Oath Keepers: When the Teabaggers Just Aren't Whacked Enough

Between the Teabaggers and the Birthers, I'd thought I'd pretty much seen the pinnacle of evolution for Rightist nutcakes.

Then, the Oath Keepers showed up, a bunch of current and retired military and cops howling about the new dangers to the Constitution they've sworn to uphold with all the bluster they can muster on a Web site which, like all similar right-wing sites, is hopelessly swimming in Revolutionary War-era metaphor and imagery. Oh, and don't forget to check out their video, in which they declare their intent to disobey their Top Ten Unjust Orders with a lush backdrop of inspiring patriotic and military imagery and overwrought music. Yeah, you might think we Lefties get a bit over the top, but for sheer Drama Queen goodness, you can't beat the Right Wingnuts.



What's especially interesting about this bunch is that they were founded just this past March, not even two months after Barack "Timberlake" Obama took office. Now, mind you -- during the eight goddamn' years in which the Bush Regime was instigating illegal wars of aggression, censoring the news, arbitrarily declaring people "enemy combatants" and detaining them without charges or a trial, criminalizing Muslims and the Left, suppressing dissent, allowing torture, and otherwise generally pissing on the Constitution at every opportunity, the people comprising the Oath Keepers were nowhere to be found. In fact, when US service personnel were refusing to comply with illegal or unconstitutional orders under Bush, you could hear the future Oath Keepers howling for courts martial and trials for treason.

Now that there's a Donkeycratic administration in power, though, the Oath Keepers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bellowing at full throat about illegal orders and detention camps and the military occupation of American cities and threats to the Constitution. Never mind that Obama's pretty much continuing all of Bush's favorite programs such as imprisonment without charges, rendition, torture, suppression of the news -- not to mention that he's escalating the war in Afghanistan. That sort of pertinent information is totally lost on these doorknobs: all they know is that now the Donkeycrats are in the White House, the President is a N!gg3r, and the Republic is in grave danger. Oh, yeah, and they don't want to pay taxes, either; they want highways and schools and National Parks, but they don't want to pay taxes -- like the Teabaggers, but with more brass and swagger. Basically, the Oath Keepers are for people who think the Teabaggers are too liberal.

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(...and read more about the Oath Keepers' association with White Nationalists at Lady Liberty's Lamp.)

Decision 2012 (pardon my Herblock)

Oh, gaahhhdddd! Not only another election cartoon, but a cartoon with items metaphorically labeled, old-school! Jeez, I can hear my pal Gregor yelling right now... "Goddammit, Mike! Herblock is DEAD!"

Yeah, y'know... once the election ideas get going, it's pretty much hopeless. The usual Repuglican "stars" are already making noises about running; we're hearing about Sarah Palin possibly running (sigh), and Newt Gingrich (spit) -- and I even heard about Dick Cheney (double spit) on Joe Scarborough's program this morning (triple spit).



OK, granted, 2012...I may be a bit ahead of myself, here, but still... if you check out The One's record of achievement (or lack of same) in just his first year in office, plus the rash of FAIL in the special elections this year, you're looking at a raft of Donkeycratic politicians with a whole fistful of "achievements" pinned to their respective asses, and damn' near little ability to defend them come next year's midterms -- which, by the way, will be held after the Afghanistan debacle's had about a year to soak in.

So, would that be next year's repudiation of last year's repudiation?

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2012: They Were Warned

It's the end of the world as they know it...
but they feel fine!

Those of you who've followed my work for any length of time will remember my complaints about the early start of the Presidential "election" cycle (John Edwards announced on Christmas Week, 2006) in the form of the four-part "Jackass Slate for 2008".

So, here it is, at least a year before the "official" start of the 2012 Presidential campaign season, and here I am already doing a '12 Election cartoon. I don't know what else I can say for myself, other than that when the muse visits me, she absolutely refuses to quit pestering me until I've committed a creation to paper. It really was a "perfect storm" of events, recently: we had the epic FAIL of the Obama Administration in the areas of healthcare, the economy, and the war in Afghanistan; the Democrats stumbling in the recent elections in Virginia and elsewhere; the GOP hopefuls for '12 already jockeying for position; Obama's approval rating finally dropping to a level representative of normal objective reality; the ominous spectre of a sound butt-paddling for the Democrats in the 2010 off-year elections -- and a movie just out about the end of the world in 2012, which was pretty much the icing on the conceptual cake.

