James O'Keefe: Lowering the Bar to Subterranean:
When you think about it, at this point, wannabe CNN-punker and "journalist" (if by "journalist," you mean, "preening liar jerk-off," which, sadly, often it does) James O'Keefe deserves to be raped by a polar bear and left to rectally bleed out on an ice floe that's drifting into the Arctic sea. As the darkness starts to creep into his eyes, the last thing O'Keefe deserves to see is the illusion of douchebag polar bears high-fiving each other and waving good-bye to him. That's absurd, though. Chances are, he'd be broken in two by the rape and then eaten.
But until O'Keefe decides to do a major "story" about the North Pole, the pasty-faced bag of shit who used his frat house's Final Cut of doom to create a poor asshole's Borat about ACORN, thus leading to a media feeding frenzy to destroy an organization that helped the poor, is free to do the cretinous work that his Breitbarting masters expect of him.
Like his latest attempted prank: to lure CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau, who is doing a documentary for the network about young conservative activists, onto a yacht filled with sex toys and "pretend" to seduce her, all the while filming the events. It's like O'Keefe saw the movie The Virginity Hit and thought, "Huh. Maybe I can finally get laid, too."
If you read the excerpts of the planning document O'Keefe and his associates created, you can see into the dark heart of a wannabe rapist. It's like these pillow-biting fuckwads thought assault was a joke. They call it a "Caper," and list things to have on the boat, like "posters and pictures of naked women" and "dildos." 'Cause that shit's funny, yo. There's even a spec script of how they thought the whole thing would happen, with Boudreau presumably acting like a complete idiot instead of like the adult in the room, saying swooning damsel shit like "James, this is not professional." Then, "If she is pulling away, withdraw and pull her back in. If she's unsure, comfort her and reassure her. Vacillate between somewhat serious interview and the come-hither persona as needed in order to confuse her judgment and also keep her on the boat." How many times do you think O'Keefe has jacked off to this scenario?
Creeped out yet? How about this, from the script that O'Keefe would say as an intro to the video: "I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath." You got it? Motherfuckers sure know how to quote Don Henley, no?
Oh, wait, there's also the mention that they want to make sure they have lots of early video of the "seduction" before so as "not proverbially 'shoot your load' before the catalytic moment" of revealing it's a hoax. The rape threat, even if not acted on, was implicit.
That's not citizen journalism. It's coercion and stupidity. Luckily, the "bubble-headed-bleach-blond" is not who they think she is. She's a seasoned reporter who probably would have told O'Keefe to go fuck himself, which, you know, would have had to have been edited out for the sake of the "story."
God help brave O'Keefe assistant and, until then, abettor, Izzy Santa, who tipped off Boudreau because something about it just made her queasy. Damn bitches. Always fucking up the boys' fun. Advice to Santa: don't take any drinks from O'Keefe anymore. Actually, that should be advice to everyone.
Seven Rude Years:
Indulge a few moments of navel-gazing: It's been seven years today since the Rude Pundit decided that he couldn't take the disgusting insanity of the Bush administration and emerged to offer his own versions of karmic justice that could be enacted on the various and sundry criminals who we called our leaders and media figures. He's pretty sure that every year he does this comes with a three-year loss of life on the back end. Bloggery is the intellectual coal mine. But it offers a liberatory experience that few so-called journalists and pundits are allowed to have.
Despite the best attempts by sites like Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, both admirable in their own ways, despite some of us being asked to appear on major media outlets, we have resisted being gentrified here in the blog ghetto. Witness the liberal sniffing at Markos Moulitsas's book American Taliban for daring to use the attitude and language of blogs in monograph form, like how dare we bring our crude, countrified ways to their refined and erudite cities. The Rude Pundit still loves that we're offensive to a good many people because we should be. And the Rude Pundit has striven mightily to be so.
Usually, every anniversary is accompanied by a fundraising drive. Now, the Rude Pundit would never stop you from clicking on the PayPal button over there on the right and tossing a few scheckels in the hat. But he's gonna ask most of you to sit on your wallets and hold your purses for a bit. (Unless you're in that magical 3% income-wise - in which case, fuck, please, be the Rude Pundit's House of Medici.)
'Cause, see, he's got a book coming out soon, The Rude Pundit's Almanack, from OR Books, best known as the publisher of Going Rouge, the anti-Palin volume, as well as works by Douglas Rushkoff and others. To answer the most-asked question, the Rude Pundit's book will be mostly never-blogged and totally new stuff. And blog posts that are in the book have been updated and expanded.
So, dear, sweet, 97% who have been so amazingly generous in the past, keep your hard-earned dollars and pesos and Euros and whatever the fuck you have down there in Australia (Is it Woggies? If not, it oughta be) for now. And when the book comes out, let's put that fucker up the magical Amazon charts. As soon as he has the publication date, which will be in the next few months, he'll post it here.
Tonight, the Rude Pundit will celebrate in the old way: a deranged foursome with some very open-minded Muslims while sucking on opium hookahs and downing an anise liquor drink called the Suicide Bomber. It won't be pretty. Or maybe it'll be beautiful.
Indulge a few moments of navel-gazing: It's been seven years today since the Rude Pundit decided that he couldn't take the disgusting insanity of the Bush administration and emerged to offer his own versions of karmic justice that could be enacted on the various and sundry criminals who we called our leaders and media figures. He's pretty sure that every year he does this comes with a three-year loss of life on the back end. Bloggery is the intellectual coal mine. But it offers a liberatory experience that few so-called journalists and pundits are allowed to have.
Despite the best attempts by sites like Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, both admirable in their own ways, despite some of us being asked to appear on major media outlets, we have resisted being gentrified here in the blog ghetto. Witness the liberal sniffing at Markos Moulitsas's book American Taliban for daring to use the attitude and language of blogs in monograph form, like how dare we bring our crude, countrified ways to their refined and erudite cities. The Rude Pundit still loves that we're offensive to a good many people because we should be. And the Rude Pundit has striven mightily to be so.
Usually, every anniversary is accompanied by a fundraising drive. Now, the Rude Pundit would never stop you from clicking on the PayPal button over there on the right and tossing a few scheckels in the hat. But he's gonna ask most of you to sit on your wallets and hold your purses for a bit. (Unless you're in that magical 3% income-wise - in which case, fuck, please, be the Rude Pundit's House of Medici.)
'Cause, see, he's got a book coming out soon, The Rude Pundit's Almanack, from OR Books, best known as the publisher of Going Rouge, the anti-Palin volume, as well as works by Douglas Rushkoff and others. To answer the most-asked question, the Rude Pundit's book will be mostly never-blogged and totally new stuff. And blog posts that are in the book have been updated and expanded.
So, dear, sweet, 97% who have been so amazingly generous in the past, keep your hard-earned dollars and pesos and Euros and whatever the fuck you have down there in Australia (Is it Woggies? If not, it oughta be) for now. And when the book comes out, let's put that fucker up the magical Amazon charts. As soon as he has the publication date, which will be in the next few months, he'll post it here.
Tonight, the Rude Pundit will celebrate in the old way: a deranged foursome with some very open-minded Muslims while sucking on opium hookahs and downing an anise liquor drink called the Suicide Bomber. It won't be pretty. Or maybe it'll be beautiful.
The Rude Pundit on Yesterday's Stephanie Miller Show:
On Monday, the Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller discussed the need for Democrats to nut up for the coming midterms.
On Monday, the Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller discussed the need for Democrats to nut up for the coming midterms.
Democratic Candidates Will Win Only By Being Democratic Candidates:
So, in an interview with Rolling Stone (motto: "Last print magazine standing - for now"), President Barack Obama said to disenchanted Democratic voters who apparently are unenthusiastic about the upcoming midterm elections, "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." (This was said just after President Wiretap and State Secrets said, without a hint of irony, "If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election.")
Earlier in the interview, referring to health care reform and financial regulation reform and student loan reform, among other things, Obama said, "I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished." The problem, of course, is that Democrats aren't. The problem is that Obama isn't running this year. The problem, as Joan Walsh points out in Salon, isn't that liberals are planning to not vote.
Right now the Democrats' closing argument in the election is "You think we suck? Those other fuckers suck way more than we do." That doesn't exactly inspire the on-the-fence voter to jump to the blue side. It's like when you're breaking up with a total douchebag loser you've dated for a couple of years and he says, "You think you can do better than me? You just wait and see." Man, now that's some compelling shit: you can stay with the loser or see what's after the loser.
That's essentially what Joe Biden said in New Hampshire on Monday, that Democrats need to "remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives." There's a "no-shit" component to that advice (which Obama also gave): every election is about looking at the alternatives. But, you know, you make a better case during that break-up when you say, "I may not make a lot of money, but, damn, you know you love our fucking. And I make you laugh." In other words, Democrats need to embrace who they are. It's the same goddamn argument we on the left make every goddamn election.
For example, look at freshman Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello of Virginia. Less than a month ago, he was getting his ass kicked by Republican Robert Hurt, 61-35% in one poll. Now, the race is tightening for lots of reasons, even though this was supposed to be a slamdunk, an easy takeaway by the GOP against a Southern Democrat who voted for health care reform and cap and trade. He voted against the stimulus because it didn't go far enough.
Now, you'd expect Perriello to be hominah-hominah-ing his beliefs, like Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Instead, one of Perriello's strategies is to say, plainly and clearly, "Yep, those were the votes. And here's what they did for you." On his website, he's touting the Patients' Bill of Rights that began to go into effect last week. He's highlighting the green jobs he's helped get funds to create. And he's probably gonna be endorsed by the NRA (yeah, we can't have it all). Sure, his district contains Charlottesville, a college town, but it's also got a good chunk of backwoods dentistry-free Virginia, too, and it went for McCain in 2008. He should be toast. But he's not. Shit, last Friday, at a campaign appearance, he said flat-out that he wants to end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. And he's been kicking Hurt's ass over Hurt's refusal to debate.
How about that? An incumbent Democrat who isn't denying he's a Democrat who supports Democratic causes just made up a supposedly insurmountable gap in the polls in a generally red district. Oh, wait...is that too whiny?
So, in an interview with Rolling Stone (motto: "Last print magazine standing - for now"), President Barack Obama said to disenchanted Democratic voters who apparently are unenthusiastic about the upcoming midterm elections, "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." (This was said just after President Wiretap and State Secrets said, without a hint of irony, "If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election.")
Earlier in the interview, referring to health care reform and financial regulation reform and student loan reform, among other things, Obama said, "I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we've probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I've got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we've accomplished." The problem, of course, is that Democrats aren't. The problem is that Obama isn't running this year. The problem, as Joan Walsh points out in Salon, isn't that liberals are planning to not vote.
Right now the Democrats' closing argument in the election is "You think we suck? Those other fuckers suck way more than we do." That doesn't exactly inspire the on-the-fence voter to jump to the blue side. It's like when you're breaking up with a total douchebag loser you've dated for a couple of years and he says, "You think you can do better than me? You just wait and see." Man, now that's some compelling shit: you can stay with the loser or see what's after the loser.
That's essentially what Joe Biden said in New Hampshire on Monday, that Democrats need to "remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives." There's a "no-shit" component to that advice (which Obama also gave): every election is about looking at the alternatives. But, you know, you make a better case during that break-up when you say, "I may not make a lot of money, but, damn, you know you love our fucking. And I make you laugh." In other words, Democrats need to embrace who they are. It's the same goddamn argument we on the left make every goddamn election.
For example, look at freshman Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello of Virginia. Less than a month ago, he was getting his ass kicked by Republican Robert Hurt, 61-35% in one poll. Now, the race is tightening for lots of reasons, even though this was supposed to be a slamdunk, an easy takeaway by the GOP against a Southern Democrat who voted for health care reform and cap and trade. He voted against the stimulus because it didn't go far enough.
Now, you'd expect Perriello to be hominah-hominah-ing his beliefs, like Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Instead, one of Perriello's strategies is to say, plainly and clearly, "Yep, those were the votes. And here's what they did for you." On his website, he's touting the Patients' Bill of Rights that began to go into effect last week. He's highlighting the green jobs he's helped get funds to create. And he's probably gonna be endorsed by the NRA (yeah, we can't have it all). Sure, his district contains Charlottesville, a college town, but it's also got a good chunk of backwoods dentistry-free Virginia, too, and it went for McCain in 2008. He should be toast. But he's not. Shit, last Friday, at a campaign appearance, he said flat-out that he wants to end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. And he's been kicking Hurt's ass over Hurt's refusal to debate.
How about that? An incumbent Democrat who isn't denying he's a Democrat who supports Democratic causes just made up a supposedly insurmountable gap in the polls in a generally red district. Oh, wait...is that too whiny?
Karl Rove Is Coming Back for His Leather Slave:
The phone calls started coming months ago. But when he answered, the other side would just hang up. Now he heard a half-huffed, "Hello there." That voice. That voice on the other end, so familiar that it comforted him and nauseated him. It aroused him exquisitely and caused his skin to crawl as his senses conjured the pains he had suffered. The voice said, "I've always known where you are. And you know you want to come back to me. Don't worry. It won't be long now. God, I can feel my balls slapping against your taint already. Life hasn't been the same without you."
Karl Rove's ex-leather slave threw his Android phone across the room. My god, my god, my god, he thought. How could this happen? He thought he had gotten away. He thought for sure that he had finally found freedom. The memories, which he worked so long to press down into a flapjack of agony, exploded and he was covered with their effluvia. When he was Karl Rove's leather slave, during the early, long-forgotten part of the millennium, he was kept in the basement of the White House, chained to Andrew Johnson's sewing table and next to a file cabinet filled with Woodrow Wilson's secret Socialist takeover plans (all stamped: "Canceled due to stroke"). Down there, for years, Rove wrecked his leather slave's anus constantly with cock, dildo, and Benjamin Harrison's silver-coated pineapple, among other implements, and used his mouth as a testicle cozy. The leather slave smirked a bit, thinking, "Karl Rove: Teabagging before it was cool." The leather slave escaped after the 2006 midterms, and he went about his life, constantly looking over his shoulder, constantly wondering when Rove would find him.
