BP's "GULF KILL" Procedure

Now nearly 85% successful! (Click here for larger, underlying graphic.)

It occurs to me that, like the mining industry and the ecology of West Virginia, if the oil industry can simply kill off the entire Gulf fast enough, there will be nothing left for environmentalists to protect.

Of course, some low-level BP flunkies would have to be ritually sacrificed, and a great political show would have to be made about, oh, let's say, the greatness of America. Or the rule of law.

Or something.

But in the end, other than a few, hardy, independent and poorly-funded documentary film makers, the media would close up shop and go find another runaway blonde or fake scandal to leg-hump for ratings.

The public would shrug.

And the United States of Homer would return to its default factory setting:

Homer Simpson: "Will you all stop worrying about that stupid comet oil spill? It's going to be destroyed. Didn't you hear what that guy in the building said?"

Lisa Simpson: "But dad, don't you think..."

Homer: "Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rain forest global warming scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?"

Lisa: "No, Dad, I don't think..."

Homer: "There's that word again!"

Game-set-match, and another triumph for Disaster Capitalism.

Now, do I think that this is the actual plan?

Well, let's just say that I have come to believe corporations should be considered guilty until proven innocent, and that I will reserve judgment until all the evidence is in.

However, if you believe that no institutions operating on the playing field of American democracy would be evil enough to do something that incredibly destructive and reckless just to increase their bottom line...well...first I would warmly welcome you to planet Earth on behalf of my tragic and glorious species.

And then I would direct you to the nearest public library and urge you to look up things like an overview of th the history of the American labor movement, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire,"The Jungle", the Bhopal Disaster, the looting of the American economy by the Banksters


disgraced former Republican House Speaker Tom DeLay's "perfect petri dish of capitalism" and slavery in the Marianas


a company called Enron

and a few hundred other examples that come immediately to mind.

If you doubted that the United States Gummint would sanction the annihilation of a big chunk of the planet to beta test some flaky economic theory pried out of Ayn Rand's cold, dead ass, I would refer you to the entire fucking

Iraq War.

If you could not believe that the American public could be induced to simply forget the destruction of a whole region of their own country, I would hand you a few articles on a place called New Orleans.

Even the most cursory reading of the literature shows that, as machines designed to do nothing but maximize profit, corporations are fundamentally sociopathic and will generally conduct themselves with a sense of public morality no greater or less than the size of the gun the gummint has pointed at their heads.

It is their nature, and as such, if large and well-connected corporations come to believe they can make a buck off your death -- and if they believe they can get away with it under the Conservative figleafs of free market self-regulation -- first they'll secretly insure your home and family, then they'll kill you, then render you down for soap, and then sell the soap to your kids, then kill your kids, then burn your house down, then collect the insurance and use part of the profits to run ads against those evil unions and activist judges and trial lawyers who want to limit their right to treat human life like ass paper and the planet like their personal bidet.

And so, dear visitor, I would urge you read up on my country and its rich and schizophrenic history and decide for yourself.

And I would also urge you to hurry up and get 'er done before the Texas School Book Grand Inquisitors heaves all of that scary "fact" stuff into the always hungry maw of the Wingnut Wood Chipper and replaces it with a line of "Ronald Reagan and Jebus Saves Christian Murrica from the Hippies" Pop-up books.

There's Nothing Like

A traditional family singalong.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

"Babble, Babble, Oil and Squabble" edition.

Between Wall Street capitalist billionaires recklessly stabbing civilization in the throat for profit and Petro capitalist billionaires recklessly shooting civilization in the spine for profit, it hasn't been a good week for the media stooges of and apologists for reckless capitalist billionairism.

BP sent its press flak everywhere to look soulfully into various cameras and express BP's official, corporate regrets that they didn't "wrestle this thing to the ground" as if they were Hercules besting Antaeus, and not a gang of cheap, corner-cutting, hustle-bucks who gambled with other people's future and lost once too often.

Of course, the usual Establishmentarian Clowns like David Fucking Brooks were out as well, playing their little tunes on their little Conservative pan pipes, but their heart wasn't much in it: the Black Hats here are still too blatant and the crime scene still too active for them to even attempt to hose it all down with some Centrist-both-sides-are-wrong camouflage claptrap.

(Not that they have much to worry about: even as I write this, I'm sure deep inside some Mellon Scaife or Koch Family-funded Wingnut think tank somewhere, tales of imaginary Socialists patsies and/or scary brown people are being fabricated that will keep the ideology of the ruling class starched and white and clean.)

As usual, the most daring strategy of all was piloted by Fox News: bury the real news as agge4sively as possible, and...

Chris Wallace (breaking his Botoxed affect with a jackalish grin) : The Sestak Affair! I like that name!

The Sestak Affair? A guy was offered a non-paying advisory job in the hopes that he’d step out of a primary fight where some other guys wanted still another guy to win. The first guy demurred, and has since burnished his Independent Resume by ginned up what is a common-as-dirt-if-not-widely-publicized political practice into an act of High Heroic Overcomingness.

And now, taking Sestak's stoopid and running with it, Fox News and various Republican bottom-feeders have upped the rhetorical ante on this trivial and perfectly legal transaction until, in Wingnutland, it constitutes an offense so serious that:

1. It trumps the worst environmental disaster in American history in terms of news value.
2. It warrants hearings and subpoenas and Independent Prosecutors. And stuff.

And of all the detestable tools in the Hate Media toolbox

only Fox News would have the huevos to task Liz Cheney with leading the charge with statements like this:

"I think there are some things that clearly rise to the level of needing independent investigation."

And this:

"There is not an impeccable record of integrity there on the part of the former president. "

And this:

"Clearly, you need somebody to come in and take a look at exactly what happened."

And this:

"There is a lot here that just smells funny."

And this:

"I want to know what the president knew."

And this:

"This is very reminiscent of the campaign finance scandals back in the mid-'90s when they were selling the Lincoln bedroom."

And this:

"I think the American people have a right to know here."

