Dear Paul Begala and Chris Matthews...

Thank you.

Thank you for your clarity.

Your unvarnished truthfulness.

Your bigotry-spawned “going to ground” over what this election is truly about for yourselves and I'm guessing the majority of your co-horts in the nattering chattering class.

I thank you gentlemen for at the very least, exposing yourselves for what you are and letting the world and me know just what the twisted, fear-crafted movement inside you is that makes you tick-tick-tick.

You sirs, and your fellow travelers have removed all doubt for me. At last I know where I stand with you—or rather, five steps behind you .

From Chris Matthews last month:

MATTHEWS: Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is an Obama supporter. Senator McCaskill, did you advise Obama to go out and try to bowl the other day?

McCASKILL: Well, listen, I grew up in a small town where you learned to do two things: You learned to bowl and you learned to roller-skate. I can’t wait to challenge him to a game of bowling.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?

And this from the revelatory Paul Begala during the heat of last last night's rollercoaster primary coverage:

BEGALA: When people say things — I love Donna and we go back 22 years. We’ve never been on different sides of an arguments in our entire lives. But if her point is that there’s a new Democratic Party that somehow doesn’t need or want white working-class people and Latinos, well count me out.

DONNA BRAZILE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Paul, baby, I did not say that.

BEGALA: We cannot win with egg heads. Let me finish my point. We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.

President Clinton — reached across to get a whole lot of Republicans and Independents to come. I think Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both have that capacity. They both have a unique ability—well it’s not unique if they both have it. They both have a remarkable ability to reach out to those working-class white folks and Latinos. Senator Clinton has proven it; Barack has not yet, but he can. And I certainly hope he is not shutting the door on expanding the party.

(CAMPBELL) BROWN: OK. Let — egg heads and African-Americans? That’s the new coalition?

BRAZILE: First of all, Paul, you didn’t hear me right. Maybe I should come and cook you something because you’ve got a little hearing problem. I was one of the first Democrats who were going to the white working-class neighborhoods, encouraging white Democrats not to forget their roots. I have drank more beers with “Joe Six Pack,” “Jane Six
Pack” and everybody else than most white Democrats that you’re talking about.

In terms of Hispanics, you know Paul, I know the math. I know Colorado; I know Nevada; I know New Mexico. So that’s not the issue. I’m saying that we need to not divide and polarize the Democratic Party as if the Democratic Party will rely simply on white, blue collar male—you insult every black blue collar Democrat by saying that. So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul, because you and I know both know we have been in more campaigns. We know how Democrats win and to simply suggest that Hillary’s coalition is better than Obama’s, Obama’s is better than Hillary’s — no. We have a big party, Paul.

BEGALA: That’s right.

BRAZILE: Just don’t divide me and tell me I cannot stand in Hillary’s camp because I’m black, and I can’t stand in Obama’s camp because I’m female. Because I’m both.

There is nothing that warms my African American heart more than being told that I am not a “regular person”—whatever that is, or that my vote is some sort of statistical anomaly, or simply having my vote flat-out discounted.

Hey, let me show you a picture.



It's a bit blurry and you've probably never seen it before, but here are some details on it. It was captured on film on June 12, 1963—the year I was born. What does it show? A two-tone '57 Chevy Sedan parked in a Jackson, Mississippi home's carport. There's a stain on the ground trailing away from the driver's side and ending in a pool at the far left. I grabbed this from a video chronicling that night.

Let's look at it a little closer, shall we?



I've highlighted that “pool” area so you can understand what it is.

That's blood.

Starting in a thin stream and then gouting from a gaping wound in a man's back courtesy of a Ernfield 1917 30.06 rifle bullet. Said man dragged himself about 25 feet from where he was struck initially and then collapsed near his front door where that pool collected.

That man's name was Medgar Wiley Evers. And he was assassinated for fighting for civil rights and most importantly near the time of his murder, voting rights for African Americans.

Yes. People put their lives on the line and sometimes—too many times—saw their lives snuffed out for fighting to obtain and maintain that right. So, when I hear the likes of a Matthews and revealingly, a Begala flushing the votes of nearly 14 million African Americans down the crapper because they don't like where those votes are being cast and for whom, I think of Medgar Evers on that night, getting out of his car, taking custom-made T-shirts reading “Jim Crow Must Go!” out of the back seat, and then a cowardly sniper's bullet ripping through his back and him bleeding out on his front steps as his wife and kids opened the door to see him there, life ebbing away with every millisecond.

Guess what? Medgar Evers was “regular people”. We are regular people. And these weak-assed attempts to chump off the Black vote when it doesn't play to conventional wisdom or fit a desired template pisses on the memory of those who fought the hardest and sacrificed the most for it. We make up 13.5% of the electorate. You court us when you need votes for “X”, then diss us when we vote for “Y” and “Y” ain't what you're down with.

“Regular people.” “African Americans and Eggheads.”

Let me ask a simple question here. If Black folk only make up 13.5% of Americans, and college educated folks make up 29% (allowing for overlap between the two groups, as well as overlap between college educated voters and GOP-inclined ones), where in the name of Dr. George Washington Carver is the rest of this nettlesome, apple-cart upsetting vote coming from? Or has the dreaded Black Genius Camp and the MIT-educated numerical wizards from the movie “21” banded together in cahoots to unfairly freaknomic-ize this year's primary results? Trotting out this patently racist sour grapes bullshit would be maddening if it weren't so sad and revealing about the people perpetrating it.

And whether you're a hard-core member of “Obamanation” or a pom-pom waving “Clintonista”, common sense should prevail and allow anyone with eyes to do the simple math and realize how specious, divisive and destructive this framing is.

The numbers don't support it. Silly people's fears and naked spite do.

