Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.

Pounded out on horseback because outside it’s warm and inviting and full of waves of quantum potentiality that have not actualized into dirty dishes and unpaid bills,

Also I have a series of chats and noshes with friends set up like archipelagos over the next 48 hours.

So down into it, boys, and the Devil take the hindmost! And remember, like Slate Magazine, all quotes here are hand-hewn to a rough likeness of verisimilitude.

Or just plain made-up.


On Fox:

Herr Senator Doktor Fristy and Dick Durbin.

In which Fristy explains that he’s not really a whore because there are some things he won’t do. Like, say, anal with a Cabbage Patch Doll.

Wallace: You said this Immigration Package is a “success”. Is it a success for the American people that dirty wetbacks are coming into our glorious country, stealing Social Security from grandma? Is it a success for the American people that we now have to beg Mexico’s permission to protect our own country?

Fristy: Well, it’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. But it’s hard. It’s the Will ‘O the Senate (Translation: Not my fault!)

Wallace: Would you accept a bill that would take out a “path to citizenship”?

Fristy: Well, it’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. (Translation: Don’t look at me!) But we gotta have Death Star-strong border security. You gotta have a com-pre-hensive thing going on down there.

Wallace: Aren’t you a (insert ominous music) flip-flopper? On 10/25/05, and again in March of this year you were telling your conservative base that you wanted to ship ‘em all the fuck back.

Fristy: It’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill. (Translation: My ass is not fat!)

Wallace: Why was it amnesty in October and amnesty in March, but now you voted for it?

Fristy: Blither, blabber, tap-dance. It’s not perfect and I don’t agree with everything in the bill (Translation: Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault. I am powerless I tell’s ya! Powerless. You should be taking this up with the Majority Leade… Oh. Never mind.)

Wallace: How much danger is the Senate is of being lost to the vile Democrats?

Fristy: Some. Of course the reason for the discontent is the mysterious increase in gas prices, dirty immigrants and people not understanding how terrific Iraq really is! And certainly not that we are led by cretins and liars whose philosophy of government is “Don’t”. (Translation: The blubbery rubes that voted us better have a care. They don’t know how good they have it.)

Then the unveiling of the New Republican Contract With ‘Murrica:

1. Gay marriage.

2. Flag Burning.

Ta da!

Wallace: Isn’t this just fucking pandering? Are these really the most important things that the Senate of the United States should be working on in the Fall or 2006?

Fristy: We have to secure “America’s values.” I’m going to Arlington tomorrow. Flags. Soldier's graves. Noble sacrifice. Terri Schiavo. It’s important because right now in this country we are being overrun by Invisible Smelly Godless Hippies who think that it is OK to desecrate the Flag! And if we have to wipe our asses with the Constitution until our Nation’s Glorious Taint bleeds to stop this massive outbreak of entirely imaginary threats, we will!

Marriage is Under Attack Today. The Fags Are Coming! By Activist Judges. Terri Schiavo!

In an alternate Universe where me and mine had no stake in the outcome, I might say that Fristy is a pitiful creature.

A man who, true or not, carefully cultivated the persona of Collegial-Integrity Guy. And now, because he wants so desperately to be the President candidate of a Party that is wholly owned and operated by the scum of the Earth, must engage in repeated, humiliating Public Show-Trial’s of Faith.

So rather than actually lead, he must sink ever lower into his own filth. Slinking away from and weakly denouncing his own beliefs and legislative initiatives, while also loudly ripping the raw flesh of Gay Marriage and Flag Burning right off of the arms and legs of the Constitution to feed to his ever-voracious Base.

Having to trot from camera to camera performing his ritual and pubic auto’s da fe by slowing strangling whatever little bit of conscience he might have once had.

But this is not an alternate Universe where one can spectate amusedly on the follies of the GOP without consequence, so fuck Frist and the Cabbage Patch Doll he rode in on.

Then came Senator Durbin.

Wallace: Border fences -- Is it the position of the Democratic Party that the the United States should not have sovereign borders?

Durbin: No. Of course not. What kind of dick-headed question is that?

Wallace: Well aren’t you nancies running to the dirty Messicans and asking permission to protect you own country?

