Sunday, bloody Sunday

Writing about a new Democratic president in The Nation, the late Howard Zinn wrote: "My object is not to denounce, but to clarify. It is important for American citizens to know exactly how far they can depend on the national government, and how much remains for them to do.... This government simply cannot be depended upon for vigorous initiatives. It will, however, respond to popular indignation and pressure." It was 1962, and he was referring to JFK....
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Bernie Kerik, Rudy Ghouliani’s skin-head familiar, has gotten four years! The beginnings of justice are always sweet. The judge said he upped the recommended sentence because the little thug had been chief of police and in line for a vital federal position (thanks, Rudy!), making his crimes particularly egregious. Hopefully, this is another nail in the coffin of Rudy’s ever-coy lust for political office, but probably no hindrance to the corporate harlotry that butters his bread today.
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The China Model for the Authoritarian Games is in full swing in Vancouver. Fences surround the silly “Flame”; more disturbingly, there are preemptory arrests of protestors; all fealty must be paid to the corporate-sponsored festival of spectatorship, and the media obliges with heart-rending tales of little athletes triumphing above the blah-blah-blah. (What intolerable egotistical monsters these people are!) And the Canadian taxpayers? Stiffed with the bill, of course. We dodged a bullet on that one when NYC "lost" the bid a couple of years back (our hookers ain't what they used to be, evidently). I never get tired of reminding people that the criminal International Olympic Committee was run for decades by fucking Franco’s minister of sports. If that doesn't say it all, nothing else does.

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The wages of fear.
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And the wages of rage? The Teabaggers Party, stinking of racist thuggery and white-riot nativism as it is -- reactionary populism is never pretty -- is made up of people just as angry as I am about the corruption that runs this country. Obamacrats -- nothing more than Clintonoids in sheep’s clothing, if not hapless Carterclones (for all his post-facto good works, Carter was a soft neocon in office, paving the way for the Reagan counterrevolution) –- have so missed the boat on this, and they are going to pay dearly for it. But who’s surprised they missed the boat? They're on another ship entirely, a big fat-cat cruiseship, mouthing liberal pleasantries and socially advanced cultural chitchat with enlightened plutocrats. I think the ship's named the SS Titanic.

Hope maybe a thing with feathers, but politics is a blood sport.