The Fourteen Tenets of Fascism
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=britt_23_2
October 18, 2008
The Republican Platform at a Glance
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October 16, 2008
Ye Olde Scribe Presents: “Keeeeellll HIM!”
Ye Olde Scribe has captured a muse and decided to torture it. This is “news?” He heard that at a McCain rally someone screamed out “Keeeeeeeellll HIM,” in regard to no one’s Momma, Obama. Desperate to disprove this obvious Liberal slander, Scribe went to pictures of the rally posted on the net and oh, by gosh, by Moosemeat Mama golly, there he was: Achmed the Dead Terrorist right in the middle of the angry mob.
Isn’t “angry mob” by now a synonym for “Republican rally?”
OK, Scribe if frakin with ya, apologies to Battleax Galactica, the newest version of an old Sci (Stir) Fry show with Junior’s mother it.
Listening to the Alex Bennett “I’m an old, cranky, curmudgeon, Show, Scribe found them spending two programs berating anyone who claimed they heard “kill him” on any of the various clips they played. Only one, from a McCain rally, was the right one and Scribe: who has recording studio trained ears, did hear what was either “kill him;” or damn close. Even Alex finally admitted “maybe a little…” AFTER insisting it had to be “terrorist.” (We all know they sound exactly the same, except the “k,” the “elll” and the “im.”
In other words, they wasted everyone’s time acting like Republicans out to mock anyone who thought it might even slightly sound like “kill him.”
Well, in true YOS tradition, Scribe has decided Mr. Crankypants and his Crankypant-ettes have to be right. Then he went through non-existent sound clips from other famous moments in history and here is what he found…
John Wilkes Booth actually said “sick temper my anus.” (more…)
October 14, 2008
Happy birthday Katherine Mansfield
“How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?” Katherine Mansfield
(10/14/1888 – 01/09/1923)
New Zealander writer
The Tattlesnake – The Old Man and the She Edition
Sarah the Terror is a Sideshow Attraction Pushing the Wretched McCain to the Background of His Own Campaign
“You’re starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time. Our message, the campaign’s message, isn’t connecting.”
– Saul Anuzis, Michigan Republican Party Chairman, as quoted by the NY Times, Oct. 11, 2008.
Who is McPalin appealing to these days? Not Joe Sixpack, nor Hockey Moms and Dads – they roundly booed the Alaska Governor at the Philadelphia Flyers opener last Saturday; not ‘Lunch Bucket’ Workers; not ‘Reagan Democrats’ (the last two categories joining the liberal Rockefeller Republican in extinction long ago). Nope, all of the voters who fit those media-hyped pigeon holes have been suffering the pain and remorse of living in King Junior’s Politics for Profit United States of Katrina for the last couple of years.
These days, aside from the Party Hacks – that random collection of reliable bobbleheads: GOP office-seekers, low-level local staff, other small fry and their kin — it seems the only faction of American humanity — and I use that term advisedly — showing up in large numbers to see Gov. Snow Job and her doddering Grandpa running mate are a type not much discussed but well-known by the Punditrocracy and the Big Media — let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Screwloose. These are not just Low Information Voters — they are that, to be sure — but the Lowest Common Denominator loonies and Hate-for-Jesus Christians who spend their lives forwarding brainless emails assuring the reader that prayer is what the troops in Iraq really desire more than anything else; who want the Ten Commandments hanging off every government building; who believe we were founded as a Christian theocracy regardless of the evidence to the contrary; who violently oppose the idea of someone they don’t know marrying someone else they don’t know of the same sex because it’s written in the Bible, yet still chow down on pork and shellfish; who equate ‘liberal’ with ‘traitor’ because comic geniuses like Ann Coulter told them so; who perpetually mistake actors who play cowboys for real cowboys; who go to check when someone calls asking if their refrigerator is running; who want more war with those they perceive as terrorists, even after being told to turn the other cheek by the founder of their faith; who know nothing about Islam, yet believe it is an ‘evil’ religion; who resist scientific proof of anything unless it comports with their bizarre, pre-fabulated religious beliefs; who focus on abortion as state-sanctioned murder while they applaud the death penalty and celebrate the carnage of war; who wallow with Rebel Yell pride in their ignorance and let themselves be suckered by slick Republican hucksters to vote against their own interests; who viscerally believe in an End Times scenario and subsequent Rapture that never appeared in the Bible; who think Serial Liar Sarah Palin is ready to be president since she’s just like them: a card-carrying member of the rusty-truck-up-on-blocks, fuckin’ redneck, hootin’-and-hollerin’ Kallikaks ‘ignorati’; a goofball fundamentalist Christian yahoo who shares their demented white-trash-wet-dream ‘values’ which include a spiteful racism that would make Joseph Goebbels grin and a preposterous gullibility that has made a creepy Messiah pimp like Pat Robertson rich.
