It's Dead Jim!

Let it go.

This from the NYT.

Its Long Trek Over, the Enterprise Pulls Into Dry Dock
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: May 1, 2005
IN the sector of planet Earth known as Hollywood, it was business as usual on the Paramount back lot. On a sunny day in early March, green-skinned aliens with zippers embedded in their faces were eating catered lunches, stagehands were disassembling lighting rigs labeled "Thorium Isotope Hazard," and all were doing their best to ignore the fact that the warp engines on the starship Enterprise would soon be shut down, perhaps never to start up again. "Welcome," a security guard said with heavy irony, "to the last days of Pompeii."
On May 13, UPN will broadcast the final two episodes of "Star Trek: Enterprise," the most recent spinoff of the genre-defining science-fiction series created by Gene Roddenberry nearly 40 years ago.
...
When it was time to commit to a new season of "Enterprise," UPN ordered fewer episodes than in the past and shuffled them to yet another time slot. Still, some people clung to hope. "Being the optimists that actors are," said Scott Bakula, who played "Enterprise's" heroic Captain Archer, "you think, 'Maybe if we do a really good job. ...' But basically we were kidding ourselves."

Star Trek was rarely Science Fiction.
And just for the record, Star Wars was never Science Fiction.
“The Minority Report?” Definitely. “Happy Accidents?” Yes. Even “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” You betcha.
But not so much Star Trek.
Figuring out if something is Science Fiction or not is really pretty simple: it is a literature – a genre – that depends entirely on the question of “What If?” What if you could reanimate the dead (“Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus”)? What if a computer could lead a rebellion in a Lunar prison (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”)? What if you could tamper with time (“A Sound of Thunder”)? If you yank out the science, the plot collapses: that's how you know if its science fiction or not.

It’s a test that Star Trek rarely passed.
Trade Colt pistols for phasers, and Conestoga Wagons for starships, and it’s “Wagon Train In Space”. Which is, in fact, how Gene Roddenberry marketed it to the executives at Paramount. It was a weekly morality play, wherein you could paint Frank Gorshen half-black and half-white and do an episode on race without it being banned south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And it offered a largely hopeful vision of the future, which was a very good thing.

But it wasn’t science fiction. And now that we can talk openly about race and sex and hate – on commercial teevee AWA cable – the need for an encoded “morality a clef“ series like Star Trek has passed.

Part of the inherent problem with the series had to do with its creator. Simply put, Roddenberry wouldn’t allow the characters to grow or change. The near-perfection of the humans that populated the series violated a basic rule of good writing that says that human nature does not change very much. Whether you’re slogging towards the Indus with Alexander the Great, or exchanging photon-torpedo broadsides with Klingons, humans are humans (and BTW, c’mon? FTL-driven starships blasting away at each other at arm’s length like 18th Century wind-and-wood naval fleets?) people are people, and always will be.
The Star Trek Universe was hermetically sealed, and despite, for example, some mighty imaginative fan fiction porn, the beginning-middle-and-end of any given episode was as carefully calibrated and predictable as Big Ben, and before the credits rolled, you knew that all characters would return to their default positions. A decision that robbed the series of an underlying sense of real tension that "Babylon Five" had in spades.
For thise keeping score at home, "Babylon Five" was science fiction.

For the uninitiated, the Star Trek Series chronology can be explained thusly:

Star Trek: We go into Space.
Star Trek TNG: We go further into Space.
Star Trek DSN: We stop, and let Space come to us.
Star Trek Voyager: Ooops. Went too far into Space in our Giant Shoe Stretcher Ship, now we gotta get back.
Star Trek Enterprise: How did we get into Space again?

Thematically, the series goes like this:
Star Trek: “Wagon Train” in space. We roll along into strange places, encounter strange people, and have adventures. Oh, and women wear, at most, miniskirts and go-go boots. Otherwise they wear Kleenex and green body paint. And we get laid like President’s Day sale carpet by a variety of hot, hot alien babes. Kirk first, and the rest if-and-when. Oh, and even robbed of her few lines by the Bill “The Ego on the Edge of Forever” Shatner, decked out in her miniskirt, with a seat as an equal on the bridge, the mighty fine Nichelle Nichols did more for race relations and reframing the place of African Americans than most.
Enough that when she was threatening to quit, Dr. King personally asked her to stay. Nichols went on to make recruiting films for NASA and it is fair to say that without Uhura doing her “Hailing frequencies open, Captain” thing, there is maybe no Dr. Mae Jemison, so how cool is that?

Star Trek TNG: The Broken Family. Everybody – and I mean everybody – in this series had a fucked up family. Almost all were orphans, or has lost a parent, or estranged from their families in one way or another. The series foundered around like rudderless ship until the arrival of The Borg. And then somebody remembered that Great Story requires Great Conflict, which needs a Great Villian.

The Borg showed one model of social order – one model of family: everyone cambered and tooled to fit into the Collective. The Federation showed us another model: the family as the protective shelter which encourages the individual to flourish. It is constantly changing – in a perpetual state of renegotiation between the family-as-a-unit and the family-as-a-safe-harbor.

Star Trek DSN: Religion. This one was my favorite. House Roddenberry finally let characters have flaws. Let them fuck up and fail. Let the villains have redeeming qualities and the heroes fall. And it took faith seriously: both as means and ends. And after trying it the other way, they let Avery Brooks shave his head and grow his goatee and go full badass: he was just one full-length leather coat and hand-canon away from being Hawk again...which was a goood thing.

Star Trek Voyager: Going home. Largely forgettable, although Kate Mulgrew had this no-nonsense borderline-dominatrix Captain thing going that I found immensely appealing.
“Ensign Driftglass, get over here and fuck me stupid. Now.” Yes ma’am! :-)

Star Trek Enterprise: Prequel City. Jut-jawed Captain boldly doing that going-and-doing thing that jut-jawed Captains do. IMHO, could have been a much bigger success than it was, but the Custodians of the Roddenberry Legacy couldn’t let it run loose enough to really rock and roll. Imagine if they had decided to go All In on it, and invited Neil Gaiman or Harlan Ellison over to script an episode or two? Or Greg Bear? Or Neil Stephenson? Or William Gibson?

Don’t know those names?
That’s because they write, among other things, a very important type of speculative literature called Science Fiction. Which for all of it virtues, Star Trek never was.

Give them an inch...

And they think they’re a ruler.



Some of Our Dear Leader’s comments about NCLB from last-night’s Big Press Leg Humping…interspersed with a few observations;

QUESTION: Mr. President, you've made No Child Left Behind a big part of your education agenda. The nation's largest teachers union has filed suit against it, saying it's woefully inadequately funded. What's your response to that? And do you think that No Child Left Behind is working?

BUSH: Yes, I think it's working. And the reason why I think it's working is because we're measuring. And the measurement is showing progress toward teaching people how to read and write and add and subtract.

…the Iraqi war will cost no more than 1.1 billion dollars. – check.

…It will be a cake-walk – check.

…Iraq has enough oil revenue to cover the costs of any “reconstruction” – check

BUSH: Listen, the whole theory behind No Child Left Behind is this: If we're going to spend federal money, we expect the states to show us whether or not we're achieving, you know, simply objectives, like literacy, literacy in math, the ability to read and write.

(Um…literacy in math is called “numeracy”. But OK, that’s one ‘a them Fancy Dan words that no Preznit should be expected to know.)

BUSH: And, yes, we're making progress. And I can say that with certainty, because we're measuring.

Here here! I could not agree more: Measuring is indeed a fine way to guage progress. If you state with clarity what the measure of success will be in advance, and then fail to prove up, you should be made to answer for it. If you fail miserably…you should have your ass handed to you on the good China.

So let’s continue with tangible, measurable milestones of progress are the were unambiguously articulated before the project was undertaken…

…mobile weapons labs. – check.

…Botuline toxin by the ton – check.

…anthrax by the cubic hectare – check.

... Al Quaeda training camps -- check.

BUSH: But we spend a lot of money here at the federal level, and have increased the money we spend here quite dramatically at the federal level. And we just changed the policy. Instead of just spending money and hoping for the best, we're now spending money and saying, Measure.

…active, aggressive nuculer program, within shouting distance of a “Mushroom Cloud” – check

…the great Niger yellow-cake Uranium Easter Egg hunt – check.

…outing a CIA agent because they made you look like the idiot you are – check.

...direct links with 9/11 -- check.

Bush: And some people don't like to measure. But if you don't measure, how do you know whether or not you've got a problem in a classroom?

…”Flypaper” – check

…Dude, where’s my Exit Plan? – check

…Fuck the armories and the nuculers and the museums: guard the Oil Ministry man. -- check

Bush: I believe it's best to measure early and correct problems early before it's too late.

…the so-called “resistance” it just a few regime dead-enders who will be mopped up in a matter of weeks. -- check

…We Will Be Greeted As Liberators. – check.

