Today while looking through the new US history book I am to teach with, I found their discussion of propaganda tucked into the coverage of the American Revolution. Not where I would’ve put it, but appropriate enough. It was not the first time that intentionally misleading promotions and pronouncements in periodicals prodded an American public into a war. Nor was it the last.
As you may recall from your high school journalism class, or from that one crazed social studies teacher who kept imploring you to be less gullible than an Eloi marching blindly into a Morlock cave, there are seven types of propaganda. While Bush boners like the “Healthy Forests Initiative” and “you’re either with us or against us” may have been painfully plain to the liberal among us, Obama might be harder to peg.
Obama did not simply buy his way into the presidency, he talked us into it; even if he did raise seven hundred and fifty million dollars, outspending McCain 2-1 in the homestretch. Clearly Obama made his case with the American people; but his campaign was no less manufactured than McCain, except Obama’s worked. He didn’t talk America into hiring him it by being the anti-politician; he did it by being the best politician the money could buy.
Educational ethics lead me to disclaim that the following list is based on an online handout I stole from Dan McDowell of West Hills High School in Santee, CA, without his foreknowledge, but with his permission and my apology, in the hopes we can all just write this off as educational intellectual freedom in the further hope some of us might learn something.
Barack Obama has worked very hard to appear to all things to all people while campaigning, but now that he is defining himself through his cabinet appointments and press releases; it could be fun for the strong stomached to parse the propaganda factor in Obama’s present pitches. Or it could be distressingly predictable and depressing.
Obama’s propaganda does not protrude as pronouncedly as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” codpiece, but he’s still got it hanging seven different ways.
APPEAL TO AUTHORITY: Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to supports a position, idea, argument, or course of action.
We’ll start with reminding you of something that you already knew: no one gets into the club unless they are already a member. Oh sure, Obama and McCain competed to see who was the farthest outsider and the most maverick; but most mavericks are out on the range, not in the Hart Senate Office Building. They don’t call the Senate the “Millionaires’ Club” for nothing.
Oh yeah, Obama’s been in there with “the haves and the have mores,” those adorable folks Bush calls his base. We’re talking Bilderbergs, baby. Obama’s been hanging out with them since he got hot, just like Hillary, Robert Gates, Bill Richardson, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Tom Daschle. You throw in cabinet member memberships in the Council on Foreign Relations and other NWO-type group and you’ve got most of Obama’s people coming from the crowd that produced Bush’s people. I am sure we’re all agreed that those guys are indeed the authorities on how to run a government … straight into the ground.
GLITTERING GENERALITIES: This approach is closely related to what is happening in TRANSFER (see above). Here, a generally accepted virtue is usually employed to stir up favorable emotions. The problem is that these words mean different things to different people and are often manipulated for the propagandists' use. The important thing to remember is that in this technique the propagandist uses these words in a positive sense. They often include words like: democracy, family values (when used positively), rights, civilization, even the word "American."
In the campaign Obama’s greatest strength was that he didn’t give a simple answer. Even his shorter remarks were built on specifics. In politics that is often mistaken for telling the truth. Now of course, President –elect Obama is happy to speak in generalities. For example, on Obama’s change.gov website, in his Friday 12/5 speech, which addresses the half a million jobs lost last month alone, among the over two million this year, Obama promises “to put people back to work and get our economy moving again.”
Good thing we didn’t elect the other guy. He probably wouldn’t have thought of those kinds of things. (OK, knowing McCain, maybe not.)
BANDWAGON: The basic idea behind the bandwagon approach is just that, "getting on the bandwagon." Either everyone is doing it or supporting this person or cause, so you should too. The bandwagon approach appeals to the conformist in all of us: No one wants to be left out of what is perceived to be a popular trend.
Do you have your Obama plate? Everybody wants one. You don’t want to be the heretic who doesn’t love him enough to collect plastic crap for him, do you?
TESTIMONIAL: This is the endorsement of a philosophy, movement or candidate. While celebrities are usually used, it can be people who supposedly "know" about the topic or situation.
Unfortunately for some of us, many of the people who have lately taken to endorsing Obama are actually far scarier than Rev. Wright or Bill Ayers ever were. When Karl Rove cup of Thanksgiving cheer includes a WSJ editorial praising Obama, you know he isn’t in the same party as Kucinich anymore. These days Obama’s looking so Republican even GOP hard-line pundit David Horowitz has taken to fronting for him.
PLAIN FOLKS: Here the candidate or cause is identified with common people from everyday walks of life. The idea is to make the candidate/cause come off as grassroots, all-American, for the common man.
Obama photo-ops are a clear winner in this field. It is probably not even possible to take this image any further of being a man of the common earth than the now iconic pic of Obama’s feet propped up revealing his soles worn through.
TRANSFER: Transfer employs the use of symbols, quotes or the images of famous people to convey a message not necessarily associated with them. In the use of transfer, the posters attempt to persuade us through the indirect use of something we respect, such as a patriotic or religious image, to promote specific ideas.
As Daily Show’s Jon Stewart justly chortles, Obama’s bunting bill is more getting obscene than the GOP Styrofoam fake straw hat bill. No less than five flags flank the dauphin as he makes pronouncements these days. That’ll teach you, lapel flag flakes, who is the REAL patriot.
FEAR: This technique is very popular during wartime. The idea is to present a dreaded circumstance and usually follow it up with the kind of behavior needed to avoid that horrible event.
Wanna create some fear? Start here: All the Robert Rubin acolytes given high positions of power did not help many Americans feel warm and fuzzy. During the campaign Obama rightly slammed McCain as wrong on deregulation, but now he’s advancing the same kinds of people? When the audience commented on what appeared to be smoke and mirrors in selling repackaged Clinton Redux as “Change,” the Obama reaction was swift and reminiscent of the way Ari Fleischer used to do such a heck of a job reminding folks they should watch their step for being too liberal. Now Obama’s got Steven Hildebrandt to do it for him.
Keeping the theme going, recent admissions reveal the Obama “Take America Back for the American People” plan has already lost its crowd pleasing components of taxing the rich and windfall oil profits. Oops, there goes some of that populous luster. And how about this James Ramstad, the proposed “Drug Czar”? No wonder they call the position “Drug Czar.” The guy is charge of a Gulag the size of Siberia, and Ramstad seemed intent on keeping it that way.
Remember the Yes Men’s faux New York Times edition, where an Obama admin would be a liberal’s dream come true? Well, for this one liberal the dream is coming nightmare: that I’ll wake up in ’09 and it will be ’02 again.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Current Comedy 12/1/08: On Not Drinking the Kool-Aid for General Jim Jones
There are plenty of stories ripe for lampooning. A ton of stories begging for your attention: We could stare in open-mouthed disbelief with the rest of the mainstream media at the Mumbai terrorist attacks, which is exactly what we are being instructed to do on most every news front. Which is exactly the reason we should resist the temptation. Mumbai, a terrible terrorist tragedy at a very opportune time for those given to oppressing, is almost too exquisitely 9/11-ish. Terror Takes Center Stage, ignore all other news stories.
I also refuse to drink the Kool-Aid over the appointment of Jim Jones, General Jim Jones that is, to NSA chief, along with the return of Robert Gates at Defense and “Why-the-hell-not, Hillary Clinton” to the Secretary of State. Mainstream media may be gawking at how smoothly the transition is going. But from the view we get out here in the sticks, the baton passing isn’t so impressive. We already know the truth: the less you change, the easier the transition.
