It’s the Great Lumpen, Charlie Brown.

It seems that every so often the dik-dik birds that clean the baby-flesh and black market Oxycontin and Viagra fragments from between Rush’s teeth manage to con him into believing that he’s actually sane and ready for the polite company of intelligent grownups.

They then convince some idiot to put him in front of a camera.

And then hilarity predictable ensues because, of course, without the ability to cut the microphones of anyone who calls him out for being a fat, lying racist pig, Rush is helpless.

Rush knows his demographic extremely well – puppy-kickers, klansmen and assorted other inbred mouthbreathers and the women who love them. And he knows how to play to them.

And fortunately for us he periodically forgets that the world outside is vastly different that the Universe inside the Wingnut Propaganda Fart Rebreathing Bell Jar. He periodically forgets that, far from being a badass, he is in fact a terribly delicate, terribly fragile breed of shithouse orchid; one which cannot survive outside the carefully climate- and adulation-controlled environment of Hate Radio.

He forgets and uses his “inside voice”, so every so often we are treated to a Very Special Episode of the “Rush Meets World” where he implodes into a puddle of his own sweat, urine, lies and cowardice.

And then – being Rush -- he scuttles away, puling and sniveling, until his next disastrous foray into teevee land, such as his famous 15 seconds of fame-and-flame-out in front of the cameras channeling George Wallace doing “color” commentary for ESPN.


This was all brought to mind last night when I had occasion to glimpse the odious Scarborough Country while on the treadmill at an unnamed gym.

Here are some snips from the transcript.

Guests: Michael Crowley, Amy Sullivan, Katrina Szish, Ashlan Gorse, Matthew Felling, Bob Kohn, Rachel Sklar

...
RACHEL SKLAR, HUFFINGTONPOST.COM: Well, I just found it interesting Matthew‘s phraseology, watching the bully get bullied. I mean, Letterman tore a page of O‘Reilly‘s playbook, and it‘s an excellent way of kind of disarming your enemy, if I could use such dramatic phraseology.

But I think that Letterman—yes, Letterman does not seem to like O‘Reilly. The first time he was on the program, he was reacting strongly to O‘Reilly‘s criticism of Cindy Sheehan. And this is a woman who lost her son in the war. And so that was, I think, the focus of Letterman‘s outrage, and it just doesn‘t seem like he‘s a fan.

...
KOHN (author of the book “Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted.”): No, well, to a certain—I agree with Matthew. I mean, everybody wins here...

But on the other hand, you can really sense some anger in Letterman‘s voice. He personally attacks—these were ad hominem attacks. There was some discussion of the issues. As a matter of fact, I think the two of them agreed—if you listen to the rest of the segment, they agreed with each other more than they disagreed with each other.

But for some reason, Letterman was personally attacking O‘Reilly. I do sense a hatred there. And perhaps it‘s what Bill O‘Reilly is saying in his own book and on his show that there are elements of the mainstream media that are jealous of his success and don‘t want to see him succeed. As a matter of fact, they‘d like to take him down. And I think that‘s what Letterman was trying to do, try to take down...

SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, Bob, it seems as if Letterman is proving O‘Reilly‘s point.

KOHN: Exactly.

SCARBOROUGH: That there is a cultural war, and he goes on these shows, and he‘s got people that despise him because he is a Red State culture warrior.

KOHN: Exactly right.

SKLAR: I don‘t think that‘s why—I don‘t think that‘s why they don‘t like him.

FELLING: Well, you know who is really jealous who was watching this show the other night? Who‘s jealous sitting in bed, eating her bonbons, is Rosie O‘Donnell, who had Bill O‘Reilly on “The View” but had completely been bound back by Barbara Walters and couldn‘t do what—I think she would have done exactly what David Letterman did.

And the Bill O‘Reilly—the chat fest book review tour keeps going on. And it‘s really interesting to see that Oprah Winfrey, earlier in the day—I mean, we were kind of sandwiched. It was Bill O‘Reilly-mania—

Oprah had actually laid off and just let her audience feast upon the man.

SCARBOROUGH: And of course, Bob Kohn, as Matthew said, though, Rosie couldn‘t go after O‘Reilly because Barbara Walters was there holding her on the leash, right?
...

And that’s right about when I fwew up in my mouf and moved on to the free weights, because the upshot of it all was how shocking and awful it was that that Letterman was hatin’ on po’ Bill-O.

First, when exactly did David Letterman’s little comedy dealie become a proxy for the Evil Liberal Media Conspiracy?

Second, so what if he hates Bill-O? O’Reilly is repulsive, so what rational person would not find him eminently worth hating?

But third, and most of all – what pissed me utterly off about the whole, ridiculous segment – was this: When did everyone in the MSM agree to this set of rules?

That it is perfectly acceptable for the Right to scream "Traitor!!" at the top of their lungs at anyone outside of their blackshirt circle jerk, but let a Progressive get fed up enough at being called a traitor by this jackal pack of liars and hucksters to fire back, suddenly that’s hateful and off-limits?

Limbaugh, for example, has been on the air, virtually every day in every market, for twenty years now, pumping out one virulent lie after another swimming in raw racist, sexist, homophobic sewage, and how has the Right “punished” this tin pot demagogue who hawks hate and poison to the masses for partisan gain?

For his trouble he was honored as the “Majority Maker” by the Republican Congress and has a hot line to the Oval Office. And no matter how deep into the sewer of visceral rage and fear a Limbaugh or Coulter or Hannity or O’Reilly spelunk for votes or ratings or cash, the very, very worst that the craven MSM will ever call them is “Controversial”.

And when they’re called on it in blunt, clear language they cry like little bitches.

This is as if "Culture Warrior" Bull Connor had dropped by the Harlem Boys Choir to say howdy and to hawk his latest book – “Why Jungle Bunnies Are My Inferiors” -- had got shouted out of the place, and now wants to whine that he can’t understand why the Darkies are so Angry!

Why they’re so Unfair!

To which the only rational response is this:

“BWAAHAHA!”

UPDATE: Eric Boehlert says this in very much nicer language and in terrific detail here in his article "Playing nice with Rush Limbaugh" which begins thusly:

Question: When is an apology not an apology?

Answer: When the press corps is covering for Rush Limbaugh.

Bush to Marines: "Semper F.U. "

Why are Republicans making them beg for scraps?


Pamela Hess has this from UPI. (Emphasis added)

I like Pam. She’s usually about a week or two ahead the rest of the media Universe when it comes to this kind of story: something volatile and vital, yet as nuts-and-bolts and deeply “inside” as Shakespeare talking about the backstabbery of royal court politics.

Marine budget short `08
By Pamela Hess
Oct 27, 2006, 19:00 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The U.S. Marine Corps is pleading for an additional $4 billion in its fiscal year 2008 budget but has been rebuffed so far, a Marine Corps official said Thursday.

'We`ll comply with our fiscal guidance, but don`t ask me to tell you that $19 billion is good enough,' a Marine Corps official told United Press International.

While the U.S. Army has been unusually vocal and specific in discussing its 2008 budget crisis -- it says it needs about $22 billion more than the $114 billion it was originally slated to get next year -- the Marine Corps has not until now made its needs known publicly.

The Marine Corps -- at 181,000 people, by far the smallest branch of the military, and one that prides itself on doing things on a shoestring -- is preparing to make its arguments public and on the record in the next few weeks, he said.

It has become a matter of conscience.

Marine casualty reports come into the official`s office daily from Iraq -- three Thursday morning alone. They are a constant reminder of what 18 and 19-year-old kids are willing to do for the United States.

'I am increasingly uncomfortable that they are doing a lot more for the country than we are for doing for them,' he said. 'We will not be doing right by them if we don`t make powerful arguments.'

'That`s the right argument, telling the truth.'

The Marine Corps is slated to receive a fiscal year 2008 baseline budget of $18.6 billion. But according to the official, the Corps needs $2 billion more in its baseline budget and another $2 billion in the Navy budget for things the Navy provides to the Corps -- primarily aircraft like helicopters and the V-22 Osprey, but also medical personnel, health care and other accounts.

'Right now, the Navy and Marine Corps are making scary, terrible tradeoffs,' the official said. 'The war is having a corrosive effect on the Marine Corps. If we were at peace, this (budget) would probably be OK,' he said.

Earlier this year, the Marine Corps made its case for a budget 20 percent larger to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which it believed would make the president understand the Marine Corps` mounting needs.

It was not a successful tactic.

'It`s inside the building politics,' the official explained. 'We thought we`d be respected for staying within our lane. It turns out that was not the right thing to do.'

…
'What`s the benefit of being quiet?' the official asked. 'The Army is going to be short about two-thirds of what they need. We`re going to be short by a lot more than that.'

Congress has provided the military more than $300 billion in war supplementals since 2001, but even those do not cover the bills. They come too late in the year and they are restricted in how they can be used. By law, they can only go for war 'consumables' -- bullets and bombs and the cost of paying soldiers combat bonuses.

But wars have hidden costs that supplementals don`t touch: additional health care, family benefits, barracks and training for the thousands of extra troops on the payrolls, among other things. Baseline budgets are tapped to cover those costs and money is drained from buying replacement and upgraded helicopters, tanks, vehicles and guns to plug the gaps.

'We are in the middle of a long war. Quite frankly, that`s fundamentally wrong,' the official said. 'We have to ask ourselves what we are willing to risk, whether we are willing to be as vocal as we need to be, to make people uncomfortable.

The shorter wingnut argument for the catalog of sins and obscenities their Party has committed against the military -- from dumping kids into a combat zone with cardboard body armor and Purple Heart Mobiles, to veteran’s benefits cuts, to stop-lossing soldiers until they crack, to why the Barcalounger Bravehearts of the 101st Chairborne have rabidly and categorically refused by the millions to enlist in their Iraqi War for Everything That Is Good And Decent -- has always, always been the same:

“They volunteered.”

