yo no recuerdo

While this ribbon juxtaposes nicely with a vivaBUSH! sticker, such would be most appropriate if in corresponding spanglish: apoye los troops. A heteroglossic ribbon would not only be most congruent stylistically, but would also be apropos considering the demography of los troops needing the most support: they're unproportionally brown. Ellos are manning our front lines much like they man our back kitchens.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, while Latinos make up 9.5 percent of the actively enlisted forces, they are over-represented in the categories that get the most dangerous assignments - infantry, gun crews and seamanship - and make up over 17.5 percent of the front lines.

Dubya: The Apoplectic Apocalyptic Ape

Hell hath no fury like a fundamentalist Christian.

And now that our little apoplectic apocalyptic ape

has purchased another four years at the helm of this country, we are in for some dark years indeed.

In an April 2004 speech to the nation, President Bush informed the nation's deaf ear that "...freedom is not this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."

Loosely translated, Americans are so AWESOME that they are now God's contractors on Earth. And Bush, in all his delusions of grandeur, is our leader with a Mandate of Heaven.

Unfortunately, Bush's grandiloquence did not end there. He pedantically informed our collective deaf ear that 9/11 (which, by then, was sooooo thirty months ago) should have taught us exactly two lessons.

1. "We must deal with gathering threats."
2. "This country must go on the offense and stay on the offense."

Hey, maybe we need this guy!


We are going to stay on the offense. In other words, the troops are in Iraq dealing with gathering threats that gathered after Bush dealt with a dude he thought was gathering threats. After they come home from this offensive-turned-defensive, they can look forward to yet another offensive. In fact, we need to stay on the offensive.

Generations of war? Sounds like the Apocalypse, but hey -- this sin-drenched world had it coming.

The sad thing is that a vast segment of the American populace endorses this Apocalyptic vision, and the increasingly intertwined entities of church and state.

BEWARE: The images below contain graphic depictions of the fornication of church and state. The pregnant, terminally ill, and otherwise faint of heart should proceed with caution.


Mommy, why is that ribbon magnet posing like that Jesus fish?




Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun put it best in his 1992 Lee v. Weisman ruling: "When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion, it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs." And vice versa: a message of exclusion is conveyed when a particular religion puts its imprimatur on government.

Whether or not fundamentalist Christians are putting their imprimatur on the government just because their Chosen Son is in the White House may be up for debate. But the fact is that plenty of Americans endorse the increasingly intertwined church-state apparatus. The Bush campaign even hired David Barton, a Texas activist, to inform pastors that it was OK to tell their flocks who to vote for. And Barton probably then gave a shameless plug for the hand that fed him. By Barton's reckoning it is no overgeneralization to call America a Christian nation: "I would say if 88% call themselves Christians, I would say, yeah, you probably have a fairly good basis to call it a Christian nation."

I would say if 98% of George W Bush's DNA is shared with apes, I would say, yeah, I probably had a fairly good basis to call him an ape.

Like Nothing Else.

From the popular Chinese magnet purveyor Changzhou Neweastsun Gifts Company, Ltd.'s website:

Q - How to distinguish our magnets from others?
A - Just put our magnets into water for days.


Q - How to distinguish our troops from others?
A - Just observe our troops in illegal war for oil in Hummers without armor


Thanks to Neweastsun, at least the Hummers back at home can don support ribbons resistant to the elements as their counterparts in Iraq remain ill equipped.

"God Bless American"

There's always an ironic twist.

Even if you see it coming from three-thousand miles away, ironic twists are still fun to dwell upon.

Changzhou Neweastsun Gifts Company, Ltd. is located in Jiangsu province, China.


Here are some Mapquest images, to help orient the unfamiliar reader with the area in question. Orient. Get it?


^^^Note Changzhou's proximity to the city of Nanjing, the city that got raped in WWII and immortalized in Iris Chang's bestselling book.

Upon careful examination of the following maps, you will note that the Jiangsu province is located near the Pacific Ocean and experiences ocean currents also found offshore of popular Communist enclaves such as North Korea, Vladivostok, and California*.



In a September 2004 article for the Financial Times, Andrew Ward spins the story of a North Carolina company being outcompeted by Chinese manufacturers of patriotic magnetic ribbons.

Magnet America, founded by a former Christian bookstore worker during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, sold a record 200,000 ribbons in August 2004. By November 2004, the company's ribbon sales had declined to 70,000. And not for lack of space on America's vehicles.



Patriotic tightwad wholesalers have been snapping up Chinese-made ribbons from companies such as Changzhou Neweastsun Gifts for the "red price is right" cost of merely 25 cents a pop. Needless to say, patriotic tightwad individuals have been gobbling up the cheapy ribbons from retailers nationwide.

But this treason comes at a cost to the troops in question: Magnet America has donated over 10% of its profits to a charity that provides videoconferencing for families of troops stationed in Iraq. Changzhou Neweastsun Gifts has made no such claim**, and Magnet America's founder alleges that, "For the Chinese, it's all about making money."

When will we outsource our military? Call your local bookie, and place your bets.



*Fortunately, the Mafia took over Vladivostok and The Terminator is working on California and Japan.
**Neweastsun Gifts does, however, claim to use "enrironmental paper".

Riding out the Rumsfeld Roulette

On January 20, 2001, the United States Senate's Republican majority whisked through a "quick voice vote" confirming several of newly-minted President George W. Bush's Cabinet appointments. Among those confirmed that day: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

What a gamble. What a problem.

