Howard Dean Finally Vindicated…In One Week.

For those of you watching the electoral college map move increasingly in Obama’s favour, there is one man to thank for that – and that man is DNC Chairman, Howard Dean.

Democratic Party Savior, Howard Dean

Before Dean was stabbed in the back and smeared by the right wing and hawkish members of his own party, (the group known collectively as the “DLC” or “Democratic Leadership Council”) he used his “50 State Strategy” to reach out to all working class Americans in all states.

He was ridiculed and derided for suggesting that Democrats could win in states like Colorado, Indiana and Virginia – traditional Republican states that the party had abandoned for decades. The DLC hacks like Terry McAuliffe, Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville demanded the party stick to it’s tired and pathetic technique of counting on traditional “blue states” on the West Coast and north east and praying that “swing states” like Florida and Ohio would go their way…a technique that handed George Bush two straight victories.

Well, if Obama pulls out a win on November 4th, he will likely do it by taking a number of key states that the DLC hacks wouldn’t have even attempted to win. He used Dean’s strategy to beat Hillary Clinton (who used a the traditional Democratic strategy, to no avail) and he stuck with it to take on the Republican spin machine.

So for those of you who are excited about the possibility of change that can come with an Obama presidency, you should thank God for Howard Dean and also thank God Barack Obama decided to use Dean’s “50 State Strategy” to make a run for the Oval Office.

Here’s a clip from the Rony Kuby show on this very topic:

http://airamerica.com/content/ron-kuby-howard-dean

Hope…

Kucinich and Edwards are gone. So now, with Super Tuesday just around the corner, what are Democrats and progressives we left with?

Well, with two candidates that have a lot in common in terms of their political views, quite frankly.

It’s true that Obama was agianst the Iraq war from the outset – and that’s no small thing, but for the most part, there are more similarities than differences between these two remaining Democratic candidates, from a pure policy standpoint.

On the other hand, there IS one notable difference between them and it’s one worth noting…one of them isn’t named “Clinton” or “Bush”.

With Democrats and Republicans ever-increasingly marching to the drums of their corporate masters, we need a candidate that is NOT a Republican (apologies to Ron Paul) and is NOT part of the Bush-Clinton royal family that has ruled (i.e., “screwed up”) America for almost two straight decades now…the one major candidate left whose campaign is NOT supported by big corporate dollars…Barack Hussein Obama!

This is a key point, because when the common people wanted change and looked for hope back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA and paved the way for the Walmart-run world that we live in today. And Hillary?

Please. Armed with Rupert Murdoch’s blood money, she goes from having a powerful vision for national health care for all Americans, to taking big bags of campaign money from the insurance company lobby to soften her stance on that very same issue…and we all know about her flip-flopping on the Iraq war based on public opinion.

And who are the Republicans throwing out there as an alternative? John McCain! Granted, this guy gets very mixed reviews from inside the GOP, but talk about flip-floppers!

First, he backs out of the McCain/Feingold bill that was designed to take soft, corporate money out of politics (so that he can take soft, corporate money to finance his own campaign!), THEN he relaxes his stance on the pro-torture policies of the Bush regime in Guantanamo Bay, just so he can appear as “tough on terror” by fellow hawks…I mean give me a break, I guy who was famously tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam flip-flopping on the issue of TORTURE?! What the F**K!?

So, with all of this in mind, The Straight Shooter has but one person left in the race that he can endorse and that is Barack Obama…because even though the jury is out on whether he is the candidate of true change – he has now, most certainly become the candidate of hope…so based on hope alone (for now) I give you this video that my brother sent me today…

 

Please vote.

Peace out.

-EK.

 

Best and Worst Canadians Ever…

My fellow Canucks,

Remember when the CBC had that poll asking Canadians who was the best Canadian ever? Do you remember who the winner was?

Don Cherry you say? Tim Horton? Alan Thicke, perhaps?

No, no and no – thank god!

Strangely (because it could have easily been Gretzky, Rocket Richard or Bobby Orr and you know it!) and appropriately (because there is at least one more thing more important to us than hockey and beer…) the greatest Canadian ever turned out to be the man who’s vision for universal health care transformed our nation, for the better – the late, great Tommy Douglas!

