Homeland Security: Now keeping the country safe from Martian invaders!

So the Department of Homeland Security is tapping Science Fiction writers now to come up with new ways to think about terrorist attacks...

Actually it's rather appropriate for them to do this since many of the scare tactics used by the Bush Imperium are more fiction than fact. If you're going to scare people, then why not use the writers who can come up with six different ways to blow up the world before breakfast and make you think each of them really happened?

Then at least when the expected retort of "You're just making that stuff up" hits they can honestly respond with "Yes, in fact, we did!"

Brutally Honest Rant - 05/30/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Re-thinking the Pedestrian Rule
Audio Transcripts
05/30/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I have a rather interesting subject to talk about tonight… something that is… dare I say it?... a little bit off the beaten path.

I’m talking about the ancient rule of PEDESTRIANS!

I’m sure you’ve heard about it, right? “Pedestrians ALWAYS have the right-of-way. Always, always, ALWAYS!”

Doesn’t matter if you’re riding a bike, driving a car, or trying to navigate a fat-ass 18-wheeler down a busy freeway. The pedestrian trumps EVERYTHING!

Now am I the only one who sees something wrong with this concept?

Okay, let’s apply some brain cells to this…

Even a chunky pedestrian is maybe 300-400 pounds maximum… before needing a hand-truck to be hauled around. Now you pit that head-on against a two-ton urban assault vehicle going 50 miles an hour, and guess who’s going to win? Here’s a hint: it ain’t going to be the chunky pedestrian, unless the driver of the urban assault vehicle swerves first.

And that’s an urban assault vehicle! Can you imagine the turnout if Chunky decided to pit his odds against an 18-wheeler? I’m sorry Chunky, but that big red vehicle with little chrome doggie on the grill is not a Transformer, and it will NOT turn into Optimus Prime and heroically leap out of the way at the last minute. You will not only lose, but you will be turned into ugly bloody goo!

And yet Chunky still gets the legal right-of-way!

Now WHY is that?

Well the truth of the matter is that it is an OLD tradition that never got revisited, and it sorely needs to be changed.

The Pedestrian Rule is something that got started back when bicycles got started. Bicycles! You know, those two-wheeled human-powered vehicles. And back in those days there were no custom-made multi-geared bikes with an elaborate hand-braking system! They were crude, hard to navigate, and often hard to balance on. But there also weren’t as many people riding them as there were people walking. So to make things easier on the pedestrians, they hobbled the bike-riders by telling them that they had to kowtow to the quirkiness of their foot-walking brethren.

It’s strange because you really didn’t hear anyone say that chariots or horse-drawn carriages had to yield to pedestrians. If a horse came barreling through, you had to scurry out of the way or you would get run over. TRAINS certainly didn’t yield to anyone! If they did, then the whole bit about killing yourself on the rails or tying the damsel in distress up and leaving her on the train tracks would not make for a good cliffhanger. But bicycles… and later automobiles… would be told that PEDESTRIANS would have priority over them.

Now mind you the automobiles back when those things were added on to that rule were obviously not the same kind as you see on the streets today. They were still big and bulky, but they were also very noisy, often hard to start, and didn’t go very fast… AND there weren’t as many people who owned one as there are today. They simply couldn’t afford one, let alone figure out how one worked. Remember, back then you were pretty much on your own if your car broke down. There was no Jiffy-Lube to get you fixed and back on your way in thirty minutes.

Today cars are bigger, faster, and are pretty much the dominant form of transportation in our society. AND they’re driven by some of the most mindless people you can imagine! Soccer moms and business people; folks who have half their brains tied up reading the newspaper, the other half chatting on the cellphone, and are keeping from wrecking their cars out of pure instinct as they’re driving 80 miles-an-hour down the highway.

AND YET a person who is STUPID enough to cross the street in front of these vehicular morons still has the legal right-of-way!

If the idiot on foot is run over by the idiot behind the wheel, then it is the idiot behind the wheel that gets the blame, because THEY are supposed to somehow know that a foot-walking idiot is going to step out in front of them and they’re supposed to be able to bring that 2-ton urban assault vehicle traveling at 80 miles-an-hour to a COMPLETE stop at a moment’s notice so they won’t hit the idiot on foot. I’m sorry, but that’s when the laws of idiot politicians take a back seat to the laws of physics.

So now we have people who have developed this mindset that because pedestrians have the automatic and universal “right of way”, that they can pretty much do whatever they want to and actually expect people driving these big lumbering vehicles to magically come to a halt JUST FOR THEM.

One of the problems with illegal immigration is that all along the roads near the US-Mexican border you have drivers getting into accidents, because when you have people crossing into this country illegally they’re running across those highways, sometimes without a care in the world as to anything on that road. And who gets the blame? Not the people who are here illegally and are mindless and self-centered enough to run across a busy highway, that’s for certain! No, it is the DRIVERS that are getting the blame!

Here in the Metro Atlanta area there has been a continual problem of people getting run over by cars. Why? Because they’re jaywalking! They’re running out between cars, crossing the street whenever THEY feel like it, and sometimes the drivers just can’t see them soon enough to bring their car to a stop.

Even in my neck of the metro area, I see potential vehicular accidents every other day. People who ignore the crossing signals, or simply ignore the crosswalks altogether! It is one thing to do that kind of thing in a store parking lot, folks, it is completely different when you decide to do that in the middle of a busy four-lane road during rush hour!

But perhaps the worst of these pedestrian idiots are the JOGGERS! Hey, I don’t have anything wrong with people who go jogging. I really don’t. In fact watching a beautiful woman in running shorts and a sports bra casually bounce down the street brightens my day… UNLESS she’s running ON the road in front of me and NOT on the sidewalk!

You see… some absolutely self-centered MORON came up with this idea that it is somehow BETTER for joggers to go running on asphalt instead of concrete! And I really wish that the rocket scientist that came up with THAT idea ends up on the front grill of a semi, because now we have all of these self-centered jogging morons with their ears plugged up with MP3 music ignoring perfectly good sidewalks and are instead running either with or against the flow of traffic!

And guess what? WE are supposed to stop and yield for these people! We’re supposed to put ourselves and our vehicles at risk because these JOGGERS want to get a better workout instead of keeping their sorry asses safe and using the sidewalks that were actually DESIGNED for pedestrians to use!

So let’s get brutally honest here… it is high time that we CHANGE the “pedestrian rule” once and for all! Pedestrians need to know that they DO NOT have the automatic universal right of way! Their right of way needs to be null and void when they do something mindless like pit their foot-powered luck against the driving skills of soccer mom behind the wheel of an urban assault vehicle with three screaming kids, a ringing cellphone, hot coffee in their lap, and a Mary Kay Cosmetics tackle box by their side!

