Tuesday, September 30, 2003

The Stern Fatwah


Normally I don't listen to the Howard Stern Show with a politically critical ear...all those strippers and the like tend to mute Howard's suburban libertarian fanaticism so he is hardly worth taking seriously.
Alas Imus had a perfectly painful interview with Steve Martin going on today...so having NO OTHER options I flipped over to Stern in the vain hope that Adam West or some other class act might be on.
Ah look how the mighty have fallen.....once a half hearted Bill Clinton apologist, since 9-11 Stern has done a 180 and now castigates the former President in the most gruesome terms imaginable at every opportunity.
However the discerning listener can usually tune out Stern's imbecilic diatribes with little effort.
Today though, the King of All Media put on his sacred execution turban and started wishing death on Bill Maher with Iranian gusto.
Now why should anyone want to wish death on a hopeless spineless wretch like Bill Maher?
I mean all you have to do is slap him hard and Bill starts crying like a child begging for forgiveness.
Maher is an easy mark in other words.
Still the weaker the target the worse the punishment it's the law of the schoolyard.
Apparently on his HBO show Bill was arguing "as the devil's advocate" with Michael Moore as to whether or not the war of terrorism had been over hyped.
Howard had a short excerpt from the Maher Show played on the air...he then deduced from this that Maher was saying "pro-terrorist" stuff on HBO.
Now to my ears it sounded like a rhetorical device to draw out Moore's particular opinions about terrorism....but then I heard only the brief excerpt used by Howard.
Be that as it may, The King of All Media then thunders "I only wish someone would fly an airplane into Maher's studio while he is saying stuff like this..."
And his audience Howard...they are deserving of death too?
I think for raw homicidal death worship Howard has The Ayatollah's beat...hell with his blow-up-everyone-I-hate mentality he's sounding more and more like Bin Laden every day.
Coulterism or maybe Coulterosis might be the best term for this condition...a desire to punish personal hate objects with the weapons and tactics of terrorism. It is a humorless homicidal inflammation of the bowels....accompanied by a discordant whine and irony poor blood.
Although on a serious note, I think if the war in Iraq wasn't going so poorly they wouldn't have this weird need to express themselves in such diresome terms.
Compensation I think is the psychiatric term for it.

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed
Public Airwaves
9-30-03

Monday, September 29, 2003

Poison is Queen,

Anyone catch former E.P.A. chairwoman Christie Todd Whitman's appearance on
Bill Maher last week?
There she was fielding wheedling softball questions from Spineless Bill with
that horrific Barbie Doll smile on her face.
Sickening.
For all you connoisseurs of insolent political pap out there, rest assured
Christie blames the whole matter of Lower Manhattan's post 9-11 toxic air
quality on a chronically insubordinate underling at the E.P.A.
As the old misanthrope sez "what rubbish!"
It was to be sure a wretched performance from both the ex governor of New
Jersey.
Whitman is a feckless reckless lying unrepentant weasel.
Evasive yet full of sad nervous tics she certainly didn't want to be accused
of lying, nonetheless the human scale of the post 9-11 toxic cloud didn't seem
to bother her one damn bit.
And indeed why should it?
Certainly as long as well whipped Media Whores like Bill Maher are on the job
she need not fear hostile invasive questioning from any journalists.
Nope I think her biggest concern was maintaining her future political
viability, after all Dick Cheney is looking rather pale lately.
This whole toxic cloud thing is naught but a tiny speed bump on the road to
glory.
Whitman has been and always will be a nasty little GOP fixer and a grandee of
the party's national political machine.
She is a member in good standing of that gubernatorial cabal that foisted
George Bush Jr. on the country at all costs.
They wrecked the constitution possibly beyond repair so what is a bunch of
lung cancer cases to them?
We the people need to step back a moment and remember, that citizenry should expect honesty from it's appointed guardians...it should NOT have to be demanded or extracted from any public servant kicking and screaming.
This admin has such a long time record of truculence and mendacity that I think we forget that honesty ought to be and has been in the past the first recourse.
Not Christie though, she is playing this whole sorry mishaugas on a long bow.
Shameful really.
By the time the denizens of Wall Street and Greenwich Village start dropping
dead in earnest Christie will already have gone to the throne of the
republican God of Thunder and Fundraising.

Sick
Demented
Typical.

