hair metal – Veglam

IT’S THE PLUTOCRACY, STUPID!! THE DIVIDED STATES OF EX AMERICA…..

“Both Republicans and Democrats have falsely claimed that they have an electoral mandate to cut public spending. They have used all of their collective political will to make this cutback program a reality.

In fact, if this were a real democracy, the government would have gone after the Wall Street thieves and parasites who everyone knows plunged the country into crisis. Instead, they were bailed out to the tune of several trillion dollars.

The public has time and again identified jobs as the most pressing economic problem. If this were a real democracy, the government would use society’s vast wealth to respond to the people’s most pressing needs. But for the capitalist parties, it is no ’emergency’ or ‘catastrophe’ that there are 44 million people below the poverty line (and that is with a ridiculously underestimated poverty level of $22,350 for a family of four).

The number of people without health care has risen to 52 million. There is no emergency bill for the millions of families facing eviction and foreclosure every year. From just 2005 to 2009, Latino households lost 66 percent and Black households lost 53 percent of their so-called ‘wealth.’

Based on demographic changes, the country’s elderly population is set to become disproportionately larger than it is today. At the same time, pensions have been systematically eliminated, and 401k plans have taken monumental losses. Social Security—referred to as ‘supplemental income’—is usually not enough to get by on. In a real democracy, the politicians would be discussing how to expand Social Security payments, not cut them.”
(-Ben Becker; Answer Colalition)

“The man elected as the peacenik, ultra-liberal enemy of entrenched poverty would be remembered as the ruthless Bin Laden assassin who presided over the most vicious assault on the poor in modern US history.”
(-Matthew Norman)

“If you are an elected official, a lawmaker, and all you do is follow the other lemmings, then when you reach the edge of the cliff, you’re not the only one who falls. So do all the people who are depending on you. The unemployed. The sick. The poor. The children. Your mother and father, and everyone else’s mother and father. When you fall over that cliff, then you take all of them down with you.”
(-Alan Grayson)

“In place of greater equality and improved life prospects, the vast majority of us now must deal with increasing levels of anxiety and alienation and diminishing social solidarity. And we must confront the havoc wreaked on the democratic quality of our civic and political life as capitalism proceeds on its course. On the off-chance that his wars don’t get even more out of hand than they already are, or that his environmental policies (or lack of them) don’t lead to catastrophe, this is the legacy Obama is forging for himself: making the instruments of our discontent, the pillars of Wall Street’s empire of finance, even more secure.

That is what Obama is about. And so, in the preposterous episode of political theater our political class staged in the past few weeks, he gave his all. He did negotiate badly enough that Business Schools could make a case study of his machinations, but he was more disingenuous than inept. Obama surrendered for one overwhelming reason –because he wanted to; because he is not just in the game to win, but to win for Wall Street. The time is long past due for liberals to face that reality, and to deal with it not, not as Obama and his advisors expect, by acquiescing out of fear that the alternative is even worse, but in a constructive way. If a Dump Obama (campaign) cannot get going now, then when?”
(-Andrew Levine)

“The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is indeed exciting to see an African American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race together with gender and even class can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what is so often overlooked and what matters, I believe, above all, is the class one serves . George W. Bush’s inner circle from the State Department to the Supreme Court was perhaps the most multiracial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence….It was also the most reactionary.”
(-John Pilger)

“It is inexplicable that we are creating more space for war and less space for jobs, housing, education, caring for our elderly, home heating assistance and a wide range of activities of any government which truly cares for its people.A policy of no limits for war and hard limits on domestic spending, coupled with hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich, disproportionately affects the poor and middle class. Wall Street has swelled with bailouts, multiple editions of largesse through quantitative easing, skyrocketing executive pay and bonuses, and freedom to gamble the public’s money through hedge funds. Main Street has suffered a massive loss of retirement savings, housing security, access to affordable health care, real wages and benefits, full employment and massive loss of small businesses. The wealth of America is being accelerated to the top and this bill pushes that acceleration.”
(-Dennis Kucinich)

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, surrounded by assholes.”

(-William Gibson)

“Where is the outrage to come from? From you! … The betrayal of what this
nation is supposed to be about did not begin with this deal, and it surely
will not end with this deal. We must find, again, the energy and the
purpose of the 1960s and early 1970s, and we must protest this
deal and all the goddamn deals to come.”
(– Keith Olbermann)

“The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That’s the only difference.”

(-Ralph Nader)

“Since we can’t have real democracy, or jobs, or a decent wage, or money that has any value, or affordable education, or real health care, or more importantly real health, at least let us have the emotional satisfaction of hating the right people for the right reasons!

