One of Arizona’s most famous son’s is Barry Goldwater, a five term Senator known as “Mr. Conservative”.

Republican Senator Goldwater launched a bid for President of the United States against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and Goldwater was portrayed as reactionary, too right-wing and bat-shit crazy for his fights against the New Deal, unions and liberalism.

He lost the election to Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, taking down several Republicans with him.

Goldwater was known as a ‘libertarian’ way back when, and in the 80′s when he saw the religious right’s influence with Reagan, Goldwater predicted that there would come a day when he would be labeled a “LIBERAL.”

Then there was Republican Evan Mecham, who owned a car dealership, and he won the election for governor of Arizona in 1986 and is famous for his recollections of folks calling African American children ‘pickaninny’ meant in an affectionate way.

Governor Mecham is also known for overturning the Martin Luther King Holiday and blaming working women for high divorce rates.

Governor Mecham was impeached by the voters of Arizona in April of 1988 for obstruction of justice and misuse of government funds, which he was later acquitted.

Then there was Republican Jane Hull, who bankrupted the state of Arizona with the alt-fuel fiasco, and perhaps lesser known, was that Governor Hull launched the bid of Texas Governor George Bush Jr. for President.

Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano was elected after Hull’s reign of errors, and in her first term as governor of Arizona, Governor Napolitano balanced the budget and got the state out of debt and into the black.

Governor Napolitano even managed to setup a “rainy day” fund, which has since been raided and decimated.

To be fair, midway though Governor Napolitano’s 2nd term, she did play with the numbers and credit and did leave her successor with massive debt, since no one in power saw the collapse of the housing market, which was Arizona’s main economic source.

Arizona’s State Legislature has always been Republican majority and Governor Napolitano did work with them and they would vociferously complain about her vetoes, yet she managed to get the job done.

President Obama scooped Governor Napolitano from Arizona by offering her the job as head of Homeland Security, and there were Republicans rejoicing that Janet was gone, and others saddened that she left, and others angered because she left Arizona in such dire straits.

Jan Brewer slipped into the position of Governor, as Arizona does not have a lieutenant governor, and Jan Brewer is a Republican that held the position of Secretary of State.

Governor Brewer is the fourth woman, the third consecutive woman to hold the title of governor in Arizona.

Governor Brewer, an unelected governor, has not been able to work with the Republican majority in the state’s legislature.

Following former President GW Bush’s example, the Republicans shut out the Democrats from all legislative meetings, Governor Brewer only calling on the Democrats to sign her bills when the Republican majority refused.

The Arizona Democrats refused to support the legislation, since they had no voice in forming the bills, and Governor Brewer led the Republican charge that the reason the state could not balance the budget was due to the Democrats and obstruction.

The Arizona Legislature under Governor Brewer have managed to pass some of the most liberal gun laws in the country, and once again to be fair, Vermont has similar laws.

Governor Brewer was very unpopular for being unable to work within her own Republican Party, but all that changed once Governor Brewer signed the anti-immigration SB1070 into law.

I do not need to share last night’s debate between the unelected Governor Brewer and the Democratic candidate Terry Goddard as it has gone viral on the Internet.

Due to Arizona’s ‘Clean Election Law’ voted in by voters in 1996, Governor Brewer was forced to do one debate and of course, the Republican legislature has been working hard on overturning the ‘Clean Election Law’.

Last night, the local CBS station did a story on Governor Brewer’s ties to private prisons in the state, and the money they are giving to her campaign for governor.

Governor Brewer was silent when 3 dangerous criminals escaped from a private prison in Kingman and when a woman tossed wire cutters over the fence, and then two of the escapees killed a couple from Oklahoma while they were camping New Mexico.

Governor Brewer is not happy with that expose and has pulled all her ads for governor from the local CBS channel 5 in Phoenix.

On another update of Arizona news is that the Department of Justice has issued fines against Sheriff Joe due to his non-compliance with 2 subpoenas for his records regarding a DOJ investigation into abuse of power and civil rights abuse in his jails.

I’ve researched subpoenas and what it means when a person refuses to comply and it is normal for 2 warnings to be given.

This is rare, as a sheriff’s office has never refused to cooperate with a DOJ and Grand Jury investigation since Mississippi in the 1960′s.

Isn’t it amazing that Sheriff Joe is refusing to “show his papers”?

On Saturday, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to tens of thousands of blindingly white, patriotically obese, special needs Walmart shoppers, claiming to speak for God and urging a return to the halcyon days of religious domination of our democracy which brought America such historic hits as morally justifiable slavery, the slaughter of “heathen” Native Americans, Manifest Destiny, women as second class citizens without the right to vote, prohibition and its resulting in the explosion of organized crime and teens having lots of oral and anal sex in order to honor their Promise Rings.

