You tell 'em Gore

I can only imagine the doubled-upped dry heaving Gore Vidal could induce out of the Doughy Pantload, but then again, great people of letters don't usually debate those who write shitty books after coming up with the cover.

The unique mess that our republic is in can be, in part, attributed to a corrupt press whose roots are in mendacious news (sic) magazines like Time and Newsweek, aided by tabloids that manufacture fictional stories about actual people. This mingling of opinion and fiction has undone a media never devoted to truth. Hence, the ease with which the Republican smear-machine goes into action when they realize that yet again the party’s permanent unpopularity with the American people will cause them defeat unless they smear individually those who question the junk that the media has put into so many heads. Anyone who says “We gotta fight ’em over there or we’re gonna have to fight ’em over here.” This absurdity has been pronounced by every Republican seeking high office. The habit of lying is now a national style that started with “news” magazines that was further developed by pathological liars that proved to be “good” Entertainment on TV. But a diet of poison that has done none of us any good.

Good news

Seriously,

The "Mr. Show" duo of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross are returning to HBO with "David's Situation," a new comedy pilot starring Cross.

Odenkirk and Cross co-wrote the project, which will star Cross as himself. He leaves Hollywood to move into a suburban, gated community where he has two roommates, a right-wing conservative and a liberal hippie.

And here's some more funny (I love these guys -- as you've probably long figured out)

Expulsion

Last Saturday night, The Kenosha Kid invited the divine watertiger and me to a talk by Richard Dawkins at one of the high temples of Liberal Elitism, the Society for Ethical Culture. This is the kind of place, along with BAM and the sculpture garden at MOMA, that sends the Joe Scarboroughs of the world into paroxysms of spittle-flecked rage, so what else could I do but go? (Of course Joe's got a place right down the street from Ethical Culture, but I digress...)

I enjoyed the lecture, which was attended by 850 other DFHs (think about that -- 850 people lined up down the block to listen to talk by an evolutionary biologist on a Saturday night), despite the little spat reporting about it set off at Eschaton. I'll be honest. I didn't know much about Dawkins save that he'd written a book that was provoking fits in the faithful. That and the venue were good enough reasons for me to cancel my plan to jet to Lake Como with Mr. Clooney, but I digress...

So I've spent the last few days (and nights, as a spate of insomnia plagues me) clicking around the web reading about Dawkins and thinking about adding The God Delusion to the stack next to my bed. Meanwhile, via James Wolcott, I'm treated to a rather interesting and amusing anecdote in which the good professor makes an appearance. After you read it, watch this and note the characteristic wingnut victimology theme delivered in the inimitable nasal drone of a Richard Nixon apologist who's made millions selling himself as one of the smartest guys in the room.

Visions coming True?

Are the chickens coming home?

We all know how the passage goes, right?

According to CNN:

The State Department says security on Barack Obama's passport file has been breached, campaign officials tell CNN.

Several commentators and a few others have been speculating and discussing how some crazy folks might try to assassinate Obama. 

And now we have a major breach of security.

Whose surprised?

Playing? Or Being Played?

Read this.

Tomorrow, we'll talk.

Father Knows Best

Dear Mika Brzezinski,

If you're at all curious as to how to deal with a tiresome and relentless Republican hack like your boss Joe Scarborough, look no further than the 8 AM hour of this morning's broadcast, when your daddy showed how it's done.

xxx...res

Fun Music Read

Hey all you music loving Hegemonians, check out the latest Tunesday post over at Scholars and Rogues.  Ah, I remember staying up late to watch the Midnight Special... how about you? 

I am alive ...and pissed

Hello Regular readers, I apologize for my tardiness of which Dr. Atta J. Turk is all too familiar with but after a breaking of spring and a death in the family, I have returned back to my electronic homestead. 

And I return to hear a vice president cavalierly dismiss the entire sentiments of three quarters of the American public with a single word, "So..."  I come back to hear what must have been a slightly drunk prezneet Bush try to defend a failed and by any sane person's account -- an unmitigated disastrous and destructive war in the middle east. 