There was no way that Karl Rove was going to stay away for long. There was no way he would not want to manipulate the ship of state, the gears of power, to his ends, which, as ever, were the ends of his massively wealthy clients. Now, back and better funded than ever, unencumbered by attempting to get the dunderheaded Bush child elected anymore, Rove is about to launch his next great campaign: "an anti-Democratic barrage of attack ads that will be run tens of thousands of times, a final get-out-the-vote push with some 40 million negative mail pieces, and 20 million automated phone calls." Shock and awe, motherfuckers, shock and awe. It is all part of a long-term plan, one that will climax in 2012, to once more imprison his leather slave, to make him wear the hood or the ball gag or the chaps, depending on the cause, depending on the night.
Of course, at this point, after all the running, the ex-leather slave wondered if it wouldn't be better to just let Rove have him. He's noticed lately that he has others stalking him. At first, he thought they were spies sent by Rove, but he knows that Rove doesn't need men to do one's work when one has access to Pentagon satellites and FBI wiretapping. No, the ex-leather slave learned, from bricks tossed through his windows and crudely scrawled messages that these were a bunch of hillbillies who want to take him for their own. Sure, he tried to avoid them, going from Kentucky to Nevada to Florida, but no matter what, they keep appearing. He thought he'd be safe for a while in Dover, Delaware. Maybe safe from Rove, from the hillbillies.
At least he knows what to expect with Rove. He knows how Rove will fuck him, how Rove will beat his ass with a riding crop. Rove will shove a vibrator up his own ass and then sodomize the shit out of the leather slave. He'll make the leather slave lick him clean. With the hillbillies, it could just be constant gangbangs, with Rand Paul and Joe Miller tag-teaming him, high-fiving over his back as Christine O'Donnell smacks his face for making her think such filthy thoughts and Sarah Palin watches and rubs her cunt on Glenn Beck's spiky-haired head, over and over, and when they come, they all kick and punch the leather slave out of guilt. Only to invite more backwoods hillbillies over and do it again and again. The worst part is how sloppily and poorly they fuck him. Rove is good at it. Rove doesn't mind if he occasionally jizzes.
The devil you know versus the devil you don't, the ex-leather slave thinks. He knew that his liberty couldn't last for long. It's America, after all. No one stays totally free in this land anymore. The phone rings again. He walks slowly to it. He picks it up and answers. "C'mon, babe, you can't keep pretending. You tried, but you failed," Rove whispers. "I always win."
The phone calls started coming months ago. But when he answered, the other side would just hang up. Now he heard a half-huffed, "Hello there." That voice. That voice on the other end, so familiar that it comforted him and nauseated him. It aroused him exquisitely and caused his skin to crawl as his senses conjured the pains he had suffered. The voice said, "I've always known where you are. And you know you want to come back to me. Don't worry. It won't be long now. God, I can feel my balls slapping against your taint already. Life hasn't been the same without you."
Karl Rove's ex-leather slave threw his Android phone across the room. My god, my god, my god, he thought. How could this happen? He thought he had gotten away. He thought for sure that he had finally found freedom. The memories, which he worked so long to press down into a flapjack of agony, exploded and he was covered with their effluvia. When he was Karl Rove's leather slave, during the early, long-forgotten part of the millennium, he was kept in the basement of the White House, chained to Andrew Johnson's sewing table and next to a file cabinet filled with Woodrow Wilson's secret Socialist takeover plans (all stamped: "Canceled due to stroke"). Down there, for years, Rove wrecked his leather slave's anus constantly with cock, dildo, and Benjamin Harrison's silver-coated pineapple, among other implements, and used his mouth as a testicle cozy. The leather slave smirked a bit, thinking, "Karl Rove: Teabagging before it was cool." The leather slave escaped after the 2006 midterms, and he went about his life, constantly looking over his shoulder, constantly wondering when Rove would find him.
There was no way that Karl Rove was going to stay away for long. There was no way he would not want to manipulate the ship of state, the gears of power, to his ends, which, as ever, were the ends of his massively wealthy clients. Now, back and better funded than ever, unencumbered by attempting to get the dunderheaded Bush child elected anymore, Rove is about to launch his next great campaign: "an anti-Democratic barrage of attack ads that will be run tens of thousands of times, a final get-out-the-vote push with some 40 million negative mail pieces, and 20 million automated phone calls." Shock and awe, motherfuckers, shock and awe. It is all part of a long-term plan, one that will climax in 2012, to once more imprison his leather slave, to make him wear the hood or the ball gag or the chaps, depending on the cause, depending on the night.
Of course, at this point, after all the running, the ex-leather slave wondered if it wouldn't be better to just let Rove have him. He's noticed lately that he has others stalking him. At first, he thought they were spies sent by Rove, but he knows that Rove doesn't need men to do one's work when one has access to Pentagon satellites and FBI wiretapping. No, the ex-leather slave learned, from bricks tossed through his windows and crudely scrawled messages that these were a bunch of hillbillies who want to take him for their own. Sure, he tried to avoid them, going from Kentucky to Nevada to Florida, but no matter what, they keep appearing. He thought he'd be safe for a while in Dover, Delaware. Maybe safe from Rove, from the hillbillies.
At least he knows what to expect with Rove. He knows how Rove will fuck him, how Rove will beat his ass with a riding crop. Rove will shove a vibrator up his own ass and then sodomize the shit out of the leather slave. He'll make the leather slave lick him clean. With the hillbillies, it could just be constant gangbangs, with Rand Paul and Joe Miller tag-teaming him, high-fiving over his back as Christine O'Donnell smacks his face for making her think such filthy thoughts and Sarah Palin watches and rubs her cunt on Glenn Beck's spiky-haired head, over and over, and when they come, they all kick and punch the leather slave out of guilt. Only to invite more backwoods hillbillies over and do it again and again. The worst part is how sloppily and poorly they fuck him. Rove is good at it. Rove doesn't mind if he occasionally jizzes.
The devil you know versus the devil you don't, the ex-leather slave thinks. He knew that his liberty couldn't last for long. It's America, after all. No one stays totally free in this land anymore. The phone rings again. He walks slowly to it. He picks it up and answers. "C'mon, babe, you can't keep pretending. You tried, but you failed," Rove whispers. "I always win."
LOL Democratz:
Man, it's been a banner week for Democrats. First the DADT repeal fails and now we get to end the week in all kinds of shame.
Congressional Democrats bailed on any vote on the Bush tax cuts before the midterm election. A slam dunk of an issue for any idiot to spin into campaign gold - Dems want you to have a tax cut, Repubs want them to have it - instead, Democrats ran off the playground like fat kids with wedgies, saying that Republicans would block shit anyway. (The Rude Pundit thinks the real reason is that they're gonna cave on extending tax cuts for income over $250,000 and they didn't want to make the base even sadder.)
Showing that she wants to play with the cool kids, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana joined just about every Republican in choosing some Obama nominee to block to make a point about whatever issue they can grandstand on. For Landrieu, it's the deepwater oil drilling moratorium, so she's taking the eminently rational step of placing a hold on the President's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Landrieu said, "I have done everything within my power to get this Administration's attention. But the policy remains in effect, and Louisiana's economy continues to suffer." The moratorium is supposed to last until November 30, although it could end earlier.
So way to go, Democrats. Instead of celebrating the health care reform bill's positive effects and condemning Republicans for wanting to make the rich richer, you're cowering in the corner, hoping the American people don't hurt you too badly and praying that Republicans won't say mean things about you.
(Note: Yeah, yeah, the whole "I Can Haz Cheezburger" meme is long dead from overuse, but screw it. It's Friday.)
Man, it's been a banner week for Democrats. First the DADT repeal fails and now we get to end the week in all kinds of shame.
Congressional Democrats bailed on any vote on the Bush tax cuts before the midterm election. A slam dunk of an issue for any idiot to spin into campaign gold - Dems want you to have a tax cut, Repubs want them to have it - instead, Democrats ran off the playground like fat kids with wedgies, saying that Republicans would block shit anyway. (The Rude Pundit thinks the real reason is that they're gonna cave on extending tax cuts for income over $250,000 and they didn't want to make the base even sadder.)
Showing that she wants to play with the cool kids, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana joined just about every Republican in choosing some Obama nominee to block to make a point about whatever issue they can grandstand on. For Landrieu, it's the deepwater oil drilling moratorium, so she's taking the eminently rational step of placing a hold on the President's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. Landrieu said, "I have done everything within my power to get this Administration's attention. But the policy remains in effect, and Louisiana's economy continues to suffer." The moratorium is supposed to last until November 30, although it could end earlier.
So way to go, Democrats. Instead of celebrating the health care reform bill's positive effects and condemning Republicans for wanting to make the rich richer, you're cowering in the corner, hoping the American people don't hurt you too badly and praying that Republicans won't say mean things about you.
(Note: Yeah, yeah, the whole "I Can Haz Cheezburger" meme is long dead from overuse, but screw it. It's Friday.)
Random Observations About the House GOP's "Pledge to America":
Today, the House Republicans, led by Annoying Orange John Boehner, unveiled their "ideas" for the future in a "document" that's titled "A Pledge to America." Unlike the "Contract with America," which was a brief and vicious one-page manifesto, this bad boy's about 100 pounds of shit in a 20-page pamphlet. This is supposed to be the big GOP "agenda" for what they'll do if given back the Congress on a silver platter forged from fear and stupidity. A few things:
1. Could everyone just stop talking about the current crises in America as being caused by Barack Obama's agenda? Seriously, the right-wing drama queens act as if they've been living under years of oppression and hunger in a Soviet-era dictatorship instead of 19 months under a politically moderate, legally-elected president. We did live under eight years of Bush, though. Speaking of Americans "yearning to be free" and to self-determine shit, the Pledge says, "Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course." Hey, you know what, Mike Pence and the rest? We did vote to institute a new governing agenda, Obama's. Senate Republicans have prevented its passage. Maybe you could complain if we were, you know, being governed by it. But, fuck it. Why bother to really try Obama's agenda when we can just go back to the one that ass-fucked us in the first place? Kudos, Tea Party.
2. You know how you know your "Pledge" is bullshit? Easy test: scan the entire things for the words "cut" or "reduce." If you're serious about cutting or reducing spending, some specific things ought to come up, no? Sure, man, it's got all kinds of mighty phrases, like "cutting discretionary spending." But other than cutting Congress's budget (and not saying by how much), Republicans can "Pledge" to a vague notion and not say, "Oh, sorry, Nebraska, but that power plant's canceled."
3. You know how you know your "Pledge" to cut spending is bullshit? When you say that you're gonna shovel money into the defense budget like Casey Jones with a shovel and a pile of coal. "Fully Fund Missile Defense" is part of the Republicans' promise to make sure that, while your roads and schools may suck ass, military contractors get to keep sucking milk from the tax teat.
4. You know how else you know your "Pledge" is bullshit? By using as examples of how the Democratic Congress is dysfunctional things that actually demonstrate that the system and the rules work, often in your favor. The GOP says of the health care debate, "Speaker Pelosi and Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter publicly discussed a plan to allow the House to pass the bill without a vote by the House." What happened during this horrible moment in our failed democracy? Was the Slaughter Rule allowed to slaughter America? Nope: "House Democrats eventually abandoned the scheme under the weight of a sustained public outcry."
Another example of the nightmare? "When the House was poised to consider legislation to impose a 'cap-and-trade' national energy tax, a 300-page 'manager’s amendment' rewriting key provisions of the bill without a separate vote was dropped in the laps of lawmakers at 3:00 am. The House began debate on the bill just a few hours later." Yes, and now we all live under the thumb of the cap-and-trade green socialistas, no? No. Republicans in the Senate threatened to filibuster the entire climate bill, thus stopping Obama's agenda again.
5. And don't quote shit without context. The "Pledge" uses an abused John F. Kennedy line: "An economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs." Yeah, he did say it. And he proposed a tax cut, which was passed after he was assassinated. It reduced the highest marginal tax rate from 91% to 70%. Sure, it was a tax cut, but you can't use a fantasy JFK to think that he'd believe that 35% is an unfair income tax on the wealthiest Americans. Don't anger zombie JFK. Motherfucker needs brains.
6. The "Pledge" says, "End TARP Once and For All: Americans are rightly outraged at the bailouts of businesses and entities that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior. We will cancel the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a move that would save taxpayers roughly $16 billion." Of the current House GOP leadership, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Pete Sessions all voted for it. Shouldn't they be held accountable by the caucus for bringing about the current crisis?
Today, the House Republicans, led by Annoying Orange John Boehner, unveiled their "ideas" for the future in a "document" that's titled "A Pledge to America." Unlike the "Contract with America," which was a brief and vicious one-page manifesto, this bad boy's about 100 pounds of shit in a 20-page pamphlet. This is supposed to be the big GOP "agenda" for what they'll do if given back the Congress on a silver platter forged from fear and stupidity. A few things:
1. Could everyone just stop talking about the current crises in America as being caused by Barack Obama's agenda? Seriously, the right-wing drama queens act as if they've been living under years of oppression and hunger in a Soviet-era dictatorship instead of 19 months under a politically moderate, legally-elected president. We did live under eight years of Bush, though. Speaking of Americans "yearning to be free" and to self-determine shit, the Pledge says, "Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course." Hey, you know what, Mike Pence and the rest? We did vote to institute a new governing agenda, Obama's. Senate Republicans have prevented its passage. Maybe you could complain if we were, you know, being governed by it. But, fuck it. Why bother to really try Obama's agenda when we can just go back to the one that ass-fucked us in the first place? Kudos, Tea Party.
2. You know how you know your "Pledge" is bullshit? Easy test: scan the entire things for the words "cut" or "reduce." If you're serious about cutting or reducing spending, some specific things ought to come up, no? Sure, man, it's got all kinds of mighty phrases, like "cutting discretionary spending." But other than cutting Congress's budget (and not saying by how much), Republicans can "Pledge" to a vague notion and not say, "Oh, sorry, Nebraska, but that power plant's canceled."
3. You know how you know your "Pledge" to cut spending is bullshit? When you say that you're gonna shovel money into the defense budget like Casey Jones with a shovel and a pile of coal. "Fully Fund Missile Defense" is part of the Republicans' promise to make sure that, while your roads and schools may suck ass, military contractors get to keep sucking milk from the tax teat.
