Locke Versus Jack

From the Huffington Post.

GOP Debate: Romney And McCain Attack Each Other's Conservative Credentials

Marc Cooper - The Huffington Post

Simi Valley, California - During the final Republican presidential debate before next Tuesday's virtual national primary election, frontrunners John McCain and Mitt Romney verbally pummeled each other, repeatedly questioning the rival candidate's conservative credentials and arguing bitterly over the war in Iraq.

Romney said he found it "offensive" that his support for the war in Iraq has been questioned by the McCain campaign. McCain's criticism of Romney's position on the war; alleging that the former Massachusetts Governor supported a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal "sort of falls into the dirty tricks that Ronald Reagan would have found reprehensible," Romney said. McCain's tactics, he said, were "Washington- style old politics; lay a charge out there, put it out there... there isn't a single media source that said that it wasn't reprehensible. It's simply wrong and the Senator knows it." Romney insisted that he would steadfastly support current policy. "Let me make it absolutely clear tonight: I will not pull our troops out until we have success in Iraq," Romney said.

McCain heatedly fired back, saying that Romney "could spend it all" on negative ads but nothing would change the fact that Romney had not vigorously enough supported the war and this past year's surge of troops. McCain lauded himself for supporting the troop surge when it was highly unpopular and when Romney said, as a governor, he would not "weigh in" on some national issues like the war.
...

Reaganomic Flight 815 crashed on an island over twenty years ago.

After a series of failures, deaths and betrayals, two of the alpha males now approach the climactic final showdown

for leadership of their little band of smelly survivors.


The Pretty Boy

promises to save them all.

The Hunter, who had been crippled and left for dead,

is now armed, ambulatory and wants to keep them all there forever.

Of course the optimal solution is, whoever wins, the cloaking field goes back up and seals the whole lot of them off from the rest of the human race for a thousand years.

"I have been through

some terrible things in my life,
some of which
actually happened."

~~ Mark Twain

Lost Returns Tomorrow

I plan to be there


Oh yeah.

Fire Sale at

Big Rudy's Family Val-U Discount Warehouse.

Everything Must Go!

From the AP

Giuliani to exit presidential race

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer

Rudy Giuliani told supporters Wednesday he's abandoning his bid for president and backing Republican rival and longtime friend John McCain.

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican and adviser to Giuliani, said the former mayor called him this morning to tell him of his plan.

Giuliani "will be announcing his endorsement today," said King.

"I expect him to be fairly active for McCain. There is a real friendship and respect between the two," he said. A similar call took place between Giuliani and New York Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

"I spoke with Rudy Giuliani this morning and he confirmed that he is dropping out of the race and will endorse Senator John McCain for president," Bruno said in a statement.

Once the Republican presidential front-runner, Giuliani suffered a debilitating defeat in Tuesday's Florida primary.

The former mayor finished a distant third to the winner, McCain, and close second-place finisher Mitt Romney. After the results, Republican officials had said Giuliani would endorse McCain on Wednesday in California.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the public announcement.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Giuliani stopped short of announcing he was stepping down, but delivered a valedictory speech that was more farewell than fight-on.

...

Well, liquidation sales are always good for somebody, so for pennies on the dollar I'm sure some enterprising young go-getter will be snapping up deals like Chinese bankers buying up huge chunks of suddenly drossy American real estate.

A few boxes of heavily chewed campaign issues, for instance.

Or a somewhat man-juice-stained

love doll.

Or maybe even

some lovely rugs.

Breaking -- Edwards Out?

From the AP

Edwards to quit presidential race

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

DENVER - Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies, The Associated Press has learned.
ADVERTISEMENT

The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two aides. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.

Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer that she thought she had beaten had returned, but they would continue the campaign.

Their decision sparked a debate about family duty and public service. But Elizabeth Edwards remained a forceful advocate for her husband, and she was often surrounded at campaign events by well-wishers and emotional survivors cheering her on.

Edwards planned to announce his campaign was ending with his wife and three children at his side. Then he planned to work with Habitat for Humanity at the volunteer-fueled rebuilding project Musicians' Village, the adviser said.

...

If true -- and it certainly sounds like it -- that's a shame.

A real shame.

Objectivists in the mirror

Are smaller and lazier than they appear.


So the otiose Derelict-In-Chief of the Republican’s Lazy Dubya Ranch put down his longneck, climbed down out of the saddle of his official White House BarcaLounger to give a speech last night.

He shoulda stood in bed.

What will surprise historians who study the moral and mental arc of George W. Bush from whelping chickenhawk to old lame duck will not be the degree to which circumstances and time have stamped his empty brow with hard-won wisdom.

Instead they will be amazed at the degree to which George W. Bush has been a remarkably consistent creature his whole life. Specifically, a rat-shrewd, lazy, petulant, shallow, sadistic punk. A man with a superficial, breezy, vicious style bred into him from before he was at suck at Mommy’s vinegary teat. A habit of thought and speech not based on an essentially positive view of the world, but based on the bone-deep awareness that Daddy’s wallet and Daddy’s minions would give Lil Dubya an impenetrable firewall no matter how badly he wrecks the car, or how many bystanders are killed.

And today he was pushed out on stage to give one, last, awful speech.

How icky was it?

There was one moment – immigration -- where appeared to occur to Dubya to be vaguely Presidential. But past that let’s just say that the Harlem Globetrotters flaying the Washington Generals running at the same time on local Channel 50 was a fucking masterpiece of suspenseful drama and surprising outcomes by comparison.

There were three parts:

The MSNBC Commentariate part, specifically Chris Matthews’ slobbery atavism about which much as already been made.

His delusion that, thus far, Condi Rice has largely escaped criticism. That she is so Impressive. And the GOP loves her so much.

Condi Rice? The same Condi Rice who shirked and shrugged and Not-My-Jobbed her way out of some of the worst foreign policy failures in memory?

The same Condi who hasn’t made a single competent decision other than to disinter the Clinton Plan for North Korea and run it point-by-point?

That Condi?

Matthews opines that, given the “ethnic excitement” – oopsie – the “American” excitement of Barack Obama might be transfusibel into the GOP in a “Break Glass In Case Of Southern Strategy Blowback” Big Name Negro Celebrity Partisan kind of way.

Keith Olbermann: Isn’t this about as irrelevant as watching someone’s drunk uncle scratching his ass?

Matthews: People wanna know, when is the check coming and when are we getting the fuck out of Iraq.

Olbermann: Does the Preznit leaven the Iraq by pretending to give a shit about the middle east now, at the 11th hour?

Chris: Nah. I think was all want every time to agree that we need to Do Sumpin! To move forward.

Do Something! The New Battle Cry of the Crippled Republic to be sure, but impossible to implement as long as one side believes that the reason we are so deeply fucked has been the merciless implementation of BushCo policies…and the other side believes that the only way forward is the brutal redoubling of the same heartless madness that ran us off the cliff on the first place.


Then came Dubya.

Oh Lordy.


Dubya: Don’t delay or derail the Save American Bill with stuff I don’t like! This Congress is my bitch and do what it is told.

Dubya: If you roll back my Tax Cuts for Millionaires programs, 116 million Americans would see their taxes rise by an average of a thousand dollars of munnies!

Don’t you just love it when they make with the “averages”?

Dubya: Most Americans think their taxes are high enough.


driftglass: Yeah, and a lot of American believe the Earth is 12,000 years old and that God put woman and minorities on that Earth to act as footstools for the White Chosen Few.

A lot of Americans believe they’re much better looking than they actually are. That their kids aren’t spoiled idiots. That gas should cost a dime. That the Consitutition permits every paranoid mouthbreater to own a tactical nuke.

So what? People believe a lot of silly shit.

Dubya: If any bill raises taxes, I will veto it.

Dubya: I’ll cut the budget. Murrican Families have to balance their budget, so should their gummint.

driftglass: Really? So we’re using the "Murrican Family" metric now? Well y’know, I bet if Murrican Families had stomped into a neighbor’s yard –- the wrong neighbor in the wrong yard based on a pack of filthy lies -- and gotten hundreds of thousands people killed and pissed away billions of dollars of the hard-eared munnies of a lot of other Murrican Families, that after five years they would have long ago been dragged by their short ones out of that yard they never should have gone into in the first place.

That is, if we’re using the Murrican Family metric.

Dubya: I will veto any budget that doesn’t cut earmarks in half. Every earmark should be debated and voted on. Every judicial nominee should get an “upordown” vote.

Of course everything else should be filibustered into the Stone Age.

Dubya: Health Care Bitches! More tax cuts…for health care.

driftglass: Oh tax cuts! Is there nothing you can’t do?

Dubya: False populism is bad!. Blood drunk Neocon Imperialis wearing a ”democracy” codpiece…is better.

Switchgrass? S—w—i—t—c—h—g—r—a—s—s?

(Ah, There’s Dick Cheney, looking like someone beat his soul to a pulpy death with a sack of potatoes.

And there’s John Dingle looking like one of the potatoes.)

Dubya: Fund my shit! And quit trying to fund your shit!

Dubya: The Constitution means what it says.

Except, of course, where it says “impeach”.

“Habeus corpus”.

“Due Process”.

“Checks and balances”.

And so forth.

Dubya: We’re gonna have a conference in New Orleans. So that’s all done now.

Dubya: Purple Fangers! Osama bin Who?

Dubya: We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of our time.

driftglass: Do you mean nuclear-tipped, Christian Dominionist Theocracy versus Democracy, or conscienceless, slaughter-drunk, metastasizing corporatism versus Democracy?

Dubya: All we have to do is stay in Iraq forever is overwhelming numbers…and everything will work out great.

Dubya: I pledge the military will have everything it needs to protect Murrica. Which is why I call for the conscriptions of Young Republicans in every city, in every state, on every campus, passed out in every basement, etc.

Dubya: The enemy we manufactured out of whole cloth and incompetence in Iraq will be displaced by keeping troops in Iraq forever!

GOP: Yay! Yay!

Dubya: Iraqi leaders are making some trivial progress. They’re debating stuff. Some local neighborhood groups are having book clubs and bean bag parties even.

Dubya: And in the Holy Land, a new hope. My flyover photo ops are paying dividends. There is no actual, measurable progress towards anything by anyone, but if seven years of Republican Rule has proven anything it is that simply making declarative sentences about how we wish things were is a perfectly adequate substitute for actual action for the 27% of Americans who are incapable of thinking for themselves.

Shorter Dubya: Congress must pass a bill immunizing telcoms from illegally spying on Americans or I will let Americans die.

GOP: Yay! Yay!

More money for stuff!

Dubya: Our greatness is not in our Government but our People.

Dubya: Of course the Government, is “We the People.” Which means that our conservative citizen’s seething, reflexive contempt for Government means a seething, reflexive contempt for…

Anyone?

Bueller?

Shortest Dubya: The country is so important that unless you do exactly what I tell you I’ll let this fucker burn.

Did we miss anything?

Well, health care. Housing. The deficit. All of those things that President Stupid dare not speak aloud

And then comes the Democratic response from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

Sebelius: I’m a Democrat, but that doesn’t matter tonight. The fact that you’re tuning in suggests that you’re


Oh, Jebus. Pause, while I roll my eyes and reach for the Fwow Up Bag.

Sebelius: I will now detour from the traditional “partisan” response and give an “American” response.

Sebelius: We’re fucked, people! We have to do something! And a temporary fix is not enough. We need to get Real Results.

Sebelius: The Democratic Majority has begun to move us in the right direction , so Mr. President how about you join us? A Majority are ready to pass SCHIP. So how about it, Mr. Preznit? Won’t you join us and help the lil’ chilluns?

driftglass: No, he will he will not do these things because he does not believe government should do these things. What, have you been passed out drunk in the Little Centrist’s Room for the last 20 year?


Sebelius: The New Democratic Majority are ready…if only our Republican Congressional colleagues would stop behaving like assholes and join us.

Sebelius: I know Gummint can work to benefit the People.

driftglass: Are you high? Don’t you read…anything? GOP 101 is that Gummint is Evil. Except when it is bombing scary brown people to atoms. And stuffing Bibles in lady’s vaginas like they're Gideons stocking motel room drawers.

Sebelius: A new American Majority is ready to share a belief in something greater that ourselves. Not just the individual good, but the Common Good.

driftglass: Excuse me but who put this stupid bint on my teevee? Yes, Governor Non-Partisan, you are right. There is New American Majority. It even has a name. We are called Liberals. We have been around forever, and we have always been the Majority.

And the people you are so sweetly asking you to join us have risen to power almost entirely on the basis of referring to this “Majority” as traitors and any talk of the your beloved Common Good as pure Devil Communism.

This side of the grave there is no reasoning with these people. They’re not merely irrational, hateful and fact-impervious, but they are proudly irrational, proudly hateful and proudly fact-impervious.

You do not get rid of a rabid dog running wild in the public square by playing kissy face with it.

Or don’t they teach things like that in the Kansas public school system?

Once More,

with Feeling.

And then Jimmy decided

to whack his own gang… (From “Goodfellas”)

From the NYT.

