the endorsements keep coming in...




Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away...

We Can't Make It Here Anymore
James McMurtry

(I speak for Eugene Debs when I approve this message)

There is no hidden message here!
At least, not to your limited perception.

Don't mess with this pie!!!!!



This pie is on the lam. This pie just escaped from the kitchen of the state penitentiary in Huntsville, TX! They said no cooling rack could hold it. It's got an evil heart, this pie. An evil, delicious heart. And a knife! If you sass this pie it will cut you!

This pie is wanted in 15 states... it was serving 15-20 after a horrible rampage of violence.... because it's horribly and violently tasty, and will rampage over your tastebuds with its pie-licious goodness!

So everybody try to speak in soothing tones, and don't make any sudden movements, or tuck any bibs into your shirts! Maybe when it cools off it'll see reason, and let us eat it. Instead of it eating us!

Let me tell you something else, Jon Stewart is taking a beating from the CorpoRats lately. The same CorpoRat biased media is claiming that Jon Stewart is a scab. Now I'm telling you that being a writer who is given no credit, that, that, it's a thankless invisible job! You have the funny ideas and the guy who repeats them on air takes the credit. But, when the writers went on strike, Jon had this idea and we talked about it, several of us did, which was, let me tell you, it was a scary scary idea, and he bravely went on the air, went on the air with no material, nothing he was supposed to say. Wow! I would really really like to see those CorpoRat wannabees try that. But Jon did go ahead and go out here and do his show without any writers. He was willing to look stupid so that people could appreciate what the writers do. You probably have no idea how gutsy that was. I mean, he didn't even have some feeble talking point he could expand on endlessly. To me, that really says Jon Stewart must care about the workers or he would not have taken that kind of personal risk. And when a guy like that endorses Zombie Eugene Debs for president in '08, well, it just means that much more.

Wow! The endorsements keep coming. Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union, gets off the fence:

The fight to free Debs almost a century ago was the first time that Americans organized to defend the right to speak against war. A timely lesson for us today.

"It's the BRAINS, stupid" - ZED 08

Jon Stewart, the smirking television personality who had figured out the Iraq War before many other Americans, follows conservative actor Bruce Willis' endorsement with one of his own:

ROLLING STONE: I read that one of your childhood heroes was Eugene Debs, the five-time Socialist Party candidate for president in the early twentieth century.

STEWART: Yeah, baby!

"It's the BRAINS, stupid" - ZED 08

ZED's Dead, Baby



Thanks for the endorsement, Bruce, but the candidate wants his chopper back.

Z.E.D. in '08

Deadsidential candidate, Zombie Eugene Debs, delivers a speech on US-Iran relations.

A Warmonger's Warmonger
I Like Pie's endorsed candidate for the '08 election, Zombie Eugene Debs, has risen from the grave and sent us the following position paper on the "Warmonger" issue. - Cappy Rudyard

Recently, folksy radio host Ed Schultz called John McCain a "warmonger" and this is making some people cry crocodile tears. But the word "warmonger" has no real meaning if a person who sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" falls outside of its definition. I am here to state uneqivocally:

1. John McCain is a warmonger.
2. John McCain supports economic policies that will keep the world in a state of permanent war.
3. John McCain is tasty.

Let me explain:

#1. Self-evident.
#2. John McCain will "Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent." How does his pro-corporate, pro-plutocrat platform make him doubly a warmonger?

"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. [The] Wall Street Junkers. . . are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people." [The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)]

For proof of this connection we need look no further than McCain's continuous support for the Iraq War, for his rhetoric of maximum bellicosity toward Iran, and for the right of the US government to torture Iraqis and spy on Americans. This makes McCain the worst sort of Christian: the religious hypocrite.

