Magic Kingdom (or, Hope'N'Joy)

My customary Random 15 Seconds Of MSNBC the other morning featured some nasal-vocal-frying “guest analyst” from some dime-a-dozen downtown think tank babbling to the effect of “…Dick Cheney is changing hearts and minds — great!” while discussing ex-VP Dick Cheney’s announcement that he’s voting for Kamala Harris. Hot damn diggety, talk about a positively ringing endorsement.

Looks like the DNC is totally hitting the goddamn trifecta this time around, too — they’ve got Liz Cheney denouncing Trump, her old man — a known worldwide war criminal — announcing he’s voting for Kay Kay, and they’ve actually FLOATED GEORGE W. BUSH AS A SPEAKER AT THEIR GODDAMN CONVENTION, F'CRISSAKE.

So, am I the only one here who remembers when the DNC thought that Cheney was the walking, talking, living, breathing earthly embodiment of pure evil and that George W. Bush was THE WORST PRESIDENT EVAH? No, really, I mean it, ‘cos I need to make absolutely 110% sure that I didn’t totally fucking hallucinate the past quarter century.

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Miss Kabul

 

Elvis has left the building. At last.

...and as the band was playing him out, the Beltway chattering class was in a mass conniption over all those poor, helpless collaborators we left behind, and our lack of political will, and how, if we could only piss away another trillion or two and tough it out until mid-century, we could lick those mean old Taliban once and for all.

In the days leading up to Elvis' departure from the building, the press was full of screeching and howling about how this wasn't going to be like the evacuation of Saigon, honest it wasn't, seriously, for real — and the louder they howled, the more convinced I was that it would be like the evacuation of Saigon, except even more awesome.

I was 18 when I watched terrified Embassy flunkies being plucked off the roof by the choppers on TV. The draft had officially ended around 1971 or so, but I still had to register. Got a ready-to-burn card and everything. The day Saigon fell, I was about two weeks from graduating high school, and classified 1-H.

Turn out the lights, the party's over...!

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Was George W. Bush Really That Bad?

So we know President Bush the man. And what President Clinton said is absolutely true — to know the man is to like the man, because he’s comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is. He doesn’t put on any pretenses. He takes his job seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is a good man.
--Barack Obama, speaking at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, 04.25.13

The dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library this week gave the US media a chance to engage in one of its current favorite pastimes: rehabilitating the public images of thoroughly loathsome and reprehensible public figures. They’d hardly had time to catch their breath after canonizing Margaret Thatcher before it was time for their toughest challenge ever — rehabilitating George W. “The Decider” Bush. Yeah, that’s right, it’s Shark Jumping Time.

Y’know the worst thing about this wretched speech, though? He’s paraphrasing Bill Clinton, f’cripesake. Between this and the Thatcher veneration and Chelsea Clinton interviewing the GEICO Gecko, I’d say this pretty much indicates the death of the US media.

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For your further entertainment, here’s a couple of classic op-ed stinkburgers from the Washington Post from this past week. Feel their sliminess wash over you.

“George W. Bush, A Principled President”, Michael Gerson, Op-Ed Scribbler; author, Heroic Conservatism, The Washington Post, 04.25.13

“George W. Bush Is A Victim Of A Rush To Judgement”, Stephen Knott, Professor, U.S. Naval War College, The Washington Post, 04.25.13

Goodbye, Blue Sky: 03.20.03

Sorry, gang; the YouTube copyright police are jerking me around again on account of the old Pink Floyd tracks I used in this piece. You can download a copy of the mpeg4 with the sound track intact (05:39, 66.3mb) from archive.org. Sic semper tyrannis.

Oh say, can you see
on the bridge named for Key
where the “Aqua Team” marched,
and a bunch were arrested…!

It was bone cold, rainy, sloppy, and miserable only a day before the official beginning of spring — in other words, your typical mid-March morning in DC. It was also a morning full of coordinated disobedience actions across DC marking the first day of Iraq War v2.0. Our group, nicknamed “Aqua Team”, was given the plum job of mobbing aboard a Metro to Rosslyn and taking Key Bridge early during rush hour.

