Tag Archives: Obama

President Obama Declares His Support for Gay Marriage

by Cimaxion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvgJEYuKPyc
 
Well there you go! I knew there was a reason to be proud of our president. Obama today declared his support for gay marriage during an ABC news television interview. He is the first president ever to do so. It has taken him some time and he has decided to do it going into his reelection campaign. Good for him! I think I like him again!
 
At a time when the simpletons of North Carolina have decided to amend their state constitution to ban all marriages except those between a man and a woman because ‘God’ says that’s the way it should be, this president’s declaration of support rings out like a call to civilization, human dignity and simple common sense.
 
There’s a huge swath of our U.S. population cheerfully lining up to be the idiots of history – those people you will eventually see in historic photos displaying their blind range at the very thought of respecting the civil rights of others. Remember all those dead-eyed, raging lunatics in the 50s and 60s who stood in drooling protest against school integration? Remember them? Well they haven’t gone anywhere. Those idiots are still with us in the form of ‘religious’ folk who simply must ‘protect’ marriage from people who love each other and want to spend their lives together. History does not treat bigots very well.
 
Of course Vice President Biden must get enormous credit for declaring his own support for gay marriage just several days ago. His remarks created a shit storm for everyone else just the way they should have.
 
Barack Obama and Joseph Biden just got themselves another campaign donation from me.
 

President Obama Begins Indefinite Detention and Turns U.S. Military Against Americans

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

On New Year’s Eve, while few were paying attention, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill which authorizes the military to investigate and indefinitely detain any American citizen that the President chooses. It is now the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a Democratic president, that you can be identified as a possible terrorist and put into the hands of the military without any communication with the outside world – including attorneys, family, friends, or journalists. The military can then hold you without hearings or trials of any kind for the rest of your life if they so choose.

This is probably the single most frightening legislative act ever undertaken by an American Congress or president. The idea that a president could even remotely consider signing such a draconian and unconstitutional bill into law would never have occurred to me even during the Bush administration. The fact that the first black president in U.S. history is also the first president to turn his military against his own people should bring us all to tears of rage. I voted for this president. I donated to his campaign. For these things, I am now deeply ashamed. This is not a president that brings hope. This is not a man who represents to voters who he really is. This is not a man that I can ever vote for – no matter who the opponent is. Because ultimately, regardless of who Obama’s opponent turns out to be, that person will not have been involved with this law. That person will not have been a person who voted to turn the U.S. military against Americans. That person will not have enacted a law that would fit perfectly into the books of any tin pot dictatorship across the globe. In fact, nearly every dictatorship or authoritarian government worldwide has exactly this law on their books. All dictatorships need this law in order to pick up citizens who dissent and put them away in secret places – or kill them.

I don’t like Ron Paul because I think he’s probably a racist and a homophobe, but he’s angry about this law and he was one of the very few who voted against it. Seems reasonable to me. Let me put it this way: No president who signs a law like this should ever be reelected. Any opponent is preferable by a very wide margin. I hate myself for saying this because I have voted for Democrats all my life. But this is a presidential betrayal of the highest order. Worse, it is a governmental betrayal. Its magnitude is so great that it calls into question our ability to manage a democratic system. It weakens the very foundations of everything we have assumed and trusted about our system. It is an abysmal and terrifying start for the new year.

The ACLU says this about the law:

The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

No American citizen can allow the U.S. military to take them into custody. And therein lies the real problem. If Americans find that they have no governmental or legal recourse to prevent their arbitrary abduction, arrest or ‘detainment’ by the military, then they have only one possible option left. That would be armed resistance against the U.S. military. What would you do if your son or daughter disappeared into a military prison without any trial? What if all three branches of government agreed that it was just fine to make Americans vanish without trial? With the current climate surrounding the Supreme Court this could certainly happen. What if a president began using this power to make troublesome people or political opponents vanish? What would your option be?

Your option and the option of great numbers of other frightened Americans would be something resembling armed resistance. Eventually, Americans would start killing U.S. military personnel. Soldiers who jumped out of vans to snatch Americans off streets would be shot to death by people defending themselves. This would be justified. In any democracy it would be legal self defense. In a country where the military has been turned against the citizens it becomes justifiable and necessary to kill military personnel while still firmly supporting the nation and its Constitutional basis. This is the unthinkable potential situation created by President Obama and our Congress.

Obama has signed a law that operates outside of the Constitution which guarantees due process to all American citizens. We are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. Obama, the House of Representatives and the Senate do not want that to be the case anymore. They are eliminating that fundamental Constitutional protection. This is a violent and dangerous act against freedom and the American people.

Obama has signed a law which now makes every member of the military a potential threat to every American citizen at home and abroad. You must remember that nothing in this bill requires anyone to prove that a detainee is a terrorist. Since no lawyers or courts are involved no one actually needs to prove anything. The law will simply be used to arrest and hold anyone of the President’s choosing for any reason of the President’s choosing.

