Bob Crespo

It’s election time in Iraq. You know what that means, right? Yes, that’s right, an opportunity for Urban Renewal! In a unique cultural quirk, Iraqis look at elections as not only ringing in the new when it comes to elected officials, but a chance to demolish a lot of aging, decrepit buidings. And if the demolitions experts are notorious for not clearing the area of civilians before setting their explosive charges, well, that’s just Darwinism at work, Iraqi style. The thinning of the herd and survival of the fittest is more than dry book theory to Iraqis, who put it into practice with constant field testing, and only the fittest, the smartest and the swiftest of Iraqis survive election season.

Which works out pretty well for them. Who would you want rebuilding your shattered infrastructure, a bunch of slow, unthinking drones who blindly walk into a trap and are mowed down like so many blades of grass, or those smart enough and fast enough enough to outwit and outrun the demolition men? Of course you’d want only the best and brightest to build the New Iraq, what with the old one being in pretty bad shape after a 10 year war with Iran back in the 1980s, a beat down by America troops in 1991 and the complete annihilation of their army and former government by America starting in 2003 and continuing to this day. These people need their wits about them!

With their old leader hung and his government removed from office (hung), the elections are are a necessary exercise to formulate a working government in preparation for the day when American troops cease occupying this Texas look-alike. And what better way than to start fresh, with brand new roads, buildings and power plants to replace the old roads, buildings and power plants? Which, truth be told, were getting a little long in the tooth, with some of these structures dating back thousands of years! Forward-thinking Iraqis are grateful to America for providing them this golden opportunity to bring their ancient nation into the 21st century.

Towards that end, whenever an election is called, the demolitions experts get busy. First, they gather to decide which buildings and open air markets have to go, then there’s the recruitment and training phase where young men are signed up to carry out the clearing of the old and decrepit to make way for the shiny and new. Apparently many Iraqis are unhappy with their government buildings, especially those housing their police and military forces, and also their hopelessly antiquated polling places. So, in order to provide the New Iraq with state-of-the-art facilities, the old ones need to be torn down, and in a big hurry. Nothing says go away like several hundred pounds of C-4 plastic explosives packed tightly in an old sedan!

And if some Iraqis are too old, slow or dimwitted to avoid the demolition sites, well, it’s the old eggs and omelets theory, although the Iraqi recipe for making an omelet always seems to start with vaporized eggs. To each his own, as they say, and who’s to say that Iraqi omelets are less tasty than others? What may seem chaotic and frenzied to Western eyes is merely a new cultural take on political institutions and nation-building. So far during this election season, many new construction sites have been prepared, with some of the explosions so powerful that the foundation is pre-dug for the builders. All the engineers need to do is clear away the rubble and the bodies and start pouring cement!

So let us applaud the industrious Iraqis for their refreshing approach to democracy. Useless people and useless infrastructure swept aside together, making room for the new, the bold and the modern! When the dust clears (literally), Iraq will be in possession of a new set of leaders and a new set of impressive buildings in which to house them. America can then pack up and go home, well satisfied that our work is done as the newest member of the Brotherhood of Democracies sets up shop in the Middle East as a shining beacon of liberty and a fine example of self-determination and Social Darwinism. Let the voting and exploding begin!

Recession, Shmasession! Governor David Paterson did something this past week to make all New Yorkers’ hearts swell with pride and strengthen our collective resolve to lick these Hard Times! Governor Paterson single-handedly vaulted New York back into the lead in the Disgraced Governor Club! Himself a Governor by Appointment, replacing the Disgraced Eliot Spitzer, Paterson announced that he was dropping out of the campign for election this Fall due to a scandal.

While not a luridly sensational sex scandal like Spitzer provided, with clandestine train rides, fine hotels and expensive hookers in Washington, D.C., Paterson has abused the privileges of his office and accepted inappropriate gifts, while his personal intervention in a police matter to save his close  aide from arrest for spousal abuse is pretty rotten behavior by anyone, inexcusable for a Governor.  So make that 2 in a row for New York, beating Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina 2-1 in the Disgraced Governor Sweepstakes. Eat our dust, Wannabees!

While Disgraced Governors are not all that uncommon in America, having two of them back-to-back is unprecedented in the annals of state governments and sets New York apart as the elite, the creme-de-la-creme of thoroughly corrupted state governments. Not only does our second consecutive New York State Governor have to disappear in a hurry, the national consensus is that our New York State Senate, our New York State Legislature and our New York State Judiciary are all just as riddled with incompetence and corruption as the Governor’s Mansion! We’re #1! New Jersey only WISHES! We’re # 1 we’re #1…

Legislators in the Great State of Wyoming have begun the process of the realization of the dream of King Canute, who famously tried without success to “command the tides of the sea.” Their plan? To tax the wind! Brilliant! We’ve had water taxes forever, so why not make the wind pay up too?

It seems that Wyoming, a state that has enjoyed the good fortune to have recently undergone an energy boom with natural gas, has once again overcome being “only Wyoming,” as the other 49 states refer to it, and have built themselves a sizable wind energy industry, making lemonade out of the lemons of being an almost deserted and wind-swept backwater of America.

Eager to rehabilitate their state’s lousy image after having contributed America’s only dictator to our history, one Shotgun Dick Cheney, Wyoming is trying to figure out how to most equitably tax the wind. In an area larger than Austria but sparsely populated by a mere half a million souls, Wyoming has long been in the minds of Americans, well, not really there at all, just some place mentioned frequently in a childhood full of bad Western movies, and rarely, if ever, afterwards.

Taxing the wind seems like a pretty formidable task, but unlike King Canute, who commanded the tides to illustrate even a king’s powerlessness over the forces of nature, these people are serious and mean business. Or at least the business of the power companies harnessing the wind. The fact that the central power companies purchase a lot of power from independent land owners who have installed giant wind turbines on their giant empty windswept Wyoming ranches further complicates their task. Who do you tax the most?

Of course they want to do this right, and not seem foolish before the rest of the nation, and so Wyomans’ (or is it “Wyomingans?” Or is it “Who gives a rat’s ass?”) have not asked their most famous son to weigh in on this issue. Shotgun Dick’s approach to taxation has always been to bleed the working classes mercilessly and leave the very wealthy untaxed. Like the rest of our fine nation, they need another rash of property foreclosures about as much as a kangaroo needs another glove compartment.

The nation watches as an emerging industry takes shape, both in corporate structure and in relation to the government under which it operates. It would be nice for a semi-nonentity of a state to provide the rest of our nation with a working model of alternative energy infrastructure. These new technologies will be of great importance to this nation and the world, and someone has to begin to sort out how all this will work. We welcome Wyoming to provide us with something other that a dictator and fuzzy memories of “varmints and bushwackers” from old movies. Tax the wind, indeed.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of political disgrace, former Speaker of The House of Representatives, Neuter “Neut” Limpdich returns to the high profile life. He holds no office and probably couldn’t get himself elected as Dog Catcher anywhere in America right now, but to the feeble minds of the disgraced conservative right wing, the man is a Messiah come to deliver them from the purgatory of Cable Talk Show Irrelevance. With an able assist from the  hilarious comedy trio, “The House Massahs,” Bull O’Really, Glen Bucks and Flush Limburger, Neut Limpdich is doing his best to pretend that the personal failings that betrayed actions and intentions the exact opposite of his stated policies are soon forgotten. It’s an uphill climb, to be sure, but there’s no shortage of unprincipled morons around to assist him.

Which is good news. Not for the conservatives, of course, but for a progressive movement led by a suddenly hesitant president that is faltering as a time when they should be enjoying their triumph and passing a bunch of enlightened legislation. All they need do to regain their lost momentum is to scan the field of their opposition and rejoice that there are no serious people within their ranks. The “mass-exodus” of 2 or 3 Democratic Senators and the election of a male stripper to Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat are not cause for panic, no matter what “The House Massahs” say. If they had an idea between the three of them we’d know about it by now, but that hasn’t been the case.

The last idea Mr. Limpdich had was back in the 1990’s when he saw an opening to make an issue of President Clinton’s penis. Major troubles with his own penis, however, undid the man, and the most memorable of his deeds was informing his trophy wife who was sick with cancer in the hospital that he had found a new, cancer-free trophy wife, with a better brand of Christian religion to  boot (he generally changes religions with each new wife). Before that it was his Contract With America, a portfolio of legislation designed to undermine anything President Clinton was trying to do. Somehow Clinton (and his penis) managed to preside over 8 years of peace and prosperity in spite of Limpdich and left the nation with a huge budget surplus. At any rate, Neuter Limpdich was last seen in 1998 resigning from Congress in disgrace, the heavy door of Ethics Violations hitting him squarely in the ass on his way out.

No one missed him.

Fast forward a dozen years and here he is defying the axiom that there are no second acts in American lives. He has positioned himself as the new conscience of the right wing, outmaneuvering the two dim bulb pretenders, Sarah Bailin and Flush Limburger. The only drawback, at least for right wingers, is that having Neut Limpdich as your conscience is like having Popeye guarding the spinach garden. Sort of goes against the grain of what is trying to be achieved. Having learned that the term “Contract with America” smacks of corporate infestation at a time in America when no one trusts corporations, Neut has backed off that term, and also the “Republican Revolution” designation, what with the unholy mess his fellow Republicans left for the rest of us to fix.

