Barack Obama and The Call To Arms, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #167
April 26, 2010 Mike Gold 0 Comments
Don’t make me angry.
You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
– Robert Bruce Banner
Last week the House of Arizona’s state legislature voted 31 to 22 in favor of a bill requiring Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election. They say they have a right to know if their president is really an American citizen.
Really? Arizona’s been in the Union since February 1912. This is a funny time to make such a request. It causes one to suspect their motives. Like, would they have passed this bill were President Obama “one of us.”
Besides, why would anybody think these assholes would believe it now?
Back in 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater ran into some trouble when people said he wasn’t a natural born citizen, as required by the constitution, because Arizona wasn’t in the Union at the time of his birth. Given Barry’s spectacular loss, the issue was moot but most scholars agree the argument didn’t hold water. After all, George Washington was allowed to keep his gig. In today’s political climate, were Goldwater to run as a Democrat he would be hoisted on this very petard. In fact, by 2010 “conservative” standards, Barry Goldwater would be perceived as just a little bit to the left of Chairman Huey P. Newton. And he had a Jewish grandfather named Michel Goldwasser, so who’s zoomin’ who?
Well, helpful little twerp that I am, I’ve saved the state of Arizona some time and grief. I’ve already emailed a copy of Obama’s birth certificate to the bill’s sponsor, Judy Burges, and I suggest you do the same. She’s at jburges@azleg.gov.
The real birth certificate can be found at http://hyerstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bo_birth_certificate.jpg It’s a high-resolution version, so that Ms. Burges can see it clearly. It might take an extra couple seconds to download and to then upload, but it’ll be accepted by your email company. It should be accepted by Burges’s as well, unless, you know, it somehow gets overfilled.
I suggest you get all your friends to do the same. And their friends.
Tell ‘em Robert Bruce Banner sent you.
Media metaphysician and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.
Doug Abramson
April 26, 2010 - 12:54 am
Leave the crazy twit alone. If she gets too stressed out, she’ll have to take a vacation; most likely in California. The last thing I, I mean, California needs is another brain dead Zoneie on our roads. Think of the greater good man!
Doug Abramson
April 26, 2010 - 1:06 am
Seriously, give her hell, she deserves it; but it won’t do any good. The angel Gabriel could ascend from the heavens and announce that it is the Lord’s plan that Obama became President.These people wouldn’t accept it until he went to Michael Jackson’s dermatologist and changed his name to Barry Wonderbread.
Marc "Future Mike Gold" Fishman
April 26, 2010 - 9:28 am
Good to know while people are still dying in our gutters, starving, or are otherwise troubled… Arizona’s government has time to publicly ask for our President’s birth certificate. If this were an episode of “The West Wing” … there would have been some laughs, and then some interior crone would provide the copy and bury the story so hard and fast Arizonians would still be tending to their wound before packing up for the night at 4pm (gotta be home to watch Matlock, you know..)
So, what next? Maybe Florida will ask for copies of the Obama girls’ report cards to prove that Obama is a bad dad? Maybe Oregon will require copies of Michelle’s workout regimen to prove she doesn’t take steroids to pump up her first lady guns. Give me a break.
R. Maheras
April 26, 2010 - 11:10 am
Apparently some of the drugs interdicted from the Mexican cartels by Arizona State Police found their way into the Arizona state legislature.
Mike Gold
April 26, 2010 - 12:14 pm
Which brings to mind the recent Arizona immigration law. It’s hard to think of a law that would make their policemen’s jobs more difficult.
Rick Oliver
April 26, 2010 - 2:30 pm
You really can’t reason with these people; so making their lives more difficult may be the next best thing.
I had the birth certificate argument with a Republican I know (who is also ironically a die-hard union man), and I gave him a link to factcheck.org where they had all the details. His response was that it was a well-known “fact” that factcheck.org is actually controlled by Obama. This fable is, of course, based on the tenuous link between Obama and factcheck.org, via the Annenberg foundation, whose remaining namesake actually supported McCain in 08.