As a result, as Monty Python once sang, God got quite irate. So, as He is nowadays accustomed to venting his wrath, He blogged the following and asked me to post it for Him:

GOD’S BLOG – 8-31-2010

Let me begin by saying that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin speak for me. The tip offs are, I never use chalkboards, I don’t drop the last letter of “ing” words to be folksy and lastly, I usually make sense.

Being omnipresent, I couldn’t help but watch these two and their colleagues give their speeches on Saturday at the site and on the day of my dear friend’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Though I don’t see anything wrong with the way I’ve made male dogs mark territory as their own, it is a bit off putting when people use dogs as role models for that trait (wish they copied the unconditional love and loyalty stuff instead).

What can be a little frustrating about being all-knowing is that you never get to say, “What the hell is wrong with that guy?!”, you already know. I do see all living things as my children but some days, your kids can really drive you nuts, you know what I’m talking about?

Glenn claimed that his rally was about returning honor, going back to Me and less overtly, returning power in America to White Christians. That’s like urging people to come together to build and paint a majestic cross just so you can set fire to it.

Believe me, I don’t have an inferiority complex. I’m not stomping around Heaven, upset that people aren’t ruling more countries in my name. In fact, that’s exactly what would get me upset, have you seen what happens in most countries when people declare I chose them to be the leader (my lawyers did send George Bush a Cease and Desist).

Earth is for you folks to take care of and figure out how to run. I’ve totally delegated all executive decisions to all of you, I just want to be invited to the company picnics.

Glenn Beck also urged people to sublimate themselves to me, to get on their knees and make sure their children saw them doing so. I guess the best way to do that would be to get in front of the tv and pray…though I’d guess the kids would just crane their heads around to keep killing people in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

I think this could send the wrong message. First, kids may think that their parents are praying to the tv, that I am in the tv or that Tivo is God (which it is in some households).

Second, I think kids should see that strong moral beliefs are what make their parents stand up and become leaders in their own lives. Impressing subservience is like wiring a weakness into oneself or one’s kids that less principled folks than yours truly can then use to manipulate them to further unprincipled greed and lusts.

Which brings me back to Glenn Beck. He spoke of restoring honor…and did so by dishonoring one of the most honored Americans, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement he did so much for. Next time, I assume that Glenn will want to campaign on protecting endangered species by hunting them.

So, we can put aside this clearly illegitimate claim as the purpose of this rally, along with a reverence for me because love and respect and power for all races and religions is my thing. Also, despite the claims in their prospectuses and press releases, I am not a wholly owned subsidiary of FreedomWorks, Fox News or the GOP.

I just wish such wolves wouldn’t use me as their sheep’s clothing. The ironic thing is that in order to be so comfortable in using me to promote a self-serving agenda, such people would have to not believe in me (they clearly have no fear that they’ll ever have to face me for their transgressions).

So my suggestion is, the more you hear someone use me or their love of me to justify their actions and schemes that benefit themselves personally, the more of an atheist they probably are.

And BTW, some of my best friends are Atheists (I tell them that whether or not they believe in me, I believe in them and they’ll usually buy me a drink anyway, nice folks) so that’s not a bad thing but it does lend a bit of perspective to these situations.

Satan plays the same game as Glenn but as a practical joke, after a while, he always blurts out, “Just joking! I’m not really speaking for God and there is no barbecue tonight!”

Too bad Glenn doesn’t even display the decency of Satan. Still, it will be hilarious in a number of years, when Satan gets the chance to pull that on Glenn! Man, will he freak!

Good Morning Planet,

I want to thank everyone for their warm welcome. I was over at the Huffpo under the cover of my new moniker. Apparently the IP address banning department isn’t being paid enough to do their job. So I decided to have some fun with a new identity and poke at the caged animals with my intellectual stick. Intellectual: now there’s a subjective term. Okay, I’m busted – you caught me. Yes – I admit it: I am going for blood and it’s purely a personal and emotional crusade that has nothing to do with intellect. Well, the Huffpo has nothing to do with intellect either; so it’s a good match I think.

My recipe for fun includes writing little post of pure random gibberish. I learned back in 2008 when I was antagonizing posters at our local newspaper, that I could write a few random words and get the Kool aid crowd worked up pretty good. You’d be surprised at how condescending and insulting people can be – wait – I forgot my audience here – sorry – I guess I ought to rephrase that. You know how condescending and insulting people can be (better) but when you exceed their threshold of rudimentary English skills and insult their pathetically minimal understanding of syntax and grammar, you can get a very fiery response. I demonstrated my most basic technique to a co-worker during the presidential elections. My method was quick and simple:

1. go to the web-page that has the infamous gibberish generator
2. cut and paste a trolls very own words into the generator
3. generate the gibberish
4. cut and paste the result into a comment box
5. post
6. check back later and enjoy

What I am doing over at the Huffpo isn’t so lowbrow as that. I am doing what is more like poetry – random yet fluid word association in rhythmic patterns. I guess it takes some effort to do it that way but I reviewed the results of last nights guerrilla posting and discovered that some mawd there didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. One of my carefully constructed post had been deleted. This only goes to prove one thing and that would be that Huffpo mawds are capricious and vain. Further proof that the site has been overrun by right wing Christian extremists. Seriously, gibberish is apolitical and -  – - -it’s gibberish. Are these people offended by nonsense? God, now there’s a double standard! Again more proof that the Huffpo is being run by right wing Christian extremists. Hey, not that I have anything against right wing Christian extremists. (insert tasteless humor about lions).

