As we come to our annual national birthday, our love of country takes a variety of expressions. For many, July 4th is simply an excuse for a party: hot dogs, apple pies, red white and blue tablecloths and beer specials at the local Wal-Mart.
For others, it is a chance to reflect on the majesty of our history and diverse culture—a chance to look back on our past to envision our possible futures. And still for others, unfortunately, it is simply a time of pride. Yes, I use the word “unfortunate” when comes to mindless American pride, for as anyone knows who has read much of the Bible: “Pride goeth before the fall.”
Recently, in their continuing effort to demonize Obama, mainstream media latched onto a comment by his wife, Michelle, concerning pride in America. Even though the quip was made back in February, lacking sufficient current avenue to blacken his image, the GOP and their propagandists (otherwise known as network news) have gone back to dredge up a speech in Milwaukee where Michelle Obama said, “People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and … for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”
Obviously the remarks of a terrible, terrible person, deserving immediate rebuke. That condemnation came quickly enough from the most appropriate of channels, the wife of Republican candidate, Cindy McCain. Two days after Michelle Obama’s quip, Cindy McCain stepped up to dutifully chastise her by exclaiming that she, Cindy McCain, was ALWAYS proud of America. This, of course, forces us to ask the question:
Is Cindy McCain oblivious to the point of being brain-dead, or is she simply lying? Chances are that both Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain were making ill considered overstatements, ignoring both the good and the evil that have made American history since there has been an America to make history.
Having been born in 1955, Cindy McCain is old enough to have experienced half a century of American history first hand and not all of it was joyous. Was she proud at 8 years old when her president was gunned down on a Dallas city street? Was she proud both when Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to launch the war which would make her husband a POW for five years and then equally proud when the whole thing was shown to be based on a lie?
How proud did Iran-Contra make her, when our leaders were caught secretly selling weapons to our sworn enemies to fund an illegal war half way around the world against a democratically elected government where our allies were led by drug dealers who in fact used US military airplanes to smuggle cocaine into the US? Which part made her prouder, when Oliver North was imprisoned or when Bush 41 pardoned North, who would go on to run for senator claiming to have a record that demonstrated his love and pride of country.
Or what about the S & L scandal of 1980s where President Bush’s brother Neil was one of the leading bankers in a fraud that cost first consumers, then a federal bailout, over half a trillion dollars? Or how about, on a more personal note: how proud was she when the results of that S&L scandal led to the Senate Ethics Committee condemning five senators including her husband for obstructing an investigation into Charles Keating’s Lincoln S&L which bilked the American public to the tune of more than three billion dollars
Or later, in 1994, how proud was she of America when she herself was accused of being a drug addict and having the whistleblower who drew attention to it fired to shut him up? Was she proud of the way Americans cheered then candidate Bush as he trashed his then opponent McCain’s reputation and painted him as a dangerous PTSD whack-job?
Curious yesterday, while on a street corner protesting for impeachment with a couple of freshly minted high school graduates, I asked them about their pride in America. They said that over the last 8 years they’d had little to be proud of except those protesting against Bush policies. Once upon a time, that number used to include John McCain. Was Cindy as proud of him then as she is now?
Are you?
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
IMPEACHMENT GOES TO COMMITTEE
If you think Bush has done wrong or is guilty of the 35 counts Kucinich has posted, AND if you live in this part of AZ, here's who to call:
Rep. Trent Franks
Website: www.house.gov/franks
Washington, D.C. Office:
1237 Longworth House Office Building,District of Columbia 20515-0302Phone: (202) 225-4576Fax: (202) 225-6328
Glendale Office: (more district offices)
7121 West Bell Road, Suite 200Glendale, Arizona 85308Phone: (623) 776-7911Fax: (623) 776-7832
Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio In the United States House of Representatives Monday, June 9th, 2008 A Resolution
Article I Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.
Article II Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.
Article III Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.
Article V Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.
Article VII Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.
