Friday, May 28, 2004

So what are we all afraid of?

These days it is a terrorist attack and all the mayhem, personal and political that comes in it's path.
We are down to living in mortal fear of a rocket propelled grenade attack on Madison Square Garden or the Fleet Center.
Or a savage train explosion a few days prior to the election.
Well...I dunno.
We used to be quite sanguine about living a mere forty minutes away from total nuclear annihilation.
Was the landscape dotted with unused fallout shelters when the Berlin Wall fell?
Indeed it was not.
I can recall with the simplest nostalgia the futile attempts by the Kennedy Administration to stimulate the public's interest in civil defense and fallout shelters.
Yet in the wake of murky new terror threats enunciated by the Attorney General, travel plans are being disrupted and people are stocking up on duct tape, flashlight batteries and whatnot else even as write this.
Maybe it's the immediacy of the whole thing that has us so scared.
Nuclear warfare was so all encompassing a prospect that most people simply shrugged it off and went on like nothing was happening.
George Orwell talks about the pervasive feeling of atomic fatalism after World War II.
Pretty much anyone in England at the time thought that nuclear warfare was bound to break out within ten or twenty years.
Nevertheless, with a simple shrug Orwell moves on to wondering whether or not Clement Atlee's labor government will ever abolish the House of Lords.
It's the small scale of terrorism that scares us. Somehow we thought that anything so huge as global thermonuclear war would be so "big" that it could never find an average citizen.
A sarin gas bomb though, going off in the subway....that seems emotionally and intellectually comprehensible.
And so we fret and worry as much about political fallout as the lingering effects of a dirty bomb.
Frankly I'm beginning to think we could all use a dose of fatalism.
It won't remove the danger but maybe the best we can hope for is to make it a little more livable.
Because the danger will be with us a good long time...so maybe we'd better get used to it.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

It has just been one damn...

media whore after another on Imus this week.

The I-Man seems to be in the throes of some kind of odd celeb-journalist backlash seizure...he devoted considerable time this morning to denouncing Fat Tim Russert's "Big Russ and Me" and Tom Brokaw's sacrosanct "The Greatest Generation".

You'd think he was reading "Chimes at Midnight" or something.

Of course Imus'doubtful antidote to all this nonsense is to invite a hopelessly biased snarkoid hack like Andrea Mitchell on the show.
Oh don't worry it was an easy-assed appearance for the NBC correspondent, not a word was spoken about Ms. Mitchell's pre-war flackery on behalf of Iraq's phantom nuclear weapons program.
Nope, instead Andrea derided Al Gore's speech yesterday as "red meat for the Bush haters" and spun John Kerry's decision to go ahead with the nomination in Boston as a "flip flop".
She went on to insist that Tom Brokaw's threat to reduce coverage of the Boston convention "forced" Kerry to "change his mind".
"If he can't stand up to Tom Brokaw how can he ever hope to stand up to Bin-Laden" giggled this allegedly unbiased journalist.
Frankly given the fact that Andrea Mitchell has made her contempt for John Kerry publicly known I don't see how NBC can keep her in DC...especially if the Senator wins the election this fall.
Ghod today's journalist doesn't even pretend to be unbiased...no they giggle and carry secure in the knowledge that they will NEVER be called to account for their revolting behavior.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Howard "The Logical Apologist" Fineman on "Imus in the Morning" today:

The mark of a serious apex predator media whore is that they will never give up on two cherished cliches:
1.) A tedious and calculated revulsion over Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky-loaded up with a much lip smacking innuendo as can be tolerated sans nausea.
and
2.) An interminable and adolescent disdain for Former Vice President Albert Gore Jr.

Whenever you hear one or the other, you can safely turn off the radio or switch the TV channel as you will not hear a single sensible thing for the rest of the program...count on it.
***
So Howie was on Imus today...trashing Monica and Al and wallowing in all his favorite routines.
He was puffing and blowing hard to scare up some bad news for Senator Kerry. However the best the Newsweek shill could come up with was the former Vice President's speech today in which Gore will call for the resignations of as yet unnamed Bush appointees.
This Fineman oddly construed as a danger to Kerry as it "builds a fire on his left".
?
Um...does Howard in fact read the AP anymore?
Or is Fineman's memory corroded by too many open bars at too many embassy parties?
Does He even know how to read?
I seem to recall that not two weeks ago Candidate Kerry took the "leftist" step of calling for the resignations of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers.
This was in response to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
And of course it is just pure leftism that the government be freed of torture apologists.
It seems pretty clear to Humble Elias that far from "building a fire on Kerry's left" Gore is rushing in to grab off a few embers with which to start his own blaze.
More power to him, dump on the bastards Al!
Clearly though, in the torpid depths of Howard Fineman's mind Al Gore's bid to get the boot in, constitutes a danger to Kerry somehow.
Cause' somehow Al Gore is such a pariah to the average voter I guess....or at least he is a pariah to smug overpaid DC pundits with no conscience to speak of.

