Don't Panic! It's No Big Deal! People won't care if you disrespect their flag -- will they?!

I swear these guys get funnier and funnier every day.

Judge for yourself here!

Watch out for Right-wing rage. If my training as a student of psychosemiotics and psychohistory tells me anything, it's that they are going to start acting out publicly in some very weird, possibly dangerous, definitely hilarious ways.

One thing is certain, and that's that the sanctimonious pickpockets of the Republican Party, along with their parrot-like dupes among the general populace, are not going to go lightly. Get ready to see some surprises. Their waning sanity and shattered credibility will only make them more unpredictable. It won't cause them to hesitate and examine their judgment for a moment.

Most animal experts will tell you that wild animals will generally leave you alone if you leave them alone; no such luck with these enraged brutes! Their fight-or-flight hormones are constantly blasting, pumping away on full throttle. Remember: the greater their paranoia and fear, the smaller the likelihood that the thug in front of you is preparing to flee.

As the GTL says from time to time, keep your powder dry.

* * * * * * * * *

Remember how today's House and Senate Republicans - so-called "conservatives" who signed a contract with America promising to not loot the treasury six ways from Wednesday, then immediately set about doing it anyway -- plotted to destroy the fairly-elected president, Bill Clinton, from the very moment of his election?

They got louder, stronger. Took the House and Senate, vowing to "change the tone" in Washington. Well, they did do that. They made it a hundred times worse. That's a change, technically.

The first item of business was nothing less than to force the most radical of upheavals possible - an impeachment trial - on that thin, lame, watery, pumped up, trumped up charge we remember so well: that the president lied under oath -- about a private, consentual sexual affair having nothing whatsoever to do with the president's executive actions or protecting and defending the constitution.

The president is having an affair! He doesn't want to get caught!

NOW'S OUR CHANCE!

It's easy to look at these people now and ask what were we thinking. The Speaker of the House protects child molesters and Republicans everywhere, especially the "Christian" ones, perp-walking to the tunes of corruption, spousal abuse, and other funny little unmentionable tics of behavior (like having a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute who sells you crystal meth) in between weekly prayer calls with George Bush. I know, it's laughable, but these people used to be seen as moral leaders, as having some sort of messianic authority.

They thought so. They hoped that, with some luck and friends with money in the media, with the bible-thumpers as pack animals, carrying most of their water, they could pull it off. They would destroy this man's presidency and his party.

The word PATRIOT coming from these people's mouths meant nothing then and even less than nothing now. They don't have the faintest idea how important dissent and dialog are to democracy. They couldn't explain the bill of rights, let alone defend it as good citizens are compelled to do. They smear judges who disagree with their religion as "activists" and threaten them with murder. Real good Americans, huh?

You simply can't be a patriot and destroy the constitution simultaneously.

These people are not patriots. They are nationalists. Exactly like all nationalists everywhere, in every era, in every land. Nothing more, nothing less.

I started out this post thinking about flags. The world's first flags were the placentas of the Pharaohs of Egypt, hung on poles to show the world their strength, their fertility, their special favor with the gods. Think of that the next time you sing the National Anthem at a ballgame. In short, flags have been around a long time and haven't changed too much.

So who cares what silly mistake Bush made with their flag as he heads for Vietnam? Those liberal do-gooders are gonna love this one, eh? I mean, these Vietnamese... their flag is nothing like ours, not nearly as serious, as deeply worthy of reverence. Nothing worth dying for, like Ol' Glory!

Go get 'em, Junior!

The whole country is behind you!

Why I love America: Freedom of Truly Vile (conservative) Speech

Does anyone else out there but the GTL feel that profanity, threats of bodily harm, and obscene fantasies ("I hope Osama puts that gun of yours up your etc...") do more to nullify the writer's point than to support it?

I feel privileged to be part of the Blogosphere, this egalitarian heaven of free speech which allows me to reach my many readers from any computer, anywhere I go, and say exactly as I please, and hear back from others about their opinions.

