So what does it mean

Not to "love" America?

By Capt. Fogg

The question is unanswerable without asking what is meant by love, because in the era of accepted error, of laissez faire definitions, it can mean anything. So why ask? Certainly the intended audience of the assertion that Mr. Obama does not "love" the country that elected him aren't asking because their reasoning is circular, or perhaps because their ability to question things has been eroded by the linguistic dumbing down of our speech. In the mouth of Rudy Guiliani, I'm deducing that love means something rather nebulous and involves jingoistic nationalism, selective memory, denialism, a dash of megalomania and a psychopathic lack of conscience.

During the Vietnam years, the trope: 'loving America,' became a euphemism for blindly supporting the war, its conduct, it's stated goals, it's dishonest reasons against any and all criticism. It included defamation of all those who did not blindly follow. It included death threats, sometimes implemented against those who had doubts. According to a large number, you either "loved" America or you were advised to leave the country. Some of us did.

Many of us who were raised in the post war atmosphere of America as the savior of freedom and the leaders of the "free world" began to smell something as the flag marched by and the bombs fell and a generation was decimated and thought of Orwell. Love is hate, war is peace and freedom is slavery. Indeed, when people fling loaded words around like irritated apes fling dung, that famous quote from 1984 seems less cynical than it once did and more of a sad acceptance of hopelessness. Language has to change as the needs and wants of the oppressors and exploiters require it. Freedom fries, pre-owned cars, processed foods, assault weapons: define and conquer. 

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George Who?

By Capt. Fogg

Here's a history quiz for you.  Which President of the United States do we see on the left, telling the incompetent Mr. Brown he's doing a "heckuva" job responding to hurricane Katrina?  

29% of Louisiana Republicans said in response to a TPM poll that it was Barack Obama - still only an obscure freshman senator from Illinois who bears most of the blame.  44% weren't sure just who was responsible for the poor response to the devastating hurricane. George who?

These people vote.  These people say Liberals are retarded. These people are happy to lecture you about history and science and laugh at your education. George who?

I credit Libby at The Impolitic for bringing this to my attention, but I wish she hadn't.  Of course, being a Floridian, I'm glad for evidence for the argument that Florida isn't the Stupidest State as long as we have Louisiana, but none the less; how can I not feel despair at reading a poll showing, as she says, that "73% of Louisiana Republicans don't remember who was president when Katrina hit NOLA."

(Cross posted from Human Voices) 

What the Republican obsession with Benghazi is all about

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The American Prospect's Paul Waldman may be onto something -- scandal envy:

Republicans are indescribably frustrated by the fact that Barack Obama, whom they regard as both illegitimate and corrupt, went through an entire term without a major scandal. They tried with "Fast and Furious," but that turned out to be small potatoes. They tried with Solyndra, but that didn't produce the criminality they hoped for either. Obama even managed to dole out three-quarters of a trillion dollars in stimulus money without any graft or double-dealing to be found. Nixon had Watergate, Reagan had Iran-Contra, Clinton had Lewinsky, and Barack Obama has gotten off scott-free. This is making them absolutely livid, and they're going to keep trying to gin up a scandal, even if there's no there there. Benghazi may not be an actual scandal, but it's all they have handy.

There may be some truth to this, but I really don't think Republicans are thinking historically (nor, of course, rationally).

It's Obama Derangement Syndrome (and it's far, far worse than anything seen during the Bush years). There may be a few exceptions, but by and large Republicans despise the president with an intensity that is psychotic. It may be racism, it may be the view that he simply doesn't deserve to be president (for racist or other reasons), it may be lingering bitterness (as in the case of John McCain), it may be any number of other things, but the goal is the same: to bring him down, or at least to put him in his place (which of course has racial/racist connotations).

Which is to say, Republicans aren't focusing on Benghazi because they want Obama to suffer just as his predecessors did but because they want him to suffer period. They're desperate, particularly after his re-election win, and they think they can get him on Benghazi, even if there's nothing there.

Are they "livid"? Are they "trying to gin up a scandal"? Yes, of course. And if it doesn't work with Benghazi -- as it won't -- they'll try with something else. There's really no end to this psychosis.

Still lyin' after all these years

By Capt. Fogg

So lyin' Bill is still at it. I don't go looking for his wisdom any more than I go around opening manhole covers looking for a pleasant smell, but sometimes you just stumble into it - like you might step into some dog shit on the sidewalk. Anyway, here we have him again running his foul mouth for his foul audience hoping to promote evil and ugliness and hate wherever he can -- and get rich from doing it.

So Barack Obama hates half the country, says O'Reilly -- the white half, of course, because even though the only family he ever knew was white, he must hate white people because he's black -- even though he's every bit as white as he is black, unless of course the old Confederate, secessionist USA-hating bigots like Lyin' Bill are right that one drop of "black" blood means you're black and inferior. Old Confederate, secessionist bigots like Lyin' Bill must think that "black blood" is mighty powerful stuff though, if one drop of it can pollute an ocean of whiteness and all the superiority it conveys. Lyin' Bill must believe in "black power"! Whattaya know!

