WITH HIS POLLS PLUMMETING, HIS CELEBRITY FADING, EVERYONE KNEW IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O DROPPED TROU AND POSED NUDE FOR A LITTLE MORE ATTENTION AND A FEW MORE MINUTES IN THE LIMELIGHT BUT WHO KNEW VENEZUELA'S HUGO CHAVEZ WOULD BE THE FIRST TO SEE THE PICTORIAL?
"THE EMPIRE IS NAKED," EXCLAIMED THE PRESIDENT OF VENEZUELA.
AMERICAN EYES WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE SPREAD WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT INCLUDE, IN A NOD TO ANOTHER FADED STARLET AND FORMER 10, LASCIVIOUS PHOTOS OF BARRY O AND WHITE HOUSE PET BO.
APPARENTLY THE DOD BOOK CLUB HAS FINISHED WITH OPERATION DARK HEART AND IS NOW BUYING UP COPIES OF BARRY O'S SPREAD.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting with Roger Hodge, author of The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism which he discusses on the latest Law and Disorder Radio (aired on WBAI yesterday and on various stations throughout the week) with hosts Heidi Boghosian, Michael Ratner and Michael S. Smith. For an excerpt of the discussion, refer to yesterday's snapshot. In his book, Hodge writes:
President Obama has made permanent the enormous increase in military spending since 2001. His budget projections through 2017 allocate $4.8 trillion for the Defense Department, compared with $4.6 trillion spent by Bush over eight years. Given the escalation in Afghanistan, however, it is likely that Obama will spend more than $5 trillion on the military -- more, in inflation-adjusted terms, than has been spent during any eight-year period since 1946. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq has been euphemistically "drawn down" -- as of May 2010 there were 92,000 -- but all evidence suggests that we will never fully withdraw. In 2010, American military contractors were still building permanent bases all over that shattered country, and even if every single American soldier were to be withdrawan (a condition no competent observer ever expects to see), an army of unaccountable mercenaries employed by the United States is still by any substantive definition an American occuption force. In December, when Obama nnounced his surge in Afghanistan, the Congressional Research Service reported that the 30,000 new troops would be accompanied by up to 56,000 additional private contractors. As of May 2010, according to the official Pentagon figures, there were 112,092 private military contractors in Afghanistan and 95,461 in Iraq, with 42,782 in other U.S. Central Command locations, for a total of 250,335. The official total is very likely to be a significant undercount, of course, and it does not include the contractors employed by other agencies, such as the State Department and USAID, nor does it include those working for the CIA.
No, no comptent observer ever expects to see that but then when has -- as he's known among his students -- Professor Bitch ever been compentent? The over-praised blogger deleted a post he put up yesterday -- if he'd like to deny it we have screen snaps -- which resulted in people pointing out that academics should stick to reality and not tea leaf reading. Poor Professor Bitch, he'd almost lived down the tender smack down on Iraq that Steve Rendell inflicted upon him a few years back when he was making an appearance on CounterSpin. Thanks, Professor Bitch, for showing your true colors yet again. Screen snaps will run in the gina & krista round-robin and we'll be handing them out at speaking engagements all week as well. It takes a lot of whores to keep propping up Barack, in fact it takes an entire brothel.
Which is why Hodge's book is so important. Tariq Ali has a new book out (disclosure, I've known Tariq for years) entitled The Obama Syndrome: Surrender At Home, War Abroad. It's an excellent book. But Hodge manages to easily top Tariq for one reason.
Look Who's Blurbing. While both books offer excellent text, Hodge's book is a keepsake For Those Of Us Who Never Drank The Kool-Aid for the dust jacket alone. It's there you'll find key members of the Cult of St. Barack. Look, there's Socialist Barbara Ehrenreich.
You may know Babs from her constant attacks on women (such as at the FAIR gala last decade where the 'feminist' thing to do was for her to deliver a speech trashing Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda). You may not know her political affiliation because, like so many too juvenile to cop to being a Communist or Socialist, she flocked to "Progressives" for Obama. Why not "liberals"? You need to study up on your New Left and Cold War history -- Socialists and Communists do not identify as liberals. There was Babsie injecting herself into the Democratic Party primary, writing psychotic pieces about Hillary's 'secret' religion -- while Babsie hid in a political closet -- and doing everything a media whore could. As Bob Somerby noted in real time, "There ought to be a special circle in hell for hustlers like Barbara Ehrenreich." You may also know Babsie from her big-boned daughter Rosa Brooks who now works in the administration (Los Angeles Times readers are just glad she's gone) where she is most infamous for advocating that the US government institute licensing for journalists thereby controlling who could and who could not report. As Babsie and her brood have long demonstrated, totalitarianism knows no political boundaries.
