Too Broke to Fix

It’s safe to say that millions of Americans are saying tonight: “At last, I’m no longer ashamed to be American.”

An historic election, indeed, has seen an African-American elected president. It simply blows the mind. Even better, Barack Obama is the genuine article. The calm and judicious words he chose for his acceptance speech held no triumphalism, but a call to unity for a nation in deep trouble. Here is an intellect who will prove to be a statesman of the calibre of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected in the depths of the Great Depression. The similarity is truly remarkable.

Ironically, Obama’s success may not have been possible without the disastrous two terms of George W. Bush. He left the Repuglycan Party without a shred of credibility.

Tonight the world is suddenly a different place. Wow! America, it appears that you sure can.

Technorati Tags: America, election, Obama

Blog Tags: America, election, Obama

Race and slavery are America’s original sin. The election of Obama would be, beyond question, one of the noblest gestures of historical redemption that Americans have ever been called upon to make. — Martin Kettle

America is standing yet again at the crossroads. The nation did so at its beginning, during the Civil War, and during the Great Depression.

But this election will make or break the United States as a country of united states. It may already be too late. The two Americas, one progressive, tolerant and hopeful, the other conservative, bigoted and fearful, are farther apart than ever. The current financial meltdown, while helpful to Obama just now, may eventually turn to anarchy on Main Street, no matter who wins.

According to Guy Rundle, “there is no American heartland.” Had Abraham Lincoln not “illegally suspended the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in order to make war on half his own country…”

North America would now look like South America, with a northern USA, a southern CSA (Confederate States of America), a republic of Texas, a Spanish-speaking south-west and California, and a northern republic of Oregon, stretching to Alaska. *

The 1932 election, held in the depths of the depression, is similar to this one. The people had had enough of Repuglycan small government; government in fact that had been handed over to Wall Street. Roosevelt took over the presidency from a worn out Herbert Hoover. FDR was the president who saved capitalism from itself, who literally brought the nation out of its dog-eat-dog barbarity into the flourishing democracy that followed. He failed in some respects, but it was his administration that passed into law the social services that have allowed almost everyone since to live either prosperously or at least not to starve.

It is clear that Barrack Obama is today’s Roosevelt. John McCain is George W. Bush’s surrogate for Herbert Hoover.

Obama is also the political descendent of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. Like them, the risk of his assassination either before the election or during his presidency will never be less than very high. Were this ever to come to pass, do not look for a specimen or two of genetic garbage with cut rate weapons bought at the local gun shop. Assassinations of great leaders come from the very top.

Obama is ahead in the closing stages of this interminable election, but the result on November 4 is not foregone. Here are some reasons why:

1) The Repuglycans learned in 2000 that an election could be stolen. Florida should have gone to Al Gore.

2) In 2004 many of the vote counts in Ohio were administered by Bush supporters. The truth is, America’s voting system is worse than third world.

3) In this election, the Repuglycans are whipping up a campaign designed to confuse and frighten voters, while doing their best to keep them away from the ballot box.

4) Unless Obama wins by a wide margin, the Repuglycans could tie up the result in the Supreme Court for a long enough to throw the country into terminal turmoil. Don’t put it past the party that believes it owns the White House.

A couple of scenarios:

1) Obama wins and the world rejoices. As someone said, an Obama victory will improve America’s image around the world by sunup. America then begins a fraught period of recession while attempting to restore the integrity and system of justice upon which it was founded. Leaders of recalcitrant nations will be brought to the negotiating table instead of being threatened with blowhard annihilation. Those who refuse, because of their medieval ideologies, will be isolated by a worldwide consortium of nations bent on peace, not war. Cooperation — natural to human nature — will gradually replace competition — natural only to sport and business.

