Old And In The Way

The Hasbin
        or

Nowhere And Back Again*

Washington, District of Calumny

November 30, 2012 

Some of you may recall that we recently had an election during which a certain Barack Obama defeated someone called John McCain W. Mitt Romney.  A similar event transpired four years earlier when the very same Obama dispatched a nasty little man called McCain.  Even after four years Gollum McCain refuses to move on with his pathetic, completely-lacking-in-relevance life.  One is hard-pressed to decide whether McCain is more furious that he lost his last chance to become president or if his unending bitterness is the result of having lost the opportunity to force our great nation to live under the toxic cloud of stupidity that is Sarah Palin.

McCain’s latest target is Condolezza Susan Rice who is on Obama’s very short list to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  Rice knowingly or otherwise provided erroneous information to the American public about the Libyan embassy attack.  McCain Romney made a big deal about the whole thing when it happened, before anyone had any, let alone all, the facts and continued to beat the issue right up until he got the smackdown heard round the world from Candy Crowley during the presidential debate.



To give you an example of just how unfit she is for secretary of state, Susan Rice pathetically held up a vial of white powder at the United Nations as proof that Iraq had WMD…umm actually now that I think about it that was then-Secretary of State Colin Powell…she told an extremely gullible nation that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”… no wait, that was then-"president" George W. Bush telling one of the biggest bald-faced, injurious lies in American history…she recently said the biggest geopolitical threat to American security is Russia - no that was presidential candidate and all-around chucklehead W. Mitt Romney…Susan Rice, on a drunken hunting escapade, shot a man right in the face and hid for most of the next day while sobering up…or was that Dick Cheney?  Yes, I'm being told that was in fact Cheney.  Oh I know, Susan Rice outed a covert CIA operative as revenge against her husband…oops, wrong again, that was Karl Rove and Dick Cheney…Rice said “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,”…oh crap that was then-soon-to-be Secretary of State Condi Rice.  Wait, now I remember, Susan Rice said the attack on the Libyan embassy was not a premeditated assault while claiming that was the CIA's latest intel; even if that’s not true (which appears likely), compared to countless other attempts at misdirection perpetrated by the executive branch over the years, this is more like telling your wife you’re at the library when you’re really at Barnes and Noble.

Though McCain and his girlfriend Lindsey Graham are on an Idiot's Crusade to bring down Susan Rice, they both vigorously supported the nomination of a clearly disgraced and incompetent Condolezza Rice for secretary of state during at the height of the Iraq war/debacle even though she lied to the American public to help promote an illegal invasion of Iraq, which of course morally and economically bankrupted our nation.  Though there is no glory in the tragic loss of four Americans, one might be tempted to put this in perspective after having lost over four thousand Americans in the bogus Iraq war enthusiastically supported by none other than John McCain and Lindsey Graham.  Even Joe Lieberman thinks they should back off this time.  Screw them and the whores they rode in on.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Blowhard, Mitch McConnell, continuing his somnambular fili-bluster, threatened to make life in the Senate worse if the Democrats change the filibuster rules.  As if.  McConnell, who told America in 2009 that his first priority was to make sure Obama was a one-term president, apparently intends to spend the next four years trying to out-whine John McCain.  McConnell is now trying to flex what for him passes as his muscles in what he calls, “my God-given duty to make sure that Barack Obama is only a two-term president.”  This could likely be the single accomplished mission in McConnell's lackluster stint as the top Republican't in the Senate.  Stay tuned for further feckless follies from the freaks and fools festooning our nation's capital.

*apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment invited.

Occupy Obama

I’m A Little Occupied Right Now 

November 15, 2012 

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.  I really love to watch them roll.  Some of the wheels I'm watching are those that have come off the Tea Party bus as it turns a corner it cannot negotiate.  A new faction seems to be raising its head and voice as if emerging from a coma.  Americans With Brains turned out in impressive numbers to shut that whole Tea Party thing down.  This faction was always there, it just seemed like it had fallen and it couldn’t get up.  Then suddenly, it got up.  It seems quite possible that there is something blowing in the wind unlike anything we have seen, smelt, felt or tasted in a very long while.

