Watching the 2016 Election Results Come In...

...was like watching the towers come down.  

Watching helplessly as madness and evil arrive out of a clear blue sky and destroy something you took to be permanent and safely defended.   

Burn The Lifeboats

The Triumphant Return of Young Bucks and Welfare Queens

It has been more than 35 years since Lee Atwater laid out exactly how and why his Republican Party was building a string of dog-whistle factories that would enable them to wear their racism out in public and drive Southern bigots into the arms of the Party of Lincoln without the High Hats and Snooty Liberal Brahmans getting wise.

From The New York Times:

...

In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

And as proof, anyone who bothers to take a look can plainly see the GOP running this same play out of this same racist playbook over and over again, decade after decade (from The Atlantic) --

The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie

At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced the welfare queen into the public conversation about poverty: “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”

The perception of who benefits from a policy is of material consequence to how it is designed. For the past 40 years, U.S. welfare policy has been designed around Reagan’s mythical welfare queen—with very real consequences for actual families in need of support.

Though it was Reagan who gave her the most salient identity, the welfare queen emerged from a long and deeply racialized history of suspicion of and resentment toward families receiving welfare in the United States...

 -- getting, meaner and blunter and more smirkingly obvious with each iteration (from an entirely different article in the New York Times) --

When, in 1976, [Reagan] talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. True, as The New York Times reported,

The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man.

But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.

Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake...

And then the first Black President was elected and all of that barely concealed racist bile -- the true mother's milk of Republican politics -- came spilling right out into the open in a tidal wave of slander like this --

-- which PolitiFact rated as a pants-on-fire lie back when pants-on-fire lies from Republicans were notable enough that you didn't need both hands and both feet to keep count of the just the new ones that were hatching out of the GOP midden pile every single day:

Our ruling

Santorum said that Obama "showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare."

The claim is a drastic distortion of what the Obama administration said it intends to do. By granting waivers to states, HHS is seeking to make welfare-to-work efforts more successful, not end them. The waivers would apply to individually evaluated pilot programs -- HHS is not proposing a blanket, national change to welfare law. And there have been no comments by the Obama administration indicating such a dramatic shift in policy.

Santorum falsely claims that Obama has waived welfare’s work requirement entirely. The remark is inaccurate and it inflames old resentments about able-bodied adults sitting around collecting public assistance. Pants on Fire!

And now that the GOP has gotten tired of pretending it isn't a racist shitpile. burned down the dog-whistle factories and elected the Stormfront Comment Section That Walks Like a Man, guess what's baaaack baby!

From Real Clear Politics (emphasis added):

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And by the way, what happened, what happened, is Obama took a long time, years to get Obamacare, right? Again, 10 months. We've had two runs at it. We're coming closer, closer. I think now we have a plan that's going to be great. But we're not talking about it until after taxes, and then we'll take care of health care.

Then we will have done tax cuts, the biggest in history, health care, phenomenal health care. I know you don't want this -- welfare reform. Does anyone want welfare reform?

(APPLAUSE)

And infrastructure. But welfare reform, I see it, and I've talked to people. I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn't work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that's working his and her ass off. And it's not going to happen. Not going to happen.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who works three jobs.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who works their asses off doing anything other than looting the government and lying about it.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone on public assistance.

President Stupid doesn't know anyone who lives within a billion miles of social distance of anyone on public assistance.

President Stupid is a bitter, half-mad, pig-ignorant old bigot who keeps company with other bitter old bigots.  He gets his "news" straight from the from Fox and Friends Soft Serve Dung Machine, and sits on his golden shitter retweeting white supremacist filth and nutso conspiracies, picking fights with celebrities, calling for reporters and his political opponents to be locked up, yelling at uppity black people and trying to start World War Three.

When he gets bored with that, he hits the links for the umpteenth time.  Because he is a very, very lazy bitter old bigot. 

When he gets bored with that, he wanders around, grabbing random microphones and taking credit for anything that pops into his head.

He is a sick joke.

And the party that nominated him and the reprogrammable meatbags who elected people who elected him are in on that joke and think it is fucking hilarious.  

And together they are going to hurt an awful lot of people very badly before this nightmare comes to an end.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The People's Front of Republicanism

Another in my long-running series on Republican Detachment Disorder.

These days you can't throw yourself down a flight of stairs without landing in the front row of the ongoing comic opera that is The People's Front of Republicanism as they belligerently insist that the Republican People's Front aren't real Republicans.

From Michael Gerson's disquisition in The Washington Post on the rise of Roy Moore which acts as if Moore had just precipitated out of thin air instead of -- just like Trump -- being the perfectly logical and predictable destination of Mr. Gerson's Republican party based on where it has been plainly going for the past 40 years --

No, Moore is not really a theonomist. The boundaries of his worldview, it turns out, almost exactly coincide with those of the Breitbart agenda. Moore’s study of divine law has led him, in the end, to the shabby, third-rate gospel of Stephen K. Bannon.

-- to the going's on at my own state capitol --

McCann: Rauner Is ‘Not A Real Republican’: A local lawmaker isn’t just criticizing Governor Bruce… https://t.co/t7Hke6BUXV #DependOnUs

— 94.7 & 970 WMAY (@NewsTalkWMAY) September 29, 2017

-- it is clear that the "No True Scotsman" protocol is in effect party-wide.

I even listened to the latest episode of "With Friends Like These" to see if  the assertion made to me by Ana Marie Cox was actually true:

Listen to the episode, I think you’ll find I don’t let him off the hook.

