Reading the news by starlight.

In a world where “news” and foie gras are manufactured using identical processes

1. The use of industrial technology to esophageally force-feed caged, tiny-brained animals,

2. In order to mass-produce unhealthy gobbets of fatty crap.

sometimes you have to navigate the Dark Forest of Truthiness by touch and celestial navigation.

That is if you don’t want to end up lost and incarcerated in the GOP Gingerbread House, being fattened for slaughter and rolled in bread crumbs by the Wicked Rich.

This from yesterday’s ChiTrib, with helpful translations by me.

Would today's GOP go for Ford?
The Tribune's William Neikirk assesses the vast political shift since the late president's term

William Neikirk, Tribune senior correspondent based in Washington

December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- In death, former President Gerald R. Ford might be coming back into style.

Friends and colleagues said Wednesday that there is a yearning among many voters in his own party for the kind of pragmatic politics of compromise that Ford embodied.

But internal Republican Party dynamics make it unlikely he could rise to power today. Independents and moderates would like him, but not the staunchly conservative Republican base.

…

Though beloved in his own Republican Party, the Midwesterner had been seen by today's partisans as too much of an old-fashioned politician willing to make deals and forge cozy friendships with the other side.

Indeed, a moderate conservative like Ford would have a hard time governing in today's harsh political climate where both parties seem at each other's throats, analysts said.
...

Both sides. Both sides. Both sides. The mantra of the Big Lie repeated until it disappears into a background hum and everyone just repeats it. The Dirty Jew. The Liberal Press. And Both Sides are Equally Wrong.

That’s the story.

Not that the GOP pioneered modern slash and slander politics as a means to an end. No one mentions that.

Not that the Right feeds off of Racism, Xenophobia, Bad Religion, Hate Radio and Newt Politics like baby spiders feed off heat. No one in the spineless Mainstream Media would dare make that a stand-alone story.

Not that the Right killdozed itself to One Party Rule by on the back of endless investigations of…nothing. Of land deals and Christmas card lists. Of impeachment deployed in the end as just another partisan Party Favor.

Not that after trying to play nice-nice with the slavering, rabid pit bull of the Right the Dems have finally just fucking had it. Had it with the being stabbed in the throat -- being called un-American or traitorous or ungodly -- by a Limbaugh or a Coulter or a Dobson on Monday, Wednesday and Friday…and then being told by the MSM on Tuesday and Thursday that our real problem is that we don’t compromise enough.

That as “The Center” is being dragged completely over the wingnut horizon by chittering accommodationist gnomes like Tom Friedman and outright sociopaths like Bill Kristol...being told that the Big Problem with liberals is that we don’t jettison enough of our basic values fast enough to keep up with the Christopath wagon train as it rockets away towards fascism.

And so finally – finally – as the Left beings to coordinate its counterfire, the Big Lie is one again rolled out.

Both Sides are Equally Wrong.

In the recent midterm elections, voters appeared to send a message that they were fed up with divisiveness in Washington. As a result, politicians with some of Ford's abilities for bridging the partisan divide could find greater support than once believed.

Frank Zarb, one of Ford's close friends and a top energy official in his administration, said the candidate who could "represent that they could genuinely bring people together" would have an advantage in the 2008 election.

To Marlin Fitzwater, who served as press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, and Michael Genovese, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount University, presidential contenders like Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are tapping such voter sentiments that could pay off.

"The message of the last election was that people wanted someone who could see both points of view," Fitzwater said.

…

Fitzwater, for one, doubted it. "The hatred for George W. Bush is just too strong," he said. "I don't think we will see much change until we get a president who is elected in a landslide."

Yeah. That’s the problem. The ‘…hatred for George W. Bush.’ Well I suppose being a Republican handmaiden, Marlin Fucking Fitzwater can afford to pretend that the ‘hatred for George W. Bush’ just precipitated out of the irrational nowhere.

That there is no reason or justification for it.

That like the quality of mercy, the ‘hatred for George W. Bush’ is not strain'd.

That

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

Well perhaps someone can pry the glue-huffing bag out of his talons and sober him long enough to point out that George W. Bush enjoyed widespread, bipartisan support after 9/11, and widespread, bipartisan support for his invasion of Afghanistan.

It was only after he lied us into a debacle in Iraq that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11…

After he tried to eviscerate Social Security…

After he couldn’t be bothered to leave his Crawford Crawlspace for the Christmas Tsunami or Katrina or Cindy Sheehan, but because James Dobson yanked his leash did break away from his 107th round of “The Beerhunter” to fly halfway across the country in his POTUS jammies and sign a Very Special Terri Schiavo Law...