Friday, September 19, 2003

Friday Notes

I wanted to write a quickie on the spectacle of John Ashcroft hurling his defiance at those avatars of a new and corrupt class...America's Librarians.
Anthrax mailers, terrorists, and all like that walk this earth proud and free, but don't worry Ashcroft has the librarians on the run.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided the whole shameful episode spoke for itself.
I'm on vacation next week...I'm off to New York for three days.
But if it all goes to smash and I don't come back, try to remember I was once an eagle.
Meanwhile drop by my good friend Lis Riba's blog for more in depth stuff on the librarian thing.
www.osmond-riba.org
Well worth it IMHO.
And in closing, lets hope I got the above hot-link to Lis' website right.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

King Snitch in Massachusetts Bay

The Chairman of the Terrorism Subcommittee of the National Governor's Conference is none other than our own churlish dilettante Willard Mitt Romney.
Predictably in answer to the challenge of domestic terrorism that gung ho CEO has called for the creation of "state wide intelligence networks".
As if we don't do ENOUGH poking and prying into each other's lives as it is.
Romney doesn't even have the sense God gave a floorwalker at Sears...he is more like a seedy bottomed out police snitch...so it's inevitable that his answer to terrorism is better and better perches from which to sing like canaries about our neighbors and loved ones.
It's that old "If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem.

However let's give Romney some credit...at least his staff practices what the Kolobian Viceroy preaches.
I read in today's Globe that Mitt's communication's director Eric "shit-eyes" Fehrnstrom wrote a haughty letter to WLVI's general manager decrying a "partisan" speech made by news contributor Shannon O'Brien.
Some of you may remember that O'Brien lost the gubernatorial election last year and has since been forced to sing for her supper on the public airwaves.
Apparently Eric didn't care for the precise contents of a speech "journalist" Shannon O'Brien made in Worcester and has gone tattling to Vince Manzi, the GM at WLVI.
"By not curbing her political activity" whines this loathsome arrogant toady "You give us little confidence that Ms. O'Brien's reports will be free from bias..."
Cheeky little bastard isn't he?
But he has the true snitch style down pat.
I also love his use of the imperial "us".
Boy oh boy just carry a few suburbs by a wide enough margin and these out of state courtiers start comporting themselves Austrian Archdukes don't they?
Eric has a point though, there is a thin line between journalism and partisanship...and WTKK Jay Severin and Howard Stern and a vast legion of radio talk show tyrants routinely cross it every day thumbing their nose at the public good all the while.
The FCC has decreed the Howard Stern Show a "news" program-drunken angry dwarves and all...whilst 96.9 FM talk STILL advertises Jay Severin as "live and local" despite the fact he calls the show in from his home in the Bronx.
And there are still worse excesses out there...but it suits Romney's petty Huey Long like governing persona to continually bully someone he beat last year by a wide margin.
Sick
Demented
Typical...
Stupid is as stupid governs...


Rumsfeld sez there is no discernible link between Al Queda and Saddam Hussein.
A line faithfully parroted by his most reliable henchman George W. Bush Jr. the current President of the United States.
It's sequences like this that force us to confront once again the unquiet notion that Bush is naught but the meat puppet of his advisors.
Putting that aside for the moment this kinda leaves Dick Cheney in the lurch doesn't it?
I mean he was bravely toe-ing the Admin line last Sunday on "Meet the Press" asserting Al Queda's links to Saddam...and then Rummie and the Chimp pull the rug out from under him.
Bad craziness indeed-the Kay Reports allegedly disputes the existence of Iraqi WMD's and now the Bush regime won't stand by the Baghdad-Bin Laden link.
Why did we go to war the world wonders?
If you asked me I'd say Rove and company are getting ready to replace Cheney on the 2004 ticket with some nice handsome unthreatening mediocrity like Mitt Romney or the late John Ritter.
And not for nothing, but Cheney is looking plain awful these days. He mumbles out of one side of his mouth like a stroke victim and his body language even seated, is eloquent of Parkinson's disease.
Of course Tim Russert can't bring himself to browbeat such a feeble old wretch, no Tim has to save that animosity for Wesley Clark or some other suitable victim.
Remember, Tim is the pimp who called Rummie "America's Stud" in the Reader's Digest....you don't have to know anything else about Russert's journalistic objectivity other than that.
Mean while...back at the White House.
It's times like this that I recall a certain episode of "Gilligan's Island" with the simplest nostalgia.
In one of that show's trademark freak-out dream sequences, Gilligan imagines himself the hapless puppet dictator forced to dance and kneel at the command of Nehemiah Persoff.
I think Bush has that dream pretty much every night now....sometimes it's Condi pulling the strings, other times it's Rumsfeld but it is the same scenario night after night.
No wonder the First Lady slips out of the White House for solo vacations....

