Well, as Porky Pig once said, (or maybe it was Karl Rove - they’re so easy to confuse) “That’s all, folks.”

After one year and 325 articles, I’m hanging up the keyboard for a while. As I said when I first began this blog, I write all the articles myself and with an average of two to three a week, not counting ” The Observer’s Guide to the Right Wing,” that’s about eight hours a week of research (some of which I began compiling almost 20 years ago) and writing.

Unfortunately, it don’t pay the rent and its been displacing writing projects that do. (To say nothing of my other work, like tomorrow, for instance when I have to get up at 5 AM to be on location for “The Vampire Diaries.”)

So this is the last official post for I, Rantibus. It’s been fun in one way. I enjoy passing interesting information to others, even if and sometimes because it often scares the shit out of them. In other ways … well, not so much. After all, how much of a laugh can it be to have to listen to the Human Hemorrhoid, Glenn Beck to deconstruct his rambling diatribes that evince as much logic as trying to find fully parsed sentences in a bowl of alphabet soup? Do you think I’d voluntarily listen to Sean Hannity? I’d sooner watch Daffy Duck on crystal meth. He’d make more sense. Pour through that anorexic harpy, Ann Coulter’s dreck and drivel to tell you what you already know - that she’s a pathological liar? I’d rather have a jalapeno enema than listen to Bill O’Reiley. But yet one must if one is to point out their distortions, lies and hypocrisies. As I once said, it’s often like snorkeling in a cess pool to find a nickel.

Mostly what I’ve done - my original intention - was to look at past issues that got short shrift or zero coverage in the mainstream media; buried on page 14 of the ‘D’ section if reported at all. Issues I believed were important to understanding the wider picture. An informed electorate is the Republican’s greatest fear. Why do you think they’re all pissing and moaning about the President going on television to tell school children to study hard and get through school? An ignorant population is the meat and potatoes of Republican hegemony.

So while this blog is still on line before it floats off into the ether and fog of the Internet, I invite you to re-read some of the articles. And then get involved. Apathy is one of the ways the Rethugs get into power. Lies, fraud and intimidation are the others, and it can still work again.

Notice how Bush left a National Debt of $11.6 trillon (plus a record national and trade deficit) but that suddenly, the debt has become Obama’s. How the Bushes began the bailout to the tune of almost $750 billion with no strings attached and no oversight but all of a sudden the recession is Obama’s fault. How the previous administration cozened the nation into two wars that have currently volatilized over $2 trillion but suddenly Rethugs are pissing and moaning about not being able to afford universal health care for fear of putting our children into debt.

Well, at the current figure of 22,000 a year, over the next generation there’ll be at least 550,000 people who won’t have to worry about paying off the debt because they’ll be dead for lack of health insurance. The irony is that most of them are in Red States so that also means several hundred thousand fewer Republicans.

So, so long and thanks for all the fish. I appreciate those who wrote in, especially the faithful Mailuppa. (To the person who kept on writing in saying, and I quote: “???? ????????? ?? ???????????? ? ???,” I’m sorry but I don’t speak Cretinese.) I’d also like to thank my friend and college Sebastian de Casteel, who first suggested this blog and did all the heavy lifting to create it since it’s well known that I have the computer acumen of a cherry-stone clam.

A final admonition - don’t give up. Write letters to the editor, to your Congresspersons, (hint: tell them to find their collective balls and quit trying to appease the Rethugs. It doesn’t work. There is never enough for them) debunk the frauds and fools with facts at every term. You may also want to write and e-mail newspapers and TV news stations asking them why they aren’t covering the other side of the story like just a few days ago when several thousand people showed up in Seattle to show their support for the health care bill. Not a single paper or station covered it - not even the Seattle Times which, co-incidentally, is owned by a Republican. If you don’t challenge this kind of disingenuous BS, then the egregious and the pelf-puffed corporate shills will always win. More importantly, YOU will lose.

We tried winning in 2008 and it tasted good. Let’s not go back to the shit sandwich.

So thanks for reading. Look for me (hopefully) on book shelves in the next few years. And who knows - maybe in the future I’ll be back, whipping on the bastards with both hands.

Cheers!

“A man who hungers for the truth should expect no mercy and give none.”

Hunter S. Thompson