But Dennis Miller, that other Fox bastard who, back when he was funny and before he sold his soul for a buck-thirty-seven used to try to impress us all with his brilliance and erudition and vocabulary is reduced to making a living with pusillanimous persiflage for the amusement of the stupidest fraction of mediocre American minds by bantering with Bill would none the less opine that he seeth not the anger of blackness but the haughtiness of the educated. Fox and grapes, Dennis? Nobody thinks you're smart or funny anymore.

So they're back to this -- still at this, since every factual seeming accusation has been erased like grafitti under the blast from a power washer. The face numbers, the fake stories, the false identification with George Bush's blunders misdeeds, blunders and frauds -- it all has a shelf life and perhaps the lies have gone past it and are beginning to spoil and so it's back to racists and Bolshevik class warfare: he's a racist, he's a snob, he's consumed with hate (just like us).

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

If they're for it, we're against it.

By Capt. Fogg

The natural state of men, before they were joined in society, was a war, and not simply, but a war of all against all.

-Libertas, Thomas Hobbes -


Scanning the Facebook page of my congresscritter, Tom Rooney (R-FL) I find the real interest not to be the simplistic banalities and the strained attempts to generate outrage against Barack Obama. It's not the continuing effort by Rooney to portray the assistance being given NATO's actions in Syria as a constitutional violation; it's more about the truly demented calls for impeachment by the people who post there; calls that remain in view without comment by Mr. Rooney, who claims that he maintains the page to be more "in touch" with the sentiments of his constituents rather than as a tool to promote irrational rage for political purposes.

If he has some constituents other than me who disagree with the "Oh I just hate, hate him" and "Oh he just makes me sick" and the "he uses the constitution to line his bird cage" swamp dwellers, they must indeed like me, be very reluctant to post comments there under their real names. He's created a milieu quite hostile to reason and reasonable people offering constructive criticism.

Yes, of course there are many questions about the legality of George W. Bush's legacy, some of which -- too much of which -- remains in place, but the War on Obama is not really based on his alleged and often misrepresented constitutional infractions, and we know it because they weren't presented as such during the previous administration and indeed were eagerly supported by the reactionary beasts who hang out on the Rooney page to congratulate themselves and outdo each other on the size of their hate. Indeed, that place is a microcosm of our war against ourselves, a war of all against all.

It's not that I like Senator Rand Paul or his familiar pose of principled outrage, but I am indeed on his side when it comes to addressing the real constitutional outrage of the Patriot Act. I have to smile at what may be the end of his naivete because it isn't the Democrats at war with the Leahy-Paul Amendment, designed to allow greater oversight of ever increasing Government warrantless surveillance powers under that cynically named act. It's the Republicans supporting precisely the kind of power they pretend to oppose while posturing as libertarians to the frothy-mouthed and furious rabble.

“Unfortunately, what we’re finding now is that the Democrats have agreed to allow me to have amendments but my own party is refusing to allow me to debate or present my amendments.”

Said Paul. Imagine that.

But as the man said, the joining of people into a society serves to prevent the chaos of nature, and I have to ask myself whether the effort to portray anything social or designed for the common good as the unqualified evil of Socialism, did not have the promotion of that very bellum omnium contra omnes; everyone at war with everyone and every man for himself as a purpose. Perhaps when everyone is against everyone, such things as consistent viewpoints are illusory as is anything resembling principle. If you're for it, I'm against it may be as close as we can get.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

West of the moon, east of common sense

By Zandar

(Ed. note: I'd like to welcome a new contributor to The Reaction, Zandar of Zandar Versus The Stupid. I came across his blog a while back, during one of my stints doing the round-up at Crooks and Liars, and instantly became a huge fan. He's a fantastic writer who provides incisive analysis, and he'll now be bringing his formidable blogging talent to our team -- and it's an honour to have him here with us. So I hope you keep checking back for his posts, along with all of our posts (of course), but, if you aren't already familiar with him, so check out his blog and become a regular reader. You'll love it. And now read on and enjoy his first post here, on Hedges, West, and Obama. -- MJWS)

Via Jon Pitts-Wiley at Jack and Jill Politics, a not-so-gentle reminder than not everybody who suffers from Obama Derangement Syndrome is A) a Republican or B) white. 

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

That's Truthdig's Chris Hedges -- not President Obama's biggest fan by a long shot -- covering Princeton professor Cornel West there, in one of the nastiest pieces of firebagging I've read in some time. The piece is mainly about Cornel West's phone calls not being returned and his hurt feelings, but with Chris Hedges driving the narrative it becomes a massive airing of the grievances at Festivus.

Take this passage:

"I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor," he says. "But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, 'Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.' And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, 'I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade.' I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong."

Now I've made the exact same point about Geithner. I do not, however, find it to be a deeply personal betrayal. I also pointed out that the kind of folks that Republicans put forth to replace Geithner were a lot worse.  It is in fact possible to criticize the President. I did so on many of his economic, civil liberties, and military policies. I still have a number of issues with the President.

But what West and Hedges are doing is making it personal, and that's just not objective. Melissa Harris-Perry has even less tolerance for this nonsense than I do.