Ghod what a slack mentality Fineman has....first he postulates a "threat" to Kerry on the left and then he pours over thin and unpromising evidence until he finds some slight bit of nothing he can spin as an ominous situation.

Truly the dawg daze of summer are upon us, and if Howard Fineman is any indication they may well last til' Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

(No) Things to Come:

So the President was reduced to making a speech for the Food Channel and the Oxygen Network last night laying out his plan for peace in Iraq?
Apparently, if I read the papers right Bush wants to give the Iraqi people something called "full sovereignty".
My reaction is...full sovereignty to what?
WE don't even fully control the country as yet....look at our casualties if you don't believe me.
The only thing we will be transferring to the Iraqi people come June30th is title on a civil war or if someone is fastidious enough an old fashioned coup d' tat.
Nope, this is more mush from the geek who put too much faith in a now discredited band of cut-throat advisors.
I do love the constant refrain of U.N. involvement and additional coalition troops...once again when his back is to the wall Bush lifts material from John Kerry sans demure.
***
As I've said before, we are beyond hypocrisy now....we are now in a land where pride and stupidity march hand in hand unopposed.
***
On the other hand this whole Bush=Hitler thing is strictly from poverty.
And it is inaccurate as well.
If Bush resembles anyone it is Sir Ralph Richardson's swaggering boneheaded "Chief" from the 1936 British film "Things to Come".
Thirty years of war have reduced England to barbarism ushering in the rule of Richardson's brutal tribal chieftain.
For all his bluster the Chief is no match for the super scientific peace loving "airmen" who eventually occupy the ruins of London without firing a shot.
That is Bush all over, the times are sweeping past him like a torrent and all he can do ring a bell and fire off his rusty old pistol snarling entirely laughably threats into the breeze.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Monday, May 24, 2004

An Irony Poor Diet:

"Bias is shallow thinking.
If you have life all figured out in neat little packages, you are in Neverland not in the real world
"

The Kolobian Viceroy 5-23-04

Good grief. but Governor Mitt sure can string together some shopworn cliches on his way to denouncing the Suffolk University Class of 2004 as a bunch of bigots.
You see, Romney got boo'd yesterday at Commencement so he lashed out in typical boardroom fashion.
Well who can blame him?
After all he lost last week and lost big time.
Six months of cupidity, passive aggression, and gruesome political opportunism in regards to gay marriage didn't end in rioting at Town Clerks' offices which would allow Mitt the moral victory of claiming "I tolja so!".
The out of state wowsers, which is all that is left of Mitt's once invincible governing coalition, can't be too pleased with their boy.
Mitt must be nervous and angry, the snowy electoral vistas of New Hampshire and beyond are receding even as I write this.
Gotta give him credit though, trash-talking the one audience that overwhelming supports gay marriage (that is, voters under the age of 25) took some kind of dumb-ass courage.
The man stands for nothing but raw sexual apartheid as a means to enhance his own presidential prospects...yet his audience at Suffolk is "biased" and "shallow".
The irony of course is lost on Romney...but then serious businessmen are a famously unselfconscious lot.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Sunday, May 23, 2004

The Shaming of the Shrew

Ghod John Kerry can't float the merest trial balloon without Eileen McNamara screaming like a stuck Irish Banshee?
This week the campaign conjured with the notion that the convention would become a sort of super rally with the
final nomination actually held off til later in order to push off the federal fundraising limit
to the last moment.
And predicatably this somehow sez "indecisive" to Eileen in today's column.
The idea is emminently debatable...somehow though it smacks of crippling irresolution to the increasingly
shrill and irrational Ms. McNamara.
The Globe's op ed page has hit absolute rock bottom, the neo-cons are arrogant and naive (Eilenn, McGrory,Lehigh) , the conservatives are impudent snobs (The most Reverend Jacoby) and
the so called liberals helpless timid wretches (all the rest).
Frankly I can take of leave the current proposal, the fact though that the local punditariat is in a bloodthirsty uproar about it
gives it some cachet as far as Elias Nugator is concerned.



Friday, May 21, 2004

The Affair Chalabi or the Twilight of the Slack Jawed Yokels....

The raid on neocon darling Achmed Chalabi's mansion in Iraq reads like the tragic end of a great romance...
A Junior High School romance that is.
The Pentagon gave this shyster three hundred thousand a month which Achmed brazenly spends on whores and bullyboys.
He lavishly promises to bring democracy to Iraq, run the refineries full blast, and recognize Israel.
He then turns around and happily starts dickering with Iran.
After months of waste, fraud and morbid abuse, Chalabi's admirers get up the courage to cut him off...whereupon a Judge swears out a warrant to raid his mansion which induces Achmed to convene a press conference to call the Yankees " big creeps" or words to that effect.
Yup sounds like love is in the air down at Junior High U.S.A.
And not for nothing but wasn't it a hallmark of neoconservative theology to denounce alleged "naivete" of liberal democrats like George McGovern for their soft approach to world communism?
Yup the so called neocons all left the democratic party back in 1972 in search of a political home that would take a hardline on the cold war.
They all did this in the name of "realism"...y'lknow the notion of cold hard facts in service to a rational balance of power.
And these self proclaimed realists all sat like children on ritalin at the feet of Achmed Chalabi as he cynically promised them peace, democracy, and charter schools in Iraq.
And these slack jawed yokels all fell for it...and it's cost us all billions of dollars and the lives of eight hundred U.S. soldiers.
Hopefully Achmed has his thirty three million bucks in US subsidies well invested by now.
It was probably time to get off the U.S. teat anyway and start preparing for the inevitable pro - Iranian coup he hopes to lead once our army has left.
Meanwhile back in DC, Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowicz and wailing like bereft children "What went wrong! I thought he LIKED US???"

