Advising Hillary about advising Obama

Weren’t they so cute, Mary Matalin and the bald guy, circa Election 1992, political advisers and marital partners, swinging for opposite teams, both obviously high-roller clever wits. It could have made a sitcom. Did it? I remember a Mork-n-Mindy-esque book cover. Mr. and Mrs. Smith of political hit-making, presumably. Now I hear there’s another Carville-Matalin academic dream pair advising the Democratic rivals. Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste. He for Obama, she for Hillary. Isn’t that cute? Now wait a minute.

Are we to believe the stakes are so high, and political acumen such a rarity, that married couples have to divide their energies between political campaigns? Out of our entire population, or out of the small pool of “experts” consulted by the networks, the political campaigns have to hire professors whose partners are otherwise indisposed with the other side?!

In any other line of work, it would be called a conflict of interest. But in politics we’re supposed to think it’s a matter of tomayto or tomahto. Nothing you can’t resolve after the 9 to 5. At the end of the day, which candidate wins is a wash.

Probably we’re encouraged to make this comparison. But do you know any couple to survive even a mismatched allegiance to sports teams? The only way I know to stomach a partner’s at-odds political views is to have separate abodes. I’m thinking that elections have indeed become so sophisticated that in order to collude effectively, you have to have intimately briefed operators. What are they called? Bed fellows!

Competing businesses can’t even be caught meeting in the same hotel room without drawing an investigation into price fixing. Election fixing, even with Diebold’s collusion, has got to be quite a tenuous balancing act. You can’t have a Rove type working on both sides simultaneously, attending the meetings at least. But if you’ve got dueling advisers, perhaps they can coordinate the tempo, mood and fiddle, lest one side or the other fall out of step.

If you were being considered for a consultancy, wouldn’t you recuse yourself if your wife was already advising the competitor? If you didn’t offer up the info voluntarily, you could be liable for civil damages if it was found out.

But when it concerns politics, what? Never mind that your wife works for the other side. We need YOU. Oh, and you can tell us what she’s up to, without letting her in on the game. And make certain she isn’t playing you for the same. Or, your recruiters could make this pitch: The public loves a team couple. It dispels the wacky idea that politics have to do with class, or social differences.

Americans are such romantics. They believe (1) love conquers all, it even settles differences of opinion, and (2) that married couples are ultimately faithful to each other above all. One person playing double agent between rivals, betrays both naturally. But two people? They’re kept honest because they can’t lie to each other. Dirty politics become sanitized by Ward and June, each too much a patriot to betray each other.

This campaign is full of bullshit!

shit factoryHow do you like your bullshit? That’s the defining element of the US presidential elections, isn’t it? Do you want your bullshit over easy, over medium, or over hard? How ’bout some poached bullshit instead? And YES, most seem to like their bullshit stale. And at the center of it all is the bullshit war of perpetuity, the war to create perpetual Homeland Bullshit Security. Take off your shoes for them to be x-rayed… for bullshit! The biggest issue for voters, is bullshit! At least that’s what America’ most important press organ thinks. And they’re right!

Here comes McCain Son of Frankenstein

President Bush gives his blessing to John McCain on the same day
Hillary Clinton drops the suggestion of a Democratic double ticket.
Suddenly Election Race 2008 comes into quick focus: I’ll wager
Red State White Vet to win, woman with black rider to place.
 

Bruce Vincent loves George is so 2004

Bruce Vincent receives a Preserve America Award in May 2004The Vincent email has come around again, like flu season, hoping to cast Stutterin’ George Dubya in a pious light. Though it reads like Reader’s Digest bad fiction, even urban myth, the author is authentic, the event is factual, but of course a private moment with George cannot be corroborated. Who knows, the devotional lingo may be the story Vincent had to tell his wife, to cover for a Jeff Guckert/Gannon blue dress affair, if we’ve learned anything about Republicans.

What utter tripe. We’ve all of us looked into Dubya’s eyes enough to know there’s no there there, nothing but air. What reason is there these days to be circulating such a fawning pre-election 2004 profile of Bush? I think folk are trying to rationalize their support of their previous election year candidate. History has already sized up George Bush. I doubt even Bush’s biographer will argue that this president is not the alcoholic, half-wit tool of thieving, war profiteering, war criminals.

About any notion of Bush’s depth or spirituality, I have to point to the interview he gave his friend and fellow reprobate Tucker Carlson for Talk Magazine in 1999 (now reprinted in the National Review) where he made fun of condemned killer Karla Faye Tucker. Declining to offer clemency to the reformed Tucker, Bush mocked her supposed plea by mimicking her voice and pursing his lips: “Please don’t kill me!”

Test your candidate on civil liberties

Tonight, instead of hearing a Wal-mart exec explain how Saving People Money Helps Everyone On Earth Live Better TM, stop by another CC venue to see the ACLU Winter Forum. The event in Slocum Commons is scheduled to be a candidate forum where regional representatives of the presidential candidates will respond to ACLU concerns about the abuse of power by the office of the executive. A good idea, on paper.

THE ISSUES BEING: Congressional Suspension of Habeas Corpus for Detainees, Indefinite Detention Without Arrest, Trial, Legal Representation or Judicial Forum, Surveillance of Domestic U.S. Citizens, Rendition, Torture, Abuse of Executive Power, i.e. Separation of Powers, Signing Statements, etc, The Patriot Act, and more.