Spoken with something between a sneer and a smirk.

Because while “They volunteered” is what they say, in wingnut code it means “They were stupid enough to volunteer.”

The Right views the military in exactly the same way their great-granddaddies viewed their slaves and their daddies and granddaddies viewed their sharecroppers.

As property.

As chattel they could simultaneously brag on for their productive utility, and work to death without a second thought or pang of conscience.

Because it is the dream of every weak and cowardly man to have other, superior men under their heel. Men they can legally fuck over with impunity. As a balm their massive sense of inferiority, weak, little men have always felt a powerful need to be able to fuck around with the lives of their betters.

It’s why, when his poll numbers start their death spiral, George Allen will unhesitatingly go “Macaca”.

It’s why, when faced with losing in Tennessee to a black man, the GOP will instantly go Full Metal Mandingo.

It’s why this country has a Klan, a 700 Club, Conservative Hate Radio and a Big White Torch-lit Basement called the Republican Party where they can all convene and conspire.

It’s why – from scientists to teachers to soldiers to organized labor to genuine journalists – the Right has such virulent contempt for the people they depend on to protect them in one way or another.

Because they cannot help themselves; this is simply how bigots and fascists are wired.

Because they view “Semper Fidelis” as a smutty little joke played on people foolish enough to actually believe in it -- something akin to the sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the gates Auschwitz -- instead of a solemn compact that runs both ways.

As the military is called upon to stand between we civilians and harm, so we civilians are called upon not to use them as ass paper. As disposable human HandiWipes that whatever gorgon Jerry Falwell really worships put here for us to use up and toss out.

Not to use them as human footstools to prop up our decrepit egos.

They are our children, and when we send them off to kill and die in our name we are bound by honor to be fucking well positive that they go armed and armored to the teeth for a fight that is based on threats that are both incontrovertible and unavoidable.

The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban was such a cause…and the Neocons coldly and deliberately used it to bait-and-switch us into Iraq and their Glorious War for Oil and Empire.

They sent our children off, wrapped in Kleenex and IOUs, to die in Iraq for lies and the greater glory of George W. Bush’s Oedipal complex.

And now that those kids are spent -- now enough of them have died to fill a country town, and enough of them have been wounded to populate a small city –- the Party of God that sent them off to bleed in foreign deserts for no damned good reason wants to make them beg for relief.

Wants to abuse and humiliate them one last time. Make ‘em dance a little more before kicking them to the curb, rolling over, and going back to sleep.

And why?

Because they volunteered to defend their country at a time when criminals and cowards and liars run the place.

Because they served during the Age of Dubya.

An age when one can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but one can no longer be both.

The Raven: Two Different Ones

First, Basil Rathbone doing sinuous justice to the original and heartbreaking "Raven".

For maximum enjoyment I suggest waiting until after midnight, turning down the lights, and letting it fly, remembering that Poe wrote this while his wife was literally on her death bed in the next room. In the tiny house he was too poor to heat, with his coat and cat piled on her to keep her warm, she was slowly perishing from the same disease that had killed his mother and orphaned him.

He understood perfectly what the blood on her lips meant, and how helpless he was to stop it, and could not help but imagine with all awful vividness that was his gift what a desolation his life be after she was gone.

How he would try to drink and drug and read himself out of his grief, but that no matter how hard he tried, she would be gone forever and he would see her nevermore.

And then he sat down and wrote it all out because, God help us, that's what writers do.

That's the first offering.

The second is my own parodic effort, which many of you enjoyed last year and which I have brought out of retirement due to popular demand (Ok, two e-mails. But I flatter easy, the season is upon us, and I do like this piece quite a bit.)

So now, for your Halloween reading pleasure (and with apologies to Mr. Poe) the return of...

'Quoth the Hammer, "Nevermore!"'

Once upon a bender bleary, while I pondered, weak and beery,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

With my nod on, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
(Actually more like a serious bitch-slapping),

...smacking at my chamber door.

WTF," I mumbled, "I’m on vacation! Ask Dick; he runs the nation.
Get off my ass and let Karl do it," I loud and soddenly swore.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak September,
And every fucktard, camp-following member had been given his sinecure.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
Chinese cash or some “Aw Shucks” Charisma from the lost Gipp-er.

For the Smilin’, Beguilin’ Monster who could sell our Republican Manure,
Dead and gone forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each voting booth curtain
Thrilled me---filled me electoral delirium tremens throughout all of 2004;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood bleating,
" 'Tis some Pioneer Contributor, or Halliburtoning Corporate whore
Or another dimwit frat rat trollop sporting a Santorum coiffure

...This it is, and nothing more."

The Stoli shooters grew stronger; and hesitating no longer,
"Dicky?" said I, "Condi? Or is that Turdblossom? I recognize the spoor...
But the fact is, I was drinkin’, getting good and stinkin’
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door;---
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, snarling, sneering
Jerking off to Armageddon dreams no one ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken –- no Condi or other token –
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "2004?",
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word," 2004!"
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into my bottle turning, all the Jim Beam I’d guzzled burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before,
"Surely," said I, "surely, that is Rumsfeld with a briefing.
That will disassemble that bitch Sheehan’s beefing.
Let my heart stop Cheneying a moment, and this mystery explore.
" 'Tis just old crazy Rummy, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a hiss and splutter,
In there stepped a mangy Hammer, of the Mandate days of yore.
Not an ounce of sense made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with Death Skull grimance, perched above my chamber door.
Shat upon a bust of Nixon, just above my chamber door,
Shat, and sat, and nothing more.

This Sugarland turd was so badly freaking, into my pants I went leaking,
Shocked by the deranged and murderousness of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy Majorityhood be shorn and shave," I said, "you are still craven,
Ghastly, grim, and wretched Hammer, rampaging like a rabid boar.
What the fuck do I do now that my assassin's been shown the door?"
Quoth the Hammer, "Nevermore."

Much I marveled as this insanely ranting Dale Gribble spoke so plainly,
Though it’s answer little meaning, little veracity bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Would not projectile hurl upon seeing this two-legged offal above his chamber door,
A Christopathic beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
That can’t say shit but "Nevermore."

But the Hammer, a skulking minor demon, spoke only of his venom
Hissing that one word, as if his soul were stabbed with skewers.
Nothing further then he uttered; his heart was tightly shuttered;
Til I scarcely more than muttered, "How can I enjoy this Dewars?
Who shall ram my mandate now, through Congress' sewers?"
To which DeLay said, "Nevermore."

Like the thousand promises I’d broken, his word was oily spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store."
Bred from drooling Texas losers, friend of low-wattage crooks and boozers
Partied fast and kneecapped faster, till his lies one burden bore ---
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never---nevermore."

But the Hammer still berserking looked into my dank soul smirking,
So Karl broke it down for me in little words of two syllables, no more.
”Your polls are a’sinking, on ice your lies are stinking
Iraq and Katrina the public are finally a’linking, and now comes this loony Texas hoor –
This grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous Sugarland hoor
So guess what he means by "Nevermore"?”

And the media scrum grew denser, now fueled by a Grand Jury’s censure
Wrought by a righteous prosecutor who ain’t taking this shit no more.
"Wretch," I cried, "now it’s all for nothing. For nothing I cheated Albert Gore.
So get me three fingers of two-cents-plain that I may forget by apotheotic 2004!
Drink and drink and puke and drink and forget my apotheotic 2004!
Quoth the Hammer, "Nevermore!"

"You For-Profit, agenda-killing jag off" said I, "Faith-based pimp of Abramoff!
By that Dobson that bends us over -- by that God we both abhor—
Is there in the cushions where we shine our asses, even one dime of my political assets?
A whiff of my miracle Mandate year, which Pope Gregor named 2004 ---
My moment on the Mountain, COBOL programmers call Y2K-plus-four?
Quoth the Hammer, "Nevermore."

"Shut up you fucking loser!" I shrieked, upstarting –
"Go back to offing roaches you salad tossing, Albatrossing spore!
Leave no poo stripe as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my binginess unbroken! Leave me a political Debtor!<
Take thy dick from out my mouth, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Hammer, "Nevermore."

But the Hammer, never quitting, still is sitting, still is shitting
Down the throat of my Dead Mandate, my ghost of 2004;
And his eyes still have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my Mandate from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!

Happy Halloween, kids.

Meanwhile, at Camp David

Prince Dubya makes merry with the Party Faithful.

There is something brutally contemporary in the best of Poe’s work, and since 'tis the season...

It’s true that he cranked out a lot of crap (don't we all), but it is also true that 150 years after his death, his C. Auguste Dupin is still the prototype for every private detective from Sherlock to Monk.

His nameless psychopath who was “…never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” would be right at home in the box spilling his guts on any of the thousands of “Law and Order” variants.

Montresor’s crime scene – undisturbed for fifty years – would fit in nicely as either a “Cold Case” or perhaps “CSI: Italy”.

And his “Masque of the Red Death" feels to me more frighteningly modern every day.

Set in an unnamed land wracked by plague and fear…

“The "Red Death" had long devastated the country.
No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.

The wealthy -- under the leadership of their Prince Prospero -- withdraw into a massive fortress:

"When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.

"This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.

They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned."

And in three, quick lines, Poe almost offhandedly distills the essence of all feudal systems and deftly defines the nature of the New Conservative Order the Party of God is now openly struggling to impose on our country.

"With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion.

"The external world could take care of itself.

"In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. "

Because the promise you are being offered here and now is this: As long as you are obedient to the Prince, you will be protected from the horror of Outside.

The horror of black men laying their hands on your white women.

The horror of Poverty.

Of Sickness.

Terrorists.

Dirty hippies.

Nukes.

Democrats.

Burning Flags.

Liberals.

Jews.

Strong women.

Messicans.

Nuptialized Queers.

It’s a long and ever-growing list.

