Asshole from El Paso
Awol von Bunnypants
aWol von Lazyass
Awol von Retard
Awol von Stupid
Awol McAsshat
Awol McBubbleboy
Awol McFakecowboy
Awol McPenisenvy
Awol Wonderboob
Awol Wonderchimp
...
And that's just the "A" section. Heh ...
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
By any other name ...
One of the reasons I love Maru and her contributors is because of the names they have for the Chimp. UL decided to post the collection:
And that's just the "A" section. Heh ...
And that's just the "A" section. Heh ...
Dianne Feinstein ...
Should shut the fuck up:
She sure as hell voted to confirm every asshole the Chimp put up, from cabinet positions to Supreme Court justices. I just love these Dems who are nutless when it comes to standing up to the Rethugs, but are just itching to pick a fight with another Dem.
Dianne Feinstein is having a little public fit because she wasn't consulted about Panetta and had instructed the president-elect that he had to choose an "intelligence professional." Well, excuse me. When did Difi get a veto on cabinet appointments?
...
She sure as hell voted to confirm every asshole the Chimp put up, from cabinet positions to Supreme Court justices. I just love these Dems who are nutless when it comes to standing up to the Rethugs, but are just itching to pick a fight with another Dem.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
Many more.
It's shopping day. Over the mountains and through the woods and out of this frozen hell*, to Costco we must go. See yas later.
*It's actually not so bad since the holiday influx of tourons and skiers has left. At least I think they have. I'm so scared of the way those city slickers drive, I ain't been out much.
Peru to Sue Yale Over Artifacts
Demands its skull and bones back.
Yugo Ends Production
Leaves GM, Ford, Chrysler as only remaining makers of clunkers.
Many more.
It's shopping day. Over the mountains and through the woods and out of this frozen hell*, to Costco we must go. See yas later.
*It's actually not so bad since the holiday influx of tourons and skiers has left. At least I think they have. I'm so scared of the way those city slickers drive, I ain't been out much.
The value of a life ...
It's about demonizing the brown people:
It's what I learned not long after I married into a Jewish family (overwhelmingly Democratic and progressive). Everything Jewish is good and Israel can do no wrong (let alone the remarks I've endured over the last 20 years about my ancestry but that's a post for another time).
It's about valuing certain lives more than others. 5 Israelis are dead and so far, the retribution has taken 500 Palestinian lives. It reminds me of the stories my grandfather told me of how the SS operated when it came to dealing with resistance movements, be they in France, Holland, or Russia. Collective punishment. For the life of a single German soldier, 10, or 50, or a hundred locals would be executed. How is different? How is the invasion of Lebanon in '06 (for the lives of 2 Israeli soldiers) different? To me, they're just excuses to attack and 'end the problem once and for all' (read into that what you will).
It's this disregard for the lives of innocents that bothers me. There are a million and a half people in the Gaza Strip; are they all guilty of launching rockets into Israel? Should they all be made to suffer? Because they voted for Hamas, who promised them the chance to live a normal life? By that extension (George Bush served two terms), every American should pay for the deaths of those civilians our troops and mercenaries have killed in Iraq. Do you feel you should?
The Israelis have been using this strategy against the Palestinians for 40 years and it isn't working; in fact, it's making things worse. And, since we're so closely tied to Israel, blame is cast on us as well for our unqualified support of their actions. We have enough sins of our own to pay for, in the region and throughout the world, without being splattered with the shit Israel is tossing at the fan.
The Palestinians have been squeezed by Israel for 40 years, not just in Gaza, but the West Bank as well, steadily increasing their territory while the Palestinians crowd more people into dwindling acreage.
It is time for a Palestinian state, one that functions, one that can police itself, feed itself, and care for its people. Once the average Palestinian has freedom of movement, can support himself, and keep his family safe, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even al-Qaeda will wither and die. These groups are born of hopelessness and desperation and if people can see a future for themselves, they will not resort to violence. The violent groups will be marginalized and eventually go away (or shrink to a manageable size). The Palestinians have not had a future, aside from occupation and embargo, for 40 years.
It's time for a different solution. It's time for the U.N. to take the lead (France's President Sarkozy has been spearheading the cease-fire effort) and for the U.S. to stop giving the Israelis cover by vetoing every Security Council resolution condemning their actions. It's time for us to butt out and let someone without a vested interest try to fix the situation. Too many lives depend on it.
