RIP Tom Snyder

Goodbye pal.

And in celebration of the life and beverages of Tom Snyder, mix yourself up a Colortini, sit back, and let this lime green wave of pure 70s goodness wash over you.

The downside: Leisure suits, guy-necklaces, impact-resistant hair, and everybody smokes.

Upside: You get to see Young Harlan Ellison (a writer who has influenced me as least as much as any other) set to full-tilt-boogie, Doohan in his Evil Spock goatee, Koenig getting to say more than “Yes, Kep-teen”, and Snyder interlocuting with that inimitable easygoing, interested-basset-look he had.

Everybody from Ayn Rand to Charlie Manson eventually did Snyder, who made late night boozily interesting and interestingly conversational.

If you want to raid the fridge for more, the four preceding slices are here:

Part One of Five



Part Two



Part Three



Part Four

The Ten Plagues

Of Dumbses II.

(Recently translated from the First and Second Books of Texodus.)

The First Plague:

And so it was the days when the Wingnut Boot was heavy on the throat of the Nation, Reality went unto Dumbses, asking that the mortal remains of Terri Schiavo be respectfully committed unto the ground.

And Dumbses called his pundits and frists; and they by Christopathic enchantments and certain secrets, defiled her mortal remains most egregiously for partisan gain.

And though Reality did consume every wingnut trickery and win that argument most decisively, Dumbses’ heart was hardened, and he did not hearken to the will of the Nation, as Reality had commanded.

The Second Plague:

And unto the Media a Memo from the Street of Downing was delivered, proving the perfidy of Dumbses in the matter of the Great War. And it was shewn to the Nation that Dumbses did turn the nation of Iraq red with blood for lies and profit.

Thus therefore saith Reality: "In this thou shalt know that I am not to be fucked with: behold I expose the lies that led to the Debacle in the Desert."

And among the the soldiers that are in the War, many shall perish for criminal want of Armor and Medical Care. And the Press shall become corrupted, and the Nation shall be afflicted with ignorance and cognitive diarrhea when they try to gain knowledge from the Media.

And Reality landed smack on fat heads Dumbses and his servants and bloggers and water-carriers: and Iraq was turned into blood.

The Third Plague:

And the Pundits and Chickenhawks who throve in the shallow, smelly end of the bullshit tide pools of Conservative mendacity began to go mad; and the information flow became corrupted and completely detached from the real world. Runaway Blondes and Sharks Attacks displaced vital debate on and analysis of the Iraq War, and the Press refused to tell the Nation what in the fuck was really going on in Dumbses’ Excellent Iraqi Adventure.

And the limbaughs, hewitts and kristols worked their enchantments in like manner, tattooing the killword "Traitor!" upon the brow of any who dared to question the infinite wisdom of Dumbses; and Dumbses’s heart was hardened, neither did he hear the Nation, and he turned himself away, and went to Crawford the clear brush and play blindfolded "Find the WMD" with his Office Wife Secretary of State, neither did he set his heart to it this time also.

And Reality said, quit lying to the people you despicable, dry-drunk idiot. Quit slandering honorable me and quit shitting on the Constitution.

But if thou wilt not, Reality shall multiply the number of enemies and terrorists who will afflict you and the next two generations.

The Fourth Plague:

And Black Prisons and Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and the bloody occupation of a foreign land for years in a war that was supposed to take a fortnight did rend the Coalition of the Willing, did drive Moderates into the arms of the Enemy, and did greatly enflame passion against a Nation that would be so fucking addle-pated as to have allowed a feebleminded frat-rat to rule over it in the first place.

While Osama bin Laden sat in safety in a different country altogether and laughed and laughed and reaped the rewards of the propaganda victories Dumbses kept handing him, year after year after year.

And the o’reillys and the coulters and the malkins did conjurate their majyks and process fact though their Orwellizers and cast enchantments to “prove” that this plague of failure showed how very, very right Dumbses had been all along, and how very, very wrong and disloyal the followers of Reality had been.

And Dumbses was reassured that he was right in all that he had done, and again hardened his heart against Reality.

The Fifth Plague:

And Reality stretched forth its hand upon the waters, and struck sky and ocean, and there came a Great Storm. So large was it that it could be seen from Space striding towards the Nation fangs and claws bared like a lion nearing the sheepcote.

And yet the Beast Katrina bore down on the Nation, Dumbses did nothing.

And as the Gulf Coast of the Nation was consumed and a great city lost, and as the brownies and chertoffs were commended for the heckuva job they were doing, even members of Dumbses own Party now began to wonder where they were being led.

And who the detached, oblivious shit-kicker was who was leading them into disaster after disaster.

The Sixth Plague:

And then didst Dumbses attempt to privatize the Nation’s Social Security.

As deftly and smoothly as a bear with DTs wearing oven mitts trying to thread a beading needle with sticky silk fresh from the spinneret of an Araneus diadematus.

And although he was beaten by Reality like a rented dromedary, he still didn’t fucking get it and his heart stayed as hard as Ted Haggard on a meth bender with a pre-paid rent boi.

The Seventh Plague:

And then there came a very grievous swarm of Leaks into the demesnes and principalities of Dumbses and of his servants, and all the Nation learned of the “Dubai Port Deal”, “Valerie Plame”, “Vote Caging”, “Energy Task Force”, “Jeff Gannon” and a host of others. They fell upon the Nation like a cloud of stinging flies, and the Nation rose up and said very clearly, “We wanted these incompetent, lying fucknozzles gone!”

And the friedmans and the broders and the rest of the pundit priesthood did sift the air and cast spell after spell, incanting “Bill Clinton’s Penis Was Woooooorse”.

And another layer of concrete was poured over Dumbses’ wretched heart.

The Intervention of the Reasonable Men:

Reality was by this time starting to notice that Dumbses stayed constantly and imperviously drunk on a cocktail of Hubris and Delusion, and that his Party's big plan was to just let him get away with it and blame Jimmy Carter or somebody whenever someone shoved a camera at them. And so Reality did summon The Baker and The Hamilton from their homes high atop Mount Whiteguy, and lo a Commission was formed so that Dumbses might be given a face-saving exit from his Iraqi Debacle and in that way the Nation might be saved.

And the Baker Hamilton Commission did produce a very mild, very moderate, very Centrist Report, and presented it as tribute to the mighty Dumbses.

And Dumbses used this Report as ass-paper,

and his heart stayed harden as neutronium.

And the Nation wept.

The Eighth Plague:

Ironically, in the case of Immigration, Dumbses actually tried to let some people go.

They were, in the main, the People of the Mexican Lands, who were sorely afflicted and heavy laden with the toil of picking the Nation’s fruit and swabbing the Nation’s bedpans while dwelling in a twilight economy. And Dumbses did stretch out his hand and try to find a middle course wherein the suffering of the People of the Mexican Lands might be balanced with the legitimate legal and security needs of the Nation.

But in this, Dumbses’ own magicians, pundits, spear-carriers and shouty-crackers rose up on Dumbses skin like boils. And they bit Dumbses upon his ankles and his throat, crying that he “Wanted Amnesty” and was perhaps even “Secretly Liberal”.

For Dumbses while had girded himself in a powerful armor of pinhead fanatics to protect him from Reality, he never understood that those reprogrammable sock-puppets would turn on him in a hard-heartbeat if he ever showed signs of not irrationally scapegoating the right groups of people.

The Ninth Plague:

And Reality brought a burning wind out of Texas called Alberto Gonzalez to set fire to what the other plagues had left in tinder-dry rubble. And day and night Dumbses loyal foot-servant stood before Congress under oath and lied and lied and lied and lied.

Badly.

