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November 21, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Debunking Five Current Media Myths Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:57 am

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
– George Bernard Shaw

1. The Republicans are going to end earmarks. Ha, ha! Both parties, but especially the GOP, thrive on earmarks – not only does it bring home the bacon, but it’s a nice covert way to reward their corporate sponsors. The typically devious Republicans, with the help of some Blue Dog Dems in the Senate, are just going to change the name to something like ‘help American families add-ons’ or ‘freedom appropriation inserts’ and continue to happily earmark away.

2. The Republican Party is now strong. Another laugher. The GOP had to rebrand as the ‘new Tea Party GOP’ in 2010 and none of their candidates dared campaign with Junior Bush. In TV ads, many GOP candidates did not even mention they were Republicans. Rand Paul, the only true Teabagger in the Senate, is now making noises like a “go along to get along” guy, and various naïve Teabaggers in the House, like the anti-government-paid health care dimwit who demanded his government-paid health care ahead of schedule, have begun showing their strong streak of stupid, even before January’s official swearing in. Most of us have noticed it’s not the mid-90s anymore, with the booming economy of the Clinton years, except for Republicans like Rep. Darrell Issa. Tying the House up in endless attempts to impeach Obama is not going to endear the GOP to a crumbling nation dealing with what is really the second Great Depression. And some of the Teabaggers may be gravely offended to discover that the GOP has been lying to them. It’s going to be a fractious two years in Congress that won’t come out well for the GOP in 2012.

3. The Republicans have a plan to restore jobs. Related to the item above, and every bit as hilarious, the GOP has nothing except ‘tax cuts’ (spin and repeat, ad nauseum), and that isn’t going to create any jobs except at corporate PR firms trying to peddle the fraud that tax cuts are working to create jobs, and that’s not nearly enough to refloat the fast-sinking economy. As the fading middle-class notices its nails are ripping off trying to hang on to what they have left, brand ‘Tea Party Republican’ will become a political curse as loaded with negative connotations as ‘Communist’ or ‘Cheney’ is today.

4. The Republicans can balance the budget. The GOP hasn’t been able to balance the federal budget since Reagan took office, and without Clinton-inspired tax hikes and a few turns by Big Bill, there wouldn’t have been a surplus in 2000. Since the GOP doesn’t want to end two over-priced wars from which their corporate supporters are getting wealthier, truly reform our wastefully expensive health care system, remove corporate tax loopholes, separate commercial and investment banks, and cut the defense budget drastically, that leaves social spending like Social Security and Medicare on the block. The unvarnished truth: Even if the GOP junked all federal social programs, which they won’t be able to do, they still wouldn’t be able to balance the budget. In fact, with their tax cuts for the wealthy of prime importance, along with preserving corporate tax loopholes, they’ll be adding another trillion dollars to the debt. They’ll remain the ‘put it on the credit card and blame the Democrats’ party they’ve been for 30 years.

5. The Democrats lost because they went too far left. Au contraire, mon frere, as George Carlin used to say. Think of it: In spite of the corporate millions that poured into the Senate race in Nevada, the GOP couldn’t score what should have been an easy victory. In California, progressive and GOP target Barbara Boxer prevailed, and the Tea Party proved its basic worthlessness in the “I’m not a witch” fiasco that was Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. Only in those areas of the country dominated by Fox News and AM radio right-wing talkers, and not much counter-balancing local media, where the Teabaggers could work without serious scrutiny, did they score wins, mostly against Blue Dog Dems. The reason a lot of Dems stayed home in 2010 is that they were tired of voting for progressive Democrats and getting Republican Lite. Obama and the Dems should listen to the wisdom of Harry Truman, a Democrat who prevailed during a bad time for Dems in the late 1940s, “Given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican every time.”

Obama and the Dems might also heed this advice from Give ‘Em Hell Harry: “Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.”

But let’s not expect too much.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

November 5, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Jon Stewart WTF?!? and Other Miscellaneous Head-Slappers Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:12 am

– What is Jon Stewart playing at? I’m a big fan of The Daily Show star and think he’s done a great job in the past, so it pains me to write this, but WTF?!? Okay, so to make his point at the Rally to Restore Sanity he tossed Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz under the same bus reserved for Glenn Beck and Fox News. Last Monday, Olbermann graciously took his point and even cancelled indefinitely one of my favorite Countdown segments, “Worst Persons in the World.” But the other day on TDS, here’s Stewart heaping honey on Chris Wallace of Fox News and agreeing to appear on Wallace’s “Fox News Sunday.” Yes, he took a few mild swipes at Fox’s obvious Republican partisanship, but he also equated MSNBC, the home of Olbermann and Schulz, to a AA ball club compared to the Big Leaguers at Fox. He didn’t mean that in a complimentary way, but Jon can’t seriously believe there is any parity between what Fox does and what MSNBC does. (For one thing, Fox doesn’t give a liberal Democrat a three-hour weekday morning program, as MSNBC has with conservative Republican Joe Scarborough.) Put simply: Fox lies, as Stewart well knows, and MSNBC’s progressive hosts, even though they may display passion for their side, don’t. You can’t possibly have a restoration of sanity without fact, and Jon Stewart knows that, as well. So, why is Stewart trying to make them both seem equal? A few possibilities:

(H/T to the Bartcop main page for the graphic)

H/T to the Bartcop main page for the graphic

1. Since the hosts at MSNBC won’t be invited on Fox – even Ed Schultz is banned now, I’ve heard – perhaps Stewart sees himself as the voice of reason who can parry the thrusts of the Noise Machine and inject some truth into Fox’s stream-of-conspicuous nonsense. To do that, he must maintain some semblance of being ‘reasonable,’ which means to the right-wingers attacking MSNBC and progressives. Note: If this is the case, Obama has tried this tactic for the last two years and just had his head handed to him. It doesn’t work.

2. Maybe Stewart just has some personal animosity toward Olbermann and Schultz and he’s taking it out this way. That would be mighty petty of him, but nobody’s perfect, particularly in an ego-driven arena like show business.

3. This is the ugly one: Comedy Central is owned by corporate media giant Viacom and it’s possible they finally noticed TDS and Stewart have had quite an impact on recent elections and the voting trends of those under 30. Was Stewart brought in by Bush-backer and Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone for a pointed “Network” reminder of who signs his paychecks and told to back off? I have noticed Jon has been much more civil to right-wingers this year, even bottom of the barrel types like Bill O’Reilly. I’d hate to think the reason he’s promoting this ‘equivalency’ is that he doesn’t want to end up back humping the comedy club circuit doing 300 “Hey, I’ll be at McLaughington’s in Akron on Friday!” road gigs a year. He’s now a middle-aged man with a home, wife, family and a pile of bills – powerful reasons to toe the corporate line.

4. And this is the really horrible one: Perhaps his head is being turned by the ‘charm’ of the right-wing corporatists; they can be very persuasive ‘good guys’ in person, unless you remember the whole fetid history of the Republican Party of the past 30 years. I recall when Dennis Miller had his HBO show years ago: first he brought on right-wingers to lightly mock them, as Stewart does; then he had them on to explain their positions while he nodded his head; then he became one of the Pod People himself. Miller should be a warning of what happens to those who turn their backs on sanity and the facts – they end up losing their core audience, and money, as they perform for a bunch of dimwit thumbsuckers who don’t get their jokes.

5. Even more horrible than the last one: Stewart is angling for a nice, long-term berth at Fox hosting a TDS-style political satire show. It’s no secret Roger Ailes has been looking to compete with TDS; what better way than to back up Murdoch’s money truck and hire away Stewart? (Think Karl Rove: attack their strong point.) I’d hate to think this is Stewart’s motivation, but it’s a possibility.