Durbin: Quit huffing Lime-Away before you go on the air, Chris. We share a huge border with Mexico. There are towns that face each other across that border that are interrelated and cooperate for all kinds of reasons. What sort of moron would slash a wall across all of that without at least having a conversation?

Then some other crap.

Then...Obama ’08?! [In response to the HUGE headline on the front page of the Sunday Tribune. Last Sunday, if I rememeber correctly, it was pic of Hillary -- smallerm and in profile -- and a similarly speculative article.]

Durbin talks real pudry about Barack and tells the world that he thinks the Junior Senator from Illinois should think long and hard about a run for the White House. And if he runs, Durbin will stand with him.

An imploding GOP makes many things possible. Many, many things.



On Face the Nation:

Schumer and Mitch McConnell. Missed the whole damned thing, because,


On This Week, ‘twas John Murtha and John Warner.

Short version: Murtha kicked 37 flavors of ass.

Murtha (to repeat one more time, all quotes are a sense of what he said and not transcriptive):

Every day these soldiers go out and IEDs go off. Every day. One day, no one gets hurt. Next day, someone dies. Next day, someone gets mutilated. I see these kids. I visit them in the hospital, and the pressure of those kinds of days, days after day, 3...4...5 tours in a row is unbearable.

There was clearly and obviously a cover up [of the Haditha massacre]. These sort of things have to be brought out immediately, so that other Marines won’t see this as a green light for them to do likewise.

It has been six months since this happens. Who ordered the cover-up? Where up the chain of command does it end? General Pace? I don't think he knew, but where did it stop?

Other Marines knew about it, and all the Iraqis knew about it! We made payments to their families! That doesn’t happen without when only the little guys are involved. Someone higher up had to know.


Stephanopoulos: Are you sure they didn’t think they were responding to fire from the houses?

Murtha: Absolutely not. There are pictures. There is evidence. This was a massacre followed by a cover up.

Murtha: (Responding to a quote impugning his motives as ‘political’) There’s no one who has done more for the troops than I have. But this was murder, plain and simple, and there was no excuse for it.

This is worse that Abu Gharib.

Stephanopoulos: We already know a tape of this is being send by al-Qaeda to mosques all over the Mideast.


(driftglass: Let’s be clear. Murtha loves the Corps. Love it. And sees the life, honor and integrity of the thing he loves imperiled by a thoughtless, reckless and craven Administration who drop troops into the Iraqi Shredder without a second thought. He knows exactly what can kill an army quicker than ammo – duplicity, corruption, ambiguity, not holding people accountable, forcing the military to try to “fix” political problems because that’s the only tool in your toolbox that isn’t rusted rotten – and he wants the White House to stop to it.

Immediately.

Before irreparable damage is done to the military by foolish, unaccountable men who cannot tell the difference between these --


And these --


Murtha: Sewage everywhere. Water, one hour a day. Electricity below pre-war levels. Oil production below pre-war levels. We are stuck in the middle of a Civil War that we cannot fix, cannot “win” militarily. Only the Iraqis can fix this. Only they can settle this. It was a mistake to go in in the first place and we need to get the hell out of there.


Then they air-lift in the mortal remains of John Warner:

Blah blah blah particularly on Memorial Day we need to be calm and reassuring to the American People. Need to be calm. Need to let the UCMJ work before we say anything.

We need to keep reminding the troops of their oaths of office.

Stephanopoulos: [Reads a quote from a soldier serving in the Iraqi theater to the effect that, “The Geneva Convention doesn’t apply over there.”]

Warner: These are terrorists over there. Coming in from many lands to kill Americans.

Warner is, of course, an idiot, but I have to interject here that this drivel crosses the line between Warner’s usual, vacuous, arrant nonsense into the territory of incredibly dangerous bullshit.

Because what Warner is doing here is simply lying to the American public through his expensive orthodontia. He is also lying to the troops, in effect feeding them deliberately wrong intel. Telling them that they are not stuck between two home teams that are clawing at each other in a civil war, but are fighting the Brown Hordes.

That they are the thin, green line between their homeland and an undifferentiated mob of slavering Ismlaofascist first-cousins of the 9/11 murderers, topped off with the Commander-in-Chief giving the winky-winky to the whole world that the Geneva Convention doesn’t fucking count.

Are you shitting me?

