Stop Me Before I Vote Again

And if he doesn't find a way to spend some money on 'em pretty soon, he'll deserve to be buried in teabags,

That's what the invasion of Iraq was, bread and circuses for the yahoos after 9/11.

The oils companies would get to corner the market on Iraqi crude. AIPAC would get to see a state potentially dangerous to Israel smashed. And the yahoos who listen to Rush Limbaugh would get to contemplate the idea of taking some crappy little country full of Muslims and throwing it up against the wall.

Uh Oh. I sound almost like a lefty here. But it's true.

Obama's going to keeping killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But unlike Bush, he can't let on that he's enjoying it. He can't strut around the deck of an an aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit. He can't say "bring em on." He can't destroy Fallujah again. Just about the only thing he can give the angry white people of America is a few dead Somali teenagers.

It's a bit like Clinton in the 1990s. Clinton killed plenty of Iraqis and even a few white people in Yugoslavia. But nobody was allowed to enjoy it. So all the angry white guys in middle America hated him, especially after it was revealed he got blow jobs from fat Jewish girls.

OK. I'm definitely sounding like a lefty. But here's the punch line. I'm hoping, praying, pleading with God that Obama is getting blowjobs from a white woman and it somehow leaks out to the press. And I hope she's good looking (the only thing that saved Clinton was the fact that Monica wasn't good looking).

Then, and only then will you lefties finally get your rioting in the streets (with Joe the Plumber leading the charge).

TKT-- You didn't think Monica was attractive? A lewd plump JAP in a thong? Oh you callow youth, you.

On the subject of bread and circuses, I don't think circuses are going to cut it -- Somali pirates and so on. No. I think the punters want bread, and Obie better come up with it if he knows what's good for him.

Of course, everybody whom he has employed, and everybody on whom he depends, will oppose any such show of weakness. So he may find himself between a rock and a hard place -- as my grandmother used to say.

I agree the wage kulacks are poised for unauthorized action
Let's at least
Entertain the possiblity they will act in their own interest

The dems have indeed watch one half of a nation
Go absolutely no where other then into debt

They will not have earned the ride but thery still may. Get it

Ob as clint II
Still may not happen
Not because ob takes bold prog steps tpard a prog pop alliance
But because the pops to the surprise of elites of all ilks
rise up
at their job. Sites

Hey 30 years of pigtail pulling gets to rile a spirit

I think the punters want bread, and Obie better come up with it if he knows what's good for him.

But there's the genius of it all.

Come on. You're drawing back from your own insights. Obama is the perfect agent of repression.

The left won't take to the streets against a black president.

So the only danger of any dissent is going to come from these angry suburban rednecks.

Yes, these tea parties are stroturfed. But astroturfing can be dangerous, as our Russian friends found out 104 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gapon

The right doesn't distinguish between angry right wing yahoos and angry left wing yahoos. They don't want "the people" getting too involved in the public sphere. But they won't have to lift a finger.

The left will stir up a scare about the imminent danger of hordes of McVeighs blowing up federal buildings and voila, before you can say hope and change, you'll have Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann calling FBI surveillance.

And in the meantime, they can all eat cake.

"I agree the wage kulacks are poised for unauthorized action
Let's at least
Entertain the possiblity they will act in their own interest"

There's a possibility there, but I think the jaded view on this blog is stopping you all from seeing the opportunity being squandered. I can't think of a better environment for some proselytizing, but Rahmbo has muzzled everyone (most recently CNBC, via the auto bailout leverage & GM's stake in CNBC), and the New Way Forward people are left out there looking stupid.

It seems like a ideal conditions for a new party or two on the national scene, but the only one I see being formed is some sort of bizarre Patriot Party. That's fine by me, I actually don't mind Ron Paul and his followers, and think they should have a viable party. But on the left, there's nothing.