A journalist could be detained by the military because the President asserts that the journalist wrote something suspicious in a newspaper article. We may never hear from that journalist again.

Think very carefully about this the next time you watch your troops celebrating Thanksgiving during an NFL broadcast. Those smiling, turkey-eating troops now have the power to march into your house, throw you into a canvas bag and take you to a cinder block cell where no one will ever hear from you again. That’s no exaggeration. What do you think ‘indefinite detention’ means?

The President signed this bill into law with his own little attachment to it – a statement. He claims to have significant issues with the detention provisions. He promises that his administration will never use those provisions to detain Americans. He ‘promises.’ But of course he signs the law. He takes the power. But he wants us all to feel a little better about it because he promises he really won’t use it. This is one creepy little bullshitter if I ever saw one.

Obama has lost all my admiration, my support, my money, and my vote. I will vote for anyone else. Anyone. I don’t care if it’s a Republican. I don’t care if the person can’t read, write, or do arithmetic. The bottom line is that whoever that person is, he or she won’t be Obama. Recall elections should be held to try to remove Senators and Representatives who voted for this bill. I am personally voting for a Democratic primary opponent to my current Representative who voted for this law. People who pose as liberals – like Al Franken – should be removed. The very idea of a liberal Democrat voting for this terrifies me. It really means that we are running out of options. Someone is so interested in gaining this power of indefinite detention that they are willing and able to get everyone working in concert for it. They have totally overcome the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans… liberals and conservatives.

Obama has seized the single most important legal power underlying all dictatorships and authoritarian governments: the power to make people disappear.

Here’s an interesting Russia Times America report on the bill from early December 2011:

Wikileaks is Fighting World’s First True Information War

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

The United States government is attempting to physically destroy the Wikileaks organization.  The ‘Cablegate’ release of diplomatic communications has begun to reveal that Western democracies maintain shadow governments that are outside the reach of their electorates.  They appear to have a system in place that is not subject to the outcomes of elections.  For me, that is the main thing suggested by the leaks.

The Obama administration is fully engaged in a very serious information war that threatens to turn the public eye toward the inner workings of a government sliding very quickly toward a new form of corporate/government fascism.  The obvious connection between government, corporations, and the military is now under public scrutiny as we watch officials tell companies like Amazon and Paypal to cut off the Wikileaks operations.  A democratic superpower is influencing, through threats or friendly suggestion, the behavior of companies that are enormously powerful on the Internet.  It has become clear that we absolutely cannot expect any form of free expression to exist where Amazon or Paypal are concerned.  The fact that Amazon controls most of the book trade in the U.S. is an emergency and should ultimately result in a move toward a more open source form of book selling.  I would not want to be in the position of trying to sell a book on Amazon that contained thorough investigative reporting on U.S. government secrets or corruption.  One call from Joseph Lieberman could shut everything down for my book.

The important thing about the Wikileaks is that they change journalism.  They open a deep wound in the side of government that bleeds secrets, incompetence and corruption.  The wound will continue to bleed because there will always be someone willing to leak the information.  It’s simple human nature.  There will always be a place to send that information and there will always be journalists to sift through it and print it for us to read.  If this Wikileaks is killed, another will pop up.

Wikileaks is nothing more than a reporter sitting at a desk answering the phone and taking notes from a confidential source.  Wikileaks is a reporter.  President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have openly declared themselves to be extremely dangerous enemies of a free press.  They have already begun threatening university students who try to download or link to the Wikileaks data (the data is here, by  the way).  They will stop at nothing to end Wikileaks.  We should be prepared for this.  They will stop at absolutely nothing.  Just wait for the leak.  Then you’ll know.

Here’s an excellent article by John Naughton at the Guardian Newspaper about how governments now must either live with open access to information or try to shut down the net.

Obama Orders Touching of Genitals Nationwide

by Cimaxion

Mature Content – Language

When was it you realized that Americans had unwittingly elected a horrible president?  Was it when he decided to cover up photographic evidence of systematic atrocities by U.S. troops?  Was it when he took tax money to buy General Motors?  Was it when he decided to continue an illegal war of aggression against Iraq?  Was it when he decided to continue a Vietnam-like quagmire in Afghanistan?  Was it when he decided that he would let British Petroleum defecate into his mouth?  Was it when he began to falsify scientific research data about the water in the Gulf?  Was it when he decided that he could constitutionally force every American citizen to purchase health insurance from brutally self-interested corporations?  Was it when he decided to use the power of his office to forcefully defend the military’s anti-gay bigotry and discrimination?

Or was it when he ordered his Homeland Security employees to stick their fingers into your genitals if you decide not to allow the government to blast you with x-rays in a ‘full body scan?’

