Agitprop: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda

Falcon Got You Sucka

Obama Nobel Post-Mortem

via Mr. Fun @ The Defeatists!

Hey, if Woodrow Wilson and Henry Kissinger can receive a peace prize, I guess anyone can.

Stay out of Malibu, Polanski

The tag line of an LA Times article titled "Polanski arrest draws cheers and jeers in Europe" reads:

Those in the arts community see the film director as a hounded hero whose jailing reflects America's dark side. Others see the arrest and Switzerland's cooperation in the sting as justice overdue.

We are the country who disintegrates children on a weekly basis with predator drones. We torture. We have the highest prison population in the world thanks in part to incarcerating non-violent offenders. But wanting to try a guy who druged and raped a 13 year old girl 30 years ago shows our dark side?

What the fuck are you talking about?!?

Seriously...people in the arts community...if you are suddenly frightened by the American ethos then you clearly have been trapped in the celluloid you produce for a living. There's no such thing as a get out of jail free card for artists - only politicians and white-collar executives are privy to that golden ticket.

See also: Rape-Rape.

Torture is as Torture Does

Impeach Obama

Cheney/Obama

Yes We Can

Burgerverse

HOLY SHIT! Think that's HOLY SHIT? Look what a Getafe player can do if he scores:

Globalization, beotches.       Unrelated bitching, moaning, music, links here.

Counterpoint.

Re: the below theory on President Obama's ass-fixation...

[Clownshit] Love the Propaganda

The greatest successful federal legislation title of the week:

The Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement (PEACE) Act

I don't know what this legislation does, but all of the 'E' words in the title scare the shit out of me. "Enhancement" meaning 'coercion' nowadays. And "Enduring" meaning 'forever.'

And John Lennon is Rolling in His Grave

Here on the left coast we've been saturated with advertisements for Chase Bank. Late last year they took over the failed Washington Mutual, which was omnipresent in these parts. Here in Irvine there were three Wamu branches on the same street within a five mile stretch. Now they are all Chase.

Part of the Chase ad campaign is to introduce Californians to the east coast brand - since apparently no one here has ever heard of them before. Their current commercial features a shitty cover of a John Lennon classic.

Was Yoko hard up for cash or something? Using this song to promote the legalized loan sharking industry is just - wrong. Then again, what Beatles song hasn't been used to peddle feces to the masses?

In my world, Instant Karma (the original JL version) would be played to footage of bank CEOs jumping out their high rise windows to their deaths on Wall Street. Now that's karma.

Alas, A Discovery

Newt Gingrich, speaking at the "Rediscovering God in America" conference:

I am not a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator. [...] I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.

Here I thought citizenship started with birthright. For Gingrich and his God Rediscovery Team believing in the Judeo-Christian creator/father god should be a litmus test for citizenship.

Pagans? I thought we surround them? And who is them?!?

Cuban spies? "Reality" TV Stars? The kung fu mafia? The hipster mafia?

I give up. The pagans have already won.

The Sultan of Set It and Forget It

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Bombs of hope are audaciously dropping in our occupied territories. Military tribunals have made a quick return. Obama and his proggels are turning out to be quite astute at managing the empire. As the Dark Wraith puts it - it's authoritarianism without the incompetence.

Today Der Krauthammer describes how the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by the new Democratic government. The Progs be illin' while you be chillin'.

Which reminds me of something Arthur Silber let loose a few days ago:

The ongoing, sickening disregard exhibited by many lib-progs for the criminal murder of large numbers of innocent people has thus been a constant feature of our repellent political discourse for some time. And I will note that, despite the Shirley Temple metaphysics that undergirds my analysis, a few of us have regularly pointed out the gaping, bloody hole where their souls ought to be for several years.

And what IOZ wrote back in December 2007:

To cast a vote for any Democrat at the national level is to cast a vote directly for the torture of other human beings. It is not acquiescence or acceptance; it's endorsement. If you call yourself a Democrat, you're a torturer.

Now some of the faithful are on their knees praying that they won't get fooled again. Via Steve Bates - who has removed the word "Democrat" from his blog name - comes Rachel Maddow with a nice take-down of Obama's Thursday doublespeak.

Can we have both the rule of law and preventative detention? Yes We Can!

Like BDR said a couple days ago, I too am not surprised one bit how the Obama presidency is unfolding. But had you asked me a year ago about 2009, I would have told you McCain would be president. I guess I don't deserve a pint after all.

The Never Ending Campaign

California rest in peace.
Simultaneous release.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Whether or not you’ve recovered from the 2008 election season - aptly dubbed The Two Year Root Canal by The CultureGhost - there’s a special election next Tuesday May 19 here in the great state of California. Six ballot measures promise to save the state from fiscal armageddon.

Here's the latest:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told legislative leaders Monday the state's annual income tax collections are expected to fall this year for the first time since 1938, punctuating a budget shortfall that he said will reach $21.3 billion if voters reject a slate of ballot measures next week.

With passage of the measures appearing unlikely, Schwarzenegger announced that he would release plans Thursday -- five days before the May 19 special election -- to show Californians the devastating consequences for government if the propositions fail.

When an authority figure comes to you and says “We must do this now or else [fill in the blank]” it’s best to question their motives.

Think back to fall 2002…Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and is determined to annihilate U.S. cities! We must take out Saddam before he and his Al Qaeda friends attack us with unmanned aerial drones and anthrax-tipped pen guns! Or just last fall…Henry Paulson needs $700 billion or else the entire global economy will collapse and we’ll have human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria!

This is all so comical. Californians seem to have forgotten that six years ago we recalled our former governor due to a $30 billion deficit. Budget deficits are an annual thing in this state. Get over it. Gray Davis must be laughing his ass off, as his successor has been unable to tame the spending beast.

So the Democrat-controlled legislature and Republican governor created our fiscal mess. Now they want Californians to fix it. Fuck that. I’m not voting in your stupid election. Fix your own damn problems. I’m not going to buy into your shock doctrine electioneering tactics. 

Typically, my disdain for ballot measures leads me to vote “No” on everything. But next Tuesday I’m going to sit this one out. My wife’s union, the CTA, is pushing hard for “Yes” on everything. She already told me she will do as her union commandeth. More power to 'em.

Good ol' Progressive Governor Hiram Johnson instituted California’s ballot initiative process. These were the same Progressives who advocated eugenics. Today, ballot measures waste millions of dollars in ad campaigns and are often hijacked by out-of-state special interests. Proposition 13 has been bankrupting the state since 1978. Last year's Proposition 8 gave the general public the power to decide who gets constitutional rights and who doesn't...and they voted to deny constitutional rights! American Idol has better standards than this shit.

Direct Democracy is impractical - not to mention a failure. It may have worked in 5th century B.C. Athens but it can't work in a state with over 40 million people, let alone a country as large as the United States.

As The Great IOZ summed up recently:

One could make the case, perhaps, that elections are a reasonable scheme for a city-state somewhere, but a hundred million harried citizens making hazy decisions after two years of propaganda isn’t qualitatively different from the happenstance of heredity or the rolling of dice. And George W. Bush, god bless him, is the proof.

California legislators are representatives. We live in a representative democracy, remember? They are paid over $116,00 per year (the highest in the nation) to write legislation and agree on an annual budget. Instead, they have decided to foist their workload onto the California voter. The good news is that polls show all of these ballot measures headed for defeat.

Whatever It Is, I'm Against It has a nice rundown of ballot measures for any Californians that will be voting next Tuesday. So does the LA Times, for what it's worth.

The only solution for this insanity is to 1) vote out every single incumbent in the CA State Senate and Assembly and 2) campaign to repeal the 2/3 rule. Being able to pass a budget with a simple majority would alleviate the annual song-and-dance between the governor and legislature on crafting a budget. Hmm, perhaps I should write Mark Leno’s office if I really care about this.

Number 3 would be campaigning for a ballot measure to end all ballot measures. Hell, I would devote my time to gathering signatures for that.

Democracy is a failure! Repeal the ballot initiative process! Vote "yes" to repeal your suffrage!

Ok, who's with me? Any takers?

When The Going Gets Tough, Americans Go Shopping?

Last week I received the following email.

Subject: CELEBRATE EARTH DAY

APRIL 22, 2009
Buy yourself a Motorola ReNew

The Motorola W233 Renew offers an easy way to help you proactively protect the planet without compromising the quality of your phone. Exclusively from T-Mobile, the environmentally responsible Motorola W233 Renew is uniquely designed to reduce environmental impact by using sustainable materials in its design and packaging while at the same time delivering performance and quality customers rely on. Minimizing its carbon footprint through energy, transportation and material efficiencies, the Motorola W233 Renew does its part reduce its climate impact.

Really? How in Mithra's name is a buying a new cell phone going to save the planet? The most environmentally responsible thing to do would be to use your current cell phone until it craps out beyond repair. Just think how much energy was exhausted in the Motorola plant to build the millions of W233 Renews that are being scattered across the planet. And how exactly does sending my old cell phone to the landfill reduce environmental impact?

Silly Wabbit, Corporations are People!

The latest from Joe Bageant:

This financialization of our consciousness under American style capitalism has become all we know. That's why we fear its loss. Hence the bailouts of the thousands of "zombie banks," dead but still walking, thanks to the people's taxpayer offerings to the money god so that banks will not die. We believe that we dare not let corporations die. Corporations feed us. They entertain us. Corporations occupy one full half of our waking hours of our lives, through employment, either directly or indirectly. They heal us when we are sick. So it's easy to see why the corporations feel like a friendly benevolent entity in the larger American consciousness.

Corporations are, of course, deathless and faceless machines, and have no soul or human emotions. That we look to them for so much makes us a corporate cult, and makes corporations a fetish of our culture. Yet to us, they are like the weather just there.

And who knew? There are folks trying to revoke corporate personhood.

Good luck on that.