The Fox and the Henhouse

Much is being made about Obama’s Henhouse taking on the Fox. Suspicion and doubt is easier than the patience of waiting to see how a game plays out. Presently, Obama is taking on the radical right and pointing out what fakes Fox is.

However, one way of looking at this is it creates the illusion that Obama is the good ol’ liberal we knew we elected and secretly he using this Fox attack as a distraction as we get to the crucial time when he, the health insurance industry and participating Democrats drown the public option like nine year olds pouring water on an ant hill. Obama says he “prefers” a public option but won’t demand it. Yet, most everyone I trust says quite correctly that without a public option it is not real reform.

Either Obama is playing a very sophisticated strategy in pursuit of the promises he made last year or he is slowly selling us out.

As the Kinks sang, “Paranoia will destroy ya”, however there are possible realities we must consider just to understand the terrain of the whole battle field.

His ratings dropped fifteen points in the polls recently on health care at the same time the polls attest that most Americans want a public option more than they want bipartisanship.

I think the Obama Henhouse has sniffed the air and smelled the change in the direction the wind is blowing, which means they know Americans are tired of his delaying delivering on his promises. They are afraid the American people are soon to be as vocal about a public option as gays are for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Obama gets close to the issues in which he made impassioned campaign promises about and then all he does is make a speech.

He’s made a speech about DADT, he’s made speeches about health care reform, especially in admiring the not necessary to be admired Olympia Snowe vote, and on and on.

Sometimes I get the feeling he’s stalling for time until the Supreme Court rules that corporations are people too and he’s given the signal by his overlords to declare martial law, force us all into corporate labor camps, work co-ops and employment pools while being forced to buy their health insurance or imprisoned, forced to buy their products or fired and forced to fight in their wars to take oil, uranium and water, and nuke Iran, Russia and make an uneasy peace with China.

That’s the new America for the new American Century.

What’s the difference between a neo-con and a paranoiac? Paranoiacs don’t get political appointments, they only get elected.

Obama and Fox has repercussions. As Craig Crawford said on Olbermann tonight, it only makes Fox bigger. It means they will mobilize the conservative vote in 2010 and take House and Senate seats away from Democrats.

Another way of looking at that is: by turning up the heat on Fox, and with mid-terms at stake, it may serve to further divide the Republican Party so that the far right breaks off and neither trusts the other and they cannot get their act together to mount any sort of solid opposition to Democrats.

But, if Obama was truly interested in skewering Fox for its bias, why doesn’t he next go after CNN for its bias as well, or for it simply being ridiculous in covering certain issues.

Obama changing how the major media in this country performs its democratic function and inform our citizenry would be something I could believe in.

I’m waiting for him to tell us we just couldn’t get a public option and blame it on Fox’s influence on the Teabaggers and the Teabaggers’ influence on Congress—which we all know is a lie.

The Iraqi Shoe Thrower

If I typed his name as the heading, you may have no idea who this post was about. His name is Muntazer al-Zaidi, for those who do not know or have forgotten.

At this writing it in unknown whether he will be released today or there will be another delay. I can only hope he is released and hope my positive vibe has its intended effect.

What I find interesting is what he said as he threw the shoes. As many of you know, I do not speak Arabic, but I found the translation in an article: “It is the farewell kiss, you dog,” he shouted before he threw the first shoe, and, “This is for the widows and orphans of Iraq,” he shouted when throwing the second one.

If I were Iraqi, I would be just as angry if some shithead like Bush lied to launch a war for oil and war profits which resulted in widows and orphans and maimed and dead—especially children.

It is unclear what Mr. Zaidi will do for work once released. He may return to work for the Iraqi television station in whose employ he was when he became a hero to billions worldwide.

If throwing shoes is one of the greatest insults in the Arab world, then perhaps the US military, upon the commencement of its invasion way back in 2003, should have lobbed shoes at Saddam and his son’s Uday and Qusay and their palaces. It would have saved a lot of innocent lives and we could have humiliated Saddam into surrender.

A lot of money could be made by throwing shoes, pies, water balloons and other assorted items—tractor tire rims?—at Saddam and his son’s Uday and Qusay, just like at a state or county fair amusement booth not only in America, but in Iraq as well.

Since that is not possible now, perhaps Zaidi would consider working as a taxpayer-paid shoe thrower; lobbing steel-toed boots at Max “Haucus Paucus” Baucus, Kent “Gone Bad” Conrad and Harry “The Need for Speed” Reid.

Then I’m sure he can get hired by liberals at Teabagger rallies. I know I’d pay to see some of those idiots defending the insurance industry’s death panels and their billion dollar profits get a size 13 snow boot on the noggin from a second-story window somewhere near the demonstration route.

I’d love to see Jim “Demented” DeMint have a Payless Shoe Source work boot graze his splanchnocranium.

I envy Mr. Zaidi, as many of us probably do. Why? Because we would all like to have thrown a shoe at Bush but we were only able to scream at the TV while Zaidi actually vented his anger in a good ol’ fashioned, non-lethal way.

But Zaidi paid the price for it, and I don’t think any of us would want to serve the prison time, but that’s the beauty and convenience of vicariousness.

For those who want to see it again here is the best version I could find on YouTube in the brief time I had to search for it.