Tag Archives: Election

Gaza and Afghanistan- it’s election time so it’s time to spill The Barbarians’ blood!

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gaza-babyThe Israeli Zionist Jewish State waited 24 hours after Jesus’s birthday to unleash their State Terrorism yet once again, since Jews have already unfairly been judged by many Christians in the near historical past for having murdered the ‘Son of God’. So they gave the Gazan Arabs one whole day of reprieve for Jesus. Wow!

Election time was coming up, and just like in the Christian US, Zionist Jewish politicians have to show that they are tough on the Barbarian Blacks of The Third World. The core of Zionism is racism, just exactly like the core of US nationalism (Christian patriotism) is racism, too. So, it’s time to kill the Gooks! It’s election time once again (early February in Israel)! One thousand Gazans have laready been killed or maimed in this new Israeli terrorist bombing.

Much overlooked in the US is why Barack Obama was allowed by his super rich backers to take office? He simply told them that he was tough on Barbarians, too. Oops, you missed that in his campaign? The rich who made his election possible did not. Barack Obama pledged to continue the ‘Global War on Barbarians’ by surging in Afghanistan, imitating the Bush war effort just exactly. Luckily for Obama, he had a bunch of ‘Peace’crat liberals out there to cover his ideological ass.

What is it about the Christian and Jewish Right that makes them so blood thirsty? Is it their ‘Holy Scriptures’ that tell them that they are ‘chosen peoples’? Kind of reminds one of the Aztecs, Incas, and Maya. ‘God’ like that just demands human sacrifices.

They are on a schedule almost, and once the Jewish platoon holds their ‘elections’ in their racially clean ‘democracy’, then that’ll be the Democrats green light to turn Iran into a Gaze/Iraq/Somalia. Such restraint! Makes the nut cases proud to be American, I bet.

Let’s just hope that all this planned war doesn’t trigger off a nuclear row between India and Pakistan mean time? Real mean time. Like car bombs, these things (Gaza) can just blow up right in your face when you go to set them off.

Obamapologists task growing Sisyphean

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rick warrenThe anticipation is building for one hell of a JANUARY 21ST wouldn’t you say? While emails are flying, about invitations to this inauguration party or that, or about holding Obama’s feet to whose fire on Day One, Two or Three, the President Elect continues to stack a cabinet to defy all Hope.

What is this B-Team Obama is assembling, even beyond the Cabinet? He’s chosen pop- Fundamentalist minister Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation.

Southern Colorado should be pleased to see its Senator, Ken Sell-Out Salazar, off to DC pastures where he can do less immediate harm, but at the Department of the Interior’s expense, where he might take a run at pal and predecessor Gale Norton’s ignoble high score. It was a supreme relief, this election season, to hear Salazar booed when he made appeared at Obama rallies.

Can you name a single office appointment with which you’ve agreed? Obama’s every single choice has been a gift to the Center Right, and Democrat Loyalists have run the gamut of excuses to describe their anointed one’s mysterious ways. His wisdom been so opaque, I’m hopeful it’s actually subterfuge.

To hear his pundits spin it, Obama’s reasons range from wanting experience, to a smooth transition, to keeping his rivals close. It won’t be until he’s in office when Americans will really know what the one will do.

But we already know twice as many US troops are going to Afghanistan, and we know a resolution to the war in Iraq has likewise been pushed off into the future. What were everybody’s reasons for hoisting Barack Obama aloft as their deliverance from Bush?

Obamapologists will no doubt spend the entire of Mr. Change’s first term reminding us that the tortoise ultimately won over the hare. When do you imagine that analogy will finally lose steam? I’m guessing lack of health insurance will compel most of us to cheer a speedier finish.

I’m looking forward to the judgment of George Bush and Dick Cheney for their crimes against humanity. I anticipate that some Democrat apologists will even preach forgiveness, undoubtedly in the name of leaving Obama unencumbered to address bigger challenges. And turd-speak like that will be fine with me. I don’t even care if he pardons Bush Co in a grand ceremony festooned with glittery Medals of Freedom and Yankee Doodle Macaroni.

I don’t even care if Bush pardons himself, and all of Fox News, indeed the whole Beltway, for their crimes of treason, theft, profiteering, usury, and illegal war. And Obama signs it and washes everybody’s clawed feet.

(Psst, no need to alert Bush, but War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity are the jurisdiction of The Hague. They’re neither self-pardonable, nor outside of the reach of the International Criminal Court. In fact, it doesn’t matter if the US is a signatory or not. There are no exemptions, and no statutes of limitation.)

The question of course then arises, would Barack Obama block efforts by the ICC to bring the Bush Cabal to trial? What sob story are Obamapologists going to contrive for that one?

Core religious value of Mormons is hate

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MormonsThe Mormons are a hateful group of elitists, and though ostracized throughout much of their history for it, just keep on finding an angle to spread their hate outward and onto others. Like the Catholic Church, another elitist group of Christians with a long history of spreading hate against others throughout the world, the Mormons are a hierarchical group of religious fanatics. You can see that easily enough in their youth, who often are going by in pairs, dressed in ties, riding their bicycles to who knows where? That’s the junior rank for men.

Notice they never have women in pairs in Sunday best on those bicycles. I guess they don’t think that women are capable of riding them? Kind of reminds one of the Saudi malefolk and how they are with their women driving cars.