…Abu Where? No, we don’t torture. We’re ‘Muricans. We obey the law. – check.

BUSH: That's why, as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act, we had money available for remedial education. In other words, we said, we're going to measure. And when we detect someone who needs extra help, that person will get extra help.

…Cutting benefits for veterans. – check.

…Body Armor? Humvee Armor? Fuck you. Scrounge soldier. – check.

…One weekend a month, my ass. -- check

BUSH: You know, I've heard some states say, well, we don't like it. Well, you know, my attitude about no liking it is this: If you teach a child to read and write, it shouldn't bother you whether you measure. That's all we're asking.

…”I believe the title [of the August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing] was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States” -- check

…Mission Accomplished! -- check.

…and Presidential Medals of Freedom For Everybody. – check.

So, is our Petro-Junta Overlords learning yet?

Future head of the DNC?

Thomas Adams knows you don't screw around with Bugs

This story just made my day, and somebody please can Friedman's wheezing corpus over at the NYT and give this lad a job...

Boy's battle to save Bugs' gang gets Warner Bros.' attention
By Kelly Kurt, The Associated PressPublished April 28,
2005 TULSA, Okla. --

Eleven-year-old Thomas Adams thought Warner Bros. had gone daffy when he saw the company's plans for a new cartoon called "Loonatics," based on Bugs Bunny and his Looney Tunes pals.The grimacing, hollow-eyed, power-fisted prototypes of a futuristic Bugs, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner struck the boy as dark and scary. In the words of Daffy Duck, he found them "dethh-picable."Now, nearly two months after starting an Internet petition drive against the TV series' fall debut, Thomas has gotten their attention.

Warner Bros. Entertainment spokesman Scott Rowe said his company wants the thousands of fans upset by the made-over characters unveiled in February to know "that's NOT all, folks."Those "early drawings" have been revised into characters that are softer and less menacing, he said.

"We heard the outcry from fans, including Thomas," Rowe said.

When I was just a little driftglass, my mother sat me down and said, “Son, there are three things you should never do...

“First, never invade entirely the wrong country on a lie...

“Second, never try to loot Social Security and act like you’re doing people a favor...

“Third, never, ever fuck with The Bunny.”

And her wisdom has served me well.

BTW, young Thomas Adams done good – done real good – so why not pay him a visit and say “Thanks” or sign his petition or bump up his hit count.

And watch the language! He’s in fifth grade.

U.S. Energy Policy Part II.

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko sez: your Energy Policy is ready Mr. President.

Part Two is the fun flip side of the Evolution issue, or what happens when dim-bulbed people who have a fundamental(ist) contempt for science get to sit in the Big Chair. It’s what happens when your religion requires that your higher brain functions be obliterated and yanked out of your skull with a crochet needle…

This from Akhet Egyptology:

“When a body was mummified the internal organs were usually preserved in some way. This was not true of the brain which was often just discarded. This was usually done by inserting a hook up the nose and using it to slice up and remove the brain tissue, with the cavity then being washed out.”

Sure sounds like Fundy Sunday schools to me.

And once your ability to reason has been fragged, bagged and tagged, all you are left with as a tool for comprehending the world is the faux virtual illumination of superstition. Like the drunk that looks for his car keys a block from where he dropped them because the light is better, once rationality has been blotted out, anyone can be led anywhere by any unscrupulous bastard with a single, flickering birthday candle.

So to understand the Fundy (and hence, the White House) take on Science, you have to understand that they don’t just hate it…they fear it.

It is the means by which their whole ignorant medieval, voodoo cult theology can come crashing down, because the single, Jesus Bolt holding the whole contraption of Biblical Literalism together is that none of the faithful are allowed to even contemplate the possibility that the Bible is factually wrong about anything.

Doesn’t matter how tiny or seemingly trivial it may be (like the Spinning Mary in the Garden of Gethsemane), they are barred from any admission of any error of any kind…because if they admit one, then who’s to say there aren’t two? And then ten? And then soon nobody’s upending their changes purses into the Love Buckets, and no one’s signing over their Social Security checks to Big Jerry’s Wee Church o’ the Holy Odium.

And much worse than the fiscal downside, these fuckers actually do believe the shit they trowel out like it's, well, The Gospel :-) Their whole persona -- their whole self -- rests completely on caissons sunk a mile deep into the Literalist bedrock of their faith. Science (Hell, basic critical thinking skills) prowls around them night and day, threatening to destroy them and threatening to drag others down into the febrile swamp of Sinful Secular Science.

They’ll die to protect their delusions. And they’ll kill anyone who tries to take them away.

They are stranded one bad precedent and bad thought away from hard slide down a terminally slippery slope, so no admission of any glitch, no matter how microscopic can be tolerated, which means they can never get close enough grasp what science is, and what it isn’t. So for them, Science is Magic. Incomprehensible, probably evil, but certainly Magic, and since it's Magic, there is no reason why it can’t grant any wish at all. And no reason why its wizards shouldn't be made to bend in any political direction at all.

Which is why Stalin liquidated a whole lot of his scientists who made the mistake of advocating, well, science, and promoted the likes of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.

Which is the kind of stunningly idiotic paralogia we see burbling out of the Bush White House on virtually every issue, but especially on energy matters.

This snipped from the Skeptic’s Dictionary summarizes the Lysenkoism pretty well.

Lysenkoism refers to an episode in Russian science featuring a non-scientific peasant plant-breeder named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko [1898-1976]. Lysenko was the Leading proponent of Michurianism during the Lenin/Stalin years. I. V. Michurin, in turn, was a proponent of Lamarckism...According to Lamarck, evolution occurs because organisms can inherit traits which have been acquired by their ancestors.
...
Lamarckism is favored by those who see will as the primary driving force of life, e.g., the 20th century French philosopher Henri Bergson. Darwinism, or natural selection, is hated by many of those who believe God created everything and everything has a purpose: the fundamentalist teleologists of the world.
...
[Michurin's] views on evolution found favor with the party leadership in the Soviet Union. When the rest of the scientific world were pursuing the ideas of Mendel and developing the new science of genetics, Russia led the way in the effort to prevent the new science from being developed in the Soviet Union. Thus, while the rest of the scientific world could not conceive of understanding evolution without genetics, the Soviet Union used its political power to make sure that none of their scientists would advocate a genetic role in evolution.

It was due to Lysenko's efforts that many real scientists, those who were geneticists or who rejected Lamarckism in favor of natural selection, were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared from the USSR. Lysenko rose to dominance at a 1948 conference in Russia where he delivered a passionate address denouncing Mendelian thought as "reactionary and decadent" and declared such thinkers to be "enemies of the Soviet people" (Gardner 1957). He also announced that his speech had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Scientists either groveled, writing public letters confessing the errors of their way and the righteousness of the wisdom of the Party, or they were dismissed. Some were sent to labor camps. Some were never heard from again.

Under Lysenko's guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. Lysenko's methods were not condemned by the Soviet scientific community until 1965, more than a decade after Stalin's death.

Sound familiar? Tediously, nauseatingly, “I can’t believe anyone brighter than crab lice could really fall for this drivel” familiar?

Well, welcome inside the Fundy Biosphere at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where once inconvenient science is banished, any crazy shit goes as long as the Dear Leader wishes it to be so.

And then, since it’s all just magic, the True Believers all drool over the idea of a pure, theocratic state where Demon Science is finally caged and enslaved and can be tasked with granting each and every one of their deprave desires. Smartass science, that has always made the inbred homunculi of the Right Wing feel impotent and inferior, can at last be made to kneel and grovel and beg and say whatever the fuck Jerry Falwell tells it to say and do whatever the fuck George Bush wishes it to do.

That Creationism is the one and only Truth.

That the whole of the Cosmos is an illusion.

That Global Warming is a Bad Magic chimera made up by crafty, America-hating liberals.

And that Technology is Good Magic and can save us from the laws of cause and effect.

And just to repeat it yet again, if you are a Moderate Republican, you are specifically and personally responsible for this insanity.

U.S. Energy Policy Part I.

And then the Giant Magic Otters come and refill all the oil wells.


This snippet from tomorrow’s NYT (yes, I have a way-back machine and I have no compunction about using it.)

Bush puts his power behind energy plan
By Elisabeth Bumiller and Jad Mouawad The New York Times
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2005
WASHINGTON
President George W. Bush has presented a plan to offer government risk insurance to companies that build nuclear power plants and to encourage the construction of oil refineries on closed military bases in the United States.
...
Bush also proposed on Wednesday giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the authority to choose sites for new terminals to receive liquefied natural gas from overseas.
...
Bush's proposals would not lower domestic gasoline prices this summer.
...

To be fair there’s also some weak rhetoric about using clean diesel, and tax breaks for this and that .

