John McCain is not George W. Bush. He’s Dick Cheney.

John McCain’s constant reference in the debate was Joe the Plumber, who it turns out is really Joe the Tax Dodger.

Todd Palin ineligible for security clearance due to his terrorist connections?

Sarah Qualin thinks New Hampshire is “part of the Great Northwest.”

Russians invade Alaska, Palin unaware.

Secret Service investigating terrorist threat to assassinate Obama at Palin rally.

NeoNazi Rush “KKK” Limbaugh says black people are terrorists planning to destroy America.

There is nothing more racist than a Republican.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Oct 16 notes, thomasmc.com.

Zogby writes back….

Today my office issued the following statement, which includes my comments:

Dr. James Zogby says, “Enough is enough!”

Washington D.C. – October 11, 2008 -We are disturbed by the degree to which ‘Arab’ has become the metaphorical mud to sling against your opponent. Last week, for example, the Republican Jewish Coalition released a document in which they use the term Pro-Arab as apejorative accusation. For his part, Rush Limbaugh has joined in by declaring that Obama is in fact an Arab American. Then, last Friday, after a supporter called Senator Barak Obama “an Arab”, Senator John McCain came to the defense of of his political opponent by saying, “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen…” From this we are left to infer that an Arab man is less then a “decent family man.”

Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute, says, “Enough is enough! From the beginning of this campaign there have been those who have used ‘Muslim’ and ‘Arab’ in an effort to smear Barack Obama. This exploitation of bigotry and the stoking of racist fires to forward an agenda is reprehensible. This is not only offensive to Arab Americans, but to all Americans. As any ethnic group who has ever been used to scare the electorate knows, this is a dangerous game that, tragically, can get innocent people hurt.

“And while we are pleased to see that the senator is trying to dispel rumors about Senator Obama, we feel the need to point out that Arab Americans are also decent men and women with full rights of citizenship as enumerated under the Constitution. Arab Americans are part of the great melting pot that is this country’s strength. We work towards peace in the Middle East along side our Jewish partners. We raise our sons and daughters to be model citizens of this nation. We serve this country with honor. The suggestion that any ethnic group is treacherous and Anti-American is unacceptable, dangerous, and unbecoming of such a great nation.”

Amen and Amen. Leave us add “Ay-rab, Muzzle monkey, towelhead, islamofascist and sandnigger” to the Basket of Already known Hate Word rotten eggs like “Nigger, Jew-boy, Spick, Chink, Gook, Nip, Gyp, Fag…” the list goes on…

There was a movement in France, during the occupation, very small movement but to show solidarity with the Jewish FRENCH people the Anarchists made their own stars for their clothing only with the word “Goy” (yiddish for Gentile) written instead of “juden”…

The Nazis of course loved that so much they put a swift end to it… the Anarchists in Paris thus became the first ones on the trains to The Camps.

BUT… They didn’t quite wipe it out. The Resistance kept the memory alive.

It’s the reason even straight people will put a pink triangle on the bumper sticker…

Solidarity with the oppressed.

How we, the Citizens of Outer Redneckistan, can do similar things for Arab-Americans, Arab-Europeans, Arab-North Africans, or hell, let’s just call it “people in general” to un-demonize the name, will be a matter of much work.

Wall Street fleecing goes into hyperdrive

wall street stick-up
The Great American Swindle. $1T Bail out plan for Wall St. would give absolute power to Treasury Secretary Paulson, his decisions on how to spend the money would not be reviewable by Congress, or any court of law. This, after they included a provision in the $85B AIG bailout that lets financial firms use customer assets to insure solvency — which means they can borrow your stocks, bonds, CDs, money market acct., etc. — without your permission — and if they go under, you are just another creditor in bankruptcy court.

The GOP Disease. The “Party of Responsibility” morphed under Regan deregulation into Capitalist Anarchists, “failures are just the market regulating itself.” But now that that the financial institutions are failing (which the regulations were designed to prevent) they suddenly become Socialists — but only for the filthy rich. The other 95% of us are left on our own.

The bailouts of Wall St. brings to mind Republican president Ronald Reagan’s comments about “welfare queens driving Cadillacs,” but today’s welfare queens have private jets, enormous mansions, and multi-million dollar incomes. And that’s just fine with the GOP.

McCain declares war on the New York Times, for revealing his campaign manager was behind the deregulation that brought on Wall St. collapse.

Conservative George Will goes after McCain.

McCain lies. He said he supported Northern Ireland peace process, but he opposed it.