The Media has become just another meaningless bureaucratic institution that exists solely for the purpose of keeping the population distracted and diverted by the use of a constant barrage of bad news, intentionally, or unintentionally, designed to keep us from thinking, acting, and organizing, but mostly, to remind us about those starving children in Africa, keeping us grateful that our miserable lives aren’t any worse.”
(-Little Steven Van Zandt)

“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it.”

(– Raul Grijalva, head of Congressional Progressive Caucus on faux deficit sideshow)

“…Raw extortion….a catastrophe on multiple levels….What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work, if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.”
(-Paul Krugman)

“Obama had many options for avoiding this ‘crisis,’ long before it came to a head. He didn’t take those options because, like all good disaster capitalists, he wanted and needed a crisis of this sort to enact the brutal economic agenda he has openly advocated from the beginning. The result, of course, will be further impoverishment and diminishment in the lives of millions of ordinary people, for years to come — and, ironically, the eventual collapse of the monstrous system that supports the ravenous elite that Obama serves with such panache.”
(-Chris Floyd)

“I am here today because I have chosen to protect the people locked
out of the system over the profits of the corporations running
the system.”
(– Tim DeChristopher at his sentencing)

“There has never been such a void in moral truth as it now exists…And what the expectation has been for many of us, was that Barack Obama would bring to the table, a great sense of moral fortitude. I think were he to apply that in the decisions that he would have to make, he would find that his presidency might touch on a level of greatness that he has not yet considered.
…He (Obama) has only listened to the voices that shout the loudest, and it’s all those reckless right-wing forces. It’s almost criminal.”

(-Harry Belafonte)

“I believe that Vermonters and people across the country are extremely dismayed that all of the burden for deficit reduction will fall on the backs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. This extremely unfair agreement does not ask the wealthiest people in this country, most of whom are doing extremely well, or large profitable corporations to contribute one penny. This is not only immoral, it is bad economic policy and will cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs.
It is impossible at this point to determine exactly what programs will be cut or by how much. That will be determined later in the committee process and I will do everything I can to defend priorities important to Vermont. What we can say, however, is that vitally important programs for Vermont, like LIHEAP, education, Head Start, child care, community health centers, the MILC program for dairy farmers, Pell grants for college students, nutrition programs, environmental protection, affordable housing, community action agencies, small business loans and many other programs will be on the chopping block.
Further, the so-called deficit reduction super committee of six senators and six House members will have the power to make devastating cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans.”
(-Senator Bernie Sanders, VT)

“Untold American treasure – literally trillions of dollars communities here
desperately need – has been poured into a series of wars, conflicts, and
war preparations without a victory, or even a significant success
on the horizon.”

(– Tom Engelhardt)

“When it comes to shared burdens and slashed budgets, don’t expect the
Pentagon to start holding bake sales, despite what you may have heard
about reductions to its obscenely bloated funding.”
(-Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis)

DISASTER CAPITALISTS CUTTING, GUTTING, PRIVATIZING, AND SHOVELLING YOUR MONEY INTO LONG WARS FOR MUSLIM OIL….

I never confused Dee Snider, or even Jesse Malin, for Joe Strummer, but, geez, Louise. Wal-Mart has killed-off and undermined all of our unions, drove all the Main Street Mom and Pops out of business, censored our albums, sent all the manufacturing jobs overseas to Chinese sweat-shops, all so six obscenely rich Walton heirs can sit on half the nation’s wealth, and Twisted Sister lets ’em use the old eighties juvenile delinquent anthem about “fighting the powers that be” for a commercial?? That’s just flat-out wrong.

America’s ex-rockstar media-class have collectively lost the plot. Dylan and McCartney and Grohl all suck up to war hawk, NDAA fascist Obama. I know loads of good folks who want to flee this neo-feudal oligarchy, backed by a militarist police state, but they just can not afford to leave, due to extreme poverty, or family obligations. Passports are like one hundred fifty bucks! The spy agencies all work for the oligarchs-they’re basically the same people, and it seems we keep foolishly electing sock-puppets of the banks and spy community. All these floods of Manchurian candidates are aggressively stripping us of our liberties, moral traditions, and Constitutionally guaranteeed rights, already under suspension, with the venal Patriot Act. The Koch brothers’ puppet governors and unelected “budget crisis managers” are outlawing collective bargaining, while nefarious billionaires, like Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch call for an end to public education, preferring to usher-in private charter schools for profit, they relentlessly refer to state financed schools as “a monopoly”. Coming from these two! I started noticing the rapid slide in to full-fledged feudal serfdom in about 1996–when middle-class, twenty something, college drop-outs, in the midwest were becoming violently territorial about all the low-wage, food and beverage positions. All the restaurants and bars were owned and operated by the tight-knit local yokals, who only hired attractive women, they could prey on sexually. As an outcast schoolboy, I had very typically rejected the sliding-scale morality of suburban sports culture, spurning the “haves”, I became more attracted to the free beings-the punks, the beats, the goths, and urban drifters, I was somewhat comfortable in poverty and beatitude, skimming off the suburbanite surplus, pooling resources with the other have-nots, forming bands, sharing, collaborating, living communally, having fun.

