Disco Ann Coulter

Puked up some more flying monkeys...

This from Media Matters

Coulter on Sen. Chafee: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln"

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter titled her August 30 syndicated column on the Rhode Island Senate race: "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." The headline is a reference to Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), whom she excoriated throughout the piece -- calling him a "half-wit" and a "silver-spooned moron[] -- while expressing her support for his challenger in the September 12 Republican primary, Stephen Laffey.

This is not the first time Coulter has alluded to killing those she disagrees with:

· Commenting on radio host Melanie Morgan's assertion that if New York Times executive editor Bill Keller were convicted of treason she "would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Coulter said, "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution." She later suggested that Times staff members should be "executed."

· Coulter said of the media: "Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists."

· Coulter suggested that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) is "the reason soldiers invented fragging," -- military slang meaning the intentional killing of a member of one's own unit.

· Coulter argued that the national debate during the Monica Lewinsky controversy should not have focused on whether former President Bill Clinton "did it," but rather "whether to impeach or assassinate" him.

· Coulter said of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens's créme brulée.''

I chose the pic of Morton Downey, Jr. in bad drag because that is clearly the sharp arc Coulter’s career is taking. From Bill Maher’s favorite talentless slutty wingnut, she has chased fame, fortune and power deeper and deeper into the feculent mire of the Right, and always to the thunderous applause of the pig people.

She become a Golem of a kind.

A thing, so desperately and wholly dependent on the spotlight for identity and her daily bread, that she will literally say anything to keep attention focused on her twitching corpse.

On the one hand, it is weirdly fascinating to see this powerful Republican Spokesperson implode as she scuttles from termagant to shrike to raving subway Jim Jones to a waterhead sideshow geek who will gladly used her own watery shit as cream rinse and lip gloss so long as people don’t stop paying attention.

On the other hand, attention to Coulter qua Coulter is probably a bad idea. Primary attention should be focused on the anchorweasels who keep giving her air time. Anyone who gives her and her murderous shrieking one minute of camera or one inch of bandwidth needs to be blogswarmed into early retirement.

Ann Coulter is not “provocative”. She is not “controversial”. She is ebola in pointy shoes. She is Bull Connor with a bonier ass and a bigger man-apple. Do you let your kids play with medical waste and call it “My Little Pony”? No? Then why do you dump poison like Coulter into the public well and call it “news”?”

However, on the other, other hand, I would argue that Coulter the phenomenon -- and not Coulter the desiccated rind of slunkmeat jerky -- does not get nearly enough attention. What she represents is extraordinarily dangerous and profoundly anti-democratic, and I’ll write more about that very subject at a later date.

For now, a message for Ann herself:

Just relax, Ann. Don’t give me or the other liberals a moment’s though.

You need to just keep on keepin’ on.

Just let all that succulent hate



and delicious crazy wash over you.




Bathe in it, and don't forget to let your dietary "helpers"

do their work too.

Just keep on being you.

And you will finally get

everything that’s coming to you.

Best wishes,

driftglass

This little bit of

Photoshopped South Beachcraft was demeaning enough.



But what they were planning on doing with Couric v 3.0 --



“The Cournkite 3000 – Now with 75% more Trustiness!”

-- was a crime against nature

If it'd been a fight...

...somebody woulda stopped it.

Crooks and Liars has this up -- Keith Olberman just picking up a continent and beating Don Rumsfeld to aspic with it.


Not that I have any illusions that Keith will change any minds.

After all, if at this late date you are still goose-stepping loyally along behind the Dear Leader into the abyss, there is no hope for you. You're either a 1st Class imbecile, a 3rd-rate Randite or a 5th column fascist. Whatever the case, you're long since dug like a tic into your own, private Cheneybunker so deep that mere words and facts and logic and reality have never budged you and never will. You are a waste of carbon, an insult to your species and need to get the Hell off of my planet.

Still, great jeremiad, Keith. Stictly top-shelf.

From

in the Dubya Alphabet

(Title borrowed from Harlan Ellison’s splendid, “From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet” about which more here.)

“A” is for Abizaid for who won’t call the war Civil.
(Once he retires maybe he’ll stop talking drivel.)

“B” is for Brownie…and Bremer…and Brooks.
For all Conservative lackeys who give cover to crooks.

“C” is for Colin. Now where did he go?
His Army is dying while he lies safely low.

“D” is for Dick who shoots people’s faces.
Who believes he holds Royals, but holds eights and aces.

“E” is for “Eastasia” with whom we’ve always made war.
And anyone who says different is a traitor and whore!

“F” is for Falwell who now calls the shots.
And for whose flabby ass McCain now has the hots.

“G” is for the Global War on Every Bad Thing.
(If we call it that, maybe we'll get a King!)

“H” is for Hitchens, who so loves his despot.
Because all petty tyrants need a guardian sot.

“I” is for “Scooter”, though I know it’s a reach.
And while there’s no “I” in “Scooter”, there is in “Impeach”.

“J” is for Jeb, who must be dying of spite.
Dubya means for Jebby no House that is White.

“K” is for Katrina. For truth without pity.
That you can’t trust Red Brownies to protect a Blue city.

“L” is for Lieberman who must be defeated
(unless you want Bush fuck-ups forever repeated.)

“M” is for the Media who ushered in Hell.
When the fuck did Journalism become “Don’t Ask” and “Don’t Tell”?

“N” is for NOLA who died on Bush’s watch,
because Republican tides raise only those with the yachts.

“O” is for Oil -- why Iraq was first planned.
Everything else is just bad sleight-of-hand.

“P” is for Plame who was tossed under the bus.
As with every Bush treason, wingnuts ask, “Why the fuss?”

“Q” is for Quagmire. The name of this place.
Left here by a President who will leave in disgrace.

“R” is for Rummy: Ol’ Shithouse-Rat-Nuts.
Who Dubya sides with, no ifs, ands, or buts.

“S” is for Sully, the definition of “taint”.
Andy lay down with dogs, but wants to get up like a saint.

“T” is for the Two Thousand Six Hundred now dead.
Sent to unquiet graves by the rich and well-fed.

“U” answers the question: “Who will clean up this mess?”
It’s you and me, darlin’: Oblige sans noblesse.

“V” for Vendetta, which comes in November.
When we give them an Election they will always remember.

“W” is for Dubya and for the War he created.
Who left us broker, and weaker, and globally hated.

“X” is for Camp X-Ray where we Torture and Lie.
Where the Constitution was rendered to lie down and die.

“Y” is for “Why”, as in, “Why are we here?”
Because too many of us heed those who play on our fear.

And “Z” is Zero. For nothing. For naught.
It’s what we have gained for the War we have fought.

No Sarin, no Anthrax, not one AQ member:
No ties whatsoever to 11, September.

No nukes and no gas. Our good name long gone.
While our obtuse little Zeus screams, “Next stop, Iran!”

Update: Welcome Crooks & Liars hordes.
Mind your feet and wipe the cat.
Beer's out back.

Just one more War.

I can stop whenever I want to.

Really!

File under: Reason #6,943 why anointing an untreated, dry-drunk Preznit with delusions of grandeur to White-Knuckle his White House into the last reel of White Heat might have been a bad idea.

Because such a one as that would never have had to pass through the 12 Steps of Disaster Recovery and emerge on the other side clear headed and calm.


Step #1: Admit that you are powerless over the disasters you created in Iraq abroad and in New Orleans at home, and that your incompetent foreign and domestic policies have become unmanageable.

Step #2: Come to believe in a Party greater than your own which could restore this country to sanity.

Step #3: Make a decision to get you and your band of criminals and lunatics the Hell out of the White House before you can fuck up anything else.

Step #4: Make a searching and warrantless inventory of yourself. Use the NSA to drill into the deep corners if necessary: they seem pretty adept at that kind of thing.

Step #5: Admit to God, yourself and the American people the exact nature of your fuckuppery.

Step #6: Be entirely ready to have God remove your shortcomings, and a newly-functional Congress remove you and your co-conspirators to federal prison.

Step #7: Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings, and then bend over and get ready to be hosed down with subpoenas.

Step #8: Make a list of all the persons you have harmed and be willing to make amends to them all. Thank God for your forest clear-cutting policies, because you’re gonna need a lot of paper.

Step #9: Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Drag Jenna and Not Jenna -- by the hair, if necessary -- down to the Army recuiting station. Tomorrow. Or demand they carry a coupla them Snowflake Babies to term. Visit a few thousand wounded soldiers and apologize to them and their families for being such a morally bankrupt, intellectually bereft, emotionally dead embarrassment to the nation. Demand Cheney’s resignation. Tomorrow. Followed by Rummy, Chertoff, Rice, Rove and every single one of your science “advisors”. This will take every dime you have and several lifetimes to accomplish, but the price-tag your failure of leadership has stuck us with for the next two generations is so terribly, incalculably higher that anything you can imagine.

So quit lying and sniveling and get started.

Now.

Step #10: Continue to take a personal inventory and immediately apologize when you fuck up. To cover you bases, just spend the next twenty years closed-loop-Rain-Man repeating, "Im sorry. I'm sorry. I am sooo fucking sorry" to anything that moves.

Step #11: Seek though meditation and study to improve you conscious contact with the Constitution of the United States of America. Seek only to understand what the Founders intended for us to be, and seek only the power to carry out their mission to maximize American liberty and privacy, and curtail governmental tyranny, intolerance, coercion and secrecy, not t'other way 'round you feeble-minded child!

Step #12: Having had a Constitutional Awakening as a result of these Steps, you will try to carry this message to other Republican Neocons and Christopaths, and to practice Constitutional principles in all of your affairs.


Start immediately.

There are Progressive meetups in every city almost every day where you can go and find support for your newfound Abstinence from Autocracy, and you can begin right now by looking yourself in the mirror and saying out loud:

"My Name is George Dubya and I am a Hegemonoholic."