““Regular People” are turning out in record numbers this year just in the primaries not as some statistical blip. It's clear that something is up in America. Gas down the block from me is $3. 91 a gallon for Regular. They're tacking foreclosure notices to houses like they were cellophaned copies of “Pennysavers”. This asinine war has infuriated people beyond belief and trust in the way “things have been” has eroded mightily. Habeas Corpus is under siege, and a government that promised to be hands-off has been revealed to be totally “hands-in”, as in up our asses judicially via manipulation of US attorneys and privacy-wise in terms of FISA. These seven and a half years of Bushian presdiential awfulness is what's driving things change-wise.

But you don't want to look at that.

That's too big a thought for your walnut-sized, political bronto-brains to digest. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's the “elites” who have fucked this thing for you. “The Creative Class”. Eggheads. And of course, the n*ggers.

I'm one of seven kids, born to North Carolinians with a family tree going back to and fading out at Pre-Emancipation. I'm also a writer, actor and visual artist as well as a former college boy. I suppose that makes me the magic and dreaded electoral trifecta of evil according to these two clowns and their co-conspirators in piss-pot punditry.

And apparently, I don't fucking count. Me, the great-great -great grandchild of slaves. People who built this country under a whip of leather and second-class citizenship. My vote and the votes of people like me don't matter a whit. A vote Medgar Evers took a bullet in the back for. Whose vote counts? Ones from the likes of those who shot him down for daring to assert personhood for 13.5 million Black folks. And if not them, then those who quietly have no problem with his murder and what it represented.

“Regular people” “Real America” The mother-fucking “Heartland”.

Thank you Paul Begala. And thank you Chris Matthews. For coming clean on how you really feel. I'm no sage, and while I may not know exactly what America herself is or is not ready for, I know what you two and your ilk are clearly not ready for. You've spent your adult public lives playing at high-mindedness, but now...you've come clean.

The mask is off and I see you for what you are. What's that old saying about “The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know”?

I know you now. Benefit of the doubt shielded you before. But no more.

“Desperation is the flashing, trembling hand that snatches away the veil of false propriety.”

Who said that?

Why, I just did.

Just your typical, discounted, influential-beyond-my-wildest-dreams, and might I say, educated Black person.

At last, I know where I stand.

And because of that, I will fight that much harder. Against injustice. Against a corrupt and twisted system. And yes, against you. Because you see, as well as knowing where I stand...I also know, and will never forget...



...where Medgar lay.

There's more...

George Stephanopoulos, Stupid Motherfucker

Stephanopoulos, defends himself.

He dismissed criticism that it had focused too heavily on "gotcha" questions, arguing that they had gone to the heart of the "electability" that, he said, is forefront in the minds of voters evaluating the two Dems.

"Overall, the questions were tough, fair, relevant, and appropriate," Stephanopoulos argued. And he rejected the claim by many Obama supporters that the debate had been stacked against him, saying Hillary had faced sharp questioning, too. --TPM

Yeah, right, whatever. Except he got some of his questions from Sean Hannity. Who keeps trying to bring up that Obama used to know some guy from the Weather Underground when he was 8 years old or something. Let's put it this way, Hannity has closer ties to classic racist Hal Turner than Obama does to the Weather Underground. Although Stephanopoulos used to work for Clinton's husband, according to his book there is no love loss between him and Hillary and he works for the same company that produced the excreable Path to 9/11

He is a Stupid Motherfucker. Or maybe he thinks we are? Who the hell picks the moderators for these debates? The candidates are supposed to "debate the issues". That's what "debate" means. It doesn't mean that stupid corporate media shills get to think up questions that they think would make the candidate squirm just like Timmeh does. Debate. Not "simulate the sunday talk shows." Get it? The moderators are supposed to come up with topics and then moderate the time. These people take the meaning out of everything. And Atrios is right they are cornholing democracy. Fuck you George.

Someone should have stopped the debate. The should have interrupted the debate right in the middle and explained to Charlie and George what a debate is, and that they were hurting America.

There's more...

China Attacks Green Zone

The most senior US general in Iraq has said he has evidence that Iran was behind Sunday's bombardment of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets ...
The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example... were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force. --BBC

This is Dave Petraeus talking completely out of his ass. I wish this guy would just run for office already so I don't have to listen to his bullshit while he is wearing green. The only way they could know who "funded" and/or "equipped" and/or "trained" the insurgents who fired the rockets into the Green Zone is if they caught some and they didn't.

What he is talking about are the rockets that slam into the Green Zone every day. Probably Iranian Haseb or Noor or Hadid rockets. Except they are actually variants of Chinese made rockets, and include some parts from the Chinese! So Dave should also be looking under his bed for those chinamen. Look out Dave, the calls are coming from inside the green zone!

What about the security forces who are doing double duty and are part of the insurgency? They were trained, equipped, and paid by the United States! Let's invade them next.

There's more...

Terrorist Watch List

917,000

Number of names currently on "Terrorist Watch List".

Because that's effective. Jeeebus, what a bunch of dumbasses. Practically 1 million people. Just how stupid are these fucking people? "Security" has to be the Dumb Magnet of the 21st century. How many steroid addled nincompoops are carving out hives in DHS? How long will it take us to dig them out of their holes? Best just delete the whole infrastructure.

There's more...

Spitzer Resigns (at some point, I presume)

ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation. -- NYT

Stupid. Monumentally stupid.

And like that, he's done.

There's more...

Barack Obama, Manchurian Candidate

Mark Halperin, Stupid Motherfucker
Below I mention the lard headed fools like Nedra Pickler, and CNN that are propagating this silly assed Manchurian Candidate Pseudo Patriot meme and like freaking clockwork here comes Mark Halperin. As Atrios calls him Time Magazine's Chief Racism Promoter. I would have said racist but who am I to argue with the Mighty Atrios.

His stupid ass comes up with a helpful list of things "McCain Can Do to Try to Beat Obama That Clinton Cannot"... Look at number 11.

11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

Like clockwork...

There's more...

Peggy Noonan, Stupid Motherfucker

George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

-- Peggy Noonan, Jan. 25 2008 WSJ
Peggy has come a long way since just a few short years ago.

