Like many around the country I waited with baited breath, laptop open, pen in one hand and remote in the other to take notes on the Tuesday Oct. 7th, 2008 debate. After the amazing entertainment value of the Biden-Palin sideshow (AKA Say-it-Ain’t-So Joe V. the Gorilla from Wasilla) just a few days earlier, like many among the 70 million of us who watched Biden pummel Palin, I was tuned in and psyched up.
However after an hour and half of the candidates and about that much time with the commentators (not to be confused with the high class taters or the sweetpea taters) I find, to appropriate the ruling cliché of these times, “no one hit one out of the ballpark, so I guess we’ll call it a tie.”
Of course in Biden-Palin, you had the under-card upstarts swinging as wildly as they felt they could get away with. Palin, for example, at that point felt all she could get away with were simple distortions of the Dems record. However emboldened by MSM’s giving her a pass plus WAY too many points credit on the grounds “she doesn’t fail quite as miserably as we expected, so that means she did great,” by Saturday Palin was a wild woman wielding the T-word, “Terrorist,” as if she were the latest version of a wannabe McCarthy-ite testing out the latest red-baiting jingoism. And as Democracy Now watchers know, by the end of the weekend she was comfortable enough to let her audience members call out for Obama’s death.
If not stopped she’ll be pissing on cars at intersections by next week. So, in the interest of the public good and for the protection of paintjobs everywhere, I will devote the rest of this week’s column to some of the old “gotcha soundbite journalism” Republicans so loathe. You know, where they say something that clearly reveals their vile character or evil intentions, thinking that they are safely in a crowd of equally vile characters, and then some awful commie exploitive journalist catches them on an open mic. Republicans call this “gotcha soundbite journalism.”
I call it “truth hurts, don’t it?”
Displaying his typical bitter and dismissive sense of humor, McCain undercut his vague talking points by prefacing most of his expositions with derogatory remarks aimed chiefly to insult Obama, but also having enough bile to insult mediator Tom Brokaw at least once. It was a supposedly refined version of the Palin wail, but it was still the grotesque sound of McCain flailing dirt with both fists. Of course, when he’s playing the game that way, you can’t help but enjoy the gotchas.
One of my favorite early ones was when McCain tried to tar Obama with the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae crisis, and says he “[bets] most people never heard of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae before the crisis.” Since the twin companies were the nation’s biggest home lenders, it seems McCain loses his bet, but wait, double-down, Obama then gotchas McCain himself by sharing the underreported factoid tidbit that none other than the voice of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, lobbyist extraordinaire Rick Davis, was a chief organizer of McCain’s Campaign. GA-CHUH!
Another good gotcha was the way McCain again attempted to fashion himself as Mr. Anti-Earmark. Quite the image, however, while he was busy trying to grab credit for his non-role in crafting and selling the repub Senate bill which amounted to the House bill from earlier in the week, one had to reflect that the substantive difference between the two is the Senate version was draped in a representative’s favorite fabric: pork. Mr. Anti-earmark is trying to take credit for 150 billion of taxbreaks and porkbarrel spending. He tries to embarrass Obama as a contributor to the 16 billion invested in hometown projects and then tries to take credit for ten times that amount. Gotcha again.
Other good gotchas include McCain’s faint smearing of Obama for not “talking softly and carrying a big stick” to which Obama replied by singing the McCain hit, “Bomb-bomb-bomb Bomb-bomb Iran” right back at him. Or there’s McCain crowing “we can never allow a second holocaust” besides the one he cheerleads for that we’re conducting in Iraq. And how about Obama nipping McCain’s Pinocchi-nose down to a nub, regarding their competing tax cut plans by twice slapping down McCain prevarications about his $700,000 tax cut for CEOs.
There’s the Cheney-to-Bush-to-McCain weapons of mass deception triple play gotcha of McCain’s near foaming at the mouth accusation that if the US were to follow the Obama Iraq Peace Plan, “Al Qaeda would reestablish their base in Iraq.” If only he could have had Lieberman as a lifeline.
Perhaps the most expensive gotcha was when McCain tried to dance around discussing potential revisions in Social Security and Medicare. Even when prodded to address Medicare he feinted away, hoping the rest of us didn’t know that that same day it was reported his economic plan includes cutting one point three trillion out of Medicare. Now that’s some big league gotcha.
Almost as good a gotcha came when the bitter McCain attempted the bait and switch as Obama came up for the after the match handshake. McCain offered his wife, Cindy’s, hand first and then slipped off leaving Obama hanging. The gotcha supposedly goes to McCain, except that the whole exchange was caught centerstage on film, already available on a You Tube near you and so the whole world gets to watch McCain be an ass. Gotcha right back.
Then the sweetest part, the gotcha that keeps on giving came after an hour and a half of watching McCain be a smug self-righteous jerk, a wannabe Bush in Reagan clothing, it came after the CNN commentators obligatorily called the debate a tie (Which is mainstream media-speak for “the Dem kicked the crap out of the Republican, but our sponsors don’t allow us to say that, but since you were just then watching it with your own eyes yourself, we have to say something that seems believable if we repeat it a under times and only replay the parts we want you to see.”)
It came as we watched when the pundits pilloried McCain for getting hoisted on his own petard of mudslinging and shallow promises as the after-debate polls slid ever farther the Obama way.
Lordy, Lordy how it takes me back to about four + years ago just before the ’04 RNC convention. McCain sells off in his renegade-among-republicans status for a slow-dance with the decider in chief. The maverick let himself be branded. And now, like all the other rats going down with the Bush-ship, McCain is finally wising up to the old adage, “you got to dance with the one that brung ya.” Oh that last look on McCain’s face as you could see him watching his hopes sink slowly in the west.
Gotcha.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Quick Take: Biden By Da Landslide
I don't know which debate some folks were watching (particularly the commentators on CNN), but i saw Palin caught being shrill, phony, ignorant, dishonest, narrow, clichéd and obvious about it, bitchy and out-classed repeatedly; and as Rady Ananda pointed out, there was that time she seemed affected by Biden and stammered, looked flummoxed and desperate, for the space of several questions. For a while she was undone.
I don't consider her avoiding questions scoring points especially as baldly as she did it, especially as often, and most especially the fact that each time she blew off the questions to return to her script, it was such a narrow script on energy plans, and being vague about the greed on Wall Street. Most importantly i saw her straight-facedly advance some of the most transparent attempted deceptions of the McCain camp about his less than stellar record and her lack of one.
Also in her back into her own messes way, Palin gave reference to the real reason she was on the ticket: Alaska oil and gas, including the huge natural gas pipeline she symbolically waved as a show of her power, but instead it revealed that it wasn’t about the lipstick or the pit bull with Palin in the end. With Palin it’s more about getting Alaska and putting up with her, than any other consideration of why she’s claimed to have tapped for this role.