The Mormons have always hated others than themselves, especially those who they considered low in status. That, of course would include Native Americans, Blacks, outsiders of any non-Christian heathen variety, and YES, Gays. Sheldon Rampton examines Mormon Homophobia up close and personal, where he mentions the fact that the Mormon Church spent $20 million spreading their hate against Gays in California’s last election. The best way to shut these hate mongers up is to take away their tax exempt status, would it not be? In fact, we need to do that with all the hate mongering Christian Churches. Certainly if Islamic charities can be persecuted for their religion’s charity works, the Christians need to at least get their tax exempt status rejected. Demand it next church service, in fact. It’s more than high time to get the churches out of politics!

‘Change’ that isn’t change: Cronyism trumps empty rhetoric of Obama

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changePromises of ‘change’ empty of all real content followed by cronyist selections of long time Democratic Party hacks to replace the Republican hacks of the last 8 years. Yes, it is change of a sort.

We will no longer have the direct thuggishness of the likes of Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, and Cheney in high office to focus on as targets against America’s ruling class viciousness. It’s back to the Slick Willie model of reactionary policies and talking heads. But is back to the Clintonist model of imperial rule ‘CHANGE’?

The latest empty rhetoric of Obama is focused on the promise of a ‘jobs program’, and is designed to take our minds off the hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars of give-aways to the biggest corporations the Democratic Party is underwriting with government funds. Obama will introduce his new economic leadership team Monday, a key step toward enacting a huge new economic recovery plan that aims to save or create 2.5 million jobs over the next two years Truth be told, this ‘jobs program’ sounds and looks like more of the Republican Party same, just couched in a different sales pitch.

Obama’s earliest measures have been to load the new Administration with long term Illinois political hacks and tag alongs of Obama, pairing them up with old Clinton regime standbys. It’s not a pretty picture, and when the inevitable failures of the DP Big Federal Government give-aways fail to revive the Pentagon welfare based US capitalist model, the populace of our country will certainly be turned back towards the Republicans who will become labeled by the corporate media as being the future ‘change’. vehicles Meanwhile… the Obama game is starting! It’s the change without change team at work!

Who did not play Faust for George Bush

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I’d like to compile a collection of letters from famous personages in which they decline to dance with the Bush Administration. Were there many?

Shouldn’t any artist/musician/author or intellectual/humanitarian of note have publicly refused to collaborate with the immoral tyrant and his saccharine-smile patronizing librarian wife?

I have some favorites:
Mr. Feiffer Regrets -by Jules Feiffer, 2002
Poets Against War -Sam Hamill, 2003
Statement of Conscience -by Jennifer Warn, 2003
Open Letter to Laura Bush -by Sharon Olds, 2005

Archived copies are below:

Mr. Feiffer Regrets

October 12, 2002

Mrs. George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I wish that I could come to your National Book Festival breakfast at the White House on Saturday, but after giving it much thought, I can’t attend.

I was thrilled to be invited, along with other writers and illustrators, to help celebrate your campaign to inspire young people in the pleasures of reading.

But I find it unbearably ironic that, while the uses of language are celebrated by you and your renowned guests, elsewhere in the White House language is being traduced and transformed to nudge us into war.

There are honest arguments on both sides of the Iraq debate (such as it is), but it seems necessary on the occasion of a celebration of reading to press the point that words, at their finest, don’t set out to confuse or obscure. Their aim is to clarify.

But clarity is not what we’re getting from your husband’s White House. It seems that clarity would deny him a war.

I am a father and a grandfather. As every parent knows, most children can intuit whether the stories their parents tell them are true or if they’re making them up.

The American people are able to tell too.

I am delighted to participate in National Book Festival events scheduled for the Library of Congress and the Capitol grounds. But as for your breakfast, may I convey my regrets and best wishes to you and your guests.

Sincerely,
/s/Jules Feiffer

Sam Hamill

Dear Friends and Fellow Poets:

“When I picked up my mail and saw the letter marked “The White House,” I felt no joy. Rather I was overcome by a kind of nausea as I read the card enclosed:

Laura Bush requests the pleasure of your company at a reception and White House Symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice” on Wednesday, February 12, 2003 at one o’clock

Only the day before I had read a lengthy report on George Bush’s proposed “Shock and Awe” attack on Iraq, calling for saturation bombing that would be like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, killing countless innocent civilians.

I believe the only legitimate response to such a morally bankrupt and unconscionable idea is to reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam.

I am asking every poet to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend his or her name to our petition against this war, and to make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon…

Statement of Conscience -Jennifer Warn

February 12, 2003

Mrs. Laura Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear Laura Bush,

Thank you for inviting me to the White House symposium on Poetry and the American Voice. Your call to better understand and celebrate the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes led me and many thousands of American poets to find their voices of dissent.

Since January 30th poets in many countries have joined in an upsurge of conscience and compassion, submitting over [15,000] poems to the Poets Against the War web site (www.poetsagainstthewar.org), organizing hundreds of anti-war poetry readings around the world, and joining with millions of others in vigils, processions, prayers and intercessions, lobbying and rallying for peace.

You have inadvertently presented a gift to the American people and to the world by providing poets an opportunity to express their most passionately held beliefs about their vision for the world’s future. Your gesture has revealed the very relationship it was meant to deny: the connection between poetry and politics, between literature and reality. Another great American poet, Wallace Stevens, presented this relationship succinctly:

“In life what is most important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is most important is the truth as we see it.”

This wisdom is excerpted from “Imagination as Value,” an essay in the long tradition of poets puzzling over the power of poetry and asserting its place in a world primarily shaped by the machinations of politics and money.

What is poetry’s power? Why should you, vested with the power of the White House as First Lady, pay attention to such a rush of words at this late hour?