McCain opposes MidEast peace process.

Why is John McCain so afraid of Rachel Maddow?

Top Alaskan Republican, Senator Lyda Green says “Palin isn’t prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

McCain’s chief of staff outed as gay. Suppose Sarah Palin will demand he be burned at the stake? Or will she just shoot him and mount him on the wall of her den?

Rush Limbaugh says Obama isn’t black, he’s Arab.

Fool us once … we won’t get fooled again. Polls: “by a two-to-one margin Americans blame Republicans for the current financial crisis.” 82% say the economy is getting worse (0% say it is getting better), and only 28% support the bailouts. Not that the politicians, bought and paid for by Wall St., give a damn what we think. Oh, and 54% say the US is losing the “war on terror.”

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 23 notes, thomasmc.com.

Alaska’s REJECT PALIN rally

Sarah Palin with caribou kill
It has to be the item most hidden by the American media so far this year. They just do not want America to know that Alaskans turned out in mass to what has been described as the largest political demonstration in that state ever! They came out 1400 strong to show the US and the world that Sarah Palin is certainly not liked at all by many an Alaskan.

The Republican hate media tried to stop the large turnout. Alaska Women Rally Against Palin And Are Threatened That forked tongue, Right Wing hate radio scumbag kind of turned your stomach, didn’t he? Eddie Burke is kind of an Alaskan version of Rush Limbaugh, a loud mouthed thug who was forced to backtrack from his original calls to violence. He got slapped on the wrist for invoking violence against 2 women organizers of the rally, but his brand of hate will be back, because it’s popular with the Far Right nutters. Radio host suspended for airing anti-Palin protesters’ numbers

Republican is a Synonym for Terrorist

Never forget who the real terrorists are. Republican terrorist assassinates Democratic Party Chairman in Arkansas. Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Malkin and the NeoFascist goons at Fox News must be so proud.

…so, I guess that means the USA is no longer a nation?

Judge rules murdering black people is not a crime if you work for the government.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 14, thomasmc.com.

Avenge Vietnam among other things

POW-MIA pin- Bring em Home Or Send Us BackThe wait was long at the post office, prompting a gentleman ahead of me to remark “Soon this is what health care is going to be like. Get used to it.” I might have agreed, if he hadn’t gone on to expound with unsolicited details. “Socialized medicine like Obama has in mind will lead us to ruin -etc, etc.” I had to chime in. “A good part of the population can only hope their health care will be as easy to get as walking into the postal office.”

I asked him if he’d had health care lately. He said yes. I asked if he was insured. Again yes. I assured him he was more fortunate than a sizable number of Americans. He told me he could tell by my tone that I was a liberal, and that he had no intention of arguing, but he’d just say this, etc: No one is being denied health care anywhere and proceeded to list all the hospitals that couldn’t turn them away. I assured him people were suffering from inadequate health care, unemployment, etc. He: “why don’t they get off their asses?” Me: can’t get jobs with benefits, malnutrition, unequal access, don’t know their options. He went on about lazy immigrant jerk-offs, between pointing his finger in my face and telling me to “shut up,” while insisting on getting the last word. Finally he turned away and I saw what was on the back of his jacket.

I’d already sized this fellow up by his ironed dark blue-jeans, his Harley-Davidson patch and his trim grey hair. He was a pensioner biker, but I hadn’t appreciated him bad-mouthing the postal workers who were on their break but still within earshot. He was likely a Limbaugh ditto-head, based on his outspoken populist right-rage, and on his too-crisp denim jacket he had a large MIA-POW emblem.

Now, I’ve seen folk still caught up in the MIA sentiment, and they take it very sentimentally. I’ve even seen young teens performing a “missing you” place setting ceremony with the empty chair, candle and rose, on military occasions, for what must be by now a grandfather or great uncle. Probably this is a ritual they have grown up with and will pass on to their kids. It’s a depressing self-isolation, but I don’t want to begrudge them their incapacity to question the poor-man’s lost-war avenger dogma.

But an MIA freak who’s also a beer-hall loudmouth? No quarter.

I remarked, to the back of his head, that I didn’t see how someone could expect to be taken credibly on the subject of social problems, who also believed there are American soldiers still being held hostage in Vietnam. The Lord-Harley-Fountleroy wheeled around and nearly clocked me.