As long as you calibrate your tunnel vision narrower and narrower until all you see is Fox, all you hear is Rush and all you believe is literal and inerrant word of Dubya H. Christ…you will be protected from the Evil Other that lurks Out There.

In fact far from a call to shared sacrifice and purpose, it’ll be one helluva party!:

The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure.

There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.

All these and security were within.

Without was the "Red Death."

It is the perfect Conservative Cartesian Universe, with a clear, bright line drawn with a Flag and a Bible between Us and Them.

Until, of course, the revelers realize, too late, that the outside world can’t be walled off and shut out.

That as much perfume and bunting and forest-green stucco as they try to slather and tack and trowel on the walls, the only enduring human structures designed to keep the world permanently out and us in are Tombs and Prisons.

And the only Peace and Security this regime is offering are those of the Gulag and the Grave.

Because in the end, the world endures and fixed fortifications do not, and we can either go out and meet the threats of our era – and home and abroad -- with confidence, compassion, strength, humor, flexibility and intelligence…or hunker in our bunker getting dumber and drunker and pretending it’ll all just go away and leave us alone.

In the end we cannot hide.

Even if we were itty bitty we couldn’t hide, but we are far too big, too rich, too prominent and too powerful to even pretend such a thing is possible or desirable. We are all in this together, and if we allow ourselves to be scared into cowering in our fortress of fear and ignorance we doom ourselves.

The Outside will always, always breach the walls.

Red Death always will come for us in our resplendent spider hole…

“…like a thief in the night.

And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.

"And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

"Keep your weak shit outta here" Edition.

The only burning question here in Chicago this afternoon was this: exactly how badly were Bears going to pulverize the 49ers?

It’s been a long time coming, and no one is counting any chickens yet, because we here remember not only the magic year of 1985, but the years before that.

The years in the wilderness that made winning so sweet.

The late-70s/early-80s Bears. The dark days. The Neill Armstrong Bears. Losers, chewing up the middle of the field, running the same failed plays over and over and over again in hopes of better result.

Walter, left.

Walter, right.

Walter, up the middle.

Punt.

And that’s an awful lot like what the next few weeks in politics is settling into, because there really are no more trick plays to call or Hail Mary’s to be thrown.

Which means there was nothing you would not expect on the Mouse Circus today, except the Bob Schieffer beat down of Ken Mehlman on Face The Nation.

So I’ll keep the rundown brief.

On Fox. The “News” coverage was Korea and the Bush Rear Guard Politcal action and Iraq.

Harold Ford came out smart and stinging, thus giving the “Mandingo” ad fresh oxygen for another new cycle. The ad was a piece of smut. “The Party of Family Values should not have run this ad in Tennessee. Or anywhere.” And if the Republican National Committee didn’t think I could win, they would not have run this filthy shit in my state.

Then Little Ricky Santorum made angry poopy in his pants. While smiling that big, vacant, GOP smile they’re all trained to smile while they say terrible things. I guess we’re supposed to find it reassuring, although I have never found smiling sociopaths anything other than creepy.

Liddy Dole: We are trying to win and Democrats are content to lose the war in Iraq.

Bill Kristol: Smirking Evil. Obviously fell into that vat of Joker chemicals as a young traitor. How else can you explain that he literally cannot stop grinning while he lies to the American people and tries to get more American soldiers killed for his insane cause.

“This Week…” was like any of a dozen other re-runs of “This Week…”

“Meet the Press” featured a Senatorial debate between Ben Cardin and Michael Steele, so if you’re still, for some inexplicable reason, politically malleable, and you live in Maryland, go find a rerun somewhere.

Which is why for the next few weeks, Sunday morning is going to be somewhat uninteresting.

It's trench now. The GOP is simultaneously slurrybombing (he said, fully realizing he was violating his own metaphor) the wildfire that they themselves created and that's roasting them alive with ever more racist, hateful, lying sludge...and running away from their own rhetoric when anyone throws a little light sunlight into their reeking, Evangelical shithouse.

Thus combining the three least appetizing features of the Party of God: Overweening hubris, overwrought hate-peddling and cowardice.

The GOP seems to be positively possessed of a raging case political Tourette’s Syndrome. Some perverse contest to see who can most completely empty their bile ducts and lower intestines into the political waters in order to so poison them that nothing but a handful of Right Wing CHUDS will survive to shamble to the polls and re-elect their Party of Perverts and Traitors Family Values.

For myself, I believe they’re in the throes of this massive moral dysfunction to try to pre-empt the post-election sense of “esprit de l’escalier” that will come pouring down like a hurricane of hammers and anvils if they lose on November 7th. These are, after all, men who have grown and prospered by looting and betraying America and every time the jig was almost up, they just upped the dosage of lies and betrayals by another 50%.

And somewhere in that dirty cubby where their conscience used to be is a feeling, ruddy and throbbing, that is they could just find the right set of syllables to string together, it'll magically save them (once again) from the consequences of their treachery and corruption.

Because at long last they know nothing else. They are nothing else.

And let’s not pretend their confidence is completely unjustified.

One look down into the ranks of the GOP confirms that there are millions of American citizens who are simply too bigoted or insane to be allowed anywhere near a voting booth, and Karl Rove knows just where they live and which of their pet perversions and diseases to stroke to get them sprinting towards the polls.

Of course, David Kuo’s book, “Tempting Faith”, should have been the last straw to any self-respecting Christian who still believe in the GOP. But let’s face it; if you proudly reject science and reason and believe in the Rapture and an Earth with a “born on” date of 4004 B.C., and delight in the idea of the Universe having a God-sanctioned expiration date of “really, really soon”, then c’mon, you’re not exactly the shiniest ornament on the tree to begin with are you?

Absent a lot of that introspection that you're absolutely terrified of, you're sorta die-cast in the part of "Credulous Faith-Based Dumbass" for good, aren't you?

So while this Sunday was a predictable as Punch and Judy, the one exception was on Face the Nation.

John Murtha was eloquent: We get no action. We get rhetoric. We get denial and demonization of the opposition.

Duncan Hunter was reporting from an alternate Universe where Everything is great and getting better. Just like Germany. Just like Japan. Everyone who is on-board for this war is a patriot. Everyone who is not is pro-terrorist.

Or something. I honestly can’t even hear what they say anymore. Can’t even make out individual words. It’s all this high-pitcher, nearly-hysterical keening

But it was the “interview” with Ken Mehlman that was kinda special.

Because while Kenny wanted to talk about “Taxes baby!!” Bob Schieffer wanted to know why the RNC is spending its money in Tennessee on racist sludge.

Schieffer just slaughters Mehlman. Little, excuse-peddling pussy. The “law” won’t let me take down this ad.

Bob: But you said you though the ad was fair.

Ken: But…I…but…but…I….

Bob: You’re on the record as saying just that.

Ken: I can’t do nuffin! I’m impotent. Powerless.

It was beautiful. It was long overdue.

Because the only play-series Mehlman and the GOP knows how to run anymore is:

Hatred, left.

Hatred, right.

Hatred, up the middle.

Punt.

And on this Sunday, perhaps a picture brought to you from a better future



is worth a 1,000 of those other thingies.

I was told

There’d be beer.

This from DefCon blog

(h/t to Crooks & Liars indispensable Roundup)

Stand For The Family Events Bomb

Focus on the Family has cancelled two of their “Stand for the Family Events” scheduled to be held in giant auditoriums in cities across the country — moving them instead to much smaller venues and in one case to a local church where the admission will be free of charge! Talk about desperate.

Unless Focus announces otherwise, there is no doubt that these are a result of a general disinterest in the Godfather of the religious right i.e. low ticket sales. This is not turning out to be the October they hoped for. Get all the details after the jump.

You’ll remember that in August, Focus on the Family announced a massive campaign to influence the elections in eight targeted states. The campaign was touted as the largest political effort by the religious right since the heyday of the Christian Coalition and reportedly combines a massive voter registration effort, the distribution of voter guides, and a series of high profile “Stand for the Family” events across the country featuring both Dobson, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer.

We’ve heard through the grapevine that the voter registration efforts are struggling, but now here’s some hard proof that these groups are not being met with the fanfare they had hoped or planned for.

Two of the three Stand For the Family events with Dobson and Perkins were cancelled and moved to much smaller venues. The first, on October 3rd in St Paul was initially to be held at the Xcel Energy Center, capable of holding 18,000 depending on the configuration, however at the last minute it was moved to the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, with a capacity of a little under 6,000 — there were less than half that many there.
…

Go read the rest here


Robert Frost famously said: "Hell is a half-filled auditorium."

Welcome to Hell, bitches!

It's Tom Waits Friday

Not too keen on the vid itself. It's technically competent but thematically unrelated to what Waits is singing about. However, many thanks to the artist for posting up a crisp, clear version of the song.

Anyway, Waits grinds it out like an old machine driven too hard, too often, tearing itself apart, so turn it up loud.

"Pregnant women and Vietnam Vets
Beggin’ on the freeway ‘bout as hard as it gets.
..."

Welcome back to the future, kids.

The Ponce of Tides

ponce

n : someone who procures customers for whores (in England they
call a pimp a ponce) [syn: pimp, procurer, panderer,
pander, pandar, fancy man]

Yeah, that’s about right.

And once upon a time, during the age of Conservativism Ascendant, he strutted and fretted his pimply passions upon the world stage.

But now that all he has dreamed of has come to pass -- and all that he was warned would come to pass once his dream came true is crashing down around him -- now Bobo has now forcibly mutated himself from the wingnut’s own paunchy, Wonder Woman



-- staunchly deflecting all legitimate criticism of in a flurry of scurrying and yipping and gaggingly self-congratulatory creative typing -- into a kind of petulant accountant.

