All your heroes are perverts

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the human condition.

One by one they fall, one by one they fail to live up to ridiculous or impossible standards, fall prey to undue pressure and temptation, are revealed to have kinkier tendencies, human frailty, addiction to fame or money, are too easily drunk on lust or power or culturally frowned-upon deviance in inelegant or sometimes illegal proportions.

Who is immune? You? The president? The pope? The dorky Christian NFL quarterback who thinks Jesus really gives a damn about his pass completion percentage? Nuns? Trees? Dogs?

Answer: No one. Not now, not ever, not even close. You know, just like Jesus intended.
...

God, what BS. What ignoble and harmful idiocy, this “sin” gibberish. Was there ever a more disastrous concept foisted upon humanity? A more oppressive and tragic propaganda?

Shorter: If someone can dream it up, no matter how bizarre, someone is doing it. Someone dreamed up religion after all.

Headline and Question of the Day

‘Fox & Friends’ hosts: Why weren’t we invited to the White House with MSNBC?

This is the easiest question to answer I am likely to see all week: because you're wingnut morons is why. Yeesh. Rocket science it ain't.

Village Idiot In A City Of 8,000,000

In toto and for what it's worth and just for fun from Salon. Links at site.

Perennial loser Donald Trump is still a loser. This time, though, it’s not a media company or a non-announcement announcement that makes him look bad. Instead, it is a small-town, 60-year-old Scottish farmer, Michael Forbes, who has quietly shown up the Donald.

Forbes gained fame after appearing in “You’ve Been Trumped,” a documentary that chronicled Trump’s attempt to steamroll a Scottish community in order to build a golf course. Forbes emerged as one of the movie’s unlikely heroes when he refused to sell his farm or succumb to Trump’s bullying. Of course, this incited the always-incited Trump, who resorted to calling Forbes’ farm “disgusting.”

The New York Times reports that last week Forbes earned the “Top Scot” award, honoring him as Scotsman of the year in a poll sponsored by whiskey maker Glenfiddich and the newspaper the Scotsman. The award’s previous recipients include the likes of “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling and viral singing sensation Susan Boyle. Forbes, who was “a real people’s choice,” beat out contenders like tennis star Andy Murray and cyclist Sir Chris Hoy.

Of Trump, Forbes told the Scotsman, “I took an instant dislike to him. He called me a village idiot and accused me of living in a pigsty, but I think everyone knows by now that he’s the clown of New York.”

And all of Scotland, it seems, agrees.

Oh aye!

Armey Jumps Ship

Exclusive from David Corn and Andy Kroll at MoJo:

Dick Armey Quits Tea Party Group in Split Over Direction

In a move not publicly announced, former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party.

Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP's Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in an memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on November 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation. (See Armey's email below.) Armey demanded that he be paid until his contract ended on December 31; that FreedomWorks remove his name, image, or signature "from all its letters, print media, postings, web sites, videos, testimonials, endorsements, fund raising materials, and social media, including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter"; and that FreedomWorks deliver the copy of his official congressional portrait to his home in Texas.

FreedomWorks, as you know, is the Koch Bros astroturf imitation of grassroots that has sucked in a lot of people now known as Teatards to act on behalf of the 1% whilst not thinking they're doing so.

I can pretty much say without fear of contradiction that Armey hasn't seen the light or grown a conscience. Either they didn't pay him or renew his contract after the election losses, or they're up to something actually criminal and he doesn't want to be their spokesperson from prison. It will be interesting to see what develops here.

Maybe Gruber Norquist's "Tea Party Two"?

Update:

Top FreedomWorks Staffers Depart in Wake of Armey's Resignation

I get a lovely visual of multiple rats fighting over one little rat-sized life jacket. Heh.

Quote of the Day

El Rude-o on Orange Boner's "counteroffer", aka "the Ryan budget", to Obama's fiscal plan:

In otherer words, we're not getting a goddamned thing done with these preening bastards whose idea of compromise is to say, "Tell you what: you cut off your balls and then we'll fuck your wife in the ass. Deal?" At some point, it's not just stubborn. It's evil.

Mumble and Whine

Paul Krugman

In the ongoing battle of the budget, President Obama has done something very cruel. Declaring that this time he won’t negotiate with himself, he has refused to lay out a proposal reflecting what he thinks Republicans want. Instead, he has demanded that Republicans themselves say, explicitly, what they want. And guess what: They can’t or won’t do it.