— With Friends (@crooked_friends) September 29, 2017

I listened very carefully.  I made many notes.   And I reached several conclusions.

First, upspeaking the end of your sentences a couple of times to indicate a slightly increasing level of dubiety does not rise to the level of not letting Mr. Steele off the hook.  Not even close.

Second, if you think slightly upspeaking the end of a couple of sentences actually means you are holding a Republican accountable for the nonsense they're peddling,  maybe that explains why we Liberals lose so goddamn much.

Third, according to Mr. Steele, the reason he is a Republican is that, back in 1977, while living in a home with a dynamite mom (I have a dynamite mom too, so at least we have that in common) and pictures of JFK, MLK and Jesus on the wall, he researched the party and discovered that Harriet Tubman was pretty cool.  So he decided that he wanted to join the Republican party...as it existed in 1893.

Beyond that, the simple, irreducible truth is that Mr. Steele has made a very comfortable life for himself fronting for a party of racists, con men, theocrats, gun nuts, xenophobes, imbeciles, misogynists, demagogues and assorted other malfunctioning humans and he will go right on doing so as long as A) the checks clear and, B) he can continue to hold himself suspended in a dissociative state of denial, dissembling and dismissal.

So here we go...

Like virtually every other Republican I know, Mr. Steele hides the indefensible absurdity of his political position behind a welter of vainglorious bullshit (rush transcript from Ms. Cox's podcast) --

Steele:  I've run into the racism.  I've dealt with the bullshit.  All that.  But I also look at what I have been able to do in the party.  I also look at what I have been able to accomplish.  And the voice that I can try to represent on some critical issues at critical times.

-- and Both Siderist nonsense in which, again, like virtually ever fucking Republican in Christendom, he keeps attributing distinctly Republican malice and depravity to "Congress" and "politicians" and "the voters" and "the people" and "us" and "the country".

And, conversely, Mr. Steele inclusively absorbs distinctly non-Republican actions and attitudes into the category of things "we" are doing.

"We" had this march on Washington. "We" elected a black president.  And so "we" dumbed ourselves down about being post-racial, and "we" don't want to talk about "it".  

Not since "A Rose for Emily" has the second-person plural voice worked this hard:

Steele: This is what happened to Hillary and the Democrats. They were so concerned with the polls and the statistics and "the country" was, like, we're not feelin' her.  We're not feelin' that.  We're not over here where you think we are. 

See, according to Mr. Steele, polls don't count and numbers are meaningless because "real people" lie to pollsters all the time.  In fact, black people will vote in large numbers to cut their own economic throats "just to fuck with you."  Because Political Correctness!

But what about factors like the GOP's massive, coordinated, well-financed program of voter suppression?

Steele:  You say voter suppression on the Republican side.  I say voter control on the Democratic side.  It works on Both Sides. I'm beyond excuse-making.  I want to get to why things don't work the way we want it to work.

And of course, inevitably, this...

Steele: The president is much more of a Democrat than he is a Republican.  He's not a Republican. He's certainly not a Conservative.

It went on and on like that, most of so howlingly, predictably preposterous in all the ways that all Republican Detachment Disorderlies are howlingly, predictably preposterous these days that any of it could have been easily knocked to bits and vivisected, live, on-stage, if that had been Ms. Cox's goal.  

But Mr. Steele is a dear friend of hers.  The man she called for coffee and consolation the day after President Stupid was elected.  So she let one slow pitch after another glide over the plate untouched.

I promised Ms. Cox (whose podcast I listen to fairly regularly even though she doesn't listen to mine)  to hear her out before critiquing her efforts.

I have now kept my promise.

In summary, my opinion of Mr. Steele was not budged one iota from where it was back in the Olden Days when Lower Manhattanite would make mock of Mr. Steele's hi-larious hijinks.  

Not one iota from when I wrote this one year ago:

Republican Detachment Disorder: Michael Steele, Patient Zero

While some scientists believe that Republican Detachment Disorder is a Trump-era affliction, in fact, the RDD pre-dates the rise of Il Douche by many years.

For example, back in 2010, between excursions to bondage-themed strip clubs and lecturing George Stephanopoulos that government jobs aren't real jobs, Michael Steele -- the RNC's "Break Glass in Case the Democrats Elect a Black Guy" desperation-hire -- was faced with a vexing demographic problem:  98% of African-Americans hated the Republican party.

And like his predecessor (Ken Mehlman, a closeted, self-loathing gay American who fronted for the virulently anti-gay party) Mr. Steele (a self-loathing African-American who fronted for the racist party.  Are you noticing a pattern?) was forced by the existence of well-documented historical fact (man, those were the days) to acknowledge the existence of something called "The Southern Strategy".

From TPM in 2010:

Steele: African-Americans 'Really Don't Have A Reason' To Vote GOP

Appearing Tuesday at DePaul University in Chicago, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said that the Republican Party has not given African-Americans a reason to vote for them.

"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," said Steele, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Steele said how the Republican party had been founded as a pro-civil rights party, with Frederick Douglass among its early members. However, Steele explained, the Republican Party has alienated those voters: "For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South...

However, Mr. Steele quickly added that the GOP's racism had ended long before his time:

...Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton."

And yet based on the long, grim-faced sad I just saw Mr. Steele having on MSNBC this morning (no video available yet), like herpes, all of the seething racism that powers the GOP and somehow magically disappeared during Mr. Steele's time as a party leader...

