12.30.2010

It's Schwagfest Time!

Happy New Year, gang, and it’s getting to be that time again — that time when every major politician who’s sociopathic enough to want to be El Presidente announces their intentions to run, kicking off the Presidential campaign season for the elections of 2012 — or, as any Democrat will tell you, The Most Important Election Since A Large Disk Of Dust And Proto-Planetary Matter Accumulated Around Our Sun.

This time, though, there’ll be a chance for all you betrayed, irate Lefties out there (or, “purists” and “whiners”, as The Most Progressive President Ever might refer to you) to get the jump on all the Liberal appeasers, Fauxgressives and other assorted Democratic Kool-Aid drinkers out there with this suitably cynical and ironic set of images mocking Shepard Fairey’s iconic 2008 “Hope” poster — available on T-shirts, stickers and fridge magnets, each in nine delicious flavors at the Cartoon Schwag Shop.

T-shirts, $25; 3×5″ stickers, single $4, 10-pack $30; 2×3″ fridge magnets, $5.

Downloadable images, 550 x 905 pixels, 72dpi jpeg:
“Aw, C’mon”, 44kb | “Whiners”, 48kb | “Purists”, 68kb | “Appease”, 68kb | “Centrism”, 64kb | “Pwned”, 68kb | “Compromise”, 64kb | “Caved”, 64kb | “Civility”, 52kb

12.21.2010

Uh Oh, It's Herblock Channeling Time Again

Sorry, gang; can't help it. Sometimes a portrayal of a situation defies all subtlety and poetry, and forces me to "go Herblock" on it.

If you’ve been paying any attention to the news lately, you’ve probably heard all about the big CEO get-together up at Obummer’s Place, with all the attendant worried blather from the boss media chatterers about whether or not El Presidente is being seen as “pro-business” enough. Well, let’s see… there’s the bank bailouts, the health-insurance industry bailout (aka “Healthcare Reform”), the latest round of bailouts of the banking industry (aka “Financial Reform”) and, of course, the latest sellout to the rich in the form of the extension of tax cuts for the rich under the thin disguise of “tax cuts for all”. After all this, how could there be any doubt about how “pro-business” our Glorious Boy Emperor is? Seriously, the guy’s been pro-corporate since day one, and even before. What the hell are all these big shots on CNBC bitching about? He’s pretty much given them everything they want.

What I’ve enjoyed, though, is the defensive, pushed-button reactions of the White House and Democratic Party “leadership” every time any Progressives or Lefties call bullshit and point out how he’s sold out to corporations on every major issue; they go into the pre-programmed “compromise” rap and brand anyone who objects to “compromise” as an unreasonable zealot or “purist”. What Obummer fails to point out, however, is how all of his “historic reforms” are weak, watered-down half-measures at the very best, and how his “spirit of compromise” involves caving in to corporate interests at every opportunity, appeasing right-wing neofascists and wannabe theocrats, and colluding with the very same class of people who are responsible for the trouble this country’s in now. Y’know, if our side actually got something out of all this compromising, it might not be so bad, but we’ve gotten absolute zero.

So, if being appalled at crass opportunism, cowardice and hypocrisy makes me a “purist”, then, hell yeah, I’m a purist. If wanting an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the closure of Guantanamo and Bagram makes me a “purist”, then, hell, yeah. If wanting the control of the healthcare system taken away from corporations makes me a “purist”, then, hell, yeah. If wanting an end to warrantless spying and intimidation and the restoration of the Bill Of Rights makes me a “purist”, then, hell, yeah… just like Frederick Douglass was a “purist”, and Eugene Debs was a “purist”, and Emma Goldman, and Nelson Mandela, and Abbie Hoffman, and Bobby Seale.

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12.17.2010

No Labels: Not Left, Not Right, Not Nothing

"He's a real Nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land,
making all his nowhere plans for Nobody!"

--the beatles.



So, a few days ago, I read about some so-called “post-partisan” or “anti-partisan” or “centrist” or whatever the hell kind of outfit they’re supposed to be called “No Labels” that’s just had its big launch with all manner of bland corporate politicos and media hacks boosting it, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — that’s right. one of the most right-wing howlers I’ve ever seen on the tube lending his gushing endorsement to an allegedly “centrist” group. You know when some emerging astroturfers use the phrase “common sense” in their press materials, it’s time to look the fuck out.

“Woodstock For Moderates” I heard it being called; that was such a horrid notion to imagine that there was only one thing I could do, and that was to hit the search engines. As I suspected, it was some weak-assed corporate centrist astroturf outfit being co-led by none other than Mark Penn, the Democrats’ famed Campaign Manager Of Losers and his socialite wife, and dragging along with such glittering moderate luminaries as Evan Bayh and a gaggle of GOP flunkies including former Rudolph Giuliani speechwriter John Avlon and McCain campaign advisor Mark McKinnon (hell, how does he rate?). Along with the eye-glazing politics of “civility” they’re pimping, it sure doesn’t help that they’re still being cagey about who’s signing their checks.

But, let’s just see what Salon was able to dig up…

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that seed donors to No Labels include Loews Corp. co-chair Andrew Tisch, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich, and ex-Facebook executive Dave Morin.pro-corporate Democrat. Ditto for Tisch, a former tobacco executive who has given money to Sens. Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, and Kirsten Gillibrand over the years. It’s not clear where Morin, a young Silicon Valley investor, is coming from politically...

Ewwwwwww. Lieberman. Bayh. Facebook. Eeeeeewwwwwwww. Anti-partisan, my ass.

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12.11.2010

There Will Always Be More Of Us Than There Are Of Them

"I am Spartacus!"


At last count, there were 1697 mirrors of Wikileaks available online. The mirror URLs shown in these posters are working as of today, 12.11.10.

Good luck, Senator Lieberman.

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2 of 3, 956kb

3 of 3, 956kb

12.08.2010

Whatever Happened to Civility?

Bite more, bark less, I always say.


If you’re like me, you’re probably at your wits’ end with the “civility” crowd. You know who they are, the people with stickers on the cars reading “choose civility” and “wag more, bark less”.

Do these people honestly believe that our reaction to the injustices, indignities and brutalities of the past decade should be in the manner of a UN bureaucrat drafting a resolution?

Are the corporations and the State being “civil” when they arrange for huge bailouts for themselves while the rest of us are scrambling for work or being thrown out of our homes? Is the State being “civil” when it seeks to cut back on Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age to 70 — essentially, working us to death? Is the State being “civil” when it strips away our Constitutional protection and basic dignity for the sake of cheap security theater at the airport? Is BP being “civil” by destroying ecosystems and livelihoods on the Gulf Coast and continuing to evade prosecution? Is the Democratic Party being “civil” when it panders to “progressive” constituencies in order to secure their votes, then spends the next two years publicly abusing and mocking them?