Palin’s singular talent is that she can deliver her pre-scripted message competently: It’s acceptable for you to vent your hateful bigotry on McCain’s black opponent since he’s conveniently a friend of terrorists.
That said, it appears the McCainiacs running the Palin traveling carnival have misunderstood why so many people turn up at her events — she’s now a cultural phenomenon, a Britney Spears freak of nature slathered over by the supermarket tabloids, as well their big brothers in the MSM. Many Gawkers of the American Idiocracy show up not because they endorse her message, but just to get a look at the Two-Headed Geek in person. She’s a sideshow attraction now more than a serious candidate for political office. In a campaign rally last week, a good portion of the crowd started leaving after Palin was done speaking, giving the hapless McCain a view of their departing backs. It’s Palin and McCain these days, from the same lineage as Barnum and Bailey.
October 11, 2008
The Tattlesnake – McCain Finally Does the Right Thing Edition
Perhaps it was his abandonment by old friend and former Michigan Gov. Bill Milliken, or the outrage of the old-line conservative media, or finally understanding that the path Steve Schmidt and the other Rovians in his campaign had set him on was becoming exceedingly dangerous — with angry cries of “Kill him!” emanating from the crowd, how long until an unstable McCainiac tries to make that a reality? – but John McCain, to his credit, finally informed his supporters, much to their dismay, that Barack Obama was a “decent, family man, a citizen,” not an “Arab,” and “a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States,” and that he was simply a political opponent in an American election and not the embodiment of boogeyman-under-the-bed terrorist evil.
Contrary to the flood of negative ads run by the McCain camp over the past two weeks, and the incessant pit bull howling of his Shiller from Wasilla running mate condemning Obama as an ally of ‘domestic terrorists,’ a glimmer of the old John McCain from 2000 showed itself and courageously pulled back from the building Nuremberg Rally mob-hatred of the rapt-by-Rapture Christians and revanchist regressives that now comprise what remains of the Republican base. It seems even McCain was appalled by the flow of vile vituperation and brown-shirt frenzy increasing evident at his campaign stops.
Possibly McCain merely realized he was going to lose this election and wanted to be remembered not as a peevish, fuming crank who had auctioned off his soul and self-respect to get elected, but as a class act who recovered his dignity and integrity before it was too late.
For once in this campaign, John McCain actually put ‘country first’ and he should be applauded for it – ironically, if that McCain had been in the race all along, he might have had a better chance of winning.
October 10, 2008
The Tattlesnake – The Turn of the Screwed Edition
And Other Worms in the GOP Apple…
Obama just made two very smart moves:
1.) Buying a half-hour of TV primetime on the Wednesday before the election. If he plays it right, this will be like a presidential address ahead of the election, making any part of America that still has doubts comfortable with Obama in the Oval Office. Better yet, he won’t have Grandpa Crank or a moderator to step on his message, and McCain doesn’t have the cash to buy a half-hour of his own.
