As Dashiell Hammett Wrote

80 years ago...


"The cheaper the hood

the gaudier the patter."

In a World...

Since everything else has gone kerflooey (sorry about the potty-mouth), I have begun trying my hand -- or uvula -- at freelance voice-over work. According to the glossy brochures, not only is there ample federal funding available for worker retraining in this fast-growing, in-demand field, but the VO (as we say in the trade) profession can be both a "spine-tingling thrill-ride" and "a feel-good adventure for the whole family".

However, to be honest, thus far, I've only made a few bucks freelancing.

Well, not exactly freelancing.

More like on-spec.

Well, not exactly on-spec.

More like busking.

Well, not exactly busking.

More like following people around my neighborhood as they walk their dogs, intoning "In a world where Man has been reduced to picking up the poop of Beasts..." until they pay me to go away.

Thus far I've racked up $7.80, a half a cruller and a restraining order.

Another half-cruller and I qualify for union membership (which, as I understand it, in addition to having many professional benefits that I would be crazy not to take advantage of [such as Full Dental, Vision, and Not Getting Your Jaw Broken as a Dirty, Dirty Scab] is also the Last. Best. Hope. For. Humanity.

Now.
More.
Than.
Ever.)

RIP Tony Curtis

In any civilized afterlife, virgins are pitied and Yvonne De Carlo is working the door.

Protocols of the Elders of Lyin'

Video from the quarterly FreedomWorks Oligarch Oversight Subcommittee at which the real leaders of the GOP hatch their scheme for a Tea Party "Movement".



He Is Daaangerous...

One of the more hilariously odd things

to show up in my email in the last nine days.

I mean I knew someone was following me...

Samuel Pepys and Matt Taibbi

A short video on The Great Fire of London (1666).

From Taibbi:

...
Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about...

Sometimes all one can do is watch carefully and faithfully record for posterity what actually happened the day the fire came and ate everything.

"It is inexcusable for any Democrat...

...or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines." -- President Barack Obama


I could not agree more, Mr. President.


"We can't let this country fall backwards because

the rest of us didn't care enough to fight." -- President Barack Obama


I could not have said it better myself, Mr. President.


Now see how those same words look when you season them with just a pinch of

chucklefuck jellyfish DLC quisling sauce...


"It is inexcusable for any Democrat...

...or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines."

"We can't let this country fall backwards because

the rest of us didn't care enough to fight." -- President Barack Obama


I hate to break this to you, Mr. President, but the asses that most desperately need a Presidential foot jammed up them and broke off sideways ain't down here among us ready-to-rock-and-roll Liberals.

They're at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. Funny Shoes for Mayor!

Mr. Funny Shoes knows Chicago.
Mr. Funny Shoes is a hard-working native son.
Mr. Funny Shoes' parents were immigrant who came up the hard way.
Mr. Funny Shoes is adaptable.
Mr. Funny Shoes is well-organized.
Mr. Funny Shoes is not afraid of getting dirty to get the job done.
Mr. Funny Shoes supports public transit.
Mr. Funny Shoes is a tough negotiator.
Mr. Funny Shoes is the only candidate endorsed by Charles Darwin, Mike Madigan and the Chicago Tribune.

Mr. Funny Shoes is willing to work for food.

Of course "Mr. Funny Shoes" is also a six-foot-tall, cold-blooded, mutant "Judas Breed" insect slaughter machine who preys on the poor and weak (and the occasional union member) by mimicking human appearance just enough to get close enough for the kill...

...but since when has that been a barrier to high political office in these United States?

Old Whine in New Skins

Brand new picture...

...same old crap.



America's Paper of Record shares with us the Very Latest Breakthrough in injection molding thermoprose Bobospeak mass production technology: "Tom Joad Gave Up":

Both parties helped kill off California’s pro-market progressivism.

Some assaults came from the left...

Then there was the growing power of the environmental movement...

Another assault on California progressivism came from the right...

As jobs disappear, legislators are fixated on transgender rights and deals for lobbyists...

What’s needed is not a revolution, but a restoration and a modernization of what California once had.

