FIRST DRAFT

The Case of the Impatient Patients

Yes, it's unfortunate that the ACA has stumbled coming out of the gate but people really need to get a grip. This is a major new program that's designed to touch millions of lives and it's on the interweb. That's a recipe for a slow roll out.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart at play, our culture is addicted to instant gratification and expects instant results. It's why we have some nasty variations on classic food products such as instant oatmeal and quick grits. People need to drop a chill pill, take a deep breath, and the MSM should stop letting those who want to destroy the ACA drive the narrative. As the President said today it's MORE THAN JUST A WEB SITE. Me, I'd say it's MORE THAN JUST A FUCKING WEB SITE.

The stupidest thing I heard said all today was by Brian Williams who was in touch with his inner Reagan baby on his broadcast:

Let's talk accountability. a lot of people say if this happened in the real world it could be curtains for the company, the ceo. in this case the ceo would be Health and Human Services cabinet secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Just like it was curtains for all those Wall Street CEO's when they crashed the world economy? Many of them are still on the job and those who aren't were given golden parachutes instead of jail sentences. And what do Brian Williams and his dim sidekick Chuck Todd know about the real world in any event? So much for liberal media bias.

Obviously, the healthcare.gov site needs to be fixed, but technical difficulties can be fixed, that is, if you want to fix them. (Damn, I just said fix a lot, which means the fix is in.) The haves in this country are pitching a hissy fit over the fact that the "undeserving poor" may be getting health insurance. The US and A is not the only country with creeps like this. Here's an extended quote from a piece in the Guardian about the reaction to Australian Labor PM Gough Whitlam's health insurance initiative back in the 1970's:

Something about government health care just drives conservatives crazy. Republicans, say critics, have lost their minds because they let their most rightwing members drag them into the government shutdown to destroy Obamacare.

Australians scorn the dysfunction in Washington but 40 years ago we fought the same do-or-die struggle over healthcare. Legislating for Medibank stretched the Australian constitution and was central to Coalition complaints about Gough Whitlam’s excessive spending. And as soon as the Fraser government came to power, it repealed the national insurance program.

Labor and Liberals now treat Medicare as a sacred cow, revered since the dawn of time. In truth, though, it’s less than 30 years old and was significantly amended by the Howard government’s requirement that higher income earners buy private insurance.

Why was Medibank so contentious in the 1970s? The middle class could afford health insurance and paying for it was a mark of prudence and self-sufficiency. People with insurance believed the system worked very well.

The Australian Medical Association and its political allies in the Coalition denounced Medibank as "socialised medicine". Health spokesman Don Chipp said the scheme would create "anarchy in Australia".

Insured patients dreaded the prospect of being herded with poor patients into shabby public hospital wards. The lazy and feckless would crowd waiting rooms and government clinics would destroy private practice. It promised the middle class nothing but higher taxes and lower standards.

Medibank passed at the one and only joint sitting in Australian history and in 1975 the Coalition resorted to blocking supply to reverse it. That’s the tactic Republicans used with the government shutdown.

It's hard for many of us to comprehend people who will wreak havoc to deny someone medical treatment but, as we all know far too well, those people are out there. I wish they'd spontaneously combust, but they won't so they must be fought. The good news is that national health insurance is now a beloved sacred cow in Australia, much like Medicare here.

That is all.

Shorter Krauthammer: Let Me Decide When to Stop Hitting You

It's only okay to overcome prejudice if nobody bothers you about it: 

I don’t like the language police ensuring that no one anywhere gives offense to anyone about anything. And I fully credit the claim of Redskins owner Dan Snyderand many passionate fans that they intend no malice or prejudice and that “Redskins” has a proud 80-year history they wish to maintain.

[snip]

When I was growing up, I thought “gyp” was simply a synonym for “cheat,” and used it accordingly. It was only when I was an adult that I learned that gyp was short for gypsy. At which point, I stopped using it.

Not because I took a poll of Roma to find out if they were offended. If some mysterious disease had carried away every gypsy on the planet, and there were none left to offend, I still wouldn’t use it.

See, Charles Krauthammer has evolved, you guys, and if we would just all wait, and be silent and polite, everyone would evolve. Then there would be no need for "political correctness," which as we all know is worse than a dozen Obamahitlers. 

It does not occur to this stupendous nitwit that part of the reason words come to be known as offensive is that people targeted by them speak up, and eventually that filters through to even the most clueless rich beltway dillhole.

No, his evolution happened all by itself, through the genuine goodness and decency inherent in his noble soul. It had nothing to do with the people those words describe, or how they felt hearing themselves characterized such, or whether they were within their rights to say look, we don't like that, knock it off. 

They barely exist, just as they did when he was cluelessly using words like Negro and Redskin and Gyp. They don't matter. What matters is that Charles Krauthammer's evolution happened at its own pace. People offended by the stupid things he said should have been perfectly content to wait for him and people like him to grow up. 

In silence, as befits their inferiority, without insisting on owning their names. 

A. 

