She Stomped The Terra

and left the terrain so much more beautiful for having done so.

She was our fierce yellow rose that punched like a fist out of the Kilimanjaro of atavistic shit that is Texas politics.

She was always ready to take the Truth upstairs and show it a helluva time.

She was right about Bush before anybody, but we didn't listen.

And other that whining selfishly about how much poorer I feel today than I did yesterday, there is nothing that I can say about Molly that she couldn't say better.

So let's let her do that.

Here's a Texas-sized helping of video that I happened across awhile ago over at Susie Bright's literotica shop: Molly Ivins and others explaining to us civilians the Swiftian bizarro alternate Universe created when they mixed "Texas Fundamentalist dumbassery" and "sodomy laws" down in the Lone Star State.

It is funny, bawdy, topical, civil libertarian, proudly Liberal, and not at all work-safe.


It other words, pure Molly.

"All the world's a stage

And all the stoats and aardvarks merely pixels."

When Animals Thespians Strike Back.

Infuriated by what they see as an unwarranted assault on both their dignity and financial security, Vertebrates Local 1702 recently announced a bold counteroffensive against what their spokesmarmot, Dean Chibbers, described as “the increasing Pixar-ization of the animal kingdom”.

Using only locally available props, a microscopic budget and strictly adhering to indy “dogma movement” rules for guerilla cinema vertie, several species local fauna performers have come together to attempt to mount live-action, Animals Only remakes of popular movies and teevee programs.

Until recently their efforts had been small and experimental, but yesterday they attempted their most technically complicated and difficult piece yet:

The staging of final and climactic scene of the 1995 breakthrough suspense classic, "Se7en”

Regrettably there was some...unpleasantness.

This from the AP...

Eagle lugging a deer head causes outage

Mon Jan 29, 5:38 PM ET

About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines.

"You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario," said Gayle Wood, an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman. "This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle who evidently found a deer head in the landfill."

The bird, weighed down by the deer head, apparently failed to clear the transmission lines, she said. A repair crew found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby.

The power was out for less than 45 minutes Sunday.

Oh and just case you forgot what the last bit of "Se7en" was like,


Bill Shatner helpfully reenacts it here…

The Challenger.

In Memoriam.

There are a thousand ways to remember tragedy.

I remember the Challenger in several, discrete episodes one of which I’ll go into after this by Danny Miller from the Huffington Post, who recalls that day like so:

Touching the Face of God: Remembering the Challenger

What baby boomer wasn't obsessed with the space program? As a kid growing up in the 1960s I followed every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launch with enthusiasm and wonder and created scrapbooks of the missions. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were cultural icons in my childhood the same way Elvis and the Beatles were.
…
A few months later, I heard that NASA was following my lead. When I learned that a high school social studies teacher by the name of Christa McAuliffe had been chosen from over 11,000 applicants to be the first civilian to go up in the space shuttle, my childhood obsession with the space program was renewed. I read everything I could find about Christa's training, listened to her inspiring interviews, studied the lesson plans she would bring with her on the historic trip, and felt like I came to know her family members and her students in Concord, New Hampshire.

In January 1986, as the launch approached, I couldn't get enough of the Challenger coverage. I was disappointed each time the cold Florida temperatures delayed the mission. On January 27, I watched McAuliffe's husband Steven and their two children on "The Today Show," talking about how excited they all were for Christa. The kids, nine-year-old Scott and six-year-old Caroline, seemed thrilled that their mom was making such a ground-breaking trip and Scott was excited that his entire third-grade grade class had traveled to Florida to watch the launch.

On the morning of January 28th, we all stood around the TV set in the SVE conference room to watch the liftoff. It was still unusually cold in Florida but we were relieved that mission control did not stop the launch. I suppose if it hadn't been for Christa McAuliffe I might have been following the story of Judith Resnick, the Challenger astronaut who was only the second American woman to travel in space (third if you count Apple Blossom) and the first Jewish astronaut. The Challenger crew also included commander Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Gregory Jarvis. When they showed the seven astronauts about to enter the shuttle, my eyes were glued to the high school teacher from New Hampshire. Her smile was contagious, she seemed so terribly happy.

My heart was racing as the Challenger majestically rose from its perch at 9:38 Chicago time. The cameras kept cutting away to McAuliffe's mother and sister who were there watching the liftoff and live shots from Christa's former classroom in Concord. It seemed like a perfect launch, the Challenger rising in a beautiful straight line at Cape Canaveral and beginning to arch over the Florida sky. At first I didn't think anything of the strange double formations that formed around the shuttle's trail which was being closely followed by the cameras. It took me and the millions of people watching the Challenger several minutes to realize that some kind of major catastrophe had just occurred. It had never even crossed my mind that anything could happen to the crew of the Space Shuttle. Hadn't NASA proven itself over and over again, even when potentially catastrophic situations emerged during some of its earlier missions? The only casualties of the space program to date had been the three Apollo 1 astronauts who were killed by a fire on a launchpad in 1967.

When it became clear that the Challenger had exploded 73 seconds after takeoff, I could only stare at the television in disbelief. It took my brain several minutes to catch up with what my eyes were seeing and my ears were hearing. At first there were some excruciating close-ups of the stunned and then grief-stricken faces of McAuliffe's mother and sister.
…

I can't remember a news event that affected me so viscerally before or since. I couldn't even imagine the grief that the families and friends of the astronauts experienced as they watched the live broadcast of their loved ones' completely unexpected and terribly violent deaths.
…

That’s not a bad take on how Challenger felt to a lot of us.

Why, on 9/11, the only emotionally analogous memory I could dredge up to frame the nightmare I was seeing was from that day -- January 28, 1986 -- when this passionate son of the Space Age saw the most complex machine ever built by man, sailing into the stratosphere with the most “American” crew it had ever borne, blown to atoms, live and in color.

But I also remember another, later chapter of that catastrophe.

A specifically and contemptibly political chapter.

See if this doesn’t sound appallingly familiar:

A Republican Administration which, for grubby political ends, decides to do something incredibly dangerous and reckless.

To get what they want, Administration heavies lean hard on the Department charged with assessing the risk of their endeavor. They make it clear that “The President Wants This!” and that the consequences of not find a way to "Yes" may be very unpleasant.

In response, the men at the top -- The yes-men. The politically-sensitized careerists and bureaucrats -- steadily whittle away at every rationale underpinning each of the risk assessments. Insisting that the engineers frame each scenario in the most “optimistic” possible terms.

In other words, Pure Fucking Cheney-Think: that incessant thugging-down of every cautionary voice as somehow disloyal or harebrained, and the relentless amping-up of any data, not matter how wispy and wishful, that helps to spin a happy tale of glory and triumph.

In short order, the engineers who actually know what the risks are, are pushed aside, ignored or beaten into equivocation. Which, if you don’t have a conscience and have the authority to screw someone out of their career, is really not hard to do. You pick, and pick, and pick until the experts admit they cannot say with 100% certainty that your insane idea will end in ruin.

Of course they can’t.

Unknowns multiplied by unknowns multiplied by still other unknowns make for a predictive model which can be shot to sunshine if you are an ideologue hell-bent on seeing only what you want to see. If you are the kind of freak who absurdly insists that science must either be a flawless seer of what-is-to-come...or it's just "opinion" in which case isn't one opinion just as valid as another?

It was on this contemptible corruption of science that Big Tobacco was built, and that Global Climate Change is still dismissed as "unproven" by agenda-pounding wingtards.

And because no one can predict the outcome of unknowable events with perfect certainty, once the wormy shits from the Big House on Pennsylvania Avenue can bully the analysts into admiting any element of doubt exists, they then have all the room to maneuver they need.

And so, against the consensus advice of their experts but with the consent of their appointed lackeys -- their own pet "Heckofajob" Brownies and Bremers -- the Reagan Administration threw Challenger into the sky and killed it.

I supposed the single, merciful fact that philosophically separates the Shuttle Disaster from the Iraqi Disaster is that once the Challenger exploded -- once the debris fell into the ocean -- no one could continue to cling to the belief that the Challenger Mission could still somehow be salvaged – that “Victory” could still somehow be achieved -- by pouring more money and lives down that rat hole.

But other than that, the parallels roll right down the same, predictable, disgraceful track.

After the failure came the parade of experts. All in impressive uniforms, bulwarked by impressive credentials. All spewing highly technical doubletalk specifically designed to make the non-experts feel stupid and silly.

In other words, spouting bullshit calibrated to make anyone who was not suited up in a NASA-issue lab coat and blessed by the Administration that dared to venture a harsh question or skeptical opinion feel like an idiot.