None of which will deter the man from seeking the presidency in 2012, or suicidal right wing lemmings from following him off that cliff. Which should be taken as grand news for Democrats and progressives everywhere. With any luck he’ll pick another Sarah Bailin as a running mate, maybe even the naked pin-up guy from Massachusetts, thus ensuring the conservatives 4 more years of whining from the altars of Cable TV “situation rooms,” the closest thing to power they will see until they come to their senses and recruit some smart people who have at least some semblance of integrity and personal ethics, and maybe even a viable idea or two. Luckily for the president and his fellow progressives, that’s not in the cards as long as people like Neut Limpdich are calling the shots for the opposition. They would do well to ignore the ranting fools and get on with their agenda before the right wing smartens up.

Has anything gone right in Afghanistan since the opening weeks of that war when we destroyed their army and toppled the government? If that sounds like winning a war, well, that usually  does the trick, but America was in Afghanistan for another reason, to capture the madman who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t a part of the Afghansitan government, but a Sauidi Arabian of Yemeni descent, and he and his al Qaeda gang were being given a base of operations by the Taliban regime from which to train suicide killers and plan terrorist attacks. Both the head of the Taliban, one Mullah Omar, and Osama bin Laden escaped the initial onslaught and have been on the lam ever since, both still very active in their respective gangs.

For 8 years now we’ve been killing or capturing a series of #2 al Qaeda guys, possibly the least attractive job in Afghanistan. Now we get word that we have captured the #2 Taliban man, some goon with the mouthful of a name Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Meanwile, his boss, and the al Qaeda boss, both of them a striking 6 foot 6, have melted into the bleak landscape somewhere in the nebulous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Catching the #2 man in any organization might be a public relations coup, but doesn’t really do the trick of crippling the organization.

That’s like catching Larry of the Three Stooges and leaving Moe free. He and Curly would still be capable of all sorts of mayhem. And if the new #2 guy Curly gets apprehended, then Moe would simply go on with the show with Shemp and Joe Besser. Moe is the mastermind behind all the havoc perpetrated by the Three Stooges, the “brains” of that outfit, or at least as far as brains go with outfits like the Three Stooges and the Taliban. Usually just enough to make a ton of trouble for everybody else, and it’s always Moe’s idea. It’s the same with Osama and Omar. Without them, the rest of the Taliban and al Qaeda Stooges couldn’t plan lunch, never mind a tyrannical government or a deadly terrorist organization.

Osama makes more inspirational videos than Tony Robbins while planning further attacks on the West as we capture or kill his latest Larry. And now we’ve started down that same road with the Taliban, with the big cheese Mullah “Moe” Omar still out there on the loose running the Taliban and organizing it into a lethal guerrilla force, waiting for the day America tires of searching for the twin Moes so he can seize power again. The recent assault by 15,000 soldiers on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan saw sporadic fighting by a rear guard Larry Brigade assigned to hold off the enemy until the rest of the Talistooge guerrillas melted back into the mountains.

Mullah Omar will simply have his Stooges reappear where the enemy is not, that’s the name of the game in a rebel insurgency. He found out 8 years ago that the Talistooges were no match for a modern army and has tailored his tactics accordingly, while America and her allies have not. Unless and until they can capture a Moe, this war will be continue to be a stalemate. Kill or capture the twin Moes, and there is no more Taliban or al Qaeda for the other Stooges to follow. Enough with the capturing of yet another Larry. That’s happened so often it’s not even news anymore. Go after Moe or go home.

This is for America’s right wing politicians who are so bitter now that they are out of power. First off, let me say: Go fuck yourselves, you lying, arrogant and traitorous pieces of dog shit. Secondly, good riddance. And thirdly, don’t make any plans for the immediate future to get back in power. Your abysmal record while in power speaks for itself, and your behavior when voted out of power reveals you to be the very worst sort of people that America has produced. You have no honor, no integrity and no courage, and you take pride in your ignorance and stupidity.

The American right wing in recent years has been playing by the Joseph Goebbel’s playbook. Yes, that Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party Minister of Propaganda. He was the guy who put forth the proposition that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. That theory didn’t exactly work out all that well for himself, his boss Adolph, for Germany or the world. No matter how many times he called the sky green, it persisted in remaining blue, and only complete assholes took anything he said seriously.

But there were enough assholes to do the whole world a lot of harm, to the tune of 50 to 60 million people killed, countless cities destroyed, wiping out the work of centuries, and a hostile world divided in a Cold War for the next 45 years. It was called World War 2 and it was started by lying right wing sacks of shit who had to be defeated at horrendous cost by sane people. Maybe today’s lying right wing sacks of shit feel that enough time has passed that people will forget the tactics that gave rise to Naziism and opened the floodgates to World War. Not a chance.

Repeating lies over and over just makes them monotonous lies, never the truth. Saying things like “everybody knows” and “it’s as plain as day” doesn’t mean a goddamned thing when there are no facts and figures to back up such broad statements. For example, all of a sudden a whole bunch of right wingers claim to be experts on military courts, as narrow and rare a specialty as there is. They claim that military courts are a better and cheaper forum for the trials of accused terrorists, when the fact is that our regular court system has tried and convicted hundreds of accused terrorists while military courts have convicted fewer than a dozen.

