After he left office, Carter built houses for poor people, wrote books and only occasionally transits back into the turbulent orbit of la vida politica.
Ike, like a good soldier, faded away.
Truman shed the White House like a man trading in his prison stripes for a good suit and a cold beer, returned to Missouri and got behind a plow.
Johnson grew his hair hippy-long and was rumored to spark up the occasional reefer cigarette.
Roosevelt went out toes-up, having had the good sense to die in office after locking up the title of longest serving President in history, while Kennedy was shot out of the saddle and into tragic legend.
Reagan doddered around the ranch ordering cacti to invade Granada before they finally brought him indoors for good.
Bush and Ford played a lot of golf.
And Nixon lurked in the ex-President parking lot, luring children into his van with sour balls and then forcing them to listen to him explain why he was set up.
But the modern Democrats' Great One won't stay off the fucking stage.
Because Clinton wasn't just some guy.
He was Destiny's Bright Young Man.
The Phenom.
The Natural.
The youngest governor in the country (beating out Governor Fetus O'Preemee of Idaho by a full three years) and (as he used to joke) the youngest ex-governor in history.
The Rhodes Scholar who sat on the roof at Oxford, not inhaling, creating his castles in the sky by appointing imaginary HUD Secretaries to build them.
The Comeback Kid.
But the years and the easy pace of high-dollar speeches and non-controversial causes (where of course Mr. Former President Sir can haz any fucking Cheezburger he wants) slowed his miraculous political metabolism until it could no longer outrace his vast, gobbly appetites.
His dogma finally overtook his karma, turning the New Democratic Party's hot-rodding, hound-dogging, enfant terrible into the cranky old guy across the street who wants you to turn your damn music down.
Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must 'kiss my ass' for his support
By Tim Shipman in Washington and Philip Sherwell in New York
Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama's victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support.
Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president's future campaign role is a "sticking point" in peace talks with Mrs Clinton's aides.
The Telegraph has learned that the former president's rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.
A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.
A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.
Mr Clinton last week issued a tepid statement, through a spokesman, in which he said he "is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States ".
...
It has long been known that Mr Clinton is angry at the way his own reputation was tarnished during the primary battle when several of his comments were interpreted as racist.
But his lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: "He's been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn't. I've spoken to a couple of people who he's been in contact with and he is mad as hell.
"He's saying he's not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote kiss my ass close quote, if he wants his support.
"You can't talk like that about Obama - he's the nominee of your party, not some house boy you can order around..."
Another Democrat said that despite polls showing Mr Obama with a healthy lead over Republican John McCain, Mr Clinton doesn't think he can win.
...
"Bill Clinton knows the party will unite behind Obama, but he is telling people he doesn't believe Obama can win round voting groups, especially working-class whites, in the swing states," the strategist said.
"He just doesn't think Obama will be able to connect with the voters he needs."
Joe Klein, the author of Primary Colours, a fictionalised account of Mr Clinton's 1992 election, who has known the former president for 20 years, said he also heard that he was "very, very bitter", from people who have spoken with him.
"It's time for him to get over it or go off and do his charitable work. He knows the rules of the road. What's going on now is kind of strange. I think his behaviour is really, really shocking."
In which Ralph Nader (appearing on “This Week” ) laps Pat Paulsen as the most ridiculously comical perennial Presidential candidate in modern history, as he and Bob Barr each sorta launch their bids for Preznit.
And I am sure that they and their literally dozens of steadfast followers will lend every bit as much trenchancy and relevance to the political process as
we have come to expect from Naderites and Libertarians over the last thousand years. (So very Not Safe for Work)
On “Face the Nation”
Holy Joe Lieberman said very many wrong, foolish, outrageous and self-contradictory things:
Obama is a pussy.
Obama would have turned over Iraq to Iran and al Qaeda.
There would have been genocide.
And while McSame and I disagree on a woman’s right to choose, on the important issues we're tight as ticks.
Iran is beaten and broken…thanks to McSame.
And yet we need to keep troops in Iraq right up until the Rapture, because while it is beaten and broken, Iran is also a fierce and looming threat, forever on the verge of triggering the Apocalypse….but for McSame.
Gibberish to the untrained ear, but, you must understand it’s very simple dialectics.
One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions.
In other words, another week of Holy Joe playing “Photojournalist”
to McSame’s Colonel Kurtz.
Later, David S. Anger Sanger says: Sure, the North Koreans blowed up their cooling tower real good, but they got away with enough nuclear material to make 5-6 weapons. North Korea has emerged from the Bush Administration with a far more powerful nuclear arsenal than they had at the beginning of Dubya’s Reign of Error, and Dubya’s “answer” to this fuckup is the same as his answer to all of his other fuckups; walk away from it and let someone else clean it up
Very different that the Wingtard Battle Cry of “We will bury you!” that we screamed at everyone we disagreed with in 2002.
Still there is a process in place now, and it goes to show you what you can get sometimes when you , y’know, actually talk to your enemies.
On “This Week” Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) and Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) nuzzled each other’s arm pits and bit each other's ankles.
While on "The Roundtable", Arianna Huffington, Byron York, Hugh Hewitt (Talk Radio guy AND blogger) and Katrina vanden Heuvel made much chin-music.
On the subject of immigration, Hugh Hewitt shaves himself head-to-toe, slathers on $300 Euros-wroth of that dark, bitter, GOP crude and manages to slither the specter of Iranian nukes into the discussion.
Katrina vanden Heuvel picks up that ball and runs with it:
John McCain wants to make this election about National Security so fucking badly that in his interview in Fortune Magazine (“Conspicuous Consumption Porn for those wealthy enough to buy hookers for their hookers.”) when asked about the “gravest threat to our economy” he didn’t talk about energy, trade, anything.
