So it’s no news that people go a little nuts when it comes to sex, sports, politics and God.
Myself included.
After all we derive some sense of belonging and identity from each of these activities. We investing each of them with a sense of immediate and personal importance both because they have real world consequences and because, before we even realize it, we are hooked right though the gills.
And when we get our loyalties wrong, or find them under siege, or think our golden idols are going to be taken away from us, we freak right out.
Every con man ever born knows this heartless calculus by heart; knows that after the coup de grace, it is this alloy of pride in our own opinions and shame in being taken so utterly that keeps so many nice little old ladies from calling the cops after being skinned out of their life’s savings.
And (he noted in passing) it is precisely that same cocktail of emotions that keep so many Conservatives loyal to the Dear Leader and his epic failures long, long, long after it has become painfully clear to everyone else that their ideals have been sold out, their leaders are liars and traitors and they have been greased, fleeced and decreased by genuinely degenerate men who have done genuinely evil and treasonable things in their name.
This is the Great Lie that ticks like a bomb in their bellies. The terror they dare not admit, especially since most of the biggest, loudest, hardcorest of The Duped spent much of the 90s mocking and deriding Liberals for "falling for" Slick Willie, whose worst crime seems to have been lying about blowjobs.
So stipulated that politics can get all itchily and frantically into our blood and make for the strangest of bedfellows and belligerents.
Still, when you get this snip from a story from the Steinbeckish end of the socioconomic spectrum…
“FEBRUARY 25--Meet Jose Antonio Ortiz. The Pennsylvania man allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach after the pair quarreled about their respective support of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. According to cops, Ortiz, 28, stabbed Sean Shurelds last Thursday night in the kitchen of an Upper Providence Township home.” …
“Socialite Bunky Cushing's annual St. Valentine's Day tea at the Ritz-Carlton drew nearly 100 businesswomen and society names, all dressed in red, but the blue-state alliances still showed.
Laurie Davis, 58, the outspoken owner of Lulu's at the Belle Kay, a clothing boutique on Lincoln Avenue, supports Mr. Obama and says she knows "who's touchy and who's not." Pointing to friend and Clinton supporter Vonita Reescer, Ms. Davis says, "She's someone I can tease."
and these…
"It's hard to be a Clinton supporter right now," says Margo Weinstein, 47, a partner with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. "It tests your political convictions when you're invited to a party at Oprah's house." She declined the invitation from Mr. Obama's most famous supporter: "It's like a sports fan wearing the other team's colors during the playoffs. It's not right."
Delmarie Cobb, a supporter of Ms. Clinton and a longtime Chicago political and media consultant, has debated publicly about the primary with Obama supporters but doesn't appreciate the intrusion of politics into more personal settings.
"A woman in my Jazzercise class was hitting me about Barack. I had to say, 'That's what I do for a living. I don't come here to debate politics,' " Ms. Cobb says. "All of a sudden, I've got to go to work in my exercise class."
you gotta figure that perhaps, waaay down in the American psyche, it is just possible some kind of extraordinary, boundary-crossing, once-in-a-generational energies are starting to bestir themselves.
William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.
Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.
Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.
"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."
Buckley had for years been withdrawing from public life, starting in 1990 when he stepped down as top editor of the National Review. In December 1999, he closed down "Firing Line" after a 23-year run, when guests ranged from Richard Nixon to Allen Ginsberg. "You've got to end sometime and I'd just as soon not die onstage," he told the audience.
…
I suppose there is something sadly appropriate that this is the period in which Buckley departs our vale of tears.
His death in and of itself isn’t any more or less poignant than that of anyone else at the end of a full, prosperous and well-lived life, but coming as is does now -- as Neocons, Theocrats, Feudalists, Bigots and Professional Wingnut Media Haters fight over the tiny gobbets of rotting meat left on the bones of Conservatism -- it does possess some of the same elements of a classical tragedy that exist in, say, a “King Lear”.
A tragedy which began (as such tragedies do) in early struggle and triumph as Buckley took up a fringe and reviled ideology called Conservatism and transformed it into a powerful national movement.
A tragedy which reached its long apotheosis as Buckley faded away as a source of influence within the movement he created, while still lingering lucidly and long enough to see the cause to which he devoted much of his life invaded, conquered, sacked and betrayed by the scum of the nation.
Lived long enough to see his movement debased into a horde of blood-drunk moral imbeciles whose idea of discourse is standing in traffic and screaming “Traitor!” at random, passing cars, and whose idea of responsible governance is voting for delusion and disaster and then whining when the bill comes due.
And while expending the energy and effort necessary to crush that mob is essential, it is also so far beneath us. So far removed from how a great nation should be expending its time and attention.
I’ll miss knowing Buckley is in the world if for no other reason than I am a strong believer that only the best opponents can bring out the best in us.
And that “opponent” need not be a synonym for “enemy”.
In the end the ideological children Buckley begat turned out to be monsters. Gargoyles who have now fully taken over his cathedral, shit in the holy water and used its cross to build a bonfire onto which they have hurled just about everything he held dear.
He was a man who outlived his revolution and watched powerlessly as it degenerated from this
to this
And there is no better word I know of to describe being forced to witness the arc of your own movement's glorious rise and massive, ignominious collapse than “tragedy”.
Because sometimes (like this time), no matter how well-tilled the ground may be, I'll find myself helplessly in the grip of doing up a post for no other reason than the headline that pops into my head cracked me up too hard not to.
Huckabee Endorses “Egg As Person” Concept By: Nicole Belle
While I was watching and transcribing Mike Huckabee’s appearance on SNL this weekend, I kept thinking he is so good at being likeable that if you don’t have a clear sense of what he really stands for, it would be easy to be swayed by Huckabee. But then a story like this comes down the wires and you realize that it is really, really important to know EXACTLY what candidates do stand for. Denver Post:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Monday endorsed a proposed Colorado Human Life Amendment that would define personhood as a fertilized egg.
The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister also supports a human-life amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Huckabee spoke favorably about the Colorado ballot initiative, sponsored by 20-year-old Kristi Burton and her Colorado for Equal Rights group, during his Friday visit to Colorado Springs.
