Optional

My jaw is on the floor. Last night on "The O'Reilly Factor," Billy called Iraq "an optional war." Wow. And the comments on NewsBusters show that right-wingers are adding him to the chorus of voices they used to revere, but now are all too willing to throw under the bus of their hard-right worldview.

Will wonders never cease?

No one ever listens to my predictions

The Republican nominee for President in 2008 is going to make George W. Bush look like a combination of Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky and Dennis Kucinich. And when that whackjob wins, after a very short time we will all be nostalgic for the measured, intelligent, middle-of-the-road presidency of George W. Bush.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Dean Esmay, on Hitler's Germany:

There are serious academic scholars who say the German people, or at least vast swaths of them, were bullied and terrified into following Hitler's gang of criminals. A gang of criminals who were never legitimately elected. I can point you to academic sources that debunk the "Hitler was elected" nonsense any time you like. He and his group of thugs seized power, through terror duplicity and coercion. They then constructed an image of German national unity that had nothing to do with what everyday Germans actually thought.

Hmmmm.

Rhetorical question

Why don't those dead reporters file more *positive* stories about Iraq?

I've got your official language right here

George W. Bush, call your office.

(stolen from August Pollak's xoverboard site.)

Slippytoad's got it right

Well, surprise: World Net Daily took the passage about Hitler and the Nazis out of the piece I wrote about last week. George Orwell, call your office. Meanwhile, a commenter on Crooks and Liars named Slippytoad pretty much summed up my feelings about the whole immigration "debate":

If you bothered to ask me what my position was, I would tell you very simply that we need to do three things: #1, we need to prosecute companies who wink and nod and hire illegals. This would stop the incentive for people to come in the country. If they don't have jobs to come to, they will stay home. #2, we need to make a serious and abiding effort to improve economic and trading relations with Mexico so that their economy is not an open cesspool of corruption and misery. We contributed to that mightily with the ill-conceived NAFTA giveaway to large corporations. We need leadership to come up with a trade program that actually improves economic conditions for everyone, instead of just for large companies. #3, we CANNOT deport 12 million people, and more importantly we should not. What we should do is make a sane and rational process for becoming naturalized that isn't up to the whims of paper-pushing assholes, and not insist on horrific punitive measures that are only there to make racist pricks feel good about "administerin' justice." The people are here, and they have families here, and some of them believe it or not are refugees from oppresive regimes who came to America because they thought it was the land of the free. We owe it to them to give them the opportunity to do it right, instead of wasting tremendous amounts of taxpayer money, blood, effort, and time doing a purely spiteful thing like yanking them out of the lives they have established here and putting them in tremendous peril, just because we've suddenly decided to enforce the rules that we've been winking and nodding at for 30 years. Large corporations enabled this situation by nudge nudging and selectively enforcing immigration laws. Nobody, especially the Republican Congress, deserves any political capital for suddenly creating a crisis out of whole cloth and capitalizing on it.

And that's what I'm really fucking sick of. The hysterical bullshit assertion that this is suddenly a crisis. Jesus Fuck, I grew up in Denver, Co, and know goddamn well what's going on. DO NOT presume to tell ME what I do or do not understand about immigration. You have no idea who I am or what I do or who I know, so you can climb off your fuckin' high horse of knowledge and come down here where your assertions stand or fall based on their truth. And the truth of it is, we are engaged in this discussion because Republicans are scared shitless of losing their base. And the reason they are using this issue is to scare their base with the image of a bunch of "filthy brown people" scumming up their alabaster fucking communities. And any impulse in that direction I encounter from anyone will be met with unremitting, withering scorn. Deal with the REAL ISSUE. Do not make up fake issues to scream about. I will mock you, I will get the facts, I will jam them right up your ass, and I will shut you down. Bank on it.

Explaining water to a goldfish

John Gibson went out of his way to be offended that anyone could have concluded that he was racist from his recent racist remarks about how white people need to have more babies to catch up to Hispanics. (I love it when they dig themselves in deeper.) His defense boiled down to "Hey, I love Mexicans. I just hate Muslims." Thanks for clearing that up, John. We were worried there for a minute.

Gibson's remarks led to a fantastic comment over at Digby's Hullabaloo site:

Once again, I spent the morning trying to explain 'water' to my goldfish. He listens well, but just doesn't see it.

It's like explaining racism to John Gibson.

How do you tell a blind person what 'red' is?

Quote of the Week

"I'm upset with the Democrats too. Because after all this time, they still haven't found one woman willing to have oral sex with President Bush so we can impeach him."

-Woman in the audience of the Stephanie Miller Show on Air America, broadcasting from the Barrymore Theater in Madison

Good for you, Russ (Part 352)

Why can't more Democrats stand up for what they believe in? Come on guys. The President's approval ratings are in the 20s. When are you going to grow a backbone?

My favorite little tidbit about the anti-gay-marriage vote detailed in the above link is how Arlen Specter voted for the ban in his Judiciary Committee, even though he's personally opposed to it, because it "deserves debate in the full Senate." Full-on crapweaselry on display these days.

