Paperwight's Fair Shot

Fuck Off Librul, Make Us Stop: Episode 2

- Karl Rove complaining that both Clinton and Obama politicized the office of the President.

- Rick Scott spearheading the attack on health care reform.

Explanation here.

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

I skimmed Bobby Jindal's speech, and it occurs to me that I heard it put to music once -- in 1964:

Barry's Boys by The Chad Mitchell Trio

We're the bright young men
Who wanna go back to nineteen-ten
We're Barry's boys
We're the kids with a cause
Yes a government like grandmama's
We're Barry's boys
We're the new kind of youth at your Alma Mater
Back to silver standards and solid Goldwater
Back to when the poor were poor and rich were rich
And you felt so damn secure just knowing which were which

We're the kids who agree
To be social without security
We're Barry's boys
'Cause his hat's in the ring
Where Westbrook Pegler once was king
Now he's too left wing
So if you don't recognize any old Red China
Or Canada, or Britain, or South Carolina
You too can join the crew
Tippecanoe and Nixon too
Back to Barry
Back to cash and carry
Back with Barry's boys

Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get from the left to the right

Roses are red, violets are blue
Walter Lippmann's a pinko, too

A-na-ka-nee, ka-nah, ka-nay
Let's investigate the PTA

Barry, Barry, make your bid
I love John Birch, but oh you kid

Mother, mother, wear a grin
And don't complain, or we'll turn you in

Hold the presses, stop the mail
The Pentagon's having a one-cent sale

What's the latest news statistic?
Hootenannies are socialistic

Shut the door and lock and latch it
Here comes Lizzie with a brand new hatchet

Back with Barry's boys

We're the kids full of nerve
As long as it's conservative, we're Barry's boys
And we can't comprehend
Why our parents aren't friendlier to Barry's boys
Why Dad once crusaded for Sacco/Vanzetti
Now all we're doing is doing the same for John Paul Getty
Our parents emulated Roosevelt and Farley
But we just want to grow up to be like Ev and Charley

No college days with Socrates and Plato
When you're Barry's boys
You just organize parades for the abolishment of NATO
And the rest
The entire West
So let's go back to the days when men were men
And start the First World War all over again
That's right you tell'em son
Isolationism can be fun
Back to Barry
Back to cash and carry
Back with Barry's

And remember, "An American first, and a politician second"
Spoken like a true American politician

Back with Barry
Not with Lyndon, Ike or Harry
Back with Barry's boys

Conservative Lizard Brain vs. Deep Thought

Atrios asks: Deep Thought -- Why does John McCain refuse to wear a flag pin?

Conservative Lizard Brain responds: He can't raise his arms high enough to put a flag pin on because he was tortured as a POW in Vietnam! His arms are his flag pin! Why do you hate the military and our veterans, you dirty fucking hippy!?!???!!!?!?? Vietnam! Vietnam! Hanoi Hilton! Will to win! Hanoi Hilton! Hanoi Jane! America hater! America hater!

In Which I Differ with Pam's House Blend.

bkmn at Pam's House Blend suggests that we should refer to Cindy McCain as John McCain's second wife.  I really think that's not an accurate description. 

A better description would be: "John McCain's last mistress... that we know of so far."

Would it be irresponsible to speculate?  It would be irresponsible not to.

John McCain's Advisors: Proud Pig-Ignorance

From Wonk Room:

In a conference call today, John McCain’s foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann accused Barack Obama of “walking back” an earlier offer to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Stating that Obama now says ” he would only meet with appropriate [Iranian] leaders,” Scheunemann snickered that “Generally, the president is considered the head of a country."

Wonk Room goes on to explain that this is not true of Iran, which (and this is my gloss) makes Scheunemann a jackass.

But one should also note that the "President" is not consider the head of several other fairly important countries as well, including some of our allies.  For example, see Germany, India, Ireland, and Israel.  Just because in the Bush/McCain view of the world the President of the United States has "near-dictatorial powers" doesn't mean it's true for every other country, no matter what, because hey, it's the same word, it must mean exactly the same thing in their system!

Unthinking belligerence and proud pig-ignorance: these are already the hallmarks of John McCain's foreign policy.

Hail the Victorious Dead

whose silence means they agree to serve as symbols for the Republican pursuit of endless wars fought by other people.

Hail also the living troops in "support thuh troops" as long as the Republicans can use them like uniformed Real Dolls.

For the actual members of the military and their actual families, with actual needs and personal goals... Screw Them Once.  Screw Them Twice.  [Update:  Just Keep Screwing Them.] Don't bother leaving them bus fare.

Praise The Lord

In reading this brief note from Ken Silverstein regarding the Freedom Defense Fund, I was reminded of this story from 2004 about the College Republicans bilking little old conservatives out of their savings.

It should surprise nobody that Republican groups are basically run like the crassest sort of televangelist scam.

[Yeah, it's old.]

Zero-Day Exploit

Early in the fall of 2007 Scott Horton initially advocated that Michael Mukasey be confirmed to the post of Attorney General of the Bush Administration, arguing that although Mukasey was of course conservative, he was a thoughtful conservative with a great deal of personal integrity.

Mr. Horton gradually and painfully retreated from both elements of that position, first retracting his advocacy of confirmation for Mukasey, and eventually withdrawing the positive opinion of Mukasey the man.

Now me, I don't travel in rarefied circles where I would get to know a Michael Mukasey, but I could have told Mr. Horton that Mukasey doesn't have any personal integrity, or rather, whatever personal integrity he might have was of lesser importance to Mukasey than his instinct toward authoritarianism and ass-covering for movement conservatism.  That was obvious, based on two simple facts:  the Bush Administration believed Mukasey to be a suitable candidate for Attorney General, and Mukasey was willing to take the position.

It is theoretically possible that a principled conservative (i.e., not a movement conservative) could have taken a position in the 2000 Bush Administration without understanding the depths of corruption in American conservatism as embodied in the Republican Party leadership.  But by 2003, no-one -- and I mean no-one -- of sufficient status to be offered a position in the Bush Administration could have avoided knowing the excremental depth of the cesspool into which they were diving.  Anyone willing to take that swim was already corrupt.

[Yeah, it's old.]

Twenty-Five Years, Citizenship, maybe a Farm

Patriotic American John McCain objects to providing military personnel with educational incentives to become ex-military:

McCain is worried that the benefits would be so juicy people would leave the military to get their education. "I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military as well as for people to join the military," he said.

I eagerly await McCain's sponsorship of a bill preventing mercenary companies working for the US Government from paying more than the US military.  Wouldn't want to create an incentive for military personnel to take their training and leave the military. 

Of course, by McCain's own admission, he doesn't know much about economics. No shit, Sherlock.  But that's OK -- ignorance of economics hasn't slowed down the freewheeling stupid embodied in the Bush administration. Why should it hurt McCain's candidacy?

Actually, that's a Feature, not a Bug

From Think Progress:

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Political Insider reports:

In 1998, 27 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of Democrats tuned in regularly to Atlanta-based CNN. Eight years later, the number of Democrats had risen to 29 percent.

But the number of Republicans who tuned in to CNN had shrunk to 19 percent. Gosh, where do you think they went?

Over the same period, Fox News’ share of Republican viewers jumped from 14 to 36 percent.

Hollander also notes that conservatives “dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position.” Evidently, this included C-SPAN, which also saw a dramatic drop in conservative viewers.

...

But too much Fox News may be bad news for conservatives. An April 2007 Pew Research Study survey found that viewers of the conservative Fox News channel had the lowest knowledge of national and international affairs.