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Introduction to The Original Gorilla
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"Perhaps the human species is just a ghastly
biological blunder, having evolved beyond
a point at which it
can thrive in harmony with itself and the world around it."(Richard E.
Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins)
Edward Stanton, Lincoln's second Secretary of War, dubbed Lincoln "The Original Gorilla," a moniker that another great general of vigorous activity (and another self-proclaimed savior) George McClellan adopted when writing copious letters to his wife.
Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president in 1860, and though by his own admission his principle purpose as a bona fide "war" president was to preserve the Union, and despite that he was not initially an integrationist (one of his plans included shipping all African-Americans, including free ones at the time, to an island or a small country in South or Central America), his sense of righteousness and law (despite his circumventing it or ignoring it when expedient), prompted him to write the Emancipation Proclamation and push for the 13th Amendment before being assassinated, and to create a plan to heal this nation after bloody conflict. Lincoln could be deemed a progressive by defenders, or a political pragmatist by critics. Perhaps his greatest gifts were his intellect, reverence for the rule of law, and genuine compassion, items sorely lacking in this last never-elected Republican.
I had a two-fold reason for calling my site The Original Gorilla, the obvious one is reflected in the quote from Richard Leaky, the less obvious one in reference to the first, and perhaps greatest, Republican president.
My aim is to simply add another voice to the growing roar on the internet to take back our country from the criminals who have stolen it from us, from the Supreme Court that broke the law by appointing this current squatter in the White House through the corporate cronyism that dictates domestic and foreign policy to the mainstream media that is now the mouthpiece for these usurpers of our fundamental freedoms. My only credentials are those that allow me the freedom to express myself: I was born in this country.
We are now at a crisis point in the American experiment that will determine the future of democracy. Lincoln purged this nation of the great sin of slavery, a cancer that has brought down every democracy the world has historically known. Will we allow the mediocre, deluded leaders who have temporarily suspended our democracy to continue their pillaging?
Will we allow the misguided sheep who follow their fanatic fundamentalist leaders to return us to the Puritan past that has been the legacy of nearly every horror this nation has perpetrated on enemies and citizens alike? Will we continue to allow corporations to divide and conquer us by sending our jobs abroad as they stuff their shirts with as much plunder as they can pirate while they pollute our planet and ignore the majority who want them regulated? We face a no less urgent crisis than the one Lincoln did in 1861, or the one our founders faced when they wrested this nation from King George. We must wrest our nation from Emperor George and his neo-con cabal or accept the fearful conditions of a totalitarian state.
We must take back the media from the corporations that spread dogmatic propaganda whose sole aim is to muddle the masses with animadversion, jingoism, and bellicosity. We must take back our flag so that patriotism is no longer the last refuge of a scoundrel. Otherwise, the original, Original Gorilla will have taken a bullet in vain.
Remember what Jefferson saliently wrote Madison: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."
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From the Memory Hole
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Tue Jan 09, 2007 at 07:02:05 PM CST
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Two years ago, I posted a response to Madison’s “Federalist No. 10,” when the Republicants still possessed a majority in the House. It is time to repost it (despite the fact that some of the references will indeed be dated – one may substitute, however, a plethora of new references in their stead), not because I think I was unduly prescient. An eighth grader who passed the Constitution test or a Civics class could have seen the obvious. I post it now as a reminder to the Democrats why we the people elected them, and as a warning that the nation is still in peril. Even as Bushicus Tyrannus sinks deeper into delusion and will once more condescend to the nation while rubbing our noses in his bushit over the Iraqi debacle, the core issues I addressed in that post remain a cancer on the body politic. No matter how many Republicants we send packing, and no matter how vociferously we protest, the work to undue the damage to our Constitution remains. Our nation remains deeply entrenched in a class war that never seems to be spotlighted by the mainstream media or the national politicians we elect to end it. The time has come for we the people to issue our own ultimatum, our own declaration of independence. If Democrats waste this opportunity, then they are indeed no different than those they have replaced. If they waste this opportunity with the support of nearly two-thirds of the nation, then we have indeed reached the point where we ourselves must act. If we do not act now, how can we face our children and our grandchildren who will rightly blame us for the bleak future we will indeed be securing for them?
(1830 words in story) Full Story
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Merry X-mas: Mammon and the Morons
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Wed Dec 20, 2006 at 07:01:13 AM CST
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Evolution has long been controversial in Cobb County, north of Atlanta, where some biology teachers used to tear pages out of textbooks to avoid discussing it. In 2002, after more than 2,000 parents objected to sections on evolution in a new biology textbook, stickers were placed on the inside of the front cover. (Evolution Warnings Don’t Stick
Surely readers remember the stickers warning students (at some of their parents’ behest) that any theory is just that and nothing more. Of course, no one thought for a moment to include a sticker warning that creationism, or Intelligent Design, isn’t even a theory but a myth and should be appreciated in the same way that we appreciate the polytheism of the Greeks. In case you’ve been napping next to Rip, here’s how the warning read:
(1175 words in story) Full Story
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The Gingrinch Who Stole Christmas
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Mon Dec 18, 2006 at 04:37:09 AM CST
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"Of course I'm thinking about it," Gingrich said. "I hope between now and September, to help create with every candidate in both parties, a wave of new ideas, a wave of new solutions." (Gingrich hints at 2008 White House run)
In the real world, where accountability actually counts, Newt Gingrich would not be allowed to simply change a few elements of his personal style to recast himself as a Washington outsider with new ideas for our nation while publicly pandering (I mean, pondering) a presidential bid. Alas, the American political landscape does not function under real world constraints. Nixon recast himself as the law and order candidate with a plan to end the Vietnam War. He turned out to be the lawless president whose plan included the clandestine bombing of Cambodia and nearly twenty thousand more American casualties and who knows how many Vietnamese civilians.