Many said Biden had to win by not bullying her, while all the while trashing McCain and Bush and he did that so many times Palin eventually chided him for looking back and jaw-droppingly acknowledged the Bush admin had made blunders. She even repeated herself and you could imagine the collective hiss from the steam letting out of the GOP Watch Parties across the country.
I saw Biden slam home several points that were played with style and cleverness, including more than once getting a zinger last word on a subject and Palin getting no chance to refute, leaving her unsettled to start her next round. Well played. I also saw him slap down GOP BS when she tried to spread it, like on the Vote to cut funding for the troops thing when Biden noted McCain did the same thing and the campaign’s respective tax plans.
Watching on CNN we saw a graphic supposedly of lines reflecting "Undecided Ohio Voters" broken down by men and women. We saw Palin at negative or flat-lined a majority of the time with these voters and Biden repeatedly scoring, particularly with women to a point where the EKG like scrolling graph topped out, climbed all the way to the top of the chart then slid along the upper edge, particularly on lines about education and Bush being scum. The tale of the tape on this one showed that much of the time, particularly in the later portions of the debate, the audience whether or not the audience agreed or disagreed, most of the time they could’ve cared less just as long as she’d stop speaking since they’d all already heard it before.
Biden scored one of his biggest moments when Palin, by his (and by my) reckoning, misinterpreted the Constitution about the legislative powers of the vice president. Biden hit that one in the sweet spot on his reply that reaffirms the rabid liberals who were once Obama's base. As the Illinois Senator has rushed to the middle of the road those initially inspired have had their enthusiasm somewhat tempered by his transformation from a member of the choir Wright was preaching to, to a moderate Afghan War loving, Israel loving, Off-shore Oil Drilling 'Democrat-style Commodity." The poor man has been bleached of as much color as is possible without totally cooling off his base.
So, when Palin poorly asserted that she looked forward to the powers of the Vice President in the Senate, and imagined to what extent can 'he,' or god forbid in this case 'she,' craft and direct legislation. She then obligatorily tossed Dick Cheney a prop for his work with muscling Congress. Biden then gave was undoubtedly the liberals rallying cry quote: Biden made a point of looking straight at the camera and said, "Dick Cheney is the most dangerous vice president this country has ever had."
That's a line that me and millions like me needed to hear to keep our faith.
So many pundits watching the show measured it by how well or not well they perceived Palin; but Biden was also in a position to sell a plan and hit one, or several, out of the park.
As far as i'm concerned he did just that.
I don't consider her avoiding questions scoring points especially as baldly as she did it, especially as often, and most especially the fact that each time she blew off the questions to return to her script, it was such a narrow script on energy plans, and being vague about the greed on Wall Street. Most importantly i saw her straight-facedly advance some of the most transparent attempted deceptions of the McCain camp about his less than stellar record and her lack of one.
Also in her back into her own messes way, Palin gave reference to the real reason she was on the ticket: Alaska oil and gas, including the huge natural gas pipeline she symbolically waved as a show of her power, but instead it revealed that it wasn’t about the lipstick or the pit bull with Palin in the end. With Palin it’s more about getting Alaska and putting up with her, than any other consideration of why she’s claimed to have tapped for this role.
Many said Biden had to win by not bullying her, while all the while trashing McCain and Bush and he did that so many times Palin eventually chided him for looking back and jaw-droppingly acknowledged the Bush admin had made blunders. She even repeated herself and you could imagine the collective hiss from the steam letting out of the GOP Watch Parties across the country.
I saw Biden slam home several points that were played with style and cleverness, including more than once getting a zinger last word on a subject and Palin getting no chance to refute, leaving her unsettled to start her next round. Well played. I also saw him slap down GOP BS when she tried to spread it, like on the Vote to cut funding for the troops thing when Biden noted McCain did the same thing and the campaign’s respective tax plans.
Watching on CNN we saw a graphic supposedly of lines reflecting "Undecided Ohio Voters" broken down by men and women. We saw Palin at negative or flat-lined a majority of the time with these voters and Biden repeatedly scoring, particularly with women to a point where the EKG like scrolling graph topped out, climbed all the way to the top of the chart then slid along the upper edge, particularly on lines about education and Bush being scum. The tale of the tape on this one showed that much of the time, particularly in the later portions of the debate, the audience whether or not the audience agreed or disagreed, most of the time they could’ve cared less just as long as she’d stop speaking since they’d all already heard it before.
Biden scored one of his biggest moments when Palin, by his (and by my) reckoning, misinterpreted the Constitution about the legislative powers of the vice president. Biden hit that one in the sweet spot on his reply that reaffirms the rabid liberals who were once Obama's base. As the Illinois Senator has rushed to the middle of the road those initially inspired have had their enthusiasm somewhat tempered by his transformation from a member of the choir Wright was preaching to, to a moderate Afghan War loving, Israel loving, Off-shore Oil Drilling 'Democrat-style Commodity." The poor man has been bleached of as much color as is possible without totally cooling off his base.
So, when Palin poorly asserted that she looked forward to the powers of the Vice President in the Senate, and imagined to what extent can 'he,' or god forbid in this case 'she,' craft and direct legislation. She then obligatorily tossed Dick Cheney a prop for his work with muscling Congress. Biden then gave was undoubtedly the liberals rallying cry quote: Biden made a point of looking straight at the camera and said, "Dick Cheney is the most dangerous vice president this country has ever had."
That's a line that me and millions like me needed to hear to keep our faith.
So many pundits watching the show measured it by how well or not well they perceived Palin; but Biden was also in a position to sell a plan and hit one, or several, out of the park.
As far as i'm concerned he did just that.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Current Comedy, 9/30/08: Aussie Rudd Condemns American People While Senate Readies Tax Cuts
As the impact of the citizen propelled revolt against the failed US House of Representatives $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street crashed markets around the world, Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tisked our interference in his markets and urged Congress to get on with it. Off with you, Cheerio, and all that. In so doing Rudd joined the wrongheaded chorus of leaders stunned by the fact the people remembered the fact they have the right to speak.
What Rudd was complaining about is Americans actually taking the time to run their own flipping country. As is typical the rich and powerful complain that the citizenry have no will and no voice, until we show some and then they say we have no brains. Sure, we hear the powerful condemn the people, but still we do not hear about how much Rudd or Britain’s Gordon Brown are offering to help pay for the bailout they are insisting we Americans must tolerate having to pay for.
Meanwhile back at home challenging our security, the US Senate is preparing for round two of the bailout battle and intending to roll out a similar bailout proposal except with the extra added bell and whistle of … come on, guess. You got it! More tax breaks for business! As reported by Yahoo, “Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., [has] called it ‘a brilliant move’ that will ‘help pick up votes on both sides of the aisle.” Will the people call out again against this Congressional boondoggle of robbing the poor to further the rich, or will we once again succumb to the Neo-Con drug of choice, the tax break.
And if we resist, will we be heard? Or is the actual question, how loudly will we have to speak to heard, if it comes to that.