Dear New York Times,

I know a guy, can write you da sweetest little algorithm you ever seen. Twice a week, it'll poop out identical, perfect, steaming, 800-word-long logs guaranteed indistinguishable from the run-down, played out, vanilla-infused-excreta you're slinging now -- forever -- and for about 1/10,000th the cost.

If you order in the next 24 hours and mention offer code "Ellsworth Toohey" --

"Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed."

-- I can get him to throw in a subroutine that will periodically crap out a random, gushy paean to Ronald Reagan, John Thune, Scooter Libby or any of two dozen other bilaterally symmetrical Conservative Authoritarian Daddy figures of your choice, no extra charge.

Act now: supplies are limited.

Yours in Christ,

driftglass


Malcolm Tuckers's has his own potty-mouth take on Bobo here:

Reprogrammable Killbots

Ripping our country further apart year after year after year by methodically regurgitating the same lies to the same flag-waving simpletons over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.

Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

--Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

And then they take a little break to make little jokes about Obama and teleprompters.

[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

-- A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend by Walter C. Langer. Office of Strategic Services

If you still cannot see the problem, then you are the problem.

Your Friday Podcast

Our burgeoning media empire keeps its whole catalog and PayPal thingie here, and thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help.

George Burns was right. Show business is a hideous bitch goddess.

-- Bart Simpson

Predicted Versus Actual

Predicted Huffpo Headline (July 08, 2010)



Actual Huffpo Headline

September 23, 2010



Rommel, you magnificent bastard

I read your book!

Friday Flashback

Today we set the I'm feeling lazy and discouraged and David Fucking Brooks has plopped another godawful, "Both Sides are Wrong but Righteous Values Will Save Us" bag 'o dung on the Op Ed page of the NYT that I can't look at today without feeling like throwing up everything I've eaten since 6th grade Wayback Machine to an April 2005 post in which a little-known blogger predicts the rise of the Tea Party...

...in children's parable form.

"...
So she got on the phone with her very good friend Karl Rove and with his help organized carpools to the polls, and get-out-the-vote drives, anti-gay marriage amendments and smear campaigns. For Jesus.

And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything.

And now everybody knew it.
...?

The rest here.

More Accidental Funny

brought to you by TPM and sponsored by BP.

Colbert is a genius.

Second. Best. Suicide. Note. Ever.

The awful, awful reviews are in.

Not that it's ignoble failure and lobbyist buried gold will matter in the slightest: like any of, say, Dinesh D'souza's literary catastrophes, the purpose of their construction isn't really to be read by actual humans as words-in-a-row-leading-to-some-form-of-meaning, but instead give the "author" a luridly entitled lump of paper to sit on and a few inflammatory quotes to throw around as he makes the rounds of the wingnut welfare talk show wasteland.

The Best Ever, of course, remains the Republican Party's March, 2009 "Road to Recovery":

their long-awaited, much touted Super Ooper Duper Plan to solve everything, which turned out to rank as serious policy lit somewhere between a Chick Tract and the flier that I found shoved under my windshield wiper promising me 1/2 Off Lap Dances at Omar's.

Local Breitbart Clone

uses adulterated video to justify 20,568th consecutive unhinged rant against Those Evil Liberals Who Are Destroying America (this time the target was ThinkProgress.com.)

Anybody surprised?

Anybody want to have a hold-your-breath contest as we wait for any wingnut anywhere to suffer any consequences for lying?

Anybody feel like the next, fatuous Centrist "independent" who opens their pie hole for the millionth time to whap on and on about the "Liberal media" and "both side being guilty" needs to be exiled into the Shame Circle until the end of the decade?

Here, then, is the Anatomy of a Brietbartian Ratfucking.