On Monday, Huckabee lent official support to the measure.
“This proposed constitutional amendment will define a person as a human being from the moment life begins at conception,” Huckabee said in a statement.
“With this amendment, Colorado has an opportunity to send a clear message that every human life has value,” Huckabee said. “Passing this amendment will mean the people of Colorado will protect the sanctity of life from conception until natural death occurs.” ...
Shorter :
"... And Huckster called back, “I can hear you just fine. But Liberal ears aren’t all Jebussy like mine. Are all of you down there making a big holy ruckus? 'Cause those activist judges are all out to fuck us! Are you sure every Who down in Who-ville is working? Check the whole blasted blastocyst! Is there anyone shirking? ...”
And of course, as every working writer knows, once the original starts selling, you need to have as sequel in the pipeline.
For three hours on Tuesday, Starbucks will shut down every single one of its 7,100 stores so that baristas can receive a refresher course on how best to improve the coffee customer experience.
Among the various lessons that will be re-taught include how to wipe the steamer wands and remembering to rinse the pitchers and shot glasses every time.
As a spokeswoman tells the Seattle Times:
"We will have all new standards for how we create the drinks...[Employees] will be trained in creating the perfect shot, steaming the milk and all the pieces that come together in a drink."
As requested by CEO Howard Schultz, the unprecedented ining session will take place between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. and affect approximately 135,000 employees. ...
and happy I was to drift off to sleep all warm and snuggly and full of cinophilic goodness.
But then, the dawn.
And at the crack of this mean, skull-punching, Chicago winter Monday dawn I found myself being rudely whiplashed out of the rack by the Clinton Campaign’s declaration that Oscar Fevah Sunday was over, baby!
That it was now "Gratuitous, deliberately provocative, spiteful, desperate, childish Rovian graphics"-Monday
By Perry Bacon Jr. Barack Obama's campaign this morning sharply criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign for reportedly sending a picture to the Drudge Report of the Illinois senator that showed him in African dress, with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accusing Clinton of engaging in "shameful, offensive fear-mongering."
The picture, taken of Obama while he was in Kenya in 2006 on a Senate trip to Africa, shows him in Somali garb, and Obama aides suggested the Clinton campaign circulated it to call attention to Obama's African ancestry and give credence to persistent and false allegations circulating online that he is a Muslim. Obama is a Christian who attends a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago.
Clinton campaign officials did not deny sending Drudge the picture. Instead, in a statement, campaign manager Maggie Williams said, "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely."
…
Damn.
"Gratuitous, deliberately provocative, spiteful, desperate, childish Rovian graphics"-Monday always catches me unawares, and I end up never getting my shopping or Photoshopping done on time.
But what the Hell, I'm adaptable.
So since that's the way Senator Clinton wants us to roll today, happy "Gratuitous, deliberately provocative, spiteful, desperate, childish Rovian graphics"-Monday everybody!
As it appears that I will need to be out and about early this day (spotting in transit, perhaps, that rarest of avi, the Libidinous Liberal Lass who is still too Saturday Night and not yet nearly enough Sabbath Morning), the Mouse Circus might just slip right on by me.
So just in case, the castle staff have whipped up a special Early Bird “Becalmed in the Maladroit Metaphor Latitudes” menu just for today, because over at the increasingly-creepy and cat-pee-smelling Gray Lady’s house, while you slept, behind the lace curtains in the parlor, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd began trying to pull together a pundit minyan for the Clinton campaign.
Dear Frank and Modo and everyone else: Please quit counting the Clinton machine out.
Remember what happened the last time you did that?
And the time before?
And the time before that?
And 1999?
And 1994?
And 1991?
And yet every time, like the whey-faced private in the last reel of virtually every John Wayne war movie ever made, you still pop your head up and declare “Hey! It’s all clear, Sarge!"
Time to light up a Lucky Strike, tip back your lid and sigh, “Whew, that was clo…”
“The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe...”
“After promising a cakewalk to the nomination...”
“...she was routed (notice the past tense) by an insurgency.”
“...her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn”
-- I believe Frank has extending the “Election 2008 is Hillary’s Iraq” metaphor well past both its sell-by date, and the line beyond which using the slaughter and failure in Iraq as symbolic of anything as trivial as a primary fight is just in bad taste.
She really has no schtick left but a sniffy, reductive hyper-feminization and/or hyper-masculinization of every fucking thing. That combined with her humping the leg of a thesaurus in the service of this perpetual, decaying, barely-sublimated estrus she seems stranded in has gone well past the point of merely being tiresome.
Sorry, Modo, but everything cannot be centrifuged into either toast points and cream rinse, or hairy troglodytes flogged puppies with a bicycle chain.
Not either Hillary, She Wolf of the DLC, or Emily Post Hussein.
Not Pebbles or Bam Bam.
See,in Modo’s world the furniture is all arranged like this:
“The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival.”
“Hillary was so busy trying to prove she could be one of the boys…that she only belatedly realized that many Democratic and independent voters, especially women, were eager to move from hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach.”
“Less towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity.”
“…many Americans would like to see their government focus more on those staples of female fiction: relationships and conversation.”
“She tried once more to cast Obama as a weak sister…”
“Like a prudent housekeeper, Obama spent the cash he raised…” while “Hillaryland spent like a hedge fund manager in a flat-screen TV store.”
And while I know that at long last this really may be the only dialectic your curdled Catholicism allows you to comprehend, really Maureen, as a one-size-gags-all metaphor for everydamnedthing it kinda sucks.
The big big world is far more complex and fascinating than that. Oh and I don’t know which drunken Irish relative laid this scar across your soul, but the opposite of bellicosity is not a weak sister. These are not the only two choices life or politics offers you. They are, in fact, merely the two ends of the same broken whiskey bottle into which you keep trying to stuff all variations and dimensions of human behavior.
You are right in this, however; “The bullying and bellicosity of the Bush administration have left many Americans exhausted and yearning for…” something.
But not your, “Less towel-snapping and more towel color coordinating, less steroids and more sensitivity.”
Not an “Obama [who] tapped into his inner chick and turned the other cheek.”
