Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

In print, Hunter S. Thompson had this to say about the President:

Let's face it--the yo-yo president of the U.S.A. knows nothing. He is a dunce. He does what he is told to do--says what he is told to say--poses the way he is told to pose. He is a Fool.
This is never an easy thing for the voters of this country to accept.

No. Nonsense. The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time--when the last living vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus rich kid in charge of the White House. Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters--it is where the heart of America lives. So if the president lies and acts giddy about other people's lives--if he wantonly and stupidly endorses mass murder as a logical plan to make sure that we are still Number One--he is a Jackass by definition--a loud and meaningless animal with no fundamental intelligence and no balls.

To say that this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.

Whoops! Did I say that? Is it even vaguely possible that some New Age Republican whore-beast of a false president could actually make Richard Nixon look like a liberal?

- From Kingdom of Fear, Simon & Schuster, 2003

R.I.P. Gonzo...........

"The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place."

'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972'

...takes me to a time just four months ago when i had hope in a whole different way....

I remember too, and sometimes, when I can bear it, I go back and look at the old Kerry blog. the Hall of Fame, of the Beautiful Bloggers--where are they all now? We were so sure, so full of hope and excitement.

I feel significantly older too, in just these few short months, but I'm going on. I haven't discovered a way to stop fighting. No matter how hard and ugly it gets, if people like us don't fight back, that hope and promise and excitement will be forever lost.

Give up? Are you kidding?

Got Democracy?

If I may offer up a little Orwell in honor of Hunter Thompson.........

"Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act"

Got Integrity?

The election night of November 2000 was wonderful. I spent that night with Hunter Thompson, William Kennedy, and Douglas Brinkley. The three were appearing that evening as part of a writer's institute workshop. William Kennedy was HST's first editor, when HST was still mainstream, and writing from Cuba. If you read HST's book from 200 on Cuba, you can read the of hysterically funny letters the two wrote back and forth. We spent the evening, just the three of them, me, and about 50 or so people, listening to stories of those times.

It was only the next morning when Shrub's ascent to the throne started that we all woke up with a collective hangover.

But no matter what else happens, I will remember the wonderful HST's humor with his best and oldest friend that evening, sharing memories of being young writers, both of them poor and passionate and hungering to tell the truth about what the US was doing in Cuba.

Having read HST since I was in High School, I expected to hear the eviscerating grumblings of an annoyed democrat. Instead, I got to see a warm and vulnerable side to him as he reminisced with his friends. It's a side of him that helped put the pieces together of why and how he wrote as he did. His take no prisoners style of writing came from a profound depth of feeling and patriotism about his country. I don't think that is a word that is largely associated with him, but it's one that I often think of when I think of him.

Telling the truth as HST did was always a courageous act of patriotism and I will always feel incredibly lucky to have spent an evening in his company.

Injustice, in Secret
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40624-2005Feb20.html?nav=rss_opinion/editorials
"ATTORNEYS FOR the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another's arguments."

[WTF?!?!? This makes as much sense as Bush-speak... or maybe that's why it makes no sense whatsoever by the time one reaches the end of this short editorial. Secret court proceedings and secret documents and secret testimony is so UN-American - and UN-real and UN-civilized and UN-worldly and UN-ethical - I'm utterly speechless with fury!!! No civilized society can put up with this crap!!! No UN-civilized culture would put up with this crap, either, for that matter!!!]

Lovely thread. Just had a discussion with a student--first one in months--who GETS it. Finally, I feel like my students are waking up.

It's about the truth; peering past the walls and curtains--Hunter S. knew that too.

Those who see clearly--and I include Abbie Hoffman and Gary Webb in the list--are subject to blinding flashes of clarity in which the stench of evil becomes overwhelming. All the drugs, good and bad, in the world cannot pull the veils down again.

I ask myself--what can we do to keep the losses from mounting here?

And the answer that comes back--provide sanctuary. Abbie, Gary, Gonzo--as with so many of us--needed a different kind of sanctuary than they had.

