Senator John McSame

"Chains You Can Believe In."

(Click pic for larger)

Bigot-Bait Twofer

Far from being merely tawdry, weird and one-dimensionally racist, I find this ad by Senator McSame to be a small gem of malevolent efficiency.

Because it plugs Barack Hussein Obama into not one but two of those ancient, bone-deep, contemptible cultural stereotypes that always comes to hand so easily and naturally in what once might have been thought of as the Floyd Brown/ Lee Atwater /Karl Rove wing of the Republican Party, but is now known simply as…The Republican Party.

Much consciousness has been righteously raised about Senator McSame’s weirdly tasteless ad wherein the Scary Big-Cocked Black Man is digitally slathered over the flower of Blonde White American Sluttyhood in a way that would make Madonna sucking Gamera off through a picket fence look like a masterpiece of subliminality.

However -- and maybe this is just because of the specific way I am wired -- when I heard about this ad this morning via my Dirty Hippy Radio, my first thought was not of its miscegenistic overtones, probably because I have never thought of la Britney and chez Paris, as, um, sexual creatures.

Generic American-made injection-molded penis tchotchke?

Yes.

Distressed, off-brand Round Heel Barbies, a-crawlin’ with booty cooties, random wealth and douchebag entourage?

Yes.

But not anywhere within a parsec of any sane grownup's definition of sexy.

So instead of their “soiled and seedy and fragrant with gin"(h/t Mark Twain) sexuality, I flashed on what cultural niche they occupy in our depraved media ecosystem.

dday comes close here. His-or-her analysis is dead-on as far as it goes:

...
There's no reason to include Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in this ad. None. It hangs on the word "celebrity" being included, which means it could have just as well been Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
...

I would just contend that it does not go far enough.

Because for the purpose intended, mere "celebrities" would have been insufficient.

When you first think only about their on-stage/public personae, what words could one use to describe Britney Spears and Paris Hilton exclusively? Words that would almost certainly never be use to describe a Brad Pitt or George Clooney?


Well, between them, it’d be fair to say those words would be:

…trifling…

…ignorant…

…lazy…

…buffoonish…

…comical…

…purveyors of lame jokes and trivial song-and-dance.

Hmmm.

And so we have John Derrick McSame

confronted with the terrifying specter of a vigorous, urbane, intelligent, popular, eloquent, Christian, family man poised to whip him back into the yellowing margins of George Dubya Bush’s Failed Presidency

Ah, but John Derrick's opponent is not a man; he is a black man.

And when you plug “black man” into the Spears/Hilton matrix of “garish clowns, flouncing around on-stage for the entertainment of rubes” guess what pops out of the American collective unconscious?


The McSame Campaign has managed to conjure up out of a very ugly place a double-duty bit of soft-core raceporn that gives a carefully measured dog-whistle to the cultural iconography of the black man both as slavering monster and shuffling minstrel.

All in 32 seconds.

Somewhere in the Eighth Circle of Hell -- down among the malebolgias reserved for for seducers, panderers, barrators (sellers of public office) and false councilors -- Lee Atwater is roasting on a spit...and smiling.

War Criminal Conservative Hero Dick Cheney

just wants to be sure

he weighs all of his post-retirement

options

very,

very,

very

carefully...

Later that evening, Katie Couric

could not resist sneaking into John McSame's hotel room for one more taste of his minty, mavericky goodness.

Didn’t we shred the Constitution

so The Decider could keep us safe from him?

You've heard the story:

Police: Man shot churchgoers over liberal views

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.


A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson's small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" and was upset with "liberals in general as well as gays."

Adkisson, a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps, had 76 rounds with him when he entered the church and pulled a shotgun from a guitar case during a children's performance of the musical "Annie."

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported Monday that Adkisson may also have chosen the church because his ex-wife was a former longtime member of the congregation.

He remained jailed Monday on $1 million bond after being charged with one-count of murder. More charges are expected. Four victims were hospitalized in critical condition.

The attack Sunday morning lasted only minutes. But the anger behind it may have been building for months, if not years.

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement," Police Chief Sterling Owen said.

Adkisson was a loner who hates "blacks, gays and anyone different from him," longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the newspaper.

...

Yes, the world is full of violent madmen.


But not every madman comes with a billion-dollar army of media backup singers that all sound exactly like the

voices in his head.

From Knox News (h/t Digby)

...
Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
...

Not every madman gets to have his madness validated every single fucking day by a whole political infrastructure

that holds power by telling him that his paranoid delusions are perfectly reasonable.



Nor every psychotic has his homicidal, eliminationist, victimhood fantasies

hand-jobbed to screaming climax by scripture-quoting, millionaire hate-mongers.

The entire, vast, powerful, ridiculously profitable Conservative Media/Political/Religious Empire is based on three little rules:

"Keep 'em stupid. Keep 'em scared. Feed 'em lies."

At one end of that pipeline you have hatepimps in $1,000 suits like Micheal Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell and Karl Rove who built their careers telling pig people that Liberals, gays, uppity women and assorted brown people are to blame for their miserable lives.

The other end of that pipeline empties into the toxic "Always wrong but never in doubt" sewer of Modern Conservatism out of which yet another "Running low on food stamps, but with plenty of ammunition" wingnut oozed, girded with that distinctly ignorant brand of vengeful righteousness the Conservative movement doles out by the job-lot, armed with all the firepower he could carry, looking for some Liberals to kill.

However, as tragic as their rampages always are, at the end of the day the handful of domestic terrorists who routinely boil out of the noxious heart of the Conservative Movement don't scare me half as much as the millions of just-as-deluded-but-not-quite-killcrazy, dog-loyal, Fox-addled, Hate Radio junkie Americans who fervently believe exactly what the likes of Adkisson and McVeigh and Rudolph believe. Who go to the polls every two years all burning with the same wingtard certainty that if only they could force-march humanity backwards into a New Dark Age, the Liberal monsters under their bed would finally be banished forever.

The Triumphant Return of Tom Waits Friday

The sweetly appropriate "Eggs And Sausage"

"...
there's a rendezvous
of strangers
around the coffee urn
tonight
..."

All thanks to able ranger larue (whose original link was even tastier, but sadly unembeddable.)

Righthawks

Arrogant Liberal Elitist Smartypants Barack Hussein Obama shown here creating a dangerous traffic hazard by shamelessly pronouncing “nuclear” correctly five times in front of +200,000 Germans.

Meanwhile, back in America, Senator McSame holds Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Brit Hume, and a

teeming mass of

screaming mob of

raucous crowd of

rowdy bunch of

Elk’s Lodge-worth of

dignified gathering of

day room full of

small, well-behaved knot of

tepid well-wisher in a paper hat, absolutely fucking spellbound

(click pic for much larger)

with his tales of how The Surge helped Otto Von Bismark defeat the Carthaginians at Second Manassas.