Third parties (or revolutionary vanguards) don't just build themselves. I know it is anathema to Americans, but maybe it's worth considering how Canada got a third party & medicare. Tommy Douglas wasn't afraid to get into a bit of rabble rousing and stoking the class tensions. Medicare in Canada is largely a result of his comedy routines bringing down the house at county fairs and pubs all over Canada. His central message was pretty much exactly the same as this blog's. Here it is, expounded in what was probably the most famous speech in Canadian history:

Mouseland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqpFm7zAK90

a new party or two

i agree with the spirit of this
we'd need 4 stable self funding parties
not 3
or we'll spiral back to 2
not a formalist but
the dynamics i think would require both parties weakened at once

one thought
a temporary "left" dem bolt
to run a prez can
of the progressive democratic wing
of the old party

not a threat to the state structures
or even the congress "delegations"
obviously if the prog dem prez ticket won
a very unlikely outcome of course
it would re "unite " with the opportunist main body of the old jack ass outfit

to make this blameless ie not a nader goat
your ron paul pat buc
redemption party
might be necessary

hence the two becomes four not two becomes three

third parties tend to work as middle parties
outcomes can vary of course
the fate of the liberals in canada
vs in the uk
quebec much like our black and brown and red internal nations
creates dem votes
the french internal nation
creates lib votes up there
votes
that are non existent in the uk
outside scotland
and the north of ireland at least

the ndp has never become the analogue
of the brit labor party
but its at least sustainable

here the trot fantasy of a labor party
has been smothered by the dem hedge
father S's prison house
of "oppressed" minorities

Nice piece.
I initially snickered at the Teabaggers myself, but you are correct in that their anger isn't entirely unjustified.

By the way, Mr. Smith, since you've worked with Buffalo Beast before, what's your take on the recent criticism of Matt Taibbi on this same blog?
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/04/duce_duce.html

There seems to be the implication by some commenters that Taibbi is an apologist for the Democrats and Obama, which I don't think is true.
On the other hand, I guess it's quite possible to be a progressive who's not a Democrat/Obama shill and still unwisely circle the wagons. A great many anarchists are guilty of doing that.

What I've read of Taibbi, actually, I've liked (Disclaimer: the Buffalo Beast has published some of my stuff, so I'm kindly-disposed toward 'em.)

Like all of us, he's no doubt a a bit uneven.

I didn't actually follow up on the link to his comment on the teabaggers. If he took the usual contemptuous Pwoggie view, I'm sorry for it, but that's a hard one for people like us to get over. It's taken me a long time, and Taibbi is a lot younger than I am.

I think you're forgetting about the Bloc Quebecois. Liberals don't have a real captive base, which is why I think they have been pretty responsive to public demands.

We basically had 5 parties until recently:

- Liberal (Catholics & 2nd wave immigrants, big business interests)
- Progressive Conservatives/Tories (Anglican WASPs, big business interests)
- Reform (Western redneck methodist conservatives)
- NDP (union/lefty)
- Bloc Quebecois (big-tent Quebecois party)

Quebec is more like a grey zone, where Libs or Cons can try to grab a couple ridings in the cities from the BQ, but not much other than that.

After Mulroney's free-trade supply-side policies destroyed the country, his Tories got decimated and ended up with something like 9 seats in parliament. The Reformers got some benefit from this collapse, but they couldn't shake their racist bible-thumping image enough to become viable in the east. Then they did a little leveraged buyout deal with the remaining tories to acquire the Conservative brand. Soon afterwards, the Tories were dumped, Republican brand specialists from America were brought in, and the party was turned into Republican-lite. The old Tories have now regrouped as the enviro-WASP "Green Party", so the parties are now:

Liberal
Conservative
NDP
Bloc Quebecois
Green

There has been some talk of a left alliance to match the Conservative conglomeration, but thankfully it fell through. I'm willing to stomach another few years of this pathetic minority government in order to maintain the diversity of political parties. It doesn't matter how much the rest of the vote gets split, so long as they don't get a majority. Our parties are pretty crap right now, but I think the system is fairly healthy.

I initially snickered at the Teabaggers myself, but you are correct in that their anger isn't entirely unjustified.

But since "Van Mungo" has already proven via a Rasmussen poll that the majority of Americans are "socialists" why is anybody even paying attention to these right wingers.

Why aren't people writing about the masses of people in the streets protesting Obama from the left?

Surely the 500 socialists who went to both protests on Wall Street a few weeks ago (and I'll be generous and throw the Answer and UFPJ people in a pool together) are more representative of the American people than these astro-turfed right wing freak shows?

Sure, blog about these right wing hippies. Where's the "Silent Red Majority" Nixon was already talking about?

Just a little O.T., but the successful resolution of the Somali pirate kidnapping crisis did get Obie a few muted thumbs ups on most of the gun blogs I read, which are mainly right-of-center. They applauded him for making the decision then letting Navy professionals do their job without trying to micro-manage from afar.

Some of my fellow Lefty friends are more sympathetic to the pirates cause, but I'm unable to work up any sympathy myself. If Xe (Blackwater) is looking for new markets, the Gulf of Aden seems like a golden opportunity for them.

TKT (aka Scott S.)--

The poll I cited from Rasmussen did not provide evidence that the majority of Americans are socialists. You're as slippery and sloppy with facts as you are with theory. The poll showed that only 53 percent of Americans fully support the capitalist system and that a surprisingly robust one third of younger people--in the 18-30 range--favor socialism. I also cited a recent Gallup poll that shows that 60 percent of Americans favor single-payer Medicare for all, and a number of other polls demonstrating that the mass of Americans are well to the left of the political establishment (both parties) on a wide range of issues, conventional mass-media mythology to the contrary notwithstanding.

So, Scott, now that we have our facts straight: thanks to the supine Washington press corps, the American people have no idea of the scale of the looting of the treasury that is taking place under Obama. At his last prime-time press conference, not one reporter asked him to react to the criticisms of Krugman and Stiglitz--in fact, not one question about the bailout at all. Rahm had the fix in--the rehearsed questions from the pre-selected reporters insured that outcome, and all the bureau editors in Washington never raise a quibble about this charade for fear of losing invitations to the key insider cocktail parties.

Once the American people understand the scope of the heist, the outrage will follow. It took several years for the majority of American to understand the folly of the aggression in Vietnam, but once they got it, they poured into the streets by the hundreds of thousands--in the powerful mass demonstration that you tried to sabotage when you were a Healyite robot--remember?

There is always the possibility that an enraged populace will turn its anger on scapegoats rather than the true authors of their misery. That's an old story. That's why people of conscience need to do everything they can to push the truth against the tide of lies.

Others, like you, are content to see the lies take their course and cluck your tongue. In fact, you, with your casual way with facts, are one of the purveyors of the lies--fortunately, very few people read your junk. You're like a pipsqueak-pretend Bill O'Reilly barking your lies and lunacy into your Mattel home radio kit.

sad. they'll post minutemen at every capitol door and the "other" guy will still get 'em.

Your nattering about a "Trot" fantasy of a labor party betrays sovereign ignorance, as do your other casual, dopey swipes at left-radical tendencies that don't conform to your revolutionary program of perpetrating at least four snickering, incoherent prose poems per day

Can you name a "Trot" group that even has such a demand at the core of its program these days? The Healyites used to put this demand front and center, but they're pretty much extinct, aside from North's WSWS, which is more a literary than a political exercise.

Most of the USFI-affliliated groups have a much more nuanced approach to building independent left parties and movements--witness the NPA in France--but you're not interested in such real-world developments. You prefer your anachronistic, bigoted Stalinist-Dinosaur stereotypes--from you, the epithet "trot" carries no greater degree of thought or insight than "n-----" or "sp--" coming from a racist. You know who you hate, and you don't even bother to think much about why. It's amusing to see a self-designated world-class intellect recycling such decades-old rotted garbage; basically, Opie, you're just a vicious party hack at heart, even though you're just a party of one.