The Gingrich Rules, Ctd

Remain in effect.

Regular readers will already be familiar with the Gingrich Rules to the point of tedium:

In the game of professional punditry there also clearly exists a special set of rules designed with one person on mind.  Or, rather, one sort of person: Conservatism's parade of bomb-throwing, hate-mongering, race-baiting bottom feeders.  That breed which makes their daily bread from grifting the Pig People by generating an endless flood of books, magazine articles, broadcasts, speeches and videos all telling the GOP base over and over again that their bigotries are noble and their paranoia is patriotic. 

Of course, part of the downside of wallowing in the wingnut sewer and trafficking in slander and lies is that, sooner or later, you become a toxic mess.  Your stink becomes unacceptable to the general public, which s where the Sunday morning talk shows -- the Mouse Circus -- comes in.   Because despite having long ago devolved into a sinkhole of Beltway centrist twaddle, it is still viewed by altogether too many people as a bastion of Very Serious people -- it's the strip-mall of political opinion where casual shoppers go to feel smart and validated.

And so a bargain is struck; the bottom feeders deliver a temporary hike in the only thing these show's owners really care about -- audience share -- and, in exchange for being teevee friendly and keeping the worst of their batshit crazy on a leash for a few minutes, their Mouse Circus deburrs the bottom feeders' public image, replates and burnishes their credibility and temporarily transfuses them with Seriousness, which can then be redeemed at ten times its face value back among the Pig People.

And in the key to that bargain we find "The Gingrich Rules":

 

an agreement that the moderator will never, ever ask the bomb-throwing, hate-mongering, race-baiting goon sitting directly across from them a single question about their bomb-throwing, hate-mongering or race-baiting activities.  Instead they will be represented to the public merely as a Conservative commentator or talk radio host or pundit who, at worst, might be known for some "controversial" opinions, which the moderator will never bother to explicate. 

This week -- once again in fulfillment of prophecy -- the Definer Of Civilization's Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces) will slither back out of the sewer to join such first order thinkers as (oh my crap-shooting Jesus) Tom Friedman and Carly Fiorina on David Gregory's Sunday Morning freakshow.

I don't know how many dead hookers one would have to have helped David Gregory bury to pile up the kind of Villager Clout Points necessary to buy a lying grifter like Gingrich a permanent, all-access, Beltway Wonka Golden Ticket, but I'm guessing that it is a value not usually found in nature outside of the secret numbers Willard Romney's army of demon accountants use to conjure away his United States federal tax burden.

If you run into Mr. Gregory, ask him from me how he can live with himself, because that one just beats the Hell out of me.

He Wants You To Want Him

Where are the tax returns Willard?

Don't give a good god-damn about another word out of the mouth holes of any of your hirelings until you show me your tax returns.

Professional Left Podcast #143

“I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle."  

-- Alfred Hitchcock

Special thanks to my wife, the sublime Blue Gal, who battled the clock and raging Rigellian fever to get this out today!

Links:

• The NYT covers Mitt's Tax Returns
• Richard and Phillip fence:

 

Da' money goes here:

Coming Soon:

"The Bar-Stools of Madison County"

Upon reflection, I must admit that Mr. Eastwood summed up the GOP base flawlessly:  a cranky old white man yelling at an imaginary President about fictional problems.


After all, these are the same idiots who fell for this baloney cannon.



Twice.

And now just wish-wish-wish it all away....

Dotty Harry

Rumor has it that Clint Eastwood apparently thought the most opportune time to begin live read-throughs of his one-man show -- "Crazy Uncle Liberty Reads His Emails From The Internets!" -- was onstage, during prime-time on the biggest night of Willard Romney's political life.

Rumor also has it that, in exchange for Mr. Eastwood's addled, meandering "endorsement", Team Romney has agreed to change its campaign slogan to "Deserve's Got Nothing To Do With It."

So while I must admit to a nostalgic preference for Mr. Stacy Keach's original interpretation of this material,



bravo to you, Mr. Eastwood, for giving him a long, rambling, incoherent run for his money.

Yesterday, upon a chair
Clint met a man who wasn’t there
How sad it is that Rowdy Yates
Has ended up as Orly Taitz...

The Democratic People's Republic of Conservatism

Last night as I was fighting off the last, clingy remnants of what appears to have been Rigellian Fever, and BG and I were otherwise rushing about trying to manage another midweek homework/ dinner/ shower/ bedtime-story traffic jam, my wife stopped dead in her tracks in front of the teevee just as Paul Ryan was stem-winding his bare-assed falsehood about the U.S. credit downgrade:

"Oh Jesus,"she said. "You mean they're really going to lie about that too?"

"Of course they are," I said. "After all, once you've trained your base to believe anything, why the Hell not just lie about everything? They're North Korea."

"They are," she said sadly. "They really are."

From inventing "welfare queens" and "young bucks" out of the raw material of their bigoted paranoia, to hiding their pig-ignorant, Limbaugh-loving Base in plain sight by strapping funny hats on their heads, calling them a "tea party" and claiming that they had never heard of George W. Bush, the strategy of bald-faced, Orwellian lying is one that the GOP been battle-testing and tweaking for 30 years.  

