Wednesday, December 31, 2003

The Year in Review:

I started this blog solely as a means to carry on in as gross and incontinent a fashion as possible.
My goal, it would seem, has been achieved.
:)
What have I learned though?
Damn near nothing....but I sure did cover a lot of ground in the interim.
Lessee now...
I delved ad nauseum into George Bush's charisma potential. I think I finally concluded that charisma could be defined as a commodity.
Anyone else who wants to pick that ball up and run with it please do so. Despite a graduate degree in political science this is a theoretical question that I can do little with over the long term.
I dicked on the notion of a matched pair of democracy haters like Andrew Sullivan and Chris Hitchens presided over an Orwell Conference at Wellesley College.
Howard Kurtz, Mike Barnicle, Howard Fineman, Sean Hannity, Chris Matthews, and Tom Friedman were all abused in the grand style repeatedly.
Ditto and the same for Laura "Hollow Leg" Ingraham, Debbie Schlussel, and Peggy "Magic Dolphins" Noonan.
Oh and Cal Thomas and that senescent young cavalier Jeff Jacoby...they got whacked well and thoroughly.
And lets not forget Big Bill Bennett's gambling addiction, Rush Limbaugh's problems with junk or the President's fey tendecy to dress up like a fighter pilot and go swishing down the flight deck.
All dutifully denounced.
Mitt Romney got bashed almost every week.
The Globe's seemingly endless ranks of cheap Kerry-bashers were upbraided.
Eric Kriss was branded a dangerous crackpot.
Rick Santorum? pegged him as a screechy, ambitious demagogue.
Eric Fehrnstrom was labeled a snitch and creepy little bastard.
Held up Dick Cheney as naught but Halliburton's paid agent in the Federal Government.
Oh and I didn't forget Joe Lawless either...I only wish that I could!
I also predicted queer-bashing as the GOP's latest wedge issue come campaign 2004.
And I didn't let up on my entirely unique the-end-of-conservatism-is-upon-us routine.
Oh and sycophancy...I came down hard on that.

However in all truth I said some nice things about the following persons and things:
The Edgemere Drive In Shrewsbury Ma.
Senator John Kerry
General Wesley Clark
The Commonwealth's entirely sane and sensible electorate.
Lis Riba
The Romney is a Fraud Blog
Kim Thurlow
And I waxed nostalgic over the now-vanished vacant lots of Harvard Square.
As far as I'm concerned it's been a great year and what the hell the worst is yet to come.

Happy New Year,
JohnIAT@aol.com
Chimes at Midight will be back Monday January Fifth 2004.

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Mitt Romney gets an electric chair for Christmas...

The Federales have sentenced Gary Sampson to death. Pointedly doing this in a state where there hasn't been an execution since 1947.
So there is no doubt in my mind that the mini-Mitts Romney has scared up to run for the Great and General Court in 2004 will be squeaking long and loud in favor of the gallows.
Like all Republicans with national aspirations, Mitt longs to campaign for re-election in 2006 atop a vast pile of duly electrocuted corpses.
Never mind the fact that the crime rate in the Commonwealth remains low thanks to our lavish spending on prisons and despite a sluggish statewide economy.
No, Mitt must have his noose and will screech for it interminably come next fall.
And what the hell, the suburbs are full of inexplicably fearful people Mitt will probably get his coveted electric chair in the end.
I'm not opposed to the death penalty per se, I don't think it deters anyone from doing anything...but there is a minority of offenders so gross and repellent to the polity that they must be turned to dust soonest.
On the other hand, I have no faith in Romney's ability to handle this particular power should it be granted him by the Legislature. Mitt sees the death penalty purely in political terms as a means to keep the masses in a perpetual state of fear and excitement.
Moreover the thought of these crude pro-death penalty adverts getting seen in Southern New Hampshire during campaign 2006 must have Mitt fairly fondling himself with glee.
There is only one solution, the state legislature must pass the death penalty but with a proviso mandating the use of a gallows and furthermore nominating the Governor as actual executioner of record.
I mean that, the only way Mitt should get his gallows is if HE is prepared to pull the death-lever.
My guess is, that for all his demagogic bluster, Mitt is a coward a heart, one doubts he could drop a perp without puking.
Now if we could only get that bout of post execution nausea on video....

Monday, December 29, 2003

Day of the Ass Clown:

God Scot Lehigh must've been pissing his pants in sheer glee yesterday.
His paen of praise to Governor Decaf was the feature article in this Sunday's Boston Globe Magazine.
Big frickin' whoop, Scot spun the deposition of Billy Bulger and the Governor's acquisition of new budget cutting powers into a irresistible march to glory before which all must bow.
He also asserted without much evidence, that Romney was "sweeping out" the bureaucracy of all it's encrusted political appointees.
And yet I haven't heard about Joe Lawless suddenly clipping coupons and Dollar Bill Monahan's law suit against the state hasn't been dropped either.
More than likely all those Swift-ites and Cellucci holdovers who are being broomed out of governance will be replaced with loyal Romneyans.
When that happens you can bet Scot Lehigh will pass over this in silence...his loyalty is ever to the appearance of the Kolobian Viceroy's reforming zeal.
Scot just like the sound of the word reform-reform-reform being said over and over again....that is all.
Whether or not any reforms are achieved is another matter...something for policy wonks to worry about , hipster columnistas like Scott can't be bothered.
The problem with Scot is, he fancies himself a suburban independent.
And the problem with suburban independent's these days is that they are given to bargaining away everyone else's freedoms to secure their own good fortunes.
Thus we end up with Romney with his cabinet loaded with arrogant weirdos, utopian uplifters and warrior CEOs, a hopelessly inane and opportunistic bunch whose every gaffe is called reform and every catastrophe is declared to be "radical reform".
To Scot Lehigh it certainly is...
I think the Globe is desperate to launch Romney into national politics, I really do.
I think they are cutting Kerry dead on the op-ed and news pages because they are trying to tempt Romney into the 2008 Senate race. Morrissey Boulevard either wants Mitt to succeed Teddy or else they want a loud rousing battle for Kerry's Senate seat...something that will sell lotsa papers and help obscure the Globe's unwanted reputation as a liberal rag.
Ultimately they wanna run an "ironic" op-ed piece announcing the death of liberalism in Massachusetts thanks to the national popularity of Mitt Romney....nothing would give them more pleasure.
The Globe is as light as ashes and as shallow as a bird-bath these days.
In the immortal words of William S. Burroughs "their bald-face motivation is hanging out there for all to see".

