My favorite holiday, bar none!
Here’s one of the great street parties I once attended and here is more on it; la, la, la. While there exist real, fucked-up freaks everywhere, and truly disturbing people always about, at least for one night we can appear to be crazier than them.
(And no, I won’t tell you who I went as this year.)
Light some candles... arrange some pumpkins, and pray and hold faith for the redemption of the monster our country has become.
Happy Halloween!
“Mammon Over God”
To nation’s relief, Religious Right racketeers lose influence
And so it has come to pass, finally. The fall of the right wing’s great Hypocritical Hate Machine, and at the hands of Rudy! himself, no less.
Backing a loser, they know, would even further diminish their waning Washington status in a post-Rove, post-Bush G.O.P. The more they shed their illusion of power, the more they imperil their ability to rake in big bucks from their apocalyptic direct-mail campaigns. They must choose mammon over God if they are to maintain the many values rackets that make up their various business empires.Frank Rich has the details.
Quiz Time
What breed of liberal are you?
My Liberal Identity:
You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
h/t: Tristero
Beware of The Blob
Mass of toxic sludge a perfect metaphor
A friend who shares the same politics and I were talking the other day about what image, what photograph, could best sum up the current administration when the sad, inevitable day arrives that either of us are forced to explain to some inquiring kid about what the hell happened to America in the last eight years. It wasn’t that the photo had to be specifically related to something the adminstration had done, per se, or been directly involved with (though its penchant for extreme secrecy and malice precludes ever ruling that possibility out), but a single image that conveyed all that needed to be said about this presidency. There was this, or perhaps this. My friend thought this would be as good a candidate as any.
And then, lo and behold, the always great Mark Morford appeared and tipped the country off about this. A 1,500 mile-wide, rank, shapeless mass of putrid junk—a floating landfill—far out in the Pacific Ocean; an amorphous blob composed mainly of the plastic ephemera we throw away that traveled from land to sea to end up as this giant clump of toxic nastiness so foul, so unnatural, that Mother Nature herself had to banish it out into the farthest reaches of the open ocean.
It was then we both decided that this thing, this revolting ugly mass, was the perfect metaphor for the Cheney administration and all the misery it had caused. Some things are just too much for a single photo.
What in the hell Is Wrong With These People?
Rightwing bloggers go off the rails
Update: Tom Tomorrow, as always, nails it.
So, let’s see; it’s now acceptable among the eye-bulging, froth-spewing Right to attack a seriously injured twelve-year-old boy and his little sister if their parents have the effrontery to make use of a government program designed explicitly to help people precisely in their situation.
I could link to various blogs, Michelle Malkin’s first among them, to make a point, but neither she nor any of them deserve the traffic. They’ve been given, via the intertubes, enough rope to hang themselves and I’m certainly not going to contribute to exposing anyone to their brand of hateful, toxic waste. There was a time (I came of age in the ’80’s) when people like Malkin and her mouthbreathing followers were called the “fringe”; respectable newspapers and magazines saw their letters as the ravings that they were and tossed them where they belonged: in the trash can beside the desk, and that was that.
Now, however, everyone has the power of the press online (provided anyone reads what you have to say). This is a good thing, considering the authoritarian direction our government has been sliding into in recent years, but as human nature dictates, there’s always a nasty underside. Hence Malkin and Townhall’s attempts (no links provided as I’m not going to give them credence) to demonize this little boy in order to keep their own bizarre version of “reality” true. Everything is falling apart around them and the desperation is setting in.
I’ve often said online and in conversation: these are hideous people, worthy of nothing but contempt.
The always terrific Eric Boehlert has the defining word on the subject.
Congratulations
All Blogs Need More Eurovision
Push The Button!
(In the midst of the grinding hell of the Bush “presidency”, can we not find time to laugh?)
h/t: the good and wise Atrios.
Doing Their Part
Mitt’s brave sons stare fear in the eye, grit their teeth and storm the beaches for America:
“A Bad, Naughtyboy”
It’s only the gays who do that, right?
(Updated.)
Sigh. For Christ’s sake.
Is it too much to ask the heartland people of America to understand that a political candidate who makes the loudest noises about “family values” and rails against “sin” and whatever other nonsense they (or their speechwriters) can dig up almost always has a dirty little secret?
What really ticks me off is that there are hundreds of thousands of perfectly well-adjusted gay men and women in this country who not only have the courage to live out of the closet, but also don’t troll for jollies in a filthy public restroom—–in a major airport, no less––while having gone on record denouncing a former, democratically elected President for consentual sexual hijinks.
Larry Craig, like Mark Foley before him, is both a pig and a true deviant; an ugly label his party so often relishes painting all gay people with simply to pick up a few extra votes from the perpetually grousing Limbaugh contingent.
What is it with these deeply self-loathing, closeted Republicans? This phenomenon is nothing new, obviously, but I’m going to repeat what’s been said many times before: if you hate who you are that much, get some therapy and quit fucking things up for the rest of us who are proudly gay, happy and normal, capeesh?
Update: Andrew Sullivan offers some rather good thoughts on this whole episode.
“Political Serial Killer”
Turd Blossom heads out to pasture; Cheney’s influence now total.
There’s been quite a bit written already on this topic; suffice to say I’ve got nothing to add (the mere thought of Rove makes my blood pressure spike to unhealthy levels) that the always excellent Sidney Blumenthal hasn’t said about this rotten specimen of humanity already. Of course, keeping in character, Shrub will doubtlessly pardon him and he’ll either go on to a lucrative career on Fox News or collect millions in speaking fees on the wingnut welfare circuit.
The Unbearable “Issues” of Chris Matthews
Chris Matthews should be fired.
Digby rightly excoriates the excitable, unhinged TV talker, who really has become little more than an embarrassment for MSNBC. With the exception of the excellent Keith Olbermann, that’s really saying something for that network. In a reality-based world, Matthews would have been tossed out of the studio years ago for on-air antics that ranged from the merely puerile to the downright disturbing. As many have pointed out, this isn’t a normal hetero or homosexual thing; I don’t think actual sexual desire figures into it at all. This is something deeper, and much weirder. Sara Robinson of Orcinus has a very good take on the right-wing cult of “masculinity” and the need of people like Matthews for a big ol’ GOP “Daddy” figure to take care of them.
Back Again
“It’s been a long time, been a long time...”
Well, posting has been nonexistant for a long while now for a number of factors but primarily being busy at work with lots of big projects — all done on the computer — which has left me in the quandry that, short of answering any pressing personal emails, when I get home in the evening the very last thing I want to do is sit right back down at another computer, no matter what I have to say. (And posting from work is impossible). However, things have eased up a little bit so I'm going to attempt to update a little more often.
“The Art Teacher’s Office”
I don’t agree with Andrew Sullivan on a lot of things, but this is, as he says, a minor [Simpsons] classic. Hilarious (especially if, like me, you were an art student*).
*Of course, my home office/studio doesn’t ever smell like that. Nope. Never.
Knockout
The New York Times winds it up and lets Gonzo have it, right between the eyes.
It’s about time someone in the corporate media said what’s needed saying for a long time now.
Convenient
Well, well... this appeared just in the nick of time, didn’t it?
Let’s recap the past three weeks: soldiers sent off to fight in a pointless “war” are found to be recovering from their wounds in appalling, Dickensian surroundings at Walter Reed; a company with political ties to the Bush family was found to be installing defective pumps on the levees in New Orleans; “Scooter” Libby becomes the first publicly acknowledged felon in an administration full of them; and Bush crime family/mob lawyer Alberto “Abu” Gonzales is about to have his ass hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee and be forced to testify (under oath, again) about the latest bit of skullduggery to ooze up from the White House swamp. Then, smack in the middle of all this, the King Terrorist Of The World (Osama who?), whom we’ve had in custody for years, suddenly “confesses” to everything short of the fall of Rome and the Great Potato Famine. Funny how years of ongoing torture has a habit of making a person admit to, well... just about anything!
Could this administration get any more cynical? I’m sure the knuckle-dragging 30 percent or so True Believers will buy into this predictable bullshit, egged on by reliable gargoyles like Hannity, Limbaugh and Coulter, but the rest of the country sees it for exactly what it is: another smokescreen tossed out to deflect attention from the White House’s current and richly deserved mountain of political problems.