If Obama really was working to improve our security, he’d do more to protect us from the outgoing Bush admin, who are just about finished rewriting the Labor Dept. workplace safety standards on toxic exposures. According to the New York Times, this is the first of many little nuggets on Bush’s final to-do list of still more ways to screw us before leaving office.
For that matter Obama could also make a statement or two about Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s efforts to prevent Bush pre-emptive pardons for his outgoing lackeys. Stopping Bush or at least promising to undo him is “change that we need.” Restaging a faux Clinton Camelot is “more of the same.” Now there’s the chant we should be hearing. Where’s that Biden when you need him?
But for me, over these last two weeks, the story that has hit closest to home came from my hometown, Raymondville, Texas; and from a friend I have kept up with since high school, more than 30 years ago, Juan Angel “Johnny” Guerra. Touch me, I’m famous. Once upon a time I had PE with the guy who tried to lock up Dick Cheney.
Many on both the left and the right side of the media will spin this story down to nothing and have been aiming to bury it as quietly as possible. But for me, Juan Angel Guerra is a hero I wish more people would write about.
I was in Raymondville for my mother’s funeral on Oct. 23rd, so my wife and I dropped by his county offices to see him, the day he initially filed the then-secret, now famous, or infamous, indictments. He shut the doors and leaned to us to whisper. He told us of a massive corruption and prisoner abuse case he had just finished with the grand jury. The case was too big, too hot. It was nationwide. It went all the way to the top. He couldn’t even talk about it there.
We followed him to his house out by the county line. It felt like the scene in the second reel of a movie where the brainiac explains the secret plot to the hapless dupes while they are checking to see if that black SUV is following them. Turned out, with the aid of a woman named Blanca, Guerra had been secretly pursuing the case for years. He had corporate flow charts and prisoner rights videos in stacks, folders of folders in folders of folders on his desktop, and cases, literally cases, of paper files stacked around the room. The whole house that we could see had been turned into a private office for this one case.
But it was too much to comprehend, especially while dealing with 80 years of my family’s debris and 50 years of my own memories. We left with my head a-swirl. I offered to write a story about the indictments when they came out, you know, to help promote them. He said that was OK. He was already in touch with the New York Times. We laughed, but it was true.
On November 17th Guerra stunned the world by managing to do what no other prosecutorial official in the United States had had the cajones to attempt: he brought charges against Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. These weren’t little charges either. Cheney was accused of using his influence as vice president to direct prisoners and prison money to have ICE immigration prisons built to be managed by a company he owns stock in. And, further, that in the interest of making a profit, this company cuts so many corners as regards prisoner medical treatment and safety that prisoners in the Raymondville Texas facility and across the country had died as a direct consequence of that willful neglect.
As for Gonzales, the charge was that he had used his power as US Attorney General to stop investigations into GEO Group in general and the Raymondville prisons in particular. Further, Gonzales was only one of many in the criminal justice system who sought to stymie Guerra’s investigations into corruption in the prison system. As part of the long ranging efforts to thwart Guerra’s investigations into the prison corruption case, for 18 months trumped up indictments hung over his head, hobbling his investigation and losing him his re-election bid. In addition to the high profile targets like Cheney and Gonzales, there were a handful of local indictments bundled in the mix for good measure.
You probably never heard the story reported that way. You weren’t supposed to. The Guerra story was meant to marginalize any die-hards who still had hopes of seeing criminal justice-style retribution against the blasphemies of the Bushco years. The case was made to look like a loser from the get. The majority of the news stories that reported on Guerra’s effort to follow one money trail through the corrupt side of the American Police State Prison Economy movement were written to make Guerra out as the fool for indicting the people who had worked together to falsely indict him, and depicted the Cheney-Gonzales connection as outlandishly Byzantine at best, and most likely, simply preposterous.
It was a story built up to tear down. Even the Left was supposed to laugh at the country bumpkin county DA who once protested those charges against himself by camping in the front yard of the county court house with farm animals. Jon Stewart took his turn at mocking Guerra’s efforts on the Daily Show, leading his show with a bit about it when news of the indictments was new. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales tried to crowd him explaining the complex paper trail that took years to assemble into an interview with less than 10 minute for the segment, leaving Guerra looking inarticulate, out of his depth and chopping off his entire explanation of the Gonzales connection.
It all went as planned. Despite Guerra’s stalling efforts to give the story time to build momentum, the story instead was laughed off in less than a week. Except Guerra didn’t know he was a joke. He thought it really was wrong to use positions of power to swing government contracts. He thought it was wrong to hinder investigations into the abuse, neglect and deaths of prisoners. It was wrong to leave people, even guilty ones, to suffer and die more often in exchange for making an extra buck or two; and wrong for him to not try to do something about it.
But, he was wrong. Like I said, it was a story built to tear down. You weren’t supposed to believe it anyway. That story was officially put to rest today, Dec. 1, as so many of us feared it would: all charges being summarily dismissed. On a technicality no less, with none of Guerra’s reams of amassed evidence even admitted.
On the 10th is a hearing to stop him from attempting to re-file indictments in revised form. Since his term ends at New Year’s, the case will then be lost and soon forgotten. One doubts whether national media, which briefly hovered around the tantalizing prospect of Cheney on trial, before moving on to other issues to drone to death, will even deign report the outcome.
Like I say, most of us knew the case would come to nothing. Motions upon motions would delay, misconstrue and eventually bury any case such as this where an earthling tries to reach up and touch power with justice. But for a couple of weeks we had another chance to believe that change could possibly actually come.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Footnote: Hollywood cinematographer/director Hart Perry, wrote about Guerra and made him one of the stars in the 2003 film, Valley of Tears, Perry’s immense twenty year spanning documentary on race relations in Raymondville, home of the farm workers strike of 1979, the Casteneda v. Pickard lawsuit which established bilingual mandates for schools in America and Guerra. Yours truly appears in the film at 16:27 in the background of a march which came in from west of town, i believe on a Saturday. I'm wearing a white tee shirt, red shorts and looking doofy.
I also refuse to drink the Kool-Aid over the appointment of Jim Jones, General Jim Jones that is, to NSA chief, along with the return of Robert Gates at Defense and “Why-the-hell-not, Hillary Clinton” to the Secretary of State. Mainstream media may be gawking at how smoothly the transition is going. But from the view we get out here in the sticks, the baton passing isn’t so impressive. We already know the truth: the less you change, the easier the transition.
If Obama really was working to improve our security, he’d do more to protect us from the outgoing Bush admin, who are just about finished rewriting the Labor Dept. workplace safety standards on toxic exposures. According to the New York Times, this is the first of many little nuggets on Bush’s final to-do list of still more ways to screw us before leaving office.
For that matter Obama could also make a statement or two about Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s efforts to prevent Bush pre-emptive pardons for his outgoing lackeys. Stopping Bush or at least promising to undo him is “change that we need.” Restaging a faux Clinton Camelot is “more of the same.” Now there’s the chant we should be hearing. Where’s that Biden when you need him?
But for me, over these last two weeks, the story that has hit closest to home came from my hometown, Raymondville, Texas; and from a friend I have kept up with since high school, more than 30 years ago, Juan Angel “Johnny” Guerra. Touch me, I’m famous. Once upon a time I had PE with the guy who tried to lock up Dick Cheney.