Said it’s Islamo-terrorism.
Got that: the greatest threat to the economy is the bogeyman who, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, is the Greatest Threat to Western Civilization…
…and on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, is, well,
meh?
Hugh Hewitt also thinks that near the top of that short list of vital issue that keep Americans up and tormented are “marginal tax rates”.
If you are flying by our melting planet and want to know why the Last Superpower is so deeply fucked up, all you really need to know is this exchange, wherein Arianna Huffington does the unspeakable by quoting Hugh Hewitt…to Hugh Hewitt.
Huffington: It isn’t just Charlie Black who is spouting off ridiculous, provocative nonsense. This week, Hugh Hewitt – this pale, privileged, crybaby motherfucker sitting right across from me – said that he was trying to get tickets to a game between to USC and Ohio. He said (direct quote):
“...it's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama.”
Hewitt: That’s the problem with you Leftie Extremists. You distort everything.
Huffington: Hey, Asshat; these are your Own! Fucking! Words!
Hewitt: Do you believe we live in a dangerous world, Arianna?
Huffington: Of course.
Hugh Hewitt: Well, then…
Hugh Hewitt was, is and shall even be a talent-free hack.
Hewitt -- and a hundred more little wind-up Conservative Truckle-Me-Elmos just like him – makes a fabulous living selling the pig people those ridiculous, seditious lies that prop up their degenerate worldview and makes them feel smug and superiors.
Of course, when they get cause outside of the Shield Wall of Hate Radio, their faces ball up like ferrets biting into a dung-covered lemon, the give the “Bush giggle”, and explain that they were being “ironic”.
That the Left doesn’t understand “humor”.
Instead of exercising his First Amendment rights where his talent would naturally land him if we actually lived in a competency-based meritocracy -- namely ranting on a street corner, being avoided by strangers -- Hugh Hewitt is sitting in front of a camera on one of the most influential Mouse Circus teevee shows in America.
Spouting horseshit.
Because we do not live in a competency-based meritocracy. In fact, the Right -- for all its sloppy, dimwitted tongue-kissing of Ayn Rand and stiffy-popping dreams an American landscape ruled by guns and Darwin -- is terrified of the concept of a competency-based meritocracy.
Which they pronounce “elitism”.
Under such pressures, the 27%-ers would vanish from the Earth leaving nothing behind but a slag-heap of scorched mullets, Toby Keith CDs and unanswered letters from the US Army begging them to join up and actually fight in their Greatest War Evah. And so, thanks to them, instead of drinking himself into a coma in a Midland trailer park, Hugh Hewitt’s pal and 27%-er Superhero -- George Dubya Bush -- was anointed and then re-anointed President of the Last Superpower.
Having spent the last seven years serially violating the Constitution and his oath of office, selling out America to benefit his corporate sponsors, and doing more long-term damage to America than any terrorist could dream of, instead of being hauled out of the White House by federal marshals root and branch, Hugh Hewitt’s President will leave his Presidency the same way came to it: a smirking, ignorant, vicious fraud who will stagger off into history, remembered by 70% of Americans and 99.999999% of the rest of humanity as an epic disaster…
…and by the 27%-ers as the Greatest Preznit in History.
And Hugh Hewitt thinks what America needs is four more years of that.
On "Meet the Press" – Govenator Ahnuld made an Ahnuld-like plea for dee pozt-pahtizansheep and such like dat.
By which he means:
My Party spent 30 years lying, cheating, and clawing our way to power and calling anyone who stood in our way a traitor.
To sieze power we methodically annihilated the very idea of political comity in America, and when we were at the peak of Gingrich-fever, we laughing at anyone who suggested that compromise was a virtue.
And once we achieved our goal of running every branch of government, we proceeded to destroy everything we touched. We mocked the dead and dying of New Orleans. Broke whole countries. Bankrupted the nation enriching a handful of plutocrats. Pissed away an international reputation it took fifty years of skill and patience to construct.
And now that we are falling into the abyss we created – now that all the consequence the hated Dirty Fucking Hippies warned us about are coming to pass – we’d like to, uh, move past partisanship and, uh, all get along.
OK?
No. Not OK.
In fact, Fuck. That.
I am perfectly happy to welcome any apostate Republican who is willing to beg forgiveness for being a fucking tool, and who will work as hard to bring the Bush Crime Family to book as he or she was willing to work to impeach Bill Clinton for trivia.
Other than that, I believe Conservatism is a disease. One that almost killed this country.
And it needs to be treated as such.
Later, Tom Brokaw notes that there has been some scurrilous stuff out on the blogospheres about Barack Hussein Mao Tse Stalin Obama.
Proving yet again that you just can’t sneak nuthin’ past Brokaw.
Whatever path they travel -- Rapture Road or Bigot Boulevard -- a huge number of wingtards not only believe that the United States will come into its ultimate destiny in some all-out, Hobbsean slaughterfest, but that this denouement is a good thing.
A righteous, Christian thing.
That with the exception of 1/2 of the 2nd Amendment, our most basic rights are as trivial and irrelevant to survival in the Mad Max future of their dearest hydroencephalic wet dreams as snuff boxes and lace cuffs.
And so an amendment drafted to allow a fledging nation to muster up a militia of smooth-bore, muzzle-loaded riflemen at a time when the graves of American killed by a hated Occupier were still fresh...is now affirmed by the Bush Family "Originalist" Court to mean that any mouthbreather with tiny penis issues can wield an arsenal that could have singlehandedly sunk the entire 18th century British Navy.
Meanwhile, right down the street, our most fundamental rights to privacy are traded away for votes like baseball cards and, under a sinister bargain struck between the leaders of the Party of Darkness and the Party of Weakness, absolution will be granted to the Peeping Telcoms before a single trial has even been held, or a single word of testimony has been taken under oath.
