Much That Is Hidden

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The scattershot approach to voicing the progressive concerns highlighted by the Occupy Wall Street protest include many over-the-top populist anthems that, while perhaps ringing a tone that resonates with a majority of Americans, are not the way to proselytize the uninformed. This is important in crafting a strategy to overcome how the right keeps repeating the same stupid lies until they almost sound true to the average inattentive citizen. And to the many who are ignorant of the reality of progressive politics, some of the worst tenets of the right seem to make enough sense to justify railing against all these dirty, jobless malcontents camped out in front of the NYSE (who may also be students, union members, working mothers, single fathers, airline pilots, teachers, retail workers, military service members, and laid-off foreclosure victims, but who definitely ARE Americans exercising their right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”).

Most of the uninformed masses are hard to reach with what they see as pointy-headed, over-educated liberals pushing their commie-Muslim-gay propaganda. It's not complicated — that's what they hate because that’s what they’ve been conditioned to fear. Perhaps the most focused way to scare them back the other way is incessantly repeating the vision of corporate fascism that thrives on constant internal and external Holy War and what will come to pass if these billionaire gangsters aren't stopped and damn soon. Then again, most of those who are at the point of accepting the reports of Fox News as gospel are likely not worth the time to engage.

So if the many great voices out there are for the most part preaching to the choir, what can less verbose progressives do to help? Start by making copies of good articles and offer to discuss them with friends and relatives who are right-wing sympathizers. You won't win a lot of popularity contests, but is that really important? The idea is to make the world slightly less stupid, one Republican at a time. You can only defeat the truly evil, but you can educate the clueless and confused.
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Labels: couldn't we just TRY a hardcore lefty for four years folks?, gummint, justice, madness, money, politix, rants, The FEAR, violence inherent in the system, war

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It was realized unto me that The Great Google has been outed for giving cash to the right-wing Heritage Foundation (bullet point one). My connections in both Facebook and Google+ may have seen that I’ve been mounting a one-man campaign to get folques to try and perhaps even switch to Google+. Few are the simple reasons for this and if I haven’t told you or you’ve yet to figure out that Facebook is evil then the matter will, hopefully for the sake of your mortal soul, soon be apparent. So The Google’s a bona fide grown-up now. I've never said it wasn't part of the system — could be it’s one of the beasts of St. John’s wacky vision and will usher in such tribulation as will have blood flow to the horse’s bridle. Or it could be that Facebook is such or even another beast in tandem, triplicate, or whatever. I lose count, and I digress.


It was just a matter of time before this, which has likely gone on for a few years, had a stink raised. Welcome to America, big deal. The only way to get your way in politics is to spend money. That may be unfortunate for many of us, and so the only answer may be to get moneyed interests that align with yours to get in to politics. Most of us can’t/don't want to take the time to do that. And hereby sits the friction™* — I defer first to the Way Left of Right Rev. Jeff Mosier, who knows as did George Carlin that “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”

“The table is tilted and the game is rigged. It's not the GOP or Dems, it's the legalization of bank robbery, the industrialization of war, the suicidal addiction to FDA-approved food that kills us, and an addiction to material objects as a replacement for family and community. We're sick people and yet we stand and let delusional preachers, pundits and bullshit marketers from every walk of life sell us and scare us by controlling the conversation. Shame on us. People need to start posting, prodding and making some real noise in the country. I'm shocked every single day at the silence. Really shocked.”

So can we overtake the powers that be? Realize that it has to be a bloodless revolution of the mind because any other kind literally, yes literally, means the unfolding of a very unkind world that could take decades to start healing after the brunt. Yes, that’s heavy, but I still have hope that it will not go that way. Back here in 2011 we see the information age chugging along and with it the greatest opportunity for the masses to engage the system and mold it into what’s workable for stable society, complete with mixed economy, neighborliness, and tolerance for all. That’s a pledge I could stand for.


So is Google wrong for playing the game with the rules that have been written over the last 200 years? Not if they want to stay alive, and I’m glad they’re working at that because they are a tool we need. The right wing is not going away and represents a major chunk of their customers. I could sit and wring my hands over how awful it would be if all information was ground to a halt, but I believe, (of course idealistically, since it could be electricity that halts) that a majority of prominent individuals in the tech universe as we know it are bent toward true social action, reaction and interaction, and that they know the right is on the wrong side of history (again). Until, and if so after the shit hits the fan, I have to work it like they and billions more people in a hundred other fields have got my back.


*replacement cliche, all rights reserved. 
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Labels: Google, politix, violence inherent in the system

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Incensed by the continuing wholesale kleptomania of the financial world as described in the Washington Post, El Jefe at Boiled Dinner did that "write to your senators" thing that passionate citizens do when they're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Kudos to Jeff for a succinct and effective note.

As happens from time to time, here is a typical "comment on a blog that became a post instead."

I have fear that increases a bit with each article I read about all this financial stuff. It's a fear that America, like some strung-out junkie, will have to hit rock bottom in order to snap out of the consumerist greedocracy in which it has become so comfortable living. And yes, as Jeff pointed out, rage is something else I have - it's about the only thing that keeps me from being burned out on concern for our nation's future.

It is a frustrating thing to be unable to muster any trust for our elected officials to fashion a proper solution to our troubles.

The only things that I can so far agree to, based on a plethora of news and commentary both organized and informal, are the following rather nebulous points of indeterminate feasibility:

1. Break the grip of the two-party system. One more viable party would great, two seems to be the impossible dream.

2. Declare 100 percent public financing of all elections. How much would this cost in comparison to American military deployments and financial bailouts? Seems like a bargain to me.

3. Reform of corporate personhood designations that facilitate loopholes in everything from liability to taxes to government lobbying.

4. (Write-in)

5. (Et cetera)

6. (Et cetera)

Labels: gummint, justice, law, Nothing about Yoko, politix, rants, terms of enragement

Federal minimum wage for most workers went up to $7.25 per hour on July 24 (the last of a series of increases over the past three years). But workers who receive more than $30 per month in tips have a different minimum - just $2.13 per hour, a wage that hasn’t been increased in EIGHTEEN YEARS ! !