Many on both the left and the right side of the media will spin this story down to nothing and have been aiming to bury it as quietly as possible. But for me, Juan Angel Guerra is a hero I wish more people would write about.
I was in Raymondville for my mother’s funeral on Oct. 23rd, so my wife and I dropped by his county offices to see him, the day he initially filed the then-secret, now famous, or infamous, indictments. He shut the doors and leaned to us to whisper. He told us of a massive corruption and prisoner abuse case he had just finished with the grand jury. The case was too big, too hot. It was nationwide. It went all the way to the top. He couldn’t even talk about it there.
We followed him to his house out by the county line. It felt like the scene in the second reel of a movie where the brainiac explains the secret plot to the hapless dupes while they are checking to see if that black SUV is following them. Turned out, with the aid of a woman named Blanca, Guerra had been secretly pursuing the case for years. He had corporate flow charts and prisoner rights videos in stacks, folders of folders in folders of folders on his desktop, and cases, literally cases, of paper files stacked around the room. The whole house that we could see had been turned into a private office for this one case.
But it was too much to comprehend, especially while dealing with 80 years of my family’s debris and 50 years of my own memories. We left with my head a-swirl. I offered to write a story about the indictments when they came out, you know, to help promote them. He said that was OK. He was already in touch with the New York Times. We laughed, but it was true.
On November 17th Guerra stunned the world by managing to do what no other prosecutorial official in the United States had had the cajones to attempt: he brought charges against Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales. These weren’t little charges either. Cheney was accused of using his influence as vice president to direct prisoners and prison money to have ICE immigration prisons built to be managed by a company he owns stock in. And, further, that in the interest of making a profit, this company cuts so many corners as regards prisoner medical treatment and safety that prisoners in the Raymondville Texas facility and across the country had died as a direct consequence of that willful neglect.
As for Gonzales, the charge was that he had used his power as US Attorney General to stop investigations into GEO Group in general and the Raymondville prisons in particular. Further, Gonzales was only one of many in the criminal justice system who sought to stymie Guerra’s investigations into corruption in the prison system. As part of the long ranging efforts to thwart Guerra’s investigations into the prison corruption case, for 18 months trumped up indictments hung over his head, hobbling his investigation and losing him his re-election bid. In addition to the high profile targets like Cheney and Gonzales, there were a handful of local indictments bundled in the mix for good measure.
You probably never heard the story reported that way. You weren’t supposed to. The Guerra story was meant to marginalize any die-hards who still had hopes of seeing criminal justice-style retribution against the blasphemies of the Bushco years. The case was made to look like a loser from the get. The majority of the news stories that reported on Guerra’s effort to follow one money trail through the corrupt side of the American Police State Prison Economy movement were written to make Guerra out as the fool for indicting the people who had worked together to falsely indict him, and depicted the Cheney-Gonzales connection as outlandishly Byzantine at best, and most likely, simply preposterous.
It was a story built up to tear down. Even the Left was supposed to laugh at the country bumpkin county DA who once protested those charges against himself by camping in the front yard of the county court house with farm animals. Jon Stewart took his turn at mocking Guerra’s efforts on the Daily Show, leading his show with a bit about it when news of the indictments was new. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales tried to crowd him explaining the complex paper trail that took years to assemble into an interview with less than 10 minute for the segment, leaving Guerra looking inarticulate, out of his depth and chopping off his entire explanation of the Gonzales connection.
It all went as planned. Despite Guerra’s stalling efforts to give the story time to build momentum, the story instead was laughed off in less than a week. Except Guerra didn’t know he was a joke. He thought it really was wrong to use positions of power to swing government contracts. He thought it was wrong to hinder investigations into the abuse, neglect and deaths of prisoners. It was wrong to leave people, even guilty ones, to suffer and die more often in exchange for making an extra buck or two; and wrong for him to not try to do something about it.
But, he was wrong. Like I said, it was a story built to tear down. You weren’t supposed to believe it anyway. That story was officially put to rest today, Dec. 1, as so many of us feared it would: all charges being summarily dismissed. On a technicality no less, with none of Guerra’s reams of amassed evidence even admitted.
On the 10th is a hearing to stop him from attempting to re-file indictments in revised form. Since his term ends at New Year’s, the case will then be lost and soon forgotten. One doubts whether national media, which briefly hovered around the tantalizing prospect of Cheney on trial, before moving on to other issues to drone to death, will even deign report the outcome.
Like I say, most of us knew the case would come to nothing. Motions upon motions would delay, misconstrue and eventually bury any case such as this where an earthling tries to reach up and touch power with justice. But for a couple of weeks we had another chance to believe that change could possibly actually come.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Footnote: Hollywood cinematographer/director Hart Perry, wrote about Guerra and made him one of the stars in the 2003 film, Valley of Tears, Perry’s immense twenty year spanning documentary on race relations in Raymondville, home of the farm workers strike of 1979, the Casteneda v. Pickard lawsuit which established bilingual mandates for schools in America and Guerra. Yours truly appears in the film at 16:27 in the background of a march which came in from west of town, i believe on a Saturday. I'm wearing a white tee shirt, red shorts and looking doofy.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Current Comedy, 11/17/08: Little Georgie Jr. Loses His Very Own Iraq War
Yep, you read that title right. So stop the presses, whatever other news you were thinking about ignoring, ignore this one first.
I know, I know, you were hoping I would comment on Georgia Representative Paul Broun setting a new North American land speed record, and coming in a close second to the world record time, for calling a newly minted world leader a “Hitler.” Last week, displaying his lightning fast GOP-style smearing techniques, Rep. Broun labeled Barack Obama a Hitler less than ten days after his election. The only faster recorded time was that of the Berlin press corps who on Jan. 30, 1933 called Hitler a “Hitler” on the pretty much the same day of his appointment as Chancellor. It will stay a hard record to break.
I also do not intend to expound on Fox News finally noticing that Obama did indeed run as a centrist; nor will I re-demonize the de-demonizers who are currently trying to demonize the demonizers of President Bush. I apologize for not bashing those apologists. This is better than that whole roundelay, here’s the news: Little Georgie just lost his very own Iraq War.
That’s right, in breaking news on Monday Nov. 17, 2008, the US and Iraq signed a finalizing peace accord with a, gets this, a “timetable” creating a schedule for US troops leaving the country, evacuating according to terms dictated not by Bush, but by Iraq. Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh framed impending departure like this: the “best possible, available option” was for US “forces [to] withdraw on June 30, 2009 from cities and districts to bases agreed upon by Iraq and the US administration. This date is not liable to change according to the situation on ground. The date is definite and final."
The US would further be required to vacate the country entirely, including all the personnel for all those big beautiful bases we just built/bought, all 150,000 Americans, by New Year’s Eve 2011. Let me repeat that last line from the Iraqi spokesman for you: “This date is not liable to change according to the situation on ground. The date is definite and final.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is definitely what we call ‘getting told’ and who gets told in a war? The losers. If you win, you stay however long you want, like McCain once said. We still have troops in Japan and Germany after 60 years and everybody knows we kicked their butts. In comparison we don’t have soldiers in Vietnam, do we? Well, no live ones.