4. You know how else you know your "Pledge" is bullshit? By using as examples of how the Democratic Congress is dysfunctional things that actually demonstrate that the system and the rules work, often in your favor. The GOP says of the health care debate, "Speaker Pelosi and Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter publicly discussed a plan to allow the House to pass the bill without a vote by the House." What happened during this horrible moment in our failed democracy? Was the Slaughter Rule allowed to slaughter America? Nope: "House Democrats eventually abandoned the scheme under the weight of a sustained public outcry."
Another example of the nightmare? "When the House was poised to consider legislation to impose a 'cap-and-trade' national energy tax, a 300-page 'manager’s amendment' rewriting key provisions of the bill without a separate vote was dropped in the laps of lawmakers at 3:00 am. The House began debate on the bill just a few hours later." Yes, and now we all live under the thumb of the cap-and-trade green socialistas, no? No. Republicans in the Senate threatened to filibuster the entire climate bill, thus stopping Obama's agenda again.
5. And don't quote shit without context. The "Pledge" uses an abused John F. Kennedy line: "An economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs." Yeah, he did say it. And he proposed a tax cut, which was passed after he was assassinated. It reduced the highest marginal tax rate from 91% to 70%. Sure, it was a tax cut, but you can't use a fantasy JFK to think that he'd believe that 35% is an unfair income tax on the wealthiest Americans. Don't anger zombie JFK. Motherfucker needs brains.
6. The "Pledge" says, "End TARP Once and For All: Americans are rightly outraged at the bailouts of businesses and entities that force responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior. We will cancel the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a move that would save taxpayers roughly $16 billion." Of the current House GOP leadership, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Pete Sessions all voted for it. Shouldn't they be held accountable by the caucus for bringing about the current crisis?
What the Hell Was That DADT Vote Yesterday? (Updated):
That was some kind of kabuki shit yesterday in the Senate on the defense budget authorization bill with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in it. Honestly, the Rude Pundit's having a hard time wrapping his head around this one. Sure, sure, it's easy to say, "Those GOP cocksuckers filibustered it because they hate the gays." And that's part of it. But this shit was just weird. We're left with a whole lotta fuck-you's and not a lot of sense.
Let's see: Fuck Susan Collins and her whiny ass voice and flat fucking koala bear face. She went to the floor of the Senate to take a mighty stand for the process over civil rights. Sure, she said, gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military because it's only fair. But, she added, "I cannot vote to proceed to this bill under a situation that is going to shut down debate and preclude Republican amendments. That too is not fair." You got that? Collins believes there's a moral equivalence between the persecution of gays in the military and Republican senators not being allowed to toss shit at the bill. When's it get to be compared to kristallnacht?
Fuck John McCain and anyone who said "Let's wait for the Pentagon study." The DADT provision said outright that there would be no implementation until after the magical questionnaire o' justice is done being tabulated by unbiased military people. (Seriously, has anyone else's civil rights been subject to the results of a poll?)
Fuck Harry Reid for hastily bringing this up in order to get progressives vaguely excited about something for the midterms. Sure, now he can say, "See? Those bastards block everything," but so fucking what? (And fuck the White House for doing nothing to help passage beyond a little press release. Hey, howzabout ending those discharges, your Commander-in-Chiefiness?)
Fuck anyone who says this is "playing politics." It's the Congress. Politics are always at play. You either support something or you don't, especially when it comes to fundamental rights. And, by the way, filibustering a defense bill used to be akin to treason. Now it's just part and parcel of the political landscape.
Face facts here. Republicans are just better at this shit than Democrats. They know how to play this game to win. Always. Look at what they're doing to Lisa Murkowski. Fuckin' strippin' her of her committee position almost immediately after she went rogue. That's a specific threat to anyone breaking ranks with the famiglia. Democrats didn't have the balls to do that to Lieberman.
This was an enormous clusterfuck of a failure on DADT. Sure, it'll come back after the midterms, in a lame duck session, but some of the wind has been taken out of the sails. Right now, the best hope is that Anthony Kennedy will make it all better at some point.
Update: Republicans have decided not to strip Murkowski of her ranking spot on the Energy Committee. Which means she must have pledged her grandchildren's souls that she'd caucus GOP if she wins. Or she has two less fingers.
That was some kind of kabuki shit yesterday in the Senate on the defense budget authorization bill with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in it. Honestly, the Rude Pundit's having a hard time wrapping his head around this one. Sure, sure, it's easy to say, "Those GOP cocksuckers filibustered it because they hate the gays." And that's part of it. But this shit was just weird. We're left with a whole lotta fuck-you's and not a lot of sense.
Let's see: Fuck Susan Collins and her whiny ass voice and flat fucking koala bear face. She went to the floor of the Senate to take a mighty stand for the process over civil rights. Sure, she said, gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military because it's only fair. But, she added, "I cannot vote to proceed to this bill under a situation that is going to shut down debate and preclude Republican amendments. That too is not fair." You got that? Collins believes there's a moral equivalence between the persecution of gays in the military and Republican senators not being allowed to toss shit at the bill. When's it get to be compared to kristallnacht?
Fuck John McCain and anyone who said "Let's wait for the Pentagon study." The DADT provision said outright that there would be no implementation until after the magical questionnaire o' justice is done being tabulated by unbiased military people. (Seriously, has anyone else's civil rights been subject to the results of a poll?)
Fuck Harry Reid for hastily bringing this up in order to get progressives vaguely excited about something for the midterms. Sure, now he can say, "See? Those bastards block everything," but so fucking what? (And fuck the White House for doing nothing to help passage beyond a little press release. Hey, howzabout ending those discharges, your Commander-in-Chiefiness?)
Fuck anyone who says this is "playing politics." It's the Congress. Politics are always at play. You either support something or you don't, especially when it comes to fundamental rights. And, by the way, filibustering a defense bill used to be akin to treason. Now it's just part and parcel of the political landscape.
Face facts here. Republicans are just better at this shit than Democrats. They know how to play this game to win. Always. Look at what they're doing to Lisa Murkowski. Fuckin' strippin' her of her committee position almost immediately after she went rogue. That's a specific threat to anyone breaking ranks with the famiglia. Democrats didn't have the balls to do that to Lieberman.
This was an enormous clusterfuck of a failure on DADT. Sure, it'll come back after the midterms, in a lame duck session, but some of the wind has been taken out of the sails. Right now, the best hope is that Anthony Kennedy will make it all better at some point.
Update: Republicans have decided not to strip Murkowski of her ranking spot on the Energy Committee. Which means she must have pledged her grandchildren's souls that she'd caucus GOP if she wins. Or she has two less fingers.
The Tea Party Candidate Conspiracy?:
The Rude Pundit's bud Mark C. is a man filled with crazy notions and conspiracy theories that make more sense when opium has seasoned your brain like so many hanging hams in a Virginia shack. Still, on a symbolic, if not realistic, level, they are fascinating. For it was Mark C. who said that he thought that at the 8/28 rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Glenn Beck was going to have himself crucified. It was an idea that the Rude Pundit picked up and ran with in an oh-so-sardonic way. Turns out that Mark was closer to the truth than most of the professional prognosticators when Beck made the rally into a deeply weird religious revival meeting.
Now, the heady combination of Xanax, pot, and bourbon that makes him get through a day has given Mark the idea that the success of Tea Party candidates is a Karl Rove-created conspiracy to restore honor to the nightmare presidency of George W. Bush. Follow the bouncin' ball here as the Rude Pundit explains:
See, Karl Rove spent the better part of his adult political life transforming Bush, an inbred loser who couldn't keep a fuckin' oil company in business in Texas, into a viable candidate for governor and president. The Bush presidency went down in flames, as we know, Christ, how we know, with Bush hurting the country worse than any plane-crashing assholes ever could have. But, ah, Karl Rove still was a believer, and just as he was able to make a coke-snorting, drunk-driving, AWOL cheerleader into a moralistic tough guy, Rove now wants to revise recent history. And the best way to do that with a man who historians have already named one of the worst, if not the worst President? By showing America that it can be far, far worse.
Oh, it's easy to do, this kind of retardation relativity. When someone says that Ronald Reagan wasn't as bad as Bush (or that Reagan wouldn't be allowed in the Tea Party), they're comparing the difference between a murderer who killed your boyfriend with a gun and one who killed him slowly with a knife. Yeah, it's better to get shot in the head than to bleed out bit by bit, but either way, he's still fucking dead. Now the Tea Party has come along and said, "You know, while you're laying there bleeding to death, I think I'll fuck your face."
The Tea Party candidates who have a chance to win, like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Sharron Angle, and that dude in Alaska who looks like he was just released from prison for dealing meth to middle schoolers, are all bugfuck crazy and/or utter buffoons. Fer chrissake, one of the best they've got is Rand Paul, who made a big ass deal about how part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong because it told private business owners what to do and then, three months later, he came out against the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, which is, you know, telling a private business owner what to do. The only way holding those two positions makes any sense at all is if Rand Paul just says, "Fuck it. I'm racist."
And it keeps going, this devolution, with Sarah Palin and now the even more devolved Christine O'Donnell. Shit, at least Palin was a mayor before she ran for governor. O'Donnell's running for Senate with all the experience of an average show dog. But this is what Rove wants, oh, yes, as Mark said. Because a Senate with Paul, Rubio, Angle, and O'Donnell in it, all these mice with human brains, with Jim DeMint as Majority Leader, will look like the slapstick room at a clown convention.
So of course Rove has allowed himself to be turned into the villain, the embodiment of an insider elite against which O'Donnell and Palin can react. It's fucking brilliant. It fires up the degraded base and will get them out for more than just the primary. And once Palin is elected president, Rove's con will be complete. For, indeed, among the ruins, Americans will look at the Bush years as the salad days. And, if Rove has his way, the devolution will continue, the ongoing reaming of the nation in the service of making Bush's reputation shine, until we all end up hailing President Trig.
Yes, Mark likes his conspiracies complete.
See, this has to be true. The results of the primaries have to be due to Rove's behind the scenes machinations. We better hope that Mark is right. Because if he isn't, then that means that large numbers of our fellow citizens are so deluded that they don't care about the ideologies or experience of who they elect, as long as it's not them bad ol' Washington insiders. It means we're so very fucked. It's one thing to get stabbed to death. It's something else entirely to stab yourself repeatedly.
The Rude Pundit's bud Mark C. is a man filled with crazy notions and conspiracy theories that make more sense when opium has seasoned your brain like so many hanging hams in a Virginia shack. Still, on a symbolic, if not realistic, level, they are fascinating. For it was Mark C. who said that he thought that at the 8/28 rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Glenn Beck was going to have himself crucified. It was an idea that the Rude Pundit picked up and ran with in an oh-so-sardonic way. Turns out that Mark was closer to the truth than most of the professional prognosticators when Beck made the rally into a deeply weird religious revival meeting.
Now, the heady combination of Xanax, pot, and bourbon that makes him get through a day has given Mark the idea that the success of Tea Party candidates is a Karl Rove-created conspiracy to restore honor to the nightmare presidency of George W. Bush. Follow the bouncin' ball here as the Rude Pundit explains:
See, Karl Rove spent the better part of his adult political life transforming Bush, an inbred loser who couldn't keep a fuckin' oil company in business in Texas, into a viable candidate for governor and president. The Bush presidency went down in flames, as we know, Christ, how we know, with Bush hurting the country worse than any plane-crashing assholes ever could have. But, ah, Karl Rove still was a believer, and just as he was able to make a coke-snorting, drunk-driving, AWOL cheerleader into a moralistic tough guy, Rove now wants to revise recent history. And the best way to do that with a man who historians have already named one of the worst, if not the worst President? By showing America that it can be far, far worse.
Oh, it's easy to do, this kind of retardation relativity. When someone says that Ronald Reagan wasn't as bad as Bush (or that Reagan wouldn't be allowed in the Tea Party), they're comparing the difference between a murderer who killed your boyfriend with a gun and one who killed him slowly with a knife. Yeah, it's better to get shot in the head than to bleed out bit by bit, but either way, he's still fucking dead. Now the Tea Party has come along and said, "You know, while you're laying there bleeding to death, I think I'll fuck your face."
The Tea Party candidates who have a chance to win, like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Sharron Angle, and that dude in Alaska who looks like he was just released from prison for dealing meth to middle schoolers, are all bugfuck crazy and/or utter buffoons. Fer chrissake, one of the best they've got is Rand Paul, who made a big ass deal about how part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong because it told private business owners what to do and then, three months later, he came out against the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, which is, you know, telling a private business owner what to do. The only way holding those two positions makes any sense at all is if Rand Paul just says, "Fuck it. I'm racist."
And it keeps going, this devolution, with Sarah Palin and now the even more devolved Christine O'Donnell. Shit, at least Palin was a mayor before she ran for governor. O'Donnell's running for Senate with all the experience of an average show dog. But this is what Rove wants, oh, yes, as Mark said. Because a Senate with Paul, Rubio, Angle, and O'Donnell in it, all these mice with human brains, with Jim DeMint as Majority Leader, will look like the slapstick room at a clown convention.
So of course Rove has allowed himself to be turned into the villain, the embodiment of an insider elite against which O'Donnell and Palin can react. It's fucking brilliant. It fires up the degraded base and will get them out for more than just the primary. And once Palin is elected president, Rove's con will be complete. For, indeed, among the ruins, Americans will look at the Bush years as the salad days. And, if Rove has his way, the devolution will continue, the ongoing reaming of the nation in the service of making Bush's reputation shine, until we all end up hailing President Trig.
Yes, Mark likes his conspiracies complete.
See, this has to be true. The results of the primaries have to be due to Rove's behind the scenes machinations. We better hope that Mark is right. Because if he isn't, then that means that large numbers of our fellow citizens are so deluded that they don't care about the ideologies or experience of who they elect, as long as it's not them bad ol' Washington insiders. It means we're so very fucked. It's one thing to get stabbed to death. It's something else entirely to stab yourself repeatedly.