Step One: Enemy Identified! In this case, Scott Keyes of ThinkProgress reported a typically horrifying fact uttered by a member of the wingnut Brain Caste that sounded hideously embarrassing to anyone not in the cult:

John Fund To O’Donnell: Gender Discrimination Lawsuits Are ‘Not The Responsible Thing For A Conservative’

...
At the Right Nation conference in Chicago this past weekend, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund sat down with a blogger’s roundtable and discussed O’Donnell’s [wrongful termination] complaint against ISI. Fund admitted that O’Donnell’s case may well be justified, but went on to admonish her for filing a gender discrimination lawsuit because, according to Fund, “that’s not the responsible thing for a conservative to do.” Instead of combating gender discrimination in the workplace, Fund suggested that O’Donnell should have just quit her job and looked for work elsewhere:

FUND: Maybe there was some male chauvinism involved, I’m not saying it’s impossible. Boys will be boys. I don’t deny that that can’t [sic] happen. But the bottom line is she became dissatisfied and her response was not to seek other employment, it was not to have a showdown with the management. She took a train down to Washington and she met with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and accused ISI of gender discrimination. Now, gender discrimination does exist in this country. There are women everyday who are given less than their due. But the response of a conservative – a properly thinking conservative – is not to go first to the federal government and still try to keep your job.
...

Step Two: Release the Flying Monkeys! An obliging goon is now dispatched from the Brietbart flying monkey factory to divert, invert and (to quote Archie Bunker) "prevert" the facts. By any loud, ratfucky means necessary, the story MUST be deflected the hell away from the simple, wingnut-humiliating facts (bonus points if the Rat Lit can be sufficiently warped so fucking far away from reality that it can also be used to attack some blameless Liberal. Do a good job, and rumor has it Brietbart himself may give you a cookie!) In this case, when the Rat Signal was activated, one of Chicago's own climate-denying/union-bashing wingnut cloacae denizens leaped into action:

The Unethical Practices of ThinkProgress.com

Real leftists are basically the lowest form of humanity. Sadly it is all too often that many good, honest, well-meaning Democrats get tarred with the hatemongering, ethically compromised leftists among them. Here we have another example of this sort of behavior from the cretins of ThinkProgress.org with an incident that occurred on Sept. 18 at the Right Nation 2010 event in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois....

And so forth.

"Real leftists are basically the lowest form of humanity..."
"...hatemongering, ethically compromised leftists..."
"The unethical actions perpetrated by these immoral leftists..."
"I am sure that once this story gets out, his low-born pals will slap him on the back..."

And so on.

"But this is how the left is. Unethical, immoral... fact is they simply are not good people. They'll steal, lie, and cheat to get their way..."
"It is ignoramuses like this..."
"It is weasels like this that support Barack Obama and his Chicago Way style of garbage-spewing politics."

And so on.

"These are the people responsible for the heightened level of vitriol in American politics."

We pause here to fully appreciate in the breathtaking vistas of projection, delusion and rage-drunk paranoia encapsulated in the the mental-picture of one of Andrew Brietbart's acolytes up on his hind legs screeeeeeching about how it is the "Unethical, immoral" Left that is ruining American.

Step Three: Deploy the Adulterated Video! In Brietbartylvania it has become common practice to supplement the written smear campaign with a snip or two of video which purports to be "Proof!" but turns out to have either been completely stripped of its original context (See, "Sherrod, Shirley") or simply carved up and re-edited to invent crimes and conspiracies where none whatsoever existed (See, "ACORN"). In this case, the entire jeremiad

"Here you may be wondering if this is my word against theirs? It is not because we have video of Mr. Fund asking that his further comments be considered off the record..."

rests on five second of carefully barbered video.


Notice how the video simply does not say what our local blogger says it does.

John Fund did not ever say that "his further comments be considered off the record..." In fact, quite the opposite. Mr. Fund says specifically that "...this is the only thing I'm going to say that's off the record". Got that? Ergo, out of every subject and person he covered during his wide-ranging discussion, based on the evidence presented there is only one item that he wanted to take off the record.

And was that, one embargoed subject the one on which Mr. Keyes built his article?

Of course not, and we know it because this diverges from a typical Brietbartian Drive-by in one, crucial regard: in this case, Think Progress caught the slander immediately and published this update the next day:

Following this post, a contributor to Andrew Breitbart's site has accused me of multiple wrongdoings. After saying I was the type of person "responsible for the heightened level of vitriol in American politics," he went on to call me an ignoramus, a "weasel," a "leftist jackal," an "ethics deprived wretch," a "pig-ignorant jackass," a hatemonger, and the "lowest form of humanity." But in addition to his name-calling of me, he also made a few factually incorrect statements, saying I (a) "was not invited to the blogger room," (b) "did not pay to attend the event," and (c) "illegally trespassed on the property under false pretenses." In reality, I was invited, I did purchase a ticket like all other attendees, and I never gave false pretenses about who I was.

