Every week when I sit down to this computer, I tell myself I am not going to simply write another column that merely belittles and lampoons poor put-upon Republicans. Every week I remind myself that there are numerous Dems who consistently disappoint. It's true. Though, in most cases, it’s because they are acting too much like Republicans, for example, Max Baucus of Montana, Chuck Schumer of New York, or Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and of course, Harry Reid: sell-outs one and all.
I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi either. Take Impeachment off the table and keep the war going after we got you guys elected precisely to solve those disasters? Oh girl, it's on! Owned by the same people who bought the GOP leadership years back, Pelosi sold herself out as a silent supporter of torture as a member of the "gang of 8," in 2003 when Congress was debriefed on the coming atrocities in our good name. In fact, i oppose Pelosi so much back in ’08 i even did long distance campaigning for Cindy Sheehan when she challenged the queen of the torture enablers for Cali’s District 8. From where I stand, there's little difference between her and Michelle Bachman besides the quality of their facelifts.
All those Blue Dog Democrats ought to have their noses rubbed in the messes they made by crapping all over the American public so they could be corporate curs for Insurance industry donation dollars during the health care debate. And don’t even get me started on the Republican-Appeaser-in Chief, Obama himself. The GOP may not be able to find a birth certificate for him that satisfies them; but these days it seems if they dug deep enough they might find an old RNC membership card of his. So, you see, I’ve got plenty of material on Dems; but on the same week we sent our baby girl off to college and my daughter-in-law brought our baby grandson into this world, I read about birthers bashing babies and it was “game over people”—right wing raging racism trumps left-wing limpness every time.
You’ve heard about the attack of the “terror babies,” right? Oh they are WAY scarier than anchor babies ever thought about being. You may have even seen that, on successive nights in the recent news cycle, Anderson Cooper and staff had to do battle with successive, progressively deranged terror baby obsessed Texas legislators who were making bug-eyed little chicken claims that Terror Babies were the new Red Menace. Despite the fact that GOP Congressman Louie Gohmert argument of crediblity rapidly reduced down to petulantly repeatedly bleating "you can't say that it couldn't happen." And State Representative Debbie Riddle's behavior was so ugly she makes Jan Brewer look good.
Now that's the "good news" part: these people got thoroughly and absolutely debunked for the whole world to see. The bad news is despite having the whole assertion of terror babies quickly reduced to international laughingstock, the Texas legislators and their rapidly growing flock have continued to chant: "Beware of the Terror Babies"!
So what IS a terror baby? Why only the most brilliant right-wing Obama deception yet, that’s what. Supposedly all the rage in the right-wing psycho circles, this one is the über-theory that neatly ties together several strands of tea party delusion into one handy carrying case. The latest brainwash from the right-wing spin cycle goes like this:
Terrorists are smuggling pregnant illegal aliens into the country to have babies who would then be US citizens, which, as infants, would then be spirited back to some terrorism sponsoring host country, to secret Madrasas to be trained in murder, mayhem, and advanced America-hating. Then, as a teen, they would be replanted in the US to quietly wait, expecting to someday serve as a sleeper cell unit which would strike 20-30 years later because … Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on. I may be guessing on the exact details of that last part; but i'm sure that mantra ties in there at some point. By now hasn't that become the standard GOP signature conclusion for any talking point?
Try it yourself. “Because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on.” It’s the answer for everything these days, the reason for any problem if you ask a Republican. You know it, you’ve heard them say it. The GOP will tell you, “it’s wrong to try to curb Wall Street from buying and selling our nation’s very soul” … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on. Or, “global warming is a hoax” … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on. “BP shouldn’t be required to finish paying for the Gulf Coast clean-up” … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on. Or the latest disgust brought back for a second ugly aftertaste of corruption: "Pat Tillman was murdered by his own men and the Army not only covered it up and lied it into a sleazy piece of slipshod right-wing religious propaganda, and everyone, all the way up to Rumsfeld at least, knew what was going on but they all kept it secret from the American public and keep keeping it a secret still " … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on.
