...Where The Good Lord Split You

Malaria. Mumps. Mauling By A Bear. All Things We Will Miss More Than You.

When the “end” came for Senator Joe Lieberman (I-“only-give-a-fuck-about-me”—CT), it was hoped for by many here on the left that there would be more to it than what we got a week or so ago. More smoke. More fire. A bruising primary battle that he would again lose and again spit on the process with another third party run that would end this time with an exhausting loss and a bicuspid-loosening, lachrymose speech to end all bicuspid-loosening, lachrymose speeches.

Instead, we got the unexpected, punk-assed bow-out before the predicted knock-out…and a pretty damned lachrymose speech anyways.

We will take it.

You see, when you get a bow out like that, it means that said candidate's internal polling in-state is not merely on the negative end of things. It means that it is abysmal to the point where it can not be centrifugally spun to even neutral.

This final Senatorial term and his craven shenanigans during it soiled his reputation in Connecticut to the point where the number of those who'd backed him for the last twenty years, “just 'cuz”, was swamped by the number of those who'd begun to find themselves pissed off by him as far back as the 2000 Presidential election when he patty-caked with his direct opponent Dick Cheney(!), and the steadily increasing number of middle-grounders who found his post-September 11th hawk-fuck behavior growing more reprehensible by the month.

It would have been schadenfreudilly-icious fun to see it end for him all Santorum-like on a balloon and confetti-free stage with a small band of broken-hearted nutmegger supporters and a doddering, stiff-lipped John McCain by his side as the TV talking heads all went on about the sadness of it all / warrior carried out on his shield / “he was his own man” yada-yada they reflexively spew out of their mouths. “Just 'cuz”.

But instead, with his typical courage…Joe ran away rather than get run out. We'll never know just how awful the internals actually were, but let's just say that the numbers were not based on some random “it just happened”, shrug your shoulders “Wha?” anomaly. In politics, things happen for a reason. And Joe Lieberman started seeding the ground early for his abandonment by the Connecticut electorate.

In 1998, he let it be known to the generation of Democratic politicos that came after him and ascended to power without his king-making-thank-you-very-much! that he would not be ignored, when he came out as the one Dem to most obviously hop a cheap-ass hobo-ride on the right wing's “Get Bill Clinton Express” during the impeachment hearings. This was one of the first times I remember hearing about Lieberman's oh-so-convenient “moral” (pronounced by Joe in that annoying as hell, cloying “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” intonation) nature. It would sadly, not be the fucking last.

Two years later in 2000, having ridden the wave of fame from his standing alone against Bill Clinton's penis or something like that, we found Joe again on the national stage, having been chosen as the Vice Presidential candidate by then veep Al Gore in a stupidly misguided attempt to curry favor with the mewling, chicken-necked scolds of the voter base. Lieberman not only brought us all the new word for the opposite of voter excitement (“Joe-mentum”), but also let everyone know who his friends truly were when he he rhetorically gelded himself and handed over on the world's smallest silver platter said separated goods to his opponent, the famously venomous Dick Cheney during their lone Vice Presidential debate that season. His relationship with Cheney that night was like that of a sozzled patrician reveler at a dinner party in Georgetown who realizes upon grabbing the last canapé off the hors d'œuvres tray that a fellow “Villager” has grabbed the other end of it—where they laughingly break the fucking thing in half, each wolf it down and then cut some cushy deal two weeks later as they hack the 18th hole at Swan Point to bits because “Hey, guys like us…we have to get along, right?”.

Wrong.

Throw in his droopy-jowled capitulation to Bush, Cheney and the Brooks Brothers Rioters during the later 2000 recount fight, totally undermining the top-of-the-ticket push to count every vote and his passive / aggressive pattern became clear to all. Albeit a bit too clear for ol' Joe, though…

As the year 2004 bought him back into the limelight. That is, if you consider “the limelight” the bare periphery of the goddamned political stage where you could just make out his silhouette where the haze of the spotlight ends and stagehand-hiding darkness begins. He was ten things beyond an afterthought in the 2004 Democratic Presidential primaries and that universal opinion evidently bent what was left of the needle of his wildly spinning internal moral compass for fucking good. Sure, it's doubtful that his almost metronomic fellating of George Bush's divisive Iraq War in the face of its bullshitteousness (which as said bullshitteousness increased, so oddly did his support for it) didn't have a thing to do with Dems running from him on the national stage like he had the disease-of-the-day SARS shooting out of his pores at them, huh?. He took offense that Dems took offense over his playing doormat to the GOP's shit-covered shoes whenever possible and never looked back after that should-have-been-ruinous political season. Should-have-been-ruinous. Alas.

Shoot ahead to 2006 when even Nutmeg State Dems found him distastefully bitter and chose another Democrat, Ned Lamont to be their standard bearer for the party. Joe went to the mattresses at this point, invoking his alter ego Droopy Dog's mantra “You know what? That makes me mad.” and effectively laid waste to what was left of his Democratic bona fides with his third party run for the slot. It was going to be a win / win for him. If he won, he'd thumb his nose at the party he'd screwed into despising him, and even if he lost he'd split the vote so the “ungrateful” Dems couldn't possibly win, thus handing the seat over to his canapé-sharing palsie-walsies in the G.O.P. Scenario Number One came to pass, and from that point forward, he would be led only by his aforementioned (cue the heroic-but-dated Frank Capra movie music) “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll nature”.

Which meant nad-kicking anyone and any policy that he simply disliked because it originated from or benefited the party he'd been abandoning since his supposedly canny shanking of Bill Clinton in '98. Hell, as far back as his first term really, since he giddily backed George Bush the Senior's initial Gulf War in 1991. People forget about that little shot across the bow.

It was all downhill and ugly on big, square wheels after that for ol' Joey “Shanks”. From his unctuous, drama-queeny dithering on who to caucus with in the Senate and playing the Dems for chumps (not that hard of a thing, really) by invoking his magical, key Senate vote in return for attendance at key leadership meetings, only to run back to Mitch McConnell and crew with the “Ooh, Ooh! Here's what they're gonna do!” dirt, to his dude-who-will-not-leave-the-party-even-though-the-host's-gotta-go-to-work-the-next-day level of continued support for the war in Iraq after everyone else saw it for the debacle it was, to his bilious backing of Connecticut's Catholic-run Hospitals refusing to administer the morning after pill on the religious whims of their owners to rape victims (Yes…rape…VICTIMS!), which prompted his infamous “It's only a short ride to another hospital” callous-speak, his descent was like un-unwatchable blurry footage of a wild car crash from some cheesy “You Gotta See This!” late night reality video show. He'd campaign with his comrade-in-hypocrisy John McCain during the latter's 2008 stumble for President and then…then give a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008 that showed us all the bold difference between “Country Crazy” (Zell Miller) and “DINO Diabolical” (Lieberman himself). After President Obama's election and the Dems increasing their Senate numbers to where Lieberman's passive-aggresive pussy-footing meant even less, he was reduced to the occasional “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” pontification on whatever vote it was that would move him to be that ineffectual old man yelling at clouds in the sky.

Until now. Those bad internal polls and a little bird's tale of less-than-good responses from potential donors on an initial reach-out for a 2012 run were enough to squelch his hopes of torturing us with six more years of deeply felt moaning from that tom turkey neck of his.

Of course, just 48 hours ago, he let loose a spew of pride-bandaging nonsense about how he 'could have won if he chose to run' as political reporters' angle on him was shifting to how his once-considerable constituency had evaporated. His statement only went to prove the point that a self-aggrandizing, toothless leopard never really can change its spots. But just before all that and his retirement announcement, he desperately tried to pull one of the oldest and most transparent tricks in ye olde book of con-artistry. And that was his flexing what little power he had left in getting “Don't Ask—Don't Tell” repealed when he did and the way he did.

Take yourself back to high school, junior going into senior year—pretty much the stretch run of things and you'll probably remember this scenario either happening to you or saw it happen to any number of people: Kids who spent the last few chapters of their time there fucking off everything worth a damn—ditching every class they had, smoking in the stairwells, and acting like utterly self-centered tools to anyone who dared call them on these transgressions while simultaneously compounding the school's delinquency problem . All of a sudden as the end nears, they get it in their heads to come back to class, make up a few homework assignments and maybe slap together a project they should have been working on throughout and then expect that final, furtive burst of psuedo-conscientious activity to be the thing their entire student career is to be graded upon. “Pay no attention to my long legacy of assholery…how's about this fine poster board triptych and still-drying papier-mâché presentation on the life-cycle of the multitude-feeding, mother-fucking corn plant, huh?”

“I mean…I get a science medal for this, right?”

No.You. Do. Not.

