Sunday Morning Comin’ Down…part II

And a pic of Cash at Folsom Prison just to mix it up a little…


Over on This Week...

Rep Walter Jones -- (R) Armed Services Committee. Has turned against the war. He tells the sad – and now sadly familiar – story of one family’s grief and loss. He has written letters of condolences to ever grieving family.

He states very clearly and simply that the reasons we went into Iraq -- WMDs and nukes -- have been proved not to be there.

Reality finally leaked in – as it always does – and at least in this matter, his fever has broken and he sees the truth without embellishment. He believes that once we train the Iraqi people to defend themselves we need to get out.

That we need to set a date-certain for withdrawal.

And then I whip back to Punkin’ Haid to hear Biden saying that it our presence in massive (but still massively insufficient) numbers is all that is keeping the whole of Iraq from going up in full-blown Civil War. That it’ll be another two years before we can dig ourselves out of this hole and meanwhile (driftglass added :-) the bulk of our military is tied up in this strategically irrelevant quagmire should any problems develop anywhere else.

I don’t doubt that Rep Walter Jones’ pain is real and honest...and I don’t doubt for a minute that the fear of facing that pain is what keeps the other Republicans screaming almost incoherently that everything is Fine and that anyone who says otherwise it a Traitor.

And whose fault is it that we failed to plan?

We’ll Rep. Jones lays the blame squarely at the feet of...the Neocons that advised Bush (Not Bush. Not Cheney. Because as with Enron, if we ever start holding CEO’s to account insyead of gunning down the underlings they personally appointed and approved and touted the clowns who now being blamed, well that could set a very dangerous precedent.)

But to move back and forth between an honest Republican who has finally brought himself to face the ugly truth of what the President has gotten us into, and the assessment of those in the know that we are stranded in that nightmare for at least another two years...is to come to understand a little of why the hearts of Progressives have been so heavy for so long.

Because we love our country, and because we clearly saw that the dark road down which Bush was dragging us would ruin our country, we have stayed on-message – patient and persistent – while the Right Wing has grown more and more dangerously delusional. More and more enraged at the corner into which their own blindness and idiocy has backed our nation and, now that they have trapped us here, they categorically refuse to take any responsibility for the mess that they and they alone have created.

Jesus would be so proud.

Back to Timmy, just in time to watch the funny dung-beetle MSM circle the wagons and angrily wave their feelers that they’re not to blame for a damned thing.

Just in time to hear Gwen Ifill invoke, “Terry Schiavo.” Just in time for John Harwood get all fussy and truculent about how the press is doing a fine job! How they’ve been all over the controversial stories like Rush at Hillbilly Heroin red-tag sale. Such as, “what we've been talking about recently -- the Downing Street memo”

Really, John? You mean after the web was on fire with it for weeks, after the Memo has been the talk of much of the rest of the globe for weeks, the MSM decides to relent, life the Real News Embargo just a jot, and make a little weak tea that tastes vaguely like a story?

How very brave you are! Go ahead and collect you Presidential Medal of Freedom...or you can take what's behind Door Number Three.

So where exactly have "we" been talking about it, John? And what exactly have “we” been saying about it?

Harwood follows up by suggesting that there might be “flaws” in this Administration. That they have a troubling, “penchant for secrecy.”

Not that they lied. Not that the GOP categorically refuses to admit any error or investigate their lies. Not taking journalistic note of the fact that this is the selfsame mad-dog GOP that ran Clinton to ground over consensual sex.

All of which would make wonderful stories and would, if this were the Clinton Administration, in-fact be headlines day after day after day.

But for Preznit Fredo the best we can ever manage are, vague, approximate, squishy words. Soft words. Until they move away from Bush and on to Dean and suddenly, the vocublary is all about “incendiary” and “inflammatory”. At which point Judy Woodruff demonstrates EXACTLY what the problem is when she says (roughly): "The Republicans throw a lot of raw, red meat to their base, but they do it below the radar.”

Hey! Judy! Leave Those Facts Alone!