And this:

"Were any laws broken? Was an offer made?"

Yes, that's Liz-Spawn-of-Dick Cheney -- the degenerate daughter of the depraved, unrepentant and conspicuously uninvestigated, unindicted traitor and war criminal of a Vice President -- who is calling for independent investigators.

Liz-Spawn-of-Dick Cheney -- whose entire professional life is nothing but the poison fruit of her Daddy's bloody, treasonous career -- who insists that this all "smells funny".

Forcefully.

Of course, neither you nor I nor anyone we know will ever be allowed within 1,000 yards of the Villager Circle Jerk – nowhere near close enough to point out the obvious and sickening hypocrisy of the blood-soaked thugs at Fox smirking and whinging on about the horrors of a little political horse-trading.

And since today was just another Mouse Circus freak show the only one near enough at hand to put any of this on the table was Fox House Liberal Juan Williams, who of course said nothing.

Here, Malcolm X explains why someone like Mr. Juan Williams could sit obedient next to this blatting evil week after week and yet not bestir his well-remunerated ass to ever interject anything rude enough to interrupt all the ho-ho-ho jolly good fascist fun



up on Massa Murdoch's plutocrat plantation.

Top Kill Fails

From the NYT:

‘Top Kill’ Fails to Plug Leak; BP Readies Next Approach
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

NEW ORLEANS — In the most serious setback yet in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers said Saturday that the “top kill” technique had failed and, after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move on to another strategy.

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference that the engineers would try once again to solve the problem with a containment valve and that it could take four to seven days for the device to be in place.

“After three full days of attempting top kill, we now believe it is time to move on to the next of our options,” Mr. Suttles said.
...

In other news, David Fucking Brooks wrote another column Friday.

Oh boy!

And it can be boiled down to two words: Shit Happens.

Really; I'm not kidding.

As the criminal incompetence of oil moguls slowly strangle the Gulf of Mexico, Bobo offers up his best, puerile, Ruling Class Shrug and drops a spicy, 800-word log explaining that complex systems are...complex.

So, y'know, chill, because accidents happen.

Funny, isn't it, that when it's poor people or brown people who fuck up or break the law or just crap out -- either in reality, or in the wingnut's bigoted little imaginations -- Conservative targeting software auto-fucking-matically locks in on it as proof of a failure of citizenship or character? Some taint of blood and class.

Hell, if he hadn't made political grappling hooks and pitons out of demonizing the character of various imaginary hippies, Negroes and assorted other shiftlessness figments of the Right's toxic fantasies, Bobo's beloved St. Ronnie would never have shucked his way into the White House.

But when it's Bankers or Oil Moguls or other members of the ruling class that Bobo so slavishly serves who gamble, lose, and blow a hole in the economy or the planet big enough to end civilization, we get reams of batter-fried bullshit like this:

"If there is one thing we’ve learned, it is that humans are not great at measuring and responding to risk when placed in situations too complicated to understand. "

And this:

"...people have a tendency to match complicated technical systems with complicated governing structures."

Of course the world is complicated; in fact it is so patently and undeniably obvious that the world is complex and getting more so every day that pissing away an entire column in the Time's reiterating that fact in mopey, condescending language seemed almost too Friedmanesque for Bobo.

But of course, as anyone who has ever worked more than five minutes in a large bureaucracy knows, it is equally true that a nest of bad, lazy, incompetent executives at the tops of powerful organizations can create cultures of reckless risk and unaccountable failure; that Confederacy of Dunces who drive out the smart and prudent and raise up the ass-lickers who promise to deliver the impossible at bargain prices.

And having purged their ranks of anyone who will tell them the fucking truth, they're the ones play Mumblety Peg with our collective futures. Who surround themselves with a retinue of sycophants who are paid handsomely to tell them what they want to hear: that with enough lawyers and technology they can stay safely insulated from any and every potential downside.

And when it all goes "Boom"?

They're the ones who find some poor schnook who in the mail room who's not in the club to take the fall.

And they're the ones who, week after week, read David Fucking Brooks' column in the Times (or watch him dine out on his own establishmentarian upchuck by regurgitating the same column a couple of times on teevee) for the same reason W.C. Fields read the bible:

Looking for loopholes.

RIP Dennis Hopper

The 1960s: Nearly over.

Search Engine Optimization Gone Wild

You know the old joke about the actress who was so stupid that she slept with the writer?

3...2...1...

From The Democratic Strategist:

Down the Rabbit Hole in South Cackalacky

Earlier this week I did a brief post on the madness that's consumed the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial contest.

Long story short, a conservative blogger and former staffer to both Gov. Mark Sanford and state Rep. Nikki Haley "admitted" he had once had an "inappropriate physical relationship" with Haley, a former Sanford protege (and the beneficiary of an endorsement from Sanford's ex-wife) who has recently rocketed into first place in polls for the primary that will take place on June 8. Haley's denied everything, and the blogger, name of Will Folks (a somewhat shady dude whose departure from Sanford's staff was immediately caused by his conviction on domestic violence charges) has been trickling out highly circumstantial bits of data about his relationship with Haley and her campaign, but nothing that really proves an illicit affair, all the while hinting the real goods were still to come.
...

Man, some people really will do anything to drive traffic.

By the way, has anyone heard the rumor that I had torrid, mutually-destructive thing with Lucy Liu, Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, Joe Sestak and someone named "Kardashian" a couple of years ago that tipped over the first domino in a series of events which ultimately led to the creation of the iPad, the "Lost" finale, the ruination of the careers of prominent politicians on three continents

and the collapse of the Greek government?

America's Growth Industries

When an article begins like this (via Chicago Breaking News):

White supremacist rally back on in Will County
May 29, 2010

"A small white supremacist rally is being held this weekend in Will County after police believed it had been cancelled earlier this week, but officials have had no trouble from group yet, a sheriff's spokesman said.
..."

You just know that buried somewhere inside you're going to find a sentence like this:

"The gathering originally was expected to take place in Kentucky last weekend until two people associated with the event were arrested on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine."

