The *V.I.P.s

*Very Impotent People

As noted downpage a touch in “Res-pect Mah Authori-taaaaaayyyyh!”, we have begun to see something many of us predicted more than a year ago—namely, the more dangerous spasms of wingnut crazy against authority they once cherished (a mere nine months ago), but now gleefully cheer the overthrow of. “The Way Of The Gun” is upon us as so-called “protesters” are now inexplicably showing up outside Presidential events with small arms, high-tech gats and thunderous blunderbusses. Apparently, some twelve of these knuckle-draggers showed up at a Health Care Town Halll not too long ago with weapons a' strapped to their limbs like the obligatory “hero” just before the big gun battle near the end of an early 90's action movie.

Now, I said “inexplicably showed up” because the presence of these weapons is inexplicable considering the spin being spun as to why they are there. I had the bile-inducing misfortune to watch one such spinmeister—one Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation on “Hardball” recently, who while admitting that it may have been over the top to so openly flaunt all that overcompensatory gunmetal, the reason these people were doing so was to make a point about government interference in the lives of Americans. Matthews was for once in his perpetually blaring foghorn of a life, speechless. Gun Rights' advocates showing up at these rallies makes as much sense as Rev. Fred Phelps' crazy ass showing up to non-sequitir-ly pimp his “crazy of the day” at random unrelated events. This in-way-over-his-head flack tried to make the case that while these lunatics probably had a secondary agenda they were pushing (Hard to believe—but going all Devil's Advocate here—okay, we'll give it a tumble...) it was still perfectly okay to bring loaded handguns and automatic weapons to otherwise peaceful Presidential Events / public discussions because 'you never know when somebody else is gonna show up at one of these things looking to kill 'em.'

And with that, the wheels fell off his argument just before it exploded in flames while cartwheeling into a road abutment.

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After Matthews went down the infamous list of times unaccounted-for guns were at venues Presidents were at and retold just how badly most of those times ended up, this poor loon still defended the letter-of-the-law legal, but incendiar-ily silly practice. Ron Reagan Jr. who in the exchange evisceratingly said to Gottlieb, “Speaking as someone who has a little more experience than you do with the Secret Service...” nailed what the host Matthews was a bit reticent to say on air—that the proud brandishing of these weapons at these events was “about anger, and anger and guns do not mix”.

“The only real reason to carry a handgun or assault-style rifle anywhere—(enumerates with his hands) hunting, target practice or you intend to kill someone in self-defense Now they're not goin' huntin', they're not goin' for target practice...so who is it that they think they might have to kill? Well, they're holding up signs saying 'The tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots'. Maybe that gives us a little hint there.”

And he was 110% correct. There's a delicious irony in Reagan Jr.'s pointing that out, considering his particular lineage and a nearly lost bit of Sixties history. His father while Governor of California quickly pressured the California Legislature to repeal the open carry laws in that state in the summer of 1967 when Oakland's Black Panther Party exploited them by openly displaying weapons during their public rallies and pursuing armed local patrols to counter police brutality—a main issue of theirs. Reagan and ninety-nine percent of his wattled, golf-tanned O.C. cronies lost their narrow, ever-lovin' minds over this “free expression” then. But the huge difference with what the Panthers were doing was they openly stated their agenda (right in their name “Black Panther Party For Delf-Defense“), and didn't present arms at unrelated events to intimidate on side issues. In fact, maybe the best way for all this unsubtle barrel waving to be brought to heel is for a few black beret-ed and leather-jacketed brothers and sisters to show up at these rallies with their own legally-owned elephant guns representing the opposite view of the “protesters”. Defense for the wingnut-practice would disappear like a baby fart-let in a hurricane.

It would be one thing if, say these Town Halls were actually about Second Amendment issues. It still would be dangerous—but one could at least see a policy correlation to the “shock and awe” of these open carries. But these meetings have nothing whatsoever to do with the gun issue. The guns are being brought to these events as a verbally silent, but deadly, and symbolically loud statement about the nature of the debate between the right and left today. The right, as has been the case for quite some time, is not capable of arguing the merits factually for their side of the ledger. They have been good at staying on message, and media manipulation, but in terms of giving good reason (or really, even half-assed “reason”) for deeds and policies when things went as badly as the halfway sane amongst us predicted, they have been—and I'm being charitable her—stunningly clueless. After years of that—especially the unabashed know-knothing-ism of the Bush era after which Americans woke up a little bit and put these people aside—they have unsurprisingly and quite literally “gone to the mattresses”. It is pure and naked “intimidation”.

And why? Because with the exposure of their arguments as utterly impotent, they have rushed down the route of many insecure about their ability to command respect or at the least, appear powerful—and that way of course, is to grossly overcompensate.

It really, really doesn't take so much as an audition of a Psych 101 course to see the embarrassingly obvious relationship between their increasing frustration and their need to show who's boss, does it? It's all about the (husky, cougar-ish Elizabeth Ashley voice her) “long barrels, huge caliber and “gasp!” explosive stopping power” now. When reason and words fail, well...the sound the insecure goes for instead is the great, big “bang”. These are not smart people. These are not people who believe in the spirit of debate or really, the democratic process. They are barely functional hooligans, for whom the moment common sense begins to win out against their entrenched, retrograde views, or policy that rankles their sensitive dispositions is even being considered, will rush headlong into the steely embrace of Mssrs. Colt, Glock and Smith & Wesson. Remember how once President Obama was elected there was that sudden run on the gun stores? A run chuckled over by the usual suspects on the right with a “Hey 53% of America...it's your fault!” topping of spitefulness? (No Insta-dunderhead links here—just Google up the words “Guns Obama Election Instapundit”—and its right there. Of-disingenuously-course.) If you ever doubted it before, let this tack by them leave you nevermore a' questioning. This is their last refuge, and really, it's not that far from where they pretend to civilly exist in day-to-day debate...it's a place where physical elimination of the opposition is not so much a final solution, but a generally accepted, logical next step in the process of their getting their way. It's what these emotionally maladjusted people have been doing for years—most notably in recent memory during the Civil Rights era where “The Way Of The Gun” and naked force was embraced as a way of stopping non-violent, democratic change dead in its tracks. And the nuts we see today at these rallies are the direct descendants—emotionally, in terms of from where they hail, and in the coarse rhetoric they spew—of those very same people acting out in the bad old days featured in that grainy black and white footage that makes us grind our teeth when we see it.

This is nearly entirely about the intimidation that Ron Reagan Jr. bluntly pointed out. Having lost in the arena of ideas, the right is going for the impactful thing that takes no thought, just blind rage and a hard hand to either pound you with or clutch a weapon to shoot you with—the threat of physical harm. Impotence breeds intolerance which breeds indiscriminate violence. It is a sad sequence as old as time itself.

But there's that neurotic spectre again...just a' waving his “point” around all clumsily, and knocking down all the accumulated Freudian bric-a-brac in the room, right? I mean...we could...if we wanted to...delve deeper into the creepy, psycho-sexual nexus of guys (and it is almost 100% exclusively men perpetrating this) feeling politically impotent over the Black Guy's (in their mind) “lording it over them” and of course going for the whole “big gun” as equalizer / trump card angle...but hey...

We await the post-protest YouTube of one of these fellows all sweaty-browed, flushed and out of breath asking another one of his number as they stand erect...against “the grip of tyranny”...

“Hey dude...was it good for you too?”

There's more...

That Crazy Genie Is Loose And Happy...And Hates Its Goddamned Bottle

“Um...yeah, Master? About that 'Your wish is my command' crap?' Um...Nope!”

It's the age-old parable. Man creates uncontrollable monster. Man uses uncontrollable monster for his own selfish gain. Uncontrollable monster is of course, un-controllable and does heinous things. Man tries to bring uncontrollable monster to heel. Uncontrollable monster says “Fuck that!” and it all goes downhill from there. From the legend of Frankenstein, to tales of lamp and bottle-chucking genies going for theirs, to the attempted “taming” of King Kong and Disney's in-over-his-head Sorcerer's Apprentice it's a well-worn story where ego-fueled “masters” grossly underestimate the destructive forces they unleash when they tamper with that which no man can truly harness.

We spoke on the original “Three M's” from last week—“McCain, The Mattresses, and Menace”, his campaign's harsh and incendiary words. And thanks to John McCain's desperate, reckless political gambit, we find ourselves reminded of three other “M's”, linked through tales we all know, and as noted above, once released, nigh impossible to re-contain—Magic, Monsters, and Murderous Rage.