Why the interest in subverting open and fair American justice? This is the sort of thinking that led to the traitorous legislation called The Patriot Act, as blatant an attack on The Bill of Rights as has ever been perpetrated. The subsequent spying upon American citizens and the interception of their mail was sold by fear mongers as a necessary measure, handing another victory to the terrorists to go along with 9/11. Here’s what these right wing anti-American assholes did while they held power:

Allowed America’s first and only dictator to rule for 8 years: By installing George Bush the Younger, a man who couldn’t beat a 10 year-old at Tic-Tac-Toe, as the nominal “President,” Shotgun Dick Cheney ruled America with an iron fist for 8 years from the office of the Vice Presidency. Representing the wealthy corporate and ruling elite, Shotgun Dick helped transfer trillions of dollars from the pockets of the working classes to the pockets of the super wealthy through a series of tax cuts. By the time he left office, the wealthiest among us, fewer than 1% of Americans, owned more wealth and assets than the bottom 95% combined.

Gutted our regulatory agencies: By underfunding and short-staffing the agencies that oversee the people who handle everybody’s money, the right wing politicians allowed the Greed Fest on Wall Street that nearly resulted in the collapse of our economy in 2008. There’s a reason why every 7-Eleven has a camera trained on the cash register – money is a powerful temptation. By turning off the security cameras, so to speak, on those who handle trillions of dollars, people who were already fabulously wealthy proceeded to steal untold billions for themselves and did damage to our economy that will take years to straighten out.

Attacked the wrong country: By attacking Iraq based on a pack of lies, The Cheney Administration committed a war crime and cost America almost 4,400 of our precious sons and daughters in an unnecessary and illegal war.

Allowed New Orleans to drown: When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding area, the Federal Government’s response was slow and insufficient, and yet the puppet president Bush The Younger was instructed to praise the head of FEMA, the agency charged with responding to natural disasters. Hell of a job, indeed.

Violated the Geneva convention by torturing prisoners: By introducing Illegal and immoral Gestapo-type torture by Americans, The Cheney Administration put our own soldiers at risk of the same treatment in the event of their capture, and robbed this nation of whatever moral high ground we held and the global support we enjoyed in the aftermath of 9/11.

Betrayed an American spy for political reasons: The Cheney Administration was directly responsible for exposing Valerie Plame as a spy because her husband had been openly critical of his administration’s crimes and tactics. This traitorous act not only put Ms. Plame’s life at risk, but likely was a death warrant to anyone with whom she had dealings in the foreign nations where she operated. She had been engaged in tracking down and securing contraband nuclear material that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction, so the Cheney Administration’s exposure of this operation also put the whole world at risk of a bootleg nuclear device landing in the hands of terrorists or unstable dictators. Cheney sacrificed a minor aide to pay for the crime, a grown man named (!) Scooter, and he got off with a minor offense, and then Cheney had the Puppet Bush commute his sentence.

Tampered with 9/11 evidence and helped material witnesses escape: After the 9/11 attacks, masterminded by Osama bin Laden, the Cheney Administration removed all the security tapes from the Pentagon, never to be found. Less than two weeks later, when the rest of the nation was still not allowed to fly so much as a kite, members of bin Laden’s family were secretly flown out of America under protection of the United States Air Force. American investigators would consider the immediate family of the perpetrator of the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor to be “persons of interest” to be interviewed, whether or not they had any information on the attack or the whereabouts of bin Laden. It is no small coincidence that the bin Laden family had for decades been business associates of the family of the puppet President Bush. What didn’t Cheney want the FBI to find out?

The list of criminal acts and outrages against the civil liberties of American citizens goes on and on. These people inherited a land of peace and prosperity with a sizable budget surplus and left it 8 years later an economic wreck, bogged down in 2 long wars, the gap between rich and poor wider than ever. It will take decades to undo the damage they did, to replace the money they stole and rebuild the economy they wrecked through greed and criminality. Is there any reason why anyone one would vote them back in power again? They have done quite enough damage already, thank you. Fuck them and their feeble lies and sour grapes whining. Their days of spreading fear and lies to divide, conquer and plunder are over. On the outside looking in is the place they earned, and it is where they belong. Fuck’ em.

So now the mental midgets of the right wing, having failed to convince sane people that President Obama is Muslim born outside the United States, now babble about his childhood in Hawaii, calling it a “foreign place” and “far from mainstream America.” Meaning exactly what? The same can be said about New York City or California. Well, what the daffy right wingers are trying to do is to make people feel that being from Hawaii is somehow un-American. What, Jack Lord, Don Ho and Bette Midler aren’t Americans?