Joe Lieberman was that dorkwad student for the entire second half of his Senate career, siding with the delinquents and thugs and being a general miscreant and pain-in-the-ass to everyone who expected better of him and let him know that they did. He comes to the obvious end of things and then, only then—did he suddenly figure it was finally okay to do a “gasp!” decent thing for some Americans who really needed it in the last session of Congress where he could really use some of that alleged capital he'd sat his wrinkled ass on for years. He is that asshole kid you will remember forever for overflowing all the toilets during lunch—when you were on one of them. He is the dude who thought it would be fun to mix the science class' magnesium flakes into the pottery class clay, thus blowing up the kiln and contaminating the gym with fumes for three months. During the winter. That dude…who wants you to instead remember for him for that excellent goddamned corn plant display he roughed off in the last three weeks of school. DADT repeal was great. But hey, it was the only decent thing to do…and special points are not awarded for doing what you are supposed to do, especially when in retrospect it is one of the only things you were supposed to do that you actually went out and did.

In a prizefight, you don't win 'cause you put together a pretty flurry in the last thirty seconds of each round after shambling about and tanking the first two minutes and thirty seconds of those rounds, because it never really fools the judges.

Only dive-taking bums do that. And Joe Lieberman…is a dive-taking bum.

I will not miss him, and neither will you. His bogus “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” nature will be an afterthought after countless afterthoughts before it. That passive-aggressive backstabbiness and craven ransom holding of votes that should have been simple-human-decency-based will not be thought of as ironic or crafty politicking, but rather as what they were—underhanded and self-serving. His migraine-inducing plays for integrity when confronted with his misdeeds, trotting out the sad, soggy old card of neo-cons everywhere—“I marched with Dr. King”—will absolutely not be missed. Real warriors of that time never have to bring that shit up out of context. Only post-mid-life-crisis ideological flip-floppers looking to cover their naked asses from rightful criticism work that mawkish angle out of the blue.

So, Joe…it ends…as bad things like root canals, IRS audits and weekend-long diarrheic bouts with Indian food poisoning always do. With the sufferer pained and worse for wear, but happier than a cat in a “Deadliest Catch” fish hold that the bad times are at long last over. Toodle-oooo, Joey, and I hope your future career at Fox is so quickly negotiated that when the Senate door swings shut to hit you where the Good Lord split you that it can only strike the vapor of whatever final legislative fart on the way out I know you'll decide to grace that august chamber with.

Here's a song to scoot out to. And please enjoy Oran's spoken word love poem at the 2:23 mark.

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Another Word Now Rendered Meaningless

Overheard in Buenos Aires: "Yess, yess, he vass my SSSOULMATE!"


For more reading, check out Jill's post at Brilliant at Breakfast. What she said. Plus, I'm so glad Republican Christianist heterosexuals are preserving the sanctity of marriage for all of civilization, aren't you?

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Project Dumb-Way

Or...The Tale Of The Would-Be Empress' New Clothes
(Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

In 1952, when then Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson propped his big ol' Size 11s up to give his dogs a rest during a campaign stop, he initiated one of the most famous political fashion brouhahas recorded to that date, and quite honestly to this date.

You see, the lyrical poet of the political class had worn the leather of his shoe sole clear through in his walking miles during campaigning, to where a semi-unsightly hole showed a gasp-worthy bit of sock. The little moment played a bit to Stevenson's “of the people” manque, but coming off the age of Hollywood glamor, with the likes of Cary Grant and Fred Astaire romping about while looking sartorially splendid (think of Grant's elegant steel-gray suit in that decade's “North By Northwest”, and Astaire in “The Band Wagon” and “Funny Face”), it put some people off. Superficial as it may be, Americans get hung up on how our presidents and vice-presidents look. Consider also that Adlai was coming off the old money patrician style of FDR and the clothes-conscious former hanerdasher Harry Truman, and you can see how years of conditioning geared the populace to expect...a little something nice when we see our chief executives in public settings.

Now granted, there have been some who have eschewed style and given the “Mr. Blackwells” of the world the back of their hands—like LBJ and his documented lack of style (The audiotape of him coarsely ordering gobs of cheap-as-hell pants from renowned polyester purveyors Haggar™ is dead-on, real-life cringe comedy when you hear it), and Jimmy Carter's ill-chosen “Mr. Rogers” cardigans for his chats during the mid-seventies energy crisis. For the most part though, there has been an amazing attention to what one wears as a “big willie” in D.C. There was the “just something I threw on” preppy style of the gorgeous Kennedy wardrobe, and the almost Edith Head-esque “Return to Hollywood” glamor of the high-end pieces the Reagans sported. Bill Clinton's deep-gorged Italian-silhouetted jackets, and Al Gore's embrace of the three-button redux look (never mind the unfairness of the “earth-tone” digs he endured) were also nice touches.

No one should be begrudged a level of “dap-ness”. Looking good isn't a crime—it's as much an expression of self as it is a nod to the people around you to say “Do you think I'm appealing?” Folks still, and always will—until we evolve to “Star-Child” status where our mere physical forms cannot contain our “nth level” psionic powers and we become beings of pure energy—often consider each other based on the outer appearance. It is our first impressions for the most part...how we look. So, looking good can matter in a big way, like it or not. And going out of our way to do so is sometimes part of the game.

Which brings us to this election, and the latest brouhaha to sprout dandelion-like from it—namely, the $150,000 dollars the Republican National Committee spent to make-over Sarah Palin for visual public consumption.

$150,000 dollars in just over a month. Clothes. Shoes. Hair, and all that. One-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars. Thus, the tale is told...

The life of a vice-presidential candidate may be gruelling, but it can also be glamorous - $150,000 glamorous.
The Republican National Committee has reportedly spent about that amount on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's wardrobe since she was chosen as John McCain's running mate less than two months ago.

___________________________

It looks as though Mrs Palin's "the heels are on, the gloves are off" comment was more firmly based in reality than was previously thought.

In the midst of a financial meltdown, those from what Mrs Palin called the "pro-America areas of this great nation"- the Middle America of Joe and Jane the Plumber - have been staying away from the stores.

___________________________

Retail sales decreased by 1.2% in September - the most dramatic drop since 2005. High-end stores' sales have reflected this fall.

But the RNC, for its part, has been bucking the trend.

The party treated Mrs Palin to a one-day $75,000 shopping trip at swanky department store Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis.
A romper suit and hat with matching ears for Mrs Palin's baby, Trig, was bought at another shop in the city for $92.

The committee also dished out nearly $41,850 in St Louis, and $4,100 for make-up and hair consulting.

Altogether the RNC spent about $150,000 on clothing, hairstyling, make-up and other "campaign accessories" in September, after Mrs Palin was selected as Mr McCain's running mate.
This adds up to more than double the average American household's yearly income.

Now...why has this tidbit of the trail become such an issue?

Well, our own Sara—who were she in a policy or any other debate theme with Governor Palin would see said debate called on cuts, carnage and cumulative damage to the addle-pated Alaskan candidate from words alone—lays out the sartorial issues in detail down below a tad. And beautifully I might add. I thought about going that route with my take, but I'm glad Sara the brilliant went with her breakdown first. Mine is going to be a little bit different. So again, we ask: “Why has this tidbit of the trail become such an issue”?

Is it because of sexism? I think not. Remember the supernova-heat hell John Edwards caught for getting a $400 haircut? Or the Clintons being raked over the coals for alleged expensive coifs on the road that tied up California air traffic? The issue wasn't gender so much as it was the appearance of over-indulgence for the sake of vanity.

The difference with those cases however are starkly defined from the Palin clothes-horsing. You see, Bill and Hillary and John Edwards didn't try to write off the bills for their prettification on someone else's dime. And what's more, the amounts they spent pale like an arctic ice sheet compared to the numbers Sarah Palin gidddily ran up in less than a month. $150,000 dollars for a month's worth of wardrobe. Why does this resonate with people?

We live in a fashion-conscious culture where the public watches “Project Runway”, and has an inkling about what things cost. A culture where “What Not To Wear” is known down to the level of the amount contestants are given to spend to re-vamp their wardrobe—approximately $5,000—three percent of what Sarah Palin dropped on her sprees at Neiman-Marcus and Macy's. It also resonates with people because of that annoying, mosquito-like flitting bugaboo called hypocrisy. Palin has spent her more etmyologically lucid moments prattling on about her “Hockey Mom”-ishness, her so-called folksiness and ability to connect with the “common folk”—a dumpster-load of talk of Johnny Lunchpails, Joe Six-packs and Plumbers, and the Susie Housecoats, and Sally Run-in-her-stockings who gosh-you-betcha make Amurrrka, “Amurrrrka”. Fred-the-this, Jane-the that. Everyone but Kiddie TV's “Bob The Builder” and Good Times' “Ned The Wino”. Palin's attempt to play at populism is given a big, Fat Bastard-sized lie when this supermarket spree she went on is looked at just a little bit.