A crime has been committed here.
A crime against our Constitution.
A crime whose seriousness and scale dwarfs the offenses that drove Nixon to resign, and yet a crime that fades into the crowd when considered alongside all of those other acts of barbarism and betrayal that have been the hallmark of Conservative rule in America.
But rather that simply doing their fucking jobs -- to protect and defend the Constitution -- our lawmakers have decided instead to rewrite the rules to retroactively let our domestic enemies off the hook. Rather than performing their first and most sacred duty, they have decided instead to squat down and shit a big, fat, steaming load of cowardice and complicity all over the graves of every patriot who ever laid down his or her life to defend our liberties.
It is that simple.
Perhaps one could reasonably argue that grants of immunity would make sense in a Truth and Reconciliation context where, after great harm had been done to the nation by its leaders, those leaders were deposed and coaxed out of their bunkers and gated estates by a simple quid pro quo: tell the whole, unvarnished truth about what you and others did to our country -- in secret and under the color of official authority -- and we will permit you to return to the society of civil humans.
But no such bargain was struck here.
Instead of immunity being used during the course of hearings as a lever to serve the truth, it is instead being used as a lifeboat to protect traitors and obstruct their treachery from public view.
And where have we heard this all before? This nexus of propaganda, an illegal war secretly ginned up by Conservative fanatics, the invocation of national security and executive privilege to cover it up, repeated, breathtaking violations of the Constitution and the rule of law by those same ‘Murrica-luvin pig-people, and Presidential pardons all around when they all get caught with their treasonous asses hanging out?
Though Iran-contra ranked as the most insidious scam of the mud-spattered '80s, not one of the eight convicted offenders has spent a night in jail. Last week a court ruling made it likely that the two key culprits, Oliver North and John Poindexter, would also see their records scrubbed clean in legal terms. Further, the decision may force Congress to choose between , spectacular public hearings and criminal prosecutions in future scandals.
… For Walsh, a lifelong Republican who shared the foreign policy views of the Reagan administration, the Iran-contra experience was a life-changing one, as his investigation penetrated one wall of lies only to be confronted with another and another -- and not just lies from Oliver North and his cohorts but lies from nearly every senior administration official who spoke with investigators.
… Three years later, that immunity came back to haunt Walsh's hard-won convictions of North and Poindexter. Conservative judges on the federal appeals court, particularly Reagan loyalists Laurence Silberman and David Sentelle, exploited the immunity opening to reverse North's conviction. Sentelle, a protege of Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., also joined in the decision to wipe out Poindexter's conviction. [Since then, Sentelle has taken over the three-judge panel which selects independent counsels.]
… The conservative Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page fired near-daily barrages at Walsh often over trivial matters, such as first-class air fare and room-service meals. Key columnists and editorial writers for The Washington Post and The New York Times -- along with television pundits David Brinkley and Christopher Matthews -- joined in the Walsh bashings. Walsh was mocked as a modern-day Captain Ahab.
… More seriously, the congressional and media attacks effectively limited Walsh's ability to pursue what appeared to be other false statements by senior administration officials. Those perjury inquiries could have unraveled other major national-security mysteries of the 1980s and helped correct the history of the era. But Walsh could not overcome the pack-like hostility of official Washington.
…
And, in the end, that unholy alliance of media and power, helped a Republican cabal of degenerates and True Believers who raped the shit out of Constitution make a clean getaway:
But the cover-up likely could not have worked if the other institutions of Washington -- Congress, the courts and the press -- had not helped. Those institutions aided and abetted the White House both directly, through decisions that undermined the cases or reversed convictions, or indirectly, through incessant heckling of Walsh's investigators over trivial complaints.
And, in the end, as we watched the Conservative traitors drive away in limousines, laughing at our quaint belief in the Rule of Law, we swore – we swore! – we would never let it happen again.
Obama, McCain Debate Via Twitter: How To Follow Along Peter Kafka | June 20, 2008
Want to know what Barack Obama thinks about net neutrality? John McCain's views on white space spectrum? Good luck learning about that during any of this fall's official debates. But we're reasonably sure these and other issues will come up via a semi-formal debate the two campaigns are starting up today -- via Twitter.
Here are the pretty loose ground rules for the event, organized by Andrew Rasiej's Personal Democracy Forum: Sometime today, moderator Ana Marie Cox will start lobbing questions to two officially sanctioned stand-ins for the rival campaigns -- Mike Nelson, who's advising the Obama campaign on tech issues, and Liz Mair, online communcations director for the Republican National Committee.
The debate is supposed to focus exclusively on tech, so if you're looking for arguments about Iraq or campaign financing, you're going to be disappointed. But since it's completely in the hands of Ana Marie, best known as the original Wonkette, we're betting it's going to be quite lively. …
Lively?
I dunno.
Senator Obama’s overall campaign, staff of evildoers and Twitter page, all seem to suggest a genuine grasp of technology and its implications.
Whereas Commodore McSame’s seems a trifle, um, Dossy.
-- where Aaron Sorkin takes story notes from Franklin Roosevelt and Ben Franklin on the Way Things Shoulda Oughta Be -- the back-channel staff people working for Senators Obama and Clinton suddenly see a mutually advantageous way for their Senators to team up which would also;
Make history...
Unify the Party...
Reframe the national security debate live, on-camera, without interruption and in a medium they would control...
Give each of them virtually unlimited free publicity for them to be able to talk about what they want, for as long as they want...
Give them a joint, "Sister Souljah" moment where they can use their unique pulpit to discipline the goofballs in their own Party...
...all while actually -- gasp! -- doing the right thing.
It happens when Senator Clinton rises in opposition to the FISA bill unpacks a lunch, and lets people know she’s gonna be at this for awhile.