Ain't Nobody Fresher Than My Motherfuckin' Clique

Harry: 

"Ted Cruz is smart. He has always been able to talk down to people. He is now in the Senate. People are as smart as he is. He can't talk down to anyone anymore. But he has still not accepted that in his own head. He still thinks he's smarter than everybody else. He might be able to work a calculus problem better than I can. But he can't legislate better than I can."

I'm a terrible person for loving the gloating phase of this whole thing as much as I do. But goddamn, it's been a long time since we had a win. 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Tears Of Blood edition

OK folks - I know you've been waiting for four days to hear the Freeperati weep bloody tears over their failed coup.

Who am I to deny you a little schadenwhatsis?

Remember when John Wilkes Booth looked at his hands as he lay dying and muttered - "Useless...Useless."?

House passes senate budget compromise CNN ^ | Oct 16

Posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:15:33 PM by lonestar67

72 republicans yes 122 republicans said no 261 to 123 for the senate amendments

1 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:15:33 PM by lonestar67

.

To: lonestar67

Compromise? What effing Compromise???

The Rats got everything they wanted.

4 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:18:10 PM by dfwgator

.

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To: lonestar67

"House passes senate budget compromise"

Since when is a traitorous gang rape of the United States considered a "compromise"?

6 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:18:56 PM by Carl Vehse

Yes - but was it LEGITIMATE rape?

Or were the Republicans just asking for it?

To: Sarah Barracuda

Why do we even bother? Seriously wanting to take everything I’ve got and go to Panama. Only my love of my family stops me.

16 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:24:02 PM by Aria ( 2008 & 2012 weren't elections - they were coup d'etats.)

Don't let me stop ya. And your family would probably be relieved if you pulled a Dexter on them.

To: lonestar67

This is an epic disappointment.

We had Obama and Reid on the ropes. They had nothing. The House gave them 14 (or was it 17) bills which funded everything in the government except Obamacare. The onus of the shutdown was on the Dems, despite what the left said, and most people were beginning to realize that.

In some alternate universe, maybe

All the Repukes had to do was stand shoulder to shoulder and not budge. They could have broken the will of the Dems if they’d only done that. They had the power of the purse on the House side, and all the Dems had was Dingy Hairy’s obstructionism on the other.

We were almost there, and like they’ve done so often in the past, the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Those here who remained pessimistic throughout this thing, have been vindicated. The Pubbies have dropped the ball at the end zone, resulting in a 100 yard Democrat run back for a touchdown, yet again.

And what did it cost Obama? Absolutely nothing.

95 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:52:09 PM by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)

WAR! Huh! (good god, y'all) What is it good for?

To: Aria

I was listening to Robin Leach today, he’s a great human being God bless him..he was telling Stuart Varney how he came here over 40 years ago for the American dream, to get away from Socialism, which is just another tame way of saying Communism, he said look at America right now, he said its very close to becoming the Communist country he ran away from..look around, we are almost there and it scares the hell out of me

18 posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9:25:30 PM by Sarah Barracuda

I guess he's running out of Third World shitholes to extract cash out of, huh?

.

You dumb fuck - you're licking the dick of an asshole who uses "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams" as a tagline - BUT HE DOESN'T MEAN FOR YOU!!  He makes a living (or made a living) out of rubbing your stupid nose in the fact that there is a club, and you're not in it,

Wish and dream on that little piece of reality, Palin-for-brains.

.

So - what to do, what to do?

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Maybe you can win by lurching ever further to the right-wing fringe? Make your appeal more selective?

Stratergy and mas after the Hastert Amendment....

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I Have Four Questions About Gay Marriage in Illinois

Yeah. And. So. What? 

Under the measure, the definition of marriage in Illinois would change from an act between a man and a woman to one between two people. Civil unions could be converted to marriages within a year of the law going on the books. The legislation would not require religious organizations to perform a marriage of gay couples, and church officials would not be forced to allow their facilities to be used by gay couples seeking to marry.

Religious leaders opposed say the bill doesn't go far enough to protect their rights. For example, they contend they might be forced to provide health insurance to an employee's same-sex spouse.

OH MY GOD. ANARCHY. NOT THE HEALTH INSURANCE! THIS IS THE GREATEST INFRINGEMENT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN OUR TIME!

Seriously, when you get to heaven St. Peter is like ticking off boxes, and sure, you've pillaged and burned your way through this world, hoarding riches and enabling the worst of what your society has to offer. But what will really seal your fate is that you were complicit in a homosexual relationship by paying an insurance compay so a person you will likely never meet can see a doctor! 

I do not get the health insurance obsession. I don't get the "courts will force us to marry gays, who naturally want to be married in places that despise them, because that's how humans totally work" thing either, but that at least had some direct bearing on the daily operations of a religious institution. That fear has been assuaged, so now we're on to a nitpick of allowing religious institutions to explicitly punish and exclude people for reasons that have nothing to do with doctrine. This is just using a tiny thing to bludgeon sexual compliance out of people.

Which a) Il Papa himself has said lately is total bullshit, in case the Illinois Catholic Conference is still paying attention to what that hippie in Rome thinks and b) DOESN'T WORK HAS NEVER WORKED WILL NEVER WORK. You wanna drive people back into the closet, okay. But they're still going to be having sex in there. You're not winning anything. 

