Why I Am Hopeful For America

I want to talk about bullies.

Yes, we know that the GOP is run by and kept in power by bullies — from the blowhard at the business breakfast who, having listened to Limbaugh’s one-sided debates knows nothing of the give and take of civil discourse, and descends into repeatedly attacking you as subhuman, usually prefaced with “yew LIBURULZ!” and “that’s what a LIBURUL wood say!” (sic and sic), to the thugs who strong-arm U.S. Attorneys, who put Alabama governors in prison after stealing said governor’s elections with middle-of-the-night ballot returns that were suspiciously “gathered” and suspiciously one-sided.

Politico’s Mike Allen, Superschmuck

A high level Bush “former aide” comes forward to Mike Allen to “emphatically” rebut Scott McClellan, when we know that a White House smear and discredit campaign is underway. Gee, why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah. I TOLD you on December 31 how the same modus operandi showed its Medusa’s face in the “Giuliani used public funds

Liars Label Liar’s Liar a Liar for Leaking Lying Liars’ Lies

From the BBC

Rice defends Bush over Iraq claim

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has rejected claims from a former White House press aide that President George W Bush misled the US over the Iraq war.

Ms Rice refused to comment directly on the book by Scott McClellan but said Mr Bush had been “very clear” about the reasons for going to war….

Let me see if I get this right: She won’t comment on the book, but what it says is wrong, Right?

A Tale of Two (Half) Witties — REVISED

It’s rare that you get the nocturnal and diurnal Republican anvil chorus in a double-header, but yesterday was a masterwork of shame to the shameless.

Once upon a time …

Part i. In Which Doris Gets Her Oats

Are they KIDDING us? For the past two days, Memeorandum has been in a Genuflecting to Oligarch Pedophiles’ blogswarm over Obama “gaffes” that fill out the Rightie Blogosmear™ dance ticket, with only a few “progressives” like Taylor Marsh, Jeralynn of TalkLeft and Pamela Leavey of The Democratic Daily joining the anvil chorus of jeers, the Jukes’ and Kallikaks’ catcalls. Scratch the surface of a spoiled White Democrat Woman and you’ll find a Republican Shrew yearning to break free, it seems.

“Keep, ancient hands, your storied pap!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your cash-poor,
Your humbug’d crasses yearning to be tax-free,
The wretched richies of your teeming store.
Send these, the debenture bond-less, IPO tempest-tost to me,
I lift my skirt beside the gold futures’ door!”

– Ronald Reagan, 1883

A Tale of Two (Half) Witties

There were errors and omissions. These have been corrected. Please see the REVISED post, entitled, eerily enough: “A Tale of Two (Half) Witties — REVISED.“

“Keep, ancient hands, your storied pap!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your cash-poor,
Your humbug’d crasses yearning to be tax-free,
The wretched richies of your teeming store.
Send these, the debenture bond-less, IPO tempest-tost to me,
I lift my skirt beside the gold futures’ door!”

– Ronald Reagan, 1883

The Internets Is Clogged

According to Senator Ted Stevens (Idiot, AK):

… the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material.

Here is a picture of it from Wikipedia:

them tubes of the internets (klick for more)

Whether because of atmospherics, or the new surveillance equipment that the NSA put between the tower and our house to surveill us, those tubes have been clogged and slowly sludgy all day. The column I am writing depends on unclogged intertubes, and, therefore, I am going to have to wait until the wee hours.

Making this, alas, today’s post.

We bear your forebeggance.

Or something like that.

Courage.

Happy Decoration Day!

It is Memorial Day. Originally, it was Decoration Day. From Memorial Day dot org:

… it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860′s tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

General John A. Logan, from Library of Congress

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic,

Hillary and The First Rule of Holes

Go ahead: misconstrue the title. What I’m talking about is this:

When you realize you’re in a hole, STOP DIGGING!!!

This is known as “The First Rule of Holes” in politics, and Hillary seems NOT to understand it in the least.

“We do have a saying in America: if you’re in a hole, stop digging … erm, I’m not sure I should have said that.” — Donald Rumsfeld Listen

It’s like she dropped the “F” word at a church service and THEN says we misconstrued what she said, because she was condemning people who thought that saying FUCK in a church was acceptable.

Hillary, Precognitively

Don’t ask me: I didn’t MEAN to roll out of bed at four o’clock yesterday morning with a fever-dream imperative saying: YOU HAVE TO WRITE THIS … NOW! I didn’t mean to write a 5,002 word post delineating the collapse of the Clinton campaign.

And I sure as heck didn’t mean to inadvertently prefigure the whole “RFK Assassination” flap of yesterday and today. I just did.

How Brazen Was My Hussy

How well I remember it: when the alarms sounded, and the great whistle blew. Everyone knew what that soul-chilling blast meant — there had been a cave-in at the mine. Everyone in the little town of Truthiness knew the cold dread that gripped our hearts, then …

(From the imaginary 1941 MGM film, “How Brazen Was My Hussy,” dir. John Ford)

click for full size picture

The collapse came suddenly. As I told you back on March 9: (and it’s baaaack today)

Too Much Yak

The sheer volume (in both senses) of political madness (don’t act dumb: you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about) sloughing from the earwaves into the soul of a badly soundbitten body politic mitigates against any medical advice from me. Best for the patient to get some rest and try to sweat the poisons out of Her* system. Make that SEVERELY soundbitten. (“Once soundbitten, twice soundshy.”)

(* By “Her.” I mean America, as personified by “Columbia,” the Goddess of Liberty — who was black-bagged by the Feds sometime during the 1950s, we think.)