Judging the Book By Its Cover: Rick Warren & Charles Rangel

Today, The Raw Intelligence is proud to present what we hope will be a regular feature (if we ever get our lives together enough to do anything regularly). Welcome to Judging the Book By Its Cover!
To judge a book by its cover, in the parlance of our times, is to make a broad judgment about someone or something based solely on appearance. You’re not supposed to do it. “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” say our moms, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” say ugly or weird-looking people.
Well, we at TRI have always found that the cover of a book is often pretty goddamned indicative of what’s inside. People are paid money to design covers that reflect a book’s content and appeal to its target audience.
Anyway, this new feature is basically going to consist of us looking at pictures of public figures, then making completely unfounded but probably-true statements about them.

First up, Rick Warren.


There’s been a whole lot of hubbub about Obama choosing this guy — the leader of a giant, lucrative evangelical congregation in Orange County — to lead the prayer at his inauguration. Everybody’s all pissed off because he’s reeeaaally conservative and super-opposed to same-sex marriage and such.
Now, we all know that high-powered anti-gay Christians usually turn out to be raging fags. Anybody who knows anything knows that. But we don’t think that’s the case here.
C’mon, look at the guy. He fucks prostitutes…females, that is. I mean, just look at him. This guy just looooves to fuck prostitutes.
I’m going to guess he fucks prostitutes twice, three times a week, on average. Look at his fat face. He just loves sticking his fat face in between fat, floppy hooker tits and then just motorboating, Bbbbbbrrrrrraaahhh!
Not only that — he fucks young girls! I mean young girls, like girls his daughter’s age. Take a look at that goatee. Wow dude, you must ride motorcycles or something. When his daughter’s friends come over, I guarantee you Rick Warren gives them a big hug, a big, inappropriately long and hard hug. Then when they leave the house later, they say “Goodbye Mr. Warren” and try to get the fuck out of there, but Mr. Warren’s had a couple of beers and he beats them to the door, then gives them a big long hug that he punctuates by brushing/grabbing their asses with his sleazy preacher hand.

Next up on Judging the Book By Its Cover, New York Congressman Charles Rangel.


Now, Rangel’s been in a little bit of hot water lately for allegedly…well, fuck, being a Congressman, basically. He evades taxes, he illegally uses his public position to raise private funds, he barely pays rent on his four NYC apartments, blah, blah, blah.
But look at this guy’s face. You’re going to tell me this guy doesn’t love cocaine? I mean, look at his face. Tell me that face has never been plunged into a giant pile of lobbyist-funded cocaine. I guarantee you it has. I guarantee you Chuck Rangel has buried his face into a huge pile of cocaine, Hoovered the shit up his nose, then jerked his head up toward the ceiling and screamed “NOBODY FUCKS WITH CHUCK!,” then looked around the room wild-eyed while licking the snow out of his moustache. Then, high as shit, he gets paranoid and starts threatening people, he grabs his driver by the collar and says, “You want to fuck with me? I will fucking bury you,” and the driver is like, “No! Jesus, Chuck, I’ve worked for you for 15 years, I’d never fuck with you man!” And Rangel finally says, “That’s right motherfucker,” lets go of the guy and sticks his face back into the huge pile of cocaine.
Also, I bet he gets wine-mouth. I bet when he’s at private parties he gets piss-drunk on red wine, and his teeth and mouth get all red. I mean, look at him. Tell me you can’t imagine that face, all googly-eyed and red-mouthed at some party. He probably totters on over to someone else’s wife, gets all up in her face with his red mouth and breathes out nasty propositions where the only intelligible word is “baby.” He’s just all leaning up on some guy’s wife, red-mouthing into her ear, “Jus gib be minna to, baby. Youn me, baby. I’ll fckn shw’da WORLD, baby.”

Once again, the preceding statements are all completely unfounded and probably true.