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Think There's More Perks to Being Pope Than Big Hats and Cool Cars:
Apparently, the leader of the world's biggest cannibal church brought his road show to England and Scotland last week, where he was orally pleasured on a regular basis.
Seriously, this dude gets more blow jobs than Ron Jeremy backstage at the AVN awards.
Whoa, what a second here...
Shit, looks like someone's gonna have to contort himself to not apologize again.
Apparently, the leader of the world's biggest cannibal church brought his road show to England and Scotland last week, where he was orally pleasured on a regular basis.
Seriously, this dude gets more blow jobs than Ron Jeremy backstage at the AVN awards.
Whoa, what a second here...
Shit, looks like someone's gonna have to contort himself to not apologize again.
America the Poorhouse:
In Fort Myers, Florida, the Salvation Army reports a 60% jump in families seeking its services.
In Tucscon, Arizona, a local soup kitchen has seen the number of people it serves nightly go from an 40 to 150-200.
In the last year, in Livingston County, Michigan, the number of people looking for food and cash assistance has risen by over 30%. In Jackson County, it's up over 24%.
In Texas, more than one out of every four kids under the age of 18 lives in poverty. That's higher than the national average of one out of every five. And over a quarter of the entire state is without health insurance. Charities there report 25-50% more demand for food and assistance since 2008.
In Steuben County, New York, homelessness has risen by 15% since 2009. And Catholic Charities says that it's serving 33% more people than last year.
In Minnesota, "At Families Moving Forward, a Minneapolis network of churches offering shelter to families with children, the number of calls for housing has shot up from 50 for every opening to 150."
According to the census, the poverty rate in the United States has risen from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009. For those of you doing math, that's one out of every seven Americans. Income has fallen. The number of people without health insurance has risen. Extended unemployment benefits are all that kept 3.3 million more people from falling below the cruel poverty line.
Oh, and by the way: "The top fifth of households accounted for 50.3% of all pre-tax income; the bottom two-fifths got 12%." When it comes to tax cuts and discretionary spending cuts, we're arguing about what now?
In Fort Myers, Florida, the Salvation Army reports a 60% jump in families seeking its services.
In Tucscon, Arizona, a local soup kitchen has seen the number of people it serves nightly go from an 40 to 150-200.
In the last year, in Livingston County, Michigan, the number of people looking for food and cash assistance has risen by over 30%. In Jackson County, it's up over 24%.
In Texas, more than one out of every four kids under the age of 18 lives in poverty. That's higher than the national average of one out of every five. And over a quarter of the entire state is without health insurance. Charities there report 25-50% more demand for food and assistance since 2008.
In Steuben County, New York, homelessness has risen by 15% since 2009. And Catholic Charities says that it's serving 33% more people than last year.
In Minnesota, "At Families Moving Forward, a Minneapolis network of churches offering shelter to families with children, the number of calls for housing has shot up from 50 for every opening to 150."
According to the census, the poverty rate in the United States has risen from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009. For those of you doing math, that's one out of every seven Americans. Income has fallen. The number of people without health insurance has risen. Extended unemployment benefits are all that kept 3.3 million more people from falling below the cruel poverty line.
Oh, and by the way: "The top fifth of households accounted for 50.3% of all pre-tax income; the bottom two-fifths got 12%." When it comes to tax cuts and discretionary spending cuts, we're arguing about what now?
An Invitation and Open Hand to the Disappearing Moderate Republican:
Look, you just need to accept it, remaining moderate Republicans. You fucked up. You miscalculated, thinking that sticking with Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership in merely throwing up a Maginot line against anything that the President and the Democrats in Congress wanted to pass would be the way to assure your party's re-ascendancy. Yeah, you might get the House, but the cost is that you, nervous moderate Republicans, are going to be purged eventually or you're going to be isolated. All it's gonna take is for Rand Paul or that dude in Alaska who looks like your niece-raping uncle to win, and they'll be gunning for you, Olympia, Susan, and the others. You put party over country, and your party is about to abandon you. Congratulations on creating the conditions for your irrelevance. The temptation here is to say, "Go fuck yourselves with McConnell's glasses and enjoy having a Palin-endorsed primary challenger."
Over here on the Democratic side, we liberals have needed to accept that, since Reagan, the entire range of political thought has shifted rightward. We know that Clinton helped it along by pushing the Democratic Party further and further to the right. We know that the chance of actual liberal ideas coming to fruition decrease with every election, but we keep plugging away as Democrats because, really, truly, we have nowhere else to go. Until someone like eeevil George Soros is willing to fund a genuinely left-wing party, we gotta stick with Democrats or just get pushed out of the argument (perhaps winning the occasional race with the Bernie Sanders-type independent).
But, in theory, moderate Republicans do have a place to go. And that's the Democratic Party, which is, in terms of pre-Reagan ideology, is pretty much a moderate Republican Party. Right now, President Obama, Tim Kaine, and every goddamned Democratic strategist needs to figure out how to get the moderates to switch parties. It's the way to pull the rug out from under the potential Republican majority. Yeah, GOP moderates will fear the Specter effect: getting a challenge from the left in a Democratic primary. But Specter was an idiot and a jerk who never made a clear case for changing parties other than "to save my ass." Changing parties right after the midterms, for instance, would demonstrate that, yeah, ass-saving is part of the equation, but that a moderate also wants to do some good for the country.
This is one of the most depressing things the Rude Pundit has ever written, for it presumes that the best the country can hope for anymore is not the achievement of progressive goals, but that our legislative branch is not overrun by the crazies. However, we're facing total and utter gridlock in a Congress that's intent on trying to bring down the President through bullshit investigations and hearings. Every time the Rude Pundit thinks we can't get any more fucked, a bigger dildo is brought out and someone says, "Oh, no. We're shoving this one up your ass now." So the only way to hope for actual progress, even if it's not strictly progressive, is to get some Republicans to jump ship.
So there ya go, moderate Republicans. You can stick with obstructionism and party over country, if you want. And then, one day soon, you're just gonna sound like Mike Castle and Bob Inglis, bitching about how the conservatives are murdering the GOP. It's too late, motherfuckers. Your GOP is already gutted. And you helped tear out the organs. Now liberate yourselves and come over to the side that actually believes the same things you do.
Look, you just need to accept it, remaining moderate Republicans. You fucked up. You miscalculated, thinking that sticking with Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership in merely throwing up a Maginot line against anything that the President and the Democrats in Congress wanted to pass would be the way to assure your party's re-ascendancy. Yeah, you might get the House, but the cost is that you, nervous moderate Republicans, are going to be purged eventually or you're going to be isolated. All it's gonna take is for Rand Paul or that dude in Alaska who looks like your niece-raping uncle to win, and they'll be gunning for you, Olympia, Susan, and the others. You put party over country, and your party is about to abandon you. Congratulations on creating the conditions for your irrelevance. The temptation here is to say, "Go fuck yourselves with McConnell's glasses and enjoy having a Palin-endorsed primary challenger."
Over here on the Democratic side, we liberals have needed to accept that, since Reagan, the entire range of political thought has shifted rightward. We know that Clinton helped it along by pushing the Democratic Party further and further to the right. We know that the chance of actual liberal ideas coming to fruition decrease with every election, but we keep plugging away as Democrats because, really, truly, we have nowhere else to go. Until someone like eeevil George Soros is willing to fund a genuinely left-wing party, we gotta stick with Democrats or just get pushed out of the argument (perhaps winning the occasional race with the Bernie Sanders-type independent).
But, in theory, moderate Republicans do have a place to go. And that's the Democratic Party, which is, in terms of pre-Reagan ideology, is pretty much a moderate Republican Party. Right now, President Obama, Tim Kaine, and every goddamned Democratic strategist needs to figure out how to get the moderates to switch parties. It's the way to pull the rug out from under the potential Republican majority. Yeah, GOP moderates will fear the Specter effect: getting a challenge from the left in a Democratic primary. But Specter was an idiot and a jerk who never made a clear case for changing parties other than "to save my ass." Changing parties right after the midterms, for instance, would demonstrate that, yeah, ass-saving is part of the equation, but that a moderate also wants to do some good for the country.
This is one of the most depressing things the Rude Pundit has ever written, for it presumes that the best the country can hope for anymore is not the achievement of progressive goals, but that our legislative branch is not overrun by the crazies. However, we're facing total and utter gridlock in a Congress that's intent on trying to bring down the President through bullshit investigations and hearings. Every time the Rude Pundit thinks we can't get any more fucked, a bigger dildo is brought out and someone says, "Oh, no. We're shoving this one up your ass now." So the only way to hope for actual progress, even if it's not strictly progressive, is to get some Republicans to jump ship.
So there ya go, moderate Republicans. You can stick with obstructionism and party over country, if you want. And then, one day soon, you're just gonna sound like Mike Castle and Bob Inglis, bitching about how the conservatives are murdering the GOP. It's too late, motherfuckers. Your GOP is already gutted. And you helped tear out the organs. Now liberate yourselves and come over to the side that actually believes the same things you do.
Fun With Christine O'Donnell (in Three Parts):
Hey, GOP, have a blast with Tea Partying non-fucking primary winner Christine O'Donnell, who is basically William Donohue in a skirt (she's one hardcore . It's kind of nice that the Republicans just teabagged themselves out of any chance of winning back the Senate. You've heard about O'Donnell's stance against self-fingering. But there's so very much more.
1. Stupid Shit She's Said in the Last Few Years
Fun conversation with Bill O'Reilly on Fox "news," regarding a Catholic bishop refining the definitions of the seven deadly sins on March 28, 2008:
O'REILLY: But if you hurt somebody by pollution, if you're a big corporation, you're dumping chemicals in the water, you're going to hell.
O'DONNELL: Again, that's greed.
O'REILLY: You're going to hell.
O'DONNELL: Absolutely.
(Note: This is not necessarily a bad way to threaten polluters.)
Fun quote while talking to John Kasich, guest hosting for O'Reilly, about a California survey showing that a vast majority of people want real sex education, including condom distribution at schools, on January 6, 2006:
"[E]ven if the population is increasing, so what? So what? People aren't bad. When did humans become a bad thing?"
Fun quotes about HBO series while on Hardball on June 20, 2003:
"[T]he thing that attracts people to The Sopranos is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing." She added, regarding Sex and the City, "It's not taking into the account the physical destruction of going from one man to the other, spreading disease, spreading AIDS. It doesn't take into account your emotions."
Fun quote from Savage Nation, an ancient series starring an insane man that was actually on MSNBC once upon a time, from May 24, 2003: O'Donnell's description of the Supreme Court: "It's kind of like we have the nine people sitting there in Washington who have a constitutional monarchy." (Note: the Rude Pundit loves that one for its sheer, unabashed dumbfuckery.)
Going back a bit:
Fun quote from CNN on March 30, 1996: "[C]reationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that [than evolution]."
2. "I'm a young woman in my '30s and I remain chaste." - From MSNBC's Scarborough Country, November 13, 2003. O'Donnell was 34. She is now 41 and unmarried. Because of her strict views on abstinence, she is either a virgin who has never even masturbated or a liar. Or perhaps, last night, after her victory over the man she projected gayness onto, she leaned forward against the center of the lectern where she gave her victory speech. Perhaps in the wood there she could feel, just lightly on her edges of her tightly covered pussy, the vibrations of the sound of applause from the crowd. Perhaps, her body acting without her even realizing it, she moved ever so slightly so that her clitoris was now pushed against the lectern, and, perhaps, the roar of her supporters made it shake just enough to alert her long-dormant desire, her subconscious need, and her clit became engorged with blood, which only heightened her sensitivity. Perhaps this confused O'Donnell's nerve endings, unaccustomed to an application of such delicacy, and perhaps she pushed even more against the lectern, almost as if her labia were drawing her toward the vibrations, the flute-playing swami to her cobra, making her subtly hump it. Perhaps, and only maybe, she felt flush, wondering what this sensation was, that victory combined with adoration was making her feel all a-tingle. Perhaps she came, quietly and just once, climaxing with the end of her speech. Perhaps she wondered what it meant. Perhaps she took it as a sign from God that it's okay to touch herself. Or, more likely, perhaps she wondered who let the devil into the Dover Elks Lodge.
3. For anyone who wonders if O'Donnell can pull out an upset, let's put her numbers in context:
Number of registered voters in Delaware: 621,746
Number of registered Republicans: 182,796 (29%)
Number of votes O'Donnell received: 30,561
By the Rude Pundit's awesome abilities with a calculator, that means she received: 16.7% of registered Republicans.
Number of registered Democrats: 292,738 (47%)
Or, in other words, Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, and the Tea Party can go fuck themselves.
Hey, GOP, have a blast with Tea Partying non-fucking primary winner Christine O'Donnell, who is basically William Donohue in a skirt (she's one hardcore . It's kind of nice that the Republicans just teabagged themselves out of any chance of winning back the Senate. You've heard about O'Donnell's stance against self-fingering. But there's so very much more.
1. Stupid Shit She's Said in the Last Few Years
Fun conversation with Bill O'Reilly on Fox "news," regarding a Catholic bishop refining the definitions of the seven deadly sins on March 28, 2008:
O'REILLY: But if you hurt somebody by pollution, if you're a big corporation, you're dumping chemicals in the water, you're going to hell.
O'DONNELL: Again, that's greed.
O'REILLY: You're going to hell.
O'DONNELL: Absolutely.
(Note: This is not necessarily a bad way to threaten polluters.)
Fun quote while talking to John Kasich, guest hosting for O'Reilly, about a California survey showing that a vast majority of people want real sex education, including condom distribution at schools, on January 6, 2006:
"[E]ven if the population is increasing, so what? So what? People aren't bad. When did humans become a bad thing?"
Fun quotes about HBO series while on Hardball on June 20, 2003:
"[T]he thing that attracts people to The Sopranos is the family element. It shows that America still has a longing for that traditional upbringing." She added, regarding Sex and the City, "It's not taking into the account the physical destruction of going from one man to the other, spreading disease, spreading AIDS. It doesn't take into account your emotions."
