American Fatso

“It was not her sex appeal but the obvious relish with which she devoured the hamburger that made my pulse begin to hammer with excitement.”

-Ray Kroc

“Gluttony is not a secret vice”

-Orson Welles


It seems to me that in the immediate aftermath of Thanksgiving, the one day of the year when Americans are given the green light of a traditional holiday to engage in epic feats of gluttony and gross excess is an appropriate time to post this weird, meandering and basically obscene thing that I have had in the pipeline for awhile. So hey, what the fuck what better time to let it rip than this very weekend which is symbolic of decacence and overindulgence and I can already feel the relief of finally ridding myself of this fucking monstrosity is equivalent of taking that nice big dump in the aftermath of a huge Thanksgiving dinner sometime between the halftime show of one of those crappy football games and the second run at the leftover deviled eggs. The NFL on Thanksgiving has long ago jumped the shark – the Detroit Lions will suck until the day that hell itself freezes over and alas the good ole days of the turducken are but a receding memory of a saner time in the land of plenty circa pre 9/11 when the reset button was hit on American history by a treacherous fascist junta seeking to destroy everything good and dignified that has happened in this country over the last two and a quarter centuries. I fully acknowledge that this latest blistering screed of mine is horribly mean spirited, insensitive, cruel, rotten and most importantly dead on right which is in direct violation of the maxims that the dumbed down masses of sweet potato pie gobbling, plaintively bleating sheep have been conditioned to accept as the ultimate truths as though they were chiseled into stone tablets by the almighty.

Thanksgiving Day, which was supposed to have been a national day of offering thanks to God for all of greatness of our bountiful land of plenty as set forth when the Pilgrims (the religious right of their day many of whom would just as soon burn people at the stake as break bread with them) had a celebratory feast with the indigenous people back before greedy, politically influential moneyed interests had determined that it was expedient to engage in genocide by stealing their land under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny but that is a very long and tragic tale best revisited at some point in the future.

Thanksgiving Day finds already overfed Americans eating until they practically burst at the seams then parking their fat asses on sofas in front of the electronic crack pipe to engage in watching the traditional two turkey football games, one featuring the perpetually woebegone Detroit Lions and America’s Team aka the Dallas Cowboys where they are lie supine and transfixed watching advertisements for corporate national chain restaurants, bad movies, beer, gas guzzling automobiles and all other manifestations of the mythical American Dream that are inserted into the six plus hours of bad gridiron action (nine if you are able to receive the new NFL Network that is the precursor to pay per view games that is coming soon which is a nice racket since the league can have it both ways in receiving revenue from both fans and sponsors.) The National Football League is the ultimate triumph of American capitalism and a money making machine and merchandising goliath that protects it’s trademarks even more vigorously than the Disney Gestapo but this post is not about the NFL either but rather about our national epidemic of obesity. I am sure that this is going to offend many but if you are easily offended you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog to begin with as there is no such fucking thing as political correctness here.

While Turkey Day may be an excuse for gorging oneself in America but it is only 24 hours long and the feeding frenzy goes on unabated for the other 364 day per annum as we relentlessly pursue our national destiny of becoming not only the most boorish, angry, fearful, selfish, uninformed, regressively religious, overly entertained country on the face of the planet but also the fattest. Obesity and the desire to consume go hand in hand with the mutant strain of capitalism that has metastasized throughout this society like a rampaging cancer since the ascendance of the Reagan era when the post-war decadence of the baby boomers reached fruition, the illusion that Vietnam and Watergate were just bad dreams and our national destiny of exceptionalism and greatness was once again bestowed upon us as though it were a gift from God himself.

The 1980’s was the personification of the ‘it’s all about me and just screw everyone else’ cultural zeitgeist of Dallas, Dynasty, the rise of technology and the accompanying nationwide cable and satellite communications explosion that brought us VCR’s, HBO and a barrage of fast food related advertising that extolled the virtues of the fast food eateries and national chain restaurants galore that sprouted weeds throughout the burgeoning suburbs and exurbs and touted the virtues of the convenient high fat, low nutritional diets that an over-burdened, over-worked and overly entertained society could enjoy both often and inexpensively and save that troublesome time spent in actually cooking for the family. We even experienced the miracle of those little remote control devices to ensure that we would never have to pry our rapidly expanding asses off of the couch to engage in such menial exercise as changing channels on our ever growing television sets that paralleled our waistlines in the race to be the biggest and the best.

