The Old Colony Democrat No. 3

                     The Old Colony Democrat 

                                                                                     Vol. II, No. 3 Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012

                                     A Newspaper for the People, 

                  Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

 In the Open at Last: Plutocrat Romney Comes Out for The Money Power

        News comes to this County that our old acquaintance,  His Excellency Mitt Romney, has been exposed as a Prince crown'd by The Money Power, who seek together to reduce the citizens of this lately gain'd republic into a state of absolute SERVITUDE.
        The Boston papers and the New York packet as well report that Mitt Romney, late and regrettably the Governor of this Commonwealth, and today the most despised man therein this side of a convicted war criminal, has lain it open and in the clear that he runs for Chief Magistrate as the greasy Errant Boy of Filthy Lucre, as a Princeling of the Moneyed Aristocracy.
      Indeed, Romney so boldly spoke to his fellows in that cabal of Designing Banksters that, having outraged the kingly Commoners paid a pittance to serve them, these latter Friends to Equality saw fit to record what our would-be Executive had to say.
 Thus did he speak:

    "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. "

     And so, Friends and Citizens, I ask you: did ever you see The Money Power -- that very power which Old Hickory did smite with a righteous VETO -- assert itself so baldly? Have you ever seen Aristocracy assert itself so nakedly? 

    That's why you've all got to go out and assert your rights, and the rights of the People at large, this November 6th. For it is only through the majesty of DEMOCRACY that Aristocracy has ever been turned back from mastering this, or any other, Republic.

Quakers to the Left of Me.....

       NOVANGLUS is privileged to possess many friends on what might be commonly thought of as the decidedly Left end of the political spectrum; and on most days and most matters, he is proud to stand with them. For they assuredly are different from their opposite members on the Right: they are good people and they mean to make the world a better place.

        But on several occasions, over the course of the years, he has had to part ways with them, however personally fondly he may hold them, when their objections retreat into merely monkish rectitude, with no regard for the political currents that swirl about us, and thereby abdicate the dictates of duty to the demands of a Quaker conscience, and shrink from the questions before us, because they should have wished other, and better, questions, to be put to the People.

       This is one of those occasions. 

      For many on the Left today, some of them dear to me, refuse to vote for President Obama -- the People's President -- because he wages a small but nevertheless unjust war abroad: I speak of course of the Drone War. I, as the reader no doubts intuits, do agree with these critics on the unwisdom and injustice of the Drone War as currently waged. Though I am closely agreed with the President that those who would seek to do real harm to the United States (whatever their motivations) must be stopped, and sometimes brutally so, I do not think that this means we have to or ought to countenance the destruction of entire villages by flying robots. This, along with the nonsensical "Surge" in Afghanistan (do you remember, dear Reader, when that word signified merely a hyper-caffeinated soft drink?), are among the policies for which Obama will be judged most harshly.     
       But harsh judgement must also be reserved for those "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots" who hew to a cause only where it is most popular, only where it is unimpeachable, only when it has the common assent of all women and men. For those who, judging a cause solely on its most indefensible aspects, boldly proclaim their political innocence, deigning to dirty their hands in the common struggle against those that would rob All of the People of their ancient and hard-won liberties. For those who would tell you, in 1940, that they would not see this country take up the struggle against Nazism, because the British Empire was in so many places and so many ways a very unjust thing.    
      Friends and fellow citizens: these arguments are the mark of a dilettante, and one who is suited for the religious rather than the political sphere. And I declare as well: that in the Great Class War which now divides this nation, in which the candidate of the People, Barack Obama, does battle with the Prince of the Plutocrats, M. Romney (a dweller of French mansions, if not a sipper of French wines); that those who sit out this fight are as those Philadelphia Quakers, too lofty for this world, who sat it out betwixt America and Britain while WASHINGTON and his army shivered at Valley Forge. 
     Take heed, Citizens, and do not repeat their mistake!

Daisy Buchanans to the Right....

       Meanwhile, because I wish to illustrate the truth of this Maxim: that these friends to my Left are good people; and that so many in Romneystan (see how the Other 10% live!) are not, I shall relate the story shared with me by a good friend to this Paper, a scholar and a Democrat, who, because of her husband's profession, is a good deal wealthier than Novanglus and thereby gains access to some of the salons and dinner parties where such a Swamp Yankee as NOVANGLUS would be summarily tossed out and fed in the kitchen with the Servants and the Dogs. She does not speak her peace, but listens, like an Anthropologist truly.