The way the bail out reads, banks around the world are already lining up for the gravy train, while no real provisions are made to help those millions of Americans already suffering real not inflated losses. For all the damages the markets have done to real people throughout the years, I say let them collapses all the way back to zero like the credit houses did at the end of Fight Club. Know what the third rule of Fight Club? No, your profit margin is not more important than me feeding my family.
Remember: Wall Street is a game, a sham, a pack of lies agreed upon. The “money” Wall Street generates is based on speculation, not actual goods or services produced. It is largely about people buying and selling each other ideas about wealth: the value of the image of a company, a bank’s line of credit, not the investors life savings, a housing market not a real house, the future value of pork parts. The market does not have to behave the way it does. It’s a choice. The GOP did not have to deregulate and allow them to be as nasty as they want to be either. That was also a choice.
Just as nobody is forcing the banks to tighten credit on each other except the government, just because predatory practices have become the norm, it doesn’t mean that is the only way you are allowed to act. On Tuesday, following the fabled Market plunge of one point two trillion in value, when everyone should have been cautious and could have been considerate, they were back in business, buying, selling and screwing each other over as usual as often as they could, once again licking their lips in anticipation of the upcoming government paid for golden parachute.
If only the people would shut their mouths and keep quiet.
Meanwhile Congress and the President shove Wall Street in our faces and try to tell us that their artificial markets with their artificial rules should have the right to take real food our of our mouths and throw us in the streets for the plutocracy’s continued comfort. And yet, we see that the crisis, as oh so terrible as it is supposed to be, wasn't actually important enough for congress to work through a holiday for. Oh, how important Congress was this weekend when they "burnt the midnight oil" Saturday because of the "crisis.” No wonder they took Sunday off to let the aides type stuff up. But come Monday they had to act right away or else the markets would be lost. And then when their scheme fell through because all America roared, "HELL NO!" suddenly the crisis wasn't important enough to work through Tuesday.
I know it’s a religious holiday, but hey, we've been working through Ramadan. Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas. People do stuff during the holidays ... when it’s really important.
Well folks, this one really is that important, and We-the-People all need to keep working. It doesn’t matter which Naomi you lust or listen to, Naomi Wolf or Naomi Klein, America is at the edge of dictatorship. The Bilderbergs are only guaranteed to win if we don’t shove back. Every anti-Bush issue across the spectrum is embodied in this bailout. This is the outrageously diabolical Bush world paradigm cratering under its own weight of lies.
This is the whole kill billions for trillions in oil profits that has us in so much hot water over global warming. This is the war bought as freedom, but sold for money; and so willing middleclass thugs could go torture and destroy brown skinned people for god and country. This is the Department of Interior partying it up with sex, drugs and oil company lobbyists as they rape the environment for their buddies in big business and terrorize hippies at the Rainbow Gatherings because of a smell in the air. This is every freedom we’ve traded for a scrap of security deserving neither.
Realize this: if the best possible scenarios being woven actually occur, the same Uncle Sam we’ve allowed to usurp near dictatorial powers, will, by necessity, “forced by the mechanisms of the market,” end up being the owner of the homes and businesses of millions. If that happens then the terrorist really have won and they’ve done it while waving a US flag.
This is still our chance. This is still our country. Time to show we still deserve it.
-mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ
What Rudd was complaining about is Americans actually taking the time to run their own flipping country. As is typical the rich and powerful complain that the citizenry have no will and no voice, until we show some and then they say we have no brains. Sure, we hear the powerful condemn the people, but still we do not hear about how much Rudd or Britain’s Gordon Brown are offering to help pay for the bailout they are insisting we Americans must tolerate having to pay for.
Meanwhile back at home challenging our security, the US Senate is preparing for round two of the bailout battle and intending to roll out a similar bailout proposal except with the extra added bell and whistle of … come on, guess. You got it! More tax breaks for business! As reported by Yahoo, “Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., [has] called it ‘a brilliant move’ that will ‘help pick up votes on both sides of the aisle.” Will the people call out again against this Congressional boondoggle of robbing the poor to further the rich, or will we once again succumb to the Neo-Con drug of choice, the tax break.
And if we resist, will we be heard? Or is the actual question, how loudly will we have to speak to heard, if it comes to that.
The way the bail out reads, banks around the world are already lining up for the gravy train, while no real provisions are made to help those millions of Americans already suffering real not inflated losses. For all the damages the markets have done to real people throughout the years, I say let them collapses all the way back to zero like the credit houses did at the end of Fight Club. Know what the third rule of Fight Club? No, your profit margin is not more important than me feeding my family.
Remember: Wall Street is a game, a sham, a pack of lies agreed upon. The “money” Wall Street generates is based on speculation, not actual goods or services produced. It is largely about people buying and selling each other ideas about wealth: the value of the image of a company, a bank’s line of credit, not the investors life savings, a housing market not a real house, the future value of pork parts. The market does not have to behave the way it does. It’s a choice. The GOP did not have to deregulate and allow them to be as nasty as they want to be either. That was also a choice.
Just as nobody is forcing the banks to tighten credit on each other except the government, just because predatory practices have become the norm, it doesn’t mean that is the only way you are allowed to act. On Tuesday, following the fabled Market plunge of one point two trillion in value, when everyone should have been cautious and could have been considerate, they were back in business, buying, selling and screwing each other over as usual as often as they could, once again licking their lips in anticipation of the upcoming government paid for golden parachute.
If only the people would shut their mouths and keep quiet.
Meanwhile Congress and the President shove Wall Street in our faces and try to tell us that their artificial markets with their artificial rules should have the right to take real food our of our mouths and throw us in the streets for the plutocracy’s continued comfort. And yet, we see that the crisis, as oh so terrible as it is supposed to be, wasn't actually important enough for congress to work through a holiday for. Oh, how important Congress was this weekend when they "burnt the midnight oil" Saturday because of the "crisis.” No wonder they took Sunday off to let the aides type stuff up. But come Monday they had to act right away or else the markets would be lost. And then when their scheme fell through because all America roared, "HELL NO!" suddenly the crisis wasn't important enough to work through Tuesday.
I know it’s a religious holiday, but hey, we've been working through Ramadan. Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas. People do stuff during the holidays ... when it’s really important.
Well folks, this one really is that important, and We-the-People all need to keep working. It doesn’t matter which Naomi you lust or listen to, Naomi Wolf or Naomi Klein, America is at the edge of dictatorship. The Bilderbergs are only guaranteed to win if we don’t shove back. Every anti-Bush issue across the spectrum is embodied in this bailout. This is the outrageously diabolical Bush world paradigm cratering under its own weight of lies.
This is the whole kill billions for trillions in oil profits that has us in so much hot water over global warming. This is the war bought as freedom, but sold for money; and so willing middleclass thugs could go torture and destroy brown skinned people for god and country. This is the Department of Interior partying it up with sex, drugs and oil company lobbyists as they rape the environment for their buddies in big business and terrorize hippies at the Rainbow Gatherings because of a smell in the air. This is every freedom we’ve traded for a scrap of security deserving neither.
