calimary
calimary's JournalIt IS racism.
There are things this President has had to endure that would NEVER happen if he'd been a white guy.
FUCKERS. We're ONTO them.
PIRATIZE.
EXCELLENT!!!
Show OUR side! Loud 'n' Proud!
Surely WE have as much lung power as the teabaggers. And hundreds of times the intellect! As well as the FACTS - on OUR side.
And here's the KEY:
As the child of a WWII Marine, my late father told me that "Everyone knew what was going on in Germany but no one dared talk about it". I'm sure he was right as it would have been impossible not to know.Cannot repeat this often enough. Cannot overstate the importance of this - the critical, urgent, VITAL importance of this. "...but no one dared talk about it."
That is the message WE need to take to heart. We NEED to talk about this. We NEED this out in the open as far as possible. We NEED truths like this - out in the open!
I've seen multiple threads, in a row, that carry this cautionary note: if it's not out in the open, if it's not spoken, shown, acted upon, WE TOO will get rolled. Whether it's Pox Noise-only viewers among your friends (who never hear anything other than THAT shit and therefore can't be expected to know any better - since nobody's telling them the other side), or the militant StopPatriarchy.org pro-choice people who are out there with glaring gory poster-size photos of butchered women dying or dead from a botched back-alley abortion,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026143433
or the ignorant who trust only their knuckle-dragger brother-in-law's insistence that dick cheney served in the military and must certainly know all about the real costs of war...
WHERE do we get to see, or are we shown, the true and sometimes gruesome consequences of doing it THEIR way? This may be the first time in a long time, or the first time EVER - at least for THIS particular cause.
Anyone remember the circus around the whole Terri Schiavo travesty? All the nuts out there on their knees fiddling with outsized rosary beads in the street, loudly chanting prayers and religious songs, dragging big-ass 8-foot-by-6-foot wooden crosses on their shoulders, laying down on the pavement in "holy robes" and other crap, lots of visuals to dominate the coverage (THINK:::: what are the cameras gonna wanna focus on? A handful of quiet supporters of Schiavo's husband and her right to die, over there on the side, or this traveling revival show of loud, colorful whack-jobs. In the TV newsrooms where I worked, the philosophy was - "if it bleeds, it leads." Or if there was an apartment building on fire, THAT was the lead. "WHAT DO WE SEE?" That was "the phrase that pays."
I learned three basic questions to answer for oneself when covering, brokering, or otherwise curating the news:
1) "What happened?" Told to me by a City Hall reporter when I was first interning and my assignment was to follow him around, try to copy what he did, and write up "practice" news reports about what he was covering - as though I myself was covering it.
2) "Who cares?" Told to me by the news director of the big rock station that just hired me to do hip rock 'n' roll news with an attitude toward our hip rock 'n' roll listeners. What would THEY care about? Would they really care to hear about this-or-that story?
3) "What do we see?" Told to me by the producer of the evening newscast at the local TV station, who always went with the blazing fire or the bloody accident or victims being taken away on stretchers. The VISUALS. He knew that gripped audiences and kept 'em tuned in. Visual cataclysms of one sort or other always led the newscast.
There was also a fourth item on that list, later on, to keep in one's filter -
4) "I can't believe what I just heard on the radio!" Or "I can't believe what they just said on the radio!" THAT ONE was for the "Morning Zoo" contingent and the mad-dog morning DJs and Howard Sterns and people who'd be pushing the envelope as outrageously as they could, every morning, so by the time you got to the office that's all people were buzzing about, in the coffee room or around the water cooler.
When we see a whole lotta nothing or boring visuals, the news cameras and reporters and microphones are gonna go find the nutcases and the loudmouths and the vivid pictures instead. PICTURES. For the vast majority of American viewers and news consumers who process information VISUALLY. Attention-getting. The fucking teabaggers understand this. That's why the crazies with the teabags hanging from their sun-bonnets and the fat retirement-age white dudes in their home-made "patriot" costumes with their cardboard three-cornered hats, and the stupid poorly-spelled protest signs between the lawn chairs - that's why THAT is what you see on the news. And what you KEEP seeing on the news.