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

My Holiday Column...

The worst thing about Christmas is listening to Frank Sinatra singing the seasonal standards over the PA system in Macy's.
If there is one artist less in synch with the holiday zeitgeist it is ole' Blue Eyes.
His version of "Jingle Bells" sounds like he was forced to sing it at gun-point.
Musically, the only time Sinatra is "faking it" is when he is trying to put forth the mask of seasonal gaiety.
****
The season has it's cultural pitfalls make no mistake about it.
A friend relates that he brought his two sons to see a "great Santa Claus" at the Burlington Mall this weekend, at a cost of a mere two and a half hour wait.
I mused to myself, just what is a "great" Mall Santa Claus?
Not having seen this guy's act I couldn't say and neither could my friend owing to the state of enervation that lingers after such a task.
The killer is, my friend is Jewish....and a proud Zionist as well.
And who else but a Zionist would wait half a morning to undermine his four year old's sense of cultural-religious identity?
This couldn't be funnier to me if he was a Trotskyite quite frankly.
Well what of it, the jolly old fellow went over big with the kids and Papa and Momma are off the hook for another twelve months.
Maybe the Jews need a character to help put over the Festival of Lights bigtime?
They have a rich collection of luminaries to elevate to Saint Nick-dom...hell the Jewish walk of Fame stretches out seven miles and gets longer every week!
Howabout "Eli the Channukah Cowboy"?
Rides through the walls on his magic horse dropping off holiday treats to all good sons and daughters of Abraham.
Yup a cowpoke for the holiday seasons' that'll put a nice spin on the whole mishaugas!
Spins a mean draydl with his lariat, tips lavishly....this could be big I tells yuh!
:)

Monday, December 22, 2003

The Christmas Coup...

There but for Tom Ridge and his kaleidescope of alerts, we might have ourselves a neu ordnung today in the Bay State.
Romney was leaving to spend two weeks at his "vacation home" in Utah....Kerry Healey the alleged Lieutenant Governor was wandering off to visit her parents for some indeterminate period of time.
This left Billy "The Prince of Darkness" Galvin, the Commonwealth Secretary of State as Acting Governor....with two weeks of almost unlimited freedom of action and the Lege in recess as an added bonus.
Michael Collins couldn't have asked for a better opportunity!
:)
TELL ME, we couldn't have deposed Romney fair and square in that amount of time!
Good grief it'd be easy, just get a court finding asserting Willard was never a citizen of the Commonwealth at the time of his election in 2004.
While the damn fool is flailing around trying to scare up a lawyer to argue his case in Provo Utah we scare Kerry Healey into resigning.
That'll be plenty easy, she is a vapid suburbanite who has probably fallen for the olde "rubber-snake/Lady-yez-got-vermin-unner-th'-house" routine at three times already.
No just send her a e-mail message at her parents house in Colorado or Florida (or whatever floor the Lieutenant Governor is sleeping on this holidays season) announcing that Al Queda has taken over Quincy and Brockton.
Follow it up with a real "Al Queda" video that is composed of the pay-off scenes from the old "Flash Gordon" serial.
I guarantee you instead of flying back to Logan to die at the head of her loyal troops, Ms. Healey will be pounding on the gates of the White House screaming incoherently about Bin Laden's "rocket ship fleet".
With her safely tucked in a straitjacket at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital we could've finally gotten down to the hard business of saving the Commonwealth.
Alas it was not to be, that orange signal went up and Mitt came trotting back home...so clearly the Department of Homeland Security is on to us.
:)
Yeah I know....it's a harsh sort of a post, but it's fun-nee!

And anyway, face facts, if there ever was a real terrorist attack in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney would be the first to flee to safety spewing self exonerating press releases the whole way.
:)

Friday, December 19, 2003

I was just thinkin'


Chris Matthews is not on our side. He may have dicked on Peggy Noonan on his show last night, but lets remember Matthews was lauding Bush's flight suit nonsense last May.

He sees himself as in the President's camp, but free to tear a new hole in some of his more for fragile supporters...Peggy Noonan is in the end, easy prey, being as soft as puppy dog shit.

Hey whatever happened to Robert Bly and the "Men's Movement"? Boy, that was a real flash in the pan wasn't it?
Anyone remember "Wingspan" the official newsletter of the Men's Movement?
Hilarious reading...the poetry was an extra hoot.

So it boils down to this...are Paris and Nicholle really that obnoxiously vapid and impulsive or are they playing up to the cameras?

I say they are playing up to the cameras.

I pity the poor Olympic silver medalist who has to go charging down the rink in a loincloth as part of Disney's "Tarzan on Ice" extravaganza.