Feel like they were somehow besmirching the brave sacrifices of our noble astronauts.

Is this sounding at all familiar?

And they may well have gotten away with it if it weren’t for this guy.


Richard Feynman: A physics genius with that rare, mentor’s gift for communicating the often exotic intricacies of the scientific world with admirable plainness and clarity.

It was Feynman who, during the hearing -- live and on-camera -- used the simple props of a C-clamp, a glass of ice water and a chunk of O-ring material to demonstrate irrefutably that the stuff they used as gaskets on the shuttle would fatally lose its elasticity when the temperature fell below freezing.

Period.

Who wrote this in his appendix to the “Roger's Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident”.

(emphasis added)

"It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management....

“Finally, if we are to replace standard numerical probability usage with engineering judgment, why do we find such an enormous disparity between the management estimate and the judgment of the engineers? It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.”
...
“There was no way, without full understanding, that one could have confidence that conditions the next time might not produce erosion three times more severe than the time before. Nevertheless, officials fooled themselves into thinking they had such understanding and confidence, in spite of the peculiar variations from case to case.”

“Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working
engineers.

“In any event this has had very unfortunate consequences, the most serious of which is to encourage ordinary citizens to fly in such a dangerous machine, as if it had attained the safety of an ordinary airliner. The astronauts, like test pilots, should know their risks, and we honor them for their courage. Who can doubt that McAuliffe was equally a person of great courage, who was closer to an awareness of
the true risk than NASA management would have us believe?

"Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects.

"Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

Substitute "White House" for "NASA" and "Iraq" for "Challenger", and if Richard Feynman were alive today and making the same kind of clear, rational observations he would be flogged as a traitor on Fox, or as a terrorist-sympathized in the Wall Street Journal, or as a disloyal American who refuses to support the troops by Tony Snow.

Every Fucking Day.

There are a thousand ways to remember tragedy, and I can’t think of any way sadder than to realize that that subspecies of Rodenta Republicana Americanus whose political hubris and contempt for science authored the Challenger tragedy have, over the years, proven themselves time and again to be uniquely incapable of learning a single god damned thing from their own failures.

That, as Iraq and Katrina have now made abundantly clear, unless they are stopped cold, this particular mutant breed of political animal will rampage on, unchanged and unrepentent.

Continue to frantically scramble for more and more power regardless of the long-term toxicity of the means.

Continue to loudly dismiss experts and analysts and thoughtful critics in favor of their imbecile dogma and the dictates of their corporate masters and their science-hating Christopath fellow travelers.

Continue to misuse the power they grab by taking ever-crazier long-shot gambles with other people’s money and other people’s children.

Continue to fail, serially and catastrophically.

And continue to try to blame the bloody results of their own murderous incompetence on their critics and betters.

That is the lesson for our time. That in the Age of Dubya, the Modern Republican Party as it is currently constituted is beyond salvation and beyond redemption.

That since their ideology renders them incapable of self-correction, they will continue destroying all that they touch until they are electorally torched back into the ideological sewers that spawned them.

And not a moment before.

Protesting Dissent.

File under: Bartleby the Protester

Over at Mr. Gilliard’s House, a little hornet’s nest (or WASPs nest, if you want to be precise) was stirred up with this post from Mahablog entitled Protesting 101:

The short and sweet of it are Six Rules for changing the world if you’re going to do it using mass protests.

They are:

Rule #1. Be serious.

Rule #2. Be unified of purpose.

Rule #3 — Good protesting is good PR.

Rule #4 — Size matters.

Rule #5 — Be sure your opposition is uglier/more hateful/snottier than you are.

(I think of this as the “Bull Connor” Rule. If you can get Central Casting to line you up a fat, white, jackbooted imbecile of a villain who reeks of Klan cross-smoke, walks with the swaggering unearned privilege of Confederate Apartheid and calls everyone “niggra”…half of your battle is won.)

Rule #6 — Demonstrations are not enough

Good rules, but the kerfuffle that was kicked up was, in many ways, the eternal battle between the Suitist and the AntiSuitarians.

Commenters “dave©™” and “Richard Estes” over at Gilly’s respectively sum up the AntiSuitarian position thusly:

“…definitely worth discussing, and a much more valuable dialogue than liberals insisting upon the need for dress codes and language censors at marches involving tens of thousands of people.”

And thusly:

”A little late to all this, but let me say this: suits??? Are you fucking kidding me? People don't even wear slacks to go to church anymore, for Christ's sake.

If you look at films of the World Series from the early 60s, you'll see people wearing suits and ties at the game. That shit doesn't happen anymore, either.

I love you, Steve, but this is utter bullshit.”

This isn’t to single out anyone, but to further an important conversation. Specifically, to speak to this proposition:

Resolved, that from a strictly utilitarian point-of-view, the purpose being served by a mass protest should be aligned with the stagecraft of that protest.

To me it seems perfectly clear that a protest march -- any protest march, like any political movement -- is either a means to achieve an end, or it's....a Shriner's Parade.

Or Burning Man.

Now there's nothing at all wrong with funny hats and little cars or funny hats and getting naked in the desert, but these are not activities designed to impel the larger society to change their behavior or to bring their massed electoral pressure to bear on behalf of your particular issue.

For example, the very few times I have had to go to court, fucking-a I wore a suit. Shit, if I could have swung it without running afoul of the Karma Gods, I’da worn a priest’s collar, and done it for one, simple reason:

Whether you are going to have your day in court, or a job interview, or to march in the streets...at least 70% of your job is the theatah of the thing. These are places where, for strictly selfish, hard-nosed reasons, you want to be as credible as Caesar’s wife, by any means necessary.

What you are engaged it is performance art designed to achieve a specific goal, so why go out of your way to rack up points against your cause before you’ve even had chance to get a word out of your mouth?

Forty years ago, when Dr. King spoke on the Mall in Washington, he was not talking to Civil Rights activists. He was speaking for them and to the conscience of Middle America in a voice that was fierce and proud and hopeful and beautiful. He understood ritual and spectacle and he understood that when you speak the raw truth to a sick and powerful nation from a position of moral authority but physical vulnerability, you’d best leave nothing to chance, including your threads.

Forty years later, Jon Stewart goes on teevee every day and tells more truth and makes more of a dent in the skulls of the simians that are running the country in an hour than you or I will probably ever do in the very best month of our lives. And you know what? Mr. Stewart Corrupts the Youth of America wearing a blazer, a crisp shirt and a tie done up in what appears to be a double Windsor.

Suiting up for a battle in the public square isn’t conformity. It’s stagecraft.

Keith Olberman? That Rebel Without a Pause wears a fucking suit.

So does Stephen Colbert.

So does Letterman.

And Obama.

So does Kennedy.

So does Conyers.

And Hagel.

And Kucinich.

And Sinatra.

And Sharpton, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Also handmaidens of the Dark One like Falwell and Dobson and Cheney.

And when those nice young men from the LDS come to pester you about the sorry state of your immortal soul, they’re in white shirts and ties.

Why?

Because like it or not, it confers a certain degree of immediate and unearned respectability that helps you get your foot in the door.

So is that fair?

Of course not. But so what?

I was promised a future of Lucite sandals, shiny unitards, sassy capes, and taking the 5:15 ballistic rocket back home from my job in the orbital research lab, and that didn’t quite come off as planned. The world we have is the world we have, and pretending that the impression you make makes no difference to the cause you champion – especially in a 24/7 Media Universe -- is simply ridiculous.

Now while this canard that “everybody” goes to church in shirtsleeves is ridiculous, I have certainly been to plenty of church services and more than one wedding where denim and boots with a silver bola might be considered a bit overdressed.

I have been to at least one Wiccan event where clothing was very much optional.

Again, so what?

In my time I have also been to any number of weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs where I wore a yarmulke and at least tried to not stick out like a treif thumb.

Also my share of Catholic Latin mass.

Ditto African Methodist Episcopalian services.

Ditto an ashram or seven and a couple of mosques.

But those were and are inward-facing rituals designed by and for the benefit of the participants and their deity of choice. And whether or not I was remotely interested in their faith, pamphlets, women or house Kool-Aid, I was raised to at least respect the rites and customs of that House while I was a guest there. To learn when to take a knee, when to take my shoes off and when to cover my head as a sign of courtesy if not interest.

But protest marches are most emphatically outward-facing rituals. They are specifically, explicitly designed to attract and focus the attention of people who are not already in “the church”.

So if you want to go to court wearing a hoodie, hanging your best "Fuck You" face with your cell chirping away every 90 seconds, that’s cool with me. It's a free country.