Realize this: if the best possible scenarios being woven actually occur, the same Uncle Sam we’ve allowed to usurp near dictatorial powers, will, by necessity, “forced by the mechanisms of the market,” end up being the owner of the homes and businesses of millions. If that happens then the terrorist really have won and they’ve done it while waving a US flag.
This is still our chance. This is still our country. Time to show we still deserve it.
-mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Current Comedy, 9/29/08:The Pack of Lies We Are Expected to Agree To
As I predicted in last week’s laugh-fest, the administration has begun the cracking heads of those guilty of the crime of being all too visibly poor. The first of the NWO’s new century Hoovervilles to be attacked was homeless settlement in Seattle, Washington known as Nickleville. Following the government thrashing, the homeless residents fled to a nearby parking lot to await their next beating. Just like the rest of us.
Also, as predicted but not written about before, having had a week to digest the predigested news they are force-fed, the rightwing would-be wonkettes who hang out at my workplace watercooler have begun to regurgitate neo-con pundit pap like: “As much as I hate it, you’ve got to bail out Wall Street, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give MY money to help out some knucklehead down the street who wouldn’t make his house payments.” (I swear, actual quote.) Of course these are the same people who are still feeling obligated to go ga-ga over how funny and smart Sarah Palin is.
As I type (evening, 9/29/08), led by the recurring unholy alliance of Denis Kucinich and the House GOP with their ever predictable Blue Dog tagalongs, Congress has turned down round one of the Bush Bailout. In response, the Market dropped an inconceivable one point two TRILLION dollars in worth today alone. That translates out to about twice what we’ve spent thus far on the Iraq War. Imagine: Iraq Times Two. And it didn’t really kill our country even once. Yet.
Though to listen to the Bush line, all loyal Americans should have died last week of anaphylactic shock when Congress failed to pass his conveniently timed bailout bill on Friday 9/26/08. Yet somehow even when Congress again failed with the slightly refined version of the bill on Monday 9/29/08, the TV kept selling me cars, movies and hemorrhoid creams.
To hear Kucinich tell it, the Bush Administration’s recent harassment of banks might’ve been the final precipitating agent in the hot new fashion of bank collapse. Interviewed Monday morning by Democracy Now just prior to the House discussion and ultimate down vote on the bill, Kucinich noted, “A former head of the FDIC [told] a group of congressmen yesterday that the Bush administration has been going around the last few weeks, actually, so tightening up on the practices of banks that they were forcing them to have bigger reserves, which …would … create the kind of tight money policies that we’re saying we’re trying to alleviate with this bill…. There’s a possibility that this crisis has a little bit of manufacture to it.”
Imagine that: like the Iraq War, sold with phony urgencies and covert provocations. Paulson wonders why Americans were outraged over his demand for zero oversight and accountability. Why don’t we trust “Good Ol’ Hankie-Wankie”? I’ve got just four letters for you Mr. Bush Cabinet member: WMDs. From that point on, even the most loyal American had the right to challenge the pronouncements of this administration. Not just the right, but the obligation; that is if they were loyal Americans in the first place.
And who should we trust, among these players? Perhaps Padre Paulson, of late of Goldman-Sachs, who first helped create the collapse from both ends (both Wall Street and the Whitehouse) and now will benefit from the aid he is attempting to empower himself to bestow? Maybe we should trust Nancy Pelosi, who has so much riding on the rest of us saving her stock at AIG. How about Bush? Should we trust him? Ok, just kidding, after all, this is a comedy column. According to Paul Begala on The Daily Show Bush is up to an 82% disapproval rating, which puts him right up there with anal injection of habenero paste.
I say don’t trust any of them. None of them are talking holding folks accountable, like George “The Uniter” Bush who succeeded in throwing us all into debt back in 2001 when he pressured the mortgage industry to target minority and low-income buyers; or John “The Great Deregulator” (his own moniker) McCain who in 1999 basically undid oodles of the Roosevelt era protections that were made so Americans would never have to find ourselves in this predicament again. Thanks fellas!
Nobody, not even my neo-con water cooler workmates, is talking about the evil financial instrument that has undone so many Americans over the last few years and is the citizen’s side of this mortgage-financial crisis: the ARM, the Adjustable Rate Mortgage. People sign-on on a loan at one rate and in a couple of years, the rate changes whether they can pay it or not. Also a true story--I lost some friends not long ago who had to move to a new town after having lost their home. He’s a fireman, she’s a teacher, supposedly American bedrock professions, but the house they purchased at a manageable $1000 per month ballooned to $1600 a month after two years and they were screwed. I guarantee you the ARM is the biggest villain in this psychodrama, which is so not about Wall Street investment bankers taking a giant soaking and losing 90% of their wealth, leaving them with mere hundreds of millions, like poor Hank Paulson.
And that is the biggest ugliest truth in this week’s situation comedy that nobody is acknowledging: the fact we the people have let our leaders tie the fate of our country of hundreds of millions to the gambles made by the few to joist with each other with levels of unimaginable money such as the rest of us will never see--except incrementally as it leaves our pockets in taxes to subsidize their gamesmanship.
And don’t give me that nonsense about the Stock market isn’t some sinister plutocracy, but instead it’s the millions of us Americans who have our money tied into the market through various retirement accounts and what all. We’re for the most part just mindless sheep that have been told to trust and did so. This is how we’re rewarded for believing in our country.
We’re not the ones who created half a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives so hedge fund managers could gamble with the whole world’s life savings the way the Dutch once gambled away Europe’s wealth in the Great Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Nor did we dream up predatory lenders, nor are we the ones trying to give away our country to them. This is just another case in a long series of occasions where the rich decide to collapse the market to see how much more dough they can shake loose.
But they aren’t the ones winding up in the Hooverville, nor the ones who will get their heads cracked when they’re stay poor becomes to annoying for the people in power. Please, if we really have 700 billion available to help the economy, let's spend it on the people and invest our energies, instead of our dollars, on re-regulating the markets, eliminating ARMs, and prosecuting Wall Street billionaires for so defrauding our public. Then let's also look into the efforts of the Bush admin to precipitate this crisis and Paulson should be at the top of the list. That is Wall Street reform that would do Americans some good.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Also, as predicted but not written about before, having had a week to digest the predigested news they are force-fed, the rightwing would-be wonkettes who hang out at my workplace watercooler have begun to regurgitate neo-con pundit pap like: “As much as I hate it, you’ve got to bail out Wall Street, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna give MY money to help out some knucklehead down the street who wouldn’t make his house payments.” (I swear, actual quote.) Of course these are the same people who are still feeling obligated to go ga-ga over how funny and smart Sarah Palin is.