January 28, 2008
Kennedy Chooses Obama, Spurning Bill Clinton Plea
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Senator Edward M. Kennedy, rejecting entreaties from the Clintons and their supporters, is set to endorse Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid on Monday as part of an effort to lend Kennedy charisma and connections before the 22-state Feb. 5 showdown for the Democratic nomination.

Both the Clintons and their allies had pressed Mr. Kennedy for weeks to remain neutral in the Democratic race, but Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly disenchanted with the tone of the Clinton campaign, aides said. He and former President Bill Clinton had a heated telephone exchange earlier this month over what Mr. Kennedy considered misleading statements by Mr. Clinton about Mr. Obama, as well as his injection of race into the campaign.

Mr. Kennedy called Mr. Clinton Sunday to tell him of his decision.

The endorsement, which followed a public appeal on Mr. Obama’s behalf by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, was a blow to the Clinton campaign and pits leading members of the nation’s most prominent Democratic families against one another.

Mr. Kennedy, a major figure in party politics for more than 40 years, intends to campaign aggressively for Mr. Obama, beginning with an appearance and rally with him in Washington on Monday. He will be introduced by Ms. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy then heads west with Mr. Obama, followed by appearances in the Northeast. Strategists see him bolstering Mr. Obama’s credibility and helping him firm up support from unions and Hispanics, as well as the party base.

The endorsement appears to support assertions that Mr. Clinton’s campaigning on behalf of his wife in South Carolina has in some ways hurt her candidacy.
…

Anybody that revels in the fact that politics is this way is a sociopath; do not let them play with your children.

But anybody that pretends that it isn’t this way is a child playing in traffic thinking that Happy Jesus Thoughts will protect them from the 18-wheeler bearing down on them.

Or as Pericles put it 2,500 years ago and better than I ever could: "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

So for all the righteous passion and fury of the last few months, sometimes it is easy to forget that this primary season is working just exactly the way it is supposed to work.

It is not pretty. Not fair. Not for the faint of heart, the politically virginal who can only give it up to the perfect man or woman, the single issue purist, the impatient or the easily discouraged.

Anyone – anyone -- who steps into the arena with the GOP this Fall had damned well better be sweated down to their fighting weight, born again hard and stripped for action. To win, they and their running mate will have to pop from the first bell and rain hell down on the Republican Party and its nominee.

And I don't know about you, but I want to win.

Anybody wants this nomination has to fight for it. They can do it with a velvety tone, or message of peace, or a jaunty grin, or a voice that sound like kittens’ claws being dragged across a hundred miles of slate, but they have to do it.

Which leaves us all doing the hardest thing, which is also the necessary thing. We must root passionately for who we love, who we admire, who we think can win or who we just know people would come to adore like we do of only they would pay them just a little more attention.

We must fight for them.

Fight like a motherfucker, sincerely and with all of our hearts…

…all while knowing -- in a coolly pragmatic little cellar in our soul -– that our heart will be broken. That if our Beloved wins, in no time their feet of clay will be tracking political muck all over our nice, clean Liberal carpet. And that if our Beloved loses -- if they cannot survive real punches being throw and real mud being slung in the prelims -- they probably have no business stepping into arena for the main event.

Because with the globe in genuine peril, Dubya's six-week Cakewalk War about to enter its sixth year, the nation plunging into the shitter, our Constitution begging for help and the Supreme Court one bad cold or slippery patch of pavement away from a bulletproof wingnut majority for the next 20 years, I for one am all finished with losing nobly and consoling myself that at least I kept my political hymen pure and intact.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

I will probably flee screaming in horror from miss most of the Mouse Circus today, but based on certain dodgy precognitive skills with which I am cursed, I understand that --

This Rudy Giuliani fella will be on “Face the Nation” to remind us that

1. He and Judy are still very much in the race for the Duke and Duchess of Greater Miami, and,
   
2. He still has the strength

of a dozen imps

On “This Week” I forsee Barack Obama bringing sexay courtesy back as he extends his thanks

to Hillary Clinton and her suff-rage-ettes surrogates.



On “Meet the Press” , St. John McCain will tout his

New York Times endorsement.



And on “The Chris Matthews Show”, Big Daddy Chris, Katty Kay, John Heilemann, Clarence Page and Elisabeth Bumiller

will tensely fake their way through a pleasant family meal for the befuddled comfort of their tiny, dementia-riddled audience.

Dear Bubba

These

Are not



Synonymous


So please stop campaigning...

1. ...for your third term.
2. ...for a proper second term to make up for the one the GOP stole from you.
3. ..to show em! To show 'em all!

You're spoiling it for everyone else.

Kindly sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, quit getting drunk on someone else's cork, and let the Junior Senator from the great state of New York run on her own dime.

That is all.

Tom Waits was busy

so he sent Bowie.

David Bowie -- "Heathen"

Big Two-Headed Fibber*

Actual ad with close-up of neck area (and big h/t to Crooks & Liars)

Via the Houston Chronicle.

Texas candidate gets skinnier in campaign photo

Jan. 18, 2008, 3:29PM
The Associated Press


HOUSTON — Some politicians talk about cutting the fat, but this one was serious.

Congressional candidate Dean Hrbacek appears slimmer than usual in a new campaign brochure because a photo of his head was affixed to the image of a different body.

While the mailer sent to voters this week by the former Sugar Land mayor says "Dean's record speaks for itself," his physique clearly does not.

The picture, presented as a true image of the candidate, is a computerized composite of Hrbacek's face and someone else's slimmer figure, in suit and tie, from neck to kneecaps.

Hrbacek, a tax lawyer and accountant, did not immediately return a call placed to his campaign headquarters Friday by The Associated Press. He's among 10 Republicans seeking the nomination to run against U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford.

Campaign manager Scott Broschart acknowledged the image is a fake. Hrbacek has been so busy meeting voters that he had no time to take a full-length, genuine photo for the political mailing, Broschart said.
...

I wouldn’t be too hard on him.

I mean, given Dean’s infamously bizarre physiognomy

I may have been tempted to try the same trick myself.

*(Yes, I stole it from Papa. And abused it. And, no, I don't think he'd mind.)

Dance Dance Revolution

Embarrassed? Are you shitting me?

Dude, they give me awards for these fierce, puppety moves.


The next generation of journalismists are shown here,


hard at work.


learning to stomp on only those keys

the Big White House Beat Box tells them to stomp on.


The following is from the AP.

But it isn't the story.

Why isn't it the story?

That’s the story.

Study: False statements preceded war

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press WriterWed Jan 23, 6:43 AM ET

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

Well D-to-the-U-to-the-H and knock me down with a hummingbird pinfeather.

…
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

And that is where this story will remain; stranded in Centrist Limbo.

The cycle never, ever changes.

Republicans lie.

People die.

Republicans get caught.

