Middle Aged man wants to be cool...

So I think I'll buy myself a Zune.


What? It matches my dark socks and sandals.

MATLOCK!!!

High Broderism indeed -- pretty soon he'll be forgetting Matlock scripts too. Although I heard a touching news report recently that Broder had unexpectedly started a romance with Sandra Day O'Connor's husband.

November 9, 2007:

New York: Will you and the media ever apply as much scrutiny to the Giuliani marriages as you have done to the single Clinton marriage?

David S. Broder: I plan to leave both subjects alone.

Six Days Later:

Billary Burnout: The prospect of a two-headed Clinton monster as president could test the tolerance of the American people.

Put the former president into the picture -- however "sanitized" or insulated his role is supposed to be -- and the dimensions of the problem become even larger.

No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependence of their political and personal partnership.

No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end should Hillary Clinton be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.

It is a difficult question for any of the Democratic rivals to raise. But it lingers, even if unasked

The balance of the article then centers around the Lou Dobbsian universe. The one that did so fucking poorly in the November 2007 elections.

I was thinking of doing a Camille Paglia Post

But I see one was already done by capable hands.

She's truly the amazing projection machine.

The Continuing Adventures of Rudy & Judi (Part V in a Series)

Tonight, somewhere in South Carolina...

RUDY: "Look, the Kerik indictments were bad enough, but this Regan thing is out of control. You're going to have to do it."

JUDI: "Listen, you miserable garlic-eater, you gave me that damn thing. It's mine. And I'm not selling it, no matter what happens."

RUDY: "Judi, we need money to do rapid response on the Regan allegations."

JUDI: "What's the matter? Don't trust your BFF Roger Ailes to run interference for you with the the wingnuts?"

RUDY: "They're not 'wingnuts,' Judi. They're my base."

JUDI: "Listen to this fucking guy. 'They're my base.' Let me tell you something Rudy, I'M your base. Without me, you're just another dumb Dago with a closetful of tasseled loafers, a 'Ground Zero Survivor' commemorative plaque, and a lifetime Viagra prescription."

RUDY: "Look, you don't have to sell it. We'll just take it to a pawn shop. I bet we can shut Regan up for a cool fifty thousand. She's got legal bills to pay. I'll buy it back for you after the election."

JUDI: "You want me to hock my tiara? Nothing doing, Rudy. I don't want to hear another fucking word about this. Hit Regina up for the money. Tell Donna to hock some of her jewels. Hell, call in a favor from Christyne Lategano for all I care. But I don't want to hear another word about me hocking that tiara. I need it for my -- oops! I mean your inaugural ball."

This installment inspired by an idea from Hecate.

Enjoy the whole series: Part IV, Part III, Part II, and Part I.

New York Can Be a Deeply Silly Place

As brilliantly captured in The Story of YVES.

h/t: Sexy Pixie

Something for Sonny Perdue

And the rest of the prayer contingent for rain.

Moments later Hitchens lost his Johnny Walker Blueballs

This was sent to me, I have no idea where it's from (Vanity Fair maybe?), but why God why?

Of course, that last question really does help answer Hitchens' position on the Almighty in clear terms. If there was a God, he would not allow such pictures to be published.

But they clearly are.

How quaint

President Say-it-don't-Spray-It.

Wow, Bush and an 'American Idol' contestant. I'm sure they discussed 'string theory'.

REUTERS/Jason Reed

Oh, Nooooooooooo

I can already smell the condescension.

Iowans are perverse. They will insist on changing their minds several times, just to keep all of our attention focused on them, between now and the caucusing. It's sort of like roller derby, with lots of elbowing and slipstreaming and then someone or ones break loose from the pack and...crashes into the rail, or occasionally, wins.

In any case, there is no inevitability in Iowa. Time to start paying close attention. I've bought a new winter coat, which includes the better part of a sheep as lining, for the occasion. I"m ready to roll.

Can't we petition Lou Dobbs or something to keep Joe Klein from coming here?

Classy with a "K"

Ah, those high-minded Republicans:



Note the crowd reaction -- and McCain's non-reaction.

via Talking Points

I do believe we can spot the bigot

Sad and, in what is more of a rarity, not from a Republican -- that Party still continues its DiMaggio-like streak for sexual perversity.

HOUMA, La. (AP) — A white state lawmaker in a runoff election called a black civil-rights veteran who had helped her campaign "Buckwheat," prompting the NAACP to urge voters to kick her out of office.

Rep. Carla Blanchard Dartez, a Democrat, acknowledged that she ended a Thursday night conversation with Hazel Boykin by saying, "Talk to you later, Buckwheat." Dartez had been thanking Boykin for driving voters to the polls...

