Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Ronald Reagan Hologram to Address 2012 RNC Convention in Tampa?



That's great, lovely. I was in a mall in Chicago in 2002 and they had a static hologram (didn't move, like the real one, and just as intelligent) of St. Ronnie's well-coiffed-and-empty head. That wasn't the first time I'd seen one: the Museum of Science and Industry had the one Salvador Dali did of Alice Cooper's head, with an exposed brain, so I knew he had one, his own conservatism aside. Holograms aren't very convincing up close--the Cooper one was greenish, and it photographed badly. I believe it was made in 1973, when the Watergate hearings were reaching a crescendo.

That Ronnie-the-vegetable one, however, was impressive. They'd shot a close-up of him that had close to a 3/4s wraparound of his head. Every hair (the fucker had dandruff and trout eyes), every pore, every liver spot, every wrinkle, and every glint from his Irish eyes (yes, they were-a'-smil'in, yes) was there in incredible photographic detail. Now, from some angles, sure, the color spectrum started to shift, and it looked transparent--a hologram. Of course, for laughs, I was miming the same moves that put John Wilkes Booth into the annals of history, really milking it for a friend, a lot of yuck-yucks. And yes, there were laughs, 9/11 (the American public) hadn't ruined things as badly, there hadn't been enough time for that yet.

Fox News (entertainment for the emotionally challenged) is throwing around a rumor of a yet-to-be-revealed speaker at the tail end of the GOP mosh pit in Tampa, after all the lawful demonstrators have been brutally, criminally beaten and pepper-sprayed by dirty cops and private security, and after most of the drinking and whoring has sated the...uh, bought press, the delegates, candidates, incumbents, and key SuperPAC donors, maybe a few Rotarians, heh. Because I think their corruption is, in the words of one of the Founding Rapists, self- evident. Why bother writing about it? Because someone in the back row couldn't hear last time, so shut up you loud-mouthed assholes in Section A seating, you animals, you rabble, Jesus. 

So, they had this two-dimensional Tupac on stage not more than a few months ago, and creepy it was dear readers. From what I could see, an actor's body was composited with footage of Shakur's face from a variety of visual sources, but it could have been modeled from imagery too and made lifelike. Either way, the head was generated, the body was not, making this a sentence that was destined to be written one day. Top that, Cybermen. You know, the GOP isn't doing anything new here, as always, but putting out their usual historical revisionism onto vulnerable people who don't know shit about where the country's been in the first place.

They've been flogging everyone with this moronic, delusional (delusions of adequacy, Republicans aren't even that) "no new taxes" bullshit for over 30 years. What does it say about someone when they keep falling for it again and again, expecting different results? Those are gamblers stabbing in the dark, looking for what? A Leader, a dictator, to tell them what to do, and that's a lot of Americans who harbor these authoritarian tendencies, many of whom have convinced themselves otherwise. The old models of male-headed authoritarianism are at a crossroads. These clowns down in Tampa are at a funeral wake, America died long ago, back when they sold out after the sixties and became the most irresponsible citizenry in modern history. Watergate gave millions of Americans what they always wanted: an excuse to no longer be engaged in the political process. Voter apathy gave us Ronald Reagan and while it probably won't give us Mitt Romney, it's given us weak and compromised candidates for well over a generation. That's the fault of the public, and so is the decline of the unions, out of selfishness, laziness, and stunning stupidity.

Everyone knows that a computer generated hologram of a dead corrupt president isn't going to change the fact that everyone owns a piece of this economic and political crisis, no one is immune, not me, not anyone. The wealthy, the criminal management class, and the politicians own the lion's share of this. Every branch of government is to blame. From this, one should get that we have a fundamental flaw in how our society is ordered, what it's centered around. Now go have fun watching the dead guy who gave us a lot of this crisis, the one with the CGI stick rammed up his ass.


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

"The Inside Job of all Inside Jobs," a forlorn satire, torn from the pages of history, by Matt Janovic

It had been a dreary marriage to Mary Todd and a gloomy four years as president. I am feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders once again, but liberation is finally at hand on this lovely spring day of April 14th.
Had I finally enlisted the rebel sympathizer to kill myself just a day after my speech on granting negroes voting rights? I had. It wasn't as easy as that: I had to navigate through channels connected to the Confederate spy-networks that reached into Canada and, miraculously, and all at once, hit gold. It was a direct line to my nemesis, rebel Confederate President Jefferson Davis, partly by way of the nefarious Knights of the Golden Circle. This Booth is a strange character--and actor--and also a member of this peculiar abomination culled from the rituals and symbology of the beneficent Freemasons.