Where in the Wide World Of Sports is Lady Lynn Forrester De Rothschild with her Swarovski-encrusted hammer of fury at elitism over this bullshit? Michelle Obama goes on “The View” in a $200 dollar dress available at an online store, and she's an elitist? But Sarah Palin goes buck-wild like a dollar sign-eyed Wilma Flintstone, running down a Bedrock street with her arms piled high with Mastodon furs while yelling “Cha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-rrrrrrrge it!”, and she claims she's the one you more easily can see handing cups of Sunny Delight to your kids off the back porch?

Nanook, please.

Again, I begrudge no one their right to by “fly”, but don't sit there and try to tell the American people you're “All About the Wal-Mart” when you just dropped 150K in a month on duds in places “Real America” is going to be hard pressed to buy jack-doodle-shit from this coming holiday season. One hundred and fifty-K. On. One. Sorry-ass. Month's. Worth. Of. Shopping.

But hey, I do have a heart. You see, I can understand the reason for a bit of an “upgrade”, when fashion disasters like the one below happen...







“Clouds in my coffee?” No problem. Clouds on your OVERCOAT? Oh sweet Jesus...












When you are wearing a coat that looks like a background still from a grainy, old “Deputy Dawg” cartoon, you undeniably do need some help with your gear. Seriously. But to show you the idiocy and scattershot nature of the McCain campaign, don't you think it would have been a safer, and savvier move for the rictused Cindy to call upon one of her numerous couturiers, or a designer friend or two to help poor cloud-coated Sarah out of her fashion fix? Maybe have them lend her some nice stuff Harry Winston-style for the campaign's stretch run? Where were the rich republican members of the pearls and cashmere set with their pulling together to get Sarah some nice duds? Perhaps a call to a major retailer like Ann Taylor, or Barami—sheeeeit, Dress Barn, dammit for a simple promotion deal where she wears their stuff in return for playing them up on the trail as being “Where hockey moms like me shop, youbetcha!” Get that retail segment goin' kids. Good for the economy.

Unless, maybe...Cindy actually doesn't give a rat's ass about the trashy Palin and couldn't be bothered to lift a finger for her on this front, and designers and retailers didn't want their “brands” to be associated with the decidedly un-cool, and un-sublime Ms. Sarah too. Hmmmmmm.

More likely though, is this simple explanation: The GOP's noted inability to think things through rationally just moved them to do what they always do—namely throw a shitload of money at a “problem” and figure that maybe, God would just sort it all out later. In the end, it would have been better had a chunk of that money been spent on a few large-print copies of the constitution and an easy-to-remember newspaper and magazine subscription or two. Just sayin'.

But no. They sent this fool into Neiman-Marcus where she dropped $75,000 on one spree, to Macy's where she melted $42,000 of plastic, and another $4,000 on make-up, leading one to ponder the question, “Can a supposedly snarling pitbull actually tell the difference between a $1.50 tube of Lip Smackers® and a $150 tube of Socialite Collection Burnt Cinnamon collagen-enriched gloss and plumper?”

Here's the thing—as Sara noted, for all that money spent, it ain't gettin' homegirl much. What I know about womens' clothes indicates that there was little thought to the “bang-for-the-buck” insofar as what they spent and what she got. Our own doyenne of the ladies couture set points out that for a LOT less, Palin could have replicated the same look. But of course, she didn't. Whoever got the commissions on those sales must be laughing up their 3/4 length, rouched silk sleeves. It could ironically be that's the right's infamous “trickle-down” effect in action...I don't know. But what I DO know is that this is a P.R. nightmare for Team Dumbass. You know it is when they desperately switch the subject to the thing they just got through saying they didn't want to talk about—the economy, as they pooh-pooh the “triviality” of bringing this pish-posh up.

And I am amazed at the ham-fisted handling of this thing from A to Z. I'm no campaign consultant, but couldn't this have been turned into a “Rally 'Round Our Sarah” thing with a publicized effort to get maybe 150,000 republican women to send a dollar each to outfit the proud barracuda?

“Two Pairs Of Mules For Sister Sarah! (CLICK HERE TO DONATE)”?

Wouldn't a simple thing like that have been a neat way to tap into the abiding love for the new-politics standard-bearer who allegedly so “energized the base”?

Unless maybe...“ahem!”, that so-called energy is actually much more spark than shattering bolt and the “huge” support is in reality so thin that a campaign such as that would have been embarrassing when it failed publicly? Hmmmmmmm a-gain.

Even with the probable failure of such an initiative, the timing of the plan put in effect could not be worse. Companies are cutting jobs with the gusto and attention to detail of a boot camp barber who's five hours late starting a three-day furlough, and for Palin and the GOP to drop this sort of coin for something so literally superficial is to remove the tires from the truck full of nitro and drive it full-tilt “Wages of Fear”-style down a rutted mountain trail.

A disaster.

$150,000 is a lot of money any damn time. But when Americans are seeing their retirement money burn and ember away, as their present job becomes a waiting game for that dreaded unscheduled Tuesday “organizational meeting” to come, that kind of expenditure ain't never gonna wash. And the “we're going to give the stuff to charity” after--the-exposure dodge is just that. If you think Sarah Palin had any intention of giving so much as one thread of those vines back, I have a lovely fucking bridge in Alaska to sell you, with one end moored to the land, and the other trailing off into the fog of Limbo City, Population: Zero. See, this ain't the first time missy's hooked a vacuum cleaner up to a money-swollen teat and sucked it all away for herself. She's been illegally duking the state of Alaska out of gobs of Benjamins for flying her loved ones all over the place for non-governmental events. She finagled a way to get the builders of Wasilla Sports Complex arena to build her a new house too, on the down-low and pretty much gratis. So spare us the pity about her P.R.-hyped financial predicaments and hardscrabbble background and how in the end, she's just a poor, scuffling “Hockey Mom”. She's a Grade-A chiseler and knows exactly what she's doing when she signs on for every little perk she can grab. I mean...a Louis Vuitton bag for her seven year old? While folks are Coinstar™-ing stray change from their seat cushions to expand their household budgets?

“Hockey Mom”, my ass. “Hokey” is more like it.

She isn't a damn thing like the people she's playing at playing to, these mythical “Real Americans” she sees from her bangs-over-the-bubble head. You strip away the “Little House On The Prairie” gel from the lens and you see she's really batting and winking her eyes not at the virtuous and tolerant Charles Ingalls, but at a dingy-shirted Archie Bunker. And folks, even he's kind of bent outta shape about the spree. Not fer nuttin', there!

All that money spent— for what exactly? Oh yes, clothes and acccoutrements, but make no mistake—the RNC and John McCain were trying to buy something else for her here. Namely, some class. And that, “my friends”, is something that doesn't come off the shelf or rack. My father, God rest him—used to tell me about how a poor man with class in his Sunday Best always looked better than a buffed-up Park Avenue swell who had none. “Class is something you have in you. You get it from good home training. Respect for people and yourself. It's a way you carry yourself in life. And you can't buy it, not for all the money in the world. Ever.”

Lord, but people still do try. Thus, with three swipes of an RNC Debit Card, the VP candidate's story went from that of the sacrificing, ascetic fantasy image of “Sarah, Plain and Tall”, to “Sarah The Would-Be Empress...And Her New Clothes.”

I think we all know the moral of that old tale, don't we? How unbound hubris and a misplaced sense of infallibility is the worst sort of adornment of all...and Palin's remake / script flip here in 2008 is a nice, modern take on it—showing how the ill-gotten garments of a hypocrite can expose one just as surely as proud and stupid nudity. How it can expose you utterly.

As a deluded despot...and yes...as a fool.

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The Purpose Driven Life (unless you're gay)

Church officials said they'd hoped to have some tickets available for the public but ran out when they couldn't satisfy demand among church members, who got the first crack at tickets that sold for $500 to $2,000.

Church officials said they decided to charge admission for people who wanted a chance to see the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls because of the expenses to stage the event and provide television feeds to a host of networks. ocregister.com

Ka-ching!

Seriously that must have been a nice little haul they brought in, but the "cost of network feeds"? What are you kidding, do you really think people are going to believe that the networks didn't pay top dollar for this?

Purpose driven life, indeed...

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Secrets and Lies

I Am The Eggman. I Am The Eggman. I Am the Douchebag!

