The Whitest Nigerian Prince? Ted Cruz

Turns out that, for an alleged smart guy, Ted Cruz is Internet-ignorant/stupid (he's not even Master of His Domain -- see www.tedcruz.com). He also shares his campaign fundraiser donation page security certificate with something called "nigerian-prince.com". Really.

This is probably not such a big deal. It's not like he's a real candidate anyway. He and the other putative Rethug "contenders" who showed up at the Kochsuckers Gala in Palm Springs are just astroturf meat puppets, running-dog lackeys of the über-rich capitalist pigs who want to give the rubes -- the god, guns and grits crowd of the Moron-American Voting Bloc -- the illusion of "choice" before the adults shove aside the goobers and anoint Jeb Bush (after all, he is "one of them") inheritor of the crown.

Come on, like you didn't already know that?

Anyone who gives money to Ted Cruz deserves to be 419-scammed by a Nigerian Prince.

Unless -- is it possible? -- Ted Cruz really is a Nigerian Prince, and he's been the one all along offering to share, with each and every of us who has an email account, a large chunk of his zillions of dollars, inexplicably tied up in some mysterious African bank, for only a small processing fee (aka "campaign donation")?

Hmmmm...

HT to BadTux the Snarky Penguin for the link to the Nigerian Prince story. And thank you god for giving us an unusually early start with the traditional Republican Clown Car

When Satire Falls Flat

I swear it's as if they have lost their funny bone -- or more likely, never had one. An Oldie Goldie email has been making the rounds again, you know the one where Obama said he won't wear an American flag pin because he "doesn't want to be seen as taking sides" and wants to change the national anthem to "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"?

This story first appeared on a site called John Semmens: Semi-News -- A Satirical Look at Recent News in October 2007. As you can see, it was clearly labeled "semi-news" and "satire", but the wingnuttery doesn't care about that. Shit, they probably don't even know what "satire" is. Except for that rubber thing that they gots to have four of to keep their pickup truck up off the ground: "'At? 'At satire. Needs some ayr."

So satire goes flat (get it?) when it strikes the wet canvas brain of the Moron-American Voting Bloc, which is no more capable of nuance and subtlety than an earthworm.

Apparently Only Democrats Can "Appease"

Over on The Facebook, a labeled photo of Ronald Reagan is making the rounds amongst the Moron-American Voting Bloc:

My question to the original poster was this:  "So has everyone forgotten that Ronald Reagan ordered the withdrawal of forces from Lebanon after 241 Marines were blown up by terrorists? How was that NOT 'appeasement'?"

It didn't take long to draw this response: "Spoken like a true communist traitor!"

To which I replied: "It's funny that when someone can't answer a question they start with the name calling. But that's okay, I have thick skin. So explain to me how Reagan's pullout from Lebanon was not 'appeasement'?" 

After three hours I've received no response. Like that's a surprise. In the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, "The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

As I say, it would appear that only Democrats are capable of "appeasement"... God forbid that Saint Ronald could do any wrong... 

Republican Hypocrisy in Action

Republicans and hypocrisy. But I repeat myself -- now it's almost like those words are synonyms for each other. AlterNet has an article entitled "10 Rankest Hypocrisies of Mitt Romney and the Republican Party that is well worth the read.

Here's the money shot:

Romney was a vocal opponent of the auto industry bailout orchestrated by the Obama administration. He famously wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with the title "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Fast-forward a couple of years to a newly profitable and growing automobile industry and we find that Romney has shifted his position. Today he not only claims he supported the bailout, but he considers himself responsible for its success. He told ABC News that "I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry's come back." That’s a little like Pontius Pilate taking credit for Jesus coming back. [Emphasis added]

Seriously. Who in the fuck could EVER vote for this guy? I'm old enough to remember when being a Republican meant something completely different, back in the days of Oregon's governor Tom McCall, Oregon's senator Mark Hatfield and Washington's senator Dan Evans, none of whom would be welcomed in today's RepubliCON party. Welcomed? They wouldn't even be acknowledged.

It's sad, really. It wasn't supposed to be this way, but that's the hand we've been dealt. Now the Democrats have no choice but to double down and call out the lies and the hypocrisy as they pop up. The danger is, of course -- and the Rethugs know this -- that if you pop up and play the Republican Wack-a-Mole game, you'll get the reputation of always being the party of negativity. All they have to have is one more whopper to tell than you have the strength to knock it down, and this is a battle that they will win.

Here's hoping that the Moron-American voting bloc will finally see through the lies and vote in their own self-interest for once.

The Uninformed Voter: The Biggest Threat to Democracy

It happens every election. Uninformed voters cast their votes at the last minute for the candidate whose last ridiculously-expensive television commercial they saw, cast their votes against candidates based on gut-level emotional attacks – monumental lies, mostly – by their opponents, without ever taking the time to really examine the candidates, what they say they stand for versus what they really stand for, and what it really means for their own economic and social well-being if Candidate X wins the election.