Whatever the reason is, I wish Stewart would, in the interest of fairness, have Olbermann and Schultz as guests on his show to present their side, as he does with the Fox Newsers. (And Olbermann and Schultz should reciprocate by having Stewart on their shows to explain himself.) Let’s clear the air.

I hope this is all a tiff among friends, rather than the creation of another Miller monstrosity or Ailes attack dog.

(more…)

November 3, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Sifting Through the Post-Election Ashes Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:14 pm

First off, in my previous ‘Toast and Coast’ pieces, I accurately predicted that Republican Teabaggers Linda McMahon, Carl Paladino, and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Palins, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, were all toast, along with the Billionaire Girls Club of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. G.I. Joe Miller in Alaska and Ken Buck in Colorado are still undecided at this hour. That leaves two where the Tattler’s crystal ball was cloudy – Rand “There’s Something About an Aqua Buddha Man” Paul in Kentucky and Mark “Captain Blight” Kirk in Illinois – but 6 out of 8 ain’t bad. Ron Paul’s offshoot was the biggest surprise, but probably should not have been in a Red State that elected a turtle wax replicant like the sour-lipped Mitch McConnell to the Senate.

As I watched the televised bulletins from the Planet Xenon otherwise known as the Mainstream Media carve up and autopsy What This Election Means today, of course the MSM managed to bungle and bypass any realistic diagnosis as they became trapped in the humbug of their own quackery and delusion. A blur of the Pundit Class’ finest recruits for Perdition hilariously kept sawing on some iteration of this soggy paper-maché log: “This election will show Obama he has to cooperate with the Republicans to get things done!” Really? What has he been doing so far?

The official DeeCee Democratic Party, naturally, will take the wrong lesson from this drubbing – “We need to be more conservative!” rather than, “We have to stand for our progressive principles and stop backing down!” So, have no worries, Teabaggers, the GOP, even though a majority only in the House, will get everything it wants out of the Senate, from budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy and further corporate deregulation to, perhaps, some curtailing of unemployment benefits and elimination of the minimum wage, hastening our final plunge off the economic cliff.

And you won’t hear John Boehner solemnly announcing, “Impeachment is off the table!” To the contrary, the Republicans will be conducting proctological investigations of every person who ever spoke to Obama in an effort to find some scrap of sleaze with which to remove him from office, aided and abetted by Fox News and the other media gangsters on the right. (Orly Taitz, get ready for your Congressional appearance!) While the GOP likely won’t be successful at actually impeaching Obama, they will so muddy his name and reputation that they’ll get their wish – he’ll be a one-term footnote in history, ‘first African-American president,’ with no other accomplishments listed.

In the Tattler’s occasional Unscientific Barroom Polls, I ask tipplers of various ages and colors to state, in a few short words, what they think conservative Republicans believe in: “Tax cuts,” “Small government,” and “Strong defense,” were the most frequent answers. I then ask the same question regarding the Democrats. Most people stared at me agape, unable to think of a thing, although one respondent said “Weakness” and another uttered “Big government.” During the time of FDR, most Americans presented with the same query about Democrats would have said, “Saving the economy,” “Fighting for the little guy,” “Creating jobs.” Will the Dems learn that lesson? You have to stand for something.

In two years America will be sick of the Republicans, or what’s left of America anyway, and ready to toss the conservatives out in favor of Democrats who think they should be more conservative, and the dance will continue until the global economic collapse that is certain unless a miracle happens and Obama starts taking tips from FDR instead of Lincoln.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

October 29, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Yankee Doodle Kydoodles and Other Yowling Yowfs of the Teabaggers Pox Americana Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:21 am

“What then is freedom madness? God forbid. For freedom and madness exist not together.”
– Epictetus, “Golden Sayings,” No. XXIX

Non-corporate dissectors of the political scene, and Board Certified (in the Rand Paul sense) observers such as myself, have learned to read the stray tea leaves crushed beneath the corporately-financed circus wagon of this year’s New, Improved Tidal Wave GOP (“Democracy’s Detergent!”) and the occasional bits of actual useful information that drop off the Big Media buffet table of parboiled conventional-wisdom offal determined fit for the rustics by the over-paid ‘two legs good, two legs with money great’ crew that pounds a dismal beat between Beltway Washington and the glass canyons of New York.

A pattern has emerged as clear as the unblinking eyes of Karl Rove when he’s lying through his teeth; despite the noises made by national pollsters — whose questionable practices include antiquated techniques from the ‘one ringy-dingy’ age of rotary-dial Bakelite phones, and a habitual penchant for loading poll questions with such baloney as, “If you had to vote for a really fantastic Republican candidate or a Democrat who nightly dines on dogs and cats, which would you prefer?” or “Yes, I know it’s the headquarters of Koch Industries; I wondered how you planned to vote this election?”– it’s now plain internal polling done by the GOP has revealed that their bumble-brained Teabagger candidates are losing far and wide, and by more drastic margins than the MSM Silly Swillers of Echo Valley would have us believe. Hence, nearly a week before the actual election, we have Republican charges of ‘vote fraud’ and the vow that voter intimi – er – ‘integrity’ squads will be dispatched to those areas rife with denizens who made the poor choice to be born with skin darker than Sarah Palin’s and, unlike politely accommodating indigent whites in certain parts of the country, insist on voting against those who would gladly serve them up by the shovel to feudalistic Chinese-style capitalism.

Your Tattler could not avoid sketching out what these Teabagger ‘voter integrity squads’ might look like. Will they be in full 18th century drag from tricorn hat to knee-britches with silk stockings and ask questions of voters in the formal English of two centuries past? “Hark thee, fair citizen! Dost thou possess the required credentials to participate in this seemly exercise of democracy?” If so, I dost predicteth a spate of hilarity as laughing voters push by the costumed lunkheads, most probably thinking they are hawking the opening of a new Long John Silver’s rather than checking voter identification.

Of course, Ohio’s Republican House contender Rich Iott may dispatch his Nazi re-enactors to prevent any chicanery at the polls. Will they be dressed in complete SS regalia and posing their queries in a fake German accent, ala Col. Klink? “I must zee your papers now, schweinhundt!” This, too, affords too much room for risible ridiculousness, if not danger for the Nazi imposters – some unamused WWII vet might grab a rifle and take potshots at them from his wheelchair or walker.

But then, the Teabaggery may appear in yellow t-shirts with the affable “Don’t Tread on Me” embossed in acrylic on the front, accompanied by a gun strapped to their leg in one of those goofy Velcro thigh holsters. Sure, they seem to mean business, but the thigh-holster can be a knotty problem – if the straps are too loose, the pistol humiliatingly falls down on your foot and resembles nothing so much as a public depantsing; if the straps are too tight, it cuts off blood flow and the Teabagger tough guy is reduced to hopping around on one foot, trying to intimidate minority voters while restoring circulation to his numb leg. “Hey – Ow! Ow! – you got legal identification to vote – Ow! Ow! – here?” That path, too, leads to nothing other than comical YouTube videos and an excuse for some droll Jon Stewart barbs on The Daily Show.

But no matter what garb the Teabaggers don — whether it’s grim ‘Men in Black’ mufti like Joe Miller’s amateur-hour security guards in Alaska, or the simpler straw hat with hanging teabags stapled around the brim – the fact is that most Teabaggers hail from rural, caucasian areas of the country. While they are confident they intimately know the psyche of black people from long exposure to lawn ornamentation and Bill Cosby reruns, and no doubt believe they will be greeted in Inner City regions by courteous men and women emulating our gracious president, such may not be the case. I can think of several black folks of my acquaintance who would not take kindly to being confronted by some rude peckerwood demanding their papers. They would definitely not refrain from putting the ‘Mr. T’ in Tea Party, so to speak.