Cheers – and I’ll be baaaaaaack

Hi Folks,

Quwhellyicquid here. Some of you may have met me over at the Huffpo. Apparently some mawd didn’t like my snark so I got canned.

Hell, I had a great fan to comment ratio going too: 700 comments and 103 fans. Ef it anyway. It seemed obvious that the Huffpo had sold out

to the right wing MSM right? Like how stupid is it to put up an article about Dickhead Cheney being in the hospital and not let anyone post even a passive comment about how happy that made them feel.

Seriously, the sooner that war criminal goes to hell the better. However, all of the sappy posts that the mawds let through were “I’m praying for a speedy recovery” or some other bullocks like that.

Like this was the Huffpo, and I thought it was against the insanity of the right wing – and here they are having a little Cheney love fest going on. Purely nauseating.

Anyway, I’ll just my news from the BBC unless someone can suggest a better source. Until then, I’ll just have to deposit my snark here unless otherwise told to do otherwise.

Cheers

All ye who failed to believe my last blog concerning the REAL political leanings of Arianna Huffington, please take a look at the picture she recently tweeted below.

She’s on holiday in Italy, and whilst in Amalfi, just “happened” to run into an old friend and his wife. Guess who?

Unexpected encounters: in Amalfi, running into Newt Gingrich and his wife (even invited him to blog about his new book)

What’s the old Rod Stewart song say – every picture tells a story? She’s even asked him to blog. Huffington Post takes a sharp turn to the Right, with the man who likens Muslims to Nazis.

I feel vindicated.

Arianna Huffington is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post. She fancies herself a powerful voice in the world of American Progressive politics, and I suppose she is, although I’ve always doubted the liberal credentials of someone who was closely-knit, literally and figuratively, into the framework of Newt Gingrich’s political philosophy throughout the 1990s. People change, yes, but lasting, believeable and genuine change is often of the calibre which occurs slowly, almost imperceptibly, throughout a number of years – much in the way the conservative former Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens, evolved from a conservative jurist into the liberal conscience of the Court.

So pardon me, a natural secularist, if I found Huffington’s Damascene conversion from hardcore neocon and Gingrich neophyte into a fully paid-up member of the Progressive Populist club, practically overnight, more than a bit difficult to swallow.

Even harder to accept was the ease with which the liberal media readily accepted her within their fold. More than Mitch McConnell “taking the President’s word” that he’s a Christian, the media elite embraced this woman as one of their own.

She certainly has been making the rounds – from Morning Joe to various appearances on CNN, with stops in between on Ed Schultz’s and Keith Olbermann’s echo chambers, as well as a quasi-regular stint on ABC’s This Week – especially when there’s an opportunity to criticize whatever the President has said or hasn’t said, has done or hasn’t done, which hasn’t met her personal standard of excellence. And then, there’s always the opportunity for her particular brand of argumentum ad hominem. I believe her favourite reference to the President is “Nowhere Man.”

Don’t get me wrong. Politicians were made to be criticized, their feet being fashioned to be held to the fire by the people who elect them; but – Lordy! – according to Arianna Huffington’s political perspective, it’s amazing that the President is able to walk down the street and chew gum without tripping up. There’s criticism, there’s nitpicking … and there’s cherry-picking.

However, I’ve noticed, during yet another summer of discontent, that Madame’s been curiously quiet of late, starting right about the time of the Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Breibart incident.

In an interview printed earlier in the year in Wired magazine, Breitbart amply credited Huffington as being  his mentor, saying she’d taught him everything he knew about his particular type of journalism – which is, at best, described as “press hackery” and, at worst, as a variety of ratfucking: shady, oblique quotes from anonymous sources, phrases and sentences taken out of context and spun with a view to imparting a message completely different from the original, and loads of nuanced criticism, which never offers any alternative suggestions, but always ends with a sneer and more than a dollop of condescension.

Needless to say, the interview went viral in the age of the internet, and more than a few of the many people who comment regularly on Huffington Post were quick to point out, not only the association between Huffington and Breitbart, but also the fact that Breitbart was the co-founder of HuffPo, himself.

