“An Exit to Eternal Summer Slacking”
I *love* this song. Where was I when it was new?
In Which the Poo-Flingers Have Found Their New Queen
Gov. MILF’s been lolling around on bear skin rugs with biker dudes, we hear, and that’s got some of the Rich Lowry types out there not sitting up quite so straight on their couches anymore.
Alex Conant: Coming soon to a cable TV station near you: TLC just released a YouTube video of a recent interview with Sarah Palin that has an unfortunate image of the Governor relaxing on a bear rug in her office. Seriously:
There’s video if you’re feeling particularly squick-proof, although I think it’s more of a bear-skin couch kind of deal, but apparently such niceties do not matter to Mr. Conant, who is packing up his bottle of Jergen’s and box of Kleenex and going to bed.
I’ve defended Sarah Palin after recent media criticism. But I fear this latest video, coming just a few months after the unfortunate turkey-slaughter clip, is fodder for cable TV and her opponents.
I know! Yay.
I seem to remember at one point joking that Alaska under Sarah Palin was a place where it was always winter and never Christmas. Boy, was I wrong. It’s Christmas every day with that woman, praise Bast. What with the trailer-trash bail-jumping mother-in-law and other delightful family antics, the legal defense fund that ran aground on ethical issues literally within hours of its creation, and on and on and on. Thank you, Sarah Palin, for just being you. You’re special.
But it sounds like the rest of the GOP might have to wash its hair next year, Governor, k? We’ll call you.
Yeah, and the Michele Bachmann thing isn’t working out so well either.
With Rep. Michele Bachmann’s false assertion that a Democrats held the White House when the last “swine flu” scare fresh in mind, the editorial board of the West Central Tribune conjures another agricultural affliction when discussing the 6th District Republican: “foot-in-mouth disease.” Citing her recent gaffes — many of which we’ve chronicled here — the editorial concludes: “Bachmann has become the poster child for bizarre politicians. She also is an embarrassment to both the 6th District and Minnesota.”
But never fear, if there’s one thing that the Right will always find, it’s someone new to worship and uncritically adore, and right now it’s beauty pageant runner-up Carrie Prejean, who, when asked about her views on gay marriage by some screechy trainwreck whose name escapes me, said:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have gay marriages and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South California and, uh, the Iowa, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our marriages over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help marriage and should help the Iowans and the opposite marriage countries, so we will be able to build up our future…
Poor thing. She’s not so great with the thinking and the talking, but she has a face like the front end of a platinum Mercedes SLR 722 and a lovely pair of breasts that she got between the Miss California and Miss America pageants and the folks at NOM just love her. She’s shiny.
Dodai: Well, some people are psyched that Miss California USA Carrie Prejean is against same-sex marriage. Who? The people behind he National Organization for Marriage. They’ve put her in their brand-spanking new ad:
Politico’s Ben Smith notes that NOM paints the scenario as Miss California being “immediately attacked.” OMG who would attack a pretty, pretty beauty queen? A bitchy gay blogger, that’s who. (Dennis Miller says she was asked harder questions than President Obama fields.)
*snort!* Dennis Miller? That washout just wants to slip a fifty into her bikini strap, thankyewverymuch.
But really, can’t our side get a better spokesperson for ourselves than Perez Hilton, please? Like, STAT?
Death to Crapitalism
(above: crapitalist pigs)
Litbrit has an excellent (if appalling) post up about the deplorable, disgusting conditions at the Smithfield Farms facility in La Gloria, Mexico where it is believed that the Swine Flu outbreak may have begun.
However, Smithfield’s statement fails to mention that countless residents of La Gloria were routinely and relentlessly exposed to airborne droplets of pig feces and decayed tissue for an undetermined number of years, thanks to toxic and sick-making clouds blowing outward from Granja Carrol’s so-called “oxidation ponds”–or pig sewage lagoons. And that they have long complained of respiratory illnesses, well before their children started dying in March.
