Some Will Kill, Some Will Be Killed: Obama Lays It Down, TRI Slurps It Up

A TRI Staff Analysis

TRI staff gathered last night to wait for updates in the Tiger Woods saga, because we find the news that a man in position of power would cheat on his wife to be one of the most earth-shattering revelations of the last 1,000 years.
Sadly, there were few new developments, the only update we received coming from TRI sports correspondent Barret Strong, who reported that his girlfriend was once brought to orgasm by playing "Tiger Woods Golf 2007" on Xbox and repeatedly hitting the ball into the water while holding the vibrating controller between her legs.
So instead, we watched President Obama accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

We were expecting just to beatbox along like we usually do when the Bammer is laying down his floetry, but when Bamdog laid down the line, "Some will kill. Some will be killed," the beatboxing stopped and a TRI staff roundtable began.
Say what you will about Obama’s performance in office so far. But…wait, actually, let’s take a second to do that.

Say what you will about:
The health care debate: Is it possible for an entire Democratic caucus to bend over so far backwards to please Republicans that they end up licking their own assholes—then have the Republicans criticize their "unrealistic" rimming technique? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Wall Street bailouts: It’s actually hard to "say what you will" about the bailouts because, like all taxpayers, we have a ball gag in our mouth and a line of downtown New York financial douchebags waiting in line behind us to pummel away while reaching into our pockets, all with President Obama looking on approvingly and Timothy Geithner jacking off in the corner.

The Afghanistan strategy: "Er, um, hold on, give me a minute here…dither, dither, dither…Did Sarah Palin just accuse me of dithering?! That bitch!…dither, dither…Hold on, just a minute, er, um, well, jeez.…Okay! We’ll send more troops, but not as many as the general asked for! And THEN we’ll get the fuck out of there!" *wipes sweat from brow*

Cash for Clunkers: Might as well have been Gold for Bowlcuts: go to your local salon for a bowlcut and get a gold bar straight from Fort Knox! After all, barbers are hurting, too. We guess it’s understandable that Obama would shovel money onto the auto industry…We would expect him to do the same for any other American industry that is essential to the fabric of our nation and in danger of going under…*cough* Newspapers! *cough*

Bowing to the Japanese emperor: The only way it’s cool for an American president to bow to non-elected royalty in Japan would be if he followed it by saying in an exaggerated Chinaman voice, "OOooooh, pwease ta meechuu Mista Empowaaaaa…." then threw little karate chops at him.

Calling out a white police officer for acting "stupidly" when he arrested Obama’s Harvard professor buddy, who is black: Uh, Barack? You weren’t there. And your professor buddy seems like an asshole. Saying what you said…well, it was just "stupidly."

Anyway, say what you will about ALL of that. But the president’s speech in Norway reminded us of at least one thing: This is a man who cares, and who understands the gravity of his decisions. Of our troops, he said, "Some will kill. Some will be killed."
Remember how Bush talked about war? "Bring ‘em on." "We’ll smoke ‘em out of their holes." Meanwhile, he wouldn’t even let us see PICTURES of all the American caskets coming back from overseas.
Obama walked into one of the toughest situations in presidential history--and he’s made it look pretty fucking tough. But with that one line–"Some will kill. Some will be killed."–he reminded us that he really is a unique motherfucker in the history of the presidency. He cares and he’s not afraid to show it.
So TRI is here to say that while 2009 may have been a year of strikes and gutters, ups and downs, we stand behind our president going into the new decade.
Obama, the Bammer, the Bamdog, the Head President in Charge: We’re with you, dog. Let’s go get ‘em again. This time it’s for the money.