This technology is a remarkable accident of history; years before the Orwellian leaders of our corporate nation (and world) ever got hip to the “Internets,” the online universe had already taken a firm hold on the future and was growing exponentially, shepherded by a generation of programmers, hacker-daddies, and future billionaire misfit nerds who had more to gain from the creation of a wide-open forum with fundamental net neutrality than from another venue for corporate pimps and soul-sucking idea assassins.

If I have the time I would like to read every comment on any random politically-oriented Blog-string and collect and analyze information to answer the following questions:

Who uses sexually graphic imagery and language more, liberal commenters or conservatives? And to what extent?

Which orientation demonstrates more anger and rage, as understood by the use of threats, violent language, and graphically violent fantasies?

Which orientation has a better grasp of facts?

Who are the better listeners?

Which group is more likely to ignore the complexity of situations and leap impulsively into action?

Who is more likely to commit ethically questionable or downright illegal behaviors in order to gain or keep power?

Anyone feel like helping?

Sore Loser File: nothing conservative about this genius' foul language and fouler opinions

here is a memo from me
fuck all liberals in the ass
arianna put that where the sun dont shine

By: winthewaronislam on November 14, 2006 at 07:43pm

FOX NEWS INTERNAL MEMO:
lets try to find a patriotic liberal

fat chance-they don't exist

By: winthewaronislam on November 14, 2006 at 07:47pm

-- excerpts from Huffington Post blog comments section


Hey! You!

Over here!

You were looking for a patriotic liberal? Couldn't find one?
Where the f did you look?

My guess is that right now, whatever the dead-set opposite of Conservative is, you'll find plenty of people willing to call themselves that, and more coming forward each day. Patriotic people. Citizens. You obviously didn’t bother to look for liberal patriots in the U.S., where last week a majority of the population LOUDLY rejected the Republicans, their ugly smear tactics, their over-the-top brutality and corruption, not to mention the Bush Administration's violent neo-conservative psycho paranoia.

("New American Century" indeed. Hmmph.)

Your comments, Winthewaronislam, betray your crudity, and your simple-minded glee in the sh*t-smearing, swift boating, red-meat movement tells me that for you, terrorists are the penultimate embodiment of evil, second only to one group: Americans on the Left with different political philosophies than yours.

Your kind of patriotism is just nationalism trotted out under new bunting.

I for one am relieved the conservatives have been schooled. I couldn't survive much more compassion, I can certainly tell you. My wages, adjusted for inflation, are the lowest they've been since 1955.

Who knows? Soon it may not be a smear to be called a Liberal anymore. Maybe the worm has really turned.

There's been a flood of belligerent, angry, nationalistic bullshit coming from the Right since the end of the Cold War. It's been blended with Christian social intolerance and rage into a sort of whipped frenzy, a “Shit Frappe,” if you will.

Maybe soon they won't be able to smear this foul santorum on us anymore.

Look, I'm a law-abiding, tax-paying, informed, voting citizen. I love this country, it's freedom guarantees and common sense, but not its present leaders. I am encouraged by the words of the founding fathers, urging us as citizens to take action against corrupt leaders. Exercise your inalienable rights. Get 'em OUT.

Which we did. That, my friend, is a patriot.

Only the most simple-minded civic retard could think that being a patriot means not questioning authority; especially given the spectacularly corrupt House of Bush, their financial interests in the Carlyle Group, their deep ties to the Saudi Royal family and the BinLaden family, and plenty of other, more merely constitutional, atrocities - which in any other administration would have alone led to impeachment and total disgrace, but seem so far to have been swept under the deep royal-blue oval office rug.

So yeah. You need a patriotic liberal? Thank your stars that the majority of your country is one.

Wrong At Last, Wrong At Last, Thank God Almighty, I'm Wrong At Last!

More from here later.

Send your prayers and wishes to Virginia, which will give us the nation's first senator with a child serving in Iraq - if that swaggering racist bully loses and is forced to eat his own macaca.

Most importantly today, the Dems have proven they can fight. I may have to re-register now. We'll see if they can keep the pressure on in January. They have nothing to fear, after all.

