There's No "P" In Our Ool

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When I first peeped that aerial shot on Reuters, it wouldn’t leave my mind.

On the one hand, it’s another bucket of your garden-variety shallow-ass Liberal pearl-clutching at seeing the Evil Orange Man giving the job of restoring the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to a company which contributed heavily to his campaign and which promptly turned the project into a National Lampoon movie.

On the other hand, though – the part that wouldn’t leave me after seeing that Reuters foto – on a much deeper level than simply Trump doing his usual nouveau-riche alcoholic country-club vulgarian shit, it was much more symbolic of an empire in rapid decline, possibly even already at the point where the Emperor is appointing his horse to the Senate. It doesn’t so much say something about Trump specifically as it does about American society, culture and institutions in general.

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Big Bidness Babble

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Starring in order of appearance: Some Harvard Economics dweeb, author of “Some Crap You Bought To Read On The Plane”; some wild-ass up-all-night, Monster Energy-guzzling, stock-market playing Wall Street geek, author of “Some Crap You Bought To Read On The Plane”; and some shallow, glitzed-up ex-Chamber Of Commerce honcho who’s now the executive director of some big-ass retailers’ association, author of “Some Crap You Bought To Read On The Plane”.

Inspired by a lively, witty exchange between some pals on Bluesky a couple of weeks ago, riffing on business media pundit shartage.

(At this point, has there ever been a panelist or Guest Contributing Analyst on The Network Formerly Known As MSNBC who hasn’t been pushing a book on the air lately?)

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TrumpGas

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‘They can still see his headless body stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland’s Thompson gun’
– Warren Zevon, “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner,” 1978

This old chestnut from my crazed student daze wasn’t really historically apropos to this cartoon, but it was stuck in my head the whole time I was working on it. It was in our Dorm Top Forty in senior year, when I was drawing in the Yipster Times and my buds and I were getting ready to pie the Dean. I couldn’t begin to explain it; the sonofabitch just kinda leaped out of my memory, cranked to 11.

But, let’s just put those old giggles aside for now, and take ourselves a zesty, steamy gawk at the front page of Pravda On The Potomac from last Thursday (as I write this) – or, as I called it, the “Venezuela Special”. JEEEEzus CHRIST, willya LOOK at that goddamn mess. The main head on the front-page lead piece on the Donster’s latest yo-ho-ho’ing looks as if they’re in on the Cheer For Bullying, Piracy And Thievery Without Actually Cheering For Bullying, Piracy And Thievery Challenge – nothing if not the internal agonizing and mental pretzel-twisting of my imperialist Liberal friends’n’fam made publicly visible. They’re actually in favor of something the Donster is doing, and so they’re just going all splungy. So, what’s he gonna do with the goddamn tanker, now – open his own gas-station chain? “TrumpGas”? He’s already started up his own social-media site and plastered his name all over all kinds of shit, why not gas stations? “You can trust your car to the man who…”

…but, enough of that; let’s move on to the featured foto on the left, where the true hilarity ensues – in which The Courageous Venezuelan Opposition Leader* Who Looks Like The Villainess In A Telenovela And Who Begged Trump To Invade Her Country And Who Can’t Come Out Of Hiding To Accept Her Cracker Jack Peace Prize Sends Her Daughter Instead.

*Note that here, as in all cases, the phrase “opposition leader” in the US press is a stand-in for the phrase “USAID, NED and multiple-corporate-backed right-wing US stooge”.

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Voter Enthusiasm

 

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I happily confess that nearly my entire contact with Legacy Media™ these days comes from the five minutes or so I spend scoping out the front pages of the Washington Post, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times – and the New York Post, if I think I can stand it – in search of inspiration at the newsstands of my local bodegas while out on my morning walk.

Isn’t it adorable how all the DNC can think about is getting their goddamn vote out while our neighbors are being snatched and disappeared by gangs of masked thugs, the regime is spitting in our faces on live TV and trying to provoke a civil war, and pretty much every goddamn American institution we were taught to venerate in school has turned out to be total garbage? But yeah, sure, Donkeycrats; let’s get that mid-term vote out.

And what’s with the “voter enthusiasm” thing? Goddamn Democrats can’t shut the hell up with that crap. What, are they bugged that the voters are so goddamn beat down, desperate and indoctrinated that they’re just kind of reflexively dragging their glum, dejected asses out to punch a chad, tap a screen, pull a lever, then back home for “The Price Is Right” instead of eagerly, happily, proudly – dare I say “joyfully” – skipping and singing on their way to the polls?

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GOP + DNC = ZFG

If you’re a Liberal or Progressive who, at this point, is still furiously bitching about why the Democrats won’t “do something” about all this, then you’re as stupid as you look.

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God Bless Us, Every One

When I first caught the news about the Brian Thompson shooting, I didn’t hear it all — just “United Healthcare CEO” and “shot in NYC”, and that was about it. I assumed it was your standard-issue random street crime until I started getting the details — especially the word “targeted” yelled over and over — and thought “whoa, man, shit’s gettin’ real…!”

Predictably, the Wall Street Journal treated it like the JFK assassination; splashed that CCTV shot over the front page like an Abraham Zapruder frame. The New York Times was surprisingly factual as the shooter really did go to the trouble of stalking Mr. Big Shot and it was, in fact, a pretty goddamn bold assasination.

Gotta love the Washington Post, though; they say the police are looking for a motive — a motive, f’crissake. Hell, gang, if you want a goddamn’ motive, you might want to ask around the huge-ass numbers of people who had to go to an ER and were dinged for a $10,000 ambulance ride.

