Don't Open the Door!

Don't even answer the phone.

It's Christopher Walken.

He wants to make you listen to Edgar Allan Poe.

Do not fall for his blandishments.

Nobody Sings for the Doomed

Better than the Man In Black


Johnny Cash -- "The Man Comes Around"



Johnny Cash -- "God's Gonna Cut You Down"



Johnny Cash -- "Mercy Seat"



Johnny Cash -- "Ring of Fire"



Johnny Cash -- "Ghost Riders In The Sky"



Johnny Cash -- "Sam Hall"


Yeah, baby.

Malphas, a Mighty President of Hell

On this All Hallows Eve, as we citizens of Chicago begin another slow winter freeze, watch one season of local sports franchise implosion fade into another season of different sports franchise collapse, and find ourselves beset on all sides with fiscal disaster, failing schools and legendary municipal corruption, we cannot help but notice that -- election after landslide election, for an entire generation -- one man has presided over it all.

And we are moved to ask the perennial Halloween Question: "Is dis guy in league wit da fuckin' devil or what?"

Before you answer, consider this description Malphas -- a "grand president of Hell" -- from Johann Wier's "Pseudomonarchia Daemonum" (1583)

...he is seene like a Crowe, but being cloathed with humane image,

speaketh with a hoarse voice,

"If we quoted Mayor Daley correctly every time we dealt with him, he probably wouldn't be embarrassed, but some people would probably be embarrassed for him." -- George Langford, Chicago Tribune's public editor

be buildeth houses and high towres wonderfullie, and quicklie bringeth artificers togither,

Daley will be remembered as a "builder mayor" despite Chicago's failure to land the Olympics, Simpson said. He helped spearhead the popular downtown Millennium Park, the O'Hare International Airport expansion project and a redeveloped south Loop area of downtown Chicago.

he throweth downe also the enimies edifications,

...
In a controversial move on March 30, 2003, Mayor Daley ordered private crews to destroy the runway in the middle of the night, bulldozing large X-shaped gouges into the runway surface.[7] The required notice was not given to the Federal Aviation Administration or the owners of airplanes tied down at the field, and as a result sixteen planes were left stranded at an airport with no operating runway, and an incoming flight was diverted. The stranded aircraft were later allowed to depart from Meigs' 3,000 foot (914 m) taxiway.

Mayor Daley defended his actions, described as "appalling" by general aviation interest groups, by claiming it would save the City of Chicago the effort of further court battles before the airport could close. He claimed that safety concerns required the closure, due to the post-September 11 risk of terrorist-controlled aircraft attacking the downtown waterfront near Meigs Field.[9] In reality, closing the airport made the airspace less restrictive. When the airport was open, downtown Chicago was within Meigs Field's Class D airspace, requiring two-way radio communication with the tower. The buildings in downtown Chicago are now in Class E/G airspace, which allows any airplane to legally fly as close as 1,000 feet (300 m) from these buildings with no radio communication at all.[11]

Editorials in the Chicago Tribune pointed out that "the issue is Daley's increasingly authoritarian style that brooks no disagreements, legal challenges, negotiations, compromise or any of that messy give-and-take normally associated with democratic government."
...

he helpeth to good familiars,

Stroking Mayor Daley's big ego has become commonplace and I don't expect aldermen to have the guts to stand up to him anymore. He is the master puppeteer amongst 49 "yes" men and women, who would rather pimp the tax payers for debt in 2016, than to find more creative, fundraising efforts to bridge the Olympic cost overruns.

he receiveth sacrifices willinglie,

It has been nearly a year since he imposed tougher limits on who can contribute to his campaign, but Mayor Daley showed Wednesday he can still rake in the dough.

The mayor returned more than $128,000 in campaign contributions that violate his crackdown on money from donors with potential conflicts, but he still has nearly $5.7 million for the Feb. 27 election.

And Daley's campaign officials said this month is so loaded with fund-raising events, they are having trouble scheduling them all.

"We've just run out of dates right now," said Terry Peterson, his campaign manager.

Daley's war chest dwarfs those of his challengers, according to reports filed Wednesday. He started the year with ...

but he deceiveth all the sacrificers,

The Shadow Budget

...
On October 15, Mayor Richard M. Daley held a press conference to break some bad news: To erase a $500 million budget deficit for next year, he would probably have to eliminate jobs, cut services, and dip into reserve funds generated by leasing the Skyway and the parking meters.

But behind the scenes, the mayor and his chief aides were proposing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a rehab of Willis Tower, subsidies for privately run hospitals and Fortune 500 corporations, and pet neighborhood projects that won't be included in the official city budget.
...

and there obeie him fourtie legions.

Those same aldermen now see a measure of justice in the fact that the renegade organizations the mayor used to govern by fear are at the root of scandal. Chief among them is the Hispanic Democratic Organization, led by Victor Reyes, former director of the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

"The single most important fear was this army of thugs that he had on the street. Come election time, all he had to do was snap his fingers, and 500 of them were in your ward kicking your ass," said an alderman who asked to remain anonymous.

"This political underworld shut out the traditional party structure. He created it. He ran wild with it, and now it's starting to devour him. These organizations are the single-biggest factor in the mayor's undoing."

Ald. Joe Moore (49th) agreed that there is not a "tremendous amount of sympathy" for Daley because of his dictatorial style and renegade political army. That explains why U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has so far been the only prominent Democrat to stand up and publicly defend Daley.

"Whether it was by design or just willful ignorance, the mayor bears responsibility for the growth of these independent political organizations loyal only to the mayor and the fact that so many people in those organizations received city jobs in violation of the Shakman decree," Moore said.