After he lied during the debates...

After he made our troops beg for armor like the homeless begging for change...

After he pinned a Medal of Freedom on Viceroy L. Paul Bremmer...

After we learned that billions --- billions! – of our tax dollars have been lost, embezzled or no-bidded out to Dick Cheney’s pals...

After Heckofajob Brownie...

After a dozen other fuckups and disasters which the same Congress that looked into every pore and fanny-crack in the Clinton White House somehow could not be bothered to notice…

…then it turned to hate.

Get it?

...
And then there is the question whether a modern-style Ford could survive in a party where religious, social and economic conservatives impose ideological litmus tests on party leaders.

That question is very much up in the air since a deep-seated animosity between the parties has been part of the political picture for more than a decade. It became more pronounced with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

...

Well Duh.

Different style

...

Recalling that style, Zarb said Ford once reached a deal on a major energy policy bill with Democrats in the House and Senate in a meeting that never came to light. "Those guys shook hands, and the deal was done. No press conference, no press release," he said.

Zarb cited another example in which Ford quietly kept key members of Congress informed of delicate negotiations. He said the former president had assigned him to work on negotiating a deal with the shah of Iran at the height of the energy crisis. The shah had indicated he wanted to negotiate discount oil prices with the U.S., Zarb said.

The deal never materialized for various reasons, including economic considerations, but when two top members of Congress, the late Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) got wind of the talks, Ford told Zarb "you'd better go up and talk to John and Scoop." Zarb said he did as he was told, and consequently the talks were never made public.

Like his predecessor, Ford went along with major social programs like Medicare and Social Security, protecting the government's major safety net. He sought to cut taxes to relieve the financial burden on Americans, but not while raising the deficit.

Yet, Ford and Congress did not always see eye to eye, particularly on spending legislation. During his 2 1/2-year tenure, he exercised his veto frequently.

By contrast, President Bush has vetoed only one bill, dealing with stem cell research, explaining that he usually got what he wanted from a Republican Congress. The sharp partisan tone in Washington preceded Bush's presidency, but has appeared to worsen in recent years, several analysts said.

"Our majority became so damned haughty," said former House GOP Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.), who served in the minority with Ford. "Back in those days, you could still get things done, if you were reasonable with people."


…

Michel blamed former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who resigned after being involved in a lobbying scandal, for feeding the partisan atmosphere. "His modus operandi is one that turned people off," he said, adding that the GOP rammed legislation through the House without much consideration for the other side.

While I agree with Bob Michel’s post-mortem, let’s face it: As long as the Batshit Crazy Right was winning, even though they were doing it at the cost of laying waste to our nation’s basic institutions and fiscal security, Republicans were completely cool with it. Sure someday the bill for their reckless stupidity would come due, but by then, according to Ayn Rand, they’d all somehow be as rich as pirates…or they could just do what they have always done: blame their calamities, mendacities and open, running genital sores on the liberal press and the dirty hippies

This little snip transcribed from the estimable Mr. Paul Krugman in today’s NYT brings it perfectly home:

As long as people like Mr. Armey, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were out of power, they could run on promises to eliminate vast government waste that existed only in the public’s imagination — all those welfare queens driving Cadillacs. But once in power, they couldn’t deliver.

That’s why government by the radical right has been an utter failure even on its own terms: the government hasn’t shrunk.

…
Unable to make good on its promises, the G.O.P., like other failed revolutionary movements, tried to maintain its grip by exploiting its position of power. Friends were rewarded with patronage: Jack Abramoff began building his web of corruption almost as soon as Republicans took control. Adversaries were harassed with smear campaigns and witch hunts: Congress spent six years and many millions of dollars investigating a failed land deal, and Bill Clinton was impeached over a consensual affair.

…
In the end, Republicans didn’t shrink the government. But they did degrade it. Baghdad and New Orleans are the arrival destinations of a movement based on deep contempt for governance.

Or, to misquote Tacitus’ famous line, the GOP “Made a political desert and called it victory."

Starting thirty years ago with their despicable Southern Strategy, this is the path they deliberately chose.

This is the path they duckwalked the country down.

And now that the bitter fruit of their reckless, berserk scramble for absolute power is dropping as predicted -- fat and rotting -- at their feet, how dare any of them continue to pretend that it was somehow both sides...

...both sides...

...both sides...

...that brought us to this place.