The Tea Party? The Coffee Party? Wake Up. It’s The Corporate Party
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 21, 2010 by admin in Politics
Sunday, March 21st, 2010The real power in this country lies in the hands of corporate interests in ways most people don’t understand.
 For some unsettling insights into who’s really running things, check out the DVD  or the book “The Corporation”. |
When it comes to politics, I sometimes get the feeling lately that I’m having one of those weird anxiety dreams where all the surroundings are basically familiar, but everything is just a little different somehow, and everyone else knows what’s going on except me. When you have a bunch of mostly working-class people calling themselves “teabaggers” marching against the party that historically has been on their side calling legislators niggers and faggots, and the best response that the liberal intellectuals of the country can muster is a contrarily-named coffee party, you have to pause and ask: what really is going on here? Well, after doing more reading and research on the topic than I’d really care to, I have a bit of an opinion forming. Almost every problem that I see in America right now can be traced to one basic source. Corporatocracy. Whether it’s the corruption that ensues from regulatory capture by way of DC’s revolving doors, or the travesty that is the current health care battle, or the incredibly unsustainable and unhealthy diet and food production process in America, it can all be directly traced to corporate interests. I’ve longed for a third party for some time now, and was too dense to realize it was right here all along. It’s big business. Whether it’s campaign donations, lobby dollars, or the direct infiltration of the government via the aforementioned “agency capture”, Global and national corporations are clearly more powerful than government today. And the sick part of the big joke is that the GOP will probably deflect attention from their profoundly corporatocratic beliefs by using the widely misunderstood term corporatist to call Democrats fascist corporatists (which will be partly true, in an odd way) and both groups of voters will buy into their side’s spin. The irony of course being that both parties will be telling some twisted version of the truth, while benefiting personally as people of wealth and power by keeping the citizenry split down the middle, pointlessly hoping for a democracy-based solution.
Coffee Party Movement Grinds To Halt In Soy vs Lowfat Debate
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Monday, March 15th, 2010When I wrote about Why Democrats Always Lose & Why American Voters Need A Brand a while back, I was hoping for something a little more inspired than a choice loosely based on the title of a now painfully politically incorrect “tell all” book from the “swingin’ sixties”. Yes, the American liberal has once again [...]
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When I wrote about Why Democrats Always Lose & Why American Voters Need A Brand a while back, I was hoping for something a little more inspired than a choice loosely based on the title of a now painfully politically incorrect “tell all” book from the “swingin’ sixties”
Terrorists & Teabaggers
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 21, 2010 by admin in Politics
Sunday, February 21st, 2010The greatest threat to American security right now is probably a white fella from the heartland.
 Is this what you picture when you hear the word “terrorist”? |
Just when I was starting to find this whole teabagging thing entertaining, some mentally unstable individual in Texas has to go and wreck everything for me. You’ve almost certainly heard about Joe Stack burning his house down and crashing his plane into the IRS office in Austin, TX. But did you read his final note at embeddedart.com? If not, I’ve saved an original copy here. I saw it the morning before his hosting company decided to take it down for bandwidth reasons, so unlike the nutjobs posting in the forum the hosting company courteously provided visitors, I’m confident that there’s no FBI coverup conspiracy behind the takedown. I’m not surprised that both liberal and conservative sources are trying to link or unlink his action with the teabagger movement though; that’s just par for the course in politics these days. But to me it’s clear that he was just a fairly intelligent person who became consumed by his own pathological thinking. Reading Stack’s last words made me especially uncomfortable, partly because – like many of us – I can find myself agreeing with a lot of what he said. It revived unpleasant memories of reading Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s ramblings; there were portions of his lumbering manifesto that any modern person might agree with, but the overall tone and the author’s real-world actions rendered any points one might agree with irrelevant. For me, this was especially true in Kaczynski’s case; a personal friend of mine was one of the victims of his deranged actions. But back to the teabagger link. Is there a connection? How can a reasonably informed person deny that regardless of whether Stack considered himself a teabagger, he ABSOLUTELY had common ground with them? It’s ironic that a recent Fox News piece expressed concern with the headline Radical Anti-tax Groups Growing Threat, when it’s the opportunistic sentiment-baiting that Fox News and Bitchzilla from Wasilla (yeah, I can say that, there’s no editor around here) engage in that fuels the kind of rage that sparks violent protests and makes crazy men fly planes into buildings or bulldoze their houses. I imagine we’ll see a few more tragic events over the next few years as a result of people’s frustration with money & taxes. This Newsweek blog post points out that there have been 75 domestic incidents since the Oklahoma bombings, with 6 of them specifically targeting the IRS. I find it more than a little ironic that a government that was born of tax rebellion and presently sees terrorism as a threat from Islam is going through a two-decade struggle with domestic terrorists. If you’re not familiar with the recent history of violence and the American radical right, the Read the rest of this entry »
How I Became A Teabagging Dick Tuck
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on February 9, 2010 by admin in Politics
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010If you can’t beat ‘em, infiltrate ‘em.
 I don’t care WHERE you bring Glenn Beck, as long as it takes him further from ME. |
To me, voting these days seems more like a choice of execution method than a treasured civil right. Would I rather be shot with the antiquated but lethal and remarkably reliable Kalishnakov (The Republican Party) or with the the Humanitarian Magic Fairy Love Rifle that turns the target into a pretty and confused unicorn and brings peace, love, high speed trains, and broadband to all (The Democratic Party)? Which is why I always delight when an alternative pops up, if only for the variety. Of course, in the case of guys like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader, that “variety” can work against the voter’s intention by helping the worse of their two perceived evils to win, as happened in 1992 and 2000, and that’s one of the reasons I’m fascinated with the teabaggers. The first reason is of course their choice of name. Although polls have shown that a lot of Americans aren’t (or won’t admit that they are) familiar with the well-established slang term teabagging, there had to have been quite a few former frat boys amongst the party’s ranks who were well aware of the term. Another reason I’m fascinated with them is their utter ignorance of the fact that they’re really just Libertarians. Somewhere between deciding on their values and choosing someone to represent them, things got really confused though. Which is why it’s fun to mess with them. The other day I visited the web site of the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition to see if there was any sanity embedded in their angst-driven herding behavior. I didn’t find much; they make their confusion clear in the second sentence of their little manifesto by saying “We are non partisan, unabashedly conservative, and drama free“. On the other hand, they show a little cleverness by putting social networking and sharing tools to use with a Ning site, user polls, and and an Eventful.com badge for a Glenn Beck appearance. Which is where I had a little fun, and where I think I finally discovered my place in modern politics. First, the trivial fun, then I’ll explain my new role in politics. I noticed they had a poll that said “Do you think Tea Party Coalition will be a usefull tool?“, so, after leaving a comment that said “Do I think [the] Tea Party Coalition will be a usefull tool? No. But I think you all ARE a bunch of tools. And I think you should learn how to SPELL before you try to EDIT the existing tax code. That would be ‘usefull’!“, I noticed the poll had no block on voting twice, so in the time-honoured tradition of “vote early, vote often”, I shifted the numbers a bit by voting “No” 270 times to amuse myself while I was busy on a phone call. Then I noticed they were also trying to get Homosexual Nazi Blood Elf Glenn Beck to come to Tennessee. I’m all for getting Glenn Beck as far away from ME as possible, so I voted a few times for that as well. And this is when it dawned on me. I don’t support either major party across the board, and this has frustrated me for quite a while. So in the interest of sticking to some of my core values but still doing something that has impact, I’m going to become a Bipartisan Dick Tuck, and offer my campaign pranking services to both parties, but based entirely on whether the prank aligns with my values. See you at the reader poll! Read the rest of this entry »
Brewing Discontent: Since When Is The GOP Anti-Deficit?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 15, 2009 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009While liberals kick back with their lemon-grass tea, conservatives brew theirs with Astroturf…
I shouldn’t be as astounded as I am that the GOP has once again taken ownership of a public sentiment that has absolutely no real foundation in a partisan stance. Tell me. Who in America (besides a bunch of bailed out bank executives) is NOT angry that tax dollars are being funneled into a mind-boggling array of government subsidizing of business and bailouts of epic business failures? And more importantly, how the hell did the GOP spin this out so cleverly and so quickly into their issue, when it is, plain and simple, their fault? This is the party that from Reagan to Cheney has said that deficits don’t matter. And now, suddenly, deficits are a horrible monster created by Barack Obama. The GOP is even benefitting from the humor and confusion that a typical witty liberal will enjoy when watching a pun-laden rant against tea parties, as in the MSNBC clip featured at left. Who’s behind this masterpiece of Astroturfing? Mostly the conservative lobby groups Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity. Nice job, Dems. Read the rest of this entry »