AOTL Video Marathon


If there's one thing that we love to do on holidays it is watching reruns back to back for hours on end. For those of you who get tired of "Roseanne" and "The Twilight Zone" Ahead On The Left offers a few minutes of video entertainment (be sure to scroll down).

Enjoy your holiday season and whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, please do not watch these videos while driving.






























Crazy Animals



Chip MySpace Video

Northern Exposure






Dear Todd or Bristol or Sarah or Levi or Trig or Piper or Willow or Occupant, whichever one of you checked out my blog, do come back. Leave comments and tell friends.
Happy Holidays. Oh that's right. I mean Merry Christmas.

For Colored Girls Who Considered Quitting After Hearing Enuf Office Comments About Her Hair

I’m sensing Republicans will soon be asking Malia Obama to resign her post as First Daughter as the role of First Daughter is unconstitutional. If they succeed Team Obama will be loosing one of its most effective members. To most people, the contribution of Malia is missable. To black women who have been put under administrative scrutiny at work for wearing anything other than the Donna Brazile/Condoleezza Rice/Michelle Obama office perm, Malia Obama is a trailblazer.

As any black woman over the age of thirty-five will tell you it has not been easy making a black woman’s hair acceptable in the workplace (“yes that is a ceramic bird in my hair”). Nappy hair on a black woman has been considered, on the surface, below office muster. Braids, twists, and Afros above a certain height can be grounds for a workplace hassling. Once the wearer chooses to attend her job in one of these styles her superiors no longer see her Cheryl in accounting; She is Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, the Crips, and the bloods in accounting. She will be assumed to be testy, mean, and lippy. She will swivel her head when she explains why she can't help you. She will be unapproachable and highly likely to file multiple frivolous discrimination suits. In a word, trouble.

While things are much better than they were in the 80s and 90s we can easily see where the struggle continues. Before Malia, there was no Sister on the White House staff or any White House resident who would rock braids. To this day Malia is the only one. It may be assumed that this is something Malia can get away with as a the minor child of a president, but even at eleven years of age Miss Obama has already been the target of the Right-Wing outrage generator. While touring Italy this year Malia sported a t-shirt emblazoned with a peace sign which prompted some tractionless chatter about it sending the wrong message to the attendees of the G8 Summit which was occurring simultaneously.

I don’t know about the shirt, but her hair certainly sent a message that day as she strolled through the streets of Rome: “My hair is nappy. Live with it.” It would be too dramatic to compare this to when Eleanor Roosevelt flew with the Tuskegee Airmen to validate their airmanship, but Malia is opening a door. We are approaching the day when a black woman can get a hairdo over the weekend without having to anticipate it creating any bureaucratic stress on Monday morning.

Malia is the quintessential spokesperson who never had to say a word. With only eleven years behind her, there's little record for her enemies to pillage. She is certainly more liked than her father. They don't poll the approval of presidential children, but if they did, Barack Obama would be wearing cornrows at his next Camp David visit. Then in fifty years it would be trivia that Barack Obama began the tradition of presidents wearing cornrows during their Camp David stays.

Joe Lieberman, Please Eat Shit and Die (Slowly)

By Ray Richmond

Okay, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut (the “I” clearly stands for “Irrelevant”), you win. If your goal was to convince me and the American people that you’re a mangy, mealy-mouthed, Smurf-like, fossilized piece of walrus vomit, congratulations. You’ve convinced me. In the darkest depths of Hell, the halls are bedecked with your portrait, smiling that bloated little android chipmunk smile that seems to say to the world, “I’m a pathetic little trapezoid-shaped turd of a politician who is so far up the ass of Big Insurance that my entire grotesquely misshapen bulb of a head has started to turn the color of rancid salami.”

You will find Sen. Lieberman wherever houseflies gather. He’s drawn to the stench of excrement because it so reminds him of the breath he wastes when justifying why he is somehow morally, ethically and constitutionally incapable of voting for a bill designed to fix a hopelessly broken health care system and provide millions of uninsured Americans with a ray of hope for the future and tens of millions more with a way to pay for medical care without going broke.