I am not advocating so much crazy idiot images, but IMAGES. Something memorable that sticks in the mind. That triggers a reaction along the lines of "Oh. Uh. Hmmm... I never thought of THAT..."
The public will NOT think of THAT because they're never SHOWN THAT. So how CAN they think of THAT? They're trained only to see and think about what they're repeatedly shown. And then they react as you'd expect them to, and they are softened up and receptive to your message and to how you want them to think and intake information and process it and conclude what you want them to conclude and react the way you want them to react and respond the way you want them to respond. Like Pavlov's dogs. WE on our side provide NO answer back on that. NO counter-action, counter-provocation, counter-images, counter-information, counter-education. When all the public hears and sees and hears talked about is one way, that's all they're going to know.
If I may... (Humbly submitted. I know it's a post of mine. But please consider the conversation between "She," "Me," and "Mom #3". "She" being a mom, very nice and well-intentioned, who knew nothing of the world around her except what her rich developer-husband and her Pox Noise-loyalist brother-in-law were telling her about dick cheney's alleged "war record" to provide one of many justifications and excuses for the "nobility" of that damn Iraq War. She had NO OTHER INFORMATION on which to make any conclusions of her own, and she was never exposed to anybody with any alternative points of view to add to the conversation around her.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6143454
Amen! Well, maybe this is how it starts.
How many years have gone by when our side has sat and wrung its hands and done NOTHING?
I really LIKE the idea of fighting fire with fire - they have their damn posters with the mass of differentiating cells in various stages of development. Well, what about the posters that show butchered women? DYING women? DEAD women, from trying to end an unwanted pregnancy - for WHATEVER reason (usually a really serious and credible reason like rape or incest or extreme poverty or hopeless deformity of the fetus or sickness and disability for the mother - who usually doesn't have any partner to help her afford to raise all those kids). Show the gore. Show the gore on the OTHER SIDE, so the actual cost can be seen.
Again here it is. ALL WE EVER SEE is THAT side. That OTHER side. That's all we ever see, all we ever hear about, all we ever hear talked about. WHERE IS OUR SIDE???? WHERE? WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN ALL THIS TIME, while the other side has been busy busy busy, working working working, lobbying lobbying lobbying, pushing pushing pushing, staying-awake staying-awake staying-awake, and they have done NOTHING but gain ground. And we make it easier for them to do that because we offer no forceful push-back to match their efforts, move by every-single-move.
WHERE IS OUR SIDE??? Is it finally here? Is this the start of it? I sure hope so. SOMEBODY has to be out there advocating vigorously, pointed, aggressively. We need a "citizen soldier" movement like these people are. A "citizen activist" And we need to be part of it, even in a small way. They have one on that side, trying to force-feed their message and their agenda. We NEED one on OUR side - to COUNTER-FORCE-FEED OUR message and OUR agenda. We need more forceful push-back - like this.
YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!
This:
The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.
It's a KEY TO UNDERSTANDING... what moves these people and what makes them tick and makes them think the way they do.
And I'd bet the only thing they watch is Pox Noise, and the only thing they listen to is hate-radio. So that's all they know. And their sources do nothing but reinforce and reaffirm that. And if that's all they see and all they hear, WHAT ELSE ARE THEY GONNA THINK????
That's why it's so urgently important that WE be the voices to try to crack through that facade. It could be that if YOU attempt to speak up or shine a light or provide facts or tell the truth, it just might be the first time they ever hear anything like that. They may never have heard the other side (OURS) before, unless of course it's being distorted and ridiculed and misrepresented and flat-out LIED about. We HAVE to speak up, and be their only source for real honest-to-God truth. We HAVE TO. Especially when we're hamstrung by idiot media and flabby non-combative and spineless Dems.