A bored grump, noting the collapse of his political House of Games and the slow unmasking of the horrifying parade of catastrophes that six years of Republican rule have wrought with the suddenly flatly-affected, extraterrestrial detachment of an alien discussing a hurricane ripping the guts out of the Gulf Coast from High Earth Orbit.

It is, of course, another coward’s retreat further into mysticism’s cave.

The excuse practically every Conservative with whom I have ever had a beer finally barricades himself behind when he runs out of excuses for voting Straight Traitor Party Ticket for the last 12 years.

That I shouldn’t worry.

That eventually “the pendulum” would swing back towards me.

As if what has happened has something to do with tectonic plates.

Or the Coriolis effect.

Or maybe the tides?

Something comfortingly vast and sweeping. Something quite beyond their control or blame that certainly has nothing to do with the cruel and deliberate choices of millions of our hateful, dimwitted fellow citizens, and the terrible consequences of those choices.

And, yes, these are the people who still have the fucking nerve to call themselves the "Party of Personal Responsibility".

Cold comfort to half a million dead Iraqis. That all this time David Brooks and all the Bobos in the land were banking that eventually some bastard child of Karma and Causality would clean up the debris their treachery left behind and set things right again without them having to man-up, pay-up or take any responsibility whatsoever for the mess they made.

So shut the fuck up willya!

Cold comfort 3,000 dead American soldiers, the former residents of the former city of New Orleans, and on and on and on.

The bill of particulars is long, but then again, these Pendulous Conservatives are actually proud of the fact that never in their lives have they given a shit or a second though about anyone but themselves and their immediate circle of blood relatives and fellow travelers. And since the creatures who still remain loyal to the Dear Leader have nothing resembling a conscience anyway, it’s not like one corpse or one billion is going to budge them one inch.

But at bottom, their world is world of lies, and as the man said “Truth crushed to Earth shall rise again.”

And when it does, and dick-slaps them in the face until blood gouts from their ears, their peevish acknowledgment that something might just be a leeetle bit awry sounds something like Bobo’s Thursday column – “The Era of What’s Next” – fragments of which have been transcribed here from my copy of the NYT:

“Sometimes liberalism is dominant and sometimes conservatism is dominant, but sometimes there is no dominant ideology.

Between 1932 and 1968, liberalism dominated American politics. The big accomplishments were liberal accomplishments — Social Security, Medicare, the civil rights movement. Even if Republicans sometimes held the White House, the general drift of things was still to the left.

Between 1980 and 2006, conservatism was dominant. The big accomplishments were conservative accomplishments — the defeat of communism, the reinvigoration of the economy through deregulation, tax reform and monetarism, the rebalancing of the culture to emphasize family, work and individual responsibility. Even if Democrats sometimes held the White House, the general drift of things was to the right.

But in some eras there is no dominant political tendency. The 1970’s were such a period. That decade was marked not by a change in political winds so much as by disillusionment and a scrambling of political categories.
…

No, it was an era marked by Watergate, Vietnam, the highest of crimes in the highest offices, and the most blatant Republican attempt to rape and strangle the Constitution in history.

Until now that is…

We’re about to enter another of those periods without a dominant ideology. It’s clear that this election will mark the end of conservative dominance. This election is a period, not a comma in political history.

…
If you look at the political landscape, identification with the Republican Party is falling but identification with the Democratic Party is not rising. Instead, there is a spike in the number of people who do not identify with either. People correctly perceive that neither party has a coherent agenda this year.

In the near term, the candidates who thrive will be those who offer a new way of politics. This might be the maverick independence of McCain, or the ostentatiously deliberative style of Obama, or it could be the manner of somebody whom none of us are even thinking about. Candidates who seem conventional will have a tough time. This includes Hillary Clinton.

FYI, “Maverick independence” is wingnut code for “Jeez, I hope my lipstick didn’t smudge Jerry Falwell’s Tighty Whities too badly”

…

The center of political gravity will shift. In the liberal era, the urban Northeast dominated the landscape. In the conservative era, it was in the South and in bedroom communities like those in Southern California. In the coming era, the center of gravity will move to the West and the Midwestern plains, and to the pragmatic, untethered office park suburbs sprouting up there.

Hey dumbass. Unplug Liberal, contentious, diverse, corrupt, magnificent Chicago from “the Midwest” and watch how fast that wonderland of sensible, melanin-poor office parks turn into ghost towns.

Bump gas prices up to a post-election $4.00/gal or let the fresh water supply be taxed just a bit more and watch your fantasy exurbs dry up and blow away.

…

The second big problem is entitlement spending and the stultification of government.

The third challenge is the emergence of China and India ...

The fourth is the growing importance of cognitive skills and cultural capital...

One party will become distracted by passing squalls, but the other will focus on those issues. Then, a new period of dominance will begin.

Not surprisingly, Bobo is wrong.

Not about China or India, but at the meta-level he is, as usual and of course, wrong. At that level, Bobo continues his seething contempt for “government” and “spending”, while diagnosing national problems that will only be solved by the intelligent and war-footing-aggressive use of both.

But here we also find the framework of a deeper, philosophical dishonesty. Because the days ahead are not going to be ones which dawn without rationale or direction. Instead they'll break with altogether too much at stake. Too much in peril. Too much that can bust the strongest man’s heart.

We are coming up on an era in which will be positively saturated with purpose, because ahead comes the Great Cleanup.

For a quarter of a century – roughly since the start of the Reagan Coma of Good Feelings through the end of the Bush Catastrophe – we have been a nation aggressively asleep.

Somnolent, with a bellyful of post-war prosperity earned partly by our own ferocious inventiveness, partly by plunder, and half by our unique position after WWII of having the only industrial society left in the Solar System that was not in ruins.

This allowed us to get good ‘n drunk and play at all kinds of decadent weirdness -- from crappy art to Randite cults to deeply psychotic perversions of Christianity.

Because whatever ridiculous God we chose to fool around with -- Ra El, Jor-El, Fall W’El or Falaf ‘El -- we had the whole of America's seemingly limitless wealth and power from sea to shining sea to backstop us.

We could fail and fail and fail and still have enough tucked away in the cultural bank to keep our kids from starving.

But no more.

Our army is crippled, our Treasury broke, our good name debased. Our majestic purple mountains have been decapitated for their coal, and to keep our plains industrially fruited we have polluted our shining seas.

Somewhere in my deepest and more proudly paranoid recesses I envision a Liberal Master Cylinder -- like Commander Kos but oh so much higher up the food chain -- studying the morally-flatlining pod people the Right has been breeding for the last 30 years and deciding to go Full Metal John Galt on their granite, Christalopithecan skulls.

“Let them have it all,” the Progressive John Galt of my imagination sayeth. “Just step out of their way. Let them win and then let them wallow in the Hell their winning will create.”

Because perhaps in the end there was no way to break the Moderates of their lethal delusions but to play Clarence the Angel and let them see what the world would be like if Conservatives were actually forced to step up, shut the fuck up and govern.

To stop bitching and whining and Rushing and Gingriching about how glorious things would be if we had no Federal government.

If we ran the country as a White Christian fiefdom.

If we unilaterally voided the social contract.

If we deregulated corporations wholesale.

If we elevated torture to national policy, spied on our own citizens without warrants, and fed habeas corpus into the wood chipper.

If we and openly used our military as the meat-axe of Empire to eviscerate anyone who made us nervous and conquer anyone who sat on any natural resources our Ruling Clique wanted to exploit.

In other words, if we let the Christopaths actually run the joint and live with the fallout.

Because the blight and fear and debt and death all around us in the Year of Our Lord 2006 are not what happens in spite of Conservativism, but the apotheosis of Conservativism.

And what this bitter lesson has taught us is simply this: We cannot allow thuggish children whose vision of our future is grounded in a truculent and superstitious pseudo-religion and a proudly imbecilic ignorance of science, history, economics, world affairs and basic English to run the country.

Ever again.

And that, Bobo, is “What’s Next.”

Overdue Photo Captioning

"Come, let us sit and treason together."

Pity the Poor Christopath

This is what they were promised thirty years ago.

And this

is who and what they got.

Because as their vision was utterly despicable, so the results were utterly predictable.

They got played by hucksters and liars and criminals who danced them up to the top of the mountain and promised them the Kingdoms of the Earth, then razored out their pockets and booted them out into space. They got punked on a truly epic scale, and worst of all, everybody in the known Universe but them saw it coming like a St. Patrick's Day parade down Michigan Avenue at noon.

No wonder they're super ooper duper cranky these days.

So here, as a public service, is a short tutorial on how to console your Christopath friends and acquaintances

in this, the looming political midnight of their tiny, hateful souls.

To the One out of Ten

Go ahead and call me a feminazi to your friends.

If it helps you puff up in front of the losers your run with, call me a fag.

Or a n*gger-lover.

Or a tree hugger.

Fine. Knock yourself out.

You don’t have to be brave right out loud. You don’t have to face down your knuckledragging pals at the bar.

Go ahead and call me a traitor out loud and in public, not because it has anything to do with me or mine, but because you think you have to.

Because down in the Heart of Dixie, or in the Pit of Man’s Fears, or in your lily-white gated exurban bunker, or emptying clips into woodland creatures, as ruggedly individualistic as you pretend to be – however much mandibular juttiness you vogue – you are a coward.

On the deep-down, where it counts, you know you’re a weak little man.

It takes no guts at all to bleat and stomp and follow the herd.

Sure, if you come up with another clever word to insult some out-group – some sly “macaca” you can use to piss on someone weaker or browner or poorer or just weirder than you – it’s high fives all around. If you come up with a new and novel way to demonstrate your “Me too!!” conformist obedience to the Party Line, you’re peers will rub your tummy and call you a badass.

Except, of course, we both know you’re not, because running with the lemmings is not running with the bulls.

We both know that you don’t dare open your mouth and think for yourself.

We both know you don’t fucking dare opine even one degree off from True Fucktard North.

