Somewhere in America, Mark Halperin

is standing with nose pressed flush against the screen of a 124" plasma teevee, screaming,

"For the love of God, pleeeeease let me back on camera to talk about Centrism and the unreasonableness of Democrats and stuff!"

Voice of Empire, Ctd.

This week at The Mouse Circus, David Gregory continued to perform his indispensable function as the mouthpiece of the Oligarch Empire to which he has sworn complete, obescient and lucrative fealty. A function best described by Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” as that of…

"...an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill"

When Obama spokesman David Plouffe suggested that our current national nervous breakdown is a “healthy debate”, Gregory wanted to know “What is healthy about [it]?" Greggers was pissed that "nobody is yet making the hard choices" about screwing over poor and working class people in sufficient numbers to protect hiss tock portfolio.

Greggers: My broker An unnamed financial person of my acquaintance called me. You could smell the fear-shit in his pants. This is a Code Red Day, people. Code Red!

John Thune then brought his awesome bilateral symmetry to the “debate”, because he is "in play".

At that moment, somewhere in a very nice gated community in America, David Brooks involuntarily jizzed himself with excitement.

(Said Bobo of Thune back in this embarrassing mancrush of a column from 2009:

He is a gracious and ecumenical legislator, not a combative one. When you ask him to mention authors he likes, he mentions C.S. Lewis and Jeff Shaara, not political polemicists.
…

He doesn’t have radical plans to cut the federal leviathan. He just wants to restrain the growth of government to bring deficits down. He doesn’t have ambitions to restructure the tax code. He just wants to lift burdens on small business.
…

But in the meantime, people like Thune offer Republicans a way to connect fiscal discipline with traditional small-town values, a way to tap into rising populism in a manner that is optimistic, uplifting and nice.

And yet, less than one month ago, Mr. Brooks also made this assessment of the mental and moral health of his Republican Party:

…
The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.

This, as I say, is the mother of all no-brainers.
...

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

Got that? David Brooks’ definition of unacceptably nuts is a Republican who refuses to “to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard” and by this refusal shows their unwillingness to “accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities”.

I wonder what would happen if Bobo's “gracious and ecumenical“ John Thune failed Bobo's own "Crazy or Hot?" test on exactly these issues?

Ruh roh...

David Gregory: John Thune, as a Senator who is still “for sale” "in play", what will it take to get you to “yes”.

Thune: First, no taxes…There will be some who want to see taxes as part of their approach. I certainly don’t, and I don’t think most Republicans do. just ruled out a tax increase.

Somewhere in a very nice gated community in America, David Brooks just tore his tiny Johnson out by the roots.

“Why, John Thune? Why have you done this to meeee?!”

Later, to a question about whether his billionaire paymasters should maybe pay one dime more in taxes, Greggers shot back: “But shouldn't Medicare also be shoved into the wood-chipper to make sure Democrats are also blah blah blah.”

It wasn’t Gregger’s mindless, reflexive mouthing of the “Both Sides” mantra that had me yelling “Fuck you, you vonce!” at the teevee. I'm used to that by now. It was his triumphalist smirk that put me over the top.

Gregory: Hey, Thune. My portfolio is about to take it in the neck. My broker An unnamed financial person of my acquaintance wants to know how many poor people can you head-fake the Democrats into sacrificing?

Yeah, it was that bad.

Greggers called in Clare McCaskill -- this week’s Obligatory “Meet the Press” Blue Dog Democrat flunky -- to make the “Left” argument as follows:

We have a lot of volume from the two extremes.

We need that Fucking Awesome Middle to rise up!

It is not about the Tea Party, or about the Far Left.

Senator McCaskill was unsurprisingly non-specific about who makes-up this imaginary "Far Left" contingent, and why their non-existent list of fictional demands was just as bad as the teabagger's very real threat to destroy the global economy. Obviously Senator McCaskill, needs to be primaried into extinction, but of course that will never happen.

Tom Brokaw -- this week’s Obligatory “Meet the Press” Beltway Establishmentarian Sage -- was also on hand to obediently and predictably toe the corporate line:

• Both sides do it.
• Both sides did it.
• And now we have to shovel a lot of weak and sick and powerless people into early graves to make the world safe for the oligarchs who pay my salary

Raul Labrador -- this week’s Obligatory “Meet the Press” Teabagger – was there hand trowel on his prepared list of falsehoods virtually unchallenged:

David Gregory: The American people are idiots.

Brokaw: Yes they are!

Labrador: The Ryan Budget is still awesome! It proposed to close loopholes.

What were a few things that Greggers could have asked The Labradoodle but never did?

"Didn't the "Ryan Suicide Pact" actually take the money from those closed loopholes and plow them back into tax cuts for billionaires?

"Isn’t it true that the "Ryan Suicide Pact" never gets anywhere close to solving the deficit?”

"Isn’t it true that the "Ryan Suicide Pact would itself require the dept ceiling be rasied over and over again?”

But these questions are inconvenient and so, instead…

Hey, here's an article from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal that explains that while Republicans may have spiked the deficits every time they got anywhere near the levers of power, both sides are to blame!

Let's talk about that!

Hey, here's another article from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal from sodden, mossy bint Peggy Noonan calling Obama a "loser".

Let's talk about that!

Brokaw: The Baggers did it old school. Got organized. Got elected. That's how you do things!

No mention of the Koch brothers money that paid for it.

No mention of Dick Armey.

No mention of the Entire Murdoch Empire working overtime to making an electoral silk purse out of the sow’s ear of the GOP base out of thin air and pushing the Hell out of it around the clock.

No mention of the complicity of clowns like David Gregory every inch of the way.

Because these are inconvenient facts that fly square in the face of the "Both Sides Do It" goon squad doctrine.

And as such, they will remain in enforced exile until the monopoly of the "Both Sides Do It" goon squad is forcibly broken.

Over on “The Chris Matthews’ Show”, I learned that “this is still a "Center-Right" country”, while on “This Week…”, the soulless, Himmler-faced Grover Norquist was invited to appear on to provide the rat's perspective on the bubonic plague.

On “This Week…”, Paul Krugman continued to do heavy lifting on behalf of the Silenced Majority by calling Grover Norquist a liar to his face - twice - and pointing out that the debt ceiling is no less than a hostage crisis precipitated by radical.

