The World’s Laziest Journalist doesn’t want to do all the research that a column titled “Sartre vs. Bush” would require because the conclusion would be obvious from the start: Sometimes the difference between there being a wedding celebration and nothingness can be one accidental air strike. No American politician will have the gumption to sanction a war crimes trail into being and watching his own political career dissolve into nothingness.
March 12, 2009
February 20, 2009
February 19, 2009
The Tattlesnake – The Suicide Kings of the GOP Edition
The Right-Wing Media Frankenstein is Pushing Its Republican Political Prisoners to Electoral Doom
“You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.”
– Glaucon, from Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” Book VII, “The Republic.”
Out in the formerly sunny Kal-i-forn-yuh, now the province of the disastrous ‘leadership’ of Republican Gov. Arnold “Worse Than Gray Davis” Schwarzenegger, GOP lawmakers are resisting a sensible bill that will save the state from bankruptcy and collapse. Why? Because it contains necessary tax increases to balance the state budget and the California Republicans are under threat from right-wing radio talkers that if they vote for the bill, they will be targeted for removal from office and their political careers ended.
Similarly, national Republicans in Congress have also gotten the message from Rush Limbaugh and his braying ilk: vote against even the most reasonable spending bills that would help Americans enmeshed in Bush’s new Great Depression and hope Obama fails – or else.
Democrats have been rightly criticized for leaving their spines in a lockbox in the conduct of national business, but this is an exhibition of cowardice unparalleled in US political history: Not only are the chickenhawk Republicans afraid to risk their dainty flesh in the nation’s interest, now they are trembling in fear at the thought that obtuse gasbags like Limbaugh might attack them for voting the wrong way. (One, a featherweight embarrassment named Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, blubberingly apologized and begged forgiveness on Limbaugh’s radio show recently for veering from Rush’s notion of conservative orthodoxy.)
The irony here is as thick as Rush Hudson Limbaugh III’s porcine jowls; the two ‘new’ political ideas hatched from the dank cellar of Nixon’s presidency were appealing via code words to white bigots – the infamous ‘Southern Strategy’ – and mobilizing fringe right Christians, formerly opposed to political involvement, to take up the GOP banner in the name of fighting abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was ruled on by the Supreme Court in 1973. The third ‘new’ idea, which really hearkened back to the broadcast rants of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, was the inception of right-wing talk radio infesting those AM bands that had been all but deserted in the rush to FM in the 1970s, pioneered by the unlikely success of post-Fairness Doctrine Rush Limbaugh in 1988. In the early days, the Mighty Wurlitzer of conservative talk radio served the interests of the Republican Party, helping to elect Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’ Congress in 1994, and took their marching orders from the Republican National Committee, or GOP political operatives like Ed Rollins, Lee Atwater or, later, Karl Rove. The concept was simple: take all of the rage that was building in the nation from working class poor and blue-collar whites who were being consistently reamed by corporations owned by wealthy Republicans and their GOP political puppets and turn it on liberals, Hollywood, Democrats, feminists, scientists, gays, college professors, Barbra Streisand, welfare queens, ‘elites’ or anyone else not providing money or faxed talking points to the host, then urge them to support whatever jive pinhead the Republican Party dredged up to run against it all.
That the promulgators of this fictional universe, donning imaginary overalls during airtime and portraying themselves as straight-talking ‘average Americans,’ themselves were making millions of dollars (Limbaugh himself just signed a deal worth $400 million) and living the most elite lives possible off air was carefully hidden from the office-bound rubes and factory-floor yokels of the new GOP diaspora, strangers in their own land and eternally the patriotic put-upon victims of some liberal outrage, smart-ass scientist, gay celebrity or urban welfare recipient who had no other thought in life but to retire early with their new Cadillac and color TV bought on the downtrodden white man’s hard-earned dime.
For a time, the right-wing media prevailed with this fantasy of misdirected ire and ratings boomed, especially during the ’90s when they had Bill and Hillary Clinton to vilify for all that’s wrong with the world, and it reached it’s influential zenith with the election of the dullest knife in the drawer, the malaprop-prone black sheep alcoholic son of a politically-prominent family, a failure at everything he had ever tried, shoehorned into the Texas governor’s mansion by the slimy machinations of Karl Rove, and illegally appointed to the presidency by Daddy’s friends on the US Supreme Court — George W. Bush. The Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s celebrated – they had catapulted one of their own into the highest office in the land; but that was also the beginning of their downfall, concurrent with the nosedive of Bush and the GOP, and the concomitant blossoming of their blind arrogance that is on track to reduce the Republicans to a small regional party, grasping for votes from the unlearned, unteachable and plain dumb. This media Frankenstein, stitched together haphazardly to assist the GOP, now bullies the party to work against its own interests, just as they have been doing to their misbegotten audience for decades, an audience diminishing in the harsh light of economic reality.
As the prescient Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com – he was correct about the last presidential election and the baseball Tampa Bay Rays winning 2008 season – has noted:
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February 13, 2009
The Tattlesnake – GOP Fiddles While America Burns Edition
Or, Nero Was No Hero
“But one of the good things about reading history is you learn a good deal. And, we know for sure that the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work. In 1940, unemployment was still 15%.”
– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), speaking the untruth of the powerful, Feb. 6, 2009.“[O]ne of the things that really has gotten dumber about our culture: the media constantly talks about truth as if it … were always equidistant from two points. In other words, sometimes the truth is one-sided.” […]
“[I]t’s exactly like saying … ‘so-and-so says, two plus two equals five. But, of course, mathematicians say that it really equals four.’ The mathematicians are right. The people who say that two plus two equals five are wrong. The media blurs that constantly.”
– Susan Jacoby, from Bill Moyers’ Journal, PBS, Feb. 15, 2008.
That great economic historian, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, took to the floor of the Senate last week to excoriate the memory of FDR and claim the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression. In fact, Roosevelt’s New Deal programs put millions of average Americans to work and reduced unemployment from a high of over 35 percent to 14 percent. Aside from that, if FDR was such a failure, why did he win by 62.6 percent of the popular vote, and 98.5 percent of the electoral vote, in 1936, and 55 percent in 1940, with 84.6 of the EV? Why was he retained in office for 12 years, from 1932 until his death in 1945, the longest-serving president in our history, if he accomplished nothing toward solving the primary issue of that time – the economic crisis? Some smart reporter should ask McConnell those questions.
“Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”
– Ben Bernanke, the Republican-picked Fed chief, from his book, “Essays on the Great Depression.”“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
– President Franklin D. Roosevelt
In his first press conference on February 9, Obama put the screws to the GOP, albeit wrapped in enough padding that no blood was drawn but, to mix metaphors, this is Obama’s style – wear them down with civility while you score with shots to the gut and dance away. Our ‘Gentleman Jim’ President nimbly peppered the punch-drunk Republicans just as ably as the original did in 1892 to win the heavyweight crown from the blundering beast that was John L. Sullivan who had only his ‘strong right arm’ as a weapon.
Pushed by such withered toads as McConnell, blatant numbskulls like Mike Pence of Baghdad street bazaars are ‘just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime’ fame, and the inchoate babblings of the evidently very corrupt new RNC chair Michael Steele, the GOP is collectively lurching toward irretrievable disaster, one every bit as bad as anything the Dimbulb Son who just left the White House wrought — you know, the one whose name must never be mentioned in public by any Republican ever again. They seem determined to take the mean-spirited, unpopular opinion on nearly every issue, just to gratify a shaky base of fringe nutcases, religious retrogrades, Fox News employees, Wall Street Journal editorial board members, Coulter cultists, racist rednecks, professional malcontents, crumb-bum lobbyists, and off-shored-assets tycoons channeling Leona Helmsley.
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February 6, 2009
The Tattlesnake – The Dying of the Right Part Deux Edition
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you concentrate on.”
– George W. Bush
“It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know — and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.”
– Joyce Cary
Larry (not his real name) pretty much confirms what many of us already suspected about the “I hope he fails” crowd. After years of taking public surveys, Lar developed this scientific rule of thumb, which can be stated thusly: “Twenty percent of the American people are utter freaking morons.” To put it another way, about two out of ten knew such tidbits as all or most of the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment, the names of their two senators, in what century the Second World War was fought, who LBJ was and what his initials stood for, and how old the United States is; six of ten knew at least one senator, and managed to get more than half of the American history/political questions correct; two out of ten, meanwhile, barely knew what century they were living in and were hard put to name the kind of skin used to make a bear skin rug. Guess what political party and ideology was embraced by 90 percent of the bottom-feeding twenty percent, and who their favorite radio talk show host was?
Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, I heard the other day that the three most well-known Republicans in the nation were Maj. Anal Cyst, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber’s Helper, a regular triumvirate of Jim Crow snark, Wasillabilly fark and dee-do-diddley dumb fronting for the wealthy old firm of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe. The GOP is in the process of desperately trying to shore up its dwindling ‘base’ of Jaywalk All-Stars, and the Democrats, borrowing their gumption from single-cell amoeba, continue to flinch at the shadow of the embalmed corpse of Ronald Reagan, the threatened filibusters of King Wanker Mitch McConnell, and the fading influence of the soon-to-be perp walked Karl Rove. I’ve given up seeking the goose juice to make the Dems act like winners for a change. We can only hope Sheriff Obama will be able to corral these shaky steers long enough to pass legislation to end Bush’s National Nightmare. Out of ideas, out of favor, out of power, and sinking ignominiously into the Hee Haw-rerun party, this is all the GOP has left.
Former Dan Quayle Chief of Staff and Original Neocon Bill Kristol, lately bounced from the NY Times op-ed page as even Andy Rosenthal could no longer cover for his nitwittery with a straight face, has laid out the reason for the strident and baffling GOP opposition to the badly-needed stimulus package: this is just the warm-up to the big fight coming over health care reform, of which the Republicans want none, contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of the public. Why does the right-wing hate America?
February 2, 2009
The Tattlesnake – The Hilarity Begins at Home Edition
Short Cuts on the Collapse of Bush’s Republi-conism and Letterman’s Resurrection of Bill Hicks
Here’s the Future of the GOP:
“One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let’s commit ourselves, just everyday American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again.”
— Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential debate, Oct. 2, 2008.
Yes, never again elect another Booby-Hatch Neocon like Junior the First as president, and I won’t mention any particular governor from Alaska who does Fargoesque photo-ops with a working turkey chipper in the background. What do you think – Obama wins 49 states in 2012 against the Mad WASP Caribou Mangler of the Great White North?
Oh, Brothern and Sistern: A “Full Armor of God Playset Kids Costume” is up for sale at EBay from the ‘God4me Ministries,’ which looks amazingly similar to a Roman legionnaire’s battle rattle. Does God4Me Ministries recall who it was that put the spikes into Big J and let him die on a cross? Hey, but for only $8.99, it’s relatively cheap to turn your bambino into one of Pontius Pilate’s boys.
How shoddy can your reporting get? One anonymous “Republican official” makes false claims about President Obama’s stimulus package and there is no attempt to fact-check the charges or get a response from Democrats or the White House? I would have gotten a dressing down for this kind of sloppy nonsense even in my pathetic journalism course at a no-name school. This is what happens when the guy in charge of your Washington Bureau crawls under the covers with the Demonic Forces of the Republican Party, as has Ron Fournier. In 2004, then-AP reporter Fournier had an email exchange with Karl Rove and ended one message with the line, “Keep up the fight” and has been stroking the GOP since. (He’s almost as bad as King Sucker Mark Halperin or one of those Tiny Tots at Politico.com.) Tell me about the liberal media, Elton, ’cause it makes me wanna puke. Media Matters has more details at “The AP’s Thursday Train Wreck.”
Speaking of Mrs. Rove’s Evil Spawn: If Karl Rove doesn’t show up in Congress soon to answer questions from John Conyers and the House Judiciary Committee, it’s inevitable that Eric Holder’s DoJ will instruct the FBI to compel Rove to appear, arresting and jailing him if necessary.