The play backfired. Badly for him. Shakily mounting the Ayers stalking horse himself like some city-poser playing cowboy-tough, and with Sarah Palin doing the vile scut work of trawling the depths of wingnut fear-mongering and regurgitating that crap with such dippy glee that folks wondered if she was medicated...it all seems to have come apart. He has stoked his crowds—his racist, hate-filled republican base crowds to such a high temperature of intolerance that the news media felt that ugly heat a mile away and reported on it, and ol' Johnny boy himself took some third degree burns to whatever prestige remained attached to him.

He may have also helped to crispy-critter his party's brand with this reach into the realm of ugly. And his in-party co-horts are pissed.

Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.

And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.

From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies.

Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing state of Wisconsin, said he thought Mr McCain, on his present trajectory, would lose the state, and he told a New York Times reporter he was not happy with the campaign. “I don't know who is,” he added.

GOP'ers love to trot out the old “11th Commandment” of Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”, as evidence of their party unity. Evidently there was a little-discussed “Commandment 11A” scrawled at the bottom of Saint Ronnie's jellybean jar that only a few read back then, but many seem to know now. Said addendum reads...“unless the idiot's gonna blow our shit sky high.”

And Johnny's fucking with dynamite, kids.

It was evident he was rallying the nutbar base of his party as independents have begun to tune him and his cave-bright co-hort the hell on out. A desperate ploy, this going all native, you see. But this maverick whipped mule, with the polls sliding and his chances getting away from him released that genie, sought to domesitcate “Kong”, and messed about with the Sorcerer's powerful spellbook, and of course the ensuing situation got away from him embarrassingly. When you have one guy campaigning on “Hope”, and “Change”, and detailing how he's gonna fix the broken stuff in political D.C., while the other guy's got screaming, crazy supporters citing chain-letter, black helicopter bullshit as the reason they're “a-skeered”, and how the opponent must be bombed, defeated, or killed, well...that's gonna look bad for the latter guy.

Of course, he didn't realize that until the external poll numbers began fleeing away from him, and didn't even hint at changing up until the internal numbers clearly (although they'll NEVER admit to it) imploded. The sane among us saw those crazies at his rallies—the “He's a terrorist!”, “Bomb him!”, “Kill him” crowd and didn't have to make a Bob Beamon leap to see the dangerous place that anger was going. Those lunatics are that hard-nut core who will back the worst, most retrograde shit, and cannot stand the very idea of being either called out on their obvious biases or being out of impactful power. Both of those things trigger a pathological response in these “people”—a misplaced, transferred play at victimhood. The same kind of victimhood” seen in D.W. Griffiths' “Birth Of A Nation”, where beleagured Whites were forced—forced I tell you!—to take up arms, sheets, coned hoods and blazing crosses against the Black menace that post-emancipation “threatened” the country.

The unnervingly bitter folks in these videos speak volumes.





Yes, I said “bitter”. What turned these moments into a pro-Obama springboard was their clear validation of a painful early Obama campaign narrative come a' cropper...namely that “bitterness” he spoke of during the primary season. It manifests itself in these brusque moments and the countless others chronicled since John McCain decided to beat the whackdoodle beehive with a tree limb and think he could tell the bees that swarmed out what to sting and when. It plays to Obama's not only having been right, but also sagely prescient about how these folks will “go to ground” when the shit hits the fan.

And for them it is clear, a Black person at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and not working in the kltchen is the shit hitting the fan.

McCain and Palin knew exactly what they were doing when they played these cards with the crazies across from them at the table. They just didn't figure on everybody else instead of following these sad lunatics, standing back and disassociating themselves from the bigoted batshittery. And in isolating those morally sick people with the candidates who amped them up, and then puiblicizing the stupidity of their words, McCain's gamble wound up crapping out. “Regular” folks didn't want to be lumped in with “those” vicious goons who sounded like the loudmouth sidewalk bystanders from old newsreeels screaming invective at civil rights marchers.

Shame is a helluva thing. When the polls worsened for McCain after this ill-thought-out / ill-timed tack, the situation in fact, blew up so badly that McCain had to beat his “monster” back with a flaming torch alá Frankenstein's Monster by talking his most insane “supporters” down from dementia as noted above. The stumped “No?” from the crazed anti-Arab woman is priceless. It's as if she's saying “But that's what I got from what you were saying, John...”

McCain even had to issue a press release disavowing the wild rhetoric he sired, and worst of all for him—for once he had to publicly acknowledge Senator Obama as a human being with feelings in trying to clean up after his 'followers' hateful verbal diarrhea.

And then, it put wingnuttia's most prominent shills on the defensive as well. When you have the likes of the rope-belted perfesser, Glenn “Instahack” Reynolds and Michelle “Diss The Cheerleader And You Save The World” Malkin running scared, and running interference to cover for the nuts they play to, but make believe they don't, you know a line got crossed.

First, Reynolds: (No links. Crawl through the cybersewer “Shawshank Redemption”-style to find their turds.)

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE? So we've had nearly 8 years of lefty assassination fantasies about George W. Bush, and Bill Ayers' bombing campaign is explained away as a consequence of him having just felt so strongly about social justice, but a few people yell things at McCain rallies and suddenly it's a sign that anger is out of control in American politics? It's nice of McCain to try to tamp that down, and James Taranto sounds a proper cautionary note -- but, please, can we also note the staggering level of hypocrisy here? (And that's before we get to the Obama campaign's thuggish tactics aimed at silencing critics.)...

...The double standards involved --particularly on the part of the press -- are what are feeding this anger...

...So while asking for McCain supporters to chill a bit, can we also ask the press to start doing its job rather than openly shilling for a Democratic victory? Self-control is for everybody, if it's for anybody...

And then, our poor, special child Shellykins has the blogospheric equivalent of a two-year old's shit-fit while sprawled on the floor of a Stein-Mart:

The Obamedia is attempting to set yet another false narrative: The narrative of the McCain “mob.” McCain-Palin rallies are out of control, they wheedle. Conservatives are mad! They’re yelling mean things about Obama and calling him names! It’s scaaaaary!...

...Please.

Let’s talk about “insane rage” and “violent escalation.”
This is insane rage — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”...

...This is insane rage — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:..

...And speaking of violent escalation, let’s revisit the Unhinged: The Mugshot Collection for the violent escalation last election cycle that the Obamedia ignored:...

The two whine-fests are funny for so many reasons. One, you can tell when something is under Instahack's onion-thin skin because you can feel the abject agony of his having to actually write something beyond “Heh”, “Indeed”, “Ouch!” or somesuch passive-aggressive pablum that ends up agreeing with heinous winger shit. Two, when he's going on about the mean, old press being responsible for these kooks' anger, remember...this is the clown who's been crowing like a rooster with short-term memory disorder about the death of the old media, and their loss of influence. As they are apparently being replaced by such new “Tiffany Network”-grade work as seen at Pajamas Media, of course. Malkin's piggy squeal though, first comes off like some over-the-top ad-lib shit off the “Mean Girls” cutting-room floor—“It's scaaaaaaary!” But that's almost appropriate, considering her emotional maturity level (Hey, she may have actually written this little screed herself, by gum!), and then she lapses into the lamest defense since The Patriots' fourth quarter ass-tumbling last winter against the Giants. “Waaaaaaaaaah! Lookit what they did!”—followed up with mealy-ass filler from her most recent bound failure of a string of consonants and vowels, “Unhinged”. (This will NOT bump up sales Malky, sell 'em outta your trunk like the hoodrat snuff-fiction you know it's equal to)

But notice one key thing about these two leading-low lights and their defenses. There's not a shred of contrition, folks. If anything, there's more of the “Raaaaaaaaargh! I hate, therefore I am victimized!” keening. Why?

Simple. It goes back to something I said two weeks ago about today's wingnuts when I called them “The Lost Generation”.

...And the likes of Palin and her fellow travelers, skipping down the road of stupid like Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow...not in quest of heart, home, courage and yes...brain, but power instead—represent the core of what passes for leadership on the right. There is NO brilliant—but wittily evil mind on their side like Bill Buckley's any more. His generation is dead and gone, and he was at least entertaining in a thought-provokingly maddening sort of way. No. What we have is a cloud of dumb-assery, raining grating “Dontchas”, “Betchas”, “Hear-yas”, and “Back-to-yas!” upon us to where we stand knee-deep in in a sludge of bullshit and stupid.