And with Paul Ryan's convention speech, the GOP has shown that it is determined to do what it always does in a crisis: double down and down and down on the lying.



Last night, on the biggest national stage he has yet occupied, Paul Ryan fully re-invested the Romney/Ryan ticket in Karl Rove's strategic vision of a Party that has thrown off the shackles of factual reality and now propels itself entirely by the internal combustion of its own fairy tales, medieval values and rapacious ideology:

Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech and His Web of Lies 

by Michael Tomasky Aug 30, 2012

Paul Ryan pushed American politics into new territory with his convention speech, effectively daring Democrats and the media to call him out on his string of blatant falsehoods.

It just boggles the mind to imagine how Paul Ryan can stand up there and lash Barack Obama for abandoning Bowles-Simpson when he did exactly that himself. Or for taking $716 billion out of Medicare that Ryan’s own budget also removes from Medicare. Or try to blame him for the closing of a GM plant that actually closed while George W. Bush was president. Those three lies are just the beginning of a cavalcade that followed. I can’t in clear conscience call such a speech “good” or “effective.” But I will acknowledge that Ryan can spin the goods like nobody’s business...

A strategy which, despite skyrocketing deficits, a suffocating middle class, a war birthed in lies and spiraling into catastrophe, and a barely literate debate performances by George W. Bush, worked like fucking Spanish Fly with magic leprechaun sprinkles in 2004.

It worked because while Democrats were busy being indignant and incredulous that anyone in their right mind could believe a word that the Swiftboat Liars and the architects of the Iraqi Debacle said, the Republicans were busy stealing a march from them among the dolts at the swampy end of the "Undecided" gene pool: a march from which the Kerry campaign never recovered.

Which is why this time around anyone who has lived through the depraved decades of the Reagan Revolution and the Age of Bush and who has watched the Party of Personal Responsibility get away with 100% pure, unstepped-on Orwellian crack like this --

 

-- and this --

-- and this --

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove):

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

-- and this --

“Not intended to be a factual statement,” the comment made by a spokesperson for Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and transformed by comedian Stephen Colbert into a pop culture meme has come nearly full circle, as Democrats have begun to use the phrase on the Senate floor.    

-- has no business being taken by surprise by a Republican candidate for Vice President who gets up on the biggest stage of his life and --  in front of tens of millions of his fellow citizens -- lies as easily and unself-consciously as a dog licking its ass.

This is who they are now.  This is all they are now.  And the reason it might very well work this time even though we can see it coming right down Michigan Avenue is that the Republican system of bald-faced, pathological lying requires only two moving parts:  first, a Party that, top to bottom, has gone fully sociopathic and will lie about anything, any time without batting an eye, and second, a complicit, enabling Centrist media which categorically refuse to call them on their lying.

That first group -- the Party base -- is a cultural dead-loss: they've been stuck on stupid and bigoted for decades and, as I have said many times before, at this point they ain't gonna let nobody turn them 'round.

As to the second group...well the astute reader probably figured a long time ago why I devote so much of my meager firepower to Centrists:

...the Pig People would be nothing but a minor nuisance -- a boil on the ass of democracy -- without their  Centrists who keep the "Both Sides Do It" spider hole well-furnished and open for business.  Pound for pound, Centrism is the biggest and most debilitating lie in American politics bar none.  It is the Big Lie that makes all the little lies possible, which is why I focus so hard on those who traffic in it.  They are the ones most vulnerable to and terrified of being called out in public.  They are the ones we must run out of the media on a rail.

Think Progress has a fast rundown on the many exciting ways our Centrist, enabling media has invented to weasel out of performing its most basic public service of telling the truth and calling a liar a liar:

How The Media Soft-Plays Paul Ryan’s Lies: ‘Factual Shortcuts,’ ‘Perceived Inaccuracies,’ ‘Questionable Claims’

By Zack Beauchamp on Aug 30, 2012

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) speech to the Republican National Convention last night was chock-full of bald-faced lies. For example, Ryan blamed the Obama for S&P’s downgrade of our credit rating (despite the fact that S&P blamed GOP policies) and blasted Obama for failing to heed the Bowles-Simpson debt commission (which Ryan torpedoed). Yet political reporters covering the speech have, in many cases, been curiously reticent to call Ryan’s lies what they are. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of the euphemisms used in place of “lie” to describe Ryan’s falsehoods...

Without their Centrist enablers by their side, the Pig People fail.  Miserably.

With their Centrist enablers by their side, they may well succeed.

And in the end the only way the enabling Centrist parasites can ever be pried away from their Pig People hosts is to visit such a relentless and unholy amount of professional pain on their heads that they are either forced to quit lying or are forced to lose their gigs in "respectable" media and have to fight with Greta Van Sustern for table scraps at Fox News.

This time around, it's really that simple.

Trying to Stop Conservatives with Graphs and Logic

Is like trying to stop a tank with a smile and a pitcher of lemonade.

