Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party was on teevee today.

Not on basic cable or Fox, but on ABC.

He sat with Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, George Will and the mortal remains of Baba Wawa.

He had to unhinge his jaw to accommodate the sheer volume of lies and wingnut twaddle he disgorged during this time on camera.

The Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party explained that he was not "in the business of politics".

Arianna Huffington whined to the Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party that "words have consequences". The Chief Propagandist for the American Fascist Party figuratively put his cigar out in her face.

The Baltimore Beatdown -- arguably one of the most important political and cultural events in recent memory -- was glossed over for about 11 seconds.

As it was glossed over on every other network teevee show this morning.

The Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party opined that the Kenyan Usurper had grossly misread the 2008 elections: that the Kenyan Usurper somehow got the idea that America had given him a mandate a to ram through his Secret Commie Pinko Marxist Treehugger Agenda, whereas the real reason Americans had voted for him was that they were "tired of seeing George Bush on teevee".

Arianna Huffington whined to the Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party that Glenn Beck says terrible things.

The Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party said that every word Glenn Beck has ever uttered (with one exception) was gold-plated awesome. That we don't want "word police". And that someone had once said something mean about the Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Partyon Huffington Post, which meant that anything anyone does on the Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party's teevee network had now been immunized against any such ciricism by anyone ever.

Then George Will lied for awhile about the history and meaning of the modern filibuster.

Then, for several uncomfortable hours, Baba Wawa riffled through the pages of the Scott Brown nudie "Cosmo" from the 1980s to find the the page where she -- Baba Wawa -- appeared, in order to underscore how brutally time had ravaged her.

Or something.

She did this in the interest of "full disclosure", thus prompting the only moment of genuine, bipartisan unity I have seen in a long time as the rest of the panel looked on in mute horror.

Towards the end, Arianna Huffington asked why the network run by the Chief Propagandist of the American Fascist Party cut away from the Baltimore Beatdown.

Baba Wawa stepped in and said "We're out of time!"

She might have also flashed her tits, but by this point I was in the powder room throwing up everything I had eaten since John Anderson ran for President.

More later.

If a Challenge, Name the Time and Place

If a grudge, name your reason.

I'd wager a bottle of Oban that last night, at some cubicle deep inside the GOP Fortress of Platitude, some luckless staffer was emptying his or her desk, because some powerless person, somewhere, has to pay the price for letting Eliot Ness bring cameras into the GOP crack house.

Because Friday, President Obama made history by violating the Prime Directive of moderns American political life: He told the truth. He calmly unsheathed three feet of Verdad, walked into the ideological heart of the Republican Party and took them apart, one vital organ at a time.

A fair viewing of the 82-minute tour de force admits no other interpretation.

So what can we be 100% sure of?

Three things.

First, Fox and Hate Radio will completely shuck the event its context, cut it up and pasted back together like a ransom note to suit whatever spin a blood-drunk thug like Karl Rove chooses to inflict on it. By next week, based on mixing a few, cherry-picked sentence fragments in a 1-to-100 ratio with the usual, wingnut canonical claptrap, the new-new narrative (Obama was Angry. Obama was defensive. Obama agrees that Republicans are awesome and all of America's problems are the fault of Nancy Pelosi/George Soros and the Liberal media's fault) will have been fully dispersed, and the Pig People -- without ever troubling themselves to see what really happened -- will be dutifully and angrily regurgitating the new-new lies, and blitzing everyone in their address book with angry, half-bright emails festooned with eagles, flags, Jesus and VERY BIG FONT.

Second, the Pig People will be required to double up on their dosage of Outrage Viagra to keep its faux outrage steely-hard and pointed at the Kenyan Usurper for unfairly dragging Facts and History right into the parlor of their little hokum whorehouse...while at the same time they stayed extra, extra furious that anyone would assume that, upon reading that card-carrying members of the Wingnut Junior Ratfuck squad who were caught breaking into the offices of a Democratic Senator while impersonating telephone repairmen (from Media Matters):

...
The New York Times reports that "the four men, two of whom were dressed as telephone repairmen, were charged with entering a federal property on false pretenses with the purpose of committing a felony. The crime charged is itself a felony that carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison."

As Media Matters' Eric Hananoki noted, O'Keefe's three alleged accomplices -- Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan, and Stan Dai -- are right-wing activists as well. Basel was the founder of a conservative campus publication at the University of Minnesota-Morris, which, like the campus publication started by O'Keefe at Rutgers University, received funding from the conservative Leadership Institute's "Balance in Media" grant. Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana William Flanagan, reportedly works at the conservative Pelican Institute in New Orleans, just half a block from Landrieu's office. Dai received $5,000 from the right-wing Phillips Foundation's Ronald Reagan Future Leaders Scholarship Program. Additionally, during his time as a campus conservative, Dai reportedly co-wrote "a satirical work entitled The Penis Monologues, apparently a takeoff on the Vagina Monologues."
...

might somehow reach the conclusion that they were breaking into the offices of a Democratic Senator to tamper with the phones.

And third, the Right's marketing factory will be adding a third shift to hurry up and retrofit Jimmy "Wingnut Welfare Pimp" O'Keefe

with a new suit, new haircut, new past and new role as oppressed minority


and prisoner of conscience.


History will write that greatest failure of the Right was not merely that they were bone-in stupid. Or that they were malicious. Or bigots. Or fools.

No, future generations will note that what rocketed the Right to truly Olympian levels of FAIL was that they were men and women utterly without honor.

Right down to their skidmarked souls.

This is what makes them a tragedy.

Driftglass and Blue Gal Podcast #3

Everything but the kitchen sink.
(Now with kitchen sink.)

Where Yesterday Has Been Exiled

Memory is Rebellion.

You know what you don't hear a word about anymore?

The so-called Bush/Cheney "truth and reconciliation" committee.

From “The Nation” almost one year ago:

...
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, deserves credit for pressing ahead with his modest proposal to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to review the assaults on the Constitution and general lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney administration.