She speaks eloquently on the subject of the Constitution, the rule of law, and how appalled she is that members of her party let themselves be scared and bullied into trading away the basic rights of American citizens in a way that both makes them look weak and stupid, and hands a victory to the greatest domestic enemy the Constitution has had in living memory: the Bush/McCain GOP.
At around the four-hour mark she yields to a question from Senator Obama the question, he makes clear
(in a direct lift from “The Stackhouse Filibuster”)
is in “22 parts” and might take a while, so perhaps the Senator from New York would like to take a break and have a shot of Crown Royale?
Just another day of smart Democrats beating vile Republicans and Centrist meatheads like that poor, tired, rented mule.
We would love to sell out our Party and oaths of office in exchange for being dick-slapped in front of America by the most unpopular man in the world!
A Liberal walks into a bar --
No, wait. Make that...
10,000 Liberals walk into 10,000 bars.
They announce loudly, "I’d like to buy the House a Fourth Amendment."
The patrons, bar flies, pole dancers, pool players, happy hour chuggers, Ladies Night mojito sippers all turn around and in one voice ask: "Wuzza Fourth Amendment?"
There is no punchline.
Your Fourth Amendment reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
"No matter how often the opposition calls this bill a ‘compromise,’ it is not a meaningful compromise, except of our constitutional rights. The bill allows for mass, untargeted and unwarranted surveillance of all communications coming in to and out of the United States. The courts’ role is superficial at best, as the government can continue spying on our communications even after the FISA court has objected. Democratic leaders turned what should have been an easy FISA fix into the wholesale giveaway of our Fourth Amendment rights.
"More than two years after the president’s domestic spying was revealed in the pages of the New York Times, Congress’ fury and shock has dissipated to an obedient whimper. After scrambling for years to cover their tracks, the phone companies and the administration are almost there. This immunity provision will effectively destroy Americans’ chance to have their deserved day in court and will kill any possibility of learning the extent of the administration’s lawless actions. The House should be ashamed of itself. The fate of the Fourth Amendment is now in the Senate’s hands. We can only hope senators will show more courage than their colleagues in the House."
The Fourth Amendment is 54 words that our ancestors fought and died for.
But they are also 54 words that won't get you laid, won't score you that Big Promotion you've been gunning for, and won't make it possible to drive your family to the Dells this year without taking out a 2nd mortgage to cover gas.
Which is why these people believe they can feed it into the shredder without most people noticing or caring.
But some people notice.
Some people notice that, in less than two years, Nancy Pelosi has proven herself to be a complete failure as a Leader and as a Democrat.
Some people have noticed that although Democrats rose to power on the strength of three, simple propositions being embraced by the majority of Americans --
1. The President of the United States had lied us into an illegal war from which we needed to extract ourselves as quickly as could be safely managed.
2. For reasons of profit and politics, the President of the United States was using every means at his disposal to undermine the rule of law in America and had to be stopped.
3. In pursuing his war and his attempted destruction of the Constitution, the President of the United States had committed specific, High Crimes for which the constitutional remedy is impeachment.
-- in her 1.5 years as Speaker of the People's House, Pelosi has not moved us one millimeter closer to ending Bush’s Iraqi fiasco, has “taken impeachment off the table”, and today has once again show herself to be completely captive to moneyed, anti-American interests and utterly unwilling to uphold her oath to protect us from a criminal and malevolent Administration.
Of course all of that is on one side.
On the other side, Nancy Pelosi is not the Speaker of the House.
It is simply that, any words on the subject of Iraq from Thomas Friedman other than a hand-written note reading "I am so, so, so, so fucking sorry" that he pins to his lapel as he walks into the sea come freighted with so much history, stupidity, blood and loss that the thought of him daring to touch the subject again makes me terribly sad.
And the thought of this dribbler collecting a pay check for doing it makes me physically ill.
Gimme your Soul, defend my Legacy and I shall make you Preznit!
During this political season, John McSame has been under Dubya’s arm oftener than a pit-stain and on-hand with a soothing POTUS reach-around more reliably than Condi Rice.
And why?
Because John McCain really wants to be Preznit.
Really, really, really, really wants to be Preznit.
Unfortunately, unlike his common-law helpmate Joe Lieberman, Senator McSame does not have the luxury of tinkering together a brand-new, one-state, one-time-only political party and then running as its sole candidate.
He is a Republican. If fact, he is now The Republican. Which means he needs the 27%-ers in direct proportion to how much he wants the Big Chair up on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Which is why he, for all the winky, nudgy, faltering denials, McSame absolutely requires the help of the man who holds his political leash -- Commander Guy -- and Commander Guy’s pet character assassin, Don Karleone.
Report: Rove Talks "Fairly Regularly" With McCain Camp; Getting Six Figures From Freedom's Watch
In a new National Journal article (not available online), writer Peter Stone dives deep into the conservative establishment and gets campaign staffers, movement operatives, and the ubiquitous "strategists" and "consultants" to talk about Karl Rove's current role in presidential politics. The takeaway? Rove is back. In fact, he probably never left. The campaign that is trying to prove it's not a second coming of George W. Bush is using the President's former chief strategist on a regular basis.
Stone says not to be fooled by Rove's hesitance to be identified with John McCain publicly.
...away from the spotlight, Rove has been busy pitching in by giving informal advice to McCain’s team and spending a considerable amount of time as an outside adviser to Freedom’s Watch, the conservative political group that is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars to help elect House GOP candidates. William Weidner, a Freedom’s Watch board member, recently told National Journal that Rove has offered strategic advice to both the group and its major financial backer, Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which Adelson chairs, called Rove "an invaluable asset" to the group....
While the top of McCain's campaign won't admit to extensive conversations with Rove, fearing that Rove is too closely associated with the Bush Administration and its worst scandals, some folks are willing to spill the beans off the record.