Stupid Shit David Frum Says, Ctd.

"If we've learned anything from this campaign, it is the supreme overarching importance to Republicans of tax reduction. The current proposal is to make permanent the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, and then go further with an additional cut to a maximum top rate of 28%. 

"Of course, George W. Bush cut taxes while mounting a very aggressive foreign policy. But here's the difference: over the past five years, the Republicans voting base of older voters has suddenly become acutely conscious that today's deficit implies tomorrow's tax increase."

-- David Frum, 06/29/12

Mr. Frum knows damn well that what he is saying is just bullshit.  That when he says:

"...over the past five years, the Republicans voting base of older voters has suddenly become acutely conscious that today's deficit..."

What he means is:

"...since the black Democrat took the oath of office, the salivating wingnut mob has suddenly become acutely aware that "deficits" are a thing they can use to beat up on the Kenyan Usurper..."

Mr. Frum knows full well that the average GOP base voter never gave a shit "deficits" before Barack Obama because president any more than they gave a shit about the crippling Reagan/Bush deficits until Bill Clinton was sworn in.

He also knows that once a President Romney starts a few wars, screws the middle class a little more and fucks over a few million poor people,  the lumpen Base will crawl right back into their Fox News comas until the next time another bogeyman needs to be attacked.

Athenae Is Very Shrill

From First Draft:

Making You Inferior With Your Explicit Consent

This, precisely: 

An attendee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday allegedly threw nuts at a black camerawoman working for CNN and said “This is how we feed animals” before being removed from the convention, a network official confirmed to TPM.

It's not just about the racism, though I don't think they'd have used the word "animal" to refer to a white crew. It's about a media culture that for 30 years now has heard from the right wing in in this country that it should be ashamed of itself and has loudly and resoundingly agreed. 

It's what you get when you take somebody who says the New York Times building should be blown up, and put her on the cover of a magazine because she's influential and controversial and maybe hey, she's just kidding around!

It's what you get when you hire people as your commentators and consultants who think urinating on corpses is hilarious, and call Supreme Court justices "goat-fucking child molester"s.

It's what you get when you pay sex tourists with drug problems insane amounts of money to spend hours on the radio calling the president of the United States everything right up to the very edge of nigger, and then quote him as if he's a person whose opinion matters.

It's what you get when you invite people on the air who hate you. Who hate what you do. Who hate what you stand for. Who hate everything you are. Who say, out loud, that the world would be better off without you. Who think you're a detriment to society. Who "joke" about killing you. 

... 

Read the whole thing here.

This shitaree of horrors didn't just happen out of the blue or via some act of God.  The reason Erick Erickson is drawing a CNN paycheck is because someone -- some individual person -- approved that decision.

The reason batshit shrikes like Ann Coulter are finding new, second homes at the Sunday Morning Mouse Circus is because individuals book people like her on those shows, apparently with the understanding that none of her embarrassingly bloodthirsty, fascist oinkings will ever be mentioned withing eye-shot of a camera. 

I lost interest in the fact of these people's existence a long time ago, but I have a deep and abiding interest in the people behind the scenes -- the bookers, producers and corporation executives -- who work tirelessly to mainstream their rightwing crazy.

It is terribly unfair that those people are not getting the attention they deserve for their diligent service to the wingnut cause.   

We need to know their names.  
We need to know their faces.  
We need to know their phone numbers and their email addresses.

We need to know how to reach to them directly and let them know what we think of the work they do.

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

We're here.

We're Liberal.

Get used to it.

First, the self-evidently not-stupid part:

This is indeed a party more extreme than any other right-of-center party in the West, a party whose social policy is dictated by the Bible, whose foreign policy is directed by the furthest-right faction in a foreign country (Israel), and whose economic policy is based on the notion that if you cut taxes massively and boost defense spending and only cut entitlements in twenty years, we can best tackle the debt.

But its candidate - who has ensured there is no daylight between him and the more rabid parts of his party - is neck and neck with a president still in the world of reality. The GOP's degeneration is its own fault;...

Now the very stupid part, with emphasis added for your enjoyment:

...but that such a degenerate, irresponsible, ideologically extreme party is now, I believe, the favorite to win this election is a reflection not on them, but on us.

What the fuck is this "us" business, Andrew?

"We" did not create this monster and set it loose. You did.

You and David Frum  And David Brooks.  You and Ann Coulter.  You and Hugh Hewitt.  You and Ronald Wilson Reagan.  You and Jerry Falwell.  You and Karl Rove.  You and Lee Atwater.  You and Rich Lowry.  You and Thomas Sowell.  You and Phyllis Schlafly.  You and Newton Leroy Gingrich.

You and tens of thousands of others, all pulling on your little oars, each contributing your time and energy to setting this horror in motion.

You. Fucking. People.

And then there were those other people, Andrew.  The Liberals.  The ones who have been putting their backs and hearts and wallets into reversing the course the Party of Reagan has been on for 40 years; to stopping this long, grotesque and premeditated slide into an emiserating Conservative Dark Ages of ignorance, superstition and fear.

The ones you used to call "fifth columnists" until the wind shifted and started blowing your shit back back down your throat.

And you know. in a way the social issues of 2012 bears some eerie similarities to the Iraq War circa 2004-2005.  Once again, the GOP has painted itself into an ideological corner that is violently at odds with reality.  Once again, to get out of the noose, the Party of Personal Responsibility resorts to and all-out campaign of slander and lies.  Once again the spineless press simply transcribes and transmits the slander and lies verbatim.  Once again, the roof they have thatched together out of pure fraud and bullshit works for awhile...and then starts to collapse right on top of their victory parade.

And then comes the Holy Shit moments as the scam falls apart.

Holy shit, there really were no WMD!

Holy shit, there really were no nukes, no mobile bio-labs, no secret bunkers, no anthrax-spraying drones!

Holy shit, they really are torturing people!

Holy shit, these incompetent fuckers really are did let an American city drown!

Holy shit, Terri Schiavo!

And a few people noticed -- far too few noticed -- that, holy shit, the Liberals were right all along.

Of course that particular revelation would fry every circuit in the Conservative skull so, unsurprisingly, after it all went sideways on you -- after it all blew up -- Conservatives like you simply wrote us out of the picture, didn't you?  Because we were a constant and horribly irritating reminder that we were right and had been right all along, and people like you were wrong and had been wrong all along.

And so we jump into the big, Hope and Change bobsled and sail in the Year of Our Lord, 2012, where we find ourselves waist deep in the sour backwash of three solid years of Republican slander, lies and sabotage. And as the media swings the Big National Spotlight down Tampa-way, people here and there are once again briefly popping out of their political comas to discover...

Holy shit, they really are bigots!

Holy shit, they really do think the Earth is 6,000 years old!

Holy shit, they really still listen to Rush Fucking Limbaugh!

Holy shit, they really do hate science!

Holy shit, they really do think woman are chattel and vaginae are full of scary sorcery!

And again, a few people are noticing -- far too few -- that, holy shit, the Liberals were right all along.

This is a big deal for us Liberals because the default status of being a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America  is a little like being gay in Pat Buchanan's America: absolutely invisible most of the time, mocked and ridiculed the rest of the time.

As a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America, I am not permitted to exist except as a straw man projection of the fears and ignorance of others.  I am hauled out and punched around whenever some wingnut halfwit needs to prove his bona fides, or some douchbag Centrist needs to prop up the forever-collapsing walls of their Both Sides Are Equally Wrong cloister.  To be a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America means that I constantly have motives imputed to me that are simply lies.  It means that I am told --  emphatically told, every single day by every wingnut goon with a microphone -- that I believe all kinds of things that I do not believe and that no Liberal I have ever met believes.

The converse of all of this is that, as Liberals in Andrew Sullivan's America, neither you nor I will ever be given a chance to rebut any of this on a large scale, because to be a Liberal in Andrew Sullivan's America means that you are never allowed anywhere near that Big National Spotlight.

Because once in that  Big National Spotlight -- even for a moment -- there is always the risk that you might rudely point out that "we" are not the problem.

Because, as I explained to the well-meaning Bob Herbert back in 2008, there is no "we" anymore:  there are the people who have gotten everything fucking wrong, there are the people who have opposed the people who have gotten everything fucking wrong, and there are the people who are too lazy or foolish or cowardly to perceive the difference:

Dear Bob Herbert,

...I could not help but note that the technical term for people who tried to suggest any of [his very reasonable ideas about fixing our national problems] at any point over the last couple of decades was "Dirty America-hating Liberal".

A group roundly hated, ignored and demonized by the Real Murricans on the Right, and their enablers in the press.

And in November, while nearly 69 million of us surveyed eight years of debt, theft, blood and failure and ran screaming in the opposite direction, over 58 million of those Real Murricans looked at exactly the same shattered landscape and voted for “More Please, and with Extra Palin Sprinkles!”

Truth is, Bob, there is no “we” anymore; there are those of us who look at your laundry list as a reasonable assay of our challenges and changes…and there are the Pig People, their panderers, exploiters and ringleaders.

A major reason we are still at great peril, Bob, is not that nobody knows what the problems are, or even how to tackle them, but that Conservatism’s meaty thumb still rests heavily on the cultural scales.

Here is a belief system that has proven beyond any doubt to be a oligarch’s scam -- whose adherents are botched, cartoonish failures as citizens – and yet inexplicably continues to be treated with respect. Even deference. As if bleeding with leeches were still considered to be a legitimate substitute for heart surgery, or casting out demons was still discussed as a valid, competitive alternative to psychotherapy.

Failure by failure, lie by lie, after 30 years Conservatism deserves nothing but publicly mockery as a noxious witchbag of bad religion and bigotry it has always been, and yet when I flick past C-Span this evening, who do I see but George “Macaca” Allen…

...being fêted by the Heritage foundation…

...urping up one Conservative talking point after another

• Just lock criminals up longer instead of letting them out like Liberals wanna do.
• Burn more coal.
• Don’t listen to “pompous elites”.
• Global warming is a lie.
• Americans are not addicted to oil; Americans are addicted to freedom.
• Etc. ad nauseum

...and smiling that big, fatuous, shit-eatin’ good-ol’-boy grin that is ceremonially Dremeled onto the front of every wingnut politician and preacher’s skull they day their balls drop. 