As Leahy said at the opening of Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing on "Getting To The Truth Through A Nonpartisan Commission Of Inquiry":

Nothing has done more to damage America's place in the world than the revelation that this Nation stretched the law and the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel treatment. The Bush administration chose this course, but tried to keep its policies and actions secret, knowing that they could not withstand scrutiny in the light of day. How many times did President Bush go before the world and say that we did not torture and that we acted in accordance with law?

There are some who resist any effort to look back at all, while others are fixated on prosecution, even if it takes all of the next eight years, or more, and further divides this country.

Over the last month, I have suggested a middle ground to get to the truth of what went on during the last several years, in a way that invites cooperation. I believe that that might best be accomplished though a nonpartisan commission of inquiry. I would like to see this done in a manner removed from partisan politics. Such a commission of inquiry would shed light on what mistakes were made so that we can learn from these errors and not repeat them.
...

Of course, given the fact that the Cheney Regime basically torched the place, walked out in the middle of the five alarm fire they created and have been throwing bombs at the fire department ever since did make it harder to bring something a Truth Committee together under the kind of unflinching spotlight it deserves, but I think there is another, deeper reason: basically that such a commission is that it would involve two things that our elite media and the Conservatives despise the most --"truth” and “reconciliation".

You see, to get at the real roots of the problems that are killing us would necessarily required (to steal the phrase from AA) just the kind of fearless political inventory that almost no one in power is going to risk. Because once you open the door on that sort of thing -- once you set out to hold up the words and deeds of important people to the body scanner of history -- there is no telling who might end up spread-eagled in front of the digital panty sniffer.

And there is no telling what sort of hideously embarrassing Ziplock bags full of avarice, incompetence, cowardice and complicity one is likely to find shoved into the ass cracks of the wealthy and influential.

All of which is to say, when you start planning a Truth safari into the heart of professions run by imbeciles, criminals and nepotists (that have compiled a decades-long unbroken string of lies, failure and fuckuppery) you will not be treated by the gatekeepers of those realms (who make a handsome living doing what they do) as a Deliver, or a long-overdue Goddess of Justice but as the Angel of Death.

After all, what would ever become of pseudo-apostate Conservatives like Andrew Sullivan or David Brooks should they ever be truly stripped of their self-absolving Teflon fantasies about the real nature and history of Conservatism? (Think freshly shucked oysters in a convection oven.) Where would the punditocracy their pernicious be if their lies about “center-right America”, “independents” and Barack Obama’s of being “too liberal” were forcibly pried from their sticky little fingers? What would happen if the press were required to report the fact – unapologetically and repeatedly -- that the Tea Party movement was mostly armed White Identity idiots operating under a sponsorship agreement with Fox? That the Right completely lost its shit years and years ago? If Rush and Glenn and Bill-O weren’t around, who would help abet the aggrieved delusions of bigots and fundies? What would happen if every Blue Dog who preached mindless bipartisanship and compromise as the solution to every problem (“If we just bend over a litttttle further and grab our ankles a liiiitle tighter…”) were openly mocked as being simple-minded fools in “serious” venues every day?

But that will never happen, because once our political, social and media institutions decided to preserve their status and fiscal well-being by playing make-believe with ugly truths about themselves and their own behavior, they become hostage to the habit. And once it became clear that media personalities and politicians could openly and repeatedly lie to the public without swift and brutal consequences -- once they gave themselves permission to flush their own incompetence, cowardice and complicity down the memory hole with impunity – we were well and truly screwed.

Because after all, from what position of factual, experiential or moral superiority would people who lie more-or-less continuously about the last 30 years of American political and cultural history pass judgment on people who lie about where the President was born? Or Death Panels? Or…anything?

Once you take that Faustian bargain, it doesn’t matter how fine your suit is or how surgically superior your tits may be; you’re just another grifter, straining a different grade of ethical sludge for krill.

And so we find ourselves drowning in a vast conspiracy of forgetting.

Living in an American where larger and larger chunks of recent and inconvenient history are just being whisked away with the giddy recklessness of a four-year-old who has just discovered lying.

Noted Blogger Here to Beg For Handouts

Somehow, I was at the Arianna Huffington thing last night.

Rather like an alien abduction, I'm not sure exactly how it happened, or how I got there, but an hour of my life went missing and my ass hurt. (Then I apparently ended up at a bar where the President of the United States talked for awhile, after which David Fucking Brooks was all over my teevee like genital warts for no good reason.)

Ms. Huffington made it through the Chicago cold and snow all the way to the tippy top of Columbia College's 1104 S. Wabash building, where she spoke to a two-thirds-full auditorium about media, business, politics and so forth. She made a few comments (she is apparently on a never-ending hunt for “storytellers” who can turn dry data into moving, vivid prose) and then took several questions.

And based on my haunted, fragmentary recollections of the evening, I saw nothing to disabuse me of my impression that while Ms. Huffington's clothes may say "Vogue", and her vocabulary may sound like a Mario Savio mix-tape, her heart is pure J. Pierpont Morgan.

Arianna, if you want to pair your lovely rhetoric about the future of America with something tangible to help save the middle class, how about paying those “storytellers” fair market value for their labors?

Or, as Bob Heinlien once succinctly put it:

"Money is the sincerest form of flattery.
Women love to be flattered.
So do men."

Adequate! Adequate!

Your biased, bleary and unfair State of the Union review, rough hewn and pounded out on horseback (well, bar-stool) with liberals to the right of me, liberals to the left of me, and Chris Matthews forcefully stating the sun-blottingly-plain-as-Keith-Olbermann’s-massive-melon obvious.

It is, for your entertainment, divided into Real Quotes (designated by quotation marks), Fake Quotes (Designated BHO), and commentary, which is everything else

BHO: Madam President, Members of Congress, humans, Lieberman, shut your collective pie holes and lend me your ears. And, yes, I’m talking to you Wilson.

BHO: I am the President, and for over, like, 20 years now already, America has had tough times. So many of them that, jeez, you’d think Almighty God was really angry with us or something. Even way back in olden days when our country was in black and white. Or daguerreotypes.

BHO: We are One nation. One people. Except for the Civil War. So, OK, you got me there.

BHO: We’re falling but not plummeting. So bite me.

BHO: A child sent me his allowance, proving that children are apparently still writing letters. So that’s good.