I have many criticisms of the Obama administration. I wrote angrily about his choice of Rick Warren to deliver a prayer at the inauguration. I have spoken on television about my disagreement with drone attacks in Pakistan and been critical of the administration's initial choice to prosecute DADT cases. I worked for more progressive health care reform legislation and supported organizations that resisted the reproductive rights "compromises" in the bill. I've been scathing in public remarks and writings about the President’s education policy. My husband leads a non-profit that is suing HUD for its implementation of a discriminatory formula in the post-Katrina Road Home program. The president has never called me. I got my ticket to the inauguration from Canada! (Because Canadian Broadcast Television who gave me a chance to narrate the day's events.) But I can tell the difference between a substantive criticism and a personal attack. It is clear to me that West's ego, not the health of American democracy, is the wounded creature in this story.

And I have to agree with that wholeheartedly. The real issue is how the "principled opposition" to Obama from the left always seems to devolve from pointed criticism of the President to hysterical pyramids of straw men set on fire to glorify and justify the people attacking him from the left. It becomes the raison d'être rather than the objective viewpoint, and much of that comes from the fact the Village exists to feed on things like this. Best way to get attention as a liberal? Attack Obama from the left. A whole number of folks have staked out this territory in the last two years or so. Cornel West is just the latest but by no means is he the sole offender here.

When the "valid criticism" of the President becomes a vehicle for your own self-advancement, it ceases being valid and starts being dangerous and detrimental. If you're going to come at Obama because of policy differences, that's one thing. If you're doing it to get shiny views and TV time in order to remain relevant, then it's your problem, not Obama's.

Some folks need to do some serious soul searching, and do it quickly. The alternative to Obama is far, far worse. But I'd be remiss if I let this passage go without a fight:

"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men," West says. "It's understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening."

As a mixed-race person here, West's accusation involving Obama being afraid of being viewed as a "white man in black skin" is so far beneath both rational discourse as a tenured Ivy League professor and beneath contempt in pretty much any other context that I'm actually somewhat horrified that anyone would actually say that outside of David Duke. Trying to make your bones off of painting Obama as "not black enough" is just as repugnant as having a problem with him being black, and in many ways it's worse. How is that in any way germane to the discussions of his policy or the realpolitik of Washington in 2011?

This is the kind of truly damaging idiocy that will end up doing more to deliver votes into the hands of the Republicans and depress turnout among blacks than anything Newt Gingrich or Tom Coburn or Ron Paul could utter, and it's this line-obliterating nonsense that goes well beyond the realm of valid criticism of Obama and straight into Obama Derangement Syndrome territory.

And that brings us to the most maddening, frustrating, and depressing part: West does have some valid points. Obama has made some bad decisions on his economic team and economic policy that favored the wealthy over the rest of us, on continuing many of the more heinous Bush-era legal and civil liberties policies, and by not prosecuting the Wall Street offenders who decimated out economy.  But those points are hopelessly lost in the storm of his own desire to go after Obama for sleights both real and imagined, and the further rush to justify his position as morally correct.

There is a categorical difference between what West set out to do here (and what Hedges tries to assist him with) and what they actually end up doing, and it's an empirical example of how you can go way too far in the quest for ideological perfection at the expense of common friggin' sense.

(Cross-posted at Zandar Versus The Stupid.)

Proof at last.

By Capt. Fogg

Yes, Osama is no more, other than a few pieces of him taken back for DNA test purposes. It's not official however until Donald Trump explains to us just how he forced the President into it and the Tea Party arrives at a consensus on just what the best way to throw it in Obama's face as a scandal might be. Osamagate, if you will. The order was given on April 29th. Had a more competent president given that order, it would obviously have been carried out much more quickly and cheaper, reduced the debt and created more jobs.

One thing is already certain. The Body of Osama bin Laden was, as we're told, disposed of with respect to Islamic custom which demands a quick burial. So there you have it at last: Barack Obama respects Islam because, as his long form birth certificate stated before it was photoshopped out, he is a Muslim himself.

And curse him for not respecting the SEALS by sending them into harm's way and attempting a military action without consulting the Tea Party, the Tyrant!

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

UPDATE

And of course at this moment, Fox News is interviewing Dick Cheney who reassures anyone who might be lured into believing that the president should be given any credit for anything positive, that the "groundwork" for the raid on Abbotabad was laid by George W. Bush.

The Sound and the Fury

By Capt. Fogg

I'd just signed clear with 5N7M in Nigeria and my spectrum scope showed a big pileup on 20 meters in the area reserved for extra class phone operation, so I tuned in expecting some rare DX station everyone was trying to work. I wish I hadn't. I didn't hear dozens of stations shouting their call letters trying to be heard on the other side of the planet, what I heard is what passes for political discussion these days.

"Well whaddaya think of a president who thinks he's a dictator and ignores the constitution"

"you mean Bush?"

"No, I mean Oh-Bah-Ma! Thinks he can declare war all by himself. At least with Bush both times he got permission from congress -- this guy thinks he's a DICTATOR"

"Ahhhh, come on. . ."

"That's an impeachable offense! That's Treason!"

Of course I'm editing here. There were too many voices stepping on each other to include it all or even to call it a discussion, but that's American politics in all its unsound and furious ignorance.

