Monsters Inc. - Starring Hillary T. Inevitable

Every now and then one of our "representative" leaders lets the mask slip and Americans get a peek at the monster behind the mask. The monsters that represent us are well-known elsewhere in the world by the people who are variously invaded, bombed, incinerated by flying death robots, disappeared, held in gulags, tortured, sanctioned, starved, treated to heaping helpings of depleted uranium, attacked with banned weapons like white phosphorus, brutalized by authoritarian dictators and puppets that our monsters support with weapons Made in America(tm). I could go on, but you get the picture.

One of the most memorable mask-slips of recent times was when the ghastly gasbag Madelaine Albright revealed the sociopathic policy of the Clinton administration - claiming that it was "worth it" to cause the deaths, estimated in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report as 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, to bring Saddam Hussein to heel.

This idea that it was a good thing to starve an almost imponderable number of children to enforce American interests was apparently widely held within the Clinton administration as Clinton's energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, doubled down on supporting it shortly afterwards.

A couple of years later the monsters were ready to up their game. At a televised town meeting held in St. John Arena at Ohio State University to drum up support for an escalation of hostilities to invade Iraq, the Clinton administration's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger appeared.

Facing hecklers and strong opposition from a crowd chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your racist war," Albright attempted to justify the Clinton policies by using terms all too familiar:

"What we are doing, is being the indispensable nation, willing to make the world safe for our children and grandchildren, and for nations who follow the rules."

Yes, yes - the Clinton administration cared deeply about children

The Clinton administration loved the children so much that they were willing to slaughter them and their parents by the millions.

Because America is the indispensable dispenser of death and destruction.

By the time that the (second) Bush administration came along, even positing a rationale for killing became something of a joke:

"No masks here!" All of the monsters are bald-faced killers.

One administration full of bald-faced, unrepentant killers, torturers and war criminals fades without accountability into another. We now have a president that's "really good at killing people" - and also thinks that it's a pretty funny joke:

So, now as America prepares itself for the grand pageantry of the 1% purchasing another national election, there is an inevitable candidate who has had her own "monster moment" on national teevee where her mask slipped off:

Yep, if you enjoyed the Obama administration's laugh-a-minute killing spree, Hillary has you covered. She apparently enjoys a satisfyingly brutal assassination:

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, wearing matching tan pants and shirt, by now soaked in blood, stopped briefly and looked around, seemingly bewildered. He had little more than a few seconds to take in his surroundings before being grabbed by each arm and wrenched away from his final, ignominious refuge. ...

A mob grew around Gaddafi as he was frog-marched through the sand. While he was being taken towards a group of rebel trucks, one fighter crouched in the dirt behind the frightened captive and sodomised him with a bayonet.

"Haram alaikum!" screamed Gaddafi, his voice hoarse and his eyes darting wildly. Loosely translated: "It's a sin what you are doing!" ...

Blood from the vanquished leader's various wounds was now caking his shirt. Blows rained down on him. Every one of his captors seemed to want a piece of the hobbled tyrant. ... Gaddafi was thrown on to the front of a white car bonnet, his bloodsoaked head locked between the knees of a militiaman from nearby Misrata. He slipped off the bonnet, his ravaged body unable to cope with the constant battering. The militiaman hauled him back up. ...

Adam Zawbi, a 20-year-old Misrata fighter, saw what happened next. "I had just got there," he said. "We got a call that Gaddafi was captured and we went straight to the area. There were lots of guys shouting and Gaddafi was in the centre of the road. I saw the gun. I saw the hand holding it and I heard it fire."

Hilarious! Or should I say Hillary-ous?

"We came. We saw. He died. Hahahahaha! chuckle, snort," said the compassion-filled candidate who is running for president to be a champion for "everyday Americans."

Yes, the woman who laughs at gory deaths with her media buddies under the glare of the studio lights wants to lead us in making America a kinder place. On another teevee date with her media pals, Hillary said without apparent irony:

"The most important thing is how we treat each other and how we think about the future and the future for our children and future grandchildren, and that means we've got to be kinder, and we have to be more compassionate and empathetic. ... It all starts from home, just like who you are as a person. It all starts from your heart, and so you have to carry that forward."

Hillary just loves everyday people!

As a lawmaker and diplomat, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of “everyday” people abroad, from Iraq to Yemen. As commander-in-chief, there’s no reason
to believe she’d be any less a hawk than she was as the senator who backed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, or the Secretary of State who encouraged Barack Obama
to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

So, if you assume that Hillary is indeed inevitable, there are a few things that follow:

  • a continuation of the culture of impunity for war criminals
  • endless wars
  • more amusing deaths
  • more games of "bug splat" for everyday people

The great thing about America, though is that we get to freely choose our leaders.