He also accused me of publishing comments that were intended to be off the record. There was only one specific instance where Mr. Fund made this request, saying that “this is the only thing I’m going to say that’s off the record.” This request occurred approximately five minutes before the video clip above. I honored Fund’s request and did not publish the specific comments he asked be off the record. Fund made clear that the rest of the conversation was on the record.

The blogger who is impugning my character said that I am willing to "steal, lie, and cheat to get [my] way." In reality, his grievance seems to be that not everyone at the roundtable shared his right-wing views. There is no requirement at these events that all attendees subscribe to a strict, narrow ideology. Mr. Fund himself would know this, as he attended the liberal Netroots Nation convention in July.

Future historians take note: This is what it looked like when the Right stopped merely drinking the Koolaid and started injecting it directly into their spines.

More Accidental Funny

From the Loony Party.

Because nothing says "Republican" like "Error" and "Security Failure".

The News For Wombats

From ABC News:

American gives $8m to wombat rescuers

A multi-million-dollar bequest from an American benefactor has shocked a volunteer wombat rescue program in South Australia.

The man visited Mannum in South Australia to see the work two years ago and has now given $8 million to the Wombat Awareness Organisation.

Founding director Brigitte Stevens has been astounded by the donation and plans to put the money towards buying land to develop a centre to care for wombats.

"There's nothing like that in South Australia and you know that'd be a big step forward for conservation in South Australia where we can then work on co-existence with other species of wildlife as well," she said.
...

I have no opinion, other than, in the end, people should feel free and unfettered to give to whatever causes move them.

In unrelated news, have I mentioned lately how much I love wombats and I unreservedly admire

their entire

body of work?

Yum. Yum.

So there I was, listening to Peter Beinart

on the Liberal "Thom Hartmann Show" (which is all-but-pirate-radio broadcast into my Liberal enclave from my lone, local Liberal radio station) nattering on and on about the horrors of a "new McCarthyism" which uses fear and slander as political weapons...the near-complete ignorance of the American people regarding Islam...and how a basic lack of empathy is the root of all of these evils.

And stuff like that.

So soothing!

And then I started to think that maybe I'd remembered Peter Beinart from somewhere other than his near-continuous presence on every radio and teevee outlet; from a place and time so long ago and far away that memory of its existence has been all but lost to the race of Man.

But where?

Oh yeah, I remember now.

He's this guy:

Peter Beinart As Cautionary Tale In Journalism History

by David Sirota | December 11, 2007 - 8:39pm

Just eight months ago, PBS's Bill Moyers aired perhaps the single most devastating indictment of the Washington press corps that I have ever seen. In his documentary, which looked at how the media cheered on President Bush's push for a war with Iraq, Moyers interviewed one of the key cheerleaders: then-New Republic editor Peter Beinart. Moyers asked Beinart "what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert" in the lead up to war? Beinart said that though he had never been to Iraq, he is "a political journalist." So Moyers naturally asked what kind of "political journalism" and reporting Beinart did to make sure his pro-war cheerleading was sound? Beinart's answer was the stuff of journalism infamy:

"Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people's reporting and reading of what officials were saying."

He's this guy (From Matthew Yglesias, 12/07:

The War's End?

The juxtaposition of David Brooks and Peter Beinart both opining that nobody cares about Iraq any more right before a New York Times poll came out revealing that "more people cite the Iraq war as the most important issue facing the country than cite any other matter" sure is odd. Equally odd, in many respects, is the logic Beinart used to reach his conclusion:

Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from subject to subject, she marked the topic and the time, then gave her thoughts. At 8:34 p.m., it was driver’s licenses; 8:55, Pakistan; 9:57, the Supreme Court. By night’s end she had 17 entries totaling almost 1,500 words. And she hadn’t typed “Iraq” once.