I know you get the picture because it is the one they show on the news, everyday.
These days, It almost even makes the whole idea of terror babies seem ... no, it doesn't, terror babies is still stupid. As if that wasn't ludicrous enough we now have to envision the image of thousands of tiny James Bonds in pull-ups getting their bottles shaken not stirred… because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on.
Of course Gohmert et al, insist they heard about terror babies from “credible” retired FBI agents, even as the active incredulous FBI spokespeople are frantically working to discredit the allegation that such a thing as terror babies could even exist and/or that the FBI has ever investigated or currently intends to investigate terror babies of any sort or fashion. And while this sounds like an idea for a sequel George Romero couldn't even get produced, the rapid spread of the myth of the terror baby is an ugly harbinger of crap to come.
Seriously, terror babies, while no more based on facts than most of the GOP prevarications, are the most ingenious explanation of the reasons that “Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on,” yet devised, even if it is the most outlandishly baseless. This is more than just another variation on the crazed illegal immigrant/Willie Horton-style boogeyman, more than just the basic birther conspiracy on steroids ... and meth, PCP, XTC, 10 cups of coffee, and airplane glue. More even than the incestuous spawn of such an unholy mating of the birther myth AND immigrant myth. This explains everything: I mean, after all, who is the original terror baby according to the above description?
Why of course, it’s Obama himself. Whom the GOP have been hating since the day he was born, like they intend to do with terror babies. Speaking of birthers, this recent news cycle also brought us the Bronze Star Birther, Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, a multi-decorated soon-to-retire sawbones who is no less than "the chief of primary care at the Army's DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic at the Pentagon."
Lakin is refusing to take his assigned rotation to the front … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on + an illegal alien with no birth certificate. Never mind the fact that when someone says they won't go to war because it is "morally wrong" and based on falsified claims which exploits our citizenry, savages our international credibility and endangers our citizens around the world, those reasons are the reasons of a coward. Say you won't go to war because you don't like your boss, they call you a hero. This guy Lakin was a lifer and ready to risk the "distasteful choice" of court martial rather than take orders from a foreigner, an immigrant.
No wonder Republicans want to get tough on those demon terror babies. They mean to show us all and especially those babies who is the boss. But as Illinois Dem Congressman Luis Gutierrez recently challenged, targeting pregnant "immigrant looking" women will cause them to shrink away from the medical care they probably need at the time of delivery. Some of those babies will die, either from mothers avoiding the medical la migra, some will die because of it. These are babies, not bombs. And so like Luis, i too have to ask of the "Party of No: "Where is your love of children now?"
Thought it was "a child not a choice. "
Or is it only the unborn life of an American child that matters? Other ones aren't really lives worth caring about? Which is why we can casually bomb the crap out of babies overseas. And these babies, smuggled like balloons of poison hidden inside women, bred to be props of American hating Islamists, they are no different than the duct taped dynamite vests jihadists wear. They must be eradicated.
Right to life? Or only the right to be hated for having one?
So, if the GOP truly says no unborn children of undocumented parents are allowed to be born on US soil, what measures do they intend that can be taken to prevent it? What is it that the GOP suggests when comes to parsing the finer points of targeting children? Are they talking Abortion? As the Virginia drunk-driver case of illegal alien Carlos Martinelly Montano from Bolivia demonstrates, as so many immigrant haters have made clear, it can take up to two years to deport someone. How are you going to stop that baby from being born? You can't just say, "Hey put that back!" once junior crowns. And further, if human life actually begins at the melding of DNA (as the Minnesota GOP state platform recently declared) then the religious right will have to acknowledge the rights of undocumented zygotes the instant they pass onto US soil, even though the fetuses in question would technically be "wet foot" till their water breaks.
Thus they have to have to revoke the 14th Amendment … because Obama is the secret Muslim-Commie socialist and so on. I surely do not look forward to finding out where this storyline is leading. But i have a queasy suspicion we're going to find out.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Current Comedy, 8/8/10: "Morally Wrong"
In their continuing effort to top each other and thus earn the title of author of the "Most Outrageously Hypocritical Political Statement of the week," this week various high-profile members of the GOP yacked up some pretty jacked up big league BS.