Dear Silly Bint: What “Radar?” You ARE the fucking radar! You are the ones who are supposed to let us know what the people in power are trying to slide by, remember? Instead of letting the destruction of the American military lumber past unnoticed, in a flurry of he-said-she-said “Who are we to judge?” gutlessness...and then picking nits over the comments of a Party Chairman.

Factually correct comments, I might add.

Ms. Ifill tells us that, if we had parliamentary elections, Bush'd be in the same boat as Tony Blair...

..and I’d have to disagree. The GOP would crank up the Swift Fake Terror Alertists for Truth Machine, and you’d drop into your report on “the process” crouch and ignore the Truth. Focus exclusively on what tactics the Dems are using to the counter the attacks instead of, say, pointing out that the attacks are lying agitprop being flogged by douchebags.

Judy Woodruff against manages to dig deep into her lexicon to find semantically positive words to describe morally indefensible behavior. Bush is, “supremely confident” instead of “delusional”. He, “hangs in there” instead of “he’s mulishly stubborn even when he is obviously wrong.” He’s just chock-full-o “Leadership” goodness.

Gwen says that, “Dean complains that the Republicans are using him as a diversion, but he keeps saying these things.”

Yes, Gwen. And you keep reporting these things being said by a Minority Party Chair a full year before any elections are scheduled to hove themselves into view, and then omitting crazy, ignorant shit being said and done by the Leader of the Free World. Not that I mind – because Howard Dean speaks for me – but it’s funny to watch them drown in their own feculence while not even being able to speak the True Name of the sludge that’s poisoning them

Harwood is just appalled that Dean is focused on what Dean is focused on when, as he says, “Look at all the raw material the Dems have to work with?!”

Hey, Harwood, as you surveyed the rich field of Republican failures which Dean could exploit, did it ever in your wildest imagination also occur to you to say, “Wow. Look at all the raw material I could be reporting on?”

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Judy’s burbling again. Four minutes ago it was Dean and he was abrasive and inexperienced and blahblahblah negative and tsk-tski worthy. And doesn't this newbie from Vermont undertand... and Maybe he'll learn someday...

But with Bush, he's "decisive". "Confident". Straightforward.

Oh, BTW, Dean did get one thing wrong; the GOP leadership are not Christian. They are the antithesis of Christian.

They’re the Cross, and every time Dobson or Falwell, or Pryor or Frist or any of the rest of the Judas’ open their lying bibble spigots to preach hate and fear as national policy, they as much as re-crucify Christ.

And every time the Moderates strand idly by and let it happen – every time they let a freak like or DeLay or Robertson speak for them -- they wash their hands, mutter, “What is truth?”, slink away and abandon their Savior to the tender mercies of his Enemies.

David Broder bemoans the fact that, by focusing so much on his (Dean's) comments, Dean has done a disservice to his party. Dave, bubbula, didn’t you noticed that it’s you who are paying such close, anxious attention to Dean's remarks.

On Chris Matthews. Usual suspects. Minus the eye-candyful Katty Kay, plus something from the tarpits of Vogue named Julia Reed. This brittle, buck-toothed harridan is on the panel why? If you’ve ever wondered (and haven’t we all) what would have happened if Molly Ivins had had a runty twin sister that was packed off to a Segregation Academy, this half-finished piece of aw-shucks trash answers the question.

First story: “Dizzy Dean”

Surprise! More incessant talk about how awful it is that everyone is talking incessantly about Howard Dean.

Joe Klein-- Dems have no redeeming social value. Nothing. Flat.

And if the Dems had a “Karl Rove?”

Andre Mitchell advises that Dems should focus on policy and specifics.

Julia Reed -- Dean is a distraction.

Klein - Dean is foolish.

Mitchell -- People are willing to buy extreme books by extreme people, but they don't vote that way. There are too many important things going on their lives....

Really? Who the fuck are you people? Where the fuck do you live? Because I live in this Universe and I just saw a whole job-lot of shithouse rat crazy idiots tell Americans a bunch of extreme and amazingly deranged lies...and get re-elected.


And...I can’t watch anymore. Well, watch AND drink.
Mouth filling with bile.
Bile and rage.
Bile, rage and pretty good coffee.
Bile, rage, coffee...and a banana, pineapple and pomegranate juice smoothie, laced with green food.
Bile, rage, coffee, smoothie...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
Sorry.

