Animal liberators face a dilemma. Livestock deserve to be freed, every last piglet and lamb. But animals bred for captivity won't survive without it. Emptying a CAFO will precipitate an equally calamitous tragedy outside its door. The remedy of course is to stop breeding sentient beings for human consumption. The same probably holds for people. Social justice advocates can aim to liberate the "sheeple" but into whose hands?
Tag: Politics
A real democracy would elect Trump
A friend of mine used to say "You know who has their finger on the pulse of America? Walmart." Materialism on the cheap, zero social responsibility. It's true of American television, fast food, urban planning, everything USA. We sell immediate gratification, that's it. Success in America under declining capitalism has become courting only the lowest common denominator. I can wish it was otherwise, you can lecture it to death, but Cracker culture: insipid, racist, xenophobic culture is American culture. Love yourself, hate everybody who isn't you. For many successive Me-Generations, narcissism is WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT. The American mass doesn't want an Obama hued panel of multiculture-splainers saying America must be anything but stupid indulgent. An intelligencia's repulsion at Donald Trump and his common denominator campaign goes without saying, but it can't fault his sales pitch. Trump is tuned to win. Feel rueful about the lumpen masses, but you're being undemocratic.
Press button to hear short speech from Hillary Clinton
It's an old joke that probably makes the rounds every election season.
The sad fall of the Jewish religion into becoming a mainly political text for turning out neo fascist robots
'It is hammered into us that the history of Jewry has been brought to an end and that Israel is its end point. Israel functions as an eraser of Jewish history, of memory, of languages, of traditions and of Jewish identities. Israeli politics is not only criminal against the Palestinian people. It claims to be the heir of Jewish history when it has misrepresented that history and betrayed it. Israel knowingly puts the Jews in danger wherever they find themselves. And it transforms them into robots summoned to justify the unjustifiable.' --This is an excerpt from a great commentary found this weekend on the Counterpunch website at 'The Avant-Garde of Islamophobia-Israel Against the Jews'
Can Chris Christie pretend he doesn’t know MOTIVE for extorting Fort Lee?
Commenting on televised politics is as meaningless as speculating about developments on reality TV. Since the Christie bridge debacle purports to effect which presidential candidate gets voted off the island, it might be worth at least delving where the talking heads are not. Of course Chris Christie's office engineered plausible deniability for their boss with the bridge blocking scheme, but Christie would certainly know WHY pressure was being brought to bear on Fort Lee. Christie's lack of curiosity on the matter betrays an untruth. If his mea-non-culpa had digressed to speculate about a motive, he would have exposed himself to being caught lying. Was the Washington Bridge closure in retribution for the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, not giving his endorsement? Was it retribution for a Democratic senator obstructing the state legislature? Retribution does seem petty. I think there's a stronger likelihood this was not retribution, but extortion, about a yet unmentioned political goal. Especially as Sokolich professes not to know why the governor's office acted why it did. What would be the point of retaliating if your mark didn't know why? A second clue is that now the mayor has accepted governor Christie's apology, still without asking why. When Christie's chief of staff emailed "It's time" to disrupt the traffic in Fort Lee, it's unlikely any of the players were in the dark about what that time was.
Lincoln: from Obama we hoped for a presidential reprise, not an Oscar
President Barack Obama couldn't deliver on the campaign inference he'd fill Abraham Lincoln's shoes, so what do we do? Cut the Great Emancipator down to size. Portray America's most lionized president as political operator, and distribute copies of the film to all the nation's schools to cement the revisionist theme. Generations of visitors to DC's monument will no longer recognize the seated giant, he'll seem to big.
Obama nails presidential debate. With Romney made viable, the election is on
President Obama nailed it! He had to lose last night's presidential debate and how else was that going to look credible unless he out-Romney'd the reigning court fool? Arrogance would have been easier, and sloughing it off would have been unconvincing. Neither would have resuscitated Mitt Romney's credibility. And while Obama's brilliant turn may appear ego-less, it reflects the ease with which he has been betraying all his supporters with higher hopes. After turning his coat on every issue A-Z, it took a debate to infuriate his Democrat supporters? Where was the anger on Guantanamo, Immigration, Civil Liberties? They only care that he didn't show up Mitt Romney. On the positive, they've all spent the next morning going over in their heads what Obama should have said, probably the arguments they'll make in now revived voter-drives. Denver's debate was psy-ops at its crudest.