2.) Setting a trap for McCain by telling ABC’s Charlie Gibson “…[W]e’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days that he wasn’t willing to say it to my face. But I guess we’ve got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.” Biden also called McCain out for his Ayers-Rezko-Wright malarkey. This painted McCain into a corner: If in the Oct. 15th debate he doesn’t respond to the challenge and bring up the nasty personal attacks his campaign has been making, he risks appearing like a wimp to his own supporters; if he does, he looks like a petty jerk and takes the chance of Obama not only skillfully dispensing with the slurs, but also sticking it to McCain on the Keating Five, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, McCain’s campaign manager and lobbyist Rick Davis, Watergate crazy man G. Gordon Liddy, and McCain’s ties to the anti-Semitic and racist U.S. Council for World Freedom. Obama could rightfully point out that his casual connection to Ayers-Rezko-Wright never cost the taxpayers a dime; McCain’s association with the Keating Five and lobbyists Iseman and Davis, on the other hand, cost the public billions.
Surprise! Sarah Palin’s hired Munchkins up in Alaska just found her innocent in the Troopergate affair on Thursday, one day ahead of the release of the official report, ’cause that’s just the way we do business up here in the Great White North, buster.
Ya know, I betcha Palin’s whole ‘moose hunter and sport fisher’ thing is just a buncha staged photo-ops to enhance her Alaska political career and she never drank a six-pack in her life. (Gotta watch that figure, dere!) I’ve met women who hunt and fish and they don’t have long, beautifully-manicured fingernails of the type Sarah the Terror has had since her first beauty pageant. (In fact, it would be impossible to keep their nails like that and still do such things as ‘field dress a moose.’) This is like the Bush Boy putting on a Stetson hat and pretending to be a real Texas cowboy — the man is terrified of horses!
October 8, 2008
Ye Olde Scribe Productions Presents: A “Pleasant” Afternoon’s Drive with Moosemeat Mama
Speculative Friction
“Taking actual events and mining them just to provide that special itch that irrational Reich Wingers can’t scratch.”
Actual event (Thanks to News of the Weird)
“The Nebraska legislature’s new ’safe haven” law for unwanted babies, like other state laws allows them to be dropped off anonymously at hospitals to discourage abortions (and neglect by unfit parents). However, unlike other states’ laws, Nebraska’s applies not just to infants, but “minors” because, said Senator Tom White, “All children deserve our protection.” In September the first two non-infants were abandoned, as exasperated parents gave up on rebellious sons aged 11 and 15, and critics say the law could apply to those up to age 19.”
Speculation…
The Palin girl put down her bags and sighed. “Pregnant again.” (more…)
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October 7, 2008
The Tattlesnake – McPalin: It Just Gets Deeper and Deeper Edition
Random Notes on the Worst Presidential Campaign in Modern History, Tonight’s Debate, and Other Rumorous Swill
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
– Mark Twain
“Sooner or later people are going to figure out that if all you run is negative attack ads you don’t have much of a vision for the future, or you’re not ready to articulate it.”
– John McCain in 2000.
Gov. Cosmetically-Enhanced Pit Bull has hit the road, eructating hoary disproved Obama slurs and smears to try and save what’s left of McCain’s Electoral Death March from burial under an FDR-sized landslide next month.
The McCainiacs have become so tone-deaf, and run out of so much of the infamous bullshit alluded to by Howard Beale in “Network,” that McCain’s camp is inexplicably continuing to chase the GOP base that responds to Palin’s cutesy-wink tirades and snippy town-gossip slights. Even if the 30 percent of registered voters that comprise this ballyhooed base turn out to vote, McPalin still loses big, in no small part due to the most badly managed presidential campaign in modern history.