Ald. Brian Doherty (41st), the Council's lone Republican, said he knows how bitter his Democratic colleagues are about the mayor's political army.

"HDO, the Coalition for a Better Government -- these organizations under his people's leadership -- they acted like rogues. They weren't answerable to anybody, so they basically did what they wanted to do," Doherty said.

Sure, on the one hand, this is a triple-dipped, superstition-frosted paranoid conspiracy trifle, dropped into your virtual Halloween sack since I can't personally lob a bag of genuine, witchcraft-infused seasonal candy

at every one of my fabulous readers.

But on the other hand, it is impossible not to notice that at the same moment newspapers are figuring out how to commit mass suicide with ever greater efficiency, and the working press is slowly starved out of existence, yakking up the right flavor of superstition-slathered paranoid conspiracy piffle

has become a golden ticket to media power, fame and wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice.

All Your Internet Traditions

Are belong to them.

40 years ago.

Wow

Of course in internet years, that's...

Jesus.

No wonder my ass hurts.

The Return of Tom Waits Friday

Vimeo.

Well, go ahead and call the cops
You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops...

Raining Here Today

I wonder if it's...The Devil's Rain!

At Fox

Every day is Halloween.

"You can get further with a kind word and a pumpkin cannon,

than you can with just a kind word."

-- Legitimate Chicago businessman Jack "Da Great Pumpkin" O'Laughntern

Happy Pre-Halloween

Invisible Sky God Battles

Invisible Hand of The Market.

Sky God loses.

From Yahoo News:

Fla. man says Home Depot fired him over God button

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A former cashier for The Home Depot who has been wearing a "One nation under God" button on his work apron for more than a year has been fired, he says because of the religious reference. The company claims that expressing such personal beliefs is simply not allowed.

"I've worn it for well over a year and I support my country and God," Trevor Keezor said Tuesday. "I was just doing what I think every American should do, just love my country."

The American flag button Keezer wore in the Florida store since March 2008 says "One nation under God, indivisible."
...

Keezer's lawyer, Kara Skorupa, said she planned to sue the Atlanta-based company.
...

I will never understand why Conservatives can't seem to respect the private property rights of employers? And why so litigious? Always looking to some activist judge to undo the righteous judgments of capitalism?

Now having said that, please understand that I'm not unsympathetic to Mr. Keezor's plight.

Quote the opposite.

I, too, have suffered at the hands of the religiously, patriotically, and sartorially intolerant.

In fact, to this day I still maintain that my "Priapus Rampant Upon a Confederate Flag" Liberty codpiece/"flair"

was perfectly in keeping with both my deep religious faith and the stirring, patriotic themes of "rockets", "bombs bursting", "towering steep", "the gleam of the morning's first beam" and "gallantly streaming" found in our very own National Anthem.

But did that keep the godless fascists at the American Girl Cafe from firing me?

Nooooo.

So fight the power, Mr. Keezor.

Fight. The. Power.

The Connecticut Manqué Returns

As God as my witness, I had hoped that I could retire this effing creepy graphic forever. But just in time for Halloween, American politics' most famous Quisling decided that there is still one square inch on the back of Liberalism that remained as yet unshivved.

So, taking careful aim, Joe Lieberman did what Joe Lieberman does best: stuck the knife in. (via TPM)

Lieberman: Sure, I'd Filibuster A Health Care Reform Bill With A Public Option

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told reporters today that he would in fact filibuster any health care bill he doesn't agree with--and right now, he doesn't agree with the public option proposal making its way through the Senate.

"I told Senator Reid that I'm strongly inclined--i haven't totally decided, but I'm strongly inclined--to vote to proceed to the health care debate, even though I don't support the bill that he's bringing together because it's important that we start the debate on health care reform because I want to vote for health care reform this year. But I also told him that if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill."

Just like he did in 1998


And in 2000


And in 2008


Just like he did in 2006 when that nice then-Senator, Barack Obama said such kind things about him --

"...Joe Lieberman's a man with a good heart, with a keen intellect, who cares about the working families of America. I am absolutely certain that Connecticut's going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the United States Senate."

after which Holy Joe lost the Democratic Primary to non-warfreak-douchebag Ned Lamont, abandoned the Party, invented the brand new, eponymous one-man "Electric Lieberman Headrush Skinflute Experience" Party and, with the invaluable support of the Connecticut Republican Party, ran against and beat the Democratic standard-bearer.

And if you need 15 more reasons to wonder why in the Hell Rahm Emanuel hasn't already made sure this Category Five Shitwhistle wakes up with Lindsey Graham's head in his bed, go here.

The point is this, Mr. President; while there have been many, many people who have been very, very wrong about Holy Joe, there was a group of people who were mostly right about him. And about Iraq. And about the economy. And about torture, warrantless wiretapping, health care, and a couple of dozen other issues that are really important.

That group is called "Liberals".

Maybe you should listen to them more often.

Nobody Left But The Crazies

File Under Gresham's Corollary: "Bad crazy drives out everybody.".

From MediaMatters:

Kristol: GOP's future "center of gravity" lies with Beck, Limbaugh

October 27, 2009 8:05 am ET by Media Matters staff

From William Kristol's October 27 Washington Post column:

Obviously, many Republicans and conservatives -- and lots of moderates and independents -- will be grateful to Mitch McConnell if he can stop ObamaCare, and to Jon Kyl if he can induce the president to embrace a stronger foreign policy. But it's unlikely that the minority party in Congress will be the source of bold new conservative leadership over the next three years. Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill.
The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.

