Drop the Chalupa!

Time: The day the Feds come for that other Gonzalez kid.

Place: Deep inside a West Wing closet.

"Ok. Mr. President. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way..."

OK, what in the fuck

have you people done to my Party!

Sure I was Evil.

But I was Genius Evil. Operatic. Shakespearian. I was fucking Epic.

And John here looked positively scholarly sucking on a pipe like he sucked on my gnarly Khmer Rouge during those long winter nights at Camp David.

It was not as if I was some rich, spoiled, cowardly waterhead moron.

With some skeevy, half-bright, Houston Fixer for my AG…

Lord how the wicked have fallen.

All of which is by way of reminding you that Sunday, June 17th is “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day.

Here is the story behind the day we honor.

You see, once upon a time -- I know this is hard to believe -- a Republican President obsessed with a disastrous war that his every lie and surge made worse, obsessed with his enemies, obsessed with power, tried to set himself up as a king.

In his paranoia, he illegally wiretapped American citizens.

He abused the US intelligence system to achieve his own, petty, partisan ends.

He made a joke out of the Justice Department.

His nationalized and routinized slander. smear, race-baiting, crying “traitor” and backstabbing as the acceptable political wetwork and the calling card of the GOP.

He gave Lincoln the boot, and welcomed the Klan with open arms.

He targeted the press for GOP-brand abuse and intimidation.

He was protected by a shield wall of degenerate, morally-dead, robot-loyal political Myrmidons who ass-raped the Constitution three times before breakfast from onside the White House and smiled.

And his Party wuuuuuved him: even though he had a clear, decades-long record of being a degenerate monster, they elected and then re-elected him anyway.

Because the other guys were Dirty Fucking Hippies who obviously Hated America.

A man whose departure in humiliation and disgrace was perfectly summarized by Saint Hunter Thompson thusly:

"Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed down there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark. "

Amen.

And on June 17, 1972, the Nixon Administration nicked itself while shaving. Something it had to do six, seven times a day.

Nicked itself near an artery.

Of course they didn’t realize it; In their Pride and Paranoia (The admittedly least-brilliant novel of Jane Austen) they assumed it was something trivial. Something they could lie or cheat or bribe or blackmail their way out of as they had so many, many, many times before.

Because that is how Republicans do business.

But the wound bled. And it bled. And an infection set in. And after a year the skin began to slough and breach enough for everyone but the 27% to see the writhing horror underneath.

And it all began 25 35 years ago this Sunday (thanks, anonymous).

When this guy -- Frank Wills –

a security guard at the Watergate Hotel discovered a break in in-progress and called the cops. The PD arrested five men -- Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez and Frank Sturgis – and then we were off to the races.

Make no mistake, Nixon laid down the political DNA of the modern Republican Party: What came after was no accident, kids, and they aren’t going to just up and disappear simply because they’re evil and stupid and wrong about every single fucking thing in the Universe.

They are a disease.

So this “National Republican Treasonal Affective Disorder” Day, please give generously of your time and money to a Progressive cause or candidate, so another generation won’t have to wake up to a Constitution again left in tatters by the Traitor Right. To more American’s dying in an illegal and catastrophic war. To a nation kept deliberately terrorized and divided because that is how fascists hang on to power.

Because isn’t 25 35 years of Republican treachery, deceit, slaughter and contempt for the rule of law

enough?

One day

our national media will no longer be an optical illusion run by men with the morals of panda porn fluffers, who get pirate-rich by catering to the grubby hatreds and vile obsessions of the 27%.

Until then, digby.

Were my Grandpa alive...

(Who, if you'da ever had the pleasure, would've reminded you whole a lot of this guy)

...I have to believe he would read this and say, "Well don't that just beat all?"

From here:

Porn for pandas

By Jonathan Brown

There's an unmistakable sexual tension at W-long's celebrated giant panda enclosures on the misty upper slopes of Sichuan's bamboo forests.

Early summer provides an all-too-narrow window of opportunity for the handful of male breeding pandas in the world-famous reserve, and the prospect of imminent gratification hangs seductively in the air.

Qing Qing, Ying Ying and friends are waiting bad-temperedly - or as grumpily as this disarmingly docile creature gets in captivity - to begin the job at hand. The males must endure a frustrating wait until the moment is exactly right for their more reluctant and choosy breeding partners. As the females prepare to come into their brief period of oestrus, the males are barking and swinging from the branches in anticipation.

But if the male pandas's hopes are riding high on the activities of the next few days, so too are those of the scientists who have dedicated their lives to the preservation of China's giant panda, and who shoulder responsibility for the future success of this great symbol of global conservation.