Crazy Karl is bizarrely claiming permanent executive privilege on an issue he supposedly never discussed with the president — Don Siegelman’s corrupt prosecution and imprisonment in Alabama and Rove’s involvement in ‘changing’ the Alabama election results late at night — after Siegelman had won — to put Republican Bob Riley in as governor.
Executive privilege only extends to actual communications with the president and Rove has stated he never discussed these matters with Bush, so it doesn’t apply. Besides that, no court has ruled that the privilege is eternal.
Unfortunately, if it comes down to it, Rove might pull a Scooter Libby and fall on his dagger to protect Dick and Dumbo, taking the heat for the political corruption of the Bush Regime while Rummy is nailed for approving torture. As pleasing as it would be to see Karlo and The Don in orange jumpsuits, the idea that Cheney and his Puppet would skate free is outrageous.
Finally, David Letterman has apologized to comic genius Bill Hicks’ mother Mary for censoring him in 1993 and banning him from his show. Hicks, who died shortly thereafter from pancreatic cancer, was, along with George Carlin, one of the few ‘no sell-out’ social satirists of the ’80s and ’90s, giants in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and Mark Twain. (Incidentally, Letterman didn’t know Bill had cancer when he barred him.) Good on Dave for coming to his senses, even if it took 16 years. No word on why CBS’ late night talk show host chose this time to make amends, but better late than never. When will we see equal treatment for Harvey Pekar? He’s still alive so the apology could be face-to-face. Click here for videos of the on-air apology and short clips of Bill’s brilliant routines. (H/T to Quinn Esq. at TPM Cafe.)
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January 30, 2009
So many topics . . .
When President Obama names the new Attorneys General across the USA, how long will it take for the conservative talk radio folks to distort the issue (all incoming Presidents do it) and say that the Dems are hypocritical for doing what they condemned Bush for doing just last year?
Rush or Dennis mentioned Friday that a return to the fairness doctrine may be on the Obama agenda. In Australia, radio has a variety of formats and community radio (which is a lot like the radio version of local TV cable access shows) are the norm. Rush will want his listeners to protest the fairness doctrine. It will be twisted into blocking the unfair ratio (90 conservative to 10 liberal) of talk radio as a way of promoting freedom of speech. Is it time for an update column?
Did you see an item on-line this week saying that Republicans are promoting a bill that would eliminate all IRS tax penalty fees?
Which is worse; the journalists in Thirties Germany who could not tell the truth or the American journalists who stifle themselves so as not to antagonize the Bush family? (When George HW Bush spoke about the possibility of Jeb becoming President, did any mainstream journalist say just the phrase “Broward Savings and Loan,” let alone elaborate on why that might be a relevant side-bar story?
On radio in the San Francisco area, in promos, Mike Savage is saying that now that Barack Obama is President, folks should follow the money. He doesn’t indicate if it would be important or of interest to follow where the bank bailout funds went. Is that unfair and unbalanced?
This past week Rush Limbaugh seemed to be quarterbacking the Republican strategy. He wrote an article outlining his version of a good bailout legislative package. Would a column speculating about the possibility that this might be an early part of a Rush for President effort be premature? If Rush is not the Republican “front-runner,” then who is?
Sean Hannity (on Thursday) suggested that the Obama program would be to go toward “European style socialism.” Any thoughts that the Bush banks bailout funds were socialism for capitalism, was not verbalized. Would a column outlining that contention be appropriate for this weekend?
If (conservative moles/trolls please note the use of the subjunctive mood)President Bush & Co. were guilty of war crimes, does the mainstream media silence about “justice,” indicate a move to avoid any allegations of “accessories” because of their poor performance on that story? (Was Robert Brasilach guilty of collaboration or just a misplaced effort to be fair and balanced?)
Should we write a weekend column speculating on the possibility that Murilee Martin ever leaves Alameda and if he does why does he?
What can readers do with pictures of their smiling dogs?
Isn’t “the Bark” magazine looking for such material?
Would folks in the SF Bay area rather see “The Blue Angel” (Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Museum) than the big football game and all those cool ads? Can that question be expanded into an interesting column?
What is the mathematical probability that any readers of this site would read a column about “the Monty Hall problem”?
What are the odds that Rush would use this Gen. George S. Patton quote:”If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”?
Now our disk jockey will play Seasick Steve’s “Save me.” It’s time for us to ask: Will Karl Rove testify for . . . Jesus? Have a “hallelujah” type week.
January 23, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Random Notes on Bush’s Exit, Obama’s Entrance, and the Dying of the Right Edition
Part the One
– Wow. Obama’s been president for three days and already he’s signed Executive Orders closing Gitmo; banning torture; suspending those odious ‘military tribunal’ trials; ending revolving-door lobbying; preventing lobbyists from occupying senior positions in agencies they once lobbied; requiring ethics courses for all of his staff (and he took the course himself); limiting the use of secrecy classification, even imposing Justice Department oversight on his ability to classify documents secret; and expanded government transparency, directing his administration to err on the side of Freedom of Information Act requests rather than the other way around. He also froze the pay of senior White House staff and informed them that as long as he’s president, none of them will quit and then turn around and lobby their friends still in his government, reversing years of Bush/Cheney corruption, sleaze, secrecy and illegality.
What’s more, he did all of this while acting like a grown-up, speaking in full, clear, grammatical sentences, and taking his job seriously. It will be difficult, but pleasant, to adjust to a president who doesn’t have a smirk perpetually playing about his mouth, doesn’t need someone else to run his brain, and can think on his feet. We’ve gone from Barney Fife to Denzel Washington, and the change is striking. I’ll be criticizing Obama in the future I’m sure, but for now all I can say is: Wow. I think he’s one of those rare politicians who really meant what he said when he was campaigning.