Tipped workers did have their minimum wage linked to the standard minimum until Congress axed that requirement in 1996. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) has now introduced H.R. 2570, the Working for Adequate Gains for Employment in Services (WAGES - gotta love those congressional acronyms) Act, which would set the minimum wage for tipped workers at 70% of the standard minimum wage (or $5.08 per hour). This would end the absurd situation tipped workers are in today where an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t result in an increase in their minimum wage. Many servers must also tip share with bartenders and table bussers, so when they don't get a good tip (or on occasion none at all) it ends up costing them money to work because they are required by the IRS to claim 11 percent of their sales as tipped income.

Friendly reminder: if you can't afford to tip your server at least 15-20 percent (for good service, of course), then you can't afford to eat out.

* Tipping
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Labels: me, money, politix, work

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“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Rogers

This quote, now being bandied about virally through the right-wing haunts of Blogovia, represents what I see as typically disingenuous conservative talking points. Full disclosure – I am, as some 12-steppers might characterize, a “recovering” conservative. I have shifted (or more accurately come full circle) to a belief that government is a tool that, when wielded properly, is very effective for tasks that cannot and should not be done for profit. Am I naive in thinking that healthcare should not be done for profit? It turns out a huge chunk, if not a majority, of healthcare professionals agree with this.

Taxpayers already pay for the healthcare of people who are uninsured. If someone without insurance goes to the ER and cannot afford to pay for treatment, then the hospital gets tax money to offset the costs. We partially pay for most hospitals in this country through public funds. If we didn’t do so these hospitals would go bankrupt, and then the next time you or a loved one needs emergency treatment, it had better not require experts, extensive facilities or after-hours care.

We also pay for a number of things for the common good already. Our property taxes help pay for schools, but do we all have kids? I’m sure you get that an illiterate, poorly-socialized mob of kids who can’t get jobs is bad for you specifically, as well as the country at large, not to mention horrible for the kids. We help pay for police and fire service, but few of us ever need to be rescued by a firefighter. Your actual chances of having life or property saved by these services are pretty dang slim, yet conservatives don’t object to this form of socialism (we can all bitch about the taxes). Military, too - we haven’t had a bona fide military attack on our soil since the War of 1812, so the common good is well served through the provision of the common defense (exponentially - we spend more on our military than the rest of the planet combined. I wonder where we could reallocate some of those billions?). Oh, and the above mentioned things have been done successfully for quite some time in a nonprofit capacity.

With our current healthcare system we also pay in ways that are harder to calculate - lost productivity, inefficiency, etc. It is no good for the common good to have a large pool of unhealthy people who only seek medical care when it’s an emergency, work when they are sick with god-knows-what, get no follow-up care, etc. This creates a standing reservoir of disease. How would you like to see TB come back (it’s making a valiant effort)? It also creates an easy vector for some god-awful strain of the flu, or any other pandemic bug, to rip through this country. A healthy society will always benefit society at large. The minority groups who may not derive benefit from this are small and often have ulterior motives that are counter to the common good (*cough* folks sponsoring anti-healthcare reform rallies).

And characterizing the people who can’t afford health care as ‘lazy’ is the worst kind of derogatory nonsense. Millions of people in this country work jobs that provide no benefits, and unfortunately these jobs rarely pay enough for the employee to afford the exorbitant health insurance premiums of an individual policy. Millions of middle class families with both parents working cannot afford $1,600 per month in premiums, not to mention costs for visits, referrals, tests, prescriptions and procedures not covered. Laziness has nothing to do with it for the overwhelming majority of un- or underinsured people in this country. I believe conservatives either know this and have contempt for people who do necessary jobs that simply don’t pay enough, or they are truly ignorant of this state of affairs. In either case I urge them to read widely, challenge their assumptions, go outside their comfort zone, meet people outside their socio-economic niche, travel, etc. Good news - most of these things can be done easily (and cheaply) on the Internet.

It is easier for me to trust people than entities whose sole aim is to gain as much short-term profit for themselves as possible, and which view all else as obstacles, sometimes including the law. If I had to sum up the progressive ideal, I would say this: Progressives seek to do the greatest good for the greatest number while doing the least harm to the least number of people, using any tools that do not contradict the first part and do not abridge individual rights. Yes, the common good is always tricky, always a dynamically-maintained balance that will change over time. There will always be disagreements, abuses and people who are harmed by measures taken to implement it. The trick is to, again, do the most good for the most people. These town hall decriers of healthcare reform being a “systematic dismantling of the American way of life” are just blowing bogus talking points based on fear.

By the way, the late Dr. Adrian Rogers was a Baptist minister from Memphis, TN and is also attributed with this quote:

"I feel slavery is a much maligned institution. If we had slavery today we would not have such a welfare problem."

I can't say that his statement isn't 100 percent true.

Labels: analysis, facts, healthcare, irony, Lies and Lying Liars, politix, rants

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When I decided that I would vote for Barack Obama last November, I was not as pie-eyed about him as millions of his supporters seemed to be. Despite the fact that Obama was my first winning ballot cast for president, my vote didn't seem any better or worse than its predecessors - it still possessed that hold-your-nose, lesser-of-two-evils feel that has dominated our national elections probably since they began.

So there is an article by Drew Westen that, besides providing some perspective for those who may have been a little drunk on the Big O and his suspiciously meteoric rise to power, brings hearty agreement from me. My apologies to those who have accused me of leaning on my pundit appreciation too heavily, but honestly (Blogovia take note) - what's the point of me blathering on about something when the likes of Mr. Westen can provide so eloquent a treatise. Besides, I think he gets paid better for it.

Oh, and as you read Westen's article, bear in mind the possibility that Bill Hicks was spot-fucking-on:

"I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, no matter what you promise on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-fucks who got you in there. And you're in this smoky room, and the lights go dim and this little film screen rolls down silently from the ceiling. And a big guy with a cigar goes, "Roll the film." And it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before. It looks suspiciously like it's from the famous grassy knoll. And then the screen goes up and the lights come on, and the big guy says to the new president, "Any questions?"

"Um, what's my agenda?"