…
And Rove is even more deeply involved with Freedom's Watch, the internally troubled right wing group that seeks to make trouble for Democrats throughout the campaign season.
[William] Weidner [a Freedom’s Watch board member] stressed that Rove has been "very generous with his time and ideas. He gives up his time for those things he believes in."
Two GOP strategists said they have heard that Rove has worked out a private consulting deal with Adelson; this arrangement, one strategist reported, pays Rove in the mid-six figures for giving speeches and providing assistance to Freedom’s Watch on labor union issues, a top priority of the group.
This is because McSame doesn’t just need The Base; he needs them on fire.
He needs them whipped into a peak of howling, manic, batshit, fuck-you-let’s-kill-‘em-all, political wilding frenzy.
Which is one helluvan assignment, because while our more reptilian fellow citizens haven’t gotten any more human in the last seven years, the fascist popskull that used to thrill through their veins has largely gone flat.
All the bubbles fizzed away from seven long years of screaming at the top of their chickenhawk lungs about the untrammeled joy of living in the ass crack of Dubya's Fucknozzle Feudalism.
Because these people had been promised things. Weird, scary things.
Sometimes bareback and shrieking and sometimes with a dog-whistle, but the Base was were promised that Commander Guy was gonna deliver cheap gas from his Dear Uncle Saud.
They were promised a permanent wingnut majority. They were promised a savage, worldwide comeuppance to every variety of Scary Brown Persons who haunt the bedwetty dreams of White Rightard Christian Patriots everywhere.
Instead, following the Sacred Conservative Junior Jumble Scrolls with absolute fidelity, Commander Guy destroyed everything he touched; sowing nothing but disaster while making sure his cronies reap obscene profits auctioning off the blood-stained rubble.
While Osama bin Laden sips Virgin Mojitos in our 'allies' backyard and releases more tapes in a year than The Pixies have released in 20, their Bicycle Chief limps around the world one last time, trailing weakness and humiliation like a sick dog butt-scooting across the floor, and leaving behind him an America fast becoming a Hobo Nation.
A terrifying international joke with no punch line in sight.
Where once we were a respected superpower that could broker global agreements with relatively clean hands and intentions, after seven year of Republican rule, Dubya and his Republican Party have vivisected and perverted America into a lethally belligerent extension of their own polluted souls: a power-drunk thug-state that recklessly flashes its nuclear arsenal like a mean drunk brandishing a broken bottle.
And as we watch the Midwest fill up with water, remember that most of it will eventually sluice its way into the Gulf through the splintered corpse of George W. Bush's own Herculaneum -- New Orleans: the great American city that America can't ever seem to get around to rebuilding.
And yet, from the blogs to the pulpits, from local bars to national cable news, from double-wides to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the degenerative democratic disease called “conservatism” that drove us off this cliff is in no way gone; it is merely quiescent.
Tuckered out from all that non-stop crazy, they are waiting for the next aw-shucks demagogue to sweep them off their feet, angry them back up and make them believe one more time that the smoking gun in their hand and the gaping holes blown though their lives are somehow really all the fault of dirty fucking hippies and Bill Clinton’s penis.
Which is why Rove and Bush are not enough.
McSame needs Hagee, and Parsley, and Robertson and their legions of Christopaths.
Hell, he needs Zombie Jerry Falwell
He needs to go down to the bayou with a sack full of enough Spanish gold for the witch women to reanimate the remains of Lee Atwater, Jerry Fallwell, Father Coughlin, George Wallace, Spiro Agnew and Bull Connor.
Come November, if the GOP Base chooses to remain asleep in their Barca-Loungers dreaming their filthy little Confederate dreams, McCain loses.
Tantalus' punishment, now proverbial for temptation without satisfaction, was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone, like that of Sisyphus.
He is stranded between a Base of hardcore, shit-house-rat-crazy thugs who he absolutely must have and who threaten to bolt ever time he comes within a thousand miles of disavowing the Existential Awesomeness of Commander Guy and even whispering anything genuinely bipartisan or reasonable…
(They tolerate his Clinton-supporter wooing for the same reason Hagee’s minions “support” Israel. They view it as a tactical expediency…a necessary toll booth on the road to a glorious future where the True Believers can once-and-for-all annihilate their eternal enemies new BFFs and dance a merry tarantella on their stupid bones.)
…and a block of “independent” voters of unknown size who desperately want McSame to run like Hell away from Commander Guy and start talking in Mavericky bipartisan, reasonable ways. Who are repulsed by the Base and will flee like blind mice from the Farmer’s Wife if they catch McSame in the parking lot handing out foot massages to the 27%-ers.
And that pulverizing limbo between two, imperative-but-mutually-exclusive demographics is where McSame’s political career -- and quite possibly his Party -- will perish.
UPDATE: I removed the graphic of Lieberman from this post because commenter tw33z makes a valid point. While I make no apologies for the Photoshop of Lieberman in its original context, without that context the photo was in poor taste.
For a long and terrible time, American journalism has been slowly bleeding out its heart and soul. Dying. Putrefying into a lifeless, profit-centered fortress for political celebrities.
Degenerating into a multi-billion-dollar scam best described over 35 years ago by Doctor of Journalism Hunter S. Thompson in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, as…
“…not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
Except now they do it on camera. In very nice suits. And for a payday so lavish it would have dwarfed Thompson’s wildest, acid-fueled dreams of expense account El Doradoes. But it is also a fortune based on a fraud so precariously balanced on the edge of collapse that it must be savagely protected every minute of every day from the grotty rabble who want to upset the Golden Applecart of Mindless "Objectivity" with a lot of loose and dangerous talk about Liberty and Truth.