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Thursday, May 20, 2004

What color is the sky in Jeff Jacoby's world?

Today he airily promises that the magic money spook (aka the "free" market) will soon bring down gas prices to low levels thus making fools of all elitists liberals everywhere.
Earlier week on NPR he blamed the public's lack of outrage about gay marriage on "liberal media elites".
And then there was he recent apologia for biblically inerrant christian education, a fine thing sayeth Jacoby much derided by "liberal media elites".
You see the pattern?
Everything is the fault of liberalism.
Conservatism is in decline in this country for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is their sniveling snitch mentality that abandons all responsibility for the state of the nation in favor of reflexively fixing blame on their political opponents.
Their argument runs, "If we could only get rid of ALL the liberals, somehow we conservatives would be purged of our inherent stupidity and could govern magnificently sans constrain!"
In fact more and more conservatism is becoming an ideology united only in it's hatred of liberalism.
Conservative economics is an oxymoron in this so called republican administration, morality issues are a bust, and their foreign policy is equal parts naivete' and fraudulence.
What is let but to go hunting liberals?
Jacoby is a big mouthpiece for the "blame mentality" of movement conservatism...inflexible, whiny, shallow, and bumptious...no wonder they love him.
To that list you can also add, "bereft of ideas" or at least any ideas that have a passing acquaintance with the reality as the rest of us know it.
Ah but in Jeff's world there is always a devil and he is always a liberal.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Time's Arrow:


In this week's issue of Time Magazine, the following quote was found:

"Berg's death reset the moral equivalence meter and reminded the world who the enemy is.
U.S. officials said privately that they could not believe the terrorists has such a poor grasp of public relations."

Collateral Damage,
Michael Duffy, Matthew Cooper, and John F. Dickerson
Time Magazine, 5-24-04

What times we do live in my friends, that a man's gruesome death is reduced to being a hypothetical effect on a particular individual public relations campaign.
But then, public relations, the formation of mass attitudes has a unique language all it's own. Events are measured quite literally and then translated into a lexicon used to maintain support for a political program.
Over time this lexicon can and does subvert clear orderly thinking....it harasses the mind into assessing events in turns of their potential for political advantage.
It is a language of assessment and prioritization. It is the essential precursor to said manipulation of news and information.
It is crude to label all this "propaganda"...if Jacques Ellul is to be believed, truly effective propaganda cannot exist in a functioning democracy owing at the very least to the multiple uncontrolled sources of information.
"When democracies make effective propaganda" sayeth the French scholar :"They cease to be democracies".
We are not talking about propaganda here, if we were, the news out of Iraq would be infinitely rosy and uplifting not a body-bag to be seen no buggered POW's in sight.
But there in play a self replicating language at play here, it automatically limits the range of rationality and imposes a predetermined meaning on events.
It can't control events...but it sure can try.
The fact that a lexicon like this exists in a democracy is bad enough for the moment.
I think it is quite possible for language and clear thinking to decline within the confines of a democratic polity.
Quotes like the one above are the proof of it, and worse things of this nature go on all the time.
Facts are the only thing that can stem it's grow and it's abuse of rationality.
Facts break it down and facts prevent it from evolving into an all encompassing system of propaganda.
And in conclusion, facts are the last thing you will find in the reportage of "Time" magazine.

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

The Eternal Sunshine of the Thoughtless Mind:

Does anyone over at the Boston Herald edit Howie Carr's column for stupidity?
Because if they don't then they should.
This is what Howie wrote on Sunday in regards to gay marriage:




This is the liberal credo: If it happens in Abu Ghraib prison, it's a war crime. If it happens at a rest stop on I-495, it's true love.

Welcome to Massachusetts. The Gay State. Sodom and Begorrah.

