Why I would watch monkeys reading Kleenex boxes

If Aaron Sorkin wrote the script

Ahhhh

Because there is nothing quite like that warm, Googlewhack glow.

And because I really wanna win that car!

"The only way I can lose this election

is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."
- Edwin W. Edwards.

Oh you mean there actually are live boys?

And both the Party of God’s Preceptor of the House and Morality Leader knew about it?

For weeks and weeks? And did absolutely nothing?

Well I'm sure no one could have anticipated the something something, so cue stirringly patriotic music. Preferably something brassy and violiny and urgent that Fox News plays under its B-Roll of “Operation Endless Clusterfuck: The Glory Years.”

Because in the Alternate Reality where criminals and perverts don’t run the government, the President is about to address the nation…

In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed. It has already been delivered by the American people.

...
Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

…
Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who was the pervert that solicited sex from this page? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated Republican organizations known as al NAMBLA. They are the same Republicans who stood by the Rotting Corpse of Tom DeLay; the same Republicans who stood by while Jack Abramoff looted and perverted the American government.

Al NAMBLA is to Republican Powerbrokering what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not merely making money; its goal is remaking the world -- and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

Al NAMBLA practices a fringe form of Biblical extremism that has been rejected by Christian scholars and the vast majority of Christian ministers and pastors -- a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Jesus. The Al NAMBLA directive commands them to impute the courage, morality, constancy and integrity of all non-Fundamentalist Republican, and makes no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children.

This group and their leaders -- men named Karl Rove, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell -- are linked to many other organizations, including Focus on the Family and the Council of Conservative Citizens. There are thousands of these Republican cells in all 50 States. They are recruited from campuses and churches and brought to Republican Fundraisers and Think Tanks in places like Washington and Arkansas and Florida, where they are trained in the tactics of lying and betrayal.

They are sent back to their homes or to Congress to plot evil and destruction.

The leadership of al Al NAMBLA has great influence in Red State America and supports the Fundamentalist regime in controlling most of that part of the country. In training films “Jesus Camp”, we see al NAMBLA’s vision for the world.

Women are not allowed to control their own bodies. You can be jailed and tortured forever without trial. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be Swiftboated in America if he speaks the truth.

Real America respects the people of Red States -- after all, we are currently its largest source of federal aid -- but we condemn the House Republican regime. It is not only deliberately dumbing-down its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying degenerates. By aiding and abetting perverts, the House Republican regime is, in effect, molesting minors.

“Allegedly.”

And tonight, the Real United States of America makes the following demands on the House Republicans: Deliver to authorities all the leaders of al NAMBLA who hide in your Party. Release all e-mail, transcripts, diaries and other testimonies related to sexual predation of children, including Congressional pages, you have hidden. Protect minor children in your Congress. Close immediately and permanently every Christian Madrass in Jebusland, and hand over every Al NAMBLA member, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The House Republican regime must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the perverts, or they will share in their fate.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Christians throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Christ blaspheme the name of Christ. The Republicans are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Christianity itself. The enemy of America is not our many Christians friends. Our enemy is a radical network of Fundamentalists, and every government that supports them.

Our war on perverts begins with al NAMBLA, but it does not end there. It will not end until every Fundy Hate group has been found, stopped and defeated.

Real Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

These Republicans do what they to not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity against the Constitution, they hope that Real Americas grow fearful, retreating from their onslaught and forsaking our values.

Republicans hate us, because we stand in their way.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before.

They are the heirs of all the despicable ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life and the rule of law to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

…
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated voting. Americans should not expect one election, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic upsets, visible on TV, and local elections, secret even in success. We will starve Republicans of legitimacy, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue organizations that provide aid or safe haven to al NAMBLA and their ilk.

Every city, every county, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the House Republican degenerates. From this day forward, any organization that continues to harbor or support Conservative Fundamentalism will be regarded by the Real United States as a hostile regime.

These measures are essential. But the only way to defeat Conservative Fundamentalism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.

Many will be involved in this effort, from election judges to precinct workers to the school boards across this country that work the keep science and reason in the curriculum, and ignorant superstition out. All deserve our thanks, and all have our prayers.

…
This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

…
Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.

…
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Fellow citizens, we'll meet violence with patient justice -- assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.

Thank you.

Clarifying Update: If the text of this speech sounds familiar, it is an edited-and-regifted version of the speech Michael Gerson wrote for George Bush, delivered on September 20, 2001.

Back a million years ago when we were united and purposeful.

I though it would serve two useful ends: to show how ridiculously hypocritical the GOP Party of God sounds when they moralize about the evils of the Intolerant Fanatics of Faith, and to recall what we were -- for one, brief moment -- back before the Republican Party chose to hijack and pollute the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan advantage with Rovian lies, slanders and unabashed totalitarian struttings.

Back before Bush and Cheney chose to split our grieving nation like a meat axe through bread pudding.

How strange it is to remember that the Leader of the Empire of Fear once talked of "pluralism, tolerance and freedom" and normal people actually believed he was serious.

How sad it is to remember that the Torturer-in-Chief once called upon the nation to "fight for our principles" by living by them.

How grotesque and tragic it is to remember that the head of the Party of Falwell and Coulter once took to the national stage to denounce fringe and hateful religious extremists that have perverted the peaceful teachings of their faith's founder.

But then again the Dear Leader is a Republican, and in His Age -- the Age of Dubya -- one can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but one can no longer be both.

Malignant Twaddlism

Or: “Won’t you please stop sodomizing puppies, please!”

You know the old one about the prisoners who have told the same jokes so many times, they’re all numbered by now?

On his first night inside, the new guy hears cons yelling out numbers -- “72”, “51”, “93” and so forth -- and each time its followed by Big Laughs. His asks his cellmate, “What the hell?” and is told that the jokes are so old and often told that to save time they just assigned each one a number.

“Can I try?” he asks.

“Knock yourself out.”

“Three!” he shouts.

Dead silence.

“Three!” he shouts again, louder.

Still nothing.

His cellmate rolls his eyes, turns over and says, "You don't tell it right."

Well having a Conservative Spin Jokebook with only three, thin pages does have a distinct upside: When told properly, it is easy for stupid people to remember which slogan they are supposed to scream, and when.

The downside is that when the world is on fire and you’re standing in the spotlight you fought like hell to capture, alone, with a Jerry can of gasoline in one hand and a Zippo in the other, naked except for your “Arsonists do it In Flagrante” tee-shirt (that’s a freeble for you Latin junkies), you look increasingly ridiculous shrieking that there is no fire, and that fire isn’t so bad, and that, anyway, Ted Kennedy is sooooo fat.

Joke Number One: Deny everything. No matter how steeped in murder and ruin you are, deny that anything is wrong. Remember the more blood Conservatives spatter on their glasses, the rosier things look!

Joke Number Two: Blame the Liberals. Doesn’t matter what it is or how completely it is your own the policy that caused the disaster, when in doubt call Ted Kennedy fat and Nancy Pelosi crazy.

Joke Number Three: Run for the Imaginary Center. When your fuck-up is so total and catastrophic and clearly of your own making that myopics can see it from space, after failing to pin the blame on the very people who told you not to do what you did, sprint as fast as your little webbed feet will carry you towards the intersection of Lieberman Boulevard and Friedman Avenue in downtown Brooksylvania.

Here you will find the Magic Wingnut Haberdashery that will fit you out with that fine set of Emperor’s New Clothes of your dreams.

So if you have, say, mooshed a dozen puppies with a steamroller, Spin Number Three dictates you start immediately and violently declaiming that however objectively ridiculous your claim that puppy crushing is really just a Quick HoJo’s Drive Thru Stop on the way to a worldwide, Jeffersonian Democracy may be, that to your Right there is a tiny but slavering mob of loonies who want to torturer and kill a billion puppies just to be on the safe side (which is true), and to your Left there is a huge pack of Libertines who want to fuck those sassy puppies and maybe marry them (which isn't true)!