There remains only a vestigial brain—just sophisticated enough to walk, breathe, chew gum and hate with.

The modern-day republican is hammer-to-the-temple stupid and is reduced to just a hateful “id”. Reynolds and Malkin and those hooligans at the rallies exemplify it. They are never wrong—somehow only provoked and misunderstood. Pushed to their state of crazy by a world gone mad.

Bullshit.

In Robert Louis Stevenson's original “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” the venal Hyde was not something that Jekyll became outside of himself. The brutal “Hyde” was a thing within him that if not acknowledged as a component, would repeatedly subsume him. (Which it does in the novel)

The GOP of today is the ascendant, unfettered Hyde. Jekyll is no more. Lamented in his passing by Andrew Sullivan and others through the reality of classic “conservatism's” having been overwhelmed by the lunatic fundie base. The genie is out of the bottle for good now, and that scares the living hell out of the sane and sober “silent majority” of classic republicans. What we see at these rallies is the inbred children of old-line Birchers, and Wallace-ites, raised on Rush and Coulter on home-school talk ray-diddio, and taught to read by reciting black helicopter-and-illuminati-filled chain letters. They were looked at as the “special” kid the shamed GOP elites kept in an attic closet or in a special hidey box like “The Gimp” in “Pulp Fiction”. Well, a desperate John McCain has set those maladjusted people loose—to spark something...Anything!—to get his campaign turned around and instead, it blew up in his face.

Exposing him as craven and feckless, and them as the damaged loons we always knew they were but were maybe too reticent to group in.

The reason you can't stop these people is because they are “the base”. That core 25-28% who still support Bush in spite of his royal 'King Feces Touch' and will back anything a nut with an “R” in front of his name and a bible under his arm says. They are the concentrated pure essence and cannot be diluted at this point—for they are what remains. You can't ask something that is what it is to be something else. The dangerously flawed John McCain chose to appeal directly to them—and not the independents who've abandoned him in droves, because they are the shock troops, the instant offense you go to when you need a furtive boost. Not what you base a winning team on.

John McCain's sweaty desperation helped him to forget that. And now the big, ugly gear of intolerance in the republican machine has laid itself bare. For the Reynolds' and Malkins of the world on piss-pot damage control duty, there is NO spin away. There is no masking what those crowds are down with.

You can try to stuff that genie back in the bottle, Johnny-Boy. But first, you'll have to glue that fucker back together after you smashed it open in a panic.

And now that the genie's (a pretty powerful one, too) tasted freedom, thanks to you...it's gonna be damn near impossible to get it to “go home”.

'Cause those blinks when it gets angry are no joke.

There's more...

The Lost Generation

“Hel-loooooo! Helloooooooo In There! Any body Home?”

I grew up as did our blogfather Steve, a child of to-the-rest-of-the-world “Horrible” Harlem, NYC... reading the journalistic likes of Tom Wicker and R.W. Apple. Jack Anderson and Murray Kempton. I read Gay Talese and the great Jimmy Breslin, (who probably won't remember me doing so, but I nuked a taped segment of his briefly shown ABC show when he did a man-on-the-street segment showing how Americans didn't know their politicians—and I immediately knew who the pictured Tip O'Neill and Caspar Weinberger were. They turned the camera off) as well as Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, and Sydney Schanberg.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (who I met two nights ago in Manhattan at a large specialty store) were names in my family household before “All The President's Men”. I mean Goddamn, sportswriters? I'd read about Grantland Rice and his renowned “Four Horsemen” piece in a book on early 20th century American History. I followed the dugout and sideline talk of the creepy Dick Young, the brassy Jerry Izenberg, Beantown's Bob Ryan and the thoughtful Dick Schaap. I even read the execrable Mike Lupica for shits and giggles.

I'm that same nobody who grew up in Harlem and Hollis, going to almost all-Black schools that weren't supposed to teach me a Goddamned thing. Places where I learned about fabled court cases like Brown vs. Board of Education (and Thurgood Marshall's huge role in it), and Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Dred Scott (vs. Sandford) case. The name Felix Frankfurter stayed with me for years just out of curiosity. Abe Fortas and Earl Warren were names attached to one of the first D.C. feeding frenzy scandals I remember seeing unfold. Warren Burger? Watergate, baby. How could I forget that drama.

Yeah. I'm that same nobody who grew the hell up in Horrible Harlem and Hip-Hop Hollis, going to those no 'count second-rate, damn near all-Black schools.

So tell me how in the flying fuck through a rolling donut did I manage to read more newspapers, and end up knowing more about American jurisprudence and current events in my lifetime than the almost brain-dead Republican candidate for Vice President in 2008? “What newspapers do you read?”, and she couldn't even say GRIT? Not even fucking GRIT?

No, seriously...as this is really no longer a joke—how is it that a person who is one of the four people presently most likely to have a turn at running the most powerful nation in the world when asked about what newspapers she reads can give an aneurysm-inducing response like this:



And then, laughing that train wreck off, answer like this to a question about the Supreme Court of The United States? (via TPM)



Okay...now go swig down a couple of tablespoons of fish oil to replenish the brain cells you just Manson-ed watching the above video blights, and I'll give you the answer. (Hopefully your language center survived and you can still read the letter “_”. You can still read _he le__ er “T” can't you? Good! Whew! You had me scared for a second there!

The problem is that there is a generation of Republican politicians for whom the very idea of broader knowledge is anathema. For whom a discerning, analytical brain is seen as a hinderance . For whom smart is dumb, and dumb is smart. Give the devil that is Richard M. Nixon and his generation their due—for all their perfidy and damage, you can't say that they weren't at the very least...intelligent.

Not just shrewd, but actually smart, learned people.

Republicans gave up on the valuing of intelligence with the ultra-marketing and eventual ushering in of the proudly, giddily dim Ronald Wilson Reagan. But Reagan, thanks to decades worth of Hollywood experience was artfully dumb. It looked nice on camera. Or, to paraphrase Will Smith's line in “Men In Black”, 'He made that shit look good.' His wizened acting chops—boiled down to simple soap-opera/ TV movie shorthand worked perfectly in a just post-Charlie's Angels era America. It was the beginning of “The Idiocracy” and he was Highfather Megalord of that new faith, his smiling visage everywhere, all Bryllcreem™, ten-gallon hats, and the best B-movie production design gloss his backers and Michael Deaver could afford.

The political children he would spawn in the “sea change” GOP wave in the 1994 elections were mere bit players and chorus girls bereft of what presentational chops Ronnie had. They were all emotion and NO smarts at all, but luckily managed to ride that boiling wave of hate and fear to an election victory. But they have NOT worn well. The stupid shows through now, clearly.

You see, reading position papers and reciting blast-faxed talking points is all fine and good when nobody asks you real questions. You don't get to cup your hand to your ear and do a bullshit “Whatdjasay” as you stroll majestically to your waiting copter of escape like Reagan did. This is a different world in 2008. It's harder to hide your shit. The twenty-four hour news cycle and alternate reportage (on the net and through the blogosphere) makes it much more difficult. And thus, you get exposed like Palin has. Or how poor Eric Cantor did a week-and-a-half ago. Or GOP shill Kevin James this past May.

I'm reminded about Allan Bloom's “seminal” (at least to conservatiives) tome from the late eighties, “The Closing Of The American Mind”, and just what a transference-crammed mind-fuck that book was. Bloom's “premise” was that the country's collective intelligence—nay, it's very future!—was at risk due to the expansion of the so-called recognized canon of accepted literature and general culture in our schools and culture. Conservatives hopped on this leaky hulled failboat of reason, using it to smack down Ethnic and Gender Studies departments in colleges, claiming that this augmenting and for them, diminishing of the long-held standards of intellectual greatness would surely lead America to ruin.

