by Greg Palast

What the hell happened? Did Barack have a fight with Michelle? Was it nicotine withdrawal? Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President: As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side. And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War. The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped. Lost…

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

Really, Mr. President, REALLY?

Romney says that if you’re 38 or 54, it doesn’t matter that you’ve paid into Medicare and Social Security all your life, you don’t get the insurance you paid for. You get some stinking voucher, some coupon that says, “Here’s a hundred bucks kid, go buy a gold watch.”

Who exactly is going to take a voucher to provide health insurance to a 72-year-old with asthma, in a walker and prostate problems?

Governor Romney said, with that smirky, smarmy grin, “I’d assume I’d rather have a private [health] plan.” Gee, Mr. Romney, could you give me the number of your insurance company and tell them to take my “voucher”?

Mr. President, you gabbled on about the Cleveland Medical Clinic and its “best practices.” Who the hell cares, Mr. President? There are people bleeding out here, LITERALLY BLEEDING, who now can get health coverage because of ObamaCare. For all its failings, it saves lives, saves homes from foreclosure caused by insane medical bills – only recently, the number one cause of foreclosures in America.

Can’t you even defend the one thing that’s worth a damn and has your name on it?

Romney’s wife has MS. That’s sad. But what’s tragic is that there are millions in America with MS who couldn’t get insurance because they have this prior condition—and are not married to an investment banker demi-billionaire.

I don’t care that you couldn’t seem to defend yourself tonight, Mr. President. That’s a Democratic Party headache. What I resent, what gets me furious and angry, is that you didn’t defend ME. Me and my family.

When Romney says he defends small business, let me tell you, I have a small business. I don’t need a tax break – hell, like most small businesses, we don’t make money. We need health insurance. We need government loans.

When Romney says government never does anything cheaper than the private sector, Mr. President, don’t you know that it was government mortgage agencies that funded America’s middle class homeownership? That’s what government did – and licked Hitler to boot.

When mortgages were privatized, we were thrown at the mercy of the Banksters.

(And why the hell did you, Mr. Obama, bring up that right-wing canard that banks just gave out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them – blaming sub-prime predatory mortgage crimes on the victims. Sounds like you agree that 47% of Americans are leeches.)

Maybe it’s true that you, Mr. President, are actually just a hollow man, a creation of PR consultants and rich donors, a Ken-doll of repeating lines about “Hope,” “change” and “this country thrives when the middle class thrives.”

The truth is, you were ready to raise the retirement age for Social Security and cut back-room deals with drug companies. Maybe in the end, progressive policies are just a marketing niche you’ve found to cover aimless ambition and a yearning to compromise.

If someone drilled a hole in you, could we blow in and play you like a flute? Or is there some substance, some hard core of principal that couldn’t break out tonight because it was imprisoned by advisors who told you to play it safe, play it in a coma?

Mr. President, if you can’t explain why you are the Commander-in-Chief in this class war against the billionaire bandits attempting to seize our government, then get off the horse and let someone in the saddle who can ride.

A version of this story originally appeared on the The Mudflats.

Greg Palast is the author of the recently published New York Times Top 10 Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, which is available via Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

[..]

by Lee Camp

Okay, if you don’t watch this video because you’re curious how the world will end, then maybe you’ll at least watch it to learn the ins-and-outs of butt chugging. I wish I were kidding…I so very much wish I were kidding.

[..]

by Nicole Powers

The weekend leading up to Occupy LA‘s October 1st anniversary featured a packed schedule of activities, which included panel discussions, educational events, and a Really, Really Free Market. In anticipation of the big day, several protesters reoccupied City Hall on the Sunday night, erecting tents on the sidewalk surrounding the now restored South Lawn. Though the LAPD harassed campers under the premise of minor infractions, occupiers ensured they stayed within the bounds of local bylaws and codes, and were allowed to stay in their temporary encampment overnight. Despite the fact that two arrests were made – after those suspected of “crimes” such as first degree jaywalking and possession of a bike with no light were found to have outstanding warrants – the symbolic victory set a distinctly upbeat tone for Occupy LA’s first birthday celebrations, which featured a rally at Pershing Square at noon (where OLA kicked off exactly one year ago), an afternoon of marches and direct actions, and a special evening GA. Though anti-Occupy propaganda and general burnout had taken its toll on numbers, a hardcore group of protesters, who through shared goals have forged strong bonds over the past year, came out to celebrate their numerous tangible achievements (most notably in the realm of foreclosure) and their new American Dream: that another – fairer – world is possible.

Visit our gallery for more pictures of OccupyLA’s first anniversary.

[..]

by Steven Whitney

When Mitt Romney recently declared that 47% of us are “dependent on government,” he made it sound like a bad quality – starkly un-American, as if we were all addicts smoking the administration’s crack pipe.

Yet dependency in and of itself is neither a good nor bad attribute – it’s just a part of who humans are on the most basic biological and anthropological scales. We are a social species – it’s in our DNA – and everything we do that has any meaning is dependent on social interaction, whether it’s buying and selling to make a living or profiting emotionally by just hanging with friends and loved ones.

No one exists in a vacuum. We live in families and tribes and cultures, and sub-tribes and border cultures – whether it’s surf bums or car enthusiasts or school parents or Wall Street self-proclaimed “Masters of the World” – we are all dependent on some grouping that sustains us emotionally, psychologically, and often financially. We seek out others who share our interests, passions and values to give us a sense of belonging, precisely so we don’t feel isolated and alone as we float down the river of life on something akin to Sartre’s ice floe.

This is the most basic concept of what it means to live and work in a community. And, with the freedoms America offers, it’s normally a community of our own choosing – be it a church, a bowling league, a book club or rotisserie league, or even a political party.

As a devoted acolyte of the self-interest rationalization (objectivism) of Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan can be excused for not knowing this simple human truth. But Romney should. Whatever their faults, Mormons famously take care of their own – perhaps to the exclusion of those outside the Latter-Day Saints circle, but Mormons comprise a real and ongoing community.

But just maybe the extremely insular nature of the church has impacted Romney more than its communal practices. As Romney has shown almost every day of the campaign, he is uncomfortable with and wary of outsiders, or “the other,” a trait commonly found in minority sects that robs them of any real sense of either a national or global community.

Mormons make up just 2% of our population – yet as a group they are so tight-knit that the other 98% have become “those people.” Ann Romney is afraid of giving “those people” tax returns they might use as ammunition, and Mitt said his job is not to worry about “those people.” So one has to wonder if it’s a lack of empathy or social skills on their part or an extreme level of xenophobia – but none of those can or will play well on a world stage that foreigners and all sorts of “those people” inhabit.

As time (and the song) has shown – people need people. The well-being of every person on earth – and every nation – begins and ends with dependency on our social and professional interaction with other people, for companionship, for work, for sex, and for love. We cannot be free or happy if we are imprisoned in our own solitude.

Indeed, study after study shows that prisoners in solitary confinement inevitably suffer from schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. Free in society, those who isolate themselves are prone to paranoia, obsession, depression, agoraphobia, pre-senile dementia, and early onset Alzheimer’s.

Many experts in the mental health field define true madness as the loss of self. If they’re right, and madness ensues from extreme isolation, then it follows that we lose at least a part of ourselves – of who we are – when we forego social interaction, when we lose our connection to other people. The “other,” then, becomes not only necessary for our optimal survival but must also be an integral part of each of us. Who of us, for instance, does not carry inside someone living or dead – a parent, a lover, a friend, or mentor – who in some way changed the course of our life and helped make us who we are?

Even higher education – colleges and universities – was originally conceived not only as a venue of advanced learning but as a necessary social and psychological bridge from narrow adolescent groupings to the larger adult society.

Especially in democracies – which are by definition created “of the people, by the people, and for the people” – we are dependent on other people in every aspect of our lives.

But Romney and Paul Ryan are distancing themselves and their party from the immutable truth of community and what it means by adopting a by now all too familiar “I did it all by myself” stance.

First because it’s not true – both Romney/Bain and the Ryan family have depended greatly on government contracts, subsidies, and corporate tax exemptions. Romney often puts forth his involvement in Staples as proof of his extraordinary skills as a businessman. But one of Staples’ biggest clients is the Department of Defense – our military – with $13 million in orders. And in the second quarter of 2011, Staples received a $21 million tax refund through a special exemption. As for Ryan, his grandfather built the construction company that has provided for three generations of privilege on the back of government highway contracts.

Secondly, it’s just too much too bear from the neo-Gatsbys of Massachusetts and Wisconsin who were more than a tad bit dependent on the rich families that gave them a leg up. Someone has to explain to these two the old axiom that if you’re born on third base you did not actually go to bat and hit a triple. They did not build lives of privilege and elite schools and exceptional opportunities all by themselves. They had help from their DNA, those who loved them, and many others. To be successful, it does indeed take a village.

Mitt and Paul and all of us are dependent on workers who make furniture, who build houses and apartment complexes, who labor on the assembly lines, who pack our microwave lunches, and who make with their hands all the things the rest of us need. And yet, like the soldiers in Afghanistan, Mitt didn’t find them worthy of even one mention during his convention address.

Dad works two jobs, Mom works one and takes care of the kids, and this family has the temerity to feel they’re entitled to food or to some kind of basic housing? A soldier in Iraq gets his legs blown off and now expects healthcare? A senior citizen who paid into Social Security every two weeks for more than fifty years now has the balls to demand the government fork over a check every month? What an outrageous lack of personal responsibility!

More than 400 years ago, John Donne wrote an elegant prose section in Meditation XVII that he later turned into a poem.

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. . .
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Still, when referring to 47% of our population in what was supposed to be a top secret briefing to financial backers, Romney says: “My job is not to worry about these people.”

That doesn’t cut it – a President’s job is to represent and worry about all the people – the richest and the poorest, the healthiest and the most infirm, the overworked and the unemployed, and everyone else. You cannot lead if you do not care for all the people.

So for Mitt and Paul – and all the rest of the rugged Republican individualists who built everything by themselves with absolutely no help from others, all of them who are not in the least involved in mankind – the death knell of the upcoming Presidential election tolls for thee…and, hopefully, for your sociopathic mindsets as well.

Related Posts:
Political Ramblings And Random Thoughts
From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar
Modest Solutions To Voter Suppression
Character. . . And The RNC
The Do-Damage Congress: Who’s Responsible?
Worse Than A Do Nothing Congress
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!

by Lee Camp

Did you know that Transformers is a propaganda film produced by Toyota? Or that The Hangover was made by the recreational drug industry in order to convince people that blacking out is fun? Or that the new Maggie Gyllenhaal flick Won’t Back Down is a propaganda piece by the people who want to privatize education?…I have a confession to make. Those first two sentences were lies. (But that last one is true.)

Related Posts:
What The Hell Are You Eating???
Forget Money! Let’s Barter – What Can You Get For A Few Naked Pics?
Moment of Clarity: Never Mind Protesting Are Your Ready For McNoodles?
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I Know Who Will Win The Presidential Election (Seriously)
Moment of Clarity: Are We In The Middle Of A Zombie Apocalypse? (And If So, Can Someone Eat Simon Cowell’s Brain Already?)
Moment of Clarity: Why The Occupy Anniversary On September 17th Matters
Moment of Clarity: Life Is This Miniscule Thing…It’s This Moment And Then It’s Over…Use It Wisely My Friends
Moment of Clarity: A Category Five Shit Storm Hits The RNC
Moment of Clarity: Study Reveals Experts Are Morons…And Here’s Why
Moment of Clarity: Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, And The Fifty Shades of Rape
Moment of Clarity: Apathy Ain’t Sexy
Moment of Clarity: A Bedtime Story About Fraud, Corruption, And Snorting Koch
Moment of Clarity: Your Vote Will Be Stolen And Here’s How
Moment of Clarity: Why Can’t War Be Fun For The Whole Family?
Moment of Clarity: On The Brink Of Cultural Singularity
Moment of Clarity: Storming The Headquarters Of Chase Bank
Moment of Clarity: The Euro Was Designed To Fuck You 12 Ways Til Sunday
Moment of Clarity: This Video Is Not Fracking Offensive
Moment of Clarity: Go Greenland, Scratch That, A lot Of It’s Already Gone
Moment of Clarity: America Is Too Fat, Skinny & Free!
Moment of Clarity: Did The Lord Say To Be A Greedy A$$hole?
Moment of Clarity: LIBOR – Ladies Intimately Bending Over, Rearview
Moment of Clarity: The Shadows Are Taking Over

Title: What The Hell Are You Eating??
Corny Title: Q: Why Did The Chicken Nugget Have Ears? A: Because It Was Made Of Corn!

by Lee Camp

Okay, I know it’s not polite to comment on someone’s diet, but you and I need to talk. …You’re eating too much corn. Really, you have to chill out on the corn. Breakfast, lunch, AND dinner? What are you nuts?! And I know what you’re thinking – “I don’t eat that much corn.” But you’ve forgotten about one thing – the fact that you’re wrong. Watch the video.

**UPDATE**

Lee Camp will be performing one night only in Denver, CO! If you haven’t heard of him, Camp is best known for going live on Fox News and calling them “a parade of propaganda and a festival of ignorance.” George Carlin’s daughter Kelly called him “One of the few keeping my dad’s torch lit.” SuicideGirls called him “Better than boobs!” and two weeks ago Rolling Stone said he “gets the crowd roaring!” He’s a contributor for The Onion and has been featured on most major TV networks. And now you’re thinking, “But I don’t have $20 to spend on a comedian.” Well, that’s good to hear – because the cost is a $5 recommended donation at the door.

It’s TONIGHT at 10pm at Deer Pile, located at 206 East 13th Ave. in Denver.

[..]

by Steven Whitney

Nation-building is a perilous task, mostly because the people you are allegedly “saving” from oppressive regimes often don’t share the same world view or want the things we think they should want.

For decades, hard line American foreign policy experts found it expedient to install or keep in office leaders whose greatest (and sometimes only) asset was their pro-American stance, aided by billions of American foreign aid dollars. They didn’t care if we were propping up a royal personage (Hassan II / Morocco), an upwardly mobile warlord (Barre / Somalia), a cruel dictator (Pinochet / Chile), or even an outright mass murderer (Pol Pot / Cambodia). It was a classic devil’s deal: as long as these puppet dictators let the USA pull their strings, we supported them, usually disregarding the popular (and underground) leaders who might have been elected by a democratic process. It was and is an anachronistically paternalistic policy – America as Father Knows Best – and it is thankfully dipping below the horizon of our history.

In the meantime, the excesses of these tyrants eventually turned their countries against them, most recently in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. And we supported the rebellions. But if America is going to promote – or at least not get in the way of – democracy abroad, it must realize that it is often not going to like the results. These new democracies are not created to please us, but rather to free their own people and let them choose their own leaders – that’s what democracy is about.

Like life itself, politics is a messy business, especially when you do the right thing and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted or expected. In this new century of global integration, we have to stop acting like spoiled children accustomed to always getting our way and learn that self-determination means just that.

There’s a price to be paid for freedom…and often it is spread around unpredictably.

Republicans and Fox News howled when they discovered that “God” was not mentioned in the 2012 Democratic Platform. A veritable hue and cry followed. Democrats hastily put together a Yay or Nay convention floor vote with no audible winner. While the word “potential” was eventually changed to “God-given,” the DNC might have seized the opportunity to point out that the Constitution of the United States, the document office-holders are sworn to uphold, also does not contain the word “God.”

Look up the Constitution on the web. Then click Find for the word “God.” It won’t come up…because it isn’t there.

Our founders were extremely clear about the separation of church and state. Anyone who thinks otherwise should spend the rest of their days searching for God in our Constitution.

In most cases, children first discover the world at large in their local library…and adults find almost anything they need to learn or want to enjoy. Except for actual schools, libraries contribute more than any other institution to our growth as human beings and to the society we live in. They are the social hub of information sharing and, unlike most elected officials, libraries serve their entire communities, so when even one is in danger of closing, it’s imperative that the community push back.

Faced with just such a threat the good citizens of Troy, Michigan pushed back against the Tea Party / Grover Norquist tax fanatics. Watch this short video to see how the smartest use of reverse psychology I’ve ever witnessed saved their library.

These voters are not only informed, but amazingly creative. Bravo!

Writers generally love words. Lately, one phrase keeps intruding on my thoughts – “to the manor born.” It holds visions of British aristocracy, Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. But now American has its own version.

Doesn’t Mitt Romney (and to a lesser extent, Paul Ryan) perfectly embody the concept of “to the manor born?”

Time magazine recently reported that more than one hundred bird species, including chickens, engage in some sort of homosexual behavior, much of it “casual sex.” And a study at Virginia Tech in 1964 discovered that cockerels placed in cages only with same sex chickens started getting it on pretty quickly. Of course, the bible on the topic is Bruce Bagemidhi’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which confirmed Darwin’s finding that diverse sexual behavior – homosexuality, bisexuality, and more – naturally occurs in almost all animal species, including humans and chickens.

As a result, anonymous sources have revealed that in an all-out effort to prevent gay chickens from hitting their grills, CEO Dan Cathy has commissioned famed Minnesota sex orientation adjuster Marcus Bachmann to visit every one of Chick-fil-A’s facilities to “pray the gay away” from their otherwise magnificently heterosexual chickens.

Fowl behavior, indeed.

Our Worse Than a Do Nothing Congress recently set a new and shameless low in governing standards. On September 21st, members of Congress recessed for the all-important business of getting re-elected in November. It was the earliest exit from D.C. in over 50 years.

Congress reconvened from its summer vacation on September 10th – and worked nine full days before calling it quits – obviously spent by their oppressive workload. They might not have come back at all but, as always, Republicans had some important bills to block.

First up was the Veterans Jobs Bill, which would have created jobs for 20,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It actually passed 58 to 40, but Senate Republicans killed it by lodging an objection that then required a 60 vote passage.

House Republicans also stalled the Farm Bill because its $23 billion cut in farm subsidies over ten years was not nearly enough. And, too, the GOP wants to replace subsidies with a new privately run “crop insurance” program with projected costs of over $1 trillion that creates myriad irrational incentives for small farmers (while, of course, favoring huge agribusiness concerns).

Attached to the farm bill was a provision passed by the Senate cutting food stamps expenditures by one-half of one per cent. House Republicans want to quadruple the cut, so the bill was effectively tabled. Food stamps help feed 46 million Americans, many of them working families, part of the 47% of Americans Romney/Ryan accuse of feeling “entitled to food,” and if the GOP has its way, “those people” will be dining only at Midnight Missions throughout the country

Due to so much unfinished business, Congress will reconvene after the November election. Since some – and hopefully many – Republicans will be lame ducks by then, perhaps a few will veer from the hard party line and actually use their votes to help everyday Americans.

The biggest mistake President Obama made during what is hopefully his first of two terms was during his State of the Union address before Congress in January, 2009. Back then he should have declared that in the almost 3 months since the election he had been briefed on every aspect of our government and that everything was much worse than we – and he – had been told.

I’m sure he wanted to use that forum to regenerate his message of hope, but his lack of candor supplied the GOP with their rallying cry today: “He didn’t fix our mess fast enough!”

The Bush/Cheney administration left our country in disastrous ruin on almost every front and it would take more than even the full team of Avengers to repair the damage, especially when Congress does nothing but obstruct proposed bills that would help us regain our fiscal health.

Instead, Obama’s first SOTU address fostered what by then was unrealistic hope and, when truly miraculous change didn’t happen, the President was blamed by every screaming Republican.

The truth is that Bush/Cheney dug us into such a deep hole, it might take a full decade or more to recover, even longer if the GOP maintains its obstructionist posture or, heaven forbid, gains power and returns to the policies drove us off the cliff in the first place.

On Election Day, all you really have to do is remember who led us into the quicksand of failed policies from 2001 to 2008. And then vote.

Related Posts:
From Death And Despair. . . Dreams Can Soar
Modest Solutions To Voter Suppression
Character. . . And The RNC
The Do-Damage Congress: Who’s Responsible?
Worse Than A Do Nothing Congress
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business
Chicken Shits: The Slippery Slopes of Chick-fil-A
The Vagina Solution
Fighting Back Part 4: The Big Liar, Intimidation And Revenge
Fighting Back Part 3: Fighting Fire With Fire
When The Past Is Prologue
Fighting Back Part 2: Defining Rovian Politics
Fighting Back
The Electoral Scam
Being Fair
Occupy Reality
Giving. . . And Taking Back
A Tale Of Two Grovers
A Last Pitch For Truth
America: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Gotcha!