Canto Two: Dubya Revealed

Bush was ecstatic, full of vinegar and piss
“Play Osama for the Liberals, the People, the Swiss!
Play him for Hans, for Putin, for Jaque!
Play him for all of those protestors that talk
‘Bout my speech problems, my faults and my little white lies
‘Bout the V.P's finger in Halliburton pies
About torture in Graib and Guantanamo Bay!”
All sins forgotten come Election Day.

“Four more years”, Bush mused, “hell, maybe eight!”
No reign is too long for George Bush the Great!”
And in his head his body grew a full twice it’s size
He was imagining himself viewed through history’s eyes
“So fire up the draft,” he boomed, “next stop Iran!
After that, Germany, France, the Sudan!
We’ll take out the Japs, just like World War One!
The Russkies for the Cold War and the Canadians for fun!”

And though the content of his speech was profane,
It’s message was surprisingly clear and urbane!
The great mask had lifted, the foul truth revealed
The whole time Bush’s mind’d been cleverly concealed
To what end?” you ask desperately, “why play such a fool?”
His manner was means to an end, twas a tool!
Look at how much the redneck did achieve
Like so much ‘bout Bush, it’s hard to believe!

Though many believe that George Bush is the guy
That put terrorist recruitment at an all-time high
And though the Taliban’s stronger than ever, some say,
Dubya’s served his country in a remarkable way!
Cuz from a resource perspective, why, Dubya’s the man
That got oil pipelines pumping through Afghanistan!
And in that land before the dusts of war could fade
Bush got the poppy fields growing for the heroin trade!

Discredited Venezuela’s Chavez , though duly elected
He wasn’t on the list of very carefully selected
Dictatorial puppets who’d never dare spoil
American interests by nationalized oil.
Bush sent in the Marines for Chavez’s protection
From the people who’d voted for Chavez’s election!
Chavez takes the next vote and Dubya still didn’t care
“Vote again!” Bush roared, Carter quoth “No! Twas fair!”

What else for this man-child with godawful diction?
Gave a drum-up for war that was essentially fiction
Why send country to war with nothing but lies?
Cuz George ‘Dubya’ Bush kept his eye on the prize:
He brought the Middle-Eastern pot and put it to boil
For Halliburton contracts and better access to oil
Say to me “this had nothing to do with the war in Iraq!”
Then you’re either naïve, Friend, or you smoke too much crack!

“But hold on,” advised Powell, as Cheney hissed like a snake
“You’ll need some type of reason, and it’s okay if it’s fake
But some type of reason to put troops on the ground,”
General Powell spoke then looked meekly around.
“Screw it!” yelled Cheney, “don’t listen to this geek!
You know he’s a pansy, you know that he’s weak!
The U’S’, of A is big, bad and strong
What need we care to look right or look wrong?”

Rummy spoke up next with a scowl and a frown:
“No he’s right, this whimpering pacifist clown.
With no reason for war the other nations won’t play
And without other nations then we’ll have to pay
For this endeavour of ours and it’s big sticker price!”
Rummy fell back asleep and up spoke Condy Rice.
“We need a reason that’ll play in the city and sticks
Cuz without something like that we come off as pricks!”

“Need a reason for war?” said Bush, “we’ll give ‘em three!
He’s a god-awful tyrant whose people ain’t free!
He’s got terrorist links with Osama and gang
And nuclear bombs will explode with a bang
And a big mushroom cloud will appear o’er our land
Unless we pound Saddam and Iraq into sand!”
Said Condy: “Master stroke! Three reasons for invasion!
We use three shifting reasons for each special occasion!

If one reason proves false or gets heavily queried
We hit ‘em with another until the people get wearied
And say, ‘alright fine then, enough is enough
Do it quickly and quietly and safely and stuff,
Just do it,’ they’ll cry, ‘do it quick as you can
Take down this awful and dangerous man
We hear your good reasons and respect your decision
And they’ll sleepily return to their Reality television.’”

All agreed this was brilliant and would work like a charm
If one of ‘em proved wrong then what was the harm?
They’d switch to the next reason, then the one after that
When that one gets knocked down, the next one’s up to bat
And though they knew there would be much debate
With enough boots on the ground it’ll be far too late.
So that’s how they sold it, those three shifting reasons
That changed over time like the change of the seasons.

-SenseChange

Random MP3age: "Here Comes the Sun" - the Beatles

Impeach the Evil Swine!

"Those who would sacrifice a little Liberty for a little Security deserve neither and will lose both."
-Benjamin Franklin

That's one of America's greatest men speaking there. So, what does it mean?