...
I can't express how many emails I've received in the last week from people identifying themselves as "liberals" (and, overwhelmingly, American Jews); telling me that they agree with my views in almost all areas other than Israel; and then self-righteously insisting that I imagine what it's like to live in Southern Israel with incoming rocket fire from Hamas, as though that will change my views on the Israel/Gaza war. Obviously, it's not difficult to imagine the understandable rage that Israelis feel when learning of another attack on Israeli civilians, in exactly the way that American rage over the 9/11 attacks was understandable. But just as that American anger didn't justify anything and everything that followed, the fact that there are indefensible attacks on Israeli civilians doesn't render the (far more lethal) attacks on Gaza either wise or just -- as numerous Jewish residents of Sderot themselves are courageously arguing in opposing the Israeli attack.
...
It's what I learned not long after I married into a Jewish family (overwhelmingly Democratic and progressive). Everything Jewish is good and Israel can do no wrong (let alone the remarks I've endured over the last 20 years about my ancestry but that's a post for another time).
...
More to the point: for those who insist that others put themselves in the position of a resident of Sderot -- as though that will, by itself, prove the justifiability of the Israeli attack -- the idea literally never occurs to them that they ought to imagine what it's like to live under foreign occupation for 4 decades (and, despite the 2005 "withdrawal from Gaza," Israel continues to occupy and expand its settlements on Palestinian land and to control and severely restrict many key aspects of Gazan life). No thought is given to what it is like, what emotions it generates, what horrible acts start to appear justifiable, when you have a hostile foreign army control your borders and airspace and internal affairs for 40 years, one which builds walls around you, imposes the most intensely humiliating conditions on your daily life, blockades your land so that you're barred from exiting and prevented from accessing basic nutrition and medical needs for your children to the point where a substantial portion of the underage population suffers from stunted growth.
...
It's about valuing certain lives more than others. 5 Israelis are dead and so far, the retribution has taken 500 Palestinian lives. It reminds me of the stories my grandfather told me of how the SS operated when it came to dealing with resistance movements, be they in France, Holland, or Russia. Collective punishment. For the life of a single German soldier, 10, or 50, or a hundred locals would be executed. How is different? How is the invasion of Lebanon in '06 (for the lives of 2 Israeli soldiers) different? To me, they're just excuses to attack and 'end the problem once and for all' (read into that what you will).
...
If you see Palestinians as something less than civilized human beings: as "barbarians" -- just as if you see Americans as infidels warring with God or Jews as sub-human rats -- then it naturally follows that civilian deaths are irrelevant, perhaps even something to cheer. For people who think that way, arguments about "proportionality" won't even begin to resonate -- such concepts can't even be understood -- because the core premise, that excessive civilian deaths are horrible and should be avoided at all costs, isn't accepted. Why should a superior, civilized, peaceful society allow the welfare of violent, hateful barbarians to interfere with its objectives? How can the deaths or suffering of thousands of barbarians ever be weighed against the death of even a single civilized person?
...
It's this disregard for the lives of innocents that bothers me. There are a million and a half people in the Gaza Strip; are they all guilty of launching rockets into Israel? Should they all be made to suffer? Because they voted for Hamas, who promised them the chance to live a normal life? By that extension (George Bush served two terms), every American should pay for the deaths of those civilians our troops and mercenaries have killed in Iraq. Do you feel you should?
...
So many of these conflicts -- one might say almost all of them -- end up shaped by the same virtually universal deficiency: excessive tribalistic identification (i.e.: the group with which I was trained to identify is right and good and just and my group's enemy is bad and wrong and violent), which causes people to view the world only from the perspective of their side, to believe that X is good when they do it and evil when it's done to them. X can be torture, or the killing of civilians in order to "send a message" (i.e., Terrorism), or invading and occupying other people's land, or using massive lethal force against defenseless populations, or seeing one's own side as composed of real humans and the other side as sub-human, evil barbarians. As George Orwell wrote in Notes on Nationalism -- with perfect prescience to today's endless conflicts ... [ems in original]
...
The Israelis have been using this strategy against the Palestinians for 40 years and it isn't working; in fact, it's making things worse. And, since we're so closely tied to Israel, blame is cast on us as well for our unqualified support of their actions. We have enough sins of our own to pay for, in the region and throughout the world, without being splattered with the shit Israel is tossing at the fan.