“I’ll punch you in the face if you dare insult the memory of the guys who -etc, etc” he yelled. The broader my smile, the more he repeated his threat. Our already indiscreet argument had drawn the attention of everyone in the line, including the counter staff. I guess he thought that an MIA blasphemy would give him license, in the court of public queue opinion, to shut me up with his fist. He went on to make the rest of his arguments to the postal clerks, looking for affirmation of his inherent indignation. I just kept smiling and winking at them. Sentimental conservative hard-asses? I don’t feel for you.

WARNING: War criminals Bush and Cheney are still at large!

John McCain says he doesn’t care if Iraqi PM Maliki wants a timetable for withdrawal. He’s running for Emperor, not negotiator.

Do you want 19th century stupidity in a 21st century leader? McCain proves once again that he considers the Iranian people, not the government, to be “the enemy.”

Burn the evidence. McCain’s wack-job “spiritual advisor” John Hagee orders YouTube to remove all record of his racist rants.

Is there only one patriotic Congressman left in America? Today Dennis Kucinich will introduce a single article of impeachment, for lying the country into war. [Plain Dealer] I can already see the treasonous Dems slithering back into their dens to protect the guilty. The precedent they are setting will doom America.

Don’t even think about not supporting the NeoFascist Agenda! Feds to use top-secret weapons to prevent any dissent at both party conventions this fall.

Obama says he hasn’t moved to the center. Duh. He’s always been there, all that nonsense about him being such a liberal was just crap Rush Limbaugh pulled out of his fat ass, and the GOPbots have been mindlessly parroting ever since.

John Edwards says he’d consider accepting VP slot. That might be the only way progressives would consider voting for Obama at this point.

AG Mukasey refuses to hold accountable officials who politicized Justice Department honors program.

Excerpted from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 9, thomasmc.com.

Rush Limbaugh Deported For Terrorism!

…And placed on the National No-Fly List!

Ok, so that was just wishful thinking. But wouldn’t it be a more clear and righteous judgment if he and the other Animated Genitalia who rejoiced over

a) the destruction of an American city (New Orleans)

and

b) made an open call for Americans to kill Americans in riots (like in Denver)

and

c) openly encouraged vote fraud on the part of Republican voters

and

d) called for suppression of Democratic voters through Poll Watchers and insistence on current ID cards (upheld by the Fascist “due process” Supremely Servile Court)

would be judged by the same standard as those by which he and the other Animated Genitalia judge people for using terms like “America’s chickens have come home to roost”?

Yusuf Ibrahim for pointing out that there are in fact Islamic laws which support condemnation for blasphemy?

What if Dobson were placed on the same level of “adjusted freedom” for HIS very similar pronouncements?

What if Gunny Bob were to have the same “freedom adjustments” for his retarded statements that the Society of Friends was a Terrorist Hate Group?

What if THEIR anti-American hate speech were judged worthy of being censured by Congress on the same level as MoveOn and the New York Times being “condemned” for pointing out that Generally BetraysUs actually is the smarmy bootlicking traitor that he truly is?

Of course the Reaganites don’t mean what they say…

But we kind of expected that, no?

For instance there was a United Nations mandate about Torture, and Shirley Temple Black was one of the signatories, which said Torture was not permissible under any circumstances.

Basically our solemn word as a Nation, and according to the Constitution, a Foreign Treaty ratified by Congress has as much weight in American jurisprudence as the Constitution itself does.

But alas, somebody in writing the law put in a few Weasel Words.

For instance, nobody is to be subjected to Severe pain either as punishment or to extract information. Nobody is to be subjected to unnecessarily cruel or harsh treatment.

So the Reaganite lawyers are now saying Ha ha ha, we lied to you and you can’t do a thing about it because we had some escape clauses in the treaty.

Now George Bush and Douche Lymphnode (Limbaugh) say “Who cares what the rest of the world thinks of us?”

Well, dumbasses, it’s like this… the only alternative to actually negotiating in good faith is to commit unjustifiable atrocities, like the Invasion of Iraq or perhaps the pending attack (using WMDs, no less) on the nation of Iran.

Not meaning what you say as a civilian, Joe Citizen type, means nobody will rent you a house without you paying all the rent in advance. People won’t give you credit.

Not meaning what you say as a representative of the people means you won’t be able to get anybody to agree to anything you ask for unless it’s under threat of absolute destruction.

To do that you would have to be at a level of International Bad-Ass which has never been reached.

You would have to be Untouchable.

The hijackers on 9/11 demonstrated for us that hell no, we ain’t untouchable.