If you ask me, we need less “civility” and more people willing to organize and act on their own behalf instead of whining about how Liberal politicians are doing such a bad job of fighting their struggles for them, and how there’s so little “civility” these days. Take a tip from the British and the French. They’ve shut whole cities and countries down, with strikes and “incivility”. They’ve made their countries nearly ungovernable over issues — like corporatized healthcare and retirement “takebacks” — that make your average American shrug for a moment and go back to watching Top Chef. This is what needs to be happening here, instead of a bunch of Liberals bitching about “civility”.

Something else, too, that I found extra double-yum ironic about the Liberal “civility” crowd. If you — like me in ‘96, ‘00 and ‘04 — were or are a supporter of Ralph Nader and/or the Green Party, try this simple test on your average “civil” Liberal: bring up how hard the Democrats worked to prevent voters from having any real choice, and how the Democrats really lost the ‘00 election — and see how “civil” their reactions are.




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12.03.2010

Alternate Wikileaks Links Available!

Thorn In Imperialism's Side Not Deterred By Cowardly Hosts, DNS Providers

It’s often been said, ever since the days of Usenet and Tiananmen Square, that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. As it was in those bygone days, so it is today, as the US State pressures Wikileaks’ “cloud” provider and DNS service to take steps in an attempt to silence dissent.

The problem is — at least, if you’re the US State, it’s a problem — Wikileaks can still be reached on the Web via any number of alternate links, such as through its numeric “dotted quad” IP addresses here and here. It can also be reached through its alternate domains in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to follow that grand old Web censorship-defeating tradition of “mirroring” and passing alternate links around, and post these links to your blog or Web site:

http://213.251.145.96/
http://46.59.1.2/
http://wikileaks.ch/
http://www.wikileaks.nl/

Wikileaks is also mirrored at over 200 sites worldwide.

Tough luck, Barack. Better luck next time, Hillary.

11.15.2010

It Gets Better


Among my wife’s and my best friends are a gay couple who live near us in our neighborhood. One of the guys was a colleague of my wife’s for several years; before moving here, he was the first openly gay mayor of a town in Iowa. He also recently served as one of the ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) representatives for our ward, and currently holds a management job for the city government. He and his partner have been in a serious, loving, committed relationship as far back as I can remember. They’ve bought a house and renovated it together and have been active contributors to the community. Every year they celebrate the anniversary of the US Constitution by having a really awesome party. Basically, we’re talking about a couple of really cool, hard-working, stand-up guys.

It always bothered me, though, that whenever I’ve been at their annual Constitution Day party for the past few years, their basement has been decorated with some Obama ‘08 lawn signs and other campaign schwag — and I could never figure out why, given that Obama pretty much came right out during the ‘08 campaign and stated his intention to do absolutely nothing to make our friends’ lives any less of a pain in the ass than they already are (and, in fact, he’s been working to make it even more of a pain in the ass). I’ve always been tempted to ask them why they supported Obama given his opposition to same-sex marriage, but as these guys have been good friends of my wife and I for many years, I’ve decided not to cause a big stink, and let it slide. Still, it really burned my toast to think that Barack Obama allowed himself to be portrayed as some big-time progressive, but didn’t want these guys to enjoy the same rights as my wife and I.




So, you can imagine just how steamed I got when I saw Obama contributing a video to the “It Gets Better” series. Hearing him delivering empty platitudes on tolerance and bullying really made me gag as I thought of his opposition to gay marriage — he supports the lame half-measure of “civil unions” — as well as his inviting Rick Warren, the infamous gay-bashing megachurch preacher, to speak at his Inauguration, and his Administration’s lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court in favor of retaining the insulting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military. Mind you, I think the real problem is dead soldiers, not gay soldiers, but, still, the policy sucks on general principle. In the meantime, President Precious is giving us lame lip service on the bullying of gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people, while he and his regime engage in bullying of a kind even worse than the physical kind — bullying by the State, in the form of repressive and discriminatory official policies.

Just when you think Obama’s smarmy, empty sentiments can’t be any more infuriating — it gets worse.

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11.05.2010

Why Don't You Two Get A Room?

I’ve been watching these two flirting while pretending not to flirt since about 2002. The elephant would watch the donkey all the time, and the donkey would watch back, while they pretended to hate each others’ guts. The donkey would pretend not to give a shit — not speaking to him, not returning his calls, but the whole time she’d look for excuses to be around while the elephant was in the room. It got to be pretty annoying after a while — the donkey would be flirting her ass off, and the whole time saying it was nothing, just a little bipartisanship, all in a spirit of compromise.

It only got worse after 2004 — the donkey practically throwing herself at the elephant, while acting all coy, like she didn’t even care, the elephant behaving like a cold bastard toward her, while anybody with half a brain in their head knew he really wanted to fuck her brains out.

The goddamn’ donkey got even worse around 2008 or so — smarmy coy looks, suggestive touching, soppy goo-goo eyes, all the time insisting there was nothing to it. Finally, about the time of the health care vote, she was all but falling all over the elephant, and it became insufferable. It was all I could do to keep from yelling “for crissakes, why don’t you two just get a room, already?”

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10.28.2010

Don't Tread On Me (Gadsden Updated)

"Don't Tread On Me"?
"We Tread On Thee", more like.


In light of the recent incident at a Rand Paul appearance in Kentucky, in which a couple of his goons assaulted and stomped on the head of a woman counterdemonstrator from MoveOn, we thought it was time to update the design of the historic Gadsden Flag -- a.k.a. "Don't Tread On Me" flag.

Downloadable in three glorious revolutionary sizes:
Letter-size, high resolution, 600kb
Tabloid size, medium resolution, 468kb
34 x 22.527 inches, medium resolution, 1mb


10.22.2010

Fucking Hippies

"You're obsolete, my baby--my poor, unfaithful baby,
I said, baby, baby, baby, you're out of time!"
--Rolling Stones


A couple of weeks or so ago, Vice Emperor Joe Biden went on TV and called the American Left “whiners” for daring to complain about the abject failure of the Democratic Party to enact any truly progressive reforms while at about the same time, Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One gave a bitchy interview to Rolling Stone in which he slags the Left six ways from Sunday for complaining about the Democrats sucking so badly, pretty much doing everything but pissing on us and giving us the finger in what was the first round of “hippie bashing” by the Democrats — followed by his remarks at a posh fundraising dinner in Connecticut attended by a buttload of rich people, in which he spits on the Left yet again while bowing and scraping to “the people who write the checks”. That’s sure a helluva way to convince your progressive “base” to support you, isn’t it? You go back on every promise you ever made during the ‘08 campaign, you retain and expand on Bush’s policies on imperialist war and the national security state, you enrich the banks and Wall Street while leaving the unemployed and homeowners facing foreclosure to twist in the wind, you sit by while economies and ecosystems are destroyed on the Gulf Coast, you legislate sweetheart deals with the health-insurance and pharmaceutical industries under the guise of “reform”, you exhibit the most craven behavior possible in the face of rightists and fascists — and when the people who helped elect you dare to complain about it and threaten to withhold their support in the midterm “elections”, you go on TV and insult them to their faces? There’s some real out-of-the-box thinking for you. Is your party and its leadership an abysmal failure? No problem, just blame those fucking hippies for complaining, and announce that the beatings will continue until morale improves.