That Plane Falling From the Sky Reminds Me of Something

By Travis Lee Hunter
The Raw Intelligence

That F-18 that fell from the sky and wiped out some poor family in University City reminded me of something.
It reminded me of a couple years ago when I was covering the debate surrounding the San Diego Regional Airport Authority, and what eventually became Proposition A to relocate the international airport currently at Lindbergh Field to Miramar.
San Diego International Airport needs to move. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s right fucking downtown. This is 100 percent unique in major metropolitan areas. You don’t pull up into the Staples Center parking lot when you fly into LA, you don’t scrape the top of the Empire State Building when you fly into New York, you don’t fly over…um…whatever the fuck is in Denver when you fly into Denver. But fly into SD, and you drop right over the goddamn I-5 and, if you’re on the left-hand side, you’re so close to the downtown skyline you can look into the window at Mr. A’s and figure out who’s having lobster and who’s having steak.
This is why SD’s downtown skyline is so stumpy and pitiful. This is why SD’s airport checks in at less than an acre when most major airports are 10 times that size. This is why SD’s airport will reach maximum capacity within the next couple decades and severely restrict the growth and prominence of the city.
So anyway, the fucker needs to move. Problem is, the airport authority, which spent three years and millions of dollars studying possible locations, did a shit-lousy job of it. They single-mindedly focused on Miramar, proposing to share it with the Marines, who said no fucking way from the very beginning. But the airport authority pressed on, ignoring better options like snagging some land in Camp Pendleton or putting it in the desert east of SD. Why? Pure laziness, I think. A lot easier to try to muscle into an existing airport than worry about where it’s going to fit in North County or how you’re going to get people from East County into the city center quickly.
Miramar would still have been a much better spot than the current downtown location, but when San Diego voters were given the choice, they did what they always do when presented with an opportunity to change.
They said, “NO!”
This is the mantra of the San Diego voter: “Change? NO!”
Anyway, back to the Marines, who are the ones who killed that poor family in University City. The whole time they were arguing against sharing Miramar with the civilians, one of their main arguments was, “We can’t have fighter pilot trainees taking off next to jetliners!”
They made it sound like they were just tossing new recruits into fighter jets, hanging a “Pilot In Training” sign on the back and then sending them on their way. And considering what happened yesterday, shit, maybe that’s what they are doing.
Initial reports from the scene said the pilot told bystanders that his first engine went out over the Pacific Ocean, then “a decision was made” to try to get back to Miramar rather than dumping the crippled plane in the water.
Translation: The Marines thought the $30 million price tag for a new F-18 was worth the gamble that the thing might drop out of the sky and kill a few people.
Which brings me to my point. FUCK YOU, MCAS Miramar. You didn’t want to share Miramar with us, well guess what. We don’t want to share our airspace with you. Get the fuck out of San Diego.
And FUCK YOU, San Diego Regional Airport Authority. You had a chance to get the commercial airport into a sensible location, and you blew it. Imagine the casualties if that were a commercial jetliner that crashed and burned. That’s a reeeaaally rare occurrence, but considering that 80 percent of plane crashes occur immediately before, during or after landing or takeoff, I’d watch my head if I lived in Mid-City or Loma Portal.
Anyway, sorry this was such a fucked-up ramble, but I’m all pissed off right now. Both MCAS Miramar and SD International Airport need to get the eff out of San Diego proper.
Here’s the Airport Authority’s site, complete with contact info:
http://www.san.org/Airport_Authority/index.asp
Drop ‘em a line and tell them what douchebags they are.

TRI Has a Shit-Lazy Staff

A Letter from the Editor

So here I am again apologizing for going a few weeks without posting. What can I say…my staff is shit-lazy. They keep churning out bullshit like “holiday gift guides” (as if anyone has any fucking money) and bullshit about Obama’s Cabinet (as if we won’t have plenty of time to bitch about them later).
And I refuse to subject you, the discriminating Raw Intelligence reader, to such…what’s the word…ah, yes — bullshit.
I aaaalmost wrote about the U.S. automakers flying in on private jets to beg Congress for money, but all that kept coming out were things like, “Cocksuckers!” and, “There is actually an extensive history of government bailouts for critical industries in America, the only difference between then and now is that, in the past, incredible care was taken to spell out specific guidelines about how the money would be used and how it would be paid back.”
But who wants to read that shit?
And the Editor and Publisher’s personal life hasn’t exactly been a fountain of inspiration lately. I could have shared some recent things I wrote, with titles like: “Being Homeless Actually Ain’t That Bad (If You Have Good Friends),” “Del Taco Is Actually Pretty Damn Good,” and “My New Band Is Going To Rip Your Face Off.”
But I say again: Who wants to read that shit?
Anyway, then a plane fell from the sky on some poor family in San Diego and got my staff all fired up. Post soon to follow.

