The New York Times reported the story about the presidential candidate slumming it with her constituents without any hint that they caught the disconnect. It may not be Bush Senior marvelling curiously at a barcode scanner or Bush Junior referencing the "Internets" but this was clearly Hillary Clinton's first time in a Mexican fast food grill. The choice is beef, chicken, pork or tofu, served in tacos, fajitas, burritos, or bowls. Unless her handlers intervene, Hillary is going to waltz into a Souper-Salad and ask for the soup salad.
Tag: Headlines
How to tweak a headline, right wing style.
Without being called an extremist, or if anybody does you can call him a paranoid or otherwise mentally ill "conspiracy theorist". From The Atlanta Examiner: "AARP members bash Obamacare". This mirrors a similar "Shocking" headline Fox did last year when about 1% of the AARP membership left the organization in a huff and on a TeaBag high-horse because AARP endorsed Health Care Reform.<=The proper name. But, with the term "AARP members" and not specifying how many, what percentage of the overall membership, or noting that AARP has members from every political party in America including Anarchists, you could get any two AARP members to say they don't like Health Care and would prefer the alternative, a murderous system of killing elderly, disabled and poor AMERICANS through organized, explicit and consistent Denial of Health Care by the so-called "free" market. And with those two voices you can get "AARP members bash Obamacare". Get 10 to say they want to keep the old Murderous system and you get "A group of seniors say they don't want to have Health Care". Have them organize and you get "Senior Advocacy Group says they'd rather be taken out and abandoned on an ice floe, while their tribe rows
Army Career “opportunities”
We've seen the ads, "Join the Military and get job training that employers want".. yeah right. One of my friends in El Paso was at the time a Scout for the Third Herd, 3rd Armored Cavalry. Stationed at Ft Bliss but spent most of his time (between the constant wars in which America has been engaged, unofficially) in this patch of Hell called MacGregor Range sandwiched between the limits of Ft Bliss, Biggs Army Air Field, White Sands Missile Range and Holloman AFB. His take on it was the job opportunities using his training would be either working as a cop or a hitman. (Personal aside, I don't make any distinction at all between the two jobs.) A double-digit percentage of the unemployed in Colorado are veterans. That's about twice the percentage of the population who are veterans. The TeeVee college ads, trade schools actually, because the Wealthiest don't want to spring for a real academic education, they want to keep us firmly planted in the Servant Class, make promises to recently discharged Veterans that strongly echo the lies of the Military Recruiters. "get training the employers are looking for". You know, it would be a Hell of a lot easier for
Pax Americana on a necklace
There's the rub. An iconic photograph from the Vietnam War shows an American GI wearing a peace symbol necklace between a bandoleer of machine gun bullets. Which is it soldier? Nonviolence or destruction? Peace or war? Many Americans cannot make the distinction and think you can have both.
The pornography of prosthetics
It was unavoidable. With untold thousands of US men and women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with missing limbs, somebody was going to want to see that naked. I wanted to see the naked figures. Specifically, how many servicemen have been injured, how many of them maimed? Strangely, those statistics are not exposed. Not accounting our soldiers' sacrifices, to spare a public's waning jingoist sensibilities, is the real exploitation. 8793
About Afghanistan, shoot the messenger
This time let's learn something from the travesty of Vietnam. The interests which drove US soldiers into the hamlets of Southeast Asia are directing the massacres today. We call them the hawks, as if war was mere blood sport. Though South Vietnamese collaborators were forced to flee for their lives from Saigon, their US cohorts were never held to account. This time as America extricates itself from terrorizing Afghanistan, let's note those among us with blood on our hands and prosecute. Not the soldiers, but the warmongers in the charge: those commanders who every month reported the war "is still winnable" those propagandists who blamed the failure of occupation on waning public resolve, those politicians who rationalized inhumanity, and the war industrialists, all of them.