It is clear to me as I reflect on the crawl-up to the election that one of the most significant catalysts in waking this sleeping giant and changing the entire dialogue was the Occupy Movement.  A significant number of people didn’t just stick their heads out the window, they went right out the front door and took their bodies out of their homes and into the streets to say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  They said it all across the country for months on end.  Once the Occupy Movement made their presence felt, a certain president in the process of seeking reelection decided it was at least safe if not in fact wise to attach himself to this organic expression of promoting the general welfare.

In fairness I suppose credit also goes to the Tea Party infection of 2010.  This raging infection of our political class certainly triggered an auto-immune response in the populace at large.  The Occupy Movement was that response, like a homeopathic remedy to stimulate We The People to take a stand against Wall Street, the banks and politics-as-usual.  I believe they struck a nerve.  Americans With Brains started believing in their ability to heal the Tea Party infection and leave their social-sickbed.

Pretty much every group in America other than white-male-Republican’ts did very well this election cycle.  Women, the 47%, Hispanics, progressives of all stripes, workers, potheads, the LGBT community, voters, climate change realists, Planned Parenthood and all those they serve and the 99%.  On the other hand, idiots who have trouble understanding what rape is, overly-wealthy selfish bastards and would-be king-makers who heaped hundreds of millions of dollars on W. Mitt Romney and the Boy Blunder, homophobes, the increasingly irrelevant John McCain…again, the almost completely irrelevant Grover Norquist and Karl Rove,  Donald Trump…as usual, the Bush Tax Cuts…even the NRA came up losers.

Even though nobody cares a whit what Willard Romney thinks anymore - or ever will again - he is still going on about the 47%ers (more like 51% actually) who only voted for Obama because he had been “very generous” during his first term in handing out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as to women.  The Kenyan socialist Obama provided access to “free health care,” guaranteed contraceptive coverage, more affordable student loans, and “amnesty for children of illegals.”  All of this free stuff, which had no other purpose, as W. Mitt sees it, than getting votes, combined to give the president a decisive edge in popularity - according to the World’s Biggest Loser of 2012, while trying to explain to his biggest assholes donors why he went down in flames along with 300 million of their not-so-hard-earned dollars. 

I guess Romney’s version is better than One-Thought-Wonder and anti-tax moron guru Grover Norquist who said “the president was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head.”  That’s right, the man who claims he came up with his One Big Idea while in junior high school is still talking poop.  It’s really all he’s ever done.

Romney, for his part is surely not giving anybody anything - the poor slobs who worked on his campaign, trudging home after a comically disastrous campaign and a brutal drubbing at the polls, were shocked to learn that their campaign credit cards had been cancelled the moment their Fearless Loser conceded defeat.  Thanks for all your help suckers.

Speaking of people nobody will have to care about anymore, Paul Ryan thinks Obama won because too many black people voted.  Ryan is not alone in his assessment of the American electorate.  I wish them all continued success in their fight for freedom from reality.  Don’t change a thing.  Really.

Republican’ts can rest assured that their crushing defeat in 2012 had nothing to do with the fact that their primary gave them a candidate who was nothing more than a guy with two legs who won a butt-kicking contest against a crowd of blind, one-legged, mental midgets.  Or that this guy was a congenital liar, an arrogant corporate bastard who heaped scorn on all those he knew to be beneath him and a purveyor of pathetic “ideas” that he alternately loved and abandoned every five minutes. 

Many Republican'ts, licking their self-inflicted wounds, decided they lost because of Superstorm Sandy, one Black Panther in Philadelphia, unsuccessful voter suppression, non-comatose debate moderators (both women no less) or perhaps  because it's much easier being a black man running for president in America.

