Guest Artist: Donna Davis

Photographer Unknown
(Newsphoto)

"I wrote this in response to a newspaper in early 2000.
I hope it soon becomes obsolete."
Donna Davis


REPUBLICAN RAG—2000 A.D.

Come to the party,
The Grand Old Party,
You’ll have a barrel of fun

They know to a T
How things should be
They’ll keep you safe with a gun.

A tank and a bomb
They’ll buy with aplomb
To be sure every war we will win;

No need to see
The enemy
For murder would be a sin,

And sinners abound,
In fact we’ve found
An endless need for prisons;

They cost more than schools,
But, hey, that’s cool,
As long as they’re hers and hisns.

Without a doubt,
In jail or out,
They’re clear about the sexes:

A woman should
Be always good
Or else the gods she vexes.

She must say “No!”
To her ardent beau
Abortion isn’t nice;

But she partied wild,
That careless child,
And now must pay the price.

If she had wed
Her boss instead
Her world would be all sunny,

With not a care
And a great big share
Of his hot G.O.P. money

Oh, they’ll cut your tax
And break the backs
Of those who do real work,

And coupons clip
While “Read my lips”
Is uttered with a smirk.

So come to the party,
The Grand Old Party,
You shouldn’t need a push

To join the team
And swim downstream
With dear George Dubya Bush!

-Donna Davis

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The Rustle of Resistance

Artist Unknown

I'm happy to report an excellent response to my call for artwork from my personal network. Many talented artists who've been working away, since the Bush regime takeover of our federal government, are sending images of their work. I'll begin posting it very soon!

In the meantime, I'd like to post some constructive, inspiring writings from progressives. Yes, there is such a thing...a lot of it in fact...it's just not getting much air time. Here's my attempt to help ideas that may be America's salvation (I mean that in the democratic not religious sense.)

Thom Hartmann, a progressive author and radio personality, is in the process of writing anti-doublespeak tips for Democrats to use against the radical right wing sound-byte machine. He calls the series, "Reclaim the Issues". Here is the first of three articles he posted on Common Dreams:

Reclaim the Issues - "Occupation, Not War"
Thom Hartmann's Website

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The Midas Touch

The Midas Touch © Emily Duffy 2006
Photo by Emily Duffy

ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson stated that the corporation's net income for the period from April through June was up 36 percent from the same period in 2005 and production increased 6 percent on an oil-equivalent basis as well.

Although much of the profit was attributed to the near-record cost of fuel, the news still sent ExxonMobil shares to their highest level ever and helped lift stocks higher in early Thursday trading.

Other oil companies also had a profitable second quarter. Royal Dutch Shell stated on Thursday that earnings during that period jumped 40 percent to $7.32 billion. Earlier in the week, British Petroleum reported its profit climbed 30 percent to $7.3 billion, and Houston-based ConocoPhillips announced that earnings rose 65 percent to $5.18 billion.

Full Article

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What Goes Around...

Photo by Arnold Newman

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961:

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

-SNIP-

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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War...What is it Tolerated For?

Photographer Unknown

Playwright Eugene O'Neill wrote this to his son six months after Pearl Harbor, when all of America was being prepared for war:

It is like acid always burning in my brain that the stupid butchering of the last war taught men nothing at all, that they sank back listlessly on the warm manure pile of the dead and went to sleep, indifferently besotting custody of their future, their fate, into the hands of State departments, whose members are trained to be conspirators, card sharps, double-crossers and secret patriarchs of their own people, into the hands of greedy capitalist ruling classes so stupid they count not even see when their own greed began devouring itself, into the hands of that most debased type of pimp, the politician, and that most craven of all lice and job-worshippers, the bureaucrats.

From Howard Zinn's amazing book, Artists in Times of War (see below).

Artists in a Time of War

Artists in a Time of War

Sometimes Images Do What Words Cannot

Graphic by Damx Design Corp.

Welcome to the newly created Political Artwork blog. This is a non-profit, non-commercial progressive political art blog. This blog gallery will allow the free sharing of progressive/liberal artwork and ideas between the creators and the public. Many artists are producing excellent, timely artwork relating to the political emergency occurring in America today.

The Bush Administration’s activities have inspired liberal-thinking artists to produce insightful, sometimes hard-hitting work that documents the revolutionary political changes occurring in our country as they happen. This artwork needs to be seen by as many Americans as possible in order to save our Democracy from ruin.

This is free speech at its most basic and as long as we still enjoy that right, I will attempt to spread the progressive/liberal message far and wide using images, words, personal accounts, and stories as they are submitted to this site for inclusion.

Please respect the work of the artists you see here and be sure to credit them when you share their artwork with others.

To share your opinion on this or any other post, please click the word "COMMENTS" below.