On the back of Hodge's book, Babsie pants: "This is what I've been waiting for -- a profound and hard-hitting critique of the Obama administration from the left!" Golly, Babs, couldn't you pen one yourself? Oh, of course not. Whores aren't known for courage, now are they. She continues, "The Mendacity of Hope should help wake up all those Obama voters who've been napping while the wars escalate, the recession deepens, and the environment goes straight to hell."
Who's been napping, Babs? Those of who didn't enlist in the Cult of St. Barack didn't pack up our bags after the 2008 election. Closet Communist Leslie Cagan did and, when packing up her own bags, she packed up the bags of the organization she RUINED United for Peace & Justice. Napping? Babs, you've written six columns in two years -- going by your own website -- and for one who proclaimed Barack to be The One, you've been strangely silent on him ever since, now haven't you, tired whore?
Oh, look. Another whore, Naomi Klein, blurbs, "Ready to wake up from the Obama dream yet? If so, this thrilling scathing and relentlessly truthful cri de coeur is your strong cup of coffee. Hodge skewers the sloppy intellectual cluture that willed this political chimera into being, while expertly unmasking the corporate machine that is the real Barack Obama. Drink up." You first, Naomi, and why don't you choke on it?
For those who don't know, Naomi swore she was staying out of the 2008 election -- and, as a Canadian-American citizen, she had every reason to. She really doesn't want to raise the issue of dual citizenship, does she? If you think the immigration discussion is ugly in this country (and it is) wait until people get a load of the fact that Naomi may be voting in US elections . . . after her father fled the US (I applaud him for it) to avoid serving in Vietnam. You can hear the rumble of grandstanding on the part of GOP senators starting up, can't you? "She has American citizenship and her father deserted!" Yeah, Naomi, you really need to learn to stay out of US elections.
But of course she couldn't. And it went far beyond what she thought was her 'careful' and 'undetectable' slanting on the Real News Network in 2007 and 2008. Naomi decided to do a book tour. Naomi decided to do stand-up on her book tour. The Chicago September 2008 appearance? So much sexism has never been unleashed by one woman -- not even by Phyllis Schlafly. Stay on the sidelines? No. Despite preaching in 2004 that the peace movement (Naomi prefers "anti-war movement" so that she can reject her father -- having already rejected her feminist mother) should never be hijacked by elections, there was Naomi making a fat ass out of herself. There was Canada's very own Tiffany-era mallrat telling 'jokes' that would make Hugh Hefner blush. Was it worth it, Naomi? Really?
There are two Naomis. Many confuse them. Used to be Naomi Klein was the thin one -- that changed about two years ago. Not because Naomi Wolf began to lose weight but because Naomi Klein's been seriously packing on pounds. Naomi Wolf. Everyone's favorite pill-popping columnist. Naomi explained the 'feminist' thing to do was to spit on Hillary and support Barack. She did that during the primaries. She did that by cloaking herself as the victim. It was a cute little act and the only time the term "cute" has been applied to Naomi in years. She continued that bulls**t throughout the lead up to the election as well as after -- breaking only when donning her sexually enhancing burqa. She was on CNN in January 2009 proclaiming -- as Ms. magazine had -- that Barack was what a feminist looked liked.
On the back of Hodges' book, Naomi Wolf blurbs, "Roger Hodge has written a desperately needed expose of how Barack Obama is not the messiah of liberalism but its deisgnated gravedigger -- he is one of the all too few voices on the progressive side who dares to tell the truth about the corporate masters this administration actually serves, and the dire effects of that allegiance upon what is left of our Republic. This is a blazing indictment of corporate collusion and a bracing injection of hard truths."
I'm counting nine columns you've written for the Huffington Post, Naomi, since Barack was sworn in. While I see your attempts to distract and defocus for the administration by obsessing over the Tea Party -- a party that your last bestseller (and I do mean "last") owes a debt too but we don't talk about that, do we? -- I see nothing calling out the administration. Where is it, Naomi? Or did you pop a pill and think you wrote it when you didn't?