In Washington State, we also have a cumbersome initiative process that over the last few elections has managed to confuse the public and bog down the electoral process. Unfortunately, many of these initiatives, while they are skillfully titled and worded to appear benign, cynically manipulate those who are not really paying attention to vote against their own best interests.

For example, to us progressives, pretty much any initiative proposed by our own Republican political gadfly and pseudo-Populist Tim Eyman is automatically suspect. Every one of his initiatives, despite whatever innocuous-sounding name he slaps on it ("Initiative Measure No. 1132 concerns state expenditures on transportation"), is aimed at crippling government and destroying the public's faith in it. His centerpiece, of course, was 1999's infamous I-695, which, even though it was subsequently declared unconstitutional, had – and is still having – a tremendously devastating effect on this state. His many subsequent attempts were never quite as successful, but that hasn't stopped him from becoming a master media manipulator and successful wingman for the Republican right wing. He's become such a "media darling" to a complaisant press in this state that they always know that he can be counted on to say something so borderline outrageous that, even if it makes for bad public policy, makes for good television.

Progressives, sadly, really don't really have anyone with Eyman's skills and abilities. He might be selling snake oil to the voting public, but he also makes them want to buy it. It may well be that the truth will set you free, but first you need to know the truth.

So what can be done? How about a massive educational drive designed to make voters understand what they can do to avoid these manipulations by a select corps of Grover Norquist "starve the beast" acolytes?

Sidebar: Norquist, you may recall, is a Republican operative whose most famous line was that he wanted to reduce government to a size where he could "drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the tub".

Beyond that, it is up to each and every one of us to educate ourselves on the candidates and the issues for which we are expected to cast a thoughtful ballot in November. It's also up to each and every one of us to talk to our friends, relatives, co-workers, even that stranger on the bus, and educate them on the candidates and issues. This is true over the entire country, not just in Washington State. And don't drop your guard. This year's election is only the warm-up round for next year's Battle Royal.

This is where we progressives have it over the so-called "conservatives". They won't do that because they can't. Most of them cannot successfully articulate their positions because they are among the very worst when it comes to uninformed voting. On the other hand, they have a follow-the-herd mentality which means that they don't have to think about things. We do, and we will.

Don't Know Much About History...

Or so goes the line from a Sam Cooke song that was popular in my youth... say 100 years ago or so...

But it's a sad commentary on the state of the world -- and the future of it -- that today's students truly don't know much about history.

According to a Reuter's story, less than 25% of teens are proficient at US History.

And that is a shocking statistic. If you don't know your history, then you don't know shit, and consequently you are much more likely to fall for anything that "sounds reasonable"...

Which goes a long way towards explaining why idiots like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann can get away with the moronic mangling of American history (Palin; Bachmann) to suit their own ends.

Shit, they probably don't even know where they are wrong. After all, they are in the mix along with everyone else. But I'd guess that they are probably at the bottom end of that continuum (a mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean), the 5% that don't know shit and don't care... And are proud of it!

It bodes ill for the future, not only of the US but also the world.

No wonder Holocaust Deniers can get the kind of traction they are getting. The farther we get from WWII and the less people know about it, the more the historical revisionists can work their evil magic...

In Your Fucking Dreams, Newtie

I really wish I had the confidence that Newtie G. will never get the Rethug nomination, let alone win the 2012 election, that this headline implies, but I've pretty much given up trying to understand, let alone "misunderestimate", the Moron-American Voting Bloc.

Now that Newtie G. is officially in the race, you'd think that some of his supporters -- or those who think they are supporting him because they remember hearing his name sometime and wasn't he the guy with that Contract on America thing? -- would actually look that gift horse in the mouth.

Over at Mother Jones, Tim Murphy and David Corn have put together a compilation of statements flowing from the diseased gums of the man-who-would-be-king. It's called Newt in His Own Words: 33 Years of Bomb-Throwing, wherein you'll find, among many more, these "greatest hits":

1980 On the House floor, Gingrich states, "The reality is that this country is in greater danger than at any time since 1939."
1985 Gingrich calls Reagan's upcoming meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev ''the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich.''
1994 He sums up his political philosophy: "People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day."

Okay, enough of that. See a pattern developing here. Newt is so swept up in the events leading to WWII that he sees a Munich behind every treaty, an umbrella-toting Neville Chamberlain lurking inside every Democratic politician.

The scary thing is that this thrice-married family values fraud is probably more likely than any of his current Rethug contenders (Michelle Bachmann? Mike Huckabee? Get real.) to actually get the nomination. And if that happens, then it's just one October-surprise international-crisis black eye for the black president, and Our Hero will come galloping to the rescue.