But if we negotiate constantly in bad faith, our word as a nation means absolutely NOTHING, it would inevitably inspire people to negotiate with us at gunpoint… that is, THEM pointing the guns.

Or failing the ability to negotiate that way, simply saying “screw negotiating, we’re all going to die sooner or later anyway, why not just fuck these dudes up really really badly while we’re cashing out”…

And they throw airplanes at our buildings.

Way to GO! Ronnie and George and Rush, you and your socially retarded gang of thugs have already bought us a few nasty terrorist attacks.

Gosh, George and Rush, you must have felt a huge surge of pride when those towers fell, knowing you helped it to happen.

Name That Loser!!

A certain ChickenHawk has now called for violence BY Americans AGAINST Americans to promote his own perverted political agenda. Speaking of Rush Limp-dog of course.

This is a man who is a complete stranger to violence. Never had a real fight in his unnatural life. Maybe some slappy-slappy schoolboy playground make-believe “fight” where he was either much bigger than the other kid, or he was the one getting slapped around.

Rush Limbaugh (spelled out like that for the Search Engine Crowd) has had his share of truly outrageous, completely anti-American speech moments, his brain fart about Donovan McNabb leaps to mind, urging his Cult-like followers (he calls them ditto-heads and m

The mixed up Peace Community

The Peace Community is just plain mixed up. They are always ‘commemorating’ false anniversaries, and have a great ability to count by thousands (though not by hundreds of thousands, or millions). ‘This is the 5th year of The War, and this is 4,000 down, etc. and yada, yada, yada’ …, however, they don’t really seem to have even a clue.

What I am getting at, is that The War date to remember really is January 17, 1991. That’s when the US went to war with Iraq. That’s the date the Peace Community should be commemorating, but doesn’t, simply because most of those years the so called Peace Community was MIA, or advocating even a US war against Yugoslavia. Congratulations, People, you are really on the ball! You were to busy with the Rush Limbaugh War those days, I guess?

Even now, many of the clueless people want to go campaigning to stop the Olympics, save the Fur people and give them a Dar, and to chop off a fifth of Chinese territory and make a new country out of it. Whoopeee!!!!!

Let’s think about the US some more, shall we? When did the US government go to war with the Afghan people? Come on, Peace Buddies! Hey, was it way back when Osama was still considered a Freedom Fighter? You guys are really quite clueless! Even today, you hardly are campaigning for America to end that war, now are you?

And when did the US go to war against Iran? Hey, wasn’t that back when Saddam Hussein was our government’s good friend? See the Wikipedia some about our history here… The Gulf War

Shoot, that was when most of the Peace Community was part of the porra (cheerleaders) for Daniel Ortega and team. They didn’t really have time to think about how Saddam was being backed by the US government to wage war on the Iranian people. They didn’t have time, as they took their revolutionary vacations elsewhere.

Yes, the Peace Community is just mixed up most of the time. So this election year, we’ll keep that in mind. Americans are always on Cloud Nine…. for an eternity it seems. And that includes the Peace Community. If I they didn’t forget to oppose the Drug War so much even, they might not be so drugged out? Who knows?

I guess what I am saying with this rambling rant, is that it is so sad that much of the Peace (and Justice, too) Community misses about 99% of what goes on around them, about 99% of the time. The corporate media just screws with their minds too much for most to follow what goes on in the world. The Peace People can see that in the conservative element of the population, but is quite oblivious to their own propensity to be manipulated, and about 99% of the time.

It certainly is frustrating to try to work with these people. It might be easier to work with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or some other hard-to-have-success project? Lord only knows? But I continue to work with Unitarians instead. It’s a Unitarian Peace Community.

Peace.

Knowing we are in over our heads

One reason we have governments, for you inquiring civil libertarians, is for guidance. I can certainly think of two matters which might always evade common man’s grasp: nutrition and economics.

In spite of all best efforts to educate a public, we may have to agree that nutrition and economics are too big for the layman to grapple. We elect representatives to Washington to advise our lives about complexities like these.

Take for example the fudgsicle, it’s “low fat” but probably not on the whole going to make you skinnier. By the taste, the fudgsicle is made of sugar. So where does that put it, as obesity causal factors go?

Regulating calorie intake vis-a-vis carbs, electrolytes, supplements, additives, toxins and who knows what, is not a static math problem. It’s about maintaining a buoyant equilibrium as we move our bodies forward in our mortal trajectory. It’s like keeping the steam pressure up on an old locomotive, there was a reason the train drivers were called engineers. A steam engine didn’t start and go like its Lionel Train facsimile, it had to be tended, coaxed and fed lest it a) falter or b) explode.