...

Once the wingnuts are electorally neutered and driven into the political sewer, and once the Centrists who prop them up are collecting unemployment, then we can start discussing how "we" are going to get ourselves out of the troubles they got us into.

Once an accounting is made "we" can talk, but not a moment before.


 Postscript: This is also unintentionally revealing --

"It's Orwellian propaganda. Chris Matthews was righteously indignant yesterday about the revival of Atwaterism - but the real scandal is that a major campaign is running a race-baiting ad based on nothing."

re·viv·al (r-vvl)
n.
... 

2. A restoration to use, acceptance, activity, or vigor after a period of obscurity or quiescence.

Andrew, as a point of simple fact, you cannot "revive" something which has never gone away.

Neil Armstrong: Space Moocher

Just a quick reminder (especially to those tens of thousands of aerospace workers in the great state of Florida) that, according to official Republican Party doctrine, being the first human to set foot on the moon was not a real job.

But going on teevee and spewing GOP talking points  



is a real job.

And a very good job at that.

Because...Freedom!

Priebus!

Gets taken to the woodshed. 

Not to worry, though: Tom Brokaw was on-hand to try to limit the damage by throwing David Broder's mortal remains on the grenade.

What a hero.

One Small Death of a Man *

One giant death for mankind. 

One detail about Mr. Armstrong with which you may not be familiar comes from this Arthur Clarke "Playboy" interview with Ken Kelley, July 1986: 

On Neil Armstrong's statement, "That's one small step for man, one giant step for mankind"?: 'I took him up on that statement afterward, because he dropped out the "A." It was supposed to be "That's one small step for a man." He just fluffed it. When I talked with him about it later, he said, "That's what I thought I said, and that's what I meant to say."'

*  Thanks, Jack.  Too fast and too tired.

Then and Now

A few weeks ago, a podcast listener asked for a few, handy examples of where Liberals hand been right and Conservatives had been wrong.

We were happy to oblige with a few, and here's another.

In 1999 -- nearly 20 years after "...after Reagan had delivered the Conservative movement to the tender mercies of filth like Jerry Falwell" -- this was Andrew Sullivan's deeply held belief about the nature of Liberals, Conservatives, Teh Gay and, in passing, the plight of those poor, poor black Conservatives:

"[H.L. Mencken] reminds me of conservative friends who oppose almost every measure for homosexual equality yet genuinely delight in the company of their gay friends. It would be easier for me to think of them as haters, and on paper, perhaps, there is a good case that they are. But in real life, I know they are not. Some of them clearly harbor no real malice toward me or other homosexuals whatsoever.

"They are as hard to figure out as those liberal friends who support every gay rights measure they have ever heard of but do anything to avoid going into a gay bar with me. I have to ask myself in the same, frustrating kind of way: are they liberal bigots or bigoted liberals? Or are they neither bigots nor liberals, but merely people?

...

"So may other forms of minority loathing -- especially hatred within minorities. I'm sure that black conservatives like Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell have experienced their fair share of white racism. But I wonder whether it has ever reached the level of intensity of the hatred directed toward them by other blacks? In several years of being an openly gay writer and editor, I have experienced the gamut of responses to my sexual orientation. But I have only directly experienced articulated, passionate hate from other homosexuals. I have been accused over the years by other homosexuals of being a sellout, a hypocrite, a traitor, a sexist, a racist, a narcissist, a snob. I've been called selfish, callous, hateful, self-hating and malevolent. At a reading, a group of lesbian activists portrayed my face on a poster within the crossfires of a gun. Nothing from the religious right has come close to such vehemence.

"I am not complaining. No harm has ever come to me or my property, and much of the criticism is rooted in the legitimate expression of political differences. But the visceral tone and style of the gay criticism can only be described as hateful. It is designed to wound personally, and it often does. But its intensity comes in part, one senses, from the pain of being excluded for so long, of anger long restrained bubbling up and directing itself more aggressively toward an alleged traitor than an alleged enemy."

...

It is now 13 years later. Clarence Thomas has proven himself to be exactly the sort pliant wingnut cipher that the Left thought he would be (although outside of a Hunter Thompson novel that was never written, I don't know anyone who foresaw what a perfect caricature of a teabagging, drunk-dialing nutcase his lobbyist-wife would turn out to be) and Thomas Sowell has long since given up any pretense of seriousness, instead preferring to (predictably and profitably) embrace just about every batshit scrap of party-line nonsense that rolls off the Fox News/Hate Radio

 

assembly line.

It is now 13 years later.  And here is Mr. Sullivan's revised assessment of his Special Conservative Friends: those who, 13 years ago, some people might have mistaken for haters "on paper" but who, "in real life" Mr. Sullivan knew were not:

But [if Mitt Romney held the same positions on issues related to gay rights as President Obama] the bigots would flee. And without the bigots, there is no Republican majority. My long ago dreams that the GOP would end up where the Tories have on gay equality are ashes now. Bitter, tragic, unnecessary ashes.