And so, lost today in all the folds of black bunting and pleats of mourning dresses around the Mouse Circus were the differences between informational rigor, and intellectual rigor.
Between hard work and good works.
One after another, Sunday talkers queued up to attest to Tim Russert’s Punkin’-Haid-and-shoulders-above-the-rest status as a towering plier of their trade; what a hurricane force Best Practices model he was.
And, sadly, that assessment is exactly true.
I have no standing to say a word about Tim Russert’s personal life, so I’m perfectly happy to assume that it was exemplary. Good husband, son, father, uncle and husband. Loyal friend. Picked up after his dog.
Alla that.
But his professional life was another thing entirely, and no fire hose of laudatory prose from his peers -- however heartfelt -- with alter the fact that Russert was no pioneering journalist. Instead, he kept ferocious watch over the Beltway's Velvet Rope Line; keeping the Serious People Secure and In and the dirty fucking hippies Marginal and Out.
Week after week after week, Russert held his meaty thumb on the scale, insuring that only the Royalty of Bourgeois Centrism made it into the clubhouse.
* Bob Dole/63 appearances
* John McCain/50 appearances
* Joseph Biden/41 appearances
* Richard Gephardt/41 appearances
* Richard Lugar/36 appearances
And (no surprise) the most frequent pundits to tread the MTP boards were David Broder (396 times) and (until his despicable involvement in the Plame Case finally cost him his free pass) Novakula (247 times).
Old. White. Predictable. Centrist. Safe.
And, to no one’s surprise, it was a clubhouse that -- like all the other sideshow tents at the Mouse Circus -- leaned conspicuously to the Right.
Second, Russert did not practice journalism so much as he perfected a new infotainment magic trick to take the place of journalism.
A ritual as rigid as High Mass.
Step One: The Sermon and The Lesson -- Roll out a guest. And, as Atriot Neponset once said so perfectly, drop out of a tree onto them with ten-year-old quotes. Which Russert would then read for forty minutes, and then say "Well?"
Step Two: The Call and Response -- Read off endless reams of polling data, and then say “Well?”
Step Three: The Choir –- The Matalin/Carville freak show are wheeled out to nod and wheeze and giggle and snark and affirm the Glorious Conventional Wisdom of it all.
Rinse and repeat, week in and week out: A computer with webcam reading LexisNexis entries would have accomplished the same function.
Third, well, in the end, when you sweep aside all of the thousands of sincere words spoken over the death of Tim Russert, the fact remains that only way to judge the value of the Spam factory is by the quality of it’s potted meats.
So…how many important national stories were ever rooted out and broken on Meet the Press? (And no, “being forced to testify about your own ignominious role in a major national security scandal” does not qualify as “breaking” a story. Neither does “acting as a launch pad for Administration Trial Balloons”)
How many traitorous douchebags were ever brought to book by a Russert journalistic crusade?
In a country where Russert is held out as the ne plus ultra of his profession, has the Mainstream Media been doing a consistently better or worse job of ferreting out the Truth over these last twenty years?
Take a wild guess: Have Americans grown more or less ignorant?
THE THOUGHT occurs to almost everybody, I would suppose, that politics today is conducted at a lower level than it used to be. Not many voted against William Howard Taft because he was fat or Abraham Lincoln because he was thin. One can't imagine Franklin Roosevelt being judged by how badly he bowled or how convincingly he knocked back a tumble of scotch. Indeed, studies show that the speeches presidents gave a half-century ago were pitched at the 12th-grade level - five grades above the level of speeches given by presidents over the last generation.
Which brings up a paradox. Decade by decade Americans are getting smarter and smarter, and decade by decade our politics is getting dumber and dumber. How can we explain it? ...
Unfortunately, what the polls show is that Americans cannot make up for their lack of basic knowledge even if they shrewdly employ shortcuts. The harsh truth is that ignorant voters are sitting ducks for wily politicians. This is why millions were so easily misled when the Bush administration dropped hints that Saddam Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One study by the University of Maryland found that nearly 60 percent of Americans were convinced that Hussein was helping Al Qaeda when we undertook our invasion. A majority based their support for the war on this flagrant misunderstanding.
Why hasn't education helped voters become smarter about politics? Television is a big part of the explanation. Once television replaced newspapers as the chief source of news, this happened around 1965, shallowness was inescapable as Americans began judging politicians by how they looked and acted. ...
Yeah, Russert could make a crackpot like Perot look sweaty and addled. And he spanked that weak, little tub of mendacity named Scott McClellan, but remember that it was only after Scotty Dog himself decided to stop lying with every breath and write a confessional that the Russert Maneuver of waiving contradictory quotes at people and huffing out a Very Serious “J'Accuse!” could gain any traction.
For the causal and careless liar -- for the pipsqueak liar -- navigating the Russert Show could be genuinely uncomfortable. But against our nation’s Liars Royale -- against professionally and treasonably conscienceless men like Cheney or Bush of Rumsfeld -– Russert’s silly brand of “gotcha” was a joke.
They knew how his little card trick was performed and knew how to beat it. And so week after week after week, Administration heavies and their button men glided onto the set of Meet the Press, looked directly into the camera, lied their filthy asses off with clear eyes and dry brows, and then went away to rape the Constitution some more.
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007; Page A01
Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.
This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."
"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."
So, Washington insider...
Boy from Buffalo...
Network Vice President...
In the end, perhaps we can agree that Tim Russert was a Man of Many Names.
But “journalist” really wasn’t one of them.
Elsewhere at the Circus…
On “Face the Nation”
Gov. Bobby “Father Damien” Jindal, (R-La)spoke very reasonably about Barack Obama and John McCain and some other stuff...
...right up until he was asked about Evolution.
When it comes to Evolution...the Republican Governor of Louisiana thinks States should decide!