It was once again morning in America and the breakfast table was groaning under the weight of the bountiful feasts of all of the new food choices that were beamed electronically into the national consciousness by public relations flacks and Madison Avenue hucksters who along with Wall Street all too soon realized that selling more junk food was good for capitalism itself. The food lobby despite its irresponsible peddling of garbage to kids and the typical lack of foresight for the ultimate consequences that is always so prevalent among the greedy ensured that there would be abundant resources (including their own lexicon a guide to which it along with other PR spin)  to tap when ever it became necessary to launch countermeasures against those pests of the ‘nanny society’ who dared to bring up such inconvenient correlations to devouring junk food as the rise in childhood Diabetes, the burden on our disgraceful for profit health care system and the looming obesity epidemic But more on the food flacks in a little bit.

The explosion of obesity in America is reaching catastrophic levels and is only going to continue to explode as television, sedentary lifestyles, an overworked populace and poor dietary education driven by scientific studies that are smacked down by food industry spin meisters continue. Last year 31 states (not surprisingly 9 of the 10 top fattest states are in the South and it is no coincidence that that particular geographical area also is a leader in racism, regressive and hostile religious distortions of Christianity and outright stupidity – all of the states are Bush/GOP strongholds including Mississippi, home of notorious racist and highly influential Republican Senator Trent Lott as well as a whopping 29.5 percent of adult who are obese) had record increases in adult obesity according to a recent study entitled: F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing America . Most tragically and in a very damning sign for the future, child obesity is on the rise as well and is an extraordinary plague on our medical system (which the ‘free market’ dogmatists and Ayn Rand masturbation cult are on a devout mission to destroy), the accompanying explosion of diabetes is placing an increasing burden upon our health care industry and given the relentless dedication of the corrupt corporate whores in congress to drive costs even further out of the reach of ordinary Americans there is a coming tide of obesity related health problems that are going to swamp this country like a killer tsunami. But still the feeding frenzy continues.

America is also awash in fad diets (a multi-billion dollar industry) and painless weight loss schemes that multiply exponentially among a population not prone to any sort of sacrifice or hard work to attain personal goals. Working diligently to lose weight the healthy and efficient way through a change in eating habits and exercise is anathema to the instant gratification crowd always looking for the easy way out. Americans want to get to Heaven but are nearly universally opposed to the concept of having to die first in order to get there so praise the lord, pass the Krispy Kremes and schedule the gastric bypass surgery.

The national obsession with the easy fix for fatness one need look no further than at the popularity of the ubiquitous Jared Fogel of Subway fame, the former scale busting mammoth who lost hundreds of pounds allegedly by eating nothing but Subway sandwiches while in college. As with all urban myths the legend of Jared is comprised of far more bullshit and outright P.T. Barnum style chicanery than it is of serious truths.

What is not mentioned in the constant advertising featuring the bespectacled yuppie wonder boy in his post-flubber days is that his successful weight loss formula was more the result of a drastic reduction in daily calorie consumption as well as regular exercise than from gobbling turkey sandwiches and peddling Subway’s snake oil.In fact if you go to Subway’s website you will notice the preponderance of disclaimers on every Jared related page. Yet Jared has become such a recognizable national pseudo celebrity that I have often heard people conversing about how wonderful that each new Subway ad featuring their hero is. Here is an interesting little site that I found on The Cult of Jared that is recommended reading. They want to have their meatball sub and eat it too but the truth is that Fogel could have lost the weight eating at Taco Bell, McDonalds or Popeye’s had he undertaken a similar cut in caloric intake and engaged in regular exercise. The Subway diet plan as with all get rich quick schemes or revolutionary weight loss plans are quite simply only chum for flocking suckers the likes of which there is no shortage of in modern day America. Of course the dietary industry which is the modern day equivalent of snake oil and miracle cures peddled by the traveling medicine men of the old West has a vested interested in keeping Americans fat for life, as much as a vested interest as the fast food and restaurant lobby who are not above producing fake ‘trust us we’re experts’ type studies that encourage more gluttony.