Plus, getting back to your lawyer's defense up at the pearly gates, can't you just confess your sin of enabling the health care of gay people, and beg forgiveness? Isn't that how it works for immoral thoughts and abortions and protecting child molesters? 

A. 

How Government Works

Making noise about problems with Obamacare would also require an understanding of Obamacare: 

First, the right is dealing with an audience that’s been told that Obamacare will lead to an end of the American way of life as we know it, create panels that determine whether you live or die, and make you stand in line for hours to get even a band-aid from some doctor (not your own) toiling under the thumb of faceless bureaucrats. Compared to all that, a website that crashes or takes a long time to complete an enrollment is almost a good news story.

Second, if you start talking about exchanges having trouble signing people up, you must acknowledge the fact that people are signing up. If you acknowledge that, you acknowledge that a four year effort to kill off Obamacare has amounted to precisely nothing.

Plus the audience wouldn't understand it anyway. They don't want to think that hard about it. They don't want to talk about the actual policy because they don't know anything about the actual policy and they don't want to learn. If they learned, they might start differentiating between actual government incompetence and the routine dysfunctional office bullshit that results in inconveniences like long lines at the DMV. There's a conspiracy every time these assholes get a letter about over-watering their lawns and it's because most of them are just not that frickin' bright. 

And let's be honest, when talking about technological problems, a reasonable Democratic opponent might respond that the Romney campaign's major space-age advancement was LITERALLY A FAIL WHALE, so maybe not so much with the Internet-shaming. It's a losing argument either way for them. 

A. 

Sunday Morning Video: Cheap Trick Live In Daytona Beach

Here's a 1988 live set from Robin, Rick and the gang:

 

Weekend Question Thread

What Oscar-bait movie are you most excited about this fall? 

I ate the book this was based on in about three days, like didn't even make it through the intro before I knew it was going in my top ten of all time, and if they fuck this up I'll kill them: 

A.

Come to A Book Reading Tonight!

No, for once I'm not pimping my own stuff. This is the lovely Mary Donnelly's new book: 

Few acts have as mythical a history as the Illinois power pop band Shoes. From their legendary living-room-produced breakthrough Black Vinyl Shoes, through the trio of gems recorded for Elektra Records, and back to their DIY roots, Shoes’ path has not always been straight, but they have nevertheless managed to create some of the finest records the genre has ever produced. In Boys Don’t Lie, pop blogger Mary Donnelly and Moira McCormick breaks through the myth to tell the real story. With a naïve faith in themselves and their music, Shoes set out to make the kind of records they liked, finding themselves accidentally part of a movement that both fed and swamped them. Withdrawing from the scene, they settled in to form their own studio and label, sharing their distinctive DIY ethos with the next generation of alternative artists. Now elder statesmen of the alt-pop scene, Shoes continues their enduring legacy of friendship and music.

This book traces the history of this unusual and influential musical group. More than just the history of a single group, Boys Don’t Lie explores the broader history of the music industry over the last forty years: the technological and commercial upheavels that have buffeted both the major labels and the independents.

The Book Cellar in Lincoln Park, 7 p.m. 

A. 

Friday Ferretblogging

Chicken and Bucky, enjoying one another's company: 

A. 

 

Deep American Horror Story Thought

No, I'm not talking about the shutdown although that *was* bloody horrific. I'm, of course, talking about one of the campiest and most entertaining things on the teevee machine, American Horror Story: Coven. Season 3 of this wackadoodle anthology show was filmed here and features 2 semi-mythic New Orleanians, Marie Laveau and Madame LaLaurie as characters. Voodoo, witches, murder, mayhem blah blah blah but that's not why I like it so much.

Two uber campy things are going on this season. First, the young witch (Taissa Farmiga)  whose power is fucking unsuspecting guys to death with the VAGINA OF DEATH.

Second, there's the reanimatrix witch played by Lily Rabe who was Sister Satan in AHS: Asylum. This time around she has blond curly hair and looks like, and is obsessed with, STEVIE NICKS. When Rhiannon came on, I laughed so hard that Oscar ran away and insisted that I let Fleetwood Mac have the last word:

 

Stop Giving Us Money

I like money. Big fan of cash. I own all their albums.

That said, I want Scott Walker and the Republicans to stop giving it to me. At least they should stop giving it out in stupidest way possible.

Wisconsin overwhelmingly passed a bill that would give its citizens $100 million in property tax relief over the next two years. That sounds great until you break it down and realize that this means home owners will receive about $33 each on average over that two-year span. While the average family will be planning it’s biennial trip to Golden Corral to spend this windfall, this will happen:

The property tax cut and several other economic bills being pushed by Walker and GOP lawmakers would lower the state's balance by $120 million in the current two-year budget and add $180 million to the projected shortfall in the next budget, according to estimates by the Legislature's nonpartisan budget office.

 

So, in other words, for what amounts to almost no actual relief, the state will plunge further into debt in very real way, more cuts to vital programs will likely take place and state workers will continue to be dramatically underpaid.

The benefits to this are entirely cosmetic, which Speaker Robin Vos inadvertently noted when he referred to this bill as “emblematic” of a commitment to budgetary restraint.  Republicans running next term will be able to tout their “slashing of property taxes” while slamming the few Democrats who voted against it as “rejecting property tax cuts on hard-working citizens of this state.” Other than that, not much is happening.

“Tax” has become a four-letter word over time. In fact, I think we’d be better off saying to people that you want to “fuck” them than “tax” them. I’m still unclear as to why this has happened, other than the hysteria associated with treating taxes like robbery: someone else is taking by force what you earned and you have no say in the matter.

Still, what the hell are you going to do with $33 over two years? It’s about a $1.38 a month during that span. You can’t even buy a Powerball ticket with that kind of cash.  The state, however, could do a hell of a lot with that money. Collectively, we could fix some of the shittier roads and schools around here. We could pony up for improved nature programs or better use of our natural resources. We could pay people better so they could buy shit from other people who own the businesses throughout the state.

Taxes are not a penalty. They are not a punishment. They are a way for us to pool resources to take care of problems we can’t conquer individually. If you want an honest “You Didn’t Build This” moment, drive around your city and look at all the shit that you couldn’t do on your own but that got done thanks to the collective efforts of the whole.

So please, stop giving me money. The whole reason I was OK with giving it to you in the first place was so you could do something with it to begin with. Give a teacher a raise or fix a fucking pothole.

But stop handing it back to me in some falsely magnanimous gesture.

Friday Catblogging: Chairman Oscar

Oscar is the dominant cat in our house but he wears his alpha male crown lightly. Della Street is much noisier but as you can see in this picture, she's definitely Oscar's sidekick:

'Low Calibre American Lawmakers'

Mark Kirk, sit down like you supposed to: 

"David Cameron must choose between two Conservative legacies," thunders Senator Kirk, "that of Winston Churchill or that of Neville Chamberlain."

Really? At Munich 1938 Hitler was already embarked on his wars of conquest. He’d left the League of Nations, had occupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria, and was poised to invade Czechoslovakia.

Iran has not invaded another country in the last 170 years and is not threatening to do so now. It as one of the original signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and submits its nuclear facilities to international inspection.

The analogy with Hitler and appeasement (which was also used by neo-Conservatives ahead of the Iraq War) is tired and feeble.

As for his remark about Iran's facilitation of al Qaeda, this shows that Senator Kirk deserves to be dismissed as an ignoramus whose advice on tying one's shoes should be treated with the utmost caution.

Yeah, you can't make Hitler comparisons to people whose country was, you know, bombed by Hitler, and expect them not to call you out for the braying jackass that you are. 

A. 

The March of Folly, 21st Century Style

One of my favorite non-fiction books of all time is Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly. It surveys a series of historical events that went awry, including our raging open national sore, the Vietnam War. The decision making process of which looks even worse now that we've heard the LBJ tapes that indicate he knew the nation was plunging headlong to disaster. Johnson flinched because he was terrified of the right pulling another "they lost China to the commies" stunt like the one they pulled on Truman. LBJ should have put fluoride in their water instead…

The Iraq War is another thing that fits the Tuchman pattern of denial, arrogance, hubris, and downright stupidity. Anyone with clear eyes knew that it was never going to be a cakewalk, but Bush went in anyway thereby making that war our current raging open national sore.

The latest example of the march of folly is the GOP's reaction to their shutdown catastrophe. It's so predictable: "we lost because we weren't conservative enough." A variation on the theme is a regurgitation of the whole "mean liberal media ganged up on us" thingamabob. It's hard to dignify either reaction with a response since they're both batshit crazy, especially the latter notion in the era of Fox News and the right wing media bubble. The biggest problem with these nutbags is that they *only* speak to people who agree with them. Not an original thought but a valid one.

Maroons like Louisiana Congresscritter John Fleming are acting as if this whole mess was a mere dress rehearsal for wingergeddon when they will finally get things right. To paraphrase the great Kinks song, (my ring tone, btw) Do It Again: "Back where we started, here we go round again. Come on and do it again." As a card-carrying liberal Democrat this makes my leg all tingly, Tweety style. Hopefully, they won't listen to Grover Norquist:

"It’d be a good idea if they stopped referring to other Republicans as Hitler appeasers because they opposed the strategy they put forward which failed," Norquist told National Review's Betsy Woodruff. "I think if you make a mistake as big as what they did, you owe your fellow senators and congressmen a big apology — and your constituents, as well, because nothing they did advanced the cause of repealing or dismantling Obamacare."

Though Norquist didn't name specific Republicans, he singled out the strategy championed by Cruz.

"They hurt the conservative movement, they hurt people’s health care, they hurt the country’s economic situation, and they hurt the Republican party," Norquist continued. "And a lot of congressmen and senators are not going to win because we spent three months chasing our own tail — or at least, parts of the conservative movement spent three months chasing their own tail."

We are well and truly through the looking glass, y'all. Instead of mocking Grover for his nutty politics and even sillier name, I am quoting him approvingly and from a piece in the National Review to boot. Bill Buckley would be as confused by this as I am but would probably use bigger words. What would he have made of a simpleton like Louis Gohmert Pyle? Yeah, I know, Buckley would have used him as a pawn before discarding him…

It's interesting that Norquist makes a Nazi era analogy that is not about the President for a change. I have one too. After Germany lost the Great War in 1918, a myth was created that if not for a "stab in the back" by the Social Democrats and other weak-kneed wusses and girly-men, Germany would have won the war. It was, of course, batshit crazy and wrong, wrong, wrong, but when did that ever stop conspiracy theorists? The stabbed in the back mythos seemed credible to many because one of its prime purveyors was General Ludendorff co-commander of the Eastern front where the Jerrys had beaten the Russians. (Holy crap, I sound like Corporal Newkirk in Hogan's Heroes.) This mythology undermined the Weimar Republic, and led to the domination of inter-war politics by the far right and far left. We all know how that turned out.

I don't think that we're headed for dictatorship. All Tailgunner Ted or Senator Aqua Buddha will ever be is the President of Wingnuttia. That's a place where Rushbo is a sage. Roger Ailes is a demigod, Sarah Palin has a brain, Glenn Beck is sane, Newt is an elder statesman, and Atlas Shrugged is a sacred text. It's a guvmint and tax-free utopia that they'll ascend to after wingergeddon.

The current generation of nihilist wingnuts are neither conservative nor libertarian, they're anarchists who think the Lord of the Flies depicts a paradisiacal world free of guvmint and adult supervision. In short, like the Sex Pistols song, "they wanna destroy."

The Republican march of folly continues unabated.

Pulp Fiction Thursday: Hostage for a Hood

This week's PFT will be the last hostage reference I'll be making for now. Hopefully, there won't be future Congressional hostage taking but I wouldn't bet the farm, ranch, or whatever on it. Here's a really sleazy-n-kinky cover  for your perusal:

The Doctor Will See You Now

From Album 5

Even the Houston Chronicle is having second thoughts about Ted -- who, in the end, couldn't resist a bit of cheap grandstanding and ugly demogaugery. 

Yesterday Paul Krugman wrote about something called "The Backfire Effect," quoting journalist David McRaney: "When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger," 

But what exactly are those convictions? With the wingers, it looks to be...pretty much straight up hatred. They barely bother with any of the standard conservative tropes -- faster, better, cheaper, etc. Nope. They want to hurt others, even if it hurts themselves ... or maybe they're so delusional they think a general economic collapse won't affect them. 

Lord help us if they manage to get beyond hostage taking, which is bad enough...

 

 

America Held Hostage: End Game

 

I'm going to miss posting the Jasper Johns flag but not writing about the debt ceiling/shutdown fake crisis. It has been an utter waste of public time and money. If the wingnuts considered themselves to be public servants this would not have happened but they're out for themselves, their base and the right wing interest groups who fund them.

The only good thing that came out of this mess was the discovery that Democrats have regained their backbones after years of caving. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are all to be congratulated for not giving into the ludicrous demands made by the teanuts. They need to keep it up because these fuckers will be back for more. It's what fanatics do.

I'm sorry that I missed the Crack Van but I was offline after spending way too much time on the computer of late.

I have two musical selections to celebrate the end of this ridiculous hostage crisis. First, Freddy Fender with the Texas Tornados:

 

 This tune is dedicated to Speaker Boner:

 

Shutdown Vote Van

By popular demand, it's the VAN: 

AAAAND it's over. Thanks for hanging out!

A.

Malaka Of The Week: Ted Yoho Yahoo

First of all, I agree with everything A just posted about the uselessness and futility of the whole shutdown exercise. It's essentially political dodgeball of a sort that not even Vince Vaughan would try. That brings me to this week "honoree" who is a bidnessman, fantasist, and delusional malaka, Ted Yoho Yahoo. Since I cannot possibly top what Charlie Pierce wrote about Ted Yoho Yahoo and everything he personifies, here's the money quote:

The power rests with Ted Yoho because the castrato Speaker Of The House, Boehner of Ohio, cares more about his job than he does about his country. The power rests with Ted Yoho because the American political system has tolerated carefully cultivated ignorance and carefully tailored bigotry for far too long. Ted Yoho has been coming for years. Ted Yoho was made inevitable by the NCPAC campaigns of the late 1970's and by the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 and, subsequently, to an artificially exalted place in our history after he left office. The Republican party revelled in all the forces that are now tearing it apart.

And that is why Ted Yoho Yahoo is malaka of the week. He's the quintessential ignorant and damn proud of it teahadist motherfucker. I hope he crawls back under the slimy rock from whence he came.

That concludes what the late Greg Peters would have surely called "lazy quoting from better writers" theatre.

What's It All For Then?

Nice job, assholes.

Nice job throwing a stupid fucking hissyfit for nothing.

Nice job making the whole damn country watch as you screamed and kicked and demanded toys in the Target or you'd hold your breath until you turned blue. 

Nice job getting in everybody's way while they're just trying to shop for frozen french toast sticks, fuckpuppets. 

I would swear if Democrats don't hang this around their necks and make them wear it until it rots ... but I thought that about the war, too, and about so many other things. Still, every single Democrat in every single teawad district just got a big fat fucking present from Santa this month, and if they don't want to open it then by God there's nothing anybody can do for them. 

Can we be done with this tea thing now? I mean it, can it be over? Can we stop pretending this is a new and legitimate force in American politics and just admit that over the weekend, every single thing out of their mouths should disqualify them from being in the same room as the machinery of government ever again?

Can we stop talking about Ted Cruz's presidential ambitions and how his story is so inspirational?

Can we stop covering Sarah Palin's every word? 

And once and for fucking all can we please stop giving Boehner a pass? He's kept this viper's nest in his party and he's knuckled under to them for weeks now before doing what he knew and we knew all along he was gonna have to do. He was not in a tough position. He was not in a bad spot. He was exactly where he wanted to be and the way I know that is that his ass wasn't elsewheres.

The sympathy he's gotten astounds me. This is a grown-ass man who is not in any way powerless in our society. At any time in the past two years he could have told everybody to cut the shit with the wacko birtherism, with the vaguely racist slavery comparisons, with the overtly racist slavery comparisons, and the general temper tantrum over Obamacare, and every other fuckin' thing.

At any time he could have done that, but he ran the numbers and decided the idiots were useful. He decided he'd rather have the rabid dogs on his side. The rabid dogs turned around and chewed his damn legs off and I'm supposed to push him around in a wheelchair now and bathe his fevered brow? Fuck that. He knew what he was doing all along and he was never helpless. 

Can we be done with it all now, and get back to the business of not being an international laughingstock? Can we put Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in a time-out room and then just kind of forget to let them out of it? Can we please? 

A. 

We Band of Shitbirds

I was really hoping some of this would just amount to epic trolling, like this Confederate flag guy can't possibly be real, can he? But they've been like this since 9/11, at least, and it keeps getting sadder, and more desperate, and while I don't feel sorry for these people exactly, I get them.

Outside the Tea Party, do people really not look at these antics and say, are we really in such a moment of high drama? I think most Americans see a much more workaday world, one with problems and possibilities. But not this. I'm not sure it's precisely the historical moment they'd choose but I look at these folks and it's like a mix of insecurity, self-regard and a very different perception of their own identity and place in American society is making them feel like they're in a perpetual London May 1940.

What drives me crazy is the idea that you have to wait for, or manufacture, a moment to be a hero. IT'S EVERY GODDAMN DAY. If you do not feel like you are living the life you see in a Bruckheimer movie, sport, there are opportunities all around you. Simplest is that the army is perpetually hiring, hardest is that somewhere within a rock's toss of your house is a food bank and you could clean out your pantry and give somebody else the Cheetos for once. 

Or go be a firefighter. I swear everybody loves firefighters. And even the ugly ones are hot. 

But that wouldn't be satisfying enough, would it? These dipwads are daydreaming of Agincourt and Orleans, of leading the vaward or driving the whole host of enemies away with only God at their sides. They want the soundtrack and the chick in the stands clapping for them. They want the grand gesture, and they want to be the only ones making it. It's like the desperate fanboy post-apocalyptic fantasy where sure, in this life you're living in your mama's basement, but when the shit goes down, man, the popular girl will have to fuck you then, for food or candles or whatever the new currency will be in the kingdom that you make. 

They want that moment to come to them, instead of making it for themselves. They want everyone to come to them on bended knee and humbly beg oh please, lead us out of darkness now. They think that's how it happens. It's so poisonous I almost can't stand it. It's so lazy. It's so small. 

Nothing heroic ever comes to you, still less a moment worthy of an Oscar-season film. And life isn't like that all the time anyway, not anybody's life. Guys came home from the Bastogne and they still have to change the oil on their cars. The bullshit of life never goes away. But somewhere in there, among the chores that need doing and the litterbox that needs cleaning, you get up every day and you try to be an upstanding human being. It's the kind of thing history books skip over, and movies deal with in a quick montage, so that they can get to the culmination of all that effort, all that boring, miserable, backbreaking effort. 

That's the only way you get the moment these fucknuts think they created by waving traitor's banners outside the White House gates. 

A. 

Album Cover Art Wednesday: I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus

The cover of the Firesign Theatre's 1971 comedic tour de force (farce?) I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus isn't my favorite among their LP covers. It is, however, the most thematically appropriate title for today as Republican bozos seem intent on driving the national bus off a cliff. How's that for a metaphor, Ari Shapiro?

Here's the LP via the strange magic of YouTube:

  

America Held Hostage Day 16

I've been doing a John Boehner impression when it comes to writing this post. No, I'm not crying, muttering, or spray tanning, I've been procrastinating and waiting until the last minute. And since I attended a Krewe of Spank meeting last night, I had a beer or three or maybe even four. I also had a conversation with my good friend Greg, and we agreed that, while this clusterfuck *used* to be funny, it's not funny any more. The GOP is dying a death of a thousand cuts but the country is being harmed as well. Speaker Boner's inability to control his caucus or to hold a free vote is procrastination run amuck and amuck is amuck or is that enough is enough?

You know things are bad when someone-hell, anyone-makes Chinless Mitch look good but House Gopers have succeeded in doing so. I worked on Capitol Hill many moons ago and I've always preferred the less pretentious lower house to the stuffy and pompous Senate but right now I want those fuckers in the House to do what's right for the country instead of getting played by Ted Cruz. They have so little regard for their own institution that they're allowing a freshman Senator to meddle in the affairs of the House. Any member with a lick of sense or any pride would have told Cruz where to get off. Unfortunately, they have no sense, no pride and they're inflicting needless pain on millions of people and all in the name of their crazed and incoherent ideology. There's a special circle in hell for people like this and I wish they'd go straight there.

That is all.

Why Gloria Steinem is the Utter Best

Fuck yeah: 

Last week, during the Women's Media Awards, Steinem was asked by Yahoo's Omg! Insider whether she thought Cyrus' risque VMAs performance and "Wrecking Ball" video were setting the feminist movement back. The icon and activist answered with a resounding "I don't think so." She expanded on that opinion, saying:

I wish we didn’t have to be nude to be noticed ... But given the game as it exists, women make decisions. For instance, the Miss America contest is in all of its states ... the single greatest source of scholarship money for women in the United States. If a contest based only on appearance was the single greatest source of scholarship money for men, we would be saying, "This is why China wins." You know? It’s ridiculous. But that’s the way the culture is. I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.

Good on her. Focus where the problem is, not on the shiny thing. 

A. 

No Metaphors, No Mo

The high priests of the church of false equivalency aka the White House press corps are getting petulant:

But it was "ransom" — a word Obama has used repeatedly to describe Republican negotiating tactics — that struck the last press corps nerve. The usual briefing room decorum, such as it is, broke down entirely when Carney said finally that Obama would sign a debt-ceiling extension but not if it meant "paying a ransom" to Republicans.

"The president will not pay ransom for ... " Carney began.

"You see it as a ransom, but it's a metaphor that doesn't serve our purposes ... " NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro shouted back with broad support from other confused reporters.

"You guys are just too literal then, right? Carney said.

"We just want to accurately report," Shapiro began before Carney interjected. "We're trying to be accurate in our description of what's going on."

One would think that the MSM would feast on colorful language but not when it gets in the way of its eternal pursuit of non-existent balance. I realize that Jay Carney is a former hack but he's there to serve the President's purposes, not the press pool's.

The word ransom quite accurately describes what the teahadists are demanding. It's starting to remind me of the scene in Blazing Saddles wherein Cleavon Little takes himself hostage to escape the town full of bigots named Johnson:

 

The analogy, of course, breaks down because there aren't many teanuts who look like Cleavon BUT the entire "movement" is a farce worthy of Mel Brooks. And you can guess what kind of movement it reminds me of...

This post accurately describes my beliefs on this matter even if it doesn't suit the purposes of twits such as Ari Shapiro who, apparently, aspires to be, if not a high priest, a rabbi of false equivalency. Me, I think the White House should keep the metaphors flowing .

And that's the way it is, on the 15th day that the American economy has been held hostage by a bunch of malakatudinous, unpatriotic nimrods.

The Comeback Kid

Remember Bob Barr? He's the former Georgia GOP Congressman and Clinton conspiracy buff who ran for President in 2008 as a Libertarian. Barr was a teawad before there was a tea party and was a driving force behind the GOP's last major Pickett's charge: the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Since comebacks are in, Barr is running as a Republican to replace major wackjob Phil Gingrey in the House of Representatives. Some GOPers aren't happy, but I doubt that it's because of this: 

In 2011, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the former Haiti dictator responsible for the deaths of thousands of Haitians, returned home after two decades of self-imposed exile, claiming he wanted to help his people in a time of crisis.

“I mean, there's weird, and then there's Haiti weird, and then there's the special kind of weird with the ex-dictator showing up after 25 years of exile with no warning just after the earthquake and cholera epidemic in the middle of the presidential election weird,” said Jonathan Katz, a journalist who covered Haiti and the author of the book The Big Truck That Went By.

And then something strange happened. In walked one of Duvalier’s newest advisers: Bob Barr, a US congressman from 1995 to 2003 and the libertarian candidate for president in 2008.

"My jaw was on the floor,” said Katz. “Barr put the icing on the weirdness cake.”

Actually, in the context of Shutdown City circa 2013, Barr is just another everyday, common variety Republican weirdo.

I wonder if the Tonton Macoute will be providing security for his campaign?

America Held Hostage Day 15

 

The Senate *may* have a budget deal as I write this, but whether it will pass muster with the crazy caucus is unclear. It looks as if my prediction that the stupid would have receded by today was overly optimistic. Mea culpa. Here's why: the GOP has spent years pandering to the neo-Confederate, neo-Bircher, and teabagger wing of their party, so it's not easy to turn on a dime and tell those irredentist cocksuckers to wake up and smell the fucking coffee. Where's Ann Landers when you need her? And I mean the *real* Ann Landers. Where have you gone Eppie Lederer, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you or is that Joe Dimaggio? Nah, Eppie was a librul whereas Joltin' Joe was a selfish, greedy bastard who would have fit in nicely with today's Me Party.