Fun quote from Savage Nation, an ancient series starring an insane man that was actually on MSNBC once upon a time, from May 24, 2003: O'Donnell's description of the Supreme Court: "It's kind of like we have the nine people sitting there in Washington who have a constitutional monarchy." (Note: the Rude Pundit loves that one for its sheer, unabashed dumbfuckery.)
Going back a bit:
Fun quote from CNN on March 30, 1996: "[C]reationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that [than evolution]."
2. "I'm a young woman in my '30s and I remain chaste." - From MSNBC's Scarborough Country, November 13, 2003. O'Donnell was 34. She is now 41 and unmarried. Because of her strict views on abstinence, she is either a virgin who has never even masturbated or a liar. Or perhaps, last night, after her victory over the man she projected gayness onto, she leaned forward against the center of the lectern where she gave her victory speech. Perhaps in the wood there she could feel, just lightly on her edges of her tightly covered pussy, the vibrations of the sound of applause from the crowd. Perhaps, her body acting without her even realizing it, she moved ever so slightly so that her clitoris was now pushed against the lectern, and, perhaps, the roar of her supporters made it shake just enough to alert her long-dormant desire, her subconscious need, and her clit became engorged with blood, which only heightened her sensitivity. Perhaps this confused O'Donnell's nerve endings, unaccustomed to an application of such delicacy, and perhaps she pushed even more against the lectern, almost as if her labia were drawing her toward the vibrations, the flute-playing swami to her cobra, making her subtly hump it. Perhaps, and only maybe, she felt flush, wondering what this sensation was, that victory combined with adoration was making her feel all a-tingle. Perhaps she came, quietly and just once, climaxing with the end of her speech. Perhaps she wondered what it meant. Perhaps she took it as a sign from God that it's okay to touch herself. Or, more likely, perhaps she wondered who let the devil into the Dover Elks Lodge.
3. For anyone who wonders if O'Donnell can pull out an upset, let's put her numbers in context:
Number of registered voters in Delaware: 621,746
Number of registered Republicans: 182,796 (29%)
Number of votes O'Donnell received: 30,561
By the Rude Pundit's awesome abilities with a calculator, that means she received: 16.7% of registered Republicans.
Number of registered Democrats: 292,738 (47%)
Or, in other words, Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, and the Tea Party can go fuck themselves.
The Rude Pundit on Yesterday's Stephanie Miller Show:
On Monday, on the radio, the Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller discussed Koran burning, mustaches, and Obama at least being in the same room with his old mojo.
Of course, you can keep your rude mojo going by subscribing to this not-so-humble blog's podcast.
On Monday, on the radio, the Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller discussed Koran burning, mustaches, and Obama at least being in the same room with his old mojo.
Of course, you can keep your rude mojo going by subscribing to this not-so-humble blog's podcast.
Perfect Democratic Ad? "My Opponent Voted to Raise Your Taxes in 2011":
Sometimes it all comes down to spin and semantics. For one of the Republican statements out there that has become the media's conventional wisdom is that President Obama wants to "raise" taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. This is simply false. It implies an action by the President that he is not taking. He has not proposed raising anyone's taxes. He does want to lower the taxes of the other other 98% of us. But he is not doing anything nor, he says, does he desire to do anything with the taxes of that portion of the population earning more than a quarter million a year. He doesn't have to raise their taxes. Republicans took care of that nearly a decade ago.
If the Rude Pundit were advising, say, Democrat Charlie Melancon in his Senate race against incumbent diaper aficionado David Vitter, he would tell the congressman to make an ad that says just that: "David Vitter voted to raise your taxes in 2011." Unlike what Republicans are currently saying about Obama, that is a true statement. In 2001, then Rep. David Vitter voted for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. As the President said last week, it was "by design" that the tax cuts in that Bush-pushed bill would expire ten years out. Why? Because Republicans, as usual, were bypassing a Senate rule, this time on adding to the deficit over the long-term, essentially blocking any attempt at a filibuster by Democrats and allowing the bill to pass by reconciliation.
Here's how David Sanger explained it in the New York Times back in the day: "Altogether, taxes are to be reduced by $1.35 trillion, slightly less than the $1.6 trillion President Bush proposed over 10 years. But the lower number was met by assuming that all the tax cuts would expire in 2010, and unlike the president's proposal and the bills passed by the Senate and the House, no revenue loss was shown for 2011." You got that? The only way the bill passed was to end the tax cuts, now known as a "tax increase." If you voted for the bill, you voted for a tax increase down the road. It's absurd as hell, but it's cut-and-fucking-dried.
(Fun fact: Republicans were so intent to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy that Majority Leader Trent Lott fired the GOP-hired Senate parliamentarian because he had made some decisions on rules and procedure that favored Democratic positions on the bill.)
Rules are rules, for sure. And as any golfer will tell you, the more you can use them in your favor, the better. But another rhetorical failure by Democrats in this election cycle is in letting Republicans get away with what was, at best, a deceptive vote in 2001 (and, to a lesser extent, 2003). Make these fuckers own their chicanery. Make them own up to their lies and machinations.
In a debate, in the race that the Rude Pundit is theoretically discussing, Melancon could ask, "Did David Vitter vote to allow tax cuts to expire (or for tax rates to increase) in 2011?" Yeah, he did. There ya go.
The follow-up: Why? If the tax cuts were a natural good, why not debate their permanence then? Oh, right. Because Democrats were trying to stop this march to fiscal insolvency. And because we now know that the tax cuts weren't good for the country. Actually, most of us on the left and center knew back then that they'd fuck us up. We even knew there'd be hell to pay some day. Now, why not use their contortions to make the Republicans pay?
(Note: Yes, this can be used against some Democrats, like Ben Nelson, who went along with the tax cuts. But, mostly, fuck 'em.)
Sometimes it all comes down to spin and semantics. For one of the Republican statements out there that has become the media's conventional wisdom is that President Obama wants to "raise" taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. This is simply false. It implies an action by the President that he is not taking. He has not proposed raising anyone's taxes. He does want to lower the taxes of the other other 98% of us. But he is not doing anything nor, he says, does he desire to do anything with the taxes of that portion of the population earning more than a quarter million a year. He doesn't have to raise their taxes. Republicans took care of that nearly a decade ago.
If the Rude Pundit were advising, say, Democrat Charlie Melancon in his Senate race against incumbent diaper aficionado David Vitter, he would tell the congressman to make an ad that says just that: "David Vitter voted to raise your taxes in 2011." Unlike what Republicans are currently saying about Obama, that is a true statement. In 2001, then Rep. David Vitter voted for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. As the President said last week, it was "by design" that the tax cuts in that Bush-pushed bill would expire ten years out. Why? Because Republicans, as usual, were bypassing a Senate rule, this time on adding to the deficit over the long-term, essentially blocking any attempt at a filibuster by Democrats and allowing the bill to pass by reconciliation.
Here's how David Sanger explained it in the New York Times back in the day: "Altogether, taxes are to be reduced by $1.35 trillion, slightly less than the $1.6 trillion President Bush proposed over 10 years. But the lower number was met by assuming that all the tax cuts would expire in 2010, and unlike the president's proposal and the bills passed by the Senate and the House, no revenue loss was shown for 2011." You got that? The only way the bill passed was to end the tax cuts, now known as a "tax increase." If you voted for the bill, you voted for a tax increase down the road. It's absurd as hell, but it's cut-and-fucking-dried.
(Fun fact: Republicans were so intent to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy that Majority Leader Trent Lott fired the GOP-hired Senate parliamentarian because he had made some decisions on rules and procedure that favored Democratic positions on the bill.)
Rules are rules, for sure. And as any golfer will tell you, the more you can use them in your favor, the better. But another rhetorical failure by Democrats in this election cycle is in letting Republicans get away with what was, at best, a deceptive vote in 2001 (and, to a lesser extent, 2003). Make these fuckers own their chicanery. Make them own up to their lies and machinations.
In a debate, in the race that the Rude Pundit is theoretically discussing, Melancon could ask, "Did David Vitter vote to allow tax cuts to expire (or for tax rates to increase) in 2011?" Yeah, he did. There ya go.
The follow-up: Why? If the tax cuts were a natural good, why not debate their permanence then? Oh, right. Because Democrats were trying to stop this march to fiscal insolvency. And because we now know that the tax cuts weren't good for the country. Actually, most of us on the left and center knew back then that they'd fuck us up. We even knew there'd be hell to pay some day. Now, why not use their contortions to make the Republicans pay?
(Note: Yes, this can be used against some Democrats, like Ben Nelson, who went along with the tax cuts. But, mostly, fuck 'em.)
Gingrich and D'Souza: "Fear the Secret African Obama":
The problem, you see, is that Barack Obama is not the kind of nigger they're used to, so they have to turn him into another kind of nigger. Obama just doesn't conform to what the right sees as the various kinds of American niggers they're used to either manipulating for their purposes or deriding as lazy/arrogant/violent ("uppity" sometimes sticks). And he certainly ain't the wannabes, the power-seeking blacks who align themselves with the right, like Michael Steele, like Clarence Thomas. No, all the attempts to turn Senator-Candidate-Nominee-President Obama into a regular ol' nigger just failed. So they have to turn him into another kind. They have to make him into the exotic nigger, the Hottentot, more attuned to the nature of the savage white-conquering Africans than to that of the Zip Coons and Jim Crows. For many on the far and not-so-far right, Obama is Othello, the black Muslim from faraway dark lands ready to fuck and strangle your white daughters.
Conservative cumrag Dinesh D'Souza makes the African connection explicitly clear in an article for Forbes that's so retarded, so racist, and so bizarre that the leather-clad corpse of the magazine's queer founder must want to shove a dildo up his son Steve's ass. In "How Obama Thinks," D'Souza, the type of madman we used to call "fucked in the head," posits that the foundation of Obama's approach to governance is anticolonialism. Specifically, the anticolonial uprisings in Africa. More specifically, Kenya.
And D'Souza has a motherfuckin' Rosetta Stone to prove this: a seven-page article written by Barack H. Obama, Senior, in the July 1965 issue of East Africa Journal. Now, you might read this and say, "Huh, looks like Daddy O is reasonably and specifically critiquing a Kenyan parliamentary document dealing with economic policy and things like land use, job training, and foreign investment." But, then again, you're not fucked in the head. You might not say, "President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House," even if Politico did a big-ass story on it back in April 2008. Again, we're not talking about a manifesto. We're not talking about a book. We're talking about a small article that merely wants to clarify the definition of "African socialism."
When D'Souza writes, "Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial," he's demonstrating a willful denial and misunderstanding about the long-term effects of colonialism. But because D'Souza, an Indian from Mumbai, has been made deranged by their beautiful whiteness and deeply desires to please his former colonial masters, he decides that the President, who just escalated the war in Afghanistan, is against such things. In fact, he pulls together many disparate strings in a frantic attempt to prove his theory, and he ends up seeming like another idiot who can't accept that Obama is just Obama, a centrist Democrat who is negotiating as polarized a political territory as any President has had to face in a generation or two. No, no, there must be some grand unifying theory that makes Obama who he is, and it's not enough that it might be satanic Marxism and latent Islam. No, it's gotta be nigger Marx at work. D'Souza actually writes that "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s...[a] philandering, inebriated African socialist." Or, in other words, fear the nigger and his drunk nigger father because they want your white throats cut.
Why are the mad rantings of Dinesh D'Souza in any way significant? Because they were supported and echoed by Newt Gingrich this weekend, who said in an interview with the National Review that D'Souza's article offers "stunning insight" into the President. "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior," said the bloated reminder of the decadent overreach of a power-drunk Republican party. This is the man who is the intellectual heart of conservatism in this country.
(By the way, why "behavior"? Does Obama prefer roasted gazelle with lentils over steak and kidney pie?)
Isn't this convenient? One no longer has to argue about whether or not Obama was born in Kenya. One only has to say that he's turning the United States into Kenya. Now that's a scary-ass nigger.
The problem, you see, is that Barack Obama is not the kind of nigger they're used to, so they have to turn him into another kind of nigger. Obama just doesn't conform to what the right sees as the various kinds of American niggers they're used to either manipulating for their purposes or deriding as lazy/arrogant/violent ("uppity" sometimes sticks). And he certainly ain't the wannabes, the power-seeking blacks who align themselves with the right, like Michael Steele, like Clarence Thomas. No, all the attempts to turn Senator-Candidate-Nominee-President Obama into a regular ol' nigger just failed. So they have to turn him into another kind. They have to make him into the exotic nigger, the Hottentot, more attuned to the nature of the savage white-conquering Africans than to that of the Zip Coons and Jim Crows. For many on the far and not-so-far right, Obama is Othello, the black Muslim from faraway dark lands ready to fuck and strangle your white daughters.
Conservative cumrag Dinesh D'Souza makes the African connection explicitly clear in an article for Forbes that's so retarded, so racist, and so bizarre that the leather-clad corpse of the magazine's queer founder must want to shove a dildo up his son Steve's ass. In "How Obama Thinks," D'Souza, the type of madman we used to call "fucked in the head," posits that the foundation of Obama's approach to governance is anticolonialism. Specifically, the anticolonial uprisings in Africa. More specifically, Kenya.
And D'Souza has a motherfuckin' Rosetta Stone to prove this: a seven-page article written by Barack H. Obama, Senior, in the July 1965 issue of East Africa Journal. Now, you might read this and say, "Huh, looks like Daddy O is reasonably and specifically critiquing a Kenyan parliamentary document dealing with economic policy and things like land use, job training, and foreign investment." But, then again, you're not fucked in the head. You might not say, "President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House," even if Politico did a big-ass story on it back in April 2008. Again, we're not talking about a manifesto. We're not talking about a book. We're talking about a small article that merely wants to clarify the definition of "African socialism."
When D'Souza writes, "Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial," he's demonstrating a willful denial and misunderstanding about the long-term effects of colonialism. But because D'Souza, an Indian from Mumbai, has been made deranged by their beautiful whiteness and deeply desires to please his former colonial masters, he decides that the President, who just escalated the war in Afghanistan, is against such things. In fact, he pulls together many disparate strings in a frantic attempt to prove his theory, and he ends up seeming like another idiot who can't accept that Obama is just Obama, a centrist Democrat who is negotiating as polarized a political territory as any President has had to face in a generation or two. No, no, there must be some grand unifying theory that makes Obama who he is, and it's not enough that it might be satanic Marxism and latent Islam. No, it's gotta be nigger Marx at work. D'Souza actually writes that "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s...[a] philandering, inebriated African socialist." Or, in other words, fear the nigger and his drunk nigger father because they want your white throats cut.