As I type (evening, 9/29/08), led by the recurring unholy alliance of Denis Kucinich and the House GOP with their ever predictable Blue Dog tagalongs, Congress has turned down round one of the Bush Bailout. In response, the Market dropped an inconceivable one point two TRILLION dollars in worth today alone. That translates out to about twice what we’ve spent thus far on the Iraq War. Imagine: Iraq Times Two. And it didn’t really kill our country even once. Yet.
Though to listen to the Bush line, all loyal Americans should have died last week of anaphylactic shock when Congress failed to pass his conveniently timed bailout bill on Friday 9/26/08. Yet somehow even when Congress again failed with the slightly refined version of the bill on Monday 9/29/08, the TV kept selling me cars, movies and hemorrhoid creams.
To hear Kucinich tell it, the Bush Administration’s recent harassment of banks might’ve been the final precipitating agent in the hot new fashion of bank collapse. Interviewed Monday morning by Democracy Now just prior to the House discussion and ultimate down vote on the bill, Kucinich noted, “A former head of the FDIC [told] a group of congressmen yesterday that the Bush administration has been going around the last few weeks, actually, so tightening up on the practices of banks that they were forcing them to have bigger reserves, which …would … create the kind of tight money policies that we’re saying we’re trying to alleviate with this bill…. There’s a possibility that this crisis has a little bit of manufacture to it.”
Imagine that: like the Iraq War, sold with phony urgencies and covert provocations. Paulson wonders why Americans were outraged over his demand for zero oversight and accountability. Why don’t we trust “Good Ol’ Hankie-Wankie”? I’ve got just four letters for you Mr. Bush Cabinet member: WMDs. From that point on, even the most loyal American had the right to challenge the pronouncements of this administration. Not just the right, but the obligation; that is if they were loyal Americans in the first place.
And who should we trust, among these players? Perhaps Padre Paulson, of late of Goldman-Sachs, who first helped create the collapse from both ends (both Wall Street and the Whitehouse) and now will benefit from the aid he is attempting to empower himself to bestow? Maybe we should trust Nancy Pelosi, who has so much riding on the rest of us saving her stock at AIG. How about Bush? Should we trust him? Ok, just kidding, after all, this is a comedy column. According to Paul Begala on The Daily Show Bush is up to an 82% disapproval rating, which puts him right up there with anal injection of habenero paste.
I say don’t trust any of them. None of them are talking holding folks accountable, like George “The Uniter” Bush who succeeded in throwing us all into debt back in 2001 when he pressured the mortgage industry to target minority and low-income buyers; or John “The Great Deregulator” (his own moniker) McCain who in 1999 basically undid oodles of the Roosevelt era protections that were made so Americans would never have to find ourselves in this predicament again. Thanks fellas!
Nobody, not even my neo-con water cooler workmates, is talking about the evil financial instrument that has undone so many Americans over the last few years and is the citizen’s side of this mortgage-financial crisis: the ARM, the Adjustable Rate Mortgage. People sign-on on a loan at one rate and in a couple of years, the rate changes whether they can pay it or not. Also a true story--I lost some friends not long ago who had to move to a new town after having lost their home. He’s a fireman, she’s a teacher, supposedly American bedrock professions, but the house they purchased at a manageable $1000 per month ballooned to $1600 a month after two years and they were screwed. I guarantee you the ARM is the biggest villain in this psychodrama, which is so not about Wall Street investment bankers taking a giant soaking and losing 90% of their wealth, leaving them with mere hundreds of millions, like poor Hank Paulson.
And that is the biggest ugliest truth in this week’s situation comedy that nobody is acknowledging: the fact we the people have let our leaders tie the fate of our country of hundreds of millions to the gambles made by the few to joist with each other with levels of unimaginable money such as the rest of us will never see--except incrementally as it leaves our pockets in taxes to subsidize their gamesmanship.
And don’t give me that nonsense about the Stock market isn’t some sinister plutocracy, but instead it’s the millions of us Americans who have our money tied into the market through various retirement accounts and what all. We’re for the most part just mindless sheep that have been told to trust and did so. This is how we’re rewarded for believing in our country.
We’re not the ones who created half a quadrillion dollars worth of derivatives so hedge fund managers could gamble with the whole world’s life savings the way the Dutch once gambled away Europe’s wealth in the Great Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Nor did we dream up predatory lenders, nor are we the ones trying to give away our country to them. This is just another case in a long series of occasions where the rich decide to collapse the market to see how much more dough they can shake loose.
But they aren’t the ones winding up in the Hooverville, nor the ones who will get their heads cracked when they’re stay poor becomes to annoying for the people in power. Please, if we really have 700 billion available to help the economy, let's spend it on the people and invest our energies, instead of our dollars, on re-regulating the markets, eliminating ARMs, and prosecuting Wall Street billionaires for so defrauding our public. Then let's also look into the efforts of the Bush admin to precipitate this crisis and Paulson should be at the top of the list. That is Wall Street reform that would do Americans some good.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Current Comedy, 9/22/08: Every Conspiracy Theorist’s Worst Nightmare: US
Current Comedy, 9/22/08: Every Conspiracy Theorist’s Worst Nightmare: US
Greetings from So-Hi.
Out below, in my front horizon, is a stretch of highway 68 known as Union Pass. It is the straight line across the horseshoe bend on I-40 at the western Arizona border. Over the Black Mountains, where trains couldn’t go and so Route 66 didn’t follow, from Kingman the route runs west 27 miles and in the last 12 falls 3000 feet to Bullhead City, the fabled Colorado and the casinos of Laughlin Nevada, or, a hundred miles farther up the road, the casinos of Las Vegas.
At night, the stars trail down out of the mountains to crawl across Golden Valley below. It’s quite a sight, endless. These days 68 flows through here day and night. It is the alternative route for points East to Vegas and the only one for trucks and heavy vehicles, a detour around the Hoover Dam, every since the terrorists won back in ’01.
I see my share of traffic up close as well.
I drive that pass to work and often watch the trucks along the way, noting the armored vehicles being hauled west. I spot them more often than I’d like. Flat bed trailers, not always military rigs towing them, weaponry lunging like roped animals with each highway jostle, cannons strapped to the deck tugging at their tether. Machine gun barrels ropes in place, windows taped over. Bradleys, Humvees, trucks, incomprehensible wheeled vehicles with arms and levers, and the tanks, at least a tank a month that I see, driven through this route, west. Where do they go, you can’t help but wonder.
This week, 9/22/08, I hope I didn’t get an answer. But it appears this election round’s October Surprise may be a little livelier than I’d been expecting, having hoped for cupcakes. It looks like the Bush Admin Homeland Security is preparing for the next front in the War on Terror right here at home: terrorizing Americans so we’ll shut up about impeaching and or arresting Bush or any other crowd sized reaction to the disasters he’s created for us.