Basically, the evidence for Beinart's side is that media elites who control the debate questioning process don't want to talk about the war. Conversely, the public does seem to think the war is very important.
...

There is, in essence, a powerful desire to avoid an "accountability moment" in which the people who played a role in bamboozling a large swathe of the public into backing the war are called onto the carpet.
...

He's this guy:

In place of consistent coverage of the peace movement, some pundits and columnists sounded the alarm about the threat to America from within. New Republic editor Peter Beinart (9/24/01) thought critics of administration plans should either keep quiet or explain their loyalties: "Domestic political dissent is immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity, a choosing of sides."

So Petey Beinart ("PNAC's bitch" as the late Steve Gilliard famously tagged him) has morphed 180 degrees -- from being a dangerously ignorant, war-mongering McCarthyite...to warning against the perils of dangerous ignorance, war-mongering and McCarthyism. -- all without missing a meal or a moment out of the spotlight.

Wow.

You know, its almost like there is some sort of...Club...in which certain people have some sort of...privileged, in-group membership...which shields them from the professional consequences of being complete asshats.

Or, as Krugman says about a different but equally inbred clique:

"Now, we all make mistakes and get things wrong — although it’s striking how often the trolls on this blog feel the need to accuse yours truly of saying things I didn’t. But after this string of errors, wouldn’t you at least begin to suspect that the people you find congenial have a fundamentally wrong-headed view of how the world works?"

You're living the dream, Petey! Living the dream!

Sadly, Not From "The Onion"

Republicans Urge "MOAR VAMPIRE FACE SUCK PLEASE!"

From Reuters:

Summers successor to set tone on economic policy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama to pick a more business-friendly successor to economic adviser Larry Summers, a move that would signal a shift to the center.

But a decision on Summer's replacement is months away, a White House official said.

A day after Summers announced plans to step down as director of the National Economic Council, speculation about his replacement focused on female candidates, many of whom would bring business expertise that some say is lacking in the Obama White House.

"We'd like to see someone who had good understanding of what it takes to create private-sector jobs," Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said in an interview at the Reuters Washington Summit.
...

Got that?

The Conservative diagnosis of the problem with Summers is that that he has been too Socialist-y.

That if Obama wants to be more Centrist-y (And who the heck doesn't!) he needs to make a massive leap to the right of this unapologetic architect of radical financial deregulation and the creature of the Goldman Sachs mobster mentality.

No news on whether or not anyone offered to shove a nuke up Senator Lamar Alexander's ass to make him more "fusion-friendly".

Gas Station Zebra *

Dateline: Santaclausylvania (From CNN):

Russia presents vision for Arctic wealth.

CNN) -- Three years after Russian divers thrust a rust-proof flag into the seabed below the North Pole, the country is again staking its claim on the Arctic region.

An international forum held in Moscow Wednesday aimed to "present the world community with a picture of the region's future as it is seen by the Russian experts," according to Sergei Shoigu, the President of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) who is also the country's Emergencies Minister.

The Arctic contains a vast wealth of untapped oil and natural gas, according to a report released in July 2010 by the U.S. Geological Survey.

It estimated that the amount of "undiscovered, technically recoverable" oil north of the Arctic Circle was more than double the amount that had been previously found in the Arctic. It added that the Arctic contained more than three times as much undiscovered gas as oil, most of which was in the Russian Arctic.

Russia has long sought to claim rights to the waters of the Arctic Ocean off Russia, including its much-publicized expedition to plant the Russian flag on the Arctic sea floor in August 2007.

On Wednesday, it announced plans to start work soon on a new atlas of the Arctic, a task Sergei Shoigu described as requiring "extensive, serious work."
...

Terrific.

Now if only someone would get all of that pesky ice out of the way.

Oh yeah...

*(Candidly, this one I did primarily because it met the conditions of Driftglass Emergency Posting Rule #3. Specifically, does the topic;

A) Cause a title to pop into my head that is too irresistible not to use. And,

B) Provide an excuse to post something with Patrick McGoohan in it.

Yes. And yes.)