The thing you have to know about Senator Joe is that he is absolutely, exclusively and unequivocally in the Joe Lieberman business to the exclusion of everyone else. He never was a true Democrat. He’s not even a Republican. What he has done with the label “Independent” is transform it now and perhaps forever into a synonym for “Self-Serving Asswipe.” He doesn’t just give Jews a bad name; he soils Caucasians, politicians (not an easy thing to do), the name “Joe,” the surname “Lieberman,” married people, fathers and indeed humanity itself. He’s a power-mad putz doing the bidding for Big Business, taking a hatchet to everyday Americans eagerly and without the thinnest shred of conscience.

First, Lieberman the Lapdog vows not to vote for the health care bill if there’s a government-run public option. Why? Utterly unclear. Something about bankrupting the country. Hmmm…Where did we hear that one before? Oh yeah, when we bailed out the banks. That turned out splendidly, didn’t it? But it’s called a public option, not a public must do it. It’s called tossing people who need it a long overdue life preserver. But that simply isn’t part of Senator Shmoe’s agenda, having as he does a vested interest in flipping them overboard instead.

But not even this is enough for this cloying collection of parrot droppings. He then decides to take to the Sunday morning airwaves yesterday and vow to vote against any health care legislation that includes an expansion of Medicare to allow a buy-in for those aged 55 to 64…as well as any fallback version of a public option. Why? Because the prick is owned outright by the insurance companies. They promise Lieberman whatever he wants so long as any legislation that enables Americans to steer clear of the greed-mongering insurance congloms is erased from the bill.

None of this would much matter, of course, saving for the fact that Lieberman (that’s “Lie-berman”) is the Senate’s swing vote, the 60th, filibuster-proof one who stands potentially between passage and defeat. Small wonder the twit thinks it’s all about him. It’s what he’s told every day. Why would he think any different? An arrogant pretend-moderate is somehow cast as the most important and powerful guy in the country, in some ways more important a voice than the President himself.

I’ve just fucking had it with this flip-flopping slime bucket. Pardon the raw language, but it’s the mildest I can be when discussing Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the jerkoff who puts the “con” in “Connecticut.” For years, he conned everyone into believing he leaned left when all he does – and all he’s ever done – is bend over. He has traded his voice for a truck full of cash and a pair of lips stuck to his buttocks. If people wind up dying because his unquenchable ego and lust for power are all that matter to him, so be it. He is a little man who is small in every way, a turncoat who has abandoned his party, shucked his responsibility, sold off his allegiance and deserted his people in their greatest hour of need.

And for what? Evidently, it’s so Senator Joe can be the story, can be bigger than the issue, can become part of the historical fabric – the consequences of his actions, or inactions, be damned. What is more unctuous still about Lieberman is that he thinks he can continue to have it both ways, that he can talk one way and walk another. He is, thus, the worst kind of political scoundrel, one who lacks even the simple honesty to embrace his own convictions. The press marvels at his seeming courage to stand against the tide, but it’s a mere illusion. The real Joe Lieberman is as predictable as the sunrise – that is, playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing role to the hilt. In every profession but politics, they would call this a phony. But in Washington, snake oil salesmen are the mainstream.

We already know that the literal meaning of the term “politics” is, “The science of convincing a segment of the population that you are not in fact beholden to the special interests that control you.” But Jackass Joe has taken it a step further. He seems not only to buy into the deception but also to believe the delusion as fact. His reward should be a special wing in Hell.

TIGER BY THE TALE



By Ray Richmond

I have seen the future -- and I've seen it all before -- and so I know how this here Tiger Woods saga is going to unfold from here. Trust me, so do you. There's really no other way it can go. All he has to do is follow the standard script.

But first, a few casual observations:

1. Tiger is going to come through this almost entirely unscathed. Really. Sure, he used to be seen as a Boy Scout. But others have done far worse than serial consensual philandering and been forgiven wholeheartedly.

Start with Kobe Bryant, charged with sexual assault but no longer tarnished by that particular alleged sin even moderately. Michael Vick was convicted of torturing dogs for sport, and no one's even raising a whimper today as he restores his shattered reputation with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Does anyone raise a peep now about steroids as it applies to Alex Rodriguez? Nope. Turning into a post-season home run machine will do that. Success trumps transgression with few exceptions, particularly if it's preceded by the appropriate quasi-sincere public apology. Just spin, baby.