BHO: Shouting? Partisanship? Pettiness? Do not want!

Chuck Grassley is showing off his vivid red vest. Which means that ritual courtship display season has come again to the GOP.

And oh how the Conservative ladies love it so.


BHO: Americans are resilient. They bounce good. Like a Superball even.

They're almost alive!

For some reason, the grubby unemployed speak in parallel poetic construction, which is also good.

Periwinkle is obviously the new flag pin.

BHO: The last administration fucked everything into the ground and peed on the rubble.

A look of horror spreads over the Republicans as BHO dares to reveal the closest-held secret of their cult.

BHO: We recovered most of the money from the banks. Except for some sofa change and stuff I think went through the wash.

A call to soak the fucking bankers. (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking dyspeptic.)

BHO: We cut taxes. (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking crabbed.)

Jobs saved. (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking irritable-bowelish.)

Jobs bill. Who doesn’t love?

BHO: Small businesses. In America, is there any other kind of “grit and determination” but “sheer”? I think not. Comrade!

BHO: Small business loans through community banks? Anyone? (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking petulant.)

Apparently all taxes of any kind will be cut to zero forever.

Infrastructure? Shit! Why not…Ultrastructure?!?!

A call to get rid of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas? (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking surly. This is the point at which the GOP’s little sit-in stops looking like solidarity and now looks just irredeemably dickish.)

“Washington has been telling us to wait for decades. China’s not waiting.”

“I do not accept 2nd place for the the United States.”

So...4th?

BHO: I’m not interested in punishing banks.

(Cut to Dodd with a mile wide ++OhDearGodThankYou!++ thought-bubble hovering over his head.)

Regulatory reform. (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking sullen.)

Exporting is good. We’ll double it, and add two million new jobs.

Tax credits for college? (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking reptilian.)

Public service? (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking peevish.)

Pull any more shenanigans and I will pull this Ship of State over and veto your ass!

The Supremes get spanked. Well, as much as you can spank five shitwhistles with lifetime tenure. I don’t know that this has ever been done before. So good on you, President Obama.

We still need to govern. Democrats, we have the largest majority in decades, so do something already.

A call to serve citizens not personal ambitions? (Democrats applaud. Republicans sit looking pouty-pouty-poo-poo.)

BHO: We could argue all we want about who is to blame…

Yes! Lets finally, finally, finally DO THAT!

Oh. Rhetorical. I get it.

BHO: C’mon, psychos! After 20 years of being asshole, how about you put down the flamethrower that’s gotten you everything you have in this life, step down off the pile of bodies you have slain and heaped into an altar to your sick ideology and behave like decent people. What’dya say!

Crickets.

“I’ve embraced the values of Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.”

Fucking Hollywood starlets? Oh. Eliminating nukes. See, that would’ve been my third guess, after the starlet thing, and sporting a fine head of dark, lustrous hair.

Here comes the laundry list. Its a good list. I'm very, very proud we do things like this.

Hey, where’s my fucking switchgrass? Where’s Mars bitches?

“...that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it.” OK, that's the only factual error I could find in this speech, but its kind of a big one. Because every citizen of the United States, not just those who "abide by the law", deserve the full protection of that law.

That is, in fact, one of the pillars of our democracy, and it is actually fairly shocking that it got past not just the White House speech-writing team, but former Constitutional Law Professor, Barack Obama.

The only reason we are here today is that generations of American did stuff. Hard stuff. Had anvils dropped on their heads, but stood up together and knit a new circle of freedom’s ringing truths. Or something.

Except, of course, for the Civil War.
Oh, and Jim Crow.
Well, basically the entire history of civil rights.
And the entire history of worker right.
Actually, it sure as hell seems that every advance in those fields domestically resulted from it being pried out of powerful, unwilling hands, often by force.

But hey, whatever.

America, fuck yeah!

As I said, an adequate speech (if you don't get the reference, it is from "Dog Day Afternoon".) (Not Safe For Work)


And my President is sniffing happy glue made from unicorn hooves if he thinks anything he said tonight is going to coax even one Republican down out of the crazy tree.

Because the view is just too nice from up there.

And Thus the 2nd Half of the Great Recession

Finally achieved escape velocity.

From Yahoo News:

Owners: $5.4B NY housing complexes go to creditors
Owners: 2 NYC apartment complexes bought for record $5.4B will be turned over to creditors

NEW YORK (AP) -- The financially troubled owners of two massive apartment complexes that sold for a record $5.4 billion a few years ago said Monday they're turning them over to their creditors.

The joint venture ownership team led by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty, hurt by the real estate market collapse, couldn't make a multimillion-dollar loan payment earlier this month for the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartments in Manhattan.

Over the last few days it became clear the only viable alternative to bankruptcy would be to transfer to lenders control and operation of the 110 buildings and 11,000 apartments overlooking the East River, partnership spokesman Bud Perrone said.

"We make this decision as we feel a battle over the property or a contested bankruptcy proceeding is not in the long-term interest of the property, its residents, our partnership or the city," Perrone said in an e-mailed statement.

The group bought the complexes, which have about 25,000 tenants, in 2006 at the height of the real estate bubble in the nation's largest residential real estate deal.

The record purchase price seemed outrageous to many real estate analysts, but the partnership believed it had a winning strategy: It would aggressively convert thousands of rent-regulated apartments occupied by middle-class families into luxury units that would fetch top dollar.

But the tactic was a bust as the city's housing market cooled considerably. Ratings firms estimated the value of the 80-acre area had fallen to as little as $2 billion -- far less than the outstanding loan balance.
...

Goodnight moon.
Goodnight stars.

Goodnight hustlers.
Goognight scammers.
Goodnight light, and the real estate balloon...

As I Pondered, Weak and Weary

Over at one of my competitor's publications, Junot Díaz (via Andrew Sullivan) wonders why the "Storyteller-in-Chief" has done such a rotten job of Presidential griotry:

All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. It should necessarily be a story eight years in duration, a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all.

I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.

