The man who would be king

President Obama wants to be a king, you know.  We hear that all the time.  He's a tyrant, he appoints Czars to run things, but of course he gets nothing done and plays golf while hordes of armed terrorists cross the borders disguised as children he invited here with his "policies." Never mind that the influx peaked in 2008. 

His policies -- his executive orders -- you know he's issued more of them than any other president and he's trashing the constitution by doing it!

Rand Paul, the man who would be president says his first executive order would be to repeal all previous executive orders, doesn't seem to see that particular order as trashing the constitution or indicating royal presumptions of his own and perhaps because he also asserts that revoking all previous orders would be his only and final order.

Of course the entire premise, that our current executive branch operates primarily by autocratic executive order and in disregard for the "will of the people" (as ignored and filibustered by Congress)  is false.  In fact Obama and his predecessor issued far, far fewer of them than any president in my lifetime.  If the facts don't fit, you're full of shit as Mr. Cochran might have said -- and he would be right.

But Paul's presidential campaign is not about truth or even about Democracy.  It's all about appealing to the irrational and fact-free passions of  the Party and apparently he had to think for a moment about repealing Truman's integration of the military and indeed Lincoln's executive order freeing of the slaves and Eisenhower's desegregation of schools before saying he would repeal and re-instate those which had some saving grace.  One can only imagine the debate about re-instating those three, but I have to wonder about the Napoleonic ego of someone who would repeal all the executive orders of the Washington administration onward and using his own judgement, re-order those he agreed with.  

To the people who cheered and applauded this proclamation without bothering to check any facts or perhaps to those who care little for facts or are able to dismiss them for some metaphysical reasons President Paul is a prospect devoutly to be wished because to those who really would be kings, all that which stands in the way must be done away with, whether true or false, good or bad or disastrous.

Fox is Republican? That's crazy!

Well, there you have it. There is no center any more and objective reality is defined as a manifestation of insanity. Bill O'Reilly says people who think Fox News supports the Republican party are "Crazy left wing loons" because although the corporate owners are all Republicans, save those who are Saudi Royalists; because Fox stages rallies for the Tea Party, publicizes and and funds them along with Republican think tank and propaganda groups; Because Fox gives million dollar contributions to Republican candidates and nothing at all to others; because virtually all important employees there are lifelong Republicans, because much of the editorial staff have worked for Republican presidents and even such lefties as Karl Rove can and will be publicly browbeaten into supporting promising to support any and all Republican candidates including Christine O'Donnell -- only a loony would think they're Republicans. No, that's not the gutter, that's right down the center. No, that's not Thule Greenland, that's Paris. That's fair and balanced. Crazy as a Fox.

It's only another word for "you're in my way" in O'Reilly speak. So in response to President Clinton's mention that Fox's rhetoric was whipping Republicans into a "white heat" Balanced Bill replied with:

"What he's trying to do is demonize Fox as carrying the water for Republicans. That's a theme Democrats have been using for months."

Months? You sure are right on top of things Mr. O'Reilly. And of course if Democrats use it, it can't be true, because they're not fair and balanced like you: they guy whose obviously not a Republican. Demonize? Are Republicans horned and forked tongued demons then? Is that why you don't admit to it?

You're the guy that invented a story about Saginaw Michigan banning red and green because they were God hating Liberals at war with Christmas. That was five years longer ago than "months." Fox is the News Network that twisted a story about a small town using cumulative voting for village trustees into an Obama communist campaign to give extra votes to illegal aliens and disenfranchise white people.

Mr O'Reilly, you've excused every Republican action from starting a war under false pretenses, to torture, to warrantless spying, to libertine and deviate sexual excesses and called everyone who ever disagreed with your hyperbole a pin head, an idiot and insane. You're a Republican, you support Republicans exclusively and your network will punish anyone who deviates from utter devotion to any Republican candidate no matter how grotesquely unqualified. Why are you afraid to admit it?

You lie sir. You lie a lot. You're a radically extreme extremist with a total disregard for truth and Fox pays you a fortune to balance your farcical contradictions and concocted stories on your nose like a trained circus seal. You reported, the world has decided. You lie.

Take the C train

Climb aboard the Republican crazy train, boys and girls -- we're going to Loonie Land! We're going to the Fox Fun House Hall of Mirrors where everything gets distorted to look Muslim, or Communist, or Fascist. Yes indeed the logo of the Nuclear Security Summit, can, if you squint your eyes and take another deep one from the paper bag of glue, looks like a crescent -- or if you're one of those sane elitist liberals, like an orbiting electron in the classical model of an atom.

But we're not sane are we? We're ConSERvatives and it's fun to be CRAZY! It's fun to sabotage any attempt to make the world a safer, saner place, it's fun to sabotage everything the voters (corrupted by socialism no doubt) do to restore sanity.