I’m not sure whether the representatives would be able to get beyond how they think their bosses would respond. It’s hard to imagine each will not agree that all American Civil Liberties must be protected, keeping our security in mind, yada yada yada; as opposed to salivating openly at the chance to get into power and abuse every executive advantage like your predecessors.

The only hope I see for a discussion is for a Green Party spokesman for Cynthia McKinney to clarify what the corporate candidates have already revealed about themselves based on their actions and affiliations.

And now of course with Ralph Nader stepping in to mix things up, there’s the chance to hear what an independent might lend by way of outrage. Have the McKinney and Nader camps been invited?

I am voting against McCain

I’m voting against McCain.
 
Saying there isn’t any difference between the candidates is like stating there’s no difference physically or philosophically between you and me, or me and Eric or you and Eric.

The Anti-Immigrant crowd are howling for Obama’s blood as well. They’re suggesting absurdly that his father planned to smuggle a future terrorist into america in the womb of an American citizen.

The Wall is so unworkable just as a physical engineering problem, it’s clear to you, clear to me, and probably clear to each and every candidate for any office higher than Dog Warden that it’s a massive, expensive Feel-Good giveaway to construction workers, until after the election at least.

Any one issue, like the Wall or the War or Health Care or Wiretapping, … they all converge on one simple, monstrous Elephant in the Parlor fact…

Allowing any Bush Annointed Bush Replacement, such as McCain, to win even by the slightest of margins, will be seen by the 19% Jackass Squad as an overwhelming mandate to Implement every stinkin’ one of the Chimp’s signing statements and Executive Orders, to replace the Constitution, as Bush put it “stop waving the Constitution in my face It’s just a goddamned piece of paper” yeah, THAT Constitution, with the so-called Patriot Act.

There’s plenty of criticism of the Constitution from the left as well, it seems to be somewhat of a dinosaur, it has regressive Articles, some of which were stricken from the use but not from the letter of the law, like a black man being worth 1/3 of a White man in the census.

BUT the Patriot Act in conjunction with the Signing Statements, the Executive Orders, the Attorney General refusing to enforce Contempt of Congress citations or subpoenas from Congress, the Supreme Court backing his sorry ass on that, the Vice President saying he’s neither Executive Branch nor Legislative, but instead is some kind of Super-Executive above all laws…
Pure retrogressive.

The trend wipes all legal issues raised since the Code of Hammurabi.

“Badges? We don’ need no steenkeeng Badges!” or warrants, or probable cause, or finding somebody guilty UNDER THE LAW, or a legitimate reason to invade any country on earth…

Any vote that will put that Jackass McCain on the throne will be a vote for the utter destruction of America and every place and person on Earth that the American Empire can take down with it.

It will be a vote for Absolute Rule, “we told you to, that’s why” Rule.

Tony, man, I love you brother, but pissing away your vote for Nader would be even worse than voting directly for McCain. Even worse than sitting home and refusing to vote.

Nader could have done something truly hellified in the political sphere by running for Congress, in the 60s or even today.

Under the Constitution the Congress would have an extreme hold over the power of the presidency. He had the support in and out of Congress to do it.

And the support to have effected some real hard-core changes over the past 40 years.

40 years of that kind of working for change would translate into a real chance for being President. I just get the feeling, though, that not putting in that kind of time or effort shows that he really doesn’t want to be the President.

He doesn’t actually want, at least in any way that’s obvious, to have the responsibility or be in the position of change.

Voting for him would be voting for No Change, save for the change in the number of milestones on the road to a collective National Grave.

I personally ain’t ready to do that.

You see the political situation here in the Springs, you saw it in Highland and University Parks, Houston, El Paso, and even in other countries, like in the Distrito Federal in Mexico. The situation of no change except for steady worsening.

No, Obama isn’t going to Save America. Not just no, but hell to da fuck no…
Despite the “Cult-like Supporters” slur, everybody or most everybody who intends to vote for him realizes that.

Voting for No Change, though, Guarantees the Damnation of America.

Ralph Nader white knight on dark horse

Spare no unflattering portrait of third party candidateIf a picture is worth a thousand words, there are no end of terrible words which corrupt opinion shapers want to throw at Ralph.
 
A consumer/citizen advocate would indeed look sinister in the eyes of corporate malfeasance and to those interests who have pirated our democracy. The media portraits are consistent with dark shadows and a scowl, even though Nader’s only special interests have been ours.

If Citizen Nader wants to run for president and dedicate more of his life to public service, we should be so lucky. The only party he’s pooping by stepping into the ring, is the two-party fraud perpetrated by the beltway television lying bastards. The charlatans so smugly think the American political spirit should be satiated by the choice between their stooge on the right and their stooge on the left.

Asked if his candidacy would serve as a spoiler, Nader replied:

“If the Democrats can’t landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form.”

No need to fear, Underdog is here!

Ralph Nader makes speeches about issues that matter
Here comes Ralph Nader to remind us that a politician can make memorable speeches AND make it about something that matters. Here’s Ralph, younger than Barack, addressing the ills of society instead of its platitudes. Ralph’s back to force the issues into the election coverage. He faces corporate candidates who offer nothing different from each other except sex/color/age and to which uninformed voters they pander.

