Saturday, June 23, 2012

Obama Wants All Your Swag

When Valerie from Australia sent this to me just now, I thought it was a joke:
Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up?
Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl.
Setting up and sharing your registry page is easy—so get started today!
If you have already made the mistake of selfishly putting your own needs before  the president's, try this. Take all your undeserved gift clutter, including that rock-hard fruitcake Aunt Sally sent you five Christmases ago, and dump it in front of the Obama campaign HQ nearest you. Maybe the Bots can find a pawnshop, or place an ad on Craigslist. I do not suggest tossing your swag directly on the White House lawn, since I don't want any arrests (or worse) by the Secret Service on my conscience.

Unfortunately the President is unable to accept any dinnerware for his campaign war chest at this time. The Secret Service confiscates knives and forks in selected venues -- most recently at that Latino campaign event in Florida. yesterday. Besa mi culo, puto.*

Anyway, why even stop at happy events? If a loved one dies, don't forget to add to the obituary: "In lieu of flowers, please send a donation to Obama for America."

Think of this as a wonderful way to teach your child the true meaning of altruism. You might say something like "President Obama needs our help, so we're sending him all the money we set aside for your birthday. Maybe you can get your Tickle Me Elmo next year, when he's safely back in the White House. Remember: Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court!"




Gimme Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Gravy Boats


(*Kiss my ass, bastard!)

20 comments:

Anne Lavoie said...

Gee, what's next? Is he going to ask us to turn tricks for him and send him the proceeds? He is soooo tacky! And desperate.

4Runner said...

Used to be, the tail wags the dog. Now, the swag wags the dog?

James F Traynor said...

Too late. Wall Street has it.

James F Traynor said...

Wish I could turn tricks - oh well.

Denis Neville said...

Panhandler-in-Chief stoops even lower to conquer with pathetic event registry.

Maybe it’s not the politicians who suck:

"Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'" – George Carlin

James F Traynor said...

Carlin - a great soul.

Jim Kaye said...

It's wonderful to live in these times, when we hit a new low almost every week. The UK has the C of E; we have the Church of Obama.

Valerie said...

Just got an e-mail from RootsAction. Sound like Obama is planning - in secret with about 600 big business leaders to create a NAFTA like agreement that outNAFTA's NAFTA.


"The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal has been negotiated in secret (except for 600 corporate advisors). The TPP would:

- reward outsourcing of jobs to lower-wage countries;

- give foreign corporations immunity from U.S. laws;

- allow foreign corporations to challenge U.S. laws in foreign (secret) tribunals;

- and wipe out national protections for workers or the environment.

U.S. negotiators are pushing these worse-than-NAFTA measures on the Pacific countries."

http://rootsaction.org/featured-actions/467-obama-trade-deal-worse-than-nafta

So, not only does Obama want our wedding gifts, he then wants to turn around and stab us in the back. WAKE UP Democratic Party! This guy is the Trojan Horse sent into our party as one of us - but he is the enemy.

Eric Veltri said...

You know if the choice is between Obama and Rommney I hope that none of you would consider Rommney.
And to Neville what do you expect from the American people who are feed nothing but lies, distortion and drivel 24/7 by the MSM?

Denis Neville said...

@ Veltri – a lot more!!!

“Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Neil Postman asked, “Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter? The people in 'Brave New World' did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. Civil libertarians, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.” - Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Henry Giroux quotes Martin Luther King Jr., “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9865-beyond-the-politics-of-the-big-lie-the-education-deficit-and-the-new-authoritarianism

“The American public is suffering from an education deficit. By this I mean it exhibits a growing inability to think critically, question authority, be reflective, weigh evidence, discriminate between reasoned arguments and opinions, listen across differences and engage the mutually informing relationship between private problems and broader public issues. This growing political and cultural illiteracy is not merely a problem of the individual, one that points to simple ignorance. It is a collective and social problem that goes to the heart of the increasing attack on democratic public spheres and supportive public institutions that promote analytical capacities, thoughtful exchange and a willingness to view knowledge as a resource for informed modes of individual and social agency. One of the major consequences of the current education deficit and the pervasive culture of illiteracy that sustains it is what I call the ideology of the big lie - which propagates the myth that the free-market system is the only mechanism to ensure human freedom and safeguard democracy.”