Mike Gold
April 26, 2010 - 3:42 pm
And the Annenberg fortune started with Moe, the mobster who started out running distribution for Hearst’s Chicago papers, the American and the Herald-Examiner. His method: if you didn’t handle his newspapers, he firebombed your newsstand. He moved to Philadelphia to run the Daily Racing Forum and, shortly thereafter, he “acquired” the wire service that provided information to race tracks and bookie joints — and to the local mobs. Served a few years for income tax. His son, Walter, led a more above-boards but no less interesting life, acquiring three local magazines to form TV Guide. He later became ambassador to England. It was Walter and his wife (second, I think; maybe third) who started the foundation.
Reg
April 26, 2010 - 4:32 pm
Wow, Mike. Just wow, man. Now that’s knowledge that has rarely seen the light of day.
MOTU
April 26, 2010 - 7:19 pm
I really think its time to get all Martin Luther King on those racist motherfuckers in the Arizona’s State legislature as well as the state of Arizona itself. I’m sorry to Invoke Dr. King’s name with words that harsh but COME ON, let’s call a spade a SPADE.
Arizona did not want a holiday named after Dr. King and it took public outrage, a song by Stevie Wonder and the NFL moving the Super Bowl to get those racists to accept the holiday.
We dropped a fucking ATOMIC BOMB on Hiroshima and THEY celebrate MLK day. I’m not kidding look it up.
I suggest we drop another atomic bomb on Arizona. This time it’s a financial bomb. STOP buying ANYTHING that has ANYTHING to do with the Nazi State. The Arizona Black Film Festival has recognized me as Master Of The Universe. I’m not kidding about that either, that’s what it says on the award they gave me a couple of years ago-I will have NO problem asking the press core LOUDLY what the fuck is UP with this type of shit.
I mean COME ON!!!
MOTU
April 26, 2010 - 7:31 pm
Just to clarify my above statement-I will have NO problem asking the press core LOUDLY what the fuck is UP with this type of shit when I’m AT the festival next year.
Vinnie Bartilucci
April 27, 2010 - 4:47 am
I don’t think anyone in Arizona’s government actually either this or thinks their immigration law will stand. As with so many things nowadays, they are intended to make noise but perform no actual perceivable action.
Look at those multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against Nabisco for daring to make Oreos taste good and then not provide each American with someone to follow them around and slap the cookies out of their hands. Nobody actually expects the guy to WIN the lawsuit; it was filed to attract attention both for the lawyer and the issue. And you never know, with the crazy way the legal system works nowadays, they might actually see a dollar out of it. And the lawyer will see forty percent of that.
These laws are intended to say “This far and no further” to changing mores and values of the country. They usually get struck down by higher courts, or amended, or undone by the next guy as the political pendulum yons after the current hitherage.
And oddly, most of the time these laws are enacted by Conservatives, clinging to their past like a child refusing to give up even the broken toys. We’ve seen laws banning the burning of flags, codifying the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and myriad other rebuttals to changes in law and society, passed after the fact and serving no purpose other than to say, “We’ll see about THAT!”
It’s the kind of move that gives the populace the impression that Something Is Being Done To Stop This. It’s slightly further up the scale than those non-binding resolutions that Congress like to make, which hold as much water as a membership in the Against Taffy Sinclair Club.
Similarly, these birthers are doing the same – maintaining a constant attack on Obama in areas that serve no purpose and have no effect, but allow them to remind the people that they’ve been against him all along. It’s a numbers game – if you keep hammering away at a target with endless spurious arguments, eventually some people will begin to think, “well if there are THIS many allegations, surely SOME of them must be true. They wouldn’t just be making them UP, would they?” And you won’t be able to hear for the sound of one group tearing their hair out, the other just humming and miming “I dunno, maybe”.
And if tempers get hot, they can all look forward to the cool breeze of the pendulum flying past, in one direction or another.
Mike Gold
April 27, 2010 - 7:19 am
The most important skill a politician can have is the ability to count noses. In this, the Right seems to be severely impaired: on the federal level, for example, they can only count to 61.
Both locally and nationally, when it comes to actual voters the Right only knows how to count white Christian heterosexual noses. Arizona is a wonderful case in point: right now over 30% of the state electorate is Hispanic.
So I ask you: does it make good political sense to pass a law — whether it’s enforceable or not — that COMPELS the local police forces to treat everybody EXCEPT white Christians as suspect? Does it make sense to publicly support that statement?
The only way you get elected is to put together ethnic, religious and racial coalitions. That’s what Anton Cermack did back in 1931, and Chicago’s democrats haven’t lost a mayoral election ever since. Piss off 30% (and rapidly growing) of the electorate and you quickly discover two things. First, the voter turnout percentage among the discriminated group grows. Second, the idiots who only count white Christian heterosexual noses go back to doing legal work for insurance companies.
R. Maheras
April 27, 2010 - 8:14 am
If your “over 30%” figure for the Hispanic electorate is correct, then it highlights what I think is an interesting point. During a recent poll, 23 percent of Arizona residents were against the new law. That means that even if everyone who is against the law is Hispanic, then about a quarter of Hispanic residents are FOR the law. Since is very unlikely that only Hispanics are against the law, I’d wager that it probably means that Hispanic community is probaby split closer to an even 50/50 split on the controversy — which makes sense to me, since they are the ones who are more likely to be threatened or killed by the Mexican cartel members filtering through their community and coming and going with impuny.
Food for thought.
Vinnie Bartilucci
April 27, 2010 - 9:10 am
I’ll lay odds there ARE Hispanics who are for the law. More specifically, legal citizens who assume the police will only search and question “those” hispanics. Or if they do ask them for their papers, they’ll quickly apologize for the confusion and it’ll never happen again.
You know…morons.
R. Maheras
April 27, 2010 - 10:54 am
Morons? How about people who are tired of living in fear?
You’ve never lived in a dangerous neighborhood, have you? Where every time you leave the house, you have to keep one eye down the block to see if any danger is lurking. And I’ll also wager you’ve never been chased by a group wielding baseball bats, or been standing on the corner waiting for a bus while cars with people shooting at each other go barreling past. And I’ll also wager your landlady was never murdered — blugeoned to death — right in the back gangway of her own apartment building.
If I still lived in such a neighborhood, I’d want the cops all over the place, and I’d gladly pull out my wallet for a random ID check.
Mike Gold
April 27, 2010 - 12:29 pm
As always, raw poll numbers aren’t very helpful without the deeper numbers behind them. What percentage of those polled were Hispanic? You’ve taken polls; they ask you that right after they ask you your sex and your age. You can opt out, of course, because we’re a very sensitive people. And when was the poll taken? Reasonable people have a tendency to reevaluate their position after discussion and consideration.
And I’m sure some Hispanics are in support of the law. Particularly those over around 50, who feel (with frightening legitimacy) that they are less likely to be considered “suspicious” strictly because of their age. I mean, damn, I’ll never forget the first time I was waived through the security gate at a rock concert because of my advanced age. I think I wasn’t quite 40.
As for people wielding baseball bats, well, I was chased by a whole lot of police wielding truncheons. Does that count? Seeing as how I hadn’t broken any laws at the time, what’s the difference between the two groups? Oh, and I was 18, which profiled me as a potential criminal. But that was better than the time, a couple months later, the police in Cairo Illinois shot at me and my friends during a racial equality demonstration.
Danger is defined by the victim and the potential victim. Preemptive measures defy logic and civility, let alone our laws.
Rick Oliver
April 27, 2010 - 2:22 pm
Fear of crime or violence on the part of illegal aliens, regardless of how justified you may think it is, is largely irrelevant. Putting more police on the streets to arrest them won’t stop the tide. Putting up a 50 feet high wall along the border with motion-sensitive laser death beams won’t stop the tide. As long as there is the lure of illegal jobs, they will come. Because however bad we make it for them here, it’s still worse where they come from.
R. Maheras
April 27, 2010 - 4:17 pm
And as long as people here continue to use illegal drugs, the widespread death and violence in Mexico and our border states will continue.
Mike Gold
April 27, 2010 - 5:00 pm
Russ, you’re absolutely right. That’s the best and most succinct argument I’ve read for legalizing drugs.
It’ll help out in Afghanistan, too.