Yes, the latest attempt in the Logo Wars, to find crescents in everything Obama does and says started in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post "Now he's a crescent loon" and migrated to Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, which showed an array of Islamic national flags on Wednesday with the 2010 Nuclear Summit logo -- not that they're suggesting anything. They're just suggesting that since Obama is suspiciously "reaching out" to Muslims and thus is suspected of being a Muslim and since some Muslims are black -- well you decide for yourselves. We're not going to tell you what's true and what isn't. You decide.

I mean you'll note that Obama has pulled the plug on another mission to the moon and the moon you know, sometimes. . . well you get the picture -- not that we're suggesting anything, but looking at Space Shuttle mission patches you'll notice crescents all over the place and of course the shuttle orbits over Muslim countries constantly. Could be that Obama converted the Space Agency to Islam back in 1990! How sinister is that?
Of course since nuclear arms reduction was a particular dream of Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush, Murdoch may have wanted to pull back on the theme that arms control only weakens the nation when Democrats do it, or he may have been embarrassed by Insanity Hannity's being caught in a lie about what Obama's nuclear position actually is -- or perhaps he knows in his wrinkled Australian heart that it's just easier to get away with a totally insane innuendo than to play with dangerous facts. Nobody ever went broke after all, by underestimating the stupidity, gullibility and indeed the raw insanity of the American public.

A day in the life of Ivan Cornysovitch

I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about 'death panels' and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pot's Killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago and it's important we hear about it right away.

You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of Federal Employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.

Love in the time of Republican insanity

Face it, it's been downhill since that socialist Lincoln freed the slaves. In no time at all, we gave women the vote and only a hundred years after that bearded Marxist in the bad hat betrayed the freedom of slave owners, the descendants of those slaves could vote too. The speed of our nation down the slippery slope to Socialism is breathtaking. Only a century after those lazy slaves were allowed basic human rights, the damned Liberals were insisting that God was wrong in separating the races and wanted to allow interracial marriage. There will no stopping this slide and there's no fooling Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) it's all about galloping socialism.

"If there's a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they'd have to go to, is same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept, in the final analysis."

Makes your head swim, doesn't it? The incisive and trenchant logic, I mean. Why isn't everyone smart enough to see that denying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is our last defense against Socialism? Why aren't they smart enough to see that we need government to take over everything in our lives from our morals to our freedom to our love life in the name of smaller, less intrusive government? Thank God for Iowa!

School for Socialism

I agree with Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer. President Obama, by going on TV and telling school children to work hard, stay with it and take personal responsibility for their education is spreading a Socialist ideal. Good republican families should teach their kids to kick back, drop out and stop listening to Socialists.

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology."

and there's nothing more socialist than getting an education. God (the fundamentalist one) only knows education is the enemy of everything Jim Greer and I stand for: school prayer, using the schools to preach that abortion is murder and that complete anarchy will allow a free market utopia.

the Democrats have no problem going against the majority of American people and usurping the rights of parents by sending Pied Piper Obama into the American classroom.

even when that majority seems to be less than 25% as concerns public health care.

Of course Greer and I part company at this point. He simply doesn't go far enough. Public schools are government run, which means they are much more expensive than private schools and they are supported by unfair graduated property taxes which hurts those who create jobs. They should be closed and the responsibility of brainwashing and restricting information should be left to the parents!

Public schools -- the next thing you know we'll be having public police, fire, EMT and even public government! All these things should be returned to the private sector just like George Washington would have demanded if he'd been psychotic Conservative.

The entire government should be run by a private corporation, the military by private corporations, the police, etc. That way it would cost less, the invisible hand of morality for profit would keep them all honest and we would all live happily ever after in the miraculous prosperity of the Worker's Paradise while the State withers away.

amen.

Summer raving

Those lazy, hazy, crazy conspiracy theories of Summer are still with us and not just in the deep South. Majikthise gives us a clip of Glenn Beck, Fox News' designated madman, discussing the prospect of Americorps being a cover for President Obama's own private army - a kind of American SS if you will. Just the kind of zombie troops he will need to disarm the Armed Retards of Texas and deliver our country into the hands of Sauropods from Saturn. Just like FDR did with the WPA.

Obama has given the job training and public service agency "half a trillion dollars" to turn them into an elite fighting force to use against Americans, presumably after the Pentagon balks and Blackwater opts out. The Pentagon would be jealous of all that funding - if there was a particle of truth in this seditious crock of Glennbeckery.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not reject conspiracy theories out of hand. There certainly were some involved in bringing on Bush's Second War and a number of less violent ones involving raiding the public treasury, but I say that because there is credible evidence for it. There never is for Beck's ravings. In fact the idea seems to be that total absence of evidentiary support is not only proof of conjecture, but a large screen upon which to project the ideas he comes up with by sticking his head in a paper bag full of aromatic hydrocarbons. Never mind the proof of his dishonesty, the folks who have been backed into a corner don't care about evidence. The people who hired him care nothing at all whether their viewers are human or subhuman or anti-human as long as they tune in, turn on and freak out.

