A Very Special No Fair Remembering Stuff Birthday Fundraiser: They Knew. They All Knew.

(Me on my 6th birthday, some numbers of years ago, in another country.)

This year, for my birthday fundraiser and in honor of the "No Fair Remembering Stuff" mission statement of this joint, I've gone down to the cellar and uncorked a rare and special vintage for you.

A rich and full-bodied post I bottled 13 years ago this week, and which has aged either wonderfully or terribly depending on your perspective.

I laid it down as a hedge against the day when the raging shitpile of bigots and imbeciles that is the modern Republican Party would finally kick the doors off the basement lab where Serious and Sensible Conservatives (and their collaborators in the mainstream media) had been hiding them and begin to rampage across the land in plain view of the general public.

As hedge against the day when those same Serious and Sensible Conservatives (and their collaborators in the mainstream media) would swear on the bones of Saint Ronald Reagan that they had no idea that there even was a basement lab, much less what kind of monsters were being cooked up therein.  That the rise of Trump and discovery that the GOP base was a deranged mob of bigots and imbeciles had been a completely unforeseeable tragedy -- a spontaneous disaster in which they played no part and for which the shared no blame.

Except, nah.

From October 27, 2009, this is "Nobody Left But The Crazies".

 

File Under Gresham's Corollary: "Bad crazy drives out everybody.".

From MediaMatters:

Kristol: GOP's future "center of gravity" lies with Beck, Limbaugh

October 27, 2009 8:05 am ET by Media Matters staff

From William Kristol's October 27 Washington Post column:

Obviously, many Republicans and conservatives -- and lots of moderates and independents -- will be grateful to Mitch McConnell if he can stop ObamaCare, and to Jon Kyl if he can induce the president to embrace a stronger foreign policy. But it's unlikely that the minority party in Congress will be the source of bold new conservative leadership over the next three years. Even if Republicans pick up the House in 2010, the party's big ideas and themes for the 2012 presidential race will probably not emanate from Capitol Hill. 

The center of gravity, I suspect, will instead lie with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties. Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots.

Kristol began working out years ago what the last, few fusspot remnants of the Old GOP seem to only now be dimly perceiving: that there is absolutely nothing left inside the Party of Lincoln but crazy, and if you want to hang onto those sweet-sweet “Conservative pundit” paydays, you’d better cozy up to the rabid Cheney Regime Dead-Enders most ricky-tick.

Of course this will remain an ongoing, toxic disaster for the country until the cultural backwash that is the Party of God is universally repudiated, stamped with a fluorescent HazMat symbol big enough to be visible from orbit, and buried under a mile of electoral concrete (I have said elsewhere and only half in jest that President Obama's biggest job will turn out to be saving the GOP from itself.)

But as a freelance ontologist (“Will Visualization Information For Food’), I appreciate the 30 years of dedicated effort it took for Hate Radio charlatans, Christopathic multimedia colporteurs, FoxNews harlequins and all of their various elected finger puppets to gather together the nation’s bigots, yahoos and moral imbeciles under one political roof.

So way to go Rush! UR doin’ it rite!

And for no additional charge, here's let me pour you a sipper of this mellow dessert wine I laid down just a few days earlier, on October 23, 2009.  In this post I noted that George Will -- yes that George Will -- had taken up his quill to write an ooey-gooey love-letter to Minnesota's Craziest Political Escapee, Michele Bachmann.

Yes that Michele Bachmann.

Here is Mr. Will:

"... Some of her supposed excesses are, however, not merely defensible, they are admirable. For example, her June 9 statement on the House floor in which she spoke of "gangster government" has been viewed on the Internet about 2 million times. ..."

At the time I irresponsibly speculated that:

Will has come to terms with the fact that his Movement has now been swallowed whole by the yahoos and bigots that the GOP spent the last generation recruiting as foot soldiers. 

And if he wants to keep drawing a paycheck as "Conservative columnist, George Will" he'd better learn to cozy up to Unwashed Crazy.

Well it's 13 years later.  

George Will remains gainfully employed by the Washington Post where he still oozes bile onto its pages every week.

Without breaking stride, Bill Kristol has morphed from Trusted Fox News contributor and founder of .the Weekly Standard to Trusted MSNBC contributor and founder of The Bulwark  

And I'm still at this keyboard, pretty much every day, remembering things that men like Will and Kristol very much want everyone to forget.

I Am The Liberal Media

The Return of Wingnut Mr. Whoopee

Glenn Beck's Never Trump LARPing act lasted exactly as long as we knew it would.

Glenn Beck says that "American Communists" and George Soros are orchestrating an "assault on the republic" using Central American migrants pic.twitter.com/888mpoAurV

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) April 11, 2019

But boy howdy were the Liberal media rubes lined up around the fucking block to hand him all the media spotlight he could soak up when he was feeding them their favorite self-flattering fairy tale of the bad man who has seen the error of his ways and come into the Liberal light.

Glenn Beck: Canary in the Never Trump Mineshaft

Stop being chumps, people.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Noted Arsonist Calls For "Fireman Appreciation Day"

"We are vastly 2 different countries" https://t.co/w8iA3N4WlM

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 26, 2018

Film at 11 for no explicable reason.

George Will Had No Sons

He had three whiskered things but he disowned them.

From the Moonie Times:

George Will renounces GOP, declares ‘This is not my party’

By Andrew Blake - The Washington Times - Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Republican Party’s acceptance of Donald Trump as its presumptive presidential nominee has prompted acclaimed conservative columnist George Will to change his political affiliation, the writer revealed Friday.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post, Mr. Will changed his voter registration in the state of Maryland earlier this month from Republican to “unaffiliated,” he told PJ Media during an interview Friday.

“This is not my party,” Mr. Will said at an event in Washington, D.C. earlier in the day, the website reported.

Mr. Will has been a vocal critic of the GOP’s presumptive nominee since well before the New York businessman announced his candidacy 2015, and said the decision to part ways with the party was the result of the recent endorsement made by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, according to PJ Media.

...

Makes a giant, reeking mess.

Abandons it.

And is now bitching about how the help isn't cleaning it up fast enough.

George Will -- Conservative to the bone.

Loony Cult Leader Urges Followers To Reject Other Loony Cult Leader

Two men say they're Wingnut Jesus

One of them must be wrong

Glenn Beck Calls On Conservatives To Leave The GOP 'Because Tinfoil Hat Don Is Crazy'

Remember kids, when batshit demagogues fight, we're all winners.

Dread and Circuses

As the Fox News chickens come home to roost...and peck the fuck out of each other.

Apparently, when this clown...



... calls this clown...

... a "clown",  it is noteworthy (from The Hill):

Glenn Beck: 'Grow up, Donald Trump'

Radio host Glenn Beck slammed GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday, saying he is more concerned about the Iran nuclear deal than the businessman’s “third-grade politics.”

“I’m telling you, dealing with Donald Trump is like dealing with a third grader,” the conservative media personality said on his Thursday broadcast.

“And I’m not dealing with a third grader anymore because the world is on fire,” Beck said. “Enough of the third-grade politics. Grow up, Donald Trump.  Grow up.”

Beck’s remarks follow his appearance at the Stop the Iran Nuclear Deal rally in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday afternoon. Trump also spoke at the event, as did Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another White House hopeful.

...

Beck also slammed former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) for cozying up with Trump during Wednesday’s rally.

“I’m embarrassed I was once for Sarah Palin,” he said of the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee.

“I don’t care what Sarah Palin says anymore,” Beck added after seeing her speak with Trump. “Sarah Palin has become a clown.”

...

But the idea of swinging the cameras and keyboards a little to the Left and talking to the people who have been right all along?

Never.  Gonna.  Happen.

It's a funny old world.

Well, at least I can get a few more miles out of some of my vintage graphics.

Mammon on the Mount

Or would "Stations of the Crass" be more apt?

Or perhaps "Old Whine in New Skins"?

Hard to say.

Maybe all of them, because when America's favorite sociopathic grifter starts making headlines by taking his patent med'cine freakshow to the Holy Lands to relieve a small group of pilgrimaging goobers of their extra cash, there is really no hammer big enough to adequately compass 'round my simultaneous contempt for Beck's grotesque perversion of Christianity and my profound embarrassment that I live in a country where millions of my fellow citizens actually take this fucknozzle's words as solid gold gospel.

From the Daily Beast:

What’s Beck Doing in Israel?

Michelle Goldberg

Aug 24, 2011

At the first of three rallies he is holding in Israel, Glenn Beck preached to his followers like a pastor. Michelle Goldberg reports on Beck’s ridiculous attempt to become a religious leader.

...
On Monday, in the first of three rallies he’s holding in Israel, a mostly American audience gathered in the ancient Roman amphitheater in the northern seaside town of Caesarea to hear from Beck and leading end-times preachers like John Hagee and Mike Evans. “I have spent the last few years trying to find a solution to what’s going on [in] the world,” said Beck, standing on a floodlit stage at the pit of the open-air structure, Roman columns behind him and the scent of the ocean in the air. “Anybody who’s listened to me or watched me for the last few years, you know about five years ago I said, ‘We’ve got to get off the exits. We’ve got to get off the exits. We’re passing the exits!'”

His voice grew more and more urgent, sounding rather like Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka narrating the Wondrous Boat Ride: “There’s going to come a time when there’s nothing but freeway and a cliff!” Then, suddenly oddly calm, he said, “We’re there.” From the crowd, there were scattered assents. “While there may not be a political solution, the good news is, the God of Abraham ain’t running for office!” The cheering crowd leapt to its feet. “Be not afraid! Know who he is! Know his face! Know that he is a God of covenants and a God of miracles! We are leaving the age of man-made miracles of spaceflight, and we are reentering the age of miracles of God.”
...

Beck is working closely with David Barton, the GOP operative and conservative revisionist historian, on “Restoring Courage.” The two acted as cohosts on Sunday night, and donations to the event are being channeled through Barton’s Wallbuilders organization. Barton’s record on Jewish issues is no better than Beck’s. He built his career by arguing, via a selective reading of documents from the Founding Fathers, that the Constitution is rooted in biblical values and that the founders never intended to separate church and state. And early on, he found an eager audience for his dubious history lessons on the right-wing fringe.
...

Prepare Ye, the Way of the Fraud.

Now, The Bush-Belly Sneetches: UPDATE *

were backers of Bush...

As I learned years ago, in those fevered moments when a welter of polls, counter-polls, rage, speed, heat, transient headline-swallowing micro-issues and barely comprehensible wonkspeak threaten to smother our civic discourse, sometimes it is a good and palate-cleansing thing to sidestep those battlefields altogether and try a simpler, clearer genre to make the point.

And so, with great respect for the work of the immortal Theodor Seuss Geisel...

The Tea-Belly Sneetches
(this one's for you, Mom ;-)

Now, the Bush-Belly Sneetches were backers of Bush,

The Plain-Belly Sneetches thought Bush was a Tush.
The Bushs weren’t so big; they were really quite small.
You would think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
But because they backed Bush, all the Bush-Bellied Sneetches would brag,
“Plain-Bellies are nothing but Commies in Drag!”

"They hate our Great Nation," The Bush-Bellies said.

They're Marxist white-flaggers who want us all dead!
They hate our Dear Leader! They hate our Great Troops!
They mindlessly hate everything, those Socialist poops!
It's their lack of Bush-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

For years this went on, this faux-patriot shucking
(As they conveniently forgot years of Clinton rat-fucking).
They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Bush was, and how Lefties were Loons.
There was no need to be careful or watch their own words.
They would now win forever, swore the Blossom of Turds.

But the day finally came when Bush began looking crummy
And that was NOT a good day to have Bush on your tummy.
His policies were failing, his economy crashed;
He had left the Great Nation quite thoroughly trashed.
His lies were all melting like snow in a stove
And no one could stop it, not even his Rove.

This made Bush-Belly Sneetches look like ignorant tools
And their Bush-Belly screeching sound like the ranting of fools.
First the Senate fell down, then the House fell down too
(And if that weren't enough to make Bush-Bellies boo-hoo
In two thousand and eight the very worstest blow came
When they lost to a Negro with a strange Muslim name!)

The Bush-Belly Sneetches became very confused.
How could they fail? Had they merely been used?
Fox had told them for years they were righteous and shrewd;
That the Plain-Belly Sneetches were stupid and crude.
Now their Bush-Belly tats made them look shithouse-rat-nuts
Their own words had damned them, no "ands", "ifs" or "buts".

And then out of the West came their own gin-soaked Moses
Who swore all their shame could be turned into roses.
His name was Sylvester "Dick Armey" McBean

Inventor of the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine.

For the price of their souls and a couple of bucks

The Bush-Bellies could now buy some nips and some tucks.

From the Bush-Off Machine they tumbled like fresh laundered sheets

Screaming about deficits! Taxes! And those awful elites!
They had never liked Bush, no not even a little...
...they shrieked from mouths flecked with Patriot Spittle.
They'd never voted for him, nor swallowed his dirt.



You don't believe me? Just look at my shirt!

"They hate our Great Nation," The Tea-Bellies said.
"These Marxist death-panelists who want us all dead!

They hate our Great Founders! They hate Sarah Palin!
They hate all good things and they're why we're failin'!
It's their lack of Tea-Bellies that gives them away
They're America-haters! And probably Gay!"

They marched and they cheered and sang lots of brave tunes,
About how great Beck was, and how Lefties were Loons.
For one thing, of course, had remained just the same
The Left and their schemes were always to blame.
Because there is no need to be careful or watch what you say

When your past is as squashy as modeling clay.

*UPDATE: Now available in exciting audio.

Open Thread