Poetry’s power lies in its perceptive ability to describe both inner and outer realities. In reading a poem we experience the paradoxical delight and anguish of human life. Poetry holds a mirror to the reality that our political systems and values create and in doing so reveals both the limitations of our current state and life’s endless possibilities. In its refracted light we see our intangible connections, the irrefutable unity of all people and beings on the planet.

We invite you to read this selection of poems which represents some of the most powerful in the Poetry Against the War Anthology. These poems were written by Pulitzer Prize winners, former U.S. poets laureate, and poets who work as professors, business people, homemakers and veterans. Those who have submitted poems or personal statements to register their opposition to ill-considered military action, including a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, honor a long and rich tradition of thoughtful and moral opposition by poets and other artists to senseless and murderous policies, including those of our own government.

We believe that the world is poised on the knife-edge of a decision between war and peace. It is our hope and conviction that peaceful American voices, conveyed in part and without historical precedent by the poets of this country, may help to avert a disaster of tragic proportions.

We call upon the Bush administration to halt the headlong rush toward war, to heed the voices of the people of the world, and to seek peaceful means of resolving conflicts in company with the world community.

Never before in history have so many poets gathered to speak in a single voice.

Sincerely,

Emily Warn
Poets Against the War

Open letter to Laura Bush -Sharon Olds

September 19, 2005

Laura Bush
First Lady
The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it’s a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents–all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women’s prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students–long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit–and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person’s unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country–with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain–did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made “at the top” and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism–the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness–as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing–against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting “extraordinary rendition”: flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

Christians are why I do not believe in Christianity

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Confirmed: Obama considering Hillary for either Secretary of State, or to answer the phones at 3 am. She’s already publicly declared an interest in the later.

NeoNazi Republicans retaliate against Obama win with hundreds of hate crimes nationwide. [AP]

Church of h8. “Know a tree by its fruit.”

Hoping the Supreme Court will steal another election for the GOP, nutcase Republican Alan Keyes files suit challenging Obama’s election.

Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel shocks Arab community by appologizing for his father’s ugly anti-Arab comments.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Nov 18 notes, thomasmc.com.

America’s racists retaliate in mass with their hatreds

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john mccain Just this night on the job, a White co-worker was telling each and every one of us all his racist antiBlack and anti ‘Mexican’ catalog of jokes. Quite a sad joker he was, in fact. I told him my joke in reply, asking him what the words pen, day, and hoe all combine into? Answer… an Anglo pendejo, like himself it was implied. Of course, he didn’t really know what the word meant but knew it wasn’t in English. His brow kind of grew wrinkled after my joke for him. He’s not really a vicious guy, but just a run of the mill White racist. So no harm done, right?

Unfortunately, the press reports that the Obama election spurs race crimes around country There are some vicious racists out there though and they do seem to have become rather rabid. John McCain, what do you know about this?

Common Dreams? Or is it censorship in common with the corporate media?

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Ira ChernusThe biggest liberal website out there online, Common Dreams, informs us with its headline today that ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES: HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. Common Dreams has become a major resource for the US Left and liberal community in the last couple of years through its posting of many important commentaries by Leftists and liberals plus its convenient links that many of us use quite often. Unfortunately there is a big weakness of the site, and that is their censorship of commentaries, writers, and readers who are not completely 100% on board with their ‘support the lesser of two evils’, pro-Democratic Party point of view.

As a result, when I go to read their headline, I today get the message that THE WEBSITE DECLINED TO SHOW THIS WEBPAGE (to me) HTTP 403 FORBIDDEN. What is Common Dreams scared of from me?

The exact post I made to one of their commentaries that got me blacklisted from their site was made on election night and was linked the following day to a commentary at Common Dreams, from the one I made here on Not My Tribe titled Sadly, Barack Obama will probably get us OUT of Iraq by getting us INTO Iran. Many people who read Common Dreams material link to other commentaries that back up their opinions and beliefs, and I merely did the same.

But this belief that Obama’s election will lead to yet more war ran counter to their cheeleading for the Democratic Party, and earned me their shunning. And you know what? I still think it is most probable that attacking Iran is a most possible final result, post national arrival of Obama into the White House. How will the Common Dreams’ censor feel if this actually happens? Will he/ she remember the decision to put me permanentl offline from their site, for simply making this observation? Probably not.

I certainly do not feel all alone at all in being treated so shabbily by the Common Dreams Democratic Party cheerleading censor on their site. The site shuns many others, too, including the Libertarian site ANTIWAR.COM that it has never chosen to link to and acts as if the site does not exist. ANTIWAR.COM, you see, is a major resource for those who oppose what they call one of the War Parties, the Democrats? Can’t do that per play book of Common Dreams censorship. Not at all if you want publication there.

Also of note, is that Common Dreams likes anarchists somewhat, linking to the giant academician anarchist site, Znet, but has no links to overt Marxist links. Major antiwar activists (and presidential candidates) like Gloria La Riva will never see any comment of theirs allowed the Common Dreams site. CENSORED by the CD group-ling of ‘OBAMA’S PROGRESSIVES:HOLDING, PUSHING, TUGGING’. More like BLOCKING, I would say, and Common Dreams doesn’t like people that are aware of that, and will comment to that effect on their pro-Democratic Party site.

I could list many people whose comments will never appear at Common Dreams, merely because they are activist Marxists. Many academic anarchists act at election time though as Social Democrats, and Social Democrats can be easily herded into voting Democratic Party in the US. ALLOWED.