Things turned out quite nicely. All the color-nicknamed groups gathered for their rallies at designated points around DC, not knowing where they were headed until it was actually time to go — a brilliant piece of strategy which greatly reduced the chances of any snitches in the crowd getting the word ahead to the cops — in our case, it was a meetup at Eastern Market, right in my backyard, then onto an Orange Line all the way across town to Rosslyn, where hilarity ensued…

Blast From Yer Past: Feb. 15, 2003

February 15, 2003 was called by many “The Day The World Said ‘No’ To War”, and was reportedly the largest worldwide turnout for a single day of protest in history. Here’s a little “remastered” slice of what went down in New York City that day:



As I recall, the actual rally site and staging area for the march was somewhere around UN Plaza-ish, but owing to the staggering hugeness of the crowds converging — reportedly in the 1.5 million neighborhood — we never quite made it to the actual rally or march, and ended up just kind of flowing with the crowd through the streets, and spending most of the day hanging around East 50th and Third Avenue.

Here’s my friend Marianne from the Washington Action Group and the “Doghouse” puppet workshop in DC, being gratuitously harassed by NYPD goons for using a bamboo stick — apparently considered a “lethal weapon” that day — to hold up her sign. She was helped out by comrades in the crowd with some spare cardboard wrapping paper rolls.

DC anarchists “representing” on Third Avenue. One of the better flag designs of the day.

Some more of our friends from DC, the ever-popular Korean drummers’ group whipping up the crowd.

Just a few weeks before, the then-director of Fatherland Security, a pug-ugly bastard named Tom Ridge (a guy who looked as if he could play a gangster in a ’40s film noir) advised the nation that their best defense against a chemical or biological attack was to — get this — seal off your doors and windows with plastic sheeting and duct tape.

I never could figure out how these people got onto the top of that Fritos truck. It was an oddly inspiring sight, though they seemed oblivious to the shouts of the crowd below to “throw us down a bag of Fritos, man!”

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain?” This had to be my number-one favorite sign of the day. One is a genius; the other’s insane.

The Radical Cheerleaders belt one out towards the end of the afternoon. About this time, a breakaway unpermitted march had forced its way onto the streets and defied the police to march to a point near our location, succeeding by the strength of sheer numbers.

Never Forget

Never forget how the State used the attacks of September 11, 2001 as a pretext to shred the Constitution and encourage the escalation of police thuggery against citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 to encourage profiteering in the “defense” and “security” industries at the expense of citizens.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal wars and military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Never forget how the State used September 11 as a pretext for illegal imprisonment, secret courts and torture.

Never forget that the atmosphere of oppression, suspicion, paranoia and racism which has taken root in this country since September 11, 2001 has been fostered and maintained by both Republican and Democratic governments.

And last, but certainly not least…

Never forget how you, the American people, rolled over and allowed yourselves to be bullied and cowed into silence by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Obama, Ridge, Chertoff, Napolitano, Clinton, and Lieberman while they waged wars of aggression, built a gulag, committed genocide and torture and stripped away your liberty and dignity.

Never forget.
Happy Anniversary.

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The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? by Alexander Cockburn at CounterPunch.

Greetings From Haiti!

Y'know, I hardly know where to start with this. Perhaps I could start with this gob-smacking foto of ex-Presidents Bubba and Chimp, both smiling their most smarmy and smug smiles as they accept the position of Special Envoys in charge of the Haitian relief effort. That's right, ex-President I Invaded Haiti In The '90s and ex-President Heckuva Job Brownie have been placed in charge of Haitian earthquake relief, and the bastards are frickin' smiling... and President Timberlake, there, seems just barely able to contain himself as well. What perfect cover for a little bit of that "vulture capitalism".



Or, perhaps this amazingly soulless, brutalist David Brooks column from the New York Times might work for you. In it, he calls for the throwing away of any tolerance or respect for foreign cultures and calls for "intrusive paternalism" at least half a dozen times in a page and a half of thinly-veiled racist spewage. In spirit and letter, it's really no different from any similar racist spewage about Haiti and the Dominican Republic published in the New York Times a century or so ago; Noam Chomsky writes in Year 501:

Times editors lauded the "unselfish and helpful" attitude that the US had always shown, now once again as it responded "in a fatherly way" as Haiti "sought help here." Our "unselfish intervention has been moved almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people tormented by repeated revolutions," with no thought of "preferential advantages, commercial or otherwise," for ourselves. "The people of the island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend." The US sought only to ensure that "the people were cured of the habit of insurrection and taught how to work and live"; they "would have to be reformed, guided and educated," and this "duty was undertaken by the United States." There is a further benefit for our "black brother": "To wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to safeguard them against our own exasperation," which might lead to further intervention. "The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own government" are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in 1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had already aroused a storm of protest.