The Palestinians have been squeezed by Israel for 40 years, not just in Gaza, but the West Bank as well, steadily increasing their territory while the Palestinians crowd more people into dwindling acreage.
...
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I long admired the state for its tenacity, its refusal to contemplate surrender or nonexistence, its bravery in the face of daunting odds. But there is a huge difference between fighting the remnants of the great Turkish empire and an assault upon a defenseless civilian population when you have the best army and armaments that the contents of the American Treasury can buy.
...
It is time for a Palestinian state, one that functions, one that can police itself, feed itself, and care for its people. Once the average Palestinian has freedom of movement, can support himself, and keep his family safe, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even al-Qaeda will wither and die. These groups are born of hopelessness and desperation and if people can see a future for themselves, they will not resort to violence. The violent groups will be marginalized and eventually go away (or shrink to a manageable size). The Palestinians have not had a future, aside from occupation and embargo, for 40 years.
It's time for a different solution. It's time for the U.N. to take the lead (France's President Sarkozy has been spearheading the cease-fire effort) and for the U.S. to stop giving the Israelis cover by vetoing every Security Council resolution condemning their actions. It's time for us to butt out and let someone without a vested interest try to fix the situation. Too many lives depend on it.
"Smaller than life ..."
'Daddy' Frank Rich bids the Chimp a not-so-fond arrivederci:
I'd like him to play a post-Presidency role in a supermax prison. And because it might not be obvious to all Americans, a pamphlet with the Chimp's 'accomplishments' is being distributed.
2 1/2 weeks and King George will be on his way and not a minute too soon. If I fixed cars the way George Bush 'fixed' America, I'da been out on the street years ago.
...
The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn’t grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he’s promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he’s in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.
...
I'd like him to play a post-Presidency role in a supermax prison. And because it might not be obvious to all Americans, a pamphlet with the Chimp's 'accomplishments' is being distributed.
...
This document is the literary correlative to "Mission Accomplished." Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving "market economy" (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a "democratically elected president" (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He "led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief" (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).
...
2 1/2 weeks and King George will be on his way and not a minute too soon. If I fixed cars the way George Bush 'fixed' America, I'da been out on the street years ago.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Sunday Not-So-Crazy Redneck Music Blogging
This one's dedicated to Mrs. G.
BCB Band sings a song called Tennessee Whiskey by George Jones which is a song about the love of a woman freeing him from the clutches of alcohol addiction.
Go ahead and shoot! I dare ya!
AND THE HORSE
THEY RODE IN ON!
(apologies to the late Cleavon Little, and Mel Brooks)
Quote of the Day
EssEffChron on "Iraq, oil and the Bush administration":
[...] Back in 2002, the better class of commentator sniffed at the naiveté of "No Blood for Oil" - the chant of anti-war demonstrations around the country. But blood for oil may not be the worst of it. The worst, in the war's subdued and sorry denouement, may prove to be blood for no oil.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Quote of the Day - Zwei
Mannion:
...
The New Deal Roosevelt offered was a deal between the government and the people, and the deal was this, that the People of the United States and the Government of the United States were one in the same. The New Deal was an old deal, the old deal, the one that had been broken by the Republicans. The government did not exist to keep the People in line, certainly not to keep them out of their own capitol city. The government was there so that the people could help each other and take care of their country together, their country. Under the New Deal, the government would treat its People as people and not as invaders to be chased away at the point of a sword.
...
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
Subtitled for your convenience.
Emmylou Harris and Trisha Yearwood - When I Was Yours
An AMS rebound from Jay-pan. Amazing. Thank you, ringringash.
Quote of the Day
The last line in a post at Huffpo by Jane Hamsher on the Blowmebich/Burris/Reid clusterfuck:
If Reid doesn't stop allowing political expediency to be the ultimate arbiter of his actions, the only clear winner is going to be George Bush and his legacy of contempt for the rule of law.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Sorry but ...
(This post stays on top all day. - G)
Once again the Dems shoot themselves in the foot. Listen to me.
Rod Blagojevich is the duly elected Governor of Illinois. Until he is removed from office, he still has all the powers the office brings. Roland Burris has not been accused of 'buying' the seat, nor has he proved to be incompetent. Sorry, but we'll have to live with that decision and Senate Dems had better wrap their heads around that fact pretty quick.