– The Dying of the Right 1: While the vast majority of America is celebrating our new competent president, the peevish drones over at Fox News, led by Chris “My Dad’s the Journalist!” Wallace, have been foaming at the mouth over whether Obama’s really president, since Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts bumbled the reading of the oath on January 20th and Obama followed him. This is the largest load of unprocessed fertilizer since the questioning of Obama’s birth certificate. (Hint to all the ‘reporters’ at Fox: As well as the certificate itself, long available online and sanctioned as genuine by fact-checking organizations, there was also a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper welcoming Barack H. Obama Jr. into the world in 1961.) In fact, the law says that, as the victor in the last election, Obama was officially president at Noon last Tuesday, whether he was sworn in or not, and documents were signed after the inaugural ceremony signifying that official transfer of power. Just to head off frivolous lawsuits from tinfoil-hat pinheads, Obama had Roberts drop by the White House the next day and redo the swearing in. Incredibly, some of the bloviating scoundrels claimed this was a – oooohhhh — ‘secret ceremony’! Horse pucky. The press was invited in, still photos were taken and an audio track was recorded – it was as secret as an American Idol audition. Only the TV cameras weren’t involved, and that was likely because Obama wanted this formality completed quickly and didn’t want to get bogged down with silly questions from the Usual Media Meatheads like Fox News. (“Mr. President, will you now come clean about your place of birth? Weren’t you really born in Kenya or Cuba or Mexico? Isn’t it true that Patrice Lumumba is your real father and Squeaky Fromme is your real mother?” )
– The Dying of the Right 2: Rush “Rhymes with Limbo” Limbaugh, who once went apoplectic criticizing liberals as ‘unpatriotic America-haters’ because he had convinced himself they wanted the Little King to fail in Iraq, has now joined the ranks of unpatriotic America-haters, according to his lights. On his radio show the other day, he confessed openly, “I hope Obama fails.” Aside from the fact that about 83 percent of the public doesn’t agree with him, even some the brain-dead rubes who still give any credence to the great blubbery gasbag, suffering under the GOP economy and dying in the senseless Republican wars Rushbo helped peddle, had to be appalled by this statement. He wants the country to go down the drain to what – make the era of conservative Republicans look good? That’s some patriot; George Washington would be proud. Prediction: This is the sort of nasty, psychotic hypocrisy that is losing ratings for the neocon hustlers of the broadcast media and it’s going to result in Limbo being dropped from the airwaves across the country. In eight years, Rush will have lost his syndication deal and will end his miserable existence shouting through a tin can at a little 1000-watt daytimer in North Peckerwood, Alabama. (“Hey, Limbaugh, y’all forgot to take out the trash from the studio last night!” “I’ll get it, boss, I’ll get it!” “Yeah, and don’t forget to mop them washrooms extra good while you’re at it.” )
– Laugh-A-Bullroar: If you were watching the inaugural ceremonies on CNN or MSNBC, did you notice they cut the mics picking up the crowd sounds when Bush, Cheney and the Republicans were introduced? And the band was cranked up extra loud to try and drown out the tidal wave of booing. Earlier in the day, even addle-pated ‘Morning’ Joe Scarborough remarked on the two to three million Obama fans flooding into Washington that the GOP had better pay attention to this political shift or risk being the minority party far into the future. Forget Dimmy and Dick, they’re gone, but I wonder if those Congressional Republicans got the point? (Some of them nearly lost their safe seats last election.)
January 8, 2009
The Tattlesnake –The Media Blago Jewell Show, Say It Ain’t So, Joe, and Other Low Blows Edition
Remember Richard Jewell? Back in 1996 he was the poor schlub who was convicted by the Big Media as the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bomber, based on a leaked story and innumerable FBI agents and other law enforcement experts appearing on TV practically guaranteeing the public that Jewell, by dint of proximity, false information from a former employer, and fitting an FBI ‘profile’ of lonely demented maniacs seeking heroic status, was the man who did it. They had everything but the formality of a conviction in a court of law. I recall several of our fellow citizens so outraged at the time over Jewell that they gladly would have stuck his chubby body on a spit and slow-roasted him to death. After all, everybody – the media, the punditry, the FBI, the guy tending bar –- KNEW he was guilty — he killed and maimed innocent people! — so why bother with a trial? Then the facts began to trickle out; the former employer had invented the disparaging remarks about Jewell’s character; the vaunted FBI ‘lone bomber’ profile – well, it was really just sheer speculation, after all. All the ‘proof of guilt’ left was that Jewell was in the area when the bomb exploded, along with hundreds of other people. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence and, finally, in 2005, the real perpetrator of the tragedy confessed – none other than Christopublican nutcase Eric Rudolph, who had made his name blowing up abortion clinics and gay bars because he believed that life was sacred. Jewell, who died in 2007 at age 44, sued for libel without complete success, and he never really got his reputation back – even an apology from AG Janet Reno didn’t help that. For those who need some help connecting the dots: These days, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been convicted by the Big Media based on the allegations of one man, Patrick Fitzgerald, with no independent evidence that he has done anything wrong. Everyone – the pundits, Democrats, the public, late-night comics – just KNOW Blago is guilty – why even bother with a trial? Yet, Fitzgerald needed, and received, an extension until April to bring indictments against Blago, whom he claimed was on a veritable ‘crime spree.’ In other words, he made a public announcement of sure guilt, and now he can’t even present a case to an indict-a-ham-sandwich grand jury? Something stinks here.
I’m not saying Blago is innocent; he might be the most corrupt politician since Boss Tweed for all I know, but it has to be proven in a court of law, not by prosecutorial press conferences nor the error-ridden scandalmongers of our national media. (These are, after all, the same solons who sold us on the Iraq disaster.) Note: Whenever you see this ‘convicted by the media’ shark-feeding in progress, just remember Richard Jewell.
