Obama’s Round Two already shaping up to look just like Round One

Reuters photo

Then-U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Chuck Hagel yuk it up in Amman, Jordan, in July 2008. Obama is expected to nominate the Repugnican former senator as his secretary of defense any day now, because “bipartisanship,” you see, means that a so-called Democrat does things that no Repugnican Tea Party traitor ever would do in kind.

 Let’s see:

“Democratic” President Barack Obama hasn’t even been inaugurated for his second term, and already he:

• Threw U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice under the bus when she came under attack from the white supremacists and patriarchs, who rather would see U.S. Sen. John Kerry in the position of U.S. secretary of state, since a white male Democrat is better than any other kind of Democrat
• Capitulated on the Bush-regime-era tax cuts for the rich, having promised over and over and over again to increase taxes on inviduals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000, but actually having agreed to increase taxes on individuals earning more than $400,000 and families earning more than $450,000  
• Is poised to sell us out on Social Security and/or Medicare in the deferred so-called “fiscal cliff” fight over the federal budget (after all, he and his family are set for life)
• Is poised to name Repugnican former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel as U.S. secretary of defense, reinforcing the meme that Democrats are shitty on defense, and doing something that a Repugnican president never would do (i.e., appoint a Democrat to his cabinet, perhaps especially for defense)

Have I forgotten anything? And again, Obama hasn’t even been inaugurated yet for Round Two.

Your vote for Barack Obama on November 6 was significantly different from what Mittens Romney was offering how?

The most immediate next fight in D.C. apparently will be over Hagel, whose nomination might be announced as early as tomorrow, according to Reuters.

Not that Hagel would represent the first time that Obama sold out those who voted for him where it comes to his selection of the U.S. secretary of defense. Recall that Obama, at the start of Round One, lazily, cowardly and stupidly kept on Robert Gates, who under George W. Bush had replaced war criminal Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in November 2006. Gates stayed on the job as defense secretary under Obama until he retired on July 1, 2011.

My biggest problem with Hagel is that again, a Republican president of today never would put a Democrat on his cabinet (yes, I use “his” because a female Republican president is pretty much an oxymoron), and DINO Obama has sold out the Democratic Party enough as it is.

Yes, I have a real problem with Hagel having referred to former U.S. Ambassador James Hormel in 1998 as “openly, aggressively gay” — we gay men should keep our sexuality strictly and entirely in the closet, just like straight men always do, you see (since when has equality been an American value?) – but I do like Hagel’s reportedly made comments about the “bloated” defense department budget (our national “defense” budget is bloated beyond belief, and mostly represents only the perpetual looting of the U.S. Treasury by treasonous war profiteers) and the insanely disproportionate amount of power and influence that the “Jewish lobby” (I call them the “Israel-first lobby,” because of course not every Jewish American is an Israel firster) has in D.C.

Admittedly, it is unusual for a Repugnican to attack the sacred cows of the military-industrial-corporate complex and the Israel-first lobby, even though both of those sacred cows are milking us dry. And Hagel, himself a veteran of the Vietnam War, also apparently wasn’t enough of a cheerleader for the unelected Bush regime’s illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked Vietraq War — which also is unusual for a Repugnican.

But are there no qualified Democrats whom Obama could nominate as defense secretary?

What’s Obama’s logic here? That as long as his nominee as defense secretary uses the Republican label, the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in the U.S. Senate will be OK with it?

“This is an in-your-face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel,” Repugnican Tea Party U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham– who, along with Repugnican Tea Party U.S. Sen. John McCainosaurus, was instrumental in Obama’s caving in on the nomination of Susan Rice – already has declared of Hagel’s nomination.

Not that the likes of wingnutty closet case and chickenhawk Lindsey Graham would approve of any of Obama’s nominees, but why the fuck can’t Obama at least respect those who voted for him by ceasing to kiss the ass of the Repugnican Tea Party traitors, who never return the favor in the fucking slightest?

Oh, well.

As I watch Barack Obama for the next four years continue to sell out those who voted for him — and continue, just like Bill Clinton did, to make the Democratic Party more and more indistinguishable from the Repugnican Party (I lovingly think of the two corporation-loving and individual-hating parties as the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party) – at least I won’t feel nearly as punk’d this time as I did during Obama’s first term, because while I stupidly voted for Obama the first time, on November 6 I cast my vote for the Green Party candidate for president.

As George W. Bush once so wisely declared: Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again!

See you around, fools.

Mittens’ binders full o’ women, Barack’s back, and other thoughts

Updated below

Damn is the Internet fast.

Mittens Romney claimed during tonight’s presidential debate that when he became governor of Massachusetts, he was dismayed by the fact that the applicants for his cabinet positions were overwhelmingly (or entirely) male. So, he said, he had his staffers compile for him “binders full of women” candidates so that he could put some women on his cabinet.

“Binders full of women” struck me as an awful — some might say “inelegant” – way to put it, and I wasn’t alone. Already “binders full of women” has gone viral:

More here and a lot more here.

It’s funny how someone inadvertently can reveal his or her true feelings about a group of people, isn’t it? I have a co-worker whose word choice routinely (very apparently unwittingly) reveals her homophobia/heterosexism, and here is Mittens claiming to wuv women yet talking about them as though they were objects to be stored in binders.

Condescension and objectification – that’s the way to win the women’s vote, Mittens!

Speaking of women, this is probably the only news that my favorite presidential candidate, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, is going to make: That she and her running mate were arrested for disorderly conduct while trying to enter the presidential debate hall in New York today.

I love the Green Party and we’re long overdue for a woman in the Oval Office, but um…

Here is a photo of Stein and her running mate right before their arrest:

LongIslandReport.org photo

Don’t get me wrong — I disagree with the partisan duopoly that we have in the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party, and it long has rankled me that third parties are shut out of the presidential debates, preserving the partisan duopoly, but I don’t see that this tactic of the sit-down from the 1960s works.

I mean, in politics image is everything, and looking like you are members of the Occupy movement — and I support the Occupy movement (I’ve given money to my local Occupy movement, in fact) — may not be the best image to project.

Just sayin’.

I’m not saying that Stein did something wrong, that she doesn’t have a point, that she isn’t the victim of injustice.

I’m saying that it (apparently orchestrating your own arrest for disorderly conduct) probably isn’t the best way to project power. I’m saying that it looks a bit lame and weak, and that not many people want to be part of a group that is perceived to be lame and weak, and so that therefore, it probably can’t be a great recruitment tool.

I had hoped that the Green Party would really take off after 2000, but it has only languished. I suspect that the best way to change the Democratic Party — to make it actually progressive and to make it actually for the people (and no, corporations are not people) – is to infiltrate it, much like the “tea party” fascists infiltrated the Repugnican Party, which I now routinely call the Repugnican Tea Party, since the “tea party” Nazis were so successful in infiltrating the party.

