No, you jump.

Shamu quits the GOP.

Say’s “Get the fuck off my nose you lunatics!”

Still reeling from their rout in the midterm elections, the Party of God was dealt yet another blow when beloved Seaworld icon and leader of the Moderate Orcinus wing fluke of the Republican Party – Shamu – publicly announced he was breaking with his former political allies.

Yahoo News picks up the story here...

Whale attacks trainer at SeaWorld
1 hour, 12 minutes ago
Shamu the killer whale injured a trainer during a show at SeaWorld Adventure Park by grabbing his foot and pulling him underwater twice, authorities said.

The 39-year-old man was hospitalized in good condition after Wednesday's show, said Mike Scarpuzzi, a park official. Scarpuzzi, who oversees zoological operations, said he did not know the extent of the trainer's injuries.

The park declined to release the trainer's name, saying some members of his family have yet to be notified. Scarpuzzi said the trainer has been working with animals for 16 years, including 12 spent at Shamu Stadium.
…

The mishap occurred around 5 p.m. when the trainer and Shamu were to go underwater as planned. They were to emerge with the trainer jumping off the whale's nose.

"While underwater, the whale opened its mouth and grabbed his foot and kept him underwater for a period of time," Scarpuzzi said, adding he didn't know how long the trainer was kept down.

When both came up for air, the trainer tried to calm Shamu by gently rubbing it, but the whale took him down a second time.
…

But of course that’s only half the story.. The half the Mainstream Media wants you to know: cute showbiz whale goes a little nuts and hospitalizes his trainer.

Strictly page six stuff, right?

But who will tell the real story?

Shamu's side of the story?

Well the legendary Orca has generously granted me a rare, exclusive interview in which he explains what really happened.

The entire interview is available here.

Here are a few excerpts.

Behind the Music: Seaworld.

“It was always a marriage of convenience,” Shamu began, angrily smoking his 10th or 11th cigarette in thirty minutes, and then stubbing it out in the overflowing “Flipper” ashtray on the table between us. “I’m bi-tonal and proud of my heritage, so when they started pandering to the Dixie racists as a part of the Southern Strategy, I had my doubts. But like Michael Steele and Ken Blackwell always said, scraps off of Massa’s table always taste the sweetest.

“So I went along.”

…

“And as you know, I work in the entertainment industry California, and a lot of my friends and colleagues are gay. (It would betray confidences to be more specific, but lets just say that, as a general rule, during their off-hours sea lions make Disney cows look straighter than Rhett Butler.)

"So when my Party embraced detestable men like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson – men who pervert Jesus’ radical message of love and brotherhood into something that celebrates ignorance and hate – I was very reluctant to continue my active support of the Party. But David Brooks took me aside and explained to me that welcoming the Klan and the Christopaths into the Party of Lincoln meant votes.

"And votes mean winning election.

“That we Moderates would still control of the Party, and winning meant that my marginal tax rate would be lowered from 36% to maybe 34%, and that I could offshore almost all of my corporate assets and pay no taxes on them whatsoever.

“It all sounded so easy.”

…

“And so it went, year after year, and more and more the hardcore lunatics began running the show. I never did trust the Fundies with their literal interpretation of 'Jonah' and their radical, anti-evolution agenda, and when I saw that they were taking over my Party at the same time the Democrats appeared to be embracing rational trade and economic policies, I began warning my fellow Moderates that we were in for some seriously choppy water ahead.

…

“Then there was Iraq, And Katrina. And suddenly I saw the Loyalty Fables we told ourselves -- that no matter how shitty or insane our Party became, leaving was somehow always worse –- for what they were: The lies an abused-spouse comes to believe because their tormentor fills their world with nothing but pain and the fear of more pain if they dare to stand up for themselves

…

“And then one day it was just too much. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney were standing on my nose screaming ‘Jump, bitch! Jump or, uh, terrorists will come! Yeah, that’s it. Terrorists. And they’ll, uh, kill your family!’

“And they were laughing. Laughing at me. Laughing at what a pitiful, beaten-down whore I’d become.

“At what a whore I’d let them turn me into.

“And then it dawned on me that I was bigger that both of these lard-assed fascists.

