Occupy Liam Flynn’s: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

Tomorrow is the second Wednesday of the month, and as usual some of Baltimore’s finest progressives of all stripes will gather for pints and politics in Station North. The Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets twice a month at Joe Squared, Liam Flynn’s Ale House, which will be our new home for the Winter months. Meetings are 7 pm til whenever, and open to all. Just look for the big red, white and blue bottle on the table.

Of course the big story in the news right now is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has now spread to more than 100 cities including our own. What was at first all but a non-story has become an ongoing top national headline for the last week or so. While much of that is attributable to those in the movement who are especially tech savvy, we suspect a lot of it has to do with just plain good luck. There’s not a whole hell of a lot else happening at the moment. The news has been pretty slow this week overall, so all we’ve got to blog about is Occupy.

We’re certainly no expert in protest and demonstration tactics, but we do know that the main thing in any protest is just showing up- boots on the ground, bodies in the crowd. The Participants have done a decent job of that, but unfortunately that’s about all they’ve done so far. It’s kind of like that scene in The Jerk where Navin is asked if he’d like to be president of Shell Oil. You don’t get to run the whole system just by showing up.

Ever since the movement came to Baltimore, we’ve been in an odd position. We’re actually very sympathetic to this cause, yet all we’ve done all week is find ourselves making snarky wisecracks at the Participants’ expense. We were at the harbor during the first day of the protest, when it was mainly 20-something kids from middle class backgrounds playing campout. Those kids are easy enough to make fun of, but the truth is we felt a little guilty about not participating. (Not much.) Stopping by again Yesterday morning though, the entire face of the thing had changed. people who are used to sleeping in nice beds and eating 3 square meals a day all seemed to have found their way out of McKeldin Square, and the only people we could see about all looked like they’d recently fallen off a boxcar.

Littered signs outnumber people down there now. There’s composting going on. People have staked out their own little areas and are going about their daily ablutions in a way that makes us think that they are not the 99% but are in fact the other one percent. The one percent that is perfectly comfortable not showering for a week on end; that eats food directly from cans, that actually sees itself as America’s happy, noble poor and likes it that way.

The real 99% don’t find anything particularly noble about living in poverty, and are not happy being poor. And things are going to have to get a lot worse for them before they start showing up to occupy.

Hipster Parking Lot: Parking Info for Station North and Downtown Clubs

It’s kind of ironic that we’re writing a post about parking now that we’ve resolved to give up our car, but there are two changes in parking at places we go regularly that are worth noting for the rest of you who still have cars.

The first change we noticed was in Station North, at the lot on the corner of 20th and Howard Street. This lot is kind of a minor urban miracle in that it functions as a free community lot where people can park day or night without fear of being towed. A lot of people are quick to denigrate the presence of parking lots, but when they’re free and open to all they’re very much a valuable community resource.

Now, we’ve been parking in this lot for years, and we’ve always kind of wondered who owns it and why they allow free parking, but we never thought it wise to look the free-parking gift horse in the mouth since we’ve never been ticketed, towed, or broken into there.

In this diagram, south is up.

The only difference now is that when we went to Joe Squared last week there was a large poster board with the above graphic lashed to the fence next to the patio. We can only take this to mean that parking in this lot is pretty legit for patrons of all Station North businesses. Who says there’s no such thing as free parking? Now all we gotta do is pass Go and get our $200.

The other parking change is much more substantial and will be of interest to anyone attending shows at Sonar or other clubs near the foot of the JFX.

We’ve always just parked on the street when going to Sonar, Sidebar, etc, since there’s generally not any shortage of street parking near City Hall at night. Going to the Shellac show though, the weather was rainy and since our driver’s side window has been reduced to a pile of Baltimore Diamonds we were looking for sheltered parking.

As it turned out, we were in luck. We’d noticed on Sonar’s website that this show’s listing said parking would be available in the garage above the club for $2. We had always know that there was a garage on top, but had no idea that it was available for show-goers. Not only that, but when we pulled in, there was no one there to take our money. The parking was free.