Of course if you really want to do some riveting reality television lets drop a serious junkie demagogue like Rush Limbaugh on an Appalachia subsistence farm for a few weeks.
Mayhap the locals will mistake withdrawl symptoms for cholera and opt for leeches.

Seriously though, did anyone out there see Noonan on Chris Matthews last night?
Did she start jabbering about the magic dolphins that saved Elian Gonzalez from drowning?

There are rumblings out of the White House of reviving our manned moon program.
Apparently La Famiglia Arbusto are talking up a space race in China.
Why not put Neil Bush, the President's greedy debauched brother in charge of the whole mishaugas?
That way sending astronauts to the moon can be outsourced to the P.R.C. itself at a savings of billions.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Suburban Blight on Policy Street

If you are ever curious to know what we are really up against in America, then I invite you all to take a drive down South Policy Street in Salem N.H.
Therein is an edifying spectacle indeed, endless vistas of McMansions set up on little tree-less artificial hills....nouveau rich bunkers with two story columns...a Ford Explorer (or two) in every driv way.
And across the street, a trailer park as dingy and hopeless as ever plus the occasional outright shanty with a rusting Toyota Camry up on blocks in the front yard.
The only thing that interrupts this repetitive landscape is the regularly spaced mini-malls with the inevitable Tru-Value hardware stores, christmas shops, and gas stations selling to all comers for outrageous prices.
It is picture perfect portrait of widening income disparities and the corrosive effects of galloping sprawl.
Once, seventeen years ago, when I went to College in Manchester, southern New Hampshire was a genial wasteland with it's yearly hunting fatalities and local bus service that shut down at 6:30pm on weekdays.
What happened?
People in Boston started making mad phat cash in the High Tech Industry (and elsewhere) eventually a lot of money started chasing a finite supply of choice housing so homebuyers were forced further and further afield for the shit hole of their dreams.
Now however southern N.H. is running wide open with Bay State interlopers mortgaging themselves to the hilt to own a two-garage heap that was practically glued together by the builders.
As Boston declines into a cultural colony of New York City, so too does the Granite State become a commuter colony of Boston.
Everybody, rich and poor commute endlessly to work, their purchasing power is wasted in chain stores that send money far out of the region, and we actually wonder why the future is uniformly debt ridden and bleak.
Frankly I liked Massachusetts better when it was a proper wasteland back itself in 1975...nobody lived here....nobody thought they could make money here, our chief export was a quality education.
Once you had your diploma, you left.
There used to be empty lots around Harvard Square, if you bought a book there was a ninety percent chance your money went into the pocket of a fellow citizen of the Commonwealth....
Now?
Everyone in Massachusetts thinks they are a millionaire because they house they are living in, no matter how much they owe the bank, is worth $900,000.00
So it's just natural that with such tendencies in the electorate people would elect a millionaire to rule over them.
Oh how it all flies out of town though. Grocery money, movie tickets, mortgages everything....and Salem N.H. looks about as spiritually desiccated as Burlington or Belchertown Massachusetts.
Localism is disappearing, without the green and white highway signs we wouldn't know what community we were in thanks to 7-11, Starbucks, etc etc etc.
I don't know what is to be done....our economy is alleged to be mighty....but sometimes it's results are paltry and cheap.
And I hope as Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry or Howard Dean go rolling down those back rounds they look around and see what is becoming of the country they hope to lead.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Your Next Stop, The Romney Zone....


The Boston Globe reports today that Governor Romney wants to see more "focus groups" when he visits local High Schools.
You see the Kolobian Viceroy got booed lustily on a visit to Winchendon High last month, and that was when he wasn't being called a callous fool among other choice sobriquets.
So translated this means that he wants fewer students in the room in the hopes they will intimidated by his big scary State Police detail.
Frankly I pity any kid who gets dragooned into a face-to-face meeting with this vain condescending bastard.
The economy of the Commonwealth is at a standstill, we spend more on prisons than we do on higher education and the state legislature's legendary pedagogues are writing curriculum for the masses...and if you asked Willard about any of this you'll be rewarded with a cataract of clumsy evasions and sonorous nonsense.
More time wasted on standardized tests, and less money to go to college, Lord Gawd Almighty now there is a formula for success in the long run!
This "focus group" crap is the inevitable response of a thin skinned amateur politician who is simply unused to be disparaged to his face by a cohort that he naturally holds in contempt.
When faced with the unrestrained exercise of the First Amendment, Romney in true CEO fashion seeks to create a space where he can more rigorously control the discourse.
This called in business-speak "effective communication".
Meanwhile back at the State House, the Commonwealth's Eugenicist in Chief Eric Kriss has figured out our current economic plight is all the fault of the unions.
Y'know those same public sector unions such as the police and firefighters that these yo-yos couldn't stop praising to the high heavens two years ago.
If that doesn't fly look for Eric to start bitching about the cost of feedin' all those freeloading students in the public schools.
You can tell they are panicking because they've gone with such unoriginal scapegoats...it is a mark of deadline pressure.

Sick
Demented
Typical...

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Flailing Laura...again.


Y'know it's amazing but Laura Ingraham is just as boring on her own radio show as she is in her frequent appearances on the Imus in the Morning program.
So clearly, the notion that she saves the A-list stuff for her own program is right out the window.
I was shopping in a "publisher's close out" fly by night bookstore one town over and the torpid staff therein had Laura on at peak decibelage.
It had no effect on me, Miss Ingraham is as preposterously dull and repetitive as ever.
She can't even gloat in a interesting or infuriating fashion.
She was trying to suggest in a dispirited fashion that the "Today Show" was a hotbed of pro-Saddam liberals....but it was thin stuff even for this famously undiscerning fembot.
At one point Miss Ingraham was flailing around suggesting that Katie Couric was wearing black out of sympathy for Saddam or some damn thing.
I think Laura needs to adjust the color contrast on her TV.
This is assuming she really is up at that time of morning in a coherent state which I strongly doubt.
Or does everything look like it is in black and white after a long boozy night?
The callers were all a weedy whiny lot and Laura sounded like she had to go to the bathroom real bad.
Dreadful radio all around....nobody sounded happy about anything.
Still ya gotta give her credit, she shakes off the D.T.'s every day, cozies up to the microphone and jabbers away like those jackhammers in her head were a million miles away.