Actually the War Powers Act requires that the president notify congress within 48 hours, which of course was exactly what happened. Whether or not that will filter down to the terminally Foxed and all those so desperate to portray Obama as everything Bush was and worse, I don't know, but where there's a will to hate, there's always a way to hate. As much as facts might contradict the idiot rage, they have as much a chance to bust the pileup as a 2 Watt QRP rig with a Buddipole.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

"Those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint."

By Capt. Fogg

I don't have to look for evidence that the United States of America isn't united, unless you consider enraged confusion to be a uniting factor. A Pew polling report last year showed that only 34 percent of Americans think Obama is a Christian. I have no idea how many Americans like me, don't give a damn if he's a Zoroastrian as long as he keeps his scriptures under his pillow and not under mine. His religion or lack thereof is no more significant to me than his favorite basketball team and indeed the private beliefs of most of our better presidents have rarely been a factor in their official lives.

Of course those who wish to destabilize and polarize what's left of the informed electorate for reasons of partisan gain are happy to make an issue of it and for them it's indeed a game with few rules and only one strategy: attack, attack, attack. Prominent amongst that breed of snakes is of course, Fox News, who can depend on a base of religious chauvinists and racist bigots who know less about the certainties they profess than their enthusiasm might indicate.

Take the recently manufactured "scandal" about the inaccuracy of Obama's reading of Isaiah 40:31 at the National Prayer Breakfast this week. Fox Followers can't really be expected to know much about the archaeological history of Isaiah, the variations between extant scrolls or that chapters 40 - 66 seem to have been written about two centuries after Isaiah himself, but apparently they have so little regard for the knowledge of America's scholarship that they also don't expect us to remember that there are other and better translations than the King James version, some of which have incorporated what has been found at Qumran and most of all: that the original certainly isn't in English. President Obama was simply quoting the very popular New International Version. Some scandal.

One can hope that these fragments scraped from the bottom of the GOP slime barrel, indicate that the barrel is empty. Sad to say, it's very easy to make a fool of one's self in America, but it's still difficult to get Americans to notice it amidst the sound and fury.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Let it snow

By Capt. Fogg

It snows in New Jersey, as I guess we all know and yet as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we're still arguing who has the responsibility to do what and with which and for whom. Some New Jersey people are quite angry with Republican governor Chris Christie who said of the recent heavy blizzard:

“If someone is snowed into their house, that’s not our responsibility.”

I think they have the right to be staggered by such a statement. Earthquake, flood, wildfire, tornadoes, hurricanes; disasters man made and natural: for all these things the government to which New Jersey taxpayers contribute their money has no responsibility. As if to emphasize the point and flaunt the banner of limited government, Christie proudly said:

“I had a great five days with my children. I promised that.”

when the going gets tough, the rich and powerful go to Disney World.

When the Republicans abandon their posts, Partying while New Orleans drowns, for example, it is more than simple misprision. Playing Nero when things burn or flood or get buried is an affirmation of core Republican values, amongst which is "every man for himself" when it comes to questioning the need to rescue the elderly, the helpless, the children from being cut off from food and medical care and a needed paycheck.

No, we can't afford it, quacks the gubernatorial duck and can't be bothered with it either, and besides, I need to ride the teacups and get my picture taken with Mickey Mouse.

We expect this. I'm a bit more surprised at the blog comments from the tea suckers and Republican Chia pets who seem to think the inability of a State that gets snow every year to deal with that snow well enough to ensure public safety, is something they can blame on President Obama. After all, the President also takes vacations. That's what we need to be angry about say the trolls.

I know. It's hard to follow such a stroke of stupid with any further comments. It sucks the air out of the room, but that's what we've become in America: a cesspool of non-sequitur and duplicity, vast and deep. A pit full of dogs tearing ourselves apart for the profit of others. We're able to absolve Bush of any criticism in setting an all time record for vacation days, including those care-free parties he attended, playing air guitar while New Orleans drowned, but Obama? That's different, the boy should have been out there with a shovel while Christie did his heckuva job on the water slide in Orlando. Hell it's his duty to keep his government hands out of our lives, isn't it?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

New signs of the same old thing

By Capt. Fogg

I believe it was the Architect Frank Lloyd Wright who once griped that Florida, being the lowest part of the United States, everything loose had slid down into it, but whether he did or didn't, there are many unsavory things down here in America's bilges. Not that we're all that unique. One can turn over rocks anywhere and find the same sort of things that turn up in the Sunshine state, but here they're more likely not to bother hiding.

So I'm leaving the local car parts store yesterday, coming up empty handed in my search for a transmission shift cable bushing and right next door in the seedy strip mall containing a barbecue joint where the ancient, blackened smoker sits in the parking lot and a pawn shop in front of which a weathered 1950's pickup truck has been moldering since I moved here 9 years ago.

These times are good for the pawn shops and I happen to be a fan of History Channel's Pawn Stars featuring a shop in Las Vegas operated by some funny characters and stuffed with real treasures, so I decided to have a peek. I'd been there before. It was about 6 months after President Obama took office and the two men seated inside in front of a large screen TV where Fox News was raging away were declaring that that damned Commie in the White house had had 6 months to fix the economy and had failed miserably. Little has changed, except for the worse. Same two men, same TV, same dark, gloomy, mildewed interior filled with the seedy detritus of sad lives and one hell of a lot of guns. Same suspicious glower. All that was new was a sign saying "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." underneath which was the name Barack Hussein Obama - "from his book Audacity of Hope."