They need to know that their right-of-way is null and void when they ignore crosswalks and crossing signals. They need to know that their right-of-way is null and void when they dart out in the middle of traffic without a care in the world as to what is out there. And they CERTAINLY need to know that if they’re out jogging and they consciously decide to forgo the concrete sidewalk for the asphalt road that the only “burn” they will experience will be the heat of a car’s transmission as it fries their sorry asses moments after they become ROAD KILL.

Now folks, I’m not saying that it should be open season on pedestrians now, although that’s probably a good idea since it would hammer the message in quickly. And certainly I’m not saying that places that don’t have sidewalks or crosswalks or crossing signals should now be unsafe for people traffic. I AM saying that people need to get their heads out of their asses when it comes to dealing with pedestrians and traffic. I want you to remember that the people behind the wheel are NOT attentive professional drivers, no matter how many years of experience they may have. In way too many cases, you’re dealing with people whose minds are someplace OTHER than on what is right in front of them.

And you CANNOT expect these drivers to stop on a dime just because YOU want to cross the street in front of them! The days when that particular fantasy could happen are pretty much over with. Now it’s back to treating non-pedestrian transportation like you would back in the days of chariots, horse-drawn carriages, and trains.

(Computer – Some timely stuff… maybe some funny stuff… who knows? You never listen to it anyway!)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Here’s a quick history lesson, boys and girls: the people who designed the cities and streets and communities that you live in are usually NOT forward-thinking people. They don’t design streets and roads and neighborhoods based on how things will look like in fifty years or even ten years or even NEXT year! They base their designs on the things that are happening at the time.

That’s why you have cities like Boston and New York with super-narrow roads and alleyways and absolutely NO parking for any of these areas. Back in those days, there were no such things as automobiles. Everybody walked. So they created roads that were pretty much for PEOPLE and some horse-drawn vehicles.

That’s also why SIDEWALKS are not commonplace for many new suburban areas. It’s not because they’re not “people-friendly”, but because they know that most people will get around in a car.

Now if you think that should change… guess what you have to do? Right… you have to get involved you’re your local government. Yet another reason why you can’t fob these things off to the special interest groups.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Very Quick DVD Review: Epic Movie

Okay, I just picked up the "Unrated" DVD of "Epic Movie", and if I really go into a full-bore review of it... I'd end up giving more attention that it deserves.

The tagline for "Epic Movie" is that it is the product of TWO of the SIX writers of "Scary Movie".

They should have called in the other four.

The only reason why I picked up the "Unrated" version is that it has a couple of gratuitous scenes. Unfortunately some of the other things that went with the "unrated" feature were just a little too disturbing for me. They tried really hard to touch on EVERY movie that came out in 2006, not to mention a couple of slams of MTV, American Idol, and a few others. Unfortunately in order for them to do that, they sacrificed everything about the story and any concept of comedy.

Don't buy this video, unless you're buying it for someone you really don't care for but you have to get a gift for anyway.

Brutally Honest Rant - 05/23/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: GOOC Special – Police Abuse
Audio Transcripts
05/23/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

A couple of months back I was talking about how I was going to bring an old series back to this rant.

Back in the days when I was doing a live weekly broadcast for the Talk Liberty Network I had an ongoing series called “Government Out Of Control” which dealt with issues of abusive government activities, whether they are abuses by politicians, judges, or police officers. They represent the government, they cause irreparable harm to innocent people, and they are quite often above reproach. Even when caught or exposed, any punishment they get is miniscule compared to the overall damage and destruction that was caused in their wake.

Now I’m not saying that under certain extreme situations some bending of the law can’t happen. CERTAIN circumstances require it. But bear in mind that we are dealing with an institution – government – that is based on the same principle of infallibility as religion. It can NEVER be wrong! EVER! Even and especially when it really IS wrong and has DONE wrong!

That’s why when the government actually DOES wrong it is far more destructive to a free society than any terrorist attack or any crime spree. A terrorist can blow up a building, but a corrupt government destroys the very foundation of society.

Now there are two ways of dealing with these abuses. The first is in simply letting them happen and hoping that you never have to deal with something like it. That’s how enslaved people living in tyrannical countries operate. The other way is to let people know about these abuses, and let them get pissed off enough to FORCE accountability.

And that brings us to our little grand jury of public opinion… a special grand jury of public opinion that focuses on exposing those abuses, much like how prosecutors use their own grand jury system to indict others. We are not here to determine guilt or innocence… we are here to indict or not indict the parties involved and let the true court of public opinion determine the rest.

So let’s call this public grand jury to order…

(GOOC Theme)

Tonight I don’t have any specific case to hand to the grand jury of public opinion, but rather a general theme of gross police abuse spanning several major cities.

First up: Atlanta, Georgia.

For the past few months there has been an ongoing investigation into the death of 92-year old Kathryn Johnston. Johnston was surprised in the early-evening hours by three men wearing masks who barged into her house claiming to be police officers. This was a standard ploy for criminals in that part of the city, and many homeowners of all ages fell victim to it. So she was prepared. She stormed out with her legally-obtained handgun and let out one shot.

Unfortunately for her, the three men who barged in were REALLY police officers who were acting under a no-knock warrant. Johnston’s one shot didn’t hit anyone. THEIR shots, on the other hand, turned her into 92-year old Swiss cheese. She was probably dead long before her body hit the ground.

There’s just one problem… their warrant stated that there were drugs on the premises. That was the whole point of the raid. There were NO DRUGS. The officers SWORE on their statements that they had an informant who purchased drugs. That informant would later admit that not only did he NOT purchase drugs, but he was told by the officers to LIE about it! Oh the officers did say that they found drugs in the residence… but not the drugs that were described in their statement or by their fictional witness, and it later turned out that those drugs were planted afterwards BY the officers to justify the armed invasion and the murder of an innocent woman!

This was a serious and malicious abuse of police power, and all three officers involved have been indicted, and two of them have already struck plea deals that will give them only ten years in prison instead of life. The third officer’s criminal trial has yet to begin.

Now in case you think that this was an isolated incident of cops gone wrong, there was ANOTHER case just like this that happened two months previously. In that particular situation an 80-year old woman living alone was also accused of selling drugs. She was also raided by police officers acting under a no-knock warrant and wearing masks, and she also brandished a gun to defend herself. Only in this situation, her gun was a cap pistol and the police officers had enough sense to let her stand down before it became a tragedy. Again, information for the warrant was falsified and no drugs were ever found.

But here’s the thing… the officers involved in this case were NOT the ones who stormed in and murdered Kathryn Johnston two months afterwards.

So the problem here is symptomatic of the drug squad, if not the entire department. You have outright lying to justify a raid. That’s called perjury, and it is supposed to be a criminal offense when you’re talking about a legal affidavit, which is what a search warrant is based upon. When cops bring that warrant before a judge they have to swear under penalty of perjury that the information in that affidavit is true!

Now, while you’re pondering that situation, let’s bring up the second city: Chicago, Illinois.