Les Paul: A Great White Swims On

A Letter From the Editor





TRI would like to take time today to remember a true Great White shark: Les Paul. He invented the solid-body electric guitar, or as we call it now, "the guitar." He invented multi-track recording, or as we call it now, "recording."
I will now recount, in the self-indulgent fashion of our times, my personal journey with this man, from the day I first got one of his guitars to the night I spent in his sharky presence in a jazz club in New York.
I first went crazy for the Les Paul guitar in high school. I didn’t play then, but I was a devout member of the Church of Social Distortion, and our pastor, Mike Ness, always played a beautiful gold-top Les Paul. I would have ran through fire for Mike Ness in those days, but I’ll never forget the one thing I was willing to criticize him over – the RF sticker he had plastered on that guitar. I remember thinking, How could he slap that thing on that beautiful golden guitar? I vowed that if I ever got one of my own, it would be completely unadorned.
When I started playing myself, I would go over to my dad’s place and fuck around with the many guitars in his quiver. He had Les Pauls, but long ago devoted himself to the Fender Stratocaster (hey, if it’s good enough for Jimi Hendrix, I guess).
But I always preferred the Paul. Not so much because of the sound, since I didn’t know shit from shinola sound-wise in those days, but the look. It just looked beefier, stronger and more substantial. I looked at it and imagined clubbing someone over the head with it, killing them instantly.
Anyway! When I picked my first guitar out of the Musician’s Friend catalog, I went with the Epiphone Les Paul Special II. It was the very cheapest entry-level Paul in existence and when it stopped working, as $150 guitars tend to do, I took it to my dad to fix.
He called me over to his house one day and said, "Your guitar is fixed." He handed me my case, and I immediately felt it was heavier than when I left it. I opened it up and my Epiphone Paul was nowhere to be seen – in its place was my dad’s authentic Gibson "The Paul" 1979 solid walnut Les Paul. He was giving it to me. He said something like, "You’re ready for a real guitar," and it was one of the best days of my life.
When I started looking into the man himself, the first thing that struck me was the story about how he broke his left arm at some point, and the doctor said he was going to have to set it in a fixed position. Paul chose to have it fixed at a 90-degree angle, so he could still play guitar. I tried finding a picture of it, but I swear, there’s pictures where he’s standing there with his left arm sticking out. It looks hilarious – unless he’s playing, in which case it looks totally natural.
Anyway, several years ago I was surprised to find the man was still alive…he was approaching 90. Then I was AMAZED to find that he was still playing shows, every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
I became fixated on the idea of going there to see him. Well…partly I was fixated on that, and partly fixated on a woman I loved who had bailed on me and moved to New York, and partly fixated on going to New York and watching the b-ballers at Rucker Park, but anyway! This came to represent what was so fucking cool about New York to me. LES PAUL PLAYS THERE EVERY FUCKING MONDAY NIGHT!
So years later, I got that woman back, and we went to New York together and went to the show. Again, one of the best nights of my life. It was so damned fun….I really don’t have the words for it. Some editor, huh?
First of all, his band SHREDDED. Bluesy-jazzy-rock, just straight up, good-time, have-five-or-six-martinis, good ol American music.
And Les Paul the man, just shy of 94 years old, was one of the most engaging, charismatic frontmen I had ever seen. Just full of jokes and good vibes…I remember at one point he was talking about some encounter he had just had with a beautiful woman, and he said, "I felt like a condemned building with a new flagpole." HAHA! This was a 93-year-old man making boner jokes! The crowd loved it.
His Iridium Jazz Club residency was famous for HUGE guest appearances: Jimmy Page, Springsteen and other huge names had popped in for unannounced appearances before.
On our night, Les announced that he was going to welcome to the stage, "One of the first men around the world."
I was sitting there thinking, who the fuck’s he bringing up, Magellan? But it turns out what Les meant to say was, "One of the first men to orbit the planet Earth." It was astronaut Scott Carpenter.
I was a little disappointed at first, but Carpenter turned out to be an awesome guest. He took the mic and talked a little bit about space, boasted like a real old bastard about beating the Russians in the space race, then left us with a really foreboding warning, as only a true old bastard could: "China…LURKS…" he said, then left the stage.
The crowd didn’t know whether to applaud or cry. Me, I almost spit up my martini before busting up laughing.
On the way out of the club that night I walked right by Carpenter. As I mentioned, I had had a few martinis. I said to him, "Before this week, I had never even been to New York. And you’ve been to space!"
Carpenter smiled and shook my hand and said, "Well, they’re both great places!"
I laughed my fucking ass off. It was a magical night, and I’d like to thank Les Paul for it. Oh, and for inventing the greatest musical instrument in human history.
Sincerely,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