That kids should be exposed to “the very best thinking” on both sides. And then test those theories.
So the Republican Governor of Louisiana believes that the facts underpinning biology, geology, environmental chemistry, cosmology, genetics and a dozen other sciences …are merely articles of faith.
Matters of opinion. Like gravity. Or arithmetic. I mean, if the good people of Louisiana wake up tomorrow believing that, say, Long Division is Heathen or Fractions are the work of Lucifer ...why should their children be forced to endure some kind of elitist, liberal, Archimedio-Euclidean brainwashing!
Just to placate SomeWashingtonBureaucrat (which is now officially OneWord)!
And by the way, how exactly does one “test” Intelligent Design?
I mean, how can one ever know to a scientific certainty whether is it God’s will or mere biology that Republicans have tiny brains and tiny penises?
So, go Bobby go!
And then Newt!Fucking!Gingrich! explains that a Supreme Court decision which would limit the Crawford Dauphin’s ability to throw people into secret prisons forever without a hearing is…wait for it…worse than Dred Scott.
Newt says that “It may cost us a city” just because “five lawyers” (not judges – even though they serve on the Supreme Court – but five lawyers) want to let “any random, nut-case district judge” usurp the power of the Imperial President.
I think Newt Gingrich referring to anyone else on the face of the Earth as a "random nut-case" is the funniest thing in the world.
And I think that you could not find a more perfect example of just how fucked our media has become than the act of putting a sociopath like Newt Gingrich in front of a camera and treating him as anything other than a rabid dog.
On “Fox News Sunday” - Senator Byron Dorgan, (D-N.D). Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R-Exxon/Mobil) and Some Oil Wank talk about why the solution to every problem is drilling for more oil.
Wallace: The most obvious solution to the energy problem is…domestic drilling. Drilling the crap out of everything would “dramatically reduce” the price of oil. Why do Democrats hate America?
Dorgan: There is far more oil in the Gulf of Mexico than in ANWR, and I support drilling in the Gulf if we have to. ANWR was set aside by Dwight Eisenhower. And McCain voted against drilling there.
Hutchison: Must drill. And drill more. Environmentalists are cray-gee!
Wallace: You oil people have leases on 68 million acres of oil land. Why not drill there?
Oil Wank: Because Sweet Baby Jebus made oil hard to find. Hard! And we spend lots of money exploring and stuff…so…shut up!
Dorgan: There is nothing having anything to do with supply and demand that explains the high price of oil. This is being driven by speculation.
Hutchison: We need transparency. The only thing that will stop speculation is…more drilling!
driftglass: Drilling Is Magic. Like…Republican Jebus or tax cuts for billionaires. It solves all problems. It appeases all gods. It makes the sun to rise and set. Make the corn grow. The people of New Orleans and Burma and Iowa are all being punished for not drilling in ANWR.
Or something.
Wallace: What about your obscene profits?
Oil Wank: Yadda Yadda Yadda. We are penniless, I tells ya! I make nothing! Nothing! My children are in rags. My mother has to pick gobbets of discarded Hungry Man Salisbury Steaks out of dumpsters. My wife has to use a hand-me-down, steam-powered vibrator. If we drilled more…we’d make less profit. And then our profits wouldn’t be so grotesque.
Hutchison: The only “compromise” that will save America and stop the Evil Speculators…is more drilling,
Then an apparition that looked like Karl Rove floated onto the set
It could not have been the actual Karl Rove, because the actual Karl Rove is rotting away in the Treason Wing of some federal gray bar hotel, right?
Right?
On “The Chris Matthews Show”, David Broder wandered around the set, knocking over lights and asking strangers who was going to give him “sponge bath and pudding” now that Tim Russert had “moved to a very nice pundit farm in upstate New York”? Where (so Broder had been told) Russert was going to spend his days gamboling happily in the sun with other journalists.
Because as has been true for a long, long time now, no one wanted to burden the Dean of the Washington Press Corps with any ugly truths.
By BEN EVANS and SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writers
Nothing personal, Sen. Obama, but our re-election comes first.
Barack Obama, for all his attention and primary successes, does not go over so well in a fair number of Democratic lawmakers' home districts. So it seems there is little chance that some will endorse him for president.
Some are counting on Republican votes in their re-election bids. Some are newly minted and in rematches with 2006 opponents. Some may be wary of how their constituents will react to a black presidential candidate. Some, too, have made it a practice of distancing themselves from the national party, fearing the inevitable campaign ad that has their face morphing into Howard Dean, the party chairman, and Obama.
Rep. Dan Boren, the only congressional Democrat in Oklahoma, calls Obama "the most liberal senator" in Congress and says he has no plans to make a public endorsement.
"We're much more conservative" in eastern Oklahoma, Boren said. "I've got to reflect my district."
Georgia Rep. Jim Marshall, a Democrat and Vietnam veteran who won his last election by about 1,800 votes, said he admires both Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but feels no obligation to state a preference.
"If it turns out one of them is an ax murderer or something like that I'll make a choice," he joked. Otherwise, "I don't think I need to get involved."
For most of these fence-sitters — at least 14 as of Wednesday — it boils down to political necessity: They are vulnerable Democrats in conservative-leaning districts who take pains to avoid aligning closely with the national party.
…
"They are all scared to death about getting beat by a Republican," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., one of Obama's most prominent supporters. "I don't think that if the good Lord himself had been nominated as a Democrat that some of those folks would have endorsed him. They are afraid of looking too much like a Democrat because of the kind of districts they're from."
As in the past, many uncommitted Democrats are from the South, which has favored Republicans in recent elections.
Although Obama swept the region in the Democratic primaries with near-universal support from black voters, he often fared poorly among working-class whites. As a result, he is seen as an asset in some districts but a question mark at best in others.