Worse than messing with Jack Lord, his bionic hair and his “book-em, Dano,” mantra, however, is disrespecting the Americans who died defending that American island on December 7, 1941 from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Nobody back then dismissed their sacrifice as the meaningless defense of some exotic foreign land. Hawaii was then and still is America soil. Anyone born there or living there lives under the American flag. American law and the United States Constitution rule Hawaii, just like the other 49 states of this Union.

Is the right wing so short of ideas and policies that personal attacks are all they’ve got? Attack the man’s politics, his failures to deliver on campaign promises, his naivete and inexperience, that’s just fine and the American way. But to attack his patriotism because the guy grew up in Hawaii? What the fuck is that all about? How friggin’ stupid do you have to be to go that route? Do any of them have any better ideas or solutions to America’s many pressing problems? If so, they’re sure keeping them a huge secret.

There’s only so many times you can genuflect at the altar of Saint Ronald Reagan before people start remembering how dumb and dishonest he was too. There was a guy who campaigned against Big Federal Government and, once elected, proceeded to triple its size. He talked about being a tough guy and when the U.S. Marine barracks was blown up in Lebanon in the opening salvoes of the Terrorist War against the West, what was his response? He cut and run like the French Army, then diverted attention from his cowardly act by attacking Grenada, a tiny island less lethal than some of our own urban neighborhoods! His trickle-down economics exposed the conservative right’s view of their fellow Americans as so many dogs fighting for scraps under the dinner tables of rich men. This daft fool is their hero?

He must be, since they’ve been promoting as their leaders and standard bearers some of the stupidest people around in recent years. Sarah friggin’ Palin? Paris Hilton is smarter! How about that underwear model and nude cover boy they just got elected as a Senator from Massachusetts? Wow! Talk about the bottom of the barrel. And what about the media people elevated to political guru status by right wingers. Flush Limbaugh? Bull O’Really? Talented entertainers, perhaps, but completely bereft of any original ideas, unless “I got mine” passes as a policy and belittling the poor and minorities is in their view an original thought.

If they feel, like many people who backed him, that President Obama doesn’t have a stiff enough spine to implement his agenda even with a commanding majority in both houses of Congress, let them say so. Don’t go after his Hawaiian (American) roots. You can’t fault the guy’s intelligence or his personal life, since he was a law professor and is a good family man, but his performance as president is sure fair game. Why the personal attacks and the libel against Hawaiians? Could it be that that’s all they’ve got?

At least they’re not stupid enough as to ask Ms. Palin for any ideas. The last time she had an idea it was to join a political party that advocates Alaska’s secession from the Union. That’s not exactly optimum presidential candidate resume material, so now she’s spoon fed ideas by slightly less stupid right wing political operatives before she is allowed to speak in public (at $100,000 a pop!). The only other idea coming out of the right wing is from former dictator Shotgun Dick Cheney (If anyone thinks Bush The Younger was anything but a puppet, guess again. Talk about stupid!) and that is that all our problems can be traced to the current administration’s unwillingness to (!) torture people. That from a guy on who’s watch 9/11 happened, and who threw New Orleans an anchor while it was drowning!

When you have nothing to offer but desperately want to be in power anyway, the only way to go is the low road; the repeated lies, the unfounded personal attacks and the scoundrel’s last refuge, phony patriotism. The fact is, though, that a steaming pile of dog shit wrapped in an American flag is still a steaming pile of dog shit, and now you have to wash the damned flag under which we all live, even Hawaiians and Alaskans. The right wing would be taken more seriously if they could enlist some smart people to their cause. They could start with a few slightly-above-average recruits and build from there. Meanwhile, lay off Hawaii, where many brave Americans died defending this nation.

Once again the conservative right wing has succeeded in hoodwinking Americans of below average intelligence with no familiarity with history or politics that liberal is a bad thing to be, almost a curse word. Well, what can one say except that when someone calls someone a left wing liberal, they’re actually putting them in some esteemed company, those Americans whose politics looks out for the other guy as well as themselves, while the conservative philosophy is all about getting yours, and screw everyone else.

It sometimes takes courage to be a liberal, the courage to stand up for the rights of people you don’t care for all that much. If you believe in America and The Constitution of The United States, you realize that everyone has a right to have their say, even those who would like to subvert that Constitution by seeking to establish a state religion or wish to violate the Bill of Rights when it comes to “certain people.” They have no right to do these things, but they can talk about them all they like, otherwise their right to free speech is being violated. Liberals want no part of violating the rights of any individual or targeted groups of individuals.

Besides, liberals figure that the more people hear openly what these people are really all about, the more they will realize what complete assholes they are. No one is under any obligation to take such people seriously if they do not commit any criminal acts, and their right to be an asshole must be respected. Talk is cheap. Accomplishments speak much louder. Here’s a few people who might be considered by today’s conservatives to be no good left wing liberals:

George Washington: Farmer, land surveyor, soldier, revolutionary and father of his country.

His accomplishment: America.