This is what I said: The president won re-election by a relatively healthy margin because the American people judged him to be the better man. He seemed to have the better character of the two candidates. He'd tell you what he was going to do, and why, and then he'd do it. He'd been doing that for four years. He did it in the campaign, too. He was dependable, and he was predictable. It's nice to have a predictable president. It's not nice in the nuclear age to have a surprising one.

Mr. Bush was not known as a sneak or a liar. We have had presidents who were known as sneaks and liars, some quite recently, but that wasn't Mr. Bush, and I believe it was a relief to normal people. That relief was never articulated by anybody I remember hearing, but I believe it had a real if unquantifiable effect on the voters' choice. (WSJ, Nov. 2004)

Honestly, you have to read this whole asinine column from just after the election in 2004 by this stupid ass clown. She talks about Bushs' balls and also quotes the St Crispin day speech from Shakespeare. George Bush? Prince Henry? Yeah, right.

Now he is the bubonic plague? No, Peggy, people like you forced Bush down our throats twice. Now, you are correct, he is destroying your party. Destroying your Reagan legacy and the very core of your party. A party now filled with people exactly like him. Shallow ill bred man-boys, who wouldn't risk their sweet pampered white asses in Iraq or Afghanistan to save anything, let alone their country. Too stupid to smell the end of an error is drawing oh so very near.

While I sit and laugh at sweat beading up on the back of your neck as you realize the bet you made is coming due. Bush and the Republican party tumbling end over end unceasingly heading for the cliff. History is a motherfucker Peggy.

There's more...

Karl Rove: Whoring for All that is Wrong with Politics

photo of Sand laden scrape manure, Fair Oaks Dairy, by Accent Stainless Steel Manufacturing Ltd.
Click for LARGE photo.

More full of Crap than a Republican Congressional Caucus.
Spanish Speeder Sues Family of Teen Boy He Killed...

What Karl Rove did for politics was eliminate any legitimate sense of community.

It isn't to say, he wasn't willing to take advantage of your sense of community, play on you and your people's sense of wanting to belong, wanting the dream of a larger, greater America.

But Karl Rove when in operational mode, has no sense of shame, no sense of community, no sense of being part of something larger. Like Satan. He organizes, splitting groups up and spitting them out. Gays, Christians, white males, soccer moms and NASCAR dads, Blacks, Chicanos, and illegals (and yeah, they're illegals, not undocumented and you must hate America, buddy. Want to make something of it? Here... talk to my friends in Gitmo.)

If you and yours get run over, well... tough.

That's two for him and none for you, and you weren't paying attention.

Some people admire this. Even some Democratic politicians, we hear the pundits say, admire Karl Rove for the results he has delivered for Republicans.

I despise him and everything he stands for. I spit on the ground he walks on and sow it with salt. I say Karl Rove stands for the worst America has ever offered, the worst in American politics, and the worst President this country has ever had. Rove destroys our sense of community. He stands for dirty, irresponsible politics without accountability. He appeals to the worst in our nature, rather than our best. He is willing to routinely settle for 51% and than govern as if he had 80%, rather than get elected with 70% and govern as if he had 70%.

An article from Spain today reminds me deeply of Karl Rove.

Associated Press (Yahoo)

MADRID, Spain - A speeding motorist who killed a teenage cyclist is suing the boy's parents over damage to his luxury car, the government says.

Enaitz Iriondo, 17, died instantly in August 2004 when businessman Tomas Delgado's Audi A8 crashed into him at 100 mph near Haro in northern Spain, an Interior Ministry traffic report said. The speed limit was 55 mph.

Iriondo was not wearing reflective clothing or a helmet, the ministry report said. As the sun had set when he crossed the path of Delgado's car from a side road, a regional court found both parties at fault and closed the case, the report said.

Delgado, whose insurance company paid Iriondo's parents $48,500 in compensation for their son's life, filed a suit in late 2006 to recover $29,400 in damages to his car and car rental costs, the ministry traffic report said.

"It's the only way I have to claim my money back," Delgado was quoted as saying by the newspaper El Pais, which first reported the story on Friday. El Pais said a ruling was expected next week.

"It's the final straw, a stab in the back," Iriondo's mother, Rosa Trinidad said, according to El Pais. "Before the lawsuit we thought the poor guy would find it hard to live the rest of his life with the thought of having caused our son's death.

Let me give you that again: "Before the lawsuit we thought the poor guy would find it hard to live the rest of his life with the thought of having caused our son's death."

Before this administration, I thought any president, any administration, would find it hard to live with the damage they have caused my beloved country.

I was wrong.

With just under a year before a new president is sworn in, the damage done by the Bush administration continues to mount on a daily and weekly basis. Already the damage is so vast and crosses so many domains, the United States will be the rest of my lifetime and much of my children's lifetime, cleaning up the mess, and that assuming future presidents allow room to work, by no means a sure deal.

The U.S. position as world leader may well be destroyed forever, depending on how we get through the coming economic crisis. Karl Rove ran the politics which allowed all this to happen, and authorized the looting of our nation at the same time, the fuck.

But Rove, the President, and the Bush administration continue to act with no shame, and no sense of community. They continue to rip apart over 200 years of nation-building, while the rest of us do what we can to stop them as they kill people, while looting the country.

What is Rove doing now?

Rove is out spinning away in magazines, on television, and writing a book (for which he got a crappy advance), blaming the entire mess on Democrats (liberals), trying to say the Bush administration is winning the war (if only the Generals and troops would get it right), while raking in money as he desperately attempts to revise history so he and Bush (but especially himself) are the people who got it right.

How many more have to die in Iraq for Rove to be proved right doesn't matter, just so long as Rove is proved correct.

Really, no kidding.

This is all about Rove and Bush being right, and everyone else being wrong. It's a big game of "I told you so," we know what we're doing, do it my way.