Among the runners-up this week include:
In 3rd place: Russell Pearce's flimsy attempt to flim-flam his way around being caught without a clue, jumping on the broken bandwagon of Republicans trying to label the Constitution as "Unconstitutional." As the sponsor of the incendiary SB-1070, AZ Legislative District 18's State Senator, Russell Pearce, has leapt to national prominence over his outspoken stance on America's immigration issue, and become the latest in the series of poster boys for the thinly veiled racism and xenophobia that passes for Republican policy these days. Like Joe the Plumber without the looks, or Palin without the brains.
Pearce has even posted his studied and misquote studded opinions on the 14th Amendment on his website, and thus professes himself an expert. Weighing in on the latest GOP "Wrong is Right and Ignorance is Strength" fad, on prime-time CNN no less, Friday Aug. 6th, feigning massive moral and mental superiority, "Prof" Pearce's pompous points were precisely punctured by ... first, interviewer Anderson Cooper, then debate opponent Paul Begala, and then, after the break, internationally respected Constitutional historian, Eric Foner was brought in to further poke holes in any attempts at a claim of legitimate Constitutional precedent, or functional scholarship for that matter, by the GOP for their recent anti-14th Amendment rant. The 14th Amendment was written to establish the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, to protect the children of immigrants, in a nation built of immigrants. Imagine that.
Also worthy of consideration in recent news was the GOP push to perpetuate the Bush era rich guy tax cuts. To keep that straight, those tax cuts for the richest 2% of the population that Bush swore we could afford cost us hundreds of billions each year in uncollected revenue and drive up the deficit by as much as a trillion a year for the foreseeable future according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Now, even Alan Greenspan and David Stockman (Reagan era budget director), with all the due vengeance of reformed whores, have copped to the fact that GOP Congressional leaders are apparently parading around with their pants on fire. Rather than the GOP foisted myth that "Secret Socialist Commie Obama" has been single-handedly destroying our economy, bankrupting us all through all sorts of unnecessary spending;" it's actually the Bush tax cuts that are the single most important component of our structural deficit and current GOP efforts to continue them is a disastrous mistake ... and a deliberate deception. Stockman goes so far as to say, " Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy." This from a party which has repeatedly claimed an irreproachable reputation for fiscal austerity as a guise to challenge and even derail many of Obama's efforts.
Yep, those were some great moments in hypocrisy. But there's no point in further following the Eric Holder model of prosecuting governmental abuses (i.e. "Beating around the Bush"), so let's get to the goodies: This week's title, "Morally Wrong," comes to us from the howler of a quote from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, an Obama Republican holdover from the previous administration. This quote was regarding Wikileaks' recent public posting of years' worth of US military dirty laundry. While dodging specifics about pursuing charges with the Department of Justice, just yet, Gates appeared to invoke a higher law in condemning Wikileaks and its putative founder, Julian Assange: "There's also a moral accountability. And that's where i think the verdict is guilty on Wikileaks." Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen also manned a pulpit to call out the sinner and took up the call of morality to pillory Assange, claiming the US government had a "moral obligation" to the people in the Af-Pak theater of operations and should be the sole authority when it comes to how much the public should know about the wars waged in their name.
To recap: in late July the international whistle blower website, Wikileaks, released their latest bombshell exposing corruption and conspiracy on a massive scale. Already internationally acclaimed for helping concerned citizens document the misdeeds and cover-ups of various corporations and governments, Wikileaks operates on a simple principle: its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations." In Kenya, Iceland, Thailand, Britain and Australia, for example, conspiracies revealed have rocked nations.
This time their sources had revealed a cache of info on a case of mismanaged war on a massive scale--murder and abuse and misuse of funds at an incomprehensible level: a compendium of more than 91,000 on-the-ground reports of misguided violence, greed, and/or stupidity. Unfortunately the culprits this time were us, as in the US military in just the latest revelation of our continuingly misguided misadventures in Afghanistan.