In the meantime, Democratic Party mouthpieces in the blogozone are going into full-tilt pants-crapping panic mode, with Robert Parry at consortiumnews.com spewing a page full of the most weak-assed, warmed-over, shopworn scaremongering and excuse-making possible, complete with that good old Nader Hate. Trouble is, in the course of trying to make a case of supporting the Democrats no matter what, he makes a case for staying home — or even voting Republican, seeing as how even with the Democrats in power, we’re still being saddled with Republican policies which, more often than not, are being enabled by the Democrats. Parry might as well have cut’n'pasted an old column from 2000, begging and pleading with us not to vote Green in response to the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Clinton Regime, threatening us with calamity and disaster, guilt-tripping us with that tired old bullshit about how “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush”. Hell, even the Communist Party USA is getting in on the action, with Comrade Chairman Sam Webb posting a whiny-assed screed pleading with us to not sit this one out. Jeezus, who’d have thought that even the geezing old cranks at the CPUSA were fronting for the Democrats these days?

Eight or ten years ago, this kind of behavior by the Democrats and their mouthpieces would’ve made me livid, but nowadays it just fills me with delight; I can’t begin to tell you how liberating it was to finally quit giving a shit about what happens to the Democrats. Sure, on the one hand its really piss-poor the way Biden and the Boy Emperor are dissing us, but what do you expect? These are Democrats we’re talking about here, y’know. I become flat-out ecstatic every time I hear either of these two — not to mention the likes of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed “I Know No-THING!” Schultz blustering and kvetching and pleading for us to come out and vote for their miserable-assed party, because I know that every time they do this, they’re showing us just how truly weak, ineffectual and entirely unworthy of our support they are. “Pleee-eeease vote for us! Pretty please? We only suck ass a little less than the GOP! C’monnnn, pleeee-eeaase?” P’wahh ha ha ha ha ha hahhh. Take a goddamn’ hike, assholes. It’s popcorn time. You want to pander to me, exploit me, guilt-trip me, lie to me, insult me to my face on TV? Kiss my ass goodbye.

I plan on staying home on “Election” Day, withholding my support for a bunch of cowardly corporate tools, refusing my consent for a system that doesn’t work in my interests — and doing it without shame, regret or apology. Seriously, folks — there’s no shame in staying home on “Election” Day if none of the walking wastes of DNA seeking your vote are representing your values or standing up for what you believe in. C’mon, take a chance. Stay home. Don’t participate in the cheap-assed kabuki theater that passes for “democracy” in this country. See how liberating it is.





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10.21.2010

Yes, We Can!

"Though I could not caution all, I yet may warn a few:
Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools!"

–grateful dead.


Y’know, I’ve been hearing a lot of desperate yammering lately from shit-scared Liberals and Fauxgressives about how I need to support our Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One and the Noble Democratic Party in their struggle against the Evil Rethuglicans. They agonize over the Tea Party freaks and their horrible lack of “civility”, although whenever I try to point out how the Democrats have either cut and run or else actively enabled the Evil Rethuglicans’ takeover on just about every issue — Iraq, Afghanistan, the banks, healthcare, the economy, the environment, you name it — the Fauxgressives promptly proceed to pitch a fit (how uncivil of them) and only seem to be able to respond with mindless chants of “Yes, We Can!”.

Indeed — Yes, They Can:
Bomb civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan
with robotic drone aircraft. This has to be the most pussified way to fight a war you could think of. They’re using “Predator” drones to bomb homes, schools, weddings, and funerals. Funerals, f’crissake. So, where the hell are the Liberals and Fauxgressives while this shit is going on? When George W. Bush was doing it, they filled the streets; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One is the one dropping the bombs?

Wiretap the Internet. It’s been reported this past summer that Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One wants to make it easier for the FBI to obtain information about your private emails and Web surfing history as well as enable direct surveillance of Internet traffic in what is a 180° about-face from his lofty campaign promises of 2008, a return to Bill Clinton’s odious “Echelon” program defended by Democrats as “a necessary evil” (yeah, that’s right — Democrats). When George W. Bush wanted to do this, Liberals and Fauxgressives screamed so loudly you could hardly hear yourself think; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One wants to spy on American citizens and suppress dissent?

Prop up the banks: Liberals and Fauxgressives like to claim that this was George W. Bush’s doing, but they conveniently forget that it was then-Senator Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One who was being the good “house negro” by helping round up the votes authorizing the biggest transfer of wealth from the People to the Rich in this nation’s history. The Liberals and Fauxgressives raised holy hell about this when it was going on towards the twilight of the Bush Regime; where the hell are they now that President Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One — with the assistance of the Democratic Party — has continued enriching the banks and Wall Street brokerages at the expense of the foreclosed-on and unemployed?

Let the Gulf Coast die: Back towards the end of last March, President Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One served up his “Drill, Baby, Drill” speech — although, of course, he couched it in his classic pompous professorial speaking style, not actually using the GOP faithful’s “Drill, Baby, Drill” phrase in order to avoid freaking out the Liberals and environmentalists (who supported him in ‘08 anyway despite his stated support for offshore oil drilling). Then, as BP’s Deepwater Horizon well catastrophe unfolded, the number-one recipient of campaign contributions from BP sat by and let it happen, even as BP’s attempts to stop the gusher resulted in one pathetic FAIL after another, and BP worked itself to death to keep reporters and news photographers from reporting the extent of the devestation — hell, The Boy Emperor even helped BP suppress reporters by lending the services of the Coast Guard. When George W. Bush sat on his ass and allowed the near-total destruction of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the Liberals and Fauxgressives were howling at full throat; where the hell are they now that Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One has allowed the decimation of ecosystems and economies all over the Gulf Coast, and allowed BP to escape punishment?

Appease the Right: From Israel to trade policy to financial “reform” to healthcare, Barack Obama’s your go-to guy for pandering to rightists and Teabaggers. I’ll keep it brief here and concentrate on the prime example: the alleged healthcare “reform” which basically leaves the criminals responsible for our problems in charge. There was endless sound and fury in the media about the healthcare “debate”. Huh, some debate; nurses and activists demanding the inclusion of single-payer healthcare — the system favored by a majority of Americans — in Senate hearings on Capitol Hill were ordered ejected from the hearing room and arrested by Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Obama and his Donkeycratic cronies were so utterly desperate to pass a bill — any bill would do — that they legislated bailouts for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, sweetheart deals with the hospital industry, the compromising away of abortion rights and the supposedly-more-important-than-anything “public option” (a shallow mockery of single-payer) and a measure which forces citizens to become customers of the insurance industry no matter how broke and/or unemployed they are. Meanwhile, at the Democrats’ phony town-hall meetings where they pimped their worthless healthcare “reform”, the places were overrun with Teabaggers busting up the scene — while the Liberals and Fauxgressives just sat on their asses and whined about those mean old Teabaggers. Hell, they knew this bill was a piece of shit; why the hell weren’t they out in the streets and busting up the Democrats’ cheesy dog’n'pony shows? If George W. Bush were putting over a sham like this, you can bet the Liberals and Fauxgressives would be out for blood; where the hell are they now that this same corporate-backed fraud is being perpetrated by Mr. Hope’n'Change?