Not everyone can be an engineer. We can read how-tos, and feel good about taking the levers, but ultimately the pop-guides are written to take us in circles to the next self-help over-simplification.

Likewise, not everyone can understand economic theory. We like to apply our bookkeeping common sense, our coupon-clipping savvy, and Nike GTD ethic to the federal budget: just balance it, but spreading greater prosperity is much more complicated than that. Try conducting even domestic trading with “neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

That’s why we elect administrators, that’s why we make them give big speeches to demonstrate their competence. We know we want smart people to be in charge. You’d think that concern would be intuitive, but we have learned it to be otherwise.

Evidently we need at the very least to be taught in our schools that our leaders must have more than the common sense of our drinking buddies. Our educational system must keep citizens up to speed to appreciate that governance is a demanding task. We don’t need to know the complexities, but we need to know enough to tell buffoons like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity that their homespun drivel is for uneducated morons.

For dummies, morons or complete idiots

Literature for Illiterates
A friend of mine says the best guide to constitutional law among titles he’s surveyed is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the U.S. Constitution. I’d prefer the 70’s era light-hearted For Beginners incarnation as a recommendation. Not just because that series has the co-op recycled paper look compared to the cautionary yellow & black, distinctly generic (re. anti- aesthetic) packaging of the current self-hating imprimatur.

I think the trendy For Utter Morons marketing attitude is a horrible acceptance of today’s sorry anti-intellectual state of affairs. The American viewer-ship has shown itself as audience, gathering, or consumer group, to BE complete idiots. Or dummies, or worse, no question. But do we need to wear the sign? Why that indignity too?

Rush Limbaugh can talk to us like we’re idiots, make jokes which we’ll laugh at like idiots, or have us applaud unknowingly at our own duping like idiots. But I’d like to draw the line at being called an idiot for the laugh.

No, I’d rather a book “for the novice” or “an introduction to” or other healthy self-depricating sobriquet. Perhaps I am also put off by the condescension. Astrophysics in Plain Words would also disqualify.

You say the “Complete Idiot” reference is just a joke, it’s meant to be funny, to be catchy, to sell books. Being an idiot myself much of the time, I don’t find it funny at all. Neither would I find amusing, Beauty for Ugly Girls, Etiquette for Poor People, or Landlording for Assholes.

Stupor Tuesday

It’s Stupor Tuesday! Across this Great Nation of ours we’re all pretending to have a democracy tomorrow! Voters will have chance to vote for a future female imperialist, a future Black imperialist, or several assorted knuckle-headed imperialists ala Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson breeds. Isn’t it great to have such a choice?

I’m betting on the mare personally so meet you at the race track! Just don’t lose your shirt nor your common sense when it all happens. Just have fun and maybe this country will have an actual democracy instead of Stupor Tuesday some day? You bet on it!

BTW, I hope you bet right on the Stupor Bowl yesterday? Hey, and wasn’t that half-time something else? I missed Janet Jackson though, because it just seemed so drab and phoney without her on board.

Colorado Springs future looking brighter

Mark Lewis took this photo of Gazette editor and hillbilly blowhard Sean Paige holding court recently in Poor Richards restaurant to discuss his leaving the city daily
Colorado Springs has several attributes which make it a pleasant place to live. Our dry sunny climate of course, and Garden of the Gods, Manitou, The Broadmoor, Colorado College, the Smokebrush Foundation, to leave out quite a bit. Pikes Peak, the Olympic Training Center and NORAD separate us from other provincial backwaters only by giving us a sense that we are on the map.

Since Amendment 2 Colorado Springs has been on the map for our unpleasant demographic. The sagging mental acuity of the Pikes Peak area is something of legend, and lo, increasingly deserved. We owe this to the abundance of military employers, to the continuing influx of fundy revivalists and of course the standard American low expectations for education. But no entity has played a more detrimental role in shaping our pinheads than our city newspaper, the “libertarian” Freedom Communications Gazette. Since the demise/absorption of its competitor the COS Sun, the Gazette Telegraph has warped our city news with impunity.

And none have done it with more mean-spirit and Rush Limbaugh alacrity than Gazette Editorialist Sean Paige. Our own top-tier asshole.

And he’s leaving! Hurray! I wish it had been with tar and feathers. And it’s a rather selfish joy, because doubtless he’s moving somewhere. Wouldn’t it be more noble to know to where, so that instead of passing him off, we could give them a shout and prevent Paige from wreaking his cynical damage in their unsuspecting community?

