Today we are taking a moment out of our celebration of the beginning of the post-Bush era to ask you to give . . . give ‘til it hurts. To the Alaska Independence Party.

We review the headlines about the Alaska election results and hope you will help us with what we'd like to call "Assisted Secession”:

NY Times:

Barely a week after he was convicted on seven felony counts, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska held on to a narrow lead in his bid for re-election.

Talking Points Memo:

Anchorage Daily News is saying Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who wasn't satisfied with breaking laws but actually violated the constitution, is probably going to get reelected.

Here’s the link to donate to the Alaska Independence Party. Help make their dream a reality – Make sure to let them know that ILP,S! sent you by writing “Forty-nine is just fine” on the memo line of your check or money order.

By Cappy Rudyard

Members of the conservative junta are so intent on making sure that the tattered shreds of our economy hold together until the election is over that they will stop at nothing. Today’s news shows that not only are they willing to co-opt Obama’s “change” meme, but have completely plagiarized Debs’ “public ownership” message. But they get it completely wrong.

With 80% public ownership of American International Group (AIG), the McCain/Bush junta has made explicit their plan to “privatize profit, and nationalize debt.” This is, of course, not Debs’ Socialism, but the naked use of government to give the most beknighted of our hereditary financial class a “do-over.” Roll back individual bankruptcy protection, while making corporate bankruptcy protection available for the asking. Regressive taxation in two senses: taking from the poor to give to the rich, and taking from the careful to give to the gamblers.

This may sound like Socialism on a superficial level, but here is Eugene V. Debs to remind us what real Socialism sounds like:

Less than 2 percent of our people privately own our natural resources and our industrial machinery. In virtue of which they have the power to rule the nation and rob the people…
As long as the industrial machinery that feeds and clothes and shelters the people is the private property of the 2 percent minority of exploiting capitalists, the people will be poor, life will be wretched struggle for existence, the divine in human nature will never be realized, and this world will still be nearer to the jungles than to any real civilization.
The Socialist Party says put an end to private ownership of social necessities. The end of private ownership means the end of exploitation, and the end of exploitation means the end of war and the beginning of worldwide peace.

- Debs: The Wall Street Explosion [Sept. 25, 1920]

Zombie Eugene Debs.
Right for America, alive.
Right for America, dead.

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