Rove is no different at heart than the Spanish motorist who killed a teenager and now is extorting money from the family because his fancy car got dinged up when he ran over their child at 100 mph. And displays just as little empathy.

Hey...

Maybe Karl could hang out at Arlington with a sign that says:
"I helped kill your child by prolonging the war to help the President stay in power. Car needs tune-up. Will give speech on why surge is working, for cash."

There's more...

Mitt Unfortunately Finally Lets The Dogs Out

“If You Don't Know, You Better Ask Somebody...”


Wikipedia: “Cringe Comedy is a comedy genre that uses offensive or vulgar material or (as has been popularized recently) awkward and embarrassing situations to cause audiences to be repulsed or feel uneasy.”

Two of my favorite examples of “Cringe Comedy” are the skit segments on “Late Night With Conan O'Brien” and perhaps best of all, the original BBC version of “The Office” starring Ricky Gervais.

It's a difficult genre to master. But one of the key tenets of it working well is for the protagonist to have pretty much no shame whatsoever.

And folks...when the phrase “no shame” comes to mind, the pen and ink sketch next to it in the dictionary looks a lot like one Willard “Mitt” Romney.

With that, witness the entry of a NEW deity into the “Cringe Comedy” pantheon of greats. (via Pam's House Blend and The NYT)

Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate from Massachusetts by way of Michigan and Utah who enjoys a milkshake at the end of a long day, stopped by a staging area for a Martin Luther King Birthday parade here. In his dress shirt and tie, and with his unwavering smile, he walked over and posed for photographs with a group of black youngsters. Putting his arm around a teenage girl, he waved to the cameras and offered, “Who let the dogs out?” He added a tepid “woof woof.”

Somewhere, the Baha Men, the Bahamian group whose 2000 song the candidate was referencing, must have been shuddering.

I mean...

...Jesus.

“Who Let The Dogs Out?”

They stopped playing that song in minor-league ball parks in 2002, lest fans damage the P.A. system speakers with tossed beer cups and stale pretzels.

What madness overcame this transistorized, lacquer-headed disingenu-ite? Was he so uncomfortable around young Black folk that he felt he just had to break the unbearable tension with a crunk, gully reference?

I mean..,shit, “crunk” and “gully” ain't been “in” since '04, and this sad, starch-blooded clown trots out a Baha Men tune from 2000—that Black folks played for about a month before declaring it “done, son”. Could someone please send Hugh Hewitt a copy of “Now That's What I Call Music” dated later than 2001 so he can hip his boy, jest a touch?

The nervous laughter from the assembled young people in the clip is priceless, too. It was definitely of the “Henh-henh. I won't clown you now because that would be embarrassing. Really embarrassing, but wait till I get home, go online and rag your vacuum-formed ass out on Bossip. I have heard Romney described as a panderer before...and it's one thing to read a compare and contrast piece that highlights his shameless, windblown conviction-choosing. But to see it happen right there before your “WTF”-ing eyes, so nakedly, and oh-so-Goddamned badly just hammers that truth home with piledriver force.

Here's the hint Mitt—if you are around a bunch of folks of a different background than yours, and you are clearly uncomfortable, it is better to shut your $40,000 veneered mouth and smile than it is to dig into that Bryllcreem-leeched mind of yours for a “when in Rome” cultural reference that lets everyone know “you're hip...not!” You could have just gotten the photo-op, said “Thank you” and hopped your ass onto the campaign bus and power-washed the Black off your hands like you wanted to.

But you wanted to “be down”...and you all of a sudden thought you were the cool White guy on the train whose iPod headphones bleed out enough that you can hear Ghostface Killah or Jadakiss spittin' rhymes over the subway din.

You were not him. You are Willard “Mitt” Romney—who already fucked up on “Thangs Dr. King” when you lied about marching with him in the sixties. Now, you've compounded your “ghetto fabulism” with a lame attempt at cool that went over just a little bit better than if you'd deigned to sing “De Camptown Ladeez”, or “Ol' Man River” to the assembled.

I want to say, “Just...shut your fucking mouth, Mitt”, but your every gaffe is comedy and campaign-killing gold, so I won't.

Just make sure to say, in your best Jimmie “J.J. Walker voice “Ah-Dy-No-MITE!” when you want to punctuate a point during speeches on these visits to Blackfolkland.

And playing the super-funkee “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang and asking us to “Git dowwwwwwwwnnnnnnn!” during your entrances won't hurt either. Word.

Lastly, is it just me or is there a strange irony in hearing the man who tied his carrier-penned dog to the top of the family wagon and drove hundreds of roof-shit inducing miles now stiffly squawking about “Who Let The Dogs Out”?

God, I wish I'd been there. Just to yell “Not you, motherfucker!”

There's more...

WGA Strike: Scab of the Week

Matt Taibbi. file photo WNYC New York Public Radio, April 11, 2006.

Matt Taibbi is a Punk

I don't care that Taibbi made fun of a dying Pope.

Just shows he has no class.

I've read his stuff. He can't write comedy.

Lower Manhattanite can write rings around Taibbi's tight-ass.

Which shouldn't matter; Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone, not Mad Magazine. Except Taibbi fancies himself funny and satirical.

You know what isn't funny?

Crossing a picket line against striking writers.

Taibbi appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report this past Wednesday. (No I'm not linking. We're on strike.)

But here are the late night schedules.

Notice how the struck shows don't dare tell you who's appearing until after they've appeared?

That's because when people find how someone's going on, damn near EVERYONE calls and tells them what idiots they are.

Mostly they back out. Because who wants their mother, boy or girlfriend, neighbors, and everyone they care about calling them up:

Mom: Hey, dumb ass... what are you doing? This family doesn't cross picket lines. I didn't raise you to be a fool. And I did not work my ass off for 27 years for you to act retarded. Now you get on the phone right now. You call Conan back and tell them no son of mine is doing a struck show, you hear me boy?

Dumb Ass: Yes Mom, I hear you.