It seemed so silly then, Bloom's caterwauling...but now I, and I'm sure you see it for the dodge that it was. Just look who the fucking idiots turned out to be in the end. It was used as an excuse by dippy wingnuts to get away from dealing with smarts altogether. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater entiirely. It would beget the likes of the Cro Mag-browed and brained Sean Hannity, the reason-challenged spittle launching of a Rush Limbaugh, the happily simple George W. Bush, and now...the frightfully un-learned Palin. There was actually something of a balance between the raw emotion and the obvious intelligence of a jerk like the aforementioned President Nixon. But that balance of emotion and brainpower that fed awful things like the “Southern Strategy” as well as his canny signing off on major elements of civil rights legislation (to keep a lid on things in the powderkeg of early seventies America) is gone now, totally subsumed by all the silly ass emotion his intellectually lesser descendants could muster. Newt Gingrich is a child of that Nixonian blend of intelligence and venality. And even he realized not long after the '94 “sea change” that the staircase-full of idiots he stood with when he signed the “Contract with America” was a reason-and-intellect challenged bunch who knew only zealotry. Which meant that pragmatism and even the occasional bit of “give” necessary to get a larger thing done was utterly lost on them. These political “savages” did not get it at all—and their hubris and anger could NOT be tamed.

Newt was gone before you knew it as their “leader” / shepherd—inasmuch as one could ever hope to “herd” a pack of rabid, feral cats, one would suppose.

This gang was a “Lost Generation” for whom stupid was the air they breathed, the blood that coursed through them, and the quicksanded earth they trod—with knuckle-drag lines bracketing the footprints within.

There was a time when there were “a couple” of patently stupid people on the right you could point and hoot at...but post 1994, the numbers are too great to chalk up as “a couple”. We have been governed and legislated by fools like Senator “Box Turtle” John Cornyn, and Rick Santorum. Represented by the likes of daft “Mean” Jean Schmidt and Ted “a series of tubes” Stevens. Preznidented over by George W. (as in “What the fuck is the answer to two-plus-two?”) Bush, misdiagnosed by Senator “She's NOT brain-dead, Jim” Bill Frist, and judged by his Daddy Bush's dusky dolt on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, who famously, like Ol' Man Rver, “Don't know nuttin” and “Don't say nuttin” in sessions with his fellow Supremes. (And conversely, we saw actual intellects like Al Gore openly mocked and pilloried for basically “daring NOT to drool” by his haters on the right.)

There are others I could spend an hour mocking the single brain cells of, but you get the point. And Palin is but the natural evolutionary result of this post-Reagan process. Yes, I know she believes humans and Dinosaurs existed at the same time, and that Fred, her great-grandpa ten-thousand times removed, tragically met his end when his foot-powered car tipped over due to a giant slab of bronto ribs being placed haphazardly on the driver's side window sash, but that evolutionary process in republican politics is real, and she is the iteration we have now. But as the GOP has de-volved, the world about it has e-volved with instantaneous fact-checking and alternative media to the one-time “Ghosts In The Machine” that was the mainstream media of a mere ten-to-fifteen years ago.

And the likes of Palin and her fellow travelers, skipping down the road of stupid like Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow...not in quest of heart, home, courage and yes...brain, but power instead—represent the core of what passes for leadership on the right. There is NO brilliant—but wittily evil mind on their side like Bill Buckley's any more. His generation is dead and gone, and he was at least entertaining in a thought-provokingly maddening sort of way. No. What we have is a cloud of dumb-assery, raining grating “Dontchas”, “Betchas”, “Hear-yas”, and “Back-to-yas!” upon us to where we stand knee-deep in in a sludge of bullshit and stupid.

There remains only a vestigial brain—just sophisticated enough to walk, breathe, chew gum and hate with.

Gone is their “Capital Gang”. Say hello instead...to the enfeebled “Capital Ganglia”.

This...is the best they can do. In their slaughter of the middle class, the military and our prestige on the world stage, their point-blank blunderbuss of “duh” has also managed to kill even irony's ass. Stone. Cold. Dead.

My God. You'd think this crew just fell off the rubber-chicken banquet delivery truck. It's as if...they'd “only been at this like what? Five weeks?”



Yep.

And five weeks from now until election day. Here's to the “two smartest mother-fuckers in the room” effectively ending the reign of the “I'm With Stupid” brigade.

So, to you Sarah? As even the functionally illiterate “Krusty The Klown” inspiringly said to the millions of kids watching his show...as he held a weighty tome upside-down...

“Give a hoot! Read a book!”

UPDATE:

Picking up the ball in comments, Stormcrow and Doc Bopper plumb history's depths to note:

Stormcrow: This is not a creation of the 1980s

This has been with us since before the Revolutionary War..

And it's been growing. Decade by decade. Like a cancer, ever since America and the Industrial Revolution first crossed paths.

Google on "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Please.

That book was first published back when Ronald Reagan was still an actor.

This was part of my own education. Though it wasn't in any syllabus. It was, I guess, part of my first "incident post-mortem".

Undertaken more than two decades before I learned to use the word "incident" to refer to something other people would call a "catastrophe".

drbopperthp: Stormie is absolutely right. The vein of anti-intellectualism that runs long and deep through the bedrock of American culture has been tapped into and vigorously mined by the enemies of true democracy in this country for 400 years. Mix in a little dollop of -ism schism and inject the plague viruses of ignorance and stupidity and look watcha got.

And they are right. Sometimes, when you “Readers Digest” a issue, that little bit of extra depth excluded can gloss over an important point. One which I made down in comments and will re-iterate here:

...Like a cancer, there is a tipping point—where things metastasize and the cancer touches bone and then...

...it's everywhere.

Reagan was the metastization point and we pretty much went terminal from there.

The idea of this proud stupidity does go back well past a century—into pre-Emancipation America in “Gangs of New York” New York where:

The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing."

The moniker would go on as a pejorative in the early 20th century to define xenophobic haters of influence playing to the lowest common denominator.

Familiar? You betcha'!

As called out in the all-knowing Wiki, even William Kristol, the son of one of conservative America's last evil thinkers (The Star Wars “Emperor”-esque Irving):

In 2006, an editorial in the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard by William Kristol attacked populist Republicans for not recognizing the danger of “turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party.”

And of course...there is Paul Krugman from just two months ago:.

[K]now-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Yah got that right!

UPDATE #2:

And thanks to Tata in comments for capping it all off perfectly with this video link:

There's more...

Speaking of Hate Related Killing

Authorities still claim to have no known motive for the murder of Arkansas Democratic State Party Chair, Billy Gwatney. A commentor (thanks stormcrow) made the point in my mosque-attack thread, that we will never be able to directly pin these crimes to the likes of Maulken, Coulter, and Limbaugh-- the scum that promote violence as a part of the political process. And mores the pity.

Apparently there was a note with a phone number and Gwatney's name written on it, and the FBI is checking out a computer, but not much of anything else is known at this time.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A computer used by the gunman who killed a state Democratic Party chairman is the last clue to be investigated in the search for his motive, authorities said Monday Timothy Dale Johnson, 50, burst into the Arkansas party headquarters and killed Bill Gwatney on Aug. 13, then was shot and killed by police after a long chase later that day.

Little Rock Police spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said car keys and a phone number listed on a note found at Johnson's home in Searcy did not turn up any connection between the two men.

"We have everything pretty well figured out except for the computer. ... We've found nothing so far to indicate any motive or reason," Hastings said Monday. "Right now, we've got nothing that points us in any particular direction as to why this happened."

Police did not provide specifics on the investigation of the computer, but have said that the FBI is helping.

The note with the phone number also had the name "Gwatney" on it, but police said it did not match Gwatney's home number or any cell phone number they know of for the slain chairman...

Johnson, who owned at least 16 guns, drove more than 30 miles to Gwatney's office after quitting his job at a Target over graffiti on a store wall.

I think it is clear that things have gotten more than a bit dangerous out there for the reality based community, it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride and one that will continue past 11/4 for certain. I believe the wingnuts will turn more and more to violence as an escape valve for all the cognitive dissonance building up in their system.

There's more...

“Such A Pretty Mess”

“Here's The Pitch—It'll Be A Combination Of 'Northern Exposure', 'Peyton Place', and 'The Dukes Of Hazzard'! Pretty Good, Huh? Hello? Hell-oooooo?”

There was a consideration before this past week that some of us here at GNB go to Mary Tyler Moore-opolis to cover the Republican Convention. I'm so glad we didn't as it would have not only been a waste, but it would have screwed the correct context for experiencing the whole thing all to hell.

This “thing” was meant to be watched on TV. A shitty, pre-cable-ready TV with rabbit ears and a remote with a wheel that goes “click” when you switch channels.