It means NO MORE! No more rights trampled in the name of the neverending, Fear inspiring "War on Terror", or any other war for that matter! The Constitution is a document for times of peace AND times of war, or it WILL NEVER SURVIVE! The big Fear of the Day is NEVER supposed to supercede the instruction manual for Democracy!

I cannot stress enough, this is not a Right or Left thing. These rights disappear and they don't come back without bloodshed, I promise you. History dictates it to be so.

You couple the spying with some of the uglier aspects of the Patriot Act -in itself a good clue at the nature of the government we have in place, a total Orwellian phrase that hints that if you don't support it you are not a patriot, another good sign of our descent towards soft tyranny- which enables the State to kidnap any of its Citizens, spirit them away for NO TRIAL, summary execution or perhaps torture in a foreign land! Is this your America!?! Let me tell you whose America it ain't, BEN FRANKLIN'S! THAT'S WHO! YOU WANT TO SEE THAT QUOTE AGAIN?

"Those who would sacrifice a little Liberty for a little Security deserve neither and will lose both."

People say, "well, if you're a terrorist you have nothing to worry about!"

Listen up, lemmings, and listen up real good: The argument that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about would have fit in well in Maoist China, Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. “Off they go to the camps! Ah well, must’ve done something wrong, eh? Not me, no sir! Heil!"

They went too far, man, TOO FAR! I don't care if your a Democrat or a Republican, a Cath-o-holic, an atheist or a friggin' MOONIE! They went too far! STOP THEM! LET THEM KNOW THEY CANNOT GET AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE -LEFT OR RIGHT- WILL NOT ALLOW IT! It's your rights, Citizens- and the Rights of your children and your grand-children! Make noise now, because if this behavior continues unchecked you WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE NOISE LATER, I assure you!

Impeach them! Kick them out! Piss on them! Their way lies TYRANNY! This does not have to be a partisan political issue, you're politicizing yourselves right into FASCISM!

"Those who would sacrifice a little Liberty for a little Security deserve neither and will lose both."

It ain't Ben's America anymore. Bring it back to him. Impeach these evil fucks.

-SenseChange

randomMP3age: "Renegades of Funk" - Rage Against the Machine..I swear it was random, I swear!

Part of the Dialogue: the term most used to described the language of this adminstration is "Orwellian". The term Orwellian refers to George Orwell's magnum opus, 1984, in which a Tyrranical and Fascist government manipulates and controls its Citizens through Fear and Deceit.

GoogleCrossRef: "Bush administration" and "Orwellian": 359,000 hits. And the hits just keep on comin,' Citizens! Part of the dialogue.

The Death of Journalism, Goodbye HST

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

With the death of the American Dream lay Hunter S.

I got the phonecall from an acquaintance-in-the-know who’d rather I heard it from him than on the radio or some such shit. The news? One of the few left worthy of admiration, certainly the only journalist, Hunter S Thompson, the father of ‘Gonzo Journalism’ and perhaps the last bastion of Truth in American politics offed himself over that weekend, with one of his own shotguns that he always loved so much.

Thompson on election 2004: “The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people want it that way. That is what this election is all about. It’s down to nut-cutting time..."

Often when someone you care about dies, everybody always says something like ‘Dick left this world a better place than he found it.’ You can’t say that about Hunter, he’d be the first to tell you you’re full of shit, and believe me, you don’t want to risk a haunting from this man, fan or not.

Because he didn’t leave this world a better place and he’d be the first to say it. He left it more twisted, more bizarre, more depraved, more perverted. Why? Because that was the duty he’d chosen or the duty that had chosen him; to document the Fall of the American Dream, an Odyssey he’d begun a long time ago and violently punctuated with his shocking suicide.

It was the first suicide that I didn’t see as a cowardly act. He had no interest in being a weak old man so he died as he lived, with a shocking bang that freaked the hell out of all that knew him. That’s Hunter S for you.

In its own way a strangely fitting end. Savage. Shocking. There is no doubt in my mind that Hunter knew his place in American culture and history, and as such, to those in-the-know, his suicide means something, perhaps his final angry and crazed letter, perhaps the only suitable ending for a man ever pursuing and exploring an American Dream turned to Nightmare.

His funeral was attended by his good friends, including Jack Nicholson and Johnny Depp who had played him so impeccably in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” His remains were blown from a cannon in the hills of Aspen, as per his request, a final bang being Hunter’s apropos goodbye.