Kristol began working out years ago what the last, few fusspot remnants of the Old GOP seem to only now be dimly perceiving: that there is absolutely nothing left inside the Party of Lincoln but crazy, and if you want to hang onto those sweet-sweet “Conservative pundit” paydays, you’d better cozy up to the rabid Cheney Regime Dead-Enders most ricky-tick.

Of course this will remain an ongoing, toxic disaster for the country until the cultural backwash that is the Party of God is universally repudiated, stamped with a fluorescent HazMat symbol big enough to be visible from orbit, and buried under a mile of electoral concrete (I have said elsewhere and only half in jest that President Obama's biggest job will turn out to be saving the GOP from itself.)

But as a freelance ontologist (“Will Visualization Information For Food’), I appreciate the 30 years of dedicated effort it took for Hate Radio charlatans, Christopathic multimedia colporteurs, FoxNews harlequins and all of their various elected finger puppets to gather together the nation’s bigots, yahoos and moral imbeciles under one political roof.

So way to go Rush! UR doin’ it rite!

Early Glenn Beck Footage Located

(Note: Stop the video after the 1:53 mark, unless you enjoy big slabs of old movies. Note to YouTube: How about getting some "end" embed code to work side-by-side with your "start" code?)

Special Limbaugh/Ledeen Alert.

This is what is referred to by your betters as "satire".

It is not intended to be taken by anyone as actual film
of the actual Glenn Beck
actually plotting to destroy
actual America.

In black and white.

In 2036.

Sadly, we apparently have to explain this sort of thing to the wingnut brain caste now.

Using very small words.

Even though their "talent" is "on loan from God".

It Would Be Irresponsible To Suggest

that this pundit deep tissue massage of Minnesota's Craziest Political Escapee

"...
Some of her supposed excesses are, however, not merely defensible, they are admirable. For example, her June 9 statement on the House floor in which she spoke of "gangster government" has been viewed on the Internet about 2 million times.
..."

by failed cultural metaphor George Will sprang from some hot-tempered and hastily-entered-into wager made by Mr. Will during the Summer of 2009 that ended with the words "...and if the god damned Yankees make it to the World Series this year, I'll...I'll...I'll drink half a bottle of something cheap and domestic, and write something ooey-gooey about Michelle Freaking Bachmann!"

Very irresponsible.

Much more likely that Will has come to terms with the fact that his Movement has now been swallowed whole by the yahoos and bigots that the GOP spent the last generation recruiting as foot soldiers.

And if he wants to keep drawing a paycheck as "Conservative columnist, George Will" he'd better learn to cozy up to Unwashed Crazy.

(h/t Wonkette)

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

FoxNews' Laura Ingraham Gets The Memo:



A few weeks ago it was Malkin.

A few weeks from now it'll be Newt Gingrich again, with all of his on-camera lying forgotten.

Every week, it is the same. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots

with the same plastic avatars being reset to their factor-default settings at the end of every staged confrontation.

Nothing is ever over at the Mouse Circus. Nothing is ever resolved. No string of bloody failures, treason and lies is ever so great that you permanently lose your key to the Villager Executive Shitter. Nothing is so far beyond the pale that you will not be welcomed back into the Great Muppet Fellowship again and again and again, forever and ever, toxic circular jabber without end, amen.

Nothing, nothing, nothing is unforgivable.

Except, of course, being right, being honest, and being a Liberal.

Coming Sunday, Sunday,Sunday...

Teevee finger puppets talking about other teevee finger puppets.

On teevee!

Eight Senators discuss whether we should we send Wall Street executives to Afghanistan (OK, I probably read that wrong).

Then a bunch of teevee people gin up more fake controversy about Fox News.


Bob Schieffer hosts “Face the Nation”

With Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)



David Gregory buses the “Meet the Press” tables

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY)

Erin Burnett (CNBC) and Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times)
Political roundtable: Jane Mayer (The New Yorker), Joe Scarborough (MSNBC), Dan Senor (Former Bush the Younger Adviser), Tavis Smiley (PBS).


Chris Wallace emcees “Fox News Sunday”

Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan Presidential candidate will discuss rumors that he was really born in Omaha, and that he is dirty, dirty socialist.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich) and Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

Then an Obama Administration stitch-n-bitch with representatives from the health insurance industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News crybabies.


Gorgeous George Stephanopoulos

bartends “This Week”

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO)

Panel: Laura Ingraham (Fox News/talk radio shoutycrackers), Cynthia Tucker (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Al Hunt (Bloomberg News), John Podesta (CEO, Center for American Progress) and George Will (Unfrozen caveman pundit).


Let's get ready to dissemble!

Today In Future Local Headlines

February 21, 2010*

City Announces More Mindless Deck Chair Reshuffling.

Signaling his Administration's ongoing commitment to aggressively creating the impression of productive activity, Mare Daley announced today the traditional Biennial Reorganization of several city departments that he has already reorganized several times before. Beginning March 1, all homeless, child care, elder care, job training, fire-hydrant painting, summer youth, community college, submarine spotting, animal control, veterans, recycling, ex-felon, downstate belittlement, tree-limb removal, poison prevention, gardening, truck napping, traffic circle vegetable garden, after school, bird migration, hospice, ceremonial street re-naming, Indiana border patrol, warming and cooling center, seasonal pot-hole decoration, rat abatement, Predator-drone traffic ticket delivery system development, disability, City website bewilderification, consumer protection, and revetment stone leveling programs will be consolidated into the newly created "Mayor's Office of Work, Training and Families."

Because then it'll be all private-sectorish and streamliney.

"So remember," said mayoral spokesperson Bergan Scamptastic III, "from now on, when you think 'City Services', think 'WTF!'."