Keep your heads up,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

Know Your "Drunk History"

A Letter from the Editor

So it’s been brought to my attention that a big part of blogging is to refer your readers to other people’s sites. This never would have occurred to me since I am naturally extremely self-centered. But I’ll play the game.
Watch “Drunk History” on vbs.tv. It is a high-fucking-larious little series where someone gets completely tanked and then recounts a famous chapter in American history. You’ll see cool actors like Danny McBride, Jack Black and Michael Cera playing characters like Alexander Hamilton and Ben Frankiln by lip-synching along to the shit-faced ramblings of the narrator. Then guess what happens — you laugh.
You may even learn a little something about American history (and you’ll definitely learn something about the effects of alcohol). For instance, we all learned in the first “got milk?” commercial that Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr. But did you know that Hamilton didn’t even fire his weapon at Burr because he was morally opposed to dueling? And yet he participated anyway! The Founding Fathers were fucking weird, I’m telling you.
Check it out here: http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1761990748
Yeah, I know you can do links without just copy-pasting the url, but I’m not there yet. I just got into blogging a couple weeks ago for chrissakes.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

In State News: Prop 8 Protesters Need to Get Out of the Damn Street

Ahh, protesting in the streets. The Raw Intelligence did it once. We marched down the streets of San Francisco a few weeks before George Dubya shocked and awed Iraq, asking him to please not do that. There we were, the editorial board, the Editor and Publisher’s mom and grandma, and some stinky girl with a sign that said, “Drop Acid – Not Bobms.” Yeah, spelled like that. Amazingly, the President did not take that advice.
The funny thing is, had President Bush asked for the people’s advice at that time and put it to a popular vote, it probably would have turned out pretty similar to how Prop 8 turned out: About 52% would have voted “Yes, nuke those towelheads,” with about 48% voting “No, wait, what? Bomb Iraq? Why?”
But anyway, on Prop 8, the people actually did speak. True, they spoke after being subjected to tens of millions of dollars worth of televised lies funded by a church whose definition of a “traditional wedding” includes a row of seats set aside for the groom’s other wives, but they spoke nonetheless.
And protesting in the streets isn’t going to change that. The lawsuit backed by LA City, LA County and SF and Santa Clara counties maaaaaybe can change that.
The good news is, something will change it, and here’s why: Prop 8 was Wrong. So many propositions are matters of priorities, or wording, or the hidden details. Rare is the vote when one side is Right and one side is Wrong. But that’s what we had here. Denying anyone the right to marry is wrong, just like it was wrong when people of different races couldn’t marry, just like it was wrong when people of different social classes couldn’t marry, just like it was wrong when the Lakers lost the 2004 NBA Finals.
And the Right side will win on this eventually, and all the people who voted Yes on 8, if they are not dead when it happens (and a LOT of Yes on 8ers will be within the next few years), are going to feel fucking stupid.
But anyway, protesters, quit acting the fool and get out of the damn street.
“Make Acid – Not Signs.”

In Sports News: USC Shits the Bed, Cries About It

USC football coach Pete Carroll has been crying and complaining about the BCS lately, and it’s hilarious. For those of you who don’t follow college football, the BCS is a convoluted system of polling and computer analysis that attempts to identify the top two teams in the country for a final championship game. It’s stupid and an infinitely better alternative – a pro-style playoff – could easily be implemented, but the BCS bowl system isn’t going anywhere for the same reason a lot of fucked-up things aren’t going anywhere: because it makes shitloads of money for a lot of people and institutions that already have shitloads of money and therefore have the power to keep it alive.
So here’s where Little Peter Carroll comes in, complaining about something that everyone knows isn’t going to change any time soon. This fucker coaches USC, meaning he usually trots on to the field with a team that has anywhere from 200% to 1000% more talent than the team it is opposing, and yet he’s got something to say about college football being unfair. You see, Little Peter, whose team is so fucking talented it should NEVER lose, lost a game earlier this year to the vastly inferior Oregon State. In a BCS world, that loss cost his team any shot at a championship. Now Pete is openly wishing for a playoff system that would allow his team another shot to prove that it is the best in the land.
We have two things to say to Little Peter:
1. You’re right; a playoff system would be better.
2. Shut the fuck up.
Pete, you know what you could do to help fix the BCS? DON’T LOSE TO OREGON FUCKING STATE. Don’t let your mega-talented team get overconfident and shit the bed against an inferior team.
Unfortunately, Pete has proven he can’t do that, as he’s let it happen once a goddamn year for three years now. This year it was shitty little Oregon State. Last year it was bespectacled Stanford. The year before that, OREGON FUCKING STATE. It’s become like some terrible anti-holiday in LA, only nobody knows where USC Shits The Bed Day is going to fall on the calendar until it actually happens.
In conclusion, we offer Little Peter a piece of advice. In the words of some very wise motherfucker, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