Chicago PD seems to have a pest problem. They seem to be infested by punch-happy goombahs that aren’t afraid to beat the crap out of innocent people to get what they want.

Once the surveillance video of a drunken officer was shown beating up a helpless 26-year old female bartender, other similar incidents started coming out. Police Superintendent Philip Cline resigned and several other police officers have been suspended or demoted not only for these abuses but also for how the initial assault against the bartender was being handled. They also seem to have a pretty poor record of handling claims of police abuse.

One incident caught on tape can be written off as being just a bad cop. SEVERAL incidents, some of them also caught on tape… well that is a serious personnel problem. There’s a serious image problem when you have citizens calling attorneys to report a crime instead of dialing 9-1-1, and that is supposedly happening in the Windy City.

And now I bring to you the third city… Los Angles, California.

The recent May Day demonstrations on behalf of illegal aliens brought some uninvited guests… the same mysterious gang of third-party rioters that seem to show up every time there is a liberal-run protest in certain cites. They didn’t show up in every city that had a May Day protest, nor do they show up for every protest, but when they do, it is usually for a liberal cause, not a conservative one, and it is always justification for the police to break up that protest.

And this year, unlike others, the LAPD decided to attack ANYONE that stood in their way. It didn’t matter if they were participants, bystanders, or even reporters doing their jobs. If you were in front of that police officer, you were seen as and treated as the enemy.

Now in previous years, any time there was a protest in Los Angeles, the reporters were given a safe area to be in that they knew that the police would leave alone. This was part of an agreement made back in 2002, but for whatever reason, this year there was no safe area. The police even herded the fleeing crowds through one broadcast location during a live broadcast and injured several of the employees of that station in the process. If you watch the video, then you realize that this was done deliberately, because you cannot miss seeing that broadcast setup! It stands out like a sore thumb.

It was by far one of the worst cases of abuse of power that was publicly displayed in that area in forty years. No less than 60 police officers have been suspended over this incident. The FBI is now officially involved. Needless to say, the investigations on this are still pending, and the lawsuits have already been filed by the busload. The taxpayers are going to pay through the nose over this one, although it remains to be seen if any real justice is going to come out of it.

Now in case you’re wondering where I’m going with all this, here’s the point: in each of these situations, and many others like these, there is one common element between them. A general attitude that perverts any kind of government, any kind of essential government institution… and that attitude can be summed up with just one sentence…

“Get it done, I don’t care how.”

Let’s get brutally honest here… in EVERY town, city, state, or federal government, in every agency where there is abuse of power, you’ll find some administrator… some government wonk with some modicum of power or authority… who says those exact same words to others.

“Get it done, I don’t care how.”

Someone told that to the Atlanta Police Department concerning drug arrests. Doesn’t matter who said it. It could be the chief, a precinct captain, a department head, a city councilman, or even the mayor herself. SOMEONE told the police officers that they wanted to see more arrests, no matter what it took. Step on toes, bend the rules, it doesn’t matter to them. The ruining of innocent lives is irrelevant to them. The death of innocent lives doesn’t matter. They just want to see numbers, and that is what they got.

As far as I am concerned, that unknown “SOMEONE” should also be held accountable for the death of Kathryn Johnston. He or she was just as guilty as the officers who pulled the trigger, because THAT was the reason why those officers broke the law repeatedly and put themselves in a position where they would have to murder an innocent woman whose only crime was to defend her home against intruders.

Someone told the Chicago police officers that same message. They said to go ahead and BE aggressive. Be demanding. Be no different, no better than the brutal muggers, killers, and rapists that you’re supposed to be getting off the streets. If you have to be a punch-happy goombah and beat up innocent people for no damn reason, then go right ahead and do that. We don’t care. We only care about results.

Someone told the LAPD to go empty out the park on May Day from all of the illegal alien supporters. They didn’t care how; they just wanted it done. And the media? Poor planning as far as they were concerned. “Oops!”

Come on guys, it’s not like Los Angeles has never known what a protest looks like! This particular group has been having these kinds of protests every year for a couple of years now. And the LAPD hierarchy should know above any other municipality what happens when you get caught acting like a bunch of storm troopers in front of the media. The name “Rodney King” quickly comes to mind.

It is this political attitude that needs to be indicted. This blasé attitude from those in government that actually ENCOURAGES lawlessness from those whose very purpose is to maintain law and order. And then they wonder why street gangs and organized crime manage to get a foothold in society! At least with the criminals you KNOW what to expect!

There is one thing that separates the good guys from the bad in our society, and that is that the good guys are supposed to follow the rules. Granted, quite often the rules suck, and that some extraordinary situations require a bending of some rules. But those need to be the absolute rare EXCEPTIONS, NOT the means to fill some artificial quota or to placate the bloated egos of career politicians. The three examples I gave to you tonight were clearly NOT extraordinary situations!

You know, we turn on the TV and we see programs like “The Shield” and the old “NYPD Blue” and we see cops breaking the rules. And maybe sometimes we cheer them on because we only see them going after the bad guys. We don’t see them beating the crap out of little female bartenders, or lying to get a search warrant just so they can break into some old woman’s house to fill a quota. The INNOCENT people don’t get hurt by bad cops on TV, unless of course the writers need it as part of the storyline.

But the real world is not like TV, and the consequences of bad cops in the real world have SERIOUS long-term effects for the community. And it is not enough to go after the bad cops… we need to also go after that blasé attitude from those in government that fosters the bad cops, encourages their behavior, and ultimately justifies their criminal actions.

(Computer – some timely things)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

As I was working on this rant, there was update on the Kathryn Johnston case that should be noted. Last night, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington announced that he has decided to reassign ALL of the Narcotics officers to different assignments. Over 140 officers are involved, including all of the supervisors.

That’s good, but it’s still just a drop in the bucket. If the blasé attitude that fostered the bad behavior is still inside the APD, then all you’re doing is moving the bad officers to another department to destroy their credibility. Imagine having to deal with those cops when it comes to your parking ticket, or a DUI stop. You really think you’re going to get a fair shake with them? If it is outside the APD, then the new officers to that department will soon come to think that this is the status quo and they’re back to square one all over again.

The message needs to get sent to everyone in the APD that what was going on in their drug squad was criminal, unacceptable, and would not be tolerated AT ALL by anyone in any department.

And by the way, this shuffling around should also not be used as a substitute for the rest of the investigations and any subsequent criminal indictments and convictions. Perjury is STILL illegal and for the sake of the credibility of every police officer in the whole metropolitan area, the officers who committed that perjury still need to be prosecuted and taken off the force.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Quick observation on gas prices and the media

Okay, just to give you a quick thought... as you know, the price of gasoline keeps going up and up and up and the media is eager to let everyone know about it. But I have two interesting observations about it.