Coming off the Democrats' Shubert Alley level of stagecraft last week, the GOP opted to swiftly counter-program with the surprise (a.k.a. “What the fuck?”) pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as “Senator McGollum's” running mate for their sub- “Waiting For Guffmann”-grade show this week. I was still recovering from Denver when I heard about the Palin choice Friday afternoon / evening, and I realized that in spite of its oddness, there really weren't many other avenues to pursue for the plane-trashing Arizona legislator.

Romney was out of the question, in spite of a smile that would blind you from a satellite and a bunny-trail smooth coif to die for. That bugaboo ‘Mormon Thing” would rear its head again with the American people. They are decent folk, but have a severe liability in the actual words of their religious texts and certain...well, offensive belief structures that were in place up until just a couple of decades ago. Things that soundbite-wise would have been killers, even with so-called “explanations” and after-the-fact context added...

“And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”

“Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttt! Next!”

Giuliani, for all of his fear-mongering / hate-channeling ability was even further out of the question. His “Noo-Yawkiness” was going to be bad enough with the flyover voters, but his bottomless satchel o' scandals—as yet un-mined directly by the wife he openly cheated on if you can imagine that—was a non-starter as we noted here early and often. Add in his old wingman Bernard Kerik—who leave us not forget, Rudy pushed as Homeland Security Boss (!) is still about to go on trial for everything except for killing a man in Reno just to watch him die. Nope. Wasn't gonna happen.

Mike Huckabee. Were those dark-pooled eyes of his not prone to reflect the fearsome pit of super-religio-crazitude, he coulda maybe been a “contendah”. He'd have helped carry a south pretty much promised to McCain, padding the margins of victory only. But Huck's whole “fried possum” and cornpone ways would probably cost McCain valuable northern votes he'd need to steal to nab a surprise state or two. Huckabee's known gift of gab and affability would have been easily countered with a not-too-deep probe or two into his shadiness while at the Governor's mansion in Little Rock, right down to him and his wife's filching everything that wasn't Krazy Glued™ the fuck down when they left the place. And dare we mention Huck's lying about his odd handling of the parole of a rapist who struck again, and how that hamstrung his primary campaign for weeks? Shitty, shifty and shady. Can I get an “Amen”?

Fred Thompson? When my brother was six years old, I got him to believe a famous TV pitchman had six fingers on each hand—just as a goof through constantly saying, “See? Did you see it? Right there! Six fingers!” Eventually, he believed it, based on my timing when to tell him to look and through my convincing tone. Someone sadly pulled the same stunt on Fred Thompson late in life, getting him to believe that a good thing like “Gravitas” was the equal of being a ponderous, boring, wrinkle-faced lump of a man, and being thus he somehow had “Gravitas” in spades. A slug crawling across a patio stone holds more excitement than this man, and the only state he'd have helped McCain carry is the state of unconsciousness. When you leave “Law & Order” and viewers don't even notice you're gone, it means you not only bring nothing to the table personality-wise, but should you sit down at it, you will be asked to leave because you put people off their meals. Sam Waterston probably remembers you as that big guy who frowned during the half-hour you worked every week. No name. Just 'Ol' frowny-puss'. Dianne Wiest however, I'll bet he he has on speed-dial. Ooops.

Joe Lieberman. What to say about this saggy, nad-faced scold that hasn't already been muttered under the breath of progressives since the ought-sixes? “Short Ride” Joe has all the currency of a Brian Keith bon mot from an episode of Hardcastle & McCormick—but with less integrity. He's the guy who when the big snowstorm hit, sadly saw his lawn alone nearly bare because of how he positioned his house. So, because he couldn't build a fucking snowman, he must, must, must go from yard to yard in his “neighborhood” kicking over and then pissing on all of his neighbors' lawn-standing snowmen. Classy stuff. The lame-ducked twerp so wanted to matter again...but even a “Mad Cow” addled John McCain would have retained the common sense to consider only, then pick elsewhere with Joe's name in the mix. A three-alarm kennel fire sports more popularity than a Joe Lieberman vice-presidency. “Joe-mentum?” No. “Joe-Rect-um”. And I mean that in every sense of the word.

So, what about Texas' Kay Bailey Hutchison? Ehhhhhh...too Betty Crocker-cookbook circa “Mad Men”, and unable to move the female vote outside of Lubbock, Plano, and Texarkana—if she were lucky. Lindsey Graham? Too Huckleberry Hound, and frankly, a vetting cluster bomb that would set fire to the GOP platform and any Log Cabin situated near it. Charlie Crist? See “vetting cluster bomb that would set fire to the GOP platform yada-yada-yada...” Bobby Jindal? There's brown people to the GOP, and then there's FUCKING-BROWN PEOPLE to the GOP. Jindal is the latter. He's also so batshit crazy a fundie that Mike Huckabee probably looks at him and says, “Mister...you are in-tense!” His support of and actual involvement in...exorcisms (!) probably also would have hurt him...oh, just a little bit. Tom Ridge? Too closely linked to the idiotic color-code scares of Bush's halcyon fear-mongering years of 2001-2005, and so on and so forth with the remaining “contenders” as it were.

Leaving us with our Lip-Smacker™-ed pit bull, Sarah Palin.

Why her?

There's the distinct possibility that she was chosen because no one left wanted to be hooked to this boat anchor of a ticket. That I can see. But I think there's a bit more...or rather, less to it than that.

An empty vessel with superficial charms was pretty much the one thing that could help McCain. Everything else would tie him either back to Bush or deeper into the beltway he despises so much he's collected seven different homes to run away from it to. And Palin's being a woman—and a youngish one while not tipping the scales in McGollum's favor, at least slows their tipping away from him a bit, as the shiny, bespectacled newness—“Now fortified with that second “X” chromosome, because folks, that's all it takes to get silly, wimminzes to rush out and vote for a party that hates them, right? You see, It was never going to be McCain flack and fluffer Carly Fiorina, as the business press was set to break the bones left over from their chewing the meat off her over her HP tenure debacle and then gnawing at her marrow of incompetence. And Fiorina for all of her fuck-ups comes with an administrative / big-job pedigree of sorts. She's the kind of person who could without even thinking about it, talk rings around the increasingly stupefied McCain on economics, business, health care and the like, diminishing him all the more.

Sarah Palin is NOT that person. She spent the last three days before Wednesday night's hissfest cramming on the difference between Iraq and a souped-up IROC, and learning that the federal safety net was NOT something deployed to save dolphins while wrecking the fishing industry. As she showed Wednesday night, smarts ain't her bag. What she is is a 'crystal cudgel'. Willing to be used to beat the shit out of an opponent, but designed to shatter delicately at just the moment you note the “violence” she's involved in. The five kids...the bullshit-teous “aw shucks” personal story, and her willingness to play the victim card the second the heat starts melting her ice-princess evil shell are components of that breakaway “crystal” we're all supposed to stand around and “tut-tut” about as it lay there on the floor in all of its beautiful jaggedness whenever she tears her ass publicly.

And let's be real here. Palin's whole story as it unspools before us all is a mess. A pretty mess. But Goddamnit, a mess nonetheless. And a throw a scoop of sordid on top.

If you took that old TV you have in the basement, put on a combat boot and kicked the shit out of the picture tube so it split three ways and then turned it on, you'd see “The Sarah Palin Story” play out before your eyes. In one of the cracked sections you'd see an old episode of “Northern Exposure” playing. Small town drama against a backdrop of the western sun and weird shit galore, with the moose droppings filling in for her ham-fisted GOP poltico bullshit, of course. On the second section you'd see a washed-out kinescope of of the turgid soaper “Peyton Place”, with all manner of backstabbing, shocking affairs, mystery babies and melodramatic lies and cover-ups. And oh, the gossip! The big-chord, sudden turn and hand-to-mouth gossip! “Brought to you by Ivory Snow...it cleans dirt.” And in that final panel of the busted triptych you'd see a dirt-flecked episode of “The Dukes Of Hazzard”, another mess of faux-Americana gone amok, with “proud rednecks” and wild livin' and of course, the hyper-influential “Boss Hogg”, running the town and pulling every lever available to him—never mind legality to git whut he wants done, done.

Now quick, turn that sucker off before it shorts out and bursts into flames!

Q: Why in the “Wide, World Of Sports” would John McCain choose someone with more baggage than a JetBlue cargo hold on Christmas Eve? Did he know?