If the last three years has proven anything beyond the simple fact that Liberals were dead right and the Bushies are lying incompetent freaks, it is that continuing to pump this kind of pusillanimous, politically-calculated bilge into the public conversation on the war serves only to set in motion the machinery that made Abu Gharib inevitable.

That made Gitmo inevitable.

That made secret prisons inevitable.

That makes warrantless wiretapping of Americans inevitable.

That makes the massacre of civilians inevitable.

That made Iraq itself inevitable.

Because to follow the arc of the murderous lie at the heart of this Administration’s policy –- 1) Everyone who takes up arms against Americans is a terrorist. Even if we’re in their country. Even if they have lived there for 30 generations. 2) The rules of war and civility don’t apply to terrorists, and 3) There are no distinctions between combatants and civilians -- means there is no reason whatsoever why one shouldn’t lob a few grenades into a class full of nine-year-olds, or shoot old women.

Because why not?

We have told our kids over and over again that are no rules in this war. That we're allowed to torture who we want, spy on who we want, kill who we want -- even the innocent -- and weasel out of it with a bizzard of signing statments, refusals to investigate any Republican treachery no matter how blatant, and "Mission Accomplished" banners.

So when anyone in your gunsights at any given moment MIGHT be a “terrorist” by the absurdly slack, one-size-fits-all-Ay-rabs definition of that word as used by the President of the United States, in a moment of fury, why not?

And the fault for setting the table for these crimes against humanity – which are simultaneously handing one overwhelming propaganda victory after another to our real enemies – lies stinking and maggot-riddled squarely on the desk of the Dear Leader and his wormy minions like Warner.

In the Dubya Universe, where “crime” is whatever the Dear Leader says it is today. Where any residual criminality and incompetence, when found above a certain pay-grade, is brushed off with Medal’s of Freedom and “Heckofajobs”.

“Punishment”, in Bushland, is only meted out CEO-style: to peons below a certain pay-grade for those stupid enough to get caught.

And marching armed young men and women into this swamp of calculatedly Bushian ambiguity is the poisoned tree from which each and every one of the particular toxic flowers bloom.

So to then to sit on your fat ass on the Sunday Mouse Circus and wring your spindly hands over being calm? Over waiting for the UCMJ to work its magic?

That the REAL fucking problem is that we haven’t read out that rule about “Thou Shalt Not Slaughter Unarmed Women and Children” to the Marines often enough?

To whine that you didn’t ever mean it to turn out this way?

Of course you wanted this.

Who but a Persistent Vegetative Senator could possibly still believe -- at this late date, after three, blood-soaked years -- that any Party that piles up facts, dissent, logic, history, science and the rule of law into a heap, slathers it with napalm, and then spends five years flicking lit cigarettes at the pyre...didn’t really want a conflagration.

This is an Administration that specializes in two things: Barking out their ludicrous policies and ideology in short, defiant, declarative “Bring ‘Em On” sentences...and then cowering like children and throwing line staff, soldiers and assorted other underlings under the bus when those policies inevitably crash and burn.

But hey, at least they’re not “angry”, right? Because then they surely wouldn’t be credible.

No, they slit Liberty’s throat with a giggle and a smirk, which they can manage because they know the pig people that elected them will never, ever, ever, ever hold them accountable for their malfeasance, incompetence, sadism and depravity.

But hey, at least there are no blowjobs at stake, right? Because that surely would be a real crime.

Because as we all know, in the Age of Duyba, you can either be a good American or a good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

This week’s Meet the Press featured the following line-up: Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner discuss the difference between one Republican position on immigration and another Republican position on immigration.

And since the line-up last week on Fathead’s Puppet Show was Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Republican Lindsey Graham and Republican Charlie Norwood, there is really no reason to continue to pretend that Punkin’ Haid --

-- is anything more than well-compensated Republican trollop.

So fuck ‘im.

Then on to Chris Matthews who spend a goodly chunk of his 26 minutes of Sunday humping Dubya’s leg.

Short Bush “Apology” (delivered while looking squintily peevish): I’m sorry...that some people misinterpreted my words.

Short Matthews (delivered while rolling on the floor chirping his shins together like a tubby cricket): Such steely humility! We love that! So firm, so hard, so fully packed...with 'umble. Such a heavenly stud-musk coming off of that hunk of Texas lovemeat. Holy Mother of God, how I crave that man!