       Mrs. H_____ told me the following:

      That she and Mr. H____ were invited to a party at a fine McMansion -- if the monstrous issue of unbaptised sloths can be called "fine" -- down the road belonging to a family that, though once, fifteen years ago, were infamous Irish thieves, felons truly and convicted, have now, through the purifying power of Plutocracy, been rendered immaculate in the eyes of those other, unconvicted felons who do occupy the other, lesser McMansions round about them.

     And many things she heard here, wondrous to tell.

     She heard that one of these elfin Principessas of pin-striped Privilege does heartily hate NOVANGLUS, for something he wrote in Josh Cutler's go-along-get-along rag ten years ago, The Duxbury Clipper (getting something of interest out of that sheet is like trying to get something of substance out of Candidate Cutler!). Something to the effect that it was his very great regret that the last piece of woods on Washington Street was cut down to satisfy the vanity of a McMansion-dwelling Aristocratic Junto. Well, it wounded her so! 

    Madam, NOVANGLUS would like to have replied: if it wounded you so, my mere words: what think you and your reckless actions these last three decades, your Marie Antoinette pride in taking MORE THAN YOUR FAIR SHARE of the Common Weal -- what harm think you they have rendered to the Body Politick? And of course, as the Scripture saith, she would answer not a word....
      But the very worst thing of the evening, Mrs. H______ reported, was a statement that shows you just what these blond mavens of towering Mammon say behind closed doors. For, in the midst of a long, strange line of braggery -- about how little she read, and how little she does remember, from her College years -- Mrs. Isabel, whose poor friend's feelings were made tender by the criticisms of NOVANGLUS; this Mrs. Isabel described how she once took a class on Eastern Orthodoxy, that oldest of the Christian churches.

      And then she said this: "It was weird and -- igh! -- and there were all these swarthy and hairy guys there in the classroom; there were no blondes like me...." And at this, her fellow Reichsleiters of McMansion Kingdoms did gloat and laugh.....

      Friends, if ever you forget what this election is about, come back to that quote from Mrs. Isabel. For we all know that one side wants "to finish the Temple of Freedom," and "to make it capacious within", as the old Lincoln campaign song has it. We want to make a place "for whoever seeks shelter, whatever the Hue of their Skin!" The other side -- well, just see what Lady Isabel had to say.

   Remember, all of you neither deliriously wealthy nor self-content in thine blondness: Vote Your Interests, Vote Your Conscience, and Vote the Straight Democratic Ticket!

Voting for Obama with You!

                                                                                                       

A new Ballad, in Broadside, sweeps Southeastern Mass.

Romney's Lament; or,
 The People's Reply

 A Ballad printed in Broadside, at Corn-hill, in Boston

To the tune of "The Outlandish Knight" (Child #4)

 "Come, Mittens, Come Romney,
  Come tell the Countrey,
  Tell us what your Plans might be;
   Will you be the People's President --
   Or for percentage fifty and three?"

   "Come farmer, come yeoman,
     Come listen to me:
     I'll tell you what my plans might be;
     Just as soon as you vote for me
     I'll tell you what my plans will be!"

     "Come Mittens, Come Romney,
        This ne'er will do;
       You must tell us oh! truthfully:
        Will you be the People's President --
         Or for percentage fifty and three?"

       "Come Young Men, come Women,
         Come  listen to me:
         I'll save you from Obamacare;
         Tho' I did start this very same thing,
          I'll use it the Slow Folks to scare!"

        "Come Mittens, Come Romney,
          Come tell the Countrey:
          Tell us what your plan might be:
          Are you for Orphans and Widows and Dogs,
          Or for merely the Fifty and Three?"

         "O People, Good People,
            Why do you ask me?
           Why ask you such foolish things?
           Am I not most like a KING you have met,
           From among the Fifty and Three?"

         "O Mittens, O Romney,
          Come down from that throne;
          We'll answer your questions three:
           You do act so Kingly to Us,
           That We Shall Not Vote for Thee!"

           "You do act so Kingly to Us,
            THAT WE SHALL NOT VOTE FOR THEE!"