Krugman: The 2010 elections were run on two issues: Jobs and the Democrats are gonna cut your Medicare. Since then, the president as worked hard on jobs and tried to give the GOP political cover on Medicare…The GOP, meanwhile, is extorting policy changes they could never have gotten past the legislative process and never gotten past the voters.

All of it true, but most of it too late. Direct quotes for the pedants:

“From the perspective of a rational person, we shouldn’t even be talking about spending cuts at all now,” Krugman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. “We have nine percent unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment… If you have a situation in which you are permanently going to raise the unemployment rate — which is what this is going to do — that’s actually going to reduce future revenues.”

“These spending cuts are even going to hurt the long-run fiscal position, let alone cause lots of misery. Then on top of that, we’ve got these budget cuts, which are entirely — basically the Republicans [saying], ‘We’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what we want’ and the president said, ‘Okay.’ That’s what happened.”

“We used to talk about the Japanese and their lost decade. We’re going to look to them as a role model. They did better than we’re doing,” he added. “There is no light at the end of this tunnel. We’re having a debate in Washington which is all about, ‘Gee, we’re going to make this economy worse, but are we going to make it worse on 90 percent the Republicans’ terms or 100 percent the Republicans’ terms?’ The answer is 100 percent.”

My only advice to Republican Obertaxenfuhrer Norquist is the same advice Katherine Hepburn gave to Anthony Hopkins in "The Lion in Winter":

"Don't look sullen, dear. It makes your eyes go small and piggy...and your chin look weak."

Grover Norquist: Regulations are the real problem. Next week the EPA might try to shove a liberal light bulb up your ass!

Krugman: Guy's a liar. Also a moron. Also, a liar.

This week's black-and-white differences between Amanpour's show and Gregger's Carnival of Beltway Bukkake are clearly visible and, I think, easy to understand.

Gregger's audience -- which is basically the same as media-bestriding colossi like David Brooks and Tom Friedman -- consists of a few thousand insider players in D.C., a few hundred plutocrats who own property and keep homes in New York, and the millions who are obtuse enough to believe their drivel.

Amanpour is trying for a more international audience, and the America where David Gregory is considered the gold standard of journalist and Grover Norquist has not been flogged into the street by mobs of sensible humans is a foreign land indeed.

After that I watch Mitch McConnell lie in a single, continuous stream all over Gloria Borger's face on "State of the Union" (CNN).

It was this exchange…

Borger: But can you absolutely positively, 100% guarantee...

Yertle the Minority Leader: I am lying to you now.

Borger: Can you at least tell us what's going on in the Wingnut Clubhouse?

Yertel: Fuck you.

Borger: But can you absolutely positively, 100% guarantee...

…repeated over and over again.

Borger took it like a pro.

Then I watched John McCain lying on the floor of Senate for awhile.

Watching that morally-necrotic old man spryly reversing himself, spinning to contradicting himself, and leaping like Najinski to lie about things that he himself had said years, weeks or even hours before should be an inspiration to octogenarians and sociopaths everywhere.

And when you consider that, of all the Senators from Arizona, McCain is actually the lesser crazy, the voters of Arizona must be so very proud right now.

For Brutus is an honorable man;

So are they all, all honorable men.

Happy 6th Bloggiversary to Batocchio

Who is noble and true, a fine and insightful writer, a great lunchtime companion and raconteur, and raises welts on all the right people.

Last seen looking in vain for Bagel Street.

Go over and wish him well.

"No Liars" Pledge Gains Momentum -- UPDATE

James Wolcott lauds Lawrence O'Donnell for his decision to banish " a congenitally lying Tea Party Republican phony (a multiple redundancy, I know) from his program's guest list" and then asks the four trillion dollar musical question:

When did Sean Hannity get elected to anything and become the cryptkeeper of the Reagan legacy?

Good question, Mr. Wolcott, and many thanks for the link.

So Mr. Wolcott continues using his Vorpal sword to great effect, and Mr. O'Donnell has stepped up. And, as readers know, Dr. Paul Krugman is already doing yeoman's work for the cause (like this from today's NYT):

Very Serious Suckers

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out:

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.

...
I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.
...

So what about you, Jill Abramson?

What about you, Tina Brown?

What about you, Betsy Fischer?

What about you, Mistah Kurtz?*

This nation can no longer survive half-Fox and half-free.

So which side do you choose?


* UPDATE: As the Republican House of Representatives votes to shove the global economy off a cliff, Mistah Kurtz shows what a creature made of pure, sniveling Beltway Centronium looks like:

Rather than muting the partisanship and hammering out a compromise so the wealthiest country on earth can keep paying its bills, the two sides seem farther apart than a week ago.

...
Each legislative body has now demonstrated that it can blow up the other’s preferred alternative. What neither has shown is the ability to craft a bill that could actually gain enough support from both parties to break the gridlock.

The day someone finally slap's Tom Friedman's dick out of this sock puppet's mouth, I will dance an Irish jig on Michigan Avenue.

To Be Clear

I would never suggest that Lawrence O'Donnell might have been influenced in any way to take the unprecedented step of banning Congressman Joe Walsh from his teevee show for being a massive liar...


...by this post earlier in the week

suggesting we as consumers demand that broadcasters begin to take the unprecedented step of banning massive liars from their teevee shows, and in which I used as an example Lawrence O'Donnell (whose show I like very much) putting massive liar Congressman Joe Walsh on the air:

Only Nixon can go to Nixonland

"As much as I like Lawrence O'Donnell, a couple of nights ago when he trundled Marcia Blackburn and Joe Walsh and David Frum out in front of the cameras, I turned his program off. I did it because I am not interested in what liars have to say.

I am not interested in watching a "debate" that isn't a debate at all.

Because, as everyone on the Left learned long, long ago, there are no depths to which the Right will not sink in order to hold power and enrich their paymasters. Treason, economic sabotage, scapegoating, direct appeals to racism, stealing elections, voter suppression, you name it.

But most of all, just plain lying. All the time. About everything."

Because to suggest that would obviously be silly and perverse.

Instead, I would merely salute Mr. O'Donnell's valiant decision to use his public platform to make liars begin to pay for their lies.

Professional Left Podcast #86

"So no more runnin'.
I aim to misbehave. "

-- "Capt. Malcolm Reynolds"

PS. I'm pretty sure I messed up a reference to a story I thought was called "My Name is Joe". I'll figure it out once I've had 12 hours of kip and a bucket of coffee.