When we asked the club staff about it at the door, they advised us that nighttime parking in the Farmers’ Market lot under the JFX now costs seven dollars ($7!). They also said that from now on, Sonar patrons can park above the club either for free, or for some rate which will be less than $7.00 depending on the show.

If you zoom in on the embedded map, Sonar itself looks like a parking lot. There are 2 levels of parking on the building, a covered garage, and the exposed rooftop. you can access both levels from Gay Street, passing the church and making a hard left right behind the billboards.

Have any downtown parking tips of your own? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Iraq and the Arab Spring Edition

As you know, we usually only talk politics every second and fourth Wednesday, in conjunction with the regular meetings of Baltimore Drinking Liberally. Drinking Liberally will happen as scheduled tomorrow (Joe Squared, 7pm), but we’ve got something else cooked up for then, so we’re waxing political today.

There’s definitely no shortage of topics to cover at the moment. The GOP seems to be having debates about once a week, and each one is more disgraceful than the last. Today though, we’re going to focus on one single idea.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally chapter will meet tomorrow at Joe Squared. 7 pm.

It may not be a wholly original idea, but it did occur to us quite on its own and we haven’t been able to shake it since. At any rate, it’s not a very popular idea- as we’ve never seen or heard it discussed anywhere in the media- and after we put it forth on our humble little blog here it probably won’t get much more traction because it’s frankly a very uncomfortable idea to accept.

Saddam Hussein never would have survived the Arab Spring.

On the face of it it’s a pretty simple thing, and most people might even shrug it off and say “Hm. Yeah, I guess so. Whatever…” But the more you think of it the more disturbing it becomes. It implies that the entire Iraq war effort was completely unnecessary. They likely would have come to the same result on their own.

Now, there were many, many people who said before the invasion that the war was wholly unnecessary. The Chop was among them, and we knew at the time that there were no WMD’s, that there was no collusion between Iraq and Al Qaida, and that Iraq presented absolutely no threat to the United States. But the point of this post is not to say we told you so. It’s to ask the question What if we’d known the Arab Spring was coming?

Of course, none of us has a crystal ball, and back in 2003 there wasn’t anyone anywhere who was predicting what’s going on now across the Arab world. Hindsight is 20/20 though, and it would be irresponsible of us as a nation not to examine our actions and motives in light of subsequent events. Saddam Hussein was not drastically different from any other Middle East dictator, and if anything the Iraqi Street was even more primed and ready for a revolution than most of the country’s neighbors.

A best-case scenario for Iraq would have been a revolution similar to that which occurred in Egypt. This is the type of regime change that was laid out by the Bush administration at the time; a quick bout of fighting with a minimal number of casualties followed by an orderly transition to democratic rule. Unfortunately, they couldn’t deliver on it. We actually passed through Egypt in July and the lower-level nonpolitical government officials we dealt with were not only still showing up for work and keeping things running smoothly, but there was actually less evidence of bribery and corruption about.

A more likely case for Iraq would have been what happened in Libya. The US already had a no-fly zone and a raft of sanctions in place in Iraq, and there’s little doubt that that the US, NATO or both would have been delighted to manage Libyan-style air strikes on Regime targets, even to the point of “shock and awe.” As soon as the first bomb fell the PKK would have seized complete control of the North, and the Shiite militias would likely have taken the south without much difficulty. The Republican Guard should have stayed loyal to Saddam, but regular Iraqi army units probably would have defected almost immediately, either remaining loyal to a cadre of generals or blending into militias.

Saddam himself would probably have done just what Gaddafi did, hiding out in or around Tikrit, or possibly attempting a run for the Syrian border. It’s entirely possible that his clown-show of a trial and his inhumane circus of a hanging would have happened exactly as they did, as there was little US or international involvement in either of those events. The “Sunni Awakening” might have been part an parcel of the larger Arab Spring, and in the end it’s easy to imagine that Iraq’s post-revolution government would be just as hapless and dysfunctional as its post-invasion government has been. The absolute worst case scenario would have been a bloody years-long nationwide civil war, but the Iraqis had that anyway, whether the neo-cons want to admit it or not. They could have just as well fought their civil war without us.