He perjured himself publicly and repeatedly, and when he was not lying he was stumbling and “forgetting” frighteningly important details, until all the Nation could conclude was that Gonzalez was either deeply and criminally complicit in a cover-up of illegal activities perpetrated by the White House to subvert the Constitution and violate the civil rights of the people of the Nation...

...or that day-in-day-out he was proving to be possibly the stupidest creature on two legs, all while Dumbses kept insisting that he was, in fact, fucking brilliant, honorable, and was running the Nation's Department of Justice like an EZ-Bake Oven with a fresh light bulb.

And a great Darkness enveloped the GOP, as even the most loyal vizier and conjurer realized that the failings of the Dumbses Regime had exceeded even their considerable talent for propagandistic legerdemain.

And they keenly remembered what had happened when Dumbses had waited far, far too long to eliminate Rummy.

“Pleeeeeease,” they begged of him in private. “You must fire this baby-faced ebola virus or he’ll take the whole Party down with him. Didn't your spectacular failure to excise Rummy until he had doomed us all teach you a God Damned thing?!”

But again Dumbses’ heart was hardened and he said “Fuck you all; the Higher Father sez Gonzo’s stayin’!”

The Tenth Plague: The Loss of The Firstborn.

And finally Reality had had it with Dumbses and the filthy little fascists who eagerly followed him into despotism and ruin like baby ducks.

And Reality said, “OK, that’s it. I’m tired of playing. I’m making your kids into Liberals. The firstborn in the land of the Wingnut shall become Dirty Hippies, from the firstborn of Dumbses’ ministers, even to the firstborn of the trailer-dwelling mouth breather who thinks we can nuke all of our problems away.

"Might even make ‘em gay too, but for now we’ll just see how this goes."

And there shall be a great cry in all GOP, such as neither hath been before, nor shall be hereafter.

And you know what?

That’s exactly what’s happening…

From The Political Wire

July 27, 2007

Republican Support Collapses Among Youth

A new Democracy Corps/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey finds young people "profoundly alienated from the Republican party and its perceived values."

Key finding: "Young people react with hostility to the Republicans on almost every measure and Republicans and younger voters disagree on almost every major issue of the day."

In the presidential race, "both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lead Rudy Giuliani -- the most acceptable of the Republican offerings among youth -- by significant margins. The President’s standing is substantially worse, to the degree that is possible, than we find in the broader electorate. Moreover, the disconnect we see between the Republicans and our nation’s youth runs so deep, that it likely will not only outlive the Bush administration, but potentially haunt the Republicans for many years to come."

So let it be written.

So let it be done.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down – Part 1

Mouse Circus: The Director’s Cut (Sorry, seem to have over-written the previous, placeholder post)

driftglass (VO)

"Sunday, shit. It’s still only in Sunday. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the jungle.

When I was home after my first Mouse Circus, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing...

When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.

I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Chris Wallace squats in his own poo he gets stronger.

Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.

Everyone gets everything he wants.

I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one.

Brought it up to me like room service.”

On “Face the Nation”

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Schieffer (recounting a smattering of the sins and crimes of “Baby Face” Gonzalez: But does this even matter to the Average American?

Schieffer: Its all very, very arcane, which is why Average Americans has a problem following it.

driftglass: The Average American doesn’t vote. The Average American doesn’t read. For amusement, the Average American watches one game show after another featuring people pitted against each other like red and black ants in paint shaker. The Average American wouldn’t pay attention to the Second Coming if the Messiah were pureed, set afire and catheterized up their urethra.

Fuck the Average American.

Leahy: You follow the law. I follow the law. It is the Administration’s position that they do not have to follow the law.

Schieffer: So what should the Preznit do?

Leahy: Well some say he should fire Gonzalez. But he needs to go further and make it clear that no one is above the law as a matter of principle.

driftglass: It always sadly amuses me when media and political persons recount the reasonable things that any President should do in this or that crisis knowing full well but never, ever, ever daring to say that the reason it’ll never happen is because Dubya is out of his fucking mind and none of the gel-based Profiles in Courage over in the Impeach Bill Clinton Party At Any Cost have the guts God gave flatworms.



On “Meet the Press”

Tim Russert

Dan Balz and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd of NBC News, Ron Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times and John Harwood of CNBC.


Hoss race toutin’.

Feh.

If I want to see overpaid men running in meaningless circles, NASCAR is only a click away...




On “Fox News Sunday”

Driftglass reminder that the Department of Justice is to Justice what Fox New is to News.

Russ Feingold straps into a HazMat suit and video conferences in, after Noot! Does his Noot! thing all over the furniture.


Noot! The Whole Candidate Selection Process is fundamentally broken. Making people stand on stage in line and answer questions indeed!

Noot! The American System is fundamentally, deeply, massively failed as evidenced by the fact that I am not the President, and no one has come and meekly offered me the crown.


Noot! In 1861 Lincoln gave a 77 hour speech and people gave birth grew old and died during it! And now these pissants stand meekly in line, answering questions! From teevee personalities and smelly peasants. Well cheese and crackers, I have never heard of anything so demeaning.

Idiotic Premise #1: That “size matters”. Anyone -- Noot! Included – is welcome to stand on any street corner and give any speech of any length they choose. No one is stopping you. But as Noot! full well knows, fortnight stem-winders do not fit into the teevee format. That you can talk all you want but nobody’ll listen doesn’t mean the system is broken.

It's called d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y. See also b-l-o-g-g-i-n-g and 3-r-d c-l-a-s-s m-a-i-l.

Idiotic Premise #2: That brevity = System!Failure!.

I was gonna be nice, but since Noot! had to go and drag Lincoln into this…

In 1863, Lincoln was invited to give a few, concluding remarks at the public dedication of a war cemetery; a speaker named Edward Everett gave the main address, which lasted over two hours (which Noot! seems to think is the golden benchmark of a speech given in a system in perfect condition).

And even a very learned American couldn’t tell you who the fuck Edward Everett was or one, single phrase from his two-hour speech if you put a gun to their head.

Lincoln's speech –- now known as The Gettysburg Address and indisputably one of the masterpieces of the English language -- was a mere 246 words long,

And God Herself stopped what She was doing and wept when he delivered it.

BTW, Lincoln’s other most brilliant piece of oratory – his Second Inaugural – clocked in at 698 words.

Funny. You'd think as a Big Time History Guy and author of crappily-written books about the past, Noot! would’ve known that?

The co-author of “Gettysburg” continues…

Noot!; Each Party is disqualified to govern. Republicans don’t understand how fucked up things are, and Democrats are Evil Liberal Baby-Eating Swamp Things who want to Socialize us into the Dark Ages.

The Noot! Solution? He’s gonna have a Big Idea'r Conference.

For example, Noot! has discovered that the education system sucks in Detroit. That we need to fundamentally replace the Detroit public school system. Which has been destroyed, according to Noot! entirely by the Teacher’s Unions.

No half-measures with Noot! Everything is always Fundamentally, Irretrievably, Apocalyptically, Sub-Atomically fucked up.

And to a certain extent, he’s right, and history will record the fuckuppedness of everything by another name.

It will be known as “The Republican Legacy”.

Noot! manages to drive through the whole of the collapse of Detroit with no mention of GM, Ford or the complete mismanagement of the auto sector by Big Money for the last 30 year, and the resulting implosion of the economy and middle class.

You'd think a Big Time History Guy would’ve picked up on that...

Of course, Noot! never had and never will have any genuinely Big Ideas. He just has a Big Vocabulary and a tiny-brained Base who cannot tell the difference.

Noot! on Abu Gonzalez: I don’t agree with the Democrats 293rd investigation of stuff. Dems have gone irrationally overboard in this desire to investigate everything.

