If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out…….

I watch a lot of that liberal, progressive,  socialist, pinko media. Olbermann, Maddow, The Daily Show, Hardball, The Colbert Report………..love Bill Maher and Michael Moore.  I’m a voracious reader: The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Truthout, The Nation, Salon…….you get the idea.  I do my level best to monitor the other side, I listen to Limbaugh and Hannity everyday for as long as I can possibly stand it.  Fucking blow hards be as they may.

So it’s sometimes difficult to abstain from merely parroting various points of view, being a liberal, progressive socialist, pinko myself.  Often I’ll author a piece only to discover that an article, op-ed or televised segment is so congruent to what I’ve already written that I fear being accused of plagiarism.  Great minds think alike?  It’s true, they do.  Having said that, I can’t help but agree with Olbermann’s special comment this eve and endeavor to expound on it.

See, the other day, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs waded in with some fairly innocuous sentiments: “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs told The Hill’s Sam Youngman, in an interview published Tuesday. “I mean, it’s crazy.” -The Washington Post.  Yes, that is crazy.  George Dumbya Bush was an inarticulate, intellectually incurious puppet.  A consummate fool.  Obama is much further down the the road than that.  He is his own man and I believe him to be doing what he believes is the best he can.  However not good enough it is.

He also said less auspiciously: “This “professional left,” he added, “will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” -The Washington Post”  Well, that’s a little slipperier.  As for the former, I Remember Obama campaigning on single payer and affordability of prescription drugs like Canada.  But before the health care debate even had flame beneath, single payer was off the table and the public option was on the altar at the church of big pharma/big insurance with a knife wagging from it, gore and vital fluids oozing.  All this sacrificed, before the shouting even began.  Why did that happen?  The hard right does not even pretend at the spirit of compromise.  They are there for the whole pot or to insure that nobody leaves with a goddamn thing.  The current administration appears to have not yet figured this out  Regarding the latter, I’d be more than happy with a 2.5 sided building devoted to our massive expenditures, more than any other nation, to killing, as long as the other 2.5 sides could be devoted to fomenting peace, prosperity, potable water and nutritious foods and all that.  That would be cool.

He also said something like, and I’m paraphrasing here, that we of the left wouldn’t be happy if  Kucinich were President.  Well, Kucinich was my first choice, I called him the “little paste eater” because he was geeky but had the the courage of his convictions and the rather obvious heart of a lion.  I still like him and I can’t help but resent that observation.  I can’t help but think that he never would have folded so easily.  Pissing on Kucinich is misguided, thoughtless and sloppy.  We need him like we need Weiner and Franks and Sanders and Feingold and Grayson (telecom bullshit notwithstanding)……

Let me me tell you people something, Mr. President and your administration, something about why we’re pissed at you and why you’re frustrated at us for being pissed at you.  The amount of good you’ve been able to implement thus far, pales in comparison to the amount of havoc they were able to so expertly and efficaciously wreak in a similar amount of time.  Their hare of damage has passed your turtle and I’m fretting over your pace.  You’ve had some monumental legislative achievements for sure, but too many are in name only.  Sure you passed health care legislation but it’s weak.  A government mandate without a public option is just lame.  The protections against being denied coverage and care for pre-existing conditions are merely a financial disincentive to abide.  You appointed most of the same people who fucked us financially to prevent us from being fucked again.  Toothless legislation.  Way too many foxes in the hen house.  Don’t wag a finger at us, your base, for concerning ourselves with what is is right and fair and opposing institutionalized injustice.

Net Neutrality is in the shitter and what’s up with Elizabeth Warren?  Don’t ask don’t tell?  Gitmo?  Afghanistan? Military commissions?  The Patriot Act?  C’mon man.  Do you guys mean it or not?

Under the Bush administration, when they controlled both houses like we do now, reconciliation was used to the point of abuse.  It’s how we got tax cuts for the wealthy.  How much has that cost us?  How many times have you employed that tactic?  There is considerable doubt as I write this that your administration will even be able to resist the extension of those cuts.  And now that Democrats are in power of both the legislative and executive branches?  The threat of filibuster has been invoked more than ever in the history of the Senate.  Reconciliation Sir.  There comes a time when you fight fire with fire.

