Thursday, October 30, 2008

 

Don't let the door hit you, etc., etc.....

This came around in e-mail. I think it's well-done. Brings up thoughts like, "we should have let the South split off, way back then."

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan , Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.


To sum up briefly: You get Texas , Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that ditch weed they grow in Mexico.
Peace out,
Blue States

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 4:26 PM 0 comments
 

A little of this, a little of that, but mostly what a pile of shit!

So, how high a pile of $1.00 bills would $14.83 Billion be?

Damned high, yeah. It's the biggest quarterly profit of any, repeat, ANY corporation, ever. Guess who? Exxon-Mobile. That profit came from the quarter where we were wondering if we'd ever be able to again fill up a gas tank. The same quarter that saw the economy start to crumble. The almost last quarter of George II's regime.

The mortgage game had it's covers yanked, and the U.S. taxpayers went in the hole for the bail-out. The world economy, thanks to the "free market," is lurching around like a blind cyclops, and we all hope to hell it doesn't step off the edge of the cliff. Some October surprise!

John McCain is throwing everything he can scrape up at Obama—including some of John's own personal stink, I believe. The comic strip "Candorville" has been running a story line about some embedded reporters searching Hanoi for McCain's lost Honor. That's about it: McCain has given up any pretense of honorable behavior in his panic-y old man efforts to get elected president. It's sad and disgusting at the same time: I bounce back and forth the two positions. There's something ghastly about his attempts to smear Obama with anything he can find. It's demented.

And so's Sarah Palin, yeah: demented. She is the Manchurian Candidate of the Christian Fascists. I don't know if she invented herself or is a product of the labs at Dobson's Focus on the Family. She's kind of like Hitler: a joke if she wasn't for real. I think, to maybe take the load off her, she's maybe just not too bright and attention-starved, so she's been listening to the wrong people. No, God is not going to bless her into office as the savior of America. No, we are not the chosen people and, no, there is no New-New Covenant between God and America. However, we are fucked.

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 4:09 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 19, 2008

 

Same ol', same ol

Interesting, yeah. According to some “conservatives,” Colin Powell endorses Obama because of race. Jesus.

Now that we can see the finish line and see that Obama is a lot closer to it than is McCain, the final suicidal charge of the Republican Machine hurls skin color at us. Race, yup. At least they’re consistent. From Nixon’s recruiting southern whites to the Republican party to this, they are consistent. Got to give them credit for that. What value that credit has, though, is dubious. Playing to racial fears is about as valuable as dumping dog shit on the sidewalk.

Through it all, though, our own, good, stalwart, daily paper maintains it’s Republican bias. They came out today and endorsed McCranky and Sarah Barracuda. McCain, the Bulletin noted, has a more responsible health plan and his tax policy is more sensible. Sure: let the concentration of wealth increase. Let the insurance company donors make greater profits off human misery. Wolves need to be killed. Polar bears are not important and neither are beluga whales. Indians are mukluks. Bomb bomb bomb Iran.

What happened to this country? I know. Nothing has happened—it’s the same ol’ same ol’. Anti-Indian, anti-Black, anti-Mexican, anti- everybody who isn’t white and protestant and on the make. Fuck nature. Jesus, again.

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 3:28 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

 

The Return of Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Remember way back when some of the radicals talked about not voting for Tweedledum or Tweedledee? (they wanted us vote for Eldrige Cleaver or Tim Leary or some such citizen.) That's pretty much what it amounts to; both candidates are centrists, both statists. One's slightly to the left and one's slightly to the right. McCain is a not-too-bright and not-too-ethical Republican, and Obama is bright, but super-ambitious and a Democrat out of the Illinois Democratic Machine (which has never won any awards for ethics or particularly high moral standards—Christ, it gave us Mayor Dailey, back in the old days and what a creep he was). The howls that Obama is a “crypto-Marxist” or a “crypto-Muslim” completely ignore the political machines of America: no Marxist and, these days, definitely no Muslim is going anywhere. These guys are regular old politicians. Neither one will do anything unusually radical nor unusually reactionary.The line to remember is, "If voting could change the system it would be against the law."