(1) Why is LINO (Libertarian-In-Name-Only) Neal Boortz obsessed with people taking trips to Orlando? He continually uses it as an example of why he believes the rise of gas prices means nothing. SCREW DISNEY! How about demonstrating how the rising price of gas is affecting ordinary people doing ordinary day-to-day activities? How about showing how the rising cost of gas means less money available for other things? Oh, I forgot... that would make the rising costs look like a BAD thing, wouldn't it?

(2) Am I the only one who is noticing the hypocrisy from WSBTV's website? Every time there is a video segment on gas prices you have to watch a commercial from a local dealership trying to sell their fat-ass gas-guzzling urban assault vehicles!

"Hey, gas prices are going through the roof, and we've got a video for you that will show just how badly you're going to get raped in the wallet over it... but first here's a commercial for a fat-ass gas-guzzling urban assault vehicle!"

"You're going to go broke trying to get around this summer, but first we want you to buy this fat-ass gas-guzzling urban assault vehicle!"

"The economy is about to go right into the crapper this summer... but first here is a message about a fat-ass gas-guzzling urban assault vehicle that we want you to spend money on!"

I'm sure the connection is unintentional from the web-dudes. It's probably stuck in a program somewhere. Still it is worth noting.

My thoughts on Falwell's death

You know, I was sitting here trying to come up with a way to properly express my thoughts about the death of Bible-thumping blowhard Jerry Falwell when my father emailed me about the status of his kidney stone surgery. My father had to be taken to the hospital for this kidney stone that decided to come loose and impale itself someplace that was causing him tremendous debilitating pain. They tried drugs, and that didn’t work. Finally they had to go in there and remove the stone from his body.

My father said that his kidney stone was half-an-inch long, with sharp spikes on both ends. His doctor described it as a nail impaled through a tennis ball. And I thought about that description for a minute or two and I realized that it was the PERFECT description of Falwell!

Here was a little itty-bitty PRICK that was the cause of so much debilitating pain for the body America!

They say that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead. Funny, thing, though… a convicted criminal gets executed or someone like Saddam Hussein gets shuffled off this mortal coil, and the media is RIFE with comments about how that person’s passing came way too late and what a waste of oxygen that person was when they were alive. So the concept is in principle nothing more than a combination of ignorance and arrogance.

Likewise, I have very little to say about Falwell that does not involve speaking ill of the dead. He never earned my respect in life, so I will not give him any in death. You don’t measure a life only by the good that they do, but by ALL that they do, and likewise we do history a disservice by candy-coating the passing of this chunky social parasite.

Jerry Falwell was a walking, talking, bodily obstruction. He was abrasive, abusive, and he relished doing it. He wasn’t above making wild accusations for the sake of media attention.

He shoved his fat greedy finger in front of the cameras after 9/11 and went down a list of groups that he opposes and falsely accused THEM of causing that tragedy. For that sin alone, he should forever burn in hell.

He shoved his fat greedy finger at a television character from a show designed for infants and accused that character of advancing a homosexual agenda simply because it was purple, had a triangle-shaped antenna, and carried around a bag. For that sin alone, he should forever burn in hell.

He stole the PTL Ministries from Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, claiming to hold it “in trust” until Jim Baker was out from prison for the crimes that he committed, only to then refuse to return control of the institution and instead assimilated it into his own financial operation. In doing so, he violated the Ten Commandments in that he coveted his neighbor’s goods; and for that sin alone, he should forever burn in hell.

Jerry Falwell was a walking, talking stereotype of everything that is WRONG with religion. Rather than unite people under a mission of peace, Falwell spent his money and influence to pit Americans against each other and to set up institutions whose ultimate agenda was to turn freedom into theocracy and then to spread the myth that this was all part of some grand cosmic destiny. He helped hijack the Republican Party and turned it away from the cause of less government and into a government full of puritanical thugs eager to abuse power. He became part of the religious cabal that political candidates would have to ass-kiss in order to get their support. Even though religious tests are supposed to be expressly unconstitutional, Falwell and the others declared themselves to be the final word for the success or failure of Republican candidates.

And yet for all these things, the only good thing that I can say about Falwell is that at the end of his bloated existence, he WASN’T as bad as some of the other bible-thumping, freedom-hating moralists out there. He wasn’t as bad a Pat Robertson, who was arrogant enough to insist that our government assassinate a foreign leader. He wasn’t like James Dobson or Benny Hinn or Donald Wildmon… or for that matter Fred Phelps.

That’s why the media liked him and why he was a frequent guest on the air-fluffed news programs. He was a caricature of his former self. He became nothing more than the stereotype that he cultivated. His achievements – if you can call them such – were more style than substance. He was, despite his size, a little prick causing so much pain that the only way people could feel better is when he was removed from this mortal coil.

What makes me sick is that now that he’s gone, the media has taken it upon themselves to canonize Falwell, passing off this myth that somehow despite his many sins that he has gone to Heaven to receive his saintly rewards. I’ve got news for you folks: if you truly believe there is such a place, then he’s probably not there. If there is such a thing as cosmic justice for the hereafter, then Falwell will be in the other place of his own creation; the place that he eagerly condemned others to.

So for those of you who think that Jerry Falwell was this frigging saint, you need to understand and accept the reality that the reason why people are singing praises on his passing and dancing on his grave is because of the social divisiveness and polarization that HE helped to generate. THIS is his real legacy. This is what he leaves this world with.

Brutally Honest Rant - 05/16/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The OTHER Terrorists
Audio Transcripts
05/16/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Ever since the end of 2001, we have been told that America is in a STATE OF WAR against terrorists! We have been continually conditioned like Pavlovian dogs to ACCEPT this not just as a statement of fact, but as DOGMA! And it is considered dogma because it has been the preemptive statement to justify every single action from the Bush Junior White House since then. EVERYTHING has been done to go after terrorists… bad guys… people determined to bring down civilization as we know it. No matter what the program is, no matter how it impacts our lives, it’s ALL done to stop terrorists!

We were told that terrorists could be anywhere in the world, and that we need to look everywhere we can to find them. Afghanistan was just the tip of the iceberg. They could even still be in THIS country, planning even more acts against us!

Great times… at least for the White House. Remember those days? Everything was perfectly clear. It was all absolutes and zero-sum. It was all black-and-white, right-or-wrong, and you were either with us or against us. There was nothing in between. There was no debate about the subject. There was no gray area. We couldn’t afford gray areas anymore! If you weren’t with us, then you were a terrorist. If you gave help to a terrorist, then you were a terrorist. If you sheltered a terrorist, then you were a terrorist.

And we bought it all, hook, line, and sinker! We agreed to let the government break the rules. We agreed to let the government write new rules that gave them unquestionable access into our lives. And when the much-feared abuses of power did materialize… we weren’t outraged over them. Not in the least! Do you know why? Because it’s all done to go after the terrorists! Bad guys! People who are planning to kill us and destroy our way of life! We can’t let that happen, can we? No, absolutely not!

