Re: Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid
Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 10:00 am
MARK LEVIN ON SPECTER'S DEFECTION, by Charles Carreon
05/05/09
Okay, the first thing I wonder is why Mark Levin plays stadium rock at the beginning of his show, and claims to be broadcasting from “a bunker under the brick and steel of a nondescript building.” And the answer comes to me at once – rock is, like it or not, the music of rebellion, and he is pretending to be a voice from what we used to call “the Underground,” and nowadays refer to as “the Resistance.” In fact, Mark Levin is a stooge for the rich, a phony rebel with a whiny voice that would identify him as a sellout in any venue other than one where spouting bullshit is the norm.
I’m here to respond to his sermon to the faithful about how the loss of Arlen Specter as a Republican Senator is no problem for the Republicans. Let’s start with a view from the reality zone, a place Levin avoids like cats avoid water – Specter is one powerful dude, and smarter than hell. Time and again we have seen him feint left, veer right, and head downcourt to sink the shot for the Republicans. He has the ability to sound like the voice of reason. He’s a graduate of Yale Law School, an Air Force veteran, and the twefth most senior member of the Senate. He is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Just take the Judiciary Committee position – he is top dog on the committee that will clear all Obama’s nominees to the Federal bench, including the next Supreme Court Justice who will replace outgoing Justice Souter. If this were a chess game, the Republicans just lost more than a bishop or a knight – they lost a rook, and they are going to miss him. But Levin’s listeners won’t get the facts, they’ll get this silly accusation, which would be true of any politician, and coming from Levin, sounds like a candid self-description:
AUDIO EXCERPT
People who disagree with Levin fall into two categories, “dishonest or delusional.” The truth as revealed to Levin by Reagan’s ghost, no doubt, is that the party has become a minority party because it has tried to be “all things to all people,” a process that has been going on “since 1989, the end of the Reagan era.”
AUDIO EXCERPT
Tell you what – I really want to give Mark Levin a chance hear, so I’m gonna look at his picture and try to surrender to his charisma. Oh, yeah, now it’s working. I remember it all now. Yeah, I remember the last eight years under Bush – what did we call him – “The Uniter,” wasn’t it? Riiiiiight, Mark, Karl Rove, closet Democrat, Dick Cheney, always making concessions, and Alberto Gonzales claiming to approve of torture, but actually a mole for the ACLU. It feels so good to re-imagine reality – this is better than believing in the Dalai Lama or Deepak Chopra or Kaballah – under the influence of Levin, I can believe anything!
Y’know, he has such ability to turn a phrase, the way he artfully flips sentence structures, that it overpowers my resistance. Listen to this:
AUDIO EXCERPT
Doomed! That’s straight out of the comic books! Zap, Pow, Kaboom! Doom!
And with that, Specter is history. Or less than history. Just roadkill on the political highway, scum under Levin’s boot. With the scum out of the way, he’s ready to get back to his important job, after selling fish oil, of course -- shilling for the rich. Listen to this – and this time, to accentuate the delivery, I’ll give you a little visual accompaniment:
AUDIO EXCERPT
God, Mark is mad about those bailouts! Yes, the billions that have been given away – that’s not what’s bothering him. The problem is, he wants the money for corporations and banks to be FREE FREE FREE! And to hell with the people who build the cars – the autoworkers – they don’t need to be Incentivized, they don’t need bonuses to keep them going in their pathetic little jobs. They aren’t bankers who have a necessary role in the future reorganization of the company. NO NO NO NO NO! Only people who wear pinstriped suits get to receive massive funding and retention bonuses – if you give power or money to the blue collar guys – that’s Communism! It’s okay to bailout banks, but not to demand stock in them. You can pour money down Wall Street’s throat, but you can’t ask them to do a flinkin’ thing.
And nightmare of nightmares, the government wants to provide people with health care. Bummer bummer bummer. Only old people should get health care. Only drug companies should receive massive infusions of federal funding through prescription drug buying deals. There’s a flu sweeping the nation, but I personally will be better off if the person flipping my burger, coughing on my lettuce, pays for his own healthcare – or doesn’t.
The government is stealing the wealth of future generations, as well as our own wealth, shouts Mark! Is he talking about the additional 600,000 unemployed people who have lost their jobs every month since the beginning of the year – that’s 20,000 a day? Hell no! They don’t have any stinkin’ wealth to lose. Maybe he’s worried about the 500,000 homeowners in Arizona, Nevada, California, Florida and Illinois – who received foreclosure notices in the first three months of this year. No, he’s not talking about them. Their wealth is gone, but the government didn’t take it the bankers did.
And Mark works for the bankers night and day, deflecting the righteous hatred of his listeners towards some Obama-shaped boogeyman, some hate-able liberal socialized megalith that came outta Washington and ate their wallet. They just want their pride back, their jobs back, their clear black-and-white, us-versus-them posture. Hell, they don’t know what they want. They don’t understand politics. But when they listen to Mark, with his fancy turns of phrase, stirring exhortations to stand for principle, they think they do. And when Mark drops his voice low, and asks “what we’ve come to,” at this point in our national life, they can imagine themselves standing straight and tall, like one of the Minutemen, like Paul Revere, or Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or Sam Adams. But in those days, guys like Levin weren’t talking revolution. They were talking about how the King’s rule was just, and holding forth about the rights that we had as Colonists under the crown. Because guys like Mark, who play rock music, but hate real rebels, who talk about how we’ve lost our freedoms, but shill for the rich, are not patriots – they’re bullshit artists. Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams would know him for a poser, and a dangerous one at that.