And that in the sad context of this terrible, titanic struggle between the Irrational, Pro-Puppy Genocide movement and the equally vile Make My Bitch My Wife movement, your little adventure in puppy-flattening is actually quite reasonable.

Of course, to give any of these Jokes the traction they need – to catapult that ol’ propaganda -- you need wide circulation, so thank God the New York Times’ enlightened editorial policies have given up on hiring from, say, a pool of many genuinely competent and gifted writers and instead simply endows certain column inches to certain breeds of writers like Cambridge endows the Lucasian Chair.

And occupying the Third-rate Hack Rightard Chair is Mr. David Brooks, who today is running gem of a riff on Joke Number Three.

And since Brooks resides behind the NYT Shield Wall, it would be inappropriate to copy the column in-toto. Also it would hurt my fingers.

However this bitter little sip from the NYT I purchased today sums up the whole of it quite adequately:

…

If we lived in a serious political culture, we’d be discussing what we’ve learned from Iraq and how to proceed. Instead, all of Washington is involved in a juvenile game of gotcha. Bill Clinton is fighting about what did or didn’t happen 10 years ago. The White House is still exaggerating the positive. Democratic senators purr like happy kittens as retired generals slam Donald Rumsfeld, and then stop up their ears when those same generals call for more troops and a longer war.

Please note: When Dems critique a Republican Administration for lying to get us into a war, treasonable behavior during the war, war profiteering, cowardice, incompetence, torture, murder, assorted other war crimes and breaches of the Constitution and the supine complicity of a Republican Congress that steadfastly refuses to investigate a single thing…it’s called “a juvenile game of gotcha.”

Please note: When Republican go after a Democratic Administration for a bad land deal and blowjobs, it demands seven years of unending hearings, tens of millions of dollars, a relentless, daily smear campaign in the MSM, and impeachment.

Of course, Bobo good and well knows this, but never let it be said that David Brooks ever let mere fact stand in the way of pandering to his tens of thousands of loyal fans on the Coward Right. Because while telling the truth saves lives, morally ugly people will always pay premium retail for their Conservative Mirror Mirror on the Wall who tells them that they are really fair, young and bee-you-tee-full.

But I digress.

...
Voters now confront a Republican Party that understands the breadth of the threat but has bungled the central campaign, and a Democratic Party that is quick to criticize but lacks an understanding of the jihadists and a strategy for confronting them.

Worse, more and more people are falling for the Grand Delusion — the notion that if we just leave the extremists alone, they will leave us alone. On the right, some believe that if we just stop this Wilsonian madness of trying to introduce democracy into the Arab world, we can return to an age of stability and balance. On the left, many people can’t seem to fathom an enemy the U.S. isn’t somehow responsible for. Others think the entire threat has been exaggerated by Karl Rove for the sake of political scaremongering.
...

There isn’t really any point in deconstructing this lie by lie because in this case the view of Bobo’s Majestic Mendacity Forest is much more instructive than any individual tree.

You will notice, however, that on the Right, merely “some believe” their pet fallacy, while on the Left, “Many people can’t seem to fathom…” while even more “others” think the threat is exaggerated (those “others” being putatively on the Left, since Right Wing Hateprop Minister Karl Rove is cited as the reason for the “other’s” disbelief.)

So when you math it out, using Bobo’s dissembling arithmetic, it magically turns out that there are a lots and lots and lots of people on the Left who either don’t take the threats to our nation seriously or don’t have any serious ideas on how to cope with them.

On the Right, the denial-driven are apparently a few straggling wretches who live with Pat Buchanan in a fully weaponized, "He Man/ Woman Haters" treehouse somewhere in PaleoConservative Never Never Land.

Which is kinda weird because I have never ever in all my fucking born days ever met any of these mysterious Lefties he is talking about, at least outside of a few nuts ratting around the exurbs of reality and a certain species of Veal Undergrads who don’t know anything about anything anyway.

And to give the Right some credit, I do not know many who have given up on the “Wilsonian madness of trying to introduce democracy into the Arab world”, just as long as we sitpulate that, in Wingtardian, “introduce democracy” means “bomb them to glass and then take a hammer to the glass”, and “the Arab world” means “any buncha fucking sand niggers who look at us funny and are sitting on a pot of oil”.

Because with these emendations made clear, most Bush Conservatives are totally down with that program.

The reason I bring this out is this.

Yesterday I was listening to Air America's Randi Rhodes take apart a Rightard caller piece by piece. Molecule by botched molecule. It was painful listening both because of how utterly he was being bitch slapped (Or are we calling that “Wallace Walloped” now?), and how utterly predictable the outcome turned out to be.

He came to her armed to the teeth with what he though was an arsenal of unassailable facts that bulwarked his idiotic opinions, and the charming and delightful Ms. Rhodes just flattened this fucker.

Then he started ripping into Cindy Sheehan’s life and family, except it just so happened that Ms. Rhodes had Ms. Sheehan online at that exact moment and Casey’s Mom herself was able to very gently, very firmly debunk one hateful, ludicrous lie after another.

Of course, in the end, none of it made the slightest difference to Mr. Angry White Moron. He came to the party armed with his raging ignorance and certitudes that had been pre-cooked, pre-chewed, pre-digested and then shit straight into his hollow, Sakrete head by Dear Leader’s propaganda ministers.

And thus he left: A bundle of rage and stupid and conviction that he had actually “won” and that he had never heard anything but “Bush hatred” from anyone on the other side.

He is, in a very real sense, no longer human. Dead inside, without a single thought to call his own. A mindless shaped-charge of meat and piss, wound up, turned loose and detonated by the cowards and liars who run his Party.

And being that he is a pinhead, he gets his filthy ideas elsewhere.

He, and millions like him, get them like soiled, third-hand hand-me-downs from men like David Brooks.

Because however “Aw Shucksy” and in whatever reasonable, pastel camo Bobo pens his bilious little column, what he is doing, week after week after week, is dumping toxins into the groundwater of public discourse. He is lending his ink and his incredibly influential position to the cause of polluting the public well with outright lies, half-truths and a veritable Qin Shi Huang Army


of straw men.

And however many times he shows up a’grinnin’ and a’musin’ on The News Hour or the Chris Matthews show, Bobo is a fundamentally weedy and dishonorable creature fighting a desperate and dishonest rear-guard action to protect his lucrative schtick and his despicable ideology. And however easy it is to dismiss his weak little puling in the pages of the NYT, the fact of the matter is only clarity, frank honesty and focused integrity can save us from the slaughterhouse future that Brook’s Masters have prepared for us.

As a man who makes his living ferociously bending every effort to muddy and foul the waters and fill the air with smoke and misdirection to protect himself and his dogma from the righteous judgment it has so richly earned, Bobo has chosen to use his privileged place to make himself a fountainhead for all that is wrong and sleazy in this country.

He feed the machine that is destroying us, and as Reality overtakes him, the harsh parameters imposed by the iron bindings of the Three Joke Playbook make him look increasingly unhinged and absurd.

Poor Bobo; still obediently yelling “Three!” on command, but no longer able to tell the joke well.

Over at Gilliard’s House,

He’s asking for some coin.

I don’t have a “help driftglass keep the wolf at bay” fund. Yet. Part of the reason has to do with the trickiness of staying cloaked while fundraising, and part of it is the ROI on even trying such a thing with a site that has such light (albeit brilliant, trenchant, sexy and sweet-smelling) traffic.

And part of it is I don't have the time to subtract from my other jobs to do the homework I'd need to do to figure out how to make this tight and profitable. Ironic, no?

