Here’s a riddle

that you’ve heard here before.

Q: “What would the first three words out of a Republican’s mouth be upon learning that George Bush was caught on video schtupping the family dog on the White House lawn, while throwing burning kittens at homeless veterans?”

A: B...b...but the Liberals!

Pick any random column by David Brooks or Tom Friedman, or a cross-section of conservative pundits on any given day when another GOPer has been caught doing what he aught’na.

And if, as is usually the case, there are no actual facts to support their idiot assertions…they’ll just make shit up.

As is the case here, via TPM…

In the bizarre AP piece I referenced below there's this surreal passage ...

The Abramoff investigation threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen members of Congress of both parties and Bush administration officials. Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients, has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is cooperating with prosecutors.

With the midterm elections 10 months away, Democrats have tried to link Abramoff to Republicans, the main recipients of his largesse.

At least half a dozen members of both parties.

That's quite a line. We're just on the outer edge of this investigation. And I'm certainly not willing to claim or predict that no Democrat, either in or out of Congress, will be taken down.

But to the best of my knowledge no credible claim has been made that any Democrat is even under investigation in the Abramoff scandal, let alone facing potential indictment. At least half a dozen Republicans have been so named in press reports, with varying degrees of specificity. The sentence is a plain statement of misinformation posing as news reportage.

Then comes the next line -- that Democrats are trying to link Abramoff with Republicans. This is like when Republicans tried to link James Carville to Democrats. Link him to Republicans? He's been a professional Republican and major GOP power-player for a quarter-century.

All the factual claims noted here in this article appear to be willful distortions, or statements with omissions so great as to be meant to confuse.

How can the public know what's happening in their government when the reporters of the news seem so bent on misleading them?

It is in matters like this the conservatives reveal themselves to be so hellbent on being “right”, that their lobotomy scars really show. Because being “right” to a conservative doesn’t mean what in means to you and me.

Being "right" to a GOPer doesn’t mean fidelity to the truth, or to the facts on the ground. This is a Party that still cannot collectively admit they fucked up in Iraq. Cannot admit, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that their President lied to them. Repeatedly. Wherever he is, he’s probably lying right now.

Cannot admit we’re losing in Iraq, and cannot admit that we will continue to lose in Iraq whether or not Dear Leader continues to play coy about coughing up any metric whatsoever for what “winning” might look like.

Could not and would not admit – despite overwhelming evidence – that Tom DeLay was a corrupt, amoral douchbag. And has been for years and years.

Because being “right” to a conservative means fidelity to Party and Dogma and Dear Leader…which have now become fused into a massive, misshapen lump of Cult of Personality. An in their minds, being even slightly off the reservation in any direction is cause for having hellfire rained down on you.

Thing is, they’re not very bright. They don’t have a lot of flea flickers in the ‘ol playbook if you know what I mean, so they keep it very simple.

Blame Clinton. Deny everything. When caught, whine “But the Liberals…”

Mind you, this is a Party that came to power, not on any programmatic platform, but on the premise that they were the Party of Good and God, and that Dems were irredeemably evil. It is the predicate they use to justify every excess, every slander, every lie, every Swiftboat. They must burn heretics and, lest the nation be made impure by gazing too long into Nancy Pelosi’s witchy eyes.

This is also the Party of Creationism, that still is pretty sure that Saddam planned 9/11 despite what all of those polls and newspapers say. These are people whose vision of “right” sinks not one, tiny anchor-bolt into reality at any point; all they have to keep their mingy souls warm at night is hate and doctrine. Republican Creed is their church, and George Bush their representative of God on Earth, and to this purely Stalinist vision of their party and its leader they bring the full weight of their wretched excuse for Christianity: Fundamentalism.

All discussions with Fundy’s begin and end with their smirking, unassailable, “Heaven’s Gate” certainty of the inerrant rightness of every single thing their cult leaders tell them…and that your degree of sinfulness is measured by how far from James Dobson’s vision of the Universe you have strayed.

The problem is, translating that kind of morally arteriosclerotic thinking about the Bible – where everyone is conveniently long dead – into modern politics can be tricky. Yes, the groundwork has been laid (after all, Fundies come pre-lobotomized with their “Asslicking Obedience to White Male Authority Figures Pounding Bibles” software pre-loaded) and baldfaced assertions of God’s intervention on the side of Dubya and against smelly hippies and braless chicks pops up again and again in wingnut rhetoric, but the problem still remains: The biggest truncheon in the Fundy arsenal is The Miracle, and they can’t use it here.

Got a problem stain that just won’t come out? Is reality kicking the shit out of your fuctard vision of the Universe? From Galileo to germ theory to Evolution, the same pattern repeats itself. Rub a little "God Passed a Fucking Miracle" into the collar and cuffs. Rinse under Holy Water. And then attack and slander the proponents of fact-based thinking as heretics.

This is Page One of the Republican hymnal, but in the teevee age it becomes deucedly hard to say that the reason George Bush didn’t really lie about Iraqi nukes or terrorist training camps was…hey look…it’s a Fucking Miracle!!

…with a straight face, although now that the feculent MacArthur Park Cake the White House has been serving up as gospel for five years begins to show signs of melting in the Reign of King George I, Scott McClellan does seem to be on the verge of trying to slip in “Miraculous Intercession” as a possible alternate theory at every opportunity.

So since “Right” to them means adherence to Republican Dogma, and the Magic Lime-Away of divine intervention is denied to you when it comes to eliding over those pesky facts, what's a god-fearin' homunculi to do?

Simple. Just extract the essence of “miracle” and repackage it. And the essence of a miracle is really just a magic, unproveable trump card you play to win an argument that you are losing miserably on facts alone.

In this case, it’s the assertion that there is some “Hard left” or “Extreme left” in politics that somehow always manages to balance out the wingnut right. It is the ludicrous assertion made by the self-conscious apologists for the ruling junta that their asses are not hanging waaaay out in Wingnut country, but that they are safely nestled in their Mythical Center.

How can you tell?

Because on Mondays, Wednedays and Fridays, they rail on the Democrats for having no ideas. For only being negative (Partially guilty as charged. We’re against having criminal run our country. Against having liars and plutocrats dupe us into war. Against having cronies and frat reach-around buddies run vital government and letting whole cities die. So sue me) and having nothing to propose (Uh, how about NOT having criminals run our country? NOT having liars and plutocrats make foreign policy? How about leaving the running of the government to intelligent professionals and not whichever inbred twit one of Dubya's apple-polisherd shared a bong with back at dear, old Goldwater U?)

And yet miraculously, on Tuesdays and Thursdays – and always on Sunday mornings – GOP gears are ground to rust and shake as Democrats are suddenly repackaged as extreme, relentless Commie warriors, pushing some “far left agenda” that I have never seen or heard of.

Because the wear and tear on the knees and gums that comes from being the crack-whores of journalism like BoBo or Andy Sullivan is starting to show on their faces, and they desperately want to believe that they’ve been servicing heroes and they're not just hirelings, glory holing Jack Abramoff’s client list at a cocktail party for $2 a throw and all the shrimp they can pocket.

They want to tell themselves they haven’t been plying their trade in a Tidal Basin alley at 3:00 a.m….so they close their eyes and wish away the Fundy or wingnut or fat lobbyist they’re going down on and go to their Happy Place.

Their Safe Place.

Where clients don’t wipe themselves off on their faces when they’re done, throw a couple of bucks at them, and walk away laughing.

Their Warm and Snuggly Imaginary Center where they do their thing on satin sheets with ideological soul mates who love them.

And where Democrats are somehow, magically, miraculously, perfectly, equally and oppositely to blame for those open, running sores that their pancake makeup doesn’t cover up so good any more.