Message to the Black Athlete in America

I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is a staunch Republican outpost located about halfway between Chicago and Detroit. Perhaps our most famous living native son is the champion boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr. I bring this up because recently Floyd beat up some Brit to win some kind of middle weight boxing title. You see I don't follow the sport closely. In fact, I truly wonder why if it's illegal for chickens and dogs to fight then it's perfectly acceptable for people to scramble eachother's brains for sport. I have my theories as to why, but I will save that for another day. Anyway, the point is that you would think our local newspaper and TeeVee stations would be closely following this story. But I watched the local news last night and they did not mention anything about the fight (which was going on at the time) until the sports section. Yet, last year when the Tigers (which play in a city 180 miles away) were in the World Series, they led off the news with coverage and reporters covering the story in front of wide screen TVs at local sports bars.

Now let's go back in time a few years to 1998. At that time Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs and was a modern day folk hero. Three years later Barry Bonds broke that record and was subpoenaed. He then went on to break the all time home run record in 2007 and was subsequently indicted.

Ok disclosure time. Barry Bonds and Floyd Mayweather Jr. are black men. So, to borrow a sports anaolgy, they have two strikes against them starting out. They are also considered arrogant by many sports writers who happen to be caucasion. STRIKE THREE!

They are outta there. No front page headlines and you better watch your step. That's the price you must pay if you insist on being the UBA, or Uppity Black Athlete. This is the CLS, or Carl Lewis Syndrome at play here. Named after a famous UBA from the '80s, who didn't play by the rules of the caucasian media and was even suspected of being gay. That killed his megastar and even star status in America (though not elsewhere in the sissy world of Europe and Japan).

If you want to be well liked and black in the world of sports you have to be at least humble if not downright deferential. Caucasian athletes can do as they damn well please, they get a pass. These are the rules. Michael Jordan was a possible exception. He would not suck up, but he still became the megastar because he bit his lip and let the Nike money do the talking. Be like Mike. And they will at least tolerate you.

Joe Lieberman in the Garden of Gethsemane

And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

Mark 14:35

Of the many rouses that politicians use to cow people, religion is perhaps the most effective. The sight of a senator or president appearing as a moral standardbearer while backing wars of agression is as common as suicide bombers in Baghdad these days. Case in point: "Holy" Joe Lieberman, the orthodox Jew that so pompously chastised Bill Clinton for sticking his penis in unauthorized areas, has since devoutly endorsed the decidedly not-so-moral Bush/Cheney cabal and its spreading of torture and death hither and yon.

Now he is in the unenviable position of having to vote yay or no for the next advocate of torture and genocide that Bush has nominated for Attorney General. Our Mr. Morality can take a righteous stand against these evils just as he did against the philandering Clenis. Or he can give the green light to torture and death. Or he could use the sleazy, torture-enabling Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Feinstein as cover and give a purely symbolic vote against the nominee. It will be interesting, in a disgusting kind of way, to see how it pans out.

Must Be Halloween Again

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

~ Bertrand Russell


In WingnutLand, it is always Halloween, that dark, spooky place where danger lurks in every shadow and evil ghouls are ready pounce without warning. Of course the only real ghoulish characters involved here are those who have so tragically appointed themselves as the guardians of our safety. The latter day Pearl Harbor aka 9/11 allows them to wield fear as the most powerful weapon in their arsenal since it allows them to unleash all the others. The sad fact is that the public has wised up to them before many cowardly people in congress have.

So now they want to attack Iran. Why? I guess it's because the Iraq thing went so wonderfully smooth. Yep, mission accomplished. Err...or not. Never mind, let's move on. These Iranians are terrrorists ya know and they umm...have these nookular things that they plan on using to ehh...kill us all with. Yep, that's what they wanna do...kill us all. With their bombs. Yeah. Their bombs. Nookular ones.

Well that's good enough for me. I am convinced. Wait a minute...my attention span being longer than three seconds, it just occurred to me that I heard this bullshit before. But where? Oh yeah, from these same assholes. About Iraq. OK...can someone arrest these motherfuckers now? Oh wait, congress is going along with them again. Way to go Democrats. Take AIPAC money much?