I suppose it falls to humble Elias to point out the obvious, that the prisoners of Abu Ghraib were forced to perform demeaning acts under threat whereas the Commonwealth's gay marriages are entirely consensual in nature.
If Howie is too moronic or torpid to tell the difference then surely there must be someone at the Herald with the stature to clue him in.
***
It is an open secret in Boston and beyond that since he helped to depose Governor Dukakis fourteen years ago that Howie has been in a dastardly creative funk.
Oh don't misunderstand, Howie still hustles after a fashion...he got rid of his mentor Jerry Williams and landed a sweet daily talk radio gig...and his commitment to a bumptious social conservatism is as harsh as ever.
However...lets face it...Howie is stuck in a rut-his barbed tongue has gone dull so to speak.
He is hardly ever seen at the Herald's offices anymore. Word is, he doesn't even keep an office there.
Dukakis is gone, Clinton dodged all those bullets effortlessly, people don't seem to care as much about the latest outrage in the state legislature...Carr is reduced to droning on about classic teevee on his radio show and wallowing in tedious fag bashing in his column.
You'd think that the legalization of gay marriage would rouse this fiery conservative populist with his low hatred of all so called political elites.
Nope quite the opposite, Howie can't even muster the energy for a coherent put down.
Maybe it's the embarrassment of the Herald's hiring of his former Boston Globe rival Mike Barnicle....nothing so drains the soul as a setback like that.
Maybe its those adverts in the sports-pages for adult-oriented video stores...most of whom have huge homosexual erotica sections.
Perhaps the veiled conflict of interest is beating poor Howie down.
Who can say?
:)


Monday, May 17, 2004

The Miracle of Democracy....

Well as of midnight, gay-residents-of-the-Commonwealth now have the right to marry.
Of course, the measure may not survive the 2006 ballot initiative...but for the moment all is well in Ghod's Country.
And let us stop for a moment however to celebrate the sheer diversity of the current debate.
Rock ribbed conservatives can rejoice that democracy in the Commonwealth is so strong that they can listen to ten hours straight of sneering homophobia courtesy WTKK 96.9 FM talk radio.
Liberals on the other hand can fearlessly spin the dials to...where?
"NPR!" howls a chorus of Howie Carr fans.
Ah yes National Public Radio whose storied integrity extends to interviewing a gay couple and some homo hating wowser as if they were morally equivalent in some murky journalistic fashion.
The cause of democracy and freedom is well served with vigilant guardians like Howie Carr, Jay Severin, and NPR on the job...
So if my rights are being so well defended by these "local" lions of journalistic incorruptibility, why can't I sleep at night?
:)

Friday, May 14, 2004

Tommy Too Late:

In a New York Times column dated May 13th 2004 Tom Friedman wrote the following:

Why, in the face of rampant looting in the war's aftermath, which dug us into such a deep and costly hole, wouldn't Mr. Rumsfeld put more troops into Iraq? Politics. First of all, Rummy wanted to crush once and for all the Powell doctrine, which says you fight a war like this only with overwhelming force. I know this is hard to believe, but the Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam. Second, Rummy wanted to prove to all those U.S. generals whose Army he was intent on downsizing that a small, mobile, high-tech force was all you needed today to take over a country. Third, the White House always knew this was a war of choice — its choice — so it made sure that average Americans never had to pay any price or bear any burden. Thus, it couldn't call up too many reservists, let alone have a draft. Yes, there was a contradiction between the Bush war on taxes and the Bush war on terrorism. But it was resolved: the Bush team decided to lower taxes rather than raise troop levels

NICE TRY TOM!

YER NOT FOOLING ANYONE YOU SPINELESS LACKWIT!

Now...after civilians are getting beheaded, prisoners tortured, and the whole of Iraq run like the Hell's Angels gone amok...NOW Terrible Tom Friedman suddenly decides to change sides and come out against the war.
Anything to get out ahead of the crowd so you can maintain the fiction that you are leading it somewhere.

And not fer nuthin'...but am I the only person in America who recalls Friedman's many many appearances on the Imus in the Morning program in which he fairly defecated himself at the mere mention of Donald Rumsfeld's name?
My Ghod Friedman used to howl and squeak his servile praise for the Secretary of Defense...it got pretty disgusting after a while.
"Th-those t-terrorists weren't counting on good old DON RUMSFELD I-Man!!" cringed the Times columnist.
Now suddenly Rummy is a bad guy.
And then there was the time Tom saw a pile of human skulls in Iraq and proclaimed that revolting sight all the justification for war that he needed.
Good Gawd, what is to be done?!
The only thing worse than having Tom Friedman as an opponent is having him as a ally even a de facto one.

Sick
Demented
Typical!





Thursday, May 13, 2004

Madness in the Corner Office?

Governor Decaf has apparently laid the maximum smackdown on Mayor Menino, insisting that Boston's City Clerk refuse to marry out of state gay couples come Monday.
The headline in today's Globe read "Boston adopts stricter stand on Gay Outsiders" (italics mine)
Very frankly, I think the Kolobian Viceroy going insane and none too quietly either.
When it comes to his irrational fixation on gay marriage, Romney is happily countenancing a level of bureaucratic pettifogging that would never be tolerated at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Think of it as passive aggression on a grand embarrassing scale.
Not only is Mitt going mad, but clearly his dementia has infected some of his closest collaborators.
Yesterday, Eric Fehrnstrom, the Governor's grotty overpaid mouthpiece was quoted in the Globe sputtering:
"What next, is Provincetown going to start marrying ten year olds in violation of the law?"
No doubt behind closed doors, the Utah Mafia expresses itself even uglier ways when it comes to gay marriage.
I think we can count on the Governor making one last unpleasant even borderline gesture come Monday.
It may be in the form of more out of state "volunteers" doing civil disobedience at Town Clerk's offices or it may be some desperate judicial intervention-who knows?
So if you are planning on getting hitched Monday keep your eyes peeled for some gubernatorial skullduggery...Romney just can't resist the temptation to posture and pose in the limelight when it comes to this issue.
The miserable opportunistic bastard seems the suppression of the rights of a tiny minority as his ticket to ride.

So much for reform my friends, there are out of state wowsers to be beguiled and god damn any one who says otherwise.

Sick
Demented
Typical
Madness in the Corner Office?

Governor Decaf has apparently laid the maximum smackdown on Mayor Menino, insisting that Boston's City Clerk refuse to marry out of state gay couples come Monday.
The headline in today's Globe read "Boston adopts stricter stand on Gay Outsiders" (italics mine)
Very frankly, I think the Kolobian Viceroy going insane and none too quietly either.
When it comes to his irrational fixation on gay marriage, Romney is happily countenancing a level of bureaucratic pettifogging that would never be tolerated at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Think of it as passive aggression on a grand embarrassing scale.
Not only is Mitt going mad, but clearly his dementia has infected some of his closest collaborators.
Yesterday, Eric Fehrnstrom, the Governor's grotty overpaid mouthpiece was quoted in the Globe sputtering:
"What next, is Provincetown going to start marrying ten year olds in violation of the law?"
No doubt behind closed doors, the Utah Mafia expresses itself even uglier ways when it comes to gay marriage.
I think we can count on the Governor making one last unpleasant even borderline gesture come Monday.
It may be in the form of more out of state "volunteers" doing civil disobedience at Town Clerk's offices or it may be some desperate judicial intervention-who knows?
So if you are planning on getting hitched Monday keep your eyes peeled for some gubernatorial skullduggery...Romney just can't resist the temptation to posture and pose in the limelight when it comes to this issue.
The miserable opportunistic bastard seems the suppression of the rights of a tiny minority as his ticket to ride.

So much for reform my friends, there are out of state wowsers to be beguiled and god damn any one who says otherwise.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

The politics of torture and the sheer torture of politics:

The ominous part of the whole Abu Ghraib Affair is that back in the United States we are inevitably separating into pro and anti torture factions.
If Abraham Lincoln could just see us now!

This polarization process has been slowed and obscured somewhat by Nick Berg's horrific death by beheading in Iraq....but nonetheless battle lines are being drawn up.
There is that Imus in the Morning clown the bumptious Richard "Bo" Dietl and Senator James Imhofe (R. Oklahoma) both of whom find think torture stuff is jim-dandy and only as much as the scum deserves. Their only regrets are that the whole mess got found out.
***
The funny thing is, the pro-torture faction, bellicose patriots and loud apologists of the President to a man, are themselves at odds with the spirit of administration policy.
Bush "apologized" for the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and promised an investigation of the whole sordid mess.
Of the photos he said he was "horrified" and that these actions were not of the America "he knows".
The President's so called policy in Iraq, is to win Iraqi "hearts and minds" via various good works.
Ghoulish torture photos therefore undermine this policy.
The pro torture faction won't have anything to so with this goody-goody nonsense.
Yesterday, Senator Imhofe got the ball rolling, using a tried and true GOP play denouncing the so called liberal media's reaction to the torture and spewing hatred and venom towards "humanitarian do gooders".
This is an old trick designed to turn attention away from the mayhem perpetrated and instead focus on the vague undesirability of those who condemn said mayhem.
The late Spiro Agnew was the acknowledged master of this particular ploy.
***
Imhofe ranted on in this Agnewian vein to the effect that the Abu Ghraib prisoners were all terrorists murderers and crooks implying that they somehow deserved to be tortured.
Bo Dietl, said much the same on Imus today and was, if anything, even more preposterously belligerent.
So clearly the pro-torture faction's program is simple, the scum must be ruled by strength....be they liberals here in America or some Baathist paper-pusher picked up in a sweep.
The policy differences within the GOP couldn't be starker, Bush enunciates a soft line whilst Imhofe and Dietl scream for whips and punishment.
:)
I mean, clearly we are headed for a confrontation here, sooner or later the President's soft policy will get in the way of the movement conservatism's newfound taste for blood sports and sexual humiliation games.
***
To the extent that we have an "anti-torture" faction in the US, it is headed by such naive bleeding hearts as ex POW Senator John McCain and his senatorial colleague Lindsey Graham, himself a former Air Force Judge Advocate.
What good these men can do I don't know...it seems like the rest of the GOP is sublimating it's frustration with the occupation of Iraq into a gruesomely queer zest for sadistic interrogation techniques.

The fact that there are serious political playas out there, defending torture is itself a sign of the incremental decline in old time democratic values in the USA.


