Stupidity of the Week Review.

(Forgive me or not. I do not plan on linking sources. Deal.)

It came to light that week that Nikki Haley considers herself white. When it suits her to be. Normally I'm all for screwing with people's heads about race. But that's not what she's doing. She's playing an entirely different game, me thinks. And particularly in southern politics where race is still a bigger deal than other parts of the country, she's distancing herself from the niggras, and other not whites. Choosing sides perhaps?

Now back to the hostage crisis. If I hear (read) another teabagger or wing nut blame the Dems/Obama for this shit, I am gonna loose it. Well I would be justified, I think. For that matter I am fucking sick and tired of anyone who is not down with the reality. The GOP is morally unfit to govern, or legislate. Make that even have any part in the process, anymore. I just wish we could arrest the fuckers, and rendition them to Bagram.

I know. I should stop before I get really angry. One last thing on that bundle of related things. Abut the most stupid thing I read this week about related shit was something where some dipshit made the argument that it could be unconstitutional for P. Obama to veto any debt bill that passes both chambers. Ex-fucking-scuse me? There is no real test for validity of veto. It's a unrestrained power.

Anything else going on this week? Past week worth the keystrokes? Not off the top of my head. I try not to get too pessimistic, but sometimes I think we are all fucked. And on that note, happy Sunday. No. Wait. One last thing. Even if summer is not over I have decided on a title for the book about Summer of 2011, even if I will never write it.

The Summer We All Died and Went to Hell.

Imagine if I were really feeling pessimistic?

Are These Assholes Trying to Revert to the Articles of Confederation?

I'm either brilliant for finally seeing it. Or stupid, for taking this long. But It occurred to me that either directly or indirectly the wing nuts who are holding the nation hostage over the debt limit are threatening to take the USA back to it's pre Federal Government days.

Remember, boys and girls. There is a US Const. and a US Federal Gvt. because the prior system could not pay it's debts, and had a shitty credit rating.

Jon Stewart at His Most Brilliant.

Satirically, at least. And might I add, this vid might be said to well explain why so many on the right consider him to be part of the news media. He a damned better reporter of facts and the truth than them bastids. Most of the time. Anyway.

Jon starts off with the whole (as I call it) cult of (most usually white) right wing victim hood angle, following the Norge Mass Murderer Templar/Crusader story. Before long he's laying out the full case why I despise Fox News and the right wing political media axis. There's that one clip of that offensive pig Sean Hannity that is as Jon says/infers is the most extreme example of a lack of self awareness.

Ahhh. Good stuff. So enjoy.

Tar Baby vs. Briar Patch. I Really Need to Stop Posting About a Certain Law Professor Blogger, . . .

So I am taking the conversation up to the higher level. And/or I am not going to name names in my remarks. Anyway, some writer used the phrase "Briar Patch," in a piece about P. Obama's threatened veto of the Boehner Extortion Plan. OK fine. No big deal. Unless one goes off on a tar baby tangent. Some unnamed blogger did exactly this. Now both the briar patch and the tar baby stories are found in the infamous Uncle Remus stories. But beyond that, what is the linkage? Not much. But the unnamed blogger did not seem to get it, that tar baby is a bad thing . . . because it has been used as a racist insult. Briar patch has none of that baggage. So what was this blogger thinking? Who the fuck knows. Maybe the blogger is totally ignorant of the specifics.

Now does one need to be an expert in anti black, racist insults to know this? Fuck no. All one needs to be is a fan of classic Saturday Night Live (or call it Richard Pryor) skits.

Word Association - watch more funny videos

Sometimes life is that simple. No need to muddy and muck things up, now.

One last thing. Granted, the tar baby = racist insult part is not the only part of the Uncle Remus shit that is basically racist. The whole mythology of good niggers back in the good old days and all that Southern Imperialist, Slave Plantation nostalgia shit is very, very bad racist shit. But beyond that, there's that fucking fake patois that the racist goober, Joel Chandler Harris used in the stories.

If someone were to post a chunk of that shit on their blog and not be clear they were doing it for a credible reason (like pointing out how odious that shit is,) they might find themselves open to the charge of being tone deaf on a simple and widely known racial taboo.

If one were silly enough to do that shit.

And to make matters worse, there is now a link to the clip from the Disney film, "Song of the South." I watched it. And it's pretty bad. I only saw the movie the one time, when it was in theatrical re release, back in the 1960s. So I really don't remember it. And it's bad. Minstrel Show bad. (Oddly enough, or not, cause people love their stereotypes so fucking much, there are comments on the YouTube page defending this racist shit. This is America in the 21st Century? Good fucking grief!)

The Most Disturbing Thing (Perhaps) About Ann Althouse . . .

and I used to describe it as her pathological lack of self awareness. But on and after deeper thought, I must now conclude it's her lack of general awareness. Generally. Let me try to explain with out getting too long, here.

Following her latest bloggingheads.tv performance, she took asymmetrical offense to her opposite's blogging about the experience, calling it,"Weird." Granted, Althouse employed one of my least favorite sleazy lawyer tricks, what I call a buzz saw citation, and to a great extent misrepresented, blatantly, some of the things the other, Ms. Rebecca Watson, said in her own blog post post. Go here if you need to see for yourself.

The most telling thing about Althouse's blind spot occurs when she looks at one of the discrete (and it is a mild) complaints Watson makes about the experience, basically complaining about Althouse's (my words) sometimes manic conversational style. It's like dealing with some child on a sugar buzz, or some adult who had too many double espressos. Again, my words. What Watson said was reportedly this (and I did read the full post on her own blog. I am quoting from Althouse's post, here):

"She kept saying things that required me to unpack a lot of stuff before moving on."

Mild, like I said. No where near how I would and did say it. And while I am at it, ya know how Sarah Palin does that neurologically disturbed and distressing to experience, word salad shit? Althouse does not do word salad. But she does this thing where instead of coming at you with one coherent question, or point, she can blitz a person with a bunch of nonsense just muddying and mucking things up. It's not the clearest of thinking, communicating styles/tactics. Never mind the straw man and red herrings that seem to be legion with her.

Anyway here's the pay off. After saying that, Althouse says:

"Wow! That sounds like good conversation to me. I would love it if someone would talk to me in a way that invited me to go places where I hadn't planned."

STOP THE PRESSES! Ann Althouse likes her own odd, strange, sometimes hard to follow style of communication. Doesn't seem to get it that others might not like that, and would prefer a more "Strunk and White" style.

And before she gets to the end of her post, she's basically gone all passive aggressive troll on Watson. And the follow up post highlights the trolling. But back to that statement. There's this net/blogger convention where people do a shorter version of what some other writer says. My not so much shorter on Althouse's unaware statement would be:

"Wow! Someone thinks different than me. Heathen/heretic/monster."

Ya. Above I described it as non awareness. Althouse actually is aware there are people with different thoughts than her. She just has trouble processing that reality. At first I took that quote for being pathologically not self aware, but that's only part of the story. She has a shallow, bare minimum awareness that people are different than her. And it seems to bother her. A lot. So much so, that by giving the signal to her commentariat that she felt offended by Ms. Watson, she (knowingly) unleashed the hate mob to spew all sorts of disproportionate poison on the poor girl. I guess it's good to be the Queen Bee? (Gag me.)

