A Queen Among Men

My Queen Elizabeth

Warrenton, DC

July 25, 2013

I’m not usually one to gush over royalty, but I’m afraid I just can’t help myself. Maybe it’s all this fuss about the royal baby. I hope he’ll be able to find some strange woman lying in a pond distributing swords or pull the sword from the stone or whatever it is they do over there to elect their king. Anyway, I never paid much attention before, but I have watched several videos of the Queen since the beginning of this year. She looks much younger than I expected, but I guess it’s all that easy living and adulation keeping her so vibrant. Every time I see her I am simply in awe of her command of history and all the nuances of her particular milieu. Perhaps you have seen an exchange or two she's had with some of the commoners. If not check this out: http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/sign_glasssteagall/?akid=14296.12160.2nRI_W&rd=1&source=e7-nonsign-don&t=2

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Okay, I feel a little silly here. Apparently, this is not in fact the Queen or a queen or even a princess. This is freshman senator - now the senior senator from the great state of Massachusetts - Elizabeth Warren. She has simply taken the capitol by storm. Considering she’s a freshman senator, she takes no prisoners, no excuses and no shit from anyone. People worried she would just end up frustrated and cowed by all the pathetic losers we know as the United States Senate. Truly a more worthless governmental body has never existed. More cadaver than body if you ask me. Mostly a bunch of white guys whose brains died years ago, but whose bodies keep shuffling along the halls of Congress and Fux News.

God Save The Clean

Elizabeth Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987 and became a tenured professor. She began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1992, as a visiting professor, and took a permanent position in 1995. Warren said of her history of voting as a Republican for many years, "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets." In 1995 she began to vote Democratic, but she says that she has voted for both parties because she believes that neither party should dominate. Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama. Then of course Obama threw her under the bus because it was too much trouble to go to bat for her when it came to crunch time.

Bankers and Wall Street thieves are scared to death of Elizabeth Warren. She knows more about what they do than they do. She’s smarter and tougher than most of them. She took their bright shining whore star - Scott Brown - and turned him into roadkill. She soundly defeated Self-Loving-Scotty after serving the partial term he won in a special election to fill the seat of Ted Kennedy - crushing him by over 7%. Brown is now a loser talking head for right wing media with almost as broad an appeal as Sarah Palin.

The economic inequality in this country is simply disgraceful. Dis. Grace. Ful. Elizabeth Warren gets it as much as anyone in the Senate. And while over the entire membership of the Senate this is an exceedingly low bar, there are a select few in that festering corpse august body that are and always have been steadfast in their support for actual Americans...you know, the 99%.

Elizabeth Warren is the real deal. She has long been determined to protect We The People from the banks and corporations that ru(i)n the government. She’s not shy and she’s not wasting any time trying to get things done. Keep an eye on Elizabeth and help her when you can. Please watch the video (linked above) and sign the petition. And tell everyone you know - they’ve got a friend in DC.

I. Mangrey and I approve this message.

The White To Bear Arms

Shoot ‘em If You’ve Got ‘em

Sanford, Florida

July 19, 2013

Something is rotten in the state of Florida. No, I’m not talking about Tea Party Senator Marco Rubio…at least not at this moment, though he definitely doesn’t smell right to me. Unsurprisingly, I’m referring to Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law as it played out in the trial of George Zimmerman. Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law, the first of what is now a thirty-state-wide epidemic, was put on full display recently as would-be-do-gooder and actual murderer, George Zimmerman who was arrested in 2005 and charged with “resisting officer with violence” and “battery of law enforcement officer,” now spends his free time pretending to be a cop. Why is this asshole permitted to carry a gun?

Zimmerman was recorded on a police scanner shortly before fatally shooting an innocent boy, “Those f#@%ing punks always get away with it.” Zimmerman was found not guilty after stalking Trayvon Martin who, fearing for his life, attempted to elude the self-anointed judge, jury and executioner. Martin was ultimately confronted, forced to defend himself – to stand his ground to coin a phrase – and then finally shot through the heart at point blank range by the deranged vigilante. Trayvon Martin was of course unarmed as civilized people in a civilized society are wont to be.

Robert Zimmerman, Jr. said of his newly acquitted brother, "Clearly, he is a free man in the eyes of the court, but he's going to be looking around his shoulder for the rest of his life." In regard to the many Americans who saw things differently he added, "They think justice was not served and they won't respect a verdict no matter how it was reached. They will always present a threat to George and to his family." I’m sure we can all understand poor Mr. Zimmerman’s discomfort with being treated like a criminal for no apparent reason, being profiled by strangers who wish him harm, perhaps even followed on a dark rainy night when all he was doing was walking home with a bag of Skittles and some iced tea. That would just be terrible, especially if he became engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with this ne’er-do-well and then shot to death. Nobody likes being in that position. I’d hate to think I was being followed by an armed pinhead with a cop complex an itchy trigger finger.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in shitty sunny Florida, Marissa Alexander, a black woman and mother of three, with no criminal record, who fired a warning shot to protect herself from an imminent threat by her abusive husband, is currently serving 20 years after being convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Nobody was hit, injured, or killed during the incident. You wouldn’t be off the mark for thinking Ms. Alexander was simply, uh, wait, it’s on the tip of my finger – oh yeah – standing her ground. She was however doing something that is generally frowned upon in the state of Florida, something that also tarnished Trayvon Martin – she was visibly and unashamedly being black. Mark O'Mara, co-attorney’ for Zimmerman’s defense (not the one who began his opening statement with a disastrous knock-knock joke) told a reporter, "I think that things would have been different if George Zimmerman was black for this reason. He never would have been charged with a crime," he said. Yeah, because it’s just so much easier being black in America…unless you live in George Zimmerman’s neck of the woods. Just ask Marissa Alexander.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Stand your ground.