However, if comic relief is what you're after, don't despair; former US Senator John "Senator Goodhair" Edwards is going to Haiti to help out, also -- with cameras conveniently present, of course.

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First Insurgent Aerial Attack Squadron Gear

Are you getting pissed? I mean, really, REALLY pissed? Well, don't just sit there doing bong hits and watching "Adult Swim" -- ­get up, rise up, and show 'em your shoes! Show your solidarity with the Iraqi shoe-throwing reporter! Let 'em know you're ready to "keep 'em flying"!



Black Cotton t-shirt, $20.99;
3.5" button, 10-pack, $24.99;
2.25" button, 10-pack, $15.99

...and, check out more Official FIAAS Gear here!

Mission Accomplished!

So, I'm poring over the Drudge Report in my daily search for cheap laffs, and finding out what the Enemy is up to, and I come across this Associated Press dispatch from Baghdad reporting on the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Chimp, and thinking "whoa, that's some cheap laffs – and he almost hit the sonofabitch, too! Sweet!" and move on with whatever I was doing...



Later that day, I go by Drudge again, and find another story from Agencie France-Presse noting that the perpetrator of this "shoe-icide attack" is being hailed as a hero in most of the Arab World, and the next thing I know the whole world's raising hell to get the guy out of prison, it's being reported that he's being beaten in custody, there are demonstrations and rallies all over in solidarity, and I'm thinking...holy shit, this story's really grown some legs, man!

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Payback's A Bitch

So, anyway, I see last week where Congress approves another million billion zillion dollars for President Chimp's War in Iraq. No surprises there. Then, this bridge collapses in Minnesota, to much wailing and voyeurism from the press, and the predictable calls for us to send our prayers to Minneapolis -- even though no prayer requests were forthcoming for the victims of similar bridge collapses caused by US bombing of Iraqi civilians.

Shortly afterwards though, Congress somehow manages to find another few hundred mil or so under their sofa cushions -- a huge-ass surprise, to see that anything was left after the million billion zillion they just poured into the friggin' war.

Then, this past weekend, as reported so gloriously on AP, President Chimp himself pays a visit to the collapse site and casts his own personal eyeballs on the scene, allows himself to be personally spoken to by a common, ordinary worker, makes a big fat promise about repair and restoration -- but, get this, he says "I make no promises on the timetable"; he never was much on timetables, was he -- has his picture taken in a hardhat surveying the devestation, gets back onto the helicopter, and flies home.

So, all this stuff starts crashing together in my head -- fat wads of cash pissed away on an illegal war, public works budgets going begging, bridges collapsing in the USA -- at which point the conceptual collisions build to critical mass and, just as the pile detonates, my first thought out loud is, "whoa, payback's a bitch!"

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A Year After Katrina...

Ahh, it's "election" season once again! This one slammed head-on into my brain after reading little bits of Dubya's speech on the Katrina anniversary, after seeing the montage of drowning victims in Spike Lee's documentary, and after reading in various news reports that a year after the hurricane, corpses were still being found.



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"Birth Pangs of a New Middle East"

Is it just me, or did Secretary Of Snake Condolee-ee-ee-eezza Rice make one of her weirdest statements ever last weekend -- even weirder than that NBC "Today" interview where she said "freedom is on the march" about half a dozen times? Oh, and I love the part where she says that "We're going through a very violent time." "WE"? What do you mean "we", white woman?



All in all, though, quite a bout of birth pangs, there; shame it couldn't have been a more quiet, serene and peaceful birthing experience, like Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's baby.

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Out of Iraq, Into Darfur

Did anyone else here see those Liberals at the April 29th New York City peace mobe toting signs sponsored by Working Assets reading "Out Of Iraq, Into Darfur"? Yeah, it sounded pretty damn' whacked to me, too.