But when I get kicked and you get fined, please don't cry me any fucking tears.

Spocko

The saga continues (h/t Atriot WoodyG'sGuitar)

Tom Waits Friday

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up
…

The Big Lie

The intertubes will be smokin’ tonight, tomorrow and beyond with commentary on this evening’s rhetorical combo: Dubya’s "Eternal SOTU of the Spotless Mind", and Jim Webb’s two-fisted rebuttal.

In clean, muscular language Webb performed the most important service a citizenry can ever ask of its politicians: To literally speak on our behalf.

On smaller matters we may disagree, but on the big things the job of our representatives is to open their mouths and use the proximity to power we lend them to speak what is in our hearts directly to those who do not want to hear it.

And if they are very good, say it clearer and more magnificently than we ourselves could probably manage if we were standing where they are.

By that measure, Jim Webb was good tonight. Very good. And afterwards watching a simpering puddle like David Brooks try to encompass what Webb’s speech accomplished in his shabby, partisan rags made me laugh. Watching Bobo grudgingly grunt out left-handed admiration for Webb's punctuation and his font choices and ignore the content as anything but “partisan” was like watching Barney Fife, fifty pounds overweight, trying to downtalk Muhammad Ali.

Webb can speak for himself and needs no editorial gilding, and the deconstruction of George W. Bush’s remarks will be the work of many hands over the next many days, so instead I’d like to discuss the goings on in a dusty corner of the radio dial late this afternoon.

Now I usually don’t have the opportunity to listen to any radio, much less NPR (the “Nice Polite Republicans”. h/t Atrios), during the average workday, but today I was booming down the wide boulevards of my city and overheard Neal Conan facilitating this round of mutual masturbation between former Senators Alan Simpson and George Mitchell, each nostalgizing about the Good Old Days and generally pinin’ for the fjords.

Then I pulled over and made a little sick behind some nice lady’s rose bushes.

Then I cleansed my palate with a little Zepplin and resumed my rambles.

Here is what they said (all quotes are rough and approximate except, where I have just made stuff up to make the old guys sound more lively.)

The program was called “Crossing the Divide: Partisan Politics on Capitol Hill.”

First, in fairness, some things that I liked.

Simpson: Trust and respect are the missing ingredients. I trusted them [my Democratic counterparts]. I didn’t have to agree with them.

Mitchell: Preznit Bush [the First] was in office. Democrats controlled the House and the senate…We had our disagreements, of course. But because we maintained a personal respect and a cordiality, we were able to overcome our differences. And we passed a shitload of things. Big, scary, complicated legislation where we spent a ton of time working out our differences and compromising honorably.

Mitchell: We believe in competition. We believe in it in business. In sports. And of course in government. But we also believe in [cooperative and collegial political] relationships that will vindicate our belief in the competitive system.

Simpson: I never voted straight party ticket. I never followed the straight Wyoming party platform because I thought some of it was stupefying. And yet I seemed to get along OK and I never lost an election.

Simpson said many good things. That the last Congress did nothing. That this new arrangement will pull the President towards the center. That it is “tragic” that Harry Reid has been the Dem Leader in the Senate for all these years and yet has been invited to the WH to speak to the Preznit one-on-one only once.

So, as I say, there was some good stuff.

However it was all icing on a big pile of cold dung, because even with the barrel of an elephant gun pressed to the foreheads of their favorite puppies, what you will never get a Simpson or Mitchell to choke out is this, simple reality:

When it comes to partisanship, ideological fanaticism, and the vicious depths to which they will gleefully sink to demonize their opponents, by any measure the Republican Party is far, far worse than the Democrats.

So why is partisanship getting worse in the Senate?

Mitchell: Because you’re getting more people elected to the Senate from the House. And they bring the mores and traditions of the House with them.

Simpson: I agree with George totally. I can name names. I watched the venom come from the House.

Caller Isabelle from New Jersey chimes in and gets the bullshit rolling.

Isabelle: I think the problem right now is not so much between the Republicans and the Democrats as it is between those with an ideological approach to politics and those with a pragmatic approach.

Isabelle: So when you have people like Alan Simpson or Christine Todd Whitman who have a more pragmatic approach to politrics they can discuss [issues] with Demiocrats, whereas when you have a very ideological person like President Bush or Sam Brownback…it’s more difficult to come to a compromise because their ideology is based on ideology not on reality.

And then, completely unprompted, our host helpfully leaps in with this:

“I would suspect to be fair that there are at least a few Democrats who have an ideology of their own too…”

To which the caller replies:

”Yes. I agree. I just couldn’t think of one though.”

The discerning ear can now hear the penny drop.

“To be fair…”?

driftglass translation: Whatever explicitly Republican high crimes, scandals, lie or treasons are under discussion, Something Very Bad will happen to me if I don’t automatically and doctrinally butt in with no evidence whatsoever and assert that, somehow, Democrats are equally bad.

This is GOP Talking Point Number One, repeated so incessantly and so ubiquitously that it has reached the point of reflex.

Everyone is equally partisan.

Equally to blame.

Equally unreasonable.

Everybody knows that…except for some mysterious reason no one can lay hands on a single metric that shows this to be true.

And why? Why this persistent, voluntary blindness?

Well, for the GOP the answer is obvious. I mean, since they can now force the bar to be lowered and the ire to be raised uniformly and robotically for everyone every time they and only they are caught naked, in the apse, fisting the Easter Bunny, they can start every national race no worse than dead-even with any competitor.

But with others – with those who do not follow anything political very closely at all – I think the answer is really very simple. They want to believe it because to believe otherwise is terrifying.

Our political parties have each been on various issues and at various moments shrewd and flawed and cowardly and noble, but our system is formulated in such a way that we ultimately resolve ourselves into two and ONLY two major parties. With rare exceptions we always have been thus, and for the foreseeable future we will certainly be thus. And being a proud Realist I have long since learned to rein in my political fantasies and keep them from straying too far into the “Gee, what if we had nine parties, a parliamentary system, public financing, and heroes and angels as public servants?” territory.

Because we don’t.

We have what we have, and the trick has always been to try to keep this ornery, square-wheeled Conestoga wagon lurching along in generally the right direction. Because sitting by the roadside crying and holding one’s breathe until the magic, smooth-riding, round-wheeled, hybrid Nadermobile glides to a stop to pick you up and take you to the Progressive Promised Land is never, ever going to happen.

The two parties have always ended up soaking up the issues and zealotries and good and bad Third Party ideas of the day like biscuits sopping up gravy.

They have adapted and evolved or devolved where and when they have been forced to, and then like two drunks propping each other up, stumbled along their symbiotic way.

That view of our country is burned onto our collective civic motherboard, so what happens on the day regular, non-political junkie Americans are faced with the no-longer avoidable reality that one of our Parties is no longer just the Opposition, but are the Enemy?

That all of their millions of megawatts of flag-wavin’, good-hairin’, Jebus Lovin’, RedWhiteandBlue Murrican rhetoric has been in the service of a political and economic elite that is deeply malevolent and deeply committed to the extinction of this country as we know it and love it?

What happens then?

There are powerful historical parallels to be found in the Dark Age of our own recent Segregationist past.

The perpetuation of Jim Crow in this country owed as much to the vast number of citizens who quietly went along with or who willfully ignored the terrorism that the Southern states inflicted on their black minorities, as it did to the terrorists who carried out their state-sanctioned campaign of rape, torture, extortion, lies and murder decade after decade after decade.

Long, looong after it was painfully clear to anyone who bothered to open their eyes that the South was owned and operated by openly fascist regimes of child murderers, Americans by and large dealt with the problem by magical thinking. They did not want to believe in an America run by bloodthirsty despots – which is exactly what the Segregated South was – so they just…ignored it.

Just wish-wish-wished it away.

Sometimes, in search of other more intricate answers, I overlook our nearly infinite national capacity for just closing our eyes to terrible problems, pulling the blankie over our heads, and hoping it all somehow goes away. So like the war in Vietnam, year after year this country somnolently whitewashed over the horrors of our Apartheid That Dare Not Speak Its Name until it came screaming out at us from our teevee sets and rammed itself down our throats.

And now we are faced with another grim reality with frightening implications: That millions of our fellow citizens are either hateful morons or clinically insane and that they are almost all packed into the same political Party.

A Party/Media/Corporate Empire which now survives solely by keeping its base ignorant, frightened and berserk with rage.

And the implications that flow from this unhappy revelation that we are two, distinct Americas now -- and that while one is certainly flawed and squabbling and timorous, the other America – the Red/Fox America -- has become so existentially monstrous that it is now inimical to every value we claim to cherish -- are so terrifying to normal citizens that they will not accept it.

