Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down

Caution: May cause bloating, mendacity and uncontrollable Vice Presidential leakage...

On Fox...Reverend Joseph Lowery vs. GOP pet gerbil, Ron Christie…but not really. Of course, if Fox were truly Fair and Balanced, there would be two of Christie and 98 of the good Reverend to demonstrate the statistical reality of overwhelming contempt with which the GOP is held by African Americans.

And of course Fox wasn’t going to have them debate each other and risk watching the good Reverend dispatch another one of the “Fo’ Rent Two-Percent” in a cloud of foppish Urkel fluff, because this is how the good Reverend carries himself into battle (transcript via the Fox site here)

WALLACE: Reverend, here the president came to the funeral to pay tribute to Mrs. King. Was that the right time to criticize his policies?

LOWERY: Well, you know, I'm certain that President Bush is wise enough to know that when he comes to the funeral of a civil rights icon like Mrs. King that he's going to hear about the issues around which she gave her life.

And she was an advocate for peace. She was a strong proponent of racial justice and elimination of poverty. And how do you celebrate her life without mentioning those issues which relate to public policy? Maybe President Bush, the senior, the father, struck the right note when he said he'd never seen anything like that before, the cultural divide in our own time.

Rosa Parks' funeral had more discussion of public policy than did Mrs. King, but, of course, the president wasn't there. Could I read you an excerpt from a funeral in 1963? Four little girls were killed in a church in Birmingham. Three of them were buried at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.

Listen to these words. "These little girls have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right wing Republicans."

WALLACE: And who said that, sir?

LOWERY: The eulogist was Martin Luther King, Junior.

At which point, if I were making this movie, Wallace would have started to slag like the critters in the last reel of “Devil’s Rain”...

...screaming, “It burns. It burns!” until he’d melted into a little puddle of stink.

But alas, I’m not in charge of casting, so there was no actual debate -- which would have been vastly entertaining -- because Fox doesn’t do “Truth”.

Bad for business.

Fox does what good trollops do; tell the trick he’s a manly, manly stud full of all-night luvin’! The mouthbreathers who actually watch Fox for “News” desperately want to believe that there are Sekrit Negro Legions who are really just Republicans trapped in the wrong skin, and who will whisper to them that it’s OK to hang with racists.

Which is where the Magic of Teevee comes in.

By juxtaposing in time and seating arrangements an actual leader like Reverend Joseph Lowery with neutered Bush Shar Pei like Christie, they can perpetuate the myth that there are actually two sides to this discussion, and soothe the tiny, twitchy, fevered brains of their target demographic.

This “Army of Ones” strategy by the GOP always sickens and saddens me.

It is no mystery that you can always find people who – for reasons of self-loathing, or ego, or thirty pieces of silver – will gladly sell out the group that their owners have hired them to “represent". You can always find a Christie who will perkily knob a GOP party line that has been an unalloyed disaster for African Americans. You can always find a Malkin to trance-channel for the Klan and say what her White male patrons dare not, and an Andrew Sullivan to merrily pipe up that the Party dedicated to his extinction is just misunderstood.

In the end, of course, this strategy of papering over the hate at the heart of the GOP with a rainbow-onionskin of diversity says nothing about the GOP other than you can always buy a kapo if you need one. And that the Party of Lincoln is still desperate to reassure its Southern Strategy Soldiers that the queers and darkies and kikes and gooks that they hate so profoundly somehow really wuuuuv them in return.

Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes bat the Fox house "liberals" around like cats working rubber mice. Fred Barnes whinging that the Dems are a buncha handwringers when it comes Luvin' Murrica! Then Mara Liasson joins in and whines about the dangers of Dems leading with their “civil liberties chin”.

Then Republican stooge Chris Matthews asks Republican mouthpiece Bill Kristol to opine…

…about what Democrats can do to counterpunch the GOP effectively.

Bwahaha! A pickpocket and his spotter "advising" citizens to keep their money safe by tying it up with yarn and dragging it along ten feet behind them.

And yet why do I get a Powerful Mental Picture of Bob Schrum leaping out of his snuggle sack, crouching in front of his teevee in his saggy, gray underpants, with the stub of a pencil in hand, taking down every single fucking word Bill Kristol says.

