Greetings From Haiti!
Y’know, I hardly know where to start with this. Perhaps I could start with this gob-smacking foto of ex-Presidents Bubba and Chimp, both smiling their most smarmy and smug smiles as they accept the position of Special Envoys in charge of the Haitian relief effort. That’s right, ex-President I Invaded Haiti In The ’90s and ex-President Heckuva Job Brownie have been placed in charge of Haitian earthquake relief, and the bastards are frickin’ smiling… and President Timberlake, there, seems just barely able to contain himself as well. What perfect cover for a little bit of that “vulture capitalism”.
Or, perhaps this amazingly soulless, brutalist David Brooks column from the New York Times might work for you. In it, he calls for the throwing away of any tolerance or respect for foreign cultures and calls for “intrusive paternalism” at least half a dozen times in a page and a half of thinly-veiled racist spewage. In spirit and letter, it’s really no different from any similar racist spewage about Haiti and the Dominican Republic published in the New York Times a century or so ago; Noam Chomsky writes in Year 501:
Times editors lauded the “unselfish and helpful” attitude that the US had always shown, now once again as it responded “in a fatherly way” as Haiti “sought help here.” Our “unselfish intervention has been moved almost exclusively by a desire to give the benefits of peace to people tormented by repeated revolutions,” with no thought of “preferential advantages, commercial or otherwise,” for ourselves. “The people of the island should realize that [the US government] is their best friend.” The US sought only to ensure that “the people were cured of the habit of insurrection and taught how to work and live”; they “would have to be reformed, guided and educated,” and this “duty was undertaken by the United States.” There is a further benefit for our “black brother”: “To wean these peoples away from their shot-gun habit of government is to safeguard them against our own exasperation,” which might lead to further intervention. “The good-will and unselfish purposes of our own government” are demonstrated by the consequences, the editors wrote in 1922, when they were all too apparent and the Marine atrocities had already aroused a storm of protest.
However, if comic relief is what you’re after, don’t despair; former US Senator John “Senator Goodhair” Edwards is going to Haiti to help out, also — with cameras conveniently present, of course.
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Happy Anniversary, Obamabots!
Well, here we are, a year into this glorious new post-racial, post-partisan Hope’n’Change Era, so let’s just pause to take stock of all the momentous Change that President Booker T. Obama has brought us:
The Economy: worse. President Hope has given away absurdly huge buttloads of our tax money to bankers and Wall Street. Bonus? Of course. That’s what the bankers have done to us for the past year or so.
Health Care: worse. To paraphrase a recent Keith Olbermann broadcast, it’s not health, it’s not care, and it sure as hell isn’t reform. President Change’s idea of health care reform involves shutting single-payer supporters out of the “debate”, massive corporate giveaways to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, the threat of fines or jail for people who don’t buy corporate health insurance even if they can’t afford it — and if you can afford decent health insurance, President Yes We Can wants to tax the living shit out of your benefits. Still, with any luck, that Coakley woman will lose that special Senate election in Massachusetts, and it’ll be Sayonara Charlie to The Bill That Needs Killing.
Civil Liberties: worse. Some doorknob in Detroit tries to blow up a plane with his underwear, and the next thing we know, President Hope wants to institute Jim Crow for Muslims and make us all to pose for digital x-ray porn. Meanwhile, one of President Hope’s fellow Harvard punks over at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs wants to assign CIA spooks to troll duty at any blogs that happen to bug him.
Illegal Foreign Wars: worse. President Change — or, as Code Pink called him during the campaign, the “Peace Candidate” — makes a big-ass deal out of appearing to seriously ponder the situtation before initiating a 40,000-troop escalation of the war in The Graveyard Of Empires — or, as it’s more commonly called, Afghanistan. The Nobel Prize committee finishes slurping the dregs out of the bottom of the Kool-Aid bowl and awards President Change a Nobel Peace Prize; President Change, on accepting the Prize, gives a pro-war speech. Now, that’s class.
So, congratulations to one and all of you Obamabots who allowed yourselves to be motivated by fear and desperation and fall for the first slick-assed huckster who can speak in complete sentences and knows how to pronounce the word “nuclear”. I just can’t thank you enough.
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T-shirts and Stickers at Mike’s Schwag Shop.
Between the Teabaggers and the Birthers, I’d thought I’d pretty much seen the pinnacle of evolution for Rightist nutcakes.
Then, the Oath Keepers showed up, a bunch of current and retired military and cops howling about the new dangers to the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold with all the bluster they can muster on a Web site which, like all similar right-wing sites, is hopelessly swimming in Revolutionary War-era metaphor and imagery. Oh, and don’t forget to check out their video, in which they declare their intent to disobey their Top Ten Unjust Orders with a lush backdrop of inspiring patriotic and military imagery and overwrought music. Yeah, you might think we Lefties get a bit over the top, but for sheer Drama Queen goodness, you can’t beat the Right Wingnuts.
What’s especially interesting about this bunch is that they were founded just this past March, not even two months after Barack “Timberlake” Obama took office. Now, mind you — during the eight goddamn’ years in which the Bush Regime was instigating illegal wars of aggression, censoring the news, arbitrarily declaring people “enemy combatants” and detaining them without charges or a trial, criminalizing Muslims and the Left, suppressing dissent, allowing torture, and otherwise generally pissing on the Constitution at every opportunity, the people comprising the Oath Keepers were nowhere to be found. In fact, when US service personnel were refusing to comply with illegal or unconstitutional orders under Bush, you could hear the future Oath Keepers howling for courts martial and trials for treason.
Now that there’s a Donkeycratic administration in power, though, the Oath Keepers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, bellowing at full throat about illegal orders and detention camps and the military occupation of American cities and threats to the Constitution. Never mind that Obama’s pretty much continuing all of Bush’s favorite programs such as imprisonment without charges, rendition, torture, suppression of the news — not to mention that he’s escalating the war in Afghanistan. That sort of pertinent information is totally lost on these doorknobs: all they know is that now the Donkeycrats are in the White House, the President is a N!gg3r, and the Republic is in grave danger. Oh, yeah, and they don’t want to pay taxes, either; they want highways and schools and National Parks, but they don’t want to pay taxes — like the Teabaggers, but with more brass and swagger. Basically, the Oath Keepers are for people who think the Teabaggers are too liberal.
(…and read more about the Oath Keepers’ association with White Nationalists at Lady Liberty’s Lamp.)
Continue reading "Oath Keepers: When the Teabaggers Just Aren’t Whacked Enough" »
Decision 2012 (pardon my Herblock)
Oh, gaahhhdddd! Not only another election cartoon, but a cartoon with items metaphorically labeled, old-school! Jeez, I can hear my pal Gregor yelling right now… “Goddammit, Mike! Herblock is DEAD!”
Yeah, y’know… once the election ideas get going, it’s pretty much hopeless. The usual Repuglican “stars” are already making noises about running; we’re hearing about Sarah Palin possibly running (sigh), and Newt Gingrich (spit) — and I even heard about Dick Cheney (double spit) on Joe Scarborough’s program this morning (triple spit).
OK, granted, 2012…I may be a bit ahead of myself, here, but still… if you check out The One’s record of achievement (or lack of same) in just his first year in office, plus the rash of FAIL in the special elections this year, you’re looking at a raft of Donkeycratic politicians with a whole fistful of “achievements” pinned to their respective asses, and damn’ near little ability to defend them come next year’s midterms — which, by the way, will be held after the Afghanistan debacle’s had about a year to soak in.
So, would that be next year’s repudiation of last year’s repudiation?
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