What’s more, if Hispanics are the vicious beheading drug gangsters the trembling Teabaggers have been told they are, how many of Beck’s Crusaders will want to hang around in front of polling places in Latino neighborhoods, waiting for the Machete of Death to fall? These Tea Partiers are, after all, gullible ante-bellum conservatives who are scared of almost everything, including any concept hatched after the Dark Ages, and unlikely to chance confronting the living representations of the actors Sharron Angle sticks in her Halloween Party TV ads.

There will be intimidation at the polls — the Teabaggers will be terrified into sitting in their vans with the doors locked, hunched down, trying not to wet themselves. This GOP ‘project’ will be as big a bust as Rove’s electoral math in 2006.

Add to that the number of voters who find criminally stomping on a passive woman’s head at a public event offensive, and you have an upset for the Democrats in the making, and the Teabaggers quickly jettisoned from the GOP ranks damned with the only epithet the cynical Republican elite consistently honors, ‘loser’.

Contrary to the news-cycle fantasies of Media Conventional Wisdom to which would-be president Rudy Giuliani succumbed, mostly a confection of giddy press releases, past performance, and inbred cocktail party jabber, the fanatical Teabagger GOP – a small minority never much more than empty rage, incoherent ideas, and shifting wind, financed by fools with more money than brains — peaked months ago and has been in decline ever since as Democratic candidates rose in even the archaic landline-phone polls that favor older, whiter, more rural, and more conservative voters – in other words, the core of the Tea Party movement. If the Punditocracy that has for the past year woven the fiction of massive GOP gains in 2010 were not so obstinate in supporting their own discredited imaginings, and getting a pat on the head from the large corporations that dispense their paychecks, they might look at this information from a different angle, and I don’t mean Sharron: Around the country, the Democrats have pulled even or ahead with the voters the desiccated, weakened GOP desperately needs to get elected.

Hang down your bulbous Chuck Schulz head, Charlie Cook.

Sure, it’s possible that Dems will stay home in droves to teach Obama some kind of obscure lesson, which is reminiscent of the story about the boy who chopped off half his foot with an axe for attention. He got the attention he craved – his family thought he was nuts and stuck him in a mental hospital, and he had to live out his life limping around with half his foot missing. And disgusted independent voters might decide to commit economic suicide by entrusting their futures to babbling goofballs like Angle and Rand Paul, and corporate vipers like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, and complete the job of obliterating our Constitution, rewarding the rich at the expense of the rest of us, eliminating social programs, and shipping what’s left of our jobs overseas or forcing us to work for slave wages.

Then, I’ll hang down my head, but I won’t be alone – millions of Americans, in a few years, will feel the full impact of Reverse Robin Hood Republicanism and be doing the same, and what’s left of America will depend on the thin thread of ink flowing from the president’s veto pen.

If it comes to that point, you’d better hope Obama doesn’t hold a grudge and decide to teach the country a lesson.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Kydoodle: To make loud, meaningless noise.
(From the book “Words” by Paul Dickson.)

Yowf: One whose importance exceeds [their] merit. Rich or influential fools.
(Coined by Gelet Burgess who also invented the words ‘blurb’ and ‘bromide.’)

October 16, 2010

The Tattlesnake – More Toast and Coast Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:31 am

Because once was not enough…

Given their deep concern over budget deficits, someone in the Noose Media should ask one of these Tea Party candidates if they are willing, once in office, to save the taxpayers a little money by taking no more than $50K per year in salary, buy their health insurance the same way the average prole does, and forgo their housing allowance, generous government pension, and other perks for Congress members. Oh, right, they can’t ask them that because they run in terror from all but the ‘GOP friendly’ media.

With rumors circulating that the GOP Money Machine has quietly given up on Christine O’Donnell after her pathetic “do I need to know that?” debate performance; Sharron Angle’s bizarre Valley-of-the-Dolls, all-you-need-is-the-free-market mutual press conference with Harry Reid (where has Sharron been the past 30 years?), and Carl Paladino’s further fattening of his job resume for a gig with The Onion News Service, it’s become clear how weak the Republican Party really is these days. They are being led around by vacuous political shock-jocks like Limbaugh and Beck; their Teabagger candidates are ignorant, barely-coherent dingbats pushing stink-bomb Gilded Age economic cure-alls; and the only things keeping the sinking GOP dinghy afloat is Fox News, their dutiful handmaidens in the Big Media, and piles of undisclosed corporate cash for negative ads. If not for the aforementioned, the Know-Nothing Party would be curled up in a ball in the corner, mewling for mercy. They have no constituency except that 20 percent of the country that is uninstitutionalized wingnut – and that’s not enough to get anyone elected. Americans may be angry with the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean they want to move in with a family of moon-howling morons.

cartoon-gop-ads-who-paid

Consider that a month ago, every MSM pundit with an AFTRA card was assuring us plebes of Big Wins for the GOP in such states as Nevada, Delaware and Alaska, based on the polls and past off-year electoral history. Now, not so much — toss-ups everywhere as the Dems have come even in polls and, in the case of DE, shot up about 20 points ahead.

With that said, the Tattler again consults his Toast and Coast flash cards on some of the prominent races of Pax Americana:

Toast: Joe Miller, GOP candidate for US Senate from Alaska.
Tea Party Joe’s enthusiastic endorsement by multi-millionaire Sarah Palin probably didn’t help him much with Alaskans – she’s not well-liked in the Great White North anymore. On top of that, the hits just keep coming that he has a bundle of regressive views on Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, which basically amount to telling the serfs to “suck it” while doling out tax cuts for the well-heeled heels. Not good. Then there are the recent embarrassing revelations that his wife collected evil unemployment benefits, his refusal to answer questions about his past hypocrisies, and a write-in challenge from Preferred Establishment Republican and sitting senator Lisa Murkowski, and you have Joe melting faster than a Bering Sea glacier in an Al Gore film.
Coast: It may be a squeaker but Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, who has risen to within six points of Miller, will pull out this upset victory in what once was a Deep Red State.

Toast: Mark Kirk, GOP candidate for US Senate from Illinois.
Just because I can’t resist the rhyme, let me say Kirk is a jerk, but it’s true. Aside from inflating his US Navy service beyond recognition, he’s had a whole FUBAR political career as a Congressman. He’s not a Teabagger, he’s a spoiled little pain-in-the-ass from a suburban district of Chicago who apparently has never taken the time to understand what the big metropolitan neighbors his constituents depend on need and then wonders why things aren’t working better. He’s also not great at discerning what’s important to downstate farmers and blue-collar workers with whom he feels no affinity or compassion. He’s a vacant tax-cut-crazy political dilettante who votes as instructed by the GOP Elite. It’ll be a relief to wave ‘bon voyage’ to this political parasite. His Dem opponent is no prize, but it’s hard to imagine how he could be worse than Kirk.
Coast: Alexi Giannoulias, but only by a couple of points.

Toast: Michael Bennet, Democratic Senator from Colorado.
Sorry to say, but Bennet has run a soft, inchoate campaign against Tea Party goofball Ken Buck, and it’s showing. Meanwhile, Republican Ken has been Strong and Wrong, which sells well in the Rocky Mountain State, and even told the Birthers to stop asking him stupid questions in public, all of which resembles manliness to those deprived of oxygen in high altitudes. Colorado is a mixed bag with progressive enclaves such as Denver, Aspen and Telluride, but then there’s uber-Christopublican Colorado Springs and the Pine-Tree Yahoos and Desk-Set Mountain Men and SUV Cowboys who inhabit the rest of the place. They’re all for Buck and Bennet just doesn’t have the testicular appeal to overcome it.
Coast: Ken Buck, by a thread-narrow margin.