*(Your humble scrivener also wishes to take this opportunity to apologize for putting the nine consultants who staff the City Logo Development Committee, the City Logo Approval Working Group, the City Council Special Subcommittee on Logo Development and Approval Procedures and the Mayor's Task Force for City Logo Development and Approval Procedures Oversight out of business by knocking this together while I was waiting to use the urinal at the unemployment office.)

Plus ça change,

plus c'est la même chose

This handful of Time Magazine covers from 40 years ago (with one cheat from 1968) shows how little our basic nature and fundamental obsessions have changed over the course of a generation.

Political fortunes still rise and fall

and (until recently) Democrats still saw "Kennedy" as an organizing principle instead of a family name.


For most of us, the economy still feels like (as "Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry" once described "testicles"),

"being chained to the village idiot."


We have, once again, gotten our selves stuck in bloody, endless and expensive finger-traps

far, far away.


And speaking of "being chained to the village idiot"...

I still am having trouble adjusting to the idea that to qualify as an informed citizen of these United States you must now give a shit about who gets to hold the conch shell in some bronze-age Rubblevania half a planet away.


The way we do health care is still fundamentally broken, and costlier than

any sane, civilized country should tolerate.


And Teh Gay is still an issue

instead of a neighbor.

Lord Whorfin Mare Daley

(pictured here flanked by his Budget Director and Chief of Staff)

has more words of pure inspiration for his serfs.



From the Sun Times:

Daley to eliminate 220 vacant city jobs to prevent future tax hikes

October 19, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Mayor Daley said Monday he would eliminate 220 vacant city jobs, cancel cost-of living pay raises for 3,500 non-union employees and order those bureaucrats to take 24 unpaid days off to honor his promise to keep his hand out of taxpayers’ pockets in 2010.

Together with cuts in non-personnel spending, the latest round of bureaucratic belt-tightening will reduce spending by $64 million.

The remainder of the city’s $550 million budget gap is expected to be filled by raiding reserve funds generated by city asset sales. That’s a controversial move that threatens the all-important bond rating used to determine city borrowing costs.
...

Now I might not have gone to no fancy Chicago Public School, but I can do math, and I do have a memory.

And I remember last Fall.

Vividly.

I remember that a year ago Da Mare was also using his Special Scary Voice to announce that brutal layoffs were coming.

They were described by Chicago Federation of Labor leader Dennis Gannon thusly:

"We've cut to the bone already," he said. "Now, you're at the bone marrow."

Then, of course, in the Spring we have yet another round of cuts, also described in the language of the abattoir (from the Tribune):

Daley aide says more job cuts likely

Mayor Richard Daley's chief of staff today announced $9.2 million in spending cuts and warned that more city workers could be laid off.

The city will try to save $6 million by making a 3 percent reduction in spending on "non-personnel costs like commodities, materials, supplies and services" across city government, said top Daley aide Paul Volpe.

Another $3 million would be saved by renegotiating contracts with companies that provide services to the city.

And about $100,000 should be cut "by reducing the number of employee car leases."

"We are not cutting fat," Volpe said. "We are cutting muscle."

Each announcement set off a frenzied scramble inside the Dark Tower. Not for extra skills training or a rational analysis of all options based on the good of the taxpayer...

...but a mad dash for phones as everyone who had ever helped an alderman's assistant stash a pregnant girlfriend, or had taken the weight for an up-and-coming Director caught making a drunk, panstless down-payment on future job security called in every favor they had.

Because everyone knows how such decision really get made (from The Reader):

Whether the city's cut too much or not enough is open to debate, but we all know what usually happens during layoff time: certain protected people stay on the payroll (or manage to get added to it despite the budget woes) whether they're necessary or not, and certain others are canned whether they're necessary or not.

And so we come again to the Fall budget season, and an even more gaping budget hole than there was in the Fall of 2008, or the Spring of 2009.

Are there still failing and failed projects sucking up City resources? Yes there are.

Are there still mouthbreathers and frauds drawing City paychecks? You betcha.

Are there still useless consultants dug into the City's exchequer like ticks on a sniff hound? Absolutely.

Will any of those things be cut -- or even mentioned -- when it comes to cutting corners this time around?

Of course not.

But what is even more super-special about this time around is that, after all of that bone and muscle cutting of the last 12 months, Da Mare has somehow managed to magically conjure up "220 vacant city jobs" out of thin air which can now be sacrificed, while also conjuring the wherewithal to dip into the city's massive reserves to cover the budget hole this time around.

What a surprise it must be to the people who listened, terrified, to all of that "cutting muscle and bone" talk, who were then thrown overboard during the last couple of layoffs and into the teeth of the worst recession in the last 70 years on the grounds that there were absolutely no other alternatives to learn that -- surprise! -- there were apparently lots of other alternatives.

What a surprise it must be to the people and to their families, and friends, and colleagues, and union brothers and sisters to discover that, in the end, their mistake wasn't that they didn't work long enough or hard enough or ably enough, but that they never figured out which dick they needed to suck to make their services more valuable than one of "220 vacant city jobs".

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Sadly, budget deficits are short-staffing the castle these days. The wenches are all on involuntary furlough days. The cat has been moved to third shift. That gig teaching advanced porn fluffing at the Learning Annex fell though. And, as a result, sometimes your emails go unanswered for too long, and posts get delayed in the process.

"Perhaps," I tell the cat, "if you were just a better manager?"

The cat, being a poor manager, refuses to reply.

Anyway, on Sunday...

Sexual super-collider George Will

continued to tell The Man to go to Hell in his own counter-cultural, fashion iconoclast way.



Peggy Noonan

continued her own, bold late-life experiment in career-reinvention, moving ever further from parceling out her sentences in the Gipper-Whisperer-mode of her earlier days, out to the ragged edge of insanity where every answer consists of stabbing whatever question is asked to death with full-on, unpunctuated, blank-verse, condescending Dadaist nonsense.

Stephanopoulos: What about this segment of the GOP base – these teabaggers – who are just fucking nuts?

Noonan: I think the whole thing is exaggerated. And I don’t know about this seabiscuity woodshavings cohort idea of calling them “teabaggers”. We had this Imogene Coca August Awakening of independents, spinach eaters, sheet-folders and some Democrats saying, hey, we don’t like stuff that’s going on around here!

Elsewhere, David Gregory freaked out the Republican Junior Douchebag from Arizona John Kyl by asking him an actual question:

GREGORY: You know, it's interesting, Senator Kyl, in that vein, in terms of this kind of moral imperative, you and other Republicans have said this healthcare reform should be opposed, and one of the major reasons you cite is how much money it costs, how much it could potentially add to the deficit, although the president says it'll be deficit-neutral. And yet when you talk about the war in Afghanistan and the commanders should have more of their troops, I've never heard you say that that should be deficit-neutral, that war costs should somehow not break the bank. Why is that disparity there?

to which Kyl replied:

9/11/9/11/9/11 -- Brave Americans! -- 9/11/9/11/9/11

Meanwhile, on Fox News, one current Republican, one former Republican and one wannabe Republican "debated" health care, with John Thune winning the "Repeating the phrase 'Government Health Care'" contest 177-to-2.

Then came 15 minutes of ominous organ music and inconsolable weeping as Karl Fucking Rove whined about how unfair the White House was being to po' po' Fox News, and how Nixonian it was for a White House to target members of the press:

Of course...

A. Fox is not the press. Fox is a wingnut whorehouse. And,

B. My what short memories the droolers have. From 2003, Slate:

...
At his televised news conference last week, President George W. Bush deliberately snubbed several reporters he ordinarily calls upon, including journos from the Washington Post, Newsweek, and USA Today. But the most conspicuous recipient of the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. freeze-out was longtime UPI reporter Helen Thomas, who has barbed and grilled every president since John F. Kennedy and almost always gets to ask a question. Bush pointedly ignored her.

Bush then dealt Thomas a second slight. By custom, Thomas concludes White House press conferences at the president's signal by saying, "Thank you, Mr. President." Bush denied her that supporting role, ending the conference with his own sign off, "Thank you for your questions," and flushing a decades-old White House custom.

Bush's slaps at Thomas are consistent with the psy-ops his information wranglers conduct day-in and day-out on the White House press corps. Bush's news conferences have become increasingly scripted, with the president calling on reporters from a preset list and refusing the follow-up questions that might trick him into saying something substantive. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has lobotomized the White House press corps in official briefings by jawing more and more and saying less and less. (The smarter reporters play hooky these days rather than endure Fleischer obfuscations.) Last October, Fleischer maliciously tampered with the corps' self-esteem by reassigning seats in the briefing room. The new chart demoted scribes from Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report from the Park Place of the second row to the Siberia of the sixth. (Pressies live for their little perks, and the White House reporters revealed their Ted Baxterian pettiness for all to see when they bellyached about the reshuffle.)
...

Rove and Chris Wallace were joined in their quarter hour of mutual self-pitying masturbation about Barack Hussein Obama not bending a knee to the House of Murdoch by Former Democratic National Committee Chairman and political wind-sock, the ever-flexible Terry McAuliffe.

Rove: Obama called Fox News an enemy. He’s just like Nixon!

McAuliffe: Glenn Beck called this President a racist.

Chris Wallace tugs McAuliffe’s leash.

McAuliffe: Fox does opinion stuff. President Obama gets that.

Nice that McAuliffe is now an official confidante of the President.

Wallace: But last year, during the primary, you kissed Fox News’ ass. Lets roll the video.

Video of McAuliffe sucking hard on Roger Ailes’ wizened swizzle thanking Fox News for cozying up to Hillary Clinton.

McAuliffe: But you have to remember, Chris, that I am a huge whore. I’ll knob anybody who pays me.

Wallace: ABC went after Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky happy-fun time, so just because we call Barack Obama an uppity Commie Negro usurper, don’t you think its unfair that he won’t come on our little teevee tree fort?

McAuliffe: It was a different time back then. Mastodons walked the Earth. Nightline didn’t suck.

Wallace: With all due respect, you’re not an administration official.

McAuliffe: Obama’ll come on Fox. He’ll be on your show.

McAuliffe: Karl?

Rove: I’d rather not interrupt Terry as he wallows in his own shit begging to fill the Fox News Susan Estrich Boozy Fake Liberal Chair.

Wallace: What about House? House is on Fox? And Homer Simpson? Are you calling House and Homer Simpson un-American?

McAuliffe: Please can I have my wine now?

Thirteen Years In The Penguin Box

There is virtually no problem in American politics that does not trace its origins to the fact that the frontal lobes of the Land of the Free have spent the last 13 years being bludgeoned by Rupert Murdoch's Fox New.

Snipped from Newsweek:

The O’Garbage Factor
Fox News isn't just bad. It's un-American.

by Jacob Weisberg

...
Any news organization that took its responsibilities seriously would take pains to cover presidential criticism fairly. It would regard doing so as itself a test of integrity. At Fox, by contrast, complaints of unfairness prompt only hoots of derision and demands for "evidence" that, when presented, is brushed off and ignored.

There is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, which itself constitutes an abuse of the fair-mindedness of the rest of the media. One glance at Fox's Web site or five minutes' random viewing of the channel at any hour of the day demonstrates its all-pervasive slant. The lefty documentary Outfoxed spent a lot of time mustering evidence that Fox managers order reporters to take the Republican side. But after 13 years under Roger Ailes, Fox employees skew news right as instinctively as fish swim.

Rather than in any way maturing, Fox has in recent months become more boisterous and demagogic. Fox sponsored as much as it covered the anti-Obama "tea parties" this summer. Its "fact checking" about the president's health-care proposal is provided by Karl Rove. And weepy Glenn Beck has begun to exhibit a Strangelovean concern about government invading our bloodstream by vaccinating people for swine flu. With this misinformation campaign, Fox stands to become the first network to actively try to kill its viewers.
...

Of course, within minutes the the flying monkeys began to descend...

"For eight years [the mainstream media] pounded un-"fairly" on Bush..."

"FoxNews is far and away better than any of the evening news programs for objectivity and fairness..."

"Fox is SO mild compared to Matthews or Olbermann, just to name two of the many hate-mongers at CNN and MSNBC."

"Weisberg authored ;The Complete Bushisms' and 'The Bush Tragedy' ;and co-authored a book with Robert Rubin. He is also a contributing writer for the N.Y. Times. What would would you expect?"

"...you come across as a simpering sexist unable to grant that a woman (or it a conservative) has a bona fide doctoral degree. For the record, Dr. Crowley most certainly does (as do I), and this kind of slur has no place here."

"Your complaint with FOX makes no sense to me. It is far more balanced than Newsweek, The Washingtonn Post, NY Times, any of the broadcast networks, CNN, or MSDNC."

"...Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck are more successful than you. Get over yourself already."

"So Fox is the only major news outlet slanted right, big deal. They are outnumbered by the organizations slanted left by a large margin."

"It seems pretty damn funny coming from newsweek, one of THE most left leaning publications around."

"...hope it makes you feel better about the two hours of your life you spent righting this piece. Those are two hours you'll never get back. So sad."

"...the article is garbage."

"At least Fox is trying to look past the smoke and mirrors. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Madder say a whole lot worse about the right..."

"This is how your friends nazis and commis operate. Hugo and Obama have similar aim - to eliminate all opposition stations."

"...all famous racists were Democrats"

"Proof? Look at the ratings."

I must confess, the one about "famous racists" is my favorite: a textbook example of how the pillars of the Right's ideological temple all depend on the smug certainty that everyone is even more pig-ignorant of history than they are.

There are no good arguments left in favor of trying to reason with the swine dregs left at the base the Conservative movement. They have had their heads buried so deep up Murdoch's, Ailes'

and Limbaugh's collective asses that irreversible moral hypoxia has set in.

They are a cultural deadloss and their beliefs are a pestilence, and until the plague rats of the Right

are directly confronted, quarantined and driven into the sea, there will be no end to the havoc they wreak on our civilization.

The Stay Trite Marshmallow Media

(click for larger)

"Something I loved from my childhood.
Something that could never ever possibly destroy us."

-- Dr Ray Stantz, "Ghostbusters"

This is something I whipped this up for a "Balloon Boy" photo contest over at HuffPo (BTW the raw material they offer you to play with is pretty skunky, so hey. Arianna, how about you spend some of that "How To Blahg Dahlink" money and hire yourself a decent graphic artist?)

Also I understand that, in exchange for my labors, a tree has been planted in my honor in Ms. Huffington's back yard

Mare To Appoint

New Commissioner of Beatdowns.

Responsibilities to include budget "compliance", handing our union ass-kickings, bending revenue curve until it passes out.

From the Trib:

Mike Tyson drops in on Mayor Richard Daley after Oprah appearance

Posted by John Byrne

Former world champion Mike Tyson paid Mayor Richard Daley a visit today and the boxing heavyweight and political heavyweight talked about youth violence, among other topics, during a 30-minute private meeting.
...

Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said the mayor met Tyson a few years ago, and the two hit it off. Tyson contacted the mayor's office to see if he could drop in to say hello while in town for Oprah, Heard said.
...

If you think Da Mare of Da Great City of Chicago is above biting off an ear or twenty to get what he wants, you ain't from here.

Global Death-Balloon Watch 2009 Special Breaking Update!

National Press literally distracted by shiny object as Balloon Boy buoy's the collective hopes of anxious Americans that we can finally stop paying attention to serious, scary shit like health care and war and how creepy it is that the Right has terminally cracked its mental engine block.

Ripped from the front page of America's Newspaper of Record:

Balloon Lands, but Boy Is Not Found Inside
By LIZ ROBBINS

A homemade weather balloon, mistakenly thought to have a 6-year-old boy inside, floated over Colorado for over two hours on Thursday before coming to a rest.
...

Look!

Up in the sky!

It's...an inflatable runaway bride!

It's...a kid stuck in a well! In the air! With UFO sprinkles!

It's...oooooh...shiny...

British Court to British Bigots:

Suck. On. This.

From Yahoo News (emphasis added):

UK far-right party to allow nonwhite members

LONDON – The far-right British National Party agreed Thursday to change its constitution to let nonwhite people become members.

The party opposes immigration and says it fights for "indigenous" Britons.

A government-backed rights body took it to court, claiming the party's constitution is discriminatory.

At a court hearing, a lawyer for the party said leader Nick Griffin would ask members next month to change the constitution so it did not discriminate on the grounds of race or religion.
…

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which brought the case, said it would be watching to see whether the BNP complied.

"Political parties, like any other organization, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people," said the commission's John Wadham.

There are few indications, however, that nonwhites would like to join.
...