Like a block of keys stripped from your keyboard, what you are conspicuously absenting from your column stands out in such sharp relief because it is so conspicuously absent from the instrument you are using to create it. From your own emotional lexicon.
Because what Senator Obama appears to be is...a gentleman.
Imagine that? And how spiritually famished you must be, Modo, not to recognize one when he’s standing right there?
Not Slick Willie II. Not Jebus. Not Obambi. None of the tired, cloying, Dowdian archetypes that cobweb you like so much Blanche DuBois-brand Spanish Moss, and not whatever, clever, diminutive you cobble up next week.
Just a gentleman.
Relaxed. Comfortable in his own skin. Articulate. Flawed. Confident. At ease in the company of strong, accomplished women. Courteous, but not one to be shoved around. Casually brilliant, but not frantically “Oh! Oh! Oh! PickMe!PickMe!PickMe!”
And for the record, no, to the extent this gentleman is succeeding it is not because he is running away from “hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach.”
Je-zus, Maureen; do you ever just give your neuroses $20 and send them off to the movies?
Senator Obama is currently succeeding as well as he is for two, main reasons;
Because Senator Clinton made the profound blunder of running a White House Rose Garden campaign before she had a White House Rose Garden to run it out of.
Because his team has quietly figured out how to run Howard Dean’s 50-state campaign, but with jet fuel instead of NASCAR high-test, a strategic infusion of netroots widgets and sensibilities, and some serious fucking Drupal upgrades.
Fastest Way Up Hills: Zigzag
Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
SPACE.comFri Feb 22, 6:25 AM ET
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but on a steep slope, a zigzagging path is the fastest way to go, a new study confirms.
On flat terrain, a straight line is typically still the best way to get from point A to point B. But climbing up a steep hill is a whole different ballgame; the mechanics and energy costs of walking up a hill alter the way we negotiate the landscape.
"You would expect a similar process on any landscape, but when you have changes in elevation it makes things more complicated," said study author Marcos Llobera of the University of Washington. "There is a point, or critical slope, where it becomes metabolically too costly to go straight ahead, so people move at an angle, cutting into the slope. Eventually they need to go back toward the direction they were originally headed and this creates zigzags. The steeper the slope, the more important it is that you tackle it at the right angle."
…
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's must-win states of Ohio and Texas are no cakewalk for her, largely because independents and crossover Republicans are welcome to vote in their Democratic primaries.
The political calendar of late winter has been less than kind to the embattled presidential contender, who once figured that a big day in early February would affirm her march to the presidential nomination and the rest would be icing.
Instead, it's been slippery ice at every turn, and Ohio and Texas contests on March 4 matter greatly, crucial tests in her big-state fallback strategy.
The field in both states could be tilted to Sen. Barack Obama, despite Clinton's presumed advantage among some voting groups and long-held if diminished leads in the states' opinion polls.
Obama has displayed strengths dating to January among different voting groups that would normally be in tension with each other, and his drawing power has become more pronounced in his 11-contest winning streak heading into March 4.
The Illinois senator has mobilized his party's left wing, a big help in caucus races where party activists and fired-up newbies are key. And he's drawn crossover Republicans and independents to primaries in which they are allowed to vote.
Ohio and Texas make it easy for them to do so. If they do, it could boost Obama's vote.
…
The Conclusion will be left as a problem for the class, but someone on the “Yahoo News” post-up brigade is having waaay too much pure geek fun for this early on a Saturday.
If Senator Clinton can fight her way off the mat and win, fine. But if she goes down, she needs to go down swinging.
Because this is just batting practice.
These are just the time trials.
I genuinely pity McCain for not having a Mittens or a Mayor 9iul1an1 to spar with through the Spring.
I mean, have you noticed how much better and sharper Senator Obama has gotten?
How much of the scripted, stilted nonsense Senator Clinton has been forced to shed? How much tighter her message has become?
I have my preferences, but for the purpose of this post they are not relevant.
What is relevant is that my candidate comes out of the primary process born again hard.
Comes out sweated down to gristle and fangs and stink, fast as hell, with a strategy to win from the top of the ticket right down to committeeman and county treasurer.
Comes out like a Fury on a mean drunk with a roll of nickels in each fist to protect my Constitution and my Supreme Court, my Treasury and my Military, my Civilization, my Jesus and my Good Name from one more miserable day of giggling evisceration at the hands of blood-drunk lunatics and power-drunk blackshirts.
Comes out ready and eager to wade though body-blow after body-blow and put these fuckers down.
Ralph Nader could be poised for another third party presidential campaign.
The consumer advocate will appear on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. Nader launched his 2004 presidential run on the show.
A spokesman for Nader did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Kevin Zeese, who was Nader's spokesman during the 2004 presidential race, but is no longer working for him, said Friday that Nader has been actively talking to "lots of people on all sorts of levels" about the possibility of making another run.
Zeese said he could only guess what Nader might do, but added: "Obviously, I don't think ("Meet the Press" host) Tim Russert would have him on for no reason."
Last month, Nader began an exploratory presidential campaign and launched a Web site that promises to fight "corporate greed, corporate power, corporate control."
Nader's appearance on "Meet the Press" was announced Friday in an e-mail message from Nader's exploratory campaign. The message from "The Nader Team" urges supporters to tell friends and family to watch the show and requests online contributions.
"As you know, we've been exploring the possibilities in recent weeks," the message says.
Nader is still loathed by many Democrats who call him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost Democrats the election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest in Florida. Nader has vociferously disputed the spoiler claim, saying only Democrats are to blame for losing the race to George W. Bush.
Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party candidate in 2000, Nader won just 0.3 percent as an independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states. …
At the sound of starting gun, the candidates for President of the United States fielded by the two major political parties ran the gamut from Mike Gravel to Ron Paul, Bill Richardson to Rudy Giuliani, Dennis Kucinich to Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes to Chris Dodd, Tom Tancredo to Joe Biden, Fred Thompson to John Edwards, Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to John McCain…with Mike Bloomberg waiting in the wings with his billion-dollar-Third-Party turkey baster in-hand.