       
   

The Old Colony Democrat, Sept. 15, 2012

                        The Old Colony Democrat                         

                                                                                                                          Vol. II, No. 2

                                 A Newspaper for The People

          Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

                                                                                                                    Sept. 15, 2012

World News: American Embassies Attacked; Dignified Response of the President, Sec. of State

     More dreadful news was brought to this County today of continued assaults on American diplomatic outposts in the Mediterranean, Near East, and South Asia. The Boston papers as well as word brought via the Providence coach to Plymouth tell of attempts to storm embassies in multiple Muslim capitals, from the Atlantic in the west to the Bay of Bengal in the East. However, the crowds are reported for the most part to be small, unrepresentative of local opinion, and even in some places -- such as Benghazi -- opposed by pro-American demonstrations.
    Meanwhile, to the strains of "Nearer My God to Thee", the bodies of those Foreign Service personnel murdered in the attack Tuesday in Benghazi returned home today. The President and the Secretary of State greeted them at Andrews Airforce Base in Delaware, and, after making remarks by turns somber and affecting, were moved to a rare moment of public affection -- a clasp of hands between long rivals, embraced alike, as is the Nation, by grief.
     Significantly, in Egypt -- after President Obama's description of the country as neither ally nor enemy in an interview with Telemundo -- the government of Muhammad Mursi reigned in raucous Salafist crowds and effectively defended the embassy in Cairo. Mursi himself, travelling in Brussels, was at last moved to denounce the attacks after initially hedging between the competing demands of Egypt's secularist military, the Islamist Right, and the government of the United States.
 Demonstrations against the embassies of Great Britain and Germany have also been reported.

The View from Buttermilk Bay
    
     A Ploughman from WAREHAM writes:

     Today friends I thought fit to write to the Old Colony Democrat to speak words of truth to certain of mine neighbors, men inclined to tipple early and often in the day, men, as they say, fortified with that liquid courage.

     For today, going to Charlie's to eat a fish sandwich, a few miles past the mouth of Red Brook, I was treated to the insalubrious and damnable foolish rantings of these "summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots" as they sat to their strong beer, and I thought I would publish them to all the world -- or, failing that, to you, the readers of this paper.

      These braggarts of the barroom thought it the finest kind of bravery that they -- in response to the deaths of actually brave men in the Foreign Service -- should call loudly, and without consequences, for the burning to death from the air of people they didn't know, and who hadn't harmed us a whit, on the other side of the Ocean. Ah! what martial skill! What students of military science! Indeed, so devoted must these men be, that they must be constantly tending temples to Mars (and sacred offerings burn't to the image of Megyn Kelly) -- for they were nowhere to be found when their country called them in 1970, having taken the pledge as VESTAL VIRGINS to their false and bellicose idol, and are nowhere to be found today as the call goes forth once more.

      Mark ye well, O citizens! Never trust a man who, never having heard the frightening song of musketry himself, endeavors so bravely and beerily to send other, braver, more worthy men into that unholy din.

                    -- PLOUGHMAN

 News From the Middle West: Rahm the Wrong Kind of Democrat

   A clergyman, known well to the publisher of this paper, sends word from CHICAGO on Lake Michigan of the bravery and decency of the Teachers of the public schools in that City, and of the perfidy of Corporate Democrats determined to rob of them and the community of their ancient and hard-won liberties.

    Chief among this latter clique of ambitious and designing men (well, let us not forget that there are some ladies among'st them) is Rahm Emmanuel, the Mayor of Chicago and a friend to the Banks and The Money Power. For indeed, it is widely and infamously known that Rahm is no friend to the honest workers of this and other lands, but rather to the men of soft hands and clean collars who believe they were set to rule over all us plain joggers of ploughs as MASTERS over a nation of SERVANTS. Men who never work a day in their lives, but rather engage in merest jobbing, growing fat off the accumulated moneys that other hands gathered: men such as these dare to tell a common schoolteacher that she is a layabout and a shirker. Yes, they really do say this, to the men and women who teach the nation's children not only the useful arts, reading and writing and figuring, but also the sublime Arts of Citizenship which turn us from beasts and creatures merely into reasoning humans and Citizens. Yes, these mere Stock-jobbers propose that, rather than their own malfeasance, it is the greed of the teachers, the greed of the Firemen, the greed of Policemen and Constables, that has mired the Nation in such Panic and Recession.

    Have you ever heard of anything more plainly absurd?

    For Mayor Rahm endeavors, not even with stealth, to undo the public schools themselves, on the grounds that they have yet to create that Earthly Paradise which evidently only the denizens of Business Schools may deign to bring us poor homely farmers and mechanics. A man might as well burn down his house because the roof has sprung a leak! 

