Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which the Mouse Circus takes another step down that long, shiny hellroad to full-on

Hollywood Squaredom


Because if two heads good, well then, by golly,

four heads


better!


On Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace excitingly repeats the phrase “Master Strategist, Karl Rove” 100 times. I assume Wallace lost a rather large bet, and rather than let Bill Kristol lay his eggs in Wallace's throat, he opted instead for the slightly less vomit-inducing penalty.

On Meet The Press, two things were downright amusing

Peggy Noonan -- clutching her pearls so tight it made the lil’ oysters from whence they came cry – moaning “Why oh why can’t people just step up and be simple adults? Huh? Huh? Stop these 'tear the other guy’s throat out' partisan games."

Of course, it turns out, the problem is -- and I know the will shock you down to your fanny pack full of Liberal chardonnay and giveaway copies of the “Little Red Book” -- equally and oppositely bad on both sides.

Oh. the sorrow!

Yes, 'tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity,
And pity 'tis 'tis true: The Left and the Right both somehow share the blame so evenly that armies of National Review mathematicians had to grind through 700 billion significant digits to find one instance where someone on the Right said something despicable that was not instantly and equipoisedly counteracted by someone of identical stature, power and reach on the Left saying something exactly as despicable.

Oh, the fucking pity!

Translation:

Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze

try to kick our wingnut football one more time.


Later, Tom Brokaw asks:

Don’t the American People have to take some responsibility here too? Taking mortgages they can’t afford? Credit card debt? Medicare? And forget about even finding a houseboy who can make a fucking daiquiri anymore without him stealing you blind! Blind I tell's ya!

David Gregory: Oh yah, you betcha. Gonna be some pain there, you know. Also with the suffering, there would be goodness if some of these Washington gotcha elites would take a big hit of Maverick and get in there and be that big change that Joe Sixpack American is a’lookin’ fer.

Tom Brokaw: WTF?

David Gregory: Oh, see, also I just got my copy of Palin/English Berlitz flash cards through that gosh darn mainstream filter and I thought I’d go all Maverick on your gotcha media ass.

Tom Brokaw: And so, in English…?

David Gregory: Gonna be a lot of pain, and the candidates should be suicidally honest about how much shit the American public is going to have to eat to clean up the Bush Administration's Epic Fail mess.

driftglass: The GOP runs on a very simple electoral strategy:

1. Tell the Pig People they can have their stupid and eat it too.

2. Ruin the nation, run up insurmountable debt, seed every institution with incompetents and looters, all while cowering behind the Flag, the Bible and the troops.

3. When it all goes South, double down on the lies and the stupid, and boldly blame Bill Clinton’s Penis and the dirty fucking hippies.

Election after election, this gets them to 45%. Then, a little election fraud, a shitload of slander, and hauling Bin Laden out of the terrorist toy box gets them a slim majority of the perpetually and dismally “Hmmm. Should I give my kids battery acid? Or apple juice? What does ‘Us’ magazine say?” undecided and uninformed.

Gregory knows it. Brokaw knows it. Noonan knows it. All of Noonan’s evil “boys on the plane. The Blackberry guys” know it. I know it. You know it. My cat knows it. My cat’s ass knows it.

And yet we all also know that, week after fucking week, the Mouse Circus, the Villagers and the D.C. insiders continue to run their shabby, little kabuki pretending otherwise.

Every week, it is almost always the same deeply dishonest and depressing schizophrenia: The Villagers straining mightily to prop up their Potemkin media and pander to right wing fucknozzles with their “Both sides are equally wrong” drivel…while simultaneously decrying the fact that no one has the balls to tell the Murrican People the truth about what is happening to them and why.

I for one am physically hungry for just such a system; a political culture where adults argue passionately and collegially, and children who want to run through the corridors of power playing smashy-smashy with my country, my Constitution and my money are sent back to their doublewides without supper.

But that isn’t our system.

For a fast survey of the system we actually have, let’s take a quick look back at rich, political history of a few candidates who told the Murrican People the unvarnished truth and asked them to grow the hell up and start acting like adults.