I mean, c'mon...can you believe that Amnesty International is supporting military intervention in Darfur? Yeah, that sounds even more whacked than a rally of 10,000 Liberals on the Mall a couple of weeks ago yelling for President Chimp to invade... uh, that is, "save" Darfur. Y'know, through the past decade and a half at least, I haven't seen a single "humanitarian" crisis -- real or perceived -- that the US State hasn't tried to exploit for either resource extraction or imperial expansion: Somalia, Kosovo, the Sudan, you name it. If anything about Darfur is "saved", it's going to be the big-assed puddle of oil sitting underneath Sudanese soil.

Imperialism and militarism aren't tools for solving problems -- they are the problems. Even the quickest examination of US foreign policy and behavior over the past fifteen years would show you why "Out Of Iraq, Into Darfur" is about the most cockamamie idea to come along since "Anybody But Bush".

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Stay the Course!

Finally, a Plan For Victory! Oh, sure, the GOP may not have any real plan -- and the Democrats may be even worse -- but at least the Bushites have the good sense to put up big signs all around the stage reading "Plan For Victory" whenever President Chimp gives a speech. All the Democrats have is Howard The Duck, living in a party he never made.

Seriously, the Bush Regime flacks must have assumed Americans are even stupider than they actually are to serve up that old Reagan-era bromide "Stay The Course" when, in fact, there were a goodly number of us who remember that load of bullshit from back when it was still fresh and steaming. The war in Iraq is shaping up to be a Fail even more epic than Vietnam, and all President Chimp can think of is to say "Stay The Course". What was that old Pete Seeger song... "waist-deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says..."



In 1989, one Dr. Francis Fukuyama penned what had to be one of the most conceited loads of triumphalist blathering ever, The End Of History, in which he claims that the fall of the USSR and its satellite regimes in Eastern Europe heralded the end of the struggle between Good and Evil (aka Capitalism and Socialism, or the absurdly distorted, simplistic media images thereof). What I found especially laughable was Fukuyama's treatment of the USA as a state that was somehow immune to collapse and above it all, the "winner" of the aforementioned struggle when, in fact, even as US politicians and pro-capitalist idealogues celebrated the victory of "freedom", the first rumblings of the collapse of the USA could be heard in the form of NAFTA and George I's initiation of renewed imperialist adventurism in Panama, Iraq, and Somalia.

The end of history? No, sorry, Dr. Fukuyama, what you heard in '89 was just the first shoe dropping. Seriously, Dr. F, didn't you realize that if a regime the size of the USSR could end up as historical roadkill, it could just as easily happen to the USA? Jeezus, what is it with these goddamn' Harvard jerks?

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Katrina Marches on Washington

As public outrage over the Bush Regime's handling of the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina began to grow and spread, I thought it might be a good idea to create a second poster for the upcoming national antiwar mobe based on this theme, to tap into that sentiment and spur more intense involvement in the demonstrations.

At last, here was one that President Chimp and his lapdog Congress and media couldn't spin their way out of. "I didn't expect the levees to break", easily one of the most incredible whopping lame-assed "dog ate my homework" excuses ever, was a comment I couldn't help laughing at in spite of everything because it was just too damn' much like watching Saturday Night Live.

So, to help juice up peoples' attitude at the upcoming events in DC, a little something in solidarity with the dispossessed in Fallujah, Iraq, and her sister city, New Orleans.

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Turn Your Back on Bush

Another personal favorite, this was commissioned by The Progressive magazine for a Counterinaugural event they were sponsoring as part of the weekend of protests coinciding with the Second Chimp Coronation.



