A fiery read! - Craig Seeman (@SeeCraig): GreenParty Tv Producer.
By Sasha Brookner
Huffington Post
By Sasha Brookner
Huffington Post
In the 16th century, the Eastern Orthodox Christians had a unique aphorism: "Better the turban than the mitre." They were referring to the preferable conquer of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks rather than the Western Roman Catholic empire. Today, that lesser of two evil principles isn't about maintaining freedom of religion; rather it's used by Democrats to justify genocide, drones, Guantanamo, rendition, kill lists and cutting heat subsidies for the poor under the past its sell-by date defense that Republicans would double these demons. It is evident that this perpetual comparative doctrine has reached steroid proportions. Although President Barack Obama may wear the "turban" when it comes to certain domestic policies, such as gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research, when it comes to foreign policy, corporate interests, and saying farewell to Magna Carta, both the Elephants and the Donkeys are wearing the Bishop's hat.
In 2008, I complacently cast a vote for the so-called Marxist, Muslim, crypto-Mau Mau leader. At the time, I thought his rhetoric on hunting down Osama bin Laden and his cadre of non-threatening, Pashtun goat-herding boogie men was simply posturing for xenophobic independents. I mean this was a devoted peaceful father who didn't spank his children and volunteered at soup kitchens. We're talking about a man who turned down a lucrative corporate gig for grassroots basement community activism. Goodwin Liu was on his short list for the 9th circuit; hell, he sat in front of feminists and spoke about rescinding the Hyde Amendment. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels could have ever made their utopian government functional, this was the guy who could swing it. Don't laugh at me. Over the next four years the nausea and culpability I felt for casting that less than prescient ballot and not supporting Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney would take it's toll on my conscience and nervous system.
"He's playing chess!" Obamacrats screamed emphatically when it was abundantly clear the Ivy Leaguer was failing horribly at checkers. While Republicans transformed into strategic tacticians taking chapters from Sun Tzu's Art of War and marching their elephants over the Alps, Democrats were busying themselves reading Iyanla Vanzant. Obama's bi-partisan agenda skyrocketed to epidemic proportions - apparently a pre-existing condition for which he was previously denied treatment - leaving him perpetually naked every time he walked away from the political poker table. Frustrated amidst even his moderate ideas being obstructed by the GOP, he would come out of his economic meetings and relieve his stress going H.A.M on Kabul. He even felt the need to make the stomach-turning Jonas Brothers drone joke in protection of his precious daughters - who, unlike little girls in MENA, will never come close to seeing glimpses of war. In his autobiography, Obama said, "War might be hell and still the right thing to do." I'm sure this bit of philosophical reflection holds true only as long as it's not his family experiencing that "war" or "hell." Our president only has a predilection for playing commando leader with other parents' children. And when resistance fighters return fire Michelle offers their families big bear hug condolences and rhapsodizes over how valiantly they died for our freedoms. Watching the Obamas donate money to veterans' organizations is like watching pimps offer charity to domestic violence shelters.
Obama's political tenure reads like acute moral fragmentation. He has ordered some of the most catastrophic cuts to our civil liberties while throwing in a couple Lily Ledbetter Acts to keep liberals placated. Congressional obstructionism was not the culprit when our president renewed the egregiously Orwellien Patriot Act via non "sunlight before signing" autopen.
It was not to blame when he refused to shut down Cheney's beloved interrogation facility in Cuba even though half the tormented water drown prisoners have been cleared. A few Wall Street bankers received "consent orders," but no prison buddies named Bubba. Meanwhile, our heroic Bradley Manning rots away half naked in a cell, two more Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas were recently shut down and Obama's lust for war has extended from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Mali and Yemen. We haven't even entered into his beloved drone curriculum which makes Bush's water boarding look compassionate.
The current administration's three billion dollar a week jingoistic kill brown people program could have easily been invested into eradicating homelessness, canceling student debts, rebuilding 98,000 elementary and 25,000 high schools, and providing superlative pro bono job training - all of which pose a much greater threat to our country than desert nomads across ocean divides who draw their diabolical plan of attack against America with sticks in the dirt. Boehner and crew's impediments were not the issue when our chain smoker president broke his campaign promise to respect state's rights and started hunting down medical marijuana dealers. Watching a man who consumes a product that leads to the death of 6 million users annually go after the hemp guys was like watching a drunk driver moralize to cranberry juice drinkers. Instead of learning from the preeminent philosophers throughout antiquity who preached mastery of self before mastery others, Obama has used his tenure in office having romantic affairs with the Disposition Matrix, Illegal Wars, and NDAA's Section 1021(b)(2) which allows for indefinite detention and cold-blooded murder of U.S. citizens at his Tuesday discretion, all of which would have gotten the younger Barack laughed out of his Harvard law classes. But hey, aren't his daughters adorable? And that Michelle she sure can Hula Hoop. I wonder how her vegetable garden is doing? And Bo! Democrats love them some Bo.