However, if you have in the past expressed an interest in hitting my nonexistent tip jar for a buck (and many of you have, which is hella nice), how about you consider heading over to Gilly’s House and making a donation with my compliments?

I know that a lot of us are strapped these days, but if you can I know it would be appreciated. I do, regularly. I’m not starving, but I’m also not possessed of wealth, and Gilly's is one of the places I choose to spend my modest resources.

Why?

Because I’m incredibly fucking selfish, that’s why.

Over at Gilliard’s, commentor klyde asked this question about the state of our poor, abused nation:

“For the love of God how did this happen?

I still read Gilly every day, and comment there when time and circumstances permit, and this is what I wrote in reply to klyde’s question.

One hateful prayer from Jerry Falwells's pulpit at time.

One nigger joke at a time.

One feminazi comment at a time.

One racist pandered to instead of being publicly denounced and bitch-slapped at a time.

One tax cut so those welfare queens won't get my money at a time.

One "It ain't me and mine, so fuck 'em" at a time.

One wingnut Senator at a time.

One union busted at a time.

One DeLay at a time.

One "Path to 9/11" treated as serious drama and fact instead of fascist agitprop at a time.

One "black baby" and Swiftboat armada at a time.

One global warming report rewritten by a science-free hack at a time.

One Brownie at a time.

One fag-bashing law at a time.

One science-hating fake Christian at a time.

One "The Government is the Problem" shithead at a time.

One militia at a time.

One public school left to go to rot at a time.

One Christian madrass opened up because the public schools will pollute my little freak's mind with free thought at a time.

One "State's Right" wink-wink speech at a time.

One lie at a time.

One Confederate Flag displayed with pride instead of horror and shame at a time.

One Limbaugh broadcast at a time.

One reporter going silent to protect their access and paycheck at a time.

And one apathetic, sniveling, cowardly Moderate at a time who looked on the mounting evil they were allowing the run wild and said, "They're not really serious", "They're not really so terrible" and "Well you know Ted Kennedy is really fat" at a time.

There is no way we are going to reason and compromise and triangulate and finesse our battered nation out of the hands of the fools and criminals and killers who have hijacked her.

There is no room left to wriggle and nothing unimportant left to trade off to the sociopaths in hopes that if we just give up one more right, one more virtue, one more principle, one more sacred, irreplaceable measure of the Liberty that our fathers and mothers died -- died! -- to bequeath to us, that they’ll finally leave us alone and in peace.

Sorry, but these fuckers want it all. And weak appeasement buys us nothing but their sadist’s giggles as they curb-stomp what was good about America to death right before our eyes.

There is no peace to be found with them, which is why we need men and women who know how to hit back hard over and over and over again to stand with us and for us and to catapult our fucking propaganda like hot metal through a snowbank.

Gilly does that job for me, and that seems to me to be worth at least the price of a bottle of good scotch.

Which is what I mean when I say I do this out of selfishness. Because I selfishly want me and mine to live in the paradise this nation could be, and not in some Neanderthal’s medieval, nightmare vision of a berserk, nuclear-tipped Jebusland.

I think that’s a culture war damned well worth having, and I want talented people who will fight that fight with and for me to have the equipment and support they need to take the battle straight at the enemy.

Don’t Just Do Something!

Sit There!

File under: Frist Pissed.

This from the NYT outlines how the most overpoweringly, awesomely, crushingly , omnipotently dominant political machine in the history of the known Universe -- God’s Own Personally Fucking Endorsed Part-ay, that finally captured the entire federal government from crotch to crown after having spent the last thirty years fanatically clawing, sliming, bellowing, stealing and lying their way to power -- spent the last year.

Hint: It is possible I expended more productive mental terawatts in eight hours passed out in my own drool dreaming up new topiary patterns for my pubic hair than these fuckknuckels burned on the nations’s business in the last year on the public dime.

And hey! Take a wild guess who these cranky losers are blaming!

(emphasis added)

September 25, 2006
Congress Ending, but Much Is Left Undone
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — A Congress derided as do-nothing has a week to do something, and the prospects are cloudy.
Procrastination, power struggles and partisanship have left Congress with substantial work to finish before breaking for the elections. The fast-approaching recess and the Republican focus on national security legislation make it inevitable that much of the remainder will fall by the wayside.

At best, it appears that just 2 of the 11 required spending bills will pass, and not one has been approved so far, forcing a stopgap measure to keep the federal government open. No budget was enacted. A popular package of business and education tax credits is teetering. A lobbying overhaul, once a top priority in view of corruption scandals, is dead. The drive for broad immigration changes has derailed.

An offshore oil drilling bill painted as an answer to high gas prices is stalled. Plans to cut the estate tax and raise the minimum wage have floundered, and an important nuclear pact with India sought by the White House is not on track to clear Congress. New problems surfaced over the weekend for the annual military authorization bill. And numerous other initiatives await a planned lame-duck session in mid-November or a future Congress.

“It is disappointing where we are, and I think Republicans need to be upfront about this,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia and a member of the House leadership. “We have not accomplished what we need to accomplish.”

Given the practical and political realities, Republicans have chosen to concentrate on legislation emphasizing their security credentials, like the bill governing interrogations and trials of terrorism detainees, a National Security Agency surveillance program, and spending on the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

“With obstruction from the Democrats at an all-time high, we have focused on four security issues in an effort to enact some solid, substantive accomplishments,” said Eric M. Ueland, chief of staff to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, who is stepping down at the end of this session.

While Republicans prefer to blame Democrats for the backlog, intramural fights and sharp differences between House and Senate Republicans have been chief impediments to major legislation.

…
Circumstances have changed in Washington from the days when Republicans were famous for party discipline. President Bush, weakened by his sliding popularity, has been unable to hold sway over Congress. The Republican leadership in the House and the Senate is in transition and lacks the muscle of Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader. Republican lawmakers, many facing their most serious electoral opposition in years, are fending for themselves.

“We have no central core of political authority driving things in Washington,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “
…

“This session of Congress is not over,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said Friday. “We are not finished with our work, and some of these issues are still in progress. What we are going to do Friday or Saturday is to take a timeout.”

Democrats have been happy throughout the year to stand almost united in both the House and the Senate against many of the Republican initiatives, forcing the majority to find enough votes to pass legislation from its own membership. That has often forced major concessions from the leadership. In other cases, Republicans in the House and the Senate have simply been unable to find common ground.

“In the 26 years I have been here,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, “I don’t think I have ever seen so much tension between the House and the Senate, and it is all among Republicans.”

…

This is simple.

When the hive lost their Brain Bugs


the drones got fussy and uppity and starting thinking they no longer needed a permission slip from their leadership caste every time they wanted to swipe a cracker from the cracker barrel.

Bill Frist is a weak man who sold his gifts for a mess of pottage. He came fresh from the showroom floor inspired and enspined with no grand vision of anything other than awkwardly jumping through whatever hoops James Dobson and the White House set in front of him on the promise that he’ll be considered for the White House job in ’08 if he’s a good little doggie.

Hell, at least DeLay had an organizing principle. Granted he was an ambulatory shitbag of a human being and granted his "vision" was the liquidation and looting of the federal government of the United States America, and the installation of a Confederate Shitkicker Caliphate in its place, but it was a touchstone he could draw on in times when choices had to be made.

As much as Democrats are parodied as a Party where opinions outnumber members 10-to-1, they have show remarkable party discipline over the last year. Republicans, on the other hand, are bred from the whelping box to the Authoritarian model. The are natural followers who find their inner peace only when marching in obsequious lockstep while someone else does the thinking.

And right now all of the “thinking” seems to be coming from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the acrid stink of their own burning skin seems to have awakened at least a few on the Right that all the “thinking” from the West Wing seems calibrated to sacrificing everyone and everything else in order to salvage the legacy of one halfwit who barely acknowledges their existence except when he needs his ass wiped in public.

Our looted future – Chapter 2,115

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker asks, “Brother can you spare a quarter of a trillion dimes?”

Before you read the snip from today’s LA Times, wash this quote from Vice Chancellor Cheney around in your mouth to temper you palate just right.

“It [Iraq] was the right thing to do and if we had it to do over again, we'd do exactly the same thing."

Now remind yourself that this is not a quote from 2003.

Or 2004.

Or 2005.

No this is from Cheney on “Meet the Press” two weeks ago.

Now this from the LA Times…

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short

An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer

September 25, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

"This is unusual, but hell, we're in unusual times," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussions.

Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service's funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.

According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels.

"It's incredibly huge," said the Army official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity when commenting on internal deliberations. "These are just incredible numbers."

Most funding for the fighting in Iraq has come from annual emergency spending bills, with the regular defense budget going to normal personnel, procurement and operational expenses, such as salaries and new weapons systems.

About $400 billion has been appropriated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency funding measures since Sept. 11, 2001, with the money divided among military branches and government agencies.

…

The Army, with an active-duty force of 504,000, has been stretched by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 400,000 have done at least one tour of combat duty, and more than a third of those have been deployed twice. Commanders have increasingly complained of the strain, saying last week that sustaining current levels will require more help from the National Guard and Reserve or an increase in the active-duty force.

Schoomaker first raised alarms with Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in June after he received new Army budget outlines from Rumsfeld's office. Those outlines called for an Army budget of about $114 billion, a $2-billion cut from previous guidelines. The cuts would grow to $7 billion a year after six years, the senior Army official said.

...

[A] study group — which included three-star officers from the Army and Rumsfeld's office — has since agreed with the Army's initial assessment. Officials say negotiations have moved to higher levels of the Bush administration, involving top aides to Rumsfeld and White House Budget Director Rob Portman.

"Now the discussion is: Where are we going to go? Do we lower our strategy or do we raise our resources?" said the senior Pentagon official. "That's where we're at."

…

Funding was further complicated this summer, when rising sectarian violence in Baghdad forced the Pentagon to shelve plans to gradually reduce troops in Iraq.

Because of those pressures, the Army in July announced it was freezing civilian hiring and new weapons contract awards and was scaling back on personnel travel restrictions, among other cost cuts.

Schoomaker has been vocal in recent months about a need to expand war funding legislation to pay for repair of hundreds of tanks and armored fighting vehicles after heavy use in Iraq.

He has told congressional appropriators that he will need $17.1 billion next year for repairs, nearly double this year's appropriation — and more than quadruple the cost two years ago. According to an Army budget document obtained by The Times, Army officials are planning repair requests of $13 billion in 2008 and $13.5 billion in 2009.

In recent weeks, however, Schoomaker has become more publicly emphatic about budget shortfalls, saying funding is not enough to pay for Army commitments to the Iraq war and the global strategy outlined by the Pentagon.

"There's no sense in us submitting a budget that we can't execute, a broken budget," Schoomaker said in a recent Washington address.

…

"Year after year there were attempts to raise the ceiling, but year after year OMB has refused," said a former Pentagon official familiar with the debate. "The difference this year is the Army has said that if a raise in the ceiling isn't going to be considered, they won't even play the game."

…

Rumsfeld has not set a new deadline for the Army to submit its budget plan. The Army official said staffers thought they could submit a revised plan by November, in time for President Bush to unveil his 2008 budget early next year.

Budgets are interesting documents, because they are the exact point at which the rubber of your rhetoric meets the road of Reality.

For three years, the GOP has done its fan dance of smoke and mirrors about the single most important issues of our time – the catastrophic failures of this Administration at every level and on every front. From the ongoing, escalating debacle in Iraq to the Norquist Manifesto that this government made fatally manifest in the streets of dead New Orleans, the Bush White House has show itself to be simultaneously ignorant, arrogant and spectacularly incompetent at the most basic tasks of governance, and at a scale that we have never seen before, in our lifetimes and possibly in our nation’s history.

They have ruled elbow-deep in the blood and sacrifice of their betters with a ruthless, giddy pleasure, obeying one and only one commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Inconvenience Thy Fellow Rich, White Plutocrats For Any Reason.”

George Bush has gotten up every day for the last three years and has bludgeoned home the same, simple message in every speech he ever gives, whether to Rotarians in Tallahassee, Americans in Urgent National Addresses, or Barney the White House dog when he is making his morning ablutions in the POTUS potty;

“Barney, Iraq is more important thing evah! More important than World War Two. More important than Korea. More important that that Cuban Missile dealie. And more important than taking you out for a walk.

“And I must do whatever I feel is necessary on a mood-swing-by-mood-swing basis to make sure that we achieve victory, just as soon as Cheney tells me how we are defining ‘victory’ this week. We must prevail in Iraq, no matter…”

It is at this point that Dubya trails off because Barney has pooped the carpet in the People’s House. Again. Which means four things will happen before lunch:

1. Barney will be awarded another special Presidential Medal of Freedom in a private, Rose Garden ceremony.
2. Cheney will find some mailroom intern to be rendered and beaten with a claw hammer until he confesses to pooping the carpet.
3. Rummy will declare that another corner has been turned.
4. Rove will begin to leak stories that Democrats are weak on carpet pooping.

Meanwhile, George Bush could solve the military budget problem relatively simply by calling for sacrifice and asking those that most benefited from his reckless, profligate tax cuts to now give something back to help our kids overseas.

He could denounce the looting the billions of dollars in Iraq and demand a full investigation.

He could barnstorm the country, tapping into his vast network of donors and political allies, asking the Party Leaders who now run the country root and branch to lead by example and urge their children to join the Army and Dubya's Noble Cause.

If he were serious, he could invest the salvation of the Army and its mission with at least the same zeal he once gave to the demolition of Social Security.

If Iraq were truly as important as he claims with every breath he takes, he could do all of this easily. He could spend all Fall on it, and by November he would have begun to show the world that America is deadly serious about Iraq, and show voters that Republicans are deadly serious about national security.

It would be win-win-win...if Bush were serious.

But of course Bush will do none of this, because if he did his base would turn on him like wild dogs.

Because his rich backers don’t give a shit about this country and never have, and would have his hide to upholster their Mercedes’ if he laid a federal finger on their wallets.

Because his base is that solid slab of invincibly ignorant dittoheads at the bottom of Evolution’s barrel that know nothing, stand for nothing and remember nothing but fetishize every word the Dear Leader speaks because that’s just how fascists are wired.

The Dear Leader promised them all that they never need to worry their tiny heads over math, or science or causality again. He promised them that Voting 2+2= 177 makes 2+2= 177 damn it! He promised them boundless Victory after Victory. He promised them ouchless, teevee friendly Shock and Awe Military Miracles for two pennies apiece…forever.

All along, responsible grownups warned the Whiny Ass Titty Babies of the Right that sooner than they could imagine the piper would have to be paid. And all along Whiny Ass Titty Babies of the Right called them traitors and haters. Told them that the Dear Leader had repealed arithmetic and to shut the fuck up.

That they will gladly pay you Tuesday for their World War Three today.

And now, in too many dreadful ways to count, that IOU is coming due.

Because no matter how many bills the GOP pass and no matter how many speeches Dubya gives promising the mouthbreathers otherwise, the tide will always come, and Reality will always have her merry way with us.

And so you're back

(With apologies to Ms. Gloria Gaynor…)

...from outer space

I just walked in to find you here, with your wang in Mehlman’s face.

Dubya's favorite go-to cock

A rent boi GI GOP

So where’d you get the fucking nerve

To come back and lecture me?

File this under Red Letter Christians vs. Yellow-Bellied Manwhores.