Army Times reported it, Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman echoed it, and now everyone’s message board from Ron Paul to Nine Inch Nails is buzzing with the fact that a unit from our forces in Iraq, the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, is being deployed to … the US.
That’s right, now the enemy is us.
Somebody page Alex Jones and let him know his padded cell at the Denver Detention Center is ready. If there really are Bilderbergs, this looks like an EndGame. The article goes on to say that the unit is being prepared if “called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called non-lethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.”
Flaunting the once sacrosanct Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of US soldiers against US citizens, the Bush move is the first time an actual active army fighting force has been designated to a strategic planning military group known as the US Army North. That’s right from the Northern Command, every conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare, the same folk who bring you the martial law drills every year. They would also be the same ones back about seven years ago who created those hijack plane drills that happened to take place on the exact same day real planes were crashed into the Twin Towers—the ominous mystery men in films like Dylan Avery’s Loose Change and Zeitgeist. The first line of defense in a case of national emergency or martial law.
Perhaps the soldiers are in actuality preparing for something that will never take place and we leftwing discredited are panicking over nothing. The government is just being prepared, providing for a common defense. Hey, there will probably be a peaceful transfer of power come January and no one will object in the slightest to any of Bush’s actions between now and then and any election results between now and then. Maybe I’m just nuts. OK, we know I’m nuts, but maybe I’m nuts and wrong. Maybe the Neo-cons are the nice people they always say they are and they have no need to fear they will ever be held accountable for the rape-fest they’ve been having with Lady Liberty these last eight years.
But maybe Bushco is scared. I know I would be. The house of greed Repub “Free Market” policies built, in part led by good old John McCain’s deregulation efforts in the late 90s, have opened the door for the greatest economic disaster/swindle in history, a national economic disaster to the tune of 700 billion dollars, even topping Brother Neil Bush and company’s half a trillion dollar S&L scandal in the 80s. It is another case where everyone’s money will be going to the richest 1%--another case where the very people who claim to detest class warfare fire the first shot.
First Bushco gives energy companies the license to pillage then gives social program money to war profiteers with a phony war he knows is unwinnable while neglecting the war in Afghanistan and the misery we still manage to create there and all the while managing to find the spare time to screw over both the environment and lobbyist bought hookers, or least that’s how the ballers’ roll in the Denver offices of Dept. of Interior these days. And now, giving what ever is left Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG for screwing up by being too greedy. America can no longer afford her people, the rich need their money.
And the millions of mortgages that have been held by those companies, will now be owned by your favorite uncle, Big Brother Bush. No need for elections when this kind of class warfare turns to shooting warfare. Call in the army and open the cages. This could make Hoover’s Bonus Army debacle look like an Easter Egg roll.
Now I know where all those tanks and trucks and weapons of mass destruction are headed: home to roost.
--mikel weisser writes from the west coast of AZ.
Greetings from So-Hi.
Out below, in my front horizon, is a stretch of highway 68 known as Union Pass. It is the straight line across the horseshoe bend on I-40 at the western Arizona border. Over the Black Mountains, where trains couldn’t go and so Route 66 didn’t follow, from Kingman the route runs west 27 miles and in the last 12 falls 3000 feet to Bullhead City, the fabled Colorado and the casinos of Laughlin Nevada, or, a hundred miles farther up the road, the casinos of Las Vegas.
At night, the stars trail down out of the mountains to crawl across Golden Valley below. It’s quite a sight, endless. These days 68 flows through here day and night. It is the alternative route for points East to Vegas and the only one for trucks and heavy vehicles, a detour around the Hoover Dam, every since the terrorists won back in ’01.
I see my share of traffic up close as well.
I drive that pass to work and often watch the trucks along the way, noting the armored vehicles being hauled west. I spot them more often than I’d like. Flat bed trailers, not always military rigs towing them, weaponry lunging like roped animals with each highway jostle, cannons strapped to the deck tugging at their tether. Machine gun barrels ropes in place, windows taped over. Bradleys, Humvees, trucks, incomprehensible wheeled vehicles with arms and levers, and the tanks, at least a tank a month that I see, driven through this route, west. Where do they go, you can’t help but wonder.
This week, 9/22/08, I hope I didn’t get an answer. But it appears this election round’s October Surprise may be a little livelier than I’d been expecting, having hoped for cupcakes. It looks like the Bush Admin Homeland Security is preparing for the next front in the War on Terror right here at home: terrorizing Americans so we’ll shut up about impeaching and or arresting Bush or any other crowd sized reaction to the disasters he’s created for us.
Army Times reported it, Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman echoed it, and now everyone’s message board from Ron Paul to Nine Inch Nails is buzzing with the fact that a unit from our forces in Iraq, the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, is being deployed to … the US.
That’s right, now the enemy is us.
Somebody page Alex Jones and let him know his padded cell at the Denver Detention Center is ready. If there really are Bilderbergs, this looks like an EndGame. The article goes on to say that the unit is being prepared if “called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called non-lethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.”
Flaunting the once sacrosanct Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of US soldiers against US citizens, the Bush move is the first time an actual active army fighting force has been designated to a strategic planning military group known as the US Army North. That’s right from the Northern Command, every conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare, the same folk who bring you the martial law drills every year. They would also be the same ones back about seven years ago who created those hijack plane drills that happened to take place on the exact same day real planes were crashed into the Twin Towers—the ominous mystery men in films like Dylan Avery’s Loose Change and Zeitgeist. The first line of defense in a case of national emergency or martial law.
Perhaps the soldiers are in actuality preparing for something that will never take place and we leftwing discredited are panicking over nothing. The government is just being prepared, providing for a common defense. Hey, there will probably be a peaceful transfer of power come January and no one will object in the slightest to any of Bush’s actions between now and then and any election results between now and then. Maybe I’m just nuts. OK, we know I’m nuts, but maybe I’m nuts and wrong. Maybe the Neo-cons are the nice people they always say they are and they have no need to fear they will ever be held accountable for the rape-fest they’ve been having with Lady Liberty these last eight years.
But maybe Bushco is scared. I know I would be. The house of greed Repub “Free Market” policies built, in part led by good old John McCain’s deregulation efforts in the late 90s, have opened the door for the greatest economic disaster/swindle in history, a national economic disaster to the tune of 700 billion dollars, even topping Brother Neil Bush and company’s half a trillion dollar S&L scandal in the 80s. It is another case where everyone’s money will be going to the richest 1%--another case where the very people who claim to detest class warfare fire the first shot.
First Bushco gives energy companies the license to pillage then gives social program money to war profiteers with a phony war he knows is unwinnable while neglecting the war in Afghanistan and the misery we still manage to create there and all the while managing to find the spare time to screw over both the environment and lobbyist bought hookers, or least that’s how the ballers’ roll in the Denver offices of Dept. of Interior these days. And now, giving what ever is left Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG for screwing up by being too greedy. America can no longer afford her people, the rich need their money.