To say I am influenced by this man’s works is an understatement. He was my hero - an angry voice howling at the insanity of it all, who would add his own particular brand of crazy and somehow through this, arrive at the heart of Truth as he perceived it to be. How much of my political writings can be chased back to my love for his books? How much of my style can be distilled down to the influence of this wooly, crazy man’s writings?

He was so out there, so crazy that he could say whatever he wanted. He was unbribeable, unrepentant, a rascal, a madman. And a champion of real justice and human rights. A proponent of freedom, real freedom.

And he saw America as it really is: a bizarre orgy balanced precariously before a fall, and most likely into tyranny. His disgust and horror at what America has become is matchless to nothing but his respect, love and honor for the basic linchpins of how things are supposed to be, which was why he was so vicious and savage in his attacks.

Hunter S on George W. Bush: “a treacherous little freak...a golem...the syphilis president...a dangerous loser...”

He carved himself a niche so entirely his own with a typewriter, a blowtorch, mescaline and attitude, a perch from which he could cover the greatest and lowest stories in American political history of the last forty years.

I guess I’d thought he’d live forever. Maybe we all did.

67 and pickled in the good booze and drug all his life as he was, he remained sharp as a tack right up until he died.

Hunter S Thompson On Bush’s 2000 election result: “the most brutal seizure of power since Hitler burned the German Reichstag in 1933 and declared himself the new Boss of Germany.”

The first good article on the death of HST came from Rolling Stone magazine, the publication that was home to a lot of his finest work, a publication the foundation of which he’d help to lay in the early sixties. The writer of this article said that one of the last thing Hunter was working on before his death was something on 9-11, seemingly incontrovertible evidence that there were explosives placed in the building as well. Not long after, he would take his own life in a strange parallel.

The temptation here is to feel a fleeting sense of anger and paralyzing impotence: you’re leaving us now?!? This is when we need you more than ever before! Then a realization dawns, he fought for a long time, for decades. That fight belongs to others now. It's my Odyssey now. And yours. So talk hard if you're talking, write hard if you're writing and blog hard if your blogging. If you were a fan of HST you can do nothing less in his honor.

To so many he was a clown, an oddity, a druggie and to be certain, he was all those things.

However, if we accept what George Orwell once said, that “in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” we must also accept that Thompsen was a revolutionary.

He will be missed. Maybe I’ll be eulogizing him forever. Who knows?

We are, after all, professionals.

-SenseChange

NonRandomMP3age: "White Rabbit" Jefferson Airplane

Citizen's Note

EVERYTHING IS A CONSPIRACY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

THAT IS ALL.

-SenseChange

Primer for the Apocalypse

Canto I: Twas the Eve Before Elections

Twas the eve before elections, and in all the nations,

The masses were huddled before clever animations,

Before renowned experts, clever pundits, talking heads

They watched from the couches, they watched from the beds

They watched from the caves, they watched from the rocks

Day and night the whole world watched that box

And the reality created by the good folks at the News,

With no trace of bias and the purest of views.

It showed what Darth Cheney meant when he said

That “Citizens were doomed and fucked in the head”

If they voted for Kerry, for "with Kerry lay Death!

By Terrorists conspiring to take your last breath!

Cause Kerry can’t hack it,” Darth said with sly grin,

As a large drop of oil dripped down his chin,

“He says he’s a soldier, but he’s no kind of man!

As for keeping you safe, why there’s no way he can!”

“What on Earth does a Nam vet know about fighting?

For Nation to lay bleeding, dying, kicking and biting?

What good a soldier at defense or attacks?

What good a commander to watch all of your backs

Of leading a battle, and curing the world’s ills?”

Cheney asked in a fine suit made of Haliburton dollar bills.

“He’s an old wooden pussy, the worst kind by far!

He hasn’t the temperment, he’s well below par!”

Cheney droned on for the tenth time that day

In non-stop news world it was all they would play.

I was getting tired, had all from the tube,

So I pulled out some weed and I rolled a big doob.

I considered a meal, a jerk-off, a jog

When who should appear but that old salty dog!

Not Kerry, not Bush, nor football’s John Madden

But the worst of the worst, Osama Bin Laden!

“Well, hot damn!” I shouted, not sure how to feel,

The whole thing was twisted, confusing, surreal.

He was there just in time for the whole world to see

In time for the election of the New Century!

He was back, the scoundrel, but where had he been?

The Afghani hills was the last place he’d been seen

Or was it a cave in the South of Iraq,

Sipping champagne with that filthy Chirac?

“Bring us Osama!” we screamed “that salty old prick!