2) McCain wins, thanks to the votes of non-college educated men, abortion opponents and racists, and the world begins an overnight descent into bitter contention. America will remain a primarily warring state whose goal is hegemony over everyone’s resources in the name of its obscene definition of democracy. In retaliation, nations holding vast amounts of US currency will replace it with Euros. America will become a failed state. Its only beneficiaries will be the wealthy and the lowlifes who run amuck on the streets with their arsenals of hate.

Obama will not have an easy time of it, even if both houses of Congress become Democrat-controlled. The legacy of Ronald Reagan, not only his misanthropic economic policies, but especially his vaunting of American exceptionalism, are so ingrained now as to be part of the DNA of many Americans.

In truth, America has never been a model democracy. Perhaps no nation can ever be. Democracy requires the active participation of the people, not just at election time, but every day. It has to be based on economics and social equality. The cult of individualism has insured that many Americans are of two minds on the latter. And that is why the election of Barrack Obama is so important. At least then, the idea of the nation as a society instead of a pack of rabid, self-interested consumers can once again be contemplated,

If, somehow, John McCain and Sarah Palin were to triumph, they will most certainly oversee the completion of George W. Bush’s eight-year reign of national and worldwide destabilisation. As David Moore, a Ford employee during the dark days of the Thirties, said in the documentary, The Great Depression, “I don’t think it, I know damn well there would have been a revolution in America if Roosevelt had not got elected. And I’d have been damn part of that revolution.”

But Roosevelt did win. And so will Obama. The human race has not evolved this far without the occasional corrective to greed and intolerance. Something in the minds and hearts of the mass of men and women eventually awakens to set the species back on the right course.

* See Charles Potts: How the South Finally Won the Civil War.

Technorati Tags: America, democracy, election, lincoln, McCain, Obama, roosevelt, Sarah Palin

Blog Tags: America, democracy, election, lincoln, McCain, Obama, roosevelt, Sarah Palin

Last night’s Daily Show (4:10 in) featured a montage of Sarah Palin’s recent rallies, in which she refers to the friends of Joe the Plumber.

Speaking to supporters as if they were five-year-olds, Sarah the Paleo sounded like the twee host of a kiddie show. And the supporters cheered as if they were delighted toddlers. Here is a list of the real Umeruhcans she wanted them to know were on their side, just like Joe is:

Ed the Dairyman
Doug the Barber
Tito the Builder
Christine the Florist
Phil the Bricklayer
Cindy the Citizen
Rose the Teacher
Clark the Cook
Corinna the Nurse
Joe the Farmer
Dave the Cop
Vicky the Realtor
Jeffrey the Hockey Player
Jack the Hunter

And last but not least: Joe the Plumber’s son!

Wow! What a list of Great Umeruhcans to infuse the kids home sick from school with Patriotic Pride. And while they’re watching they can take lessons from Dad the Neo-Nazi on how to clean the weapons he keeps in the rack of his pickup truck.

My personal favourite is Cindy the Citizen. But hey, that’s not a job, is it? Wrong! In McCain-Palin World, being a citizen who votes for medieval values is the toughest job of all. Hardly a minute to relax with a six pack followed by a hearty wife beating and a little incest before opening the Bible.

Best of all, there weren’t any commie socialist types to gnarl and twist their little minds. Anti-Americans like these nasties:

Mircea the Intellectual
Belinda the novelist
Martti the Nobel Peace Prize winner
Marvin the Comedian
Steve the Composer
Harmony the Feminist
Ernest the Scientist

To top things off, Jon Stewart showed a clip of John McCain berating Obama at a rally: “He wants ta spread the wealth around!” said McCain, sounding as usual like a menacing version of Grandpa Simpson. To this heinous idea the audience booed with wild abandon. No socialist assurances that they could lead decent, functional lives for them. No sirree, they want McCain to lead them into four more years of the same old faecal nuggets of trickle-down booty promised for the last eight years. “I expect to find a flake o’ gold in one o’ them little turds any day now,” said Harlan the Small Town Repuglycan.