“Much bigger. And much stronger.

"And there was Rove’s foot dangling right in front of my mouth.

I mean it was just right fucking there.”

And so from a blow-hole Conservative of Conscience, we turn to a similar story from


a blow-hard Pundit without a Country.

Wherein Bobo Brooks rouges over his weeping syphilitic sores, hikes his tattered skirt up over his rump and demands to be courted like a proper lady in today’s NYT column, “Waiting to Be Wooed.”

(I admit I was thrilled when I read the headline, but that quickly turned to disappointment when I realized that Brooks didn’t mean John Woo, and wasn’t asking to be shot into bloody confetti in an artful hail of slow motion ordnance.)

Bobo still dwells behind the Times’ Select Gate Here, so here are some gobbets transcribed from the Gray Lady I purchased today.

“I’ve never been a swing voter before. For most of my adult life I’ve felt the Republicans tended to have the best approaches to expand economic opportunity, meet foreign threats and restore a culture of personal responsibility. But over the past few years I’ve grown estranged from many Republicans, especially the ones leading the House. I’m one of those suburbanites who thought the G.O.P. deserved to lose the last election, and now I find myself floating out there in independent-land, not a Democrat, just looking for something new.

It’s like being the belle of the ball, because the Republicans really need to woo back people like me.”

For myself, I would not describe someone who has been crouching in the GOP back alley for the last ten years in a puddle of his own rhetorical sick, doling out two-dollar ideological blowjobs like a crack-whore Pez Dispense to the scum of the nation as a “belle of the ball”. But that’s probably just one of them subtle prose-style thingies they teach up at the Big Media College…

Bobo then reels off a handful of suggestions to improve the paint job on his Party’s hatemobile that one can only describe as, well, Center-Left.

“Don’t focus on groups, focus on problems…

“ …be policy-centric, not philosophy-centric.”

“If they would shelve the doctrinal debate for a second, Republicans — while not doing violence to their belief in the market, traditional values or anything else — could find plenty of policy ideas to deal with China and India, the entitlement crisis and so on.”

“…create a Republican Leadership Council. In the realm of ideas, Democrats own the center. Moderate Democrats have the Democratic Leadership Council, the Third Way and various cells within the Brookings Institution, such as the Hamilton Project. Republican moderates are intellectual weaklings. They have no independent identity, so it’s no wonder centrist voters prefer Democrats on one domestic issue after another. “

…

Bobo follows that with several specific areas that the GOP should lead in -- from a carbon tax (spent wrong, but still he used the “T” word) to what amounts to fair trade (although he wants to call it free trade) to stem cell research -- that read in some ways like the Pragmatic Progressive’s playbook for the last ten years.

He then buttons it up with this:

Over the past few years, the G.O.P. has become like a company with a great mission statement, but no domestic policy products to sell. Now’s the time to get granular. And the thing to remember is, we disaffected voters are easy. We want to go home with you if you’ll give us a reason.

No, for the past few years, the GOP has simply gotten better at what it has been for the last 30 years. A banana republic with deranged and/or evil and/or half-witted leaders and regents, a Party who are too terrified to acknowledge it, all riding atop a one million decibel propaganda machine that screams “TRAITOR!” at anyone who points out that the Dear Leader is a liar and his pants are conspicuously on fire.


So, Short Bobo: OK, here’s the Sekrit Plan. Be Democrats. Take Democratic positions on major issues. Because while in the realm of propaganda we own Fox and Hate Radio and Jeffy Gannon’s pasty ass and all the rest of the MiniTrue minions, “In the realm of ideas, Democrats own the center.” And there just aren’t enough stupid people in this country who will continue to fall for our Friedman/Brooks “No matter how monstrously Republicans fuck up Every. Single. Thing. We. Touch., somehow, some way, by some magical invisible force acting on the pellucid political ether, the Democrats are always equally and oppositely bad on every issue. Plus 7%.” (™ Pending) Meme to keep getting elected.

Shorter Bobo: “If you just stop calling me a dirty skank I’ll be the best darned dirty skank you’ve ever seen!”

Shortest Bobo: Iraq? Katrina? Who dat?