So let's listen for that little satanic hobgoblin Dick Cheney, here he comes now with his Halloween ditty:

Trick or Treat
Smell my Feat
Gimme sum more Blood to Drink

But there's hope...the media will expose them this time. Certainly after the last disaster they won't be made to look like criminally negligent accomplices to genocide AGAIN will they? No effing way...they are gonna totally expose these shysters this time I can feel it. You believe me don't you?

If you do then I have some Revolutionary Guard nooks to sell you.

Slavery...Again

I will begin my comments this very, very serious topic with a somewhat light-hearted aside. I am that rare type of person that actually enjoys certain uncomfortably awkward social situations. Don't get me wrong...I don't try bringing them about. It's just that some other damn fool invariably does and when it happens I actually welcome it, for a couple reasons. First, there's the very funny aspect of watching ignorant people stutter and spit while other less brash, but no less ignorant people, shift from foot to foot uncomfortably and stare off into space yearning for immediate deliverance from the here and now. And there's the emotional catharsis of "educating" on some fool that is just mindlessly regurgitating the talking points meant to reinforce their own lack of historical perspective.

Speaking of which, one of the most insidious and downright amusing-in-a-perverse-sort-of way talking points are those that deal with the topic of Slavery in America. These, I believe, are being cooked up by the modern day equivalent of plantation owners and their enormous PR machine that consists of an army of intellectual charlatans to do their bidding on the propaganda circuit. Well recently one of these charlatans, a movie critic turned culture warrior (only in America!!), decided to join the long list of right-wing nutcases that have expounded on the "Slavery Wasn't so Bad, Actually" meme that resonates so strongly with most white people benefitting from a socio-economic lansdcape descended directly from the plantation Big House. I will not even name the author because he deserves no special recognition, being one of the more unremarkable of the wingnut hired mouthpieces (maybe making a name on the freak show parade was one of the motives here). It's highly doubtful that he, as a supposedly educated person, even believes what he writes. So let's go down the list of the author's six "inconvenient truths" of slavery and see just how truthful they are. Why bother? Because this is the internet and we (still) have the opportunity.

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.

OOOOhhhhh. Good call. "But Mom, everyone else was doing it!". How far did that justification get you, when you were a 5 YEAR OLD? I could see how this argument would play well with the spoiled ass young Republicans that it was meant for, though.


2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

It existed almost 200 years before The Republic was even declared, after which African slaves were denoted as 3/5ths of a person for another 89 years. The tiny percentage is misleading on a number of counts. Number one slave owners were rather small segment of the population to begin with. Number two, it involved a large percentage of the ancestors of Black people and one of the reasons for this is that, number three, the slave owning men sired quite a few black children. In fact, this can be traced through modern methods, and the thought of a lot of lilly-white trust funds being called into question on those grounds is a very scary thought indeed for some folks!

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.

Oh my favorite one, the old "My Holocaust was Bigger Than Yours" argument. He even does the Auschwitz comparison. Just because slaves were murdered for being sick, just because slaves were murdered for wanting to be free, just because slaves were murdered just because, this doesn't mean that all of them were MEANT to be murdered. They were really just meant to be WORKED TO DEATH. But the underlying theme is more along the lines of "the profit motive is your friend, even if you are a lowly slave". Meanwhile, people are still dying in this country because of profit-driven health care. Not to mention those in Africa consigned to death by the Big Pharma patent obsession. But I digress...

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

All this says is that Northern manufacturing was more profitable than the Southern agriculture. That's not to say that temendous wealth was not built on the backs of slaves working the plantations. The author also neglects to mention that Northern wealth was built on the backs of immigrants and children in factory sweatshops. Even so, if given the choice, I'd take the sweatshop over the plantation experience any day, tyvm. I bet the author would, too.

5. AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

It took 89 years and about the bloodiest civil war any country has ever fought to get rid of it. It was then replaced with a system almost as brutal that lasted another 100 years. And all the while there were people justifying slavery by saying it was God's will as expressed in the Bible. Of course there is little doubt that if slavery were still around the author would be listing the six "inconvenient truths" about "why slavery ISN'T that bad" instead of why it WASN'T that bad.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

There's also no reason to believe that if Europeans had not continued to exploit the people and resources of Africa to this very day that large segments of Africa would not have the turmoil and misery they have had. But getting beyond that often overlooked truth, this statement is like saying that "hey, at least the Jews that were murdered by the Nazis in Europe didn't have to go to Israel and worry about being attacked by Palestinians".


OK I'm done. Now after having gone through all that trouble...I am beginning to think that the whole point of the drivel cascading from the right-wing parade of assclowns is to have forward thinking people waste their time and energy debating and debunking obvious bullshit. They are no more than internet trolls. Unfortunately, they are too well funded to be ignored.

Spreading What?

The Iraq Fiasco, againt all odds, continues to smell even worse lately. Two stories to follow (that the Money Media certainly won't) are the plans by our beloved U.S. oil companies to privatize the entire national oil sector, and the continued subjugation of the Iraqi government by crazed terrorrists aka Blackwater mercs. Both of these things can be traced right back to that caricature of evil incarnate, Darth Cheney. This reptilian mafioso creep was part of the Poppy Bush junta in the early 90s at which time he came up with the concept of privatizing large segments of the military, and contracting that business out to Republican-owned companies. He had to wait about 10 years before he could fully exploit the system he created, but now it's ON, thanks to 9/11 and the all too predictable scenario of the U.S. public not paying attention. So our tax bucks go to a few of his favorite violent charities, and some of that gets funneled back into the Republican campaign slush fund. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been redistributed that way in the past 4 years. It's a remarkable achievement for someone who lacks a heart, and soul. And with this killing machine we are in the process of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

But what exactly are we spreading? It seems that democracy in Iraq is the kind of democracy that we have in the United States. One where the vast majority of people have important decisions made for them by people who are corrupt in the most basic sense: they put cash money ahead of everything else, most notably the lives of their fellow people. What kind of democracy prevents a sovereign government from kicking out psychotic death squads like the Blackwater mercs? What kind of democracy sees politicians bribed in order to sell off the vast wealth of the nation to foreign oil companies, allowing billions of dollars to be swiped out of the national treasury?

Answer: The kind that we want to spread to Iran, Cuba, and North Korea.

What's in a name: Katrina

You know I rowed a little boat, five miles 'cross the pond

You know I rowed a little boat, 'bout five miles 'cross the pond

I throwed my things in the little boat, it rolled me right along
It was thunderin' and lightnin', but it rolled me right along

It was thunderin', it was lightnin', Oh yeah, it rolled me right along

There were thousands of people, they didn't have no place to go, mmm
Little children they were screamin'and cryin', Oh yeah

The wind was howlin', they didn't have no place to go, mmm

There were thousands o' people, they's goin' from door to door, mmm

- I Rowed a Little Boat

Traditional, from the 1927 Mississippi River Flood

On August 29, 2005, almost 80 years after the terrible Mississippi flood of 1927, the levees broke and flooded the poorest, lowest-lying sections of New Orleans, Louisiana, drowning over one thousand people. Two years later, many of those sections are still deserted, their inhabitants scattered across the country, many with no plans or desire to return. For several weeks the sight of the survivors, stranded by the floods and by the harsh economic realities of a country that consistently puts money ahead of life, was out there for all the world to see. And the world did see it, more clearly and objectively than most people in this country were willing to. I remember going to the BBC and other foriegn news outlets to get the most in-depth look at why the richest country on earth could doom its own citizens to a watery grave. How that country that could spend a trillion dollars on invading and occupying countries halfway around the world was not willing to spend less than one hundredth of that cost to shore up the levees that protected one of its own cities.