Anyway, I started this piece to tip my hat to the Occupy Movement.  They may not be as visible as they once were but they're not gone and they're not going away.  Occupy is now engaged in what is called Operation Rolling Jubilee, which consists of buying personal debt from banks.  They are taking random people's debts for pennies on the dollar and simply abolishing it rather than collecting it.  There is a fund-raiser tonight, which is already sold out, to collect money with which to do as much of this as possible.  Maybe we can all chip in a little to help out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qs9w1XlJKE

Occupy the Future.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment invited.

More Postum

November 7, 2012

From the editor:

Maybe Things Don't Go Better With Koch

Good morning campers.  This is your host Ed Venture.  I. Mangrey is taking a well-deserved and desperately needed (my words, not his) day off but he does have some breaking news, which I will get to shortly.

 



For my part, it’s simply shocking how wrong all the polls were.  The Republican’ts kept screaming that all the polls were skewed and not showing the true nature of the electorate.  They were apparently right.  They grossly overestimated W. Mitt’s numbers in almost every battleground state.  I guess those lazy, good-for-nothing 47%ers must have some friends in higher places.  In any event, by all counts Barack Obama will have another four years to attempt to work with a hateful and spiteful Congress, who have shown nothing but contempt for democracy and compromise.  I wish us all the best of luck.  But wait, there's more...

Let me now share this breaking piece filed early this morning by I. Mangrey, now recuperating in a quiet room somewhere, but insisting this be heard: I know most of you are relieved and comforted today.  Romney conceded  in honorable fashion early this morning.  He may yet have the last laugh though.  My sources inform me that W. Mitt Romney is planning to reverse course and claim victory some time later today.  "Conceding is just something you do on election night.  Today is a new day and Governor Romney has had time to sleep on his earlier position and get into some fresh underwear," said my source close to the Romney campaign, "The governor phoned a small group of us upon awaking and has called us together for a strategy session.  I think you can expect Mr. Romney to pull out the old Etch-a-Sketch and claim victory sometime around noon, Eastern Time today.  He is convinced that his ability to change position on any issue at any time is still a powerful political tool, as is the governor himself, and he intends to make the most of it.  I suppose we'll still have to wait and see just how many Americans will be willing to take this walk with us after the apparent defeat we suffered in the actual election yesterday.  But hey, we still have a ton of money to throw around so what could it hurt.  We fully expect the governor to take this bold and original step, after all his is a devout Mor(m)on and someone who means what he says...sometimes for the better part of an hour."  The source continued, "We are not going to allow the election results to be dictated by a bunch of fact checkers.  We are in this thing for the long-haul."

Although my colleague Mr. Mangrey seemed mildly incoherent as he shared this story with me, I cannot take this lightly, coming as it does from such a reliable reporter.  We'll just have to wait and see if this story actually does pan out, or if Romney is just talking more of the shit that was his entire campaign from its inception after all.

Ed Venture, editor Paying Attention

(You Call This) Living Will

A Cry Laugh For (NO) Help

My house above-ground bunker

November 5, 2012 

I. Mangrey, being of sound mind (strictly for legal purposes) and body hereby set forth my most recent will and testament on this Election Eve, November 5, 2012.  We are at a crossroads here in America – two halves of this country desperately trying to take their country back from the other half.  One half proudly ignorant of science, what rape is, who built what, if black people are really Americans, the environment, facts, compromise, consensus and the other half - the Self-Proclaimed Patriots.  The other half continually obsessed with intellectual growth, racial, gender and sexual equality, infrastructure, universal health care, a level economic playing field, forming a more perfect Union, promoting the general welfare, even providing for the common defence, as well as legitimate political discourse, and keeping the Earth from becoming just another lifeless orb among many in a vast universe - you know, The Crazy America-Haters.

