Fundraiser Day One: Sunday Morning Came And Went

I am once again putting my little tin cup front and center for my annual birthday-adjacent fundraiser.

Today, I thought it might be amusing to take the measure of just how long I have been on this beat, and just how consistent the themes have been, even though the dramatis personæ keeps changing.

Also, if you are a new reader (or an NBC/CNN/Fox employee who sneaks a peak at my stuff every day and thinks I don't notice). try to imagine how simultaneously maddening and fucking hilarious it is to have been writing every day about the devolution of the Republican Party and corruption and collapse of the political media for more than a decade and then -- suddenly!!! -- professional Conservatives and highly paid media haircut start losing their minds 10 minutes ago because -- Oh My God, Becky! -- the Republican Party is stacked to the rafters with Republicans  and the media is full of hacks, frauds, lunatics and liars.

(Easter Egg Alert: Keep an eye out for "Both Siderism", "the media is to blame" and your 'umble scrivener wondering how the hell the media keeps giving these fascist miscreants a pass.)

Probably to a SMCD post about today's freak-show later in the day, or tomorrow, although picking one disaster from a landscape of tranwrecks is vexing me, but for now here is the...very first Sunday Morning Comin' Down from April of 2005:

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down... 

I watched Sunday teevee and sipped coffee and type a little bit of what I saw. Maybe I’ll do this more regularly. Anyway be apprised that I’m not a court recorder and this is not a transcript: All quotes are imperfect and not direct attributions but are, shall we say, impressionistically correct.

Meme wars this morning!

Harry Reid going great guns on the Heaven’s Gate Republican “impeach and possibly waste all judges who oppose Tom DeLay’s Divine Will” nuttery on CBS this morning. This Mormon kid’s got some heat!

driftglass FYI: As of next week, 205 out of 214 judges from Bushville will have been confirmed. That’s 96%...a rate of blockage or 4%. During Clinton’s term, Republican Senators blocked 35% of President Clinton’s nominees. See 35 is MORE than 4! I know that some of my GOP friends will have to take off their shoes and socks to cipher numbers that high, but trust me, like Evolution, it’s really true!

And as a matter of historical interest, in the Clinton years, Republicans threatened to stop all confirmations or just obliterate judicial positions outright, demanding they were entitled to choose half of the judges themselves. And the only reason that Bush even has so many vacancies into which he can pack so much rancid Republican Peanut Butter is because the GOP blocked so many Clinton nominees in the first place...

...and every time you hit the lever for Republicans, you enable this kind of Anti-American bullshit to run unchecked.

Harry Reid catches the meme: “These are not "mainstream" Republicans; these are the extreme, hard Right.”

On the Bolton Nomination: "We're not going to allow someone who is an embarrassment to the country.”

“If this goes on, we'll just become an extension of the House of Representative.”

Bob Schieffer: “Is there some kind of compromise that is being worked on...”

Bob don’t get it, and I'll get to that in a longer piece on what I’ll call the “Tyranny of Artificial Bisection” at a future date.

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On This Week –

Sen. Santorum, calls Tom DeLay. “passionate and effective” and apparently the MEDIA is the problem.

Wow, so it’s the MEDIA, eh? Not much of a deep game the GOP has these days, is it? We're back to insisting that the problem is not Res Ipsa Loquitor (like DeLay or people being gunned down in broad daylight in Iraq, for example) but publicly reporting on the existence of the thing itself and not simply regurgitating straight Rightwing propaganda as “news.” Shocking, no?

Senator Christ Dodd: “DeLay rigged the rules. He becomes the poster child for everything the Dems think is wrong with the Repubs.”

Pattern developing. Pattern is good. driftglass likes the Shape of Things to Come.

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Fox – Just Can’t Watch it for more than a few moments at a time, Maalox or not.

Bill Kritol – Another reliable Tom DeLay assclown.

Brit Hume – So this is what Gumby looks like without the Botox?

Hume: “Not a whole lot of daylight between Cheney the Preznit and DeLay.”

Bwahahahah! Bless you, evil feculent Bizarro Gumby! Bless you for explicitly tying the whole line of Republican boats to the fate of Tom "BTK" DeLay, as that chunk of vile, high-density, neutronium disappears beneath the waves!

Seriously, why does anyone that can use opposable thumbs to open a book watch this asslickery?

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CBS - McCain. His constituents ask him “Why are you guys always fighting?” He opines a few seconds later, “I think both parties...”

Fuck you, McCain. And as regards Dear Old Tom DeLay and his reeking-so-bad-it-makes-Baby-Jesus-cry scandals, McCain opines further, "I'll take him at his word" and "I'm not is a position to comment on DeLay."