See How They Roll: In a related item of Big Media heavy breathing over a scandal that wasn’t, let’s travel back through the mists of the past — or the ‘Clean Air’ pollution, if you will — to January of 2001 and the Bush Leaguers entering the White House. Remember the Big Scandal of the time was that departing Clinton staffers had trashed the place and pried up the ‘W’ on nearly every computer keyboard? Oh the moaning and groaning of the Right-Wing Wurlitzer and their stenographer pals in the White House Press Gang over how classless and horrible were the Clintonistas – why would they do something so childish and awful? Well, that was until the truth emerged – funny story, it was actually the Bushites who had quietly pushed the phony vandalism story to smear Bill Clinton and there was nothing more than normal office wear-and-tear left behind by his staff. Ha, ha. If you’re wondering why Obama and his family have been denied access to The Blair House, the traditional residence of soon-to-be-inaugurated presidents, even though it was empty until the Bushers hastily scheduled a one-night stopover for former Australia PM John Howard, here’s the proof that, not only is Junior the worst president we’ve ever had, but also the most peevish and vindictive. (Clinton left the presidency with a high approval rating, and Obama is entering it with a 70-some percent favorable rating and after winning a larger number of votes both electoral and popular than did Junior.) Incidentally, the Obama’s have been forced to stay at the Hay-Adams Hotel until January 15th, which is costing the taxpayers much more in security than if they had been living at The Blair. But, hey, who cares about the ‘little people’s’ money when it comes to pointlessly snubbing the democratically-elected president of the other party.
Laugh-A-Bull You Can’t Make Up: I know I promised never to mention him again, but this is too good: Joe the Plumber’s Helper, AKA Samuel Wurzelbacher of Lower Dipstick, Ohio, has stuck his unlicensed plunger back into the news stream as it was announced recently that he would be the new mighty-rightie Pajamas Media correspondent on – sit down and swallow that hot beverage – the Middle East! He even handed down this nugget of wisdom to a CNN affiliate on his assignment to Israel, “Being a Christian I’m pretty well protected by God I believe. That’s not saying he’s going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance.” Perfecto! That’s just the kind of open-minded attitude we need in journalists providing information from that volatile region. Kudos to Pajamas Media for trying to burnish its credibility – or satirical value, anyway. (Hey, maybe Bob the Builder could be tapped to report on the housing market, or Thomas the Tank Engine on transportation? The possibilities are endless.)
Laugh-A-Bull the Deuce: Lady Laura Bird Bush just unveiled a new set of White House china that the incoming Obama family may or may not like. The set cost nearly a half-million bucks ($492,798 for 320 14-piece place settings) and, in these times when much of Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Heading-For-The-Poorhouse are eating uncooked Spam off of paper plates, seems a tad excessive. True, it was financed by private funds, and it’s American made, but still — hasn’t anybody told clueless Laura we’re in the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression? “These plates are perfect for cake, if you can’t afford bread.”
Laugh-A-Pitbull: Finally, according to some outfit called Veterinary Pet Insurance, the most popular dog name in 2008 was ‘Max,’ and it was the most popular name for a cat, as well. The company’s employees also picked the most unusual pet names for 2008 (read the full list here); topping the list for cats, ‘Edward Scissorpaws’ (although I liked No. 4 ‘Buddha Pest’ better), and for dogs, ‘Rush Limbark.’
January 6, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Them That’s Got and Stan Getz Edition
And This Day in Hell…
“Them that’s got shall get,
Them that’s not shall lose…”
– From “God Bless the Child (That’s Got His Own),” by Arthur Herzog Jr. and Billie Holiday, and recorded by her for Okeh Records in 1941.
“Free market capitalism — as a faith — really is an inverse of Marxism. It is a theology that believes their system will bring paradise on earth and moral perfection. When their system is in power in the real world, their true believers claim that any problem only happened because their ideology has not been applied with sufficient purity.”
– Larry Beinhart, “The Fall of a Free Market Prophet,” Common Dreams, Dec. 7, 2008.
“Sometimes the Invisible Hand is all thumbs.”
– Jared Bernstein, C-Span, April 16, 2008.
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
– Ernest Hemingway [Bush reversed the formula, but it's still true today.]
So far we’ve seen the Top Dogs – underline ‘dogs’ – of Wall Street and Detroit parade before Congress insisting they need our tax money to bail them out. The former ‘Masters of the Universe’ have made so many stupid short-term decisions they have shamed their MBA parchment into so much worthless sheepskin accorded to those who can pay the tuition, or have the family clout, to squeeze them through college. To add insult to injury, the bankers who have fleeced us for billions in the name of providing credit to keep businesses going have refused to use our money to provide credit to keep businesses going, instead financing bonuses for themselves, luxury retreats at pricey resorts, and apparently precipitating a sit-down strike by 300 union workers at a Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago last month. Not only were these people unceremoniously fired and given one day to clear out, the company reneged on its contract to provide wages and vacation pay owed them and the severance pay they were guaranteed. That’s right – Republic refused to pay wages and vacation pay already earned and blamed it on the Bank of America, while they hastily moved their Chicago equipment to Iowa. BoA received $25 billion of our tax dollars to avoid just this kind of situation. Fortunately, thanks to nationwide publicity for this sit-down strike, and support from near-President Obama, the Republic workers finally received their back wages and other pay, but let’s see this for what it was: A naked attempt to bust the union, and it was mostly successful. Republic’s union workers are still out of a job and the company has set up a low-wage non-union plant in Iowa. (Incidentally, inquiring minds would like to know: who is paying the salaries of Republic’s top executives and how much do they make?)
Morality and ethics hardly exist in the corporate boardroom but, if this isn’t wrong, what is?
How to correct it? Let’s hope President Obama takes a page from Franklin D. Roosevelt, especially his Economic Bill of Rights speech delivered January 11, 1944, during the Second World War, which included:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
As FDR concluded: “All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
“America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.”
If we have those rights, the economy will take care of itself.
What Does Late Jazz Sax Player Stan Getz Have to Do with Our Economic Meltdown? Read on:
December 29, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Is Gov. Rod Getting Rammed? Edition
What’s the Republican Political Angle to the Blagojevich Prosecution?
Is Illinois’ F**king Golden Boy Merely the Stooge for a Partisan GOP Attack on Obama and the Dems?
Had Enough Leading Questions Already?
While some may choose others – such as Billo, Hannity, the Savage Wiener or Radio’s Anal Cyst Rush — as a reliable weathervane of what not to believe, I have my own preference – second-tier CNN newsreader Kyra Phillips. In the case of the first four names, we know they are regurgitating their daily Talking Points from the Ministry of DoublePlusGood Neocon Truth, but Kyra aspires to a level of journalistic integrity that renders her eructations of state-sanctioned Big Media hooey more entertaining – and she’s easier on the eyes and ears than the Cave Boys.
