The Hope Thing

I was raised on hope. It formed the foundation of a childhood  built on a precarious ledge that could break off at any time. Most of the time I'd wake up in the morning relieved we were still in the same house, apartment, or motel room. Hope was defined as a small wish, an unvoiced plea that we could stay this time,  that we didn't have to sneak out in the middle of the night because the money was gone again, gambled away by my father when he managed to hold a job for more than a couple months, or just gone because there was never enough to last more than a couple days, no matter how hard anyone worked.

Hope was the sucking in of my breath and thinking if I was completely quiet, if I never cried, if I was just invisible enough, my father wouldn't notice me and I could escape his wild rages, the beatings that he inflicted on everyone unfortunate enough to be in the same room with him. Hope was sometimes wishing he'd get hit by a truck so all our bruises could finally heal and I wouldn't have to wear long-sleeved shirts to school in a 110 degree weather anymore.

Then there was the kind of hope that wished I didn't live with a grandmother who spoke no English, a mother whose accent was so thick she might as well have been speaking Martian. Or the even more unreasonble hope that I would no longer be short and dark but tall and blond and thin. Or those days when I was so exhausted I'd wish I didn't have to be the responsible adult so often, and that someone would take turns  being the grownup so I could finally get enough sleep.

When I left home at 17, it was a home I'd only lived in for a couple months. I'd never gone to the same school for an entire year in my whole life. I had penpals I was closer to than the temporary friends I made before we had to move on again. But every time we moved, every time we arrived in a new town, every time I was the new kid in a room full of strange faces, I hoped that it would be different, that the pattern of my life would change, that the paradigm would shift, that I'd wake up safe, secure, and living in a stable, loving and constant never-changing life.

And for a few days, for a few weeks, and in some extremely rare occasions that I remember well because they were so rare, I realized my hope through the sheer act of hoping. I lived it and knew it, however brief it was. Maybe it was because I knew it was only temporary,  and so I had to jump in and indulge myself completely before it went out like a candle flame burning in the momentary lull of a hurricane.

My life is made up of those patchwork moments, those times when I let myself believe and dream and hope that no matter how bad things were, they would always get better--even if only for a few days or hours at a time. I learned to let that be enough, to settle for the moments because they were better than no moments at all.

I write this to explain what is happening to me now with the upcoming inauguration. I find myself afraid to hope, afraid to believe until Obama takes that oath and officially becomes President, that the Bush years are finally over. This is how deeply that bastard has stolen hope from us, from me, from someone who had it dashed over and over in my life and yet still believed enough to move forward until Bush came along and did what a lifetime of shit couldn't do: he took my hope.

And on Tuesday I'd like that evil, shit-faced, smug little son-of-a-mean-ass-bitch to know that I'm taking it back. I'm taking it back along with the belief that America will never be anything but a racist, ignorant country. I'm taking back my hope that once again we will be a nation of adults and those of us who are always stuck being the responsible adults can finally take a break. I'm taking back the hope that we will become the kind of people who draw strength from what we do for others instead of from what our armies do to others. I'm taking back the hope that we will stop letting the greedy powermongers divide us so they can more easily pick our pockets, empty our bank accounts into their own, and then blame us for what they did to us. I'm taking back my hope that together as one people, one planet we can build a world that builds dreams instead of destroys them.

And no, it is not President Obama who can do this. It is me and you. It is us. It is being the change we wish to see in the world, because more than anything it was the small bits and pieces of hope  Bush didn't kill that elected Obama President and if we combine them again, who knows what we will do with that much power next. I can hardly wait!

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The Hope Thing

Dubya, The Loser and His Legacy

I tried to watch Bush's speech tonight because it was the last one and there's so much pent up anger, despair and disgust at what he's inflicted on America and the world that I thought it might feel like a celebration to see the beginning of his end.

I lasted only as long as the moment he began the obligatory pandering to 9/11, neglecting to mention his administration ignored all warnings that it was about to happen.

-----"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John
Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida
strike on an American target that was given to the White House two
months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." read more------

I couldn't watch any more because he's a sick piece of crap who doesn't think he did anything wrong...ever. He's the kind of rationalizer who always finds someone else to blame, who always has an excuse, who always has a scapegoat waiting in the wings to take responsibility for his actions.

He's just another stupid, spoiled and pampered rich fuck who serves as a living example why an inheritance tax might be a good thing. If daddy and his corrupt cabal didn't steal the election for him, Dubya's life would probably have been a series of drunken driving arrests, cover-ups of times neighborhood pets were found tortured to death, and a series of insane moments where he would shoot at innocent people from inside his pickup truck while screaming that he was the Decider.

