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
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? 33653
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
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. 28693
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) 26062
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
$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? 24308
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. 22485
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. 16261
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... 16204
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? 8459
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. 6362