Who’s against the goddamn A.C.L.U.?

Who does not like the ACLU?
Do a Google image search for ACLU and you get an almost unanimous gaggle of hateful yahoos cursing the ACLU. You’d think the American Civil Liberties Union was made up of a bunch of commie traitors.
 
Come on! The ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh’s keeping his medical records from law enforcement officers eager to nail him on his Oxycontin Hillbilly Heroine habit. They defend the right of white supremacists and Nazis to march in public. What does the ACLU do which upsets you?!
 
The only people with a legitimate gripe against the ACLU are prickish totalitarians who do not want YOU to have claim to rights, arms or voice. You’re more afraid to retain your right to remain an American Idiot.

Maybe when environmentalists set their sights on NASCAR for setting a gas-guzzling, dick-centric bad example, the ACLU might be your best only hope.

When your teenager gets pregnant, and you want to force her to keep the baby to term, who’s going to keep social services from interfering with your authority? It’ll be the ACLU.

If you want to go on beating your wife or molesting your children, and value keeping it private from the police, you have the ACLU to thank.

Rush Limbaugh needs to get the can for Hate Speech, too

Here is a video of Rush Limbaugh’s promotion of ‘black face’ in the wake of Imus’s getting his papers from his sponsors for his own racist hate speech. Barack the magic negro The timing was deliberate, too. It is Limbaugh’s defense of Hate Speech in general, of which he is one of the biggest practitioners of.

These hypocrites call for the firing of any even mildly liberal professor they can dig up, and then try to wrap themselves in the mantle of ‘Free Speech’ when it comes to themselves and their constant spreading of Hate Speech across the airways. But there is a big difference between the two types of speech. Let me give my own experience at an antiwar vigil yesterday to illustrate.

Yesterday me and another antiwar protester were practicing our right to Free Speech by appearing with signs at a busy intersection. They said ‘PEACE’ and ‘NO WAR’. Some hecklers who disagreed with our message started shouting ‘Bush, Bush, Bush’ from their cars. They, too, were practicing their right to Free Speech, but then it turned nasty.

It turned into an example of them practicing Hate Speech. These young and belligerent men parked their cars and started to menace us. One of them told me to ‘Suck his Dick’, as they threateningly seemed to be building up to a physical assault on us, even though hundreds of driver-byers would have been watching! They made it clear that they would have assaulted us physically, except for the fact that so many onlookers would have witnessing their attack if they did.

As they left, one of them who had worked himself up full of hatred for us, angrily backed his vehicle into the tall lamp post in the parking lot of the Fast Food ‘restaurant’ he was at. Comical and sad. That’s what practicing Hate Speech usually comes down to, but it does have the danger of potentially causing others deep harm, and usually in an effort to stop others from their right to exercise their Free Speech.

Let’s face it. Much of the work of people like Ann Coulter Imus and Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than the most flimsily camouflaged Hate Speech. It’s basically not much more than telling others to ‘suck their dicks’, and it’s usually directed at people of other races, other sexual orientation, and those from other cultures. Oh, and against others practicing their Free Speech to openly disagree with government policies.

It is not being against hate mongers’ Free Speech to demand of their sponsors that these practitioners of Hate Speech either clear up tehri acts and eliminate their Hate Speech routines, or just hit the road. There are plenty of ways to express one’s disagreement with ‘liberals’ than in using Hate Speech, so let the message be sent out that we are tired of this constant hate mongering on the airways.

Some like Rush Limbaugh and Imus will never engage in civil exercise of Free Speech, but rather will continue to principally engage in Hate Speech if continually allowed to. So let’s hope that Rush will get the can, too, like Imus did. That would be a big victory against Hate Speech, and a big victory in favor of Free Speech. Similarly, me and my fellow antiwar protesters of yesterday will continue to engage in our right to Free Speech, no matter how many middle fingers come our way along with the threats to possibly physically attack us.

We will meet soon with the city police to discuss how to keep them from physically attacking us for practicing Free Speech in this city. I don’t expect much, or anything for that matter. The police, just like the Bush Adminstration, are totally in favor of Hate Speech and totally incapable of defending the public’s right to engage in Free Speech. I’d have to see a miracle from God before I would ever think otherwise.