2. In an odd way, people have gained a measure of respect for Tiger that wasn't there previously. Many found him to be so straitlaced as to be boring. No longer. Now he's the guy singlehandedly responsible, seemingly, for keeping the hotel and motel industry from imploding during the economic downturn.
3. Anytime someone departs a job or position to "spend more time focusing on my family," the sure bet is that this has little or nothing to do with the decision. What it means in this case is, "I need to gather myself and consider my options while surrounded by imagemakers, spinmeisters, lawyers and marketing reps, as well as the occasional intern." Hanging with the family probably doesn't rank much higher than sixth place on the priority scale, and that high only as props for the occasional photo op. But it appears that Tiger will need to travel to Sweden to get a shot of the happy family working out its problems.

4. You just need to have the right "The devil made me do it!" mea culpa, and Tiger is about to play that card out of utter necessity. This brings us to my crystal ball:

JANUARY 5, 2010: Tiger Woods announces on his website that he is in the throes of sex addiction and is seeking inpatient treatment at the Sierra Tucson in Arizona -- a 30-day program designed to restore himself to sanity and rescue his personal life. "I have been an untreated sex addict for 11 years," Woods declares, "and I intend to get this issue under control once and for all."

FEBRUARY 1, 2010: It's announced that Tiger will give his first sit-down interview since his sexual indiscretions became public with Barbara Walters on a very special two-hour edition of "The Barbara Walters Interview."

FEBRUARY 17, 2010: Woods tells Walters that he didn't understand until undergoing treatment that what he was doing all of these years was "seeking the approval" of a father who was never satisfied via the multiple dalliances with women. "I respected all of them," Woods says, "but I didn't respect myself."

FEBRUARY 22, 2010: In an edition of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on which he serves as the sole guest, Woods tells Winfrey that he hopes to be able to reconcile with his wife "even though she's now living on an island in Sweden that denies me access." He offers "a sincere apology to the women of America for treating you as my personal amusement park."

FEBRUARY 25, 2010: On "A Dr. Phil Prime Time Special: Tiger Woods Apologizes to Dr. Phil," the world's greatest golfer and most prolific clandestine womanizer answers the Dr. Phil question, "What were you thinking?" by admitting, "I was thinking with my sex drive. In program, they call this, 'Disrespecting my penis.' For that and so many other things, I apologize to you and to the country."

MARCH 5, 2010: Woods announces that he will be returning to golf in April to play in the Masters tournament, surprising no one.

MARCH 21, 2010: The Tiger Woods Apology Tour '10 continues in a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story that carries the headline, "I've Disrespected Nike. I've Disrespected Gatorade. I've Disrespected Everything."

APRIL 11, 2010: Tiger finishes a more than respectable third place in the Masters, his first tourney back since his self-imposed hiatus. The jokes about Woods' "never having a problem finding the hole" begin to slow down a bit.

MAY 9, 2010: He finishes second at the Players Championship. The press begins to turn back toward rooting for Woods rather than poking fun at him and reveling in his anxiety-riddled misery.

MAY 19, 2010: It's announced that Tiger and his estranged wife, Elin Nordegren, have decided to give it another shot with a reconciliation. She moves back along with the couple's two children to their home in Florida.

JUNE 20, 2010: Tiger wins the U.S. Open Championship, instantly erasing all memory of Woods' winter of discontent and restoring every sponsorship he had lost the previous December. Everything is wondrous once again in Tigerville.

Yep, a mere six months from now, this is all going to be just a bad memory -- for Tiger, for the PGA Tour, for his endorsees, for the nation. The lesson that will have been learned: No more early morning car accidents! Hire a driver and live happily ever after. Amen.

