However I'm not disappointed in my president, for a change. The man has been president for a little over three weeks now, and in that time he's done many of the things he said he would do, Most notably setting in motion the process to shut down Guantanamo bay, directing all intelligence agencies to follow the Army's field manual guidelines as to the treatment of prisoners (as in, no more hooking up car batteries to some dude's nipples or filling his lungs with water then saving him half a second before he dies,) and, for the love of God, instituting a timeline to finally end major combat operations in fucking Iraq. These three things already put Obama head and shoulders over the Bush thieves that have been eating away at our country for the last eight years. True he's done some things that I do not agree with, for instance maintaining the practice of extraordinary rendition, scaling up the conflict in Afghanistan, and allowing bombing raids into Pakistan. But you take the good with the bad. It's a misconception that all Iraq war protesters are also against the Afghan war too. violent retaliation is perfectly justified against Al Queda, in fact if we would have concentrated on that instead of the illegal Iraq war it would probably be over with by now.
Why I am disappointed is because the Democrats are still so fucking spineless, AGAIN. For the last three months or so we've all been talking about Obama's stimulus package. It's been headline news 24/7 since he won the election. It seemed to me that the news media would routinely bring it back during the waning weeks of the Bush administration, as if to give the people something to hope for between news of continuous layoffs and shutdowns - "Just sit tight and wait for Obama to get in there, and this stimulus package will be coming our way." Obama it seemed then went out of his way to get the Republicans on board. But when it came down to it the vote in the house was dead split along party lines. Not one Republican voted for it. We had almost the same in the senate, with a mere 3 of the opposing party on board. This is after the package was cut back by 100 billion - which was taken from the education and environmental portions of the bill I might add. We didn't see any cuts from the corporate fucking tax breaks section.
The major news media of course is just blind to all this as always. While the economy is melting down and thousands upon thousands of us are loosing our jobs those shitheads are busy blabbering about a swimmer guy who got busted smoking weed and some stupid bitch who had eight stupid babies at the same time. Yeah that's some real news there.
This sounds evil and dastardly, but the truth is the Democrats have always been the Junior party. Even though the Repubs got trounced in the last election they still continue to set the Agenda while the Democrats play defense. That's just how it works in Washington. This is going to be a pattern that we'll see a lot in the next four years. The democratic majority in the House is large enough that every Republican can safely boycott every bill that goes by and not have to worry about looking bad. In the Senate small concessions will be made to get the one or two Republicans on board that are needed to get anything passed. Things may change during the mid term elections but don't count on it. Truth be told it's probably better this way. One party shouldn't have too much power anyway, even if it's the people you voted for.
What's really disappointing me though is how fast and hard the right wing pundit assholes have made a 180 - two months ago they were defending the flag, mom, and apple pie, now they're calling for Revolution. Right wing radio is still reeling from the defeat last November and their response has been to froth at the mouth. The hate machine is turned on higher than ever, trying to blame Obama for all of Bush's failures - the one I really love is the line that the stock market tanking and the banks falling apart is somehow the result of Obama winning the election and not the culture of corruption we've allowed to fester for the last decade. Yeah, ok. I suppose he started the wars too, huh?
You notice that none of these people ever call him "President Obama." Limbaugh calls Obama "the Messiah." Mocica Crowly calls him "Da Bama." If they are forced to actually use his name they always make sure to include the "Hussein." It's Almost like they just can't bring themselves to say "President," like that would be admitting defeat. It's also a nice way of dehumanizing someone. A good drinking game (if you're ever home at 11am and feel like boozing it) is to switch back and forth between clearchannel stations and see how many demeaning nicknames you can spot.
This is all really funny, because even though they're all screaming crazy like wild animals about how much Obama is going to destroy the world their arguments (as always) hold very very very little substance. Instead of attacking any particular policy too directly, like say the stimulus package (probably because the Republicans aren't stupid and know we actually do need it,) they tend to focus on his "character," which so far has been impeccable. But that doesn't stop them from twisting it around - now the fact that Obama can like, actually speak and make sense on TV is turned around and he's a "demagogue." It's that same old line from last summer when they kept calling him a "Celebrity." Ann Coulter even attacked the first lady, calling her a "saint." What the fuck kind of an insult is "saint?" What does that mean, exactly? Is she too GOOD? Then, when Obama decided to include his middle name during his swearing in, Coulter actually demanded an APOLOGY from everyone. Are you fucking kidding me?
It doesn't take an earth shattering leap of logic to see that these names are all a thinly veiled substitute for "NIGGER." You know I'm right. That's why only redneck hillbilly truck drivers listen to this garbage in the first place. Did we call Bush names like this? Clinton? Not really, not to the same extent. It's a dehumanizing tactic so we'll instantly turn against anything he might actually be doing. Conservative media people have always been quick to point out how namecalling is a "liberal" tactic while always engaging in a healthy amount of the practice themselves. Then some half-cooked wackjob shows up at a Church play and starts gunning down "liberals." Well when you're fed a diet of hate speech 24-7 from fat drug addicted slimebags what the hell do you think is gonna happen?
You know, clear channel laid off 1,850 people in January. This article says the new parent company is looking to cut about $400 million in costs. Hey, guess who got a $400 million dollar contract with Clear Channel last year? Looks like the wrong fat got trimmed. But people like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, Micheal Savage, etc all, they do not see the connection between their own ridiculously over bloated salaries and waves upon waves of blue collar layoffs. That's why you don't hear these assholes saying much about how the banks just ripped us off for $350 billion last October. The analogy is just a little to close to home for these people. To them this is survival of the fittest. To them, it's YOUR fault that you have the shitty job you have, it's YOUR fault your job doesn't pay enough to have health insurance, or has shitty benefits so your CEO can make 800 times what you make. They say it's YOUR fault if your job doesn't have benefits at all (like say, mine) and it's YOUR fault if your job gets shipped to India so they can pay some poor schmo 5% of what they used to pay you. It's also your fault if your whole company goes under because some pencil necked bean counter was cookin' the books through off shore shell companies so the CEO can snort coke off a hooker's ass during a company trip to Thailand. They don't give a fuck, because each time something goes wrong they get to write another book about how it's all the Black President's fault.
These people do not care about you. The line we keep hearing from them is we should just cut taxes down to zero and shrink the government down to nothing, and somehow this will magically create a super duper unstoppable economy and everyone will get rich. Well besides the fact that such a notion is complete bullshit - I mean, what the fuck have we been doing for the last 8 years - but it's doubly ironic since the person they bent over backwards for over the last 8 years is the one who got us into this fucking mess in the first place. Remember the Bush $1 trillion dollar tax cut, and how that was supposed to make us all happy and wealthy? Well I don't know about you, but the $1200 I got spread out over 8 years kinda disappeared pretty quick. Kinda wish we had that Trillion dollars now, huh? We were supposed to be farting through silk by this time. Remember how back in 2002 they wanted to put Social Security into the stock market? Arent'cha glad that shit didn't happen? What other bad ideas do you right wing shitmonkeys have for us now? Invest Medicare into Jackalope farms and lunar cheese mines? Put our college funds into furry trout fisheries? Any other schemes that will let the top 1% rip off even more wealth?Where the fuck is your Free Market now?
It's truly disgusting when the hatemongers and the carpetbaggers get to run free while the good people who keep our world together are trodden down. The fact is these people want us to fail, becasue they're afraid the "change" everyone keeps talking about might be us changing the channel.