There are a lot of twisty, tricksey convolutions that go along with energy policy, but for the sake of conversation, lets focus on two.

Part One: Everyone in the Bush White House is a big, old oil slut.

Some, like Bush 43, are spectacularly inept and failed oil sluts, but like all idiot children of the corrupt and powerful, rich/stupid always fails upward, and the Head's of the Five Families found Fredo a gig pretending to run the country for eight years while they loot every loose nickel and floorboard.

The entire Bush family is treated like cross between cousins-with-privileges (if you know what I mean) and pet hamsters by the House of Saud.

Baron Vladimir Cheney of House Halliburton ran a company that started out as an oil instrument company.

Baron Cheney goes into the bunker with a handful of his oil buddies and lobbyists and rewrite U.S. energy policy...and it's barely a yawn. Funny, I remember when a certain Majority Political Party and a certain wide swath of Main Stream News Outlets went absolutely apeshit when they thought Hillary Clinton was doing exactly that with U.S. Health Care policy?

Condi Rice has a tanker named after her.

Of all the targets that a traumatized country was willing to give Preznit Fredo a blank check beat to death, he picked one that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, but was a keystone in the international petroleum game.

This certainly isn't Startling New Information, and the list is much, much, much longer than this little cut, and make no mistake about it: put as much diesel-and-efficiency pig lipstick on this as you want, for them, "alternative sources of energy" means drilling.

Drilling deeper, further, harder.

Drilling until you hit the Earth’s Core. (Hey, maybe that’s a little corner of the Real Iraqi Plan: not only will we commandeer-by-proxy the second largest oil reserve in the world, but from there the C. Montgomery Bush Slant Drilling Company can angle under Iran and poach their reserves too. Sweet.)

If they all had made their fortunes working for King Cotton, and every single national policy happened to involve encouraging Americans consume Giant Cotton Underpants like whiskey at an Irish Wake, maybe someone in the intrepid MSM woulda noticed and maybe thought, "Hey, that's kind of odd?" But the MSM is currently busy chasing shiny objects and converting oxygen into carbon dioxide and such.

So everyone knows this, and yet we watch it unfold like a nightmare, moving with a nightmare’s kind of persistently deranged, slow-motion momentum towards catastrophe. And the ones pushing it all towards the edge of the cliff smile, and nod and babble gibberish and are obviously insane or are working a Imperial Agenda...and go on and on and on.

So, for your consideration, an honest-to-God modest proposal, put gingerly forward, for changing the dynamic of U.S. energy policy: Tie Defense and DHS spending directly to Alterative Energy research.

1-to-1, 3-to-1, I don’t have a good sense of what the Golden Mean would be in this case, but make it a hard number and tie it by law to Defense and Homeland Security. Basic research, Manhattan Project/Apollo in scope and sale, and every time the Pentagon or the Spies Who Love Us want another billion or three, they have to hit the Alternative Energy Tip Jar. Hard.

Why Defense and DHS?

Because Iraq II: “The Wrath of Condi” is about oil.
And Iraq I: “Heaven can Kuwait” was about oil.
And installing the Shah was about oil.
And propping up a sociopath like Saddam to counterbalance the Ayatollah Khomeini after he deposed the Shah was about oil.
And the reasons the Palestinians have been pimped by their own Muslim/Arab brethren is about a lot of things…and one of those things is oil.
And Israel has an interesting lineage…with a more than a little petroleum in the patriarchy.
The war we have trapped ourselves into between a rouge element of House bin Laden’s and House Saud is about power…which means oil.
Our troops are garrisoned in within Frisbee distance of some of the holy sites in Islam because of oil.
We give a rat’s ass about the internal politics of Russian in no small measure due to oil.

See a pattern? Its very subtle, but if you look closely…

And this was all when oil was under $50/barrel. What happens when it hits $100? $150? $250? And our new, gigantic industrializing buddies on the other side of the planet – the ones that own most of our debt -- decide that the pie needs to be resliced.?

So our wars are going to be about oil, our foreign policy is going to be driven by oil, our economy is going to continue to be hostage to oil, and our environmental policies – the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the only planet we’ve got – will all continue to be sacrificed to the Oil God.
And the trend lines all point in one direction.

This being the case, who but an America-hating traitor could suggest that true alternative energy is any less tactically imperative than body armor, any less more strategically vital than any missile defense system could possibly be, and any less patriotic than any damned flag?

Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?

Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?


File this under "Life during wartime", but no, this isn’t about a famous punk club, CBGB: that's shameless bait-and-switch on my part.

This is about the not-famous-enough federal grant programs called Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). It’s what we call "flexible" money used for economic development, home ownership and programs for the homeless, for youth, homeless youth, domestic violence prevention, job development, job training and a ton of other extremely worthy and worthwhile things.

So why should you care? Well, because odds are really good that wherever you are you're within shouting distance of some program in your town that helps the weak and the struggling...and its funded by CDBG money.

And given that the program is not designed to throw money at the already insanely wealthy Barons of Petrolem, but to help out home buyers, to poor, the unemployer, small business, the sick and the fragile, it is perhaps needless to say the Bush Administration is out to destroy it.

Also needless to say, this is largely an urban program, itd deliberate destruction is part of the ongoing GOP War on the Cities. Or, as a conservative colleague of mine put it, ”Cities didn’t vote for the President, so what did you expect?” Because for them its not about whether to programs actually works; its about annihilating the heretics and apostates and heathens who have not followed the Republican Piper at the Gates of Hell into the darkness.

Also needless to say, like every other parcel of bullshit these evil clown try to fob off on the public, the legislation is neatly wrapped in a name that means exactly the opposite of what it does: in this case its called “Strengthening America’s Communities Grant Program”.

This from the City Mayor’s Website

...
The US Conference of Mayors President and Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic said, “This new proposal is totally unacceptable and we are extremely disappointed that this tactic is being used as an excuse to eliminate CDBG and cut much needed resources to local communities.“A key priority of this Administration is stimulating the domestic economy by creating jobs and expanding home ownership, and that is exactly what CDBG does. CDBG is good business and is the foundation of our nation’s communities,” he continued. The business community also has a stake in the community development block grant program. In the financial year 2004, CDBG created or retained 90,637 jobs. Furthermore, for every one dollar of CDBG funding, approximately $2.79 in private funding was leveraged for economic development projects like shopping centers and grocery stores.

...

In Los Angeles, California, CDBG funds were used in the Chesterfield Square project in Southwest Los Angeles, which brought a major supermarket, a Home Depot, a major drug store and other stores and restaurants to this underserved community. This project alone created over 500 jobs and brought newfound pride to the community.
...

In the 2004 financial year, the program assisted 168,938 households with their housing needs, which included homeownership assistance, construction of housing,
rehabilitation of existing housing, and energy efficiency improvements.
...

The coalition of mayors, county officials and business leaders contends that for the future of this nation, CDBG must not be eliminated, nor see any major cuts to the program. “CDBG is an effective program that helps millions of Americans by investing in our communities. We will take our message to Capitol Hill to fight for our federal and local government partnerships that have been successful for over three decades,” Plusquellic concluded.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey.
I ain't got time for that now.

The Further Adventures of Captain Obvious.

Why does this man have a job?

When I was a teenaged driftglass, I took a young lady to a truly awful movie named, I believe, “Mother’s Day.” The reason I lured her to this particular cinematic offering was that I was a horny young idiot, and hoped to lead her step-by-step into a mutual, pants-jettisoning moment...and the movie was rated “X"; a relative rarity at that time and place.

So being no slouch when biological imperative is whamming at the door, and thinking that nothing amps up the chances of the pants-jettisoning like a little soft-core date-porn, I convinced this equally-clueless lass to accompany me to said film. I mean, there are such a lot of naughty-bad-fun carnal possibilities inherent in that title, no?

And the film turned out to be a rip-and-kill flick of the lowest order, given an adult rating apparently because it was so fucking nauseating. Just...charnellity, and it hit with such an startling, white-noise intensity when I was expecting a nice, family-friendly lesbian adventure that it simply didn’t register right away.

Truth is, I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I kept waiting for it to get better. For the joke to kick in. For the Army of Sappho to enter stage-right and make it all better. To turn that corner.

Never happened. It just went on and on, and my date and I looked at each other and then ran for the exit. I even demanded our money back, which is kinda tricky when you're a little under-age and are trying to puff up and come on as strongly affronted in front of your date that you didn’t get the Isle Of Lesbos Kickline and Leap Frog team you’d been expecting. Very complex situation.

In my memory I loom over the simpering theater manager and boom out, “Your trickery, sir, has cost me my time, my money and any hope of a pants-jettisoning interlude with this comely lass, and I demand satisfaction!"

And then, mercilessly exposed as the weasel that he is, he offers me cash and prizes and access to his polymorphically perverse sister, and humbly begs my forgiveness.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that’s not what actually happened, but why does this by Tom Friedman evoke that memory?