No lie too big, no mind too small

Get ready for it: another surge in the Anti-Obama Wars will be arriving in about a week with a new and more specious attack from the Derangement Rangers, or as these vampires call themselves the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. Twisting facts and flinging fallacy, they intend to pump up the rage junkies for some purpose we can only imagine and we can be sure that if someone stupid enough to buy their product acts on that rage, they will wash their hands of it and blame the liberals. In fact they're already doing it.

I can say that because the ad will apparently reference the recent intelligence report warning of increased right wing terrorist activity -- which of course proved true: blood, bullets, bodies and all -- as an example amongst many, of how Barak Obama is just like Adolph Hitler.

"As the regime spun out of control, they labeled political opponents domestic terrorists, and warned of confrontations between such groups and government authorities."

Is their view of an all too correct observation. Too damned bad more attention wasn't payed over the howls of offended wingnuts and too damned amazing that they're still howling after the warning was proved accurate.

Of course it takes a special person to see this alleged spin-out of the administration, but the accusation is quite predictable. Indeed every accusation made against Bush, no matter how true, is going to be re-labelled and returned in the same fashion as Watergate was reprised in every word and action and relaunched against Bill Clinton.

"They proposed a civilian security force, and a Congressman warned it was exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Opposition heightened after voter fraud by the president's allies, including thousands of bogus voter registration [sic]"

Since I'm personally involved with civilian security (Radio Amateur Emergency Services) I would have to laugh at a bunch of retired engineers volunteering to do emergency communications in a disaster being compared to Storm Troopers, but it's hard to understand why a thousand or two bad registrations, which don't seem to have produced any actual votes could account for the 9 million vote Obama victory. Hard, unless you're up to no good yourself and of course the OCDB PAC isn't. It's the illegitimate child of Howard Kaloogian, the fellow who during his losing campaign to replace disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham told us that Iraq was safe and almost free of violence and that the fact was being hidden by -- you guessed it -- the Liberal Press who of course support terrorism. Is there any doubt?

"And now the Obama Administration is warning law enforcement to focus their attention on the dangers of conservatives."

says their website. They're not, unless you describe murderers as conservatives, but I am and I can't help but mention that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of campaign was pioneered by Adolph Hitler himself.

These people are deranged, malignant well financed and well armed. Oh yes and dishonest, did I mention dishonest?

The annotated Pritchitt

People still laugh at the headlines proclaiming Dewey's victory over Truman but somehow it's rare that the breathless predictions of doomsayers, fear merchants and political liars are reexamined, hilarious though they may have become. I have a feeling that some of the hyperbolic, hypergolic, hyper-dishonest anti-Obama slander will be far funnier than any smiling picture of President-elect Truman holding up the announcement of his defeat -- that's if it doesn't just fade away, forgotten. Surprisingly, much of it is still making the e-mail circuit.

The letter that follows is circulating on the disinformation highway. Unlike many or even most, it's not a hoax. It's just another example of the endless assault on truth, the continuous appeal to fear and confusion and anger through lies, distortions, fabrications and slight of hand. Even though we now know much more about Barak Obama and he seems far less like the straw man his opposition put together during the campaign, this letter still circulates to the giggling approbation of the Ridiculous Right.

Lou Pritchett is one of those "motivational speakers" who keep vaudeville alive by soaking hopeless losers for "motivating" them. He was a former VP of sales for P&G, whose products I will think twice about purchasing. Have you seen it? It was turned down by the print media and so was launched on the last refuge of idiots and paranoids, the Internet. It's designed to allow idiots to confirm their vague fears without much analysis and that's why I've enjoyed picking it apart, lie, by lie. Perhaps you will too.

___________________________

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

Not even a doubt about Dick Nixon? I'm surprised Roosevelt doesn't still give you nightmares.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

The argument from ignorance: I don't know A, therefore B. Nothing like starting our with a classic! The well known is described as unknown so that you can share the author's ignorance and false conclusions based on it.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

Argument from ignorance, only it's now ignorance about long since answered questions.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

The evidence is strongly otherwise and of course the "formative years" can be described in any way that bolsters the absurdly irresponsible accusation.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

Neither did Eisenhower, Jefferson or Washington or Lincoln. Bush did, by the way.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

No evidence that not being in the army leads to not understanding anything as vague and meaningless as "its core." Better watch what you say anyway since St Ronald never served either.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

Baseless statement obviously at direct odds with his demonstrated humility and smooth demeanor - his most famous attribute. He's yet to blame Bush, yet this bozo is brazenly blaming Obama for things he hasn't done or had the chance to do!

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

No he didn't and no he hasn't and the most vocal calls for America to fail have come from the Republican party and its blowhards, like Limbaugh and Gingrich. Strange rhetoric from someone hoping that Democracy will fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

Only if "blame America" is described as taking responsibility for our actions and promising to support justice.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

No evidence of that whatsoever and he's been a disappointment to Liberals who are of that intent. That's a bit of a tactical oversimplification about Europe, by the way. I wonder if he has ever been there.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

We don't have a system except for the government health care available to veterans, soldiers and government officials - and they tend to love it. Of course since he hasn't really told us what he does support, it's obvious that you're making it up as you go along.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

Shows total and probably pretended ignorance of the costs of oil shale development, the lack of adequate oil reserves and the definition of the word "responsibility" there being no real reason not to utilize wind power. I suggest he owns a lot of AMOCO stock. "Responsibly capitalizing" does of course not mean accelerating the use of something we're running out of and of course you know that, which makes you a liar, doesn't it?

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

We no longer have the highest standard - it having passed away during the Bush years and of course there is no evidence other than fantastic lies to support the assertion. In fact those Eurosocialist bogeymen are living better, healthier and longer than we are. In fact Capitalism suffered a great crash after years of Reaganomics and the bailout process was begun by Republicans, so you've disproved your own fake point.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

Yes, Extortion is lending money and demanding accountability, transparency and responsibility in return. That would make any kind of banking and investment - capitalism itself - a form of extortion. Paulson in turn demanded trillions and demanded that we not ask where it was to go, what it was for or when or if we'd get it back. That's extortion, Pritchett, old chap. You must have been a great soap salesman indeed with a line of bullshit like that.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

Vide supra and too bad your policy didn't shrink from the larger, murkier and legally questionable spending policies that made the bailout necessary.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

Actually he is famous for doing exactly that, in emulation of Lincoln. you really ought to make some reference to the truth occasionally because your lies are getting increasingly cheap. Do you think you're being tolerant of other viewpoints or misrepresenting, demonizing and lying about them?

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

No evidence whatever - not even a hint of that. You'd like to insist that he claims to be messianic so you can accuse him of failure before he's had a chance to start and make every imperfection seem monstrous. Bush on the other hand told us he actions were directed by an omniscient and omnipotent God - or did you forget? Pictures were painted of Bush with a halo holding Jesus' hand and he claimed divine inspiration for lying to start a war and bankrupting the economy.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

Sure, we haven't heard any criticism at all, have we - especially from the most popular news channel, Fox.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You've just contradicted yourself and of course, Obama never having suggested any such thing, we can see that you're lying. Please reference any occasion of Obama having called for censorship and particularly pre-emptive censorship. Please, comply because your credibility is on the line here Pritchy boy.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

A nice, but meaningless and inapposite point. Again, the guy's famous as a deal broker, but perhaps in Gopspeak there is some different interpretation of what it means to be President.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Try getting psychiatric help, because if you can't remember who it was that demanded we give up our freedoms for fear of terrorism, who tried to make the postman into a spy, you're either suffering from dementia or a damned liar. Frankly you're a scary guy yourself and for many reasons other than for being a liar, fabricator of disinformation, spreader of malicious and unfounded rumors, libel and just plain old hatred for freedom, justice and anything remaining of the American way after 8 years of Bush.

Lou Pritchett

You should be ashamed. I'd change the name, if I were you.

Let's all torture like it's 1499

I know, I know, you're going to tell me that I'm obsessed with Ann Coulter and I should just ignore her until she goes away. Well, I'm not and she won't of course, but it's just that every time I think I've identified the craziest or most repugnant, evil minded, nasty and dishonest humanoid resident within the US borders, Ann, like one of those sea cucumbers that extrudes its intestines in order to gross out predators, gives us another and bigger load from her oversized colon.

Yes, of course Rush Gassbaugh is already on record as stating that the beatings, the attachment of electrodes to testicles and worse at Abu Ghraib were something only a girly man and liberal would object to, but Abu Ghraib is old news. It's all about Guantanamo and it's Ann's turn to tell us that waterboarding someone 189 times is just like a carnival ride people would actually pay to experience and that "the Muslims" are laughing at our weakness because we don't torture them enough. Only a hundred have died, after all. What we do is to put an "adorable little caterpillar" in someones cell, said adorable Ann to Sean "insanity" Hannity -- kind of like Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition using soft pillows and comfy chairs. We're "Wussies" for having any sense of morality greater than a jackal's says Ann while lounging around her luxury Palm Beach estate drinking a glass of human blood and munching on some child's barbecued leg.

Of course she's referring to our playing on some prisoner's phobias and to some, being trapped and unable to prevent an insect crawling up their leg is worse than pain. We all have some secret fear, after all. Imagine being trapped in an elevator with Coulter and Limbaugh, for instance, on the day you forgot to take your gun with you.

So I guess what the Arm Chair warriors from Palm Beach would like to see, is an America so utterly depraved and devoid of conscience as to make the world shudder in horror as we torture, maim and kill for pleasure -- you know, like real men like Ann and Rush do. Well they don't actually do anything, but they do giggle and laugh and snicker and mock decency while telling us we're "godless" for not torturing more people in more horrific ways and that we're suffering from "derangement syndromes" for criticizing evil.

Anyway, the dishonesty, the depravity, the malignant personality of laughing Ann doesn't need me to criticize it. Someone who makes a living lying, insisting that concerns of right and wrong, good and evil are for weaklings and that only cruel and inhuman leaders who make us safe by terrifying and disgusting the world can be supported -- while ridiculing liberals for being without religion isn't going to listen, and those who support her will simply read inexplicable hostility into my words and claim she's the victim.

We don't burn these people at the stake any more -- perhaps that's the danger of being Godless, but I'm just as happy that he's dead or gone or never was at all, since this is the kind of thing that would provoke any deity into raising the sea level once again.

Tough guy Ed Rollins

Well what can we expect Ed Rollins to say when he tries to make a case for Barak Obama's weakness? After all Rollins can't make much of a case for anything but "toughness" in the Reagan administration he worked for or indeed the party he's long been part of. Not that he will get specific about Reagans testicularity, because if a Democrat had "cut and run" in Lebanon, Ed would still be howling about his effeminate weakness. But one can't take Ed for anything but a low key polemicist, an Ann Coulter without the filed teeth, a Lower fat Limbaugh with less gas content. It's all theater; all a continuing part of the fear mongering the humiliated GOP has been using to make us feel good about giving up freedom and prosperity and distract us from the abject failure of all its promises.

So Barak Obama wants to be loved, says Mr. Rollins. Horrors!

"He wants to be loved passionately and daily"

he writes for CNN.com as though he could know. As though he learned of the presidents innermost dreams through pillow talk: as though he weren't building yet another straw man, stuffed with pot-pourri and dressed in lace panties.

"He wants to be loved by the Democrats on the Hill and even the Republicans who have still not given him any love." (despite many having voted for him)

"He wants to be loved by the Europeans who have made a career out of badmouthing U.S. presidents and their policies."

which is Ed's way of placing the blame for calling them all Terrorist supporters of the Axis of Evil because they didn't agree about our false assurances about Iraq on them rather than on George Bush glaring weakness of character.

"The real example of searching for love in all the wrong places was last week's lovefest south of the border when, in effect, he appeared to be hugging Castro, Ortega and Chavez who have spent their lives fighting everything the United States stands for."

continues the puffed up patriot, twirling his baton, wacing his flag, wishing you could believe that George Bush's Chavez handshake was fundamentally different than Obama's Chavez handshake which, to a prejudiced eye appeared to be a "love fest" and that these banana republic leaders were, by dint of socialistic ambitions "fighting against everything the United States Stands for." The very nerve of showing basic respect instead of making threats! The very weakness of decency and dignity!

Perhaps they do fight against some of the things we stand for, in their own countries, Like Ronald Reagan's death Squads and the fuedalism of foreign corporations, but as a threat to the security and way of life of our republic, they can't do the kind of damage that's been done by Rollins' party, nor are all the things we've been standing for, like torture, military aggression, supression of dissent and bombing the bejusus out of innocent civilians, all that worth defending. I hate to mention it, but Jesus lost his life fighting against many things we've wasted time standing for, nor did he think love was such a terrible and weak thing.

Still Obama should court respect, says Ed, meaning fear. He should just spit on these spic bastards and tell them in no uncertain terms just how many bombs we could drop on their miserable citizens just for voting against our wishes, like we did in Veet-nam. Fear is what we want, not love: grovelling, abject submission to the will of the American President, through fear.

Now of course appealing to the basest sentiments of the public with slander and libel and a smorgasbord of false accusations as the Republicans have done, is really all about wanting to be loved; only it's more pure by virtue of its dishonesty and hostility.

Consider the torture memos. Obama was weak fo releasing them: weak for allowing the Justice Department to decide who to go after and sorst of all, he looks weak, says Ed, to both the people who wanted to hide the information and the people who are our for Republican blood.
Weak if he does, weak if he doesn't. In fact the courage to ignore the passion of either mob must be weakness, right?