Junot has in mind something like this I suppose:


And while I am tempted to point out how wise and keen this kind of insight is (largely, I must confess, based on the fact that I wrote something remarkably similar a year an a half ago with the much-cleverer title of "The Griot Gap":

...
But at the end of the day, what we want our Presidents to do it tell us the story of ourselves; to stand in front of the tribal fire, or the tribal “fire side” radio, or the tribal teevee and act out a ritual that tastes just a little bit like what Walt Whitman was getting to in ”Song of Myself”,

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
…

Telling the story of America to Americans -- finding just the right chords, and setting them to the music of the English language -- is an enormously powerful tool.
...)

I feel compelled by the obligations imposed on me by the ancient and sacred rules of blogging to point out the sadly obvious fact that Barack Obama does not tell the story of America -- the real story of the real American as it exists today -- because, as long as his political strategy depends on propping up the delusion that some form of mature, bipartisanship is still possible, he cannot.

He dare not.

Because the real story of the real American as it exists today is the story of a

political/cultural clique of powerful lunatics and their 30 million willing stooges methodically destroying this country.

The real story of America now is the story of madmen whipping themselves into a psychotic rage

over imaginary offenses.


The real story of America now is the story of those madmen intricately plotting the murder

of the America I knew and loved

and then carrying

that murder out.


The real story of America now is the story of those madmen methodically burying the evidence of their crimes


under


one million


cubic yards

of lies.

The real story of America now is the story of those madmen celebrating a fleeting moment of triumph

as their imaginary enemy lay dead beneath their feet...

...before sliding into a state of permanent, shrieking insanity when the evidence of their crime takes up residence inside their skulls, where it just gets louder

and LOUDER and LOUDER.

The real story of the real American is told by a deeply deranged narrator

and begins like this:

"TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad?..."

The real story of America now is "The Telltale Heart", which is why, as long as the the Bard of Pennsylvania Avenue remains reflexively medial and relentlessly placating, he can never dare to whisper a word of it.

Remember, Every Age

Had a "Daily Show".

Because over the long and bloody history of the human race, our vices never change anything except their clothes, their machines and their processing speeds.

I take no small measure of comfort in that.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

"Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity."

-- George Bernard Shaw

In which, this week, our national media vigorously discusses two topics:

"Is Obama Too Liberal?"

and

"Obama is too Liberal!"

With emphasis randomly added by me, higgledy-piggled, and just for fun.

On “Face the Nation” John McSame (Senator, Mouse Circus) announced that

"...we categorically reject much of what the Democrats have passed on a party-line vote continuously."

driftglass: Without bothering to mention that it only turned out to be a party-line vote because the Party of God categorically rejected every fucking thing any Democrat anywhere tried to do.

Senator Durbin:

"...Bob, for the record, President Obama met personally with the Republican leaders in the House and Senate before this began and engaged them and asked them, be part of it. We brought them into the committee hearings. A hundred and seventy Republican amendments were accepted as part of this process in both the Senate committees. We have kept the door open. We waited for months in the hopes of bringing across three Republican Senators who expressed an early interest. To-- so to suggest that we have closed the door to them and haven't engaged them is really not a proper statement of what's happened."

Translation: Senator Maverick is a liar. And everyone knows it.

Bob Schieffer: "...if the two sides could somehow pay less attention to the voices on the fringes of the left and the right..."

And this is how it went.

Everywhere.

All. Fucking. Morning.

As predictable as the sunrise, according to the American political commentariate the last twelve straight months of the Obama Administration selling out one Liberal value after another trying frantically to plight its troth to Joe Lieberman (I'll..I'll...divorce single payer! And public option! And Medicare for All! I swear! And you can totally wear my varsity jacket!) while propping up American capitalism by paying ransom to the Ferengi

...somehow means that Obama has gone mad swilling invisible Socialism Vodka.

For which the only known cure is six weeks drying out in rehab at the Charles Krauthammer Center for Randite Political Chakra Re-Centrification.

On “Meet the Press”, Greggers wants to know about health care.

Mitch McConnell: Yadda yadda "bipartisan". Blah blah "you start with junk lawsuits." Something something "tax code."

Gregory: Jobs?

McConnell: Ibbledee bibbledee "job killing healthcare bill". Flammity shammity "tax cuts".

Gregory: Jesus. You people really are fucking robots.

McConnell: That's how we win, son. Skull fuck the middle-class into blaming poor people for getting skull fucked. Scream "Commie!" any time anyone tries to stop us.

Gregory: But since everyone knows that, how do you keep getting away with it?

McConnell: See that camera pointed at me, Greggers? It didn't point itself. You invited me here. People like me? We're hateful, evil little trolls. Always have been. Always will be. We sell this country out an inch at a time every time we breath. And lie? Hoo-boy, do we ever. We lie and lie and lie, and every week we come back here and people like you give people like me free access to millions of American living rooms.

Gregory: It's good to be useful!

McConnell: It also helps that the political base of my Party is fuck-all stupid.

Gregory: And it's really that simple?

McConnell: Yeah. Look, I'm about to blame the President's failures in the last year on his unwillingness to compromise. Now, everyone knows that he's spent the last year doing almost nothing but compromising away Liberal principles to douchbags like me and shoving money into banker's pockets -- not exactly Step's One and Two in the Marxist World Domination Handbook -- but I'm still gonna sit right here and lie about it. I'm gonna say these magic words:

(actual quote) "The president made a decision to go hard left."

and you know what you're gonna say if you don't want me to scream "Commie" at you?

Gregory: What?

McConnell: Absolutely nothing.

Pause

What follows in italics are actual quotes 

Gregory: "The Supreme Court decision this week to allow corporations..."

McConnell: Lickity clickity "important victory for the First Amendment."

McConnell: "Look, it's about policy, not personality."

McConnell: "...if he will move to the political center, I think he'll find a lot more Republican support."

McConnell: "He chose to go hard left the first year."

Gregory: "Leader McConnell, thank you very much."

McConnell: No, thank you, human urinal cake.

Later, a nearly-sober Peggy Noonan explained that trying to draw any parallels between Obama's rough first year in office and Reagan's rough first year in office fail because while Reagan was the greatest human being who ever lived and was selected by Almighty Conservative Jebus Himself to deliver His chosen "center-right" people into the hands of a corporate theocracy, while Obama is just a dirty, dirty Socialist.

