The Terrible!Truth!

About writers.

LowerManhattanite (pictured above) is so full of it.

He’s over at the GNB right this minute trying to convince a gullible public that writing is actual work.

That the people who till the inky vineyards actually care and fret and labor, and at the end of that long day most still can’t keep the wolf from the door without a job-job.

Here’s part of it:

...
I won't front. [Joss] Whedon notes that the “poncey” writer's manque is a tough one to defend. We write. We don't tar streets, or heft swollen trash bags into ooze-dripping trucks. We write. We wrack our brains looking for the right sequence of words and situations so that a show, or a movie, or whatever we're writing kind of works. We don't always succeed. The same way a tarred street will sometimes go soft and gooey a month after being laid, or how you'll come outside to see a trail of embarrassing trash from your curb to the street. We do fuck up. But for the most part, we sweat the details, and pour our hearts and souls into this stuff because in the end, if we're lucky—our names go on it—for ever and ever. When you think of a particularly bad episode of a show you've seen—especially a famously bad episode, it takes all of twenty seconds to Google the culprit's name. The pitiful beast's author.

That's forever, baby. And that author knows it. Imagine your worst work fuck-up being findable and attributable to you by anyone with a 2600 baud modem.

So you work hard to not have that happen to you. There are hacks among us, but the vast majority bust our asses...big time.

And believe it or not, not just as writers. A large majority of the writers I know can't make ends meet on what they make just as a writer. They have a nine-to-five doing something else. Some work as copywriters in publishing. Some work in retail. Others bartend, Two others I know work as a cable TV repair technician and IT troubleshooter respectively.

Another one works for the Parks Department, pruning and mulching trees damaged by storms.

Only one of 'em swings all the bills alone. The rest are either married or significantly-othered up, so expenses are shared. Nobody I know is rich.
…

What he will not tell you is what every writer knows but will not tell you. That despite external appearances of normalcy and a fidelity to craft that any decent plumber or bricklayer would recognize and respect, writers really get all of their ideas, inspiration, editorial chops, and narrative vision not from hard work, practice and mercilessly ransacking the lives and pain of everyone they have ever met to serve the Muse…

…but from the mystical powers emanating from pair after pair of the hand-stitched, superhero Underoos

each of them are issued each and every month from the day they are taken up to the Old Tolstoy Place on Big Rock Candy Mountain

and initiated into the mysteries of the Ancient and Spiffy Order of Wordslingers.

An Order whose limitless wrath I have now incurred by broaching this most inner-sanctumy of their secrets, and who will now no doubt dispatch their myrmidon hordes (“The Doggerels of War” as they are known up at the lodge) to hunt me down and eliminate me.

But someone had to tell you all The Awful Truth.

That writers live lives of unimaginable luxury and laziness.

That the Underoos from which their gifts really spring are made from the spin of special, genetically-upfurbished silkworms which are fed naught but Vosges Chocolate and the tenderest, center-cut verso pages carefully razored from hand-tooled vellum first folios of “Vanity Fair”.

Fatted on this rare diet, each worm expires after 62 years, during which it has produced nothing but wormfarts and an occasional book on process management. However during its death throes it extrudes a single inch of nearly invisible silk thread, after which each worm must be ritually buried in a tiny coffin made from onyx which tradition permits be mined from a sacred mountain only one night each year during the dark of the moon.

Each morning, the threads are gathered – still damp from the death-sweat of its spinner -- and borne by barge to a secret, ancient jungle lair where they are individually dyed using powders and oils extracted from coccyx and tongues of animals so rare that they appear in no textbook on Earth, and the letters that form their names have never been strung together before in the history of man.

(Willy Wonka, it is said, according to a bootlegged copy of his unpublished biography -- “Wonka Unbound” -- was able to secure a small cameo of one of the island’s menagerie at the cost of a pile of pure, unstepped Wonkain the size of the Great Pyramid at Giza, but as of this writing the neither the existence of the island, nor the cameo, nor Wonka, nor Wonka’s infamous “fizzy lifting weasel dust” cannot be confirmed.

That is just a small measure of how globe-spanning this conspiracy is in its reach, and how insidious in its influence.)

From there these threads are slow dried in oasts made from jewel-encrusted fossilized skulls of ichthyosaurs, and then spliced together into longer strands by platinum nanites wielding microscopic knitting needles made from splinters of the True Cross.

Finally, as a cost-saving measure (because Management isn’t made of fucking money, y’know), the bundles of dyed thread are transshipped to barbed-wire-enclosed, Republican-supported slave-labor camps somewhere in Northern Marianas islands where they are sewn into lavish, magical writer’s undergarments.

And every single working writer has a closet-full of them!

When they tire of one pair, they dress their pets in them. Their robot sex dolls. Their legions of valets, chauffeurs, maids and concubines (And concuboys. And, yes, I’m looking at you Tiny Fey!)

Then, once a month, they gather up at the Old Tolstoy Place to incinerate the really old pairs in the light of the Eternal Underoo Pyre; dousing the pile with rare 2nd Century oil of spikenard, sparking it up with million dollar bills, and dancing in a big, nekkid circle, laughing at all the rubes who think real writing is real work.

And now, having spilled the Magic Beans, my fate is sealed.

Remember me as a peace-maker.

Also an ass-grabber.

Hey, isn't it Tom Waits Friday?

Funny you should ask...

Time.

Well she said she'd stick around
Until the bandages came off
But these mamas boys just don't know
When to quit.

And Mathilda asks the sailors
"Are those dreams or are those prayers?"
So close your eyes, son,
And this wont hurt a bit.

No Country for Old Memes

Time to be quiet now, Joe. (click pic for larger)

Don’t let anyone kid you, baby; superpowers carry curses. Especially Invisibility -- the particular power with which we are afflicted. (And if you don’t get why it's a misery, you clearly have not read enough Wells. )

We are invisible because the rods and cones of the Great Corpulent Eye of Media are configured to perceive only certain caricatured types. Only Tough Conservatives and Pussy Liberals. Only Serious Journalists and Foul-Mouthed Bloggers. Only Reasonable Centrists and Dirty Fucking Hippies.

And we were not those types.

We are invisible because we wear suits and ties sometimes, and “Impeach!” tee-shirts at other times.

We are invisible because we have children in public school, and get them to and fro in things called "carpools".

Because our hair is cropped or grizzled or lustrous or gone or tied back so the kids can’t try to swing on it like tropical vines.

We are invisible because no headlines track the crippling, everyday tragedy of our divorces. Because we have two jobs. Because we wake to the taste of terror and stomach acid in our mouths and then remember that it’s Sunday and thank God.

Because we are quietly burying our parents.

We are invisible because we are frail and flawed and asymmetrical and oh such usual and plain sinners in every way.

Because sometimes we feel like dying before that Big Meeting, because as meaningless as it may be in the great scheme of things, sometimes --

So much depends upon
A good PowerPoint
And some glazed doughnuts
Beside the white flipchart.

Because we know that tomorrow, the next day, next week, there will be another Big Meeting which may end us. And then another. And another.

Some of us labor invisibly in cubicles dreaming of offices, or in offices dreaming of driving away and never coming back.

We the invisible feel guilty that we weren’t there to crush the Nazis or end the Depression, but we’re glad someone did and so God Damned Proud that we can call them Mom and Dad, or Grandma, or Grandpa, or Uncle Jeff, or Aunt Ramona.

We carry a lot, and at some moment nearly every day we feel quite sure that whatever we do is not nearly enough. That out there, somewhere, God is, well, not angry, but terribly disappointed in us. And invisibly we carry on as best we can.

Which we can do without going mad and running screaming into the desert because we have always believed, down deep, that there were certain things -- certain categories of things -- we could rely on.

That certain things would persist, and therefore didn’t require our anxious attention.