We begin with this intriguing article from "The Swamp" section of the Tribune:

Originally posted: September 24, 2006
Only Jesus can decide this fight

Posted by Frank James at 12:40 pm CDT
Last week I wrote about the Red-Letter Christians, a new movement of evangelicals meant to contest the Religious Right for the moral high ground in the nation’s public policy debates.

The RLC held their press conference to pre-empt the conservative Family Research Council’s Washington Briefing, an event meant in part to rally Christian conservatives before the November mid-term elections.

So what was the FRC’s response? Pretty muted actually, from what I heard at the FRC conference. Speaking at the general session on Friday, Tony Perkins, the FRC’s president, dismissed the RR’s critics in a not-too-subtle attack on their authenticity as Christians.

“There was a poll or survey just released by Baylor University, one of the most in-depth studies on Americans and religion,” Perkins said. “One of the things they pointed to was there really is a distinction between evangelicals.

“And I know we’re hearing a lot especially this week as a number of left-leaning quote unquote evangelicals have been denouncing this event.

“What it boils down to (is we) are Bible-believing Christians. That’s the demarcation. That’s the point of difference. And in that poll it shows that 22 percent of Americans believe the Bible. That is almost a quarter and the fact that’s almost the same number of people who were identified as value voters in the 2004 election. There is strength in numbers.

“We’re just encouraging Christians to say it’s OK to stand up and defend and proclaim the truth and we’re going to stand with you and we’re going to help you and together we will make a difference in this nation.”

“Bible-believing” is a term many who take the Bible literally use to describe themselves. It the same as fundamentalism, though that term seems to have fallen out of favor.

Perkins was essentially saying the BB Christians, his people, are real Christians because they “believe the Bible,” implying the other Christians really don’t so they aren’t real, a point he accentuated by saying "quote unquote evangelicals."

For their part, the RLC, so-called because they want to give greater priority in public to the social-justice message contained in Jesus’s words, printed in red in many Bibles, believe they are closer to Jesus’s truth because of their social-justice emphasis.

“The Red-Letter Christians… (are) saying we have neglected the words of Jesus. And Christians are supposed to be first of all known by obedience to Jesus Christ,” said Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a Christian group devoted to social justice.

“And we haven’t seen that or heard that in proclamations by those who claim to be Christian and so active in public life. We want to return to Jesus’s words to correct the politics that have become so skewed by a partisan application of them.”
…

Apparently, despite overwhelming textual and theological support to the contrary, Jebus is actually a Republican who luuuurves lying, hate-vomiting hypocrites and hates Liberals like me.

And how do I know?

Because Manwhore Jeff Gannon hisself has urped back to the surface of the Earth to set heathens like me a’rights.

The article continues…

By the way, this is for those interested in Washington trivia. The reporter who asked Wallis the question that elicited the above response was none other than Jeff Gannon.

Yes, that Jeff Gannon. Gannon, many will recall, is the controversial former White House reporter for the conservative, online Talon News who left that post after liberal bloggers revealed his real name was James Dale Guckert and that nude photos of him appeared on gay escort websites.
…

And then, for bonus points, who shows up to respond to this article in the online comment section but Manwhore Jeff (which I cite here advisedly, aware that anyone can pretend to be anyone else in the fever swamp of the blogosphere.

I suppose like anyone can pretend to be a Marine in the world of Gay Conservative S&M Prostitution.)

Mr. James:

I'm pleased to be able to answer the question posed in your article. I believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. That is one of three criteria that distinguishes Evangelicals from other Christians, the other two being the belief that the Blood of Christ is complete in its sufficiency for the redemption of sin and that the only way to God is through His Son, Jesus Christ.

The Red Letter Christians are attempting to pass themselves off as Evangelicals when by definition they are not. However, that is not the only problem RLCs have with authenticity. They try to skirt the issues of gay marriage and abortion by dimissing them as "wedge issues." They downplay their importance by pointing out that Jesus didn't directly address either topic. However, both gay marriage and abortion are inherently antithetical to his teachings and as such didn't warrant specific comment.

Helpful driftglass aside: This is, by the way, a complete lie.

“Abortion” as it is currently understood did not exist in the first century A.D. On the other hand, the issue of when a bundle of cells becomes a “person” was a matter of interest to Jewish scholars of the time (Note to Christopaths -- Jesus was Jewish, was a rabbi, and was incredibly scrupulous about the spirit of The Law):

In rabbinic Judaism, the embryo is 'not a person' (lav nefesh hu) until it is born. The fetus is considered 'part of its mother,' ubbar yerekh immo, rather than an independent entity. The Talmud regards the embryo during much of the first trimester as “simply water.” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 72b, Hullin 58a, Yevamot 69b.) In this instance, the wisdom of ancient Jewish law, viewed as midrashic metaphor, presciently and uncannily mirrors modern embryology: during the first (and possibly part of the second) trimester the fetus is not yet sufficiently developed to experience pain or sensation; nor is it viable, capable of surviving outside the womb until the end of the second trimester. To the rabbinic eye, it is more like water than person in its first months.

As the issue of the “ensoulment” of a human being was a matter of interest to early Catholic church fathers:

Even the earliest Christian Church, the progenitors of Roman Catholicism today, did not view all abortions as a crime. Indeed, many of the early church fathers -- and I emphasize that gender -- did not believe that abortion raised any substantial moral questions until the moment of ensoulment, which many scholars believe was 30 days after the conception of a male and 60 days after the conception of a female. But the idea of fundamentalist Christian and Catholic doctrine indicating that abortion is murder is a theological accretion. It's not something that is an imperative of scripture.

End of helpful driftglass aside.

Gannon continues...

As I pointed out to Mr. Wallis, the RLC's literature is a recitation of leftist talking points with a bit of scripture thrown in. Jesus didn't have anything to say about a phased withdrawal of U. S. troops from Iraq or global warming as the RLC would have people believe.

You remember Jeffy Gannon, right? Republican Gay Hooker. GOP leak conduit. Fake Reporter. Working for a Fake Agency. Under a Fake Name.

And lest we forget, despicably posturing as a Fake Marine.

Well, for those of you who have gotten your media lobotomies freshly detailed and have no recollection whatever of Gannon, or Scott McClellan, or what you had for dinner eleven minute ago, this summary of L’Affaire Gannon by Susie Bright was one of the more exquisitely written on the Web.

"Aggressive Verbal Dominant Top" Seeks Submissive Male Who Can Reinstate White House Press Pass”

Today I read a new interview with James Guckert, the gay S/M hooker who changed his name to the more butch “Jeff Gannon,” and posed as a journalist in the White House Press Corps, “reporting” for a fake news site. That rascal!

Gannon got hand-fed by the Bushies like he was their very own pet peacock. One day, some of Jeff's colleagues in the press box finally crawled out of their slumber and said, “Whoa, he's weird— Who is this dude?”

If I sound disdainful of how the mainstream media is handling Jeff’s expose, perhaps I’m just fed up with being bewildered.

It’s been a good month since anyone with a browser and a minute to spare has been able to see pictures of Gannon’s shaved erection on his live out-call web ad.

But on Sunday the New York Times, continuing the curious timidity of every other paper of record, played down this man’s true identity once again! In the NYT magazine interview, Deborah Solomon wrote that Gannon “apparently earned [his] living running a gay escort service.”

Apparently? Used to? This is the man’s entire past, present, and future!

As for “running a service,” where’s the reception desk? Are we supposed to infer that Gannon fills out employee time cards like the Mayflower Madam? No sirree— Jeff Gannon has been a one-man hot military beat-your-ass stud, and the only thing he runs is a carefully honed sales pitch. He is one discrete, butch, jarhead whore— and the only thing that is “apparent” is that he is one of the best, according to his customer reviews.

When I talk to my friends, I find that many don't know who Guckert is. Sometimes they've heard that some weirdo infiltrated the White House Press Corps by mistake. Maybe they heard he was right wing, or that he entertained Scott McClellan with sycophant questions that bordered on, "Why is George Bush the greatest president who ever lived?”