And so with the eager help of Hate Radio, Fox News and the Mainstream Media, they invent a bedtime story to help them hide the ugly truth. An opium dream that is now faithfully parroted by every Broder and Brooks and Friedman and Neal Conan in the land. This lie that no matter how low the GOP sinks, somehow, some way the Democrats are equally and oppositely terrible.

Equally steeped in sin and intolerance.

Equally to blame for every bad thing.

Back on NPR, Jim in Oklahoma City would like to know the effect of Religious Fundamentalism on politics.

Jim: “Reasonable people are willing to compromise their political stances, but it is probably extremely difficult for people to compromise what they believe are their religious principles.”

Got it? The question Jim asked is about the dangers that come when Religious Zealots get into politics.

And since political extremism jacketed in fundamentalist religious fanaticism is a particular disease of the Right, this is a clearly a shot right into Simpson’s Party’s political wheelhouse.

So how does Simpson answer?

First he rambles uncomfortably and incomprehensibly all over God’s Little Acre and back again (for Simpson-watchers, this is a sure sign that he is about to lay out a fat line of bullshit), and then fires back with this:

“I can tell ya, when you have zealots on both sides, and they’re getting’ pumped up on one side by Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken on the other, you got problems in River City.”

Really?

Rush Limbaugh “returned to radio as a talk show host at KFBK in Sacramento, California” in 1984.

That was 22 years ago.

Al Franken began firing back in the same medium as Limbaugh when he began anchoring a show on Air America, which did not even exist until 2004.

That was two years ago.

So Rush had a twenty-year head start. And in that time his imitators created an entire, integrated radio/teevee/print/cable media Universe based almost entirely on egging the pig people on to mindlessly hate Liberals and blame queers and “feminazis” for every evil on Earth, real or imagined.

For twenty years a polyglot witchbag of sociopaths, Christopaths, Neocons, drunks, demagogues and whores have gotten rich and re-elected by banding together to demonize Liberals and tell the scum of the nation over and over and over again that being the scum of the nation is a noble calling. Or, to misquote H.L Menkin, “No Fox executive ever went broke overestimating the hateful stupidity of the pig people.”

And for twenty years – while the mass purveyors of carefully calibrated hate and rage and xenophobia on the Right gathered more and more power and got more and more vulgar and vicious in their rhetoric – what did the Left try to do?

We tried to find common ground. To meet our opponents half-way.

To compromise…with people who sneered at the very idea of working together and said quite openly that compromise was “political date rape”.

While the Emperor of Weaponized Bile, Newt Gingrich, took over the House with a campaign explicitly based on calling Democrats “traitors” at every opportunity, and Limbaugh was being honored as the “Majority Maker” by those House Republicans, we on the Left were still trying to do and be all the nicey-nicey things that Alan Simpson is now all weepy and wistful for.

And it didn’t work. And while we played by Marquis of Queensbury, the orcs laughed in our faces, overran the joint, and bequeathed to us as its apotheosis the worst, most despicable, most incompetent, most Constitution-loathing Administration in American history.

Al Franken and Air America did not arise in a vacuum. The came into being as a desperate, eleventh-hour attempt to fight back against a twenty year multimedia blitz of unremitting, unrebutted Conservative lies and bigotry.

They arose because no one in the Mainstream Media had the guts to take on the GOP Propaganda Machine head-on. Instead, the MSM collaborated, because collaborating in the Big Lie was a much better, safer career move.

Progressive Radio arose because politicians like Alan Simpson were, for twenty years, perfectly content with looking the other way and harvesting the electoral fruits of the poison tree that their Conservative/Christopath/Racist Hate Radio, Hate TeeVee, Hate Satellite, Hate Cable and Hate Publishing so lavishly watered and fertilized.

Because the GOP was never concerned with the destruction of political comity…as long as it was working to their advantage.

As long as all of the screeching Orwellian hellfire was coming from the Right, they never said a fucking word.

But now, finally, after twenty years of unilateral disarmament, now that the Left has at last decided to fight back hard, suddenly old Republican loons like Simpson get all gooey for the glory days of cellulose collars, nickel candy bars, whale-bone corsets, heroic cavalry charges and a politics of gentle, ruffled fisticuffs followed by brandy, cigars and top-shelf hookers.

Suddenly it is “zealots on both sides” that have torn his beloved Temple down.

Well fuck you, Alan Simpson. Fuck you sideways for your bogus hand-wringing and crocodile tears.

And fuck you, George Mitchell, for sitting there with your thumb up your ass and allowing your good, Republican friend to spread this Big Lie unchallenged right under your nose.

Sunday Morning – Tuesday Edition

Part 1 of 2

The Golden Age of Trial Ballooning!

Part V.

In which GOP spokesrodents yelp “It’s not another load of spintastic horseshit! It’s a Plan for Victory!” and throw anyone who does not believe that serial fuck-up George W. “Light Fingers” Bush has finally found the Majyk Tumbler Combination to Peace in Iraqi out of the Party of God.

Sunday was a Family Fun Day at the castle, rounding out a weekend hosting various dignitaries from clan driftglass – isinglass, art glass, a coupla shot glasses, etc. -- in town to hang out, goof around, try to cram too many projects into too little time, eat too much and enjoy each other’s company.

Which was vastly more fun and soul-nourishing than anything the Mouse Circus can ever offer.

So I watched, but not with much attentiveness. The sides of the great “Who Lost Iraq?” battle of ’07-‘08 settling in for a long, trench-but-not-trenchant warfare.

On "Meet the Press" Whoever decided the roll the Audio-Animatronic St. John McCain out of the Disney Enchanted Tiki Room of Wannabe Preznits and plug him in to the line up made a serious mistake.

McCain looked doped to the gills. As if the handlers he just picked up cheap at the Bush Administration Estate Sale put him on the serious anti-cranky meds, and instead of a shower he’d just run his head through a bowling-ball cleaner. Flat affect. Zero modulation.

An irritable bowel in a suit.

The shorter time-lapse take on St. McCain is this:

St. McCain: “I’m thinking of a number. If we push that number of troops into the Iraqi meatgrinder, everything will work out fine.”

Everyone in the MSM: Is it…zero?

St. McCain: Nope.

Everyone in the MSM: Is it…20,000?

St. McCain: Nope.

Everyone in the MSM: Is it…50,000?

St. McCain: Nope.

Everyone in the MSM: Is it…a jillion?

St. McCain: Nope.

St. McCain is, of course, tuckpointing his shambled reputation by playing his own cynical variant of “The Price is Right” spoiler strategy with people’s lives.

Whatever “price” anyone names, St. McCain will just mindlessly assert it has to be more.

The difference of course being that we’re not playing for a new washer/dryer set or a ski vacation in Tierra Del Fuego. As they have for the last four years, this Administration is casting human dice down George Bush’s Iraqi Rathole because to face the truth with clear eyes and clean hands – the truth that Iraq is long lost, and the people who stranded us there are despicable monsters – would mean the end of the GOP for a generation.

Which would mean St. McCain would have to find another ass to bear his lying self into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Iraqi Escalation is McCain’s Presidential 401K, and he’s going to make sure it is fully vested no matter how many people it ends up pointlessly killing

The other difference is, of course, that on “The Price Is Right”, eventually they flipped the cards over and showed you the correct answer.

In Iraq, the correct answer – that we can either begin to leave now at a quick march or later, pell mell and under fire – is the fact that dare not speak its name.


McCain:

“I have great confidence in General Petraeus. If it’d been up to be, it would have been more. But I looked General Petraeus in the eye and he said it’d be fine.”

“If the failure in Iraq was that clear-cut, Holy Joe Lieberman wouldn’ta been re-elected in Connecticut.”

So Candling the Great Egg of Veracity regarding Iraq no longer has anything to do with what the general’s said. Or the public. Or the experts.

No, according to St. McCain, the truth about Iraq hinges on the gullibility of the voters in the Nutmeg State.


Punkin Haid: We’re moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. WTF?

McCain: I’m not aware of that, but it is concerning. We have a military of 1.4M. Seems to me that we could come up with 20K, no problem.

Apparently coming up with tens of thousands of troops is like coming up with loose sofa change. Who knew?

Punkin: The Preznit said he’d listen to the commanders. Gen Casey said he does not want more troops.

And on it went.

Then came Kennedy talking sense:

Kennedy: If the Preznit chooses to be contemptuous of the will of the American people, the judgment of his generals, the birpartisan majority of the US Congress, then we have a constitutional responsibility to cut off funding for this war.

Kennedy: We would have an orderly departure. We would make sure they have the armor and the bullets.