America's two growth industries: Meth and bigots.

Better Than Radio

Cheaper than therapy.

"One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

“The reasons the Tea Parties were formed was
so Republicans wouldn’t have to face up to their shame.”

-- Blue Gal

Corrupt Ex-Governor Update

Circus Arrives Thursday

From the Chicago Tribune:

Blagojevich trial delay request denied
Corruption trial of former governor set to open Thursday

By David Savage, Tribune Washington Burea

5:49 PM CDT, May 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens refused Friday to delay the trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, scheduled to begin Thursday.

Stevens, who handles emergency appeals from the 7th Circuit Court, turned down a motion from Blagojevich's lawyers, who sought a 30-day delay.

The defense team argued the trial should be put on hold until the high court rules in several pending cases on constitutional challenges to the law that makes it a crime to deprive the public of "honest services."

Blagojevich faces 24 counts of corruption, including bribery, extortion and racketeering, but several of counts include charges of honest services fraud.
...

Should be hugely entertaining.

Rod is now a professional celebrity, and nobody goes to the freak show to see unbearded lady.

The Return of Tom Waits Friday

Books of Moses
Bringing stone news

Construction To Begin

On Fortress of Mendacitude.

From Yahoo News:

Palin builds fence to block biographer neighbor


When Sarah Palin called in to Glenn Beck's radio show Wednesday, the conversation turned to her new neighbor, unauthorized biographer Joe McGinniss.

So how's Palin dealing with the journalist next door?

"Todd and his buddies started a fence yesterday and it's looking good," Palin said. "It's about 14 feet high. That's what we're going to have to do this summer, I guess."
...

Well that's gonna be a tricky project.

After all, it'll have to be high enough to keep out anyone who might want to asked her impertinent questions about, say, her choice of newspapers, but still low enough that she can keep a constant eye on that tricksie Vladimir Putin,

you betcha!

Probably gonna need a Dutch door.

Or a periscope.

Or something

And Now, a Plague of Frogs...

From Yahoo News:

Flood of frogs shuts down major Greek highway

THESSALONIKI, Greece – Greek officials say a horde of frogs has forced the closure of a key northern highway for two hours.

Thessaloniki traffic police chief Giorgos Thanoglou says "millions" of the amphibians covered the tarmac Wednesday near the town of Langadas, some 12 miles east of Thessaloniki.

"There was a carpet of frogs," he said.
...

Too. Many. Jokes.

Anyway, for those of you keeping track at home, here's the score so far.

Plague of Frogs?

Exodus 8:2 And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs;

Exodus 8:3 And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs:

Check.

Plague of Hail?

Exodus 9:18 Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.

Check.


Water turned to Blood?

Exodus 7:19 And the LORD spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their rivers... and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that they may become blood;

Check.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, BP has hinted that if "TOP HAT" and "TOP KILL" should both fail, they can can still fall back on what they refer to as an "All-purpose, emergency contingency 'Plan C'" that combines elements of both:

Metaphor Explodes/ Sinks in Gulf of Reaganomixico

Dateline: Jesusland

Ever since the Deepwingnut Horizon rig caught fire and collapsed, spewing millions of dolt-pounds of uncontrolled, fucktard wrath into the body politic, a debate has been not-so-quietly raging among Conservative about how they can best cope with the nearly incalculable short-term and long-term damage being caused by the so-called “Bilecano”.

Some of the early victims of the sludgenami were the Moderate Republicans who, for generations, made their living in the fertile streams and deltas of Cooperation and Compromise, until wave upon hysterical wave of “Dirty RINO traitor!” rhetoric wiped out their delicate electoral ecosystems and, with them, their livelihoods.

Since then, of course, the torrent of braying idiocy has only worsened. And once it became clear to some of the last, sober-minded Movement insiders that the nation’s deepest Hate Reserves could not safely be tapped, refined and used to win elections without risking world-killing consequences like the Deepwingnut Horizon catastrophe, plans to cap the nutjobs and clean up their mess were hastily drawn up.

Unfortunately, their first effort -- an attempt to contain the rage beneath a dome of effete, silk-slipper Conservative commentators called a "FOP HAT" -- failed completely as the blasting geyser of crazy overwhelmed their attempts to pretend it didn't exist, or was just some sassmouths on the fringe, or that it was mere "entertainment".

Their second effort was a scheme nicknamed “GOP KILL". This plan called for all leading Conservatives to simultaneously run like Hell away from the wreckage they created. Then, after they had burned their “Bush/Cheney” uniforms, they would begin calling themselves “Libertarians”, “Tea Baggers”, “Independents”, “True Conservatives” and swear on the lives of their sainted mothers that they’d never even heard of politics before January, 2009. Finally, they would all meet up again in front of Reagan’s tomb in 5-6 years to re-constitute the Party of God after all the unpleasantness is forgotten.

“GOP KILL" fared just as badly as "FOP HAT", and in their failures the truth of what the Dirty Fucking Hippes been warning them about for 40 years began to slowly dawn: that once the Cracker Kraken has been released, there is very little one can to get it back on the leash.

However, despite the obvious and ever-growing body on evidence that their course of action has been an unmitigated disaster, some Conservative insiders maintain that destroying America in order to hang onto power is still preferable to the horrifying alternative of having to stop behaving like nasty little children throwing a perpetual sugar high tantrum, grow the fuck up and start cooperating with people they disagree with for the good of the nation and the future.

Speaking off-the-record, one highly-placed Conservative spokesperson explained:

“You can talk all you want about those allegedly 'clean' alternative electoral sources. "Prudent governance". "Comity". "Long term planning". But it’s all bullshit. Everybody knows what powered the GOP through the last 40 years has been a steady, reliable supply of cheap and plentiful furious imbecility. And since the early days when Nixon and Reagan sank the first Atwater shafts into vast pools of Hippie Hatred, Racism, and “Government is the Problem”…right up through the Middle Class strip mining operations of the 90s when we brought million of tons of Coulter-grade fascism online, the Party of God has been gotten even more dependent on the phenomenal energy of demagoguery.