(775 words in story) Full Story
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The Right is Simply Never Right
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Fri Nov 10, 2006 at 05:48:31 AM CST
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History was made this week! For the first time in four election cycles, Democrats are not attacking the Diebold Corp. the day after the election, accusing it of rigging its voting machines. I guess Diebold has finally been vindicated. (HISTORIC VICTORY FOR DIEBOLD!
Except, of course, in Florida again, where a Slim 368-vote margin will trigger a recount for the 13th District because among several claims of Republinazi dirty tricks and voting machine indiscretions, we learn the following:
The results were loaded with controversy as nearly 13 percent of all ballots cast in Sarasota didn’t include a choice for Congress. That difference, and scattered reports of difficulty finding the race on Sarasota’s touchscreen ballots, raised concerns about under votes in the race.
(1378 words in story) Full Story
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The Terrorists Are Coming!
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Sun Sep 17, 2006 at 04:02:07 AM CST
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“The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” (George Orwell, 1984)
In a fit of pique and petulance worthy of a spoiled sociopath, our fearless leader warned Congress and the American people that if the Senate continues to embarrass him by balking at redefining torture (and other “vague language” in Article III of the Geneva Conventions) then the vital CIA program that has “saved American lives” will be cancelled. Apparently, the man behind the curtain (or in the president’s case, at the other end of his ear piece) failed to warn the commander in chief that the information presumably extracted under “duress” (for lack of a more descriptive word, such as torture) might be considered a “state secret.” No doubt the irony was lost on the man behind the curtain as well as the chief executive. The Washington press corps simply hit the snooze button, again.
(980 words in story) Full Story
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Fear, Terror, 9/11, and the Real Bogeyman
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Sat Sep 09, 2006 at 04:33:57 AM CST
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“He’s not trying to ignore Iraq — he wouldn’t, he doesn’t want to,” Mr. Bartlett added. “But he had to explain that even if we have a debate here about whether Iraq’s part of the war on terror, the enemy believes it is.” (NYT: President Bush's 'reset the clock' strategy)
No, Bushicus Tyrannus is not trying to ignore Iraq (how could he, that conflict has defined him as the War Preznit and effectively undermined our armed forces); he is simply attempting to regain traction by reminding the “patriotic” forty-odd percent of Americans who to this day continue to believe Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks to support the troops and hold onto that terror and by scaring the hell out of the remaining majority with visions of storm troopers ransacking our garbage and stealing our identities. And never mind the absurd logic in Mr. Bartlett’s claim above (when have we ever had a debate about Iraq that did not entail Republinazis smearing anyone who dissents as Nazis or terrorist-enablers who secretly send love letters and money to Osama bin Missing, as if we might actually know where he is when our entire intelligence community cannot find a tall Arab on dialysis?). Moreover, when has Bushicus ever explained anything that has not left his auditors more confused than before Bushicus opened his pie hole? How many sentences has Bushicus tortured anyway? Would one say more than the number of alleged terrorists renditioned to black holes in Europe or inmates “aggressively interrogated” at Gitmo?
(832 words in story) Full Story
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Condi Does Nero
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Fri Jul 28, 2006 at 03:42:54 PM CST
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"It is a serious time, it is not a time that is frivolous, and I will play something that is in accordance with my serious mood," Rice, a trained classical pianist said, adding she would probably offer solace from the brooding works of Johannes Brahms. (Rice has Mideast on her mind at Asian summit)
If it were truly a “serious time,” as Condi-mint intones, she might consider Mozart’s “Requiem.” Then again, she might consider demanding an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon before negotiating away another Roman candle. Ah, Nero fiddles and Condi diddles, the ivories that is. And Bushicus Tyrannus flails at Blair witchcraft as flaming oil thrusts from his nostrils.
(951 words in story) Full Story
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Politics or the Same Old American Orthodoxy?
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By Brian, Section News
Posted on Tue Jul 25, 2006 at 07:35:03 AM CST
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”)
One might argue that Emerson presaged the political fight in America today, an election cycle that has come full circle in less than a dozen years since the alleged “Contract with America” and the Gingrich revolution. Of course, Emerson decried what he saw as a Protestantism that demanded conformity by all Americans to some idealized version of a Puritan land of the free as long as you were white and went to church regularly, and indeed maintained a status quo that included the literal enslavement of an entire race and the intellectual enslavement of everyone else.
(814 words in story) Full Story
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