We have to mention too that Libya is a nuclear-armed country. That is to say, they have real, actual weapons of mass destruction. There are also large stores of chemical weapons there that were not used throughout the revolution by either side. The answer in Libya did not “come in the form of a mushroom cloud” so to speak.

But Libya isn’t even the worst-case scenario. We’ll grant that it is possible Iraq could have seen the horrific type of one-sided massacres that are still happening today in Syria. However, the situation in Syria is far from over. We don’t see any way that the Assad regime can come out of this in tact, especially given that he’s garnered the type of widespread international scorn and condemnation that Saddam never did.

Now, what about the countries that didn’t revolt? What about Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where blossoming discord was nipped in the bud?

The Saudis basically bought their way out of a revolution, giving everyone in the country a nice check and creating thousands of new jobs, primarily to be filled by men 18-25. It’s easy to fight on an empty stomach, and the Saudis are now making goddamn sure that every able-bodied fighting-age man has a bellyful of bread. Likewise, they’re exerting a lot of influence and pouring a lot of resources into their much smaller neighbor Bahrain. They even put Saudi troops on the ground there to keep the peace. After so many years of sanctions, Saddam simply didn’t have the money to buy his way out of a revolution, and no one else had nearly enough power and influence to offer protection to such a large country as Iraq.

So there we have it. Ten years on and the result in Iraq might have been exactly the same. Well, almost the same: without invading, we would have saved one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000.). We’d have saved the lives of over 4400 US service personnel and up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians. No Abu Ghraib. No Torture. No diversion of resources from Afghanistan. No war profiteering.

And George Bush says he has no regrets.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Weiner’s COCK Edition

Today is the second Wednesday of the month, and as usual Progressives of all stripes will be gathering on the patio of Joe Squared to swap stories, talk politics, and drink beers at the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Meetings start at 7 pm and are open to anyone who wishes to attend. Just look for the table with the red, white, and blue bottle and introduce yourself.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

Of course, the topic of Weiner’s wiener is bound to come up, but we’ve been tired of that pun for at least two weeks. We’re going to insist on calling it Weiner’s COCK if we have to talk about it at all. Come on… that’s how people talk anyway. When’s the last time anybody sent a wiener pic? No one ever has. People send cock pics. Weiner sent a picture of his cock.

As far as where that leaves us now… well, we still think Andrew Breitbart is a sleazy, sensationalist, predatory asshole. He just happened to be right, the same way a broken clock will be twice a day. It’s safe to say that we won’t be seeing much more of Weiner on programs like Maddow and sites like Twitter. He’ll be going about his job much more quietly from now on. As to whether or not he gets to keep his seat, that’s up to the voters to decide, but we’re thinking he does. As we pointed out two weeks ago, sex scandals happen all the time now, and you’ve got to be pretty sleazy these days to seriously raise eyebrows. We don’t think that being a horny 16 year old who just got his first Myspace page will ultimately prove that destructive to the distinguished gentleman from New York.

In non-Weiner’s cock related news, this is also a good day to talk about who will be the next mayor of Baltimore. SRB, Otis Rolley, Jody Landers, and Catherine Pugh are all officially in, and with 98 days left until the election, it’s not out of the question that Kweisi Mfume, Carl Stokes, Andre Bundley or some other dark horse candidate could throw his or her hat in the ring. Like 99% of the city, we haven’t even pretended to pay much attention at this point, but any one of those names is a huge step up from one of the most hated people in Baltimore, Sheila Dixon.