"But the truth is, the early, plentiful sources are running out, and if we want to continue to enjoy the standard of Republican Large Living that we have all become accustomed to, we have to drill ever deeper."

But what about accidents like Deepwingnut Horizon?

"I ain't gonna lie: like the song says, 'accidents will happen' and Freedom isn't Free you fucking Commie! And when it comes to winning elections, only some op-ed page dickhead could actually be oblivious enough to believe that, say, a sober discussion of national priorities is gonna get the Pig People to the polls. No, if you want to WIN in the Republican Party, nothing comes close to cranking out contributions and the election day amps as posters of the President of the United States with a bone through his nose being carried by hillbillies screaming 'Hitler!'"

And what of the revulsion of the general public?

"Look, this so-called 'general public'? I don't know if you noticed this, but they don’t fuckin’ vote, OK. Believers vote. Fanatics vote. And over on our side of the barn they vote their bloodlust and their terror, so fuck what Mr. and Mrs. American Idol think. And anyway, with aggressive enough press management techniques and several million gallons of an attention dispersant called Cent-Rism, we can keep public knowledge of what the fuck is going on to a minimum to begin with."

But what about the terrible, long-term damage that combining a toxic chemical like Cent-Rism with the already massive and poisonous fucktard spill could cause to the country?

“What are ya, some kinda fag?!”

Postscript:

'I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement.'

-- Rush Limbaugh

McSlimey

Al Capone -- Sainted Healer.

This is the BP situation exactly: the guy who put three slugs into your kid turns out to be the only surgeon in the world with the equipment and expertise capable of saving your kid.

How do you "shoot the hostage" when the hostage is the world?

BP To Erect 2,800 Mile

Media Containment System.

Thank God the technocrats have arrived.

Maddow/Rand: The Director's Cut

Pity.

What a doctor he would have made.

The Cold Evasions

In the long run it will probably turn out that blowing most of my meager savings on one a' them newfangled Pedantic Resonance Imaging thingies (I was vulnerable and a little hammered, and they run such enticing ads

at 3:00 A.M. ads) but until the repo guys come for it, I figured I'd get a little life out of it.

So I took Tuesday's David Brooks column and ran it through my PRI.

Imagine my surprise at the results:

When I was in college...

.Enlightenment
..Descartes
...Rousseau
....Voltaire
.....Condorcet
......Descartes
......Descartes
.......French Revolution
.......France
......Scotland
.....Britain
......David Hume
......Adam Smith
.........Edmund Burke
.....Gertrude Himmelfarb
.......French Enlightenment
..........British Enlightenment
.........natural desires
........moral emotions
.....self-love
....tribalism
.......Thomas Paine
.............Edmund Burke
..........Yuval Levin
...........University of Chicago
.........Paine
.........Paine
.......American and French Revolutions
......universal truths
.............Burke
.........British Enlightenment
.......age-old institutions
..............Burke
.......horrified
..............Burke
..............Burke
........Paine
.......Americans
.......Americans
.....French
....British Enlightenment
..Jefferson
...Hamilton

My, my, my.

Where in the world do you suppose this turgid, meandering assload of bourgeois undergrad namedropping could possibly be heading?

Where else:

"You see polemicists of the left and right practicing a highly abstract and ideological Jacobin style of politics."

No matter where in the whole, wide Universe he begins a column, somehow, since the Great Fraud of Modern Conservatism collapsed in blood and lies and bankruptcy, all of Bobo's roads always invariably lead to Centerville: that imaginary kingdom of the morally-conjoined fraternal twins -- "self-confident Democratic technocrats" and "self-described conservative radicals" -- who are always somehow perfectly equally and oppositely responsible for every evil, every ill and every excess.

Where, in other words, Bobo believes he can skip out forever on paying the tab for his career as an unabashed whore for the Conservative Movement by screaming "Hippies made me do it!" at the top of his lungs.

"And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance. "

Understand that David Brooks has spent his entire adult life as the mouthpiece of one of the most radical and destructive movements in American history; and as his beloved Reagan Revolution Conservatism laid waste to the middle class...destroyed not merely America's political comity, but the idea that political comity is a good thing...razed not merely the American federal government, but the idea that governance is a good thing...Bobo was there, cheering it on.

Cheering it on, and getting downright hysterical if anyone tried to pry the Gipper's actual, ugly legacy out of the vice grip of his revisionist acolytes.

It was not until the blowback came -- until the catastrophic and long-predicted consequences of his toxic and predatory ideology began washing unstoppably up on America's shores -- that Bobo suddenly discovered the Joys of Centrism, and started rifling through his yellowing undergraduate term papers and dropping them wholesale into the New York Times.

(Hearing effete, white collar, silk slipper Conservatives like David Fucking Brooks whinging on about the "self-described conservative radicals who seek to sweep away 100 years of history and return government to its preindustrial role" Palinites is especially delicious: like watching the snake oil hustler on one side of the street bitch about how the Three Card Monte grifter working the other side is just ruining everything!)

This is also why, whatever people may claim they want, we can never have an honest, national dialogue about politics and culture in the United States.

Because, if by some miracle the Right were struck with a pandemic of uncontrollable honesty, the first question every Liberal is going to have for their newly-candid Conservative fellow citizens is going to be: "You know that everything you say and believe is about 95% bullshit, right?"

If the answer is "Fuck no, you dirty Commie!" then the conversation ends.

But if the answer is "Yes", then the very next question is going to be, "Well, if you know it's mostly evil bullshit, and we know it's mostly evil bullshit, then why in the Hell do you keep shoveling it?"

And that is the one question that no Conservative will ever have guts enough to answer honestly.

The 2,500th Post

The occasion of my 2,500th post, PLUS this by Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:

...
In one piece, Glenn Garvin talks about how shocked the non-racist Barry Goldwater was to see bigots flocking to his banner. He's especially revolted by George Wallace of, all people, offering to switch parties and run as his vice-president. Of course Goldwater and Wallace deserved each other, because Wallace was also a non-racist.