The life of O’Reilly, The Lunatic

I think America has reached a milestone, when it appears that Bill O’Reilly has actually been able to pass both Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson as America’s most obnoxious lunatic, nut case. Sure, Robertson is a bigger nut, but O’Reilly steps forward to take first place in the obnoxiousness category. As a blend of obnoxiousness and nuttiness, he edges them all out.

The only other competition would be from the women’s division, where Ann Coulter now reigns supreme. Check out this hilarious youtube.com video of O’Reilly in action against an antiwar movement rep, Sunsara Taylor. O’Reilly is a true credit to what a Catholic highschool education can do to you. It can turn you into a big pile of poop.

Borders & Ignoble

Retail citadelI found myself inside one of these boxes again, waiting for my wife to finish up some mall shopping I had tried to talk her out of. These 2 chains of supposed bookstores are like the Democrats and Republicans almost. Nobody can tell any real difference between the two of them.

Usually, I can pull up a chair, and browse their discount picture books for a bit, but this time they had the music (Christmas oriented for the season) cranked up double the usual volume, and it began to drive me a little crazy. It was really annoying, giving some, I guess, an incentive to buy quick and get out of there. I didn’t have that incentive though. These places aren’t really bookstores so much, and I have a hard time even finding anything much of interest to read inside, let alone for puchase.

What do I mean about Borders and its chain competition not really being bookstores? Well, I happened to come across what B & N describe themselves as being to explain some. Here it is…

“Our mission is to operate the best specialty retail business in America.”

This little pearl of thought sits upon all the computer screens as a screen saver, and also is meant to be personal inspiration for the mechanized robots, I meant customer assistants that work there. Nothing about books about these places really. It’s about specialty retail business.

Still, people who enter are most often confused. They do seem to believe that they are in a real bookstore. Actually, meany of the customers have nere seen an actual bookstore, or at least not close up between the shevles. Or even if they happened to stroll through the shelves of a real bookstore, have never really looked much to see what was on the shelves. So it’s kind of easy to see how so many get confused about thinking that they are inside an actual living breathing bookstore. But they aren’t!

They are inside a specialty retail business, that’s all. A good place to sit at a table with a laptop sipping coffee. A good place to buy some pop music crap for some demented teenager one might know. Or a place to pick up a calendar, or some blank sheets of paper for correspondence or a blank diary perhaps? Sure there are books there, but not so many real ones. Many are dedicated to computer programming, or things like Manja (6 shelves alone for that Japanese cartoon stuff and ‘role playing’).

There are categorized sections of everything, well almost. Theses stores are marked off like a MS windows filing system and give sort of a superficial encyclopedic appearance. But little old stupid me. The category that interest me most is Foreign Literature. But look around? I saw about 55 shelves titled Fiction and Literature, but strangely enough there’s hardly a book of foreign literature in this group! One would think upon browsing there, that only dimwitted American authors were alive today? Oh, and maybe a dimwitted Brit, or two.

Oh sure, maybe I should go over to the Science Fiction (20 shelves), Mystery (14 shelves), or Romance (10 shelves) sections. Nothing. Everybody is an America. Apparently they never write mysteries or SF in Italy or Spain, Brazil or Africa? If they do, certainly you can’t find it at an American specialty retail store, as opposed to a bookstore. Despite their supposed thoroughness, Borders and B & N apparently don’t carry certain stuff. Like foreign fiction. Go figure.

They also don’t carry current affairs (3 stacks) commentary much, unless it is Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, that sort of gag-us quality of thought. One does find 13 stacks of Christian babble, too. 6 stacks of Tarot/ New Age 1 1/2 stacks of ‘Eastern Religions”. I am an atheist myself, so I looked for that stack? If you really want to befuddle employees in these stores, go up to one and ask to be directed to atheist oriented non-fiction. It’s great fun!

Or better yet, tell them that you have found the 10 stacks of Romance novels, but that you are a man and would like to see some male oriented porn instead. In book form. They might direct you to a shelf entitled Erotica (in some stores less regionally influenced by Dobson’s minions)? But then, you will see only gay ‘erotica’ there. Tell the clerk that you are not gay and would rather see their collection of porn books for heterosexual men. “Sorry, Sir, we only have magazines in that genre.” My reply is always, “What? The adult entertainment business is a multi-trillion dollar one, and yet your retail establishment carries not a porn book at all, outside of the gay ones!” And in Colorado Springs, not even much of that. Moo.