Being mayor of Baltimore is a really hard fucking job and honestly, we’re surprised that even that many people would want to do it. With more than one candidate that we’d actually consider voting for already in the race, we feel like we’ve already won.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: More Sex Scandals Edition

Well, the forecast for this week has not been good. It may not be Joplin-esque, and we may be a whiny pussy of a blogger for complaining about it, but we’re getting sick of rain. To hell with rain. Seriously. We want to do outdoorsy things, like go to festivals and swing golf clubs and most especially, enjoy the outdoor seating at Joe Squared tonight during the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Hell, we might even like to walk there, you know? At any rate, we want to stay dry long enough to gossip about political sexytime. As you know, these things come in threes, and so there must be one more shoe soon to drop.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

The news recently has been dominated by the sex scandals of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The GOP primary field is as boring as can be, and the Rapture was never a real story anyway, so sex and storms and sexstorms are all we’ve been getting lately. It’s all sort of boring, really. Most natural disasters all look similarly horrible on the news, and we’ve had so many sex scandals in recent years that you’ve got to try pretty damn hard to top Eliot ‘Raw Dog’ Spitzer, Mark ‘Appalachian Trail’ Sanford or Ted ‘I-only-tried-meth-once-and-just-asked-him-to-jerk-me-off’ Haggard.

As far as Schwarzenegger goes, we LOL all day long. Arnie oversaw the bankrupting of California, and now Maria Shriver is going to oversee the bankrupting of Arnold. Fair Enough. Most politicians leave office to ‘spend more time with their families,’ and we guess Arnie is no exception.

DSK, on the other hand, deserves not just jail, but a few good jailhouse soap-drops of his own.

Here is a man who claims to be a Socialist, but was more or less in charge of all the money in the world. We don’t know of many true Socialists who favor $3000 per night hotels, although the hotel itself is just the tip of the iceberg. You can believe that real Socialists aren’t staying in such luxury when they gather by the hundreds of thousands to protest the IMF and WorldBank meetings. They aren’t arriving at those meetings in limousines either. They’re marching together, as Brothers and Sisters should.

The thing about Socialism though, the thing that its detractors can’t quite wrap their fat heads around is that at the end of the day Socialism is about Equality. It’s not about tax rates or countries of origin or business regulations. It’s about respecting the rights of Workers, and respecting the Workers as human beings. Socialism is about protecting and elevating those among us in the lowest station, not dragging down anyone else.

Strauss-Kahn has made a habit of preying on precisely those in the lowest station. Time after time, and in this case especially, he has shown a plutocratic hubris and a sense of entitlement which would be disgusting in any man. As far as we’re concerned this is not a sex scandal of any sort, but is in fact a case of sexual assault and attempted rape. These are violent and serious crimes, and are unforgivable no matter who the assailant or the victim may be.

We expect that American justice will be served in this case, and we’re glad of it. This crime was not just a brutal and personal attack against an innocent woman, an American, and a Worker, it was an act of class warfare, and we regard it as such.

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Drinking Liberally meetings are held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. They’re free to attend and open to anyone interested in progressive politics or causes. The opinions expressed above are those of the Baltimore Chop blog, and are not sanctioned by Living Liberally, Drinking Liberally, or its Baltimore Chapter.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Bin Laden’s Still Dead Edition

Is it just us, or have the last two weeks gone by really, really quickly? What’s today? April 27th? The 28th maybe?

Fuck! It’s May 11! How is that even possible??? We sort of regret that the last two weeks of life elapsed in what felt like 2 days, but the good news is that if it really must be the 11th of may, that means it’s once again time for the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally. And thank God and everything that is holy, we’re finally returning to Joe Squared, home of a hundred rums, delicious pizza, and one of the best outdoor seating arrangements around. If you’re driving across North Avenue tonight, see if you can spot the big red, white and blue bottle on the table, and if you do, feel free to sit down and have a drink.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

One of the major reasons that time has flown so quickly recently is that the only thing on the news has been the death of Osama bin Laden. We’re cool with that. It’s been fully a week and a half now, and we’re still not even close to being tired of hearing about the bin Laden raid. It was awesome. There is not one single thing about that story that is not awesome. Whether it’s photos from inside the Situation Room, parachuting superhero special ops dogs, Pakistan left with its mouth hanging open dumbly, or the president on 60 Minutes being basically the biggest badass of all time.

