Among my wife’s and my best friends are a gay couple who live near us in our neighborhood. One of the guys was a colleague of my wife’s for several years; before moving here, he was the first openly gay mayor of a town in Iowa. He also recently served as one of the ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) representatives for our ward, and currently holds a management job for the city government. He and his partner have been in a serious, loving, committed relationship as far back as I can remember. They’ve bought a house and renovated it together and have been active contributors to the community. Every year they celebrate the anniversary of the US Constitution by having a really awesome party. Basically, we’re talking about a couple of really cool, hard-working, stand-up guys.

It always bothered me, though, that whenever I’ve been at their annual Constitution Day party for the past few years, their basement has been decorated with some Obama ’08 lawn signs and other campaign schwag — and I could never figure out why, given that Obama pretty much came right out during the ’08 campaign and stated his intention to do absolutely nothing to make our friends’ lives any less of a pain in the ass than they already are (and, in fact, he’s been working to make it even more of a pain in the ass). I’ve always been tempted to ask them why they supported Obama given his opposition to same-sex marriage, but as these guys have been good friends of my wife and I for many years, I’ve decided not to cause a big stink, and let it slide. Still, it really burned my toast to think that Barack Obama allowed himself to be portrayed as some big-time progressive, but didn’t want these guys to enjoy the same rights as my wife and I.

So, you can imagine just how steamed I got when I saw Obama contributing a video to the “It Gets Better” series. Hearing him delivering empty platitudes on tolerance and bullying really made me gag as I thought of his opposition to gay marriage — he supports the lame half-measure of “civil unions” — as well as his inviting Rick Warren, the infamous gay-bashing megachurch preacher, to speak at his Inauguration, and his Administration’s lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court in favor of retaining the insulting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays in the military. Mind you, I think the real problem is dead soldiers, not gay soldiers, but, still, the policy sucks on general principle. In the meantime, President Precious is giving us lame lip service on the bullying of gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people, while he and his regime engage in bullying of a kind even worse than the physical kind — bullying by the State, in the form of repressive and discriminatory official policies.

Just when you think Obama’s smarmy, empty sentiments can’t be any more infuriating — it gets worse.

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“You’re obsolete, my baby–my poor, unfaithful baby,
I said, baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time!”
–Rolling Stones

A couple of weeks or so ago, Vice Emperor Joe Biden went on TV and called the American Left “whiners” for daring to complain about the abject failure of the Democratic Party to enact any truly progressive reforms while at about the same time, Boy Emperor Barack Martin Luther Gandhi Aquinas Timberlake Obama The One gave a bitchy interview to Rolling Stone in which he slags the Left six ways from Sunday for complaining about the Democrats sucking so badly, pretty much doing everything but pissing on us and giving us the finger in what was the first round of “hippie bashing” by the Democrats — followed by his remarks at a posh fundraising dinner in Connecticut attended by a buttload of rich people, in which he spits on the Left yet again while bowing and scraping to “the people who write the checks”. That’s sure a helluva way to convince your progressive “base” to support you, isn’t it? You go back on every promise you ever made during the ’08 campaign, you retain and expand on Bush’s policies on imperialist war and the national security state, you enrich the banks and Wall Street while leaving the unemployed and homeowners facing foreclosure to twist in the wind, you sit by while economies and ecosystems are destroyed on the Gulf Coast, you legislate sweetheart deals with the health-insurance and pharmaceutical industries under the guise of “reform”, you exhibit the most craven behavior possible in the face of rightists and fascists — and when the people who helped elect you dare to complain about it and threaten to withhold their support in the midterm “elections”, you go on TV and insult them to their faces? There’s some real out-of-the-box thinking for you. Is your party and its leadership an abysmal failure? No problem, just blame those fucking hippies for complaining, and announce that the beatings will continue until morale improves.

In the meantime, Democratic Party mouthpieces in the blogozone are going into full-tilt pants-crapping panic mode, with Robert Parry at consortiumnews.com spewing a page full of the most weak-assed, warmed-over, shopworn scaremongering and excuse-making possible, complete with that good old Nader Hate. Trouble is, in the course of trying to make a case of supporting the Democrats no matter what, he makes a case for staying home — or even voting Republican, seeing as how even with the Democrats in power, we’re still being saddled with Republican policies which, more often than not, are being enabled by the Democrats. Parry might as well have cut’n’pasted an old column from 2000, begging and pleading with us not to vote Green in response to the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Clinton Regime, threatening us with calamity and disaster, guilt-tripping us with that tired old bullshit about how “a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush”. Hell, even the Communist Party USA is getting in on the action, with Comrade Chairman Sam Webb posting a whiny-assed screed pleading with us to not sit this one out. Jeezus, who’d have thought that even the geezing old cranks at the CPUSA were fronting for the Democrats these days?

Eight or ten years ago, this kind of behavior by the Democrats and their mouthpieces would’ve made me livid, but nowadays it just fills me with delight; I can’t begin to tell you how liberating it was to finally quit giving a shit about what happens to the Democrats. Sure, on the one hand its really piss-poor the way Biden and the Boy Emperor are dissing us, but what do you expect? These are Democrats we’re talking about here, y’know. I become flat-out ecstatic every time I hear either of these two — not to mention the likes of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed “I Know No-THING!” Schultz blustering and kvetching and pleading for us to come out and vote for their miserable-assed party, because I know that every time they do this, they’re showing us just how truly weak, ineffectual and entirely unworthy of our support they are. “Pleee-eeease vote for us! Pretty please? We only suck ass a little less than the GOP! C’monnnn, pleeee-eeaase?” P’wahh ha ha ha ha ha hahhh. Take a goddamn’ hike, assholes. It’s popcorn time. You want to pander to me, exploit me, guilt-trip me, lie to me, insult me to my face on TV? Kiss my ass goodbye.