As of yet, realization of this defeat has probably not registered on your American viewing public. Last word we had from Bush and the “stay-on-message” team of GOP operatives, the Repub talking point was to not set timetables. It was tantamount to admitting defeat. McCain for example, Bush’s bitch since the ’04 election, would never broach anything that could even remotely be construed as somehow related to defeat.
In fact the GOP philosophy of “don’t ask and don’t tell about timetables” eventually jumped the shark while in McCain’s fumble-fisted fingers when he stretched it to a point of being proud of himself because he was willing to keep fighting in Iraq for hundred years just to show how repulsive the very idea of timetables were to him.
But look, if Iraq can tell us when and how to leave, we are not in control of the country anymore. Though as many would note who have swum through this quagmire these last six years, in many ways America lost the war in Iraq right around the time we thought we had won it and decided not to leave. Late ’03, Saddam was finally captured, wrapped up like a gift wrapped X-mas turkey. That was the good news: one of our two clearly stated goals had just been actually accomplished: topple Hussein.
The other stated goal wasn’t going quite as well. We had already ruined the occupation on the ground with L. Paul Bremmer’s de-Baath-ification program and dismantling the Iraqi Army so they could re-assemble as the Iraqi Insurgence. We’d let five thousand years of history be looted so we could guard the oil ministry records of wells that were on fire. But most importantly by that point it had become all too obvious America had failed in our other noble cause: the WMDs.
We never found any because they hadn’t been there in the first place. Like many of us knew all along. Some of us who knew better protested the genocide. While others, who also knew all along, conducted it. Right then, right there mid-December ’03 a moral world leader would have said, “We were wrong about the whole WMD thing, but hey, we got Saddam. Sorry for breaking your country. We’re outta here.”
And that moment, when the US didn’t say that, was when we lost the war. The rest of the world knew a long time ago what we finally had to be told: we don’t belong in Iraq and we need to leave.
Thanks again, George Jr. You have outdone your dad when it comes to ruining a war for us.The man who once made the whole world fixate on his trussed up codpiece as he boasted before a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” who would later whisper to Bob Woodward in private that his advice on Iraq to the next president would be “don’t let it fail,” just got told “get out” of the country he once so willfully occupied. Defeat never tasted so sweet. The irony is almost too delicious, except for all the dead Iraqis.
And their blood on our hands.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ
I know, I know, you were hoping I would comment on Georgia Representative Paul Broun setting a new North American land speed record, and coming in a close second to the world record time, for calling a newly minted world leader a “Hitler.” Last week, displaying his lightning fast GOP-style smearing techniques, Rep. Broun labeled Barack Obama a Hitler less than ten days after his election. The only faster recorded time was that of the Berlin press corps who on Jan. 30, 1933 called Hitler a “Hitler” on the pretty much the same day of his appointment as Chancellor. It will stay a hard record to break.
I also do not intend to expound on Fox News finally noticing that Obama did indeed run as a centrist; nor will I re-demonize the de-demonizers who are currently trying to demonize the demonizers of President Bush. I apologize for not bashing those apologists. This is better than that whole roundelay, here’s the news: Little Georgie just lost his very own Iraq War.
That’s right, in breaking news on Monday Nov. 17, 2008, the US and Iraq signed a finalizing peace accord with a, gets this, a “timetable” creating a schedule for US troops leaving the country, evacuating according to terms dictated not by Bush, but by Iraq. Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh framed impending departure like this: the “best possible, available option” was for US “forces [to] withdraw on June 30, 2009 from cities and districts to bases agreed upon by Iraq and the US administration. This date is not liable to change according to the situation on ground. The date is definite and final."
The US would further be required to vacate the country entirely, including all the personnel for all those big beautiful bases we just built/bought, all 150,000 Americans, by New Year’s Eve 2011. Let me repeat that last line from the Iraqi spokesman for you: “This date is not liable to change according to the situation on ground. The date is definite and final.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is definitely what we call ‘getting told’ and who gets told in a war? The losers. If you win, you stay however long you want, like McCain once said. We still have troops in Japan and Germany after 60 years and everybody knows we kicked their butts. In comparison we don’t have soldiers in Vietnam, do we? Well, no live ones.
As of yet, realization of this defeat has probably not registered on your American viewing public. Last word we had from Bush and the “stay-on-message” team of GOP operatives, the Repub talking point was to not set timetables. It was tantamount to admitting defeat. McCain for example, Bush’s bitch since the ’04 election, would never broach anything that could even remotely be construed as somehow related to defeat.
In fact the GOP philosophy of “don’t ask and don’t tell about timetables” eventually jumped the shark while in McCain’s fumble-fisted fingers when he stretched it to a point of being proud of himself because he was willing to keep fighting in Iraq for hundred years just to show how repulsive the very idea of timetables were to him.
But look, if Iraq can tell us when and how to leave, we are not in control of the country anymore. Though as many would note who have swum through this quagmire these last six years, in many ways America lost the war in Iraq right around the time we thought we had won it and decided not to leave. Late ’03, Saddam was finally captured, wrapped up like a gift wrapped X-mas turkey. That was the good news: one of our two clearly stated goals had just been actually accomplished: topple Hussein.
The other stated goal wasn’t going quite as well. We had already ruined the occupation on the ground with L. Paul Bremmer’s de-Baath-ification program and dismantling the Iraqi Army so they could re-assemble as the Iraqi Insurgence. We’d let five thousand years of history be looted so we could guard the oil ministry records of wells that were on fire. But most importantly by that point it had become all too obvious America had failed in our other noble cause: the WMDs.
We never found any because they hadn’t been there in the first place. Like many of us knew all along. Some of us who knew better protested the genocide. While others, who also knew all along, conducted it. Right then, right there mid-December ’03 a moral world leader would have said, “We were wrong about the whole WMD thing, but hey, we got Saddam. Sorry for breaking your country. We’re outta here.”
And that moment, when the US didn’t say that, was when we lost the war. The rest of the world knew a long time ago what we finally had to be told: we don’t belong in Iraq and we need to leave.
Thanks again, George Jr. You have outdone your dad when it comes to ruining a war for us.The man who once made the whole world fixate on his trussed up codpiece as he boasted before a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” who would later whisper to Bob Woodward in private that his advice on Iraq to the next president would be “don’t let it fail,” just got told “get out” of the country he once so willfully occupied. Defeat never tasted so sweet. The irony is almost too delicious, except for all the dead Iraqis.
And their blood on our hands.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Current Comedy 11/11/08: The Old “Wake up the Morning after Screaming,‘Oh My God, What Have We Done’” Routine
You May Ask Yourself, Where Does That Highway Lead To?
And You May Say To Yourself, Oh My God, What Have I Done?
--Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”
It’s morning in America. Like the teenager once so hypnotized by the brilliant glow in her boyfriend’s eyes, who now finds herself sneaking back into the house with unsightly stains in unmentionable places, many Americans woke up on Wednesday Nov. 5th checking themselves for long-term effects of their debauchery. A Black man elected president, Mandingo never seemed so taboo. And here we had done it. Obama had made a dream come true, right then, right there for so many Americans. Now what?
Change has come, but just where it is going is still anybody’s guess. Who would have thought that a politician’s website would become a national overnight sensation giving America a new idol to ogle at Change.gov. Or that suddenly policy wonking is sexy again. Who would have thought a Peruvian Hairless would have a chance at being First Mutt, or that Americans would “ooh and ah” over a trick as old as Checkers.