And when we had those moments when we didn’t live in perpetual FEAR that bad guys were going to destroy us… all of a sudden… yes, you guessed it, there would be some kind of new THREAT materialize! Now it doesn’t happen when we are already living in fear. No, these things seem to wait until just the RIGHT moment to remind us… terrorists… bad guys… out to kill us… out to hurt us… can’t let that happen.

And the TIMING if it all… almost like clockwork! We get too complacent, we start treading away from the First Church of the GOP, then all of a sudden these thing show up! Or we get a new message from the terrorists. Or we get some other kind reminder that the bad guys are out there and are still wanting to hurt us, even now more than ever… because now we’re looking for them, and they don’t want to be found… at least until they decide to carry out their plans to hurt us, at which time of course they want as much attention as they can get.

But a funny thing happened during all of this. While we were busy living in perpetual FEAR of the terrorists and stocking up on duct tape and plastic sheeting… we sorta-kinda let a whole bunch of OTHER terrorists slip on by!

Sure we caught Eric Robert Rudolph… the guy behind the Olympic Park bombing in 1996 and several other bombings. He was on the run for all of these years, but we lucked out and we caught him.

But somehow the T-word never materialized at all during his processing. NOBODY in our federal government was willing to label or describe Eric Robert Rudolph for what he really was. And NOBODY in the media – you know, those liberal bastards that are the bane of neo-con thinking – was willing to say it either. He was a TERRORIST! But we refused to say the word and connect it to him.

Now… WHY is that? I mean, we were sending forces to Iraq to fight and die to bring down Saddam Hussein, and we continually said it was because of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction… and yet here was an ACTUAL TERRORIST who was on the run for several years, who actually committed ACTS OF TERRORISM inside the United States of America, one of which made INTERNATIONAL news! And we REFUSED to call it for what it really was!

And now his words are showing up on websites by the group that he was associated with… the so-called “Army of God”. And everyone is afraid that his words will inspire other acts of violence… but nobody wants to say the dreaded T-word or treat it for what it really is.

Rudolph is in the Supermax prison for the rest of his life. He’s never coming out of there unless it is in a body bag. But he didn’t survive on the run all those years on his own. He had help. And because nobody wants to use the T-word on him, they certainly will not use the T-word on the folks who were helping him, who encouraged his actions, and who are still out there today, even though it goes against our new 21^st century dogma.

And now the Justice Department is trying to get the T-word re-attached to another group of criminals… the members of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.

You see these were the guys who were attacking meat packing plants, horse corrals, lumber mills, research facilities, auto dealerships, and even one ski resort. In all about 1200 separate incidents of arson are claimed by the ELF and ALF. And the ten people involved with this collective group even ADMIT doing the crimes! BUT they flatly deny that they are TERRORISTS… even though what they did qualify as acts of terrorism.

So you’re probably wondering what the hell is going on, right? We have terrorists who aren’t getting branded as terrorists, and other terrorists who originally weren’t being treated as such but now all of a sudden are getting the label slapped on them. That goes against everything that we’ve been told about terrorism for the past six years, doesn’t it? That violates our whole “terrorists are evil” dogma!

But then again, that’s the whole point. The dogma is a farce.

Eric Robert Rudolph may have committed acts of terrorism, but our government REFUSED to call him a terrorist because he is also a CHRISTIAN, and Christians are not terrorists in the eyes of our government!

This actually goes back to those anthrax attacks. Remember those? Remember what our President said about those who sent anthrax attacks and those who sent phony anthrax attacks? I remember those words quite well. He said if you send anthrax in the mail, then you’re a terrorist. And if you send phony anthrax threats in the mail, then you’re ALSO a terrorist.

Then it came out that one of the people sending a lot of those phony anthrax attacks was a Christian extremist. But somehow he didn’t end up with the “terrorist” tag attached to his crimes.

It was at that point that the whole Republican, neo-con, fear-mongering dogma started to fail. Rudolph gets captured, and he gets away with the exemption that was set up after the phony anthrax attacks. He wasn’t branded a “terrorist”; he was simply a “lone bomber”... just another kook like Ted Kaczynski.

And you’ll notice that it was right around this time that the rhetoric from the White House changed just a little bit. Oh “terrorists” were still a threat, but our government was only concerning itself with a SPECIFIC kind of terrorists: the radical religious extremist terrorists… who also happen to be not Christians. In fact, right around this time the White House was really starting to bristle at how the media was calling this the “War on Terror” and started saying that this was really just a war against “radical religious extremists”. Mind you this was about four years BEFORE they starting calling it a war against “radical Islamic fascism”, as if they even knew what the word “fascism” really meant!

And now the Justice Department wants to expand this listing to include domestic terrorists like the ELF and ALF. So why lump these guys as terrorists and not the people like Eric Robert Rudolph? Because these guys are LIBERAL extremists! Cons and neo-cons like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity have already tried and convinced liberalism itself of treason in their own literary kangaroo courts (aka: their books), so this is just the next logical extension for them.

And this is just the beginning. Other acts of liberal-based extremism will also get treated as acts of terrorism. The animal rights activists who toss paint or urine at people who wear fur, or who break into research facilities to “liberate” animals used for product testing will soon get branded as terrorists.

Let’s get brutally honest here… our government should NOT be playing games with determining who and what falls under acts of terrorism, especially if the White House is throwing the word around as the all-powerful end-all-be-all justification for everything they do! You don’t declare terrorism to be evil, declare a “war” against it, DEMAND absolute zero-sum obedience, outright declare that there is no such thing as a grey area when it comes to terrorism, AND THEN turn around and parse out which acts of terrorism should be counted as such, and then flip-flop over that determination!

Let’s be absolutely clear about this: what Eric Robert Rudolph did was and should have ALWAYS been treated as ACTS OF TERRORIM. PERIOD! He should have been branded as a terrorist the moment he was on the run. He should have been declared a terrorist when he was captured. He should have been incarcerated and processed in the same cells and facilities as any other terrorist in this day and age. He should have been CHARGED with committing acts of terrorism. And he should have been punished AS a terrorist! And the same thing should apply to the ELF, ALF, and any other similar groups whose acts fit the definition of terrorism. They should be charged as terrorists, they should be treated as terrorists, and they should be punished AS terrorists! And this needs to be done from DAY ONE, not after they’ve already been convicted and are on their way to prison.

Even worse is the appearance of discrimination on the basis of religious or political affiliation in this matter! The moment this government decides that only non-Christians or only non-conservatives can commit acts of terrorism in their eyes, then that government loses any credibility and moral high ground it has on the subject. It’s no longer about prosecution… it becomes persecution. And the charge no longer becomes a legitimate offense, but merely an empty excuse to abuse power.

In order for laws to be just, they must be applied equally, regardless of political or religious affiliations. There is nothing more destructive to a free society than an unjust law, no matter the excuse used to maintain it as such.