How Perry Mason Ruined America

And no, not just because Raymond Burr crapped up the original "Godzilla", or because "Perry Mason" became a fetish with the Neocon Grand Vizier Leo Strauss, whose unholy spawn eventually went on to capture the Conservative Movement and destroy America.

But rather because it suckered too many people -- myself included -- into the civic fantasy that the factual and/or logical irrefutability of a proposition has anything whatsoever to do with whether people -- especially people who belong to the Confederate rump battalion that the American Conservative movement has degenerated into -- believe it or not.

Quite the opposite.

As the Conservative Movement has rocketed along its trajectory towards full-on, crazyfuck, Heaven's Gate cult-status at geometrically accelerating speed, more and more of Teh Internets (and my mailbox) has filled up with infuriated, "J'accuse!"-type questions challenging one aspect of the Right's overall psychosis or another, with varying degrees of mental and verbal dexterity.

"How can they say...?"

"How can they believe...?"

"Have you heard the latest...?"

"How can someone who say this and then turn right around and say that?"

These days I just shrug. Shrug at the mutants who think that simply screaming EVER LOUDER will get us to notice that they these are the same useful wingnut idiots who never gave a shit about any of their suddenly-dearly held beliefs as the Bush Administration serially and brutally savaged them.

And then a Negro put his hand on the Bible.

Deep inside the dark and seemingly bottomless nightmare of the Age of Bush when the chips were down -- when it fucking well mattered -- when these fair weather patriots weren't slagging the Left for being traitors, they were nowhere to be found.

And then a Negro put his hand on the Bible.

Now, of course, these broken, brainwashed clowns want the world to believe that they were all righteously outraged...in secret! As millions of Liberals were marching past their front door, they were apparently in the basement bellowing bravely into their pillows. As millions of Liberals demanded accountability from a provably reckless and depraved Conservative Republican Administration, these heroes were too busy handing out stern and learned lectures on macroeconomics to whoever was passed out on the bar stool next to them.

For eight long and catastrophic years they somehow never found their Outside Voices.

Until that Negro put his hand on the Bible.

And then, as predictable as the sunrise...

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

I Want My Country Back!!!

The same well-financed masterminds who trained these sock puppets to sit up on their hind legs and howl over the imaginary horrors of Bill Clinton's Democratic Administration...and who taught them to roll over and play dead during the actual, daily horrors of George Bush's Republican Administration...have simply returned the outrage chip in their little heads to its factory default pre-Bush Administration setting.

Of course, their conditioning is such that the Right never notices their own enormous and flagrant hypocrisies, because they are no longer capable of noticing such things. Which is why I don't doubt their sincerity, any more than I doubt the sincerity of a waterhead drunk begging for a bottle.

Any more than I doubt the sincerity of the mob in "1984" howling out its carefully-programmed hatred at imaginary enemies.

Lunatics are very sincere people, and this knowledge -- that on the Right, any connection between passion and logic has been irrevocably severed -- is what permits their leaders and politician to look the camera in the eye and just lie, lie, lie about things that are plain and self-evident

and get away with it.

The obvious fact that they are lying -- that shameless and continually lying about big, important stuff has now become nothing more than an everyday tactic among Conservatives -- is certainly a fact, but also completely misses the point.

The Teabaggers are the loyal Outer Party members of the Right, who had always, always, always, been at war with with Eastasia.

Then a Negro put his hand on the Bible...

Distributor Cap NY Gets It Done

You should go check it out.
Or would you prefer the cornfield.

Sneetches Come Alive!

The award-ready Tea-Belly Sneetches...now in spectacular audio.

I feel an enormous amount of pressure to get this right. I want to win that car!

When Scary met Calley

And then one day the anti-wanking O'Donnellite teabaggers and pro-armed-insurrection Angloid teabaggers joined forces...

G. Gordon Pretty

"What monstrosities would walk the streets
were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds."

-- Eric Hoffer

Now, The Bush-Belly Sneetches: UPDATE *

were backers of Bush...

As I learned years ago, in those fevered moments when a welter of polls, counter-polls, rage, speed, heat, transient headline-swallowing micro-issues and barely comprehensible wonkspeak threaten to smother our civic discourse, sometimes is a good and palate-cleansing thing to sidestep those battlefields altogether and try a simpler, clearer genre to make the point.