William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, wrote about the experience of how easily one could be taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state; how surprising and sometimes consternating it was to find that notwithstanding the opportunities one had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions, calculated and incessant propaganda, made a certain impression in one’s mind and often misled it; and how seemingly educated and intelligent people would parrot the outlandish assertions. Shirer wrote about “how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.”

Bill Moyers, “The delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seats of power. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.”

Neil Gillespie said...

@if the choice is between Obama and Romney…

There is at least one more choice: Do not vote. Why throw your vote away (and your integrity) if you do not believe in the candidate?

Valerie said...

Kinda changing your tune, aren't you Eric? Last time you posted here you were gung ho for Occupy to be violent in its tactics. Now you are all about voting for President "lesser of two evils." So which side are you on? I smell a plant.


The truth is, it takes a truly honest and enlightened person to change his or her paradigm. It is clear to anyone who is searching for the truth that the MSM is "on the take" simply by looking at the superficial stories they cover. We can see that REAL unemployment is rising, that free trade deals are only hurting the American (Mainstreet) economy, that no matter what the politicians say, we seem to be forever looking for a war to fight - the list goes on. Yet these stories aren't what the MSM is covering.


The blogosphere is out there and almost everyone has a computer and a "fringe friend" who is starting to make a lot of sense. They can find good blogsites if they are genuinely looking.


We live in a democracy. Citizens have a responsibility to remain informed. I am tired of people making excuses for not getting involved and not being informed.

Karen Garcia said...

Continuing on that theme, here's my response to Ross Douthat's column in the NYT (Ross touches upon the fact that liberals are A-OK with drone assassinations and actually indirectly links to Glenn Greenwald, but of course does not go so far as to condemn the drone strikes.) --

Now that campaign season is in full shallow swing, so is the tribalism. We are expected to root, root, root for the home team, despite the fact that the game has been rigged from the get-go.

Ordinary people are left out in the cold. Who raked in the most millions last month? Who had the most gaffes? What do the job numbers mean for the president's re-election chances? How many Pinocchio noses did Romney rate last week?

Who cares? Neither man is addressing the humanitarian crisis of permanent unemployment, crushing poverty, stagnant wages, financial crime sprees going unpunished and unabated, climate change.... all thanks to the silent coup by the oligopoly of the .001%.

Meanwhile, it's pretty odious that Ross dumps drone assassinations, relief for Dreamers and bickering between the corrupt Issa and the Oval in the same pile of alleged abuse of executive powers. The first policy is probably a war crime, the second, a masterstroke of political genius and humanitarianism, and the third one is just a stupid distraction. (But, as much as the Fast & Furious brouhaha is a GOP stunt, aren't you curious about what DOJ does not want us to see?)

Since it is highly unlikely that the corporate media will start doing their jobs any time soon, it is up to us to not only cast our ballots, but to keep up the fight to get the $$$ out of politics, as well as shining relentless disinfecting sunshine on the corrupt swamp that is American politics.

Valerie said...

Just stumbled on the comment section of the Applestores article in the NYT and was truly gratified to see so many pro-union comments. Makes me feel far less alone. Now if we could only organise that enlightenment into some kind of action! Here's the link just in case anyone wants to read the comments. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html#postcomment

James F Traynor said...

For the sake of my sanity I refuse to listen to political commercials. I hear them (it's damn near unavoidable), but I don't listen. A long time ago I also gave up talking about Global Warming and God, even though the former is real and the latter is not. Both subjects release a torrent of lunacy difficult to believe. Epicurus had it right and there's really nothing more to discuss.

Eric Veltri said...