You can say what you want about the campaign – the expense, duration, shitty horse race –driven press coverage, the hysterical collapse of the credibility of the punditocracy, that my man or woman got screwed -- but one cannot say there was a dearth of choices on the Presidential Pu Pu Platter.
And while it is a great and glorious thing that anyone who wants to can run for the office of President, it is the height of crazy to assay the political landscape of the last year and conclude that what American politics most needs at this moment is one more trip to the county fair squired by Ralph Nader’s
Gargantuan ego.
UPDATE: Much to my surprise, welcome NYT readers. And a bottle of something smooth and Celtic to the first one of you staffers who can explain to me in little words how in the wide, wide world of sports a third-rate water boy like David Brooks or an out-and-out blackshirt like Bloody Bill Kristol draws even a pfennig from the exchequer of your once-noble institution?
…every liberal is a dirty terrorist co-conspirator. …every criticism is disloyalty. …every act of dissent is treason. …every Medicaid check and Social Security Card is a paving stone on the road to undiluted Communism. …every Republican lie, no matter how huge or bloody, is irrelevant. …every Democratic lie, no matter how small or trivial, is grounds for impeachment. …every story about how fucked up Iraq was, is and shall be is mere propaganda. …every fawning tribute to the Dear Leader is "fair and balanced".
… and anyone preaching hope is a direct and imminent threat.
“At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.
“The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation. …”
...it can’t come as any huge surprise.
What Bobo misses, of course, is that people are not simply stupid-drunk on hope. It’s that after 30 year of David Brooks' side of the political universe feeding-tube-glutting the body politic with nothing but a slurry of fear, hate, rage, bigotry and paranoia, we're sick of it.
Sick. Of. It.
We are starving for something other than the bile and venom cocktails that are the mother's milk of the Conservative movement. Dying, in a very real sense, for want of something -- anything -- with more nutritional value than the various brands of reeking toxins that Limbaugh, Falwell, Hannity, Coulter, DeLay, Gingrich, Hume, Kristol, Robertson, Brooks and the rest of that long, long, looooong list of Wingnut Heroes have been hammering down our throats for decades.
This is not an endorsement of Obama (You’re smart people so make up your own damn minds) but an observation that while he both connotes and denotes many things to many people, what Obama most clearly represents is this: our National Gag Reflex finally kicking in.
We are, finally, sick and tired of being kept sick and tired at the hands of the people with whom Bobo allies himself.
And since Bobo has always been staunchly on the side of the liars and the poisoners it is no surprise that his ugly little screed on the folly of daring to hope that our future will not be some wingnut “Red Dawn” meets “Mad Max” masturbatory fantasy manifests itself as mocking mystification at the Obama campaign.
But imagine if Bobo had spared just a moment for self-reflection?
Spared a minute to notice that the “Why” behind the Obama movement is the sense abroad in the land that, finally, something good and hopeful must be flung right into the face of the Metastasizing Conservative Darkness that has been busy busy busy smothering hope and snuffing out compassion under an avalanche of shrill fear-mongering and its endless sermons of hopelessness and dread?
Imagine if, over in the Better Universe, Bizzaro Bobo wrote a more honest tune.
With the same melody, but slightly different words.
An imaginary, alternative history version of Bobo's column today entitled “When the Magic Fades”:
At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Michael Weiner Savage devotees in Alabama, Texas and Orange County. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Gingrich Comedown Syndrome.
The afflicted had already been through the phases of Gingrich-mania — Terri Schiavo, Purple Heart Band-aids, spending years lying, slandering, investigating ginned-up “scandals” and impeaching. These patients had experienced intense surges of hate-amine, the brain chemical that fuels the entire Conservative Movement
But they found that as the election-cycles went on, they needed more and purer hate-injections just to preserve the Rush. They wound up craving more hate than even the Party of God could provide, and they began experiencing brooding moments of suboptimal hatefulness. Anxious posts began to appear on the blogs. A sense of ennui began to creep through the nation’s “Traitor”- and “Liberal Fascism”-centered book clubs as people began to notice how utterly fucked their beloved movement and Dear Leader had actually left them.
Up until now Hate Radio screeds had seemed to them less like stretches of words and more like soul sensations that transcended time and space. But those in the grips of Gingrich Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if Neocon bullshit actually made sense. For example, Wingtard Dogma tells the faithful that the Evil Liberal Gummit is the source of all problems, but if we are now running the Evil Liberal Gummit and things have gotten dramatically worse and not better, well WTF?
Patients in the grip of G.C.S. rarely express doubts at first, but in a classic case of transference, many experience slivers of longing for the Democratic Party. They see Democrats crisscrossing the country generally debating one genuine issue with each another — Governance for Grown-ups Tour.
They see that their entire political strategy consists of repudiating with a smile and a seriousness of purpose everything the pig people hold most dear.
The Pig People long for that sense of purpose again, as they watch as their leaders struggle to fill the headlines again with trivial, divisive trash like flag burning. As their once and future Hate Radio Kingmakers scramble to feed their own fingers through the Might Wurlitzer Swiftboating Woodchipper. Gibbering madmen lashing people inside their own perimeter to the mast of an ideology that has done nothing but fail for 30 years, and then hectoring their fellow “Conservatives” on their lack of fidelity to that ideology as it sinks beneath the waves and the icy waters of political oblivion begins to lap over the deck.
And in their darker moments they begin to wonder “So is this what it has been like to be a Liberal in the age of the Party of God? Trying to reason with crazy people who call you a traitor as they giggle and gut your country?”
As the syndrome progresses, they begin to ask questions about The Party itself:
The Rule of Law Party that impeached a President because “no man is above the law”, and yet laughs off BushCo lies and lawbreaking that have gotten actual Americans actually killed.
The Privacy Party, that now abides illegally spying on millions of Americans.
The Personal Responsibility Party that now pardons traitors, and counsels its underlings to blow off congressional subpoenas.
The Individual Liberty Party, that now openly celebrates torture, murder, secret prisons and the garroting of habeas corpus.
The Fiscal Responsibility Party, that will leave office next year saddling the next Administration with record debts and deficits, and an open financial wound bleeding tax dollars into the Iraqi desert and Dick Cheney’s crony’s pockets for the next 100 year.
These doubts lead G.C.S. sufferers down the path to the question that is the Unholy of the Unholies for Hate-maniacs: How exactly are we going to govern and repair a nation when our leaders are hell-bent on destroying the very idea of citizens using their government as a means to help their fellow citizens?
After we smashed Iraq to bits, what was the fucking plan?
After we clawed and cheated our way into the White House, what was the fucking plan?
After we get our asses sawed off and made into Happy Meals for the Dirty Fucking Hippies in the last election, and we decided the best strategy would be to virtually shut the government down by filibustering everything including potty-breaks, what was supposed to be the fucking plan?
Of course, there was no plan.
There never is a plan; just a crackpot fundy delusion that when government is liquidated, all regulation eliminated, all labor protection vaporized and the Earth turned over to corporations with guns, then history will end and the world will be transformed into a Randite paradise and the pasty, idiot hordes of True Believers will finally get to plant their little peh-pehs somewhere inside of Ann Coulter's lady area.
The victims of G.C.S. struggle against wingtard-myopia, or the inability to see beyond the “Let’s burn it all down and dance on Roosevelt’s filthy Commie ashes!” rhetoric of right-here-right-now. But here’s the fascinating thing: They still believe. They know that the hate-mongering is cancerous. They know their Dear Leader and his minions know it’s cancerous.
But they still share this dream that they can just plain hate and stoopid and Republican Jebus their way to the Promised Land. That after the fury fades and the bill for their rapacious idiocy comes due, reality can still be held at bay by sheer arrogant misanthropy.
They figure that any new president is going to face gigantic obstacles. And that if a Democrat gets in, they can just go back to their natural state of cutting the legs out from beneath anyone who tries to move the country forward, while simultaneously whinging and squealing about how victimized and powerless they are beneath the iron heel of Evil Liberal Gummit.
Those afflicted with G.C.S. are no longer as animated as they were when they were mainlining that pure, uncut, McVeigh-infused, Clinton-hating fury they got hooked on in the 90s.
That Good Shit is no longer available. But its legions of hate-amine damaged junkies – shaking and jonesing for a bump of that sweet DeLay/Gingrich/Limbaugh/Falwell redneck righteousness cocktail – remain.
(A phrase I lifted from somewhere, but can't remember where.)
From “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell:
“What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase - " complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism " - jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid.
For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking.
And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature.
He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front - it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc.”
And that is precisely where 30 years of absolutely tireless, relentless, shameless Conservative lying and slander has left us; with a segment of the population numbed to facts and reason and sensitized to start drooling and creaming with hate at the mention of certain key-words.
Or, as the Waco Kid put it much more succinctly in "Blazing Saddles"
...morons.
In their world, the rules of Wingnut Scattergories never vary and are depressingly easy.
Pick a word that the pig people have been conditioned to fly into a white-hot rage every time they hear.
Pick another part of the Constitution you want to raze.
Repeatedly and hysterically declare that Democrats want #1 to violently ass-rape #2.
This week's Scattergory?
Democrats want to let evil "trial lawyers" help wreck "FISA" so terrorists can destroy Murrica.
Democrats Back Trial Lawyers Over National Security, GOP Says By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor February 18, 2008
(CNSNews.com) - Republicans say House Democratic leaders are putting the interests of trial lawyers ahead of national security by blocking House consideration of a bill that would modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Instead of taking up a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate last week, House Democrats recessed for 12 days on Friday without doing a thing about FISA.
A temporary FISA update measure expired on Saturday, after repeated warnings from President Bush that he would not sign another temporary fix when a permanent solution (the bipartisan Senate bill) was at hand. The House had enough votes to pass the Senate bill, but Democratic leadership refused to bring it to the House floor.
"Our first priority should be protecting our national security and not paying off trial lawyer campaign contributors," House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio wrote on Sunday. "The question now is how much longer are some lawmakers prepared to protect their trial lawyer allies at the expense of our national security?"
Boehner and other Republicans say terrorists are still plotting against the United States, and because House Democrats have blocked a FISA modernization bill, as of Saturday, "our intelligence officials will not have all the tools they need to protect us from an attack."
...
Democrats are balking at retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the government conduct electronic surveillance after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against those companies -- "frivolous and costly lawsuits that would tie up our courts and endanger American lives," Boehner said. Without retroactive immunity to protect them from those lawsuits, the telecommunications companies are reluctant to cooperate with the Bush adminstration's eavesdropping requests.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told Fox News Sunday the telecom companies are understandably nervous: "And the private sector, although [they] willingly helped us in the past, are now saying, 'You can't protect me. Why should I help you?'
First, this whole deal is because tecom companies are whining "Why should I help you?" Really? Well this is an exciting development in law enforcement. Does this mean when the nice man from the NSA shows up at the castle with the warrant and subpoena I can treat it as just another irritating customer service call?
That I can tell him, sorry, but I choose not to "help" you, but you are free to kindly fuck off?
Because that would be seven kinds of awesome.
Second, please note that the Party of Small Government and Personal Liberty has sold it soul so completely that the Official Policy of the GOP is now that the idea of American citizens taking their government to court for secretly and illegally spying on them constitutes merely "frivolous and costly lawsuits" that would somehow "tie up our courts and endanger American lives".
Third, honestly I think our problem is that we're thinking about this fight all wrong and firing waaaay too high.
Boehner and Bush and the SwineVolk that blindly support them are never going to to be lured into a debate about checks and balances and the rule of law in the first place. The remnants on the leadership caste of the Party of God are either outright brownshirts or conscienceless toadies, and the "Fox Rocks!" 27%-ers that will follow them cheerfully into the slaughterhouse are frankly too stupid to comprehend or appreciate what is at stake and what they have already cost us.
In the end, if we want to save what is left of our basic rights and protections from the GOP, we have to move from law and fact-based arguments that sound all preachy and French and elitist to the Pig People...
...and either LOLCat our foundational documents until they are too fucking adorable to be mutilated any further...
"Awwww! Ain't you the cutest little Bill of Rights? Yes you are! Yes you are! We won't let the mean ol' GOP hurt you. No we won't."
