the end of the southern strategy

That's it, over, done. Nigger-baiting in national elections has played out. For the entirety of my life until now, this has been the GOP's plank strategy. Thanks to a shift in demographics that's ongoing and will continue well into the future, America's going to be a predominantly brown nation, thanks mostly to Hispanic immigrants. Think about it: this has been going on since 1968. What Boogeyman is the Republican Party going to find next? Oh sure, terrorists, but that's not going to fit the bill.

No, I think they're basically screwed, but then, so are the rest of us thanks to them and racist American evangelicals (rural hicks, white Southerners generally). We're still heading on the wrong course in our obsession with military adventurism. We still have Citizens United. Ah, and don't think President Obama is FDR--he's not. What he's going to do is tow their line about the national debt, misrepresenting it, making the same claims that fly in the face of accepted economics theory, and we'll continue to have the same problems, albeit with a privatized or non-existent social safety net, and it will have been done by Democratic hands, not primarily Republican ones.

So, great, enjoy the parties for now, but the fact is that President Obama is going to continue to roll back our civil liberties with NDAA, a war on lawful government whistleblowers, and he's going to continue to commit heinous war crimes in the Middle East, North Africa, Africa generally, Asia, and so on, little will change. The missing-ingredient once more is the public holding him accountable, but with partisan tribalism what it is now, forget it. The American public will continue to be on the one hand an apathetic demographic blob, and a bloodthirsty rabble, the dream of authoritarians everywhere.

But at least the Southern strategy is over, done, kaput, and I can watch the assholes that ruined my nation writhe for four more years. None of this is reassuring. Expect the president to cut back on social services and to gut solid programs like Social Security. It's coming, and you're going to own it, because you're just as irrational as the Republicans, dear lockstep Democrats, you're exactly the same kind of morons.

Who's the sincerest of them all? Not you, sunshine

Both major parties, Republican and Democrat, are sincere--1% sincere. OK, I was wrong: The Democrats get the whole sum.

CNN reports dumb-assed Al Qaeda salad bar/buffet plot after GOP stalls Food Safety Act for months

Is there not a better sign of the end of an Empire and a nation in serious trouble? Just don't tell the Obama-holdouts, they might get upset. Who on God's gray earth would believe this horseshit but a Republican or a Libertarian, all of them with serious emotional and intellectual issues regarding reality? "Al-Qaeda plot threatens America's salad bars and buffets." You gotta be kidding, right?

It beggars the imagination that someone without the ability to imagine would believe something a ten year old could see through or do a better job of concocting.

Just as they did under Bush II, being a venerable asset of Empire and the GOP, CNN is selling a very lame-assed scare story to boost another war criminal's sagging popularity ratings as well as providing some cover for corrupt food growers and processors who wanted the Food Modernization Act. Apparently, high school never ended and life has now become Facebook. How is this different from all the times that George W. Bush cried "WOLF!" (not CNN's Blitzer, or even Donner) with the terror alert warnings to save his own ass, for political ends? It's not at all and it's not the only example, Obama's just less obvious about it than the last clown.

Seriously: President Barack Obama is the same as George W. Bush, wake up assholes, pull your heads out of your collective-ass and stop having this.

CNN's talking-neck was barely able to read the salad bar/buffet headline it was so stupid, so nebbish, so moronic and transparently unimportant pap that was probably lifted from a surveillance log of someone simply toying with the idea of joining a terror cell...after a few bong-hits or a lift from some meth. Get real, quit insulting our intelligence with your counterintelligence, your disinformation predicated on scaring the dummies that over-populate every nation so that we hand over even more of our rights to a predatorial establishment.

Great, someone was going to "poison" salad bars and buffets across America...and somehow they weren't American food growers and producers who routinely employ illegal immigrants, who then lobby the GOP all of the time for fewer regulations on food safety. Yes, it was a smart timing to run the bogus Al-Qaeda story just hours after the GOP had stalled the Food Safety Act for months, very wise, well-timed. How long did they stall its passage? Since March of this year, nine whole months, which is roundly un-American.