U.S. Soccer Team Shits the Bed in Mexico

By Travis Lee Hunter
TRI Editor and Publisher
And
Colombo Crue
TRI Sports Correspondent
　
Reporting from La Cita in downtown Los Angeles: A giant Mexican flag greeted us at the entrance so it was no surprise to find a big pro-Mexico crowd inside. Most of these men were intensely focused on the game and their $2 Budweisers and had very little to say, other than the occasional "la madre" or "a la chingada" when things looked risky for their beloved Tricolor. Once in a while someone would crank some disco through the system for five or ten seconds to pump up the crowd and everyone would cheer.
Of the four USA supporters in the bar besides your faithful TRI correspondents, two were loud-mouthed suit-wearing assholes who were hoping the game would go to a shootout (which was impossible since World Cup qualifiers can end in ties, and in fact a tie might have been what the U.S. was aiming for, strategically speaking). Another guy was so pessimistic about the U.S. team’s chances he was actually rooting against them harder than any of the dozens of Mex fans in the house. Another guy didn’t say anything the whole game other than a sarcastic "there you go Ching!" everytime U.S. forward Brian Ching blew it. And we thought we were the only ones who hated Ching! We actually had a gay little bonding thing with the guy, like, You hate Ching too?! Wow, cool man, us too! Smile. Wink.
The service at the bar was excellent. The bartendress spoke little English but certainly understood "Budweiser." When we asked her if they served food, she said no. Then a couple minutes later she asked, "You want shrimp tostada?" We had no idea where the fuck she was getting a shrimp tostada from all of a sudden but we were sure it was going to take some sort of unusual effort, given that they didn’t have a menu or even so much as chips and salsa. We didn’t want to impose.
The room was very dark, with three flatties over the bar and a big sheet with the game projected nice and clear over the dancefloor.
On to the game.
The U.S. team had trouble a) getting the ball, and, on the rare occasion when they did achieve a), b) keeping the ball.
These are both important facets of the game of soccer.
The Mexicans just like to kick the biscuit around, passing for the sake of passing. The entire crowd shouts "Ole!" for every pass and they have fun with it, just biscuiting it around. The U.S. team…well, we don’t know biscuiting from bed-shitting, apparently.
What we had here was a pretty comprehensive bed-shitting, excepting Goalkeeper Tim Howard, who stopped all the shots that were stoppable. But once you move up from there, to the defenders, is where the grass starts getting poopy.
DeMerit, as usual, filled the role of tattoo-haver for the team, and played pretty well. Onyewu was his big bad self, but neither he nor DeMerit seem to be aware that they have options once they have the ball at their feet other than "blast it the fuck upfield." Granted, they were probably feeling a little ragged because of the constant pressure they were under the entire game thanks to the midfield, which might as well have brought toilets onto the field and sat on them and watched from there. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
At least Onyewu and DeMerit actually stopped people, which is more than you can say for Cherundolo and Bocanegra, whose defensive mindset appeared for a while to go something like, "Do not get too close to the offensive player. Keep your distance and funnel him into the penalty area." They had me waiting all day for the classic Meh-Hee-Can flop in the area for the penalty kick. The long-range "golazo" (magnificent goal) that tied the game for Mexico wouldn’t have happened if Bocanegra had rushed the shooter instead of covering his balls and flinching away from the shot like…well, like we would have done if we were out there.
As for the midfielders….ay ay ay. We wouldn’t go near Ricardo Clark or Michael Bradley’s positions for about 35 or 45 minutes. Let them air out. Clint Dempsey, supposedly one of our cornerstone ballers, must have gone and dug a hole to shit in, because we didn’t even see him.
Landon Donovan’s pass on Davies’ goal was one of the best and biggest plays he has ever made in his soccer career. It was perfect: the power, the placement, the vision. Unfortunately, he should have spent the other 80 minutes of the game in the bathroom. Have we mentioned that?
On to the forwards, and Davies. He got a look at the goal with just the ‘keeper to beat and he punched it, bent it and buried it. He made it look easy. He made it look easier than it was. It reminded us of when the U.S. had…um…wait, we’ve never had anyone who just made it look easy like that. Wynalda was as spazz who battled and scrapped for every goal he got. McBride was a spazz who battled and spazzed for every goal he got. Donovan is…fuck it, you get the picture.
Then there’s Ching, as we mentioned, sucks so bad we got a new boyfriend out of it. We wanted to see the Connor "Shiny Marshmallow" Casey or that young bad brotha Jozy Altidore on the field, but U.S. Coach Bob Bradley chose to go with slightly more experienced players.
Unfortunately, their main experience is in the field of bed-shitting.
So the U.S. was denied, unable to get either its first win or second tie in more than 25 qualifiers in Mexico. We deserved zero points and we got them. Our World Cup qualification hopes are still on solid ground (next game Sept. 5 vs. El Salvador in Utah) but we still have the look of a team that would be lucky to get out of the first round if we did make it to South Africa. Fortunately we are a young team with the potential to improve greatly between now and the tournament.
So wipe your butts, boys, and think about what you’ve done.

