The Middle School Jihad...
The Boston Globe continues it's assault on Senator Kerry today running a front page valentine to Governor Dean that gushes on unabashedly about the Doctor's moderation and civility.
You mean Dean entered a room and didn't start screaming for blood and dynamite? Oh be still my beating heart!!!!
Meanwhile Scot Lehigh predictably bashes Kerry on the op-ed page recycling the juicy bits from the Sunday Globe's hatchet job on the junior Senator. Eileen McNamara also tried to get the boot in over the medicare bill.
Alas she simply comes off as being her usual ineffectual and spiteful self.
In days to come we'll get the last in Kerry venom from Vennochi and McGrory and all the rest of the yokels, have no fear.
I think that article Sunday all but gave permission to the op-ed squad at Morrissey Boulevard to open up on Kerry sans let or hindrance.
I don't really expect the Globe to prostitute itself on John Kerry's behalf.
I do think it's reasonable for someone in a responsible position to call a halt to the snarky juvenile tone that has invaded even the straight political reportage of his candidacy. If Kerry has few supporters among the Globe's paid pundits well that is the luck of the draw...but the tone of the news reporting ought to be straightforward and unbiased.
Instead we are getting the usual kewl kidz drivel from writers who are way too impressed with themselves.
Days like this, post conservative civilization looks a long way off....
Sick
Demented
Typical
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
50%
Fifty percent of those surveyed in the Commonwealth support either gay-marriage or full spousal benefits.
Or so the polling goes from the Boston Globe.
Something like less than 40% of respondents are unalterably opposed to both civil union benefits or gay marriage itself.
The message is clear, the electorate is once again proving itself wiser than the laggards they've been sending to Beacon Hill.
The facts seem incontrovertible, now what is needed is wise and sane leadership on the matter, statesmen who are prepared to go forward with reasonable proposals that will that 50% margin together.
Alas this is Massachusetts and America circa 2003 and there is precious little that is sane, reasonable or wise to be found in the public arena.
That 50% is mute testimony that the citizenry is prepared be magnanimous-but it won't last I assure you.
Something like thirty groups with untold millions are organizing to beat back the SJC's decision.
They will zero in on the slim gap between civil union supporters and outright gay marriage proponents creating a phantom wedge issue that'll drown the whole matter ins a deluge of demagoguery and money.
These are the very constituencies Romney would need to appeal to in a presidential primary so don't look for a break from the Kolobian Viceroy.
Tom Reilly is running for Governor and so feels strangely compelled to cut the gays of Massachusetts dead.
And the State Legislature?
Well few of them were elected on the strength of their charitable broadmindedness.
Who is going to stop them?
No-one save the people of the Commonwealth are in agreement with the broad goals of the SJC's decision...O'Reilly, Romney and the State Leg are dead set against it for various reasons.
Soon enough they will compose their differences and the Court's decision will be overturned or overthrown by main force.
Hell the Great and General Court simply refused to implement "clean elections" despite referendums and court orders...they will do no less in this matter.
It was a nice and gallant decision but it will be crushed underfoot by a combination of out-of-state witch burners, money, rampant cowardice in our own leadership classes.
But I promise you, this sumbitch is gonna come back to haunt a lot of prideful bastards presently in public life.
The largest cohort supporting gay marriage is the under thirty crowd...sooner or later they will come into their own and then we will see some shit!
Fifty percent of those surveyed in the Commonwealth support either gay-marriage or full spousal benefits.
Or so the polling goes from the Boston Globe.
Something like less than 40% of respondents are unalterably opposed to both civil union benefits or gay marriage itself.
The message is clear, the electorate is once again proving itself wiser than the laggards they've been sending to Beacon Hill.
The facts seem incontrovertible, now what is needed is wise and sane leadership on the matter, statesmen who are prepared to go forward with reasonable proposals that will that 50% margin together.
Alas this is Massachusetts and America circa 2003 and there is precious little that is sane, reasonable or wise to be found in the public arena.
That 50% is mute testimony that the citizenry is prepared be magnanimous-but it won't last I assure you.
Something like thirty groups with untold millions are organizing to beat back the SJC's decision.
They will zero in on the slim gap between civil union supporters and outright gay marriage proponents creating a phantom wedge issue that'll drown the whole matter ins a deluge of demagoguery and money.
These are the very constituencies Romney would need to appeal to in a presidential primary so don't look for a break from the Kolobian Viceroy.
Tom Reilly is running for Governor and so feels strangely compelled to cut the gays of Massachusetts dead.
And the State Legislature?
Well few of them were elected on the strength of their charitable broadmindedness.
Who is going to stop them?
No-one save the people of the Commonwealth are in agreement with the broad goals of the SJC's decision...O'Reilly, Romney and the State Leg are dead set against it for various reasons.
Soon enough they will compose their differences and the Court's decision will be overturned or overthrown by main force.
Hell the Great and General Court simply refused to implement "clean elections" despite referendums and court orders...they will do no less in this matter.
It was a nice and gallant decision but it will be crushed underfoot by a combination of out-of-state witch burners, money, rampant cowardice in our own leadership classes.
But I promise you, this sumbitch is gonna come back to haunt a lot of prideful bastards presently in public life.
The largest cohort supporting gay marriage is the under thirty crowd...sooner or later they will come into their own and then we will see some shit!
Monday, November 24, 2003
Monday Notes:
Before it all goes to smash, will some wise person out there please tell me why the Boston Globe hates John Kerry so?
They had a nice little hatchet job on the candidate on the front page of the Sunday Paper.
The article managed to review with lip smacking relish every poor speaking performance made by the Senator going back to his prep school debate days.
In all a disheartening read in many ways especially this collection of rumor and kitsch was sold as a news article.
I can understand the columnists all hating him, they are wretched intimidated lot, but a news article whose sole purpose was to update the masses on how wrong the Kerry campaign is?
Something is rotten on Morrissey Bvd.
The paper has gone steadily downhill since the New York Times bought them out, all sorts of articles are e-mailed in from staffers living in the Bronx and Queen, unconnected to Boston in any way.
Time servers most of them, no doubt hoping to move up to the eagle aerie that is the Times' city room when they've paid their dues.
The Globe has no sense of community any more-none.
Oh they still sniff out a good scandal and did yeoman work on the clerical sex abuse controversy....but try and get the Arts Section to take your local production of "Dr. Faustus" seriously...
I don't even read the op-ed page any more it's filled with petty scribbling yaps of the most disposable sort.
Brian McGrory?
A nervous hack trying to get out from under his mother's journalistic shadow by wallowing in populist pseudo conservative humbug.
Scot LeHigh?
A shifty smarmy sneak with a hopelessly inane and condescending writing style. I promise you, he has five different political obituaries for John Kerry on his hard drive just waiting if the Junior Senator drops out of the race.
Jeff Jacoby?
Ah Jeff, that laughing young senescence....turgid and vain the famous conservative columnists seems to have but three stock editorials:
1.) A mawkishly sentimental letter to his five year old son Caleb...full of dreary Victorian rubbish and cutsy anecdotes about the poor lad's first subscription to "National Review for Kids".
2) A sort of yammering poor mouth whine in which somehow labors to prove that global political correctness is out to abuse and humiliate helpless American conservatives.
3) A manic I-told-you-so-shriek....loud unpleasant and atonal it's deployed every time the GOP scores the slightest victory. Usually it ends with a the usual impending-death-of-liberalism nonsense...which is the approved closing paragraph for thousands of conservative editorial hacks all over the nation.
Joan Vennochi?
Naive pretentious...and a sloppy journalist as well. Just another silly another social climbing nitwit on the Op Ed page.
Ellen Goodman and Eileen McNamara?
Impotent hand wringers of the dreariest sort.
The Globe seems to be headed towards the sort of hopeless editorial fragmentation that characterizes the Washington Post these days.
There may be readers out there who feel an ideological affinity with this rabble, but I sure as hell don't.
Which is why more and more I read the Boston Phoenix for serious political reporting, the Globe has just gone to pieces IMHO.
In fact the only thing that unifies the Globe is this unconcealed disdain for John Kerry.
Why I don't know...perhaps they are hoping to drag him down enough this time to tempt Romney into the Senate race when JK's term expires in 2008.
A nice loud contested senate race does sell a lot of papers.
That is assuming that Romney doesn't appoint himself to the sinecure when Kerry becomes President next year...
:)
Before it all goes to smash, will some wise person out there please tell me why the Boston Globe hates John Kerry so?
They had a nice little hatchet job on the candidate on the front page of the Sunday Paper.
The article managed to review with lip smacking relish every poor speaking performance made by the Senator going back to his prep school debate days.
In all a disheartening read in many ways especially this collection of rumor and kitsch was sold as a news article.
I can understand the columnists all hating him, they are wretched intimidated lot, but a news article whose sole purpose was to update the masses on how wrong the Kerry campaign is?
Something is rotten on Morrissey Bvd.