A few years back Eric Schlosser wrote a book called Fast Food Nation (recently made into a dramatic pseudo documentary movie with characters loosely based on the characters and storylines) that should be destined to become an international classic for his extremely well researched and impeccably written analysis of the socio-political impact of the fast food industry on post WWII America. This book should be required reading for every American who is not only concerned about the potentially devastating health problems of a diet that with too much sleazy, cheap, instant gratification type fast food as well as the horrendous effects of the fast food, keep it simple stupid business model of workplace efficiency that permeates our working lives and continually dumbs down jobs to the point where they can be exported to semi illiterate third world countries, offered to illegal aliens which the Bush administration is opening the borders to with reckless abandon despite the bogus threat of terrorist infiltration (yet another slimy contradiction from these master charlatans) or made into essentially plug and play positions where the lowest and most desperate members of society can be lined up one after the other for the time that it takes to be fired for fucking up the timing sequence on an automated french fry drop. Fast Food Nation was a rousing success as well a a critically acclaimed best seller for its uncompromising examination of the cultural affects of the industry and along with their loathing of Schlosser another nemesis of the fast food flacks came in the form of Morgan Spurlock and his gut churning documentary Super Size Me.

After watching the movie, if you want a good fucking laugh or two along with some serious analysis on America’s obesity crisis and the pushers of the fast food industry pick up a copy of Spurlock’s Don’t Eat This Book which has some absolutely fucking hilarious anecdotes and factoids such as the reprinting of the following post from his website that is featured on page 85:

“I used to work in a funeral home, and one night I was down in the morgue when I was summoned to the crematorium. When I got there, I saw the embalmer standing in the door of the crematorium holding a fire extinguisher. As soon as he saw me, he told me to run back downstairs and grab some sheets or hospital gowns. So as I’m heading downstairs I feel strangely hungry, which is not a feeling you usually get working in a funeral home. I grab a stack of hospital gowns and run back to the crematorium. What happened was that this morbidly obese gentleman was so big that his fat was melting off faster than the machine could burn it up. Having worked in the funeral home for a while, I have smelled some hellacious things and know it helps to not pay attention to what I am smelling. But this actually smelled…..familiar, and slightly appetizing. As I was walking out of the crematorium, I realized exactly what it smelled like: all that melted human fat smelled exactly like the inside of a McDonalds.”

Sweet Jesus that is hilarious, especially to somebody with a really sick fucking sense of humor like myself, it’s better than the alleged fingertip that some lady tried to scam Wendy’s into paying damages on that she claimed that was found floating in the chili which is incidentally the only thing actually fit for human consumption on their menu in my opinion at least. I did once find a pubic hair in my fries there about twenty years ago and it still haunts me to this day.

Spurlock certainly isn’t endearing himself to the nations fat czars who gorge like hogs at the money trough over our chronic addiction to harmful foods by putting out books like this on the heels of his hit documentary ‘Super Size Me’ which was a bane to the existence to the fast food industry’s 800 lb (no pun intended) gorilla McDonalds which he excoriated by eating nothing but Mickey D’s food for a solid month. This may have been a somewhat extreme measure undertaken to make his point but I’ll be Goddamned if I don’t know several people at my place of employment who eat there at least twice a day and judging from the size of some of the wildebeests it wouldn’t be too much of a leap in logic to expect that on several nights after another dehumanizing day in corporate cubicle hell that they hit the drive through on the way home so as to avoid having to exert the energy to actually cook dinner.

Spurlock’s movie is great by the way but don’t look for it at your local Wal Mart, at least the ones that have partnered up with McDonalds, my own neighborhood super Wal Mart will ring up your super sized meal deal right at the checkout while the poor underpaid associate rings up a shopping basket full of Chinese made goods so while building China into an economic powerhouse you can rest assured that you are will be buying American if you just order up that number three combo and while you’re at it you might as well just super-size the motherfucker! The book is an inspired piece of work on our American post-industrial fatso culture of the land of George W. Bush were the only constant is that waistlines increase proportionate to a shameful national regressive form of chronic dumbness. I would recommend both it as well as the movie that hooked me from the instant that a giant female fat ass in polyester shorts appeared on screen waddling to the beat of the killer riff opening of Queen’s classic Fat Bottomed Girls.