My constituents are dumbshits: John Fleming represents Northwestern Louisiana in Congress. He's a physician/bidnessman without the sense to come in out of the rain during a monsoon. Why are all the doctors in the House dumbshits? I've known some right wing docs but very few idiotic ones ala Paul Broun and this maroon. I guess it's a Southern thang. Anyway, Fleiming  is convinced that *all* of his constituents are as obessesed with the ACA as he is:

"In my district, last week I had a tele-townhall, and the subject was the shutdown. You know what? People in my district didn't know that there was a shutdown, or didn't care that there was a shutdown. They wanted to talk about Obamacare. My district has more Democrats than Republicans and it has one of the highest proportion of African-Americans of any district held by a Republican."

You know "those people" don't pay attention to the news. Shutdown? What shutdown. I wish "those people" would turn out and vote this stupid sumbitch out of office but the Democrats in his district include rednecks who are too lazy to change their party affiliation That concludes this installment of stereotype theatre.

Today's reading assignment: It's no mystery that Charlie Pierce is a master whom I revere and steal from at every opportunity. His post about the Sunday shows on Monday, Monday (can't trust that day) this week was a masterpiece even for the master. I'll stop saying master now...

For those of you who haven't been reading Salonista and former TPMer, Brian Beutler, you really oughta, and his piece about neo-Confederates is an excellent place to start. Yeah, I'm as obsessed with the neo-Confederates as they are with birtherism and ranting and raving about Yankees, and I'm not talking about the team A-Rod kinda sorta plays for...

I hope that this feature will soon be a thing of the past and I can get back to malakatude, cat blogging, pulp fiction and trolling Jude. Of course that all depends on Speaker Boner getting his shit together, which means we might still be in deep shit and sinking fast on D-Day: October, 17.  

U.S. Blues: Finally, the wingnuts have cooked up a  fakakta-n-cockamamie conspiracy theory that the Confederate flag at Cruz-Lee-Palin fest was planted by liberals. This is not only fakakta, it's kaka unless, of course, some stoned hippie was inspired by this song and simply brought the wrong flag:

           

They also might have been *really* wasted and mistaken the cross of St. Andrew for St. Stephen with a rose:

 

Journalism is Declining to Lead

On the one hand, good, less of George Will and every other syndicated asshole out there, and fewer Letters to the Editor about how Kids Today twerk too much. 

On the other, really? 

Publisher Bob Hall said that although the Inquirer has endured repeated rounds of financially induced cutbacks in recent years, the decision to eliminate the op-ed page “was not done at all for cost-cutting purposes.” Hall said that in focus groups, people said the paper had “too many editorials, too much bias” and that some, but not all, of the space will be made up with an extra page on Sundays. Still, Hall acknowledged that many readers have complained about the cuts.

If you're listening to focus groups you're already lost. 

OF COURSE readers are telling you there's too much bias, because everybody who talks about media talks about bias, because almost everybody talking about media is a goddamn moron. Don't believe everything you read in the paper, that one's been around a while, despite us wanting to blame the Internet for all falsehoods in history, and media bias has been a wingnut refrain for at least 30 years if no longer. Some of it's sunk in by now.

(Also, "bias" is not the same thing as opinion, and if you can't differentiate between the two you have no business publishing a newspaper.)

Focus groups are bullshit. The seven dollars per person you spend feeding them lunch could be better spent on almost anything, including feeding your maintenance staff lunch. Focus groups are gonna tell you a bunch of half-educated shit about how to do the job you already know how to do, or should know how to do, and for God's sake, talking about them openly is an admission to the general public that you have no fucking clue what you're doing. 

If you must have them, if you must have useless surveys of people who already don't read you and are happy to provide you an excuse that involves you doing more work and them doing nothing, at least go over what they say and see if it's based in the same universe as reality. Take what's useful in there and use it, and screw the rest. 

Trust your goddamn instincts. Set your own agenda. That is, ideally, what your opinion page should do: Set an agenda. Tell the community, not just your readers but the whole damn town you cover, what they should be thinking about and how they should be thinking about it. Fuck the feedback you get. Fuck the assholes who call up all, "Imma cancel my subscription and the Sunday coupons be damned." Nine times out of ten they never read you anyway, they just wanna make a big noise. Take the way things have always been, take the way things are, and take them apart. Make your readers think, make them happy sometimes, but more often make them mad. At you if you have to, but try for making them mad at what you want them to be mad at. 

I'm all for fewer editorials about how the sweet corn is really great this year and the local sports franchise is subpar and Both Sides Do It, but I'm not for fewer editorials because people don't like opinions and it's rude to stir them up and let's have less "bias." That's not some editorial choice. That's cowardice. 

A. 

I Seem To Remember

One dude in a Che t-shirt was enough to scare the entire Democratic party and most of the so-called liberal media away from the anti-war movement prior to the Iraq War. 

Times have changed. 

A.