War, War, and MORE WAR!

4 More Years of Neo-Con Politics?

Obama in Berlin: No, no, no, that's not "that" salute!
We hope you aren't getting your progressive hopes up about Barack Obama. Did you hear him in Germany yesterday? He sounds more and more every day like G.W. Bush, our only-ever never-honestly-elected president EVER (OK, the Mafia in Chicago put Kennedy in the White House in 1960, we agree). By the end of Obama's whirlwind fact-finding trip from Afghanistan to Iraq to Israel (only 3 hours in Ramala but 30 hours in Israel) and then ironically from Israel to Germany, you'd'a thought he would be hollering, "For Holy Sakes, folks, after visiting these devastated places of war and horrors and tortured prisoners and peoples running out of food while the poppy fields are bursting with deep-red bloom and processing evolution--the juices of those ancient fields being sent to Europe and the USA for processing!--and then in Iraq I saw such horrors, filthy streets, backed-up sewers, the Tigris flowing with the deteriorations of all kinds of animal bodies and with garbage and sewage, and there is no electricity in some parts of this city of 2 million people, this city where the civilization we Westerners worship began--and there in the center of this vast city I saw the largest embassy in the world, a billion-dollar playground for the occupying army, and, yes, folks, that's what our army is doing in Iraq--we are occupying that country--Iraq is a military playground now and the only hope I see for peace there is for us to get the heck out--and then I was in Palestine, yes, I'll admit, I was only there for 3 hours, but I was there long enough to see ruin all around me and to hear about the human devastation just down the road in the Gaza Strip--and, yes, I did then spend more time in Israel, but then I've already stated that I'm biased when it comes to OUR commitment to Israel--that was included in my famous 'defend at all means' speech to the Israelis in New York City..." and this imaginary speech drifts off into nowhere because we created it out of smoke and it never happened. The speech instead really was a summation of his Holy visits, first to Afghanistan where he promoted more troops for that "righteous" war (invasion)--besides Afghanistan is going to be Obama's big war where he's gonna prove his Warrior worth to those who criticize him as being soft on WAR and Neo-Con ideals; in fact, Obama's still talking about chasing Al Queda into Pakistan whether Pakistan likes it or not and using nuclear weapons in case he has to, blah, blah, blah--and today it is revealed that the Bush Administration is sending Pakistan's (Musharif's) Air Force brand new F-16 fighter jets to help them in their fight against terrorism and the Taliban (yep, that's right, those are those dangerous jets that used to be too difficult to fly or some such futility like that--yet the Department of Defense (that offensive department) went ahead and ordered billions of dollars worth of them built--no money for the poor people of the USA who were hoaxed out of their homes by easy loans and encouraged to go over their heads by buying dream homes--they were bilked--yet there's no money for them--billions for the hustlers and gangsters working us dry in Iraq and Afghanistan--like KBR, Halliburton (now a foreign corporation), Blackwater (one man's private army made up mostly of ex-South American soldiers, especially those who fought with the coalition in Iraq--Peruvians, Colombians, Chileans), Booze Hamilton (a spy corp); then Obama was in Iraq, and instead of going out into the center of Baghdad where he'd'a drawn about a billion people--dangerous, yes, but, hell, he could have gotten Holy Sanctification from the Sunnis and Sufis and Soderites--he chose to be wined and dined in the Green Zone (the world's largest embassy) and playing soldier boy with the "brilliant" General Petraes (Betrayus), and Obama started praising this stupid-dick military man to high heaven, stating that he's a great American leader and that the military under his leadership are doing a bang-up job (and that's right, Obama, it ain't a "duty" anymore, it is a job--a volunteer army in which these geeks are hired, given a salary--sorry we apologize for letting our "anti-killing" feelings getting the best of us--we forget the USA loves killing, huge explosions, wild shoot outs, and people thinking of being murdered or how to murder and people being attacked and our women scared shitless from so many women being abused and beaten and tortured beyond imagination and eventually murdered but not just murdered but usually mutilated and then in some cases butchered, seeing this on television all afternoon long and then all night long and our news reporters constantly are throwing scares at us of detailed reports of hits and runs of children who are left dead or near-death or detailed reports of the cops blowing some crazed black man away because he waved a kitchen knife at them or detailed coverage of horrible fires or cranes falling in mid-town Manhattan or of Long Island couples getting bloodily murdered in their comfortable homes in their comfortable neighborhoods--that happens nearly once-a-month in NYC--even the stupid weathercasts are made with threats--"It's gonna be HOTTER than two Hades tomorrow, folks, so you'd better