I first noticed Kyra’s particular talent in this regard back in May of 2003, following Junior’s Commander-Cody-with-a-Codpiece moment on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and his hilariously boneheaded ‘Mission Accomplished’ ramblings afterward that ‘major combat operations’ had been completed in Iraq.
The Most Trusted Name in Newspeak had Kyra onboard the carrier that day and, with time to fill and a Glorious Victory in Eastasia to celebrate, she was given a free ride on a US Navy jet at the taxpayers’ expense. After landing, the breathless and excited Ms. Phillips gushed — only verbally, as far as I know — over the sea-going military, jet pilots, aircraft carriers and the whole goddamned Good War thingie – we had kicked Iraqi behind and all was right-wing with the world! But I noticed something in Kyra’s flushed smiling face and twittering-with-glee voice – why, it reminded me of a time decades before when I ran into a notorious groupie just hours after she had ‘balled’ (late ’60s slang term for copulation) every member of her favorite band! Of course, the video of Bush’s dumb publicity stunt is only useful now as a platform to launch a thousand jokes, and I’m sure Kyra’s embarrassing orgiastic spurt of militaristic slathering, wearing a flight helmet, no less, has been filed in the root cellar at CNN never to be seen again.
In the years since, whenever Kyra decides to editorialize the news, whether it be Rudy Giuliani’s popularity with Dixie-Fried Republicans, Fred Thompson’s manly irresistibility to voters, or Sarah Palin guaranteeing a big McCain win with the womenfolk, I have sure knowledge that whichever way Kyra blows, so to speak, the opposite is true.
This came up again a few weeks ago as the news of Scooter Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s December 9th arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich blanketed the airwaves like an all-day Chicago blizzard. There was Kyra, frowning eyebrows crawling toward one another, serious-minded caterpillars an omen of the bad news to come, hyperventilating that the Blago scandal was “ten times worse than Watergate,” an attitude likely shared by some of her second-string Big Media cable colleagues but not expressed in so grandiose and historic a phrase.
Really, Kyra, ‘ten times worse than Watergate’? Hint to Phillips’ fevered brainpan: Blago didn’t have a private ‘Plumbers’ force breaking into his political opponents’ offices, he didn’t suborn perjury, he didn’t claim executive privilege to protect himself, he didn’t have a slush fund with millions of dollars in it to pay off criminals in his employ, and any scandals he’s alleged to be involved in are fairly pedestrian examples of political corruption and not a Constitutional crisis for the nation.
Perhaps she was taking her cue from Fitzgerald, who buzzed that Blago was on a “crime spree.” Whoa! Al Capone went on ‘crime sprees’ such as the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – Blago’s babbling about wringing cash out of various politicians and bigwigs comes nowhere near that level of violent wrongdoing.
Whatever Blago’s crimes, no one died, no one was injured, he didn’t start any unnecessary wars based on lies, he didn’t authorize torture or the waste of billions of dollars in taxpayer money through no-bid contracts, he didn’t order Ken Blackwell to finagle the Ohio vote in 2004 to shoehorn Junior back into the presidency, he didn’t conspire to steal an election and jail the winner, as in the Don Siegelman case in Alabama, all of which seem to me to be much more serious than these routine instances of alleged malfeasance by Blagojevich.
But there’s more to this story than has been unearthed by the corporate BM, using the telescope from the wrong end, as usual.
Here are a few facts that have been missed in the rush to convict Blago:
December 26, 2008
Pardons Imply Guilt
Critics of President Bush expecting that he would issue pardons to his staff for any possible war crimes, underestimated the devious cunning of his advisers. Not issuing the pardons may have been their greatest stroke of genius because it provides President Obama with a loose-loose decision.
If President Obama initiates a war crimes investigation, the conservative talk show hosts will unleash a propaganda counter-attack that will be a relentless stream of vitriol that will question Obama’s reasoning, sanity, and patriotism. The attempts to formulate a program of change will become deadlocked in a debate about the need for any war crimes trials.
The Republicans will use the “innocent until proved guilty” dodge to sabotage every step of the investigation process. (Note: by that criteria, Hitler can not be considered a war criminal.)
If President Obama does not conduct a war crimes investigation, then the Republicans can claim that it constitutes a <I>de facto</I> “not guilty” verdict and closes the topic forever.
Imagine that Hitler didn’t commit suicide and that after the Allied victory, Hitler avoided being indicted for war crimes. Wouldn’t his supporters have claimed that the fact he wasn’t put on trial meant that there wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction?
Was there any chance that Hitler would have been given a pass due to good-sportsmanship?
If President Obama wants to form a consensus majority, he has to avoid a divisive trial.
If he advocates “forgive and forget,” then eventually the Republicans can use the fact that no trial was held as the basis for saying “if there were any war crimes, then Obama became an accessory after the fact by not holding any investigations.” At that point the Obama administration will want to avoid any discussions about the possibility that war crimes may have been committed during Bush’s term in office.
Forgoing any Christmas pardons for the advisers who delivered the “weapons of mass destruction” rational for going to war, was clever raised to the third power.
President Bush didn’t issue any pardons and now the next move is up to President elect Obama because any pardons would have been seen as avoiding punishment for some wrong that had been committed. Without pardons to denounce and decry, the next move is up to President Obama and he has other more important issues needing immediate attention.
So who do you think will win this year’s Best Motion Picture Oscar
Ned Kelly said: “Such is life.”
Now, the disk jockey will play AC/DC’s song “Highway to Hell” and we will scram. Have a “no harm, no foul” type week.
December 5, 2008
Does Truth Matter?
(Fremantle W. A.) December 6, 2008 Late December 6, 1941, the Queen Mary is reported to have departed rapidly from Pearl Harbor.
If that’s true, it may indicate that someone knew what was just about to happen. If that didn’t happen, then why worry about it?
Were the WMD’s in Iraq that important?
Don’t Americans always say: “All is fair in love and war!”?