You said that you’d catch him and you said it’d be quick!”

Yet with all sound and fury, no peep was heard

Of that scary brown man with the toga and beard.

Yet here he was, calm and cool, tasting new glory

But what role was he playing in the Election Eve story?

October surprise, how ‘bout surprise of the year?

But what role was his in the 'Great Campaign of Fear?'

“Osama!” cried Paula, “holy shuddering fuck!

On Eve of Election! What a great piece of luck!”

“Coup de grace,” called a pundit, for Bush and his throng,

“With Osama in hand, how could they go wrong?”

“The nail in the coffin,” said Reilly, “Kerry’s sunk!”

Then called Moore a homo and Edwards a punk

“Shit’s fucked!” Stewart declared, “the deal’s been queered!

This election has just gone from strange to plain weird!”

It blew it for everybody, if you know what I mean,

It blew it for Kerry and his Heinz ketchup queen

It blew it for the Democrats, Bill Clinton, Al Gore

It blew it for Springsteen, it blew it for Moore.

It blew away the Masses, the Nation, the World

It blew away Joe Biden who violently hurled

Upon fellow Democratic hope Barak Obama

This, the effect of the appearance of Osama.

Cuz the election had been about Fear from day one!

And when ‘hot ticket’ Bin Laden was spoken and done

The people all moaned and some turned towards God

Of timing and appearance nobody thought twas odd

But he’d clinched up the deal and sealed ‘er up tight

For those compassionate neo-conmen, the Republican Right.

Did Bin Laden care of the head he anoints?

Who knows, but Bush got an extra six points.

-SenseChange

RandomMP3age: "I am a Rock" Simon and Garfunkel

The Future Was Yesterday

Sci-fi writers don’t write about the Future anymore, they write about the Now, because Now is the Future, you dig? In fact, to be honest, the Future was Yesterday!

This is a time where anything can happen. What’s the world gonna look like in 2012? It can be the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning or the beginning of something entirely new. Or it can be business as usual. But you know something? I doubt it.

Saw an interview with Captain Kirk on some show, dude asked him about where he thought the human race was headed –an odd question to ask the good captain, to be sure, and on a comedy show no less- and Kirk (looking perhaps a little drunk, can’t be sure, but…) gave us twenty years at the present course unless we all get together and make some big changes. Kirk SensesChange, do you?

End or Transcend, Citizens! Hey, I choose the latter. You?

And if the times are fucked, it makes it in there, some how some way. If the world is going to get fucked up because of the logical Ends of Capitalism, rampant greed, selfishness and deceit then maybe you write stories and rants and bloggedy-blogs about big evil corporations getting taken over by its workers.

Without reform of some nature, Capitalism too will fall. Don't see it yet?

How about this:

Bush is a perfect symbol of the failure of Capitalism. A bungling moron has been given the keys and it took Big Bucks to get him there. Nothing about him or his past is exemplary in any way, never was he ‘the best’ or even ‘very good at’ anything. With this gibbering chimp we see that Money is not the answer to everything, for it has failed the people of the United States of America and indeed, the entire rest of the world. It’s like when the boss’s idiot nephew got hired in to run your company and all you can do is complain about it when the whole shitcan goes up in flames because he's a stuttering fucktard.

So the Big C is on the way out? What emerges next? That’s what SenseChange is all about, you see it coming but you don’t know what form it’s gonna take and yer curious, dig? Communism failed because of the human element, not the idea, and so too shall fall Capitalism. Interesting how both polar opposites end up being the same, in the End, a bunch of evil bastards on top –who have everything- taking advantage of a huge base of peons and piss-ants who have nothing.
Huge layoffs at Ford! During an era of record profits! C.E.Os making five hundred million dollars a year! “But it’s the labor!” moans Mr. C.E.O. as he lights a huge illegal Cuban cigar with a smoldering thousand dollar bill, his secretary’s cocaine-covered lips hard at work under his nice mahogany desk, “the labor was bloody killing us! What’re you gonna do?!?”

What indeed.

If the idea is to search for an ideology that benefits the most, rather than the least, then how do we establish it without falling into the same traps? Are we collectively capable of learning from our mistakes or are we doomed to repeat them until the wrong stupid bastard finally gets angry at another stupid bastard and launches the Apocalypse? Time will tell, Citizens, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Hmmm. A bit of a downer there. Sorry mates. Hey, all I can say is I still have hope for us. I see it out there, and more and more, in here.

Peace and Love OR ELSE!

RandomMP3age: "Friend is a Four-Letter Word" by Cake.