Don’t get stuck in the fly-over states. The drunk-ass villagers are big, white truck driving, football “woof-woofing”, immigrant blaming, Glenn Beck watchers, transparently disguised, in Bob Marley t-shirts. The tramp-stamped, over-perfumed chicks there dance to songs like “Baby Got Back”, and “Who Let The Dogs Out”.

The whole culture there is all about sucking-up to perrenial, small-time, establishment figures-the drug dealers, the rich kid club promoter, the off-duty cops and bouncers who shake down the outdated raver kids, for their drugs, in stinky nightclub parking lots, the jock shit-heads whose folks bought ’em coffee shops and record stores and bars, who big-balls around like rockstars. Back then, it seemed like I was the only one uninsulated from these intollerant pockets of high school cafeteria bullies. It took most of my more solvent pals a lot longer to realize the table was so tilted, and the fix was permanently in. Now, I see legions of people in their forties and fifties, living in their cars, holding cardboard signs, like teenage crusty-punks, begging for change. The degrading, fast food cashier, and big-box retail positions are held by people with college degrees. The only businesses hiring are Wal-Mart and McDonalds-if you possess the commitment, desperation, car, and computer-access, required, to complete their time consuming, privacy violating, battery of urine tests, background checks, psychological profiles, and intensive, multiple, interviews with state college weasels, in their button down shirts and khaki pants. Orientation at Wal-Mart involves watching hours and hours of anti-union propaganda. Getting a job at Target–the trendy, greenwashed Wal-Mart, is as complicated as filling out college-loan paper-work. You can not be promoted to management at Target, without a four year college diploma. Neither Gore Vidal or George Carlin could therefore assume management positions at Target. The Congress and President are right-wing tools. The police and spy agencies are becoming increasingly militarized, here in the fascistic homeland:

http://www.alternet.org/story/151864/6_creepy_new_weapons_the_police_and_military_use_to_subdue_unarmed_people

I WANNA ROCK…

The corporate-government vigorously defends it’s war criminals, predator lenders, vaccine-makers, cancer-machine security profiteers, foreign double-agents, hedge-fund billionaires, lobbyists, and torturers, even while it persecutes whistle blowers and human rights activists, and arrests peaceful protesters, violently. The wealthiest 10 percent households now account for 60 percent of all consumption in the U.S., according to some estimates…The Murdoch media juggernaut, Rush Limbaugh, Fear-Channel’s hate-radio talk shows, and Pat Robertson’s ferociously rightwing, Zionist, evangelical-Christian, broadcasting network all cospire to brainwash gullible hicks into believing that wars of occupation are moral, just, even heroic, forever demonizing Muslim folks, and simply never reporting any facts from the perspective of the oppressed, or the anti-war movement, or even the pained, haunted, shamed, and inflicted soldiers returning home from bloody, contaminated battle-fields full of depleted uranium, and the notoriously toxic, Halliburton burn-pits. Big-media ignores “Free Bradley Manning” protests. They simply refuse to report tens of thousands of anti-war and anti-austerity, pro-union activists marching in the streets. Neo-Con, Obama, has cut all the programs for the elderly, and the poor, while adamantly still refusing to tax the super-rich: his Wall Street bosses, who created the economic collapse, lied us into war, and purchased/or manufactured all the politicians. Middle-classers are still too “doped on religion and sex and TV” to organize, and we, the flat broke, vast majority, are too busy treading water, just getting by, struggling to merely survive.

All those bullshit TV shows about the generosity of undercover C.E.O.’s and same-name celebrities are bogus class-war propaganda. Everywhere I go, I meet parents going broke, trying to provide care to Autistic children, while the sinister Supreme Court says they can’t sue vaccine-makers. The NAACP has demanded an end to the bullshit, “war on drugs” that incarcerates the poor, in for-profit prisons, extracts slave labor from in-mates, films them for voyeuristic cable TV shows, and regularly rotates that stock, election year, “tough-on-crime”, racist jive about how prisoners are getting mani-pedis, and free Ivy League educations, and lounging in day-spas, which is, of course all pure bullshit. The crooked rich people and pro-murder lobby don’t go to jail. Only the poor. Big-media’s constant mantra is “don’t invoke class warfare.” The class war is already OVER. We lost. Now we need to discuss how to stop post-class-warfare class genocide. I keep seeing these “volunteer” commercials…that means, “work for nothing”. In my twenties, I “interned” for two record labels, but that just meant I worked hard and made no money, zilch, nada, zip, and the profits I helped to generate went into some already rich guy’s pockets. The American Way, huh? Capitalism is all about brainwashing suckers and rebranding slavery. The bottom ninety percent of American society is only ever visually represented by cable TV, on those depraved, prison in-mate shows, on the intel-umbrella’s propaganda arm, the Discovery channel.