One thing I hope we have begun to create here is a resonant place--a sanctuary for hearing and seeing the truth.

[space for listening]

"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. "

"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws."

"My concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at a hundred and twenty and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that . . . and there I'd be sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a cast of whiskey next to me, and a case of dynamite in the trunk . . . honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and fall down into that mess of steel mills. It'd be a tremendous goddamn explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt. I'm pretty sure, unless they've changed the highway, that launching place is still there. As soon as I get home, I ought to take a drive just to check it out."

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

So long, Gonzo. It has been a great ride.

Thompson put his finger on the problem with the mainstream press in a statement he made in an unsentimental eulogy of Nixon in Rolling Stone. "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point," Thompson said. "It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place." (--Hunter S. Thompson, "He was a crook," Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994.)

Referring to the Bush mob he wrote: "Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? . "They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis."

Salon magazine says, referring to Thompson, "The godfather of gonzo believes America has suffered a 'nationwide nervous breakdown' since 9/11, and as a result is compromising civil liberties for what he calls 'the illusion of security.'"

A little farther down, Salon says: "Of course, the writer has distrusted power all his life, and it may come as no surprise that he now believes the administration is 'manufacturing' the Iraqi threat for its own political gain and the economic gain of the 'oligarchy' (read: the military-industrial complex)."

It quotes Thompson as saying: "The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public. And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny. I think that's what worries me."

In regard to the sacrifice of civil liberties that has taken place after 911, Thompson says, "It's a disaster of unthinkable proportions -- part of the downward spiral of dumbness. Civil liberties are black and white issues. I don't think people think far enough to see the ramifications. The PATRIOT Act was a dagger in the heart, really, of even the concept of a democratic government that is free, equal and just. There are a lot more concentration camps right now than Guantanamo Bay. But they're not marked. Now, every jail, every bush-league cop can run a concentration camp. It amounts to a military and police takeover, I think."

I had forgotten HST was with JK briefly during the campaign. Awwwh.... Boy, he really did speak the truth:

"Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States."

Which is true. I said all those things, and I will say them again. Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart -- which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.
____
Man, he checked out on us just when it was getting good. There is so much more corruption to report on about this WH and we need journalists like him to lead the way. Oh well, RIP HST.

Gotta smile at this............

Thompson's will outlines unusual directions for author's ashes

BOSTON - The late Hunter S. Thompson apparently wanted to have his ashes blasted from a cannon across his ranch in Woody Creek.

That will be the extent of the maverick journalist's funeral, as outlined in his will, said George Tobia Jr., a Boston-based entertainment lawyer who has represented the author for the past 15 years.

http://www.9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=3a9fb108-0abe-421a-00d3-6a13bbdf1f56&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

Thanks,FD. I remebered that and couldn't search for it. Important to me that you posted.

This is OT & for Ira & others here interested in PA. New site set up by Atrios poster. Found info here:
http://www.politicalstrategy.org/

Site is here:
http://beat-santorum.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday, Ted Kennedy!

Weak dollar, oil price spike slam stocks
Investors worry currency troubles could lead to inflation

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:34 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2005

NEW YORK - A sharp surge in crude oil prices sent stocks tumbling Tuesday, as investors worried that high energy prices could not only spark inflation, but cause the stock market to tumble further.

Weakness in the dollar — which fell sharply against the Japanese yen and lost ground against other currencies — helped send crude futures soaring past $51 per barrel, much as they did during the third quarter last year, when the major indexes fell to multiyear lows. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $51.05, up $2.70, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The economic news and fears of a market downturn overshadowed strong earnings from Dow component Home Depot Inc. and intensifying merger talks between Federated Department Stores Inc. and May Department Stores Co.

“This distressing news about oil prices is really nagging at investors,” said Joseph Battipaglia, chief investment officer at Ryan Beck & Co. “It’s not enough to break the camel’s back, but that pressure will be there for a while.”