No, really. While there has been a lot of bluster from the G.O.P. about how we should reduce the deficit with spending cuts, not tax increases, no leading figures on the Republican side have been able or willing to specify what, exactly, they want to cut.

And there’s a reason for this reticence. The fact is that Republican posturing on the deficit has always been a con game, a play on the innumeracy of voters and reporters. Now Mr. Obama has demanded that the G.O.P. put up or shut up — and the response is an aggrieved mumble.
...

The point is that when you put Republicans on the spot and demand specifics about how they’re going to make good on their posturing about spending and deficits, they come up empty. There’s no there there.

And there never was. Republicans claim to be for much smaller government, but as a political matter they have always attacked government spending in the abstract, never coming clean with voters about the reality that big cuts in government spending can happen only if we sharply curtail very popular programs. In fact, less than a month ago the Romney/Ryan campaign was attacking Mr. Obama for, yes, cutting Medicare.

Now Republicans find themselves boxed in. With taxes scheduled to rise on Jan. 1 in the absence of an agreement, they can’t play their usual game of just saying no to tax increases and pretending that they have a deficit reduction plan. And the president, by refusing to help them out by proposing G.O.P.-friendly spending cuts, has deprived them of political cover. If Republicans really want to slash popular programs, they will have to propose those cuts themselves.

So while the fiscal cliff — still a bad name for the looming austerity bomb, but I guess we’re stuck with it — is a bad thing from an economic point of view, it has had at least one salutary political effect. For it has finally laid bare the con that has always been at the core of the G.O.P.’s political strategy.

And from Krugman at HuffPo:

The next couple of years "seem likely to be one long Republican tantrum," Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote on his New York Times blog on Sunday. "This is going to be nightmarish."

So what's new?

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

OBAMA WELCOMES MITT ROMNEY TO LUNCH AT WHITE HOUSE
Serves crow smothered in sour grapes.

Washington: Republicans Smith, Jones, Doe Renounce Grover Norquist Pledge
Note: those are their new names.

Heh.

Rolling Stones Two Years Older, on Average, Than Supreme Court Justices
“My older brother liked them,” says Justice Ginsburg.

Marco Rubio Still Not Sure if Earth Was Created in 7 Days or 7 Eras, Since He’s “Not a Scientist”
Doesn't know his ass from his elbow since he's “not a doctor.”

Got that one right.

Just when you think you've heard it all...

When it comes to crazy, Fischer is at the top of the pile of batcrap so he can be closer to his "God". Yeesh.

Bryan Fischer: ‘Enormously insensitive’ to hurt God’s feelings by not using oil (via Raw Story )

Bryan Fischer, the director of issues analysis of the conservative fundamentalist American Family Association, on Thursday told a so-called “expert” who denies climate change that not using God’s fossil fuels would be like “crushing” someone’s feelings by rejecting their birthday present…

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

A song about Northern Ireland and anywhere else people teach their kids to hate which is everywhere.

Song by Nanci Griffith; Kentucky Educational Television's "The Lonesome Pine Specials"; recorded at the Kentucky Center for the Arts; producer Richard Van Kleeck; director Clark Santee; copyright 1992, KET

Thanks to foxfireman188.

Seeing the Light in Chasing Ice

Via The Rude Pundit and Digby. Chasing Ice website here.

Witness Fox News cult deprogramming in action:

Revenge of the Reality-Based Community

It's hard to believe I'm about to link you to The American Conservative but...

Kudos to DailyKos diarist(s) Roosevelt Institute for spotting the article this morning, and succinctly summarizing it, as follows:

Bruce Bartlett explains how he got shunned and excommunicated from the mainstream conservative movement after decades of toeing the party line because he dared to point out that observable economic reality seems to have a strong Keynesian bias.
...

For more than 30 years, I was very comfortable within the conservative wing of the Republican Party. [I worked for or with: Goldwater, Nixon, Young Republicans (during Vietnam), Ron Paul in 1976, Jack Kemp, supply-side economists, Jude Wanniski, Heritage Fdn, Reagan's White House, Gary Bauer, James Baker, Nick Brady, Glenn Hubbard, Cato Institute and NCPA; and wrote conservative editorials for: WSJ, Washington (Moonie) Times, Investor's Business Daily, NY Sun, etc.]