Now, I'm not into clairvoyance or prophecy or any of that woo-woo, but the events of the past year -- most notably the healthcare "reform" debacle -- had gotten me to thinking that at least in one respect, the Mayans may have been on to something...



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The Spirit of '99

Holy jeez, gang, has it really been ten years already? Phew, now that really makes me feel old. Luckily for me, fiftysomething is the new thirtysomething...or something.

So, when I was asked to design the poster for the Seattle/WTO Tenth Anniversary event here in DC, there was only one thing to do -- another parody of a famous work of art, in this case, a classic of Kitsch Americana, Archibald Willard's iconic Spirit Of '76, the hit of the show at the 1876 Columbian Exposition.



But, aaa-aaaanyway...the big do is on Monday, November 30, at Chief Ike's Mambo Room in Adams-Morgan, 1725 Columbia Road NW, at 7pm; it's a fund raiser for the Washington Peace Center and the Funk The War Alumni Association (for all you ex-college kids who are too old for SDS, but still want to get funky). There'll be the obligatory drinking and party-mix grooves, of course. There'll also be some vintage Seattle/WTO rebellion video running, because we really loves us some anarchy.

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So, hit the copy shop, mix up the paste, grab your rollers, and hit the streets, kids, and I'll see yer butts down at Chief Ike's on N30!

Radio Hate

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Just so we're on the same page, here: community organizing group ACORN registered large numbers of black voters in Chicago for the last big "election". As is common in many registration campaigns, there's a fair number of wise-asses registering dead peoples' names, or fake names. Also, as is required by law by boards of elections in any US city I've been to, any bogus/invalid registrations are reported, to keep the voter rolls cleared of all the dead people, and all those Luke Skywalkers and Donald Ducks.

So, anyway, outfits like the Drudge Report (has anybody informed that bonehead that the '90s are over?) get hold of this and, in their own predictable, inimitable fashion, proceed to blow this up into some kind of bogus "scandal" and throw it to the rightist k00k crowd like so much fresh, raw meat. Still, you've got to love Drudge, if only because he carries on in the finest shrieking tabloid tradition -- never let the facts get in the way of a good story -- along with providing us all with some good cheap laffs.

Now, just to refresh your memories, one more time, here's the video of a small group of black youth selling little plastic flags at the September 12 Teabaggers' rally being threatened and harassed, and accused of being "ACORN People" (as if there were something wrong with that in and of itself)...

Death Panel

That's right, gang; looks as if Sarah Palin may have been right about the "death panels", though perhaps only in the same way a busted clock is still right twice a day -- that is, for the entirely wrong reasons.  The recent push to eliminate even "public option" -- having only the barest, slightest whiff of national healthcare to it -- has confirmed my own suspicion: the "death panel" is real. Here they are now, rendering a recent decision affecting healthcare access not just for your wizened grandma, but for your own personal self.



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Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone

At the Capitol Hill Teabaggers' Rally this past July 4th, I spotted more than a few signs saying "Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone", and it got me thinking, what vast new entrepreneurial opportunities have been denied owing to government regulations and petty tyrannies such as the Clean Water Act, The Pure Food And Drug Act, or the Glass-Steagall Act...?

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Teabagger

The recent Teabaggers' Shindig over at Senate Park(viewable above) has certainly left me inspired, to say the least. Never did I hear a gang of astroturfers yell more loudly about not being astroturfers even as they were funded by big, fat rightist PACs run by characters like Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, and never did I hear more yelling from a group about how they aren't about Left or Right, even while they never missed an opportunity to slag the Left -- or even on ordinary Liberals, for that matter -- as the lot it was my fortune to cover this past Fourth Of July.



Even more hilarious was their total ignorance of the causes and effects of events that happened before January 20, 2009 -- forgetting, for instance, that the current corporate bailout fiasco was pushed by George W. Bush. Listening to the howls from the stage and checking out the composition of the crowd, it was as if the single reaction from the Teabagger Massmind boiled down to "OMFG, the President is a N1GG3R!" -- like the old-timer in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, hollering from the top of the church steeple, "Here comes the new sheriff, and he's a big..." ...and it sure as hell didn't help any as their event was organized and staged by members of a well-known White Power band, Pokerface.

So, considering all this, I thought to myself, "Self, it's time you did a poster that announces the imminent arrival of the National Teabaggers' Convention coming to town on the 12th of September, and maybe inspire some of the local anarchists and antifascists to organize a little welcoming committee." So, I did.

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Feeling Stressed Yet?