Our Lewd and Savor

“The Power of Crap compels you!"

"The Power of Crap compels you!”


So if I’m reading my rate card correctly, some bottom-dwelling pervert has now been comped a trans Pacific plane ride -- business class with champers -- and a "Get Out Of Thai Jail Free" card.

In exchange for which -- for a solid week -- a sizeable slab of the media was spared the skull-sweat and shoe leather of reporting on actual news and instead got to run B-roll of JBR kiddie softcore, jerk off all over itself and call some freak by an ominous middle name that I guarantee no one has used since his mommy caught him torturing a hamster when he was 11.

In other words, the perfect value-for-value proposition in a WalMarted media world where the "marketplace of ideas" has devolved into a tabloid-grade monopsony.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The future’s so blight, I gotta wear shades.

Mouse Circus Summary of the Lead Stories:

On Face the Nation -- Katrina
This Week… -- Katrina
Chris Matthews -- Unknown.
Meet the Press -- Katrina
Fox News -- Kidnapped Fox Reporters Released.

“Fox News: We Slant. You Decide.”

And on Fox News Sunday

Fox Reporters Released. Which is good news. For the most selfish of reasons, I want reporters -- all reporters -- to be free to come and go from and within that region as free and unmolested as possible: Because I like my reports on the facts on the ground like I like my seafood. Clean and as fresh as humanly possible.

Then the talk turned to Katrina. And coming around the clubhouse turn, Fox takes a late lead in the Idiotic, Clutterhanded Metaphor Derby:

“New Orleans used to have two phone books. Now the yellow and white pages have been condensed into one book.

Back to you Chris.”

Wha?

Don Powell, federal coordinator for the Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding, has learned the hard, Republican lesson of Katrina: Never, ever answer the fucking question you are asked.

Never get off the Talking Point Boat. Absolutely goddamned right.

Wallace: On the whole, NOLA seems about as fucked as it was a year ago. Are you satisfied with that.

Don busts out the tangentially-related factoid SuperSoaker and spackles the studio with stats: Tourism. Energy. Port. All good, baby. All golden. The future’s so blight bright, I gotta wear shades.

Wallace: But hasn't the Preznit reneged on two of the three iron-clad promises made on September 15th 2005 to the people of New Orleans.

Don: There has been an shitload of money spent, Chris. Just a shitload. It’s like you checking account. Money goes in. And then you can use it. Or something.

Don’s hitting the “check book” metaphor today for reasons that escape me.

Wallace: So...good news?

Don: Lots of progress. Lots of good news. We believe that Katrina is in its final throes. That we’ve turned a corner. That we’re gonna give it 110%. That it’s not over ‘til its over. I'd like to thank Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior, and give a shout out to my Mom. Made it Ma! Top 'o the world!

We will stand up when the debris stands down.

We will fight hurricane aftermath in NOLA so we don’t have to fight them in New York.

Sounded like a dying Iraqi Synthesizer trying to imitate the tongues of men before it shuffles off its digital coil...

Then Joe Biden comes hippity-hoppin’ down the bunny trail

Wallace: We’ve had a couple of weeks where the carnage wasn’t as bad as it has been, so doesn’t that prove the Dear Leader has been completely right and that you Liberal elitist swine are wrong about everything and have been since the beginning of time?

Wallace: General Abizaid sez there’s isn’t a really, really, for-real Civil War. General Abizaid sez you smell. That you’re a dirty hippy and you smell. So is it possible that General Abizade knows more than you do? Huh? Huh?

Biden summary: We’ve had a good couple of weeks, but look what it cost us. We had to bring in a lot more troops and go heavy in those few spots where the violence went down. We’ve had to take the lead because the Iraqi Army couldn’t swing their cods to save their lives. We tamp down, they melt away and the Iraqi “Army” hold our coats.

We move on to the next breach, and the place we left reverts back to Hell on Earth. Like trying to paint the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

with a couple of gallons of Glidden Interior Flat Latex.

As long as you can scam and threaten the media into pointing their camera’s at the three doors and trim that are painted a lovely Green Zone Jade, then you can continue to ignore the other 129,427,900 cubic feet of space that is going to rot.

Then came this a few hours later from the Associated Press...

By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 1 minute ago
A wave of bomb attacks and shootings swept Iraq Sunday, killing dozens of people despite a massive security operation in the capital and appeals from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for an end to sectarian fighting.
…

Across Iraq, Sunday's attacks left more than 50 people dead.

A group of assailants in three cars raked an open-air night market with gunfire, killing at least 12 people and wounding 25 others, police said.

The gunmen fired indiscriminately at throngs of people at the main market of Khalis, a mostly Shiite town 50 miles north of Baghdad, Diyala provincial police said. Earlier in the day, another six people were killed and 14 wounded when a bomb exploded on the outskirts of the town.
The U.S. military command said two U.S. soldiers were killed — one by small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad Sunday afternoon, and the other on Saturday night when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb southeast of the capital.

A U.S. official also said a U.S. armored vehicle was attacked on Sunday outside Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad, "resulting in casualties."

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the U.S. military command had not yet issued a statement on the incident, could not give details on the number of casualties or their condition.

In downtown Baghdad, a bomb in a minibus exploded outside the Palestine Hotel, killing nine people and wounding 16, while a car bomb outside the offices of a government-run newspaper left three dead and at least 29 wounded, police and witnesses said.

Two back-to-back suicide car bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed nine people and wounded 22, hours after another suicide car bomb killed one person and wounded 16.

In Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, a motorcycle bomb at a night market killed four people and wounded 15, the governor's office said.

Drive-by shootings also killed two people in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad; one in Numaniyah, a town near Kut, 100 miles southeast of the capital; and another three — believed to be the bodyguards of a member of parliament — in Dujail, 50 miles north of the capital, police in both cities said.

In Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, police found the bodies of eight people in various parts of the city, Capt. Rasheed Al-Samerayi of Mahmoudiyah police said. All had been handcuffed and blindfolded, he said.
…

I guess break time is over.

Oliver Thomas, N.O. City Council president, was supposed to be on but Wallace said he overslept. Not only overslept his teevee appearance, commented Wallace, and thus missed out on polishing the seat of a Fox News folding chair, but overslept a briefing on Ernesto.

Funny that Conservative-friendly mogul Steve Case was supposed to be there too and Chris Wallace did not find it necessary to editorialize on his absence.

I am reminded, for some reason, of this little tidbit about Mr. Case from waaaay back in 2000:

The controversy began with the Oct. 16 announcement that over a year ago Steve Case and his wife, Jean Case, formerly a public relations officer for AOL, donated $8.35 million to her alma mater, the Westminster Academy, a religious school in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was seemingly the most innocuous of gifts, earmarked for a new high school building, student scholarships and the creation of a technology center. But Westminster Academy is affiliated with the fundamentalist Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, as the "statement of faith" on the school's Web site attests: "Westminster Academy is a parochial school, an agency of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Primarily, it is committed to the education of the children of this Church and strives to implement a curriculum that reflects the variety of needs of these children, one that is based upon and is faithful to the Holy Scriptures as interpreted in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms."

Coral Ridge Ministries is best known among gays and lesbians as the proponent of an "ex-gay" agenda. The premise of the ex-gay mission is that homosexuals can be converted to heterosexuality or -- if that doesn't work out -- celibacy. Such "ex-gay" conversion therapy is not just one more queer political issue; it's a heated and emotional subject that cuts to the heart of gay and lesbian identity; it's a threat to people's very sense of who they are. And Coral Ridge Ministries is one of the most visible promoters of such queer "conversion": The Rev. D. James Kennedy spreads the word regularly on the bully pulpit of the church's nationally syndicated radio and TV program "Coral Ridge Hour." Among the church's tactics: launching a $500,000 national newspaper campaign promoting ex-gay ministries, and renting airplanes to fly anti-gay banners over Disneyland on "Gay Days."

Wouldn’t have even mentioned it but for the fact that Reverend Jimmy and his Coral Ridge Ministries propaganda butt-scooted across my teevee this morning on another channel altogether (see last review in this column) and brought it to mind.

Seemed like...destiny.

Since neither of them showed up this morning for their Fox News flogging or tongue-bath, should you ever cross the path of a stranger on the boulevard and think to yourself, “Hey, I wonder if that guy Oliver Thomas. Or Steven Case.”, for your edification I have included a picture of Mr. Thomas:


And a picture of Mr. Case.

He’s the smiley one, seated at Dubya’s Right Hand.

However for the record, I’m sure the reasons for respective absences and Chris Wallace’s need to pounce on one and not the other are complex and nuanced and not as simple as, say, Democrat and Republican.

I’m sure it can’t be that Black and White.


On Face the Nation: Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) David Paulison
Director, FEMA

Katrina and New Orleans.

We lead off with Chertoff video of Skeletor blaming Brownie for everything from his bald pate, Mr. Drysdale moustache and overall sinister mien.

Brownie: DHS is fucked, crotch-to-crown.

Brownie: The White House message on Katrina was a lie. We were saying that everything was fine, smooth, wang-in-tang slick and tight. In fact, everything was a friggin’ mess. Nobody knew what was going on. Everyone was bungling everything, and the red tape was drowning us.

Brownie: I will take the fall for the Preznit, but I will not take the fall for that dickhead Chertoff.

Brownie, the Now-Highly-Paid Disaster Consultant, an being a Highly-Paid Disaster Consultant: Who better than me to know what does and doesn’t work?

Rule One – Don’t Hire Brownie.

And then we move on to...

“This Week…” – Brownie, Mary Landrieu, Don Powell

And the subject is Katrina and New Orleans.