Ahead On The Left International


This is a map of recent visitor activity at Ahead On The Left. It's an encouraging picture considering the modesty of the AOTL marketing strategy. As we approach our 50th post it provides a view of where we may focus our attention. A quick glance suggests we put efforts into the web markets of Asia, Australia, and Texas.
With this growth comes responsibility. AOTL promises to join Amnesty International in the event that anyone living under a repressive regime is imprisoned for for being a fan. We will also have t-shirts made up saying "Free (insert prisoner name here)," budget pending.
Finally, an acknowledgement to the person in Mobile, AL who spent a whopping 18 hours perusing the sight. It more than makes up for the people who stay on the sight for a reported zero seconds. Thank-you and keep coming back.

Spanking Tom Tancredo

In this clip Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas goes from left-wing sage to liberal wet dream. Watch as he chases Tom "All Talk" Tancredo off of the Ed Show. Tancredo who never served a day in the armed forces tries to speak for veterans. Moulitsas, a veteran makes quick work of that. You can compare service records of the two here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Tancredo#Early_life_and_political_career

and here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Moulitsas

Whatever Happened To... Robert Latta


On January 20, 1985, long before Michelle Ann Holt (now Michaele Salahi) and Tareq Salahi ever knew that they would become known as “this week’s balloon boy” the Reagan White House was on low alert when a Denver man wandered inside and gave himself a 14 minute tour that ended when the Secret Service sauntered in on him and took him down.

It was the day of Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration and Washington was abuzz with distractions. Latta took advantage of the hubbub and followed the Marine Corps Orchestra past security into the White House. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, and he didn’t have an instrument, but he did have his overnight bag. Security may have figured him to be the Marine Corp Orchestra’s sloppy civilian manager. Why not?
Latta was questioned by the Secret Service, turned over to DC police who booked him on unlawful entry, and interviewed by psychiatrists. Amid the legal goings-on Latta at one point had been committed to St. Elizabeth’s hospital, having divulged a previous stay in a psychiatric ward. According to the meter reader, he had voluntarily committed himself after hearing voices in his head saying “you blew it.” Incidentally, St. Elizabeth’s hospital is where Reagan assassination attempter John Hinkley still spends his days. This writer’s father also worked at St. Elizabeth’s as a young lab tech. That was back when Eisenhower parked it at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Ahead On The Left is not an investigative journal and though the title of this post suggests a brief on the current status of Robert Latta, the only information available on Latta in Wikipedia covered events prior to and around the arrest. The article ended without so much as a word on what the final outcome of the case was. Come on Wikipedia. I’ll donate that dollar when you complete your articles.

What I personally can account for was the rapid saturation of Latta into the stream of popular culture. Of course they babbled about him on the morning shows. He may have even been on a couple. He was portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Rich Hall, though only a feature player, by that time Hall had established himself on the comedy map as the originator of the word (but not quite the concept of) Sniglets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniglet).

I remember the jokes rampant in the black community: “If that was Rasheed Latta, they woulda shot that n***** before he got off the subway.”

As a nation, we may have at first thought Latta was a jerk – the kind of guy who touches paintings in museums or licks things he doesn’t want other people to take. Then the notion of peculiarity set in evoking feelings not too far from underdoggery. In America we believe in going far doing the things we’re crazy about. Latta got far just by being crazy. That’s closer to the American Dream than a lot of people are going to get. Plus, he was awkward so we could tell he didn’t think he was better than the rest of us.

This was before the wasteland of reality television was even the size on a flattened gumwad on the sidewalk. Robert Latta was not looking to be in the new cast of “I’m A Dysfunctional Mess. Gimme Money.” If he sought any fame for his trespassing he went about it the wrong way, but I don’t believe he was trying for fame. This was clearly more of a spur of the moment thing than a precision operation. In the ranks of stealthy Japanese assassins he’d be a nonja.

Meanwhile, the Salahis, unbeknownst to them, are pioneers in the reinventing of reality television as people who end up on the news as a result of a hare-brained scheme to get on a reality show and then burn out before they even pay their restitution. That wouldn’t be enough punishment as far as I’m concerned though. I wish what happened to Latta including incarceration and psychiatric evaluation could have been on the fare for the Salahis. That’s reality television I’d watch.

So I wonder what did happen to ole Robert Latta?

Latta is not to be confused with U.S. Congressman Bob Latta from Ohio.