There’s little chance the Republicans will nominate someone better, but given Clinton’s record as a senator and Secretary of State – the latter giving us a very good idea of how she would approach foreign affairs once in office – it will be hard for them to find anyone much worse.

So, what if Hillary is not inevitable?

What might Bernie Sanders foreign policy look like? Sanders is allegedly a socialist and has a portrait of Eugene V. Debs in his office. Isn't that enough?

While Sanders is a big step up from Hillary in many ways, his record on matters of war and foreign policy is mixed. He voted for the AUMF in 2001. While he voted against the AUMF for Iraq, he's voted for appropriations to fund the war. Sanders voted against the Patriot Act, but in 2006 voted to make the remaining provisions of it permanent and allow the FBI to conduct roving wiretaps. Sanders has also voted a billion dollars in aid to the fascist-dominated Ukraine government.

Like a typical politician vying for military pork investments in his state, Sanders has worked to get the F-35's located in Burlington, Vermont.

But Bernie's great on economic issues affecting "everyday people," right?

So called progressive politicians who do not draw the link between corporate America’s wars and its attack on social security, health care, the minimum wage, forty- hour work week, and other issues working people consider important are doing us a disservice. The wars fought by the US military are ultimately fought for one reason only–to maintain and expand the power of corporate America at the expense of workers and the poor around the world.

Well, at least Bernie hasn't cracked jokes about murdering people yet.

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mimi's picture

We are so accustomed to listen to the justifications of those wars to forget what the wars actually were and are.
Kudos for putting it together. Wished it could be posted somewhere else. I would cut and paste it for you, if you want to.

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joe shikspack's picture

not sure which day, but soon.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

"We came. We saw. He died. Hahahahaha! chuckle, snort..."

I recall being one of the very few who was cognizant and violently opposed to that horrifying US atrocity against Libya while it was actually in the planning stage.

Good times.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
joe shikspack's picture

i was actually a little surprised at how many people swallowed that "humanitarian intervention" codswallop whole. even some people that i thought were reasonably sophisticated fell for that crap.

i mean it's not like there was a record of failure that attended the destabilization of countries that preceded it or something.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...even some people that i thought were reasonably sophisticated

It was like backing the Nazis in WWII. Irredeemable.

Same is true of the US-Ukraine clusterfuck — although in this case, they actually are backing the Nazis.

Or those who, after 2008, wanted to stay in Afghanistan and continue the murderous US atrocities there because otherwise, wimmens would get their noses cut off.

(BTW, Hillary was up to her elbows in blood in all of these humanitarian disasters, a fully culpable co-conspirator in war crimes — just as was Condoleezza Rice. Psychopaths, both of them.)

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Big Al's picture

"progressive politicians who do not draw the link between corporate America’s wars and its attack on social security, health care, the minimum wage, forty- hour work week, and other issues working people consider important are doing us a disservice."

Too much of the left have never listed ending U.S. imperialism in their top five, many not even in their top ten.
And that's coming through clearly with the support of Sanders.
Not the only thing coming through clearly either.

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joe shikspack's picture

like "progressive," greatly overstates the ideological complexity of much of "the left" in the us. we have to remember that people use the term "progressive," not because they are ideologically aligned with a movement of people who had the gumption to stand up against the bipartisan order because their ideals were more important to them than party - but because they were tired of being called "liberals" as a term of derision. it is just a branding exercise for most of them, nothing more.

much of what is called "the left" is completely comfortable in the very narrow political continuum of the two parties and indeed is too comfortable (or frightened for their fortunes) to leave the security of the established order.

i'd venture that most of the people calling themselves progressives these days have little grasp of history or understanding of american imperialism past or the fact that the us is an empire now. they mostly seem to think that war powers are something that you can trust in the hands of nice men like barack obama, but absolutely not in the hands of people like george w. bush. why? because the opinion marketers of the democratic party tell them so.

/rant

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Big Al's picture

top of his list, let me just say I'm disappointed more of the "real" left (if I can use any label to somehow
distinguish among us) doesn't have it there or even in the top 3 as well. I don't understand it.

