Sunday Mornin' Came and Went – Part II.

The “Day Late/ Dollar Short” edition.

In which Gingrich and McCain command us all to: “Be Excellent to Each Other!”


Here’s Newt! (On Meet the Press)

First a preamble ramble…

I had friends, years ago, who hated the fact that I actually listened to Newt. Who would respond so viscerally as to the run screaming from the room -- WAUGGGGH! -- whenever his fat vole visage came lunkering onto the teevee.

And I didn’t blame them one bit: Newt is a human disease. But the thing is, he’s not just any disease, and not just any vector. Newt is the political Patient Zero of the GOP Hate Machine, and he needs to be studied for precisely that reason

He bears studying because he is the GOP’s own “O’Brien”, the real villain of Orwell’s “1984”. The Inner Party character that has been completely engulfed by his own fascistic fantasy of a perfect future of hate and fear and power – forever. Who has become so loyal to the self-lobotomizing act of “doublethink” that makes it possible to maintain a complete Totalitarian State based on literally nothing but lies, torture and murder that he has completely internalized it.

That’s Newt, to a fucking tee. An intelligent man who personally brewed up the raw Kool-Aid likker (three parts rabid hatred to one part boldfaced lie) that he used to nurse the Base along into a fevered, hysterical hatred of Clinton based on trivia and fiction…and who drank so deeply of the dregs of his own witchbrew that now he literally cannot stop himself from going off in a foaming, batshit rage one minute, and then puling about the coarseness of the behavior in the public square the next.

Like the chronically unbathed who eventually stop noticing their own stink, this creepy inability on the part of people that still self-identify as Republicans to notice that their normal patterns of speech and thought are repulsive and offensive is the true legacy of Newt.

He and Rush and all the rest have bred a whole generation of pig people who think nothing whatsoever about casually dropping into conversation the “fact” that Liberals Hate America, but who completely freak out in the most amusing whining-assed-titty-baby way when you simply punch back.

Who blab on about how the “Liberal Elite” destroying the country, despise our soldiers and want to tax working men and women into penury with exactly the same thoughtlessness-borne-of-massive-and-careful-brainwashing with which a German would have offhandedly mentioned the “Dirty Jews” in a different age and in a different land.

And who are, therefore, are no longer capable of comprehending that the Liberal “anger” that they’re so fucking exercised about is not casual sniping, but a long-delayed counterfire. That we generally only target the muzzle flashes of those that ginned up this Culture War for partisan political reasons, and who have been shelling us – virtually unmolested – with the worst kinds of lies and vitriol for 30 year.

And now that we’re firing back…now the Right suddenly freaks out about how Angry the language of politics has become.

Now they suddenly want to have a polite conversation.

So for example, when Noot says that everything the WH has done is legal. Everything. The problem is the WH doesn’t come out and explain what it is doing. They need to beat the living crap out of Senator Leahy.

And is confronted with the plain fact that, two days ago he said (when asked to stand up for the WH) it was “Defending the indefensible.”

How response: I meant, uh, see, what I mean was that…Oh look over there!

A bunch of Liberals who have no trouble with letting Americans be murdered by Evil Islamokillbots.

Run!

It’s Nancy Pelosi!

Then it’s: “What then will you do when you five that there are five terrorists loose in America and they’re going to attack a city, and we haven’t bothered to track them?” Then these same nattering nabobs will want to hold hearing about why you let this awful thing happen.

Then it’s: “I think saying “For Libertarian reasons we would rather lose a city than collect data” is not acceptable.

But of course no one, anywhere, is making that point.

Or is anywhere near that point.

Or is camping on an ideological mountaintop from which that point is visible.

No, its just Newt being Newt. Reasonable-sounding – even vaguely professorial, if your professor sucked lemons and huffed amyl to get on the mood for teaching – right up until the moment when you disagree with him. Then the lips skin back, the eyes disappear into their sockets, and out crawls the bombthrowing shrike who wears his ultrathin, Levelheaded Newt SkinSuit as camouflage.

Nick him , even slightly, and suddenly you are guilty of being happy to consign a million Americans to a fiery death over some stupid principle.

Howard Dean? Why haven't you heard?! Wants to Raise Your Taxes for No Good Reason. He apparently just rolls out of bed each morning looking for ways rifle your kid’s pocket just because he likes taking money away from hardworking American citizens.

Nancy Pelosi? Weaken America.

And at the drop of a rhetorical pin he will reliably conjure up the Worst Possible Case Ever – Liberals using your tax money to, say, air freight American babies to Pakistan so they can be afire and used as skeet by Osama bin Laden – and then loudly demand to know why Liberals want to destroy America.

Ah, how I have missed Newt.

Not just his completely predictable Manufactured Republican Shrieking Hysteria over the obviously-homicidal motives of anyone who might want to tweak marginal tax rates or raise CAFÉ standards.

No, more than that, I miss his completely naked, prototypical Republican hypocrisy.

When, five minutes after he backs a dump truck full of arsenic up to the Well of Public Conversation and poisons it beyond repair, he will then stand on top of the blight he created and weep his tiny, acid tears over the Death of Civil Discourse.

Or, for example, when the tables are even slightly turned on him, as in this exchange about Immigration…

Timmuh: What do you do about the fact you’re breaking up families?

Newt: In the Age of Jet Aircraft…

Timmuh: What about the people whose kids are born here? Don’t your solutions all mean that parents and grandparents would be torn away from their children.

Newt (Getting visibly hostile): For you to take the most extreme the case… You are such a bitch!

(Like implying that if a terror cell were loose in the nation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be trying to feed them intel, give them cover and do it by raising your taxes.)

Newt: There are humane ways to solve this problem.

Timmuh: Really? What are they?

Newt: Shut up.

Followed by a long series of quotes about Newt turning 180 degrees on Iraq. From rabid demands for regime change to rabid demands that everything Dubya touches turns to shit.

Keywords to be found in every sentence used by Newt: Clearly. Unquestionably. There is no doubt.

It was the right thing to do to take Saddam Hussein out. Remember, he paid $25,000 for every suicide bomber (but not a single one who ever attacked or planned to attack America. Ever.)

Q: What about how fucked up everything has been since the GOP took over. Every debt number up. Spending up

A: Nancy Pelosi wants to raise your taxes, take your money and throw it away!

Q: Jack Abramoff?

A: The problem is with BOTH PARTIES.

Q: Campaign Finance Reform?

A: The McCain/Feingold “Censorship Bill” is wrong.

And then old Newt's head spins right around and we get the appeal for comity. We have real things to do in 06. We need to change the political dialog in this country. We need to have real conversations. If we don’t break out of the Partisan Mess we’re in...

Again followed by a complete lack of thunderbolts raining down on the Newtster that was enough to make me doubt that the Flying Spaghetti Monster even exists!

Q: Do you regret the bombthrowing? The bitter, vitriolic rhetoric? Going after Jim Wright personally.

A: We passed lotsa good stuff. President Clinton and I were able to get beyond partisan rhetoric.

driftglass: And then you fuckers impeached him.

If we could ONLY get the two parties to talk to each other. So sad.

Why oh why, Newt wants to know, can’t we all just get along?

Oh and BTW, Nancy Pelosi is in your back bedroom right now, stealing your money to give it to terrorists, setting fire to your puppy and slipping sekrit faggy drugs into your kid’s milk.


The panel on Meet the Press was: John Harwood. Judy Woodruff. John Meacham

Woody: The Preznit REALLY needs a win. I was in Mississippi. The reddest of the red states, and they’re disappointed. Clinton managed after Monica. Reagan after Iran/Contra. But those were one-issue problems. Bush fucks up everything.

Meacham: There’s a lot of drip-drip-drip. Wow. The CIA has gonorrhea? People are pissed about three big things: Iraq, Katrina and the deficit. The preznit is heading into midterms with the lowest poll ratings of any president…since human started taking Presidential polls.

Timmuh: It is interesting to hear Newt – bombthrower and acid-spitter of the first water – talk about being civil. (Insert clip from McCain speech at the Falwell Madrass about how “We’re not enemies. We need to be excellent to each other!”)

And then came two, utterly grotesque quotes back-to-back.

First from Harwood: McCain’s street cred as a maverick is pretty solid.

And the second – and by far the sleaziest – was the throwaway from Timmuh: Some Democrats say, “Maybe its better if we don’t win! Then we’ll have the issues.”

Really Fathead? Which ones? Specifically? Which Dems say that?

Oh Flying Spaghetti Monster I beseech you: can’t you meatball these homunculi back to whatever alternate Universe they came from!


Chris Matthews was interesting because it was the only place where “The Rove that dare not speak its name” was mentioned anywhere on Sunday.

The sorry souls of Matthews’ Sunday Slagpit were: Elizabeth Bumiller. Andrea Mitchell. Howie Fineman. Bill Carter.

Howie: The preznit has lost the one thing he had going for him. His rep for honesty.

Mitchell: People still put security over privacy.

Matthews: But lets say, on 9/10, the gummint had all this data.

Mitchell: But they did have it. They had the chatter. They had tapes. They just didn’t do shit all about it.

Carter: Do people in KC care that they’re being watched and listened to by Big Brother.

Matthews: Whither Karl?

Carter: The Press has built up this image of Rove as having Dark Powers.

driftglass: Yes. The Press. Whooooo! The Omnipotent, Invisible Press. In other words, “Not us.”

Mitchell: Rove is a great political strategist. Roves problem is his relations with the Hill. With policy. He is completely incompetent to do those things. He has blown everything.

driftglass: No, Rove’s great strength is that he is a political sociopath. He is quite willing to stoop vastly lower and go vastly filthier and more despicable than any other human in his peer group. And while that works well in stampeding the Fundies to the polls, it doesn’t play so well inside the legislative/policy-making process.

Put another way, if by “policy” you mean laws and practices that will divide and inflame people's hatreds to the temporary advantage of the House of Bush and to the long-term detriment of the country then, by God, Rove is your man.

But if you mean laws and practices that create a template for working together for the common good, Rove doesn’t have a fucking clue what that would even mean. He seems to simply be unable to comprehend the function of anything that can’t or won’t be used as partisan napalm.

On the subject of the Death of the Evening News…

Howie: Watching the news used to be a “ceremonial act”. Not anymore.

Bumiller: I’m not home at 6:30, so I don’t watch the evening news. If they put it on at 9:00 I’d watch, but they won’t.

Howie: This is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

All inside baseball on ratings and demos. Not a breathe about WHAT these people watch or don’t watch or WHY they do or don’t tune in.

driftglass: People tune into their teevee screens for three reasons: Miniseries, porn and weather. 9/11 – in addition to the thousand other things it was -- was a perfect teevee miniseries. A vast, tragic story, unfolding with great complexity in real-time across nations. It was designed for television.

But news, opinion, etc? Why would I ever carve out a sliced of my valuable evening to watch a hair-puppet read from a TelePrompTer when I can get all of that, on demand, updated practically real-time, from anywhere?