Sunday Morning Comin’ Down – Part 2 of 2.

In which the lying will continue until the situation improves.

On Face the Nation: Howard Dean, Chairman, DNC. versus Sen. Mitch McConnell, subaltern, SMERSH.

Dean: The Republicans look increasingly incompetent. Dems want to Fight the War on Terror.

On, “You have no plan…”

Dean: That’s simply not true. Shit, ask McConnell. Fucker turned down every idea, every suggestion, every request for more funding for national security.

On “Lieberman…”

Dean: Lieberman? Hell, you see an awful lot of Republicans scrambling to get off of Bush’s sinking ship.

On “Rummy resigning…”

Dean: Of course he should. He is not only fundamentally incompetent, but he’s also not very politically smart. He and Cheney likened anyone who questions Bush to Nazi sympathizers and appeasers. That’s the vast majority of the American public.

Dean: We haven’t talked about the Republican War on the American Family.

On “What do the Dems have going against them…”

Dean: For a long time Dems did not fight back. Now we are. And while the Republicans cannot govern, they’re very good at running.

Dean: Republicans are very good at this. Very good at running elections, and they’ve been at it for 30 years.

Dean: Republicans refuse to fund first responders. Refuse to fund port security. Refuse to armor our troops. Refuse to pay to protect chemical and nuclear facilities. Our troops deserve better than this.

On “The economy…”

Dean: For 80% of Americans, life got harder under the GOP.

Next Up, Mitch McConnell

McConnell: It is important to remind people that if Democrats win they will raise your taxes, rape your dog and prisoners at Gitmo would be better treated that our own soldiers…

McConnell: Dean is Angry.

McConnell: Dems want to wave the White Flag on the war of terror.

McConnell: The McGovern Wing of the Party. If we don’t defeat them in Iraq, they’ll follow us back here. 9/11. 9/11. 9/11.

McConnell: Dems won’t tell you their Sekrit Agenda. Cut and run. Raise your taxes. Impeach the President.

McConnell: There are no “national races” this time.

McConnell: Rummy’s doing a Great Job. He will go down inn history as one of the Greatest Secretaries of Defense Evah! His speech was brilliant. He excretes a delightful man-musk that leave woman weak and makes men wish to lay with other men. His pomade raises the dead and his poo tastes like Coc au vin !

On “The Minimum Wage…”

McConnell: The Dems had a chance to vote for the Minimum Wage weeks ago, but they refused. They won’t take “yes” for an answer.

driftglass: Of course, McConnell is a liar. The Minimum Wage bill was the Massive Tax Cut for Billionaires bill with a poison pill provision for a small wage increase for the poor. Built into the bill so that anyone with a conscience (e.g. Democrats) could not possibly vote for it.

But of course if Katrina incised one indelible truth into the flitting, fleeting, mercurial critter known as the American Consciousness it is this: Republicans will never miss the opportunity to verbally, electorally or economically gang-rape the sick, the weak, the elderly, the brown, or the impoverished for their own partisan advantage.

So why should anyone be surprised that McConnell gets on national teevee and lies to shame the Devil?

McConnell: Nothing goes perfectly in any War.

Mitch McConnell – This generation’s goggle-eyed, chinless and testosterone-poor Newt Gingrich.



On Meet the Press: It’s “Suddenly Santorum!” as Little Ricky “debates” Bob Casey.

Full disclosure: I do not like Bob Casey. I also don’t like cold sores. But frankly I’d rather have a mouth full of them -- and be forced to gargle with salty lemon juice -- than have, say, bone cancer.

Which is the distinction between Casey and Santorum. And which is why, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I’d be working my ass off for Casey.

Because whatever your calendar age may be, politics is a game for grownup realists. And in the world of grownup politics, your choice is rarely between Good and Evil, and much more often found treading water between Somewhat Adequate and Full Metal Armageddonish.

And the difference between the Lesser of Two Weasels is often times the difference between cold sores and cancer.



Santorum: No one could have anticipated how hard it was going to be in Iraq.

Holy Howler Monkey, he actually said, “No one could have anticipated…”

Santorum: Don Rumsfeld is a great leader and a great Secretary of Defense.

Timmuh: The Pentagon report and our own Ambassador says that the problems in Iraq is NOT TERRORISM. It is sectarian violence.

Santorum: You can’t ignore that we are fighting this war on multiple fronts, and that Iraq is only one front. Iran Is The Problem. Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran!

Timmuh: So Iran has more influence in Iraq now that under Saddam Hussein?

Santorum: Uh. Duh. Uh.

On the rank hypocrisy found by comparing Republican Clinton-era rhetoric while we were at war in Kosovo, with their foot-stomping hysteria over anyone disputing the Infinite Wisdom of the Dear Leader…

Santorum: We had no business in Kosovo. We had no national security interest there.