At Wolong, a four-hour drive along a treacherous single-lane road from the provincial capital of Chengdu, they, with the help of the international community and the support of hundreds of panda lovers around the world, are painstakingly rebuilding the critically low population.

In 2006, 34 cubs were born in captivity in China, setting a record for the 30-year-old breeding programme. In 2007, expectations are high that this number can be bettered.

According to Prof Tang Chunxiang, the chief vet at the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda at Wolong, "Panda breeding here is successful and we have worked hard to overcome the many problems."

Every avenue has been explored, from IVF to showing prospective couples "pornographic" videos of pandas mating in the wild.

Tang believes that without such forthright human intervention, the panda would now be extinct.
...

Which proves one of my pet theories yet again.

That no matter how noble their motives or plentiful their degrees, China Giant Panda Conservation and Research-ologists don't know the first thing about what reels in the


the sweet, sweet ladies.

Got Surge?

If I can use your balls for castanets, guess which one of us is charge?

This from McClatchy.

Al-Sadr reasserts authority over his movement

By Laith Hammoudi and Leila Fadel

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD - The anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is reasserting authority over his movement after disappearing from public view for three months.
A top Sadr aide, Salah al-Obaidi, said Monday that since Sadr had reappeared during religious services two weeks ago at a shrine in Kufa, he'd replaced 11 local leaders of his movement, including two in Baghdad.

Obaidi, who speaks to Sadr regularly and is considered his spokesman, also disavowed what appears to be a final push by Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, to seize control of contested neighborhoods in south and west Baghdad, where Shiite forces are pressing a campaign to push out Sunni Muslims. He said local leaders in the Bayaa and Amil neighborhoods had acted without orders from Sadr.

"Sayed Muqtada refuses all kinds of violence and he refuses to answer violence with violence," Obaidi said. "Sayed" is an honorific used for descendents of the Prophet Muhammad.

Where Sadr went during the months he dropped from sight is still debated. U.S. officials said that the young cleric - he's thought to be in his early 30s, though his precise age hasn't been publicized - had fled to Iran in February as the U.S. began building up troops to stanch sectarian violence in Baghdad. His supporters say he never left Iraq.

What isn't contested, however, is the impact of his absence. U.S. and Sadr officials say the movement fragmented while he was away.

"We have seen a fracturing of Jaysh al-Mahdi in the last few months. We see elements acting on their own," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Garver said, using the Arabic for Mahdi Army. "He may be trying to prevent that. It could be a positive thing for Iraq, the coalition and the Iraqi people or it could be a negative thing, depending on how these new leaders are going to behave."
…

On the one side, we are being targeting by the people we “liberated” and who who now clearly want us the fuck out of their country by any means necessary, and we operate hoping that their most powerful leader will somehow not keep kicking us in the throat.

On the other, we now arm and train the same people we overthrew and ousted four years ago, knowing that by night they reconstitute as death squads and kill each other and us.

Because they, too, want us the fuck out of their country.

The Bush regime’s lies and treasonable incompetence have left our armies stranded in a no-win killbox, hostage to forces that hate us, and our futures hostage to events rapidly spiraling beyond our control.

And the only solution being sold by from the back of the Dear Leader’s snake oil wagon is an even bigger bottle of Clap!Even!Louder!

His lapdog Republicans in Congress are so terrified of debating the rank criminality that now reeks off of Abu G’s Justice Department and erupts daily into the media like gangrene that they refuse to allow it to come to a vote.

And he personally is so terrified of having to answer hard questions about his failed war that he has refused to re-nominate Peter Pace to his own jobb; the same man in which the Dear Leader placed such limitless confidence less than two years ago. Effectively firing Pace just to make sure that nobody in his Administration who knows the dirty, tragic realities of what is really unfolding in Iraq is ever put under oath in front of a Congress that is no longer permitted to function as Dubya’s personal shit-scraper, glory hole and getaway car.

While in the wilds of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden laughs and laughs and laughs.

All of which is brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party, because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

Oh, my good dear friend.

Trust me!

"Well take this for what little it will profit you. As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds. The sounds of billions of people calling your name."

"My followers?"

"Your victims."

— Elric, the Technomage, Babylon 5:A Geometry of Shadows (From Wiki)

Fop.

Drunk.

Fool.

Affable, inept, wastrel heir to past glories he could never hope to live up to.

Until the crisis came.

Then agents of darkness came to him and offered him all his heart desired.

And he made a pact with the darkness.

It gave him all the raw power he had ever dreamed of.

And lacking the prudence, compassion, skill and intellect to use it wisely, he instead abused it in exactly the way the darkness had always intended.

He stopped being a fop. A drunk. And a fool.