"Thou shalt not kill" is now the law. But it applies only to individuals — not yet to nations. To slay your neighbor is murder — unless you are in uniform. But when the nation slays its neighbors and the killings mount into the thousands, it is not murder but patriotism to be proud of, glorify, and rejoice over. When shall peace come to earth? When the brute and savage shall have died in us and we have become human. In a word, peace will come to earth when humanity has been humanized, civilization civilized, and Christianity christianized. ["Peace on Earth." (1915)]

Yet some would vote for McCain despite the self-evident failure of the Iraq invasion to even have a purpose that a majority of citizens can name. They seem to think that our atrocities teach a valuable lesson, or at least one valuable to the Wall Street Junkers. They are deceived by confusing might and right, and along with faux Socialists like Dead Gus Hall*, insist that a strong Stalinesque hand is needed for real peace. Zombie Eugene Debs is here to tell you that is not the case. Social justice is the key.

"The end of profit and plunder among nations will also mean the end of war and the dawning of the era of 'Peace on Earth and Good Will among Men.'" ["Peace" (1916)]

#3. His pinkish orange pate no doubt houses a tasty brain. Zombies know these things.

* See also.

Post text by: MarkC
Image: Montag

I guess it'll be ok to post here, still. I been sittin' on this one since before The First...



Zbigniew Brzezinski

Collect them all!

PS: I'll werk on maybe a different header image sometime... eventually.

[Cross-posted.]

(Well, other than the obvious reason that it is not the Fafblog... speaking of which, thank goodness the Fafblog is back! Lordy, how we missed you. We tried to keep a light on for you, Fafblog. Sure, it was a 10 watt bug bulb with a blob of paint on one side, from that summer Grandpa tried to paint the back porch after he quit drinking, but still. We did the best we could.)

I dread this... but it is necessary.

And let me first say that I, for one, appreciate some of you either stepping up and taking responsibility for the unseemly tone of this blog, or dishing the blame out and throwing your loved ones under the bus. You're troopers. Stalwarts. Princes and/or Princesses among Men and/or Women. You really are. But it's time to pay the piper, my friends. It's time to give the devil his due. Time to clear the air... fry the bacon... rinse the vegetables... raid the medicine cabinet. Time to slice the fruitcake, and face the music.

It's my fault. Yes. I'm the rotten apple, the bad seed. The Judas, if you will. Well, the non-flowering Judas. But Judas, nonetheless. I'm the reason why this blog is not the best blog!

I suppose I should just go ahead and say it.

I've always been a gymnosperm.

When I was a kid (or more accurately a smallish tree), while all the popular angiosperm kids (likewise trees... don't get bogged down here, gentle reader) were budding and flowering and smelling nice and forming their various types of edible fruiting bodies -- there I was... all green and sappy and woody and prickly. Standing in the corner, usually. And while they swayed lithely in the breeze... well I'd just sort of rustle a little. Sometimes I'd drop a few dry needles, and hear their hushed snickers. I still hear those snickers today... oh, how they echo in my dreams. My nightmares!

Then later -- in the winter, when all the popular kids (trees again) had shed their brightly colored leaves and were standing there, beautiful and slim and naked in the silvery light and cold air of morning -- well there I stood, squat and frumpy in my corner, still just as green and sappy and woody and prickly as I'd been in the spring. I never fit in! I never changed! I felt like a freak I tell you..... a changeless, evergreen freak!

There was only one thing that got me through those years. I had a secret... a small, happy secret... and somehow, it helped me to endure all the ridicule, the ceaseless automotive air-freshener jokes and not-so-subtle pine-sol references. It's a secret I've never told anyone. But I'm going to tell it to you... because we're friends here, aren't we? Aren't we?

This is hard.

Sometimes... sometimes..... yes! Yes! Sometimes, in the silent darkness of the blackest moonless winter night I would do it! Er, you know.... DO it.

Spontaneously, and with wild abandon, I'd go into a furious cone-forming frenzy! I would! I would cone-form to beat the dang band! And I liked it!!! It felt GOOD! And I still do it! I did it a couple of months ago! And I'll do it again!

There! I said it. Now you know the truth.

Judge me if you must.

THEY'RE
BAAAAACK!
Click Fafblog!