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Da' money goes here:

Parry Hotter

So, what are the Five Happiest Words you can read in the New York Times?

David Brooks is off today.

Slight typo though -- David Brooks is always off.

Meanwhile, K-Thug continues to vividly channel, um, well, me:

July 28, 2011
The Centrist Cop-Out

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.”
...


So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Wow.

In case you didn't notice, Dr. Krugman crossed a very specific Rubicon here: he has just made the very public case for firing Tom Friedman and David Brooks -- just about as bluntly as the medium allows -- right there in the pages of the New York Times.

Suck on that,

Tommy-boy.

Thanks, But No Thanks

For most of the last decade (and a whole lot longer if you don't count the year one starts a blog as "Year Zero") , a small band of Commie Pinko America-hating, chardonnay-swilling Dirty Fucking Hippie surrender monkeys has been crawling over the barbed wire in Mainstream Media no-man's land to disarm -- one by one -- the endless, endless Villager Centrist landmines that the vast and infinitely-well-funded Beltway Machine has been tirelessly sowing there.

It has been an almost wholly thankless task performed by a mostly-volunteer brigade who have had to get used to being verbally assaulted every day by Defenders of both the Wingnut and Establishments Faiths flinging verbal feces-packed Pampers

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

that are often so vicious and berserk (and barely literate) that they'd make Malcolm Tucker

wince (NSFW)

But now that the Right is doing a very public end-zone happy dance over finally getting their hands on the "Destroy America" launch codes they've been frantically looking for for the last 30 years, it looks as if mindless dogmatic Centrism might be temporarily losing a wee bit of its Teflon inviolability, and the years of work by that tiny band of reviled Liberal losers might be bearing a little fruit.

Which is precisely why now, the same Joe "Jokeline" Klein who spent most of his career as a carbuncle on the ass of Conventional D.C. Wisdom, would like to hedge his usual Villager Centrist bets (this golden Jokeline Oldie from 2007 catches the nub of it)

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right."

and jump on the "Hey, maybe this one time, Both Sides Didn't do it!" bandwagon before it picks up too much speed:

Republicans’ Debt Ceiling Charade Is Downright Dangerous
By Joe Klein Thursday, July 28, 2011

...
And so, here we are. Our nation’s economy and international reputation as the world’s presiding grownup has already been badly damaged. It is a self-inflicted wound of monumental stupidity. I am usually willing to acknowledge that Democrats can be as silly, and hidebound, as Republicans–but not this time. There is zero equivalence here.
...

How about instead of more columns like this, you just go fuck yourself Joe, and we'll call it square?

How about that?

The Clown Show at the End of the Universe

I wonder if the King of the Oompa Loompas still has some of that sweet, sweet tobacco baksheesh left over in the kitty (from Bob Herbert in the NYT):

That’s Where the Money Is

...
I remember writing about that day back in the mid-’90s when this slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House.

It was incredible, even to some Republicans. The House was in session, and here was a congressman actually distributing money on the floor. Other, more serious, representatives were engaged in debates that day on such matters as financing for foreign operations and a proposed amendment to the Constitution to outlaw desecration of the flag. Mr. Boehner was busy desecrating the House itself by doing the bidding of big tobacco.

Embarrassed members of the G.O.P. tried to hush up the matter, but I got a tip and called Mr. Boehner’s office. His chief of staff, Barry Jackson, was hardly contrite. “They were contributions from tobacco P.A.C.’s,” he said.

When I asked why the congressman would hand the money out on the floor of the House, Mr. Jackson’s answer seemed an echo of Willie Sutton’s observation about banks. “The floor,” he said, “is where the members meet with each other.”
...

Because it sure looks like he's gonna need every pfennig in his bribe sack and then some to squeak his utterly meaningless plan past his own members in his own House:

Boehner debt ceiling vote delayed, lacks votes for passage


House Speaker John Boehner announced late Thursday that a proposed plan on increasing the nation’s debt ceiling was delayed as party leaders scrambled to find additional votes.

The news came just minutes before Mr. Boehner was set to hold a 5:30 p.m. vote on the proposal, which would cut roughly $915 billion in spending over the next ten years but only raise the debt ceiling through the end of the calendar year. A Republican aide said the House would vote on the bill later on Thursday evening.
...

A plan which -- should it actually pass-- will immediately crawl under the Senate's porch and die.

And since Boehner's bill is absolutely DOA in utero, so to speak, this pointless drama is about one thing and one thing only: whether of not, in the House tiger cage, Boehner is the one holding the whip, or the one obediently running in a circle with a little dog prancing on his back.

You know, back in aught-nine I believe it was, I wrote a little song about it.

And here it is:

Oompa Loompa Sprayontan Dude
I've got another puzzle for you
Oompa loompa doompeda dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

Who do you fault when your Party's insane?
A shrieking, bigot-riddled daisy chain?
Rabid from a diet of paranoid lies
Peddled by demented teevee guys?

The
Gutless
Party
Leadership

Oompa Loompa Sprayontan Dude
Letting his Party come completely unglued
A laquered corpse, irredeemably screwed
Like the Oompa
Loompa
Sprayontan
Dude...

Later Herman's Hermits stole that song and made a fortune off of it.
Me? I never saw a dime.
Damn hippies.


Meanwhile, the eminently calm and rational James Fallows (to whom I actually owe a beer next time he comes to Chicago) joins Paul Krugman in the Big Driftglass Party of filthy, America-hating Communist dupes:

Sad, really...

Five Reasons the House GOP Is to Blame

By James Fallows

Jul 28 2011, 2:56 PM ET
Many Republican readers have written to ask why I have posted "partisan" charts, like the one after the jump, that use data from the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere to show that tax cuts over the past decade have played a huge role in creating mammoth federal debt.

In my view, these have been "charts," rather than "partisan charts." And to me their significance is less in allocating responsibility for creating the problem than in clarifying the real options for dealing with it.

Still, anyone who thinks I am mainly blaming the Republicans for the needless debt-ceiling fracas, especially the Tea Party-era House Republicans arrayed behind Rep. Eric Cantor (and Rep. Jim Jordan), is correct. To put the reasons in one place, as things go down to the wire, here they are...