I've cast a lot of protest votes—very few people I've voted for have ever won any election—and when I do that I feel a little less dirty, I'm not sure that it does much good in the long run. It's a problem. For me, just for me, the Constitution Party seems about as bad as Sarah Palin or Jerry Falwell. Ralph Nader should take up tinkering with antique watches in his old age and leave the rest of us alone. Marxist parties and libertarian free-market parties are delusional—they both have great theories, wonderful ideas, but theories and realities are quite different. They only way those ideas can be tested, it seems, is by killing everyone who doesn't want to play that game—Cuba and Chile are good examples. Cuba tried to force Marxism and Chile tried to force free-market capitalism and the results were awful in both cases. China and Laos, the current mess in South Africa...ideologues are dangerous people.

On the up side, only three weeks to go before they shut up and leave us alone for a while.

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 6:12 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

 

Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear....

Voting is a really good idea. Duh. We need to ask, though, what exactly we hope to accomplish with our votes on November 4th. Do we think we can change the system, seriously change it? No. I'm not even sure we can do anything about the economic mess we're in. Most people I talk to are dubiously hopeful that things will get better. Sort of, I guess, like a patient with a terminal illness is hopeful of a miracle cure or a sudden medical break-through. But...yeah, sometimes these things happen.

Naomi Wolf is a woman I sometimes confuse with Naomi Klein. I'm sorry; it's an odd first name, for an old fart—I couldn't have met more than two or three in my entire life. I think Naomi K. is brilliant: brilliant and beautiful, sigh. I don't know that much about Naomi Wolf, other than she's brilliant, too, in a different area. This is the Age of the Woman Intellectual. Yeah, it's about time.

Now, here's something to consider. It seems like our votes may not matter all that much...




Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control"

By Naomi Wolf, AlterNet
Posted on October 8, 2008, Printed on October 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101958/

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing "unruly individuals," and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the "War on Terror," the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.

He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined "insurrection" or many other "conditions" he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event of an "insurrection." With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters "insurgents" staging an "insurrection" is strengthened.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:

"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."

If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat.

I interviewed Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and patriot David Antoon for clarification:

"If the President directed the First Brigade to arrest Congress, what could stop him?"

"Nothing. Their only recourse is to cut off funding. The Congress would be at the mercy of military leaders to go to them and ask them not to obey illegal orders."

"But these orders are now legal?'"

"Correct."

"If the President directs the First Brigade to arrest a bunch of voters, what would stop him?"

"Nothing. It would end up in courts but the action would have been taken."

"If the President directs the First Brigade to kill civilians, what would stop him?"

"Nothing."

"What would prevent him from sending the First Brigade to arrest the editor of the Washington Post?"

"Nothing. He could do what he did in Iraq -- send a tank down a street in Washington and fire a shell into the Washington Post as they did into Al Jazeera, and claim they were firing at something else."

"What happens to members of the First Brigade who refuse to take up arms against U.S. citizens?"

"They'd probably be treated as deserters as in Iraq: arrested, detained and facing five years in prison. In Iraq a study by Ann Wright shows that deserters -- reservists who refused to go back to Iraq -- got longer sentences than war criminals."

"Does Congress have any military of their own?"

"No. Congress has no direct control of any military units. The Governors have the National Guard but they report to the President in an emergency that he declares."

"Who can arrest the President?"

"The Attorney General can arrest the President after he leaves or after impeachment."

[Note: Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has asserted it is possible for District Attorneys around the country to charge President Bush with murder if they represent districts where one or more military members who have been killed in Iraq formerly resided.]

"Given the danger do you advocate impeachment?"

"Yes. President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus -- which has prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets -- with a 'signing statement.' He should be impeached immediately in a bipartisan process to prevent the use of military forces and mercenary forces against U.S. citizens"

"Should Americans call on senior leaders in the Military to break publicly with this action and call on their own men and women to disobey these orders?"