The paper has gone steadily downhill since the New York Times bought them out, all sorts of articles are e-mailed in from staffers living in the Bronx and Queen, unconnected to Boston in any way.
Time servers most of them, no doubt hoping to move up to the eagle aerie that is the Times' city room when they've paid their dues.
The Globe has no sense of community any more-none.
Oh they still sniff out a good scandal and did yeoman work on the clerical sex abuse controversy....but try and get the Arts Section to take your local production of "Dr. Faustus" seriously...
I don't even read the op-ed page any more it's filled with petty scribbling yaps of the most disposable sort.
Brian McGrory?
A nervous hack trying to get out from under his mother's journalistic shadow by wallowing in populist pseudo conservative humbug.
Scot LeHigh?
A shifty smarmy sneak with a hopelessly inane and condescending writing style. I promise you, he has five different political obituaries for John Kerry on his hard drive just waiting if the Junior Senator drops out of the race.
Jeff Jacoby?
Ah Jeff, that laughing young senescence....turgid and vain the famous conservative columnists seems to have but three stock editorials:
1.) A mawkishly sentimental letter to his five year old son Caleb...full of dreary Victorian rubbish and cutsy anecdotes about the poor lad's first subscription to "National Review for Kids".
2) A sort of yammering poor mouth whine in which somehow labors to prove that global political correctness is out to abuse and humiliate helpless American conservatives.
3) A manic I-told-you-so-shriek....loud unpleasant and atonal it's deployed every time the GOP scores the slightest victory. Usually it ends with a the usual impending-death-of-liberalism nonsense...which is the approved closing paragraph for thousands of conservative editorial hacks all over the nation.
Joan Vennochi?
Naive pretentious...and a sloppy journalist as well. Just another silly another social climbing nitwit on the Op Ed page.
Ellen Goodman and Eileen McNamara?
Impotent hand wringers of the dreariest sort.
The Globe seems to be headed towards the sort of hopeless editorial fragmentation that characterizes the Washington Post these days.
There may be readers out there who feel an ideological affinity with this rabble, but I sure as hell don't.
Which is why more and more I read the Boston Phoenix for serious political reporting, the Globe has just gone to pieces IMHO.
In fact the only thing that unifies the Globe is this unconcealed disdain for John Kerry.
Why I don't know...perhaps they are hoping to drag him down enough this time to tempt Romney into the Senate race when JK's term expires in 2008.
A nice loud contested senate race does sell a lot of papers.
That is assuming that Romney doesn't appoint himself to the sinecure when Kerry becomes President next year...
:)
Friday, November 21, 2003
Links, Talcum Powder, and Lone Gunmen:
Well, the very nice people at the Romney is a Fraud blog have seen fit to restore the link to this poor scandal sheet.
Guess all those cracks about the "Kolobian Viceroy" didn't make em' queasy after all.
:)
Careful guys stuff like that only enables me....
:)
Lemme give the Governor credit...he is a handsome man-although that "touch of grey" at the temples is strictly from hunger.
I often wonder though, what does Romney's make-up staff dust him with to give his skin that soft pinkish non-reflective pallor?
When the light is right, it's frankly a little well...unearthly it's as if Willard hasn't got any pores or something.
Meanwhile we are all wallowing in the 40th Anniversary of J.F.K.'s assassination. The last remnants of the New Frontier are all over the cable news outlets.
On a cursory viewing I can say, Pierre Salinger's toupee looks awful, Ted Sorenson looks and acts like he could walk into the Oval Office today get everything shipshape in short order, Evelyn Lincoln is old unhappy and sharp as a tack, while poor old Arthur Schlesinger is still jabbering on about his pendulum theory of U.S. politics.
I make fun of these people, but I'd rather be ruled by the ruins of the New Frontiersmen in their extreme dotage than the vile and vain rabble George Bush has swept into office.
In some ways I'm glad Kennedy died young, he'd be 86 if he was alive today.
What the late President would've made of these preening conservative louts we got down in D.C. and elsewhere can only be imagined.
Well, the very nice people at the Romney is a Fraud blog have seen fit to restore the link to this poor scandal sheet.
Guess all those cracks about the "Kolobian Viceroy" didn't make em' queasy after all.
:)
Careful guys stuff like that only enables me....
:)
Lemme give the Governor credit...he is a handsome man-although that "touch of grey" at the temples is strictly from hunger.
I often wonder though, what does Romney's make-up staff dust him with to give his skin that soft pinkish non-reflective pallor?
When the light is right, it's frankly a little well...unearthly it's as if Willard hasn't got any pores or something.
Meanwhile we are all wallowing in the 40th Anniversary of J.F.K.'s assassination. The last remnants of the New Frontier are all over the cable news outlets.
On a cursory viewing I can say, Pierre Salinger's toupee looks awful, Ted Sorenson looks and acts like he could walk into the Oval Office today get everything shipshape in short order, Evelyn Lincoln is old unhappy and sharp as a tack, while poor old Arthur Schlesinger is still jabbering on about his pendulum theory of U.S. politics.
I make fun of these people, but I'd rather be ruled by the ruins of the New Frontiersmen in their extreme dotage than the vile and vain rabble George Bush has swept into office.
In some ways I'm glad Kennedy died young, he'd be 86 if he was alive today.
What the late President would've made of these preening conservative louts we got down in D.C. and elsewhere can only be imagined.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Thursday Notes:
Well....I've had one little setback here at the Chimes at Midnight this week, the unknown entities behind the superlative "Romney is a Fraud" blog have dropped me from their links!
Oh well...all those references to the "Kolobian Viceroy" probably made everyone a tad queasy.
What can I say, bitter effusions such as that make me laugh....
Nonetheless, the Romney is a fraud blog is a very worthwhile daily read, all and sundry should bookmark it pronto.
Dang I was listed under "heroes"....
And while you are at it, take some time to drop by my good friend Lis Riba's blog "Riba Rambles", she is concise and factual to a fault.
Oh and Senator Kerry has spiffed up his website, check it out.
If these links all work it'll be a miracle.
:)
Well....I've had one little setback here at the Chimes at Midnight this week, the unknown entities behind the superlative "Romney is a Fraud" blog have dropped me from their links!
Oh well...all those references to the "Kolobian Viceroy" probably made everyone a tad queasy.
What can I say, bitter effusions such as that make me laugh....
Nonetheless, the Romney is a fraud blog is a very worthwhile daily read, all and sundry should bookmark it pronto.
Dang I was listed under "heroes"....
And while you are at it, take some time to drop by my good friend Lis Riba's blog "Riba Rambles", she is concise and factual to a fault.
Oh and Senator Kerry has spiffed up his website, check it out.
If these links all work it'll be a miracle.
:)
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
A Gay Olde Tyme....
In 180 days, a mere six months, the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hath decreed "gay marriage" will be legal in this state.
A nice pleasant thought, but don't you believe that this will come to pass without an almighty fight!
The State Legislature, defied the Courts and the Electorate to gut "clean elections" last year and they will do no less in regards to gay marriage.
Count on it.
Bob Travaglini, Terrible Tom Finneran, and Bishop Romney will jump through the hoops like acrobatic monkeys to get this ruling hamstrung-believe that playa!
My Ghod these are the men appointed by us to protect our own rights and lives...the lot of them would sell us all out for nickels.
It's sad to see any number of democrats desperate to restrict the rights and fortunes of a particular minority, especially over an issue that yield up in the short term naught but symbolic significance.
On the other hand, we've gotten used to republicans and their biblical revulsion towards any type of sexual liberation...so their desire deny rights to others comes as no surprise anymore.
I strongly doubt that there will be stampede of homosexuals seeking marriage licenses some six months from now- I don't think the SJC's ruling will hold up in the fracas to come.
Howver the economic consequences of broadening the definition of marriage is another debate.
Trust me on that one as well, said debate will never happen.
I look forward to an uninterrupted cataract of homophobic excrations for the next six months.
Yup, the Commonwealth will fill up with every witchburner, snake handler, and sundry voodoo practitioners they'll be buying teevee time and howling that old time religion on every street corner.
There will be gruesome talk about protecting what George Bush calls "the sacred institution" of marriage from queers and trannies. Loud bellows will be hard about the diresome threat "gay marriage" poses to that aforementioned sacred edifice.
As if marriage could be any more debauched given our current divorce rate and the number of single parent families out there right now.
No...it is not marriage that is threatened, but the sexuality of a lot of windbags and frantic virtuecrats.
And when their sexuality fragile though it is, is threatened it's strictly Katey-bar-the-Door!
It'll be anarchy I tells yuh.
And not for nothing, but if Willard Mitt Romney really IS a Bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, and IF he agrees that marriage is a "sacred institution", shouldn't he recuse himself from any discussions about the issue?
Isn't this the very picture definition of a conflict of interest?
Granted the LDS defines his Bishopric as a "lay" position but it is still a position within the hierarchy.