I reenter and the economy is sliding toward depression where the two America's that John Edwards spoke about is being quite apparent.  Where is the DAMN INDIGNATION over what will become $4 a gallon gas (or more)!!! 

I am back.  I promise my thoughts on politics, culture, and music.  But man, I sure wish everything didn't have be in such a spiral when I did.

Yeah, I'm alive.

I'm no journalist

But I know enough to know that:

1. THIS is completely unacceptable, but rather homoerotic.

2. Now THIS is completely fine.

3. While THIS is unbelievably unacceptable and dickish and like No. 1 above par for the course.

Truly, this must be Brian Ross's defining story...so very proud (pic from Glennzilla)

That's about Wright

Chris Britt, Springfield Journal Register.

Via Blue Gal at Crooks & Liars.

This from Nick Kristof is nice to see as well...for the actual depth and meaning of Obama's church is buried beneath small edits and snippets of Wright, not anything approaching the voluminous body of work:

Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his church say that is an unrecognizable caricature: He is a complex figure and sometimes a reckless speaker, but one of his central messages is not anti-white hostility but black self-reliance.

“The big thing for Wright is hope,” said Martin Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services. “You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope.”

Professor Marty said that as a white person, he sticks out in the largely black congregation but is always greeted with warmth and hospitality. “It’s not anti-white,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who’s white who walks out of there not feeling affirmed.”

Mr. Wright has indeed made some outrageous statements. But he should be judged as well by his actions — including a vigorous effort to address poverty, ill health, injustice and AIDS in his ministry. Mr. Wright has been frightfully wrong on many topics, but he was right on poverty, civil rights and compassion for AIDS victims.

Really?

Arlen Specter wrote a book with this as it's title?



Well, it certainly isn't a description of his service in the Senate.

BTW, must be nice having that health care coverage isn't it Arlen? Think that might have helped?

I guess the Iraqis are celebrating the Anniversary in a fashion Bush & Cheney can related to

Who needs Flowers & Sweets (or $3 Trillion)?

Police said Wednesday 17 border guards have been shot dead by gunmen in different areas in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

The killings occurred over the last 24 hours, police sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The sources did not say whether the killings were carried out by the same gunmen and what the motive behind them was.

Criminal gangs and militias loyal to rival political powers have been active in Shiite-dominated Basra, 550 kilometres south of Baghdad.

In a separate incident in the city, Sheikh Abdel-Azim al-Idani, a close aide of senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was critically wounded in an attack by gunmen Tuesday, according to the same the sources.

Al-Idani's aide was killed in the attack.

But hey, those Black Preachers sure are crazy (when you edit their clips down into 2 minute segments).

"We have to keep fighting or the scary brown men will join with the scary black men and ruin all that is right about America, the most free & equal society on earth!"
- Paraphrased Sean Hannity

Who's Messiah are you on?

Hey, Michael Gerson...

When your side stops kissing the ass of ...

Jerry Falwell (okay too late for that one)

Pat Robertson

John Hagee

Or any number of Catholic-Jew-Gay-America Haters you can talk to me about Jeremiah Wright.

Furthermore, if we are just going to extract a few minutes here and there of sermons then what can we find from those folks?

But my favorite for this perpetual double-standard has to be the long-time GOP love affair with Reverend Moon and the Moonies. For Moon is the self-proclaimed messiah on earth and has owned the Washington Times for about three decades now. Something that goes curiously unmentioned in our media while condemning some black people and their craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy ways.

And during this whole time he and the conservative media have been giving each other reach-arounds.

See how many times the Washington Times, a loss-leader if ever there was one, is quoted by these knuckleheads in condemning a liberal...especially on religious matters.

When you guys stop cupping Reverend Moon's balls, you guys can have some point worth listening to on extreme religious speech.

But until then...