But Abu Gonzalez is a bad AG and is hurting the Children somehow.

Wallace: What do you have to say about the Democrats and how they want to lose in Iraq and sell us out to the terrorists? Isn’t that a bad thing?


Noot!: Well now that you mention it, the left wing of the Democratic Party (that’d be me) wants Americans to lose. Wants us defeated.

In 1975, the Left Wing of the Democratic Party killed the government of South Vietnam.

How can you in good conscience walk away from the good people in Iraq.

We have seen this happen in Afghanistan; the Taliban coming back and killing children on their way to school!

Idiotic Premise #1: No one is arguing anything regarding Afghanistan except that it is where we should be and should have focused out efforts since September 12th, 2001, and that the Bush Administration has fucking it up. Badly.

Idiotic Premise #2: If Fox News blobs ever paid attention to trifling details they might notice the fact that the failure in Afghanistan limns nothing so much as the complete bankruptcy of the Bush Doctrine…which is precisely what Noot! is allegedly championing.

Noot! has not changed one iota; he is still the same loathsome, cowardly, hateful, slander-at-the-drop-of-a-hat fascist he has ever been.

And he still speaks for the Republican Party


Then on to Russ Feingold;


Wallace: But Petraeus is going to save us. Why oh why won’t you Dirty Liberals listen to the Gentiles on the Ground Fein-gold.

Russ: I’ll listen to him respectfully, but not exclusively. And I remind you we have already received assurance after assurance from this Administration regarding Iraq, all of which have proven to be a tissue of lies and bullshit year after year.

Wallace: This is all technical stuff that our dimwit viewers cannot possibly comprehend. Therefore shouldn’t we drop it?

Russ: Fuck you. This needs to be at least investigated.

Wallace: But to investigate one the Dear Leader’s minions? How dare you look the Dear Leader directly in the eye!

Russ: Why wouldn’t you do that? Why wouldn’t any responsible legislature want to find out what has gone wrong and why and fix the fucker?

Wallace: The Preznit needs FISA to be changed to save the children! Why don’t Democrats want to save the children?

Russ: Just easing foreign-to-foreign restrictions? No problem. We have a deal. We can do that in a day. But this is the scam they propose every time.. With the Patriot Act. With Military Commissions. They find one small, reasonable detail everyone agrees on. Then they load it up with a bunch of grotesque, power-grabbing trash, and try to ram it through.

And then they sit back and watch while minions like you, Chris, go monkeyshit over how unreasonable the Democrats are.

Wallace: Isn’t this just political theater with no smoking gun?

Russ: That’s why we want Rove and the rest to come down and testify? How can we tell you if evidence shows a smoking gun if the White House will not let us look at the evidence?


Wallace: BTW, we asked White House and Congressional Republicans to come down and defend Speedy Gonzalez and had no takers.

End Part 1.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down – Part 2

Mouse Circus: The Director’s Cut

(Sorry, seem to have over-written the previous, placeholder post)

On “This Week”

Orrin Hatch and Charles Schumer, followed by Bob Dole and Donna Shalala.

Hatch continues his campaign to be the Last Republican Attorney General for the next 16 years by fiercely laving the President’s taint.

Stephanopoulos to Schumer: Aren’t you more concerned that the public will think the Congress is more interested in investigating and nor legislating.

driftglass: The Public, you will note, is alternately imputed to Not Even Fucking Notice and Think Its All Politics. Translation: Quit looking up Dubya’s dress!!

Schumer: The reason we need an independent investigator is that everyone in the DOJ reports – directly of indirectly – to the Preznit’s consigliere at the top.

Orrin Hatch really took his salts, Viagra, Metamucil and Soul-Thinners today

Stephanopoulos: Well, you’re the one person the Congress would probably confirm as AG. Are you interested?

Hatch (giggling girlishly): Fresh boy!

Stephanopoulos: So…?

Hatch (batting his lashes): I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.

Hatch lapses into daydream…


"Gone With The Wingnut"

Hatch: Oh, Dubya! Please, don't go! You can't leave me! Please! I'll never forgive you!

Dubya: I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if an impeachment gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Orrin. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.

Hatch: Don't hold me like that!

Dubya: Orrin! Look at me! I've loved you more than I've ever loved any Republican and I've waited for you longer than I've ever waited for any Republican.

Hatch: [turns his face away] Let me alone!

Dubya: Here's a Preznit of the party of God who loves you, Orrin. Wants to feel your arms around him, wants to carry the memory of your kisses into battle with him. Never mind about loving me, you're a stuffed shirt sending a Preznit into cruel history with a beautiful memory. Orrin! Kiss me! Kiss me... once...

Stephanopoulos: Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Yadda?

Uh…yadda?

Hatch snaps back to the here-and-now.

Hatch: Gonzalez has been used as a punching bag by Democrats. And some Republicans.

Hatch: I respect Gonzalez.

Hatch: Gonzalez has done some good at the DOJ.

Then it’s”BYO Straw Man Day” on the Panel with David Gergen, Cokie Roberts and Fareed Zakaria.

Gergen’s face time, reminds me of bygone , pre-David Brooks days of weekly debates on PBS when I used to actually looked forward to the give and take.

Cokie Roberts, ever willing to haul any debate into “Why Democrats Are Always Wrong” mudpit: “If Democrats keep trying to out-dove each other they’ll get themselves into the same problem they had ion Vietnam”

Fareed; This is not 1975. The country is in a totally different place. And the Democrats are haunted by the memories of George McGovern.

Cokie (In her best Red Queen accent): As well they should be!

Gergen: There is nothing Republicans would like more that some pussy who would retreat from everything, cooperate with dictators and hold hands and sing "Kumbaya"

And of course, no one anywhere is arguing for that.

Cokie (accidentally dropping a dime on herself): This is a problem of perception. And in politics, perception is everything.

Ahhh. Classic “What poo smell?” mendacity.

Cokie argues in an absolutely perfect circle.

Skanks and Broders like her are in Terrible!Terrible!Danger! of losing control of the public perception of politics. Their whole MSM Free Lunch Program depends entirely on propping up the 40-year-old stereotypes of what Liberals and Conservative are like, despite the fact that reality bears no relationship whatsoever to those stereotypes.


So she and her fellow liars frantically work the “Serious” Journalist sandbag line, as the Centrist Levee in which their entire livelihood depends blows leak after crack after breach.

What really freaks her out is that Liberals are in danger of busting completely out of the frame she and her colleagues are desperately trying to keep them stuffed into.

Of being perceived of as regular Americans; pragmatic, Constitution-loving, everyday working people who are terribly concerned with the dark road down which the Christopath Right has led us, and terribly angry at the craven, Beltway-circle-jerk complicity of the MSM in the disaster.

And then...no more Free Lunch for Cokie.

On ”The Chris Matthews Show”

Kelly O'Donnell -- NBC News White House Correspondent, Michael Duffy -- Time Magazine, Gloria Borger -- CBS News/ U.S. News & World Report, David Ignatius -- Washington Post

Kelly O’Donnell: It’s all about Fear.


David Ignatius: This is George Bush’s war. The American People are fed up. They’re tired of this war and feel they were lied into it.

Oh, and Michael Duffy shamelessly lifts my point from 12 days ago ago: That on the one hand the Administration is pumping of the Big Giant Fear of Al-Qaeda …at the same time they are arguing that Al-Qaeda is weak, on the run and we are kicking ass against them.

You’re welcome, Mike.

This was all sadly inevitable, predictable and predicted when you are stuck with a delusional, fanatical White House whose whole Strategy was, is, and always will be: “Army Group Steiner will save us!!