On our meeting yesterday the actor told me that after the speech he had vowed, "That is the last speech he will ever give." Our undisclosed and surreptitious meeting at a tavern outside of the nation's capital was...brusque. I could see the anticipation in his eyes, and I trembled for our nation, as President Jefferson once wrote, for our God is a just one. Richmond had already fallen a little over a week ago on that date. Just three days prior to our meeting at the tavern, the rebel General Lee had surrendered to that drunk, General Grant. What had it all been for? Yes, the slaveholders threw a tantrum over my winning the election, but the Union was and still is a phantasm. Why do I think this shall repeat itself in our history over a century from now over something so ephemeral as the Union? But the preparations for this were difficult and I could share my secret with no one within--or without of--the confines of the White House, certainly not my military or police sentry escorts.

Indeed, this was as baroque a means of avoiding sitting through that wretched, accursed play Our American Cousin, as anyone could imagine, but there were other issues at hand...

You see, Mary had run up an unconscionable and staggering debt--rivaling the cost of the war between the states--at the establishments of a number of prominent Washington dressmakers. Then, there was the dream that my own assassination had transpired and was viewing myself as some faceless spectator, displayed on the presidential catafalque, deceased. I awoke quite happy from such a phantasm as that! Now, this day of days, this morn, I happened upon my new Secretary of State, Mr. McCullough, and even he remarked that "I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy." Indeed I was this morn! He can never know how happy I have been on this day, the happiest of my life.


But, with her usual perspicacity, Mary chimed in, "Saying such things aloud could bring you bad luck." and I ignored it as I usually do. Why is it that everyone in my midst is either drunk or half-mad? Was it I that appointed them? I'm afraid so, and I don't even want to think about my grave error in appointing Schuyler Colfax. My melungeon ancestors are groaning, my heart yearns for the Appalachin, and perhaps, Portugal. Did I really have melungeon ancestors? Our family tree was a little unclear, but who could care but my political enemies and the now vanquished slave-holding contingency? I am still torn over the war between the states. Future generations will either lionize or scorn my legacy, but I feel assured that I will be mythologized as Cicero and Pericles were, and they will be just as wrong out of convenience...

Our plan--that of my assassin and me--comes tonight in Act III, Scene 2 after 10:00PM. A player will utter the line, "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap... ." I have no conception of what "sockdologizing" is, but am very familiar--as my assassin is of the play and its contents--with what a "man-trap" is, hence part of the motive behind my plans for escaping this vale of tears. He knows his part, and his lines, well, and has rehearsed them like any other play.

As I sit here in the final moments before these fateful lines are uttered by the players, when my drunkard police escort Frederick Parker has run off to the tavern with timepiece precision as he has been known to do, and why I chose him, I can only reflect on the humorous possibility that some Southern halfwits in the distant future will run for any exit, for any wild leap of reason, to explain my killing. The irony is inescapable. They will do so to make sense out of an event which has no sense to it because this life has no sense to it. Yet, I feel the strong passion for my fellow man...and the gams of Major Rathbone's lovely fiance, Clara Harris who has also joined us in the presidential box here, tonight at Ford's Theatre. Booth is a strange one, perhaps mad. The South has lost, they have no hope of permanent secession, yet this "man" thinks that he can somehow turn the tide of history. Perhaps he will, but at least I will not have to endure the final act of this accursed play or to face bankruptcy over my wife's addiction to finery.

Mary is wittily saying to me in jest,"What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?"

My timepiece says it is squarely 10:15PM, and I can hear myself saying, "She won't think anything about it," and I hear a sound coming from behind me.


The End
Postscript, 03.19.2013--And those pages torn from history, those pages were ripped from the spine of John Wilkes Booth's diary, disposed of at a military prison outside of the nation's capital, consumed by the smouldering embers of war...

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Blag-o-mania! (a fuckin' satire)


"He [Lincoln] entered political life in one of those eras of delusive prosperity which so often precede great financial convulsions... . It was too much to expect of the Illinois Legislature that it should understand that the best thing it could do to forward this prosperous tendency of things was to do nothing.'' --Lincoln biographers John M. Hay and John G. Nicolay


"Fucking fuck is fucked! Fuck 'em, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck!" yelled the Governor of Illinois at the Lieutenant Governor and his svelte Chicago wife, Patti. He was jumping up-and-down on a stuffed-canine, a bizarre scene soon to be available on DVD and Blu-Ray™ with added bonus features. Fuck. His Azar's™ Big Boy look was showing today and he was sporting a pompadour that could double for a beaver-pelt coming in for reentry.