Obama pushes to return White House to the Republican Party by coming out for Gay Marriage to unite Republicans
At a time when the Republican Party was infighting at every level, Barack Obama and Joe Biden with the 2 Clintons found a unique way to unite the Republican Party behind a weak and universally disliked Mitt Romney. They decided to make the dividing line between the two corporate parties Gay Marriage! Will it work? Will the Democrats once again be successful at returning themselves into the position of being the pretend oppositional party, where they can safely keep the Democratic Party's 'liberal' community thinking of themselves as some sort of dissidents instead of the milquetoast pro corporate class 1%-ers they really are? It is hard for the Democratic Party leadership to be in the White House pretending to be fighters for change, when every bit of the party leadership is actually Big Money Big Business made. Easier to pretend to be fighting the Republicans even as they cooperate with them on every major issue. Easier to take a loser issue in the US and LOSE! Gay Marriage is that issue... Look for a resurgent Republican Party to take the White House back in November. It will be hard to do because Romney is so completely nauseating. But then again, the Democratic Party leadership is so corrupt and stupid. Or is it that they just want the Republicans back in the White House and not themselves? Impossible you say? Are you really so sure of that though? I saw the PRI, the world's longest one party dictatorship, jettison their own 'presidential' possibilities in Mexico by running an incompetent and married gay male politician, and letting the PAN beat up on that right before the selection/ election. Vicente Fox got in as a result. End of 'dictatorship' and Mexico's bad reputation as having one. The PRI did it for the betterment of the Mexican business elites and perhaps that's what motivates the US Donkey Party Establishment as well? It's not like the corporate world is going to demote the Democratic Party politicians when they lose the White House to the Republicans once again. No... never! There will always be a place for the donkey heads in the corporate world they help make up. None of them need to go and work down at the local Starbucks as barrista. Don't cry for them, America.
Near success of delegates for Ron Paul exposes electoral college as rigged
I want to give Ron Paul supporters their due. By their determination to advance their Republican candidate by hook or by crook, Team Ron Paul's self-deputized delegates have exposed the US electoral college nomination process to be fixed. Isn't it interesting how far Republican state party chairmen have been willing to go to stop even the slightest encroachment on candidate Mitt Romney's presumptive convention backing? May the best man win is the ethos they preach, but it seems the furthest from what they will allow. Of course this learning moment will be lost on Ron Paul's army of halfwits, just clever enough to outmaneuver the average rival Republicans, but dumb enough in the first place to fall for their "Dr. Paul". Don't you just love it, their reverence for a PhD, from mostly stunted males claiming post-grad (of associate degrees) studies in "The Austrian School" of economics? They're gun nuts and bombastic proponents of folk-wisdom libertarian nationalism, no surprises there, and so we can't even congratulate them on debunking the apple-pie objectivity of America's electoral level playing field, because it will go to their head and their craniums are pit bull small.
Did Obama’s middle class speech, as the MSM says, strike a chord? From Osawatomie, the note was sour.
OBAMA STRIKES A CHORD WITH MIDDLE CLASS SPEECH. What cynical populist fable-telling. President Obama delivered a speech in Kansas yesterday appearing to speak up for America's middle class, as if he wasn't the reddest-handed fox in the hen house. Once again President Hope spews Orwellian double-speak as he eviscerates the world's social fabric. Yet the media trumpets that Obama's speech "struck a chord" in a most pernicious stretch of dissembling. If Obama struck a chord, it was like a guitarist strikes a chord, on a wrong note, or ringing true, but to say Obama's words resonated is to pretend that wasn't entirely the product of media amplification. In Obama's case, lined-in through spin effects - in guitar terms it's called Reverb. To strike a chord used to mean saying something that hit your listeners just right. Is that what happened? Does our Nero have anyone convinced --beside our media-- that he's Spartacus? I'm disturbed because President Obama chose Osawatomie, Kansas to grace with his forked tongue. Osawatomie was the nickname given Abolitionist John Brown, for holding his ground in an early anti-slavery battle at the Osawatomie slave sanctuary. Obama might have chosen the locale for its historic Free State significance, but instead of mentioning the radical Brown, he praised Teddy Roosevelt, the father of American imperialism. BTW, the Weather Underground published its anti-imperial, anti-racism missives in an underground press magazine called Osawatomie.
Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I
I like telling the story of the time we went to Telluride with my brother David to catch the Bluegrass Festival there. Dave is a pretty dang famous fiddler, and this happened 13 or 14 years ago when his Freight Hoppers were riding a crest, having two then current Billboard Top 20 Americana list releases on Rounder, (Rounder is pretty much a ripoff, but that’s for another time). The Freight Hoppers were hot in Colorado, and their set would draw some 30, 000 festival-goers, with a respectable bevy of hairy Deadheads looking for an outlet following Jerry’s departure bouncing , flouncing and working their little Tai Chi dance up at the stage. Lots of really notable musicians liked them, too, and still do, actually. Anyhow, we would meet up with Dave and the band at the festivals after winding through a long cattle-line setup, to get to the will-call desk and pick up our magic-rainbow all-access wristbands and hang out all weekend with all these niche-famous musicians, eating, drinking, being merry, smoking, and playing music together. That shit is great! So one day we’re back stage chillin’ with Tony Furtado, (hi Tony—rock on!), and someone goes, “Is that Johnny Cash?” and sure enough, the Highwaymen had showed up to play an unscheduled set. We never made it away from whatever we were doing at the time to see them play, but not long later, as if they had come for no other purpose, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson show up looking for my brother to tell him how much they dig his music. How cool is that!? Well, we all got to jawin’, and knowing a little about Willie I pulled a little fairly decent weed out of my pocket and offered it, but Willie said, “Oh, no thanks, son, put that away,” and busted out some G13 mutant weed or something, and sparked the stoniest joint I’ve ever smoked in my life, to this very day. What a day! Now, Willie has always been a hero of mine. His heroes have always been cowboys, he says; mine have always been outlaws, and I always figured Willie for a true outlaw, to the core. I mean the guy runs for president on a platform built of pot smoke, with Ani DiFranco as his running mate. Go Willie! That’s why some things he’s said lately trouble me. I’ll get to that in a minute but the first order of business here is to retell that story one more time, (not that I won’t tell it again—it’s a great staple of mine at parties and such), and to let
Reapportionment: the Texas Miracle comes to Denver
So aside from moving polling places without advance notice, threatening college Kids with their parents being arrested if the vote, telling voters they need to re-register to be eligible to vote in a mail-in 2 days before the registration deadline and 2 day AFTER the ballots were mailed... and that's just local... The Thief Party has, in an Orwellian joke about "increasing" minority representation, given more voting clout to the Ignorant Redneck Racists, who I sadly have to admit are my fellow Texas immigrants. (mostly) One such move counted the population of the Arapaho Co. Jail, mostly non-white, to claim an otherwise Klan enclave (like, a lot of Sheriff's deputies and other pigs) as a "minority" district! And of course it's wrong to assume that a majority of the jail populace are from a minority of the population reflects any kind of Racial Bias on the part of the Police and Judiciary. The mostly White cops, prosecutors and Judges say they're not racists. Even elected Republican voices are protesting this blatant power grab. Comment: I wonders, yes I does, if the Oslo shooter would have let the Right-Wing Lunatic Core delusion of his suicide homicide mission go unchallenged, had it been continued for days as he planned. I mean, he already blamed his own actions on two religions he does not practice, Islam and Christianity. And assumed, right in line with what Limbaugh, Beck, Bachmann, Palin and O'Reilly preach; that the "Liberals" would react with fear and tears, and he would have a much longer Killing spree. And , Sure enough, the first reports spilling out, they GLEEFULLY, smiles on their smug stupid snouts, were proclaiming an Al Qaeda OUTRAGE! Along with a failure of Liberalism to stand up against Islam or to mount harsh anti-freedom measures profiling immigrants.