Or really go all in, print the thing on "Shroud O' Turin" stationary and start screaming 24/7/365 that anyone trying to tamper with it wants to make Sweet Baby Jebus cry.
The early 21st Century finds American media groaning under the weight of ferociously ignorant, misanthropic white homunculi.
Judging strictly by the product they extrude, these ferociously ignorant, misanthropic white homunculi are paid to lie, hatemonger, toe a strict and clear Pig Person party line, and otherwise shit in their own shoes, call it opinion journalism and scream "First Amendment" whenever anyone suggest that maybe -- just maybe -- they are just plain fucking incompetent and should be cut loose.
To these ferociously ignorant, misanthropic white homunculi the major networks and cable outlets give large sums of munnies. Munnies which, if the major networks and cable outlets were even remotely interested, y'know, actual journalism, could be used to purchase actual journalism for pennies on the dollar.
The steaming, pile formed by these ferociously ignorant, misanthropic white homunculi nearly blots out the sun.
And the fly that squats atop that pile is Glenn Beck -- rubbing his filthy little feet together and giggling over the fact that being emperor of the wingnut imbeciles is literally the only job qualification required to net him a princely living week after week after week.
I usually don’t write much about this moron because after I watched him once I wondered how he had a job in radio let alone got a gig on CNN. I know talkies have a lot of time on their hands to kill, but what the heck is he talking about? Has he looked in the mirror lately?
“If you’re a guy, you can get past it. I don’t think you can as an ugly woman.”
“You’ve got a double cross, because if you’re an ugly woman, you’re probably a progressive as well.”
Do you prefer having your 2008 Presidential Campaign framed like this?
Vote Schlafly/Coulter '08: Or do you just hate women that much?
Or this?
What kind of heartless fucking bigot refuses to get behind Keyes/Ruckus '08?
Or would you rather people put a sock in it already and get back to seriously and intelligently debating Iraq, poverty, the economy, health care, education, global warming, energy, debt, deficit, impeachment, FISA, telcom immunity, or any of a dozen other issues that each have a knife to the throat of our democracy?
Thank you,
Lazlo T. Urdington, Chairman, Department of "Please Grow The Fuck Up"
“Two 'Brothers' and a Stranger” Edition. (About which more later.)
First of all, it’s cold here. Past damn cold. Past fucking cold. My “fucking” (which, in Chicago, is kept like a mezuzah on the doorpost to be activated in case of Scientologists, Girls Scout cookie pushers or Walter Jacobsones), actually froze and fell off.
It’s cold; without looking at weather dot com or anysuch newfangled ARPANET-based deviltry, I’d guess it’s, oh, around 800 degrees below zero here.
‘Course, with da winn-chill it seems a lot coal-er.
Bouts of shivering? Grogginess and muddled thinking? Inability to think and pay attention? Slow, shallow breathing?
Sounds about right.
Alternately, is it cold enough that maybe my brain has started superconducting? Just firing my last, few thoughts and images senselessly ‘round and ‘round?
Then again maybe the Mouse Circus just sucked.
“Fox News Sunday” rolled out the new audio-animatronic "Decider 2008" they’re planning on installing at the Bush Presidential Hooters Library and did some beta testing of it on the air.
(They already got the kinks worked out of the Missus model.)
Decider 2008: I’m one a these fellas don’t wish for what he can’t have.
Decider 2008: I know McCain well. He is a True Conservative. He jerked me off into his lucky Ronald Reagan Tube Socks and washed 'em out in the crick out back here for seven months.
Decider 2008: If McCain is the nominee, he’ll have some convincin’ to do.
Decider 2008: We believe in Teh Freedoms. In war forever. In tax cuts for the rich. The Other Side believes…
Decider 2008: I lookit peoples principles. Lookit their heartses. Not what they do or say, but what they believe.
Decider 2008: Decider 2008 didn’t wanna stomp on Murricans civil liberties any more than anyone. But Decider 2008 understandses These People and Their Evil.
Decider 2008: The NIE sends mixed signals. Just because the Iranians don’t have a “weapons program” and are not a threat, doesn’t means they might not get one someday later on!
Then we pause for a commercial full of soldiers, peril, washed out colors and a whispery narrator saying “Between mission defined…and mission accomplished.”
Ad for the Marines?
The Army?
The Texas Air National Guard?
Nah.
Lockheed Martin.
Message: Don't be a sap and waste your blood on the battlefield. That's what poor people and brown people are for. Instead, become the Warrior Poet of greater investor ROI, young wingnut patriot!
Decider 2008: Republicans love Murrica and Democrats want to raise your taxes, take away your freedomses and surrender to the terrorists.
Oh how I do hope this is all really just some half-remembered Randite horseshit superconducting thought my imagination and not our nation's actual political narrative.
On “Face the Nation”
It's Mikeabee!
Bob Schieffer: But the maths, Mikeabee. The maths say you’re d—o—o—m—e—d.
Mikeabee: I’m prepared to stay in until someone has 1,191 delegates, or my followers tell me to get off the stage.
Schieffer: Romney got out because he said to stay in would aid The Terrorists!
driftglass: You know, it must have hurt Mittens to have his ass handed to him by the rabble, instead of by his team of ISO 9000-certified ass-handlers.
Mikeabee: I don’t think our party is damaged by having an election.
driftglass: Good one, Mikeabee.
Mikeabee: St. John and I are running the two most civil campaigns going, whereas the Democrats are eatin’ each other alive.
On “Meet the Press”
It's Mikeabee II!
Mikeabee: We believe competition breeds excellence and lack of it breeds mediocrity. And if we as a party can’t stand up and have debates about the issues of the day, then we are not ready to lead. And I’m ready to lead.
Russert: Since you refuse to say bad things about St. John McCain, I will now read a long tirade by James Dobson –--who endorsed you -- and then ask you if you agree with him. Hmmm.
Mikeabee: Fuck you, you lazy turd. How about you pry your scabmeat ass out of your million-dollar throne once in awhile and do some actual reporting.
Russert: I will now read a long “wahwahwah!” by Rush Limbaugh and then ask you if to repudiate him. Hmmm.
Mikeabee: I stand by my previous lazy-turd comments.