But so what? — Isn’t it just more of the same? Are we expected to get outraged over every Red State cheerleader?

If you’ve also heard that Gannon is gay, you probably know that he has written anti-gay marriage material, and smeared John Kerry for trying to be a “gay president.” Hmm... so he’s a self-hating pathological mutant. We’ve become so accustomed to it— yawn. Or maybe we’re just numb since Janet waved her nipple at us. Gosh, the press devoted so much attention to that sex scandal, they’d surely go apeshit if Gay Nazis took over the White House, wouldn't they?
…

Which is, among other things, one more example of why I read Ms. Susie Bright.

Of course, the MSM never went apeshit. Or Teacup Poodleshit. Or even Parameciumshit. As with virtually all of the First Order Hypocrisies of the Bush White House, the mainstream press gave The Gannon Thing a very conspicuous pass on any serious coverage whatsoever.

Yes, Jeffy Gannon was all those things Ms. Bright notes so eloquently and yet, somehow, he is the really, really, for-real Christian and people like me are not.

Another textbook example Dental-Dam Conservativism.

Another morally-polluted failure of a human being who slips the Radically Abridged Bible Wingnut in his mouth and believes that magically protects him from getting drooling duplicity all over his Fake Marine Dress Blues as he can angrily hectors Liberals on their godliness shortcomings.

Manwhore Jeff goes on to scold Democrats as having “driven away people of faith” through our devotion to abortion and “an unholy alliance with the anti-Christian ACLU.”

A typically sweeping, Christopath indictment of all people whose tongues don’t reek of James Dobson’s sulphurous prostate. Leaving only the Truly Righteous to keep God company, bring Him cocoa, conduct His Illegal Wars, ram through His Billionaire Tax Cuts and fuck over His useless Poor.

Leaving only Onwardly Marching Christian Fake Soldiers like Jeffy Gannon.

And people like this guy.


To which one can only add to Penn Gillette's cogent conspectus of this breed of assholery a loud and clear, " Let the People of God Say Amen! "

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.

In which Bill Clinton shoots a man on camera just to watch him die.

Elsewhere it was 2008 GOP Preznit Candidates On Parade, but really, the Big Dog taking off his man-belt and just beating sniveling Fox News hack Chris Wallace to meat-ribbons did for Sunday Morning what Clinton’s presence on the political stage did for eight years.

Render everything else is irrelevant.

But for posterity, here’s the fast-fast-fast rundown.

On This week… 15 minutes of Herr Senator Doktor Frist. Wheeee! The Kat Killer talks Torture. Well, “talks” is being generous. Frist flopping his jaw open and unspooling one, stale, lying bumper sticker after another after another after another isn’t what I think of when I think of talking.

One breathtaking new “fact” we did learn is that, by sheer effort of obediently sticking to his talking points, Herr Senator Doktor Frist is personally holding back the tide of terrorism. It’s true! And not since his remote diagnosis of Terri Schiavo has Frist so boldly inserted himself bodily into the bandwagon-hopping/credit-grabbing business.

Frist angrily asserts that if he personally answered the question “Is water-boarding torture?” it would tip the balance in favor of terrorists, who would then come to this country to assassinate Americans, “including people watching this show now”.

Welcome back to 2002.

And 2004.

Packs of lying Right Wing demagogues squealing “Vote for me or your kids’ll die!!!” into any camera they can commandeer.

Meet the Press... was MIA. Instead, mostly well-heeled white men in suits with talking points were preempted by mostly well-heeled white men in ugly pants with putters.

On Face the Nation... McCain wipes some of Jerry Falwell’s watery stool off his chin and runs through his loyal Bush Lapdog paces.

Perhaps a pair of these would help?
(Warning: video is so very wrong, and not exactly work-safe)


Neuticles, Senator!

Finally, Bill Clinton on Fox

shows the young 'uns how it’s done.

Naturally, Crooks & Liars has Part One of the video here.

Yes, you’ll need to brace yourself against having to watch craven, smirking attack-hamster Chris Wallace, so take your Dramamine and wash it down with three ounces of Laphroaig (we’re not barbarians here) but watching the Big Dog force Wallace to take his medicine – rectally, and in elephantine doses – was quite worth the price of admission.

This needs to be required viewing at Democratic Candidate Boot Camp, and there was nothing else remotely comparable, so no sense gilding this lily with a lot of chatter.

So get thee to C&L for Part One now.

For Part Two, click below...

Holy Joe plans "Major!! Address!!"

While the Universe waits with bated breath to watch his words change the course of time, history and mighty rivers.

Or something.

Film at 11.

Lieberman to deliver speech on Iraq Monday

NORWICH — U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman will deliver what his campaign is calling a “major address” on the future of Iraq Monday.

Lieberman is seeking re-election to a fourth term as independent candidate in the November election after losing the Aug. 8 Democratic primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont.

Lieberman will deliver his speech at the Fowler-Dix-Park VFW Post #5095 in East Hampton.

Sorry, Joe. Long gone are the days when Americans huddled around the Philco and awaited a "major address" by any leader, much less a third-tier player on the national stage who peddles his Democratic credentials the way a Madison alley hooker rents her mouth.

2003 was the time to stand tall.

2004 was the year to grow a conscience.

2005 was the year to wake the fuck up, spit Dubya's dick out of your mouth, pry yourself out from under your sodden White House lover's brain-dead war and spend six months riding the "Mea Maxima Culpa" circuit of every teevee show and county fair that'd have you.

But it is now the Fall of 2006, and the number of Americans dead in Iraq from George W. Lieberman's reckless, inept, treacherous foreign adventures now exceeds the number of Americans murdered in Bin Laden's September attacks.

Too late, Joe. Too late for any random Republican simpleton, but far, far, far too late for anyone who wants the nation to turn its lonely eyes to him as a Leader for Our Times.

However, in the interest is fairness, my spies deep inside Camp Snittybitch did manage to smuggle out a clip of the junior Senator from Connecticut rehearsing his remarks.

So you can judge his gravitas for yourself.

Add one can of “Canticle for Liebowitz”-helper

to this from the LA Times and voila! (Click for larger view)

A brand-new genre: Flash political science fiction.

Writing on Jazzetec Slab Is Hemisphere's Oldest

Tablet of 62 characters dates to about 2000 AD. It's the first text clearly tied to puzzling culture.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
Times Staff Writer

September 15, 5006

Archeologists working on the gulf coast of Caltexico have uncovered a 3,000-year-old stone tablet that bears the oldest writing in the Western Hemisphere and the first text unambiguously linked to the Jazztec empire — the enigmatic civilization believed to be the progenitor of the Rednik State and Blusian Empire.

The 26-pound tablet, about the size of a legal pad, bears 62 symbols arrayed in a manner suggesting an organized text.

"We have long thought that the Jazztec would have writing," said archeologist William A. Saturno of the University of New New New Hampshire, who was not involved in the discovery. "This block is finally the evidence everyone has been waiting for."

Scientists believe they have translated the gist of the text, but unless they find many more examples of Jazztec writing, they cannot confirm the meaning of several symbol groupings,” said archeologist Stephen D. Houston of Stomptown University of Libertine Island, a co-author of the report published today in the journal Science.

But "if we can definitively decode it, it gives us a chance of hearing their voices and finding out what they considered important and worth recording," he said.

The Jazztecs flourished in Northern Murrqua for more than 200 years before they mysteriously disappeared, a few centuries before the rise of the classic Blusian culture about AD 300. The Jazzmen were the first civilization in ExoMurrqua, and at their height they constructed large cities and created massive steel and composite structures. They built the first mass intermodal transport system in the region and established a wide-ranging trade arrangements that stretched across most of the globe.
...