Do you want something new? Nader has the same thing to say, and it’s always new. Although the context becomes more dire with each election. Where has Barack given you any sense he presents “change you can believe in?” Because Barack’s reform is sufficiently infinitesimal that you believe it is plausible.

Nader is everything Dennis Kucinich promised without the caving to the Democratic Party.

Fighting all who rob or plunder! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!

Bleeding Hearted Liberals running small check-list businesses make my heart bleed

All around America there are bleeding hearted liberals running small businesses… small social service businesses. As a general rule, too, liberals don’t run businesses very well. They’re too damn dumbly soft and sweet, that’s why. So we can begin to understand why all these ‘reform groups’ (like the local area’s Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.. for just one example) don’t make much profit for the people they claim to be serving (even as they keep them out in droves from their social advocacy groups, run as small ‘businesses’).

Here is the type of thing I am talking about,

…from an article appearing in The Nation…
‘Check off the boxes, copy the paragraph from two years ago, mail it in. As an election year approaches, I again face the piles of questionnaires that progressive organizations use to evaluate public officials. Environmentalists, feminists, campaign finance reformers, housing advocates and labor unions have all come to rely on these lists of our positions–often on issues that never even come up for a vote. It should come as no surprise that, for the most part, all we get out of this cumbersome process is a long line of “checklist liberals” who answer correctly but do little to advance the progressive causes that underlie the questionnaires.’

The rest of this article can be found on the liberal’s very own Nation Magazine at Transforming the Liberal Checklist

OK, OK! So the rest of the article is not very good, much like the liberal organizations themselves, and The Nation Magazine is not very good, either. It was still a good and insightful first paragraph of an article at least!

And the commentary reminded me of all those fund raising letters, free stamps with animal pictures on them, and ‘surveys’ to find out my learned opinions, etc. Reminds me of all the wasted time sitting in meetings where bleeding hearted liberals talk about running THEIR small businesses. You see? The bleeding hearted liberals are most always the ‘owners’ of small socially aware businesses calling themselves community’ groups, which these groups having small office staffs then try to run the group like it was a church or tiny corner store of some sort.

Yes, the small office staff always begin to behave as if they were real owners of the store, much in the same way that some convenience store minimum wage workers will try to stop a robber of some sort or other, by risking their own lives over pennies that supposedly belong to the stock owners instead. These small would be owners can snarl and bite quite hard if given an opportunity to do so. They often overpower the petty ‘robbers’ of their unit with their forceful indignations than can border on madness of sorts. Some times they get popped for being so dimwitted, too.

So what to do about all the PEACE and GREEN and SOCIAL JUSTICE groups’ ‘leaders’ acting in our name? They operate much as the Democratic Party does, which is to impede rather than progress the people forward.

The runners of these small businesses calling themselves ‘peace and justice’ outfits, most often see themselves not as an elected group of leaders for exploited workers struggling for justice and peace, but as a group of independent networkers and business operators, forcefully headed for making more profit for their own personal businesses, the social groups. They spend more time being angry at any of the lower levels of the ‘co-ops’ managed by themselves than at the power elites that cause the social injustice they are supposedly fighting against. When angered by the lower elements, their faces can become quite bulldog-like.

Recently a certain word has come into great popularity with this sort of manager owner of social cause… that word being the word SUSTAINABILITY. Why so popular this word, and with these people? It is because it strikes a chord with the small manager/owner and his small manager/owner mindset. They want to know if their small business is SUSTAINABLE and if their position as head of the operation is SUSTAINABLE most of all? SUSTAINABILITY is their biggest goal of them all. And now of course, corporate America wants to help them become SUSTAINABLE.

This sort of group run as a small business with paid staff who think themselves owners is a very huge impediment to any real social action taking place. The main technique of ‘the owners’ who are salaried is simply to eat up other people’s time. They know that they can out last them in energy by simply doing this, and can come out on top when actual decisions are to be made. In other words, they are well positioned to stifle.

Like owners of any corporation, ‘the owners’ of supposed social groups get paid real money for their time while the volunteers do not. Is this the model of a social action group that will get things done? Most certainly not. Unfortunately though, it is the model structure for liberals and their do-nothing liberalism everywhere today in America…. small groups with a paid ‘leader’ or two, spouting ‘good things’, and doing next to nothing besides appearing to be seeminglygood people.

At the recent meeting of the executive board of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, it was totally noticeable that nobody there had anything of a working class background. In fact, the idea of justice for workers is totally absent from this group with ‘justice’ in its name. Being so church-like, this group throws the word in as if it were a bone to the lower classes so next to being sweet dogs in the eyes of these nice people. They were about as working class in composition as the ACLU is!… to give an idea of what the meeting was actually like. Nobody was ‘angry’, just sad. Or happy when seemingly a crumb from real power is thrown in their direction. And at this meeting it had been.

The City of Colorado Springs was going to let the group march in the St Pat’s Day Parade! All Hallelujah, Jesus! But that is about more than this little essay can talk about for the time being. Just let it be said, that liberals running small businesses that should be action groups make my heart bleed. Bleeding hearted liberals make poor businessmen and the conservative business men will tear them to part. Antiwar groups should not be run like they are small businesses. Probably enough said at this point.