And instead became a monster.

Great maker! My mother warned me about reading the NYT while watching reruns of “Babylon 5”, but did I listen?

Noooo.

Science fiction: Escapist my ass.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

“Certain Honorable Men” – Edition.

Once upon a time there was a very good, somewhat-flawed writer by the name of Rodman Edward Serling.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him?

(Question # 138 on the SAT:
In the world of writing, “Good” is to “Flawed” as

A. “Feta” is to “Goat”.
B. “Morning-after winemouth” is to “Pan”.
C. “Lost in Space” is to “Hippy-Hating brainwashing”
D. All of the Above.)

He created literature that will last as long as we ingest wisdom-laced entertainment via video -- a butt-load of the “Twilight Zone” episodes, “Requiem for a Heavyweight”, “Patterns”, the screenplays for “Planet of the Apes" and “Seven Days in May” (screw you; I liked it) – as well as some stuff that frankly should be sailed over the horizon and sunk without a trace into the deep, blue sea.

In the latter category was the mediocre “Certain Honorable Men”: a balding retread of the “Man of conscience in crisis” theme Serling did a thousand times better in “Patterns” and in any of a dozen T-Zones.

Serling worked best when he was writing out of a powerful sense of moral indignation, coupled with a deeply humane empathy for the compromises and ambiguities life forces on even the best of us...while wielding a scalpel in one hand and "Tiny" van Buskirk's dureum space axe in the other.

Listen to what Mr. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" wrote in an editorial in the (then very right-wing) Los Angeles Times 43 long years ago, in 1964, in response to a series of articles by wingnut-apologist Morrie Ryskind (proving that every generation has its brownshirt-friendly media cross to bear):

…
What Mr. Ryskind seems constitutionally unable to understand is that there is a vast difference between the criticism of a man or a party, and the setting up of criteria or patriotism which equates differences of opinion with disloyalty.

We have need in the country for an enlightened, watchful and articulate opposition. We have no need for semi-secret societies who are absolutist, dictatorial, and would substitute for a rule of law and reason an indiscriminate assault on the institutions of this republic that should and must be held sacrosanct.
…

Uncanny, isn’t it?

Uncanny, and desperately sad, that this piece was written four months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and yet if it were reprinted tomorrow in Paul Krugman’s column or frontpaged at the Great Orange Satan -- word-for-word and sentiment-for-sentiment – it would still be as up-to-the-second contemporary as “The Soprano’s” finale.

And to be perfectly clear, Mr. "Time Enough At Last" was no Squishy, Broderian Centrist. He had an extremely well-honed political point of view, which he himself made unambiguously plain in this response to a response to his aforementioned comments (no linky; comes out of a dead-tree copy of “Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone” by Joel Engel, one copy of which, Lord knows why, I proudly own.)

“[The far right cannot] discount the fact that sitting it their parlor is the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, every racist group in the United States and not a few of some Fascist orders that have scrambled their way up from the sewers to a position of new respectability.”

Again, un-fucking-canny.

Think about it.

Absent a mention of the influence of the Christopaths, and minus the now-obsolete qualification of “far right”, this diagnosis of the disgrace that was then stalking the land is indistinguishable from something that Steve Gilliard could have penned and posted on any given midnight.

And it was written before the late Mr. Gillard was born.

My God, we have been culturally soul-sick with this disease for so damned long.

Serling himself disliked the teleplay of “Certain Honorable Men” intensely, at least in part because it was a supposed to be a political drama set in the United States Congress and it was rewritten by network weaklings to remove any reference to specific political parties.

Shorn of its context and ideological framework, it meant that as a “political drama”, it made no fucking sense at all.

So come now to a place 43 years in Rod Serling's future.

To a precipice he desperately tried to warn us away from. A place and time where the cowardly, the complicit and the blood-soaked bend the mightiest media in history to the service of flensing issues of life-and-death of inconvenient political context, for fear someone will notice that They Are The Problem.

A bloody cul-de-sac he would have recognized at once as his “Maple Street” where the Monsters have finally come for real.

A place we call, the Mouse Circus.

On Fox News Sunday:

First Tony Snow and Chris Wallace Immigration, Jebus and Carcinoma.

Snow: The critics want to know “How can we trust you?” ‘Cause were gonna throw money at it. And because there used to be nothing but a wrist-slap for employers. Now we will track illegals. For really, really real.

Wallace: Dems will probably poop in the punchbowl again by pointing out that it’s the Republicans who sabotaged this whole thing. What Mighty Powers of Bullshit can you bring to bear to help our feeble-minded viewers from facing yet another Harsh Reality 180-degrees in opposition to the chicken-fried horseshit they have been uncritically swallowing as Gee Dubya Gospel for the last six years?