We believe we can take that corner going a little too fast because the car door is not going to suddenly morph into tissue paper, the seatbelt won’t transform into a rope of sand, and we won’t go spilling into the road at 50 miles an hour.

We believe that, if pressed, we could put together a helluva dinner party on really short notice.

We believe our pets will not kill us in our sleep.

And, God help us, we believe in America.

No, we are not innocent enough to believe in the essential Capraesque nobility of the Public Servant, or ignorant of the fact that American history has been a, long, bloody, murderous struggle to force the nation to simply stand by its very fine words.

Instead it was that -- as with all the other unseen, reliable material realities -- we believed that buried under all of the rot and bile, there really was some rectifying mechanism. Something ineffably American that would save us from the leaping into the abyss.

That is, until 2004.

For us, it was 11/02/04 every bit as much as 09/11/01 that Changed Everything.

For us, 11/02/04 was waking up and finding ourselves deep in the third reel of “Dawn of the Dead”. It was looking out of our kitchen windows, through the limbs of bare trees, and glimpsing an army of blood-hungry corpses dressed in the tatters of civilization staggering through the fields and alleys.

Shambling towards the polls.

And all the pleading, persuading, negotiating and screaming didn’t slow them down one bit.

For us, seeing 62 million of our fellow citizens rise up and choose to re-elect a cabal of proven thugs, liars, traitors and sociopaths who had just spent four years ratfucking the Constitution…Changed Everything.

It was not a “Road to Damascus” moment of pure revelation, because it had been painfully clear for years that the bigots and mouth-breathers and shoutycrackers were recklessly abroad, and in force.

Instead it was the realization that the most basic civic intuitions -- our cultural dams and levees -- designed to keep us from being overrun by the scum of the nation were not merely in trouble, but were hollow and dead.

Instead it was Martin Luther finally visiting the Vatican only to find that the entire organization was bent from ass to miter. The discovery that the princes of the Church -- the men in the Big Red Hats who Luther’s doctrine told him spoke with the authority of God Himself -- were pimps and thieves and perverts, using Fear and Scripture as two barrels of a shotgun to extort money from their followers and feed their lavish and degenerate appetites.

This was the reality that we invisibles had to face on November 2, 2004; that it was not the leadership of the Democratic Party that had failed us...or the entire GOP...or the justice system...or the Media.

It was all of them.

It was that moment of dawning awareness that comes over Hercule Poirot when he realize that everyone on the Orient Express

had stabbed Ratchett.

It was all of them.

So when we see a Joe Klein publicly humiliate himself for the umpteenth time, trying to excuse his flagrant dissembling incompetence and lies with this phrase (now the Official Pundit Battle Cry of the 2008 Olympics):

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right."

we are angered and saddened to be sure, but mostly we are just fucking weary.


Of course Joke Line shat all over the pages of Time magazine.

And of course his editor’s reaction was to reflexively defend the shitbag in her employ and to hang up on that uppity blogger who dared to question her right to print lies.

And of course it now falls to Lil' Petey Hoekstra "...one of the most obedient and loyal Bush-following Congressmen over the last six years" to step up and defend one of the Right's most Useful Idiots...

Today, Hoektstra went to National Review to defend his good friend, "liberal pundit" Joe Klein, in what Hoekstra called the "venomous debate [that] has raged between Time columnist Joe Klein and his far-Left critics." As always on the pro-Bush Right, those who believe in the radical instrument called "search warrants" are deemed to be "far leftists." Hoekstra pronounces Klein correct in everything he said, and then confesses that he was "one of Klein's sources for the complex technical and legal points that seem to be in contention."

So, in other words, it was Hoekstra -- one of Washington's most partisan GOP operatives -- who lied to Klein by claiming that the House Democrats' bill requires warrants for every foreign terrorist's call and that the bill thus gives the same rights to foreign Terrorists as American citizens. That's a real surprise. And Klein The Journalist then mindlessly wrote down Hoekstra's smears without bothering to check if they were true, and Time printed them as fact.

Of course Karl Rove went on Charlie Rose and blamed the Congress for forcing po’ po’ Dubya to invade Iraq.

And of course Charlie Rose sat there gumming Fat Karl’s dick instead of working him over with a sock full of nickels.

Of course Scotty McClellan spent his professional career using his mouth as Dubya’s bidet.

And now of course he is spending his retirement trying to cadge a few more bucks off telling the inside story of being a lying whore.

And each of these men – and thousands just like them – will go to their graves convinced they lived respectable lives because absent a conscience, the only metric they understand is power, and fealty to power. So what if they’re letting the devil screw them in the ass? In their universe, copulatory technique is everything, and the Number of the specific Beast they let fuck their country to death counts for nothing at all.

These are all facets of the ugly truth we were forced to face on November 2, 2004: that no one – absolutely no one – is going to save us but ourselves.

Because, as Greenwald masterfully summarizes it here, the establishment media is no longer even bothering to pretend that it didn’t join the enemy and turn their guns on us long ago (emphasis added):

…
As Eric Alterman documented before most people were pointing it out, the greatest myth in our political culture is the Rush-Limbaugh-generated complaint about the "liberal media." Other than right-wing fanatics like Limbaugh and his followers (including those in the press), who can review this deliberately one-sided, government-worshipping record -- and it is but a tiny fraction, much of it from the "journalists" like Klein assigned to play the "liberal" role -- and maintain that "liberal media" myth with a straight face?

The issue of "why" the media behaves this way is complex and completely separate from demonstrating that they do. There are numerous factors. Some of it is ideological. Much of it is the perception of what is economically rewarding (as Banfield suggested, along with Billmon when analyzing Time's descent into right-wing pablum).

A huge amount of it is due to the herd behavior of our vapid, eager-to-be-liked journalist class, desperate for access to and affection from power -- which, in Washington, means GOP operatives and high government officials. And there are other factors as well, some socioeconomic and some relating to the natural political goals of corporate executives.

But what all of these incidents conclusively demonstrate -- including the latest Time/Klein scandal -- is not merely that our establishment media act as stenographers. If they did, that would be an upgrade. They act as eager, obedient stenographers for one side -- the Government and the GOP power structure inside Washington -- faithfully promoting their views as fact until forced to do otherwise. What other conclusion can be reached from this ample, disgraceful record, perfectly illustrated by Time's extremely commonplace conduct?
…

So whether the act we take is objectively large or small -- whether its speaking rudely up at a cocktail party with an “Excuse the fuck out of me, but maybe if you hadn’t voted straight Traitor Party last time…” where we would not have done so before, or a lonely blogger at the edge of town posting for his or her small community night after night, or Glen Greenwald using his position at Salon to blow repeated, Klein-sized holes in Time Magazine’s glossy façade -- every time we speak out, we nail another sheaf of refusal and dissent to their shithouse cathedral door.

Because any society where Joke Line isn’t writing ad copy for Juggs Magazine, and where Karl Rove isn’t learning an honest trade on the government dime in federal prison, is a society that is fundamentally broken, and these are the simple, sad truths of our times that we are now all called upon to speak out loud, in any venue that is open to us, in whatever voice we can muster, until things change.

Because this is no country for old memes anymore.

And we can no longer afford to be invisible.

I'm not sure how effective

Fred Thompson's new campaign ad is really going to be.

Holy Shit!

Uh...my alarm...musta broke.

It is well to remember that, almost since the day Bar squatted down amongst the thistles and squeezed him out on the back nine, Dubya has been a shallow, lazy fuckup.

And now that he's all growed up and his failed Presidency is rounding the clubhouse turn, it doesn't look like he's planning on changing much.

Bush: 'Worth it to try' on Mideast peace

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent1 hour, 24 minutes ago

President Bush expressed concern Tuesday about the risk of failure in the first major Mideast peace talks in seven years, warning that could spawn a generation of radicals and extremists. Still, he said, "It is worth it to try."

