Jump, ni**er, jump!

The sad spectacle of media crucifixion of Barack Obama continues. When Obama first responded to the media/Clintonite uproar over the rev. Jeremiah Wright with his speech on racism, he took the high road. Making an emotional and intellectual appeal for clarity and realism on the subject of race, Obama's Philadelphia speech was compared by the media to JFK and MLK. For a moment.

But the manufactured Wright "controversy" did not end there. The attacks continued. Not in a way that actually debated anything said by Rev. Wright, or any position actually held by Obama, but in the way of insinuation and implication. Obama was even asked how patriotic Wright actually was.

I've heard and read some very thoughtful explorations of this subject. Usually, the more of Rev. Wright's sermonizing and speechifying they play the better and better he sounds. I agree with most everything Ive heard him say, and that which I don't agree with, I completely understand why he would say.

But then Wright came out of his period of silence, and repeated many of the things he had said before. And the media, beholden to the corrupt political establishment that has bought and purchased it over the last few years, basically forgot everything Obama had said and started repeating the same old nonsense.

Nevermind that Hillary Clinton organizes a prayer breakfast led by a right-wing cultist, or attends a church that codifies and institutionalizes bigotry against gays. Nevermind that McCain sought out the endorsement of a super-rightwing nutcase preacher who, in addition to his anti-gay hatred, organizes Christians to support Israel to help bring the apocalypse closer. Nevermind that the North Carolina governor pretty much used a mild form of the word "faggot" ("pansy") when he was endorsing Clinton and she offered no distance or protest.

But the media called Obama to eat shit and throw his former pastor under the bus. And sadly, that is what Obama did. "Jump!" they said. And he did. And now he will discover, I fear, that they just wanted to see if he would jump. They will continue to say "Jump! Ni**er! Jump!" and each time Obama will be sadly disappointed he's really not welcome at the party at all. The racism he hopes to transcend has just been mashed in his face.

I'm disappointed that Obama didn't find a way to transcend this circus of crucifixion. I don't know, of course, if it will be fatal to his campaign. I hope not. It doesn't change my support, which is as strongly qualified as it is strong. But if I was in Chicago, I know damned well I'd be trying to find where Jeremiah Wright was preaching now. I may not be a Christian but I do know who's on the side of the righteous.

God DAMN America.

Sean Bell, murder victim

The name Sean Bell can now be added to the growing and tragic list of innocent people murdered, with the full support of the law, and for no real reason, by New York City policemen. A Queens judge has just found the officers indicted in his death not guilty.

A sad sad day for justice and the people of New York.

one giant prison

So last month or so it was announced that ONE PERCENT of the American population is behind bars. Yes, one in every hundred people. Today it was announced that the absolute number of people behind bars in the US is the highest in the world. Yes, higher than the number of people in prison in China, which has a population well over one billion people.

Statistics show that over 50 percent of the people in prison are there for drug-related offenses, which is complete madness.

Hey, it's a free country!

"we will obliterate them"

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Nice way to go after Jewish votes? To prove you're tough? How about answering with truth like, "Iran doesn't actually have nuclear weapons." Or saying, "The middle-east should be nuclear-free."

It's tragic, really, how beholden to Israel politicians are. Even Barack Obama has taken some really disgusting positions on the subject. When former President Carter recently visited with Hamas leaders in exile in Syria, even Obama condemned him for meeting with "terrorists."

Will Israel be the destruction of any progressive movement in the US?

Bitter? Damn right I'm bitter.

So Barack Obama said that voters in Pennsylvania have become bitter over years of failed promises. War criminal lunatic McCain and my (hah!) senator Clinton are condemning him for being an elitist, for not saying that Pennsylvania voters are optimistic.

Well well well. Let's talk about bitter. Let's talk about elitist. Let's talk about optimism.

Laid off after giving 16 years to a single company because of a crappy economy and because american corporate culture is closer to that of medieval feudalism than 21st-century democracy? You bet I'm bitter. Reading the news and reading casualty reports of an american war, and seeing pictures of americans smashing in the doors of innocent civilians and bombing the fuck out of a country just like the vietnam war I witnessed in my childhood? you bet I'm bitter. A senator who has nothing better to do but feather her own multi-million dollar nest, support fascistic resolutions against flag burning, war against Iraq and threats against Iran, who coddles the racist swine of the zionist movement like they were tonguing her asshole? You bet I'm bitter. A president who has in eight years nearly destroyed the constitution, yes I'm bitter. A population who has been hypnotized into thinking voting for American Idol is more important than voting for President, who re-elected Bush and is actually considering voting for a senile right-wing pig like McCain? You bet I'm bitter.

A presidential candidate who sat on the board of Wal-Mart for 5 years and who, with her husband, made ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS in seven years dares to call someone ELSE elitist? You bet I'm bitter. Who has danced around flinging shit and negativity and had her surrogates toy with racism and loaded language and she has the nerve to say now that Obama doesn't understand how OPTIMISTIC the voters are? Yeah I'm fucking bitter.

A man running for PRESIDENT who doesn't even understand who is fighting who in the war he suggests continue for A HUNDRED YEARS and people are gonna vote for him and he says Obama is OUT OF TOUCH? Jesus H fucking Christ.

I don't know how Obama does it. To stay so positive, to avoid getting sucked into this swamp of disguting garbage. I admire him. Me, I want to set something on fire. Maybe I'm just gonna go back to listening to jazz. Better for my heart.

Vote for Obama. Your life depends on it. Heck MY life depends on it.

Hillary Clinton's Line of Bullshit on Iraq

Hillary Clinton is now trying to position herself as "more anti-war" than Barack Obama. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that unlike Obama, Clinton helped start the war in the first place--and that's some big thing to set aside--here's what Clinton said in December:

Hillary Clinton: Goal to remove all troops from Iraq by 2013, but no pledge
Q: In 2006, Democrats were elected to the majority in the House and Senate, and many believed that was a signal to end the war. You have said that will not pledge to have all troops out by the end of your first term, 2013. Why not?

A: It is my goal to have all troops out by the end of my first term. But it is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting. We do not know, walking into the White House in January 2009, what we're going to find. What is the state of planning for withdrawal? That's why last spring I began pressing the Pentagon to be very clear about whether or not they were planning to bring our troops out. And what I found was that they weren't doing the kind of planning that is necessary, and we've been pushing them very hard to do so. You know, though, about the Democrats taking control of the Congress, I think the Democrats have pushed extremely hard to change this president's course in Iraq. The Democrats keep voting for what we believe would be a better course.

I think it's a fair criticism of Obama to say he is waffling a little on his exact plans to end the war. Kucinich and Richardson, who both pledged to remove troops immediately, with none of this ridiculous "slow draw-down" crap, had a better position. This is a tremendous failing of the Democrats. But at worst, Obama has the same position as Clinton, who as shown above has waffled plenty. I have suggested she could easily be the LBJ of this war before, and I say it again.

Her current posture on the war is solely political. Her actions, as shown by her capitulation to Bush's war drive 6 years ago, speak louder than what she's currently saying. The war must be ended, immediately. Clinton will simply not do that. The proof of this pudding is in her vote for the Lieberman/Kyl amendment, virtually granting to Bush the power to go to war with Iran that she granted him to go to war with Iraq.

Om Mani Padme Hum?

Shangri-La is under attack! The holy spiritual people of Shangri-La are being oppressed! The Oympic torch must be stopped!

Well I must point out with all the hullaballoo about the Beijing Olympic torch and the unrest in Tibet, that in American liberal fascination with Tibet, the Dalai Lama, Buddhist spirituality, and the certainty of its self-righteousness opposition to oppression in foreign countries, not everything is what it seems.

Tibetan Buddhism surely is a wonderful spiritual path, and while I have heard that the Dalai Lama has some unfortunate views on homosexuality, as a religious person outside the mainstream of Abrahamic tradition I throw no stones at its belief system or adherents.

However, I would point out that his supporters in the west seem to be endorsing a medieval theocracy with a documented and unglorious history of slavery and feudalism. I say to these supporters of Tibet the same thing I would say to supporters of Israel: if you believe separation of church and state is a defining principle of modern democracy in the United States, you need to believe the same thing about separation of church and state in other countries, no matter how like Shangri-La you imagine them.

It may be that the Chinese are oppressive to the Tibetan people, and Tibetan autonomy and self-determination is no doubt a laudatory goal. I don't excuse the subjugation of peoples. But the smashing of a brutal and backwards feudal theocracy? Go Chinese People's Liberation Army!

To the Americans caught up in protests of the Olympics, I say, your main enemy is at home. You want to help the people of Darfur? You want to help the Tibetans? End US imperialism and international corporate rape. Dismantle the CIA. Remove American troops from Korea. Remove American troops from the middle east.

Here's an interesting perspective on Tibet.

My Second Choice for President

The Moment passed

Forty Years

Forty years ago today, one day after giving his prophetic "mountain top" speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a white supremacist in Memphis.

I remember as a boy of nine hearing the news on the radio. The high-school student who looked after me til my mom got home from work told me she was worried what would happen at her school the next day. That evening we walked to the corner and looked down the broad avenue we lived near in super-segregated Chicago. The black neighborhood down the way was on fire.

The world lost a great great man that day. May his spirit shine forever.

Embrace of the War Criminals

Americans seem to have a dangerous weakness for doddering old fools.

It needs to be said, Senator John McCain is not some kind of liberal republican maverick. He is a dangerous right-wing scumbag. John McCain was bombing civilian and military targets in North Vietnam during the American war of aggression against Vietnam. When he was shot down, he was rightfully and justly imprisoned. Neck deep in the blood of murdered innocent Vietnamese--who he proudly called "Gooks" until just a few years ago--John McCain is not some war hero but a war ciminal.

McCain's recent and repeated comment about Al Qaeda returning to Iran to rearm and retrain is not an excusable confusion, it is either senile dementia, stupidity, or more of the same duplicitous manipulation of American ignorance about the world that we've had from 8 years of the corrupt Bush regime.

Over and over again John McCain has shown a willingness to embrace the worst of nascent American fascism, the so-called "conservative" movement. LIkely to die in office before his term is up, he is clearly also a kind of trojan horse for dengerous right-wing forces. Look to his vice presidential candidate to see who, in fact, the Blackwater/Oil company corporate axis truly seeks to entrust with the reins of corrupt corporate state power.

Beware.

President Bush Arrested, to Stand Trial

President Bush was jailed today after a citizens' delegation arrested him for war crimes, sedition, and crimes against the humanity. Several other members of his former administration were also jailed. Vice President Cheney is not, howeer, expected to recover from the stroke he suffered shortly after being taken into the people's custody.

A congessional delegation has travelled to the United Nations, where a representative is to tomorrow deliver a statement entitled "we apologize to the world."

In other news, shares in the Trans-middle-east Plowshares Corporation increased in value today after a donation of American weapons of mass destruction to the Jerusalem-based scrap metal corporation.