Instead, the bought and paid for Supreme Court stole the election for him, an act that history will condemn them for in perpetuity. As a result, he drunkenly drove the country into a financial ditch, wiped his ass with the Constitution, made torture synonymous with his legacy, and created concentration camps for people who were mostly guilty of being Arab. Those who were actually guilty of something can never be tried for their crimes because the laws he didn't manage to defile with his signing statements and politicized (in)Justice Department, will never allow their extracted confessions to be considered evidence.

In the last few days he's given more speeches than he's given in the last year. It's all about the legacy for him now and he's delusional enough to think it won't be the most horrendous shadow that will follow him to the grave. I have a few suggested legacy "designs" for him and his adminstration that he can't blame on anyone but himself.

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Dubya, The Loser and His Legacy

War Profiteers Vs. Corporate Thieves

One of the most common fears spread around the "internets" is the desire of certain wingnuts for a third world war. One of the primary spreaders is the poster child for fried brain syndrome, Newt Gingrich, who really wants to believe we are already there so we can start nuking Arabs for fun and profit. "Newt's thinking is that five years of false promises, failures, ineptitudes, errors and omissions, is hard to swallow as a mere War on Terror, but that as World War III it would all be just dandy." read more

Of course, the possibility exists that rather than promoting war from the recesses of his demented and rapidly rotting brain cells as some ideological hallucination, he is actually a member of the future feeding frenzy party lined up at the trough and stands to profit from any and all wars. In this, he would be in some familiar company, starting with Bush's grandpa whose thievery and greed inspired Dubya the Dumber to follow in his blood-stained footsteps:


"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany." read more

Making money from death is not limited to just the horse thieves in the Bush crime family:

"The three major arms manufacturers in the world – the U.S., Russia and France – provide almost 80 per cent of the sales for armaments. By itself, the U.S. sold over half of all weapons in the world marketplace: 18.6 billion dollars. Its sales increased 30 per cent between 1999 and 2000.

Among the principal clients for the armaments furnished by the great powers are the monarchies of the Middle East, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While continuing to improve their up-to-date airforces, they
also purchase armored cars to keep internal order. The United Arab Emirates expense for arms in 2000 was 8.4 billion dollars. Other clients for weapons are the African dictatorships like Algeria, which spent 580 million dollars, Angola, (253 million dollars), and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which spent 108 million dollars. All three countries have been ravaged by terrible civil wars which have oppressed and massacred their populations for years. Nothing stops the arms industry – merchants of death – from going after profit." read more

The greed of these war criminals/profiteers is almost endless, but it is matched by their most passionate and vindictive enemy--the corporate whores who already have dibs on any profits  made on the backs of American workers. They've spent a lot of time and money making sure their profits aren't messed with by ideologues like Newt or their other worst enemy--labor unions and workers who struggle to make a decent wage.

"Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages
than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy
refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming." read more

But that wasn't enough profit for the corporate pigs. They realized there was money to be made by keeping wages low and forcing Americans into the endless cycle of debt they needed just to stay alive. After all, a refrigerator can be paid off and then you have to find someone else to sell another refrigerator to. A credit card can return interest investment forever. A refrigerator bought on credit will continue to add money to corporate coffers year after year, even after the refrigerator itself no longer works and is languishing in some landfill for the next generation to deal with.

"The origin of our current culture of debt goes back to around 1973. That's when America's long run of unprecedented economic growth (which began shortly after World War II) hit a wall. OPEC raised
oil prices, and European and Asian nations became industrial competitors. This was the beginning of the decline of the U.S. manufacturing economy and the end of wage growth for the American worker. Thirty-five years later, the U.S. median wage per worker still hovers around the 1973 level. For male workers, most affected by deindustrialization, wages have actually declined slightly since 1973" read more


But in order for the corporations to continue gouging the average consumer by selling them 300 dollar refrigerators that will end up costing them 3000 dollars in a couple years of paying interest on the unpaid balance, they need the cooperation of the government to throw more money their way and refuse to help the consumer in any way that would threaten those corporate profits.

"The principle of government helping big business and refusing government largesse to the poor was bipartisan, upheld by Republicans and Democrats. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to give $10,000 to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought, saying, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." But that same year, he used the gold surplus to pay wealthy bondholders $28 above the value of each bond--a gift of $5 million. " read more

It also requires taking over all the safeguards put in place to help the consumer or small business person compete in the marketplace.

"..since 2003, 15 federal investigations have found that Fortune 500 firms are the actual recipients of most federal small business contracts. It has been estimated that large businesses receive over $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts. ABC, CBS and CNN have all aired investigative reports which have found firms like: Rolls Royce, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Raytheon, IBM, Xerox, Dell, John Deere, General Dynamics, GTSI, Home Depot, Titan Industries, Hewlett Packard, Battelle and British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) have all received millions of dollars in federal small business contracts." read more

In light of this, warmongering morons like Newt Gingrich are powerless to get their war on as they would have to convince the corporate whores that ideology is more important than money and that's not going to happen. There's only one thing that corporations fear and that is the loss of their money flow. They know if a world war broke out and suddenly bombs were dropping on American cities, they'd wake up to a financial catastrophe not even their paid servants in Congress could bail them out from. Think of how you bank, how you pay your bills, how you buy and use services. If cable companies like Comcast can't even keep their service up in a storm, can you imagine what would happen if just a few of their access points were bombed to shit? No one could do banking, no one could pay their bills, automatic payments and deposits would stop.

Their worst fear, and one that is becoming more possible with each bailout that rewards corporate greed and incompetence and refuses to help people who are losing their homes, jobs, savings, and retirement plans, is that people will stop paying their debts. There's no debtor's prison in this country. And when you have nothing left to lose and your credit is already shot, what's to stop an ever growing desperate population from simply walking away from their credit card and other bills the same way they're walking away from mortgages and car loans?

"So until real relief is forthcoming, citizens who are in distress should simply destroy their credit cards and stop paying the monthly bills. People are already doing this. Arrearages and defaults are climbing, and credit card debt is starting to be viewed as the next bubble to burst. But so what? If people have to use a credit card, that means they can’t really afford to buy whatever it is they think they want. If they can afford it, they should use a debit card instead." read more

What is now a trickle of people giving up on their debts would be a tidal wave if war broke out in this country, and because the arms merchants depend on corporate whores to bankroll their deadly toy purchases, they're not going to create a war that will effectively kill their golden goose. The only way a third world war would happen is if everyone lost everything, even the corporations. And even then, without the necessary funding for crime families like the Bushes to profit from it, any war would more likely be a revolution where mobs took to the streets and burned down banks and collection agencies. Any talk you hear of a stimulus package for the ordinary American is to prevent this from happening and not to save anyone from living under a bridge and sleeping in the box that once housed their refrigerators and flat screen televisions.

A funny rat with a sad expression says "After eight years of Bush all I
have left is hope." Great to wear for the inauguration and to celebrate
the election of Barack Obama as President. You can purchase it or other items with this design by clicking on the design or visiting Ursine Logic stores President Obama shop.

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War Profiteers Vs. Corporate Thieves

Brother, Can You Spare A Shoe?

---

Bush picks up a nice pair of shoes as a souvenir of his trip to Iraq. He's probably starting a collection for his presidential library as the comic books and treadmill look kind of boring in there all by themselves. Let's give him a real nice send off and mail him a shoe for his collection.

George W Bush Farewell Shoe Drive
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

All designs available at Ursine Logic

Iraqi throws shoe at Bush, George W Bush Farewell Shoe Drive, mail Bush a shoe

Brother, Can You Spare A Shoe?

Flies On The Wall #52

Flies On The Wall #52

Paradigm Shift

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Paradigm Shift

Lynch mobs for McCain-Palin

John McCain is no man of honor and he sullies all who served honorably with what he's become recently.

"The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers." read more

This is what McCain now considers honor. This is what his running mate considers honor. This is what they work to inspire in their followers--death threats for his opponent, racism to a news reporter, false accusations of terrorism. John McCain has revealed what kind of hateful and dangerous President he would make.

Of course, what do you expect from a man who helped sell arms to Iran and associated with known terrorist, John Singlaub? read more Surely, not honor.

What do you expect from a man who was involved in the last financial meltdown caused by greed and deregulation? read more Surely, not honor.

And as far as Sarah Palin, when you advocate the violent overthrow of the American government:

"Isn't it funny that Sarah Palin would totally distort the Times story and tell lies about Obama "palling around with terrorists," when, in fact, it is her husband who was actually the member of a secessionist group whose founder hated America and got killed and chopped up and
buried in a tarp after a plastic-explosives deal went bad? Isn't it funny that Sarah Palin is calling Obama out when in fact it is HER OWN HUSBAND WHO PALS AROUND WITH TERRORISTS!? ISN'T THAT JUST SO FUNNY?!?!" read more


THAT is treason and she and her terrorist pals should be arrested immediately.

But more than anything what this latest slime from the McCain camp reveals is a pathetic desperation. They have nothing to offer the American people except fear, hatred, lies, slime---all tactics they learned from associating so closely with their best buds, the Bush administration. Nothing says Bush clone like the campaign McCain is running, no matter how much he tries to deny it. The only honor and dignity in this campaign belongs to Obama and the American people know it.