In National News: Obama Picks His Team

Reports have it that Barack Obama is considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. A former First Lady and one of the most influential Senators in one of the worst Senates ever assembled – that’s Change I Can Believe In.
Obama has already selected Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. A lot of people got really fired up about this guy coming in as “bad cop to Obama’s good cop,” and that sounds all well and good if we were putting together the new drama on TNT, but that’s not what we’re doing here. The Raw Intelligence will of course withhold judgment until we see the man at work, but our initial impression can be summed up thusly: Rahm Emanuel seems less like a “bad cop” and more like a “fucking asshole.” He is known for being an extremely partisan political centrist. Is there anything worse than an extremely partisan political centrist? That’s basically someone who’s saying, “My views don’t differ all that much from the Republicans, but I’m going to battle them tooth-and-nail because they’re on the other team.” We don’t know for sure, but we think a lot of the people who were breathlessly clamoring for “change” during the campaign were talking about just that kind of thinking.
Also, Emanuel served on the board at Freddie Mac a few years back when the mortgage giant misstated its earnings by $5 billion. Um, wow. Cool. This is one of the guys who made many, many millions of dollars while directly contributing to the kind of skullduggery and bullshittery that fucked our financial system to the point where Congress had to fork over a mountain of taxpayer money to Wall Street. To borrow a few phrases from the douchebags on CNN and Fox News, when Joe Taxpayer went to his doctor on Main Street because he was having trouble sitting down, he found out it was because Rahm Emanuel’s dick was in his butt.
But, hey, we’ll see how he does.

Hacking Away in a Post-11/4 World

A Letter From the Editor

Cherished readers of The Raw Intelligence, on behalf of my staff I would like to apologize for our absence since the day after the election. I have been focused for the past week and a half on coughing my lungs out of my body one tiny piece at a time, and my staff chose to exploit that distraction, either by ditching out of the office to protest outside of Mormon churches or by sitting around talking about the regal greatness of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The good and bad news is that neither the Lakers talk nor the protests are going to change a goddamn thing. The Lakers are regal and great, and their season will be a grand processional to a championship that should be observed in reverent silence (unless of course you are at Staples Center). Proposition 8 is law, the people of this state have spoken, and marching in the street in West Hollywood is about as likely to change that as my daily tirade to my cat about taking less-foul-smelling shits is to change the smell of my cat’s shits. Not fucking likely.
Anyway, we’re back to work now, and in the next few minutes we’ll be posting a few things our staff has been totally tripping on.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

This Is a Disgusting Personal Story And a Poor Metaphor

A Letter from The Editor

I woke up this morning and vomited. It wasn’t booze-related, though I did watch last night’s election at a party sponsored by the Scotch maker Dewar’s, and I did partake heartily of the party favors.
The vomit came as a result of an illness I’ve been battling for a couple weeks now. What started as a fever and flu had become acute bronchitis, largely a result of some poor personal-health decisions I made during the original illness.
So I awoke Wednesday with a belly full of swallowed lung mucus. It sat indigestible at the bottom of my stomach like a lump of new concrete.
I knew — don’t ask how, but I knew — the only way this plague would ever leave me would be through my mouth. I stood up and thought about vomiting. I walked around my apartment, thinking, “Yes I can.”
My cat followed me for a few laps around the premises. He knew something was wrong. He’s known all along. His blue eyes looked up from his flat, gray face and said, “Yes you can.”
My eyes watered. My mouth watered. I walked quickly to the bathroom and bellowed out a yellow-green ghost that dove into the toilet water then swam back to the top.
I looked down at its cloudy ghost-face and said, “Fuck you.”
And I felt GREAT.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

THE RAW INTELLIGENCE Nov. 4 Election Endorsements

By THE RAW INTELLIGENCE Editorial Board

For President : VOTE FOR WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT. This is the one spot on the ballot that’s received more than enough attention. If you’re still undecided, please leave it blank. THE RAW INTELLIGENCE editorial board believes that change in this country will have to start not with the executive branch, but with the legislative. Congress spent the last eight years — two of which under Democratic rule — turning what was supposed to be a system of “checks and balances” into a system of “sucks and swallows.” Congress — the Senate in particular — needs to grow a new spine (stem cells?) or our government will never be healthy again. This will be an ongoing theme here on THE RAW INTELLIGENCE. Remember that Nov. 4 is the end of something big and the start of something huge.