Besides the GOP's tail-dragging on to poison the public, or not to poison it, these were some of the major opponents of the very reasonable bill--unless some of us prefer a little e-coli with our spinach, watermelons and potatoes (take that Dan Quayle!), and TEA:

Freedomworks

Competitive Enterprise Institute

American Mushroom Institute

National Potato Council

National Watermelon Association

Produce Marketing Association

United Fresh Produce Association

The John Birch Society

National Cattleman's Beef Association

Western Growers

American Academy of Microbiology

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510)

Any familiar names here? It passed the Senate on November 30th of this year anyway, but there was more stalling from the GOP.

And you Democratic incumbents: You can stop with the good cop, bad cop act. We're on to you. We know this is all just political theater and we're about to call bullshit on this whole clown show. We're not having it anymore, you're done. For a moment, I thought they were saying that Jimmy Buffett was being targeted by terrorists, which makes just as much sense and is just as credible...

On Robert Gibbs's remarks regarding the "professional left"

With all of the calls for him to resign or to even be fired (the latter coming from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), you have to wonder if Shakespeare ever imagined political theater so hollow, so empty that it's not even entertaining anymore, just pathetic. Why bother? Indeed. Gibbs's remarks were to the Moonie-owned The Hill, a staunchly conservative paper, meaning a cargo cult-within-a-cargo-cult, and apparently the outgoing press secretary felt quite at home in making the statements that he did. Why wouldn't he? He's the same kind of cretin. Yet, why? Why make such stupid remarks?

The answer is simple. He and the administration that he represents aren't especially different from--say--the GOP itself and hate their base at least as much. What choice are we left with here in a roundly rightist political culture that doesn't reflect or even acknowledge the views of the majority of Americans on social issues? That's what's known as a political crisis since there really is no opposition party in American politics, only two branches of one pro-business one; one that represents an oligarchy but not the public. Yes, now the president is worried that his agenda will be endangered (a good thing in the end) and is engaging in some last minute social spending such as a paltry $3 billion for those who have or will lose their homes. Then, there's the diehard municipal/teacher/police vote that was paid for with much more and will likely ensure more Democratic votes--the primary motive for doing it at all. This kind of a mess is nothing new to American history, but it is a regression, back to the bad old days of the 1880s-90s when the "robber barons" (now we simply call them the "rich," "CEOs," and "Wall Street"). Once again, thanks Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, but you couldn't have done it without those wily Democrats.

Like an atomic clock going off exactly on time, a slack-jawed denizen on Facebook hit me with: "In the real world, what better candidate that can actually be elected would you suggest?" Besides being the usual straw man argument one gets from the unfortunate few middle-class whites who bother to vote (which is why registering poor and minorities is always a good idea), this kind of a comment ignores how rigged the electoral process is and that they keep voting for people who wish to impair it over and over again once they're in office, and that's for starters. There's a point where you're just another battered wife, a dupe, a mark, a moron. There was a better candidate than Barack Obama and Gibbs worked to take him down in 2004, for the the DNC and the Kerry campaign: Howard Dean. Yes, they've beaten Dean down into submission and made him parrot their absurd talking points, but there was a time, not so long ago...

But it was the Foghorn Leghorn-like Gibbs that worked overtime putting out attack ads against Dean and his reasonably progressive agenda--too reasonable for the DNC and its biggest backers. Dean's also from Alabama and has been advising on a Southern strategy for the Obama campaign/administration for some time. These are the same people that wanted Barack Obama in office and not someone like Dean since he might actually come through for the public and not Wall Street. In addition, when Team Clinton came onboard, we got more of the same cronies from that sordid, pro-business administration, making for a curious form of non-nostalgia. Why am I one of the only people in America who knows that Hillary Clinton has served on the board of Wal-Mart and is a major shareholder, for example? Thanks to a compliant media, never mind all the high talk of the Obama administration having to confront a "combative media," most Americans don't know this. One wishes they were combative, at least for the right reasons, which would be a very real change.