...has magically reappeared now that he has left!

How amazing!

You see, RDD appears in many forms.

Sometimes it is of the relapsing/remitting Michael Steele variety in which party loyalty (and unhinged Liberals bashing) appears and disappears depending on who is footing the bill.

Sometimes it a mass pandemic event like the "Tea Party" in which millions of life-long Republican racists who were eager to get a jump on hating the Kenyan Usurper from Day One without having to answer a lot of embarrassing questions about all the shit they had been talking for the previous eight years, all burned their "Bush/Cheney 04" lawn signs, put on funny hats and swore on the lives of their children that they had never even heard of Dubya.  Just look at their fucking tee-shirts!  These good ol' boys are obviously Constitutional Conservative Christian Libertarian Independent Patriots, so why would you come 'round here callin' 'em Re-publicans.

What are ya, ignernt!

See like all Republican cowards tragically afflicted with RDD, the madness into which the GOP has been steadily descending for the last 40 years is never, ever about them.  Never about the things they said and did, the abominations they countenanced, the beasts they helped tinker together and turn loose.

The blame is always laid at the feet of some other group of irresponsible Republican elites waaaay over there.

Some other group of craven Republican bigots who let us all down.

Oh, and the Kenyan Usurper.

Who pals around with terrorists and works tirelessly to destroy Murrica.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is accusing President Obama of intentionally weakening America at home and abroad. 

“It’s now abundantly clear: Barack Obama has deliberately weakened America,” Rubio said early Monday during a speech on national security at the American Legion in Hooksett, N.H.

And Hillary Clinton, of course.

Who is kissing cousins with Lucifer.

And should be locked up.

Obviously.

There are no more party insiders or outsiders or victims or naifs on the Right any more.

There are only those who long ago walked away from Omelas or refused to live there in the first place, and those who stayed and profited because deep down they either do not care about the bigotry and sadism that powers their party, or they just plain revel in it.

On the Right there are only collaborators, co-conspirators and quislings now, and as Brother Charlie Pierce notes, Trump bought them all at fire-sale prices:

Last Night Chris Christie Had the Living Definition of a Shit-Eating Grin on His Face

Trump owns them all now.

CLEVELAND, OHIO—Once the deed was done, and folks were filtering out to celebrate the elevation of He, Trump to the toppermost of the poppermost of the Republican Party, it was time for the Volksgerichtshof portion of the festivities. One after another, the establishment pols came rolling out to pledge their undying fealty to the new boss. I'm surprised that He, Trump let them keep their belts on so their pants wouldn't fall down...

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Like a Virgin Redux

I wrote this back in 2009 on the occasion of the eight anniversary of 9/11.

It is now eight years after that, and it gives me nothing but nightmares that all the things I was writing about back then -- the berserk, blood-drunk madness of the GOP,  the utter cravenness of the Beltway media, the willful amnesia everywhere, the dreadful momentum all of it was acquiring -- have all gone from very bad to unspeakably awful.

Like A Virgin

“...they turned to prayer, beseeching
that the sin which had been committed
might be wholly blotted out.”

-- 2 Maccabees. 12:42

Once upon a time, there was a President named Bill Clinton, who was, by most historical standards, a typical Centrist Republican, although by a fluke of geography and circumstances he ran for public office with a "(D)" after his name.

Under his Administration, many Conservative ideas which had long gathered dust on the shelf -- ideas such as welfare reform, a balanced budget, debt reduction, a strict “Pay as You Go” fiscal regime, jobs-jobs-jobs, budget surpluses, NAFTA, GATT, official bans on gay marriage, etc. -- were finally realized.

And for all of his good work on behalf of their ideology, Conservatives spent eight, long years treating Bill Clinton -- a Southern, White, Christian man -- as if he were a case of flesh eating nuclear syphilis.

Because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name.

And because he did not run for office with an "(R)" after his name, according to the leading voices in the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, Bill Clinton was, in no particular order, Hitler, a Socialist, a rapist, a warmonger, a serial murderer, and a drug dealer, whose Presidency was somehow vaguely illegitimate.

And counterpointing the 24/7 slime campaign, there were those endless, endless hearings. Whitewater. Travel office. Christmas Card lists. Lincoln bedroom. Etc ad nauseum.

Or don’t you remember?

He was “Not my President!” (Ollie North: War criminal, terrorist arms dealer, GOP Senate Candidate [1994] and FoxNews Contributor.)

He was warned “not to set foot in my state.” (Jesse Helms: Professional Bigot, Confederate Senator, 1820-2003)

His picture was used for target practice by G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate felon, would-be assassin, radio personality and Republican hero.

From "The American Prospect":

...it's worth remembering just how virulent the opposition to Clinton's presidency was. Republicans began plotting to impeach Clinton long before anyone had ever heard the name "Lewinsky," and many on the right simply refused to accept that he legitimately occupied the office he held. Then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, when talking to Democrats, used to refer to Clinton as "your president."

It was a warped, hysterical campaign funded by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Richard Mellon Scaife

and propagated by wealthy Right Wing thugs like Rupert Murdoch who made sure the lies were jack-hammered into the headlines day after day, year after year.

And judging by its objectives, it was also a very successful campaign: it legitimized and metastasized Hate Radio; killed the credibility of the "objective" media once and for all; made the overt mass-slander of political opposition by the Right acceptable; moved radicals, militia nuts, bigots, Creationists and Limbaugh zombies to the center of the Republican Party; accelerated the exodus of reasonable moderates the hell out of the Republican Party; destroyed the possibility of public discourse; and kicked the door open to the use of Congressional hearings as instruments of political vendetta.