The thing about Common Dreams is that they are not real honest, and pretend often to have no bias for the Democrat Party even as they push them with countless articles praising people like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, et al. With the final days to push to get Barack Obama elected though, they seem to have dropped much of their camouflage and subterfuge and the long time effects will be to make their site less attractive to people who actually do want uncensored Left opinion, and not just cheerleading for the new DP executives in power. The CD approach to activism is to try to herd all ‘Progressives’ into voting the Democratic Party. It really is about that plain and simple, but it would be much better for activism if this major Left resource in the US had a less sectarian and less Democratic Party partisan approach.

So to the question is it Common Dreams, or is it censorship in common with the corporate media? I leave you to contemplate that question? For me, I just know that I can no longer read the site on my home computer, let alone comment on their posted articles, all because I do not share their ‘common dream’, which seems narrowly limited to getting the Democratic Party politicians into office, and propagandizing for them. That’s why I see them as being so like the corporate media itself, which will only endorse one of the two corporate parties, and will censor those who want a different world.

As to those whose commentaries are promoted by Common Dreams? I will be writing to at least one of them, Ira Chernus who lives here in Colorado, and asking him what it feels like to have article after article of his promoting the idea of voting Democratic Party this last election published on the Common Dreams site, and then finding out how Common Dreams has censors who keep opposing ideas to his own offline at their Common Dreams site? I don’t think that Ira, or many of the other nice liberal Democratic Party voting writers, have given this censorship much thought. It reflects poorly on them though, when Common Dreams publishes their commentaries and then keeps ‘Progressives’ from actually being able to challenge their POV. Ira, that is censorship. Have you anything much to say about this?

PS.. That picture above is of Ira Chernus, whose multiple articles framed the Common Dreams site the last weeks of the election. He is a professor who happens to live in The Democratic Party Peoples Republic of Boulder.

Defining ourselves by what others fear

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weather-underground-organisationIt could be confused for being contrarian or reactionary, but how else do you build upon what you learn? Instead of letting life buffet you while you strap yourself to a mast to drift to a predestined shore, why not sail a bit? You’ve got a rudder and centerboard to limit your drift. Let those who live back in the age of the square sail think that weather can only lead downwind.

In public protest, as in arguments, I can tell I’m on the right tack when authorities object to what I’m saying. I’ve learned this much, if they don’t like where you’re standing, you’re closing in on the sweet spot.

The 2008 presidential campaign offered some great insight on political positioning. I’d like to consider the attempts to slander Barack Obama as a point of reference. A good place to start for what most scares authority.

Middle name Hussein?
Sounds like a fine middle name to me. Adopted by any of us, “Hussein” commemorates cultural tolerance, specifically, irreverence for ethnocentric bigotry and false fear-mongering.

Paling around with Bill Ayers?
We should all be so lucky to know a real 60s Weatherman. Where were you on the Vietnam War? Any less radical ideology would probably be indefensible now. Maybe “Bill Ayers” makes an even better middle name to adopt, if you want to pay tribute to youthful idealism and audacity.

(BTW- The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), was a militant antiwar group known originally as The Weathermen, named from a Dylan lyric referencing Kerouac. Splintered from the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a subgroup of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weatherman formed a “white fighting force” in solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement after the murder of Blank Panther leader Fred Hampton.

BTW2- Neither Bill Ayers nor the WUO were terrorists. The bombs they planted were not to terrorize people but to symbolize the need to destroy the mechanisms of US imperialism. Warnings were always issued beforehand to prevent casualties.)

Agree with Reverend Jeremiah Wright?
Wow. Who could but hope to have the moral courage of Reverend Wright? Especially his temerity, eloquence and perseverance. “God Damn America?” If any Nationalist Hypocracy ever deserved a wrathful kick in the ass, we do. God Damn America most certainly. Americans joke about Hell in a Handbasket, but where are those who dare leap out and try to lead their companions to deserving a more honorable fate? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Stars and Stripes fly over monumental crimes for which Americans have never atoned. We worship false Gods if they do not damn our immoral economic enslavement of everyone in our grasp.

As a politician, Barack Obama would not have had the latitude to express agreement with Reverend Wright. Or admiration for Bill Ayers. It’s nothing to do with conviction and everything to do with the compromises of an elected office in the face of a slanderous press. But while Obama makes his pragmatic choices to get neared the seat of power, we needn’t delude ourselves about right and wrong, wisdom and ignorance. We don’t need to win popularity contests, so why not be our true, moral selves?

Socialist?
That old anti-capitalism Red Scare bugaboo? Too bad for the would-be critics, “socialist” doesn’t mean totalitarian commie, or puritanical dictator. Socialism means putting social concerns first. Socialized medicine. Socialized education. Socialized economy. Protecting ourselves and fellow beings from the baser human natures of predation and greed. I find a person who is opposed to socialism is, and it’s an instructive pun, anti-social.

Election day fire alarm at Centennial Hall

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Centennial Hall fire alarmCOLORADO SPRINGS- The Gazette has video footage of city firefighters arriving at the El Paso County election offices at Centennial Hall on the evening of election day, Nov. 4th, just as Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink exits the building. RNC delegate Balink’s possibly illegal ban of news crews from all county polling places, did not prevent cameras outside from documenting the 8:20pm fire alarm which delayed the tabulation of election results. Here’s the official CSFD DUTY REPORT for UNIT E1C.

Incident No. 838997
Alarm Time: 20:20
Dispatched: 20:21
Arrived: 20:24
In-Service: 20:54

ATAL-Detector Operated Due to Particle Contamination

E1 to scene for automatic fire alarm sounding, unknown further.

E1 arrival to a single story government building, fire resistive construction, no visible signs of emergency, evacuation completed. Investigation of fire alarm panel, activation of detector in zone 5. Further investigation shows activation of detector, apparently due to dust, in basement level electrical closet. Facilities maintenance on scene completed successful reset of system after cleaning out detector. No further action required, E1 return to service.