Babsie's always been nuts, Naomi Klein's been a non-stop disappointment to her parents, but Naomi Wolf? No one went nuttier than Naomi Wolf. Appearing in public -- often with a dirty face and hair unkempt -- she spent most of 2007 and 2008 insisting her tax returns were stolen by the government. (Because the government didn't have them already?) She would tell anyone who listened that she was being spied on, her mail opened, her calls listened into. She could hear the "clicks"! Was she on a party line? Today's surveillance doesn't provide clicks when tapping. (Echos do, however, occur.) She went completely bonkers. An Alan J. Pakula character transposed into a Stephen Spielberg film. It was not a pretty sight.
And the reason we open with this is to make very damn clear: IT'S NOT THAT EASY.
Having whored and lied for Barack Obama, you're not just going to sneak back in to the party. No. The three above are not Democrats (Naomi Wolf once was but she denounced that around the time she denounced Judaism). In their political affiliations, they damn well know they have to practive confessions in their own political cells. They need to make a point to do the same in the political discourse at large. Meaning, you better get honest about your whoring or you better expect that you will go the way of Faith Popcorn and so many other pundits whom the public rejected. You whored, you lied, you attacked.
Those of us who gave a damn about the Iraq War -- the one that is still going on, the one that Naomi Klein can't seem to find today despite the fact that it is her claim to fame -- refused to play the game, refused to whore. We're not letting you back in unless and until you confess. You were handed the reigns of the movement -- look at Leslie Cagan -- and what did you do? You destroyed the movement. (UPFJ posted a yea-war-is-over message the day after the 2008 elections and closed shop.) To let you slink back in now without confessing to your crimes would be a betrayal of the movement.
So your pimp Barack got a little rough with you, slapped you around and now you want to sneak back over to our side? It's not that easy. And what's up here online is nothing compared to what we have taken to college audiences for two years now. They know you, across the land, as the whores you are. Outside of the tiny circle-jerk that passes for Panhandle Media, you are whores, you are known whores. And as others in the beggar media realize that, you won't be booked. Or they'll risk being fired on air as well. This isn't a vanity issue, this isn't hurt feelings. This is you have blood on your hands.
You whored and Iraqi s died. You whored and the war went on. You have blood on your hands and you will confess or you will continue to be known as the whores you are. Naomi Klein asks if people are "Ready to wake up from the Obama dream yet?" Naomi, what were you doing in DC the day of the inauguration? Oh, that's right, you were fundraising. And partying. We know you were attacking others. You gave that idiotic interview to Matthew Rothschild, remember? Castigating 'radicals' who refused to belive that Barack was the savior. Do you expect The Progressive to 'disappear' your words, Naomi? Your attacks on the left critics of Barack Obama are well known and public record. Now you want to show up on a dusk jacket pretending you were there all along? They really raise those Canadian mallrats dumb, I guess.
The Cult of St. Barack got their commemorative plates in January 2009. It took a little while for the truth tellers of the left to get our own commemorative keepsake: The dusk jacket of Roger Hodge's new book. Suitable for framing. At your local bookstore and available online. And let's note this from yesterday's Law and Disorder Radio .
Heidi Boghosian: Roger, you actually sort of sum up it up in talking about health care by saying: "The health bill is of a piece with Obama's general approach to governance which is to make loud, dramatic claims about his purportedly reformist agenda -- claims that both his supporters and his enemies almost always take at a face value -- while working behind the scenes to make sure that no major stakeholder in his coalition of corporate backers will suffer significant losses." And that could sum up most of what he's done.
Michael Smith: Yeah, that was an outstanding passage in the book, I thought
Roger Hodge: Thank you. Thank you. And we see it again and again. We see it with detentions --
Heidi Boghosian: Guantanamo.
Roger Hodge: Guantanamo. We see it with --
Michael Ratner: State secrets.
Roger Hodge: -- Afghanistan. We see it with Iraq. Supposedly the war in Iraq is over. People take that at face value. 'Oh, he ended the war in Iraq.' Well he didn't.
Michael Ratner: He just said he did.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
"The embarrassment that is the current administration"
"Iraqi Christians"
"Isaiah, Hillary Is 44 and Maxine Waters"
"Now they want to extend benefits?"
"Fresh Air"
"where's barack?"
"Not impressed"
"No, we are not all Matt and we don't want to be"
"Look who's embracing sexism"
"Barack needs to be sued"
"The suffering of Kurdish women"
"Travels, news, et al"
"The fan club dwindles"
"THIS JUST IN! FLEETING FAME!"