Gibbs is right(ist): I'd trade the Pentagon for a Canadian-style health care system in a heartbeat. For those who think we need defense spending that's 600 times greater than the next highest spender, you're the ones who are "crazy," and if you don't live to see the tyranny you're constructing, your children certainly will. With luck, it's all going to collapse before then anway. You've been lulled into a Pavlovian call-and-response--you feel fear when the political and economic establishment rings 'dem bells. What does that make you?

Would I be satisfied with "Kucinich as president"? Damned straight I would. Fire all of them. Fire the next ones if they're the same. Fire them all, and shut them out of the political process forever, and anyone like them that doesn't serve the public interest, let alone won't listen to them. Eventually, the public will stop speaking and start acting. At that point, Mr. Gibbs will have a lot of explaining to do. Will it be too late? Who knows, but he's going to own a part of the social chaos if it does in fact unfold, and as much as any Bush II operative. That's not a stretch since the Obama administration has kept most of them onboard.

A suggestion to President-elect Barack Obama for a Sec. of Commerce replacement

Washington D.C.--Now that New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson is out--Ralph Nader, and for every reason you might imagine. Vetting Nader? You wouldn't even have to, he's cleaner than the busboys in the nation's capital, never mind the congressional pages.

The man is more than qualified, honest, incredibly disciplined and can handle the workload. Ralph Nader has done more good for the American public than any single politician in our history without being one, and because he's definitely not going to be in the pockets of Wall Street, the banks, the business sector, and so on.

He's your man, which is why I know you're never, ever going to pick him, sad.

Bush II administration officially ends, Obama de facto President of the United States

Washington D.C.--It might say "Office of the President-Elect of the United States"on the podium, but Barack Obama and his economic team have already begun taking action as an active and operational presidential administration.

Alongside this there has been the parallel inaction and obstruction of the dead administration of George W. Bush and its inability to think outside the obsolete box of the "market economy" ideology. This week, reality handed them their ass, and now they're being far more cooperative.

This disintegration of the Bush II administration isn't being announced anywhere, but it's unprecedented in our history, it's real. George W. Bush's inability to lead and govern collapsed long ago, but it's now completely played-out and he has nothing left to offer to a situation that he helped birth through earlier negligence and criminal inaction.

My intuition is that the meeting between President-elect Obama and the outgoing President Bush yielded the belated cooperation, finally, because there was nothing left for them to do. They wanted help and they wanted someone to guide them, to hold their hand. You can imagine they also said, "Don't hurt us," in so many words.

The bailout of Citigroup (of whom vice president-elect Joe Biden has connections) is likely a concession on-the-part of Bush in-exchange for economic advice. A promise of amnesty might have been part of the deal as well. Why would Bush and his administration know how to fix the mess he helped create? How would they do it without implicating themselves? You can just feel that Barack Obama is already president due to the grave nature of things at this historical moment.

The GOP is doctrinally and politically paralyzed within the executive branch. Send in the new guy:

Remarkably for a president-elect, he said he wanted Congress to act "right away" on a stimulus measure that would blend spending and tax cuts. Asked for details, he said without elaboration that he wanted a measure "of a size and scope that is necessary to get this economy back on track."

Democratic officials in Congress said the stimulus plan could include aid to cash-strapped states to provide health care to the poor, along with road and bridge funding. More money for food stamps is also likely, they said.

Obama renewed his campaign-long call for middle class tax cuts but said he would let his advisers make a recommendation on whether to roll back Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. ("Obama urges Congress to pass costly stimulus bill," AP, 11.24.2008)

Bush and Obama spoke together on the phone today, and one can imagine why. There was no choice. Leadership in the White House has collapsed and illuminated what we--the critics of the administration--have contended all along: George W. Bush is not a leader in any sense, he is incompetent, and he has broken the law knowingly and unknowingly because of these fundamental facts.

Bush is also a very compromised man, and now Congress and the "incoming" Obama administration has begun bypassing the White House in addressing the economic crisis. This has never happened in the entire political history of the United States.

