Sing It If You Understand

(6:00PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In.  But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .

obama!! Pictures, Images and Photos

That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it’s echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged.  Don’t even think about it.  Byron Dorgan got the message.  Chris Dodd got the message.  Robert Wexler got the message.  We all got the message.  

2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,

Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

I don’t have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don’t have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don’t have to tell you because she wasn’t the only one who made that mistake.  100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.  

So here we are.      

“Pragmatic” progressives tell us we can’t jump the track, the corporate media tells us we’re just cars on a cable, the “Christians” tell us life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we’ve seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.

Sing it if you understand . . .

 

An Uneasy Feeling . . .

This is a society in deep, deep trouble and the fixes currently in the works are in no way adequate to the enormous challenges we’re facing.  The fault lies everywhere. The president, the Congress, the news media and the public are all to blame. Shared sacrifice is not part of anyone’s program. Politicians can’t seem to tell the difference between wasteful spending and investments in a more sustainable future.  Any talk of raising taxes is considered blasphemous, but there is a constant din of empty yapping about controlling budget deficits.

It won’t be empty yapping for long, Lieberman and Conrad and Nelson and Snowe will see to that. Social welfare programs will be shredded, “entitlements” will be gutted, no Democrat will defend them, they’ve seen the writing on the wall, the ones who aren’t “retiring” will say what their corporate masters tell them to say and do what their corporate masters tell them to do.    

Hypocrites . . .

Congress Pictures, Images and Photos

They’re all there for the very same reason–POWER.    

Digby . . .

The deficit scolds are coming out of the woodwork now that the Republicans brought us to the brink, slashing taxes for the wealthy, larding their own contributors with earmarks, solidifying the notion that military industrial complex spending is a sacred, untouchable icon, and fetishing and deregulating the market until they finally brought the whole system to its knees.

There’s a light at each end of this tunnel, we shout, but we’re just as far in as we’ll ever be out, and these mistakes that we’ve made, we just make them again, like we did in 1980, and 1982, and 1984, and 1986, and 1988, like we’ve done every two years ever since the Reagan/Bush years, over and over again, by reelecting corrupt corporate Republicans and corrupt corporate Democrats.

We’re trapped in that two-party tunnel to nowhere, we’re just as far in as we’ll ever be out. We’ve always been just as far in as we’ll ever be out, we always will be just as far in as we’ll ever be out. We’ve been wrong.  We’ve been wrong every time.  There’s no light at either end of that tunnel. There’s no light at the Corporate Democratic end of that tunnel and there sure as hell isn’t any light at the Corporate Republican end of that tunnel.

Sing it if you understand.

May he turned 21 on the base at Fort Bliss.  “Just a day,” he sat down to the flask in his fist. “Ain’t been sober, since maybe October of last year.” Just a day.  Just another day in the tunnel, just another demoralizing day like the one before it and the one after it, just another demeaning day for the powerless, for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who have no choice but to obey their commanders, for the working people of this country who have no choice but to obey their bosses.  Just another day in the tunnel, just another demeaning day in a demeaning life in a dying nation being destroyed by criminals.  

Sing it if you understand.

Mike Prysner understands . . .

I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land.  But not people whose names we don’t know, and cultures we don’t understand.  The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable; it’s the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable; it’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable.  Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer.

Mike Prysner understands: “Our enemies are not 5000 miles away, they are right here at home” . . .

We need to get organized, we need to fight back.  Take a deep breath.  Take as many as you need. Then face the truth.  There’s only one way out of this.  Working within the system is no longer an option, it just plays into the hands of the corrupt criminals who control the system.  

Sing it if you understand.  

2 AM and I’m still awake, writing these words,

If I get them down on paper, they’re no longer inside of me,

Threatening the life they belong to.

The writers and poets, the songwriters, the activists, the seekers of peace and justice who who speak truth to power, who will not sell their souls for a corporate paycheck, who have seen enough, who will not submit to a criminal government, who know what has to be done, who are ready to do it, could use some help.  From you.  From every American who still gives a damn, from every American who still believes that justice matters, from every American who is ready to be the change they seek, from every American who is ready to get arrested if that’s what it’s going to take to restore democracy and the rule of law to this country.                    

I feel like I’m naked in front of the crowd,

‘Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud,

And I know that you’ll use them, however you want to.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I know why I’m here.  I’m here to find the words, to use them as they were meant to be used, to make Americans understand, to find a way out of this tunnel, to forge a movement, to show those criminals in Washington what accountability looks like, to show them what massive civil disobedience looks like, so we can take back our government, so the rule of law can be restored, so democracy can be redeemed.  

Somebody needs to get the fuck out, but it’s not us, it’s not progressives, it’s not We the People, it’s the criminal bankers and corrupt politicians and corporate media hacks who have the blood of the innocent on their hands, who have bankrupted an entire nation, who have turned America into a wasteland of lies, into a cauldron of corruption, into a corporate dictatorship.  They have shamed us all.  They are beneath contempt.  They are the ones who need to get the fuck out of Washington, out of Wall Street, out of their propaganda studios, out of their corporate boardrooms, out of this country and out of our lives.  If they won’t go, we will have to make them go.  One way or another.          