From Obama on down, they played this all wrong and if they push the issue, they'll just look like bigger fools than they already do. Not that I'm defending Blago, and just the appearance of such gross impropriety (I'll believe Fitz before I believe a politician) frankly makes him unfit to govern, but he hasn't been convicted of anything. Blago knows this and knows exactly how firm his legal footing is.
If the Dems try and block Burris' taking his seat, it's already been said the Capitol Police will take him away if he shows up, he will have legal standing to file a false arrest suit and maybe be able to sue for the seat itself, which he would probably win (facts reiterated: Blago is still the governor. Burris did nothing illegal to obtain the appointment nor is he unfit to hold the post). Lawsuits would only prolong the agony, keeping the Blago Show on the front page for months. Senate Dems, Harry Reid especially, should STFU and welcome Burris with open arms and put this story to rest. Look at the bright side; he coulda appointed a Chicago mobster.
Now another thing. Of all the opportunities Harry Reid's had to take a stand in the past couple years against the Bush administration, against Joe Lieberman, he has to pick this to get all principled over? This is leadership? Dude, if you were a military commander, you'd spend more time quarreling with your own troops than fighting the enemy. We had idiots like this in SAC*, who were more concerned with the length of your hair or the shine on your boots than the mission.
Talk about the waste of a good Senate seat and a leadership position. If President Obama (who went along with Reid on the Lieberman issue) wants to get anything done, his first order of business should be putting pressure on the Senate Dems to replace Reid. Harry's proven he's a cowardly little twit when it comes to the Republicans and only stands up against his own.
It saddens me that after such an astounding victory in November the Dems revert to their old form instead of growing a set of balls. How much good legislation will Reid kill in fear of angering Republicans because he doesn't have that 'Magic 60' head count to avoid a filibuster? The Rethugs are already making noises they'll be obstructing everything that comes down the pike; do we really need Reid riding shotgun on progressive legislation that's absolutely needed? Do we really need Reid picking fights within his own party when there's so much 'big picture stuff' to be done?
Look, just shut up and let Burris take his seat. I'm willing to wager he'll be more loyal to the party than, say ... Joe Lieberman. Disgusted, I'm going to work.
Update:
Digby:
Once again the Dems shoot themselves in the foot. Listen to me.
Rod Blagojevich is the duly elected Governor of Illinois. Until he is removed from office, he still has all the powers the office brings. Roland Burris has not been accused of 'buying' the seat, nor has he proved to be incompetent. Sorry, but we'll have to live with that decision and Senate Dems had better wrap their heads around that fact pretty quick.
From Obama on down, they played this all wrong and if they push the issue, they'll just look like bigger fools than they already do. Not that I'm defending Blago, and just the appearance of such gross impropriety (I'll believe Fitz before I believe a politician) frankly makes him unfit to govern, but he hasn't been convicted of anything. Blago knows this and knows exactly how firm his legal footing is.
If the Dems try and block Burris' taking his seat, it's already been said the Capitol Police will take him away if he shows up, he will have legal standing to file a false arrest suit and maybe be able to sue for the seat itself, which he would probably win (facts reiterated: Blago is still the governor. Burris did nothing illegal to obtain the appointment nor is he unfit to hold the post). Lawsuits would only prolong the agony, keeping the Blago Show on the front page for months. Senate Dems, Harry Reid especially, should STFU and welcome Burris with open arms and put this story to rest. Look at the bright side; he coulda appointed a Chicago mobster.
Now another thing. Of all the opportunities Harry Reid's had to take a stand in the past couple years against the Bush administration, against Joe Lieberman, he has to pick this to get all principled over? This is leadership? Dude, if you were a military commander, you'd spend more time quarreling with your own troops than fighting the enemy. We had idiots like this in SAC*, who were more concerned with the length of your hair or the shine on your boots than the mission.
...
It would certainly be interesting to watch the same Senate who gave convicted felon Ted Stevens a standing ovation (Reid calling him "distinguished colleague") exclude Burris.
...
Harry Reid has sworn to use his mastery of Senate procedure to block the Burris appointment and protect the integrity of that very exclusive club, which nonetheless warmly embraces Joe Lieberman.
If only he had been so Johnny-on-the-spot when Bush was appointing Supreme Court Justices, ramming through telecom immunity, FISA and the Military Commissions Act, and otherwise trashing the country.
...