This is not hyperbole. This is not the grandstanding of Alex Jones or Naomi Klein, or even Arianna Huffington. The Bush administration ended last week. There is the possibility that the formality of impeachment might not be such a bad idea after all. What political party would want to lay claim to George W. Bush after the last year? Not even the GOP.

Expect some belated actions towards impeachment that could even occur after Bush and his cohorts leave office in January, and expect Obama to be a disappointment. But events have a way of forcing hands...

There is no statute of limitations on war crimes, and the economy might just be all the impetus they need in Congress to act in apprehending the worst band of criminals to hold high office in our history. General strikes and a groundswell have a way of making politicians behave.

This era promises to be as dramatic as the 1930s, if not more so. How often have you ever heard a president-elect urge Congress to act on anything before they've taken office? I'm not saying it's improper given the circumstances, but it's new, and it underscores that the Bush II administration is completely inept and has finally ossified into total inaction.

Yet Obama and his advisers are already talking about deficit-spending when they should be making-it-plain that Bush's 2001 tax-cuts on the wealthiest cannot survive after January 2009.

"Obama urges Congress to pass costly stimulus bill," AP, 11.24.2008:

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20081124/492a34d0_3ca6_15526200811241080860600

[Ed., 11.25.2008--If you don't get that there is no two party system, but just a one party one masquerading as a two party one, you've probably had fork-marks on face your entire life, and always will.]

WHY HASN'T OHIO REP. BOB NEY RESIGNED YET?

Washington D.C.--That's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obvious: the GOP will do anything, and I mean anything to keep their majority. Why? To continue shielding the Bush administration. The Democrats don't really want a genuine house-cleaning either because most of them are dirty too.

They are all basically complicit with the Bush administration, and bipartisan goof on their part. Cold busted. The Bush years will be remembered in history for being the time when the public finally had the scales fall from its collective-eyes, and discovered that their political system needed an overhaul.

Ney isn't resigning because Bush and Cheney need him for that margin majority. They have to have to avoid prison, and the fear is becoming palpable throughout the political culture. Even the pundits and ideologues like Bill O'Reilly seem more restrained lately. That's because they had better shut-up. Washington DC's culture has always been one of blackmail, and this whole affair with Foley is a cream dream for politics junkies. Why it didn't occur during Clinton is beyond me, but who cares? It's happening now.

BOB NEY CONFESSES FOR THIRD TIME: "OK, THIS TIME YOU'VE REALLY GOT ME."

Washington D.C.--Bob Ney says that he's resigning. This is news? Ten year olds knew this. He plead guilty? The evidence was well-known, though everyone should have due process, right? Not to the GOP, unless it involves themselves. At least they're consistent on this point. Like Mark Foley, Ney's considering getting treatment for alcoholism.

Let's see...we have George W. Bush, Winston Churchill, Dick Cheney, Boris Yeltsin, Ted Bundy, Tip O'Neill, J. Edgar Hoover, Leonid Brehznev, George H.W. Bush, Spiro Agnew, Nikita Khruschev, Mark Foley, Herman Goering, Bob Ney, Richard Nixon...I could go on-and-on. When you know that you are a pig who is forcing American families into-the-streets, you would drink too. A whole lot.

We know where this leads: pedophilia, because Mark Foley said so. Are those gin-blossoms on Dennis Hastert's nose? What's most-irksome is, yesterday, Ney claimed he wasn't going to resign! Apparently, he sobered-up and reality sank in...then he had another drink.

Is Convicted GOP Governor Bob Taft an Alcoholic? http://governor.ohio.gov/releases/060306Prevention.htm

Detox this:http://tailrank.com/616032/Rehab-The-last-refuge-of-scoundrels

The Political culture of 'the Hooch':
http://www.health24.com/mind/Sexual_dysfunction/1284-1300,34254.asp

Newt Gingrinch, the best Literary reviewer since Poe (not really).There is
no-way he read some of these, but he's had the time. Here's to him having more:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A27WFYW9ZJ5DN1/ref=cm_aya_pdp_profile/102-6113671-6488152