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.
11×17″ grayscale .jpg image, vertical format, 476kb
11×17″ grayscale .jpg image, horizontal format, 636kb
I’ve been watching these two flirting while pretending not to flirt since about 2002. The elephant would watch the donkey all the time, and the donkey would watch back, while they pretended to hate each others’ guts. The donkey would pretend not to give a shit — not speaking to him, not returning his calls, but the whole time she’d look for excuses to be around while the elephant was in the room. It got to be pretty annoying after a while — the donkey would be flirting her ass off, and the whole time saying it was nothing, just a little bipartisanship, all in a spirit of compromise.
It only got worse after 2004 — the donkey practically throwing herself at the elephant, while acting all coy, like she didn’t even care, the elephant behaving like a cold bastard toward her, while anybody with half a brain in their head knew he really wanted to fuck her brains out.
The goddamn’ donkey got even worse around 2008 or so — smarmy coy looks, suggestive touching, soppy goo-goo eyes, all the time insisting there was nothing to it. Finally, about the time of the health care vote, she was all but falling all over the elephant, and it became insufferable. It was all I could do to keep from yelling “for crissakes, why don’t you two just get a room, already?”
“We Tread On Thee”, more like.
In light of the recent incident at a Rand Paul appearance in Kentucky, in which a couple of his goons assaulted and stomped on the head of a woman counterdemonstrator from MoveOn, we thought it was time to update the design of the historic Gadsden Flag — a.k.a. “Don’t Tread On Me” flag.
Downloadable in three glorious revolutionary sizes:
Letter-size, high resolution, 600kb
Tabloid size, medium resolution, 468kb
34 x 22.527 inches, medium resolution, 1mb
Füçking Hippies
“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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