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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Blast From Yer Past, Aug 2004: "Decision 2004"

While I continue getting over surgery and tryna' get back into a drawing groove, n'shit... let's flash back to another war that Liberals of both parties lied, blustered and bullied their asses off to drag us into... originally did this for an immediate post-election protest response in DC; it got blasted all over, but I never actually did a blog post, except for this sloppy-ass blurb on my old static html site... so, here it is. Let's climb aboard the TARDIS, kiddies, and set the dial for the turn of the century: 

---------------

After one too many mornings of watching Kerry and Bush piss-fighting over Kerry's war record, I was begging, desperately: Somebody, Anybody – STOP THE TORTURE of American Voters!

So, I wake up one early morning recently; as usual, my wife's already awake and has NBC's "Today" jabbering on the TV. In the thinning fog of my fading REM state I hear candidate John "Lurch" Kerry being interviewed, and he's telling us how he plans to continue to uphold the corporate/military agenda, after which a Bush campaign ad denounces Lurch for being "too leftist". I think: jeezus, it's too damn' early for this shit. Lurch says he'll keep doing what the Chimp started, and the Chimp accuses Lurch of being too leftist, it's only 7:15am, and my brain is already hurting.

Somebody, stop this torture. Somebody make it stop. Somebody, make...it...sto-oopppppp!  

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Afghan Women's Liberation no. 2 (or, Won't Somebody Think Of The Women?)

 

When the US first set out inflicting two decades of destruction and misery on Afghanistan the Liberals, true to the old Phil Ochs song, were never more red, white and blue — and the Liberals' most appallingly cynical appeals for support for that debacle came from the "imperial Feminists" who tried to tug our heartstrings with horror stories about burqas, illicit nail salons, and no HBO. 

So, it was no surprise when America's Imperial Feminists picked up where they left off, joining the chorus of bitching, pissing, moaning and sour-graping about their being run out of Afghanistan, reviving the tired old bromides about women's rights and how the US "left women behind" when it dragged its bloody ass out of the place after twenty years in the Graveyard Of Empires.

The most unctous of these was an article in The Atlantic which dragged out every one of those tired old arguments, hoary old horseshit so old it's got SCSI ports on the back. What was merely appalling twenty years ago is absolutely godawful today, considering the current abuse of working-class women in the US, and in US satellite states like Saudi Arabia:

One reason that we stayed in Afghanistan so long with nothing to show for it except the safety of women, @CaitlinPacific writes, is that for all of our sins, our default position is freedom.

—The Atlantic, @theatlantic on Twitter, 08.19.2021

Says on the author's profile that she traffics in "thought crimes for all occasions". I wouldn't know about that, but that article of hers sure is a goddamn crime, I'll tell ya that for free.

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This Is Your Captain Speaking...

 

I present for you now, ladies'n'gents, my very first cartoon of the 2024 Presidential campaign — and leave all hope behind...

Human remains were reportedly found in the landing gear of a US military plane after it departed Kabul airport, with harrowing unverified footage purporting to show a person trapped on the plane’s exterior as it took off...

...In footage too graphic to publish, presumably filmed through a window by a passenger on board the plane, the person was seen trapped outside the craft in mid-flight, though it is unclear exactly when the video was captured or how long after the C-17 took off.

— RT.com, 08.17.2021

 

...and the tweet in question has since been pulled for "violating the Twitter rules" — though, luckily, that evil, terrible old Russian-controlled media nabbed us a frame or two. I wish I'd jumped on it and downloaded a copy of the video as soon as I saw it — barely 7 months in, and we already have a disgustingly apt visual metaphor for the entirety of the Biden Years.

This is your future, working-class America.

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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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It's A Quarter To Three...

...so, set 'em up, Joe...!

Am I the only one here who watches Presidential speeches and news conferences these days and gets the feeling he's just not into it anymore, somehow...?

One more for his baby, and one more for the road...

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Mission Accomplished, no. 2

So, Liberals... how'd that Hope'n'Change horseshit work out for you?

Here's Obama's "George W. Bush Moment".

