Yikes

Every Sunday Yikes posts the best political cartoons of the week. This week there are some really good ones, and instead of duplicating all of them I'm just recommending you go there yourself.

Three Year Olds

I've always used the analogy in my US and world history classes when trying to explain Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler in 1938. I always say: Think of Hitler as a three-year-old that sees a toy in a store and wants it. If Mommy says no he starts to cry loudly. This is to intimidate Mommy into the buying the store so she won't feel embarrassed in front of all the other Mommy's shopping there. Then the next time they're in the store he wants another toy and so on...

Appeasement is giving in to the child over and over again.

Lee Siegel today at The Beast has a corresponding post explaining this for Obama in handling the Toddlers in Congress.

A child operating behind the threat of a tantrum will begin by crying softly. (Leaking the threat of a filibuster to the press.) If the parent sticks to his guns and insists that the broccoli be eaten, then it is advantageous to escalate the cries into low, persistent shrieks. (Throw the ball to Fox.) If this meets with continued resistance, the low shrieks may then become outright screams. (Call in Sarah Palin and the specter of the death panels.) At this point, the child may even hope to attract “independents”: i.e. concerned neighbors or the police. And of course, if none of these tactics is successful, then physical gestures may be employed: first, pushing the plate away, then throwing the broccoli onto the floor, and finally full-scale assault on valuable objects: dishes, glasses, even favored toys (in order to demonstrate absolute commitment). A full-scale tantrum (filibuster) results when all three elements are combined—crying, screaming, throwing—for a substantial length of time, leading anxious, self-conscious parents to believe that they are a) severing the bond between them and their children (Obama’s fear of rejection); b) destroying them developmentally (Obama’s fear of not being a paragon of democracy); c) failing utterly as parents (Obama’s fear of, well, failure).

The Big Sell Out

Maybe it came the day Obama chose Tim Geitner as Treasury Secretary, but today's soon to be announcement in the state of the union address of a non-military spending freeze for the next three years has just about everybody that voted for Obama munching on tin foil. Krugman is beside himself and...

Steve Clemmons at Huffpo today has this to say:

Obama's team, content to have bailed out Wall Street, seem to now run the rest of the economy on a cash accounting basis. That's bad, self-defeating policy.

What needs to be run on a cash accounting basis -- that is not -- is the part of the budget Obama seems not to want to reign in.....a huge, runaway bill to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, the cost of America's Iraq engagement will still run more than $150 billion. And add to that $100 billion plus for Afghanistan.

One QUARTER OF A TRILLION DOLLARS is what the US is spending on two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan that together have a COMBINED GDP of just $23 billion.

That is lunacy. Americans have a US President who is going to say tonight -- we cannot afford our future, we cannot afford investment in ourselves, but we can afford to bail out Wall Street financiers, and we can afford to pump $250 billion into two small countries abroad, but we can't afford to do the right things by American working families -- who deserve far better.

It is obvious now that there isn't a single politician at the local, state or federal level that actually gives a good Goddamn about the average taxpayer.

What difference did it make?

If Obama is going to make all the wrong decisions that we were afraid McCain would make and continue the stupid and destructive policies of the previous 8 years, why did we bother to vote at all. I'm really getting buyers remorse here.

Hat tips

• To Yikes for the cartoons above.
  
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  To Woody for the picture above, who has been dead on in his evaluation of Obama for the past year.

• For Russ who made it onto C&L's blog roundup.

• From Tom Degan's Rant: "Fascism should more properly be called 'corporatism' because it is the total merging of corporate and state power." Benito Mussolini the Founding Father of the Fascist state
• This article from the Tom Paine blog is insightful on how to counter corporate greed.

Captain's Log 012510.0820

Last week was a really bad week for the average middle class worker in this country. A demographic soon to be placed on the endangered species list. The problem is that our elected corportate mouthpieces are about to kill the list.

I'm going to claim that phrase: Elected Corporate Mouthpieces or ECM's. They stopped being public servants a long time ago. Now the Supremes have brought them out of the closet.

The only consequence of this last blatant destruction of our Constitutional core values is that this decision might prove to be the one galvanizing over reach for the CorpoRepublicans that Roe v Wade was for the Democrats.

The Day Democracy Died

Our fine republic has been on life support for ten years. Today the Supreme Court pulled the plug. It ruled that corporations may fill the airwaves in support of which ever candidate they choose with unlimited tax free money.

It's been bad enough that they fill the coffers of politicians with campaign contributions making them the best corporate servants money can buy (they stopped being public servants a long time ago), but now they don't have to bother with campaign contributions they can just pick a candidate flood the airwaves with their advertising dollars and the gullible sheep that bought the swift boat lies will check the corporate approved candidate's box on election day. We got rid of this kind of economic electoral blackmail with the secret ballot, but thanks to a Supreme Court that elected Bush, they've now stabbed our Constitution in the back again giving mindless, soulless, rapaciously money hungry entities, that are in all other ways immune from laws with human rights.

The Zombies have taken over our government and will feast on human flesh for years to come.

Really Pissed Off

I've taken over a writers group that meets once a month. The gentleman who coordinated it before me handed over an e-mail address list so I could contact all those who are a part of the group. just under 200 on the list. I set up a new e-mail account for the list with MSN's live.com It took quite awhile to enter in all those addresses, but the site says you can mail up to 300 at a time, you just have to build up for a few weeks. I've sent out some test e-mails ten at a time a couple of days and after the intial ten the next ten I'd have to verify with one of those letter things. After that it would block any more e-mails, it says for 24 hours. I haven't sent an e-mail since last weekend and when I checked the account today I wanted to reply to one of the members who had e-mailed me about finding the blog I started for the group. It blocked me from sending a reply. There is only their pat answer sheet that you can turn to for help and no one to either e-mail or call to ask what gives.

So Fuck the son's of bitches.

I'll have to redo all the addresses into a yahoo acount I've had for years but seldom use.

Goddamn the bastards!

Missed it.

I really was all set to leave for the curmudgeons meeting yesterday and something came up. I don't have cell phone numbers for Russ or Woody so I'm sure they were wondering where I was. I hope they had a good time.