Your Daily Wolcott

In the middle of this post, "...America's most beloved pterodactyl, Larry King."

I laughed.

Would have gone with "Rhamphorhynchus" myself, but that's just a quibble based on my desire to win a bet that I could use "Rhamphorhynchus" and "quibble" in the same sentence.

Kristol Blue Persuasion

The World's Best Blogger is mad, dammit!

Bill Kristol's Mindset

Every now and again, the mask slips and we see what the neocon scion really cares about. Fiscal responsibility? Debt reduction? This was a man who barely mentioned the debt or spending under the fiscally ruinous Bush-Cheney years, and mocked those who did. And the reason is simple: this is a writer concerned solely about partisanship and power...

They can't even bother to disguise their rank cynicism and partisan tribalism any more. Their core objective in this Congress: what Mitch McConnell said.

Translation: How much nicer everything was back when Kristol would at least put on a wig and some Sinatra before I gave him his Brotherhood of St. Reagan reacharounds.

While You Were Away Today

"Global Economy Held Hostage: Day 72" proceeded just about as you'd expect.


Meanwhile, after my favorite cartoonishly nugatory political group

spent the last couple of week issuing the following series of increasingly baroque, narcissistic and surreal communiques from the faraway and irrelevant Dread and Mighty Duchy of Grand Centrism, (emphasis added) --

July 7, 2011

“Partisans Blame, Patriots Fix”
No Labels Supporters Take to Capitol, Demand Answers and Action

...
Added No Labels Founding Leader David Walker, “When both sides only come to the table with political rhetoric and ultimatums, nothing ever gets done. A plan can only turn into a solution if it includes meaningful dialogue and constructive compromise that can achieve bipartisan support. Otherwise, it is just more political posturing and gridlock. Partisans blame. Patriots fix.

++++++++++++



July 8, 2011


House Heeds No Labels Call: No Deal, No Break


"...No Labels has demanded that Congress get to work and get a deal done for over a month, and today the House answered that call.”*

“The House may have showed up to bat, but now they have to put the ball in play,” said No Labels Founding Leader David Walker. “If the Democrats and Republicans put everything on the table and leave everything on the field, they can score a win for the American people. If all they do is fight amongst each other and focus on their own electoral stats, the American people will strikeout and lose big with job losses and higher interest rates.”

“Partisans fight, patriots fix. It’s time for both parties to realize they are on the same team and get a deal done for their boss, the American people.”

*(dg -- Got that? The House changed its schedule
because these mopes demanded it :-)

++++++++++++

July 19, 2011


The Time for Leadership is Now


"Every day, Americans are hearing the tick, tick, tick of the ticking time bomb of default," said No Labels Founding Leader David Walker. "Washington seemed oblivious to the sheer destruction an explosion would leave in its wake -- higher interest rates, less job security, and more economic pain for a nation already saddled with so much of it. That bomb is still ticking, but today the Gang of Six brought Americans hope that maybe, just maybe, they will be able to step in and defuse it."


++++++++++++

July 19, 2011

America Needs A Real Deal, Not A Default

Said No Labels Founding Leader Lisa Borders, “Congress and the White House need to stop dragging their feet. We’re here to call for them to start walking in lockstep with the majority of Americans, not those on the far left and far right who are holding up progress. The American people want a real deal, not a default!”

-- the Dread and Mighty Duchy of Grand Centrism has fallen ominously silent.

I suspect they are cloistered in very nice hotel with Tom Friedman and David Brooks planning their next genius move, but that's just speculation.

So who are these very well-funded "No Labels" buffoons?

A partial list includes, John Avlon -- Senior Political Columnist for The Daily Beast; Speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani for President; Dave Frum -- former Speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Senior Advisor to Rudy Giuliani for President; Dan Gerstein Political Commentator on Fox News and MSNBC; former Communications Director to Senator Joe Lieberman; former Senior Aide to Joe Lieberman for President; Mark McKinnon -- former Advisor to President George W. Bush; former advisor to Governor Sarah Palin; former Advisor to Senator John McCain; Nancy Jacobson Co-Founder, Third Way; former Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton; former Senior Advisor to Hillary Clinton for President...

You know: that same, stale assload of political leftovers, rapacious Beltway whores, former Neocon speechwriters hiding out from the catastrophe they created and Clinton/DLC triangulation junkies who never met a Democratic principle they wouldn't sell at remaindered prices for a back-alley tugjob from David Brooks and five minutes on Meet the Press.

All looking

for their next meal-ticket.

I know you are deeply shocked by this.

As for me, I already have a group.

Sure, sometimes they give me such fucking agita,

but truth be told, I love 'em to pieces.

Only Nixon can go to Nixonland

Conservatives built this monster.

It didn’t just wander out of the woods one day, or land here from another planet. The Wingnut Base -- whatever teabagger, Colonial Williamsburg camouflage they’re sporting this week, and however hard the media tries to pretend they aren't who we know they are -- was manufactured by the Conservative Movement to win elections. Made right here in the U S of A out of spare parts left over from the Segregationist South, Right-wing fundamentalism, Bircher paranoia and general Archie Bunker pig-ignorance.

Conservatives built the unholy thing, programmed it, wounded it up and sent it out to do their bidding.

And everyone knows it. David Brooks knows it. David Gregory. Tom Friedman. David Frum. The goofs at the "No Labels" freakshow. The entire GOP Brain Caste.

Everybody.

This is the same monster that never gave a shit that Reagan/Bush were running up historic deficits, or sold weapons to terrorists to finance illegal wars. The same monster that hunted and impeached Clinton. The same monster that completely looses its shit over "activist judges"...right up until five of the most malignantly activist judges in modern history put their candidate in the White House and gave corporations the right to buy elections.

The same monster that cheered on George W. Bush's serial, catastrophic betrayals and failures while it called Liberals "traitor".

The same monster that dutifully gets its opinions from Rush Limbaugh, its "news" from Sean Hannity and its Jebus from Pat Robertson.

And everyone knows it.

The title of this post is sadly facetious: Nixon would of course be considered a filthy Commie Liberal by the monster his strategies created and would have to carry Pat Buchanan in front of him like the Ark of the Wingnut Covenant if he wanted to get into CPAC.

And everyone knows it.

Everyone also knows that calling your Conservative member of Congress isn't going to budge them, because your Conservative member of Congress owes his or her job to the monster.