(Computer – some stuff about fear)
(Fade Music In – “Skylight” by Overseer)

I want you folks to think for a moment about the elements that make up a fanatical terrorist. We’re talking about people who demand rigid obedience to their cause. People who believe that THEIR ends always justify the means, and who aren’t above a little hypocrisy here and there as long as they get what they want.

Now take a good hard look at that definition and look at the mindset of the people who are screaming “with us or against us” and then ask yourselves this question: is there REALLY a difference between the terrorists and the people who are telling us to fear them?

I would really HOPE that there is some difference other than religion, because if the only difference between those two groups is geography and religious beliefs, then the threat from radical Islamic terrorists will be the LEAST of our concerns.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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Brutally Honest Rant - 05/09/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The Annual Gas Nag
Audio Transcripts
05/09/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and over again and expect to get a different result. I can certainly relate to that definition after seeing people make the same mistake over and over and over again and expect things to be somehow different when it comes to computers.

We certainly do that with our political process! We swap between Democrats and Republicans thinking that the next guy will somehow be different, and yet are actually surprised when the next election time comes around and it is business as usual… especially when we vote for people who are not supposed to make it business as usual! Vote third party? Oh they’d like to, but they don’t think third party candidates would have a chance… mostly because everyone is swapping between Democrats and Republicans.

Insanity, to a “T”!

And so it goes as well with the price of gasoline. Every year right around this time we see the prices go up and up and up. Every year right around this time the media goes into hysterics. Every year right around this time we have Wall Street futures experts going into hyperactive fits about what the price of gasoline “may” reach. Every year we right around this time we talk about who is to blame for it all. Every year right around this time we ask why can’t the government DO something about this.

And this has been happening EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

And every year we get PHONY messages about what needs to be done. We get really BAD ideas being thrown about by politicians and special interest groups looking to expand the scope of government and looking to pilfer even more money from us. They want to punish oil companies for problems that THEY THEMSELVES pretty much created! They want to tax oil company profits heavily, even though those taxes will be passed on down to US through higher prices at the pump.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

Every year we hear about some one-day “gas out” scheme that fraudulently claims to make a statement but doesn’t really accomplish anything! Worse yet, the same message gets passed on pretty much word-for-word as the previous year’s message.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

We hear about raising the minimum fuel efficiency standards, but only doing so by the SMALLEST of levels, and not in the course of months or even years, but IN DECADES! DECADES! By the time fuel efficiency levels get to where they need to be NOW, it will be the year 2020! That’s thirteen years of dealing with this problem, and by then those levels will STILL be abysmal, pitiful, and unacceptable. And that’s also assuming that we haven’t turned into a Mad Max society by then because of the sheer INSANITY of this seemingly eternal issue.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

And yet somehow the REAL message doesn’t seem to sink in. The message does not seem to enter into our collective heads. We simply DO NOT want to accept the TRUTH when it comes to dealing with higher gas prices.

And so I am here once again to give you that TRUTH. And if this is my purpose in life to constantly browbeat society over this and to remind them of this TRUTH, then so be it.

(Reagan Clip: “There you go again.”)

Here it is, boys and girls: if you do not like the price at the pump, then it is UP TO US to do something about it!

Let’s get brutally honest here… our government is not going to do anything significant about this issue until WE – yes I mean ALL OF US – do something significant on our part. And I don’t mean just sitting around and complaining about the price of gasoline or writing letters to our elected grifters and shysters demanding that THEY do something about it. THEY WILL NOT do anything significant until they know that WE are serious about it, and that means actually DOING something that we probably will not like, but it has to be done anyway.

If you do not like the price at the pump, then the ONLY way you can demonstrate that is to STOP DRIVING!

I am serious about this… as I have always been about this issue.

A couple of days ago pseudo-libertarian Neal Boortz gave a hypothetical situation where a family of four was going to Disney World in Orlando and how much they would have to pay to drive there and back as the price of gas goes up. He argues that the difference is miniscule. Well why the hell is that family DRIVING to Disney World if the price of gas is an issue? Why the hell are they even GOING to Disney World to begin with? Save your money and buy a couple of movies on DVD. Or better yet, just take your kid to the Disney store at your local mall. You get the same experience for less money, plus the food at the food court is cheaper, the lines are shorter, AND the water at your local mall probably doesn’t smell or taste like sulfur. Yeah, that’s one dirty little secret that doesn’t get mentioned in those commercials.

If you REALLY want to make a statement about gas prices, then WE – ALL OF US – have to make that statement by cutting back on our driving habits! We have to stop driving like gas is cheap and plentiful, because even when the prices are low, those days are DEAD! It means no more road trips. It means no more “cruising”. It means no more long vacations far away from home. It means only using your vehicle for necessary trips, or carpooling, or doing a whole bunch of errands in ONE trip instead of fifty separate errands.

And WE have to do this! The government isn’t going to do these things for us. The automakers certainly will not stop making gas-chugging urban assault vehicles until WE stop buying them. You want alternatives? Well you have to BUY them! You have to WANT them bad enough so that they will happen!

Now, if you want to REALLY want to look for a way to cut back on driving then try this: MOVE CLOSER TO YOUR WORKPLACE!

Again, I am DEAD serious about this! I did this TWO years ago this month and my life changed for the better because of it!

For seven long years I put up driving almost a hundred miles a day to and from work. This normally would take me about fifty minutes per trip to complete… or at least it did when I first started making that commute. Then it grew to a two-to-three-hour drive through heavily-congested areas to where the commute was literally KILLING ME! I was going broke because of all of the money that I had to spend on gas and all of the money that I had to spend every six weeks on servicing my car. And the stress from that commute was so bad that I was coming home every night feeling like I was about to have a heart attack. I probably would have had one too if I didn’t do something about it.

So I moved… and now I live just two miles away from work, I have almost everything I could ever want just down the street from me, and I don’t have to fill my car up every two days. The differences in my life and in my finances are like night and day.

Almost this time last year my parents followed suit. They were driving even longer commutes, and it also was killing them. They moved closer to their respective workplaces… not as close as mine, but it was still a significant shift for them. They have told me that the financial difference for them is like getting a second paycheck. They look better, they sound better, and they feel better about themselves because of it.

And a lot more of us need to do just that!

Our whole society here in America revolves around this idea that we can live in the suburbs and work in the city. And that idea worked as long as there were available houses, affordable cars, affordable gas, and relatively short commutes between work and home. That was the whole suburban dream back in the 1950’s that is reflected even today.

Well guess what? Those days ARE DEAD!

Our obsessive quest for available housing are putting many homeowners into debt thanks to risky mortgages with adjustable interest rates that are already driving some of them into bankruptcy. Affordable cars? Does spending $50,000 on an urban assault vehicle count as “affordable”? Relatively short commutes are pretty much a thing of the past, as some people have to literally drive FOUR HOURS to get to their destination, and that’s just one-way! If you work in an office and you spend as much time commuting to-and-from work as you do in your work, then you clearly do not have a short commute!