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shaharazade's picture

that I too have in my head often. I vote for this... 'because they were tired of being called "liberals" as a term of derision. it is just a branding exercise for most of them, nothing more.' All political descriptors like liberal, left, right center, conservative, you name it they are all just branding terminology. Self identifying as a moron from outerspace....... The measurement's are meaningless as the Vandals stole the handles. Progressive was to me an insult when it first came into it's modern usage. It's a one size fits all political category. After decades of hearing 'you liberals need to blab blab blab... it seem like an appeasement out of fear of the lunatic RW'ers of the Bush era. Turns out it was also a massive sell out of the democratic wing of the party by the freaking centrist moderates who are neither moderate or at the center of anything other then the masters of the universe they derive power from. All the branding in the world cannot make any of this progress or moderate. Pragmatic is another term that drives me up a wall what's pragmatic about winning fake victories for compromise? The scale of political ideology or direction is just a made up map to measure and direct our pain everywhere except at the complicit political deceivers.

My rant. Tom Tomorrow has a great cartoon this morning.

The populist menace indeed.... if only....

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/11/1383377/-Cartoon-The-populist-m...

.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…investigative reporter extraordinaire, Kevin Gosztola, has an excellent piece up at Fire Dog Lake:

US Establishment Press Dismiss, Shrug Off Seymour Hersh’s Story on Killing of bin Laden

Most distressing about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s story on the lies President Barack Obama’s administration reportedly told about the killing of Osama bin Laden is the general reaction of the United States establishment press.

Hersh is an award-winning journalist best known for exposing the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam War. It earned him a Pulitzer Prize. He also did stellar reporting on the abuse and torture of detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Yet, most establishment press seem to be shrugging at Hersh’s latest 10,000-word feature story published by the London Review of Books or they are snidely dismissing it altogether.

Is it because most in the US press wholly accept the narrative put forward by the Obama administration around the raid that killed bin Laden? Is it because they have moved on and no longer find it worthy to investigate what really happened? Is it because they do not want to believe what Hersh is alleging because it amounts to a major international espionage conspiracy if it all happens to be true?

Christopher Frizzelle of The Stranger already went to the trouble to list off each allegation against the Obama administration that is made in Hersh’s story. So, courtesy of Frizzelle:

• Pakistani officials knew about the raid and even helped the US pull it off.

• There never was a firefight, neither in the yard outside the house nor once the Seals got inside.

• The story of the courier whom the reportedly CIA traced, leading them to bin Laden, was a fabrication.

• The story of the courier dying in the firefight was a cover-up “because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him,” a retired senior intelligence official told Hersh.

• The way the CIA actually found out where bin Laden was is that a “Pakistani walk-in” who wanted the $25 million reward came in and told the CIA about it.

• Osama bin Laden was not armed, contrary to reports that he had a machine gun and was killed in a firefight, and he was not killed with just one or two bullets but “obliterated.”

• “Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen,” that same retired senior intelligence official said.

• “Despite all the talk” about what the Seals collected on site, the retired official said there were “no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks.”

• The story about bin Laden’s sea burial may be a fabrication.

• The retired official told Hersh that bin Laden’s “remains, including his head… were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains—or so the Seals claimed.”

• Obama was going to wait a week until after bin Laden’s death to announce it, and he was going to tell the American people that bin Laden had been killed by a drone, but after the Seals had to blow up their malfunctioning helicopter onsite, attracting attention locally, everything changed.

• The story about the vaccination program carried out locally in an attempt to get bin Laden’s DNA—a story that “led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying”—wasn’t true.

• Retired official again: “It’s a great hoax.”

Did anyone really buy the "burial at sea"?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Big Al's picture

corroborating the fabrication that bin Laden was in Pakistan at the time and they did kill him.

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OLinda's picture

Big Al, what do you think happened, or didn't happen. Just briefly. A sentence. Do you think he's still alive?

Thank you.

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Big Al's picture

by the CIA and State Department until the right time to kill him off.

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OLinda's picture

Well, that's new to me, Al. I sure don't have any reason or evidence to disbelieve it though. I'll keep an open mind. Thank you for replying.

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mimi's picture

kind of sense does it make then to ask someone what he believes in? I don't want to sound aggressive and I apologize already up front for my comment here, but questions like that irk me a little, especially after having witnessed how people who answer similar questions on dailykos get "ridiculed" or "moralized" or "timed out" or simply silenced.

"I don't know" is the only honest answer one can give and basically that is a "known known". And I think people like Rumsfeld and his fans, really are very interested to keep those "known knowns" for ever "unknown unknowns" and that alone is a reason to hold Rumsfeld accountable for his assholery, imo. But of course you have to be able to prove his assholery to a degree beyond reasonable doubt. So, one always is interested in keeping up enough fairy tale stories to make everyone doubt and never be sure of anything beyond that reasonable doubt.