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Labels: humour, madness, No Ordinary Bill, politix, President Obama

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I've been called out, and now my closet door can no longer remain shut. I'm here to announce to the world that as a happily married heterosexual, I'm gay.

As a heterosexual I do not fully relate to being gay, but as long as the theocracy mongers of America continue their assault on the lives, liberties and pursuits of happiness of the gay community then I will continue to be gay.

I guess I'm lucky in that this is a decision that I can make of my own free will, and when/if ever my country comes to a peaceable understanding of the equal rights and protection of ALL its citizens, then I can decide once again to not be gay. So I stand with those who are so unfortunate as to have no choice in being held in contempt by an uncaring and ignorant multitude of stone-throwing sinners.

There are so many points that made my decision to come out rather simple. Many revolve around the recent boil of debate over California's Prop 8 and its surface attempt to define marriage and, just a scratch below the surface, define it by a narrow, traditional religious worldview. When people talk about the sanctity of marriage in one breath, and tradition in another, they forget what those traditions actually are, for marriage hardly has a pure and glorious history. It's rarely been about love, and even more rarely has it been about choice. For millennia and still today women have married the men they were told to marry and spent their lives being miserable. The men got married to women for a variety of convenient and expedient reasons, then promptly went out and got a cartload of mistresses to fool around with.

As for religion, the Christian church explicitly avoided anything to do with marriage until the Council of Trent in the 16th century, and there the primary interest was for the Roman Catholic church to introduce barriers to reformation. Let's not forget all the family squabbles that were settled by marrying the children of the warring sides together, or the marriage of close cousins to keep royal bloodlines "pure" (and ugly and inbred). And what of the still-current tradition of marrying barely pubescent girls to much older men for the purpose of pumping out "legitimate" babies? If one girl died in childbirth, you just haul another one to the alter and start the bed springs bouncing again.

The way I see it, since there is no state religion, then as far as the state (which issues licenses and regulates the social benefits and responsibilities of married couples) is concerned, marriage is a legal contract and not a religious one. It is a contract that smooths out all sorts of estate and power of attorney issues as well as some legal aspects concerning minors. It's a pretty decent deal for all involved (unless someone tries to dissolve the contract, in which case it's usually just a pretty decent deal for the lawyers). Still, so long as the state intertwines marriage with inheritance, child custody, durable powers of attorney, etc., then the government should have no say in which adults do, and which do not, get to be in a binding contractual arrangement simply based on whether or not the people have matching sex organs.

I often wonder why gay marriage is such a hot button issue, but then I also wonder why people try to impose their will on complete strangers. If a church doesn't want to bless/recognize gay marriage then that's their prerogative, but I can see no logical argument for why it would support denying two loving partners to enter into this form of legal contract. I do understand that the most zealous anti-gay practitioners want to live under a theocracy. They want their religious law to be everyone's law, and they want to be free to use their bigotry to oppress others without comment or complaint. And so I stand.

What is the impetus for this all? I admit that my mind has wavered over the importance of the decision by President-elect Obama to invite Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to deliver an invocation at his inaugural on January 20. My liberal sensibilities were typically incensed by the thought of having such a high-profile individual that represents the worst of the two-faced evangelical establishment. Someone referred to Warren as "Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt," which, from what I know of the man's homophobic bashing and foamy hatred of all things not Jesusified, I count as an accurate characterization. But being new to this gay thing I considered that maybe we queer folks were making too much of this, that Obama is merely "reaching across the aisle" (to employ one of the top 10 cliches of 2008) to help heal the scars our nation has endured from the right-wing authoritarian religionists these past eight years. Bullshit, I've decided. This is political fence-sitting at best and at worst paranoid pandering.

BTW, this was initiated by stalwart ex-pat (and bloggy shit/conscience-stirrer) Ser Kelso de Panama, who has dubbed it the HETEROSEXUAL ANTI-WARREN SELF-OUTING PROJECT. One point of conviction for me was this very well-put notion of his: "Ultimately, a kind of cowardly president is a good non-leader for a cowardly nation whose soon-to-be-governing party has not had an idea or principle yet that they've been willing to put the smallest effort into defending when challenged by the Republicans or the MSM."

I am encouraging snazzy corresponding blog badges for the project participants, but for now the reward to any willing participants is the satisfaction of knowing that you and your good heart stand on righteous ground. And aside from any schtick this project may be reduced to, I think the call was put forth best by Keith Olbermann just a week after the vote on Prop 8:

You are asked now, by your country and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have to applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know, it is, in fact, the ember of your love for your fellow person. Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too. Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace that love? The world is barren enough.

Labels: gummint, politix, religion, The FEAR

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It shouldn't come as a surprise to many Americans that, according to the Associated Press, Barack Obama has garnered more death threats than any previous president-elect. The article relates three minor situations, the most repugnant being the "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool" put forth at a convenience store in Maine to guess the date on which he will first be attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," was the charming sales pitch on the sign-up sheet. My personal favorite is the guy from Georgia (hohum) who wants to see Rev. Jeremiah Wright and all the "traitors" of Trinity United Church of Christ be deported. Aside from the obvious ridiculousness of the suggestion, I pondered about where U.S. citizens might get deported.

Sure, I worry a bit that some skinhead pukes will find a way to breach the rigorous security measures of the U.S. Secret Service and cause Obama and his family harm. But I follow BHO's lead, which as chief cool cucumber is a measured "not likely, let's go on about our business." The AP article prompted a response from the editors of the right-leaning Family Security Matters website. I tend to agree with their basic point:

...Signs of deranged reactions against politicians are part of the danger zone that we live with in this country. But the AP wants us to believe that a "new emerging threat" is on the rise. Their underlying message is that President-elect Obama is inspiring a political change which is nourishing counter-change violence. And here lies the danger in the AP story: it is predicting violence and pervasive race hatred which doesn't exist sociologically. In short, it is trying to create a new "menace."

They contend that the AP is "using extra energy to 'build' a case for a lethal threat against Obama, so that an imaginary enemy is created – other than the standard nut cases whom we have among us anyway."