The Isolympics

From Huffington Post:

"Protest Zones" Will Be Set Up For Beijing Olympics

CHARLES HUTZLER | July 23, 2008

BEIJING — Beijing will set up specially designated zones for protesters during next month's Olympics, a security official said Wednesday, in a sign China's authoritarian government may allow some demonstrations during the games.

Worries about terrorist attacks, both from international groups and Muslim separatists from western China, and about protests of any kind have prompted one of China's broadest security clampdowns in years. The overall effect is that while Beijing looks cheerful, with colorful Olympic banners and new signs, the city feels tense.

Vehicle checkpoints ring Beijing. Visa rules have been tightened to keep out foreign activists. Police have swept Beijing neighborhoods to remove Chinese who have come to the capital to complain about local government misdeeds, and known political critics and underground Christians have been told to leave.

But Liu Shaowu, director for security for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, said Wednesday that areas in at least three public parks near outlying sporting venues have been set aside for use by demonstrators.

The remarks were the first public confirmation that Beijing may tolerate a modest amount of protest at an Olympics that the government hoped would be flawless, boosting its popularity at home and China's image abroad.

"This will allow people to protest without disrupting the Olympics," said Ni Jianping, director of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies, who lobbied Chinese leaders to set up the protest zones.

It was not clear how easy access would be to enter the zones. Liu and Beijing police would not say if special permission would be needed. A human rights campaigner criticized the move as cosmetic, and Beijing has already refused visa requests for known foreign activists.

A Beijinger whose restaurant was demolished in the city's Olympic makeover and who was jailed for trying to organize a protest, Ye Guozhu, was taken from the Chaobai Prison on Tuesday to an unknown location, four days before he was due to be released, the monitoring group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Wednesday. Police in Ye's old neighborhood said they were not aware of the case.

…

Well, while I am a big fan of “Synchronized Shaming” -- and will sit through some Cossaquestrian and “Fencing In” if they’re lively -- I’ve always thought the “Discuss” and “Stay Put” lacked any credibility as competitive sport.

Because if I understand this correctly, and “protest” is now something that

• Will take always place far from the center of the action.
• At a designated venue.
• And will only to be seen by a handful of hardcore enthusiasts.

then civil disobedience has finally and officially become an Olympic Demonstration Event; camera-friendly and ready to be commoditized, packaged and sold with banners and team colors and souvenir plastic tasers for the kids.

And that somewhere beyond "This Vale of Tears, Inc.", Paddy Chayefsky is laughing his ass off.

Nightmare at $200,000,000 Dollars

Oh, sure, things looks all cozy now.




But...


...just a few minutes before?

"Mormons! Mormons!


I'm not imagining it, he's out there!


Don't look, he's not out there now.


He jumps away whenever anyone might see him, except me!"

There's.....Something on the Right Wing!

And if you happen to be unfamiliar with the references, well,

kick back and take a long hit of the good stuff.

In retrospect

it makes one wonder how poor George Bush ever survived the incisive, relentless ass-flayings that Senator John McClausewitz has been mercilessly meting out year after year after year?

McCain/Johnson Jeremy 08 ?

"If you could just have a quick look at my, uh, sagging, uh, swing state, uh, poll numbers."

"Sorry, old dude, but thirty years in the business taught me there's some things even my Majyk Healing Porn Powers can't save."


Senator, it is truly too bad that when you were but a wee cranky lad, Little Johnny never read any of those cautionary tales about genies and lamps and being very careful about what one wishes for.

Because now your dearest, double-dog-dare dream has come true: Barack Hussein Obama is on a tour of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Europe. which should have made you very happy because, hey, gotcher wish (And how many of us can say that?) and since you advertise yourself as a shrewd judge of politics –--what Murricans want -- and the international situation -- what the set of all people who aren’t Murricans want -- this was your chance to do a merry I-told-you-so dance as Senator Obama fell into your clever tiger pit.

Bwahahahaha!

Unfortunately, Senator Nostradamus, the first thing you failed to foresee was the entire United States media establishment joining Senator Obama abroad.

Obama Overseas! In Presidential Mode! Back Home, It’s McCain in a Golf Cart.

Article Tools Sponsored By
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: July 23, 2008
It wasn’t a television blackout of John McCain; it was worse: split-screen contrasts that at times made it seem as if Barack Obama was on a state visit while back home his opponent chafed at the perks and privileges of an incumbent commander in chief.

...

On Tuesday, Mr. McCain held a town hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H. In the shadow of the ancient Temple of Hercules in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Obama solemnly described his vision for peace in the region while standing at a lectern, the Middle East sprawling out behind him. Reporters were cordoned in front of him like the White House press corps — except that an audio snag kept their questions inaudible.

All three cable news networks carried Mr. Obama’s news conference live and in full. They showed only parts of Mr. McCain’s forum and focused mostly on his reaction to Mr. Obama’s statements. Even Fox News broke away from Mr. McCain midevent to cover the rescue of a bear cub wounded in a California fire and nicknamed Lil’ Smokey.

Which meant that, outside of the handful of Fox News copyboys who are not running down breaking news about rescuing a bear cub, there is no one left in America for you to just sorta casually remind during the course of normal conversation that You Are A Fucking War Hero ["McCain Stipulation" duly stipulated] and shouldn't have to queue up for media handjobs like some hobo trying to sneak back in line for seconds at the soup kitchen’s Thanksgiving supper!

The second thing you seem to have failed to count on was your rival being greeted by cheering crowds and

cheering American soldiers.

The third thing you failed to foretell was your rival’s policies being endorsed by both the Prime Minister of Iraq

McCain knee-capped by Maliki
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - This weekend's surprise endorsement by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Senator Barack Obama's call for American combat forces to leave Iraq by mid-2010 marks a serious setback to Republican Senator John McCain, who has tried hard to depict his Democratic rival as "naive" on foreign policy, especially with respect to Iraq.

That Maliki's endorsement in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine came on the very eve of Obama's visit to Baghdad has made things even worse for the McCain camp, which at first echoed the White House in insisting that the prime minister's remarks had been "misunderstood and mistranslated".

Even McCain's staunchest supporters admitted on Monday that Maliki's comments constituted what the right-wing National Review magazine called a "body-blow" to the Republican candidate, who has made Iraq - and what he claims is the unqualified success of the "surge" strategy in the past year there - the centerpiece of his efforts to claim the mantle of seasoned foreign policy veteran.

"Maybe McCain shouldn't have been so emphatic" about urging Obama to visit Iraq, rued the Review's White House correspondent, Byron York.
...

…and then sorta-but-not-really-but-kinda endorsed by the Bush White House.

Now I can well imagine how eye-wateringly bad the desperate panther sweat of "We must fucking do something right fucking now!” stinking up the aisles of the “Doubletalk Express” must be for you to be verging on playing one of the few, precious media face-cards you still hold in order to stop the hemorrhaging.