This is the space where we usually discuss a couple of current political stories, but there’s nothing else to discuss this week, really. Osama’s still dead, it’s still awesome, and no amount of phony-ass quotes on Facebook is going to change that. If you posted one, you can go ahead and de-friend us any time. For the rest of you, here’s a real quote for your wall…

“Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn’t deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.”

-Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking of people who need to have their heads examined, one of the many, many stories that slipped through the media cracks these last 10 days was the first GOP Debate. It was the most clownish of clowny clowning, and only the snarkiest of blogs could even be bothered to make fun of it. Seriously GOP? Herman Cain? Ron Paul? Santorum? The debate was sponsored by and covered exclusively by Fox News. Every other news outlet in the world was too busy showing how awesome our president is. If the GOP had seen any of it, they’d understand that his re-election is an absolute lock.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. Joe Squared is at 133 W. North Ave in Station North.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: We’re Much Better Off Than We Were Four Years Ago Edition

For all the complaints of Baltimore being (or at least feeling like) a small city, it does have one distinct advantage over some of its larger counterparts, namely the ability to sometimes be in two places at once. That’s exactly what we plan on doing tonight as we ping pong back and forth between the No Friends/ Deep Sleep show at CCAS and the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally at Joe Squared.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

With both events starting at 7 pm, it won’t be difficult to ask a friend for a text message alert when the bands are about to play, and spend the rest of the time around the corner at Joe’s drinking beers and talking politics. It’s a lucky break too, as tonight marks the last regular meeting at Joe Squared until the spring. For the rest of the Fall/Winter season the DL crew will be alternating between two of the Chop’s other favorite establishments, Midtown Yacht Club and the Laughing Pint. For anyone who’s a fan of those bars, but has been hesitant to make the trip up to North Ave, we’ll be sure to save you a seat.

We feel like we should be much more excited about politics today, what with the elections so close, but the truth is that there’s not much happening right here in Maryland, now that the Democrats have the governor’s race in the bag.

The Chop is endlessly pleased that Martin O’Malley and Bob Ehrlich have a real and genuine dislike for each other. We can’t stand all this “my good friend” and “the distinguished gentleman” type rhetoric you sometimes hear during campaigns. We see nothing wrong with partisan politics, and at the end of the day, although we may loathe and despise the Ropewalk crowd, we secretly respect them much more than these so called ‘swing voters’ and ‘undecideds’ who are really just wussies and retards.

But even with the abiding distaste that MD’s last two governors share, the campaign has remained pretty dull. O’Malley is running a crummy campaign (a kitchen table? Really???) But somehow, Ehrlich is doing even worse. He’s pouring on that fake-ass homer Arbutus charm and trying to make the case that he was a good governor (He wasn’t. Not by any metric. Ineffectual at best.) and the case that Maryland was a paradise four years ago and that it’s one big Hooverville now.

The truth is that Ehrlich only got to be governor in the first place because Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was one of the weakest candidates, running one of the weakest campaigns in the history of our fair state. Sure, those were better times nationally, but Maryland has quite frankly done a better job of weathering the storm than almost every other state. California, Nevada, Ohio, Florida… these are places with problems. Maryland’s local economy has remained vital. Businesses small and large are still opening and operating, whether they’re wont to complain about taxes or not.

Bob Ehrlich’s big final push is a direct rip off of some Reaganite pap from the 80’s, and honestly Bob, Yes. We are better off than we were four years ago.

Four years ago we didn’t have a car. We were able to buy one with cash. Four years ago we didn’t have a job, now we’ve got a legitimate skill set in a very secure field and get paid to travel around the world and take 6 months of vacation every year. Then we had no insurance and a mouth full of cavities. Now we’re covered and smiling brightly. Four years ago we were living in our parents’ basement. Last year we were able to buy a renovated house in a neighborhood we like and even get rental income from our best friend and roommate. Four years ago we were in a twin bed and eating from TV trays. Now we’re sitting at the head of a well appointed table and sprawling out in high thread count sheets on a queen sized bed.