Oh. And the follow up. To explain, one of the incidents covered in the bloggingheads episode was Watson's telling of a story about being hit on (mildly) in an elevator at this conference she attended. By the end of the original post, Althouse is sympathizing with the pick up artist.

Now during the "follow up," as posted today, Althouse posts some vid of some other guy in some elevator. More passive aggressive snark aimed at Watson. Petty vicious trolling, there. Not very mature, that. After giving a passive "By My Leave," license to her minions to savage the poor girl (one of the topics of that bloggingheads session, disturbingly ironically was sexism,) she could not leave it at that one shot for that one incident. Sorta sickening, I think.

My god (figure of speech.) What must it be like to work with her?

Speaker of the House, Manipulative Extortionist of the Nation.

If John Boehner were America's spouse, America would have grounds for divorce, on account of Abuse and Cruelty. If he were America's boss, or co worker, America would have grounds for a workplace harassment/hostile workplace claim. If he were America's stalker, America would have grounds for an order of protection. If he were America's next door neighbor, America would have grounds for an injunction. But he is none of those things. He's The Speaker of the House.

I'm not a religious person so take this figuratively when I say, God Help All of Us!

Monday Quickies

Right wingers, The Fox Fux and others, are in serious denial about the Norge Killer. According to Expert Researcher on all things Right Wing Violent, Michelle Goldberg, in her performance today on Bloggingheads.TV, Der Norseman Killer is not a Christan Fundamentalist. But he definitely is a violent right wing cultural warrior. Allegedly in his manifesto he cites (if not copy pastes directly from) standard American right wing wing nut conservative writings.

Getting more specific, I read somewhere that Satan Spawn anti Islamic Bigot Pam Geller is upset that she's being linked to him. Shit, woman. You so impressed him he mentioned you in his rant. So deal.

Fox News Channel is not dead yet. Allegedly we have to wait for a conviction in the UK shit before anything can happen here under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Unless some shit shakes out of the trees here, we are in a holding pattern.

I am still on a tear about the Hostage Crisis. Interesting thing, I read today quoting a former CBO head. He says we ought to do away with the debt limit. Sounds good to me. Granted, we can't get the teabaggers in Congress to go for it, as they are not going to be willing to give up their extortion weapon. But it would be better for the nation, I am convinced, that it never be held hostage again like this.

Anything else for now? That awful movie about Palin has totally bombed at the box office. Expect it on DVD soon. If you dare watch it. My understanding is never mind the subject. It's such a bad piece of documentary film making it might end up famous, in the same way Ed Wood movies are famous. For how bad they are.

Anyway. Enough. Later, people.

Missing the Forest for Imaginary Trees Part Deux.

I don't mean to obsess about Althouse, but in a weird sort of follow up to the Allen West hate speech fest, the following, regarding some blogger's crack on Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin. The blogger called her the journalistic equivalent of a fluffer. For those of you not up on the term, a fluffer is a girl on a porno movie set who's job is to give head to male actors between shooting scenes, to keep them fluffed up. Anyway, Here's what Althouse says.

"Rubin's writings about the Norwegian massacre deserve criticism, but aren't liberals supposed to refrain from writing about women like this?"

Find That Stupid Shit Here.

Ok. Let me break that stupid shit down. Firstly, one writer is one writer. Making a general swat at liberals - plural, from that one incident is stupid.

Secondly (and I am no real fan of Kos. The blog, I mean to say,) this is just some no name blogger. So if one is going to make some sort of comparison to a person of power and privilege in the United States Government, like a sitting Congressman, one is making a stupid comparison.

Thirdly, let's look at the words. And the usage. The nobody blogger made a comparison that clearly was not meant to be literal. Granted, it's a metaphor I would not want anyone making about the female folk in my family, but there is a difference between metaphorical statements and flat out disparagement. For example calling someone an attention whore is not the same as calling them a whore. What the blogger did there was closer to calling someone an attention whore instead of flat out calling them a whore. So taking too much out of the analogy here is just stupid.

I'll go for brevity. Up till now, the most stupid thing someone has said this past week to take a shot at liberals, in general or specific, was the fucking asshole who tried to compare P. Obama's infrequent smoking to Michele Bachmann's debilitating migraines. As if smoking a ciggy is the same as having to be left medicated, in a quiet dark room for hours if not days at a time. The two are not even on the same continent, never mind in the same ball park. But this twisted comparison of the nobody blogger and the congresscritter going all unstable batshit in a personal email sent to another congresscritter, and cc'd to congressional leaders, is at least a close second if not itself, most stupid crack of the week.

Oh and lastly, how fucking typical of wingnuts. The fucking problem with Allen West's email was not principally the, "Not a lady," part. It was the whole fucking thing. It was the entirety of the email. All of it. It was that, and the seeming mental instability of the person for not only thinking of the entirety of the content, but then typing it, addressing it to a recipient, and hitting send. Then again, I totally agree with Marcotte. West is not so much a sexist in my eyes. He's unhinged. That's his problem. I was just reading up about the changes coming in with the next edition of the DSM. The whole way of thinking about personality disorders is changing a great deal. So I have to break myself out of the habit of calling people by the (still current) old diagnostic labels. So I will stick to the layman's terms and just call him a crazy man.

Sunday Quickies. (Well I started out with that intention. Got on a tear.)

Carry over from my fb page:

If I have to hear another GOP pol, pundit, or hack speak that lie about how taxes kill jobs, I'm gonna plotz! I want an emergency Federal Law passed. Repeating the lie that taxes kill jobs is a felony punishable by being forced to live in a particularly bad trailer park, for no less than 2 and no more than 5 years.


Likewise, in a similar vein I am really so deeply sickened by the GOP's conduct during this, as I call it, hostage crisis that even as badly I disparage them, usually? They have really exceeded my low opinion of them. And ya damn right skippy. Part of why they are pushing this shit so hard is because their hatred of P. Obama is so extreme they are willing to fuck the national economy just to fuck with him. But the truth is they are not holding Obama hostage. They are holding The American People hostage. And for that I want them arrested, or at minimum disgraced and chased out of society, like they would chase a scumbag out of town, back in the old days.

Changing gears, Ann Althouse is once again hosting vicious hate speech on her website. In a thread about the Allen West scandal (and her own post was an extreme example of her passive aggressive catttiness,) one of her commenters posted something rather odious. Now to explain, the death of Amy Winehouse had led to another post on the blog about the (dead at) 27 club. And the Allen West post used an article written by Amanda Marcotte as the point of departure.

The odious comment? "Is Mandy 27?"

Go Here to See the Hateful Shit Yourself.

I personally find that sort of shit worse than the blatant "I wish you would drop dead," sort of remark, because I have a thing about passive aggressive trollish cowardly fucks. I hate them on sight. But more's the point, they are trying to be cute in pulling their punches. It's like going for plausible deniability, but failing at it miserably. Everyone gets the message. And in trying to clean up what is a blatantly hateful message, it, to my mind, just comes across all the more uglier. But hey. That's my take on it.

Oh and before I finish here, Althouse's own comments in the post? (Lemme read that shit again, so I can trash it with precision.) I'll just quote her directly:

"I'd like to say that Marcotte and Goldberg are hacks using a boring old rhetorical device, but I think these angry/crazy characterizations do leave an impression.