Mom: You better. And then get your sorry miserable, dumb ass home, because I am going to climb high up on a stool where I can reach you. Then I am going to slap you so hard son, what little brains you have left are going to come right out your eyeballs and spill down the front of your Armani shirt. Who came up with this cluster-fuck of an idea anyway?! I know it wasn't you.

Dumb Ass: It was my agent, Mom.

Mom: You mean, your ex-agent?

Dumb Ass: But Mom...

Mom: Anyone dumb enough to have a man as handsome as you cross a picket-line and ruin your damn career, when anyone with only half the brains God gave a Golden Retriever, and the Lord knows that isn't the brightest dog in the world, knows you could be out on the picket-line getting free publicity just bringing donuts to the writers. They're not the swiftest bunch. Give them donuts and you'll be up on YouTube as their friend forever.

She's not your agent any more son; she screwed up. You were born naturally stupid just like your poor Daddy, but your agent we pay 10% to 'cause she's supposed to be smart. And now she's done gone and screwed the pooch.

Dumb Ass: The pooch, Mom?

Mom: It means, I just fired her sorry ass for being behind the times.

Son, you call Conan's people and tell them your Mother said you are not crossing any picket lines. No way, never, no how. Then come straight home. I've got apple pie waiting...

The Colbert Report is being actively picketed.

Taibbi was contacted by the WGA, asked not to go on the show. He ignored his brother and sister writers, went on anyway, and then... wasn't funny. Colbert carried him.

Lame.

Friday night, Taibbi is scheduled to CROSS ANOTHER PICKET LINE to appear on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Taibbi is a fucking punk. It's that simple.

Punks are people that when incoming drops in, can't be counted on to cover their buddies' backs or their own fire zones.

When New York Press editor Jeff Koyen quit rather than take a suspension over running Taibbi's "funny" article mocking the death of a dying Pope, did Taibbi walk out the door with him?

No. He punked out, only to quit just before being forced out the door in a management change.

Punks feel bad. They whine and complain, dodge and weave. Most of all, they come up with excuses for not doing what's right.

There's another word for punk...

Coward.

Here's another...

Opportunist.

My personal favorite...

Stupid motherfucker.

Taibbi -- You've just made clear to every Guild writer, you know you lack the talent to write for movies and television. 'Cause if you thought there was the slightest chance you had a screenplay in you, you would never cross a Writers Guild of America picket.

WGA writer's don't forgive scabs -- or those who help them by crossing picket lines.

Ya no-talent un-funny punk.

There's more...

Cool Brother

I do not want a National Dad or even a Cool Brother for the President.

Fred Thompson has that Emperor Palpatine thing going on and I like that

-- James Lilek (R)ightwing fucknut.

I swear to God. How did these people beat us?


How?

There's more...

Mirror, Mirror

You Should Thank Me For Not Photoshopping The Mirror Universe's Giuliani. Seriously.

Son-of-a-bitch, it took me long enough. In trying to get a handle on Mike Huckabee, I found myself hacking through through the man's veritable forest of dichotomies with a macheté dulled from overuse. There is o much to him. Much that is brutal, and intolerant, like his stance on quarantining AIDS sufferers, his knee-jerk idea of a blanket closing off of the U.S. to all Pakistanis post-the Bhutto assassination, his equating homosexuality to pedophilia and maybe most noxiously, his expressed desire to send Mexican children born in the U.S. back to Mexico.

And yet, there is an undeniable charm to the man. Straight up. He is affable, unlike his fellow policy travelers such as Tom Tancredo. He boasts a genuine warmth, setting him apart from GOP cold fish like the moribund Giuliani or the follicle-perfect, unblinking Life Model Decoy Mitt Romney. At least in words, he scans as having something of a compassionate streak on certain issues that matter to people.

In Huckabee there is the familiar and the alien...a bit of the romantic and of course, the repellent.

I've struggled for weeks to grasp the man and what it was about his whole vibe that seemed so familiar.

And then it hit me. I was surfing YouTube two nights ago and found myself spluttering with laughter at Charlie Murphy's hilarious, gangsta re-boot of Mr. Spock in the Robot Chicken Star Trek figure animations. Shortly afterward, I was shutting down the house bit-by-bit, turning off the lights and then the computers and checking locks and whatnot—all those mundane little things when I ended up padding down the hall to the bedroom in the dark. Groping my way along the wall I thought of Star Trek and laughed.

I stopped. A picture came to mind. Mr. Spock—Charlie Murphy's brash and profane, alternate-universe Mr. Spock.

Alternate universe. Star Trek. Spock sideways. “Mirror, Mirror”. Oh, hell...

“Mirror, Mirror” was the classic episode of the original Star Trek series where we saw the flip side of the characters we all knew so well—familiar still in so many ways, but scarily different in other ways that are to say the least, jarring. Even if you're not a Star Trek fan, the pop-culture ubiquitousness of the episode's alternate reality images—the sleeveless, sweating Kirk and the menacing, goateed Spock, endure beyond the show's mythos.

But just who exactly I thought, was Mike Huckabee the freaky “Mirror Universe” version of?

I needed to look no further than his predecessor as Arkansas governor, one William Jefferson Clinton.

When that thought bubbled up, I went back down the hall and turned the computer back on, to type in a few things—and suddenly, it all made sense.

Both of men were governors of Arkansas.

I popped the TV on and caught a highlight of Huckabee sitting in on bass with Jay Leno's band. Bill's turn on Arsenio blowing sax popped to mind of-Goddamn-course.

Both of them spent time visibly weight-challenged and workied desperately and quite publicly to fix it.

Both men are as friendly and welcoming as a gravy-laden chicken-fried steak after a hard day's work, and are blessed with a quick wit and charm enough for a hundred men.

They're each full to bursting with the gift of gab and breezily capable of waving the oratorical sugar stick that echos from the pew and the pulpit.

And then...you notice the sash and goatee...