Bully the Left: I thought I’d save the best for last. During the 2008 campaign, delusional Liberals ranging all the way from United For Peace And Justice to Code Pink were drooling all over Barack Obama, a supposed “peace candidate”, based on one single weak-assed speech he gave at an anti-war rally just before the US invaded Iraq — a speech in which he said he wasn’t opposed to all wars, just “dumb wars”. WTFF? This is a peace candidate? …Fast-forward to this past September 24, when Obama’s FBI conducted raids on the homes of antiwar activists in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan, issuing grand jury subpoenas to at least a dozen activists. Remember, this was our peace candidate — President Hope’n'Change, the man who emitted a vile “just war” speech when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. If George W. Bush was pulling this crap, the Liberals and Fauxgressives would be busting blood vessels all over the place, but now all they can say is that we have to support the Democrats, no matter what. No matter what.

Where the hell are they now? I’ll tell you. They’re flailing and failing, able to offer nothing but warmed-over excuses and apologia for Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One and the Democrats, telling us that we have to support the Democrats because the Evil Rethuglicans would be worse — yeah, that’s right, we have to support the Democrats because while the GOP sucks, the Democrats suck just a little less, an excuse so lame and tired that it’s gone from amusing to annoying — and that to stay home and not vote in this, The Most Important Election Since The Earth Accreted Enough Material For Gravity To Compress It Into A Sphere, would be to invite disaster.

What, you mean we’re not in a goddamn’ disaster now?

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10.09.2010

One Nation Working Together

We can hold One Nation marches every week. It will not make any difference until we revolt against the formal structures of power.

The liberal preoccupation with positive forms of propaganda ignores the root of our problem. The tea party and hate mongers on Fox such as Glenn Beck, however repugnant, are the manifestation of the crisis, not its cause. The forces assaulting the remnants of American democracy will not be cowed or discredited with rallies, such as the one in Washington on Saturday. We will blunt these rising anti-democratic forces only when we organize outside conventional systems of power.

Mass support for anti-democratic movements and public acceptance of open violations of human rights are not caused, in the end, by the skillful dissemination of misinformation or brainwashing. They are caused by the breakdown of a society and the death of a liberal class that once made reform and representative government possible. The timidity of our liberal class was on public display during the march in Washington. Speakers may have called for jobs, but none would call on citizens to abandon the rotting hull of the Democratic Party and our moribund political system or put Wall Street speculators in prison.

– Chris Hedges at TruthDig, 10.05.10

One Nation FAILing Together, more like.

Oh, how I wanted to punch this rally in the teeth.

After happily committing to blowing off that thinly-disguised Donkeycratic GOTV rally, I ended up letting my comrades in the Town Hell Posse talk me into coming out with them to shoot it with the idea of putting together a nasty, sarcastic music video to the tune of the Dead Kennedys’ Holiday In Cambodia.

Jeezus, what a huge-assed mistake. This was, without a doubt, the dullest rally ever held in DC — and I mean the Dullest. Rally. EVER. A rally made of Lame. Not even the Socialist or Green contingents could save this Lamefest. Even inasmuch as my pals warned me what I was letting myself in for, it was still a soul-crushingly wretched scene in its own way even worse than Beckapalooza was in August. No street theater, no puppets, no militant pizazz, no civil disobediences, no genuine sentiment, just a bunch of goddamn’ liberals waving mass-printed placards.I chose to cover the immigrants’ rally and feeder march because it was at the Capitol, five minutes’ walk from my house, and because the immigrants’ protests have always been better as they all come from countries where they really know how to throw a protest. Huh, some hope. The immigrants’ rally was totally overrun by SEIU jerks still proudly wearing their goddamn’ purple Obama ‘08 jackets — and featuring Al Sharpton, to boot. Augggh, Reverend Fucking Al, The Cosmic Media Attention-Sucking Vortex, spouting his standard-issue faux militant boilerplate after opening with a prayer. As usual, there was more God than I could handle at this shindig. I can handle the rightists yelling about how America needs God and Christianity, but the Liberals totally blow my gaskets with their hypocrisy about religious diversity even as they totally ignore atheists and freethinkers (such as yours truly).

It was all downhill from there. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial just in time to hear some guy yelling about how “we can’t let Obama fail,” or some godawful shit, and I knew then that I was in for a long, hard afternoon. This Kool-Aid tripper was followed by a bunch of students taking turns reciting pieces of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech as if they were in some kind of school Christmas pageant, followed by MSNBC’s Ed “I Know No-THING” Schultz who bellowed his usual partisan line of bullshit at the top of his goddamn’ lungs. You don’t know scary until you see that windbag Schultz yelling at you from a goddamn’ Jumbotron.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention the Jumbotrons — lots of ‘em. Yeah, nothing says bottom-up, grassroots peoples’ mobilization like a fistful of Jumbotrons.

After I finished having the skin peeled off my face by Ed Schultz’s blustering, I decided I just couldn’t take any more and headed back to the Washington Monument snack bar for a hot dog and a beer or three. Normally, I just couldn’t see paying three and a half bucks for a goddamn’ Budweiser, but after witnessing that weak-assed spectacle I was more than happy for a few overpriced Buds to help me recover.

It wasn’t until I met up with the rest of the Posse and headed back to my house to review the footage that the true wretchedness of what I’d just endured really set in (I only shot about half an hour of tape that afternoon because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand looking at it again). The more deathly dull footage I saw rolling by, the more I realized that here was five hours of my life I’ll never get back again — and more’s the pity.

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9.15.2010

Happy Belated 9/11, Everybody!

Left Keeps It Classy, Teabaggers Keep It Zany On Ninth Anniversary Of WTC Destruction

Here's hoping your celebration of American Victimhood Day was as joyous as mine. I and my comrades in the Town Hell Posse spent the day in New York City with cameras rolling, and here's our special musical coverage of the celebrations held in the Big Apple.

Word Of The Day: HATEFEST:




More on the day’s festivities from my comrades at Lady Liberty’s Lamp.

9.01.2010

Bite the Big Apple

ya got rats on the West Side, bedbugs Uptown!
What a mess! This town’s in tatters!