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Garbage, no. 2 (...garbage out)

So, that was the “October Surprise” this time around, huh? That was really it? Old Uncle Joe, movin’ kinda’ slow, suddenly decides to pipe up about some of Trump’s throwaway trash talk and immediately shits out a Basket Of Deplorables moment, right out on live TV in front of god and his cat and everybody, less than a week before the “election”? Well done. Even if MSNBC immediately changed its format to All Abortion Rights Horror Stories All The Time, it probably still wouldn’t be enough to save the DNC’s asses.

Just trying to imagine the scene around the DNC campaign offices right now… imagining Uncle Joe, still and quiet for all these weeks — they really thought they had him buried this time — suddenly clambering clumsily out of the grave like Tor Johnson in Plan 9 From Outer Space to drop a big, hot steaming Gaffe From The Beyond.

Mind you, I’m not arguing with the truth of El Presidente’s blabbage about Trump supporters being garbage, here; that’s as maybe — but, still, when you’re a sitting President of the United Snakes Of Amerika who’s had to drop out of a re-election campaign after your brain fried out on live national TV, and who’s proudly facilitating and defending the brutal, venal crimes of two of the most garbage human beings walking the Earth at the moment, and whose actions in the past year have at last fully revealed American/Western traditions and institutions to be complete garbage… you might want keep a lid on that name-calling shit.

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New Ukrainian Flag

Take a look at this graph. Go on, kiddos — take a big, long, steamy gawk.
Same shit, different day: They can never afford housing, healthcare or education, but there’s always money for war.

Getting a single, lousy-ass $1400 “stimulus check” out of those geezers on Capitol Hill was like pulling teeth. They never would extend unemployment or rent relief for the people still out of work because they were still in quarantine, or because the companies they worked for went under during the pandemic — and the bastards’n'bitches still refuse to discuss national healthcare despite this country being ravaged by a worldwide pandemic.

Whenever it comes to funding national healthcare, or free college, or subsidized housing, we have to have a “national conversation” about it, we can’t afford it, we have to “make some hard choices”. But, when it’s time to fund the Pentagon? No prob, guys, here’s $800bn. Wait, y’sure that’s enough? How about an extra hundred billion big boys just in case?

Don’t let anybody tell you whose war this is. It’s not for the Ukrainian people, or Democracy, or freedom, or Western values, or any of that horseshit. It’s Joe Biden’s war, it’s NATO’s war, it’s the EU’s war, Boris Johnson’s war, Emmanuel Macron’s war, Olaf Scholz’s war, the IMF’s war, Wall Street’s war, Boeing and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s war.

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Season's Greetings

 

For the workers who died at a candle factory in Kentucky, and an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, for every worker forced to risk their life without proper protective gear or healthcare, in the middle of a pandemic and a tornado, to keep the profits coming in and the supply chain stocked so we can buy our daughters a Fighter Pilot Barbie for Christmas… Season’s Greetings from Capitalism.

“The bosses won’t keep us safe; they only care about profit. Workers are the only ones who know what is safe and what is not. We should decide whether to continue working or not. For that purpose, we need to fight for Health and Safety Commissions to be set up in all workplaces that will function independent of the bosses, that are democratically elected, and that can organize to impose protocols and shut down production when necessary.

Not one more dead worker at the hands of the bosses! Our lives are worth more than their profits!”

Left Voice, 12.14.2021

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...Or The Virus Wins

Remember right after Nineleven™ when the travel industry and retail were imploding, and Bush and that bunch were telling everybody to “go shopping, or the terrorists win”? Welp… same deal here. The State and Capital won’t do what needs to be done to keep us safe and to eradicate Covid-19, and have chosen instead to go with “herd immunity” (a.k.a. “mass death”) to serve Capital at the expense of the working class and their families.

…and speaking of serving Capital — all the sudden squawking about the “supply chain” kinda smelled funny to me from the get-go simply because every major US media outlet and their uncle all started yelling ZOMG SUPPLY CHAIN almost simultaneously, as if somebody threw a switch, not unlike all the screaming about the “labor shortage”. My suspicions were pretty much confirmed the other day when, while catching my daily 15 seconds of MSNBC, they were doing their daily Supply Chain Meltdown and one of their “guest analysts” was the CEO of Mattel.

Yeah, that’s right; that’s what this pants-crapping is all about — not enough Barbies at Wal-Mart for Christmas.

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Up, Up, And Awa-aayyy!

 

Alright, just so I'm straight, here... we're being thrown out of our homes, we're losing our jobs, there's a new COVID-19 wave hitting, fascists are terrorizing our streets, the cops are mass murdering us — not to mention that millions of us all over the country still don't have broadband service — and Mr. Counterinsurgency Big-Shot at the White House wants to fly balloons over Cuba to "provide internet service" while they hijack connections to broadcast US State Department propaganda, including the Voice Of America.

Christ, I hate this goddamn country. I really, really fucking do.

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Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone

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

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Pig Nation

In the midst of all the fear and paranoia following 9/11, George W. Chimp somehow thought it a good idea to show The Terrorists™ how courageous we all were by getting out and going shopping, and actually went on TV, looked us all in the eye, and told us that. That crass, shallow admonishment remained seared into my brain for some months before finally emerging as a fully-formed inspiration in the wake of the release of the latest Star Wars "prequel" with its attendant marketing blitz of toy tie-ins and Star Wars-themed McDonald's happy meals.



The original idea, "Pig Nation", came from Abbie Hoffman's famous remarks regarding the keep-up-with-the-Joneses, ticky-tacky suburban house-dwelling, station wagon-driving middle-class America of the late 1960s. It seemed an even more appropriate and apt description of the modern-day McMansion-dwelling, blockbuster movie-going, SUV-driving America of the early 21st Century.

This piece also appeared in Adbusters Magazine's annual "big ideas" issue in 2005.

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