Thanks to those of you who are reading along.

Peace!

Being Wrong Never Felt So Right

I'm going to bed. As I do so, the election results appear to actually match up with the recent polls in most races.

Knowing how things changed while I slumbered in 2004 (went to bed in Kerry's America, woke up in Bush's), I can only say I am keeping my guard up.

If the people manage to wrest even a small amount of power from the current crowd in DC, I'll be a happy man.

O to have subpoena power in the new year!

O to send the evangelicals back to the Bible belt!

O to have one less war to fight!

Good night, friends. See you tomorrow.

Whatever happens, this moment right now is worth savoring.

Mmmm. Yeah. Savor the feeling of justice while it lasts.

Today's Email To A Despondent Friend Pondering Politics While Sitting In His Cubicle At A Job He Hates

The text of a private email this morning, editied a bit for continuity, anonymity, and because sometimes I change my mind and hence my rhetoric:

Chin up there, Pal.

All around the country the cries are coming from people who went to vote but could not. I am girding my emotions for a major theft. It sucks to be right and I hope to god I'm wrong. But then, I realized long ago that I have to make my own bliss in this world and not rely on justice to come just because it ought to and I care deeply about it.

A dream deferred explodes, the poem seems to indicate. Life in this country is hard enough with the ruthless corporatocracy robbing us all blind while we line up to buy their trinkets and cut their taxes; add the million and one petty indignities of the last 26 years of political rightward trending and it comes to the point where someone somewhere is going to spontaneously snap out of it and realize it ain't beef in the beef stew, if you get my drift.

When large cultural movements actually begin it becomes very hard to stop them. The only way becomes Tianmen-square-style repression and I do believe this country lacks the hegemony to achieve the fact of gunning down its citizens on worldwide television.

For now.

Much to the Reicht Wing's consternation.

As psychohistory tells us, and we are witnessing now, group psychosis ends with blood, and then psychic release. So even if the bloodletting were to increase, it would ultimately result in a mass improvement of consciousness and reality-perception. Ultimately, the trance ends and the warmongers are revealed in their paranoid bloodlust.

And in lieu of the draft, the military ones dying in the blood sacrifice signed up for it; they wanted to kill, and they got what they wanted. This may sound harsh, but they all pledged allegiance to kill on the command of a politician, or be killed by someone else who would really rather not die that day. One ought to know better. Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas. Live by the M-16, die by the IED. This is a musing; I'm well aware that the reasons for joining the military are varied, and include the hope of escape from economic apartheid at home. Nevertheless, those guns don't shoot vitamins and nobody ever thought they did.

If you think this is treasonous or mean-spirited, look at the budget cuts to the Veterans’ Administration the Republicans are passing. I’m all talk; their actions are truly anti-veteran. I hope the veterans get treated well but they never do, do they?

When they start drafting kids again the Right will shrivel up and die. And I mean dead. Boom - Down.

So anyway, there is definitely a cultural swing away from the Right happening; they may be able to keep the corpse alive Terry Schaivo-style for a few more cycles by artificial means, but their policies and behavior generate continual bad consequences, bad suffering, and bad press, bereft as they are of any genuine ability to govern effectively, and will continue to do so until they have no one left but the Right-wing base of pedophiles, crack-smoking evangelical gay whoremongers, and their dupes (of course).

So I am at peace politically; I let my rage out a little bit here and there and love my friends and family that much more strongly. Besides, I take care of a dozen needy mentally ill people at a time all day, week, month, and year and they are not abstractions; I feel my own usefulness as much as I feel my own powerlessness. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm trying to think positively.

I am not offering advice since you seem not to want any. Also, what's a ni**a to say? If I were in your position I would pretend layoffs were around the corner and try hard to find a new job, blocking all defeatist ideas from my consciousness as a ferocious act of will. It's clear that place is not healthy for you. It's what I had to do when unemployment ran dry and congress did not authorize their customary 3-month extension. It scared me pantless and led me, out of desperation to feed my kids and keep my house, to working with adults for the first time ever, and that eventually led me here. Where I go from here is anybody's guess, but it will be up if I have any say in the matter.