be CAREFUL or you could DIE")...and Obama yammered on about how our troops in Iraq are heroes--just big mouthfuls of bullshit coming from this man's stentorian mouth--and then he's talking more troops for Iraq and while he's at it he gets into some of that tough Amurican talk about "perhaps" bombing Iran's nuclear hopes down to ashes, though he quickly liberally adds that he will try to deal with Iran diplomatically but if he has to, hell yes, he'll bomb 'em back to the Stone Age. Obama's talking as though he's prepared to be a tough-ass, executive-privileged, George W. Bush-type, bullshittin', lyin' dog-type president--the change he's offering the Amurican people is not a change that will be progressive and improving our lots, no nothing like that, what Obama means by change is simply a change of faces--a change from a white to a black face (no pun intended)--but still the same old same old WAR over PEACE bullshit. Then in Germany, the Black JFK gave his version of the great profligate's "I am a doughnut" speech, assuring the Germans that he was going to go after Al Queda and all extremist terrorist groups and he's going to increase the NATO forces as they move for the first time out of Europe and into our righteous war against the people of Afghanistan--carrying on the old Soviet attempt to occupy Afghanistan--remember when the Soviets told us getting involved in Afghanistan was going to be our downfall?--how quickly we forget!--and, yes, Obama is for the missile sites in the Czech Republic (still Czechoslovakia to John "Nutjob" McCain and most American high school students) and, yes, in order to bring respect back to the USA, Obama told the Germans he's going after terrorists and extremists with more vim and vigor than G.W. "Pussy" Bush ever thought possible given the executive privileges old Georgie Porgie has set up for the next president to use! POWER, mama, POWER! DADDY'S GOT THA POWER, BABY! Obama is loudly and orationally aligned himself with "The War on Terrorism" tough talk--you see, Obama's trying to prove to the 28% who still are Bushbackers that he's able to become a toughass, mean-talkin' Commander-in-Chief since that 28% of Bushbackers is spreadin' the lie that John McCain is considered by most Amuricans to be a better commander-in-chief than Obama! What drivel! Commander-in-Chief--that title is such bullshit. Only Congress can declare wars, not the Commander-in-Chief! Such bullshit! Such anti-American bullshit! Fascists pigs! All these bastards are fascists!--Bush's fantasy wars have become devastating realities--besides, we don't even know how to deal with the hurricanes and floods and wildfires wiping us out! We are not even concerned about T. Boone Pickens buying up as many "water rights" as he can get his dirty mitts on in expectation of the US running out of drinking water before T. Boone's time has expired and we are rid of his schemes--unless he has a worthless son or daughter! Commander-in-Chief! Hell, Timmie and Lassie could make better Commander-in-Chiefs than the wimpy presidents we've ever "elected" with the exception of maybe Dwight David Idlinghour (Eisenhower--born in Texas!), who did warn us about the Military Industrial Complex, and anybody and his dog would make a better Commodore-in-Chief than the totally VietNam-vet insane (we here at the Growler believe all ex-Vietnam vets are crazy as hell--that war left our streets full of crazy homeless nutjobs) John McCain who was lucky he was able to dump his original wife and marry the Tucson beer-baron's daughter who's now worth, we read, over 300 million bucks!--Way to go, Johnboy!! So the New World Order will continue on into infinity as far as Obama's concerned, even though the majority of We the Dumbass People want us out of both stupid invasions and stupid attempts at occupation--to suck out the wealth from under them--and We the People want our rights back--we want our privacy back--we want our jobs back--we want our factories and industries returned to us--we want our lands back--hell, we want our culture back--we want our troops back within our borders protecting our borders and not dispersed all over the world fighting Paper Tigers! If our troops had of been protecting our borders on 9/11, if our Early Warning System, remember that farce put over on us during the Cold War (a made-up war, too)?--if that had worked those airline hijackings could have been avoided or at least shot out of the air by our Air Force fighters who are supposed to be on a 24/7 readied state, but NO, none of that worked! Our Defense System couldn't keep this terrorist attack from being a success though it claimed our defenses are solid everytime it asked for more and more millions of dollars from Congress every year. (It pisses us Growlers off, too, that Americans have totally forgotten that Ronald "Raygun" Reagan was the first president to put us into debt and that the Bush Family presidents have put us into the worse national debt ever--Georgie Porgie topping his old Pappy's debt-busting deficit record by a wipe-out margin, a debt we may never recover from--old GHW Bush is the dude who when told there was poverty in the USA said he didn't see it--hell, everybody he knew had two homes--where's the poverty in that he asked--such arrogance!) All Wars have been rigged wars since wars began!

