Crandolph’s Barbaric Yawp

The last post was #100.

How are we doing over here at Randolph Publishing?  Are we meeting your blog needs?  Are we infotaining and entermational?  Do tell.  Leave any feedback as comments to this post, or email me.

- Chris

Dear Flex Your Rights Supporter:

As you may already know, in response to the London terror attacks New
York City police began randomly searching bags of people entering the
subway system. You can read our response to this on our new Flex Your
Rights blog: http://www.flexyourrights.org/blog.

In the coming days and weeks it’s likely that similar policies will be
implemented in major cities around the county. As this happens, you can
stay updated on events and our response by checking the blog at
http://www.flexyourrights.org/blog or the bottom of our homepage at
http://www.flexyourrights.org.

BTW: We’ve been blogging for a few weeks now. In fact, we got a lot of
attention from our July 7th post about tweeked-out meth dealers
entitled "Is that a rocket in your trunk, or are you just happy to see me?"

So if you like our blog, please help us spread the word by linking to
it and forwarding it to your blogger friends.

Thanks for your support,

Steven Silverman
Executive Director

I’m going to post this dispatch from Jobs with Justice, even though they just end up supporting the very party which defeats labor from the inside year after year.  I’ll take them seriously when they don’t unquestioningly get out the vote for people who voted for NAFTA to begin with, but at least they’re on the right side of this issue:

If we don’t stop CAFTA this week, we will be stuck with a job-killing trade deal just like NAFTA.

  CAFTA—the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade
Agreement—would extend NAFTA’s disastrous job
loss, workers’ rights abuses and environmental damage
throughout Central America.

Your
U.S. representative needs to hear from you NOW. Urge him or her
to oppose CAFTA by calling this number toll-free:

1-800-718-1008

Tell your Representative:

“I strongly urge you to oppose
CAFTA. CAFTA is based on the failed NAFTA and will expand
NAFTA’s legacy of lost jobs, low wages and trampled
workers’ rights to six more countries.”

Just like NAFTA, CAFTA does not include meaningful
protections of workers’ rights—but it gives trade
breaks to countries that violate workers’ rights.
Highlight these points when you call your representative’s
office:

• CAFTA is based on the failed NAFTA, and it will expand
  NAFTA’s legacy of lost jobs, low wages and trampled
  workers’ rights to six more countries.

• Under NAFTA and other failed U.S. trade policies, the U.S.
  trade deficit reached a record $600 billion last year as
  American companies relocated to take advantage of lower wages,
  weaker worker and environmental protections and improved access
  to the U.S. market. Even companies that didn’t destroy
  jobs used the threat of leaving the United States to break union
  organizing drives and win concessions at the bargaining
  table.

• The NAFTA-related trade deficit cost U.S. workers nearly
  900,000 net jobs through 2002—and the trade deficit only
  has grown since then, despite predictions by NAFTA
  supporters in the 1990s that the agreement would generate
  trade surpluses for another 15 years.

We can’t afford another NAFTA. Please call your
representative now and urge him or her to oppose CAFTA.
Your U.S. representative needs to hear from you NOW. Urge him or
her to oppose CAFTA by calling this toll-free number:

1-800-718-1008

Thank you for working to stop another job-killing trade deal.

In solidarity,

Jobs with Justice
July 25, 2005

In 1970 the Canadian/American band Steppenwolf released a themed album titled Monster.  It was one of the first gatefold-covered ’70s concept albums, with a real concept running through all the tracks (unlike, say, Sgt. Pepper’s…), and the topic was politics.  The band had already tackled politics before in tracks like "The Ostrich" and "Don’t Step on the Grass, Sam" in between the other songs of groovy love and "heavy metal thunder." But this entire album was going to lay it out on the table, and whack the listener over the head with a message of social and economic liberalism.  It’s hard to imagine a mainstream band attempting this today, or even being capable of it.  (There was Rage Against the Machine, but who could understand them?  And had they just had a Top Ten hit on their previous album?)

The album leads off with the 9+ minute track "Monster - Suicide - America."  In theory this is a suite of 3 different songs, but I don’t imagine there are many people lifting the needle after the first 3 or 6 minutes.  It works as a whole song, and what a song!  It basically lays down a summarized history of the country and inspires the upcoming generation to do better with a stirring coda.  We can surmise that the Clintons and the Dubya were too into Fleetwood Mac (or cocaine) around this time to notice.

"Monster - Suicide - America" - John Kay and Jerry Edmonton, copyright 1969

Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope

Like good Christians some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands, to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And till the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end

While we bullied, stole and bought a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The Blue and Grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war was over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it’s a monster and will not obey

The spirit was freedom and justice
And its keepers seemed generous and kind
Its leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won’t pay it no mind
Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
Now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it’s all just an echo of what they’ve been told

Yeah, there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’

The cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin’ the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can’t understand
We don’t know how to mind our own business
‘Cause the whole world’s got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who’s the winner we can’t pay the cost

‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose
It’s got our heads into the noose
And it just sits there watchin’

American, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

American, where are you now
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster

I am weary of the fact that these Hunter S. Thompson words written when I was barely 1 year old have been valid my entire life:

"How many more of these goddam elections are we going to have to write off as lame but ‘regrettably necessary’ holding actions? And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?"

- from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72

… and with Leni Riefenstahl finally dead, who should film it?

That’s the only remaining question, all of the other answers supplied in such predictable fashion that I struggle to stay awake typing these very words.

In short, the leadership of the Democratic Party wants more war, more military spending and more aggressive recruitment [link to current DLC conference article], and they want it now.  Happy days are here again my ass!  In any other western democracy our two major parties would not be considered "centrist" or "center-right" or even "conservative."  In any other democracy people who advocate spending more than half of a federal budget on military expenditure, as well as the bombing and threatening of significant parts of the world, would rightly be considered dangerous far-right lunatics.  At least the Austrian neo-fascists advocate retaining a system of national healthcare; we don’t even get that much from our "centrists."

I’ll be posting as much of Hillary’s hatespeak tomorrow as I’ll be able to find, I’m sure that fresh from threatening Iran at the AIPAC lovefest she’ll be in rare form at the DLC conference.  How many more truly dastardly things does this creature have to advocate and vote for before liberal America scrapes the Hillary 2008 stickers off of their Volvos?

The entire premise of Clinton’s move to the right as paving the road to victory is a demonstrably faulty one.  In two elections, after 12 years of Republican misrule and then after 4 years of his own, Bill Clinton failed to win a majority of the popular vote (1992 figures, 1996 figures.)  Clinton wouldn’t have won without the H. Ross Perot candidacy, and Perot was likely the only reason that turnout "hovered" near 50%.  Perot energized some people to participate in the process who would otherwise have stayed cynical and stayed at home.  While I don’t agree with all of his politics, he seems to have a genuine concern about the future of the average American.  It’s a sad day when a billionaire has to be the lone advocate for avoiding NAFTA on the national stage because it would hurt the Average Joe American, yet this is what the two major parties fostered.  If the Nader and Buchanan candidacies are any gauge, a person isn’t even allowed to say that in a national debate unless they do have a billion dollars of their own money to spend.

In 2000, of course, born-again, pro-corporate Al Gore was able to barely nip Official National Buffoon George W. Bush when Bush stumbled though his cue cards like a learning disabled toddler.  When it came down to the Republicans outright stealing the election, and putting the ball in the Democrats’ court, the Dems naturally folded.  Winning the election already won owing to the cartoonishly laughable selection of Bush the Lesser for the top spot would’ve required a single Democratic senator standng up for the voting rights of dark people, and this is apparently too much to ask.  Why would a lot of southern African-Americans bother to turn out again if it amounts to nothing?  Of course even in this case Al Gore managed to lose every single southern state, even Mississippi (the only majority black state), even Tennessee (his home state), even Arkansas (Clinton’s home state).  This should be another indication to the Democratic true believer that a right-hand turn is a wrong one.

A rightward turn failed to crack the 50% mark for the Democrats again in 2004, with the general population that still bothers voting so turned off to the Democrats that they also somehow managed to lose 4 seats in the Senate and 2 in the House after 4 years of George W. Bush.  To some people this might suggest "we’ve taken a wrong turn" instead of "we need to push harder in the same direction."  This is the crux of my argument against the party; they’re not only sell-out weasels, they are bad at it.  Who is excited about voting for the JV Republicans?  Apparently a) people who receive direct payment in working for the party via jobs and favors, b) the terminally naive and c) those willing to cast a cynical vote for the least-worst, out of a weary sense of vague civic responsibility, having given up on the concept of voting for what one really wants.  This is no way to build a winning coalition.

And once you "win" on a right-wing platform, what have you "won?"  Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, NAFTA?  How about healthcare?  A living wage?  Clinton had actually set 5 consecutive all-time-high records in military spending, in some cases granting the Pentagon more money than they asked for (recent Bush military budgets, with over 95% of elected Democrats voting with him, have since surpassed that - good-fucking-bye Peace Dividend.)  Of course we bombed Serbia, the Sudan, a Chinese embassy (not to mention Waco, TX) and a whole lot more of Iraq in the Clinton era, while maintaing a massively lethal embargo on Iraq to boot.  An embargo which apparently was, in some twisted way, "worth it."  According to (actual) liberal economist Robert C. Pollin, even the touted economic performance of the Clinton years was an overstated bubble which widened the gap between rich and poor.  The fact that the prison population doubled under Bubba seems to support this notion.

That was the Clinton Experience for the average American - lowered expectations, taxes sent to Boeing and Honeywell instead of the local schools and hospitals, and quite possibly a stint in prison or the military.  How do Democratic true believers describe the Clinton years?  Astoundingly, without fail, the mantra is sounded as "EIGHT YEARS OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY."  Ronald Reagan would be proud.

If you want poor and struggling people to vote for you - and if the U.S. has anything these days, we have poor people - you have to offer them something.  America has not swung to the right; this has things ass-backwards.  American politicians and business leaders swung to the right, and haven’t given people who disagree a damn reason to bother voting.  Polling indicates that a majority of Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq and universal healthcare, just for starters.

The right-wing cranks can only peddle their hate on issues like gay marriage to rightist true believers who keep voting because they win… but they win through attrition.  Reasonable working class folk have simply stopped voting.

When you lose elections with, say, 55% turnout by, say, 3% of those people, might it not occur to you that you could pick that up from the 45% of the population who don’t bother?  On the whole they are a whole lot more reasonable than the half of the population who are motivated to vote by their current choices.   For the most part the non-voters tend to have more dire need of economic assistance from the government and tend to take a more live-and-let-live approach to social issues. Gaining these votes requires offering that 45% of the population - the people who get laid-off and still send their sons to die for oil, who would like to be able to smoke their pot in peace and not have their doors kicked in, whose kids need health insurance - a reason to bother, and when a party is putting moralizing corporate sycophant millionaires who want to send more sons to die out there as candidates, that simply ain’t gonna happen.

A majority of Americans still believe in fairness and, unless you scare the shit out of them for months on end, aren’t too jazzed about foreign war entanglements.  The Democratic Party has done nothing to promote fairness in economics or society at large for decades, and they’ve been in a competition to beat the war drum louder than the Republicans for 25 years.  That tends to make sensible voters cynical about the process, and I don’t blame them.  Most working people have an instinctual sense that neither party intends to help them improve their lot in life in any way; only liberal elites feel a need to lecture people that "their vote counts."  Of course even a cursory honest study of gerrymandering suggests that it probably really doesn’t most of the time.  Not without real alternatives at the ballot box and the long, hard road to rebuilding working class voter trust.  The very last thing that would rebuild that trust is having two Republican parties.  One thing that might work, if we can still salvage the nation at this point, would be a series of candidates who keep hammering away at the system with a real people’s platform, one based in economic security, guaranteed rights and a future that need not include war and prison for people not born into wealth.

The DLC is running in the other direction.

Sent earlier today:

—–

To the Editor:

One would hope that, by now, ‘alternative’ weeklies such as yours would have developed a healthy skepticism toward the motivations of the federal government in Iraq.  No such skepticism was evident in your glowing profile of Mike Flowers and his “rewarding” prosecution of Saddam Hussein.

The thinking person has to question the tactic of trying Hussein only for the “relatively minor incident” of his regime’s 1982 retaliatory killings in Dujail.  An obvious reason for the focus on this incident is that it did not directly involve chemical weapons nor inconvenient questions about where Iraq obtained them.  Similarly it does not involve allowing Hussein to speak in any relevant sense about western backing in his war of attrition against Iran, nor his meetings with Donald Rumsfeld, nor the elder Bush’s apparent green light to invade Kuwait.  In short, it is one of the few incidents which brands Hussein as a thug while allowing  our prosecution and a puppet judicial system to avoid the topic that he was our thug.

That the case involves the death penalty is also richly convenient; dead men tell no tales.

This is far from an academic discussion.  Hussein’s prosecution serves as cover and justification for an ongoing war for and occupation of the world’s second largest oil producing nation.  The United States has been instrumental in killing over one million Iraqis over the past decade and a half, the vast majority civilians, and Iraqis continue to die at the rate of as many as 35 per day.  Hussein himself would struggle to keep that pace in a “good” month.  Meanwhile Britain’s Christian Aid estimates some $8.8 billion of Iraq’s wealth has gone missing during our occupation, including an estimated $4 billion worth of crude oil exported from the country without as much as metering it.  This is looting on a scale that makes Saddam look like a street urchin pickpocket.

This leaves me scratching my head as to why you would report Flowers’ activity uncritically, going so far as to hint that he’s taking a major financial hit in the process.  Flowers is still very much a “highly paid white collar defense attorney,” in this particular case he is simply doing a hatchet job to cover the asses of past and current federal officials, including high-ranking members of the current Bush Administration.  He is quite well compensated compared to the teachers, cops and office workers who read your paper, and in fact his salary, room and board, transportation and security are being paid for with our taxes.  Effectively Flowers is being paid better than most out of our collective funds to pull the wool over our collective eyes.

I would not mind seeing you folks delve into these issues in future articles; any ‘alternative’ publication worth the title would.

Yours,

Chris Randolph

The Sanders-Paul House Joint Resolution I referred to positively some weeks ago in this blog failed, 86-338.  Republicans voted in favor of remaining in the WTO as is 185-39 with 6 non-voters and Democrats favored the same 153-46 with 2 non-voters and one absurd "present."

Thus we see the the dramatic difference between the two major parties on issues of labor, environment, national sovereignty, social justice and trade; the percentages willing to actively vote in favor of screwing the majority of the world’s people and undermining American sovereignty as reagrds labor, environmental and human rights in the service of international capital revealing an 80.4% (R) vs. 75.7% (D) split.  "Vive la difference!"

Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA), a union man no less, naturally did the will of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the world’s rich and powerful like a good soldier and voted in favor of the established socio-economic order.

… and the 1 voting against was a Republican, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma!  Beyond mere "loyal opposition," the Democrats are proving themselves to be more loyal to Bush on these matters than his own party.  Of the 535 members of Congress, the only 2 to vote against FY 2006 appropriations for America’s new Stasi have been western Republican conservatives with an honest instinct for personal freedom.

"We all really have to get  beyond flaming on the internet and get down to the left and right settling differences  with bare knuckles. And I’m dead serious about
being willing to fight the guy. I speak for
no one but myself, but I am fed up with wingnut
hostility, threats and garbage like permits to hunt liberals and have no moral qualms about taking out my frustrations on a wingnut given to fantasizing about beating people into unconsciousness, just to give
him a chance to make his dreams, theoretically
anyway, come true. I owe it to 1,700 dead US servicemen and thousands of dead Iraqis
to pummel the hell out of at least one lying-assed
right wing scumbag. …"

With this tirade the lefty web presence known as Rev. Mykeru calls out a habitually physically theatening right wing net presence named Steve Crager, who in typical Yellow Elephant fashion refuses to show.

The problem with the Yellow Elephant campaign, of course. is that it limits the hypocrisy of volunteering poor kids to do your fighting to the Republican Party and its members.  Anyone who works to elect Democrats who want and wanted to send additional divisions into Iraq and Afghanistan to "do the job right" and isn’t lining up at their recruiting office or sending their own children into harm’s way is, in fairness, equally open to the same criticism.