ENOUGH Already. Letter back to viral e-mailer.

[mojowork_n]

RE: Your forwarded viral e-mail, "So, Let's Recap 2009"

The Supreme Court recently made a decision assigning full "personhood" and "citizenship" rights to corporate legal entities. Corporations now have the same unregulated access to "free speech," and "political media speech" as any regular, ordinary citizen. (Those of us who walk, talk, pump our own blood, require oxygen, etc.)

The recent 5-4 decision was based on the 1886 ruling in favor of the Southern Pacific Railroad, vs. Santa Clara County, and it takes that precedent to the full reductio ad absurdum extreme.

The 1886 decision was itself based on one of your least favorite constitutional amendments -- the 14th, the "broad definition of citizenship." That's the amendment which overruled the Supreme Court's worst decision -- Dred Scott (1857). The decision which excluded slaves and their descendants from having any constitutional rights.

It's just a feeling, but it looks to me as if this country is going to need another constitutional amendment. Your forwarded e-mail in my inbox this morning (one example from a long, long series) was the push that drove that "Eureka" flash of insight right out of the bathtub, soaking wet.

The 14th amendment has now become a total monstrosity, a two-headed Janus.

The "corporate personhood" face of the god, looks backward to the good 'ol days of complete, full and unregulated "property rights."

When Dred Scott's owner had a higher claim on Dred Scott's locomotive and respiratory functions, for the performance of manual tasks -- than Dred Scott did.

The "Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th amendment -- the forward-looking face of Janus -- has to turn around, sooner or later, before both heads explode.

....How have I arrived at this conclusion?

Here's the full text of your viral e-mail....

So, Let's Recap "2009"

• The American people inaugurate a half-Arab president with a total of 142 days experience as a US Senator from the most politically corrupt state (city) in America whose governors have been ousted from office. The President's first official act is to order the close of Gitmo and make sure terrorists civil rights are not violated. (honest mistake?)

• The U.S. Congress rushes to confirm a black Attorney General, Eric Holder, whose law firm we later find out represents seventeen Gitmo Terrorists. (An honest mistake!)

• The CIA Boss appointee, Leon Panetta, has absolutely no experience, has a daughter Linda, we find out, who is a true radical anti-American activist and a supporter of all the Anti-American regimes in the western hemisphere. (There were socio-economic factors involved!)

• We got the second most corrupt American woman (Pelosi is #1) as Secretary of State; bought and paid for. (You can put lipstick on a pig, but it still stinks!)

• We got a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary who did not properly file his own taxes for 12 years. (He misspoke!)

• A Commerce Secretary nominee who withdrew due to corruption charges. (Another honest mistake???)

• A Tax cheat nominee for Chief Performance Officer who withdrew under charges. (Hmmmmmm . . . another screw-up?)

• A Labor Secretary nominee who withdrew under charges of unethical conduct. (OK, maybe this person was just plain stupid.)

• A Secretary HHS nominee (Daschle) who withdrew under charges of cheating on his taxes. (I'm running out of excuses for these idiots!!)

• Multiple appointments of former lobbyists after an absolute campaign statement that no lobbyists would be appointed. (Dear God, I am getting a headache!)

• All this occurred just during the first three weeks . . . but who's counting? America is being run by the modern-day Three Stooges; Barry , Nancy and Harry, and they are still trying to define stimulus . . . "it's called spending!"

• The congress passes the $800,000,000,000 (that's $800 billion) pork-loaded spending bill where the government gives you a smidgen of your tax dollars ($13 per week), making you feel so good about yourself , that you want to run out to Wall-Mart and buy a new Chinese-made HDTV and go home and watch Telemundo!

• Here's the good news though - Obama took Air Force One to Denver to sign the stimulus package, wasting as much as 10,000 gallons of fuel (OR 24 JOBS FOR ONE YEAR). Don't you just love hypocrites?

• Obama went to the International Olympic Committee to have them choose Chicago for a host city, he failed.

• Obama went to Copenhagen to lecture them on global warming, he failed.

• Obama went to new Jersey to promote the Democratic candidate for governor, he failed,

• Obama went to Virginia to promote the Democratic candidate for governor, he failed.

• Obama went to Massachusetts to promote the Democratic candidate for senator, he failed.(Dear God, I am getting a worse headache!)

• Speaking of praying, Obama has now been president for a full year, and yet he & wife (first lady) Michelle, the Christian family they claim to be, have not attended church since the inauguration.