This guilt by association was just enough to jog some memories of Huffington the virulent neocon of the Nineties – neophyte of Newt and the founder of a website dedicated entirely to securing the impeachment of one President William Jefferson Clinton, Democrat. It was also enough, for awhile, for several commentators to slam accusations of “Breitbart journalism” against certain of her regular reporters, each time their “reporting” proved to be shoddy and inaccurate – which was quite a lot.

The dots were connected.

Huffington never referenced Breitbart, and, although her site offered many and varied articles concerning Shirley Sherrod, Fox News and the Obama Administration, with most of the blame being heaped heavily onto the President’s shoulders, she never offered up a word, distancing herself from this man and his shady practices, never reassured her adoring gaggle of fans that she totally condemned what he’d tried to do. She simply ignored the name Breitbart altogether, as if he didn’t exist in her fragrant world of expensive facials, debutant balls and speaking up for the “small people.”

It seemed as though Arianna, for once, had lost her mighty voice.

And now, with all the kerfuffle surrounding the Park51 incident in New York, all the not-too-cleverly disguised innuendo insinuating that Muslims, as a whole, are to be feared, vilified and persecuted, we’ve yet to hear Mrs Huffington expound upon this. The verbal attack on a construction worker, trying  to thread his way through the New York mob, who appeared to “look Muslim” didn’t raise a whimper of protest from Arianna’s throat.  Nor did the fact that recent polls reveal an increasing number of people seem to suspect our President is a Muslim. These are ordinary people who believe this, the sort of people for whom Arianna claims to speak, especially in her recent book, which has yet to climb onto the New York Times best-seller list.

Arianna, who always speaks the truth (according to her dittoes), should be guiding and enlightening these people to the contrary.

Instead, she’s uncharacteristically silent.

Sometimes silence reverberates more astoundingly than a plethora of loud and gratuitous criticism, and sometimes silence can be interpreted as tacit assent.

In days of yore, in the Nineties when the budget was balanced and everyone believed they had money in their pockets, Arianna was the First Disciple in the Church of Newt Gingrich. Now that Newt’s likening the Muslims to Nazis, one wonders if the sheets Arianna might be thinking of donning are made of designer-labelled white linen.

During last Friday’s Vox Populi, we were discussing how the GOP/Tea Party, assisted hugely by Fox, the MSM and corporations, has foisted this fraudulent series of racist and hateful “issues” on the nation and into our politics.

Pres. Obama, being a thoughtful man of reason, responds earnestly to accusations about mosques near Ground Zero, his being a secret Muslim, etc.

We arrived at a consensus that instead of this accomplishing anything, Obama’s responses merely validate and empower the GOP hate machine which is continuing to whip up more and more irrational fear and hatred against non-whites, non-Christians and any other group that can be portrayed as the evil “other”.

A legitimate concern is that such rabid, omnipresent and publicly sanctioned hate mongering is deteriorating social discourse and behavior as well as our democracy…not to mention increasing the likelihood of more terrible, hate-inspired incidents.

What Pres. Obama needs to do, in our opinion, is to bust this fraud wide open and expose the cynical greed for power behind it. Instead of playing defense in this rigged game, Obama needs to kick the board over.

We would like to see Pres. Obama make a speech from the White House to the American People, laying bare the racism and xenophobia being used to manipulate people to empower the GOP and corporate America. He needs to explain to the nation that the GOP’s blocking of everything that would help America recover from the GOP/Corporate-caused economic crash, purely for their political gain, is unAmerican.

By doing so, he could short circuit this dangerous scheme and turn the focus to where it belongs, on those who would betray the people for their own pursuit of power. Instead of standing by while the GOP propaganda machine continues spewing lies and hatreds that Obama needs to keep addressing, it’s time to put the GOP back on their heels and on the defensive for their ruthless and disgusting behavior.

And a bold, confrontational speech by Pres. Obama declaring that this campaign, by the GOP and the Corporations behind them, is about placing the greed for power above what’s best for the citizens of our nation would change the conversation profoundly from the manufactured accusations and divisive distractions from reality to the true reality we’re actually living in.

Such a speech could rally the nation.This country desperately needs to reverse the polarization and come together to confront and overcome the immense challenges facing us, not allow the GOP and Fox to increase the ongoing deterioration of this Union and its future because it’s to their own financial and political benefit.

So we came up with the idea of setting up a collaboration for folks here to offer their thoughts and suggestions on what Pres. Obama could say in such a speech and also what we should say to him in a cover letter to convince him to take such action.

Once we’ve had folks weigh in on this, we’ll draft a speech and a cover letter based on the comments below and post them so people can add their names (confidentially) as signatories to endorse them (and get the word out to try to gather as many people as we can to add their names). Then we will send the letter and speech to Pres. Obama for his consideration.