California Statewide Propositions:

Proposition 1A: WE STRONGLY ENDORSE PROP 1A
This is a bond to pay for a high-speed train to L.A. to San Francisco. You may be thinking, “How fucking often to I go from LA to San Francisco? Who put this on the ballot, the Bureau for Gay Sex Tourism?” But I say it’s a good idea because it’s gonna pay for itself, and who knows, maybe you WILL start doing regular trips up and down the state. The train is FUN, man. Go down to the bar car on the Amtrak and you will meet some serious “journey is the destination” type of people…good people. Trains are also extremely comfortable, especially considering you can bring whatever the hell you want on board and then use whatever the hell it is in the downstairs bathrooms. THE RAW INTELLIGENCE editorial board believes that an expansion in public transportation will be an essential part of any plan to save our planet and our collective sanity. This high-speed rail line is a great start. Heh heh. We said “high-speed rail.”

Proposition 2: AHHHH…FUCK. WE TENTATIVELY OPPOSE PROP 2
It’s fucked up. Chickens are smashed into tiny cages and the ones on top shit on the ones on bottom. That’s not cool. This measure is supposed to stop that practice, but it won’t. The measure would outlaw the PRODUCTION of eggs using these methods in Cali, but not the SALE. And that’s where it’s fucked. Because grocers aren’t going to suddenly decide they’re willing to spend 20% more to stock Cali eggs, the end result will be the end of the egg business in Cali, while the shelves will be stocked with eggs from other states or Mexico where the chickens are still smashed into tiny cages and shitting on each other. If this bill was about the SALE of eggs produced under such conditions, we Californians would be faced with an actual choice: Are we willing to pay more for eggs in exchange for knowing that the chickens did not suffer? But as it is, there’s no real choice here. This is just the Humane Society of the United States trying to chalk up a symbolic victory to put on its next fundraising pamphlet. Still, there’s something to be said for symbolic victories, and California should be out front on things like this. But we think it’s the wrong time economically to chase an entire industry out of the state.

Proposition 3: WE ENDORSE PROP 3
This is a bond to improve children’s hospitals. Children good. Hospitals good. Just put in on the card and we’ll pay for it later. It’s the American way.


Proposition 4: WE STRONGLY OPPOSE PROP 4
Ahhh, abortion. Ay ay ay. This prop here — which would require minors to inform their parents before having an abortion — is just another front in the bigger battle. We oppose it because, looking at it pragmatically, the end result of this is going to be more girls who are afraid of their parents heading off for illegal abortions, the thought of which just makes us cringe and grasp at our chests with little Tyrannosaurus Rex arms.
But how about abortion, huh? THE RAW INTELLIGENCE cannot understand how this has become the foremost “wedge” issue in the country. On one side, the people who just can’t handle living in a world where women are allowed to quickly remove an organism growing inside their body that has miniscule sensory capability and has a one-in-three chance of dying on its own before ever seeing the light of day. On the other, the people who can’t imagine a world where women aren’t allowed to have doctors reach inside their bodies and kill a growing human being. Seems like a close call to us. Amazing how many people have chosen this as the issue that defines them above all others. Anyway, on to Prop 5!

Proposition 5: WE STRONGLY OPPOSE PROP 5
This one is all about treating drug addiction as a disease rather than a crime, something requiring treatment rather than punishment. Sounds reasonable, sounds like something a lot of smart people have been advocating for a long time…but this prop goes waaaaaay too far. This would create a system in which drug addiction becomes a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card, which may sound fun to some of you. Then some junkie breaks into your house, says he was doing it to feed his addiction, gets placed in a voluntary treatment plan, quits, and comes back to jack all the stuff he missed the first time.

Proposition 6: WE OPPOSE PROP 6
Automated spending — which is what happens when our state government writes into law that we will spend THIS much on THIS issue over THIS many years — is what got our state into its current budget situation, which nine out of ten economists describe as “fucked,” with the tenth countering that the budget is simply “cocked.” But that’s what Prop 6 is, automated spending to counter gang crime, without any tax increase to pay for it, meaning the money will likely come from cutting social programs that keep lots of kids out of gangs in the first place. And yes, I did steal that last bit almost verbatim from the Los Angeles Times. Blogging is Fun!