So...Big John, how exactly did you vote on the Clinton Impeachment again? I believe part of what you said went something like...this,” Although I may admit to failures in my private life, I have at all times, and to the best of my ability, kept faith with every oath I have ever sworn to this country. I have known some men who kept that faith at the cost of their lives. I cannot--not in deference to public opinion, or for political considerations, or for the sake of comity and friendship--I cannot agree to expect less from the President.”

(From Bill Shakespeare who was, most definitely, not making the rounds this Sunday Morning:

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;

But Brutus says he was ambitious,

And Brutus is an honorable man.)

And then McCain has a hearty laugh about how effectively Bush cornholed him in 2000.

Hehehe! Lookit the funny draft dodgy creep who ran a fixed-bayonet attack right at genuine war heroes. Impugning their service at war and in POW camps, slandering their good names, during the period when Der Bush was apparently too knee-walking drunk to bother to show up for the cushy job his rich daddy poached for him. Letting some poorer, smarter, low-born thrall go off to the jungles and suck up bullets.

Man! Bush-dick must taste like Belgian Chocolate! So yummy, that you just can't get it out of your mouth!

McCain again: “It shouldn't be partisan...” and fond recollection of the good old days of “Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill...”

When the Party of God starts puling about the good old days of compromise, keep your hand on your wallet. C’mon, John. When you’re Party quits napalming Democracy...our party will quit boosting hubcaps, OK?

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On This Week – I watch Eliot Spitzer for a few seconds: Community values, government helping people to get wealthy, fighting for them on their behalf. Jeez, somebody get Hillary on the wireless: Hil, you ever want my vote...say shit like this every day. Believe it. Act on it, center your chakras on it. Touchstone it. And never give up. And then you get my vote. Of not...bye-bye.

Timmuh -- talkin' about Intelligence Failure.

The committee reports says, "Every piece of fresh evidence (uranium hunting, anthrax planes, weapons labs) had been tested and disproved by the UN Inspectors.”

Sen. Pat Roberts. -- loyal Bush Family houseboy. He assures us that it was not only a failure of US intel....but the Whole World, Timmy!. Even the Russians! Even the FRENCH damn it!

Driftglass aside: WTF?! Why is it every single fucking time these dust mites get caught lying their asses off they scamper and hide like the puling little bitches that they are behind the French. Is there a stronger word available to the civilian consumer than "coward"? Is 'cuntily" a word?

We are the fucking United State of America. We spend more money on Intel than most countries spend on...everything. We brag on it harder that any suburban warrior brags on his new Hummer to his Camry-driving neighbor. We went to war on big, brave, macho, firm, unambiguous, declarative sentences made by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Perle, Wolfman and Powell. And now, when the going gets tough, they run and hide behind the skirts of a nation they mock and despise as weak and ineffectual.

Roberts launches New GOP Talking Point: “The assumption train.” Well. OK. Somebody was sure as hell pulling SOME kinda train, and everyone that fell into line got a nice, sloppy reach-around from Bush an Cheney. 

But we are assured that There is Good News: we've swapped out the defective bureaucrats who were the REAL problem. (Gotta love that Ken Lay Enron defense: It just keeps giving!) The Department of Fucking Everything Up is getting a new Director! Yay!!! So...does he get a Preznit Medal of Freedom up-front, or is there like a probationary period?

Wow. I must be old. I remember dimly back when the Republicans would have been positively shrieking for a Special Prosecutor and an unlimited line of credit when a Prezint fucked-up-and-lied this nakedly, and over silly shit like jizzed-up dresses.

Robertson on the other part of the report he promised. The part about how was it exactly that the White House rolled out nation into a war based on these amazingly transparent lies. Are they just all stupider than six pounds of pasta? Or so ideologically blind that they are incapable of rational thought? Or just a pack of lying rodents? Or “D” – all of the above?

Roberts explains that, well, we're very busy, y'know. Very, very busy. Got confirmations. Judges. Social Security. Doing our taxes. Cleaning out the gutters. Buncha stuff. But don’t you worry, America: we'll get ‘round to it one to it eventually, one of these fine days.

And, yes, these are the same people that all but shut the government down to impeach Bill Clinton over some consensual fellation.

Has to stop watching. Going out to see “Downfall” now, although watching a movie about a raving, hate-mongering fascist in complete denial about his own monstrousness, surrounded by sycophants willing to burn their own country to the ground rather than irritate the boss seems...anti-climactic.