Such is the Kingdom of God
On the Congressionally licensed airwaves
and elsewhere
God Save the Republic.

Monday, December 15, 2003

Send in the Ass Clowns....

Is anyone on the op-ed page of the Boston Globe simply indifferent to John Kerry's candidacy for President?
If so, then I'd like to hear from them.
Eileen McNamara that perpetual impotent scold unloaded with both barrels on Sunday calling Kerry "imperious, arrogant, and indifferent".
Her column title?
"Kerry's style a real turn-off".
Apparently Eileen found some laggards up at the State House who are unimpressed with Kerry's willingness to get on the phone and jaw about the possibilities of loading up the D.P.S. with a few more deadhead consultants....hence the charges of egomania.
Good lord, the Winter Hill Mob has a higher favorability rating than the Great and General Court...but hand one of those yankers off on an aide and look out, dice are rolling and the knives are out!!
All politics is local, rumbled Tip O'Neill, and naught is more vicious and bitter than local politics adds JohnIAT.
So here we go again, debating style and comfort....when an editorialist feels uncomfortable watch out!
Candidates will fall and ideologies will be ridiculed until their intellectual backsides are in a comfy place.

There is nothing so grimly ironic as when a aloof and out-of-touch columnista starts flinging charges of egotism around....I mean look who is calling the kettle black?
Tripe like this is what keeps me in the writing game.
I mean if a self loving hack like Eileen can collect a Pulitzer Prize for jumping ugly on John Kerry like she was a social climbing middle school student then a talent like mine is just bound for glory!
:)
Lets face facts though, the Globe's op-ed page has systematically gone from mediocre to utterly unreadable.
Lazy brutes like Jeff Jacoby and Joan Vennochi print undocumented nonsense at the drop of a hat whilst Scot Lehigh, Brian McGrory and our own Eileen run around waving scary rubber swords over their heads in hopes of convincing someone somewhere they are not doctrinaire liberals.
A laughable and base canard, it is the very last thing I'd expect of those three.
I realize these are editorialists we are talking about they are under no compulsion to either like or support John Kerry.
However you'd think the Globe would caution this formidable front of Kerry-haters to pace themselves when spewing bile and venom at the Junior Senator.
Sadly this is not the case, most of these yankers are perpetually auditioning for better paying gigs elsewhere so the spewage goes on in hopes of attracting a cushy radio or cable gig.
The polls results that ran above the fold in yesterday's Globe don't bode well for Kerry, so look for Scot, Brian and Joan to get the boot in good this week.
Bad poll results from N.H. tend to set them off reminding that lot that the have a bare forty five days left to kick John Kerry around before it all goes to smash.
Boston is slowly becoming an irrelevant ideological and social colony of New York - so everyone up here needs to be mindful of where their next meal ticket is coming from.
Hence the current debased nature of op-ed rhetoric at the Globe....they are working for the Yankee Dollar.

I devoutly hope John Kerry wins in N.H. for a lot of reasons, one of them that it'll spare us for a little while the sentimental-sarcastic political obituaries from all these jack offs.
Lehigh in particular can't wait to write yet another death-of-liberalism-twilight of John Kerry screed....I can hear him smacking his lips from my lonely Fastness overlooking the Lost Village of Menotomy.
Sick
Demented
Typical....
PS.
John Kerry is in a tight race for second place in Iowa,
The reason for this is simple, they don't get the Boston Globe in Iowa.

Friday, December 12, 2003

Laura Ingraham on Imus today...

So, why are so many functional alcoholics attracted to Roman Catholicism?
As this post unfolds, this question will loom in relevance, so stay with me.
Laura Ingraham was on Imus in the Morning today....she was actually in the studio for the interview,
Now Imus is allegedly germ phobic so I suspect Laura has incriminating photos of her host in bridal drag or something.
Well flu season or not there she was as tedious and trite as ever despite her wa-ay too loud impersonations of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.
Usually I'm exposed to the perils of falling asleep at the wheel whenever Ingraham makes one of her interminable Imus appearances, but today was special.
Laura revealed that she converted to Catholicism this year.
Yup thats right....MY CATHOLICISM!!! MY DAMN RELIGION!
Geezus Mary-n-Joseph we have to insist that the Bishop's poll the laity before letting in any adult converts...I mean forget the clerical sex abuse scandals and the misuse of charitable funds to pay hush money...letting in a screeching harpy like Laura Ingraham is just plain nuts!!
Is the R.C.C. that hard up that we are reduced to accepting drunken booze-worshiping viragos like Laura Ingraham?
We have to put a stop to this, we really do.
The Bishops are clearly pursuing an open door policy for any bum with a bankroll and a high Q rating.
And not for nuthin' Laura but you are figuratively speaking climbing into a burning lifeboat presided over by the dregs of the Hell's Angels!
I mean HE-LLO! The clergy are dying off (those that aren't under indictment), the church teetered on bankruptcy and the laity are about to inherit a burnt out hulk of a religion.
She claims to be an innocent "fallen Baptist" (and just what the HELL is that????!!!) who shopped around for a new religion and even took counsel from that social climbing dingbat Justice Thomas as to what was the hot new faith.
For some reason that is locked in his cold vengeful heart, Thomas (who has changed his own religion some three times so far including a stint as a Catholic seminarian) talked up the R.C.C.
A baptism, the Eucharist, and a confirmation later and now we are stuck with Laura Ingraham out in the pews flapping her arms and doing her too loud Hillary impersonation.
She will wear out her welcome quickly I assure you.
I'll bet the bitch stiffs us on the Stewardship Appeal when the envelopes come around.
Well...I suspect that Laura's alleged dipsomania didn't go down well the local Baptist divines so she went looking for a faith that would let her drink in peace.
The late Anthony Burgess became a Catholic late in life for more or less the same reasons. The conversion had an intolerable effect on the author's literary output reducing him to writing bizarro essays extolling the sexuality of Margaret Thatcher in the "Vanity Fair."
One might devoutly wish the same creative torpor to overtake Ms. Ingraham, but she is already a shrill boring witch who hit bottom years ago....