So noted. But since they are a righty entity, I can't let this post, and their article, pass without doling out the GeeDub prize for ideological ironicness. Get a load of this (emphasis mine):

In the Third World and within populist ideologies, the manufacture of a mythical danger is a part of the consolidation of a regime. It creates sympathy for the sitting leader and grants him moral power to increase the security apparatus. While we don’t have evidence that the news agency is promoting such activity, we can clearly see a pattern, and perhaps even a strategy, in the way the report presented the threat... And such an imaginary enemy can be used politically for many purposes: national security rearrangements, foreign policy decisions, war on terror reshaping, and all other wilder fantasies.

You don't need 20/20 hindsight when the past you're looking at is close enough to express a zit on your ass, you betcha.
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Labels: journalism, politix, racism, vitriol

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Labels: Max, politix, President Obama

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That would be the force effects of the following screed from John Perry Barlow, a true maverick (a wave of that flag to the impassioned Aiko Annie):

Ten years ago when I was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School, I was on a panel with Senator Ted Kennedy and my tragically late sidekick John Kennedy, Jr. The focus of our discussion was determining when the Internet would likely have the pivotal role in shaping a presidential campaign that television had assumed in the 1960 election of their brother and father. Oddly, for a couple of guys who were deeply suspicious of Cyberspace, they both thought this would happen much sooner than I did, possibly as early as 2000. I said it would be a decade at least. It has now been a decade. And this will now be that election.

Among the many lines of division at contest here - between the 50's and the 60's, between football and frisbee, between a high regard for education and a contempt for it, between weed and whiskey, between Monotheism and Pantheism, between love and fear, between greed and responsibility - is the contest between the highly cybergenic Obama and the apoplectic old race-bating, fraudulently heroic, tail-hook gunning, womanizing, pathologically gambling, unindicted Keating 5 co-conspirator who is literally treasonous enough to possibly entrust the American republic during its darkest hour to a woman who has great legs and cheekbones, combined SAT scores lower than either one of mine, and who, with her "First Dude" were helping lead, until recently, the Alaskan Independence Party, a powerful pro-secession movement. (Imagine Lincoln choosing Jefferson Davis as his first running mate and you get the idea.)

McCain, that disgraceful curdle-brain, that grimacing little tantrum of spoiled Naval nepotism whose greatest military accomplishment (if you don't count crashing three multi-million jets while on joyrides, and contributing to a deck fire that almost sank the Forrestal} was getting in getting shot down and breaking under torture, spent the first part of the debate whining about Obama's low blows and then informed the women and children of America that his opponent had promoted an Illinois law that now legally requires doctors to refuse medical treatment to any child who somehow survives an abortion attempt. Given the abortion methods I'm familiar with, I'm inclined to think such a child would also survive the flame-throwers they'd be using against him toward the end of the movie.

But among his other qualifications for being a 21st Century President , Senator McCain remains proud that, like both Bushes before him, he is computer-illiterate and that he makes his wife Cindy deal with all that.

I thought George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had made me ashamed to be a Republican. But McCain and Palin have pretty well completed the job.

However, since God is merciful, McCain probably doesn't know what I'm talking about. He's watching the campaign on television where he's presented with an edit of reality that is far less damning to him and his campaign than the one I've been watching on the Internet. John McCain is blessed indeed to be spared the online version of himself.

On the Internet, he would see the "people's edits" immediately, like the YouTube condensation of all 3143 of his eye-blinks during last night's debate into a thirty second segment, or the highlighting of his reference to Obama's "eloquence" in a fashion that left no doubt that this was his painfully polite euphemism for the vile effluent one can squeeze out of an fast-talking sack of lying shit when he talks about the "health" - a word McCain enclosed in finger quotes - of the baby murdering "mother", who is unable to accept that a child is the natural punishment for her coozing around in fornication, which is pretty much all these black Muslim terrorist baby mamas do, if you know what I mean.

If he watched the much more elaborate coverage of the campaign on the Internet, even McCain would have to be in awe of the fact that Senator Obama has shown almost superhuman dignity, humor (as opposed to sarcasm), and that quality that Hemingway defined as courage, "grace under pressure" even while being carpet-bombed, first by the Clintons and now the McCain/Palin Golem, with six months of sucker punches, lies, trivialities, the guilt of distant or even non-existent associations (often involving black people behaving ungracefully), and now, finally, the direct incitement of murderous intent in crowds spiked with many people who are insane with racial hatred, well-armed, and trained by their government in the accurate use of long-range weapons.

He would have seen the look of enlightened acceptance on Obama's face tonight when McCain fiercely declared his pride in the people who attended his rallies, including, presumably, the ones who shout "kill him" and "off with his head." As he pronounced his appreciation for these unmasked Klansmen, someone like me who doesn't have an abused wife he can use as a computer interface could, with a slight enhancement of certain frequencies, make clearly audible the dry, cold wind that was whistling through McCain's dentures.

At this point, I must pause and ask any other digeratum who zoomed into the Senator's forehead pulse at such moments: Who do you want answering the phone at 3:00 am in the White House: someone with unassailable poise and courage or someone whose rage-readiness and blood pressure make him a fine candidate to pop a valve, thus creating the scenario in which the more blink-resistant President Palin returns the call at 3:45 am?

Who do you want salvaging the economy, someone who believes that if the government is going to recover what Bush's and McCain's cronies looted from the public treasury, the very rich will have to pay some taxes, or someone who believes that we can spend extravagantly on war, greed, weapon systems we don't need, and subsidies for our friends, while taxing only the middle class and the poor?

Finally, if McCain were watch this on the Internet, he would have known better than to make a certain Joe the Plumber the unanimous winner of tonight's debate. Apparently, Senator McCain caught a short network soundbyte of Senator Obama's exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio last week. Whatever it was, it allowed McCain to think he could get away with claiming that Senator Obama would deny Joe the fruits of the American Dream, since Joe would have to give his money to Senator Obama who would then "spread the wealth around" presumably to other people of his own shiftless kind. Kind of like Washington Hussein Stalin.

However, if you click on the link I've attached to Joe Wurzelbacker's name above, you will see the full 6 minute discourse between Obama and the supposed target of his communist exploitation, as McCain characterized the hapless Joe.

In fact, what you will see will make you proud to be an American.