Abraham Lincoln: Self-educated lawyer, Congressman, President.

His accomplishments: Preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

Thomas Jefferson: Farmer, scholar, inventor, architect, ambassador, Secretary of State, Governor, writer, President.

His accomplishments: Writing the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, championing the Bill of Rights, defeating the Barbary Pirates who were attacking American shipping in Africa and founding the United States Military Academy at West Point.

John Adams: Farmer, lawyer, ambassador, Vice President, President.

His accomplishment: Among many other accomplishments, defending the British officers involved in the Boston Massacre, setting an important precedent in equal treatment before the law, no matter how distasteful the defendants may seem, perhaps stands out as his greatest contribution to Americanism. He took the case in spite of his fear that it would damage his reputation, but his honor and his commitment to his beliefs were more important to the man. Of the eight soldiers charged with murder, six were acquitted and two were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. Apparently Americans didn’t hold his integrity against him and elected him the second President of The United States.

James Madison: Lawyer, Secretary of State, Congressman, President.

His accomplishments: Prevented Great Britain from reclaiming her colonies in the War of 1812. Wrote the Bill of Rights. Collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay on what became known as The Federalist Papers, a series of essays and arguments urging the people of the United States to adopt the Constitution, which was no certain thing in the days following The American Revolution.

Alexander Hamilton: Political philosopher, economist, soldier, Congressman, Secretary of The Treasury.

His accomplishments: The Federalist Papers, contributor to The United States Constitution, advocate of a strong national army and navy, established the United States Mint.

Patrick Henry: Planter, lawyer, Governor.

His accomplishment: The statement “Give me liberty or give me death!” This encapsulation of America still holds up. You think this guy would have shut up when the cynically named Patriot Act sailed thorough a fearful Congress and handed the terrorists a second victory to go with 9/11? He’d have put his life on the line defending the rights and the freedom of American citizens from this criminal and traitorous legislation.

John Jay: Revolutionary, diplomat, Secretary of Foreign Affairs under George Washington, First Chief Justice of The United States Supreme Court.

His accomplishments: The Federalist Papers and the establishment of the legal precedent that the individual states were subordinate to the Federal Government, further strengthening the Union of a young nation.

Thomas Paine: Revolutionary, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, author.

His accomplishments: The original blogger, his pamphlets, especially “Common Sense,” “The Age of Reason” and “The Rights of Man,” were instrumental in convincing the majority of British colonists to overthrow the monarchy and establish a democracy that scrupulously respected individual human rights and recognized no specially privileged classes of human beings. Equality before the law and in society were Mr. Paine’s passions, and he passed them on to all of us as our birthright.

Martin Luther King: Clergyman, Civil Rights activist.

His accomplishments: Led a peaceful and aggressive Civil Rights movement that confronted the innate racism in American society, and in the process changed America for the better forever.

John F. Kennedy: War hero, Senator, President.

His accomplishments: Completing the unfinished work of Abraham Lincoln by introducing the long overdue Civil Rights legislation, starting the race to the moon and winning the highest stakes poker game ever played against Nikita Khruschev’s Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Lawyer, Governor, State Senator, Assistant Secretary of The Navy, President.

His accomplishments: Social Security, minimum wage, the United Nations, The New Deal, winning World War 2. Generally considered, along with Washington and Lincoln, to be one of our three greatest presidents.

Lyndon Johnson: Master politician, Congressman, Senator, Vice President, President.

His accomplishments: Passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, continuing the work of the assassinated John F. Kennedy. Instituted Medicare, the highly successful medical program to take care of America’s senior citizens, and Medicaid, to provide health care for the nation’s poor. Initiated arms reduction negotiations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His Great Society and War on Poverty programs greatly improved education in the United States and opened up job market to minorities. Johnson also eliminated hunger from this nation with his Food Stamp and Public Assistance programs.

While none of these people mentioned above were perfect human beings, all of them acted upon their powerful belief in America values and the American people, and the universal human rights that our forefathers pronounced to be “self-evident,” and did so even in the face of stiff opposition, even at the cost of their lives in a few cases. Few of them were particularly religious, but all of them were content to let anyone follow any religion they wanted to as long as they did not force it upon others. All were highly moral and ethical, morality and ethics having very little to do with religious faith. These men were and remain the conscience of our nation, the people who made America America. All of them left our nation, and the world, a better place than they found it. Left wing liberals, every man jack among them. So when someone accuses you of being a left wing liberal, be  proud, be very proud. You’re in good company.