–rolling stones

So, what’s the deal with New York City, anyway? Is it hypocritical — or schizoid? I’ve been asking this question a lot lately, while checking out the news from NYC about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the attendant right-wing racist street zaniness. New York City’s always had this outward image of a progressive, multicultural, hip city — a cradle of the US labor movement, the birthplace of outfits like the Yippies, the city where people like Andy Warhol, Peter Max, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith first emerged as major artists — versus a long-present simmering vile nasty core of racism and class war, where Amadou Diallo and a host of other Black Americans and African immigrants were brutally tortured and murdered by the police, and systematic gentrification drove the poor and working class out of places like Tompkins Square and Brooklyn.

I was recently discussing this with my friend Isis, a cohort in the Town Hell Posse and native New Yorker. She seemed totally down with the wormy, rotten core idea, and filled me in on New York City’s historic record of racism, xenophobia and classism. “Y’know that old Stones song, ‘Shattered’? That pretty much says it!” Suddenly, the conversation shifted to sketching in some plans to go to NYC to cover the big anti-Islamic hate rally being held on September 11, and how we could use “Shattered” for our motif and background music; my mind suddenly fixated on the line that goes go ahead, bite the Big Apple — don’t mind the maggots!

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8.30.2010

Sharpton Marches, Teabaggers Sit; Honor Restored, Dream Reclaimed

Word Of The Day: "Doughy"





From Our Better Late Than Never Department:

The Washington Post, possibly suffering a massive brain seizure due to the heat, referred to the Beckapalooza at the Lincoln Memorial as a “grassroots” event. Oh, absolutely; I’ve lost track of how many up-by-the-bootstraps, grassroots mobilizations had rallies with custom-built stages, state-of-the-art sound, high-end multi-camera video production and five or six Jumbotrons.

And, oh, did they use those Jumbotrons — to crank out a steady diet of smarmy, syrupy video trailers full of classically empty nationalistic propaganda language about the Greatest Country In The World and the Greatest People On Earth. The stage production may have been pure Albert Speer, but the video pieces were pure Reifenstahl. For a bunch of people who cherished freedom and hated being made to do something, they sure did enjoy being told what to do. Not even the most craven, tweedy Liberals enjoyed being bossed around more than this bunch.

The Posse and I could only stand in awe at the high number of pasty, doughy, Twinkie-fed folks who turned out to help Restore Honor. It’s almost a good thing Glenn Beck didn’t schedule a march, because he’d have been sued by the families of the nearly 100,000 heart attack and heatstroke victims among the roughly 200,000 who Restored Honor on Saturday. It was at this rally that the folding camp chair would become symbolic and synonymous with your slackly-rallying Teabagger.

I thought it was interesting that Beck made such a bit deal about his people not bringing signs. Did they honestly think they could cover up the rank hate and racism that oozes out of them? They may not have had signs, but we saw some nasty t-shirts at that rally. Besides, we’ve already seen plenty of them for the past year and a half, so it’s not like the rest of us don’t know who they are, and where they’re from, and what they stand for, and what they’re about.

I honestly don’t know which was worse: the possibility of being threatened and roughed up by Teabaggers, or being grabbed and manhandled by Al Sharpton’s henchmen. Both of these happened Saturday — to a young man holding a “Re-Elect Obama” sign assaulted by members of Glenn Beck’s bunch at the Lincoln Memorial, and to yours truly and to fellow Posse members jerked around by the arms by parade marshals while covering the Sharpton march; what those New York guys didn’t realize is that they were in Washington, DC, which has the highest number of lawyers per square inch of anywhere in the USA, and consequently full of people who will sue your ass. God help anyone doesn’t toe the line at the Sharpton press scrum.

And speaking of our Dear Lord, there was a whole lot of God being pushed on both sides of this circus. God was asked to bless America at least twice (by both sides). God was asked to bless the crowd (on both sides). God was thanked for Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. God was invoked in remarks on religious diversity that strangely didn’t include atheists.

The opposition event wasn’t so much about whether or not they kept Beck off the Lincoln Memorials grounds as it was about Reclaiming The Dream. Organizers included the National Action Network, the SEIU, and the usual suspects, so they weren’t any more “grassroots” than the Beck event, although NAN couldn’t afford Jumbotrons. Still, while they didn’t have Jumbotrons, they did have Al Sharpton.

8.23.2010

More Lame Teabagger Hackery

They love me! They really, really love me!

After spending the better part of the past two or three months cranking ‘em out every other week — including more goddamn’ oil spill cartoons than I care to think about — I decided to take a break and finish getting ready for my two-week trip to South Africa, which I just returned from this past weekend.

So, the other night, while doing my normal rounds of rightist blog surfing for cheap laffs, what should I stumble over but this entry at Michael Wolfe’s blog at americana83.com, declaring the Teabaggers’ opposition is hypocritical and swearing all up and down that the Tea Party “Movement” isn’t racist, despite the recent Philadelphia rally which was made of FAIL, the recent video-hacking antics of Little Andy Breitbart and the racist email blasting of New York Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.

Along with citing my video of the July 4, 2009 Teabagger rally on Capitol Hill, Mr. Wolfe also took considerable liberties with my work in the form of an attempted parody of my late 2008 cartoon “Obama’s Big Bus”:

I briefly considered writing to complain and to post a takedown notice under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, except that 1: parody, as I recall, falls under “fair use”, and 2: I was unable to type properly as I was laughing so hard, although not in the manner that Wolfe might have intended.

So I finally decided, what the hell, man; why not keep it classy and be a good sport? And, besides, as they say, any publicity is good publicity. Thanks, Wolfe.

7.21.2010

Happy Apollo 11 Anniversary, Everybody!

I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

Ask anyone who knows me really well, and they’ll tell you that I’m a huge space geek, and a really huge fan of human expansion off the Earth. Normally, though, spaceflight issues these days aren’t normally big on the mainstream media radar — save the occasional catastrophic Space Shuttle failure — and haven’t been since the last Apollo crew came home. In fact, the last space-related cartoon I did was about nine years ago. Still, once in a great while a cartoon-worthy space policy issue will bubble up into the MSM, such as the current partial privatization/funding brouhaha going on over the late Constellation/Orion program and the future of US manned spaceflight As We Know It™ with regard to President The One’s Vision For Space Exploration. So, while it’s a bit of a geeky issue, I thought this might be a good time to take the opportunity — while I’m still struggling for good immigration cartoon ideas — to knock out this piece that’s been rattling around in my head since I read about the current House version of the NASA appropriation:


So, the crew module that was supposed to be capable of ferrying astronauts to the Moon (the Moon? What’s that?) and to Mars-bound spacecraft has been reduced to an ISS lifeboat, and President The One is talking up that old chestnut, the Public-Private Partnership™, to take up the slack of building and launching cargo and man-rated vehicles to ISS. Needless to say, Elon Musk’s nipples are exploding with delight. Oh, and they’ve also directed NASA to get down to building a heavy-lift booster by the end of the decade. I’d just love to know how the hell they’re going to pull that off when their program is getting be as cash-starved as the xUSSR’s N1 heavy-lift lunar booster program was in the 1960s. Here’s a look at the outcome of one of their many test launches which, to the last, was made of FAIL:



The thing that really irks the hell out of me is that this is just the icing on the cake, after seeing pretty much every other important program — healthcare, housing, education, Social Security — having to go begging because of the stonking huge wads of cash being pissed away on two wars, neither of which is particularly beloved among the public, and the equally stonking amount of cash being blown on building a massive security state. We’ve got no problems throwing away money on Predator drones and bunker busters and upgrading the phone networks to allow easier tapping, but when it suddenly comes time to fund a national healthcare system, or keep Social Security out of trouble, or help humanity expand off the planet, it’s like they’re suddenly all tapped out. But, they’ve always got money to pay for their goddamn’ wars.