The Best Man for the U.N.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: April 27, 2005
My biggest problem with nominating John Bolton as U.N. ambassador boils down to one simple fact: he's not the best person for the job - not even close. If President George W. Bush wants a die-hard Republican at the U.N., one who has a conservative pedigree he can trust, who is close to the president, who can really build coalitions, who knows the U.N. building and bureaucracy inside out, who can work well with the State Department and who has the respect of America's friends and foes alike, the choice is obvious, and it's not John Bolton.
It's George H. W. Bush, a k a 41. No one would make a better U.N. ambassador for Bush 43 than Bush 41.
...
But there is actually an even better reason to prefer 41 over Mr. Bolton. The White House claims it needs the pugnacious Mr. Bolton at the U.N. to whip it into shape and oversee real reform there. I have only one thing to say in response to that pablum: Give me a break. We do not need a U.N. ambassador to "reform" the U.N. That is not what America needs or wants from the U.N. You want to reform the U.N.? You want to analyze its budgets and overhaul its bureaucratic processes, well, then hire McKinsey & Co. - not John Bolton. (Everyone knows he prefers to torch the place.)
...

Did I wander into the children’s section of the NYT?
The “special” children’s section?

For me, the factual correctness or lack thereof of any give topic that passes through Mr. Friedman’s alimentary canal isn’t even an issue anymore: it’s that retarded, mutant love-child-of-Elmo-and-Andy-Rooney Shouting Out Loud obviousness that positively leaps off the page at me.

Like a morbidly obese soprano singing incomprehensibly bad Aida, and you can’t believe how terrible it is, and you wonder how long the metal-shredding keening of this beast can possibly go on. And then she turns around and you see that she has not only tucked the backside of her costume into her panty hose, but has obviously soiled herself recently. It’s this degree of obliviousness that jumps it up into a different order of uber-idiocy. That, in this case, begs the question from the editors of the NYT for the umpteen-millionth time: Who in the fuck is Tom Friedman talking to?

The Shining Path Right, to whom any candidate left of Vlad Tepes would be considered a commie (and who are not exactly disposed to listen to any of the Children of Abraham whose last name doesn't rhyme with “Fleeberman” if you get my meaning)? So not those guys.

The Left, who have already sorta kinda looong ago figured this out already?

School children?

House plants?

You want to know why blogs are on the rise? And why the MSM is desperately trying to pivot itself around like the Exxon Valdiz 20 feet from shore and either appropriate or marginalize blogging?

Look no further than this.

Again we see on display on the once-sacred ground that was the Editorial Page of the New York Fucking Times, Mr. Friedman’s willingness to leap into the fray long after the fray has left town and bravely declare that...
…you know, if you slap an egg on your forehead it might break, so maybe you don’t want to do that.
...Green’s a nice color, don’t you think?
...WWII. Wow. Glad those Nazis lost, huh?
…smell my finger. No, go on, smell it.
…call me crazy, but I think that the Sun going nova would be, overall, a bad thing.

Like the hormonally impelled decision of my younger self to plunk down my hard earned coin only to find myself watching the almost inconceivably brutal and stupid "Mother's Day”, I buy my ticket to the NYT and sit down and expect…something.

Something insightful or witty or provocative. And not even every day, because I know that the Muse is a Tough Buck: just on-balance, give me something I better than I could have dashed off myself, hung over and face down in the pee trough in a Wrigley Field men’s room.

And yet what we get is the likes of Tom Friedman breathing the rarified air of the commanding heights, atop the tallest newspaper on Earth and using his sacred real estate to pontificate that a circle, you know, is round.
And that snow looks pretty cool.
And jelly doughnuts sure are tasty, but too many of them might make your tummy upset.

And I keep waiting for the punch line and a phalanx of agile, antic lesbians to come and right this terrible right this wrong, but they never arrive.

And at last I slouch out of the theater, heartbroken, that the New York Times has really, finally allowed itself to become such an enervated heap of flabby words.

Scott McClellan delivers some fresh apple pie.

During the Clinton Administration, the White House worked closely with Republican Leaders to find “compromise” candidates that would be considered acceptable by both sides. The White House took the advice of professional legal and judicial organizations that had weighted in on the matter of judicial qualification, as had been the standard practice for decades.

For all of their bipartisan troubles, the Clinton Administration had 35% of all nominees blocked by Senate Republicans, who used cowardly “holds”, which meant they could hide from pubic scrutiny and never had to use a filibuster. This meant that 35% of all Clinton nominees never got an up-or-down vote.

By contrast, the “Uniter, not Divider” Bush Administration has dispensed with any pretext of cooperation and bipartisanship, and have make a public decision to stock these lifetime position the most extreme ideologues that they could find.

By contrast, the Bush Administration has pointedly ignored the recommendations of legal professional organization (that have members of all political persuasions.) And by virtue of their successful blockade of 35% of the Clinton nominees during the 1990’s, they actually have far more slots available to fill than they deserve.

By contrast, Democrats have approved 96% of all Bush nominees, and have blocked only 4%. The sniping-from-camouflage weapons the GOP used when they blocked 35% of Clinton’s nominee are not available, since and "compromise" is just another big, hard-to-pronounce-four-letter-word at the White House, the Dems are left with no alternative but the filibuster the worst of the worst. And to do forthrightly and publicly, instead of assassinating democracy while skulking in the cloakroom, fearful of being found out.

And what does the White house have to say about this contrast?

Well, not surprisingly they simply lie their fucking asses off, knowing that the spineless MSM and the craven Moderates are so completely gutted, leashed, neutered and pussywhipped that Minister of Information McClellan could walk among them rubbing their faces in individual servings of fresh, steaming offal from downer cows and they’d all smile their big, obedient smiles and say how mighty fine the fresh apple pie tastes.

Want proof? Here is from today’s briefing via First Draft via Atrios (enraged emphasis added):

Q What does the President think of this offer by Harry Reid and by Senator Biden for a deal on judges, that if the President were to maybe relent on some of the most, in their minds, most conservative judges, that they'd be willing to work out a compromise and approve some of the President's nominees that have been either deadlocked or filibustered?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think our view is that Senate Democrats need to stop playing politics and give all judicial nominees an up or down vote.

(And again, the devastating follow-up.)

Q Did you think the Republicans were playing politics when nominees when the Clinton folks had problems getting their nominees through?
MR. McCLELLAN: What has happened in this Senate is unprecedented. There has not been a situation like this, where members of one party have blocked nominees from even receiving an up or down vote on the floor.

He said, as his big liar pants just burst into flames.

Stand still

And let me hit you.


There is this joke about a linebacker that I’m sure dates all the way back to the days of Alex Karras and Rosie Grier, and it’s not really a great joke, which I now realize is not something one says before telling a joke, so just pretend I didn’t just say that.

Anyway.

There’s this linebacker. Big as a Panzer, but very linear and not so good with the abstraction and improvisation, so after trying to teach him various complicated plays, the coach gave up and told him, “Look, let’s keep this simple. Hit whatever’s in front of you.”
And it worked brilliantly for 4-5 games, until one day at practice an assistant came tearing into the coach’s office and told him that his star linebacker had busted his shoulder and was en route to the hospital. Probably out for the season.
“What the fuck happened?” the coach demanded.
“It was the clean-up crew’s fault,” the assistant said. “They were replacing the sod and they moved the tackling dummies a little to the left.”
“So?”
“So the dummies weren’t where he expected them to be, so he just kept a’runnin and a’runnin until he hit a parked car.”

This from Matthew Yglesias brings that joke to mind.

April 26, 2005
REALLY AND TRULY NO EXIT.

If you're looking for reasons to believe that the Bush political machine is losing its deft touch then look no further than Bloomberg News' report that the President will be extending his Social Security privatization world tour beyond the initial 60-day timeframe. This is an absolutely baffling thing to do. By all objective standards, the tour has been a catastrophic failure. He's induced zero new legislators to back his agenda. Privatization's numbers have sunk further in the polls. Indeed, the best polling evidence available suggests that the more people focus on the issue, the less they like the president's ideas. Even worse, we're now seeing clear signs that pushing privatization is driving down the GOP's overall level of support with key constituency groups like senior citizens and rural people, both groups that backed Bush in '04 on cultural grounds and are now being driven back into the Democrats' arms.
Frankly, Bush has won enough battles over the years that I have trouble believing his team would do anything as dumb as a tour extension clearly seems to be. Maybe they've got some trick up their sleeve so brilliant that I can't grasp it. …

I commend the whole article to your attention, but here’s where I respectfully disagree with part of what the estimable Mr. Yglesias wrote: the Rove strategy was and is statistically sophisticated. Relying on knowing the voter registration and preference stats to a degree of granularity almost fine enough that one can count the number of Fundies live on a particular street in a particular district. But the method or activating the base and the margins was actually simplicity itself.