Proposition 7: WE STRONGLY OPPOSE PROP 7
Some douchebag once said, “The devil is in the details,” and boy was he right. The details on Prop 7 are some little rascals. This is supposed to set big new mandates on how much energy our state gets from renewable sources. Sounds great, but how about those details. First, such a mandate already exists for investor-owned utilities. Second, the prop is written in such a cocked manner that it excludes small renewable plants that generate less than 30 megawatts of power from counting toward the goals. These small plants — which are often just homes or small businesses that go solar on their own and then sell surplus power back to the utilities — are the ones currently leading the charge on solar. This prop would take away the incentive to work with them. Just look at who opposes this bill…in a word, everyfuckinbody. The Natural Resources Defense Council and the CA Chamber of Commerce both agree on it, and the last time they agreed on something was….um….

Proposition 8: WE STRONGLY OPPOSE PROP 8
Protect marriage! Protect it from people who want to get married! Um, what? This prop to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry is backed mostly by Christians and old people. First of all, Christians — what are you tripping on? Okay, the Bible says “when a man lays with a man as he lays with a woman he has committed an abomination.” Okay. The Bible was written thousands of years ago. In Hebrew. It was then translated. The same word that was translated to “abomination” was also used to describe the practice of eating pork, suggesting that it was a much milder word originally, something closer to “inappropriate” or “unclean.” But you don’t see too many Christians out there crusading against hot dogs, do you? THE RAW INTELLIGENCE suspects that the Christian aversion to homosexuality arose in a time when the religions of the world were in intense competition, literally fighting over people in an effort to dominate the globe. They needed baby-makers and the gays were not helping. Before Christianity’s rise, being gay wasn’t no thing. There were so many dicks swinging up against beards in ancient Greece, the word “faggos” was directed at men who DIDN’T have their own personal cock-boy.
Homosexuality is a natural state of being. It is not an abomination. It is not something someone came up with for fun, or to be cool or weird.
This is California. We are cool to people here. We are tolerant of people here. Be Cool. Vote no on 8.

Proposition 9: WE OPPOSE PROP 9
But we don’t really feel like writing about it. We really just wanted to get to 8. Prop 9 is all about creating a “victim’s bill of rights” when it comes to crime, but it seems a little weird to us. A little vendetta-ish. Yep, that’s a word now. Blogging rules.

Proposition 10: WE STRONGLY OPPOSE PROP 10
This is a fat fuck Texas oil billionaire named T. Boone Pickens — yes, T. Boone Pickens — trying to steal money from California under the banner of “helping the environment.” The only environment it’s going to help is T. Boone’s environment, probably to place golden piping under the golden toilets he already has in his many, many homes. On another note, how about the little girl holding the flower in the ads in favor of this prop? She is fucking ugly.

Proposition 11: WE STRONGLY ENDORSE PROP 11
This is all about redistricting reform. Redistricting is when legislators look at the map and say, “Hey, a bunch of people from my party live here, here, and here, but not so much here. Wouldn’t it be great if my district only included people from my party?” Then the two parties get together and redraw the boundaries and the result is that the map of districts in the states is a lot less, shall we say geometrical, and a lot more like a fucking Jackson Pollack painting. Here’s how you know the current redistricting system is fucked: It’s the one and only thing the two parties in our state legislature agree on and work together on year after year. They set it up so that legislature seats never change party hands, so they can worry less about losing their jobs and worry more about not overdosing on the pile of blow their favorite lobbyist just sent over. This bill puts redistricting in the hands of a small commission that will have a mandate to create districts that make sense for the state, not just for the politicians.

Proposition 12: WE ENDORSE PROP 12
This is a bond that helps veterans buy homes. Veterans fucking rule! Put it on the card. We’ll pay for it later.

LOCAL LA MEASURES

Measure A: OPPOSE
Measure B: ENDORSE
Measure J: ENDORSE
Measure Q: OPPOSE
Measure R: STRONGLY ENDORSE
Measure U: ENDORSE

R.I.P. 'Lefty' Rosenthal

The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday on the death of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who parlayed his sports gambling super-genius into a cozy partnership with, um, certain Italian-American families, and a spot at the top of the Vegas food chain. Rosenthal was the basis for the Ace Rothstein character in "Casino," played by...well, just take a look at this photo of Lefty and you tell me who would best fit the role: