May Day MAYDAY

Everywhere, USA

May 1, 2012

Well, if it isn't May Day 2012.  I'm surpried it wasn't cancelled.  Last May Day saw some problems here in the Home Land.

This little kerfuffle still hasn't gone away.  The Democratic party is trying to crush the movement that is trying to make it a party of The People.  The party bosses are fostering a nasty primary, hoping to get their corporate-preferred candidate to defeat the already-installed, corporate-preferred Republican't governor.  With any luck the actual people of Wisconsin will manage to decide the primary for themselves and then run Scott "Koch Brother From Another Mother" Walker out of town.  On Wisconsin!



May Day.  The day when workers the world over made their voices heard for many years, achieving incredible things for average working people, even here in America.  Then it was co-opted and hijacked to assist the general public in erasing anything useful from its collective memory.  Now most Americans prepare to vote for rich people who want nothing more than to keep them poor and powerless.  Move along folks nothing to see here.  Anyway, just wanted to keep in touch.  I'm still a fan of democratic principles, equal rights, civil rights, workers' rights, women's rights, free speech, taxing the churches, fairly taxing the insanely wealthy and little green apples.

Anyway, i'm kind of busy at the moment, so i thougt i'd take you back to yesteryear and dedge up a golden oldie from a May Day not so long ago...

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Another May Day, MAYDAY
 

Wishing Well, DC

May 1, 2008
 

Happy MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Day everyone.  Yes it was just five years ago today that Feckless Leader declared “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”  We all know how accurate President Oil Profits was on that fateful day, speaking from his codpiece aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which he apparently rented for what is still perhaps his most famous photo-op.  This stunningly pathetic episode is of course just one in an almost infinite array of idiotic moments we are all hoping we can soon forget, or at least put behind us in 263 days.  Only time will tell when this nightmare will really end, and even then there will be horrible scarring that may never fade.  But at least the war is over and the surge is working and nobody got hurt.  And isn’t that what really matters?

Today, however – five years after the first MISSION ACCOMPLISHED festivities – there is another reason to cheer.  Unfortunately, I was unable to rent the USS Abraham Lincoln or even the newly built atomic aircraft carrier, the George Bush, which came to be for a mere seven billion dollars or so – what a bargain.  All I have is this keyboard and the magic of the Internets to spread my holiday cheer.  Today we learned that President Codpiece has become the least approved-of president of all time.  This is the first time any president has surpassed 70% disapproval.  And he has certainly earned it.  His brilliantly staged war in Iraq, a war no other president (not counting his father) would have ever imagined, the war he waged to (after countless other reasons we were given) assure low oil prices, has surprisingly caused oil prices to skyrocket.  Nobody could have anticipated THAT!  The good news is that the hourly increase in gas prices at the pumps across America has created thousands of new jobs – each gas station now has a full-time employee perched next to the sign showing gas prices, so the price can be quickly and accurately displayed at the very moment the next increase is to take effect.  Finally, a job that can’t be outsourced and one that even a person of George W. Bush’s talents is capable of doing.

Sure, it’s small compensation for the demise of the United States Constitution, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court, the American Dollar, the American economy, the American military, elections, public education, the housing market and the Middle Class.  But why quibble over such trivialities when there is so much good that has come out of the Bush Years?  We have finally thrown off the oppressive Geneva Accords, the brutal Theory of Evolution and the crippling Rule of Law.  And we are this close to completely ignoring the Global Warming Hoax.  And, perhaps best of all, it is now safe for drunken vice presidents to shoot people in the face.  This is the New Improved America we all really want, whether we know it or not.

These are the good times that America has been fighting for since at least the day we (well, not me; I was observing a strict abstinence-only voting regimen at the time) elected a lousy ex-actor with Alzheimer’s to lead us through the Eighties, a period of time of which he had no recollection even as it was happening.  This of course didn’t stop him keeping American hostages safely in Iran until he was innaugurated or later selling arms to the very same Iranians to raise money to fund the murderous Nicaraguan Contras.  Then we elected our first Bush who invaded Iraq to help boost his popularity, followed by the Republican-who-ran-as-a-Democrat – William Jefferson Clinton whose claim to fame was staining the dress of a young intern with his precious presidential bodily fluids.  And NAFTA.

Sure May Day used to be known as International Workers’ Day, a day to celebrate the social and economic achievements of the American labor movement, originally chosen to commemorate the 1886 general strike and subsequent Haymarket Massacre.  That’s just so Nineteenth/Twentieth Century.  Those days are gone.  This is a New American Century and these are The Zeros –its first, and perhaps only decade.  America’s biggest labor unions are now in India, where poor, smart people are thrilled to have our jobs and China, where striking is punishable by death.  There’s no room for that kind of Commie Pinko Labor Union nonsense in post-Democracy America and I for one am ready to impale myself on Barak Obama’s unused Flag Lapel Pin.  Bring it on.

I. Mangrey reporting

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment invited.