“You know, just when I think you're the shallowest man I know, you somehow manage to drain a little bit more out of the pool.”
Elaine to Jerry—Seinfeld, Episode #59, “The Implant”

I know not to expect anything remotely resembling class from a bottom-feeding miscreant like Matt Drudge, what with his track record for blaring, and then cowardly running away from self interest-serving lies, operating as an unabashed smear hit-man for the right, and of course covering the asses of his wingnut benefactors through widely disseminated push-back (written by them). He's a disingenuous hack, masquerading as some sort of next-wave “journalist”, when in the end he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper back if his pen had a diamond tip. The key to his “success”? It is in no way related to the quality of his “reportage”. It merely is the manifestation of something my father used to tell me all the time about seeming unfairness and how merit oftentimes does not win out.

“Sometimes son...it isn't about being good. It's about being FIRST.”

Drudge? Merely the dude with an idea and a faster baud modem than his pre-histor-internet peers.

Add to that good timing a petty, and vindictive personality and his having all the scruples of a rabid jackal loping about the unguarded newborn wing of a hospital and you get the man in whole.

However, give the devil his due. The one thing the marble-mouthed cyber-thug has going for him is a well-cultivated network of snitches and lapdogs waiting with bated breath for his every gutteral utterance.

Thus, when he breaks a story—regardless of how damaging—it can hit with the force of a stray spark in a vapor-filled gas main.

He did just that late last week when he blared in a banner headline the till-then-clandestine presence of Britain's Prince Harry's serving with his fellow British troops in Afghanistan. Clandestine because of known threats against the young Royal's life, and his unit should his location become known.

Just...wow. (via Crooks & Liars)

Tsk...tsk...tsk...
The 23-year-old prince was posted in mid-December to the restive Helmand province of southern Afghanistan under a cloak of secrecy following an unusual agreement reached between the media and the army.

However, the arrangement collapsed after news was leaked on the US website, the Drudge Report, yesterday.

The ministry said the decision to withdraw the prince, who is third in line to the throne, was taken primarily because “the worldwide media coverage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan could impact on the security of those who are deployed there, as well as the risks to him as an individual soldier.”

So, this lunk-headed bomb-tosser basically jeopardized not only Prince Harry's life, but that of his unit-mates just-fucking-because? I am no fan of war—it's a disgusting, life-coarsening thing whether justified or not, but I will give serious credit to those who put their asses on the line to fight—for the poor grunts humping it for college money, or a sense of duty or family tradition. And for someone like Prince Harry who deigned to serve when he—unlike the VAST majority of the children of political privilege here in this country—could have sat on his ass, sippeing at Pimms and Sevens till he was a silver-haired do-nothing King. Via birthright he could have ducked anything—he could probably garotte “Who Want's To be A Millionaire's” Chris Tarrant in the middle of a programme and in the end, walk away unscathed.

But...he chose to serve and was doing so with an understanding that it would be kept secret as a matter of national security until apparently Matt Drudge ran out of unflattering Hillary pics to run and ran dry of synonyms for ragheaded darkie to pillory Obama with—so, he went with a stupid, attention-getting, red-cheeked shit-in-the-street leak of confidential and potentially danger-increasing information.

You know Goddamned well that were it one of President Bush's responsibility-phobic daughters' Apple-tini sodden asses on the line in a secret war-zone location, Drudge would've made the Sphinx look like a sodium-pentatholed Chris Tucker with not only his silence, but a vicious lashing out at anyone daring to break that silence.

And that's the crux of it—his naked partisanship and a-moral “fuck propriety—I'll run with any manner of story about anyone who isn't fellating me with deference and perks” style. He'll trash you not out of any sense of wrong or right (or whether what he's pushing is actually true or not—as Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton all would painfully find out), but just because he can, because it serves his wingnut masters, and because dirt fucking sells.

The ultimate irony is that for all his incessant muckraking on others, he's often the first to rail about someone or some entity endangering national security or his backers' interests through their actual tough investigative reporting. And the right-wing media he funnels his swill to join him in that double-standard. “How dare you release the Abu Ghraib pictures! They're inflammatory!” “We need to prosecute those in the press who leaked about this goverment's illegal secret prisons!” “Someone must pay for daring to talk about the depth of our illegality in spying on Americans”. But of course, you've barely heard a word about Drudge's shitty little line-step because he's “their boy”. Add into the mix the fact that Drudge has some nasty “secrets” about himself that he litigiously fights with all of his hypocritical, indignant might—via Crooks and Liars:

Many have asked about the egg reference in my earlier post. It comes from an article in Salon back in 2000. Jeannette Walls had a spat with Drudge over her book entitled “Dish” in which she revealed some of Matt Drudge’s preferences. She actually never mentioned anything about eggs in the book. Matt brought it out into the open:

After a mutual friend of both gossips tipped off Drudge as to just what these “lurid allegations” (about him—LM's note) were—a nasty case of pubic lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre egg fetish—he began to spread them himself….

“He likes to have sex with eggs. He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies.”

“It’s all very well sourced,” she told the New York Post’s Page Six. “If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass.”

Splat!

And here, via Raw Story:

Drudge is a fine example of a nut-job. He’s obsessed with being known—starting non-gay rumors about himself, pestering big papers to get coverage—but wants absolutely nothing “out” about his personal life. Certainly not the kind of details he’d splash across his page, anyway. Unless it’s a rumor he tried to start about himself and Laura Ingraham. He even reportedly asked the New Times that no full body photos accompany that interview. That is either one of the gayest things I’ve ever heard or one of the craziest.

Pretty secretive little panty-sniifing (or should I say,“tighty-whit-ey sniffing”), garbage-picking parasite...ain't he? He uses his contacts and “ins” all over the place to gather dirt on pissed-off, would-be retaliators to keep them from ratting out his own creepy-fuck behavior. The day's gonna come though when somebody bigger, badder and with a more powerful “gun” than him will cut him off at the knees and leave him choking on the refuse cloud in history's dustbin. It happens to 'em all. His political and temperamental forefather Walter Winchell saw his once-mighty influence first blunted, and then quickly drained away as people finally tired of his knee-jerk reactionaryism and then saw himself mocked mercilessly in the media—particularly the scathing classic film (One of my all-time favorites) “Sweet Smell Of Success”...

“The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after (screenwriter) Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell Of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.”

In the end, the once omnipotent and widely read Winchell was reduced to standing on a Hollywood street corner handing out mimeographed copies of his “column” for free to disinterested passers-by like some sandwich-boarded, nudie-show barker passing out coupons for “Live Girlz!” Drudge's years of hypocrisy—just like Winchell's—and rank amorality will certainly bring him low when the worm turns, as it always does at some point. It'll be the ultimate comeuppance for a turd-gobbling little cyber-thug like him. Countless people unfairly outed. Security and highly sensitive relationships fatally compromised. Reputations...trashed. Lives actually endangered.

All for the sake of a nasty addiction to running people down, spreading gossip, and shilling for parties who mean no one well. All that and what cheap, fleeting fame it grants. That day of payback's pimp-slap'll be a sweet and vicious one...as it is for all “can't take it” bullies.

The prescient words of a then-Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson come rushing to mind...

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

How true those words rang...especially when the bullying Tyson would ironically find himself on the receiving end of a sea-changing “punch in the mouth.”

Do “dirt” and you set yourself up for a “dirt-nap” Trade in shit, and you'll find yourself eating it. Callously play around with people's lives and you'll eventually see your own ruined.

Pimp a secret...push a lie. When fate bites back...don't wonder why.

There's more...

Gone.

D.R. Scott said it with one word in comments yesterday within Hubris' post below on the young woman who was apparently gang-raped by workers at a KBR work camp (Kellogg Brown & Root until April was a Halliburton subsidiary. How lucky for Halliburton to have spun the company off before this story broke), and then held prisoner in a shipping container until a sympathetic guard loaned her his cell phone, which she used to call her father 7,000 miles away stateside.

Her father called her local Congressman, and he called the State Department—to rescue an American citizen from a rogue American contractor in the middle of a war zone. They just roll so wrong off the tongue—the words. Agents were dispatched to the American mercenaries site and the abused woman worker was freed.

I'll say it again.

Gone.

As D.R. Scott elaborated, “Whatever moral authority the United States claimed to have is now gone.”

Totally. Painfully. Sadly.

Gone.

The next time you hear some half-cerebrumed fool asking with a puerile whine, “Why does the world dislike us?”, after you laugh in his face and backhand him in his drooping jaw, stand over his unconscious body and run this case down for him.

This is how we're treating our own people who've gone over there ostensibly to help “the cause”.

Imagine what in Satan's fucking name these roided-up loose cannons are doing to Iraqis who don't have a congressman to call.

Gone. Gone. Gone.

Here are some of the ugly particulars of the case—the sorts of things that evaporate all moral authority and then seeds the clouds for a rain of karmic blowback so drenching that Hell itself would steam from the deluge's leaching in.

...the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

“Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston,“ Jones says she was told.

Yes. they effectively threatened her with blackballing in the industry were she to talk. Speak out and we'll destroy your livelihood. Got it? Good. Now, the fellas need a little...how do you say, entertaining...