Sick
Demented
Typical

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Joanie Vennochi catches up with The Chimes at Midnight...

Anyone out there read Joan Vennochi's column in the Globe today?
She sneers that Romney's current agenda, composed as it is of lower taxes, the death penalty, and fagbashing is naught but campaign piffle designed to maximize the Kolobian Viceroy's appeal to out of state voters.
Now correct me if I'm wrong here but didn't the Chimes at Midnight assert the same damn thing two week ago?
Didn't the "Little Blog that Cried" also assert that this triune platform would screamed from every rooftop in this fall's legislative races?
OY!
I suppose I should be worried about this, it means the big time columnistas are running only a fortnight behind me at best.
Up until now I thought I had a good six month lead on torpid yo-yos like Scot Lehigh and Brian Mooney.
Just have to ramp things up a notch.

In other news...

The Globe's gossip pages report that Luke Russert, Fat Tim's son is starting Boston College this fall.
I feel for the kid.
Clearly he didn't wanna go to Georgetown or Catholic University and commute from home.
Still if young Luke really wanted to give the old man the slip, he should've opted for Saint Anselm College in (romantic) Goffstown New Hampshire, yer boy Elias' semi alma mater.
Known as "Saint Ay's" to all it's hardy survivors the campus is cold, wretched, windswept and prone to persistent killing snow drifts until mid April.
The Benedictine Monks prowl around in long black cassocks muttering darkly the de-latinization of our youth and the decline in the relevance of the Saints.
In sum it's like Harry Potter's "Hogwarts" leavened with excessive drinking and sans the magic and joy.
As a practical matter it's a perfect place to ditch Dad and simply ski for four glorious years.
Well, young Luke had his chance...now every football season he'll be shoulder deep in ghastly BC alumnae all dressed like they are about to be shot out of a circus cannon.
Poor kid.

Monday, May 10, 2004

Fat Tim and Me...

Tim Russert was on Imus this morning.
In contrast to his usual crude put downs and tasteless references to impotence and senility, Tim was acting all solemn today.
And why not?
Like Tom Brokaw Tim now has a book to flog endlessly, "Big Russ and Me" which is apparently a memoir about his "larger than life" Dad.
Tim was earnest, Tim was sentimental (if that concept makes you nervous, then join the club)...Tim was serious.
The NBC reporter was preciously proud to have tracked down the specifics behind a horrific air crash his Father had survived back in World War II.
He even went so far as to get the relevant files from the Pentagon and everything.
Whotta reporter, I'm impressed.
Except...does anyone else get the impression that Tim did more research for this work of calculated hagiography than he did during the entire expanse of the Clinton impeachment scandal?
I mean back in the day, the RNC could pretty much feed Tim any amount of mendacious nonsense with the sure knowledge that he'd regurgitate it faithfully the following Sunday.
This is the same wise guy who derided the Florida Democratic Party's 2002 convention as "irrelevant" and was still making Whitewater jokes as recently as last year.
***
Well why flog him?
He is a media whore a pretentious mediocrity and a bit of a bully....in other words it's just plain fun to dump on him and his predictable by the numbers best-seller.
And besides when these hacks start soul-searching and wallowing in sentimental trash it's hilarious it just is.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Friday, May 07, 2004

Mad Ann Speaks to the Current Crisis

"No civilized society allows women in the military--this is separate and apart from the fact that you should not be allowing women to fight. "
Ann Coulter from an interview with KABC radio's Al Rantel 5-5-04

Does this mean Ann Coulter thinks Israel is not a "civilized country"?
Last I heard, Israel was way out in front of America in terms of fostering gender equality in the armed forces-they actually draft women.
Maybe this foreshadow a break between the dementia right and the Jewish State?
Perhaps Miss. Coulter is agitating for the U.S. to join the Arab boycott...after all, women are kept out of the armed forces in many-many Arab countries...by that logic Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Taliban's Afghanistan are all civilized nations.
***
I usually refrain from chasing after Ann Coulter's outrages, she makes herself too damn easy a target and besides, everyone goes after her...she is like the electric rabbit at Wonderland.
Anyway, the way she smokes she'll soon be dead of lung cancer so it's no fun dicking on the sick and unable like that.
Laura Ingraham though, is fair game to the Chimes at Midnight. Here I confess a mercenary construction, I'm down on Laura mostly because she makes herself unavoidable to me thanks to her many appearances on the Imus in the Morning program.
Moreover there is just something tragic and pathetic about this lonely dipsomaniacal Ivy Leaguer doing her comical impersonations of liberal politicians like a tourettes victim into the phone in some wretched bedroom somewheres.
Laura is sad and broken, Ann is just plain desperate for attention.
There is a difference.
In that above quoted interview, Ann also denounces her gender as being "vicious"....too vicious for the army by extension.
IF you follow her logic though you have to ask...is there such a thing as being too vicious for punditry?
If she thinks women shouldn't carry guns, then why the hell should they be allowed to opine on the public airwaves?
Ann's thinking leads inevitably to a perfectly smooth inescapable intellectual cul-de-sac...one even she can't get out of.
Well if you want the rest of the interview it was blogged here.
Check yesterday's posting for the details.

Happy Mother's Day...
Elias





Thursday, May 06, 2004

An Irony Poor Diet...

Isn't it funny how on the same day that "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" accused Senator Kerry of "lying about atrocities in Viet Nam" their employer President Bush was "outraged" on Arab TV over allegations that our troops were sticking brooms up the bungholes of Iraqi prisoners-among other sundry brutalities.
John O'Neill (a Chuck Colson discovery back in the heady days of the White House Plumbers) calls John Kerry "unfit" to be President. Meanwhile the man who is now paying his bills goes hat in hand to Arab television promising "justice" for those Iraqis who were saddled and rode like donkeys by U.S. Troops.
Yet somehow at the same time, Bush manages to not apologize for these gruesome activities....being the Overseer of Plantation USA apparently means never having to say you are sorry.
We are truly reached post-irony civilization in this country.
In the good old days poor threadbare hypocrisy would pay a few shekels to a demigod named virtue and go on hustling for a bite to eat.
Now, hypocrisy has knifed virtue and dragged it's carcass up and down Pennsylvania Avenue live on national television.
We are so beyond mere revulsion at hypocrisy, these days a blatant double standard is enshrined as the norm and guarded jealously by a legion of pundits, activists, paid private security forces and ghod knows how many campus conservative bundists.

Sick
Demented
Typical

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Not that I wanna...

indulge vulgar Freudianism or anything, but does anyone else out there think that George Bush suffers from a sort of displaced penis envy when it comes to John Kerry's many medals from the Viet Nam War?
The current GOP propaganda line which includes the usual "troubling" doubts about JK's first purple heart and a "spontaneous" appearance by an anti-Kerry group of Viet Nam vets has all the hallmarks of repressed homoerotic longing.
If Bush can't have what Kerry earned in battle, then the President (ever the spurned lover) will tear our candidate to pieces like an enraged drag queen.
***
And not for nothing but who are these hammerheads that La Famiglia Arbusto hired to staff "Swift Veterans for Truth" or whatever it is...?
The media is spinning this as an attack by "every one" of Kerry's superior officers in Viet Nam.
In fact three of the heavy hitters in this group , Lt. Colonel James Zumwalt, Captain Adrian Lonsdale, and Lt.Commander George Elliot (who nominated Kerry for the Silver Star) all but ENDORSED Kerry during his hard fought re-election fight
in 1996!
Now of course these yobs are all up in arms about Kerry's work with the Viet Nam Veterans against the War....activities that they knew all about in 1996.
If they were that hung up about Kerry's antiwar activities then why did they endorse and defend him?
It's all on the front page of today's Boston Globe if you want tor ead about it.
Honest to Ghod Karl Rove must be desperate to dredge up a howler like this.
Oh I'm under no illusions here, the headline for the next week will all be about "NEW TROUBLING ALLEGATIONS" and all like that.
The simple truth is though, you've got to walk some hard miles in the Bush White House before you can find anyone with as heroic a record as John Kerry's was in Viet Nam.
He earned every medal while our current President was drunk before noon in the Texas Air National Guard's infamous "champagne unit".
That remains the starkest contrast between the two men...and I devotely hope the American people hear about it soonest.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Ideological notes to the fall campaign in Massachusetts:

The fall campaign for the state legislature is slowly taking shape:
At this point it seems clear that Romney's handpicked collection of GOP candidates, bindlestiffs, video store night managers, unemployed consultants, and pantry boys from campaign 2002...will be running on a three pronged program:
1.) The Death Penalty. Today's proposal for a DNA based level of certitude in capital cases is naught but a harbinger of bloodthirsty rhetoric to come. No doubt the Kolobian Viceroy and his hand-picked sock puppet will be whistlestopping in villages like Menotomy atop a portable gallows.
2.) Fag-bashing. Initially tarted up in lofty syrupy phrases like "the defense of the sacred rite of marriage"...but as the campaign lurches into October look for the usual porcine squeals and grunts from Governor Decaf and his toadies about "queers and nancy-boyz".
3.) You know it, you love it...olde reliable the blunderbuss of an issue that tamed and bankrupted a proud republic, yew guessed it A TAX CUT.
Oh that'll jut be the crowning touch...Romney atop his gallows promising dire punishment for the Commonwealth's dykes and homos. When he isn't fagbashing The Man from Kolob will be promising to make money by way of tax cuts rain from the heavens liken unto the biblical deluge.