"Look, fucker," stated the governor, "Either fuckin' get those fuckin' assholes off of the Tribune's editorial board, or fuck it, fucker. And no, I don't wear a fucking wig you asshole." He was being more restrained than usual. Patti had no druthers spelling shit out, fuck me for stating it.

"Fuck this shit, I'm the fucker who wears the pants in this family...'hold up that fucking Cubs shit, fuck 'em!' Gimme the fuckin' phone Rod," she shrieked, grabbing it like an IRS agent collecting on a delinquent tax bill from a casino owner. Her gun was drawn as well and she nervously pressed the .45-automatic to her sweat-covered temple repeatedly as she yelled into the receiver.

Machievelli never saw "la chienne" coming...

"Nuthin', and I mean nuthin' goes on in this fuckin' one horse town of Chicago without my fuckin' say-so, y'hear asswipes?! No more "Mrs. O'Leary's cow jokes either--and when do we get the bathroom retiled?!" Even the governor was shuddering over that last part of her remark. Fuck. Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney [NAME REDACTED] was listening-in with his wife and kids after a prolonged porno...you don't want to know.

"Heh-heh, I'm going to have to take this off of speaker-phone guys--uh, hold on! Er, shit, um, ahhh fuck!" muttered the government prosectuor. "OK guys, outta here, me and your mother need to listen-in on some very intimate conversations. The Governor of Illinois and his wife are talking out-their-asses again, bye-bye, chop-chop!" He clapped his hands together vigorously as he said it, and the kids left--resigned--but not without leaving a listening device of their own in the room so that they could monitor things in their bedrooms.

"Mom and dad are fucked, [NAME REDACTED] it's that simple," said the pie-faced teenager as they walked down the hall.

"Fuckin'-A-straight," said his sister. "Why can't we listen-in on private conversations too? Why do they get to have all the fucking fun?" Fucking adults...are there any of them left these days?

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and his new bride were sitting down to a cup-o'-joe that morning: "Gosh-and-golly, darling, you have no idea how much emotional damage listening these wiretaps has done to my fragile eggshell mind--the language of these people. We never tawked like this in Flatbush--never!!!" He was becoming overexcited by it all, huffing and puffing away, a real sight, a bourgeois hoot, but that's the effect of Jesuit education for ya'.

"Now-now, dear," said his celeb-chasing law groupie wife, "The blood-pressure, remember, remember, oh my, oh my. You know this isn't going to help you with the 'personal problem' we've both been experiencing lately," she sighed, exhaling a very long time. An imp of the perverse snickered within the walls of their home, but got a little electrical-shock from the wiring.

"What the fuck was that sound?! ...'People now know that if you're part of a corrupt conduct, where one hand is taking care of the other and contracts are going to people, you don't have to say the word 'bribe' out loud... . And I think people need to understand we won't be afraid to take strong circumstantial cases into court,' " he exclaimed loudly at the breakfast table. He could feel his own sense of outrage in his now-swollen testicles. His wife wisely interved again.

"Patrick--listen to me: this is like that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby prosecution, dear. Disclosure on it was, erm...premature." She warmly grasped his hand as she told him this, but it was the last thing she needed to say this morning. Timing is everything, especially when applying the "rhythm method." The Fitzgerald clan had a long history of premature ejaculation, the main reason the U.S. Attorney was sitting there arguing with his new wife at all. Hey, Irish doormen need a little piece occasionally, Jesus Christ.

"The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave!" screamed the U.S. Attorney. This marital row wasn't going to blow over anytime soon. The nuclear option was considered and adopted by both sides that morning.

Wife Jennifer retorted, "Lincoln was questionable too--he was the most successful railroad lawyer of his day. He even owned land near Council Bluffs, Iowa, then pushed to create the Transcontinental Railroad through emergency legislation that he proposed to Congress, he wasn't so clean. Besides, he used to tell dirty jokes to visitors at the White House, and often!" She was becoming aroused, with that flushed look that's the same shade of a baboon's...you get the picture.

He was going to have to hit the books for a reply to that one, but he was qualified, determined, and dedicated to this job. He would spend long nights at the Chicago Public Library and the office as he always did. He would not suffer from premature ejaculation any longer, even though his self-confidence was currently flagging, if not looking a little droopy. He began reading his Kipling, just like Governor Blagojevich: No "If[s]" for this prosecutor, he was a man, my son.

"Fuck," said a mafia soldier listening-in on the Fitzgerald breakfast.