Alright I will share more of my thoughts.
This is the way I see it. The corporate plutocracy has already won in the sense that they effectively have control the political systems in western Europe and the US. Several of you, I believe correctly, have also included the MSM. The people are definitely being feed BS 24/7 and therre is definitely a severe shortage of critical thinking.
I.ve toyed with Gillespie's third alternative of not voting and even recommended it as an alternative to some of my friends. It might be the best choice but I'm not so sure it's best.
Valerie I am sorry that you have such little faith in me. We have seen the Occupy movement sort of petter out. We've also seen them meet with thuggery. I believe that if they ever pushed it to the extent of the Egyptian's blood would surely run quite heavily in the streets of America. By the way have you noted how the Egyptian revolution has been effectively sidetracked? First they let time pass, then the military dissolved their parliament and then disqualified four candidates that were most revolutionary. Looks like the CIA and the military folks won in the long run-no?
Finally Karen comes to the ballot question and I ask again do we vote for the republican light or the full scale corporatista? Well it certainly dosen't matter to the outcome what we think or do because I've come to believe that the whole show is just Kabuki Theater but, I am curious. I also collect social security and am on medicare and don't want them further compromised. I think that the Trojan Horse will at least do his feeble best to protect those programs, so, what do you think now Gillespie and all you others who are capable of critical thinking. Do we vote for him or not?

Valerie said...

Eric,

Good to hear where you stand. Do you know who Chris Hedges is? If not, here is a link to his Monday columns. Occupy may not have a place to rest her head at night but she is by no means finished or beaten. http://www.truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/

I am absolutely against violence - at this point. We need to win over the decent folk in this country and violence on our part will only alienate them. Notice that every time there is violence against Occupy protesters not only does it FINALLY get some mainstream media attention, but the movement is fortified. Why? Because decent people can see that violence in response to peaceful protesters with a legitimate gripe is not right. Had violence erupted in response to the violence from the police on any of those occasions, those situations would have been called a riot and the good people of this country would have written off the Occupy Movement. There might come a time when we will be forced to us violence as our very last option, but the time is not now.

As for voting for TLOTE (The Lesser of Two Evils). Neither candidate has any intention of doing the right thing by Main Street. As we write, Obama and his 1% cronies are hammering out another Free Trade Agreement that is going to out-nafta, Nafta. Would Romney do anything different? I don't think so! Both of our presidential candidates and 95% of Congress are working in the best interest of the one percent and that ain't most of the people reading this blog. Yet how many will allow the scales to fall from their eyes and see that voting one way or the other isn't going to change a thing about the off-shoring of jobs, the lack of affordable medical care, tax breaks for the ultra rich, the fact that Wall Street bankers continue to get away with treating our economy like their personal casinos? Check out Thomas Frank on Moyers. The same people buying the Republican politicians are the same ones buying the Democrats - including and especially Obama. And they get payback for their investments.

Neither candidate is working for Main Street and the sooner we face that reality, the sooner we can join forces to claw back our democracy from the plutocrats - who are both Democrats and Republicans.

So what can we do if voting doesn't change the balance of power? Get off our couches, turn off our T.V.s and find our local Occupy Movement. Get out in the streets because that is the only place where meaningful change is going to happen. We need to stop waiting for someone else to fix our democracy and start fixing it ourselves.

Anne Lavoie said...

@Veltri

Are you still living in China? I thought you were working there, but you now sound retired. Welcome back to Sardonicky.

OBAMA is the person who put Social Security on the table during so-called negotiations without asking for anything in return, great 11-dimensional chess player that he is. So I wouldn't have any confidence that he will protect any social programs, least of all Social Security.

The power elite want Social Security and all other social programs privatized in one form or another and they'll get it, no matter who is elected President. Once both sides work out what form the privatization will take (while pretending that they're not), Obama will claim his hands are tied and the evil Republicans are holding something hostage and that he has no options - all the usual excuses to give the rich what they want.

