“We do best when the middle class is doing well.”
–Barack Obama, Presidential Debate 10.03.2012

So, I’m seeing a lot of footage of Obama rallies on TV lately showing us lots of raving Dembots waving signs reading “Middle Class First”.

Now, on the surface, this sounds really nice and progressive populist and all, until you stop and think of how Obama bailed out the banks and Wall Street and left the foreclosed and unemployed hanging out to dry, and when you think about how the Presidential candidates of both wings of the Party pandered to the middle class while totally ignoring the working class and the poor. In fact, at my count, at last Wednesday night’s “debate”, I heard the phrase “middle class” spoken at least fifteen times in the first half hour — until I had to stop watching because my eyes were glazing and my brain was dribbling out of my ears.

To be honest, I’m actually becoming really annoyed at the amount of fawning and gushing and pandering directed at the Middle Class™ by politicians at the media, even as they display indifference — or, in some cases, flat-out hostility — towards the working class, the poor, and the formerly middle-class who’ve fallen into poverty owing to extended unemployment or foreclosure.

Let’s also not forget that generally, the Middle Class™ is where all the narrow-mindedness, conformity, materialism and selfishness live.They consume the most resources and complain the most about taxes while demanding the best of everything — roads, schools, public services — while joining in the villification of the poor and identifying with the rich, even as the rich continue to screw them royally.

So, perhaps a more accurate slogan for the Obama campaign might be “Middle Class First, And Throw The Poor A Bone If There’s Any Left”.

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The continuing adventures of The Forty-Seven Percent.

My follow-up to last week’s anatomical chart.
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No, really, it is, at least parts of it.

I was on my way downstairs for a sandwich one late morning last week or so, and I passed by the bedroom, where the DW is catching up on some impresario chores on her laptop while the satellite box is nailed down to MSNBC. As aiways, I stop for a minute or two just to check out what they’re emitting, and it’s some woman who looked as if she were made entirely of plastic babbling an item about Hill leadership’s reaction to the discovery that the US Olympic Team’s uniforms had been made in China. Faster than you could say “eight percent unemployment”, Harry Reid and John Boehner had crapped their drawers loudly while blurting out carefully crafted Tourette’s episodes on the subject of the export of US jobs to China. After offering up this news, the anchorbabe said — for real, I shit you not — “At last, something that Democrats and Republicans can agree on.”

“…along with war, torture, censorship, warrantless surveillance, assassinations, detention without trial…” the anchorbabe neglected to add.

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Yesterday morning at Lafayette Square across from the White House, David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, locked himself into a cage in a civil disobedience protest against US policies on the cultivation of industrial-grade hemp for use in food and fibers.

Bronner notes that the US is the biggest market on Earth for industrial hemp products, and yet US farmers are cut out of the market; as a result, his company is forced to buy hemp oil from Canadian outfits to the tune of $100,000 per year. Bronner also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Obama government in that as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted twice in support of industrial hemp cultivation, but as El Presidente, he has actively interfered in the rights of states to legalize the growing of industrial hemp, including his refusal to to meet with a delegation from North Dakota, whose government — from the Governor on down — has signaled its wishes to allow its farmers to cultivate industrial hemp.

From about 8am until the DC Fire Department arrived to cut the locks and bolts holding the cage closed, Bronner harvested some of the half-dozen or so industrial-grade hemp plants he had on hand — at .06% THC, smoking it would give you nothing but a headache — sifted the seeds, and used them to demonstrate a hand-cranked seed-oil press.

(Note: Owing to currently-insoluble issues with Vimeo’s new uploading system, I’m forced to revert back to YouTube for the foreseeable future… and yeah, it kinda sucks. Apologies.)

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