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Most people are familiar with comedian George Carlin’s seven dirty words. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled they couldn’t be uttered on network television. But here are seven even dirtier words—and the chances are good a majority of the members on the current Supreme Court would think they’re just fine:
Greed.
Corruption.
Indictments.
Convictions.
Apathy.
Short memories.
Injustice.
The president of our Alaska AFL-CIO state federation, Vince Beltrami, suggested this new set of seven dirty words as those working families need to remember this November. Beltrami writes a column for the Anchorage Daily News, and his riff on Carlin is worth quoting at length:
Carlin did a special not too long ago that featured a bit called "The American Dream." It wasn’t funny. It was brooding and cynical, but I saw it as a call to action by one of the most accurate, if not offensive, social commentators of our time.
Carlin took Americans to task and lamented how we’ve been sold a bill of goods on the American dream, and blasted us for standing by as the "real owners" of America stick it to working folks and how the real owners, big-business interests, have taken control of politicians, the media, the judges, etc. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated citizens, capable of critical thinking. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.
Carlin went on to say, "They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly [expletive] jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. Good, honest, hard-working people; white collar, blue collar, people of modest means, continue to elect these rich [expletive] who don’t give a [expletive] about them."
The guy who made me laugh my guts out when I was a kid stopped me cold with his death and his commentary.
There likely are a lot more than seven words we should keep in mind this November.
Suggestions?
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Hi, Tula. I’ll get the kids…
I’d love suggestions as to how to reverse the culture of greed and apathy.
Your list of seven words is missing the most import one:
Impeach.
Hey Tula,
as you can guess, all the godless hippies are listening to Obama laying out his plans for a World Government /s
and I for one can not imagine a dirtier word to these thugs than Accountability
Not me, my audio card died yesterday.
Obama speech – he’s done, and now shaking hands, more chanting of “yes, we can.”
It was a magnificent speech. Watch later.
Massive crowd wants to shake his hand. He’s closely guarded by secret service. (Damn they have to get different initials.)
When McCain gives his speech in Berlin, perhaps Poppy Bush can drive him to the stage in a golf cart.
Start sowing the seeds for a Constitutional Convention
CNN’s Kyra….BO referred to his mother, father, and grandfather to cheers…people in the crowd cheered with Kenyan sounds, making Obama smile…”bringing him back to his home country”.
Excuse me????!!!!
at one part of speech, he mentioned in some global context, Africa, and there was a high ululation, which made Obama pause and smile. it was great.
whew, LS! brainwaves!
Treason, war crimes, torturers, spies, liars, thieves, plunderers, war profiteers, war mongerers, murderers.
More youths playing to camera, chanting, holding up an ‘Obama for President’ sign.
very interesting, Obama is now in some restricted area, leaving, but still speaking to some reporters, and there was a table set up with stuff to autograph, which he did.
short memories can be exchanged for “feigned ignorance”
loosely related Union note in case you haven’t seen it -
Teamsters leave ANWR Coalition, join up with Blue/Green Alliance
President Hoffa -
“We are not going to drill our way out of the energy problems we are facing–not here and not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” Hoffa told labor and environmental activists at an Oakland, Calif., summit on good jobs and clean air. “We must find a long-term approach that breaks our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the development of alternate energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power.”
link
note: bluegreen alliance formed in 06 by United Steelworkers and Sierra Club
CNN’s Candy Crowley…this was just his campaign speech over European history. She is so destructive to this country….stupid hack.
The very first word on that list should be Politician.
That’s not a dirty word. It should be required of every citizen to know what it means and why it should be used.
You have to be asleep to experience the american dream… and my friends.. americans are asleep (cept those from the lake and a few others)
arrogance
cruelty
hate
indifference
intolerance
willful ignorance
lying
spitefulness
willful neglect of our fragile environment
deliberate abandonment of future generations for immediate personal gain
Ohgawd. I miss Molly Ivins and George Carlin!
Thank you for the open invitation to vent, Tula. whew.
Agreed – Crowley being, IMHO, second only to Andrea Mitchell as worst cable political commentator, err, politcal “reporter”.
Isn’t it the movies, humor, etc. that often show the truth of things. Mr. Carlton shows us that, and FDL and alike are means of passing on the facts that support his observations. Much thanks for your efforts FDL (and all the others) and please keep up the most excellent work!
PS: No need to go into the specifics of Mr. Carlton’s observations, we all know them here. It is the education of the “rest” of America to the facts that is the job. GRITv is one of the best I seen in providing that education, and maybe hooking up to one of the major MSM shows would start to broaden that education this country is so in need of.
Food for thought.
beg to differ. there are some good ones. imo, they need those skills. we need the good ones to have political skill. it’s not the same as lying. ymmv
Bingo on Mrs Greenspan !
in throwing it to Ricard Wolfe – ” what did he say today ?