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OLinda's picture

I value Al's opinion. He mentioned "...fabrication that bin Laden was in Pakistan at the time and they did kill him," which strongly suggests he has some thoughts on the matter. I am interested in what he thinks.

This is not DK.

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mimi's picture

If it helps to find the truth, go for it. Let me know, if you find something that is beyond reasonable doubt. That's all I am interested in.

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OLinda's picture

I'm not actively researching this subject. It came up in conversation. That's what this is, conversation, where we talk about what we think about things.

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mimi's picture

right. I have no interest right now to go back to research that. I have so many other things I want to wrap my mind around. I try to write about what makes me so cranky in a while.

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Big Al's picture

don't know for sure about 9/11. There is no evidence that proves anything beyond a reasonable doubt.
But we can make a good assumption after analyzing the facts and circumstances of the case. The number one
assumption I've had is that the government is lying about the story. Plenty of indicators for that and Hersh is
bringing out some of them.

Then there's the issue of bin Laden and his kidneys. He reportedly had Marfan's Syndrome and was being treated
for it in late 2001, including dialysis treatment.

Like I said, it doesn't prove he wasn't killed in 2011, but like 9/11 there are so many holes in the story that you
have to doubt the government version.

And what really happened to Seal Team 6?

"According to French intelligence reports, CIA agents visited Bin Laden at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months before 9/11.

It was also widely acknowledged at the time that Bin Laden needed a kidney dialysis machine because of renal health problems. Indeed, CBS News reported that Bin Laden was having kidney dialysis treatment the night before 9/11. No dialysis machine was found in the alleged compound in Pakistan, which prompted the corporate media to backtrack and report that that he actually had kidney stones, not kidney disease, despite the fact that the CIA admitted back in 2008 that Bin Laden had suffered from kidney failure.

Other accounts from 2000-2001 claimed that Osama was also suffering from Hepatitis C and had only two more years to live. Despite all these health problems, on Saturday the White House released video footage of Bin Laden which it claimed was filmed in fall 2010, although the clips show a younger and healthier looking Osama compared with video footage from 2001.

Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer and can cause instant death from the sudden rupture of the aorta.

“Back then, after the 9/11 terror attacks, medical experts weighed in on bin Laden’s tall, frame, lanky limbs and long face, all classic physical symptoms of Marfan syndrome,” states the MSNBC report."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/osama-died-in-2001-msnbc-hit-piece-unwittin...

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mimi's picture

go into the whole issue. I have given up on it and also have no interest anymore to go back to it. I am sorry that I made the comment.

I guess I shouldn't be here. It doesn't make sense for me with my current mental state of affairs.
I basically am only here to support the efforts of others. But that is not really needed and I think I need to take care of myself first.

I am sorry for that.

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joe shikspack's picture

(a reference to the princess bride) i.e., there were a succession of osama bin ladens, as one was picked off or retired, another tall man with a beard would take over... B)

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Big Al's picture

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/seymour-hershs-zero-truth-th...

Oh Sy, what happened man? No way, I read his article, it doesn't add up and smells real bad. willyloman is right.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

In the end, all of this ultimately points right back at the events of 9/11.

Everything does. It's apparently a law of physics.

Forbidden topics can never be laid to rest.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

Now I am completely confused.
What the fuck?

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lotlizard's picture

People say "extraordinary claims require blah blah conspiracy theory blah blah"—conveniently overlooking the fact that nowadays everything the U.S. government says is an "extraordinary claim" by an enormous and extraordinarily opaque organization with lines of control, command, and psychological conditioning reaching everywhere.

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OLinda's picture

Does anyone remember a firefight being in the reports? I don't. Didn't they say he was unarmed, or perhaps there was a weapon in the room that he could have dove for? It was admitted it wasn't really a "capture" mission.

Also, giving vaccinations to get his DNA doesn't make sense to me. Can someone explain how that would work? I thought the story was that they were giving vaccinations in order to enter homes and look around.

I'm not saying I believe the whole story as told, but some of this sounds odd to me.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

I remember a photograph President Obama looking on excitedly, via helmet cams, as the crippled old man was turned into tomato paste.

The vaccination connection was new to me.