Don’s back, with the positive NOLA message and the “check book” metaphor again. Apparently everything is faboo now. Dubya is all over this shit. He’s crazy-focused on every detail. He demands action. The levees are now better than they were before Katrina.

The levees are sixteen miles high and are rising. Six miles thick. Patrolled by a fleet of “Day of the Dolphin” dolphins with lasers mounted on their heads.

And by 2016, the levees will be better that they were before NOLA.


Roundtable:Donna Brazile, Nicolle Wallace and George Will.

RepubliBlonde and White House Communications Director Nicolle Wallace:

On Howard Dean: He’s backing Ned Lamont! Can you believe it! He’s the gift that keeps on giving.

On Iraq: The President encourages robust debate and many points of view on Iraq. It is the Democrats who risk “contracting” to a monolithic Party.

On Stem Cell research: The Preznit and his people are keenly focused on all scientific developments. In fact there is a whole room in the White House that has been converted to a print shop specializing in converting complex, scientific papers into pop-up books for the Preznit’s bednight table with titles like “Oil -- Good Enough To Balm Our Savior, So Why Is The Christian-Hating Left Against It?” and “Jimmy Blastocyst – Pre-Boy Hero!”

Donna Brazile, Nicolle Wallace and George Will: Two Consies and one DNC-Hairball-Hacking loser.

Man, I love’s me some Librul Media Bias!


On Meet the Press: Ray Nagin. Then, a recovery efforts & preparedness update with FEMA’s David Paulison. Plus a roundtable with Robert Novak, Al Hunt, Kate O'Beirne & Eugene Robinson.

Katrina and New Orleans and the off to Politics

Al Hunt: Of all the available options, the one we know doesn’t work is “Stay the course.” Bush’s policy is the one policy that has no credibility whatsoever.

And responding to quotes by George Will and William Buckley that not only is Iraq lost, but that Dubya has fucked the this country’s reputation and future 30 years backwards with its pants on...

Snappy O'Beirne says: It is not true that there have been all these “arm-chair cheerleaders for Iraq.”

The muffled thunder you are now hearing like the faraway last five minutes of every 4th of July firework extravaganza going off like a string-of-firecrackers noise across the land is the sound of Wingnut’s heads exploding.

Seriously, for such a ridiculously lying dufflebag of shit as Snappy, the appropriate response would be for Punkin' Haid to hit her with a bucket of water and then pound the puddle of slag into which she melted with a 2X4.

Instead he let her live and let her keep talking.

Snappy: There are a certain percentage of people who are disillusioned with Iraq, but who are “persuadable”. But this whole “We ain’t leavin’ so long as I’m in charge!” eyewash from Dubya sounds “more stubborn that strategic.

Snappy: They don’t have to persuade “Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan”; they have to persuade former hawks.

Yes, Snappy, there is a “certain percentage”.

.00001% to be exact.

Novak: I was never for this war. Never, never, never. Slandering and savaging White House opponents with impunity whenever my ideological gout flairs up? Sure. Sniping from my dank and profitable nest between Dick Cheney’s flabby ass checks? OK. But I never said Iraq could be turned into Iowa. Now you have all these politicians who were booming this thing slinking for the exits, turning off the lights and cutting off Dubya’s tab at the bar. The real question that journalists should be asking is not whether or not the Iraq Debacle was done incompetently, but whether it was impossible from the start.

Eugene Robinson: Well where are Republicans who supported this war going to go? They have nothing left but to quibble about the competence with which it was done.

Novak: It is long past time that my (treasonous, back-stabbing, Republican, insider, Administration-Predator-Drone, spy-outing) source identify himself [in the Plame Affair].


And the cherry on top?

On WPWR -- Channel Fiddy to us locals – a 30 minute Jeez-o-mercial featuring anti-science theocrat Dr. James Kennedy trying to provoke a slap-fight over the ”controversy” of evolution.

“Evolution is a fairy-tale for adults.”

The support for Evolution is “crumbling in the science labs”.

And “Inherit the Wind” is a terrible, anti-Christian polemic and now, ironically, it is Evolution that is shamefully protected by law and God that has been driven from the classroom.

And who is Dr. James Kennedy, Ph.D.? Why according to his bio, he’s the:

“...senior minister of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and president of Coral Ridge Ministries. The author of more than 65 books, he is also founder and president of Evangelism Explosion and chancellor of Knox Theological Seminary. Dr. Kennedy is the most-listened-to Presbyterian minister in the world today”

So who knows but it may be that it was some of Steve Case’s dough that financed this little embarrassment to Western Civilization.

And who does Dr. James Kennedy choose to interview for her keen, scientific insights on cosmology, cosmogony, molecular biology, punctuated equilibrium and the current scientific consensus?

None other than “Disco” Ann Coulter.

Noted here for her Christian modesty and chastity:

"When I first met her," says a fellow conservative, "she was walking around with a black miniskirt and a mink stole, making out with Bob Guccione Jr. in the stairwell." (Coulter dated publisher Guccione, son of the porn mogul, for six months. She says the stairwell story "could be" true, although "I make out in public less often now that I'm publicly recognizable."...)

Temperance:

As for living on chardonnay and cigarettes, Coulter says that's "definitely true."

And shunning the jaded and worldy:

Coulter ... hardly ever misses the drag queens' Halloween parade in Greenwich Village.

Oh Lordy.

Like Gideon at the drinking fountain, Dr. Jimmy sifted through the Armies of the Lord and settled on Coultergeist as the perfect Christian Messenger for his message of ignorance and fear. Thanks to her infinitely rechargeable poison sacs which she will – for a juicy fee – happily puke all over whatever target she is programmed to attack, Dr. Jimmy chose this spindly sack of hateporn to vomit out his lies.

Which tells you all you really need to know about Dr. Jimmy. Who, one might suggest, would actually sound more credible interviewing a rabid dog’s ass for confirmation of his belief that integral calculus is the work of the Devil.

“Arf, Arf,” Coulter says, “Arf!”

Well color me shocked.

And proudly simian.

And The Horse You Wrote In On...

Sculptures made with light pens, time-lapse video, patience, steady hands and a freight-load of time...here.

Site will ask you if you want to install a language pack.

I declined and it worked fine for me; nothing but good, old-fashioned American Esperanskrit spoken 'round this castle!

While I was piddling around in Photoshop

Imagining the GOP 2008 Dream Ticket...

..Chris Clarke was busy bringing the 120 mph heat with “The Top 25 Most Dangerous Fictional Unhinged Characters Who Are Dangerously Hurting America” – an essay that certainly bids fair to bring home a Koufax (or whatever) for the year of Our Lord 2006.

My Mom promised me when I was but a little driftglass that if I was very good -- eating all my veggies and pelting Republicans with the rinds and stems -- maybe I could grow up to write half as well as Chris on my better days.

Here are some snips, but you really need to go read the whole of it here.

Really, really.

Looks like the conservative list machine is cranking up again. Back a few months ago, we had David Horowitz’s hurriedly cobbled together book, The Professors: The 101 99 Roughly Eight Dozen Most Dangerous Academics hit the shelves, and a few people actually bought it. The book came out on the heels of Horowitz’s assembling such treacherous anti-Americans as Noam Chomsky, Katie Couric, and the guy who played Screech on Saved By The Bell into a network, which he termed “The Network,” of liberal traitors. Michelle Malkin wrote “Unhinged,” which despite the title is neither a work of autobiography nor a treatise on the condition of her jawbone but rather a compendium of dangerous liberals. Right Wing News publishes an annual list of the “Top twenty most annoying liberals," among whose selections are such noted American liberals as Andrew Sullivan, “The Wellstone Memorial,” “The Mainstream Media’s Katrina Coverage,” and “MTV’s Rock The Vote.” Attempts to reach The Wellstone Memorial and The Mainstream Media’s Katrina Coverage for comment were unsuccessful.

…

The Top 25 Most Dangerous Fictional Unhinged Characters Who Are Dangerously Hurting America

(note: Any appearance that the number of characters may not actually total twenty-five is merely a quirk in the format of the list.)

Ellen James
Ellen James, the mutilated rape victim in John Irving’s The World According to Garp, inspired in that book a radical fringe group of feminists who cut out their tongues to symbolize both their commitment to the cause and the silencing of women by men. This caricature of a strawfeminist splinter, written by a misogynistic old straight man, has taken root on the net as radical feminists of various kinds are increasingly referred to as “Ellen Jamesians.” Thus James’ inclusion here.

We at Creek Running North recognize the unfairness in blaming a rape victim for the misrepresentations in real life of fictional groups acting in her name.

Of course, this sensitivity to the need for fairness to rape victims makes us Ellen Jamesians.

Vodka-Drinking Welfare Queen
Also known as Cadillac-driving Welfare Queen, occasionally seen in presence of her consort Stagger Lee. Best known, especially in the early 1980s…

The Gipper
The only fictional character ever to win a majority of votes in the Electoral College. After taking up residence in the feeble brain of the B-movie actor that played him in a conservative movie, this dead football player ran up what were at that point the largest federal deficits in history, cut and ran from a Middle Eastern country after the terrorists brought it on…

Holden Caulfield
Single-handedly influenced millions of American teenagers to hate their parents, fart in church, and curse…

Tonto
Also known as “Chief Bromden,” “Uncas,” or “Ed from Northern Exposure.” A character whose primary role is to provide reassurance that Americans have not inherited their ancestors’ responsibility for inhabiting stolen land…

It just rolls on and on like that. Like a mighty river. Like a mighty damned funny river

What are you still doing here?

Scoot.

Go.

Vice President

War Hole.

I Saw Goodie Lamont

Consorting with Osama!

I want to open myself! I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of the GOP! I saw Ned Lamont with the Osama! And Goody Sharpton! And maybe I even I saw Michael Moore too!