One of the most insightful parts of Spurlock’s book is where he details the harassment tactics that were brought against him not by McDonald’s of course, Ronald and Mayor McCheese would never soil their hands with any rough stuff, just as in real life politics and the world of corporatism there are always plenty of hired guns in the form of public relations firms eager to do the dirty work when it becomes necessary to swift boat any who happen to get too nosy and vocal when it comes to doing business. Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is an example of such a firm and according to Don’t Eat This Book is a front group that passes itself of as a non-partisan think tank while lobbying for anti-environmental polluters, pro-smoking big tobacco corporations and anti-health food conglomerates. I did a quick check of Source Watch and found that yes indeed CEI was a neo-liberal inclined ‘think tank’ that does a shitload of business lobbying on behalf of corporations like Exxon-Mobil, Phillip Morris, Pfizer and Amoco among others and is funded by grants by such extremist right-wing luminaries as the Koch family, the Olin Foundation, the Roe Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundations, a virtual who’s who of philosophical allies of the John Birch Society types who generally view the Bush-Cheney junta as limp-wristed, flaming sissies.

One of the slimier tactics used to trash Super Size Me by CEI was the campaign to show that McDonald’s was actually healthy and that Spurlock was basically an anti-American heretic full of Mc Shit to suggest otherwise. According to the book a CEI “adjunct fellow” named Soso Whaley went on her own 30 day eating spree at Mickey D’s and actually lost weight thereby allowing CEI to debunk Spurlock’s experiment under the standard right-wing two word denunciation of ‘junk science’. What wasn’t so widely reported is that Whaley limited herself to 1,800 calories a day and exercised so in essence her little PR ploy was about as honest as the great urban legend of the aforementioned former American fatso Jared Fogle’s famous Subway miracle in which the commercial darling dropped 245 pounds in less than a year by eating nothing but Subway sandwiches. What is left out is that Fogle’s secret to success was not in merely experiencing a magical weight loss through ingesting Subway food but by reducing his daily caloric intake to around 1,000 and exercising frequently but I covered this earlier so I digress…

Being the enterprising and intelligent young man that he is Fogle was able to parlay his weight loss into financial gain by entering into a very lucrative business partnership with Subway Inc as a spokesman and shill. Of course the management of Subway aren’t idiots so every page on their website that features Jared also features the following disclaimer:

*Individuals lost weight by exercising and eating a balanced, reduced-calorie diet that included SUBWAY® sandwiches with 6 grams of fat or less. Their results are not typical. Your loss, if any, will vary. The SUBWAY® chain does not endorse the diet Jared created and cautions anyone embarking on a weight-loss plan to consult their physician.

Check It Out HERE

Another highly active industry attack dog/advocacy group that went after Spurlock is the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), which operates as a non-profit organization allowing it to not be compelled to disclose contributors, many of which according to investigative work by watchdog groups are not surprisingly the food industry’s heaviest hitters. According to a report from the Center for Media and Democracy via an anonymous insider back in 2002 the money flowed to CCF by such corporations as Coca-Cola, Tyson Foods, Wendy’s, Outback, White Castle and Applebee’s among many others too numerous to list here.

CCF was behind that ludicrous Orwellian PR campaign earlier this year that disseminated the propaganda that the entire obesity threat was all hype and that Americans should feel free to gorge themselves on a regular basis preferably at Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden) which was allegedly behind the efforts to propagandize and minimize the serious health issues involved. CCF in the past also has a history of mixing ther obfuscations and lies with blasts of Karl Rove style neo fascist demagoguery that in 2005 was perfectly timed for the Fourth of July weekend labeling those were decrying the epidemic of obesity as unpatriotic according to Paul Krugman of the damned liberal New York Times who in his 7/4/05 column “Girth of a Nation” brought up the following CCF insane bit of standard post 9/11 fear-mongering, divisive trash:

“Far too few Americans, remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. Now it seems that food liberty – just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots – is consistently under attack.”

Translation: Either you are with Ronald McDonald or you are with the terrorists or as McDonald’s magnate Ray Kroc succintly put it:

“This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I’ll kill ‘em before they kill me. You’re talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.”

The assault on both Spurlock and especially Schlosser is massive and ongoing, a withering food industry blitzkrieg. A Hitler Youth style fascist group called Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) was distributing tracts demonizing him Schlosser for allegedly being anti-immigrant, the kicker is that YAF alumni include Dan Quayle and none other than that all inclusive type of guy Tom Tancredo the Colorado racist firebrand whose demagoguery of late has made for an alliance with the anti-immigrant paramilitary nutball ‘Minutemen’. The hypocrisy is as delicious as it is offensive.