You note that Clinton celebrates the inclusiveness of faith in general. Huckabee revels in the exclusiveness of his.

Clinton while walking out the door pardoned a white-collar criminal who did nothing after the fact but found himself pilloried for it. The rapist Huckabee pardoned as the door hits him in the ass promptly went out and raped and murder-death-killed someone.

Clinton passive-aggressively Ju-Jitsu-ed his opponents into damaging themselves with subtle moves. Huckabee it turns out was a notoriously vindictive and “on-the-offensive” partisan office holder. (Agony booth, anyone?)

Bill Clinton is renowned for a sparkling intelligence and his grasp of current events, history and a rapacious thirst for knowledge in general. While Huckabee....oh, my...oh my, my, my...

It is there where the damning, and fatal difference between these good and evil twins lay. The ONE thing no one can ever say about Bill Clinton is that he is ill-informed on issues. Or not up-to-speed on what's going on in the world on cultural and international matters.

Huckabee however, for all of his charm and honey-drizzled platitudes and plays to velvet-gloved Huey Long populism is by dint of a chain of his own recent, telling blatherings...quite the fucking numbskull.

He didn't know a Goddamned thing about the NIE—and when pressed probably thought it was something silly British knights said in a movie once—except I'm guessing he's more of an “Ernest Goes To Camp / “Left Behind” VHS-watching kind of fellow and has probably never heard of Monty Python.

It seems he also spent the bulk of his governorship consulting half-melted 1950's hygiene film-strips for forming policy opinions on dealing with AIDS sufferers.

But...I think it is the following feces-covered zirconia of a statement that frankly cleaves with a flashing axe, protozoans like him from the upright-walkers like Clinton and most sane folk.

"Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce," the former Arkansas governor said. "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."

If you took battery acid, roiling lye, a shot of nitroglycerin, ground glass and Clorox and mixed it in an iced tea glass and garnished it with a rusty X-acto blade, you couldn't whip up a stupider cocktail than the above issuance of words from Huckabee. It's got economic theorizing that only Professor Irwin Corey could grasp, a healthy dash of tongue-talked, Christianist law-flogging, and last but not least. one of the most shoe-horned-in bits of Godwin-nery ever heard in an unrelated political discussion.

It certainly doesn't say very much about the GOP that for all their belated gnashing of teeth about their present Commander-in-Chef's idiocy, they seem all too willing to elevate as a successor an equally intelligence-deficient person.

Perhaps that's the most obvious flaw of the wingnut “Mirror Universe”—the key divergence being the outright championing of dumbfuckery.

That penchant for shit-for-braininess certainly explains the newly ascendant Huckabee''s rise in the GOP polls, And the eerie superficial similarities he has to Clinton fills in the rest of the “Mirror Mirror” blanks quite neatly.

How sad is it that I can explain the GOP's shiny, new front-runner in total with nothing more than a creaky plot device from a 40-year-old cult classic TV series. Damn.

But I suppose it's only fitting. M*A*S*H's Frank Burns perfectly captures the last front-runner....and The Hillbilly Bears' Paw Rugg pretty much nails Iowa's #3 finisher.

Shit. There's Commander McBragg!

And Hymie the Robot.

The bitch of it all? They all think they're Jack-fucking-Bauer from “24”.

There's more...

Judge Allows Arizona Anti-Immigant Law To Go Active

Staunch Republican Judge throws out Temporary Injunctions

U.S. District Court Judge Neil Vincent Wake just ruled against both requests for temporary injunctions in the Arizona Contractors Association, Inc., et al. v lawsuits. (US District Court, Arizona. Decision #1. Decision #2.)

The New York Times

A new Arizona law considered among the nation’s toughest against employers who hire illegal immigrants will go into effect on Jan. 1 after federal judges on Friday refused to block it.

Both a United States district judge in Phoenix and a federal appeals court in San Francisco, ruling on separate lawsuits by business and civil rights groups, declined to stand in the way.

The law calls for suspending the license of an employer found to have knowingly hired an illegal worker, and revocation for a second offense.

First, Judge Neil Vincent Wake of Federal District Court in Phoenix issued a sharp defense of the rights of lawful workers and said the law would not burden businesses in the short run.

Then on Friday night, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deferred a decision on an injunction until after a hearing by Judge Wake on Jan. 16, provided a “decision is reached with reasonable promptness.”

Judge Neil Vincent Wake was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.

While certainly not every Judge is a right-wing ideologue, in the years immediately after 9/11 the Democratic minority was not positioned -- nor frankly, did it even try -- to prevent the Bush administration with stacking the courts. And we know from experience, the kind of horror judges who rule based on politics instead of law give us. Don't we Judge Bates, you fucking tool?

Judge Wake before he was on the bench, was a right-wing tool of the highest order. The first case of his I pulled up had him representing Paula and Alan Sears against the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community on the grounds that:

Las-Vegas Review Journal

...their children, who go to school in Scottsdale, would be exposed to bad influences if casino gambling is permitted nearby.

Seriously.

He won, too. (At least as of that moment. Don't know how it ultimately turned out.)

The moralistic anti-gambling forces say, I should be able to force my world-view on you such that because my sweet little innocent children go to school within miles of your den of iniquity, Jesus must throw out the money-changes from the temple.

Worse -- it might lead to dancing.

Since Judge Wake has become a judge, he has suggested that gays have no constitutional right to equal protection under the law, even in prison where the State obviously has a legal obligation to make certain homophobia doesn't lead to attacks.

Not our Judge Wake, the right-wing homophobe:

Lesbian Gay Law Notes (Page 9)

Ruling on an apparently routine summary judgment motion in a pro se ex-prisoner case, U.S. District Judge Neil Vincent Wake made the startling assertion that for purposes of an Equal Protection claim, “Homosexuals are not a protected class in the Ninth Circuit.” Sotelo v. Stewart, 2005 WL 2571606 (D. Ariz., Oct. 11, 2005) (unpublished disposition). What he should have said, of course, is that “sexual orientation” has not yet been recognized as a suspect classification, but that would not, of course, deprive the court of jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 to consider whether prison officials had a rational basis to treat a gay prisoner less well than a non-gay prisoner, an inquiry supported by Supreme Court precedent in Romer v. Evans.