Kennedy: Let’s try something we haven’t tried. That hasn’t failed. Let’s de-escalate. Our guys have been over there for four years. They have done everything we have asked of them. Longer than WWII.

Kennedy: This President has been wrong on every major decision.

Then Russert runs a tape of Negroponte saying “A precipitous withdrawal would be bad.”


Kennedy: Of course no one is talking about what Negroponte is talking about. They have been wrong. Negroponte has been wrong about everything every time.

Kennedy: They took their eyes off the ball in Afghanistan.

Kennedy: We tried a surge four different times and it didn’t work.


On “Fox News Sunday” the only outstanding question is why fifth-columnist and serial fraud Bill Kristol is still allowed to show his face on teevee.

I mean there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Kristol that his sitting in a sealed garage with the engine running for six hours couldn’t cure. And then his carcass could be towed out to sea and sunk onto the Sala Y Gomez Ridge where his skeleton could perhaps help produce a lively coral playground for skates and urchins and squids, and begin paying the vig on his massive karmic debt.

Except, of course, for his malevolent grin.

The coroner’s gonna have to pound that “Isn’t it cool how I make other people’s children die for my jagoff delusions of Empire?” smirk off his skull with a coal chisel.

Also on “Fox”, Bill Kristol finally, if accidentally, formalizes the GOP meme for maintaining perpetual war while keeping dissent perpetually demonized. Saying, more-or-less, everyone needs to STFU fro the next 6-9 months to see if this latest stupid idea pans out.

Of course when it doesn’t, it will be followed by yet another fantastically stupid plan, and Kristol will then tread the boards once again, insisting that everyone who does not sit on their hands while the Bicycle Chief forces the military to Sisyphus another Rock up Mt. Iraq is a traitor.

Project this shell game backwards four years and ahead forever – interleaved with protestations of “listening to experts” followed by the firing on any expert who disagrees with Administration delusion -- and you now understand the blueprint for the GOP Perpetual Destruction Machine.

End Part 1 of 2.

Sunday Morning – Tuesday Edition

Part 2 of 2.

ABC's "This Week" — Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

And the Waxworks Panel nattered on.

Yawn.

CBS's "Face the Nation" — Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.


Hagel: It is wrong to put kids in the middle of a sectarian civil war.

Bob Schieffer: How many Republicans do you need to sign up for your bill to make it bi-partisan?

driftglass: One. Every fucking time the GOP leaves orbit for Planet Crazy they take Holy Joe Lieberman with them as supercargo so they can point to his turncoat ass and shout “bipartisan”. So per the GOP Rulebook, the correct answer is “One”.

Hagel: If you keep this bottled up, then it’s a problem. Are Americans so weak that we cant even discuss it. 21 American kids died over this weekend.

Hagel: It is clearly wrong to put American troops into the middle of a sectarian civil war. That is morally wrong. We owe it to the public and the troops to debate this openly and honestly.

Hagel: For example, the Republican Party, interestingly enough as the new chairman of the Republican Party said in his acceptance speech two days ago, needs to get back to what it once stood for. The party that I first voted for on top of a tank in Mekong Delta 1968 is not the party I see today."

Hagel: It is complete nonsense to say we’re undercutting the support of the troops…What are we about? We’re Article 1 of the Constitution. We are co-equal branch of government. Are we not to participate? Are we not to say anything? Are we not to register our sense of where we’re going in this country on foreign policy?


driftglass George W. Bush will go down in history as the American President who spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to kill the monster under his bed.

And the GOP will be forever damned as the Party that let him.

And speaking of Eternally Damned Conservatives,

David Brooks pooped this into the NYT last Friday, so as a little added bonus, let’s have ourseves a look-see at just the first and last bit:

We’re in bipartisan nirvana. Bills are passing through the House 356 to 71 and through the Senate 96 to 2. Nancy Pelosi is aglow, and this week President Bush will trot out a State of the Union speech so conciliatory in tone it’ll sound like Gandhi on Quaaludes.

The question is, What is all this good cheer accomplishing? It’s time to render judgments on the substance of all this legislation coursing through the Democratic Congress:
…

In conclusion, if a wonky Mr. Chips were to step back and render a judgment on the new Congress so far, he’d note that it’s not a terribly ambitious student. It hasn’t tried anything big. It has a weakness for showy symbolism and middle-class subsidies. Still, at least it hasn’t humiliated the nation the way the last Congress did, and it looks set to do some modest good.

Ah, Bobo.

Congress is an E-Ticket. A two-year ride. And yet with…let’s see…carry the seven….with slightly more than Two Fucking Percent of the term of the 110th congress expired, Bobo has chosen to “render judgments”.

Remember a few short years ago when the funny little pundit monkeys and their Administration counterparts were ripped to the tits on meth, dogma, stoopid, and bad whiskey?

The days when manwhores like Jeff Gannon was left free to trollop down the halls of the White House? When Fox News Republicans in and out of government amused themselves by publicly despoiling the graves of the Founders? Peeling the flesh from Lincoln’s bones and wearing it like a barbeque apron as they gleefully torched the Constitution and lobbied for a Monarchy of looters, liars and lunatics?

When anyone who asked any questions about why Big GOP Daddy was raping Iraq into the ground and pounding our basic rights to splinters was called a traitor and cast into the outer darkness?

IMHO, the mistake – the cardinal mistake – Liberals made in 1975 was taking their eye off the ball.

The various strains of Progressivism in America had had fifteen years that were simultaneously vital, vicious, productive and insane. The civil rights template that had been hewn out of unyielding American stone by the blood and sacrifice of so many men, women and children was being learned and unleashed by students, women and other minorities. The senseless slaughter in Vietnam had been ended by the combination of mass action, media attention and reluctantly exercised political will.

A disease-ridden abomination of a Presidency was terminated two short years after winning a landslide.

And then, as I believe Harlan Ellison once said in an essay I can’t track down, a “vast, Ford-like hum settled across the land.” Progressives splintered, or wandered away or went to sleep.

And when they woke up, Ronald Fucking Reagan was taking the oath of office, and the only “Jerry” on the national stage that was commanding any legions was Falwell.

The wound inflicted on the nation by Nixon and his mob was never properly cleaned and dressed and since then the authoritarian infection has been left to gangrenize.

And for nearly six year an even uglier, deadlier, more vicious, more proudly ignorant and Christopathically zombified mutation of the Nixon Virus has ravaged this country while Bobo and his ilk have stood aside, golf-clapping their destructive claptrap and pooh-poohing their critics.

And now that their 100-story Tower of Twaddle is falling to pieces around them, Bobo wants to scoot his NYT Lemonade Stand back out onto the curb and begin Opining Loudly About Democrats For Dollars again as if nothing had happened, while Frank Luntz works the other side of the street, desperately hawking his own line of “Bipartisan Cuisine” meals while hoping that you’ll forget to notice that up until six minutes ago he was one of the most fanatical architects of the wingnut deliberately divisive, no-holds-barred Total War on Liberals.

Sorry, Frank. Sorry, Bobo.

This time all is most emphatically not forgiven.

This time we know better than to leave you to your own devices. We have seen your true and naked faces and know that if left alone your kind will only metastasize again.

Sow the seeds of your next Fascist Renaissance. Again.

This time we salt you off the body politic like the leeches that you are.

This time we take you down root and branch.

From your corporate agendas to your Party’s racist heart, from your multibillion dollar Media Lie Factory to your wingnut welfare think tanks, from your rancid ideology to your despicable perversion of Christianity, this time there will be No Brownshirts Left Behind.

Why Rio is Rio

Madame Ambassador.

This vie Reuters

Violent Rio picks Naomi Campbell as its ambassador
Fri Jan 19, 3:13 PM ET

The beautiful but violent Rio de Janeiro invited the pretty but troubled Naomi Campbell to be its ambassador on Friday, two days after she admitted in a New York court to throwing a mobile phone at her housekeeper.

The British Campbell, a prominent black supermodel, told the mayor she wanted to raise money for the poor in Rio, a multiracial city known for its vibrant nightlife.

"She has an image that is the face of Rio de Janeiro, she could represent it abroad like nobody else," Mayor Cesar Maia said on the city's official Web site.

On Tuesday, Campbell was sentenced to five days of community service for third-degree assault during a dispute over a pair of jeans. She got a $363 fine and was ordered to attend anger management classes.
…

Because of the nuances involved, I hesitate to make blanket statements about trends in foreign policy. But in this case I believe I can safely say that this is the

Greatest.

Foreign.

Policy.

Development.

Evah.

