Bite more, bark less, I always say.

If you’re like me, you’re probably at your wits’ end with the “civility” crowd. You know who they are, the people with stickers on the cars reading “choose civility” and “wag more, bark less”.

Do these people honestly believe that our reaction to the injustices, indignities and brutalities of the past decade should be in the manner of a UN bureaucrat drafting a resolution?

Are the corporations and the State being “civil” when they arrange for huge bailouts for themselves while the rest of us are scrambling for work or being thrown out of our homes? Is the State being “civil” when it seeks to cut back on Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age to 70 — essentially, working us to death? Is the State being “civil” when it strips away our Constitutional protection and basic dignity for the sake of cheap security theater at the airport? Is BP being “civil” by destroying ecosystems and livelihoods on the Gulf Coast and continuing to evade prosecution? Is the Democratic Party being “civil” when it panders to “progressive” constituencies in order to secure their votes, then spends the next two years publicly abusing and mocking them?

If you ask me, we need less “civility” and more people willing to organize and act on their own behalf instead of whining about how Liberal politicians are doing such a bad job of fighting their struggles for them, and how there’s so little “civility” these days. Take a tip from the British and the French. They’ve shut whole cities and countries down, with strikes and “incivility”. They’ve made their countries nearly ungovernable over issues — like corporatized healthcare and retirement “takebacks” — that make your average American shrug for a moment and go back to watching Top Chef. This is what needs to be happening here, instead of a bunch of Liberals bitching about “civility”.

Something else, too, that I found extra double-yum ironic about the Liberal “civility” crowd. If you — like me in ‘96, ‘00 and ‘04 — were or are a supporter of Ralph Nader and/or the Green Party, try this simple test on your average “civil” Liberal: bring up how hard the Democrats worked to prevent voters from having any real choice, and how the Democrats really lost the ‘00 election — and see how “civil” their reactions are.

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Continue reading "Whatever Happened to Civility?" »

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" »

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Just so we’re on the same page, here: community organizing group ACORN registered large numbers of black voters in Chicago for the last big “election”. As is common in many registration campaigns, there’s a fair number of wise-asses registering dead peoples’ names, or fake names. Also, as is required by law by boards of elections in any US city I’ve been to, any bogus/invalid registrations are reported, to keep the voter rolls cleared of all the dead people, and all those Luke Skywalkers and Donald Ducks.

So, anyway, outfits like the Drudge Report (has anybody informed that bonehead that the ’90s are over?) get hold of this and, in their own predictable, inimitable fashion, proceed to blow this up into some kind of bogus “scandal” and throw it to the rightist k00k crowd like so much fresh, raw meat. Still, you’ve got to love Drudge, if only because he carries on in the finest shrieking tabloid tradition — never let the facts get in the way of a good story — along with providing us all with some good cheap laffs.

Now, just to refresh your memories, one more time, here’s the video of a small group of black youth selling little plastic flags at the September 12 Teabaggers’ rally being threatened and harassed, and accused of being “ACORN People” (as if there were something wrong with that in and of itself)…

Continue reading "Radio Hate" »