Hanging Fake Testicles from the Back of Your Vehicle

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Republicans Make Pledge, Take It in the Butt; Abel Maldonado Wins Badass of the Week Award

From the State News Desk

State lawmakers got all the headlines this week as they struggled to figure out California’s budget, which was, as TRI has previously reported, “fucked.” After a long week that included late-night power struggles and senatorial sleep-overs that surely brought secret thrills to many of the chamber-members who oppose gay marriage, our fearful leaders came thiiiiiiis close to leaving the budget “fucked, murdered, and buried in the woods.”
Facing a $40-billion-plus deficit, state Democrats came forward a plan that was basically, “We’re gonna have to make some tough cuts and we’re gonna have to raise some taxes,” and the Republicans came back with, “No tax increases! And NO, we do NOT have a better idea! So don’t bother asking!”
Now, anyone who thinks they’re going to close a $40 billion budget hole without increasing revenue (through taxes) has a “math problem,” as our eloquent Austrian immigrant (and Republican) governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it. But math wasn’t the Republicans’ problem — it was a “pledge” that almost all of them had signed, promising to never raise taxes.
The Republicans’ unwavering commitment to this pledge reminded us of their ideas on sex education, and their “abstinence pledges,” which was probably on our minds because of the recent interview given by Sarah Palin’s lovely daughter Bristol. Then we remembered that a lot of kids who sign those things circumvent by having anal sex. Then we almost got completely off track.
Anyway, we have no idea why our leaders can’t simply pledge to do the right thing for the state in each situation….guess that’s not as catchy as “I’ll never raise taxes.”
The budget was fucked and the Republicans couldn’t budge without risking having their constituencies crucify them for sacrificing their rigid ideology in favor of pragmatic crisis resolution. Instead, they chose to stall, and if they had stalled for just a few more days, the government would have run out of money and basically shut down. Which sounds kind of cool, except if you care about small things like roads, schools, cops, fire departments and healthcare. Small things.
But one guy finally did something about it, and we at the Raw Intelligence are proud to present this guy with our “badass of the week” award: State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria)!



Now this guy was already somewhat of an outsider within his own party. Last year, when our budget deficit was a paltry $2 billion (and they considered that big at the time), he petitioned hard against closing it through any cuts to education, which seriously rankled his Republican counterparts, who love nothing more than stealing money from schools. (Their kids go to private school.) He’s also pissed them off on issues like gun control, and by being Latino (he’s the only Rebublican Latino in the Capitol).
So Maldonado sat there in the State Senate knowing that his one vote could end the budget crisis, and he decided to play that chip HARD.
In exchange for his vote, he forced onto the ballot a measure that would institute an open primary system in California. This would allow Californians to vote for any candidate they want for state government, regardless of party affiliation. The thinking right now (which could of course prove to be pretty simple thinking) is that this opens the door for more moderate candidates and will make for interesting races in places where the electorate skews so heavily to one party that the primaries have basically been the real elections.
To illustrate why this is a good thing for California, let’s go back to what got us in this fucked budget situation in the first place:
“Governors and legislatures, in good (economic) times, overspent and over-cut taxes and didn't have the courage to make their pandering generosity just temporary.” – George Skelton, LA Times Capitol Journal.
That’s putting it simply enough.
When you put rigid Democratic spenders and stiff Republican cutters together in the same room, here’s what does NOT happen: They negotiate through difficult decisions, deciding where spending is most essential and how much of the cost burden can rightfully be placed on the taxpayer. No. What happens is, these stiffs just cut AND spend, and push the huge fucking problems inherent in that logic into the future — which finally came.
So anyway, we at The Raw Intelligence think having some more moderates like Maldonado in the room will be a great thing, and the open primary system should help make it happen. Both parties HATE the idea; they’d rather just sit on safe seats, keep their party talking points on the straight and narrow, and roll out some standard factory model D’s and R’s for battles in a handful of contested areas.
But somehow this Maldonado guy managed to sneak in and seize his one moment of opportunity to unleash this whole other crazy animal that nobody else from either party wanted to fuck with at all.
Despite the small brown stains on the trousers of some lawmakers, the taxpayers, of course, are the immediate “biggest losers” (in the traditional, negative sense of that phrase). They are going to be paying more taxes for fewer services, all thanks to past dumbfuckery in the state capitol. (Though you can’t say we don’t deserve it a little bit. After all, we lapped up those “pandering” tax cuts and new expenditures that Skelton was talking about.)
But at least we got to see all the politicians, dumb-fuck Democrats and remedial Republicans alike, get it good from Abel Maldonado. They signed their little pledge, and now they’ve got Abel’s dick in their butt.
Hahahahahahahahaha.