From The News Blog, June 2005:

Army Group Steiner


How many doors? How many patrols? Will this ever end?

In Hitler's bunker, he repeatedly said that Army Group Steiner would rescue Berlin. The fact that Army Group Steiner was a ramshackle group of units and unable to save itself was of no concern to Hitler. In his mind, Army Group Steiner was the solution to the desperate straits of the German Army.

…

Now, the GOP would rather debate Dick Durbin's logical argument that we are slipping down into totalitarian practices, alienating our allies, instead of facing that reality.

A quick look at the WaPo in the last week or so would show the unravelling of Bush's war. Parents are facing off with recruiters and winning. The Iraqis refuse to fight. The Kurds provoke the Turks, Gitmo is now a recruiting tool for our enemies and decried by our allies. Pirates boarded an oil tanker.

So what dos Dick Cheney say? The insurgency is in it's last throes. And Army Group Steiner has stopped the Russians.

We are reaching a crisis point in Iraq. And Bush keeps pretending it isn't happening.

…

As long as Bush pretends Iraq is OK, it will only get worse.

…

All roads lead to Iraq.

And whether directly (lying about Pat Tillman as a part of the larger effort to keep us in Iraq forever, or handing no-bid contracts to Regent Cheney’s friends to make sure all the right people got fat off the blood that was being spilled) or indirectly (stealing elections…to hang onto power… to keep us in Iraq forever) virtually all Administration crimes – high and low -- were Mothered by the Conservative's bone-deep, sneering contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, and Fathered by the exigencies of maintaining their Forever War in Iraqi.



And as always, even from beyond this vale of tears, Steve Gilliard has the last word.

End Part 2 of 2

Libby visits his old boss

in the recovery room to keep him up to speed on the Saudi project, the Lieberman project, and the Gonzalez initiative.

That Blue Gal

is making the leap into those talky "moving pitch’ers" all the kids are crazy for these days, and is trying to work out the “Glasses on or glasses off?’ details.

Well Blue Gal is just fine either way, and up here at the castle we only have one, iron-clad rule when it comes to accessorizing:

And this one time, at Bandar camp,

me and Bandy, we shot some Messicans and buried ‘em up on Mount Lil' Coolidge.

At least I think they were Messicans.

All's I know is, they worked in the kitchen, and we were pretty sure they were spittin’ in our soup, and they cried and swore and stuff in Messican when we tasered ‘em, so I think they was Messican.

And this other time, at Bandar camp, we made a buncha Peace Corps chicks blow us!

For real. It was so awesome. We said we’d have their families deported to Bandy’s country if they didn’t, so they did.

Then we ate so much pie we got sick.

Then we blew up a dog with a grenade.


When you read this article, keep in mind that the Saudi Royal family and the Bush Royal family have been band camp reach-around buddies for two generations.

That Dubya’s nickname with the House of Saud was “Bandar Bush”.

That two nights after 09/11/01 – like “Boston Legal”’s Alan Shore and Denny Crane –

it was with Prince Bandar that Dubya shared a balcony at the White House so his close, personal friend could have a stogie and a drink.

From "Fahrenheit 9/11" (transcript)

...
Two nights after September 11th, George Bush invited Bandar Bush to the White House for a private dinner and talk. Even though bin Laden was a Saudi, and Saudi money had funded al Qaeda, and fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis, here was the Saudi ambassador casually dining with the President.

On September 13th, what were they talking about? Were they commiserating? Or comparing notes? Why would Bandar's government block American investigators from talking to the relatives of the fifteen hijackers? Why would Saudi Arabia become reluctant to freeze the hijackers' assets?

The two of them rocked out on the Truman Balcony so that Bandar could smoke a cigar and have a drink. In the distance, across the Potomac, was the Pentagon, partially in ruins.
...

And yet…(from the NYT with emphasis scattered in by me)

July 27, 2007
U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis, Citing Role in Iraq

This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg, and written by Ms. Cooper.

WASHINGTON, July 26 — During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

…

Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

Just so we’re completely clear, this just one more stone in a mountain of evidence that these longtime friends of the Bush Family are either explicitly or implicitly backing the people who are coming over the Iraq border to kill Americas.

And that this is the same President who came into office claiming that his complete lack of foreign policy experience would be more than ably compensated for by his nearly superhuman ability to look into the eyes of other leaders and get a measure of their souls.

This is the Leader of the Free World we’re talking about.

The Head Drum Major for Jebusland.

The Manichean Emperor of “You’re either with us or with the Terrorists".

Preznit Optico-Soul-O-Matic-Polygrapher.

So exactly what bold, decisive action is Dear Leader taking in the face of this clear and present danger to American lives being perpetrated by his family's close personal friends?

...
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
…

So…they’ve waited damned near five years to notice that the Saudis are getting into the habit of killing Americans and getting away with it, and now Dubya’s fiercest kung fu consists of sending his errand boys and girls to deliver a sternly-worded message to his Saudi Uncles?

Well Fan-Fucking-Tastic.

...

Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.

The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.
…

Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to prop up Sunni groups in Iraq …

Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that Saudi Arabia’s direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year as the Saudis lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must bolster Sunni groups in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.

Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — to give financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last December, Mr. Gnehm said.

And yet…

The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an Op-Ed page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr. Khalilzad, now the United States ambassador to the United Nations. “Several of Iraq’s neighbors — not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United States — are pursuing destabilizing policies,” Mr. Khalilzad wrote. Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was referring specifically to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

…

Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent of the flow of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, for instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top American military spokesman in Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a foreign fighter recently captured in Ramadi.

In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by a Syrian facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a suicide truck bomb on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify the man’s nationality, but American officials in Iraq say he was a Saudi.

And yet...

The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers.

…

There are seven mentions of the name “Bush” in this article: One in a sentence that describes how hacked off the Saudis are with Dubya, and six as part of the phrase “Bush administration” or “senior Bush administration officials".

Nowhere just Dubya, explaining to the citizens of the country over which he has presided for almost seven years what he plans to do about this grave and murderous threat.

Nowhere in the reporting on this bloody awful mess is it even mentioned that the Leader of the Free World has close, filial bonds with the leadership of the country that is bankrolling a big chunk of the people who are killing our children.

Nowhere is in even hinted that, just maybe, instead of dispatching his minions with a scrap of paper and some harsh words, that in defense of the troops e sends off to die every day in this Iraqi Debacle, the Commander Guy should perhaps get on the fucking phone and make a few blunt calls to his Saudi cousins.

And yet he does virtually nothing, year after year, while exhorting us all to keep pouring our blood and treasure into his Persian Abyss because it is the Most Important War Evah!

Which may leave you wondering, is Dubya simply a coward and a weakling?

Or is he in the pay of a foreign government?

Or is it perhaps that the Prince remembers some things about Dubya’s summers at Bandar Camp that the Dear Leader would rather not have disinterred?

The “Who Now?” Hilton - Part 1

Hello? Anyone there? Hellloooooo?


This neat bit of writing by Sara Robinson is waiting for you over at the Group News Blog.

“You Call These Candidates?

I've been trying to figure something out since this whole overheated, overlong campaign season started. It's starting to make my head hurt.

It's about the GOP. Ever since the late 70s, they've been intensely focused on priming their political pump with a rich flow of potential candidates. To this end, they've been hand-picking preachers and PTA presidents, packing school boards, sending people off for elite candidate training courses, hooking them up with money people, and generally doing far more to cultivate their native leadership talent than the Democrats even thought about doing until Paul Wellstone came along. This aggressive candidate-building infrastructure has been a core source of the GOP's power for about 30 years now. They take it very seriously -- and they're very, very good at it.