Coming almost exactly four years after the 2001 attacks, with a similarly horrific death toll, this disaster in many ways stood in stark contrast to that event. This time, the lie was put to the term "Homeland Security" the reactionary name and department that was born of 9/11. It was exposed as a grand farce as floating corpses were eaten by dogs and people died of dehydration, waiting for help that never came. This government was obviously not capable to secure this country, much less Iraq.

And then there the were people stranded and dying even after they were rescued, or waded out of the flood waters. As Wolf Blitzer observed in a moment of live-TV stream of consciousness "These people are so poor, so Black". And they were. They were not the wavy-haired, light complected Louisiana ruling class Moriels et al., but their darker brethren, lowest on the economic and social totem pole that is the living legacy of the plantations. They were "left behind" even as the pets were flown out of harm's way while the monstrous swirl of clouds and wind approached.

Perhaps the sickest tendency in the wake of the event was to blame the victims, which is elevated to something of an art form by our media giants. So we have LOOTERS and SHOOTERS and all kinds of hysteria that turned out to be 99 percent bullshit, all in the name of making people think "yep those niggers are animals and they brought this on themselves. Nope, there's no helping those people". What they didn't report that most of the poor people in New Orleans and all across our land of bounty, have jobs, often more than one. And they still can't afford a car to get the hell out of town. No they never spoke of poverty wages, but the first thing Bush and Cheney did was foist an executive order making it legal to pay slave wages to workers reconstructing the city!

Oh and one more thing the media never told you. The lower 9th ward, the lowest of the low lands, was created when the New Orleans Superdome was built, destroying a more prosperous (and elevated) working class community and relegating its inhabitants to the place that is now a wasteland. It is sadly ironic that the Superdome became their terrordome again during Katrina and their middle passage out of New Orleans.

The Great (Non) Debate

Listen to me! A two-legged animal will believe anything, and the more preposterous the better. Whales speak French at the bottom of the sea. The horses of Arabia have silver wings. Pygmies mate with elephants in darkest Africa. I have sold all those propositions...and more.

~Allardyce Meriweather, snake oil salesman in the movie "Little Big Man"

Americans like to be fooled. It's in our blood. We are suckers for hucksters with good sales pitches. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of politics. How else can you explain so many people voting against their own economic self interests? Karl Rove was no genius, despite what some frustrated non-wingnuts may think. It's not hard to fool people who are raised up as consumers, the human equivalent of a grazing bovine herd animal. It's been done before, many times. Just play to the fear and ignorance. Genius means inventing something new...and ole fat Rover just took the ancient turgid playbook of American politics and ran through the mud one more time with it. The genius part of politics exists elsewhere, however...to wit: the entire "left/right" debate on Fox News and CNNBCBS. How is this desultory bit of theatrics genius you ask? First of all, the true left is nowhere to be found in the mainstream media. Rather we have center-right debating with the rabid wingnuts. It's a sham, designed to make people believe that the likes of Bill Clinton is actually a "leftist" rather than the big chubby, amiable friend of carnivorous capitalism that he is. It's also designed to make people believe that there is an opposition to a system that puts profit ahead of life on earth when there isn't. Not one that can get elected president anyway.

So in campaign 2008 we have the Republican side already proudly advertising themselves as the worst in human nature. Shameless boorish hypocrites willing to squander whatever resources (both human and natural) they can to maximize the profits of the top 1 percent of the population. On the other side we have the Democrats, divided into the so-called "top tier" candidates who are undercover Wall Street stealth operatives ready to sign more disastrous trade agreements and the more true representatives of the long battered working class who are already being termed the "also-rans" by the money pundits before a single vote is cast. These are our choices. We are told the only people that are willing to make any meaningful change cannot be elected to make that change.

This is the democracy we want to export to the rest of the world? No wonder no one wants us occupying their country.

Perversions of Christianity

"Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

-Matthew 19:24

I don't recognize anything remotely Christ-like in the biggest purveyors of Christianity in the United States these days. Backers of religious wars, vilifiers of the poor, supporters of the continued acceleration of maldistribution of wealth and resources among the economic classes; on virtually every important issue, they are more akin to Roman rulers rather than the humble servants of God they pass themselves off as. The great paradox here is that those who most closely preach the true word of Jesus are more often than not agnostics or non-Christians. Jesus set an example for not judging others, lest ye be judged. But all these people are good for is passing judgement, and a harsh judgement at that. I'm telling you, if the current crop of right wing religious hucksters were around back then, they would have hurled stones in response to the statement "let he who is without sin...", because they truly believe they are without sin. That is the level of their hubris and hypocrisy. You have to be seriously blind to any faith in order to take a message and change it to suit your own prejudices and class perspectives. This is the modus operandi of the faith hustlers, southern white conservatives that were never in touch with the true teachings of Jesus Christ having grown up in segregated churches and in a culture where black people as subservient, almost invisible members of the world was the norm. And they preferred to keep it that way, and they still do. Listen to them speak about the past in nostalgic terms, and you know what I mean. Once having any concern for others ceases, then religion loses any purpose it had. This ain't coming from me, either. Read your good book, whatever that good book may be...ALL religions have the Golden Rule as their central message. Realizing that, we see how many people in the world today are TRULY LOST. Those that preach the message along with those that follow them into the hell they inevitably create.

So Much for Living in a Free Country

This is classic hypocrisy from the ruling elite...in fact it doesn't get any more in-your-muhfukkin-face obvious than this:

"Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary 'Sicko'."

Now this story requires some background info so let me set the stage for you. About 50 years ago the people of Cuba overthrew centuries of autocratic despotic rule, promulgated by Spain and the United States. They installed a socialist regime, and that resulted in a large number of rich and/or corrupt Cubans fleeing to Miami, where they proceeded to rent out a bunch of whores that we commonly refer to as U.S. politicians. These whores took the old casino/brothel money from the Cuban exiles and, among other dirty things, made laws preventing U.S. citizens from travelling to Cuba. Let me repeat that part with emphasis: THEY MADE IT ILLEGAL FOR US TO TRAVEL TO CUBA.

Now ask yourself, what kind of country makes it illegal for its own people to go where ever the hell they want to? A despotic regime? A banana republic? Yes, that's what we are living in. So the next time you hear some right wing clown talking about how repressive things are in Cuba (or any other country currently out of favor with the State Dept.) ask in a loud and clear voice: WHY IS IT ILLEGAL FOR AN AMERICAN CITIZEN TO TRAVEL WHERE THEY WANT TO?

Now back to the story. Among the most corrupt element of United States society is the propensity for politicians to take money from big corporations and then make laws benefitting them. And about the worst offenders in this practice are big pharmaceutical companies, a special breed of people that ALWAYS put profits ahead of people's lives. A case in point, these are the people that condemned millions of sub-Saharan Africans TO DEATH because they were worried about losing a few dollars to generic drugs that fight AIDS. They are the lowest of the low. Well maybe with the exception of the U.S. State Department.

So Michael Moore is making a movie about how our health care system is basically, criminal. But you can't call very huge and powerful corporations what they are. Nope, not in the United States. Because where there is a lot of money, there are a lot of people being paid to lie. So in those rare instances when someone attempts to bring up the unpleasant and obvious truth, such as our health care system is an embarrassment and criminally neglectful, these people will spring into action. They will write stories, they will go on talk shows and yes, they will run for political office:

"Moore's opponents have accused him of distorting the facts, and his Cuba trip provoked criticism from conservatives including former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson, who assailed the filmmaker in a blog at National Review Online."

Remember when I mentioned how U.S. politicians are whores? Fred Thompson is a big whore. Now he may play a tough guy on TV, but he is really a soft pussycat when it comes to standing up to deadly corporate behavior. He rolls over and arches his back for those who are going to sponsor his potential presidential run. And that's where we are in this free country right now, being ruled by people like that.