Wallace was less principled, but he was also much clearer. Goldwater's sin was naivety, and a dangerous underestimation of the precise nature and vintage of evil then stalking the South. Wallace understood the evil too well, and thus set about manipulating it. Wallace knew that this was more than abstract theory, that there was real power at stake.

In that sense, Goldwater is the more appropriate hero for today's generation of blissfully ignorant ("How did that 'White slavery' sign get there?") non-racist Republican. It's not so much that they hate you, it's they are shocked--shocked--to discover that some of their fellow travelers hate you.

PLUS my own, full-flowering laziness has moved me to reprint this piece on the subject of "Never jumping into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are” which I put together for my 2,000th post (with a few of the numbers lined-out and updates where appropriate.)

Because nothing whatsoever but the decibel level at which the Right has been squealing "But we didn't knoooow!" has changed.

Looks like I fixed that P2K bug just in time.

So this is post 2,000 2,500, which is a pretty big number. Big enough to be divisible by lots of other reputable numbers, including 1,000 500, which I’m sure is somehow meaningful if you squint at it long enough.

It also means that I have done, on average, around 1.3 posts a day since I started, which explains why I feel like the morning after an alien probe: I’m tired, don’t know what day it is, and my ass hurts.

For the occasion I went back to The News Blog -- my old home place -- to do a little reconnoitering and see if I could find anything of my misspent, uh, youth.

Walking around the old site made sad, as it always does, to see the words hanging there still vibrant and true as they ever were, while at the same time knowing that no more midnights will ever toll when I can come past Steve Gilliard's site confident that he’ll have just laid out yet another freshly BBQed, blogosphere-agenda-setting haunch of Jonah Goldberg, David Brooks, Victor Davis Hanson, Rich Lowry or Michelle Malkin.

In the end I did find a little something to use today; a comment I left there and Gilly promoted to his front page from back in Thee Olden Days when Liberalism was flat on its back, Steve's powerful writing was keeping a lot of us together, focused and strong, and he was running his comment section 24/7 as the best kind of unabashedly raucous, Dirty Fucking Hippy troll smackin' (Hi, Bloomie!) road house.

All gone now -- June 2 will be the second third anniversary of Gilly's death -- but never let it be said that we didn’t stomp upon the terra.

Because we did. We surely did.

Anyway, this is me, from March, 2005.

IMHO it’s as simple as: “Never jump into bed with someone who’s crazier than you are.”

For the Suburban Gated, the non-deranged gunnies and the Tax Cuts Uber Alles Republicans, it’s all jolly good fun having a romp with the Fundies…as long as they keep delivering the 20% margin the GOP must have to win anything and as long as they stay the fuck away from my house and family, its all just good kinky fun…

…until the sun comes up, and you realize that the Electoral Candy you were offered was just bait to get you into the Windowless Fundy Panel Truck.

Oops.

And now you’re waaaay out in the country somewhere you don’t recognize without your pants, and you start to figure our that all the Burning Crosses and Swastikas and Apocalyptic Paraphernalia that tricks out the inside of the van isn't tatted-up Goth Chick posturing.

And Randall Terry and Tom DeLay wave to you from the front seat and say, “Mornin’ shug! Get ready; we gonna burn us some ‘a them Christ Hatin’ Abortionists today.” Or Fags. Or Negroes. Or Liberals. Or Ay-rabs. Or Jews. Or, really, anybody.

And all of the slack-jawed yokels who were so eagerly helpful while you were passing you’re Lovely Tax Cuts are sitting around you giggling…and armed to their snaggled teeth.

And then you hear, “Bring Out The Gimp.” (Which, for my money, should be the Democrats’ Lead Media Message for the next four months.)

Oh. God. You mean these crazy fucks were serious? Like, really, really serious?!

No shit they’re serious, Suburban Weekend Bad-Ass -- and it's not exactly like you weren't given Ample Warning: Now they have your shriveled nuts in a razor-lined C-clamp, they want the very high interest vig on the Electoral Loan they made you to pay for your Optional War and Drunken Safety Net Shredding Good Times.

And now here we are, 2,000 2,500 essays later. And taking a very rough, back-of-the-envelope stab at guesstimating the length of a typical post while factoring out tags and code and clips from other sources, I figure that means I have stitched together somewhere between one and two two and two-and-one-half million words (to be fair, they were mostly typos and variation on “fuck”) on this site since the day I hung out my shingle.

Which means, in terms of quantity, I have finally beaten that fucker (see, I told you) Shakespeare (The definitive concordance puts Shakespeare’s complete works at 884,647 words).

So, y’know, bite me :-)

However, in term of quality, given how far into the stratosphere the bard set the bar on every subject from seduction:

"That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman."

-- The Two Gentlemen of Verona

To troll-shredding

"All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him
By inch-meal a disease!"

-- The Tempest

To a certain breed of automated, outsourced “Rock On”/”New Thread” roboblogging

Moth: They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol'n the scraps.
Costard: O, they have liv'd long on the alms-basket of words.

-- Love's Labor's Lost

I daresay we will all be standing safely in the Great Man’s magnificent shadow until the end of time.

In Space...

No one can hear you nom.

From Yahoo News:

Hubble catches planet being devoured by its star
Mon May 24, 4:19 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Hubble space telescope has discovered a planet in our galaxy in the process of being devoured by the star that it orbits, according to a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The doomed planet, dubbed WASP-12b, has the highest known surface temperature of any planet in the Milky Way -- around 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit).

But it could be enveloped by its own parent star over the next ten million years, the paper's authors have concluded.
...

4...3...2...1...

Set the controls

For the heart of the Sun.

Uncle Ruckus Runs for Office

(h/t Sullivan)

Who knows?

A few more commercials like this and maybe Ol' Les will finally make it into

White Heaven.

More of Ruckus' bone-deep, self-loathing "wisdom" here and here.

And, no, none of it is safe for work.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Armageddon: How will it play politically?