You know that you dare not look to closely at crippled Liberty, for fear you might notice that the bruises on her throat are from your hands, and the welts on her back are from your belt.

You want to talk curb-stomping tough with your running buddies, but when faced with the consequence of your own ideology, you do the Tucker Carlson Squirm:

Tucker Carlson speaking today to Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill about the Michael J. Fox stem cell research ad she is running in her effort to unseat Republican Jim Talent:

It's a form of moral blackmail. No matter where you stand on stem cell research, I look at this ad and say I can't disagree with Michael J. Fox. Because his illness is so sad it pulls on me emotionally so much that it feels immoral to me to disagree with him. And I think its unfair of you to run this ad for that reason…

…This is not a conversation about Michael J. Fox, his celebrity or his disease. It's a question about stem cell research and whether its moral or immoral.

So Tucker is a bit uncomfortable with the video because he feels like it makes his views appear immoral. But, since that cannot be the case, it must be McCaskill's fault for putting him in the awkward position in the first place. How dare she play on his emotions by showing a real person being ravished by a horrible disease. Really, what does any of it have to do with the stem cell debate?

We both know you don’t dare admit that the collection of liars and loser and war criminals and thugs who run this country is your Party. Not the exception.

We both know that drowned cities, blasted countries, looted treasuries and War Forever are not the accidental side effects of your ideology.

They ARE your ideology.

They are what 12 years of Conservativism Ascendant looks like.

You did this. Not Fat Ted Kennedy or Crazy Nancy Pelosi or some little Liberal blog full of big words.

You did it and you damned well know it, and by my estimation about one in ten of you are softly sickened by what you have done.

But being a Conservative, you’re weak: standing deep within the mob and screaming slogans for twenty years isn’t exactly an Iron Man training regimen for the courage muscle.

And courage is a muscle. One you have let atrophy almost beyond recognition by letting it loaf on the sofa, lazily suckling the Received Wisdom of Rush and mocking the poor and the weak and the different. Because we both know damned well that if your good good friends ever heard the slightest note of doubt or introspection in your voice, you’d be out.

You would suddenly become the fag. The freak. The Liberal. You would be exiled from you local Kool Kids Klub so fucking quick your head would spin fast enough to split atoms.

So fine, go ahead and call people me feminazi to your friends, but know the days of people like me tolerantly turning the other cheek are over (Letting the pig people get away with taking pride in being ignorant hateful assholes is sooo 20th century)

If it helps you puff up in front of the losers your run with, call me a fag.

Or a n*gger lover.

Or a tree hugger.

In public, make all the noisy protestations of Wingnut Faith you feel you have to make to keep your bigot street cred up inside your Rovian daisy chain.

In public.

But in private, Jesus, have a little pride. Salvage some small portion of your God Given dignity before it suffocates completely under two decades of knee-jerk dumbass flab.

Even though you can no longer bench press more than a kitten’s-worth of honor with it, at least take your courage muscle out for a short walk.

Just a brisk stroll down to the polling place on November 7th.

Because while you may feel you have to go along with the Archie Bunkers of the world in public, remember that in private you are still free to act like a man and take a a man’s responsibility for the mess your public self has made.

And privacy is why they put curtains on voting booths.

Ok, no more monkeying around

with HTML for at least a week.

Although it was an interesting case.

Thank Jebus I keep a test-bed.

It was never intended to be more than a tweak here and there to widen out the body and narrow down the rails. To eye-friendly it up a little, and I end up decapitating (or degluteusizing) the blog.

Sheesh.

And in a way too subtle to diagnose from the castle: every recompilatiion came back A-OK and looked and acted fine

Double sheesh.

Based on some patient emails and my own sampling, it appears that this little electronic hacienda of adjectives was perfectly viewable under the following circumstances:

1. On a Mac (Safari, Firefox or IE)
2. On a WinTel box running Windows XP and Firefox.
3. On a WinTel box running Windows XP and IE.
4. On a WinTel box running Windows XP and Netscape
5. On a WinTel box running Windows 2000 and Firefox.

But not on a WinTel box running Windows 2000 and IE.

Which is also apparently the most common configuration in the solar system.

So I changed the format entirely and while I was republishing the beast (which now takes upwards of an hour, which disinclines me towards making fussier, more tuckpointy changes despite my wishes to the contrary), blogger imploded.

Couldn’t get Gilliard or Shakes or Atrios.

So it’s quite possible that I temporarily annihilated the whole blogger ecosystem.

So I’ve got that going for me.

Give Me More Children.

For I am never sated.

This from the AP:

U.S. says more GIs may be needed in Iraq
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago

Two weeks before U.S. midterm elections, American officials unveiled a timeline Tuesday for Iraq's Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm the world's most dangerous capital and said more U.S. troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed.

U.S. officials previously said they were satisfied with troop levels and had expected to make significant reductions by year's end. But a surge in sectarian killings, which welled up this past summer, forced them to reconsider.

At a rare joint news conference with the American ambassador, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said additional U.S. troops could come from inside or outside Iraq to "improve basic services for the population of Baghdad."

"Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And, as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis," Casey said. There are currently 144,000 U.S. forces in Iraq.

The military has expressed disappointment over its two-month drive to cleanse the capital of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia fighters and death squads. But the Americans also say that for the situation to improve, the Iraqi government must make political concessions to minority Sunnis.

…
The lack of any real political consensus even among Shiites, however, has made it extremely difficult for Iraqi leaders to keep deadlines; for example, they missed targeted dates on naming a government and in moving forward on constitutional amendments. Moreover, Tuesday's declarations lacked specifics on how to accomplish the goals.

…
Casey's estimate of when the Iraqi army will be ready was noteworthy because it has not changed even as the security situation in the country has deteriorated. Iraqis are now being killed at a pace of more than 40 each day in sectarian fighting and revenge killing.

Complicating the matter has been the recent outbreak of sustained Shiite-on-Shiite violence in the once relatively calm south of the country.

To curb the spreading and increasingly brutal killings, Khalilzad said the United States was "inducing Iraqi political and religious leaders who can control or influence armed groups in Baghdad to agree to stop sectarian violence," an apparent reference to recent secret talks the United States has conducted with Sunni insurgents.

Al-Maliki has repeatedly said he would rein in Shiite militias but so far has taken little public action beyond a decision to move aside two police commando leaders. He issued a statement on Monday saying the military had been ordered to take action against any illegal armed group, but the declaration, like the timeline introduced on Tuesday, lacked detail.

…
While Shiite militias and death squad violence represent a major security problem, curbing them would still leave the other half of the equation unsolved — the continued vibrancy of the Sunni insurgency that has been attacking Americans with a vengeance since summer 2003.

The timeline appeared, therefore, largely directed at luring the Sunni establishment away from violence and into the political process.

October has been the deadliest month this year for American forces. The military Tuesday announced the deaths of two more U.S. Marines, a sailor and a soldier. Since the start of the war, 2,801 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.
…

For Republicans, there is always plenty of room on Bush’s altar for another deranged sacrifice to the Gods of War and Hubris.

It is never too steeped in blood, so long as it’s someone else’s children who do the dying.

"Jeez, man,

Why didn't you just shoot him in the face?"


"ShutupShutupShutupShutup! Why can't you just shut up!"


"Shit, it's the press.
Ok, just like we rehearsed:
1...2...3...Robot Arms!"

Keep Drinking

Eventually you'll believe anything

Except, of course, the simple truth.

In fact eventually you will sound exactly like this…

From Media Matters

Peggy Noonan, meet Bill O'Reilly
by Eric Boehlert

Peggy Noonan is pained about the state of public debate in this country. The longtime Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter longs for a time when dignity flourished and political dissent was embraced. Lecturing with signature certainty in her latest column, Noonan bemoans the loss of "civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together."

After all, she laments, "Free speech means hearing things you like and agree with, and it means allowing others to speak whose views you do not like or agree with."

Peggy Noonan may be anguished, but at least she's sure who is to blame. It is liberals, those win-at-any-cost Democrats (and worse, celebrities!) who are silencing debate in this country. Plus, they're also being rude about it.

The way Noonan sees things, it's inquisitive, open-minded conservatives who are grappling with the hard questions, eager for public debate and a civilized, wide-ranging dialogue. They're the solemn protectors of dissent in this country, particularly vigilante about shielding unpopular opinions during wartime.

All of which begs the questions: Has Noonan ever watched Fox News where Bill O'Reilly tells guests to "shut-up" and unfurls insults, all while compiling an "enemies list"? Has she tuned into right-wing talk radio, which is designed to be hermetically sealed in order to keep dissenting voices off the air? And has Noonan ever read the right-wing war bloggers, who, as a rule, question the patriotism of anyone who speaks up against the war in Iraq?

Noonan's attempted maneuver about grace and free speech is clunky, but it's not unfamiliar. She's simply mimicking a popular right-wing attack that happens to be a classic Rovian, jujitsu thrust, which is to acknowledge your own weakness -- unhinged hatred for liberals and bullying desire to muzzle dissent -- and relentlessly project it onto your opponents, arguing that they're the ones who have blinders on and are driven by partisan rage. Consequently, Republican pundits pretend it's high-minded conservatives -- gentlemen and women who prefer the Queensbury Rules of intellectual combat -- who are trying to cling to a fading notion of poise and civility in the public square.

Where to begin? You could start with Media Matters for America's catalog of graceless attacks made by the likes of O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, who owe their careers to their willingness to assault political opponents and stomp on minority viewpoints. In terms of Noonan herself, travel back to last year's Terri Schiavo right-to-die controversy and try to find the grace hidden in the insults Noonan hurled against anyone who disagreed with her radical notion that Congress needed to overrule the rights of Schiavo's husband and keep Terri alive via legislation. To Noonan, her opponents had a "bizarre passion" for death, were "unstable," "unhinged," and "red-fanged and ravenous." She warned that they were paving "the low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz."