Nothing short of an extinction-level event is going to change the monster's course or ferocity: it is quite mad in exactly the way its designers intended. It has no capacity whatsoever to correct or even recognize its own madness, which means it is never going to recover.

So please stop trying to reason with it.

Instead, focus on what can be done, which is this: Nixon didn't go to China for the pandas and the Great Wall; he went to create a split in the alliances that held the Communist world together.

For 30 years, the staunchest ally of the unhinged Right has been the craven Center: that army of Beltway automatons who profit handsomely from propping up the Right’s every act of depravity with one outrageously false equivalence after another. This is the "But the Democrats" brigade, on well-coiffed display every Sunday at what I have been calling "The Mouse Circus" for the past six years.

Unchecked this state of affairs will continue for another 30 years or until we as a nation are finally burned to the ground and sold off for scrap by the Right, right under the noses of the Center who will be busy sternly lecturing Left on the need for more Compromise and greater Reasonableness, and compulsively masturbating into the pages of the New York Times about how an awesome new Third Party full of Radically Reasonable Compromisers

would solve everything:

Can’t We Do This Right?

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

...
Personally, I’ll support anyone with a real plan to cut spending, raise revenues and boost investment in the five pillars of our success — be they Democrats or Republicans. But if neither Republicans nor Democrats can see that we need a hybrid politics today — one that requires cutting, taxing and investing as part of a single nation-building strategy (phased in over time) — then I’ll hope for a third party that does get it and can take us where we need to go.

After which they will drive on back to their vast estates inside their gated communities while mobs in festive tri-corner hats driving Medicare-funded scooters start ripping the wiring and copper pipe out of the walls of the Home of the Brave in the name of Freedom.

In other words, it is long past time for that to change, which is why the Center must be destroyed: must be reduce to an economically uninhabitable no-man's land where it is no longer possible for the "Both Sides Do It" liars to ply their lucrative trade.

It is time for a new Pledge; a beneficent mirror-image of Grover Norquist's odious "Americas for Tax Reform" Party of God loyalty oath. A pledge where the signer promises they will not book guests on their radio or teevee show who are liars. Not link to websites that feature liars except to excoriate them. Will not buy from, advertise on or patronize media that hires and promotes liars. That they will not reference lying Centerists at all except to mete out to them the scorn they deserve.

As much as I like Lawrence O'Donnell, a couple of nights ago when he trundled Marcia Blackburn and Joe Walsh and David Frum out in front of the cameras, I turned his program off. I did it because I am not interested in what liars have to say.

I am not interested in watching a "debate" that isn't a debate at all.

Because, as everyone on the Left learned long, long ago, there are no depths to which the Right will not sink in order to hold power and enrich their paymasters. Treason, economic sabotage, scapegoating, direct appeals to racism, stealing elections, voter suppression, you name it.

But most of all, just plain lying. All the time. About everything.

In order to preserve their privileged positions, there are also no depths to which the "Both Sides Do It" Center will not sink to continue pretending none of the above is happening, and/or that the Left is always equally wrong in equal measure in the opposite direction.

Lastly, and most tragically, time and crisis have demonstrated over and over again that there is absolutely no magical combination of facts, logic or goodwill that can dislodge the Center or the Right from their destructive, co-dependent ideological bunkers.

To his credit, Paul Krugman has now gone all the way there:

The Cult That Is Destroying America

...
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.

It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.

We did not choose this ridiculous fight with these depraved and reckless imbeciles and their cowardly enablers: our nation has more than enough real, serious problems without having to deal with one more manufactured drama pulled out of thin air by the monster the Conservatives created and set loose to win elections long ago.

But once again the war is thrust upon us.

And this nation can no longer survive half-Fox and half-free.

Not With a Bang. Or a Whimper.

But with the petulant Dunning-Kruger whiiiine of Koch-bred, Rush-fed homunculi running finally and fatally amok.

In case future historians are confused, we weren't laughing because they were funny: we were laughing because of something we called the "gallows humor" of it all.

We were laughing because the technology necessary to shoot these fuckers and their Centrist enablers into the Sun was not yet widely available.

The Opposite of "Delphic"

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.

From Andrew Sullivan:

David Frum likewise sees danger for the GOP. I remain of the view that the extremism of the right - their refusal to accept that in a divided government, there has to be some give and take - is related to what I called a "cold civil war."

...
This Nixonian achievement has turned the GOP into the party of the South - a minority country within a country. With no ability to communicate within the Democratic party to bring the South and the rest of the country together, we have stalemate. Recall that the map of the 2008 presidential election was almost identical to the map of the states in the Civil War, with now Northern-infiltrated Virginia and Florida the only exceptions. And that, to my mind, is why we don't just have a refusal to compromise; we have an essential refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the president or the Senate, because they are not controlled by the South. Heaven knows how this dynamic is made worse by having a miscegenated president. But I do not doubt that, somewhere in the psyche, it has to be. Hence the whole birth certificate/Muslim/Kenyan fantasies.

And so the whole promise of post-partisan Obama founders on the determination of one faction to bring him down, regardless of the costs - even to themselves. I have not yet seen Obama so perfectly forced into Lincoln's position: trying desperately to accommodate a force that refuses to be accommodated, except by dictating the national outcome of every debate. But their rage will not be assuaged by appeasement.
…

Note the word: "Nixonian".

As in "This shit has been going on since the reign of Richard Nixon."

Which begs the same question I have been asking of our Conservative Expatriates since forever: "Wow. This shit has been going on since before Andrew Sullivan was in long pants. How in the fuck did he manage to miss it?"

Anonymous Mike.K. in a previous comment thread makes this observation:

I really think Sullivan's problem... OK, his main problem in this political crap, is that he did not grow up in the U.S.A.

I honestly get the sense that deep down, really and truly, he doesn't believe that the religious right is the batshit crazy group of arsonists, bombers, and psychopaths that they really are. I, as someone who grew up in the U.S., know that they really and truly believe that everyone else is wrong, and deserves the raining Hell-fire Jesus will send upon them in the End of Days, and if they can start enough wars and bomb enough clinics and lynch enough educated people, Jesus will have to start the End Times and show up early so he will have enough people to blast into Hell to satisfy his blood-lust. (Apologies for the gratuitously long sentence.)

