by Greg Palast

What the hell happened? Did Barack have a fight with Michelle? Was it nicotine withdrawal? Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President: As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side. And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War. The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped. Lost…

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

Really, Mr. President, REALLY?

Romney says that if you’re 38 or 54, it doesn’t matter that you’ve paid into Medicare and Social Security all your life, you don’t get the insurance you paid for. You get some stinking voucher, some coupon that says, “Here’s a hundred bucks kid, go buy a gold watch.”

Who exactly is going to take a voucher to provide health insurance to a 72-year-old with asthma, in a walker and prostate problems?

Governor Romney said, with that smirky, smarmy grin, “I’d assume I’d rather have a private [health] plan.” Gee, Mr. Romney, could you give me the number of your insurance company and tell them to take my “voucher”?

Mr. President, you gabbled on about the Cleveland Medical Clinic and its “best practices.” Who the hell cares, Mr. President? There are people bleeding out here, LITERALLY BLEEDING, who now can get health coverage because of ObamaCare. For all its failings, it saves lives, saves homes from foreclosure caused by insane medical bills – only recently, the number one cause of foreclosures in America.

Can’t you even defend the one thing that’s worth a damn and has your name on it?

Romney’s wife has MS. That’s sad. But what’s tragic is that there are millions in America with MS who couldn’t get insurance because they have this prior condition—and are not married to an investment banker demi-billionaire.

I don’t care that you couldn’t seem to defend yourself tonight, Mr. President. That’s a Democratic Party headache. What I resent, what gets me furious and angry, is that you didn’t defend ME. Me and my family.

When Romney says he defends small business, let me tell you, I have a small business. I don’t need a tax break – hell, like most small businesses, we don’t make money. We need health insurance. We need government loans.

When Romney says government never does anything cheaper than the private sector, Mr. President, don’t you know that it was government mortgage agencies that funded America’s middle class homeownership? That’s what government did – and licked Hitler to boot.

When mortgages were privatized, we were thrown at the mercy of the Banksters.

(And why the hell did you, Mr. Obama, bring up that right-wing canard that banks just gave out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them – blaming sub-prime predatory mortgage crimes on the victims. Sounds like you agree that 47% of Americans are leeches.)

Maybe it’s true that you, Mr. President, are actually just a hollow man, a creation of PR consultants and rich donors, a Ken-doll of repeating lines about “Hope,” “change” and “this country thrives when the middle class thrives.”

The truth is, you were ready to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut back-room deals with drug companies. Maybe in the end, progressive policies are just a marketing niche you’ve found to cover aimless ambition and a yearning to compromise.

If someone drilled a hole in you, could we blow in and play you like a flute? Or is there some substance, some hard core of principal that couldn’t break out tonight because it was imprisoned by advisors who told you to play it safe, play it in a coma?

Mr. President, if you can’t explain why you are the Commander-in-Chief in this class war against the billionaire bandits attempting to seize our government, then get off the horse and let someone in the saddle who can ride.

A version of this story originally appeared on the The Mudflats.

Greg Palast is the author of the recently published New York Times Top 10 Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, which is available via Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

[..]

by Lee Camp

Okay, if you don’t watch this video because you’re curious how the world will end, then maybe you’ll at least watch it to learn the ins-and-outs of butt chugging. I wish I were kidding…I so very much wish I were kidding.

[..]

by Laurelin

I remember that I used to go to his bar after we had broken up. I had always gone there, why should I change anything just because my life as I knew it was over? Besides, I was fine. I would do my hair differently, a different style, parted to another side. And I’d wear a little black dress because I was on my way to a fancy event that once he would have also been invited to. I was okay, and he would see that.

I wasn’t okay, I was drunk. Lines blurred and people stared, and when I fell backwards off my barstool he came running to help me up. I screamed that I didn’t need his help anymore, that I was fine. Our friends shook their heads and saw me home, and I knew that I was far from fine. That night would replay a couple of times a week; a different dress, the same sad looks. And always I would cry when I thought no one was looking, even though everyone was. He must have been horrified.

Three years later, I watch him walk drunk into my bar regularly. He has his head held high, but I can always tell that something is wrong.

After the scene unfolded for the first time, I leant over to one of our friends and said, “This is what it was like all those years ago when I used to go into his bar, isn’t it?” Our friend nodded his head, and I felt impossibly sad.

I would rather have nights of my own endless heartbreak than know I’m causing someone else to ache like that. I don’t know what’s happening, and I am powerless to stop any of it. I have my own problems and having front row seats to his makes me feel guilty for being annoyed, but I am.

“I just miss you,” he says, reaching for me. I turn away, just out of his reach and I want to cry, but I don’t. Not until I was telling someone else the story later did my eyes fill with tears. “You’re happy now,” he had slurred and I wanted so badly to shake him and tell him that I was anything but happy; I was still always being let down, the only constant in my life was our sad city bar scene. But he didn’t need to know that. If he thought I was happy and that made him sad, it wasn’t my place to let him know that I really did want to be rescued – just not by him anymore.

It’s raining outside today, and I can’t bring myself to get out of bed. I don’t feel like drinking, I don’t feel like talking, texting, writing, eating. I feel sad, alone, heartbroken. I have to be at the bar in one hour. As shitty as I feel I know, I’ll get up, I’ll add some color to my pale cheeks and I’ll fake a smile, and while some people will know, others won’t. I’ll be okay. Maybe he’ll call and maybe he won’t, and no matter which “he” it is, I shouldn’t answer the phone, because nothing is right.

I have to be at the bar in one hour, and the mere thought of lifting my face off this pillow is enough to make me turn to ashes.

[..]

by ChrisSick

Mitt Romney loves Big Bird. He likes coal. He doesn’t like expensive things. They hurt families.

This is what passes for substance in a Presidential debate. By the fifteen minute mark I felt as bored and listless as President Obama looked, and was mostly focused on trying to figure out what drugs he was taking and pondering how hard it would be to acquire some for myself, because by the half hour mark I was clearly more upset with how poorly he was doing in the debate than he was.

If you want the conventional wisdom take you’ll be seeing over the course of the next seven days before the VP debate takes place on October 11, it can be boiled down to Mitt Romney won and Jim Lehrer should’ve just stayed the hell home.

Every time the President smiled while Romney was speaking, it was because Lehrer was making a “talks too goddamn much” sign with his hands while slugging back from the flask he had in his jacket pocket. It was a pretty embarrassing show for everyone involved, honestly, except for Mitt Romney, who has no shame.

It only took fifteen minutes into the debate for Governor Romney to reverse himself completely on his tax policy. When pressed on the analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center that says he couldn’t possibly implement his proposed 20% tax cut and not add $5 trillion to the deficit without increasing taxes on the middle class by closed deductions he happily pointed out that he has studies that show otherwise. And the President has studies. We all have studies, but Mitt Romney likes JOBS.

It was a stunning display of politics in a post-partisan era and Obama seemed slow to respond to it. Analysis from Jon Lovett (no, not that one) at The Atlantic sums it up well:

“In many ways, this election is a referendum on whether or not Mitt Romney’s kind of politics is effective. People can argue about the president’s policies, but he has always been honest about our fiscal situation; he has always been honest about gimmicks — whether it was cutting earmarks four years ago or cutting PBS today — which will do almost nothing to lower our debt. Mitt Romney believes he can get by without the numbers adding up. He can be for deficit reduction while being against cutting taxes, entitlements, and military spending. He can promise more education funding to some audiences; more NASA funding to Florida; more health-care funding to seniors; and ‘Oh by the way, I won’t accept any deal that raises even meager revenues when compared to budget cuts.’ It’s BS. It’s nonsense. It’s obviously not true. But he has not only embraced this idea, he’s embraced its cheerleader in the Congress, Paul Ryan.

So anyway, that’s frustrating.”

By the halfway mark the President was finally beginning to wake up, successfully laying traps for Romney that put him on record supporting Medicare vouchers, saw him stumbling through a populist style attack on big banks, and trying to explain away Romneycare/Obamacare, which one of the advisors who helped draft the two laws says “it’s the same fucking bill.”

But Obama continually failed to capitalize on these attacks and build any momentum. By 9:50 PM EST, it was clear to most people that Obama wasn’t going to pull this one out, despite getting a few good jabs in. Republicans, of course, had been claiming victory for at least thirty minutes by that point. One thing Republicans aren’t shy about, it’s claiming victory.

Romney wandered into a few traps that will work well for future Obama ad-buys, and spawned at least one new Twitter account (@FiredBigBird), but he did his job reasonably well, and kept the President listless and defensive. I found myself not being sold by Obama’s liberal ideals that I already agree with.

From Jon Lovett, again, an instructive bit to the secret of Mitt Romney’s success:

“Though I forgot about this from the primaries: Mitt Romney’s skill in debates is speaking with great conviction about matters on which he’s held like seven positions. He’s no longer cutting taxes? Come on. He didn’t propose tax breaks for the wealthy? But he says it like he’s actually taking offense. It’s stunning.”

And that is exactly what made him so successful tonight. This is the brand-new-and-improved Mitt Romney, the reboot that finally actually took. For the first time since the last time, Mitt Romney finally got his chance to introduce himself to the American people without any media bias bullshit. This was Romney unfiltered, and he would not be denied by some bullshit moderator.

Romney talked about the things he likes (coal!) and the things he loves (Big Bird!), instead of accusing Obama of being a secret Muslim socialist. He was hopeful, upbeat, and present in a way Obama just couldn’t be bothered to be. Hell, even the campaign email I just got from Obama was subjected with a sad-ass “hey.” As in “hey, buddy, you still with me?”

So round one goes to Romney. What to watch for over the next few days:

* Will the Right excoriate their guy deviating from party orthodoxy, or be too busy taking victory laps now that Romney’s finally won one to notice?

* The polls were narrowing earlier in the week, expect them to narrow even more after the President’s poor debate performance. Will the Right finally start to believe in polling again, provided they show their guy has a lead?

* How fast and how many attack ads will the candidates various positions spawn over the next seven days alone?

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I love the idea that masochism is a reincarnation of prudery.”
– Bill Condon

Bill Condon is the Oscar winning screenwriter and director of Gods and Monsters which was released to great acclaim in 1998 and launched Ian McKellan as a legitimate film actor. Since then Condon wrote Chicago and finally brought to light his long gestating project, Kinsey, which is a look at the life of Alfred Kinsey, a pioneer in the area of human sexuality research, whose 1948 publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was one of the first recorded works that saw science address sexual behavior.

Read our interview with Bill Condon on SuicideGirls.com.

Mel Suicide in Master Bedroom

• INTO: I like to laugh and mess around a lot. I don’t take life too seriously. I’m a massive cat enthusiast.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Food, alcohol, friends (obviously), modeling, memes, sunshine, music, DJing, Hello Kitty, cats.
• MAKES ME SAD: Ignorance, fake people, being cold, hangovers.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: My best friends, laptop, phone, and a splash of make-up.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Being an absolute spazz with my friends!

Get to know Mel better over at SuicideGirls.com!