Death of News

Gary Kamiya of Salon has displayed extreme sharkiness on many occasions...but he's probably at his most eloquent in this piece about the death of newspapers. He argues that newspapers, and the true brand of objective reporting they provide, are a social necessity — one that is quickly being strangled by the invisible hand of a free market that gives people what they want, but not always what they need.
He suggests they should be subsidized, either through endowments or government financing. That sounds creepy as fuck to any trained journalist...but as a former newspaperman who hopes to be one again, I say fuck it! Give us that guv'mint money!!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/02/17/newspapers/index.html

Spending Money to Get Out of Debt — TRI Staff Roundtable

The Big Man, the 'Bammer, the Big O, the Head President In Charge got up and laid it down tonight. We at the Raw Intelligence really enjoyed his press conference. It's still such a bizarre experience watching Obama speak. The long pauses he sometimes takes, especially... It's like he's stopping to think or something. Weird.
Anyway, we're sure you've noticed that we really haven't had a damned thing to say about the economy, the Wall Street bailout, the proposed stimulus package, any of that awful bullshit. Well, what is there to say really? Rich fucks in New York and Washington fucking fucked us, and now we’re all fucked. And since the rich fucks are the only ones in the country with savings accounts anymore, they’re the only ones who will ride through this crisis without sustaining any major wounds…in fact, they’re probably having a great time with all the low prices out there right now on everything from real estate to airfare to hookers.
Anyway, we don’t have any economists on staff here at TRI, but we do have a couple folks (whoa…latent Bushism) who have dealt with debt. And in our staff roundtable, we found the Republicans’ recent claim that “you don’t spend money to get out of debt” to be patently ridiculous.

-- Kerwin Skill, TRI sports editor, noted that when he was facing mounting credit card debt, he called a consolidation company to get the monthly payments under control. This company charged Mr. Skil a fee.
-- Lazlo Krew, TRI entertainment editor, remembers owing a substantial amount of money to his local bookie. Mr. Krew hired a local street tough to kill the bookie, costing him several hundred dollars.
-- Artemis Crowntree, TRI training editor, once found himself nearly destitute after a “can’t-miss” stock went bottoms-up. He got back on his feet by starting a business in which he took groups on tours of beer breweries. He first had to incur the startup costs of purchasing a van and paying local police to ignore the underage drinking that took place on the tours.
-- Destiny Winterfrosty, TRI news editor, fell thousands of dollars in debt as a result of a failed business venture. She rebounded by selling cocaine at the bar down the street from her house. This enterprise required that she first purchase a large quantity of cocaine at a discounted bulk price.

So there you have it. The Raw Intelligence staff has spoken — you CAN get out of debt by spending money. Many other staffers, including the Editor and Publisher, had similar stories, but they were edited out due to questionable content.

Get Ready, San Diego — The Chargers Are Going to Drunk-Drive Themselves Right Outta Town

A Letter from the Editor

I would like to send two very urgent warnings to all my friends and fellow Chargers fans back in San Diego.
First: If you are driving down the road and notice your favorite Charger driving beside you, watch out! He is probably drunk or high as shit!
The arrest this week of Jamal Williams on drunk-driving charges is just the latest is a long line of alcohol- and drug- related arrests for the team, so if that hasn’t been enough to convince you that the Chargers are one of the most fucked-up party teams in the league, let me add some personal insight.
I spent a lot of time in San Diego and I got pretty close to some Chargers and was very close with some people who were very close with them. Here’s what I can tell you: The linebackers party HARD, with cocaine and vodka near the top of their menu. The offensive linemen are a bunch of beer-swilling alcoholics. I could tell you exactly where to find a couple of Bolts linemen right now, right down to the exact barstool. The wide receivers are fucking drunks. The secondary is by all appearances a group of upstanding guys, the only problem being they suck at football. As for the Holy Trinity, Rivers and LT are squeaky-clean and Gates, while he does hit the town with the fellas, seems to keep himself under control.
One of the funniest things to come out of the Jamal Williams DUI story is that he had apparently chosen not to utilize a special program set up by the Chargers to provide players with safe rides home.
This program was founded by former Charger Lorenzo Neal, and was called Safe Ride Solutions. The funny thing is the city of San Diego already had such a program, called Call a Fucking Cab.
Call a Fucking Cab actually was a network of several smaller programs, and most were open to all San Diegans, Chargers included.
If you were drunk on the town, had a few extra bucks and wanted to get home, you could just Call a Fucking Cab.
It’s really funny that Neal was the one who decided Call a Fucking Cab was insufficient, then started his own program. On three separate occasions in San Diego, I jumped into a cab wearing Chargers gear only to have the cabbie go out of his way to tell me what a degenerate drunk Lorenzo Neal was.