Wake’s brief dismissal misses the point and is clearly erroneous in light of Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), which held at least that a state violates the 14th Amendment if it discriminates against gay people without a rational justification. In the context of a prison, had Sotelo alleged with sufficient specificity that he suffered discriminatory treatment because he was gay, the prison would have to show a penological reason for treating gay prisoners differently from others. More fundamentally, the Equal Protection Clause protects individuals, not classes.

In Romer, of course, section 1983, a jurisdictional statute, was irrelevant because the case was brought in state court and went to the U.S. Supreme Court directly from the Colorado Supreme Court on the federal constitutional question, but Romer clearly establishes the principle, binding on the 9th Circuit and its district courts, that sexual orientation discrimination is actionable under the 14th Amendment.

That's fancy legal talk for, "God Hates Fags."

Against gambling and fags.

Want to bet he's against teh sex and the abortions, the wine, women and song? And in favor of big corps?

Every case of his I found was moralistically based, or on behalf of a big corporation, white boy style. (Anti-women, anti-poor, anti-labor, anti-Indian, "Fuck you; I've got mine.")

You can see why the Bushies wanted his ass on the bench.

Part of the major damage of the Bush administration is they've corrupted much of our legal system. Even the judges who don't rule overtly politically like this asshole, aren't favorable. And then you have entire government entities attacking and ripping apart or turning over to corporate pirates the very institutions they should be protecting: the FCC, NLRB, FDA, SEC, USDA, and more.

Our legal system assumes good intent. It is not set up to protect itself against an insider attack from people in power. This is something we progressives need to fix once we take over.

Th Arizona law has undocumented workers fleeing the state in fear, and employers checking the documentation status of current workers, even though the black letter law makes clear people only have to use the system when hiring people.

Why is everyone running? Because the sheriff in Phoenix has a history of using immigration laws illegally to come after anyone he wants. A culture of lawlessness and distrust prevails against a background Republican/libertarianism "I've got mine so fuck everyone else" which pervades much of the fundamentalist (and to a lessor extent, the Mormon) portions of the West.

I can't say I blame the Ninth Circuit for failing to override Judge Wake. Had they, I have little doubt the Supreme Court would have overturned, 5-4. And again we're back to the long-term damage done to our country by the stacking of the courts.

There'll be a hearing on the case in January, where I have no doubt Judge Wake will, yet again, rule against undocumented workers and for this horrid cruel law. His current rulings make his January hearing pretty damn clear.

Arizona is cutting its own throat, economically, socially, culturally, genetically.

Stupid, stupid Republican legislators.

There's more...

He Who Is Falling Tries To Leap The Highest

“Hey, Maybe This'll Revitalize Things A Little Bi—Ohhhh...Fuuuuhhhck.”

If you, the regular readers of this blog haven't guessed it by now, or if you are a casual “click-by” visitor and don't know me (LowerManhattanite) and “how I roll“, let me lay a hard truth out here right now. I happen to utterly despise the “man”—and I use that term loosely—named Rudolph W. Giuliani. Now, it's not that I have decided to simply single his rabid ass out from the rest of the GOP jackal pack as a personal punching bag or something—oh no! Me and Rudy have “history”. Me and about 8, 149, 999 other New Yorkers to be precise. As a born and bred Gothamite, I was here during Giuliani's spittle-flecked reign of two terms as Mayor. Two terms where he and his lackeys in the guise of making the city a better place—for tourists primarily—collectively nut-kicked people of color, the poor, and the vocally progressive.

I got my two “stop n' frisks” during his reign. And others got more. Others beyond that group sometimes got dead. Grossly, unjustifiably dead—because of this little psychotic's policies. Poll this town—his hometown and you'll find surprisingly short support for his ass. Telegenic, bullshit mid-September walks walks up a dust-clouded Church Street notwithstanding.

Steve (God rest him) was on this clown's ass three years ago, and yeah, I've proudly accepted the baton from him and swung it at Rudy like I was LAPD Officer Stacey Koon stopping off in Crenshaw on my way home from a losing softball game. From jump, we've been relentless in analyzing, sharing, and exposing Giuliani's most infamous and most-desired-to-be-hidden escapades.

In the first Rudy post, during that first week of this place's being “open”, I noted the following:

We're looking, a year-and-a-half-out, at a campaign that could well die the classic “death of a thousand cuts.”

Well, here we are less than a year away, and it's only taken a few nicks to set him hemhorraging like the proverbial stuck pig.

And the ex-wifey ain't even palmed the shank outta her cuff yet. Damn.

I'm proud to say that I've been hard as times in '29 on Giuliani, but sometimes, you have to vary the palette—work a different groove to keep sharp, dontchaknow?

'Cause Rudy just gives you so Goddamned much fuel for the fire. Trouble is, as predicted—he's fucked up and set himself ablaze, with fireworks, black powder and two bottles of kerosene in his pockets to boot.

And when he did that—with his poll numbers cratering (still as we speak), I opted to mock instead of maul. The mocking met with good response, but some felt I could have busted out the whuppin' stick a little harder...

“Steve would have crushed the bastard. LM, I think you might be too nice.”—Melanie

She's right. I could have crushed him. But I've got to admit, just batting the mouse around and letting him run a second or two, only to pounce on his wounded ass again is well worth it.

And then? Sometimes that mouse gets so beat up, so discombobulated he'll run himself smack onto the trigger of a Victor mouse trap, and “PYOOOOWWWW!” You step back and go, “You dumb son-of-a-bitch.” And you just have to laugh.

Rudy gave us one such moment yesterday with his “What-the-fuck-were-you-thinking?” grade Christmas ad for the Iowa caucuses.