Hate. Lie. Hate. Hate. Fear. Hate. Lie. Little bit more Fear. Tax cuts. Fag bashing. Smear. Hate. And wrap it all up purdy in the Bible and a Confederate Flag. All shrieked at 1000 Decibels by their pet Pravda Media and their Fuhrer-Pundits.

Which is a lot of things, but not deft. Not subtle.

It is a set-piece battle that relies on Democrats never moving around and just letting the Shining Path Republicans bomb the shit out of them, while the SCLM and the Moderate Republicans are allowed to cower in the shadows and then pick the corpse clean after the hyenas have brought it down. And it relies on that ever-reliable backbone of all Biblical Literalists – that you can never, ever, ever admit even the possibility that you might be wrong.

The “strategy” is simply that you bet the pot and go all in every time, on every issue, and never admit that you might have stepped in it even when you are covered head to toe with a three foot layer of the foulest elephant dung that any diseased pachyderm ever pooped out.

Deny, deny, deny: always the featured item on the menu of Fundies, con men and alcoholics everywhere. Just keep charging blindly ahead, heedless of the horrific damage you’re inflicting: Keep calling it “confident” and “decisive” and focus on saying anything and doing anything that keeps you one bounced-check ahead of the carnage.

Or put another way: being infallable means never having to say you're sorry.

Except that somebody went and moved the damned tackling dummy...so wave to the funny Republicans as they sprint right out of the stadium and into traffic.

Guess what I do for a living?

Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo

In a world gone “spla”, run by feebleminded dry-drunk oil-princes, bulwarked by Elmer Gantry and Elmer Fudd, one can perhaps be forgiven for looking for a little stability. A couple of square feet of firm terra on which to plant one’s feet. Things like...
...the Cubs will always blow it. Always, always, always.
...Chief executives will always be shocked – shocked! – as childhood friends, cronies and the guys that danced at their kid’s wedding are hauled off by the job lot for illegally scoring contracts that the Chief Executive’s lieutenants (again, just shocking) had rigged up for them.
...day or night, there will always be a killer blues band, jazz trio, hot dog stand and top shelf rib joint open somewhere in the Windy City, if you know where to look.

And Italian gentlemen of leisure with nomes de guerre like “Big Tuna”, “Hambone”, “Twan”, “The Clown” and “Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo” (OK, I’m ripping one of those off from “The Simpsons”) always be perp walked in and out of the federal courthouse in the Loop.

We here all know who they are, where they like to eat and what they do for a living. We know that in the body of the story the Teamsters, trucking and Vegas will always somehow be mentioned. There will be a crusading federal prosecutor. At some point it becomes a comfort -- Chicago, the Stockholm Syndrome by the Lake: The cycles of the moon shall ever be fixed and unvarying, there will always be an England, and the lineal descendents of Scarface Al will always get a good table at La Scarola.

Clown missing from mob
Lombardo vanishes from regular haunts
By Ray GibsonTribune staff reporterPublished April 26, 2005

For more than 50 years, Joseph Lombardo has called the West Town neighborhood his home--at least, whenever he wasn't in prison. An early riser, he was often seen
since his 1992 release from prison riding his bicycle with a small cigar firmly planted between his lips.But when federal agents went to the 2200 block of West Ohio Street Monday morning to pick him up, Lombardo was nowhere to be found.Lombardo was one of just two of the indicted members of the mob not under arrest when the Operation Family Secrets charges were announced Monday afternoon.

Lombardo, 76, has known he has been a target for months. His attorney, Rick Halprin, has said Lombardo was being looked at as a suspect in the 1974 slaying of Daniel Seifert. Seifert was a Bensenville businessman scheduled to testify against Lombardo and others in a Teamster pension fund fraud case.Halprin has said Lombardo was at a Chicago police station at the time of the slaying."We will have to wait and see," Halprin said of whether his client would surrender.
...
Lombardo has done two stretches in federal prison. He was released in 1992 after serving 10 years on two separate federal convictions. He was convicted of conspiring to bribe U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon of Nevada for help in defeating a trucking deregulation bill and convicted in a mob scheme to skim $2 million from a Las Vegas casino.
...
Fuesel told Lombardo's wife that the agents were not going to leave, and Lombardo came out a half hour later and accepted the subpoena.But Monday morning, Lombardo was nowhere to be found.

Oops.

You sure got a purdy blog.

I got's me a computer too.

Who are these people?

I don’t mean the gen-u-ine debaters who know how to actually argue a point, and concede their position when they lose. I just got back from a four-hour dinner with an old friend – a purdy lady friend – and for most of the evening we jousted aggressively over a whole range of things. Firm but respectful, lightening quick and both of us able to back off and rethink if it turned out we were full of it.

Add wine and a dessert cart so laden with the Devil’s own private stash of caloric wonderfulness that they needed a full team of Holstein oxen to drag it pornographically back and forth in front of us, and its fun for the whole family.

So not that kind of argument. Hell, I live for that kind of shit, y’know? Someone to push against. And there are several places where I and a Moderate Republican would agree wholeheartedly and were these different times, different standards and manners would be called for. But this is here and now, and I will not have any such conversations by the light of a burning cross.

Period.

Kick the Fundy Ultras to the curb or shut the fuck up, because we have absolutely nothing to discuss until you clean the pirahannas out the kiddie pool. In fact, since you obviously know who and what these monsters and, and you persist in wrapping your lips lovingly around their throbbing hate gristle, that actually make you worse than them. Because you know better, and yet still abet people causes you know damned are evil, with your eyes wide open.

But in principle I love a good argument.

OTOH...who are these other people? The Rove Warriors. The vomiters of undigested rightwing propaganda. The ones who will just scream that 2+2="Houseboat" over and over an over again...until the party line changes, and then pivot 180 degrees and start screaming that Houseboats Hate America an 2+2=”the conspiracy of Terrorist left-wing Judges and various Usual Suspect mountebanks.” Just rabid-otter-crazy shit, boomed out in 120 Decibel San Serif Font.

They persuade no one. Whatever cause they’re dimly trying to champion is only made more ridiculous and mockable by fact that such lunatics embrace it and Jesus, do I really want that as a ideological bunk mate?

So exactly who and what are these critters once you peel back the anonymity the Web affords us ? Husk them out of their safe little sniper’s nests...what do we find? It interests me.

I'll leave it to trained forensic ontological entomologists (shorter: who let the Fundy mealy bugs into the Metaphysics!?) to do the hard science: all's I know is, their psychological ordure is crawling with worms and with bad crazy stink. So an objective profile of these creatures I will leave to professionals. Subjectively, in my head, here's what they look like to me:


Waddling himself across the room is an effort, but plugging the microwave into the overloaded, daisy-chained power strips by his computer would blow the circuit. Besides, heating his pick-me-ups in the tiny, mossy bathroom in the hall is…efficient. He can plump down on his ancient, gray toilet, absently Brailling the waffle pattern the rattan chair leaves on his huge, pale ass, and thinking of cool stuff while his pick-me-ups cook.

The corpulent man loves “efficient”, but hates to be away from the computer. He knows they’re talking about him, the computer people. Talking constantly about him, all over the world. Some are afraid of him, of his powers. Most just wait silently – reverently -- for more of his wisdom to pour out.

But they are all envious. They’re all sick with it. Sick with envy for his powers.

His tiny, hairless dog butt-scoots furiously back and forth between his fat, varicose feet, yipping impatiently for its portion of whatever’s on the menu, when suddenly the phrase “They shall be a portion for foxes” erupts orgasmically through the doughy man’s head.

And, “But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.” And, “But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: for the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.” He remembers that last part of the 63rd Psalm was Mommy’s favorite when he was little. She would read it over and over to him. About how all the liars would die, and he and Mommy would be exalted.

Digging his pinguid toes into the gritty, green shag carpet, he feels comforted. Memories of “outside”, walking in the grass with Mommy years and years ago, before the liars and the coloreds and the spics and the girls and the jews started ruining everything. Mommy explained to him that they – all of them -- envied him his powers.

But now she’s old and yellow and smelly. She’s one of the liars now, and afraid of his power. She is fearful and envious of his vast powers, so she makes war on him. A weekly war of attrition; of who will run out of supplies first? Will Mommy burn through her Pall Malls and Bristol Cream before the bloated man runs out of his pick-me-ups?

As it happens, one of his many vast powers is strategy, so he usually wins. He visits many websites and subscribes to many magazines, and knows – for example -- the minds of the US soldiers, the average Iraqi, all terrorists, all insurgents and every Muslim in the whole wide world better than any other human being. He has written many letters to many people in Washington offering his services, but they have not replied.

Envy. Envy everywhere.