And the millions of mortgages that have been held by those companies, will now be owned by your favorite uncle, Big Brother Bush. No need for elections when this kind of class warfare turns to shooting warfare. Call in the army and open the cages. This could make Hoover’s Bonus Army debacle look like an Easter Egg roll.
Now I know where all those tanks and trucks and weapons of mass destruction are headed: home to roost.
--mikel weisser writes from the west coast of AZ.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Your Right to Remain Silent
This was actually published elsewhere about a week ago:
Usually around this time in the election cycle, I find myself daydreaming about the inevitability of the upcoming last minute political revelations which can cause a candidate to sink or swim on the turn of a phrase. The term for these drama-fests was originally coined by Gary Sick when discussing an alleged conspiracy among the 1980 Reagan campaign to use George H. W. Bush to stall the Iran Hostages’ release until after the election. Ever since then, the news scandal which erupts in everyone’s face just in time to change the course of elections (so voting machine programmers don’t have to) has been known as the “October Surprise.”
For a good while now, the Repubs have fought some of the dirtiest campaigns this side of gonorrhea. Most every Dem lost election in recent times has had an October Surprise: Dukakis going down over Willie Horton, Gore and the bogus Internet claim, Kerry and the litany of ways he was Swiftboated. Somehow it seemed this go-round however; the GOP was playing the typical Dem role of the hapless losers, making every wrong step possible.
Depending on how far you want to go back there’ve been numerous opportunities to chronicle the buffoonery of the GOP campaign including my favorite: McCain not knowing a Shiite from Shinola back in the spring. Then there’s the way it was revealed that McCain, who once crowed of himself as anti-lobbyist, has now built his campaign staff almost exclusively out of lobbyists and the Neo-Con think tank crowd. That led to the public embarrassment and possible treason when Randy Scheunemann himself, of the Project for the New American Century fame, McCain’s go-to guy on foreign affairs, was revealed to be a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic of Georgia (currently of the fabled UniCal Caspian pipeline fame) at the same time McCain starts calling for US intervention in the Georgia/Russia standoff.
And of course there is that figure the Dems are already walloping McCain with daily: his 90% plus voting record of siding with the increasingly unpopular George W Bush through many of Bush’s worst decisions. In a fair election, just being that associated with the Suharto-like Bush would be enough to discredit McCain, if not get him investigated for indictment on his own rights, like fellow AZ GOP member Rick Renzi.
And then, like an over-ripe Christmas plum, the McCain campaign offers up Sarah Palin as a vice presidential choice. If that is the face and the voice of the new Republican Womanhood, no wonder so many male GOP leaders support “Abstinence Only Education.” If the Dems only exploited one scandal a day on this woman they could be discrediting her clear up until Obama’s Inauguration. Suddenly I find myself wondering if the good guys are actually going to win this round and if this year’s inevitable October Surprise isn’t going to come down on the GOP. Maybe after years of effort to stitch all the pieces in place John Conyers Judiciary Committee will actually come out with the goods when Congress resumes and initiate Impeachment Proceedings. And everyday the hearings are on the media could plaster McCain with Bush just like he so richly deserves.
But then I think wait, I’m living in America and that kind of justice is hard to come by. It’s usually bought or sold. Perhaps our October Surprise will be that in light of the successful suppression of free speech and free press activists at this year’s Republican National Convention, the Bush administration in the interest of public safety and public awareness will soon be releasing an amending Bill of Rights. Since so few Americans have expressed concerns over the steady erosion of those rights, Bush & Co. have rationalized that given sufficient personal freedoms and creature comforts we could be persuaded to ignore the loss of our civil rights.
“Here is the summary version of your new Bill of Sale: the right to remain silent.” Anything you say can and will be used against you. Perhaps in staying silent for so long we Americans will find we’ve traded away our ability to speak in exchange for a fuller bowl of porridge and a warmer bathroom.
Either way this is definitely a time to watch for the next shoe to drop. Who will be surprising whom? That depends on who is actually dealing the cards and I think we’re going to find out soon.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
Usually around this time in the election cycle, I find myself daydreaming about the inevitability of the upcoming last minute political revelations which can cause a candidate to sink or swim on the turn of a phrase. The term for these drama-fests was originally coined by Gary Sick when discussing an alleged conspiracy among the 1980 Reagan campaign to use George H. W. Bush to stall the Iran Hostages’ release until after the election. Ever since then, the news scandal which erupts in everyone’s face just in time to change the course of elections (so voting machine programmers don’t have to) has been known as the “October Surprise.”
For a good while now, the Repubs have fought some of the dirtiest campaigns this side of gonorrhea. Most every Dem lost election in recent times has had an October Surprise: Dukakis going down over Willie Horton, Gore and the bogus Internet claim, Kerry and the litany of ways he was Swiftboated. Somehow it seemed this go-round however; the GOP was playing the typical Dem role of the hapless losers, making every wrong step possible.
Depending on how far you want to go back there’ve been numerous opportunities to chronicle the buffoonery of the GOP campaign including my favorite: McCain not knowing a Shiite from Shinola back in the spring. Then there’s the way it was revealed that McCain, who once crowed of himself as anti-lobbyist, has now built his campaign staff almost exclusively out of lobbyists and the Neo-Con think tank crowd. That led to the public embarrassment and possible treason when Randy Scheunemann himself, of the Project for the New American Century fame, McCain’s go-to guy on foreign affairs, was revealed to be a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic of Georgia (currently of the fabled UniCal Caspian pipeline fame) at the same time McCain starts calling for US intervention in the Georgia/Russia standoff.
And of course there is that figure the Dems are already walloping McCain with daily: his 90% plus voting record of siding with the increasingly unpopular George W Bush through many of Bush’s worst decisions. In a fair election, just being that associated with the Suharto-like Bush would be enough to discredit McCain, if not get him investigated for indictment on his own rights, like fellow AZ GOP member Rick Renzi.
And then, like an over-ripe Christmas plum, the McCain campaign offers up Sarah Palin as a vice presidential choice. If that is the face and the voice of the new Republican Womanhood, no wonder so many male GOP leaders support “Abstinence Only Education.” If the Dems only exploited one scandal a day on this woman they could be discrediting her clear up until Obama’s Inauguration. Suddenly I find myself wondering if the good guys are actually going to win this round and if this year’s inevitable October Surprise isn’t going to come down on the GOP. Maybe after years of effort to stitch all the pieces in place John Conyers Judiciary Committee will actually come out with the goods when Congress resumes and initiate Impeachment Proceedings. And everyday the hearings are on the media could plaster McCain with Bush just like he so richly deserves.
But then I think wait, I’m living in America and that kind of justice is hard to come by. It’s usually bought or sold. Perhaps our October Surprise will be that in light of the successful suppression of free speech and free press activists at this year’s Republican National Convention, the Bush administration in the interest of public safety and public awareness will soon be releasing an amending Bill of Rights. Since so few Americans have expressed concerns over the steady erosion of those rights, Bush & Co. have rationalized that given sufficient personal freedoms and creature comforts we could be persuaded to ignore the loss of our civil rights.