In November 2003, I had an intellectual crisis... The [2004] article is best remembered for his quote from an anonymous White House official dismissing critics like me for being “the reality-based community.” ... I was banned from Fox News... extended throughout Rupert Murdoch’s empire. After careful research [in 2007-08], I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100% right in the 1930s. Previously, I had thought the opposite. ... I had previously viewed Krugman as an intellectual enemy and attacked him... For the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.

The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today."

Any farther to the right and they'll fall off the edge of the Earth. Happy landings.

Headline of the Day

The Latest Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory: Obama's Third Term

Geez, they say it like that'd be a bad thing!

Note to the whacko sore losers: You guys would be a lot happier if you came up with fun fantasies like the rest of us do! Then again, what you do with your pants around your ankles is your business.

Top Romney Adviser Brags About Losing Poor, Minority Voters To Obama

Oh, my stars and garters! This takes "denial" to a heretofore unimagined level!

TPM

Mitt Romney can take some solace in his devastating loss on Nov. 6: at least he won the voters who really count.

That’s the thesis anyway of top adviser Stuart Stevens, who penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Wednesday arguing that by winning wealthier and whiter voters, Romney secured the moral victory over Obama.

I am so fine with this! They can have all the deluded "moral victories" they want.

Scarborough to Republicans:

Start attacking Susan Rice for her ‘temperament’

This is getting so good! Raw Story.

“How did they pull Kelly Ayotte in?” Scarborough wondered. “They pulled Kelly Ayotte into this trifecta after [Sen. Joe] Lieberman starts running for the doors.”

“They need a third amigo,” New York magazine’s John Heilemann explained. “And now two of the three are women — at least one of the three are women. They both think they are trying to recover from the war on women.”

The Rude Pundit calls Ayotte "Lieberman-with-smaller-tits" and McWalnuts "America's angriest leprechaun". Heh.

Someone else, and I can't remember who, is calling all three of them "the three pendejos". Pretty close.

“As apparently the only liberal with no interest in helping Republicans repair their political flux capacitor so they can get out of 1957 (My em. Heh.), I wholeheartedly agree with Joe Scarborough, and then some,” Christopher wrote. “Instead of ignoring Ambassador Susan Rice’s impressive qualifications in favor of a ginned-up controversy, Republicans should ignore Susan Rice’s qualifications in favor of a ginned-up controversy and her ‘temperament,’ and maybe they could also wonder how Rice will perform as Secretary of State and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour.”

¡Mas popcorn! ¡Mucho mas mantequilla!

Over? Who says it's over? The hell it is!

Filthy Mitt Romney Delivers Campaign Speech To Audience Of Confused Shoppers In Ohio Safeway

Do not miss this one! From America's Finest News Source.

CANTON, OH—According to eyewitnesses at the scene, an unkempt and thoroughly disheveled Mitt Romney gave an impassioned campaign speech Monday to a group of bewildered shoppers inside a local Safeway.

Sources confirmed the filth-covered former presidential candidate walked into the store unannounced early yesterday evening, went to the store’s cereal aisle, and started to play Kid Rock’s “Born Free” on a portable boom box, enthusiastically waving and pointing to no one in particular.
...

Witnesses told reporters that Romney walked around the store barefoot as he gave his speech, wearing only a pair of dirt-caked jeans and a wrinkled dress shirt covered in food stains.

Safeway patrons also said the former Massachusetts governor gave off an incredibly strong odor and appeared to have gone “days, possibly weeks” without bathing.
...

Sources said a weeping Ann Romney at one point attempted to pull her husband out of the store by his arm but was angrily rebuffed, with the 65-year-old retired businessman yelling that he was “trying to do [his] job here.”
...

According to reports, Safeway employees finally called local authorities when Romney attempted to grab an infant from the arms of her mother “for a quick photo op.”

After three police officers managed, with some effort, to subdue Romney in the produce section, he could be heard shrieking incoherently at the top of his lungs for several moments before he finally trailed off, muttering about a plan to “create 12 million jobs by the end of [his] first term.”

“We’re going all the way to the White House!” Romney loudly proclaimed in the parking lot as he was gently guided into the back of a police car. “Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America!”