As Written by Someone with No Idea

In the wake of David Paterson's admission, discussed by Res yesterday, I should say it goes well with my new book:

"Feels Good"

Said the man as he pumped his fist, if a man he be, though no woman would proudly claim Bush either. Let's just say "it" shall we?

"Feels good" it said five years ago today when it launched 'Operation Clusterfuck' and it's sequels, "Operartion Clusterfuck II:Electric Boogaloo"; "Operation Clusterfuck III: This time it's Personal"; "Operation Clusterfuck IV: Taxing The Next Generation"; "Operation Clusterfuck V: The Surge" and of course the now premiering "Operation Clusterfuck VI: Bush vs. Freddy".

Yes, it's been a delightful five years so far in the land where lauching voluntary wars and proclaiming everlasting Freidmans is the height of sound policy and if you disagree you're a big liberal fascist.

Thank goodness for those 4,000 dead Americans, 25,000 wounded, the $500 billion and counting all the way up to at least $3 trillion. And let us not forget the nameless, faceless, brown-people who worship a faith that has so few people boisterous about bombing us as the 'Great Satan' that we had to bomb a shitload of non-offending brown-people to prove that we aren't evil at all, just EXXXXXXXXXXXXXTREMELY freedom loving.

I'm getting a little teary-eyed...of course that might be the tap water.

The Empire State of Fornication

Wow. If you read the papers, you'd think that the only thing New York governors were doing was, well, fucking, specifically people other than their spouses.

Take comfort, New York governors, you're in good company.

Artwork: "Triumphant Eros" (1602) -- Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Nobody could not have anticipated

This:

A conference to reconcile Iraq's warring political groups began to unravel even before it got under way on Tuesday, with the main Sunni Muslim Arab bloc pulling out and protesting it had not been properly invited.

The gathering, billed as the biggest of its kind in Iraq, aimed to bring leaders of rival factions together around much-delayed so-called laws meant to promote common cause between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

The Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc, had said it would attend but pulled out as dozens of political leaders gathered at a hotel in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"The Front will not attend the conference, not because it does not believe in reconciliation ... but because the invitations were sent to members of the Front and not formally to the Accordance Front," spokesman Salim al-Jubouri said.

Land of the Free etc.

America:

We've advanced to the point from where only white people can be elected President to one where ... black people who are really white people can be elected.*

Where exactly have we advanced?

And thank goodness our media has advanced so much that a media critic can say this about a black man and think nothing of it or how it reads:

It's not that I think the Illinois senator should be tarred with every eccentric or anti-American ranting by the reverend

*Not Applicable in America.

Thanks so-called liberal media

From a woman who can't edit who is paid to be an editor:

John McCain, Looking Good [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Gallup:

McCain’s 67% Favorable Rating His Highest in Eight Years
Obama has a 62% favorable rating, while Clinton's is 53%

It's a good think K-Lo wasn't invited to the bbq, plenty of ribs to go around for the Michael Scherer's of the world.

It's our Anniversary

Four years ago, Atta J. Turk, Podiatrist to the Stars started Rising Hegemon with just a blog and a dream.

11,181 posts later...where's my fuckin' dream?

Anyhoo, here's an old one in remembrance of blog posts past:

photo via crazymaq
Gilligan's Nation

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

a tale of a feckless drip.

That started from a zygote spore,

from this preppy's tiny dick.


The Chimp was a steely rocket man,

his Condi brave and sure.
The nation's fate set sail that day,
appointed to an eight year tour, an eight year tour………

Al Qaeda started getting rough,

the neo-con shit was tossed.
If not for the doltage of the feckless crew,

Bin Laden wouldn't be lost; Bin Laden wouldn't be lost.


The Fools took ground on the land of this wretched desert place,


with Gilligan,

and Cheney too,

the Spinning Ass,

and the Wives,

Beeeeeeeeee-Movie Star,

the "Perfessor"

and Crazy Ann,

Yes, they're all quite vile!

Guess what, we're so lucky to be "and the rest"