So please feel free to dive right in with any suggestions, please share your thoughts on what Pres. Obama should say in an address to the nation to defuse this mercenary campaign that seeks to further tear apart our nation and instead inspire people to come together for the common good.

When you stay at hotels around the country, visit a bar or restaurant, find yourself in some public place where there’s a tv, you’re more than likely to see on that tv either a commercial for Dulcolax or Fox News.

The way you tell the difference is that one of these promotes the expelling of human waste and the other…hmm…let me get back to you on that.

Why is the exhibition of Fox News in public places so ubiquitous? Less than 30% of the country would describe themselves as Republicans, are there really millions more who think that the way to deal with the Republican party being repugnant is to just hide one’s membership?

Or, should one instead look to the corporations and business owners of the hotels, bars, etc. as the public purveyors of this News porn?

If one is interested in politics, it is wise to stay informed on what one’s adversaries are saying or screaming hysterically as they lean desperately on their chalkboards with tears stream down their faces. Since Fox and the Right Wing have successfully constructed a talking points pipeline, it’s actually hard to escape the piles of dead grannies, Marxist-Socialist-Muslim-Kenyan-Hitler presidents and racist black people oppressing white people.

Still, even though prolonged exposure to Fox News may be hazardous to your healthy gray cells…especially if you do as I do and keep a large wooden mallet next to your couch for smacking yourself in the head each time something especially asinine is said and agreed to by a collection of RW talking heads….it can be educational.

Today on Fox and Friends, it was once again a bone of contention and a big cause of dissatisfaction that Obama has not given every American a unicorn or at least a pretty pony. The criticisms came from every direction, Obama promised there would be no more flatulence in the world, that we’d all get super powers, he hasn’t once turned time back to get there before Lois ‘s car fell in the earthquake-caused crevice nor has he french kissed a single oil company CEO. The guy is a total failure!

I also learned that prior to January 2009, we have no idea who was president or what they did. Apparently, Al Qaeda used some kind of a Men In Black memory-wiping thingy on us, we probably had a president before Obama but in the midst of all the disasters we’ve been going through in this nation and the world, it’s probably not worth the energy to try remembering anyway. Then again, I do subscribe to the Lindsey Lohan School of Strategic Planning.

In a PPP poll in January 2010, Fox News was rated as the most trusted news network. Unfortunately, the results of an OMG poll out the following month showed that a majority found that PPP poll the least trusted results of polls that month. The following month, a BS poll showed that a majority of people don’t believe in polls and would never participate in one. The following month a FUBAR poll found that 200% of poll results are unreliable.

There’s an old saying, “History is written by the winners.” Fox News would add, “…but history is re-written by the losers.”

In this shocking, unedited video, Andrew Breitbart proudly announces to an audience that he was on crack cocaine during the birth of his children, is in rehab, has sexual problems, is a narcissist and in the end confesses, “I’m kind of a fraud.”

Should he be forced to resign?

Please spread this video around, the people have a right to know the truth…but send them this link anyway!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYigEUvG3Bo

The Huffington Post has gone Vegas.

It has instituted a clever way to have commenters engage in what can only be seen as a form of slot machine gambling.  I noticed this  after learning HP had started some kind of  “badges” system.  I visited the site and saw a curious form of differentiation occurring amongst the commenters.  Now there were  symbols next to the individual members which served as an additional set of descriptors.  It gave the promise  of  a member becoming  something of a  Huffington Eagle Scout skilled in all sorts of communications Huffington.  As far as I could tell, if you tweeted Huffington, Face Booked Huffington, networked Huffington by smoke signal and semaphore, you could obtain a badge of some sort.  As Questinia, I saw I had a badge.  A level 1 badge of some sort.  It meant something. Although I found out what it meant in the badge identifying page, I  forgot what it means.

BUT! As I was observing the merry calvacade of HP all-stars, trolls,  data plodders, the marginalized and the up and coming, I saw my badge had been taken away! What had I done?  I reviewed my comments as tried and true Questinia and saw nothing that merited the  demerit of  badge removal.   I promptly inquired HP as to why my badge had been taken away with a modicum of feeling pathetic.   But,  as a “good girl” with my reinforcements of yore including a brief stint in Catholic school,  I responded to this virtual punishment with pique;  without explanation, I was duly given back my badge.  It was odd, but I realized they had gotten me to modify my  behavior (caring to ask what happened) by tapping into my school-girl’s deeper parochial brain. Now, I was intrigued.

A parallel phenomenon appeared to be taking hold at HP:  That of whirlwind fanning.  Members were now fanning one another in declaratives “I Fan You!”.  “Faved and Fanned!”, etc…  giving the site an air of part boy’s High School locker room high fiving after a big team win and a ceremony of title bequeathing.  It seemed partially gratuitous, as genuine appreciation, as a new form of LMAO, at times as a form of barter, as a way to give a message, as a way to get back at someone.  Even as sex.   I saw one fanner write “I am fanning you SO HARD right now!!”.  My only hope was that the person getting fanned wasn’t getting fanned in the fanny.