Mr Smith goes to #FuckYouWashington
The netizens are revolting. On the eve of US "austerity measures" the Twitterverse is crowdsourcing its ire against the de facto seat of world government. The unprintable hashtag won't trend on social networks -- it's alleged, even as momentum builds like a movie title mashup. Typical sentiment: FuckYouWashington for putting profit above people. The laundry list of injustices is staggering and as a political party platform, it's writing itself. What is democracy but crowdsourced grievances in search of redress? As tweeters hurry to open external floodgates, it's going to be interesting to see which if any of the social networks decide to unleash its participants from the censorship which constrains the profanity they want to share. #FuckYouWashington for your mass murder, inhumanity, enslavement, penury and usury and then telling me this hashtag is profane.
Obama discards consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, picks bank favorite
Who can be surprised really that President Obama will take no measure against the rule of the bankers, not even the appointment of public favorite Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer agency for whose creation she lobbied to address increasingly usurious creditors?
Find the Michele Bachmann inside you
So Michele Bachmann was a tax collector. Sarah Palin was an oil industry stooge. The media didn't conjure these villainesses from whole or rare cloth. Most politicians are corporate functionaries before they bill the public to do it. If they haven't dedicated their lives expressly to destroying the environment, the social fabric, your job and everyone's quality of life, they've always understood your loss was somebody's gain, and theirs. Know anyone like that around you? Practically everyone! That's whose throats you need to wrap your fingers around. Shake the blinders off their eyes with good old-fashioned throttling. Shout them down. Shut them up. Shame and scorn them, the heartless, uninformed, apathetic pricks. Activism begins at the grassroots, pull those weeds from the roots. The media sets up Bachmann and Palin as characters you love to hate, there for you to pillory in effigy. You can flame them with your wit, call for their heads, but ultimately their pulpits lay beyond your reach, from where they safely goad you at the media's whim. Wake up. Bachmann and Palin are the effigies. Burning them accomplishes nothing. They're the poster children rotten apples among the joe public rotten apples which fill the American barrel. Look around you. See all the clueless, amoral, self-serving opportunists? Time to drop the agree-to-disagree, polite society pretense. Take the gloves off and have at 'em.
$5 chance to win dinner with Obama could be available for price it’s worth
Democratic fundraisers are hawking the chance to win a dinner with President Obama for the donation of $5 or more to the 2012 election campaign. Rather than sit across the table from the smug insincere technocrat, can I opt for the immediate cash value of the prize? Were I a corporation, that value would be precisely calculable, but as an ordinary citizen, we all know the real value is, excuse the pun, O. In which case I'd hope they offer a better investment option, that entries be permitted with no purchase necessary, as required by law for any other sweepstake scheme.
I just got an email from Pres. Obama
I just got an email from President Obama. He wants me to lead. He says the politicians in Washington won't do their job unless I do their job for them. At face value, that's just weird. Are constituents to imagine that stump speeches fall by the wayside when the polls close and representatives develop amnesia from which only lobbyists can deliver them? Does anyone really believe that the public has to jump hoops for good governance? Who drinks crap-flavored Kool-Aid? Pardon my disrespect. Yeah, Obama writes to me directly, and would you believe, often. He's practically asking my advice on a daily basis, or that's the impression he gives with his personable tone. Actually it's strictly a one-way conversation, telling me what to do, offering gentle encouragement, and asking for money. It's gotten so I can't differentiate fund-raising from tax-collecting. I confess I've tired of inferring that if Obama is running low on fairy dust, it's because I'm not clapping hard enough. The problem is I think Obama is wearing thin with all this intra-constituent communication, and he's delegating too much of the multi-tasks to Dumbama. In today's letter, Obama wants me to solve an "Immigration Crisis," his contribution? Boots on the ground. Did Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address? That's always the impression my teachers gave. No Civil Warmongering William Safire of his day laid claim to coining four score nattering nabobs. When did Americans decide their leaders needed ghostwriters? Why do we accept that an Ersatzbama can come across with the same winning sparkle? Because you know the president is not even reviewing these compositions either. He's got ghost-readers on staff for that. Alright, so we like our speeches peppered with wit, and we know not even the most luminous television hosts can tread water without a staff of gag-writers. Fine, if celebrities need personal assistants to hold their phones, we can't begrudge a busy president his showbiz consultants. But oh my goodness, why would we countenance forged personal emails?! Who wants a Notobama pretending to give us the inside scoop on the President's daily thoughts? What kind of charade is that for a presidential parade? And I ask you, have you yet heard Obama answer a simple question, and you're left wanting to hear more? If I got an email that confided he didn't believe the crap vetted for the corporate media, that would be a believable email. Instead we all get Minimebama email numbing us with what we know is the web's potential for a ceaseless stream of digital drivel. But I'm making quite an ignorant assumption, that we're all getting the same stupid email. We assume the White House is spamming a consistent message, but maybe it's highly customized, and for some reason, and I'd better take it to heart, they've pegged me as a big idiot.