Also on the attack against Schlosser is The Heartland Institute an ultra right-wing industry think thank/advocacy organization with ties to the Koch family, the Olin Foundation and the Scaife family….notice a common thread here? All have at some point been reputed to have ties to the John Birch Society and their strategy at using good old McCarthy style red-baiting in their attempt to takedown Schlosser is faithful to their ideological roots. The Heartland Institute sent out a news release which according to Source Watch proclaimed that Schlosser was “tricking young people….to lead them away from capitalism into his failed socialist ideology”. Considering that many such firms are tax-exempt perhaps they should rethink labeling

Schlosser to no surprise found himself the target of an industry backed smear campaign over his newest book ‘Chew On This’ and the upcoming movie version of ‘Fast Food Nation’, the usual suspect advocacy groups are on the attack as surrogates and have launched the originially labelled website Best Food Nation to whack and denounce Schlosser’s book and movie in the true cowardly fashion of right wing cowards, hacks and freaks. The involvement of these monstrous front groups and their use of relentless campaigns of distortion and disinformation when it comes to protecting the food industry shows just how much of a vested interest that Wall Street has in keeping America fat. Yes, corpulence for the benefit of corporate America is the ultimate in patriotism because fat people drive the engine of our great service economy now that the manufacturing sector has been dismantled (except for those reclassified jobs for whopper floppers) and exported piecemeal to juice profits. The oxymoron that is free market capitalism always requires a good supply of piggies at both ends of the trough and fatsos are excellent consumers or as the fast food industry terms their best customers ‘Heavy Users’, I kid you not regarding this term.

If there is hope that the junk food lobby and their saturated fat and sugar pimps can be reigned in it came earlier this year. The man from Hope who is former president Bill Clinton recently succeeded in brokering a deal with the soft drink goliaths whose colorful vending machines have become ubiquitous in America’s schools, dispensing their sugar-filled drinks that have contributed so greatly to the general epidemic of obesity and diabetes that have plagued our youth. The nation’s largest beverage corporations have agreed to now sell only more nutritious drinks and juices, this should cut down somewhat on the heavy users while they are in school but the epidemic and non-stop advertising are everywhere and once the kids leave the schoolyard there are always the proverbial pushers lurking across the street in the form of Mickey D’s, Burger King, Long John Silvers, Taco Bell and any of the other fast food pimps who have become far to prevalent when it comes to feeding the masses.

Maybe I’m becoming a total crank in my old age but a pet peeve of mine is the disgusting spectacle of the explosion of all of those little motorized carts that serve no purpose other than to haul around the overly fat asses of those who are too obese to walk for more than a few steps under their own power. My local grocery store is filled with fatties on carts, mainly motoring down the frozen foods, candy or snack aisles or creating fucking gridlock in the deli and bakery but the whirring of the little electric motors is at its loudest as these lard-asses stamp down their stubby little toes (many of which will inevitably be surgically lopped off due to complications from complications due to our nation’s fastest growing disease diabetes) on the accelerators and barrel through the crowd towards whichever hapless elderly person is manning a station where free samples of FOOD are being handed out, practically leaving skid marks on the floor as they nearly put the carts in full dragster mode.

It is a fucking feeding frenzy Jack, and the scrum around some poor sixty something blue hair struggling to supplement her social security by passing out free samples of low quality cheap frozen pizzas cooked in a toaster oven on a part-time basis is damned near the equivalent of the storming of Utah Beach. These poor semi-retirees who often exhibit deer in the headlights looks should be offered hazardous duty pay for having to fend the threat of being squashed by one of the the fatty carts bearing down upon them as though they were heading into the final lap of the Brickyard 500.

My fucking God what is this country becoming?

“The epidemic of gross obesity or the mutant evolution of the human body into a form that perfectly fills out a couch and keeps the form perfectly in place to focus on the television, perhaps as the years go on and the body grows plumper the arms can also become longer and more spider-like, perfect for feeding itself from the multiple bowls of television pimped snacks on the coffee table. If stereotypical comic book evil genius scientists are able to utilize this formula in a genetic experiment to create an even dumber, fatter version of a modern day American only with an increased ability to feed itself they would win the Nobel Prize which by then will also be sponsored by a major corporation: dumb, fat, gross, nationalist, subservient and obedient, a true master race that not even Hitler could envision, far more compliant than even the most ardent of Aryans and a totalitarian’s dream.”