There's been a rash of newspaper comments about such things appearing in stores all over town and of course, that quote is gross misinterpretation of what the book really said.* Other stores have offended customers with entirely fictitious quotes by the First Lady. The real quote of course showed his promise of support for American citizens if such things as the internment of Japanese-American citizens should happen again.

I have to admit that the sheer firepower displayed there made me decide to vote with my feet and not shoot my mouth off and I simply left. But of course, to the devotees of the Obamahate religion, such heresy as any bit of truth I might have offered would not have been well received or credited. What's the use? No newspaper editorials debunking this disgusting garbage are effective, since newspapers are "Liberal" as we all know. The religious symbols of Obamahate are becoming as widespread as those chrome fish and other religious declarations scrawled on Mom's dump truck. It's not new, it's just a new sign in the old pawn shop.

Of course they can't find enough real criticism, even though there is plenty. That would require more in terms of intelligence and education than they possess -- nor can they simply say what they really mean, thanks to what they call "political correctness" which to me, is a cynical name for common decency: decency, at least as it relates to the cult of nativist and racist bigotry, being a Liberal affectation rather than a virtue. So they make up stories about the president. Easier than discussing the likelihood that TARP 'spending' will prove to be a net gain or whether financing a war on the prospect that a disproved scheme will generate sufficient revenue. Call him a Kenyan tribesman, a somehow Communist Muslim fanatic. Call his wife a gorilla. Safer than using the N word and revealing what you really are.

*They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."


(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The Devil and the Oil Spill

By Capt. Fogg


Fox and Palin.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?

Yes, we have people out in the street screaming about tax increases that never were and while Federal income taxes are lower than they've been in 50 years. We have Fox giving air time to the airhead who has taken time out from chanting "drill baby drill" like an over-aged cheerleader for the oil cartel to chastise President Obama for not doing what he in fact is doing and for not knowing how to do what it was BP's responsibility to know how to do and to be able to do. I wonder if she took time to take a shower and change clothes before switching from 'hands off the oil industry' to 'we need government intervention and oversight.'

"Well then what the federal government should have done was accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans that have had the solutions that they wanted presented."

Well, of course that's what the administration is doing. Looking for assistance from countries where drilling is subject to much more oversight and where Fox ranteth not. Perhaps it's time to ask that "gotcha" question once again. So what newspapers and magazines do you read Mrs. Palin? Oh, I see -- you watch Fox.

Of course there was a 4 week delay in waiving the federal Merchant Marine Act of 1920, which mandates that all goods shipped between U.S. ports be transported in U.S.-built, U.S. owned and U.S. manned ships.Of course there was a long delay during which BP didn't tell us how bad it was and that they couldn't have it stopped in short order, but face it, the Grand Old Bastards have so much fun and profit with their daily game of pin the tail on the President, they're even criticizing the pants he wears when talking about the oil spill, unlike the Commander guy with his costumes.

Does it really matter whether the president has apparently made sure that we won't have to pay for this disaster by having BP set aside 20 billion in escrow? No, even that is proof of perfidy, since it will somehow hurt the Louisiana economy and it basically is a socialist plan to redistribute wealth says the irrepressible Bachmann. Win or lose, we lose, if you ask the New Right.

But it appears that God wants no part of this sound and fury and we're going to have to fix it ourselves. If only we only had to battle the Devil and the oil spill here and not the legions of lying idiots.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Below the surface

By Capt. Fogg

Sometimes I meet the nicest people, kind, outgoing, articulate and with many shared interests. A Saturday afternoon barbecue, a manicured garden, a convivial crowd of fellow boaters; many with experiences I can only envy, of cruising the beautiful and exotic parts of the globe.

I mention a planned sail to the Leeward Islands and a stop in beautiful Dominica with it's mountains and waterfalls and hot springs and black sand beaches like the Hawaii of long ago. "Maybe I'll never come back," I say.

"Maybe we'll all have to go elsewhere" says she, "before those Liberals ruin the country with all that debt and, you know before that Obama destroys capitalism."

There's that sick, sinking feeling again; the realization that beneath the tranquil surface, there's a dangerous reef to rip your bottom out. I should have known; but facing the isolation one feels when surrounded by people passionately inimical to your every thought and steadfastly obstinate in resisting any facts or any argument that might diminish the comfort of their cherished anger, makes one too desperate to believe someone might not have been infected with that alien zombie virus. Damn it, I let my guard down again.

"I can't watch the news any more, it's all Liberal" she says. Perhaps she doesn't, but she's listening to someone. Someone is not telling her that the debt began so soar in terrifying fashion when George entered the white house; has soared under every Republican president since Ford or reminding her that the tax cuts that were supposed to increase government revenues and that were supposed to create new jobs created didn'tno private sector jobs whatever while government jobs and government coasts soared. Someone isn't telling her that our senseless military endeavor that appears now to have been embarked upon for profit has already cost more that World War II and continues to burn through billions. That kind of debt doesn't count, only debt that might help Americans who aren't already in the club. No -- best not to listen to the Liberals on the TV news.