Okay, so now that you’re good and pissed at the Chargers, let me deliver my second warning: The Chargers are leaving town.
Now a lot of people are saying “they might leave town,” or “I hope they don’t leave town,” or “what will we do if they leave town,” or “I don’t even want to think about them leaving town.”
We’re not fucking with any of that. We’re telling you: The Chargers are leaving town.
They will play their 2011 season representing the City of Industry, east of Los Angeles. Now I know this is an emotional issue for everyone, including me. Even though I’m in LA at the moment, I want the Bolts to stay exactly where they are, in Mission Valley, in the heart of San Diego.
So I’m just gonna lay these facts out there bullet-style, cold-blooded. There’s no other way to get bad news.

• The Chargers need a new stadium.
Yeah, the new one is perfectly functional for the game and for the average fan, but this isn’t about football. It’s about money. Chargers executives look at the potential revenue streams a new stadium could open (seat licenses, luxury boxes, marketing partnerships, etc.) and they get sweaty in the private area. The NFL has already declared that the current stadium will never host another Super Bowl, which is really a kiss of death for the building, especially considering that San Diego is otherwise a first-class host city. The Chargers rent the building from the city, and have been involved in several lawsuits over said rent. Have you ever been in a dispute with a landlord? Did you find yourself thinking, “I hope we can work this out?” No. You thought, “I can’t wait to get out of here so I can come back and throw a brick through the window.”

• The Chargers’ “last option” in San Diego is not an option.
So after spending tens of millions of dollars trying to work out a new stadium site in San Diego County and being rebuffed by the city of SD and Oceanside, the Chargers have declared Chula Vista their “last option.” Only problem is, Chula Vista is not interested. The mayor of Chula just blasted the team with some weird news release that didn’t make much sense other than reiterating her long-held opposition to hosting the team. But hey, big deal right — it’s just the mayor. The real problem is the city ALREADY HAS PLANS for the site the Chargers are looking at. The retail-entertainment development that was scheduled to inhabit the bay-front site the Chargers want is hitting its own snags in these rough times, but it should work out and it would bring a lot more dough to the city than the Chargers would (because the Chargers would keep most stadium profits and leave the city to deal with the headaches).

• The Chargers can no longer afford to build their own stadium.
When the Chargers first approached the city about a new stadium a few years ago, the deal they offered was, “You give us the land, and we’ll build the stadium.” The city said no, and in the ensuing years, escalating costs of building materials have driven the estimated cost of a new stadium from $500 million to $1 billion. When those estimates started shooting up, the Chargers went looking for financing partners to help shoulder the costs. They couldn’t find any.

• Ed Roski has the land, the money and the design for a new stadium in his pocket.
Ed Roski is a part owner of Staples Center, the LA Kings and the LA Lakers. Ever heard of them?
He also owns this big patch of land out in the City of Industry, an overlooked little burgh east of LA. He has finished architectural designs for a football stadium at the site. He has completed the environmental impact report, which is the single biggest hurdle to any major development. He has the $1 billion to build a new stadium in his pocket.
No looking for financing help, no leveraging, no bullshit. The money is in his pocket.
Roski has indicated that he will not put a team in the site unless he is a part-owner. The Spanos family, which currently owns the team, has shown no interest in selling any part of it, but we’re sure a man with pockets as deep as Roski’s could work something out with them. Especially considering that Roski and the Spanos’s are close personal friends. Oh, had I forgotten to mention that? Yeah. Close personal friends.