Faced with an economic crisis that may eclipse the Great Depression, the McCainiacs bafflingly went small-bore with discredited petty minutiae: Obama hung around with ‘domestic terrorist’ Bill Ayers; received favors from Tony Rezko; was part of the Chicago political machine that breathed it’s last a decade before Obama entered politics. If they are enthralled by the notion of legions of Working Class Independents showing up to save the day, maybe they should check Frank Luntz’s focus groups of Uncommitted voters who are checking the box for Obama this election — the blue-collar voters of yesterday are the blue-vest voters of today, and they aren’t happy with the Republican Slide to Doom. As the Time blog noted on Luntz’s focus group in August:
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Turns Out Palin’s Been Lying About This Too…
When I first heard Sarah Palin make the claim that she could “see Russia from her house” it sounded weird and, checking a map, seemed preposterous. Now, thanks to CNN, it’s been definitively proven an outright lie:
Sarah Palin Has Never Actually Seen Russia From Alaska
By Jed Lewison, Huffington Post
Posted on October 2, 2008Just when you thought the whole “I can see Russia from Alaska” thing couldn’t get any funnier … CNN’s Gary Tuchman delivers the goods: it turns out that Sarah Palin has never seen Russia from Alaska.
Tuchman went up to the part of Alaska from which you can actually see Russia, a remote island called Little Diomede located just 2.4 miles from its Russian twin, Big Diomede.
It turns out Gary Tuchman’s trip to Little Diomede sets him apart from Sarah Palin — because she’s never actually been there, nor has she set eyes on its neighbor in Russia.
Here’s the video of Tuchman’s report: [see the Huff Post website]
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October 6, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Quiz: Find the Real Palin Quotes Edition
“He who cannot remember the past is condemned to remember the past. Or something.”
– Joe Queenan, channeling a Quayleism in “The Vice-Presidency Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.”
Grab a pen or pencil and some paper and take the quiz, and no cheating with The Google. Which are actual quotes from Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and which are from a beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity? (Answers below the fold.)
1. “I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
2. “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
3. “Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
4. “Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you’re not always the solution.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
5. “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
6. “It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren’t, then I’d be a school teacher.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
7. “Well, I’d rather choose to be beautiful, um, because, to be beautiful it’s natural. But being smart you can learn… you can learn, um, a lot of things… a lot of things from the experience… you can learn from a lot of things being smart.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
8. “Maybe he’s for everything as long as it’s not helped forward by the government. Maybe he’s for everything if the free market takes care of it. I don’t know.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
9. “We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
10. “We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
11. “So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
12. “I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
13. “We are truly the land of the great. From the rock shores of… Hawaii… to the beautiful sandy beaches of… Hawaii… America is our home.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
14. “I would discuss with him having mandatory sex education classes, because if students decide to have sex, they should be practicing safe sex. However, in my opinion, abstinence is always the best way.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
15. “[T]he western part of Pennsylvania is very, uh, Midwestern, and the eastern part is more east.”
A. Sarah Palin
B. Beauty pageant contestant, fashion model or airhead celebrity.
(Answers below the fold.)
October 4, 2008
October 3, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Biden-Palin a Snoozer Edition
Ho-Hum Debate: The much-ballyhooed Biden-Palin exchange of stump speeches disguised as a debate came off as a fairly bland affair. No big gaffes, no sizzling language, nothing but the same-old Talking Points we’ve all heard before. Full Disclosure: I only watched the last half of the ‘debate’ last night — the rest I recorded – and I checked the endless replays of the ‘highlights’ today. Just two thoughts:
1.) I never noticed before how truly phony is Sarah Palin. Up to last night, I regarded her as just a naïf out of her element, a high school player accidentally sent up to the Big Show. Not now; what I saw in the debate was a calculating hick, a two-faced Lonesome Rhodes “Face in the Crowd” type, who, I wouldn’t be surprised, probably muttered something like “That oughta hold those dumb bastards” when she was safely off stage. It was all there: The cornball “Gosh, golly, gee” patois, the overcooked Church-Lady-Meets-Lily-Tomlin’s-phone-operator voice, the cutesy winks, the camera mugging, the self-satisfied smile. It makes her even more dangerous than she was before; Junior with a craftier brain.