…

As for Noonan's allegation that it's liberals, not conservatives, who actively despise dissent, blogger Glenn Greenwald did an efficient job of demolishing that talking point, noting, as just one of many examples, that "David Horowitz has built his career over the last several years on his campaign to limit academic freedom through legislation."

Or how about the Fox News pundits in late March 2003 who were attacking journalists who raised legitimate questions about the early military progress of the invasion into Iraq. At Fox, that public discourse was slapped down as "disgraceful," "idiotic," "stupid," and "moronic."

…

While I agree with Boehlert’s analysis – his dissection of “method and opportunity” -- I disagree with his take on the motive for Noonan’s crimes. His assertion that “She's simply mimicking a popular right-wing attack that happens to be a classic Rovian, jujitsu thrust…”

Her actions may well have the effect of mimicking Rove’s pathology, but there is no reason to think that the cause of her now-complete detachment from Reality isn't that she has simply and finally gone insane.

That her whispery, dolphineering, Jebus-conjuring blather and Locked Ward Stare into a Universe that does not exist would look and sound exactly as they do from inside four padded walls and tied into five-point restraints, instead of in front of the cameras and microphones of the national press.

Because once you have fallen too far into darkness, the thought of having to face the reality of the carnage that gapes at you from your rear view mirror becomes your ultimate horror.

Your cage of rats.

You mash on the gas, piling more of the same onto the disasters you have already sired (the Hair of the War that Bit You, so to speak) but no matter has fast you flee or how loud you screech, the only thing protecting you from your Room 101 primal dread is a tissue of lies that grows more brittle and translucent with each passing day.

Because now the heaps of corpses you have stacked out to the horizon are bringing down the roof beams.

The ruin and penury in which you have happily collaborated in press so hard against that last onion-skin of perfidy that the blood now oozes freely through.

What is coming next is beyond doubt, as are the names and faces of the authors, axe-honers and axe-wielders who have stampeded the entire 21st century into this abattoir.

Because chaos and nightmare is and always was

the real Project for a New American Century

And there was a moment, long ago -- who can say exactly when? -- that you knew beyond any doubt that all that have sworn by is a fraud and all you believe is a lie.

But you couldn’t muster the courage to face the music you yourself composed.

Because once you knew better – once you galloped on past that checkpoint beyond which you can not possibly, plausibly argue that you were misled or were just too stupid or credulous to figure our what was really going on – and you keep on going in the direction of evil while spouting scripture and wheezing on and on about righteousness, you were lost.

Possibly forever.

Part of the symptomology of the wildfire cancer that has now swallowed your soul is the volume and fever with which you now say the most despicable and deranged things.

You denounce patriots as traitors, back war criminals as heroes and denounced as misfits and Compulsive Bush Haters the level-headed realists who warned you this was all coming. You lie and lie and lie about crazy shit. Obvious shit.

Because Rove is has no conscience, what he does doesn’t bother him, but to follow him -- to survive after trading in your soul for protection from the consequences of your lies -- you have had to slowly cut yourself off from anything having any spiritual nutritional value. You live now, under siege, in the battle-bridge of your own skull, sustained only by swallowing lies regurgitated down to you from above which you, in turn, puke into the mouths and hearts of the rank and file below.

At long last – after clearing a path to One Party Power by projectile vomiting unhinged hatred in anything that stood in their way – there is nothing left in the Republican belly but the sour aftertaste of that fiery cask-strength rage that has kept them warm and voting for so long.

At long last, nothing left but the pathetic gibbering of Dry-Heave politics.

Waits – Hold On

Well go ahead

and call the cops.

In case I’ve never mentioned it, Waits knocks me to my knees. Like Raymond Carver used to do in short stories, Waits takes mangled guts at the low ebbs and margins and transmutes the pain of hookers, junkies, thieves, the used up and the terminally lost into something sacred.

And he's right; you don’t meet nice girls in coffee shops.

LowerManhattanite (might be) coming to Chicago.

For Yearly Kos II: "This Time It's Toddling!"

Maybe.

So OK…calm yourself.

Deep, cleansing breathes.

Gonna hafta pick up the cat poop. And shop. And probably learn Portugese.

Clean up city government. County too.

Get the Neverending I-94 Shred and Stall Project finished.

Find the Cubs a winning lineup.

And get the Streets-N-San crews to make up all the flowerbeds in all the planters down the middles of the boulevards with crisp, hospital corners.

Because LowerManhattanite (might be) coming to Chicago, damn it!

If you don’t know who he is, well Shame, Shame, Everybody Knows Your Name.

He is a regular commenter over at House Gilliard, and while the conversation there is always nutritious and delicious (really), when LM takes down his Ticonderoga Number Two 12-guage, it lights up the joint like a joyful Starburst Shell jacketed in champagne going off in a cozy corner bar.

He’s a friend of this blog , smart as hell, and writes like I wish I could.

And because this particular day Steve is slow and I am not, I have stolen liberated LM’s latest, exquisite opus from the steerage deck of Mr. Gilliard’s comment section.

And so, without further gilding (and a h/t to Kid Charlemagne for the pointer), LowerManhattanite’s “Mudbone Goes to Maryland”, Parts 1 and 2…

1.) MUDBONE GOES TO MARYLAND PT. 1 -- 3:37

Sooo…for those a’ ya’ll unawares—that means all you ignorant mother-f*ckers—m’ name…is Mudbone…and ah hails…from Tupelo, Mississippi—

(MAN IN CROWD CALLING OUT)
“Tupelo? Where the f*ck is that?”

Just outside “One-a-lo”. (BEAT) Trent Lott-lookin’ mother-f*cker Don’t know where sh*t is, askin’ me? Do I look like Rand-McNally, mother-f*cker? Better go find you a page to f*ck, leave me the hell alone. Dis-respectful. Anyways, m’ name’s Mudbone an’…I’m a tell you the stor-ah, ‘bout how I was called to run—a big-time Senate Campaign. Yeah! See, they called my *ss to hep’—‘cause I’m a’ tell ya,--the candidate? He was f*ckin’ it up.! Sh*t the bed--through the linens, the flo’, right through the Goddamn kitchen ceiling. That’s a bed sh*t fo’ yo’ ss, man—s’whatcha call…a-a-a duplex…bed sh*t. F*cked his campaign up somethin’ terrible.

See, they called me an’ said “Lissen, we heard you good with words and whatnot, and you can conneck with folks—can you come an hep the brotha out?” So I says, ‘Well, whass his problem? He can’t talk? Mother-f*cker mute n’ sh*t? Tell me something!’.

They says “Oh no…he can talk…he just get his *ss in trouble every time he do” Now, I know what they mean, but to come up north on that Greyhound five-and-a-half hours to save his monkey-ss, I want some entertainment, so I asks for farts and giggles “Well, what the mother f*cker done said?”

They tell me…this trifling-*ss fool said a gang a kuh-razy Black Power college boys called down a plague a’ mother-f*ckin’ Oreo cookies from the sky on his *ss! Swear to God! Stupid mother-f*cker said ‘the air was thick with ‘em”—like locusts and sh*t! I said, “What the f*ck is this? The Goddamn “Ten Commandments”? Is ya crazy?
They said, “No, no…he said that sh*t.”An’ I said, “Well I know his *ss need my help now, ‘cause this fool don’t know nothin’ ‘bout Black folks at all”. They said, “Well-well what do you mean sir?” I said “You know Goddamn well that mother-f*ckers ain’’t gonna waste no free-*ss cookies!—Sh*t, they’d ate every one of ‘em, washed em down with chocolate milk and then?---Fell the f*ck asleep!” Thick in the air like locusts! You mean “thin in the air like some tasty-*ss cookies!” Goddamn.

So, I agrees to hep’ im out. I says “Send me a roun’-trip bus ticket, and I’ll be up t’morry. We can work out the payment then”. They said okay, an’ then they got reeeal quiet. An’ I said, “On what the f*ck is goin’ on now?” So, they said, “We think it’s only fair to warn you that…he’s Black”—which was cool with me, ‘cause half the folks I run with is still “colored”—an’ I’m always lookin’ to upgrade my surroundings.

“And…he’s a Republican.”

So I took out my Smiff n’ Wesson an’ I shot the Goddamn phone—PYOW! I heard the mother-f*cker on the other end cryin’ an’ sh*t—“Owwww! My ear! My ear! What the f*ck did you do?” I said “I shot the Goddamn phone is what I did--an’ you better be glad we was on the phone, else I’d a shot you in yo’ *ss for tryin’ to run that Black GOP sh*t on a n*gger. ”

Black republican? Sh*t, that make as much sense as freeze-dried watah.

Jus’ add watah and stir. What kinda sh*t….?

But then, I heard the man start talkin’ bout money. Big-*ss money. Enough money to git everybody off Lotto's t*tty for six months. So when I heard that, I picked up the pieces ‘a phone and tol’ his* ss we had a deal. So, ‘bout an hour later, the courier come, hand me my tickets, ask for a tip, I give him one—“Nex’ time ask a mother-f*cker who actually tips”—and I was on my way. Packed light—underwear, good suit, smokes an’ my Smiff—in case sh*t get outta pocket up north. F*ck that end a’ “Livin’ For The City” sh*t, y’know?

Now, when I arrives—they got a limousine waitin’—which was alright, ‘cause it was nice to ride in one a’ them without somebody’s havin’ to be dead for once. But…when I open the door to it, Goddamn thing’s full a’ puppy sh*t! Not dog sh*t , but runny-*ss puppy sh*t! I’m like, “Holy Jesus, holy Jesus!”—an’ the candidate leans out from the puppy sh*t holdin’ a stack a dollas that-swear t’ God—would make Oprah “come” nine times. So, I got in the puppysh*t-mobile an’made myself comfortable. As a mother-f*cker could be in a car full a’ puppy sh*t. An’ then I looked cross from me an seen “the candidate”. Ol’ grinnin’ bal’head, mother-f*cker. Head so shiny, it’d blind Ray Charles a second time—an’ grinning so hard, I thought the top a’ that bal’ head was gonna fall off at the jawline.