Boykin, 75, helped desegregate restaurants and the parish school system in the 1960s. Her son, Jerome, is president of the Terrebonne Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Meanwhile, the gang at "Hot Air" plan to rally in support of the Republican Candidate in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Memories...

Many may remember when C+ Augustus traveled to the remnants of the Soviet Union a couple years ago and had a variety of embarrassing photo ops with Vlad that we will keep dredging up for another fourteen months.

Well, the highlight of that trip was a campaign style rally in the newly established "Democratic" state of Georgia. It was like the President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili was taking staging orders from the White House advance team. Why just look at the image:

I am proud to stand beside a President [Saakashvili] who has shown such spirit, determination, and leadership in the cause of freedom...

While peaceful revolutions can bring down repressive regimes, the real changes and the real challenge is to build up free institutions in their place. This is difficult work, and you are undertaking it with dignity and determination. You have taken tough steps to reform your economy and to crack down on corruption. You are building a democratic society where the rights of minorities are respected, where a free press flourishes, a vigorous opposition is welcome, and unity is achieved through peace. In this new Georgia, the rule of law will prevail, and freedom will be the birthright of every citizen.

I'm just glad the ALWAYS prescient Washington Post Beltway Wise Men were there to document the enabling:

David Ignatius:

What will keep him from becoming another dictator, Saakashvili says, are the free media and free elections he helped create. Eventually, the public will tire of his policies and throw him out -- perhaps at the end of his first five-year term. When that happens, he says, "it will show that Georgia has become a normal country."

The Bush administration talks about democratic change. But it's the Saakashvilis, armed with their homegrown how-to manuals, who actually make it happen.

Meanwhile, in the real world:

The pro-Western government of Georgia, a former Soviet republic, declared a state of emergency Wednesday night after police violently dispersed throngs of protesters and shut down private TV stations. The president accused opposition leaders of acting in concert with Russian intelligence agents.

The crackdown began Wednesday morning when police in black masks and riot gear used tear gas, batons, rubber bullets and water cannons against demonstrators who had occupied the street in front of the Parliament building. It was the first real violence since large anti-government demonstrations began six days ago.

And then there is this entertaining nugget:

About 9 p.m., Imedi, a television station known for its opposition to the government, went off the air in the middle of a live broadcast. Before the screen went black, the anchor said police had entered the premises and had told employees to lie on the floor. He called on foreign governments to respond.

Imedi has been owned jointly by billionaire opposition supporter Badri Patarkatsishvili and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Last week, the station announced that News Corp. was increasing its shares to a majority stake.

So Saakashvili may be becoming a repressive dictator, but the dude at least has taste.

Meanwhile, good ol' Chimperor Disgustus has had fuck-all to say about this. He probably thinks it will piss off Atlanta Brave fans.

Wow, she really is like Ann Coulter

"Blue State America and Red State America is meeting in my dress" - Laura Ingraham.

Amazing how lame conservative talkers are when confronted with even moderate opposition to their views, rather than enablers.

Fez Tip to TRex.

Wow, just...

Wow,

Richard Cohen turns his full beltway "Broder-junk" to 11.

Will Mayor Mike [Bloomberg] run? He might. Can he win? I still doubt it. But my doubts are nothing compared with my chagrin when I read an op-ed by Karl Rove with which I keep nodding in agreement.

This is what passes for a stiffy in Cohen's world. He should really consult his physician over mental priapism.

I've seen beat downs before

But as Atrios cryptically implies, Bob Herbert's thrashing of Bobo Brooks' Reagan racial fantasy piece from last week is truly a beauty to behold.

Brooks isn't getting up from this well-earned cockpunch.

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Congress overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Congress overrode that veto, too.

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.

To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words like “states’ rights” in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the Reagan presidency.

Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary keys to his political success.

The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.

Meanwhile, Bobo is back on the hagiography train with John McCain -- back to total fanboy status. Within the column is an ironic remark that perfectly sums up the four decades of Right-Wing fiction that so personifies our national debate as well as Bobo himself:

Telling the truth is a skill. Those who don’t do it habitually lose the ability

Once again, Reagan was a effin' bigot -- the "soft" bigotry of symbolic expectations:

Old vs. New

Thanks to the Chimp, we're going to have "New Privacy" replacing the "Privacy Classic"*

Old Privacy:

The right to express your thoughts, without the government attacking.

New Privacy:

The right to keep your thoughts to yourself.

I'm sure Glenn Reynolds, former libertarian, will tell us we're all over-reacting with our failure to heh & indeed over such things. Privacy, is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO overrated. And you have to trust him, after all, he's a former libertarian.


*Bush loved "New Coke" by the way...but then again he loves coke in all its forms**


** There has been some unfortunate confusion involving straw placement.

Bush's New Buddies in Iraq

Well, this is fuckin' AWESOME! Good thing our media and punditry can't be bothered to analyze this in any depth at all.