2.) In their post-debate commentary, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, the Politico’s Roger Simon and the Other Usual Media Miscreants once again strained credulity by attempting to speak for the Working Class out there in the Fly-Over Country of the Midwest. These guys inhabit offices in New York and Washington – besides the building doorman or the valet who parks their luxury car, how many actual members of the hourly-wage Drone Culture do they really know? In their omniscient view of the Biden-Palin encounter, Palin was likable and sharp and those downtrodden Soccer-Hockey Moms out there counting quarters to do the laundry were sure to swallow her guff whole-hog and rally to the GOP. Victory for Palin! Then Todd started running through the poll numbers from independent voters showing they thought Biden won – he didn’t really have an explanation for why Mr. and Mrs. Joe Six-Pack didn’t buy the adorable Palin’s pandering guff as predicted; it was just one of those, shrug, anomalies. Hint to Chuck and Company: I live out in that part of America you think you know so well; I can’t find anyone – not a single person — who likes Palin, even after her cynical performance last night.
Rating: Pretty flaccid on both sides and nothing memorable happened. Biden won it on points by a hair, mainly because he, ya know, actually knew things; Palin was all empty Talking Points and gushy BS; she didn’t do McCain’s campaign any good.
October 2, 2008
The Tattlesnake – I Knew Sarah Palin Edition
…Or, At Least, Someone Like Her
Centuries ago, before personal computers, Blackberries, cell phones and The Google, Your Decrepit Tattler worked for a company that published a glossy magazine in a mid-sized, Midwestern US city. The glossy was eponymously named after the city, and the company also owned the local civic-booster travel guide and an FM radio station.
One day the word went out – the company had hired that year’s winner of the state beauty pageant to flack for the magazine, and proudly announced that the owner/publisher was confident she would go on to become Miss America, thereby enhancing the magazine’s ‘national prestige and image.’ All of us Worker Bees were ordered to come up with ways to promote the wonderfulness of Wendy Jo Stepford – her real name has been lost in the mists of age, but that’s a serviceable substitute – making sure we ‘excited’ local and state media coverage of her and, of course, the magazine for which she stood.
Our Advertising Director Ron, the dog, eagerly took it upon himself to be her personal escort and tutor, and arranged photo-ops around town to display her at various events – inaugurating the Oktoberfest celebration, cutting the ribbon at a car dealership opening, saluting the interstate trucking industry, dining at a new trendy restaurant – where she could smile with incredibly large teeth, open her eyes unnaturally wide, and proclaim forgettable hooey with the breathy guileless sincerity of a pretty 20-year-old in a miniskirt.
At first, the plans of the owner/publisher went smoothly – wherever she went, Wendy Jo attracted crowds of young women asking her about her choice in cosmetics and wardrobe, and leering old lechers who lusted to be her Sugar Daddy, and the media couldn’t get enough of her blandly sweet persona and trite, platitude-laden lexicon. Plus, she looked good in a two-piece bathing suit – somewhat incongruous for a German beer festival where she was posed with ruddy men in lederhosen, but it put her picture on the front page of the city’s highest-circulation newspaper.
The first crack in Wendy Jo’s edifice occurred during that suds-soaked Teutonic rave-up when she was asked about the history of Oktoberfest – they might as well have asked her to define Quantum Mechanics. She paused for a long uneasy moment, eyes practically bugging out of her head in naive intensity while her mouth froze in a large-mouthed professional beauty contestant grin; then came the groaner, delivered brightly: “Uh, those Nazis in Germany had a lot of bad stuff about them, but I think we can all agree that Oktoberfest was a pretty darn good idea!” Oh, you betcha! Gemütlichkeit!
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Today in History
1867
Alaska: The U.S. takes possession of the territory after purchasing it from the Russians in March for about 2¢ an acre.
Can we just give it back now?