They say, “No we di’int!”

Dems says “Yes you did!”

“No we di’int!”

“Yes you did!”

“No we di’int!”

“Yes you did!”

And the Corporate Press – not wanting to be seen as taking sides in a way that would jeopardize their access to cocktail weenies and Appletinis -- wanders away to cover John Edward’s hair and Hillary's décolletage.

…
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Of course they lied to us. Of course they did. The ugly fact that this was an Administration run by and for a cabal of traitors and fascists was rather blindingly self-evident years ago.

That’s not the story.

The story is that so many Americans went to the polls in 2004 and voted to re-anoint the Boy King and his Morally Detached Retinue anyway.

The story – the real story – is that so many of our fellow citizens desperately want an end to the great democratic experiment called America. The real story is that Freedom is high maintenance, and a frighteningly large numbers of Americans are simply weary of the burdens and contradictions, the complexities, and the attentiveness Lady Liberty requires..

Instead, they want something easy.

Something drive-thru.

To make them feel brave and patriotic, they want to be provided with the occasional, bellicose, ouchless, tax-free, HDTV-Dolby-Surround-Sound-roaring hate-fuck of some small, brown and relatively helpless nation.

Then want to roll over and pass out under a snuggly soft, White, Christian, totalitarian Daddy-State blanket and never, ever wake up again.

The real story is how these squealing hordes of Pig People have ruined our nation.

And the other real story is how the Corporate Press – entirely dependent on the patronage of these same squealing hordes for their revenue – cower behind their bizzaro definition of “objectivity” and categorically refuse to cover the Pig People in those terms.

…

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

Sure, occasionally a Don Imus is temporarily financially inconvenienced for upchucking blatantly stupid, racist shit on the air, but how many journalists committed honorable seppuku for being smirkingly complicit in the Bush Regime’s scheme to march this country into the abyss?

For acting as the wheel-man for Cheney’s smash and grab of the United States Constitution?

For being Commander Codpiece’s drooling little fluffers as he screwed this nation into the ground?

How many of the junta’s journalistic co-conspirators have lost their jobs over this?

Have taken a pay-cut?

As our children have been shipped of to be slaughtered for Dubya’s lies, how many journalists have lost so much as a parking space? A corner office? A complimentary latte?

How many have had even a twinge of conscience?

A flicker of introspection?

A “My God, the Dirty Fucking Hippies were completely right all along!” moment?

How many have simply apologized?

How many have promised to do better and then have done so?

Since we cannot be there – since we are not allowed near enough to do it -- how many journalists allegedly acting as our proxies have had the nerve to verbally slap that perpetual, blood-smeared smirk off of Dubya’s face and call him out as the liar he is?

How many of them lead off coverage of new, suspect assertions by this Administration with the important caveat: “Having lied the nation into a war in Iraq, the Bush White House now ask the American public to believe…”?

How many have turned their hundreds of cameras and millions of lights on the Pig People – on their demented values, deranged beliefs and degenerate leaders -- and as they scurry away deeper into the shadows and sewers, how many had the guts to say “There! There! They are the problem!”?

Instead of serious, Clinton-Penis-Grade investigations of the felonies, treasons and incipient fascism of the Bush Crime family we get full-tilt coverage of Barack Obama’s melanin.

Instead of any inkling of reform, Bloody Bill Kristol scores a sinecure at the New York Times, Karl Rove starts collecting paychecks from Newsweek, and Fox News rolls on like the mighty Mississippi.

Instead, we get the same, cowardly corporate carnival barkers pushing the same lurid trivia, never daring to even whisper the word “impeachment”.

Unless of course it’s about a Democrat.

And the stakes are merely cocks and interns.

Catch-43

A careful, methodical and lengthy analysis of the latest chapter of the Dear Leader’s Forever War is documented here in the Washington Post:

Surge to Nowhere

Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

…
In an essay entitled "Mission Accomplished" that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that "Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved." Violence there "has ceased being political." As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is "no longer nearly as important as it was." Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the "credibility of the prophets of doom" has reached "a low ebb."

Presumably Kagan and his comrades would have us believe that recent events vindicate the prophets who in 2002-03 were promoting preventive war as a key instrument of U.S. policy. By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina.
…

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome.

First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate.

...

It is a long and interesting deconstruction of the strategy of the Perpetual War Party, whose formulation of --

1. Suspension of civil liberties, due process and the rule of law is permissible during war
2. We are now at war forever.
3. Ergo you may now kiss your fucking Constitution one more time before we take her out behind the chemical toilets and slit her throat.

-- makes Modern Conservatives positively cream in their WalMart discount “Desert Fighter Underoos”, and makes Good Americans ask impolite questions like “So remind me again what ‘ideals’ are we fighting to protect?” and “So having lied us into a war, and then used that war as an excuse to gut our Constitution, does any thinking person doubt anymore who is it that really ‘hates our freedoms’?”

But if you want a shorter, fictionier explanation of what is really going on, perhaps this (which I readily admit to ruthlessly appropriating from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and tarting up in Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck panties) rests a little more more salty/sweet on your tongue:

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: The Surge Worked! Ask anybody. Ask McCain, Kristol, Mittster, tell him!

American Citizen: The Surge Worked?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: The Surge absolutely Worked. The war is Largely Over. All of my experts and media agree.

American Citizen: So if the Surge Worked and the war is Largely Over, we can start bringing the troops home.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Oh no. Not at all. The Surge Worked and the War is Largely Over, which means we have to stay in Iraq forever.

American Citizen: But that's crazy!

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No. It’s patriotic. Or are you a fucking traitors who doesn’t support the troops?

American Citizen: So you can only support the troops…by leaving them in Iraq forever?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Precisely!

American Citizen: But when you win a war -- when your Surge Works and the war is Largely Over -- then you bring the troops back home.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: That's true.

American Citizen: So did the Surge Work?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Of course it did.

American Citizen: Then why not bring the troops home?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No they have to stay until there is Peace and Iraq has become a stable ally in the Global War on Every Bad Thing.

American Citizen: And then we can bring the troops home?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: No. Then we absolutely cannot bring them home.

American Citizen: Why not?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: There's a catch.

American Citizen: A catch?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Sure, Catch-43. If there is Peace because the Surge Worked, we cannot bring the troops home because their presence is the reason there is Peace.

American Citizen: And if they leave?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: If they leave, there is the threat of Conflict. And given the threat of Conflict we cannot bring the troops home because the threat of Conflict must be preempted, so that Peace can be created with more Surge.

American Citizen: But we’re occupiers. As long as we’re there, the Iraqis will hate us. As long as we’re there, there always be a threat of Conflict.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Now you’re getting it!