So Obama, though he says he's for change, isn't for change at all--it seems this guy rather admires George W. Bush and his nonchalant attitude while the ship is sinking around him--and it looks like Obama certainly likes the executive privileges GWB has provided for the next bunch of hypocrites who'll be spending 100 million dollars in campaigning for a job that pays at tops $300,000 a year! IT'S THAT POWER THAT THEY'RE CAMPAIGNING FOR!

What a joke our politics is in this country; EXCEPT, it's a deadly joke and no one I know is laughing about it.

Also, everyone everywhere with brains has known all along that cell phones were little microwave ovens that could eventually cook all the memory out of our brains if we used them as often as the big newer and bigger and better telecom companies want us to so they can get richer and richer and richer off the profits of selling us more and more wireless (microwaved) communications devices. Obama turncoated on us by voting to give immunity to telecom companies who illegally spied on We the People of the USA under the orders of a criminal president. Turncoated? Yes. Obama first said he would back a filibuster against the bill--instead, he backpeddled and went right along with the telecom-designed-and-written bill--which Obama said was a compromise bill and wasn't so bad afterall (the Dumbocratic Party's official stance)--besides, once he's president he's gonna keep on keepin' on spyin' on us untrustworthy Amuricans anyway--WHY? well, hell, simply because he has the POWER now thanks to Bush and the Neo-Cons to do it--spying on us because since 9/11 all of us have been led to believe that We the People of the USA are responsible for allowing 9/11 to happen (our criminal leaders are of course projecting their inadequacies onto We the People)--even though We the People were working our asses off that day and we weren't all reading My Pet Goat and we didn't all run like frightened weak dogs to Omaha, Nebraska, to hide out like wimps at the SAC base there, or we didn't run scardy-cat like Unka Dick Cheney did to the mother's-skirts protection of our own mountain-bunker retreat--our own private hideouts! We remember the days of the backyard bomb shelters! scardy cat we We the People in those early chilly days of the Soviet nuclear threat--even though the USA is the only country so far to kill 300,000 people with two nuclear weapon attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan.

Obama is saying he is scared shitless of Iran and its at-best tincan full of uncleaned uranium while the country he's so religiously going to protect from nuclear attack has over 200 nuclear weapons of its own. How come Israel's nuclear threat to Iran's peace isn't given any consideration?

It looks like Obama's a dunderhead. Same old, same old. You might as well hope for an Obama-McCain coalition--in fact, Obama was talking "coalition" help in the War on Terror over in Berlin (a city that was leveled to the ground in WWII and Americans are killing millions and leveling villages and towns and cities in so-called revenge against a bunch of Saudi citizens and a couple'a Jordanians with boxcutters and limited flying knowledge pulling off one of the great guerilla attacks in warfare history by knocking down two of the world's largest edifices and killing 3,000 people, nearly a fourth of whom weren't US citizens), thereby justifying OUR illegally started wars that aren't really wars at all, they are invasion and occupation actions, and having a "coalition"--like Bush said originally--legitimizes worldwide OUR War on the Terrorism AGAINST the USA as being in actuality a WAR on FREEDOM and PEACE and diplomacy in favor of "bombin' 'em all back to the Stone Age"--the words of the creator (General Curtis LeMay) of the Strategy Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, where Bush wimped out to when he finally got it through his thick skull that some force was attacking the USA. Wouldn't the successful attack on the World Trade Center towers make Osama bin Laden a military genius?

There a voices saying Obama's Berlin speech was one of the greatest speeches in US political history. What should have impressed both Obama and our press was the 200,000 Berliners who turned out to hear what kind of HOPE he was going to bring to this anxious world--we don't know if they heard what they came to hear--how about Obama repeating Raygun's famous dumb words, "Mister Goor-bo-chef, tear down that wall," yes, can you believe it, Obama said it, "Tear down that wall," as part of his cliched message of how he wants to "tear down those walls" all over the world, blah, blah, blah. One commentator critical of his speech said it would have made more sense to have given that speech in Baghdad where the US has walled in one whole section of Baghdad--or in Israel where Israel has built a wall between its Chosen People and the Arab dogs whose country it once was--or, hell, Obama, how about making that speech down on the US-Mexican border where you're going to inherit a WALL meant to keep feelthy-dog Messkins (our Palestinians--we did steal all of our West from Mexico) out of this country--"Senor Obama, derride esta pared!"

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

From Our Pal L Hat, a Piece by Matt Taibbi from AlterNet

I am a single mother with a 9-year-old boy. To stay warm at night my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I'd like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the capital building... we are certainly a country in distress. -- Letter from a single mother in a Vermont city, to Senator Bernie Sanders

The Republican and Democratic conventions are just around the corner, which means that we're at a critical time in our nation's history. For this is the moment when the country's political and media consensus finally settles on the line of bullshit it will be selling to the public as the "national debate" come fall.

If you pay close attention you can actually see the trial balloons whooshing overhead. There have been numerous articles of late of the Whither the Debate? genus in the country's major dailes and news mags, pieces like Patrick Healy's "Target: Barack Obama. Strategy: What Day is it?" in the New York Times. They ostensibly wonder aloud about what respective "plans of attack" Barack Obama and John McCain will choose to pursue against one another in the fall.

In these pieces we already see the candidates trying on, like shoes, the various storylines we might soon have hammered into our heads like wartime slogans. Most hilarious from my viewpoint is the increasingly real possibility that the Republicans will eventually decide that their best shot against Obama is to pull out the old "He's a flip-flopper" strategy -- which would be pathetic, given that this was the same tired tactic they used against John Kerry four years ago, were it not for the damning fact that it might actually work again. (I'm actually not sure sometimes what is more repulsive: the bosh they trot out as campaign "issues," or the enthusiasm with which the public buys it.)

Naturally we'll also see the "Patriotism Gap" storyline whipped out and reused over and over again. There will also be much talk emanating from the McCain camp about "experience," although this line of attack will not be nearly as fruitful for him as it was for Hillary Clinton, mainly because the word "experience" in McCain's case also has a habit of reminding voters that the Arizona senator is, well, wicked old.

To read the rest of this: www.alternet.org/workplace/91927/