You will see a presidential candidate stop and take the time to explain more and in more respectful detail about his tax program to a single plumber from Ohio than McCain has ever explained anything - besides misrepresentations of Obama's resume - to the entire American public during the length of this campaign.

(Thanks to McCain, we know more about Obama's perfidious porkpie of a 3 mil planetarium projector - which McCain still thinks is an overhead slide projector - than we know about McCain's entire economic recovery plan. And certainly more that the payments and favors he took from Charles Keating to keep the regulators off Keating's Arizona S and L which, by some estimates exceeded $3 million and kept them at bay just long enough for the Lincoln Savings and Loan to eat the life savings of many retired investors before requiring the Federal Government to bail it out with $3 billion.)

But I digress. I come to praise Obama, not bury McCain (who is doing a fine job already). Anyway, If you watch the whole "Joe the Plumber" segment, you will see Mr. Wurzelbacker listening skeptically but with equal respect to Obama and providing his own knowledgeable addenda. It is the kind of conversation you can't imagine a president being willing or able to have with a citizen in public. This president will, and in so doing, he will encourage the existence the citizens as worthy of that critical role as Mr. Wurzelbacker appears to be.

Unless, of course, one of those supporters in whom Senator McCain takes such pride leaves one of those rallies just amped enough by their "tough" campaign style, a pint of Jim Beam, a terror of terrorists, and his abusive daddy's fury at all things brown that he'll haul out his "Elk-erator": that .270 Weatherby Magnum which, when he's using his own hand-loaded rounds with the 130 grain bullets and the extended casing length generates a 3200 fps muzzle velocity quite sufficient to drop a trophy bull at 400 yards, or, for that matter, to blow ol' Hussein Obama's nappy smart-ass head right off his skinny-ass Armani-wearin' body.

If that moment comes, hope will really die in America, I think, and hope for America will die in the rest of the world.

But right now hope is alive and well and winning. While fear, hate-mongering, and war-lust look moribund, querulous, profoundly mean-spirited, and almost blind with blinking.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in "Democracy in America," a book more timely now that when he wrote it in 1835, "America is great because she is good. If she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great." This is the moment when we get to choose which she will be. Watch the whole YouTube exchange between Obama and Joe the Plumber and you will know that we are still good.

Then watch the clip on the Internet from four days ago when a Christian pastor named Arnold Conrad opened a McCain/Palin rally with this little invocation that fails to inspire a thoughtful patriot or a true Christian or anyone like me with a degree in comparative religion, but which was, nonetheless, well-received by the crowd and the principal speakers. Rev. Conrad said, "There are millions of people around this world praying to their God -- whether it's Hindu [not a God], Buddha [also not a God], Allah [Arabic for God] -- that [Obama] wins for a variety of reasons. And, Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because, if that happens, they're going to think that their God is bigger than you." Then you see how fragile and stupid our goodness has become.

Personally, I pray to God and Allah and Atman and Jaweh and the Great Spirit and the Holy Who Knows and whatever else you want to call That For Which All Names and Assumptions Fall Short that goodness will survive this moment and that, in 30 years, we will look back on the next three weeks and know that, at a dark time, the American people, sick of fear, war, greed, bigotry, torture, wastefulness, and a diseased fixation on the past, rose up and voted for hope and love and the future. They voted for Barack Hussein Obama and Joe the Plumber's true American dream. Which started to become real for the first time.

And nobody got shot except maybe the very, very few who had it coming. Most of who are presently in the mountains of Afghanistan getting in the American heroin crop.

I truly believe America is at a fork in the road as Barlow illustrates. So even though I had/have issues with BHO, and even though I know my vote won't likely mean shit in terms of Georgia's contribution to the Electoral College, I just can't, after reading this most excellent memo, pass up the opportunity to lend a hand to history.

Labels: John McCain, politix, President Obama

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This just in:

Wells bids $15 MMM for Wachovia; scuffles with Citi

Reuters, Friday October 3, 2008

NEW YORK - Wells Fargo & Co agreed to buy Wachovia Corp for about $15 billion, upstaging a government-backed Citigroup Inc bid for Wachovia's banking assets with a deal that would catapult it into the top ranks of national consumer banking.

Citigroup demanded Wells Fargo drop its surprise bid, which comes four days after Wachovia preliminarily agreed to sell its banking assets to Citi...

I am a Wachovia customer. As I have deposits that amount to half a gnat's turd in the grand scheme of things, I have not been worrying much in the face of news about the bank's travails. But now I'm inclined to go get mine, slide (not stuff) it into the mattress and let these assholes duke it out without me.

But the BIG economic news, of course, is that the Bush Bailout+ finally, after five grueling days of uncertainty for Wall Street and its minions, slithered its 451-pages of graft through the House, which had wisely slapped down a much trimmer bill earlier this week.

Many economists are regarding October 3, 2008 as a date that will live in infamy. I use that turn of phrase to point out the irony of how the world's richest man, as told to Charlie Rose on Wednesday , regards the entire U.S. economic situation.

So, what are we being bombarded with? How about the "Exemption From Excise Tax For Certain Wooden Arrows Designed For Use By Children" which, appearing on page 301, is among hundreds of tax relief sausages cooked up on the big Congressional barbe-queue [sic]. The EFETFCWADFUBC, as I will fondly dub it probably just this once, applies (I think) to manufacturers of "certain wooden arrow shafts...consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft (whether sold separately or incorporated as part of a finished or unfinished product) of a type which after its assembly (1) measures 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter and (2) is not suitable for use with a bow as described in bullah, bullah, bullah..."

What is this saying about Congresspeeps who, finding Monday's 108-page version of a free (and credit) market/home/business-saving $700 MMM financial rescue objectionable, switched their nay to yay for the fattiness that includes a children’s wooden arrow excise tax exemption in it? Only that as usual, they are all too willing to give their constituents the shaft.



With a h/t to DCup - "Because what goes around comes around"

Labels: gummint, madness, No Ordinary Bill, Nothing about Yoko, politix, rants, taxes, terms of enragement

The latest issue of Rolling Stone (RS 1062) features this article by Matt Taibbi. It is arguably his most caustic, cynical and spot-on writing yet. It's long, but well worth the read.