Prose laureate of the Age of Paranoia

Thompson was stalked by doom but his writing was beacon of truth

By Henry Allen
The Washington Post

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7011556/

-snip-

We’re left wondering what happened. He once said: “I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone . . . but they’ve always worked for me.” Until maybe he got wondering about the ultimate high being a 1,500-feet-per-second implantation in the neurological system.

Or the paranoia got to him — in paranoia you are your own worst enemy, and that’s a tightening circle that nobody can escape, except, say, by suicide. Or it was pain and depression brought on by reported back surgery, a broken leg and a hip replacement. Or he was playing out the last moves of the Hemingway game — the paranoid, shock-treated Hemingway who ended up with his doctor one day, crying because he said that he couldn’t write anymore, he just couldn’t write. Or America has finally become what he said it was, with lie-awake fears of suitcase nukes, jails full of secret uncharged prisoners with no legal recourse, and quiet applause for the recreational torture of Arabs in Iraq. Or people have stopped reading, and there are no more literary heroes. Or maybe he just killed himself, like a number of other people on any given day. He lived on his terms, he died on his own terms.

Except he wasn’t like a number of people — he left us his prose, his genius persona, and his insights into the dark side of America, insights that could change your life after the laughing stopped. You would like to think that beneath the forbidding scowl of post-9/11 America, and despite the dark side, that a lot of people understand that Hunter S. Thompson was a great American.

Sorry, OT, but a must read.

The $200 million disinformation campaign
Social Security privatization cabal will break the bank to convince you to break yourself

AUSTIN, Texas -- Among those still interested in fiscal sanity, and that includes quite a few Republicans, I bring your attention to two tax cuts that should be repealed right now for the sound reason that they are perfectly nuts.

snip>

This has been done before, but not at this incredible level. When the insurance industry mounted a $10 million campaign in 1993 to defeat the Clinton health insurance plan (remember Harry and Louise?), no one had ever seen that kind of money spent to kill a single bill before. And now, The Washington Post reports, "Corporate America, the financial services industry, conservative think tanks, much of the Washington trade association community, the Republican Party, and GOP lobbyists and consultants are prepared to spend $200 million or more to influence the outcome of two of the toughest legislative fights in recent memory."

snip>
The latest onslaught of special interest money, reported in The New York Times, is $10 million from a lobbying group called USA Next, which will be used solely to attack the AARP for opposing Bush's privatization plan.

"They (AARP) are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next, told the Times. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." If you can't win an argument on the merits, then dirty up your opposition. (This is a continuance of the Swift Boat Liars cohorts. Funny thing and they said they were not associated with the Republican party.)

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18599

NO SURRENDER !!!

Alterman: Journalism Obsessed By 'Crap'

By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: February 22, 2005

Mired in trivialities of its own making, mainstream journalism needs new "giants" willing to stand up for traditional standards of truth-telling, media commentator and historian Eric Alterman said in a lecture yesterday at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Alterman lamented that important stories such as the abuse at the U.S. military's Abu Gharib prison in Iraq are "one-week stories" at best, while attention is lavished on sagas such as the Scott Peterson murder trial.

"Journalists are responsible for that, in part because they have become part of the permanent government, and in part because we've become so addicted to the spectacle," he said. "I do think the media are to be blamed for devoting so much of their space to crap."

http://199.249.170.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000809172

~off topic

~All in the family: Sistani's bro-in-law chosen as Iraqi PM:

Shiites Choose Candidate for Iraqi PM
http://tinyurl.com/5wbsn

Ibrahim al-Jaafari is brother-in-law of the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_al-Jaafari

I'll bet Gonzo would want us to enjoy a laugh...

http://www.humorinthenews.com/pages/thisweek.html

bush protestors in Europe:
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2238&mode=&order=0&thold=0

I just got a letter from the office of one of my senators, Hutchinson, who i had e-mailed about Social Security. In the begining she thanked me for writing and went on to express how much she respects all of her constituents. ...so, naturally, she proceeded to lie throughout the rest of the letter. =/