But as successful as it was, it was also an incredibly high-risk strategy, because of a thing called the "public record".

The public record meant that each and every time a Republican stood up to, say, slam the Democrat Commander-in-Chief during a time of war (from The Poor Man Institute:)

“You can support the troops but not the president”

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“President…is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”

-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)

“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.”

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”

-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush

“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.”

-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years”

-Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

“I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our overextended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today”

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

“Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?”

-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

“This is President Clinton’s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.”

-Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.”

-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

they left a documentary trail wide and bright enough to be visible from space.

Or from the next election cycle.

The public record meant that every frivolous Republican witch hunt and every syllable of hate and demagoguery gleefully poured out through public megaphones and megachurch pulpits to malign and demonize the Left could potentially represent a thick bar on the cage of any future Republican president's imperial ambitions.

Because, after all, should the tables ever turn -- should there ever be a Republican President whose election really was suspect, or who really did lie to the American public and flagrantly abuse his office, and did it in ways that cost the nation trillions of dollars and thousands of lives -- after spending eight years establishing a public record in such clear and unambiguous language what the Hell could the Right possibly say?

After conspiring to bring about two of the most destructive events in modern American history -- the impeachment of a US President over trivia, and the probable theft of the subsequent Presidential election -- to what God could Republicans possibly pray that their eight years of insanity, venom and violence "might be wholly blotted out?”

On 09/11/01, their dark miracle came winging its way out of a clear, blue sky.

Eight years ago, this is what we all saw.

All of us, all together across all political, cultural and religious spectra watched the worst thing many of us had ever seen.

Together.

But in what now seems like less time than it took to wipe away our tears, the same depraved thugs who sponsored eight years of "Clinton Murdered Vince Foster!" hysteria began hijacking of our pain and patriotism to serve their partisan interests right before our eyes.

The minute the Bush Administration began trying to stretch the war they got into an excuse for the war they wanted, 9/11 stopped being merely a national tragedy and started being the Bush Administration's bottomless political ATM machine.

The minute the Party of Personal Responsibility began using the mantra "9/11 changed everything" as the political equivalent of the Blood of Christ -- as a means to absolve themselves of their personal responsibility for eight years of malice and derangement -- for them September 11, 2001 stopped being a moment of shared, national anguish and started being a suit of cultural body-armor which magically deflected any criticism of their lies and their hypocrisy.

An impervious sniper's nest from which they could cynically escalate --

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

-- their war on the Left.

Or don't you remember the day the Right robbed the graves of all those who perished on 9/11 to turn this


into their all-purpose

"Get Out of the 90s Free" card?

And the thing is, it worked.

By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on bareback fucking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God.

But they forgot that tempus just keeps fugiting along. And as time passed, the Right got so accustomed to butt-scooting their depravity all over the public square and never being called on it they simply stopped noticing that they were amassing a whole new post-9/11 public record so despicable and overflowing with Conservative atrocities that it positively dwarfed their antics during the Clinton Years.

And that brutal, meth-addict level of dependence on never being brought to book for anything they say or do left the Right completely unprepared for the one thing their leaders promised would never happen again.

Losing.

And losing has driven them a special kind of crazy; that screaming-incoherently-and-lashing-out-in-every-direction kind of cold-turkey junkie withdrawal crazy.

In the few, short months since they lost, they have emptied out their entire store of raving invective and delusion.

Losing has left them insisting that that the legally elected President of the United States somehow isn't really the President. That he is a secret enemy. A Communist. A Hitler. A Muslim sleeper cell. A Chicago gangster.

Has left them swearing that "their country" has been stolen and that somewhere hidden in secret code in a 1,000 page health care bill is a plan to murder senior citizens.

To understand how deep and relentless their addiction goes, you need only consider the recent example of Mrs. Katy Abram, who leaped into microcelebrity and the wingnut pantheon a month ago with her Clown Hall rant of “I don’t want my county to become Russia!” speech.

Mrs. Katy Abram wants the world to believe that, like some pure, down-home, liberty-lovin' Sleeping Beauty, she somehow slept through 9/11.

Slept through two wars and the two trillion dollar bill they racked up.

Slept through tax cuts for the wealthy that added another few trillion to our debt.

Slept through Katrina.

Slept through Terri Schiavo.

Slept through the screams of the Constitution as the Bush Administration fed it an inch at a time through the wood chipper (the same Constitution she is now so deeply concerned about that she has somehow become, virtually overnight, an “original intent” quote-spewing expert) only to be awakened in a sudden, patriotic fury by the sound of a Black Democrat taking the oath of office.

I’m sure in Mrs. Abram’s mind – and in the tiny little minds of tens of millions of Americans just like her – she sees absolutely no contradiction between explaining that she never paid any attention to a single fucking thing prior to January of 2009....and saying that she started paying attention in 1991 "when we first went to the Gulf War" and that she has debated politics with friends at the opposite end of the political spectrum “a million times over”.

It is, in fact, a sign of the depth and effectiveness of their brainwashing that people like Mrs. Abram see no conflict between saying in one breath “I have never been interested in politics” and "I always seem to have faith in the government“ in the next.

