Finally on a roll at the Yipster Times. Before you start laughing, 13.9% was a ball-buster for a mortgage in 1981, at least as I recall — even for the “fixer-upper” portrayed below. This was about the time that the legendary Largest Arms Buildup Since The First Cold War was being cranked up, about the time the air-traffic controllers’ union was busted, and real wages first began its long, slow slide into the toilet.

Our “leaders” were hitching us back up to the war machine, our wages were hitting the dumper, but at least the goddamn’ Rooskies couldn’t get us.

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Continue reading "Missile Defense" »

Ahh, the re-emergence of conservatism. Morning in America. A great time to be an American, as long as you were rich, well-connected, and/or a raving religous freak — like the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, VA (creepily, right near where I went to college) who suddenly was a nationwide rock’n'roll star who pissed on the separation of Church and State the First Amendment, and who was insisting that “what Jesus would do” would be to build a couple of new aircraft carriers and an orbital missile defense system and station a naval task force in the Persian Gulf…

This piece states what I think Jesus would’ve done, which, in keeping with proper conservative fiscal policy, would be to save a buttload of cash by converting all those cute little old Baptist churches out there with those cute little old steeples into missile silos, as long as we were in the process of bringing God back to government.

Seriously, though… could you imagine being in your pew one Sunday morning when the klaxons go off in town and the preacher unlocks the cover on the firing button and cuts that sucker loose? It’d probably look like that one scene in one of the early Planet Of The Apes sequels, which sucked (but then, all sequels suck, pretty much), but had this one memorable scene where a bunch of second-generation mutant survivors are in a makeshift church where there’s a single, unfired, loaded missile launcher at the pulpit; all the “congregation” are singing this nasty discordant hymn, and the “minister” finishes the service by mashing the “launch” button. Well, that one scene was really cool — even though the rest of it sucked — and, anyway, that’s what it’d look like.

That’s all, folks.

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Continue reading "Separation of Church’n'State" »