"It's true that 24 hour coverage leads to a format that's mostly speculation and opinion and it's true that at least one network simply lies and invents and misquotes and twists facts, " I said. Her brow began to furrow. "That's why I try to read as many sources as I can. "I read three or four to a dozen newspapers most every morning," I say. " I listen to everything from Al Jazeera to Haaretz on line." I can see the suspicion growing, the bestial voice in her head growling liberal.

I'd ask her to define liberal, but I know she's define it as its opposite. I know she has no awareness of current events, history or anything outside the Yacht Club Republican cocktail-hour school of economics and social criticism. I know there's no point in flexing a consciousness that's been ossified in one position for 75 years, so I do what I always have to do and smile and say:

"Oh, don't worry, it's a strong country and I'm sure we'll survive," even though I'm far from certain.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Heckuva Twist, Brownie

By Capt. Fogg

When you want to get the best advice on how to treat a disaster, who're you gonna call? Well certainly not the "enviros" who might know something about nature and how it works. Certainly you don't ask advice from people who have been telling you it was going to happen any day now after the day actually arrived. That would be to close to admitting you were wrong. No, you want to hear from someone whose personal record of handling catastrophic situations has become a metaphor for bungling and incompetence: you ask Brownie.

Of course the hottest new dance, the Tea Party Twist, has the baggers in knots trying to blame Obama for the latest Gulf oil disaster, the kind of disaster we've all been warned about and have been laughed at for worrying about. We dare not mention George and Dick who actually were partying it up while New Orleans drowned and doing Lord knows what for days afterward since it might diminish the outrageous new claim that Obama stalled doing anything about this oil spill so as to maximize the tragedy and give him an excuse to "pander to the environmentalists." You remember them, they're the guys who were to blame for the high prices that made the oil industry so happy?

Come on baby, let's do the twist:

"This is exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous,' " No, this would never have happened but for President Hussein.

"This president has never supported Big Oil, he's never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down."

whined Brownie through the microphones at Fox without regard to the fact that "back down" would indicate that it had ever been shut down and that Obama hadn't been saying all along that he was in favor of drilling when needed if it could be done safely. No he hasn't yet joined Rush in claiming that environmentalist hippies in diving gear sunk the platform and he hasn't mentioned the failure of the safety equipment from Halliburton -- who would dare? Why mention that the free market is supposed to take care of this, not that durned Gummint. Who would be so unpatriotic and nonpartisan as to mention the truth? Lady Sarah after all says we need people to trust the oil industry. That means we need people to distrust the (Democratic) government if not Democracy itself.

So let's go, the band is playing and it's the Blame it on Obama Cha-Cha. Who can resist? Play it loud and you won't hear me blaming this on official drill baby drill Republican policy.

Blame it on ObamUH
Blame it on ObamUH!

Come on everybody!

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Times Square terrorism

By Capt. Fogg

The big question today is, how long will it take the media to patch together a reason to blame the car bomb that didn't go off in Times Square today on President Obama? I've already had e-mails to the effect that, because the Coast Guard chose, as a cost cutting method, to turn off the obsolete LORAN-C coastal navigation system last February, our "enemies" are now sure to attack us.

The rural right is going to blame it on Obama, who as they know favors the use of the police and FBI to capture terrorists instead of the armed forces using lots of 9-billion-dollar bombers -- just like the unmanly socialist wimp he is. Never mind that it works.

Of course, the Pakistani Taliban has already claimed responsibility, but it's already been proved that Obama's college education was financed by Pakistani agents who knew he'd be president someday. He might just as well admit the whole thing.

Another question that's been on my mind is whether or not the two latest attempts to blow stuff up were intentionally defective. After all the real objective is to bleed us dry and turn us against each other and that's just what is happening. Give the Nigerian kid just enough powder to blow his Nigerian gonads off, park the SUV with propane tanks and a smoke bomb on a New York street, and you have us all running around screaming for blood, begging to give our civil rights away and destabilizing the country without the risk of major retaliation and without spending much money. It's just conjecture, of course. I'm just sayin', as the Foxy folk say.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Fire in the Sky

By Capt. Fogg

I'm a gettin' tired of Armageddon. Yes, the earth will become incapable of sustaining life some day and the sun will die and the Universe might just be torn apart by some sort of dark energy stuff. Sure sometime between Wednesday and 50 million years from now we're likely to get whacked by another chicxulub sized asteroid but if and when, it won't have anything to do with Giving America the same health-care plan Communist-enslaved places like Massachusetts and Switzerland enjoy.

"There has been plenty of fear-mongering and overheated rhetoric, and if you turn on the news, you'll see that those same folks are still shouting about how the world will end because we passed this bill. This is not an exaggeration. Leaders of the Republican Party have actually been calling the passage of this bill 'Armageddon.' They say it's the end of freedom as we know it," said President Obama in Portland, Maine, shortly after the bill passed. "So after I signed the bill, I looked up to see if there were any asteroids headed our way. I checked to see if any cracks had opened up in the ground. But you know what? It turned out to be a pretty nice day."