05/05/09
Okay, the first thing I wonder is why Mark Levin plays stadium rock at the beginning of his show, and claims to be broadcasting from “a bunker under the brick and steel of a nondescript building.” And the answer comes to me at once – rock is, like it or not, the music of rebellion, and he is pretending to be a voice from what we used to call “the Underground,” and nowadays refer to as “the Resistance.” In fact, Mark Levin is a stooge for the rich, a phony rebel with a whiny voice that would identify him as a sellout in any venue other than one where spouting bullshit is the norm.
I’m here to respond to his sermon to the faithful about how the loss of Arlen Specter as a Republican Senator is no problem for the Republicans. Let’s start with a view from the reality zone, a place Levin avoids like cats avoid water – Specter is one powerful dude, and smarter than hell. Time and again we have seen him feint left, veer right, and head downcourt to sink the shot for the Republicans. He has the ability to sound like the voice of reason. He’s a graduate of Yale Law School, an Air Force veteran, and the twefth most senior member of the Senate. He is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Just take the Judiciary Committee position – he is top dog on the committee that will clear all Obama’s nominees to the Federal bench, including the next Supreme Court Justice who will replace outgoing Justice Souter. If this were a chess game, the Republicans just lost more than a bishop or a knight – they lost a rook, and they are going to miss him. But Levin’s listeners won’t get the facts, they’ll get this silly accusation, which would be true of any politician, and coming from Levin, sounds like a candid self-description:
AUDIO EXCERPT
People who disagree with Levin fall into two categories, “dishonest or delusional.” The truth as revealed to Levin by Reagan’s ghost, no doubt, is that the party has become a minority party because it has tried to be “all things to all people,” a process that has been going on “since 1989, the end of the Reagan era.”
AUDIO EXCERPT
Tell you what – I really want to give Mark Levin a chance hear, so I’m gonna look at his picture and try to surrender to his charisma. Oh, yeah, now it’s working. I remember it all now. Yeah, I remember the last eight years under Bush – what did we call him – “The Uniter,” wasn’t it? Riiiiiight, Mark, Karl Rove, closet Democrat, Dick Cheney, always making concessions, and Alberto Gonzales claiming to approve of torture, but actually a mole for the ACLU. It feels so good to re-imagine reality – this is better than believing in the Dalai Lama or Deepak Chopra or Kaballah – under the influence of Levin, I can believe anything!
Y’know, he has such ability to turn a phrase, the way he artfully flips sentence structures, that it overpowers my resistance. Listen to this:
AUDIO EXCERPT
Doomed! That’s straight out of the comic books! Zap, Pow, Kaboom! Doom!
And with that, Specter is history. Or less than history. Just roadkill on the political highway, scum under Levin’s boot. With the scum out of the way, he’s ready to get back to his important job, after selling fish oil, of course -- shilling for the rich. Listen to this – and this time, to accentuate the delivery, I’ll give you a little visual accompaniment:
AUDIO EXCERPT
God, Mark is mad about those bailouts! Yes, the billions that have been given away – that’s not what’s bothering him. The problem is, he wants the money for corporations and banks to be FREE FREE FREE! And to hell with the people who build the cars – the autoworkers – they don’t need to be Incentivized, they don’t need bonuses to keep them going in their pathetic little jobs. They aren’t bankers who have a necessary role in the future reorganization of the company. NO NO NO NO NO! Only people who wear pinstriped suits get to receive massive funding and retention bonuses – if you give power or money to the blue collar guys – that’s Communism! It’s okay to bailout banks, but not to demand stock in them. You can pour money down Wall Street’s throat, but you can’t ask them to do a flinkin’ thing.
And nightmare of nightmares, the government wants to provide people with health care. Bummer bummer bummer. Only old people should get health care. Only drug companies should receive massive infusions of federal funding through prescription drug buying deals. There’s a flu sweeping the nation, but I personally will be better off if the person flipping my burger, coughing on my lettuce, pays for his own healthcare – or doesn’t.
The government is stealing the wealth of future generations, as well as our own wealth, shouts Mark! Is he talking about the additional 600,000 unemployed people who have lost their jobs every month since the beginning of the year – that’s 20,000 a day? Hell no! They don’t have any stinkin’ wealth to lose. Maybe he’s worried about the 500,000 homeowners in Arizona, Nevada, California, Florida and Illinois – who received foreclosure notices in the first three months of this year. No, he’s not talking about them. Their wealth is gone, but the government didn’t take it the bankers did.
And Mark works for the bankers night and day, deflecting the righteous hatred of his listeners towards some Obama-shaped boogeyman, some hate-able liberal socialized megalith that came outta Washington and ate their wallet. They just want their pride back, their jobs back, their clear black-and-white, us-versus-them posture. Hell, they don’t know what they want. They don’t understand politics. But when they listen to Mark, with his fancy turns of phrase, stirring exhortations to stand for principle, they think they do. And when Mark drops his voice low, and asks “what we’ve come to,” at this point in our national life, they can imagine themselves standing straight and tall, like one of the Minutemen, like Paul Revere, or Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or Sam Adams. But in those days, guys like Levin weren’t talking revolution. They were talking about how the King’s rule was just, and holding forth about the rights that we had as Colonists under the crown. Because guys like Mark, who play rock music, but hate real rebels, who talk about how we’ve lost our freedoms, but shill for the rich, are not patriots – they’re bullshit artists. Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams would know him for a poser, and a dangerous one at that.