President Barack Obama has finally positioned himself, uniquely among modern presidents I think, so that actual physical resistance to a presidential order is not only logical but morally imperative.

The Transportation Security Administration is installing full body scan machines that use x-rays in airports across the nation.  If you refuse to be photographed naked and dosed with x-rays that many scientists are very worried about, the TSA will force you to accept a physical ‘pat down’ that involves the probing and touching of your penis, vagina, breasts, and buttocks.  In one airport, a woman’s blouse was removed in full public view to expose her bare breasts.  Nearby agents then taunted and mocked her for several minutes as she tried to regain her composure and escape the area.  This is a full-blown sexual assault that warrants a full physical response in self-defense, followed by prosecution of the TSA agents involved.

Why not just go through the full body scan machine?  Because it photographs you naked.  The TSA and the manufacturers have continually asserted that the machines cannot store images.  But they have been proven repeatedly to be lying about this and thousands of the nude photos have been stored by the machines.  Think about it.  Would you build a scanning machine that could not save the photograph showing a bomb strapped to someone’s butt?  Don’t you think you might need that photo in a courtroom trial at some point?  Of course the machines store images.  Only an idiot would think otherwise.  They also shoot radiation all over your body.  The pilots’ union is very nervous about this and wants pilots exempted from the machines.  Scientists are weighing in to say that the radiation can have long-term effects on the human body.  This is scary enough.  But stop to think about how these machines will sit in airports and be tended to by dimwits earning minimum wage.  Are we to expect these crotch-grabbing imbeciles to keep sophisticated x-ray machines in proper adjustment?  Will it take a baby getting barbecued in one of these things to wake people up?

Yet, the TSA asserts that it has the right to pursue incredible monetary damages against you if you refuse the full body scan and the genital touching procedure.  They can come after you even after they make you miss your flight and leave the airport.  Shocking.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals actually upheld this civil penalty right.

We are far down the rabbit hole when a person, who doesn’t want to risk his or her health to x-ray radiation managed by low-level government employees, cannot reasonably refuse having their genitals and breasts touched without being turned into a criminal and put at risk of at least a ten thousand dollar penalty.

These TSA people can feel the genitals of children also.  There’s no protection.  You think this is pretty bad?  Well it gets worse.  They can also go inside your pants.  If the agent decides that your clothing is a little too loose, they can go inside to feel your private parts.  They can do it to children.

If some dude in an airport touches my special Christmas package, I’m going to put his head on the floor.  I think anyone else should do just the same.

Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, insists that the new procedures are necessary to thwart terrorist threats.  Bullshit.  These x-ray machines that they are trying to zap us with come from a company that employs the former Secretary of Homeland Security.  Sound odd?

November 24, 2010 is National Opt-Out Day.  People going through security at American airports are encouraged and expected to resist the governmental assault on freedom from unreasonable search – to resist being dosed with radiation and groped in the groin.  I frankly hope that Opt-Out Day turns into a real nightmare for the TSA and for airlines.  Thousands of people refusing to be assaulted by government goons will jam up airport lobbies very quickly.  Flights will be delayed.  Passengers will be asking for refunds.  The airlines will react with anger on Capitol Hill.

Terrorists don’t have to blow up airplanes.  Why are we allowing ourselves to be victimized at airports?  Terrorists can just as easily climb onto trains or buses and blow them up.  Will the TSA start touching our penises and vaginas at train stations and bus depots?  Why wouldn’t they?

On November 24 American air travelers need to stop pretending to be mild sheep in their own airports.  Have you ever noticed how when we set foot in an airport we suddenly become Mr. and Mrs. Proper?  We behave as if we are all the most casual of normal harmless little people without the least tendency toward even the slightest outburst.  We take it up the ass because we are all told to behave in just a certain way or we’ll be arrested.  It’s a waste of energy to worry too much about terrorists.  What air travelers should be more worried about is inattentive airline mechanics down on the tarmac.  That’s where the real damage is done.  Incompetence is far more dangerous than terrorism.

Americans have punched the idiot Obama hard in the face with the recent election results.  They can do it again by punching gropers.  ‘Touch my kid’s crotch and I’ll stick my fist down your throat.’  That’s the proper response.

One suggestion I have for our smiling President is that he should offer to demonstrate the new ‘pat down’ procedure on Secretary Napolitano.  He could reach those long slender fingers of his down into her business pants, lift a roll or two of fat out of the way, and give the Secretary a good finger job for national security.  We’d all be watching.

We all have a right to travel freely in this country without being subjected to dangerous radiation or getting groped.  We have shown our crappy politicians what our anger can do in the recent mid-term elections.  On November 24 let’s show them again.