Because during the Bush years, people like Mrs. Abram never saw their love of their Dear Leader and their fealty to his Administration as something "political". They saw it normal. As the Universe being at its proper, wingnut default setting: White, male, fundamentalist Christian, Conservative, flight-suit clad and killing scary brown people. And as long as that remained true, all was right with the world and people like Mrs. Abram were absolved by their "Don't Worry, Go Shopping" leaders of any responsibility for paying attention to anything their government was actually doing.

And once the Dear Leader's reign ended, as far as people like Mrs. Abram were concerned, the natural order of mindless obedience in exchange for a smug and blissful ignorance collapsed. "Their country" was suddenly broke and fucked up for reasons that they dared not think about too much. "Their country" was suddenly awash in dirty fucking hippies, who for some reason were no longer satisfied with being cultural punching bags. "Their country"suddenly had politicians and activists who said mean things about the Dear Leader and the Republican Party...and got away with it!

And worst of all, "their country" suddenly had a Scary Black Man living in their Dear Leader's pretty White House, probably having dirty, Muslim sex in the Dear Leader's sacred, Christian bed and putting his filthy, Kenyan hands all over "their county's" pure, white Constitution.

So, for example, when you hear the same people who fanatically supported President George W. Bush when he famously told Iraq war critics to fuck off --

"Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election."

-- now insisting, less that a year after the 2008 elections, that President Barack Obama needs to:

"...scrap the current grandiose plans and to start over."

or when you see the mobs on the Right being whipped by talk of secession or revolution or spilling the "blood of tyrants" into a nearly-pornographic frenzy, understand that what you are witnessing are the echoes of political decisions made in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Political decisions that trained the Right to believe, on a visceral level, that a sufficiently bloody and horrifying disruption to the life of the country can -- if properly exploited -- wash away their eight otherwise-unforgivable years of sin and restore "their country" to its proper, wingnut default setting.

That if the right sacrifices are made to the right Gods in just the right way, then they can be virgins again.

Repost: The Nightmare Scenario

I originally posted this back in August because, in addition to the overt racism, misogyny, xenophobia and other assorted crackpottery that passes for mental activity among the meatheads on the Right, this is what Crazy Uncle Liberty was cheering for.

And now...

BREAKING: Trump to #morningjoe on the nukes tweet: 'Let it be an arms race' https://t.co/X9FMNtgKPK

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 23, 2016

America's stupidest and most hateful citizens have elected a lunatic who will strip away the their health insurance and let the plunderers poison our air and water, but hey, at least he'll give them a big, shiny arms race to keep them mesmerized while he and his cronies rob us all blind.

Meanwhile, down at the soon-to-be-shuttered Department of Labor...

Trump vineyard seeks Labor Department approval to hire foreign workers

Act Neutrally

With apologies to Buck Owens and his Buckaroos...

They're gonna put me on the talk shows

They're gonna make a big star out of me

'Cause I'm a fraud who's propped up by his cronies

And all I gotta do is act neutrally

Well, I'll bet you I'm a-gonna be a big star

Might win a Emmy, you can't never tell

The talk shows gonna make me a big star,

'Cause I can play the part so well!

Well, I know you'll sit and watch my talk show

Then I'll know that you will plainly see

The biggest tool that's ever hit the big time

And all I gotta do is act neutrally

I have this gig 'cause I'm propped up by my cronies

Got it by begging down on bended knee

I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsing

All I'll have to do is act neutrally

Well, I'll bet you I'm a-gonna be a big star

Might win an Emmy, you can't never tell

The talk show's gonna make me a big star,

'Cause I can play the part so well

Well, I hope you'll sit and watch my talk show

Then I'll know that you will plainly see

The biggest tool that's ever hit the news game

And all I gotta do is act neutrally

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Trump Presidential Cup

Another great last-minute holiday gift from the good people at BOHICA Industries.

BOHICA Industries:  Because you were optimistic enough to believe that since the Bush Administration sucked ass at every level and the Obama Administration was civil and rational and scandal-free, just maybe Crazy Uncle Liberty was willing to start climbing down out of the Stupid Tree.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down: Old Hackery

I had a nice long SMCD post teed up on NotePad and then a thing happened, and another thing happened and then this other, other thing happened and it was gone.

Probably file corrupted :-)

So rather than redoing the whole thing, here's a PhotoShop I knocked together this morning (see above) and the abridged version of The Great Lost Post is as follows...

First, and most obvious, is the fact that the only things which will survive a nuclear war are cockroaches, Twinkies and false equivalences.

Great read, @GlennThrush https://t.co/vimoPVFCar Democrats blaming Comey should ask how HRC/team allowed race to be so close. Malpractice pic.twitter.com/ABbrUnMsfX

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) December 10, 2016

Bravo, @brianstelter! Journalists must call a lie a lie wherever it lies*

*applies to @realDonaldTrump @HillaryClinton & every lying leader pic.twitter.com/8g7bSpjyQz

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) December 4, 2016

I'll put it like this: Clinton would certainly be President-elect if her actions hadn't forced an FBI criminal probe https://t.co/xCV0vOyiEE https://t.co/5JOt6Pj1CK

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) December 11, 2016

Second, Reince Priebus -- the decorative bobble-head doll that Donald Trump has installed on the dashboard of the Ship of State -- was really busy lying, lying, lying his ass off all over teevee.

On "Meet the Press", Shuck Todd pushed back as hard as his tiny arms and watery knees could manage, but lets face it, what's the point?

Priebus tells a big lie.

Todd says "Yeah, but..."

Priebus tells a bigger lie.

Todd says "Yeah, but..." with a little more color rising in his cheeks.