Pushing PAUSE button while on SURGE

They share three letters. SURGE. PAUSE. First our military wanted a surge, now they want a pause at the height of the surge, making the temporary amplification something more like an escalation. In fact, it’s forecast that US troop levels in Iraq will actually rise by the summer, as we head into the election. Probably for “the surge is working” refrain. So our surge has surged. This surge shares no similar properties to its namesake in electronics. Just as pause bears no similarity with the button on the TV remote. Hitting pause on a controller would halt the fast-forward mode. This pause actually locks us into the higher setting. General Sonofabitch is asking us for a LOCK on the troop gains he’d secured, from which he’ll be able to call a next surge.

‘Super Delegates’ make the corporate party super undemocratic

Corporations have one big problem in controlling political expression in that all they have is money, not numbers. Tons of money get spent on fabricating false images, manipulating sentiment, and plastering everything with advertisements for the top dogs the corporate world has running in the arena.

Still, sometimes the rabble voters get out of hand, and that’s where the so-called ‘super delegates’ come in as the ultimate corporate trump card. American ‘elections’ are not a democratic system at all, and its design is just to appear to be democratic without actually being so. ‘Super delegates’ are mere icing on the cake of undemocracy that we suffer with every 4 years.

Go figure, what’s is democratic about the government financing all the primaries for the 2 corporate parties in the first place? Nothing. As if the corporate world is not already buying the elections before hand, the corporate government moves in with hundreds of millions of corporate dollars to show its favoritism to the 2 official corporatized parties. It is one thing for the government to finance the real election, but the primaries are not that at all since they are just party functions. In short, they are a facade of procedure that the 2 corporate parties (with a big push from the corporate media and corporate government) put out to pretend to being democratic, when in reality they are no such thing at all.

To many, electing a Black American will represent ‘change’. To many, electing a White woman will do so. And to many, just getting George out of office will be all that is needed for them to think that the country is moving forward once again. Wrong. Until we establish a political system that has more than the most pathetic pretense of being functionally democratic, we are all on the super-highway to getting screwed yet even more than Bush has already done to the country. Corporate looting of our nation and to the world as a whole cannot stop without us beginning to construct a democratic system where none now stands. We need a democratic America, and that is not an America led by either the Democratic or Republican parties.

Change Barack Obama can believe in

Barack Obama takes the lead from Hillary Clinton except for the Super Delegates
He didn’t bring change as a Senator, nor has he offered change as a political voice. But Barack Obama is campaigning on a platform of change. Is campaigning all he can do?

That’s what we have already with the Bush presidency, making paid appearances to groomed audiences, selling the Neocon agenda. Obama’s agenda is the same “change” which George W. offered. Same financiers, same agents of change. Obama supporters are displaying the same aw shucks gleeful optimism as the Bush supporters did. Obama may be smarter, so maybe America will just be more smartly screwed.

I have to say I do think Barack Obama, or a Barack Obama, could not fail to do a novel job of campaigning for a new image of America. If the task at hand is not about curbing American imperialist ambitions, at least we could do a better job convincing the rest of the world that our expansive authority is in their interest. Obama may be a better pitchman considering he’s not directly one of the profiteers. But as a candidate, not being a shyster may be something else to stand in Obama’s way of not getting to be president.

I’m thinking of course of other obstructions, such as the corporate media and the corporate parties. By corporate I mean corrupted, the corrupt spokesmen, experts, soothsayers, pollsters, social engineers, spin doctors, psychological manipulators and enterprising hacks.

Asked in 2004 about Bush’s aptitude for the presidency, the talking point seemed to be: “he’s the best man for the job.” Cynically they didn’t have to address whether he was bright or competent or knowledgeable, only that he’d perform the job as intended. And they were right. Bush gave it up to the munitions industry. He delivered the Middle East to big oil. He transferred the wealth of the people of the United States into private hands, all the while looking fully incompetent and not the least suspiciously larcenous. The American public has yet to grow wise.

So who’s the best man for the job in 2008? We’re going to let them tell us again. A short fat white dude, last seen hugging George W. and kissing his ring. He’ll be the last white hope against the menacing half-black dude with no track record, indoctrinated in a madrasse, but strangely the best the Dems could come up with as an alternative.

The Genetic Purity Kennel Club

Miniature Alsatian from MaltaThe 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show aired this week, much to my excitement and sheer delight. Broadcast from Madison Square Garden, the competition is the height of absurdity, but plenty of hilarious fun. In case you’ve never watched, dozens of dogs, broken into categories such as sporting, terrier, herding, or toy are placed, one by one, on a table draped with fine linens and examined by a stern-looking woman wearing a full-length silk dupioni skirt and fitted cropped jacket, pearls and heels. She dramatically pulls back the lips of each show dog to inspect the teeth and gums, checks the body position, runs her hands up and down the pooch’s torso to assess bone structure, lifts the tail for reasons unknown, and then grunts her assent.

The handler then puts the dog to the ground and somberly run-walks it in front of the bedecked judging panel. This is the best part of the circus. The women handlers are middle-aged, wearing knee-length skirts and sensible shoes and are usually rather frumpy. The male handlers, in great contrast, are young cute men wearing Armani suits. The spectacle never fails to make me laugh hysterically, even to the point of falling from my chair.

One of the more interesting things in the show is the commentary about the history of the various purebred dogs: where they originated and what their use was in bygone days. Dogs were domesticated generally not as pets, but as herders, hunters, workers, or for the amusement of the royal and wealthy.