It just seems easier to re-form (not “reform” but re-form) an existing party that has gone astray than to try to to make it on your own as a third party…

Not to let Barack Obama off of the hook.

His campaign included this image in another of its endless fundraising e-mails that it sent tonight, just after the debate:

You’re supposed to click on the image in the e-mail, which then oh-so-helpfully diverts you to a user-friendly fundraising web page.

The e-mail, titled “Get Barack’s back,” reminds me of an editorial cartoon that I saw recently in which a man reading a newspaper remarks to his wife of Obama, “I thought he was supposed to have my back!”

My sentiments exactly. This Cult of Obama thing, in which it’s our “duty” to “have Obama’s back” — it’s a real reversal of the idea of the public servant, isn’t it?

Seriously, though, is it, “Ask not what we can do for our country, but ask what we can do for Barack Obama”?

It’s a turn-off for this left-winger.

And truly, I wouldn’t be so put off by the command to “Get Barack’s back” if for these past three-plus years, after I gave him hundreds of dollars and my vote for his 2008 campaign, I felt much more strongly that he had mine.

Update: Some more women-in-binders-themed images from the Tumblr site titled “Binders Full of Women”:

This one, from elsewhere, though, is probably the funniest one that I’ve seen thus far:

And the Internet is abuzz with the report that Mittens lied even about his binders-full-o’-women story. (I had doubts about his story, which is why, when I wrote about his claim, I called it a claim. [Seriously, though, the man lies so fucking much that if he told me the sky were blue, I'd check it out.]) 

The report is that a women’s advocacy group had started to create the binders containing profiles of female candidates for high-ranking Massachussetts state government posts before it was even known whether Mittens or the Democratic gubernatorial candidate would win the election, and that Team Mittens was simply given the binders after Mittens won — making Mittens’ claim that he had his staff seek out the binders full o’ women at his direction (because the wuvs the womens so much) yet another fucking Mittens LIE.

Reading between the conventions’ lines

Reuters photo

Repugnican Tea Party Speaker of the House John Boehner shakes the hoof of right-wing New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan after Dolan gave the closing prayer at the Repugnican Tea Party Convention in Tampa, Florida, on August 30. Not to be outdone in wingnuttery, the Democratic Party had the right-wing Dolan also give the Democratic National Convention’s closing prayer, in which Dolan expressed his and the Catholick church’s opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage. Yet the shameless Democratic Party hacks cry foul when those of us who are sane and who reject evil pieces of shit like Dolan claim, correctly, that the two right-wing, pro-corporate parties (which I can think of only as the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party) are becoming more indistinguishable from each other day by day.

About the last thing that you want to pay attention to at the Coke Party’s and Pepsi Party’s quadrennial conventions are the politicians’ speeches.

The vast majority of political speeches are just shameless propaganda, false proclamations of actually giving a shit about the average American, and are not an actual reflection of reality (what it has been, what it is now or what it will be).

No, you look for other clues at the partisan duopoly’s conventions to inform you as to what’s really going on.

The two things that you have needed to know about the Repugnican Tea Party convention are that a black camerawoman for CNN had food thrown at her by white delegates and was referred to as an “animal,” and that an addled, doddering, grumpy old man who wants to take us back to the 1950s (or before) in a way-back machine still is the face of the Repugnican Tea Party. (It was John McCainosaurus in 2008, and Clint Eastwood this time.)

Of course, if you watched any of the Repugnican Tea Party convention coverage (even just brief clips, as I did), you saw, as the camera panned across the convention attendees, that it was a sea of lily-white faces. Seriously, why don’t they go ahead and don their pointy white hoods already? We all know that they want to.

I’ve seen only snippets of Mittens Romney’s acceptance speech. He wore way too much makeup, which only made him look even faker than he already comes across, and his whisper-like, condescending, faux-compassionate voice makes me want to hurl.

This man is a multi-millionaire Mormon. He cares only about his fellow millionaires and his fellow Mormons. If you believe otherwise, then there is something seriously the fuck the matter with you and your grasp of reality.

I don’t need to listen to Mittens’ words. I have only to listen to the strong voice within every time I see even a brief clip of Mittens: This uber-phony man is evil. He has to be phony because if he showed us his true self, enough of us would be repulsed that he’d never win the election. It wouldn’t even be close enough for him to steal it, as appears to be his party’s game plan, a la 2000.

Not that the establishmentarian, Clintonesque Democrats are much better.

I haven’t bothered to watch even a brief clip of Barack Obama’s convention speech. Why? What would be the point? We know what we’re going to get with four more years of Obama: more broken promises, more of the same, more concessions to the corporations and to the right wing, more excuses as to why Obama absofuckinglutely refuses to head an opposition party, which is what the Democratic Party used to be until the slimy baby boomer Bill Clinton destroyed it, as the greedy, corrupt, talentless baby boomers have destroyed or are about to destroy all of our nation’s best institutions (including, of course, Social Security and Medicare. [They destroyed even capitalism, too, but of course, capitalism needed to be destroyed]).

We know that while of course Mittens would be worse than would be Obama (except for Mittens’ fellow Mormons and his fellow millionaires, of course), the prospect of another four more years of Obama is nothing to be excited about.

There were two stand-out events at the Democrats’ convention that, for me, tell me what I really need to know about the party. And again, you won’t find this shit in politicos’ propagandistic speeches.

First, there was Barack Obama once again capitulating to right-wing and “Christo”fascist criticism, demanding that the Democratic Party’s platform, which the delegates had already democratically approved, be changed to add the word “God” and to add that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

As I wrote, the selfish, anti-democratic actions of the convention’s chair, the slimy Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, were repugant. Clearly Villaraigosa didn’t have the two-thirds voice vote by the delegates that he needed for the alteration of the platform to pass, but he shoved the changes to the platform down the delegates’ throats nonethefuckingless.

The Los Angeles Times today published Villaraigosa’s “defense” of his repulsive actions. He said:

• “It was a lot of ado about nothing.”
• When he was told that others didn’t hear a two-thirds voice vote, he replied smart-assedly, “That’s nice to know. I was the chairman and I did, and that was the prerogative of the chair.”
• “It’s more a media concern than a delegate concern. I can tell you this — the president of the United States said, ‘Wow.’ The president said, ‘You showed why you were speaker of the California Assembly.’ The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that.”
• “The president of the United States and the leader of my party asked me to do this, and so I’m proud I have a president who believes God and Jerusalem should be in the platform, and so do I.”

What a fucking weasel Antonio Villaraigosa is. To call a blatantly anti-democratic move “decisive” is sick. No, Villaraigosa, you are not “decisive.” You are a fucking self-serving coward.

And it was not “a lot of ado about nothing” and not only a “media concern.” (Blaming shit on the media is quite Palinesque of Villaraigosa, however.) It was the hijacking of the platform that already had been democratically approved, and that is a serious matter. I’m not even a registered Democrat — because of slimeballs like Villaraigosa I’m a registered Green Party member — and I wasn’t even there, but when I watched the clip of Villaraigosa’s actions, I was incensed — as were many delegates who were there, for whom the lying Villaraigosa pretends he can speak. (It wasn’t a “delegate concern” — because he says so!)

“I was the chairman and I did [hear a two-thirds vote], and that was the prerogative of the chair,” Villaraigosa huffed. Bullshit. He did not hear it, which is why he had to hold the voice vote three fucking times (watch the clip yourself), and so when he claims that he did hear it, he fucking lies, but then immediately after his lie, he inadvertently tells us the truth: “that was the prerogative of the chair.”

I’ll translate that from the weaselspeak that Villaraigosa speaks into English: “I was able to abuse my position of power and trust, and so I did so. Fuck you for even questioning my authority.”

And then, Villaraigosa does even more quite inadvertent truth-telling: “The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that,” and “The president of the United States and the leader of my party asked me to do this, and so I’m proud I have a president who believes God and Jerusalem should be in the platform, and so do I.”

Well, yes, indeed, Barack Obama (and, if Villaraigosa is telling the truth — it’s hard to know, because he’s such a fucking liar — Joe Biden and even Michelle Obama) wanted Villaraigosa to ram the last-minute, “Christo”fascist- and wingnut-placating changes to the party’s platform down the delegates’ throats, and so Villaraigosa the shameless fucking sellout dutifully did so.

But that is a “defense” — that he pleased his puppeteers? That makes what he did OK?

And what does it fucking matter what Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa believe? The party platform already had been democratically approved by the convention delegates. Why bother to have the delegates at all if they can be overriden by power-drunk autocrats like this?

I’ll never give the slimeball Antonio Villaraigosa my vote even for dog catcher. He has demonstrated his character amply.

As has Barack Obama, of course.

Not content that he had alienated enough of his base by anti-democratically using his tool, the fool Villaraigosa, to change the party’s platform against the wishes of the delegates (who clearly are just window dressing, if that), Barack Obama decided that it would be a swell fucking idea to have the right-wing, anti-choice, anti-same-sex-marriage Catholick Cardinal Timothy Dolan give the closing benediction at the Democratic National Convention.

The “Christo”fascist Dolan said these two things in his “benediction” to the Dems:

• “Thus do we praise you [he's talking to "God" here, you see] for the gift of life. Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure. We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.”
• “Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.”

If you claim that these are not thinly veiled references to the Dark-Ages Catholick church’s “Christo”fascist stances on abortion and same-sex marriage, then you are a fucking liar or you are a fucking moron. (Or both.)

Dolan also talked about “freedom” and “liberty” in his “benediction” (“bene” is from the Latin word for “good,” but Dolan is evil, so to call it a “benediction” is a contradiction), but in Dolan’s and the Catholick church’s worldview, women may not have the freedom and liberty to make their own fucking reproductive choices, and same-sex couples shall not have the freedom and liberty of marriage equality, but are to be continued to be treated as less than equal human beings, as they have for centuries.

“Freedom” and “liberty” are reserved only for those who agree with Dolan and the right-wing, dying dinosaur that is the Catholick church under the command of Pope Palpatine, you see.

Know that this is how much brazen contempt Barack Obama and the ossified Democratic Party (the best of which it can do is wheel out the right-wing fossil that is Bill Fucking Clinton every once in a while) have for you: to invite a known — a well-fucking-known — right-wing, misogynist, homophobic, patriarchal piece of shit like Timothy Dolan to give the closing “benediction” of the Democratic National Convention.

Barack Obama isn’t concerned in the fucking least about delivering for his base.

He never fucking has been and he never fucking will be.

Barack Obama is way too busy catering to the right wing, you see, pushing the Democratic Party further and further to the right, making it more and more indistinguishable from the Repugnican Tea Party, and his stance toward you is the same arrogant, power-drunk stance that Antonio Villaraigosa has toward you:

Fuck you.

It’s his prerogative.

What are you going to do about it anyway?

Democratic pussies cave to Repugs even during their convention

Updated below

I hope that I live to see the nation’s first openly atheist president. I suspect that Barack Obama actually is an agnostic, maybe even an atheist, but he’d never publicly admit it because, like most politicians do, he panders to the fucktards who still believe in mythology.

Leave it to the spineless fucking Democrats to capitulate to the Repugnican Tea Party “Christo”fascists yet once again – even during the Dems’ quadrennial convention.

Earlier today I read with glee that the word “God” didn’t make it into this year’s Democratic Party platform, which is great news, since “God” doesn’t belong in the party’s platform any more than does Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy or the Great Pumpkin.

Of course, we’re talking about the Democrats, so it couldn’t last. Reports The Associated Press today:

Charlotte, N.C. — Embarrassed by Republicans, Democrats amended their convention platform [today] to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The party reinstated language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

It also reinstated its 2008 language that Jerusalem “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Republicans pounced quickly on both omissions.

GOP officials argued that not taking a position on Jerusalem’s status in the party platform showed the president was weak in his support of Israel. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said omitting God “suggests a party that is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of the American people.”

“I think this party is veering further and further away into an extreme wing that Americans don’t recognize,” Romney said.

The Democratic Party’s decision to restore the mention of Jerusalem reflected what advisers said was the president’s personal view, if not the policy of his administration. The administration has long said determining Jerusalem’s status was an issue that should be decided by Israelis and Palestinians in peace talks, but has been careful not to state that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

Romney’s campaign quickly sought to capitalize on the slight, but important difference.

“Mitt Romney has consistently stated his belief that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” said Andrea Saul, Romney’s spokeswoman. …

The White House wouldn’t say whether the change in the Democratic platform language reflected a change in administration policy.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the reinstated party language reflected “the policy of both Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” … [Yes, because "That's the way we've always done it!" is such a convincing "argument"! And surely, anything that the Repugnican Tea Party has always done must be
right!]

But the decision to amend the platform did not rest well with some delegates.

Noor Ul-Hasan, a Muslim delegate from Salt Lake City, Utah, said she felt it went against the principle of the separation of church and state.

“There are people who don’t believe in God and you have to respect that as well,” Ul-Hasan said. She also questioned whether the convention had enough of a quorum to even amend the platform. “There was no discussion. We didn’t even see it coming. We were blindsided by it.”

Angela Urrea, a delegate from Roy, Utah, said she felt it was sprung on the convention without any discussion.

“The majority spoke last night,” Urrae said, noting [that] the platform was approved [yesterday]. “We shouldn’t be declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

Republicans declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in the platform the party approved last week at its convention in Tampa, Fla. …

When was the last fucking time that the Repugnican Tea Party traitors changed their party platform in the middle of their fucking convention because of criticism from the Democrats?

Jesus fuck, you would think that the one God-damned time the Dems could show some fucking backbone would be during their fucking convention.

And what, exactly, does this last-minute capitulation to the “Christo”fascists get the Dems, politically speaking?

Committed “Christo”fascists already support the Repugnican Tea Party, which consists of millionaires and billionaires, but there aren’t enough plutocrats among us to win elections, so the millionaires and billionaires also pretend to love the white supremacists and the Jesus freaks and other assorted white trash, and that is the bulk of the Repugnican Tea Party: the plutocrats, the remnants of the KKK and the “Christo”fascists (with a lot of overlap among those categories).

Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel, but that’s one of at least a few things that the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party have in common: They both want Jewish dollars, so they can’t pander to the Israel-firsters enough. It’s treasonous to put the interests of a foreign nation above the interests of one’s own nation, but with the shameless money whores who comprise the “leadership” of both of the major parties, expect both parties to continue to lick Israel’s ass like no other nation’s ass.

And if God exists, then maybe God should be a suprise guest at the Democratic National Convention!

Yes, indeed: Barack Obama should scrap his acceptance speech and instead bring an empty chair on stage with him and have a conversation with God, a la Clint Eastwood. God could even endorse Barack Obama on live television!

What, that’s bullshit? It’s no more bullshit than is the utterly unprovable assertion that there even is a fucking God, who is like a reward- and punishment-doling Santa Claus on crack. (He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!)

If the Repugnican Tea Party traitors want to continue to pander to the dipshits who still believe in a God, fine, but it would be fucking nice if the Democratic Party “leadership” would respect the long-standing concept of separation of church and state.

The job of a political party is to govern, and our government is to remain neutral in affairs of religion. That is the only fair way to govern. Otherwise, you have a theocracy, and I, for one, just say hell fucking no to an American Taliban.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what the religion is, whether it’s Judaism, whether it’s what we actually call here in the United States “Christianity,” whether it’s Islam, whatever — I don’t want retards who believe in non-existent deities to shove their delusions down my fucking throat through the vehicle of government that my tax dollars make possible.

Atheism, agnosticism and other belief systems (such as the Eastern belief systems) are growing in the United States of America.

The Repugnican Tea Party and the “Christo”fascism that the Repugnican Tea Party espouses are going the way of the dinosaurs.

It would be fucking fantastic if the cowardly fucktards who “lead” the Democratic Party wouldn’t follow the Repugnican Tea Party traitors into the fucking tar pits.

P.S. Now comes the news that the Big Man Himself — no, not God, but Barack Obama — had the party’s platform changed. Reports The Associated Press:

Charlotte, N.C. — President Barack Obama personally intervened to order Democrats to change language in their party platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, campaign officials said [today].

Scrambling to end the furor, Democrats abruptly changed the platform early [this] evening to reinstate language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” …

Democrats also restored 2008 language on Jerusalem, declaring the city “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

Campaign officials said Obama’s reaction on the omission of God from the platform was to wonder why it was removed in the first place.

The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private discussions.

The platform changes did not sit well with some Democratic delegates gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s three-day convention. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

Democrats had approved a platform [yesterday] that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Republicans quickly pounced. …

Who fucking cares what the Repugnican Tea Party traitors think?

The Democratic Party’s platform had been approved democratically. It should have stood, regardless of what Barack Obama believes. Why should the members of the party vote on anyfuckingthing at all if they then can be overriden by one individual?

And no one caves in better to the thugs on the right than does Barack Obama, who makes them look like they are right by caving in to them almost every single fucking time.

Barack Obama has turned caving in to the radical right wing into a fucking Olympic sport.

Update: I just watched the video of the actual vote on the changes to the Dem Party platform. What a fucking weasel Antonio Villaraigosa, chair of the convention, is.

The change to the party’s platform required a two-thirds vote by the delegates, which Villaraigosa did on a voice vote. Villaraigosa had the delegates voice-vote three fucking times, apparently believing that the third time would be a charm, that the delegates would fall in line like good little lemmings.

Yet by even the third voice vote, it doesn’t sound at all like Villaraigosa reached the two-thirds threshold.

Nonetheless, the weasel-bastard, undaunted by the fact that sometimes democracy doesn’t go your way, declared that the changes to the platform had passed by two-thirds of the delegates.

This blatantly dishonest, anti-democratic, hierarchy-ass-licking bullshit is what you would expect from the Repugnican Tea Party Nazis, not from the Democratic Party — and this is yet another reason why I call the two parties of the partisan duopoly the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party: because there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two.

I place most of the blame on the Democratic Party’s worthless “leaders,” like Barack Obama and Antonio Villaraigosa, who apparently has gotten ahead in the Dem Party only by going along with the fucktards who outrank him, by putting blind personal political ambition — and thus blind obedience — far above decency and integrity.

Kudos to the delegates who at least tried to stop the anti-democratic coup that their party’s selfish, shameless “leaders” perpetrated upon them today.

Has Barack Obama finally paid a price for having burned his base?

Two headlines on Yahoo! News today make an interesting juxtaposition: “Frustrated Liberals Want More From Obama”* and “Romney and GOP Raise More Than Obama and Democrats.”

Gee, could there be a connection?

Team Romney, y0u see, reports that it raked in more than $76 million last month, while Team Obama reports that its take for the month was “only” $60 million.

This being fairly prominent in the news today prompted a rather pathetic fundraising e-mail from the Obama campaign with the subject line of “We got beat.”

The e-mail reads, in part:

For the first time in this campaign, we got beat in fundraising.

The Romney campaign and the Republican Party raised more than $76 million last month, compared to our $60 million.

We knew this moment would come when Romney secured the nomination.

What happens next is up to you.

Help close the gap right now — make a donation of $23 or more.

I want to be clear: We’ll always have more people pitching in.

We know that only 15 percent of Romney’s May totals came from people giving less than $250, compared to 98 percent in that category for us.

We don’t have the special-interest and high-dollar donor advantage that Romney has. Barack Obama has you, and we are bound and determined to fight back on behalf of a country where everyone gets a fair shot and a fair shake. …

Um, Barack Obama did have us, back when he promised us “hope” and “change” — and when we believed him.

But after we put him where he is, Obama and his henchpeople called us “sanctimonious” members of “the professional left” — and Obama seemed more interested in trying to sing “Kumbaya” with the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in D.C. than in delivering upon his promises to his base — you know, the people who actually give you money, talk you up to those they know, and vote for you.

You piss and shit upon your base, and maybe, just maybe, your base will stop giving you money.

Speaking of which, it’s interesting that Team Obama pretty much is saying that the candidate who can raise the most money is the winner. We pretty much already knew that that is the mindset of the partisan duopoly that is the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party (Can’t tell the difference between the two corporate products? Neither can I), but to see it couched so fairly transparently in a campaign e-mail, even in a fundraising e-mail, is interesting.

What Team Obama might not get is that its base is sick and fucking tired of being regarded as an ATM, that its base wants something in return for the moolah that Team Obama and the Democratic Party expects it to fork over.

I have no doubt that Team Romney is funded by millionaires and billionaires to a greater extent than is Team Obama, but that’s no excuse for the fact that Barack Obama has failed to deliver upon his 2008 campaign promises, very apparently believing that he can fuck over his base because we progressives have nowhere else to go.

We do.

In California’s presidential primary earlier this week I cast my vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, to whom I have given some money.

I have given and will given Barack Obama not a dime toward his re-election, and nor will I waste my vote on him again.

I, for one, refuse to continue to support the lesser of two evils. I’m fucking sick and tired of evil.

The Democratic Party and Democrats in name only like Barack Obama won’t change their game until and unless we, their base, force them to.

If that means President Mittens, then so be it.

I have little doubt that had Barack Obama actually been the president that he promised us he would be, he would have no problem matching the Repugnican Tea Party traitors in their fundraising.

When you please your base, your base is apt to reward you with more money.

The Repugnican Tea Party traitors certainly know this, which is why millionaires and billionaires give to Repugnican Tea Party candidates, such as how Repugnican Tea Party Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker outspent his Democratic opponent Tom Barrett 7-1 or 8-1, depending upon whom you read, in this week’s gubernatorial recall election. (Most of the millions that were given to Walker were from out-of-state millionaires and billionaires. That’s how the Repugnican Tea Party traitors roll, you see: they have their wingnutty sugar daddies.)

Certainly, in politics money matters these days. You have to spend millions of dollars in propaganda to induce the chickens to vote for Colonel Sanders, as just happened in Wisconsin.

Clearly, we need to get big money out of politics.

Until that day comes, the Democrats can increase their take by acting more like Democrats and less like Repugnican Lites, and by actually delivering results to their base instead of delivering only more rhetoric about how they’re on our side, yet we see that nothing fucking changes, but only gets worse, regardless of which party of the partisan duopoly runs the show.

–

*This Associated Press piece begins, “They are trying to be hopeful, but the Democratic Party’s most passionate voters are struggling to hide their frustration with President Barack Obama.”

Really? It’s no struggle for me. Not being a Democratic Party hack or an Obamabot, it’s quite easy for me to point out how Barack Obama gained the support of us progressives, including our money and our votes, by having made specific promises that he went on to break systematically, one after the other.

Speaking of which, Tom Tomorrow’s last two ’toons are pretty good (click on panels for larger version):

Obama makes it easy to be Green

Updated below

Unlike both Barack Obama and Mittens Romney, a Green Party president wouldn’t be just a puppet of the corporations.

I yet to have been inspired to give Barack Obama’s re-election campaign a single fucking penny, and I already have cast my (mail-in) vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein for California’s June 5 presidential primary election.

I am not sure which is worse: to have had the unelected Bush regime use opposition to same-sex marriage to “win” “re”-election in 2004, or to have the (at-least-actually-duly-elected) Obama administration use support of same-sex marriage to win re-election.

In both cases, we of the “LGBT” “community” are only being used by the “leaders” of the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party in order to raise million$ and in order to pander for votes.

The Obama campaign earlier this month released an incredibly pandering five-minute re-election campaign video in which the Obamanistas act as though all throughout his first term Obama has been fighting fiercely for the LGBT community when, in fact, his fairly recent “breakthrough” announcement that he finally has “evolved” and now supports same-sex marriage — even though he had proclaimed that position way back in 1996 in Chicago, and even though he still maintains that each state should be allowed to decide the issue, meaning that we will continue to have gross inequality and unfairness and injustice throughout the nation – came quite late in his first term.

Yes, the demise of “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a good thing, but let us recall that it was “Democrat” Bill Clinton who gave us “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the first fucking place, as well as DOMA (the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which the Obama administration does not defend in court, but which remains the law of the land).

The Dems are our friends? They enact awful, discriminatory, unlawful/unconstitutional legislation, and then want to take credit and want praise for reversing it? Really? Really?

And “don’t ask, don’t tell” doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, someone who doesn’t see why anyone of any sexual orientation would aid and abet the criminal U.S. military in the first place, someone who recognizes clearly what a fucking racket the U.S. military is — it’s not about actual “defense” or “national security” nearly as much as it is about funneling the contents of the U.S. Treasury (billions and billions and billions of our tax dollars) to the pockets of the traitors who comprise the military-industrial-corporate complex. (Well, the nation’s treasury is empty these days, so what they’re doing is making sure that those of us who have to follow them inherit a mountain of national debt.)

The members of the U.S. military these days primarily serve as the thugs for the corporations to exploit other nations’ natural resources — thugs that we, the taxpayers, pay for, even though it’s the plutocrats, and not we, the people, who get the lion’s share of the spoils of the wars that we, the people, pay for.

(The Vietraq War, for instance: Saddam Hussein’s real crime was not that he tyrannized his people, but that he nationalized Iraq’s oil fields. Now that the people of Iraq have been “liberated,” so have the nation’s oil fields — for Big Oil. No one in Iraq died for freedom or for democracy or for puppies or for kittens or for butterflies or for marshmallowy goodness. No, all of them died primarily for the profiteering of Big Oil and the profiteering of the military-industrial-corporate complex, such as Dick Cheney’s war-profiteering Halliburton, which couldn’t profiteer without a war, so the unelected BushCheneyCorp gave it a war from which to profiteer, using 9/11 as a pretext, much as how the members of the Nazi Party had used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to ram their right-wing agenda down their fellow countrymen’s throats. Happy fucking Memorial Day, by the way, and it’s so awfully nice to know that we of the “LGBT” “community” now are “free” to be cannon fodder in the plutocrats’ war profiteering that we call “national security” and “national defense” and the like.)

I suppose that I digress, but I like — well, I love – what Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi had to say earlier this month about Presidential Race 2012:

…But this campaign, relatively speaking, will not be fierce or hotly contested. Instead it’ll be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a hand job in a Bangkok bathhouse. And everybody knows it. It’s just impossible to take Mitt Romney seriously as a presidential candidate. …

This is exactly the John Kerry scenario. Kerry was never going to win, either, and everyone pretty much knew that, too. [No, actually, I, for one, thought that Kerry had a pretty good chance, having recognized that an incumbent president usually is difficult to unseat, and I still suspect that Kerry actually would have won the pivotal state of Ohio, and thus the White House, had the election in Ohio not been overseen by the Katherine-Harris-like Kenneth Blackwell.] But at least in the Kerry-Bush race there was a tremendous national debate over the Iraq war, which many people (incorrectly, probably) thought might end more quickly if a Democrat was elected.

This year, it’s not like that. Obviously Republican voters do hate Obama and genuinely believe he’s created a brutally repressive socialist paradigm with his health care law, among other things. But Romney was a pioneer of health care laws, and there will be dampened enthusiasm on the Republican side for putting him in office. [No, they hate Barack Hussein Obama primarily because he's black. The “Muslim" and “socialist" charges are just code words for “nigger," which you can't utter in the public domain anymore without repercussions. Let's be real about that fact.]

Meanwhile, Obama has turned out to represent continuity with the Bush administration on a range of key issues, from torture to rendition to economic deregulation. Obama is doing things with extralegal drone strikes that would have liberals marching in the streets if they’d been done by Bush. [Absolutely.]

In other words, Obama versus [John] McCain actually felt like a clash of ideological opposites. But Obama and Romney feels like a contest between two calculating centrists, fighting for the right to serve as figurehead atop a bloated state apparatus that will operate according to the same demented imperial logic irrespective of who wins the White House. [Emphasis of that money shot is mine, although the money shot of Taibbi's piece actually might be his hilarious but fairly accurate assertion that this year's presidential election “will be disappointing, embarrassing, and over very quickly, like a hand job in a Bangkok bathhouse."]

George Bush’s reign highlighted the enormous power of the individual president to drive policy, which made the elections involving him compelling contests; Obama’s first term has highlighted the timeless power of the intractable bureaucracy underneath the president, which is kind of a bummer, when you think about it. …

That, to me, is the main reason that I’m not at all excited about this cycle’s presidential race: Both Obama and Romney indeed are calculating centrists. But since the Repugnican Tea Party has succeeded in moving what used to be the center to the right, that makes both Obama and Romney, in my book, center-right candidates. Romney is a bit more to the right than is Obama, but not enough to see the two as much more different from each other than are Pepsi and Coke. The tiny plutocratic minority will continue to do well while the rest of us, the vast majority of Americans, will continue to suffer, regardless of which calculating centrist wins in November.

Obama panders to the left now and then — when he or his spokesweasels aren’t calling us such things as “sanctimonious” members of the “professional left” — but it’s his actions, or lack thereof, that I pay attention to, not his words, especially after his words “hope” and “change” fizzled specfuckingtacularly.

Speaking of Obama’s lack of actions, on June 5, not only will California hold its presidential primary, which will help Mittens finally get the 1,144 delegates that he needs to be the Repugnican Tea Party’s official presidential candidate (he has 1,084 delegates right now, according to Politico), but Wisconsin will hold its gubernatorial recall election.

Unfortunately, as I type this sentence, intrade.com puts Repugnican Tea Party Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s chances of surviving the June 5 recall election at 92.6 percent.*

That’s in no small part because Barack Obama and the national Democratic Party have been conspicuously missing in fucking action where the fight for the right to collectively bargain in Wisconsin has been concerned. Wisconsinites have been on their own since early 2011, after Walker took office and gave tax breaks to the state’s plutocrats and announced that it was the state’s public-sector labor unions that were the cause of the state’s fiscal problems.

In November 2007 at a campaign rally in South Carolina, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said this: “And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself; I will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.” (Here is video of that promise.)

Yet Obama has yet to appear once in Wisconsin to stand up for the Repugnican-Tea-Party-beseiged members of the working class and the middle class there. The national Democratic Party has thrown some money Wisconsin’s way at the very last fucking minute, too late to make much of a difference, if any difference at all (Scott Walker’s corporate sugar daddies have thrown many more millions his way than the Dems in Wisconsin have had available to them), but now, I suppose, the national Dem Party can say, and will say — well, actually, it has said – that it did something in Wisconsin, even though this has been just a repeat of the Democratic cowardice and incompetence and sluggardry that we have seen before.**

I remember the debacle that was California’s 2003 gubernatorial recall election all too well: The state’s Dem Party was in incredibly stupid denial that its uber-uncharismatic incumbent governor, Gray Davis, might actually lose the Repugnican-orchestrated recall election, which more than anything else was just a do-over of the 2002 gubernatorial election that the Repugnicans had lost, only this time they would front as their candidate against Gray Davis testosterone-movie-star Arnold “Baby Daddy (We Know Now)” Schwarzenegger. Because of their denial, the state’s Dem Party elites staunchly refused to rally around another Democratic candidate to run against Baby Daddy Schwarzenegger. To do so, the Dem elites rationalized, would be to admit Davis’ impending defeat.

Then-Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, apparently recognizing that Davis indeed might lose, ran against Schwarzenegger in the recall election, but he did so on his own, without the support of the state party. Had the state party supported Bustamante, or another viable Democratic candidate, he or she might have won the recall election.

It’s incredibly fucking difficult to support a party that absofuckinglutely refuses, repeatedly, to fucking fight for you in return for your support.

Should Scott Walker survive his June 5 recall election, I will chalk that up in no small part to the fact that Barack Obama utterly reneged on his 2007 promise to “put on a comfortable pair of shoes” and join “American workers [who] are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain” — “because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.”

We workers do deserve to know that somebody is standing in our corner, but nobody fucking is — at least no one who actually can win the White House in November.

However, I’d much rather vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein again in November, even though of course she can’t win the White House, than to vote again for Barack Obama, to continue to be punk’d by the party that claims that it loves me so much — but that can’t show me such “love” unless it can then use me in its fundraising efforts immediately thereafter.

P.S. Disclaimer: I have been registered with both the Green Party and with the Democratic Party. Currently I am registered with the Green Party, in large part because I can’t stomach the Democrats’ pseudo-progressivism, their unwillingness to fight the Repugnican Tea Party traitors, and the party’s ever-increasing move to the right. Background:

In 2000 I voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader for president because he was the candidate whose platform most closely matched my own beliefs and values, and because it was obvious that Democrat Al Gore was going to win all of California’s electoral votes anyway (and, of course, he did).

In 2004 I supported and voted for Democrat John Kerry, primarily because preventing a second term by the unelected Bush regime was my No. 1 priority, and Kerry early on struck me as the strongest candidate to put up against Bush. (Of course, the spineless, incompetent Dems didn’t let me down; when it was announced that Kerry had “lost” the pivotal state of Ohio, Kerry couldn’t concede fast enough, and shortly after the election, word came out that Kerry had not spent millions of dollars that he’d collected, millions that might have made a difference in the outcome of the election.)

In 2008 I still was not sure, as I entered my polling place, whether I would vote for Barack Obama or whether I would vote for Ralph Nader again. I knew that Obama would win all of California’s electoral votes anyway, just as it was a foregone conclusion that Gore would win them in 2000 and that Kerry would win them in 2004. (Until we get rid of the Electoral College, millions of Americans’ votes for president won’t really matter at all.) At rather the last minute, I blackened the oval by Obama’s name.

That is a mistake that I won’t make again, unless, perhaps, by some miracle it actually looks like Mittens Romney might win California. (That, of course, will not happen.)

Update (Monday, May 28, 2012): Oops. I wrote above that Mittens should seal the deal on June 5. Actually, Mittens is expected to finally reach 1,144 delegates tomorrow, when Texas holds its presidential primary. If for some reason Mittens does not get enough of Texas’ 155 delegates — Reuters reports that he needs fewer than half of those to reach the magic 1,144 — then he would get the remaining delegates on June 5, when California and four other states hold their primaries. (The very last state in the presidential primary season is Utah, which doesn’t vote until June 26.)

–

*As I type this sentence, intrade.com gives Mittens Romney only a 38.7 percent chance of winning the White House and gives Obama a 57.4 percent chance of winning re-election, which seems about right to me, about 40 percent to 60 percent.

**While I have yet to give Obama another penny for his re-election – I gave him hundreds of dollars in 2008, primarily during the 2008 Democratic primary fight because I believed that as president he would be significantly more progressive than would Billary Clinton – I have given hundreds of dollars towards the recall elections in Wisconsin, because that, to me, is where the real fight has been, and because, as I noted, the Wisconsinites for the very most part have been on their own, having been abandoned by the Obama administration and the national Democratic Party.

Rejected by both parties, OWS must be doing something right

Updated (Wednesday, November 23, 2011)

Associated Press photo

An OWS’er hands President Hopey-Changey a note while the prez campaigns for re-election in New Hampshire today. Unfortunately, this is the only way to get a message to the president from the 99 percent of us, despite the love for the Occupy Wall Street movement that the treasonous Repugnican Tea Party falsely claims the Democratic Party establishment has.

While the Repugnican-Party-co-opted “tea party” traitors are old (tri-cornered) hat, the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have staying power. Why? Because while the “tea party” traitors always have protected our plutocratic corporate overlords — the cause of our nation’s economic collapse — and thus were easy to absorb into the pro-plutocratic, pro-corporate Republican Party establishment, the OWS’ers have defied our overlords.

If OWS weren’t a force to be reckoned with, the treasonously pro-plutocratic Repugnican Tea Party wouldn’t put out fundraising e-mails like this one from the party’s congressional fundraising arm, which I received today (yes, I’m on the enemy’s e-mail list):

Dear Supporter,

Democrats have made it clear who they are thankful for — the Occupy Movement protesters who have cost taxpayers millions of dollars, desecrated the American flag, hurt small businesses across the country, displayed contempt for law enforcement officials, tolerated anti-Semitism, and become the laughing stock of mainstream America.

In fact, Nancy Pelosi just sent out a fundraising email emphasizing her and Democrats’ continued support for the discredited protesters.

Democrats stand with them. We don’t. We stand with entrepreneurs who make this country, and the men and women in uniform who protect our liberties every day.

I urge you to make an immediate contribution of $20 to send a message that you stand with small businesses and law enforcement.

Your immediate $20 contribution will let Democrats know that their divisiveness and class warfare will not work in their relentless pursuit to regain the Speaker’s gavel.

 Thank you,

 Pete Sessions, NRCC Chairman

P.S. Don’t miss your chance to send a message. A contribution of $20 will send a clear message that you stand with small businesses and law enforcement.

I do congratulate Sessions (or his ghostwriter) for packing so many bold-faced fucking lies and bullshit talking points into one fundraising e-mail, though. Let’s see:

• Yes, the free expression of speech might cost the taxpayers some money. Freedom isn’t free, as the wingnuts love to remind us. (Our tax dollars fund the Secret Service, which is protecting Herman Cain, for instance.) Of course, those OWS’ers who exercise their First Amendment rights are taxpayers, too. It’s not just the wingnuts who pay taxes, and of course the richest wingnuts avoid paying their fair share of taxes like the fucking plague.
• I’m not sure about the flag desecration thing, but my response to that would be something like this: So the fuck what? You’re butt-hurt over a piece of cloth? Grow the fuck up and get some real priorities in life, pseudo-patriotic dipshit!
• “Hurt small businesses.” Right. Like the pro-corporate Repugnican Tea Party really gives a shit about small businesses and entrepreneurs. Um, how many small businesses are even left in the pro-corporate environment the Repugnican Tea Party traitors can’t support enough? Two? Three? This isn’t the 1950s anymore, when just about anyone could start his or her own business. Corporate pervasiveness in all areas of our lives makes modern entrepreneurship nearly impossible, as does the shitty American economy that’s likely to last at least for years.
• “Displayed contempt for law enforcement officials.” Um, would that be before or after the immoral, unprovoked and unjust (if not also illegal) use of pepper spray and other forms of unnecessary violence on non-threatening protesters? Puhfucklinglease. Right-wing (mostly white male) cops whose salaries the citizens pay show contempt for citizens who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in any meaningful, effective way — unless those citizens are “tea party” traitors whom the cops agree with. (In that case, they get to exercise their First Amendment rights without being pepper-sprayed or otherwise molested by the pigs.)
• “Tolerated anti-Semitism”? There is one guy who shows up to every protest with his sign about Jewish bankers, but he represents every OWS’er. Right.
• “The laughing stock of mainstream America.” Um, wouldn’t that be serial sexual harasser Herman Cain, who thinks that the president can overrule the U.S. Supreme Court and that we have to prevent China from getting the nukes that it has had since the 1960s; public drunk Rick Perry, who’s always at a loss for words; wide-eyed lunatic Michele Bachmann, and all of the other pathetic Repugnican Tea Party presidential wannabes? The OWS’ers, in fact, have the sympathy of most of the nation and the world. They might be laughed at only by the wingnuts, whose opinion 0n any matter is less than worthless anyway.
• What Repugnican Tea Party fundraising e-mail would be complete without mention of Princess Nancy Pelosi? Yes, she’s worse than Satan himself. She hides under your child’s bed at night and scares the holy living shit out of him or her. Does the mere mention of Nancy Pelosi still work on the wingnuts to make them open their wallets? Is it a Pavolvian thing?
• “The men and women in uniform who protect our liberties every day.” Those would be the very same people whom the Repugnican Tea Party traitors send overseas to fight their illegal, immoral, unjust and unprovoked wars for the war profiteers and the corporateers, such as Dick Cheney’s Halliburton. If the Repugnican Tea Party traitors actually gave a shit about our troops, they wouldn’t put them in harm’s way unless it were absolutely necessary. But mentioning our troops — and insinuating that Democrats, liberals and progressives hate our troops — apparently elicits that right-wing Pavlovian response that is good for fundraising, so let’s just gratuitously mention our troops in our fundraising e-mails. (After all, our troops aren’t just great cannon fodder for corporations’ profiteering – they’re great for political fundraising, too!) 
• “Democrats stand with them.” No, the Democrats don’t stand with the OWS’ers unless it’s to try to co-opt and exploit them. I mean, the Dems always want chumps’ votes and money.