Elsewhere Obama graces special issues of People Magazine and kids of creeps across America woke up on the 5th to find Obama hadn’t sold their parents into white slavery, made Islam the official religion or forced them to marry gay people. However the “Obama is the Antichrist” bloggers are s&*(#@ in their pants right now as crowds around the world go wild and ignite a global spirit of uniting.
It seems we actually have a liberal majority in America and that the propaganda the right’s been force feeding us over these last several years is exactly the malarkey many thought it was all along. Just one of the many distortions we might find lodged in the filter American media uses to shield the American public. Now what do we do now that we got him?
Well, like with any straw man trussed up to appear presidential, it doesn’t take long for the buffoonery to show. When Joe Biden warned Obama would be tested in less than six months by some world leader, no one realized the test would come, not from abroad, but from typically slimy Dems in his own party and secret provisions in the Big Deal Bailout. It turns out as so often happens with the Dems, once the rhetoric is over and we get down to definitions, it seems they prefer to define “change” as “change from your hand to mine.”
Democracy Now is currently reporting that a heretofore secret passage of the $700 billion, no make that 850 billion, no actually it is well over a trillion tax dollar giveaway to big business has, not only the already acknowledged 13 billion dollar CEO bonus component, but also a clandestine $140 billion windfall profits clause that Dem senator Max Baucus didn’t want you to know about. According to the Washington Post, “Staffers with Senate Finance Committee chair, Max Baucus, a Democrat, reportedly asked that an administration briefing on the tax code change be kept secret. … Congressional aides admitted lawmakers agreed to keep the change hidden to avoid public outrage.”
Cats out of the bag and I’m ready to be outraged. How about you?
How Obama handles this mess will define the kind of president we purchased. Hopefully it won’t show that Bush isn’t the only one capable of squandering massive amounts of goodwill when given a little taste of power.
To complicate matters, at this same time in the same state where foul-up hedge fund managers are soon to be rewarded with even more tax payer money, the state of New York is planning to cut billions out of services, so citizens will suffer so the wealthy can get wealthier. “In with the new boss--” Meanwhile the Fed is loaning so much money out that they will not reveal the names of the companies in question in fear the news will threaten the market. “--Same as the old boss.”
So, it looks like the first real test Obama has to face will not come from abroad but from the way the American elite including his own party are all too visibly bilking the American public. Villains like Iran, North Korea, Chavez, will have to wait their turn, if America continues to be its own worst enemy.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
And You May Say To Yourself, Oh My God, What Have I Done?
--Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”
It’s morning in America. Like the teenager once so hypnotized by the brilliant glow in her boyfriend’s eyes, who now finds herself sneaking back into the house with unsightly stains in unmentionable places, many Americans woke up on Wednesday Nov. 5th checking themselves for long-term effects of their debauchery. A Black man elected president, Mandingo never seemed so taboo. And here we had done it. Obama had made a dream come true, right then, right there for so many Americans. Now what?
Change has come, but just where it is going is still anybody’s guess. Who would have thought that a politician’s website would become a national overnight sensation giving America a new idol to ogle at Change.gov. Or that suddenly policy wonking is sexy again. Who would have thought a Peruvian Hairless would have a chance at being First Mutt, or that Americans would “ooh and ah” over a trick as old as Checkers.
Elsewhere Obama graces special issues of People Magazine and kids of creeps across America woke up on the 5th to find Obama hadn’t sold their parents into white slavery, made Islam the official religion or forced them to marry gay people. However the “Obama is the Antichrist” bloggers are s&*(#@ in their pants right now as crowds around the world go wild and ignite a global spirit of uniting.
It seems we actually have a liberal majority in America and that the propaganda the right’s been force feeding us over these last several years is exactly the malarkey many thought it was all along. Just one of the many distortions we might find lodged in the filter American media uses to shield the American public. Now what do we do now that we got him?
Well, like with any straw man trussed up to appear presidential, it doesn’t take long for the buffoonery to show. When Joe Biden warned Obama would be tested in less than six months by some world leader, no one realized the test would come, not from abroad, but from typically slimy Dems in his own party and secret provisions in the Big Deal Bailout. It turns out as so often happens with the Dems, once the rhetoric is over and we get down to definitions, it seems they prefer to define “change” as “change from your hand to mine.”
Democracy Now is currently reporting that a heretofore secret passage of the $700 billion, no make that 850 billion, no actually it is well over a trillion tax dollar giveaway to big business has, not only the already acknowledged 13 billion dollar CEO bonus component, but also a clandestine $140 billion windfall profits clause that Dem senator Max Baucus didn’t want you to know about. According to the Washington Post, “Staffers with Senate Finance Committee chair, Max Baucus, a Democrat, reportedly asked that an administration briefing on the tax code change be kept secret. … Congressional aides admitted lawmakers agreed to keep the change hidden to avoid public outrage.”
Cats out of the bag and I’m ready to be outraged. How about you?
How Obama handles this mess will define the kind of president we purchased. Hopefully it won’t show that Bush isn’t the only one capable of squandering massive amounts of goodwill when given a little taste of power.
To complicate matters, at this same time in the same state where foul-up hedge fund managers are soon to be rewarded with even more tax payer money, the state of New York is planning to cut billions out of services, so citizens will suffer so the wealthy can get wealthier. “In with the new boss--” Meanwhile the Fed is loaning so much money out that they will not reveal the names of the companies in question in fear the news will threaten the market. “--Same as the old boss.”
So, it looks like the first real test Obama has to face will not come from abroad but from the way the American elite including his own party are all too visibly bilking the American public. Villains like Iran, North Korea, Chavez, will have to wait their turn, if America continues to be its own worst enemy.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
11 Laugh Lines Learned in the Latest Election-revised
With Obama poised Janus-like at the cross roads of American history, liberals await smoke signals. Will we finally have an agenda where a government of, for, or about the people won't be slandered as socialist, but recognized as insuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare?
Or, will the tacitly accepted branding of the centrist Barack Obama as a liberal lead to a new rightward shift in the "Stereotype" of liberalism like Clinton's election did? Giving the nod to Rahm Emanuel and Clinton –era John Podesta suggest that Obama will in some ways be a continuation of business as usual. It could be a way to right shift what the left looks like.
Either way, the world has shifted:
1) You can't win by appealing to your base. It was a lesson in this election that kept multiple Obama supporters muzzled while McCain's crowd bit the hand that fed them. Actual liberals kept their mouths shut to let Obama cajole the mainstream crowd. Meanwhile the McCain-Palin traveling tent revival and side show threw red meat and hoked it up for the god and country crowd. Grand Old Partyers may have had themselves a fine old time, but watching footage of it scared the piss out of the rest of us.
2) If you throw enough crap around, a bunch of it sticks … to you. And after hearing them a thousand times, really, "yes we can" is a lot more appealing 3 word summation of a world view than, "Other Guy Sucks."
3) Your cousin Adolph can come out of hiding now. Sticks and stone will still break our bones, but names sure aren't hurting us anymore if anyone with any name named Hussein can wind up being the president.