Bush cautioned it would take time for Israelis and Palestinians to reach an agreement. The goal is to reach an accord within 14 months by the end of Bush's presidency.

"I don't think it's a risk to try for peace," the president said in an Oval Office interview with reporters from The Associated Press. "I think that's an obligation."

While Bush has been criticized for standing back from Mideast peacemaking for most of his presidency, he described himself as "very engaged, up to the moment" in bringing Israel, the Palestinians and more than 40 countries together for a conference in Annapolis, Md., to launch the first major peacemaking effort in seven years. The last significant attempt at Mideast peacemaking was at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000. Its failure was followed by a Palestinian uprising and violence.
…

A man willing to give a solid 22% at whatever he does as long as someone else picks up the tab.

A man who will only grudgingly throw together together some 3rd rate, half-assed, last-minute toothpaste- and-whatever-he-found-on-the-way-to-school science project so that his stooges and apologists and work wife can later insist that The Great Man "tried".

Well at this rate, his final, panicky year in the Big Chair should be quite exciting.

Something like Major Kong



meets “The Paper Chase”

Sunday Morning Come and Gone

“Dear Future Generations of Humans…and Biologically Uplifted Raccoons, Bears, Dolphins and Gorillas…or Representatives of the Cockroach Solar Empire…depending on how things turned out" -- Edition.

A Gratuitous "Sleeper" Clip

to set the mood

Should you ever get the urge to understand exactly why the American Political System at the beginning of the 21st Century was so wholesale fucked up, you need look no further than the Mouse Circus (apologies to the Uplifted Mice of Tomorrow) of November 25th, 2007.

Not for any specific content – that moves around a lot week-to-week -- but for an opportunity to peek at the three radically different paths public conversation would eventually follow, at a moment before they completely diverged.

A look at evolution “in medias res”, with three transitional forms laid out side-by-side;

Of course, by your day, the Great Phuquetard Purge has already happened and “Russert Hunts” “Wallace Whacking” have become largely a matter of myth and custom; the ritual decoration of potatoes and pumpkins with toupees and blazers, and then the beating of same with sticks.

But in the here and now, “Russert” and “Wallace” and the rest of the characters from your children’s boogie man campfire stories are actual, real people who walk the Earth, make huge salaries and turn everything they touch into ass water.

The First Subgenus is “Grown-ups talking”. This is more-or-less what political discourse should be like.

On “Face the Nation”, Bob Schieffer gave a workmanlike example of this kind of programming with Robin Wright (Washington Post), "Looming Tower" author Lawrence Wright, Rick Atkinson (Washington Post), and retired General Anthony Zinni.

They talked about…

…the upcoming Annapolis Peace Conference.

…Kurdish North Iraq and the tensions that causes since they’ll cheek-by-jowl with Turkey.

…Iran

…local elections are being discussed in Pakistan in just the right way. Not who’s up and who’s down in the polls, but what the social and military pressures are on civil society.


In other words, they talked about regional problems in their proper context. Lawrence Wright pointed out, for example, that Osama bin Laden doesn’t care about Israel. He cares about the Israel/Palestine problems only insofar as it creates recruits for his movement.

Nothing Earth-shattering, but a fine example of what The Media Commons can sound like when people actually care about matters of substance.


The Second Subgenus is “Lying Liars Lying” and on “Fox News Sunday” you see unvarnished propaganda in its purest form.

Fox, for your information is what we called a “news network” that isn’t with “reporters” that aren’t. It is, in fact, a corporate life-form viciously inimical to democracy that gets very, very rich telling bigots and imbeciles that they are not bigots and imbeciles.

This Genus survives largely by camouflage: By using a format that is superficially similar to “Grown-ups talking” -- men and women with very good hair, wearing very nice suits, in front of big signs that “News” –- the bigots and imbeciles are reassured that all of the lies they are being told really must be true.

This particular Sunday they had on a man named Fred Thompson. He is an “actor” who played a “senator” for a little bit and then did other things that were less strenuous and paid better. He is running for President, which is weird because we are often told that energy and zazz are important factors in winning elections, and Fred Thompson is as “charismatic” a “lemur on a heroin nod dozing in a bowl of cold oatmeal.”

This is a sample of what Fred “No Campaign for Old Men” Thompson sounds like, and thinks like:

Th’ Rev’nuers izza cuming for yore munnies!

Mo’ tax cuts is always better ‘cause that makes Teh Economy grow, which is why corporating shouldna hafta pay no tax munnies

For reg’lar taxpayers, you should have two rates (rich and po’)

And his is a sample of what Chris Wallace sounds like:

Wallace: But we’ve done Teh Maths on your ideas, Fred, and it look like you want to cut 10% off the Gummint Budget. Which means you’d end up with a two trillions dollar shortfall of munnies.

(In these days, before the Housing Meltdown, Peak Earl, the collapse of Techno, the rise of Hechno, the Zombie Tit-Rabbits from Callisto, The Lil' Armageddonette and Rapture Hoax, it didn’t cost a billion dollars to buy a Genuine Costco Guaranteed-Carbon-Neutral Drive-Thru Handjob...so a “trillion” it was still a lot of munnies)

Thompson: We’ll y’know, then damned e-lites are always wrong about estimating taxes. Experts are always wrong.

(Translation: “e-lites” are people who are not actually stupid enough to get their information from Fox News and Fred Thompson”)

Thompson: To save Social Security – which is goin’ bankrupt bitches! – we should junk it and have people open private accounts. A whole buncha experts like “The National Review” think that’s a great idea. And it will save the gummint, like, four trillion dollars of munnies.

Some stuff future people should know:

1. Social Security isn’t broken. Or broke. It is, however, hated by a group of people called “Conservatives” because it was created by a man named Franklin Roosevelt during something called the New Deal.

2. Franklin Roosevelt believed that old people and sick people should not die alone and in agony just because they’re poor and Social Security helps prevent that from happening. Conservatives hate the poor, the old and the infirm and hate Social Security because it taxes a tiny, bitty fraction of their munnies to try and make sure the poor, the aged and the sick don’t die alone and in agony.

3. Conservatives mostly call themselves “Christian”.

4. Conservatives call taking a tiny, bitty fraction of their munnies to try and help the poor, the old and the infirm Evil Socialism! And yet.

5. Jesus Christ –whose Conservative “Christians” claim to follow more perfectly than any other fucking people in the history of forever – was all about helping the poor, the old and the infirm. On the other hand, Jesus Christ never said “Boo” about gay people.

6. So…Jesus Christ was a Very Bad Christian Indeed!

7. Fred Thompson is a Conservative. Or at least plays one on the teevee, which for Fox News viewers is the same thing.

8. Fred Thompson did not bother to elaborate on what length of time his four trillion dollars of munnies would cover, whereas Chris Wallace did specify that Fred Thompson would need to come up with two trillion dollars of munnies every year, and not over 20 years…or ten years…or after a “spell”

(Translation: “a spell” is a span of time short enough for Conservatives to get into office and fuck everything up, but long enough so they can sneak away and start blaming “Bill Clinton” for it.)

Thompson (on abortion): We should direct our energies to something that “might could git done”. Federal judges. The Supreme Court.

Wallace: But what you said – that states should be able to decide what they want to do – isn’t that the essence of the Pro Choice position? That people should have a right to choose?

Thompson: I don’t know of any states that have abortion on demand. Mebbe some do. And if some states did, other states wouldn’t.

I know it is hard to understand why this intellectual speed-skater is running a panting third behind a reprogrammable, Vinyl-encased-vacuum named “Mitt”, a mobbed-inflected, cross-dressing, pro-Choice liar and serial adulterer named Rudy, and the corpse of Ronald Reagan.

Wallace: You said we don’t know the “real” Mike Huckabee. So tell us about the real Mike Huckabee.

Thompson: The “process” will take care of this. The Cato Institute gave him bad tax grades. As bad as Clinton. Also on ‘bortion.

(Translation: “The Cato Institute’ were a bunch of screwheads who hate every idea that involves taking munnies away from some people to pay for things.)

(Translation: “(Bill) Clinton” was a U.S. President who presided over a period of extended prosperity, peace, job growth, fiscal restraint and budget surpluses. But because he was a “Democrat”, Conservative “Christians” spent seven years undermining, slandering and trying destroy him using every means at their disposal. They finally impeached him for having sex with a lady who wanted to have sex with him and then not admitting that he had sex with that lady.)

Which was, according to the Conservative “Christians”, worse that nine Hitlers.

Thompson: (on Giuliani and gun control) New York doesn’t necessarily have the same values as the rest of “Murrica.

(Translation: Hellooooo Klansmen!)

Wallace: There’s a poll that sez you’re Sleepy. And Dopey. And frequently Grumpy. But not Sexy at all! How do you counter critics who say you’re a lazy old man who though he could slip into the White House on a flotilla of corn pone and an IMDb ranking somewhere between Wallace Shawn and Powers Booth?

Thompson: This has been a constant mantra at Fox.

Wallace: Hey! That’s my motherf%^&ing paycheck you’re talking about! Quit saying bad things about my pimp! And anyway, a lotta people have said that.

Thompson: Yeah, but you used (Fred) Barnes and (Charles) Krauthammer. You pig-fuckers only highlight the negative, and then you put on your own guys who have been against me since the beginning.

Then on came Carl Levin and Lindsay Graham, who at this point have been put through their paces so many times there they have laminated passes to the Fox News cafeteria.

Levin: The Surge was a means to a specific end. Saying that there is decreased violence is fine, but it isn’t why we are there.

Wallace: Well, OK, that’s true. What about that, Gomer?

Graham: By January 2008 the de-Baathification law will be fixed.

Wallace: But isn’t it true that the Preznit is already lowering expectations?

Graham: The Surge is working! I’m not gonna play that game. No "That Game Player" am I.

Levin: Shit, it was the Malaki government themselves who set these benchmarks. For a year ago. To sit here and keep saying that if they don’t meet them we’ll… maybe… eventually….sorta ...do something is ridiculous.

Levin: We have been there four-and-a half-years. Why in the name

Graham: The Surge is the most successful counterinsurgency in the history of the world! I won’t set idly by and watch us go ahead and go back to the Old Strategy and let Congress run the Greatest War Evah! Congress setting deadlines. Congress cutting troops strength.

driftglass: Graham is simply a liar. At no point in the history of this bloody disaster has “Congress running this war” been the strategy, Old or New. For 3.5 years a Conservative Congress rubber stamped every deranged, treasonous, thieving decision the Bush Regime made. Then, for the last 11 months, a Slightly Less Conservative Congress has been pushing back a little bit.

Levin: Fuck you, you mealy-mouthed asshat. All we have done is support the troops. Period. The commanders on the ground are the ones telling us that the failure of the Maliki Gummint is the reason for the troubles they face.

Graham: Fuck you! The Surge is Working. Gomer out!



The Final Subgenus…I think is going to require a little more room.

Gomer Out!

"I Keel! I Keel You All!"

Young(er) Dick Cheney shown here honing those mad "Running down helpless children like a Cossack" skillz that would later serve him so well under the Dubya Regime.

This image -- and many other like it -- are to be found over at this terrific Vanity Fair slideshow.

Which also manages to capture in a single, delectable photograph

exactly why I always loved Betty Ford.

Teh Internets: Full?

Or merely gassy?

From InformationWeek:

Report: Internet Outages Could Occur By 2010 As Capacity Stalls

By Paul McDougall

Booming demand for Internet services combined with insufficient infrastructure investment could leave the Web vulnerable to brown outs within three years, a study released Tuesday predicted.

Nemertes Research said Internet providers need to invest from $42 billion to $55 billion -- or 60% to 70% more than current plans call for -- to stave off interruptions to the digital economy that could happen if the 'Net bogs down. "The next Google, YouTube, or Amazon might not arise" if the situation isn't fixed, Nemertes said.

The problem, the group said, is that bandwidth usage is outpacing infrastructure build outs. While core fiber and switching/routing technology "will scale nicely," Internet access resources could soon be overwhelmed in three to five years, Nemertes said.

The trouble could be particularly acute in North America, the researchers said.

"Rather like osteoporosis, the underinvestment in infrastructure will painlessly and invisibly leach competitiveness out of the economy," said Nemertes.

...

Dark times a'comin'...

A world of rationed syllables, and "Frist" abbreviated to a mere "#]t" by federal mandate.

A world where we have to spy on ourselves and mine our own data for hints of disloyalty because the Gummint can no longer afford the bandwidth.

A world where the little ones go to bed crying because there's not enough "Warcraft" to go around.

A primitive world of seedy, corner "Youtube" peepshows where netroots citizens have to stand on line for hours to exercise their God-given right to see this:


A world where porn is only found printed on slippery paper inside things called ma-ga-zines, and the carbon-based life forms behind the counter that guard these ma-ga-zines want actual money for them!

A sad, fallen, "Heh Indeedy"/ "More Thread" world where the survivors will surely envy the dead.

And the award for

"Most Lavishly Hyperbolic Butt-Plug Ad Evah!" goes to...


These guys:

"John Galt brought the world to its knees using inner technology"?

Are you fucking kidding me?

"John Galt" is a two-dimensional, stamped-out-of-chipboard Ayn Randite protagonist whose Pimpernellian exploits on behalf of poor, oppressed capitalists are shot through a vast, steaming heap of bad science fiction called "Atlas Shrugged" like veins of undigested corn.

The book (for those of you who never strapping on the hazmat suit and Libertarian codpiece and waded into this offal ocean) is an apocalyptic novel littered with ludicrous villains, miracle metals, force fields, death rays, and magic motors that suck electricity out of the sky more efficiently than a dozen conservative ‘best selling authors” working the wingnut welfare teat.

It would be (perhaps just a little) too flip to say it plays “The Hobbit” to the “Lord of the Rings” of Tim LaHaye’s execrable “Left Behind” series, and yet they both clearly and calculatedly exploit and profit from the same basic, murderous RightWing masturbatory fantasy; they each cold-heartedly celebrate a cleansing apocalypse that allows a few of The Chosen to survive -- to be Raptured away to Heaven or the Rocky Mountains -- while civilization is annihilated and the bulk of smelly, sinful, Hippy humanity perishes for its unworthiness.

So if you really want to irritate the bejesus out of your local, smirking Objectivist wannabe, ask him (repeatedly) why Ayn Rand is lionized for doing nothing more than rewriting a secular "Book of Revelations", with more gadgets, endless “Please God, just fucking shoot me”-long tirades about Evil Collectivists and Glorious Individualismists, but no Cross.

Because, in the end, that's all it is: a pile of really, really bad science fiction.

And trying hawk your wares to the misanthropic basket cases out there who see themselves as "Ayn-Rand inspired visionaries"?

Again, are you fucking kidding me?

Trying to model your life on "Atlas Shrugged" is as emotionally healthy as trying to model a life on "Riverworld ", "Scanners Live in Vain" or "The Man in the High Castle".

Considerably less healthy, actually, since these latter are actually skillfully crafted meditations on the pain and majesty of being human…

…and not thousand-page sagas about sock-puppets stabbing straw-men with tax cuts.

To show there are no hard feelings

Dubya and his Cabinet take Scotty McLellan out for a friendly beer and a little night music.

Of course, as Commander Guy's Press Secretary, Scotty Dog's "real" job was never to inform, discuss or answer a damned thing.

Like Alberto Gonzalez, his job was simply to geek for the cameras, in the very old-time sense of the word:

"The origin of the term dates back to the late 1800s. A geek was a carnival performer who bit off the head of a chicken or was part of a freak show."