But, wait! There’s more! Now, after the Constellation Program’s gone, all that promise out the window, and we’re reduced to buying rides with the Russians and waiting around for half a dozen spaceflight-contract wannabes to get their ducks together, NASA’s added insult to injury by releasing a video game version. Yeah, that’s right, a goddamn’ video game. Mind you, being an artist as well as an old space geek, I certainly loves me some tasty CGI concept art as much as the next guy, but this kind of bugged me somehow, coming as it did so soon after the program meant to replace the Shuttle went from its first test launches to just the latest addition to NASA’s Awesome Concept Art Gallery. I mean, that’s just depressing (besides the fact that they haven’t even developed a Mac version, losers).

What’s really sad, though, is the fact that I still want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

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7.13.2010

My Final BP Oil Spill Cartoon (I hope)

Yeah, I know, I know. I’m as tired of it as you are. There’s so much other cartoon-worthy stuff going on — ten percent unemployment, home foreclosures skyrocketing, Obama escalating the war in Afghanistan, Israel murdering humanitarian aid workers, Arizona enacting a racial-profiling law — but it seems like pretty much every damn’ cartoon I’ve done in the past two months has been an oil spill cartoon.

At last, however, this is the final idea left in the queue. At last! My final, really, no kidding really, honestly, seriously, absotively posilutely final BP oil spill cartoon — even though it’s really sort of an election cartoon:

11×17 medium-res color .jpg, 948kb.

7.10.2010

Stop The Raids! July 30

I dare anyone out there to call "Godwin" on this one!

I’ve been having a hard time lately coming up with any decent cartoon ideas about the upcoming July 30 sweeps and raids by Sheriff Joe “Heinrich” Arpaio in Arizona in support of their “Papers Please” Law. It seemed all I could come up with were these goddamn’ oil spill cartoons until my comrades at Lady Liberty’s Lamp sent along this iconic old foto of the German Army pulling a raid on a house in the Warsaw Ghetto. Suddenly, the light finally came on in my head; I’ve never been shy of parodying iconic art or fotos, so why not parody this famous foto of Jews being rounded up in Warsaw?

So, here’s one for all my comrades in Arizona, for use on leaflets and for your late-night flypasting pleasure:

Medium-res grayscale image, 16×20 inches, 1mb

6.27.2010

It's What's For Dinner!

Here’s another piece inspired by an article I saw at one of my all-time favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again — specifically, this entry, containing an especially pithy comment by another one of my Leftie blogozone faves, The Drunken Pundit, who comments:

…With both parties fully in the grip of the industrial-financial-military complex of the American Empire they have to serve up shit sandwiches to everyone but they each need their own distinctive flavor of shit in order to differentiate themselves…

I honestly can’t think of anything else to add to this succinct and elegant analysis — at least not in written words — so, I’m not going to waste time blathering here this time, and just get on with the cartoon:

11×17 inch medium-res jpg image, 624k.

6.17.2010

Nerobama no.2: Still Fiddling

OK, so I’ve ripped off one of my own cartoons that I did about a year and a half ago — and it was a cartoon that ripped off a famous painting, at that. Still, given the response of Our Exalted Leader Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Skywalker Obama The One to the massive man-made environmental disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico, and the incompetence and obstructionism of British Petroleum, it just seemed fitting considering the response — or, should I say non-response — of Our Exalted Leader Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Skywalker Obama The One to this and every critical situation that’s confronted him since taking office: basically, sitting on his ass and saying silent, making like Nero, and metaphorically fiddling while metaphorical Rome burned — fiddling while Gaza burned, fiddling while Oakland police executed a young black man on a subway platform, fiddling while home foreclosures and unemployment skyrocketed, fiddling while Wall Street ruined the economy, fiddling while Israel committed piracy and murder, and now fiddling while ecosystems and economies on the Gulf Coast are ruined for generations.

Nerobama played golf, hung out with Bono and rocked out with Paul McCartney while the Gulf Of Mexico was destroyed. Only weeks into the debacle did Our Exalted Leader Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Skywalker Obama The One bother to actually show his face on the Gulf Coast, only to pose for photo ops with the people actually trying to clean up the mess — with “workers” bused in by BP specifically for the photo op — and making inane pronouncements such as this one, in the Gulf Coast town of Theodore, Alabama, this past week:

Apologists for Our Exalted Leader Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Skywalker Obama The One will point to the fact that he got BP to agree to a $20 billion (a drop in the bucket) escrow fund to pay out damage claims to Gulf Coast residents whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed by BP. Yeah, he finally got that one little thing done, but how long did it take him? Nearly two months, that’s how long — two goddamn months of fiddling, hemming, hawing, and excuse making while BP made pathetically cartoonish attempts to plug the Deepwater Horizon blowout, bought giant ads in the newspapers, bought sponsored keywords on Google, and prevented the press from viewing or photographing the blowout site.

This is something that Our Exalted Leader Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Skywalker Obama The One should’ve been right on top of from day one, but instead he fiddled.

Medium-res .jpg image, 728k

6.01.2010

A Better Reason To Mark Memorial Day

DC Joins Millions Worldwide In Speaking Out Against Israeli Murder, Piracy

It was a boisterous and irate crowd that gathered yesterday outside the Israeli Embassy to protest the murder, kidnapping and piracy committed in international waters by the Israeli State against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla humanitarian aid ships destined to defy the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Along with large amounts of food, water and building materials, the ships carried a number of former European legislators, an 86 year-old Holocaust survivor and a Nobel Laureate — that is, a real Nobel Laureate — as opposed to Barack Obama, who might as well have gotten his Nobel Peace Prize out of a goddamn’ Cracker Jack box.

Also present were two — count ‘em, two — members of Code Pink. Still, this was all that was necessary to attempt to inflict damage on the event through their now-patented “demojacking” technique perfected by Code Pink at a pro-Palestinian protest in January of last year. Happily for all of us, though, Code Pink’s attempt to ruin the event amounted to a big ol’ bucket of FAIL as less than ten protesters decided to take them up on a pointless, straggling little march to the White House.


5.29.2010

Plugged, At Last!


Damn! Why didn't they think of this before?