Toast: Linda McMahon, GOP candidate for US Senate from Connecticut.
Linda is, for lack of a better term, a knuckle-dragging dimwit who hilariously thinks she’s worked in the ‘real world’ because she ran a pro wrestling organization. She’s as phony as a Ric Flair knee-drop. Joe Lieberman notwithstanding, CT’s a Blue State and AG Richard Blumenthal is still popular despite artificially-enhancing his Marine Corps war record.
Coast: Blumenthal in a walk.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

October 11, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Even More New Entries for the (Politically) Askewed Dictionary

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 3:48 am

Aspigmatism: The inability to see that wealthy elites are making a sucker out of you. (See ‘Tea Party Express.’)

Atwatering: Throwing up so many specious charges that your political opponent is forced to spend all of his or her time responding to them, thereby destroying any chance they have for election by leaving the impression in the minds of the impressionable that some of it must be true, even though each charge is found to be false. (See ‘Swift Boat Veterans.’)

Cantstitutionalism: Inventing parts of the Constitution that, in your imagination, prevent a Democratic president from exercising the same powers you approved of when the office was held by a Republican. (See ‘Issa, Darrell.’)

Deficitmock: A conservative who only worries about the deficit when Democrats are in control of Congress. (See ‘Boehner, John.’)

Freedumbery: The notion that attaching the word ‘freedom’ to any half-baked conservative idea or title, especially when used in the form of ‘protecting freedom’ by incarcerating innocent people or naming your corporate-funded Washington Astroturf group ‘FreedomWorks,’ magically confers a patina of true American patriotism on your efforts, rather than exposing you for the greedy fascist sneak you really are. (See ‘Armey, Dick.’)

Hyde-rophobia: Rabidly denouncing a sitting Democratic president for the same sins committed by senior Republicans in Congress. (See ‘Gingrich, Newt.’)

In Flagrante Demento: Displaying an embarrassingly excessive number of American flags at your speeches and rallies, as if you needed a visual reminder of what side you’re supposed to be on, but aren’t. (See ‘CPAC Convention.’)

Noonanery: Pretending to be an objective and rational political observer while maintaining the late Ronald Reagan could do no wrong, no matter how you have to inflate his record. (See ‘Noonan, Peggy.’)

Quaylery: Making an egregiously stupid statement – e.g.: “Social Security is welfare” or “Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya” — and then retracting or denying it when it might hamper your chances of winning an election, only to later repeat it when among a friendly crowd. (See ‘Angle, Sharron.’)

Teabuggery: Demonstrating your ardent belief in freedom of speech for all Americans by shouting down those who disagree with you. (See ‘McCarthyism.’)

Xetgeist (pronounced ‘Zeet-geist’): The conviction that changing your name will also eliminate your past criminal record. (See ‘Blackwater.’)

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

October 9, 2010

The Tattlesnake – New Entries for the (Politically) Askewed Dictionary

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:36 am

Almightyosis: The bizarre egomaniacal conviction that the creator of hundreds of billions of galaxies in a universe of vast unknown dimensions personally wants you to run for office and takes time out to tell you so. (See ‘O’Donnell, Christine.’)

Anglephile: A strange, pathetic creature, usually elderly, who, although dependent on Social Security and Medicare for their well-being, will nevertheless vote for those who would gladly take it away. (See ‘Lemmings.’)

Diptheoria: Maintaining a comically contradictory opinion on a subject with a straight face, such as bringing peace by starting wars, believing in Republican morality, or balancing the budget by incurring $700 billion more in debt to give tax cuts to yourself and your wealthy friends. (See ‘Bush, George W.’)

Fecktrescent: Describing an idea so outstandingly stupid it glows like moonlight on a fresh turd. (See ‘Palin/Beck 2012.’)

Foggle: A combination of Fox News, fearmongering, fog and mind-boggling. To foggle is to use egregious disinformation and unconscionable exaggeration to appeal to the basal ganglia or ‘reptilian brain’ in lower orders of ‘non’-homo sapiens with the goal of swaying by sheer panic and bigotry an individual or group into voting against their own best interests. Usage ex.: “We need more foggle to convince those tea partiers into rallying against health care reform!” (See ‘White Citizens Council.’)

Journabalism: Reprinting press releases from a corporation, lobbying firm or political party and calling it news. (See ‘The Washington Times.’)

Kochcrapola (pronounced ‘Cokecrapola’): The desire of spineless billionaires to fund far-right Astroturf causes for their own benefit while hiding that information from the public so as not to offend customers of their consumer products, such as Brawny paper towels or Northern bathroom tissue, and thereby lose business. Named after the Koch brothers. (See ‘US Chamber of Commerce.’)

Murdochism: A mental trick wherein you pretend you aren’t aware of what pestilent self-serving propaganda appears in your media outlets on a daily basis while still insisting they are actual news organizations nonetheless. Named after Rupert Murdoch. (See ‘Bozell, Brent.’)

Odontestry: The appearance of ugly gaping truth as a candidate’s false Tweets fall out, reduced as she is to campaigning solely on Twitter since she’s terrified of facing any reporter who might dare to ask her a tough question. (See ‘Grizzly, Mama.’)

Palmystery: Stage magic wherein the performer makes $100K disappear in return for a tepid speech based on hoary, imbecilic talking points written on her hand. The mystery is why anyone would pay for this bum fodder. (See ‘Pledge to America.’)

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

October 7, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Unuttered Utterations and Which Witch is Which? Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon,Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:37 am

– Tattlesnake’s ‘Media Insider’ says cool cats and kittens should not be swayed by the ‘official’ story regarding Rick Sanchez’s bouncing from the Corporatist News Network otherwise known as CNN. The reason Jon Stewart’s hilarious portrayals of Sanchez as something of a babbling idiot were so devastating is because, well, he’s something of a babbling idiot. (As evidenced by his comments about Stewart’s alleged ‘bigotry’ and Jewish ownership of the media.) Word is, CNN has been looking for a reason to dump this ratings-tank boob without having to pay off his contract. Like most Big Media bobbing heads, Sanchez’s contract no doubt had a standard clause that said if he did anything egregiously immoral, racist or embarrassing in public that had the potential of bringing scorn upon CNN, such as shaving his public hair on live TV or wearing a hood and announcing his selection as a Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK, he could be summarily dismissed and his contract immediately cancelled with the balance due unpaid. CNN knew its man – with Rick’s fetid history of on-air loopiness, it was only a matter of time until Sanchez crossed the line, and this just happened to be that moment. Of course, Sanchez has now issued the stock Pro Forma Apology to the Universe, (you’ll find it between ‘Memo, Traditional Format’ and ‘Resume, Classic Form’ at your local Big Box stationery store), and eagerly looks forward to his “new future of opportunities” somewhere else. That ‘somewhere else’ will probably be the graveyard shift at Fox Business Channel where Roger Ailes has provided a comfortable if little-watched retirement village for dimbulb dogmatists who have bottomed out elsewhere in MediaLand. Here’s to not seeing you again, Rick!