Scotty Dog's job to stand in the spotlight and rub shit in his hair.

Like Gonzalez, his job was to be a daily, human manifestation of Dubya's utter contempt for every aspect of the democracy which he had sworn to uphold. A daily "fuck you " from the Bicycle Chief to the very idea that his imperial presidency should ever have to answer a single fucking question or be held to account for a single fucking thing.

And in my wiliest imaginings I could not dream up a more grotesquely perfect, final coda to a life lived in the ethics-free, garbage-in-garbage-out dumpster of the Dubya Plantation than Scotty Dog angling for a big payday based on his reportage of his own utter, slavish, Constitution-shredding debasement to the monsters he so loyally served.

This column -- "A World Made More Opaque: Why Scott McClellan Had His Job" -- by Jay Rosen surgically disassembles the life and times of Scotty the Dissembler, and shows why what McClellan did was so much worse than merely lying.

A World Made More Opaque: Why Scott McClellan Had His Job

Scott McClellan deserves to be remembered, not as the greatest but as one of the most effective stooge figures in the Bush Administration. (The greatest: Alberto Gonzalez.) This week's news from his publisher--that the stooge says he had unknowingly passed along false information provided to him by Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, "and the president himself"--would seem to suggest that McClellan may be waking up a bit to what his actual role was during the three years he served as White House press secretary.

But I wouldn't count on this awareness reaching very far. In fact, by seizing on a case where an outright falsehood was passed along to the press, we may overlook the meaning of McClellan's tenure as the jerk at the podium, which is what I called him in my April, 2006 retrospective. You can read that post for the full interpretation; here's the gist of what I want you to appreciate about McClellan, because it's worse than lying.

Although he stood at the podium and managed the briefings, McClellan was not there to brief the press. He was there to frustrate, and belittle it, and provoke journalists into discrediting themselves on television. Choosing him to be the president's spokesman was a brazen act because it contradicted at least 40 years of received wisdom on how to manage White House communications
...

And because Scotty was a member in such good standing of the Republican "They hired me because there are some things even a brain-rotted, crack-addled, alley scat whore won't do" rogues gallery, I'm sure the rest of them still happily playing Cesspit Marco Polo at the White House will find time in their busy schedules to take their former BFF out for at least one night on the town to celebrate his good fortune.

And the beer they'll drink?

I just isn't Thanksgiving

Without the greatest

Turkey Day

Promotion Evah!

Among the many things for which I am thankful

is the fact that people like Paul Krugman are still up on the barricades, doing battle with all the right demons. As in this column ("Republicans and Race") where he smites the few slivers of Bobo’s career/foundational-ideology that still have a little wiggle in ‘em with a vengeance.

So good on him.

And now that the Shield Wall has been lowered, you certainly don’t need me to smuggle any fragments packed in coffee past the NYT trustees.

I read this piece as I usually do, and delighted that there are still thinking, compassionate humans plying their sturdy craft through wrecks and hulls that litter the Sargasso Sea of modern American journalism.

And then we came to a small parting of the ways.

Krugman was piloting the vessel harmoniously along with passages like this:

…
The centrality of race — and, in particular, of the switch of Southern whites from overwhelming support of Democrats to overwhelming support of Republicans — is obvious from voting data.

For example, everyone knows that white men have turned away from the Democrats over God, guns, national security and so on. But what everyone knows isn’t true once you exclude the South from the picture. As the political scientist Larry Bartels points out, in the 1952 presidential election 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic; in 2004, that figure was virtually unchanged, at 39 percent.

More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980 as “humiliating to the South.” Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year’s House elections, but Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.
…

and this

…
Thus, Reagan repeatedly told the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud. He never mentioned the woman’s race, but he didn’t have to.

while we passengers partied snugly below decks, dancing singing lively Liberals Sea Chanties. Until we hit a little white water with this:

…
Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong.

The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time. The “macaca” incident, in which Senator George Allen’s use of a racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for the better.
…

Mind you, we were in no danger of us going tits up, Poseidon-fashion, but it was enough for me to slop my excellent Liberal Chardonnay all over the “I Hate America” ball gown batik project I had been working on for the annual George Soros War On Christmas Auction and Bake Sale, so I went topside to inquire.

Now one might fairly ask what in the world is world is wrong with that statement. And I would tell you, flat out, that I think Krugman, being a hopeful man, has drawn a hopeful lesson from the Virginia Senate race of 2006.

But it's the wrong lesson.

Because, for starters, I'd bet real, folding money that George Allen will rise again.

He’ll go into wingnut rehab, hire himself a better publicist, and poop his "reformed" self out the other side; just another recycled, extruded fascist meat product ala Newt Gingrich. And his “transformation” will work because of the nature of the Neo-Confederate South.

Because it was never comprehensively fixed or finished, but like a tail snapped off a gecko lizard, after every defeat is was always left to limp along and regenerate its degeneracy into new, mutant forms.

It was allowed to keep its traitor flag – our very own American Swastika – and fly it without fear of reprisal. It was permitted to warp and rewrite its despicable history into a hazy, grandfatherly tale of glory and honor instead of what it truly was: the toppling of a league of totalitarian regimes each grimly hanging on to its privileges, its murderous ideology and its perverse debasement of genuine Christianity.

Now of course, sometimes sinner does change his ways.

Once in a great while, after, say, being torn apart by bullets and left to live out his life in wheelchaired irrelevance, a George Wallace will find redemption.

Or, on certain rare occasions, after finding out his brain was being eaten by cancer, a Lee Atwater will disavow the malevolent tactics of a filthy lifetime to make a hurried peace with a Creator whose Way and Word Atwater had spend his political lifetime relentlessly sabotaging.

But so long as they have their healthy and an appetite for power, by and large the polluted Spawn of Jefferson Davis will lay down the blood-soaked but extremely effective tools and traditions of racism only when those tools are clubbed out of their grubby little hands and they are flogged back into the Great Doublewide Bog from whence they came.

Kicking and spitting and shrieking “Traitor!” every inch of the way.

Because it wasn’t just “Macaca”.

It was the collective weight of the series of revelations that preceded and followed that moment.

It was learning that Allen had helped terrorize a black family when he was younger.

It was finding out about his incessant, almost obsessive use of the word “n*gger” during his college years.

It was the noose he kept on display in his office.

The Giant!Confederate!Flag this privileged child of California fetishized.

It was his panicked and hysterical reaction to the revelation that his mother was Jewish.

And then it was “Macaca” – on camera -- followed by Allen’s weasely and blatantly absurd explanations of what he said and why he said it.

Followed by the jackbooted behavior of his staff and supporters once things began to spiral out of control.

What Krugman sees is “The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time.”

And over the long run I don’t disagree with that assessment.

However in the here and now, what I saw was a candidate whose racist dog whistle was slapped right out of his mouth. and who would nonetheless still be sitting in the Senate today -- eyeballing the White House -- if a mere 3,616 votes had gone the other way.

I’m incredibly glad that Jim Webb is now in the Senate, but I have no illusions about what I saw on election night 2006.

I saw a candidate who, by accident and hubris, had been stripped of the traditional Good ‘Ol Boy, “Just kiddin’ around, folks!” Limbaugh-figleaf like no other candidate before him.

And knowing for an absolute fact that George Allen was a clear-eyed, pig-fucking, racist-by-choice, I saw 1,165,440 Virginians march proudly to the polls and tell the whole world that, yes, this Asshole is Our Boy!

So sign me up for your better tomorrow, Paul, but know going in that as long as any political party feels it can slip that Ring Of Bigot Power onto its finger and not pay a fatal political price, the scum of this nation will never lack for legions of greasy opportunists feeding off of Big Media, Big Politics and Big Jebus who will be more than happy to cater their cross burnings.