Well, duh.

I mean, what kind of self-loathing,

opportunistic

misfit

would willingly join a movement that was aggressively dedicated to the cause of smearing and subjugating them?

Our Man In Saigon Kabul

A thoroughly corrupt government propped up with American money and power.

A brutal, growing insurgency that feeds off of national frustration with that corruption and occupation.

A local soldiery which, after eight years, still can't get its shit together enough to fight its country's wars or keep its country's peace.

All of which will be set right by sending in a lot more US troops.

Because as history shows, there is no conflict on Earth too far away, too alien, too awash in nepotism and big money narcotics and too sick of our boots on their land that it cannot be turned around by

pouring more American blood and treasure on it.

Fund The Funny

You probably don't know this, but there are seven unsung people who work every day to keep the gears of the Left Blogosphere from seizing up and going boom.

Seven who keep the whole whirlygig machine from exploding in a brilliant flash of obscurantist policy tracts*, liberal purity tests and kitteh pictures.

And Blue Gal is one of those seven.

So how about you hightail it over to her place and throw five bucks her way and do your part to keep Progressivism from burning up on its reentry into political ascendancy for lack of a sense humor.


*(h/t Aaron Sorkin)

GOP Goes With Joe The Lamer

Gonnna save a few bucks.

From TPM:

The New GOP.com Crushed Under Weight Of Mockery, Dem Says
Evan McMorris-Santoro | October 13, 2009, 2:34PM

The new GOP.com appears to be struggling through its first day online. Reporters found holes in the site's content this morning, and lately visitors have found the site to be down altogether or, at best, extremely slow.

"You know your web program is in trouble when your site can't even handle the traffic bump from people making fun of your web program," Joe Rospars of Blue State Digital told TPMDC.
...

Bwahaha!

Somewhere right now, on a 1993 touch-tone phone, a GOP accountant is being told:

"See, here, it looks like da token ring fell right troo your eater-net.

Yeah, ya know, we're gonna hafta order back to da factory for dat one."

Sunday Morning Came and Went

In which I find myself being a little harsh with that nice Roger Ebert and that nice Frank Rich, links to both of whom landed in my email box this weekend.

Both Frank's and Roger's pieces were thoughtful and well-written --

(Shorter Rich: "Why the fuck are the asshats who have been wrong about everything for the last eight years still being listened to?"

Shorter Ebert: "My God! Can you believe how fucking unhinged the Right has become?")

-- but both left me feeling strangely...meh.

Like reading well-crafted travelogues of some "Vanity Fair" writer's trip to Rocky Mountain National Park...years after everyone you know has already spent every summer there, camped there, gotten married there, conceived children there, photographed every inch of it a million times and shared meticulously narrated slideshows of all of it as far and wide as their email contacts list would carry them.

Shorn of their specific references to Barack Obama, the sad truth is that both Frank's and Roger's essays could have been written a year ago, or three years ago, or five.

Yes, Frank, it is true that a very long line of clowns on the Right have been loudly and self-evidently Wrong about virtually every aspect of American foreign policy. Wrong for years and years. Wrong at the cost of trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, the health of our military and the respect of the world.

But that is no longer an interesting story. No longer "news".

What would be "news" would be a story -- naming specific names, dates and decisions -- about how and why these blood-spattered "Always wrong but never in doubt" clowns Still Have A Fucking Job?

How about it, Frank?

Why is John McSame still on my teevee every fucking Sunday?

And when he is, why aren't his shriveled, war-mongering prune-hammocks being roasted over a small, cheery fire for making "every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11"?

When he took "no responsibility for any of this" -- when he was "asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan" and then "spoke as if he were an innocent bystander"-- why didn't Ms. Couric rip his heart out of this chest?

Why is it that, short of one, flirtatious turn on the dance floor with the Scary Truth on "Meet the Press":

David Gregory: ... Where were the Republicans who want all these troops now and want McChrystal to be listened to eight--during these eight years when this appears to be an underresourced war?

followed by one, long, hilariously weaselly blathering-to-the-point-I-thought-he-was-having-some-kind-of-seizure word-fart from Bob Woodward:

Bob Woodward: Well, as we know, we were fighting and resourcing the war in Iraq, and, and that was the focus. But I mean, how--you know, who knows what the outcome is going to be. But it is good that they are questioning these assumptions. Paul suggests that politics is driving this. I think that obviously politics is there, as it always is. I don't think it's driving it. And I think, from the reporting I've done, Obama is forcing them to dig into this. And the people who are on one side or the other are kind of--it's, it's having a calming effect on them, because they realize this is a really hard course...

...no one -- and I mean no one -- ever dares to complete the following statement:

"People like John McSame are allowed to come on teevee and dissemble with impunity over and over and over again because _______"?

It's fucking eerie, Frank. And it would make a helluva story.

Roger Ebert's piece was more vexing because my first read was mostly sympathetic, and I had to think extra hard about why exactly it bugged.

Yes, Roger, the Right has completely lost its shit.

But the Right was a ranting cesspit of ignorance, bigotry and fear in 2008, wasn't it?

And in 2006.

And in 2004.

And in 2002.

And in 1999.

And in 1997.

And in 1994.

So we find ourselves confronted with another, sad case of “Meme-ento”:

That inability of some people to form any new political memories that conflict with the way they desperately want the world to be.

And Roger seems to want what lots of people want.

Symmetry, in world that is much nicer than the one we really live in.

A world where our real social problems are obedient to the imaginary physics of the literary (or cinematic) plot. A world where our cultural conflicts -- regardless of how wild and balls-out-Miserlou they may begin --

will eventually conform to a predictable path from Thesis, through Antitheses, until finally coming to a satisfyingly resolution at Synthesis.