People are trying very hard to ruin Allen West right now, before he gets anywhere, and they are trying to ensure that Sarah Palin stays down where they think they crushed her."


Remember kids. Allen West was chased out of the Army, narrowly avoiding Court Martial, but was fined $5,000.00 and allowed to retire with benes. The thing that gave rise to his ignoble separation from the Army was that incident where he fired off a gun next to somebody's head, to coerce them to "talk." Basically, it was an act of torture. Basically, he lost his commission because his mental instability became too obvious for the Army to let him remain in the service. And let's be honest here. His behaviour in this, and as well the previous conflicts with Wasserman-Schultz is really good evidence he's fucking nuts, in addition to being a fucking pig. So I look at Althouse's cult of right wing victimhood remarks, there, as evidence she's missing the forest for the partisan, invisible trees.

There's no crying in baseball. And there are no victims in politics. (Of the Media, that is.) When will the fucking wing nuts stop acting like a bunch of whinny babies? Tiresome, that!

Oh. Lastly, Althouse quotes that other wing nut, from Instapundit:


"Yeah, first Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, now Amanda Marcotte: What is it with the Democrats sending white women to attack a black man, anyway? Are they trying to play on gendered racial fears among white voters? It’s some kind of dog-whistle, isn’t it?"

I find it passive aggressively intellectually dishonest, how she will quote shit like that, and not affirmatively endorse, or otherwise comment. So I can not, or at least will not here criticize her for specifically believing in and endorsing such an odious and cynical employment of both the sexist card and the race card, that is contained in a vicious and unfounded group libel of the Democratic Party, and the women specifically mentioned.

But I do get to, and will criticize her for giving that hate speech voice on her page, without condemning it.

Related to My Previous Post About Religion.

Consider the following statement:


"People need to recognize that the real situation about where we fit in the scheme of things is very different from the way it's been portrayed," Friedman said. "In my view of what's going on, there are loads of civilizations out there all over the place, and that we are not very significant."

Roswell Article on Huffpo.

Now whether or not this is true, there's a philosophy there that to my mind runs counter to religious thinking. Religious people seem to have a deep, if not pathological (in some cases) need to feel special. Being made in God's image, being beloved by God, being among his chosen people. All that shit.

I don't get that shit. I don't say exactly what that guy I am quoting says. The way I say it usually is something more like I hope there's more, as in more so than us, intelligent life out there. I mean if humans are the best the universe has to offer, then the universe is fucked!

"Your site is really disrespectful toward religious people."

That's a quote I pulled off some page somewhere. I'll get back to that point, and soon. But first I will say that I am still rubbernecking at that site called The Anchoress. It's run by this extremely devout Catholic lady. And most of the friggen time I have no idea what the hell she is talking about.

I could easily crank out comparative religion papers. But I have no feel for religion. I have no appreciation for the institution. I really do not respect the institution. And that gets us to my quote.

What is wrong with religious people, in how they get it, that some people don't respect religion, but don't get it, that they are allowed not to respect religion? More's the point, where the hell do they get the nerve to expect if not demand that others respect their religious belief system? It's not only totally fucked up thinking. But it's oppressive.

I really hate that shit. And I know. I mean I know that on account of the disparity of the numbers, religious people outnumber the rest of us, that society places a value on religion making it superior to other human belief systems. That's the default. But do I forfeit my right to say, that shit doesn't make the tiniest bit of objective sense to me?

I'm not really ranting here. I am just saying.

Some Shit That is Annoying Me.

Firstly, this new found love for the idea of sexism by some on the right. I find it well annoying that some of those people jump to call sexist any criticism of, as I am now enjoying to call them, the Boobsey Twins (Palin and Bachmann.) I stand with Bill Maher in saying we don't dislike them because they have boobs. We dislike them because THEY ARE boobs.

That bleeds to a related matter I call "The Cult of Right Wing Victim hood." That is one of the most annoying things I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. And I have tasted Miracle Whip! Anyway . . . some people on the right have very thin skins. They don't seem to understand that no one has to like them, particularly when they are being mean and trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, and all that good shit. This is not really a political point. It's basic human nature. It's basic sand box, playground human nature. Take away, or merely threaten to take away my lolipop, my bag of cheese doodles, or my favorite yo-yo and I am going to call you a poopy-head.

Back to a clearer political point. If a politician is a member of a party that worships the ideas of smaller government and less taxes, I have no reason at all to trust anything they say about there being a need to make government smaller, or the logic for not raising taxes. I know their biases to start. And that means I know not to trust them (particularly when they ignore CBO reports and data that proves they are wrong on their analysis and arguments.) As the brilliant American philosopher, Judge Judy says, "Don't pee on my leg, and tell me it's raining."

The fact that NewsCorp has not completely crumbled yet, has me only somewhat annoyed. I am happy to see it in distress. I am amused to see and or hear the defenses of that criminal corporation . . . by folk on it's payroll. But I am losing patience here. I want that shit done, fast! Is it too much to hope for a Criminal RICO action, in addition to Corrupt Foreign Practices? I just love the look and sound of the following: Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp Indicted for Racketeering. Imagine the howling, as they drag Bill O'Reilly away from his desk as the US Marshall's seize the studio. Priceless! (And yes, you can get RICO with bribery. And we already know of NewsCorp doing that in the UK. I think we have to have evidence of that happening here too, for RICO to kick in.)

I'm running out of steam here for now, so I will just say I am annoyed by the persistence of Michele Bachmann. I mean really. It seems none of the rest of the Seven Dwarfs can get any ink/digital/vid coverage these days. (I heard a rumor Herman Cain is about to drop a single feat. Vanilla Ice, just to get mention on the TMZ page!) It's like she's this News Cycle Vampire, sucking all the limelight. But I know better than to blame her for that. I know the truth. And that is it's Summer. It's traditionally the Horse Latitudes for news, and she's the shiny thing of the moment. And already she's morphing into a metaphorical pinata. In other words, my nefarious friends in the liberal media set her up, just to knock her down. She can't handle pressure (few of the current batch of GOP pols can, it seems. Clay feet and eggshell craniums seem to be in abundance on that side of the aisle.) And when the push comes to shove, she will crack like a raw egg. Make that instead like Humpty Dumpty. My guess, at least.

I Should Enjoy It More When Wingnuts Make it This Easy, But . . .

I don't enjoy the circumstances here. Rep. West's excuseless attacks on Rep. Debbie Wassserman-Schultz?

The man (and I am using that word loosely there) is a fucking pig!

What's The Best Entry Point for the Death of the Bachmann Candidacy (she's got serious brain problems, ya know) story?

Some wingnut law professor. He is giving her the benefit of the doubt (cause politicians never lie about their shortcomings, and other embarrassing shit.)

Fuck a duck. There's migraines, and then there are incapacitating migraines. If the ex insider reports are only 1/2 true, The Stepford Wife is in my opinion, medically unfit for the office of POTUS.

I had what was one of my busiest threads on my fb page today over a post about that shit.

To explain my own bias, I assume The Stepford wife is not only a pathological liar, but a hypocrite par excellence. I give no benefit of the doubt to trash like her. Instead I embrace every worst negative inference. So I am assuming the worst those ex insiders say is true. And due in part to the push back I got on my fb page from some GOP (friendly leaning) friends) I did the minimum research on the meds. Short of it? There are some preventative drugs. But then there's the post onset drugs. One class of them is not really incapacitating, but still works as a Serotonin inhibitor, so it's a truly serious kind/class of med. And the other is opiates. You don't need me to explain opiates, but to say the are the dopest of Dope.

And I assume based on the reports so far, she needs the opiates. She got a very bad case of bad head. if she needs to take opiates, then she's medically unfit for POTUS. If the people in her district continue to vote her in to Congress. Fine. But the Stepford Wife fails the Medical Fitness test to be CIC and in charge of the launch codes.

Her campaign? I can't swear to it but I am thinking it's all over but for the whining.

Shit. The fucking useless press, far as I know, have not yet asked if her husband has been treating her. Ethical violations there, Mr. Bachmann. And yes I think you are that fucking stupid. Arrogant. Both.

Sometimes it's that simple . . .

I was a not even close to happy person for a few years there. Not to say I never had fun, but a lot of my malaise was due to my nearly non existent social life, save the hated Internet.


And here I am having discovered, that ya. Even if they say happiness comes from inside, all that, it is profound what a difference it can make to unplug, and get out there and enjoy life in the real world. And the company you keep can have such a brilliant and positive effect on a person, I have recently re learned. But I really have not relearned anything, truth be told. For years I have known and have been preaching the Gospel of Networking:


"You gotta go to the right kinds of parties, and meet the right kinds of people!"


That goes both for social and professional lives. And for many of us, there a lot of blur between the two.


Ok. That's all I've got for now.

Sunday Quickies, Starting With Rebekah Brooks.

Snagged. Busted. Or as they say over there on the other side of the Atlantic Pond? Pinched.

Moving on, bad new for (the) Palin (movie.)

"So far the film has received zero user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

To make matters even worse for Palin, John Wilson, president and founder of the Razzie Awards, told the LA Times in an interview about his interest in the documentary.

"She's the political equivalent of what the Razzies are all about," he said. "And she's hysterically funny if you don't stop and think, 'Oh, my God, she could've been vice president!'"

Palin attempted to squash rumors of her family's discontent over the movie's shorcomings."

Here.


Bill Maher is getting cynical, bullshit heat for being sexist re The Boobsy Twins (Bachmann, Palin.)

His respose: Here.

Oh and that Minstrel Act Herman Cain is doubling down on the racist anti Muslim shit, again for the nth time.

What a racist piece of shit.

Friday Quickies

Rebekah Brooks Resigns.

I confess I usually have a thing for redheads. So there's some draw for me, here.

Do I know for a fact she was neck deep in the particulars of the scams? I find it hard to believe not. Well we will have to see how she comes out of it. Not been arrested. Yet.

In other news, seems P. Obama is endorsing means testing for Medicare. For Crying Out Loud! It's time to go Chicago Way on those GOP gangsters. Not pander to them. No more pandering.

Oh and speaking of the evil them, apparently Grover Norquist (of all minions of evil and professional sowers of malcontent) thinks things in DC have been too partisan.

Too fucking partisan? This coming from the guy famous for the quote regarding how it would be great to shrink the fed gov down to a size small enough to drown in a bathub is now thinking partisanship is a fucking bad thing?

Either he's off his meds, or finally got on some, or really needs some! My opinion!

Oh. And I listened to the interview.

Now I don't literally believe in hell, but if there were such a place I expect Grover has a special devil, hand selected by Beezlebub, waiting on his lying, evil punk ass.


Edit to Add:

A moment of euphoric and unexpected delight. Michele Bachmann mispronouncing “chutzpah.” Here.

Well, it could have been worse. She could have been caught more than once, substituting her cross for a star of David.

If Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld Were Fem, Wing Nuts Would Accuse me of Being Sexist for Saying the Obvious.

Both are morons and sluts.


Now to set this up, both moronic sluts are members of the (said to alternate, in the future as planned) panel of 5 talking heads on the show that replaced Beck on Fox, this week. First Gutfeld's slutty moronic moment. I think it was Tuesday. There was a heated discussion about political rhetoric. Lone Dem Bob Beckel, in an unattributed quote, parroted the infamous line about the desire of some wing nuts to, "Drown it," the Fed gvt., "In a bathtub," line. Gutfeld's reaction to that was to accuse Beckel of engaging in overheated rhetoric. Slut is such a moron he apparently doesn't know Grover Norquist's famous, and by my count thirty year old line. As far as slutty moronic stunts go, that's hard to beat.

Enter Bolling. Who already has racked up some of the most stupid (and racist) lines of a Fox New Employee this year already. He said, a couple days ago, he did not know of any terrorist attacks in the US during the Bush years. Critics and people who have been in a coma since before 9/11 (and still are in such comas) all rose as one to pimp slap this moronic slut for forgetting 9/11.


Allegedly toady, he replied to his critics defensively and by lashing out. How dare people take him at his slutty moronic word? How dare those mean libs hold him to the standard meanings of the words he chooses and uses?

And to make matters worse, in his apology he basically doubled down on the slutty moronic shit by saying but for 9/11 . . . . As if no one died in the Anthrax Attack. Or the Beltway sniper cases. Ya.

Oh and I am calling both sluts not for the sexual insult as much as the secondary meaning: a coarse obnoxious person.

I confess. I haven't watched the Bolling vid at the link yet. I relied on the Mediate reporting for my first impression. That's me being fair to him as much as possible. My actual feelings are going to be far more judgmental than calling him a moronic slut. Here goes. I will watch as soon as I post this shit.

It Was the Best of Times. It Was the Worst of Times.

The suicide by graft and crime of NewsCorp, starting with it's UK Print Ops, and perhaps leading to loss of the broadcast license in the USA (among best case scenarios) gladdens my heart. I would be full of the joy of seeing the universe correct itself, meting out justice to those who got it coming. However, the on going debt fight in DC still has me distressed and way angry.

Speaking of that, the news of the day is not Eric Cantor's dubious claims about an angry P. Obama storming out of a meeting (I would have been pleased about that if that was something I truly believed, by the way.) But it's the bit about how at least one GOP Senator is now thinking and saying out loud that the extortion scheme (my phrasing of it) tied to the debt limit fight might not have been such a good idea.

Bob Corker Has An Epiphany.

I do believe in giving credit where due. Now on to some criticism.


To some wingnut professor. Are you out of your fucking mind, pimping Cantor for VP? Here. Fighting the good fight? Are you out of your fucking mind? And this wingnut professor posts some audio of Cantor blabbing about the details of the negotiation as his evidence of Cantor fighting the good fight? Fuck a duck! The mere fact any of those evil bastids went along with this extortion plan is well . . . evil! (I know that wing nuts have trouble with facts, reality, and the fucking obvious. Using the issue of raising the debt limit as an extortion fulcrum to jack the White House into agreeing to things that they and the American People do not fucking want, is inherently evil, no matter how much people may believe in Reaganomics. And we all fucking know that fucking doesn't work. Sorry. Like I said above, this shit makes me angry.)

Now I have already highlighted someone at least on the path to good work, Sen. Corker, who is at least doubting, publicly, the extortion plan. Anyone in the GOP still thinking and playing that game as if it is not evil, is evil. Again. This shit is fucking obvious!

Let me find the door. I tend to stay calmer about this shit merely reading about it, than typing about it. It must be that when I am thinking about my comments, and analyzing the process and what it means, that must wake up deeper parts of my brain. And before I know it, I go all fuck this fuck them. I know it's not necessary to do so. But hey. My blog. My thoughts. All that.

More Quickies . . .

I want to see more of this! Debbie Wasserman-Schultz taking it to the GOP. Here.



"One of the biggest “children” in her view may be Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who she blasted for not having the comprehension of what the consequences of defaulting on America’s debt would be and who she doubted had qualifications to actually be President. The Republican slamming continued with one final statement, as Wasserman Schultz concluded that not raising the debt ceiling would have catastrophic results and “there’s no disputing that – unless you’re a Republican.”"

I can not begin to say in public what I think is a fitting penalty for the GOP for their over leveraging over the debt limit. But I will describe it as such. The current GOP Is Lex Luthor, Emperor Ming The Merciless, and Doctor Evil, all rolled up in one. Oh. And don't forget the Daleks. Like them too.

Fuckit. I'm done for now. Maybe more quickies later.

Quickies . . .

Let's remember children, that the important thing to note in the debt ceiling story is that even if leveraging is nothing new in Washington Politics, the GOP leadership has so over played it's hands here, it should be considered extortion.

As of the last shit I read, Mitch Turtle McConnell floated a weird plan that pre authorises the POTUS to raise the debt limit. And of course that shit it tied to matching cuts, not revenue increases. What more reason do we need before we can arrest and deport these shits?

Moving on . . .

Some people, who will remain nameless for now, take more offense when people accuse Palin of using her looks to get ahead in the world if they are otherwise critical of her, than those fan boys who love her gams and boobies. To people who don't do this even on a dare, I double dog dare you to go read comments on her fb page. Or go out there and find a male Palin supporter and just ask them what do they like about her most? Go ahead. I'll wait for it. I know it won't take long for the fan boys to get down to it.

Lastly (for now as I want to run out now,) did you hear about the AZ state level lawmaker who pointed a loaded gun at a reporter, just in showing him the gun, not meaning to be threatening? Still what she did was so ignorant that gun people are critical. See. This is why we don't like the idea of every idiot being able to get a gun. That means idiots will have guns. And that's a bad thing.

Ok. I'll leave things there for now.

Ann Althouse says:

"Perhaps respect for religion should lead us away from using the words "sacred" and "sacrifice" casually."

She's All For Free Speech, Except When She's Not!

Oy vey!

And I am going to put on my arch agnostic hat and say I am fucking sick and tired of fucking religious people trying to get me to respect religion, when truth is, I don't. Not much. Not really all that much more than any other belief system, hobby, or other human time-killer activity. And to be honest, there's a lot of things in the arts and sciences I respect way more. Like, idaknow? All the arts and sciences?


But hey. Like I say, religion doesn't have to be oppressive. But lots of religious people are.

Not Motivated. Too Hot. So Let's Go Very Quicky.

Mrs. Palin is teasing in more ways than one. She's still teasing her minions with tauntingly seductive-trying-seeming hints that she's thinking about running (don't you just hate teases?) But in that Newsweek article she strikes poses more befitting of a Hollywood Starlet than someone seriously thinking about the very serious job of running for office to become POTUS.

Shit on a cracker! You don't pose demure, and slyly flirty if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate for leader of the Free World. Fuck a duck!

Here.

Sticking with Mrs. Palin, I was about to give Tommy Christopher of Mediaite shit, for giving Martin Bashir shit, for "wrongly" allegedly accusing Mrs. Palin of calling P. Obama a Sugar Daddy. Then I went back and looked again at the post on Mrs. Palin's facebook page and remembered. I did not get past the third line of that shit. So I really can't really give Tommy Christopher much shit really, but to say the following. If one does what I did, and reads the head line and not much past that, that's the way that shit reads, mon ami. Just saying.

Sunday Quickies, Starting With the Internet Feuds.

Sorry. I'm off schedule. It all started Friday evening, when I found myself sick with the thought of hanging out in the apt., paying too much attention to the stinking Internet. So I got marginally dressed up, went into the city, and bla, bla, yadda yadda. I'm still recovering from that.

Net feuds. I should consider myself happy I am too insignificant to attract the attention of the wing nut bloggers who have attracted mine. That shit gets very juvenile, very fast. Ann Althouse is either in a three way, or four way pissing match now. She cutely quoted that old Stealers Wheels song, "Clowns to the left of me. Jokers to the right . . . ," but she missed the point, entirely. She considers herself more of an independent, so she's stuck in the middle, with or with out another (making reference to the song, "Stuck in the Middle With You," again.) Now granted, that old saw about how if everyone is against you, you must be doing something right would rate as sophistry, if it did not seem utterly baseless, and irrational, and self serving within 3 seconds of awareness of it having been communicated. It's rank bullshit. Not that I am saying she said that. But I suspect that's part of the bundle of twigs that comprises her thoughts on these matters. Moving on . . .

Mitch McConnell is being honest again. He repeats. His main goal is the defeat of P. Obama. Dood. That's the same (well for an audience not composed of fellow travellers) as saying no fucking one should trust any position you take on any issue, since we must assume it's real purpose is to your real and stated goal, defeating P. Obama.

Honest (on that one point) but generally a dishonest person. Moving on.

CNN recently did a piece on whether or not legal blowhard commenters, such as, particularly, Modified Mullet Wearing Nance Grace are hurting the process. Answer -- of course! Find it here. Oh and one last thing for now . . .

Pawlenty is taking shots at Bachmann. Good going Timmy. Remember you wanna-bes got to defeat each other before you can run against P. Obama.

At What Point is it Lying, to Quote Someone Who's Obviously Lying?

Ann Althouse is pimping some ludicrous article about jeans made in America having to cost $300.00 on account of being made in America. FYI. The article she's linking there is on the Wall Street Journal. That partisan rag (in hard copy format) isn't worth using to wipe my ass, it's so biased. But generally, and as a resident of one of the few parts of the country that still counts the rag trade as an on going trade (granted, a mere shell of it's former robust levels) I call bullshit. I call fucking liar pants on fire, at least on the person who made that claim. And I at least call irresponsible on Ann Althouse for republishing that shit.

I googled jeans made in America. I found a website in the first few hits that was a directory of made in America products. And there's a Jeans section. Let's review:

All American -- men's jeans as low as $43.95. $43.95.

Texas Jeans men's @ Sale Price: $29.99.

As I have broken the through the $30.00 floor, I have made my point clearly.

So I ask again. At What Point is it Lying, to Quote Someone Who's Obviously Lying?

I Intend For This to be a Quickie. Nancy Grace.

I'd like Nancy Grace a lot more if she finally got herself an attractive hair cut. I googled her for images. Every shot had her in a ugly-assed coiffure.

Granted, it doesn't look exactly like Palin's modified mullet, but it seems to me to be another variant on a mullet. Poofy on top, straight, longish, and close to the head on the sides. It's a fucking mullet!