When you have absolutely nothing left – after you have sold yourself empty, after the stink from the corpse of your dead ideology reeks up the whole planet and after you haven’t so much principle left as would half fill a mitochondria’s change purse – this is what you are reduced to.

Crying Witch.

Fortunately, the people of Connecticut know a little bit about what happens when you let reckless freaks throw around frenzied accusations of witchcraft:

“A previous outbreak of witchcraft hysteria had occurred thirty years earlier in Hartford, Connecticut, during which thirteen people were accused of witchcraft, four of whom were duly convicted and executed. An outbreak at Fairfield, Connecticut, occurring at the same time as the Salem outbreak, resulted in seven accusations and one conviction, but no executions.”

And I can’t imagine to good people of the Nutmeg State would allow Holy Joe get away with trying to revive that despicable practice in their state and in their name.

Because let us be crystal clear about this tactic: Shrieking “terrorist” at the top of your lungs and hoping that you can scrape enough human excrement off of the very bottom of the racist, Christopath chum bucket to eek through another election is nothing less than trying to precipitate a modern “Crucible” so you can scuttle back into power by riding the panic-stampede you deliberately created.

Which, lets’s face it, has been pretty much been the totality of this Administration’s domestic policy for the last five years.

Five years of staggering incompetence and crippling cronyism, blood and plunder, naked racism, a massive, deliberate Great Leap Backwards into the superstition and bigotry of a Dark Ages hatecult mutation of Christianity…

…all troweled over with screams of “Treason!” any time the GOP carcinoma bursts through the skin in places like Baghdad and New Orleans and people start telling the truth about the anti-American agenda of the GOP right out loud.

So congratulations, Joe: By crying “Witch” when you got down in the polls you have crossed that last line. Descended into the Republican cesspit too far to ever ascend again to the land of honorable men. You have demonstrated beyond any doubt that any vestige of conscience or ethics has fled you, and that you openly side with, sleep with, and lick the wet spot clean for the Enemy.

Just another Republican stooge, joining such luminaries of the Right as:

Ken Mehlman:

I saw Howard Dead with Osama! I saw Goody Pelosi with Osama!

Dick Cheney:

I saw Goody 148,000-Connecticut-voters fornicating with bin Laden!

And of course, Don Karleone himself:

I saw Goody Liberal dancing with terrorists and offering them therapy!

Commenter KnaveRupe

was kind enough to pen us a fable.

Which will certainly come in very handy if you ever want to explain the Lieberman Effect to the little ones without scaring them or risk them puking into their bednight snacks.

Also you gotta give it up for anyone who both coins a term like "Islamo-Fish-ists” and uses it correctly in a sentence.

The Fable of the Bat
or
Die Liebermaus
by
KnaveRupe

Once upon a time, there was political rancor in the Kingdom of the Birds and Beasts. The Birds had ruled the Kingdom for many years, and peace and prosperity was the norm. But the Beasts hated the Birds and their high-flying ideals, and wanted to rule the land. After a particularly divisive election, the Beasts managed to wrest control of the Kingdom from the Birds (by virtue of a bogus decision made by five Snakes on the Supreme Court), and one of the most Beastly of Beasts, the Chimpanzee, was named the new king.

Many of the Birds were unhappy with the state of affairs in the Kingdom, (the Blackbird caucus even tried to challenge the election!) but they all eventually fell in line and followed the advice of the Ostrich consultants and buried their heads in the sand.

Affairs remained in this state of tension for many months, and the incompetent Chimpanzee sat in his castle flinging poo at the walls and riding his little toy bike. There was little doubt that the Birds would regain control of the Kingdom come the next election – and then disaster struck. The Kingdom was attacked!! And thus the war began.

The Kingdom of the Birds and Beasts went to war against the Fish, who the Chimp-king decided had weapons of mass destruction. He decided that we would fight them in the water, so that we wouldn’t have to fight them on the land. Many of the Birds thought this was a tragically stupid idea, since it is much easier to fight a Fish OUT of water, but again the Ostriches carried the day, and the Birds reluctantly supported the Chimp-King. Those who didn’t were branded Traitors, Fish-lovers, and worst of all, “in league with the Islamo-Fish-ists”.

About this time, one of the birds became the most vocal supporter of the Chimp-King; the tiny Bat. In fact, some Birds questioned whether he was even a Bird at all, since he had fur instead of feathers, and teeth instead of a beak. The Bat, however, always pointed to his wings and insisted that he was a bird. He would flap them, and fly around a little, and the rest of the Birds would shrug and drop the subject.

After a time, support for the War on Tuna began to flag, as the In-Sturgeons (who were supposedly in their last roes) continued to kill and maim the troops of the Kingdom. Opposition to the war began with those Birds who spent all their time sitting on the wires, but it soon spread to Birds everywhere. Even the Hawk, known as the greatest supporter of the Military called for a withdrawal! Eventually all of the Birds were united in their opposition to the Chimp’s war.

Except for the Bat.

The Bat refused to go along with the rest of the Birds. He refused to hold the Chimp accountable for his crimes. While the Swift was being Swift-boated by the Beasts, the Bat was getting smooched by the Chimp. He even appeared on the Beastly network owned by the Fox, criticizing other Birds for daring to question the Chimp!

Finally, some of the Birds had had enough. They decided that even if the Bat was technically a Bird, they didn’t want him around making their job even harder. They remembered how the Bat had sided with the Beasts back when the Leader of the Birds got in trouble for that incident with the Swallow. They remembered how the Bat undermined the Birds when they tried to stage a featherbuster. But most of all, they remembered that Kiss from the Chimp and the support for the war.

So, the Bat got his wings clipped.

And, lo and behold, once his wings were gone, the Bat was revealed to have never been a Bird at all, but a sad little rodent – the lowest of the Beasts. And the former Bat skittered away from the birds in terror and went back to the Beasts and spent the rest of his days living off of their crumbs.

And the Moral of the Story? No matter what Joe Lieberman has said or done or pretended to be in the past, underneath it all he’s always been a rat.

Fin

The vivacious Ms. Res Ipsa Loquitur

Published the following Universal Troll Rosetta Stone in the comments over ta' Atrios’ place.

And since he is slow and I am tiny and nimble, I got a salvage team over to Eschaton hurry-up-quick and had them bring it to the surface, pack it in nitrogen gel to prevent deterioration and air freight it over here.

Hey, it tickled me.

And it’s also so sadly true. It’s why I focus whatever wee dram of outrage I have on the few, remaining moderates that still fingernail-cling to the blood-sodden hull of Bush's Pequod of State as it goes plunging madly over the edge of the world. Because there really is no point in talking to the majority of people who still self-identify as hardcore Bush Backers any longer -- they have four pounds of “E”-grade (“bull/stag carcasses with pronounced masculinity”) coarse-ground mulerump between their ears, and simply do not have anything I could honestly define as a “mind” left to change.

Plug in any topic – Iraq, Democrats, the economy, the Constitution, Dubya, the phases of the Moon, Vietnam, arch supports, hen teasing, what killed Vaudeville, who wrote the book of love, why does the caged bird sing...anyfuckingthing – and the lights on their vacuum tube firmware go blinky-blink, and this pre-recorded galvanic-reflex-feedback loop is what comes reeling out of their pie-holes.

It’s not that they “believe” any of this, any more than my egg timer “believes” in counting down to “ding”.

It's just that these people have debased themselves to the point where I barely recognize our species similarities anymore. They have allowed themselves to become little more that pliantly re-programmable meat in the service of evil men: Yawping and barking and quacking out whatever insensible syllables they are told to repeat in whatever order they are told to repeat them.

And if the Received Wingnut Wisdom of Today inverts and annihilates the Gospel of Yesterday, they notice it no more than my spiffy Sharper Image Talking Alarm Clock notices that I’ve reset it for 5:15 instead of 5:00.

This is what passes for mission and “purpose” down among the hatefully stupid.

I do not see any hope for them, and Hell, I am eternal friggin’ optimist.

Anyway, take it away, res...

blah blah blah clinton got a blow job blah blah blah howard dean is mean blah blah blah something about negroes blah blah blah some people say cindy sheehan is a crack whore blah blah blah michael moore is fat blah blah blah he mean "mohawk" not "macaca" blah blah blah frist never diagnosed schiavo blah blah blah santorum never said democrats were "assasinating judges" blah blah blah nagin never ordered the buses blah blah blah let the free market work its magic blah blah blah liberals will form a fifth column in their decadent coastal enclaves blah blah blah kos commands all blah blah blah atrios' real name is "duncan" blah blah blah soros is a jewish name blah blah blah if you write "ann althouse" backwards, in greek, 17,354 times in 59 minutes with a cereulean crayola crayon on a piece of bluestone and then allow rain to pour on the bluestone for exactly 36 seconds a secret code will be revealed that will show us the date, time and location at which we will reach the turning point in iraq.

© 2006, res ipsa loquitur

Whee! I'm in the Club!

So for post #700, a little fun on what will be a very long day.

And while I can't prove it using your fancy, elitist "facts" or "logic", I believe these vidoes may well be the reason God and Algore created the internets...

The Vader Sessions – Episode I



The Vader Sessions – Episode II



The Vader Sessions – Episode III


So enjoy...

“They’re Just Not Into You”

In which Boss Playa “Big Dog” Clinton offers the heartbroken Left Hangin’ Chads out there some tough-love Electoral Relationship advice from his new book -- “They’re Just Not Into You” -- and breaks it all down.

Old school.

(The following was pilfered, groped and terribly misused by me from these excerpts from the actual book, “He’s Just Not Into You”, which remains, for reasons that utterly mystify and depress me, a best seller to this day…)


Lesson One: They’re just not that into you if they’re not asking you to represent them.

Because if they like you, trust me, they will ask you to run.