Petition Sallie Clark not to groom Lisa Czeladtko city council campaign
Conflict of interest, anyone? County Commissioner is one of those "low paid" jobs in local government which pays off hugely in graft money, if one is so disposed to take advantage of that opportunity, by voting tax breaks, zoning laws (enforced at Public Expense) and other Pork-barrel subsidies for the actual paying business of the Commissioner. Quasi-legalized Grand Theft would be a better word for it. editorial note: There are lines even in Colorado Springs politics which should not be crossed. Such as paid representatives using their positions of power to influence elections. Sally Clark is an Earth-raping Fascist a Land Developer, part of the "in crowd" who destroyed the economy of the U.S., the entire planet and in particular Colorado Springs with their Ponzi-scheme federally subsidized Mortgage Ripoff. And who bought her position and vote not only as city council but as County Commissioner. Same as always Lisa Czeladtko is running for City Councilor of Colorado Springs Colorado. The status quo in Colorado Springs shows hatred toward victims of a poor local economy. Former Colorado Springs City Councilor and current El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark is the campaign manager for Lisa Czeladtko. Lisa Czeladtko has negatively criticized the New Life Church for having helped victims of a fallen economy in Acacia Park. Lisa Czeladtko has publicly demonized victims of a fallen economy. Sallie Clark is acting as her campaign manager while serving as El Paso County Commissioner. Sallie Clark must either resign as El Paso County Commissioner or resign as Lisa Czeladtko's Campaign Manager. Colorado Springs needs fair minded representatives on the City Council not those who express hatred toward toward people who were negatively affected by the downfall of the economy. Furthermore let this petition serve as a notice that the whole world is watching Colorado Springs There was a Richard Pryor movie long ago "Brewster's Millions: an American excess story" in which the question was put, of a mayoral candidate, "Why would anybody spend 30 Million dollars to get elected to a job that pays a hundred Thousand a year? Answer: because he can steal it back, with interest" While the campaign costs for City Council and County Commissioner here aren't that large, neither is the actual pay for those positions. Since every man jack and girl Jill on either board considers or at least calls him/her self a "conservative" and with business ethics which start and end with Profit At Whatever Moral Cost, that leads to a (yet another) wide-open all-you-can-steal-buffet publicly funded trough where the Rich can feed. Exact text of petition: Please Resign Greetings, We feel that your efforts to help Lisa Czeladtko win a seat onto the Colorado Springs City Council are with hatred toward the victims of a poor economy in the Colorado Springs Area. We the undersigned feel that it would be in the best interests of the people in the Colorado Springs and El Paso County Area if you resign as Lisa Czeladtko's Campaign Manager and/or El Paso County Commissioner [Your name] Of course my take on it remains unchanged The City of
Love me I’m a Liberal – Phil Ochs
"In every American community you have varying degrees of shadiness. One of the shadiest of these is the Liberals. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally." -Phil Ochs, 1967
Compared to George W. Bush, Obama demonstrates W didn’t stand for Worse
Media voices this morning are positively giddy with Obama's extension of tax cuts for the rich. Probably anticipating a hefty Christmas bonus. Today would be a good time to apologize to Debby Downers you vilified in '08 because they cautioned that Barack Obama was not the change you wanted to believe in. I wasn't among them, I didn't have the temerity to rain on everyone's hopeful desperation. Today I have to laugh. LAUGH. We traded in a thieving bumbler for a hypocritical lying bore who's only changed gears on corporate graft, a higher gear. The heist Obama just pulled for America's rich leaves absolutely no question whom he serves. I mean, he can pretend to be thwarted at every turn, the wars, Guantanamo, DADT, but in this case, he's plain shilling for the other side, telling regular Americans this is a good deal for them.