For those Canadians who never heard of him – shame on you…and go here to get a concise bio of the man while reclaiming your dignity and right to be a citizen of this fair land at the same time…

The sad thing is, there are probably more people who know who Tommy Douglas’ jerk-off grandson is – the stupendously mediocre “actor” known as Kiefer Sutherland. Yes, Kiefer Sutherland, the star of the Bush Administration’s prime-time torture pornfest known as “24″.

After phoning in some typically average performances in a couple of good films (Stand By Me, Dark City) and a lot of very bad to ordinary films (The Lost Boys, Young Guns, The Three Musketeers, etc., etc., etc.) Sutherland stumbled into the Jack Bauer role on 24.

But instead of continuing his journey down the B movie highway with enough money in hand to feed his notorious and voracious appetite for liquor…until God mercifully ended his life here on earth – our man Kiefer decides that this 24 thing is just too tempting to turn down.

Beautiful. Well done, dude.

I mean why not? It’s the biggest pay check he was ever going to see in his life…who the hell wouldn’t sell out their family honor for a few easy bucks…right? I mean, you’re only the grandson of the mastermind behind our beloved national health care system, it’s not like the guy invented Cheez Whiz or anything…right?

Dear Mother of God NO! NO! NO! A gazillion times NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Now let’s get one thing straight, right here and right now…when you are the grandson of the great Tommy Douglas and some sleazy Hollywood producer offers you the lead role of some torture-happy, Habeus-Corpus defiling Republican’s wet dream tv series, there is ONE and only ONE way to respond…you lean over the guy’s desk, look him in the eye and scream, “No way, jerk-off – I’d rather fall off the D-list once and for all and drink myself to an early grave so that I can die with a shred of dignity still intact!”

I mean, could it be more tragically ironic that this no-talent, whiney, booze-hound punk, so idolized by the far right for his portrayal of 24′s Jack Bauer, (the pug-nosed, pasty, puffy-faced masochist and poster boy for the “war on terror” crowd) is not only the grandson of the great Tommy Douglas, but ALSO the son of much more talented Canadian actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas?

I mean, there should be a law against tainting bloodlines to this extent! And what the heck is in Donald Sutherland’s sperm any way? Crazy Glue?

Okay, okay, so let’s fast forward to the present…and you’re probably thinking ol’ Kiefer was feeling pretty good about his decision to sell out and cash in while he could, right? Well, perhaps not…

You see, there just may be a happy ending to this bitter little tale after all (well, happy in a “at least there’s some justice in the universe” kind of way…).

I guess Kiefer’s big cash bonanza and new-found superstardom didn’t quite make him the slap-happy idiot you think it would…at least that’s the impression you get when you find out that he was recently arrested for drunk driving (while being under probation for a previous offense from 2004) and sentenced to 48 days in prison.

Gee, it appears as though making boat loads of money to be the centerpiece for of a right wing, war-mongering propaganda campaign and selling out your family honor in the process just doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a happy and fulfilling life any more…go figure.

So, for being an embarrassing, self-loathing drunk (your best quality, by the way) and a total sellout and poster boy for the pro-torture, anti-civil rights yahoos that have taken over America…you, Kiefer Sutherland have well-earned The Straight Shooter Award for the Worst Canadian Ever…enjoy it, jackass.

-EK.

Some Perspective For 2008…

Okay people, for those of you who may be thinking about which candidate is the most “presidential”, going into this pivotal 2008 campaign, let’s take a look at what used to be considered presidential material…let’s go back, waaay back to the years 2000 and 2004, shall we? Please take a look at the two clips below.

So why wasn’t CNN, CBS, NBC and the others not playing this bizarre W cleaning his glasses on an unsuspecting woman’s sweater clip endlessly on loop, for weeks back in 2000 the way they endlessly played that Howard Dean campaign footage in 2004?

Go back and compare those two moments – the Dean footage and this W clip and then tell me that the media doesn’t have it’s own agenda…surely the W footage displays more, um…disturbing behavior from a major political candidate, which presumably would make it not only more sensational than the Dean incident but also, quite a bit more newsworthy.

You could even make the argument that the major media outlets went out of their way to turn the Dean post-Iowa rally into something more disturbing than it actually was…a guy trying to rally his followers after a disappointing loss.

And yet, the W incident barely received any major media attention at the time.

Keep this in mind as we move forward into this 2008 Presidential Campaign – and remember to look carefully at who and what the mainstream media calls “crazy” and maybe, even more importantly…who they don’t.

-EK.