• The Chargers can get out of their lease in 2011 for a relatively low sum.
The Chargers lease with San Diego allows them to leave whenever they goddamn well please, but they’ll have to pay a penalty. This year, it’s about $56 million. Next year, about $54 and a half mil. The year after that, in 2011, it drops to about $26 million.

• The Chargers just hired an LA marketing firm.
And there’s a lot of fucking people to market to up here.

Sorry for the colossal Friday bum-out. Fuck it. Go Lakers.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

Media Misidentifies Phelps Bong as "Pipe"; Man Smokes Pot, Cereal Disappears

Raw Intelligence Staff Reports

Media Misidentifies Phelps Bong as “Pipe”
The staff here at The Raw Intelligence has been traumatized, as has most of America, by the recent events surrounding Michael Phelps’ cannabis usage.
In a nation where our president (Barack Obama), greatest athlete (Phelps), greatest musician (78-way tie involving Bob Dylan and others), greatest movie character (Jeff Lebowski) and most trusted neighbor (Canada) are all acknowledged cannabis users, it seems the mainstream media does not know the difference between a bong and a pipe.
At a time when the media should be working to regain our trust after eight years of ignoring its essential role as a critical and skeptical watchdog, most mainstream news outlets continue to spread misinformation and take things out of context.
Almost all of the news headlines on the Phelps photo have referred to him holding a marijuana pipe.
Now, in the context of a head shop, where the owner is legally operating his business under the pretense that his goods are for tobacco use and calling something a “bong” could get him in trouble, that thing in Phelps’ hands is called a pipe.
Under aaaaany other context, that’s a bong.
As for a water pipe, well, that’s something that runs under your house.

Man Smokes Pot, Cereal Disappears
The other amazing development in this story is the news that, of all Phelps’ sponsors, only Kellog’s cereal company will be severing ties with him as a result of the photo.
The cereal company is dropping him because he smoked pot.
This is basically like a peanut butter sponsor dropping someone because they were caught holding jelly or a surfboard sponsor dropping someone for using sunscreen.
We’re going to break this down for the folks at Kellog’s, who are obviously too high to understand it: People eat cereal because they are hungry and lazy. Pot makes a lot of people hungry and lazy.
Put it together.

At The Hat

A Letter from the Editor

I was at The Hat in Pasadena today and some punk highschooler was chuckling with his friends about Circuit City going out of business. He was talking about how it would be real easy to go in there and steal something since they needed to get rid of everything anyway and everybody was losing their jobs anyway so nobody would really care. Then one of his buddies said a third-party liquidation company now was handling the sales and security would probably be pretty tight. Then they both decided that stealing a TV would be pretty damn hard no matter how lax the security was, and decided not to do it.
And I thought to myself, Kids today are pretty smart.
Then one of these rascals said, “I can’t really imagine life without Circuit City,” and even though he was laughing and was obviously stoned, I knew there was truth to what he said and I related to it. This is fucking crazy! I mean, yeah, times are tough, yeah, we’re in a bad spot and it’s the worst this and lowest that and biggest the other since the Depression. But this is America: Our ATMs still work, I can still go purchase bread at the store and be home in five minutes, I will still watch the Super Bowl over a satellite signal on a television set powered by electricity while companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for each second of my attention. Things are bad, yeah — but they ain’t that bad, and I know things will eventually cycle around and get better. But now you’re telling me Circuit City isn’t going to be there when come out the other side?
That’s weird and a little hard. I mean, this is Circuit City we’re talking here. When I was little and my dad convinced my mom it was time for an upgrade to a big-screen and my mom was so on-board with the idea she said “Have it here by the time I get home tonight” on her way out the door (I remember it like it was yesterday), the first place we headed was that place with the big red entrance. When I first got a truck that was worth putting a system into, the second place I ever took the fucking vehicle was to Circuit City. (The first was El Asadero at Oceanside Blvd. and Temple Heights Rd.) And when I moved out of my college dorm room and finally got a place that was truly mine, and my roommate said we needed at least a 50-incher for the living room and that we’d only have to steal and sell about 5 mountain bikes to pull it off…I said no, of course. (But if I had said yes, and we had taken four bikes and turned them into $1500, we would have gone to Circuit City. And we would have bought a 50-inch Hitachi Ultravision.)
And the kids I overheard today at The Hat, when their schemes develop beyond walking into a store and stealing a TV, to more sophisticated two-part plans, where will they take their money? Where will they go?
Oh, yeah — Best Buy.

Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

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