Tom Waits Friday

Tom Traubert's Blues

And it's a battered old suitcase
To a hotel someplace,
And a wound that will never heal

No prima donna,
the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whisky

Stewie Griffin

playing

Rich Lowry

Jonah Goldberg

David Brooks

Tom Friedman

Tucker Carlson

Andrew Sullivan

Victor Davis Hanson

Peter Beinart

Fareed Zakaria

Tim Russert

And virtually every Modern Conservative I have ever met.

Media Dumbnambulism - Part 1 of 2

Take out a sheet of paper.

Divide it in half.

Then read this and get ready to make a some lists.

January 16, 2007
Democrats Seek the Middle on Social Issues
By ROBIN TONER


WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 — The promise may not outlast their political honeymoon, but Democratic Congressional leaders say they are committed to governing from the center, and not just on bread-and-butter issues like raising the minimum wage or increasing aid for education. They also hope to bring that philosophy to bear on some of the most divisive social issues in politics, like abortion.

In their first days in session, Senate Democratic leaders reintroduced a bill that they said was indicative of their new approach: the Prevention First Act, which seeks to reduce the number of abortions by expanding access to birth control, family planning and sex education.

In the House last week, Democrats showcased a vote on expanding federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, which, despite fierce opposition from many conservatives, has won bipartisan support among lawmakers — and voters — who are otherwise divided on abortion.

The mantra, for many Democrats, is the search for common ground.
…

Conservatives are skeptical that such a search for common ground is much more than a shift in tactics.

“I can tell you what I expect,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. “I think the Democratic leadership will seek to advance the policy agenda of the hardcore groups but do so under the cover of deceptive rhetorical campaigns.”

....

And conservatives, by controlling which legislation came to the floor, succeeded in defining the debate over social issues for more than a decade, through votes on same-sex marriage and the procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion, in ways that highlighted the political limits of liberalism.

One measure of how the legislative debate has shifted is that the last time the Democrats were in power, one of the biggest abortion fights was over whether abortions should be covered in the benefit package guaranteed under the Clinton administration’s national health insurance plan, which eventually collapsed. Abortion rights leaders focus on far more modest goals today.

In the past 12 years, Democratic strategists say they have learned some hard lessons. Many said they were dismayed to see the religion gap after the 2004 election, with the Republicans’ overwhelming strength among churchgoers and the widespread perception that Democrats were a secular party insensitive to issues of values.

…

In fact, Democrats, like Republicans, have long had to fight the notion that they are in thrall to the advocacy groups because of these hot-button issues. Republicans clearly took a dip in the polls after their intervention in the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, and many strategists say their intense pursuit of a ban on same-sex marriage and other conservative causes ultimately backfired, making them seem out of touch.

Democrats, after 12 years in the wilderness, say they are not likely to repeat those mistakes. But as Mr. Johnson of the right to life committee and other skeptics note, the true test of the Democrats’ common ground campaign may not come until there is a major court fight, especially a vacancy on the Supreme Court. When the fundamental debate over the extent of abortion rights is front and center, common ground will be hard to find.

…

To quote the estimable Steve Gilliard: “Fuck bipartisanship.”

Why?

Because the Left is now the “Center” and the Right is now a dark forest populated only by trolls, bigots, halftards, Christopaths, little lost Small Gummint children and a groping menagerie og ignorant, single-issue armies who clash by night and have let their own fright-propagand so ensorcelled them they can’t even see what a noxious sewer their has Party become.

And because the only people outside of the GOP Circle Jerk who refuse to acknowledge this huge, glaring fact are the Media.

You know; the people who are actually paid to Report On Huge, Glaring Facts.

So you have your paper, properly folder.

Now on the Right side, write the values that were embodied by the Republican Party, say, thirty years ago.

It’s actually pretty easy.

Just look at their Party platform from that year (The list below has been edited down to snips. If you want to see the whole of it, look it up.)

· On our Inalienable Rights:

…Government must protect your constitutional rights. Government must deal with other governments and protect you from aggressors. Government must assure equal opportunity. And government must be compassionate in caring for those citizens who are unable to care for themselves.

· On the role of a Federal Government:

…Those concerns of a national character -- such as air and water pollution that do not respect state boundaries or the national transportation system or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties -- must, of course, be handled on the national level.

We prefer local and state government to national government, and decentralized national government wherever possible.

Well so do I, but there is a New Orleans-sized difference between “wherever possible” and “at any cost”.

· On Fiscal Responsibility:

Every dollar spent by government is a dollar earned by you. Government must always ask: Are your dollars being wisely spent? Can we afford it? Is it not better for the country to leave your dollars in your pocket?

· On Public Integrity:

Your elected officials, their appointees, and government workers are expected to perform their public acts with honesty, openness, diligence, and special integrity. At the heart of our system must be confidence that these people are always working for you.

They work for us. Get it?

· On the Environment:

…The beauty of our land is our legacy to our children. It must be protected by us so that they can pass it on intact to their children.

A clean and healthy natural environment is the rightful heritage of every American. In order to preserve this heritage, we will provide for proper development of resources, safeguards for clean air and water, and protection and enhancement of our recreation and scenic areas.

As our environmental sophistication grows, we must more clearly define the role of the federal government in environmental protection.
We believe that it is a national responsibility to support scientific and technological research and development to identify environmental problems and arrive at solutions.
…
We still have a wealth of resources, but they are not of infinite quantity. We must recognize that our material blessings stem from what we grow in the soil, take from the sea, or extract from the ground. We have a responsibility to future generations to conserve our non-renewable natural resources. Consistent with our needs, conservation should remain our national policy.

· On the way to be in the world:

The United States must always stand for peace and liberty in the world and the rights of the individual. We must form sturdy partnerships with our allies for the preservation of freedom. We must be ever willing to negotiate differences, but equally mindful that there are American ideals that cannot be compromised. Given that there are other nations with potentially hostile designs, we recognize that we can reach our goals only while maintaining a superior national defense.

· On Recycling:

We can no longer afford the luxury of a throw-away world. Recycling offers environmental benefits, economic expansion, resource conservation and energy savings. We support a policy which will reward recycling and economic incentives which will encourage its expansion.

· On Science and Technology:

Every aspect of our domestic economy and well-being, our international competitive position, and national security is related to our past and present leadership in basic and applied research and the development of our technology.
...
Because our society is so dependent upon the advancement of science and the development of technology, it is one of the areas where there must be a central federal policy. We support a national science policy that will foster the public-private partnership to insure that we maintain our leadership role.
…
We recognize that only when our technology is fully distributed can it be assimilated and used to increase our productivity and our standard of living. We will continue to encourage young Americans to study science and engineering.

On Privacy:

We are alarmed by Washington's growing collection of information. The number of federal data banks is now estimated at between 800 and 900 and more than 50 agencies are involved. We question the need for all these computers to be storing the records of our lives. Safeguards must protect us against this information being misused or disclosed. Major changes, for example, are needed to maintain the confidentiality of tax returns and Society Security records.

· On Veterans:

Because they bear the heaviest burdens of war, we owe special honor and compensation to disabled veterans and survivors of the war dead.
We are firmly committed to maintaining and improving our Veterans Administration hospital system.
Younger veterans, especially those who served in the Vietnam conflict, deserve educational, job and housing loan benefits equivalent to those of World War II and the Korean conflict.

Of course this is not the platform I’d write. They’re opposed to abortion. Their dishonest misreading of the 2nd Amendment comes pre-printed on the Platform Form.

And in 1976 they were more than a decade into the soul-murdering Faustian Bargain of the Southern Strategy.

They’re Republicans and I’d stipulate to all of these qualifiers and a buncha other stuff as GOP Que Sera Sera. But there is no way around the fact that the platform – which is always a partisan, political statement of value and vision -- smells faintly of...reasonableness.

rea·son·a·ble (adj.)
1. Governed by or being in accordance with reason or sound thinking:
2. Being within the bounds of common sense:
3. Not excessive or extreme;

A throwback to a day when your opponent need not be your enemy.

When you could differ with honor.

So what changed?

End Part 1 of 2

Media Dumbnambulism -- Part 2 of 2.

What changed?

They changed.

And the Dems chased them.

So now note on your list what the values of the Republican Party of 1976 have mutated into over the course of thirty years.

Note the deliberate coarsening and Orwellization of political language -- the "Scream 'Traitor!!' as loud as you can." -- strategy engineered by Republican Newt Gingrich and Republican Rush Limbaugh.

Note the Republican proud-almost-giddy willingness to use any means, tell any lie, betray any ethic to personally slander and destroy anyone or anything that stands in your way. The Atwater/Rove/DeLay-ification of politics itself.

