I Need to Scream!

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin make Al Sharpton flip as they co-opt Martin Luther King's civil rights dream

CHIBIS ..... FROM ..... SPACE!

Well, what with Glenn Beck’s 9-12 movement, you’d think he’d have used THAT day to present his plan for America. But you’d be wrong. You see, Glenn has discovered that God is big bucks, and Glenn certainly wouldn’t want people to be working on the Sabbath. He’s right about that. Listening to Glenn Beck is HARD @#$%^& WORK!

So Glenn looked about for another day to hold his political rally–errr religious revival? And lo and behold, God made him chose the very anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech. Purely by accident–or by the Hand of God. Quite frankly, I think Glenn totally capable of not knowing when MLK gave that speech, considering the mish-mash he makes of American history. But considering the low cunning that usually pervades his work, it’s JUST possible that the choice of date was intentional.

Anyway, he delivered a plan for America–as short of details as Mr. Beck is short of cards in his deck–with Sarah Palin on hand to rescue the civil rights movement from liberals and black people. Huh? You see, in Mr. Beck’s reformulation of MLK’s dream, Dr. King was fighting for civil rights for ALL people, not just oppressed minorities. He wanted to protect white people’s rights. Like the right of Dr. Laura Schlesinger to say “Nigger nigger nigger” on her radio program. And the right for poor people to stay dirt poor while the rich maintain their right to get filthier rich.

Glenn even found a niece of MLK who agreed with him–not that anyone ELSE of Dr. King’s family had the wool pulled over their eyes. Al Sharpton held a counter-rally to try to uphold Dr. King’s ORIGINAL dream–you know, the one Beck is trying to rescue from progressives who, consarn it, want to extend civil rights to immigrants and poor people. For a while, we had Dueling Rallies down here in Washington. And not very musical.

This wasn’t about politics tho. It was about that old time religion that America lost 240 years ago. 240 years ago, that’d be 1770? What happened then? Perhaps he was rounding up the years from the Declaration of Independence…hmmm, I guess that’s when we abandoned God. Or King George. Or the Church of England. Or somebody. I guess that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is too progressive for Mr. Beck.

After all, this country was founded by the Puritans–so goes the American myth–the most obnoxious bunch of holier-than-thou’s that ever walked the face of the earth. They left England for the freedom to practice their religion–and made other religions illegal the day after they hit Plymouth Rock. Then they outlawed Christmas and burned a few neighbors for firewood on the grounds that they were witches. The Puritans don’t exist today. There’s a good reason for that. Oh yeah, they held a Thanksgiving celebration–the next year they had a war with the Indians who’d helped them.

See Mr. Beck–you have no monopoly on mish-mashing history!

Glenn wants us to turn back to religion. He has no interest, he says, in becoming President. NOT THAT ANYONE ASKED! No, he’d rather be seen as one of God’s prophets.

Only Glenn spells it with an “fi” instead of “phe”.

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Hey, we still have troops in Germany and Japan 65 years later…

Ho-hum--combat troops gone? What about all the troops?

Hey, they're only there to help train the Iraqi army--which hasn't gotten it together in the last 6 years

Only 7 years and change later and we finally have less than 100k troops in a place we should never have invaded in the first place. Remember those heady days after 9/11 when people all over middle America were convinced that Saddam Hussein was going to nuke their mall in the next two days? The mushroom clouds that Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice were predicting would be our doom unless we took out Iraq NOW! Those aerial photographs of Carvel trucks that Colin Powell assured us were delivering yellow cake instead of ice cream cake? Such a relief there was when the Marines staged that toppling of Saddam’s statue so it would look like the Iraqis themselves were pulling the ropes!

But by the time we found out that there WERE no weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam had nothing to do at all with 9/11, the “Pottery Barn” scenario–you break it, you bought it–was in full swing (and we were even wrong about the Pottery Barn’s policies!) and it was too late to say “Whoopsie-daisy!” And for the last seven years, we’ve been bollixing up a country that was continuously on the verge of civil war with the only thing which the various factions could seem to agree on was that they didn’t WANT US!