CAUTION: Rated "R" (which also could mean "Rabid Right-Wing Religiosos Really won't like this")

The Lies of Sarah Palin
By Matt Taibbi

I’m standing outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Palin has just finished her speech to the Republican National Convention, accepting the party’s nomination for Vice President. If I hadn’t quit my two pack a day habit earlier this year, I’d be chain smoking right now. So the only thing left is to stand mute against the fit-for-a-cheap-dog-kennel crowd-control fencing you see everywhere at these idiotic conventions and gnaw on weird new feelings of shock and anarchist rage as one would a rawhide chew toy.

All around me, a million cops in their absurd post-9/11 space combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in paper-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joylessly out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion bowls and other “wild” drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the “Unbelievable Time” they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they’re at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into the sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague – they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation – at the Xcel gates, “She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her, open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin’ picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – And this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party’s fortunes around faster.

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made on of the all-time campaign season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway Park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain’s decision to cave in to his party’s right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman – Reportedly his real preference – By picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-Thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I’ll rally the base. Here, I’ll choose this rifle-toting, serially-pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

But watching Palin’s speech I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who “five children later” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American; the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set or drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.

Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It’s the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.

Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the “Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick,” blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set – who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else’s wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review – seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We’re used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She’s all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It’s just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn’t the most qualified candidate, that the party “went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives.”

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflective prejudices of their demographic, as they would for a reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-Syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would “have a friend and advocate in the White House.” This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin’s charge that “government is too big” and that Obama “wants to grow it” was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical Bush-era Republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $15 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK’d a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that “taxes are too high” and Obama “wants to raise them.”

Palin hasn’t been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin’s paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn’t collect from her own; Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation. The rest of Palin’s speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been railing about for decades. Palin’s crack about a mayor being “like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities” testified to the Republican’s apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They’re probably right). The incessant pausing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people – reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever – for their failures.

Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to “forfeit” to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, its total disregard for reality, its absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won’t matter that she’s got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five month bump and some sideways-cap-wearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the reality-making business is that you don’t need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate’s bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.
One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of sanity and reason pore over the governor’s record in search of the Damning Facts. My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the “truth” about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an Internet connection knows by know that Palin was originally for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she opposed it (She actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn’t actually sell the Alaska governor’s state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).

Then there are the salacious tales of Palin’s swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister’s ex-husband), Palin also fired a campaign aide who had an affair with a friend's wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, who had resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.

Then there’s the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush “Come from Hell” and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama’s Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a “refuge state” for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was “God’s Will.” She also described the Iraq War as a “task that is from God” and part of a heavenly “plan.” She supports teaching creationism and “Abstinence Only” in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you’d expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She’s a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you’d think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job – But not in America. In America, it takes about two weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you’ve been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He’s been on TV every day for two years and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that’s a lifetime of hands-on experience.

It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama. As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of long-lost, future-embracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin’s Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in Middle America, you have to accept that Middle America probably feels the same way when it hears Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-“I love you, Obama!” ritual at the Democratic nominee’s town-hall appearances.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much as a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we’re actually going to need in government if we’re going to get out of this huge mess we’re in.

Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn’t that she’s totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and porked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: That you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we’ll not only thank you for your trouble, we’ll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn’t require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in awhile, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing “I’m Lovin’ It!” during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn’t require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote all you have to do is put your Country First – Just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, Baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!

__________________________________________________________________

Taibbi’s loudest thumping dart is how, as far as our political process is concerned, a huge chunk of our electorate practically delights in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. At least 29 percent of these folks have a crazy romance with mediocrity, going back at least to the 2000 elections. They are high on the whole “Sarah is an ordinary person!” Yep, she’s a reg’lar gal alright.

As I have on several occasions, I ask how “elitism” has become a bad thing in American politics? Everywhere else it is something to be desired, if not demanded – pilots, research scientists, surgeons, athletes, even our beloved troops. But when it comes to positions where thoughts and actions will affect millions, there are those who quite illogically want someone just like them - down-to-earth but not too intelligent or well educated.

To the question of why one likes Sarah Palin so much, the woman-on-the-street response that really gets me is, “She knows what it's like to be a mom.” If that is not a heinous detachment from the real problems of today, then, arrrgh! The next administration will inherit myriad issues that are perhaps, in a primary leadership / situation room kind of capacity, the furthest things from needing a mother’s touch. Things like war, climate change, nuclear proliferation, a stagnant/shrinking economy, the rise of China, epidemics, education, energy, infrastructure, and Internet security, etcetera, etcetera. In my humble estimation Gov. Palin is not competent to address any one of them.

I leave you with this very interesting list:

The Truth About Sarah Palin

A guide to separating myth from fact

Compiled by Tim Dickinson – Rolling Stone

THE MYTH: "She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay. And made a profit!" — John McCain, at a campaign stop in Wisconsin

THE FACTS: No one bought the jet online. It was eventually sold through an aircraft broker — at a loss to taxpayers of nearly $600,000. The buyer, a Palin campaign contributor, is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE MYTH: "I told the Congress 'Thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "We ... championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "I found ... someone who stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money." — John McCain, introducing Palin at RNC

THE MYTH: "Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems — as if we didn't know that already." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE FACTS (?!): "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem." — Sarah Palin, July 2008

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE MYTH: "We began a nearly $40 billion natural-gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence." — Sarah Palin, RNC speech

THE MYTH: "She's from a small town with small-town values." — Fred Thompson, RNC speech

THE FACTS: Wasilla and the surrounding valley recently named the meth capital of Alaska, with 42 meth labs busted in a single year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE MYTH: Palin has "taken on the political establishment in the largest state of the union." — Fred Thompson, convention speech

THE FACTS: Served until 2005 as director of fundraising group associated with indicted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE MYTH: "She's fought oil companies." — John McCain, introducing Palin at RNC

THE FACTS: Collected $13,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas lobbyists, including Exxon, BP, Shell and Chevron. BP was a sponsor of her inaugural ball.

