Last Friday Was My 18th Blogiversary

That's 18 years, 11,000 posts, around 4,000 original graphics and in that entire time only seven typos :-)

And lemme tell ya, over the last 18 years I have seen some shit.

This is a post mine from April 1st, 2005.  The only substantive differences between then and now are:

1. The bigoted,deranged GOP base now runs the party directly and not by proxy. And, 
2. The people who made a living lying about the bigotry and derangement of the GOP base in 2005 now make a living pretending to be utterly shocked that the GOP base suddenly and inexplicably turned into a mob of bigots and imbeciles in 2016.

Swap around a few names and it's the sort of thing Liberals could have (and did) write on any given day over the past couple of decades.   A sin for which we were declared "pariah" and exiled forever into the outer media darkness forever.

Or it's something the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark could've (and did) file the serial numbers off of and post to wild acclaim and a fistfull of MSNBC contributor contracts and book deals five minutes ago.

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Tip jar below the post if you are so inclined.

Rep. DeLay Preps the Beds for the GOP's Big Sleep

(This particular bit started life as a comment in Gilliard's Shoppe but has been Repurposed to better serve You, The Customer :-)

The little-“p” politics of this is fascinating.  [The fact that] Over the long run that the GOP is demographically/electorally doomed to become the minority Thurston Howell Party again. Either when the Fundy Shining Path Rebels that make up their margin of victory make one too many batshit demands, or are are told “No” once too often.

(If you want to get a clear picture of how this will look, rent “Fatal Attraction” or “Play Misty For Me”. I’m not going to be ignored, George!)

So either they take their bat and ball and stomp disgustedly back to Mordor, or a handful of moderate Republicans get so freaked out by the Randall Terry Wing of the Party that they bolt or stay home.

But short run…Tom DeLay is now a Household Name. Been waiting 10 years for that to happen and always amazed that Republicans had no fucking clue who he was, even though you’d tell them five or a hundred times. Sheesh. All RAM and no Hard Drive with some people.

Every GOP Leader knows the Gingrich Lesson: No matter how much the membership owes you, they’ll go absolutely Lord of The Flies on your Piggy-ass the minute you becomes a measurable liability. Newt was so completely “I Am The Reich” that he would have been perfectly happy to go into the bunker and fight it out until the GOP was razed to rubble had he not been stopped by his own House Republicans.

And since the Suddenly Huge Liability named Tom DeLay is now just “Tell Tale Heart”--thundering away under the GOP floorboards, threatening to drown out everything else, the question is, will that same dynamic play twice?

Well DeLay ain’t Gingrich. He learned from that episode, and they don’t call him The Hammer for his shipwright skills. He spent a decade forcibly collecting GOP testicles and caching them in his private Crown Royal bag. At the slightest provocation he will to politically and personally destroy anyone who doesn’t bend a deep knee to His Gorgon Awfulness.

And both the Texas and National Republican parties have shown absolutely craven willingness to rewrite the Rules on the fly any time the Beast’s wet-bar needed to be restocked with virgin’s blood, or whenever a law or policy might make threaten to cinch-in the bottomless lust he and his stooges have for Power, Money, Trinkets and Perks, even a trifle.

So (hahah!) they’ve kinda disarmed themselves to accommodate him, and now they’re stuck very much up on that very windy gibbet with him. So if you were running in 2006 and playing How Do I Save My Pink Republican Skin while DeLay is holding your ass held hostage, what do you do?

Got to time it juuuust right. Jump away from Herr DeLay too soon and he’ll blow your head off. Jump too late, and your face will be morphed into Tom DeLay…into Randall Terry…into, I dunno, Osama Bin Laden? in every ad, every day, for the entire election cycle.

My simple suggestion for voters in 2006?

Shoot the hostage ;-)

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