The networks circled the wagons hard this week, rolling in the Oldest and Most Establishmentarian war horses available: Party bosses, party chairmen and panel's full of every moth-eaten Villager they could trundle up from the MSM wax museum.

Of course, Tea Party Übermensch Rand Paul's

delightfully rustic views on civil rights were discussed, as was his Sudden Onset Palinitis as he fled like a coward from the national press that he had, only recently, courted so ardently.

Sister Sarah herself did a turn on “Fox News Sunday” to talk about the fine points of the midterm elections.

Because who better!?

We learn that Rand Paul is just a Civil Rights luvin softie who was cruelly stalked, Gotcha-ed and field-dressed by a “teevee character” woman who had “an agenda”.

Just like they did to poor Sister Sarah!

Wallace: Do you see any parallel between the horribly unfair behavior of the Liberal Media asking Rand Paul questions about what he believes and then, based on his answer, asking him follow-up questions…and their brutally unfair treatment of you?

Palin: You betcha I do, Chris! That teevee character person wouldn’t let him talk about his stuff! Also too we have to stop this Pelosi/Reid/Obama agenda that is harming America so much!

In Palinworld, there are two kinds of media: the kind that asks you hard stuff like “What newspapers do you read?” and makes you look stupid...and kind panders to your “I’m a victim” bullshit, asks you “Don’t you think that other media treated you worse than nine Hitlers?” and then pays you enormous amounts of money.

The first kind are “lamestream media” losers; the second kind is fair and patriotic.

Speaking of the lamestream media, on “Meet the Press”

The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot complains: President Obama has governed so far to the Left that the poor, poor Republicans have been driven to the Right.

David Gregory: When you have such activism in the Left and the Right, how will the Awesome Center – where all the reasonable and Serious People live – survive and govern?

Tom Friedman (donning his Ninja suit and leaping into the fray): It has been decimated. By cable and gerrymandering and campaign finance reform and Teh Internets.

Andrea "Mrs. Alan Greenspan" Mitchell: There is so much punishment when people try to work across the aisle

On the subject of the BP Oil Spill, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward accidentally demonstrates how astonishingly ignorant the Big Dollar media can be outside their little bubble.

Bob Woodward: Why don’t they call Google? They’re smart.

Paul Gigot: Because it’s a really hard engineering problem. And what do you expect the gummint to do? They just don’t have the expertise to fix this problem.

Bob Woodward: But Google isn’t the gummint. And they’re so smart.

Because when you're stupid, all technology is magic and all smart people are warlocks.

driftglass: And this is the problem with having a stupid electorate and a stupid press. People sling declarative sentences around about what is and is not dangerous and what is and is not possible based on the theory that there is a cadre of supergenius X-Men just waiting in the wings to kiss their boo-boos and make in all better if it turns out they’re horribly wrong.

Mitchell: BP said that this exact problem would never happen, and they could fix this exact problem if the unthinkable ever happened.

Friedman: If we could just magically solve all our problems then our problems would be solved.

Gigot: Oh for fuck’s sake, shut the fuck up you wormy little fuck. You know what the “long term” solution is; slap a 3-5 dollar tax on gas and suddenly people will start getting serious. You also know that no politician in America is going to do that, so what the fuck do you keep babbling on about?

Mitchell: This was not an inevitable accident. This was caused because safeguards and expertise that they promised were in place were not.

driftglass: Another solution? Start packing the wellhead with dead oil executives.


Over on “This Week” Republican Chief Obsequious Officer, Michael Steele was asked about Rand Paul’s letter supporting the right of plantation-owners property-owners to discriminate in selling or renting to minorities.

Steele: That’s a philosophical position that lots of Libertarians have. Lots of people have lots of different philosophies.

Terry Moran: But...

Steele: Lalalala!

Terry Moran: But I...

Steele: Lalalala! I-cannot-hear-you! Lalalala!


On ”The Chris Matthews Show” Jonathan Alter (of that-which-used-to-be-Newsweek) notes that: Obama was a little naive, believing that because he just won the election by a wide margins and was walking into office facing a catastrophic economic collapse, that the Republican Party would have been willing to help him a little bit.

He found out the John Boehner had told his caucus to just say no to everything. That he was just wasting his time.


Wow! Really?

The Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long, Long Dark Night of the Conservative Soul

From one more Conservative idiot with a national column:

Sarah Palin killed my conservatism

I know exactly which seconds Sarah Palin killed the last piece of my conservative soul. On 28.52-29.19 in the C-Span video “Vice Presidential Candidate Gov. Sarah Palin (AK) Full Speech at the RNC”.
...

Listening to Conservatives agonize over the death of their Glorious Movement at the hands of Sarah Palin or George Bush is like listening to a Dixiecrat finally, tearfully taking down his "Wallace/LeMay '68" lawn signs...in 2010.

Your movement is and always has been a fraud and a front for despicable interests, that propped itself up these last several decades by bulk importing the most most destructive and evil of all the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow: its absolutely poisonous ideology. The belief that God has decreed that White, Conservative, Christian, Men should rule over the Earth by divine right, and that if you're not a White, Conservative, Christian Man, your job is to shut the fuck up and do what you are told.

And if you don't go along with the program, it is perfectly legitimate to rain holy fire down on your traitorous, Commmie, Liberal, faggot ass.

And while it's mighty white of you guys to begin to catch up with where Liberals were, say, 40 years ago, if Conservative intellectuals were, say, bridge-builders, and had been knocking together beam and truss and suspension bridges out of scavenged glass and pixie dust and dynamite -- one after another -- since the 60's...

...while every step along the way ignoring the warnings that were being LOUDLY SHOUTED AT THEM that the components they were using to build their bridges were incredibly dangerous and unstable and would sooner or later lead to catastrophe...

...while every step along the way also mocking the people who were shouting those warnings...

...until the day came when traffic started to move across those bridges, and they began to collapse and explode, one after another...

...at some point shouldn't the designers and builders of those bridges have to SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY?

Hot Tub Reincarnation Machine

It probably shouldn't bother me as much as it does that the central MacGuffin of "Lost" looks and acts so much like the central MacGuffin of

"Hot Tub Time Machine".


Here, John Locke comes out of surgery


Later, they find the source of the Island Light

And the Polar Bear returns.

Not Really That Hard

This sparkly ingot of truth by xkcd has been circling the globe for a few days now & I thought it deserved another tiny push.

I admit I too fell for the "Make your updates good..." fable.

Silly blogger.

Meanwhile, some music for those of you stocking up on Apollo Bars, Ranch Composite and other Dharma Initiative snacks in advance of tonight's Nerd Rapture.

The Last Temptation of Gilligan's Island

Nears its end (click pic for larger.)

Non-"Lost" fans may ask why I didn't include other important characters.

Characters like:

Alex Rousseau
Ana Lucia Cortez
Ben Linus
Bernard Nadler
Boone Carlyle
Charlie
Charlotte Lewis
Claire
Dad Shephard
Danielle Rousseau
Desmond Hume
Dr. Pierre Chang
Ethan Rom
Frank Lapidus
Hurley
Ilana Verdansky
Jin & Sun
Juliet Burke
Libby Smith
Michael Dawson
Miles Straume
Mr. Eko
Mr. Friendly
Naomi Dorrit
Nikki Fernandez
Penny
Richard Alpert
Rose Nadler
Sayid Jarrah
Shannon Rutherford
Vincent (Arf!)
Walt Lloyd
Anthony Cooper
Aron
Carmen Reyes
Cassidy Phillips
Danny Pickett
Diane Jansen
Emma
George Minkowski
Horace Goodspeed
Jacob
Jason
Karl Martin
Leslie Arzt
Liam Pace
Marshal Edward Mars
Martin Keamy
Mikhail Bakunin
Nadia
Omar
Phil
Roger Linus
Sarah
Steve Jenkins
Stuart Radzinsky
Zach
Zoe
Amy Goodspeed
Bea Klugh
Big Mike Walton
Captain Gault
Captain Teresa Cortez
Carole Littleton
Colleen Pickett
Dan Norton
David Reyes
David Shephard
Dogen
Dr. Douglas Brooks
Gina
Goodwin Stanhope
Helen Norwood
Ivan
Jae Lee
Jill
Justin
Kelvin Inman
Lara Straume
Lennon
Leonard Sims
Lindsey
Luke
Lynn Karnoff
The Man in Black
Margo Shephard
Matthew Abaddon
Mitch
Montand
Mr. Eko and his whip-ass Jesus stick
Mr. Kwon
Mr. Paik
Mrs. Paik
Neil
Nurse Susie
Rachel Carlson
Regina
Richard Malkin
Robert
Ryan Pryce
Seamus
Sgt. Sam Austen
Susan Lloyd
Theresa Spencer
and
Tito Reyes

I'd tell you, but as any real "Lost" fan knows, there is no time to explain!

"The Fountainhead" In Five Seconds

Two things.

First, honestly, I got bored at the 1.5 second mark and couldn't make it all the way through.

Second, the most full-throated, hard-core, Randite cult member I ever met in my life (post-puberty) is an inept, mid-level gummint bureaucrat who owes his entire career to ass-kissing, back-stabbing, credit-grabbing, pouring drinks for all the right people and otherwise latching onto power like a barnacle. And yet when he gets up every morning to go to his perfectly useless, taxpayer-supported gummint job I have absolutely no doubt that, as he looks at himself in his bathroom mirror, he sees Howard Roark gazing heroically back out at him.

...The Podcast Tolls For Thee

Ya gotta have faith, faith, faith...

Can you imagine
What I would do
If I could do
All I can?
-- Sun Tzu

There Once Was A Man From Meretricious...

Who found Centrist cock quite delicious...

David Brooks wrote a column today.

You know, if he'd just write a fucking travel column, or something about his famous tapioca-basted hot wings (which aren't hot...or wings...but still), then I'd be perfectly happy to never bother Bobo again.

But apparently toxic banality has no "Off" switch, so here we are again, this time with "The Story of an Angry Voter".

Oooh, excellent. Tell us a story, Unca Wingnut Boiler Plate!

Let’s imagine a character named Ben.

You mean like the rat?

No. Not like the rat. Now shut up and pay attention!

Bobo continues:

A couple of decades ago, Ben went to high school.

It wasn’t easy. His parents were splitting up. His friends would cut class to smoke weed. His sister got pregnant. But Ben worked hard and graduated with decent grades and then studied at East Stroudsburg University and the University of Phoenix.

That wasn’t easy either. Ben would like to have majored in history, but he needed a skill so he studied hotel management.
...

Wait a minute...that's your fucking story? Recycled Steve Wynn commercials from the 1970s?

And how is getting drunk with Sinatra and banging cocktail waitresses two at a time (h/t Moe Green) supposed to be a bad thing?

Well, it doesn't really matter, because by now we know that every godawful Bobo Cautionary Fable ends the same way, right?

First, the Imaginary Everyman must always somehow find that the Left is inadequate, extreme and much toooo cold.

Brrr! Of course, we are never offered any proof at all that the Left -- in part or as a whole -- is really in any way inadequate or extreme; instead -- like a lazy writing slapping a Black Hat on a cardboard character to indicate "Villain" -- Bobo incants a few Magic Pundit Words like "MoveOnDotOrg" over his trite, plodding missive and we move right along indeed.

And the Right?

Ouchy, ouchy, toooo hot.

"So when Ben looked around for leaders who might understand his outrage, he only found them among the ideological hard-liners."

Thankfully, the Center is always snuggly, and womblike and juuuuust right.

Once there was a group in the political center that would have understood Ben’s outrage. Moderates like Abraham Lincoln believed in the free labor ideology. Their entire governing system was built around encouraging labor and rewarding labor.

But! wait!

In this Terrifying!New!Bobo!Reimagining! of the long-running Villager soap opera -- "General Centrism" -- apparently all is not well in the Sacred Middle.