R. Maheras
April 27, 2010 - 10:47 pm
Yeah, Mike, that’ll magically solve all of the world’s problems.
And I want my surgeon, train engineer, airline pilot, air traffic controller, brakes mechanic, and armed law enforcement officer, among others, suffering from flashbacks. And I want the rest of the people driving around or interacting with me to be high on one legal drug or another, or crashing around me (in both senses of the word) between fixes.
I have to deal with enough crazy people as it is.
Alan Coil
April 28, 2010 - 9:48 am
Today, Russ, I am sorry for the life you lead. Is there no light in your life? Is there no hope? Do you always assume the worst in your fellow man?
R. Maheras
April 28, 2010 - 10:55 am
Drug abuse (including alcohol and tobacco) is one of the biggest causes of misery in this world, whether the drugs are legal or illegal.
That’s not an assumption by someone who is assuming the worst in his fellow men, it’s a fact. The Netherlands, for example, did not become a healthy, crime-free utopia by decriminalizing the usage of certain drugs. And as liberal about the issue as they are, even they kept the hard stuff illegal.
So vastly increasing drug usage is going to lessen misery in the world how?
As far as my own personal life goes, I’m just fine. I have a smart-ass sense of humor, I can relax in a heartbeat, I rarely stay mad for more than few minutes, and I generally sleep like a baby. I also rarely keep any of my emotions bottled up, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind (as you no doubt have noticed).
And despite being a child of the 1960s, I’ve never used any illegal drugs, and I avoid legal prescription drugs like the plague. Over the years I’ve seen far too much misery attached to drugs of all types to ever want to do anything but keep them totally out of my life, if possible. I’ve also never smoked.
The only exception I’ve made is in the area of alcohol, but I probably haven’t been legally drunk in more than 20 years. I’m predominantly a social drinker, and even then it’s often only red wine, which is supposed to have health benefits, in moderation. I generally am the designated driver, but if I do drink, I’ll usually milk a drink (two, at most) all night.
Vinnie Bartilucci
April 28, 2010 - 10:59 am
“Do you always assume the worst in your fellow man?”
Is that a trick question?
If/when pot and other drugs are legalized, I expect a MASSIVE increase in useage right away as all the people who were curious finally get to try it without risking incarceration. See all the pictures of people imbibing in the streets after prohibition was lifted. Adn this phase will be filled with stories of people at the least making damn fools of themselves and at the worst injuring themselves and others. These stories will be repeated to the sky by the anti-legalizing crowd, and will likely not come close to the number of injuries or deaths from other sources like alcohol.
After the curiosity phase is passed, I think useage will drop about back to where it was before, with only the slightest increase. Because in most cases, the people who want to imbibe already are.
What I’ll be curious to see is whether or not the government tries to put strictures on home gardens. After all, the big selling point of legalization is revenues from tax and licensing; they don’t make any money if you grow your own. I predict some clever dick suggesting a garden registration and permit system.
And the fervent hop-heads will complain that the pot from RJ Reynolds isn’t nearly as good as the “real stuff” from before.
Mike Gold
April 28, 2010 - 1:06 pm
I’m not sure there will be a massive increase in use of these substances. Virtually everybody who might have wanted to sample any of it had sufficient opportunity to do so, and for most of these people it wasn’t the law that was holding them back. It was the thought that the stuff might be dangerous or lead to other things. For the rest, where access was the issue, yeah there’ll probably be some sampling. But massive — I dunno, but I don’t think so.
After that passes, I think we’ll see more occasional use of these substances but less regular use. They’ll lose the outlaw imagery. It’ll be acceptable. Just as today we compare (for example) the dangers of marijuana to the dangers of alcohol, after legalization we’ll compare the coolness of marijuana to the coolness of alcohol. The latter is more cool: it’s more sociable (which has its dangers: bar fights and drunk driving) and smoking weed is, indeed, smoking — which is a socially dievient activity. The baby boomers won’t make these distinctions; we’ll just be happy the shit’s legal. The Gen Xers, probably the same. But to those who will grow up thinking it’s No Big Deal, I wonder how presently illegal substances will hold up to competitive pressure.