Last veteran of the War to End All Wars
IS THAT RICH? UK's oldest living veteran of the Great War died this weekend at age 111. Machine-gunner Harry Patch who survived Ypres and nearly not Passchendaele, was eulogized by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles who explained "The Great War is a chapter in our history we must never forget." Prime Minister Gordon Brown added: "The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten." What did Soldier Patch think of the war for which he was held in patriotic regard? "It wasn't worth it." 8271
Next to the White House
While visiting Washington DC in March, I found it interesting to note the edifices closest to the White House. 7252
White Flight from football to assault rifle
Ryan dons the rest of his gear in the car. Pads, armor, helmet, even mouth guard. I adjust the rearview mirror downward until I see his small frame in the backseat. We're only halfway to practice and he's already biting down, breathing through his nose, focused straight ahead. It's the same routine for football, except today he's got a lacrosse stick across his knees. In his grip, I should say. When we pull the car to the edge of the parking lot, he jumps and literally hits the ground running. From my height he gives me the sense I'm a helicopter pilot who's dropped soldier reinforcements to join the team on the pitch. There's a steep hillock between Ryan and the field, but his charge never slows, he ascends like a Cavalry of One, his stick brandished like an assault rifle. 3478
Obama drops all pretense of being Mr. Peace, Mr. Health, or Mr. For The People
Barack Obama, the new American Emperor, stands now naked before his previously admiring fan club. His expansion of the Af-Pak War, his retention of US Occupation of Iraq, his gigantesque freebie Fed giveaways to the corporate world all now stand exposed for all to see. Honeymoon now over, and only 2 1/2 months post taking office! Still, the public faith is there that The Empire's economy will right itself in the troubled waters. Faith dies hard. 7187
Space Symposium grand finale not a dud
COLORADO SPRINGS- According to local sources, this year's grand finale of the Broadmoor Hotel's fireworks display, marking the final evening of the National Space Symposium, was not a dud. It simply never came. 7186
Roughing it in DC
WASHINGTON DC- We caught the Metro, dragged our bags across the streets and sidewalks, but alright, we haven't exactly been roughing it. 7246
Truth Wanted: IDF military intelligence propagandists need not apply
Well, engaging the Israeli Internet Megaphone was an interesting experiment, although the popular consensus interjected the qualifier "hardly." Now smeared across the NMT comment record is the indelible impression of what an industrial strength, defense department white-wash program can do to an open blog forum. It's particularly distinct at NMT because we don't have the red-neck yahoos which usually camouflage the disinformation agents. Well, we've documented the propaganda mechanism, it's provided the scat samples, now it's time to close the study. 6655
The Dead Sea
The dead zones in our oceans are in danger of being turned into just The Dead Sea. Scientists say Acid oceans 'need urgent action' Why is it that in America we always have a war on this, and a war on that, but never do we have a war to save the planet from utter and total destruction?
Your limbs for oil: the crude reality
Spotted at a rally: CRUDE REALITY. It's the NO BLOOD FOR OIL message, brought home for the children raised on bloodless TV violence. What's blood anymore? You offer it to vampires, you can get more at a bank. Missing appendages, that's visual. I'm still working on a poster, featuring a closeup of an artificial ankle, today made of aircraft aluminum, or is it graphite, with the bold assurance that this one is ARMY STRONG.
Does NPR have a hiring impediment?
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO- I can laugh at speech impediments with the best of them. But I'm less comfortable if there's no laugh track. Specifically, when it's a speech-challenged news reporter, I utterly object to being made to decipher from mispronunciation. On the radio, poor diction is as unacceptable as inaudible recording, and disabled- enunciation is as appropriate as a paraplegic delivering your piano. Take NPR's Louisa Lim. 5598
Insurgents, prairie dogs and Laser Tag
I remember discovering the difference between target shooting and Laser Tag. At a firing range you could look calmly down your gun sight and concentrate without distraction. Same with hunting. But Laser Tag, Paintball, or the doubtlessly misnomered Airsoft, let you experience what it's like to be shot at. Who would believe aiming a gun is so different under fire? 4299
Howabout an unexpurgated face of war
The US media was not permitted to depict fallen soldiers, in or out of the coffin. Next military censors forbade photos of US wounded. Most recently US soldiers have been under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them at all, to promote the illusion that our Iraqi surrogates alone are handling security. How infuriated our officials must have been to see this photograph in the international press. 3922
Afghans persist in face of annihilation
Horror! The Taliban is reported to have taken back a half-dozen Afghan towns around Kandahar. It's an inevitable development of course, the catastrophic consequences of which will be equally unavoidable if America sticks to its guns on the matter. Refugees are already pouring out of the areas. Are they fleeing the Taliban fighters? From the reports of our jingoist embed press, how will we ever know? I'm pretty sure the Afghan refugees are fleeing our retaliatory air strikes, which are certain as rain to blanket every living occupant now determined by US precision weapons to be dark skinned combatants. It will be like Waco without the interminable siege. Who are we kidding? Our unmanned drones are named "Predators" and "Reapers." They're armed with missiles of "Hellfire."
The AIPAC friendship society at work
AIPAC is an organization of friendship, and its work is legendary. A recent film allows us to see just how this melding of minds works in actual practice. See the film over at the BBC and ask yourself, is Zionism really racism? 3512
KRCC promoting Amy Goodman and DN!
Most radio listeners are in their cars. That AM stations retain their clout is because for the longest time most cars could only receive the AM signal. Older established technologies present critical links not just older generations but to lower socio-economic populations.
Too pretty to blog?
An oft-heard conversation in my house goes something like this: "Mom, why did I only get one Thin Mint and Lara got two?" "Because I like her better." Fortunately, my kids are wise enough to know that to accept this un-motherly, and of course untrue, explanation is to be spared an hour-long lecture on The Inherent Unfairness of Life or Life Is Not a Zero-Sum Game or, my favorite, From Each According to Ability To Each According to Need. 2737
Magna Carta one-ply tissue unscented
When I heard the Magna Carta described today as the basis for democratic freedom, in particular, as it set forth that no man is above the law, I worried about the symbolism. Someone will pay $21 million expressly to wipe their ass with it. Can I call it or what? 2294
“How awesome and powerful God is.”
Allah Akbar - God is Great. After the recent attempted rampage at New Life Church, officials no longer have to explain their church's unusual need to assign a dozen guards, half of them armed, and several policemen every Sunday to look over their members. They are quick to add "these are not mercenaries that we hire." Onward Christian soldier. 2260