vampira_odona–Republican Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell, when not busy denying she’s a witch, told Fox News she was refraining from national campaigning to focus on the concerns of Delawareans. (That would be the denizens of tiny Delaware, not a race of talking plants in “Star Trek-The Next Generation,” although any confusion is completely understandable.) Howsomever, as Rachel Maddow recently exposed, the Anointed Chipmunk has not been doing much campaigning in Joe Biden’s home turf, either; no public events scheduled, nor interviewing forays with the local media. Is this evidence that she’s given up, facing a 20-point deficit in the polls and broad exposure of her two decades of public nuttiness? Her campaigning seems to be confined solely to running a batty ad where she informs voters up front she’s not a member of a coven (she only ‘dabbled’ in witchcraft, folks), and that she’s just like them, when they haven’t taken their meds. Aside from the roasting over hot flames any Dem candidate would receive from the rabid right for confessing even a fraction of Christine’s abuses of sanity, God Girl’s latest revelation that she’s been receiving ‘classified’ information that China is planning some kind of invasion of the US isn’t really classified or new. Your Tattlesnake has a couple of pals who were paid to teach English in China, only this was not the standard grammar-and-syntax English most of us think of when the subject comes up. Instead, what they were really hired to teach was street-American patois and the intricacies of our popular culture. (One friend spent a whole class on Elvis Presley, for example.) The Chinese ‘invasion’ is no secret, either, only it won’t be military – as reported by several financial publications, the Chinese are using their abundant hoard of US dollars to buy up large tracts of American land; it seems reasonable, more reasonable than Christine, anyway, that the Communist tyrants in Beijing plan to use that real estate to set up factories to manufacture their cheap junk here, once the US labor laws have been sufficiently weakened by Christine’s GOP to allow the kinds of unsafe job conditions and meager salaries Chinese workers endure. (Or maybe they’ll just use prisoners, as they mostly do back home.) What the little Non-Witch misses is that a good Christopublican corporation, Walmart, is the chief importer into the US of Chinese-made goods; her Republican Party has been the main driving force behind suspending tariffs and other regulations to prevent foreign nations from having this kind of power within our country; and notorious picked-by-Jesus ‘president’ Junior Bush borrowed $2 billion a day to pay for his bumbled, illegal war in Iraq and lavish tax cuts for his wealthy family and their rich friends. If ODon weren’t already losing large in the polls, it might behoove her opponent to point this out – yet another thudding contradiction that is going to kill the GOP in future elections.

– Why is it that this morning, an atheist did not see an image of Richard Dawkins in her burnt English Muffin, or Madalyn Murray O’Hair in her Lay’s Sour Cream & Onion potato chip? For that matter, Buddhists have not reported visions of Siddhartha in the swirls of their Cream of Wheat, nor have Jews spotted Moses in bowls of chopped chicken liver. For some reason, only Christians, and especially those of the odiferous American variety, seem to have this penchant for apprehending the Christopublican-sanctioned Jeffrey Hunter Jesus in everything from Melba toast to grilled cheese sandwiches. What does that say about the dominant religious delusion in the US? “Whoa — I see God in my snacks!”

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

October 5, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Another ‘Who Said That Quiz’ Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , — RS Janes @ 4:47 am

Drop your pretenses and grab your pencil and paper, here comes a multiple-choice quiz to test your political savvy.

Who said the following?

1. “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

a. Karl Marx
b. Franklin D. Roosevelt
c. Barack Obama
d. Abraham Lincoln

2. “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools don’t take it.”

a. Barry Goldwater
b. Ronald Reagan
c. Benjamin Franklin
4. Winston Churchill

3. “Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera.”

a. Karl Rove
b. Bill O’Reilly
c. John Boehner
d. Ken Buck

4. “Don’t believe the right-wing ideologues when they tell you the left still controls the media agenda. It does not any longer. It’s a fact.”

a. Bill O’Reilly
b. Roger Ailes
c. Al Franken
d. Alan Grayson

5. “The thing that attracts people to ‘The Sopranos’ is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing.”

a. Carl Paladino
b. Sharron Angle
c. Glenn Beck
d. Christine O’Donnell

6. “The New York Times is for us what Pravda was for the Soviets.”

a. Ronald Reagan
b. Antonin Scalia
c. Gore Vidal
d. Sean Hannity

7. “The Republicans have lost their standards, they’ve lost their principles. Really, that’s why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me.”

a. Barack Obama
b. Sharron Angle
c. Harry Reid
d. Christine O’Donnell

8. “Counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of ‘winning the allegiance’ of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble.”

a. Bob Woodward
b. Gen. Wesley Clark
c. Barbara Tuchman
d. Bernie Sanders

9. “Why don’t you write books people can read?”

a. George W. Bush to wife Laura.
b. Sean Hannity to Newt Gingrich.
c. Glenn Beck to Arianna Huffington.
d. Nora Joyce to husband James.

10. “Am I too conservative? They probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.”

a. Rush Limbaugh
b. Sharron Angle
c. Jim DeMint
d. Christine O’Donnell

11. “You cannot preach the Bible if you cannot preach God’s hate.”

a. Mike Huckabee
b. Pat Robertson
c. Jerry Falwell
d. Fred Phelps

12. “There was no assignment of political points of view when we were making the film … I thought it was really about the onset of a kind of life where the corporate people are trying to tell you how to live, what to do, how to behave. And you become puppets to these merchants that are somehow turning individuals into victims.”

a. Michael Moore on “Capitalism: A Love Story”.
b. Oliver Stone on “Wall Street”.
c. Paul Newman on “Cool Hand Luke”.
d. Kevin McCarthy on “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

Answers below the fold.

(more…)

October 1, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Toast and Coast Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 2:31 am

“Lie to me once, shame on you; lie to me twice, shame on me for believing you; lie to me three times – hey, you’re a Republican!”
– Yank Bunger, Ph.D

Who’s Not Ready For Prime Time and who is in some upcoming races, as determined by a dart throw and a peek into the dank tea leaves at the bottom of the barrel. Those seeking alphabetical order will be struck by its absence.

Burnt Toast: Christine O’Donnell, GOP candidate for US Senate from Delaware.
Along with her Jabberwocky bleatings about witchcraft, satanic picnics, evolution, masturbation, and her other hobbies, the Lawd’s Chipmunk Girl has now been found to be brazenly fabricating her educational history. Turns out she didn’t attend Oxford, she didn’t get a degree from Claremont University, and she falsified her record concerning the time of her graduation from Farleigh Dickinson U. Seems she won’t lie to the Nazis to save another human being, but all else is fair game. If this Media Hound had any capacity for embarrassment, she would have dropped out of the race already, but she hasn’t, so she won’t – and she’s shamelessly blaming it all on God for wanting her to stay in the race.
Amusing Sidenote (sort of): Why don’t these Christopublicans like O-Don and Junior Bush ever take the hint? Maybe the Almighty is telling them to run to teach them a lesson in humility (and comedy) they sorely need.
Big Coast: Democrat Chris Coons, who’s no doubt up by a bazillion points in the polls by now, or will be by election day.

Toast:Carl Paladino, GOP candidate for Governor of New York
Scraping up the dregs of the Tea Party teapot, we find Mr. Kiss-My-Ring Carlo, a true Republican family values man who loves family values so much he extended them to a woman to whom he wasn’t married who then had a child a decade ago. Papa P. (for ‘Pot’) is now accusing his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, of conducting extramarital affairs without the wimpy liberal niceties of evidence. Oh, and he’s been physically threatening reporters, too, for asking him to prove his wild charges. Already popular among his friends for sending them emails featuring racist images and bestiality porn, Paladino will no doubt nail down the vote of blacks, women and equestrians, but will the men support him?
Amusing Factoid: Carl says he enjoys being nasty. No shit, Carl?
Coast: Landslide thy name is Cuomo.

Toast: Meg Whitman, GOP candidate for Governor of California
In a state that’s already burned out on Republicans, the revelations Thursday that Megma lied when she said she received no notification from Social Security warning her that her former maid’s SS number was false pours the last coat of KY Jelly on the wealthy ex-eBay CEO’s long greased slide.
Amusing Factoid: Meg’s husband’s name is Griff Harsh. No wonder she doesn’t use her married name in her political campaign – it’s too appropriate.
Coast: Jerry Brown, once and future Dem Gov.