He, as British, thinks that those people can't be *that* crazy, and the intellectuals like him can keep them properly banished to the fringes. When I have heard him speak, he genuinely always seems to be surprised that Christians who are Republicans genuinely harbor so much blind and pointless hatred for him, and Republicans who are Christians give the former so much power. He still thinks they can be decanted from the mix, and doesn't realize it's one big frothy and incestuous well-blended Santorum.

(And bonus points for using it in a sentence.)
"""""

Which I tend to buy.

Mr. Sullivan, like David Brooks (Canadian), David Frum (also Canadian) and Ayn Rand (Soviet Union) all were shaped by political ecosystems that were between somewhat-and-radically different than the ones you'll find here in the United States. They all came trailing all of this misshapen baggage. They all pounded it into my native soil whether it fit or not. And most importantly, they all became the very well-compensated Useful Idiots (or, in Rand's case, the Hive Queen) of some loathsome people with depraved ideas.

They got it wrong from the start and have been wrong ever since, and if they had never become apologists, spokes-models and lawn-jockeys for gorgons, I would not have a problem with them. But they did. They profited from their stupidity and complicity, and they continue to profit from their Conservative Movement Gold Membership Cards long, long after it was abundantly clear that their movement was monstrous and their precious ideological pearls were lies.

Lies that -- ahem -- Liberals have tried to point out to them over and over and over again.

Which is why the sight of Andrew Sullivan and David Frum freaking out over the fact that the vast majority of their Conservative movement are as crazy as a betsy bug -- a fact about which Liberals have been steadfastly right and reviled for decades by people like Mr. Sullivan; a fact that Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Frum and the rest of their little clutch of precious Conservative bedtime storytellers have steadfastly disregarded and gotten completely wrong for most of their lives -- is hilarious.

Accountability begins at home, Mr. Sullivan, so how are you going to pay for the monster you helped create? What are you going to do to atone?

Or year after year it it just going to be more repetitions of The Prayer of Andrew Sullivan?

Dear Jebus,

Please continue to make it possible for me to make a nice living at a job where I simply repeat as breathless epiphanies observation, which – when made by those dirty Liberals one million times over the last 30 years -- I have alternately ignored or derided.

Also, I would like to help my equally, spectacularly wrong ideological running buddies to ride along on you Holy Gravy Train gravy train. I owe them favors, and this would be a great help to me.

Also, I would like to be on teevee a lot without anyone ever asking me any tough questions about my long record of being so very wrong about so very much.

Also I would like a pony.

God Bless Mommy and Daddy and Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Amen

Quote of the Day

"Not all liberals are wicked..."

-- Andrew Sullivan, very famous gay Conservative public intellectual, Reagan idolater, and tireless battler against decadent Fifth Columnists everywhere.

Well that sure is mighty white of you, Andrew.

I also assume, based on the context in which it was given in this post, that "Oakeshott" must have been the nickname of the bong in which you spent most of your adulthood curled up, conspicuously ignoring everything of importance that was going on in the Real World of Real Conservatism, year after year after year...

Ernest T. Bass Announces Bid

for Republican Presidential nomination.

"I likes breakin' winders!" Mr. Bass told reporters.

Immediately following his statement, Mr. Bass leaped to a commanding double-digit lead over Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Space Ghost among likely voters in the latest CBS/Reuters Iowa Poll.

Voice of Empire, Ctd.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down: "We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs ladies and gentlemen!" edition.

At the Mouse Circus, "Meet The Gregory" descended fully into naked, fact-repellent "Both Sides Do It" self-parody with not so much as an eyebrow of hair-extension visible above the absolute tsunami of Centrist Bullshit.

Sample?

Greggers to Presidential Chief-of-Staff Bill Daley:

On both sides...

But both sides...

From the Republican point of view...

Can't you understand their point view?

To demonstrate his great belief in "balance", Greggers then trotted out a panel featuring a former Republican Senator, a current "tea party" Congressman from the Illinois 11th (because according to our Villager Wise Men, "tea party" is a whole different Party than "Republican"), and the Democratic mayor of Newark, whose sole contribution to the conversation was "I agree with the Republicans! I'm the only Democrat who will say that!"

And then we were off to the races.

Former GOP Senator Chuck Hagel:

Both parties are to blame.

Independents roxor! I wanna suck every Independent dick in the Universe.

Andrea Mitchell Mrs. Alan Greenspan:

Both sides!

Both caucuses!

The healthy middle, the disgusted middle...as opposed to the Pelosi-Democrats...and Republicans.

Historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin:

The Center is seen as too passive. We need a Raging Fucking Center. Like Teddy Roosevelt! Like Harry Truman! Too often the passion is on the Left and the Right. What about the Center? Huh? Huh?

And the absolute cherry on top?

David Gregory:

If the Left and the Right are taking over, is their any room for the Center?

Tom Friedman has a column today...

This is a snip from the horrible, horrible column from The Mustache of Understanding

over which Greggers was salivating (Don't worry David Brooks; it'll be your turn to have one of your wretched journalistic abominations tongue-bathed next week):

Make Way for the Radical Center
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 23, 2011


If this kind of idiocy by elected officials sends you into a hair-pulling rage and leaves you wishing that we had more options today than our two-party system is putting forward — for instance, a party that would have offered a grand bargain on the deficit two years ago, not on the eve of a Treasury default — not only are you not alone, but help may be on the way.

Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. I know it sounds gimmicky — an Internet convention — but...

Really, Tom? You really believe that two years ago -- back when the global economy was in free fall -- was the time to start negotiating massive budget cuts?

Back when every economist in the Universe agreed we should be spending like crazy to staunch the wound?

When even offering 1/3 of the stimulus as tax cuts was not enough for the Right to boycott it entirely and run against it, even asn they took credit if for it with their constituents ?

Were you just drunk, Tom? Living in a cave? Or were you too bust fellating Chinese billionaires and imaginary Indian cab drivers for your next awful book to notice the Right storming through America's town halls shrieking about Death Panels and "Taking Their Country Back!" two years ago?

Were you asleep during the whole Kenyan Birth Certificate freakshow?

Did you somehow miss the Koch brother and Fox News funding the rebranding of the Pig People as "The Tea Party"?

Miss all those placards showing our Secret Muslim President as Hitler, as a Witch Doctor and generally as an illegitimate, uppity Negro filling up the GOP tent revivals?