“Here is the summary version of your new Bill of Sale: the right to remain silent.” Anything you say can and will be used against you. Perhaps in staying silent for so long we Americans will find we’ve traded away our ability to speak in exchange for a fuller bowl of porridge and a warmer bathroom.
Either way this is definitely a time to watch for the next shoe to drop. Who will be surprising whom? That depends on who is actually dealing the cards and I think we’re going to find out soon.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
“Middle Class Thugs for Bush” Part 2
This last weekend I went to the Mohave County Fair in Kingman and, while standing near the Democrat booth, I cringes at the disgusted retorts made by some of the passers-by who were enjoying their afternoon at the fair by sharing racist and other hateful remarks with family and friends. It reminded me that eight years ago, during Illinois State Fair time, I wrote about an experience of being verbally and physically harassed at an early Bush campaign rally in Springfield, Illinois.
My editor, at the liberal A&E weekly I frequently wrote for, ran the piece with the title, “Middle Class Thugs for Bush.” Within a week I had been fired from the better paying conservative glossy monthly local magazine I also wrote for. Which started the series of events that led me to Arizona, where I get to annoy you fine people.
Anyone reading this piece in that certain conservative daily Western AZ paper where I occasionally publish might note you are, by far, not the first to call for my economic ruin because you disagreed with some words I wrote.
Imagine wanting to have the power financially destroy another person because you were offended by the way they thought. You imagine it. I can’t.
Because, actually, those of you who would want that kind of power, disagree with letting people you disagree with have such freedoms in the first place. You in fact are the same middle class thugs my editor was talking about way back then. And that’s the problem with George Bush: he represents the middle class thugs then and he does now.
He was wrong then, just as John McCain is now, by striving to be the hero of those giving in to the worst aspects of the American spirit. That is unfortunately a part of our history as indelible as our calls of freedom, justice and prosperity. That’s right, some Americans have always acted as if their right to disagree with someone extended to a right to have them destroyed. When little kids act this way we tell them to grow up and some parents even call them stupid. What should we call these parents?
All too often they are the same Americans that try to act like our country is not capable of ever doing anything wrong. The victims of the Tuskegee experiment, Japanese Internment, Iran-Contra, and Operation COINTELPRO are likely to disagree. And they’re giving into the same impulse that makes some want to support our country’s efforts when it says it intends to destroy another country even though we know it’s wrong because all those anti-war protestors are just pissing you off.
Truth is, America has always been the voice of dissent and the tyrants among us, whether in our fairgrounds, or in our Oval Office, have always tried to prevent that voice from being heard. Like Wilson’s Sedition Acts during WWI, which once famously imprisoned a movie producer for making a movie about the American Revolution, because Wilson had made it against the law to portray the British, our then-allies, in a bad light.
Like last month when the Minnesota RNC police security arrested 40, count ‘em 40 journalists trying to report on police brutality out at the protests, while inside the coliseum the polo shirt crowd crows to each other about their love of county. Whose country? Is it “We the people,” or is it “Us and Them”?
Wrong then, just as it’s been wrong any of the countless times American force overwhelms American fairness. Whatever other thing this country is legendarily supposed to be about, it is touted as the Land of Free, who should also be free from the pettiness of those who call themselves brave.
Here is an excerpt from that piece back in August, 2000: “These people weren’t some drunks, punk kids, or ruthless thugs. They were what passes for upstanding citizens, well dressed adults carrying slick signs and wearing their candidates’ pins. They were proud to be mean and felt it their right.”
This probably why the thugs among us support aggressor warrior candidates like Bush then and McCain now. Bush proved willing to go so far as to build a war out of weapons of mass deception, as has been irrefutably proven. How little will it take to push the famously hotheaded McCain over the edge so he can prove his inner thug-ness also with some more of our sons and daughters?
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
My editor, at the liberal A&E weekly I frequently wrote for, ran the piece with the title, “Middle Class Thugs for Bush.” Within a week I had been fired from the better paying conservative glossy monthly local magazine I also wrote for. Which started the series of events that led me to Arizona, where I get to annoy you fine people.
Anyone reading this piece in that certain conservative daily Western AZ paper where I occasionally publish might note you are, by far, not the first to call for my economic ruin because you disagreed with some words I wrote.
Imagine wanting to have the power financially destroy another person because you were offended by the way they thought. You imagine it. I can’t.
Because, actually, those of you who would want that kind of power, disagree with letting people you disagree with have such freedoms in the first place. You in fact are the same middle class thugs my editor was talking about way back then. And that’s the problem with George Bush: he represents the middle class thugs then and he does now.
He was wrong then, just as John McCain is now, by striving to be the hero of those giving in to the worst aspects of the American spirit. That is unfortunately a part of our history as indelible as our calls of freedom, justice and prosperity. That’s right, some Americans have always acted as if their right to disagree with someone extended to a right to have them destroyed. When little kids act this way we tell them to grow up and some parents even call them stupid. What should we call these parents?
All too often they are the same Americans that try to act like our country is not capable of ever doing anything wrong. The victims of the Tuskegee experiment, Japanese Internment, Iran-Contra, and Operation COINTELPRO are likely to disagree. And they’re giving into the same impulse that makes some want to support our country’s efforts when it says it intends to destroy another country even though we know it’s wrong because all those anti-war protestors are just pissing you off.
Truth is, America has always been the voice of dissent and the tyrants among us, whether in our fairgrounds, or in our Oval Office, have always tried to prevent that voice from being heard. Like Wilson’s Sedition Acts during WWI, which once famously imprisoned a movie producer for making a movie about the American Revolution, because Wilson had made it against the law to portray the British, our then-allies, in a bad light.
Like last month when the Minnesota RNC police security arrested 40, count ‘em 40 journalists trying to report on police brutality out at the protests, while inside the coliseum the polo shirt crowd crows to each other about their love of county. Whose country? Is it “We the people,” or is it “Us and Them”?
Wrong then, just as it’s been wrong any of the countless times American force overwhelms American fairness. Whatever other thing this country is legendarily supposed to be about, it is touted as the Land of Free, who should also be free from the pettiness of those who call themselves brave.
Here is an excerpt from that piece back in August, 2000: “These people weren’t some drunks, punk kids, or ruthless thugs. They were what passes for upstanding citizens, well dressed adults carrying slick signs and wearing their candidates’ pins. They were proud to be mean and felt it their right.”
This probably why the thugs among us support aggressor warrior candidates like Bush then and McCain now. Bush proved willing to go so far as to build a war out of weapons of mass deception, as has been irrefutably proven. How little will it take to push the famously hotheaded McCain over the edge so he can prove his inner thug-ness also with some more of our sons and daughters?
--mikel weisser writes from the Left Coast of Arizona.
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