Late last week, after a tedious morning of futile job-searching, I took a break to hit the news and found this excellent little piece by Al Schumann at Stop Me Before I Vote Again, one of my favorite lefty blogs, in which he proposed a solution to the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf Of Mexico which left a mental image that I just couldn’t un-see.

For nearly a month, BP attempted “solutions” which were just PR exercises designed to do little more than make the spill less visible from airplanes and satellites, keep the media from being flooded with images of fouled beaches, oil-soaked birds and dead fish, and make it looked as if BP actually gave a damn. Meanwhile, our Glorious Leader, Booker T. Obama, got the George W. Bush Katrina Tour of the affected areas — though he did manage to keep it classy by not telling the Minerals Management Service that they were doing a “heckuva job” — while Interior Secretary Salazar was busy enforcing an offshore drilling moratorium that wasn’t.

Meanwhile, the mental image provided by Schumann’s blog entry continued to eat into my brain. It sounded like a better and better idea the more I thought about it. Why not round up all the people responsible for the disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico, and use their bodies to plug the leak? Let’s see who we’ve got, here:

First, of course, our Exalted Boy Emperor, Booker T. Obama, a leading recipient of campaign contributions from BP, not to mention the entirety of the oil and nuclear industries. Then, of course, the Board Of Directors of BP, for caring more about profits and PR than about actual responsibility for environmental disaster and cleaning up after itself. After that, we’ve got our environmentalist nonprofit organizations, outfits like the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, who entered into “partnerships” — or, to be more accurate, took payoffs — in the form of large donations from BP. Then, let’s not forget you — that’s right, you, the people who clog the highways in fat-assed SUVs, sedans and station wagons on your daily commutes, traveling one to a vehicle, while remaining silent about the American Empire’s wars of aggression in the Middle East in search of more oil. Didn’t think I’d let you off the hook, did you?

Now, that’s what I call “Top Kill”!

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5.12.2010

Climate Change?


Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates between right and left, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place. Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.
– President Barack Obamessiah, “Drill, Baby, Drill” Speech, 03.31.10


Well, it certainly looks like the last cartoon has started a sizzling but happy shitstorm across the Leftie blogozone, especially at my favorite, Stop Me Before I Vote Again. So, I thought, perhaps I need to take responsibility and do something to quiet things down a bit – so, here we go: something about a topic we can all agree on, and it has Barack Obama being made to look like a big-assed Ichabod in it, and everything.

You’ll recall a couple of weeks ago, I had something to say about the Obamessiah throwing his environmentalist constituencies under the proverbial Bus with his announcement that he was joining in the zesty chorus of “Drill, Baby, Drill” in an effort to appease the Right. (Hell, it’s always about keeping the Right off their backs to the goddamn’ Democrats, isn’t it?) Well, it wasn’t a week later that suddenly the Obamessiah was reconsidering his position – or, as most of us like to say, “backpedaling”. Hah, Mr. O, I guess those debates aren’t so damn’ tired now, are they?

Medium-res .jpg image, 676k.

5.07.2010

This is what Democracy looks like!

They range from borderline delusional to flat-out certifiable – and they vote.

I’d been seriously wondering about the root causes of the quality of “leadership” in this country over the past twenty-odd years,
beginning late in Reagan’s second term and continuing off and on during the Clinton and Bush years, but it didn’t really start banging the doors down in my head until the 2008 Presidential “election” cycle began. Things finally reached critical mass when I saw this article in Slate a couple of months or so ago. I didn’t quite agree with all of its points, but you can’t possibly imagine the thrill and relief when I finally realized that, yes, I’m not the only one thinking that the number one problem is, in fact, The People.

I couldn’t stop being amazed at the plunging quality and the attendant skyrocketing of ignorance and sociopathy among the USA’s “leadership” in the past decade. I and others often wondered just how in the hell we wound up saddled with such a bunch of sociopaths, liars, and thieves? Then it hit me: this bunch wouldn’t be in power now if they hadn’t been put there by You, The People. Yeah, that’s right – you. You, the voters, have shown yourselves to be just as ignorant and sociopathic in a trend increasing upwards since at least the 1980 “election”, climbing steadily into the “zany” category in the Bush I and Clinton years, until it finally sailed off the edge of the Earth and into the realm of “batshit” shortly after 9/11. The “election” of 2008 totally iced the deal for me. This class of hucksters and shysters is in power because You, The Voters, put them there. You complain your asses off about the quality of your “leadership” until you’re blue in the mouth, and then promptly slog off to the polls like zombies, punch a chad for a fresh batch of sociopaths, liars and thieves, then slog off home to fall asleep watching American Idol. The names and faces of the “leaders” and the little letters after their names are different, but they’re basically the same class of sociopaths, liars and thieves. Then, the cycle of bitching/voting begins again, without your having learned a single thing from any of it, like that one really stupid cow in the herd who keeps walking into the electric fence.

And, no wonder, too. Just take a look at yourselves, f’cripesake. Despite Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper showing you Barack Obama’s birth certificate right there on TV, right to your faces – and despite the numerous third-rate forged Kenyan birth certificates exposed as fraud, right there on TV in front of your faces – a buttload of you still think Obama’s not a natural-born US citizen. Despite his having been a servant of bankers and industrialists since forever, some of you actually think that Barack Obama is a Marxist. Despite no evidence, a bunch of you think he’s a Muslim (as if there were something bad about it). Despite mountains of evidence, some of you still think that climate change is a hoax. Even more of you think that the weak, late, lamented “public option” in the healthcare “reform” bill was socialist. Despite the initial study being proven a massive fraud, huge numbers of you still insist that vaccines cause autism. Many of you still think — despite any tangible proof — that 9/11 was a conspiracy, an “inside job” perpetrated by the Bush Regime with the aid of the Saudis and Mossad and Israeli Art Students and all that other crap.

Many of you profess a love for liberty, but are so shit-scared of your own shadows that you’ll fall in line behind the first proposal that comes along requiring you to pose for digital x-ray porn at the airport. Despite reports of events coming largely from NGOs’ press releases and George Clooney on the Today Show, many of you still cry out for intervention by the greediest, most violent, genocidal and hypocritical state on the planet — the USA — in a tiny, half-assed civil war in Africa with the idea of “saving Darfur”, even though you know the only thing the “leaders” you elected care about saving is the massive puddles of oil in the ground under The Sudan.

And, please don’t get me started about the Liberals and Pwogwessives, because I really loves me some busting on Liberals and Pwogwessives. You totally went for Obama because you were so desperate and pants-pissing scared that you couldn’t think of anything else besides the possibility of a President with a “D” after his name who could pronounce the word “nuclear”. It’s not like you couldn’t have gotten onto the Internet and done some judicious search-engine sifting to find out that he was hooked up with the Democratic Leadership Council and had Wall Street and the nuclear and “defense” industries among his largest campaign donors, and seen what a cynical fake the guy was, and how he was basically a Republican. I guess that would’ve ruined your fun, though. Some of you supported Obama because he was a “peace candidate” – even though he waffled on the war and threatened Iran in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convension (or, as I like to call it, his 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination announcement speech), and even though, in his I Heart Israel Speech at the 2008 Conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, he pretty much gave the green light to Israel to do whatever it wanted to do in Gaza, i.e. bombing, strafing, shooting, torturing, blockading and collective-punishing the living hell out of the place.