And those with the cheap-ass made-in-China car magnets that say "Support Our Troops"
are often among those who are the first ones to want to send more of our kids off to war (and then deny them health care and rehabilitation and GI benefits after they come home broken and war-weary and shell-shocked because they're suddenly part of the "lazy moocher" crowd).
Shit - it takes me back to this - um - "conversation" I had with one of the other "karate moms" who was quite wealthy, country-club type, married to a predatory developer husband. She was SO republi-CON she was pretty doggone unreachable. She was the one I had an argument with - about dick cheney.
She: "Oh he served."
Me: "No he didn't!"
She: "YES. Yes he did!"
Me: "Nope. NEVER wore his country's uniform, NEVER saw combat, five deferments. NEVER got his hands dirty."
She: "But ... my brother-in-law says cheney SERVED!"
Mom #3 (mutual friend, another karate mom, also a country-club type, married to a rich guy but she had a taste for facts and reality): "Um... actually, no, cheney never served. calimary's right. Your brother-in-law is wrong. cheney never served."
She: (flustered) "What? Really? He didn't?"
Mom #3: "No. He didn't."
She: (flustered, stammering) "Well... I'm getting wrong information here. I've been given wrong information..." Muttering continued as she took her coffee and headed down the sidewalk.
This SAME "She" came to me after war was declared and our loved ones were being conned off to war, and pleaded - "Oh, God! It's started! I put our flag up at our house to support our trooooooops. Aren't you going to fly your flag to support our troooooooooooops?"
Me: "NO. I'd rather 'support our troops' by stopping that damn stupid wasteful war so they don't have to go! The way we need to 'support our troops' is by NOT WASTING THEIR PRECIOUS LIVES to begin with! By NOT SENDING THEM TO A WAR LIKE THIS ONE. By KEEPING THEM OUT of a stupid useless war that's built on LIES and we shouldn't even BE over there fighting it in the first place! THAT'S how you 'support our troops'."
She never got it. And I didn't really expect her to. She'd spent too much of her life in that mindset. Surrounded by people who felt only THAT way. She never heard the other side, and had already been wired to dismiss it if she did hear it. She was hard-wired NOT to be receptive to anything I would argue. There was nobody like me, or even like "Mom #3" in her social circle. She lived her life surrounded by bush/cheney lovers and war proponents and other believers in "that" musty, irrelevant, and fact-free capitalism-worshipping mindset of rovian reality-manipulation and Pox Noise-pushed delusion. She was and probably still is unreachable, and unredeemable. But I never stopped trying. She'd NEVER HEARD ANYONE in her circle who knew the truth about dick cheney, for example. Certainly nobody who spoke up about it. And if she'd never heard that, it's an absolute guarantee that she never heard anything else about bush/cheney that was based on reality, either. It was a shame. We lost touch after awhile, as our kids grew up, earned their black belts, the boys started wanting to get their drivers' licenses and chase girls and try to get ready for college, the girls started wanting to get their drivers' licenses and chase boys and try to get ready for college, and very few of them stayed with the karate lessons for long. The little group around the karate school started to splinter off and scatter to the four winds. And so it goes...
We have a ronald reagan Freeway out here now, leading to the ronald reagan worship center
um - I mean the reagan presidential library.
I STILL call it the 118 - or the Simi Valley Freeway.
I WON'T give in.
Just think of it this way - that statue? Is it outside? If so, then there's more places for pigeons to poop on!
And think of this, too: A comment I think I saw here from some liberal activist out there in the active fight who said something to the effect of - "yeah, ronald reagan's 'legacy.' Don't worry. We're working on it." (As in - we're working to DISMANTLE it.)
There's this stupid-ass "reagan legacy project" whose ridiculous addle-brained "mission" (hmm - those addled brains flock together don't they!) is to rename everything possible from coast to coast after ronald reagan. Every bridge, every school, every dam, every highway, every public building, every town square, every everything. Well, there are those of us who believe that the best thing to do is to follow along behind them and undo whatever they just did. It'll take time. Because all the pizzazz of that Hollywood fairy-tale glaze doesn't melt away from the eyes overnight. But he will fade. Time marches on. The worshippers will die out. And eventually nobody will remember why they simply HAD to rename everything on the planet, AND the planet too, after this dead piece of meat. He does NOT stand with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and CERTAINLY NOT FDR. Historians will begin to take over.
I look forward to the day when people start realizing that saint ronnie did NOT singlehandedly beat down the "Iron Curtain." Let's all remember - it would NOT have been possible if there wasn't this Polish dude in Rome named John Paul II who started chipping away at that from a lot closer to home. AND it would NOT have been possible if there wasn't somebody who'd risen to power on the OTHER SIDE of that "Iron Curtain" who brought a different mentality into the picture and was receptive to different ideas and open to change - even actively looking for opportunities to change. Some dude named Mikhail Gorbachev. reagan was around trying to win points from Leonid Brezhnev, and then Yuri Andropov, and then Constantin Chernenko. One after another they each rose to power over there and ruled for awhile and then died. Buncha old men in succession. With the same stale old mindset that nobody in the West could work with, and that was slowly becoming increasingly obsolete as the world changed. And then came Gorbachev who was younger, and had different ideas, and this new thing he called "glasnost" - which referred to opening windows and letting the fresh air in. And suddenly, there was a new climate behind the Iron Curtain that hadn't been there before. So all reagan did was survive long enough for somebody better over there to step up and take over. ONLY THEN were there favorable conditions with which the West could work. Even Maggie Thatcher in England noticed that, too. I remember her quote about Gorbachev: "I think we can do business with him."
In the UK, from what I've noticed, there are growing numbers of people who are not exactly enthralled with the idea of worshipping Margaret Thatcher, either. Eventually I think a critical mass of people here in this country will realize what ronald reagan's REAL place in the pecking order is. Especially as his worshippers age and die out, and the historians and objective historical records take over. ESPECIALLY if enough of US make sure of that. Just watch. I suspect that as the years pass, and that list comes out year after year with public opinion surveys of the five best Presidents. As time passes there will be more names to consider. I suspect Barack Obama's name will start appearing in the top-ten lists and then eventually the top five. And ronald reagan's name will start sinking. He'll probably wind up somewhere in the middle. Especially as the historical record starts speaking louder and more forcefully with time. History, I suspect, will be VERY kind to Barack Obama, considering his record, his legacy, what he was up against, and what he still managed to accomplish in spite of that. I think his achievement in affordable health care will be a HUGE part of that, especially considering how many presidents before him tried to enact some form of it and repeatedly failed. I may not live long enough to see that, but I suspect it's what will ultimately be true.
FACTS will ALWAYS trump bullshit. Because FACTS stand on solid ground and bullshit is nothing more than just another house built on sand. May take longer than we like. But eventually the clouds part and the sun breaks through.
LOVE LOVE LOVE that joni ernst cartoon at the top!
Welcome to the big time, kid.
The higher you rise, the more of a target you make yourself. The higher your profile, the less you can get away with, because more people are starting to notice you, and seeing you, and watching you, and keeping track of what you say, and checking into it to see if it actually holds water (and yours DON'T and never did - but back home, you didn't have the big audience with lots of other things to do than simply drink you in and worship you without question. All you ever had was the locals who'd swoon over your folksy schtick and fall for your big smile with all those pretty teeth).
You're in the major leagues now. And THIS is what comes with it. There are MORE eyes and ears turned your way, and MORE critical thinking. And MORE objective audiences who look at you more objectively, and will check you out more dispassionately, and discover more quickly that you're nothing but a FRAUD.
I'm surprised sarah palin didn't realize that. You can fool 'em back home more easily than you can fool all of 'em in the big leagues. Actually... I take that back. Really NOT surprised. Her ego's so damn big it won't let her see the reality out there. Not then, not now, not EVER.
And for joni, well, just because you can castrate hogs back home doesn't mean you can neuter the critical thinking of a majority of Americans. You're no Rebecca and this is no "Sunnybrook Farm."
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Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
Current location: Oregon
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 81,220