To be honest, this week the battle had been closely contested. He completely exhausted his cache of Aunt Honeybear’s Xtra-Loaded Tater Skins, the Veri-gud Cheddar and Ham Spirals, the Lil’ Chikun Pies, the Mac & Cheeze & Cheeze & Cheeze, the BeefPacks and even the Choco-Monster Breakfast Dots and SugarMilk.

He was almost through his extra emergency case of Vienna Pork Sausages, when she shrieked down the stairs that she was going out to the store. He shrieked back that he had left a list by the front door.

Victory!

The faded rattan chair groans in misery as the lumpy, naked man sits back down.

The keyboard is crusted with a hoarfrost of sticky, brown smudges and petrified crumbs. The “Ctrl”, the “C” and the “V” keys are a solid, gooey black: one of his many, many vast powers is his gift for copying and pasting things.

The sojourn back from the bathroom leaves him weak and whiffling for breath, but it’s time to get back to work. Time to share his vast powers with the silent millions who he knows wait anxiously for his next pronouncement, no matter what the loud girls and jews and liars say. He pokes another little sausage in his mouth.

His angry, microscopic dog clambers up his tree-trunk leg, along his spongy arm and finds a wattled perch on the shoulder of the huge man. It digs its claws into the man’s flesh. The man likes the pain. It vaguely reminds him of something he can’t quite dredge back up. Something from childhood. Something about Mommy and his vast powers.

The dog whispers to the massive, ruined man, “OK, bitch, start typing.”

The man complies.

Well, it appears that Harry Reid has a pair

.

And they appear to be made of Brass.

This from Reid in a blogger conference call today via Air America.

(BTW, for those in foreign lands, this is how a US Senator says, "Toss my Moromon Fucking Salad you dumabass wingnut phuquetards. And Don't forget the 'taint'." in Congress-speak.)

What is the sound of one hand slapping?

Happy Happy.
Joy Joy.

SENATOR REID ON NUCLEAR/CONSTITUTIONAL GOP NAME GAMES
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, on a conference call with bloggers today: They’re great with names… On Social Security, they’ve been trying to call private accounts “personal accounts.” They can talk about the constitutional option all they want. It’s privatization, and it’s the nuclear option. They created those terms, and they’re going to wear them around their necks from now till Doomsday.

Little Red State Fundy sez...

Whatever will we tell the children?


One day we will have to explain to the children what happened when Thurston Howell III lost his right mind and decided that for the sake of some tax cuts to make him incrementally more comfortable, his very bestest buddies in the whole, wide world were the Ultra Right Wing Gorgons down in Jesusland.

May I suggest the following?

The Story of Little Red State Fundy

Little Red State Fundy found a grain of hate.

"Who will help me plant the hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she buried the hate in the bloody ground of the Old Confederacy. After a while it grew up paranoid and ignorant and violent.

"The hate is ripe now," said Little Red State Fundy. "Who will do the mass mailings and preach bigotry from the Pulpit?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she licked envelopes until her bill was cracked and dry and stood up into the House of God and crowed to her flocks in their millions that God Loved Them for hating and killing creatures who were not like them.

Then she asked, "Who will help me focus this hatred politically?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she made databases and phone banks, and walked door-to-door with petitions that talked of Gods Great Hatred of Gays, and Gods Great Hatred of Judges that did not worship the Hate God in exactly the way the Little Red State Fundy told them to.

Then she carried the hate to steps of the Congress and the White House.

"Who will make a mandate from this hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she got on the phone with her very good friend Karl Rove and with his help organized carpools to the polls, and get-out-the-vote drives, anti-gay marriage amendments and smear campaigns. For Jesus.

And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything.

And now everybody knew it.

Then she said, "Now who shall help me Rule the Earth."

"We will!" said Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red State Fundy, "but see, now you are all my bitches."

Then she called Randall Terry and Tom DeLay and Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson, and they and the rest of the Shining Path Republicans used what was left of the Constitution as ass-floss.
And judges were terrorized into silence.
And those deemed ungodly were beaten in the streets.
And they invaded whoever the fuck they felt like, for whatever fucking reason they chose.
And the very idea of a Free and Fair press died.

And to people who had been very clear all along that they genuinely believed in a Theocratic Nanny State and thought that precipitating Armageddon and triggering the Second Coming should be the highest calling of any worldly government, were handed over the police, courts, government, treasury and nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States of America.

And in the end -- just as they had been warned for the past twenty years -- there was nothing whatsoever left at all for Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

Closer...Closer...

Too Close!

It's not a palindrome!

The palindrome of Bolton would be Notlob. It don't work!

First, based on the “Not Lob” questions that the “Suddenly Spineful!” Dems have been firing across the plate, I must say it appears that, once again, Monty Python has proven to be the prescient source of all wise things.

So good on them: credit where credit is due and so forth.

Second, while Bolton seems to be the very embodiment of the whole Bush Package -- flagrant disregard for the facts in favor of a creepy, absolutist ideology...oily suck-uppery when it comes to making with the lavish boss-anal-labiation...some particular species of world-class incompetence that makes him uniquely unsuited for the position into which he’s being rammed...a contempt for those beneath him that would make a Prussian Aristocrat blush – he nonetheless seems to be lacking a certain...subtle...something.

I can’t quite put my finger on it...

Ohhhh....shiny!

OK, three things that men like to play with.**

Two stories, one paper, same day. So what do they have in common?

First story: farce and embarrassment.

4 charged in sting at massage parlor
Published April 23, 2005
GLENVIEW -- Two employees of a Glenview business and two customers face prostitution-related charges following an undercover investigation, police said Friday. Nick Mellas, 54, of the 100 block of East Grand Avenue, Fox Lake, was charged with keeping a house of prostitution, and Kassandra Malone, 26, of the 900 block of Shattuck Lane, Schaumburg, was charged with one count of prostitution following their arrest Thursday at Eden Inc., 3090 N. Lake Ter., a massage parlor, police said.
During a sting operation at the business Thursday, investigators charged Dennis Dorman, 58, of the 800 block of Summit Drive, Deerfield, and Martin Shuster, 54, of the 700 block of Equestrian Drive, Wheeling, with solicitation of a sex act, police said...

Second story: stupidity and tragedy. And I will refrain from suggesting that the fact that the story features a reckless gun owner named Thomas Paine in the 90% White Suburb of Stickney has anything to do with anything.

Dad thought gun `out of reach'
Boy's shooting death accidental, family says
By Joseph SjostromTribune staff reporterPublished April 23, 2005
The gun that a 3-year-old boy shot himself to death with this week in an accident "was thought to have been placed out of his reach," according to a statement released Friday by his family.
Tommy Paine was struck in the head by a bullet from a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol Wednesday morning in his father's Stickney home, then died a few hours later in a Berwyn hospital, police said.The boy's father, Thomas Paine, can't say where the gun was when his son found it, said Dan Proft, a Chicago publicist retained by a lawyer for the Thomas family. "He's retracing his steps in an effort to figure that out," Proft said.
...
Meanwhile Friday, a gun-safety program funded by the federal government and organized by a gun industry trade organization, announced that free gunlocks were going to be distributed nationwide to the public soon. A statement from Project ChildSafe said an announcement would be made Tuesday at the Stickney police station...

The local CBS affiliate also reported Stickney Police Deputy Chief Carl Jozefik has said that "No improprieties" had been found in connection with the gun or the father's firearm ownership identification card.

”Stickney does not require handgun owners to register their guns with the town, but advises all gun owners to use gun locks,” said Stickney Police Cmdr. Gary Dunow.

”No gun lock was found in the home,” Stickney Police Sgt. John Sladetz said.


So what do they have in common?

Flip the elements around and see how they read then:

As a matter of public safety, gun locks – the most tepid and very least intrusive gun control there is -- become mandatory. You become criminally liable if you don’t use one. Your name will go in the paper, even if the weapon was never actually fired. In fact it’s so important that cops will devote their incredibly scarce resources to staging undercover sting operations just to make sure-sure that gun owners know they’re serious about children not dying.

OTOH, ”While prostitution is not illegal in our town, we advise all potential johns to use gun locks. Sorry, what I meant to say was ‘condoms.’” becomes police SOP.

Culture of Life my ass.



** (Disclaimer: driftglass would like the stunning Ms. Rosario Dawson to know that he in no way implies any connection between her and the field of professional sex worker, but meant simply that any straight man with a pulse would merrily crawl through an acre of white hot broken glass, concertina wire and peeved weasles to sit next to her on the bus. In fact, if Ms. Dawson wishes further elaboration, driftglass would be very, very happy to cover this matter with her in much greater detail over drinks, anywhere, anytime.)

I'm a Man! An Anchor-MAN!

Juan Williams hard at work in the Fox Research Library

First off, is that a cute kid or what?