About guns:

“While studies done by pro- and antigun groups as well as the Justice Department show conflicting results on whether the weapons ban has helped reduce crime, the political impact on Democrats and others who supported the bill are indisputable. At least 20 congressional Democrats who voted in favor of the bill, including House Speaker Tom Foley, went down to defeat in 1994, paving the way for the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

...

By the time the assault weapons ban passed, the National Rifle Association was ready to take revenge.

Ten years later, Republicans still control both houses of Congress, and the party completed its sweep when George W. Bush was elected president in 2000. Campaigning that year, Bush said he supported reauthorization of the ban, but as president has never pushed Congressional leaders to move the legislation.

Now Feinstein and others who support the ban must cope with the reality that their law, which helped cede control of Congress and national gun policy to Republicans, is at the mercy of Republicans from rural states, where gun ownership is almost a religion.
…

About crime:

About foreign policy:

And, most salient of all, about what we will have to do to clean up the mountain of debt and failure the GOP has bequeathed to our children and grandchildren. You all remember how well the Noonan Strategy worked for President Mondale, right?

So this time – sorry, Magic Dolphin Lady – there will be no unilateral disarmament by the Left, followed by yet another “Surprise! We wuz just kiddin’!” knife-in-the-back from the Right.

This time we don’t stop dropping anvils on your chest until your Party is extinct, your Base are driven back into their various cultural sewers, and you are reduced to writing rhapsodic articles about truck gardens for “Modern Eviction Magazine”.

Amazingly more honesty than I thought I’d see in a month of Sunday Mornings came from …The Chris Matthews.

Kathleen Parker: There is no Republican party. People aren’t voting for McCain; they’re voting against Obama.

Joe Scarborough: McCain’s “Dukakis Moment” was saying “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

Kathleen Parker: She [Palin] was like a wind-up doll. … Talking fastfastfast to get out the talking points they stuffed into her empty fucking head before she forgets them. They taught her how to build a Bridge to Somewhere. Taught her to say “I’m not gonna answer your question” right out loud and then go ahead and talk about whatever the hell she wanted to talk about.

Joe Scarborough: We’re going to see a 2004 Karl Rove/Ken Mehlman election. She gives Conservatives a reason to be excited.

Michelle Norris: It sends a mixed message, dropping out of Michigan when, three-weeks ago, John McCain was talking about the importance of Michigan.

Joe Scarborough: They don’t care about the message; they care about winning.

Joe Scarborough: Whenever John McCain runs for anything, he has to turn his opponent into an enemy. He loathes them.


Translation: So, in addition to being a gambling junkie and serial liar, McSame has a debilitating fetish -- a term I use here in all sincerity:

Fetish: Something, such as a material object or a nonsexual part of the body, that arouses sexual desire and may become necessary for sexual gratification.

McSame’s fetish is rage: he is hooked on it because like many another addictive fetish, seething anger has now become the only way this sick, old man has left to keep his political dick hard.

How lethally erratic would a McSame Presidency be, driven by a man whose mood can lurch between its only two settings -- “My Friends” and Hulk!Smash! – during any given day?

Think how being called a wimp led Bush the Elder around by the nose, and then consider how easily a President McSame – a man who can only cope with opponents by casting them as demons to be destroyed – will be pushed and played by an impertinent Congress



An implacable China.



An opportunistic Iran.



An imperial Russia.



Until finally…

Ya know, President Maverick isn’t feelin’ so good today so I'll be takin' over for a little while. But he told me ta tell ya ta praise the Lord and let those doggone missiles fly!

Finally, this is Rick Stengel (Time magazine) letting slip that:

“We’re doing a study in Time this week on why Americans vote the way they do. Turns out, up to 28% of American voters vote for the wrong candidate. Vote for people with whom they disagree on basic issues because they don’t fucking know any better.”

And, this is me, trying my mavericky best to contain my surprise that 1/3 of the American electorate are friggin idiots.