All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us

Breaking News: F5 Iraqi Shytstorm hits Kansas:

In Kansas, the governor said the state's response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semitrailers, to the war in Iraq .
"Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild," she said.
Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office, which manages state resources during emergencies, said the state has a shortage of heavy equipment transport trailers, pallet-sized loading systems, Humvees, dump trucks and other large equipment that would be help move massive amount of debris.
"We are never at 100 percent because we are allocated a certain amount from the National Guard Bureau. With the war, we are much shorter than we would be. We have about 40 percent of what is allocated," Watson said.
----------------------------------------------------


Yet more proof that the scam wars in the Mideast are not to make us any safer. Nothing has changed since Katrina, people. Our health and safety is about the last thing the war makers are worried about; up top of the list is lining their pockets.

Peggy Noonan: Blood Drinking Zombie from Hell

This must stop now. You wonder, how can we do it? And your mind says, immediately: Whatever it takes.

-Peggy Noonan, advocating genocide against Iraqi children, April 2004

An indian who is as bad as the white man cannot live in our nation; he would be put to death and eaten by the wolves. We told them to leave us alone and keep away from us but they followed on and beset our paths and coiled themselves among us like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. This is the cause of us making war; and they know it. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceitful. Indians do not tell lies. Indians do not steal. But they look at the indian spitefully and speak bad of us... It is true that the white men do not scalp the head: but they do worse - they poison the heart.

-Cheif Black Hawk, 1832

Well this is some old business that needed taking care of, so it may be some days late and a few hundred billion dollars short, but here goes. As some of you may recall way back in early April 2004 four Blackwater mercenaries got the George Armstrong Custer/Mogadishu treatment in Fallujah, Iraq. The grotesquley macabre images of which quickly reverberated throughout the world and sparked one of the most grotesquely macabre editorials ever written. This was penned by none other than Ronald "Ketchup is a Vegetable" Reagan's former propagandist, Peggy Noonan. Yes the same subhuman creature that trumpeted it was "Morning in Amerikkka" as poor children saw their school lunches evaporate, death squads crank up in Central America and Osama Bin Laden's Afghan Mujahadeen get sent many millions of dollars and hundreds of Stinger missiles to boot, circa 1984.

This creature, this...this thing, sat down and banged out some of the most bloodthirsty prose seen since the days of Manifest Destiny sought justification for the Twin Godheads of this country's foundation: African Slavery and Indian Genocide. Fittingly enough, it appeared in the editorial section of The Wall Street Journal, the very mouthpiece of Capitalist Exploitation and Those Without Souls aka the ruling class. Let's take a look (take a deep breath and if you have just eaten you might want to wait a few minutes before continuing) shall we?:

"The world is used to bad news and always has been, but now and then there occurs something so brutal, so outside the normal limits of what used to be called man's inhumanity to man, that you have to look away. Then you force yourself to look and see and only one thought is possible: This must stop now. You wonder, how can we do it? And your mind says, immediately: Whatever it takes."

Wow, where to begin... Well, let's start with some muuuuch needed perspective. These haughtily indignant words were written well after the last vestiges of any moral justification for the invasion/occupation of Iraq (which resulted in the slaughter of countless thousands of Iraqi civilians) had disappeared. We knew there were no WMD there and therefore we knew that Bush/Cheney were two big lying sacks of murderous shit. Whatever it takes? How 'bout some fucking TRUTH you pig, or have you been writing your lame ass propaganda so long that the truth is an abstract quantity, something impossible for you to grasp? But Wait it gets better...or worse, since I hope we are all living outside of Peggys "Up is Down Bizarro World":

"The pictures that television appropriately mostly did not show and the Internet inevitably mostly did were horrifying in a way that was reminiscent of the first still pictures of the Trade Center victims of 9/11. It was like seeing people in business suits falling through the air again. It was as if someone pointed a camera at evil and actually caught it in the act."

Ah several of the most amazing "qualities" of the propagandist are on display here in all their sick glory. To whit:

EMOTIVE PANDERING: Hey, let's exploit the 9/11 dead ONE MORE TIME, Peggy.