Toast: Carly Fiorina, GOP candidate for US Senate from California.
With C.F.’s debate performances less than stirring, all sitting Dem Sen. Barbara Boxer has to do is keep reminding voters that multi-millionaire Carly, as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, cut 35,000 American jobs and sent them overseas. And leave us not forget her atrociously incompetent record in that position – so bad the H-P board bought out her contract and told her to take a walk.
Amusing Sidenote: You can bet at least one La-La-Lander will vote for Carly because they think she wrote and sang the song, “You’re So Vain.”
Coast: Welcome back, Babs, the Senate needs more like you.

Toast: Rand Paul, GOP candidate for US Senate from Kentucky.
Paul has bounced around on his positions so much he could be a tennis ball. Starting off as a staunch antiwar, pro-drug decriminalization Libertarian, he’s morphed into a desperate, soft-shoe racist, bug-eyed-nuts Teabagger with hidden GOP establishment trimmings. It’s what happens when you nominate an oafish country-club drunk whose Bircher-bitter political opinions are filtered through a martini shaker. His campaign, to his detriment, has been more Rand and less Paul, as in his father Ron.
Amusing Factoid: Dr. Paul is ‘board certified’ by a medical board that he apparently invented and that features his wife as one of its members. He also earns half his keep from Medicare patients, yet wants to get rid of social programs like Medicare – after he’s safely ensconced in the Washington millionaires club that is the GOP side of the Senate, of course.
Coast: It may be a squeaker, but KY AG Jack Conway will pull it out.

Toast: Sharron Angle, GOP Candidate for US Senate from Nevada.
After all of her anti-government fulminations against any social program that might help poor or middle-class folks keep their heads above water, Sharron with the two ‘RRs’ (for Raving Right?) has taken routine Republican hypocrisy to a new and higher angle by living off her husband’s government pension and taking advantage of his sumptuous government-paid health care benefits. She’s another demented ignorant Teabagger who doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about on any subject and just makes things up to suit the moment. Fortunately, Nevadans have gradually become aware of this fact and Harry Reid is now leading by five points in the polls.
Amusing Factoid: How crazy do you have to be to go from thirty points ahead to five points behind to a guy who is disliked by 75 percent of the voters in your state? Sharron has blazed the trail for future Tea Party candidates in this regard.
Coast: The unlikable lamebrain Sen. Reid will prevail, maybe by as much as ten points in the vote.

Toast: Rahm Emanuel’s run for Mayor of Chicago
Although the too-tight Beltway Cocktail Party Media may not realize it, the charming (koff, koff) ferret-faced DLC hatchet man and soon-to-be-former Obama Chief of Staff is not roundly loved in most sections of the Windy City. In fact, one might say he is deeply loathed far and wide, except by a few leftovers of the old Daddy Daley Machine from whence this corporate-money monster grew. Following his flat-on-his-face failure for Obama, and Hizzoner’s son Richie Daley’s steep fall from grace as mayor, who would want Rahm to perform Richard the III by the lake? (The only part he’s really capable of playing.) Nope, he’s toast straight out of the gate.
Amusing Factoid: Rahm is not and never has been a liberal, progressive nor even much of a Democrat. He’s more of a ‘Fuck You’ Republicant who was a DINO because Republicans don’t get elected in Chicago.
Coast: Anyone not named ‘Rahm Emanuel.’

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

September 15, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Serious As A Fake Heart Attack Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , — RS Janes @ 12:27 pm

“I recognize you – you’re the guy from the ads for the heart attack drug on TV.”

“Ha, ha – yeah, that’s me.”

“Congratulations on recovering so well from your heart attack.”

“Well, actually, I never had any heart attacks, thank God. I’m just an actor playing the role of a man who had a massive heart attack and recovers taking that drug. I can’t tell you if the drug works or not.”

“Ask your doctor if this drug is right for you, huh?”

“Ha, ha, that’s right.”

“Does that bother you? I mean that some people watching that might think you’re a real heart attack victim?”

“Well, I thought there’d be some disclaimer on the ad, letting the viewer know we were actors – that’s the way they used to do it. Then I saw the ad on TV and realized there was no disclaimer – that kind of bothered me, but it was too late to do anything about it.”

“How do they get away with it?”

“Some new law says they don’t have to tell the audience they use actors anymore.”

“Those ads are on all the time – you must be doing pretty well from them.”

“Oh, yeah, the residuals pay very well, but my career in TV and movies is over.”

“Really, why?”

“Because when people see me they think, ‘Isn’t that the guy from the ads for the heart attack drug on TV?’ and, anyway, I’ve got a rider on my contract that prohibits me from working on any other TV shows for a year after they stop running those commercials, to preserve the credibility of the spots.”

“That’s tough.”

“I’m not complaining. I was going to retire anyway. And there’s always dinner theater, ha, ha.”

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

August 9, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Drunk or Stupid Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:48 pm

It’s time to play the popular home game ‘Drunk or Stupid?’ wherein contestants watch TV and decide from the public statements and general demeanor of various politicians and pundits if they are such persistent imbibers it has softened their corrupt little minds to the point of retardation, or if they are just naturally dumb as a result of ignorance and flea-bitten ideology. Of course these terms are not mutually exclusive; some of these miscreants are both drunk and stupid, but here we are gauging which mode predominates in their media appearances and what passes for journalistic efforts.

Names were picked at random from a tricorn hat while I was nursing a hangover and appear in no particular order; the obvious idiots – Beck, Limbaugh, et al – were ignored:

Joe Lieberman
Drunk. On MSNBC recently, he kept calling Gen. David Petraeus ‘Darren’ Petreaus and mispronounced, or Freudian slipped, Rolling Stone as ‘Ruling Stain.’ Of course, if you’re as crooked and backstabbing as Joe, you have to go heavy on the MD-20/20 just to stand shaving every morning.

Sarah Palin
Stupid, in the unique way only ex-beauty pageant contestants can manage. (Google Carrie Prejean and Miss Beverly Hills.) Hubby Todd is likely the drunk in the family, along with all the little Palin photo-ops, and who can blame them?

John Boehner
Drunk, with bells on. Catch the GOP Bonehead late enough in the afternoon and he’s liable to gush all sorts of hilarious head-slapping crapola while he stares bewildered and baggy-eyed at the camera, like a dripping-wet old Lothario who’s trying to think up a reasonable excuse on the spot for why he was caught skinny-dipping with the neighbor’s wife at dawn. No doubt he pours them down as he rests in his coff – uh — tanning bed every morning. There are suspicions he was born with the face he has now and had to be hidden in the attic until his body caught up to his weathered mug, but that’s just the loosest of rumors, no doubt spread by one of his many detractors.

Mitch McConnell
Drunk, on waning power. Yet another failure of modern plastic surgery, at least that form practiced in the hills of Kentucky. McConnell found the recipe for making lemons out of lemonade, and then, obviously, ate them all in one sitting. His wrinkles are embarrassed to be seen with his archaic ideas these days. Rand Paul, Mitch, Rand Paul…

Chris Matthews
Drunk, with an attractive excess of saliva and a penchant for spitting when he’s excited – and he’s usually excited about something. (Guests who sit across the table from him on his show are rumored to be armed with ample supplies of Kleenex and zinc cough drops.) He also has the drunk’s penchant for mispronouncing a word and then insisting his mistake is the correct pronunciation. (‘Chee-knee’ for Cheney, for instance.) After embarrassingly blubbering over the greatness of Junior Bush in the early part of the twenty-first century (“Americans just love this guy!”), and verbally ass-grabbing various young women on his show, as well as showing a streak of mean for Hillary Clinton that is inexplicable, he’s now steered to the left in order to boost his ratings, aping the success of Keith Olbermann, but his past follows him like the iron shackles that should be encircling the legs of the now literally heartless Dick Chee-knee.