Snow: Rather than doing finger pointing, you could have this thing done. If you weren’t taking all day Monday to do the entirely symbolic vote thingy about Abu Gonzalez.

Snow: Maybe instead of looking for blame the Dems should, y'know, not look for blame.

Snow: Whatever the Gonzo vote is, it is purely symbolic. Nothing untoward has happened. Nothing going on here. Just move along kids. Do people really think that taking a whole day to spank Alberto G is more important than rolling over and doing what the Dear Leader Commandeth? Why, I’ve never heard of such! It’s...it's...it's like those little bitches think they’re a whole separate branch of government. Or something.

Wallace: Does the fact that Dubya pussied out and refuses to re-nominate Peter Pace mean that the Dems can now steal his lunch money, piss in his pockets and call him a “Nancy man” to his face?

Snow: No. It’s the Congress. The Congress just sucks ass. The Senate has done nothing. The American People have issued a vote of no-confidence in the Congress. I have it here in my pocket. It has the names of over 600 million loyal Americans who have called me up and personally told me that Congress is full of madness.

Wallace: Can I see it?

Snow: No.

The Fox Blightening Round, wherein Wallace one-word questions and Snow doesn't answer them.

Pardon?

Yabba dabba do.

Ruskies?

Shama Lama Ding Dong.

When we return: “How can we blame Democrats for the GOP rats fleeing this Titanic of their own making?”


We return with My Senator, Dick Durbin:

Wallace: What’ll it take to bring this bill back from the dead?

Durbin: We had Republicans refusing to back their own amendments. Kinda fucked up when you have Goopers blowing their own bridges wouldn’t you say?

Wallace: Well, Ted Kennedy said…

In a lightening move, Dick Durbin snatches Chris Wallace’s nose from the front of his head.

Durbin: I’ve got your nose.

Wallace: Do Nive Dat Mack!

Durbin: What?

Wallace: Bi Doze! Nive Be Bi Doze!

Durbin: What? You’re asking why we took Friday off? We were committed to stay Friday, but there are 4-5 members on the Republican side who just don’t want a vote. They called for endless roll-call votes. They want of fuck this up, fine, but we don’t have to stick around and watch them write their names on the wall in their own poo.

Fox Makeup Lady snaps Wallace’s auxiliary nose back into place.

Wallace: Sure you say it’s a cabal of whinging, screaming, loony right-wing Republican pinheads that keep sinking this bill, but isn’t this really your fault?

Don’t answer that.

Instead, lets move on to discuss why Democrats hate our soldiers.

Durbin Quote: “Our soldiers should never be used as political bargaining chips”.

Wallace: So since Obama and Clinton voted against funding means they’re using our soldiers as bargaining chips.

Durbin’s Answer: I can’t speak for others, but I have talked to Barack at length and know he takes this matter very seriously.

Correct answer: “This President has done NOTHING but use the grief of the American people and the lives of American soldiers for the crassest, sleaziest partisan reasons since before the rubble of the World Trade Center was done smoking. Aren’t you just sick of it, Chris?

Wallace: Yeah, but they voted to end funding. How do you justify their votes?

Correct answer: Your President is a whockerjawed mope being led around by the nose by criminals and fascists. So tell you what, Chris. You explain to me how you justify your unstinting support of America’s internal enemies, and then I may consider answering your asinine question.

Wallace: You have done nothing in the last five months. Doesn’t that mean you are all a buncha failures.

Durbin: It has only been five months, and don’t forget we had to clean up the unfinished business the lazy, criminal, moral-lepers of the outgoing Republican Congress had left undone.

I mean it took over a months to get Jerry Lewis’ head pried out of Jack Abramoff’s ass. Another two weeks to chiropract and naprapath Denny Hastert’s gargantuan ass-divots out of Lady Liberty’s spine. And two more weeks to find the dungeon in which the GOP had thrown Justice and chisel Ted Stevens’ desiccated jimmy-stick out of her ass.

Also we passed a minimum wage increase, have six important bills being reconciled and ready for Preznit Badload to veto them, and have begun to restart the rusty engines of something called “Congressional Oversight”.


Durbin: There has been a more healthy debate about this war in the last five months than we have had in the last four years.

Brit Hume declares Dubya to be irrelevant. Lame duck. Due to the “unpopularity of the Iraq war”.

And “Certain Honorable Man” Juan Williams circumlocutes around the uncomfortable fact that his Conservative Paymasters Are The Problem. and instead blames the GPS coordinate of a place called “Washington” for the nations ills.

“Something intractable in the body politic of Washington” is Juan's diagnosis of the problem.