Virtually all examples of purported ExoMurrquan writing that have been found previously and that date to the first Jazztec Era are isolated sets consisting of just one or a few glyphs, or symbols. Critics have charged that such discoveries represent merely pictures or identifiers rather than true writing.

With the new find, Houston said, "suddenly we are aware of the possibility that those far shorter sequences may be part of the same writing system."

Beginning about 500 years before their culture disappeared, the Jazztecs rapidly settled the highly fertile and resource-rich region between the Chin and Afriqquan Oceans.

They were, for a time, among the most inventive, creative and literate people of the Old Age — in fact, their name means “people of the spontaneous music" in Foxee-Limmbaw, the language of the Rednik — and invented ritual ballgames, theatrical performances and symphonics played by the elite in brick and steel arenas called “wrigleys” scattered throughout their lands.

What the Jazztecs called themselves or how they met their downfall is not known.
...

Reactionary

Politics. (click for larger pic)

Sometimes pictures tell a better story (plus I’m hording secret, weirding adjectives for the first week in November), so here is a simplified diagram I poached from a site discussing the principles of the “Very-High-Temperature Reactor” that I have repurposed to sum up the mechanical processes by which the Party of God maintains control.

Also I find when I look at it for what it is -- a machine, powered entirely by the energy from superheated lies -- the workings of it become easier to understand, deconstruct and defeat.


The Rove Rods 



(With Cheney sprinkles)

These are the wedge issues the GOP dredges up cycle after cycle to crank the Base of the Party up to Scared Shitless and White Hot Loco just in time for each election. It is why the GOP can fuck up whole countries and leave entire American cities to die without fear of being voted out of office 99-to-1 in every district everywhere. Because if you give mouthbreathers enough fags, burning flags and Terror Alerts around election time it’ll crowd the entire record of Republican perfidy, bloodshed and failure right out of their itty bitty heads.

The Propaganda Pumps

These babies can inject pressurized bullshit into the system at speeds varying from CNN to Fox to Limbaugh to Full Coulter. This is the Lie Delivery System, through which the air is kept thick with rightard trigger phrases like “feminazi” “activist judges” and “cutnrun” and squeegeed clean of anything resembling thoughtful discussion or honest debate.

The Radioactive Base.

This is a three-dimensional array of the ignorant, the hateful, the insane and the Christopath Right.

Individually, these samples of Enlightenment’s backwash make a persuasive argument that the good of our common humanity would be better served if the hatecults that fester in the wounds of our Democracy were gathered together for an All Ratfuckers Tribal Council at the Trinity Site and spontaneously Raptured into the stratosphere in a single, thermonuclear flash.

Collectively, they are the Modern GOP, and by putting every last species of botched American citizenship and knuckledragging bigot in harness together under one whip, the Republican Party has clawed its way to power.

The Liquid Bobo Koolant

The Koolant system that keeps it all from blowing apart at the seams and melting itself back into the masturbatory fever dreams of every wannabe Jefferson Davis circulate a viscous Koolaid-based composite goo made up of 43% David Brooks, 27% Tom Friedman, 23% Tim Russert, 12% Joe Klein and 10% David Broder.

You say that’s 115%? Well fuck you and your fancy, liberal, Jebus-hating elitist “arithmetic” anyway.

If you press your ear to the containment shell you can hear in murmuring through the pipes:

“There are no crazies here.”

“The Southern Strategy is a myth.”

“Ignore Falwell, Dobson, and Reed. They’re Men of Faith.”

“Ignore Schlafly, Limbaugh and Hannity. They’re just the fringe.”

“Ignore Robertson, Perle and Nordquist. They’re just amusingly provocative.”

“Gingrich isn’t a fascist; he’s just ‘controversial’.”

“Coulter isn’t really serious, even though she is the keynote speaker and commands top dollar at national Republican events, Republican media outlets and sold-out Wingnut Christian rallies.”

“That carcinoma spreading across your face. It looks just the Jesus, so you know it can’t be bad for you!”

“The Moderates really run the party.”

“The Center is where all right thinking people should be, despite the fact that in the last 30 years the Right has dragged the Center a million miles into Crazyville.”

“No matter how completely the GOP rapes American values, without a sliver of evidence to support this assertion you should still somehow believe that Liberals are either just as bad or worse.”

“The GOP cares about idiots like you.”

“There is no core in this reactor.”

That’s how it works. Simple, right?. And yet to build this electoral dynamo the Republican Party has had to completely sell out any vestige of principles or soul it once had for dominion over the divided and bitter land it has created. And because of that, there is no “Plan B” if you are a GOP candidate for national office.

Your Party Masters have burned your bridges and salted the Earth behind you, and now there is nothing left for you to do but desperately tunnel deeper into the Hell you have built for yourself.

Which is why John McCain now publicly grovels and kisses the poxy asses of the men who service and steer the Pretty Hate Machine indifferently past the bodies of the dead and dying of NOLA, and gleefully down the blood-tarred, bone-macadamed streets of Iraq. Men who went right after his family -- his wife and children -- and his honorable national service without a second thought when it suited their despicable purposes.

Because the Pretty Hate Machine does not come with a conscience, and it now casts its depraved shadow over their entire Party.

And over the entire nation that Party has seized.

And over the entire world that Party has polluted.

It has become all Means and no Ends but More Power, and as with all power, it comes with a steep price.

Because despite periodic and frightening bouts with Mussolinitis, we are not a fascist people by inclination.

In fact, we are taught to abhor authoritarianism. Our whole government is an exercise in the division and dissipation of power and the creation of strong, interlocking safeguards to protect us against the rise of a One Party/Dear Leader State. We number among some of our proudest moments (the Emancipation Proclamation, the defeat of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese Empires, the enactment of landmark Civil Rights legislation, the collapse of the Soviet Union) those occasions when we slammed totalitarianism to the ground, both at home and abroad.

And because these are the very safeguards and traditions that the GOP is working assiduously to destroy, and because there is no majority present in the active electorate actually lusts after the annihilation of democracy in America, they have to do it sloooowly and under a variety of false fronts and pretenses.

Yes there are millions of them, and yes they are virtually packed into the same party:

(h/t Vivian Paige’s blog for this clip from John Dean's terrific book, "Conservatives Without Conscience")

“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds,” Altemeyer told me. He added, “They would march American into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. They have the mentality of ‘old-time religion’ on a crusade and they generously give money, time and effort to the cause. They proselytize; they lick stamps; they put pressure on loved ones; and they revel in being loyal to a cohesive group of like thinkers. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away.”

Nauseating, but they are the minority, which is why they have to sorta ease into it, one gay bashing, flag burning, pro-torture, intolerant, anti-choice, anti-Science skirmish at a time. No blitzkrieg, but an ambling, “Aw Shucks” Pinochetism that, as you watch it over the course of decades, has marched this country directly and determinedly towards oblivion.

But because this is not a Majority Blackshirt nation – yet – every two years the theocrats and Neocons need another few million more collaborators than they can pony up on ideology alone, which is why winning elections for Republicans is getting to be an ever-trickier business.

Sure they cheat when and how they can -- and it is a tactic that we must demand the Dems fight loudly and aggressively district by district -- but there is simply no way to rig every fucking election in every district that matters, which is why manipulating the Pretty Hate Machine requires ever more finely tuned motor skills.

Because if the entire Right Wing understands anything it is this – as frustrating and degrading as it is to men like Trent Lott, Tom Tancredo, G. Felix Allen and Rick Santorum who really, really want to shout their love for all things Segregated and/or Despotic from the rooftops, it is still not socially acceptable to publicly embrace and celebrate your Inner Klansman.

Thus they must commune with their Swine Army in code.