I thought HP was engaging in some sort of blog site social experiment while possibly driving up it’s membership and number of comments made.  Some moderator in the backroom must be earning a PhD.  So I thought of conducting a simple experiment of my own.  I began to play with socks to see how people would respond to various personae.  What came out of it was somewhat interesting.  All the socks attracted different people.  Although I tried to keep the tone of my posts similar, it was clear  that different personae attracted different people and they were duly fanned and faved.   Then, for some reason, I found myself wanting more fans.  I wanted to hit a payload of fan accolades.  I wanted to see if I could increase my odds of getting repeatedly fanned, good and proper.  I wanted an all out gang-fan. I wondered why I was feeling this way.  What became clear to me was the site is now set up as a smoky Vegas slot hall with intermittent reinforcement keeping posters more or less compulsively commenting.  Now, HP was always that way to an extent, but one couldn’t overlook the muted mid-brow frenzy of fanning, and faving and flagging.  All in the presence of croupier moderators.  But, in the olden days a fan was hard earned and was more or less disconnected from the comment timewise.

You remember intermittent reinforcement.  It’s what gets people searching for that high, it’s what keeps gamblers hoping for that big win, it’s what certain unscrupulous men use on women as “fractionation”:  That deadly and effective psycho-strategy of paying incredibly focused  attention to the objects of their desire then suddenly and without warning withdrawing.  It’s the push-pull.  It gets women into bed in a heartbeat.  It’s all based on that form of learned responses called operant conditioning.  An operant is a modifying condition which changes a behavior.  With positive reinforcement, the desired behavior is always matched with a reward, say a rat always gets the pellet.  It is an easy behavior to extinguish since the rat begins to always expect the reward and therefore becomes a bit blasé to begin with.  When the reward ceases to be forthcoming the rat goes “meh”.  The negative reinforcement schedule is essentially one where the desired behavior is reinforced and learned by averting a punishment, say an electric shock to a rat’s front privates.  These types of paradigms are continuous.  That is to say, a behavior is always met with a reward, either a positive one or a negative/averting unpleasantness one.  Each of these forms of learning are fairly easy to extinguish.  Simply uncouple the behavior and the reward and the behavior decays over time.

However, with intermittent reinforcement, there is discontinuous rewarding.  It is intermittent.  It can occur after every fifth attempt at obtaining a reward, or tenth , under certain light conditions, after different amounts of lapsed time.  The most important feature of intermittent reinforcement is that it is very difficult to extinguish.  It provides the foundation for obsession and compulsive behaviors.  Under continuous reinforced learning, the behavior to be extinguished is never given the reward. Therefore it is easy to stop.   However in intermittent reinforcement, the subject has become used to going for periods of time without a reward so they will continue to engage in it.

My goal was to make the intermittent reinforcement a more positive continuous one by making me more irresistibly fannable. One in which I would  nearly always get a fan.  For that, I had to strategize what name, avatar and type of comment I should use.  I chose a furry, cute, dysmorphically dwarfed,  creamy orange kitten with  parted red Clara Bow, blowing-kisses-lips on a baby blue blanket.  It’s name was to be a shamelessly manipulative play on pity-fuck.  I named it Pity-Fan Me.  As to type of comment,  I chose humorous, punny or sarcastic.  Sometimes abstruse and esoterically knowing.  Occasionally precious.  The name and moniker alone gave me a shower of fans.  Nearly everything I wrote was faved.  Mostly,  people commented on how cute my avi was.  I increased my odds by leaving overly serious main threads and  by repairing to posts like “Tokio Hotel Band member OD’s on Viagra”.  It worked.

I decided then to have a goal which would make the entire fanning system appear absurd all the while earning me more and more fans.  I declared to the bloggers that I wanted to accumulate more fans than Hume Skeptic.  That I wanted to initiate a “Fan Drive”.  At least I wanted to outdo Rich Misty or Thunderclap Newman.  I even went up to Hume and taunted him  by saying I was on his heels  ( I SHOULD have said fanny!)  and I had only 2, 243 more fans to go.  So…he fanned me.  To make things fair, I fanned him back.  I got a few fans from people who evidently had some hidden animosity toward  Mr. Skeptic.  Even though I obtained many fans that way, my trifecta winning moment came when I composed a poem about oil fuck-up Oynes called “Oynty Doynty”.  I got about five fans in a single swoop.  I was batting .500.  I had roughly 50 fans at 100 comments, but then lost a few for some reason when I got cocky and wrote “Hello my name is Pity-Fan Me and I am a fanaholic”.  Maybe I was hitting too close to home.  In keeping with my shamelessness,  I then shored my fan number with a reinforcement of my old socks just to pad the numbers.  So what?  I cheated.  I don’t run any NIH studies so don’t worry.  The point is, I found myself commenting more and more. When the magic seemed to be  wearing thin,  I commented more foolishly and desperately.  Saying things that Pity-fan wouldn’t write.  After eight un-fanned comments, I noticed I was on a losing streak.  Since I am by nature not an addictive person I quit while I was ahead and didn’t waste any more of my time.