• Obama is the 1st president in history who did not attend any Christmas religious observance.

• He was the first president to miss the Army & Navy Football game. He must miss Reverend Wright!

• And finally, he is the 1st president to remain on vacation after a terrorist attack.


— Wow, what a Year —

In these times, it's probably wise to keep your God, your

freedom, your guns and your money. Anyone that

supports this insanity can keep "THE CHANGE!"

....I'm not even going to bother going to Google, or to "Snopes" or "Factcheck.org" to look up any of that crap.

You and I both know what the record is on your forwarded e-mails, when the claims are put to the test.

That's actually my insight...

...Having been proved flat-out wrong so often, a normal human being, with feelings of conscience, possessing however vestigial a sense of responsibility to the truth -- might cease and desist. Or at least back off a little.

But your viral e-mails just keep coming. Knocking down one imaginary, concocted, or plucked-out-of-context "strawman" after another. Proving nothing.

So who's writing them?

Paid hacks. Political "guerrila marketers" gone bad.

Poor, soulless wretches who have no more claim on the direction, ultimate use, or physical and emotional consequences of their literary output, than field hands had on the cotton in their basket.

I'm sure there's a Stockholm Syndrome factor at work, too. After a while, some of those who started out as purely self-serving mercenaries become 'true believers' in the wingnut lunacy. (No doubt, it's got to be a self-protective mechanism. In much the same way that blood-sucking vampires, in fiction, can no longer take a step back and give themselves a good, long, honest look in the mirror.)

But that's your 14th amendment at work, now.

Protecting the right of every American (or mostly American, however fractionally off-shored for accounting and tax evasion purposes) corporate entity to manipulate, deceive and flat-out bamboozle the general public.

Because money talks, sucker. And it pays to rile up people who have more than enough honest reason to be confused and upset about the direction of this country.



It's a big game of misdirection....



...When people don't have the patience, education, intelligence or insight to look through the smokescreen, past all the half-truths, flat-out shameless lies, and distortions -- marketed and served up with so much white-and-bright packaging, like junk food on a plate -- the lifeblood of democracy turns to arterial sludge. Instead of healthy circulation and respiration, the free exchange of ideas becomes something toxic.



While the real culprits are laughing all the way to the glowing display terminals in their palatial upper floor bedrooms. To check the huge flatscreens with the up-to-the-minute record of their banking transactions.

[rfranklin]

1. Oh yeah? So where is that birth certificate?

There's no talking to people who forward this crap.

[treestar]

2. Sounds like he has a problem with the 14th Amendment? I can't

quite tell from his drivel.

Obama missed the Army Navy football game? Say it isn't so, Obama! :rofl:

[calimary]

3. Very good to compile responses - and send 'em!

And if there's an email chain visible, from whoever sent this to the sender who sent it to you, send your response to that whole group, too.

I did that once, worked backwards through EVERYBODY who was on the forwarding list several levels back. I actually got a response back from someone who felt like me - hated getting these stupid knuckledragger emails but hadn't really felt motivated to do anything about it and was feeling kinda isolated because she felt as though she was the only one who felt this way. Not everybody on these email lists belongs on them, or sympathizes. You might be reaching out to offer that unfortunate soul some solidarity.

[mojowork_n]

4. I like that idea,

but in this case, I know where the link in the forwarding chain that includes me branches off.

There's this cranky, old, old, old coot; somewhere outside D.C., who used to be an attorney in the Judge Advocate General's office. He's always one or two FWD's down the e-mail tree. I've never met him but I guess he's practically homebound, taking care of a spouse who's pretty much lost the ability to care for herself. So I'm not going to get in the way of his venting and blowing off misplaced aggression.... He happens to be someone who used to be a buddy of a really good friend of mine, another elderly misanthrope. (A really interesting, unusually articulate, intelligent and well-read fellow, who just happens to be a 19th century, classic "liberal." A paleo-conservative European. I mean, you should have some friends you don't always agree with, or you'd never grow.)

My ire would be directed more toward the organ grinders. The primates at the keyboard who get paid to play on and misuse the inherited, too-deeply-embedded prejudices of all these other old monkeys, and the knuckle-draggers, as you refer to them.

I mean, who writes that stuff?

Has anyone ever connected the authorship of a viral e-mail to any living human being?

How do they get paid? By the word, or by the hate crime?

[Hekate]

5. Kick and 5th

[Change Happens]

6. You should respond with: "why do hate America so much?"

Or why do you hate FREEDOM?