The current word is, that Romney will offer an amendment to the State Constitution blocking gay marriage entirely.
Woo! That didn't take long!?
No doubt Eric Fehrnstrom was up all night polling and tabulating results.
JohnIAT@aol.com
In 180 days, a mere six months, the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hath decreed "gay marriage" will be legal in this state.
A nice pleasant thought, but don't you believe that this will come to pass without an almighty fight!
The State Legislature, defied the Courts and the Electorate to gut "clean elections" last year and they will do no less in regards to gay marriage.
Count on it.
Bob Travaglini, Terrible Tom Finneran, and Bishop Romney will jump through the hoops like acrobatic monkeys to get this ruling hamstrung-believe that playa!
My Ghod these are the men appointed by us to protect our own rights and lives...the lot of them would sell us all out for nickels.
It's sad to see any number of democrats desperate to restrict the rights and fortunes of a particular minority, especially over an issue that yield up in the short term naught but symbolic significance.
On the other hand, we've gotten used to republicans and their biblical revulsion towards any type of sexual liberation...so their desire deny rights to others comes as no surprise anymore.
I strongly doubt that there will be stampede of homosexuals seeking marriage licenses some six months from now- I don't think the SJC's ruling will hold up in the fracas to come.
Howver the economic consequences of broadening the definition of marriage is another debate.
Trust me on that one as well, said debate will never happen.
I look forward to an uninterrupted cataract of homophobic excrations for the next six months.
Yup, the Commonwealth will fill up with every witchburner, snake handler, and sundry voodoo practitioners they'll be buying teevee time and howling that old time religion on every street corner.
There will be gruesome talk about protecting what George Bush calls "the sacred institution" of marriage from queers and trannies. Loud bellows will be hard about the diresome threat "gay marriage" poses to that aforementioned sacred edifice.
As if marriage could be any more debauched given our current divorce rate and the number of single parent families out there right now.
No...it is not marriage that is threatened, but the sexuality of a lot of windbags and frantic virtuecrats.
And when their sexuality fragile though it is, is threatened it's strictly Katey-bar-the-Door!
It'll be anarchy I tells yuh.
And not for nothing, but if Willard Mitt Romney really IS a Bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, and IF he agrees that marriage is a "sacred institution", shouldn't he recuse himself from any discussions about the issue?
Isn't this the very picture definition of a conflict of interest?
Granted the LDS defines his Bishopric as a "lay" position but it is still a position within the hierarchy.
The current word is, that Romney will offer an amendment to the State Constitution blocking gay marriage entirely.
Woo! That didn't take long!?
No doubt Eric Fehrnstrom was up all night polling and tabulating results.
JohnIAT@aol.com
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
London's Bawling
A mere seven months ago, George Bush was strutting around the flight deck of the Carrier Abraham Lincoln like he was Pappy Boyington or something.
The illusion managed to last quite a while thanks to groveling little bastards like Chris Matthews screeching his praises all summer long even as the body count inched up higher and higher every day in Iraq.
Now today we are presented with the edifying spectacle of a President of the United State forced to turn London into a armed camp for the duration of his visit to Olde Blighty due to the hordes of protesters on hand to "greet him".
This is a long way from "Mission Accomplished" lemme tell you...
And not for nothing but something is seriously wrong when the President of the United States has to surround himself with a brigade of armed sharpshooters and secret agents before visiting the capital of our closest ally.
The notion that "our" President can move about London only under the protection of a shoot-to-kill order is a sad commentary of the state of western civilization.
Still none of this will have any affect on Bush's outlook on the war, fanatics such as himself are famously immune to self reflection or doubt.
Having a view of militaryoperations gleaned seemingly from childhood games with G.I. Joe dolls, no doubt the President finds all the armed guards and gulag pageantry secretly thrilling.
The whole sordid affair begins to take on the appearance of mad old Gaius Caligula "inspecting" the Roman Empire's garrisons on the Rhine.
It's almost pointless to protest, almost.
I mean, Bush is exactly the sort of monochromatic mentality that never changes it's mind no matter who gets hurt or how much the cost.
This sort of narcissism is called "Texas Hardheadedness" by the likes of George Will.
Sick
Demented
Typical
I remain, you obedient servant....
A mere seven months ago, George Bush was strutting around the flight deck of the Carrier Abraham Lincoln like he was Pappy Boyington or something.
The illusion managed to last quite a while thanks to groveling little bastards like Chris Matthews screeching his praises all summer long even as the body count inched up higher and higher every day in Iraq.
Now today we are presented with the edifying spectacle of a President of the United State forced to turn London into a armed camp for the duration of his visit to Olde Blighty due to the hordes of protesters on hand to "greet him".
This is a long way from "Mission Accomplished" lemme tell you...
And not for nothing but something is seriously wrong when the President of the United States has to surround himself with a brigade of armed sharpshooters and secret agents before visiting the capital of our closest ally.
The notion that "our" President can move about London only under the protection of a shoot-to-kill order is a sad commentary of the state of western civilization.
Still none of this will have any affect on Bush's outlook on the war, fanatics such as himself are famously immune to self reflection or doubt.
Having a view of militaryoperations gleaned seemingly from childhood games with G.I. Joe dolls, no doubt the President finds all the armed guards and gulag pageantry secretly thrilling.
The whole sordid affair begins to take on the appearance of mad old Gaius Caligula "inspecting" the Roman Empire's garrisons on the Rhine.
It's almost pointless to protest, almost.
I mean, Bush is exactly the sort of monochromatic mentality that never changes it's mind no matter who gets hurt or how much the cost.
This sort of narcissism is called "Texas Hardheadedness" by the likes of George Will.
Sick
Demented
Typical
I remain, you obedient servant....
Monday, November 17, 2003
The Hercules Putsch:
Seizing power in a coup is a pretty undignified messy business most everywhere else in the world.
This is despite the fact that the old fashioned coup with it's flags and tanks is the accepted manner of changing governments for something like 75% of the world.
Thanks to Good Old Fashioned American Know-How, we've even managed to standardize this peculiar foreign custom.
And so we come to November 17th 2003, a day in which thanks to an obscure law written by well meaning goo-goos in the 1900's Arnold Schwarzenegger, a vain preening lout, is seizing power in the State of California.
I'm sure his inaugural address with be mercifully bereft of the usual truculent threats that have characterized Arnold's movie work to date.
"I'll be back" and junk like that.
No it'll be naught but indigestible rubbish about the free market, opportunity, and the California Way of Life.
And amidst these bloviations the Golden State will be whisked off on a waltz with yet another tedious demagogue.
There is a tiresome cliche on the neocon right to the effect that the states are "fifty little thrifty beehives of social policy experimentation".
Hence they should be allowed the widest possible latitude in order for a "hundred policy flowers to bloom".
This is of course errant nonsense on a cosmic scale.
They are less fifty little social policy labs and more like fifty nasty semi-bankrupt banana republics mostly presided over by the lowest most contemptible scoundrels on Ghod's Green Earth.
In fact most of the nation's demagogues and dictators have been state governors not U.S. Presidents.
A President has precious little time to set up a really effective tyranny, he's got to be fund-raising for re-election practically from the moment he takes the oath.
And he's watched like a hawk even by his own so called supporters and sycophants, there is nowhere to go but down once you are in the White House.
Plenty of people are gunning for you...
Not so being a state governor a man can safely don jackboots and a Sam Browne belt and rate nothing more than a snarky picture in "Time Magazine".
The Gubernatorial roll of dishonor features many such stalwarts as Huey P. Long, Herman Talmadge, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Pete Wilson, James Rhodes (who pumped the National Guard up to a shooting frenzy just prior to Kent State) and of course lets not forget Massachusetts own James Michael Curley.
Yup not only are all politics local, but all Dictatorships are local as well.
That is a consequence of Federalism that the Heritage Institute would rather not deal with.
Or maybe when they say "laboratory" they mean "gulag"....who can tell in today's rhetorically debauched times?
Sick
Demented
Typical
Seizing power in a coup is a pretty undignified messy business most everywhere else in the world.
This is despite the fact that the old fashioned coup with it's flags and tanks is the accepted manner of changing governments for something like 75% of the world.
Thanks to Good Old Fashioned American Know-How, we've even managed to standardize this peculiar foreign custom.
And so we come to November 17th 2003, a day in which thanks to an obscure law written by well meaning goo-goos in the 1900's Arnold Schwarzenegger, a vain preening lout, is seizing power in the State of California.
I'm sure his inaugural address with be mercifully bereft of the usual truculent threats that have characterized Arnold's movie work to date.
"I'll be back" and junk like that.
No it'll be naught but indigestible rubbish about the free market, opportunity, and the California Way of Life.
And amidst these bloviations the Golden State will be whisked off on a waltz with yet another tedious demagogue.
There is a tiresome cliche on the neocon right to the effect that the states are "fifty little thrifty beehives of social policy experimentation".
Hence they should be allowed the widest possible latitude in order for a "hundred policy flowers to bloom".
This is of course errant nonsense on a cosmic scale.
They are less fifty little social policy labs and more like fifty nasty semi-bankrupt banana republics mostly presided over by the lowest most contemptible scoundrels on Ghod's Green Earth.
In fact most of the nation's demagogues and dictators have been state governors not U.S. Presidents.
A President has precious little time to set up a really effective tyranny, he's got to be fund-raising for re-election practically from the moment he takes the oath.
And he's watched like a hawk even by his own so called supporters and sycophants, there is nowhere to go but down once you are in the White House.
Plenty of people are gunning for you...
Not so being a state governor a man can safely don jackboots and a Sam Browne belt and rate nothing more than a snarky picture in "Time Magazine".
The Gubernatorial roll of dishonor features many such stalwarts as Huey P. Long, Herman Talmadge, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Pete Wilson, James Rhodes (who pumped the National Guard up to a shooting frenzy just prior to Kent State) and of course lets not forget Massachusetts own James Michael Curley.
Yup not only are all politics local, but all Dictatorships are local as well.
That is a consequence of Federalism that the Heritage Institute would rather not deal with.
Or maybe when they say "laboratory" they mean "gulag"....who can tell in today's rhetorically debauched times?
Sick
Demented
Typical
Friday, November 14, 2003
Friday Notes:
The lowest most simple-minded jobber will tell you that one of the best ways to move up in the game of politics is to get yourself noticed.
No less a solon as the Late Tammany Hall Sachem George Washington Plunkett preached as much all his livelong days.
Plunkett spent most of his time at street fairs, religious holidays, wakes, funerals, baptisms and whatnot passing out boons and perks and courting public approval.
It wa axiomatic that the State Senator could beat most fire-engines to a house fire in his district....it was said he could hear a fire bell ten blocks away.
Truly the successful politician is a ubiquitous politician.
And so we come to the ghoulish spectacle of Pennsylvania Senator Rick "high pitch Rich" Santorum in the well of the U.S. Senate pounding the podium and smacking his lips with relish at the thought of outlawing "partial birth abortion".
Rich's moment was a hand last week a nice juicy incremental blow to a woman's right to choose, a feast for any main chance GOP politico.
And what the hell he got his way, the Senate transformed itself from a den of thieves, brutes, and fixers and into a medical commission just long enough to outlaw a rare surgical procedure.
Rich then stood behind the President grinning like a Mongoloid as GWB signed the bill and made the usual effusive remarks about the culture of life and other hallucinations.
This week Rick helped Fox News stage manage the Senate GOP's 30 hour filibuster highlighting Democratic obstructionism on Bush's judicial nominees.
As we all know Bush watches Fox News as often as possible so no doubt he is beginning to take notice of the fighting young reactionary from Pennsylvania.
It helps being one of the Capitol's most resolute Bush idolators...his call ins to the Imus program set a new standard for public sycophancy of the lowest and crudest type.
So I have to ask...what does Rick Santorum want in the quickening autumn of 2003?
He is already a telegenic, sought after U.S. Senator, his sinecure seems secure.
I think Rich wants to take his screechy psychotic whine into the office of Vice President of the United States.
Yup you heard it here first, Rick wants to be veep.
Currently Dick Cheney holds that position but the famed Halliburton rain-maker is looking mighty shopworn these days...this Iraq thing was all his idea after all.
Rick has to sense the President might be looking to change up come next summer's GOP convention...
If I had to guess Santorum has probably already done some polling to buttress his popularity in other states and among the sought after cohorts.
His GOP bona fides are perfectly sound, he's all for giving carefully selected groups (poor women and queers) as hard a time as the law will allow...which is sound conservative thinking in the 21st century. Certainly Rick would have no problems running on a platform of fag-bashing and limitless military pre-emption....hell he has been dreaming all his unnatural life of campaigning on such morbid nonsense.
As the Senate goes, he does have some competition in the complex game of Vice Presidential Ambitions, chiefly Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.
But Orrin is old and sounding more than a little querulous lately....that prissy little voice of his sounds impotent and school-marmish compared to Rich's Mick Jagger-ish shrieks of studied outrage.
Bush-Santorum in 2004...how does that sound?
Prefectly dreadful in every way.
The lowest most simple-minded jobber will tell you that one of the best ways to move up in the game of politics is to get yourself noticed.
No less a solon as the Late Tammany Hall Sachem George Washington Plunkett preached as much all his livelong days.
Plunkett spent most of his time at street fairs, religious holidays, wakes, funerals, baptisms and whatnot passing out boons and perks and courting public approval.
It wa axiomatic that the State Senator could beat most fire-engines to a house fire in his district....it was said he could hear a fire bell ten blocks away.
Truly the successful politician is a ubiquitous politician.
And so we come to the ghoulish spectacle of Pennsylvania Senator Rick "high pitch Rich" Santorum in the well of the U.S. Senate pounding the podium and smacking his lips with relish at the thought of outlawing "partial birth abortion".
Rich's moment was a hand last week a nice juicy incremental blow to a woman's right to choose, a feast for any main chance GOP politico.
And what the hell he got his way, the Senate transformed itself from a den of thieves, brutes, and fixers and into a medical commission just long enough to outlaw a rare surgical procedure.
Rich then stood behind the President grinning like a Mongoloid as GWB signed the bill and made the usual effusive remarks about the culture of life and other hallucinations.
This week Rick helped Fox News stage manage the Senate GOP's 30 hour filibuster highlighting Democratic obstructionism on Bush's judicial nominees.
As we all know Bush watches Fox News as often as possible so no doubt he is beginning to take notice of the fighting young reactionary from Pennsylvania.
It helps being one of the Capitol's most resolute Bush idolators...his call ins to the Imus program set a new standard for public sycophancy of the lowest and crudest type.
So I have to ask...what does Rick Santorum want in the quickening autumn of 2003?
He is already a telegenic, sought after U.S. Senator, his sinecure seems secure.
I think Rich wants to take his screechy psychotic whine into the office of Vice President of the United States.
Yup you heard it here first, Rick wants to be veep.
Currently Dick Cheney holds that position but the famed Halliburton rain-maker is looking mighty shopworn these days...this Iraq thing was all his idea after all.
Rick has to sense the President might be looking to change up come next summer's GOP convention...
If I had to guess Santorum has probably already done some polling to buttress his popularity in other states and among the sought after cohorts.
His GOP bona fides are perfectly sound, he's all for giving carefully selected groups (poor women and queers) as hard a time as the law will allow...which is sound conservative thinking in the 21st century. Certainly Rick would have no problems running on a platform of fag-bashing and limitless military pre-emption....hell he has been dreaming all his unnatural life of campaigning on such morbid nonsense.
As the Senate goes, he does have some competition in the complex game of Vice Presidential Ambitions, chiefly Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.
But Orrin is old and sounding more than a little querulous lately....that prissy little voice of his sounds impotent and school-marmish compared to Rich's Mick Jagger-ish shrieks of studied outrage.
Bush-Santorum in 2004...how does that sound?
Prefectly dreadful in every way.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
A Zombie's Defiance:
There is nothing funnier than false braggadocio...really nothing.
Some loudmouth seething with truculence promising dire vengeance at some future date when all the time the audience knows this hammerhead would sh*t himself at the first gunshot.
Such a sublime moment occurred spontaneously on the Imus Program yesterday.
The upper west side's most notorious ambulatory corpse was staggering through an interview with "Bias" author Bernard Goldberg.
Bernie is a whiny bore whose critique of CBS News alleged liberal slant amounts to little more than the usual Allen Drury style boilerplate.
His insistence that "reporters write the news for their elite pals at Elaine's and not Middle America" could well have come verbatim out of "Capable of Honor" or one of Spiro Agnew's speechs.
All of which proves that originality is no requirement for successful on the "conservative poormouth circuit".
Imus then tried to liven things up going on a hysterical screed impugning Dan Rather's cowboy credentials before he wound himself up into a delirious fury asserting that he'd "quit" if Mel Karmazin ever tried to alter the content of HIS show!!!
Now usually I ignore Imus as a personality, he is old, incoherent, decrepit, and mean...his show is chiefly a means to get a concentrated dose of whatever rubbish the media whores are peddling this week.
However this "I'd quit!" stuff was actually laugh-out-loud funny-never has a more spineless dependent wretch sounded more hilariously defiant.
If tomorrow morning Mel Karmazin ordered Imus to get a sex change operation and give the show a "trannie perspective", the I-Man would be in surgery by noon screeching at the Doctors to "HURRY!!!"
Imus has nowhere to go at this point in his sad wasted life, his virago wife stays on only because the checks come in steady, he isn't talking to ex or his OTHER children...if Viacom-CBS cancelled his show tomorrow Imus would die of despair within a month.
"I'd quit" who does this vulgar senile fraud think he is kidding?
NOBODY quits today, the money is too good and too easy!
Still it was uproarious to listen in on his empty threats....
Such is the Kingdom of God
On the Congressionally Licensed Airwaves
And Elsewhere
11-13-03
God Save the Republic
There is nothing funnier than false braggadocio...really nothing.
Some loudmouth seething with truculence promising dire vengeance at some future date when all the time the audience knows this hammerhead would sh*t himself at the first gunshot.
Such a sublime moment occurred spontaneously on the Imus Program yesterday.
The upper west side's most notorious ambulatory corpse was staggering through an interview with "Bias" author Bernard Goldberg.
Bernie is a whiny bore whose critique of CBS News alleged liberal slant amounts to little more than the usual Allen Drury style boilerplate.
His insistence that "reporters write the news for their elite pals at Elaine's and not Middle America" could well have come verbatim out of "Capable of Honor" or one of Spiro Agnew's speechs.
All of which proves that originality is no requirement for successful on the "conservative poormouth circuit".
Imus then tried to liven things up going on a hysterical screed impugning Dan Rather's cowboy credentials before he wound himself up into a delirious fury asserting that he'd "quit" if Mel Karmazin ever tried to alter the content of HIS show!!!
Now usually I ignore Imus as a personality, he is old, incoherent, decrepit, and mean...his show is chiefly a means to get a concentrated dose of whatever rubbish the media whores are peddling this week.
However this "I'd quit!" stuff was actually laugh-out-loud funny-never has a more spineless dependent wretch sounded more hilariously defiant.
If tomorrow morning Mel Karmazin ordered Imus to get a sex change operation and give the show a "trannie perspective", the I-Man would be in surgery by noon screeching at the Doctors to "HURRY!!!"
Imus has nowhere to go at this point in his sad wasted life, his virago wife stays on only because the checks come in steady, he isn't talking to ex or his OTHER children...if Viacom-CBS cancelled his show tomorrow Imus would die of despair within a month.
"I'd quit" who does this vulgar senile fraud think he is kidding?
NOBODY quits today, the money is too good and too easy!
Still it was uproarious to listen in on his empty threats....
Such is the Kingdom of God
On the Congressionally Licensed Airwaves
And Elsewhere
11-13-03
God Save the Republic
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Hit someone, anyone...THEN make them good democracy consumers....
What color is the sky in Tom Friedman's world?
Can you smell colors therein and perform other extra-rational miracles?
All sorts of fantasies, grim and otherwise were implied from his call in to the Imus program yesterday.
His latest justification for the war (on the heels of "Saddam has a doomsday bomb" and "I saw skulls, Human Skulls!!!")
is that we must save that those stalwart progressives, the House of Saud.
Yup...Tom Friedman insists that 9-11 was cooked up by Bin Laden as part of a scheme to embarrass Saudi Arabia by loading up the operation with suicidal Saudi terrorists.
Never mind the fact that Saudi Arabia has been exporting terrorists for years, bankrolling them, and is perfectly happy as the world goes up in chunks as long as their tribal hegemony is not attacked.
Nope we are doing all this to save that olde tyme religion in Riyadh.
As usual, Tom sounded scared, and when Friedman is scared he starts spouting "complex" theories about foreign policy and quoting ad nauseam from the "Arab Human Development Report".
His conclusion? The yokels are starving, stupid, fertile, and angry...and that represents a threat to "our open society".
He also loads up his discourse with gratingly trite cliche's like "empower", "invest", "alternative energy", "shareholder" and my favorite "stake-holder".
As if the voters of the once proud republic are a bunch of grizzled miners a'la Gabby Hayes.
To Tom, it is a mere matter of weaning John Q. Public-Iraq off the local roast and enticing him across the street to the new Starbucks franchise wherein the coffee is just more reliable.
I've called Friedman a lot of names down through the years, "hopeless naive' hack" being a fave, I've also derided him as spineless and a passive aggressive yutz.
But yesterday I finally figured it out, Tom's real problem is that he is a helpless utopian, he really believes in his heart of hearts that the global free market can create nothing but positive change for the man on the street in Baghdad.
In truth, it is not all Tom Friedman's fault.
He came of age in a fiercely illiberal age and feels the only alternative to being a mindless reactionary is to assert patently liberal utopian ends can be achieved by simply cheerleading the free market.
After a while if you mumble this patent nonsense to yourself often enough, you begin to believe it.
It's called auto-suggestion and Tom has it bad.
Meanwhile he goes on prattling nervously about "our free society" ....that once glorious polity in which elections are overturned and recalled on a moments notice....this blessed plot in which thieves run amok in high places, louts make the laws, and young Americans die for a policy summarized as "hit someone anyone!".
Tom looks at all this and sees a utopia....
Me?
I'm looking into cheap plots of land in the Baja.
What color is the sky in Tom Friedman's world?
Can you smell colors therein and perform other extra-rational miracles?
All sorts of fantasies, grim and otherwise were implied from his call in to the Imus program yesterday.
His latest justification for the war (on the heels of "Saddam has a doomsday bomb" and "I saw skulls, Human Skulls!!!")
is that we must save that those stalwart progressives, the House of Saud.
Yup...Tom Friedman insists that 9-11 was cooked up by Bin Laden as part of a scheme to embarrass Saudi Arabia by loading up the operation with suicidal Saudi terrorists.
Never mind the fact that Saudi Arabia has been exporting terrorists for years, bankrolling them, and is perfectly happy as the world goes up in chunks as long as their tribal hegemony is not attacked.
Nope we are doing all this to save that olde tyme religion in Riyadh.
As usual, Tom sounded scared, and when Friedman is scared he starts spouting "complex" theories about foreign policy and quoting ad nauseam from the "Arab Human Development Report".
His conclusion? The yokels are starving, stupid, fertile, and angry...and that represents a threat to "our open society".
He also loads up his discourse with gratingly trite cliche's like "empower", "invest", "alternative energy", "shareholder" and my favorite "stake-holder".
As if the voters of the once proud republic are a bunch of grizzled miners a'la Gabby Hayes.
To Tom, it is a mere matter of weaning John Q. Public-Iraq off the local roast and enticing him across the street to the new Starbucks franchise wherein the coffee is just more reliable.
I've called Friedman a lot of names down through the years, "hopeless naive' hack" being a fave, I've also derided him as spineless and a passive aggressive yutz.
But yesterday I finally figured it out, Tom's real problem is that he is a helpless utopian, he really believes in his heart of hearts that the global free market can create nothing but positive change for the man on the street in Baghdad.
In truth, it is not all Tom Friedman's fault.
He came of age in a fiercely illiberal age and feels the only alternative to being a mindless reactionary is to assert patently liberal utopian ends can be achieved by simply cheerleading the free market.
After a while if you mumble this patent nonsense to yourself often enough, you begin to believe it.
It's called auto-suggestion and Tom has it bad.
Meanwhile he goes on prattling nervously about "our free society" ....that once glorious polity in which elections are overturned and recalled on a moments notice....this blessed plot in which thieves run amok in high places, louts make the laws, and young Americans die for a policy summarized as "hit someone anyone!".
Tom looks at all this and sees a utopia....
Me?
I'm looking into cheap plots of land in the Baja.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Bargains, Faustian and Otherwise....
"There are no honorable bargains involving the exchange for qualitative merchandise for quantative commodities"
William S. Burroughs
D'ye suppose if this cockamamie "all day kindergarten in exchange for life learning classes for the troglodytes" thing goes through that anyone in public life will take to teaching the Hottentots?
Will Joe Lawless give up his lonely vigil guarding the docks of Boston to instruct the yokels of Brockton on the proper use of tupperware?
Will Tagg Romney (the Kolobian Viceroy's eldest offspring) ditch his lucrative phoney-baloney job at the State Republican Committee to teach the wretched refuse of Holyoke how to fill out subscription forms to the "Nation Review"?
Will Eric Kriss the Cabinet's unofficial witch doctor of eugenics, resign his post to show the heathen the secrets of roasting cheap chicory coffee?
A host of volunteer opportunities beckon to the stalwart pay-triots' of Massachusetts...will they answer the call?
My guess is no...in an conflict between volunteerism and careerism, filthy jobbery wins out every damn time.
Still it is just plain funny to think of Tagg Romney (who has gotten sleek living off the dregs of the Mass. GOP's overfished mailing list) playing social worker in the windy streets of Fall River.
I mock this idea with all due genial contempt, but it does prophesy many malign things for the future...having had a de facto viceroy installed as Governor we are now witnessing the opening stages of the ideological colonization of the once proud and lonely Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The notion that we are gonna squeeze the hapless parents of children in "non performing" schools into classrooms to teach em; how to check their kid's homework would be laughed to death had it been proposed by Messr's Dukakis, Weld, Cellucci, or Madame Swift.
Romney however is an uplifter and improver of the most meddlesome conservative variety...it actually helps his utopian world view to have little real emotional with the Commonwealth...so much easier when it comes time to move the poor into air conditioned underground bunkers or build a tunnel to the South Pole to encourage housing start-ups.
Like I've said before, Romney has ideas...most of them marvelously bad.
Nevertheless he is hell bent on catching up to the rising tide of conservatism nationally and will no doubt have many more destructive notions before he is done.
He has been sent here to preach a new gospel of limitless government snoopery yoked to limitless tax breaks and like a good missionary parson, Bishop Romney will see this thing through come hell of high water.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
"There are no honorable bargains involving the exchange for qualitative merchandise for quantative commodities"
William S. Burroughs
D'ye suppose if this cockamamie "all day kindergarten in exchange for life learning classes for the troglodytes" thing goes through that anyone in public life will take to teaching the Hottentots?
Will Joe Lawless give up his lonely vigil guarding the docks of Boston to instruct the yokels of Brockton on the proper use of tupperware?
Will Tagg Romney (the Kolobian Viceroy's eldest offspring) ditch his lucrative phoney-baloney job at the State Republican Committee to teach the wretched refuse of Holyoke how to fill out subscription forms to the "Nation Review"?
Will Eric Kriss the Cabinet's unofficial witch doctor of eugenics, resign his post to show the heathen the secrets of roasting cheap chicory coffee?
A host of volunteer opportunities beckon to the stalwart pay-triots' of Massachusetts...will they answer the call?
My guess is no...in an conflict between volunteerism and careerism, filthy jobbery wins out every damn time.
Still it is just plain funny to think of Tagg Romney (who has gotten sleek living off the dregs of the Mass. GOP's overfished mailing list) playing social worker in the windy streets of Fall River.
I mock this idea with all due genial contempt, but it does prophesy many malign things for the future...having had a de facto viceroy installed as Governor we are now witnessing the opening stages of the ideological colonization of the once proud and lonely Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The notion that we are gonna squeeze the hapless parents of children in "non performing" schools into classrooms to teach em; how to check their kid's homework would be laughed to death had it been proposed by Messr's Dukakis, Weld, Cellucci, or Madame Swift.
Romney however is an uplifter and improver of the most meddlesome conservative variety...it actually helps his utopian world view to have little real emotional with the Commonwealth...so much easier when it comes time to move the poor into air conditioned underground bunkers or build a tunnel to the South Pole to encourage housing start-ups.
Like I've said before, Romney has ideas...most of them marvelously bad.
Nevertheless he is hell bent on catching up to the rising tide of conservatism nationally and will no doubt have many more destructive notions before he is done.
He has been sent here to preach a new gospel of limitless government snoopery yoked to limitless tax breaks and like a good missionary parson, Bishop Romney will see this thing through come hell of high water.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
Friday, November 07, 2003
Queer bashing 2004:
The Boston Globe has a front page story today detailing the President's desire to make "gay marriage" his wedge issue of choice in the upcoming campaign.
I hate it when I am proven right.
Serious Chimes at Midnight readers (that is, all five of you) will recall I've been predicting an orgy of homophobia in campaign 2004 for several months now.
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, so too does La Famiglia Arbusto return to it's life-giving menu of "wedge issues".
George Bush Jr. may well go down in history as the First President to run for re-election on a promise to deny certain rights to a carefully selected minority.
Rights said minority doesn't even have yet!
Gotta love that doctrine of pre-emption.
The usual suspects will chalk this whole appalling spectacle up to the "southernization" of American politics.
Y'know the forcible introduction of harsh puritanical southern clerical values into the political debate.
That of course is an interesting and suggestive phenomenon...because despite their undeniable electoral strength, the political south has been wrong about so many issues in relentless succession that it calls into question their collective sanity.
They were wrong about the Civil War, wrong about Prohibition, wrong about Civil Rights, wrong about the Viet Nam War and in the end they'll be proven utterly wrong about gay marriage as well.
But not before a lot of people are hurt and humiliated ere long.
Given this record of error and catastrophe is it any wonder the political south follows palpable frauds and liars like Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich?
Given the need to furnish the south with some blood sacrifice is there any doubt Bush will happily deliver up America's gay community to the tender graces of Reaganolaters, brutes and snoops?
But ah, remember the President does this ugly and churlish thing from his heart-he is an authentic man or so Mike Barnicle helplessly sighs.
If it mean a comfortable re-election, George Bush Jr. would happily book time on VH1 tomorrow night to wipe his ass with the original U.S. Constitution.
THAT is the core of his so called authenticity.
Otherwise Bush may steal and lie...but he calls down imprecations and punishment for the loftiest of reasons.
Vain power worshipping, dishonest...but painfully direct when screaming up a mob to oppose a right that as yet doesn't exist.
Bush knows his rabbles, and the GOP's mob is one of the best trained since the Parisian route that executed Marie Antoinette and Robespierre in succession....there is nothing he cannot do, no minority he cannot punish with them on his side.
I'm not saying the whole of the south has gone apeshit crazy, I do assert that the "commanding heights" of the southern polity is controlled by persons
The Boston Globe has a front page story today detailing the President's desire to make "gay marriage" his wedge issue of choice in the upcoming campaign.
I hate it when I am proven right.
Serious Chimes at Midnight readers (that is, all five of you) will recall I've been predicting an orgy of homophobia in campaign 2004 for several months now.
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, so too does La Famiglia Arbusto return to it's life-giving menu of "wedge issues".
George Bush Jr. may well go down in history as the First President to run for re-election on a promise to deny certain rights to a carefully selected minority.
Rights said minority doesn't even have yet!
Gotta love that doctrine of pre-emption.
The usual suspects will chalk this whole appalling spectacle up to the "southernization" of American politics.
Y'know the forcible introduction of harsh puritanical southern clerical values into the political debate.
That of course is an interesting and suggestive phenomenon...because despite their undeniable electoral strength, the political south has been wrong about so many issues in relentless succession that it calls into question their collective sanity.
They were wrong about the Civil War, wrong about Prohibition, wrong about Civil Rights, wrong about the Viet Nam War and in the end they'll be proven utterly wrong about gay marriage as well.
But not before a lot of people are hurt and humiliated ere long.
Given this record of error and catastrophe is it any wonder the political south follows palpable frauds and liars like Tom Delay or Newt Gingrich?
Given the need to furnish the south with some blood sacrifice is there any doubt Bush will happily deliver up America's gay community to the tender graces of Reaganolaters, brutes and snoops?
But ah, remember the President does this ugly and churlish thing from his heart-he is an authentic man or so Mike Barnicle helplessly sighs.
If it mean a comfortable re-election, George Bush Jr. would happily book time on VH1 tomorrow night to wipe his ass with the original U.S. Constitution.
THAT is the core of his so called authenticity.
Otherwise Bush may steal and lie...but he calls down imprecations and punishment for the loftiest of reasons.
Vain power worshipping, dishonest...but painfully direct when screaming up a mob to oppose a right that as yet doesn't exist.
Bush knows his rabbles, and the GOP's mob is one of the best trained since the Parisian route that executed Marie Antoinette and Robespierre in succession....there is nothing he cannot do, no minority he cannot punish with them on his side.
I'm not saying the whole of the south has gone apeshit crazy, I do assert that the "commanding heights" of the southern polity is controlled by persons
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Oh that Word....
Authenticity is back it seems.
The punditariat has been whispering it lately, it seems President Bush is still the most "authentic" guy around which suits these stuffed shirts just fine.
Political connoisseurs will note that everyone from Maureen Dowd to Mike Barnicle got weak in the knees back in campaign 2000, insisting that Governor Bush's callowness, fanaticism, and ignorance were somehow...authentic.
Being "authentic" is considered a virtue among the chattering classes.
It is a clear case of projection though....what else would our native class of perjurers, hopeless dissemblers and pseudo intellectuals ever aspire to?
Frankly authenticity is a trite meaningless virtue, your average Mongoloid can achieve it very handily.
As far as the rankings go it stands far down on the list next to the comparable vice of hypocrisy..they are both utterly inevitable in life and utterly forgettable as well.
Frankly to call someone "authentic" is to indirectly catalogue their many missing virtues....
These days authenticity is rapidly becoming one of those Orwellian types words that signals little more than a pleasing characteristic that even the worst and most cruel personality must be able to project if they are to succeed.
At the moment though, authenticity stands as little else than an advertising slogan, a term in the transitory stages of corruption and debasement.
If English was written and spoken correctly we'd say a person was "honest" in place of the murky honorific "authentic".
But ah...honesty still means something these days, and to call George Bush Jr. honest is to instantly call up memories of his many gaffes, lies, distortions and revisions on the road to war with Iraq.
So we are back to the punditariat citing GWB's simple authenticity....it is safe, vague and inevitable.
The advantage is, that under the appellation of "authentic" the President can go on stealing, lying, and conniving like the scoundrel he is sans reproof.
So it's a win-win situation all around.
Authenticity is back it seems.
The punditariat has been whispering it lately, it seems President Bush is still the most "authentic" guy around which suits these stuffed shirts just fine.
Political connoisseurs will note that everyone from Maureen Dowd to Mike Barnicle got weak in the knees back in campaign 2000, insisting that Governor Bush's callowness, fanaticism, and ignorance were somehow...authentic.
Being "authentic" is considered a virtue among the chattering classes.
It is a clear case of projection though....what else would our native class of perjurers, hopeless dissemblers and pseudo intellectuals ever aspire to?
Frankly authenticity is a trite meaningless virtue, your average Mongoloid can achieve it very handily.
As far as the rankings go it stands far down on the list next to the comparable vice of hypocrisy..they are both utterly inevitable in life and utterly forgettable as well.
Frankly to call someone "authentic" is to indirectly catalogue their many missing virtues....
These days authenticity is rapidly becoming one of those Orwellian types words that signals little more than a pleasing characteristic that even the worst and most cruel personality must be able to project if they are to succeed.
At the moment though, authenticity stands as little else than an advertising slogan, a term in the transitory stages of corruption and debasement.
If English was written and spoken correctly we'd say a person was "honest" in place of the murky honorific "authentic".
But ah...honesty still means something these days, and to call George Bush Jr. honest is to instantly call up memories of his many gaffes, lies, distortions and revisions on the road to war with Iraq.
So we are back to the punditariat citing GWB's simple authenticity....it is safe, vague and inevitable.
The advantage is, that under the appellation of "authentic" the President can go on stealing, lying, and conniving like the scoundrel he is sans reproof.
So it's a win-win situation all around.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Idle Worship....
We are in the midst of another revival of paganism in this faltering republic.
Last month a bunch of screechy wowsers in Alabama decided that God Almighty
inhabited a stone slab inscribed with the ten commandments.
This month it is proclaimed that any depiction of the Grand Senescence that
deviated from the standard hagiography is contrary to the will of de lawd
and grounds for immediate Mob Rule in America.
Pity poor CBS television, they thought they could trot out a bland miniseries on
the life of Ronald Reagan sans controversy.
HA!
In the past they've rendered inert and unmemorable everyone from Benito
Mussolini to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis-but when they opted to depict the Iconic
Little Father of Santa Barbera-Look Out!
To Ronald Augustus' many worshipers, the Divine Vacuity's
sacred heart is a powerful fetish that must be constantly defended.
Ed Gillespie, Matt Drudge and a host of cheap trashy fanatics rose as one to
prevent the broadcast of some perfectly forgettable biographical tripe.
We may wallow in JFK's love life and sit stupefied at Lyndon Johnson's
tawdriness...but dress up an actor as Ronald Reagan and it's Katie bar the Door!!
The wowsers were out in force threatening lynching, barn burnings,
investigations, and no doubt the Salem Water Cure as well.
And what the hell, CBS caved selling their dull epic to Showtime for a secret
late night burial on Cable TV.
As Jeff Jacoby can tell you, there is no power on earth so pleasurable as the power to force people to do stuff.
For the rightical chic it must be doubly gratifying to bend the tiffany Network to their will, since they routinely blame CBS personally for losing the War in Viet Nam along with a host of other imagined societal ills.
I can't get behind "The Reagans" as anything else but an object lesson in
the burgeoning and irresponsible power of conservative media.
It is worth remembering that there are many books out there far more critical
of Mr. Reagan's tenure as President than this dumb-ass movie....books just
itching to be burned.
Think about that.
Yup...Ronald Reagan may be the first Saint to achieve secular beatification
in this country prior to his own death.
That is no small thing.
But then Saint Ron has always been marked with more than his share of
religious hysteria going back to his days as the grinning Governor of California.
William F. Buckley used to cross himself at the mere mention of Reagan's name.
Ronald Reagan brought a lot of things to Washington back in 1981 when he was
sworn in.
Phoney machismo, a revoltingly condescending optimism, mendacity, and dippidy
doo for men.
But worst of all he brought in his train, a biblical plague of
flatterers, courtiers and raw sycophants who have since remained in Washington and debased public discourse past all hope of recovery.
THAT is real legacy of Reaganism...toadying.
We used to be a nation of persons who laughed at groveling little bastards
like George Will....now these servile bootlickers are dictating content to the
Networks.
And indeed why not?
These people steal elections, governorships, impeach, investigate and
threaten with increasing confidence truculence.
What is suppressing a little miniseries to them?
Don't know who is gonna stop em'...but these guys desperately need a nice fat
setback and soon or else we are headed to real trouble in this country.
Sick
Demented
Typical
We are in the midst of another revival of paganism in this faltering republic.
Last month a bunch of screechy wowsers in Alabama decided that God Almighty
inhabited a stone slab inscribed with the ten commandments.
This month it is proclaimed that any depiction of the Grand Senescence that
deviated from the standard hagiography is contrary to the will of de lawd
and grounds for immediate Mob Rule in America.
Pity poor CBS television, they thought they could trot out a bland miniseries on
the life of Ronald Reagan sans controversy.
HA!
In the past they've rendered inert and unmemorable everyone from Benito
Mussolini to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis-but when they opted to depict the Iconic
Little Father of Santa Barbera-Look Out!
To Ronald Augustus' many worshipers, the Divine Vacuity's
sacred heart is a powerful fetish that must be constantly defended.
Ed Gillespie, Matt Drudge and a host of cheap trashy fanatics rose as one to
prevent the broadcast of some perfectly forgettable biographical tripe.
We may wallow in JFK's love life and sit stupefied at Lyndon Johnson's
tawdriness...but dress up an actor as Ronald Reagan and it's Katie bar the Door!!
The wowsers were out in force threatening lynching, barn burnings,
investigations, and no doubt the Salem Water Cure as well.
And what the hell, CBS caved selling their dull epic to Showtime for a secret
late night burial on Cable TV.
As Jeff Jacoby can tell you, there is no power on earth so pleasurable as the power to force people to do stuff.
For the rightical chic it must be doubly gratifying to bend the tiffany Network to their will, since they routinely blame CBS personally for losing the War in Viet Nam along with a host of other imagined societal ills.
I can't get behind "The Reagans" as anything else but an object lesson in
the burgeoning and irresponsible power of conservative media.
It is worth remembering that there are many books out there far more critical
of Mr. Reagan's tenure as President than this dumb-ass movie....books just
itching to be burned.
Think about that.
Yup...Ronald Reagan may be the first Saint to achieve secular beatification
in this country prior to his own death.
That is no small thing.
But then Saint Ron has always been marked with more than his share of
religious hysteria going back to his days as the grinning Governor of California.
William F. Buckley used to cross himself at the mere mention of Reagan's name.
Ronald Reagan brought a lot of things to Washington back in 1981 when he was
sworn in.
Phoney machismo, a revoltingly condescending optimism, mendacity, and dippidy
doo for men.
But worst of all he brought in his train, a biblical plague of
flatterers, courtiers and raw sycophants who have since remained in Washington and debased public discourse past all hope of recovery.
THAT is real legacy of Reaganism...toadying.
We used to be a nation of persons who laughed at groveling little bastards
like George Will....now these servile bootlickers are dictating content to the
Networks.
And indeed why not?
These people steal elections, governorships, impeach, investigate and
threaten with increasing confidence truculence.
What is suppressing a little miniseries to them?
Don't know who is gonna stop em'...but these guys desperately need a nice fat
setback and soon or else we are headed to real trouble in this country.
Sick
Demented
Typical
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Item!
He is shrill...
He is self righteous...
He is a well connected, powerful Washington personality...
He is one of the President's most notorious apologists...
What would his famously puritanical constituents say if the rumors are true and their boy stands revealed as a homosexual?
For that fact what would his wife and children say??
***
More than likely they'd say nothing...America seems to admire nothing so much as a successful unrepentant lout....and they'll wink at the most corrupt hypocrites as long as the perp seems to be a stand up guy i.e. a loud obnoxious demagogue.
It is just this sort of shamelessness that'll return Rush Limbaugh to the airways sans reproof and allows William Bennett to scold and upbraid without let or hindrance.
It's no wonder our hero allegedly dallies with rented leather boys, he'd be a fool not to in today's brave new world.
And next year, when Bush's issue of choice is opposition to "homosexual marriage" you can bet our boy will be decorously anti queer at every opportunity.
Sick
Demented
Typical
He is shrill...
He is self righteous...
He is a well connected, powerful Washington personality...
He is one of the President's most notorious apologists...
What would his famously puritanical constituents say if the rumors are true and their boy stands revealed as a homosexual?
For that fact what would his wife and children say??
***
More than likely they'd say nothing...America seems to admire nothing so much as a successful unrepentant lout....and they'll wink at the most corrupt hypocrites as long as the perp seems to be a stand up guy i.e. a loud obnoxious demagogue.
It is just this sort of shamelessness that'll return Rush Limbaugh to the airways sans reproof and allows William Bennett to scold and upbraid without let or hindrance.