Grant Park speech aimed beneath you

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The more they replay it, the more Barack Obama’s Grant Park speech comes off like bad theater. From Obama’s lips, I’m not sure the faithful have the skepticism to critique it. But his election night address may be the surest indication of what his centrism is going to look like, political communication for folks across the aisle: exposition and pandering.

“If there is anyone here … who still doubts the promise of our democracy, tonight is their answer.”

Wouldn’t that be more appropriate coming from a high school teacher, asking the class to explore the meaning of Obama’s win, sooner than have the candidate draw the conclusion for us? It’s exposition, telling the audience what you should let them figure out by your actions. When Ussain Bolt heralded his oncoming Olympic victory, it didn’t go over well either.

More than just leading us by the nose, by spelling out the election’s answer Obama made his theme dramatically smallish. Is that what his “change” meant? Regime change? Color change? MLK’s dream in the singular? Was that the mission accomplished? Renewing America’s faith in the two parties? (Forget a third?)

I still doubt. And in Obama’s centrist hyperbole I find few answers. In fact with the Grant Park speech machinations, he raises more.

If Obama underestimated the insightfulness of his audience, or did not trust where their own observations would lead them, he had their number with his last train of thought.

I’m reminded of a comedy skit in which a corporate news outlet was reviewing options for distracting their viewers from the information they were presenting. While naked, might have been one, and certainly farting while sitting in water was a hilarious alternative. Both made light of other real techniques, not the least of which, let’s be fair, is using pictures of puppies.

So Obama closed his address by painting that picture, a promise to his daughters. “You have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.” I thought it was adorable too. Then I wondered if I’d taken my eyes off what either his right or left hand was doing.

In brief, not much. Obama was eloquent and optimistic, his points were from JFK’s inaugural, which fit the youthful, multiracial Camelot we celebrated to see gather onstage. Grant Park became a memorable pageant. There were Jesse Jackson’s tears, Oprah leaning on Joe the White Guy, Michelle’s belted Rothko dress, and a so very presidential President-Elect. What do you remember of the speech?

Democracy worked, see.
Ask not what your country can do for you.
Look folks, a puppy.

Nader says that Barack Obama is the worst of Clinton

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NaderRalph 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.

Where was this guy in trying to build any non-electoral Mass Movement, like one that would correctly center itself in building a Movement Against US War and Militarism? He basically was not to be found, and that showed in the results to his election bid.

A movement to replace the American Two Party Dictatorship of Corporate Power cannot be built on the cheap, Ralph. You have to try to built something other than a Campaign Committee or two. Unfortunately, your legacy is that you did not try to do this, unlike Cindy Sheehan, who is perhaps the major American figure that provides an example of somebody who has put effort into trying to build a Mass Movement against the Iraq Occupation by the US.

Still, Ralph Nader has been a major spokesperson against liberals just capitulating entirely to the Democratic Party, and continues to be so. It would be great if he would turn over a new leaf now, and call for a unity grouping with the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney and other major independent Left activists to help create a new and national Progressive Movement free of the shackles of corporate run faux liberalism that enslaves the American people inside the Two Party bipartisan shell game. Will you do it, Ralph?

More from Cockburn interview with Nader….

AC: How about the liberals and the left now?

Nader: The real crisis is the self-destruction of the liberal progressive community. It’s got nowhere to go, other than to renew its three out of four year cycle of criticism of the Democrats. They’ve nowhere to go because they’ve made no demands. He’s been a candid right-center Democrat and they’ve given him a free ride. No demands. From Labor? No demands. He gave them a sop on the card check. He campaigned for two years, promised blacks nothing, Latinos nothing, women’s groups nothing, labor nothing. Contrast the lack of demands on the liberal progressive side to what the Limbaugh crowd exacted from McCain.

Full Cockburn post election Hail to the Chief! interview with Nader Check it out!

Pollsters detect Stevens Effect in Alaska

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diebold-state-seal-of-alaskaObama’s victory has called into doubt the improbable Bradley Effect, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed to the re-election so far of Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska, a result which rings off-key with his pre-election eight point deficit in the polls, as suggesting a reverse-type Bradley Effect: voters misrepresenting their inclination to vote for a felon.

So why not name this specter after the honorable senator crook? The Stevens Effect: telling pollsters you will not vote for a candidate who’s a convicted felon, but in the voting booth making sure to kiss his ring.

But before we condemn the Alaska voters, let’s give them a chance to demand an investigation into their election results. Apparently the major contested offices won by Republicans on Tuesday polled very differently than the result. Plus, the Alaskan voter turnout came in much lower than expected. Until these anomalies are clarified, perhaps it’s too early to blame a Stevens Effect on the electorate. Maybe the Stevens Effect will eventually refer to a computer programming term for fixing the election result to please a mob boss.

At 84 years old, probably we’ll be denied the satisfaction that Senator Stevens will live to see his namesake effect calculated into pollster projections of upcoming elections.

The White American NOBAMA dumb face

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Did Obama’s election mark a milestone against racism in America? In fact it’s elevated a new flavor of bigotry that I can really get behind.
Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Hasselbeck

I glared into a lot of faces arriving for Sarah Palin’s last engagement in Colorado Springs. My disdain was unbridled, it’s true, as I expressed my personal shame that they were the folk giving our town its wretched national reputation. Sarah Palin needed an audience of dumb-asses, so they sent her to dumb-ass central, Jesus Springs.