To make matters worse, the documents quite clearly revealed a pattern that our supposed best buddy in the war on terror, Pakistan, was actually in bed all along with Al-Qaeda, with the Taliban, and basically with just about every other crank in the neighborhood who hated baseball, apple pie, and/or Chevrolet. Allegations of the Pakistan aiding, abetting, and even being agents of terror against the US have never been honestly addressed every since 9/11 Truthers were marginalized trying to draw attention to the 2004 UK Guardian article documenting that "General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta" and in the wake of the 9/11 investigation, the US government was trying to hush this revelation up.
A war promoted under false pretenses, perpetuated for profit, and inflicting untold misery and death on the civilian population, and for what cause? Because they don't like us enough? Our friend in the war is the world's number one exporter of opium and our other friend works for our sworn enemies. But Wikileaks was not supposed to reveal any of that.
Like Ellsberg before them, Wikileaks' publication of the low-level "low-threat" (according to the New York Times) military logs, was not likely to endanger the lives of the men in the field nearly as much as it will the boys in the back room. Furthermore, according to CNN, "neither Gates nor Mullen, who appeared on both the CBS program "Face the Nation" and the NBC program "Meet the Press," could cite a specific example of any Taliban attacks based on information from the leaked materials."
So, to recap, sell a war with lies, under-man it for years to focus on the other fiasco in Iraq (also sold with lies, etc.), partner up with drug dealers and double agents, bomb a stone-age country back to the pebble-age, enflame the region against our country, invoke religious intolerance, and then tolerate and cover-up widespread corruption and abuse. This is the legacy of former Iran-Contra player, CIA/Council on Foreign Relations figure, Robert Gates and the last four years of his war. No wonder he wants to hide it. Meanwhile the guys who report on it are the bad guys, are "morally wrong"?
Ha-ha, i get it! You, Robert Gates, are a hypocrite AND the winner of this week's title as the author of the "Most Outrageously Hypocritical Political Statement of the Week."
And the losers? Everyone else.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Among the runners-up this week include:
In 3rd place: Russell Pearce's flimsy attempt to flim-flam his way around being caught without a clue, jumping on the broken bandwagon of Republicans trying to label the Constitution as "Unconstitutional." As the sponsor of the incendiary SB-1070, AZ Legislative District 18's State Senator, Russell Pearce, has leapt to national prominence over his outspoken stance on America's immigration issue, and become the latest in the series of poster boys for the thinly veiled racism and xenophobia that passes for Republican policy these days. Like Joe the Plumber without the looks, or Palin without the brains.
Pearce has even posted his studied and misquote studded opinions on the 14th Amendment on his website, and thus professes himself an expert. Weighing in on the latest GOP "Wrong is Right and Ignorance is Strength" fad, on prime-time CNN no less, Friday Aug. 6th, feigning massive moral and mental superiority, "Prof" Pearce's pompous points were precisely punctured by ... first, interviewer Anderson Cooper, then debate opponent Paul Begala, and then, after the break, internationally respected Constitutional historian, Eric Foner was brought in to further poke holes in any attempts at a claim of legitimate Constitutional precedent, or functional scholarship for that matter, by the GOP for their recent anti-14th Amendment rant. The 14th Amendment was written to establish the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, to protect the children of immigrants, in a nation built of immigrants. Imagine that.
Also worthy of consideration in recent news was the GOP push to perpetuate the Bush era rich guy tax cuts. To keep that straight, those tax cuts for the richest 2% of the population that Bush swore we could afford cost us hundreds of billions each year in uncollected revenue and drive up the deficit by as much as a trillion a year for the foreseeable future according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Now, even Alan Greenspan and David Stockman (Reagan era budget director), with all the due vengeance of reformed whores, have copped to the fact that GOP Congressional leaders are apparently parading around with their pants on fire. Rather than the GOP foisted myth that "Secret Socialist Commie Obama" has been single-handedly destroying our economy, bankrupting us all through all sorts of unnecessary spending;" it's actually the Bush tax cuts that are the single most important component of our structural deficit and current GOP efforts to continue them is a disastrous mistake ... and a deliberate deception. Stockman goes so far as to say, " Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy." This from a party which has repeatedly claimed an irreproachable reputation for fiscal austerity as a guise to challenge and even derail many of Obama's efforts.