Mayor-For-Life of New York City, Little Mikie Bloomberg, has taken time out of his campaign to take the fun out of Fun City to appeal to President Obama to move the trial of the guy who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on New York City out of New York. They call it a change of venue, something normally done when a court of law determines that a defendant cannot obtain a fair trial in a certain jurisdiction. Well, Little Mikie has no such concerns for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged al Qaeda mastermind behind the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

No, Little Mikie, the Little Billionaire Who Could, he’s concerned about the excessive cost of security involved in such a sensational trial. He’s also afraid of the unrest that might occur in New York City, and also the inconvenience and the trauma. Which leads one to wonder if he remembers how very sensational, traumatic and inconvenient were the events of 9/11/01. To New Yorkers, it was our worst day ever, when two hijacked jets toppled the twin towers, killing around 2,500 people. It was also our best day ever, when New Yorkers responded to death and disaster magnificently, performing acts of heroism and sacrifice without a second thought, and help and good wishes poured into our town from every part of our stricken nation.

For Khalid Sheik Mohammed, it was his finest hour. Years earlier, he had been given the green light and the funding by Osama bin Laden to carry out his audacious plan, to recruit and train 20 young fanatics to hijack 4 commercial airliners and crash them into New York and Washington. The plan succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings, with 19 out of 20 of the hijackers  taking part in the plan and 3 of the 4 jets finding their deadly marks. They killed close to 3,000 people and opened up a new chapter in terrorism. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama bin Laden were heroes to illiterate deluded fanatics all over the Muslim world and jumped to the head of the Most Wanted lists of every law enforcement agency on earth.

Well, Mr. bin Laden, having been let off the hook by his old business associate Bush The Younger at Tora Bora years ago when he told American soldiers to stand down, is still at large, pursuing a very successful inspirational video career somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Not so for Mr. Mohammed, who has been in Federal custody for a few years now. He is finally being brought to trial for his crime, fittingly in Federal Court in Manhattan, the scene of the crime, but Little Mayor Mikie wants to move the trial elsewhere. Well, fuck him and the horse he is too short to ride in on.

And fuck the president for caving in to Mayor Little Mikie, who does not speak for New Yorkers and never has in his 8 years as mayor. LIke many wealthy men who enter politics, he did so only to straighten us out, figuring that a man with the ability to earn billions of dollars knows best in all things, and so uses his office as a forum for telling people how to behave and what to think. Little Mikie’s ego is so bloated that he even took it to the extreme of telling us what we can and cannot eat. This guy’s even more egotistical than former New York Mayor Giuliaini, who has been making a living selling his own fictional account of the events of 9/11, casting himself as a hero even though New Yorkers know he was just one more frightened New Yorker stumbling around lower Manhattan that day while abler men saved lives and gave theirs.

New York City is where this trial belongs, costs or no costs, sensation or no sensation. This is where thousands of survivors of this attack live, those who escaped death in the greatest rescue and evacuation operation since Dunkirk. This is where thousands more gather every year to mourn their dead, both the innocent victims and the heroic first-responders who gave their lives to save thousands. This is where Khalid Mohammed must face justice. The worst has already been done to New Yorkers, and we survived and thrived. What’s a little inconvenience or a few rallies by fringe groups? That sort of thing is merely part of life’s rich pageant around here, and frightens no one, with the exception of little Mayor Mikie.

Little Mikie is unreasonably frightened of the use of salt, tobacco and trans-fat by people other than himself, so it stands to reason that other things will frighten the little fellow too. New Yorkers deserve a better mayor, a braver man. Bloomberg and Giuliani now make it two in a row now who have used the office of Mayor to push their own narrow moral agendas that have little to do with governing New York and a whole lot to do with scolding its citizens, not a one of who needs life coaching advice from demagogues. New Yorkers have already seen the worst that Mohammed can do, and we trust our Police Department to keep our city safe while we put this monster on trial. Let the world see that we are not afraid of men such as this, delusional jerkoffs who think they enjoy broad popular support. Or maybe Little Mikie figures this town isn’t big enough for two such men and wants Khalid Mohammed out of town. Bullshit.

Let him have his day in court and face his accusers in the place where he committed his crime, since that is how America does things. Let him say whatever he wants to say, it can make no possible difference. What he did will always speak loudest, and the voices of the dead louder still. Moving the trial someplace else will deny the dead the justice they are due. The trial will bring none of them back to life, will not rebuild the shattered towers or restore the world to its pre – 9/11 sensibilities, but it will remind the world that the people who commit acts of savagery will answer for them in court. They will get a fair trial, with representation by an attorney and their rights respected until proven guilty, because that is how civilized people run their courts of law, openly and fairly with a single set of rules for all defendants.

To run and hide is to hand Mr. Mohammed another victory and deny New Yorkers some measure of justice, almost a decade after the crime. President Obama needs to tell little Mikie to go snoop around somebody’s dinner table for unhealthy ingredients and leave justice to the big boys. America needs to be America, not only to show the rest of the world, but to show ourselves that the things we stand for, the institutions we have created and the rights we afford our people are not flimsy things to be discarded when inconvenient or traumatic. The Bill of Rights is not the Bill of Suggestions, and our courts of law are not optional institutions to be substituted with other extra-Constitutional judicial venues created on the spur of the moment during times of crisis. These are some of the things that make America America, and if holding Mohammed’s trial in New York City is the harder thing to do, well, New Yorkers have never backed down from hard times or hard choices. This is no time to start. Unlike Little Mikie, few New Yorkers need to grow a spine.