Anyway, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. I call foul on your remarks to your critics. Don't like my act, don't watch my show? That's a load of shit, honey. You are on the gaming grid. You are a celebrity/media personality. You are part of the nation's entertainment even if your show is sorta newsy, it's really infotainment. That makes it entertainment product no matter what your network calls itself. You are every bit as fodder for the insatiable American appetite for morsels of celebrity icon nuggets as the Kardashians or the Wasilla Hillbillies.

I want to say get over yourself, but that's not just right. Instead, I will say get your modified mullet wearing head out of your ass, honey!

I Want to Dislike Her. But Mostly I Just Don't Get Her.

I've mentioned the blog that goes under the name The Anchoress, before. I am usually baffled by what the writer, Elizabeth Scalia, has to say about just about anything, because she is a deep, deep, deep Catholic, and seems to experience every sensation and data point through a deep, deep, deep Catholic filter. So I don't get her, usually.

And I was raised Catholic. And lots of my relatives and friends are still some shade, degree of Catholic. Arguably most are closer to being some kind of "Cafeteria Catholic." So it's not some anti Catholic thing going on with me not getting her. I would equally not get anyone from any religion who filtered the whole world through that kind of narrow, spiritual, faith based lens.

And she does talk alot about that stuff. That spiritual truth crap. Sorry. Maybe the Jesuits never got their claws deep enough into me, but spiritual truth isn't. It might be something people hold dear, and believe fully, but there's objective truth and all else is bullshit. I am not sorry to say that. I'm an empiricist. I reject alternate reality.

But enough about that for now. Let me say that she has been following and posting this story about a Catholic (not quite yet ex) priest, who . . . and I am playing here with the story, must have spent too much time down there in the Bible Belt, as he started acting like some Evan-gelly TV preacher. And by that I mean not only the TV ministry but the scandal involving sex and drugs and an ex prostitute. I finally googled him today, after skimming her latest update on him. She linked a lot of shit in her piece, but failed to author that key 'establishing' sentence so her post could make some sense to someone new to the story. Anyway, it wasn't this latest post that really attracted my interest as much as the one from a few days ago that tied in the Casey Anthony matter with the Wanna Be Evan-gelly priest.

Her observation:

"People want to see themselves and their thoughts reflected in an attractive, articulate, charismatic person, and when they find it, they feel a connection that is mostly an illusion, but which they want to be real; and they help the connection to become more real by making purchases, subscribing to newsletters and joining fan pages. It feels like being an insider, and most everyone wants to be an insider, somewhere, right?"

. . . .

"When that desire for outside validation and for inclusion gets served, then we find our idols, and this is true in all spheres, entertainment, sports, politics and religion."

From Here.


One of the themes she's stuck on is her conception of idolatry. And again, this is part of her dogmatic if not spiritual filters. She sees idolatry everywhere. I do have to credit her, even if she falls short (at least in the piece) of confronting the possibility that her own spirituality, her own deep Catholicism could be a form of idolatry.

Be that as it may, I am making note of this post mainly on account of that first chunk. That's a very clear world wide truism sort of observation she makes there about false insider-ism. I will only briefly mention how I see some deliberate blurring of the Evan-gelly form of that to Wing Nut politics. That's what led to the rise of the christian Right. And it's part of what will in the end kill the GOP, eventually. That fatalist, dogmatic brand of politics can not last in a free republic.

Even if we still have Skulls Palin, Cyborg, Arctic Decoy Unit on standby. And we have Michele Bachmann, a.k.a. The Stepford Wife, officially in the race. Both are steeped in and too comfortable with that cult of personality, "idolatrous" form of evangelical politics. I really hope that that shit has reached it's high water mark and is going to continuously weaken, like the Confederacy did, every day following Gettysburg. I really hope that's the case. We don't need that kind of evil as leader of the nation.

Honestly, I did not end up where I thought I would in this post. And since I am almost a stickler for the book end gimmick, let me tie this back to Ms. Scalia. I applaud her for being able to see that the Wanna Be Evan-gelly priest has set hims self up as a false idol. Now I wonder if the right wing leaning blogger can see what I do, about how all that applies to Palin and Bachmann? Time will tell, I recon.

Back to Picking on Wingnut Bloggers . . .

Now my initial argument might be flat out wrong. The Casey Anthony trial verdict has been the disproportionately covered story of the week, so there's that. And it's not really a political thing (I have said this already.) But the wing nuts over on Ann Althouse's blog?

Yesterday, @ 8:49 she posted a story about the hacker mess in Britain, for Unka Rupert and Newscorp. And @ 8:53 she posted some nonsense about the Anthony trial. As of this moment I am typing this sentences, the Newscorp story has only 21 comments. The Anthony post has 161.

I'm sorta curious why that the biggest scandal involving Rupert Murdoch's media empire is getting so little attention from a krew of die hard wing nuts. Is this the Internet equivalent of jamming fingers in one's ears and going,"La la la la la. I can't hear what you are saying?"

Now for the actual comments. The first minion says yes, the hacking was wrong, but he pulls a classic red herring play by saying the bigger scandal is the ATF thing. You know. That thing that already has Congressional Hearings about it? A particularly ill informed minion goes on to argue that (despite investigations, arrests and all that shit) he can't believe journalists were able to do it. And he's so wrong he's right, with his dumbassed strawman. It wasn't the journalists who did the hacking. They hired private detectives for the dirty work. And (and it's not like I have paid that much attention to the story myself. I got this from one TV story this week,) for the most part the scam involved using default passwords or some trick based on a glitch in the software. So this wasn't LuLz Sec level hacking.

Some other dromedary pipes in with the selective outrage argument, as if showing pictures of flag draped coffins and caskets (hey, its Britain we are talking about,) is on the same level of deliberately breaking into some one's voicemail. That's one stupid-assed argument there. That second one? It's a crime!

We had one zombie bring up the Wikileaks story as a red herring, and for a final red herring, the other unbraindead minion who brought up both dumpster diving for dirt on Palin, and the hacking case concerning her. Now dood. Dumpster diving is legal. And the kid who "hacked" Palin got arrested and convicted. I repeat. Arrested and convicted.

It's just silly identity politics. I know. These wing nuts are emotionally bonded to Unka Rupert on account of his Fox News channel serving them their daily dose of delusional, wing nut dog food. But as a social science matter for study, it's a brilliant example of group think and Dunning-Kruger. There seems to be no limit on the level of stupid arguments some people will go, to defend their ideological buddies. Compare that to what most Dems did one there was no doubt that Weiner played all of us. We dumped him and stopped defending him.

Reason is the higher value than loyalty. And if your buddy betrays you first by fucking up, make his ass walk the plank. That's not you being disloyal. That's you cutting your losses, with reason.

Anyway, I don't think the scandal in the UK will bode all that badly for Newscorp's US operations. Unless we find out they have been up to the same sort (or similar) of shit here. I'm the guy who has been waiting for years and years to see the mighty Fox News brought down in scandal and infamy. I am not holding my breath yet. But I could use some good news on that front about now. Please?

So Much Wingnut Stupidity, So Little Time . . .

Firstly, Mrs. Palin, who is denying that the new documentary brought tears to her eyes, and made the Mr. very angry, as the one sequence of media/entertainment celebrities ragging on her adds to the "She's a joke," factor. Since she is denying it, I believe it must be true.

Next, to The Stepford Wife, Bachmann. First Chris Wallace (mindlessly) apologized to her for confronting her with her actual street creds (or lack thereof,) as a flake. Now someone in I think Romney's camp is apologizing for saying she has a little sex appeal. What's next with these delusionally oriented wing nuts? Is someone going to have to apologize for saying she has one head, and 10 fingers and 10 toes? Fuck an even-gelly duck!

Rush Limbaugh used the occasion of the Casey Anthony (mostly) acquittal as an excuse for a very mean cheap shot at liberals. As if liberals had anything to do with the shitty case the prosecution brought way too soon? As a tactical matter, it's a mistke, rushing to trial with a circumstantial (de facto weak) case in a high profile case. The stuipid bastids should have known they were going to be fighting against high level lawyers, with high levels of resources. I hope not to say much more about that case here, but there's an ugly truth about criminal trials. Usually the balance of resources is with the state. When the state gets matched in resources, they better not merely bring their A game but they need to bring their A+++ game, or risk getting spanked. I will stop there on that matter, but to say it ain't got nothing to do with politics. Anyone who thinks that is fucking stupid.

And oh. I am noting, more, a trend among the wing nuts to attribute any action by any one left of center as doing the bidding of the Democratic Party (and the nuttier ones would say George Soros.) Bitches, listen up! If my team were that organized we would have wiped the floor with your punk bitch asses already and the GOP would cease to exist as a national party. Shit. You punk ass bitches usually do more damage to your own damn selves than we do to you. You don't have to stop saying that shit, but saying it doesn't make it true.

I could go further today, but I will stop here. I mean I could do some wing nut blogger alerts. But it does not please me enough to do so. I will rag on some wing nut bloggers on another day. Likely.

That's all for now.

Is it Time to Resume GOP (or Shall We Call it Wingnut) Racist of the Week?

No links. You will have to deal.

Here's the timeline, far as I know (with out actual times listed.)

First, some article gets posted over at The Daily Beast talking about how there are (have recently been) at least 9 clearly out of the closet white supremacists running for office on the GOP line.

9.

Some people would say that's 9 way too many. But not Professor Wingnut. I am not going to call him a racist for merely overlooking the fact that 9 is way too many, and instead doing his dumb-assed victory dance claiming, in so many words, the number is too low to bother to take note (as the peeps at The Daily Beast did.)

And not that the practice of forming up a daisy chain, smelling each other's asses, and proclaiming their ideological cohort's farts smell as sweet as roses is unique to the cult of right wing bloggers, but this is yet another instance of that. Ann Althouse links Professor Wingnut's 180 degree wrong remarks on the Daily Beast out of the closet GOP racist story. I am not going to call her a racist on account of that. But some of her minions? Her commentariat can get ugly and fast, but some of the comments there were just sickening. But that is often the case.

I would make some remark that what we are seeing is the normalization of low level racism on the American Right. But that's not new. We are just seeing a newer version of it. And that even is not that new, but has been forming since the late 60s early 70s when out of the closet racism became a rare thing. And that used to be the norm here in America, not too long ago.

In our current America, wingnut racists for the most part deny they are racists, while clinging to their racist thoughts, and calling other people racists for really stupid things like acknowledging the social reality of race. Ya. I have seen it done time and time again, that if a Democrat merely mentions race, like that one time P. Obama mentioned he himself was black? You know what I mean. It's fucked up out there. And people like Ann Althouse and Professor Wingnut clearly are not part of the solution.

9 out of the closet racists running for office across all of America on the GOP line is way the fuck too many. I mean really! How many more do you need to see before you see a fucking problem with it?

Oh. And before I end my latest wingnuts as racists rant, did you hear about the asshole tea bagger racists selling "Yup. I'm a Racist," t-shirts at some rally? They are tired of being called racists. So they made up a shirt saying they were racists.

If that was meant as irony, I would call it the ironic equivalent of a suicide vest. Way not to make the point, doods.

I will actually link that shit.

Kentucky Tea Party T-Shirt Guy Not Helping Their Cause.

There's video available. I watched some of the clip they have up at Mediaite. But I'm not up to linking that page as . . . sorta as badly as Althouse and Professor Wingnut did, the editor there was way too sympathetic to the wing nut racists. Aww. Hell. I'll link it as well. I only lasted about one minute in, before I was quite enough sickened by these asshole wing nut racists.

Link to Page With Vid. Vid is From Last Year.

Expect this shit to get worse and worse, as we get closer to election day 2012. Racist wingnuts are gonna let their racist freaks fly like it's the last chance they will ever have to fly it. And I dearly hope the days of that being suffered are quickly drawing to an end. I hope!

Fox News Calls on Wing Nut Shrink to Analyze Its "Enemy" . . .

such wing nut shrink making comments about the motives of the "Enemy."

I think the shrink would have been better off analyzing Fox's dysfunction in tapping him to attack its "enemy."

Irony get's lost on these wingnuts. Or common sense.

Here.

If I understood the law better, I might be willing to say David Brock of Media Matters has a good cause of action against Fox. But I know the law of defamation well enough to know that Fox would claim David Brock is a Public Person. And that all by itself makes the case less viable. Or at least more expensive. However . . . if David Brock can do some fundraising to fund the fight, he very well might get deep enough into discovery to find even more evidence to prove Fox is a nasty as he says it is. In theory I think proving actual malice is not so off the charts here that the case should not be allowed to go to depositions. That would just cost a lot of money to get that far.

If he chooses that path, good luck with that, I'd say. I likely could not work on such a case. I'm marginally conflicted out of that case on that side. Damnit!


PS: I know Fox could countersue. It could get ugly, in theory. Yea, in theory.

People Who Do Not Like Government Make For Lousy Lawmakers. And Other Elected (or Appointed) Politicians. Duh!

Was a point I reached, over the past year or so, when I decided to basically stop pretending that the GOP wing nuts were at all serious about governing. That is to say, people who preach the gospel of "Government Doesn't Work," can't be trusted to govern. I stopped cutting slack to the bullshit folk who said shit like, "We don't want to kill government; we just want it to be smaller." Some such. Granted, some folk may really believe that shit. But the institution of the GOP really would like to kill it as much as they can. I started saying Grover Norquist was the only honest one of them. His contempt for the institution of the Federal Government is legendary and as clear as can be.

And now for the on going debt (and all the other shit the GOP has attached to that issue) battle.

How fucking far gone are the GOPers this time? How deep is their desire to kill the Federal government? It's so bad that even David Brooks is calling them out. Now on his good days, he can seem to be a rational fellow. On his bad days he seems quite the wing nut. But today is one of his good days, I recon:


"The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right."

Here.

Let me just say that for me, the verdict is already in. They are not fit to govern. There is no doubt about that at this point in time. We don't have to see the last grisly act in this Kabuki theatre piece for that to be made any clearer.

I'm not motivated to go any further with my commentary, now. Those are the last couple graphs in his piece. It's a worthwhile read, I say.

And oh. Welcome to July 2011. The year the GOP has finally, irreversibly, gone fucking criminally insane.

Brilliant, Genius Interview With David McCullough.

On tonight's Charlie Rose. Reminds me why I hate bloggers. And to be specific I mean I hate self important bloggers who really are shit writers, and don't know their history.

Find the link to the interview. You might have to pay a dollar or two to see all of it. It's worth your time. Most people are not worth listening to. This historian, writer is.

Hey, Ann Althouse. I'm talking to you!

ETA:

Aww shit. I had no idea that the Farragut statue in Madison Sq. Park was a St. Gaudens. But hey. That's the part of town where the original Madison Sq. Garden was (and the scandalous statute featured in that movie Ragtime was found, back in the day.)

Indy Day Quickies. Auto da Fé , Anyone?

In keeping with my practice of highlighting dumb things wing nut bloggers say to take a broader sweep at such wing nuts, the following, by the blogger over at "The Anchoress." Her premise (if not conclusion) seems to be that there is this thing called "True Evil." And that I guess she knows it when she sees (hears about it) if it's a grizzly violent crime that churns her stomach. Gimme a Freaking Break.

I'll try to keep my points to a few. What about Hannah Arendt, and her famously brilliant observation about "The Banality of Evil?" Nope, you don't have to be engaged in the wet work of mayhem, to be evil, or truly evil. That's bullshit.

And secondly. We are talking human beings, not some enlightened species. The creativity with which humans have been killing other humans (and anything else that can bleed and die) seems limitless. Just this past season, I saw Verdi's "Don Carlo," at the MET. The big moment in the show is when the heathens get burned to death. The Auto da Fé? No, they did not "burn" them on stage. The director came up with a brilliant way to suggest that, with out graphically representing it. I'll not laundry list it, but shit. Give me a break. Watch a movie about the Crusades, or any European Civil or religious war. Shit. Watch "Hotel Rwanda."

Let me move on to other things. I will only say about DSK that I am glad I have not said shit about DSK so far. Great call by me. I got burned enough with Weiner. That was enough (and that was my wanting to take his word that he was not lying, for as long as I did.)

I love the idea being kicked around that the WH can just tell congress to fuck off about the debt. I read (just now) part of an interesting discussion about the strengths and the weakness of that tactic. But since I am ideologically in favor of crushing the GOP and tossing the institution on the shit heap of history ASAP, the very idea of taking away their blackmail lever is very attractive.

People need to lean harder on Bachmann. I know that crazy born-again shit-talk appeals to her natural evan-gelly base, but God told me to Marry That Man. God Told Me to Go to Law School. What the fuck? That's crazy talk. She's crafty enough to soft sell that God told me to shit now. But we have her on tape singing the full freak version of the evan'gelly anthem. Let's make her wear that like the stink from a skunk squirt.

Oh. And I am getting long here, so let me just remind all you wing nuts. There's no excuse for your beliefs. None. On my best of days I say there is nothing so wrong with most of you (as some of you are beyond being saved, mentally) that can't be fixed by changing your minds.

Until that day, I consider you all to be minions of evil. And I really don't believe in Satan. But I do believe in Hannah Arendt's genius observation of our morally weakling species.

Wing Nuts Lie, About Free Speech. Hypocrites.

They really don't believe in the real, as in constitutional doctrines and philosphy regarding Free Speech.

Case in point, the Right Wing (led by Fox) attack on Media Matters. As if they are the first not for profit org that has . . . an ideological bias? Judy Miller is positively frightening with her opinion. She basically said she wanted all such orgs stripped of tax exempt status.

What the fuck?


Well ya know. There a line. Somewhere. Tricksy. It is. And that line is actually marked down in the law and or the regs. You can't enjoy the status of tax exempt if you are promoting a particular party or candidates. That's the bright line.

Seems to me spending most of your time as a media watchdog accusing one particular media publisher as being biased, and a bunch of god damned liars is no where near half near that bright line.

But wing nuts are fucking hypocrites who really don't believe in our American Freedoms.

Where the fuck are the preachers of the Gospel of Free Speech on this one, Professor Althouse? This really doesn't even fall into that bullshit class of vapid twaddle called by it's kooky adherents, "Culture of Free Speech." This is clear First Amendment shit. And Fox News and it's allies are indirectly gunning for the normal, understood meaning of free speech as protected speech here. So what says you all?

I spent my (Sunday of) 4th of July Weekend defending the First Amendment. How did you spend it?

Pre 4th of July Post #1. Linking a Really Awful American Spirit Essay.

I call this one #1 as who knows? I might find some other stuff on line that will follow in the American Spirit (or what not) theme.

So here is the awful essay. I call it awful as not only is the compositional style rather poor (it seems more like a series of sentences, rather than a cogent essay.) But the point of departure and where the essay ends up, and the points raised are sort of silly. I could wrack my brain for a better descriptive. I have already called the essay awful. I don't need to escalate. Anyway.

Oddly posted under the category of " POLITICAL COLUMN," the essay is titled,"Fanfare for the Common Man." I confess that when I saw the headline/link, I sorta groaned, but decided to check it out to see if it was as bad as I instantly expected. And what I expected was a garden variety, anti elitist, rednecky, distorted account of the American Mythology. And it turns out it wasn't exactly that, but it was distorted, in it's own weird little way.

Oddly enough, the writer chose as point of departure some tale about some statewide Miss America competition (Wisconsin.) He romanticized that, even before drawing a weird conclusion that led to the rest of his essay. But before I get to that, let me briefly mention my experience with "The Pageant System." I was on the fringe of that scene, years ago. My friend has been designing gowns for contestants for decades. I have been his photographer. And at one time he was running a local pageant. He never let me judge (likely because he suspected that I'd pick which ever contestant flirted with me more. That's likely, I admit.) So back in those days, I just helped out with production and ran the video cam. And yes, I have been back stage at the national competition, although not on broadcast night. It's a multi day event, really.

Anyway, point is, I know that there's nothing common about the pageant system. The amount of money it costs to buy a (make that several, actually) custom made gown, like my friend used to make, means that the pageant system is basically closed to the daughters of the common man. For the most part. And since the whole thing is about finding an exceptional young woman (under the rules and standards) the last thing the pageant system can be called is common. Sorry I went long there, but that is where this guy started; with an analogy that is dead on arrival. And it gets no better.

Let's see. After that he goes on some weird tangent. Not the ordinary common man theme, but actually the America was founded and built by failures, theme. Sure, that was part of it. But to describe America generally as a country built by failures? That's some messed up shit. I really don't get his point. And I really don't get why Politco published that shit. I do not intend to celebrate America's Failures this Independence Day. I will celebrate it's successes. And by that I mean at the meta level, and as well, at the personal level. Yes. I mean yes, it's totally obvious to note that the heavy lifting gets done by the common man. But we also have been advanced as a society, and as a nation, by our exceptional citizens. I won't go long, but what would the American Mythology be without Ben Franklin, Robert Fulton, the Roeblings, Samuel Colt, Thomas Edison, and on and on and on.

Putting aside the weird "failure" line of argument, I have to say I really hate this simplistic sort of either/or thinking in this particular context. Not because of the falseness of the class war angle (what's with these wing nuts and all that bullshit anyway?) Here, the class war angle is less the point. But what offends me more is the reductionist, revisionist, delusional rape of the actual facts behind the American Myth. America is far from perfect. But shit. America deserves to have the record accurately, and truthfully told. Let's show her that much respect on her holiday weekend. Please?