And, sure, the odds-on favorites have been narrowed to --

Bobby Jindal (Plus: Very Conservative. Minus: Campaign would be haunted every day by fears of sudden-onset-puberty-voice-changes. Also performing exorcisms and drop-kicking evolution not big selling points outside of the more "inbreeding-optional" trailer parks.)

Fred Thompson (Plus: Low maintenance. Minus: You risk getting lost in the glare from his high-wattage charisma-machine personality. Also Jeri Thompson + Cindy McCain = virtual guarantee of a “Dynasty”-grade blond-on-blond smack-down

at the best worst possible time.)

Failed Senator Rick Santorum (Plus: Made of solid Conservativium. Minus: Rick who? Also just as dumb as a sock full of lead.)

Gerald McRaney (Plus: Will work for scale in almost anything. Minus: Always made side-kick look slow and girly on “Simon & Simon” and who needs that headache?)

Jerry Van Dyke (Plus: Owns own banjo. Minus: Incessant banjo-playing not big selling point outside of GOP Base. Also might be dead.)

Inspector Gadget (Plus: Probably knows a lot about this “internet” thing. Minus: Cartoon.)

Les Nessman (Plus: A newsman who burns with a fanatic hatred of the Dirty Commies so bright he makes Chris Wallace look like Leon Trotsky. Minus: Already asked him to be Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.)

Doll Man

(Plus: Good handshake, and virtually guarantees midget vote. Minus: Possibly fictional.)

Mittens Romney (Plus: Wallet. Hair. Wallet. Bi-lateral symmetry. And wallet. Minus: McSame hates his stinking guts. Also fringe-cult slap-fight between Rapture-ready GOP Base and Mormon Romney may threaten to distract from Republican Core Mission: raze the remains of the Constitution and outsource the rest of the government to Cheney-led Legion of Doom.)

Dawn Wells (Plus: Girl next door. Minus: Girl next door busted for possession. Charges dismissed, but still, anyone that close to Demon Reefer is not to be trusted.)

Adam West (Plus: He’s Adam Fucking West. Minus: While living in a cave and frolicking through various gay bondage scenes in weird costumes with a younger man may be the Beltway GOP Insider’s idea of Heaven on Earth, it is not big selling point with GOP Base.)

-- which, don't get me wrong, are all swell choices -- but none of them really precipitate that Bold, Mavericky Man Musk scent out of thin air that, let’s face it, you are starting to really, really need if you want to salvage what's left of your imploding Brand Name.

And not for just now, but think about tomorrow, Senator. What happens after get your ass handed to you in November? Think of how much of your future and legacy is gonna depend on you being being that hale-fellow-well-met Senator from NBC. And at the rate you are reversing yourself, messing up basic facts, pandering to your loony base and selling out your principles, how much of that teevee-movie-friendly capital is going to survive your coming Barackalypse?

So Senator, please consider for a moment all the pluses a Ron Jeremy

would bring to the ticket?

First, you already on record as being strongly in favor of more Dick in the White House…

...

But before Cheney became a political albatross, McCain overflowed with kind things to say about him. In fact, in July 2004, McCain described Cheney as one of the best vice presidents ever:

At a July 15 appearance in Michigan, McCain dampened the speculation by calling Cheney “one of the most capable, experienced, intelligent and steady vice presidents this country has ever had."

Second, unless you reanimate the corpse of Jerry Falwell and nominate him as your VP after carrying him into the convention borne on a litter made of thrice-blessed bones straight from the reliquary of Saint Ronald Reagan (the other way around works just as well) the Base are gonna squat in their double-wides and bay like rabid dogs at any choice you make, so why not have some fun with it?

Third, of all the myriad cock-ups of the last seven years, you have inexplicably picked one of the most catastrophically wrong lessons anyone could ever learn from the Failed Presidency of George W. Bush and put it right on your fucking letterhead: From telling the Iraqi Government to shut up and do what they’re told, to not even bothering to get right the basic geography or major religions of a place you want to bomb and occupy for a hundred years, to your campaign coming ridiculously close to actually mocking Barack Obama for not being booed and hated abroad, you clearly believe there is no foreign policy problem so complex and intractable that it can’t be solved by dropping trou and flopping your johnson out on the desk.

And, honestly, who would be better equipped to dick-slap the rest of the human race in the name of American hegemony than Ron Jeremy?

Fourth, if I were looking for someone who really knows the brutal realities of market economics as they take place on the ground, I’d be scanning the resume for adult entertainment industry experience. Why? Because, as a rule, there is no purer expression of raw capitalism than the business of the slaking our horny selves in all of its baroque manifestations.

Because, even as we speak, “economics” is in the middle of headlong, knives-out game of Naked Twister with “digital information”, and the motive power that’s driven virtually every breakthrough in information technology -- be it the in-home fresco, the printing press, the power press, color reproduction, the telephone, movies, video, DVDs or the internet -- from boutique novelty to scalable, commercial enterprise has been the gloriously smutty engine of human carnal desire.

And someone who has actually grubbed a living at the intersection of data and dildos might be able to tell you something about what that other invisible hand is doing while its more respectable twin is jerking markets around.

Fifth, the whole idea of having smut merchants in the President’s inner circle was already de facto vetted by the GOP when Phil Gramm became your Grand Economic Vizier. Gramm got dropped like 200-lbs of wet sand from a sinking balloon not because of
his sordid past as a low-rent pornographer,

but because he called America a nation of whiners.

Bad choice of noun; we are not a nation of whiners.

But I bet we could definitely get behind being a nation of loud moaners.

If

They

Had

Moustaches

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

“In which we find ourselves at the ass-end of another week Becalmed on a foul, Sargasso Sea of Liebermans and Pundits,

…
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

and realize that, as bad as it was, the Mouse Circus has actually sunk even further below it’s already-debased standards into the

…
The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

Rime of the Ancient Mouse Circus” Edition:


On “Face the Nation”

Wanton hussy and Federal-contractor-Joseph Burkett’s-soon-to-be-baby-mama Lara Logan interviews Barack Obama.

Logan: B-man! How’s it going?

Obama: Lara Logan, let me…answer you…in this way:



Logan: Hey, I’m marrying the guy. Someday. OK?

Obama: Then my work here is done, Lara Logan. (Leans off-camera) Next!


On “Meet the Press”

Tom Brokaw "interviews" Al Gore. Then David Gregory (Chief White House Correspondent, NBC News) and Chuck Todd (Political Director, NBC News) dance their way into our hearts.

Brokaw: Isn’t T. Boone Pickens a douche?

Gore: No.

Brokaw: Shouldn’t you be Vice President? Or some kind of Czar?

Gore: Meh.

Brokaw: Aren’t congressional Democrats sucky losers?

Gore: No.

Brokaw: Isn’t Hillary Clinton nine kinds of bad crazy?

Gore: No.