Last night President Obama made one hell of a good speech at The State of The Union Address. The following has nothing to do with that speech:

So, here we are a year into Barack Obama’s presidency. The economy still sucks, there are still 2 wars being waged on Third World nations by the United States and the Senate and Congress are daily proving what corrupt scumbags they are. That being said, Obama’s doing a decent job. Not a great job, but as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Those circumstances are having the bad luck to follow the most destructive administration in American history, that of our first puppet President, Bush The Younger, and America’s first dictator, Shotgun Dick Cheney. It will take years to straighten out the damage they did; to our economy, to the Bill of RIghts and to the way our government operates.

The Cheney Administration oversaw the transfer of trillions of dollars from the American working classes to the super wealthy elite, to the point where less than 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. The Cheney Administration refused to police the financial industries that handle everyone’s money, gutting and underfunding existing regulatory agencies. The result was an orgy of greed and larceny that nearly brought our economy to its knees. The Cheney Administration lied to the American people in order to attack oil-rich Iraq, and abandoned the search for Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the devastating 9/11 attacks.

The Cheney Administration betrayed an American spy, allowed New Orleans to drown, awarded multi-billion dollar contracts to Cheney’s company, Halliburton, to rebuild Iraq and New Orleans, which they then proceeded to fuck up completely, sticking American taxpayers with huge bills to repair their “repairs.” The Cheney Administration hired corporate mercenaries to illegally torture prisoners and carry out assassinations.

The Cheney administration oversaw the theft of millions of dollars of crude petroleum every single day for years in Iraq, and sent huge bundles of United States currency to that nation to bribe political, religious and business factions, very little of which has ever been accounted for, then used the corruption they engendered as an excuse to remain in Iraq for years after defeating their armies and hanging their leader.

The Cheney Administration stole elections, consorted with felons and mounted the biggest fear-mongering campaign since the Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, creating a frenzied and divisive political climate that allowed the wealthy to pick the bones of the American economy clean, sending home foreclosures and unemployment through the roof. This mess they left behind will require the work of not only Barack Obama, but the next several presidents to repair.

The culture of greed and corruption has infested Congress and even the Supreme Court, which saw fit this week to allow unlimited corporate influence over our elections, potentially leading to foreign corporations and governments investing heavily in favorable elsection results in The United States of America. Favorable to them, that is. Mr. Obama has perhaps the hardest job of governing these United States since Abraham Lincoln, and the reason the nation is in such straits can be boiled down to one word: Greed. Greed for power, control and money by the dictator Cheney, and plain old fashioned greed for money by corporate America.

Now corporate America want us to listen to their “economists,” the same sad shills who have sold Americans out, that if we only listen to them them our economy will bounce back, like we’ll ever trust them again. They point to the election of a male stripper to Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat as a positive step, a guy who makes Sarah Palin look good! There are more potential puppets being groomed for political office too, intellectual lightweights perfect for fronting the ideas of the greedy and power mad, just like Bush The Younger.

If they are fooling anyone, it is only morons. Some people will buy dogshit if you wrap it in an American flag, and the Republican/corporate alliance is counting on such fools and anger addicts to create further divisiveness to divert attention from their greed. They will convince the jackasses that their blatant anti-Americanism is patriotism, and unleash them on the nation. They will use these dim fools like rented mules, make them eat their traitorous and elitist dogshit, then take whatever they have and abandon them when they have served their purpose. Don’t forget, they’re still licking their chops over the trillions in Social Security funds they failed to “privatize” under Cheney. Imagine if Social Security money was in private hands in 2008? Uncounted millions of senior citizens would be ruined, their work of a lifetime stolen to fuel rich men’s scams.

These are the people who were already fabulously wealthy and felt it was a fine idea to start aggressively stealing on a massive scale. Most of the unindicted co-conspirators in the financial industries still don’t feel they did anything wrong, only that they slightly miscalculated. Obama has to disabuse these people of such fantasies. Their “slight miscalculations” ruined countless American lives and made 5 to 7 trillion dollars of wealth disappear, so our president has his work cut out for him. Not only that, Obama also has to deal with a great many people, both the powerful and the insignificant, who are opposed to him only because he is a black man.

Anyone with a computer has been getting inundated with racist e-mails, both subtle and blatant, attacking our legally elected President and Commander in Chief. Having to fight this Neanderthal Factor as well as the entrenched Culture of Greed is one more monkey wrench thrown into the works of reforming an American Government severely damaged by 8 years of dictatorship and corporate anarchy. The State of The Union is weird, and it is not Barack Obama’s fault. It will take a lot of work to get America back on track.