Yep, those were some great moments in hypocrisy. But there's no point in further following the Eric Holder model of prosecuting governmental abuses (i.e. "Beating around the Bush"), so let's get to the goodies: This week's title, "Morally Wrong," comes to us from the howler of a quote from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, an Obama Republican holdover from the previous administration. This quote was regarding Wikileaks' recent public posting of years' worth of US military dirty laundry. While dodging specifics about pursuing charges with the Department of Justice, just yet, Gates appeared to invoke a higher law in condemning Wikileaks and its putative founder, Julian Assange: "There's also a moral accountability. And that's where i think the verdict is guilty on Wikileaks." Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen also manned a pulpit to call out the sinner and took up the call of morality to pillory Assange, claiming the US government had a "moral obligation" to the people in the Af-Pak theater of operations and should be the sole authority when it comes to how much the public should know about the wars waged in their name.
To recap: in late July the international whistle blower website, Wikileaks, released their latest bombshell exposing corruption and conspiracy on a massive scale. Already internationally acclaimed for helping concerned citizens document the misdeeds and cover-ups of various corporations and governments, Wikileaks operates on a simple principle: its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations." In Kenya, Iceland, Thailand, Britain and Australia, for example, conspiracies revealed have rocked nations.
This time their sources had revealed a cache of info on a case of mismanaged war on a massive scale--murder and abuse and misuse of funds at an incomprehensible level: a compendium of more than 91,000 on-the-ground reports of misguided violence, greed, and/or stupidity. Unfortunately the culprits this time were us, as in the US military in just the latest revelation of our continuingly misguided misadventures in Afghanistan.
To make matters worse, the documents quite clearly revealed a pattern that our supposed best buddy in the war on terror, Pakistan, was actually in bed all along with Al-Qaeda, with the Taliban, and basically with just about every other crank in the neighborhood who hated baseball, apple pie, and/or Chevrolet. Allegations of the Pakistan aiding, abetting, and even being agents of terror against the US have never been honestly addressed every since 9/11 Truthers were marginalized trying to draw attention to the 2004 UK Guardian article documenting that "General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta" and in the wake of the 9/11 investigation, the US government was trying to hush this revelation up.
A war promoted under false pretenses, perpetuated for profit, and inflicting untold misery and death on the civilian population, and for what cause? Because they don't like us enough? Our friend in the war is the world's number one exporter of opium and our other friend works for our sworn enemies. But Wikileaks was not supposed to reveal any of that.
Like Ellsberg before them, Wikileaks' publication of the low-level "low-threat" (according to the New York Times) military logs, was not likely to endanger the lives of the men in the field nearly as much as it will the boys in the back room. Furthermore, according to CNN, "neither Gates nor Mullen, who appeared on both the CBS program "Face the Nation" and the NBC program "Meet the Press," could cite a specific example of any Taliban attacks based on information from the leaked materials."
So, to recap, sell a war with lies, under-man it for years to focus on the other fiasco in Iraq (also sold with lies, etc.), partner up with drug dealers and double agents, bomb a stone-age country back to the pebble-age, enflame the region against our country, invoke religious intolerance, and then tolerate and cover-up widespread corruption and abuse. This is the legacy of former Iran-Contra player, CIA/Council on Foreign Relations figure, Robert Gates and the last four years of his war. No wonder he wants to hide it. Meanwhile the guys who report on it are the bad guys, are "morally wrong"?
Ha-ha, i get it! You, Robert Gates, are a hypocrite AND the winner of this week's title as the author of the "Most Outrageously Hypocritical Political Statement of the Week."
And the losers? Everyone else.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
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