I plan on staying home on “Election” Day, withholding my support for a bunch of cowardly corporate tools, refusing my consent for a system that doesn’t work in my interests — and doing it without shame, regret or apology. Seriously, folks — there’s no shame in staying home on “Election” Day if none of the walking wastes of DNA seeking your vote are representing your values or standing up for what you believe in. C’mon, take a chance. Stay home. Don’t participate in the cheap-assed kabuki theater that passes for “democracy” in this country. See how liberating it is.

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Word Of The Day: “Doughy”

From Our Better Late Than Never Department:

The Washington Post, possibly suffering a massive brain seizure due to the heat, referred to the Beckapalooza at the Lincoln Memorial as a “grassroots” event. Oh, absolutely; I’ve lost track of how many up-by-the-bootstraps, grassroots mobilizations had rallies with custom-built stages, state-of-the-art sound, high-end multi-camera video production and five or six Jumbotrons.

And, oh, did they use those Jumbotrons — to crank out a steady diet of smarmy, syrupy video trailers full of classically empty nationalistic propaganda language about the Greatest Country In The World and the Greatest People On Earth. The stage production may have been pure Albert Speer, but the video pieces were pure Reifenstahl. For a bunch of people who cherished freedom and hated being made to do something, they sure did enjoy being told what to do. Not even the most craven, tweedy Liberals enjoyed being bossed around more than this bunch.

The Posse and I could only stand in awe at the high number of pasty, doughy, Twinkie-fed folks who turned out to help Restore Honor. It’s almost a good thing Glenn Beck didn’t schedule a march, because he’d have been sued by the families of the nearly 100,000 heart attack and heatstroke victims among the roughly 200,000 who Restored Honor on Saturday. It was at this rally that the folding camp chair would become symbolic and synonymous with your slackly-rallying Teabagger.

I thought it was interesting that Beck made such a big deal about his people not bringing signs. Did they honestly think they could cover up the rank hate and racism that oozes out of them? They may not have had signs, but we saw some nasty t-shirts at that rally. Besides, we’ve already seen plenty of them for the past year and a half, so it’s not like the rest of us don’t know who they are, and where they’re from, and what they stand for, and what they’re about.

I honestly don’t know which was worse: the possibility of being threatened and roughed up by Teabaggers, or being grabbed and manhandled by Al Sharpton’s henchmen. Both of these happened Saturday — to a young man holding a “Re-Elect Obama” sign assaulted by members of Glenn Beck’s bunch at the Lincoln Memorial, and to yours truly and to fellow Posse members jerked around by the arms by parade marshals while covering the Sharpton march; what those New York guys didn’t realize is that they were in Washington, DC, which has the highest number of lawyers per square inch of anywhere in the USA, and consequently full of people who will sue your ass. God help anyone doesn’t toe the line at the Sharpton press scrum.

And speaking of our Dear Lord, there was a whole lot of God being pushed on both sides of this circus. God was asked to bless America at least twice (by both sides). God was asked to bless the crowd (on both sides). God was thanked for Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. God was invoked in remarks on religious diversity that strangely didn’t include atheists.

The opposition event wasn’t so much about whether or not they kept Beck off the Lincoln Memorials grounds as it was about Reclaiming The Dream. Organizers included the National Action Network, the SEIU, and the usual suspects, so they weren’t any more “grassroots” than the Beck event, although NAN couldn’t afford Jumbotrons. Still, while they didn’t have Jumbotrons, they did have Al Sharpton.

Continue reading "Sharpton Marches, Teabaggers Sit, Honor Restored, Dream Reclaimed" »

They love me! They really, really love me!

After spending the better part of the past two or three months cranking ’em out every other week — including more goddamn’ oil spill cartoons than I care to think about — I decided to take a break and finish getting ready for my two-week trip to South Africa, which I just returned from this past weekend.

So, the other night, while doing my normal rounds of rightist blog surfing for cheap laffs, what should I stumble over but this entry at Michael Wolfe’s blog at americana83.com, declaring the Teabaggers’ opposition is hypocritical and swearing all up and down that the Tea Party “Movement” isn’t racist, despite the recent Philadelphia rally which was made of FAIL, the recent video-hacking antics of Little Andy Breitbart and the racist email blasting of New York Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino.

Along with citing my video of the July 4, 2009 Teabagger rally on Capitol Hill, Mr. Wolfe also took considerable liberties with my work in the form of an attempted parody of my late 2008 cartoon “Obama’s Big Bus”:

I briefly considered writing to complain and to post a takedown notice under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, except that 1: parody, as I recall, falls under “fair use”, and 2: I was unable to type properly as I was laughing so hard, although not in the manner that Wolfe might have intended.

So I finally decided, what the hell, man; why not keep it classy and be a good sport? And, besides, as they say, any publicity is good publicity. Thanks, Wolfe.

Continue reading "More Lame Teabagger Hackery" »