Action Jackson
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Using Osama bin Laden as a kind of verbal bookends, President Obama jumped on reality with a touch of a man-up pose in his state-of-the-union speech last night, calling on the US to “restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”
The 65-minute speech was called “feisty,” and “combative,” and in true political reality, was indeed a well-heeded campaign start-up — Obama’s leaves this morning to start the November ball a-rolling.
(Illustration found here).
Obama even had the flag carried by the US Navy SEAL team that assassinated Osama last year: “Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation room…All that mattered that day was the mission. No-one thought about politics…”
And he pounded it home:
“Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes.
No-one built this country on their own,” Obama said.
“This nation is great because we built it together.
This nation is great because we worked as a team.
This nation is great because we get each others’ backs.
And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great, no mission too hard.”
In this he laid the groundwork for the next eleven months — the real man-up ruler of the US can only be the guy that got Osama bin Laden, and it will surely not work if anyone else takes the reins of power, so vote for me!
And boxed in between the warmongering, Obama slapped at income inequality and the Republicans who have produced the situation — the president proposed big shifts with the US tax system, like for instance, a minimum 30 per cent effective rate on millionaires.
Which prompted Mitch Daniels in response to whine: “No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favour with some Americans by castigating others,” Daniels said, according to excerpts of his speech.
In other words — leave the rich alone.
And this tweet via Aljazeera English: “RT @theonlyadult: Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. #obama2012 #sotu”
And as if on cue, early this morning U.S. Navy SEALs popped into Somalia to grab two kidnapped aid workers — an American and a Dane — in a daring helicopter raid reminiscent of the Osama attack.
Before news broke of the rescue, Obama told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “Leon, good job tonight. Good job tonight,” at the State of the Union address.
Election 2012 is gonna be a dandy, action-packed pile of hollerin’ bullshit.
False on the Face
Filed Under Bullshit, Lying | Leave a Comment
Political lying as an art form:
Take last Thursday’s Republican debate in South Carolina.
Hundreds of G.O.P. voters applauded as Newt Gingrich blasted CNN’s John King for raising an accusation about marriage and sex in presidential politics.
These same voters, I have no doubt, would have cheered Gingrich for doing just that in 1998 when he led the charge to impeach President Clinton for his dalliance with a younger woman who worked in his office — or technically, for lying about it, but you see the point.
When Clinton did it, Republican voters called for his impeachment; when Gingrich does it and defends himself, they cheer for him.
A lie is the truth until its not.
And tonight, President Obama will go on TV with his third state of the union message, reportedly carrying a theme of a “a fair shake for all,” but in the actual state of the country, the shaking is from the bottom up.
Supposedly, all kinds of diverse shit will be included in the message, especially any and all important points to consider in his re-election bid — Obama’s scheduled for a three-state campaign trip starting Wednesday.
Here we go…
Accordingly, the prez should do some bullshitting himself — via The Daily Beast:
Obama should—without mentioning them by name—take a couple of whacks at Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.
This is a time, with Romney on the ropes and the leading GOP candidate (Gingrich) “enjoying” a roughly -35 point approval-to-disapproval rating, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Play some head games.
Have some fun.
Do—if I may—some dozens.
Not “your mama is so fat” dozens, obviously.
But talk some smack.
Drop in one or two that the Republicans will attack as undignified to the occasion.
Put them on the defensive, make them sound whiny.
Trust me, David Plouffe: independents will like it.
They sure didn’t like what you wanted to do last summer (capitulate).
…
If those things aren’t happening, the speech was a political failure.
And the Brits say no laughing.
From the Telegraph:
But any attempt at levity might come off badly.
There’s a reason why over 600,000 people participated in the South Carolina primary: the state’s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent and folks are angry.
Many are suffering in a recession that has run so long it must now be called Obama’s.
Gallup gives him a job approval rating of 44 percent but CBS reports that only 29 percent of the country thinks America is headed in the right direction.
As cold winds blow over the Northeast and hurricanes hit the South, attitudes are likely to harden.
I’ve been travelling across America for nearly a decade and I’ve never known such pessimism.
Gas price increases are making it harder to numb the pain with consumer spending.
And what can be bought is made by child labour in China – a country that now owns roughly $1.16 trillion of America’s spiralling debt.
The big thing, though, Mr. President, is try and not to bullshit with bullshit.
State of Dysfunction
Filed Under Bullshit, Politics | Leave a Comment
Subject to be most discussed this morning here in northern California — the 49ers loss yesterday to the New York Giants.
Personally, I don’t give a fat-rat’s-ass, but this from fumble-bum Kyle Williams typified a lot of shit: “Everyone in here told me to keep my head up and it’s not on me,” said Williams, whose fumbles led to New York’s final 10 points. “We’ll move forward.”
Don’t blame me — let’s just move on.
(Illustration found here).
And on Tuesday night, President Obama makes his annual state-of-the-union speech, his third, with the same feel as fumbler Williams — mistakes have been made, but don’t blame me and let’s just move forward.
According to Bloomberg, Obama’s big punch will be against the current Congress (a group considered the worse in US history):
“The speech will merge what he wants to say in the campaign with what he wants to do.
He’s going to be, as Truman did, attacking Congress as the ‘do nothing Congress,’ and certainly it’s total dysfunctional,” said James Thurber, presidential historian at American University in Washington.
House Speaker John Boehner signaled Sunday that he’s ready for the fight.
“If that’s what the president is going to talk about Tuesday night, I think it’s pathetic,” the Ohio Republican said yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
The Boner should be afraid of anything pathetic.
In polling last month, this particular Congress is disliked by an average of about 85 percent of US peoples — there is most-likely not another group of people as useless as this particular group of shitheads.
And it could get worse.
The US state of the union in 2012 ain’t pretty.
More Real Than The Real — Really
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Politics | Leave a Comment
A horse walks into a bar in South Carolina, the bartender asks: Why the long face?
A newt peed on me, answers the horse.
The chaotic mess of the GOP primary is finally over and Newt Gingrich urinated on everything.
In shame of Republicans, half-crazed Steven Colbert humiliated the entire process by shoving the way-ugly of current US politics back in every straight-face that chimes democracy.
(Illustration found here).
In a land where up is really down, US peoples are laced up the asshole and remain income-challenged, wealth-challenged, and debt-constrained with nowhere to go — and no one to lead them there.
The GOP has no face and no real policies, and they’re tracking nobody — even across the aisle, President Obama is not leading, but just continuing to follow.
A bit of 2012 insight from the LA Times:
The pertinent question raised by Colbert’s attention grab on the day before South Carolina’s primary vote is why the four remaining Republican candidates are not drawing crowds as big and adoring as Colbert’s.
Yes, Colbert is a celebrity.
He’s an expert entertainer.
And it’s not too hard to get a few thousand college kids to skip class on any day of the week.
But four years ago at this point in the campaign, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were pulling in crowds as big or bigger.
John McCain was packing the gymnasiums pretty well too.
And, later in the campaign, Sarah Palin proved she could rock an arena.
This year’s candidates are avoiding big events because they do not want to be photographed in half-empty halls.
Gingrich actually refused to speak to the GOP leadership conference because so few Republicans showed up.
Instead, voters have most often been invited to meet the candidates in the cramped confines of restaurants where a few hundred or even a few dozen people can look like a lot on TV.
An example of this small-scale café campaign is Newt Gingrich’s schedule for voting day: 8 a.m. at the Grapevine Restaurant in Spartanburg, 10:45 at Tommy’s Ham House in Greenville, 3:30 at the Chik-Fil-A in Anderson and 5:45 at Whiteford’s Restaurant in Laurens.
One wishes Colbert/Stewart would actually be on the ballot in November — Obama would then have to actually lead, really talk the talk, or get punk’d.
Disconcerting Circumstance
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Economy, Energy, Environment | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
In the US today, apparently all collective eyes were glued to South Carolina where intelligence-deficit Republicans held their primary to select from among a short-list of bullshitters a warm body to run against President Obama this November.
And Newt Gingrich is now the man of the hour — a later laugh is always loudest.
From a late afternoon post at CNN: “Gingrich has been harder to kill than Rasputin,” Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos said Saturday. “He has been dead three times in this campaign, and … the guy keeps coming back.”
US politics for 2012 so far has Never-Ever witnessed such a handful of completely worthless and despicable characters — a line up of reasons why this country/world is f*cked.
A most-likely insurmountable obstacle is truth of priorities and sight.
And Newt is no friend of the environment — he’s goes where be Robert Dollar.
An entire US political party (there’s only two) is working way-hard to create calamity for the coming years — twisting knowledge like a pretzel, cherry-picking data and just out-and-out lying — which in turn morphed a most-important circumstance into a cultural/religious phenomenon.
Last week, the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson positioned correctly: But however interesting this sociology may be, it has nothing to do with the science at issue. Even if all environmentalists were socialists and secularists and insufferable and partisan to the core, it would not alter the reality of the Earth’s temperature.
There it is — reality.
And a shit-biscuit reality for our kids.
What set me in this thought direction was a post at The Dish earlier today which included the writings of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, especially Burke, who was concerned that the ‘earlier’ generation made up of his own contemporaries ought not jeopardize the future of still later generations who had not yet been born by creating chaos and disorder.
And a further look at the US future via five trends, the biggest problem being the national debt.
Debt?
The US has one, and really only one problem, and it’s a humongous one (along with the entire freakin’ planet), and it ain’t financial.
The near-immediate by-and-by carries a most-disconcerting view like this quick clip found right here — a sight of the near-immediate past into the nowadays that casts a look at a future horror for all our offspring.
Another related contemplation comes from Dianne Monroe at Speaking Truth to Power — she portends this is an unique period in world history and “an amazing time to be alive.”
Some snippets:
If you are reading this, you are alive today, and that means you are part of this Great Unraveling/ Great Turning, or whatever name we choose to call it.
If you, like me, are middle aged or beyond, we have lived through the apex of a global empire now passed irrevocably into decline.
When exactly that point of turning was passed is the topic of many discussions.
I am not sure how important it is to know that precise point.
We can see that it happened sometime as we were following our dreams and passions, pursuing careers, raising families, paying mortgages… or however we chose to spend those years of our lives.
We know that something big happened on the way down with the economic crisis of 2008, even if the mainstream economic pundits keep assuring us that prosperity is just around the corner.
…
We are experiencing this great crumbling from within, as it is happening.
We will not experience it as an academic lecture or experiment (although some may try), with us standing outside of and observing some scientific process.
We are each in different locations as it unfolds.
One analogy I have heard is that it is like a long, slow train wreck.
The people toward the back are still riding along comfortably.
They may not have even noticed that something is amiss.
Good post, but like a lot of others has way-too much chasing windmills in the mind.
Despite some success in gaining traction — the Occupy movement opened eyes to the impact of income inequality, the Internet blackout rebellion last week knocked SOPA for a loop, and even the public demonstrations that helped put a end to the Keystone pipeline — all good results with good intentions, but the broad matter of a swiftly-changing climate hasn’t been seriously addressed, and it may never even have a chance.
And yes, this age is most-interesting and amazing, and therefore will become more violent and dangerous.
Some US peoples — currently tagged a subculture — have become “preppers,” or those preparing themselves for what they call, “uncivilization,” the disintegration of society and government — the end of life as we know it.
Take a look at American Preppers Network.
And this from Reuters‘ interviewee Patty Tegeler on acquiring survival equipment and stockpiling supplies of freeze-dried food: “I think it’s silly not to be prepared,” she said. “After all, anything can happen.”
Anything always happens.
Good sense goes back a long way.
From IPS and the modern Mayans:
But the end of a cycle does not mean the end of the world, and the collective hysteria triggered by the supposed 2012 Maya doomsday prediction does not at all reflect the thinking of today’s Maya Indians in Guatemala.
“There are leaders who let themselves be carried away by what they hear, or because ’13′ has very strong energy and they are worried that a catastrophe will happen, but none of that is true,” said Antonio Mendoza, an activist with Oxlajuj Ajpop, a local NGO whose name in the Maya Quiché language refers to the 13 forces represented by the Maya calendar.
On the contrary, he said, “this new stage is extremely important for reflection and analysis about human coexistence and nature,” he told IPS.
…
Mario Molina of the national network of Maya youth organisations, RENOJ, told IPS that Dec. 21 “will not mark the end of the Maya or the world, but will be a moment to assess the progress made in the development of nature and humanity.”
One must remember the operative words here: ‘neoliberal policies.’
A concept that take in absolutely no account of nature and humanity.
A view from the UK’s Guardian:
For decades, many of the poorest in developing countries have been left reeling from free-market World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic policies.
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) included forced privatisation, public spending cuts and lowered taxes on the global south.
They spelled a triumph for Milton Freedman’s Chicago School of Economics, which proposed that only by leaving everything to the market could economies flourish.
Prosperity did rise for the few, as levels of inequality deepened.
Sound familiar?
And the children will cry and wonder why.