BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Whatever happened to the man I voted for? Where did he go? Did he morph right before my ears? Or, has he simply been a sheep skinned Canus lupis all along? Damn, talk about your “quick change” artists. This guy has made Brachetti look like a full-body tattoo. From “equal” justice, to “open” government, to domestic spying, to whistleblowers, this “alchemistical” President of mine has got me to wondering if my rationale that “he’s probably better than the alternative” is anywhere near good enough. Here’s what I’m talking about: EQUAL JUSTICE: If my President is […]
EXCERPT: A Confederacy Of Dunces
Artwork via CARGO COLLECTIVE PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: Reader commenting on Philly.com has also been around since the late ’90s, but it wasn’t until 2008, following years of internal deliberations and successive regime changes, that the site went all-in and began allowing readers to talk back at the bottom of every article. “Journalism had been a one-way conversation for too long,” says one Philly.com staffer. “It was a good idea to open the door and allow the public to start commenting on our work.” Well, on paper, maybe. In practice? Not so much. There was some recognition from the get-go that there […]
SMUS: Michelle Bachmann’s Greatest Sh*ts
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY As you’ve no doubt heard by now, The Bogeywoman of Minnesota is giving up the Washington ghost. Good riddance! Don’t let the door smack you on the ass on the way out, Michele! Wait a minute. Is it possible that her pending departure isn’t such great news after all? I mean, could we actually find ourselves missing her? Just think, no more exulting in such divinely inspired declarations of humaneness and tolerance as: ”Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of ‘The Lion […]
RAWK TAWK: Life According To Brother JT
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Garage-punk savant, drone-rock wizard, acid-dazed psychonaut, human ouija board, holy fool of the Internet — Brother JT is a man of many hats. He’s been a puppet, a poet, a pirate, a pawn and king. He’s been up and down and over and out — and he still really likes the LSD thing. (SEE Trippin’ Balls With Brother JT, his lysergic talk show on Scrapple TV) He’s come to tell us all that the emperor has no clothes, the sky is falling, God is great, we’re already dead, and yet despite all that life is beautiful. He’s […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Bad Shepherd
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Should we be overly concerned about government surveillance and secrecy? After all, history shows that such CYAs and free speech damping devices have served and sustained despots and dictatorships exceedingly well for millenniums. One of the most proficient in their use was a chap by the name of Mohammad Rez? Sh?h Pahlav?, better known as the Shah of Iran. I like to use him as an example because for decades he was America’s man in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, he would never have been able to maintain one of the scariest […]
NSA WHISTLEBLOWN: America Just Swallowed The Red Pill, About To Learn How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes
THE GUARDIAN: The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection […]
1984 ALREADY HAPPENED: NSA Hoovering Up Massive User Data From The Nine Largest Internet Companies
WASHINGTON POST: The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or […]
SMUS: Apple Is Rotten And Spoiling The Barrel
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY As you’ve no doubt already heard, Apple, Inc.’s CEO Tim Crook — oops, I mean Cook — appeared before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to be grilled as to why the company screwed the U.S. Treasury out of some $12.5 billion in federal corporate income tax over the passed two years. Guess who won? Turns out it wasn’t even close. Tim “The Skim” wowed ’em, cowed ’em, and put ’em down for the count! Hell, by the time it was over, the old Crookster — there I go again, Cookster — had them eating […]
AMEN: Michelle Bachman Will Not Seek Re-Election
NEW YORK TIMES: Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican who made an ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, announced Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year. She made the announcement just six months after being re-elected in what was her most challenging Congressional campaign since she was first elected to the House in 2006. Her announcement also comes as her former presidential campaign faces inquiries into its fund-raising activities. “I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth Congressional term,” she said in a video on her campaign Web […]
HOODWINKED: Teatard Jim DeMint & The Heritage Foundation’s Racist Immigration Propaganda
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY In case you missed it, Jim Boy has left the building. Recognizing that even if he departed there would still be ample Tea Partiers remaining to carry on the obstruction, Jimmy figured the time was ripe to try his hand at running one of the country’s most inglorious research outlets: the Heritage Foundation. While there is little question about his possessing all the illiberal qualities necessary to hold down such an enterprise’s presidency — after all, for nearly 15 years now he’s been one of the most salient national shills for any and all things anti-immigrant, […]
The Shockingly High Cost Of Cheap Clothes
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Sale! Sale! Boys’ and girls’ fashion jeans – cheap! Grab ’em at Children’s Place! Ladies’ pants suits – cheap! Buy two and save even more at your nearest Cato! Outfit the entire family for less! You always get more for your money at Walmart! Always! Gee, from all outward appearances you’d think that today’s garment business was the perfect win-win situation for all concerned. Consumers enjoying low prices — brand names and retailers enjoying high profits. Free enterprise functioning at its best, no? Well, yeah, except for the folks who actually make the clothes that is. […]
Is Alex Jones A False Flag Planted By The Gummint To Discredit Paranoid Gun Nuts? ‘Cuz It’s Working!
DAILY BANTER: Let’s take a ride down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, shall we? Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings when an InfoWars stooge crashed several law enforcement press conferences, I was speaking with The Daily Banter founder Ben Cohen about Alex Jones. We were joking about circulating a rumor that Jones was actually a government covert operative manufactured and trained to infiltrate the fringe conspiracy theory groups on the far-right. Ben and I speculated that perhaps the government had instructed “Special Agent Jones” to invent a roster of crazy over-the-top theories meant to deliberately distract conspiracy theorists from real-life […]
VIDEO: The Man Who Sent The President Ricin
“This is KC & I approve this video,” he says on his You Tube page, echoing the sign-off his ricin letters to the president and the senator. He might be a lousy bioterrorist, but he’s not a bad honky tonk singer. Well, he’ll have a captive audience for the next rest of his life. RELATED: Associated Press, quoting an FBI agent, separately identified the suspect as Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, of Corinth, Mississippi [PICTURED, BELOW RIGHT]. The letter to Obama was intercepted at an office away from the White House, where all mail to the president is subjected to a […]