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"Progressive" Sanders Loves Him Some Drones

I was just checking out this short article in The Hill today about Pwogwessive hero Bernie Sanders and his declaration that he wouldn't end the US drone warfare program. Can somebody please tell me again why I should so much as lift a finger to support this brazen hypocrite? Check this out:

“I think we have to use drones very, very selectively and effectively. That has not always been the case,” Sanders said.

No shit, Sherlock. Christ, is this clown really the Great Progressive Hope? Are you friggin' kidding me, man?

“What you can argue is that there are times and places where drone attacks have been effective,” he added.

Oh, yeah, especially against weddings, funerals and schools. Now we know why Bernie doesn't spend much time discussing foreign policy, and prefers to keep beating the shit out of that old economic inequality riff. If Pwogwessive America found out too much too soon, they'd bolt the Donkeycratic Party and run like the place was on fire.

Basically, what we're got here is a warmed-over Obama, with the economic inequality rhetoric dialed up a notch or two for all the gullible bougie pwogwessives. Dude had to be dragged kicking and screaming into addressing the ongoing police reign of terror against Black America, and he'd probably still be ignoring the issue if #BlackLivesMatter hadn't publicly gotten all up in his shit about it.

This doorknob needs to stop referring to his sheepdog campaign as a goddamn' "revolution". It's really offensive.

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Nobel War Prize

With the commencement of operations in Syria, and sneaking back into Iraq, this makes seven Muslim nations Obama has attacked since he took office.

That's seven countries in six years. Dude deserves some kind of prize for that.

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Happy Anniversary, President Drone!

 It was five years ago this week -- this past Thursday, to be exact -- that President Sparkle Pony kicked off his murderous drone warfare campaign. Not even a week in office, and already we had some change -- you've got to give him that.

So, I was reading this article over at the Bureau Of Investigative Journalism and saw this graph showing President Sparkle Pony's massive escalation of remote-control murder compared to President Chimp, and on viewing the layout of the bars showing the figures for Obama, I couldn't help noticing something...

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Follow the Bureau Of Investigative Journalism on Twitter.

...and, here's some more of El Presidente's dronetastic moments from days gone by:
"Well, Waddya Know?" December 2013
"I Have A Drone" January 2013
"I Am The Joker" July 2012
"My Little Party" February 2012
"Are You In?" April 2011
"Yes, We Can!" October 2010

Well, waddya know?

I don't know if this helps any, but... ho, ho, ho.

Am I the only one out here who's sick to goddamn' death of seeing the US Left wasting its time getting its panties in a twist over this whole phony-assed "is Santa Claus white or black" controversy? Am I the only one out here who's fed up watching the US Left letting some bimbo at Fox News push its buttons with the same old standard-issue Culture War horseshit?

Is Santa Claus white or black? Ask me if I give a shit. Honestly, with all the really important stuff going on, why is the US Left wasting time fighting with Megyn Kelly over this crap?

Get a grip, willya? Idiots.

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Selfies!

The past couple of weeks have seen many memorable moments in all the pomp and ceremony marking the passing of Nelson Mandela, but none as memorable as this indelible image of three world leaders keeping it classy at the Mandela memorial service last week.

And now, Mandela has finally been laid to rest in his ancestral village -- and not a moment too soon, as I don't know if I could've stood much more of the hypocritical spewage from the leaders of the nations who funded and armed the apartheid regime and conspired to keep Mandela imprisoned for nearly three decades.

Some of the most breathtaking spewage had to have come from that inimitable mass murderer and concentration camp operator, our very own Barack "Dronemeister" Obama:

"We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set..."

President Sparkle Pony has actually said something truthful here, if only by accident. If the likes of Mandela were emerging today, he'd likely have made it onto Obama's "Disposition Matrix" if he hasn't already been smeared in a drone strike while he attended a friend's wedding. Either that, or he might be rotting in Guantanamo right now.

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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

How America Deals With Gun Violence

When I saw the initial reports on the Newtown school shootings, I knew I could pretty much skip any “news” coming out after that as I’d seen the same cycle of public hair-pulling, slobbering media frenzy (including cartoonists), and wacky-assed “solutions” every time this had happened — going back to Columbine High, if not earlier.