It says:

“Box 7. Shows nonemployee compensation. If you are in the trade or business of catching fish, box 7 may show cash you received for the sale of fish. If payments in this box are conquest income, report this amount on Schedule C, C-EZ, “or (undecipherable), and complete Schedule SE.

“You received this form instead of a shotglass of hemlock because the payer did not consider you a citizen…”

File Under: I get email.

Have you ever wondered from what headwater of simpleminded dumbassery the average Conservative idiot’s “Common Wisdom” springs? That, given the pressure of being utterly fucking wrong about everything all the time. what hammer keeps the rivets of their ridiculous ideology from popping out and the guts of their naked bigotry from unspooling all over the floor.

Well behold (I got this emailed to me, but it shows up like a manifesto/WATB Diaper Rash all over the Wingnutopshere.)

This Tax truth

At first I thought this was funny, then I realized the awful truth of it. Be sure to read all the way to the end!

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's fed.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.

Then we swing from the quaint and general to the contemporary and specific.

When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax

And thence comes the Hulk!Smash!Terrible!Outrage!

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened? Can you spell "politicians?"

And I still have to "press 1"for English.

I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times. You could help by forwarding it to your other friends...that's what I just did!

Well, you gotta give it up for the author of this twaddle. He hits for the cycle; taking swipes at uppity women in the workplace, “politicians”, and dirty Messicans (or did you think the agony of having to “’press 1’ for English” was directed at the Poles?)

So since we’re dealing with Teh Simple, let’s start simple.

Let’s start with those good old days.

A hundred years ago, England was the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world, not the United States.

And England, for your information, built its empire -- its cities, roads and navy -- on the plunder, tribute and, yes, taxes, taken from its conquests.

As did the Roman Empire.

And the Persians.

Hell, even the Original Gangsta’s of Democracy maintained themselves by a combination of plunder, genteel extortion, tariffs and levying taxes to pay for Evil Gummnit:

The Athenian Tax Law of 374/3 B.C.

The law lays down arrangements for the farming of the tax of one twelfth…of the grain of Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, and of a separate tax of one fiftieth. The collection is to be auctioned in "portions" (merides) of 100 medimnoi of wheat + 400 medimnoi of barley (one meris undertaken by a single man or a six-fold meris undertaken by a symmoria of six men), which are to be conveyed to the city "before the month Maimakterion (v)" at the expense and the risk of the collectors and stored in the Aiakeion.

No, at the end of the 19th Century – the period the writer yearns for as some kind of Tax Free Nirvana – the United States was still a 2nd rate power (on the rise due to our success in the Spanish/American War) run by robber barons and plutocrats in the long, feudal shadows of the Gilded Age.

In American history, the "Gilded Age" refers to unprecedented wealth polarization in the U.S. and wasteful displays of wealth and excessive opulence of America's upper-class during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, from the 1870s to the 1890s.

Of course unlike older empires -- and much to the horror of our home-grown theocrats -- we operate under a doctrine of separation of Church and State; which means the King or the Satrap doesn't raise armies or pave roads; the Evil Gummint does.

A hundred years ago the Homestead Act had about run its course. The frontier was closed and with it, the idea that the United States could expand forever and on the cheap into mile after unplowed, unfenced mile of virtually-free, highly-exploitable land (Virtually free, except, of course for the time and expense required to eradicate the thousands of native peoples who were already using it.)

Brief driftglass aside: One could reasonably argue that our national freak-out over the loss of our frontier-as-symbol led directly to the imperialism of Teddy Roosevelt and the expansion of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny overseas.

End brief driftglass aside.

So what did America really look like during the Glory Days the writer longs for?

Well let’s start with the basics, like how long you’d probably live.

If you were born during the writer’s Tax-Free Golden Age and you were a White Guy, you could expect to be dead as Diogenes before your 50th birthday (Average white female life expectancy was 47. Average for a black male was 34. For a black female, 33.)

Today, in the Over-Taxed Nightmare that is modern America, that poor, abused White Guy can expect to live an additional 28 year and see his 75th birthday. (White female life expectancy is now 80. Black male 68. And Black female 75.)

And where did that skyrocketing life expectancy of the 20th century come from? This miracle that gives certain crabby, dyspeptic White Guys an additional 28 years in which to bitch about how much better things used to be?

Turns out it's the result of improvements in public health, nutrition (like, say, school lunch programs) and better medicine.

Care to guess where the money came from to pay for those things?

Of course in those glorious days before “politicians” and taxes ruined America, government was largely paid for by regressive tariffs, the effects of which landed squarely on the backs of working people.

As for women not working outside the home, well I guess the writer means “Nice White Ladies” since there was plenty of cheap, legally-exploitable domestic female laborers to be found on the poorer, darker side of town. And while those Nice White Ladies were conspicuously absent from the work force it is well to remember that, for the most part, they weren't allowed to work.

Or vote (the 19th amendment wasn't ratified until 1920).

Or marry outside of their own race.

Or divorce.

Or own property.

Hell, they were property.

As to the United States having “the largest middle class in the world”, like many Conservative idiots, our writer not only picks and chooses only those selective bits of our national narrative that conveniently support his tirade, he also seems to have confused 1900 with 1952.

Because that large and stable "middle class" we see imploding around us today was created largely by a massive government spending program known as the GI Bill (emphasis added):

From “Remembering the GI Bill”, July 4, 2000.

…
STEPHEN AMBROSE: Listen, that GI Bill was the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America. The educational establishment boomed and then boomed and them boomed. The suburbs, starting with Levittown and others, were paid by GIs borrowing on their GI Bill at a very low interest rate. Thousands and thousands of small businesses were started in this country and are still there thanks to the loans from the GI Bill. It transformed our country.

JIM LEHRER: Transformed our country, Doris?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, no question. I agree with everything Steve said, including the passion with which he said it. I think few laws have had so much effect on so many people. It meant that blue collar workers, a whole generation of blue collar workers were enabled to go to college, become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and that their children would grow up in a middle class family. It meant, as Stephen said, that people had homes, instead of being renters in the city, so that they could bring up their children in a home that they had owned.

…

JIM LEHRER: I bought my first house on the GI Bill.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah. There you are. I mean, the idea of this - it is so incredible to look back on that - the idea that in 1940 - in the class of '40, as Doris would say, five years after the war, World War II, ended, twice as many Americans graduated from college. That's just the college part. I mean, as Steve was saying about the suburbs, there were 13 million homes built in the 50's, 11 million outside of there with GI loans. I mean, it just - it did transform the country.

…

JIM LEHRER: And, Doris, to use the word transforming society, I mean, the legacy of what happened to those World War II vets continues to this day, does it not, in our society?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, without question, it's the generation that really built the whole decades that followed after that. You know, just following on what Steve said, most of the people who went into the GI - into the soldier's war - had not left their counties; they hadn't traveled much in the United States. So suddenly they are in this war; they're all over the world; they see things they have never seen before. So possibilities open to them, and I think that's partly what led to that changing attitude toward their educational possibilities …

A gateway to the middle class

…

HAYNES JOHNSON: And the irony of this, we're talking about, this was the biggest government grant, in effect, it was the government, federal government. Today people hate the government. This was once there was no debate about it. There's no controversy about it. There's no ideological argument about it.

…

Hey, would you like to take a wild fucking guess who it was that most opposed the GI Bill?

JIM LEHRER: Not everybody wanted society transformed, did they?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No, absolutely. At the time that the bill was debated in Congress it passed only by a very slim margin, and, in fact, a lot of -- particularly Republicans -- said let's not pass this thing because a big part of the GI Bill was to give returning vets $20 a week for 52 weeks. They felt that would encourage sloth; that people would not try to get jobs. They thought that this would extend the welfare state, rather than do the opposite.
…

Don't kid yourselves, boys and girls; Republicans have always hated the troops.

And, yes, we wouldn’t want to spend public revenue – public taxes – on frivolous things like social safety nets, education and small business startups since we all know how much better things were back in the Olden Times.

Of course back in the writer’s “good old days", the very idea of a "World War" was still unimaginable.

During those "good old days", much of the nation's wealth came from the forced labor of African Americans in the de facto fascist states of the Jim Crow South; places where murder, rape and terror were routinely sanctioned by the State.

During those "good old days" much of the nation's industry was run by robber barons, which used private armies to stomp the hell out of anyone who crossed them.

These were the days of child labor, and clubbing to death people who dared to suggest that it was wrong.

These were the days when, if you lost a hand on the job, well that was just too fucking bad.

These were the days when, if you found a hunk of human hand in your hotdog, well that was just too fucking bad.

When a seven-day work week for slave wages was considered acceptable.

These were the days when the aged were left to die penniless, alone and in agony.

These were the days before the US maintained a huge standing army. Or a hundred billion dollar navy. Or an air force. Or a nuclear arsenal.

These were the days when an industrialist could rip open the ground, pollute the air and water, and to hell with the consequences.

When housing for the working poor was hellish because no one cared.

When pandemics wiped out people by the thousands because there was virtually no public health care system.

Where eating tainted food was the chance you took because there was no FDA.

Where there was no interstate highway system. No phone system. No internet. No oranges 3-for-a-buck in Chicago in the winter, because there was no agricultural plan or transportation system.

No public high schools.

No middle class.

No electrical grid, or expectation that you should be able to flip a switch and have heat, light, refrigeration or communication with the outside world.

No unemployment insurance.

A minimum wage? What are ya? A commie!?

No national parks.

No aeroplanes to anywhere.

No GPS system...because there were no satellites...because there was no NASA. Which means no weather tracking. No XM radio. No cell phones.

None of it existed, because they had not yet been prioritized by the American citizenry, and then purchased with their tax dollars.

Of course, there were some problems from the writer’s Golden Age that even the GI Bill couldn’t eliminate:

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I hate to be a downer. One thing that it didn't work so well at was helping black Americans. Many black Americans who got GI benefits could not get into some of these towns - Levittown on Long Island was segregated. You couldn't buy a house if you were black.
…

For that relic of our Glorious Past, we had to make another revolution.

We had to alter or abolish our government when we found it to be destructive of the lives, liberties and happiness of its citizens, which, if you’ll remember, were the grounds for our revolt against the British.

There is plenty to bitch about American. There is government waste, and certain ridiculous and counterproductive taxes, and you’re never going to find me on the side of arbitrarily defending either taxes or politicians in the abstract. However our writer seems to conveniently forget that, at the very beginning, we set a powerful precedent for dealing with those problems,

That our original revolution against the British Empire was not against taxes, but against taxation without representation.

It’s right there on our fucking letterhead.

But the thing is, in this country we have representation.

We have elections.

The “politicians” the writer is so hysterical about are also known as his “elected representatives”.

Not an invading army. Not a hereditary monarchy. Not an occupying power.

E-L-E-C-T-E-D.

And while I get the distinct impression that the writer would rather wallow in his Laz-E-Boy and rail about the “politicians” and wimmin and dirty Messicans than leap up and take action, someone should tell him that here in the Land of the Brave, he and his friends are perfectly free to organize opposition. To bootleather around their neighborhood and raise up an army of like-minded citizens. To replaced their elected representatives. To run for office themselves if they like.

They are free to do any and all of those things.

What they are not free to do is just fucking lie.

What they are not free to do is gin up some bullshit, sinless, pre-Fall, “White Man’s Eden” cheapjack Chinese-knockoff version of history from which they can then divine some magical justification for their ignorance, bigotries and idiotic ideology.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Sunday Morning quick pre-game mini-edition

Out and about this day, so possibly more later, but this was simply too important to wait.

“Meet the Press” hosted the Great Wanking Circle of Pundit Life that has destroyed our political discourse.

A coven of pundits punditing on the state of punditry, one of which was Byron York.

Dear Byron,

You may have noticed that, as you get more Serious, your hair grows progressively less long and lustrous.

Byron, I have seen the future and my advice to you is this:

Run.

Run right now.

Run

as if



your very

soul


depends

on it.

You can thank me later.

Pol Dancing

File under: Another Modo “Beautiful Agony” column.

Reading Maureen Dowd's piece in the NYT, “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, shed absolutely no new light on the subjects it alleged itself to be about: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani.

None.

But that clearly wasn't the point. Because what it did accomplish, very effectively, was to let Ms. Dowd peel herself down to her taxi shoes and nipple clamps and walk giddily around the block in front of a whole bunch of people.

Stripped of what passed for its context, here is the just the vocabulary she used in her column; just the subtext, staked out spread-eagle for your prying eyes.

dominatrix

disciplining

upstart

flick the whip

unapproachable

voice, gaze and body language

punishing

brought to heel

mesmerizing display,

iced them.

responds

belittling

strong woman

keep him in line

master

the art of (the) loving

refused to meet his eyes

she owned him

tortured

brazenly

cut

dragged

control freak

letting her take control.

all the vulnerable places

Without ever uttering her name

laced

spank

Now it is a little hard to suss out whether or not Ms. Dowd is trolling for a new lover or telegraphing her erotic shopping list her to an existing one, but from her perch atop the NYT she is without doubt doing one or the other.

And while I have my very strong impression of which side of the stockade she wants to be on, whether she likes to be the one on her knees and trembling, or the one circling slowly and whispering is still a trifle ambiguous.

What is not difficult to figure out -- regardless of which end of the leash she yearns for -- is that Ms. Dowd very much likes the idea of being put through her paces in front of a crowd.

Very, very much likes the idea.

And while I respect all of consensual, adult Roads of Excess that lead to the Palace of Naughty, Bad Fun, I really do wish Ms. Dowd would quit twisting reality, bending the politics of people she clearly despises over a barrel, and then flogging it to a pulp just to suit her barely sublimated need for a particular brand of gratification.

Write mediocre erotica, Ms. Dowd, or write about politics.

Or write both.

But as thrilling as it may make you feel down in the ol' Dowd Fun Area, please quit using your column to badly trick out one and pretend it’s the other.

"My Sled!"

(Big h/t to Avedon at Eschaton)

Some others (for the sequel)?

"He'll accept my offer because it will be a good offer." -- The Godfather

"Kansas has much different terrain, so we must be someplace else." -- The Wizard of Oz

"I can see you Ilsa." -- Casablanca

YearlyKos Netroots Nation Announces

Ladies Night.

Registration octuples.

So let us stipulate that I very much enjoyed the YKos event this summer, and further stipulate that I would have gone to BlogHer but for a snag in my schedule, and understand that it was most excellent as well.

That being said, because I have never pretended to be anything other than low and perverse, when I received this Exciting!Netroots!Update, fresh from the Liberal Orbital Command Center, Weapons Platform and Cat Blogging Ready-Room:

Netroots Nation Announces 2008 City! November 15, 2007

July 17-20, 2008: Netroots Nation is coming to Austin!

The face of progressive politics is changing. Regular people have taken it on as their civic duty to become activists, and citizen journalists, and even run for office. The trend toward more decentralized, people-powered politics and media is accelerating, and at Netroots Nation, we are doing our part to focus that trend on creating a more progressive America.

But to do that, we need to raise the bar even higher than we have before. We have to reach out to other blogospheres and communities, progressive organizations big and small, and, as always, more individuals who have found themselves disaffected by politics as usual.

That is also why we are thrilled to partner with BlogHer and feature a real-time virtual panel in conjunction with their San Francisco conference the same weekend.

BlogHer is a terrific community of--you guessed it--women bloggers.
...

I could not help but let my imagination Horace Greeley it's way westward and futureward.

Towards Austin, Texas in July, 2008 (insert sexy fade out here)

At one end of the gala event we see that the Q&A portion of the session entitled:

"Tits and Hits: A Consonant Blogger Ethics Panel Perspective on Linux, Traffic, Kittens and, oh, let's say 'Pedagogy' ".

is starting to get lively.


And at the other end of the venue?


Lefty political bloggers, these are w-o-m-e-n.

Women, these are Lefty political bloggers...


You kids have fun. Your mother and I will be upstairs if you need more chips or anything.


Footsteps.

Door closes.


Sooooo…do you ladies…like...Drupal?

American Delphic

"Buy me another pony, Pappy, and tell me some more about what 'The American People' really want.”

“Shut up you cow; they’re on to us!”

(Click here for poster-sized and h/t “Philly” from this post for the idea.)

T-H-A-N-K

Y-O-U.

Well, I hope you're happy.

Y'all have gone and robbed me of my language and left me with nothing in my tricksy vocabulary bag to say but simply "Thank You" for your kind and generous words about a certain, recent, long 4-part post:

PhysioProf

jurassicpork

res ipsa loquitur

Phoenix Woman

LowerManhattanite

dave

skunqesh

Malacandra

darkblack

bill g.

frank

Dee Loralei

Ivory Bill Woodpecker

Caoimhin Laochdha

skunqesh

US Blues

WereBear

Jill

Bustednuckles

Mr. Natural

Gentlewoman

willis

L.S./M.F.T

StonyPillow

Loveandlight

Ktesibios

Joy

prof fate

Jesse Wendel

Thank you.

And now back to our regularly scheduled porn, poop jokes and political sassmouthery.

If you never read Steve Gilliard

and wonder what it was about him that made so many of us who never met him or shared a meal or a beer with him love and respect him so deeply, well maybe if you think of Gilly as a composer...

The words were what he said, and the music was how he made us feel.

A brilliant, topical, brutally honest, by-the-sweat-of-his-brow artist who -- laboring right here on the dirty floor with the rest of us -- produced a genuinely astonishing and powerful body of work, which earned him a large and wildly diverse constellation of fanatically loyal readers.

Nobody did what he did how he did it. Or does.

Nobody comes close.

His words -- which he gave away for free -- are available in his archives for whoever wants to read them.

But the music?

The music sounded just




like this.




Every.

Single.

Fucking.

Day.

"A Rose for Bobo" -- Part 1 of 4.

Prologue.

I’ve circled David Brooks’ now-infamous NYT column for several days in what can only be called wonder.

Because I cannot recall reading a more remarkably, unintentionally and humiliatingly-revealing essay in a very long time.

For the record (Wait a minute? There’s a record?) it is the column entitled “History and Calumny” (although it would probably be better named “Hysteria and Columnist”) and it appears here if you want to read it for yourself.

Visiting further demolition on it would probably be gratuitous, since watching good writers from all over crank one round after another into Bobo’s wheelhouse has been like unto

watching the Navy take target practice on a derelict ship.

Doghouse Riley has his way with our Mr. Brooks here.

Brad DeLong.

Jurassic Pork

Paul Krugman himself deftly gaffs and guts the context surrounding Bobo’s ridiculous assertions here.

Bob Herbert, also of the New Yawk Times, pounds another fistful of ten-penny nails into Bobo’s coffin with “Righting Reagan’s Wrongs?" which begins thusly --

“Let’s set the record straight on Ronald Reagan’s campaign kickoff in 1980.”

-- and soars onward here.

And, of course, from beyond this vale of tears, my sentimental favorite is this by Steve Gilliard in 2004, which I’ll quote at length below, and which you can read in its entirety here:

So let's get past all the maudlin bullshit and discuss what Reagan really did.

First, Reagan rode to power on a wave of reaction to the Civil Rights struggle. California, a state with a deep well of racial resentment, supported Reagan, who would protect the establishment and call for students to be murdered on their campuses. Reagan was regarded as a crank by many on the left, but his appeal to middle America was strong. It wasn't that Reagan was a racist, as fas as is known, he wasn't. But he sure could pander to them, as he did in 1984 1980 at Philadelphia, MS. For those of you unaware, that is the place three civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan. It would be like a British Prime Ministerial candidate going to Amritsar to talk about the glory of the British Army (the site of a 1921 massacre of peaceful Indian protesters). Reagan pandered to the racist right with ease, even as Barry Goldwater, the man he supported in 1964 with a convention speech, slowly backed away from many of his reactionary views. Instead, Reagan depicted blacks as "welfare queens" leeching off the society, when in reality, white women are the largest recipients of AFDC. Reagan used race like a club to hammer minorities and pander to the racist right.

We need to ask what hath Reagan wrought. His economic policies crippled this country, preventing the kind of long term structural changes which are still needed. How long will American businesses have to foot the bill for health insurance? How long will unequal funding for schools exist? How long will the right of women to control their bodies be subject to restrictions? This is the real, domestic legacy of Ronald Reagan. His breaking of the PATCO strike began the road to anti-Union policies across business. Once, businesses wanted labor peace, after Reagan, strike breaking was permitted, hell encouraged.

Reagan began the road of crippling America's ability to care for Americans. Now we have this failed trickle down economic policy pushed by yet another President. One that leaves Americans in record debt and record bankruptcies. Instead of tax rates which fairly distribute the burden of funding America, the rich have been encouraged to avoid their fair share. Ronald Reagan began the bankrupting of America and the creation of a super wealthy CEO class, one where their great grandchildren will never have to work, an aristocracy of trustifarians. Under Reagan hypocracy and selfishness became the rule of the road. Not just in public life, where his staff routinely lied, eventually leading to Iran-Contra.

But if Reagan started to ruin America, his foreign policy left the dead around like fallen leaves. His foreign policy was a disaster by any standard. Dead nuns in El Salvador, murdered school teachers in Nicaragua, the tortured in Argentina, the seizure of Grenade, the failed intervention in Lebanon, the aerial assassination attempt on Khaddafi, which led to the bombing of Pam Am flight 103. Reagan's policies left a trail of failure and disaster at every turn.

How to explain funding the deeply corrupt Contras? Former Somocista generals who funded their war by the drug trade? Who murdered the innoncent. Or the war in Guatemala and the genocide of the indian population. Or the war in El Salvador, where American nuns, among many others, were raped and murdered. A government so callous that it murdered an archbishop in his church.

Reagan's foreign policy left a trail of death and fear wherever it touched.=
…

Silent complicity was the hallmark of Reagan's policy towards dictatorships. From Indonesia to El Salvador, the innocent died and the US said nothing, did nothing, except make their lives worse.

We backed the guerrilla groups in Afghanistan, funding the most radical ones and then leaving the country in disarray.

Reagan's legacy is a dark one, one of backing murderers and robbing America of a fairer future. It wasn't that he was an evil man, or a bad one. It is what he believed and what he supported caused so much pain and misery for so many people, who had to live with the results of his policies.
…

Which demonstrates, if nothing else, the true, sad state of American journalism: that a deceased and relatively obscure blogger named Steven Gilliard is still a vastly more vital, thoughtful, passionate and powerful writer from inside the Narrow House than is the allegedly-living New York Times columnist named David Brooks.

And which, in the end, leaves nothing left standing to debunk or refute.

Indeed all of the above would be an embarrassingly one-sided exercise in bouncing the rubble of where Bobo’s career used to be were it not for this simple fact: Bobo still works for the NYT.

Punching most days so desperately far out of his intellectual weight class that he can barely climb up the Big Boy stairs into the ring, Bobo nonetheless continues to punch clock every damned day on the most valuable piece of real estate at the New York Fucking Times.

He worked for them last year.

Works for them this year.

Will work for them next year.

And through the smoke of Hellfire prose tearing his idiocy to flinders, this became the part of the story-behind-the-story which began to fascinate me.

End Part 1 of 4.

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3
Click here for Part 4