Gone.

A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

“It's very troubling,” said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. “The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice.”

------------------------------------

Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.

The Bush administration's “enforcer” arm, the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales, and it's torture-enabling State Department actively sought to cover this whole thing up up, and to this day still is—then constructed a Rube Goldberg-ian policy contraption that works only to protect criminals who operate in the name of this government.

“Gone, baby gone.”

Hubris' post ended with this question:

“Anybody want to guess how long before we start hearing the attacks on this 22 year old girl?”

The answer? Maybe an hour. From Melanie in comments:

“One quick google reveals that there are already websites that are calling her "rape bait" because she is pretty.

And from Serving Patriot in the same thread:

...Just read the comments at the ABC news website for all their disgusting, "whe deserved it" of "invited it" glory.”

I won't link to the ugliness. You know where to go to find it. Bet you get there in under four clicks.

I'll count down. Five, four three, two, one...

Gone.

This government has taken whatever standing...whatever tenuous higher ground we may have had...and rammed it through a wood-chipper.

Then burned it to cinders with a flamethrower.

And followed that with a nice, long hydrochloric acid bath—agitating the last molecules with a vigorous cocktail-shaker move...into so much nothingness.

Gone.

You get that when the President pimps out his female Secretary of State, chuckling up his sleeve with his bought-and-paid-for pundits and weirdly-nicknamed aides de camp over disrespect of her at the hands of an arrogant, sexist head of state.

It's a by-product of humor being made at the expense of a woman running for President, where a male opponent doesn't challenge a supporter giddily calling her, a Senate colleague of his—a “bitch”.

What do you expect when the President won't subtly pressure, or even ask a question of a supposedly close fellow world leader whose government's judiciary sentences a female rape victim to 200 lashes for being in the company of men she is not related to, and then for speaking out against said court's injustice?

And all, all fades away when this government will give its mercenary army carte blanche...

...to run wild in a war theatre, and roughshod over an overtaxed and underpaid military who they are free to abuse...

...to murder meandering civilians, and punish them not...

...to rape, and imprison a fellow American—a woman, and threaten her with sanction should she seek justice for the ultimate denial of dignity.

Fades? No. Thrown away is more like it. Prestige cast aside is no longer prestige, but is like all that is gutter-tossed. Refuse.

“One can judge a civilization by the way it treats its women.”, Helen Foster Snow once said. And much to our collective chagrin, we are found wanting. Sadly, sadly wanting.

But there America stands, or rather...wobbles....with reptilian tears streaming down and a querulous “Ted Baxter” bawl erupting from its gut.

“Why, oh why, oh why, oh whyyyyyyyyyy do 'they' hate us so much? It's our freedoms! They hate us for our freedoms!”

But the truth is revealed. Ugly and gnarled, un-pretty, but real—they don't hate our freedoms. “They” scorn, mock, and laugh at our loud pretentions to them.

A well of good will, dusty now and webbed with dry, burning hypocrisy.

Every drop...

...gone.

There's more...

Presidential Presser Poop-plops.

“Holding ha-aaaaaaannnnds...making all kinds of plans...”

A fortnight ago, I took the Bush administration and the Saudi government to task for their cushy, co-dependent relationship, and how that “relationship” has adversely affected what America calls “The War On Terror™”, while also severely damaging what little “moral authority” we had left in pressing for international human rights.

That “relationship”, based on America's crack-ho' addiction to oil (as a resource and as a corporate revenue generator) and the Saudis exploiting said addiction in their position as a main supplier of petro-crack has resulted in a blindered moral relativism on the U.S.'s part. We look the other way on the Saudi's retrograde excesses in return for continued, flutter-lidded, white-eyed suckling at the oil teat.

What set me off? Post September 11th, Bush cynically opted to put no pressure at all on the powers-that-be who run the country where 3/4 of the attack's hijackers hailed from—those same powers-that-be whose oil revenues finance the religio-piate Madrasas (schools) that often serve as anger-to-action incubators for many a frustrated young Muslim man. A need for oil for all those Hummers and Suburbans, and an equal lust for that same oil to reap refining profits from is a sad reality of how we choose to live—and it reflects itself in the choices our government makes. Ugly choices that manifest themselves in moral hypocrisy where we pushed for war with a non-aggressor Muslim country who not a single 9-11 hijacker hailed from. Hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced, a civil war fomented by our stupidity in Iraq—whose people didn't do a Goddamned thing...and this government couldn't even talk loud to the Saudis about maybe fixing some of the eminently fixable shit they passive-aggressively promote that is a threat to us?

Yes...that bothered me in a big way.

But...you'd like to think that at some point in time...maybe by dint of the simple law of averages, some balance could creep into the mix when it comes to massaging foreign policy. You can borderline understand the blunt-force stupid of raw human nature in the single-minded “all-take/no-give” school of dealing with so-called mortal international enemies. It's not smart—but you can sort of see where it comes from. I have trouble grasping the flip side though—the “all-give/no-take” mindset when it comes to dealing with so-called allies.

The case of the young Saudi woman who was brutally gang-raped and found herself on the sentencing end of 200 lashes for apparently “asking for it” (actually 90 for the “crime”, the extra 110 for talking to the press) via the heinous sin of her daring to be with men other than a relative, is one such example of the “all-give/no-take” imbalance on America's part. There was of course, the typical “Damn those crazy Moo-slims! All of 'em!” spike of crazy in the 48 hours of news coverage it garnered. But again, there was little from our government beyond a glassy-eyed burp of “There, we've spoken on it, let's move on” from our flaxen, Presidential spokes-bot Dana Perino.

The administration let the whole thing slide as if it was slathered with a barrel-ful of low-grade crude.

However, it hit a dry spot yesterday when a reporter brought the story up at Bush's presser...and Bush's handling of it tells you everything you need to know about why we're as fucked as we are presently as a country. Diplomatically, public relations-wise, and as any sort of world arbiter of simple decency.

From the presser (Via First Draft):

HENRY: On another issue of credibility in the Mid East — At the Annapolis Summit you used your influence to get Saudi Arabia to the table but I wonder whether now you will use you influence to do something about the Saudi rape case that has gotten so much international attention? What goes through your mind when you hear about a 19 year old Saudi woman getting gang raped by seven men and basically a Saudi court blames the victim and sentences her to 200 lashes? You spoke to King Abdullah by telephone in the last couple of weeks. Did you press him on this case? If so what did you say and if not, are you giving him a pass?”

Let me jump in here for just one second. The raw transcript of this exchange doesn't give you the full story. You shoud see it. (via Crooks and Liars) When Bush was asked about this, he looked as if someone had slashed him across the gut and pulled some of his intestines out through the wound. He was stunned. Nearly in shock that not only had a reporter dared ask him such a pointed question, but also that he clearly had no clue of how to handle it via talking points. He stammered, stumbled, blinked and blinked and blinked, as if perhaps with mystical snapping shut of his eyes he could make the questioner disappear like some poor unfortunate who displeased Barbara Eden's “Jeannie”. Eventually I guess, whoever was at the console to send him messages via his top-of-the-back transmitter came up with something...but alas, not quiteenough. Back to the bullshit response...

BUSH: My first thoughts were these. What happens if this happened to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been — I would have been very emotional, of course. I’d have been angry at those who committed the crime, and I would be angry at the state that didn’t support the victim, and our opinions were expressed by Dana Perino from the podium.

HENRY: Did you press King Abdullah about it personally?

BUSH: I talked to King Abdullah about the Middle eastern peace. I don’t remember if that subject came up.

HENRY: If it was that important to you why wouldn’t you at that level bring it directly up to King Abdullah?

BUSH: (Ed. note—Very testily now) There’s plenty of time. He knows our position loud and clear.

And he ran from follow-up on that punji-stick of a question like a scalded dog, howling all the way. This pusilanimous pisspot of a President. For someone who constantly talks of good and evil in the weighty tones of characters from Faust, it doesn't take very much to expose him as little more than a prompter reader when it comes to his depth of real concern with the ideas of fairness and justice. He fell back on a cheap, emotional stunt when challenged and when the reporter basically said, “Thanks for your little scene from 'The Searchers'—now tell us what the fuck you actually did!”, the little coward punted and ran for the sideline. His non-response was a dog-whistle to our international “friends” who don't believe in justice and equality—“We've got your back on that, G!” And it was an unwitting sub-sonic alert to those we are at odds with...

“Sit n' spin, Geneva!”

What do you expect when the world's supposed supa-ultra-mega-hulk-on-steroids-plus-god-and-the-core-of-the-fucking-atom-power not only looks the other way on, but practices torture? When we encourage let our mercenaries and too many of our soldiers kill innocent civilians and then pat 'em on the back? When we allow elections to be toyed with as if by some rogue junta, and routinely see our nation's laws subverted by racism, sexism and all the other “isms” that don't impact the entrenched powers?