A: Why not her? Everybody else had baggage too, and frankly, time was getting short. He had to pick somebody, so he went with someone he figured maybe had some issues, but not the overly familiar ones of everybody else who was being bandied about. That said—note I use the pronoun “he” in describing whose pick this was. McCain's overweening ego is all over this pick—a brazen compulsive gambler's pick. “All the fuck in, Johnny.” There wasn't much deep thought in this, as seen in the eye-popping after-the-fact vetting. I think he knew there were issues, but he figured “How bad can they be for a mom of five who's a little bit ''MILF-y” and will pretty much say anything a senior GOP leader will tell her?

Pretty damned bad, as we're discovering. Beyond the “Hazzard County-esque” arm-twisting on her part in the “TrooperGate” scandal and her ties to Ted “Bridge Over Troubled Water” Stevens' boondoggle, there is “BabyGate”. And let me make one thing clear here. This isn't about ragging on her daughter Bristol and her situation. (Although I am tempted to cast kindness to the wind when it comes to Bristol's “man” Levi and his proud “F'n Redneck-ness”...but for now...) Unexpected and oftentimes disappointing things can happen with teens and sex. A teen pregnancy and a teen mother is nothing and no one to mock. However, the way Bristol's mom, ol' “Caribou Barbie” handled the matter is something else ugly and creepy entirely.

When it became apparent that Bristol was in the family way back in the spring, Mommie Dearest pulled a “Handmaid's Tale” and yanked her daughter out of school—under the threadbare blanket of a lie about Bristol having super-communicable mononucleosis. It appears that ol' tough-as-nails Sarah couldn't bear the shame of being an anti-choice spouting, abstinence-only screeching, family-values bullshitting, wingnut Governor while having her parenting maybe appear something less than the pious conservative ideal. She basically locked her daughter away out of sheer personal and political mortification while keeping up with her spewing of talking points that defied her own reality.

In other words...she's a Goddamned hypocrite. End of story.

And she kept this little Grand Guignol secret until the small-town rumor mill spilled over into the MSM and it could no longer be finessed away. Which doesn't mean she didn't try, by having Bristol show up at an early running mate event strategically cradling her younger brother Trig over a perfectly placed large blanket meant to lamely obscure her pregnant belly. But it was too late, as every Wasilla native with eyes and a willingness to talk dropped dime about the charade.

And a disorganized GOP leadership (listen here for some off-the-cuff / accidentally on-the-mic revelations about the party's real situation) led by it's by-default standard bearer had already made its choice as time was perilously short to get someone, anyone in the spot. Again, a brazen compulsive gambler's pick, but let's be real—if Karl Rove's ass is colllecting check the first for supposedly helping out the GOP this year strategy-wise with stuff like this, the next one he gets should come in an envelope stuffed with toxic white powder in it for all the good he's done and for basically stealing money from the party. We've got the National Enquirer on Palin's ass now with tales of not just Bristol's baby issues, but Sarah herself possibly caught up in some schtuppin' that shouldn't have been happening. And if you think Enquirer probes are a joke, ask John Edwards, who was less welcome in Denver than the Dallas Cowboys' Roger Staubach last week.

But, as I got a haircut on Tuesday, when the talk at the barber shop turned to politics a well-knowledged fellow patron summed it up nicely. He described McCain's choosing Palin in terms that maybe explained the senator's rationale.

“Imagine you're being held hostage, and your captors say, 'The only way you get out of here alive is to let us take a finger from you. You've got a choice—a thumb or a pinky. You make the call.' It's like 'Shit...I wanna live, but I gotta give up a finger? Which one? Which one? I need my thumb so I can pick up stuff...but man, that means I gotta let em chop off my pinky. That's my finger! Fuck. I wanna get outta here. I can maybe live without the pinky. But I gotta have my thumb. I gotta have my thumb.' So, you give up the pinky. Picking Palin was giving up 'the pinky' for McCain, and pickin' Rudy or Romney would have been sayin' 'Bye-bye thumb.' So he's cut loose. He lives. Fuckin' 'yay!' But then he sees the cut was done with a dirty-ass knife, and the spot where he lost the pinky is all infected, and that shit is spreading. Now he's probably gonna lose the 'nothin' finger next to the infected pinky stump too. S' not an important finger, but all of 'em mean something extra when you've already lost one. Know what I mean? I mean...you're alive an' all that. But yo', don't front...losing a finger's always gonna be a bitch. And then 'cause of the first one being done all grimy, you might lose two? When does it stop? You make a shitty bargain to save your ass and look what happens.”

You end up with pig-fucks like Palin's venomous “Rudy with a better drag-stylist” speech. (And whoever signed off on that “Community Organizer” diss line needs to be fired, their car keyed, and then have their house burned down.) You get McCain's awful, “Green Jello Mold 2.0” address last night where he did everything but read the parentheses-ed “Nexts” and “Continueds”. And an A/V gaffe so bad during the speech that it should earn its perpetrator a slot in the witness protection program. You wind up with a republican convention so dishwater-tepid that it would make the National Gathering of High-Colonic Facilitators in Sandusky look like “Freaknik '88”. And then, The National Enquirer chasing your people down, lurking behind hotel hallway ice machines looking for scandal, scandal, scandal!—to where it's so bad that your VP choice has to be spirited away to basically hide back home for ten days, and probably to have the motherfuckers who are diming her out back there dropped into ice-fishing holes to shut 'em up about her numerous and burgeoning scandals.

As I said before:

“Palin's whole story as it unspools before us all is a mess. A pretty mess. But Goddamnit, a mess nonetheless.”

Such...a pretty mess. Take it away, Vanity.

There's more...

Campaign '08: Republicans' Law

If It Can Go Wrong...It Absolutely Will. Yikes!

From the Department of “From Bad To Worse”, you may remember this piece of news from the recent GOP bed-shit post dealing with the potential loss of New York's one Republican Congressional seat —“Baby Daddy Trauma: Vito Power-less

NY's wingnuts finally found a sap to run for Fossella's abandoned seat, Todt Hill resident Frank Powers, but not without having several candidates they asked say 'Are you out of your fucking minds? I got belly-button lint to pick, man!, and keep on steppin'. Thus with one fell swoop, or actually several rather unfortunate boudoir up-swoops and down-swoops, yet another Empire State Republican not only screwed up his political career and for extra measure, very possibly chucked a sure seat the party desperately needed to hold against an elephant-drowning sea-change on the way...

Well, even having chosen Vito's replacement candidate, that seat was going to be a tough one to hold, especially with the rampant apathy towards Republican candidates in New York City. But hey, there was a chance to hold serve at least with a fill-in firmly in place, right?

I mean, what could happen next? Powers ending up as the old saying goes “caught with a live girl or a dead boy”?

Er...I guess there's no delicate way to say this...Um...how about just ending up dead.?

Yes...D-E-A-D, dead.

Francis H. Powers, a retired Wall Street executive who was recently selected by Republican leaders on Staten Island as their candidate for the Congressional seat being vacated by Representative Vito J. Fossella, died on Saturday at his home on Staten Island.

Mr. Powers, who was 67, died in his sleep of a heart attack, family members and friends said. His death came less than a month after he became the Republican candidate after other potential candidates decided not to run.

Mr. Powers’s death leaves Republicans in the Congressional district, which also includes part of Brooklyn, with a new set of political challenges. The decision to endorse Mr. Powers came after a long and dispiriting process for party leaders, who had initially hoped to get one of the island’s Republican elected officials to run for the seat.

But one by one, each of them declined to run, citing a variety of reasons.

You can not make this stuff up...

So now, the party is back at square minus eleven or something like that, scratching about yet again for someone...Goddammit, ANYBODY! Please!, to run in Fossella's stead—a seeming herculean task to begin with as the initial approach-ees as noted above upon Vito's fade-out ran from the opportunity like it had a big, runny boil on its lip and was movin' in close, whispering “Kissy-kissy!”

New York State's GOP isn't just imploding, people—it is imploding on a freaky karmic level that mere coincidence can't explain. Now, I'm not reveling in any way in Powers' death, but my God, just looking at the situation electorally you just have to shake your head and say “Wow. Right about now, it truly sucks to be a wingnut in New York”.

Well, suck might be too light a word for what's going on for them in New York State. Vacuums like a space-station airlock gone awry is more like it. Enter, or rather...exit...stage right, the state's highest ranking GOP pol—State Senator Joe Bruno...

Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader and New York State's highest-ranking Republican, said Monday evening that he would not seek re-election in November, after a 32-year career in the Senate.

His announcement startled people in the Capitol, many of whom have come to view Mr. Bruno, a former Army regimental boxing champion who still spars for the cameras, as almost indestructible at the age of 79.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Daily News reported this morning that when Bruno made his decision to leave, he had his lawyer call the FBI to ask if his stepping down might influence their investigation.

According to the paper, the FBI never got back to Bruno's lawyer, and no deal was ever offered.

But Bruno has denied that the FBI investigation had anything to do with his decision. For the time being, Bruno will continue in his Senate seat, but he says he has not decided if he will carry out the remainder of his term.

Meanwhile, CBS 6 political analyst Fred Dicker is also reporting in today's New York Post that federal agents removed some 30 boxes of papers -- some dating back more than a decade -- from Bruno's office just before he made the decision to step down as Senate Majority Leader.

Bruno if you don't remember was the beté noir of disgraced former NY Governor Eliot (“Black Sox”) Spitzer. Those two went at each other hammer and tong, macheté to hatchet for years, going back to Spitzer's Attorney General days upstate, and Spitzer's ignominious exit should have cemented Bruno's power cornerstone-hard. He was at the point of his retirement/booking the hell up, the state's second-most powerful politico, and not to put too macabre an edge on it, the next in line of succession to the Governorship under the state's arcane rules. Were anything to happen to the present governor David Paterson, (and the way the NY press has swarmed him seemingly every week since his swearing-in for term-ending dirt, the possibility wasn't a terribly distant one) Bruno stood the most to gain.

But inexplicably to outsiders, and painfully clear to even casually-acquanited NYers, Bruno's stepping down and away was very much related to the increasingly intense federal investigation around his years of upstate skullduggery and feather-bedding for himself and a northern state GOP that ripped off the more populous and higher revenue-generating downstate to the tune of billions of dollars.

It was the nerdy, bean-counting, pasty-faced and sock garter-wearing ghost of Eliot Spitzer's investigations coming a' calling. That, and a punk-ass's fear of a couple of other things too...

One: The state senate's going Dem majority for the first time in thirty-odd years, (on the verge of and with a Dem wave, a near certainty) relegating the high-flying, egomaniac Bruno to the low-down bust-down to minority back-bencher—which in the New York State Senate is to be powerless to the N'th anti-power. That is a bruising insult he could not stand, and his beloved senate district of Muttontown (NY's a big state people, and that's a tame name for an upstate hamlet—trust me...) bearing the brunt of Democrats retribution for his own punishment of opposition party cities was probably too much to take.

And Two: Fear of being held responsible in any way for the state's GOP strengths melting away like a bodybuilder's physique when the he can't get the 'roids any more. The coming Republican debacle is going to spawn one lovely schadenfreude-ic thing for a lot of people—namely the Republican Party's calling out of scapegoats for the disaster. When the party bosses tally up the carnage, especially the utter defoliation of elected Republican pols in the northeast, they're gonna look to blame people. And while Bruno doesn't run the state party per sé, he is its most powerful member in New York, and his upstate fiefdom was the incubator for the party's congressional talent. They're all gone now though. GOP Reps Sue Kelly, John Sweeney and Sherwood Boehlert all lost their seats in the House during the last disastrous “The Math”-filled go-round. All of 'em. And when the man comes around lookin' to “git somebody”, 'cause somebody's always got to be 'got' when the shit goes down, I don't think Joe Bruno wanted his name in that unholy number.

We see this in spades (insert obligatory wingnut racist Obama joke du hour here) all over the country as Republican fortunes become as popular as buy orders for Countrywide stock and candidates run from the party's damaged brand like light-struck roaches. The only wingnut stupid enough to proudly run on typical GOP talking points and the ValuJet-like Bush legacy is the odious Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and that saggy, nad-faced viper isn't even up for re-election this year. Not that you'd know that from his seemingly twice-weekly TV appearances from his office in Outer Idiotville—Population: Him. It's comical really, watching him run with stale-ass talking points that barely carried the day post September 11th, today in 2008.. This so-called former “democrat” (small “d” in-fucking-tentional, thank you) mind you, embarrassingly waving the standard like an extra in a dinner theater “Les Miz” for his fucked-to-all-hell masters, singing “One Sellout More”—and not realizing that the damned thing is ablaze in his hands, and there is no “crusade” to join. Just him. Woefully out of step with the reality his “new” friends are running from.

But perhaps a better visual for the folly of Lieberman's dim-witted pimping all of that old, laughable folderol is one that actually involves...a pimp. Picture a goofy, over-the-top, one-time “playa” who's been “away” from the game for too long—and decides to make the public scene again.

Except he's out of step with everything going on and looks like a Goddamned fool sporting the hopelessly dated trappings of his one-time heyday.

Joe...you are so, sooooooooo not a “fly guy”...



The words that breaks the poor pimp's spirit—and his glass-bottomed, fishy-filled platform shoes are the guffawed “This brotha is an endangered species!”, and “You look like a clown!”

“Endangered species”, indeed. It's the plight of elected Northeastern Republicans like Joe Bruno, Vito Fossella, and the Connecticut Dodo-to-be himself, ol' “Short Ride Joe” Lieberman himself. It's an almost sad spectacle to see. Like seeing old faded photos of slow-moving Bison being picked off by blunderbusses from the caboose of a hunting train. And it's not just northeastern GOP'ers fearing the electoral shotgun's blast. Embattled Republican Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon doesn't want anybody in the Beaver State to think for a second during this election season that he even knows the letters G-O-and-P are in the Goddamned alphabet. His grasping little campaign ad makes him out to be a first-class “P.O.O.” (“Pal Of Obama”) and doesn't dare ever mention the Republican party that got him in there any-fucking-where.

God! Either they don't wanna run for office at all, or those that are pressured into it, have the worst of luck befall them. And the ones fighting to remain in office don't seem to even wanna identify with the party proper.

Oh yes...the GOP's fortunes this year certainly are shaping up to be what we on the internets like to call a “fail”.

An “epic fail” in fact. Where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, Like the ironic fire truck fire shown at the top of this post.

But confidentially...I think the picture below just might sum up the nature of things GOP that...much...better...

There's more...

Baby Mama Drama—“Hate On, Haters”

“Um...Excusemeplease?”

“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-annnd...they're off!”

No, not horses, or the two—(actually, one-and-a-half) Presidential candidates, but rather, the folks with the syphilitic, nerve-ganglia-ed remnant brains over at Fox News—right on cue as the general election season kicks into high gear with the end of the Democratic primary season.

We've already seen Bill O'Reilly's championing of a lynching party against the so-not-White Michelle Obama because she's...“angry” about things. As soon as it became clear that Senator Barack Obama was going to wind up a serious contender for the Dem nod, the folks at Fox fairly licked their hate-dripping chops at the prospect of tearing at a prominent Black woman of prominence. And just as soon as the primaries ended—mere hours in fact—we were treated to the in-need-of-a-helmet-at-all-times E.D. (As is “Special E.D.”) Hill blurting out crazed drivel about the Obamas victory-night “Dap Heard 'Round The World” being some sort of coded “terrorist fist jab”. (!?) Hill would later have to back off from that super-flammable, Hi-Test stupid when even her fellow wingnuts (along with most sane folk) said in perfect Borat-ese of her dimwitted body-language analysis, “Eh...not so much.”

But now, as the creeping dread over the soppy, bed-shit of a failure-ific McCain run can be seen in stark relief, the pointy-hooded hamsters who spin the Fox News engines have gone into panicky overdrive. With the dangerously flawed warmonger of a senator's damaging 1.5 gaffes-a-day diminishing GOP hopes by the second, the mattreses have been gone to over at Cro-Mag Central. Having nothing else—no guile, “snark, or even a touch of subtlety, they're reaching into their bag of tricks and pulling out...only their own hands stained with burnt-cross soot. Ass-nekkid racism, folks. The awful gift that just like herpes, just keeps on—“Yecch!”—giving.