Many candidates have said to me, "Big Dog, voters run the world, and yet they’re constantly jerking me around, demanding more cake for less sugar?” Wow. That makes voters sound pretty capable. So tell me, why would you think we could be incapable of something as simple as going to the polling places and asking you out?

You seem to think at times that voters are "too shy" or are maybe "just getting over a bad Congressman." Let me remind you: Voters find it very satisfying to get what they want. (Particularly after a difficult day of getting dicked around by the gentry.) If they want you, they will find you.

If you don't think you gave them enough time to notice you, take the time it took you to notice them and divide it by half.

Now you begin the life-changing experience of reading our book. We have put the stories we have heard and questions we've been asked in a simple question-and-answer format. If you're lucky, you'll read the following questions and know what they are: Excuses that voters have made for their unsatisfying situations. If you're not so lucky, we've also included handy titles to clue you in.

The "Maybe They Doesn't Want to Ruin the Friendship" Excuse

Dear Big Dog,

I'm so disappointed. I have this voting bloc that I've known platonically for about ten years. They’re in a different political party and recently they were group-blogging over on Little Green Footrubs, so we had a meetup and dinner. All of a sudden it felt like we were on a date. They were completely flirting with me. They even said to me, as they were checking me out, "So, what, you're working the whole 'Change Agent' thing now?" (That's flirting, right?)

We agreed that we should get together again soon. Well, Big Dog, I'm disappointed because it's been two weeks and they haven’t called me or hit my campaign tip jar. Can I call them? They might be nervous about turning their approving glances into political romance. Can't I give them a nudge now? Isn't that what friends are for?

J. Mentum.

Dear J.,

Two weeks is two weeks, except when it's ten years and two weeks. That's how long ago they decided whether or not they could rub up on a Democrat or a dime licker who looks like one. Can you be a pal and give them a nudge? Nudge away, friendster — but watch how fast that nudge doesn't get a return phone call, endorsement or high-digit check.

And if your grope/date did feel different to them, it's been two weeks and they’ve had time to think about it and decide they’re just not that into you. Here's the truth: Republicans don't mind a little reacharound if it could lead to fucking over the Democratic Party, whether it be a "Democrat with benefits" situation or you convert and go Full Metal Fascist.

But my advice is, stick to your own Party honorably, even if that means sleeping alone and not being asked back to the Senate.

I hate to tell you, but that whole "I don't want to ruin the friendship" excuse is a racket. It works so well because it seems so wise. Unfortunately, in the entire history of mankind, that excuse has never ever been used by someone who actually means it. If we're really excited about a candidate, we can't stop ourselves — we want more.

And please, don't tell me they’re just "scared." The only thing they’re scared of — and I say this with a lot of love — is how not attracted to you they are.



The "Maybe They’re Intimidated by Me" Excuse

Dear Big Dog,

I have a crush on my constituents, but they’re such unimportant little shits. Tradesmen, shop keepers, teachers and a bunch of other little nobodies. At least that’s how it was until this summer. It was hot, and I was busy pimping for the Dear Leader, but then I saw the voters with their Lamont buttons on, and in his arms, and they were so hot. Insignificant peons though they may be, now as it turns out I'm hot for them. I brought out some beers and we talked, and I explained how stupid and ignorant their position on Iraq was.

I think they want to ask me back to the Senate but they’re afraid, because they’re such insignificant nonentities. In this situation can't I ask them to leave Ned and vote for me as an independent?

Holly Joe

Dear Holly,

They’re capable of asking you all by themselves. Haven't you ever seen a porno? Or “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington?” Hope they get there before the pizza guy. But seriously, if they didn't pick up the vibe after the beer and scolding, it has nothing to do with you being their Beneficent Overlord. Time to stop and smell the bad news:

They’re just not that into you.

The "Maybe They Want to Take It Slow" Excuse

Dear Big Dog,

There's these voters who call me all the time. They’re recently divorced, and in AA. We got back in touch recently, had lots of phone calls, and then hung out twice in one week and it was real cool. No flirting or making out or anything, but fun. Since then, they call me all the time but don't ever suggest we see each other in person again. It's like they got scared of my Social Security policy or something. I would understand if because of the divorce/alcoholic/starting-a-whole-new-life stuff they wanted to take things slow. But they still call me all the time to have long heart-to-heart talks.

What the hell should I do with these people?

Elle Ebermine

Dear Elle,

Sadly, not wanting to see you in person is massive as far as electability obstacles go. And as far as the recently divorced/newly sober/starting-a-new-life parts, blah blah blah, I'm getting sleepy, it's hot, I'm going down for a nap. When I wake up from that nap I'll probably thrill to the news that your voters are taking control of their loves.

You, however, will still not be going back to the Big City With All The Monuments, because despite all your excuses for them, they’re still not asking you out.

Now, if you're a person who enjoys a slightly satisfying phone relationship, talk on! But at this point it seems like they’re just not that into you.

The "But He Promised He’d Campaign For Me" Excuse

Dear Big Dog,

I met a really cute voter at a bar this week. His tee-shirt said “Ned 4 Ever”, but he gave me his number and told me he’d really, really campaign for me. I thought that was kind of cool, that he gave me control of the situation like that. I can depend on his support, right?

Namre Beil

Dear Namre,

Did he give you control, or did he just get you to do the heavy lifting? What he just did was a magic trick: It seems like he gave you control, but really he now gets to decide if he wants to campaign for you — or even return your call. Why don't you take Copperfield's number, roll it in a newspaper, pour milk in it, and make it disappear.

"Give me a call." "E-mail me." "Sure, we’ll do a fundraiser. And maybe get you some free time on the Farm Report." Don't let him trick you into making an even bigger ass of yourself that you already have. When voters want you, they do the work. I know it sounds old school, but when voters like candidates, they make it really fucking clear.


The "Maybe He Forgot to Vote" Excuse

Okay, Big Dog,

Listen to this one: It was just before the primary, and I was sucking serious face with this organizer from upstate.

This guy. You might know him. I thinks he's, like, famous or something.

Isn’t he hot?!?

Anyway, we hit it off immediately. He was just about to ask for my number, I swear, when something came up.

He explained that...

Honest... I ran out of gas.

I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare.

My tux didn't come back from the cleaners.

An old friend came in from out of town.

Someone stole my car.

There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts.

IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.

So, y’know, since all this bad stuff kept him from calling or e-mailing me, now its OK for me to call him, right?

Leigh Berman

Dear Leigh,

I say this with love, but what are you, an idiot?. You said you work in different parts of the same State, and you have campaign material and a website, right? Even an unbelievably cheap and crappy site will do. Certainly he wouldn't have to break a sweat to browse to your site and find your number and e-mail . And should he not be as resourceful as you are...I imagine that he has a mother, sister, or female friend that could show him how, if he was really interested.

P.S.: Shame on you for using an 1980 comedy classic as an excuse to call a guy up.


The "Maybe I Don't Want to Play Games" Excuse

Dear Big Dog,

This is dumb. I know you're not supposed to act desperate, but I call voters all the time because I don't care! I don't want to play games. I do whatever I want! Kiss Republican ass. Call my own constituents terrorists. Whatever. You're such a square, Big Dog. Why do you think we can't just demand voters do what we say, when we say, and that’s that?

Manjoe Berlie

Dear Manjoe,

Because we don't like it. Okay, some voters might like being ordered around, but they're called Fascists. And who wants to run with the Brownshirts? It's that simple. I didn't make the rules and I might not even agree with them. Please don't be mad at me, Manjoe. I just think you might want to be realistic in how capable you are of changing the primordial impulses that drive all of human nature.

Or maybe you're the chosen one.

Voters, for the most part, like to pursue candidates. We like not knowing if we can catch you. We feel rewarded when we do. Especially when the chase is a long one. We know we’re electing you to run the government, but that does change the fact that we like to feel that we’re in charge.


IT'S SO SIMPLE

Imagine right now that I'm leaping up and down and shaking my fist at the sky. I'm on my knees pleading with you. I'm saying this in a loud voice: "Please, if you can trust one thing I say in this book, let it be this: When it comes to citizens, deal with us as we are, not how you'd like us to be."

I know it's an infuriating concept — that citizens like to speak out and be heard and respected and you have to shut your massive hole and listen. I know you think it's insulting. It's frustrating. It's unfortunately the truth. My belief is that if you have to demand, if you have to push, if you have to lecture them on how fucked up they are for not adoring you, nine times out of ten (with a plus-or-minus 6% MOE), they’re just not that into you.


(The Big Dog is pictured here using his legendary mack hand to ensorcel Oprah

and get her to daub her Magic Book Club unguent on his opus.

For the record, later he boned her like a brook trout.

And no, he didn’t call her the next day.

Or the day after that.

And yet still she waits...)

Oh no!

There goes Tokyo.

Another long day ahead.

Always best to ease gently into such with a soothing, traditional, Christian melody.

It's one thing

When "The Opposition" is in change.

When there is disagreement, and a fight over values, but respect. When you can approach your opponent with "namaste" in your heart.

An honorable contest between honorable men, where the terms of the debate are constantly being renegotiated.

That's one thing.

It is another thing entirely when The Enemy is at the helm of the Ship of State. When you realize that there is literally no depths to which the people in charge will not sink to hang onto power.

That finally, unconstrained by even the memory of a conscience, there is literally nothing they will not say or do to amass power for power's sake

Ted Kennedy seems to get it (h/t Crooks and Liars):

There are 146,587 terrorist supporters living in the state of Connecticut according to Vice President Dick Cheney — the number of Ned Lamont voters.

He claims they’re encouraging "the Al Qaida" types who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task" in Iraq. Cheney’s gone too far. His disgraceful declaration of war on Ned Lamont supporters is an attack not just on Democrats, but on democracy itself.

We can’t stand by while Republicans like Cheney slander the people of Connecticut and millions of other Americans nationwide who are showing up at the polls to reject the failed record of the Bush Administration.