-Dennis Roller

I am an American dammit! I have personally been endowed with certain inalienable rights by my creator and if I choose to be fat, mean and ignorant then by GOD that is my birthright for I am America Fatso.

America: The Next Generation

Bush Preaches to the Choir

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.



-H. L. Mencken

I happened to catch the raw spectacle of George W. Bush’s stump speech during his last minute barnstorming tour to shore up support in the red states and it was an incredible thing indeed. This particular stop was in Perry, Georgia which can’t be far from the locale depicted in the movie Deliverance and was absolutely stunning in its completely over the top (even by Rovian standards) level of stridency in attacking Democrats by doing everything but accusing them of assisting the ‘terrorists’ in the coordinated killing of babies in the streets of America. Appropriately it was given on Halloween and Bush and his propagandists took fear mongering to a new level by all but denouncing Americans as traitors and spreading dread amongst the meticulously selected audience of shit kickers assembled at the George State Fairgrounds as though it were manure.

I haven’t seen or heard demagoguery on such a level since the last time that I watched ‘Triumph of the Will’ and the glazed look on the faces of the zombies in the audience was eerily similar to the normal looking Germans in what is widely hailed as the greatest propaganda film of all time. Bush’s speech writers and image masters are now outdoing themselves and are starting to make Leni Riefenstahl and Paul Joseph Goebbels look like rank amateurs by comparison.

I knew that the already tenuous mental state of Le Enfant Terrible was deteriorating daily but this was some radical stuff even for me and signs of a rapid escalation for sneaky and conniving cornered rats like Rove and Junior is not a good sign, I just have this feeling that it is going to be scorched Earth from this point onward. Colonel Kurtz has reached the end of the river and gone totally fucking insane, I mean God help us if the DLC manages to fuck up the election on Tuesday because this lunatic is demented enough to engage in some serious shit and has already proven that he regards the law as something that he can spit on whenever he damned well pleases. I can envision the nightmarish scene of the White House lawn turned into a hideous sort of tableau reminiscent of the jungle compound of Kurtz when the PBR Erebus arrived to find the heads of recently killed enemies lining the banks of the Mekong, mutilated bodies hanging from the trees and the stench of depravity and pure unadulterated evil lingering in the air.

I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be on the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil’s official enemies list on Wednesday morning if America awakens to a still standing and pissed off one party Republican fascist government and a demented despot determined to exact revenge on his tormentors. If your name happens to be Rahm ‘ass-eyes’ Emanuel and your strategy of under funding progressive candidates in favor of funneling cash to DLC approved corporate whores and warmongers the GOP may be the least of your worries because every tuned in American who is counting on your ‘leadership’ to halt the Bushist juggernaut is going to want to have your scrawny ass drawn and quartered for fucking up the opportunity of a lifetime due to your own sleazy ambitions and the vainglorious arrogance having to have all suitors line up to come and kiss your ring prior to being granted a seat at the table.

As with all officially sanctioned PR stops and the stage show events in which Bush appears access was strictly controlled and only the worst of the worst of dead enders and die hards were allowed in the doors to begin with. It is tragic that the majority of Americans never get to hear these rambling, demagogic diatribes or they would likely be shaken from their apathetic slumbers and justifiably horrified that a man who is by all signs a certifiably insane megalomaniac ccupies the most powerful position in the entire world and is in possession of the nuclear launch codes.

Here are a few pieces of the Perry, GA stemwinder:

Now I want you to — when you’re out rounding up the vote, and people say, well, there’s no difference between them, or they’re saying, well, maybe I feel comfortable with the Washington Democrats, I want you to remind them about these three votes we just recently had. There’s a clear pattern. When it came time to renew the Patriot Act, more than 75 percent of the members — Democrat members in the House of Representatives voted, no.

When it came time — when it came time to vote on whether to allow the CIA to continue its program to detain and question captured terrorists, almost 80 percent of the House Democrats voted against it.

And when it came time to vote on whether the National Security Agency should continue to monitor terrorist communications, almost 90 percent of the House Democrats voted against it.