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Laura Ingraham on Imus Monday morning...

Did I mention that?
If I didn't you have to understand, Laura is one of the most stultifying personalities on the radio today-I simply forgot.
I mean...the morning farm report holds more visceral excitement for listeners than this turgid old witch.
All her high pitched adolescent snarkiness can't conceal the utter boredom she routinely generates.
I have no idea how this woman prospers on talk radio...she doesn't have an original opinion to save her miserable life.
Oh the I-Man tried to make her seem interesting, actually allowing an in-studio interview as opposed to his normal germ-phobic practice of doing call-ins.
Gotta hand it to the famously dipsomaniacal Ms. Ingraham,...she might've been drinking kerosene the night before but she always sounds fresh as a daisy for these Imus appearances.
Somehow at Dartmouth Laura learned the secret of overcoming hangovers...so all that alleged beard time she put in with Dinesh D'Souza seems to have paid off.
Does it even matter that she was on Imus to flog some trite new book?
"Shut up and Sing: how elites from Hollywood, Politics and the U.N. are ruining America..." or some such twaddle like that I forget the exact title.
Guess she is pissed off at Hollywood...like Chris Ruddy she can't figure out what George Clooney knows about foreign policy...but then what does a drunken fembot harpy really know about national politics anyway?
More to the point, how did a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School somehow exempt herself from the elites she so casually decries?
Hell where would she be without elite patronage?
I mean you can't expect someone this banal to bootstrap themselves up by themselves....there is a reason why they are called TEDIOUS MEDIOCRITIES y'know.
Her book sounds like boiler plate stuff that was old when whatzername wrote "The News twisters" back in 1969.
Frankly any idiot can write one of these rightical chic media elite denunciations...just roll out the usual lies and spin, collect yer advance, and then hunker down when Joe Conason shows up to expose the cynical mendacity that stains every page of your book.
Sweet Laura, Milady Tedium Maxima....I think I'd prefer old fashioned mob rule to the reign of giggly beeyotches like her.
Sick
Demented
Typical....

Monday, September 15, 2003

Rumsfeld in Wonderland

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld lives in a fantasy world.
It is a very nice fantasy world all told, happy little capitalists jet to
work in free market rocketships, parents ecstatically waving vouchers send their kids to private schools, US troops are hailed as liberators throughout Iraq, and the schoolchildren of Tikrit will soon be downloading the sermons of Pastor John Hagee from the internet unmolested.
In sum a sort of low tax no government Heritage Foundation Utopia available
to all consumers.
Those helpful souls at NPR broadcast the Secretary's appearance at the
National Press Club, a very suggestive use of the public airwaves it was too.
A surprising amount of the talk was given over to the Secretary's
simpleminded economic nostrums.
Don Rumsfeld thinks he is a businessman with a lavish experience of the
private sector. Never mind his origins as a sort of Waylon Smithers character in the Ford White House, Don still thinks his decades of crony capitalism qualify him as simple entrepreneur.
Don Rumsfeld worships the so called free market, with naive intensity. This
allows him to conveniently forget his years of raking it off the top via a
rolodex stuffed with vital phone numbers and pass himself off as a rugged
individualist/moralist...a kind of Tarzan for the Rotary Club.
"Government doesn't create jobs and investment, the private sector does" he piously squawked at one point.
Which is nothing sort of bleakly hilarious given the fact that he spent a
good portion of the interview defending the President's request of 87 billion
tax-payer's dollars for Iraqi reconstruction.
THAT according to Secretary Rumsfeld is a perfectly fine use of public funds.
The irony of course, doesn't occur to Mr. Rumsfeld but then as I've said
before true believers are not known for their sense of humor.
Of course the language of this 87 billion dollar boondoggle is couched in all
the latest rightical chic jargon, it'll be used to "build opportunity" and
"unleash the productive powers of the Iraqi people"...
Smells like a subsidy to me kids.
A big fat subsidy to pay for something that Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perle etc were all claiming would pay for itself painlessly via oil revenues not five months ago.
87 billion could go a long ways to terror-proofing vulnerable industries,
ports and institutions in America. It would buy a lot of first responder training for Police and Firefighters.
But they are never gonna see a penny of that money not as long as Rummie and his fellow acolytes are still mesmerized by a vision of Iraq as a free market utopia.
And that is what we are fighting for in Iraq, to give those poor benighted
hottentots the same opportunities as any smart finance worshipping GOP hack.
The Secretary of Defense's delusional missionary zeal is nothing sort of
appalling given our steady casualties in Iraq.
The link between our occupation of Iraq and the need to prothelytize modern business civilization therein was heavy and explicit in this speech.
Irrational?
Yes especially given the casualty rates....but it's all to the greater good in Rummie's mind.
That is what those guys are dying for, the chance to create an "opportunity
society" in the Middle East.
Sick
Demented
Typical....

