Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

In which the last 15 years never happened

and the 90s continue forever and ever and ever.


On “This Week” , Anne Kornblut of the WaPo announced the surrender of the beleaguer remnants of American Media when she said [of Sarah Palin]:

Here she is actually driving the debate whether its honest or not, whether what she is saying is true or not…

Formal surrender ceremonies will take place on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan at a date and time of the victor’s choosing, because in our New Media World, the Queen of the Pig People is officially permitted to drive our national debate, whether she is lying or not.

Chairman Doctor Governor Howard Dean lays it out clear and simple here:

Former Governor Sarah Palin made some preposterous claims over the weekend which attracted mainstream media attention. She made up the term "death panel" and claimed that part of the health care reform bill now working it's way through Congress required that families with children with disabilities, or elderly people who are infirm, could be judged by one of these death panels, which could control their fate and decide if they would die. GOP leadership repeated this outrageous claim across the airwaves on the Sunday morning talk shows. The mainstream media gave this claim credibility simply by repeating it.

My wife and I have practiced medicine for over forty years combined. There is no truth now, nor has there ever been any truth to the idea that the government encourages euthanasia or infanticide.

Our country is in trouble. Claims like these are routinely refuted by people who know better, but they are recirculated because they are sensational, and the MSM purports to take a balanced position without a thoughtful assessment of the facts. Fox News actually has people on in support of these outrageously false claims.

In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it.
…

And in a Media World where open, obvious, verifiable lies and the liars who spread them are officially give the same weight as the truth, the only questions worth asking any longer are:

Who makes that decision that people like Sarah Palin should be afforded any portion of our national airwaves whatsoever?

What are those people’s names?

Where do they hide?

How can we reach out to them and let them know how very, very, very unhappy we are that they are fucking up our country?

Why aren't their names and faces spread all over the internet?

This week, the former House Majority Leader was back baby!

Yes, just like Michelle Malkin last week, noted Conservative Liar -- Dick Armey – inexplicably managed to worm his way onto a Major Sunday Show this week.

There he sat on “Meet The Press”, slurring and smirking along like Bizarro Dean Martin’s own, personal portrait of Dorian Gray…wringing his little paws…and lying with the open, joyous abandon of a four-year-old who just discovered the magical power of making shit up.

David Gregory: Dick Armey, you have amped up the crazies, scared the Hell out of them, given them their talking points, and pointed them at Barack Obama’s head. Do you bear some responsibility for the tone of these meetings?

Armey: Ya know, I had mah differences with President Bush, George W. Bush…but when MoveOn dot Org ran those ads comparing George Bush to Adolph Hitler, I though it was despicable.

Rachel Maddow: They didn’t do it.

Gregory, being Gregory, just dropped the leash on his GOP mongrels early on, leaving them free to ramble, maunder, fart, scratch and dissemble all they wanted.

Maddow: They didn’t. They never ran an ad comparing…

Armey: Shut your pie-hole, little girl. And get me a fucking highball!

So what really happened in those long-ago-days of 2004?

Well, MoveOn ran a video contest – ''Bush in 30 Seconds” – that elicited over 1,500 entries.

It was a contest, got it? Anyone can submit anything, to be voted up-or-down by the organization as a whole, and two of those 1,500 entries compared Bush to that Hitler guy.

In a sane and fact-based Universe, the fact that neither of these submissions was endorsed by the votes of its members, and that both of these submissions were immediately disavowed by MoveOn’s leadership (from the NYT, January 6, 2004) --

...
Wes Boyd, a MoveOn.org founder, fired back, saying Republicans were ''deliberately and maliciously'' misleading the public by asserting that MoveOn.org had sponsored the advertisements. ''None of these was our ad,'' Mr. Boyd said in a statement. ''Nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund.''
...

-- would settle any and all questions about whether MoveOn ever endorsed or ran any advertisements comparing Commander Cuckoo Bananas to Herr Schiklgruber.

Of course if Modern Conservatives operated in a sane and fact-based manner, they’d be Liberals. Instead, right before our eyes, the Wingnut Lies of 2004 become Dick Armey’s Wingnut Gospel of 2009.

Sitting across from Armey was Republican Oklahoma Senator and fellow Outrageous Liar, Tom Coburn, who says the following when asked about his wingnut followers rage-dancing themselves into Timothy McVeigh-levels of anti-Gummint hatred (link is to the video from C&L):

Coburn: …we’ve earned it. … The tone is based on fear of the loss of control of their own Gummint. We have lost the confidence of the people…We have raised the question whether we are legitimately looking after the people’s long term interest.

Coburn: The mail volume of all the Senators didn’t go up based on the health care debate. The mail volume went up when we started spending away our future indiscriminately…

Because Coburn fucking well knows that his Party’s low-information goons first started running in hair-on-fire circles, screaming that they were losing their country to “socialists” and blowing shit up back in the boom days of the 1990s. Back when the Clinton Administration was producing balanced budgets, millions of new jobs and surpluses while kicking millions off of welfare, and making political hay bashing gays.

By the Coburn's metric of What Angries Up the Pig People, Conservative should have been joining hands with the Centrist Democrat and enjoying a wingnut Golden Age.

But instead, Conservatives rose to power and crippled the Clinton Presidency by feeding the Pig People enough lies

to drive them wild in the streets.


And then, for eight long, ugly, Cheney-soaked years...nothing.

Mere moments before, for these very same people, impeachment followed by a public flogging was hardly a sufficient penalty for a guy who had delivered peace, prosperity and a balanced budget, but who had lied about getting a blowjob. And yet as catastrophe piled on catastrophe...as treason, corruption, torture, incompetence, criminality, paranoia, authoritarianism and Coburn's whole “spending away our future indiscriminately” thing flourished under President Cheney as never before in modern history...Coburn’s "Clinton Killed Vince Foster" Patriots distinguished themselves either by remaining as silent as the grave, or rousing themselves to scream “Traitor!” at anyone, anywhere who dared voice any opposition to their Dear Leader:


Yes, somehow, Coburn’s Patriots only managed to discover their great love of the Constitution and fiscal responsibility 10 seconds after the Black Democrat took the oath of office.

Sorry, fucko, but after living eight years dozing in a web-o-lies hammock slung between Dick Cheney's asscheeks, you and your entire orc horde forfeited your right to question anyone else's motives or patriotism

for the next 20 years.

And that’s how Sunday went.

Armey: Some guy somewhere in teh internets in Connecticut said something about something we were doing that wasn’t true. So we're not responsible for anything. And I believe I said something about a highball.

Coburn: Fuck YEAH we should all be armed and terrified!

Maddow: Facts, facts, fa...

Gregory: Hush now, missy. The Menfolk are talkin’

Maddow’s only mistake – and it was a small but noticeable one – was forgetting that she wasn’t the show’s host. Where she should have moved in for the kill, as an advocate should do, she instead listened respectfully and let the two GOP fucks burn airtime.

All in all she did well as anyone could who was trying to fight off a barrage of dissolute old man beerfarts with a nail gun. And of course it would have been even better if she’d had a tag-team member who could help her work the body, instead of Tom Daschle.

Sadly but unsurprisingly, Daschle – who took his “mealy” elocution lessons from Harry Reid -- was his usual, cold-watery-porridge-self

Daschle: Would…anyone…like…some…nice…taffy? Because…taffy…is…nice. You…know…what…else…is…nice? De…mo…cra…see.

at a meal that demanded pepper and protein.


Meanwhile, the ”Chris Matthews Show” website told me that Tweety was on in Chicago at 11:00 A.M.


Yay!

Except, of course, he’s not.

Yay!