I thought you might like the opportunity to send your own message to the Vice President. You can send it here:

Cheney wants people to believe that anyone who questions the Bush Administration’s misguided policies is in cahoots with the terrorists.

But the facts are clear.

The Administration’s extremist agenda has drained our resources and stretched our troops. This made the war on terrorism hard to win and made America more hated in the world.

The American people want more than vicious fear-mongering from our leaders. They want realistic policies, accountability for failures, and — most of all — a new direction for America.

It’s time for Dick Cheney to admit he went too far. Demand that the vice president apologize for his offensive remarks.

Let’s recognize a few truths: Lamont voters did not allow Osama bin Laden to escape in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Lamont voters did not mislead the American people into war with Iraq.

Lamont voters did not refuse to admit their mistakes. They did not vow to "stay the course" while more and more Americans die and Iraq descends into civil war.

Dick Cheney and Republicans of his ilk disrespect the very nature of our democracy when the results are inconvenient for them. But despite this unprecedented grab for executive power, they don’t have the ability to decide elections.

The vote in Connecticut proves that free and open elections still exist — and millions of Democrats around the country are ready to go to the ballot box in the coming months and put America back on track.

It is one thing when one's honorable opponent is at the wheel, but when an enemy of democracy squats and shits in the People's House, it is a terrible thing to see.

Because in the slightest breeze, their onionskin mask of civility rots away


and they reveal their true selves

in all their virulent evil.

How to blog like Thor.

In which I explain how obscure-yet-uberpivotal blogger Raven Belle codified the rules for blogging with muscle and precision for the rest of us mere mortals.

Now there is a twist to the origins of this instructive and insightful narrative, and to the Secret Identity of Raven Belle. And on my honor as a former Webelo, at the very end I will Reveal All (and without outing a soul, which you must admit will be a cute trick if I can pull it off), but I’m tres old school about such things and think it’s way more fun to just read it straight, see if it makes sense to you and if you agree or disagree with it, and then pop the cherry on the spoiler.

With that, let us stipulate that the early 21st century belongs to Raven Belle.

With her comes, for the first time, the science of the brief, immediate web log, and the treatment of it as a distinct art form with its own rules and its own fields. Laws the form is bound to have if it is to persist.

As the century progresses and as the sweep of modern technology threatens to bury us under a torrent of disorderly factlets and datoids, there comes necessarily the demand for more reality, for sharper outlines, for greater attention to logical order. The blog is natural, and indeed inevitable, in a scientific age, and Belle was the first to perceive the new tendency and to formulate its laws.

In Belle’s opinion, the blog owes its vogue in America to the great number of specialty magazines, e-zines and message boards which sprang up during the last years of the 20th century.

“The whole tendency of the age is blogward,” she wrote in early 1997.

“The MSM is quite out of keeping with the rush of the age. We now demand the legal artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the voluminous, the verbose, the detailed, the inaccessible…. It is a sign of the times—an indication of an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the condensed, the well digested, in place of the voluminous—in a word, upon journalism in lieu of dissertation.”

Blogging, she contended, to be effective must be brief, must yield a totality of impression at a single sitting.

The writer must concentrate upon a single effect. If her very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, she has failed in her first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.

Although she began as a critic, as she wrote her Laws of Blogging Well, Belle was thinking of her own craft more than of MyDD or Powerline. She had been a writer all her life, and had learned to view the piece from the standpoint of the editor. She who has but a brief space at her command in which to make her impression, must condense, must plan, must study her every word and phrase. All of her posts are single strokes, swift moments of emotion, Hunter Thompson-like massings of details with exactness of diction, skilful openings, harrowing closes.

More than this we may not say.

Belle did not work in the deeps of the human heart like Thompson; she was an artist and only an artist, and even in her art she did not advance further than to formulate the best blogging technique of the day. Her posts are not to be classified at all with the products of later blogs. They lack sharpness of outline, finesse, and that sense of reality which makes of a blog an actual piece of human life.

Her creations are tours de force; they reflect no earthly soil, they are weak in characterization, and their dialogue — as witness the imagined conversation of the Prezit’s cabinet in “Hard Day’s Journey into Tikrit” — is wooden and lifeless.

Belle was a critic, keenly observant of the tendencies of her genre and time, sensitive to literary values, scientific, with powers of analysis that amounted to genius. She was not the creator of the Web Log; she was the first to feel the new demand of her age and to forecast the new art and formulate its laws.

In the realm of the political blog, Belle was a prophetess, peering into the next age, rather than a leader of her own time. Until more than a year after her site went dark, her influence was small. She had applied her new art to the old sensational material of the 80s — old wine in new bottles. The Main Stream Media and all they stood for were imploding. Media Matters, Atrios, Kos and all the rest of the A-Listers were noting end of the era as early as the Great Gannon Manwhore Meltdown of February 2005 and the great change that had come over the Chattel Press.

It was the custom of the time to pursue an almost endless variety of “Runaway Blond” and “Shark Attack” stories, while maintaining a bonelessly deferential approach to Real News when that news was embarrassing to the White House. For years, the MSM maintained an almost literal embargo on reporting the criminal activities, lies, scandals and public treacheries of the Bush Administration and substituted for fact and truth, ephemeral trivia, destined to perish in a few weeks; but that custom appears to be passing away.

The decline of the old type of reporting explains why many of the more thoughtful reporters abandoned the field altogether, or turned to the production of book-length meditations on the state of the world. The age of the Gonzo Thompsonesque short essay had passed, and with the rise of the Religious Right came a new atmosphere.

To realize it one has but to read The Wall Street Journal, or The New Republic.

Listen to Hate Radio, or watch Fox News or the 700 Club.

In America it was the period of Falwell and Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter, the golden age of Monied Wingnuts With Megaphones. The “mainstream” American press largely capitulated and collapsed under the assault of this well-financed Fascist propaganda machine, yet the hunger for honest, pungent, pugnacious Progressive analysis increased rather than declined.

During these last few years, the Kossack Community (to take the largest example) has out-readershipped virtually every leading print opinion journal of the day, publishing hundreds of different and brilliant individual diaries by dozens of different authors, or an average of god-knows how many new pieces every day.

This was no longer journalism of the earlier type.

A new demand had come to the blogger; in the “Introductory” to the first post on Raven Belle’s Wheelhouse, Belle announced that excellent, passionate writers and vital themes were to predominate, adding that “local reality is a point of utmost importance.”

In the first edition of the Snuffington Post, Arabella Snuffington struck the new note:

“How far off from life and manners and motives the news still is. Life lies about us dumb.”

And in the same day a Snuffington reviewer notes

“...the decline of the ideals for real people in the press and the professional political process. The netroots are proving that thoughful, engaged men and women are far more effective than K Street hucksters and the DLC.”

By 2004, a blogger like Shoulder-Mounted Antiwank could open her grim site, Life in the Irony Mills, with a note like this;

I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,—here into the thickest of the fog and mud and effluvia. I want you to hear this story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain dumb for centuries: I want to make it a real thing for you.

The New Age of the serious blogger in America stands for the dawning of definiteness, of localized reality, of a feeling left on the reader of actuality and truth to human life.

And the indispensable pioneer of this age is Raven Belle.

Now go here, as Paul Harvey says, for the rest of the story…

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which Iran’s “Flypaper Strategy” has another banner week.

I mean, after all, why fight Americans in America or in Tehran when their dimwit President and his Party of God seem perfectly happy to keep marching their trillion-dollar military and their international prestige into the Iraqi desert, year after year after futile year, to be crippled, mutilated, bankrupted and destroyed piecemeal.

On Fox News.

Pete King, Rafi Ron and Rand Beers, but the real happyfuntalk comes, as ever, from Bush Stalking Horse Chris Wallace who carefully juices the ball every time he lobs it.


Wallace: If there were a plot of Norwegians, wouldn’t we look for blonde, blue-eyed people?

Wallace: But…the 85-year-old grandmother… the 85-year-old grandmother!

drifglass: But “Muslim” isn’t a country, like “Norway”, is it, Chris?

And what color is “Muslim” anyway?

Well this is what Malcolm X said on the subject 1964:

"There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white.
…
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)-while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of the blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the ‘white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

So unless you’re going to make people declare their religion and wear Yellow Stars and Red Crescents (and, OK, Green Clovers for the Irish Catholics to complete the wingnut Lucky Charms trifecta), then STFU.

However, if we are going to start screening for plurality-hating, modernity-hating, tolerance-hating religious fanaticism pulling in harness with apocalyptic, messianic obsession with the end of the world, and a penchant for advocating the murder of The Scary Other, then I want to see Pat Robertson's and Ann Coulter’s loony asses on a Terrorist Watch List

Tomorrow. 8:00 A.M. sharp.

Then comes Chuck Hagel.

Hagel: Both Parties are at peril of defining this issue down to the lowest denominator. Democrats call Republicans “war mongers” and accuse them of wanting to take away our rights. Republicans call Democrats cut-and-runners and weak on national security.

If you continue to debase this issue – to define it down to the lowest, political common-denominator – people will stop taking it seriously.

driftglass: The difference, of course, being that those who still stick with the Republican Party Line really are neurotic, war mongering liars. Really do have contempt for the Constitution and the ACLU.

Shit, Chuck; just doff you Senatorial colors, don the rags and tatters and “Stars-N-Bars” ballcap of the rank and file, and belly up to the bar in any cinderblock Rush Room tavern and they will fucking tell you as much to your face.

These are your people, Chuck, and they elected and re-elected a pack of brass-knuckle knucklehead theocrats to rule over us because this is precisely what they wanted. Hell, they’re just pissed that now that WWIII has been postponed into the heart of football season they might have to finally spring for a TiVo unit so they can tape Armageddon while they watch NFL Sunday Terminette live.