Priebus tells an even bigger lie.

Todd says "But for Chrissake, PeeBee, you can't continue on the one hand to say..."

Priebus tells an even bigger lie.

There is no amount of proof that is going to make the rodents that operate the public machinery of the GOP bite the hand that feeds them, and since Priebus is unburdened by even the memory of a conscience it is ridiculous to expect him to break down in shame and spill the beans in the third reel like some Perry Mason murderer.

He'll just lie and lie and deny and then lie some more in the sure and certain knowledge that, under the terms of The Gingrich Rules, Good Ol' Charlie Todd will have him right back on in a week or two or three.

(Also there should be a public moratorium on the the use of the words "can't", "mustn't", "shouldn't" and "won't" vis-a-vis the Il Douche Administration by people who have no power to enforce their empty edicts.  They just sound stupid and clueless -- like Margaret Dumont without a Groucho.  And, yes, I realize that this statement is itself a stupid edict from someone who has no power to make it happen.  So sue me. I contain legions.)

The industrial-snow-blower volume of bullshit that newly feisty human potato bug, Reince Priebus, was able to fling at the hapless Good Ol' Charlie Todd was so prodigious that Chuck did not even notice this barrage of offal as it flew past his head --

REINCE PRIEBUS:  Well, it might unnerve people who think that the best route for our country to go is to ignore people and to have an enemies list and adhere to that list. But look, I just don't believe, and neither does the president-elect, that solving the world's biggest problems are best done by ignoring people and having, you know, crummy relationships across the globe. And so we just don't believe that talking to people and having relationships is a bad thing.

-- and ask the obvious follow-up question:

driftglass:  Wait just one god damn minute, Short Bus.  Wasn't one of fucking pillars of your party's "Hate The Kenyan Usurper 24/7/365" campaign for the last eight years was that he said he would dare to talk to America's enemies?  But now that Vlad The Elector has hacked his sock puppet into the White House, suddenly "talking to people" is a fucking virtue?

But of course Chuck Todd didn't ask that question because Chuck Todd is not a fella who thinks so good his feet.  So instead we got quite a lot of this:

CHUCK TODD:  Why--

REINCE PRIEBUS:  We had intelligence experts here.

CHUCK TODD:   Let me ask you.

REINCE PRIEBUS:   No, no, no, hang on, Chuck. No.

CHUCK TODD:  No.

REINCE PRIEBUS:  The-- the R.N.C. was --

CHUCK TODD:  Explain why you had the F.B.I there --

REINCE PRIEBUS:  --not hacked.

CHUCK TODD:  Well then, why was the--

REINCE PRIEBUS:  Because--

CHUCK TODD:  -- F.B.I. involved?

REINCE PRIEBUS:  It's really simple. Well, it's really simple. Because when the D.N.C. was hacked, we called the F.B.I. and they came in to help us. And they came in to review what we were doing and went through our systems, went through every single thing that we did.

CHUCK TODD:  Right.

REINCE PRIEBUS:  We went through this for a month.

CHUCK TODD:  I understand that.

REINCE PRIEBUS:  And we were not hacked. So wait a second. If we were not hacked, and that is absolutely not true, then where does that story lie?

CHUCK TODD:  So nobody with the--

REINCE PRIEBUS:  The story is--

CHUCK TODD:  Let me ask you this, Reince.

REINCE PRIEBUS:  No.

Overall the Sunday Shows were a wide and slow-moving river of shit at high tide and, as dutiful collaboration with the incoming Umber Kleptocracy gets baked into the business models of America's most craven corporate media outlets, it is only going to get worse.

For example, on "This Week With Whoever Hasn't Already Gone On Vacation" bag-of-vipers-that-walks-like-a-man Rich Lowry allowed as how, yes, the Dirty Russkies had, in fact, fucked with our election --

LOWRY: Right, there's no point trying to sugar-coat this or get Jesuitical (ph) about it. Yes, Russia tried to manipulate our election. Yes, it's appalling. Yes, it should be investigated and taken seriously...

-- but hey, seeing as Hillary Clinton was the fuckee, who really cares amirite people!

...But I do think -- you look at actually what WikiLeaks came out with, most of it was just gossipy interest, except for like this Doug Band (ph) memo from a Clinton crony in black and white who explained the Clinton Foundation was a profit center for Bill Clinton and people around him.

The Russians didn't make that up, that was all Hillary's vulnerability her own.

No word from the Infernal Regions about what the late Bill Buckley thinks about the steward of his legacy treating direct and massive Russian interference with our most sacred democratic institution as a nuisance somewhere between crabgrass and being screwed out of your fries at the drive-thru.

And speaking of the Infernal Regions, as foretold by prophecy, the unholy fruit of Mike Huckabee's unholy loins is reaping great rewards for fully committed herself to serving evil, and ABC has fully committed itself to making sure she has a public platform to share the teachings of His Infernal Majesty:

SARAH HUCKABEE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: And that's going to bring me into my second point, whose fault was it? It wasn't like Donald Trump was in charge of cyber-security at the DNC, if anybody is to blame it's the Democrats, it's President Obama. His administration did not take cyber-security seriously. They did nothing to help stop this. They were in charge. And if there's anybody to blame, it's the Democrats, not Donald Trump.

Exactly!  Just as Sarah Huckabee would be to blame if someone punched her lights out because she refused to take precautions, like wearing a steel helmet at all times or never going out in public.

Hey look, it's Reince Priebus barraging exactly the same claptrap at a different, hapless haircut on a different channel!