"Every senior military officer's loyalty should ultimately be to the Constitution. Every officer should publicly break with any illegal order, even from the President."

"But if these are now legal. If they say, 'Don't obey the Commander in Chief,' what happens to the military?"

"Perhaps they would be arrested and prosecuted as those who refuse to participate in the current illegal war. That's what would be considered a coup."

"But it's a coup already."

"Yes."

Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the sequel to the New York Times best-seller The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007).

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/101958/

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 4:12 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

 

Killing me softly, with their lies...

Beth said, appropos of the campaign, "All those Republican statements are built on fear. They just want everyone to be afraid."

Bringing up a vague association with someone like Bill Ayers is, a) a remarkable piece of mud-slinging, and b) an attempt to tie someone's demented actions of forty years ago with someone else's character today... Jesus. Several people have commented than when Ayers was running off the deep end, Obama was eight years old; since then Ayers apparently got his head on straight and has been leading a quiet life, quite seperate from Obama's. This weird guilt by association riff is also hyped by the woman who accused the Democrats of always looking backward. Jesus, again. In fact, Jesus Fucking Christ! On a crutch.

I have fairly good memories of the McCarthy period. My grandfather hung out with some proto-John Birch types, and some actual Birchers fifty, sixty years ago. I even met Walter Knott, of Knott's Berry Farm and heard him rant about the communists. I can guarantee that hearing that, or from a dozen other people who thought Hitler wasn't altogether that bad, that I am in no way a neo-McCarthy-ite, nor a neo-Nazi, nor an anti-Semite, nor... Of course, if I ran into an unreconstructed loony left over from the Sixties, I might be accused of that. But that's what Ms Palin is doing. That's what the Republicans are doing with this whole fucking campaign: they're appealing to the public's incredibly deep-seated fears and convoluted emotional associations to destroy Obama.

Do the Republican strategists actually believe that Obama is some sort of covert Muslim terrorist/traitor? That's hard for me to believe, but not as hard as it is to believe that Palin and McCain are so...let me rephrase that. If the Republican strategists believe that bizarre domestic terror threat, they're as crazy as shithouse rats (as my old friend Edd Whittaker would say); if they don't believe the line they're laying down, they're about as honest as a used-car salesman's "this car was owned by a little old lady..."

Obviously, a terrorist strike here in the USA would be the best thing for the McCain-Palin ticket. I'm praying it won't happen.

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 5:25 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 05, 2008

 

Coming up for air—or for the third time...

There’s more than enough disassembling of Sarah Palin: she’s deconstructing faster than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put her back together again. I almost feel sorry for the woman. She’s sort of...well, like a Hollywood product: cute, somewhat capable, but over-hyped. Essentially, somebody pointed out, a Barbie on steroids. But—

But. What if she’s the Manchurian Candidate of the Christian Right? John McCain’s OK, like most people are OK (except for the ones who are Not OK). Nothing special, a rich and not too bright old guy who likes playing politics. He’d probably be a good city councilman or member of a school board. Maybe even a decent member of the Arizona Legislature.

We know the Christian Right wants to take over the country, so they can save our souls and please God. It's for our own Good. They believe the world is going to end, soon. The righteous will go to Heaven and the rest will go in the wood pile. The faster they can help this come about the better it will be. They also know they can’t win an election because of their own popularity. Satan has his hooks everywhere, right? John McCain could, possibly, win this election with a little help from his friends in the Republican Machine. If he does win it...

Well, he is a Beloved American Patriot (and, did you know, an Ex-POW?). Satan, as mentioned, has his hooks everywhere. Some poor deluded drug-addled liberal coward might decide to whack this Beloved American Patriot-Now-President. We’d have a good stand up Hockey-Mom-Six-Pack-ette to take his place. A good glamorous-but-demure Christian Woman.

Who happens to believe in the return of Jesus in her life-time.

Reversing Roe v. Wade would be the least damage she could do.

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 7:20 PM 0 comments

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?