Oil baron, billionaire Al Gore, has some new channel, Current TV (?), starring that righteously indignant and always eloquent, big-headed, MSNBC-exile, Keith Olbermann, but who would believe anything promoted by “P.M.R.C.” Al Gore? That guy held Congressional hearings(!!!) fretting about WASP, the Mentors, Prince, and Twisted Sister lyrics, and worse yet—selected Evil Joe Lieberman(Yikes!) as his running mate, back when he won that Presidential election. Lieberman is bad news. He’s like, Nixon evil. Kissinger evil. Maybe even, like, Dick Cheney evil. Are any of you kids old enough to recall phony-baloney, Al Gore piously goading Dee Snider, about the “Sick Motherfuckin’ Friends Of Twisted Sister”, or whatever they called the fan-club, back in the Metal Years? Sadly, Twisted licensed their most famous song out as a jingle for swet-shop, slave-trade, anti-union, Main Street killers, Wal-Mart. As “The Onion” slyly remarked, it does indeed appear, as if the Sisters have finally decided to “take it”, after all. I know they got their lifestyles to support, Long Island McMansion mortgages ain’t cheap, but Wal-Mart is the devil. As evil as Joe Lieberman. Talk about some sick M.F.’s. Wal-Mart and America’s political class make VANITY 6 and El Duce’s toilet-humor seem so, well….adorable, in comparison. We’re talking about willing and enthusiastic military industrial complex assets, who torture innocents, and smiled while they sent all the living wage jobs to communist countries, with NAFTA. Unintelligible, only semi-coherant, metal-head, Chris Holmes, reclining drunkenly in a raft in his swimming pool, or even a potty mouthed G.G. Allin, were hardly threats to anyone, especially if compared to the slick D.C. sociopaths, like Bush and Obama, Lieberman, McCain, and the Clintons, who all helped undermine the Geneva Conventions and the Bill Of Rights. What would John Denver and Frank Zappa have had to say about TSA fondlers, backscatter x-ray vans, Gitmo, tasers, warrantless wire-taps, and the so-called “Super Congress”? Doesn’t Dee Snider realize his song can no longer be an anthem of protest and rebellion, after it’s been pawned-off to Satan sandwich selling Wal-Mart?

We can all still vividly remember Obama’s kindly campaign speeches, how he promised he would use diplomacy to halt future, futile, pre-emptive wars, close the torture camps at Guatanamo Bay, and withdrawl the occupation in Iraq. I’m sure you can recall when he told us, “You can take that to the bank!” If you want to better understand all these Obama “concessions” to the generals, and heartless super rich, top one percent, read Naomi Klein’s book, “Shock Doctrine” which succinctly illustrates how disaster capitalists rule by crisis and deception, and also, Amy Goodman and David Goodman’s well-researched book, “Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and The People Who Fight Back”. I’ve been lied to my whole life, so I still don’t claim to have a secure grasp on the big picture, but at least, I can now better comprehend the long history of fictions, that have been planted by psy-op’s in the universities and corporate-media, at the pleasure of our secret rulers of the oil baron/intelligence/Pentagon community. Colin Powell and President Obama were not the first, or last puppets to lie us into war, or try to fool all the people, all the time. It’s shocking to learn how we’ve been so deceived and totally manipulated for all these decades. Someone killed the Kennedys, but it most certainly was not you, or me. I’m not mad at Dee Snider and Jay Jay French for loaning their metal classic to Conformity Inc., really-those guys have been fighting the good ole underdog fight since ’73. That’s most of my sad life. I’m probably more bummed out about “London Calling” being used to hype the Olympics, or by the Pretenders and Pogues music being “repurposed” as corporate jingles. It’s probably way more of an outrage when crunchy-granola Pearl Jam, or billionaire Bowie, became cheap ho’s for Target, but I gotta say…there’s something just plain wrong about Wal-Mart using “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, similar to the way Republicans always co-opt Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen songs, or when Limbaugh exploited Chrissie Hynde’s classic “My City Was Gone.” I just prefer to remember Dee Snider as the guy who defended rock’n’roll from the trite and condescending Washington Wives, to the friendly D-lister sucking-up to Donald Trump on bullshit unreality shows. Bring back the rebellious rocknroll motherfuckers. “This is our life! This is our song!” Free Pussy Riot! Free Bradley Manning! Repeal the NDAA And Patriot Act! END THE WARS. …We now return you to your regular sold-out corporate unreality programming.