THE MYTH: "She's been to Kuwait. She's been over there. She has been with her troops. The National Guard that she commands, who have been over there and had the experience." — John McCain, highlighting Palin's national-security credentials

THE FACTS: Never had a passport before 2007, when she made a brief photo-op trip to visit troops in Germany and Kuwait. Has never been to Iraq, and has not met a single foreign head of state.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE MYTH: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending." — Sarah Palin, convention speech

THE FACTS: As governor, sought travel reimbursement for 312 nights she spent in her own home.

Labels: Elect Shit Sandwich, politix, rants, Vote for Giant Douche

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This took some balls:

July 25, 2008

SECOND ARREST ATTEMPT ON KARL ROVE IN IOWA LEADS TO 4 ARRESTS

Four Iowans were arrested today while attempting to make a Citizens' Arrest of Karl Rove in Des Moines, Iowa. Citing Iowa Code provisions for making Citizen's Arrests as well as citing Federal Statute violations they claimed Rove had violated, the four were stopped at the gate of the Wakonda Country Club in Des Moines where Rove was scheduled to speak at a Republican Fundraiser.

The report goes on to say that the four (one an 80-year old retired minister) were "acting within the guidelines of Iowa Code that obligate private citizens to make such an arrest if they believe a felony has been committed." Two of the four had made a previous attempt to nab Rove back in March.

They sought to turn Rove over to police officials to appear before a judge for formal indictment. "By law, a federal judge should consider the charges and determine if an indictment should be made," the report said.

What comes across as a stunt to most people holds important implications in an international context. It has been considered that many of the architects of the invasion of Iraq are susceptible to arrest if ever they set foot in certain other jurisdictions outside the U.S.

I love it. We should all have such gumption. The only thing is now I can't get the voice of Gomer Pyle shouting "Citizen's arrest! Citizen's arrest!" out of my head.
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Labels: balls, politix

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I assume from the cleverly dated heading below that this badly written piece of wingnut fantasy has been mucking up the InnerTubes for at least a couple of weeks. A friend’s client, crossing a line in true rabid wannabe extremist fashion, sent it and she forwarded it for my reaction (it is thus).

Welcome to Toastmasters, June 13, 2033

That's right: 2033.

Yeesh, we've got Judge Smales at the Bushwood Country Club narrating

Today Rick Campbell, one of our senior members at age 87, is here to reminisce a bit and give us a history lesson. He says he is so old that he learned to drive an internal combustion engine car (remember those?) with a manual transmission. He once owned a typewriter. He remembers when bicycles had one speed, phones had two-party lines, and cameras had something called film. As incredible as this may seem, he says that when he was young, it was common for people to smoke in restaurants and public places. He is from a different time; almost a different world. Gee, our old La Salle ran great! It's just 25 freakin' years from now - surely you remember the "evil empire" and "Strategic Defense Initiative?" Or is this Toastmasters club of the future also the Junior High Republicans?

I'm sure all of us are familiar with the tragic events of 2010, so Rick is not going to plow that fertile field again. Instead, he is going to give us a personal look back at the conditions which led up to that fateful year, in a speech titled "2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President."

"2010 Was Not A Good Year To Be President"… Okay, got it.

Yes, 2010 was long ago and far away. As we look back on history, it appears that some Presidents had an easy ride; times of growth and stability. Teddy Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding and Dwight Eisenhower come to mind. Those were good years to be President. I can't believe you passed on the Bill Clinton "easy ride" pun, dude.

Others were elected just when the country was facing terrible crises: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush. They rose to the occasion, even though they were controversial and widely hated while in office. Not such good years to be President. FDR? Perhaps intensely hated by the wealthy but very popular otherwise. And just what crisis was Bush facing when he was elected? The dot.com bubble bursting? Oooohh...

Just prior to 2010, in 2008 yahey, the country began foundering. Began? We were in the sixth year of the Iraqi Occupation excellent choice of words, mon ami and the economy was flat. The mainstream press clearly wanted a Democrat elected. Pffft! What about the PEOPLE?

Although we didn't know it until some years later, oil producing nations had colluded to secretly buy their own oil on the open market, driving oil prices to shocking levels above the true demand price - reaching a high of $162 a barrel in October, 2008, just before the general elections.

Their purpose was simple: to effect a regime change in the United States. The noive! The U.S. economy was already in a real estate slump and also suffering the curse of stagflation; slow growth and high inflation. There were a million home foreclosures. Independent truckers went under by the thousands. Airlines failed. Airlines with names now long-forgotten: United, Delta, Northwest, American. All now merged, of course, into the one lone government-run U.S. carrier. You mean that 25 years later your loan arrangers haven't hi-ho silvered this back into line? For shame! A more realistic scenario for the record: a couple or three of the savvy discount/low overhead carriers end up with most of the marbles. The free market rides again!

Against this backdrop of weariness of the war on terror, and economic distress, the American people were ripe for a demagogue, and they certainly got one in Barack Hussein Obama. He and his running mate, Kathlene Sebelius, inspired them with vague notions of hope and change; of a world in which diplomacy settled all international problems, of free universal health care, of abundant alternative energy, of peace and love. It was a vision too good to resist. "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law is happy." Proverbs 29:18 (great sport, whipping some bible out on the wingnuts)

The Republican nominee was a name you probably haven't heard in years: Anyone? Yes, it was John McCain, a Senator from Arizona who had no clue how to run a presidential campaign, Um, seems he did pretty well with that comeback in the primaries and with a platform nearly as liberal as Obama's. Stop it, you're hurting me!

The selection of former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, as his running mate looked brilliant at first. Puleeze Unfortunately, black voters viewed her as white, and women voters viewed her as one of the establishment guys. How could this be?!!

Even so, the McCain/Rice ticket would have won the election if it weren't for the fact that 16 percent of conservatives (mostly Republicans) voted for: (Anyone remember? 2000? Anyone?) That's right, Bob Barr, another name that's a footnote in history... for having the temerity to eschew a lockstep with the two-party system, especially that liberal platform that McCain was touting.

After Obama's narrow win, thanks to four recounts in Broward County , Florida , the liberals were positively giddy. A Democrat House, Senate, and President. At last an end to gridlock in Washington . Camelot had arrived! Let's not go there - it's a silly place!

