It's Over. You Lost. Deal With It.

I have been too much enjoying the implicit fact of it, to appreciate the symbolism of it. In fact, I have been bragging about it, even before Health Care Reform passed. The end of conservatism is near. Obviously. But is the end of Reaganism a core cause of teabagger insanity? This historian says, strongly, maybe.

The End of Reaganism

And the writer makes a lot of interesting points. I have been labeling the teabaggers as Revanchists. They appear as a perfect examples of that kind of Neanderthal who believes they lost something, and are entitled to get it back. The question is what do they think they have lost? I had been thinking sense of status, tied in to all the changes with that black man being in the White House, and the Wise Latina on the Supreme Court bench. Never mind that we are on the verge of the great demographic shift, when a white numerical majority will soon be a thing of the past.

And all those batshit crazy teabaggers know it. And they can't stand it.

But it could be more than that. Personally, I think of the Reagan years as the season of hell. It was a time when the zombies and pod people took control of power in the land, and the land suffered. But I was not a zombie or pod person. Any affection for that was something I could not appreciate. But the writer made me think that if for anyone who had any vested interest in that delusional view of the world and the nation, the passage of HCR by the black man and the lady in charge of Congress might be too much for their mentally enfeebled brains to stand.

They are in the last stages of denial before they have to lose their illusions, or if not, really go fucking nuts.

I hate saying it, but I think lots of them are going to chose going fucking nuts, before admitting it's over. They lost. And then have to deal with it.

Bill Maher's New Rules. Tea Bagger Edition.

And other things.



Your poll numbers might have descended a bit, but so did your testicles.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck Might Not Get It Yet, But

At least she is sane enough to be repulsed by Mrs. Palin's gunsights/hitlist imagery.

We Win!

Congrats to Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, the Dem leadership, and All of Us. Not only do we have Health Care Reform, but smart money is on the GOP to double down their bets on the crazy, Insane Clown Posse shit.

I am not going to go long. I will post a couple great quotes here, in honor of the occasion.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future. ~Leonard Bernstein, The New York Times, 30 October 1988


Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. ~William E. Gladstone, 1866

And I thought Caribou Barbie's modifed Mullet was a horrible look.

What was she going for? Margaret Thatcher on a casual day?

Is she trying to look more serious?

Is she trying to look frumpy, deliberately?

(And yes, I am not really in the mood for serious stuff.)

Oh. One last note. Granted. Yes, I have hated those glasses from day one. But now? I think they even moreso clash with the housefrau hair. Just saying.

Oh, and what she says about health reform is utter rubbish. Hell. That Thatcher thing is wearing off on me too!

Let's Skip Politics. A Quote From the Merry Gentry Series.

Laurell K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry series is my favorite series of novels. I mean, yes, Steven King's Dark Tower is sweeping, epic, and brilliant storytelling, but I love me my Princess of Flesh and Blood. She is a princess of the Sidhe. And for those of you who don't know, they are like Tolkien's elves, but lusty. And I mean they are lusty in all ways; for skin, for sex, for power, for blood.

And in this updated telling of of the tale of the Keltoi gods and goddesses of old, we have all the fantastic creatures of old; not only the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, but the Goblins, and Phooka, and true Hell Hounds, Demi Fey, and the whole range of magical and or exotic creatures from the folklore of Tuath du Danu.

The following is a quote from a key scene in "Seduced By Moonlight," where a (usually) immortal goblin is about to die, paying a blood debt. The reason the goblin in question is going to actually die is not apparent yet, to all in the scene, but the reason for the blood debt being claimed is explained in the quote:

Siun pleaded,"My king, my king. Help me!"

"I offered you his sex and his flesh, Siun. I didn't tell you to maim him." Kurag stroked her furry back one last time, then stepped back. "If you can kill sidhe, do it, but don't fuck them up and leave them alive, because they never forget, and never forgive."

I should say that the sidhe in question, here is the former War God, Cromm Cruach, recently come back into his old powers.

Ok. There is something of a political message there, in the sense that a good social lesson about not fucking people up, and leaving them bitter, and resentful, and looking for the chance for payback, translates to politics, as well.

I Usually Decry Infotainment and all Related Things, as Shit.

And this article describes how half-term Ex Governor Palin is blazing new and unsettling trails in that direction.


Is Palin a Candidate, Pundit or Celebrity?

In One Week, Former Alaska Governor Appears on Leno and News Spreads of Second Book and TV Series

{Snip}

A little politics, a little journalism, and a whole lot of celebrity, all in a week's work. (Her foray to an Oscar gift suite made news, too.) But toward what end? A 2012 presidential bid? A daily talk show? An Oprah-like dominance of the pop culture sphere? Everybody's dying to know Palin's plans, and that makes her celebrity all the more potent.

But beyond that, many see her as just the most prominent example of a phenomenon that is larger than even her: the gradual blurring of the worlds of politics, celebrity and the media.

The shifting boundaries of politics and media have been apparent for some time. The networks, especially cable news, have opened doors - sometimes revolving ones - for former speechwriters and campaign operatives. More recent, though, are the trips through those doors of the candidates themselves. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has his own show on Fox, for example.

MSNBC pundit Harold Ford Jr., a former congressman, recently decided not to run for the U.S. Senate from New York, but said he hopes another opportunity presents itself. MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who worked as a Democratic congressional staffer and a presidential speechwriter, has talked about a Senate run from Pennsylvania.

To analyst Marty Kaplan, who often examines the nexus between politics and culture, the phenomenon is troubling. Equal time rules don't come into play for those merely considering running.

"The question becomes, when does this turn into a conflict?" asks Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School of Communication. It's especially dicey when a former politician is using the platform to mull a re-entry into politics, he says. "The networks are in effect being used by these people to rebuild their political futures. There's enough evidence that they should be thinking twice about this."

Blurring lines

This might not be the harbinger of the end of our civilization, but it is evidence we are as a society getting more and more willing to accept bullshit. Count me out, please.

It's Not That Nothing Going On is Interesting Enough, But

rather, actually it is just so much more of the same.

I am mindful that one should not tempt either fate, or karma, so I try not to waste time hating the enemy, even when they are being hateful (I don't always succeed, I should say.)

But I really think Republicans are so close to being totally bullshit, that it is mostly useless to assume they are capable of rational thought and action. Yes. They are not all out of their damned minds, but the party/movement really is in the land of the wackos now. We are not only seeing some catering to the loony fringe, but over the past 25 to 30 years the party has embraced so much fucking crazy shit that it really doesn't matter that only some embrace the now fringy-ist of ideas. What is that expression from Roman Empire Days? Cross the Rubicon? Well in this instance the Rubicon is not a river but the boundary line between the land where reasonable minds can differ, and the frontier, past which is the land of people who eat their own snot and declare it to be simply the best thing they have ever tasted.

I'll stop there. My head is hurting, just thinking about how weird strange the GOP has let it self become.

Oh One note further. Is it wrong of me to hope Mrs. Palin does something even more embarrassing than her hand prompter tonight on Leno's show?