And now our dysfunctional energy policy is completing the failure of this suburban dream. We have built a society that is dependant on vehicles, and on vehicles dependant on an energy source that is slowly bleeding us to death. That is unacceptable and it has to change!

And we cannot expect our government to act in our best interests in this matter. They haven’t so far, and they have no reason to do so now. Remember: THEY are the ones that set up our dysfunctional energy policy in the first place! THEY are the ones that green-lighted the idea that we can get most of our oil from foreign sources. THEY are the ones that have prohibited the creation of new oil refineries in this country and are overburdening the current refineries so that THEY WILL break down and further jack up the price at the pump – as they are doing right now. THEY are the ones that made sweetheart deals with the Middle East and with Venezuela and with a whole bunch of other countries that hate our guts but will still give us that oil “fix”. And so far THEIR so-called “solutions” to this problem have been even worse failures than the Drug War, Prohibition, and the FEMA Katrina response all put together!

So the only way that things are going to change is if WE make those changes ourselves! WE have to use the only things that we have at our disposal to deal with this problem: our wallets and our personal habits. We have to make the sacrifices before any other changes can be made.

And I also know the short-term and long-terms consequences of this. Yeah, either way our economy will suffer. But that suffering will be short-term if we change our personal habits when it comes to driving and gas use now. However if we do nothing now and let circumstances change those habits for us later on, then the devastating effects of our economy WILL be long-term. If you think that things are getting rough now, then you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet! This is a subject that can literally destroy this country if we do not address it… first on a personal end, and then on behalf of our grifters and shysters.

(Computer – some stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

I gotta tell you something folks… I spent my early childhood years in the 1970’s, amidst the whole mess with OPEC and the price of gas and gas outages and odd-even gas days. Times were tough for my family. I was a latchkey child before the term even was invented… and without the latchkey to boot!

But we survived. At the time I didn’t know why we couldn’t do go-karts or go out for ice cream on a regular basis like we used to do, but later on I understood. Society didn’t just spontaneously come to an end when children couldn’t go to Disney World every summer, nor did they die of boredom when the only thing they could use to cool off is a garden hose.

And guess what? Your kids will not die of boredom either if you make those same kinds of sacrifices today. They may not like it, but they will eventually understand. That’s one of the downsides of being a parent. Sometimes you have to make choices that simply suck.

Accept it. Deal with it. Learn to love it. Because it will only get worse for us all if you don’t.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
------------------------------

Do not buy into "boycott" scam

Sometime in the days before May 15th, you will get some sort of chain-mail message asking you to take part in a so-called "gas boycott". To save you the time and effort in trying to forward this to me and have me tear it to shreds, I'm going to engage in a little preventative strike.

I've researched this over at Snopes.com and came up with something interesting about this so-called "boycott": the same message keeps on recycling itself every year since 1999! In fact the message being circulated this year is almost verbatim to what was being spread in 2006!

Check it out! http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp

In short, boys and girls, the whole "boycott" idea is a HOAX. It wouldn't even work to do what claims to do because the price of gas is not based on daily sales, but rather on inventory. As long as you buy gas before or after the 15th, then you're wasting your time... which is what the gas companies want you to do anyway.

So the next time you come across some MySpace bulletin or some email mass-post from one of your friends or relatives asking you to take part in some "gas-out", kindly tell them that they are taking part in a hoax and then point them to the Snopes website for the TRUTH.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp

Oh, and make sure you don't spread those phony "boycott" message around. Spread this message around instead.

If you REALLY want to hurt the gas companies, then STOP DRIVING!

Quick word on copyright lawyers and thug tactics

Longtime Internet writer John C. Dvorak posted a really great column concerning the intimidation tactics of shyster lawyers and how their bull-in-a-China-shop approach to copyright issues has really ended up making matters worse for their clients. He doesn’t really go too far to castigate the players, but then again he still has to make a living writing this stuff and the companies that end up publishing (and thus paying for) his work probably have a bunch of those abrasive, abusive legal thugs on retainer.

Anyway, check out the column. It makes a pretty good read.

Brutally Honest Rant - 05/02/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Serena Joys and Pseudo-Journalism
Audio Transcripts
05/02/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I’ve got a couple of interesting topics for you to ponder over tonight…

First up: an interesting new term courtesy of one of my Brutally Honest supporters…

Serena Joy Syndrome: Applies to any female anti-feminist who is against women's rights all while enjoying the rights feminism brings them for the sake of their own ego and greed. All while not realizing that if their side were to win, the rules will apply to them, taking away all the power, independence, money, and freedom they took for granted.

Now for those of you who do not know who Serena Joy was… that’s a character in the book “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood. The story is about a dystrophic theo-conservative society where women who could still conceive children are forced to be surrogates to the women who cannot. The women who are forced into this reproductive slavery are not allowed to have their own names. They’re just referred to as Olfred. On the other hand, the wives who cannot bear children do have names. Serena Joy was once thought of as a star in society, a televangelist and social lecturer in her own right, but once she got married to the local military commander and she couldn’t give her husband a child, she became bitter and empty. She basically felt cheated.

I know that conservatives are scratching their heads for a moment and are asking themselves what RIGHTS have feminism provided. If you’re talking “rights” as in the US Constitution, you’ll only find one… and that’s the one that allows women to vote in elections. But in terms of causes, issues, stances, you’ll find that feminism has opened certain doors that were not previously available for women.

Okay, semantics aside, the idea of describing certain women as Serena Joys certainly has some merit if you look at feminism as a concept for what it originally represented: individual empowerment. Mind you, that’s not how it is viewed today, but way back when men weren’t treated as “the oppressors”, feminism was about empowering women as individuals. That’s the way that it was back when “The Handmaid’s Tale” was originally conceived.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have a different view on “empowerment”. They tell women that they could be just as “empowered”, but only under a strict set of rules and only under a strict set of conditions. You can only do it under OUR banners, and do so to support OUR causes and OUR crusades, and you can never forget YOUR PLACE in all of this, because this is all about US and OUR causes and OUR crusades. This is not about you. You’re our mouthpieces. You’re our friendly faces. You’re just a very public cog in our great social machine. Nothing more and nothing less.

THAT is the world of the Serena Joys. They’re bitter because they have sold their souls to the cause and are now realizing the price they are paying for it. This is the arrangement made by women like neo-con pit bull Ann Coulter.

Maybe that explains her venom… her desire to up the ante and thoroughly castigate and demonize those which do not support the conservative cause. Her desire to set herself up to be even more than just another conservative talking head... because she knows that at the end of the day, that’s all that the cause thinks of her as being. Nothing more and nothing less.

By the way, thanks to Carrie Kube for coming up with that term. If you have your own new term that you would like to try out here, send me an email at David2@myway.com and I’ll hash it out here.