But looking across those faces confirmed an observation that has been disturbing me for some time. There’s a familiar similarity in their facial features. My “White American” title not-withstanding, this telltale feature transcends race, age, gender, and beauty. The trait is more than the unblinking glare of the born-again. I might have dismissed it to a haircut, or malnutrition, or fetal-alcohol syndrome, but clearly it’s more pervasive. And it certainly grates against the American ethic that we are all created equal.

It may be nothing new, that intelligence, or significant lack of it, is a perceptibly physical trait. But the occasion of an Obama sea change has let loose my sense that I’ve license to make fun of it. I feel confident to report to you that, compared to average, the Sarah Palin supporters stood out like, well, stupid people.

They didn’t need campaign buttons, it was written on their faces.

Now I see it in photographs of the campaign rallies. Next to the Chicago crowd, the Tuesday Arizona audience looked like pellagra victims.

It’s a purely visual cue. Hearing their voices on video only confirms the book covers adroitly judged. This game might be well and good in the privacy of my own TV viewing, but what of my new impulse to have at these irritating sods? Will there be social therapy for this bigotry? What of my angry resentment that for so long these bastards held a poster child aloft as the American president, screwing all of us with his malevolent, immoral idiocy?

It is logical to assume that Barack Obama is God’s answer to our prayers

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Joel Hunter and Barack Obama, Son of God, were in prayer together just hours before Barack Obama was declared the Grand Victor for running The Empire image repaired! Who is Joel Hunter, and Why Is Obama Praying With Him? All those ‘liberals’ were praying (and not at mosques either) and asking for Jesus and God in Heaven to intervene and throw out Satan and his flock of fallen angels and demons from The White House!

Now it is true, that Joel Hunter and the others that did this conference praying by telephone (I had never even heard of telephone prayer sessions before!) with Barack Obama are probably better ‘theologians’ than say Ted Haggard or Jerry Falwell, but what can one really say about preachers that are so politically adept as to be able to shift with the political winds like this? And how many rings does it take before God picks up the telephone in heaven? But they finally did get through to him, it appears, and their prayers were answered by God. Sweet Jesus!

I’m just jealous you know, and ‘ranting’. I don’t think that Barack Obama will be tele conferencing with atheists like me, with Time-Life writing about it afterwards? We atheists cannot contemplate the intricate complexity of the universe with Barack, and that makes me just furious! He is a Christian Crusader and I am not. PLUS, I cannot speak in tongues with him as many of the tele pastors most certainly can, and did! I am unable to get God to win elections for me, like Joel Hunter implies that God might have done for Barack and him.

Evidently God got fed up with the Bush family and friends (my friends), and he listened to Barack’s prayer to him to intervene! And now because of that, it’s a new America that will be seen now that Satan will soon be removed from DC (God will wait 11 weeks still, respecting election law).

BTW, if you need to have a prayer session by telephone, you can go to Jesus Calls Ministries. Good luck in getting God on the line! May your prayers be answered! May you achieve Heaven on Earth!

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The Obama Mission Impossible caper

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South Park this week lent its usual on-the-spot spot-on insight to the Obama victory. The South Park plot suggested Tuesday’s triumph was the result of McCain colluding with Obama to seize the White House, solely to access a presidential escape tunnel which runs under the Smithsonian, putting them within grasp of the HOPE Diamond (get it?). An Obama-McCain Oceans-08 Mission Impossible heist might be stretching it, particularly with Palin cast as the technical mastermind, but would it be entirely a fiction?

Did you hear McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt recently answering critics of his strategy? Schmidt described John McCain as “the only Republican who could have mounted a campaign that would come anywhere close.” Was that Schmidt’s directive? To come close? Was the nominee his to choose?

It’s been revealed that Schmidt himself chose Sarah Palin as the VP pick. A good choice? Not? It makes me wonder about the objective of the McCain bid. To put up a good show, or to be a contender? As unthinkable as Palin was as a potential national figure, her draw as center of attention was undeniable.

The McCain/Palin ticket sure looks to have been a setup. Was it but a straw-man against whom an African American couldn’t lose? Both McCain and Palin, in their own ways, seemed epically comic caricatures of awful. They played the bad-guy opponent for the majority of wrestling fans to cheer against. There are of course always legions of WWWF fans who back the bad ass. They follow the underdog’s career as the heavy, maybe hoping someday he’ll be picked for a stint of glory. Even if wrestling is fixed, you can hope to influence the fixing with your cheers.

Tuesday night also reminded me of watching the loser of the 2004 presidential election, dutifully giving his concession speech attended by his multi-millionaire wife. Remember the Heinz heiress who would be First Lady?

The Producers Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder knew where the money was made on Broadway, from widow pensioner investors with dreams of stage glory. Maybe political party apparatchiks know it too. You can defray a bunch of your expenses if you can draw the lonely heiresses into the ring. They’ve got the billions/millions, with the wardrobes to match. Where would they find comparable spotlights to highlight those baubles? Make them queen of the ball, with the chance to be First Lady Win or not, they’ll get their money’s worth of attention.

Does America have a two-party system, or a single corporate party? Well then, are the Republican and Democratic parties a single political machine or not? Ergo, wrestling match aside, do the match promoters care whether the democracy torch bearer is Red or Blue or black?

The much we already know must color the election result.

What did you make of the orchestration we saw in Grant Park? A celebration of historic proportion was laid out in Chicago. In Arizona, the GOP assembled their booing chorus of hangers on. En toto, Obama’s CHANGE movement was executed without a single hitch. The train came into the station like clockwork, like an MI08 final scene. Concession and acceptance speech delivered like a College Football game. No overtime please, climax within the prime time alloted.