“Enough!” says Gaggy the Maggot.

Technorati Tags: America, Daily Show, Jon Stewart, McCain, Obama, Sarah Palin, socialism

Blog Tags: America, Daily Show, Jon Stewart, McCain, Obama, Sarah Palin, socialism

How else is McCain going to win? Threatened with the biggest wipe-out since that other Arizona Repuglycan, Barry Goldwater, lost damn near every state, McCain has had to throw every fear ‘n’ smear tactic in the books at Barrack Obama. So far they haven’t worked. But wait, didn’t he just guarantee an election victory?

Was that just blowhard bullshit, or are the Repuglycans frantically putting the finishing touches on a message from their latest stand-in for the world’s most feared man. Oops, that’s George W. Bush. I meant the other one, Osama Bin Laden.

One of my favourite conspiracies is the one where the Bush Administration routinely trots out a “new, improved” Bin Laden video whenever Umeruhcans start to forget they are under a constant, manufactured threat of a terrorist attack.

It’s hard to believe Bin Laden is still alive. If he is, then how unlikely is it that Umeruhca’s military hasn’t found him after all this time? Unless they want him kept under wraps for those ripe moments when they can scare the population into retaining the incumbent.

Towards the end of the last week of the 2004 election, here came Osama Bin Laden telling folks to back neither Bush nor Kerry, but that security could only be achieved if they urged their leaders to call off the “war on terror”. Bin Laden might as well have recited The Lord’s Prayer in Yiddish, because the very sight of him put the fear of that Mean Motherfucker of a God they all believe in right back where it belongs: in that chunk of apple pie a la mode they call a heart.

So they ran back to Bush. Instead of voting for Kerry the war hero, they once again chose the deserter. Kerry’s long-held lead evaporated overnight.

This time, you can bet Osama will throw his whole-hearted support, and the support of every terrorist on earth, behind Obama.

John McCain may be a boring, lying hypocrite, but he’s not stupid. Well, maybe he is stupid, but he’s cunning. Cunning and clever: two benchmarks of the right wing bent on retaining or attaining power at all costs, the well-being of the nation be damned.

Technorati Tags: Bush, election, McCain, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Repuglycans, war on terror

Blog Tags: Bush, election, McCain, Obama, Osama Bin Laden, Repuglycans, war on terror

As the November 4 election draws closer, between four percent and eight percent of those polled remain undecided as to whom they will vote for. How is it possible that after nearly two years of election campaigning they still cannot make up their minds?

Are they simply stupid? Indeed they are, and here John Oliver of the Daily Show who they are:

America’s quasi-democracy requires that they should remain eligible to vote, but if the election is close, it is these idiots who could determine the next president. Fortunately, voting in America is voluntary. Thus, we can count on remaining undecideds to wake up on November 4th and spend the rest of the day trying to decide which sock goes on which foot.

Technorati Tags: America, Daily Show, election, undecided voters

Blog Tags: America, Daily Show, election, undecided voters

Well, folks, October 29 is the 79th anniversary of the crash of ‘29. Today there are similarities galore, with the months-long roller coaster ups and downs of greed followed by fear preceding the deadly date.

Surely, it can’t happen again?

Then, it took a Democrat to get the country out of the financial profligacy of previous Repuglycan administrations. The first election following the crash and the beginning of the Great Depression took place in 1932. By then America and the world were on their knees. The Repuglycans had no one to replace Herbert Hoover, today regarded as one of the nation’s worst presidents, so it was left to him to do battle against Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It is widely assumed that if Hoover had won, the nation would have been plunged into a revolution.

So here we are eight decades down the timeline. Today’s FDR is Democrat Barrack Obama. This year’s Herbert Hoover is George W. Bush, regarded as the worst president in history. But since Dubya can’t run again, the baton goes to John McCain and his sidekick Sarah Palin.