There is a good chance that the Self-Proclaimed Patriots will carry the day tomorrow, though Nate Silver, pollster-extraordinaire-du-jour,  puts that chance at only 15% 13% 8%.  However, I learned from George W. Bush to never misunderestimate the American public.  The Self-Proclaimed Patriots' standard bearer, one W. Mitt Romney has almost all the money and none of the brains or compassion in the world behind his (hopefully final) candidacy.  Romney is promising change.  And if he wins, change it will be.  Change you can easily recognize in fact, because he will change things back to the Bush/Cheney era...at best.  More war, dying economy for the 99%, more stupid.  Eight years that came damn close to killing America.  Once that change is in place, unless you are already a multi-millionaire, you will be in deep doo-doo.  Oh, and the secretive mandatory Mormon baptisms...dead or alive.



Drool baby drool!

Wave good-bye Roe v. Wade, the few Wall Street regulations we now have, public schools, health care, Medicare, Social Security, climate science, roads, bridges, New York, the Jersey Shore and American jobs.  And who knows what other great plans W. Mitt has in store?  We just won't know unless he wins because he won't tell us unless he's elected, after the Tea Party tells him what he really thinks.  All we can go by for now is what we heard him say during the primary debates and on the video he didn't know was being made while he was speaking freely in private: Screw 47% of Americans, ignore the Middle East, and hide from Whoopi Goldberg.  Romney will outsource FEMA…to China.  I expect the response time might be a little longer than we just saw with Superstorm Sandy, but hey, the Chinese built our railroads.  Right?

I'm not sure my heart or my precious bodily fluids can take it if W. Mitt Romney becomes our next president.  If it appears I have fallen and I can't get up on election night please do not try to resuscitate me.  I promise not to do anything foolish, but if this is Romney's night and I am fortunate enough to miss all the fun he has in store, do not attempt to ruin this for me.  Nobody knows for sure how this election will turn out until all the votes are "counted" or however the winner is decided this time.  Don't forget, Bain has been busy with other things besides selling us up the Yangtze.  They have been buying up voting machines, which tend to come in very handy during elections, for those the Republican'ts are allowing to vote. But please, if the Mor(m)on from Michigan (where he's losing big, as he is in the other state that knows him well, Massachusetts) should end up setting foot inside the Oval Office, please, do not go to any lengths to keep me able to watch him in action.  If I am in a deep coma then maybe I will be able to tolerate it, but the moment he repeals Obamacare pull the plug.

Meanwhile, back to the other major disaster - Sandy.  Two things you should know.  Number one, W. Mitt Romney, who got very low marks for disaster response as governor of Massachusetts, compared cleaning up after one of the largest hurricanes on record to cleaning up a high school football field; and I quote, "I remember once we had uh, a football game at my high school and the football field afterwards was covered with all sorts of uh, rubbish and uh, paper goods from people who had a big uh, celebration there at the game and there was a group of us there that was assigned to clean it up. And I thought, how are we gonna clean up all this mess on this football field, there were just a few of us. And the person responsible for organizing the effort said, just line up along the yard lines...and if everybody cleans their lane why we'll be able to get the job done. And so today we're cleaning one lane if you will."  This was at the gathering where his campaign purchased $5000 worth of canned goods for hurricane victims, which his people gave to attendees so they could give them back to Willard in front of the cameras in a desperate attempt to make him look useful and relevant.   Willard sure has nice hair.

Number  two, Michael "heckuvajob-Brownie" Brown, disastrous head of FEMA during Katrina, said that President Obama was too quick to respond to Sandy's devastation.  “The storm was still forming," offered Brown, "people were debating whether it was going to be as bad as expected, or not...the president should have let the governors and mayors deal with the storm until it got closer to hitting the coastal areas along the Washington, D.C.-New York City corridor.”  Yeah, heckuvan idea there Brownie.  Obama should have followed your lead, then maybe he too could resign in disgrace, a loser for all time.  George W. Bush, who appointed Brownie could not be reached for comment as he was in the Cayman Islands lecturing on investments.  I'm glad I can't afford to attend that lecture.

In closing, if this is to be our last time together, it has been a privilege serving as your faithful scribe.  Hopefully...We'll meet again. Don't know where. Don't know when.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (and the ascendance of the 99% and the 47%) invited.