Article IX Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes
Article XI Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
Article XII Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources
Article XIIII Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries
Article XIV Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency Article XV Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq
Article XVI Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors
Article XVII Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
Article XVIII Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture Article XX Imprisoning Children
Article XXI Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government
Article XXII Creating Secret Laws
Article XXIII Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
Article XXIV Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment
Article XXV Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice
Article XXIX Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Article XXX Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare
Article XXXI Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency Article XXXII Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change
Article XXXIII Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911. Article XXXIV Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
Article XXXV Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders
Rep. Trent Franks
Website: www.house.gov/franks
Washington, D.C. Office:
1237 Longworth House Office Building,District of Columbia 20515-0302Phone: (202) 225-4576Fax: (202) 225-6328
Glendale Office: (more district offices)
7121 West Bell Road, Suite 200Glendale, Arizona 85308Phone: (623) 776-7911Fax: (623) 776-7832
Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio In the United States House of Representatives Monday, June 9th, 2008 A Resolution
Article I Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.
Article II Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.
Article III Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.
Article V Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.
Article VII Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.
Article IX Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes
Article XI Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
Article XII Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources
Article XIIII Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries
Article XIV Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency Article XV Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq
Article XVI Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors
Article XVII Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
Article XVIII Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture Article XX Imprisoning Children
Article XXI Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government
Article XXII Creating Secret Laws
Article XXIII Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act
Article XXIV Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment
Article XXV Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice
Article XXIX Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Article XXX Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare
Article XXXI Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency Article XXXII Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change
Article XXXIII Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911. Article XXXIV Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
Article XXXV Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders
Monday, June 9, 2008
A Patriot Would Have to Say Impeach
Forget all the years of suspecting that liberal antiwar protesters not-so-secretly hated America. Forget the years of thinking that whenever some wingnut on the television was calling Bush a liar that the wingnut was actually the liar and it was all just politics as usual. Forget every time you gave Bush the benefit of a doubt on the war.
It’s official: he was lying.
Last week two major clarifications were made regarding the record of veracity when it comes to George W. Bush. Former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, dropped his bombshell in his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. In no uncertain terms McClellan explains that the build-up to Iraq was a propaganda program knowingly based on lies, deceptions, and distortions. The guy who actually did the lying has come out and detailed the whole plan.
There never needed to be an Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis did not have to die. Our children did not have to learn the words Abu Ghraib, or Fallujah, or hear of Korans thrown in toilets. We did not have to determine our own feelings about waterboarding or what the tolerable level of sexual harassment is for private contractors in a war zone.
But wait there’s more: Also June 5, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued their official report insisting “top administration officials engaged in a deliberate, systematic and sustained propaganda campaign to manufacture support for the unnecessary, unjustified and illegal invasion of Iraq.”
Let me say that again: It’s official, he was lying. There’s a lot of you out there who owe Scott Ridder, Joseph Wilson, Ray McGovern, William Fallon, Richard Clarke and millions of protesters around the world an apology.
It’s true. All of those people who have been telling you Bush was lying, that the war is based on lies, 935 of them officially, they weren’t hurting our country, those patriots were trying to save it.
In the words of the Baltimore Sun’s Michael J. Marsalek “Such behavior must not go unpunished in a nation of laws.” We cannot ignore that our country has been intentionally deceived into taking a brutally wrong path. It wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. The only moral option is impeach.
The people who insist that they care about this country, that doing what is right matters to them must now address this terrible wrong that has been foisted on our country, if we the people of the United States are to have a country of law, a country that earns respect in the world.
Starting now, the GOP or anyone else who chooses to champion Bush must cede the position of moral authority, for they are, in effect, consciously championing the sale and further manufacture of these lies, particularly the supposed Christian Religious Right of the Republican Party. At a very basic fundamental level, supporting the ideals of Christianity and the Bush agenda are, as liberals have long claimed, a contradiction in terms.
People who claim to support a Prince of Peace and a message of mercy are then forced to also endorse Black Sites, Black Water, and Extreme Rendition? Any person who would claim to be a Christian in the first place would have to condemn the idea of war in general and in particular this Bush War in Iraq on very basic moral grounds. Christians are supposed to be opposed to murder, torture, theft, deceptions, all of which have been hallmarks of the Bush administration.
Again and again American indignation has found a way to focus on some Democratic peccadilloes and buy into the false morality that sex is worst than violence. But where once or twice individual Democrats have unfortunately screwed one or two willing participants, the Bush regime has continually screwed millions at home and billions aboard, despite our pleas for mercy.
Of course mercy is a Christian value, one Bush has repeatedly, proudly dismissed as weakness. No wonder these days George Bush is less popular than dental plaque. If you’re OK with killing people for a lie, destroying the homes of millions, maiming and crippling then abandoning tens of thousands of our own soldiers, squandering trillions and raping our social services, all for a lie, then I guess you might still support Bush, but what kind of a person would you be? Not a Christian, and not a patriot.