Illinois legislators urge National Guard to patrol Chicago, Constitution says no
Things you learn while cleaning out your spam folder. Get bigger breasts. Get a bigger penis, get a scholarship to the Police Academy. (???) cash in on your GI bill, join the Army, get compensation from the Nigerian Government for being a victim of a Nigerian scam, just give them all your identification and a valid bank account they can Clean out errr.. transfer the funds to... Classic Viagra, not just regular Viagra, no SIR! It's CLASSIC and of course goes well with whatever dope makes your breasts bigger. AND... The Chicago Police have been offered from two Illinois Legislators assistance in the form of National Guard troops. OK so that was on the way to the mail folder on Yahoo. But the story is legit. Now, neither the Chicago Police nor the Illinois National Guard are especially warm to the idea. Mostly because it's a really stupid idea and sounds a whole lot like political grandstanding.. The Klan often make such offers. Just not to the South Side of Chicago (the baddest part of town and if you go down there you better just beware of a man name of Leroy Brown..) because they themselves knew better and though they're given to grandstanding stunts they ain't that crazy. Don't get me wrong, they ARE nut-jobs, just even insanity has an upward limit. One thing the Chicago Superintendent of Police said rings a huge bell, honks a big horn and in general makes a grab for your attention. The police, says the Super, have to function within the Constitution of the United States and have to recognize human rights, like to a fair trial and actual proof of guilt before arresting somebody. Or at least after arresting somebody.
Happy Earth day, to us!
Four decades in the making, and at the FIRST Earth Day suggestions were made to stop destroying Earth. Which, since any habitable Other Planet is decades in the future, and Earth happens to be our ONLY life support mechanism until then, and the destruction could kill Earth long before then... At the First Earth Day, Public Transportation was touted. Since then, the SUV has taken over the roads, the roads have been expanded, still not enogh to satiate the Single Passenger Car Monster. The Oil and Coal industry fight very hard against public transportation, call it "socialism". There's a growing industry in Solar Power, which the Oil and Coal industries, and the automakers, sick their TeaBag attack dogs on any possibility of Government assistance in the advancement of the technology. While and at the time lining up every budget cycle, or as they call it "Feeding Time", sticking their fat corporate snouts in the Welfare Trough. Disposable packaging was a newer technology, only a few decades old. Now that has mushroomed, (mushroom is a good image, it's the fruiting carpophore of Mold, if you will: the Flower of Decay) as have Disposable Everything. Earth might have given herself a gift in the form of increased vulcanism. Since "our" political leaders can't pull themselves away from the Corporate Welfare Trough or grow any kind of Spinal Fortitude to stop the Oil and Automobile and Disposable Toxins industries from killing our planet, at least it will slow down Global Warming. Maybe long enough for them to get their fat porky Collective Arse in gear. Mama Nature is doing for us what we should have been not-too-damn-greedy to do for ourselves.Not being a killjoy, I hope, We do need to inject a LOT of righteous anger into the discussions today. Not Aggressive Violent Whiny Tantrums like the Tea-Bags throw, but a similar level of energy. Remind the "conservatives" that the root of their name is "conserve". Not, you know, wasting everything in a hedonistic orgy of greed. The ecology is the very root of our economy.
Katyn Forest kills new Polish Mandarins
At the height of the scramble for Poland which led to WWII, longtime nemesis Russia virtually decapitated Poland's governing class. Nazi Germany brought Blitzkrieg and Genocide, but the Russians successfully dominated Poland because Stalin had executed its officers and intelligentsia in the Katyn Forest in 1940. It was to a 70th anniversary commemoration of the Katyn Massacre that the president of Poland, with much of his government, was flying when his plane crashed this week. Does is surprise any that Russia's Vladimir Putin would take a lesson from the success of the first Katyn firing squads, in ridding his sensitive border regions this time of pro-Western administrators who were showing no qualms about hosting NATO missiles aimed at their Russian neighbor? Putin's audacity might defy belief, but why is our media reticent to accuse the macho kingpin?
