I remember the discussion in the nineties of what to name the coming decade. In a previous century yrs 1900-09 were aught years, but “the aughts” is an archaic term. Aught means: no thing; not anything: nil, nothing, null, zero, nix, zilch.
In bookkeeping terms, as with data processing, an aught with its diagonal slash helps the accountant differentiate a zero from an O.
I’m amused obviously, that O stands for Obama, optimism and Oprah; and figuratively it represents a zero. With a slash, we can make the distinction, and association, more pointed.
Admittedly, the 00 decade was defined by George W. Bush, and zero fits, doesn’t it, to describe his gas gauge, if not obviously his mileage? In 2008 Barack Obama promised a return from the brink of meaninglessness, this decade, not later, but how far has he got? His followers hold still plenty of hope, things being complicated in Washington and what not, but Obama is looking more like Bush’s fall guy than his arresting officer.
With his legislative majority, George Bush proved you can take a world to war, dismantle regulatory protections, rape the environment, eliminate rights, screw every last living earthly being, and raid the treasury for the bankers, each act performed faster than a Sotomayor confirmation.
With majorities everywhere, even with public opinion on his side, Obama can’t reform health care. And he didn’t have a stolen election behind him.
We’re fast approaching the anniversary of September 11, an impressive benchmark if you will, for George Bush’s first term. I’d be surprised if Obama could put a Cessna into the Hudson by then.
Of course I recognize that Obama is up against more than the Republicans. He faces the powers that be, the corporations, financiers and oligarchs, the “deciders” whose deciding Bush pretended to do by himself. But if the President of the United States is not the Leader of the Free World, is not the most powerful figure on Earth, as his office is held to be, what is he? Are we prepared to accept that our democratic election accounts for naught?
Obama was elected in aught-eight. Judging by the job he’s doing, the superlatives flying from the corporate media about how he’s turned world public opinion, brought change, ended racism, and pretends to be drawing down bad things, Obama will be a shoe-in incumbent. Come next election, we’ll still need someone to offer us hope for mini-versal health care. So from ’08 we have eight years of aught.
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) will be holding a gathering in Chicago next week to start their plans for a 2009 Lobbyfest of Barack Obama. They still haven’t figured any of it out and most likely never will. Ostensibly the UFPJ has not decided on doing anything just yet and the gathering is for the group to supposedly decide just what should be done?
Ralph Nader speaks to Alexander Cockburn about the poor performance of his campaign this year, but fails to mention the main reason that was so. This was Nader’s third and most probably last run for the presidency and what it lacked was any noticeable performance by Ralph Nader in the non election years. 
How fitting it is that the first announcement of a major figure in the newly forming Obama Administration is a pro-war Zionist nicknamed Rahmbo.
I must say that I find it utterly humorous this search with cameras for Republicans supposedly committing fraud? What are these people actually doing? So many of the Democrats are seemingly obsessed with rooting out this supposed election day fraud… but only when they seemingly might be somehow the victims of of it. They don’t seemingly give a damn that their own party’s victory is fundamentally structured and arrived at totally due to election fraud by their own party’s representatives in the first place? No concern of theirs at all, it seems… Why not though?
Dixie is a mean bitch and she got ditched for now. That’s all it is. All you got to do is check out
Even as liberals like dumb Michael Moore and even dumber Norman Solomon begin to celebrate their ‘victory’ tonight, any thinking person must be asking themselves if the Obama-Biden team plan to get the US ‘out’ of Iraq by getting us into Iran? Certainly don’t hold your breath thinking that Obama, now that he has the presidency in hand, will suddenly begin to demand a new foreign policy! All that shit about CHANGE is mere hot air blown out the ass of a donkey, for donkeys, and for more WAR.
Expect the cheers of delight to begin tonight, as many Americans begin to celebrate what the corporate media tomorrow will call a historic event. However, they will be wrong. There will have been no major change in America at all.
OK, it was less than a week ago that Kevin Costner showed up to kiss the young female donkeys on behalf of Barack Obama, but the Republicans are not to be outdone in Show Biz and have hired gun Hank Williams Jr on hand to serenade their lovely Sarah Palin. To my looking he has a kind of tired out Merle Haggard appearance, but if you miss Hee-Haw his show might just be the perfect thing for you. Here’s a preview of
Poor liberal Nervous Nellies. They see plots everywhere! It must be quite scary for them don’t you think?
No doubt about it, the American ruling class has decided to rewire the circuits once again. But what comes after? What comes after the big CHANGE?
I’m Terry Tate, and I approve these messages…
Just like how the Bush Administration just got though murdering Syrian civilian children in an unlawful attack on a foreign country, the US led forces of Georgia’s US puppet leader, President Mikhail Saakashvili, targeted, attacked, and murdered Ossetian civilians in that area of our world, too.
‘More than 600 adults have been arrested in raids across the US targeting people who force children into prostitution. Operations took place in 29 cities in a co-ordinated action involving federal, state and local law officers, according to the FBI.’ thus reads the Reuters reportage of yesterdays US government’s mass raids
The second coming of Christ has struck born again Democrats in Colorado and elsewhere and paralyzed them into none action, as they hardly notice that the US government killing goes on without so much as a word from their Black Jesus. The US has created 300,000 refugees in one province of Pakistan alone, continues to bomb that country’s civilians almost daily, and now is
Let’s see… Terrorist threats are made against an American and the University of Nebraska bends under the pressure of the terrorists? The American Department of Homeland Security doesn’t act either. What’s going on here? Why are these liberal hotbeds, like in Lincoln, Nebraska at the big liberal university there, being allowed to derail the War on Terrorism? Go figure?
You might want to take that Special Other on a Valentines Day cruise this coming February? I don’t have the money for it, but maybe John Weiss who is owner of the Colorado Springs Independent does? He could take his new wife and report back to the dedicated readers of his publication about that 2009 romantic Republican cruise! It would be of great service to the community if he would?
This morning reactionary AOL front-lined for its predominately Republican fans, that the Gallup poll showed the election was a tossup! What a joke! Reuters has a much different read on the presidential election stating that
Politico reports that 