American Citizen: Getting what?!

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: And as long as we are there, the Iraqis will hate us. And as long they hate us, the threat of Conflict will remain. And as long as there is the threat of Conflict there can be no Peace. And as long as there is no Peace, we must remain.

American Citizen: Let me see if I got this straight. We cannot bring the troops home until the Iraqis stop hating us enough to have Peace?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Correct.

American Citizen: But the fact that we are staying is what is making the Iraqis hate us.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Correct.

American Citizen: But the Surge worked?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Obviously.

American Citizen: And the War is Largely Over?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Yes.

American Citizen: So in order for there to be Peace...we have to remain at War. And the Surge Worked...only so long as we never leave.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: That’s exactly right.

American Citizen: And all of this makes sense to you somehow?

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: Oh it makes perfect sense to anyone who is not a fucking-traitor-who-doesn’t-support-the-troops.

American Citizen: That's some catch, that Catch-43.

Wingnut Talking Point Pez Dispenser: It's the best there is!

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The ghosts of two Presidents stank up the joint Sunday.

Ronald Reagan, who apparently it is indefensible to mention (if one is on the Left) as having realigned American voting patterns (which is a simple, historical fact), and unavoidable mentioning on the Right, but for wholly different reasons.

Sunday was redolent with the poorly perfumed remains of St. Ronnie, especially as channeled though the medium of Jesus Spirit Lady Peggy Noonan ,who deployed a most genteel form of parlor-speak to describe the ugly reality of what really happened during his reign as the Acting President.

How Reagan used a combination of timing, acting ability and language carefully laced with racist and classist code to create an ice-bridge that permitted the Children of Jefferson Davis to join the Party of Lincoln.

And how, once the bigots were finally running fully in harness with the Christopaths (or, as reader Tom DeLong phrased it “The Evangenitals”, in a thoroughly de-lightful neologism he coined for “the Christian Nuts”) and the Corporatists – animated by Hate Radio and Pavlovian loathing of a largely-imaginary Enemy called the “Dirty Fucking Hippy Liberal”, and united by a catalyzing contempt of any form of government that moved the nation in the direction of social justice, safety nets, limitations on corporate power or keeping America secular and free – the Radical right could finally cobble together enough of a working majority, and begin its Great Work of destroying America and replacing it with a WalMart Jesusland feudal state.

But now, like a political Antarctic Ice Sheet, the poison which was unleashed to created Ronnie World is the very thing causing that world to melt away beneath their feet. And because – like global warming – their rigid political ideology does not permit them to recognize simple facts when they conflict with Party dogma, their world it collapsing into a gray, polluted slush for reasons they cannot afford to acknowledge.

For reasons they dare not even say out loud.

The other President whose apparition haunted the proceedings was Bill Clinton, the once and future Leader of the Free World, now reduced to a cranky old retiree in a ridiculous orange tie. Sent by his wife (to give Noonan, who put it this way, her due) to stand on the lawn and yell at the neighbors.

There were distractions and disappointments here at the castle on Sunday but, as Sherlock Holmes says, “There are difficulties. But there are always difficulties.”

On “Face the Nation”

John Edwards.

Edwards: Yeah I got my ass kicked in Nevada. Now I have to get back on ly feet and take the fight to South Carolina.

Edwards: We’ve got a couple of candidates who got massive press and big-big money. But I’m not in the business of making excuses. This isn’t about any of us personally.

Driftglass aside: Edwards would make an excellent president. Period. This is not an endorsement, but a simple observation. Edwards does not suffer from a lack of authenticity or good ideas, but from the fact that the Corporate Media is congenitally incapable of perceiving the world outside of an up/down, left/right, on/off, binary framework.

They simply cannot function outside of sitting their fat asses on a cracker-barrel and opining loudly on a punch up.

It is a failure of fairly epic proportions, and one that is killing our country:

1. a Media which learned their Scandal Scale during the Monica Years, and so now every Presidential misdeed – no matter lethal or traitorous – will forever be couched in the Who's-Up-Who's-Down? language of the luridly partisan tales of Presidential Penises Gone Wild.
2. and a Media whose specific form of cognitive disorder does not permit them to recognize anything quantity past the number two.

On “Meet the Press”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, NBC's Tom Brokaw and NPR's Michele Norris


Punkin Haid plays video by Mike Huckabee talking about The Flag and says, “Well?”

Peggy The Jesus Lady Noonan: South Carolina felt they “owed” St. McCain one.

Punkin Haid plays video by Mike Huckabee talking about The Constitution and says, “And?”

Michele Norris: It spooked ‘em. He’s charming, but he gets on stage and the crazy comes out. He’s having too much fun to step offstage. Who can bring these fractious Republicans together?

Jesus Lady: Republicans have a tough time this year. They are trying to re-find their soul. It is a much tougher thing to find their soul.

Jesus Lady: The Conservative Coalition was sundered by this Administration from 2004 onwards. And the Congress was even worse.

Jesus Lady: Republicans have taken a beating. A psychic beating.

Matthews then virtually filibusters his own show by reading an extended 18-hour dissertation on the GOP candidates, written by Steve Thomma of McClatchy Newspaper.

Why?

Because Punkin’ Haid himself has nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing of his own to bring to the table.

Shit, at least when Atrios does it he just throws up a "What Digby Said" link and moves on.

Tom Brokaw: People are rejecting dogma. This nomadic groups of voters are wandering the landscape looking for a watering hole.

Brokaw: I listened to Rush Limbaugh talking to his ditto heads yesterday. Rush talked for an hour about how he did not want this election to redefine Conservationism. And one of them called and asked: “Now what am I supposed to think about Pat Buchanan?”

Brokaw: And he said that they were not really Conservatives.

Poor dittoheads. Like baby birds, they chirp and flap around in confusion, not sure who to hate and what slogans to scream until Rush pukes an opinion into their wide, stupid mouths.

Jesus Lady: The voters want someone who has thought through the relationship between Man and the State. Dogma is uninteresting. Philosophy is interesting.

Norris: Many conservatives see themselves as freelancers.

Meacham: The one person who could unite the Conservative Party is Hillary Clinton.

Brokaw: Reagan created a whole new class of voter called “Reagan Democrats”.

Yeah. Before Reagan they were just called Birchers.

Meacham is right, in a way.

As everyone on teevee is too polite to mention, the subgroups that form the Reagan Coalition have absolutely nothing in common with each other past some deluded idea that “Hulk Smash Evil Gummint!” will bring about some new Golden Age/Gilded Age/Rapture/Confederacy.

And the adhesive force that has kept all of the sub-cults working together to destroy America has been hate. Blind, terrified, deliberately induced and cultivated hate. Which works only as long as they are capable keep from mutually annihilating each other and keep their pinhead berserker fury directed at poor people, minorities, the rest of the planet, people who read and think for themselves, uppity woman, queers, imaginary flag burners, imaginary Dirty Fucking Hippies and the rest of the usual suspects.

And in Hillary, many on the Right absolutely see their wingnut Grail; a transmutative Philosopher’s Stone that can convert the raw moral sewage of Pig People’s Hate into Electoral Gold one, last time.

Jesus Lady: I thought Obama looked gracious (in his video talking about Reagan).

Lots of video of the Ghost of Bill Clinton in a big orange tie, whamming on Obama.

The House that Reagan Built…is coming apart at the seams. Each candidate so offends one of the members of the

Russert cites a Jonathan Altar article that “if the Clinton campaign can’t keep Bill in line, why do we think the Hillary White House will be able to?"

Meecham: If King Lear had a southern accent he’d be Bill Clinton. Its not all about him anymore.

Jesus Lady: There is something jarring about Hillary – the first woman running for the head of the United States -- sending Bill out to yell at the neighbors.

Goodwin: I don’t she’s “sending” him out there.

Jesus Lady: Well Holy Shit, isn’t that even worse?


On “Fox News Sunday”

Romney!

Wallace: You and McCain are the front runners. So?

Mitt: If you want a stinky old shoes that have been in the D.C. closet since ‘Nam, McCain (Subliminal Mitt-vert “It’s the economy”) is your man!

Chris Wallace: Hey, Mr. Outsider. You have lobbyists running your campaign, don’t you?

Mitt: In a campaign with over 200 people, you’re gonna (Subliminal Mitt-vert “It’s the economy”) have some lobbyists on your team. Washing is fundamentally

driftglass: Really? That is Mitt’s thesis? That there needs to be a label on every group larger than a Wednesday afternoon “Friends of Bill W.” meeting in Tierra del Fuego, “Warning: Product may contain a certain amount of hog anuses, owl pellets, finger bits, lung butter and lobbyists.”

Wallace: Are you saying that Dubya’s penis stimulus package is too small to get the job done?

Mitt: Well, I like Dubya’s penis , but I like my penis stimulus package better…It’s bigger. Throbbier. Pro-growthier. Stimulatinger. And dress-Rightier.

Mitt: My penis , system is not designed to hand out cash to people who are stupid and unattractive enough to be poor. My penis , package is about growing jobs.

driftglass: And then exporting them.

So…nothing for the 50 million Americans who most need the income, and who wouldn’t be affected by yet another tax cut for rich people.

Fuck ‘em!

Wallace: Does every industry get fat fucking tax breaks in your plan?

Mitt: Where we invest, we do well. Space. Defense. Microwave ready pizza snacks. Breakthrough Lobbyist Technology. Pork. We need to invest more.

driftglass: B...B…But…isn’t the predicate for Mittster’s whole candidacy just say that Washington fundamentally broken? That Washington can’t do a single fucking this right?

Wallace: You left Massachusetts fucked up and bleeding in the alley while every other state was getting fat. You gonna go that for America?

Wallace: The only state that did worse that you was Louisiana, Ohio and Michigan.

Mitt: Yeah, but Massachusetts sucked even harder than any other state before I came on board. It was a raw heroin junkie giving $2 handjobs in filthy alleys. When I left, it was a crack whore giving $10 blowjobs in a much nicer alleys.

Mitt: Sometimes in business you have to cut stuff. Washington is running like a shitty business. I know how to turn shitty businesses around, even when the only way to do that is to cut cut cut and outsource. We’re getting whipped by China and India.

driftglass: So…Mitt’s going to outsource the US government to China?

Cool.

Then, Chuck Schumer.

Schumer: We like the Preznit’s penis package. He took his stupid tax cuts off the table. And we gotta go-go-go. Partisan dithering would screw thing up, so good on him for putting a sock in it.

Schumer: To say that someone making $35K gets nothing, and someone making $200K gets everything is ridiculous and unfair. The 200K guy is likely to hold onto his fresh cake, and every economist in the world says that getting a little lettuce into the hand of people who will hurry up and spend it is the way to go.

Then on Fox, “Is Bill Clinton’s ‘temper’ hurting his woman”?

At which point I sick-up in a bag, fire the remote signal at the teevee machine Varon-T Disrupter-style and watch them vanish.


On “This Week”

Rudy!Rudy!Rudy!

Giuliani: I had eight balanced budgets. More than anyone else. I proposed a lot of cuts. And some of them got through.

Giuliani: George Will called my government the most conservative in America in 50 years. I turned NYC around.

Me.

Personally.

The Greatest Fucking Hero in American History

Stephanopoulos: Would a President Giuliani be in favor of the proposed penis , stimulus package?

And we pause as America shudders at the sound of the phrase “President Giuliani”.

Stephanopoulos: What about furriners buying up our country?

Giuliani: As long as it’s a lot of countries doing it, I’m cool.

Helpful driftglass translation: So as long as America is being financially gang-banged it’s all good baby!



On ”The Chris Matthews Show”

Once more, NBC permits the airing of yet another episode of Matthew’s drooly, stalky, Hillary Panty Sniffing Show.

Howard Feinman: The Clenis Giveth and the Clenis Taketh Away.

Cynthia Tucker: let me tell you where sexism is alive and well, Chris. When Bill was Preznit, the Right went positively apeshit over the thought of her as a co-President. But if Hillary were elected, Bill being there would be reassuring.

Bill wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.

Howard Feinman: As a former President, Bill will get all kinds of high-level briefings.

Richard Stengel (Time magazine): Joke Line – the Great Clinton expert -- says “The problem with the Clenis is he reminds of the psychodramas of the 90s and not the good economy of the 90s.”

Stengel…citing Joke Line. Man talk about your blind gavotting the blind right into a car crusher.

And conveniently forgetting, of course, that the chief reason the Clinton Presidency was freighted with high school food fighting clique-wars was that you fuckers and the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy ginned it up so that people would pay attention to you.

Then five minutes of wacky film clips of candidates singing.

Then a contest: What song was Bush dancing to in his Saudi Sword Dance?

Then, since he has again spent the bulk of his time fetishizing Hillary, Matthews has to sloppily lump all the GOP candidates together and asking “What’s goin’ on here?”

What’s going on is, as Sherlock Holmes also said, “Malingering is a subject upon which I have sometimes thought of writing a monograph."

And so now I have.

Tweety in the Sky

with Demons

The Churl

with colonoscope

eyes

For the benefit of future, not-stupid generations, Media Matters documents the atrocities here.

Tom Waits Friday

God's Away On Business

...
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves and lawyers

God's away, God's away
God's away on business
Business
...

Sing it, Tom

Happy Birthday, Rev.

Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam".

Could not be more timely.

I'm so, so sorry we could not stand to listen to the simple truths you had to tell.

That we could not bring ourselves to live up to our own, pretty words.

That, finally, we could not bear to let you live.

The Effect of Mitt Winning Michigan

Explained in 55 Seconds

The Moderate Squad

Yes, this is neither entirely fair nor accurate: the cultural templates available have their in-built limits.

But it is more or less what we have.

And for all of our faults and flaws and political stretch marks, across the board what we have trumps the royal jelly right out of what they have.

And anyway, admit it: you're really just pissed that you didn't Photochop it first.

Mitt Prepares

The "Break Glass In Case I Get Spanked in Michigan" Doomsday Plan D.

“In March of 1998 a group of Dirty Fucking Hippies kidnapped me and held me captive somewhere in the Boston area.

“During that time I was forced to watch 'Cop Rock' and 'The Hat Squad' reruns as well as a program called ‘Sex and the City’ while having non-missionary sex with a woman who was not a wife.

“My years as a Culture War POW were Hell on Earth -- the details of which will be published in my forthcoming autobiography; 'Plutarch's Audacity of the Faith of my Fathers' Profile in Courage' -- but for the good of the nation and the children I went along with this vile Liberal plot, pretending to adopt their bizarre, ungodly views and continuing to act as the ‘Governor of Massachusetts’, all the while scheming against them.

“In 2006, having won their confidence, they let their guard down for a moment. That is when I sprang into action, taking out three guards -- who I had known during my years of captivity only by their Liberal Party names of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Hitler -- and leading 23 others hostages to freedom.

“I now stand before you ready to lead this nation as the man I have always been; a staunch Reagan Conservative, a battle-tested warrior, and a POW with a Hollywood-ready back story.

"God Bless America!"

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

The state of the Sunday Marketplace

Once upon a time I was asked in a very nice way why anyone would waste their time parsing what the Mouse Circus puppeteers were nattering about.

I answered that the Mouse Circus is where trial balloons are launched, weekly messaging is set, where the only-lightly-engaged citizenry goes to get ideas and feel informed and smart, and the wrecked machinery of the American political dialog at the intersection of Bad Politics and Bad Journalism is on its fullest display.

Or, in the immortal words of Peter Griffith, the Mouse Circus “insists upon itself.”

And nowadays?

The Huffington Post almost never fails to host a cultural kitsch-and-bitch.

Crooks and Liars reliably slings vid as hot and fresh as IHOP dealing out silver dollar flapjacks.

There is Fire Dog Lake

There is Atrios

And Talking Points Memo

There is Media Matters

And the inimitable Shakesville

And on and on.

Taken altogether this is a good thing -- no three hours of our national teevee discourse is more desperately in need of a pyroclastic enema than the Sunday Talks -- but with so many big guns tracking every tic and toe-stub, the Sunday marketplace is now positively saturated with good observations, video and dialogue at every major site, and so it is probably time for my little Sunday Morning Comin’ Down pushcart to start fading into the sunset.

Until then, however...

On “This Week”

Sunday Morning found the Evil and Irrelevant Newt Gingrich smirking in front of a camera and cleaning his pelt for the umpteenth time, this time hosted by George Stephanopoulos and raising – for the umpteenth time -- the only question worth asking vis-a-vis Newt:

WTF does anyone care what Newt thinks?

About anything?

Newt’s face belongs on the back of America’s Political Milk Carton. His movement, in the compost heap. It’s leaders, driven from office with pointy sticks, or running through Federal Prison Habitrails for the amusement of paying customers.

And his schtick never changes.

1. Ridiculous, incendiary drivel stated as Categorical Truth:

“Michigan was hit with a Democratic governor in the same way New Orleans was hit by Katrina.”

“McCain/Feingold discriminates against the Middle Class. This is an Objective Fact!”

2. Fringe goofball “solutions” designed to solve nothing but to re-ignite the Glory Days of the “Settin’ The Woods On Fire” Wingnut 90s:

Make English the Official Language!
Build more refineries!

3. Lard everything liberally over with Newt-Brand Adjectives, making sure that “fundamental” is used as often as 9udy uses “9/11”

• No one is radical enough.
• Everything need to be dramatically deeper.
• And more fundamentaller.
• There are dramatic things we can do with Conservatism!
• We are at the end of the Bush Era. The Reagan Era.
• We need to Redefine.
• Dramatically.
• And…wait for it…fundamentally
• It is a fundamental misunderstanding that the GOP needs…

Looking into the absolutely bare cupboard of Conservatism, Newt’s sole gift is to take out the lone, sulfurous, suspect egg and announce, dramatically, “We need to try something even more radical with this smelly egg!”

And because he uses the Bigwords, Conservative ears perk right up. Because nothing is as impressive to Teh Stoopids as them Bigwords.

Newt sayeth: “This last ossified lump of 30-year-old Conservative Sanka needs a fundamental transformation” and the Great Conservative Wad swoons.

And the Conservative chicken nugget preserved in the icebox hoarfrost like a mammoth in frozen tundra? It needs to be dramatically redefined!

Newt knows that the Conservative Base – morally narcoleptic and feverishly tangled in the reeking sheets of his movement’s massive and public failures – still dreams of the magic redemption of a Clean Slate.

For the last seven years they have risen in aching joy each time Bush or one of his surrogates announced – after each and every epic clusterfuck -- that it was a mistake to “look backwards”. Because behind them is that scary place full of nation-fires they started, wreckage they created, towering debt they charged on their 9/11 Credit Card, and the untold hundreds of thousands their policies have killed or crippled.

No, never look back.

Never ever look back.

Unless there is a Democrat involved. And a failed land deal in Arkansas.

But other than that, never, never ever look back.

And yet however fast this Party of Personal Responsibility sprints from taking any personal responsibility for anything – however many Bright New Corners they insist we have turn in their Forever War – the shadow of their failures overtakes them.

Running is not enough. Lying is not enough. Sweating in their sleepy, dogma-stained Underoos, the 27% are reduced to fantasizing about another miraculous Political Snow Day.

It worked once -- when the Radical Right was allowed to hijack 9/11 and turn the blood of innocent Americans into a blank check for six years of Republican lying and treason – but covering up high crimes, criminal incompetence and incipient fascism by screaming “Boo!” seems the be finally petering out into the self-parodying Grand Guignol of Rudy Giuliani’s Madcap Terrorism Tourette's Road Show.

The wingnuts have about chewed all the flavor out of their September 11th Bubble Gum, and now the Failed Conservative Movement is desperately in search of another Great Reboot where they can claim that all debts are canceled, all of their astounding hypocrisies nullified, and the long, grievous and bloody record of their treachery expunged.

Where they can run screaming “Doooooo Ooooover!” into the streets and get back to blaming Liberals and Bill Clinton’s Penis for all the evils in the world.

The Party of Personal Responsibility pines for a Fascist Prometheus who can deliver them salvation through the Holy Fire of Miraculous Bigwords. Salvation that'll napalm away the brutal judgments of history and justice that they so richly deserve and which their million bloody sins cry out for.

And it is Newt who holds himself up as that redeemer.


Meanwhile, on ”The Chris Matthews Show”

I think.

I feel.

What do you feel?

I feel that voters think.

I think that voters think.

I think that voters feel.

Ya think?

I talk to lotta wimmin who think….

Commercial Break: Way-off-brand insurance. Dating sites. Heartburn remedies.

(Man to they ever have their demographic dialed in to ten significant digits.)

I talk to lotta consultants who feel…

I bin talkin’ to a lot of Democratic consultants…

Commercial Break: Men! Don’t exercise. Don’t eat right! Get some fake hair! 80% of feelin’ gud is lookin’ gud! Put some zip back in your luv life. Do it or no pussy for you!

I think that Americans feel…

I feel that Americans think…

Bobo Brooks: People are idiots!


And lastly, on "Meet the Press"


Clinton versus Russert

"He's mad that trusts in

the tameness of a wolf,
a horse's health,
a boy's love,
or a whore's oath."

King Lear (III, vi, 19-21)




So if you want to save your country, Liberals, the time comes when you have to finally stand up, look across the abyss at the bestial thing the Conservative movement has degenerated into, and say:

Lady, that is one goddamned ugly baby.

He's here from Downtown

GOP Establishment Candidate Mitt Romney cannot afford to keep shelling out dough and losing. He has to win, and he has to win over and over again.

So in the back room of his Flint HQ -- in preparation for "Do or Die" Michigan -- Romney is, right this minute, firing up his sales force.

They're sitting out there waiting to give you their votes.
Are you gonna take them?
Are you man enough to take them?

(Clip very "Not Work Safe")


UPDATE (courtesy KnaveRupe):

Put. That. Confetti. Down.

Confetti is for closers only.

....

First Prize? President of the United Fucking States.

Second Prize? A set of Bill O'Reilly's vibrators.

Third Prize? You're fired.

But You Can Haz

Roodybucks Instead!

Redeemable at the Emperor of All 9/11’s coronation for one brown shirt and one hearty handjob.

From the AP:

Giuliani staffers forgo paychecks

By LIZ SIDOTI

About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are forgoing their January paychecks, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate and last year's national front-runner.

"We have enough money, but we could always use more money," said Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. "We want to make sure we have enough to win."

At the end of December, the campaign had $12.7 million cash on hand, $7 million of which could be used for the primary, DuHaime said Friday. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped operation and said Giuliani continues to bring in money; several fundraisers are scheduled this week in Florida.

The former New York mayor has yet to win a contest and is counting on a victory in delegate-rich Florida on Jan. 29 to prove his candidacy is viable heading into the multistate contests slated for Feb. 5, where he believes he can prevail in states such as California and Illinois.

It's an unorthodox and costly strategy because Florida and states that follow have some of the most expensive media markets in the country. And with so many states voting in such a short time period, candidates can do little else but rely on paid media — and news coverage — to get out their message.

Republican strategists estimate that it will cost roughly $35 million to run one week of heavy levels of ads in the two dozen states that hold contests on Feb. 5.
…

DuHaime and other aides stressed that relinquishing pay was voluntary and was limited to senior staffers, many of whom already had contributed the maximum allowed by law to the campaign, $2,300. Aides said some people offered to give up their checks, prompting the campaign to then ask if others wanted to volunteer. They insisted no one was forced to work without pay.
...

I’m sorry, but do these pants make me look stupid?

Or are you for-real telling me with a straight face that an Establishment Republican campaign is now insisting that not getting paid is A) Virtuous, and, B) Unrelated to any underlying, lethal financial problems?

Because I’ve been in those kind of “let’s all volunteer to tighten our belts” meetings before.

I’m betting so have you.

The meetings where everyone in the nice suits looks poo-daggers at the drones who don’t want to “volunteer” to give up a little more blood and rent money for The Glorious Cause. Maybe you're just not the team player we thought you were? Or maybe you just want the terrorist to win?!?

The meetings that are followed by the office printers choking to death on the reams of freshly-burnished staff resumes that begin immediately spewing out of them.

The article continues.

…

Through September, Giuliani had raised $45 million and had $11.6 million available for the primary campaign. With $7 million in cash on had at the end of December, that means Giuliani had spent nearly $5 million more than he took in during the last three months of the year.

All Republican candidates have struggled to raise money for the 2008 presidential race, an indication that GOP donors aren't as energized as Democrats. Nearly every GOP hopeful set sky-high fundraising goals, but failed to meet them.

Giuliani, for his part, spent $300,000 on radio ads in Iowa and more money on direct mail, only to come in sixth. In New Hampshire, he spent some $3 million on TV and radio ads, and flooded mailboxes with direct mail; he finished fourth. He has been spending millions over the past month to run TV ads in Florida, and had a high rate of spending throughout most of last year.

Over the past few days, Giuliani has moved his handful of paid staffers out of Michigan and South Carolina to Florida, which has emerged as his best shot to re-ignite his campaign.

He also launched two ads in Florida, one of which urged viewers to discount media pundits and their election analyses. The ad seemed as much aimed at voters as it was to fundraisers, who are crucial to the well-being of his campaign at this stage.

Giuliani's two new ads in Florida cost about $650,000 in Florida markets. However, he is not airing them in Miami, the most expensive market in the state. The campaign said he is relying on earned media there.

Giuliani has spent nearly $1.4 million in Florida on ads since Dec. 28, according to data tracked by another presidential campaign.
…

While the inability to pay one’s paid staff might be charming and even marketable in boot-strappy, insurgency-inflected campaigns like those being waged by Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, it is outright laughable that the Emperor of All 9/11 thinks no one will notice that he is being reduced to running his organization like the local Pik-N-Save after the WalMart opens up across the street.

But hope springs eternal and, hey, maybe if he just wishes super-ooper-duper hard he can solve this problem the same way Republicans solve every problem.

Maybe he can tax cut his way out of the hole he dug.


UPDATE (Via "The Atlantic"):

"Breaking News: Giuliani's national finance chair, Roy Bailey, no longer has that position with the campaign. Bailey was not only Giuliani's finance chair, he was one of the founding partners of Giuliani's consulting firm."