"Weakness is the death knell for a president. With 1,366 days to go before this term is up, Obama's got to get tougher or he will be viewed as a personality who reads well from a teleprompter."

So Ed is already partying like it's 2012 and he's trotting out that shibboleth about telepromters to prove his comfort with the most childish and idiotic of his party's giggling points. Pretty weak Ed, I'm sorry to have to say it.

But that's what America liked about Kommander Guy Bush and Reagan - toughness - reading tough words written for him by arm chair belligerants like Ed. I just wish someone would define the concept well enough to differentiate it from pandering, from intransigence, stupidity, dishonesty, unwillingness to learn -- even to make peace.

I just wish politicians like Ed Rollins could explain to me why it's wrong to expose atrocities rather than be grateful to the perpetrators who have allowed us 1200 some odd days of not being attacked by a dozen or so saboteurs -- and why being so pants-wetting fearful justifies taking our freedom, respect, dignity and prosperity away while he whimpers about Obama being weak.

Up to our knees in Santorum

"Watching President Obama apologize last week for America's arrogance - before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans - helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions"

says former (hurray!) Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in a Philadelphia Enquirer editorial titled The Elephant in the Room. Of course the problem with any elephant in the room is not that it's difficult to notice, but that the room tends to fill up with shit rather rapidly.

Of course nothing helped Sanitorum be convinced of anything, he's just, like any elephant, looking for whatever fodder he can find so that he can, as elephants do, digest it and turn it to dung. Conviction is what you call the straw you're grasping at when you're afraid of drowning.

The fact that president Obama told the French we can sometimes come across as arrogant is a simple statement of truth. We can -- and Santorum certainly illustrates it by pointing out how the French owe us their freedom, while ignoring that we owe the French the same debt. Of course only such an elephant's ass as he would require the French to grovel and eat up such merde as we feel fit to excrete -- and in perpetuity. His own arrogance would be a model for the Sun King.

Of course he fails to note that Obama also called Europeans arrogant as well, which renders the former Senators "convincing evidence" nugatory as well as dishonest. But what "values and traditions" is Santy talking about here other than arrogance itself if Obama is admitting that yes, we can be perceived as overbearing and pushy?

Actually I'm getting tired of treating this man's shit as worthy of comment -- as though he weren't a tin-horn blowhard without the wit or talent to do anything but cut bait for the Republican dementia mongers. You're an elephant's asshole Santorum; you and the Fox you rode in on.

War with the Newt

"Prophets are always disappointed dear Nostradamus. That's why new ones are always in the wings updating the catastrophes."

-Andre Codrescu-

One of the reasons that I changed my major away from Psychology many years ago had to do with some films showing real mental patients, including schizophrenics, in the days of straight jackets and padded cells. The mental state of these poor people wasn't what I wanted to be immersed in for the rest of my life. Little did I know. I haven't thought about it for 45 years, but recently, listening to the barking of Newt, St. Rush, Ann, Michelle and Laura the wild-eyed ravings of hysterical madmen come to mind again.

The latest is from the would-be-relevant Newt Gingrich, who is seeking to fill the power vacuum caused by the collapse of the Bush administration by issuing vacuous proclamations with reckless disregard to what his words mean. Seeking the authority of amplitude, Newt squeals out that Barak Obama, currently disappointing his most liberal supporters by being a centrist and a pragmatist, is leading us toward a dictatorship and "Liberal Fascism."

Analyzing such speech is probably pointless, since only those in a true fugue state need to have the ironic irrationality explained. Of course Newt isn't really schizophrenic and so isn't deserving of sympathy. He's just a witch hunter and like all of them, he invents the witches he uses to elevate himself to the powers he attributes to them.

Of course he'd like to make you think it's all about those vaunted "conservative principles" he pays lip service to while supporting bloated authoritarian government in the pocket of industry, (fascism) but as I've said many times, "principles" are what we call our most unworkable ideas. In the case of Newt, they're not even ideas he believes in. What he does believe in is the Big Lie and the oft repeated lie, knowing that the more outrageous his claim, the more it will be believed and that nothing is too ridiculous, unfounded, impossible or meaningless to be claimed. Hence terms like "liberal fascist" that combine contradictory words, yet even more ridiculous coming from a source that has more successfully promoted incestuous collusion between a military industrial complex and news media using false data, fabricated scenarios, illegal surveillance and other infractions against liberty and the law to promote their goals.

We will most likely hear more sirens wailing and more Newts and Cheneys and Limbaughs pumping up the volume and trying to convince us to re-elect the party that has robbed and raped us and left us lying in the ditch. The longer doom eludes us, the more prophets thereof will howl.

Twinkle, twinkle, evil Starr,

What an evil man you are.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Ken Starr, the man who thought you should go to jail for using the word "breast" on the internet even in conjunction with words like cancer and mammography, yet led the taxpayer funded multi-million dollar investigation into the President's sex life and published it on the internet in lurid and pornographic detail, is still alive. Yes, it's amazing, but some reptiles do live a long time.

Starr, the sex-obsessed fighter against dirty pictures and swear words, hasn't changed much, he's just picking on another obsession of his - homosexuals. Ken somehow obtained a law degree and was admitted into the bar somewhere, but really he's a preacher of a puritanical bent and of the sort our founding fathers loathed so much that they eloquently and passionately expressed that loathing in word and deed. One of those deeds and words was the the declaration of independence; that manifesto of the natural and inalienable nature of human rights.

Ken Starr will have none of it. We have no rights but what the government allows and what the government allows, the government can disallow. That may have been a bit much even for George III, but in any event it's at odds with the entire philosophy from which the United States grew and a worldwide quest for freedom from religious and secular tyranny emerged.

Kenn Starr will have none of it. Ken, whose resemblance to a circumcised penis is striking, has the ill nature to go along with his appearance and so is arguing to uphold California's outrageous proposition 8. A majority he says, can simply remove the rights of a minority and so there's no real reason we couldn't restore slavery, expulsion of Chinese citizens and remove the voting rights of women and non white males.

Did I mention that Ken is a Republican? When we put the puzzle piece that is Ken Starr together with other pieces from the Bush Justice Department, we start to see a picture of America that resembles the great tyrannies of the past and present; and America that has been tricked into going not only back to the nations under God we broke from, where the ruler's right came from God and yours, if you had any, were at the grace and whim of that ruler.

How close we are to the precipice -- it's no wonder that we hear such bellowing and howling from the greedy devils. We have come so close, they have made a tower of slime almost tall enough to reach our liberty. They can almost taste our soul.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

Occam's butterknife

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

Perhaps we owe it to Barak Obama that Darwin's birthday passed by without massive hysterical demonstrations attempting to prove that all species on Earth sprang into existence from thin air about 6000 years ago. Hysteria, the other mother of invention, is required since there is no evidence other than belief and all beliefs are equally possible and equally credible, as any number with zero as a factor is equal to any other. The barking and howling Republicans were too busy yesterday denying the demonstrable truth of Barak Obama's citizenship to deny the demonstrable truth of speciation through natural selection.

The amount of evidence for the proposition that Mr. Obama was born outside the USA or its possessions is nugatory and is as dependent on wishful thinking as is the evidence for "creationism." None the less, "lawmakers" in Tennessee, the former site of the only-in-America Scopes trial that proved to the world that Americans are demented idiots if not actually an atavistic subspecies, are up to something completely similar. They are insisting that our new president prove his citizenship to them by furnishing his birth certificate -- again.

Beyond the question of how one proves anything to demented idiots, is the question of why they haven't looked, as did the Supreme Court, at the evidence they are demanding: the evidence already on record and verified. His birth certificate has been furnished, verified by the Registrar of Vital Statistics and the Health Department of the State of Hawaii and by an independent group. Let me say it again: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31, 2008 that Obama was born in Honolulu.

In Tennessee of course, Occam's Razor is as dull as a Republican's mind and so Republican Congressmen Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Niceley, suspicious of a conspiracy, have agreed to join in a suit by the hilariously Orwellian sounding Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, demanding a writ of Mandamus to obtain the birth certificate that has already been obtained and immigration records which do not exist. Postulating a conspiracy of incredible proportions between the State of Hawaii, the US Supreme Court, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a legion of America hating Liberals to elect an alien president, certainly constitutes the multiplication of entities without necessity, other than the necessity to lie and cheat in order to unseat a popular President.

"Let's just put this to bed," Says Casada, who is also the chairman of the House Republican caucus.

"Yes, people may say, you're just chasing some conspiracy theory. It's a simple act on his part to just do, and we're done — move on."

People may indeed say so, even people on the Supreme Court. People may also keep lying until, by some kind of auto da fe, it becomes truth. What people ought to do, if they give a damn about their country and its future is to run these delusional, dishonest, dimwitted mystics out of the Congress and perhaps import some Chimpanzees to the State of Tennessee to improve the gene pool.


cross posted from The Swash Zone

The healer

"A man can smile and smile and be a villain" or at least he can heap praise on one. That Mussolini made the trains run on time has become a metaphor for the practice of singling out certain isolated actions of an otherwise un-praiseworthy person in order to dismiss any clear view of the whole man.