Hopefully, time will tell.
Mike Gold
April 28, 2010 - 1:07 pm
That’s deviant, not dievient. You’d think I’d know better.
R. Maheras
April 28, 2010 - 2:36 pm
Yeah, Mike, I get all of that. The problem is many drugs are highly addictive, and over time, to get the same high, one has to consume larger and larger doses of the drug.
All making heroin and equivalent such drugs legal would do is lower unit costs. And while that would cripple traditional drug cartels, you’d still have large corporations running the show because (with the exception of, say, pot) the average guy on the street wouldn’t be able to make most drugs himself. So instead of having the current level of miserable and dysfunctional heroin, crack or cocaine addicts roaming around, because of the addictive nature of many drugs, you’d have a lot more. And while the purity danger would likely be resolved, you still have people overdosing on the stuff — again, most likely in much greater numbers. Elvis and Michael Jackson, for example, OD’d on addictive pain-killers they got from their doctors, so how do you think the average person would fare if allowed widespread, unsupervised access to a much wider range of very potent drugs DESIGNED to disorient the brain and degrade a person’s judgement?
And while I respect your view on the matter, I really don’t see any upside to legalizing any hard drug.
MOTU
April 28, 2010 - 2:47 pm
Tomorrow is my birthday!!!!!
21!
And oh yeah, I got a new Death Ray and it’s aimed right at Arizona!!!
Mike Gold
April 28, 2010 - 5:16 pm
Russ —
I agree with your take, although when it comes to legalizing “hard” drugs it comes down to one overly simple point. There’s that old lady walking down the street. Some junkie jumps her for her purse. I’d rather see the old lady alive and healthy than the junkie (who really did make an informed choice), and if legalizing it brings the cost down, I can live with that.
A lot longer than the junkie.
Oh, and for the record: my best friend (a guy I think you might have known) died of a heroin overdose 11 years ago. I know what’s at risk.
Rick Oliver
April 29, 2010 - 4:55 am
Mike: I think it will be 12 years next month. I still miss him all the time.
Vinnie Bartilucci
April 29, 2010 - 11:32 am
You know, if all these drugs become legal and the big companies start making them (a classic urban legend is that all the tobacco companies have brand names and ad campaigns ready to go at a moment’s notice the moment the gavel falls), they’ll likely be asked/required to “donate” massive funds to rehab programs, as they do now (under protest) to groups like Truth.
Heck, isn’t Partnership for a Drug-Free America mainly paid for by the tobacco and beer companies now?
Isn’t it hilarious how an article about immigration laws turned into a thread about legalizing weed? I think we could get a thread about the strings used in Beethoven’s piano to a conversation on pot in about three steps.
Mike Gold
April 29, 2010 - 3:07 pm
Vinnie sez “Isn’t it hilarious how an article about immigration laws turned into a thread about legalizing weed?”
THIS, my friend, is how it all started. Back in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when weed was still legal, people in Texas were getting a massive influx of Mexican immigrants. Something about a depression on both sides of the border. So benevolent local citizens groups like the Ku Klux Klan started a massive campaign demonizing all Mexicans. They said these lazy bastards get hopped up on marijuana and fulfill their fondest dreams and desires by raping every clean, white Texas woman they can find and they cannot be permitted into this Christian nation and nor can their evil weed.
The story was aggressively covered in the popular media of the time, and the stories in the Hearst papers in Texas were picked up by his Independent News Service (“independent” in this case means the same as “fair and balanced”). The fact that Hearst’s agricultural and textile businesses would thrive without competition from the hemp interests was, I’m sure, a coincidence.
Mike Gold
April 29, 2010 - 3:08 pm
MOTU —
Today’s your birthday? TODAY? How the hell did that happen?
Damn. Had I known I would have set up an onion loaf fest at Hackney’s.
MOTU
April 29, 2010 - 3:59 pm
Mike Gold said;
“Damn. Had I known I would have set up an onion loaf fest at Hackney’s.”
WITH BACON???????
Mike Gold
April 29, 2010 - 4:06 pm
Well, they do have bacon…
Oh, and Green River. They got that too.
I owe you. Let’s go.