Yes, he's the last one to know. Derangement and delusion are probably no help. If I had any sympathy for the sonofabitch, which I don't, I'd feel sorry for him forever after being known as "Poor Willard. The loss unhinged him".

Willard's OK and so are the Obama Deranged, who are moving through the 5 stages of grief. They're already up to "anger" but I'm not sure they'll make it to "acceptance". The human life span is only so long, less in the states Willard won. Heh.

Headline of the Day

The Top 4 Whoppers Norquist Tells To Keep Republicans From Defecting

Note to Gruber: You're gonna be the last rat on that ship when the deck is awash. How long can you tread water? Probably, hopefully, not long enough.

Run, Jeb, Run!

Yeah, run from your surname. Heh.

The National Memo

Another Bush, Another Target-Rich Presidential Campaign

The Jeb Bush boomlet that fascinated gullible pundits — and tantalized Republicans — during the dark days of last winter’s presidential primary is undergoing a swift revival. Less than three weeks after the defeat of Mitt Romney, a candidate who proved repellent to minority voters, Republicans are said to be yearning for Jeb, who speaks fluent Spanish and whose wife is from Mexico.
...

While some aspects of the Jeb story may sound uplifting, there are certainly other episodes that will make voters’ hair stand on end.

No shit. Go read.

So yes — run, Jeb, run! The fact is that almost any presidential candidate from Florida represents a full-employment program for investigative journalism — and the “smarter” Bush brother is no exception.

Note to Jebbie: The country would no doubt be better off if you had been President instead of your dumbshit brother, but that ship done sailed. He ruined the whole fucking world and your chances with it.

By all means, run. It'll make Hil work a little harder than she would running against the batcrap crazy wing but not much.

Your Prius will not save you now

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on how to cope with the Earth augering in all around you.

You gotta take care of your own karma. You gotta nurture your own heart, take care of what’s around you and immerse yourself in those you love, calm the fearful and anxious mind and choose where to place your energy as wisely as possible, offering heaps of compassion to all needful things in your world but careful not to overload the psycho-emotional circuitry lest you blow out your nav system and die.

It’s all another way of saying, the karma of the world is not yours to solve. This is the great teaching, shared across any responsible tradition you can name. Shoulder all the illnesses, traumas, violence, abuses, pollutions of the planet, feel the suffering and pains of every living creature, along with the seemingly imminent doom of the earth herself, and watch yourself implode.
...

Put another way: Do you believe our science and technology will surely save us, because smart people and sheer luck have almost always kept total annihilation at bay, save for all those times and all those magnificent empires throughout history when they didn’t?

This much we know, and this much is sometimes all we can know. You gotta take care of your own karma, the love around you. As the terrific Tantra teacher Rod Stryker told me recently, you gotta calm the frenzied terrors of the mind enough that you can summon the bravery to act with full and clear conscience. This is the only way. This is all you can do.

Maybe Chicken Little was right all along.

Headline of the Day

Republican Senators Still “Troubled” After Meeting With Susan Rice

They'll never admit it of course, but they're probably "troubled" because it blew their bullshit political attack to smithereens and they're in danger of being made to look like the fools they are.

Note to Grampa Walnuts, Miss Lindsey, and Lapdog Ayotte: It's too late. It's done.

Question & Quote of the Day

From:

Michael Tomasky on How Obama Shouldn’t Back Down Vs. the GOP

Question:

Elections are supposed to have consequences. So why does the GOP think it can strong-arm the president into compromising on entitlements without first giving in on taxes?

Answer:

Because they're bullies and thugs and it's always worked for them so that's what they know how to do. I think the President has finally figured out that he has to stand up to them. I hope.

Quote:

It’s nice to see Norquist’s Maginot Line holding about as well as the real one did.

Heh. Gruber's a bully and thug too. It'll be very enjoyable to watch his ass get knocked down, particularly because it'll be done by his own side. A buncha bullies beating up on a bully lest they be beat down because of him. Very satisfying.

Upshot:

Obama will have to give to get. That’s how it goes. But he’d better not forget, and he’d better not let the Republicans forget, that he just won an election in which the American people were given a clear choice—and they made it. Republicans walking away from Norquist deserve a few brownie points for coming back to planet Earth, but that sure doesn’t entitle them to start calling any shots.

Sometimes you have to hit these mule-headed assholes with a 2x4 to get their attention. Swing away, Mr. President.