It’s time to impeach. Call, write, do something.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
It’s official: he was lying.
Last week two major clarifications were made regarding the record of veracity when it comes to George W. Bush. Former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, dropped his bombshell in his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. In no uncertain terms McClellan explains that the build-up to Iraq was a propaganda program knowingly based on lies, deceptions, and distortions. The guy who actually did the lying has come out and detailed the whole plan.
There never needed to be an Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis did not have to die. Our children did not have to learn the words Abu Ghraib, or Fallujah, or hear of Korans thrown in toilets. We did not have to determine our own feelings about waterboarding or what the tolerable level of sexual harassment is for private contractors in a war zone.
But wait there’s more: Also June 5, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued their official report insisting “top administration officials engaged in a deliberate, systematic and sustained propaganda campaign to manufacture support for the unnecessary, unjustified and illegal invasion of Iraq.”
Let me say that again: It’s official, he was lying. There’s a lot of you out there who owe Scott Ridder, Joseph Wilson, Ray McGovern, William Fallon, Richard Clarke and millions of protesters around the world an apology.
It’s true. All of those people who have been telling you Bush was lying, that the war is based on lies, 935 of them officially, they weren’t hurting our country, those patriots were trying to save it.
In the words of the Baltimore Sun’s Michael J. Marsalek “Such behavior must not go unpunished in a nation of laws.” We cannot ignore that our country has been intentionally deceived into taking a brutally wrong path. It wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. The only moral option is impeach.
The people who insist that they care about this country, that doing what is right matters to them must now address this terrible wrong that has been foisted on our country, if we the people of the United States are to have a country of law, a country that earns respect in the world.
Starting now, the GOP or anyone else who chooses to champion Bush must cede the position of moral authority, for they are, in effect, consciously championing the sale and further manufacture of these lies, particularly the supposed Christian Religious Right of the Republican Party. At a very basic fundamental level, supporting the ideals of Christianity and the Bush agenda are, as liberals have long claimed, a contradiction in terms.
People who claim to support a Prince of Peace and a message of mercy are then forced to also endorse Black Sites, Black Water, and Extreme Rendition? Any person who would claim to be a Christian in the first place would have to condemn the idea of war in general and in particular this Bush War in Iraq on very basic moral grounds. Christians are supposed to be opposed to murder, torture, theft, deceptions, all of which have been hallmarks of the Bush administration.
Again and again American indignation has found a way to focus on some Democratic peccadilloes and buy into the false morality that sex is worst than violence. But where once or twice individual Democrats have unfortunately screwed one or two willing participants, the Bush regime has continually screwed millions at home and billions aboard, despite our pleas for mercy.
Of course mercy is a Christian value, one Bush has repeatedly, proudly dismissed as weakness. No wonder these days George Bush is less popular than dental plaque. If you’re OK with killing people for a lie, destroying the homes of millions, maiming and crippling then abandoning tens of thousands of our own soldiers, squandering trillions and raping our social services, all for a lie, then I guess you might still support Bush, but what kind of a person would you be? Not a Christian, and not a patriot.
It’s time to impeach. Call, write, do something.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
Monday, May 19, 2008
Current Comedy 5/19/08: Easy Targets
Among the many whose lives were destroyed in Iraq last week were three college students. These students were killed in the Sadar City neighborhood of Baghdad the night before their graduation. With our own children graduating this week, we Americans can surely see that these deaths, all by themselves, are a horror too great to comprehend.
Like 90% of the deaths in Iraq, they were civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in a violent war that ironically was supposed to be about preventing violence. The insurgents had fled and the students had not. There were soldiers nearby looking for targets. Just soldiers in the field, just doing a miserable job as best they can.
Can’t blame them for doing their best; except, wouldn’t it be awful if they’d been sent to do the wrong thing? And if their leaders sent them, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, wouldn’t that make the leaders seem evil, like greedy destructive tyrants.
Such leaders would also be easy targets. Like Hussein himself was--a puffed up kleptocrat deserving to be toppled. Bush and company are lucky Americans love their country enough that they have a hard time thinking of their own president as evil. We would rather think of just about any other country that way, even whole races of people as evil than doubt our president.
And so, for some Americans, Iraqis have long made for easy targets. Like his son after him would also do, Poppy Bush loved Iraq’s potential as a target so much he rejected Hussein’s 11th hour surrender in favor of 90s style Shock and Awe, way back during Gulf War I. After all why not take on Hussein when Iraq made such a good target.
We attacked that country so hard and so fast folklore claims many of the Iraqi soldiers were killed while fleeing to US invasion. In some cases we just used a bulldozer and buried them as we went. That highway from Kuwait to Baghdad is expected to be a radioactive kill-zone for the next four billion years thanks to our DU artillery. And in the end the US decided not to depose Hussein after all. Remember, Cheney himself laughed off the mere suggestion, saying to do so would make Iraq a “quagmire”?
Guess he forgot.
Then in 2001, while the Towers were still smoking, after our best intelligence assessed the best approach to try and track down Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld waved them off and lamented he didn’t want to attack Afghanistan. There were no clear targets, but there were great targets in Iraq. Even though it was quite clear Iraq had not been involved in 9/11, the Bush team wanted to attack an innocent country because it made a better target than the guilty one.
Then, when they played out all the other convenient explanations of why we were terrorizing the public of an innocent country, after they’d been caught in that public WMD lie 944 times, Bush and company switched to claiming they were there to spread democracy. Which we then compromised by dismantling what remained of the functioning civilian government and the Iraqi military. And here we are five years later and still no end in sight.
Also last week, Bush was again pressing for an extra Middle East war as if we weren’t borrowing money fast enough on the ones we’ve got going; and compared Obama to a Nazi sympathizer. Bush was in the Middle East to honor the 60th celebration of the creation of the Israeli state, which coincides with the Palestinians’ 60th commemoration of the theft of their country to create the Israeli state. As Hamas and other pesky Palestinians refuse to shut up and starve to death in Gaza, the world wonders what Israel will come up with for their final solution to their own ethnic problem.
Meanwhile Bush endorses the Israeli Palestinian pogrom while calling Dems cowards and traitors. And McCain, in his ever-determined effort to impersonate a president, even this one, has endorsed Bush’s position. Considering George’s approval rating, one wonders how a man with as much military experience as McCain could make such a tactical error as to align himself with W.
For some Americans it makes McCain look like an easy target.
--Mikel Weisser is attending the May 27th anti-Bush/McCain Rally in Phoenix to protest their upcoming appearance. He wants you to know you are also invited.
Like 90% of the deaths in Iraq, they were civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in a violent war that ironically was supposed to be about preventing violence. The insurgents had fled and the students had not. There were soldiers nearby looking for targets. Just soldiers in the field, just doing a miserable job as best they can.
Can’t blame them for doing their best; except, wouldn’t it be awful if they’d been sent to do the wrong thing? And if their leaders sent them, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, wouldn’t that make the leaders seem evil, like greedy destructive tyrants.
Such leaders would also be easy targets. Like Hussein himself was--a puffed up kleptocrat deserving to be toppled. Bush and company are lucky Americans love their country enough that they have a hard time thinking of their own president as evil. We would rather think of just about any other country that way, even whole races of people as evil than doubt our president.
And so, for some Americans, Iraqis have long made for easy targets. Like his son after him would also do, Poppy Bush loved Iraq’s potential as a target so much he rejected Hussein’s 11th hour surrender in favor of 90s style Shock and Awe, way back during Gulf War I. After all why not take on Hussein when Iraq made such a good target.
We attacked that country so hard and so fast folklore claims many of the Iraqi soldiers were killed while fleeing to US invasion. In some cases we just used a bulldozer and buried them as we went. That highway from Kuwait to Baghdad is expected to be a radioactive kill-zone for the next four billion years thanks to our DU artillery. And in the end the US decided not to depose Hussein after all. Remember, Cheney himself laughed off the mere suggestion, saying to do so would make Iraq a “quagmire”?
Guess he forgot.
Then in 2001, while the Towers were still smoking, after our best intelligence assessed the best approach to try and track down Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld waved them off and lamented he didn’t want to attack Afghanistan. There were no clear targets, but there were great targets in Iraq. Even though it was quite clear Iraq had not been involved in 9/11, the Bush team wanted to attack an innocent country because it made a better target than the guilty one.
