So, a couple of days ago I’m taking my morning walk up and down Constitution past the Taft Carillion, and I spot a bunch of these posters splattered all over the neighborhood. Of course, while I’m obviously delighted at the sight of these, I’m amazed and confused at the use of a tweet from our shiny new Speaker Of The House regarding US military spending.

Mind you, I’m not bullshitting myself about McCarthy or anything, but the irony of a GOP House Speaker stopping the Donkeycrats from dragging us into another forever war in Big Israel is just so goddamn deee-lish that I can’t hardly stand it.

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Continue reading "Irony Meter Busted, Film At 11" »

This piece was inspired by a blog post by Owen Paine, one of my favorite contributors to one of my favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again. He quotes some interesting passages from President Nixon’s 1971 State Of The Union Address in which he mentions the “expansionary” budget he was about to submit to Congress, a “full employment budget”. Here’s The Tricky One’s own words from back in ‘71:

“By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment”

Now, mind you, I’ve never been a Nixon revisionist, and I wasn’t one of those bonehead Liberals who spent the entirety of the Dubya Administration wishing they had Nixon back, but, still… full-employment budget? Then, I started thinking back some more… EPA? Detente with the Soviets? Healthcare program compromise with Ted Kennedy? Christalmighty, I thought, was Nixon, on balance, more progressive than Barack Obama?

Yeah, sure, Nixon dragged out a pointless war that hardly anybody wanted, bombed civilians at the drop of a hat, surveilled and harassed dissident activists, and sponsored coups and assassinations all over the world, but hasn’t Obama also done these?

Jeeeeeezus… full-employment budget.

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Continue reading "Who’s More Progressive?" »

The weather was iffy all day, swinging back and forth from perfect to looking like a downpour from one minute to the next. Still, by the time showtime rolled around, it had finally settled down to something unseasonably comfortable, and the gathered crowd of DC Statehood activists and supporting citizens finally got down to celebrating Flag Day by showing off a wide variety of DC flag-based tattoos.

“In The Flesh”, photographed and edited by Mike Flugennock, 04:32

And now, to augment your Flag Day Experience, here’s a little trip to Song Poem Hell, with the perversely legendary Gary Roberts — in his own inimitably atonal fashion — crooning “Our Flag”:

Continue reading "DC Flag Day, In The Flesh!" »

Just the other day, I was rummaging around in the Blogozone in search of inspiration — as per usual, when I found this juicy quote from an Al Schumann article at Stop Me Before I Vote Again:

…it seems far more likely that the Democrats are paying the price, an expected and even welcome price, for demobilizing and demoralizing their base. The Great Liberal Bus is teetering on top of a pile of the people pushed under it. From the very start, the Democrats have fought their activists harder than they’ve fought the Republicans. They’ve had them arrested!

Now, the article itself is about a year and a half old, written during the depths of the healthcare “debate”, but is still amazingly prescient in the context of the intervening two years of inaction, abuse and betrayal by the Democratic Party of its Left/Progressive constituencies, culminating in the recent budget compromise which gave the Rightists in Congress pretty much everything they wanted.

Teetering on top of a pile of the people pushed under it. Jeezus, what an image. Thanks, Schumann.

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Continue reading "Under the Bus, no.2" »