Friday, September 12, 2003

What is Howard Dean afraid of?

I think Howard Dean woke up good and scared Monday morning.
I think he saw the President's wretched puling speech Sunday night and realized Clark could jump in this thing and take the game to a whole new level.
The President is remorselessly creating a political vacuum, neither war nor peace, no prosperity and worse no security...the worst of all possible worlds...hell a man could actually get elected under these conditions!
The candidate who might be best situated to exploit that vacuum is Wesley Clark, a man loaded with both peace bona fides and national security credibility.
He is unconnected to Washington, he has no Senate votes to look up, no priors at all really.
If Clark gets in that puts two outside-the-beltway type two anti-war candidates before the electorate....and one of them is a general and the other is, a doctor.
Who would you pick?
See what the Dean campaign is worried about?
Dean has had a good summer, the antis are rallying to his cause, the money is rolling in nicely...nobody has questioned his flip flops on the Iraq War or his quaint atavistic notions about gun control.
He even managed to distance himself from campaign spending limits sans reproof-not bad for newbie on the national scene.
Now looms the potential candidacy of former NATO Commander Wesley Clark and suddenly Dean is well...running scared.
His internet fans are posting daily denunciations of Clark on the usual message boards and the Governor's campaign staff is clumsily trying to bait Clark into a vice presidential trap.
I think Dean believes his own support is paper thin and can be blow away in a stiff breeze, two weeks of good media about Wesley Clark and the good Doctor's campaign momentum may be stopped cold.
They sound and act worried, I can see the flop sweat quite frankly.

Up until now old Misanthrope has insisted that a Clark candidacy spells doom for Kerry....but the vibe from out the Kerry High Command seems to "bring it on". J.K. thinks this thing is gonna break down to a long slow slobberknocker in the snows of the Granite State, with money, volunteers and sheer endurance being the deciding factor.
He has survived Viet Nam, defeat, divorce, Bill Weld, the Deaniacs and now a General looks to get into this thing with both feet.
It is just another typical day for John Kerry quite frankly....like Mr. Spock "he's been dead before".
Meanwhile Dr. Dean and his handlers have to be worried about becoming the Eugene McCarthy of 2004....just good enough to tempt a bigger badder competitor into the race.
Which is why I keep talking about an impending "Bobby Kennedy" moment in campaign 2004.
Now Clark could decline to run, it's an awful fund-raising burden and the pace is a killer....but I suspect he smells victory amidst all the current mishaugas.
However I could be wrong.
What is Howard Dean afraid of?

I think Howard Dean woke up good and scared Monday morning.
I think he saw the President's wretched puling speech Sunday night and realized Clark could jump in this thing and take the game to a whole new level.
The President is remorselessly creating a political vacuum, neither war nor peace, no prosperity and worse no security...the worst of all possible worlds...hell a man could actually get elected under these conditions!
The candidate who might be best situated to exploit that vacuum is Wesley Clark, a man loaded with both peace bona fides and national security credibility.
He is unconnected to Washington, he has no Senate votes to look up, no priors at all really.
If Clark gets in that puts two outside-the-beltway type two anti-war candidates before the electorate....and one of them is a general and the other is, a doctor.
Who would you pick?
See what the Dean campaign is worried about?
Dean has had a good summer, the antis are rallying to his cause, the money is rolling in nicely...nobody has questioned his flip flops on the Iraq War or his quaint atavistic notions about gun control.
He even managed to distance himself from campaign spending limits sans reproof-not bad for newbie on the national scene.
Now looms the potential candidacy of former NATO Commander Wesley Clark and suddenly Dean is well...running scared.
His internet fans are posting daily denunciations of Clark on the usual message boards and the Governor's campaign staff is clumsily trying to bait Clark into a vice presidential trap.
I think Dean believes his own support is paper thin and can be blow away in a stiff breeze, two weeks of good media about Wesley Clark and the good Doctor's campaign momentum may be stopped cold.
They sound and act worried, I can see the flop sweat quite frankly.

Up until now old Misanthrope has insisted that a Clark candidacy spells doom for Kerry....but the vibe from out the Kerry High Command seems to "bring it on". J.K. thinks this thing is gonna break down to a long slow slobberknocker in the snows of the Granite State, with money, volunteers and sheer endurance being the deciding factor.
He has survived Viet Nam, defeat, divorce, Bill Weld, the Deaniacs and now a General looks to get into this thing with both feet.
It is just another typical day for John Kerry quite frankly....like Mr. Spock "he's been dead before".
Meanwhile Dr. Dean and his handlers have to be worried about becoming the Eugene McCarthy of 2004....just good enough to tempt a bigger badder competitor into the race.
Which is why I keep talking about an impending "Bobby Kennedy" moment in campaign 2004.
Now Clark could decline to run, it's an awful fund-raising burden and the pace is a killer....but I suspect he smells victory amidst all the current mishaugas.
However I could be wrong.
I was just thinking...

How well did Joe Lawless sleep last night?
I suppose he slept like a baby...

Thursday, September 11, 2003

If the radio is to be believed...

The "Massachusetts Victims" of 9-11 are gathering at the State House for a commemoration ceremony presided over by Governor Willard Mitt Romney.
To have lost a loved one on 9-11 is a soul shattering affair...but to be "comforted" by that chilly Kolobian viceroy has just got to be the last straw.
To be drowned in the carefully rehearsed, storebought, GOP inspected "sympathy" of this vain, unfeeling, ambitious man is naught but a burden to the survivors-I feel for them.
All the toneless rhetoric in the world from this pasty faced charlatan can't restore a familiar tread on the front stairs or restore a longed for voice.....
****
However, It's a known fact that most chronic onanists can't stand to be touched, so with any luck the bereaved will be spared gubernatorial hugs and face to face pep talks.
I've also heard from my impeccable State House Sources that the Governor had to be forcibly dissuaded from staging a boy's pie eating contest in the public gardens as part of the 9-11 anniversary.
Yes indeed, the Honor Guard from the Boston Fire Department would have laid aside their bagpipes and been pressed into service hosing off both winners and losers.
But that is only a rumor.
:)
Better times are coming, I can feel it.

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

A matched pair of religious fanatics

Catch the front page of the Globe today-a picture really is worth a thousand words sometimes at least.
A more eloquent and instructive graphic could not have been run.
Our Governor the Kolobian Viceroy, Mitt Romney was dutifully attending John Ashcroft's appearance at Faneuil Hall yesterday. The AG in turn was excitedly expounding on his plans to destroy the Bill of Rights completely and rule the U.S. like a Czar.
So of course Romney was caught applauding these gruesome policies, anything that increases the power of the overclass is just fine by him.
Jack off....
And not fer nothin' but John Ashcroft couldn't catch a cold if he went wading in December's ditchwater!
The slack life of a rightical chic senator from Missouri is but poor preparation to be Attorney General of a free people in a time of crisis. Back in the day all Ashcroft was good for was slurpin' vanilla ice cream and filling up the Congressional Journal with biblical solutions to the budget deficit.
Now with each new outrage he demands new powers in perpetuity to meet the crisis, none of which are making anyone any safer...and brutishly ironic given the AG's lackluster record of fighting terrorism.
But there was Romney, grinning like a mongoloid and clapping as if his life depended on it.
And why not?
Each new police power granted Ashcroft makes the Presidency an ever more attractive proposition to a power worshipping aristocrat like Mitt.
At least a goodly number of protestors marked yesterday's shameful event.
I don't have much to say in favor of demonstrators....but as far as I'm concerned I hope they follow Ashcroft like Ahab chased the whale....dog the bastard-given half a chance he'd send the lot to Utah's salt mines.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

One thing is for damn sure...


           General Clark is IN this thing no question.
After watching Bush's maundering Nixonic speech Sunday night repleat with the familiar lies, evasions, stuttering, and gross political fantasies...I could feel Clark's "Bobby Kennedy moment" even from my remote fastness atop Middlesex County....
Clark is a fool if he doesn't jump in quite frankly...a well crafted well publicized speech and even sans organization and money he'll surge to #1 in N.H.
Trust me on this I can feel it...Clark's hour has struck.
Nobody has created the Clark candidacy except perhaps George Bush Jr. himself.
Ill at ease and reliant on paper-thin cliches in a crisis, sunday night's speech illustrates how little Bush has to fall back on in a crisis.
Indeed this was inevitable given the circumstances behind his selection as President in 2001.
Bush has always operated in an odd disturbing vacuum, the American people as far as the "war on terror" is concerned have been content to let him run amok, but this should not be confused with active consent of the governed.
Into that selfsame vacuum comes Clark, unburdened by a legislative record and with few enemies except the usual frothing columnists on the national scene.
A well staged announcement could shake up the race like Bobby Kennedy's famous "reassessment" in the spring of 1968.
After that it's a question of money and logistics...play those games well and he can knock Graham, Lieberman, and Edwards out before the first ballot in Iowa.
Now all you Deaniacs out there....listen up, if and when Clark gets in Kerry will take a potent polling hit, this I won't dispute.
But don't be surprised if Dean's momentum isn't stopped cold as well....the anti-war vote this time is soft and much pre-occupied with electability.
So look to your volunteers my friends, make sure they are sold on your guy solid cause' you are all gonna be doing a lot of cold weather lit drops in Manchester N.H. come January.

That is unless Kerry can talk him out of it...no doubt promises of the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, the Vice Presidency or a nice new X-Box are in play....

  :)

Monday, September 08, 2003

When the Sleeper Sleeps

Normally when we are treated to a full bore Presidential speech from George Bush Jr.we get a mixture of puritan condescension, insincerity and a pronounced boredom with his own lies.
To that list we can now add a morbid state of hypnosis.
No joke I was listening to Bush's speech last night on NPR and at least on the radio he sounded like one of the crew from the U.S.S. Pueblo droning through a list of America's "misdeeds and crimes".
Sad really....if you are worried about the President's dignity.
Five short months ago, it was all "mission accomplished", Richard Perle was lacing on his dancing shoes in the pious hope of cutting a fandango atop the ruins of the United Nations.
it was gonna be the Neocon's summer of luv, a gallows set up in front of DNC Headquarters and a string of english immersion charter schools all through out Iraq....I can hear their mirthless chortling even now through the thump of mortar rounds and car-bombs.
Now that same President is going hat in hand to the same United Nations seeking additional peace-keeping troops.
Look how the mighty have fallen!
Suddenly we are faced with another long hard twilight struggle against terrorists, terrorist sympathizers and who knows perhaps the P.T.A. and the Springfield Theosophical Society.
Oh and he cited a generation of U.S. equivocation in the face of terrorism that helped bring about 9-11, damn Bush is a hardcase, implicitly calling his father an appeaser like that!
Poor guy, he's always trying to force that high pitched voice his down into a manly Texas register.
Which is what makes him slur his speech and sound like retard.
It was a painfully repetitive effort terror-terrorist-terrorism, rinse and repeat.....remember Bush has an adversarial relationship with traditional eloquence and the printed word-stuff that'll bite him in the ass hard when he has to starting explaining himself.
It was however a Colin Powell inspired effort to retrench and reconfigure the war in the very multilateral terms that were scorned not five months ago...a virtual public admission that the go-it-alone-punch-somebody-anybody ethic has yielded up no god results.
Bush's Iraq adventure is going to cost us some 150 billion dollars by next November on Iraq alone if Tim Russert is to be believed (and he is not, Tim's figures are lowballs no doubt).
This was Bush at his worst-his only coherent rhetoric are threats usually. Otherwise he was trying to take the high road and ignore his own mistakes and stupid optimism whilst sticking the taxpayers with an 87 billion dollar promissory note.
The Democrats from within and without Congress are well within their rights to demand to know where the money is gonna come from if the President insists on his "infinite tax cuts" policy?
The fatal political weakness of George Bush is that he has nothing, no hero status, no sensible public ideology, no friends, and no reserve of goodwill to fall back on in tough times. His presidency is built on election stealing, nepotism, cronyism,boosterism, and a loud obnoxious brand of shameful pseudo-populism...it seems formidable but is in fact as light as ashes when the going gets tough.
Whereas six months ago, Bush looked like a front runner to be the First American Hereditary Emperor, now today RNC Chair Ed Gillespie has to be frantically reviewing the GOP Governors' dossiers looking for a nice clean cut boy to take them all into the future...assuming there is a future for any of them.
Ed has his own problems, even the dimmest tout at Suffolk Downs can tell you the GOP has a thin bench for national office if and when La Famiglia Arbusto go over the hump.
It was in sum, a dismal wretched exercise, equal parts lies and fantasy delivered poorly by a truculent brute who is pouting over his self inflicted wounds.

He should've worn his fighter jock drag, that always overawes the serfs...frankly he'll need it, its gonna be a bleak fall for George Bush.
Sick
Demented
Typical

Friday, September 05, 2003

The Will't to power...

I've always felt that George Will must answer for quite a lot when his time comes.
Chiefly for reviving a faux English style of dress and deportment that was strictly from hunger back in the salad days of Alice Roosevelt and the Square Deal.
But George can get down wit' da peeps when he wants to, calling in to the Imus Program like a proper jolly fellow.
Alas, Will's Imus appearances generally have that Laura Ingraham aspect to them, too boring to recount in total.
I will however note one complete howler here that require repeating far beyond this tiny blog....
Will kept calling Attorney General John Ashcroft "Ashbrook"...he had to be corrected on this point by Don Imus no less whose corroded wits are the stuff of legend.
Once he had the names sorted out, Will swung into an impassioned defense of Ashcroft's reign at the DoJ citing the "fact" that we've suffered no further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9-11-01 as "proof" the Attorney General is doing a good job.
Get that....nothing has happened to us since 2001, therfore Ashcroft must be behind it all!
Ghod forbid we could be just gettin' lucky...nope Ashcroft has saved us from...nothing...proof of that, nothing has happened.
Maybe Will's wits are starting to dissipate...too young a wife and too much champagne at diplomatic receptions...but last I heard the "anthrax mailer" was still at large....so that's one slight blemish to Ashcroft's happy record of nothingness.
Doublethink Blues

Chris Matthews was on Imus yesterday.
It was a witless and frantic appearance for the most part....Chris makes so little sense these days one begins to wonder if he's built up a tolerance to his psychotropics or something.
He did however deliver up a magnificently cognitively dissonant analysis of John Kerry's yes vote on Iraqi Intervention...
It was spectacular.
He asserted that Kerry's current criticism of the war was "cynical"....the senator voted yes and turned a blind eye to the terrible consequences of the occupation and that somehow invalidates his current criticism.
On this point Chris sounded incredulous, indignant, and insincere all at the same time...."what he voted yes and somehow didn't realize the war would be a messy one???"
What a load of crap.
Think back to May of 2003, Imus and Matthews were on the air gleefully giggling like schoolboys at the President's cheeky carrier stunt. Oh they were fully signed on to the "mission accomplished" mishaugas and were looking forward to a summer of torturing democrats and perhaps-yes a laurel crown for George Bush Jr.
Now with our soldiers dying day on a mission the President proclaimed as mighty victory Imus and Matthews are backtracking frantically trying to adjust their prior morbid triumphalism with the harsh facts coming out of Iraq.
Of course they can't admit they are wrong....they can't even admit they were lied to....they are that committed to the President's failed policy.
It may be in the fullness of time Karl Rove and George Bush may come to regret their the President's stupid antics on the flight deck of the Abraham Lincoln....but it's a malfunctioning system indeed that doesn't think to call out Chris Matthews and his brethren for their servile truckling in regards to the same.
It's not quite propaganda but.....

WTKK 96.9 fm "talk" in Boston uses clip from the Bill O'Reilly show hyping Mitt Romney's notional presidential candidacy in 2008 as a station promo.
Real subtle guys...real subtle.
But then this is the same station that runs PSA's loudly and crudely celebrating the student enhancing joys of the MCAS....so I suppose puffery and truckling such as the above is the price of doing business.
I hate to clue youse guys at WTKK, but Mitt (admittedly GOP Boss Christy Mihos' greatest creation) will be long gone by 2008. He'll make the same mistake his father made selling his freedom in return for some trite cabinet position-count on it.
By 2008 Massachusetts will no doubt be in the grip of some other rightical chic amateur demagogue-unless we get our shit together.
But how often does that happen?
Otherwise this state is headed to a future that is boss ridden, hag ruled, and policed by demagogues as was once Louisiana in the golden aufklarung of Huey Long.
On the other hand maybe WTKK ought to go the blunt route and change their call letters to WGOP or some such twaddle as that.

