Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Markos Interruptus Edition.

Was busy winding up Ykos (The Give-and-Take by the Lake) convention, finishing off some work that had penetrated the castle’s perimeter defenses and was waiting for me when I got home late Saturday, running the previous post over a medium-grit whetstone a few times, catching up on some correspondence (behind on which I still am), disarming a neglected and pissed-off cat who was poised to kill me as I dragged my weary self in the door...

(Dramatized here

...and assorted other small etceteras, as well as sharing beverages and terrific conversation with some fine, ardent, thoughtful, committed, incredibly smart, funny, sweet-smelling, thoroughly normal, good-lookin’ Constitution-lovin’ Dirty Fucking Hippies.

Hanging with them Saturday and Sunday, hearing their experiences, the stories of their paths and passions, was absolutely the highlight of the time I spent at the Big Orange Thing.

(Also a note to the organizers: please use alligator-clippy things and not hooks to attach badges to lanyards next year, because for some reason [probably having something complex and physicsish to do with albedo and light-pressure] the badges were more often than not turned white-belly up and vital-statistics-down.

Thus further foiling my plan to discretely peek at name-tags looking for friendlies.

Ok.

Fine.

In the interest of full disclosure I will stipulate that I was marginally more focused on the name tags of libidinous liberal lasses than on other demographics.

Which was, truth be told, a policy I foreswore when a tiny lady from Sonoma decked me for what she mistook for lascivious eyeballery and it became clear that unless I wanted to go down in history the Kos Ogler, this was a losing strategy.)

So the Mouse Circus got a little short-sheeted, which was just as well since it was another All GOP All the Time day.

Condi, for example, was everywhere.

On “Fox News Sunday”


Rice:We’re gonna chart a reasonable course (in Iraq).

Also she uses the word “stable” a dozen times or so.

Not democratic. Not Rule-of-Law-centric. Not allied with us.

Just “stable”...and we’ll just sorta look the other way on that other stuff.

You know, kinda like it was under that Saddam guy.

Wallace: Sectarian deaths are still way, way up, so how can you say things are getting better?

Rice trots out the new Phrase that Pays: These are "al Qaeda–inspired" terrorists (and other insurgents).

Watch for this one to be all over the Hate Radio like a rash.

Wallace: So since the whole purpose of the Surge was all to create breathing space for the government, and since the various components of the government have either disintegrated outright, or have up and gone to W’Ali World for the rest of the summer, how can anyone say it is working?

Rice: Because its hard, Chris. Hard work.


Rice: I mean, we could have this solved tomorrow, but the Iraqi parliament could vote on this shit tomorrow, but they don’t wanna because they want everyone to agree.

What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Just. Say?!

Rice: They don’t want a 51-49 vote on important stuff.

So let me make sure I understand this very clearly:

A bare, purloined, slander-based "majority" created by the deliberate, calculated, 30-year-old Republican policy of divisiveness and hate is plenty good enough for Don Karleone and the Dear Leader to declare an overwhelming mandate from the People and from God to eviscerate democracy in America...

...but exactly that same kind of majority is just not fucking good enough to get our kids the out of slaughterhouse of the Dear Leader's Iraqi Debacle?

Words fail me.

Rice (on domestic spying): It is important that we do everything within the law to keep an eye on the bad people or “thousand of innocent people die!”

Ergo, when Nosey Nates find out that the Dear Leader has been committing serial felonies by the thousands and wiping his ass with the Constitution by illegally wiretapping Americans, it is important to rewrite the law to make his felonies legal.

Gotta love these "Law And Order" "Law Made-To-Order" Republicans…

Rice: …and to have some artificial barrier between the United States and the rest of the world makes no sense.

driftglass: Really? Well that brand new theory of national sovereignty is going to come as one hell of a shock to Immigration opponents don’t you think?

Funny, I remember when these annoying impediments were called “civil liberties”.

Rice: And we cannot leave our Good Friends the Saudis…yadda yadda yadda (See "Face the Nation" below).

Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon from the generally Evil Socialist Pesthole, the stinking liberal Brookings Institute.

Shorter Pollack: I was Tom Friedman when Tom Friedman wasn’t cool.

Shorter O’Hanlon: We are suppressing the violence. That's all.

But?

But the central government is showing no signs of diving through this very tiny window…

Wallace: And if liberal Democrats succeed in pulling out and losing Iraq, wouldn’t that be bad?

There is nothing new here except the depth of the bullshit being troweled onto the facts.

The Surge is a tactic to accomplish a specific political End.

The End is not being accomplished, is nowhere near being accomplished, shows no sign of moving in the general direction of accomplishment.

The Sunnis bailed out of the government.

The rest of the Al’Dermen have gone to the beach for the rest of the summer.

The “solution”: Wait another six months and then see.

Surprise!!!

…one…two…one…two… three...four.

All we are saying, is keep us at War.
All we are saying, is one Friedman more…

On “Face the Nation”

Condi again.

Schieffer: Isn’t it true that most of the foreign fighters are Saudi.

Rice: The most “unguarded” entry point is with Syria. They’re coming in through the airports.

Schieffer: But the Saudis? The fucking Saudis?

Rice: The Saudis are working hard. Hard! To keep the fanatics they create and fund from going to Iraq. But it’s hard work.

Schieffer: “A-list blogging”-hard? “Coal-mining in your underpants”-hard? “Dodging IEDs for the greater glory of the Dear Leader”-hard? Give me some perspective.

Rice: Hard, Bob. That’s all I can say. Te rest is all Umbra-class, Pat-Tillman-rated secret.

Schieffer: So why are doing a $20 billion arms deal with people that are sponsoring the murder of Americans?

Rice: We cannot let our friends and strategic partners go unarmed in that region. Not after we have worked so hard to make into a violent, chaotic, profit-making hell-pit.


On “Meet the Press”

Robert Gates.

Shorter: Up in Raleigh things are falling apart, and the rubble is bursting into flames. But in Mayberry things are looking up. In fact, the Darlings have joined up with Barney Fife to hunt down Ernest T. Bass.

Also Mount Pilot, is getting a little better.

Russert: But to make peace, aren’t we cutting deals with people who have killed Americans?

Gates: Well, that sort of thing is inevitable.

Yeah, that’s war for you; after the guns fall silent, you’re stuck trying to make a marriage (or at least a helluva three-day pass) with people who were shooting at you a few minutes ago.

The difference in this case is the relentless, shrill, demonizing, Manichean rhetoric that, since Day One, Republican have leveled at everyone who is blowing up anything in Iraq, and anyone at home who thinks the Dear Leader is not infinitely Wise and Good.

(Just to clarify, it is not that we think that the Dear Leader is not infinitely Wise and Good.

It is that we think that his crew of Constitution-garroting Thugees are, in fact, bad men doing terrible things for despicable motives.

We think that anyone who voted to re-elect this pack of jackals and who has vociferously supported them in their serial and tragic fuckuppery is automatically disqualified – for the next generation -- from saying another fucking word about anything except who turned in a better Gavotte on “Dancing With the Stars”.

And that anyone who both supports these despicable, blood-drunk brownshirts and their Neocon wilding against the Constitution AND stood up and cheered as these same blood-drunk brownshirts hunted Bill Clinton for seven years and then impeached him for trivia, needs to be exiled from the public square and the polling place for the next three generations.

I hope this clears up that little misunderstanding.)

Gonna be kind of hard to climb back down that 1,000-mile-high mountain of wingnut “Worse than Eleven Hitlers!!” rhetoric and into the real world isn’t it?


“This Week” did the GOP Sockpuppet Debate.

You want a ‘lil taste?

Mitt: I’m Pro Life!

Brownback: No you’re not! Watch the YouToobs!

Mitt: Quit being holier than thou!

(Then, video from five months ago of Mitt going Full Metal holier than thou all over Rudy’s ass.)

Mitt: That was a million years ago. And Jesus does too like me better!

God have mercy on us when these moral dregs and intellectual flotsamauri are the very best that one of America’s two major political party can produce.

And then I washed the taste of perfidy out of my mouth out with OJ and rolled off to good coffee and great company at the tag-end Yearly Kos.