The attached was an open letter from me to Juan Williams asking him to confront the liar on his right with that liar's own words. I posted it up a couple of months ago at Kos’ estimable establishment, and I bring it over here for a several reasons:

• The facts still remain the facts. Brit “Evil Gumby sans Botox” Hume did most definitely lie. He has been an unabashed a pimp for the Bush family for decades, but in this case he not only used his position to “Strongarm Williams” the Preznit’s agenda, but he fucking well lied to do it.
• Hume will ever be Wormwood’s own press flak, but Juan Williams continues to dine out on his “Liberal” credentials, and Fox continues to pick up the tab. Williams speaks for no one but himself and his masters and IMHO the Quislings and the kapos that continue to pretend to side with us always need to be loudly called to account for their sins.
• Like a gift from some Rodney Dangerfield God, Social Security is still a dead horse that the Preznit will not allow his loyal orcs to stop beating. He’s thrown his mother, small children and filing cabinets at us, and the American public still wants him to STFU already. So OK, a lie is a lie is a lie, true enough, but this one is still very much attached to a story with momentum.
• To demonstrate it is possible for driftglass to go on for whole paragraphs at a time without so much as suggesting that Moderates and Accommodationists should use various farm implements to gratify themselves sexually. Repeatedly. Anally. Then die.
• This was and is no small matter. It was thoroughly tracked and covered. It was all over Kos, MediaMatters, Atrio, et al. And from the MSM, not a whisper. Not a peep. Not a discouraging word.
• If any of you lovely people would like to send this letter along to Mr. Williams, letting him know that we still await an answer, that'd be cool. If, however, you know Mr. Williams or can contact him, or happen upon him in a public venue, or he’s got a speaking gig...

Dear Mr. Williams,
This weekend you will again be on the air in front of millions of Americans, and will be sitting 15 feet away from Mr. Brit Hume. Mr. Hume has said some remarkably hateful and stupid things in his long and ugly career as Loyal Bush Family Retainer, but Sunday , February 13th represented a new low even for him.

Comparing the likes of "Manwhore" Jeff Gannon with a distinguished, award-winning journalist such as Ms. Helen Thomas and the legendary Mark Twain shows a level of sneering contempt on Mr. Hume's part for both the truth and the public interest he is supposed to serve that leaves me feeling physically ill. Because Ms. Thomas is "liberal" and Gannon is "conservative", we are apparently supposed to ignore all of the many, rancid facts of this case that are actually relevant, including the sad irony that Ms. Thomas has been effectively gagged and forced to sit in the back, while the Administration has given pride of place to a male-prostitute-cum-fake-journalist. The Twain rationale is equally squalid: that since Mark Twain was a reporter (among other things) who wrote under a nom de plume, and so is Gannon, we should all just shut up and forget the actual facts.

It is painfully obvious that Fox News has given up any pretext of objectivity, but you, Mr. Williams, give these sock-puppets the veneer of credibility. The presence of you & Ms. Liasson on the panel every Sunday allow them maintain the fiction that "Fair & Balanced" is something other than an international punch-line. By acting as the ineffectually whining token minority/liberal, you stooge for your enemies, Mr. Williams, and you harm your friends.

So far, what Mr. Hume has said about Gannon-gate are matters of his opinion. They are despicable and ludicrous opinions, obviously intended to smokescreen the Administration's misdeeds (And when exactly did that become a journalist's job, Mr. Williams?) but they are opinions nonetheless. However as I am sure you know, Mr. Hume has also recently lied about Social Security. Not opined: Lied.

Mr. Hume cut-and-pasted quotes from a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt like a ransom note, deliberately inverting the meaning of the original text to make it appear that FDR would have and did support the privatization of Social Security.

That is a lie, and one that has been widely reported. There is no subtlety or nuance here: The original text is in the public domain, as are Mr. Hume's lies, which have been dutifully repeated by other Republican apparatchiks. So the simple question is, why hasn't Mr. Hume resigned? Or why hasn't he been fired? It seems to me that what's good for Dan Rather should certainly be good enough for Brit Hume.

Unfortunately Mr. Williams, members of the general public do not have any public platform from which to challenge Mr. Hume on his lies, but you do. I challenge you to confront a liar with his own words, and ask him why he should keep his job when Dan Rather had to lose his. You will be sitting 15 feet away from Mr. Hume and millions of us will be watching you to see what you are really made of.

This is a job for a journalist, Mr. Williams: Please just do your job.

Turns out I'm a Googlewhack.

So I've got that for me.

First, thanks to the Alert Reader who emailed me this Vital Information. What does one say on such an auspicious occassion? Even after years of public speaking (raving on trains still counts, right?) I am left bereft.

Second, well, it's an honor just to be nominated :-)

Third, looks like I'll have to have another "little talk" with Mom. She always swore we were Irish. Well, this isn't going to be pleasant.

Fourth, because apparently God thinks I'm not a big enough mutant as/is, it seems that I actually participate in more than one Googlewhack, which might be some kind of anti-record for Most Consistently Obscure MetaGooglewhack Leitmotif. Can you be the first kid on you blog to find 'em all?!

Fifth? Sure, I'd love one. Say a nice Speyburn, in its late teens.

But they’re cousins, identical cousins all the way.

Spot the rodent.

I pulled this up out of a reply to specific comments, because the question of why bother with Brooks at all, and who reads the NYT anymore anyway comes up here and elsewhere, and I think it deserves an answer.

It seem very clear to me that BoBo is many laughably obtuse things, but BoBo Don't Surf. He isn't simply misguided and there is little chance that he's ever going to see the light and change his mind: he reasons backwards from his ideology into his limp diatribes, instead of forward from the facts to a reasonable conclusion.

Instead (and in answer to those questions) I believe Brooks is a serious, committed Wingnut middleman -- sort of the Fundamentalist's pet PBS Mennonite -- which IMHO is much more dangerous than a fully outed DeLay.

Brooks' job is to sell the poison to the Center: to reassure the Moderates and “Reagan Democrats” and to coax the Undecideds into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck by dandying their evil up in perfumed NYT-speak, and since the battle for the future of the country takes places in the middle, these wingnuts-in-sheeps-clothing are the ones that deserve extra-special beatings.

The good news is, BoBo obviously doesn't know he's an idjit. Instead, he thinks he's tricksey, which is why he keeps obligingly waddling into the thresher blades.

Other stuff

In answer to a question, yes, I write other things.

This morning, for example, it’s cold and raining in Chicago. Gelid…which is a word I don’t get to use a lot in polite conversation :) And it put me in mind of this little bit from Longfellow’s “Midnight Mass for the Dying Year”: And the hooded clouds, like friars/ Tell their beads in drops of rain.

And for no particular reason this came to me, so I jotted it down. So there you go.

As I went down in the river to pray

The best verse he could ever write
Alit on his shoulder as he stepped in the shower
While thinking that he had to remember
To pack shorts and sandals for his trip.

In twenty dancing diamond lines,
A full compass ‘round the life of Christ.
He smiled and shampooed his thinning hair.
“Sandals,” he thought, laughing. “Sandals!”

And then recalled he’d forgotten to order toner.
Oh, and buy Q-tips. And the potatoes had gone soft.
Then the bulb that lit the bathroom snuffed out,
And he tried to remember if he had a spare.

Later, standing, pen in hand, soapy, wet and crying,
Failing to tempt back the finest words that would ever come his way.
They had had something to do with sandals. And light.
And the eccentric way that prayers are answered.

Jesus stood in the doorway, barefoot and invisible.
“Hush now, son,” He whispered. “Don’t be like that.”
Remember, sometimes the music’s for the many,
And sometimes the music’s just for you.

Do NOT give this man your credit card number.

And no, he has no sexy younger sister in a prison in Spain.

I saw this...

Pope Benedict XVI Gets E-Mail Address
By Associated PressPublished April 21, 2005, 8:44 AM CDT
VATICAN CITY --
"Got a prayer or a problem for the new pope? Now you can e-mail him. Showing that Pope Benedict XVI intends to follow in the footsteps of John Paul II's multimedia ministry, the Vatican on Thursday modified its Web site so that users who click on an icon on the home page automatically activate an e-mail composer with his address. In English, the address is benedictxvi@vatican.va. In Italian: benedettoxvi@vatican.va.
Vatican spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment on how many messages Benedict may have received already... "

So how in the name of all that is Holy could I have possibly stopped myself from writing this:


FROM: Pope Benedict XVI
E-MAIL: benedictxvi@vatican.va
BUSINESS PROPOSAL

ATTN: PRESIDENT/CEO,
My name is Pope Benedict XVI, head of a Major Religion
as well as head of a Task Force on Priest Pedophilia Clean-up.
As you might have read, late last Century there was a major
outbreak of Priest Pedophilia in the United States Region of
North America which rendered over 70% of our Dogma ludicrous.
The cleanup/cover-up was handled by a Vatican Firm but because
of the huge monetary amounts involved we decided to
over-invoice the contract sum.