On the other hand it is kinda strange that the alpha queen bee of the United States of Junior High would go in for the One True Apostolic Church of Rome....because its always weird and annoying when the obnoxious head cheerleader suddenly goes all out for Jesus.
She's been setting the football team on you for three years now she's got to have a personal line to god as well!!!
In all a disheartening situation.
So Laura might just be a true believer...someone needy and insecure who requires the awe and majesty of the Papacy to function.
This was Anthony Burgess' official excuse for joining the R.C.C. back in the day, he saw the west being threatened the seventh century fanaticism of Islam, the only answer to that being the tenth century orthodoxy of Rome.
Of course the flip side of this is raw Orwellian power worship, let us not rule that motivation out.
Certainly Laura Ingraham has numerous bona fides when it comes to venerating authority and authoritarianism.
D'ye suppose deep in the heart of the confessional Laura would ever own up to simply being ENVIOUS of Hillary?
I mean doesn't the Junior Senator from New York have the whole rightical chic package, marriage, children, money, etc etc etc.?
She even declined to divorce Bill when the whole Monica deal-io came down, what could be more conservative than that???
I think Laura Ingraham secretly wants what Hillary Clinton has, why else does she obsess so on the Former First Lady?
Ingraham always dwells at length on Hillary in these Imus appearances...always....with a voice thick with raw unadulterated envy.
Lord God of Hosts I do pity the aged and careworn Prelate that must hear this awful vengeful she-brute's confession.
I really do.

My bet is she did it for the booze though.
The Curia in Rome is very tolerant of liquor idolaters like Ingraham and Burgess and Mayor Flynn etc etc etc....
Christ...some people just bite the bullet and go into rehab, not Laura though, she'll go through a dozen incarnations of the Almighty and sacrifice children to Vaal the Godzilla Head before she gives up her real Deity.
That would be "Jack" more formally known as "Jack Daniels"....
Such is the Kingdom of Heaven
On the Congressionally Licensed Airwaves and Elsewhere
10-12-03
God Save the Republic.

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Debbie Does Mendacity

Does Debbie Schlussel think we are all afflicted with stupidity morbidus or something?
She was on Howard Stern the other day insisting that John Kerry married wealthy Theresa Heinz in order to "buy" the U.S. Presidency.
Does this inane screeching virago even know that it's illegal for Kerry to tap his wife's fortune to finance his campaign??
What do the facts matter on talk radio anyway? It is a perfect venue for the proverbial big lie, something Debbie did lip smacking relish.
Of the estimated quarter of a billion dollars Bush has raised by selling off the U.S. Government bit by bit Debbie remained decorously silent.
And indeed, excusing the wholesale theft is one of the most important jobs' performed by today's imbedded conservative punditariat.
This is a laughably easy sinecure, just lay on the empty headed sarcasm and trowel on the trendy rightical chic buzzwords.
It is a heady time to be a movement conservative in America, for thirty years these fanatics have marched behind a succession of sawdust Caesars. Reagan (their charlatan maximus), Bush 1, Bush the Terrible, and now at last they think they are on the brink of total power.
And what the hell, they may well be....clearly Debbie is anticipating nothing but a vast jubilee to come.
The fact that I have to listen to the Howard Stern Show (with it's midgets, mentally challenged guests and the occasional starlet drive to suicide) to get the latest skinny on Ms. Schlussel's power fantasies is naught but a sad comment on the death of rhetoric in America.
Sick
Demented
Typical

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Our War Aims (revised and expanded)

Paul Bremer called into the Imus in the Morning Program today....it's an odd venue for a harassed quasi-viceroy in a no-win situation, but a fella has to take whatever he can get I guess.
Sometimes though, amidst all the feckless blather, a factoid is enunciated so ridiculous so inane that it stimulates the rare and dangerous laughter of outrage.
Such was the case this morning when Bremer, while ticking off all our nation building props to date, announced that Baghdad had it's first job fair yesterday "with over two hundred participants".
YE GODS! That is what our boys are dying for one by one - the freedom to carpet a job fair with resumes!
If only Franklin Roosevelt could see this....his noble G.I.'s, the granchildren of his Spartans, his warrior angels reduced to defending a Baghdad resume-mill with the last drop of their noble blood.
It's not that this is such a pathetic tawdry accomplishment, it's the evident pride Bremer takes in the job fair as "proof" we are winning hearts and minds in Iraq.
I can't even work myself up into a frenzy over his discourse, naive piffle like this always more sad than provocative.
Besides, Bremer isn't the problem here, he has been a faithful flunky since day one, dutifully implementing the policies of his notoriously whimsical and irresolute master.
And a flunky is what Bremer is, he was enthusiastically boosting Bush's weird pre-dawn appearance in Iraq on Thanksgiving, complete with it's shiny cooked turkey prop and hand-picked audience, as a tonic for troop morale.
Soon enough, when this whole mishaugas goes to smash, Bremer will be ousted and no doubt blamed for the debacle...but lets take a moment to honor, with all due irony and malice, his canine loyalty to the President.
When the time comes Pitiful Paul will happily dig his own grave, belching Bush's praises the entire time.

