Interesting how, whenever you look at the news, it’s the Democratic Party that’s bitching the loudest about the influence of big money in politics — even as Barack Obama’s latest re-election fundraising efforts set all-time records, with $86 million raised in the second quarter of this year alone. In fact, Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, reports that the Obamabots are “back, they’re energized” — although his Wall Street masters don’t seem quite as energized as last time. They’re apparently still feeling all butthurt from Obama calling them “fat cats”.

Word has it that the Obama campaign could end up raising at least a billion dollars before the campaign is over. That’s right, ONE BILLION DOLLARS. Who the hell ever thought that one day someone would spend a billion dollars to have himself elected President? No wonder hardly anybody bothers to vote in this country anymore.

ONE BILLION GODDAMN’ DOLLARS. Jesus Christ.

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Special thanks to my Twitter comrade @KenBias for suggesting this gag line in a tweet he posted the other day.

Continue reading "It’s Always the GOP’s Fault" »

When the shit hits the fan,
you’ll be sittin’ on the can
when the whip comes down!
–rolling stones.

Right now, in Egypt, Cairo’s fabled Tahrir Square is packed full of people protesting the continuing military police state, protesting the release of police charged with crimes of brutality and military trials for civilians.

Right now, in Greece, newly-enacted harsh economic austerity measures have brought students and workers into the streets by the thousands in protest.

Meanwhile, right now, in the Bad Old USA, the Obama Administration has extended the infamous Patriot Act and is preparing to gut Medicare and Social Security as part of a harsh economic austerity program. So, how are Americans responding to this? Why, they’re slobbed out on their apathetic fat asses, falling asleep watching the latest news on Casey Anthony.

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Yeah, uh huh… like in Vietnam. And Nicaragua. And Iraq.

This was my other favorite quote from Obama’s Afghanistan speech, a crass naked appeal to American conceit. Matthew Rothschild writes in The Progressive:

Our war president promised more war. While he trumpeted his big Afghanistan speech as the first step in ending that war, Barack Obama essentially told the American people that tens of thousands of our soldiers would still be fighting there for at least three more years.

A year from now, Obama said all the additional “surge” troops will be back home. But the U.S. will still have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, twice the number that were there when Obama took office.

Only “by 2014,” he said, will the Afghan people “be responsible for their own security.”

And even then, Obama appears to have left himself an out. “We’ll have to do the hard work of keeping the gains that we made,” he said. But what if those “gains” aren’t kept? Would he reverse course and keep more troops there…?

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So, apparently, Obama gave a speech the other day about Afghanistan. Mind you, I haven’t watched a single Obama speech ever since the ‘04 Democratic Convention keynote and the Inauguration. That was pretty much all I could stand; since then, about all I could handle was the occasional video clip on TV, or the transcripts posted on the Web. From all accounts, it was classic Obama, a rehash of the Iraq “withdrawal” announcement: out of all the clips and reports I saw, two “money quotes” really stuck in my craw, and one of them was that “the tide of war is receding” — and just in time for next year’s election. Who’da thunk it?

It’s reported that our Boy Emperor is bringing home the troops he sent when he first escalated the slaughter in Afghanistan, leaving 70,000 still there, plus leaving himself an out — of course! — allowing him to stick around if things aren’t working out for the Empire. All told, this “withdrawal” means a continuation of the war until at least 2014 — conveniently, a year into the incoming GOP administration, at which point the Liberals and Progressives will have miraculously rediscovered their anti-war voices and be cynically filling the streets again.

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Continue reading "The Tide of War" »