“Sir—er…brother-brough-ham, er…My name is Michael Steele.”

An’ he held out his han’ for me to shake—f*ckin’ han’ was covered with puppy sh*t ! Wrist to nail—in the sh*t pail. I said, “Skip the handshakes, ya e.coli mother-f*cker--how can I hep’ ya?” “Well”, he goes, “I need your expertise in bridging the perception gap between myself the urban element of the populace, lest I possibly squander this election.”

Well, I couldn’t understand a word his *ss said, but I knew if he didn’t learn to talk to folks, he was gonna f*ck up an’ lose for Goddamn sure!

So, I was about to hep’ im when I notice, not only is there a puppy sh*t everwhere, but now I see about nine-hundred puppies crawlin’ around in the sh*t—an’ they’s still sh*ttin! An’ I’m wonderin’ if his *ss see ‘em ‘cause while I’m ‘bout to throw the f*ck up—his *ss is still sittin’ there, jus’ a grinnin’ an’ what-not! So I asks him, “Mr. Steele, what is with all these mother-f*ckin puppies--and sh*t? So he says, “I need the puppies to seem less threatening to White folks so they’ll vote for me.”

2.) MUDBONE GOES TO MARYLAND PT. -- 2:20

Now, I ain’t the smartest mother-f*cker in the world, but I know for a fact that a smilin’ fool like him, covered in puppy sh*t ain’’t been elected to a Goddamn thing on this planet. yet! An’ even dog-catcher in crazy-*ss Cujo’s neighborhood is out of the f*ckin’ question—so you know he smelled like all that be damned. But, I figured I’d, you know—“let go and let God". Let the man do his thing—be his own puppy sh*t covered person, and do what I could to get my hands on that stack a’ dead, white-haired crackers he was holdin’.

Just then, the limo stopped and then, the side door ripped off—almost sh*t on m’self man—but I figured considerin’ where I was, “Why bother”—an then I saw this big, kuh-razy lookin’ mother-f*cker standin’ there holdin’ the to’ off door in his hand like it was from a f*ckin’ Hot Wheels car—an he said, just like this—“Howth yout doin’?”That’s when I put m’ han’ on my Smiff—‘cause if this big, bullet-head, Buffy on "Family Affair"-soundin’ mother-f*cker’s gonna start hurtin’ people, I ain’t gonna be the last one. Then “Senator Sh*tty Hands” said “Don’t worry, that’s just my brother-in-law.”, an’ I said to myself “Goddamn n*gga, I’d hate to see what your f*ckin’ sister look like! ‘Cause this cat was ugly. Had two gol’ teeth, little beady-*ss eyes, built like a Goddamn tractor—and he had…this crazy-*ss tattoo—up his neck, ‘round his ear, looked like the flames a’ hell—an’ then down onto his ugly-*ss face.

An’ when he spoke, I swore I smelled earwax on his breath! Swear t’ God!

I thought, “This sh*tty-handed fool let this freak marry into his family? Neville f*ckin’ Chamberlain was a better judge a’ character! That’s the genius that f*cked up and said Hitler wouldn’t hurt no Goddamn body. But, I figured, “How bad can it be?”, so I go out out the car, when all of a sudden, a great, big mother-f*cker ran up on us wavin’ little U.S. flags and yellin’ “Only in America! Only in America!” N*gga’s hair looked like he was the Heat Miser’s cousin O’Dell from the town a’ No-Comb, Arkansas. So now he runnin’ around with these flags pokin’ peoples, jabbin’ campaign buttons through their chests, still yellin’ “Only in America! Only in America!”—f*ckin’ up everybody’s eardrums, when Steele says to me “How do you like my campaign staff?” I said, “Between these mother-f*ckers and these diarrhea-*ss puppies , you lucky if you vote for you.” Well, I shouldn’t have said that, ‘cause right then, the Black Heat Miser started jumpin’ around even more, yellin’ and sh*t, an’ he f*cked up an’ landed on one of the puppy’s tails. The puppy screamed and jumped up an’ bit the crazy tattoo mother-f*cker on the d*ck, he went kuh-razy an’ bit another puppy on the ear—now all the puppies is screamin’ an’ sh*ttin everywhere! Holy Jesus, it looked like somebody gave “Old Faithful” Ex-Lax—a sh*t geyser sprayin everywhere—I mean, that's right...the air was thick with flying sh*t, peoples! Candidate run off, screamin, how the sh*t was "like a Nazi experiment gone awry"—then he took it back--and then, I pulled my Smiff an’ Wesson, car-jacked the sh*t covered chafffeur and drove the f*ck off!

All the way back to Tupelo! Got home, drove through the car wash—‘bout thirty-seven times, stayed in the car with the windows down—an’ figgered at least I got me a nice “hog” for all my troubles, when I look down on the floor and see that stack a bills Steele were gonna gimme for headin’ up his campaign. Thank you Jesus, that you Jesus! So I rushes over to the bank, ‘cause I wanna set me up an account—you know, invest in some T-Bills, so I can afford me some T-Bird in my golden years. Put the money on the counter, say “I wanna set up an account”, teller push it back—“Sorry sir, I can’’t do that.” I said “What the f*ck? You better take this money, b*tch—hard as I worked fo’ it!” I push it to her. She push it back again—“Oh no, sorry sir!” So now, I’m about to be the first mother-f*cker to whip out a pistol to make a bank take his money when she says, “Sir, there’s a problem with your money.”

“What? What’s the problem with my Goddamned money?”

“Well…it’s all poopy”

“Poopy?” And then I looked at it---puppy sh*t, all up in it. Allbetween the bills. Wasn’t worth a Goddamned dime. And right f*ckin’ then Goddammit, I learned a lesson I’m a tell you right now about f*ckin’ ‘round with them Black republicans—DON’T Don't f*ck with 'em! If you see one comin--run the f*ck away, ‘cause just about everything—EVERYTHING about ‘em…is totally fulla sh*t!

Fin.

File Under: Police Dog Whistle Politics

Hey kids! Step right up and take “The Racist Challenge”!

In a morally-blind taste test, four out of five Klansmen could not tell the difference -- shot-for-shot and word for word -- between this ad

created 16 years ago to help re-elect Racist Republican Pustule #1, Jesse Helms,


And the first part of this ad

from one month ago.

Can you?

And when you’re done, for a refreshing after-taste-test palate cleanser, read this bit of ugliness from the candidate who ran Ad Number Two…

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer Tue Oct 17, 9:24 PM ET
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - U.S. Rep. Brad Miller (news, bio, voting record) chuckled through most of the first debate with his Republican challenger, who led a tense and often awkward

Vernon Robinson, who has run a series of brash advertisements about the two-term Democratic congressman, charged that Miller wants to import homosexuals to the United States and supported scientific studies that would pay teenage girls to watch pornography.

"Those are San Francisco values, not North Carolina values," said Robinson, repeating a common theme of his campaign.

A bemused Miller countered by blasting Robinson for a campaign mailer that implicitly suggested the congressman was gay and criticized Miller for being "childless." Miller's wife had a hysterectomy more than two decades ago.

"It's clear that Vernon Robinson is obsessed with sex," Miller said after the 40-minute debate, which also touched on issues ranging from Iraq to North Korea to illegal immigration.

.................................................
Robinson, a former university business professor, began his political career in 1988 with an unsuccessful run for the state Senate. He's entered about a dozen races for office, including North Carolina superintendent of public instruction, the state House and his local board of education.

Robinson's deep conservative convictions helped him win a spot on the Winston-Salem City Council in 1997. While he earned re-election four years later, he was ousted last year after he erected a 1-ton monument of the Ten Commandments in front of city hall.

If you were wondering what that tremendous thunderclap was, that was the sound of every sketch comedy writer's jaw simultaneously hitting the ground.

Because the only difference between the two ads is that Vernon Robinson is black, and with this sort of bestial horror now being aired as a “serious” ad, there is no room left out past the Tasteless Warning Track for parody anymore.

Like Gay-Hating Mehlmans and Democrat-hating Liebercrats, Robinson is part of that irredeemably crippled “Fo’ Rent 2%” the Party of God works so hard to harvest from the emotional sewers in which they spawn and rage.

Creatures all driven by such an overpowering sense of self-loathing -- who crave the approval of people who mock and despise them like a junkie craves the spike –- that at their Master’s whim they will gratefully lick the spittle off the boots of their oppressors and gleefully knife their own in the back.

They are useful myrmidons of the Radical Right. Existential cannon fodder that make up the “blind and remorselessly loyal” camp followers of the Party of Falwell and Lott, Limbaugh and Helms, Tancredo and Santorum, Thurmond and Coulter.

Because what can one say about any man who runs proudly as “the black Jesse Helms” except of course such a pathologically damaged freak is a Republican.

What else could possibly he be?

Although his campaign is, in its own grotesque way, a thing of beauty.

Like ebola or Toby Keith, it's a "noumenal" object. From the opening – pilfered directly from decomposed bile ducts of Jesse Helms -- to flag burning, to it’s ominous invocation of “San Fran Sis Co” (the county seat of all that is Queer, Unholy and Destroying White Christian Murrika) it is a kind of final purification of the form.

A straight grain distillation of Evil Loco almost to its theoretical fucktard limit; to the point past which you literally cannot pack even one more bugfuck crazy bigot stereotype in sideways.

And then coupled with the "importing gays" stuff? And implying his opponent likes boys because he is childless during the "debate"?

Perfection.

Short of holding “Skeet Shooting Babies for Jebus” Republican fundraisers on the graves of Goodwin, Schwerner and Cheney, it is genuinely hard to imagine how much more rabidly insane the Republican “Rock The Hate” drive could get before they just start showing up at people’s houses and bayoneting anyone there who listens to NPR or can count to twenty with their socks on.