Smithfield is, of course, another American company that has quietly taken its operations outside national borders in order to escape the jurisdiction of US Environmental and Work Safety laws. Down there, they can pay off officials and operate a literal charnel house so filthy that it is apparently actually breeding lethal, mutant microorganisms. Beyond the reach of US law in La Gloria, Smithfield never has to clean up after themselves or pay a decent wage to anyone or provide health care for anyone made sick by their operation.
This is the world that Tea Partiers and Libertarians say they want to live in, by the bye, the unregulated, untaxed, free-market world where accountability is only for the poor sons of bitches that can’t buy their way around the laws, i.e., the world we allegedly left behind in the 19th century. What they call “socialism”, we call Civilization. Is there any single hallmark of advanced societies that “conservatives” don’t want to erase and destroy?
“Capitalism” as it has been practiced under the Republican presidencies of Bush, Bush, Reagan, and Clinton, has basically been money-driven anarchy. As the people now known as “Liberals” have frantically been trying to support the pillars of civilization; dignity, justice, peace, education, responsibility, etc., the howling brats of the Right have been trying to kick them away, insisting that all laws that conflict with their self-interest are unfair and the work of America-hating Bolsheviks who want to take away their stuff. It’s disgusting.
Of course, maybe now that enough people have been kicked in the face by the system as it stands and “capitalism” per se is only polling slightly above genital warts with the American public, we may be able to bring back some of the things that made this country great before the Reagan Era began the Great American Decline. Maybe. Okay, not really. But maybe we can slow down the collapse long enough to finish our days with lights that turn on and off and clean water.
Meanwhile, I agree with Robert Sietsema that we should call this the Smithfield™ Flu. Or Smithfield™ H1N1, which sounds kind of like some old swing tune.
Oh Gee Thanks Mister
(above: a recycled white elephant that isn’t in the Senate)
I guess we’re supposed to be pleased that Old Man Arlen “Walking Waffle” Specter has seen the hand write in fire across the wall that his chances of being elected as a Republican in Pennsylvania are about nil, so he’s sought refuge on the other side of the aisle. Well, don’t get too comfortable, dickhead. I’ve got high hopes for the Democratic primaries next year.* This eleventh hour change of heart in no way obviates all the times over the years where you would, sure, have occasionally lucid moments in the Senate and talk sense against the Bushes or whatever, but then cave in and vote with the Cro Magnon Caucus when it counted the most.
This is my one wish, y’all. If I could rub a magic lamp and summon a genie, I would close my eyes, click my heels together three times, and say, “Term limits in the House and Senate!” Honestly, the Senate is the closest thing that the United States has to a 13th century aristocracy, hence that leathery washout Norm Coleman’s desperate, desperate refusal to just let go. Being a Senator in its way is like being a pharaoh. People hold doors for you. They defer to you. You can park your car in the handicapped spots.
It’s time for that to come to an end. No more mossy old geezers pulling their sad little old man puds and lining their pockets with our money as they enable massive corporations to rape our bank accounts and the national treasury. No more John McCains. No more Jack Murthas. No more Ted Stevenses. OUT, robber barons! OUT, corrupt old fossils!
But anyway, yeah, we’ve got Arlen Specter, oh boy. Really the only genuine pleasure I take in this is as Atrios says:
On the plus side, Senate staffers inform me that Republicans in the Senate are visibly in agony right now. So at least we have that!
Ah yes there is that. What sweet, sweet music are their cries of pain.
*Even as I type and re-read that, with a sinking feeling, I kind of realize that I don’t have particularly high hopes for that process. The DC Incumbent Protection Racket will undoubtedly see Specter as a known quantity and circle the wagons to protect him. Oh, don’t you know Arlen? He’s a great guy. One of Us. Democrat or Republican, he’s a company man, a real pukka sahib.
Yeah.
How Now, H1N1?
(totes awesome image from here)
So…what? Are we all going to keel over dead today?