I think what’s most revealing about all this is the administration’s bald-faced, utter contempt for the American people in thinking anyone (outside of their “base”) would buy this, given their deplorable record of mendacity for the past six years.
(On top of all that I am getting very, very sick and goddamned tired of them hauling out the dried, blood-encrusted mummy of 9/11 every time they find themselves in yet another ethics-challenged situation and need a quick distraction. It’s long surpassed being tasteless and, given this adminstration’s track record, a kick in the teeth to the families of the victims.)
Accounting
In an earlier post, I made a slight reference to the obscene profits our vice “president” is quietly pocketing—what earlier Congresses have quaintly referred to as “war profiteering”—without elaborating further on this ugly topic. To wit:
Before the Iraq War began, Halliburton was 19th on the U.S. Army’s list of top contractors and zoomed to number 1 in 2003. In 2003, Halliburton made $4.2 billion from the U.S. government. Cheney stated he had “severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest.”
In 2005, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said Cheney’s stock options [were] worth $241,498 the year before and were valued at more than $8 million in 2005—an increase of 3,281%. Cheney receives a deferred salary from the company—$205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004.
More here.
Perspective
Via His Rudeness, Molly said it best:
Ivins never became the regular TV pundit that so many other alleged columnists became. Perhaps it was because of moments like this, being interviewed about the brewing Clinton “scandal” on some Fox “news” program in March 1998:
“If we had devoted this much time and this much space in the newspapers to the single most important problem in American politics today, which is the money that finances campaigns and the way the people that get elected respond to that money, we would have solved the problem by now. We would have the people of this country so outraged, they would be demanding campaign finance reform. What are we doing? We’re talking about the president’s dick. It’s ridiculous.”
His full tribute to the great Molly is here.
And he’s right.
h/t to Atrios.
Standing Up
It goes without saying that the Pentagon, the White House, the military, blah, blah, blah, never figure into their bullshit “scenarios” actual people; you know, the living, breathing kind, who might be affected and perhaps have their lives ripped apart and destroyed by “engagements.” And it’s certainly a given that Shrub doesn’t, lest it disturb his sleep on those comfy pillows he’s so fond of.
But there are actual people suffering, greatly, under the massive wreckage this administration has cursed upon the world, even more than those who are lucky enough to be featured in the press; namely gay and lesbian Iraqis whose lives have been irrevocably destroyed by this immoral invasion into their country that most people in this nation could seem to care less about. Being gay under Saddam was bad, but life currently for gay men and women in Iraq is a death sentence, thanks to the neoconservatives, Cheney and his puppet, Shrub.
Go here to find out more, and find links about how you can help Iraq’s GLBT community.
“...a spineless little fuckhead who should be torn apart by hyenas.”
Quoth Matt Taibbi on the waste of DNA known as Michael Savage specifically, and more generally on the rest of the right-wing TV and hate-radio slime such as Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, etc. who gleefully spread all manner of falsehoods, garbage and outright lies about anyone they disagree with (case in point: the recent, thoroughly debunked - by actual reporters, no less - “story” concerning Barack Obama’s supposed “radical Islamic” education) in the national media with seeming impunity. These people are largely to blame for the reason political discourse in this country continues to wallow in the sewer. Matt’s idea is correct: Sue these scum for libel.
Farewell, Molly
The world seemed a little emptier today with the death of Molly Ivins, one hell of a woman and someone who I truly would have given anything to have had a few beers with. John Nichols remembers.
As Atrios said, “she made the world a better place while she was here.”
Fox and “bipartisanship”
Late on this, but in case you missed it; the gargoyles over at Fox wasted no time shoveling the muck. “Good god, that awful liberal Nancy Pelosi is gonna give us all the gay!!”
(And for the record, I couldn’t be happier to have lived to have seen the first female Speaker of the House in the history of our government.)
h/t to digby.
Back To The Grind
Never let it be said I’m not lazy over the holidays... (and for a while thereafter). However, be that as it may, let’s credit Apple (who else?) with inspiring my first burst of uncontrollable techno-lust for the new year. At least now I won't have to worry about what I'm going to buy myself next Christmas.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)