Russert: I will now read the long version of the CV of a nutjob teevee preacher, and then read the charges of financial impropriety, then play a tape by him, and then ask you if his support of you means you should be keel-hauled. Hmmm.
Mikeabee: Lazy. Turd.
Russert: But you said you would stand with him? Doesn’t that mean you are interfering in a Congressional Investigation? Doesn’t that make you a filthy, dirty, co-conspirator?
Mikeabee: Lazlo T. Urdington.
Russert: Here is video of your previous stand on a nation-wide ban on smoking. And here is where you Changed!Your!Mind!
Mikeabee: Zzzzzzzz.
Russert: Here is your stand on a the question of holding a National Pancake Day. And yet here is you are Changing!Your!Mind!Again!
Russert: How can the Murrican people have any confidence that you are not some scurrilous douchebag if you let facts and changing circumstances change your mind on such core issues as smoking bans and National Pancake Day?
Mikeabee: Y'know, whether it’s 6,000 years old or four billion years old, you are the Laziest. Fucking. Turd. On. This. Earth.
On “This Week”
Democrats talking calmly about the mechanics of elections and campaigning.
Then indicted criminal and humiliated failure Tom DeLay tells St. John McCain that he’d damned well better kiss his ass.
DeLay: We are a dispirited Party that is trying to rebuild itself as a Conservative Movement...
...out of the shards, shitbricks and owls pellets…
...left over by 30 years of letting lunatic Conservatives like me running things.
On ”The Chris Matthews Show”, in addition to the ritual rifling of Hillary Clinton’s sock drawer (Put that down, Chris. And, no, it’s strictly for backaches you perv!) Matthews actually raises an interesting question. One that E.J Dionne and others have asked in one form or another over the last several days.
Specifically, given the absolutely unhinged attacks St. John McCain has been getting from the CPAC mobsters, are the Lords of Wingnuttia playing to lose?
From “The Color of Money”:
Vince: Don't worry. I'm not going to lose often.
Eddie Felson: Yes, you will. That's what I'll teach you. Sometimes if you lose, you win.
Later Eddie asks Vince:
“Did you ever hear of a hustle called Two Brothers and a Stranger?”
Which is this.
(Which, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I dropped in here at least as much because it was shot in the back pool room of a lovely little joint on Clark called “The Gingerman” that I used to haunt, as for its relevance to the overall narrative.)
It’s an interesting question.
Consider that the Modern Conservative brain has only two settings.
Then consider that the Neocon Inflammotainment Opinion Factory (Fox News, Regnery Press, Clear Channel Radio, etc ad nauseum) is the source of all of that Very Big Cake that lets Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Weiner, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Lords of Wingnuttia avoid honest work.
And the Neocon Inflammotainment Opinion Factory produces only one product: Hate.
There are no policy discussion about the implication of this or that, or the havoc their slash and burn policies wreak on our nation and it’s citizens.
Especially on our most vulnerable citizens.
So because Modern Conservatives live and die by the “Fuck Everyone But Me” creed and do not give a shit about actually governing this country or taking care of its citizens, discussion is pretty much limited to “Evil Liberal Bad! Evil Gummint Bad! Hulk Smash!”
Which, for several years, was all a lot of jolly, profitable and penalty-free fun for the pig people; they got to kill a lot of brown people, run up a multi-trillion-dollar tab at the bar, trash the planet, tell the world to fuck off, and blame Dirty Fucking Hippies for their every ache and pimple.
But the Age of keeping the consequences of their folly at bay with nothing but fear and ignorance is ending. Because the string of epic failures and catastrophes of the last seven years now streaking in and lighting up the sky each come with an irrefutably Conservative pedigree.
And so it has gotten harder and harder for the Neocon Inflammotainment Opinion Factory to continue to sell it’s feculent "Big Liberal Gummint is to Blame!" potions to anyone but the hardcore, brain-dead 27%-ers.
It is self-evident that their disastrous ideology and the traitors, liars and looters of their leadership caste cannot clean up the shitmire they created, just as it is equally self-evident that they cannot possibly admit this in public, cannot change course, and cannot overthrow Queen Bitch Causality.
So to save their franchise, they desperately need someone on whom the can double-down on the only product they ever really had; wretched, unhinged hate.
They need need need Liberals like the National Socialist Party of Germany needed Jews.
They need someone to piss on.
Someone to blame.
And that is only possible with a Democrat in the White House.
By the merciless laws of commerce, for the Lords of Wingnuttia, winning means losing.
Whereas losing -- especially to someone with the Magical Wingtard Conjure Name of “Clinton” -- would be a license to print money.
Since the simpletons of the Punditocracy are apparently incapable of thinking outside of the fucking horse race metaphor, I think the least we can do can is make them metaphorize the right one.
It was 70 years ago and one for the ages...
Seabiscuit vs. War Admiral: The Match of the Century (cruelly snipped and cherry-picked from wikipedia to serve my evil ends):
On November 1, 1938, Seabiscuit met War Admiral in what was dubbed the "Match of the Century".
Turnout and national interest were record-breaking...
"The Pimlico Race Course, from the grandstands to the infield, was jammed solid with fans. Trains were run from all over the country to bring fans to the race, and the estimated 40,000 at the track were joined by some 40 million listening on the radio."
The touts heavily favored the tested and experienced War Admiral over the cagey, gangly newcomer...
"War Admiral was the prohibitive favorite (1-4 with most bookmakers) and a near unanimous selection of the writers and tipsters, excluding the California faithful."
The strategies were set...
"Head-to-head races favor fast starters, and War Admiral's speed from the gate was the stuff of legend. Seabiscuit, on the other hand, was a pace stalker, skilled at holding with the pack before destroying the field with late acceleration. From the scheduled walk up start, few gave him a chance to head War Admiral into the first turn."
And to nearly everyone’s surprise...
"When the bell rang, Seabiscuit ran away from the Triple Crown champion. Despite being drawn on outside, Woolf led by over a length after just 20 seconds. Halfway down the backstretch, War Admiral started to cut into the lead, gradually pulling level with Seabiscuit, and then slightly ahead. Following advice he had received from Pollard, Woolf had eased up on Seabiscuit, allowing his horse to see his rival, and then asked for more effort."