Why are the mad rantings of Dinesh D'Souza in any way significant? Because they were supported and echoed by Newt Gingrich this weekend, who said in an interview with the National Review that D'Souza's article offers "stunning insight" into the President. "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior," said the bloated reminder of the decadent overreach of a power-drunk Republican party. This is the man who is the intellectual heart of conservatism in this country.
(By the way, why "behavior"? Does Obama prefer roasted gazelle with lentils over steak and kidney pie?)
Isn't this convenient? One no longer has to argue about whether or not Obama was born in Kenya. One only has to say that he's turning the United States into Kenya. Now that's a scary-ass nigger.
A Brief Note Regarding Hallowed Ground (Updated with Startling Photo Evidence; One More Update):
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was walking down near Ground Zero, New York City, as one must sometimes do in the course of day-to-day activities, when he heard someone over a megaphone say, "Never forget. Never forget," repeatedly, flatly, almost mournfully. This was on the corner of Broadway and Fulton, across the street from St. Paul's Chapel, one block from the former World Trade Center twin towers. He turned to see what this was, thinking perhaps another protest.
Instead, he saw four figures. Two men, one with a voice that sounded like a megaphone and a sign that read, "Support Our Heroes," the other with an American flag. And two people wearing what seemed to be brightly smiling ping-pong ball outfits. And, oh, dear, kind readers, the Rude Pundit is not lying to you when he says that one of the ping-pong balls had a "9" emblazoned on it and the other had an "11." They also wore caps.
Ah, the people on the street were delighted at the sight. And when they took out their cameras or phones to snap a picture, the entire group stopped and waved at the grinning photographers. Then, the photo op done, the foursome would move on, with the first man continuing his sad wail of "Never forget."
The Rude Pundit noticed the t-shirt worn by the first and last men. It cleared up the entire story. The shirts said, in a bright, dense design, that they were from the New York State Lottery. And the outfits were the white balls you see when the hot chick on TV picks four or the Mega-Millions.
They turned, heading east on Fulton, a pair of disembodied balls scampering away from Ground Zero.
(Update/Correction: On examining a video of the scene and checking the Google machine a bit more, it looks like Officer 9 and Firefighter 11, with their goons, were crassly advertising a business. He apologizes for thinking that no one not associated with the actual lottery would really create lottery ball costumes and hope to profit from them.)
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was walking down near Ground Zero, New York City, as one must sometimes do in the course of day-to-day activities, when he heard someone over a megaphone say, "Never forget. Never forget," repeatedly, flatly, almost mournfully. This was on the corner of Broadway and Fulton, across the street from St. Paul's Chapel, one block from the former World Trade Center twin towers. He turned to see what this was, thinking perhaps another protest.
Instead, he saw four figures. Two men, one with a voice that sounded like a megaphone and a sign that read, "Support Our Heroes," the other with an American flag. And two people wearing what seemed to be brightly smiling ping-pong ball outfits. And, oh, dear, kind readers, the Rude Pundit is not lying to you when he says that one of the ping-pong balls had a "9" emblazoned on it and the other had an "11." They also wore caps.
Ah, the people on the street were delighted at the sight. And when they took out their cameras or phones to snap a picture, the entire group stopped and waved at the grinning photographers. Then, the photo op done, the foursome would move on, with the first man continuing his sad wail of "Never forget."
The Rude Pundit noticed the t-shirt worn by the first and last men. It cleared up the entire story. The shirts said, in a bright, dense design, that they were from the New York State Lottery. And the outfits were the white balls you see when the hot chick on TV picks four or the Mega-Millions.
They turned, heading east on Fulton, a pair of disembodied balls scampering away from Ground Zero.
(Update/Correction: On examining a video of the scene and checking the Google machine a bit more, it looks like Officer 9 and Firefighter 11, with their goons, were crassly advertising a business. He apologizes for thinking that no one not associated with the actual lottery would really create lottery ball costumes and hope to profit from them.)
The Frustration of an Obama Supporter (Part 2: Hamstrung by Reality):
This is where we are in our political spectrum: yesterday in Cleveland, President Barack Obama, a noted Kenyan socialist who pals around with terrorists, gave a speech that, in its core proposals, could have pretty much been given by Ronald Reagan. Yet it's still considered to be wild and woolly radicalism by the American right wing. And it's considered a barn-burning attack on Republicans by the left.
This is our current desperation, for Obama's failure on the right, for his success on the left, both sides needing their world views validated. The Rude Pundit is not immune to this. His feeling while watching much of Obama's speech was "Yeah, shove a fist right between John Boehner's charred carrot ass cheeks." Obama delivered punch after punch, mocking, for instance, the idea that millionaires should get hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks. Fuck, yeah.
It was all class warfare-sounding, with exhortations to bringing back the middle class and angry denunciations of the Republicans' ability to run the fiscal policies of the nation. The speech really was a beautifully enraged, yet carefullly modulated, summation of where we are and how we got here. If it had been FDR or LBJ making it, that would have been followed by an announcement of some momentous program that would be directly transformative for vast numbers of the underclasses in America.
President Obama proposed tax credits and deductions, along with $50 billion in infrastructure spending. He got applause for saying, "That’s why we’re fighting to extend the child tax credit and make permanent our new college tax credit, because if we do, it will mean $10,000 in tuition relief for each child going to four years of college." An expanded Pell Grant program might be nice, but, sure, this is good.
Many are gonna read this as criticism. But it's not. It's recognition of the political and economic reality. George W. Bush murdered the possibility of government enacting sweeping programs in this country for at least another decade, if not a generation. He did it with his wars, with his tax cuts, and with his rhetoric: he planted the seeds of current GOP intransigence. Republicans went for nearly five years, passing whatever the hell the President wanted, but faced with actually having to negotiate with Democrats, the GOP decided to honor Bush by blocking Obama.
Obama had his shot to do a couple of huge things, like the public option on health care reform or a huge stimulus plan, right at the start, but Democrats weren't used to winning the argument, so they compromised it all down to things that seemed politically tenable. And rather than take a victory lap on what they accomplished, Democrats have acted as if they were caught on cell phone video masturbating in the boy's room at school, ashamed and shy about having saved the economy and expanded health care while the GOP acted as if they had won by losing.
So, for the Rude Pundit, the most encouraging part of yesterday's Cleveland speech wasn't the game of tax cut chicken that the President is playing with Republicans. It was that Obama owned his accomplishments. He didn't apologize for them. He said, "That’s why I kept my campaign promise and gave a middle-class tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans. That’s why we passed health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will or denying coverage because you get sick. That’s why we passed financial reform that will end taxpayer-funded bailouts; reform that will stop credit card companies and mortgage lenders from taking advantage of taxpayers and consumers." And while he didn't use the dreaded word "stimulus," he did own his economic plan. He said, in essence, "Yeah, that's me jacking off in that video. Look how good I stroke my dick. Jealous?"
Democrats, including Obama, have allowed the GOP to set the terms of every argument. Yesterday, Obama explicitly threw the shackles of bipartisanship back at the Republicans. In doing so, he joined the fight to save a Democratic Congress. You don't go back to trying to play nice with the other side once you've called them motherfuckers because they fuck their mothers.
No, there wasn't much meat there for progressives, but there were plenty of side dishes. For now, for the realistic Obama supporter, the one who knew who he was voting for all along, that will have to suffice.
This is where we are in our political spectrum: yesterday in Cleveland, President Barack Obama, a noted Kenyan socialist who pals around with terrorists, gave a speech that, in its core proposals, could have pretty much been given by Ronald Reagan. Yet it's still considered to be wild and woolly radicalism by the American right wing. And it's considered a barn-burning attack on Republicans by the left.
This is our current desperation, for Obama's failure on the right, for his success on the left, both sides needing their world views validated. The Rude Pundit is not immune to this. His feeling while watching much of Obama's speech was "Yeah, shove a fist right between John Boehner's charred carrot ass cheeks." Obama delivered punch after punch, mocking, for instance, the idea that millionaires should get hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks. Fuck, yeah.
It was all class warfare-sounding, with exhortations to bringing back the middle class and angry denunciations of the Republicans' ability to run the fiscal policies of the nation. The speech really was a beautifully enraged, yet carefullly modulated, summation of where we are and how we got here. If it had been FDR or LBJ making it, that would have been followed by an announcement of some momentous program that would be directly transformative for vast numbers of the underclasses in America.
President Obama proposed tax credits and deductions, along with $50 billion in infrastructure spending. He got applause for saying, "That’s why we’re fighting to extend the child tax credit and make permanent our new college tax credit, because if we do, it will mean $10,000 in tuition relief for each child going to four years of college." An expanded Pell Grant program might be nice, but, sure, this is good.
Many are gonna read this as criticism. But it's not. It's recognition of the political and economic reality. George W. Bush murdered the possibility of government enacting sweeping programs in this country for at least another decade, if not a generation. He did it with his wars, with his tax cuts, and with his rhetoric: he planted the seeds of current GOP intransigence. Republicans went for nearly five years, passing whatever the hell the President wanted, but faced with actually having to negotiate with Democrats, the GOP decided to honor Bush by blocking Obama.
Obama had his shot to do a couple of huge things, like the public option on health care reform or a huge stimulus plan, right at the start, but Democrats weren't used to winning the argument, so they compromised it all down to things that seemed politically tenable. And rather than take a victory lap on what they accomplished, Democrats have acted as if they were caught on cell phone video masturbating in the boy's room at school, ashamed and shy about having saved the economy and expanded health care while the GOP acted as if they had won by losing.
So, for the Rude Pundit, the most encouraging part of yesterday's Cleveland speech wasn't the game of tax cut chicken that the President is playing with Republicans. It was that Obama owned his accomplishments. He didn't apologize for them. He said, "That’s why I kept my campaign promise and gave a middle-class tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans. That’s why we passed health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will or denying coverage because you get sick. That’s why we passed financial reform that will end taxpayer-funded bailouts; reform that will stop credit card companies and mortgage lenders from taking advantage of taxpayers and consumers." And while he didn't use the dreaded word "stimulus," he did own his economic plan. He said, in essence, "Yeah, that's me jacking off in that video. Look how good I stroke my dick. Jealous?"
Democrats, including Obama, have allowed the GOP to set the terms of every argument. Yesterday, Obama explicitly threw the shackles of bipartisanship back at the Republicans. In doing so, he joined the fight to save a Democratic Congress. You don't go back to trying to play nice with the other side once you've called them motherfuckers because they fuck their mothers.
No, there wasn't much meat there for progressives, but there were plenty of side dishes. For now, for the realistic Obama supporter, the one who knew who he was voting for all along, that will have to suffice.
Koran Burning, the First Amendment, and the Right to Be a Fucktard:
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution allows one, nay, encourages one to be a total fucking douchebag asshole in support of whatever fucktarded cause one and one's yahoo posse want to hoot and holler over. It's that simple. It's that cut and dried. And the reason it encourages such behavior is that judging who is a total fucking douchebag asshole and whose cause is fucktarded is in the eye and ear of the beholder. For, indeed, one could have argued that blacks in the Jim Crow south who were peaceably assembling at lunch counters were the assholes. And one could argue the opposite. Many people considered the Chicago Eight a bunch of unAmerican hippie cocksuckers who deserved only imprisonment, if not exile. One could argue that Gregory Lee Johnson was a complete cunt for burning an American flag outside the Dallas City Hall during the Republican National Convention in 1984. But the Supreme Court said in 1989 that his level of cuntishness didn't matter. What mattered was that it was speech (with even Scalia agreeing). And that as such, go fuck yourself with your precious little hurt feelings.
That's the deal. That's why you say rights are rights. As New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has emerged as this passionate advocate for free speech, said, "The First Amendment protects everybody, and you can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement." Bloomberg was commenting on Pastor Yosemite Sam's plan to burn a pile of Korans outside his shitty little church in Gainesville, Florida.
And you know who else is right? Fucking Pastor Yosemite Sam himself. Yeah, he's a hateful redneck son of a donkey ass-fucker (more or less). But read what he says on the church's website about why he's burning a Koran:
"In a day and age where ideas are confined to 140 character tweets, the violence of modern films dulls our senses, and the attention of most is on the frivolous dribble of celebrity gossip, sports and weather, we all know how much it takes to grab our attention." Argue if you want as to whether the weather is "frivolous" information, but if he was talking about burning Cheney in effigy, most of us would be cheering him.
Sam adds, "A small church, in a small town, down a back road, burning copies of its own books, on its own property, is not responsible for the violent actions anyone may take in retaliation to our protest." And, painful as it is to say these things, that motherfucker is right. If some stoked up vet beats the shit out of someone who burns an American flag, is the flag burner responsible for his beating? Principles are principles. And, frankly, fear of stirring violence isn't a good enough reason to restrict even idiotic speech.
Now the flip side is that free speech allows us to condemn the actions of the Dove World Outreach Center and all the people supporting International Burn a Koran Day. It allows us to call them fucktarded. It allows, say, the Rude Pundit to start a Facebook group. One that's called, for the sake of argument, and for shits and giggles, "Burn a Bible on Christmas." It's a stupid and childish response to a stupid and childish action. God or Allah or Whoever or Nobody bless the First Amendment for allowing us to "nyaah" in response to their "nyaah." And, perhaps, it might drive a few fundamentalists over at the Dove Center a little nutsy.
So join up. Shit, it's Facebook. No one's gonna check to see if you actually burn a Bible. But it's saying back to Pastor Yosemite Sam, "Yeah, we got your free speech right here." And the cool part? We do.
(By the way, as far as General Petraeus saying that Pastor Yosemite Sam shouldn't exercise his right to free speech because it might endanger our troops in Afghanistan, oh, sweet General, what endangers our troops in Afghanistan is having troops in Afghanistan.)
