Monday, February 11, 2008

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down



“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.

Which may explain why the Sunday Talks seemed so especially “through a glass stupidly” to me.

Maybe hypothermia is stalking me?

Let’s see…
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 sssssss…eee…sss…eee

(Chris Wallace reseats Decider 2008’s mendacity chip.)

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.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drift. I thank you, and Sebastian Donleavy thanks you. :o)

"Bled of his mind; rid of his senses; he was the sanest man alive."

How does it feel, my friend? :0)

Grazie. Mille Grazie. :o)

Anonymous said...

Great, one Irishman Southener to some whacked out ChiTown loon, praisin the whatever.

I havent' a CLUE what you two just said, but I think I'm proud to have read it. *G*

Were you two co-joined at birth? *G*

Anonymous said...

i thinks he be referring to The Ginger Man

Anonymous said...

Anon; I was. :o)

It was a funny, poignant, cult novel of about...whoa!...40-50 years ago?, about a rougueish wannabe writer of an Irishman, who was pretty much of a fuckup, but with a zest for fucking up that was charming, to say the least.
:o)

That line's stuck with me all these years. :o)

Fran / Blue Gal said...

We seriously need to hear more from Mister Lazlo T. Urdington. He's really special.

Anonymous said...

I feel seriously entertained.

Angel Of Mercy said...

"Lazlo T. Urdington?!?"

Mr. Glass, I laughed until I almost fell out of the chair...

Anonymous said...

Dammit Drifty, that's the third keyboard I'm gonna have to replace this month! You sir, are on a roll.

Did you ever think of having Mr. Urdington as a regular co-blogger?

Anonymous said...

Huh, Drifty needs to hire Tanbark. Course, I know him, and I'm a bit jaded his ways, as I am Drifty's.

Drifty, the links from 30's Germany to USA now, are huge, and of course many progressives have been doing this since long ago.

Glad yer on the dime of it all.

How will any of us survive?

And when will this USA break up like USSR did?

The patterns are identical. And we done overspent, it's all inevitable, ya think?

Some days, I wanna give us all 40 years more, some days, I wanna call it done and fractured in less than 3 years.

Discuss. *G*

Lex Alexander said...

Yeah, Clinton will gin up the real money and froth, but it's going to be a right-wing feeding frenzy whether the Democratic winner is Clinton, Obama or Republican turncoat Lazlo T. Urdington.

Anonymous said...

etymology of "Clinton" - settlement on the summit
jfi