When Congress convened in January, 2009, the 44th President of the United States did something unique ??? in history: he made good on his campaign promises. Certainly most voters never really thought he was serious during the campaign. But whether because of inexperience, idealism, or simply incompetence, he followed through. ??????

The following three paragraphs are conjecture and bullshit of the mightiest stink - half of it isn't even on Obama's plate and the other half is so off-base it’s laughable.

In Obama's first One Hundred Days, the Congress passed his initiatives; and he signed them into law as he said he would. He repealed the Bush tax cuts, and doubled the capital gains taxes. He enacted a windfall profits tax, and instituted price controls on gasoline and diesel fuel. He passed universal health care, which added an additional 10 percent income tax increase on all working Americans. He signed the Immigrant Amnesty bill which created 12 million new citizens instantly, each with entitlements.

He closed the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay , and summarily released all the detainees. He repealed the Patriot Act, and cut funding for espionage, and eliminated all terrorist listening and wiretaps. At the same time, he began the complete and immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq .

He ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, [reminiscent of prior presidents LBJ and Carter and Bush II] who wanted to retain bases in Kuwait and Qatar .

Instead, he went with the recommendation of Secretary of Defense Dennis Kucinich, and ordered all troops back to USA soil. Viva DK! Except he would be head of his proposed Department of Peace.

Viola! In One Hundred Days, by May of 2009, it was all done, and the initial vision was completed. He did exactly what he said he would do. And so it was in the summer of 2009 that things began to unravel for Obama. Of course, the economy needed a tax cut, not an increase, and unemployment quickly rose to 12 percent. Even attorneys and economists were put in the bread lines. Hard times ensued.

Price controls on gasoline immediately led to shortages and gas lines. The global cooling trend we have seen for the past 25 years first became obvious in 2009, exposing the CO2 global warming fraud. People were justifiably angry. ["See, I told you so," I said, crack pipe still warm in my hand.]

Federal deficits increased massively because thousands of baby boomers whoa, thousands, eh? This guy is certainly no economist (but I'd be glad to see him on a bread line), facing job loss and much higher taxes, simply gave up and took their social security.

The once superb U.S. health care system was thrown into disarray when the government created the Federal Department of Health care, and the immediate hiring of 250,000 administrators, inspectors and auditors, the only job growth in any sector of the 2009 economy. Could someone help me out here? I was rendered unconscious when my head smacked the keyboard...

By February 2010, the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq was complete. If only...

Hold on to your seats, kids. More blatant Fear Mongering coming right up! (Cue patriotic music...)

It was a very expensive undertaking. One month later in March, the gradual Shiite insurgencies from Iran turned Iraq into a true Iraqi civil war. In May, Iranian tanks crossed the border and quickly took Baghdad . Although the exact number is not known, at least 230,000 Sunni Iraqis died after we withdrew. You know, it's still plagiarism even if you rip it from your hero's playbook and change just a couple of words

Iran also quickly moved into undefended Kuwait . President Obama did exactly what he said he would. He sent Secretary of State Maria Cantwell note to "Rick Campbell": do not attempt fantasy baseball before your 87th birthday. Do not attempt actual politics before then, either to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. After two weeks of high level talks, the United States agreed to allow Iran to retain Iraq and Kuwait to create stability in the Middle East, with the understanding that Israel would not be disturbed. Cantwell returned to Washington , and explained the agreement in her famous speech, in which she proudly noted that the Obama administration had finally achieved "peace in our time" in the Middle East .

So there was some surprise by the Administration at the rocket attacks on Tel Aviv on August 14th. President Obama said, "This is not the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew." The Obama Administration decided it would be de-stabilizing to take sides in the conflict, and approximately 29,000 Israeli civilians died during that summer and fall.

American Jews were appalled at the inaction. Yes, in 2010 most American Jews were still Democrats; but because of 2010, they are solid Republicans today, [obediently accepting their lot to be slaughtered like goats at Armageddon.]

As awkward as it was, everything might have turned out all right for the Obama Administration going into the fall mid-term elections of 2010, if it hadn't been for the dirty bomb explosion in the Port of Long Beach. The Obama Administration had cut funding for the inspection of containers ...even more than Bush? Maybe he should have brought Ports of Dubai back in... because they felt it showed a "lack of trust" in the international trading community. It wasn't a large nuclear device. But nonetheless it contaminated [a bunch of crap from China and] some expensive real estate - Newport Beach , Palos Verdes - and ultimately caused the death of 14,000 Americans [evacuated to FEMA trailers]. People were especially annoyed that Disneyland had to be closed for decontamination. Oh, the humanity!

And so, in the midterm elections, conservative Republicans regained control of both the House and Senate, and the rest is history. Considering the previous 1,431 words we can only hope so

The impeachment proceedings against President Obama for "failure to protect and defend" were swift and nearly unanimous. Once again, the GOP shows the Dems how to git 'er done! Vice President Sibelius resigned. Newly-elected Speaker of the House, J.C. Watts, became the 45th President of the United States . Excuse me - SNORT!

But you know the rest of the story well. Elected conservatives finished the war on Islamic fundamentalists, largely by aiming ICBM's at Mecca and Medina. That'll learn 'em! No Democrat has been elected President since Obama. See video below

Conservatives have held both Houses of Congress. Correct history of Western Civilization and Economics are now taught in all public schools, and in English only. Marriage is defined as one man and one woman. And there are border fences, north and south Marvelous - our transformation into a continental version of East Berlin is complete

We old codgers remember the ancient Confucian curse: "May you live in interesting times." Well, 2010 was an interesting year, but it was not a good year to be President.

Same as 2008, where certain morons think that a fantastic, simplistic reiteration of a "speech" given 25 years from now creatively and accurately provides insight to where America is/ought to be heading.

This kind of shit is what tends to make me disappointed in Obama's "hands across the aisle/purple state America" vision (which in my humble opinion is too far right), because I have a hard time believing these people will ever take their heads out of their asses no matter how much you foist reason upon them.

For You, “Rick”:

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Labels: analysis, Assholery squared, Bush, fiction, humour, Kucinich, Lies and Lying Liars, Obama, politix