Yeah. And you’re soaking in it.


Meet the Press – was unavailable in these parts due to something called “tennis.”

Ah well, one show with men using rackets is much like another I suppose.


On “This Week…” Saint John McCain, and then a panel featuring
Time magazine's Jay Carney, ABC News consultant Torie Clarke, ABC News' Claire Shipman and George Will


McCain on Immigration: The more conservative, anti-legislation segment of the Republican Party does seem to hate the hell out of this bill and might cost me. And suddenly the other GOP candidates – whose records have been much more pro-immigration reform – got all Hulk! Smash! about it.


What, is there some other segment? One you people have been hiding under the bed?


Shipman: The vociferous minority had its way. This could almost have been Dubya’s Nixon-goes-to-China moment, but he needed a Democratic House and Senate to make it happen.

driftglass: Lets us be clear. “Democrats” didn’t kill this bill. Some mysterious, unnamed, vociferous Minority didn’t kill the bill. A plot of ground named “Washington” didn’t kill the bill.

The Republican Party killed the Republican President's bill.

Jay Carney: This was the end of his domestic presidency.


Torie Clarke takes the baton from Juan Williams and runs today's GOP talking point along a little further: It is a problem of “Washington”.

It is important to any aliens who may be flying past to note that this was as sweet an example of how utterly and openly dishonest and dishonorable the media is as you are likely to see

Torie Clarke is billed as “ABC News consultant”. And that is who is paying her mortgage these days.

Butt, see… (via Wiki)

“Victoria C. "Torie" Clarke (March 1959 in Pittsburgh) is an American public relations consultant who has served in the private sector and in three Republican presidential administrations, most notably as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Donald Rumsfeld.”

She is a highly-compensated Republican media trollop and camp follower, who has cheerfully offered her mouth in the perky service of the most corrupt, venial and treason-ridden Administration in American history.

And her penalty for taking 30 pieces of silver and a golden parachute from liars and monsters to help ruin America?

A sweet, paid gig on ABC “commenting” on the avalanche she herself helped unleash.

Shorter Washington Wisdom: The Preznit Badload and his GOP minions has spent seven years meticulously destroying everything they touch. They do this from atop the toxic summit of poisoned public rhetoric, Hate Radio, Christopathic fanaticism and Atwater/Rove “Rend and Rule” politics the Republicans have spent thirty methodically erecting.

Now that the Pig People they have gotten everything the ever dreamed of, and it has come a bloody cropper in exactly the way the Dirty Hippies warned them it would, they want to return to their factory default setting.

Blame “Washington”.

Blame the gridlock of “Washington”

Blame the venomous stalemate of “Washington” that they spent thirty years manufacturing and dumping into the nation’s groundwater.

So when you hear a filthy Republican whining that “Washington” is all gridlocky and slow and uncooperative, remember these are people who openly lust after the efficiency and conformity and quasi-military dress-code of a nice, tidy, White Christian One Party Police State.

When you hear them whining about the sluggish sloppiness of “Washington”, remember that our government was deliberately designed to be sluggish and sloppy. That what Republicans really hate is Democracy.



The Chris Matthews Show comes in here less predictably than pirate radio, but it is my understanding that it involved Katty Kay, John Heilemann, Michele Norris and
Howard Fineman.


On Face the Nation Tony Snow! And Joementum!

Tony reiterates that Congressional “oversight” is a big, dorky, kinda-faggy waste of time, that Brutus is an Honorable Man, and that the Congress should get on with what he believes American People elected them to do: dutifully bending over and grabbing ‘em for whatever Bicycle Chief’s appetites might be today.

And sounding off with an enthusiastic “Thank you Dubya! May I have another!” when he is finished back there.

For the good of the nation, Preznit Drinky needs a good, solid, anchored, non-ambulatory, non-sentient, inert=carbon-rod-like Congress against which he can lean and around which he can stagger and rant for the next two years and not some uppity bicameral free agent, just doing whatever-the-hell it pleases, coming in all hours, making out with boys, and worrying your mother and me half to death.

Why you could’ve wound up dead in a ditch!

No, Tony. 3,500 Americans and God knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already ended up dead precisely because the degenerate perverts for whom you works have been allowed to run amok for six years.

Those days are over, and not all the aw-shucks, shit-slinging, hale-fellow handjobbing in the Universe is going to change that.

But the cake this week is taken by Imaginary SecDef Joementum (I, Goshen) explaining why we may need to attack Iran.

Which is so divorced from reality that they don’t even share joint custody of simple ‘rithmatic anymore.

From OpEd News:

The big news however was “Jumping” Joe Lieberman’s soon to be famous sound bite that said “I think we can’t take military options off the table when it comes to Iran. They are training fighters over there (In Iran) and killing up to 200 American soldiers. I think it good that we talk to them but we should be saying to them stop killing American soldiers”.

To that Bob Schieffer asked “So what is it that you propose?”

“Well Bob, I think we should use our military and strike Iran. I believe that we should use our power and take out that base. We must stop Iran from training Hezbollah and others from attacking Israel”

“Do you think we can do this from the air?” Asked Bob Schieffer.

“Well I didn’t know, we will have to leave that decision to the commanders on the ground.” Said Lieberman, his eyes blinking like a madman, the first “tell” they teach you in law enforcement that indicates someone is lying.

And of course, giving a potential opponent that kind of head’s-up in advance just adds a special layer of fucktacularly stupid undercoating to the Joementumobile's already 100% fact-deflecting stealth carapace.

Thank Connecticut!

For forty years we have been afflicted with a political wasting disease that has been growing in menace and lethality right in front of us. Right in our midst.

And for forty years, in the name of High Broderism, the media has called it “Washington”.

They called it “gridlock”.

They called it “partisan sniping”.

They called it “divided government”.

They called it a lack of collegiality.

They have called it by every euphemism imaginable

They have called it by everything except by its True Name.

And because Certain Honorable Men and Women of the media will never, ever, ever state this simple truth, you and I must:

In the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

A Lone Gunman Presidency.

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

Here, Ezra Klein mentions that he likes Fareed Zakaria's latest foreign policy think-piece enough to recommend it without reservation.

Well I've got one.

Ezra is a fine writer and noble blogdweller on a less fuck-you-heavy and more ivy-hushed thoroughfare than my own, but on this I must take issue.

Here he misses the forest for a lot of the pretty trees.

See if you can spot the forest.

Here are some snips from the Newsweek article, interspersed with a little of this and a little of that, and some emphasis added to guide the eye...

Zakaria: How to Restore America's Place in the World
What the world needs is an open, confident America.
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

June 11, 2007 issue - In the fall of 1982, I arrived in the United States as an 18-year-old student from India. The country was in rough shape. That December unemployment hit 10.8 percent, higher than at any point since World War II. Interest rates hovered around 15 percent. Abroad, the United States was still reeling from Vietnam and Watergate. The Soviet Union was on a roll, expanding its influence from Afghanistan to Angola to Central America. That June, Israel invaded Lebanon, making a tense situation in the Middle East even more volatile.

Yet America was a strikingly open and expansive country. Reagan embodied it. Despite record-low approval ratings, he exuded optimism from the center of the storm. In the face of Moscow's rising power he confidently spoke of a mortal crisis in the Soviet system and predicted that it would end up on "the ash heap of history." Across the political aisle stood Thomas (Tip) O'Neill, the hearty Irish-American Speaker of the House, who personified the enormous generosity and tolerance of old-school liberalism. To a young foreign student the country seemed welcoming and full of promise.

Today, by almost all objective measures, the United States sits on top of the world. But the atmosphere in Washington could not be more different from 1982. We have become a nation consumed by fear, worried about terrorists and rogue nations, Muslims and Mexicans, foreign companies and free trade, immigrants and international organizations. The strongest nation in the history of the world, we see ourselves besieged and overwhelmed. While the Bush administration has contributed mightily to this state of affairs, at this point it has reversed itself on many of its most egregious policies—from global warming to North Korea to Iraq.

In any event, it is time to stop bashing George W. Bush. We must begin to think about life after Bush—a cheering prospect for his foes, a dismaying one for his fans (however few there may be at the moment). In 19 months he will be a private citizen, giving speeches to insurance executives.

America, however, will have to move on and restore its place in the world.

To do this we must first tackle...

...

Having spooked ourselves into believing that we have no option…
...

...we have managed in six years to destroy decades of international good will, alienate allies, embolden enemies and yet solve few of the major international problems we face.

In a global survey released last week, most countries polled believed that China would act more responsibly in the world than the United States. How does a Leninist dictatorship come across more sympathetically than the oldest constitutional democracy in the world?

More troubling than any of Bush's rhetoric is that of the Republicans who wish to succeed him.
…

See the pattern?

Fareed moves back and forth between excoriating Republicans for being arrant fucknozzles…and exhorting "Americans" to rise above the last years (decades, I would argue) of reckless ideology and rhetoric.

As if the Republican Party had just been out walking the doggy when it was suddenly tasered, bagged and thrown unconscious into the back of James Dobson’s Christopath Clown Car and has been forced to do unspeakable things against it's will in the basement of Fox News for the last thiry years.

And somehow in Fareed's American Daguerreotype the millions and millions of good, decent, hardworking Liberals who have vehemently opposed the Regime of the Pig People for years somehow don’t exist at all. We are just crudely drawn cartoon crowd-scene fillers. Irrelevant little oval faces that blur by in the background while the Important Battle for the Future of America is fought in the foreground without us.

Uh-uh, Fareed. I call 32 flavors of bullshit.

A third of this beautiful country is already well ahead of the curve. Get's everything you said. Got it years ago. Has been waiting all-too patiently for the rest of the country to sober up from it's Neocon bender and get to work fixing the mess they -- not we -- have made.

And we're still waiting, because another third are moral CHUDS who are quite beyond redemption.

And the last third needs to have the shit metaphorically slapped out of them until the Wake The Fuck Up and quit siding with the CHUDS.

In a lot of ways it really is that simple.

Fareed continues.

The notion that the United States today is in grave danger of sitting back and going on the defensive is bizarre. In the last five and a half years, with bipartisan support, Washington has invaded two countries and sent troops around the world from Somalia to the Philippines to fight Islamic militants. It has ramped up defense spending by $187 billion—more than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, India and Britain. It has created a Department of Homeland Security that now spends more than $40 billion a year. It has set up secret prisons in Europe and a legal black hole in Guantánamo, to hold, interrogate and—by some definitions—torture prisoners. How would Giuliani really go on the offensive? Invade a couple of more countries?

The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping…

…

The competition to be the tough guy is producing new policy ideas, all right—ones that range from bad to insane. …

…

Fareed asks the following question:

Though Democrats sound more sensible on many of these issues, the party remains consumed by the fear that it will not come across as tough. Its presidential candidates vie with one another to prove that they are going to be just as macho and militant as the fiercest Republican.

But then answers it himself:

Unfortunately, our fears extend well beyond terrorism. CNN's Lou Dobbs has become the spokesman of a paranoid and angry segment of the country, railing against the sinister forces that are overwhelming us. For the right, illegal immigrants have become an obsession. The party of free enterprise has dedicated itself to a huge buildup of the state's police powers to stop people from working.

…

To recover its place in the world, America first needs to recover its confidence.

…

No, Fareed. America first needs to cover the Conservative movement with three feet of lime and bury it in a deep, deep hole. Because first you have to excise the cancer; then you can heal the body.

And when it comes to addressing this very issue -- “...the party remains consumed by the fear that it will not come across as tough...” -- I must ask, “Come across to whom?”

To me?

To millions of Liberals like me who are not taken in by the fascist speedmetal roar of fearfearfear from the Right?

No.

The people Fareed is implicitly refering to are the Jello People of the mushy middle, who skitter and scamper hither and thither and who need to be shown, once and for all, that in the Age of Dubya, a vote for the GOP is a vote against America. And the reason this preliminary battle must be fought and won before any permanent progress can be made elsewhere is because, like it or not, the Wingnut Hate Machine is huge, well-funded and terribly effective.

There has been a lot of very legitimate criticism of the Dems for not sealing Dubya under an avalanche of Iraq Funding Bills with hard deadlines and then letting him veto himself deeper into ignominy. A lot of talk about how the Dems are haunted by ghost of the Cold Stove of Vietnam ™

“The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won't sit upon a cold stove lid, either.” -- Mark Twain

But ghosts are conjurations of the fearful (or hopeful) imagination, whereas the GOPs Pretty Hate Machine is no mere fantasy or bit of Johnson-era muscle-memory body thetan that clings to Democrats and affects their behavior long after the real danger has passed.

The GOP's Pretty Hate Machine is as real and tangible and corrosive as ever, and if you need a recent example that bears directly on the timorous behavior of some Democrats in the pre-Memorial Day vote, I would direct your attention not to 1964 or 1974, but 1994.

To the Assault Weapons Ban: a much less controversial issue than the Iraq War, and one which is at least as instructive when trying to understand the roots of Democrat's collective memory of what happens when they to the right thing, as examining NAFTA is useful in understanding them when they shamefully triangulate.

remember that in 1994, Clinton got a lot of Dems to go out on a political limb, “do the right thing” and vote for the ban.

Dems then got mashed like mint leaves in a mojito in the Fall elections, with 19 of the 24 candidates who were specifically targeted by the NRA going down.

After the election, Clinton wrote that those who warned him that it would cost his Party the House "were right, and I was wrong,''

This, let me remind you, ushered in the era of Gingrich/DeLay/Impeachment/Bush/9-11/Iraq.

Postscript: In the end the 2004 GOP Congress let the ban lapse with virtually no debate.

Lesson: While splendid bravery is what we should absolutely demand from our public servants especially during these tragic times, we also are caught in a universe that is circumscribed every bit as much by the politically possible, as it is by the morally correct. And when politicians see that when they do the difficult-but-right thing nobody will be there to cover their asses, that sends a powerful message to those that survive.

Fareed continues:

In order to begin reorienting America's strategy abroad, any new U.S. administration must begin with Iraq. Until the United States is able to move beyond Iraq, it will not have the time, energy, political capital or resources to attempt anything else of any great significance. The first thing to admit is that our mission in Iraq has substantially failed. Whether it was doomed from the outset or turned into a fiasco because of the administration's arrogance and incompetence is a matter that historians can determine.

…

There is a great deal more that is all well written, but the implicit assumption is just wrong.

Again, I am compelled to turn the prose back on itself and ask Fareed, when you say “The first thing to admit is that our mission in Iraq has substantially failed”, who the fuck are you talking about?

Admit to whom?

The notion of the conquest of Iraq and the rapid, serial decapitation of other unfriendly Middle Eastern regimes was a morally bankrupt idea since the day the Neocons starting laying their eggs in the skull of the weak-minded George Bush. The true motives for the war were perverse. It was built on a foundation of lies, and rammed down our throats by criminals using propaganda techniques ripped right from the pages of “Joseph Goebbels for Dummies”.

I know it. You know it. Presumably Fareed knows it. Millions upon millions of intelligent, thoughtful Liberals know it.

So who exactly is supposed to do this “admitting” that doesn’t already know the truth?

And to whom are they supposed to do it?

…

The administration has—surprise—tried to play up fears of the consequences of a drawdown in Iraq (which is always described as a Vietnam-style withdrawal down to zero). It predicts that this will lead to chaos, violence and a victory for terrorists. When we listen to these forecasts, it is worth remembering that every administration prediction about Iraq has been wrong.
…

Again, lovely trees, but the true name of the Forest remains conspicuously unspoken as Fareed attempts to frame the epic tale of the rise, hubristic apotheosis and catastrophic failure of the Modern Conservative Movement on every front and the degenerate freaks who still stand loyal to the criminal junta that runs it…down into a short story about a couple of bad seeds.

The story of Crazy ‘Ol Gee Dubya; sleazy skulker who wrecked the world all by his lonesome firing from the windows of the Textbook-Conservative Depository.

A loner. Disgruntled, with a fetish for guns and violent video games.

A phony-brave dimwit who mumbled a lot about smokin’ ‘em out and bringing ‘em on. Who somehow got his hands on the United States Government and caused a lotta ruckus.

You know the type.

A Lone Gunman whose Magic Bullet managed to take out the courts, maim the electoral process, turn around in midair and kill habeas corpus, wipe out New Orleans, level Iraq, trash our international reputation, set superstition in the Throne of Science, defile genuine Christianity, etc, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.

Conservatives now flail around like Daffy Duck having a grand mal seizure trying to explain that Dubya was some kind of goofy accident. That they…uh…they….just sneezed too hard and…uh…sorta pooped their pants a little, and there he was.

Just a case of temporary Constitutional Incontinence! So can’t we just forget the whole thing and go back to the Conservative Happy Days of Potsy, Richie, Ralph and President Ronald Wilson Fonzarelli?

Call do-over and go back to hating Negroes and queers, slaughtering the Middle Class blaming Liberals for every-fucking-thing?

No, Fareed. Because without a seething mass of millions of pinheaded, Rush-Drunk, Fox-Blind, Falwell-Gelded imbeciles to play to, Dubya would either be selling mobile homes in Midland or our Ambassador to Paraguay; either way drinking himself blind in the heat, shooting at the neighbors dogs for spite and screaming at his houseboy that his fucking pancakes aren't round enough.

No, Fareed, it is time to think about life after Conservativism and how to get us there. Because as long as the GOP remains a plural electoral marriage of homophobes, Segregationists, militia nuts, Hate Radio and Fox News elites, and Christopaths dowried by brownshirt billionaires and anti-American Corporatists, then the Dubya Legacy will live on and on, always just below the surface, always ready to sprint another 30 yards towards fascism when they sleaze or cheat out a win, and always eager to deploy every filthy trick in the world at a million decibels to sabotage the will of the people when they lose.

Because not until Conservativism as it is currently constituted is sandblasted from the walls of our Democracy like so much smutty, racist grafitti – not until voting Republican, agreeing with GOP talking points or even having any visible vestige of a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on one’s vehicle is treated as something on the public shame spectrum between masturbating on the subway and passing out drunk into the host during communion -- do we stand a chance of becoming the open, confident, compassionate nation of your dreams and mine.