I think even the people who publish crazy stories for crazy people are a bit shy of endorsing the latest meteorite to be noticed as a sign that God really is going to destroy mankind and probably animal and plantkind because his own most special country in all this vast universe has been polluted by reigning in the insurance companies and is eventually to allow the poor, sick, underage and temporarily unemployed to have medical insurance. But World Net Daily did take pains to note that it wasn't such a nice day in China or and that all the other earthquakes and underground rumblings and ash clouds of the last few days might indicate that all has been foretold by John of Patmos, patron Saint of Psychotics.

Nonetheless, WND was careful to point out the uppity nature of that comment and how that uppity president was very insulting to "conservatives," who of course are the only ones likely to believe this medieval insanity about signs and portents in the sky -- and in fact do believe it. What could he do that wouldn't insult them when the basic facts of history, Chemistry, physics, paleontology, geology, meteorology, and cosmology make their hairy palms sweat with righteous anger and desperate denial.

Don't get me wrong. I put conservatives in quotes because they aren't that at all. Some of them just play conservatives on TV and radio and in places like World Net Daily because they make a lot of money on the slander circuit. Others are just ignorant, bigoted, superstitious, and misinformed -- and some are just substantially subnormal. If there are real conservatives about these days, they're in hiding, unwilling to be associated with the Idiot's Crusade, and the few who remain, like George Will, for instance, are sure to provide great entertainment in trying to rationalize their inevitable opposition to brokerage, mortgage, and banking reform so they won't be called Communists too.

The rest won't try nor will they need to, pseudo-conservative memories being as short and malleable as they are. All they know and all they will need to know is that locking up Wall Street crooks must somehow be a danger to our "freedom," an offense to God and another bit of proof that the liberals are leading us straight to a future of fire and brimstone falling from the sky.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Take Texas

By Capt. Fogg

Sometimes I don't know whether to keel over dead from laughing at the people insisting I think Barack Obama is a Messiah and trying to force that sour confection down the throats of Democrats or to have a fatal stroke yelling at them about how they've been trying to shove messiahs of their own up the other end.

Of course, America is always looking for a hero and wants one so badly we've made heroes out of some strange characters, but one man's hero is always the other man's Devil and nowhere more so than in the USA. Did FDR save us from complete economic collapse and a likely shift away from faith in the Capitalist economic model, or did he make it far worse because he was in fact only a puppet: like Truman and Eisenhower, a Quisling serving his Soviet masters? As I said, one man's Messiah is the other guy's Satan. At least he and Ike and Truman didn't succeed in handing over the reigns to Stalin or Kruschev -- or did they? It depends on the definition of Communism and what looks like a free market to one person is obviously not to another. There will be no reconciliation until long after it becomes moot and the US is a distant memory to be made into an object lesson for propagandists yet unborn.

At any rate the longing for some kind of return to a past that didn't happen as described is alive and thriving like bacteria in some Texas bus station men's room and making it impossible for us to be a real nation rather than the loose confederacy of Hobbsian States they envision. Take Texas - please.

Newsweek says that the tenacity of Texas Governor Rick Perry tells us much about America in the age of Obama. I think it tells us a lot about America in the age of James Buchanan; divided irrevocably on issues that now seem morally and legally obvious to most of us.

The US in the mid-19th century was a cultural hodgepodge, filling up with immigrants speaking many languages, publishing papersk and supporting theaters and associations using German, Polish, Italian, Russian, Czech, French, and other languages. Governor Perry thanks that "hodgepodge" sapping our "moral strength" today. It's strange to behold when in my lifetime civilization was on the brink of collapse because of the far right Utopian dream of ethnic and linguistic "purity." It's a strange kind of freedom that is allowed only to people of certain ethnic and religious backgrounds, but Texas is a strange kind of place.

Governor Perry worries that our country is run by government bureaucrats, instead of the Confederate model where it was run by wealthy landowners, and the current Republican model where free elections don't legitimize a candidate they don't like and where the country should be run by a confederation of wealthy Corporations and perhaps officially sanctioned religious leaders.

Am I making unfair comparisons to pre-Civil War era conditions? Keep in mind that Perry, when asked by Newsweek to explain his Capitol Steps talk about secession, only mumbled about long term debt and "what this administration is doing from an economic standpoint."

No, the government is the enemy unless the government is the enemy: "wants to be the epicenter and one size fits all... we have very, very different ideas about the structure of this country and how it should work," and as far as I can see, they're pretty much the same as those of Jefferson Davis and bear an uncanny similarity to the ideas of many America royalists who quite liked the state religion and its forced conformity, heresy laws, witch trials, and all.

"I don't care how hard you work. We are going to take more," are the words he puts in the mouth of the Democratic Demon. He needed to since it wasn't there in the real world he's such an alien to: the world where the Yankee president is going to take your slaves and let them whistle at white girls and where Obama is gonna take your guns even though he ain't. The Yankees are gonna make it hard for us to use public schools to teach far out fringe conjectures about a 6,000 year old universe and magic creation of men out of mud. Of course, if we taught them that Allah made us out of a blood clot, you'd soon hear the tune change from their "god given right" to teach our children to another assumed right to demonize other people's rights and lie about the data.

So how do you argue with someone for whom the truth is like silly putty; where you need absolute proof of some things and sneer about the entire idea of proof or even ignore evidence with other things: someone who believes in absolute authoritarianism yet decries absolute authoritarianism in democracy? How can the smug insistence that huge debts and massive borrowing is just fine unless it's done by Democrats?

You don't.

How do you argue with someone who insists the Depression started with Roosevelt and not with Hoover's huge tax cuts: someone who insists that FDR's spending didn't end or ameliorate the depression but admits WW II did because of the huge government deficit spending? How can you make him tell you why we should be more patient about seeing results from trillions spent to do unnecessary nothings in Iraq than about seeing a complete economic turn around after 15 months. How do you argue with someone who will defend unto death, or at least until the Thorazine kicks in, that contradictions and unanswerable questions weaken an argument, that freedom is all about ethnic and religious purity, that orchestrated demonstrations of inchoate anger are an acceptable way of petitioning for redress of grievances and undoing elections?

You don't and I can't and I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of listening to How Obama has squelched our freedom of speech, how the midwest meteorite and the earthquake in China are the result of health insurance reform and other totally imaginary, seditious things, many of which are the deeds of previous administration and even supported by Conservative leaders. I'm disgusted to live in a country that allows itself to be eaten alive from the inside and won't lift a finger to help itself.

This won't end well, if it ends at all. It won't end as long as we entertain ourselves with new and ever changing diatribes of just what liberals do and just what liberals did and just what liberals are. No one but the innocent are ever burned as witches, but moreover, we'll never be able to be constructive, we'll never be able to have a democracy that works and I have to believe that the people behind this insanity know it quite well and wouldn't have it any other way.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Kind of a blast.

By Capt. Fogg


Amongst the most common criticisms of President Barack Obama published in my local papers are that he has an "agenda" for taking away our guns. The few howlers offering any proof of this nefarious plan depend mostly on the fact that Obama is a Democrat and on redacted quotes from Rahm Emanuel or references to obviously incendiary articles with titles like "Rahm Emanuel to disarm America" and calling him things like "a Zionist gun-grabbing Communist."

Even if we're to discount the Skinhead origin of much of this and ignore the supercharged, nitrous injected hyperbole so common to apoplectic extremists intent on portraying everyone else as extremely angry, we need to remember one thing: Rahm Emanuel is not the President of the United States, and has no authority in any way related to being able to do anything about Gun laws. That's the job of Congress and this congress seems unlikely to consider any such thing even if the President suggested it -- and he certainly hasn't. The Courts have ruled on the side of allowing private citizens to own and carry firearms, most of the legislators elected in the last election are pro-gun and that seems to be that.

Of course, just like the Tea people, out there howling about a tax increase they didn't get and death panels we've had all along and about taking back the country they never owned from the majority without any recognition of the blazing, neon lit irony -- my fellow gun owners and second amendment supporters are about, as I write this, to mount an armed protest against the gun-grabbing liberal commietyrantmarxistafrican, are unaware or are unwilling to be aware that Obama signed into law last year a bill making that demonstration legal by finally allowing firearms to be carried in National Parks. Thanks, Pres. As a Liberal, I approve of that.

I don't know whether it's too much of a strain on people from Stormfront to pass beyond the shoddy "democrats grab guns, Obama is a Democrat, he will grab guns" syllogism and into the world of real events. It doesn't matter however, since the supply of things real and imagined will always allow the kind of Storm and Stress they need. indeed, anything you can say about Obama becomes a credo despite, or perhaps because it's demonstrably wrong and without factual support. For those of us able do discern elitist things like irony however, it's a blast.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Stupid lefty me

By Capt. Fogg

Hey, I'm a stupid lefty. I must be, since so many obviously intelligent people tell me so. After all, I don't think the health insurance reform bill is any worse than what's already been done by prominent Republican presidential candidates and neither does Mitt Romney so he must be a stupid lefty too.

The Cato Institute, obviously a bunch of lefties as well, has pointed out that Mitsky (let's give him his due as a Trotskyite) enacted a health care plan identical to Obama's while he was Governor of Massachusetts in 2006. Of course that Maoist/Islamofascist radical Romney won't admit to it and he was only trying to hide his Marxist/Maoist sympathies when he called the identical Democratic plan all those nasty names. Hell, he's probably right to do so since 2006 was so long ago we didn't even have Twitter and nobody remembers.

The Cato Institute remembers, stupid lefties that they are.

"As President Obama himself has pointed out, Romney is the guy who created the prototype for ObamaCare. How can he lead the charge against a health care plan that is modeled on his own?" said Cato's executive vice president David Boaz.

Well hell, he's a lefty and lefties do that and the Cato "cel"l is probably a front for North Korea. But the concept of "its only wrong when they do it" really requires more intelligence than I have so I'll just never cut it as a right wing "patriot." I really am not smart enough to get angry at the President for raising taxes when he lowered them or furious at his forcing his predecessor to put us into crushing debt, so the Tea Bag patriots won't accept me either. Who can blame them for suspecting a wealthy investor and fund manager of loving Stalin and longing for the worker's paradise?

So Mea Culpa -- I'm a stupid lefty and I'll go say ten Hail Reagans and pray for understanding.