Thursday, September 04, 2003

Kerry Announces plus the unquiet shade of Paul E. Tsongas

So I made it to Faneuil Hall last night wherein Senator Kerry declared for the Presidency.
I even got within line-of-sight of the podium, JK sounded clear concise and to the point.
The rain held off which was nice.
I remember when Tsongas declared, it rained like hell up in Lowell.
This whole thing last night put me in a subtle and nostalgic mood...I worked for Tsongas in his tiny issues and research office...a lawyer, two ambitious BA's and your humble narrator.
I was so superfluous to that campaign team that I regularly filled in for the receptionist when she needed to use the powder room.
Once while staring stupefied at the switchboard, I got a call from a distant voice asking to speak to the campaign manager...I said he was in a meeting which is when that voice told me with high good humor "But-but I'm the candidate!"
In the whole of the One Hundred Days of Paul E. Tsongas that was as close as I ever got to the erstwhile Man of Destiny.
Ah poor Paul, peace to his ashes.
Or maybe it was seeing that pompous social climbing libertarian fanatic Jon Keller in the press pool afterwards.
That took me back too.
Keller was obviously preening and standing around waiting for some yokels to recognize him so he could make some suitably snarky remarks about Kerry's speech.
Ghod remember him alright, always writing bilious put downs of Tsongas' platform in the Phoenix...dippy little bastard I'll bet he can't wait to do likewise and the same to Kerry.
Didn't see Howard Fineman though, not sure what a lugubrious apologist looks like, I just thought I'd scan the reporters for the one "journalist" who was rolling his eyes and making faces with the most adolescent fervor.
Sick
Demented
Typical...

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Annoucements, Annoucements...Announce-ments!

a terrible death to die,
a terrible death to die
a terrible
yer talked to death
a terrible death to die!

Sorry summer camp memories....ah the famous wahtuka death march...
:)
***
Well today John Kerry announces for President.
Oh sorry technically Kerry announced yesterday on that Aircraft Carrier-well good for him and I'm glad to see Former Senator Max Cleland is on the team.
After what happened to Cleland in 2002, I don't think Kerry can overplay the veteran's card at this point.
I am going down to his Faneuil Hall speech after work...no doubt it'll be tough getting in there, but what the hell.
Guess who else is gonna be there?
If we are to believe the Imus program, then no less a solon than Howard Fineman will be in attendance!
Yup based on his call-in today whatever copy he eventually turns in will no doubt be sodden with the usual glib eye rolling snarkiness.
He was however firm on one memorable point, he marked out with due sincerity for Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times. The Great Grey Lady's little Hag in Training need fear nothing from the famously biased Howard Fineman, she at least sleeps easier tonight.
Don and Howie just love her to pieces....auto-sycophancy on behalf of the other kewl kids at the table being a hallmark of terminal media whoredom.
I have to wonder though, why is Howard Fineman coming to tonight's speech?
Given the fact that his mind is completely made up in favor of the White House's spin, one wonders why he even bothers to show up?
Being a bad journalist and a worse columnist seems to involve quite a bit of pretense, showing up at events you'd normally disdain and pretend an interest in candidates you loathe.
If I see him I'll put in a good word for all of you....
But at any rate: Kerry in 2004!
Massachusetts First
Massachusetts Last
Massachusetts Always!

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Labor Day in the Commonwealth

As the swallows return to Capistrano, as a dog returneth to it's vomit, so to shall the students return unto Boston.
For some, it signals the end of Summer, for others the very death of Hope itself....still others see it as the quiet expiration of easy-assed parking on Newbury Street.
It is none of those things to Humble John...I have risen above the seasonal angst in the Hub.
I've got a gold body the very pre-penultimate Buddha....jolly of tummy and am long of lobe.
My eyebrows are getting grey and bushy, eloquent of wisdom and magic in the vasty reaches beyond Wake Island.
How did I come by this Godhead so suddenly?
Easy, I found legit parking in Allston Brighton on Sunday AND Monday afternoon.
I then preached to the Doctors in the Temple, healed some beggars afflicted with boils, and took a stroll atop the waters of the Charles.
When you get one miracle going the rest simply fall in line effortlessly.
:)
I was out and about an errand unrelated to this blog's mandate....perhaps the most memorable sight was a pair of yappy undergraduate co-eds exiting the packie laboring under a box loaded with expensive hard liquor....if I was but twenty years younger I might've tried to follow them back to their nest...
But "forty one IS forty one" to quote Bonaparte.
Nowadays I merely the note the phat cashola you could make selling denim miniskirts to the right cohort.
Nope it's labor day in Boston, Humble John switches from cheap gin and tonics to that soulful winterizing libation, Jack Daniels on the rocks.
Let the snow and winds blow high.