Which is why my head begins to hurt when I look at that sorry passel of White Christian Males parading across the stage at the GOP debates. All those years, all that money, that whole infrastructure -- and this is the very best their party can offer us now? I mean, really? Rudy Giuliani, with his nasty divorces and a record that makes him one of the most despised men in New York? Unctious, officious Mormon good-boy Mitt Romney?

And Fred Thompson? FRED THOMPSON? In what universe is this man a serious presidential candidate? I mean, Reagan was an actor, too -- but he also had some serious chops as a union president before becoming a two-term governor of California. And then, only then, was he considered presidential material. Thompson's skipped right over all of that. His backers think he's got what it takes to go straight from a totally fictitious DA's office to the very real White House.
…”

Go read the rest, because it deftly described the prison the Republicans have built for themselves, brick-by-brick, bar-by-bar, Newt-by-Newt, Rush-by-Rush and Rove-by-Rove.

For thirty years, the GOP has barbered both ends of the swine. With one hand, they carefully conditioning the great, swaying ass of the Party to respond in an ever more mindlessly Pavlovian way to hate, fear, ignorance. And with the other -- in perfect, political symbiosis -- they have build candidates whose whole electoral vocabulary is saturated with the magic killwords that make the Base stand up and squeal.

Now the pasty little neocons and safety-net-rending apologists told themselves this was just a means to a meaningful end. That the Segregations dribblers and the Christopath droolers could be kept in-harness and used cost-free to transport their lassiere faire asses to a Randite Promised Land, where the livin’ is easy and the slack-jawed mopes what brung ‘em could render one last service as wait-staff, organ banks or cannon fodder before they died.

They were, after all, the beasts of bourgeois burden, and after they had performed their Bell Curve-destined function, they could be put down like a loyal pet. Perhaps literally rendered for their more lucrative and oleaginous chemicals.

But the Beast got fat and the Beast got hungry, and as the GOP rode it to victory, it began to demand more meat.

And, like the old joke about two labs rats:

“Yeah, I have him completely conditioned,” One rat says to another. “Every time I ring this bell, the subject brings me a piece of cheese.”

the GOP was not paying attention to who was conditioning whom.

So the Base started demanded that, instead of the occasional jolt of current to their hategasm nerve clusters, they get rage mainlined with a hollow-bore cardiac needle straight into their skulls.

Because they had been taught so carefully to literally turn their brains off in the presence of inconvenient facts and logic, and cheer only on command for the most reptilian, “Hulk, Smash!” propaganda, they predictably developed a complete intolerance for the very ideas of “compromise”, “due process”, “dissent”, “checks and balances”, “plurality” and any part of the Constitution or Bill of Rights that did not directly involve the possibility of them getting to kill things.

In other words, to get elected, the GOP spend billions building themselves an army of slavering orcs who deeply and profoundly despise everything this country stands for.

The mob they made want to nuke anyone that looks at us funny, nuke anyone that points out that it would be bad/crazy/wrong/bad policy to nuke anyone that looks at us funny, deport every Messican from sea to shining sea, line up and shoot every Liberal and every member of the press who does not agree with every fucking word that flees the Vocabulary Gitmo of the Dear Leader's mouth only to perish under Tony Snow's wingtipped jackboots, and generally wants to send America spiraling back to the good old days of submissive women and obedient Negroes.

And now they are the road to the White House, and like Jack Lemmon looking for the hidden stash of booze in the "Days of Wine and Roses”, they will tear apart any candidate who does not feed them the killwords to which they have become addicted, right fucking now and cask strength.

That’s a more conventional description.

For a less convention description, Part 2 follows.

The “Who Now?” Hilton - Part 2

Oh Brave New World,
That has such meatheads in it.

At some point at Yearly Kos, should anyone manage to tree a member of the national press and corner them into a candid conversation, I would dearly love to know why – really, really why – they continue to scratch their collective heads, play dumb and pretend not to understand why, in a political world where the Republican Base squats like a troll with an RPG beneath the GOP bridge to the White House, nothing gets done.

Pretend not to understand why, when the voices that utterly dominate the Right are those who (in lieu of actually debate) daily run berserk, verbal wildings against anyone who disputes the infinite wisdom of the Dear Leader, the political atmosphere is so poisonous.

Pretend that the fact that the Republican Party has lost its fracking mind and is now trussed up with a knife at its throat in the back James Dobson’s Windowless Clown Car, doing 90 down a dark road into Hell, is not a huuuuge fucking story.


And if they need the story told to them in better-dressed thread, maybe this can help.

For the record, I lifted this bodily from a chapter in Aldous Huxley’s indispensable dystopian novel, “Brave New World”. So don’t ever let it be said that I steal anything less than the top-shelf goods.

And then I made a few changes:

…
"These early experimenters," the Karl Rove. was saying, "were on the wrong track. They thought that Conservative Media could be made an instrument of intellectual education"

(Film of an angry wingnut driving to and from his shitty job, listening absently to a radio broadcast of a loud, breathless man blathering on about Supply Side economics.

Through a round grating in the dashboard of his Canyonero, a voice dins on and on.

"An economic theory which holds that reducing tax rates, especially for businesses and wealthy individuals, stimulates savings and investment for the benefit of everyone.”

At work the next morning, "Whitey," someone says, “could you explain Supply Side economics?"

A shaking of the head.

"Maybe remember something that begins: ‘An economic theory which holds…?’”

"An -- economic - theory - which - holds - that --- re-du-cing --- tax rates – es-pe-cial-ly -- for -- businesses -- and -- wealthy in-di-vid-uals – stimulates – sav-ings - and – in-vest-ment for - the - benefit - of - eve-ry-one.”

"So what is Supply Side economics?"

The eyes are blank. "I don't know."

"But, ‘An economic theory…’, Whitey."

" An -- economic - theory - which - holds - that --- re-du-cing --- tax rates …”

"So why does cutting rich people’s taxes benefit everyone, Whitey?"

Whitey burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)

That howl, Rove made it plain, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach wingnuts “facts” over the radio.

"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," said Rove, leading the way towards the door. The College Republicans followed him, desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up in the lift. "Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational."

"Silence, silence," whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor of the Fox News Tower, and "Silence, silence," the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor. The students and even Rove himself rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were Wingnut Think Tank Veal-kinder, of course, but even Wingnut Think Tank Veal-kinder have been well conditioned.

Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which Rove cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a row of Hate Radio broadcast booths, air sharp with the ordure of manufactured bile, cigars and OxyContin sweating out of huge, greasy pores.

A GOP Handler rose as they entered and came to attention before Rove.

"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.

"We had Elementary Christopathy for the first forty minutes," she answered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."

Rove walked slowly down the long row of booths, so like the efficient rooms of the whorehouses of his youth. A keening, shrieking voice seeped out under every door.

Rove halted and listened attentively.

"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have it on the speaker."

At the end of the room an AMS Concert Portable PA System projected from the wall. Rove walked up to it and pressed a switch.

"… why they always want to compromise," said a loud, furious voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Democrats are all Socialists. Oh no, I don't want to play with Democrats. And Dirty Fucking Hippies are still worse. They're smelly and awful and they hate America and want the Terrorists to win!. Besides they’re all gay, and they want to take your guns away and make you gay too!. I'm so glad I'm a working-class Conservative."

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

"Our Glorious Conservative Leaders work much harder than we do, because they're such fucking geniuses. I'm really awfully glad I'm a working-class Conservative, because fighting islamofascism and their Evil Liberals Dupes is such hard work. And then we are much better than the Centrists and Liberals. Centrists are stupid and don’t love Jebus. They don’t believe in anything, which is why they always want to compromise, and Democrats are all Socialists. Oh no, I don't want to play with Democrats. And Dirty Fucking Hippies are still worse. They're smelly and awful and they hate America and want…"

Rove pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its shrill ghost continued to mutter from behind the nearly-soundproof glass.

"On Fox, Hate Radio, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and the Mainstream Media, they'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before the end of tomorrow; then again on Thursday, and again on the Sunday Mouse Circus. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced Talking Points."

Gayphobia and a nostalgia for bygone days of burning crosses do their early work, but cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex actions needed to get out the vote.

For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, Hate Radio.

"The greatest weapon against the evils of Democracy ever invented."

The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horse's mouth.

Once more Rove touched the switch.

"… such fucking geniuses," the blustering, professionally-aggrieved voice was saying, "I'm really awfully glad I'm a working-class Conservative, because…"

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.

"Till at last the wingnut’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the wingnut’s mind. The mind that judges and desires. The mind that will hysterically impeach one man for trivia, and fanatically adore the next as he commits treason right in front of them. The mind that believes being impervious to reason and canine-loyalty to the Dear Leader are actually the highest virtues. That mind is made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" Rove almost shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the Party of God." He banged the nearest table. "It therefore follows…"

A noise made him turn round.

"Oh, fuck!" he said in another tone, "I've gone and made Hugh Hewitt pee himself again."

Make a Joyful Noise

Unto the Lewd.


I shamelessly lifted this right off of Susie Bright’s blog.

Just ran in, threw a buncha dimes and whiz-bangs into the air, and, in the ensuing confusion, made off with this very, very funny and completely not work safe video.

It has no prosaic political context.

It advocates no particular position on free trade or immigration or Iraq.

It just cracked me right up.

Now because Susie is one of the coolest writers going, one might fairly ask why I didn’t kype a big block of her taut-yet-voluptuous prose too, seeing as how I was b-and-e-ing around over there anyway.

Well, just between you and me, the strict truth is, I was…uh…slightly flash-blinded by all the shiny dimes.

And, well, very mildly concussed by the exploding whiz-bangs.

So I grabbed and ran, OK?

Oh, like you’ve never nuked a peep on a heist.

I'm not waiting on a lady

I'm just waiting on a fiend...

It's just bad luck and bad timing that the standard-bearer the GOP Base is really, really, secretly waiting for has been dead for almost a decade.

Tour de France: Stage 25

One of the most famous things that never happened but shoulda was an exchange between a female contestant on “You Bet Your Life” and Groucho Marx.

The urban legend is told a lot of different ways, but it comes down to the female contestant revealing she has some staggeringly large number of children. Some version say 11. Some 17. Some 23.

"Why so many children?" Groucho asks.

"Well, I just love my husband!" the woman replies.

"Lady, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while!" replies Groucho.

Tour de France: Stage 24

Tour de France: Stage 23

Tour de France: Stage 22

Tour de France: Stage 21

Tour de France: Stage 20

Tour de France: Stage 19

Tour de France: Stage 18

Tour de France: Stage 17

Tour de France: Stage 16

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which we wait for the hologram of our own Hari Seldon to appear and explain WTF is going on with our own, most recent Seldon Crisis.

For the non-science fiction dorks in the room, a "Seldon Crisis" is…

…a fictional socio-historical phenomenon in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series of science fiction novels. Utilizing the mathematics of Psychohistory, Hari Seldon foresaw that the collapse of the Galactic Empire would herald a period of galactic barbarism that would last for 30,000 years, stretching until a second Galactic Empire could rise from the ashes.

To shorten this period of anarchy, Hari Seldon formed the Seldon Plan, which would shorten the period of barbarism to a single thousand years. To insure that the Plan was followed to fruition, a Seldon Crisis would occur when the fictional Foundation nation would encounter a social and political situation that, to be successfully surmounted, would eventually leave only one possible, inevitable, course of action.

These 'Seldon Crises' were planned and pre-determined by Hari Seldon (after whom they were named) as devices for controlling the flow of events in connection to the Foundation in order to execute the Seldon Plan.
…

All of which is to say that, when you step a little back from the rush of event and the cataract of crimes and betrayals that have come to define the Bush Administration, there is nothing going on here that would have particularly surprised our own Founders.

They know these crises were possible because the enticement of tyranny is always there, just beyond over horizon, grinding out its sirens song.

Just give up a little.

Just give in a little.

Just sell out a little.

And I will keep you safe.

Or, because The Boss puts this shit so much better than anyone:

…
Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied
till he rules everything

The Founders knew the disease, knew the type of man who would be drawn to power for power's sake. Who would try to lure us down into Hell, so they left behind a weapon to save us.

The Constitution.

But, see, we have to actually pick it up and use it.

On “Face the Nation”

Bob Schieffer talks with Harry Reid, and Olympia Snowe.


Schieffer: Last week you tried to force a vote. Pizza. Cots. The GOP blocked a vote. And you have blocked a vote from the GOP. So aren't you all just naughty children who can't get along?

Reid: That’s not what happened. We offered the GOP lots of opportunities to vote on a lot of amendments. And they wouldn’t do it.

Reid: We have a bipartisan working group trying to figure a way to work through this, but you now have Republicans who are blocking their own amendments.

Schieffer: It is the impression that you don’t want to let people vote.

Reid: It is a myth from the White House spin machine. We offered unanimous consent to have simple majority votes on everybody’s amendments. Levin/Reid. McCain. Campbell. Asimov. Warner/Lugar. Dirty/Sanchez. Kramden. Desilu. Dostoyevsky/Twain. Junebug/Ray-Ray. Everybody. And they told us to fuck off.

Because they are more interested in protecting the President than in protecting the troops.

Jim Webb offered a simple amendment to head off the destruction of our military by allowing the troops reasonable time to rest and recuperate between their long deployments in Iraq.

And the GOP told us to fuck off.



On “Meet the Press”

Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell

Pass.

Than, Big Russ Feingold (D-Wisc)

Plus, oh man, I really am in Hell; David Fucking Brooks collects another paycheck, sitting next to Bob Woodward and Stephen Hayes, lying on his back and making little chirr-upping sounds by rubbing his hind legs together.

But first, like Howard Dean, America has caught up with Russ Feingold. What was once slandered as the radical, cut-and-run, loony Left is now the solid mainstream.

And yet, these guys who were right all along still get asked stupid questions by buffoons.

Russert: But if we leave, won’t things be bad?

Feingold: Aren’t things bad now, Tim? And aren’t you sick of having this fucking conversation? Every time anyone even tries to talk about finding the exit to the slaughterhouse, we get yanked back by some dickhead yelling “precipitous”. And then, a friedman later when things have gotten worse, these same dickheads want to know when someone's gonna do something.

(Grabs Russert by his Big Boy tie and yanks his potato head into the desk.

And a nation stands up and cheers.)

Censure resolutions!

Russert: Isn’t this a futile effort that’s just “politics”? Don’t you think the American people will get all pissy about Democrats want to censure the Preznit instead of joining hands and singing about buying the world a Coke?

The Democrats are the American people, you flatulent gourd.

Feingold: Are you fucking kidding me? Americans are outraged. They are talking impeachment. Shit, if Cheney ended up hanging by his heels in the Capital rotunda, about 7 out of 10 Americans would declare it a national holiday.

Then, David Fucking Brooks.

David Brooks: You might call Dubya confident, or you might call him deranged…

That's some real fine jounalisming there, Bobo.

Brooks (responding to Russert’s questions about lying to get us into a war): That damned Harry Reid and censure resolutions and partisanships are what’s making it impossible for 30 Republicans to run away from Dubya and, y'know, do the right thing.

Shorter Brooks: It was perfectly fine for the Bush Regime to have used the Manichean club of “You’re either with us, or with the Terr’ists” year after year after year to bludgeon Democrats, geld the media, and win elections. But now that the Democrats have a solid position, solidly supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans, it is somehow terribly unfair to demand that Bush Regime liars and lackeys “Come to Jesus”.


Woodward: The Administration believes that we would need to be fighting in Iraq for another 5-10 years to do it up right.

Brooks: Sure, we could lose 125 American lives every month for the next 5 years, but getting out could be bad too.


Russert: But you will hear a lot of people say that, since the Administration has been wrong about every fucking thing since the beginning of time, why should we think they’re right about how awful Iraq will be when we leave?

Brooks: Chirp. Chirr-up. Squeak, squeak. You see 4-5 Civil Wars going on Iraq. It’s bad, but we have an, uh, moral obligation in Iraq. And of course when I say “we” I mean mostly poor people and brown people, and not College Republicans of Selective Service age, myself, or anyone I might ever have any contact with whatsoever.

Then I had to looks away or risk defenestrating a perfectly serviceable teevee machine.


On “Fox News Sunday”

Two years ago, Dubya said we were kicking al-Qaeda ass everywhere.

Now the NIE says not so much.

And when the feces hits the cyclotron and spatters Truth all over the face of the Earth, it is Fran Townsend the Bush Regime air-lifts in to explain to the squealing Fox masses that Up is still Down, Black is still White, we've always been at war with Eastasia, and the Dear Leader has been right about everything all along.

Like all good RePravdacans, you can tell when Fran is kicking it up a notch from bullshit to hypershit, when she starts to precede her mendacity with the phrase: “There is no question…”

Translation: How dare you question!

Chris Wallace (After a lost of backing-and-forthing about the obvious fact that the Preznit has lied about how well we are doing against al-Qaeda): But this is simple. There was a downward trend. Now an upward trend.

Fran: There is no question that it looks that way if you don’t have a Magic Sekrit Iraq decoder ring. Do you have one?

Chris: No.

Fran: Well there you are. There is no question you would agree with me that everything is great and getting better if you could process the incomplete and misleading information you have through a Magic Sekrit Iraq decoder ring.

Chris: So, can I have one?

Fran: No, Chris. It’s Magic. And Sekrit. And there is no question that the enemy –- who are simultaneously weak, on the run, we are on the verge of wiping out forever, and remain a Terrible!Terrible!Globe-Spanning!Threat! who could kill us all at any moment -- would love it if we were to reveal Magic Sekrit Iraq decoder ring technology on the teevee.

Chris: OK, then why aren’t we bombing the crap of them. Starting...now.

Fran: There is no question that just because we don’t tell you we’re not bombing the living crap out of everything east of Iran doesn’t mean we’re not.

Chris: Well, OK. Are we?

Fran: It’s all Sekrit. You just need to trust us. But we’re doing lotsa stuff. Lotsa stuff.

Chris: But you have this intel that says where al-Qaeda is, what they are doing, what their training camps are up to. I mean, you can practically Google Map the Pakistan frontier and watch them on the fucking monkey bars. So a lot of people are asking “Why don’t we just take them out"?

Fran: We have lotsa capabilities and we’re doing lotsa stuff.

Chris: So we pussyfooting around with Pakistan why?

Fran: They are our friends. But rest assured that there’s no question that our national interest comes first.

Fran: There’s no question that Iraq the Central Front on the GWOT? After all, they attacked a wedding reception in Amman. Therefore there’s no question they can attack Idaho!

Then some Senators Kit Bond and Evan Bayh.

Bayh: Gotta be more aggressive, but more careful.

Bond: We have to work with the Pakistanis

Wallace: But not unilaterally. Not by ourselves.

So we have to play nice with others?

Defer to Pakistan?

But…But…

Insert sexy flashback here:

“But as the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many nations and submitting to the objections of a few. The United States will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”

Dick Cheney at the Reagan Presidential Library, March 17, 2004.

“George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.”

Dick Cheney: 2004 Republican Convention Keynote speech Sep 1, 2004

So I guess all that "permission slip" butchtalk only counts when you are slandering honorable men and lying yourself back into power.

Bond: Pakistan is not a perfect Jeffersonian democracy. But we’re kinda sloppy about this in some ways ourselves.

Translation: Maybe trading secret prisons, torture, domestic spying and habeas corpus for moral authority wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Bayh: It’s all so tough. And complicated.

Wallace: Iraq: GWOT Central, or not?

Bond: Both.

Bayh: Not. Read the NIE. Its Pakistan and Afghanistan. We’re creating more terrorists. We’ve spent a shitload of blood and treasure in Iraq, and the NIE says under George Bush, our named enemy – al-Qaeda – has reconstituted and gotten stronger.

Wallace: Two years ago you had a very different view. You changed your mind! How dare you accept new information and let it affect your opinion! Which is it!?

Bayh: Both.

Bond: The problem was we were following the fucking Bremer Plan for three years. Oy! If only someone had told us! That Medal of Freedom was soooo shiny. It had us all hip-mo-tized I tell ya!


Then, later, Evil Anti-Gumby Brit Hume repeats, offhandedly, the latest Regime Dicta that everybody knows you need 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done.

As if that were a secret part of the Constitution.

You need 51 votes to pass anything in the Senate.

You need 60 votes to cut off debate and prevent a filibuster.

Now that Republicans are filibustering everything from troop rotation policy to pee-pee breaks, Hume just yawns and waives it off.

Ah, but back when Democrats even hinted that they may filibuster some of the GOPs more radical wingnut appointments and proposals...



Bloody Bill Kristol: Harry Ried is making Hillary Clinton vote for losing in Iraq.

Juan Williams: What you describe as “Left” is the Center you fucking ghoul.

Williams: So you made a mistake 2 years ago. Or five years ago. When do you say “Enough is enough” in Iraq?

Kristol: “Enough is enough” is not a serious policy.

Williams: So what? We go on forever?

Kristol: We have a new strategy. And the American people are frustrated with Iraq only because they’re uninformed idiots. We’re making progress in Iraq and by ‘08 the Democrats will be tagged as wanting to cut and run from Iraq just as we were winning.


Again, if anyone has solid facts explaining why, why , Holy Mother of God why this lying, blood-soaked butcher -- who has been 100% wrong about everything since the dawn of history -- is still being allowed anywhere near a camera, I'd love to hear about it.

“This Week” was pre-empted by golf.

Hard to tell the difference, really; white guys in ugly pants whispering seriously about minutia that has no effect of the real lives of real people whatsoever.


On ”The Chris Matthews Show”

GOP Electoral Strategery.

We heard:

“The Base wants…”

But how does (Romney) do this split the difference dance with “The real hawks. The real Republican types”…

Karl Rove reassures regime dead-enders by telling them “Iraq won’t be the big issue in ‘08”…

The big question is really simple, except no one on the Mouse Circus will come right out on the teevee and say it: since Dubya and the GOP Base have driven the car off the cliff, how does any Republican candidate manage the burning wreckage while at the same time reassuring the Base that the car is really fine, goin’ like 60 towards victory, and that they and their Dear Leader are actually brilliant, shrewd drivers?

In other words, for anyone seeking higher office, the GOP has become an electoral Alcatraz from which no escape is possible.

Because the Base really are drooling, subhuman homunculi, and they really do now own the GOP down to the studs and floorboard. So is a Republican candidate wants to have any shot at winning the primary, they have to kiss the pasty asses of these monsters out in the bright noonday sun.

And in doing so, so creep out and horrify normal human swing/indy voters that they'll flee from the GOP in droves come '08.


And then cam Episode 309 of the Hillary Panty Sniffing Show, in which Matthews actually showed extended video of “Stand By Me” to illustrate the theoretical, potential future problems of a Hillary Clinton Vice President.

Next week on the “Matthew’s Meter” the panel votes on this question: “Has Chris Matthews gone nuts from DTs, or tertiary syphilis?”

For the College Republicans

You’ve all seen Max Blumenthal's brilliant video, and it seemed a pity that Generation Chickenhawk had to go even one more day without its own anthem.

Something that would, like the generation it would songify, be at once martial and derivative, and yet risk-free.

So here you go.

Dedicated to that generation of Yellow Elephants and Chris Vucovichs who have definitively shown for all of history to see the exact dimensions of the filthy and debased cultural cul de sac where American Conservativism finally crawled off to die.

That generation of chubby, shirking wannabe-Bonapartes, with the souls of Andersonville prison guards, and spools of GOP talking point ticker-tape where their minds are supposed to be.

The morally stillborn ratlets of our Gilded Age who seem terribly, obsessively concerned that we all know that they are absolutely not gay.

Sung to the tune of “Ballad of The Green Beret”

“Ballad of The We’re Not Gay!”

Bleating wingnuts of the Right
Dastards hiding from the fight
Cellar trolls with much to say
That screech as one: “ No, we’re not gay!”

“Cheney/Bush” on their lapels
Karl Rove’s own splinter cells.
Bought a War: let others pay.
Snivelers all, but soooo not-gay.

Trained to live off Daddy’s cash
When lies don’t work, then talk some trash.
In fear they might just be “that way”
They scream real loud: “But I’m not gay!”

“Cheney/Bush” on their lapels
Karl Rove’s own splinter cells.
Who buy their Wars on lay-away.
Poltroons all, but soooo not-gay.

Back at the dorm, a girlfriend waits
A wingnut too, and six weeks late.
Daddy’s doctor snakes her tubes
‘Cause “Right to Life” is for the rubes.

Take someone else, but don’t take me.
A real man, I’ll never be.
Just like the spawn I’ll whelp one day,
Who just like me, will not be gay.

Commenter skunqesh called the 27%

Daleks in golf shirts.

And, well, that just tickled me.

Deregulate!

De-Reg-U-Late!

Hehehe.


I am incredibly fortunate to be favored by the kind and insightful words of a phalanx of funny, snarky, knowledgeable and supportive commenters and email correspondents. And a day goes by, then a week, then I blink and half the summer has been eaten by the work and clock, and I notice I haven’t just sat and chatted enough.

Or that it has been too long since I have said thank you for the gift of your time and insight.

So, thank you, one and all.

The proper coda to this video...

(h/t Think Progress)

...would have been,

"I now realize that I have been the willing tool of evil men, have debased my profession, and have been Peter Principled so far into space that my brain died from hypoxia and exploded out of my mushy skull from the vacuum.

"I will of course resign my extremely lucrative position as the lead Wingnut Water Carrier at the NYT, quit wasting the nation's time and airwaves blatting my uniformly uninformed and utterly ridiculous judgments about virtually everything into the cameras at NPR and the major networks, and go back to writing bad books about the scandalous goings on of Beige Dockerton, Whitey O’Christian, T’okeen Swarthyguy and the rest of the denizens of the fictional gated community of Mayonnaise Place.

"I would also like to add, on a personal note, that I am so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so, so, so so fucking sorry for all the damage my neocon twaddle and spectacularly wrong opinions has done to this great nation."

But I wouldn't hold my breath.

There is sanctity

in a lover’s arms.


And our very democracy is founded on the proposition that there is space as sacred as any Eucharist in any cathedral

inside your very own body and very own mind.



And whatever consensual adults do in the privacy of their homes

is more deserving of the protections of inviolable temple rites than any sack-the- planet-and-burn-the-rubble treachery cooked up by “Traitor Dick” Cheney and his coterie of energy industry Vandals behind closed doors.

I mention these obvious facts because a woman named Wendy Vitter came out a few days ago to stand by her man, “Diaper Dave” Vitter.

Sorry, that’s Conservative Republican Senator from Louisiana “Diaper Dave” Vitter.

You all know the story.

Here is a little bit of what Wendy Vitter said:

…
On Monday, the senator denied ties to the New Orleans brothel. His wife then stepped to the podium and asked the media to leave her family alone.

"You know, in almost any other marriage, this would have been a private issue between a husband and a wife — very private. Obviously, it is not here," she said. "And now I'm going to speak to you as a mother and I hope you will understand. It's been terribly hard to have the media parked on our front lawn and following us every day."

"And yesterday, the media was camped at our church — at our home, and at our church every day. As David returns to work in Washington, we're going to return to our life here. I would ask you very respectfully to let us continue our summer and our lives as we had planned."
…

I feel sorry for Wendy Vitter: Don't know a thing about her, but really, how many times have we been witness to a wife having to stand in the shredding spotlight to save her husband’s public career from his private appetites?

She reminds me just a little of one Arianna Huffington, circa 1997: a woman who came into this world as “Arianna Stassinopoulos” and remained thus until she met and married wingnut millionaire, bisexual and utterly empty-suit, Michael Huffington.

Arianna Huffington, who now describes herself as a "former right-winger who has evolved into a compassionate and progressive populist".

Because in the life of every interesting person, there is an arc.

But that is all a matter for future.

Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.

Back in the here-and-now, this is not about your pervy man and his triflin’ ways, Wendy.

This is about the company he keeps.

The political company he keeps.

The intolerant, braying, Holier-Than-Thou gang he runs with. Bleating Heart Conservatives who are always only too happy to save their beloved Jesusland from the sticky, smartass heathen by dropping the full weight of that shredding, million-watt spotlight into the lives of anyone that doesn’t pass their litmus test of righteousness.

Who feel perfectly at home preemptively invading women’s bodies.

Who have no problem camping out on the doorsteps of family planning clinics and shrieking like howler monkeys as women try to exercise their right to see a physician.

Who applaud when pharmacists deny women access to medicine because Sweet Baby Jebus told ‘em it would make Him cry.

Who delight in following in the footsteps of Segregationists by explicitly telling two consenting, loving adults that they may not marry before the Law because their God sez so.

Who campaign, again and again and with a straight face, as the Party of Personal Responsibility.

Who march under the banner of the Party of God, making their political hay and decimating our precious Republic with their sick, medieval, theocratic idiocy.

Who cheered as they learned their President he had illegally spied on American citizens. Had made torture a matter of national policy. Had burned an active American spy for partisan gain. Had gutted the Department of Justice like a trout. Had run the Great Writ out of town on a rail.

Who spent eight years filled up the daily methadone feedbag of the MSM with every salacious detail – some factual; most just made up out of whole cloth – of Bill Clinton’s days on Earth, and now squeal like perforated swine as they prove, every single day -- by War and by Whore -- to be in a class of hypocrisy so far beyond anything else in the American politics as to be unmeasurable by conventional instruments.

And you get sore that the spotlight is now parked on your front lawn?

Following you every day?

Camped at your church?

At your home?

Kind of horrible being on the boomy end of the artillery people like your husband spend their political lives polishing, isn’t it?

Well welcome to Liberalville, Wendy, and to your brand new bungalow at the corner of Jerry Falwell Boulevard and Newt Gingrich Avenue (formerly the Joe McCarthy Thoroughfare.)

If you get lost, remember, it’s one mile past the Rush Limbaugh on-ramp.

Then over the O’Reilly bridge.

Then a quick right down Ann Coulter Way.