Who could have predicted that this thing would take on a whole new howlingly stupid life of its own on Twitter? Apparently 124 characters is just enough to turn yourself and everyone around you into a complete raving idiot. No wonder Republicans love the Twitmosphere. It is apparently where thoughts go to die.
Erupting
Sorry, gang. A whole bunch of shit happened at once and I was just kind of overwhelmed.
Early last week an actor who is working with my brother’s wife died in his sleep of pneumonia. He was just 34, by all accounts a very dear man. He’d been sick for a few days. He sought medical attention and they urged him to check into the hospital, but he was uninsured and couldn’t afford it and figured he could tough it out. He couldn’t.
Then on Wednesday, I found out that one of my dearest, favorite readers of all, one of our wonderful Aussies, had suddenly died of a heart attack. Her name was Lynne. We, of course, knew her as “Persiflage”, who I first “met” over at Firedoglake, back in the old days. She was warm and clever and a delight to have in the threads and, you know, around. Her writing just seemed so wonderfully alive and sparking with energy and wit. It just knocks me right on over on to my ass that she’s gone. Goddammit. God. Damn. It. Persi, I love you so much and we all miss you so bad.
My mom has these friends Bill and Martha. They met and fell in love and married in their 60’s. They live out on a rambling piece of farmland in Smiths, Alabama with a lake and scuppernong vines and acres of woods, goats and pigs and chickens. In other words, the kind of place that sends the grandchild in each of us straight to heaven.
Bill and Martha took in a stray dog, a rust-colored mutt with skinny legs and big feet. They called him Rusty and for a long time he was a “crazy dog” like Bo the White House dog. He stayed outside and it took them forever to teach Rusty not to jump up on people when he was happy to see them. And he was ALWAYS happy to see them. But Rusty was an Outside Dog. Bill didn’t think dogs belong in the house, you see.
But then a couple of Thanksgivings ago, we showed up at Bill and Martha’s and were met at the door…by Rusty.
“Mom,” I said to my mother, “I thought that Rusty was an Outside Dog.”
“Oh, he’s wormed his way right inside,” she said, “He sleeps in their bed, now.”
And sure enough, they had proceeded to spoil young Rusty absolutely rotten. They got him past the jumping and licking, but now, oh now, he was not only an Inside Dog, but he never even had to stay home by himself. They started taking him everywhere. Even stern, mostly silent Bill would turn to a big quivering heap of googly-eyed jell-o when Rusty came in the room.
Well, Rusty got hit by a car on Saturday. Martha is devastated. She was fishing on the lake and her grandsons were playing with the dog when he ran out in the road and was struck and killed.
I was still processing that when I got a text message on my phone from the UGA Alert system that a professor was being sought in connection with an off-campus shooting a block from my house, which turned out to be this completely awful story that actually went to the national media.
ATHENS, Georgia (CNN) — A University of Georgia professor apparently shot and killed his wife and two other people at a community theater group’s reunion Saturday, then dropped the couple’s two children off at a neighbor’s and fled.
Athens-Clarke County police said they have local, regional and national alerts out for George Zinkhan, 57, an endowed marketing professor at the school’s Terry College of Business.
“It appeared he and his wife were having problems,” police Capt. Clarence Holeman said.
Holeman identified the dead as Marie Bruce, 47, Zinkhan’s wife and a prominent Athens attorney; Tom Tanner, 40; and Ben Teague, 63.
The fucking monster is still missing, and police can’t find his passport. One of the men he killed had a seven year old daughter who was standing right there and watched her Daddy die. This is the kind of thing that tears the heart.
This weekend is one of the biggest of the year in Athens, the Twilight Jazz Festival which is held in conjunction with a national bike race that brings 30,000 people to town. There was a worry that Zinkhan might try to go out in a spectacular fashion in the middle of the festival, so this was what downtown looked like for the rest of the weekend:
(photo by jake daniels of the red and black)
And of course, yesterday was the anniversary of losing Gus, my old kitty who disappeared a year ago.
