Anti-Obama Rage Justified. When do we Kill and Eat the rich?

Barack Obama was pissed.

Did you see him, yesterday afternoon? There he was: finger waging, lectern thumping, with grim, angry looks all around defending his decision to strike a deal with the GOP that would grant a tax break to the richest of the Richie Rich Regressive Randian Rascals out there and extend the Bush tax cuts.

Obama lashed out at Republicans for worshipping at the altar of Trickle Down Economics and liberals for being “sanctimonious” to a fault.

This is a decision so unpopular with the American people who it may very well mean the end of his relevancy as a President (as Rachel Maddow suggested), or that it may guarantee that he sees a Primary challenge from the left in 2012 (as Robert Kuttner recently reported).

And while the lone socialist talking head, Larry O’donnel, took the position that Obama struck the best possible deal he could get, the debate amongst Politician, analyzed by professional pundits has little or nothing to do with how the majority of Americans feel about this issue.

Consider a few statistics from a recent CBS news poll:
Only 26 percent of Americans support the GOP’s proposal to extend the cuts for all Americans. 70% of Democrats want to extend the cuts only on incomes below $250,000.
Even among Republicans, support for extending all the cuts is less than half at 46 percent.

What is in play here is so obvious and only bears mentioning to reframe this debate: elected officials do not even pretend to be accountable to their constituents. They are accountable to the interests of the richest 1% or less in this country. This may have always been true, but the recent Citizen United Supreme Court ruling created a new monster this past election cycle, the Super PAC: granting the super wealthy even more influence and an even greater voice in the political process than ever before.

When lobbying for a more just and equitable world, your letter to your Congresswoman or man or Senator will likely have about the same effect as a sandcastle trying to stop a Tsunami.

What the overwhelming majority of American need is some leverage. Think of it another way. When the United States of America negotiates secretly with – Iran for example, do you think the USA takes the nuclear option off the table? No. That is the leverage we have. My question then is, how far off is the day when the American people, negotiating openly with the super wealthy class via their proxy pawns in Congress and the White House say something like: do we, the unwashed masses want to kill and eat the rich? Well, lets just say that all options are on the table. The negotiating table, and the dinning room table. And yes, pun intended you hyper capitalist trickle down bastard.

As I watch Obama play at negotiating with this lame duck Congress the words that more often than not dancing in my head in reference to that duck are the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie from his protest song Alice’s Restaurant:

“I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.”

If one of does that well they might think we was crazy and just ignore it. If two people, can you imagine, two people ranting and raving like that –well they might think they was faggots and file us under Don’t ask Don’t Tell.

But if three, can you imagine if three, or fifty or hundreds of people a day getting so visibly angry, well they might think it was a movement the Kill and Eat the Rich Movement.
And then maybe we would get more Politicians sounding like Bernie Sanders and less sounding like Barack Obama.

THE 2010 PERSON OF THE YEAR: BRADLEY MANNING

Rape, murder, lies, sex, war, carnage, leakage- the past 12 months have had all of this and more in common with, well, every other year in this, the 2010^th year in the Gregorian Calendar. But because list are comforting and things must be compartmentalized, quantified, ruminated on, and debated- and because Time magazine FUCKS this shit up every year, I offer you the 2010 No Cure For That Person of the year award.

But first, some dishonorable mentions:

Tony Hayward for being the arrogant face and voice of a willfully negligent environmental terrorist of a corporation who presided over the largest environmental disaster in US history and one of the largest PR disasters in world history. You are free to enjoy your dishonorable mention now that you have your life back.

Pat Robertson for, in addition to just being a windbag-o-douche- stating that the Haiti earthquake was the result of Haiti making a deal with the devil.

Pope Benedict, for your continued efforts at shielding priests from criminal prosecution and allowing them to wear the cloth after you knew they raped and molested children, here is wishing I am wrong in my opinion about the non-existence of an afterlife and that hell does in fact exist with Beelzebub saving an eternal seat for at table with Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacey.
It is hard to give your heroes a dishonorable mention, but Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, for throwing a massive rally against rallies and protest against protest a Slactivist festival that hold high the Kid Rock Ethos of “the world is really awful but there is nothing we can do about it” I declare that the 2 kings of Comedy Central go directly to jail and do not pass go.

There are more, easy targets for dishonorable mention of course; Sarah Palin, Lebron James and the father of that Indonesian 2 year old baby who was smoking a pack a day come quickly to mind, but let us now shine a light on some of the most positive movers and shakers of 2010:

Honorable mention must go to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Laying bare the lies governments tell us that lead us to and keep us in a state of perpetual war makes you a hero on this list even as the likes of Sarah Palin calling for you to be hunted down like Osama bin Laden. WikiLeaks is said to be taking precautions in the light of such threats, but if we were going to hunt him down like Osama, it would appear that his life is not in that much danger after all. And while I think he could do away with his Ray Ban sponsorship deal he still earns a place high on this year’s Person of the Year honorable mention.