We could go on, but the point is clear: The Chop is much better off with O’Malley in Annapolis, and so is the rest of Maryland.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Democrats We Hate Edition

It’s about to get interesting folks. The midterm elections are a mere three weeks away, and with the gross injustice of the Citizens United decision in full effect, the RNC and Karl Rove along with his secret billionaire friends are about to start slinging mud faster and more furiously than any of us have ever seen mud slung. Believe it.

So what’s a good old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool Baltimore progressive to do? Show up and sling a little mud of your own. Or better yet, sling a few pitchers of Dogfish Head with the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally at Joe Squared tonight.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm - ???

To a regular reader of these roundups, it may appear that the Chop is little more than a hopeless cheerleader for the Democrats. This is not so. At the end of the day, we’re really only lukewarm on the Dems. It’s our true, white-hot, pure unvarnished hatred for the Republican party which keeps us riding the Donkey. After all, way back when we voted in our first presidential election, even then we weren’t stupid enough to waste a vote on Nader.

In any year, there are going to be some Dems we love, and some we don’t. This year though, there seems to be quite a few we don’t love. In fact, there are some races out there in which we’d go so far as to outright endorse the Republican. This may seem an extraordinary measure, but the candidates mentioned below are extraordinarily terrible.

Richard Blumenthal has been running around Connecticut using the phrase “when I served in Vietnam”. Problem is, he never did serve in Vietnam, but was in a cushy stateside reserve post instead. He has yet to admit that he’s a bald-faced liar, and his apologies for ‘misspeaking’ fall flat and ring hollow. As tired as we are of the politics of Vietnam, this is beyond the pale and unforgivable, and Blumenthal has no place in the US senate or in any other position of public trust.

Alvin Greene is retarded. He’s literally retarded. We’re only surprised that no one has yet exposed Greene as the practical joke that his candidacy is. It’s still a mystery where the hell he came from, and how in the world he managed to secure the Democratic nomination. Better choices than Greene for senator include; a golden retriever, a man in a banana suit, a magic 8-ball, and of course, a Republican. As much as we hate Jim DeMint, we’ll breathe a little sigh of relief when he’s reelected with 99.9% of the vote.

Blanche Lincoln made us very angry on healthcare. Blanche Lincoln is making us very angry on EFCA. Blanche Lincoln pretty much makes us angry every time we hear her name. We’re getting really sick and tired of the Democratic leadership trying to whip 60 votes by kissing these conservative blue dog asses. We’d rather lose that seat all together than try to plan legislative strategy based on what a few hicks in Arkansas are likely to approve of in an opinion poll. To hell with Blanche Lincoln.

There’s a few more with whom we’re really not impressed who don’t merit mention here. If the Democrats are going to be losing seats anyway, we say now is the perfect time for a little house cleaning. Take Minnesota as an example: sometimes you’ve got to lose a seat to a sniveling shit like Norm Coleman in order to ultimately fill it with a true-blue progressive like Senator Al Franken.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Mega-Rich Cartoonish Super-Villain Edition

This week was the Solstice, which marked the longest day of the year. Today is the fourth Wednesday of the month, which marks the regular meeting of the Baltimore chapter of Drinking Liberally, an informal, open group of mostly 20- and 30- something Baltimoreans who gather twice a month to share pitchers of beer and talk politics at Joe Squared.

Joe Squared has always had several shelves stocked with more varieties of rum than you would ever expect from a pizza joint, but they’ve also recently rolled out a brand new rum cocktail menu for your enjoyment. While today might not be the longest day of the year, it is the third longest (we guess), so that means there will be plenty of bright warm daylight by which to drink rum on their outstanding patio.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm - ???

One’s got to be careful with rum though… unless you’re a seasoned British sailor it can really turn your stomach. Speaking of British sailors who turn our stomach, Tony Hayward simpered his way through an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Friday, abdicated all his responsibility (but not his job, title, or paycheck) on Saturday, and sailed his giant luxury racing yacht in a hoity-toity British yacht race on Sunday.