…
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a Democratic House leader who helped orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006, argues against reading too much into the holdouts. He said most of them always stay out of national politics and that the party is generally unified around Obama.
"They're just going to stick to their knitting," he said. "It's not that they're anti-Obama."
First, unless the writers of this article are using the phrase “orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006” in the loosest possible, “I-got-up-and-went-potty-and-showered-and-then-voted” sense (in which case several million of us “orchestrate the party's strategy for winning control of Congress in 2006”) then they’re just dead-wrong: Rahm Emanuel had shit-all to do with the Dems crushing the GOP in 2006.
Emanuel is a one-man DLC goon-squad who was bequeathed his political manhood by Bill Clinton and has downloaded absolutely no new software upgrades since. And had he managed to force his GOP-lite, triangulating political playbook down the DNC’s throat and run the 2006 elections out of its moldy pages, we would likely have been saddled with yet another two years of Republican congressional majorities.
(Speaking of which it would please me mightily if someone a lot closer to the corridors of power than me would point these facts out to the Democratic Leadership. And then ask them that why -- since they won the god damned election -- they continue to treat the corrupt Republican minority and the lying, treasonous Republican administration with all the calm authority of a teenage boy caught rifling through his Dad’s porn stash.)
Second, if you are a Democrat and your constituents can’t handle the heavy burden of living in a post-Emancipation Proclamation World, fuck them and fuck you for pandering to them and still having the nerve to call yourself a Democrat.
And if all this seems distantly familiar -- this spectacle of Democrats hiding from their own Party, platform, and standard-bearer -- that's because it is.
But at least back in Harry Truman's day this species of turncoat
had the stones to be up-front about why they betrayed and then bolted their party.
Black conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams has never voted for a Democrat for president. That could change this year with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's nominee.
"I don't necessarily like his policies; I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it," Williams said. "I can honestly say I have no idea who I'm going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that's incredible."
Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn't sit beside them ideologically.
"Among black conservatives," Williams said, "they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November."
Perhaps sensing the possibility of such a shift, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made some efforts to lure black voters. He recently told Essence magazine that he would attend the NAACP's annual convention next month, and he noted that he recently traveled to Selma, Ala., scene of seminal voting rights protests in the 1960s, and "talked about the need to include 'forgotten Americans.'"
Still, the Arizona senator has a tall order in winning black votes, no doubt made taller by running against a black opponent. In 2004, blacks chose Democrat John Kerry over President Bush by an 88 percent to 11 percent margin, according to exit polls.
J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he's thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he's still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.
"And Obama highlights that even more," Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. "Republicans often seem indifferent to those things."
...
By eagerly lining up to join a political party whose electoral margins depend entirely on appeasing people who hate them, that squirrelly, self-loathing hyperminority known as "black conservatives" have always operated under the bizarre converse of Groucho Marx's famous dictum: "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
And in return for their inexplicable loyalty to an organization that fundamentally despises their existence, black conservatives are trotted out one day every four years at the Republican National Convention to "prove" to people who don't know any better that it's not a John Birch Society reunion.
But now, according to this article, black conservatives have some serious rethinking to do.
His 76th birthday was celebrated on 9 April 2008, at his "Casa de Cheeta" in Palm Springs at an event hosted by Dan Westfall and Diane Weissmuller, (Johnny Weissmuller, Jr.'s widow). The press and many Palm Spring celebrities attended.
A literary agent has been hired on his behalf ahead of the publication of his ghost-written autobiography, Me Cheeta, scheduled for release in October 2008. [1]
Not monkeying around: Cheeta the chimp applies for Walk of Fame spot
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame have gone to the dogs, so why can't Cheeta the chimp get some love? The animal actor, whose credits include the 1967 comedy Dr. Doolittle and the Tarzan movies, is trying for the seventh time to get a sidewalk star and become the first monkey to get the honor. His handlers have launched an online petition to get supporters to urge the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to give him a star in 2009.
Each June, the Walk of Fame Committee picks from hundreds of nominations a list of inductees for the next year.
Cheeta's "inclusion on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will not only give recognition to one of the international, animal megastars of all time, but focus attention on his fellow primates in the wilds of Africa who now face extinction," the petition reads.
...
And yet I wonder if, among all these handlers and hangers-on, even one of them remembers Cheeta the thespian.
Or Cheeta the Paleo-Method superstar, who was making a stiff like Johnny Weissmuller look good before Marlon Brando was wearing big boy pants.
the Paulites plan a competing G.O.P. event. From the AP:
Texas: Paul Plans Rival G.O.P. Event
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: June 11, 2008
Representative Ron Paul is planning a daylong rally in Minnesota during the Republican National Convention there that could draw attention from the presumed nominee, Senator John McCain. Mr. Paul, also seeking the Republican nomination, has reserved an arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, the second day of the convention. “We want it to be a celebration of Republican values and what the Republican Party has traditionally stood for,” said Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Mr. Paul. The Republican Party will be gathering at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul for its four-day event. ...
Which could be...hmm...what's the word I'm looking for?
"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
-- Scott "Future King of the Wal-Mart 80%-Off Remaindered Book Bin" McClellan
100 years from now, historians will say that, after eight years of lavishing attention on every ginned-up, half-baked, crackpot, wingnut-financed Clinton rumor, the media felt real, real bad about how awfully they'd behaved and decided to make it up...
...to George W. Bush.
Which is like giving twenty bucks to a random junkie to balm your conscience because you feel bad about kicking a puppy in the teeth.
100 years from now they will wonder how in the hell our modern media -- with all the wealth and talent and technology in the world at its command -- could have been so monstrously stupid, feckless, sophomoric and irresponsible.
So just to sent the record straight -- if any future historians are listening -- 100 years ago we were wondering the same damn thing.