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, but a hold a second.

PRIEBUS: -- if there's ever a report...

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, Mr. -- I’m talking about...

PRIEBUS: If there's ever a report...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m talking about...

PRIEBUS: Look...

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- the finding in October that is public now of 17 different intelligence agencies saying Russia tried to meddle with our elections. That’s before this weekend.

PRIEBUS: That’s not true. George, you don’t know -- you don’t know that conclusively. The report also said that there wasn’t agreement among the 17 agencies. When the FBI came out -- they came out -- when there was a conclusion on the DNC, their conclusion was very clear and they made it public. Now, if the CIA...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s what I’m talking about,

PRIEBUS: -- or whoever else comes out...

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- that's precisely the conclusion I’m talking about, but the president-elect says he doesn't...

PRIEBUS: But they didn't...

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- accept that either.

PRIEBUS: -- but they didn’t conclude that it was Russia. George, but they didn’t conclude it was Russia. I’m not -- I don’t care -- listen, I don’t care if it’s Russia or whoever, they shouldn’t -- we’re going to protect Americans. We don’t want these countries or whoever else these people are hacking our country, our parties, our -- we protect our Americans. We don’t like it. We’re against it.

But what I can’t do is have an intelligent conversation with you about a report in "The New York Times" that is unnamed, inconclusive, and based on something that isn’t true.

This is what the next four years are going to look like, so buckle up.

I would dig into this weekend's scariest development, but I don't have the stomach or time for it.

Fortunately, Talking Points Memo does:

Trump Says He Doesn't Need Daily Intelligence Briefings: I'm 'Smart'

Perl Harbor*

November 8th, 2016, a date which will live in infamy

To no one's surprise, Vladimir Putin's regime did indeed hack the United States election in order to hand the White House to Donald J. Trump.

From the Washington Post:

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

...

And it will surprise no one the Left that leading Republican senators -- including the Senate Majority Leader -- knew about it and chose to betray their country in order to serve their depraved political interests:

...

In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals.

And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.”

The Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed on the need to take the threat seriously. Republicans, however, were divided, with at least two GOP lawmakers reluctant to accede to the White House requests.

According to several officials, McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.

Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment. After the election, Trump chose McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his nominee for transportation secretary...

Our country has been hit by a massive sneak attack by a hostile foreign power: a sneak attack whose very existence was covered up by leaders of the Republican Party.

We're at war, kids.  A quiet, 21st century digital kind of war with massive and dire consequences here in the analog world, and in that war the Republican Party has taken the side of our enemies.

The word you are looking for is "treason".

*Not a spelling error:

Perl is a script programming language that is similar in syntax to the C language and that includes a number of popular UNIX facilities such as sed, awk, and tr. Perl is an interpreted language that can optionally be compiled just before execution into either C code or cross-platform bytecode. When compiled, a Perl program is almost (but not quite) as fast as a fully precompiled C language program.

Vultures, Vultures Everywhere

As part of a nascent and irregular feature* on this blog, let us once again travel back roughly eight years and check in with President-elect Barack Obama.

Is he busy tweeting insults on Twitter, appointing dangerous lunatics to powerful positions in the federal government, lying about vote fraud or upending American foreign policy to make himself a trifle wealthier?

Nope, nope, nope and...nope.

Historical Note:  The post below mentions something called "awards" which were a thing that existed in the ancient blogging world.  In this case, the "Weblog Award" for Individual Blogger was something I won back in 2008 thanks to the energetic support of readers like you.  The same year, Andrew Sullivan won the "Best Blog" award.  In 2009 they shut the whole shebang down, which just goes to show you.  Also of minor historical note, in the original comment section a reader asked me how my job search was going.  A question which, like The Exorcist, just keeps getting funnier every time I think about it. Post also contains a reference to "Norm Coleman", who was a scary Disney character made up mostly of teeth and bullshit which Disney discontinued because it was giving kids nightmares.

Me, from January 14, 2009:

Everybody Comes to Barack’s

“Round up the usual suspects” Edition

So this happened:

Obama Pulls Up a Chair at George Will's House

By Michael D. Shear

Where does one dine a week before becoming the leader of the free world?

At the Chevy Chase, Md., house of conservative columnist George Will.

President-elect Barack Obama left his temporary home at the Hay-Adams Hotel at just after 6:15 this evening, arriving about 20 minutes later at Will's house, valued at $1.9 million.

Aides said the visit was a dinner party; eagle-eyed reporters spotted two other conservative columnists among the guests: William Kristol of the Weekly Standard and David Brooks of the New York Times.

This from the pool report, issued minutes ago: "Thanks to an enterprising photographer, a shot through a window showed op-ed stalwarts William Kristol and David Brooks are also part of this unlikely gathering of tight, right suits."

…

And while there is no official word on what they discussed, but running a sophisticated poly-dimensional analysis of sound vibrations picked up off the window, lip reading, and flatulence all run through the Mass Speculatometer 3000, it probably sounded a little something like this...

KRISTOL

Do you mind if I ask you a few
questions? Unofficially, of course.


OBAMA
Make it official, if you like.


KRISTOL
What is your nationality?

OBAMA
I'm an Islamofascist.

BOBO BROOKS
(scribbles madly)
Pulitzer here I come!

OBAMA
That was a joke.
I was born in Hawaii if that'll
help you any.

KRISTOL
I understand you lived overseas for awhile.

OBAMA
There seems to be no secret about
that.