Brokaw: Why can’t we do more drilling for oil to save us all from the terrible terribleness of changing anything ever? Huh? Huh?

Gore: We’ve already leased out enough land to start a whole ‘nother country.

Brokaw: But won’t there be pain? Won’t it be hard work? Won’t truck drivers hate you? Won’t children suffer and widdle puppies cry?

Gore: This is not a debate anymore, Tom, so why are you still asking me retarded questions?

Brokaw nods toward the camera and mouths “a-u-d-i-e-n-c-e o-f s-t-o-o-p-i-d-s”.

Gore: Oh. Yeah.

Brokaw: Besides, I din’t say the climate thingy isn't real! I din’t! I said there are debates over emphasis and timing.

Brokaw: If we set a timetable for getting off of carbon-based fuel, won’t carbon-based fuel just wait until we have left and then WHAMMO! The terrorists win?

Gore: Whammo? Really?

Brokaw: Have you called the Clintons recently?

Gore: I tried, but they were having a thing. And then they called back when I was calling them, and we missed each other. Then my phone’s base unit freaked out. Then I was in the shower. Then I forgot to turn off call forwarding. Then there was the time difference. Then my rates changed. Then...

Brokaw: Were you aware that Hillary Clinton is…a woman?

Gore: Yes. Also, Barack Obama is black, and Bill Richardson is Hispanic.

Brokaw: Isn’t “Hispanic” a derogatory terms, combining…as it…does (carefully reads notes) the sexist term “His” and the hysterical-lady word “panic”?

Gore: No.

Brokaw: How about your former testicle-cozy, Joe Lieberman?

Gore: Who?

Brokaw: Thank you, former Vice Pwesident, Ow Gohhw.

Gore: That’s “Al Gore”. “Vice President Al Gore”

Brokaw: Aww Goo.

Gore: “Al Gore”

Brokaw: Ladies and gentlemen, Ahh Glllh.

Gore: Ok this is how you end, Brokaw!

Gore Power Go!

Form of my Carbon Footprint

Up your ass!

Then, later, NBC’s Tom Brokaw asks NBC’s David Gregory and NBC’s Chuck Todd if it possible for NBC’s “Meet the Press” to be any more incestuous than it already is.

Brokaw: Isn’t it true that Al Gore is radioactive!

Gregory: Yes. And fat. And Orson Welles was also fat. And by the Generally Accepted Punditry Transitive Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo rule, that means Gore is trying to take credit for “Citizen Kane” and “Touch of Evil”. Also that he died in 1985.

Brokaw: Having to talk about Teh Iraq and Teh Economy is confusing. Can we maybe have something big, single issue called “Teh Iraqonomy”? Because that would be both cool.

Brokaw (actual quote): If Obama buys a latte this week and listens to the barista…

Makes my kinda wonder what would happen if Brokaw had said "If McSame sends Lieberman to the drug store to buy him the August issue of Juggs and a palette truck of Depends, and listens to the cashier…"

On “Fox News Sunday”
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can’t predict anything. Everything is contingent on everything else. All things are very complex. Might be this and might be that, depending.

Except, of course…

Wallace: Politics and the Sekrit Muslim Plans of Barack Hussein Obama aside, wouldn’t it be dangerous to withdraw troops from Iraq two years from now.

Mullen: Crazy-dangerous. The reason I wore this snappy, brown uniform is that, as I am sitting here, I’m actually pooping myself empty in fear of what Sekrit Muslim Barack Hussein Obama is planning to do.

Then, later…

Lieberman: We will have victory! We wouldn’t be having this conversation – this talk about getting out – if the Surge hadn’t worked. That is the goodness (WTF?)! MoveOn.org! Retreat and defeat! We are winning in Iraq today!

Bayh: I am delighted that John McSame has come around to Barack Obama’s view of foreign policy.

Bayh: Until last week, John McSame was against the Surge in Afghanistan. Does that mean he wanted us to lose in Afghanistan?

Wallace: Why would Barack Hussein Obama hold a rally in Germany? Doesn’t that make him a faggy internationalist?

Wallace: Some Christopaths conservatives persons say that your flamboyant Jewyness Liberal background – not that that word “Liberal” means anything anymore – means that you wouldn’t be a digestible choice among the Pig People.

Lieberman: I hope my support for John McSame shows that there is too much partisanship in Washington. And that only by selling out every one of my former colleagues in my former party can the Joe Lieberman Party be spared a trip to the Re-education Camps under the glorious Karl Rove One Party Wingnut regime to come.

“This Week” was pre-empted by coverage of some sort of “men in ugly pants” contest from that place where they made “Benny Hill”.

”The Chris Matthews Show” wandered in the video wilderness here in Chicago until late-late.

Shoulda kept wandering.

"Tell me about the oranges, Nuri."

Reading this from Reuters, curious minds wonder if perhaps Vice Preznit Bobo didn't have a few, well-chosen and very clearly translated words with America's Pet Prime Minister.

Iraq PM did not back Obama troop exit plan: government

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki did not back the plan of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and his comments to a German magazine on the issue were misunderstood, the government's spokesman said on Sunday.

Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement that Maliki's remarks to Der Spiegel were translated incorrectly.

The German magazine said on Saturday that Maliki supported Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months. The interview was released on Saturday.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes," Der Spiegel quoted Maliki as saying.

Dabbagh said statements by Maliki or any other member of the government should not be seen as support for any U.S. presidential candidate.

...

Yes, this could simply be a translation error.

An un-fucking-believably gargantuan translation error where the microencephalic Babelfish that is apparently now being used for all such vital, nuanced, high-level translations got knee-walking drunk and just for goofs came back with "You can haz go now! All time leave now and sooner for to leave go home! Now! Now!" when what Prime Minister al-Maliki really said was "Please keep your troops in my country until my children's children's children are as old as John McSame!"

Yes, that is one possible explanation.

Still one cannot help but notice that, day in and day out, the continued survival of Nuri al-Maliki, everyone he is related to and everyone in his government still depends largely, if not entirely, on the protection afforded him by the nearly 140,000 United State troops that currently occupy his country.

That he, his family and his government literally lives or dies based on the largess of the Commander Guy.

Or, in the words of Bobo Justus:

"Do you want to stick to that story, or do you want to keep your teeth?"

Because if hasn't sunk in by now that the Bush Regime has been playing exactly that kind of bloodthirsty, "for keeps" politics every single day since the very beginning, then I assume you have been passed out in a puddle of your own sick for the last seven years.

Technology?

I am on it, bitches!

On Shouting "Fuck"

In A Crowded Monkeyhouse.
(click for larger, 'cause, well, I'm rather pleased with it.*)

(And the original, because I realize it is
possible that not everyone is familiar with

antique cigarette ads.)

This from Nación del Netroots as filtered through the NYT:

July 18, 2008

Easing Off Online Obscenities

By Katharine Q. Seelye

AUSTIN — Has anyone noticed a decline in the use of obscenities in the blogosphere lately (well, at least when various public figures aren’t being quoted)?

Some prominent bloggers on a panel here at Netroots Nation said today that for a variety of reasons, they have scaled back their use of profanity. Others said they were swearing as much as they ever had.

Digby Parton, who writes on Hullabaloo.com, said she initially thought of her blog as an ephemeral form of conversation among friends and used vulgarities freely. But now she is read by a substantially wider circle and has cleaned up her language.

“I don’t use the same amount of profanity,” she said. “We’re taken much more seriously as a political force,” and she has a stronger sense that her words are “out there for posterity.”

Still, she said, she does not want to take a restrictive view toward language and doesn’t always hold back.

Next on the panel was Lee Papa, a theater professor at the College of Staten Island (part of the CUNY system) who writes the Rude Pundit, which gives you an idea of where he’s coming from.

He said he started his blog during the buildup to the war in Iraq, when, he said, disagreement with the idea of going to war was suppressed. One example: Shortly before the Iraqi invasion, in 2003, Phil Donahue’s talk show, which was often anti-war, was cancelled by MSNBC, even though it was the highest rated of the network’s such shows; an internal memo later revealed that executives thought Mr. Donahue’s would be “a difficult face for NBC in a time of war.”

Mr. Papa said his impulse toward vulgarity, including references to rape, was a reaction to that climate of suppression. Besides, he said, “I curse a lot in my daily life.”

But now, he said, he curses a lot less, almost as if he has developed an internal quota system that lets him get it out of the way each morning.

...

In the end, no one seemed too concerned about the use of obscenities in the blogosphere or whether it undermined their arguments. They more or less shrugged over the recent off-color language used by Jesse Jackson about Senator Barack Obama, language that some mainstream media repeated and others did not.
...

I kinda believe that if someone purloined half of Digby's consonants and her "A", "I" and "Y", she could still write most of the rest of us under the table.

That being said, this struck me as a rather bizarre panel for the purveyor/practitioners of an outsider-if-no-longer-outlaw medium to even be having in the first place (not that I wouldn't have been in the audience myself were I there.)

As wiser people than me have observed --

"Of all the strange crimes that humanity has legislated out of nothing, blasphemy is the most amazing - with obscenity and indecent exposure fighting it out for second and third place."

[Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long]

-- "obscenity" is a null concept.

Like the actual act of fucking, wielding the “f-word” (or any other term that culture and history have hollowed out and loaded with lead shot and H-bombs) is all a matter of competence and intent. If your skills are poor (as was the case with a certain bit of "New Yorker" cover art I could name), or your heart is dark, things will eventually end badly.

But if you know what you’re doing, it can be very nice. And if you do it with élan, it can be damn well transcendent.

But America media hass rammed down our collective throats a public definition of “obscenity” that is really very simple:

If you can’t say it on the teevee, it’s obscene; if you can, it’s not.

By that perverse, inverse, pitilessly-utilitarian definition, here (in honor of the Patron Saint of every vituperative, foul-mouthed blogger) are seven things so monstrous and obscene that you can never, ever, ever say them on teevee:

1. Joe Lieberman was and is a lying, warmongering weasel.

2. They don't hate us for our freedom.

3. Our democracy is a gutshot mess, and the GOP is holding gun.

4. The prime directive of our media is to scare us, flatter us and lobotomize us into giving our money to corporations in exchange for crap that makes us sick.

5. A disturbingly large number of our fellow citizens are jaw-droppingly stupid and/or intractably bigoted.

6. Genuine Christianity's worst enemies are Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians.

7. You can be a good American or you can be a good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

These define the circumference of the wholly-artificial Obscenity Perimeter the Media Villagers have invented to keep scary rabble from getting in front of a camera and making wee-wee in their mojitos.

But there is another definition of “obscenity” that is not at all ridiculous or arbitrary. One that virtually every inkslinging social critic from Swift to Twain to Mencken to Royko to Hunter Thompson would have recognized.

See if you can spot it.

Almost exactly eight years ago, the-Governor George W. Bush was running for President by telling people that he luuuurved him some Sweet Baby Jebus, that he would “restore honor and dignity to the White House” (emphasis added) --

George W. Bush Speaks at Send-Off in Orlando
Aired September 23, 2000 - 10:02 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to quickly, before we stay goodbye, go to a Bush event in Orlando.

Let's listen in.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I tell you one thing, it's got to be refreshing for the people of Florida to have a chief executive officer who has done in office exactly what he told the people of Florida that we would do.

...
We can do better in Washington D.C. We can have new leadership in Washington D.C., leadership that will lift this country's spirits and raise our sights. George P. knows what thousands of other youngsters know, that just because the White House has let us done in the past, that doesn't mean it's going to happen in the future. George P. joins us in a campaign that's going to restore honor and dignity to the White House.

-- and he would “clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.”.

April 27, 2000

THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE TEXAS GOVERNOR; Balancing Two Worlds in Washington

By ALISON MITCHELL

For once, George W. Bush was not acting like the Washington outsider.
…
Mr. Bush has been showcasing Democrats all this week. But for all his protests about partisanship, he and the other Republican speakers were unsparing of Mr. Gore at the party's gathering.

Jim Nicholson, the Republican National Committee chairman, said, ''Welcome to the R.N.C.'s Al Gore retirement party.'' And Mr. Bush sharply jabbed his opponent, calling him ''an integral part of an administration that has waged the same old Washington blame game.''

''Last week was Earth Day,'' he said. ''Unfortunately for Al Gore's campaign every day is scorched earth day. And it's time to clean up the toxic environment in Washington, D.C.''
…

Turned out, after seven year in office, we now know in bitter retrospect that what the Dirty Fucking Hippies were predicting at the time was all true: that what Republicans meant by all of their jolly chin-music was showing up every day ready to rape the Constitution, loot the treasury and lie to the American people, clean-shaven, in a suit and tie, wear a flag lapel pin and toting a Bible.

And given the unprecedentedly brutal, venal and nakedly treasonous history the Commander Guy's administration has racked up in the last seven years, approximately one-third of our fellow citizens still believe with all their widdle hearts that George Walker Bush is quite possibly the Greatest President Evah.

Before we can fix is wrong with America, we must confront the ugly reality that these failed, morally inbred, Christalopithecans Are. The. Problem.

That simple, terrifying fact will never, ever, ever show up on the teevee.

And that is fucking obscene.