Such is the Kingdom of God
On the Congressionally Licensed Airwaves
And elsewhere
12-10-03

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Endorse'd and abandoned

I must be the only person on the internet not awe-struck by Al Gore's endorsement of Governor Dean.
Oh endorsements are nice things to have, don't get me wrong, my candidate John Kerry has a fistful of them.
At best though, endorsements are symbols of a candidates allegedly diverse appeal....and Gore plays to Dean's base a rebellious democratic iconoclast.
Y'know almost everything Gore is not.
However the Deaniacs on line are having themselves a jubilee today....but then almost anything sets that crowd off in paroxysms of self congratulation. Frankly Dr. Dean could defecate on the deck of the U.S.S. Massachusetts and wipe his ass with the state flag and his supporters would fairly writhe on the floor like ecstatic snake handlers.
The matter is going to be resolved by money, luck, foot soldiers, and stamina in the snows of New Hampshire.
And the polls are an unreliable indicator of what will happen up there next month...if they were, then Mario Cuomo would've broken out of history's footnotes.

Meanwhile Kerry used the eff word in an interview with the Rolling Stone and the puritans, both left and right in this country are up in arms.
I say good for Kerry, it is a fucked up situation in Iraq, and getting more fucked up every damn day...I think he should swear some more...hell he was a sailor once he knows the lexicon.

Monday, December 08, 2003

Drive Time Dialectics

So...last week Don Imus, apparently overcome by a fit of jollity, called Howard Stern's girl friend Beth Ostrovsky a "bimbo".
The I-man then went on to air an skit in which it was implied that Beth had herpes or something like that.
Predictably Stern reacted with visceral hatred and rage promising dire if vague revelations about Imus' personal life before settling down today to promises of "a lawsuit".
In short just another typical day on drive time radio in America....the battle for ratings has entered the house-to-house fighting stage with no end in sight.
Imus is a senile old wretch and Stern is a corrupt reprobate and little more than a pimp with an F.C.C. license....their political views are remarkably similar both are loud righteous war-hawks who'd bat not an eye if Baghdad was nuked tomorrow morning.
Don and Howard have made millions off a lawless broadcasting milieu and a genial cracker barrel brand of demagoguery that is grotesquely called "entertainment" in these euphemism stricken times.
Both are craven George Bush worshippers of the lowest and crudest type and both of them have a pronounced authoritarian streak and a growing contempt for democratic society.
Let us not forget their morbid habit of wishing death on celebrities who deviate from their own dishonest pseudo populist line...these unfortunates run the gamut from the spineless (Bill Maher) to the crazy (Ted Turner).
So is it any wonder they are at each other's throat?
Yes I know, these two have a history, but they are also fighting over a static cohort of radio rightish listeners.
A sort of vulgar dialectic has set in, despite their rough similarity of their views Don and Howard are locked in a zero sum game for that magic white male listener stratum...the one with all that lovely moolah to spend.
Therefore, they've got nothing else to fight over except whose slack jawed trophy wife is a hottie...but fight over that they will because the outcome is a deadly serious paying proposition despite the surface tawdriness of it all.
Frankly at this point, I have to give the edge to Imus, any lawyer who would actually put brainless Beth Ostrovksy with her frightening little-girl voice on the stand is just asking for trouble.
Five minutes of testimony will be enough to conjure unhealthy visions of Beth dressing like a schoolgirl for the delectation of Howard in the minds of the jury.
She is truly that vapid I assure you.
On the other hand, Imus has to be raking something off the top for his so called "Cancer Camp" in the South West...the man is a sixty year old deejay fah crissakes he didn't last this long on the radio by indulging a puritanical refusal to steal.
And Imus has been married how many times with how many kids??
If it ever reaches "Court TV" I'll happily videotape every session as the resultant legal saturnalia will be a delightfully decadent forecast of the downfall of talk radio U.S.A.
Was it Lenin who said that competition is never more savage than just prior to the collapse of the olde order?
:)
Ah but I mock, no doubt Don and Howard's respective lawyers have warned them off this gaudy collision noting that the only victor will be Sean Hannity...or perhaps (dare I say it?) Jay Severin.
Who am I kidding here?
It is nice to think that sheer internecine warfare will kill off rightical chic talk radio but the supply of hosts is inexhaustible and there is apparently no limit to the potential loutish stupidity on the congressionally licenses public airwaves.
Sick
Demented
Typical...

Friday, December 05, 2003

School Houses and Jail Houses...

The Boston Phoenix pointed out yesterday that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now spending more on prisons than it does on higher education.
Oh thank Ghod...we've caught up with Louisiana in the "incarceration race"!
Nothing so perfectly encapsulates screwheaded value system of the Romney Administration....we are building more prisons and lockin' em' up faster and faster meanwhile higher education falls to pieces.
And not for nothing, but what is this hang up with crime and punishment anyway? Isn't the crime rate low in the Commonwealth?
Have we become Texas, where lawless brutes do roam, armed to the teeth, and soused to the gills?
Why all the Department of Corrections spending?
Simple cause' the vast roiling independents, mortgaged to the hilt, and near bankrupt in their frigid suburbs live in perpetual fear of crime they must be appeased and placated.
We cannot expect anything resembling a sensible education policy out of Kolobian Viceroy...the few pronouncements he has made on the subject seem to revolve around semi-privatization and other inane warmed-over dreck.
Here again Governor Decaf seems unaware of a simple fact...one of Massachusetts chief exports is knowledge in the form of education.
Stiffing higher education means poor returns on one of our few real money-makers in the Commonwealth.
You'd think a former CEO would get that...but then Romney was more a crony capitalist than a genuine free market free thinker back in the day.
He mostly loaned money to other rich white men, that somehow makes him a titan of the business class.
Like most of our current financial princeling class, Mitt has internalized a harsh Manichean view of the public sector...he doesn't care if we all become stupid, brutal and ill educated...as long as there are plenty of prisons administered by "small government" then all will be well.
Which brings me to a rare serious point, Romney may be inept, callow, vain, pretentious, duplicitous, shallow, and opportunistic...but the ultimate reason why Mitt Romney is a bad Governor for Massachusetts is that he embodies the wrong value system for our state.
Romney believes in prisons not colleges...
Romney believes in private wealth and public penury....
Romney believes in class warfare if it means setting his beloved middle class in direct conflict with the poor.
Romney believes in an ideology...he has little use for real ideas.
Ultimately Mitt Romney is a entirely undistinguished movement conservative, his loyalty is to the best interests of that "philosophy" and not to Massachusetts as a polity.
Sick
Demented
Typical...

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Open Letter to Kim Thurlow:

According to today's Globe, Kim Thurlow a Winchendon High senior had the audacity to confront Governor Romney about the MCAS.
Ms. Thurlow led a special needs student she'd been tutoring down to Romney's podium and asked just how this kid was supposed to pass the MCAS?
Predictably, Governor Romney responded with a swift cataract of fatuous nonsense.
Ms. Thurlow was left with nothing by way of a coherent explanation.

Dear Kim,

Speaking the truth to power is always a tough gig....speaking the truth to a vain unfeeling yanker like Mitt Romney is an especially lonely unpleasant business.
His reply to your simple query was vintage Romney...
A perfect example of malevolent buncombe it was...the MCAS which is ruining the lives of thousands of Massachusetts high school students is naught but a measure for avuncular old guys like him to assess school performance!
Like the olde misanthrope sez, what rubbish!
These "well meaning" old timers won't spend a penny more on your education but they damn well will make sure that you jump through a few more hoops on your way to college!
Mitt Romney is a former CEO who rose to prominence on the strength of his family name, his ideology is one of raw power worship, and his goal is to massage the process along until he either wins the New Hampshire Primary at some future date. This is assuming he isn't driven for office by a torch wielding mob.
Romney has NEVER give one hoot in hell about people like you Kim! If he could, he'd cheerfully disenfranchise you and all your friends. Hell Mitt is looking forward to world without elections wherein Princely sorts such as he can have you and me banished with the wave of a hand.
Hence his contemptuous and disdainful dismissal of your very legitimate concerns.
Your only mistake was in asking him a question, all that did was give Romney as chance to dissemble and prevaricate.
To paraphrase the late William S. Burroughs "he has nothing to offer but his bad intentions".
You can't expect Romney to give a straight answer to your question because the miserable phony hasn't answered anything honestly since the day he announced for governor.
If he did reply with candor he'd have to own up to the MCAS being a shuck-n-jive statute designed to exploit the fears of the mortgaged white middle class while loading up the student population with ever more insufferable petty irritations.
Torturing students with endless testing composed by the pedagogues of the State Legislature is good politics for a posturing fraud like Romney.
They wouldn't stand for this kind of bureaucratic abuse at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, yet Romney and his ilk will cheerfully visit punishments ten times worse on you and yours.
Kim darling, what does that tell you?
I am not painting a pretty picture here Kim sorry.
Don't despair though, you have two important weapons on your side kiddo, time and the vote.
It is a cliche' but people like you are the electorate of the future, when it comes time in 2006 to vote remember how little Mitt Romney thought of you.
Remember how out of step Mitt is with the Commonwealth and how often he resorts to arrogant piffle when confronted with an unpleasant truth.
Remember Kim, and vote on that remembrance.....the time will come when your generation will inherit the earth, nothing speeds that process along like ending the political career of a gruesome charlatan like Mitt Romney.
Keep your chin up and stop asking these jackoffs for help, start telling them what they need to do, you are the power, you are the Commonwealth.
Good luck
and happy holidays

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Grace note for a cold December Afternoon

Neal Bush, the President's ne'er do well brother is in bed with the People's Republic of China...or so the unsealed documents from his divorce do attest.
He's been skimming an easy assed sixty thousand a year from a semiconductor concern run by Jiang Zemin's son.
What ANYONE in La Famiglia Arbusto knows about semiconductors is a sacred mystery.
Even the dimmest of Bab's nasty offspring knows to how to work their rolodex and land a cushy sinecure...it is increasingly a clan tradition.
These documents make interesting reading, at one deposition the feckless lout is forced to admit dallying with whores in Thailand.
You heard that right...whores in Thailand.
Alas for the electronic snoopery of our modern age, his wife's lawyer declined to ask Neal the simple follow-up question, "did you know the ages of the prostitutes that were sent up to your room?"
Thailand being the regional capitol for under-age prostitution....for a serious elite horn-dawg with a taste for young young flesh, Thailand with it's lax vice laws is a virtual mecca of gruesome sexual delights.
So much more here than meets the eye-but is anyone willing to exploit it?