There are 400 million domesticated dogs around the globe. Scientists looking into canine DNA have postulated that all dogs descended from gray wolves in East Asia about 15,000 years ago, and came to the New World across the Bering Straight with human nomads. Analysis of ancient canine skeletons from Alaska to Peru shows a genetic link to the Old World gray wolf. However, the DNA of modern New World dogs shows no evidence of Old World wolf genes, likely because European colonists brought their own hybrid dogs and systematically discouraged breeding of Native American dogs. Even the Mexican hairless dog, thought to have developed in the Americas nearly 2,000 years ago, possesses mostly European DNA.

Hybridization to develop new breeds began merely 500 years ago, and has resulted in the widely-divergent pure breeds we see today. This targeted breeding continues and each year another specimen or two is added to the American Kennel Club’s canine A-list. This year it is the French Beauceron and the Swedish Vallhund. As in human inbreeding, notably the royal families of Europe who have close blood ties which are strengthened by noble intermarriage, incestually-bred organisms are more likely to manifest genetic imperfections and problematic temperaments. Still, the lure of genetic purity remains.

A recent study reported in Science magazine found that dogs are perhaps the most perceptive species when it comes to recognizing and interpreting human behavior. A 15,000-year friendship between man and animal has engendered this symbiotic bond. Watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, with its products of purposeful breeding, had me wondering about man’s relationship with dogs in other parts of the world. Do they pamper, exercise, feed and water their dogs like we do? Are dogs beloved family members or communal property tended by all? What types of dogs have arisen when natural selection and breeding are allowed to reign?

On your travels, take note of the dogs. Are they skinny and neglected or, as in Peru, seemingly well-tended but running free? I was recently in Playa del Carmen walking along Fifth Avenue and noticed dogs of every shape and size, well-behaved and non-threatening, but seemingly never attached to an owner, let alone a leash. Try also to find out the dogs’ names. Rover, Spot, and Fido? Or are they named like the show pups: Roundtown Mercedes Of Maryscot, Cookieland Seasyde Hollyberry, or Jangio’s Ringo Starr Kurlkrek?

Below is a picture of a dog that was sitting at my feet in a cafe in Aguas Calientas, near Machu Picchu. If you are so inclined, take pictures of street dogs in your travels, or even dogs with owners, and send them to me. I will do the same on my upcoming trips to Argentina and Chile. I’d love to amass a collection of pictures and stories of dogs around the globe. There will be no trophies or prize money awarded. This will be purely for fun.

Street dog Peru

Eye now on undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party

Super delegates or not, the public eye will still be turned on the totally undemocratic nature of the Democratic Party, since there is nothing about Barrack Obama that will bring about any real change long term. Still, the question of the moment though is whether the Clinton part of the DLC machine can still manipulate the entire DP or not? The Obama part certainly could… short term.

There is no doubt though that the corporations can manipulate the party since they totally own it. This is no people’s party at all. Rather, The Democratic Party is owned by the military industrial complex every bit as much as the Republican Party.

Nothing will be gained election time with a Barrack Obama as the new president. The only long term gain can only come about when the US population gets angry and totally fed up enough with the corporate 2 parties that act as one con. Unfortunately though, the American people still think that their corporate rulers have some God given right to rule everybody on the planet. Stupid, very stupid. No personality change in the front office will bring about change as long as the American people still are enamored of their country’s nationalism….The Empire.

Caucus surge for Obama 2004 speech

Give Barack Obama a trophy for his speechEverybody who is anybody I know showed up at last Tuesday’s DEM caucuses. I felt so bad for all of them, tuned in, activated, braced to make elections work this time. But to work for whom? Not them. We are indeed lemmings, our legs spinning, our arms waving, our faith unshakable because to not jump off the cliff would be to derail the train without the engineer and be left to organize a can of worms.

The media, the parties, everyone is in election year mode. Get Out the Vote, Be the Change, You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play, the candidates shaking themselves out like Lotto balls coming up the tube. Meanwhile we’ve got our heads down eagerly keeping the turkey cold for whoever gets Bingo. Perhaps our selfless trust in them will be reciprocated by an equal lack of self-interest on their part to help us. Do you think?

My local district caucus on the West Side was positively humming with enthusiasm. It could have been related to people thinking they might get to attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver, or even the State Convention to be held right here. But there also seemed to be an urgency about securing a nomination for Obama instead of for old Hillary.

Out with the old, in with change. Almost no one in my precinct wanted to speak in favor of Hillary, she had supporters but none that dared speak. The posters and endorsements were mostly for Obama, and the enforcement was heavy handed. One woman was told her Clinton posters were not needed in the caucus rooms because the posters there were already 50/50, when clearly they were not.

Another friend of mine in another precinct wanted to make a pitch for Clinton in hope of convincing just one person to tilt her way to reach the minimum required to earn one delegate. Otherwise the six individuals for Clinton would be thrown into the Obama majority. Thus instead of sending one delegate for Clinton against Obama’s seven, Obama would get them all. (It’s complicated the way I can’t explain it, isn’t it?) An Obama disciple approached her to explain that Obama was for uniting the party, not for dividing it, and what my friend was proposing was definitely divisive and not in keeping with the spirit of Obama. Her precinct chairman concurred and my friend was not allowed to speak. There was just that kind of fervor.

I was offered an Obama sticker which I declined. I explained that I wanted to remain undeclared, there were a few of us actually, because I thought we were being given no real alternative, certainly not relative to American war-making. The button giver sympathized with me, and offered instead that she liked the stand Obama had taken on the war in his speech before the Democratic National Convention in 2004. He spoke against the war there, and what he had said afforded her some hope.

I’d have to agree that Obama gave a great speech in ’04. Is that really going to be the basis for selecting him to be president? What has he done since, as a Senator or high-profile contender, all this time? Has he advanced, lobbied, spoken out, championed, appealed, endorsed, raised his voice about anything?!

If Obama’s speech was so convincing, why didn’t Democrats nominate him then and there for their candidate? I agree he was promising then! Now he is a confirmed professional campaigner. Not unlike… Bush! (This thread to be continued…)

What I take to be the lesson of DNC 2004 is to save the decision until all the really impressive orators have spoken, then pick one. Why tie ourselves to a nominee before all the suitors have made their overtures? Especially if we’re going to make our decision based on a speech. Let’s leave our options open. If we’d done that in 2004, we could have had Obama, and none too soon. Let’s do it this year and see who rises to the occasion. At every convention, there’s always a side player at liberty to offer a more interesting sermon.

At the 2006 state convention, soon-to-be-governor Ritter gave the worst speech I’d ever heard. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to wonder if he was a Republican, a Democrat or a Saturn dealer. It was the most bland claptrap, and he’s delivered precisely that in office. The same day, a would-be state representative spoke in amazingly blunt terms and brought down the house. Based on Obama logic, he should have been nominated for governor. I wish he had.

Who’s going to be the Obama of 2008? It wouldn’t have to be an unknown. As I remember, Dennis Kucinich gave an underrated speech at the last convention. Perhaps we should give him a chance to do it again. And he has credentials. Or Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson. Give Ron Paul or Ross Perot a turn at the podium as well. Based on one speech we can definitely feel optimism for any such candidacy.

The phony vote game

Stupor Tuesday coverage was even more stultifying than I had imagined it would be. The media truly has its job cut out trying to make the American public continue to think that we are watching democracy in action this time around. It just doesn’t smell right though. In fact, it smells rotten.

As unease about world security continues to arise, the American ruling strata only can try to put us all into an insipid political La-La Land, but we’ve already seen this shit too many times before. Nobody is enthused much by this processed spam that we are told is democracy in action.

It most certainly is not and it’s increasingly obvious. Even the liberal, vote-is-all cheerleaders are rather silent compared to their excitement in past electoral years. The vote is obviously phony and thinking people are now total outsiders in this fantasy shopping mall election. What we have is a corporate scrubbed political system that is as devoid of reality as fast food is of nutrition.

America is simply starving for lack of real democracy, and it shows. The media commentators make one simply want to gag.

Malthus, Sisyphus and the truth of 911

911 inside job
A friend of mine, Dave, is a 911 nut. I don’t mean he’s a nutcase, I simply mean he plays into the unfortunate stereotype painted by those trying to discredit conspiracy theorists.
I don’t know how to help him.

Dave’s life priority is to expose the truth about 9/11. He maintains the websites 911blimp and 911university. I saw Dave tonight at our precinct caucus. He rose to every opportunity to speak for or against candidates, always on the theme of questioning what really happened when September 11, 2001 was used to transform our nation into a “homeland” preoccupied with its security. Each time, Dave’s presentation was tempered by the precinct chairman’s reminder of a two minute time limit. Dave spoke with clarity and passion, although often part of his audience would deliberately ignore him. Between pitches Dave circulated around the room to hand out business cards and CDs. It was a tough sell but he kept at it.

Dave may as well have been Malthus warning the end is nigh, but he cheerfully explained to me that he would regret later if he didn’t speak out as much as humanly possible. Our government’s duplicity about 9/11 is ground zero for reassessing the dysfunction of our political system. I told him I thought he was absolutely dead on, but that people were still not ready to hear it. In fact I was certain they were growing more and more blind. This crowd in particular, buzzing about Obama, was hanging on desperately to a hope it was not about to be told was false.

Perhaps another round of non-representative leadership will bring Americans around to the stench of deceit that flew into high gear on 911. It doesn’t matter what theory you favor, the official theory stinks.

Dave doesn’t want us to get bogged down with weighing the conspiracies and pseudo-conspiracies. And here I think he’s on the right track. Dave told me tonight: “You don’t have to know how the magician sawed the lady in half, to know it was a trick.”

SPOILER ALERT- Election 2008 outcome

If you are enjoying tuning into the latest news, hoopla and dramatic tension of the 2008 horse race, you may want to ignore Florida and skip this post. In darkroom terms, over the last months, ballot prospects have been exposed, developed and stopped. Florida, as in the past, is the fix.

It’s going to be John McCain versus Hillary Clinton, with McCain to win. Which will be no worse outcome than we have now, nor indeed than what might have appeared to be a Democrat alternative.

The American empire is marching onward to slaughter, there’s less and less deliberating about doing otherwise. We embrace militarism, we advocate military intervention, our culture celebrates the simplistic charm of the simple-headed, we mistake might for right, and we cheer self-destructive greed uber alles.