Walking Around

Now that all 1.7 million Chicago bloggers are in Austin, TX attending Netroots Nation

(temporarily transforming my city into a
mutant-strewn wasteland not unlike

this)

the eerie silence of the streets -- punctuated by the occasional, unearthly baying from a handful of suddenly unbridled 41st ward Chicago Republicans -- bends my thoughts in the direction of this Huffington Post re-print of a wildly irresponsible "Daily Green" article on the "Most Walkable Cities in America":

Top 10 Most Walkable Cities In America

The Daily Green | Brian Clark Howard


1. San Francisco, CA

The city is known for its stable, relatively mild climate and progressive viewpoints, and 90% of San Francisco residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above, while 99% have a Walk Score of at least 50. Only 1% live in so-called car-dependent neighborhoods. The top areas are Chinatown, the Financial District, Downtown and North Beach.

2. New York, NY

Most of Manhattan, and even much of the boroughs, are well known for their heavily foot-based culture. In fact, many New Yorkers don't even own cars, given the city's 24-hour, reliable public transportation, not to mention the high cost of parking and gas.

3. Boston, MA

With it's famously labyrinthine roads and tight parking, it's a good thing Boston has world-class subway and ferry service (although many lament that the T does not run 24 hours). 74% of Boston residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above, and 97% have a Walk Score of at least 50.
...

Of course, longtime residents of Chicago know this is arrant nonsense.

The most walkable city in America was, is, and alway will be, Cartoon Town. In fact, this politically-vital, All American bellwether city, has become so vital to both parties that, even now, Senator McSame is there trying to pitch a little woo in the direction of Lady Voters.

Let's join him and his advisor in the Straight Talk Express make-up room, shall we?



The Second Most Walkable City is, as always,

Tiny Town.

The Sheriff Is Near!

Dear New Yorker Magazine,

I made your stupid cartoon a little funnier.

It’s still not amusing or sly or clever, but at least here the cartoon and the object the cartoon is supposed to be “satirizing” have been co-located within the same fucking time zone.

So since you obviously don't know "funny", sit back for a moment and take a lesson from the master in how to use humor with very sharp teeth to shock Wal-Martians out of their somnolence.

See, the reason this movie

is so damned-near-perfect, transcendentally hilarious is not that Mel Brooks used the vilest language over and over and over again -- which is essentially what you have done -- but that he was genius enough to realize that only by first firmly embedding the most vicious kind of racism in a broad, clear and unambiguous comedic c-o-n-t-e-x-t would he then be free to co-opt racism’s own imbecilic, unabashed virulence to belittle and humiliate its practitioners.

Your thing? It fails for the simplest reason of all: because its all setup and no punch-line. Which not only leaves your viewers stranded in midair, but also leaves the impression that the New Yorker editorial board believes that the only difference between a hatecrime and a scrap of ironic, performance art that we poor mundanes just don’t “get” is one snicker and a pair of air quotes.

So by all means, softly patronize the observer for essentially being too dense to see its subtle meaning, because that's usually a good plan.

But should one of you – God forbid -- come home some fine, clear evening to find a Star of David spray painted on your door, or a cross burning on your lawn, I hope you will pause a moment appreciate that -- by your standards -- you have ceded your right to judge whether those are genuine expressions of rank bigotry...or merely arch, postmodern commentaries on the follies of rank bigotry that you're just too unhip to understand.

Because shorn of any frame of reference, how in the world could you ever tell?

The Griot Gap

Along with his more visible and publicly flatulent policy problems like flap-jacking flip-flopping, war-mongering and a genuinely shocking lack of knowledge about Really Important Things Lord John Whorfin Senator John McSame (shown here flanked by key advisers John Bigboote and John O'Connor) is also


a rotten fucking storyteller.

Maybe he just doesn’t know or can’t remember what he believes one day to the next anymore, or maybe it comes from having to do all his talking with George Bush’s dick in his mouth, but Saint John just plainly sucks when it comes to Teh Talking, and that is a huge problem.

We ask Presidents to be and do many things. To keep an eye on shit. To represent us. To keep us safe from the Bad Things. To be the public face of our mourning when we are wounded as a people.

Yes, we elect Presidents, but we also -- in a very real sense -- hove them up out of the weltering witchbag of horror, ecstasy, gluttony, compassion, entitlement, optimism and stoopid that is our national unconscious.

The America-Go-Round spins and lurches and never stops, so Monday we want a beer-friendly dolt, but on Tuesday we want a brilliant horn-dog. Wednesday, a Daddy who creaks of Old Spice-soaked leather and will let us play with guns. Thursday, a Mommy Liberty who’ll show us her tits. Friday, a blood-drunk War God.

Some of us want a President who tries to be mostly honest with us most of the time.

Others will not abide a President unless he keeps them diapered in the comforting lies they want to hear.

(And for those of you new to politics, there is a term-or-art for candidates who tell the American people the unvarnished truth all of the time. That term is “Loser”.)

But at the end of the day, what we want our Presidents to do it tell us the story of ourselves; to stand in front of the tribal fire, or the tribal “fire side” radio, or the tribal teevee and act out a ritual that tastes just a little bit like what Walt Whitman was getting to in ”Song of Myself”,

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
…

Telling the story of America to Americans -- finding just the right chords, and setting them to the music of the English language -- is an enormously powerful tool.

It is also a morally neutral skill; Republicans build shrines and name highways and airports for their Great Communicator whose decisions got 241 American soldiers pointlessly killed in Lebanon, lost us seven valiant America astronauts and one irreplaceable space shuttle, put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of Iranian terrorists, funded an illegal war in Nicaragua, reversed all progress on energy self-sufficiency, smashed labor unions, created the most massive shift of wealth from the middle-class to the plutocrat-class in modern history…all while tripling America’s deficit.

But ahhh, that hair! Those suits! Those Peggy Noonan-sculpted quips! And /swoon/ the way he manfully only-almost-wept over all of the people he got stupidly killed!

/We now pause while every wingnut in America sneaks downstairs for a little nostagionanism: jerking off with a red, white and blue chamois shaped like Reagan’s head, into a jellybean jar, while screaming “There!You!!Go!Again!"/

Where Winston Churchill ‘mobilised the English language and sent it into battle', the Reagan Administration used it every bit as deliberately and carefully to convince millions and million of Americans to commit mass economic suicide.

And they did it with a smile, because he told them a Story of America they desperately wanted to believe. They curled up at his feet as he looking into the camera and spun them homilies of a hard-workin’, family-lovin’, God-fearin’ white people whose Manifest Christian Destiny was blockaded and besieged by Commies abroad (who were – swear to Jebus -- going to roll Right!Through!Texas!, into Everytown, USA and despoil your children iffin we didn’t stop ‘em in Nick’ragwa), and pinko unions, lazy Negroes, dirty Hippies and Evil Gummit here at home.

Of course it is an open and festering question as to whether or not the American Story that Senator Barack Hussein Obama is constructing – America as a nation finally, really (if stumblingly) at play in fields only dreamed of by Martin Luther King. America proudly declaring that sophistication, pragmatism, tolerance and intelligence are fucking well our culture’s greatest virtues and not some horrid Liberal shame-goiters that have to be hidden at all costs from the Pig People -- is one that 50-plus-one percent of the electorate is even capable of hearing


But the American need for our President to be, first and foremost, our Griot-in-Chief is and ancient and undeniably powerful one.