Don't know what the response to this should be quite yet...but it's pretty clear to me that Mitt is running all out and state wide again.
In part to restrict the opportunities for Kerry loyalists to campaign for our guy out of state...but also even the least pick up of votes in the Great and General Court can be spun into a huge victory for "team reform".
On the other hand, the municipalities are strapped for cash with more unfunded state mandates being cooked up all the time...the tax cut may seem like an odd ill timed proposal if people start counting the pot-holes on the way home from work.
The death penalty is inevitable in Massachusetts even if our passive aggressive archbishop speaks out against it.
My main problem with it is operation, Romney is such a lowlife skank do we really want him with the power of life and death over anyone?
As for the fagbashing...that has to be met head on, and it's not a question of candidates who are willing to engage it requires the plain people of Massachusetts gay and straight to stand up and be counted.
Overall it's a mixed bag as platforms go...a devisive social issue, usual demagoguery about crime, and the glittering lure of free money.
Not sure how well any of it will play in Romney's beloved suburbs...and moreover these "Romneyettes" he has recruited for the campaign are a green, weird, and lackwitted bunch.
A lot of things could condition this, no one is running state wide save Bush and Kerry and there are no big ballot initiatives that I've heard off...the state legislative races might not generate much heat from now until November.
That may not work to Mitt's advantage...he needs a noisy sense of outrage to for the above platform to work.
Well we will see.
Laura "hollow gam" Ingraham on Imus this morning...

And I'm prepared to say it flat out, she sounded terrible.
Hoarse, creaky, tired, dispirited, and worst of all repetitive.
Her one memorable bon mot was a tattered comparison of John Kerry to R2 D2...which was straight out of the dog eared anti-Al Gore playbook.
I think she is finally building up a tolerance to Dartmouth's famous secret hangover cure.
Either that or the salubrious locality she indwelleth is experiencing a nux vomica famine.
Whatever the reason, Laura was down in the dumps today...even that senile fraud Don Imus sensed it.
At one point Laura roused herself to do one of her signature inane impersonations, this time of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan and Imus just growled low into the microphone..."You know I don't like it when you do voices..."
Laura dropped the comedy routine immediately.
Pretty big climb down for a one time apex predator maximum damage monkey...I mean when feeble old Don Imus starts slapping you down it's time to check into Betty Ford. She was also compelled under the circumstance to express a patently phony shock and horror at the allegations that U.S. troops have been torturing Iraq prisoners in Baghdad.

And yet I can recall in palmier times a mere three months ago Milady Tedium thundered righteously into Imus' telephone:
"George Bush DIDN'T ignore the screams of Iraqi women and children in the torture chambers!!!!"
What a difference a mere ninety plus days makes eh?
NOW TODAY on Imus Laura the Loud was trying to be all grave and judicial...dumping on General Karpinsky, the head of the military prison system in Iraq for being a fool and a dimwit.
It's always funny in a sad way when an obnoxious case of arrested development like Laura tries to act all mature-like.
The results are NOT pretty my friends.
However I don't quite understand Laura's sudden conversion to the cause of justice and human rights.
I mean think about it?
Said General has countenanced the torture of Iraqi P.O.W.s and accused terrorists.
What is the problem...isn't torture and mayhem a major plank in rightical chic talk radio's platform?
Ghod Every day Jay Severin is screaming for jihad along with a chorus of other AM yakkers and social climbing rightical chic pudknockers.
Why all the squeamishness now?

It is always disconcerting when a radio demagogue flip flops like that.
For what it's worth take Laura's "shock and horror" act as a signifier as to how much of a setback this whole horrific situation is for her beloved La Famiglia Arbusto.
That is all I can take out of it.
Meanwhile let tomorrow's headline read "Drunken Fembot Denounces Torture in Iraq"

Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed
Public Airwaves
And Elsewhere
5-4-04
7:52am EST

God Save the Republic...


Monday, May 03, 2004

So let me get this straight...

Rene Gonzalez alleged graduate student in political science at Umass Amherst penned at editorial for the Daily Collegian calling the late Pat Tillman "an idiot" who "got what he deserved"?
And in Karl Rove's America, this is offensive exactly why?
Okay I jest, it is always churlish to speak ill of the dead...and if a graduate student at Umass Amherst hasn't learned that fact yet then said solon is probably too stupid to pound sand down a rat hole.
Nevertheless you have to love the predictable tidal wave of rightical chic indignation that this editorial generated....now the movement conservatives of America finally know how we feel when La Famiglia Arbusto persists in denigrating the military service and patriotism of Senator John Kerry.
Or they would know how it felt if they weren't all on a seriously demented power trip that'll end badly for us all unless the electorate does something about it this Fall.

Ah but let me wax nostalgic for a moment, you see I went to Umass Amherst back in the late 1980's...is the poli sci program still located in that rat's maze Thompson Hall?
I think the architect of that building got his start doing rodent memory experiments in the psych department or something.
I remember the Daily Collegian with particular sentimentality...a terrible rag edited by earnest and humorless undergrads...it was unintentionally funny on a daily basis.
I recall with intense nostalgia a weekly column by a born again christian asserting fervid prayer was enough to raise the dead to life...he had witnessed such miracles.
Oh it was a jolly time believe me.
Ah...Umass Amherst....nobody got along, no-one was paid what they were worth, and none can forget it.
:)