On all these vital measures, measures necessary to protect you, the Democrats in Washington follow a simple philosophy: Just say no. When it comes to listening in on the terrorists, what’s the Democrats’ answer? Just say no. When it comes to detaining terrorists, what’s the Democrats’ answer? (The crowd then roared “JUST SAY NO” in unison)

In this global war against extremists who use murder as a weapon, Iraq is now the central front. Oh, I’ve heard all of the voices in Washington, D.C. They say — a lot of them say, it’s just a distraction in the war on terror. That’s not a part of the war on terror, people in Washington — Democrats say. Well, all I ask if you’re undecided about this important issue is just listen to the words of Osama bin Laden, or Mr. Zawahiri, the number two of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden calls this fight the third world war. He has said that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s defeat and disgrace forever. It’s important to listen to the words of the enemy if you’re in war.

Now I want you to listen to the words of a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives. The reason I bring this up is I want you to understand there is a different mind set in Washington. She said, the President says that fighting them there in Iraq means it’s less likely we will have to fight them here. I did say that, and I strongly believe it. The opposite is true, she went on to say, because we are fighting them there, it may become more likely we will have to fight them here.

Iraq is a central front in the war on terror, but the only thing they want to do is leave before the job is done. I want you to hear some of the voices of leading Democrats. They say we should pull our troops off the battlefield right away. My opponent in 2004 said there should be a fixed date for withdrawal. Others suggest that we ought to move our troops some 5,000 miles away to an island. Nineteen House Democrats introduced legislation that would cut off all the funds for the troops in Iraq.

However they put it, the Democrat approach comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses. And that’s what’s at stake in this election. The Democrats want to get us out of Iraq, and the Republican goal is to win in Iraq. I’m not saying these good folks are unpatriotic. I’m just saying they’re wrong. You can’t win a war if you’re not willing to fight it.

I want you to go home and think about what retreat from Iraq would mean before the job is done; it would embolden the enemy. It would enable them to ridicule countries like the United States to folks who are wondering where the balance of power will lay in the world. It will embolden the extremists and radicals. It will enable them to gain a new safe haven from which to launch further attacks on the United States. It would strengthen the hand of the extremists and deny hope to millions and millions of people who simply want to live a peaceful life. It would dishonor the sacrifice of the men and women who have worn our uniform.

I see the impending danger. I will use all assets at my disposal to do the most important job of the government, and that is defend you. We will fight in Iraq, and we will win in Iraq. (Applause.) Oh, I know there are Democrats and independents in a great state like Georgia who do not share the views of the Democrat leadership in Washington. You may not agree with Republicans on every issue, but you should also realize what voting Democrat in this election would mean for the war on terror.

When you vote next Tuesday, your vote will determine more than who is your local congressman. It will also determine which party’s leadership will set the agenda on Capitol Hill. A vote to send a Democrat to Congress is a vote for the liberal Democrat leadership in Washington, D.C. A vote to send a Democrat to Congress is a vote to make the Senate Majority Leader a man who bragged about killing the Patriot Act. A vote to send a Democrat to Congress is a vote to make the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee a man who said the world would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power.

A vote to send a Democrat to Washington is a vote to make the chairman of the House of Ways and Means Committee a man who has suggested cutting off funds for our troops on the battlefield.

A vote to send a Democrat to Congress is a vote to make the Speaker of the House — the third person in line for the presidency — a woman who said that capturing Osama bin Laden would not make America any safer.

That’s about all that I can stomach so go to the official White House website if you want to read the rest (and have the NSA do a courtesy scan of your computer) and of course the sweaty crowd cheered and roared for liberal blood with each invocation of 9/11 and each inference that the Democrats were the enemy.

It is because of idiots like those sweating and dementedly cheering Bush in Perry that the entire south gets lumped in with the worst of the bigots and crazed rabble rousers like the dyed in the wool rabble rousing berserker Zell Miller and any number of high potency fundamentalist preachers who unfortunately happen to be the most vocal and influential spokesmen for morally repugnant Republican party which is always looking for regressive, knuckle dragging, cross burning, bible thumping angry freaks and all normal southerners need not apply. I really feel for the people who are forced to live amongst these hostile morons who have never gotten over the fact that they lost the Civil War or that they were forced by the government to recognize the rights of blacks and women.