There was an old “Pixie and Dixie” cartoon where the cat, Mr. Jinx stood off to the side laughing at a warring, destructive Pixie and Dixie laying waste to each other instead of battling him—the crafty instigator.

Jinxie chuckled his goofy chuckle and said “Hyenh! I love it when they do it to themselves. We're doing it to ourselves. Operating under a bent, ultimately lawless template and reaping the awful whirlwind from it.

In the end...I can't blame the Saudis one fucking bit for taking full advantage of our hypocrisy. That's human nature too.

“If the so-called moral arbiter is fucking up, and is beholden to me for something he needs, and won't press me to get right—why the hell should I tow the line?”

What was that phrase Robert Bork used? “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”? Sheeeee-it—this is a drunken stumble down a steep, icy hill. Maybe they'll have the crack-up at the bottom on YouTube or something. The “Jackass”-ery of civilization as we know it.

“Eeeeeee-yooooonh.”

As an added treat, here's the question that torqued off the little pissypants President and sent him scurrying away to look at torn-out Chivas Regal ads and dream away lustily...'cause you know he don't drink no more...

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. I may want to apologize in advance because --

BUSH: Please do.

Q: I can't help but read your body language this morning, Mr. President. You seem somehow dispirited, somewhat dispirited.

BUSH: I think you need to apologize for advance -- (laughter.) This is like -- all of a sudden, it's like Psychology 101, you know? (Laughter.)

Q: A question related to that, sir, is, twice now, on Iran and Iraq, the facts have failed you on things that you've been outspoken on telling the American people. Senator Harry Reid is saying on the war spending issue that "the President is not leveling with the American people."

BUSH: On the war spending issue?

Q: Yes. Are you, in fact, troubled by --

BUSH: Why don't you clarify that for me?

Q: Well, are you --

BUSH: What aspect of it? That I don't think we ought to fund the troops?

Q: No, sir.

BUSH: I think we need to fund the troops. I submitted a supplemental last February. Anyway --

Q: My question, sir, is, are you feeling troubled about your standing here yesterday, about perhaps facing a credibility gap with the American people?

BUSH: No, I'm feeling pretty spirited, pretty good about life, and have made the decision to come before you so I can explain the NIE. And I have said Iran is dangerous, and the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary. I'm using this NIE as an opportunity to continue to rally our colleagues and allies.

Q: Do you think it --

BUSH: It makes it -- the NIE makes it clear that the strategy we have used in the past is effective.
[snip]
And so, kind of Psychology 101 ain't working. It's just not working. I understand the issues, I clearly see the problems, and I'm going to use the NIE to continue to rally the international community for the sake of peace. Thank you very much.

Now when I finally saw this in its entirety, (hopefully the C-SPAN feed works) this segment played out like a sitcom segment with a fade to blackout. The questioner asks a testy, anxious Bush a question about his obvious discomfort at the podium with what seemed to be a bad day's going. He cited negative body language and tone.

Bush of course denied it—and then proceeded (you need to see the moment to truly get it) to grump, and snipe, then slouch and finger-shake, and finally yell and cut off any further questions with an angry stomp out.

A commenter in a previous thread said of the presser “GWB had an emperor sans clothing moment.”

It was that and more.

It was a “Law & Order three-minutes-of” moment too. That moment in the courtroom or interrogation room where the guilty defendant invariably snaps and exposes himself as exactly what Jack McCoy or Detective Goren just set him up as being.

But most embarrassingly, it was also a “Sexual Chocolate” moment.

Don't know what I mean by “Sexual Chocolate”? Come To America with me and all will be clear. And make sure to watch to the end, kids.



SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!

There's more...

Won't You Come Home Bill Donohue, Won't you Come Home?

Or, “A Good Batshit Winger Is Hard To Find...When There's A Story He Doesn't Want Talked About”

But talk about it we will! I mean...well...it's perfect! It's got sex, it's got crime, it's got a police dashcam video...

...oh yeah, and stuffed-in fake boobs, a pleather mini-skirt, and likes to cruise for tricks (as a hooker!) when he isn't at his nine-to-five—as a principal at a Louisville Catholic High School.



Via Cliff at Brave New Films: and The Smoking Gun:

Meet Paul Schum. The Kentucky man, a Catholic school principal, is facing a prostitution charge after Louisville police found him dressed like a woman and loitering in an alley Tuesday night.

According to a criminal citation, a copy of which you'll find here,, Schum, 50, was wearing fishnet stockings, fake breasts, and “all black leather” when officers discovered him “loitering in high drug trafficking and prostitution area.” The citation notes that Schum, who heads Bethlehem High School, had “no reason for why he was in alley...dressed up in women's leather other than for prostitution.” Schum, now on paid leave from his school post, is due in court on November 27 to answer a misdemeanor charge of loitering for the intent of prostitution.

Ohhhhh...we're being mean, I guess. Perhaps we should give the stiletto-ed “headmaster” (will I go to hell for saying that?) the benefit of the doubt, and take his lawyer's word for the real deal behind who what went down:

“..this gentleman's lawyer has stated that he owns rental property in that area and had been dressed for a Halloween party and for some reason (lacking common sense) he decided to go check on the property since he was in the area while still dressed up.”

Yes. That'll work!

But strangely, I can't find hide, nor a single, greasily combed-over hair of the spluttering, Christofascist nutjob William Donohue on this issue! Where is he? It's damn near holiday time—isn't there a “War On Christmas” on that he should be fighting with his candy-cane sword and mantle-cookie shield? I mean...shouldn't he be all over this issue, like clingy, faux-patent leather all over a 50-year-old dude's sweaty ass? I'm sure he's seen the video of the—yeccch!—arrest, right?



Really, Now!

Where in the name of angry bloggers and milk-chocolate Jesus can that man be?

Maybe he's lying in a gutter somewhere, injured.

Or perhaps he's laid up in a hospital bed, lost and disoriented...after an unfortunate, accidental run-in with one of those Godless, mocking celebrities?

Damn you Conan O'Brien...what hath you wrought?

There's more...

Fucking incredible

Q: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?

MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

Dana Perino, Whitehouse Press Secretary on Pakistan.

I just had to post that... cuz... I don't know... Shark, Fonzie, Richie, or something...

There's more...

Sick And Tired Of Your Sor-rys

What Hubris said...and then some...

Some 30-odd years ago, the poet/playwright Ntozake Shange wrote and choreographed one of the legendary pieces in the “Black Arts Movement” canon of the late 60's/early 70's—the blazing “For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf”. It was an amazing piece, dealing with the trials and tribulations of a variety of nameless women, identified only by the color dresses they wore onstage. Some of the most penetrating words in the performances came from the characters who suffered the most damage—for example, the “Lady in Red” and her recalling the terrible domestic abuse she absorbed. Many of the other characters would cite, breathlessly and in great detail how they coped with abuse they suffered—physical AND emotional.

The moment I recall best from it is a monologue by the “Lady In Blue” who fed-up with the constant enabling, and wallowing in the battered-wife syndrome that has cost her too much of her time, and waaaaaay too much of her dignity, says “enough is enough” and lays down the law for her suitors present—and in the future, that she is “sick and tired of their sorrys”.

“If you called to say you’re sorry,
Call somebody else.
I don’t use ‘em anymore.

---------------------------------------


One thing I don't need,
Is any more apologies.
I got sorry greetin me at my front door.
You can keep yours.
I don't know what to do wiht em.
They don't open doors,
Or bring the sun back.
They don't make me happy,
Or get a mornin paper.
Didn't nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
'Cause of sorry.

-----------------------------------

I let sorry/didn't mean to/and how could I know about that
Take a walk down a dark & musty street in Brooklyn.
I'm gonna do exactly what I want to
And I won't be sorry for none of it.
Let a sorry soothe your soul...I'm gonna soothe mine."

Shange's words have rarely been far from me, as I've seen that play performed at least six times or so, and the hard declaration of “no more sorrys” always stuck out for me in particular. It especially sticks out with the spot-on noting of the “battered wife syndrome” evidenced by too many of the Left's so-called elected “leaders”, particularly after Rep. Pete Stark's comments:

“The Dainty Republican Fainting Couch and Circle Jerk Society is in full effect and the press is running with it as fast as their dimpled little legs can carry them. The context that would show what is really going on is right in the story, but you won't hear about it:

Republicans jumped on the tirade, issuing statement after statement calling on congressman Pete Stark to apologize.