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Lynch mobs for McCain-Palin

Get Off Your Ass And Vote

I could only stand to watch a few minutes of the debate because there's something about McCain that sums up what bothers me about the last few years. He has that stench of entitlement to him, that arrogance that comes from living a life where no matter what happened in the past, the present becomes this insulated cushion against the outside world. And I'm the outside world he wants to be isolated from.

And please stop with that war hero stuff. No true hero wants it used as a political or other means of manipulation. I was raised by a war hero. He, like McCain, was forever destroyed as a human being by his war experiences. He nearly killed me several times as I was growing up because his war experiences only taught him how to go off and not how to stop. He was never able to ever fit into the normal world again. He was too messed up, too destroyed by what he had to do to stay alive. He was about as fucked up a human being as there is in this world, but the one positive thing I can say about him is never in his life would he allow his war experiences, his medals, his wounds to be used in the political arena. He would have rightly felt that sullied what was left of his honor. That's something that really creeps me out about McCain, how he allows what little honor he has left to be used up and frittered away as if it was meaningless.

And another point. I knew the man who raised me was messed up. He knew he was messed up. Everyone he met knew he was messed up. No one in their right mind would ever want him making a decision for them. There wasn't enough left in him that wouldn't go off on its own and start some shit somewhere. He had this look in his eyes, that look people get when they've had all the proof they can stomach that human beings sometimes really suck at being human beings. I see that look in McCain's eyes, that disgust, that barely disguised hatred of human beings.

And the man who raised me had another trait I saw tonight, he couldn't look anyone in the eyes either. He looked at them sideways like McCain did to Obama. Never once did McCain look Obama in the eyes. It was that evasive I hate humanity glance that revealed how little compassion the man truly has for anyone. The only consolation is that he probably hates himself equally. If not, then he really should. At least the man who raised me made no secret that he hated people. He felt he had earned that right. And there was no one he respected enough to look in the eyes. He was an equal opportunity hater. "I hate everyone equally," he was fond of saying.

So when I saw McCain I saw  a man who was unfit for most of the things in life that require a level head, an ability to reason outside of emotion, and compassion for fellow human beings. These are qualities that make a leader and McCain didn't show anything that I perceived as leadership. He came off as mean, evasive, sloganistic, and part of a political machine that cares about nothing except the win.

For a few minutes I felt sorry for him and then I realized how frightening it was to feel that way about him because he truly does represent his party. It's not inconceivable to me that he would vote to bail out rich cronies who gambled and lost and then justify it as saving the country, and yet at the same time refuse to extend unemployment benefits and the means to save their homes for the very victims of those whose hands he would fill with unaccountable tax dollars from me and you. He's cruel that way just as his party is cruel that way. It's all a money game to them and people are shit.

But what I also saw in his eyes was a stark ruthless win at any cost mentality that is so much a part of the Rovian politics he embraces. He and his party are dangerous because they care nothing about people, about law, about the country, about the constitution. It's all about them, about winning, about rewarding each other with keys to the piggy banks filled with our hard earned dollars. I don't doubt they will do everything in their power to disrupt the voting process, to disenfranchise voters in districts that won't go as Republican as they demand. That's why this year it is more important than ever to register to vote NOW and then get out and vote. There's too much at stake to let the bad guys win again. It's time for good to triumph over evil or the world gets out of balance forever.

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Get Off Your Ass And Vote

Dog Ate McCain's Homework

John McCain wants to cancel the debate because of the economy. Well, yeah...if the questions focus on the aspects of the economy we should be focusing on, such as his campaign manager's firm getting paid by Freddie Mac, and economic "experts" being the ones who really should take the blame for their free market gambling game. But instead he's telling us the equivalent of the dog ate his homework.

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Dog Ate McCain's Homework

The Semantics of Welfare

For those of you who are a little bit confused now trying to wrap your brains around Bush and the Republican semantic exercise of differentiating between "welfare" and "bailout," here's a few examples to clear it up for you:


From the Independent comes an article about the Republican's version of welfare, i.e. bailout:

"Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn), Barclays Bank, which is buying the business, confirmed last night." read more


And from the Progressive comes this version of those who are not worthy of the same safety net:

"Things can't get much worse than the House Republicans' welfare plan. In the "Personal Responsibility Act," the new House leaders declare that no one--no matter how desperate--is legally entitled to aid from the Government." read more

And then of course there's that overlying stench that has permeated anything coming from this administration for the last eight years: cronyism:

"What is important to note about the S&L scandal is that it was the largest theft in the history of the world and US tax payers are who was robbed.

The problems occurred in the Savings and Loan industry as they relate to theft because the industry was deregulated under the Reagan/Bush administration and restrictions were eased on the industry so much that abuse and misuse of funds became easy, rampant, and went unchecked." read more

And what do you know? Here's another Bush associated with the recent white collar thievery:

"Lehman Brothers(LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks) has nabbed George H. Walker, the CEO of Goldman Sachs(GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) Hedge Fund Strategies, to be the global head of its $188 billion Investment Management Division, Lehman Brothers announced today.

Walker has already resigned from Goldman Sachs and could not be reached for comment. A spokesman at Goldman Sachs did not return a call.

Walker, who is President George W. Bush's second cousin, had joined the merger and acquisition group of Goldman Sachs in 1991 and became a partner in 1998. He soon grew to be one of the principal architects of Goldman Sachs' investment management strategy and was
overseeing a $70 billion group of alternative investments, including hedge funds of funds and private equity investments." read more

Get it now? They stole and stole and stole until there was nothing left to steal. So they stole from each other. And now we get to pay for it. Again.

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The Semantics of Welfare

Neocon Fascists sucking up some Corporate Welfare

Fascism

"A philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism." (From The American Heritage Dictionary)

Applying these principles to the government bailouts:

NPR's Adam Davidson writes:

"The Treasury Secretary can buy broadly defined assets, on any terms he wants, he can hire anyone he wants to do it and can appoint private sector companies as financial deputies of the US government. And he can write whatever regulation he thinks are needed."

read more

In an excellent diary from Daily Kos we learn who some of the Right-Wing Billionaires/Fascists are who are calling the shots this time around:

"Here are a few of the right-wing billionaires who have profited from gaming the global financial market and U.S. housing market, and are trying to get McCain elected. They are funding Newt Gingrich's "American Solutions for Winning the Future" (ASWF), the hard-right propaganda group behind the "Drill Here, Drill Now" campaign."

read more

If you have any doubts that Neocon=Neofascist, then do read one the early stories that laid it all out:

"WASHINGTON - An influential foreign-policy neo-conservative with long-standing ties to top hawks in the administration of President George W Bush has laid out what he calls ''a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term.''

The list, which begins with the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq and ends with the development of ''appropriate strategies'' for dealing with threats posed by China, Russia and ''the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America,'' also calls for ''regime change'' in Iran and North Korea."

read more

In the next few days as these unethical and immoral losers begin their final push to get their moronic Bush replacements in the White House, it might be a good idea to do some reading on exactly what Fascism is:

read more

It might even be amusing to make a drinking game out of it every time you hear the following phrases:

*Islamic fascists, as in OTHER countries who want to try shove a theocratic state on its population.

*End Times. Bonus points if the words come out of Sarah Palin's mouth in an effort to get her followers to join her on the mountain to wait for the space ship.

*Free Market, as in free to loot it until nothing remains but an empty husk for the tax payers to bail out. Bonus points for any and all Bush relatives either employed by or running one of the bailed out entities who have ties to the old S&L Bailout.

*Anything praising the concept of Capitalism while carefully dancing around its new BFF, Corporate Welfare.

*Moonies...oh sorry, those ARE Neocon Fascists...but you get bonus points if you can find any Neocon, any Conservative, any Bush League moron who is not associated with the Reverend Moon, his disciples, or his church. read more

*Appeasement. Bonus points if a Neocon Fascist uses that term in relation to why someone who believes that Armageddon is inevitable should still have her finger on the Nuclear trigger. Hello, Sarah Palin? Do you still have your Y2K bunker stocked?

*Liberals, as in anyone who disagrees with them or dares to challenge their appalling lack of facts to back up their half-witted ideology. In ancient times, used to be several racist and ethnic slurs. Now combined into one handy catch-all phrase.

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Neocon Fascists sucking up some Corporate Welfare

Voting with my brain not my vagina!

Yeah, sure the Republicans have seen the light of shrinking poll numbers and are grabbing onto any rope they can use to hang themselves with some more. But you have to give it to them. They've set aside their fascination with big plastic boobies and now are focusing on our vajayjays for votes. Here's my response to the perennial dickheads that make up the Republican Dinosaur Party:

click on button to get one for yourself.

Technorati Tags: anti-Palin, anti-McCain, vagina vote, election 2008, vice president, presidential campaign

Voting with my brain not my vagina!

Shame On John McCain

In the past I didn't agree with McCain but I perceived him as an honorable man who didn't stoop to the sort of gutter politics made famous by the Bush-Cheney-Rove win at any cost slime. But after seeing him accusing Obama of things so far beyond the truth, such as claiming he would inflict sex education on babies, spreading lies that he's some kind of radical Muslim after all the crap spread trying to tie him into the Christian pastor of his Christian church, and a whole long list of sleazier accusations that have nothing to do with issues facing this country, my respect for him has disappeared. He has sold his honor for political gain. Shame on him. Shame on those who allowed this to happen. And bigger shame on those who vote for him because it will make your honor a weak and false thing just like his has become.