Did you miss our drooling corporate media falling all over themselves to treat the Great Teabagger Lie as Gospel?

Did you miss how the entire Right conspired to aggressively deny that the past 8 years eever happened?

Of course, from cheerleading the waste of trillions of dollars and hundred of thousands of lives to send a "Suck On This" bouquet to the Middle East, to snuggling his porn-star mustache onto the asscrack of whatever Beltway bullshit is on the menu this week, Friedman -- a soft, incredibly rich, dimwitted, talent-starved hack who invents ideologically convenient histories that never were and will never in a million years have to actually live in the chaos his idiotic ideas create -- is indeed a perfect symbol for how completely broken our media has become.

Honestly, this was old-school Soviet-bad, so obvious and ham-handed that it rivaled anything you might have seen during the depths of the worst of those Cheney-Rummy-Bush-Feith lie-a-thons.

And it taught the same lesson: The crazier and more derelict and dangerous the Right gets, the more the Villagers will rise to the occasion...by beating up the Left. That our media is run by absolutely contemptible insider careerists who will roll out with perfectly straight faces as many comical, bizarre, terrified lies as are needed to protect the Beltway Common Wisdom.

And this Sunday the iron fist of our corporate masters reached so blatantly into our the nation's "news" to control the message that frankly only an imbecile or a paid liar could possibly have missed it.

Mouse Circus employees had been put on notice by their bosses that no one was going to be permitted to allocate the blame for anything anywhere but exactly between the genuinely anarchic and unhinged Right, and an entirely fictional Unreasonable Left. And the factual accuracy of literally everything -- from Allan West's unhinged attack on Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to Harry Truman's record -- was to be beaten unconscious and thrown into Centrism Wood Chipper to serve their filthy agenda.

Elsewhere, I watched serial liar George Will continued to pretend that it is 1980, or 1952, or 1926...that Barack Obama is just being a big baby --

The President this week in his tantrum-cum-press-conference...

--- and that the Tea Party is actually our nation's salvation

Then a few minutes later I wondered aloud to an empty house what the Hell a Fox Business Network executive was doing on the same panel as serial liar George Will on ABC?

The answer came moments later: Defending Centrism -- surprise! -- and his network's craven coverage of the grotesque criminal antics of his paymasters.

My instincts tells me what we were really witnessing was an all-hands-on-deck "Fuck You" by our corporate owners to President Obama's very mild and loooooong overdue breaching of the "fourth wall" of Villager Lying -- "Whilst thou may beat on Dirty Fucking Hippies for imaginary sins all the live long day, Thou Shalt NEVER point out that the Right is always fucking wrong"(from President Obama's White House news conference. [emphasis added]):

Last point I’ll make here. I mean, I’ve gone out of my way to say that both parties have to make compromises. I think this whole episode has indicated the degree to which at least a Democratic President has been willing to make some tough compromises. So when you guys go out there and write your stories, this is not a situation where somehow this was the usual food fight between Democrats and Republicans. A lot of Democrats stepped up in ways that were not advantageous politically. So we’ve shown ourselves willing to do the tough stuff on an issue that Republicans ran on.

Sunday's Mouse Circus was our Villagers' way of leaving a video horse head in his bed: a reminder that, as long a they control the media, that message will never be allowed.

And as an extra bonus coup de grace to any Liberals who still watch this criminally dishonest drivel, the only remotely Left-leaning voice was on teevee anywhere today was Davos diva, content-thief and the Establishment's safe "liberal" media mogul







Arianna Huffington.

We are so screwed.

Professional Left Podcast #85

"There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer.
You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you’re penniless.
Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world.
Or you can kill him."

-- Edward G. Robinson, "The Woman in the Window"

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Da' money goes here:

Paris Peace Talks Break Down

Apparently Democrats wanted the negotiating table to be round, but were willing to hold their collective noses and settle for square...or semi-circular...or oval...or rectangular...or a parallelogram...and were also cool with scattered seating, or beanbag chairs, or cafeteria-style, or simply sitting around a campfire, or even just letting Republicans dial in on Skype from their homes, nude, during the few moments they can spare in between their marathon group "Atlas Shrugged" jerk-off sessions.

Republicans, on the other hand, insisted on burning the negotiating table to the floor, nuking everything in a 100-mile radius, and then being served the remains of any widows and orphans that weren't seared to ash in the initial blast as Safety Net Tartar on toast points.

I look forward to watching David Gregory unhinge his jaw so that he can manage to swallow what just happened in its entirety and still poop out little trademark "Both Sides Do It" pellets on Sunday.

Never Let Them Forget

Who it is that pulls their strings.

Judges

From the Book of Judges 11: 30-40

30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

31 then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

32 So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.

33 And he smote them from Aro'er, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

34 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.

36 And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.

39 And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,

40 that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gil'e-adite four days in a year.

I Don't Know Nothing About That

It amazes me that people are amazed when liars lie. That we are somehow stunned by each new outrage by people we already know are scum.

From the Base of the Right, through their functionaries and office holders, through the Villager Gasbags who enable them and right up to the Boss of all Bosses, they lie and abide liars because they are weak, foolish, fearful, awful people.

Because the money is good.

Because it works.

Because it comes with no price tag.

And they will keep right on lying and abiding liars until the day comes when the consequences of their lies become so terrible that their survival depends on not doing it anymore.

Murdoch Goes

Full Gonzalez


If you think anything is going to happen to Murdoch on this side of the Atlantic, you're living in a Frank Capra movie:


Murdoch owns a majority share of the Party of God, has had most of its candidates for President on the payroll, and more importantly, owns the souls of every bigot, lunatic and slack-jawed imbecile who gets his opinion piped directly into his tiny, tiny brain via Fox News.

Remember that.

And then try to remember the name of the prison in which that slimy little fuck Gonzalez is rotting away the rest of his life.

Little Doggie

chooses to continue to bark all day


The best-paid pool boy in the GOP

continues to spend part of the weekly op-end column allowance Pinch Sulzberger gives him muttering impotently that the ogres who own the place and for whom he works keep pooping in the pool.

The Road Not Taken
...

It could be that this has been a glorious moment in Republican history. It could be that having persuaded independents that they are a prudent party, Republicans will sweep the next election. Controlling the White House and Congress, perhaps they will have the guts to cut Medicare unilaterally, reform the welfare state and herald in an era of conservative greatness. But it’s much more likely that Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity.