Since Obama was elected, we’ve been drawing down our forces in Iraq–so we could throw them into the other quagmire in Afghanistan. And now, the last of our “combat troops” will be leaving, with only 50,000 “support” troops remaining–whatever the hell THAT is. Remember what we called them in Vietnam? “Advisors.” Well, maybe their mission WILL be to train that untrainable Iraqi self-defense force, but troops is troops. The real reason they’re there is so we will have a presence on the ground in the Mideast WHEN we need them. And it only cost us a couple of trillion dollars to boot!

Fox News only devoted 10 minutes of airtime to this momentous event and some people are crowing about the lackluster coverage the war’s chief cheerleaders have given to the transition. But seriously–is it anything to write home about? As Dennis Kucinich has observed, this is just a new phase in the PR campaign. We’re not going to leave Iraq for some time. Ten years? Remember, we still have troops in Germany and Japan!

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Here a Mosque, There a Mosque, Everywhere a Mosque Mosque

Obama plays Hamlet, the man who could not make up his mind...about anything!

Speak the speech, I pray you, tripping over your tongue...

So a moderate Moslem cleric wants to build a mosque and Islamic center. Where? Two blocks from “Ground Zero.” Why? Was this meant as some sort of insult to the victims of 9-11? No, he got a good deal on the property. He’ll be happy to build it someplace else, if a deal can be made.

The problem is that this has given all the yahoos something to scream about in a month when people should be hiding from the heat. Once again, it has become obvious that the so-called “War on Terror” was understood by all and sundry as some 21st century Crusade redux. Our enemy wasn’t al-Qaeda, the guys who actually carried out the deed, but all of Islam, which is why we attacked Afghanistan, letting al-Qaeda move a couple of miles into Pakistan, and then attacked Iraq, which had nothing to do with anything except we didn’t like Saddam Hussein’s moustache. And we’re still in both places, with Americans fronting the bill for two quagmires that have done nothing but drain our economy and are as much a reason for the Great Recession as the thieving banks were.

The banks aren’t terrorists. Unless you’ve gotten behind in your mortgage payments, or haven’t opted into overdraft insurance, at which point, you can’t answer your phone in the daylight hours without being attacked by some customer service rep. But all of Islam is, because we are bound and determined to hold a billion people guilty for the work of a handful of crazies. Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, those paragons of bravery while someone else does the fighting, have been leading the charge. No Mosques at Ground Zero.

Our fearless leader, of course, has taken a principled stance. Anyone has the constitutional right to build anything anywhere in the United States–he said at a Ramadan dinner with an Islamic group. Then when he heard the howls from the hinterlands–you know, the people who were convinced that Saddam Hussein was going to nuke their local mall on 9-12–President Obama turned around and said he didn’t necessarily think it was a good idea. Despite Fox News having said he’d done the right thing and defended the Constitution. I guess if Fox News says you did something right, it’s best to assume you pulled the biggest boner in creation.

Well, I happen to believe both statements are right, but, for crying out loud, Barry, can’t you take a stance on anything that doesn’t have a picket fence poking a hole in your ass? I mean, you could’ve said both things at the same time, but no, first you had to play to one audience and then turn around and play to the opinion polls. Leaders lead, they aren’t lead. Not everything has a golden mean of compromise to be found.

I swear, one day, I’m gonna wake up to read the headline that Barry brokered a deal between God and Satan where Satan accepted a 50% cap on souls he reaped. With a proviso that the terms will not take effect until after 2016.

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TIME OFF FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR

It’s August. I’ve been putting a cartoon collection into a book. All we have are talking heads and I HATE drawing talking heads. I usually take a week or two off in August but I forgot to mention it, so I’m mentioning it now. 😀

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