Palin is the ignorant git who would hold the highest office. There are people with intelligence who regard her candidacy as a positive step forward in American politics. Which proves that intelligence does not always equate with intellect. When she gets in front of a microphone you can’t help but think of American Idol. Or of her as a contestant on a quiz show. And now Ms Palin, for the presidency of the United States, explain the Bush Doctrine in 25 words or less.

It is widely assumed that if McCain and Palin were to win the election, the world would be plunged into a turmoil far worse than the inevitable recession/depression facing Obama and Biden. Regardless of Obama’s qualifications, he represents a worldwide hope that respect and sanity can be restored to the America the Bush Administration has so assiduously worked to destroy.

As the election draws near, the campaign of the formerly quasi-honourable John McCain has become textbook smear. Commentators for both sides are using the word “erratic” over and over again. Apparently the only rusted on supporters are the lunatic fringe of the right. And a huge percentage of these folks are fundamentalist Christians who lust after Armageddon and the Apocalypse. Like the Muslim fanatics they detest but closely resemble, death is preferable to life.

And that is the bottom line here. Christian or not, supporters of the Repuglycan ticket of McCain-Palin harbour nothing less than a death wish.

Technorati Tags: America, Bush, Christian fundamentalists, election, Great Depression, McCain, Obama, Sarah Palin

Blog Tags: America, Bush, Christian fundamentalists, election, Great Depression, McCain, Obama, Sarah Palin

Yeah, we all know the real Jesse James was a psychotic racist who loved to murder unarmed people. But don’t forget he was also a loving husband and father. Sounds like the profile of most Repuglycans, doesn’t it?

It’s the mythological Jesse James I’m a-hankerin’ after. The guy who allowed folks a whoop and a holler as they hi-fived (or the mid-19th century equivalent) whenever he robbed a bank. Because, Lord knows, the banks had been robbing them blind all their lives.

The banks have always been robbing us poor stupes blind. And by “us” I’m talking about every human who ever lived. As a result, we take this for granted, just like the sun coming up every morning.

According to Steve Lendman, Grand Theft America, Thomas Jefferson said:

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

But Jefferson wasn’t the only one:

A half-century later Lincoln said:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country….corporations (including bankers) have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

Lendman, now in Illuminati mode, continues:

Lincoln refused to pay bankers usurious rates to finance the Civil War and got Congress to pass the 1862 Legal Tender Act. It empowered the US Treasury to issue “greenbacks” that were interest-free because government printed its own money. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the “Greenback Law” was rescinded. A new national banking act was passed, and the government once again had to pay interest to bankers.

On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy issued executive order (EO) 11110 giving the president authority to issue currency. He ordered the treasury to begin printing “United States (Treasury) Notes” to replace “Federal Reserve Notes.” He began a process to let government control its own money and no longer private bankers under the guise of the Federal Reserve. Months later, Kennedy was assassinated. Once Lyndon Johnson took office, he rescinded EO 11110 and reestablished the current system.

If I were Jon Stewart, I’d be looking at you in that quizzical way he does to a tee.

Is it all too broke to fix? Sure looks like it. That doesn’t mean we have to go out and commit suicide before the count of ten. But we do have to maintain a Plan B. And a Plan C, and so on. All of these plans will probably lead to an early death, but what the hell, we all gonna die anyway. Point is, be ready to relinquish every last thing you love and every last routine you live by.

The world is heading for 21 December 2012, a date of transformation. Back in 2007, Gort Slypesunder published Bring on the Singularity in Bilegrip. It’s worth a read, but the essence of what I’m getting at with 2012 is contained in this quote from Terence McKenna:

Essentially, if we take a look at some of the really species-changing events in our history, we see three really MAJOR developments that changed the entire course of human history. 1) The Agricultural Revolution. 2) The Industrial Revolution. 3) The Information Revolution.

