Political Irony

[reprinted from Margaret and Helen]

100 Grand Bore

Margaret please tell Howard that 100,000 people will show up to a tractor pull if the entry fee is cheap enough. Big deal. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ignore them and have some pie.

As I see it dear, if more than a hundred thousand dead civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan can be dismissed, so can slightly less than a hundred thousand peckerwoods at a Beck rally.

If the civil rights of millions of gay and lesbian Americans are not important, then neither are the pathetic rants of almost a hundred thousand Palin addicts.

If millions of children without healthcare are inconsequential then why should I give a rat’s ass about a hundred thousand shitheads who actually think Beck and Palin have something worthwhile to say?

As long as millions of American Muslims don’t have religious freedom, a hundred thousand Tea Party yahoos shouldn’t be allowed to have cable television. It only seems fair…

I just can’t believe 87,000 people are dumb enough to buy that crap. If Beck and Palin want a government so focused on one God and one religion, they should visit the Middle East and see how that concept is working out. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t distinguish Fox News from the Christian Broadcasting Network. It’s nauseating.

Palin and Beck don’t care about you, me or anyone except themselves. They are getting filthy rich pandering to angry white mobs so transparent in their racist feelings toward the President that a sheet of Saran Wrap would cast a darker shadow.

The greatest threat against America is not terrorism. It’s not a mosque in Manhattan. It’s not gay marriage. It’s not healthcare reform. And, believe it or not, it’s not even Beck or Palin. The greatest threat against America are the tens of millions of Americans who won’t turn out to vote this November effectively giving power to 87,000 angry assholes.

Sarah Palin is an idiot. Glenn Beck is a moron. And I am sick of Fox News. I mean it. Really.

Are we really this stupid?

Dan Rather hits the nail on the head. I have worked in and with corporate-owned media, and have seen the same things. You don’t need to believe in any kind of conspiracy — either right or left wing — to understand how the slavish obsession with profits of our corporate controlled media is destroying the free exchange of ideas that our founding fathers knew and declared to be so vital to our democracy. Instead, you are told, repeatedly and with little regard to the truth, that which will make them the most money. Even if it kills you.

© Jimmy Margulies

The same people who opposed every effort to fix the economy are now profiting from the bad economy.

© Ed Stein

I love reading Ed Stein’s comics on his website, because he usually includes extra information. Here’s what he included for this one:

It’s not even a question that the national economic policies of the last few decades have favored the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. We’ve seen an astonishing increase in income inequality as taxes have become more regressive and the marketplace has been increasingly deregulated. The percentage of the nation’s wealth controlled by a tiny minority has grown exponentially while the income of lower- and middle -class Americans has stagnated.

I’ve wondered for years how so many people have been persuaded to vote again and again against their own economic self-interest. A revealing article by Jane Mayer in the August 30 issue of The New Yorker magazine helps explain it. Over the years billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers have steadily funded operations designed to stoke populist anger against the government and progressive ideas. The Tea Party, far from being a spontaneous populist movement, has been underwritten with tens of millions of dollars and coordinated through a network of organizations with names like Americans for Prosperity, with the singular goal of creating an angry block of disaffected voters who will unwittingly vote for policies that benefit the very wealthy.

Lurking behind the trumped-up fear of a government takeover of our lives is a desire on the part of these rich funders to force government out of the job of regulating how they do business, protecting workplace safety, defending the environment, overseeing the safety of the food supply, and raising their taxes–in other words, doing anything that might reduce their profits. That would also include, by the way, paying for the safety net. How this will be good for the army of middle class Americans they’ve enlisted to fight their battles for them is something I can’t answer, and I suspect the zealous Tea Party devotees can’t either. But letting out the anger, I guess, feels really good, even if the eventual consequences most certainly won’t. But, by then, we might have another Democrat in the White House we can blame for our troubles.

© John Sherffius

I once marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and trust me, Glenn Beck is no MLK.