And on that particular battlefield,



there is no

contest at all.

Lord John Whorfin Senator John McSame: Where are we going?
The Red Staters: To Iran!
Lord John Whorfin Senator John McSame: When?
The Red Staters: Real soon!

Preznit McCylon?

Do Not Want!

Up until now the Frighteningly Striking Similarities between the wholly-fictional Colonel Saul Tigh (XO, Battlestar Galactica) and the largely-fictional Senator John McSame (Commodore, Ship of Fools) have been merely amusing (The terrifically eerie montage above was created by the artist[s?] at Metamerist.com and happened across by me at Adam Pieniazek's site here.)

After all, they are both;

The cranky remnants of hard living fighter jocks from a long-ago war.

Ex-POWs.

Rageholics, who cannot keep their mercury fulminate-tempers under control.

Comfortable in gigs where no one fires them for being true to their son-of-a-bitch natures.

Completely unfit to be Chief Executives.

[[Spoiler Alert]]


But now that each has heard his own dog-whistle siren’s song that activated long-buried, core-programming…

And now that each has rid himself of a burdensome First Wife, and moved on to knocking chrome boots with their respective

Number Sixes *...

...I for one am getting more than a little creeped out.



*(And many thanks to my anonymous benefactor for providing me the raw material for this graphic.)

Phil Gramm to the Great Unwashed

"This is not the economy you're looking for."


From The Nation:

McCain Man Gramm to America: Stop Whining

Thu Jul 10, 5:04 PM ET

The Nation -- Upset about losing your job, your home or your pension in the Bush-Cheney recession?

Buck up, and stop whining!

So says former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, a top economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

McCain is honest enough to admit he does not know much about economics.

For years, he has taken advice from Gramm.

So what is Gramm saying about the current economic circumstance?

Here's what the McCain man told the Washington Times: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, arguing that there is no economic downturn in the U.S.

The problem, says Gramm, is that, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

That sort of talk has no place in the America of John McCain and Phil Gramm, argues the veteran Republican point man on economic matters.

And, despite the fact that McCain has today attempted to distance himself from his high-profile supporter (suggesting that, instead of considering the former senator as a potential treasury secretary, he is now entertaining the notion of dispatching Gramm to a diplomatic post in Minsk), this Republican economist may be on to something.

After all, things are fine in Phil Gramm's America.

He's got a great pension as a former member of the House and Senate and, because the federal government manages the money, his income's secure from raiding by corporate swindlers. In addition, Gramm has found plenty of work since leaving the Senate as a lobbyist for the firms he once aided as a legislator.

Plus, his wife's bringing in plenty of money.
...

Redneck Plutocrats look at America and see a lovely, private, gated-community adjoining a member's only country club that has been bequeathed to the GOP by Sweet Baby Conservative Jebus.

And because that is their absolutely genuine assessment of the Heavenly Purpose of the Land of the Free – and their God-ordained position of preeminence in the Celestial Order of things -- they always have and always will be congenitally incapable of understanding why the field hands grumble about their lot in life when they should fucking well be sitting happily around on the porch, singin' spirituals, and praising the Boss Man.

Don't the peons understand how good they have it?

Of course I for one am thrilled that, to flesh out his flimsy credentials, Senator McSame went right back to the Wingnut Well (out of which he had already fished bleating disasters like John Hagee, Ron Parsley and the mortal remains of Jerry Falwell) to manifest before our very eyes an old, while, Southern, male, dyspeptic multi-millionaire political insider. Who then proceeded to yell at the unwashed 98% of us (who foolishly refuse to live in the opulent comfort afforded by our trust funds or the interest on the interest of our investments) for being insufficiently grateful that the Grand Old Party continues to allowed us to live and labor in their fucking country.

And yet I must acknowledge that it may actually work.

After all, if the last 30 years of GOP politics has proven anything, it’s that Conservative horse-shit has a "strong influence on the weak-minded".

30 Years of American Politics

in one minute and 47 seconds.

[[Spoiler Alert]]

Of course, if remember "Key Largo, you remember that the gun Edward G. Robinson tosses over to Bogart wasn't loaded, and another man gets himself killed thinking it is.

None of which Bogart's character knows, but the lessons still obtain:

1. Never trust these motherfuckers. Ever. They will never leave the business of winning and losing to anything that smells of "free and fair", because they know if they do they'll lose every time. Every game they run is crooked, every piety they utter is a lie, and every deck they deal from is stacked, marked and frozen.

So...

2. Never, ever fight them on ground of their choosing.

In a Democracy

the cure for a dimwit, sociopath king

is not

a hip, smart king

who pledges to snake our overflowing toilets after he assumes the throne.

In a Democracy, we cannot allow there to be a throne in the first place.

In a Democracy, the cure for Chronic Irritable Monarchism Syndrome was, is, and always will be

this.

Since Team McSame

seems destined to remain strapped for cash...


..as the trust fund CHUDS and serial rat masturbaters who flew their beloved Commander Guy up to the top of Mount Treason on wings of gold don't seem to be warming to his Heir Passable...

...and even the most freakshow-desperate entreaties for cash

fall on deaf ears...

...perhaps Team McSame can save themselves a few bucks and recycle some of the lees from that vintage, 2004 Chateau Maveurique

still sloshing around in very old skins
(h/t Bill in Portland.)



Hell, as long as we're pitching the budgetary virtues of retro GOP for Senator McSame's campaign-on-a-fixed-income, why not go all in with the Pure Quill:

"Candidate stresses experience, willingness to 'bomb anything with two legs and a pulse to atoms'."

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Sympathy for the Devil Edition.

A question I am often asked by imaginary interlocutors is: “How are TV shows made, dg?”

“Well,” I answer, admiring the alacrity with which the aforementioned interlocutor and her bevy of libidinous girlfriends disrobe because, frankly, if I’m gonna have imaginary interlocutors, then they’re damn well going to be smart, slutty and encamped at the castle with their army of nekkid friendlies, “first there is a mommy teevee show and a daddy teevee show, and they love each other very much…”

At least that’s how it is supposed to be.

In reality, of course, teevee shows are mostly the stunted, bastard whelpings of drunken Big Media hatefucks, slathered in stupid and consummated on sticky mattresses stuffed with bribe-gleaned blood money.

Creatures that one really needs the services of Katherine Hepburn playing Eleanor full-tilt-monster in “The Lion in Winter” to properly describe:

A "spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things..."

A level of talent depletion debased even further this Sunday by a kick-line of those C-List pundits who will work over a Midsummer holiday for a case of Red Bull, John McCain’s leftover sprinkle donuts, and whatever loose change they can shake out of the Green Room sofas.