We saw this last week when the …“news network” trotted out their prodigal daughter of dipshitttiness Michelle Malkin, ostensibly as a correspondent on “Women's Issues”. Now, we know that Malkin's bona-fides on issues important to women rank up there with those of Alan Keyes' on average Black folks concerns, but there she sat, in all of her grumble-faced, flop-sweaty glory before the cameras during a segment dealing with attacks on Ms. Obama and whether people should lay off her. Of course Malkin, shiv-jabbing little viper that she is defended the attacks on Sen. Obama's wife, referring to her as... “Obama's Bitter Half”.

?

Yes, Michelle Malkin referred to another woman as someone's “Bitter Half”.

Call “CSI” folks. Irony's as dead as a busted cinderblock and Malkin's got the dusty sledgehammer in her hands.

But it gets better. You see, the graphic that appeared under the once-banished-from-Fox Malkin (for a combination of not being able to cut it after repeated opportunities at the net, and a sanctimoniousness that put even them off) in a chyron was the ass-kicker.

It read, “OUTRAGED LIBERALS: STOP PICKING ON OBAMA'S BABY MAMA”.

Um. Baby Mama? Baby-what-the-fucking-fuck? Really?

Really.



It would be so easy to just go off on this at the most superficial of levels, but you know what, oh Klan-tastic folks at Fox? I'm gonna break this shit down James Brown-on-the-bandstand style, to the bare essence and build it back up from there. First—a hard finger-point back to the band to lay out—'cept for the drums and bass...

“Band!”

Okay. Malkin continued above that lovely graphic, with her usual “Nellie Olesen” huffy bullshit spew supporting the savaging Ms. Obama, because you see folks, that's her fucking job. Malkin is that special wingnut attack droid—used specifically for those nasty jobs that the big guns don't wanna catch direct hell for. Her special forté? Attacking women, children, college students and others on the lower end of the power ladder that it might look unseemly for the big boys to chomp on.

And she relishes her job because of a particularly nifty bit of psychotic transference going on with her. She's a loser, in spite of the right's bigwigs best efforts to cram her into the media mainstream. Allegedly “cute” just ain't enough to cut it, unfortunately. She's dim. She's an awful liar. And she's bereft of any vestiges of what one could remotely call “style” or “pizazz”. She couldn't connect with viewers if you coated her with Krazy Glue and fired her into an audience full of them. The poor thing is wooden to the point of petrification, and when on-camera, is about as on her toes as Cindy-Fucking-Brady on a game show to boot. Throw in the sad fact that she also has all of the charm of a roiling bucket of lye. Michelle Obama is everything Michelle Malkin is not. Stylish, damn smart, a success in her own right and the posessor of the charm and people-connectability that her alternate universe opposite has none of.

So yeah...there is some serious hateration and holleration goin' on up in Malkin's chintzy, Strawberry's™-outfitted danceree. They trotted her out there and she as usual cipher-ized the report with what she typically brings to the table—which is nothing. But then...(cues the band with another finger-point)

“Band!” (Guitars in now)

...because the network too has nothin', they weakly opted to shore up their “report” with that patently offensive graphic. Now I know the internal excuse is that some fucknut who just got their communications degree thought it would be all funny and cool and shit to rhyme something catchy with the Obama name (“Baby Mama”), and that they were just trying to be “hip”. But the real deal is evident to everyone with eyes and ears and any sense of the campaign season's present trajectory.

Fox “News” is in desperation mode in their trying to spin for the GOP this election year. The Republican brand is so damaged by the eight years of Bush and a pliant GOP-run congress that they'd be better off trying to spin a three-ton granite block half-buried in a tar pit, than winning talking points for Republicans. The ham-fistedness of this incident along with the lame “terra-dap” episode is clear evidence of that. They've. Got. Nothin'. And in having nothin', all that's left is the hewn-from-crazy-wood buckets they're carrying that flimsy-ass nothin' around in. It's gotten so bad that they're reduced to choppin' those up and burnin' em for fuel, wearin' em as clothes and making dinner out of 'em. Mmmmmmm-mmmmmmm, not very good. But here's where we're gonna signal the whole band to come back in for the last chorus—the big finish if you will. (Clenched fist-pump)

“Band!” (Horns and keyboards come in now, filling out the sound)

What they are doing, or rather trying to do to Michelle Obama here and for the forseeable future is to reduce her to the lowest common denominator “Black Chick” that they possibly can. The woman is Princeton and Harvard educated, a law school graduate, a former Dean at the University of Chicago, and a VP at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She's a doting mother of two daughters and has long been politically active. But what Fox News wants to do is bring her back to a place where their viewers and otherwise confused (by her status in spite of her color for them) Republican voters can deal with her on the party's terms.

Bluntly...she must be “re-n*ggerfied”.

Which is why she's spun as Hattie McDaniel “mouthy” and “sassy”. It's why she's being cast by them as the off-putting, “off-the-corner”, 'round-the-way, loudmouthed ghetto-gal with loose ways—evidenced by the “Baby Mama” misnomer. That phrase is generally applied to an urban woman of color who has children by an absent or otherwise unknown father. What reason could be given for the bandying about of that very distinct moniker other than to cast her in a negative light? Fuck the rhyming and word games—there are scatologically obvious plays one could make on Bush's name, but Fox wouldn't dare do that, right? Right?

So yeah, spare me. Please.

Oh yes, there lies a secondary element of racial dissery here with this bit of classic Fox-ism.

It is the age-old switcheroo American society has long pulled on its Black female population.

From the days of slavery, one of the main ways to break the spirit of Black women was to forcibly convert them into sex objects and play-toys for the majority population. “Bed Wenches” or “Bed Warmers” they were called, and basically that meant that they were just random pieces of ass to be grabbed whenever lust struck ol' “Massa”. Black women could be taken, used, discarded and disregarded as little more than sex toys—never mind free will or attachments to someone else. As such, those hyper-sexualized chains of the the “Black-Woman-As-On-Demand-Superfreak” go well beyond someone who might unfortunately have been forced to sexually submit, but is also extended to effectively restrain the aspirations of women of color who would dare to live beyond stereotypes. “Focus on dat body.” “Oooooooh those lips!” “You know how they like their sex!” et.al. It's the ultimate diminishment of a person down to a single, furtive, physical act.

Hitch it to its cross-gender counterpart and you have brilliantly evil construct of subjugation:

Black men are scary and violent! The women? Sex-crazed banshees!

And then, in the ultimate mind-fuck, when the Black man's potential for physical threat becomes too difficult to handle in pop culture, along with the intoxicating allure of many Black women (both in spite of what other things they may bring to the table) the script is casually flipped—de-nuding them of all vestiges of physicality or soul to speak of to create one-dimensional, safe “Negroes” for the masses in pop culture, alá MIssion Impossible's “Barney Collier” (as played by the late Greg Morris) and yes, Josie and The Pussycats' “Val”. It's these pre-fab “Negroes” whose imagery and temperament are deemed acceptable, while the inverted and equally pre-fabbed image of the n*gger to fear / n*gger to fuck is deemed unacceptable. However, both images are force-marketed to the majority population. There's no room for complexity at fearful racists' table. You are either a hyper-emotional, carnal beast or or a soul-less dusky automaton. Whichever fits the necessary negative needed at the moment.

Right about now, for Fox, it's about Michelle Obama, dat ol' wanton wild-woman. An' lawty-lawd—she done had herse'f a whole mess a kids, too! An' dat au-tomatically makes dem babies questionable!

Thus, “Baby Mama”.

Now of course, just like the terrorist fist-jab thang, this was so over-the-top that the Foxies had to back off it as well—albeit in their typical half-ass apology / screw you style, leaving the poor, rage-o-holic Malkin out there all by her lonesome to defend the deed. And she didn't disappoint, simultaneously pooh-poohing the flap while also trying to absolve herself of any blame ('I don't write the captions, so there!'). And you know you've struck a nerve with her when she's forced to fall back on her old doomsday play, “But I'm the victim here!”—as she paraded out the usual few rough e-mails she got from people who chewed her narrow ass off for her part in Fox's shitty little segment. “Waaaaaaaaaah! Look at how badly I'm being treated!” cries the wretch who in the offending piece crowed about Ms. Obama's somehow being “fair game”.

Yeah. Okay. Lemme run that Fox screenshot through my own little chyron-generator to fix the obvious-to-all goof...


There. I think we've got it right, now.

Oh, here's a song for your ass, oh, Michelle The Lesser. And hey—try not to fracture a hip spazzin' around to dance to it. Okay?

There's more...