Sing it if you understand.  

82 comments

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  1. There’s only one way out of this.  Working within the system is no longer an option, it just plays into the hands of the corrupt criminals who control the system.

    Civil Disobedience.

    Sing it if you understand.  

    • RiaD on January 6, 2010 at 15:53

    like an hourglass glued to the table….

    well.

    it’s time to break the damn table, unhook the cars from the cable, forget the rewind button… go forward! speaking the truth to all you see…. just breathe…. & live your principles

    love you RusD

    ♥~

  2. in certain circles, is “Epiphany”.

    I dont know what it will take.

    “Civil disobedience.” Where to start?

  3. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

    We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

    A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

  4. and we’re all a little like Dustin Hoffman in this movie, no?

  5. Lets add one more ‘T’ to the statement…

       …GTTFO.

  6. Street Heat and there are gonna be a few dead before this is all over. Trumka arrested today. The time is coming to take to the streets and let them know we are not going quietly into the night motherfuckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  7. Council on Foreign Relations

    Bilderberg

    Trilateral Commission

    What part of depopulated nature preserve did you not understand.

    Whose top staff are all aligned with globalist oriented organizations.

    Name the pilotfor911truth who found a CO2 global warming disaster film from 1958!

    Is Timberland marketing a “post industrial” boot.

  8. I followed some links today and found this which is so true!

    In a column titled “Obama’s Promise of a New Beginning Now Seems Hollow,”

    Galloway writes: Who stole our change? Who hijacked a popular uprising that was going to put a stop to business as usual in Washington, D.C.? What happened to Barack Obama on his way to the White House?

    The Republicans have been so busy trying to paint President Obama as a socialist, as a radical, as a Marxist, as a Muslim, as the Devil, that they haven’t even noticed that he has become one of them.

  9. This is good, Rusty!

    Oh, BTW, there is yet another who will be quitting — Bill Ritter, D-CO!  Maybe, you’re correct in your reading of all of this.  I don’t know — maybe, it’s something else that we’re unaware of.

    I think Bob Herbert’s article is dead-on — it’s simple logic!  I think many of us have been hitting on the same conclusions for some time now!

    Anna Nalick’s song is so absolutely REAL.  

    I think “banning” together, in whatever entity we wish to do so, to unify efforts against corporatism is, perhaps, our best angle.  And, as I’ve iterated that before, I thought to myself, “well, what about those that DO have jobs with these conglomerate corporations?”  “What will happen to them — should we REALLY (get our shit together) fight mega-corporatists?  Then, thinking further, eventually, even they, who work for them, will ultimately, probably, lose their jobs, so, then, I’m back to where I started.  WE NEED TO FIGHT THE CORPORATISTS!

    And, then, even before Lasthorseman, posted, I thought about the “Bilderbergs.”  While, we don’t know a great deal about this secretive world-wide society, comprised of the most wealthy in the world, I have read accountings that the goal of the Bilderbergs, was to de-populate the world, as they believe it is over-populated.  (Frankly, that’s true, but THERE IS ENOUGH to go around, it’s simply a matter of how everything is distributed — a major problem involving corporatists.)  Apparently, from what one can garner of the Bilderbergs, if anything at all, is that they want a BIGGER “playground” for themselves, without the “disturbance” of a poorer population.  (Sounds a little like Barbara Bush, “Why should I disturb my beautiful mind?”, doesn’t it?)

    If there is any truth to the foregoing, “they’re” doing a good job.  Just think, if people have no jobs, no homes, no health care, inability to pursue education, etc. — what’s the outcome?  

    Thanks, Rusty!  This country is in the most DIRE of straits, as the “psychotic” of this country pursue maiming, killing and destruction of this country and that!

    IT TRULY IS UP TO US TO FIND A MEANS TO SALVAGE WHAT WE CAN, SO THAT WE MAY CONTINUE — OUR CHILDREN MAY CONTINUE!

  10. That Chapter is over! It’s over! There is no more opium to steal from India to sell to China in exchange for silks, spices, porcelain and dyes.  That kind of game is over! It’s over! The great merchant class has nowhere to go, with only a fantasy world to hold onto and a make believe war of the worlds.

    It’s not the people who need to be retrained and educated, it’s the politicians who live in a world of make believe.

    The creation of a mandate to buy insurance is a throw back to Medieval Europe, to the mandates of being loyal to the church and royalty. And Bush and Obama are drinking the same water as Richard the Lion Hearted, fearing the onslaught of the infidels as they threaten our way of life and our sacred beliefs.

    The serious business of sustaining and improving our democracy has turned into a game, and I don’t know who could characterize it better, Shakespeare or Kafka.

    The last election was pure theatre. Things are definitely fishy in America, and the cockroaches are taking over. They are very hard to get rid of. We’ve seen this before, they just keep coming back.

  11. Here`s a “Roll & Tumble”  for your great essay.

    Played on a little guitar I built with Bligh, seen here playing it.

    We built it yesterday from junk around the house, a guitar neck from a neighbor & a few parts from the music center.

    The song played is because we know the tune, & I`ve always been ready to ‘roll & tumble’

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/3

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