Talk about the waste of a good Senate seat and a leadership position. If President Obama (who went along with Reid on the Lieberman issue) wants to get anything done, his first order of business should be putting pressure on the Senate Dems to replace Reid. Harry's proven he's a cowardly little twit when it comes to the Republicans and only stands up against his own.
It saddens me that after such an astounding victory in November the Dems revert to their old form instead of growing a set of balls. How much good legislation will Reid kill in fear of angering Republicans because he doesn't have that 'Magic 60' head count to avoid a filibuster? The Rethugs are already making noises they'll be obstructing everything that comes down the pike; do we really need Reid riding shotgun on progressive legislation that's absolutely needed? Do we really need Reid picking fights within his own party when there's so much 'big picture stuff' to be done?
Look, just shut up and let Burris take his seat. I'm willing to wager he'll be more loyal to the party than, say ... Joe Lieberman. Disgusted, I'm going to work.
*SAC = Strategic Air Command
Update:
Digby:
...
The fact is that the Senate Dems have been reacting like shrieking, maiden aunts in a roomful of bats, lurching from one outraged reaction to the next without any kind of due consideration as to the legality or the political ramifications. One wonders where this level of energy and scorn was when the Republicans were making fools of them over and over again.
...
Friday Afternoon Just Plain Pretty Music Blogging
Bonnie Raitt & Ravi's Little Girl - I Don't Want Anything To Change
Sympathy for W? My ass.
Mark Morford
Sad but true. And most certainly not in the good way. What that little prick has influenced will be with us for a loooong time, damn his eyes.
Yeah, maybe about the same time I start feeling sorry for Hitler.
There's more. If "forgiveness is a virtue", I guess I'm not going to be very virtuous about that miserable, evil little weakling son of a bitch. I want to piss on his grave. Or on his face.
You have to go deep. You have to scrape and dig and plow, hunt and dive and sigh and even then it might take so long and cost so much invaluable energy and ultimately prove to be so damn near impossible, you will wonder if it's even worth it and why the hell I am even trying because, well, sweet Jesus knows he doesn't deserve it in the first place.
But if you're so inclined, if the temperature of your temperament is just so, if that fourth glass of $10 recession-defying wine is making you feel unusually generous, maybe, just maybe you can muster a bit of sympathy for George W. Bush.
Possible? Insane? Blasphemous? Damn straight.
But with Bush -- the worst-regarded, least popular, most ethically offensive president most of us will ever know -- things are just little bit different. His is that most peculiar and disquieting of exit portraits, a slumpy little guy initially thought to be a middling and relatively harmless puppet, suddenly thrust into history's limelight by the most dire of events, who then squandered every drop of global goodwill and violated most every international law and whored away the very soul of the nation with far more dazzling, efficient success than anyone could have ever imagined.
The upshot is as painful as it is undeniable: Dubya is, whether we like it or not, one of the most extraordinary and influential presidents of all time. Imagine.
Sad but true. And most certainly not in the good way. What that little prick has influenced will be with us for a loooong time, damn his eyes.
Bush as the family man. Bush as the master of friendly interpersonal relations. Bush as the dorky wise-crackin' fishing buddy. Bush as the war-weary, wizened, slightly deluded visionary whose vision just so happened to be horribly wrong in every possible way, but who nevertheless truly believed he was doing right by his confused and angry God, and probably still does, and doesn't that make him some sort of sad and tragic figure in our sad and tragic history?
Well, no, it doesn't. Pathetic? Yes. Pitiable? Maybe. But tragic? That implies honor gone wrong, integrity soured by unforeseen traumas, noble intent and spiritual purity ruined by dark forces beyond his control. Not a chance. Bush might not be the cleverest dolt in the playground, but he is far from ignorant of the dishonest, crony-laden, criminal slant of nearly every decision his administration has ever made.
To my mind, even the softest portrait of W merely raises the larger question, perhaps not to be fully answered for many years: How could such a mediocre and unimaginative human cause so much damage? How could this frat house daddy's-boy dullard so perfectly undermine America's fundamental identity and disfigure every major department of government and bring the nation to its knees? Indeed, unpacking that one may take awhile.
There is, after all, no escaping history. There is no escaping the hard reality of our gutted and mangled nation, how the past eight years are simply some of the most dismal and corrupt in our nation's history, a modern take on the Dark Ages. And there is also no escaping the sense that we barely got out of it alive.