Now why do you suppose they did this? Are these macho tough guys really offended that some congressman made these comments in a debate? Are their feelings hurt on behalf of the president? Does CNN really believe that's what's going on? Does anyone think that what Pete Stark said on the floor yesterday truly upset the Republicans? Of course not. These are the same people who spent month after month calling president Clinton a rapist and worse, for crying out loud. They are not shrinking violets who believe that there are limits to acceptable rhetoric about the president. They don't believe there are limits to any rhetoric.

Everyone knows exactly why the Republicans sent out "statement after statement" about this obscure congressman's words yesterday --- distraction. Does anyone point that out? No. In fact, the damned Democrats go right along with this nonsense and "hold meetings" and leak to the press about how they agree with the Republicans agreeing that Stark caused the distraction, and basically showing themselves to be a bunch of pathetic fumblers falling for this nonsense over and over again.

Surely, they don't think they will ever be able to stop the Republicans from finding some silly comment somewhere that they can get the vapors over do they? Are they really battered spouses trying desperately not to say or do anything that will make their vicious, bullying batterer angry?

Somebody call Dr. Phil for gawds sake. I have said it before but until the Democrats figure out how to deal with this, the Republicans are going to keep doing it. Why shouldn't they?”

Hubris pointed out downpage a touch that:


Okay? As the “Lady in Blue” (funny how colors are just...I dunno, timeless) said, “We are sick and tired of your sor-rys”. The fact is, that every time an unwarranted, “quiet the baby” sorry leaves our lips, we only give the caterwauling, shit-Pampered brats the cue to cry louder, shriller and more frequently as it says that we will always give in—even when right just to keep things quiet...which it never fucking does.

They don't say sorry. Ever. You could have seventy-thousand 20/20-visioned spectators in a football stadium, and a have a prominent wingnut sprint to mid-field befor everyone's eyes, and clothes-line a blind nun singing “Ave Maria” during a halftime show, body-slam her onto a metal bench, do a sack-dance over her broken body, and somehow...somehow, he will find a way, in spite of seventy-thousand people having seen him fuck up before their eyes, to not let the words “sorry” or “apology” ever tumble 'cross his foam-flecked lips. The playing field is skewed that crazily.

So when we''re dealing with THAT LEVEL of bull-headed wrongness, to say “sorry” to these people for daring to be pointed, and hard in our truth-telling makes about as much sense as driving gloves on a fucking worm.

Fuck them. And Fuck their tender, drug-addled, morally-bankrupt, and ice-hearted sensibilities. Hard...and with NO LUBE, thank you.

The American people—the majority, is down with the aforementioned “Lady In Blue”. And so too are many American soldiers in Iraq, who are taking the direct brunt of the idiotic, “do not question the policy” policy being enforced via screaming hissy-fit by the right's cowards:

“When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street,” Alarcon said this week. “The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks.”

----------------------------------------

Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice — 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad — Alarcon said no: “I don’t think this place is worth another soldier’s life.”

No more sorrys. No more apologies. No more humoring these maladjusted, whiny, punk-ass babies.

Because in the end, we—the American people, end up being the ones who get hurt...not them. It's a one-way street with these clowns.

And if you don't believe me, just ask poor, Ol' Lou Costello below.

There's more...

Attack of the Goats

Mountain Goats at Robin Lake, Washington, July 2006 photo by Matt Grover

Mountain Goats & Trace Minerals

A Group News Blog Exclusive

My friend Matt told me a story too good to keep to myself, so I asked his permission to share it with you. It makes sense of what everyone now knows about Mickey Kaus: as told by Matthew Yglesias, Sadly, No!, even Wonkette.

Here, as best I can figure, is how it all started, how Micky came to blow goats

Seems summer a year ago my friend Matt was hiking in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness up around Robin Lakes smack in the middle of our enormous Cascade Mountain Range, when he stopped to "take a natural break" (fifth paragraph down in the TDF article; more here, also the fifth para.)

Again this is all on point to Mickey Kaus and his known penchant for blowing goats. I know some of you have been questioning it, thinking it's nothing more than a cruel joke by a bunch of liberal bloggers trying to make fun of someone who pissed us off.

"But where's your proof?", you cry. "Surely you can't expect Mickey to DENY he blows goats! Why... that would just keep the story alive another news cycle." Well, gol-lee, I guess it would at that.

But that's not my point. My point is this.

Here is the Great State of Washington, where Men are Men and the Women are Feminists but still really smart and beautiful and nice, and willing to let us be gentleman and open the door for them out of the rain, you may have noticed (or heard anyway) that it rains a lot. We Washingtonians don't mind the rain and the fact we can't see the sun for eight months, at least not after our first two years living here. Because we've either killed ourselves, gone mad, or moved back to California.

We just walk around in the rain and wear lots of wool and clothing from REI. In fact, because Washingtonian men are much more massively endowed then men from other lessor states or expatriates -- this is a well known fact -- we tend to wear our REI wool shirts even in the summer, as if we are expecting it to rain, just in order to let the tails hang out over our wool or polypropylene fleece pants, hiding our massive endowments so as not to embarrass our out-of-state friends thus hiding our obvious physical prowess. Works like a charm.

Except when we go hiking. Up high in the beautiful mountains of Washington, and the lakes with the Mountain Goats.

Which near as I can figure, is what did in poor Micky Kaus.

Seriously.

I mean, we're real men and real ladies, here in Washington State. I'm not saying you're wimps in, just picking random examples, New York City and Tokyo, but here in the state where it rains from October to June, we face down mountain lions with a shoe string and a match. Fend off hypothermia with a quarter-stick of jerky, a bush and some old leaves. Save our wives stranded in a car in five feet of snow for weeks with no food and half a tank of gas. All the while surrounded by active volcanoes.

And we have Mountain Goats.

Johnson-loving, crotch-sniffing, penis-grabbing, dick-diving, wang-whacking, schlong-snatching, willy-waggling, dong-desecrating, boner-biting, prick-pecker-punishing, weiner-wrangling, knob-polishing, rod-licking, shlong-sucking, member-munching, phallus-fellating, Mountain Goats. Horny Mountain Goats. The second you whip it out, baby, that big, monster johnson you normally have to keep tied off around your waist? An entire herd of those scary goats puts their horns down, aims them directly at your pecker, and charges directly at your (now terrified and shrinking) just like a penis but smaller.

As Matt explained, "They want the salt. The goats have figured out, when ever you go up onto the rocks by yourself, you're going to pee. There is salt in your urine, and the goats need salt to survive. Also, the goats aren't afraid of you at all."

He went on. "Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to pee when you have fifteen mountain goats this close to you, with their sharp, sharp horns, taking swipe after swipe at your manhood as they go, 'baaaaaa, baaaaaa?'"

So there's proof, all you doubters. Actual documented mountain goats who go after the dick. And from there it's just a quick reverse and a hike in the mountains anywhere they have mountain goats to...

Poor Micky. Can't say I really blame him.

All alone, up in the mountains, surrounded by horny goats threatening him every time he tried to pee.

After a while I bet he figured it out:

There's only one thing goats like better than salt!

There's more...

Ba-Doomp-Boomp!

Fuck With The Goat, You Get The Horns...

In comedy writing and performance, there is a shop term for a classic “joke” construction called “The Trifecta”. You've seen it a million times, and it has a few different ways of playing out. It's often worked in repartee between two performers and consists of the “funny” man asking the “straight” man a question, Straight man responds with a “straight” answer, setting up the funnyman to close the bit with a snappy repartee “button”. Or if worked to perfection by three comedians alá The Three Stooges, it can go “Moe says 'X'—relatively tame. Larry says 'Y'—off kilter, quizzical or just a touch off-beat. And Curly hits it out of the park with a hilarious non-sequitir, or goofball remark that spoofs Moe's and Larry's. Boom!

Mad magazine used the old “Boomp-boomp. Boomp-boomp. Ba-doomp-boomp variation for the “reaction” trifecta—“X” happens, Character 1 says “A” in response—maybe funny, but not all-out gust-busting. Character 2 says “B” as a reaction, upping the funny ante a touch. And Character 3 deadpans the ironic, nutty, knee-slappin' “C”. Boom, again!

Why this Comedy 201 nuts and bolts breakdown? Because in the last four days or so, we've seen a wonderful and comedically instructive “The Trifecta” play itself out in grand, and hilarious scale in rightwingpunditland.

Let's set the joke up, shall we?

A.) You get an attention, and book sales-starved (as well as solid food-starved) Ann Coulter making the vampiric rounds to suck the life out of any show she appears on with her cadaverous presence—and to pimp her latest hate-by-numbers screed for people who can't read, but may need something heavy to throw at a victim, just in case a public lynching (hope, hope, hope) ever takes place in town again. She blows the bookers, (they tell their doctors that the gashes are from hopping razor-wire fences) she makes her rounds, and ends up on Donny Deutsch's CNBC program where she does the interview-show equivalent of coming to your dinner party, slapping your significant other with a used condom from her purse, and then pooping a steaming centerpiece onto the buffet table.