Oh, and there’s fucking superflu.
So, yeah, I just needed a couple days to think and process all this stuff. Thanks for being patient.
Is Somebody On This?
Can I just say right now that I would be ecstatic to donate money to military families in order to see Sean Hannity ride a waterboard? Now, please?
“You Didn’t Clap Hard Enough. Tinkerbell’s Dead.”
Okay, I want everyone to acknowledge just for a moment what admirable restraint I have exercised thus far on the topic of Meghan McCain. I mean, you know, she’s trying. She’s smart and pretty and she’s got a great job writing over there at Tina Brown’s late-to-the party blog I’ll Get You Arianna You Evil Greek Bitch The Daily Beast, and-
Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? The only reason I’ve been cutting a wide swath around the topic of Meghan McCain is because I know that every time she opens her mouth to speak, Laura Ingraham gets a hemorrhoid. But all of that must perforce come to an end now, alack! I’m sorry Meghan. I just can’t take it anymore.
Matt Yglesias managed to spit out the truth yesterday sometime:
I’m reading some of this coverage of Meghan McCain’s latest thoughts on the direction of the Republican Party and I can’t help but wonder to myself who on earth is Meghan McCain? To the best of my knowledge we’re talking about a young woman who’s never accomplished anything or held a job.
Aw, shit. Now you’ve done it. You’ve violated the first rule of Pundit Club, Matt. Ana Marie Cox is going to take you right off her Christmas Card list. You never, EVER talk about who’s in Pundit Club or how they got there. They are just manifestly there, sprung fully formed from the (sweaty, bulbous) forehead of the Drudge Report.
Meghan, she of the multi-million dollar book deal, got her prettily bobbed nose entirely out of joint.
Someone made a mean comment about Meghan McCain, saying (accurately) that she has never accomplished anything. She got mad and posted an expletive-ridden and atrociously spelled—and wrong!—resume on Twitter.
The screed is directed at an unnamed “fellow beast writer,” which we take to mean someone who writes, as McCain does (incomprehensibly!), for the Daily Beast. In response to the suggestion that McCain has never done anything, she ticks off her accomplishments: tutoring kids at a church, delivering flowers to hospital patients, internships at Newsweek and Saturday Night Live, all the way up to “multi-award winning website mccainblogette.com, which is officially the first blog in history to document a presidential campaign.”
Except for this one, called the “Official Kerry-Edwards Campaign Blog,” from 2004.
Oh god, Meghan. You know, it’s pretty self evident that you are who you are and that you have what you have because you are the blond, petted favorite daughter of two incredibly wealthy, powerful parents. All of us can imagine just how tooth-grindingly horrific you would be to work an actual job with. (See the video in this post. I don’t watch The Hills, but I’d read Richard Lawson’s grocery list, and you don’t have to be at all immersed in the show’s culture to appreciate the hilarity of watching a know-nothing TeeVee pop tartlet become completely exasperated when her day runs aground on the only person in the world less qualified to hold a job than herself.)
I mean, let’s take the kernel paragraph of McCain’s speech to the Log Cabin Republicans over the weekend:
“I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people’s lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense.
I think, write, and speak on a third grade level.
I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican,” she said to wild applause.
Darlin’, none of that says anything about your well-roundedness as a person. I hate to be the one that tells you this, but it’s really just a testament to your skills as a shopper. A professional reader of magazines, perhaps. A paid ligger.
But you know, whatever. Bully for you, Meghan. You’ve probably paid more in bounced check fees than us proles will earn over the course of our whole entire lives. But what hot-handed hedge fund manager is going to go in there and leverage the big shitpile of unsecured debt in your heart?
Oh God Please No Anything But That
I don’t know what in the hell the newspaper industry ever did to deserve this:
The “death of newspapers” has drawn powerful political interest.
Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation’s print media.
Those poor bastards, they’re completely doomed. They’ll be out of business by Memorial Day.