And because I am also very familiar with the power of  intermittent fanning, I got bored.

Pity-Fan Me.

For some reason, Joe Scarborough’s morning show did a special Sunday morning edition, solely for the purpose of discussing the previous evening’s gala shindig Press Correspondents’ dinner.

Pardon me for asking, but when did a glorified prom become cause for a special edition of a morning news-and-opinion show to be aired during the weekend? Granted, the oil spill was a particular concern to everyone and worthy of special coverage. The Arizona immigration issue was certainly newsworthy as well, not to mention the breaking news story of the failed bomb attempt in Times Square.

Instead, viewers were treated to the sight of Scarborough, Mika Brezinsky, Willie Geist and media whore, Arianna Huffington, gaggled around what appeared to be a faux cafe table against a backdrop of the White House, discussing the gossip surrounding the previous evening’s social soiree.

They all looked much the worse for wear, although they were obviously hoping the effect created was that of two super-sophisticated cosmopolitan couples, meandering back in the early hours from a Monaguesque bacchanal, and pausing in a sidewalk cafe for an espresso and a gossip-fest.

Although it was early morning on the East Coast, the day looked overcast, or early enough for the sun not to have risen sufficiently. Nevertheless, three of the four sported sunglasses. Mika was still wearing the clothes she’d worn to the event and slumped sullenly in her chair, obviously feeling the effects of too much drink and too little sleep. Scarborough wore shades as well, and what appeared to be his evening suit. Geist looked like a rumpled frat boy.

Huffington was also decked out in shades and at pains to keep her face in profile, with no close-up shots. She’d not yet been to bed, and it was obvious the tit-tape applied to her hairline during her daily facial had long since lost its grip and her incipient jowls were beginning to drop, thus, revealing every one of her real 63 (admitted 59) years by the dawn’s early light.

The quartet was there to discuss the wonderland which suddenly erupted the previous evening when the glitzy glamour of Hollywood blended with the political power surge that sizzles in Washington.

“HEV’reybuddy lahfffffs celebrities, dahlinks!” trilled Whoreanna, sounding more ZsaZsa than ZsaZsa, herself (and has anyone seen the pair of them together in one room). “Vashinkton lahffs Hollyvud and Hollvud lahffs Vashinkton.”

That was a prelude to a backdrop of photo opportunities, showing wet-knickered celebrity bimbos posing prettily with staid, patrician politicos – with either person doubtless wondering who the other might be. I caught a glimpse of Jon Bon Jovi in one flick, Michelle Pfeiffer in another.

I thought this was an annual dinner given the White House Press Correspondents. Since when did it become the Oscars away from home? Who are these people, and why are they there? Last year, Sting and Trudie Styler were invited, with eco warrior Trudie cadging the couple’s private jet and ferrying the eight people absolutely necessary to put her skinny frame together for one evening, one of those necessary people being a feng shui expert).

The whole broadcast was a cacophony of name-dropping, which – I suppose – was meant to impress the viewer. I can’t say I slept any sounder in my bed, having been told by Fuckington that all of the political establishment adored her special guest, Scarlett Johanssen, they worshipped at her feet.

Forgive me, but I don’t want people I elect to ponce about of an evening worshipping at the feet of an peroxided latent adolescent who scrubs up well, and I don’t care if her intellectual credentials included spotting Bernie Sanders across the room and sprinting over tables to confront him. That anecdote didn’t cut any ice with me, and it shouldn’t with anyone else.

I don’t give a rat’s ass which nameless Hollywood actor hung out with Willie Geist and increased Geist’s street cred amongst people who normally wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole, and I wanted Mika, daughter of Democrats, to respond to Whoreanna’s pointless bragging of having met Scott Brown and having been told that Brown named his eldest daughter after her, by snapping: “Think about it, you dumb bitch, when the girl was born twenty years ago, you were a fucking Republican so far to the Right you make Sarah fucking Palin look libera! Now shut the fuck up and order me an Alka Seltzer on the rocks. My head is splitting!”

The whole ego-stroking episode is given pride of place on Huffington Post, just under the main story of the oil spill and the President’s visit.

I find it astounding that this pathetic parvenue and blatant social-climber should consider herself a natural spokesperson for the middle classes. Many members of the class she purports to defend probably waited on her table the previous evening.