    As every New Englander knows, the Common School is one of the crowning achievements of our civilization; and for men of avaricious and scheming minds to aim to Enclose upon it, as was done to our forbears in Old England, and give it away to the great and powerful private interests: this will not do. This was not what was bled for at Gettysburg and on the beaches of Normandy. This is not what Rahm's old boss OBAMA was elected for. And we shall be damn'd if such cowardly hearts as are men of finance will ever dare speak as a superior to those Hearts of Oak, the teachers of the Common Schools.

    Indeed, the superiority -- moral and intellectual -- is entirely on the side of the Teachers. It is only Filthy LUCRE which gives The Money Power any power.

            

                     -- Novanglus.

The Old Colony Democrat (Vol. II, No. 1)

                        The Old Colony Democrat

                                 A Newspaper for The People

          Published at Old Mattakeesett, in the County of Plymouth

                                                                                                                                       Sept. 13, 2012

 Purpose of this Paper

   Friends and Countrymen:

         The Nation finds itself precariously balanced between two political forces, one beneficent and one baleful, one thinking, moving, and acting in accord with the deepest principles of the republic and of the late Revolution, one suspicious of democracy itself, of the People themselves, of our Revolution itself: I speak, of course, of the contest between the Democratic Party and President Obama, and the so-called "Republican" Party (never such betrayers of professed principles has the world seen since Judas Iscariot; you might as well call the owner of a bar-room a Temperance Man as call the GOP "republican") under that most craven and oleaginous of sycophants, Mr. Mitt Romney.

        Thus, it is the intention of this paper to adduce the reasons for the necessity of President Obama's reelection, and the triumph of the Democracy; and to further inform the People of the low and loathsome character of his rival, Mr. Romney, a man without a state, a man without a home, a man without a conscience, a man without a heart, and a man without an understanding of what life is truly like in these United States during the Great Recession.

       This paper will include both news and opinion, and welcomes letters from its readers.

-- NOVANGLUS

Romney Steps In It, Shows Himself Unready for Highest Office      News comes to us from the Boston papers, and from the New York packet, that Mr. Romney (no true citizen of the Bay Commonwealth ought ever grace this mediocrity with the title he gave up years ago) spoke precipitously and recklessly about events in Cyrenacia, and in Egypt. The reader has no doubt heard of the grievous and wicked murder, by armed Salafist elements, of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the envoy of the United States to Libya. Ambassador Stevens, a true friend to his country, was murdered in its service; and before his very body was buried, before the next of kin of other murdered Americans were informed of their loved ones' deaths; before all of this, before all the FACTS were in front of him, Mr. Romney somehow perceived in all of this -- in his typically reptilian fashion -- a chance for political gain.
      Romney, say the papers in Boston, made false accusations against President Obama, saying he had "apologized" to the killers of our Ambassador. In fact (a troublesome category for our modern GOP), the President had done no such thing. Indeed, he had yet to address the nation on this crime in Benghazi, let alone issue some entirely fanciful apology.
     Yet none of this stopped the contemptible Mr. Romney from trying to play a national tragedy -- on the 11th anniversary of that most plangent national tragedy -- for his own partisan and personal gain.
     Many in this County, having known Mr. Romney when we had the misfortune to have him sit on Beacon Hill, were not surprised. Mr. Romney, we all know, is apt to move this way and that at even the slightest touch of air, to flap in the slightest trifling breeze; and he does so fear the rabid reactionaries and imperialists in his base, that he gestures and apes like the B-School Buffoon he is, dancing clownishly in a desperate play for Tea-Bagger applause, terrified that they -- knowing at least that he is not of them -- will abandon him at the slightest opportunity (which they will).
      Remember, all true democrats, and all true republicans: Mr. Romney is not ready to be President. He is a small man, and he is not fit for a great office.

 Paul Ryan: Government for Me but Not for Thee

     News comes to us from the papers in the country of the western waters that Rep. Paul Ryan (R- Ayn Rand's Hungry Ghost), besides being a proven liar on matters as diverse as marathons and Medicare, is in addition a consummate and thorough hypocrite.
     Congressman Ryan claims "Big Government" as his ultimate bugbear -- yet, when the time comes, and push comes to shove, Rep. Ryan is always glad to fight for federal cash for Janesville, Wisconsin. In the Stimulus Bill of 2009, Ryan fought for extra dollars to flow to Janesville, while in the enactment of Obamacare, Ryan eagerly sought more money for Medicare in his district.
      Remember: Ayn Rand fanatic Paul Ryan (just like his heroine) hates Big Government when it's for someone else, someone poor and far away; but when it's for himself and his constituents -- he loves it!
      We are reminded of the Book of Matthew: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." (Matthew 23:14, KJV)