I always figured that, if the Pakistanis came to the US to vaccinate American children, some gun-toting cracker might have a problem with that. It never occurred to me they needed another reason to open fire.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

would believe any of it. But as the Firedoglake article you quote said at the end:

Judging the reaction of establishment journalists, it also is a Rorschach test for them too. His sourcing is flawed because they have decided these are anonymous sources they would never rely on for a story as damning as this one. But, if Hersh had uncovered an angle to the story that added details but did not challenge the Obama administration and the CIA, they might think his anonymous sources were worth believing.

It's so easy to manipulate the press and the public and the single government employee to cover up traces.

I won't be known what happened and that's what the CIA and government higher-up decision makers always count on. They even dwell in the fact that they are the greatest fiction novel writers and enabling confusion of the public to its highest levels. In the end people get mentally sick with that. I think it's also a psychological torture tool. I wonder how consciously it is used by the ones in the CIA or government, who decide "to make up" stories. Or how consciously same is used by "retired" whistleblowers or investigative journalists, to counter those CIA or government decisions. In the end it looks like an endless question one asks the mirror:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most honest of them all?

And all the mirror gives you back is fog and grease and dust. You clean the mirror and start all over. To end up at the same stage in the same condition. Not finding the truth. Any speculations then made by innocent people are answered with ridicule or threats. It's easy to silence people's free thoughts as soon as they are materialized in digits or on paper.

Then you give up. That's what is the goal. Resignation.

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MarilynW's picture

vaccination aid workers. Apparently the Taliban are antivax rather than seeking revenge for the Bin Ladin execution.

That fake story of how they got Bin Laden, an aging, has-been terrorist, was not only made official, there was a movie about it "Zero Dark Thirty. "Based on a true story" the filmmakers said.

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To thine own self be true.

lotlizard's picture

The Ministry of Truth's film division.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

posted at DKos, FDL, etc.

And thanks for the link from socialistworker.org. I can put it to good use, since I plan to rejuvenate my blog that was initially intended to be an aggregator of pieces on 'corporatist Democrats.' I plan to rebrand it as a blog aggregator with an emphasis on the 2016 Democratic Party candidates--and the Green Party candidate, if Dr. Stein runs.

Due to Mother's Day festivities, saw or heard little of the Sunday Talk Shows. However, on replay, we did catch a Sanders' interview on 'Face The Nation.' It was not encouraging. (This remark on CFR was the least ergregious one.)

BOB SCHIEFFER: "Hillary Clinton says she is going to have a super PAC, says she has to do it, she didn't like it but she has to do it to compete.

What about that?"

SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS: "I understand where she is coming from. I will not have a super PAC. Look, we announced a week and a half ago, Bob, and since that time, we have had two hundred thousand people go to BernieSanders.com to sign up for the campaign. . . ."

IOW, he mildly defended her, and simply changed the subject.

*Sigh*

MCM

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

OLinda's picture

I was going to post about this some day, and just noticed your beginning line is exactly what I was going to post about, so here it is tonight.

Joe, your line:
Every now and then one of our "representative" leaders lets the mask slip and Americans get a peek at the monster behind the mask.

This blockquote, surprisingly, is from Jerry Seinfeld in an interview with Alec Baldwin.

Jerry enjoyed the "Anthony Weiner show." "I loved it. To me it was the visible man. Let's take off the face of the clock and watch the gears. That's what that was. …

He wants power.

Most of them have all the guises and veils and polish … that their service is selfless."

This is not to bring up Weiner for discussion. That has been hashed and rehashed. I just really like the way Seinfeld expressed it - - taking off the face of the clock and watching the gears. It works even better for someone sociopathic where gears behind the face sounds more appropriate than something more human.

From now on, when I see a veil drop, "removing the face of the clock and watching the gears" is what I'm going to think of.

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MarilynW's picture

The US had a chance to do the honourable thing and treat him as a human being. If we must execute people, there's a way to do it so that it does not reflect back on us as if we are still savage brutes.

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To thine own self be true.

lotlizard's picture

Before the jungle closes in
A letter to America
The candles are a cocoa hue
Inside the room of missing men
100 mercenary souls
Ohhhhhhh
We are the army of the night
Ohhhhhhh

One foot in front of the other, babe
One baby step, I, I, I, I
Feel a soldier of fortune
Marching inside of me

We drink our gin in Mandalay
Afraid of what we have become
This is the moment of intrigue
Ohhhhhhh
A tiger dreaming of his prey
Ohhhhhhh
This is the edge of history

One foot in front of the other, babe
One baby step, I, I, I, I
Feel a soldier of fortune
Marching inside of me

(Repeat and fade)

—Manhattan Transfer, "Soldier of Fortune"

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