Warnings about how “power never yields without demand” appeared to be so much crying wolf. So, did we witness a shift of power, or simply the inauguration of a more palatable figurehead? If there’s a Lion King remake to re-stage for Broadway, maybe Steve Schmidt should be tapped for the job.

Working

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StudsOne of America’s great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others.

Studs was best known for his book,WORKING, which was not a novel, but rather a book of interviews where working people told of their lives. In today’s America, the reading of this book would be a revelation for many, who grew up and learned only the warped values of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Cheney Era.

See Democracy Now for interviews and programs about Studs Terkel, a Great American leader of the First Class, the American working class.

El Paso County resists blue trend how?

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Two articles caught my eye in this morning’s Gazette, and I’d like to thank the editors for putting them side by side. The first lauded El Paso County’s strong Republican push-back to the Obama landslide, the other illuminated Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink’s dubiously legal measures at the EPC polling stations. Do the Gazette editors think, as I, that one of these stories could have a bearing on the other?

The first article was written with the partisanship we’re used to from the Gazette. In face of this election’s “blue tsunami,” El Paso County remained high and dry. Can we read this any other way than meaning “safe” and Republican (red), in the face of the Obama danger? The article detailed how El Paso County voted against the prevailing tide. Even the Democratic candidates who won elsewhere were “stomped” here. Stomped –like cockroaches?

The adjacent article was about the Clerk and Recorder. It reported that on election day, the media had been banned from the local polling places. This measure was in defiance of common practice and, the question was raised, even election law. Apparently, lawsuits may follow.

Mention was also made of Balink’s attempt to intimidate Colorado College students.

Did the media ban mask inappropriate election worker activity? Had the CC letter deterred student voters?

The article did not mention a yet-to-be investigated story, the mysterious fire alarm at Centennial Hall, a half hour after voting closed. Everyone had to leave the building. By the way, the fire alarm tactic is a recurring theme if you’ve watched video reports of past election irregularities, in this new age of the self-deputized citizen poll watcher.

Centennial Hall was not only the main poll station downtown, and the chief early voting location, it was the central office into which all the El Paso County precincts reported their election results. Might there be a story here?

The article also didn’t address why in El Paso County, paper ballots were not permitted for early voters. Only Diebold touch-screen machines were available for the early birds, who one might guess would have been the most activated of the new wave.

New standard of presidential excellence

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presidential physical fitness awardHEYYY! How much did the President’s Award appreciate in value overnight?! It stands for EXCELLENCE again. After such an interim, from crook, to dolt, to hapless (portrayed so), to geezer, to wimp, to cad, to chimpanzee. Barack Obama’s landslide was not only a victory for African- Americans, it was a victory for upright man.

Really, could the presidential award have been more strange an honor, this last ugly two terms, when a child’s determination and diligence was praised by association to a certified underachiever, some world leaders would even say, a moron? The irony could not have been lost on our children, who could guess all along that Dubya stood for DUmB-Ass.

Barack Obama’s election win is not only a victory for African-Americans, it’s a victory for intelligence. The American public no longer want to be represented by a president who can neither cobble two words together nor sit for an interview without a ventriloquist. They want a statesman with bigger ideas, who speaks in terms of ideals and community. Isn’t it such a relief to think we no longer have to cringe out of embarrassment for our elected leader’s next misstep? Instead we hold our breath in awe of a capable man who will surprise us with his resourcefulness.

I must reserve judgment on the interests which Barack Obama has demonstrated to be his priorities. They are not mine, but then, I concede that my aims would not meet with approval by the power-makers. Barack Obama is past the DC gatekeepers, he has not alarmed the corporate dogs, and has been met with welcome by the great beast that is Joe the Public.

So long as a grace period doesn’t cost more Afghan lives, or Iraqi or Iranian or Somali etc, now I think we can give Obama the chance to show the bright, principled social activist which the countless who’ve known him have been telling the rest of us that he is. That’s the hope his victory has given us. If Obama’s promise turns out to be false, what have we lost? If transformation could ever come through an electoral process, it would look like this.

Bipartisan character of election fraud

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baby-voteI 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?

The Democrats dish out fraud to others challenging them for the vote, and rob the final elections’ results working in tandem with The Republican Party, their supposed enemies at the polls. Go figure now? But do you ever see the Democratic Party politicians proposing meaningful laws that would expose and stop election fraud? No. Instead, the Democrats and Republicans alike support their partisan government receipt of tax monies to fraudulently steal the elections for themselves, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars PLUS each election held inside our country. The Democratic Party stays alive through election fraud, same as their buddies The Republicans do.

Look at all the government assistance to keep these 2 parties monopolizing the voting. Schools, government buildings, policing, running their conventions for them with public monies, tax give aways for them at income tax time, and YES, paying for multiple impediments to be placed in alternative parties’ way. Isn’t that election fraud in a much bigger way than that seen when the final vote is done?

Election fraud does not just begin the day of the voting and neither does it have merely to do with the purging of voter registration lists. As bad as these manipulations can become, this is the mere tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bipartisan Demopublican-Republicratic voter fraud pulled off at each and every election in our country.

‘Elections’ where the business community is allowed to bottleneck the public into only having the choice of really being able to vote one or other of the two allowed political parties is election fraud, Folks. Don’t you get it? Get a clue now! The whole damn election thing in this undemocratic country is build on fraud, dishonesty, and corruption. No camera on hand will much help spread the news of where that basic election fraud really lies. People have to use their brains and not just their eyes to see the fraud that is.