Luckily he has a brilliant plan for fixing things! He and his imaginary phalanx of Reasonable Conservatives are going to sit right down and wait for wingnut nature to change to the point where they are embraced and appreciated.

Fortunately, there are still practical conservatives in the G.O.P., who believe in results, who believe in intelligent compromise. If people someday decide the events of the past weeks have been a debacle, then practical conservatives may regain control.

(This is what it looks like when whining mediocrities "Go Galt!")

Our Mr. Brooks even goes so far as to identify the culprits using four burn book categories -- Beltway Bandits, Big Government Blowhards, Show Horses, Permanent Campaigners -- that read an awful lot like the adult versions of various teenage cliques which probably spent a lot of time sticking young Davey Brooks' head into various toilets, taking his lunch money and turning him down for dates.

What Our Mr. Brooks obviously does not realize is that the 19 (not four) distinct dysfunctional subgroups that make up his Conservative Movement were cataloged years ago here and here:

Neocons: Pasty conquistadors. Loveless, Democracy-attachment-disorder plotters. Thinks of America as prey to be plucked, fucked and chucked. And then whittles down the wishbone to make into lock picks to break into other lands.


Meocons: ...Meocons spill their seed on the ground, on the baby sitter, on the Statue of Liberty, in your fey Liberal latte, and positively RPG it all over our future.


Geocons: ...some of the most mentally and morally landlocked creatures I have ever met.


Theocons: Swaggering molesters of the Gospels.


Sixtyocons: Sixty, as in the aggressively oligophrenic end of the I.Q. pool. Also known as “the base”. What one I.Q. site describes as "Slow, simple, supervised” under Employment Options...


Cronyocons: “Brownie, you're doin’ a heck of a job.” -- Words that will ring down the ages as the perfect synthesis of the final, bankrupt moral cul-de-sac down which the Bush Administration has stampeded the GOP. Words that sum up the “Steal everything, blame Clinton and hide behind the dead” perversity of the Age of Bush as succinctly as “Give me liberty or give me death.” summed up the Age of Patriots.


Weeocons: Baby Republicans. ... Subsidized cowards with balls as big as Daddy’s Amex, and ego’s as wide as the holes in their souls.


R.E. Leeocons: Narcissistic Confederate-pride addicts bereft of any tangible knowledge of confederate history. Tend to get all rosy-cheeked and weepy and Kenny Rogers over a halcyon Southron Camelot that never was.


"On-My-Knee(s)”-o-cons -- by prof fate. Possibly "Any one of several thousand, lightly-closeted, self-hating, Gay Men who occupy positions of prominence in and have sworn an oath of slavish fealty to a certain political party that is intractably dedicated to their eradication."


"Chicken-of-the-Sea"-o-cons –- term and classification both by the much-missed LowerManhattanite. “...brave, bloody-fingered, typist-warriors who make the Bataan Death March every two hours, from the computer hutch to the fridge to replenish their Cheetoh and Pepsi rations.” (See also “Anybody-but-me”-o-cons, also from LowerManhattanite.)


“100%-Tax-Free”-o-cons, term and classification also both by the LowerManhattanite. “....who long for that great gettin' up mawnin' when they shall be free of taxes and the inner cities free of all those nasty "mud" people who'll just die off from the infrastructure being starved of revenue. After which, the 100%-Tax-Free-o-cons can move back in and reclaim all those beautiful corpse-filled brownstones, of course.”(See also “Money”-o-cons from Fletch...)


“Spending-spree”-o-cons, also from LowerManhattanite, whose verbal swag bag is always filled to overflowing. Classification by driftglass.

Alaska needs a Bridge to Nowhere.
I need jetpacks for my lawyers.
Jack Abramoff’s Cloak of Invisibility desperately needs re-tatting.

And the Emperor needs New Clothes. Again. For Jesus.

This is, of course, part of the larger, Grover Norquist Plan – lifted verbatim out of “1984” -- to so bleed the treasury white that there simply won’t be two dimes left to rub together. This will curtail spending on anything but Perpetual War and the massive, private security forces that will be necessary to quell the rioting mobs that will arise once the GOP is done accomplishing their real objectives; destroying the Middle Class and liquidating the last few thread of the social safety net.


“Thieve”-o-con is provided by justme -- who was on a roll -- which I changed to “Thievery”-o-con to squeak by my entirely arbitrary “eeo-ooh” rule.


justme also asks if "Rupee”-o-cons would be the outsourcers. Yes. Yes they would.


”Ennui”-o-cons: "The blind and uncaring ‘moderates’” also courtesy of justme.


”Nimby”-o-cons -- also from justme “NIMBY”-o-con :-) Now isn't that just plain funny?


“O-P-P”-o-cons – by antid_oto -- Original post pictured evil gremlin and Limited-Government-Fanatic-Except-In-Your-Bikini-Area Judge William Pryor, explaining why what you put in your puss-puss is his fucking business, and what toxins get dumped into your children's drinking water, isn't....

"O-P-P"-o-cons was one I didn’t get until contributor antid_oto explained: “Hum a few bars of the Jackson 5's "ABC" if this is still unclear."

And then I laughed and laughed. Oh fuck yeah.


Patrick McNee"-o-con -- by driftglass

The smart, worldly, tolerant, sexually competent and liberated, dashing Conservative who stands up for the Little Guy, is the undoing of Evildoers everywhere, and could talk Emma Peel out of her leather jodhpurs should the need arise

Like the, Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, the last know species of this kind of Conservative had not been seen in nature in decades and is widely presumed to have gone as extinct as the Orange-foot Pimpleback Pearlymussel, or has mutated into a Liberal and become George Clooney.

“Anony”-o-con -- by driftglass.

Every group has ‘em. The babbling dorks who just insist on being on your side and do you more harm than good. The conspicuously unbalanced Shouting Out Loud louts who thinks adding LOTS!!!!!!!!! Of!!!!!!!!!!!! Punctuation!!!!!!!!!!!!! makes them sound like less of an imbecile.

Does it??????????????????????

Sadly, no.

What Our Mr. Brooks also obviously does not realize that he fits smoothly into at least four of these categories.

That when it comes to the work of democracy, Mr. Brook' wretched Centrist claptrap is a bug, not a feature.