Now the cover-up has been completed and the original
contractor has since been paid, but the contract
balance of US$38 million, which resulted from the over
invoiced contract sum that has been left in a suspense
account with the BANCO AMBROSIANO of ITALY, is
what me and my partners are planning to take out of the
coffers for ourselves. The problem is as Princes of the Church,
we are not suppose to own fat bank accounts, much less talk of
having foreign ones.

To this end, we are soliciting your assistance as a
foreign partner who can assist us and receive this
amount into your account. We are ready to share this
money with you on the basis of participation. We also
have plans to invest part of this money in any viable
business in your country under your care, as although we
are only recently installed, we are nonetheless also
nearing our retirement age.

In any case, I got your contact through network on
line hence decided to write you if you can assist us on
this transaction. Please if you accept my proposal do
not hesitate to send me an e-mail on:
benedictxvi@vatican.va, so that I can provide you
with the basic procedures for the release of the fund.

It does not matter whether you or your company does
Pedophilic Cover-ups of the nature described here, the
assumption is that you won a major contract and
subcontracted it to another company, more often than
not, big trading companies or individuals of unrelated
field win major contracts here in ITALY and
subcontracts same to more specialized firms for execution.

BENEFIT: For providing the account where we shall
remit this money, you will be entitled to 25% of the
entire funds, 70% will be for me and my partners, while
5% has been set aside to cover any expenses that may
be incurred by both parties during this transaction,
both local and international.

Please I enjoin you to handle this transaction with
utmost degree of maturity and confidentiality because,
although Infallable on matters of Doctine, I am still liable
for Administrative matters as head of the Church of Christ.
If I receive your response on time, this whole transaction
could be accomplished within the shortest possible
time based on your interest and determination, since
the money is already in transit.

Please, if you are capable and willing to participate in
this transaction, don`t forget to reach me with my e-mail
address soonest. Alternatively Feel free to call me on my
private telephone line at the VATICAN OFFICE OF SPECIAL
INQUIRY soon as you received this mail.
The lines may be busy, but keep trying till you get through.

Yours Infallably,

Benedict XVI (Papal Nuncio).

BoBo pleads for “compromise”. Again.

Just hold still and we’ll skin you with a better knife.

Short Brooks is Same-As-It-Ever-Was Brooks: Let’s cooperate. You bend over a trifle further and we’ll screw you a bit less brutally.

This from today’s NYT where, owing to forces that I find incomprehensible, David Brooks still draws a paycheck for tasks completely unrelated to filling the vending machines up with fresh cookies and HoHo’s at night. And, yes, I add in a word or two.

"Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American. When he and his Supreme Court colleagues issued the Roe v. Wade decision, they set off a cycle of political viciousness and counter-viciousness that has poisoned public life ever since, and now threatens to destroy the Senate as we know it."

No you tube worm – the Senate is threatened by your party. By your extremists. By your lunatics. Every Party has its nutjobs, Brooksie, but not every Party hands them the keys to the vehicle and then points a webbed finger at the Other Party and shouts “J'Accuse!” you truckling little pecksniff.

Maybe you didn’t get the message, or maybe you think hawking the same, old GOP Thalidomide in a world populated by the offspring it helped cripple is still a successful marketing plan, so let me say this reeeeal slooow so that there’s no misunderstanding: Mixing carbolic acid and lemonade and selling it to children as a “compromise” is not a compromise: it’s settling for poisoning children at a slightly slower pace that you had hoped for.

Go peddle “capitulation to lunatics as a square deal” on eBay, ‘cause we ain’t buying any.

"When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate."

“The centrist majority?” Just like slavery was settled amicably by the Missouri Compromises II, III and IV?

Or was the Jim Crow Apartheid that rotted away in the Red States for a hundred years after the Civil War whisked away by a “series of state-by-state compromises” and I just didn’t notice? Segregation? The ban on interracial marriage? And the ban on teaching Evolution?

Transpose any other basic civil rights issue onto the template BoBo proposes as the reasonable alternative to Kwazy Judicial Activism and the texture and density of the shit that he is packed with jumps right out at you.

I dunno which is more amusing: the thought that BoBo actually believes the diarrhea the comes bubbling out of his pie-hole, or that he thinks people just don’t notice the Giant Fundy Dildo rammed so ballistically up his nether regions that its chubby head actually pops right out of his pie-hole like a Jack-Chick-in-the-Box and says "Howdy Cowboy".

A dildo – by the way – it would actually be illegal for BoBo to purchase in the fine state of Alabama. Thanks to their level-headed “ centrist majority.”

"Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion, and imposed a solution more extreme than the policies of just about any other comparable nation."

No they articulated a right to privacy (do you ever get a single thing right?) which is as implicit in every other right mentioned in the Constitution as is the right to breathe, which the Founders also did not specify, because I guess they never anticipated the existence of the New York Times, or that it would one day decide that a myopic Sugar Glider should have its own column.

Then there’s more Peevish White Noise strung together to form sentences. Phrases like “right and left” and “pro-life or pro-choice” and “tit-for-tat”: the “Tyranny of False Bisection.” Both sides -- the barking mad and the reasonable -- somehow both equally wrong. Idiot.
…

Every few years another civilizing custom is breached. Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away.
In response, Republicans now threaten to change the Senate rules and end the filibuster on judicial nominees. That they have a right to do this is certain. That doing this would destroy the culture of the Senate and damage the cause of limited government is also certain.
..."

And again, BoBo fills up his incredibly pricey column inches with a lot of empty puling and cavorting and zero-sum-game masturbating on the glories to compromise and centrism…before he gets to the razor he has tried to hide in the candy bar.

BoBo, do you know what Centrism actually looks like? It looks remarkably like the Democratic Party with Bill Clinton in the White House. Center-right, to be accurate and y’all even got NAFTA, GAT, Welfare Reform and a bunch of other goodies from the Eternal Republican Wish List thrown in to the deal.

And as a big “Thank You”, you blocked 35% of his judicial nominees (a little statistic that Mr. Fair ‘n Balanced very conspicuously omitted because it made his whole thesis look like the puddle of damp excreta that it actually is), and are now raving that Dems blocking 4% is somehow an unprecedented breaching of “another civilizing custom”.

"The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can't stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better. "

“Fact is” you wormy little Quisling, the Dems spent the 90’s compromising their fool asses off – precisely like it says right here on the prescription that Dr. BoBo wrote out for us.

For their troubles they got Newt Gingrich and his GOPAC Little Red Hatespeech Book launching a carefully planned, deliberately executed verbal blitzkrieg again the Democratic Party. A coordinated national campaign of that came with a detailed list of words (Free In Every Box of Cracka’ Jacks!) to be used to demonization and humiliate Democrats at every opportunity.

For their troubles we get Tom DeLay rising like the Asshole Kraken from the absolute depths of bigoted-ignorant-demagogue-politics to become a proud leader of your party. And trailing behind him like the smelly brown tail of a feculent comet, all the rest of the escapees from “The Island of Doctor Moreau” that own and operate the GOP.

For their troubles they got the Democratic President of the United States hunted like a wild animal for seven years – for sport – by Republicans riding along on a rhetorical tsumani of Absolute Ethical Standards. Virtually shutting the country down to impeach him for a b-l-o-w-j-o-b, not because you wanted to -- Heavens No! -- but because any hint of impropriety on the part of any president need to be ferreted out, no matter the cost.

Well the per-capita number of Ferrets in your party has certainly skyrocketed since then, so where are all the investigations of the possible High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the administration of George Walker Bush? Where are the Select Committees? The Special Prosecutors with unlimited lines of credit? Has Cheney been excoriated and rebuked for secretly rigging up a new energy policy? Has GW been subpoenaed yet? Has Rice? Perle?

Of course not, BoBo, because your party is infested top to bottom with CHUDS and poltroons, liars and hypocrites, Elmer Gantrys and Jeff Gannons. You already own the Executive and Legislative branches and the only thing standing between them and the Jesusland, Inc. fantasy that you all cream over is the courts…

…so let’s expend a Brooksie columns beating up on judges by cowardly proxy. Hey, how about Liberal Supreme Court Judges? Who are dead? And how about we try to throw the dogs off the scent by waving the word “Abortion” around and seeing if that’ll confuse them.

Face it, BoBo in the sharp illumination of your party’s own words and deeds, you sound idiotic, but hey, if you really want to disarm and play nice, fine. And since we spent a decade trying to find compromise with the "Napalm a Progressive for Christ" wing of your party (now better known now simple as The Republicans) and got our skulls bashed in with big, old GOP crowbars for our trouble, how about you going first, and we’ll meet you at the half-way point.

The REAL halfway point, which at the rate your party has being sprinting into the doughy arms of the Fundamentalists, is now about nine billion miles to your left.