30,000 years ago, we learned how to farm. 350 years ago, we learned how to mass-produce machines. About 50 years ago, we learned how to build computers. As you can see, the rate of change is increasing, as is the ability afforded by the change. With computers, we have the ability to build more efficient things, fly planes and spaceships, educate more people, etc. Each of these enabling technologies will build further development, and at a faster rate.

According to the mathematical model, we should see approximately *61* more of these species-changing developments before December 21st, 2012! All of the same magnitude as the three noted above. Again, it’s only a model, but they predict 18 of those changes on the last day, and 13 of those to happen in the last FRACTION OF A SECOND, as things accelerate towards that infinity point.

Wowks! Talk about all your birthdays coming at once. (Or, gulp, the other end of all that.) McKenna concludes:

As we approach the lip of this cascade into concrescence, novelty, and completion, time seems to speed up and boundaries begin to dissolve. The more boundaries that dissolve, the closer to the concrescence we are. When we finally reach it, there will be no boundaries, only eternity as we become all space and time, alive and dead, here and there, before and after. Because this singularity can simultaneously co-exist in states that are contradictory, it is something which transcends rational apprehension. But it gives the universe meaning, because all processes can be seen to be seeking and moving in an effort to approximate, connect with, and append to this transcendental object at the end of time.

Maybe nothing will happen, but don’t count on it. Human history hasn’t been around forever. Forget the hysteria of religions. Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims and Judaists can’t wait for Armageddon. That’s because they’re locked into narrow, insectoid belief systems requiring military solutions to the problem of infidel gods. Their relentless nay-saying amounts to a collective death wish.

Meanwhile, Lendman ends his article with these cheerful comments:

Michel Chossudovsky (Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland) cites an Army Times article saying that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is coming home (in October) from Iraq as (according to the Times) “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Perhaps with a manufactured incident as pretext. To defend the homeland against ourselves. Be deployed against dissent. Erupting public anger. On city streets like in Denver and St. Paul. Displaying civil disobedience. Defiance against fraud, deceit, illegal foreign wars, and nearly eight intolerable years under George Bush and a complicit Congress. Capped by the current financial crisis touching everyone while government rewards crime and hangs its victims out to dry.

Chossudovsky is blunt about the possibilities. The 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade is for combat. It’s not the National Guard or local police. It’s trained for war. “Equipped to kill people” with potent weapons, and a last hurrah scheme may be planned to divert public attention from the financial crisis. A “terrorist” attack with “chemical, biological” or other dangerous weapons. A possible pretext for martial law at a time the administration and Congress are vulnerable. When people are angry about Washington protecting the privileged. Partnering with them in crime. Defrauding the public and stifling dissent. Moving one step closer to tyranny and away from silly notions about democracy. Proving crime indeed does pay and awfully well on Wall Street. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Theirs, not ours.

Expect something like this sooner than later if November’s election goes the way of the last two. You know, where the exit polls indicate Democrat but the votes somehow wind up Repuglycan? And who do we have to thank for that?

Diebold accidentally leaks results of 2008 election early

Technorati Tags: 2012, diebold, jefferson, jesse james, jfk, lincoln, martial law, terence mckenna, terrorism

Blog Tags: 2012, diebold, jefferson, jesse james, jfk, lincoln, martial law, terence mckenna, terrorism

Bill Maher is right: Most Americans can’t be trusted because they’re too dumb. Just look at Fox News. Everyone else thought Biden’s substance beat Palin’s fluff but, last time I checked, the text-ins on Fox had Sarah ahead 86 per cent to 12. And the little room of undecided inbreeds on hand to assess the debate seemed to think that because Palin didn’t fall over she was now qualified to fire nuclear bombs at Russia from Wasilla. Just ’cause we never show the white flag.

You would think she won the election, such was the gala celebration for her after the debate.

A pity moderator Gwen Ifill didn’t ask the candidates their opinions on the age of the poor old planet that has to support such gits as Palin. Or what actually to do with gang rape pregnancies. That would have opened the chasm between these two.