Were we the Admiralty, we’d have him hung from the gallows at low tide on the Thames. Seriously. We’d like to see him dead.

Equally galling in his cartoonish ultra-rich supervillain-ness is Rush Limbaugh, who (one week after paying Elton John $1,000,000 to sing at his wedding) said with a straight face that American children should eat out of dumpsters rather than receive free or reduced price meals at school.

We don’t know what Rush feeds faster… his fat ass or his drug habit. Either way, we’d like to see him choke on it. Rush is number two on the list of people we really, truly, honestly, swear-to-fucking-God want to see dead. Soon.

Since all good lists come in threes (or fives), we’re going to go ahead and say that Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff can drop dead as well. Shurtleff relished the chance to approve an execution by firing squad this week, and then saw fit to tweet about it immediately. What were his follow up tweets? A potshot calling death penalty opponents “whiners” and some cheerleading about college football. He can die and go straight to hell any time now.

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In a rare bit of good news, we’re pleased to announce a grand discovery. The Chop is a great fan of snarky political blogging, and this week we got our first look at UNAMERICANA, which is a love letter to America. With Pictures. And Swearing. This new blog brings you all the dumbness of beltway politics you can handle with several posts a day. We suggest you do like we did; bookmark their site and follow them on Twitter.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: We Say Fuck a Lot Edition.

Are you ready Baltimore? Are you ready for outdoor dining weather? The glory of al fresco dining (and drinking) is upon us in all its splendor. This time two weeks ago the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally took over most of the Patio at Joe Squared and kept the pitchers and political discourse flowing all night. If you weren’t there, you missed out. The good news is that if you did miss out, new faces are always welcome at tonight’s meeting at 7 pm.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets tonight at Joe Squared. 7 pm til ?

Are you ready now, Baltimore, for some of the most brilliant and insightful political commentary since Alexis de Tocqueville? Sike! This space is rapidly turning into a place where we just say fuck a lot and call people racists, and you know what? We’re okay with that. There’s still a lot of fucking racism in America, and a lot of it comes straight from the halls of power, and it’s not going away until it’s called out and confronted in a much larger forum than this insignificant blog.

There’s plenty of racism down in South Carolina, and sex appeal and good ol’ boys and Sarah Palin and everything else. Yawn. That shit’s so 2008. Frankly all the primaries that happened yesterday were pretty boring, despite the sex scandals in SC, the trading chickens for healthcare in NV, and the multi-millionaire vs. multi-millionaire battle in CA. Although we would have liked to see Blanche Lincoln get her ass handed to her for being a twat about healthcare reform.

We’re starting to see some fundraisers for oil cleanup pop up here and there. It feels strange to say, but we’re against them. The oil cleanup should not depend at all on the generosity of ordinary people or non-profits. This is not our oil that spilled and we didn’t fucking spill it. It belongs to BP, they fucked up, and they should pay every fucking dime of cleanup costs. We don’t think we’re alone in saying that we’d like to see the leak stopped entirely, all the oil cleaned up, and then BP go the way of Lehman Brothers and AIG.

BP should not fucking exist anymore on this earth.

Call it Socialism, but we won’t be satisfied until the Obama administration freezes and seizes the entirety of their assets. They love us about as much as Al Qaida does, and they’ve fucked us just as much, if not more.

Finally, if there’s one difference between Republicans and Democrats in this country, it seems to be that the GOP will stand up and try to defend, justify, or casually pass off racism, sex scandals, embezzlement or any number of other atrocious actions while the Democrats will gleefully throw anybody under the bus at the slightest provocation.

The Chop would like to personally take this opportunity to throw old crone Helen Thomas under the bus. Previously we had nothing but the highest respect for her, but her recent comments on Israel put her batshit-craziness right up there with William Donald Schaefer. She can pretty much die and go to hell any time now. On the other hand, it is kind of cool to be around for so long that you can say “Fuck it. I’m tired of hanging out with the president. Screw you all, I fucking quit. Effective immediately.” The Chop should be so lucky someday.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.