This was followed by a video of a less-nearly-sober Dick Armey, drooling over the teabagger Golem he created:

"This is the broad center of American politics. ...it is the Democrat majority in Congress and the president that's on the liberal fringe and we are on the center. There's no doubt about it."

Which sparks a little, meaningless hacking-and-frothing, into which Gregory quickly lobs the following question:

"Will President Obama go down fighting?"

Pause for a moment to consider just what levels of cynical, complicit Villager corruption are revealed in that question.

"Will President Obama go down fighting?"

Yeah. Because that would look just awesome in 3D-IMAX Avatar-vision!

On “This Week”, former Bush Advisor Matthew Dowd boldly advises that Obama not use his State of the Union speech to “point a finger at Republicans” but rather “embrace this”.

No. Really. He really said that. On teevee. And nobody put a chair upside his head. And what's more, he'll be back next week to shovel even more silly, dishonest shit.

And the week after that.

And the week after that.

And the week after that.

Cokie Roberts: "Call on them. Call them to action... So they’ll look unpatriotic if they're not."

No, see, Republicans don't have to be tricked into looking unpatriotic; Republicans are unpatriotic. But rather than reporting this fact as, say, a journalist might, Cokie instead believes we need more Clever Political Puppet Theater!

Because shaming Conservatives into not behaving like monsters has worked so wonderfully well these last 30 year.

Terry Moran: "Doesn’t he need to get some distance between himself and (wait for it) Congressional Democrats?"

Former Bush Advisor Matthew Dowd further advises that Obama should:

"get in a fight...(wait for it) (waaaait for it) with Democrats!"

Wow, you mean Obama should finally chastise them for being spineless, sell-out, appeaser-monkeys?

Former Bush Advisor Matthew Dowd:

"He needs to say, 'I was elected to end the dysfunction in Washington, and that dysfunction belongs in both parties. I'm going to take on the Democrats on something big...'"

Oh.

You mean Obama should chastise them not yet being more spineless, bigger sell-outs, and even more enthusiastically appeaser-monkeyish?

Then someone shouted -- swear to God -- "Triangulate!"

Because, yes, we love The Triangulate! We understand The Triangulate!

Sam Donaldson: Like Welfare Reform. All those deviant Mario Cuomo Liberals said it would be bad. But Clinton did it, and it worked out great!

But of course, that's not exactly true is it Sam?

From the Washington Post:

Why Welfare Reform Has Failed

By Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich

Sunday, December 6, 2009

...

When President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law, he didn't just end welfare as we knew it. For all practical purposes, it turned out, he brought an end to cash help of any kind for families with children in much of the country. While welfare reform was long ago declared a success in some quarters, it was deeply flawed from the beginning. The recession has shown how seriously unprepared it left us for hard times.

...

So when the Great Recession came along, the government safety net for families with children was in tatters. The United States was no more prepared for massive unemployment than New Orleans had been prepared for its levees to fail. Some important government programs, including unemployment insurance and food stamps, have started to rise to the challenge and have even begun to lose their stigma among former members of the middle class. Unemployment insurance now covers 57 percent of those who have lost their jobs, as opposed to less than 40 percent before the recession -- although their benefits amount to less half their former wages. Reliance on food stamps has expanded even more dramatically. While the average benefit still isn't enough to meet people's basic nutritional needs, the program now serves 36 million people, double the number when Clinton left office and up by a quarter in the past year.

...

In the rapidly expanding service economy of the 1990s, many former welfare recipients did find jobs, but most did not escape poverty, and a significant number were pushed off the rolls without finding work. Research showed that one in five former recipients ultimately became disconnected from any means of support: They no longer had welfare, but they didn't have jobs. They hadn't married or moved in with a partner or family, and they weren't getting disability benefits. And so, after a decline in the late 1990s, the number of people living in extreme poverty (with an income less than half the poverty line, or below about $9,100 for a family of three) shot up by more than a third, from 12.6 million in 2000 to 17.1 million in 2008.

...

In some states, according to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut law school, "applying for welfare is a lot like being booked for a crime." There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting and lengthy interrogations as to the true paternity of one's children. Word gets around, and, even in the face of destitution, many people will not undergo such indignities.

The other technique for keeping the rolls down is to staff the back door with the equivalent of a nightclub bouncer. The practice is called "sanctioning" -- kicking people off the rolls because they were late to a work assignment (no excuses accepted, whether for sick children, late buses or car trouble) or didn't show up for an appointment at the welfare office (no dispensation for failure to receive notice of an appointment or inability to understand English). In some states multiple infractions of this sort can result in lifetime disqualification.

It's time to acknowledge that America's 1996 experiment with welfare reform was based on reckless assumptions about the economy, as well as a callous disregard for the realities of sustaining a family. We need a massive emergency relief package not only to fund new jobs but to repair the grievous holes in our national safety net. Fifty million people need help now -- not in three months or six months, but today...

For the record, Cokie Roberts' was horrified and disgusted by the "lying, lying, lying, lying" of John Edwards' penises-vaginas-and-wedlock-based fairy tales.

Roberts: "It's so awful I don't even know where to begin."

I share her anger, but must LOUDLY wonder where all of her outrage scurries off to when she is sitting at that same table with Conservatives who are "lying, lying, lying, lying" about matters of life and death?

I guess the people whose lives Conservative treason and lies are likely to destroy aren't the sort of people with whom Cokie might find herself get trapped in a socially embarrassing moment while standing in the pee-line at one of the Queen and Spokeswoman of the Washington Premier Socialite Village Lawn Party Country Club's (h/t Wonkette) gala luncheons.

On ”The Chris Matthews Show” (h/t Crooks and Liars, which has the video here):

Chris Matthews: Do you think Clarence now that the administration, these smart guys around the President, he especially, misread his mandate and said they didn’t like Bush, they didn’t like Cheney, so they’re going to like a real liberal, even leftist kind of government? Did they misread it?

Kathleen Parker: Well first of all, Barack Obama had one mandate, and that was to not be George W. Bush and he should have known from the Clintons that any time you tack left, you go in the hole. You know he was elected by all of these former Republicans and independents because they thought he was going to be a centrist leader and he projected that on the campaign. So you know, he’s got to come back center.

And so it was, all over your Elitist Liberal Media.

Of course, over in “Fox World” , while the fake tea-leaf-reading results are the same  the tones tends to be considerably less nuanced.

Driftglass and Blue Gal Podcast #2

A 42 minute balm for the weary Liberal soul.

A year from now, I'm sure I'll have jangled up the events of this week sufficiently that I'll remember it as the week that the Supreme Court finally ruled on the Blogroll Amnesty Day case, which was then used by a Massachusetts teabagger to club Air America to death.

Thank goodness I'll have this awesome podcast to refer to if I ever want to remember what really happened.

Supreme Court Unveils iNeda v2.0

Why do Conservatives support Special Rights for imaginary robots?

Oh yeah; because it makes it easier to destroy America.

From digby:

...The Republicans can do the corporations' bidding without constraints. Why should they bother with Democrats if they can just buy themselves a seat for a true believer? Much easier --- transaction-wise.

And of course, as imaginary non-human malefactors of great wealth everywhere celebrate

this quantum leap in special rights for imaginary non-human malefactors of great wealth, their well-paid lackeys:

Fox News' opinion shows strangely mum on the Citizens United ruling

David and I scanned through Fox News last night and surprisingly, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren didn't mention the very controversial and pro-corporatist Citizens Untied ruling by the Supreme court. Not a word. It reminds me of how they pretty much ignored the Haiti earthquake...

obediently shut the fuck up and look the other way.

Until non-human malefactor of great wealth Rupert Murdoch decides exactly what their opinions should be.

Get ready for your new National Anthem, citizens:

Five Conservatives Vote To Obliterate Democracy

Nine years years ago, state's-rights-lovin', activist-judge-hatin' Conservatives from coast to coast applauded as the Conservative Supreme court publicly and spectacularly eviscerated what was allegedly one of its most inviolate judicial principles in order to install George W. Bush as the 43rd President of the United States on a 5-4 vote.

Nine years later, another wildly-activist Conservative Supreme court has once again publicly and spectacularly eviscerated another of what was supposed to be sacrosanct judicial principle;

...
This is a two-part coup. In 2000, in the judicially unconscionable Bush v. Gore ruling, the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George W. Bush. Bush, in turn, appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, who, in their confirmation hearings, disingenuously promised the Senate and American people to be judicial moderates and avoid judicial activism. Now, in 2010, in perhaps the greatest act of judicial activism in American history, they overthrew 103 years of precedent to turn the US government over to the largest corporations.
...

in in order to finish the off what little democracy was still standing after the catastrophic eight year reign of that President:

Citizens United: The Problem Isn't the Law, It's the Court

Progressives may have thought the victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts earlier this week was bad news, but today's Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC may ultimately prove far more devastating.

That is because today, the Court's conservative majority re-wrote the Constitution to give corporations -- never mentioned in the Constitution -- the same right to influence the electoral process as 'We the People.' As the NYT's Adam Liptak explains, "Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court ... ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections." The justices did what many progressives feared for months it would do: hold that long-standing restrictions on corporate campaign spending violate the First Amendment.

The Court's ruling could transform our electoral politics. During 2008 alone, Exxon Mobil Corporation generated profits of $45 billion. With a diversion of even two percent of those profits to the political process, this one company could have outspent both presidential candidates and fundamentally changed the dynamic of the 2008 election.
...

And, just like nine years ago, the Pig People are cheering.

From Christopath Mullah Tony Perkins:

FRC: Supreme Court Ruling a Win for Free Political Speech


WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins released the following statement regarding today's decision by the U.S Supreme Court in Citizens United vs FEC:

"Under the principles established by the First Amendment, nothing is more foundational than free speech. This is a win for free political speech and the right of corporate citizens to join the political process.

From the godfather of the direct-mail mass political marketing of right-wing bigotry and rage:

Today's Supreme Court decision: Good Riddance to Incumbent-Protection Censorship; Hello Insurgents

Written by Richard Viguerie on January 21, 2010, 12:29 PM

Today’s Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case means that the anti-incumbent furor that has been growing is partly released from the shackles created by ‘incumbent protection’ election and campaign finance laws.

The dirty little secret about all campaign finance laws passed by Congress since 1972 is that they were designed to protect incumbents by stifling competition.

This ruling is especially important for advocacy causes and organizations, which may now more freely express opinions about incumbents.
...

Over at FoxNews' Andy Breitbart's site, Chris Berg -- advisor to "conservative organizations including the Republican National Lawyers Association and the Young Republican National Federation" and Bush Administration Labor Department Objectivist Hero Second Class -- can't contain his joy at the freedom-flavored awesomeness of it all:

"Today the United States Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. This long overdue decision is a victory not only for Citizens United but also for the First Amendment..."

Mr. Berg's fellow Brietbartian, Robert Frommer, (staff attorney with the League of Justice Institute for Justice) is also large in the pants with delight at giving limitless power to corporations, but warns that we must remain on guard against the remote possibility that some vestigial remnants of quaint, old-timey carbon-based-life-form-centric democracy which may be lurking around somewhere might still need to be put down like a sick dog and bulldozed onto the ash heap of history.

Because Eternal Vigilance is the price of Corporate Omnipotence.

Or something.

"But while Citizens United marks a major victory for First Amendment rights against expansive campaign finance regulation, the war rages on. Politicians worked to silence corporations because they have the resources to speak effectively..."

Malkin:

...
[referring to McCain-Feingold campaign finance rules] Yet another reminder of how wrong-headed McCain has been on so many, many issues

Hot Air:

Assuming they break no other laws, what gives government the right to dictate when on the calendar they can exercise free political speech? Apparently, being “rich” is a Constitutional exception through which the government can infringe on rights.

Of course its a lot easier to avoid breaking the law when you write the law. And own the refs. And own the stadium. Also "rich" is not the problem. "Immortal, imaginary, non-carbon-based entities with unlimited funds and armies of lawyers" is the problem.

And as we know, wherever power has become concentrated into the hands of ever fewer, unaccountable, unelected oligarchs, that has ALWAYS turned out well for democracy.