On a day when the Gulf Coast is being ravaged by an oil spill, when unemployment is rife and rising and when those who are employed are often either underemployed or working three jobs to make ends meet, that this superficial dilettante should waste time telling the little people she thinks she serves about the party lives of the rich, the famous and the powerful.

I don’t know whether this was a jump-the-shark moment for Whoreanna, but it certainly reeked of  “let-them-eat-cake” attitude.

There is a lot of heated discussion going on in America now, sparked by the Arizona immigration debate, regarding immigration reform. It seems that everyone is agreed that immigration should continue in some way, but that there are, indeed, two types of immigrants: the “wrong” type of immigrant and the “right” sort.

I think Arianna Huffington falls in the former category.

I would like to know if her papers are in order.

Hey Kids! Did you get your Super User badge yet? You can redeem your Networker tickets for cheap plastic toys at the Redemption Booth!!! And you can earn more tickets playing Whack A Troll!!! Weeeeeeeeee!!!! Blogging time is fun time!!!

Have you checked out HuffPo’s new comment system upgrade? If you haven’t, just imagine the arcade at a miniature golf course and you’ll get the idea.

That’s not to say that they didn’t make some improvements. As many of us suggested a long time ago, they are providing a structure of community moderating which is a good thing.  Still,  HuffPo has been morphing into a neon-flashing, distraction littered,  Chuck E. Cheese-styled “playground” for some time and it has all now come to fruition.

Badges and colors and categories are applied to users. The fanning led to a class system and cliques over there but this latest application of a variety classes, IMO, turns HuffPo into even more of a  High School  campus than before. IMO, it trivializes so much about blogging and sets up fertile ground for a greater degree of cliques and egos.

BTW, if you link to their Facebook page, you get your comments highlighted in purple! So, if you are a troll with only hate to offer, as long as you help HuffPo’s bottom line by linking to their Facebook page, your comment is highlighted and a reasoned comment from a good blogger isn’t.

What a circus HP has become, a parody of itself. Instead of the site encouraging discussion on issues, it continues to make the focus on the social standing and relations of its bloggers.

I think HP learned very well that many people there are addicted to the Chuck E. Cheese aspect of getting “tickets” and “points”, they love accumulating “fans”.  Some people over there are more interested in getting more fans than any issue that could be discussed. So this latest cornucopia of badges will be, IMO, a goldmine for HP in addicting many of the same people and more to competing on who can get the coolest badges. And if that’s not what blogging’s about, my name isn’t Dave or Buster.

As for me, I think blogging should be about substantive conversations on issues that matter. I don’t think that elevating some bloggers above others is Progressive, constructive or mature. I don’t think that turning blogging into a game of Skee-Ball where you can win badges is a step forward.

For me, when it comes to blogging, I don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

Yes this ad trying to destroy the democratic process was actually linked on a so called progressive website. I could be wrong but I doubt even people who want to kill the bill out of principle on the left don’t want to block the democratic process. I really don’t know what to say but this is way too over the top.

Please keep this in Speakers Corner.

This morning as I was watching last night’s Craig Ferguson Show that we tape since we can’t stay up that late, his monologue struck a chord with me.

He stated that he’s been feeling rather depressed lately, and I have to admit that so have I, and I wonder if anyone else has been feeling the same.

I find it depressing to read the news every day and every day the news seems to be nothing but doom and gloom.

If it’s not articles about the Party of NO, it’s stories about Limbaugh’s and Beck’s latest bloviations, Sarah Palin’s Charismatic Apostolic Warriors taking over our government, the 244% increase in hate groups, unemployment, foreclosures, Americans suffering without health care, earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

I’ve been thinking about the typical platitude of counting my blessings, and I do have innumerable blessings in my life, and focusing on the positives rather than negatives, and then I log onto the Internet and the depressing cycle starts again.

So, I started thinking of what I can do in my every day life to get around the blues and decided that I need an attitude adjustment.

Today is the day that I am starting my personal movement to cheer up, by finding at least one good news story every single day.

I have also decided to stop playing into the negativity by referring to Tea Party people as teabaggers, and instead calling them, well, Tea Party People or referring to the group as the Tea Party Movement.

I am going to try very hard to speak about Republicans, Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, et all, in a respectful manner, taking a cue from Van Jones and his graciousness in telling Beck that he loves him, even if it was tongue in cheek, but I think the man really meant it.

In other words, I’m going to try to play nice and not lower myself to the opposition’s level.

Have you ever gotten really angry with someone and blew up and told them off?

How did it make you feel afterward?

I’ve done that a few times in my life, and every single time I’ve regretted it afterward and I felt horrible and worse than I did about whatever offense occurred to bring on my anger or hurt feelings.

I’m taking the high road, or going to try my damnedest to do that, as it is healthier for my frame of mind.

My feel good story of the day is this one –

Veterinarian Wins Pay It Forward