Lady Gaga also deserves honorable mention, not only for achieving fame while artistically de-constructing the fame monster culture we live in, but for using her celebrity status to advocate for gay rights and the abolishment of DADT. Even if her motivation is to overtake Madonna and Barbara Streisand on the iPod playlists of gay men all over the world, the ends (methinks) justify the means.

Allison Kilkenny and Jamie Kilstein, the married couple DIY independent media power couple get high praise for their work this year. She a journalist and he a comedian and together the hosts of the only podcast I actually listen to – you should all run right now to citizenradio.com to subscribe to their show to find out why G Gordon Liddy once told Allison why her writing wants to make him vomit and why Jeneane Garafolo described Jamie comedy as a cross between George Carlin and Bill Hicks. Pull yourself away from corporate media mouthpieces and listen to what true independence sounds like. You will not be disappointed, I promise.

This person of the year however, goes to Bradley Manning.

Displaying the courage, hearts and brains to pull back the curtain and show us much more than the menacing Wizard of OZ, Private First Class Bradley Manning allegedly (so this award must come with an asterisk, until his suspected involvement is confirmed) is the reason why Secretary of State Clinton, among other high-ranking officials, are scrambling to mend fences.  But exposing the machinations behind the hegemonic homicidal foreign policy of the United States goes well beyond any dream like dorethean allegory. Because, while it is true that we are no longer in Kansas, to stretch the boundaries of the Wizard of Oz metaphor, life in the post nuclear era is never so simple as clicking our heels together and awaking from a dream.

Private First Class Bradley Manning is now in jail, charged with illegally copying classified documents.

Manning said he hoped the release of the videos and documents would lead to “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”.

In fact, the ongoing discussion that will not die down anytime soon as a result of Manning’s actions are challenging Americans to face is a deeper meaning behind the phrase “there’s no place like home.”

U.S. Occupation of Iraq To Continue Indefinitely

SHARE THIS:

-Davis Fleetwood
TRANSCRIPT:

Dear Veterans: Thank you for making the ultimate sacrifice. Your willingness to die protecting our country is truly heroic. And since you have been wounded and killed and lost years of your life fighting illegal wars of aggression for the past 60 years, your country owes you much much more than an apology.

Certainly, I’m sorry, will not due for those 50,000 who still have boots on the ground in Iraq if they make it out alive to become Veterans.  Particularly since the U.S. is prepared to ditch the 2011 deadline to leave Iraq.

What a President lied to the American people about the intentions of our military? I don’t believe it the next thing you are going to tell me is that Santa Claus is not –Oh no. Don’t do that to me. Not so close to the holidays.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday-

Wait a second. Robert Gates was the Defense Secretary under Bush. And Bush is a war criminal.  Hope and change swept into Washington. Perhaps I am reading an old newspaper article as the source for my story today.

Is it possible that Barack Obama retained the same Secretary of Defense that was implementing the Bush Doctrine? The illegal wars of aggression that violate the U.S. Constitution, the UN Charter and laws of basic human decency?

This is supposed to be the mutha fucken change I can believe in?

The Pentagon: “WikiLeaks and Julian Assange Have Blood On Hands”

SHARE THIS:

by Davis Fleetwood

The 400, 000 documents released several days ago will take years for historians to go through, but the Pentagon wasted no time framing WikiLEaks as public enemy number 1.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it:

“The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world. Intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures, will become known to our adversaries. This department is conducting a thorough, aggressive investigation to determine how this leak occurred, to identify the person or persons responsible, and to assess the content of the information compromised.”

No Bobby, I think it might be the trail of death and destruction in the wake of the United States exporting, correction: violently shoving democracy down the throat of the world that is damaging our reputation.

Admiral Mike Mullen went even further:

“Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family. Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm’s way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point.”

Sorry Mike, but the blood is on the hands of those who would implement our insanely homicidal foreign policy. Mike, the blood is on your hands. The blood is on the hands of the Bush administration. The blood is on the hands of President Obama, and truth be told, the blood is on the hands of the American taxpayer, many of whom, though they may have never been to an anti war rally, will make a pilgrimage to DC this weekend to attend a rally held by a comedian asking us all to just take a deep breathe, get along and restore some sanity.

Suggesting that WikiLeaks and their source has blood on their hands is akin to saying that a TV station reporting on a fire is guilty of arson, or a reporter filing a story about a rape is accessory to future rape. At the end of a horror movie, when a light is cast in a dark basement revealing the cave of  the mass murderer, one does not prosecute the light.

Do we need any more metaphors, or are you with me here?

Your logic, Admiral, like the foreign policy you implement in your starched and pressed boy scout outfit all pimped out with pins, stars and the skulls of murdered children is about as warped as the corpses of the innocent civilians lying in the streets of Iraq that now number – in the low estimates of the US military ( I know this courtesy of wikileaks) to number over 66 thousand civilians.

What I also know, courtesy of WikiLeaks, is that in this hellfire attack (pictured in video above)-the civilian walking by is not listed in the report of this incident.

So what is the real number of innocent civilians dead, admiral? Furthermore, in the cost to benefit ratio, how many Iraqi civilian deaths is to high a price to pay for us to continue pursuing our Manifest Destiny?

♦

ω

Feel free to repost all or part of this on a non-commercial blog/website. Always credit “Davis Fleetwood” as the author and include an active link back to the particular blog post.

This work by Davis Fleetwood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

find Davis Fleetwood on facebook, AlterNet, twitter, itunes, BlipTV, youtube, myspace

Follow No Cure For That on Twitter.

click for most recent episode

A freelance writer, Davis Fleetwood has worked as a writer/ media consultant for Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and served as a contributing editorial commentator for The Uptake. His videos have been seen by over 18 million viewers. He has been called (among many other things) “one of the most prominent voices in YouTube politics.” (-You Tube News & Politics chief, Steve Grove) He was a “Best of YouTube, 2007” nomination. His book DROPPIN’ KNOWLEDGE LIKE A CLUMSY LIBRARIAN, is now available from No Cure For That Press, and his first full length feature documentary, MANIFEST DESTINY’S CHILD, is due out on DVD this January.

The show is Independently produced by a staff of one & runs on the fuel of your individual donations.

Click here to Donate.

ω

This is Not MoveOn.Org’s Bulls**T Campaign Ad

Share this:

Sam Stein, reporting for the HuffingtonPost, writes:

In the last round of ads it will run before the election, the progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org is going back to the well, raising the specter of well-resourced corporations overwhelming the vote of regular citizens.

Airing in 28 different races, the spot took obvious, painstaking effort to produce, featuring actual voters in that specific district reading portions of the script. But by getting authentic narrators to deliver the message there is some additional resonance.

Here is the MoveOn spot:

Cute.

To bad MoveOn.org ignores the Democrats complicity in the clusterfuck of our current 2 party duopoly.

No Cure For That has responded withthe following ad:

TEXT:
This Ad is not paid for by the corporate front groups, oil billionaires, or foreign entities that are trying to buy this election for the Republicans.

And this Ad is not paid for by Wall Street Hedge Fund managers trying to ensure that finical regulation remains a dirty word for Democrats.

And this ad is not paid for by the military industrial complex, who have ensured that not matter which of the major parties are in power, we will continue to spend and kill well past our economic and moral limits.

This is our ad, made by hard working, independent Americans.

This November 2nd, let the GOP know that they are batshit crazy. The left wing lost the culture wars of the 1990s, but we welcome the opportunity for CW2. (4 continued)

This November 2nd, let the Democrats know that they have taken your vote for granted for to long. You gave them 2006. You gave them 2008. They failed you in every way.

This November 2nd, go to the ballot box and vote Green, 3rd party, or cast a protest vote by writing in: “NO CURE FOR THAT”.

The 2010 Mid Term Elections: The Progressive Dilemma (redux)

by Davis Fleetwood
SHARE THIS:

With only 14 days remaining until the mid term elections Democrats, liberals and progressives are either unmotivated or completely defeated. We no longer stand for anything, it seems, save the restoration of sanity.

Not that the Jon Stewart siren song is without seduction. If the 2006 and 2008 elections have taught Democrats and those on the left anything at all it is that your new boss is much like the old boss, with game changing differences notable not in foreign policy (we still kill first and ask questions later) nor in domestic policy (Even in the face of the biggest wealth grab and upward redistribution of wealth in the history of the world, the white house still answers to Wall Street first, the people 2nd). With that said, there is plenty of insanity to go around. The GOP, heavily favored to lay down an ass whooping on the Democrats on November 2nd, has been successfully hijacked by a radian regressive christian conservative movement.

Tea Party Ad: “Come Home To God”

Glenn Beck & The Tea Party: “Our Children will be sold as slaves to China”

No One Cares

Originally posted on TruthDig. Written by Chris Hedges

We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. We sustain these wars, which have no real popular support, by borrowing trillions of dollars that can never be repaid, even as we close schools, states go into bankruptcy, social services are cut, our infrastructure crumbles, tens of millions of Americans are reduced to poverty, and real unemployment approaches 17 percent. Collective, suicidal inertia rolls us forward toward national insolvency and the collapse of empire. And we do not protest. The peace movement, despite the heroic efforts of a handful of groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Green Party and Code Pink, is dead. No one cares.

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.

Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

This article was originally published @ The Huffington Post. Written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP’s oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama’s Katrina.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks after touring the Coast Guard Venice Center in the Gulf of Mexico region to view environmental damage caused by the sinking of BP's oil and gas Deepwater Horizontal drilling rig while in Venice, Louisiana,

In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.