Recently information has reached the World’s Laziest Journalist temporary World Headquarters in Fremantle Western Australia that, due to sanitary concerns, these days tourists do not kiss the Blarney Stone; they only touch it. Is that true or just a rumor?
Why worry about any of this? Santa doesn’t like troublemakers and so if folks know what’s good for themselves, they will pay no attention to agitators who try to stir up dissent by planting the seeds of doubt.
If an American President tells a big fib to start a war (Did Roosevelt know that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked?), that’s a private matter between him and Santa. Any U. S. president who tells a fib to start a war knows that he will get a pail of coal for his Christmas present, because Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice.
A wise journalist once said: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Now, the disk jockey will play Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and we’ll burst out of here. Have a tropical paradise (just like in a Joseph Conrad novel) type week.
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November 27, 2008
The Tattlesnake – What We Have to Be Thankful For Edition
Aside from our personal and family connections, America has much to be thankful for on this fourth Thursday in November:
1. The Bush Boy will soon be gone. Regardless of all of the dismal forecasts of martial law and suspended elections (and accepting that he still has 54 days left for this kind of mischief), the Reign of Error is nearly over and, as a parting gift, Our Worst President Ever has ruined the neocon movement as a political force; proven Milton Friedman’s untrammeled free trade and Arthur Laffer’s supply-side ‘Trickle Down’ economic theories a bitter joke by implementation; soured the majority of America on the right-wing agenda; lessened the political influence of the Christopublicans; eliminated the chance of any future spawn of the Bush family holding national office for a generation, and nearly destroyed the Republican Party to boot.
2. President Barack Obama – if he does nothing else, just by dint of his election he has changed the way the world sees us, and the way we see ourselves. And it will be refreshing to have a president that we can be proud of for a change, and one who can even complete a full sentence in grammatical English.
3. Big Media influence is waning as ‘Citizen Journalists’ on the Inner Tubes present opinions not found in the corporately-owned mass media. Americans now read more of the foreign press online than ever before, meaning we are gradually becoming less parochial and xenophobic in our knowledge of the world.
4. The GOP might actually nominate Sarah Palin as its presidential nominee in 2012, thereby guaranteeing its decline into a regional, mostly southern, party sure to lose national elections for generations to come. Even short of that, the GOP will be wandering in the wilderness – they have to either go left, and lose part of their base, or stay to the same course and swallow defeat.
5. Karl Rove and his minions are finished as a force in politics, and Rove himself is likely to face indictments up the ying-yang after January 20th. He may be frog-marched in handcuffs yet.
6. Word is, hundreds of federal employees, silenced by fear or fiat during the reign of BushCo, will be blowing the whistle following Obama’s inauguration. Can investigations, indictments and convictions be far behind?
7. Science and the rule of law will be respected once again by our government, and decisions will be made by a president who uses his brain for the job rather than his gut.
This was just a quick list; add your own reasons to be thankful, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.
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November 23, 2008
The Tattlesnake – The Senate’s Teddy Bear Picnic and Other Maddening Madness Edition
“I don’t have a rearview mirror. I look only forward. And I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me.”
– Disgraced and defeated Sen. Ted Stevens (R-VECO), on the Senate floor, Nov. 20, 2008. (Perhaps he can bribe it to go away.)
Even in politics, a business known for honking weirdoes and depraved lowlifes, outgoing Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is Weird with a strut and horns and as crooked as a pig’s tail. Yet there were his Senate colleagues standing and applauding the convicted-on-seven-counts-of-corruption felon last Thursday, proving, I guess, that there is some honor among thieves — or, at least, praise. No wonder the Senate Ethics Office is a toothless farce – what do you have to do to engender the disrespect of these ‘public servants’? (Oh, right, tell the truth.) Utah’s ‘Mr. Republican’ Orrin Hatch, another blazing nutball with a hard nougat center of Petrified Kook, publicly ejaculated without shame that Ted was “one of the greatest men I ever met,” while his colleague from the Planet Strange, Sen. Jim Bunning, GOP marital aid of the KY-Jelly state, spread it on less grammatically: “If only you knew the Ted Stevens like I knew.” Democrat-turned-Wolfman Norm Coleman, verging on a well-deserved term limitation up in Minnesota, bayed to Ted’s moon-that-don’t-shine, “Those of us who know him also see the love that’s in his heart, reflected in love of country, love of family…” unnatural love of sheep. Even I-da-ho Spud Stud Larry Craig felt moved to knock three times on Stevens’ pipe with his own spit polish, so to speak.
Jebas, what if Uncle Ted had shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die? Would the Senate just rise as one to elect him King – or maybe Pope?
It’s too bad that AG Michael Mukasey collapsed suddenly during a speech Thursday night, but what the Big Media didn’t remark on was who Mukasey was speechifying to – the frickin’ Federalist Society, home base for the Unitary Executive malarkey that the departing Little King has used to justify dodging the Constitution. Sure, BushCo is on its way out the door, but you might think that the BM would be a little discomfited at the idea that the Attorney General, dressed up in a tux, was addressing a meeting of a group that basically believes in an American monarchy, much like democracy-distrusting icon Alexander Hamilton, who once encouraged George Washington to declare himself King of the United States. [Take a gander at FedSoc’s founders and current members: Ed ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ Meese, Robert ‘Nixonite’ Bork, Ted ‘Florida Recount’ Olson, John ‘Bob’s Dad’ Roberts, Tony ‘Bush v. Gore’ Scalia and Sam ‘The Sham’ Alito.) For a rough political equivalent, imagine the hew and cry if Obama’s new AG Eric Holder passed out while speaking to the Socialist Worker’s Party — think the venue would go unnoticed by the still-unjailed Press Gang at Newsweek and Time?
She Stoops to (be) Flounder: Remember those stories about a young Danny Quayle seeing the Robert Redford film, “The Candidate” and thinking it was a primer for a career in politics? Now it seems the Alaska Hockey Momster has aimed even lower; she’s apparently using Tim Robbins’ satirical flick, “Bob Roberts” as a roadmap for political success. For more cinematic inspiration to further Sarah’s future in government service, may ‘oui’ suggest “Amazon Women on the Moon,” “Idiocracy,” “The Aristocrats,” “Weird Science,” “Ernest Goes to Jail,” and “Linda Lovelace for President”?
And finally, the Vatican has forgiven John Lennon – imagine that? (Hint: it has to do with something he said in 1966.) I wonder if they’ve caught up with the news that he was murdered in 1980? (Lennon’s lucky; it took the Pope about 400 years to forgive Galileo for finding out the earth is round and circles the sun.)
(Quotes re Stevens from “We Salute You, Ted Stevens!” by Benjamin Sarlin, The Daily Beast, Nov. 20, 2008.)
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November 18, 2008
The Tattlesnake – Big Media Hillary Silly Season in Full Swing Edition
Secretary of State Clinton? Much A Doo-Doo About Nothing
If it hasn’t been foreclosed on yet, don’t bet the family ranch that Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State, nor even have a cabinet post in the Obama Administration.
With the long, slow political-junkie orgasm of the presidential campaign fading in the rearview mirror, the ‘Pundints’ now have little to talk about; certainly they don’t find the baffling Bush Boy’s latest incoherence on the economy – “I continue to support the neocon free market policies that caused this horrible financial meltdown!” – worth examining – to do so might remind the audience of how much the Big Media Cognoscenti had to do with leading the lemmings off the cliff; the Palin Reality TV show – “Who Wants to Be a President!” also has its limits – how long before even avid dupes of Little Debbie Shortcake begin wondering why she hauls that baby around to every public appearance and detect that her political ideas are mostly an ungrammatical noun, an opportunistic verb, ‘Nothing’s my fault,’ ‘You betcha!’ and ‘God’s gonna show me the door’?
Even the three undetermined US Senate races don’t hold the BM Short Attention Span long – the vituperation back and forth is good for a brief goose, but those complicated state voting laws! The crashing economy was respectable breathless stand-up fodder for a while – “Melanie Blandstick, reporting from Wall Street, Ground Zero of our money crisis!” – but the pampered Lads and Lasses of the Golden Corporate Microphone are not employed for their intimate knowledge of the financial markets, nor much else, and there are only so many interviews you can do with ill-kempt and boring hustlers from the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, still pushing Milt Friedman’s Cap’n Capitalist Crunch cereal after the product has poisoned the country, and who’s Ayn Rand anyhow – wasn’t she the wife in “Father Knows Best”? Iraq? Afghanistan? Iran? Whoa, dude, you’re bumming my trip!
So, of course, with little they consider ‘real news’ going on, they retreat into their favorite past time – endless speculation based on sketchy evidence, as shouted through a megaphone in the Grand Canyon to insure every Big Media Mouthpiece is regurgitating the same dull incantations.
The latest prime example of this is NBC’s Andrea “Mrs. Greenspan” Mitchell floating an anonymously-sourced story last week that Obama would offer the position of Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, when the only thing that has thus far been confirmed was that Hillary flew to Chicago for a meeting with the President-Elect. For days since, the Punditrocracy has been foaming at the mouth, leaving no entrails unturned in their white-hot desire to tiresomely discuss to death the possibility of Hillary as the top national diplomat.
Using the same superior detective skills that in the past led them to deduce that the 2008 election would be about national security; that Republicans just loved Rudy Giuliani, that McCain would inevitably pick either Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty as his running mate; that Obama had to choose Hillary Clinton as his Veep or lose the election; that American women would mindlessly flock to the GOP after Sarah Palin’s unveiling; that Obama would have a tough time attracting working class voters in Rust Belt states; and that the Dem presidential ticket would, maybe, possibly, eke out a tiny victory in the Electoral College in a very tight race because, after all, this was basically a conservative nation – in spite of this dismal record of comic prognostication, they forge ahead, this time with the latest vapid gasper of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Lost in most of their circuitous gossip is any sort of common-sense analysis: Why would Hillary give up her powerful senate seat, and an excellent chance to be Senate Majority Leader, to serve as a peripatetic foreign service factotum in Obama’s government? The appointment would also proscribe her from criticizing him should things go sour, thereby tainting her bid for the 2012 nomination. Quick, name the last five Secretaries of State before Condi and look at what has happened to them. I think it’s fair to say the energetic Sen. Clinton doesn’t desire to live out her days lounging in academia, playing golf, or filling space on the board of some think tank or corporation, publishing occasional knotted-brow op-ed pieces in The New York Times.
The Tattlesnake – More Randomized Odds and Ends Edition
Or, Once Around the Poop Deck
Rumor Du Jour: Word is, the Big Money Boys are holding back from dumping any more kale into the GOP, especially since new RNC Chair Michael “Hip-Hopper” Steele has inspired about as much confidence as Jim Cramer’s investment advice. With ex-Bush speechwriter David Frum and former Republican contractor Newt Gingrich both taking swipes at the Mighty-Mite Talk Radio Leader of the Rabid Right, how long before the schism between the more-or-less sane Party Insiders and the Christopublican-Conservative Brown Shirts, flopping around crazily to Rush’s goose-step? Place your bets now – the money to put the chug in the GOP is drying up – nobody wants to back a loser, and the GOP is the bob-tail nag running last these days – and 2010 doesn’t look rosy.
Besides, even some of the faithful Christopublican ground troops are backing off – after 30 years of getting out the vote for the GOP, they’ve noticed the Republicans, even when in the majority in Congress and holding the WH under Junior, didn’t ‘get ‘er done’ on outlawing abortion and hanging atheists and Unitarians in Lafayette Park. And where’s the Armageddon they were promised? Plus, they aren’t thrilled with Limbaugh – he’s not pious enough for their taste.
Without the Christo vote, no GOP seat is safe in 2010. Folks, grab your popcorn and settle back: we’re watching the self-immolation of the GOP on a scale not seen since the Whigs bickered themselves to death. Something will take its place, probably led by more moderate conservatives like Susan Collins and Dick Lugar, while the Christopublican crazies and demented Dittoheads spin out of orbit, lost forever babbling baloney somewhere out near Uranus.
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