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Baghdad Blues:

Now the word from DC is, that resistance in Iraq will collapse once we nab Hussein.
That sounds like an explicitly neocon line of reasoning...ergo willfully optimistic to the point of delusion.
Once Saddam is strung up from a street light, Messr's Perle, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld can presumably go back to their dreamy dreams of a free market, democratic, and Fox News oriented Middle East.
Dick Cheney can finally resume playing "Risk" with real countries in the game room of his undisclosed location.
All sounds like beer and skittles to me.
Yeah...and secretly bombing Cambodia was supposed to bring the Viet Cong to their knees.
We've heard all this before.
My thinking is, nabbing Hussein is the only remaining obstacle to a pell-mell evacuation of U.S. Forces from Iraq....by next summer at the latest and much sooner if we catch Saddam in the near term.
The occupation is a botch, the WMD's don't exist, the President looks like a liar and a willful sort of a weakling...not a pretty picture for a politician desperate to assert his manly bona fides at every opportunity no matter how inappropriate the occasion.
***
The handwriting was on the wall about this one long before Bush snuck into Baghdad under the cover of darkness for a tidy Thanksgiving Day photo-op with our soldiers.
Does anything else so perfectly illustrate the anarchic situation over there than the spectacle of an American President arriving at a military compound in a blacked out convoy under cover of darkness?
"Bring it on" indeed, just wait til Bush gets clear of Iraqi airspace willya?
Good lord, Lyndon Johnson had more freedom of movement in Saigon back during the Viet Nam War!
Ghod you just know that was the ass-end of some Rove extravaganza that originally included Bush riding a golden chariot in a Roman style triumph through the streets of Baghdad.
Perhaps the cheering throngs would've been treated to a Caligula style harangue threatening dire consequences for those Senate Democrats who opposed him...all breathlessly broadcast live on the Fox News Network.
As it was the poor wretch had to be guilt tripped into going by Massachusetts' own fixer maximus Andy Card.
And even then Bush looked all the world like a hobo who'd just been invited to Thanksgiving Dinner at the Salvation Army.
Yup, Bush has blown it, and Condoleeza Rice is gonna have to work sixteen hour days from now til next August to extricate our President from a catastrophe borne entirely of his own insufferable vanity.
No doubt more than a few well known names in the Admin will be up for the chop in due course... Wolfowitz? Cheney?
Who knows?
But don't you worry, Bush will survive this, no matter how much blood and money it costs, no matter how many of his followers must take the rap....regardless of all the lies that must need be told.
Sick
Demented
Typical

Monday, December 01, 2003

he Black Hole of CalThomas

I generally don't read the Boston Herald.
Now if I wanted to read wire service copy of world events, I just go to
Yahoo.com.
However, I was killing time in a bar and damn thing was sitting there.
Cal Thomas, that stalwart Reaganolate and columnist was predictably mad about something.
These ex-moral majority yankers are seemingly always pissed off.
The only time they are happy, you can be sure it is because some liberal somewhere is
getting a hard time.
Cal was up in arms though, the GOP dominated congress, ignoring the DC
punditariat has gone and loaded up the budget with billions of dollars in pork
barrel spending.
So there we find Cal hrrumpphing ominously about the GOP's abandonment of
it's "small government" ideology.
Never mind the fact that the current GOP has NEVER been for small government
as Cal Thomas understands it, they've always been pretty explicitly for big
government as the public service arm of their wealthiest campaign contributors.
The perpetual hallucinatory dream world of the modern rightical chic
columnist merely mistakes this avaricious czarism for "small government conservatism".
And anyway, nowhere in this naive' polemic does Cal question George Bush's
leadership or firm resolve to sign off on those wasted billions in the budget.
The good lord willin, and Karl Rove's heart standin' the strain Bush will
happily endorse trillions more in waste fraud and abuse before his nightmarish
presidency ends.
No amount of whining from Cal Thomas is going to change that, where is this
poor deluded fool to go to see his childish fantasies of small
government made real??
Nowhere quite frankly...if Cal Thomas wants homos locked up and liberals whipped in the streets then he must reconcile himself to billions of dollars in highway funds being hijacked by Republican congressmen.
Since he is not going to give up on mainstream conservatism's anti-liberal crusade, I'm betting he'll learn to live with the wholesale theft of public funds.
It hardly matters, like most DC columnists, Cal is utterly cowed by the mere mention of
George Bush's holy name.
He is content,like most other democracy-hating editorialists to blame
congress and only congress for the current round of orgiastic spending.
Cal does propose a solution though, it is laughable but also highly
instructive...so remember it.
He writes, by way of a closer "Isn't it time for another revolution?"
Isn't it just hilarious when a silly little pompous ass like Cal Thomas wakes
up and finds the whole shebang really has been run by men with the morals of
the Hell's Angels??
That the peasants must be ruled by strength?
It's got to be traumatic enough to make a good gawd-fearin' sap like Cal
start spouting like a true blue Trotskyite.
According to Cal Thomas, if the first revolution is sold out (or in this case
simply sold) then just keep making ever more conservative revolutions until
society is battered into an acceptable shape.
This is the mindset of the GOP's hard right, it is entirely revolutionary and
anti-democratic in character. It may even be, in time a revolution fully
capable of consuming Bush and his political apparatus.
But for the moment, my money is on the President to weather this storm on the
right...patronizing yelping dogs like Cal Thomas is second nature to the
commander in chief.
Calvin is a fool, and a naive' fool at that. But he is also a fool with dreamy-dreams of peasants with pitchforks and drums rolling around the Capitol.
Remember that....