Sunday Morning Comin' Down: 2006 Redux

I am here, girl, because I put no trust in a desert god and his mud-pit prophet. I prospered because I bowed lower than my brothers before the Egyptians, and now the Egyptians bow low before me. Joshua wanted you... Baka wanted you... but you belong to me... a gift from Rameses to His Excellency. -- Dathan the Overseer (The Ten Commandments) explains how to prosper under President Stupid

Although many historians and most Republicans deny it, once upon a time there really was a Bush Administration.  

It really was led by an ignoramus who was, in turn, manipulated by monsters.  It's president really did lose the popular vote and then take office under the sketchiest of circumstances.  It really did reel from one catastrophe to the next because its only road map was a failed ideology and the council of evil men.

And the Beltway media really did roll over for the Bush Administration.  Over and over again.  Despite overwhelming evidence that it was a rolling disaster that just kept getting worse.

And because many historians,  most Republicans and even the Teacher of the Rules of Civilization himself (h/t Heather and Blue Gal at Crooks & Liars) --

-- have labored so mightily to pretend the Failed Bush Administration never happened (and therefor cannot be used as a guide to help us find our way through the Failed Trump Administration), before proceeding I believe it is necessary to pour a wee dram from a January, 2006 cask of "Sunday Morning Comin' Down":

...when it comes to the U.S. unsheathing the saber in Iran, George Will [On "This Week...'] put a grim, angry smile on my face.

Will unpacks his wee soapbox, clambers atop it, and says, sure, we can bomb the crap out of Iran and knock it back ten years or so.

But, Will asks, “Then what?”

“That’s the question. That’s the question we didn’t ask bef…”

And in that perfect little jewel of a moment you could positively smell Karl Rove tickling the joystick that controls the high-voltage, barbed wire cock-ring that the GOP keeps wrapped around the withered sac of its pet journalists.

George unwrapped his lips from around the words he was just about to say like a man stung in the gums by a wasp the size of an Escalade. He then quickly shifted gears and began nattering on about Admiral Yamamoto telling the Japanese high command that, sure, he could attack the U.S. fleet and run wild in the Pacific for a “year and a day.”

…but “Then What?”

Of course the statement Will was verging on making before Karl the Klown jolted him back to goodthinkfulness was this:

“That’s the question. That’s the question we didn’t ask…before we invaded Iraq.”

But of course, that’s kind of a sore subject; one that the Stalinist Right has striven mightily to stomp down the ol’ Memory Hole and piss away into the mists of forgotten myth and lore.

Because, of course, people did ask that question before Dubya rolled our children into Iraq to be slaughtered behind his PNAC fantasies and petroleum dream, didn’t they George?

Millions and millions and millions of people asked that very question.

Very Loudly.

They were called Democrats, George.

And your Party called them unAmerican, remember George?

And even the Democrats who supported the invasion of Iraq –- and there were many of them -- made it very clear that they were not giving your President a blank check.

The Dem’s made it abundantly clear that there needed to be concrete, convincing evidence of an imminent threat. Evidence of WMDs delivered by inspectors on the ground. Evidence of some linkage to 9/11.

They demanded that enough troops be used to get the job done. And they insisted on a clear exit strategy.

And your President mumbled, “Yeah…Ok…whatever”, blew off every warning and caution, grabbed the keys to the car and drove it right off the fucking cliff, didn't he George?

And the Democrats who had made the epic mistake of trusting a dim little creep like George Bush to behave responsibly with the national Credit Card?

Your Party called them weak and cowardly, remember George?

Funny how you seem the effortlessly remember, oh, say, every stray stat surrounding Cal Koonce’s ERA, but can’t seem to remember these rather vitally important, life-and-death facts about your Party and President, isn’t is George?

Joe Klein thinks its “absolutely shameful” that the President keeps using national security for political gain.

Gee, Joe. Really? Wow? Who'da thunk it?

On The Chris Matthews' Show...Also a thematic rerun of last week’s twaddle.

Every single fucking question framed as “Just look what at what a muslim-whippin’ badass Bush is! How vewwy vewwy manly. Look how snugly his balls fit in my mouth.

And Holy Crap what a bunch of whiners and quibblers the Democrats are! With all their whinging and wheezing about this mysterious Constitution and 'civil liberties'.

Jeez! What a buncha brittle old women the Dems are talkin’ about the fact that the foundation stones of American Democracy are being sledgehammered to sand by that tough, musky, Hombre-In-Chief, a man who’s taint sure tastes like peppermint ice cream to me!"

What was missing was anyone uttering a discouraging word.