So, anyway, there's been a lot of yammering in the press lately about President Obullshit giving a "stress test" to all the banks. Now, just so I've got it straight: Obama's been pissing our tax money away on a bunch of fat, waddling, failing big-assed banks -- as well as his Wall Street buddies -- and he's just now getting around to giving them a "stress test"? D'ahh ha ha ha hah. From the looks of things, those "stress tests" probably aren't any less bogus than those cheesy "stress tests" run from kiosks or card tables on the streets by the Church of Scientology.

I don't know about the banks, but I'm sure there's about a hundred million or so workers and their families who are feeling pretty goddamn' stressed right about now...

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The Language of Washington

"Bipartisanship..." "On the table..." Y'know, gang, I'm actually from DC, and all this Capitol Hill Sunday Morning doubletalking bullshit still makes my brain hurt. Still, a well-informed citizen is a well-armed citizen; so, after many, many Sunday mornings of slogging through hours of Meet The Press and Hardball and Face The Nation so you don't have to, I've put together this quick guide to the phrases and words you hear the most in Washington.



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via AP: "Obama's top economic adviser: 'free-fall' ending"

I kid you not, gang...that was the actual headline on this Associated Press story, reporting on Obama henchman Larry Summers' remarks at a meeting of the National Economic Club of Washington, where he commented on the supposed end of the long, long dive the economy's taking right now.



Of course, Mr. Summers coyly sidestepped any mention of when or how or how suddenly this free fall would be ending which, of course, put me in mind of all those great old Road Runner cartoons where Wile E. Coyote finds himself taking yet another long fall from the top of a tall mesa and lands so hard that he leaves an impression of himself in the ground.

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Oooooh, LOOK! The FUTURE!

So, here we are hardly a week into this Shiny New Hope™ and Change™ Era, and we've already pretty much seen what The One and his Donkeycratic cohorts are all about: The Future. They want to move forward, move ahead, don't look back, don't stop thinking about tomorrow (MoveOn just wants to take another swig of Kool-Aid and – move on). They're so much about The Future, in fact, that they want to totally ditch the past – including their enabling of war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo, their role as accomplices in the destruction of the Constitution via USA PATRIOT, their endorsement of US-backed Israeli atrocities in Palestine.



Do you people – those of you who know who you are – honestly think the Donkeycrats will so much as lift a finger to bring the Bush mob to justice? Arrest Bush? In your goddamn' dreams. President Timberlake has kept Robert Friggin' Gates on as Secretary Of War, f'cripesake – not to mention that The One has also already gotten his hands bloody in Afghanistan and Pakistan this week. Does this look like the kind of guy who's going to raise so much as a murmur of objection to the crimes of the Bush Regime, anymore than he's spoken barely a whisper about US-financed Israeli war crimes in Gaza? Wake the hell up, US Left.

To bring Bush and the Gang to justice would require the Donkeycrats to admit to their own extensive complicity in crimes against the Constitution, international law, and humanity in general, crimes the Bush Regime could not have carried out without help from the Donkeycrats – kinda like the spot they found themselves in about ten years ago this month. To have impeached Bubba Clinton for his complete "rap sheet", aside from all that blowjob nonsense – murderous sanctions against Iraq, the continuous bombing of Iraq, the "Lewinsky Bombing" of Afghanistan and the Sudan, the two and a half months' continuous saturation bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia – would have required the Donkeycrats to 'fess up to their having allowed it with barely a peep of protest.

In other words, don't hold your breath.

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Nerobama

So, I'm on the street shooting these demos where people are demanding that Emperor-Elect Timberlake "say something" about the Israeli rape of Gaza, as if with enough pressure – if you call sign-waving and delivering white roses "pressure" – he'll suddenly have a Eureka Moment and go on TV and "do the right thing".



Now, I often like to joke around with my friends about how most Americans' long-term memories don't go back past the last episode of "Desperate Housewives", but lately it seems to be the dead-assed truth, and that includes The Movement™. Anyone who thinks that Obama actually has substantially different ideas about the situation that he's just waiting to express until he's officially El Presidente has obviously already forgotten his notorious wet, sloppy blowjob of a speech he delivered to last year's AIPAC Convention shortly after becoming the presumptive (spit) Donkeycratic Party nominee for Maximum Leader.

So, everybody, just knock it off about getting Barack Obombirana to "speak up" about the slaughter of Gaza. The guy's already said everything he needed to say about Gaza in that lickspittle AIPAC speech. Check it, gang...

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