Can we get you all a testosterone cocktail?

I’m happy that you so compassionately seek to be President of all of America, to serve and and protect even those that didn’t and wouldn’t ever vote for you.  You’re a nice man.  But we don’t need a nice man.  My father, quite the brawler in his day, told me once that is hardly ever the toughest, strongest or most skilled man who wins a fight, it’s the meanest.  They hate you and everything you’re about.  Thank the powers that be that you’re smarter than them, but you need to get your mean on.  They will never give you a goddamn thing, so stop giving them anything at all.  At fucking all.  Oppose them and call them out when they so consistently act like jackasses by opposing any and all job stimulus so that the economy will be a hot mess and they will be so able and willing to blame you come November.

This is a done deal by the way.  We will lose seats because they will be successful in blaming you and your administration for this economic clusterfuck.  It’s over.  The fat lady is warming up and she’s gonna belt it out.  You’ve completely allowed yourself to be sucker punched.  The economy isn’t your fault, you probably saved us and the world from an economic depression.  But the sucker punch, that’s on you.  You all walked right into it.

I see you fighting, but not nearly hard enough.  Not even close to mean enough.

And tell your spokesholes to stop whining about us.  THEY, the right wing fucktards are your problem.  They are defining you.  We are in your corner but don’t blame us for lack of voter enthusiasm.  They smell blood and they aren’t wrong.  Make no mistake, this is a brawl.  If Democrats in general, and you in particular fail to man up, to get in there and throw hands and feet, we’re fucked.

We’ve watched for eighteen months now and you cannot blame us for being somewhat nonplussed.  If you didn’t think this was gonna get dirty ugly, maybe you don’t belong here.  We will still turn out and vote, we wouldn’t miss it because we can’t help it, but it’s not us you should be concerned with, it’s all those independents and reluctant voters that you sold that hope and change thing to.  Those people are just as unhappy and even less motivated than we are.  Quit fucking around and go punch Mitch “frog face” McConnell and and John “agent orange” Boehner hard in the mouth.  While you’re at it, bitch slap Michele Bachmann.  Stop, like Anthony Weiner said, bringing library books to a gunfight.  Let’s get this show on the goddamn road.

Nothing less than America hangs in balance.

Drinks for my friends.

21 Responses to “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out…….”

  • Masterbacon:

    I’m a huge Weiner fan.

  • Dragynn:

    Damn right, man the fuck up for god’s sake Obama, do the things we hired you for and stop giving us what amounts to re-hashed “it wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture”. Get us the hell out of Afghanistan, do NOT listen to any more military “intelligence”, I said it 8 years ago, and i’ll say it again now: YOU WILL NEVER WIN IN AFGHANISTAN, NOBODY WILL, GET A FRIGGING CLUE, BUSH NEVER INTENDED TO WIN THERE OR ANYWHERE ELSE, HE STARTED THE WARS TO MAKE MONEY FOR HIMSELF AND HIS CRONIES/BUDDIES/BOSSES, PERIOD.

    And where in the hell did all the war protests go? I marched dozens of times through the last decade, but as soon as Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress was elected, they stopped, where are all those righteously angry voices now? Was it all bullshit just to get your man elected? Did any of you ever actually give a damn about all the violence, the million lives lost, the destroyed infrastructure of two entire nations, the U.S. turning into the equivalent of the Inquisition, murdering, torturing, destroying innocents in the name of “patriotism”?

    There is no patriotism to what we do today, it is nationalism, the same driving force that took Hitler and Mussolini to power. As a smart man once said :”Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility, Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on it’s own dunghill.”

    Great piece Michael, you said and continue to say, the things that really need to be said. Too many whiney namby-pamby sycophants out there crawfishing and taking two steps backward, still hoping I guess to curry favor with the powers-that-be and quietly “eat out our substance” a little further.

    • Michael Douglass:

      Thanks. You express yourself well. You should be writing.
      The point really is are they so clueless as to be pissed at us?