Later that day, the Fitzgeralds ate out at a local mob-owned bistro in Oak Park and bumped into the Blagos. The grub was good, although the U.S. Attorney swore (not literally, and not under oath) that he heard someone beating-the-shit out a busboy in the washroom. Fitzgerald looked across the room and saw a familiar face. The Governor of Illinois waved and the U.S. Attorney did likewise. "Fuck it," they all thought to themselves. Appearances are everything in Chicago, after all.

The ghost of Mike Royko grinned from his crevice in Chicago's Watertower, a structure once derided by no lesss a figure than Oscar Wilde.

"See, we can all get along, dear--we don't have to use such coarse language with people, and we can all act civilized in each other's presence even though he's investigating me, imperiling my very existence, and not just politically. I have more control than you, lady Macbeth." His wife seethed, and began eyeing the small, white phallic-shaped object jutting from her purse. "Yeah, I know dear--heh-heh--I know all-too-well." It was going to be a cold day in hell before...you know (starts with an "F").

[Ed., 01.04.2009--This reads like an episode of "Deadwood." I should have added the appellation, "cocksucker" and it would have fit.]

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Let's be natural: Blago's stunning move in appointing former Illinois AG Roland Burris to the US Senate


Chicago, Illinois--Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is innocent until proven guilty, apparently a foregone conclusion to state legislators and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Illinois state legislators, the mainstream press, and the public whose opinion they've done their best to affect.

But never mind that: the media's saying he's guilty over and over again, so it must be true. Is he guilty? It sure looks like it.

My own opinion? He's no worse than the other Illinois politicians who are pointing-the-finger at him, it being Illinois. Today's move was brilliant on Blagojevich's part, and I have to hand it to him. By picking a prominent figure on the Illinois political scene in Roland Burris (who is African-American), he's injected not only defiance but race into what's rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis in the "land of Lincoln."

and his accusers. The press conference today was an And God knows, "Old Abe" is getting invoked so much that he might just materialize and weigh-in on the fact that most of his own cabinet were crooks and incompetents who couldn't agree on much, and that his generals drank a lot. So much for the sentimentalized version of Lincoln, the real man was more complicated. We can--at least--assume the same of Blagojevichunequivocal "fuck you" from the governor to the State legislature and the members of the impeachment board. If only our Congress were so vigilant.

The scene itself was quite dramatic when the governor spoke, but best of all was when congressman Bobby Rush spoke, daring Harry Reid and all the other white senators (Obama was the first Black U.S. Senator in ages) to vote against Burris in confirmation hearings, and not to "hang or lynch" him. This isn't so bombastic as it sounds: the last African-American senator before Obama was Carol Moseley-Braun...the second Black senator since Reconstruction, which speaks volumes about our political system and culture.

The congressman was speaking symbolically, but call it what you will (and I know you will).

Rush is a longtime face on the Illinois and Chicago political scene, as well as a former leader of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense who narrowly escaped death in the state-sanctioned assassination of Panther leader Fred Hampton on December 4th, 1969. Rush had planned to visit Hampton and Mark Clark's apartment that night, but was exhausted that night from his work for the party.

Bobby Rush is also the man who beat Barack Obama during the 1990s in a congressional election, so Obama and the Illinois Democratic Party allowed him and a team to engage in gerrymandering a new district into existence for the 2004 Senate elections.

But it appears that Reid and other white senators might not have to worry--Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has stated he won't certify Burris's appointment to the Senate. This could become a major legal battle in-itself. What's troubling are the media comments smearing Blagojevich from government informants, always a matter of concern to be weighed with the highest suspicion.

If Governor Blagojevich has a "bad record," you should look at the FBI's and the Justice Department's, the institutions that put-in-motion the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark under President Richard M. Nixon almost forty years ago. This all hedges on the assumption of guilt, which is un-American and has nothing to do with due process and justice, but has a lot to do with politics and acrimony.

Perhaps he's guilty, but he deserves a fair trial, something that's virtually impossible after the media campaign being waged right now. So-called "progressive"sites (and the right's sites and blogs), the wire services, television coverage, word-of-mouth, and the newspapers, are doing the government's unwarranted work with every parroting and reprinting of the line that "he's guilty until proven innocent."

Remember that the same Congress that let George W. Bush and his administration get away with high crimes is saying they won't accept any appointment to the Senate by Blagojevich. This is the same Congress that has allowed him every pass imaginable for his unconstitutional behavior. Not-so-ironically--because they have a sense of humor--Illinois Republicans are saying that Blagojevich is "creating a constitutional crisis," which we've seen at least twice under the Bush II administration.

Whatever the truth, little of this is what it appears to be.