Oh, and, what percentage of black voters went for Obama – 90%, something outrageous like that? – even though he never made any commitment to actually improve life for black Americans, though nearly every campaign speech he ever gave was designed to reassure white America that he wouldn’t cause any trouble (especially that horrid Fathers’ Day speech)? It’s as if everybody totally forgot what King and Malcolm X were trying to teach us about house slaves and field slaves, and how to spot a “player”, and how we should judge people by the content of their character rather than their color. They didn’t give a damn’ about his being a corporate tool; they only cared what color he was. I’ll never forget the interview I read on the wire services, with black voters at a campaign stop in South Carolina, where one woman just flat comes right out and says she’s voting for Obama because he’s black. Man, oh, man, how fuxored is that? You don’t care about the campaign contributions from BP and Goldman Sachs, or that he’s going to escalate the war in Afghanistan; you’re going to vote for the guy anyway because he’s black.

Christalmighty. Somebody tie me to a railroad track.

That’s the really sad thing about this cavalcade of crazy: these are people who actually vote in elections in this damn’ country. It’s bad enough that the “election” process itself is rendered illegitimate by the Party’s dirty tricks, distortions, half-truths and corporate cash-whoring, but insult is added to injury when a bunch of greedy, selfish, ignorant, thieving sociopaths are empowered by several million other greedy, selfish, ignorant, thieving sociopaths, who then have the gall to claim that I have no right to complain about the shape things are in because I don’t vote. WTFF? You people helped maintain these bastards in power for thirty years; it looks like you’re the ones who have no right to complain. Losers.

Back when I first got involved in the IMCs and the antiglobalization movement, a common slogan chanted at the protests was “This Is What Democracy Looks Like!” With all due respect to my comrades, I have to disagree. This is what “democracy” looks like.

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4.30.2010

Spill, Baby, Spill!

When our Exalted Boy Emperor and Nobel Peace Laureate, George W. Obama, caved in to the “Drill, Baby, Drill” crowd and proposed the opening of large areas of the Atlantic and Alaksan coasts and the Gulf Of Mexico for oil drilling, you could’ve knocked over your average Liberal or Pwogwessive with a feather. They were shocked — shocked — to hear that The One was proposing to allow offshore oil drilling with a plan very nearly identical to that Evil Rethuglican, George W. Bush. Mind you, I, myself, wasn’t the least bit surprised, as only with the slightest bit of search-engine rummaging, I was able to determine way back in ‘04 that Obama was a craven military-industrial stooge of the most typical kind. The really sad part is, of course, that your average Liberal or Pwogwessive will still — like your classic abused spouse — feel as if they’ve got noplace else to go and, as per usual, trudge off to the polls to pull a lever for the Democrats later this year, and in ‘12 and, also as per usual, once again feign shock and surprise when they come in for more abuse and betrayal from George W. Obama and the Democrats.

“Drill, baby, drill”…? “Spill, baby, spill”, more like.

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4.25.2010

BLAST FROM YER PAST: Happy Birthday, "Sweet A16"


This Was What Democracy Looked Like

Time once again to fire up the old TARDIS, and dive into this action-packed day of gleeful antiglob frenzy at the IMF, World Bank, and all over downtown DC on April 16, 2000 -- and, unlike the '60s, if you can remember it, you were there!

While the Anticapitalathon's scraggly gaggle is ignored by global capital and its fawning media, now would be a good time to remember more inspiring times -- times when The Movement™ wasn't afraid to protest against a Democratic Administration, times when The Movement™ wasn't cowed and intimidated by the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO.

In the Spring of 2000, Ralph Nader and the Green Party were calling bullshit on the Democrats and challenging their stranglehold on the US Left, the Democratic Party was pissing in its shoes, and the US Left couldn't have been happier -- as opposed to today, when the US Left is sitting on its hands, and the "progressives" couldn't be happier to be marching over a cliff behind Barack Obama and his cult of personality.

This was a time when The Movement™ was riding high on a wave of energy and solidarity after its victory in the Seattle Rebellion, and was full of hope for bringing about change in our future -- before the Democratic Party got its hooks into us. (D'oh, sorry; I just said "hope" and "change" there, didn't I?)

Episode 1, 09:13




Episode 2, 06:45





Download mpeg4 files: Episode 1, 33.8mb; Episode 2, 27.6mb

A16 Poster Series, from January 2000.

3.20.2010

Whoa! I've been picked up by Gawker!

A couple of days ago, Gawker's Alex Pareene penned an excellent article about the quality and attitude of the reporting at Washington political rag Politico, specifically referring to their article "The Drama Queen Caucus". Over the past couple of months or so, I've been spending a lot of time reading Gawker for their excellent reporting on the O'Keefe/Breitbart "ACORN Pimp" scandal as well as their media critiques and -- I must confess -- their edgy and unique style of gossip reporting; so, when Pareene's article on Politico appeared, I couldn't help but play a little bit of Devil's Advocate regarding the nature of the current Washington scene and the importance of healthy cynicism in this comment:
Awesome article, Alex, and you're right on about Politico.

Still -- I was born, raised, went to school, grew up and spent pretty much all my life and career in and around Washington — throughout Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy "Crisis", Reaganomics, New Democrats, you name it -- and I can tell you that anyone in this town without a well-developed sense of cynicism is easy pickings for the likes of Clinton, Bush, Obama & Co.

I've learned to read the Washington Post the way a Muscovite learned to read Pravda way back in the day.

Your characterization of Politico is right on the nose, but, let's face it — the current ruling class in this country really is a bunch of self-centered, vain, preening sociopaths who really do live for the foto ops, the CSPAN Moments and the Sunday morning talk show gigs. Many years of experience have taught me this.

They may be right totally by accident, like a busted clock, but Politico really is right about Dennis Kucinich: he really is a time-wasting, gutless, pussified faux Progressive attention whore who talks a good game about serious policy reforms, but is totally ready to roll over for the Democratic Party —- especially when it comes in the person of a slick flash bastard like Barack Obama, who probably promised him a new pony, just like he did to the rest of us in '08. By rolling over for the Democratic leadership on the healthcare bill, he pretty much pissed away any credibility he had left on the Left —- assuming he had any to begin with, after his dickless performance at the '04 Convention.

Well, imagine my surprise when I logged on to Gawker last night to scan for the latest Teabagger/O'Keefe/Breitbart shenanigans and found myself annointed a Comment Of The Day along with my 2008 Kucinich Campaign Poster! That's right, gang; the Kid's a hit in the Big Apple! When it rains, it pours, I guess.

Kucinich '08: He'll Waste The Left's Time, medium-res jpeg image, 516k