Start again.

I can’t write about these wretched, lazy, cocooned phone-it-in any more today in any literal sense. What they are doing stinks like month-old, room temperature sushi, and the fact that millions of unsuspecting citizens might actually mistake the fecal-flinging antics of these journalistically inbred hacks for news and/or informed opinion saddens me.

Let’s just say you missed nothing. Nothing at all. The first third consisted of Dean Bashing and a mad dash to see who could climb up Bush’s ass fastest.

Followed by a slashing indictment of “smart people.”
‘Murricans hate smart people.
‘Murricans never, ever vote for the smartest kids in class.
‘Murricans resent smarty, smart smartingtons... which is why, I guess, most people would prefer to let, say, Paris Hilton remove a pre-frontal tumor from their child that a neurosurgeon.

And did we notice that Ms. Mitchell – not ten minutes prior – advise the Democrats to focus of policy matters and specifics.

You know, policy-wonk, smart-guy stuff that she is now kicking them in the teeth for.

And right off the bat let me woner aloud...if Andrew Sullivan put his pants on his head, stood on his hands and literally talked out of his own ass, would anyone notice the difference?

Probably so.

I’m guessing that Old Brown Eye would be a little more honest. I’m guessing it would whistle and coo and proclaim its loutish love of Bush and Cheney and Rummy and any other Fascist Strong Man who would beat him like a rug all night long: Whichever politco will slake his particular brand masochistic bung-hunger is the one he’ll happily footstool for. And while I don’t have any specific objections to how any consenting adults conduct their sex lives, I do profoundly object to Sully moving his politically map radically around to accommodate whatever mood his sphincter happens to be in that day.

Because according to this panel, being bright or superior or in anyway outstanding – except, I guess, in the fields of corporate malfeasance and international fuckuppery – is a shameful, shameful thing. Which is why I assume all the Beltway Kool Kids are urging their whelplings to avoid college altogether, open junkyards and operate car crushers for a living.

If you are a fake-journalist-manhore-shill-shithead, you should apparently feel free to romp proudly through the corridors of power, and if your have serially committed the greatest foreign policy disasters in our lifetime, you should just keep diggin’ that hole and smirking and political succubi like Joe Klein and Andrea Mitchell will call it confidence.

But if you actually take the trouble to figure out what is going on, read-up, work it out – you know, ALL OF THOSE THINGS we tell students ever day in every class – you should sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and not make The Stoopids and the Dominionists uncomfortable.

OK, Once More With Feeling: Reality makes the Stoopids and the Ultras feel bad, not evil eggheads. The fact that 2+2 = 4, that the Earth is four billion years plus change old is what makes them mad.

The fact that Every Single Thing we were told about Iraq turned out to be a lie AND that Evil Liberals are being shown to have been right all along AND that our bold, national strategy of Wishing It All Away ain’t working out so well...is what makes them mad.

And the solution proffered by the Matthews Clown Show is to coddle them. To accommodate them. Not to make them cranky.

No. Sorry.
The solution to being an idiot is to stop being an idiot.
To read a book once in a while that doesn’t have Ann Coulter’s Transgender Prom Queen vanity shot on the cover. To quit listening to bigots who – in case you haven’t been paying attention -- just getting crazier the more they are indulged.

They are Powerful and Hateful and Gleefully Ignorant. They’re on a Godzilla rampage through our basic freedoms, our military, our international reputation, our environment, and our Blood and Treasure.

We used to have a free press in this country who might have thought that story was worth pursuing, but now very best these intellectual drool-buckets can advise YOU the viewing public is not be too smart and if, God forbid, you don't have to have your Vice President help you sound out big words like "disassemble" and "noocueler", well at least have the common decency not to indulge your filthy habit in public, cuz ‘Murricans hate Smart People.

That and snipe at Dean, which doesn’t bother me in the slightest because the more the likes of journalistic leftovers and Bush Apologists like Klein and Sully and Mitchell blow up like puff adders in whiffling outrage at Dean, the more I am dead sure of one thing:

Howard Dean speaks for me.