(Pause)

Hey, here’s a quick thought… why is it that smog has a “season”? Here in Atlanta, May 1 is seen as the “start” of the “smog season”. Now why it that? Does the SMOG actually follow a calendar? Does it actually linger around on rooftops and in exhaust pipes thinking “boy I can’t wait until May first when I can just leap on out and strangle a whole bunch of asthmatic kids and old farts”? Obviously it doesn’t. So why do WE put a calendar date on it? From my perspective this is just another media ploy to frighten people.

Sure the health risks are there, but if the weather doesn’t change between April 30^th and May 1^st, then why should the media suddenly declare May 1^st to be hazardous and April 30^th to be just an ordinary day? That’s just screwed up, and the air-fluffed ego-driven media really needs to re-think this whole thing.

(Pause)

Okay, here’s something else to think about… there’s been a lot of talk since the Virginia Tech massacre about making sure that crazy people don’t get guns. They’re talking about closing legal loopholes and rewriting laws so that a person’s mental history can be filed in some huge database. Yeah, great, just what we need, Big Brother being run by Dr. Phil!

And of course being knee-jerked around by FEAR, the great unwashed will go with all of these Big Shrink database ideas… but I’m going to make a prediction as to what will happen to change our current lemming mentality.

It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but either one of two things – or both of them - will happen in a couple of years:

First, you’re going to have a thirty-something woman get killed by her psychotic abusive ex-husband or ex-boyfriend, and it’s going to come out that she was NOT ALLOWED to defend herself because she suffered from post-partum depression a decade previously and was still in the database as a threat, so she couldn’t get a gun to defend herself like she was told to do.

Second, the private sector will get their hands on that database, and then you’ll be hearing about insurance companies suddenly dropping people from their coverage, you’ll be hearing about companies suddenly getting rid of people, and you’ll be hearing about apartment managers suddenly evicting people because they showed up in the database for some sort of mental problem in their past.

Now, I want you to think about all of the schools that declare kids to be ADHD in their sleep and hand out Ritalin like it was candy. If that shrink database goes into effect, all of those kids will be on it. Maybe even YOUR kids.

Still think it’s a “neat idea”? You still want to roll the dice with your children’s futures? You keep on playing this game and it WILL happen!

(Pause)

Okay one more…

I’d like to seriously suggest that CNN media personality Lou Dobbs run for president in 2008.

Now mind you, I’m not saying this because I think he could win it, because he probably wouldn’t. And I’m not suggesting the he runs because he supports the things that I believe in, because he certainly does not.

I’m suggesting that Lou Dobbs run for president because he’s pretty much done everything else in his role as a CNN air-fluffed media personality EXCEPT to make that announcement.

Let’s get brutally honest here… there is a difference between being a journalist and being a commentator, and the air-fluffed ego-driven media has been really blurring that line for quite some time now and really doing everyone a grave injustice because of it.

I am a commentator. I am not a journalist. That means that I don’t have to pretend to be impartial or unbiased. I AM biased about the things that I talk about AS a commentator. These are MY views.

People who claim to be journalists, on the other hand, have an obligation to at least PRETEND to be objective and impartial about what they are reporting on AS journalists. I mean, sure, ACTUALLY being objective and impartial is next-to-impossible. We all have our own biases. That’s just human nature. But the effort still has to be made.

Dobbs, on the other hand, doesn’t do that. I’ve seen his programs. He lets his biases just blast on through.

There was one story that really stuck out on this. Local school officials got their boxers in a bunch over some kid leaving a ham sandwich out to piss off a Muslim student, and local idiots really lived up to the “idiot” portion of their name by trying to make the incident a federal HATE crime. And as he’s reporting the story he goes into this lengthy diatribe about how WRONG the officials are on this matter and how utterly stupid they look in doing so.

Now granted, I agree with Dobbs on the issue, but to be blunt, that wasn’t his place to make a comment like that! You want to comment on the issue? You set it apart from your reporting on it so that people know the difference between REPORTING on the issue and COMMENTING on it. Or better yet, you leave it to people like ME to do the commenting.

And I know that he’s not the only one who does that. How do you think that a hack tabloid reporter like Bill O’Reilly got to be where he is today on FoxNuze? FoxNuze followed CNN’s lead. So did MSNBC and many others. That is of course the problem with having a 24-hour news network… you gotta fill all of that time somehow. At least some of the other networks TRY to keep that line, but they don’t always succeed.

But here’s the thing: when you blur the line between journalism and commentating, you’re really taking the focus AWAY from the issue and putting it on the person providing it. So when Lou Dobbs reports on the news, the show is not about the news… it’s about Lou Dobbs talking about the news! When Lou Dobbs talks about the problems facing the Middle Class, he’s really talking about the Middle Class as LOU DOBBS sees it, not necessarily how it really is. When he talks about illegal immigration, it is about illegal immigration as LOU DOBBS sees it, not necessarily how the issue really is. And on this issue he’s extremely quick to interject HIS view of it in every discussion.

Now do you understand why I refer to the media as being ego-driven?

And by the way, the same thing applies to O’Reilly, to Keith Olberman, and to anyone else with their own name-driven program that pretends to be a journalist. There really needs to be a clear dividing line between journalism and commentary. Newspapers used to have that… it’s called the editorial section. It’s high time that the rest of the news services followed suit.

So Mister Dobbs, I know that you really like to have your little special town hall meetings, and you love having your viewers drop subtle hints about your books, such as the one you have called “The War on the Middle Class”. But if you’re going to be constantly interjecting your take on the issues into the discussion instead of letting the actual guests and audience members do that, then do us all a favor, take a lead from Jesse Ventura and run for public office. Just get the suspense of it all out of the way. Then at least you could stop pretending to be a spectator and actually BE recognized as an active participant in these matters.

(Computer – some stuff… but I won’t tell you here in the transcripts!)
(Fade Music In – “Heretic/Hero” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori)

You know every time I talk about the media and what it has become, I really end up bugging my best friend from our high school days. And it’s not like I do that intentionally… this guy actually has a degree in journalism and did work in radio for a while.

But what he sometimes doesn’t understand is that when I talk about the news department becoming nothing more than bunch of media personalities, I’m not saying it because I think it’s a good thing. I’m saying it because THAT is how the people who run the media think of it as.

Look at who owns the 24-hour news services. CNN is owned by a movie studio. MSNBC is owned by a company that makes light bulbs and washing machines. FoxNuze is owned by a media mogul that runs a tabloid-style newspaper and creates TV programs that feature twenty-somethings pretending to be teenagers. THEY are the ones that don’t see news as an honorable profession. They see it as being no different than any other kind of programming. They see it as entertainment. And they treat the people providing that kind of programming accordingly.

No, I don’t think of it as a good thing. But then again, short of cancelling my cable service, there’s really not much I can do about it except to bring it up at every opportunity and remind people of that bigger picture, even when doing so pisses them off.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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