KRISTOL
Are you one of those people who cannot
imagine the free market in your beloved
Socialist France?

OBAMA
It's not particularly my beloved
France.

WILL
Can you imagine us in London?

OBAMA
Now that you have fucked up the
global economyfor the next 30 years,
only

in Monty Python sketches.

BOBO
Ho, diplomatist!

KRISTOL
How about Chicago?

OBAMA
Try making a living peddling rims and tee-shirts
on Maxwell Street and then come back and
talk to me about “capitalism”.

KRISTOL
Aha. Who do you think will win the
culture war?

OBAMA
I haven't the slightest idea.

BOBO
I read in my column in the NYT that Barack is
completely neutral about everything.

KRISTOL
You weren't always so carefully
neutral. We have a complete dossier
on you.

"Barack Obama, allegedly American. Possibly
forty-seven. Used ACORN to cheat Caribou
Barbie and that old guy out of the White House ."

How you did it is a little vague. We
know you love tax increases, Mr.
Obama, and also we know that you used
to be cool with gay marriage.

Don't worry. We are not going to
broadcast it.

Barack looks up from the book.

OBAMA
Is my skin really brown?

KRISTOL
You will forgive my curiosity, Mr.
Obama. The point is, the enemies of
corporate feudalism have come to the Village
and we wanna know which side you are on.

OBAMA
My interest in whether your fucked up
Mainstream Media stays or goes is purely
a pragmatic one.

KRISTOL
In this case, you have no sympathy
for Fox News, huh?

OBAMA
Not particularly. I understand the
point of view of the Rachel Maddow, too.

KRISTOL
Anonymous bloggers publish the foulest
lies on Teh Internets every day, and even after
David Broder called them potty-mouthed
poo-heads they continued to post their
Liberal trash.

BOBO
Of course, one must admit, some of them are
pretty fucking funny.

KRISTOL

I admit they can be clever.
From l'affaire Jeff Gannon to the US Attorney
unpleasantness they have vexed us.

With our beloved Mooselini


they continue their slander,
We intend not to let it happen again.

Obama gets up.

OBAMA
You'll excuse me, gentlemen. Your
business is bitching about trivia and pimping
your failed ideology. Mine is running
the world.

Later, to escape the sounds of Angry Neocon Love coming out of George Will’s sex dungeon wine cellar, Brooks slipped out on the porch with the President-Elect. Then, after a long, uncomfortable pause punctuated only by the sounds of traffic, the muffled, far-away shrieks of Billy Kristol in the transports of welt-raising deregulatory ecstasy, and the eye-rolling of the President-elect…

BOBO
What in heaven's name brought
you to the Center?

OBAMA
My political health. I came to Center for the waters.

BOBO
The waters? What waters?
The Center is a fucking desert!

OBAMA
I was misinformed.

In the months and years to come will see waves of dispossessed Conservatives -- Ideologically Displaced Persons -- washing up on our shores and looking for a home. And once they've wiped their filthy little feet on the Rug of Contrition and gone through decontam they will be surprised at what a relatively hospitable joint we run here over here on the Left side of the Earth.

Because the Liberal phantasms that have kept them angrily mesmerized their entire lives have been products of their own viciously partisan propaganda.

Over here in the Real World, we value hard work. Self-sustaining communities. Good schools.

Healthy, well-informed citizens.

Choice, for everybody.

Marriage, for everybody.

A government based on transparency and rigorous, well-considered performance standards.

Taxes that balance the need to pay for the infrastructure and the maintenance of the commons without need to promote creativity and the entrepreneurial drive that makes the wheels go ‘round.

And whatever their history, people who share these values and are willing to work on the means of realizing them are our allies and should be greeted as such.

So in that light, I understand Obama’s gesture. I don't agree with it, but I get the idea that, as Lincoln said, we destroy our enemies when we make friends of them.

But while that idea might contain some truth, this is also undoubtedly true:

BOBO
My dear Barack, you overestimate the influence
of the Wingtards. I don't interfere with them and
they don't interfere with me. I am a Reasonable
Conservative and master of my fate! I am...

LEE ATWATER'S GHOST
Ronald Reagan’s zombified corpse is here, sir!

OBAMA
You were saying?

BOBO
Excuse me.

That as long as the livelihoods of men like Brooks, Kristol and Will depend on defending an obscene doctrine and ripping the guts out of anyone who opposes their loathsome agenda -- no matter deeply they bury the blade under layers of silk batting -- they remain democracy’s enemies.

And until a Conservative of any age, race, gender or class can cheerfully make a bonfire out of their dog-eared copies of --

“Atlas Shrugged”

“Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America”

“The World According to Ann Coulter”

“Hollywood Nation: Left Coast Lies, Old Media Spin, and the New Media Revolution”

“Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild”

“The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values”

“The O'Reilly Factor for Kids”

“Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism

“Setting the Woods on Fire”,

“Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down”

“Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America”

“The Case Against Barack Obama”

“Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning...

-- and a thousand others and pee on the ashes and walk away feeling the better for it, they simply cannot be trusted inside our perimeter.

ps. Thanks to the astonishing labors of many, kind peers, friends and complete strangers, I have apparently won the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Individual Blogger. Which stuns me. However until the Secretary of State completes the correct paperwork or Norm Coleman concedes, nothing is certified or official, so I’ll wait for The Word before posting a proper “Thank You”.

Until then, many, many thanks.

* Ironically, "nascent and irregular" is also my shirt size.