And then, history was made:
Two hundred yards from the wire, Seabiscuit pulled away again and continued to extend his lead over the closing stretch, finally winning by four clear lengths.
People are willing to go to war for scraps of cloth called flags.
They are willing to die for scraps of wood called a cross.
And 70 years ago as their world fell apart, Americans were willing to give their hearts away to a horse.
A horse.
Because people are flesh and blood, not circuits and spreadsheets, and we need hope and inspiration every bit as much as we need 10-point programs.
Which unfortunately makes us go weak in the knees for saints and charlatans alike.
Maybe this not the way it should be, but it is the way it is, and as proud members of the Reality Based community we need to accommodate ourselves to the fact that human nature is a force every bit as real and formidable as gravity.
If you do not understand this, you will never understand politics.
Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky, of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you.
Millions of Americans — and friends in many other countries — have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties.
How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.
Let me tell you my thoughts.
With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. ...
But wait! Was it over when Germany bombed Pearl Harbor?
... But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. ...
February 8, 2008 ... Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties — just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican. ...
But wait! Maybe it's just sorta over-ish, but not really, for-real over...
February 8, 2008 ... I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen. ...
Hmm.
It is a puzzlement.
Well, a puzzlement for me perhaps.
However, there is at least one young patriot for whom the direction is clear.
An 18-year-old Republican's enthusiasm for presidential hopeful Ron Paul could cost him more than $550.
Cody Hauer has been cited four times in one week for displaying a 13-inch-by-40-inch "Ron Paul Revolution" decal in the rear window of his car. The problem is that such decals are illegal if they obstruct the driver's view.
"I support Ron Paul, the city police department doesn't," he said. "They gave me a DWR -- driving while Republican."
Owatonna Police Chief Shaun LaDue said his officers followed the law.
"The political aspect of this doesn't enter into the equation at all," LaDue said. "It's very clear in state statute that you cannot have anything that obstructs the driver's vision."
Besides being in violation of the law, Hauer showed disrespect toward the officer during each traffic stop, LaDue said. "He talks himself into a citation each time," LaDue said.
Hauer said he'll argue in court that the law violates his First Amendment right to free speech.
"To be honest, I'm probably not going to win, but I'm going to go down fighting," he said. ...
Fight on, young hero. Fight on!
In earnest, I find some of what Ron Paul has to say about the nature of government, the catastrophe that the Neocons have made of American foreign policy, the economy, the Constitution and our international reputation admirable. As is his willingness to stay and try and save a Party he once believed in.
And while I find many of his follower's Randite-inflected beliefs alternately heartless and dangerously naive, I admire their zeal and cohesion and ability to raise funds to keep their cause alive almost out of thin air.
Someday soon -- as the bitter, crashing end of this Republican Party's long, massive and public string of epic failures, high crimes and casual treason is capped off by an historic ass-whipping -- some group of people are going to find themselves in the once-in-a-generation position to at least partially flush out the Augean Stables that is the current Wingnut Party of God remake it into something else.
And Ron Paul's electric boogaloo moves all point to the actions of a man positioning himself to have a chip in that game.
Now, it's obvious that everyone believes a stimulus bill of some kind is a good idea (the House bill passed nearly unanimously), so it's not as if anyone voted against the Senate version because they believe it's a fundamentally flawed concept. And since the last month's worth of economic news has been uniformly bad, no one who believes in stimulus has any real reason to balk at fattening up the package a bit. This wasn't a principled stand about letting the economy work things out on its own.
But what happened? Republicans filibustered the larger bill and then sustained the filibuster on virtually a party line vote. Why? Because it had a few billion dollars of spending targeted at Democratic priorities. There's nothing more to it.
The moral of the story is this: Republicans have no intention of ever working with Democrats on anything remotely like a bipartisan basis. Even on something as trivial as this, they filibustered and won. They will do the same thing next year no matter who's president. They will do it on every single bill, no matter how minor. They will never stop obstructing. Period. Presidential hopefuls, take note.
If you look at the race so far, it's clear that it's no easy task to even unify the Democratic Party. And as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, they'll never stop- obstructing. They are doing this now simply because they can. (After all, they could pass a popular bill like this and let the president veto it if they wanted to play at bipartisanship for the sake of the public who everyone claims is desperate for it.) ...
And they will make damned sure the villagers proclaim the Democrats to be weak and loathsome losers whose refusal to reach across the aisle is failing all Americans. I wish I knew how either Clinton or Obama planned to deal with this, but I confess I haven't the vaguest idea.
...
Because they truly, genuinely despise this country and want more than anything else to destroy it's government, the GOP never once hesitates to hold the dispossessed, the elderly, the sick, the weak, the homeless, the veteran, the working poor, the middle class, race, gender, nationality, religion, school children, farmers, soldiers or the handicapped hostage to their feudalist agenda.
Never let anything stand in their way of accomplishing politically what Timothy McVeigh began demolitionally.
However their massive failure in Iraq coupled with their cowardice and contempt for the military has made it extremely difficult for them to continue to hide their fascist agenda behind the troops, which is why they're now scampering for cover under the sheltering bower of "Fiscal Responsibility".
Which is even more laughable.
The same people who, when they were in power, pissed away untold tens of billions in failed or non-existent reconstruction projects sole-sourced to Party loyalists? Who shipped $12 billion dollar of your tax dollars in untraceable shrink-wrapped pallets to the middle of a war zone so it could be used for "walking around money"?
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish
Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone
David Pallister
Thursday February 8, 2007
The Guardian
The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.
Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"
The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.
"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.
"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."
The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."
The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."
...
The people who had absolutely no problem just plain heaving bales of cash out of airplanes and shoveling it into the pockets of Dick Cheney's cronies as long as the GOP-controlled Congress could guarantee that no one was paying any attention are now the same fuckers who have suddenly gone all green visors and sleeve garters?
Who have had a Party-wide, spontaneous Come to Jesus moment...but only when it when it comes to pinching pennies for the neediest among us?
Conservatives, a word of advice: Stick to rolling on the floor and screaming incoherently.