At least that's what Glenn Beck said that Rush Limbaugh said that Ayn Rand whispered to him on her death bed.

Or something.

Of course, if the teabaggers were actually interested in saving this country from the actual enemies of democracy instead of blaming imaginary hippies for the sour taste that sucking George Bush's dick for eight catastrophic years has left in their mouths, this Supreme Court decision should put them in the street-- pitchforks and torches in-hand -- by the millions.

Which is about as likely as Pavlov's dog getting up on its hind legs and beating the crap out of the guy with the little bell.

AA Going, Going, Gone.

Despite persistent stories of bloated egos and seemingly biannual stupid management decisions, the loss of any of our few non-wingnut media stalwarts is hard to take:

Liberal talk-radio station Air America files for bankruptcy, will go off the air

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 22, 2010

Air America, the liberal talk-radio network that helped boost the careers of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday that it was declaring bankruptcy and going off the air.

The company, founded in 2004 and based in New York, strove to provide left-leaning commentary and call-in programs as an alternative to such popular conservative radio talkers as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage.

It was troubled almost from the start. The company had difficulty lining up affiliates and attracting a sizable audience. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection just 30 months after its inception and was resold to an investor group in early 2007 for $4.25 million.
...

Because even one occasion where the good guys go home in limousines and the bad guys have to hold bake sales would obviously overthrow some primal natural of law.

So unless someone is coming forward to announce that this is just one more, obscure, genius En Passant move in the Grand Game of 13 Dimensional Progressive Political Chess which we groundlings are too dim to understand, there is nothing left but to bid Air America

a fond farewell.


UPDATE: Not to mock the corpse's shoes at the wake or anything, but perhaps someone should either take down this "Air America Radio Cruise" site or explain to us proles what the Plan B. I mention it because I had elaborate plans to wheedle a magazine editor into picking up the tab for my passage on the cruise, whereupon I would have blogged for said magazine daily about the folkways, manners and nightly liberal prayer meetings of my shipboard companions

ala Mark Twain, whose short sketches of his adventures as a passenger on the "Quaker City" tour (one of America's very first, luxury cruises) provided his paper with lively reading, and were eventually compiled into "The Innocents Abroad"; the book that made Twain's literary reputation and set him on the road to fame and fortune and poverty and fortune again and, finally, immortality.

I was going to call my opus "The Dissidents Abroad".

And why would I undertake to make such a dangerous voyage?

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"

That's why.

Well, perhaps some magazine editor with a keen eye for the commercial possibilities of closely-observed, finely-wordsmithed vivisection would like to stake me to one of the Conservative cruise alternatives.

And, yes, I'm looking at you Will Dana. And you, Graydon Carter. And you, James Bennet.

Obamasochism

Noun: The act of deriving political gratification from appeasing people who want to humiliate and destroy you.

And just in case anyone at the DNC is listening, if the national Democratic Party ever wants a minute of my time, a joule of my energy, a dime of my money or a deibold of my vote again, the request had better arrive on my doorstep pinned to Joe Lieberman's pike-transfixed head and wrapped in an open letter from the President of these United States in which he refers to the GOP as the "flesh eating virus of democracy", Fox news as "Reich-kibble for the cognitively-impaired" and the national press as "meth-tweaked lemmings".

I Get Nowhere

Unless the team wins.

Sometimes powerful people forget that.

Sometimes a gentle reminder of the solemn promises they made on the road to power is enough.

Sometimes stern words to focus their attention back on the principles they said the shared with people who put them in power is sufficient.

And sometimes, when you have tried that over and over and over and over and over again, you need an intervention.

With a fucking baseball bat.

Where Did We Go Wrong, Rahm?

Where
in the whole
wide
fucking
world
do you suppose
we could
possibly
have gone wrong?

Come What May

The work goes on.

Happy Birthday, Edgar

Someone kind soul set one of my favorite EAP poems to Tim Burton's animation.

How cool is that?

Poe died, drunk, on election night, dressed in someone else's clothes, under very bizarre circumstances that no one has ever explained.

I'm sure there's a lesson there.

I wrote a whole story about it once. Science fiction, in the style of Poe, explaining his death. Nice little story that everyone I dragooned into reading it liked quite a lot and that was rejected by every editor I ever sent it to.

I'm sure there's a lesson there too.

Prince of Piece

From ABC News:

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes
Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has 'Always' Added New Testament

By JOSEPH RHEE, TAHMAN BRADLEY and BRIAN ROSS
Jan. 18, 2010

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.
...

I have nothing to add, other than to note that most of the nearly 1,000 comments this story has garnered so far seemed to be a veritable Whitman's Sampler of bigoted, fundamentalist crazy --

"Is there no end to the Christian bashing?"

"ABC News should pay attention to the Liberals and how they are ruining our country, not the fact that a Christian country puts Some biblical codes on their weapons."

"It seems only our Pagan or A-religious media has a problem with it."

"In a country where most people profess to be Christian, ABC publishes articles and runs stories that insult those beliefs. There is nothing that the liberal left, or any pagan force can do to stop the truth of scripture."

"Yet another example of extremist liberals who hate even the possibility of faith."

"they are trying to take CHRIST from us. we will loose all of our rights. first it is smoking an no display of the ten commandments on court property.. what is next. if someone doesnt make a stand we will all be with out rights!"

"the word of God burns jounalists ears as if it were acid."

"As John Stossell would say..."

-- that fell into three, basic, screechy deperssingly predictable categories of wingnut CAPS+LOCK wisdom:

1. Quit destroying our CHRISTIAN Nation with your Liberal/commie ways you fucking heathen!

2. If arms dealers can't stamp "I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life" on the boomsticks we're sending into the heart of the Muslim world, then the Terrorists Have Won!

3. If you don't want our brave Soldiers to have DECENT weapons, then maybe you should go over them and fight the terrorist YOURSELF! Commie!