James Webb who is running against the silver spoon country club racist George Felix Allen for Virginia’s Senate seat was featured in a recent piece in The New Yorker where he as a southerner offered up some valuable insight which I will take a few passages from it here:

Webb also believes from experience that the Republican hold on the South is not unshakable. His own political remigration began when he was working on “Born Fighting” and realized that his culture’s natural home is the party of Andrew Jackson. His people don’t hate the government; they hate governmental intrusion. It is the government’s job to build dams and highways, not the perfect society.

“It’s a bottom-up culture that has been manipulated,” he told me one day. “Really, that’s one of the big reasons that I decided to go ahead and do this-—test the theory, because I believe it.”

This is, of course, a thought that has occurred to other Democrats. It’s what Howard Dean was trying to get at in 2003, while campaigning for the Presidency, when he said, in a characteristic display of unfortunate phrasing, “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” Dean’s point (and Webb’s) is that Democrats cannot succeed in the South until the Party broadens its tent, becoming less insistent on such matters of current Party orthodoxy as abortion, gun control, and gay marriage. “You know, it’s been a hard thing to get through the heads of many Democrats,” Webb says. “They have to rethink a piece of something that’s become fundamental to them, which has hurt them in ways they don’t understand.”

Webb’s campaign adviser David (Mud-cat) Saunders recalls a revealing exchange he had last spring at a retreat for Democratic senators in Philadelphia. “I had a very prominent U.S. senator come up to me and say, ‘Mudcat, why are your people so stupid that they would vote against their own economic self-interest?’ And I replied, ‘Listen, we do vote against our own economic self-interest. We do that. But you say it’s stupid. Do you ever consider that there might be a powerful force at work, and that it’s driving these people to vote against their economic self-interest? I’m telling you, it’s there. It’s called culture.’ ”

Webb’s point should be well taken, because the perception that the south is mocked as a whole by all liberals has allowed the Republicans to create a bastion of infallible support by showing up as wolves in the clothing of sheep bearing gifts of bigotry, false religion and an opportunity to essentially re-fight the Civil War through the divisiveness that is the Culture War and this only throws gasoline on the fire and creates a self fulfilling prophecy. We all need to find a way to marginalize the worst elements and work together on the economic issues that are destroying ALL of America.

I myself am admittedly guilty of taking more than my fair share of shots at the red state denizens who happen to be card carrying members of the KKK wing of the GOP while failing to acknowledge differentiate between the many good people south of the Mason-Dixon Line who abhor what the Neanderthals have done to their image to the rest of the civilized world. I have friends in the south, have lived a good many of my years in the south and there are many who are proud of their heritage, we should not disrespect them as a whole but rather seek out their help in exorcising the demons amongst them. Conversely I hold those red staters who insist on goose stepping adherence to the bellicose party line in the utmost of contempt especially those who are responsible for giving this country the stinking, rotten, debased Bush administration as some sort of revenge on liberal society and if they are offended then I only have two words for those ignorant and bigoted yahoos: fuck y’all!

I would like to implore every southerner who is appalled at the Republican party, the white supremacists and the snake handling preachers of the gospel of Armageddon and the military industrial complex to get out there on Tuesday and vote Democrat even if you feel that you must hold your noses to do so. Granted there are many problems with that particular party that need to be ironed out but at least they are reasonable enough to engage in debate and some sort of discourse rather than the anti-Enlightenment tyrants who know control the entire country, demand lockstep unity, have no tolerance for dissent and are dismantling the constitution bit by bit. The constitution incidentally protects the rights of southerners too or it used to before it was gutted by the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil.

If you can’t bring yourself to vote for Democrats, libertarians, greens or even a write in candidate instead of a dangerous and deceitful Republican party that has lied to you about matters of importance as God and country as well as exported the industrial capacity of America and our shared economic prosperity along with them for the sole reason of greed then just stay at home….please just stay at home on Tuesday.

And by the way, George W. Bush and his ilk are playing y’all as suckers, he is just another phony dude rancher like George Felix Allen. Bush is a yankee from an eastern elitist family who was born in Connecticut and educated at Andover and Yale. What could be a bigger insult to the intelligence of southerners than a stupendous fraud like he passing himself off to you as some plain spoken populist man of the people and Earthly executor of God’s orders?

As they sometimes say in the south – that dog just don’t hunt!