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution allows one, nay, encourages one to be a total fucking douchebag asshole in support of whatever fucktarded cause one and one's yahoo posse want to hoot and holler over. It's that simple. It's that cut and dried. And the reason it encourages such behavior is that judging who is a total fucking douchebag asshole and whose cause is fucktarded is in the eye and ear of the beholder. For, indeed, one could have argued that blacks in the Jim Crow south who were peaceably assembling at lunch counters were the assholes. And one could argue the opposite. Many people considered the Chicago Eight a bunch of unAmerican hippie cocksuckers who deserved only imprisonment, if not exile. One could argue that Gregory Lee Johnson was a complete cunt for burning an American flag outside the Dallas City Hall during the Republican National Convention in 1984. But the Supreme Court said in 1989 that his level of cuntishness didn't matter. What mattered was that it was speech (with even Scalia agreeing). And that as such, go fuck yourself with your precious little hurt feelings.
That's the deal. That's why you say rights are rights. As New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has emerged as this passionate advocate for free speech, said, "The First Amendment protects everybody, and you can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement." Bloomberg was commenting on Pastor Yosemite Sam's plan to burn a pile of Korans outside his shitty little church in Gainesville, Florida.
And you know who else is right? Fucking Pastor Yosemite Sam himself. Yeah, he's a hateful redneck son of a donkey ass-fucker (more or less). But read what he says on the church's website about why he's burning a Koran:
"In a day and age where ideas are confined to 140 character tweets, the violence of modern films dulls our senses, and the attention of most is on the frivolous dribble of celebrity gossip, sports and weather, we all know how much it takes to grab our attention." Argue if you want as to whether the weather is "frivolous" information, but if he was talking about burning Cheney in effigy, most of us would be cheering him.
Sam adds, "A small church, in a small town, down a back road, burning copies of its own books, on its own property, is not responsible for the violent actions anyone may take in retaliation to our protest." And, painful as it is to say these things, that motherfucker is right. If some stoked up vet beats the shit out of someone who burns an American flag, is the flag burner responsible for his beating? Principles are principles. And, frankly, fear of stirring violence isn't a good enough reason to restrict even idiotic speech.
Now the flip side is that free speech allows us to condemn the actions of the Dove World Outreach Center and all the people supporting International Burn a Koran Day. It allows us to call them fucktarded. It allows, say, the Rude Pundit to start a Facebook group. One that's called, for the sake of argument, and for shits and giggles, "Burn a Bible on Christmas." It's a stupid and childish response to a stupid and childish action. God or Allah or Whoever or Nobody bless the First Amendment for allowing us to "nyaah" in response to their "nyaah." And, perhaps, it might drive a few fundamentalists over at the Dove Center a little nutsy.
So join up. Shit, it's Facebook. No one's gonna check to see if you actually burn a Bible. But it's saying back to Pastor Yosemite Sam, "Yeah, we got your free speech right here." And the cool part? We do.
(By the way, as far as General Petraeus saying that Pastor Yosemite Sam shouldn't exercise his right to free speech because it might endanger our troops in Afghanistan, oh, sweet General, what endangers our troops in Afghanistan is having troops in Afghanistan.)
Hey, Mr. President, Can Barack Come Out to Play?:
You see that picture there? That's the bad ass motherfucker we elected, not the milquetoast pussy that gave the worthless Oval Office speech on Iraq last week. You see who's behind him there? Those are mostly white workers. If you saw them at a gathering of teabaggers, you wouldn't be surprised. It was as if President Obama let out his inner Barack, unencumbered by chimeric bipartisanship and briefly let loose by Rahm "Fucking" Emanuel. And Barack enjoyed coming out to play. We last had a play date with Barack sometime around June 30.
This was Obama's Labor Day speech, where he genuinely brought the old time noise, going after Republicans with a surprising streak of viciousness and anger. "Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no," he mocked, to laughter in the large crowd "If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no." He said that the "special interests" in DC "talk about me like I'm a dog." And he proposed a near-certainly dead-on-arrival $50 billion infrastructure rebuilding plan and tax cuts for business investments in new equipment. If he's up to what the Rude Pundit think he might be, its failure could be the rallying point for Democrats (assuming Democrats understand this).
Remember (and sometimes the Rude Pundit has to remember this, too): Obama's game has always been rope-a-dope. Lull the opposition into a sense of security. Play turtle to their hare. And then rip off the shell at the last minute to sprint to the end. Call it the Scott Brown strategy, if you want. Republican Scott Brown wasn't any kind of vague threat to Democrat Martha Coakley in the Senate race in Massachusetts. It was a combination of Coakley's presumptive natural win with her lack of natural campaigning skills that pushed Brown up and over in the last two or three weeks of the race.
So the game could be that an eminently rational-sounding, lowball job-creating bill and Republican-desired tax cuts will fail due to Republicans in the Senate, and voters will have fresh on their minds an example of GOP intransigence. What can a Democrat run on then? That Senator Cocksucker would rather give tax cuts to rich people than give the unemployed jobs? That Representative Fucker voted against tax cuts that benefit small businesses? Sure, and if Barack keeps coming out to play, if President Obama can let Barack be team captain for a stick ball game, if Democrats understand that outnutzoiding Republicans ain't gonna happen (in fact, if Democrats start pointing out how nutzoid the Tea Party Republicans in many races are, as Harry Reid is doing in Nevada), then there's a chance to stanch the party's bleeding.
In its report this morning, NPR interviewed some guy who didn't like the speech. Obama promised bipartisanship, the man said. All he heard was more of the same old politics.
"And it's about time," the Rude Pundit wanted to tell the man.
You see that picture there? That's the bad ass motherfucker we elected, not the milquetoast pussy that gave the worthless Oval Office speech on Iraq last week. You see who's behind him there? Those are mostly white workers. If you saw them at a gathering of teabaggers, you wouldn't be surprised. It was as if President Obama let out his inner Barack, unencumbered by chimeric bipartisanship and briefly let loose by Rahm "Fucking" Emanuel. And Barack enjoyed coming out to play. We last had a play date with Barack sometime around June 30.
This was Obama's Labor Day speech, where he genuinely brought the old time noise, going after Republicans with a surprising streak of viciousness and anger. "Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no," he mocked, to laughter in the large crowd "If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no." He said that the "special interests" in DC "talk about me like I'm a dog." And he proposed a near-certainly dead-on-arrival $50 billion infrastructure rebuilding plan and tax cuts for business investments in new equipment. If he's up to what the Rude Pundit think he might be, its failure could be the rallying point for Democrats (assuming Democrats understand this).
Remember (and sometimes the Rude Pundit has to remember this, too): Obama's game has always been rope-a-dope. Lull the opposition into a sense of security. Play turtle to their hare. And then rip off the shell at the last minute to sprint to the end. Call it the Scott Brown strategy, if you want. Republican Scott Brown wasn't any kind of vague threat to Democrat Martha Coakley in the Senate race in Massachusetts. It was a combination of Coakley's presumptive natural win with her lack of natural campaigning skills that pushed Brown up and over in the last two or three weeks of the race.
So the game could be that an eminently rational-sounding, lowball job-creating bill and Republican-desired tax cuts will fail due to Republicans in the Senate, and voters will have fresh on their minds an example of GOP intransigence. What can a Democrat run on then? That Senator Cocksucker would rather give tax cuts to rich people than give the unemployed jobs? That Representative Fucker voted against tax cuts that benefit small businesses? Sure, and if Barack keeps coming out to play, if President Obama can let Barack be team captain for a stick ball game, if Democrats understand that outnutzoiding Republicans ain't gonna happen (in fact, if Democrats start pointing out how nutzoid the Tea Party Republicans in many races are, as Harry Reid is doing in Nevada), then there's a chance to stanch the party's bleeding.
In its report this morning, NPR interviewed some guy who didn't like the speech. Obama promised bipartisanship, the man said. All he heard was more of the same old politics.
"And it's about time," the Rude Pundit wanted to tell the man.
On Labor Day, Remembering Nagi Daifullah and the United Farm Workers:
This is from a 1977 document of the National Farm Worker Ministry archives. (The text's presentation is an accident of how it pasted after copying it from the typed work. It strangely works well like this.)
Nagi Daifullah
came to this country
from his native
Yemen,
looking
for a better life.
Yemenese
farm workers
are the latest group (as
of 1977) to come to California
and be exploited
by state
growers.
Most of them, like Nagi, are young men in their early twenties,
shy
and slight
of frame.
Moslem,
they speak
no english
and live in
barren labor camps.
They come because
Yemen is one of the poorest
countries
in the world. In 1977, average
annual income was $94.
Nagi was 5 ft. tall and weighed 100 lbs.
Unlike many of his fellow
workers,
he had learned english.
Many times he served as an interpreter
for union organizers.
An active
UFW member,
he provided
important
leadership
for workers
on strike
at Farms near Arvin
and
Lamont, California.
His Death
At approximately
1:15 a.m. on August
14, a group of 15 UFW members
were socializing
at the Smokehouse
Cafe in Lamont,
California.
A
Kern County Sheriff’s
Department
vehicle arrived.
One of the three
officers
in the car, Deputy
Gilbert
Cooper,
began harassing
Frank
Quintana,
a UFW picket
captain.
Cooper
attempted
to arrest
Quintana,
who was quietly
standing
outside
the care, for disturbing
the peace.
(Such an arrest was routine in the long harassment
and
arrest
campaign
directed
at UFW picket
captains
by the Sheriff’s
Department
during the grape strike of 1973.)
The farmworkers
who were with Quintana
protested.
In the midst of
this confrontation,
Cooper singled
out 24 year old Nagi Daifullah
and went after him.
Nagi ran to get away and Deputy Cooper
began
chasing
him.
The Deputy caught up with Nagi and, without
warning,
swung a long metal flashlight
at him, striking
Nagi in the back of
the head.
Nagi
crumpled
to the
ground,
unconscious
and
bleeding
profusely.
Two sherrif’s
deputies
dragged
him sixty
feet along
the pavement.
They left his body lying
in the gutter
near the rear door of the
police car.
People attempting
to aid Nagi were told by the police
to leave.
Three of those that persisted
in trying
to help Nagi were
arrested.
The police did not call an ambulance.
An ambulance
was
finally called by a private citizen.
Nagi died August 15 of massive brain damage and acute blood loss.
Kern County corners’ jury ruled the death "an accident."
Thousands
of UFW workers and supporters
took part in a four mile
procession
to a memorial
service
at the UFW’s Forty Acres in
Delano.
The caravan then accompanied the casket to the Bakersfield
airport. Nagi’s body was flown home to Yemen for burial there.
(Note: At the memorial, United Farm Workers' President Cesar Chavez eulogized Daifullah, calling for a three-day fast in his memory and also asking for his fellow workers to "pray for Deputy Sheriff Cooper during this time." Nagi Dailfullah is considered one of the martyrs for the UFW's cause, along with Nan Freeman, Juan De La Cruz, and Rufino Contreras.)
This is from a 1977 document of the National Farm Worker Ministry archives. (The text's presentation is an accident of how it pasted after copying it from the typed work. It strangely works well like this.)
Nagi Daifullah
came to this country
from his native
Yemen,
looking
for a better life.
Yemenese
farm workers
are the latest group (as
of 1977) to come to California
and be exploited
by state
growers.
Most of them, like Nagi, are young men in their early twenties,
shy
and slight
of frame.
Moslem,
they speak
no english
and live in
barren labor camps.
They come because
Yemen is one of the poorest
countries
in the world. In 1977, average
annual income was $94.
Nagi was 5 ft. tall and weighed 100 lbs.
Unlike many of his fellow
workers,
he had learned english.
Many times he served as an interpreter
for union organizers.
An active
UFW member,
he provided
important
leadership
for workers
on strike
at Farms near Arvin
and
Lamont, California.
His Death
At approximately
1:15 a.m. on August
14, a group of 15 UFW members
were socializing
at the Smokehouse
Cafe in Lamont,
California.
A
Kern County Sheriff’s
Department
vehicle arrived.
One of the three
officers
in the car, Deputy
Gilbert
Cooper,
began harassing
Frank
Quintana,
a UFW picket
captain.
Cooper
attempted
to arrest
Quintana,
who was quietly
standing
outside
the care, for disturbing
the peace.
(Such an arrest was routine in the long harassment
and
arrest
campaign
directed
at UFW picket
captains
by the Sheriff’s
Department
during the grape strike of 1973.)
The farmworkers
who were with Quintana
protested.
In the midst of
this confrontation,
Cooper singled
out 24 year old Nagi Daifullah
and went after him.
Nagi ran to get away and Deputy Cooper
began
chasing
him.
The Deputy caught up with Nagi and, without
warning,
swung a long metal flashlight
at him, striking
Nagi in the back of
the head.
Nagi
crumpled
to the
ground,
unconscious
and
bleeding
profusely.
Two sherrif’s
deputies
dragged
him sixty
feet along
the pavement.
They left his body lying
in the gutter
near the rear door of the
police car.
People attempting
to aid Nagi were told by the police
to leave.
Three of those that persisted
in trying
to help Nagi were
arrested.
The police did not call an ambulance.
An ambulance
was
finally called by a private citizen.
Nagi died August 15 of massive brain damage and acute blood loss.
Kern County corners’ jury ruled the death "an accident."
Thousands
of UFW workers and supporters
took part in a four mile
procession
to a memorial
service
at the UFW’s Forty Acres in
Delano.
The caravan then accompanied the casket to the Bakersfield
airport. Nagi’s body was flown home to Yemen for burial there.
(Note: At the memorial, United Farm Workers' President Cesar Chavez eulogized Daifullah, calling for a three-day fast in his memory and also asking for his fellow workers to "pray for Deputy Sheriff Cooper during this time." Nagi Dailfullah is considered one of the martyrs for the UFW's cause, along with Nan Freeman, Juan De La Cruz, and Rufino Contreras.)
Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (National Archives Edition):
You see that? That's the first page of George Washington's Inaugural Address. It's got eight pages. Fox "news" host and Jim-Jones-without-the-guts Glenn Beck did not hold a single page of it. He didn't even hold the clear box that it's preserved in. Why? Because it's George Washington's Inaugural Address, fucker, and no one gets to touch it because it will fucking fall apart and then America will be destroyed by angry Revolutionary War zombies. Such is its power. The only upside is that they would eat Beck first and we'd at least get to see that on YouTube.