Snickering aloud, “Man, this stuff is gold!”

Everywhere else it’s: Condi! Condi can you hear me! Condi can you feel me!


Face the Nation – Condi. Then Dr. Dean, and a blast of fresh air.

Dean: Defense? Are you kidding me? Bush has been a complete pussy on defense. He’s fucked everything up he's ever touched.

Dean: On Dodd’s complaints of Demo-laryngitis. No. That’s wrong. We have not lost our voice. Here’s our agenda – boom, boom, boom.

Dean: GOP running on national security? Are you shitting me? The Vice President might not be the Vice President very much longer. These people leak secrets and imperil our security for political kicks. If the charges Scooter Libby has leveled are true, Dick Cheney must go. Period.

Dean: Dick Cheney -- Worst VP since Aaron Burr.

Dean: Hillary? Angry? Well, Senator Clinton has said a number of things about Dubya that are true and which Ken Mehlman finds inconvenient, so what do you expect?

Dean gets it. Simple, clear, declarative. These people are liars. These people are reckless with our safety. These people are corrupt beyond measure. Why would anyone ever believe another word these people say?


This Week… -- Lynn Swann. Running for the J.C. Watts “I Will Change The GOP” Chair.

I Don’t Care.

Well best of luck in your future endeavors, Lynn, and since today Billy Kristol feels free to dole out wisdom to Dems, let me return the favor and give you a head's up about your Party of Choice: you'll wanna be careful about the bigots who are doing the play-calling.

Hot route!

Go long. No, longer. No, looooonger. Yeah, that’s it. Hot route! Keep going. Keep running. Don’t worry; we’ll toss you the ball. Some day. Just keeeeeep going.

Everyone wave bye-bye to Swann as he disappears over what remains over the North Polar icecap, still screaming, “C'mon guys! I’m ooooooooooopen!” to men who loath and laugh at him.

Meet the Press…-- Senator Pat Roberts and Former Senator Tom Daschle …Congresswoman Jane Harman…Congressman Pete Hoekstra. In which the term “hot pursuit’ is treated like a $2 whore in the alley behind a College Republican Stein Hoist.

Leftovers. Reheated, rehashed, regurgitated. A long and winding technical discussion about carts and horses and which comes first interlaced with the Pat Roberts “GOP Pity Party”.

The GOP rolls out more smoke machines and weirdly shaped trial balloons than a Led Zepplin/Pink Floyd geezers-of-rock tour, but it comes down to this: we’re gonna throw up a million half-assed lies and nonsense. Fill the air with chafe and decoys, and hope you get preoccupied chasing shadows and split hairs rather that coming straight at us through our feculent fog.

Exactly like Iraq’s Mighty Morphin’ Casus Belli, the GOP has shifted to desperate defense disguised as blustery offense. Keep playing Follow The Bouncing Rationale, and speak your drivel in a tone of prissy, outraged impatience. A “How dare you question our Dear Leader” whine, which as of today goes a little something like this…

1. The Preznit has the authority to kick a kitty through a box fan if he fucking well wants to.

2. The law says the Preznit has the authority to kick a kitty through a box fan if he fucking well wants to.

3. The Preznit doesn’t need a law! He has become a Being of Pure Partisan Energy! He has risen to a whole new level of Political Evolution. Or Political Intelligent Design -- and we’ll get right on investigating failure of Iraqi Intelligent Design so climb down off my God Damned back, Daschle! He has Ascended to a Meta Constitutional State and has had his authority to kick a kitty through a box fan if he fucking well wants to vouchsafed to him by God Almighty and the ghost of Harry Truman , so leave him alone!

4. The law says the Preznit has the authority set aside the law that says he can’t kick a kitty through a box fan if he fucking well wants to…and then go Full Garo Yepremian on it’s feline ass.

5. Roosevelt did it!

6. The Prezit already came to Congress and told them he was gonna commence to kickin’ kitties through a box fan. If they had a problem, they shoulda spoken up and called him out.

7. If someone does speak up and call the Preznit out on his Magic Imperial Power to kick a kitty through a box fan if he fucking well wants to, they’re breaking three different laws and should be investigated. Maybe jailed.