Roll credits.

Fade to black.

Sweet.

Except such literary constructs are usually pure wishful thinking. Fragile human fictions built around a Reality that is often broken, raw, jagged and wildly asymmetrical. A Reality that jams a world down our throats that is, more often than not, a "cruel and shallow money trench" (as Hunter S. Thompson once described the teevee business) where "thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."

So in the service of this need to contain the ugly, terrifying reality of the Pig People within a safe and familiar Academy ratio frame, Roger entitles his piece “The anger of the festering fringe” and counterpoises two Americas: An innocent, bygone America when "most of the American people were reasonable" and only kook fringe groups like the John Birch society put any stock in wacky theories like "Kennedy was a communist"...and a present-day America where a still-reasonable "mainstream Republican Party" is merely timid and "afraid to alienate a ‘base’ it should be ashamed of."

But that’s not really true, Roger, and that's what really bothered me about your post.

Yes, once upon a time a tiny army of Birchers flared across the cultural landscape like political syphilis and, yes, they were fringe nuts, but somehow in your rush to squeeze modern American history into a comfy, halcyon, Procrustean Bed of American “reasonableness”, you somehow seem to have forgotten everything South of the Mason-Dixon line.

Forgotten how the remnants of the Confederacy were run as collection of segregated fascist states which ruthlessly exploited their minority Black populations as de facto slave labor, while systematically depriving them of their most basic human rights and enforcing their totalitarianism with state-sanctioned incarceration, terror and murder.

Systematically, Roger. Systematically.

Not just a bunch of kooks jerking off to mimeographed copies of “The Black Book”, but a vast, efficient racist machine, brutally enforcing the dictates of a centuries-old White Supremacist ideology, and aggressively passing that ideology along – generation after generation -- through the schools, churches, politics and social institutions under its bloodthirsty control.

A system that not only produced vicious, racist monsters like George Wallace, but also produced millions upon millions of American citizens who happily elected vicious, racist monsters like George Wallace to the highest public offices available.

A system which -- during this period of American “reasonableness” -- held your marriage to be a crime

under laws that were not completely cleared from the books until 2000.

And that system -- its ideology and economic interests -- didn’t just vanish into the pellucid ether. Instead it evolved, mutated, acquired a light patina of respectability courtesy of the Republican Southern Strategy (from the NYT) --

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said [Lee] Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

-- and went pneumonic thanks to the concerted efforts of the GOP, the Christian Right, Hate Radio, Regnery Press and Fox News.

For decades, the Right has oh-so-carefully cultivated, fertilized and harvested an all-purpose, bone-deep contempt for anyone who is not White, Southern, Male, Conservative and Fundamentalist even as men and women of conscience warned them -- over and over, louder and louder –- that they were making a pact with the Devil and that Devil would one day come for his due.

Few on the Right listened -- they were having way too much power-drunk fun building a political empire out of all the lovely-lovely rage and paranoia and ignorance their marketing, media and think-tanks were producing –- and so Limbaugh and his filthy imitators were turned loose to dump their poison onto the public airwaves for more than 20 years.

Not 20 months, Roger. 20 years.

20 years of Limbaugh.

30 years of Jerry Falwell.

40 years of the deliberate recruitment of Southern racists via the Republican Southern Strategy.

This is not exactly a New Revelation –- anyone with access to a couple of history books can draw a virtually straight line beginning before the Missouri Compromise, through each of these tragic milestones and many others, to where we are today -- but facing the ugly reality of who we are and how we got here demands that we jettison the dangerously abridged and Disneyfied version of political history on which Roger’s thesis depends.

Because the sad fact is, Roger, the people who alarm you in 2009 when they rant:

"Obama is a Muslim. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama was a terrorist. Obama will destroy Medicare. Obama will kill your grandmother. Obama is a racist. Obama wants atheism taught in the schools."

are the very same people who were ranting:

“Clinton is a rapist. Clinton murdered his political opponents. Clinton is a drug dealer. Clinton assassinated Vince Foster. Clinton is a Socialist. Clinton isn't the legitimate President.“

in 1997.

Only now they’re 12 years dumber and crazier and have developed an open, sneering contempt for the rule of law and the democratic process during their eight glorious years of the Cheney Regime.

And those “conservatives” you doubt would really support “…the overthrow of our government by a coup”?

Those are the very same "conservatives," who were perfectly willing to shut down the federal government out of political pique, cripple a presidency with endless ginned up scandals and Congressional hearings, and try to bring down the Clinton administration via impeachment.

Only now they’re better funded, better organized, better armed, and come to the party with an invincible sense of entitlement, and a voracious appetite for power.

I would be genuinely delighted and relieved if Roger's fiction were true, and the Republican Party was indeed a fundamentally reasonable and "mainstream" organization being outshouted by a loud but tiny "lunatic fringe, the frothers, the extremist rabble".

But after eight years of mindless hatred of Clinton and eight years of mindless worship of Bush -- after 16 years during which anyone with a conscience got the Hell out of the Party of God -- we are left with absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that the Right is anything but terminally depraved from crotch to crown.


UPDATE: Roger Ebert responds.

Ebert: A nice piece. In a strange way, you disagree with me because you agree with me.

Oh Noes!

Not a Big Fair Hike!

Butt what due ewe dew if yew donut have a car?
Ore a plain?
Oar a roe boat?
Knot even a bye sickle?
Pleas tell me how ewe are supposed too get
From hear two their
Seven daze a weak
Inn awl kinds of whether
If they're is a Big Fair Hike?