Why bring this up? Why bring up who didn't get to touch a fragile document? Because in his giant wankfest last Saturday, Beck claimed to the gathered 155,000,000 people (that's 310,000,000 tits, if you're counting) in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the statue of Washington's cock in the distance, that "I went to the National Archives and I held the first inaugural written in his own hand by George Washington." Except, of course, as MSNBC and others have reported, that was a lie, an outright and complete lie, as anyone paying attention would have realized.
Now, Beck has responded in his typically glib, "blow-me" way, by mocking those who discovered the truth. He says that it would have been "clumsy" to go through the details of what really happened. He'd have had to explain that "you can’t actually touch any of the documents, these are very very rare. So what they do, they have it in this plastic thing and they hold them right in front of you, you can’t touch them but then you can say 'can you turn it over,' and then they turn it over for you and then you look at it."
In his new self-serving piece of worm shit website, The Blaze, a Beck ball-washer named Scott Baker writes, in a pretty much incomprehensible article, that he was there with Beck: "Did I 'hold' it? That depends on what the definition of 'hold' is. Perhaps I 'hold' it closer in my heart for having gazed upon it? Perhaps I 'hold' it in greater esteem for having pondered the care and craftsmanship of the author." Umm, Scotty, if you say, "I held my balls," that means you were cupping your sack. If you say, "I held my balls in my heart," that means you spend too much time jerking off. But, oh-ho, oh-ho, how libtarded we are, caring that "words" actually "mean" "things."
However, Beck didn't just mention the holding in passing. The Rude Pundit watched the entire day of Beckturbation. Beck made a big deal about it. He put out his hands, as if they were sanctified by their contact with the holy papers of our past. He used the image to separate himself from the unworthy masses (who couldn't call a member of Congress for a private trip to the Archives). He was transforming himself into an apostle of a white American Christianity. The proximity to the relics made him holy. Is that too far? Is that hyperbole? Then you weren't paying attention.
Beck's followers won't care, you know. They'll just dismiss it as shitting on their parade. Why should a man like Beck be held to the truth? The truth is just so many chains to the earth. The faith shall set you free. And sometimes faith requires a leap over the dissonance of facts.
Hey, Glenn, you know what wouldn't have been "clumsy" or required any explanation? If you had said you were "shown" the actual Inaugural Address. That's still cool. But it doesn't give your filthy hands superpowers.
You see that? That's the first page of George Washington's Inaugural Address. It's got eight pages. Fox "news" host and Jim-Jones-without-the-guts Glenn Beck did not hold a single page of it. He didn't even hold the clear box that it's preserved in. Why? Because it's George Washington's Inaugural Address, fucker, and no one gets to touch it because it will fucking fall apart and then America will be destroyed by angry Revolutionary War zombies. Such is its power. The only upside is that they would eat Beck first and we'd at least get to see that on YouTube.
Why bring this up? Why bring up who didn't get to touch a fragile document? Because in his giant wankfest last Saturday, Beck claimed to the gathered 155,000,000 people (that's 310,000,000 tits, if you're counting) in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the statue of Washington's cock in the distance, that "I went to the National Archives and I held the first inaugural written in his own hand by George Washington." Except, of course, as MSNBC and others have reported, that was a lie, an outright and complete lie, as anyone paying attention would have realized.
Now, Beck has responded in his typically glib, "blow-me" way, by mocking those who discovered the truth. He says that it would have been "clumsy" to go through the details of what really happened. He'd have had to explain that "you can’t actually touch any of the documents, these are very very rare. So what they do, they have it in this plastic thing and they hold them right in front of you, you can’t touch them but then you can say 'can you turn it over,' and then they turn it over for you and then you look at it."
In his new self-serving piece of worm shit website, The Blaze, a Beck ball-washer named Scott Baker writes, in a pretty much incomprehensible article, that he was there with Beck: "Did I 'hold' it? That depends on what the definition of 'hold' is. Perhaps I 'hold' it closer in my heart for having gazed upon it? Perhaps I 'hold' it in greater esteem for having pondered the care and craftsmanship of the author." Umm, Scotty, if you say, "I held my balls," that means you were cupping your sack. If you say, "I held my balls in my heart," that means you spend too much time jerking off. But, oh-ho, oh-ho, how libtarded we are, caring that "words" actually "mean" "things."
However, Beck didn't just mention the holding in passing. The Rude Pundit watched the entire day of Beckturbation. Beck made a big deal about it. He put out his hands, as if they were sanctified by their contact with the holy papers of our past. He used the image to separate himself from the unworthy masses (who couldn't call a member of Congress for a private trip to the Archives). He was transforming himself into an apostle of a white American Christianity. The proximity to the relics made him holy. Is that too far? Is that hyperbole? Then you weren't paying attention.
Beck's followers won't care, you know. They'll just dismiss it as shitting on their parade. Why should a man like Beck be held to the truth? The truth is just so many chains to the earth. The faith shall set you free. And sometimes faith requires a leap over the dissonance of facts.
Hey, Glenn, you know what wouldn't have been "clumsy" or required any explanation? If you had said you were "shown" the actual Inaugural Address. That's still cool. But it doesn't give your filthy hands superpowers.
The Frustration of an Obama Supporter (Part 1: All Hard and Nowhere to Go):
The Rude Pundit's been thinking about what was so gut-punchingly frustrating about President Obama's Oval Office address on Tuesday night. Certainly, at this point, one shouldn't expect anything other than vagaries and platitudes from any speech that is ostensibly "major." That way, you give your enemies very little to attack. But it isn't just the bland stew of multiple subjects Obama mentioned that is so galling.
Let us say, and why not, that you're a gay dude and that you've found yourself in the supposed dream situation: you've met two guys at a Fire Island bar in these waning days of summer 2010 who are ready to celebrate the end of the season by having a threesome with you. They're a couple, but, hell, the liquor's been flowing freely and they've even said that it's one of their fantasies. Groovy. You get back to their beach house, and you're joking about who's gonna pitch, who's gonna catch, who's gonna ski with a couple of dicks as poles. And then the two of them start making out with each other, yanking on each other's cranks, god, you hope one day you meet someone who's so into you. It's so hot, the clothes off, you at the foot of the bed, looking for your opening, thinking, "Well, that ass seems unoccupied," but every time you try to find entry for your tumescent member, you're denied, either through subtle motion or not-so-subtle hand gesture. And you realize that this ain't about to be your fantasy. It's theirs. And their fantasy involves you perched on the end of the bed, like a good terrier, jacking off while watching them fuck.
The Rude Pundit had that feeling, enlarged and weeping, as he heard what Obama was talking about: the alleged end of the Iraq war, which isn't really ending; the nonstop stream of praise for the soldiers, some of whom committed atrocities like torture; the ennobling of the people of Iraq without mentioning the number of their dead; the outreach to the pro-war crowd by paying respect to the views of George W. Bush. And the rest of us? The majority of the nation that opposed the war while it wore on for years and years? The ones who were waving our hands saying, "How about some help at home"? Obama offered us, "[I]t’s time to turn the page." Or, in other words, have fun fucking yourself, there, Sparky. Oh, and he said, speaking for people who supported the war and people who opposed it, "[A]ll of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future." Or, in other words, stick a finger up your own asshole, too.
As the speech moved on, to Afghanistan, with its vaguely defined "get the couple of dozen of al-Qaeda members still goatfucking there," and to the economy, with a brief feint to the need to invest at home, the Rude Pundit wondered, "What do you want, Mr. President? No, really. What do you want? Is there something you want us to do? Is there something you want us to support, beyond more war? Tell us." It's like during the health care debate when he wouldn't say what his bottom line was.
He said we have to "jump start" green industries, that we need to invest in education, and one or two other things, and, hey, look, we captured or killed some al-Qaeda leaders. The only time he said anything approaching specifics was when he said what's been done for vets.
But this presidency was supposed to be about uniting us and asking us for action, asking us to all work together so we can all get off in a glorious future. Now, so cowed by the image created of him by the right, so put upon by unending crises, he merely asks for our patience, not our elbow grease.
The disappointment the Rude Pundit had with this speech, has with this President right now, is that we were ready to go. Many of us still want to get some job done. But what's the goal? What's the end game? What do you want?
The Rude Pundit's been thinking about what was so gut-punchingly frustrating about President Obama's Oval Office address on Tuesday night. Certainly, at this point, one shouldn't expect anything other than vagaries and platitudes from any speech that is ostensibly "major." That way, you give your enemies very little to attack. But it isn't just the bland stew of multiple subjects Obama mentioned that is so galling.
Let us say, and why not, that you're a gay dude and that you've found yourself in the supposed dream situation: you've met two guys at a Fire Island bar in these waning days of summer 2010 who are ready to celebrate the end of the season by having a threesome with you. They're a couple, but, hell, the liquor's been flowing freely and they've even said that it's one of their fantasies. Groovy. You get back to their beach house, and you're joking about who's gonna pitch, who's gonna catch, who's gonna ski with a couple of dicks as poles. And then the two of them start making out with each other, yanking on each other's cranks, god, you hope one day you meet someone who's so into you. It's so hot, the clothes off, you at the foot of the bed, looking for your opening, thinking, "Well, that ass seems unoccupied," but every time you try to find entry for your tumescent member, you're denied, either through subtle motion or not-so-subtle hand gesture. And you realize that this ain't about to be your fantasy. It's theirs. And their fantasy involves you perched on the end of the bed, like a good terrier, jacking off while watching them fuck.
The Rude Pundit had that feeling, enlarged and weeping, as he heard what Obama was talking about: the alleged end of the Iraq war, which isn't really ending; the nonstop stream of praise for the soldiers, some of whom committed atrocities like torture; the ennobling of the people of Iraq without mentioning the number of their dead; the outreach to the pro-war crowd by paying respect to the views of George W. Bush. And the rest of us? The majority of the nation that opposed the war while it wore on for years and years? The ones who were waving our hands saying, "How about some help at home"? Obama offered us, "[I]t’s time to turn the page." Or, in other words, have fun fucking yourself, there, Sparky. Oh, and he said, speaking for people who supported the war and people who opposed it, "[A]ll of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis’ future." Or, in other words, stick a finger up your own asshole, too.
As the speech moved on, to Afghanistan, with its vaguely defined "get the couple of dozen of al-Qaeda members still goatfucking there," and to the economy, with a brief feint to the need to invest at home, the Rude Pundit wondered, "What do you want, Mr. President? No, really. What do you want? Is there something you want us to do? Is there something you want us to support, beyond more war? Tell us." It's like during the health care debate when he wouldn't say what his bottom line was.
He said we have to "jump start" green industries, that we need to invest in education, and one or two other things, and, hey, look, we captured or killed some al-Qaeda leaders. The only time he said anything approaching specifics was when he said what's been done for vets.
But this presidency was supposed to be about uniting us and asking us for action, asking us to all work together so we can all get off in a glorious future. Now, so cowed by the image created of him by the right, so put upon by unending crises, he merely asks for our patience, not our elbow grease.
The disappointment the Rude Pundit had with this speech, has with this President right now, is that we were ready to go. Many of us still want to get some job done. But what's the goal? What's the end game? What do you want?
In Brief: Note to President Obama: Stop Walking the Tightrope:
Oh, sweet Barack, you know what to do when someone blindfolds you, makes you climb a post, uncovers your eyes, hands you a pole, and says, "See that tightrope? You gotta walk it if you wanna get to that other post"? Unless you've got a gun to your head, you say, "Shove it up your ass. I'm gonna climb down, walk across the ground, and wave at you when I get there." But not you, dear, smart Barack. You grimace, grab that balancing pole, and step out onto the tightrope. No, didn't have to. But someone told you that you should. And you believed them.
Every fucking major speech, Barack, since you were elected, other than that one health care forum where you handed Republicans their asses in public (and the other one where you did it in private), you have time and again said and done things that are supposed to bury the hatchet with Republicans, as if this one thing, this one remark, will be the magic phrase, the "Open, sesame" of the cave of right-wing goodwill. That hoodoo doesn't exist, man.
Last night's speech was no exception. No blame for the Iraq war, just the merest mention that it cost a fuck of a lot of money. A shout-out to George W. Bush, fer chrissake. More buried hatchets than at Little Big Horn. And then, as usual, no direction to us.
(Laterer today: What we want from you.
Update: Okay, tomorrow then.)
Oh, sweet Barack, you know what to do when someone blindfolds you, makes you climb a post, uncovers your eyes, hands you a pole, and says, "See that tightrope? You gotta walk it if you wanna get to that other post"? Unless you've got a gun to your head, you say, "Shove it up your ass. I'm gonna climb down, walk across the ground, and wave at you when I get there." But not you, dear, smart Barack. You grimace, grab that balancing pole, and step out onto the tightrope. No, didn't have to. But someone told you that you should. And you believed them.
Every fucking major speech, Barack, since you were elected, other than that one health care forum where you handed Republicans their asses in public (and the other one where you did it in private), you have time and again said and done things that are supposed to bury the hatchet with Republicans, as if this one thing, this one remark, will be the magic phrase, the "Open, sesame" of the cave of right-wing goodwill. That hoodoo doesn't exist, man.
Last night's speech was no exception. No blame for the Iraq war, just the merest mention that it cost a fuck of a lot of money. A shout-out to George W. Bush, fer chrissake. More buried hatchets than at Little Big Horn. And then, as usual, no direction to us.
(Laterer today: What we want from you.
Update: Okay, tomorrow then.)
Late Post Today (and This Week's Stephanie Miller Show Fun Time):
The hurricane waves are calling the Rude Pundit, siren-like, to surf this morning, surf. Instead, he's got shit to take care of. More rad rudeness later.
But, hey, here's this week's radio appearance with the lovely and snarky Stephanie Miller:
The hurricane waves are calling the Rude Pundit, siren-like, to surf this morning, surf. Instead, he's got shit to take care of. More rad rudeness later.
But, hey, here's this week's radio appearance with the lovely and snarky Stephanie Miller:
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