In a recent article for the International Herald Tribune, William Pfaff wrote of Rumsfeld as not "such a likable fellow" to the military as Bush. As Pfaff clearly points out, Rumsfeld has exploited and wasted the manpower of U.S. troops in Iraq -- for example, by assigning improperly trained troops to 'ride shotgun' for private contractors who outearn them severalfold -- without doing them any favors in return. Wire reports today indicate that the Army will be announcing plans to expand the "stop loss" order to prevent volunteer soldiers from leaving the military upon completing their overseas assignments. This intention indicates that the Army is likely experiencing a shortage of recruits. Wonder why?

Dissatisfaction with leadership is becoming alarmingly high, as even troops grill Secy. Rumsfeld in Iraq conferences. Maureen Dowd wrote tellingly of "Rummy's Lousy Answer to a Gutsy Question" in her 13 December 2004 column:

"Hoooo-rah! Rummy finally got called on the carpet. Not by the president, of course, but by troops fighting in Iraq. Some of them are finally fed up enough to rumble about his back-door draft and failure to provide them with the proper armor for their Humvees, leaving them scrambling to improvise with what they call 'hillbilly armor.'

"Rummy, however, did not hesitate to give the back of his hand to soldiers about to go risk their lives someplace he didn't dare to go.

"He treated Thomas Wilson -- the gutsy guardsman from Tennessee who asked why soldiers had 'to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles, and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?' -- as if he were a pesky Pentagon reporter. The defense chief used the same coldly cantankerous tone and squint he displays in press briefings, an attitude that long ago wore thin. He did everything but slap the kid in the hospital bed.

"In one of his glib...maxims, Rummy told the soldier: 'As you know, you go to war with the army you have.'

"...Remember when the president promised in the campaign that the troops would have all the body armor they needed?"

Dowd asserts that it's "...immoral to trap our troops in a guerrilla war without essential, lifesaving support," and she is dead-on target. What kind of jerk does that?



The press, the troops, and now some leading Republicans are among Rumsfeld's discontents. After Rumsfeld's answer to Thomas Wilson, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) commented on his feelings about the Secretary: "I said no. My answer is still no. No confidence." Retired General "Stormin'" Norman Schwarzkopf (not for nuthin', but ain't he from Trenton, NJ?) accused Rumsfeld of laying all the blame on the Army, "...as if he, the Secretary of Defense, didn't have anything to do with the Army and the Army was over there doing it themselves, screwing up."

Support. Verb transitive. To provide for or maintain, by supplying with money or the necessities of life.

This is what Rumsfeld needs to do for the troops.

Support. Verb transitive. To uphold or defend as valid or right.

This is what magnetic ribbons on cars appear to accomplish.

Support. Verb transitive. To promote the interests or cause of.

This is another thing these magnetic ribbons accomplish, but to whom are the magnets speaking? It's time to stop speaking truth to that guy driving behind you, and start speaking truth to power.


An XTerra makes a futile plea to the guy driving behind him.

Support x 3!

You can see her in the heel of the photograph; however, I did not spot this supporter's approach until after the photo was snapped. Quick to bullshit, I told her I was doing a story about the magnets for "my high school newspaper" and that I would, of course, omit her licence plate number from the image. This assertion prompted her to inform me of an attempted theft of her car. Strange. Go steal her car and support the troops x 3!

On Your Rear

I've noticed that there is no soild protocol for the placement of the magnets. God, however, wants you to vote for life and tell everybody you are doing such by placing a sticker on YOUR BOTTOM REAR WINDOW. Any speculations as to reasoning behind this specification? I sort of understand the you shall not covet your neighbor's wife thing and some of his other "rules". Whatever.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ol' Oak Tree

The late Gerald Parsons was a folklorist in the Folklife Reading Room of the Library of Congress' Archive of Folk Culture, and a foremost authority on the curious emergence of the yellow ribbon as a symbol used to welcome loved ones home. This yellow ribbon is displayed at the Library of Congress. It was first tied around Penne Laingen's oak tree in 1979, when her husband Bruce was taken hostage in Iran.



This yellow ribbon has been the most popular artifact in the Archive, generating more inquiries than the Library of Congress could even handle. Gerald Parsons explored the yellow ribbon's roots and symbolism in a 1981 and 1991 article.

Parsons maintains that the yellow ribbon's use as a symbol is drawn from "a modern urban oral tradition" which required the ribbon to be yellow as a versification standard. "Tie a hot pink ribbon" just doesn't have the same ring to it... or does it?

An interesting point made by Parsons is that the ribbon as a sign of faithfulness and chastity actually has its roots in COLLEGE MUSIC. A ribald college song made reference to a yellow ribbon... and a purple garter, both waiting for a college beau to come strip the wearer of them. If WNYU had started in 1920, it would have played songs about yellow ribbons. Therefore, the yellow ribbon was the original indie.

But the chameleon-like yellow ribbon also emerges from the infrequently quoted depths of Shakespeare's oft-maligned canon. In Desdemona's dying scene from Othello, she sings a song about a lady waiting for her man with a green willow. This seems like quite a stretch -- green willow, yellow ribbon -- and it just goes to show that those slimy Europeans will do anything to say that there is nothing American under the sun.

Wherever it comes from -- the AIDS 80's, the Roarin' 20's, or the Bard -- the yellow ribbon has a new prominence in America's heartland, and this blog is a photographic homage to its new bearers.

And their handsome SUV's.

Linguistic Variations

Most of these magnets seem to be mandates (You) support our troops; however, this seems to implicate those in the car in the act of saluting.

Small Support

Support Goose Control, also.

Support!

Recently, I've grown fascinated by the ubiquitous "Support" magnet ribbons popping up on motor vehicles. Here we will document such in field photographs with snide editorializing.