A pity too that Biden didn’t remind Palin that she was in fact on the Repuglycan ticket. She kept talking as if she and McCain were running for some other party.

Like most politicians guilty of crimes against their people (and never think that this woman isn’t a born politician), she adopted the line that that the past is done with, why hark over spilt milk, let’s move on. Forget Eyeraq and every other thing Dubya’s done in the name of wilful ignorance, she and Walnuts are gonna fix it all up nice ‘n fresh as if we were all born yesterday.

And how about that smile, that incessant smile. Enough to give you the heebie jeebies. How would you like that lookin’ at ya 24/7? The grin of a cute l’il yokel who knows how to skin a moose and you don’t so what kind of Umeruhcan are you, anyway! The A-for-adorable grin that conned folks straight in the eye into thinking she knew what was good for ‘em even if she couldn’t answer the question.

You’ll have to admit that she’s a full-blown MILF, though. Every Repuglycan bubba ‘n’ Xtian fundy who unconsciously lusts after his mom ’cause he’s too scared of other girls must have dozens of sticky bandanas under the bed, just hoping she’ll find ‘em.

What we saw in this debate was a weather girl-cum-contestant on Dancing With the Stars. Maybe America deserves her.

Technorati Tags: Biden, debate, election, McCain, Sarah Palin

Blog Tags: Biden, debate, election, McCain, Sarah Palin

The 1989 Grand Final was only the second Aussie Rules football game I had ever seen. Having migrated here from the Evil Empire, via its northern neighbour Canada, in February that year, I found myself married into an extended family of 18 Hawthorn fanatics. During that year’s football season I exercised my individual right to shop around for a team to barrack for to prove that I was no sheep who simply accepted the status quo. But by season’s end I was firmly in the Hawk camp. They seemed to best exemplify the heroic standards of my favourite childhood teams: the USC Trojans in college football, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. (In retrospect, the Dodgers were more like Collingwood, in that they had everyone’s heart but mostly failed to deliver.)

The heroics of the 1989 Grand Final sealed not only my respect for Hawthorn, but my opinion that Aussie Rules is the greatest sport on earth. No other team sport can be as intense or allows for so many body types exhibiting so many skills. And no other sport comes close to it as a gladiatorial spectacle.

Yesterday’s storybook victory by Hawthorn is something they and they alone are capable of. But, hell, I’m biased.

I’m also biased in my view of the continual criminal umpiring decisions that routinely go against them. Yeah, I know every team complains about bad umpiring, and for a very good reason. So many umpiring decisions are so pathetic that there should be a tribunal to govern their gross mistakes, as there is against transgressing players. The old cry, We wuz robbed, goes back a long way.

Hawthorn supporters are still smarting over Darren Goldspink’s giving the game to Essendon in the 2001 Preliminary Final. Yesterday’s blind man was Scott McLaren, who did his best to turn the game Geelong’s way.

I’m not suggesting that these people intentionally give bad decisions (though who knows, they’re only human), but the fact that they do so with impunity is infuriating. They hold a position bordering on totalitarian. A coach makes a wisecrack about a decision and he’s immediately fined a huge amount. A player talks back and he’s rubbed out. Meanwhile nearly every game is marred to some degree.

Footy fans bitch about all this but nothing ever changes. And it’s not only AFL, it’s every sport. The training of umpires and referees is far behind the advanced speed and complexity of most modern sport. As the saying goes, they need to take a good hard look at themselves.

Be all that as it may, the mighty Hawks of Hawthorn took on and beat the best team in the competition, and all the bad umpiring on the day couldn’t stop them.

Technorati Tags: AFL, Grand Final, Hawthorn, sport, umpiring

Blog Tags: AFL, Grand Final, Hawthorn, sport, umpiring

Technorati Tags: Grand Final, Hawthorn

Blog Tags: Grand Final, Hawthorn