Company wolves in nonpartisan clothing
Would you believe it? Not My Tribe is "nonpartisan!" We favor neither Republican or Democrat, although current usage presumes you are of course one or the other, it's just that you've agreed not to show bias. Nonpartisan is not "non-aligned." It does not mean you are neither. Nonpartisan has become more like "nondenominational." Which means not of a specific religious adherence, but certainly belonging to one of them. And like nondenominational, isn't it a ruse? Religious events billing themselves as nondenominational are casting a big net hoping to lure other believers, making the implication that they need to escape their more demarcated sect. They're after the heathen too, but make no mistake, that doesn't mean they adjust their platform one iota. Nonpartisan political groups cast themselves as aligned to neither major party. Laws governing nonprofits forbid party allegiance, but regulations don't address the socio-political aims of their missions. Just as the term "nonprofit" describes just that entity's balance sheets. It doesn't reflect the nonprofit's goals, from which sponsoring organizations definitely plan to profit. The insurance company think tanks weighing in against health care reform are all nonpartisan non-profits. You can be a fully-owned research division and because you are neither particularly Republican nor Democrat, you can label yourself not of the fray. Fox News although shamelessly willing to pervert "fair" and "balanced," does not have the temerity to call themselves nonpartisan. It would expose the ruse. Propagandist Bill O'Reilly instead hides behind the less inobjective "independent." And so Not My Tribe is more accurately independent, because we keep company with neither corporate party, the left or the right. Obviously are Left, Left, Left, and fully partisan. More akin to namesake Partisans who resisted the Nazi onslaught. Just as the capitalist wolves are corporate partisans in nonpartisan clothing.
A fine mess you got us into, said the fat man to the little man
I'm convinced the economic "mess" we find ourselves in, is of the Laurel and Hardy variety. The iridescent definition of "mess" leads us to infer that our predicament-mess, results from a clutter-mess of options. To hear the parade of experts, our financial mess is a chaotic tangle to dumbfound even a string theorist. I think it's more like a job for CSI. This "mess" is painted to obscure an entirely un-messy crime scene. The common American is in a mess alright, we're staring at a bare bank vault floor. Sleuths can trace a fugitive's ATM visits, and every bank transaction above $2,500, do you think they can't follow the money when it's in the twelve figures, if they wanted to? The mess may be a clutter of fingerprints and a tangle of wire transfers to Switzerland. Maybe we face a daunting defensive line of corporate lawyers. The press is no helping any, choosing to interview the usual odd-footed pundits, instead of the over hundred economists trying to beat down the door to oppose the various economic stimulus bank heists. The entire public discourse is being dumbed down. The MSNBC text title beneath Obama as he gave his Daschle mea culpa, read "IS CHANGE TOO DIFFICULT?" By the way, couldn't the President of the United States have enough clout to answer each question about Tom Daschle with a quick admission and segue to a pitch for his proposed stimulus package? Next the spotlight moved to Joe the Plumber, the Senate Republicans inviting him to a closed door session where he could brief them on his Middle East junket, the stimulus, and party strategy. Joe the Not Even Licensed Plumber? I was beginning to suspect Sarah Palin had been selected as a ruse to give the American people no choice but to elect a black man to the presidency. Now it appears the GOP was purposefully courting idiocy, and realizes now perhaps that it hadn't aimed low enough. Maybe it hopes to recreate its success in the shoes of Dumb George. To Joe the Plumber, every problem is not going to look like three quarter inch pipe in need of a wrench. Problems like the economy, or how to use your watch to calculate how to get to a political rally on time, are going to look like powerful quandaries. And the media hopes to use Joes like Joe as a Greek Chorus, or in modern parlance, a focus group of one, to demonstrate to the public beast that Joe the Everyman Us is stumped. Does Obama have the votes to pass this or that? Even with a Democratic majority, polls will show that if Joe Public can't count it on the fingers of both hands, he'll believe the pundits when they say Obama doesn't.