Note the rise of the Christopaths. The embrace and glorification of superstition idiocy like Biblical Literalism and Creationism. The eagerness with which the inheritors of the Party of Lincoln harness rage, racism and theocracy to bumrush the Constitution.

Note that in 2004, the GOP Platform was almost 1/3 Global War on You-Know-What.

And what else were framed as Mortal Threats to Our Democracy?

“Frivolous” lawsuits".

Everywhere.

From our heavily armed citizenry to health care, the solution to all things is tort reform. The solution is “limit lawsuits and punitive damages”.

Translation: Use the power my lobbyist pals bought for me to stop the Federal Government from protecting citizens from the predations of my lobbyist pals. Then when those citizens get fucked over by my lobbyist pals, us the power of the Federal Government to force those citizens to stop suing my lobbyist pals.

The current GOP platform is a document where “Protecting the Rights of Workers” really means “No one should feel obligated to join a Union who doesn’t want to. Hint! Hint!”

Where “No Child Left Behind” and vouchers are the only sops thrown to the dying remnants of America’s once-proud tradition of public education.

Where all environmental activities are “market-based”, “sensible”, litigation reformish and based on “voluntary agreements”. These voluntary measures plus Very Exciting Non-Existent technology will save us from Global Warming, whereas “mandatory carbon emissions controls” would “harm economic growth” and “destroy American jobs.”

Compared to a bold call for a new GI Bill of Rights by the GOP in 1976, what heroic and visionary ideas do these Republicans have for paying the interest in the debt we will owe today’s veterans?

“…cut the disability claims backlog” and “…improve health care access for veterans who need it most.”

Wow. Can't you just hear that thundering out of Henry V as a coda to his Saint Crispin's Day Speech?

And what is today’s greatest insult to Veterans?

Flag Burners of course! Which is why we must amend the Constitution to stop that terrible, fictional scourge.

And the other Enemies of All Decent Americans?

· “Discrimination against faith-based organizations.”

· Judges: “…with activist backgrounds in the hard-left now have lifetime tenure."

· "Recent events have made it clear that these judges threaten America’s dearest institutions and our very way of life.”

· “Partial-birth abortion” which is a “brutal and violent practice” which will “likely continue by judicial fiat.”

· Conspirators who are apparently plotting to molest the “Pledge of Allegiance”. Or something.

And of course, what locking up judges can’t fix, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, Abstinence Education and more tax cuts will take care of.


Unlike the 2004 Platform, nowhere in the 1976 document is the “Flag” cited as being especially threatened. In fact, is the word never used.

They had never heard of that Orwellian GOP “Culture of Life” lie, much less embroidered it onto every throw pillow at the RNC.

Nowhere is "Abstinence" referenced as something the Fucking Government should have a damned thing to do with wither way.

No mention is made of the Pledge of Allegiance.

No mention of "judges" at all, except there were too few of them.

The terms “Lawsuits”, “litigation”, “frivolous” are as MIA as Dubya from National Guard duty.

The word “activist” appears nowhere at all.

“Discrimination” appears a few times, but only regarding housing or employment. The idea that white Christian groups were being discriminated against so hard that the Preznit would have to force the vile government to stop it would have been laughed into oblivion.

Our major military threat then was the Soviet Union.

And the GOP in 1976 recognized these two facts about facing a deadly enemy.

First:

“The United States and the Soviet Union remain ideological competitors. We do not shrink from such a challenge; rather, we welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that our way of life is inherently preferable to regimentation and government-enforced orthodoxy.”

Second:

“Governments which enjoy the confidence of their people need have no fear of cultural, intellectual or press freedom.”

Imagine a stance like that taken today in favor of secularity and tolerance.

A government that believed that not only is freedom our greatest asset, it is also our export and our greatest weapon. And the more the most powerful nation on Earth confidently “walks the talk” of democracy -- the more we fearlessly call into the world's shadows and challenge all medieval, barbaric and fear-mongering perverters of noble faiths to come out and debate us in the clear light of tolerance and liberty for all -- the freer the world will become and the safer we will be.

But of course this government cannot do that because it is itself run by a cabal of medieval, barbaric, fear-mongering perverts.

And since today's GOP will always put Party ahead of Nation, and will never risk it’s long-term project oblivion by eradicating the Wingnuts who win it’s elections, staff its phone banks, stuff its envelopes and define it’s dogmatic parameters, they will keep this country stuck in a religious-hypocrisy-stasis in the exactly the same way we were was stuck in a civil-rights-stasis when we castigated the USSR for human rights abuses abroad while tolerating segregation and lynching here at home.

I mean, who in their right mind is going to believe that we stand for Enlightenment and Democracy as long as preening demagogues and raging fascists like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity continue to be the faces and voices of one of our two main political Parties?

And who in their right mind is going to believe that the lords of this moral slum don’t make pre-emptive war for oil as long as virtually the entire Executive branch is run by oil men?

So now that you’ve used up half of your paper you’ve made your list of where the Republicans were thirty years ago and where they are today one thing should be crystal clear.

One thing that you all already know.

That for the last thirty years The GOP has been on a dead-run due Right so fast that they have disappeared entirely over the horizon into an ultraviolet haze of theocracy and stoopid.

Which means that for the Center to have remained an intellectual constant for three decades -- as every fucking reporter in the Mainstream Universe just keeps insisting is the case -- then the Left must have become....Communists.

Every last fucking one of us (that isn’t Shining Path or Green, that is.)

A Party of Maoists who spend our days militating for the annihilation of Wall Street, and our nights conspiring to Collectivize and Nationalize every industry.

Except even a half-bright eight-year-old can see that we’re not.

Not even in the same ballpark. Not even on the same planet.

No, if you actually bother to check, big swaths of the 1976 GOP platform look distinctly...Clintonian.

Does this make me happy? No. But there it is. And to continue to hawk the ridiculous Broder/Friedman/Sullivan/Klein/Lieberman line of bullshit about everything on the Left being equiposedly extreme to everything on the Right is so obviously insane that the REAL story must become: "What are the real reasons why the Pundit Class continues to deliberately lie to the Amercan public?"

So despite the fact that we all have access to a rich an beautiful language with hundreds of thousands of word to chose from, and even though I dearly love running barefoot through it sometimes just for the sheer joy of it, there is no inherent virtue in complexifyin’ things so let’s make this simple for the simple folk.

From who gets slashed up in the Fox-tainted media, to who gets taken seriously, or who gets carted off the “No Lefty Left Behind” re-education camps next year, the old maxim that “A Jew is whoever Hitler says is a Jew” applies.

The ubiquitous and otherwise-amusing “dirty hippy” image of the Left in the media is almost entirely a construct of the Right which parallels exactly the “dirty Jew”, “savage Injun” or “lust-crazed Negro” stereotypes of famous fascist/eliminationist movements of the past. Marketing campaigns to hawk a simple message to the Great Wad:

That those people are responsible for your pain.

Of course this completely unravels when you actually talk to people in those groups and find out that they’re about 90% like you, except they get shit on or shot at more than you do. Which is why it is terribly important to keep the Great Wad scared stupid all the time; their lynch-or-flee reflexes kept on a hair trigger by horror stories of what’ll happen when you start “mixin’” groups that Caucasian Jebus wants kept apart.

So here’s the truth.

The Left has moved so far Right in the last few decades that the Left is the New Center.

The Right is now run by and for evil lunatics who conceal their evil lunacy in the shadows thrown by their Dirty Straw Hippies.

And anyone who tries to pretend any different is either an idiot or liar who will fuck over your children’s future, kosh you on the head, razor out your pockets and leave you for dead the minute you turn your back on ‘em.

Now fold your list into a little paper bucket.

Puke in it from nausea induced by the fact that although deconstructing these little spun-shit Fox-spawned “stories” is as easy as Dick Cheney pulling the wings off the Constitution, there is apparently no one – NO one – left in the Mainstream Media outside of MSNBC and Comedy Fucking Central who has the nads to even bother anymore.

And then dispose of your sick bag safely.

Hell, who knows?

If it’s viscous enough and comes with a good head of hair, you can maybe get it its own talk show on Fox.


End Part 2 of 2.

During his Sixty Minutes Interview

This guy also actually expected Americans to believe the following:

PELLEY: Did you see the video of Saddam Hussein's . . .

BUSH: I saw some of it.

PELLEY: . . . execution?

BUSH: Yeah.

PELLEY: What did you think when you saw that?

BUSH: I thought it was discouraging. You know, obviously could have handled this thing a lot better. And I knew it'd be, you know, one of those incidents where it would call into doubt . . . it would create further skepticism. You know, it's important that-- that chapter of Iraqi history be closed. They could have handled it a lot better.


PELLEY: I wonder if there was also some sense of satisfaction. You've had this guy in your sights for a long time.

BUSH: Not really. Not really. I was satisfied when we captured him. I'm just not . . .revenge isn't necessarily something that causes me to react. In other words, I'm not a revengeful person. I'm glad he received the justice that was due.

...

BUSH: Somebody showed me parts of it. Yeah. I didn't wanna watch the whole thing.

PELLEY: Well, you keep saying "parts of it." What do you mean you didn't wanna watch the whole thing?

BUSH: I wasn't sure what to anticipate beyond the yelling and stuff like that. And I didn't . . .

PELLEY: You didn't wanna see him go through the trapdoor.

BUSH: Yeah. Yes. I didn't.

This is the same guy who casually put 131 prisoners to death in Texas in a way that “defined him, unforgettably, as shallow and callous.”

(Via CommonDreams and originally Published on Saturday, June 17, 2000 in the New York Times)

Texas Executions:
GW Bush Has Defined Himself, Unforgettably, As Shallow And Callous
by Anthony Lewis

BOSTON-There have been questions all along about the depth and seriousness of George W. Bush. They have been brought into sharp focus now by a surprising issue: the way the death penalty is administered in Texas. In his comments on that subject Governor Bush has defined himself, unforgettably, as shallow and callous.

In his five years as governor of Texas, the state has executed 131 prisoners -- far more than any other state. Mr. Bush has lately granted a stay of execution for the first time, for a DNA test.

In answer to questions about that record, Governor Bush has repeatedly said that he has no qualms. "I'm confident," he said last February, "that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts."

That defense of the record ignores many notorious examples of unfairness in Texas death penalty cases. Lawyers have been under the influence of cocaine during the trial, or been drunk or asleep. One court dismissed a complaint about a lawyer who slept through a trial with the comment that courts are not "obligated to either constantly monitor trial counsel's wakefulness or endeavor to wake counsel should he fall asleep."

This past week The Chicago Tribune published a compelling report on an investigation of all 131 death cases in Governor Bush's time. It made chilling reading.

In one-third of those cases, the report showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.

In 29 cases, the prosecution used testimony from a psychiatrist who -- based on a hypothetical question about the defendant's past -- predicted he would commit future violence. Most of those psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical.

Other witnesses included one who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies and a judge who had been reprimanded for lying about his credentials.

Asked about the Tribune study, Governor Bush said, "We've adequately answered innocence or guilt" in every case. The defendants, he said, "had full access to a fair trial."

There are two ways of understanding that comment. Either Governor Bush was contemptuous of the facts or, on a matter of life and death, he did not care.
...

The guy who is infamous for mocking an executed Texas woman in an interview with “Talk” magazine, saying:

" `Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me.' "

These are not the actions of a compassionate man.

These are the hallmarks of a sadist who has lived his entire sheltered, gold-plated life with a singular and smirkingly cavalier attitude towards the death and suffering of others. Who has never given a shit about anyone but himself and who's empty heart and placeholder soul is only barely rouged over with words of fake empathy by his handlers when he has to be wheeled in front of a camera to woodenly stutter out whatever Dick Cheney or Karl Rove tell him to say.

Who is, as Richard puts it in “The Lion in Winter”, "incomplete": the human parts of him are missing.

So small wonder that I find it infinitely more plausible that the Crawford Dauphin watched the video of Saddam’s hanging 117 consecutive times, Clockwork Orange-Style



In a soundproofed White House play room,

With Don Karleone basting his eyeballs with Halliburton-brand “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Compassion!” glycerin-saline-peyote drops (“Now Act Like You Care With ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Compassion!’: Facsimile Emotion for All Occasions.”) every few seconds to keep them lubricated,

While he knocked back a couple or three "milk-pluses",

Brayed the whole time in pure, simian ecstasy,

And then burbled feverishly on and on through the night and into the morning about Sweet Baby Jebus and the Glorious End Days that are always only a fleeting friedman or two away.

Spocko beds

The Gray Lady

Bloggers Take on Talk Radio Hosts
By NOAM COHEN

A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers.

The lead blogger, who uses the name Spocko, said that he and other bloggers had contacted more than 30 advertisers on KSFO-AM to inform them of comments made on the air and to ask them to pull their ads.

The comments were also posted on Spocko’s Web site, spockosbrain.com. In response, ABC Radio Networks, which owns KSFO and which in turn is owned by the Walt Disney Company, sent letters to the site’s service provider, demanding the clips be taken down from its servers. The provider complied, raising the issue of what constitutes fair use of copyrighted material by a critic.

In an unusual cap to a simmering controversy, four talk radio hosts at KSFO-AM themselves played the clips on Friday, which had, in some cases, drawn national attention for language considered racially insensitive, religiously intolerant or containing violent imagery. The broadcast contained the occasional carefully measured apology for language that “could have been put more elegantly,” as one host, Melanie Morgan, described her comment — “We’ve got a bull’s eye painted on her big wide laughing eyes” — about Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, who is from San Francisco. “But Ms. Morgan added that her words were obviously a political metaphor that had to be distorted by critics to appear violent.

…
Spocko had recorded and disseminated other clips from the station in an effort to alarm advertisers. In one, Brian Sussman, an evening host on KSFO, described Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, as a “halfrican,” because he has one African parent and one white parent. In another, from 2005, he challenged a caller who said he was not a Muslim to prove it by repeating back an insult to Allah. Mr. Sussman apologized for both comments during Friday’s three-hour show.

In an interview, Spocko, who described himself as being in his “late 40s and a communications professional,” said he was appalled by what he heard on KSFO. Among the advertisers Spocko contacted, and who have been reported in The San Francisco Chronicle to have stopped advertising at KSFO were Bank of America, MasterCard and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. During the Friday show, one of the hosts, Lee Rodgers, read an e-mail message asking if the station had lost any sponsors so the listener could, in turn, boycott the former sponsors. Ms. Morgan said “one advertiser — exactly one” had left the station.
…

When reached at his office, KSFO-AM’s program director, Ken Berry, said he felt “the three-hour broadcast best spoke for us” and referred other questions to ABC. An ABC spokeswoman had no comment.

…
KSFO’s Lee Rodgers: “Well I haven’t apologized for anything and I am not going to start with you. How the hell do you like that, creep?”

Of course Rodgers hasn’t apologized. His state of contrition is irrelevant: Being an on-air, jackbooted Conservative wank means never having to say you’re sorry.

What is relevant is what Spocko has accomplished here.

Violent, eliminationist rhetoric has become the lingua franca of the fucktard base. It has been rolling off their tongues since the early mass media days of Limbaugh and the White Power Hotline, every year getting more casually vicious and every year getting more mainstream.

Like constant, toxic references to “dirty Jews” that were used almost as conversational punctuation in fascist Germany, or American bigot's beloved “nigger”, the Right Wing has grown so off-handedly comfortable with their giggling, "feminazi"-fication of the English language that their rhetorical universe has grown increasingly saturated.

They now steep so completely in their own vomitous propaganda that their gasbag heroes have to drill ever deeper into the bile mine to tickle their listener’s debased nerve endings with New!Hategasmic!Thrills!

They literally don’t notice anymore what appalling and manifestly anti-American swine they have become. The can no longer detect their own stench and act genuinely surprised/enraged when anyone calls them on it.

In the stinking wake of Iraq, Katrina, Terry Schiavo, The “AARP=Queer” campaign (during the Social Security crossfire) and especially in the last three election cycles, no one but the most willfully ignorant (in other words, about 116% of the Paid Pundit Caste) can fail to notice the oratory depths into which the GOP will gleefully sink, for any reason or none, at the drop of a hat.

That during the Reign of the Christopaths, the Right deliberately made Newspeak their Mother Tongue and Two Minutes Hate into a 24/7 media empire.

And once that happened –- once one side tossed Reason out the window and embraced darkness, irrationality, fear and smear as political instruments –- it stopped being OK to pretend that we can play nice with the crazy people any more.

It’s time for every American who still give a damn about this country to take the nearest available 2x4 to the only nerve-bundles they can still register -- the polling place and the $$$$-sac -- which is why what Spocko has done is so miraculous.

Using only a blog, a few words and some audio, Spocko has forced a story that features the two central issue of our times -- the rise of the Right as powerful, bellicose and explicitly Hate-based political cult, and the almost categorical refusal of the major media to report on it as such – onto the pages of America’s journal of record.

And that is pretty damned impressive.