But you know what? Maybe there will eventually be a tiny bit of room for empathy for George W. Bush, for feeling a tiny bit sorry for the guy for being so inept and so deeply loathed and for never really understanding the scope of the damage he was doing, or who was really pulling the strings.
Yeah, maybe about the same time I start feeling sorry for Hitler.
There's more. If "forgiveness is a virtue", I guess I'm not going to be very virtuous about that miserable, evil little weakling son of a bitch. I want to piss on his grave. Or on his face.
"Financial doom is not certain, but it's certainly in play"
Dana Parsons on the economy:
Oh, I don't know. When I was 22, older women were, well, old women. Now that I'm 63, there's a lot more gorgeous gals around than there were then. True beauty remains, if not youthful looks. We're all, well, most of us anyway, smarter now and have more to talk about than we did. My single sexagenarian friends say that Golden Years babes're a lot easier to talk into the sack, too. Livin' in a house full of 'em might not be so bad... (I can afford to talk like that. Mrs. G doesn't read this shit. Heh.)
Note to Obama: Better get hot on the infrastructure program. We're gonna need more overpasses and bridges...
As 2009 arrives like a grizzly bear at a campsite, knocking down everything in its path and then eating the campers, I find myself strangely at peace. It's a peace that comes from knowing that millions of people have subsisted for years, and quite happily, while living in small grass huts and eating only berries and twigs.
And if they can do it. . . .
Gallows humor dominates conversations with my 50ish and 60ish friends. Thoughts of retirement at 60 or 65 have been scuttled, replaced by prayers that we won't be laid off and can work until we're 80. Once-grandiose talk of "travel" now means taking buses when we're forced to sell our cars.
A generation that once romanticized communal life will now find out what it's like to live 14 to a house. It was much more appealing when everyone was 22 instead of 62.
Oh, I don't know. When I was 22, older women were, well, old women. Now that I'm 63, there's a lot more gorgeous gals around than there were then. True beauty remains, if not youthful looks. We're all, well, most of us anyway, smarter now and have more to talk about than we did. My single sexagenarian friends say that Golden Years babes're a lot easier to talk into the sack, too. Livin' in a house full of 'em might not be so bad... (I can afford to talk like that. Mrs. G doesn't read this shit. Heh.)
Oh, for the privacy of the cardboard box in the bushes near a freeway overpass! A place to call my own.
Note to Obama: Better get hot on the infrastructure program. We're gonna need more overpasses and bridges...
Bigger Than Bush
Paul Krugman with today's 'must read'. He nails the Repugs' racist basis dead nuts.
Go read the rest.
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
Go read the rest.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Quote of the Day
Greenwald:
...
But, like most of the alleged principles to which our political elite professes allegiance, America and its leaders are entitled to a different set of standards and better treatment. Thus, Charles Taylor belongs at the Hague, being prosecuted as a war criminal. His son belongs in an American criminal court being prosecuted by the Bush DOJ for torture. And George Bush and Dick Cheney belong on their "ranches," enjoying full-scale immunity for the crimes they committed and a rich and comfortable retirement, treated as the esteemed and well-intentioned (even if sometimes misguided) dignitaries that they are. Virtually the only people in the world who fail to recognize this self-evident, ludicrous and disgusting hypocrisy are America's political and media elites and those who are misled by them. [em in orig]
...
New Year's Day Crazy Canuckistanian Cowboy Music Blogging
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Ooops, pardon me for shouting. Heh.
Since I know the very first thing on your mind this morning is drinking alcohol, here's Canadian cowboy singer Tim Hus. With "a voice sweeter than a Husqvarna chain saw", this guy's pretty much of a hoot and we're just screwin' around today anyway. Enjoy.
Since wretched excess is barely enough, here's the rest of the show, starting with his big hit song from Vancouver Island. Caution: sick joke liquid alert!
Since I know the very first thing on your mind this morning is drinking alcohol, here's Canadian cowboy singer Tim Hus. With "a voice sweeter than a Husqvarna chain saw", this guy's pretty much of a hoot and we're just screwin' around today anyway. Enjoy.
Rumrunner & Hotel Saloon
Since wretched excess is barely enough, here's the rest of the show, starting with his big hit song from Vancouver Island. Caution: sick joke liquid alert!
Seine Boat & Canadian Cowboy
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)