‘Democracy’ marketing

Ask the average American if advertising influences kids decisions and they will say that YES IT DOES. Ask them if advertising influences their own decisions and the overwhelming majority will deny that advertising effects their decisions in the least. Nobody wants to think of themselves as childlike, so they give out this childlike response!

So it is election time. What do we see all the American children doing? We see them responding to ‘democracy’ marketing just like little children in front of an advertising for a ‘Happy Meal’. Barrack Obama is the young person’s candidate, the CHANGE guy, the ‘we can all get along together’ man. Hillary is the ‘women first’ candidate, the ‘stick by her man’ woman. All the Democrats are into ‘democracy’ marketing because liberals, like conservative American, are little tiny tots. Slick Willy was the ‘First Black President’ even! Al Bore is Mr. Environment (forget about all those toxic computer items he pushed for the longest time) and Jimmy is the Man of Prayer Peace Center Guy! Madelyn Albright is Ms. Stop the Genocide woman!

The Republicans are skilled at Mr Tough Guy, Mr, Protector, Mr Family Values stuff. Yes, I know that the family values are more like those family values of Ted Haggard, the Pope, and Pat Robertson, but still…. America has a lot of sick, sick, sick families out there that this marketing approach appeals to.

Ask yourself, does this marketing act add up to DEMOCRACY, capital letters? Or is it just Gunsmoke, brought to you by…? the Devil himself? You so smart that all this propaganda doesn’t influence you any? Add it all up then.

Will economic stimulus avoid recession?

The capitalists system is in meltdown. The apologist candidates won’t tell us what the real problems are because they were asleep at the wheel and have voted in support of and taken part in the corrupt capitalist system. They’re all millionaires!!!! It’s time to start a new economy and new currency, end war, cut the military budget to 1/4 of what it is and dismantle the Fed. …and the parasitical Stock Market gambling casino that robs those who produce goods and services of their bounty.

Will Economic Stimulus Measures Stave Off Recession?
by Richard C. Cook

The 2008 Presidential Election: Concepts Progressives Must Know About Monetary Policy and History

Greenspan’s Dark Legacy Unmasked
by Stephen Lendman

C.H. Douglas: Pioneer of Monetary Reform – A National Dividend and Social Credit. by Richard C. Cook

Sovereign Wealth Funds
http://www.goldenjackass.com

Eulogy for a Republican

My pal John passed away this weekend. He succumbed to cancer after a 3-pack-a-day habit. He’d been an army officer, insurance agent and counter clerk at the West Side post office. It was in the latter incarnation that I knew John, but at one time he used to live in the same condo complex as I, and therein lies a tale I’d like to relate.

One of John’s coworkers told me about his memorial service, and teared up remembering the bagpipes. I asked if nice things had been spoken about John. She told me with John there had only been good. I asked like what, considering to many customers John could be very surly. Immediately she replied there was nothing he wouldn’t do for anyone. I’ll come back to that one in a mo. Otherwise she remembered fondly John’s wicked sense of humor and his co-workers chimed in about his mastery of rubber band war. As an example of the former, John delighted in applying hand lotion to door knobs and critical postal utensils and then leave his coworkers to the consequences.

The only cross words I ever received from John happened when news reached him of my antiwar activities. He told me that during the Vietnam War, protesters had spit on returning soldiers. Had anyone done that to him, he would have decked them, is what he felt the need to tell me. I didn’t complicate his account by pointing out that the infamous spitting event had been contrived to smear the antiwar movement. Not one soldier nor any protester has ever come forth to claim they witnessed the much derided event.

But I did have a bone to pick with John, but never took the chance. He was on vacation when I stormed into the post office to give him what for, and afterwards I reconciled myself to his opposite political view. It was the eve of the last election, the week before actually, when John through despicable dishonesty put a big wrench in State Representative Mike Merrifield’s reelection campaign.

Retired high school music teacher Mike Merrifield lived in our condo community, and owing to the disparate political orientations of the units’ multiple owners, a consensus had to be reached about what to do about election yard signs. It was not enough to agree that inhabitants could post whatever signs they wanted outside their abodes, what about those with units deeper in the complex with no exposure to passing traffic?

At first the sign posting was a free-for-all, with Republican signs adjacent those of Democrats, whomever’s sign was let be. But soon signs were being replaced by their opponent’s. I knew something was up when fresh lawn signs kept winding up in the dumpster. Finally the homeowners had to reach an agreement. Everybody was opinionated, but only Merrifield was a candidate, and he didn’t have frontage real estate. If the neighbors around the edges couldn’t see themselves permitting any Democratic Party signs without wearing Merrifield down by surreptitiously removing his, no lawn signs would be permitted. As president of the condo HOA, John our Post Office activist presided over an agreement to forbid all lawn signs.

No sooner was the decision made, that John promptly called some friends with a video camera. Actually it was a PR outfit that did work for the local Republican party. They set up a video camera across the street, a little ways down the block, to lay in wait. Then someone put out a Republican lawn sign where it was agreed there would be none.

Later that morning the camera captured Mrs. Merrified pulling up the opponent’s sign. The video footage was sent to the TV stations and Merrified was widely derided, even by his fellow Democrats. Merrifield and his wife answered the reporters who besieged their front step that the lawn signs had been a contentious issue, and that his wife had acted in accordance to the HOA decision not to allow any signs.