Reading it was really saddening, and I had just about resigned myself to going to bed hopelessly appalled once again at the obdurate, militant wrong-headedness of so many of my fellow citizens who desecrate both the teachings of Christ and the core principles of democracy with an almost sociopathic casualness while at the same time LOUDLY proclaiming themselves to both the greatest fucking patriots and the best fucking Christians the world has ever known...when I came across this little gleam of light by "RevDrCraigWatts":

"The heads of this company are pushing a twisted version of Christianity that does nothing but dishonor Jesus as he is presented in the Gospels. Their militarized, Americanized religious impulses are shameful to any clear thinking Christian. To suggest in any way that Jesus would embrace their values is nothing short of blasphemy. Do they violate the separation of church and state. Sure. But that is the least of their offenses."

Thank you, Reverend.

Alert Reader Gene in Stockholm

Dropped me a note to tell me that I was no longer a lone voice crying in the wilderness, and then pointed me to this lacerating piece of bareknuckle, collimated outrage by Taibbi that begins thusly:

Translating David Brooks

A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.

Rather than go through the Brooks piece line by line, I figured I’d just excerpt a few bits here and there and provide the Cliff’s Notes translation at the end. It’s really sort of a masterpiece of cultural signaling — if you live anywhere between 59th st and about 105th, you can hear the between-the-lines messages with dog-whistle clarity...

The rest of it

was a lot like this.

Thing of beauty, and a œuvre to which I have made my own, modest contributions over the years. Such as this series from 2007:

A Rose for Bobo Part 1
A Rose for Bobo Part 2
A Rose for Bobo Part 3
A Rose for Bobo Part 4

And yet...

And yet when I pair it with this from Thomas Frank and Bill Moyers (emphasis added and video here) discussing what I would strongly argue is one of the most important cultural phenomenon of our lifetime --

...
THOMAS FRANK:...Bill. When I say this is done by design, I'm not exaggerating. And this is one of the more surprising things that I found when I was doing the research for "The Wrecking Crew," is that there's a whole conservative literature on why you want second-rate people in government, or third-rate.

I found an interview with the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1928, where he said-- this quote, it's mind-boggling to me. But he really said this. "The best public servant is the worst one." Okay? You want bad people in government. You want to deliberately staff government with second-rate people. Because if you have good people in government, government will work. And then the public will learn to trust government. And then they'll hand over more power to it.

And you don't want that, of course. Your Chamber of Commerce. And I thought, when I first read this, "That's a crazy idea. I can't believe that sentiment." And then I found it repeated again and again and again. Throughout the long history of the conservative movement. This is something they believe very deeply.

BILL MOYERS: It comes out of a definitive way of seeing things, right?

THOMAS FRANK: Yes. And we can summarize that very briefly. That the market is the, you know, is the universal principle of human civilization. And that government is a kind of interloper, if not a, you know, criminal gang. And getting in the way.

BILL MOYERS: But we saw with this collapse and this bailout, we saw the failure of that.

THOMAS FRANK: Of course.

BILL MOYERS: And yet there's no sense of contrition. What's amazing to me, and you wrote this, that the very people who brought us this decade of conservative failures, the party of Palin, Beck, Hannity, Abramoff, Rove, DeLay, Kristol, O'Reilly, just might stage a comeback.

THOMAS FRANK: I think they might. I think there's a very strong chance of that.

BILL MOYERS: After only 11 months out of power, because of the record. I mean--

THOMAS FRANK: Look, well, the stuff--

BILL MOYERS: --it's crazy.

THOMAS FRANK: --the stuff we've been talking about here today. The stuff in "The Wrecking Crew," that's all forgotten. The financial crisis had that effect of-- that stuff is now off the-- down the memory hole...

-- I find it ever harder to believe that it makes any difference.

We live fully inside the Meme-ento

black hole now.

At the event horizon, there is David Brooks. Immovable. He was there yesterday, last week, last year, and he will be there tomorrow, and next week, and next year. So will Tom Friedman. So will all of them, nesting in the high places, living large, making strange, irrelevant little chirping noises.

From deeper inside the gravity well, we good little Liberals weep and rail against the coming of a New Dark Age, but as long we are inside the hole, none of it can achieve escape velocity.

So we brandish our depressingly extensive bills of particulars against the Right, and the Right's enablers and apologists in the media.

And from the voracious singularity at the center of it all, the invincibly ignorant Right shrugs.

We show off our decades-long Bayeux Tapestry of their travesties.

They toss it on the same cultural pyre onto which they have already heaped the Constitution, the economy and the past.

And smile.

And keep coming.

We keep the safety off of our rebuttals, and our logic greased in its holster with the site filed down for a faster draw.

As if facts and logic mattered.

Digby has it right here when she says:

...
If progressives want to change politics in this country they are going to have to do it not just in institutional terms, but in rhetorical and ideological terms as well. It's not like we haven't talked about this before. Until the 2008 presidential campaign, it was one of the primary issues we talked about -- changing the terms of the debate, educating the people, giving voters something to believe in and care about. But for some reason, on the progressive side all we seem to care about these days is poll numbers and institutional reform.

I think those things are important, but they aren't the whole story. If the Republicans make a comeback -- a big "if," in the short term -- they will do it because they have spent the last thirty years indoctrinating the American people into a certain way of thinking.
...

Once Conservative strategy shifted entirely to supplying the Pig People with an ever more powerful pharmacopoeia of Wingnut Chewable Crazy to help them obliterate inconvenient truths and keep their berserk rage amped into the stratosphere, this stopped being a fight of policy vs. policy, and started being a struggle between the Children of the Enlightenment, and. a 30-million-strong army of doublethink zombies --

“ To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.[1] ”

“ The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. ”
...

-- hell bent on wrecking this country.

I will always appreciate skilled contributions to the "Why Is David Fucking Brooks Still Employed?" genre, and will probably continue to add my my own bits and pieces to it for some time to come.

But we are now fully in the hands of the tidal forces of history which are driving us towards a moment when we must confront the fact that this country (to misquote Lincoln) cannot endure, permanently half zombie brainwashed wingnut goon and half not. There is a good deal of ugliness coming our way, and I cannot help but think that once we have passed through it we will look back on David Fucking Brooks and his fellow travels as the quaint, overpriced and absurdly-ornate journalistic equivalent of a Victorian era sterling silver snuff box.