The tragedy is that it’ll work.

Not turn the tide or anything, but this 60-second hate-gasm obediently jizzed out by yet another despicable GOP House Negro gives a few hundred thousand mouthbreathers something else to triumphantly point to as “proof” that they are Right and people who don’t name their kids Nathan Bedford Hitler and raise them like Tim McVeigh Brand Veal in wingnut madrasses out of some perverted sense of “pride” are Wrong.

On the plus side, with all the honorable men and women long since centrifuged out of the GOP, and all the nation’s ideological CHUDS now conveniently packed into a single Party for easy collection, it makes the job of the Soylent Green pickup vans ever so much simpler.

When your Context

Becomes your Coffin

Hey kids, remember me?

See, there was this other election, exactly thirty years ago...

Another Republican Party, putrid so deep in the blood that its own members ran screaming in horror from it.

Republicans like Representative Lawrence Hogan from Maryland, who famously said, as the Watergate scandal was coming to a head:

“The thing that's so appalling to me is that the President, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't, in righteous indignation, rise up and say, "Get out of here, you're in the office of the President of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the presidency of the United States." But my President didn't do that. He sat there and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light.”

Of course, gutted of conscience and drowning in hubris, Jim Beam and the Blood-o-Christ, this current Administrations views all that led up to and followed Watergate as a failure not because it was the greatest attempt to rape and murder the Constitution in modern history, but because they believe Tricky Dick was too big a pussy to burn the tapes, shoot Woodstein and roll a few hundred tanks in the streets.

Y’know, because he wouldn't pull the trigger and go Full Metal Pinochet Cheney-style.

No, the Bush White House is a reeking haggis made from the diseased organs of the Watergate White House and run straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Nixon, but this is not about that shameful chapter in modern Republican history.

This is about the Gerald Ford Coda at the end of Nixon’s dark symphony.

Not the pardon -- which was an awful mistake but one I accept Ford made for honest reasons – but his run for the Presidency in his own right in 1976.

Now I liked Jerry Ford. He was an older-school, kinder, gentler Rockefeller Republican. Shit, put him back in the House, embedded in a Party of men and women like him, and Us and Them would have a lot to talk about.

A lot to agree on, or to at least dispute over respectably, and from which each side could retire from the field with honor. Because in that Universe, the Center would once again really mean something.

In that Universe, Compromise would be a virtue and not be an epithet.

In that Universe, the GOP would not be run by that bottom-feeding Morlocks like Grover Norquist who liken bipartisanship to date-rape.

But that is long ago and far away in the land of Never Was; in a place where political comity and collegiality had not been vaporized under a premeditated and coordinate rain of Unholy Partisan Nuclear Fire from Hannity and Coulter, Roberston and Dobson, Gingrich and Limbaugh, Rove and Atwater, Racists and Theocrats.

All of whom have one thing in common: they are completely cool with a Constitution-immolating, Liberty-razing Pyrrhic victory. Dee-lighted with the thought of it, in fact, so long as they get to squat in the ruins and play King on the rubble of what was once a great nation.

In the Here and Now, the Center is nothing more than Tom Friedman’s morally indefensible, intellectually flaccid flophouse. To be found in any given hour at whichever GPS location happens to be exactly halfway between wherever Jerry Falwell and Harry Reid happens to be on any given issue.

(Ignoring, of course, the simple fact that Harry Ried’s positions look an awful lot like where Jerry Ford used to be, and Falwell is about one Guyana jungle, one pair of sunglasses and 300 gallons of Koolaid short of being Jim Jones.)

Of course making such a staggeringly obvious observation would affront Friedman’s essential dishonesty and laziness – his Long Con depends entirely on mechanically blaming Both Sides Exactly Equally no matter what atrocities the GOP commit mere inches from his face, so don’t expect him to grow a spine and a conscience any time soon.

But this is about Jerry Ford, 1976, and 2006.

Affable guy, Jerry, as I have already mentioned. And he did what he could to set things a’rights. Who, for example, can ever forget his Whip Inflation Now initiative? (I have a whole box of “W.I.N.” buttons stashed away here at castle driftglass next to the Y2K jerky and dehydrated Oban powder...just in case.) Or his prescient pronouncements regarding the freedom of the Polish people years before their chains were actually broken?

But when the basic material you have work with is so putrid, you better be the original Smoove B, Love Man if you want to pull it off.

And Jerry wasn’t. He came across as bumbling and addled. In the volatile world that Watergate left behind, one misstep might have been forgiven, but Jerry made several.

And the there was the whole falling down problem.


Then Chevy Chase piled on,

and people started watching for Jerry to stumble.

Which he did. A shame, really: he was a graceful man and quite the athlete in his day.

A lot of factors conspired to defeat Gerald Ford: Nixon, Reagan, James Earl Carter, the fall of South Vietnam and the Mayagüez to name a few.

But it would also be fair to say that context killed his Presidency. Once seen and decisively mocked as ineffectual and bumbling – once that narrative killbox was clamped around him – every other misstep resonated louder and louder as a reflection of a larger Basic Truth.

That’s why, three weeks before this 2006 election, my thoughts turn to Jerry and 1976.

Because from Iraq to Katrina to DeLay to the parade of the Grand Old Pedophiles, the same fractal repeats itself.

Thirty years ago, to get and hold power, the GOP consciously decided to court racists and theocrats, and make ferocious war on the Truth as a matter of electoral strategy.

And as long as the truth was an abstract thing -- someone else’s brother dying, someone else’s money being looted, someone else’s rights being violated, someone else’s father tortured, someone else's mother losing her pension, someone else’s kids being hunted, someone else’s country being fucked into the ground -- Republicans, being the morally degenerate creatures that they are, had no problem whatsoever with the Truth being waterboarded.

It was all just good fun until a Republican Congress -- now openly led by raving theocrats -- decided to belligerently intrude into the private life-and-death decisions of a single family named Schiavo.

And in response to the jolt of nausea the Middle felt at seeing the naked face of the Christopaths who really run their Party, the Right Wing Hate Machine -- incapable of admitting error and taking corrective action -- just turned the volume up a little louder.

Then a Republican President let an American city die because he was too busy clearing brush on his fake ranch in Crawford to be bothered with the drowning of an American city and a buncha dying Negroes.

And the Right Wing Hate Machine turned the volume up a louder still. Blame the poor. The weak. The elderly. The dying. The brown. They just let their racist freak flag fly because, hey, they won in 2004 so now it's finally acceptable to embrace your inner Klansman in the public square!

Right?

Right?

Then we find out this Republican President lied us into a war, and as Americans are maimed and killed for those lies, he has been rectifying the problems by lying about his lies.

For years.

And the Family Values Christians who operate Right Wing Hate Machine practically snap the fucking volume knob off, calling veteran’s cowards and critic’s traitors.

Then we find out this war we were lied into actual breeds the very disease we were told it was supposed to cure, and as it all falls apart, the Right Wing Hate Machine rams the rhetoric up to an eardrum-shattering shriek because, having gone to that well so many times, it is literally all they know how to do anymore.

And in this soundstorm of thundering rhetoric that is no longer even tangentially related to Reality at any point, the sleepy Middle slooowly wakes and begins to see what the rest of us have known all along: that all the GOP knows how to do is fuck things up and steal.

And when the Truth they have been so hysterically trying to dam up starts breaching their lies -- when it all blows up in their faces -- all they know how to do is duck and cower like a Yellow Elephant desperately hiding from a Marine recruiter. It was blame Clinton, blame soldiers, blame vets, blame children, blame the media and blame everyone else in the world for their own sins, crimes, and criminal incompetence.

Because they are, in their own way, where Ford was 30 years ago: welded into a context of their own construction, and unable to get out.

The really, lasting story of Mark Foley scandal was not that a pedophile was loose in the Party of God, or even that the Party itself knew about it and did nothing because power is more important to them than the safety of children. Hell, anyone looking at the Iraq or New Orleans knows that the GOP does not give a shit about the lives and deaths of ordinary Americans except in the case of a Pat Tillman when their demise can be spun into a pro-Bush press release.

No, the real story is found in tracking the reaction abroad in the land.

First the stunned shock by Party faithful.

Then the resounding, “Well, DUH!” reply to that shock. The mocking “Where the fuck have you meatheads been for the last six years” response to those who were stunned by those of us who had not been living on a steady diet of Limbaugh Koolaid and dumbass pills for most of our adult lives.

Then a deafening stillness before the storm really broke. Caught red-fucking-handed trolling for children and covering it up, how would the Party of God react?

This was a quiet filled to overflowing with the silent, hopeless prayers of the rank and file millions:

“Oh, please don’t embarrass us in front of the Liberals again.

We’re tired of defending you craven hucksters.

We’re tired of backing chickenhawks against genuine war heroes.

Please don’t shit yourselves and run away, then whine and lie and blame your siblings like spoiled children again.

Please for the love of God step up, man-up and don’t show yourself to be the weasely, soul-dead, abject cowards and pussies the Liberals say you are.

Again.”

Ah, but was there ever any doubt how the Party of Falwell and Coulter and Rove would react?

Still fighting its ridiculous, rear-guard action against a Truth that surrounds them now on every side, the Party of Personal Responsibility melted down on camera so embarrassingly, so completely and so predictably as to almost defy parody.

Of course they blamed Clinton.

And Pelosi.

And the media.

And, finally, the children themselves.

In the face of the child sex predators and their enablers they have sheltered in their midst, instead of looking into their own filthy souls and confronting the monsters they have let nest there, they did what they always do; looked to Karl Rove to come down off the mountain with tablets of New Talking Points that would let them off the hook for their sickening behavior.

They’ve fallen once too often.

And now they can’t get up.