The big difference between Obama and Romney is that Obama pretends to be something that he isn't, while Romney is upfront about what he would do. Crapitalist vs. Capitalist. Very little difference.

I will never vote for Obama again no matter what. I agree with what others have said that Obama is Dick Cheney on steroids. Nothing could convince me to cast my ballot for him.

Actually, I think it will be quite entertaining to hear all the pathetic, spineless, loathsome Obama apologist Democrats weeping and gnashing their teeth when President Romney engages in the same outrageous executive actions and abuses as Obama.

I predict Romney will win in an electoral landslide.

Karen Garcia said...

Here is my response to Paul Krugman's excellent column about the abdication of leadership everywhere....

The abdication is in favor of the bankers. Just look at the video of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon when he appeared on Capitol Hill this month. His arrogant words, the fawning of the Senators, the magic Presidential Seal cuff-links he wore -- they told us all we need to know about who is really in charge. As ruler of a bank as big as a country, he is a ranking member of the Board of Directors of the United States of America.

And bankers' banker Ben Bernanke (say three times fast) and all three government branches serve at the pleasure of the oligarchs. They feast, while the rest of us starve in an orgy of austerity. Their excuse for inaction on unemployment is the inflation bogeyman, while the only real inflation exists in the egos of the so-called experts.

And President Obama, despite recent populist rhetoric, still managed to utter the word “deficit” a whopping 20 times during his big economy speech in Ohio. He continues to boast of his spending cuts as if they were something to be proud of. Millions more people are slated to lose their long-term unemployment benefits next month, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals the chronically (permanently?) unemployed now account for nearly half of all jobless people.

The official spin seems to be "situation hopeless but not serious." Abdication of leadership on such an epic scale is a perfect recipe for bottom-up populist revolution at best, the rise of fascism at worst.

Neil Gillespie said...

@Eric Veltri

Charles Hugh Smith quoted Gabriel M. Mueller on his own site, Of Two Minds, in a piece that was cross posted on Zero Hedge: "Why play by the rules when you know the game is rigged? To do so is to condone your enslavement."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-our-participation-fuels-financial-tyranny

This principal has merit for the election too. Voting for either Obama or Romney is to condone our enslavement. While I voted for Obama in 2008, now he makes me nauseous. NOBama2012.

We know the game is rigged, but most people do not understand the extent to which the game is rigged, and why change is all but impossible.

Obama and Romney are each attorneys, a point all but ignored by the press and the public. Law is the operating system in America, but most people are uninformed as to its omnipotence and omnipresence. For example, the Democrat-Republican duopoly is maintained by the U.S. Constitution through the electoral college. Your vote for either Obama or Romney is symbolic, because the president is elected by 270 electoral college votes. A third party candidate has virtually no chance, as shown by Ross Perot in 1992. Perot got almost 20 million popular votes, but not a single electoral college vote. The popular vote is meaningless, see Bush v. Gore. 531 U.S. 98, where the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in the election, and five justices awarded the presidency to George W. Bush on the basis of the electoral college. The American public swallowed that load of shit without much outcry, and our banana republic was born.

Karen’s preceding piece, Hillary Hearts WikiLeaks, shows Hillary "…actually credits the cable dump for being the real catalyst for the Arab Spring."

So credit Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for setting the stage, and Mohamed Bouazizi, the nameless vegetable vendor in Karen’s piece who self-immolated, for starting the revolution that set the Arab Spring dominos falling.

Manning, Assange, and Bouazizi are exemplars of freedom. Those who vote in the Democrat-Republican duopoly are condoning there own enslavement.

True Revolutionaries transcend the fear of death. That is one thing missing in the narcissistic Occupy Movement. All of us are under a death sentence. Death is the final stage of growth, according to Elisabeth Kubler Ross.

So Eric, as one collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits you must be an older person. Have you contemplated your final stage of growth? Will you waste your death in a nursing home or hospice? Or will you become a True Revolutionary?