That particular kind of smile is visible on the face of Bill Frist as he tries to portray our outgoing president as a savior of millions. George Bush is a healer, he says. I know, but be careful that nothing flies into your mouth while it gapes in amazement. No, he's not talking about the hundreds of millions of lives, perhaps billions of lives affected by his economic policies nor the uncounted lives of Iraqi civilians who he has killed or maimed, the millions exiled, the millions forced into fear and abject squalor, he's talking about the lives he's saved in Africa.

While millions have been hacked to pieces, raped, dismembered and starved in Africa without any interference by the United States of America, Bush has none the less committed 15 billion dollars to fight AIDS, according to smiling Bill Frist. Some, of course question the accounting and questionable accounting is the most visible Bush family trait, as we have seen. No mention makes Frist of any number of lives that might have been saved by advocating condoms to prevent infections because that, of course would offend the Christian Right. God, after all, provides sinners so that we can be saintly in our condescension and preventing the infections just gets in the way of God's plan.

Frist has the nerve to continue on and on about how Bush has done wonders for education and health care and I'm sure it's not that he's a damn liar or that he lives on another planet that he doesn't realize that Bush failures in these departments contributed heavily to the fact that Frist is no longer the Majority Leader. That Bush and Frist and their party of God are saintly men, misjudged by sinners and Liberals, is an article of faith for Republicans but they're no different than other men. It's just that faith makes liars of us all.

Victims

I've often called her Ann of the Thousand Lies, although it must be admitted that I've never documented that many of them. Perhaps it's only been 997, perhaps it's been half a million, but how many lies, after all, does it take to make one a liar? Would a dozen major lies in one book suffice or would lying to the Palm Beach County Election Commissioner do?

I'm not talking about inaccuracies, I'm talking about lies. Media Matters for America found at least that many in her latest crock: Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America. Her assertion that Fox News has never been caught promoting a fraud, for instance, is countered by a list of frauds and a memo from Fox to its writers that quoting unattributed and undocumented stories off the web was less that responsible journalism. One recalls the "madrassa" frenzy which even without the ever more slanderous innuendo batted about between stone faced panel members would be damning enough.

That's of course only a small example from one book. I would have to add one more lie so frequently used by her active and tacit supporters: the relentlessly repeated title of "conservative commentator." William F. Buckley and George Will are conservative commentators. Ann Coulter is a writer of polemical fiction, a burner of straw men; a person who has advocated the murder of Federal Judges and bought her way out of a felony conviction by using a friend at the FBI to intimidate an election board.

I must issue the disclaimer that I haven't read this book and am not about to, so I'm going to take the word of Media Matters that the lies they illustrate are actually in it. I'm also going to discount the inevitable ritual of discounting documented information by dancing around the bonfire naked, chanting Liberaliberaliberaliberal and passing ones self off as a victim of evil Liberals as her advocates do. I will point out the irony -- if it needs to be pointed out -- of a writer who has claimed victimhood with every paragraph screeching about how "Liberals" are pretending to be victims and of the irony of a woman who attacks America with every breath, scapegoating "Liberals."

Cartoon crap

Dear Mr. McCoy,

Using it up now is not the same as saving it for the future. Drilling it now is useless not because the results are 20 years away, but because the results won't matter. In fact the small amount of oil in the Gulf will be more valuable if we leave it there. Your analogies are really lies aren't they? Of course Obama isn't opposing drilling for oil, you just made that up because you're a liar, aren't you?

Madness

If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the price of free speech is eternal bullshit. Yes, this is a real billboard in Florida and for sure, some hysterical nitwit will begin to howl this at the moon.

In an ignorant and emotionally volatile population, Democracy is dangerous.

They burn witches, don't they?

Who do you think of when you hear "Wicked Witch?" Perhaps you recall the green lady from the Wizard of Oz, but for me it's Michelle Malkin. It takes a certain kind of nut job to see Jesus in bird droppings and really believe it, but to assert that Rachel Ray is secretly supporting international terrorism because she wore a paisley scarf in a Dunkin' Donuts commercial, takes Michelle from Hell.

We're clueless, says she. We (liberals?) are clueless that the Kaffiyeh is the symbol of Palestinian terrorists and even though Rachel is a woman and women don't wear these things; even though she wears it around her neck and not on her head and even though in fact it's a paisley scarf given to her by the producers, that's enough of an argument for the Mad Miss Malkin to expand into a tirade against:

"ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons."

We all know that Left Wing Icons, like Gays and Hollywood celebrities all support violence and terrorism - especially against Israel.

I think I need a scarf to keep my jaw from hitting the floor.

Back in the late 60's I had a Mao hat and little red book that I used to poke fun at the "conservatives" who accused anyone who opposed the war in Viet Nam of being an International Communist conspirator. I think perhaps it's time for me to don a Kaffiyeh myself.

Call me Ismail.