Then, when they played out all the other convenient explanations of why we were terrorizing the public of an innocent country, after they’d been caught in that public WMD lie 944 times, Bush and company switched to claiming they were there to spread democracy. Which we then compromised by dismantling what remained of the functioning civilian government and the Iraqi military. And here we are five years later and still no end in sight.
Also last week, Bush was again pressing for an extra Middle East war as if we weren’t borrowing money fast enough on the ones we’ve got going; and compared Obama to a Nazi sympathizer. Bush was in the Middle East to honor the 60th celebration of the creation of the Israeli state, which coincides with the Palestinians’ 60th commemoration of the theft of their country to create the Israeli state. As Hamas and other pesky Palestinians refuse to shut up and starve to death in Gaza, the world wonders what Israel will come up with for their final solution to their own ethnic problem.
Meanwhile Bush endorses the Israeli Palestinian pogrom while calling Dems cowards and traitors. And McCain, in his ever-determined effort to impersonate a president, even this one, has endorsed Bush’s position. Considering George’s approval rating, one wonders how a man with as much military experience as McCain could make such a tactical error as to align himself with W.
For some Americans it makes McCain look like an easy target.
--Mikel Weisser is attending the May 27th anti-Bush/McCain Rally in Phoenix to protest their upcoming appearance. He wants you to know you are also invited.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
designated weenie
Designated Weenie
“I believe that a change is going to come because many of us are committing to changing how we see others who are different.” Are these the most evil words ever written or what?
Don’t recognize this message? This sentence was the theme/refrain, in fact the very essence, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s now infamous keynote speech for the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday, April 27th (transcript widely available online). You know, the speech that has been used to paint Wright as a racist hatemonger who does not love his country, the one that has Barack Obama denouncing/ denying his former minister so fast and furious that if he were to be any more “in-denial” he’d have to travel under an Egyptian passport.
I n case you missed it, at first it seemed that CNN, who had led the way in the first public excoriation of the firebrand preacher who “happened to be” Barack Obama’s minister, the entire network itself experienced a massive about face on the issue and was now championing Wright both the man and the message. At the least the network was clearly attempting to do more than publicly apologize when, without warning, they gave over three and a half hours of primetime Sunday night TV to play, then replay, and then again replay Rev. Wright’s complete speech at the NAACP’s Detroit national convention.
A major network giving up primetime for live coverage of a minority minister, or for the NAACP for that matter, is something that only happens in fairytales and to make the incident more amazing, weekend anchor Rick Sanchez, appearing to make an executive decision, announced on air at the end of his segment that he was bumping the CNN line-up to continue coverage on Wright.
Understand it was not just any old Larry King’s celebrity interview, but jiggle-icon ratings-queen herself, Pamela Anderson. The idea of keeping Pamela Anderson’s chest off the air to replay Wright’s speech twice in the single evening was like tossing aside America’s steady diet of bubble gum for a bowl of beef stew. For a moment there was hope.
Then as if it was all a dream, despite CNN’s mighty Sunday night efforts by Monday they were back to Wright bashing business in lockstep with all the other major networks. Certainly most of the American news viewing public got to see the media once again lambaste the allegedly vile words of the supposedly diabolical Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The media feeding frenzy that followed painted Wright’s speech as the most radical manifesto this side of the Unabomber and thus once again onetime Wright ally Obama was subjected to a fresh round of pillorying and denouncement. It was another test of his mettle.
He failed.
Instead of simply distancing as he’d done during the first round of Wright baiting a month ago, this time Obama played the now traditional Democratic role of designated weenie, and turned his back on his church, his life-long friend, and the political views that are actually what make him appealing as a liberal in the first place. In doing so Obama showed the near stereotypical Democratic trait of selling his own progressive principles out to sell himself to conservatives that had no intention of voting for him in the first place; and in the process alienating his own followers as well.
While it’s not quite as bad selling out your country to the oil industry and squandering billions and murdering millions in a war based on lies, domestic suppression, and foreign terrorism, it once again leaves that taste of disappointment in one’s mouth. It makes Barack and all Dems look bad enough to make folks consider voting McCain despite knowing voting McCain is endorsing the tragedy that’s been Bush.
As Dems have done at least as far back as Dukakis, Obama blanched fearing he’d be seen as not white enough, let “right-wingers” frame his agenda for him, and wound up doing his part to assure GOP victory and a third term of the Bush policies that 70% of the American public openly condemn.