Although George W. Bush was possibly the most repugnant president in United States history next to Woodrow, Harry and Richard, the only U.S. Constitutional passage he was familiar with was the Second Amendment. Obama on the other hand is a constitutional legal eagle, meaning he's actually heard of George Mason and the Fifth Amendment. This makes his lack of deference to the only legal text that could perhaps arguably make us "exceptional" even more egregious. Regrettably, Obama's entire candidacy has been viewed through a lens of proportionality, the 112th and 113th Congress have been incomparable secret weapons. Contrasted against a group of anachronistic, pseudo-Christian crusaders with an ongoing agenda to criminalize 12-year-old incest victims who abort embryos, Obama would have to be Pol Pot to fall below the bar set up for him. The "liberal" party has taken to genuflecting in front of a man who can only look decent next to psychopaths.
8 reasons why I now go Green, not the machine
1) Because Naderization Doesn't Scare Me
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." ~ Mohandas Gandhi
If I hear another President Roseanne Barr Macadamia Nut joke, I'm going to tell the Taliban people are burning Qurans and start giving out home addresses. Our world can no longer afford to make Green Party jokes; they're just not funny amidst our current political climate. It is offensive to think I would succumb to Spoiler Controversy extortion by the so-called progressive party whose current claim to fame is attempting to raise the minimum wage by a radical buck and a half. Now there's a joke for anyone who's looked at a calendar lately or skimmed through Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Considering our president can't even pass a paltry $9/hour through Congress, he might have well have opted to start with what economists compute is the 2013 accurate livable wage sum - $21.72. Clearly over the past five years, if we've learned nothing at all, it's that our presidential elect was never gifted in the art of negotiations, continuing to start every bill to exit poverty with the lowest possible numeral, eventually exiting stage left with the number below that.
Democrats have taken to blackmailing wanderers considering Green with an indictment of Ralph Nader who they contend handed over the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, but who actually took 1% of votes equally from both Republicans and Democrats. They might as well blame the Socialist Party, the Electoral College, the quarter million Democrats in Florida who voted for Bush, eco-friendly tree huggers who wouldn't have touched Gore with a 10 ft. long stick. Or, they could blame the real culprits - Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, O'Connor, and Rehnquist.
In 1996, Ralph Nader spent less than $5,000 in his bid for presidency; yet he won over almost 1% of the American population. In 2000, he campaigned for roughly $300,000 and received 2.8 million votes. Imagine what numbers Jill Stein could pull if she garnered 5% support and qualified for millions of dollars in federal funding. Before clearing our memory cache, remember the original Republicans emerged as a third party back in the 1850's with only a single issue, abolition. Unlike the early Republicans and Free Soil Party, Greens have an injustice conquer list that makes the Fair Sentencing Act look reactionary. In addition to the biotic crisis, their objectives include supporting grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community based economics, feminist and gender equity, respect for diversity, personal & global responsibility, and future focus and sustainability. How could any sentient being support men obsessed with war over the Green Ten Key Values?
I know, I know this presidential election (like all since 1991) is "too important" to support the Party of Peace. I mean, think about it. If Republicans had taken the Oval Office it would have been conservative pandemonium. The Patriot Act would still be in effect; the Corpus in Habeas wouldn't have to be produced; Guantanamo would be bustling; drone architect John O. Brennan would be appointed chief counter-terrorism advisor; Wall Street bankers would escape prosecution; Erik Prince would further his million dollar no-bid private military contracts; Planned Parenthoods would be defunded; millions of Mexican immigrants would be deported; billions of our tax dollars and military supplies would be sent to Israel to continue Gaza occupation and we would have militarily invaded and bombed the hell out of six new countries....
Oh wait.
Obama's charm, wit, wife and ostensible liberal demeanor somehow made Democrats start liking these things again - or perhaps they were anesthetized to them to begin with and Blackwater, Fallujah and Iraqi children were just used as scapegoats when the guy they disliked was in office. Throughout the Bush regime, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary, was a regularly sought-after anti-war speaker at Democratic events; but phone calls abruptly halted when Obama took office. Democrats play the same partisan politics as Republicans, using the ritual sacrifice of brown babies to the U.S. military industrial complex as pretexts when the Grand Ol' Party is at the wheel. One could witness this pathology on Real Time with Bill Maher when Democrat strategist James Carville practically screamed at conservative political commentator, S.E Cupp, after she brought up her concern over drone attacks. What could be more depressing than when cold-hearted Republicans want to discuss the death of hundreds of babies while defensive Democrats shake their heads exasperatedly to shield their party's deity from critique? I can't imagine if the Mormon guy had used his magic underwear to catapult himself into office and left his Inaugural Ball early to bomb Yemen that Democrats and MSNBC wouldn't be having seizures. Instead news that several Yemeni citizens died in a blast after cocktail hour was far less important than the Jason Wu gown Michele sparkled in at the Ball.