But when the reporters sought out the HOA president, John, to confirm the HOA policy, John calmly cleared up the issue: He told them he didn’t know what those incorrigible Merrifields were trying to pull, because there had been no such agreement.

Knowing Obama from way back

Are you, or do you know someone who claims to have been a roommate or classmate of Barack Obama in college? Maybe it’s something about Colorado, but first-person-endorsements of Obama abound here. They’re as ubiquitous as Columbia post grads on chat sites, le cred ne plus ultra -we could add- du jour. This smells like teen spirited campaign strategy urban myth to me. Personal testimonials serve the same purpose as shills lauding the snake oil salesman, they give roots to a newcomer to those in the crowd who hadn’t noticed they rode into town together. Was Obama’s class so populous to yield these disciples now coming out of the woodwork? Were they sent forth to seed all major US cities and states?

Obama’s chances. Maybe the deep voiced revival speaker could get himself elected. What then? What is he promising by way of change? An example not being reserving the right to launch air attacks on Pakistan or on any sovereign people with whom polls show Americans can be led to find fault.

Obama acolytes tell me I must read his book, his Kampf apparently, where he outlines his intentions, or would, if they could be unveiled prematurely. It makes sense of course that you could never be [s]elected by the corporate machine if you are campaigning on a platform of threats to entrenched power. Look at Kucinich or Nader, getting nowhere. What would happen if a candidate should turn coat against the big money behind him? Has it ever happened? The nearest anyone has ever gotten is assassination.

Obama fans think their candidate is so much the real thing that he may indeed be assassinated. Fine. Their perceptive judgement of Obama’s promise will be vindicated if that happens, you can almost see them enshrine I told you sos already. Then what? Who’ll be waiting in the wings as VP that we know we really cannot count on? Joseph Lieberman?

Democratic Party voters do not want a return to the Clintons, yet…

In a sure sign of how the Democratic Party is not a democratically run body at all, Hillary Clinton continues to seem to have a lock on the nomination.

Most Democratic Party voters simply do not want a return of the Clintons to power and certainly most voters as a whole do not want such. Yet the Clinton machine seems to be the ruling power in that party. Corporate money combined with undemocratic bureaucracy within the DP combine to overrule the people’s vote.

Let’s face it, Obama’s main appeal is simply that he is not a Clinton, and Edwards main ball and chain is that he was the VP candidate tied with Ketchup man Kerry. So that leaves it as to whether the Clinton machine can break Obama or not? I think the answer is that it can, and already has. Hillary Clinton has a lock on being the party’s ticket.

So where are all the Kucinich folk now? Where are those who always tell us that the only choice is the Democratic Party? They are stuck getting ready to tell us to return the Tweedle Dee to power as the Tweedle Dumb will seem just to horrid to imagine (to them). In short, liberals have already lost the election, and since they have put no effort into building a counter movement to corporate power in the electoral arena, their votes will not count except to be wasted on bringing slick Hillary to office. Once again, DP voting liberals will have helped build the charade and con that the US is a real democracy, when in fact it is not.

Electing the lesser of real evil

While it might appear to make no difference if a candidate is Republican or Democrat, I’d say a freshly galvanized non-voter would be hard pressed to suggest that any of the Y2K presidential hopefuls could have performed with more mischievous malevolence than George W. Bush. Disengaged citizens used to be ambivalent about their lack of options. Now we have precedent for thinking very hard about the lesser of evils. Billy Mumy in ITS A GOOD LIFE We don’t want just the better of the worst, we have to be sure to pick the lesser EVIL.
 
Will 2008 be a veritable toss-up between shills? We need to know for Decision 2008 if there lurks another Alfred E. Neuman Nero in the bunch.

Remember this little boy? His occult powers and prepubescent morality made him the demonic despot of a little American farming town in an early Twilight Zone episode. He could read people’s minds and had the power to punish them at will. Though he might easily have been deposed by a collective effort, no one dared lay a finger. Frustrated individual insurgents were summarily disappeared to the corn fields.

With FISA surveillance and the Patriot Act, could this be George W.?

But even if we could discern the truly evil, the amorality which comes with profound lack of profundity, do we really have the power to make our choice heard?

We’re told the primaries determine the presidential winner. I heard an NPR reporter covering the circus interject with “here’s a fact:” and proceed to declare that no one below the second place in such and such caucus has ever gone on to win the nomination etc, etc. As if a statistical likelihood could yield an absolute. Then there’s the Iowa Caucus Curse or some such, to throw witchcraft into the pot for those blasphemers who think statistics can lie. I hear what they media pundits are really saying, when they “predict” with the caucus results, and it is true. The media have always determined who is going to win. Whether it’s in the primaries or in the final election. Whoever they choose wins. The distance between is a horse race.

Dubious exit polling in New Hampshire

The surprise and mysterious win of Clinton in NH stinks of vote count rigging. But in addition to the obvious goal of rigging with electronic scanning machines, is how rigged elections destroy faith and credibility in the public mind of exit polling which has always been reliable. All the exit polls showed Obama with a 3 or 4% margin. A review of hand counts showed the same. But electronic counts showed the flip for HRC. The exit polling for the Republicans was right on the money. McCain over the others. Follow the NH recount with black box voting.