Observe how effortlessly Mr. Sullivan referred to Thomas and Sowell and "the bigots" (and so many, many more)  as "conservatives" back when he believed they all had each other's back.  But now that the horde he used to run with and proudly appellate as "Conservative" have proven themselves to be exactly what the Liberals always said they were?



I am genuinely sorry that Mr. Sullivan's dreams ended up as ashes, but far from being "unnecessary", this outcome was inevitable. But before forgiveness comes atonement, and until I start to see a few less "I am the True Conservative and they're all posers!" columns and a few more -- or even one -- "Liberals were right and I was wrong" columns, expect no forgiveness from me.

I Will Answer Any Questions...

...except those related to abortion.

And Todd Akin.

And my years at Bain.

Also I will not be answering any questions about my family, my residences or my term as governor of Massachusetts.

Questions about my religion or my taxes are also off-limits, as are all questions about my vice presidential nominee's positions, my Party's  platform and the entire Bush Administration.

Also no questions about droughts.

Time To Dust This One Off Again

Not in the Mood?

"What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises - no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting."  

 -- Dune, "Gurney Halleck"

Professional Left Podcast #142

“You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave."   

-- Billie Holiday

Da' money goes here:

Surfing Squirrel

Gettin' it done!

Having read the schedule for the big convention next week, I see that there will be a "Birther" night and a "The U.N. is gonna take our guns away!" night and a "Women who are 'legitimately' raped don't get pregnant" night and a "Climate change is a Commie Hoax" night and even time carved out for a special tribute to all nine Black Republicans, but I can't figure out which night will be featuring speeches from last Republican President or Vice President of the United States?  

You remember, those two gentlemen who were re-elected in 2004 with more votes than any other Republican ticket in American history?  

Confusing!

Monkey Rodeos:

Everyone love 'em!

Many people think "Birth Certificate" and "Tax Returns" are equally controversial issues and wish we could just get past both them both.

Baby Hippos

So adorable!

Also Mr. Andrew Sullivan recently wrote some things that might or might not be strictly correct, but a seven million readers a month can't be wrong!

Baby Ducks!

Who doesn't like baby ducks?

Also Mr. David Brooks made several remarks today in a Big City newspaper that certainly has tongues wagging!

Kittehs!

Also Mr. Tom Friedman wrote a bunch of silly things in a Big City newspaper.

What a silly man!

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

"Sometimes it feels to me as if this campaign - with its entrenched support for both sides so dominant and the space for actual persuasion so minimal - is less a campaign than a cold civil war. Almost exactly along the same regional and racial lines as the real one."

-- Andrew Sullivan, August 23, 2012  discussing Judge John Head's loony, "Take up arms, citizens, cuz the Kenyan Usurper's gonna sell us all out to the U.N.!" comments.

"This campaign"?


Mr. Sullivan, meet Senator Jesse Helms.

"Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."  

-- Senator Jesse Helms, November 1994.

Mr. Sullivan, meet Governor George Wallace:

The children of the Traitor Confederacy have been this way forever, Mr. Sullivan, and they have been on the march since before you were in long pants.

You'd think this blindingly obvious and incredibly salient feature of American culture and history would be one of those "fact" thingies that someone whose job description is "Public Political Intellectualizing" and whose specialization is "American Conservatism" would have picked up on before going gray in the service of these thugs.

I Was There The Day

"Impactful" was invented by a barely-literate insurance company executive vice president who did not know the difference between "affect" and "effect" and was tired of looking stupid in front of the peons.

We peons all wept for the language of Shakespeare and the rise of the Confederacy of Dunces.

As for me, should be pretty obvious by now, I have no problem looking stupid, which is probably why I never grew up to become an insurance company executive vice president.

Hey speaking of looking stupid, since Andrew Sullivan no longer replies to my emails, I thought I'd recycle my last missive and maybe one of y'all would have better luck at eliciting a response.  Because as unkempt and non-insurance-company-executive-vice-presidentish as I might be, I think a raise a serious point -- one that makes Mr. Sullivan very uncomfortable by it's very nature: why shouldn't public media figures suffer tangible, professional consequence when they lie and/or fuck massively up in the execution of their jobs?  

Seems kind of hard to reconcile with Mr. Sullivan's sentiment that It is...

"...time we destroyed the archaic, corrupt, bloated, celebrity-marketing industry now known as publishing."

Of course, if  Mr. Sullivan were, say, a bricklayer or an insurance company executive vice president, I would never badger him for responses to issues like this.  But Mr. Sullivan isn't a bricklayer or an insurance company executive vice president; he makes a living as a public intellectual -- a Conservative public intellectual -- who prides himself on tackling those edgy topics that "Beltway insiders" are too afraid to touch.

Except, of course, for those edgy topics which might directly affect (see what I did there) his Conservative public intellectual credentials.