This is some scary shit, and one more reason why I lie awake at night...

They Still Walk Among Us

I am speaking, of course, of the more semi-literate members of the Moron-American voting bloc -- those who can actually read a little bit and then hit the "forward to everbody" button in their email programs.

The latest spew of brainless nitrogenous ooze issuing from the wingnuts concerned the sinister changes in Social Security over the years and that it was always -- repeat always -- the Democrats who worked in the shadows to corrupt the "purity" of the Social Security Act.

Which up front my readers know, without my even pointing it out, that this is errant bullshit.

Never mind that these pus-infested drippings invariably come from the Rethug-inclined, i.e., those who "know" that Social Security is nothing more than anti-American socialist-fascist-communist control of a population demographic that otherwise ought to -- and would -- bask, glory and revel in the abject poverty and starvation that used to be the lot of those who had the effrontery to -- horror of horrors -- get old.

Those bastards...

I have neither the time nor the inclination to copy and paste this litany of shocking exposés of the system. If you want to see it for yourself, just drop by the detailed analysis over at Snopes and see it for yourself.

What bothers me the most, though, is that people are perfectly willing to pass this shit on without even attempting to check out the factual validity of it. As long as it fits within their previously-established parameters of "what sounds right must be right", they don't question it.

And these people vote...

Book of the Month: The Grapes of Wrath

Most of the members of my father's extended family were Oklahoma sharecroppers for several generations, until the deadly combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl devastation of the 1930s drove them off the land and to the west, where they would face a new brand of poverty, humiliation and starvation in California, Oregon and Washington.

My new book of the month is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which tells in harrowing detail the plight of "Okie" Dust Bowl refugees in their flight to what they hopefully but erroneously thought would be greener pastures, oranges free for the picking off of trees, high wages and lots of work.

Reading it, for me, is like reading a biography of my own family. But the book is far more than that, and it's a necessary reminder of the kind of society that the Teabaggers and the everything-for-the-rich Republicans want to take us back to. It's not a pretty sight, but I think periodically the rest of us need to be reminded of those "good old days" that they want to see come around again.

No one can read this book without getting pissed off at a country that would allow this kind of thing to happen.

BONUS: While you are reading The Grapes of Wrath, I recommend popping this great Woody Guthrie CD into your player and listening to it. It's Dust Bowl Ballads, a terrific compilation of songs that also describe the hell that was the 1930s flight of the Dust Bowl Refugees.

Both John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie made the trip west along with the migrant worker "Okies" they wrote about, which is why both of these works have that distinctive ring of truth about them that you just can't make up. I am a writer--trust me on this.

Since my father had been untimely ripped from his childhood, the draw of Oklahoma was strong in him, as it often is in those who suffer from a sudden dislocation in their youth. So in 1950 he moved back to NE Oklahoma, dragging me and my mother along with him. We spent five years on a dairy farm near Bristow, until the draconian agricultural policies of Ezra Taft Benson, Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture (who was later elevated to the lofty perch of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" of the Moron Mormon Church), drove us into poverty once more and we were forced to again abandon the land and move west. While it wasn't close to the great migration of the 30s, it was personally disruptive to me, as it had once been to my father.

With I think the same motivations that once drove my father back to the state of his birth and childhood, I managed to make several trips back over the years. But I never even considered moving back there. Oklahoma had changed, and so had I. In a state that in the first two decades of the 20th Century had elected a huge number of Agrarian Socialists to office, Oklahoma managed to drive itself as far to the right as it could, ridiculously culminating in this year's ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to prohibit the establishment of Sharia Law(!) in the state. As if that was a problem. But what can you expect from a voting public -- part of the Moron-American Voting Bloc --that is willing to elect a professional dickhead and crypto-Fascist like Tom Coburn to the US Senate?

Anyway, The Grapes of Wrath and Dust Bowl Ballads: Get them, read one and listen to the other. You will not be sorry.

Today's Quote Worth Considering

Here's a quote that you may find interestingly descriptive. See if you can guess who said it and when.

The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

I'll bet you would have guessed that the speaker was some modern progressive, e.g., Keith Olbermann or Big Eddie Schultz. But this was written by US Vice President Henry Wallace, and it appeared in the NY Times on April 9, 1944.

That was 66 years ago, but it describes with chilling accuracy what we are faced with today. He rather eerily predicts the rise of the current corporate oligarchy and the malevolent creation of Faux News.

Wallace was a seer, a futurist, a modern Cassandra, whose warnings we have ignored at our peril.

But we will anyway, because that vast Moron-American Voting Bloc^TM is still alive and well active, as was demonstrated in this month's midterm elections.

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[HT to H.E.R.B. for reminding me about the Wallace quote]