Technorati Tags: anti-Mcain, dishonor, swiftboat lies, election 2008, campaign lies, sleaze, anti-gop, anti-republican

Shame On John McCain

Politicizing 9-11

It's too bad the Republicans and ABC had to exploit the tragedy of 9-11 by allowing Sarah Palin's political rant to take the place of news coverage. At least Obama's campaign treated the day with respect. But considering that from the moment this event happened, the Republicans have done nothing but exploit the tragedy for their own political agenda, then I'm not surprised. Disappointed once again. Sad for the families that had to see that. But so typical of the abusive exploitation synonymous with the political agenda of the Republican party. Shame on ABC and shame on Sarah Palin. I ask as has been asked before at the callous exploitation of human beings for political gain: where is your sense of decency?

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin interview, ABC, exploiting 911 for political gain, propaganda, anti-gop, anti-republican, anti-Palin

Politicizing 9-11

Caribou Barbie, the Stealth Dominionist

While everyone debates among themselves whether John McCain's choice of a snowbilly named Sarah Palin is proof that he's finally lost what was left of his mind, let's remember the party putting forth the nomination is known for its distractions to cover up disturbing facts. In Ms. Moose, they are covering up far more than the typical unethical criminal actions for which they've become so well known; they are taking one more step toward erasing completely the line separating church and state.

This is from a posting in August 29th's Daily Kos:

"There are quite a number of extremely troubling links between Sarah
Palin and neopentecostal dominionists--enough that, in truth, she may
be ultimately as much of a "dream candidate" for the dominionist
movement as Mike Huckabee was. Even worse, she's running in a manner
that has been frighteningly successful for dominionist groups since the
early 80's--specifically, as a "stealth candidate". read more

In case you want to read more about who the Dominionists are, here's a few links to get you started:

Wikipedia entry

"The Crusaders" from Rolling Stone

Replacing the Constitution with Theocracy


If someone can explain to me how this is different than the Taliban or other religious fanatics, I'd be very interested. In the meantime, if you ever needed a reason to vote against John McCain, preserving what's left of the US Constitution is a damned good one. When measured against the fanatical theocracy of the Bush regime, all of a sudden it makes sense why Bush perceived America's most precious document as a mere piece of paper. It was something in the way of achieving his most cherished dream: an American version of the religious extremism and fanaticism that he claims he's fighting the war on terror against. Maybe he needs to add his dominionist buddies to that list.










Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, Dominionists, US Constitution, Theocracy, Atheism, Religious fanatics, home-grown terrorists

Caribou Barbie, the Stealth Dominionist

Sarah Palin, Snowbilly

Now that John McCain has chosen one of them genuine snowbilly governor types from that place that done froze over good, the least we can do is show our good-natured American giving spirit by raising some money for her daughter Bristol, her baby daddy Levi, and their soon to be precious bundle of red, white and blue abstinence prize pick of the litter. If you want Republican, they'll be sure to buy them a really nice trailer. There's even one of them concrete pads left from when Dubya had too much of that Jesus Juice and Laura made him sleep outside. In honor of a whole new generation of rich white trash coming on the political scene, I dedicate these designs:





Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, Baby Daddy, Election 2008, Republican, anti-Republican, GOP humor

Sarah Palin, Snowbilly

Well, duh...she has a VAGINA

Never has the Republican party demonstrated how out of touch they are than with the choice of Sarah Palin as their "replacement" to lure disgruntled Hillary voters. Let me put this in terms that even a moron like Palin, who comes from the land of salmon, bears, crab, and big old exploding mountains can understand: if you're going after crab, don't use cotton candy as bait.

This offensive piece of fluff offered forth by McCain clearly demonstrates that he does not have the judgment to be President. In what deluded remaining functioning brain cell in that disturbed mind does an anti-choice, Creationist spouting, environment destroying, big oil-drenched gun-toting extreme wingnut equal Hillary Clinton? I'm stretching here, I really am and the only similarity I can think of is that she has a vagina.

So let me see if I have this right. John McCain and the Republican party see all women as interchangeable, kind of like that old joke, told mostly by old Republican sexist asshats, that we all look the same if you turn out the lights.

No wonder they want to take away a woman's right to choose, refuse to pay us what we're worth, and portray any woman with a spine as a bitch. All I have to say to that is: darlings, I'm not the only uppity bitch that's going to vote against you in November. You just about assured that a lot of your little bitches will be voting for my candidate instead of yours.

Take THAT to your next dickfest. And don't get too close to the crabpots while you're doing it because those crab just can't tell the difference between a worm and what you use to make your dumbass decisions.



Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, anti-Republican, John McCain, GOP, vice president

Well, duh...she has a VAGINA

Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

In 1968 I was seventeen years old in Las Vegas. My best friend, my strange and romantic and poetic buddy who didn't have a mean gene in his entire body, died in Vietnam. As a quiet and horribly shy kid whose family spoke with funny accents, he was my only friend those first few years in the desert. His family was neither Mormon nor Catholic. That made him an outcast just like me in a community that demanded you be one or the other for acceptance. Or you could be rich. Money erased all social taboos, but we were both from dirt poor families.

We ate our sack lunches together every day on the far corner of the playground, away from everyone else. We couldn't afford school lunches and often we could only afford one lunch between us. We shared the meager contents of our bags with each other. We bonded over stale bread and supper leftovers. Without him, without his acceptance, I don't know if I would have survived those early years. He gave me life and war took him from me.

It devastated me even though I was a child of war. I knew that's what war did. It took away those you loved. I was raised by people who survived horrors most Americans will never be able to wrap their minds around. No matter how whole their bodies were, their minds, their ability to feel, their ability to love, their ability to live a normal life was taken from them by war.

But before he died, we shared politics and peace. We and a small handful of social misfits like ourselves, formed a club in school that worked for civil rights, for equality, for world peace. The other students saw us as odd and quirky and mostly avoided us.

And then the unthinkable happened. Dr. King was assassinated. In the midst of our grief a small change started to occur. During the assembly where the entire school came together to mourn, students who previously avoided us now welcomed us and started to come to our meetings. Something woke in them. Something became important that had previously lain dormant inside them.

In May of 1968 we signed up to work on Robert Kennedy's campaign. We watched him that June evening with the pride, the hope, the power of our dream starting to take shape. And then as quickly as the moment came, it went with his assassination.

Life became this awful series of shocks to our hearts and spirits. It didn't seem that things could possibly get worst, but they did. Almost a week later David was drafted, and by September he was dead.

I was young and I was angry. That is why I didn't just bury myself away and run away from the wounds of the past few months. I was raised by survivors and I wasn't going to let war defeat me either.

I don't remember how I went to my first anti-war demonstration. I suspect it had to do with David because part of that first day was camping out with a group of students on the steps of the federal building in Las Vegas. We read the names of those killed in Vietnam up to that point. It was already a long list and it took us all night to read the names with people coming up and offering to read for a while. I remember a nun came and they still dressed in black robes. She read for half hour and then left without saying anything to anyone. About 3 am, a police car pulled up and we thought we were going to be arrested, but instead he got out of his car and offered to read a few names. He had lost his son in Vietnam six months before. It was that kind of night.

It was also the kind of night when cab drivers spit at us, when people with engraged, red faces and bulging veins screamed insults at us, called us Communists, traitors, appeasers. I found my voice that night when I learned I had to read loud enough to be heard over the insults.

Those years shaped and defined me as a pacifist. I have spent my entire life since then writing about peace, making art about peace, being part of organizations and groups that worked for peace and the victims of war. In all those years I never lost hope, never gave up my dream that one day the world would know peace and reject war.

But the last eight years knocked something down in me. I fought but it was from despair instead of hope. I often felt as if an overwhelming evil had taken over America and was spreading outward. I began to understand how tyranny grew, how it fed on the dispirited souls of people too beaten down to object anymore. I understood how the Nazis happened, how the Fascists happened, how petty dictators hung on to their ill-gotten dictatorships.

That dull sense of merely existing instead of fighting back is finally starting to melt. No matter what people think of Obama, the important thing to understand is that he is a symbol of a change that is already taking place. We created him, our mass consciousness, our despair, our frustration with a world growing more cruel and more mean and more intolerant, created him from our own dreams. He is us and so is Hillary and so is Biden and so is everyone who was in that stadium tonight and who watched on television screens all around the world.

I don't know what will come of it all but I do know that for the first time in eight years that feeling of oppression is starting to lift. And because of my experience with war, with death, with survival, I know that's all it takes sometime, for someone to lift the edge of the fog and show us the way forward. Tonight I finally see the glint of daylight on the horizon and like millions of people around the world, I am daring once again to dream of a better world.



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Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

Getting Used For Your Love

We've been hearing a lot about Hillary's Pumas lately and will hear even more because they are an easy target to exploit as are most people who are inflexibly attached to anything. As someone who originally supported Hillary and was driven away by the nasty politics she engaged in, it wasn't that big a step to go from one Democrat to another. I know what's at stake here and I'll vote for any Democrat to rid the country of the parasitical Republicans who care only about lining their own pockets at the expense of people like me and you.