It wasn't a “Jump the Shark” moment.

It was a “Jump the Shark—but miss and land dead in the hungry bastard's serrated grille.” moment.

If you didn't see it, here it go. Try not to do the “Producers” first act audience jaw-drop when it's done, okay?



See, you went and did the jaw drop anyway! Okay, while you're re-hinging the ol' mandible, dig on the “WTF?”real-time critique when the abomination was first shown on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” program:

Joe Scarborough and his co-hosts reacted to the ad with incredulity. “Ohhh. He did not do that,” moaned Mika Brzezinski, as Scarborough held his head in his hand.

“That was actually an SNL sketch,” Willie Geist chimed in hopefully. “Do we have the real ad?”

“I want names and I want them now, Mr. Mayor,” demanded Scarborough. “Who put you in that red vest? Who told you this was a commercial that would help you in Iowa? My god, who put the Klieg lights on your forehead while Mike Huckabee had the soft Barbara Walters vaseline-smeared-on-the-lens glow?”

“You know, it's almost like he's spoofing,” suggested Geist again. “Maybe that was a spoof?”

“They need a statement and they need to put it out right now that says this is a parody,” agreed Scarborough.

But no such statement was forthcoming. That shit was real, baby. How weird was that “ad”? Mike Gravel saw it and probably said “What the fuck was that about?” Who signed off on dressing Giuliani like a Loews Theatre usher? What lunatic thought to put a man so ill at ease in his own skin that his temperament resembles that of Vincent D'Onofrio's “Edgar” in “Men In Black”—that of a giant cockroach in a “human suit”?—in a clothing item so jarringly “off”that it unintentionally appears comedic? The “Morning Joe” staff, and virtually everyone else who saw it registered the same “This can't be real!” response.

It came off like a creepy, “Twin Peaks”-ish set up for next-scene craziness. I kept expecting for the camera to pull back to reveal him sitting there in a tub full of severed limbs and blood. That's how disturbingly forced the “joviality” was. This is a motherfucker who's got some serious problems Dig. Up. His. Yard. Now.

What's the old saying? “When your enemy's drowning, throw him an anvil”? Well, what if before you can get the anvil unloaded he decides to grab the boat's spinning propeller with his teeth? I mean...Goddamn!

But then I stopped and thought to myself...what does this ad remind me of? Something skeevy, dark, and disturbing—yet eerily similar, and then...then I remembered!

If you're a hardcore SCTV fan, you probably remember the show's batshit insane, many times institutionalized politico, Mayor Tommy Shanks, as played by a “do-not-turn-your-back-on-this-dude” John Candy. Here is that sick fraternal twin to Rudy's Christmas ad...

Melonville Mayor Tommy Shanks' Christmas message ad to the townfolk. Brrrrrrrrr!



Kind of hard to tell which one's the real spoof isn't it? And that for damn sure ain't the kind of thing a down-at-its-knees campaign wants to hear. So yes...I'm laughing. Laughing my natural, black ass off, because sometimes you have to sit back and just go, “Damn!” when your enemy somehow manages to kick himself dead in the nuts.

Even in spite of Rudy's real ad channeling SCTV's spoof one and effectively killing irony's ass D-E-A-D.

You know what? Maybe digging up Rudy's yard for Irony's body parts wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

There's more...

All You Ever Need To Know

“Those who fail to learn from history are...oooooh! Sparkly things!”

We're big on history around here—be it the history of fashion, or music, computing or pop culture—the lore of American politics or the tales of horror and heroism of war.

History is what informs you. It gives you a context to frame the events of the day and grasp their meaning better than you would were there nothing to compare them against.

Steve was a huge proponent of understanding how the past informs the present. It's what made him so damned incisive in his writing, and it buttressed his truth-telling with a gravitas that few could match.

He wasn't just making shit up and leaving it out there like a Brooks, or a Krauthammer does—expecting us to “La-dee-dah” it like we were a nation of fact and history-challenged Annie Halls out there. But he made the point often that the Bush administration's frightening tendency to utterly ignore history—including recent history was one of their most damnable crimes. Damnable because even though their soul-crushing idiocy insofar as policy-making was already awful to the seventh power, perhaps...someone in there with a grasp of history could at the very least point to a previous moment in time as a teaching moment and say “Hey you know what? Based on this thing that happened before, let's re-think this thing we're about to do.”

They don't do that in this White House. Because every day for them is like the movie “50 First Dates”—you know only what you know and nothing will inform you any further. History never impacts, and every day's a chance to blissfully shit the bed anew.

It was confirmed with this unbearably sad, and frankly scary little piece of “fluff” reported by the Washington Post:

Appearing on national Public Radio's light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and she didn't know what it was.

“I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about...the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure.”

So she consulted her best source. “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, ''Oh, Dana.'”

I believe the correct response should have been “Oh, you fucking Dumb-ass.”

If you ever wanted to get a true understanding about how this crew—“The Bushies”—could be so earth-quakingly inept...so maladroit at the handling of even the most simple elements of governance that they could, as Driftglass says “fuck up a two-car funeral procession”, this little anecdote explains it all.

This bird-brained spokes-bot, one step removed from a “Star Search” quarterfinal with fluttering hands and a presentation model's stance is the supposed spokesperson for “the world's most powerful leader”. How in the Wide World Of What-The-Fuck does a person in that position NOT KNOW about maybe the closest instance our country has ever come to nuclear annihilation? And walk around the White House every damned day and not have so much as a clue that those very rooms and corridors she slinks around probably still reek of sweat and leaked bits of excrement from those fearful two weeks in 1962? I mean...Goddamn, it was only one of the touchstone moments of the last fifty years of American history—effectively defining our relationships with the Soviet Union and Cuba to this very minute!

I'm not feeling the “she's too young to know about it excuse” either. I was born the year after the crisis and somehow managed to hear about it during my “horrible, no-good, fucked-up, inner-city education” in Harlem a decade later