Just can’t watch anymore. An hour watching Santorum doing anything other than in peaceful repose in a pine box is like a long week of getting ones balls slow-nailed to a hot muffler...

While being force fed rancid pig-butter...

Shot through with ground glass and live fire ants.

Seriously, Santorum is insane.

Just plain fucking nuts, and the fact that he has been elected to the Senate says vastly less about Little Ricky than it does about Republican voters generally, and the Republican voters of Pennsylvania.

I said once upon a time that, somewhere, in a sane Alternate Universe:

Rick Santorum is a crank with a “Kristian Konspiracy Kavalcade” show at 2:00 a.m. on public access cable. His sidekick is a fetus-in-a-jug named Mr. Snubbles, watched only by stoned teenagers who cop a few, cheap laughs at his high good-hair-to-bugfuck-crazy ratio.

Instead he is a Senator.

So what kind of radically undermedicated asylum escapee looks in the dead, button eyes of a Ricky Santorum and sees the pack of mad, sterno-drunk, scripture-gnawing rats behind them, scrabbling all over each other in has vast, empty skull, says , “Yes! That’s the one I want!”


On “This Week…” Biden was allegedly on, but I missed him. Either that, or he missed that Mystery Connecticut Train again…

The “Roundtable” was The Bespectacled Middle-Aged White Boy Club -- David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, and George Will.

Brooks: All the energy is on the Left. On the “defeatest” side. Democrats should defend WalMart. Americans Love WalMart.

Dionne: The energy is not the Left. This is not a Lefty Party. This is a very angry, anti-Bush Party.




The “Chris Matthews Show” was interesting for one reason – the inclusion of Lawrence Wright – NYT reporter and author of “The Looming Tower”.

Wright: We were attacked not just because “they hate us”, but because of specific actions we took that angered and humiliated Muslims in their holy lands.

Andrea Mitchell: True dat. Anyone who was there then knows that we infuriated the Muslim world by stationing troops on Muslim Holy Ground.

Wright: al-Qaeda longed for us to invade Afghanistan. They wanted to provoke us into military action. And they blew it: they were shocked to see how easily we rolled up their country and their networks.

Wright: Iraq, OTOH, was a fucking godsend for the terrorists. The Taliban had been repudiated. They were weak and on the run. Then we invaded Iraq and revitalized their whole enterprise.

They could point to America – lying their nation into invading and occupying an oil-rich country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 -- and say, “See! Everything we have told you about the American imperialists and plunderers is true!”

(And then came the Emergency Broadcast Network Test)

Wright: Bush did not know what he was doing. We should have left after the Gulf War was over, but we were happy and safe in our plush digs in Saudi Arabia. We could have left, but we didn’t wanna, and staying poked a sharp stick into the eye of the entire Muslim world, who already felt humiliated and dispossessed by the modern West.

Dan Rather: I talk to people all the time who say, “I don’t understand what this war is all about.”

That’s because it’s Three! Three! Three Wars in One!, Dan,

One against the people that attacked us on 9/11.

That is The Necessary War which needs to be fought against the people and networks who attacked us repeatedly over the last 15 years. It is a war to be fought primarily with aggressive law enforcement techniques, diplomatic and economic tools, and backed up by robust military action where needed. It is a war we can win by carrot-and-stick attrition if we fight it intelligently. It is a war where our core values are our greatest assets and not impediments to be jettisoned by the fascist weaklings who now run our country.

It is a war where hewing to and standing up for our core values is actually our greatest strength -- our Weapon of Mass Democracy.

Then there is The Stupid War.

The one in Iraq. The Stupid War has nothing whatsoever to do with Terrorism, or 9/11, or al-Qaeda. Nothing. The Stupid War is the one we were lied into, which should certainly be an impeachable offense. It is the one which has been prosecuted with a drunken, reckless, lethal, arrogant incompetence that should certainly constitute a separate and distinct set of Articles of Impeachment. And it is the one that has broken the Treasury as billions have been looted, lost or shoveled into the pockets of the friends and business partners of the criminals who incited and launched the Iraqi Debacle, which should certainly merit another separate and distinct set of Impeachment hearings.

And lastly there is The Conflation War.

The Loud War. It is a political and propaganda battle instigated by the criminals and lunatics who launched us into the abyss of The Stupid War by conflating it at every opportunity with The Necessary War, and calling anyone who asks any hard questions a traitor and appeaser of the Actual Enemy we are fighting in The Necessary War.

The Stupid War is the Crime and The Conflation War is the Cover Up.

And unlike Watergate, this time the President of the United States is personally and directly involved in every aspect of both sides of the conspiracy.

End Part 2 of 2.