Abu Abed, a member of the insurgent Islamic Army, has recently become the commander of the US-sponsored "Ameriya Knights". He is one of the new breed of Sunni warlords who are being paid by the US to fight al-Qaida in Iraq. The Americans call their new allies Concerned Citizens.

It is a strategy that has worked well for the Americans, on paper at least. This week, the US military claimed it had forced the extremist group al-Qaida in Mesopotamia out of Baghdad altogether, and cut the number of murders in the city by 80%. Major General Joseph Fil, commander of US forces in Baghdad, said: "The Iraqi people have decided that they've had it up to here with violence."

Critics of the plan say they are simply creating powerful new strongmen who run their own prisons and armies, and who eventually will turn on each other.

A senior Sunni sheikh, whose tribe is joining the new alliance with the Americans against al-Qaida, told me in Beirut that it was a simple equation for him. "It's just a way to get arms, and to be a legalised security force to be able to stand against Shia militias and to prevent the Iraqi army and police from entering their areas," he said.

"The Americans lost hope with an Iraqi government that is both sectarian and dominated by militias, so they are paying for locals to fight al-Qaida. It will create a series of warlords.

"It's like someone who brought cats to fight rats, found himself with too many cats and brought dogs to fight the cats. Now they need elephants."

So we fucked up a fucked-up nation worse and now are leaving it even more fucked up Damn, how can these people not stand up and applaud our Lord & Chimperor? He wonders, in his typically "manufactured reality-based" manner about this too:

If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying: God, I love freedom, because that’s what’s happened.

Well, at least we kept our ideals -- except for the death of civil liberties, starting wars of aggression, paying mercenaries, and opposing torture parts.

So I guess at the end of seven years of Bush, we've become pre-World War II Germany -- without the strong unions and health care.

...at least Halliburton's doin' okay.

Thanks Kaiser George!

The Empire of Ideals

The Bush Administration killing every possible American ideals.

A Pakistani businessman suspected of playing a role in the brutal 2002 killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl died earlier this year, shortly after being interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Pearl, a Karachi-based correspondent for the Journal, was kidnapped on January 23, 2002, and killed execution-style shortly after.

The newspaper said Karachi businessman Saud Memon became a key suspect in the case because he owned a nursery where Pearl had been held captive.

Citing an unnamed senior US law enforcement official, the report said Memon was interrogated by both US and Pakistani intelligence services.

The interrogation produced information that Memon was helping Al-Qaeda develop anthrax strains, the newspaper said.

He was "in a lot of the rooms where important things were being discussed," the paper quotes the US official as saying. "He knew senior Al-Qaeda people, and was moving equipment and supplies."

But Memon's family members and human rights groups said that in April, the businessman was left in front of his Karachi home badly injured and emaciated, weighing just 80 pounds (36 kilograms), according to the report.

About a month later, he died from what was described as complications from meningitis and tuberculosis, the Journal said.

Pakistani human rights groups have accused the local intelligence service of torturing Memon, according to the paper.

But the report mentions an unnamed Pakistani police official saying Memon was already in poor condition when the United States gave him back to the Pakistanis.

The "anthrax strains" story turned out, it appears to be complete and utter bullshit, though it was a major news item shortly after 9/11 when anthrax envelopes turned up in the chambers of Democratic Party Legislative leaders and selected newsrooms. It sounds like this guy, who may actually have had useful information was tortured and beaten into giving completely spurious info.

And know the Pakistani officials are essentially saying Americans tortured the guy to death.

Cue Lee Greenwood.

The Price of War

As George Bush refuses to see it...

I had taken a photo of Miller for the Los Angeles Times during the battle of Fallouja in November 2004. He was leaning against a wall, a cigarette dangling from his lips. To my surprise, the image became iconic, capturing a sense of the front line in a young Marine's face. It appeared in dozens of newspapers and on TV broadcasts, giving Miller a moment of fame.

Back home, he had struggled to put Iraq behind him. He was medically discharged from the Marines, suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder. He suffered flashbacks, drank heavily and retreated into a shell.

Read the rest.

Meanwhile, in the world of George Bush...

Is America's newest weapon in the war on terror the... acrostic poem? In December 2005, a Pakistani youth discovered that the first letter of each line of a poem in his English primer spelled out the name of "P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T G-E-O-R-G-E B-U-S-H." The anonymous poem -- called "The Leader" -- listed the qualities of a great statesman in a series of painfully stiff rhyming couplets.

UGH!

Worst President Ever!

$611 Billion

If Bush's latest OFF-BUDGET supplemental for Iraq is passed it makes $611 Billion for his war.

The Boston Globe has what that $611,000,000,000 could have bought: