AIG On Your Face

anniversaries are important and today's an anniverary that is really important although it seems to be slipping away unnoticed, what with all the enthusiasm americans are now showing for high finance, the level playing field of the free market, and the invisible hand of the free market, which is jammed so far up the american collective anus that two of its fingers are coming out america's collective noseholes .... six years since the united states undertook its illegal, immoral, unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no threat whatsoever that, furthermore, used to be a favored nation, one to whom we sold jet fighters; tanks; cluster bombs, and the wherewithal for making .... weapons of mass destruction .... yes, iraq was part of america's grand tradition of supporting autocratic repressive psycopathic dictators around the world in protection of our "national interest"--which generally seemed to be connected to corporate profits and "regional stability," which generally seemed to be connected to corporate profits--which might also have meant preventing someone else from accessing somebody else's natural resources ....

six years later, it hardly matters; iraq isn't an issue, afghanistan is peripheral although i doubt that it will be for long; pakistan? well, who cares what the taliban is doing, or where osama bin laden is, when we've got terrorists of our own to deal with, and i'm talking about the folks at AIG ..... dick cheney is harrooomphing and phumphing and going on quail hunts saying that we're less safe from terrorists now than we were under his reign, and this time he's right: we've got corporate bankers threatening to destroy the system if we don't give them more money .....

rust never sleeps and extortion never stops .....

so why all of a sudden is their this .... mmmmm ..... "populist" turmoil? what's happened to us? are the sheep looking up? losing their sense of humor? along with their jobs and their houses? did their tv's get disconnected? seriously, now; i haven't been writing because, well .... i'd like to write something different each time but i'm overwhelmed by the sameness of our bleak lunar political landscape, which goes something like this:

monday .... hey! did you notice that we're being fucked?
tuesday .... wow! we're being fucked ....
wednesday .... boy, are we being fucked and gosh, how fucked we are ....
thursday ... have they finished fucking us yet?
friday ... nope; still bangin' away .... have a GREAT weekend!
saturday .... no rest for the wicked ....
sunday .... hemorrhoids are no deterrent for our political process ...
monday .... etc. etc. etc. etc. ......

i guess i don't really understand the outrage that AIG's "retention packages" are causing; 170 million is a penny on the dollar when factored against the .... mmmmm ..... how many billions have we given them? somewhere last week--and i can't remember which fearless purveyor of "news" it was that brought it to our attention--i read that americans are no longer perceiving corporations as having their best interests at heart ..... did you hear me shrieking? i'm not surprised that you didn't; i hardly have the energy to shatter glass and etch crystal these days ..... oooooo ..... americans are a quick study, all right; let's see .... they've tolerated over three decades of rectal plunder by the oil companies; they stood by, grazing and bleating placidly, while the very banks they're now shovelling more money to rewrote the bankruptcy rules so that americans couldn't get out from underneath the burden of the credit cards they were bombarded with; they slept through the no-bid contracts in iraq torture kidnapping eight billion dollars cash on pallets somehow misplaced ha ha we're at what fourthousandtwohundredtwentyfive troops dead over one million iraqis yawn i can't even go off on the vapidity with which they've contemplated how the pharmaceutical industry's fobbed toxins off on them while sidestepping any liability, aided and abetted by the FDA; as for the food we eat, or the water we drink, it's all poisoned by the corporate feces of greed, and don't tell me that monsanto, archer daniels midland, or conagra are going to go sustainable and "organic" and what was that "splash" was that the last polar bear dropping into the boiling seas?

i like my polar bear rare; pull him out quick, please .....

and now joe america is pissed off because wall street's best and brightest are getting a bonus and joe's getting a bone-ass .....

i guess another reason i find it so difficult to write is that it feels like i'd be filling out a report card for barack obama: afghanistan--F+; stem cell research--A-; iraq--D+; torture--C .... it feels like i get a snippet that perks me up and i go "gosh that's really great fuck you bush eat your heart out you republican fucks" and then the bottom drops out of my world and my heart sinks and i think fuck barack, i don't think your afghanistan planistan's going to work out and it just feels gamey and sniffy and it feels like i'm writing for the new york times and i'd rather eat my flesh than become a corporate journalist even though their numbers are dwindling dwindling dwindling why there's no money to be made in reporting the news except about jen she's always worth writing about and bristol palin's break-up boy there's a surprise i never saw that coming down the pike did you i'm just sitting here shaking my head thinking over six years ago we were marching in the streets ha ha like we thought it'd do any good but we did it anyway and "the media" 'misunderestimated' the number of people in san francisco new york chicago los angeles paris london rome madrid and "the media" got all excited about "shock and awe" and got stiffies about how spiffy a unilateral illegal immoral invasion'd look on television and they could sell lots of air time they sold lots and lots of hummers with little "support our troops" decals and then they started to go "oooooo ...... where are the weapons of ass distruction they're not under george booshie's desk ha ha isn't that funny?" and i could've told 'em that and so could you but they never asked me did they did they ask you and now they're going "oooooooooo ...... do you think that there's a lot of greedy little fuckers runnin' around and don't you think it'd have been just a skosh better if all the regulations and oversights hadn't been so assiduously dismantled by all the eager little termites and fuckelves in congress and the senate who had their lips firmly affixed to the fetid crank of corporate america" and i could've told them that and i don't even have a degree in economics how about you but they didn't ask you either did they and don't even get me started on the coleman/franken debacle in minnesota we still don't do elections in the land of the free and .....

i don't know what it's like where you are but it felt like spring today, the air feeling soft and velvety and i wanted to rip off my clothes and roll on my back juggling stars with my paws but it's not safe to do that in my yard i haven't even pruned out my roses yet and they're long overdue .... tulips are up, the orange tree i planted five years ago is finally bearing fruit; i see one or two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice on it ..... mmmmm mmmmm mmmmmmm; organic free range oranges; think i'll have monsanto genetically modify it so that the oranges come mixed with ethanol ...... then i can put a tiger in my tank ......

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