David Gregory
Stupid. He’s an affable, ambitious yuppie who walks around with a permanently moistened index finger stuck in the air, or somewhere. ‘Dave’ thinks he’s posing a tough question when he asks John McCain to give his ‘real’ opinion of Sarah Palin. He’s perfect for NBC’s Sunday morning nod to subtle parody, ‘Meet the Press,’ but I detect a certain jealously of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert since they are allowed to present actual news segments more often than Gregory, and they don’t have to smooch pampered Washington posteriors to keep their jobs.

Candy Crowley
Stupid, but just barely, as it’s rumored she can put a double shot of 100-proof Georgia moonshine between her ample breasts and drink it without spilling a drop while doing a nude hula dance. Unfortunately, she has failed to display this prodigious talent in front of CNN’s cameras, preferring to bore her audience to tears with her tedious ‘Republican-pretending-to-be-liberal’ act. Candy is the Judy “What will we – I mean the Republicans — do to win New Hampshire?” Woodruff of her generation.

George ‘Eff’ Will
Drunk as a lord. Take him out to the ball game but make sure you have enough sturdy lifters to carry him home. Even stupidity couldn’t possibly explain some of his well-worded but gaseous and error-laden opinion pieces. The Doric columns of the Capitol building could be crumbling to dust before his eyes and ‘Mr. Will’ (as his friends call him) would write a column the next day praising the lasting architecture of Washington. A devoted acolyte of Ronald Reagan, George Eff never let ‘The Gipper’s’ sunny geriatric optimism infect him; he did, however, apparently contract Conservative Alzheimer’s from his late friend, a disease that has spread like a plague throughout the Republican Party. The symptoms are an inability to admit mistakes, a total disregard for historical fact, a whooshing sound in the ears from air continually filling a vacuum, and the necrophiliac’s tendency to romantically embrace ideological corpses.

Sharron Angle
Drunk, on ‘Situational Lemonade’ and the Lawd. It’s tempting to dismiss her as merely dumb, but that discounts the self-righteous zeal with which she has pursued her particular form of delusional right-wing fringe insanity. For that kind of breath-taking goofiness, you need more than just stupidity, you need God working with you in one of his many ethereal jokes. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses; in that regard, Sharron is a bust-out junkie without a hope of redemption.

David Broder
Not merely drunk, but embalmed. The Rufus T. Firefly ‘Dean’ of the Washington Press Gang hasn’t had an opinion that makes any sense in years, but he forges on, wallowing hog-like in alcohol-induced dementia while his snide colleagues cheer him on. The Old Fudd not only sees pink elephants, he celebrates them in print and tries to inveigle his readers into stumbling with him down Wet Brain Lane. Apparently the Washington Post has been afraid to tell him he’s been dead for a generation, at least as far as any political or cultural relevance is concerned.

Rand Paul
A board-certified drunk, but nearly as stupid. Only a dedicated souse could have this many half-baked opinions and his single-minded dedication to terrible ideas of the past that have proved unworkable. Besides, he hangs out at a plush Kentucky country club and apparently doesn’t play much golf. There is only one other thing white people who frequent country clubs do, and it’s usually shaken not stirred with a hint of vermouth and consumed by the pitcher. Remember, Rand, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.

Wolf Blitzer
So drunk you could get snockered sucking on his beard. The Blitzkrieg’s premier contribution to modern journalism – that is to say, advertising the Empire — is knowing from US intelligence sources, prior to the Iraq invasion, that Saddam Hussein had no WMD (he admitted it on a small public radio station in D.C.), yet withholding that little nugget from his CNN audience and obediently flogging WMD fear on behalf his pals in the Bush-Cheney War Room. His other offenses against reason and veracity are too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that he’s now probably in the Susan Powter range of daily consumption, necessary to rinse the bitter taste of corporate swill out of one’s mouth, and the image of the elephant feces-spattered circus clown from one’s mind.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

August 6, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Who’s Watching the Watchers? Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:11 am

Or, in the Maxine Waters case, investigating the investigators.

Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-CA) three ethics charges, so far as I’ve read, involved talking to Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in 2008, asking him to try and make sure a bank that helps poor people and women, OneUnited, got its fair share of the bailout money. True, her husband was previously on the bank’s board, and he retained stock at the time, but she didn’t threaten or in any way coerce Paulson improperly – she just asked. If this is the hoary ethics violations the Big Media is getting so hot-and-bothered about, then they’d better start charging nearly every member of Congress with a similar lapse of ethics, because a whole passel of Republicans and Dems did the same thing. Waters herself has stated: “The record will clearly show that in advocating on behalf of minority banks, neither my office nor I benefited in any way, engaged in improper action or influenced anyone.”

It’s worth noting that progressive Democrat Waters sits on the House Financial Services Committee that drafted get-tough legislation on banks and pushed for strong consumer protection from these miscreants. At least we know the Big Banksters would definitely not be sorry to see her go.

It’s interesting that of eight investigations or charges made by the House ‘independent’ ethics committee, all of them are against members of the Democratic Black Caucus. As Eugene Robinson said the other night, the notion that only black Democrats would be involved in unethical conduct is statistically astronomical.

It’s also interesting that one of the senior members of this ‘independent’ House ethics committee is co-chair Porter J. Goss, former rabid in-the-tank Bushite Congressman and, in Congress and as head of the CIA, a man who had considerable ethics problems himself.

Some of Porter Goss’ ‘greatest hits’:

– As head of the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA employee Goss said he could find no wrongdoing in leaking covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to the media that warranted a Congressional investigation. He ‘joked’ if you could find him a “blue dress with some DNA” he’d open an investigation into who in the Bush Administration leaked her name; short of that, he apparently didn’t care.

– On illegal torture: “March 18, 2005, Reuters reported that Porter Goss ‘defended his spy agency’s current interrogation practices but could not say all methods used as recently as last December conformed to U.S. law.’” And then did nothing to ensure future conduct conformed to U.S. law.

– When Bush-appointee Goss took over the CIA in September 2004, bringing with him his partisan Bush team from Congress, veteran CIA employees with a combined 300 years of intelligence experience resigned or were forced out after his installation. The weakened CIA under Goss then went into “free fall” according to senior House Intelligence Committee Democrat Jane Harman. In other words, Goss was willing to sacrifice the CIA’s mission of non-partisan collection and processing of intelligence to protect America to serve his Republican political agenda.

– On May 5, 2006, Goss resigned under a cloud as Director of the CIA after his handpicked man Kyle “Dusty” Foggo’s Hookergate scandal came to light. Through Foggo, Goss was also connected to disgraced Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham who admitted to and apologized for taking bribes from defense contractors.

“‘Something happened,’ neo-conservative magazine editor William Kristol said on Fox News this afternoon. ‘It’s going to be a bad few days. We’re going to discover something … It will be something not good for the Bush Administration.’ Fox News actually got a phone call from a ‘top White House official’ during Kristol’s damning comments, and Kristol was cut off so Bush mouthpiece Chris Wallace could say the Goss resignation is just a harmless part of the ‘White House shakeup.’”
– Sploid, by way of MediaCynic.com, commenting the day Goss resigned.

Also let’s keep in mind that Goss’ honesty was vouchsafed by no less than Bush confabulator and White House flack Dan Bartlett: “This man has impeccable integrity.” If Bartlett says it, we can pretty much conclude the exact opposite is true – it’s like having one’s veracity on the Iraq invasion endorsed by Dick Cheney.

Gee, I wonder if Maxine Waters had refused to investigate evidence of treason in the White House, turned a blind eye to illegal torture, degraded the CIA’s intelligence-gathering capabilities due to political partisanship, and was connected to a major bribery scandal which caused a Congressman to quit in disgrace along with senior CIA officials she’d hired, if she would be eligible to sit on any future House ethics committees?

As Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic DC delegate to Congress, told Ed Schultz on Tuesday, these are allegations, not convictions, and Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel and anyone else charged with ethics violations have the right to defend themselves in a public hearing rather than resign and appear guilty.

In the meantime, the questions remain: Who would appoint a flagrant Bush hack like Goss to a supposedly independent ethics panel and, most importantly, who’s watching the watchers here?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

July 20, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Palin’s Muddle Tongue Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:48 am

So Sen. Crash Pilot’s erstwhile 2008 VP candidate and half-baked Alaska Governor has decided to invent her own words like ‘refudiate’ – just like that Limey fella Shakespeare, by golly!

Well, since Mama Grizzly Palin wasn’t doing too swell with the dialect most Americans speak, perhaps she had no choice but to become the ‘Mutter Curage’ of the English language.

Back here at the Tattlesnake hovel, I’ve decided to conjure up a few words the newly self-anointed wordsmith can add to what Stephanie Miller aptly described as her ‘Fictionary.’ You’re welcome, Sarah.

Historectumy: 1. Pulling inaccurate historical ‘facts’ from your rear end to make your erroneous opinion seem less idiotic. (See also: ‘Fox News’ and ‘Beck University.’)

Stuperior: 1. Superiority in your utter stupidity. 2. The backassward side of something so stupendously dumb that when viewed at multiple angles, every side is backassward. (See also: ‘Willful Ignorance,’ ‘Religious Insanity’ and ‘Unwarranted Arrogance.’)

Taxicology: 1. The uniquely Republican economic psychosis, a colossal failure since its inception, that you can cut taxes and maintain the same level of revenue that you had before you cut taxes by way of the magic fairy dust of the ‘free market,’ which no one has ever actually witnessed in action. 2. Ignoring the rotten condition of the schools, roads, bridges, parks and other public projects that serve the common good in order to avoid making the wealthy unhappy by having to pay taxes. (See also: ‘The Big Rock Candy Mountain’ and ‘This is Your Brain on Milton Friedman.’)

Teabaggy: 1. The feeling of exhaustion from living in a perpetual state of ignorant outrage and bilious hatred. (See also: ‘Damp Dittoheads’ and ‘Michael the Savage Weiner’)

Teabuggery: 1. Having your organization sodomized by Republican money, operatives and influence. (See also: ‘Dick Armey, Lobbyist’ and ‘FreedomWorks.’)

Wasillingus: 1. Using one’s mouth to spread the pernicious political virus of far-right Christopublicanism. 2. A perky rural Alaskan’s foot-in-mouth syndrome. (See also: ‘Diseases of the Crack Pipe’ and ‘Polar Meth Lab Sickness.’)

That was fun; I may add some more in the future.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

July 16, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Dick Cheney Doesn’t Have a Pulse Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 3:20 am

Rachel Maddow reported July 14th that five-heart-attacks-since-he-was-37 Dick Cheney is hanging on by a thread following complete heart failure, kept alive only by a machine called a LVAD resting externally on his belly that keeps his blood moving. Ironically, because an external machine is circulating his blood rather than his damaged heart, Cheney apparently has no pulse, not that I would have sworn he had one before. Although I wouldn’t wish death on any human being (leave that to the kill-crazy wingnuts; I’d rather see him in jail), and Deadeye Dick marginally qualifies in that category, this would seem to be close to the end of the line for the Torture Boy – the doctors can do no more except a full heart transplant and he’s physically in such bad shape he likely couldn’t survive the operation. (Although the sci-fi plot possibilities of Cheney receiving the heart of, say, a peaceful Buddhist monk and publicly renouncing his past self is nearly irresistible. “I’ve done wrong and now I must pay the price! President Obama, put me in prison for war crimes – waterboard me, I insist! And I’m donating all of my millions in wealth to Green Peace! Liz, stop crying like that!”)

If he goes, are we going to be subjected to the full-pomp, days-long state funeral, or will every news outlet but Fox let him pass with just a brief mention and obit? I also wonder if, in his final moments in this realm, a fearful-of-judgment Cheney will pull a Lee Atwater and ask forgiveness for his past crimes and deceptions?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

June 25, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Is Gore Gay? GOP Barton Smartin’ and the NV Angle Tangle Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:35 am

– Al Gore sexually assault a woman? I don’t buy it, but this is the tale some Oregon masseuse was trying to sell to the National Enquirer for a cool million, according to Col. Howie Kurtz at the WaHoPo. As a mantra of fact, my friend who has very advanced ‘gaydar’ – she called out Ted Haggard months before it was revealed he was regularly visiting a male prostitute and snorting meth – has long thought Al was a closeted gay man, something like Kevin Spacey’s character Jim Williams in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” She thinks the marital break-up of the Gores probably has more to do with Tipper catching Al with a man than a woman. (And leave us not forget that weird groping public kiss at the Dem Convention in 2000. Awkward? You bet.) Ah, Tipper – apparently playing the beard to the last.

– If it were any organization other than the current Dem Party collection of timid halfwits, I’d say Texas Oil Republican Rep. Joe Barton just sunk the GOP in the 2010 elections, but then we’ve seen how often these Washington Jackasses have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, so let’s not get our hopes up.

In case you’ve been meditating in a cave for the past week (and who could blame you?), here’s what Barton publicly said to BP CEO Tony Hayward during a Congressional hearing:

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) during a hearing on Thursday morning with BP’s CEO Tony Hayward.” I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown — in this case a $20 billion shakedown — with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation’s future.

“I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anyone else, but I apologize,” Barton added. “I do not want to live in a county where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, [it is] subject to some sort of political pressure that, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown.”
– Sam Stein at Huffington Post, as quoted by Ben Dimiero at Media Matters.

BP and Tony Hayward are less popular than O.J. Simpson and here’s Strokin’ Joe embarrassing himself and his party by apologizing to them. Imagine if the tables were turned and some bubblehead Dem said this – the GOP would have it on a tape loop with wall-to-wall negative ads running all over the country and every Republican who popped up on a news show would find a way to mention it ten times. True, the Dems do have an ad up, but they haven’t gone all in yet on linking Barton with the Republicans and particularly pointing out the fact that Joe has yet to be relieved of his position as ranking minority member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. After initially renouncing Barton’s goofy apologia, some Republicans are now actually coming to his defense! Gee, that wouldn’t make a bad basis for an ad, either, especially in the Gulf States. But, then, the ‘bipartisan’ Democrats apparently find chasing their tails more attractive than hunting the predator that’s trying to kill them.

– The Angle of Attack on Sharron: You’d think someone who wants to dump Social Security and Medicare (but thus far not in favor of bartering for medical care with chickens, thank God), eliminate the IRS without any plan to replace it (how do we pay off the deficit without collecting taxes, Sharron?), still wants to ‘drill, baby, drill’ even after the BP Gulf disaster, and has ‘shifting’ positions on the prohibition of alcohol and fluoridation of water (among other wacky notions), would be pretty easy to beat in a statewide election. Well, she probably will be as even doddering old bumbler Sen. Harry Reid has finally seen fit to call her “crazy” and run a TV ad showing what a hallucinatory teabag of unfounded WorldNetDaily opinions is his Republican opponent. Reid’s no FDR, but he’s George Burns compared to Sharron Angle’s crazy-crap Christopublican Gracie Allen. Sure, the GOP rinse-and-spin machine is busy trying to make her ready for prime time, but this woman’s a political Lady Gaga at the ballpark who can barely hold her own in Fox-friendly interviews and irritatingly insists on calling any legitimate query regarding what she would actually do as senator a “Gotcha” question. In open debate with Reid, she’d be Sarah Palin without the wink; Dan Quayle without the hairdo; Ronald Reagan without the acting experience. But, since Reid’s a twenty-first century milquetoast Democrat, the election will be closer than it should. Still, I think he’ll pull it out.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

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