8. So Congresscritters should have broken the law…in order to safeguard the law…even though the have no authority to do so…seeing as how they are not Ascended Meta Constitutional Beings of Pure Partisan Energy.

9. And this whole thing is moot anyway, ‘cause it’s a “Hot Pursuit” dealie.

(Sooo…after four years, we’re still in fucking “Hot Pursuit”? Really? Because here’s the definition of Hot Pursuit from this site with emphasis added…

"An exception to the general rule that a police officer needs an arrest warrant before he can enter a home to make an arrest. If a felony has just occurred and an officer has chased a suspect to a private house, the officer can forcefully enter the house in order to prevent the suspect from escaping or hiding or destroying evidence."

Just so we're crystal clear on this, 1,615 days have now elapsed since September 11th, 2001.

Longer than the entire American involvement in WWII** (Thanks to my anon pal from Down Under catching and correcting my parochial error.)

Longer that the entire American Civil War.

Fox’s “24” is what a fictional Hot Pursuit on King Kong steroids looks like.

1,615 days is 38,760 episodes of “24”.

Maybe the Senator wants to look up some of the bigger words before he uses them in a sentence, because after 38,760 episodes of “24”, Bin Laden walks free and easy in the wilds of Pakistan because, as Dubya says, "I don't think about him much anymore" and every day our military is eaten alive in Iraq, and our presence there breeds more terrorists because of the lies this Administration told and continues to tell, every day, in the face of overwhelming evidence that they have sold this nation down the river.

How do they continue to get away with it?

Because Republicans like Pat Roberts will always put the good of his Party ahead of the good of the country. Men like him will always find a way to rationalize away his President using the Constitution as ass-floss.

Anyway…)


10. Magic Imperial Authority. Kitty. Box fan.

Over on WGN….Cartoon “Liberty Kids”. This week: Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin. Sad when cartoons for 11-years-olds are more deeply interested and highly focused on liberty than Republican lawmakers.

The Whistleblower Law pops now and again.

Congressman Hoekstra makes it absolutely clear that whistleblowers do NOT have the authorization to just set aside a law that they don’t like it. The law is clear. The limits on their actions are clear. It’s about the supremacy of the law, baby.

Of course, nine seconds earlier, the same people were arguing that the President has every right to step around any law he wants to.

Roberts gets asked about having an investigation about the NSA problems and snaps back with – I kid you not -- this (more or less): “My GOD! How many investigations have we had already. If we investigate the NSA, that’s shooting the messenger. I have visited them. They’re good, hard workin’ ‘Murricans.”

At one point, Roberts breaks out a little bottle and shakes it and says (more or less), “These are memory pills. I take them every day. Maybe we should all take them so we can all remember what really happened.”

But if you TiVo the moment…

…and zoom in on the bottle, it clearly reads:

“Crazy Pills – Take four a day with meal and gin to keep spouting Administration lies without your head exploding. May cause drowsiness. Hypocrisy. Forked-tonguedness. Tingling in Religious Extremities. Anal leakage. Do not operate the Constitution while using this product. If a raging hard-on for a fascist state persists for more that one election cycle, consult a physician. Do not rely on the Remote Diagnostic Wizardry of Billy Frist.”

Well, Senator, how about just keeping your own fucking promise to investigate intel “failures”.

At which point, Timmuh actually busts out the Paul Pillar article, and asks Tom Daschle if he’d change his vote now, if he knew then what he knows now.

Feh!

Daschle: I’m not going to revisit my vote. You know, Tim, we were promised over two years ago to have an investigation on the abuse of intel.

Roberts’ Crazy Pills kick in again. Fuck off, Daschle. We’re on this shit. We’ve talked to lots of people. There are lots of pages of stuff. Quit bugging me. I’m workin’ on it!

What’s it the proper response to this kind of foot-dragging? To this oily defense of the indefensible.

Simple.

These people are liars.

They have lied to us over and over again about matters of life and death.

They leak national security secrets to cover their lies.

They hide behind our soldiers to cover their lies.

They play on your fears -- as deliberately as any terrorist -- to cover their lies.

They smear honorable men and women to cover their lies.

They simple have no credibility on anything anymore.

So why would anyone believe anything they say?

Because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American, or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.