When I hear the regurgitated echo from Democrats that exercising suffrage on behalf of the Green Party is nothing but a "statement vote," I can't help but roll my eyes at their myopic vision and obstinate support of this Ineptocracy.
Going Green is a long-term strategy vote.
The Abolitionist and Feminist Suffrage movements knew they weren't going to win the 13th or 19th amendment the first year, or the year after that, or hell, even 50 years down the road. The time-line of civil rights progress is never swift. How botched have our Poly-Sci classes become when self-identified liberals who denounce war still vote for it in perpetuity like meat eaters who claim they detest the killing animals, choosing to ignore the vision and growth of the Green Party as temporarily unviable. One can even cast aside those lessons from Plato, Aristotle and Machiavelli, and consider our foremothers. They didn't bleed, sweat and cry for sixty years so we would be intimidated into exercising suffrage for a demagogue who works in the shadows of obscurity, killing off our sisters around the globe. I know for certainty Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't march in Selma and Montgomery so we would someday have a black president who would be bombing orphanages in Africa under the guise of safeguarding his beloved middle-class. Statistically speaking, I have a greater chance of being struck by lightening or gobbled up by a Carcharodon Carcharias than blown to smithereens by a man wanting to be Shaheed, according to this skewered logic we might as well pull a Jacques Cousteau and take to the oceans to kill off the great white shark population. We can even force minimum wage workers to fund the excursion, since it's for their own benefit.
Even the recent drone sightings on American soil and the Congressional passing of the FAA Reauthorization Act projecting that 30,000 unmanned aerial vehicles will be flying our friendly skies by 2020 isn't enough to get Democrats to tear off their tacky bumper stickers. The trite response "Well would you prefer Romney?" has become fixed in the Democrat echo chamber. No I wouldn't prefer Romney, I would prefer liberals stop cowardly supporting mass murderers and men running our constitutional pages through Fellowes and Ativas and instead work towards assisting Jill Stein in garnering 4.6% more of the electoral vote so the Green Party can inch closer to overthrowing a corporate duopoly more concerned about catering to Goldman Sachs and Halliburton than the Bill of Rights.
Got it?
2) Because of Obama's Cognitive Dissonance
"It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous men were thus bound together that in the agonized womb of consciousness these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then were they dissociated?" ~Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Barack Obama is a member of the Chamaeleonidae family, he has more incarnations than Hindu deities and trying to measure his shape-shifting would have driven Euclid to insanity. His two-faced rules of conduct are steeped in a distorted sense of violent patriotism and delusional valiance. Dr. Jekyll's eyes water up over senseless U.S. violence, like the mistaken identity murder of Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton, while Mr. Hyde pre-emptively strikes any breathing foreigner rumored to dislike America with Arabic Hadiya corpses written off daily as mistaken identity collateral damage. This is indeed a strange case.
While American MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1 Predator drones make their 24/7 rounds, Obama justifies Zionist proclivities and Gaza genocide with a straight faced outcry of "No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders." This is a fascinating statement because Obama's prized UCAV's have become perfectly acceptable descending upon third worlds, causing severe emotional and psychological distress to families at best, and dismemberment at worst, while Israel is the only region in the Middle East given Western permission to defend themselves.
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once summed up "bad faith" as the belief that one individual could operate in two completely different patterns of behavior and find a way to reconcile the duplicity. That paradigm was clearly visible during Obama's tearful vigil in the death of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in contrast to his callous indifference after he ordered the slaying of 21 children in the Bedouin village of al-Majalah on December 17, 2009. The Yemeni children didn't even receive an admission of guilt let alone crocodile contrition, proving Obama's moral compass doesn't function well when pointed East. Our first black president has taken a chapter from the Antebellum, making it clear that brown foreigners are three-fifths of a person in contrast to American's full human agency - not even worth body counts.
Obama has become the self-righteous fingerwagger of no return. He loves to moralize to Russia about their imprisonment of feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot, but refuses to discuss his own prison industrial complex which houses more men per capita than 196 countries. Obama was all keen on sermonizing Burma over the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is no more remarkable than American political prisoner exile Assata Shakur. On Syria, Obama said: "The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests." On his 99% constituents tasered and pepper sprayed by militia looking cops during Occupy Wall Street?
Crickets.
Our government's lectures to the rest of the world's system of jurisprudence for dissenters seem a little awkward amidst the recent arrest of Organic Consumers Association's Alexis Badden Mayer peacefully protesting outside of the White House and the ongoing prosecution of our truth-telling freedom fighters under obscure Acts implemented during Word War 1. Obama seems to have a great deal of outrospection about the failures of foreign governments but utterly lacks interest in curbing our own human rights abuse record.
Obama took it to a new low when he used Malala Yousafzai as a scapegoat for the Afghan war, calling her shooting "reprehensible, disgusting and tragic." Huh? Out of all the Malalas you have been responsible for recklessly depriving life, you want to shine a spotlight on this girl and fund her medical treatment? Our Apaches didn't land at Al-Majalah or Garani to fly any of those Malalas to top tier UK hospitals on private jets. Spare me the idea America is actually blowing up half of the Middle East on behalf of little girls trying to acquire an education. Remind me how many schools we've built over there again? Zero. How many have we accidentally bombed? Good question. Using the Malala logic we'd be in the Democrat Republic of the Congo right now, not best friends with the crypto-leader of the M23's. And, please, don't get me started on Susan Rice.
The Obama administration has shown they have a very selective commitment to human rights - not to mention an expensive habit of dropping million dollar bombs on ten dollar tents.
3) Because Insurance Run Healthcare Sucks
"We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies - they'll get a seat at the table, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN." ~Barack Obama
If you don't recall a single meeting about implementing universal healthcare broadcast to the American public, it's not because you were on the cable television network's wrong digit. It's evident this lack of on-camera discourse was because Obama cut a corporate friendly backroom deal before Michelle had even finished decorating the East Wing. Oh and not even a mere mention of the 2008 Hyde Amendment pledge. Obama's appropriation of Republican Bob Dole's aged well-being plan would ultimately be a blow job to United Health, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser and Blue Shield providing them with 30 million additional clients of which they can appropriate 70% of patient profits. Anyone with medical coverage who has ever requested and been denied an MRI is cognizant that insurance run hospitals produce sub-par care. When we make human suffering a commodity, for-profit providers continually block expensive but necessary scans and refuse to let doctor's inform their patients about cutting-edge modern technological advancements like VNS Therapy as to not upset their brethren anti-depressant pill market. Contrary to popular belief, Obama's Affordable Care Act won't lay the groundwork for Universal Healthcare; conversely it will hand over more tax dollars to these billion dollar juggernauts to use as additional funding to lobby against Vermont's favorable Single Payer system. While Democrats had control of the House and Senate in 2009, Obama could have at least made a good faith attempt to put his campaign promise up to the floor for a vote.
Subsequently, it would be nice if Obama fans could stop perpetually using insurance run healthcare to balance every atrocity committed under this administration. Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and Muammar Ghaddafi provided their people with actual universal healthcare, and nobody brought it up when they were using poison gas, instituting forced labor camps or firing rockets into little girls' bedrooms.
4) Because Democrats Are Not Saving Our Birth Canals
"For millions of women, federal programs are their only means of getting healthcare. Abortion is the only medically necessary health service excluded from Medicaid coverage. Failure to provide a service that only women need is discrimination." ~Barack Obama (2008)
Fast forward to Wednesday, January 21, 2009 when Women's Reproductive Rights became a distant 100th on the Planned Parenthood minister's "To-Do" list. He only once mentioned the organization's name on the national stage while campaigning against Romney in 2012 - and even then it was safely in the context of cheering for mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, not abortion. Receiving pamphlets on gestational phases is not the polemic issue for religious nuts and skirting around bio-ethical conversations pertaining to our fallopian tubes has become disrespectful. The moment Democrats begin to justify Planned Parenthood clinics because they uniformly don't offer abortion services, they appropriate Republican values, deprecating their most important and necessary function. We don't need conversations in support of mammograms, we need full fledged, third rail electrocution conversations about the elephant in the room: terminating an embryo/fetus to reduce the number of unwanted children in this country flooding the foster care system and being raised by mothers still reading Judy Blume.
Democrats still attempt to blackmail women with the notion that if we don't go for the lesser of two evils that feminist's adored family planning clinics will cease to exist. Newsflash: This past month, two Planned Parenthood clinics were shut down in Texas, completely disregarding Norma McCorvey's historical legal precedent. In Arkansas, a 12-week abortion ban is advancing in the House. In New Mexico, they're creatively working to criminalize rape victims who abort embryos as "tampering with evidence" while mandatory delightful vaginal ultrasounds are being forced upon women in attempts to guilt them into having unwanted children. This past month, four clinics were forced to shut down in Wisconsin after losing $1.1 million in state funding. Thank god poor women have Obama in office! Even amidst Congress auditing the hell out of everything Planned Parenthood, from their suction tubes to fax cartridges, and the 50+ bills that have been brought to the floor to defund and/or criminalize the termination of pregnancies, Obama has remained mum on the subject. He hoped he could avoid the conversation by throwing $15 Ortho Tri-Cyclen scraps to middle-class women who have health insurance. It worked. And not to fret ladies of the ignored lower socio-economic class, you can continue to obtain free birth control at (yup you guessed it) Planned Parenthood.
5) Because Democrats Also Love Playing G.I. Joe
The grandiloquence War on Terror is merely a euphemism for ruthless ethnic cleansing indulged upon by a group of resource grabbing oil loving drunk with power geopoliticans who could use a good ethics of war reading from Cicero's De Officiis and the Mahabharata.
Under Article 2 of the Geneva Code, Obama's wars overseas does indeed constitute Genocide, defined as the "deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group." Genocide includes imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group and we can cue Robert Gibbs who justified Obama's murder of 16 year old Abdulrahamn Anwar al-Aulaqi by his lineage empathetically issuing the quote, "He should have had a far more responsible father." Genocide is also defined as forcibly transferring children of one group to another which is seen by the estimated 2.3 million Afghan Refugee Camp regulars.
Meanwhile Obama continues to delude the American public of his success, bragging about the 22 men with white turbans tilted over their left ears he's wiped off the map. The only omission is, as Stanford, New York University and Policy Mic have reported, there is one Taliban death to every 50 civilians killed. When you kill a man's child you go to war with their father it has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda; subsequently, we've engendered thousands more Arabs who now hate America and that 22 number starts looking a little less remarkable. In a region where the U.S. should be trying to win over supporters from jihadist influence, drones prove alienating and the pedantic Quran reader's most effective recruiting tool. The mercurial rise of the once marginalized Muslim Brotherhood can also attribute their Arab Spring ascension to power as an alternative to Western imperialism. Hassan al-Banna's descendants are definitely not beneficial to the Malalas. Our politician's adrenaline pumping game of Cowboys and Indians has also precipitated military suicide rates that surpass combat deaths in 2012, hitting a 349 record number.
It is difficult for men and women who haven't lived on the outer reaches of empire not to let war become an abstraction. The West may talk about drone warfare being "bad" or "questionable" over Frappuccinos but it rarely conjures up any genuine emotive response, less my beloved Code Pink cheerleaders. It has become abundantly clear over the past decade that a Fatima Akbar will never achieve parity to a Sally Smith.
The Scandinavian Committee who slept on Gandhi but awarded the United State's 44th president a Nobel Peace Prize should be mortified to find out their compassionate patriarch of mankind runs a torture facility in the Wardak province of Afghanistan and incarcerates their other Peace Prize nominees. Unlike the eight African-American Nobel Peace Prize winners that came before him, Obama's prestigious accolade has become a white elephant. Contrasted with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1964 took his award as a duty said: "The Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for 'the brotherhood of man.'"
6) Because You Tilt at Windmills
"Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless." ~ Miguel de Cervantes
What both parties keep shielded from the American public is that neither the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda own a single armored tank, let alone F-22 frequent flier mileage. Jihadists are often goat herders who reside in dirt huts with no voltage. Their lack of electronic sophistication was transparent upon a glimpse into the King of Al-Qaeda's "lap of luxury." Homeboy looked like he could only get reception via tin foil on the antennas of his compound's 80's style TV. Bin Laden's constituents haven't mastered basic air travel, what are they going to do, ride their camels across the Atlantic Ocean to institute Sharia Law? In case everyone failed to notice, they had to hijack our planes for 9/11, so wouldn't a better plan of self-preservation simply be keeping them off flights headed this way? Apparently not, because you see these guys have the combined IQ's of Ghazali and Khaldoun and the military tactics of Saladin. This is why wardens are too terrified to have them transferred from Guantanamo to federal prison because unbeknownst to science, The Students and The Base have metal springs in their feet so they can jump over 100 ft high electrical fences. They can pass through walls by melting underneath doors then reforming on the other side. And don't let them touch you with a Quran or you'll instantly turn to stone, then crack. Mass propaganda has transformed these non-tech savvy nomads into the Voldemorts of the world actually capable of inciting an American holocaust of Third Reich proportions. Over the past 11 years there hasn't been a single attempt by a Jihadists to sneak a bomb onto a plane from one U.S. city to another (CIA false flags don't count) while polls show the majority of Afghans didn't even know what "America" was until we started blowing up their neighborhoods.
More recently, Obama authorized millions of dollars to be sent across the globe to support the Yemeni military, even amidst our country at 10% unemployment, 650,000 estimated homeless and 40 million children not receiving adequate nourishment. Our government cut off heat subsidies for the poor in 2011, closed mental health clinics and cut funding for domestic violence shelters, but suddenly has a Carte blanche to bankroll a third world's counter-terrorism operations because one underwear bomber hailed from the region. Yes we must defend destitute Americans from the threat of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula living in one of the driest, poorest and least developed country in the world. Patriotism is all about cutting safety nets then assuring the people who need them that our government loves them so much they will be protected from Salafism.
Thank you President Obama for defending us from our 1 in 1 billionth chance of becoming victim to Yemeni terrorism - and continuing to funnel money away from struggling Americans for DARPA's Vulture Program so we can have futuristic war robots - while the Soup Kitchen down the block is having another coat drive. Regardless of if you're a fan of doing the impossible extermination of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen and anyone wearing a burka, the war against "terror" has statistically been completely counterproductive to that goal. Several years ago there were only about 150 members of AQAP. After ongoing strikes from drones, tomahawk missiles and cluster bombs there are currently 1500 members. How can Obama sophists contend this is a "smart war" or a "war of attrition" when playing Whac-a-Mole on the bad guys is doubling their membership exponentially? The misguided War on Terror has been the most dim-witted battle since the domino theory days. It's like a war on acne and the more you pick and squeeze the more depressing your pimple problem becomes.
We torture Osama's Egyptian friends, he blows up East African U.S embassies, we bomb anti-malarial drug producing pharmacies in Sudan and then act surprised when Al-Qaeda starts issuing "America Die" manifestos. Confucius once said "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Our target countries practices the same Code of Hammurabi as the rest of us - an eye for an eye and the Twin Towers die. Unfortunately, we're not all as mature as Sweden who handled the 2010 Stockholm Bombings by simply stepping up their self-defense, which according to our Castle Laws, happens at home.
7) Because My Entire Life History is Stored on a Super Computer in Utah
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." The Fourth Amendment
The majority of Obama's loyal supporters have no clue that he's ordered AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to systematically turn over their customers' personal correspondence. Somewhere near the Church of Latter Day Saints, there is a mega computer that has access to every single e-mail/text you've ever sent your friends, co-workers or weed dealer. Most simply brush it off as "Well I'm not planning a suicide bomb mission so who cares" but this invasion of privacy has very little to do with 72 Virgins. These correspondences have been handed over to NSA, FBI, CIA and every other government acronym who is now privy to any naked photo you've ever sent a lover, perhaps a note telling a friend you cheated on your taxes, psychiatric records that could deny you future government job opportunities and whether you have a library book check-out preference for J.D Salinger, Mark Twain or god forbid the Quran. The interesting detail about the Patriot Act's "sneak and peak" clause is that it's been used much more frequently to snag drug dealers than locate Jihadists. So back to those weed dealer correspondences...
8) Because I Hate Personality Cults
A few weekends ago, I was walking down Crenshaw Blvd. in South Central Los Angeles and noticed a woman selling candles with Obama's face plastered on them, Virgin Mary style. I couldn't help but think how eerily reminiscent it was to Kim ll-sung. The same lady selling Saint Obama candles also had some First Lady earrings for $5 a pop. I'll pass. When Michelle's new bangs conjure up more talk in the African-American community than the National Defense Authorization Act, it's time to check the celebrity fan club. Personal brand narratives should be inconsequential when electing politicians and I would be embarrassed by any woman voting for Sarah Palin because her X chromosome genetic strain would provide role model status to young girls.
Obama has made war so acceptable to his loyal African-American supporters that when Lupe Fiasco argues otherwise in front of Hip-Hop crowds he's booed off stage. Remember when anti-war songs were cool in the black community? We can never forget Bob Marley's "War" or Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." Black people were right there in the front row waving their hands side to side. There was never a time where Renaldo "Obie" Benson of the Four Tops got booed off a stage when he asked why our government was sending kids overseas." In one era, Muhammad Ali could proudly be remembered saying:
"No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slave masters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end."
Fast forward 50 years later to find the famed boxer saluting the first black president at inaugural soirees. Nowadays anyone who dares sell out by speaking up against Obama's imperial violence, from Cornel West to Tavis Smiley, are immediately shunned by the same community that is rarely even referenced by their beloved president. This is the same community that once rallied in New York on April 4, 1967 with tearful eyes listening to Dr. King's anti-Vietnam War speech, "A Time to Break Silence."
Tragically, our president could bomb Uganda off the map and those who have created a fictive kinship with the first family would get more riled up if they found out Barack was cheating on Michelle with a white woman. There is something diabolical about a black man who refuses to speak on direct issues related to the black community from the Jim Crow neo-slavery prison industrial complex, police brutality, Troy Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal and disproportionate black unemployment levels because his family's melanin content alone is deemed sufficient. I guess you can't expect much more from a president that admires Reagan, the man responsible for the iconic "black welfare queen."
Cynthia McKinney calls Obama "the more effective of the two evils" perhaps because he can encourage extra judicial killings all too familiar to the African-American community and still win hearts by belting out a rendition of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." Unlike backing gay marriage for the LGBT community, birth control for Women and The Dream Act for Latinos, he doesn't need to worry about offering one piece of legislation directly targeting African Americans because he knows he has that vote by design. He can woo Harlem fundraisers through vocal chords, then revert back to telling the black man uptown if he wants anything changed he should "take off his house slippers." Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass would be so proud.
Jill Stein may not sing love songs from the 70's, have a fashion savvy husband or chill with Oprah Winfrey, but legislation that directly affects me, my community and my sisters around the globe is far too important to vote for voyeurism over policy. I rather a white woman that fights on behalf of the black community, than a black man who has statistically paid less attention to race in Executive Orders and podium appearances, than John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
*****
When you cast a ballot for either corporate binary it's inevitable that you're voting in the interests of Goldman Sachs, DynCorp, Exxon Mobil and Monsanto. As both Democrats and Republicans continue to loot the U.S Treasury to fund armed forces, expand indefinite detention to ordinary U.S. citizens, nonsensically send billions of our tax dollars to corrupt foreign governments while forcing the elderly to work cash registers at K-Mart clutching defibrillators, there will be alternatively only one party left to choose from.
Hillary won't get my vote in 2016. I'm not riding the donkey anymore.
6) Because You Tilt at Windmills
"Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless." ~ Miguel de Cervantes
What both parties keep shielded from the American public is that neither the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda own a single armored tank, let alone F-22 frequent flier mileage. Jihadists are often goat herders who reside in dirt huts with no voltage. Their lack of electronic sophistication was transparent upon a glimpse into the King of Al-Qaeda's "lap of luxury." Homeboy looked like he could only get reception via tin foil on the antennas of his compound's 80's style TV. Bin Laden's constituents haven't mastered basic air travel, what are they going to do, ride their camels across the Atlantic Ocean to institute Sharia Law? In case everyone failed to notice, they had to hijack our planes for 9/11, so wouldn't a better plan of self-preservation simply be keeping them off flights headed this way? Apparently not, because you see these guys have the combined IQ's of Ghazali and Khaldoun and the military tactics of Saladin. This is why wardens are too terrified to have them transferred from Guantanamo to federal prison because unbeknownst to science, The Students and The Base have metal springs in their feet so they can jump over 100 ft high electrical fences. They can pass through walls by melting underneath doors then reforming on the other side. And don't let them touch you with a Quran or you'll instantly turn to stone, then crack. Mass propaganda has transformed these non-tech savvy nomads into the Voldemorts of the world actually capable of inciting an American holocaust of Third Reich proportions. Over the past 11 years there hasn't been a single attempt by a Jihadists to sneak a bomb onto a plane from one U.S. city to another (CIA false flags don't count) while polls show the majority of Afghans didn't even know what "America" was until we started blowing up their neighborhoods.
More recently, Obama authorized millions of dollars to be sent across the globe to support the Yemeni military, even amidst our country at 10% unemployment, 650,000 estimated homeless and 40 million children not receiving adequate nourishment. Our government cut off heat subsidies for the poor in 2011, closed mental health clinics and cut funding for domestic violence shelters, but suddenly has a Carte blanche to bankroll a third world's counter-terrorism operations because one underwear bomber hailed from the region. Yes we must defend destitute Americans from the threat of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula living in one of the driest, poorest and least developed country in the world. Patriotism is all about cutting safety nets then assuring the people who need them that our government loves them so much they will be protected from Salafism.
Thank you President Obama for defending us from our 1 in 1 billionth chance of becoming victim to Yemeni terrorism - and continuing to funnel money away from struggling Americans for DARPA's Vulture Program so we can have futuristic war robots - while the Soup Kitchen down the block is having another coat drive. Regardless of if you're a fan of doing the impossible extermination of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Mujahideen and anyone wearing a burka, the war against "terror" has statistically been completely counterproductive to that goal. Several years ago there were only about 150 members of AQAP. After ongoing strikes from drones, tomahawk missiles and cluster bombs there are currently 1500 members. How can Obama sophists contend this is a "smart war" or a "war of attrition" when playing Whac-a-Mole on the bad guys is doubling their membership exponentially? The misguided War on Terror has been the most dim-witted battle since the domino theory days. It's like a war on acne and the more you pick and squeeze the more depressing your pimple problem becomes.
We torture Osama's Egyptian friends, he blows up East African U.S embassies, we bomb anti-malarial drug producing pharmacies in Sudan and then act surprised when Al-Qaeda starts issuing "America Die" manifestos. Confucius once said "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Our target countries practices the same Code of Hammurabi as the rest of us - an eye for an eye and the Twin Towers die. Unfortunately, we're not all as mature as Sweden who handled the 2010 Stockholm Bombings by simply stepping up their self-defense, which according to our Castle Laws, happens at home.
7) Because My Entire Life History is Stored on a Super Computer in Utah
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." The Fourth Amendment
The majority of Obama's loyal supporters have no clue that he's ordered AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to systematically turn over their customers' personal correspondence. Somewhere near the Church of Latter Day Saints, there is a mega computer that has access to every single e-mail/text you've ever sent your friends, co-workers or weed dealer. Most simply brush it off as "Well I'm not planning a suicide bomb mission so who cares" but this invasion of privacy has very little to do with 72 Virgins. These correspondences have been handed over to NSA, FBI, CIA and every other government acronym who is now privy to any naked photo you've ever sent a lover, perhaps a note telling a friend you cheated on your taxes, psychiatric records that could deny you future government job opportunities and whether you have a library book check-out preference for J.D Salinger, Mark Twain or god forbid the Quran. The interesting detail about the Patriot Act's "sneak and peak" clause is that it's been used much more frequently to snag drug dealers than locate Jihadists. So back to those weed dealer correspondences...
8) Because I Hate Personality Cults
A few weekends ago, I was walking down Crenshaw Blvd. in South Central Los Angeles and noticed a woman selling candles with Obama's face plastered on them, Virgin Mary style. I couldn't help but think how eerily reminiscent it was to Kim ll-sung. The same lady selling Saint Obama candles also had some First Lady earrings for $5 a pop. I'll pass. When Michelle's new bangs conjure up more talk in the African-American community than the National Defense Authorization Act, it's time to check the celebrity fan club. Personal brand narratives should be inconsequential when electing politicians and I would be embarrassed by any woman voting for Sarah Palin because her X chromosome genetic strain would provide role model status to young girls.
Obama has made war so acceptable to his loyal African-American supporters that when Lupe Fiasco argues otherwise in front of Hip-Hop crowds he's booed off stage. Remember when anti-war songs were cool in the black community? We can never forget Bob Marley's "War" or Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." Black people were right there in the front row waving their hands side to side. There was never a time where Renaldo "Obie" Benson of the Four Tops got booed off a stage when he asked why our government was sending kids overseas." In one era, Muhammad Ali could proudly be remembered saying:
Fast forward 50 years later to find the famed boxer saluting the first black president at inaugural soirees. Nowadays anyone who dares sell out by speaking up against Obama's imperial violence, from Cornel West to Tavis Smiley, are immediately shunned by the same community that is rarely even referenced by their beloved president. This is the same community that once rallied in New York on April 4, 1967 with tearful eyes listening to Dr. King's anti-Vietnam War speech, "A Time to Break Silence."
Tragically, our president could bomb Uganda off the map and those who have created a fictive kinship with the first family would get more riled up if they found out Barack was cheating on Michelle with a white woman. There is something diabolical about a black man who refuses to speak on direct issues related to the black community from the Jim Crow neo-slavery prison industrial complex, police brutality, Troy Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal and disproportionate black unemployment levels because his family's melanin content alone is deemed sufficient. I guess you can't expect much more from a president that admires Reagan, the man responsible for the iconic "black welfare queen."
Cynthia McKinney calls Obama "the more effective of the two evils" perhaps because he can encourage extra judicial killings all too familiar to the African-American community and still win hearts by belting out a rendition of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." Unlike backing gay marriage for the LGBT community, birth control for Women and The Dream Act for Latinos, he doesn't need to worry about offering one piece of legislation directly targeting African Americans because he knows he has that vote by design. He can woo Harlem fundraisers through vocal chords, then revert back to telling the black man uptown if he wants anything changed he should "take off his house slippers." Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass would be so proud.
Jill Stein may not sing love songs from the 70's, have a fashion savvy husband or chill with Oprah Winfrey, but legislation that directly affects me, my community and my sisters around the globe is far too important to vote for voyeurism over policy. I rather a white woman that fights on behalf of the black community, than a black man who has statistically paid less attention to race in Executive Orders and podium appearances, than John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
*****
When you cast a ballot for either corporate binary it's inevitable that you're voting in the interests of Goldman Sachs, DynCorp, Exxon Mobil and Monsanto. As both Democrats and Republicans continue to loot the U.S Treasury to fund armed forces, expand indefinite detention to ordinary U.S. citizens, nonsensically send billions of our tax dollars to corrupt foreign governments while forcing the elderly to work cash registers at K-Mart clutching defibrillators, there will be alternatively only one party left to choose from.
Hillary won't get my vote in 2016. I'm not riding the donkey anymore.