It's no wonder our hero allegedly dallies with rented leather boys, he'd be a fool not to in today's brave new world.
And next year, when Bush's issue of choice is opposition to "homosexual marriage" you can bet our boy will be decorously anti queer at every opportunity.
Sick
Demented
Typical
Monday, November 03, 2003
Chris Matthews on Imus today...
He has a new book out "American Beyond Our Grandest Notions"...despite it's preposterously pompous title it's apparently about all the super kewl klassic movies Chris like really really loves.
Based on a close analysis of "The Searchers", Matthews has decided we are a "relentless, lonely, rebellious nation....no wonder we don't like government much..."
So now the wellsprings of Chris' pretentious purehearted Americanism originate in Hollywood....how that jibes with the rest of the media whores hatred of tinseltown I don't know.
This IS Chris Matthews we are talking about consistency is not his strong suite.
Certainly publicly masturbating over the President's appearance on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln back in May hasn't stopped him from voicing vague "suspicions" about the war now.
Neither have these self same qualms prevented him from making plain his contempt for the current democratic field of presidential candidates....there is no link between those two congruent concepts and none will be forged by Mister Matthews either.
After all he is a journalist and he has his standards: democrats of all types and persuasions are all equally repellant.
Good Ghod I'm not back from vacation ten minutes and there is this frantic unlovely clown spouting this rubbish like it's fresh gold on the public airwaves!
I'm suspecting more and more, that Chris was the gazoonie in Tip O'Neill's congressional apparat.
You know the Jimmy Olsen-ish dingbat who got sent out for coffee at the drop of a hat. Nice dim-witted kid close to power but not trusted with a bit of it. Clearly the late Speaker got down to cases only after Chris was safely out of the room.
I can't account for his rise to pre-eminence as a journalist-although I haven't ruled out some diabolical transaction with Mephistopheles. Perhaps the demon took Matthews' soul but let him keep the rest of his annoying preadolescent personality intact.
Who knows really?
Chris has the opinions of a very hyper 12 year old boy...shallow, opportunistic and shrill beyond hope of redemption.
Trite turgid obvious...Chris is the total package...to listen to him on Imus to believe the U.S. is on the verge of enfranchising cartoon characters.
Not just the charming ones like Daffy Duck either, I'm talking the morbid caricatures of "South Park" of John Kricfalusi's "Ren and Stimpy".
Such is the Kingdom of God
On the congressionally licensed airwaves
and elsewhere
11-3-03
He has a new book out "American Beyond Our Grandest Notions"...despite it's preposterously pompous title it's apparently about all the super kewl klassic movies Chris like really really loves.
Based on a close analysis of "The Searchers", Matthews has decided we are a "relentless, lonely, rebellious nation....no wonder we don't like government much..."
So now the wellsprings of Chris' pretentious purehearted Americanism originate in Hollywood....how that jibes with the rest of the media whores hatred of tinseltown I don't know.
This IS Chris Matthews we are talking about consistency is not his strong suite.
Certainly publicly masturbating over the President's appearance on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln back in May hasn't stopped him from voicing vague "suspicions" about the war now.
Neither have these self same qualms prevented him from making plain his contempt for the current democratic field of presidential candidates....there is no link between those two congruent concepts and none will be forged by Mister Matthews either.
After all he is a journalist and he has his standards: democrats of all types and persuasions are all equally repellant.
Good Ghod I'm not back from vacation ten minutes and there is this frantic unlovely clown spouting this rubbish like it's fresh gold on the public airwaves!
I'm suspecting more and more, that Chris was the gazoonie in Tip O'Neill's congressional apparat.
You know the Jimmy Olsen-ish dingbat who got sent out for coffee at the drop of a hat. Nice dim-witted kid close to power but not trusted with a bit of it. Clearly the late Speaker got down to cases only after Chris was safely out of the room.
I can't account for his rise to pre-eminence as a journalist-although I haven't ruled out some diabolical transaction with Mephistopheles. Perhaps the demon took Matthews' soul but let him keep the rest of his annoying preadolescent personality intact.
Who knows really?
Chris has the opinions of a very hyper 12 year old boy...shallow, opportunistic and shrill beyond hope of redemption.
Trite turgid obvious...Chris is the total package...to listen to him on Imus to believe the U.S. is on the verge of enfranchising cartoon characters.
Not just the charming ones like Daffy Duck either, I'm talking the morbid caricatures of "South Park" of John Kricfalusi's "Ren and Stimpy".
Such is the Kingdom of God
On the congressionally licensed airwaves
and elsewhere
11-3-03
Republican Re education
We suffer the most when the White House bursts with ideas.
H.L. Mencken January 1933
Henry Louis said that with Woodrow Wilson and sundry divines in mind.
No doubt he'd revise the concept to include the Governorship of this
Commonwealth if he was alive today.
We are just now realizing with dawning horror what a fidgety frantic yap
Willard Mitt Romney really is.
Elected amidst the hosannas of debt burdened burgers from Natick to Pelham
Governor Decaf was expected to provide nothing more than the usual blovial
sentiments and low taxes.
Instead we are finding out that he is just overflowing with ideas...in other
words the Kolobian Primate really believes Eric Fehrnstrom's tripe about
innovative market friendly solutions.
So before we can all become savvy superconsumers on info megahighway...some
of us the dumb, the lame, the latte-less apparently have to go back to school.
Yup that is right, Eric Kriss' "taker" class, the ones with kids in the worst
performing schools, will get all day kindergarten but only if their shiftless
mothers and father go to mandatory parenting classes on Saturdays.
This is quite literally a wondrous inversion of Pol Pot's old "lock up the
city slickers and the school teachers in labor camps" routine.
It is in short, class warfare, Romney style.
I give Willard credit he apparently has read a little Asian history while he
was learning the ins and outs of loaning money to rich white men at Bain
Capital Gruppe.
Except this time it is the untermenschen, that 25%, "the taker" class will
be forced to scan the columns of Jeff Jacoby for homey child-rearing tips.
This is the inevitable consequence of electing these pie-in-the-sky
innovation worshiping free market fanatic CEO types to positions of high public trust.
They immediately start acting out on their every gruesome fantasy, the sort
of malignant rubbish that previously was only preached behind the closed doors
of the executive suite.
The notion that these pirate sector vultures represent cautious conservatism
is sheer nonsense. Time and again they are demonstrated to be as prone to
utopian delusions as any Juan Peron or Achmed Sukarno.
Fortunately, Romney is still pretty selective in what social class he wants
to police and improve...so the yokels and white trash are in for a hard time
under Romneylus Augustus.
However the rest of your should beware, all that tokin' drinkin' and high
living doesn't go down well with our famously puritanical Governor.
He'll get around to you in due course.
Sick
Demented
Typical
We suffer the most when the White House bursts with ideas.
H.L. Mencken January 1933
Henry Louis said that with Woodrow Wilson and sundry divines in mind.
No doubt he'd revise the concept to include the Governorship of this
Commonwealth if he was alive today.
We are just now realizing with dawning horror what a fidgety frantic yap
Willard Mitt Romney really is.
Elected amidst the hosannas of debt burdened burgers from Natick to Pelham
Governor Decaf was expected to provide nothing more than the usual blovial
sentiments and low taxes.
Instead we are finding out that he is just overflowing with ideas...in other
words the Kolobian Primate really believes Eric Fehrnstrom's tripe about
innovative market friendly solutions.
So before we can all become savvy superconsumers on info megahighway...some
of us the dumb, the lame, the latte-less apparently have to go back to school.
Yup that is right, Eric Kriss' "taker" class, the ones with kids in the worst
performing schools, will get all day kindergarten but only if their shiftless
mothers and father go to mandatory parenting classes on Saturdays.
This is quite literally a wondrous inversion of Pol Pot's old "lock up the
city slickers and the school teachers in labor camps" routine.
It is in short, class warfare, Romney style.
I give Willard credit he apparently has read a little Asian history while he
was learning the ins and outs of loaning money to rich white men at Bain
Capital Gruppe.
Except this time it is the untermenschen, that 25%, "the taker" class will
be forced to scan the columns of Jeff Jacoby for homey child-rearing tips.
This is the inevitable consequence of electing these pie-in-the-sky
innovation worshiping free market fanatic CEO types to positions of high public trust.
They immediately start acting out on their every gruesome fantasy, the sort
of malignant rubbish that previously was only preached behind the closed doors
of the executive suite.
The notion that these pirate sector vultures represent cautious conservatism
is sheer nonsense. Time and again they are demonstrated to be as prone to
utopian delusions as any Juan Peron or Achmed Sukarno.
Fortunately, Romney is still pretty selective in what social class he wants
to police and improve...so the yokels and white trash are in for a hard time
under Romneylus Augustus.
However the rest of your should beware, all that tokin' drinkin' and high
living doesn't go down well with our famously puritanical Governor.
He'll get around to you in due course.
Sick
Demented
Typical
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