They must use lightly encrypting hatespeech to manipulate the Rove Rods to get the Electoral Reactor Core seething hot enough to activate the base...but always keep the Bobo Koolant level of soothing denial, spin and outright lies juuust high enough to keep the Moderates from being directly exposed to and freaked out by the unshielded Core of the GOP.

This is, by way of example, exactly the dilemma G. Felix Allen now finds himself in. Allen is in every way a transparently counterfeit imbecile. A Johnny-Reb-Come-Lately who has mined such electoral gold as is available in his blighted part the country to men with money, name and good hair who are willing to jump into the bigoted cesspit of Konfederate Kaucasian Kristianity with both feet.

Except people keep asking questions about his past and his persona while on camera!

Sure, slingin’ “macaca” around may get you a flattering laugh as a sly ol’ boy down at the Cross-N-Burn bar. And jumping out of your Tunisian skin to bitch that someone was “casting aspersions” who asked simple questions about your Jewish heritage might get you a pity fuck from the Council of Conservative Citizens' Comfort Women’s Auxiliary.

But G. Felix Allen seems almost congenitally unable to comprehend that in the Information Age, voices carry.

And outside of the Heart of Confederate Darkness, moderate GOP voters who are kept carefully shielded from the truth and lulled into a cozy, supply-side coma by the Bobo Koolant are genuinely horrified when the Core of their Party is suddenly exposed and they are forced to face with eyes wide open the naked, roaring, venomous, unreconstructed filth that actually fuels and pilots the Conservative’s Pretty Hate Machine.

Preznit Flightsuit to Planet Earth:

"I'm Not Naked!"

Later that night, the Lincoln Memorial was TPed, and a bag of napalm and dog poo was left on David Souter's porch.

Of course the rank-and-file of the GOP have amply demonstrated for the last 30 years that they have absolutely no problem with jamming one Glock down Liberty’s gullet and the other up their own asses and giddily squeezing the trigger.

Seven or eight times.

And of course polls are twitchy. Polls reflect people. Granted in the most funhouse-mirror way imaginable, but it is a reflection nonetheless and a whole lotta people jump around like roaches on a hot plate.

Remember the mysterious 5-7% of the electorate who were still polling as “Undecided” about 11 minutes before the 2004 election? Mindless followers with not a single opinion or preference to call their own. Our decorative, cultural carbon automata who need the mass media to tell them what to do, that to think, how to dress, and how to vote so they could say they were on the winning team. And up until the last poll was taken it was too close too call, thus depriving the sheep among us of someone to tell them who to stand up and cheer for.

And if you read the whole article I excerpted, it's not as if people were flocking to the Democratic banner in their millions. 30 year of relentless GOP propaganda, a supine and complicit press and past Democratic bungles and ball-lessness over important issues has done their damage below the waterline.

It's not like we’re virgins here.

Still, this from the NYT is enough to give this old libertine the tiniest, vestal blush of hope for the battle that is coming in November…

September 20, 2006
Poll Finds Most Americans Displeased With Congress
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

With the midterm elections less than seven weeks away, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve reelection, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The disregard for Congress is the most intense it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end four decades of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold onto power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.

By overwhelming margins, respondents said that members of Congress were too tied to special interests and that they did not understand the needs and problems of average Americans. Two-thirds said Congress had accomplished less than it typically does in a two-year session; most said they said they could not name a single major piece of legislation that cleared this Congress. Just 25 percent said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job.

The Times/CBS News poll also found that President Bush did not improve his own or his party’s standing through the intense campaign of speeches he made and events he attended surrounding the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating was 37 percent, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted in August. On the issue that has been a bulwark for Mr. Bush, 54 percent said they approve of the way he is managing the effort to combat terrorists, again unchanged from last month, though up from earlier this spring.

Republicans continue to hold a slight edge over Democrats on which party is better at dealing with terrorism, though that edge did not grow since last month despite Mr. Bush’s flurry of speeches on national security, including one from the Oval Office on the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary.

…

Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity that Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush’s tenure. In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents — including 65 percent of Republicans — said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters who said it was “time for new people” since the fall of 1994.

“You get some people in there, and they’re in there forever,” said Jan Weaver, an Aberdeen, S.D., resident who described herself as a Republican voter, in a follow-up interview. “They’re so out of touch with reality.”

…

Evidence of antipathy toward Congress in particular — and Washington in general — was abundant. Seventy-one percent of those polled said they did not trust the government to do what is right.

“If they had new blood, then the people that influence them — the lobbyists — would maybe not be so influential,” Norma Scranton, a Republican from Thedford, Neb., said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “They don’t have our interest at heart, because they’re influenced by these lobbyists. If they were new, maybe they would try to please their constituents a little better.”

…
Voters said that Democrats were more likely to tell the truth than Republicans when talking about the war and Iraq and about the actual threat of terrorism. And 59 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush was hiding something when he talked about how things were going in Iraq, while another 25 percent said he was mostly lying when talking about the war.

…

So where are the really debauched election-eve parties being thrown this year, because who knows but what we may just have a cause or two to celebrate.

“Mayor of Capitol Hill”

returns to tie up a few loose ends?

From the WaPo

Man Crashes Through Barricade at Capitol
By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 18, 2006; 8:54 AM

The U.S. Capitol building was locked down about 8 a.m. this morning, after a vehicle drove into an unauthorized area and a man apparently entered the building, authorities said.

Police officers could be seen outside the Capitol complex wielding long rifles, and an aide to Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) told CNN that a man had been apprehended just inside an entrance to the building.

U.S. Capitol police were searching room to room, Frist's chief of staff Eric Ueland told CNN. Neither employees nor visitors were allowed to enter or leave the building.
Shortly before 9 a.m. a Senate staffer said the Capitol had been reopened.

OK, maybe not.

But would you really be shocked if “A man” turned out to be “B Ney”?

Since this Category Four Teacup Monsoon

shows little sign of abating, might as well batten down and discuss it calmly.

And as always, I find one must eventually turn to poetry to make cool and sober sense of the tangle of modern life.

Because, as Shelley once said, "Poets are the unacknowledged ta-ta wranglers of the world."


First, "Dirty Pink Pillows":

so much depends
upon

the dirty pink
pillows

glazed with gray
sweater

beside the white
bloggers.

-- William Carlos “Tit King” Williams

Next, the stark "Won’t-a-man-date-us"

I met a traveler from Wisconsin land
Who said: A flat and ashen poon of stone
Stands in Madison. Near it, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The blog that mocked them, and the heart that’s dead,
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Won’tamandateus, Queen of Spleens:
Look upon my posts, ye young and pretty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that tenured wreck, manless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-- Percy Bysshe “Really more of an ass man, but don’t tell Mary” Shelley

Then the haunting "The Whine of the Ancient Harridan" -- Part I

It is an ancient Harridan,
And she bloggeth for all to see.
`By thy withered dug and boohoo eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?'

The Big Dog's meetup is opened wide,
And I am next to greet;
The guests are met, the feast is set :
But she’s bitching about some teat.

She holds me with her skinny hand,
'There was a tit!' quoth she.
`Hold off ! unhand me, greytard loon !'
Eftsoons her hand dropt she.
…

-- Samuel “Senior Fun Bags” Coleridge

And, finally, inevitably, "The High Road Not Taken"

TWO breast converged in a light gray top,
And sorry I could not handle both
And be one blogger, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could.
Down my nose at this lovely youth;

Then I busted out, most unfair,
Making loud and idiotic claims.
Because she was young and wanted wear;
Which made me blog and tear my hair
Now I watch my rep go up in flames,

Because on that morning I rose to slay
That cussed child with the hair of black.
Oh, I kept it up for another day!
Yet knowing how “back” leads on to “pay”,
I doubted if I shall ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a lie
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Feminism hung by a thread, and I—
I blogged the low road traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


-- Robert “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” Frost

Ah, the classics!