If this is the best they can do to protect us from Bush, it is small wonder that even after all those debates most of America still isn’t sure why we should vote Dem. Some may say that at least they’re still better than the GOP, but if this is an indication of democratic leadership, I’d have to say, not by much.
--Mikel Weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
“I believe that a change is going to come because many of us are committing to changing how we see others who are different.” Are these the most evil words ever written or what?
Don’t recognize this message? This sentence was the theme/refrain, in fact the very essence, of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s now infamous keynote speech for the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday, April 27th (transcript widely available online). You know, the speech that has been used to paint Wright as a racist hatemonger who does not love his country, the one that has Barack Obama denouncing/ denying his former minister so fast and furious that if he were to be any more “in-denial” he’d have to travel under an Egyptian passport.
I n case you missed it, at first it seemed that CNN, who had led the way in the first public excoriation of the firebrand preacher who “happened to be” Barack Obama’s minister, the entire network itself experienced a massive about face on the issue and was now championing Wright both the man and the message. At the least the network was clearly attempting to do more than publicly apologize when, without warning, they gave over three and a half hours of primetime Sunday night TV to play, then replay, and then again replay Rev. Wright’s complete speech at the NAACP’s Detroit national convention.
A major network giving up primetime for live coverage of a minority minister, or for the NAACP for that matter, is something that only happens in fairytales and to make the incident more amazing, weekend anchor Rick Sanchez, appearing to make an executive decision, announced on air at the end of his segment that he was bumping the CNN line-up to continue coverage on Wright.
Understand it was not just any old Larry King’s celebrity interview, but jiggle-icon ratings-queen herself, Pamela Anderson. The idea of keeping Pamela Anderson’s chest off the air to replay Wright’s speech twice in the single evening was like tossing aside America’s steady diet of bubble gum for a bowl of beef stew. For a moment there was hope.
Then as if it was all a dream, despite CNN’s mighty Sunday night efforts by Monday they were back to Wright bashing business in lockstep with all the other major networks. Certainly most of the American news viewing public got to see the media once again lambaste the allegedly vile words of the supposedly diabolical Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The media feeding frenzy that followed painted Wright’s speech as the most radical manifesto this side of the Unabomber and thus once again onetime Wright ally Obama was subjected to a fresh round of pillorying and denouncement. It was another test of his mettle.
He failed.
Instead of simply distancing as he’d done during the first round of Wright baiting a month ago, this time Obama played the now traditional Democratic role of designated weenie, and turned his back on his church, his life-long friend, and the political views that are actually what make him appealing as a liberal in the first place. In doing so Obama showed the near stereotypical Democratic trait of selling his own progressive principles out to sell himself to conservatives that had no intention of voting for him in the first place; and in the process alienating his own followers as well.
While it’s not quite as bad selling out your country to the oil industry and squandering billions and murdering millions in a war based on lies, domestic suppression, and foreign terrorism, it once again leaves that taste of disappointment in one’s mouth. It makes Barack and all Dems look bad enough to make folks consider voting McCain despite knowing voting McCain is endorsing the tragedy that’s been Bush.
As Dems have done at least as far back as Dukakis, Obama blanched fearing he’d be seen as not white enough, let “right-wingers” frame his agenda for him, and wound up doing his part to assure GOP victory and a third term of the Bush policies that 70% of the American public openly condemn.
If this is the best they can do to protect us from Bush, it is small wonder that even after all those debates most of America still isn’t sure why we should vote Dem. Some may say that at least they’re still better than the GOP, but if this is an indication of democratic leadership, I’d have to say, not by much.
--Mikel Weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Current Comedy, 4/6/08: Fightin' Words
There are some prisoners of the Vietnam War who have never come home and one of them is John McCain.
If you’ve met many Vietnam vets then you know what I’m talking about: always a little edgy, eager for a fight, forever still trying to win some war that really isn’t their business in the first place. Once upon a time they were loyal, committed American men, now they are ghosts of who they might’ve been. Men whose country told them to fight, but not to win, whose country the war was righteous and just, as it lied through its teeth.
For as was long suspected and has finally been admitted, Johnson’s Gulf of Tolkin Resolution was no more based on reality than Bush’s WMD jive. But, still loving their country and not knowing its lie, millions risked all to show their patriotism. Then their country taught them to kill, pointed them at a brown skinned people and said go ahead, but only kill the bad guys. And by the way, you won’t be able to tell who the players are because there is no scorecard. But go ahead and kill a bunch anyway.