GOP behaving badly at Hillside Center

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Mark Lewis recorded some white-people desperation at the mostly African-American Hillside Center polling place. Here’s his account:

The lawyer for the El Paso County GOP, John Buckley takes down an Obama sign from across the street to the polling place, blames it on poll workers, then two McCain worker show up to place signs closer than this new several hundred foot limit.

They also come equipped with some silliness about firecrackers being thrown at kids (by kids) It turns out to be as false as the fire alarm pulled at the Centennial Hall polling place.

As usual, the first order of business in a controversy is the suspend the first amendment right of the free press and rewrite the laws on public “reasonable expectation of privacy”. People cheating and breaking the law hate this open society that exposes them.

In the end, no big deal, just the usual wrangling by a loosing party, desperate to take an election the way they’re used to taking them. They also misrepresented what they knew nothing about: that a person coming to vote carried up an OBama sing and the poll workers told them the law: you can’t come within 100 feet with that sign, so they folded it and put it in the trash. The poll workers thought that might be a violation too, it was visible in the open trash if you looked inside, so removed it, and these 2 guys witnessed the removal, and claimed the poll workers were electioneering within 100 feet.

Earlier Buckley threw out observers from the floor who were later allowed back in because they had a right to be there as credentialed by various ballot initiatives.

Another GOP poll worker threw out a woman looking up registrations for people and claimed she was electioneering and causing a “disruption”. I taped her helping people and she found some at the wrong precinct, directed other to the correct line (3 precincts at this polling place) and some mail in ballots that needed to be taken downtown. Never a word about any political issue.

Otherwise, where I was: West Middle School, Colorado College, Palmer High, and Hillside, the early voting long lines ended up making shorter lines on election day. Now if we can just get the lines down to the 2 hour limit that state law requires and employer give employees time off to vote, we’ll have a match and reasonable election day.

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El Paso County votes country bumpkin

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Parts of the country which favored McCain/Palin, by how much. El Paso County in no position to make fun of hicks in Kentucky or Tennessee.
Mississippi, Oklahoma 66%; Wyoming 65%; Idaho, Utah 63%
Alaska 62%; Alabama 60%
Arkansas, Louisiana 59%
EL PASO COUNTY 58%
Kentucky, Tennessee 57%
Nebraska, Kansas 57%
Texas, West Virginia 56%
Arizona, South Carolina 54%
North Dakota, South Dakota 53%; Georgia 52%; Montana 50%

Colorado election by countyThe population centers along the Front Range and along the I-70 corridor appear to have gone to the Democrats. The Front Range interrupted only by El Paso and Douglas counties.

In Colorado news, Mark Udall’s IN and Marilyn Musgrave’s OUT; but crooked SOS Mike Coffman is promoted to Congress.

El Paso County lost its 1A jail money, but kept squeaky idiot Doug Lamborn in Congressional District 5.

SENATE DISTRICTS: 4, 9, 10, 11 & 12
Mark Scheffel, (Tim Schultheis), Bill Cardman, (John Morse -D), Keith King

HOUSE DISTRICTS: 14-21
Kent Lambert, Mark Waller, Larry Liston, Dennis Apuan (D), Michael Merrifield (D), Marsha Looper, Amy Stephens, Brian Gardner

Dixie got ditched for now

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dixie-bitch-bikini-blondDixie is a mean bitch and she got ditched for now. That’s all it is. All you got to do is check out the electoral map for the election results some. See what happened to Dixie?
 
Congratulations to New Mexico, Colorado, and Florida for not backing Dixie up, too. Virginia don’t count because these days she’s DC, not Dixie.

It was the Hispanics that did Dixie in eventually, too. Even the Cubans just got fed up with her bitchy ways and together with the other Latino groups helped put holes into Dixie Land! Look away…look away… look away. Even Cubans in the US don’t like losing their houses and homes, and South Florida is suffering terribly from that credit crunch hurricane that we all read about and fear coming our way.

Poor Old Dixie! She needs reconstruction and beware!

Sadly, Barack Obama will probably get us OUT of Iraq by getting us INTO Iran

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barack obama supermanEven 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.

Obama and Biden have made it totally clear that they plan to win the so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’, and that their only real gripe with Bush is that he’s no Grand Generalisimo like Obama plans to make himself into. His plan is to begin by moving more US troops into Afghanistan, and whipping up a new forced ‘consensus’ with the European vampire class to continue America’s military industrial complex into perpetuity.

Never have the Democrats had so little to offer the American public as now. People want to believe in them, yet there is really nothing being offered other than vague promises of changing America for the better and blah, blah, blah. That’s not much to deliver and people will wise up to this act real fast as the capitalist economy continues to tail spin worldwide. Black president or not.

It is historic that the US now has a Black man as its president, but Colin Powell was a historic sort of guy, too, as was Condi Rice. Change has not come to America, as Barack is so fond of stating on TV. America is still stuck in the two party con game rut, and this election was as big a fraud pulled over all of us as it comes.

I see more war ahead, and Black-face will not cover it up for long. Colin Powell has now been replaced but the murder goes on. And the sad thing about it, is that the liberals still don’t seem to have even the slightest clue to what is coming their way. Time is now for the construction of a new American Left, because the old one showed its total rot in election year 2008.

Morning after pill for election 2008

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If the McCain-Palin ticket survives Tsunami Obama, to reconstitute a GOP win or draw in the late hours of election eve, several options are availing themselves for the American people’s political baptism. In the event of a need for an RU468, Colorado activists will be gathering 9am at the Capitol steps in Denver. For locations nationwide, or to learn what contingency plans are being prepared near you, check Liberty Tree, The Foundation for a Democratic Revolution.