Last week the Bush-luvin’ pee party was at least momentarily broken up by…

Cynthia Tucker throwing a hard elbow right in the throat of the cocka-suckas on her right and left. She actually said the words, “Southern Strategy.” Spoke of the Original Republican Sin of choosing to deliberately and shamefully pander to racists. Of always swinging through the Segregationist Academy of Bob Jones University when out making the presidential campaign rounds.

Which was followed by…silence. In memory, what seems now like a million years of crickets, broken only when Andrew Sullivan announced that he thinks the President is genuine. In his heart. It is wrong and irresponsible to ascribe racists motives to Blah Blah Blah.

Cynthia Tucker didn’t say Dubya’s a racist. She didn’t say Dubya hates black people. No, Dubya hates poor people: he just sucks a lot of racist dick, uh, recreationally.

But alas, that was last week.

This time around Chris made sure no one was on the panel who would challenge him when he leaped up on the table, ripped his shirt off to reveal his Bush/Cheney ’04 pec tat and commemorative GOP nipple clamps, and screamed:

“Sure Dubya might be a liar and a dimwit, torturer and thief. But for God’s sake people: just look at the ass on that man and tell me you could say “No” to that!”

That was January, 2006.

Within a year it had become embarrassingly obvious that the Bush Administration had not only used 9/11 to lie us into the wrong war, but that they were fucking that war up very badly, and were bankrupting the country and breaking the army in the process.  This, added to all the other failures of the Bush Administration, meant that the sheer weight of ongoing Republican perfidy and incompetence could no longer be merely shrugged off or papered over or shouted down.

For one, brief moment it all became too much and suddenly a few Actual Liberals were allowed on the teevee machine!

Sure, they were paired with Both Siderist stooges like Harold Fraud Junior so that establishmentarian testicle cozies like David Gregory wouldn't get any of the career-killing Liberal stank on him, but there they were:

But soon enough Lords and Ladies of the Beltway decides they were just not, not, not going to discuss the Failed Bush Administration anymore, because any such discussion held the very real risk of leading quickly to the subject of the craven complicity of the Lords and Ladies of the Beltway.

And so, just as suddenly as they had arrived, Actual Liberals were gone.  Poof.  As if they had never existed.

Instead, the still-burning, still-bleeding history of the Failed Bush Administration was welded into an oil drum and sunk into the Potomac, while Bush Administration hacks and speechwriters -- the men and women who had crafted the words and policies that nearly destroyed this country -- were rewarded with lucrative and well-protected sinecures throughout the media.

Human hassocks like Harold Fraud Junior remained a permanent fixture in the new order because nobody can slide that entire Both Siderist kielbasa down his throat quite like Harold Fraud Junior.

Newt Gingrich was raised from the dead to became to most frequently invited guest on Meet the Press.

And Peggy Noonan's Collaborator's Prayer (which she rolled out just three months after Barack Obama was inaugurated) --

God, grant me enough gin to look the other way when artrocities are committed by my friends and benefactors,
Enough rum to actually go on teevee and say this shit in pubic,
And enough fellow media collaborators to know that I'll never have to pay a price for any of it.

-- became the Beltway's holy writ and Both Siderism became their state-within-a-state religion.

Of course in this brave new world of every act of explicit Republican barbarism and sedition being reported as "Why Won't Obama Lead?", there was no place for those of us who knew that the obvious answer to that questions was "Because Republicans are depraved motherfuckers.  Because Republicans have been depraved motherfuckers for as long as anyone can remember.  Holy shit, didn't we already settle all of this with you goofs ten minutes ago during the Bush Administration?"

And so the entire Bush Administration went down the memory hole.  The entire Republican base was allowed to re-brand itself as "independents" just in time to pour into the streets demanding the impeachment of the Kenyan Usurper.  And Liberals -- the ones who had been right about the Right all along -- were given a "Best of Luck in All Your New Endeavors!" card signed by no one and escorted out of the building.

And in no small part because the Beltway media collectively decided that it was in their financial interest  to sell the country out, look the other way and "just keep walkin'" 

no matter how racist or deranged or destructive the Republican Party became, we now have another, exponentially-worse Republican ignoramus in the White House who is being operated by even more lethal cabal of evil men.

So it is not it is not entirely impossible that, once again, for a brief period of time as the Failed Trump Administration burns right down to the waterline and sinks, Actual Liberals may actually be asked to step in front of the cameras once again and help explain what we are witnessing.

And my advice to them is, this time, ignore whatever Harold Fraud Junior they pair you with to insulate the themselves from your icky Liberalness, focus your attention directly on the host and go full Rustin Cohle on their ass until the ask you to leave.

Because sooner that you will believe possible, Peggy Noonan will be along once again to remind the Lords and Ladies of the Beltway to look away, look away, look away from all the unpleasantness, because "sometimes life has to be mysterious".

Behold, a Tip Jar!