Truthfully, though, I have to confess to not having been in DC during the Chimp's Second Coronation as my wife and I decided we weren't into hanging around here in the miserable depths of January, freezing our asses off in some fenced-off "free speech zone", and chose instead to spend the week in relatively balmy New Orleans, watching our comrades shivering in bone-cold Washington on TV. Let's face it, it was a helluva lot more fun hanging out in little jazz dives drinking beer until closing time, then stumbling down to Cafè duMonde for black coffee and beignets at 3am. Happily, though, we managed to find ourselves in a big, healthy, counterinaugural protest anyway -- the Jazz Funeral For Democracy, held on a sunny, dry, 70-degree day, featuring a couple of real live New Orleans marching jazz bands in a traditional funeral parade that started at Congo Square and marched through downtown to a rally at Jackson Square, followed by a "second line" that marched through the French Quarter, finishing off at a gig at this cool little joint with a mean-assed blues band and the all-important cheap beer. God damn, they really do know how to throw a protest down there in the Big Easy.

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Four More Years, no.2

So, here we are: four more years of George W. Chimp. Of course, predictably, all the Democrats and Liberals were howling about how they lost because of all those terrible people who voted for Ralph Nader. Never mind that the Democrats chose to nominate the most bland, uninspiring ticket ever; never mind that the Democratic nominee supported pretty much everything Bush did (except, of course when he opposed it). Never mind that John Kerry just sat there like a goddamn' lump while the Bush campaign slapped him around, kicked him in the nuts and accused him of falsifying his war record -- not that it didn't serve Kerry right for bragging about his goddamn' war record, and assuming for just a moment that a willingness to follow orders to kill and die unquestioningly somehow qualifies one to hold public office. Naahh, it was those mean old Nader supporters that cost 'em the election; the Democrats remain convinced of that. Of course, the Democrats also remain convinced that things would've been different under a Kerry Administration, so there you are.

This series of posters promoted the Counterinaugural activities scheduled to coincide with the Second Coronation of George W. Chimp; they illustrate what we were in for four more years of Bush. To be honest, despite these being some of the best pieces I've done, I felt rather awkward doing them, as I worried they'd convey the impression that I believed things would've been substantially different had Kerry been "elected" when in fact, given Kerry's record, they wouldn't have -- except, perhaps, for the delicious irony of hearing protesting crowds in the streets chanting "Hey, Hey, JFK! How many kids did you kill today?"

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New York City 2004 GOP Convention Protest Poster

Here's another one of those gags that pretty much drew itself. On hearing the news that New York City would have the dubious honor of hosting the 2004 Republican Convention, this image slammed into my head like a runaway train and refused to go away:



This was my part towards inspiring locals and visitors alike to hit the streets and give the GOP a good old-fashioned New York City welcome, and to let the Bush Mob know that the people of NYC weren't going to allow themselves to be cast as "extras" in a fascist corporate infomercial (which is basically what the Republicratic and Demopublican Conventions had become by this time).

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Save Gas Now!

This piece originally appeared in an exhibition of cartoons at the Provisions Gallery and Bookstore in Washington DC. During the Q&A in my obligatory "artist talks about his work" appearance at the opening, one concerned art lover asked, regarding this cartoon, whether or not this was really the kind of conservation message I wanted to send, to which I replied "Conservation message? What conservation message?"



This was no gasoline conservation message; this was a comment on the attitude of the millions of American men who were trying to show off how macho they were, "playing soldier" by driving Hummers around their hometowns while, in the meantime, thousands of real soldiers were dying in theirs in Iraq in an attempt to subjugate a nation and steal its resources. By this time, gasoline was nudging the three-dollar-a-gallon mark, and I was getting more than a little bit sick and tired of listening to fat, selfish Americans pissing and moaning about the price of gasoline, as if cheap gas was something they were somehow magically entitled to. I actually found myself rooting for gasoline to hit four or five dollars a gallon -- something approaching the prices people have paid for years in Europe -- just so I could see all those selfish, arrogant SUV drivers get a bit of well-deserved comeuppance.

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Have Another Pretzel, Mr. President!

Yeah, sure, call me sick; ask me if I care. I'll proudly admit to having laughed until I damn' near wet my pants on hearing the news that President Chimp had nearly choked to death on a pretzel while watching football on TV at the White House, and that my first subsequent thought was "have another pretzel, George!"



I'd also like to take this moment to start spreading around a new expression, to signify that moment when a cocky, hubristic institution suddenly realizes, alas too late, that it's bitten off more than it can chew and can't stop itself choking: "Biting The Pretzel" ...as in "whoa, Dubya's really biting the pretzel in Iraq, huh?"

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