"But these days, the political center is a feckless shell. It has no governing philosophy. Its paragons seem from the outside opportunistic, like Arlen Specter, or caught in some wishy-washy middle, like Blanche Lincoln."

Heavens!

Well, I guess this leaves Poor Ol' Ben only one choice...


Tragic indeed.

If only we had treated Ben better.
And yuppies weren't so mean.
And unions thugs weren't so uppity.
And those damned illegal Messicans didn't call our asses fat in Espanol behind our backs.

So let's tell a happier story!

Let’s imagine a character named David.

David lies for a living. Lies a lot, and in a lot of different ways.

He asserts a lot of crap that just isn't true. Mixes up snippets of interesting studies and odd sociological observations with a generous helpings of Conservative rat poison. He pulls demonstrably false equivalencies between, say, his own, catastrophically failed Conservative ideology and the vibrant, enduring adaptive Liberal ideology out of his ass with the prodigious proficiency of a magician doing the Silk Fountain.


David also apparently doesn't know any actual "Americans", so he makes fictional scenarios and cardboard characters up out of what appears to be the blooper reels from "Father Knows Best" and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" that he picked up on eBay.

Then puts words and attitudes in their mouths.

David is basically a mediocrity who writes frustrated emails to his imaginary friends about how great it would be if everybody would just stop behaving like human beings and start behaving like David Brooks.

Sometimes the fictional characters he invents come to see the wisdom of living their lives in a David-Brooks-approved way, but usually they try to do something not-David-Brooks-like and they come to a bad end.

In that way, Davis is kind of like...well...not an angry God exactly, but more like a God who is stuck in traffic with a minor headache and hemorrhoids and is very, very disappointed in you.

Terribly sad.

Strangely enough, this spectacularly mediocre person is also the chief mouthpiece for one of America's major political movements, and full-time columnist in arguably the most powerful and influential newspaper on Earth.

I know, weird, right? But it gets even stranger.

You see, the political movement which David fronts for has pretty much failed at everything it has every tried to do. And failed really, really big.

No, really, spec-tac-ularly big.

You name it -- faith, freedom or fiscal policy -- everything they touch turns to shit, and everything they're scream hysterically In Favor Of on Monday...always ends up being negated by some hugely evil or stupid shit they'll end up doing on Tuesday...after which their position has to awkwardly reverse itself 180 degrees by Wednesday..and then -- faster than you can say "Inverso-Double-Backwards-Stupid-Hypocrites" -- the economy melts down thanks to one of their idiotic theories, or they lose a war, or 80 of them suddenly turn out to be cheating on their wives with hookers or other men or gay hookers.

After which, to relieve the pressure of being such monumental imbeciles on their tiny, tiny brains, they'll take to the streets for a brisk round of screaming that the Kenyan Usurper is a Dirty Commie, which not only makes 'em happier that a baby with a fresh diaper, but also lets them forget for a little while all that embarrassing stuff about about about being completely wrong about everything for the last 30 year.

Quite the little Everlasting Gobstopper of a Clusterfuck these Conservatives are, which is why it really is less of a "movement" and more of a collection of bumper stickers, psychotic conspiracy theories and crackpot economics wrapped in enough flags and scripture to keep several million bigots constantly paranoid and furious, and several thousand rich douchebags happy and in control.

And to give a like cipher David a fabulous career consisting almost entirely of writing two columns a week fawning over various, powerful Republicans and advocating a bold strategy of timidity, impotence, false equivalence and, finally, passive acceptance in the face of the avalanche of Conservative catastrophes roaring down the mountain at us.

Which is a fairy tale ending if ever I've heard one.

When Your Opponents Are Insane

From CNN:

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea denied Thursday that it fired a torpedo that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

South Korean military officials on Thursday announced the results of an official investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan, prompting North Korea to accuse them of fabricating evidence.

"We had already warned the South Korean group of traitors not to make reckless remarks concerning the sinking of warship Cheonan of the puppet navy," North Korea's national defense commission said in a statement, according to the Korean Central News Agency. "Nevertheless, the group of traitors had far-fetchedly tried to link the case with us without offering any material evidence."

The 1,200 ton corvette sank after a mysterious explosion tore it into half near disputed waters off North Korea on March 26.
...

Why does this kind of reflex-action, robotically-repeated, belligerent, hysterical, fact-free rhetoric sound so familiar?

From Politico:

In the months leading up to the release of his new book, “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine,” Gingrich has used almost every opportunity available to brand President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “secular socialists,” as if trying to coin the phrase.

But in his book, Gingrich went even farther than calling Democratic leaders socialist – a phrase used so often during the health care debate that it has almost lost its shock value – writing that they represent a threat just as dangerous as Nazi Germany.
...

“I have asserted that the secular socialist machine is a mortal threat to the future of America as we have known it just as totalitarian regimes were mortal threats to the survival of America in the past,” he wrote. “In our generation the two mortal threats are radical Islam and secular socialism.”
...

Oh yeah.


From CNN:

...
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to take "resolute countermeasures" against North Korea for its alleged attack, according to his office.

"The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine," said Dr Yoon Duk-yong, co-chair of a military group formed to investigate the incident.

The group comprises of experts from South Korea, Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. "There is no other plausible explanation," he said.

China asked both sides to stay calm to avoid an "escalation of the situation," said the country's foreign affairs ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
...

Why does this kind of bullshit, establishmentarian Centrist fetish that demands that "both sides" be calm and reasonable, despite the fact that one side is clearly fucking insane sound so familiar?

From Time:

...
The extreme right and left are fired up and ready to go — in directions quite different from those preferred by their parties' leaders. And, if both parties get dragged farther to the margins, which way will the center go?

Oh yeah.

The North Koreans believe a wholly fake history and worldview because they spend their whole lives completely isolated from the rest of the world by barbed wire and inward-pointing machine guns, with the Dear Leader's psychotic ravings ringing in their ears from cradle to grave.

So, Republicans, what's your excuse?