Anyway, here is my missive, which I sent in regards to Niall Ferguson's latest bedshitting episode...

Subject:  You wrote -- "He's right that calls for him to be fired are egregious and over-the-top."

In virtually any other profession, anyone who shit the bed as badly as Mr. Ferguson would be out on his ass by end-of-business.

So congratulations: in creating a special elite carve-out for your friend that exempts him from suffering any tangible consequences for his lies, you have managed to sound more like the typical Tory caricature of a hidebound, protectionist union goon than any actual union member I have dealt with over the years. 

Mr. Sullivan's email address is "andrew AT thedailybeast.com".

On the Subject of Turning Word Verification Off

Since shutting off Blogger word-verification ("captcha"), I have been getting spammed several dozen times a day. In addition to being a huge waste of my time, one of the downsides of this is that while slashing-and-burning my way through the spam comments, I'm pretty sure I have deleted at least one person's legitimate comment (something about "morning coffee" -- yes, I do read every single one of them and enjoy most of them :-) and possibly more than one.

This was inadvertent: as most regular readers know, I believe in keeping comments as open as possible and will let just about anything through that does not involve threats of violence, racist or antisemitic tirades about secret conspiracies, or spam.

Party of God Outraged

That their medieval, batshit ideas about science are distracting the media from discussing their medieval, batshit ideas about economics.

Perhaps it is time to remind our media that a certain group of traitorous, unAmerican, surrender-monkeys have been warning you assholes since forever about exactly what the Right had in mind and exactly how they were going about getting it.

For example, six and a half years ago (yes, Esquire Magazine, I have been on this beat for a long, long time), as he wandered around Washington D.C. rending his garments in stunned dumbfoundery that Republicans were behaving like Republicans, I carefully explained to David Fucking Brooks what was wrong with the GOP and how it could be fixed.

But did he listen?  Did he write?  Did he ever say "Thank You"?

Noooooo.

Here's a snip:

“Hey? What’s that ‘poo’ smell?” 

 

Bobo whines, having walked a million miles in a diarrhea-fedora and a pair of thigh-high dung-stilettos.

Behind the Great Wall of Time’s Select Dis, Bobo squats on his flat rock and muses over the Absolutely Shocking revelation that the Republican Party is run by, uh, Bad People.

Who knew?

Perhaps if he occasionally got up off his knees and bothered to look at who was paying the freight at the Party he was hired to strip, lap-dance and bareback?

Perhaps if used a 100-watt-bulb instead of a 20-watter in that dimly-lit booth he uses when he knobs his overlords he would have noticed at some point in the last thirty fucking years the True Face of the men who run his Party.

One bit of health advice though; If you stroke that pre-pubescent peachfuzz any harder, Brooksie, and pick at those microscopic nits any more fiercely, your chin’s gonna come right off.
...

But BoBo tricks himself out in “journalist” threads and goes paid-walkabout on PBS, NBC and in the pages of the NYT as such. And yet no one but a partisan propagandist as deep into the GOP swag bag as pocket lint could not have seen this [The Abramoff/DeLay Scandal] coming down the middle of Michigan Avenue at noon a mile away.

Abramoff and DeLay have both simply fulfilled the “other duties as assigned” small print of their chosen professions – bag-man/pimp/crime-boss and his symbiot; the fake-Christian political huckster/douchebag.

OTOH -- and as corny as it sounds -- BoBo betrayed his profession by deliberately refusing to notice the “alarum bell in the night” until it was booming at a thousand decibels from above the fold on the front page of his very own paper.)

...
"First, they need to hold new leadership elections. As Newt Gingrich and Vin Weber told me yesterday, Tom DeLay needs to take care of his own legal problems and give up the dream of returning as majority leader."

Wow. Turning to Newt Fucking Gingrich for advice on the de-sleazification of the Republican party? Wow. This is mockery-on-self-destruct-autopilot. It’s a target too fat and there’s no sport in it.

Like hunting legless mouse babies.

In a teacup.

With an RPG.

I have no words.

I just hope BoBo made him use a condom.

BoBo continues…

...
"But Republicans need to do more than bump DeLay. They need to put the entire leadership team up for a re-vote. That's because the real problem wasn't DeLay, it was DeLayism, the whole culture that merged K Street with the Hill, and held that raising money is the most important way to contribute to the team."

Driftglass Translation:

But the Real Problem with the White House isn’t Bush…its Bushism

But the real Problem with the Senate isn’t Bill Frist or Rick Santorum…its Fristitis and Santorosis.

But the Real Problem with the Entire Religious Right isn’t the slope-browed, knuckle-dragging likes of James Dobson or Phyllis Schlafly or Donald Wildmon or Jerry Falwell or the rest of the Christopaths who power your million-mile-long Electoral train packed to the rafters with an omnium-gatherum of morally diseased, Flag-swaddled Self Righteous Swine…it’s the DobsOnanism.

In other words, the fault, posits Dear Bobo, is not in the Party, but in some ineffable quality that just so happens to perfectly overlap every square inch of the Party.