Utopia - "Da Vinci Code" Pop Culture Edition

"People get so worked up over the historical accuracy of Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and having a child. But they don't seem to have a problem with him coming back from the dead."

-David Farré, religious philosopher

At least they're honest

Some highlights from the Ultimate Crapweasel Media recently:

Fox's John Gibson says that it's white Americans' duty to make more babies, to counter the tide of brown people streaming across our borders.

A World Net Daily columnist says that deporting those millions of illegal Mexicans should be no problem - after all, look how quickly the Nazis got rid of 6 million Jews.

The thing is, I'm glad when the essential racism of the right wing gets thrust out in the open like this. I would much rather they be honest, than try to couch everything in mushy code-word rhetoric. Stand up for yourself, racists!

Hard to keep up

Tom Tomorrow's latest "This Modern World" cartoon brings up a crucial point I think is too often ignored in all this: why does this administration have any credibility left? When Bush and his surrogates like the odious Brit Hume on Fox News pat our heads and assure us that they're not doing anything wrong with all this spying and data mining, no, it's just to catch the bad guys - why does anyone believe them? Their stories change more often than a killer on "Law & Order."

And to those fuckheads like Brit Hume who are pushing the "hey, if you didn't do anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, right?" line of anti-American bullshit - and to those whom it comforts - I feel I need to again reprint some immortal lines from "A Man for All Seasons":

More: And go he should, if he were the devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you'd give the devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the devil?
Roper: Yes! I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law - for my own safety's sake.

How low can he go?

29 percent.

Six point drop - in one month.

Poor Osama

"I sort of feel bad for Osama bin Laden. All these years hating us for our freedoms - and now he has to find a new reason to hate us."

-Bill Maher, "Real Time with Bill Maher"

Somewhat

Stephanopoulos: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

Rumsfeld: We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

-"This Week," 3/30/03

Let's face it: Donald Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere. Bush firing Rumsfeld would be like firing himself - it would be admitting that his entire Iraq "experiment" (tm Dean Esmay), the centerpiece of his presidency, was a colossal mistake. So Rumsfeld stays.

But the quote above has always seemed to me to be a perfect encapsulation of the entire Iraq war, and in fact of the administration as a whole. In the first half of the quote, Rumsfeld "knows where [the WMD] are." And then seconds later, he proves for anyone who was even half listening that in fact they "know" nothing of the kind. (The "somewhat" is the cherry on top of the sundae.)

The simple fact is, no one who supported the war in Iraq, administration or citizen, much cared whether those pesky WMD existed or not. We needed to kick some Arab ass and this was the easiest target. The bully always picks on the weakest kid. (Is it any wonder that Iran wants to bulk up a little bit before recess?)

Meanwhile, we watch "United 93" so we can refresh the hatred and fear and hopelessness we felt that day. And we step out onto the playground with our dukes held up defiantly, waiting. For something.

Revulsion

Writing about Stephen Colbert's beyond-brilliant performance Saturday night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Scott Rosenberg of Salon wrote:

Just for a moment, Colbert brought a heavily sheltered President Bush face to face with the outrage and revulsion that large swathes of the American public feel for him and what he has done to our country.

Now see, I'm a word person. And when I or someone else use just the exact right word, I get a little chill of pleasure down my spine. That ever happen to you?

Well it happened to me when I read the word "revulsion." What a fantastic, fantastic word. Don't you just have the urge to find a way to work that into your regular conversation tomorrow? (Well, probably not. But I do.) It so perfectly characterizes the feeling I get when I consider our President and all he represents. Revulsion.

Of course, for those on the right that's just my (uncommon) admission of Bush Derangement Syndrome, the whacked-out hatred of Bush that has no basis in reality.

The thing is, it's all about reality. It's about where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. It's about our inability as a society to even agree on what "reality" is. Traitors and patriots staring at each other from each side of the looking glass, snarling and spitting.

It's about not only not trying to suppress our worst instincts, but reveling in them. It's about whittling the universe down to six inches in front of our faces - if that. It's about money and power and privilege and religion. It's about Dennis Hastert driving a hybrid car a block away from a photo op press conference, then jumping into an Escalade.

We know full well the Emperor has no clothes. And we don't care.

It's not really about Bush at all. He's just a symbol, a pawn in a high-stakes game he only partially understands. But that's part of the picture, too.

What I feel, all too often, is revulsion. Thanks, Scott Rosenberg, for giving me a word for it.

Crapweasels on parade

So Republican crapweasel Sen. Lamar Alexander wants to make a law saying that the U.S. National Anthem can only be sung in English - banning, say, the recent Spanish-language version coming smack-dab in the middle of immigrant protests that have Republicans all around the country looking sideways at their maids.

Too bad the cat's out of the bag - the anthem was already translated into Spanish. In 1919. Oops. Can't unring that bell. Stop them before they translate again!

And don't show Sen. Alexander this - he might have a seizure of some kind.

Just when you think these boobs can't get any more stupid, venal or irrelevant, they prove you wrong.