Armchair Patriots

Good rant at Station Charon on the chickenhawks and their flag-burning charade. Damn near has 8x10 glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one describing what each one was*.

They are the ones who are shouting the loudest for others to die in foreign lands, they are the ones waving the flag the most vigorously while undermining all that it is supposed to stand for. These are the Armchair Patriots, and they are legion. The insistence of the most vile of all, the Republican party, a group that has come to symbolize the darkest of all American traits to 'wave the bloody flag' and tar all others as disloyal and tresonous is a low point in our nation's history. This made it especially nice to see the party's failure to mount a successful effort to implement a constitutional ban on flag burning. "Old Glory" lost today" moaned Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist, his latest crusade to amend our governing document to include language denying rights to Americans beaten back by only one vote.

Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii gets it, a World War II veteran who lost an arm in service to his country said in regards to the Republican push for the amendment:

"Our country's unique because our dissidents have a voice....While I take offense at disrespect to the flag...I nonetheless believe it is my continued duty as a veteran, as an American citizen and as a United States senator to defend the constitutional right of protesters to use the flag in nonviolent speech."

Of course being a Democrat he is by that very association deemed `unpatriotic' and a `coward' in using the dastardly labeling of Frist, Karl Rove and the rest of the unscrupulous and yellow thugs who control the government, the media, the courts and by extension are the operators of the message machine that spits out the hateful swill that motivates the most reactionary and ignorant segments of the populace who represent their base. This anti-American political party could never carry the torch were it not for their deception and demagoguery in playing to the most base and vile instincts of the perennially angry. Like any good purveyor of tyranny enabling double speak and race baiting, they have a little something for everybody.

"Something for everybody" list follows. Go read.

*If you don't understand the reference, go get a note from your Mom saying you 're old enough to be here! And if it's signed "Epstein's Mom", kick rocks, kid!