She basically called Deutsch's Jewish faith a half-assed, stepping-stone, play-religion and that those practicing it are somehow less than her, in that they have yet to reach the “perfected”(!) state of grace she has in her faith—which contrary to popular belief is not The-Holy-Church-of-Skanky-Tramps-Who-Wear-The-Dress-They-Blew-A-Rich-Russian-Mobster-In-Last-Night-To-Appearances-The-Next-Day, but rather, Christianity. Did it to his face. Pissed him off. Defended that shit and tried to laugh it off, even as he dissed the hell of of her in the segment's bumper outro:

Host Donny Deutsch asked Coulter what her ideal picture of America looked like and she recalled the 2004 Republican convention in New York City.

"People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America," she said.

Deutsch asked, "It would be better if we were all Christian?" Coulter replied "yes," and reitereated her declaration again later in the interview, although she denied wanting to wipe all Jews off the map. "We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say," Coulter said.

---------------------------------------------------------

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we're all sinners --

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued -- when you say something absurd like that, there's no --

COULTER: What's absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I'm going to go off and try to perfect myself --

COULTER: Well, that's what the New Testament says.

DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I'm offended by that personally. And we'll have more Big Idea when we come back.

Now, you're all pretty much aware of her statements I'm sure. She's as reliably batshit as the feces/sweat/vienna sausage-smelling guy at the bus station who picks at his face and eats the dead skin, going “Mmmmmm!”. But ultimately, this is just the set-up for a joke that doubles back on her buddies on the right like an acid-coated boomerang. Coulter, having said wild shit before about 9-11 widows, championing domestic terrorism and tossing around homophobic slurs as if they were her neck-whipped, peroxided mane has pretty much gotten away with it—but she'd never slammed Jewish folks before—at least not publicly. And before you could say “Why is this night different from all other nights?”, it was on. The unreformed cocktail-party skank had fucked with the wrong lobby at last and peeped the shitstorm coming down on her—and instead of her usual “fuck you, I'm right” defiance, she hemmed and hawed, and tried to mumbo-jumbo her way out of the offense. (And just where the fuck was that sanctimonious prick Joe Lieberman on this? Hmmmmm? Yeah, I thought so.) But the damage had been done. Granted, she had a few defenders out there (waaaaaay out there, actually) in the guise of the helium-voiced Terry Jeffrey and the head-kicked scriptcha-spinstah LaShawn Barber, but for the most part, what she said was so confidently stupid that few of the bigwigs came to her aid.

Here we enter section A-2 of the Trifecta's set-up, where after the initial verbal bed-shit, she evidently ran around looking for fresh sheets and some show to go on where she could “clarify herself”. And evidently, the pickins' were slim as the show she wound up having to go on to do this was MSNBC's “Tucker”, which has lower ratings than “Small Wonder” reruns dubbed in Xhosa “click” language. That's how rough her shit was. But, ever the enterprising twit, she figured “Hey, as this is going down the shitter for me anyway, the only thing I can do is distract attention from it. Maybe a flat-out, hit-and-run lie at the end of the segment'll do the trick!” And so she did, spewing out a “breaking right now as I come on air” story from the National Enquirer about an alleged, unsubstantiated “affair” between John Edwards and a documentary filmmaker—and then pretty much bolted from her chair with a “Hah!” as they went to commercial. Her work “done”, she crawled back to her crypt and waited for her piss-stained, just-rolled snowball to grow to avalanche proportions. But it didn't. It was pretty clear that she was using the one outlet she'd gotten since dissing Judaism to obfuscate her own recent fuck-up and kneecap the woman who'd embarrassed her a few months before by screwing with her marriage. The fish didn't bite. And pretty soon, a few of her blogospheric backers soiled their tighty-whities over the MSM's treating this like the pubic hair on the soap bar it was, instead of the plutonium spill into an orphanage they wanted it to be. No dice. Now we enter the “Larry Fine” (how apt) segment of “The Trifecta”.

B.) It is my opinion that at some point in the last ten years, hack-ass “journalist” Mickey Kaus got drunk at a party, and went to a back bedroom and fell asleep under a pile of coats. Ann Coulter stumbled into that same bedroom in an alcoholic stupor, drunkenly fell on the coat pile and landed on Mickey—and in her stupor, gave him the world's most disinterested hand-job ever—without checking who was actually under the coat-pile. Ever since that sticky, Cosmo-lubed night, the now-deflowered Kaus has been in absolute love with her—a love that showed itself for true when he sought to defend her from her attackers/spin attention away from her fuck-up by whipping her breathless report of “the affair” into “Seven Days In May”-level high drama, and puffing it so full of air that his pal Drudge would notice and spread it virally...like fucking Herpes. But even Drudge wouldn't bite (next time, cover the story with eggs if you want Drudge to “bite”, Mick) for whatever reason—the nasty burn he got from the Kerry/Alexandra Polier lie, or residual effects of the Sidney Blumenthal suit—who knows? He left Mickey twisting in the wind as the “story” came apart at the seams—and Mickey continuing to passive/aggressively pimp it as an MSM cover-up, then as an example of the double-standard poor conservatives face (“Edwards' denial wasn't robust enough! I smell a rat!”), and then most laughably, as a Clintonian plot to drown Edwards' campaign in the bathtub. Kaus' history as a so-called “democrat” grenade tosser—into his own side's foxhole is well-documented, as is his close alliances with the worst smear-merchants on the right (Instafuckwit...take a bow. Ooops! Popped the snap on your overalls, didja?), but this cover-a-wingnut-friend's-narrow-ass smear was something of a cake-taker. While virtually no one in his camp took the libelous “affair” bait, those on the left threw the spotlight on him, watched him skitter like a roach on his greasy floor of rumor-mongering, and then...

C.) The punch line of “The Trifecta”. Moe and “Larry” set it up, and Curly finally steals the show and gets the laugh at their expense. We—the left side of the blogosphere got to be Curly Howard. For in the effort to teach Kaus a lesson about trafficking in bullshit rumordom, a couple of enterprising souls took it upon themselves literally show Kaus the folly of such stupidity. It started off at Matt Yglesia's place (in comments):

Hey, you know what I hear, Mickey Kaus likes to fuck goats.
Posted by Pritesh | October 14, 2007 5:24 P.M.

------------------------------------------------

Micky Kaus blows goats. I read about it on another internet site and has not been refuted yet. Thus, it is true, and, if anything, underestimates how much Micky likes to blows goats.
Posted by Hank Essay | October 14, 2007 5:29 P.M.

------------------------------------------------

Now, I'm not saying Mickey Kaus engages in sex acts with animals, but his deafening silence on Goatgate really speaks volumes, if you ask me. (Not too wise for someone in his position! -Ed)
Posted by Tractarian | October 14, 2007 5:35 P.M.

And from there, it got really, really b-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaaad... (via Atrios)

Sources

According to an anonymous source,Mickey Kaus regularly blows goats. Either he fails to deny this strongly enough, in which case his goat blowing proclivities are assuredly true, or his denials will impugn the integrity of my source which makes him a tremendously bad person. And, of course, a goat blower.

Thanks, Slate, for all you've done for our discourse.

And then you end up the last place on earth you wanna be—on the end of a Sadly, No! humor bayonet. Where you get a screen-grab of Kaus' effectively and PUBLICLY being fed his own entrails...for all to see and enjoy:

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)



Boom! The punch line. Now if you google “Kaus Goats” you get 40,000 hits—all dealing with Mickey's rumored proclivities. Sadly, the Wiki entry has been redacted—probably by some poor goat shamed by being outed. But “The Trifecta” stands proud nonetheless. Coulter wounds herself with one of her twice-yearly mouth-a-rrheas, her wingnut butt-buddy comes to her aid bearing lies and spreading scandal, and now he will forever have attached to himself the punch line...of having sodomized—according to rumor—GOATS.

What's instructive about this, even beyond the obvious humor of it, is the way this got handled. Coulter got slammed on her shit, then when Kaus tried to muddy the waters with vicious lies to help her, nobody cowered. In fact...folks did the worst thing you could do to a self-important little punk-ass like him (much the same way Malkin's being driven batshit right now over her S-CHIP mind-farts)—which is to ridicule him.

Mock them. Mock them. And mock them some fucking more. That really hurts them, in ways down to the core. Not only do you show that the “emperor” has no clothes, but you make damn sure to point out that big pimple on his ass with the squiggly hair growin' out of it.


And just when they think you've stepped back, and let them from under your clawed cat's paw...





You pin 'em a-fucking-gain. :)

Ba-Doomp-Boomp!

There's more...