This last Sunday the Mouse Circus really was virtually unwatchable, so I only subjected myself to glancing blows from it. Like watching a slasher film. Peeked at through covered eyes.

During a lightening storm.

At the height of an eclipse.

As a lone strobe light slowly dies.

I can attest to the fact that Chris Wallace was not on Fox, but do not know if he was having his hair re-plated or his venom sacs re-Vulcanized.

I can report that Brit Hume stepped in to lead the Fox News Sunday spelunking through the heart of the wingnut lie machine.

Bloody Billy Kristol opined that the Evil Liberals have turned against this war in a way that is radical and unprecedented in American history.

He did not mention that opposition to the war was founded on:

1. Having been lied and stampeded into the war in the first place by loathsome traitors like Bloody Bill Kristol in ways that are radical and unprecedented in American history.

2. Watching as the war was FUBARed by Bloody Bill Kristol’s Best Preznit Evah in ways that were so radical and unprecedented in American history, that they suggested that the Administration is tanking the whole thing on purpose like some 40-year-old club fighter being paid to take a dive.

3. Watching the degenerates who gratuitously impeachment of the previous President for the sin of being a member of the wrong political party (in a way that is radical and unprecedented in American history) turn right around and spend the next five years making a full-throated defense of their Commander Guy’s genuinely criminal and impeachable efforts to destroy the Constitution while hiding behind the War.

Bloody Billy Kristol further opined that Obama “is too liberal.” That he should not win. That furthermore, no one “with his profile” should win.

And having seen Barack Obama’s profile from a distance of not less than five feet, I can attest to the fact that it includes big ears, a broad nose, and short, coarse hair…I can well understand why Bloody Bill Kristol would find it terrifying.

Brit Hume intoned that McCain is a responsible, safe alternative to the newcomer.

Month-long-sigh.

Thing is, we have been watching this kabuki for years. Debated among ourselves how best to end it until our jaws have fallen off; until the words we first used to try to prick the attention of the Media and the conscience of the Right entered an exhausted middle age.

The simple truth is that the Patient Zero for almost all the plague our country is the 27%-ers.

The Pig People.

The Christopaths.

They are, at a fundamental level, incapable of change or evolution, and because they are not merely inertly stupid -- because they actively engaged in the business of demolishing America -- talk about "reaching out" to them is ridiculous.

That. Is. The. Story.

And yet every single day in America’s Big Money Journalism it is as if the Seven Hills Daily Pantograph doggedly reported on every trivial thing going on in Rome…except for the Visigoths who were in the middle looting the place down to the studs.

Every single day in America, FoxNews, Hate Radio, Regnery Press and all the rest reap huge profits telling vicious, ignorant people that they aren’t really vicious and ignorant. That they are, in fact, nature's noblemen! That it’s perfectly OK to drink paint, and if they wake up weak and vomiting blood, it’s somehow all the Liberal’s fault.

Which is probably why this innocuous, nearly-invisible exchange between Little George Stephanopoulos and Big Ted Koppel on “This Week” jumped out at me.

Johnathan Capehart (pundit who we shall not see again until Thanksgiving festivities take out all 10,982 pundits in front of him) tosses the ball up with this:

Talking about faith also gives Obama a chance to remind people, "Hey, motherfucker; I'm a Christian!" I am amazed that in every poll after poll, over 10% of Murricans still believe he's one of Those People."

Lil George (to Ted Koppel):

Ted, he's been combating this shit on teh internets all year long. It is an incredible problem. You, Ted, spent so much time on Nightline and now on Discovery talking about "race". How big a shitstorm do you think this is gonna be.

Big Ted:

In the final analysis... There was this wonderful story in I think the Washington Post the other day...about Flag City, USA. A town in Ohio. Where people are "exposed" to what is the truth -- that Obama is Christian. That there is no reason to question his patriotism -- but all of these rumors that have come through, connected to the fact that he is an African American, has made (apparently) this entire community "uneasy" about him. And the rumor mill has been far more effective than the ads; any newspaper stories; than any television stories. And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...

And this is where Lil George talks right over Big Ted.

Lil George: And they see it printed on that screen and think, somehow, its true just because of the fact that it comes in on that email.

But that is very much NOT the road down which Koppel was rolling.

If you replay the video, and listen under Stephanopoulos' interruption, this is point Koppel was trying to get across:

“And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...the truth in this instance is never going to matter.”

Which sounds like a small thing, but for me it was almost a cultural event, because it is almost the only time in my memory when a Big Time Newscritter sat in front of a camera and called bullshit on some specific, identifiable group other than “bureaucratsinwashington” or “liberalelites”.

Because in Stephanopoulos' world (as in fairy tales of old) knowing and using the True Name of things comes with the possibility of dire fucking consequences, and so one must never, ever, ever, ever, ever call the 27%-ers out by their True Name lest All Conservative Hell break loose.

And so, in Stephanopoulos' world the 27%-ers are people who have merely been somehow bamboozled by the medium through which the message passes.

They are innocent naifs, bedazzled by Teh Sparkly Internets.

The inhabitants of Stephanopoulos' world will never come within a million miles of even forming their mouths to say the words “Jesse Helms was a despicable, racist motherfucker who stayed in power for as long as he did because his supporters and admirers were and are despicable, racist motherfuckers, one and all.”

Instead, the inhabitants of Stephanopoulos' world believe that on the occasion of the death of this evil man we should toddle down to the Piggly Wiggly and buy some brand of Kiwi shoe polish powerful enough, to buff this turd of a human being to a shine high enough, so that he can be buried under a gooey, compromise word like "Controversial" or “Provocative”.

But Koppel -- admittedly in the weakest, most tepid way possible -- was trying to at least hint at the terrible truth that dare not be spoken, because its implications are so enormous.

The truth that, fundamentally, it's not that our courts that are broken. Not our roads and bridges. Not our schools.

Not something from which science or engineering or manufacturing will rescue us. Not something we can figure out, prototype and then make a fortune selling a million units for a buck apiece.

Because it is we ourselves that are broken.

When I look at Dubya’s poll numbers staying absolutely dead-level week after week after week regardless of what he has fucked up this week, or how badly, I learn nothing new about George W. Bush. But A-B-Cs behind just about everything else I need to know about America stand painfully revealed. Those numbers confirm for me for the unmpteenth time that inside the mushy skulls of the 27%-ers there is nothing but a hatbox of junk machine parts, still twitching and clattering mindlessly along on corrupted software that was already obsolete before men walked on the Moon.

The 27%-ers are slugs madly fighting for the right to jump into the salt bucket and drag us all down with them, and any solution to the problems that vex us must begin with their grotesquely mutant versions of patriotism, economics, virtue and civilization being discredited, sequestered and driven into oblivion.

Our first, great, national problem is that our fellow citizens -- in their millions -- are damaged beyond repair.

And our second, great, national problem is that our media refuses to talk about it.