Category: Deep political thought

The knuckle-draggers from Amen Corner

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Christ, we get more bad shit out of Texas Republicans than a zoo vet does out of a whole herd of sick elephants.

The latest GOP dungheap will be accumulating at a ranch near Austin, where a gaggle of “social conservative leaders” — read “wealthy rednecks who either misconstrued Christ’s message or deliberately chose to pervert it” — will spend the weekend trying to decide whom they wish to assume the position before as the pestilential erection looms.

Ho, ho. As if it matters.

These self-righteous, sanctimonious pricks are in the same boat as we lefty-loonie, tree-hugging commies. When it comes to the big prom in November, we have no choice as regards dance partners.

Frankly, it’s an abusive relationship for both parties, the hard right and the hard left. Obama figures we’re not going anywhere, and whichever double-talking fascist finds himself out in front of the Tea Baggers, Elmer Gantrys and bow-tied Beltway boneheads knows he’s got that lot locked up.

It’s all about getting the base to the dance while also snagging the lion’s share of the so-called “independents,” who mostly have already made up their minds but won’t tell the pollsters.

So, yeah, “social conservative leaders,” good luck with that KKKaffeeklatch outside Austin. Will rubber chicken and plastic knives defeat a Chocolate Jesus? Stay tuned.

The cheese does not stand alone

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Fear and Loathing, Campaign Trail style
The more things change, etc.

So, dead heat between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in Iowa, eh? Guess nobody bothered to write in Haywood Jablomie, Jack Meehoff or I.P. Freeley.

Watching the food fight over the GOP pestilential nomination has been like watching a Coen Brothers treatment of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.” Or maybe a round of musical chairs with all the participants crazed on mescaline.

Mitt Romney keeps smiling because he owns all the chairs, the building in which they sit and the surrounding properties to boot. But that doesn’t make him any less a bag of runny owlshit that nobody’s buying as long as there’s anything else for sale.

The big cheese may eventually stand alone. All the smart money’s on it. But right now he’s doing a tango with Man-On-Dog Santorum, and he can’t be feeling too frothy about it.

Last call

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

What’s more appalling — the clown-college contest for the GOP pestilential nomination or the U.S. House of Representatives, which represents … what, exactly? What the authors of the Constitution intended to be “the popular branch of the national government, directly responsible to the people*,” today seems directly responsible to no one, not even its own speaker.

Punkinhead Boehner keeps striving for street cred’ by saying his old man used to run a bar. I’d like to see him try to run one. He’s certainly incapable of running the House. A freshman Tea Bagger with his snoot up a Koch brother’s tailpipe shouts “Shit!” and the speaker instantly replies, “What color, sir?”

This guy? Speaker of the fuckin’ House? He couldn’t carry Tip O’Neill’s jock. Hell, he couldn’t even pick it up.

* “American Government: Theory, Structure and Process,” by Dye, Greene and Parthemos.

One war ends, another continues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The war in Iraq officially “ended” today, for those of you who believe in beginnings and endings.

But the war on civil liberties continues. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act contains provisions that the American Civil Liberties Union says could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison, indefinitely and without charge, civilians — including U.S. citizens — anywhere on the planet, including right here in the good old US of A.

Glenn Greenwald views this development with alarm over at Salon, charging President Obama with being more concerned with executive power than civil liberties.

At The Nation, Patricia J. Williams argues that under this law, “if the Defense Department thinks you’re a terrorist, there would be no presumption of innocence; you would be presumed a detainee of the military unless the executive decides otherwise.”

Her colleague Robert Scheer declared that this “assault on the Constitution’s requirement of due process represents a direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies.”

Andrew Cohen is less alarmist at The Atlantic, saying we’re still “much closer to the beginning than to the end of this dirty business.”

I don’t know whether to be reassured or terrified by that.