Update 11/18: New York lawmakers are introducing legislation to prohibit the TSA from using the nude full body scanners at all airports in the state, including JFK, the largest international airport in the country.

Obama Has Ignored His Basic Responsibility to Protect the United States

by Editor

President Barack Obama has failed to uphold the primary duty of the President of the United States, which is to protect it from physical harm. This president has inexplicably ignored his responsibilities and has turned over a planetary mega-disaster to the foreign oil company that caused the disaster. The total reliance upon a company that has proven itself incapable of planning for problems with underwater oil wells is an abdication of responsibility, a total loss of control and a political nightmare that will effectively end the Obama presidency. If you are a Democrat, as I am, you had better watch the video below. When James Carville, one of the great Democrats and political strategists of the 20th century screams at you this way, with this much anger and this much disbelief, you are a lame-duck president. Doesn’t matter how well you smile. Watch:

Carville is on the money.  Obama should have immediately recognized that this hole in the Gulf is a very bad Chernobyl-level disaster that is going to wipe out the southern coast of the United States and possibly kill most life in the Gulf of Mexico.  He should have set up an emergency command center in Louisiana at which he was present and he should have put the military at the site of the disaster so that they could use cameras and submarines to keep an eye on what British Petroleum was doing at the well head.  There is no reason to believe what BP is telling the U.S. government.  There is no reason to believe that they are actually trying a ‘top-kill’ procedure.  There is no visual evidence of this and the U.S. military would be able to verify or refute the company’s claims.

The BP oil spill is a Chernobyl-level disaster.  It is ongoing and will kill enormous stretches of coastline and turn large portions of the Gulf into dead zones.  It will also kill human beings.  BP is putting people out into poisonous waters without any Hazmat breathing gear.  Those people are starting to get sick already.  The poisons can destroy brain tissue and apparently damage lungs.

Fisherman hired to help clean up are getting sick from chemicals at oil spill:

President Obama has failed to put sufficient resources along the coasts to help with cleanup. Instead, he maneuvers politically by sending 1,200 National Guard troops to help ‘protect’ the border in Arizona when everyone knows that those troops cannot do anything at all but stand around and drink coffee. It is not legal for them to arrest anyone crossing the border and they are not authorized to do so. But they could certainly help down in Louisiana with oil.

Obama has decided to visit the area on Friday. So he can have a look. Why doesn’t he put his head into the thick sloppy goop that will be surrounding his boat. When he comes up he’ll be a well-oiled president machine.

This is a very weak president.  He does not have the ability to move quickly – in real time – during an extended crisis.  It is appalling that he has not been able to overcome his inertia over the course of an entire month of unfolding disaster.  If I were an enemy of the United States, I would be paying very close attention to what is going on here and make my move right about now.  Like North Korea.

What we find out later about this oil spill will make today’s anger seem mild.  Never again will I be misled by a politician who paints himself as a hero to the people.  Never.  We were all so excited about having a woman candidate in the primaries and a black candidate in the presidential election.  But those things really aren’t important enough.  We feel proud for electing the nation’s first black president but look what it got us.  It got us a corporate middle manager who gives billions to Wall Street friends, turns healthcare reform into a windfall for the insurance companies, continues two useless and expensive wars, continues to hold people in prisons without charges, and cannot figure out how to take control during a horrendous man-made disaster.

President Obama Using Military to Threaten Journalists Covering Gulf Oil Spill

by Editor | 2 Comments

The President of the United States is actively using United States military forces to threaten journalists who are trying to document the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. Coast Guard officers working with BP officials threatened CBS reporters with arrest for photographing an oil-fouled shoreline. A Coast Guard officer says, ‘These are BP’s rules. These are not our rules.’

This is simply horrifying.  The Obama presidency has ended.  I’m a lifelong Democrat and I’m frightened of this guy.  I want him out and out fast.  Any president who uses the U.S. military to threaten and harass journalists needs to be removed from office instantly.  It’s criminal behavior.  Our military is now apparently answering to British Petroleum in the Gulf region.

There are increasing reports coming out of Louisiana that cell phones and cameras are being confiscated and that scientists and research equipment are being turned away from trying to investigate the spill in public lands.

It is beginning to look as if the Obama administration, along with BP, is engaged in a massive cover-up of Gulf oil spill information.

Obama and FCC Give Full Remote Control of Your TV Hardware to Corporations

by Editor

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Federal Communications Commission have given media corporations the legal power to remotely disable functions and outputs in your television, DVD players, and content receivers. This decision means that when you buy equipment it will have a shut-off and control mechanism built into it allowing Warner Brothers or Disney to flip a switch that will turn off various parts of your equipment so that you cannot do certain things with what you are watching. A lot of equipment currently sitting in American households already has this circuitry built in and now it can be activated by the entertainment companies.  The Obama administration is going after more than television equipment though.  It’s putting this control stuff into computers and operating systems.

This is a new form of fascism.  Corporate fascism.  When the government allows total control of what the population is allowed to do with its own media equipment and content you have in place all the machinery of totalitarian control of expression, both artistic and journalistic.

Smash your TV and throw it over the fence onto the White House lawn.  Better yet, open Obama’s mouth up wide and shove your TV down his throat.  I’ve had just about enough of this corporate-owned jerk in the White House who is more concerned about finding his cigarettes than saving the Gulf of Mexico from an outrageous act of ‘accidental’ terrorism by British Petroleum.  Obama should have a swim in the new Gulf.  The man who vowed to stop all the secret torture and military clown tribunals and needless wars has inflicted more grotesque harm in these areas than his monkey-brained predecessor.  Obama’s teeth drip baby blood.  He’s a human predator drone.  And now he’s disabling our televisions sets.

No media company is going to shut off part of my television, I can tell you that now.  I don’t give a damn what President O says.  He’s done in 2012.  It doesn’t matter who runs against this nitwit in 2012.  I’m voting for them.  I’m too angry to give a crap anymore.  Let’s give Hillary a shot.

See, you don’t need a tea party to be angry about a guy who steals for Wall Street.  You can do it all by yourself.

Obama Signs Healthcare Bill – Big Fu*king Deal

by Editor

I’m for health care reform because I’m about as liberal as one can get. I would never in a million elections consider voting for a Republican candidate for any office whatsoever.  But I also have a nasty habit of biting off the political hand that feeds me and then spitting it back.  I’ve seen the rock-bottom brutal racism and stupidity of the healthcare reform opponents and the Tea Party protesters who look to me exactly like Ku Klux Klan members.  I think they need white hoods to go along with all their racial epithets and homophobic remarks.  The fact is that the United States desperately needs some kind of health reform to reign in the murderous insurance companies and protect all people, not just those who make lots of money and can afford absurdly priced, flimsy medical coverage.  Now that I’ve said that, I will also say that this country also needs a vice president who does not say ‘it’s a big fu*king deal’ on television in front of the world with his arms around the President.  His remark is shameful and not in slightest bit funny.  It put his president in an uncomfortable position during an important and historical moment.  Obama should have asked him to kindly leave the room.  Biden is a liability and needs to be dropped from the ticket in 2012.  He will be.  Watch.  All Republican campaign commercials will now feature Joe Biden saying ‘Big Fu*king Deal.’

As for the health reform law, I think it is obviously unconstitutional.  There.  I’ve said it.  I will be rejected by most of my friends now, but it’s the simple unavoidable truth.  The law’s central requirement that all Americans buy health insurance from private companies is ludicrous and will be quickly rejected by the United States Supreme Court.  Already, fourteen states have filed a lawsuit declaring the law an infringement of states’ rights.  They are correct.  Taxing Americans in order to cover them through a public policy is one thing.  But forcing them to give money to insurance companies that routinely murder people by withdrawing medicine from them is an entirely different matter.  I think Democrats are in a frenzy of forced celebration over a victory they know is somewhat temporary.  A conservative Supreme Court is going to dismantle this thing in a hurry.  The federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce does not give it the power to force people to engage in that commerce in the first place.  If I don’t want to buy something, I don’t have to buy it.  Certainly, we are all obligated to buy car insurance if we drive.  But we choose to drive.  We are free to not drive and not buy car insurance.  But the health reform law forces Americans to pay corporations… for being alive at all.

Obama did not have the courage to push a public insurance option through.  He made a deal with Murder Incorporated and he is going to pay a very steep price for this mistake.  A reform bill without public insurance coverage should have simply forced the insurance companies into strict codes of behavior.  It should not have forced every single U.S. citizen to hand cash over to these horrendous people.  No way.  It’s actually pretty shocking to see this happening during a Democratic administration.  The plan is actually this: to have Internal Revenue Service agents investigate people who don’t buy insurance and to levy penalties upon them.  That’s like a government penalty for not buying your tires at Sears.

It is not necessary to argue about the reform bill anymore.  It is law now.  But I can predict that no law requiring private medical insurance coverage is going to be on the books in two years’ time.

Obama Wants Our Money for Insurance Companies Just in Time for Christmas

by Editor

Hey man, I’m a lifelong Democrat and I have always voted for liberal causes and I truly believe that we suffered under 8 years of despotic rule by an unintelligent baboon of a criminal in George Bush.  But I think we got taken and voted for an insurance salesman in 2008.  President Obama has done exactly four major things since taking office: He’s given billions of dollars to his friends on Wall Street.  He’s bought a crappy car manufacturer.  He’s protected torturers in the U.S. military and Bush administration from prosecution.  He’s steadfastly refused to lead the world in emissions controls.

And now he is trying to take our money and give it to his friends in the health insurance industry.

When this man ran for office he sounded like a voice of the people – of the less advantaged.  Apparently, that is easy to fake.  He now wants a health reform bill in which every American citizen is required by law to purchase health insurance from… get this… a private insurance company!  The very companies that kill babies by refusing to cover them!  The very companies that charge huge amounts of money for coverage and then yank it out from under you as soon as you get sick.  Those companies!  This a-hole of a president wants to make us criminals if we don’t give these people our money to purchase their scam health insurance policies.  You’ve got to be joking me!  Right?  He’s serious!  He’s limp-wristedly telling all of us that this health care reform bill is better than no bill at all.  Rubbish.  He’s a jerk and he will not be reelected under any circumstances.  When a Democratic president loses people like me, man I gotta be honest with you, he’s in deep doodoo.  There’s no coming back from that.  I’m offended, disappointed, disgusted, angry… and I’m looking for a new candidate.  Possibly a new political party.  The Democrats equal Joe Lieberman – shifty, fraudulent, elitist, and wholly owned by corporate business interests.

Here’s our jerk in chief talking about how there must be a public option for health insurance just several months ago!

Message to President Obama: Pack your things.

Opinion Piece: Obama’s Own Images Influence Healthcare Protest Images

by Editor

The controversy over President Obama’s health care reform effort is becoming dangerously angry. Groups consisting almost entirely of white conservatives are agitated about the possibility of legislation that creates new rules for health insurers and establishes some sort of public government-run coverage for those who want or need it. I’ve seen the footage of screaming and shoving at the town hall debates. I’ve seen the footage of the raging white guy snatching the poster of Rosa Parks from the black woman and tearing it to shreds while the white audience applauds his shocking act. I’ve seen the protest signs showing Obama transformed into Hitler. I’ve seen the people holding up swastikas. There’s a lot of rage and alarming racism on display by these people. Furthermore, I don’t see many poor, unemployed or uninsured people screaming and calling the president ‘Hitler.’ One must also stop to consider that many of these angry health care protesters are conservative ‘Christians’ who talk a good game in church about helping the poor and about mercy and all that kind of thing. But when the president actually sits down to try to offer money and government support for health care for people who may desperately need it, these conservative ‘Christians’ go into a frothing rage and call the president ‘Hitler.’

Very strange. Or is it?

Where do these people get all this Hitler fascist stuff? You can easily ascertain that they are not intelligent people simply by watching and listening to them.  Most of them could not tell you where Hitler was born but they seem to throw his name around a lot. They certainly weren’t out there calling George W. Bush ‘Hitler.’ They didn’t hold up swastikas for him. If any U.S. president has even come close to behaving like Hitler, it must be George W. Bush. He actually invaded a country on a false pretext. He imprisoned people without any charges and ordered them to be tortured without mercy for indefinite periods. Hitler did those things and plenty more. Of all U.S. presidents in the history of this nation, George W. Bush most closely matches Hitler in his actions and his assaults upon free speech and the rule of law. So why is Obama being called ‘Hitler’ for initiating some health insurance legislation in Congress?

FaireyObamaPosterPart of the answer is right here in this poster by artist Shepard Fairey. This poster of the candidate Obama became a national icon and is one of the most recognizable political images in our history. It also has a problem.  A big problem.

It’s fascist.

Obama is not fascist.  His images are.  Obama chose this image to represent him in his campaign for the presidency.  Strange choice considering that we are a democracy and naturally recoil at images of giant heroic politicians gazing off into the sky.

The Fairey poster smacks of simplified, hard-edged, focused, efficient, mindless hero-worship.  When images promote hero-worship of political leaders they immediately become oppressive and fascist. NorthKoreaPoster1Look at the North Korean poster with its simple shapes and heroic figures lifting their gazes off and up over the observer’s level as if they are looking into some magnificent future of possibilities and… hope.  The poster from North Korea is doing the same thing the Obama poster is doing.  I’m not going to engage in an argument about the exact definition of fascism versus communism or totalitarianism.  The fact is that all political imagery from repressive governments and totalitarian regimes concerns itself with presenting a leader as a wonderful hero who should be loved for his heroism and his magnificent personality.  The imagery also simplifies itself so that it can be seen from a great distance and be easily understood by unintelligent people.

One may argue that the artist, Shepard Fairey, is infatuated with the techniques of fascist posters from around the world and adopts their forms for his own uses.  Sure.  Artists do that every day.  But as soon as you place those techniques into a political image and promote a particular figure or personality, you are engaging in fascism whether you want to or not.  Perhaps, Fairey never intended the image to become an actual campaign poster.  But Obama easily turned it into one.

Ask yourself this question: what might George Orwell have thought of the Obama poster?

These angry health care reform protesters may not be aware of this direct link between Obama’s imagery and fascism, but they are definitely influenced by it.  They are swimming in fascist Obama imagery everywhere they turn and so they are simply using it for their own purposes.

I’m not letting myself off the foolish hero-worship hook here either.  I was somewhat taken with the Obama poster during the presidential campaign.  I made the following video as my own little effort to help the campaign.  The video focuses entirely on my discovery of one of the posters on the wall of an abandoned building in Baltimore.

My video is part of the problem. It revels in the fascist image of the candidate. I think my little film is actually pretty good, but I am not proud of being bamboozled by that suspect poster.

The Obama cult of personality imagery continues unabated.

obamacoversHe’s popular, certainly.  He’s the nation’s first black president which is fantastic and overdue and accounts for a great deal of the hero-worship.  He is a hero in many respects.  But the images are focused on his face, figure, and personality.  Not his politics.  That puts the images directly into the camp of fascism or near-fascism.  We in the United States typically maintain a somewhat suspicious attitude toward politicians.  That’s a good thing because it keeps them nervous and, with the help of the free press, it keeps them somewhat in line.

But right now president Obama is dealing with people who are expressing enormous hatred which is partly class-based and partly racist.  And, unfortunately, Obama’s own use of images containing fascist elements has unwittingly given these people a weapon with which to attack the foundations of his presidency.  It has also given them the courage to use it.

If you put your face on a poster, someone’s going to throw an egg.

Cambridge Cop Refuses to Apologize for Unconstitutional Arrest of Black Professor

by Editor | 3 Comments

So President Obama sat down today for beers in the Rose Garden with professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the cop who arrested him for being uncooperative and making loud insulting remarks to the police while inside the comfort of his own home.  Apparently, Obama felt bad for having called the Cambridge police ‘stupid’ after receiving news of the arrest for what the police call ‘disorderly conduct’.  Many disorderly conduct laws have actually been ruled to be unconstitutional and the idea that a person could be arrested for insulting a police officer while on his own property is frightening.  Anywhere in the United States, a person is free to insult police officers without fear of arrest.  Such speech is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.  We are also free to not cooperate with a police officer when asked questions or when asked to step outside of our homes.  We can refuse totally without any fear of arrest whatsoever.  Any police officer who arrests someone under such circumstances is breaking the law and is denying someone their clear constitutional rights.  I would not have any beers with such an officer.  I would not attend any meetings with him and the president.  The officer said in his press conference that both men had agreed to ‘look forward, rather than backward.’ I’m really not sure what forward he could possibly mean.  It would be more productive to look squarely backward at his illegal and shocking arrest of a man who simply didn’t like him.

I watch the officer in the video above and I see a person of limited intelligence, with no understanding of his unlawful act.  Harvard University needs to move itself the heck out of Cambridge if this guy is an example of how the locals are thinking up there. What an embarrassment.

Christopher Hitchens has written an excellent short article about why race is not as important a factor in this episode as one’s constitutional right to mouth off at police officers.

Also, in Washington, D.C. this week a young attorney was out with his friends discussing the Gates arrest.  He decided to have some fun and test the constitutional principal which gives protection to people to who express their dislike of police.  He walked past several police cars that had stopped another vehicle and he chanted ‘I hate the cops. I hate the cops.’

According to him, he was immediately rushed by an angry D.C. police offer who pushed him against a utility box and said, “Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?”  The officer arrested the young attorney for disorderly conduct.  The young man now has an actionable claim against the police department and is probably going to sue them and win because, contrary to what the cop thinks, the young man does have the right to talk to a police officer like that.  Many police seem to think that because they protect security they have rights and privileges beyond what the U.S. Constitution provides.  This problem is getting worse, not better.  The fundamental right to freedom of speech and the right of free assembly in this country is under direct and heavy assault from police who see their responsibility to protect security as trumping all other rights and constitutional safeguards.

Police who do not understand that people can insult them and dislike them and say nasty things to them should be dismissed immediately from duty wherever they serve.  And our president should feel free to call them stupid.

Cambridge Police Arrest Famous Black Professor for Breaking No Law

by Editor

APTOPIX Harvard Scholar DisorderlyWell-known black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was returning home from a trip when he and his driver found that the front door to Gate’s home was jammed. The professor went into his home through the back door and and helped the driver push the front door open. Meanwhile, a neighbor, suspecting a burglary, called the police. Of course, you might wonder why the neighbor didn’t spend a bit more time figuring out that the homeowner was simply opening his own door. But that’s not the real story.

The real story is that when the Cambridge, Massachusetts police showed up, professor Gates didn’t like the way the officer treated him and he did not cooperate fully with the officer.  Remember that in United States we are under no legal obligation whatsoever to cooperate with a police officer who is asking questions.  We don’t have to say anything.  Professor Gates decided that since he was inside his own home the cop had no business asking him to prove that he was in fact in his own home.  This is a perfectly justifiable attitude to have inside one’s own home.  A police officer must be extremely cautious in dealing with a situation like this, especially when it becomes quite clear to anyone of average intelligence that it really is the homeowner the officer is dealing with.  So professor Gates decided to give the officer a good piece of his mind.  He apparently refused to show ID then changed his mind and did.  He apparently told the officer that he was being racially profiled and that he was suffering under the treatment given to blacks by law enforcement.  He may have insulted the officer and yelled at him.  He may have insulted the officer’s mother.

The officer says that there are radio call recordings that will prove professor Gates was yelling in the background.  So, this Cambridge police officer arrested professor Gates for ‘disorderly conduct’ – in his own home.  Disorderly conduct for being angry at a police officer in his own home.  Disorderly conduct is a very vague statute in most states, used primarily to give officers the ability to round people up for simply being uncooperative.  Basically, if a cop doesn’t like you, he or she can arrest you for ‘disorderly conduct.’

I post about this episode at length because it goes straight to the heart of free speech in this country.  Law enforcement versus free speech is the subject.  We are living during a time when law enforcement seems to think it can record the phone calls of American citizens without a search warrant, physically assault journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions, and harass photographers in public places while attempting to confiscate their equipment.  Police in Minneapolis, Minnesota staged an armed assault on a young peaceful protest group just prior to the Republican Presidential Convention in 2008.  They burst into their house with weapons drawn and made these young people lie on the floor while illegally searching the house because they wanted to prevent the group from protesting near the convention.  Much of this was caught on video and witnessed by onlookers.   Many police officers around the nation seem to have very little understanding of what constitutes protected free speech and what constitutes a real threat.  Some officers actually do understand the difference but choose to ignore the law.

If professor Gates insulted the officer in his home, it’s protected free speech.  If he insulted the officer’s mother, it’s protected free speech.  I he called the officer a racist, it’s protected free speech.  None of it matters in the slightest.  The correct response from a police officer in such a situation is to shrug it off and say, ‘Have a nice day.’  To arrest someone for behaving the way professor Gates did is outrageous and stupid.  Just like president Obama says: the Cambridge police acted stupidly.

Now the Cambridge police department is furious that Obama has insulted them and they demand an apology.  Obama owes them no such apology.  He called them stupid and they most certainly are.  All you need to know about this arrest is that prosecutors refused to press charges and all charges were dropped.  That means it was a bad arrest.  That means the police behaved stupidly and made an arrest that was not supported by law.  They arrested someone for breaking no law.  I cannot think of a better word for it than ‘stupid.’

To arrest a prominent black scholar for expressing his outrage inside his own home to police officers is stupid and might possibly be an act of racism.  The police are now parading a black officer around who was at the scene of the stupidity and says he supports the arrest because ‘Mr. Gates was acting strange.’ Acting strange.  Obviously, being a black Cambridge cop has not prevented this guy from being stupid.  We are not supposed to be arresting people in the United States for ‘acting strange.’ If there’s a cop on a force who thinks that acting strange qualifies for an arrest, he or she should be let go pronto.

So we join president Obama in calling the Cambridge police who arrested professor Gates stupid. They also seem to be poorly trained, insensitive, unaware of legal protections for free speech, and perhaps somewhat racially biased.  The race part really isn’t the important part because we don’t know if anyone on the scene really is racist.  But we do know beyond any doubt whatsoever that the police on the scene arrested someone for exercising his right to free speech.

Officer Friendly sure isn’t working up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

President Obama Moves Toward Fascist Ideas

by Editor | 1 Comment

Watch liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow in this video.  Watch the whole thing.  She’s leading us through what may amount to the most terrifying fascist speech ever delivered to the people of the United States.  The sitting president is moving toward setting up a legal structure that will place people in ‘prolonged detention’ BEFORE they have committed any crime or have even been charged with a crime if they are determined to be a possible danger to the United States.  Maddow points out how this is the exact premise of the science fiction film Minority Report which was based upon a Philip K. Dick story.  This is a well-known liberal commentator who says at the end of the video that this Obama speech is ‘one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people.’

The American Civil Liberties Union has responded with short statement.

The bottom line is that this president is shocking human rights and civil liberties organizations all over the world with his rapid move toward fascism.  These are largely liberal organizations that once looked upon Mr. Obama as a welcome change from eight years of assaults on civil liberties.  They and many liberal voters in the United States are profoundly disappointed and legitimately horrified at what they are hearing from this president.

So, if you write or say something that makes someone somewhere in the Obama administration decide that you might be some sort of danger in the future, you could be arrested and held in a new separate legal structure that could keep you imprisoned indefinitely – forever.

That is a profoundly un-American and illegal idea.