Summer Rerun

Fourth of July, Fifth of Bourbon

Independence Hell, Philadelphia, PA

July 4, 2013

I. Mangrey, great patriot that he is, will be taking this national day of rest as seriously as he takes anything, and abstaining from all manner of workly pursuits. You know...lazy. As managing editor of this blog-like forum I have taken it upon myself to wade through his Archives of Angst to re-present this piece of crap history from yesteryear. So take a moment out of your festivities and wallow in a bit of quagmires past on this the Fourth of July 2013. From the frackers red glare, the bums bruising our air, here's proof through the night that our flag has a prayer.

 

Remember, those who do not learn from history are doomed. Period.

Ed Venture

 

Intransigence Day 

Wipemyasswiththeconstitution, DC

July 4, 2007

Independence Day couldn’t have come at a better time.  Here, in the course of human events, we stand at the dawning of a brand new day.  Finally all Americans can breathe a sigh of relief that we need no longer be associated with the Albatross that has clung to our necks for over two hundred and thirty years.  We are finally rid of the unbearable burden under which we as a nation have labored so consistently, in the blind belief that it was the essence of our great nation, since this horrific deed first saw the light of day.  Yes, Americans – we are all free from the stultifying restrictions and absurd dreams and notions of the dreaded…Declaration of Independence.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.  Truths?  Self-evident?  Created equal?  Unalienable rights?  Don’t make me laugh. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  Were those guys kidding with this crap?  Passé baby.  N’est ce pas? 

What a great day in American History this is.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.  First we managed to throw off the shackles of fair elections by embracing the first American President to be appointed by the Supreme Court despite the expressed wishes of the majority of American voters.  Thank goodness for that; elections are soooooo messy.  I heard there were people in Florida pulling chads out of their asses for months after that debacle down there.  Soon we were able to thrust off the brutal hindrance of never starting an unprovoked war – what a bunch of losers we had been until that Shining Path into Iraq opened before us, showing the way to a New World Order.  Shortly after that, we managed to stop pretending that we didn’t approve of torturing people, showing the whole world what we’re really made of while simultaneously unfettering ourselves from those quaint, but so pre-9/11 Geneva Accords.  Then this great appointed, shameless and supremely simian administration finished the job that whore Bill Clinton started by gutting the pathetically antiquated writ of Habeas Corpus like Karl Rove would the last known edible fish in the sea.  Throw in a smattering…oh, who’s kidding who…throw in a massive shitload of illegal domestic wiretapping made almost palatable with constant threats of terror around every corner.  Remove the crushing weight of the outdated, unwieldy, godless drivel that is the Constitution of the United States of America and you’ve got the Democracy that Mussolini always dreamed of – the Final Solution, if you will. 

With the Bushney regime’s latest exhibition of freedom loving, the Commuter in Chief made mincemeat of Scooter Libby’s sentence (after being found guilty, by a jury of his peers, on four of five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators), we can all know that simply being found guilty and losing two appeals, all overseen by Republican appointees, does not mean that the sentence we receive need be served.  I for one have never felt so liberated in all my life, at least not since I was assured by that paragon of virtue, democracy and competence, Donald Rumsfeld, that “free people are free to do bad things.”  I never fully understood how true this was until the great American hero, Scooter, was finally set free after almost coming ever so close to serving one full second of prison time.  Good for Scooter I say.  Hell, it’s not like he shot a man in the face or anything.  L’il Scooter’s been a great American – starting with his great work with the Project For A New American Century; the PNAC was way ahead of the curve by advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein back in the Nineties, but Bush 41 wimp extraordinaire wouldn’t go for it.  Scooter emerged from under his rock to become Dick Cheney’s Dick Cheney and did everything his Secret Undisclosed boss asked of him.  Who could possibly quibble with a man like that? 

Some may accuse me of being anti-America.  Go ahead I say, accuse me, indict me, try me, sentence me, laugh at my appeals all the way to the Uber Court.  I know that I shall remain free because my Lord And Master, 20%George is looking out for me.  Though I may wander through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall want for nothing.  Eyes closed, ears plugged, mouth full of amber waves of grain I shall follow aimlessly my Master and Decider, Snorter of Illegal Powders, Flaunter of Undeserved Power, Commuter of Sentences – Ignoramus Maximus.  You may ask, why do I hate my freedoms?  To you I say BRING IT ON.

I. Mangrey reporting

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment invited.