Wallace: But you want to begin to troops out within six months.

Hagel: Yes…

Wallace: But..but…but how will that make things better?

This is the same question Wallace asks every week, and asked with the same whiny assed titty-baby tone. He, of course, knows better.

He of course, knows that keeping troops in Iraq for target practice cannot make the situation better, and can only make things worse.

He knows that the war is lost.

But Wallace, being a Fox News husk and Conservative stool sample, is a typical Right Wing fainting-couch coward.

Remember always that Modern Republicans despise this country.

Deeply.

And anyone with a conscience and a functional cerebral cortex has already been centrifuged out of that inbred witchbag of bad religion and White Pride, leaving behind a reeking residue of pantywaist La-Z-Boy Patriots who will cheerfully dump children and cash down the Iraqi rathole forever….so long as it is other people’s money.

And other people’s children.

“Brave” is not heaving children into the woodchipper because you’re too gutless to admit you fucked up. “Brave” is making the hard call when it might cost you, and cost you dearly.

Hagel: Where is the fiscal responsibility of the Republican Party I joined in 1968? Where is the international engagement? Where is the call for free, fair trade?

Good question, Chuck.

Say, how would you feel about signing on with a guy named Al Gore’s for a run at the White House in 2008?

Just askin’.



On “This Week…”. Kerry is well-summarized here (via ABC News) thus saving me valuable adjectives for later use.

Senator Labels Bush Iraq Policy 'Disaster,' Lieberman Bid 'Huge Mistake'

By ED O'KEEFE

Aug. 20, 2006 -- - Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., blasted fellow a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, for continuing his bid in the Connecticut Senate race despite a narrow loss to newcomer Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary earlier this month.

"I'm concerned that [Lieberman] is making a Republican case," Kerry told ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" in an exclusive appearance.

Kerry accused the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate of "adopting the rhetoric of Dick Cheney," on the issue of Iraq.

"Joe Lieberman is out of step with the people of Connecticut," Kerry added, insisting Lieberman's stance on Iraq, "shows you just why he got in trouble with the Democrats there."

Kerry called Lieberman's independent bid a "huge mistake" and applauded businessman-turned-politician Lamont as "courageous" for challenging Lieberman on the war.

On the Panel... apostate Conservative Fareed Zakaria puts the strawmen down 1-2-3.

Fareed: We have united our enemies and divided our friends. Our foreign policy has collapsed. And this is not a situation that I think can be remedied by one more US invasion of one more Middle Eastern nation.

Fareed Z: Iran goading the US into a political attack would end up being a huge net win for Iran. We could not win, and it would only serve to solidify their standing as the major, regional power. No one would back us up except Israel. We would literally be alone. Look at the political cost we would pay.

Fareed Z: Only a political solution in Iraqi has any hope of fixing this. And guess what? We have made one massive political fuckup after another from the start.



Meet the Press: John McCain.

Atrios sums up McCain with admirable brevity:

Shorter John McCain on MTP (Russert-free, thankfully):

The administration has done the wrong thing for the last 3 and a half years which leaves us with no option other than staying the course.

McCain again sniffs the the prevailing winds and sees the only guarantee of realizing his now-bottom-of-the-ninth Presidential ambitions is to emerge in 2007 as the undisputed heir designate of the enormous Bush slimegunner apparatus. And so McCain again goes on national teevee to perform yet another of his sickening, ritual auto da fes on the last remnants of the younger, honor-spouting McCain 1.0.

Again he blinks out semaphore to his Dear Leader on camera that he will gladly trade in his rusted out “Straight Talk Express” for the keys Karl Rove's Pretty Hate Machine.

Which is why John McCain dutifully knobs Jerry Falwell’s lap bishop and sides with the vile religious extremists who have destroyed his Party.

And why he spent a large lump of his Sunday teevee face-time seeing how much further up Dubya’s spider hole he can crawl.

What a pathetic creature McCain has become. What a desperately sad, shapeless slithery caricature of his former, endoskeletally-endowed self he has become.

Principle gone. Rationale gone.

Nothing left now but unbounded ego entombed in a chitinous Brooks Brothers shell, and an unalloyed lust for power that he sees slipping away forever. A tired old man, drained of any vestige of purpose, now shitting his political Depends and shedding his honor like an albatross while he sprints for a bus that is pulling away without him.

Screaming, “Wait. Wait. God Damn It! Don’t you know who I am!!”

Yes, Senator. We now know exactly who you are.

And speaking of Joe Lieberman...



On Face the Nation. It’s Joementum!

Here, Norma Liebermond explains to Bob Schieffer;



“I'm still big - it's the Party that got small!"

(A riff I realize I have used before, but “Sunset Boulevard” as metaphor is nearly irresistible.)

Holy Joe: We’ve got to urgently deal with the sectarian violence. My opponent defined me as some kind of “cheerleader” for the Bush Administration and distorted my record.

Distortions? Heavens!

Well, lets break this down shall we?

Holy Joe: This is about how we end our involvement in Iraq successfully.

driftglass: Chickenshit, weasel-worded, and emphatically Republican tripe. It’s not “involvement”. “Involvement” means you’ve been dating for a few months and she wants to know where this is going.

“Slaughterhouse” is what we have in Iraq.

“Civil War”

“Foreign policy disaster on an epic scale.”

“Vietnomentum!”

Joe, if your dick is jammed in a light socket, the way you successfully “end your involvement” in said light socket is to yank your Johnson the hell out of there.

Jesus. That I have to explain this to a United States Senator...

Holy Joe: It would be a disaster if we set a deadline. Sectarian violence would go up.

Bob Schieffer: But it’s going up now you asshole!?

Holy Joe: Sure, but we need to “demand” the Iraqi Government do a better job. See, it’d go up MORE if we got out. To, like, Eleven!

driftglass: So drown slow or drown fast. Bleed out in an hour or in a day. These are the choices you offer? And, more importantly, who in their right mind is even paying attention to this kind of locked-ward-crazy "prediction" anymore?

Is there anyone left outside the Cheneybunker who takes seriously anything these same stump-stubborn, lemming-stupid Neocons say anymore? This Neoconfederacy of Dunces who, since before Day One, have been utterly, fatally wrong about every single one of the Arrogant Declarative pronouncement they have made regarding every single strategic, tactical, political, geopolitical, economic, and historic detail of this debacle?

driftglass: This statement alone is disingenuous and delusional to a degree that no one saying shit like this should be trusted anywhere near the policy-making levers. Being seen as doing our bidding is radioactive for any Iraqi politician. Being seen as flipping us off is seen as a sign of independence and strength.

So using what leverage do you “demand” anything, Joe? Using what inducements?

Or are you really proposing we gamble what is left of our military and our good name on the Homer Simpson Gambit.

Beat on ‘em and scream: “Stupid Iraq. Be more funny!”

Holy Joe: I have never been for an unconditional, unending commitment in Iraq.

driftglass: You’re a liar. If you are not advocating a withdrawal plan of any kind in a conflict that has no exit plan and no end, ever, then you are doing nothing other than cheerleading an unconditional commitment to the slaughter of other people’s children in Iraq. Forever.

Holy Joe: It is not a Civil War because we have a Unity Government and an undivided Iraqi military.

driftglass: You’re a liar, Holy Joe. Dick Cheney and Cheney’s various fingerpuppets are the only people left in the corridors of policy, power and press who do not think Iraq is in the middle of a full-fledged civil war.

Holy Joe: Iraq has become a major battlefield against the people who attacked us on 9/11.

driftglass: Wow. So you’re still trying to sell that sack of electoral crack on the street corner to the youngsters? What an utterly mendacious shit-heel you have become.

You’re a liar, Holy Joe. And that fact that you lie so incompetently – so Republicanly -- is what I find especially insulting.

Holy Joe: If Iraq collapses... If Iraq falls into Civil War... We need to “demand” our handcrafted Iraqi gummint do better...

Holy Joe: If you want a Partisan Divider, vote for Ned Lamont. All of that talk about Iraq being in more trouble than we can handle is just partisan! Anyone not campaigning on a platform of Komplete Kapo Kapitulationism to the Dear Leader’s whims – no loudly advocating bending over and grabbing our ankles for the Dear Leader’s Mighty Wang is -- just a stinkin’ partisan.

Hmmm. “Partisan”: adj. “Devoted to or biased in support of a party, group, or cause.”

That’s Holy Joe alrighty: Not devoted to or in support of any party, group or cause…except his own colossal ego.


On Chris Matthew's show -- the Chris Matthew's Show -- 26 minutes of Captain Dubya steering his hullgutted Operation Endless Clusterfuck on a true course ever deeper and faster, straight at ever larger icebergs, lifeboats splashing into the cold Atlantic waters and rats leap for their lives, squeaking, “Jesus, I wonder who the dumbasses were that ever fell for this idjit’s line of hooey?” on their way down.

Sorry, Chris. Unlike the dying GOP Pachyderm, we New Dems have long, long memories. And we’re now sleepily remembering a lesson our fathers and mothers taught us years and years ago. A lesson that we had forgotten for long time, to our detriment and shame.

That you can reason only with the Reasonable. And that to keep fascist and their enabling ilk from razing what is left of the ideals we love, sometimes we have to mulekick like a motherfucker.

Now off to a beach somewhere for a little reading in the bright summer sun and a cold beverage.

And of course a little discrete, gentlemanly ogling.

Anatomy of a fuckup.

And it all started with this cocksucker.

This is what happens when stupid people believe in magic (emphasis added).

The FBI computer upgrade that wasn’t
$170 million bought an unusable system
By Dan Eggen and Griff Witte
WASHINGTON - As far as Zalmai Azmi was concerned, the FBI's technological revolution was only weeks away.