And so, with great respect for the work of the immortal Theodor Seuss Geisel...

The Tea-Belly Sneetches
(this one's for you, Mom ;-)

Now, the Bush-Belly Sneetches were backers of Bush,

The Plain-Belly Sneetches thought Bush was a Tush.
The Bushs weren’t so big; they were really quite small.
You would think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But because they backed Bush, all the Bush-Bellied Sneetches would brag,
“Plain-Bellies are nothing but Commies in Drag!”


"They hate our Great Nation," The Bush-Bellies said.

They're Marxist white-flaggers who want us all dead!
They hate our Dear Leader! They hate our Great Troops!
They mindlessly hate everything, those Socialist poops!
It's their lack of Bush-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

For years this went on, this faux-patriot shucking
(As they conveniently forgot years of Clinton rat-fucking).
They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Bush was, and how Lefties were Loons.
There was no need to be careful or watch their own words.
They would now win forever, swore the Blossom of Turds.

But the day finally came when Bush began looking crummy
And that was NOT a good day to have Bush on your tummy.
His policies were failing, his economy crashed;
He had left the Great Nation quite thoroughly trashed.
His lies were all melting like snow in a stove
And no one could stop it, not even his Rove.

This made Bush-Belly Sneetches look like ignorant tools
And their Bush-Belly screeching sound like the ranting of fools.
First the Senate fell down, then the House fell down too
(And if that weren't enough to make Bush-Bellies boo-hoo
In two thousand and eight the very worstest blow came
When they lost to a Negro with a strange Muslim name!)

The Bush-Belly Sneetches became very confused.
How could they fail? Had they merely been used?
Fox had told them for years they were righteous and shrewd;
That the Plain-Belly Sneetches were stupid and crude.
Now their Bush-Belly tats made them look shithouse-rat-nuts
Their own words had damned them, no "ands", "ifs" or "buts".


And then out of the West came their own gin-soaked Moses
Who swore all their shame could be turned into roses.
His name was Sylvester "Dick Armey" McBean

Inventor of the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine.

For the price of their souls and a couple of bucks

The Bush-Bellies could now buy some nips and some tucks.


From the Bush-Off Machine they tumbled like fresh laundered sheets

Screaming about deficits! Taxes! And those awful elites!
They had never liked Bush, no not even a little...
...they shrieked from mouths flecked with Patriot Spittle.
They'd never voted for him, nor swallowed his dirt.



You don't believe me? Just look at my shirt!


"They hate our Great Nation," The Tea-Bellies said.
"These Marxist death-panelists who want us all dead!

They hate our Great Founders! They hate Sarah Palin!
They hate all good things and they're why we're failin'!
It's their lack of Tea-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Beck was, and how Lefties were Loons.
For one thing, of course, had remained just the same
The Left and their schemes were always to blame.
Because there is no need to be careful or watch what you say

When your past is as squashy as modeling clay.


*UPDATE: Now available in exciting audio.

Your Friday Podcast

Our whole catalog and PayPal thingie here, and thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help.

A child of five would understand this.
Send someone to fetch a child of five.
-- Groucho Marx

Everything You Will Ever Need To Know

About David Fucking Brooks.

From yesterday's "Conversation" in the New York Times:

Many Clinton opponents went around the bend.
Many Bush opponents entertained loopy war-for-oil and neocon conspiracy theories.
...

Something about politics these days untethers many people from reality. It makes them feel heroic if the person they are opposing is uniquely evil and alien. Then in their little information cocoons these bizarre misconceptions get internalized.

The next time you run into Pinch Sulzberger at the Krogers or Piggly Wiggly, you are hereby authorized to play keep-away with his carry-out apricot-and-cinnamon-kulfi-on-a-stick until he cries and gets the hiccups and finally reveals why the fuck he keeps this waste of skin on the payroll.

As I have said before, Bobo, what you have is not an intellectual position. What you have is a craven, Neoconservative, untethered-from-reality mutation of a disorder called "Asymmetriphobia": a horror of asymmetrical things.


Seek help.