But I do know two women who are so inflexible over Hillary not getting the nomination that they will put the future of their daughters in the hands of those who will take away their right to choose, who will almost guarantee they'll be sent to fight in some war for the next line of Cheneys, and who will let lobbyists and arms merchants dictate foreign policy. This is just plain selfish.

But setting that aside because after all, these are only two women and I believe, because they are intelligent women, they won't allow themselves to remain trapped in an abusive relationship. They'll probably end up voting Libertarian once common sense kicks in and they realize their emotions are being played by the McCrazies, or they will suck it up and vote for the perpetual candidate of the disaffected, Ralph Nader. That's their right and I honor it.

Having said that, I am one of those people who remembers what I read a few months ago about some of those primary votes for Hillary. Here's a typical article on the "phenomenon" read more. I remember how hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh encouraged his listeners to go vote for Hillary, not because he had any love or respect for her or them, but because the Republicans wanted to manipulate the primaries and get rid of what they considered a serious contender: Barack Obama.

And the Republicans are so desperate right now that they will grab hold of anything to exploit. Of course with their compliant whores in the media, they will exploit exploit exploit the passion these voters feel and turn it into slime like they do everything they touch. Those two women I mentioned will be magnified into a huge division within the Democratic party. They will be featured over and over again as something to fear, to use, to manipulate, to convince voters that the Democrats are fractured and can't agree on anything. They will do things like pile a bunch of closet Republicans (that GOP sure does love closets, don't they) into a hummer and claim they are Pumas. Check out this and tell me that any decent Hillary supporter would show up in something as blatantly symbolic of Republican excess than the hummer. It's a sad, pathetic attempt to manipulate a handful of Hillary supporters and it comes off as sad, pathetic and desperate: read more

While I would have loved a woman President, I'll settle for Obama because I truly do feel he represents me and my interests. Unlike the GOP meme that gets passed around to discredit him, he does stand for much of what I believe in. I went and read his website early on in the debate instead of listening to the bought and paid for media try and convince me he stood for nothing. Shame on those who didn't and still ask in that quasi-rhetorical meme zombie tone of voice: but what DOES he mean by change? Go read for yourself and quit letting the state run media tell you what to think and believe. Then you'll understand why more than anything America needs not just someone promising change but someone who is a symbol of that change. After eight years of Bush and his idiocy, I want someone who can talk to the entire world and not just a bunch of mindless GOP cheerleaders. That to me is a real leader.




Click on image to visit my political shop for progressive voters.Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Pumas, Hillary Clinton, Election 2008, Democratic convention, mainstream media, anti-Republican

Getting Used For Your Love

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

So it starts. Home-grown terrorists climb out of their shit pile of hatred with plans to assassinate Obama. Here's a link to one of the stories read more.

Maybe Homeland Security, with the help of their ignoble asshat co-conspirators--hate radio and propaganda TV, should start going after loony white guys instead of focusing so much attention away from them by making us scared shitless of Arabs, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims...anyone who isn't a white Christian lunatic. Last I recall McVeigh, the creepfest who blew up the Federal Building, was a crazy white guy.

Really, it's time to focus more on what's already within our borders--white Christian lunatics who are easily manipulated by the likes of Faux news and Rush "let's stir up some drug-induced hate monkey" Limbaugh into committing the kind of crimes they claim only those with brown skin commit. Those guys are the real threat from within, not some poor Mexicans trying to feed their families, or some Muslims who came to America for a better life and ran into the most intolerant fucks this side of Saudi Arabia.

Better yet, maybe the so-called mainstream media should focus less on car chases, celebutards, missing spouses, runaway children and actually report the news so America will quit holding the title as the dumbest, most poorly educated idiots on the planet.

Here's an idea for news that won't leave anyone with more than a third grade education gasping in astonishment of the collective ignorance that passes for "information" these days:

1. Darfur
2. World Hunger
3. Global Warming
4. Government policy shaped by Arms Merchants
5. Greedy fucks who don't care about people but who are playing some perverse game of who can accumulate the most money in a lifetime. (cough cough Cheney cough cough)

The list is endless and nowhere near the top are there any blond bimbos, sex lives of the white and boring, rehab tales of the rich and famous, and television "personalities" who can't even read the script tossed in front of their blank stares without gagging on their own irrelevance.

But I won't hold my breath that anything will change anytime soon. Hate is big business in America. It's the fuel that drives our politics, defines our consciousness, and makes us no better than schoolyard bullies with a vocabulary no bigger than fuck you well fuck you too you fucking fuck. And for that we need a media filled with cocaine blonds and insipid necktied young Fascists making us all very afraid and suspicious of each other so the bastards in charge can rob us blind. Nice legacy to leave the grandchildren, eh?

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders