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.