  • Ronald Marcus:

    What you’ve written in words we feel in our hearts. Now we need to tell the President.
    I’ll be there in November to support the Dems and give him the people he needs to do his job, but you’re so right, he needs to put the library books down and put the brass knuckles on … both hands … and commence to kicking some ass.

  • If he’d just cater to the people that voted for him and quit kissing the ass of the yoyo’s that didn’t and never will, we’d all be better off.

  • KUDOOoo’s! MORE LATER.

  • Brian:

    Here’s the problem. Most of the people who supported Obama are not you. In fact, the squishy middle, the “independents” – the philosophically flaccids – don’t care much for the brand of progressivism you espouse. Most people don’t buy into the idea of stimulus. It just doesn’t make any sense, and they are right; it’s nothing more than a clever reformulation of the broken window fallacy, a shiny chromed-out version of those perpetual motion free energy machines you see on ebay, with the Obamastika pasted on it.

    So Obama could break out the brass knuckles to make you and your impassioned, delusional minority happy; but that will not only further infuriate the right, but also turn the middle against him even further that it has.

    Maybe you’re too old to absorb any new ideas. But if you want to honesty understand where the other side is coming from, there are vastly better sources than Limbaugh and Hannity. But if your aim is simply to ‘monitor’ that which you have already dismissed as irredeemably evil, then those will do fine.

    And just a final note, about ‘smart’ people. Krugman’s a smart guy, Maddow seems so, if packaged with an obnoxious dose of smarm and arrogance. Thing about smart people, especially those with high verbal facility, is that they are remarkably adept at believing stupid things, like the person above who believes the US destroyed “infrastructure” in Afghanistan (superhighways and high-speed fiber optic rings??).

  • Michael Douglass:

    Your first point is a good one although it’s not anything I didn’t know.

    “Obamastika”?

    Look my friend this is a battle for the rapidly deteriorating middle and I’m curious who else you’d like me to pay attention to.

    This thing about smart people, those with high “verbal facility” being “remarkably adept at believing stupid things”, I’d like for you to talk a little more about that.

    • Brian:

      Well, socialism qualifies as a remarkably stupid idea, yet very intelligent people through the decades have become hypnotized by it.

      Eugenics was an idea propounded by very intelligent people.

      Most of the bloodiest -isms of the 20th century: stupid ideas with brilliant people carrying their banners. Who can argue that Nietzsche was not a genius? The inspired madman who gave us the ubermensch, the embodiment of the will.

      I know people who are otherwise intelligent, but believe in bizarre conspiracy theories, outlandish science fiction, oddball religious notions.

      Being intelligent does not make one immune to nutty ideas, and in fact research suggests that those of higher intelligence – especially verbal – are simply better at convincing themselves the truth of nutty ideas.

    • Brian:

      As for the rapidly diminishing middle, they are already a skeptical bunch. And they certainly aren’t going to be won over to far-left ideas with analogies to street violence.

  • Michael Douglass:

    I read your last post. “propounded”? It was shit like this one. You’re doing your best Limbaugh here, I’m not amused. Bring a cogent, not to mention salient point that you can prove or at least substantiate and we’ll talk.

    You’re free to channel Louie Gohmert at will.

  • Andy Berggren:

    Brian, I was just wondering if you (or anyone else who reads this) is aware of the quality of life in Socialist countries of western Europe. I was in France in May, I also lived there for 1 year in ’75. That country is NOT comming unglued at the seams like ours. Germany , Frace , Holland , Denmark… those countries all enjoy a higher standard of living than we do. Why? Because Socialism works & is not a dirty word like it is here. It’s geared towards slow & steady growth, not boom & bust cycles like we are prone to. It sounds so un American but capitalism for many people in the US really sucks. So many people fall through the cracks and we end up paying for them anyway. Socialism merely recognizes & addresses issues like that, up front. Everything is available & paid for. While I was in France a friend was just finishing up Chemo. His medication was 1 Euro. Can you imagine comming out of a pharmacy here & paying only $1.35 for your meds? Not everything that exists here is that great. Many things suck in the US now…

  • If I was getting bullied and threatened by Israel and USA every second, I would make something like this too.Leave them alone, Iran has never ever invaded any country.

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