I’d pretty much gotten to the point where I could guess almost exactly what was going to happen, and when — from the initial round of wailing, moaning and candlelight vigils. to the media putting on a circus, to El Presidente giving a variation of the usual smarmy speech about Our Murdered Children, to the cockamamie suggestions from mainstream Liberals and the NRA, to Pat Robertson saying something intensely stupid, to Liberals wasting time getting bent out of shape over whatever stupid shit Pat Robertson said, to some weasly legislative “solution” that does absolutely nothing to address the fact that American society was built on violence from the ground up… and finally to the media deciding they’ve milked it for all they can and going back to hyping other bullshit, like the next phony budget crisis.

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I Have A Drone

Seen above here is the famous Ben Ali’s Chili Bowl on U Street, a landmark of historic black DC, as spotted on the morning of Inauguration Day. Sadly, the window display is presented entirely without irony.

A little later, though, at Malcolm X Park… what better way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s Birthday than with an anti-drone warfare protest? Who would King bomb?

Yer Liberals, Episode 2: "Make Him Do It"

Remember back in school, when the class bully would dump your books, shove you into your locker and try to shake you down for your lunch money, and you'd say "hey, c'mon, quit it!", and the bully would get up in your face and sneer "make me"? Well, that's the mental image I get when I hear Pwogwessives and Liberals talking about what they need to do to get Obama to honor his promises and implement more progressive policies, and they say that they need to "hold his feet to the fire" and "make him do it".

Trouble is, they had their chance to put pressure on Obama and the Donkeycrats, but once again, they pissed it away -- in the recent so-called election, when they could've organized a boycott, withholding their support and sending a message to the Donkeycrats in the only language they understand: defeat at the polls.

Instead, the Pwogs and Liberals spent four years pissing and moaning about how Obama went back on all his promises and pretty much continued all of Bush's policies of warmongering, imperialism and attacks on civil liberties -- and then turned right around and voted for him again. Christ, that's got to be the most retarded thing I've ever heard ot -- real, honest-to-God short-bus-riding, helmet-wearing-in-class, drooling-in-your-lap deep-down retarded.

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At Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque: Napalm in the Morning (Drones in the Afternoon): The Smell of Victory Stirs Progressives to Action

Yer Liberals

The continuing adventures of The Forty-Seven Percent. My follow-up to last week's anatomical chart.
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Who's More Progressive?

This piece was inspired by a blog post by Owen Paine, one of my favorite contributors to one of my favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again. He quotes some interesting passages from President Nixon’s 1971 State Of The Union Address in which he mentions the “expansionary” budget he was about to submit to Congress, a “full employment budget”. Here’s The Tricky One’s own words from back in ‘71:

“By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment”

Now, mind you, I’ve never been a Nixon revisionist, and I wasn’t one of those bonehead Liberals who spent the entirety of the Dubya Administration wishing they had Nixon back, but, still… full-employment budget? Then, I started thinking back some more… EPA? Detente with the Soviets? Healthcare program compromise with Ted Kennedy? Christalmighty, I thought, was Nixon, on balance, more progressive than Barack Obama?

Yeah, sure, Nixon dragged out a pointless war that hardly anybody wanted, bombed civilians at the drop of a hat, surveilled and harassed dissident activists, and sponsored coups and assassinations all over the world, but hasn’t Obama also done these?

Jeeeeeezus… full-employment budget.

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DC Is Occupied, At Last!

The "Occupy" Movement: now with 95% more "nyan"!

It was mostly the usual suspects, for sure, but it was still great to see Our Side finally get off its ass and into the streets again. Despite all the talk about Teabaggers beginning to get involved, I only saw the usual smattering of LaRouchies and Paultards, who were largely ignored except by those in need of cheap laffs. Also, much to my delight, I spotted one — count ‘em, one — 9/11 Tr00th freak in the crowd, his sign still demanding that someone “Investigate WTC 7".

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.