That last point is demonstrated by the fact that today at a re-election campaign appearance in New Hampshire by President Hopey-Changey, an OWS’er put a note in the prez’s hand that read:

Mr. President: Over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested while banksters continue to destroy the economy with impunity. You must stop the assault on our First Amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

Indeed, President Hopey-Changey’s silence on the Occupy Wall Street movement (which is quite similar to his silence that we saw regarding Wisconsin earlier this year while labor was fighting for its life against the pro-plutocratic, anti-working-class Repugnican Tea Party) and his silence on the blatant 1-percent-protecting-police brutality against OWS’ers has been deafening, so for the Repugnican Tea Party to assert that the Democratic Party establishment and the Occupy Wall Street movement are two peas in a pod is yet another fucking right-wing lie.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is something that neither the Coke Party nor the Pepsi Party (as I think of the nearly indistinguishable Repugnican Tea Party and Democratic Party) anticipated: a movement of citizens who are beyond sick and tired of having been sold out to our plutocratic corporate overlords by both of the major parties, who are as mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, and have taken it to the streets. Who knew that the slaves would ever actually revolt?

The Democratic Party’s response to the OWS’ers has been to ignore them, for the most part — and not to criticize them publicly, lest they still be able to co-opt them – and the Repugnican Tea Party’s response has been to malign them, such as in the fundraising e-mail above. (Indeed, the OWS protesters have been “discredited” only by the traitors who comprise the Repugnican Tea Party who at the same time hypocritically accuse others of being “divisive.”)

If the OWS’ers weren’t on to something, if they weren’t a threat to the status quo, they wouldn’t be treated this way by the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party.

Their treatment at the hands of both parties is testament to their — to our — strength.

Long live the Occupy Wall Street movement, the people’s movement that the “tea party” “movement” never was and never will be.

Update (Wednesday, November 23, 2011): I didn’t adequately give the context of the episode in New Hampshire involving President Hopey-Changey yesterday.

What happened is that during his speech to his Obamabots, President Hopey-Changey was interrupted by a group of OWS’ers who attempted, using the “human mic[rophone],” to give him a message of their own. However, they weren’t far into their message before they were drowned out by the Obamabots, who started chanting “Obama, Obama, Obama…” (Creative!)

Therefore, apparently, after Obama concluded his speech, the OWS’er pictured above hand-delivered to Obama the message that the OWS’ers had tried to deliver to him.

Rachel Maddow’s show featured a clip of Obama stating during his speech in New Hampshire that he ran in 2008 primarily in order to benefit our young people. Right. That’s why the youth-powered OWS has been so successful: because Obama has been so great for our young people. Watching Obama lie through his fucking teeth about how great he has been for our young people made me want to take a shower with a wire brush.

And the Obamabots – the Democratic Party hacks who have no progressive principles whatsofuckingever but who obediently support the Democratic Party no matter fucking what, like it’s no more than their favorite sports team — knee-jerkingly defending Obama once the OWS’ers started their “human mic” demonstrates that the Repugnican Tea Party’s claim that the Democratic Party establishment and the OWS’ers are in bed together is bullshit.

The Democratic Party hacks do not support OWS because OWS points out how the Democratic Party has sold out the 99 percent of us. OWS’ers are the millions of us whom Barack Obama betrayed with his false promises of hope and change.

P.S. Via Joe. My. God., this is a graph of how much the Wall Street weasels have cost us, vs. how much the OWS protests have cost us:

Joe. My. God. notes that “wingnut blogs are going apeshit over the just-released estimate on police overtime and other costs related to OWS.”

Of course the wingnuts wholly ignore the costs that they have incurred, such as the trillions of dollars that we blow on bogus warfare via the military-industrial complex, the budget for which the Repugnican Tea Party traitors don’t want to reduce by a single fucking dime.

And how much have the “tea party” protests cost us? (Well, we know that the pepper-spray budget for “tea party” protests is nil, since “tea partiers” never get pepper-sprayed by the cops who sympathize with their wingnutty agenda.)

Wake-up call: Obama struggling in 2012 presidential matchups

Wow: A recent nationwide Gallup poll (taken August 17 and 18) puts President Barack Obama and all top three Repugnican Tea Party 2012 presidential contenders — Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann – polling at 40-something-percent each.

Even foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic Bachmann is only slightly behind Obama in the Gallup poll, at 44 percent to his 48 percent. Perry ties Obama, with 47 percent each, and Romney beats Obama by two percentage points, 48 percent to 46 percent.

(In the poll “libertarian” whackjob Ron Paul garnered 45 percent to Obama’s 47 percent, but Paul has about as much of a chance as Bachmann does of getting the Repugnican Tea Party presidential nomination. The last member of the U.S. House of Representatives who went from the House to the White House was James Garfield, for fuck’s sake.)

I realize that the November 2012 presidential election is more than a year off, but these numbers are waaay too close for comfort, and other nationwide polls taken this month show similar results.

One of those polls, a CNN poll taken over August 5 through August 7, has Obama over Romney by only one percentage point, 49 percent to 48 percent; has Obama also beating Perry, 51 percent to 46 percent; and has Obama beating Bachmann, 51 percent to 45 percent. (Ironically, that poll shows only former New York City Mayor Rudy “A Noun, A Verb and 9/11” Giuliani beating Obama, 51 percent to 45 percent, but Giuliani isn’t, at least as of today, running.)

Gee, maybe it was a bad fucking idea for Team Obama to fucking burn its base of progressives (that is, actual liberals).

Seriously: I surmise that if Obama hadn’t burned his base — repeatedly — he wouldn’t be stuck below 50 percent in the polls (with the margin of error [usually plus or minus 3 percent] factored in, that is). Obama received 53 percent of the popular vote in November 2008, which, while obviously was not a huge majority, was better than George W. Bush garnered in 2000 or in 2004.

With a demoralized, deeply disappointed base, I can’t see Obama matching his 53 percent in November 2012. What I can see is a very tight 2012 presidential race, like we saw in 2000 and in 2004 – and the incredibly spooky specter of a President Perry or a President Bachmann driving disappointed Obama voters to the polling booths in order to vote against Obama’s Repugnican Tea Party opponent much more than Obama ever could inspire people to vote for him.

Indeed, the 2012 presidential election seems to be shaping up to be about which candidate the voters hate the least rather than the candidate whom they love the most, which indicates that it’s long past time time to break up the partisan duopoly and to offer the American voters some real choices, and not only the choice between the Coke Party and the Pepsi Party.

The charade, the elephant and donkey show, will continue as long as we support it, it seems to me. As much as I don’t want to see a President Perry or a President Bachmann (or a President Romney), I’m also beyond sick and fucking tired of being punk’d by the Democratic Party.

Maybe a President Perry or a President Bachmann will solve the problem once and for all — if we survive such a presidency…