It was late 2003, and a contractor, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), had spent months writing 730,000 lines of computer code for the Virtual Case File (VCF), a networked system for tracking criminal cases that was designed to replace the bureau's antiquated paper files and, finally, shove J. Edgar Hoover's FBI into the 21st century.

It appeared to work beautifully. Until Azmi, now the FBI's technology chief, asked about the error rate.

Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds, Azmi recalled in an interview. The problems were multiplying as engineers continued to run tests. Scores of basic functions had yet to be analyzed.

"A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs," Azmi said. "You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors."

Within a few days, Azmi said, he warned FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that the $170 million system was in serious trouble. A year later, it was dead. The nation's premier law enforcement and counterterrorism agency, burdened with one of the government's most archaic computer systems, would have to start from scratch.

Failures of almost every kind

The collapse of the attempt to remake the FBI's filing system stemmed from failures of almost every kind, including poor conception and muddled execution of the steps needed to make the system work, according to outside reviews and interviews with people involved in the project.

But the problems were not the FBI's alone. Because of an open-ended contract with few safeguards, SAIC reaped more than $100 million as the project became bigger and more complicated, even though its software never worked properly. The company continued to meet the bureau's requests, accepting payments despite clear signs that the FBI's approach to the project was badly flawed, according to people who were involved in the project or later reviewed it for the government.
...

"SAIC was at fault because of the usual contractor reluctance to tell the customer, 'You're screwed up. You don't know what you're doing. This project is going to fail because you're not managing your side of the equation,' " said Kay, who later became the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. "There was no one to tell the government that they were asking the impossible. And they weren't going to get the impossible."…

'Not on a path to success'

More than two years after Sept. 11, when a team of researchers from the National Research Council showed up to review the status of Trilogy, FBI officials assured them that the bureau had made great strides. That was true in part: By early 2004, two of the three main pillars of the program -- thousands of new PCs and an integrated hardware network -- were well on the way to being delivered and installed.
But, as the researchers soon learned, the heart of the makeover, VCF, remained badly off track. In its final report, in May 2004, the NRC team warned that the program was "currently not on a path to success."

The review team from the NRC, which is affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences, was made up of more than a dozen scientists and engineers from top universities and leading technology companies, all of them independent of the FBI and its contractors.

The report observed that the rollout of the new case-management software had been poorly planned nearly from the beginning. Months after the program was supposed to be complete, it remained riddled with shortcomings:

· Agents would not be able to take copies of their cases into the field for reference.
· The program lacked common features, such as bookmarking or histories, that would help agents navigate through millions of files.
· The system could not properly sort data.
· Most important, the FBI planned to launch the new software all at once, with minimal testing beforehand. Doing so, the NRC team concluded, could cause "mission-disruptive failures" if the software did not work, because the FBI had no backup plan.

"That was a little bit horrifying," said Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the review team. "A bunch of us were planning on committing a crime spree the day they switched over. If the new system didn't work, it would have just put the FBI out of business."
...

Matthew Patton, a programmer who worked on the contract for SAIC, said the company seemed to make no attempts to control costs. It kept 200 programmers on staff doing "make work," he said, when a couple of dozen would have been enough. The company's attitude was that "it's other people's money, so they'll burn it every which way they want to," he said.

Patton, a specialist in IT security, became nervous at one point that the project did not have sufficient safeguards. But he said his bosses had little interest. "Would the product actually work? Would it help agents do their jobs? I don't think anyone on the SAIC side cared about that," said Patton, who was removed from the project after three months when he posted his concerns online.
...

One FBI manager estimated that the scope of the Trilogy project as a whole expanded by 80 percent since it began, according to a February 2005 report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

SAIC has consistently said that it was trying to meet the FBI's needs but that its efforts were undermined by the bureau's chronic indecision. Executive Vice President Arnold Punaro submitted testimony to Congress in February 2005 that cited 19 government personnel changes in three years that kept the program's direction in flux.
...

"We had information that could have stopped 9/11," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It was sitting there and was not acted upon. . . . I haven't seen them correct the problems. . . . We might be in the 22nd century before we get the 21st-century technology."

If you have ever toiled in the vineyards of IT for more than a minute, you have either worked on or been within the blast radius of a project like this.

Designed by committee, whose every whim and bowel-movement is praised as wise and sagacious beyond the consultant’s poor power to describe with mere words.

Absolutely yes, sirrah, using cutting-edge this and using new database theory that breaks the Normal Form barrier and cutting edge yadda yadds or our proprietary Natural Language interface using the latest in third fourth fifth sixth generation code we can and will build you the elusive Magic Box with the Easy Button on top.

The Super Ooper Duper Database that will bind up every wound and dry every tear.

The website that will make Almighty God Herself weep.

That’s when those of us who have been running in circles screaming that you are about to drive the division/company/country off a fucking cliff are told to STFU. To “get onboard or get out.”

Are called traitor as we desperately try to warn the decision makers that they are shoving a loaded gun in down the division’s/company’s/country’s throat and the consequences are going to be really, really bad.

“No, no, no,” we are told. “Everything is different now. The laws of cause and effect. Of human nature. Of history. Of thermodynamics. These have all been repealed by this New Majyk Doctrine! The New Majyk Paradigm! Now whatever we wish for…happens!

"It’s a miracle.

"It’s Amazing.

"It’s Fucking Wonkavision!!

“Don’t you see how new it is? NewNewNewNew, and sooo shiny!”

No, asshat, it’s not New. It’s Old. God Alone knows how old, but this scam of convincing idiots that doing something radically stupid is really, actually brilliant was old when Adam and Eve were playing “Snakes...In a Garden!”

And as to the moderns, technological gloss on this ancient con, I am only being semi-facetious when I say that it all began with that stupid, fucking IBM PC commercial. Where Charlie Chaplin toddles merrily around as tech and a few, slim, user-friendly manuals alight gently on his kitchen table.

He taps a few buttons and, Voila: Instant productivity.

Since that dark day, the treaders of the digital grapes have been fighting a rear-guard action against Stupid Bosses and Douchebag Consultants who insist that, with a little moxie and a little imagination -- and your name on this wildly open-ended contract -- all of the unicorns and Lucy Lius and 30% profit margins of your dreams will come positively rocketing out of the business end of the cornucopia we will build for you.

That’s when the money starts rolling in. Huge piles of it



delivered on palettes using C-5 Galaxies if necessary, and from that point on the death-spiral begins.

And to see this pattern in all of its perverse, pernicious, pervasiveness just substitute:

PNAC for SAIC.

The White House for the FBI.

The Iraqi Project for the Virtual Case File Project.

Because the Stupid Men at the top cannot admit failure and, oh, say, fire Don Fucking Rumsfeld without loss of face. They can take no corrective action because to do so they would have to confront the fact that everything their critics and opponents said was true, and everything their allies and friends have told them has been a lie.

And the dread of copping to that level of incompetence and cupidity -- of having to own up to being every inch the dribbling, inept idiot that the rest of the world outside his bubble already knows he is -- is a thing no Stupid Man with Power will ever, ever do.

They would rather die first. Or, more accurately, they would let the world die first.

So instead they redouble the bet, pour more money down the rat-hole, and fire the last, few, honest men within the organization who still dare to speak the truth and who still might be able to salvage the situation if given half a chance.

I have seen, up close, whole companies go under because of this scam. And, in the end, the parasites survive and scuttle on to leech the life out of yet another fat, dumb CEO and leave behind bankrupt pensions and ruined lives.

But of course, there is no bigger Hunny Pot than the United States Government, which is why the Bill Kristols of the world are calling for ever wilder, more insanely reckless action: They're going All In, because they know that after they're burned off of the flesh of this nation like the tics that they are, there is no place left for them to go.

For a long time there will be no more rich, bloated dimwits Preznits on which they can safely prey after the subpoenas start flying and George Bush and Neoconservativism vanish under weight of the blood-dimmed tide they created. Cast down, down, down into eternal infamy as the twin pillars of the worst Administration in American history.

This is the dawning realization that is scaring the fucktard rank-and-file of the GOP into ever more hysterical public behavior.

This is the sinking ship from which George Will and Tom Friedman are desperately trying to flee.

This is the existential kill-box of their own making that the Republican Party is now frantically trying to weasel out of, because of fucked projects and politics I know these six things to be true:

First, a fucked project at a bank for 100K, at the DMV for $5 million, at the FBI for $170 million, and in Iraq for $2 trillion are all depressingly similar in every characteristic except for order of magnitude of the costs and the scale of the consequences of failure.

Second, the oiliest “process reengineering consultant” or “visioneer” is no different from Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, because there will always be Big Cake to be made pouring comforting lies into the ears of stupid, hateful people.

Third, these disasters take wing because Stupid Men with Power will always listen to flatterers and liars who tell them what they wish were true, and will always scream “Traitor!” at those who try to tell then what is actually true and stop the division/company/country from being stampeded into the abyss.

Fourth, as the project collapses, the criminals who created it will strive mightily to blame their failure on those who tried to warn them that this was a bad idea from the start. On badthinkfulness and a lack of sufficient corporate piety and prayer. God knows if they’re actually stupid enough to believe that a deficit of Tinkerbell Clapping is what’s driving their organization into the grave, but other than immediately admitting their error and atoning, this is the only card they have left to play.

Fifth, eventually they fall. They always fall, and they take lives and treasure down with them in an arc that was as predictable as the sunrise from the first moment they decided they could bribe Reality into changing the rules just for them.

Sixth, the funding that will be available to clean up the GOPs rubble and ruin will be vastly less than the cost of the original misadventure.

And the same people who broke the bank and spared no expense on hooch and hookers for the Big Iraqi Cakewalk Party, will be the first to bitch and whine over pennies and taxes when it comes to cleaning up the ocean of blood and vomit, debt and tragedy their short and despicable reign will leave behind.