And so they did. As many as a half a million at a time of honest America-loving young men went west, half way around the world to fight and, while there, killed or caused the deaths of as many as three million people, permanently scarring any who survived, including themselves. Fifty-eight thousand never made it back. But the survivors have had to live with the aftermath every since.
Despite sacrificing all they had to give, the dominoes still fell and Vietnam wound up being only the first of a series of countries in the region to fall communist or worse when we flew away to toss our helicopters into the sea, on nationwide TV. It was an image we’d never forget.
And every since then there are Americans, loyal Americans, doing their best for their vision of god and country who are still trying to win a fight that was never ours. Each new international conflict is another chance to get it right and ease our conscience of the big one we got wrong. Men who take the mere suggestion that America might not always be absolutely right in everything we do as “fighting’ words.” And now the Republicans want to elect one of these to president.
But like so many, John McCain is still a prisoner of that forty year old war. Sure McCain is the war hero of a story so extraordinary we’d call unbelievable if we saw it on a made for TV movie. John McCain may be an American we can be proud of, but that in itself does not make him the best choice for president. It’s true. McCain is justifiably proud of his record, but it is a life lived at war.
Lately the recurring tendency of some to note that McCain is a “warmonger” had returned to the news. It’s a characterization that’s been made so many times in so many ways it’s almost accepted as cliché; though two notable recent turns include a campaign quip by Clinton surrogate Ed Schultz and in Robert Dreyfuss’ recent feature article in The Nation entitled “Hothead McCain” have some crying foul. But when Pat Buchanan, who purportedly likes McCain, goes so far as to quip that if he gets in the Whitehouse McCain’ll “make Cheney look like Gandhi” then maybe this “warmonger” label isn’t smack against his character, but just truth in advertising.
Perhaps McCain’s recent only half kidding choice to burst into singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” has something to do with the whole warmonger thing, but he is not unusual in his impulse to bomb ‘em all and let god sort it out. There are millions of people who view killing other people as a viable solution to life’s problems. Usually we call them criminals, not heroes.
You see, as a Christian I find the decision to vote is fairly straight forward as regards the whole “thou shall not kill” thing. I simply look for whoever seems to be the least likely to want to have people killed while he’s president. Oddly enough, McCain is currently making a big deal out of courting the so-called Religious Right, but given their propensity to support murderous wars of aggression, one has to wonder how right they can be, religiously?
--Mikel Weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
If you’ve met many Vietnam vets then you know what I’m talking about: always a little edgy, eager for a fight, forever still trying to win some war that really isn’t their business in the first place. Once upon a time they were loyal, committed American men, now they are ghosts of who they might’ve been. Men whose country told them to fight, but not to win, whose country the war was righteous and just, as it lied through its teeth.
For as was long suspected and has finally been admitted, Johnson’s Gulf of Tolkin Resolution was no more based on reality than Bush’s WMD jive. But, still loving their country and not knowing its lie, millions risked all to show their patriotism. Then their country taught them to kill, pointed them at a brown skinned people and said go ahead, but only kill the bad guys. And by the way, you won’t be able to tell who the players are because there is no scorecard. But go ahead and kill a bunch anyway.
And so they did. As many as a half a million at a time of honest America-loving young men went west, half way around the world to fight and, while there, killed or caused the deaths of as many as three million people, permanently scarring any who survived, including themselves. Fifty-eight thousand never made it back. But the survivors have had to live with the aftermath every since.
Despite sacrificing all they had to give, the dominoes still fell and Vietnam wound up being only the first of a series of countries in the region to fall communist or worse when we flew away to toss our helicopters into the sea, on nationwide TV. It was an image we’d never forget.
And every since then there are Americans, loyal Americans, doing their best for their vision of god and country who are still trying to win a fight that was never ours. Each new international conflict is another chance to get it right and ease our conscience of the big one we got wrong. Men who take the mere suggestion that America might not always be absolutely right in everything we do as “fighting’ words.” And now the Republicans want to elect one of these to president.