SELECTIVE MEMORY: I guess you don't recall the sight of hundreds of massive bombs dropped on Baghdad just a year earlier do you? Oh, but those were just Iraqis being shredded into little pieces by them, many of them not even wearing business suits. Their lives ain't worth remembering much, huh Peggy?

LACK OF PERSPECTIVE: Comparing civilians going about their workday to armed mercenaries in an illegal war halfway around the world.

And it still gets better (worse):

"This stops nothing, the terrorists will not win. A State Department spokesman said the contractors "were trying to make a difference and to help others." Indeed they were. There are many such in Iraq. They are risking their lives for many reasons, including improving the prospects for health and safety of 12-year-old boys like the one quoted by Reuters who witnessed the actions of his elders after the attack on the civilians. "I am happy to see this," he said."

"It is hard not to hate the teenagers and young men who celebrated under the bridge where they hanged the charred bodies. They are human expressions of nihilism. They take pleasure in evil, and they were not shy to show it. They are arrogant. They think barbarity is their right.
If this time, in this incident, these young men are left unchecked, their ways and attitudes, their assumptions and method of operating will only be encouraged, and spread. So we had better check them."

Those fucking savages, Peggy!! How DARE they not throw rose petals at our glorious mercenaries while they were applying symbolic bandaids after kneecapping them with a machine gun. Ungrateful sand niggers, the lot of them! Why can't they be civilized like the lilly white neighbors in your gated community, Peggy!? (You know, the ones heavy with Boeing, Raytheon and Halliburton in their investment portfolios.) Why didn't they invite the mercs over for a spot of tea? You just can't reason with those savages Peggy, much less understand them. There's only one solution Peggy and you know what it is...to check them, Peggy. Yes we must check them. Umm, what are you suggesting?

"We know what the men and boys who did the atrocity of Fallujah look like; they posed for the cameras. We know exactly what they did--again, the cameras. We know they massed on a bridge and raised their guns triumphantly. It's all there on film. It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn't lost on them, blow up the bridge. "

That's right. Arrest them and/or kill them, whichever comes first. Then blow them up. And nuke them and their damn bridge, too. Wow Peggy, I didn't know you were taking testosterone injections. Check your adams apple, baby. Thump your chest like the big wholesome silverback gorilla that you are. Well guess what, Pegs...you got your wish. Your boys lobbed several thousand rounds of white phosphorus all over that motherfucker. Enough to melt the skin off every first born (and second and third born) son in the whole city. We depopulated it, too, just like Andy Jackson did the USA of the troublemaking savage Indians more than 150 years ago. Like the Nazis did to Lidice more than 60 years ago. Are you happy Peggy? Do you sleep better at night knowing that white people will not be dishonored by brown savages anywhere on earth?

Not long after this the story of Abu Ghraib broke, and Peggy shut the hell up about Iraq. And of course, it should come as no surprise that Peggy had not a damn thing to say about Hurricane Katrina, except praising Bush's inaction and empty rhetoric while the underclass were being washed away.

You Had a Billion Chances...

Don't kill the old lady
Nor the baby where a suck 'pon titty
Jah Jah Him no go have no mercy
-Eeka Mouse "Terrorists in the City"

April is the cruelest month
- T.S. Eliot "The Waste Land"

Gunshots punctuate a sad song on the early morning radio
Was it just static or an automatic
My brain says no but my ears say so

You had a billion chances to change history
But you kept right on walking
You had the time to end it all
But you listened to other heads talking

No one is born to go out like that
Chemical imbalance put you in a trance?
Set you down a different path
He's gonna shoot, now you can dance

You just kept piling it on each day
Looking ahead with a sideways glance
You can't stop looking at the prize, no way
He's gonna shoot, and you can dance

It's the cruelest month of a cruel year
Look far away and it gets much worse
Ask yourself what you're doing here
Filled with a hunger that hangs like a curse

You have a billion chances to change
Before the time comes around
You don't have to keep insane
Before you go dormant underground