He continues with a list of technical reforms… but one cannot help but notice that the sudden, late-life conscience growth spurt that Brooks now claims has him positively bursting pastel-togged-Hulk-like out of the seams of his flouncy Little Boy Pants, came only after the Maximum Lobbyist for Life – Jack Abramoff finally announced all over the front page of the NYT that he had flipped and was going to be a Big Ol’ Blabbermouth !
...

Only then did Brooksie the Ace Newshound pick up the faint and highly attenuated scent of a possible story goin’ on ‘round here.

Then Bobo ticks off a series of technical reforms that he suggests that the GOP should make in order to get back on track, ignoring the rather obvious fact that they are on track.

Looting the government…was the plan.

Leaving the poor to rot…was the plan.

Romping into Iraq for oil and plunder on a caravan of lies and at the expense of our nation’s blood and reputation…was the plan.

But to put across the Grover Norquist/Jerry Falwell vision of America as a lawless, oligarchic Jesusland they needed stooges and apologists…like you BoBo.

You, Brooksie, were the plan.

... 

These are the same people who have told us to our faces for three decades that Government Is The Problem. That everything from health to food to oil to torture to coal mines needs to be completely deregulated. That Social Security needs to be eliminated.

That government must be annihilated.

So, BoBo, why in the fuck would a party of looters be interested in oiling the hinges on the vault door?

But that isn’t what’s interesting here.

What’s interesting is, yet again, the Dog that Didn’t Bark in the Night.

What BoBo is NOT suggesting.

The farrago of moral decomposition and indefensibly wretched excess that is the woof and warp of the GOP has been allowed to metastasize to such a scope and scale and worm into the belly of the body politic to a deeper level than the likes of Jim Wright and Dan Rostenkowski ever fucking dreamed of for one reason.

Because your criminals hide behind Christ, Bobo.

It is no accident that shoulder-to-shoulder with a mob-wannabe thug like Abramoff stood pillars of the Christian Right like Tom DeLay and Ralph “Satan’s Babyfaced Fingerfood” Reed.

In the past, Democrats -- like anyone else -- can and have become corrupt, and can and have been punished for it.

Severely.

The thing that makes the Republican Party different is not the rot in their hearts – which is capacious – and their seething hatred of the Brown Poor – which they rationalize away into the mists of market theory.

No what makes them worse – lethally worse – is their Fundamentalist Ideology.

Period.

Because when you are lining your pockets with House postage stamps, you’re just a crook and we’re all sinners here. But when you believe that God Has Chosen Your Party…you can justify any excesses.

When you have grown besotted on the grotesque perversion of the teachings of Jesus that is Conservative Christian Fundamentalism – when you cast yourself as the righteous Christian Soldiers at war with the Evil Liberal Humanists – then all things are permitted.

When you wrap your dick in the Flag and the Bible, then you can fuck anyone and anything any way you like because you believe that God is on your side.

You can justify an illegal war.

You can justify torture.

You can justify murder.

You can justify shredding the Constitution.

You can justify demanding your fucktard superstition trump science.

You can justify impeaching my President for trivia and letting your President skate over treason.

You can justify blaming Columbine on condoms and teaching evolution.

You can justify bombing Family Planning Clinics.

You can justify lynching.

You can justify blaming 9/11 on gays and feminists and the ACLU.

You can justify blaming hurricanes on liberals.

You can justify assassination.

You can justify calling liberal judges a greater threat to America than Nazis and terrorists.

You can justify turning women back into the reproductive chattel of men.

And having swallowed all of those camels, you certainly won’t strain at a few gnats like graft, corruption, extortion, blackmail and all the rest…because all of these things are simply means to the ends of the Greater Glory of the Prince of Peace!

And your Party is the one that is so fucking Blessed and Highly Favored in His eyes, right?

Mr. Brooks, these people are the problem and these people run your party. And what the fuck kind of congenital cerebral malfunction do you have that you cannot see that?

Because one cannot help but also notice the glaring omission from your shopping list. No mention made of that one reform that would actually, structurally alter the carcinoma-based DNA from which the Modern GOP has been bred.

And it’s so easy.

Just dump the bigots, Bobo.

And tell the racists to hit the fucking bricks.

Stop the clown car and kick the science-hating, gay-bashing Christopaths to the curb.

Oh, but then you’d lose, wouldn’t you?

That’s the real dirty little secret behind all of this.

You know that if you really, actually flushed the scum of the Earth your Southern Strategists have so carefully cultivated down the drain, the Republican Party wouldn’t win another election – anywhere – for another generation.

And your Party of God and Used Car Salemen cannot accept that, which is why you will always have Abramoffs and DeLays and Ralph Reeds hag-riding the GOP.

You know it and, more importantly, they know it, which is why they own you.

They are the emergent and inevitable result of the hate-driven moral absolutism, racism and pathologically perverted variant of Christianity that is the bedrock of the Modern GOP. And as long as they are allowed to remain as the pillar of your Party, it will always end in tears...

We've been warning about this rough beast slouching ever closer for a long time, amigos.

A very long time.