But like so many, John McCain is still a prisoner of that forty year old war. Sure McCain is the war hero of a story so extraordinary we’d call unbelievable if we saw it on a made for TV movie. John McCain may be an American we can be proud of, but that in itself does not make him the best choice for president. It’s true. McCain is justifiably proud of his record, but it is a life lived at war.
Lately the recurring tendency of some to note that McCain is a “warmonger” had returned to the news. It’s a characterization that’s been made so many times in so many ways it’s almost accepted as cliché; though two notable recent turns include a campaign quip by Clinton surrogate Ed Schultz and in Robert Dreyfuss’ recent feature article in The Nation entitled “Hothead McCain” have some crying foul. But when Pat Buchanan, who purportedly likes McCain, goes so far as to quip that if he gets in the Whitehouse McCain’ll “make Cheney look like Gandhi” then maybe this “warmonger” label isn’t smack against his character, but just truth in advertising.
Perhaps McCain’s recent only half kidding choice to burst into singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” has something to do with the whole warmonger thing, but he is not unusual in his impulse to bomb ‘em all and let god sort it out. There are millions of people who view killing other people as a viable solution to life’s problems. Usually we call them criminals, not heroes.
You see, as a Christian I find the decision to vote is fairly straight forward as regards the whole “thou shall not kill” thing. I simply look for whoever seems to be the least likely to want to have people killed while he’s president. Oddly enough, McCain is currently making a big deal out of courting the so-called Religious Right, but given their propensity to support murderous wars of aggression, one has to wonder how right they can be, religiously?
--Mikel Weisser writes from the left coast of Arizona
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Current Comedy 3/16/08 B: How the Republican Party Opposes Christianity
Current Comedy 3/16/08: How the Republican Party Opposes Christianity
The Democratic Party has got to stop ceding the moral issue, particularly the supposed Christian moral superiority, to the Republicans. At a very basic fundamental level, supporting the ideals of Christianity and the platforms of the GOP are just contradictions in terms.
The clearest conflict between the two is the war. Any person who would claim to be a Christian would have to condemn wars in general and in particular this Bush War on Iraq and Afghanistan on the very basic moral grounds that Christians are supposed to be against murder, torture, theft and deceptions, all of which have been hallmarks of the Bush administration.
The GOP keeps hoping that American indignation will focus on Democratic peccadilloes and buy into the false morality that sex is worst than violence. Of course, where individual Democrats have famously once or twice screwed one or two willing co-participants, the Bush regime continually screws millions at home and abroad, despite our pleas for mercy.
Of course, mercy is a Christian value, one that Bush has repeatedly, proudly, dismissed as a weakness. No mercy for immigrants who long to breathe free, no mercy for prisoners in the War on Terror, including those who have already been found not guilty or those who might be if given a real trial. Torture yes, mercy no. And no mercy also for the millions of poor American children who aren’t important enough to deserve health care coverage; no that would be charity and again that is a Christian value.
If the Dems had the temerity to hold the Bush administration to a true accounting of their actual values as shown through their actions, then the true Christians among us would have to acknowledge that the Religious Right is religiously wrong.
The Democratic Party has got to stop ceding the moral issue, particularly the supposed Christian moral superiority, to the Republicans. At a very basic fundamental level, supporting the ideals of Christianity and the platforms of the GOP are just contradictions in terms.
The clearest conflict between the two is the war. Any person who would claim to be a Christian would have to condemn wars in general and in particular this Bush War on Iraq and Afghanistan on the very basic moral grounds that Christians are supposed to be against murder, torture, theft and deceptions, all of which have been hallmarks of the Bush administration.
The GOP keeps hoping that American indignation will focus on Democratic peccadilloes and buy into the false morality that sex is worst than violence. Of course, where individual Democrats have famously once or twice screwed one or two willing co-participants, the Bush regime continually screws millions at home and abroad, despite our pleas for mercy.
Of course, mercy is a Christian value, one that Bush has repeatedly, proudly, dismissed as a weakness. No mercy for immigrants who long to breathe free, no mercy for prisoners in the War on Terror, including those who have already been found not guilty or those who might be if given a real trial. Torture yes, mercy no. And no mercy also for the millions of poor American children who aren’t important enough to deserve health care coverage; no that would be charity and again that is a Christian value.
If the Dems had the temerity to hold the Bush administration to a true accounting of their actual values as shown through their actions, then the true Christians among us would have to acknowledge that the Religious Right is religiously wrong.
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