4) Republicans can't add. McCain aped the elephant line about not wanting to waste government spending on anything as frivolous as, say, services, except for the armed ones, of course. Then in the guise of saving money, McCain supported the Bush's outsourcing model that meant hiring companies like Halliburton and Black Water to first screw us over with cost plus contracts, then stand around and not do government work, as if they could not do their jobs any better than real government workers already don't do their jobs. Paying for corporate profits on top of the cost of poorly getting your business done is not a way to save money.
5) John McCain doesn't know what good representation is. As an AZ resident these last eight years, I have been continually amazed at Mr. Anti-Earmark's gall to suggest that not working to steer government spending back to the home folks is counts as good representation. McCain bragged about his record of having secured NO special projects for AZ. Gee thanks, John. Earmark spending is called pork barrel because that is the sign of the man we sent to Washington bringing home the bacon.
6) Take a flippin' e-mail, dude, People of the 21st century are not impressed you stopped being tech savvy when 8 tracks ruled.
7) Bitchiness is still ugly even in $150, 000 worth of business suits. And if that kind of behavior is what passes for Christianity these days, it is small wonder fire and brimstone leave such a bad taste in so many people's mouth.
8) Old War Heroes may never die, but that doesn't mean we want to hear about it for the rest of our lives.
9) If you don't like big government, quit. Come on McCain, everybody knows the US Gov. is the largest employer in the world and it needs to stay that way. Arguing that under your leadership you would shrink government translates out to saying that you are just as ruthless as any other selfish CEO who thinks nothing of laying off thousands of workers in favor of a bottom line.
10) Cities are where the people are. In urban counties across America Obama routinely snagged as much as 80% of the vote—Phoenix and Forth Worth being typical of the exceptions. Even in the reddest of states, cities went blue and when it comes down to it doesn't matter how much land you have, dirt don't vote.
11) In the end it didn't matter who all the right and the media tried to tie to Obama's coattails, the scariest affiliation remained being too closely associated with the world's leading terrorist: George Bush.
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
Or, will the tacitly accepted branding of the centrist Barack Obama as a liberal lead to a new rightward shift in the "Stereotype" of liberalism like Clinton's election did? Giving the nod to Rahm Emanuel and Clinton –era John Podesta suggest that Obama will in some ways be a continuation of business as usual. It could be a way to right shift what the left looks like.
Either way, the world has shifted:
1) You can't win by appealing to your base. It was a lesson in this election that kept multiple Obama supporters muzzled while McCain's crowd bit the hand that fed them. Actual liberals kept their mouths shut to let Obama cajole the mainstream crowd. Meanwhile the McCain-Palin traveling tent revival and side show threw red meat and hoked it up for the god and country crowd. Grand Old Partyers may have had themselves a fine old time, but watching footage of it scared the piss out of the rest of us.
2) If you throw enough crap around, a bunch of it sticks … to you. And after hearing them a thousand times, really, "yes we can" is a lot more appealing 3 word summation of a world view than, "Other Guy Sucks."
3) Your cousin Adolph can come out of hiding now. Sticks and stone will still break our bones, but names sure aren't hurting us anymore if anyone with any name named Hussein can wind up being the president.
4) Republicans can't add. McCain aped the elephant line about not wanting to waste government spending on anything as frivolous as, say, services, except for the armed ones, of course. Then in the guise of saving money, McCain supported the Bush's outsourcing model that meant hiring companies like Halliburton and Black Water to first screw us over with cost plus contracts, then stand around and not do government work, as if they could not do their jobs any better than real government workers already don't do their jobs. Paying for corporate profits on top of the cost of poorly getting your business done is not a way to save money.
5) John McCain doesn't know what good representation is. As an AZ resident these last eight years, I have been continually amazed at Mr. Anti-Earmark's gall to suggest that not working to steer government spending back to the home folks is counts as good representation. McCain bragged about his record of having secured NO special projects for AZ. Gee thanks, John. Earmark spending is called pork barrel because that is the sign of the man we sent to Washington bringing home the bacon.
6) Take a flippin' e-mail, dude, People of the 21st century are not impressed you stopped being tech savvy when 8 tracks ruled.
7) Bitchiness is still ugly even in $150, 000 worth of business suits. And if that kind of behavior is what passes for Christianity these days, it is small wonder fire and brimstone leave such a bad taste in so many people's mouth.
8) Old War Heroes may never die, but that doesn't mean we want to hear about it for the rest of our lives.
9) If you don't like big government, quit. Come on McCain, everybody knows the US Gov. is the largest employer in the world and it needs to stay that way. Arguing that under your leadership you would shrink government translates out to saying that you are just as ruthless as any other selfish CEO who thinks nothing of laying off thousands of workers in favor of a bottom line.
10) Cities are where the people are. In urban counties across America Obama routinely snagged as much as 80% of the vote—Phoenix and Forth Worth being typical of the exceptions. Even in the reddest of states, cities went blue and when it comes down to it doesn't matter how much land you have, dirt don't vote.
11) In the end it didn't matter who all the right and the media tried to tie to Obama's coattails, the scariest affiliation remained being too closely associated with the world's leading terrorist: George Bush.
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Current Comedy, 11/6/08: Eleven Laugh Lines Learned in the Last ‘Lection
Current Comedy, 11/6/08: Eleven Laugh Lines Learned in the Last ‘Lection
With Obama poised Janus-like at the cross roads of American history, liberals await smoke signals. Will we finally have an agenda where a government of, for, or about the people won’t be slandered as socialist, but recognized as insuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare?
Or, will tacitly accepted branding of the centrist Barack Obama as a liberal lead to a new rightward shift in the “Stereotype” of liberalism like Clinton’s election did? Keeping in mind Obama purports to be pro-Israel, pro-Death Penalty, pro-Bailout, pro-Ethanol, Clean Coal, and anti-Single Payer Health Care, giving the nod to Rahm Emanuel and Clinton –era John Podesta suggest that Obama will in some ways be a continuation of business as usual.
All of which makes it even easier for media to use Obama’s ascent as a new way to characterize what Looney tune liberal means in relation to the “liberal” president. It could be a way to right shift what the left looks like. OR,
Obama could actually be the shining secret image serious social revisionists had all been hoping for and serious neo-cons and racists had long been fearing: Barack Obama didn’t spend 20 years in Reverend’s Wright Church without listening a little now and then.
Either way, here’s some laugh lines we learned lately about the way the world has shifted:
1) You can’t win by appealing to your base. It was a lesson in this election that kept multiple Obama supporters muzzled while McCain’s crowd bit the hand that fed them. Actual liberals kept their mouths shut to let Obama cajole the mainstream crowd without getting the man hamstrung by being smeared by their reputations as happened with Wright and Ayers. Meanwhile the McCain-Palin traveling tent revival and side show threw red meat and hoked it up for the god and country crowd. Hateful hardcore Grand Old Party may have had themselves a fine old time, but watching footage of it scared the piss out of the rest of us.
2) If you throw enough crap around a bunch of it sticks … to you. And after hearing them a thousand times, really, “yes we can” is a lot more appealing 3 word summation of a world view than, “Other Guy Sucks.”
3) Your cousin Adolph can come out of hiding now. Sticks and stone will still break our bones, but names sure aren’t hurting us anymore if anyone with any name named Hussein can wind up being the president.
4) Republicans can’t add. McCain aped the elephant line about not wanting to waste government spending on anything as frivolous as, say, services, except for the armed ones, of course. Meanwhile in the guise of saving money, McCain supported the Bush’s outsourcing model that meant hiring companies like Halliburton and Black Water to do stand around and not do government work, as if they could not do their jobs any better than real government workers already don’t do their jobs. Problem is if you say you want to stop wasting government money you can’t then outsource government work to private contractors because they cost more, a lot more. Paying for corporate profits on top of the cost of poorly getting your business done is not the way to save money.
5) John McCain doesn’t know what good representation is. As an AZ resident these last eight years, I have been continually amazed at Mr. Anti-Earmark’s gall to suggest that not working to steer government spending back to the home folks is what counts as good representation of the folks who elected you. McCain bragged about his record of having secured NO special projects for AZ. Gee thanks, John. Earmark spending is called pork barrel because that is the sign of the man we sent to Washington bringing home the bacon.
6) Take a flippin’ e-mail, dude, people of the 21st century are not impressed you stopped being tech savvy when 8 tracks ruled.
7) Bitchiness is still ugly even in $150, 000 worth of business suits. And if that kind of behavior is what passes for Christianity these days, it is small wonder fire and brimstone leave such a bad taste in so many people’s mouth.
8) Old War Heroes may never die, but that doesn’t mean we want to hear about it for the rest of our lives.
9) If you don’t like big government, quit. Come on McCain, everybody knows the US Gov. is the largest employer in the world and it needs to stay that way. Arguing that under your leadership you would shrink government translates out to saying that you are just as ruthless as any other selfish CEO who thinks nothing of laying off thousands of workers in favor of a bottom line.
10) Cities are where the people are. In urban counties across America Obama routinely snagged as much as 80% of the vote—Phoenix and Forth Worth being typical of the exceptions. On the complete US county map there are red state counties large enough to swallow entire New England states, But even in the reddest of states the cities went blue and when it comes down to it doesn’t matter how much land you have, dirt don’t vote.
11) In the end it didn’t matter who all the right and the media tried to adhere to Obama’s coattails the scariest affiliation remained being too closely associated with one the world’s leading terrorists: George Bush.
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
With Obama poised Janus-like at the cross roads of American history, liberals await smoke signals. Will we finally have an agenda where a government of, for, or about the people won’t be slandered as socialist, but recognized as insuring domestic tranquility and promoting the general welfare?
Or, will tacitly accepted branding of the centrist Barack Obama as a liberal lead to a new rightward shift in the “Stereotype” of liberalism like Clinton’s election did? Keeping in mind Obama purports to be pro-Israel, pro-Death Penalty, pro-Bailout, pro-Ethanol, Clean Coal, and anti-Single Payer Health Care, giving the nod to Rahm Emanuel and Clinton –era John Podesta suggest that Obama will in some ways be a continuation of business as usual.
All of which makes it even easier for media to use Obama’s ascent as a new way to characterize what Looney tune liberal means in relation to the “liberal” president. It could be a way to right shift what the left looks like. OR,
Obama could actually be the shining secret image serious social revisionists had all been hoping for and serious neo-cons and racists had long been fearing: Barack Obama didn’t spend 20 years in Reverend’s Wright Church without listening a little now and then.
Either way, here’s some laugh lines we learned lately about the way the world has shifted:
1) You can’t win by appealing to your base. It was a lesson in this election that kept multiple Obama supporters muzzled while McCain’s crowd bit the hand that fed them. Actual liberals kept their mouths shut to let Obama cajole the mainstream crowd without getting the man hamstrung by being smeared by their reputations as happened with Wright and Ayers. Meanwhile the McCain-Palin traveling tent revival and side show threw red meat and hoked it up for the god and country crowd. Hateful hardcore Grand Old Party may have had themselves a fine old time, but watching footage of it scared the piss out of the rest of us.
2) If you throw enough crap around a bunch of it sticks … to you. And after hearing them a thousand times, really, “yes we can” is a lot more appealing 3 word summation of a world view than, “Other Guy Sucks.”
3) Your cousin Adolph can come out of hiding now. Sticks and stone will still break our bones, but names sure aren’t hurting us anymore if anyone with any name named Hussein can wind up being the president.
4) Republicans can’t add. McCain aped the elephant line about not wanting to waste government spending on anything as frivolous as, say, services, except for the armed ones, of course. Meanwhile in the guise of saving money, McCain supported the Bush’s outsourcing model that meant hiring companies like Halliburton and Black Water to do stand around and not do government work, as if they could not do their jobs any better than real government workers already don’t do their jobs. Problem is if you say you want to stop wasting government money you can’t then outsource government work to private contractors because they cost more, a lot more. Paying for corporate profits on top of the cost of poorly getting your business done is not the way to save money.
5) John McCain doesn’t know what good representation is. As an AZ resident these last eight years, I have been continually amazed at Mr. Anti-Earmark’s gall to suggest that not working to steer government spending back to the home folks is what counts as good representation of the folks who elected you. McCain bragged about his record of having secured NO special projects for AZ. Gee thanks, John. Earmark spending is called pork barrel because that is the sign of the man we sent to Washington bringing home the bacon.
6) Take a flippin’ e-mail, dude, people of the 21st century are not impressed you stopped being tech savvy when 8 tracks ruled.
7) Bitchiness is still ugly even in $150, 000 worth of business suits. And if that kind of behavior is what passes for Christianity these days, it is small wonder fire and brimstone leave such a bad taste in so many people’s mouth.
8) Old War Heroes may never die, but that doesn’t mean we want to hear about it for the rest of our lives.
9) If you don’t like big government, quit. Come on McCain, everybody knows the US Gov. is the largest employer in the world and it needs to stay that way. Arguing that under your leadership you would shrink government translates out to saying that you are just as ruthless as any other selfish CEO who thinks nothing of laying off thousands of workers in favor of a bottom line.
10) Cities are where the people are. In urban counties across America Obama routinely snagged as much as 80% of the vote—Phoenix and Forth Worth being typical of the exceptions. On the complete US county map there are red state counties large enough to swallow entire New England states, But even in the reddest of states the cities went blue and when it comes down to it doesn’t matter how much land you have, dirt don’t vote.
11) In the end it didn’t matter who all the right and the media tried to adhere to Obama’s coattails the scariest affiliation remained being too closely associated with one the world’s leading terrorists: George Bush.
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Current Comedy, 11/2/08: Dewey Defeats Truman
By all rights and reasons, by the time you read this, Barack Hussein Obama should have become, or be fast on his way to becoming, the next president of the United States.
Despite all the Newsmax articles lamely linking Obama with every troublemaker from Bill Ayers to Tony Soprano (I swear!) Obama overcometh, or so it seems. Despite Fox News laughingly condescending and falsely maligning him for 18 months and Glenn Beck nightly reaching low grade orgasm in loving his loathing of the man. And Hannity and Rush and Savage and Kristol and Ingram, ad nauseum. Despite CNN pretending to journalistic integrity as they ballyhoo everybody-else’s every outlandish claim against the man. And Keith Olberman nightly discrediting liberals
Despite McCain lying about his tax cut more than one hundred times in campaign rallies and a lapdog media reporting the lie at least half as often and Palin conducting lynching parties, excuse me, I mean rallies, so Jim Crow, John Lewis himself had to step up to be crucified to get the complaint lodged. Despite being single handedly responsible for justifying the potential launch of a singing career for Joe the Plumber.
Despite the fact that many of us on the left still find ourselves analyzing how many concessions we’ve had to make with our own beliefs systems to support his campaign even though he purports to be pro-Israel, pro-Death Penalty, pro-Bailout, pro-Ethanol, Clean Coal, and anti-Single Payer Health Care.
Despite his terrorist knuckle bump, Angela Davis emulating wife, being secretly foreign born with no birth certificate, and being “officially” labeled the most liberal senator in Congress. Despite spending two years being dissed by opponents in his own party, and being hated so much by fans of the opposing party that one would fake her own beating, blacken an eye and carve a backward B into her cheek in the hopes it would somehow look right when not in a mirror, just to do her part to damage his chances.
Despite having to wake up every day and know that across the country you are probably second only to George Bush as the most hated man in America; and further knowing that only the first rounds of neo-Nazis and meth heads has yet been arrested for plotting to kill you. Knowing that if you should win the presidency the number of domestic terrorist plotting against will multiply. Despite knowing all that and still going out every day and displaying a white shirt suitable as a target.
Despite all those years secretly hanging out in Madrasas and that whole Wright-is-wrong thing, the Barry who became Barack has made the American Dream about as absolutely as can be imagined. This child’s story arc is as far a rise in American society as is possible. Twain’s Prince and the Pauper was more plausible: the two year old Black baby of divorced White female, who grows up in Indonesia and Hawaii, rises to lead a nation that once would have kept him in chains.
For Barack Obama’s story to be any more amazing he would have to sprout wings and fly, walk on water, leap tall buildings in a single bound or actually end a war, provide health care and balance a budget.
At latest count, somebody’s poll probably has him at like 70 kajillion electoral votes to McCain 41. USA Today lists nation wide voter registration increases that show new voters avoiding Republicanism like anal rashes. And yet--
And yet among many Michael Moore in what had to be one of the scariest costumes out this Halloween, the fat sloppy disillusioned liberal, comes on Democracy Now big deal Friday before Election Night episode and warns the fix is in and we have be to prepared to rise up after the fraud commences. Gore Vidal among others sends an open letter to Obama fearing fraud and begging him not to concede. The race that looks so winning is not even run yet and his supporters are already rehearsing their consolation speeches.
With the Crab bucket mentality of Republicans however, anything is possible. You know the story of the crab bucket: it doesn’t have to be too deep a hole to keep crabs captive. For any time one tries to rise up the others pull him down. As we read about the GDP contracting on the same day we see Exxon breaking new quarterly profit records, Repubs aim to win on the backs of the Average Joes they are helping hate him. The Republican scorched earth campaign has burnt many bridges that will have to be rebuilt. If Obama wins all the hate will be left over and focused on him.
But if McCain wins, as James Carville has warned, expect riots. But keep this in mind: even with thousands being thrown off the rolls, waves of voters intimidation expected, electronically aided vote flipping and absent absentee votes already reported, record voter turn-out met by minimal preparation and the typical sundry shenanigans, it should not be enough to keep this thing from still looking like anything less than a landslide.
Dewey Defeats Truman? Could be. We’ve seen some pretty far-fetched scenarios shoved down our throat during these last eight years. The possibility is not even in doubt. The question is what happens if we decide not to swallow it this time?
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.
Despite all the Newsmax articles lamely linking Obama with every troublemaker from Bill Ayers to Tony Soprano (I swear!) Obama overcometh, or so it seems. Despite Fox News laughingly condescending and falsely maligning him for 18 months and Glenn Beck nightly reaching low grade orgasm in loving his loathing of the man. And Hannity and Rush and Savage and Kristol and Ingram, ad nauseum. Despite CNN pretending to journalistic integrity as they ballyhoo everybody-else’s every outlandish claim against the man. And Keith Olberman nightly discrediting liberals
Despite McCain lying about his tax cut more than one hundred times in campaign rallies and a lapdog media reporting the lie at least half as often and Palin conducting lynching parties, excuse me, I mean rallies, so Jim Crow, John Lewis himself had to step up to be crucified to get the complaint lodged. Despite being single handedly responsible for justifying the potential launch of a singing career for Joe the Plumber.
Despite the fact that many of us on the left still find ourselves analyzing how many concessions we’ve had to make with our own beliefs systems to support his campaign even though he purports to be pro-Israel, pro-Death Penalty, pro-Bailout, pro-Ethanol, Clean Coal, and anti-Single Payer Health Care.
Despite his terrorist knuckle bump, Angela Davis emulating wife, being secretly foreign born with no birth certificate, and being “officially” labeled the most liberal senator in Congress. Despite spending two years being dissed by opponents in his own party, and being hated so much by fans of the opposing party that one would fake her own beating, blacken an eye and carve a backward B into her cheek in the hopes it would somehow look right when not in a mirror, just to do her part to damage his chances.
Despite having to wake up every day and know that across the country you are probably second only to George Bush as the most hated man in America; and further knowing that only the first rounds of neo-Nazis and meth heads has yet been arrested for plotting to kill you. Knowing that if you should win the presidency the number of domestic terrorist plotting against will multiply. Despite knowing all that and still going out every day and displaying a white shirt suitable as a target.
Despite all those years secretly hanging out in Madrasas and that whole Wright-is-wrong thing, the Barry who became Barack has made the American Dream about as absolutely as can be imagined. This child’s story arc is as far a rise in American society as is possible. Twain’s Prince and the Pauper was more plausible: the two year old Black baby of divorced White female, who grows up in Indonesia and Hawaii, rises to lead a nation that once would have kept him in chains.
For Barack Obama’s story to be any more amazing he would have to sprout wings and fly, walk on water, leap tall buildings in a single bound or actually end a war, provide health care and balance a budget.
At latest count, somebody’s poll probably has him at like 70 kajillion electoral votes to McCain 41. USA Today lists nation wide voter registration increases that show new voters avoiding Republicanism like anal rashes. And yet--
And yet among many Michael Moore in what had to be one of the scariest costumes out this Halloween, the fat sloppy disillusioned liberal, comes on Democracy Now big deal Friday before Election Night episode and warns the fix is in and we have be to prepared to rise up after the fraud commences. Gore Vidal among others sends an open letter to Obama fearing fraud and begging him not to concede. The race that looks so winning is not even run yet and his supporters are already rehearsing their consolation speeches.
With the Crab bucket mentality of Republicans however, anything is possible. You know the story of the crab bucket: it doesn’t have to be too deep a hole to keep crabs captive. For any time one tries to rise up the others pull him down. As we read about the GDP contracting on the same day we see Exxon breaking new quarterly profit records, Repubs aim to win on the backs of the Average Joes they are helping hate him. The Republican scorched earth campaign has burnt many bridges that will have to be rebuilt. If Obama wins all the hate will be left over and focused on him.
But if McCain wins, as James Carville has warned, expect riots. But keep this in mind: even with thousands being thrown off the rolls, waves of voters intimidation expected, electronically aided vote flipping and absent absentee votes already reported, record voter turn-out met by minimal preparation and the typical sundry shenanigans, it should not be enough to keep this thing from still looking like anything less than a landslide.
Dewey Defeats Truman? Could be. We’ve seen some pretty far-fetched scenarios shoved down our throat during these last eight years. The possibility is not even in doubt. The question is what happens if we decide not to swallow it this time?
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona.
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