Don't be afraid of change, is my only wisdom here. Or as William Shatner says, "live life like you're gonna die. Because you are."

Write back, and hello to whomever is surveiling me. Love to you and your family. I hear northern Virginia is lovely this time of year.

Election vs. Selection: Democracy Hangs in the Balance

Good morning fellow moderate reactionaries.

All around the country Americans are waking, or will soon, and going to the polls, attempting to vote. The surveys have been unequivocal: whether it's by five points or twenty-five points, the surveys all agree that the nation wants a change, and for the one-party rape of the constitution to come to a halt. For the war to end, the scandals to abate, the earmarks to be scaled back, the poverty and lack of access to health care to wane.

With even the evangelicals seeing the manipulativeness and insincerity of those scaly hypocrites who wooed and screwed them, there is no debate about what the country actually wants. The only question that remains is this:

Will our will be thwarted yet again?

Republicans want to get out their votes and suppress all the rest. Some of them languish in jail as I write due to their sleazy machinations last time around, and courts across the land have dockets full of yet more, creeps who tried to block the constitutional process they claim to love so well.

Who's to say how many non-Republican citizens, registered voters, precinct captains, and other civic leaders (all guilty of the crime of not being fabulously well-to-do and well-connected) will be turned away yet again by Republican traitors manning the polls?

True lovers of democracy want a fair fight more than a partisan victory. But then again, true lovers of democracy tend to think for themselves and avoid the Kool-Aid like the plague.

Anyway, my beloved fellow citizens, get out there and give 'em hell. Remember that the Gun-Toting Liberal loves and respects you. Now go. Winged thought widen thy forehead (guess the reference, win a prize).

Here are some reasons to vote today.

Keep your head high and your powder dry. For more than ever, it's do or die.

Mock The Vote 2006

Abraham Lincoln famously said that the hen is the wisest of nature’s creatures because it doesn’t cluck until the egg is laid. As those of us on the left side of the political divide continue adding up the victories the polls tell us we are sure to win across the nation come election day, I feel not a shred of joy, confidence, or ease.

In fact, I strain and struggle to keep my hopes from erupting into anticipation. Recent history has shown that this is, at minimum, a wise precaution.

We have only to remember the Rovian smirks and winks in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential debacle to be reminded that, democracy be damned, the Machiavellian Marauders will have their day. They seemed to know something no one else did, and boy, did they ever. Between Katherine Harris, Clarence Thomas, Bush’s first cousin at the helm of Fox News to claim victory prematurely, and who-knows-how-many other enemies of democracy working away beneath the population’s radar, it’s no wonder there was sound sleep in the suburbs of Waco that month. While the country and the world held their collective breath, wondering if the people’s will would be realized in the election of Al Gore, Shallow George slept like a baby. His stormtroopers were out and about, after all, fixing the election.

I honestly don’t think anything so trivial as the Constitution or the will of the people will get in the way of our sociopathic, paranoid Republican cabal this time around. Power, after all, is it’s own end, and the means to that end, when unstitched from the fabric of civil society, with its recognition of human corruptibility and its eminently civilized system of checks and balances, will surely run amok.

Nationalism will prevent us from seeing reality. Fear will be the cement that keeps the illusions intact. Saddam’s upcoming guilty verdict, as carefully timed by the Republican death-eaters as the release of the hostages on Reagan’s inauguration day so many years ago, will provide the plausibility factor when the election results bear no resemblance to the polls. The corporate-dominated media will abdicate its responsibility to tell the truth. No- it will MEET its responsibility – to make money and consolidate power.

And thanks to Diebold and the corrupt Republican congress, there will be no paper trail to follow when those of us foolish enough to believe in the people’s right to self-governance start to howl for recounts.

Once again, there we will be, left-wingers bringing a knife to a gunfight. God help us if the John Roberts Supreme Court is called on to do its duty.

As I sit here in my office at the mental hospital I can no longer be assured who the sane people are.