McCain is babbling on CNN right now…unable to follow his logic, and there’s a bell in the background drowning him out, very weird.
His quote yesterday about Obama wanting to “lose a war” rather than an election was outrageous. Proves him unfit to serve as President. He’s a small, mean, angry little man. In every way. I think November is going to be a blowout.
HAH! It was SUCH a pleasure for me to witness Andrea dahling seemingly close to tears(!) as she whined about not securing one of those precious seats in the press section on Obama’s plane. Whu? She or her employer couldn’t/wouldn’t pay the $20,000 tab? Uh huh. Whatever. Was his campaign supposed to pick up the tab? the taxpayers? Who pays it for them now, when they gallivant all over the bloomin’ place gushing over their enablers?!
Good on Barack Obama. Some good priorities at work there, I’m thinkin’!
the bell toles for
thee? heh.Hey, Busted, i’m enjoying your blog and your adventures. i had a cat that shed and she was quite short haired and always cold. you’d think she would keep her fur on, for pity’s sake.
some polititions are good – see Gov Siegelman! first word should be Bush!
agreed.
Republican fascists have rolled the dice betting that citizens don’t have the guts to turn them back…do they?
Has anyone heard any guesstimates on how many were at BO’s speach
it’s even better than that, look where Mayor McCheese was when Obama spoke to multitudes – HuffPo
and it only gets wurst
New Poll shows Israelis prefer BO to MCC
Saw an estimate of 100,000 on CNN web
haven’t heard yet, but HuffPo had a nice pic up of the paltry “crowd-let” who showed up for mccaint’s latest whoop-ti-doo. And then there’s the absolutely stunning video in the supermarket cheese aisle. Sorry, no link, but i think HuffPo has that also.
mcsame’s fortunes are sinking like a stone. pitiful. may it remain thus!
crowd for Obama speech solid from the Memorial to the Brandenberg Gate. How long is that?
the 100,000 came straight from the Obama Campaign – knowing full well it would be more and further drive home the ‘exceeding expectations’ message
They were expecting up to a million people. There were people as far as the eye could see. Probably best to read a German report for the true number.
I see the point, not all are bad apples, I even witnessed a couple of Pinto’s and Vegas that actually made it more than ten years too.
By and large there are a lot of worthless, crooked politicians out there compared to the handful of good ones I see over and over again.
Case in point, what is the first thing that comes to mind when the word mechanic is used?
There were 400,000 at Woodstock….looked bigger than Woodstock.
news about the governments new deregulation of toxins in the workplace; http://www.propublica.org The document is deregulating the death of workers. We have to find out who is responsible for this one. It is murder.
gee. is rover gonna try to float a lead balloon about Obama’s peaking too soon? heeheeheehee
Tula!
Thanks for quoting Alaska’s AFL-CIO head Vince Beltrami’s recent op-ed. Vince and I aren’t exactly friends – sort of deeply on opposite sides of the AK-AL primary right now – but I loved that piece when I read it:
We CAN take Alaska back from the fucking fascists!
i have no trouble agreeing with you on that.
it’s one reason why i not only regularly pester the bad ones, but just as faithfully, thank the good ones, specifically, issue by issue, action by specific action.
wouldn’t wanna spoil em. heh. ;->
here’s the link – geeawd, how bad is your optics team when someone uses ‘cheese aisle’ for a tag :D
Sergeant Surge picks a bad week to give up Sominex
i gotta get back to our painting. would rather be here at the Lake.
look fwd to video tonite & in the future of the Brandenburg speech. Woo Hoo!
Good on ya Philip at 46. Thanks much for keeping up the good fight! ;->
I was thinking similar, and still can’t stop laughing. What. A. Putz!
thanks for the link. we’re just not organized very well at the moment here, except to keep the paint blops and sanding dust from clogging the toobz.
A few words I stand never seeing again:
“Homeland” (except for the great German TV series Heimat)
“Evildoer” (except in superhero movies)
“Enhanced” (not for interrogation techniques and not, while we’re at it, for sexual potency nostrums)
der Spiegel is reporting well over 250,000
Feh: I could stand never seeing….
Here’s my list:
1. Official corruption
2. Nonfeasance
3. Malfeasance
4. Paid lobbyist
5. Campaign contributions
6. Corporate persons
7. Homeland
Here’s a GOoPer list:
1. Public campaign finance
2. Taxes
3. Social security
4. Single-payor health care finance
5. Barack Obama
6. Global climate change
7. Social gospel
Sorry I missed this party!
I’d add:
unitary executive
torture
enhanced interrogation techniques
So?
state secrets
immunity
I read that the German papers put the crowd estimate at 200,000. wow.