So, as an atheist heterosexual porn seeker who loves foreign lit, I am kind of out of luck at these specialty retail establishments. If I was a gay person, ‘spiritually inclined’, and didn’t know that a word was ever written outside US national boundaries, I might be in better shape, it seems. Or, if I could just get more interested in reading romance novels or military history, which is where the multiple stacks are. Yes, these stores don’t really seem to know that history has been passed through, unless it circled on a planet other than USA and has been interpretted by a Republican minded citizen. Not true, you can find some Democrats, too. Like Michael Moore, perhaps? But you’ll be much better off if you like books with names like ‘Semper Fi’, etc.

All in all, these retail establishments are more Americana than a retro Fifties Diner would be. But they are not quite being bookstores by doing that. In short, your prospective reading material is being grossly censored, and that’s why so few are purchasing from the shelves, and more just seem to be sipping their Lattes and Mochas, or talking on their cell phones while inside. Borders and Ignoble seems more like a telephone booth at times, than an actual bookstore.

At this point, one might object to my comments. “‘Erotica’ should be censored by B & N. Go to an ‘adult store’ if you want such filth!” But they don’t carry books there, I will moan. “And as an atheist, go to Hell and get some books by atheists.” Or to the philosophy stacks, as I have been directed by employees. As if all philosophers were automatically atheists, lol. Sorry, I’ll just order my atheist books from the Sceptical Inquirer magazine folk, thank you. And for a good porn book, I’ll just have to write my own, it seems. Though it’ll never get published, let alone make it to the B & N.

And if I might want to know how the French care about life, I will just have to confine myself to Agatha Christie, it seems. That is after I get through with the latest from Ann Coulter I purchased at the specialty retail store. She tells it like it is about the French. And she is informative about the Arab mind, too.

Nobody reads anymore, no publishers publish anymore, and no specialty retail establishments even stock what little is still around. The last time I have seen much of interest in a bookstore/ specialty retainl establishment was in a University of Texas dorm building. They had a little used bookstore that had some used books of African writers that had been published by the African Studies Dept of the UT.

Americans once wrote great literature back before the ’50s. Unfortunately, all those works are out of print and unavailable mainly. The lit was too red, it seems. Efforts to get them reprinted have flopped miserably. We have become a specialty retail people, and not a literate one. Oops, my wife is back from the mall. Got to end my rant. Bless her heart, she bought nothing at all. Or, maybe she did and is just hiding it away from Scrooge?

No war but class war

Here’s the playground analogy: Say a bully is beating up a little kid. The bully could be the military beating up a nascent democracy, could be Wal-mart beating up its employees, could be Coca-Cola killing labor organizers, could be oil companies heating the globe, whatever.

The teacher is inside the classroom, doesn’t know what’s going on, or maybe sees what’s happening but can’t intercede because the bully is bigger than she. The teacher is the U.N., or justice or the conscience of man.

We are the rest of the children on the playground. By force of our numbers, we could go fetch the teacher, or assert the teacher’s authority. The trouble is, the bully has friends.

The bully’s friends are surrounding the fight so that we don’t see exactly what’s going on. They are gatekeepers to the facts of what is happening and they placate us with a play by play calculated to not quite pique our interest or sympathy. They steer us away from realizing that the poor kid getting beat up is one of us. The friends present the bully as the victim and the victim as the attacker. The gatekeepers look like us, like the more attractive of us. We like them and want to be their friends.

Whatever the analogy, the bully is getting something from the little kid. Lunch money, natural resources, cheap labor, subservience, profit etc. And he shares it with his friends who keep the rest of the kids at bay. It’s a gang of bullies really, but they benefit by pretending they are not working together. Even a large gang of bullies can be brought down by a crowd of ordinary people who see what they are up against. But a bully or two, surrounded by some pretty point men diverting your attention, that’s a difficult game to stop.

The press used to be known as the Fourth Estate. This appellation recognized its potential power, to counter that of the king, the nobles and the merchant estates, and to empower the democratic yearnings of the estate-less: labor, the people.

Capitalism brought the absorption of all the moneyed estates into a single merchant class. Corporate trusts cemented the merchant wealth into a new ruling nobility. And belief that God is on our side ascribes to our leaders to the divine provenance of the First Estate. The Fourth Estate, the enormous merchant enterprise once the great promise of the common people, is now but part of the one reigning Estate. The State.

The press is the mouthpiece for The State, pretending still to look like people like us. Rush Limbaugh, the smart-mouthed fat every-man imbibes $4,000 wines and $300 Cuban cigars.

First thing now to do, first thing, is to quit believing what the press is telling you. They are not your friends.

Pacifism yes victimhood no