Category: Deep political thought

Voyage to the Bottom of the Bathtub

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Bibleburg has become a laboratory for neotard Grover Frankenquist’s dream experiment — shrinking government to the point where it can be drowned in a Hilton bathtub by a skinny chickenhawk — and wouldn’t you know it? That darned left-wing commniss media has done took notice.

Naturally, the story in the local cage-liner is about the darned left-wing commniss media taking notice rather than the appalling state of the local body politic, which seems to think that one digs potatoes from gravy and that God will water the parks, if He’s not too dehydrated from pissing on the fags.

This dim viewpoint may have its roots in our economic base, an unholy trinity of the industrial Christian, military and tourism complexes. As another Gaslight story notes, while we enjoy a low cost of living — 7.7 percent below the national average in 2009 — we also make shit for wages, a realization that first drove me out of town in the late Seventies:

“Colorado Springs may seem like a bargain area in which to live, but we are no better off living here because our average wages are 8 to 10 percent below the national average,” said Fred Crowley, senior economist for the Southern Colorado Economic Forum. “There is no prize for this race to the bottom.”

Aw, c’mon, Fred — haven’t you ever heard of the lanterne rouge?

Tommy the Gun shoots off his mouth again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Tom Tancredo, the gift that keeps on giving. Addressing the so-called “Tea Party convention” in Nashville, the former congressman (R-Tinfoil Beanie) and nativist nitwit said the nation should require “civics-literacy tests” of its voters.

“People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House,” Tancredo oinked in his opening-day speech Thursday. “His name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

Careful what you wish for, Tommy old boy. I’m guessing that most of the homegrown mouth-breathers who inflicted you upon the nation’s capital back in the day think Jefferson Davis was Grace Slick’s old band, a filibuster is a cowboy who specializes in saddle-breaking mares, and cloture is some kind of gay French fashion.

Your base couldn’t distinguish the Bill of Rights from the Communist Manifesto unless it was tattooed on Caribou Barbie’s tits, and thus under your proposal the prototypical Tancredo supporter would have as much chance of voting in an American election as Raul Castro.

Hail, Gloptron!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
A constitutional convention goes awry in Gilbert Shelton\'s "Wonder Wart-Hog and the Nurds of November."
A constitutional convention goes awry in Gilbert Shelton's "Wonder Wart-Hog and the Nurds of November."

Over at AlterNet, Greg Palast writes: “In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be treated the same as ‘natural persons,’ i.e. humans. Well, in that case, expect the Supreme Court to next rule that Wal-Mart can run for President.”

This very scenario was envisioned decades ago by cartoonist Gilbert Shelton in his graphic novel “The Nurds of November,” in which the jobless deuce reporter Philbert Desanex — the mild-mannered alter ego of the Super Swine, Wonder Wart-Hog — runs for president against the corporation Gloptron.

Whether he was drawing Wonder Wart-Hog or The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Shelton always seemed more politically intelligent than most of his contemporaries. In 1976, he teamed up with Ted Richards, Gary Hallgren and Willy Murphy to pen “Give Me Liberty! A Revised History of the American Revolution.” The “Nurds” book followed in 1980. It ends, as you might expect, badly, with a hungover constitutional convention establishing a fascist dictatorship led by a very much alive Adolf Hitler, who had his skull and teeth surgically removed to mislead his enemies.

Shortly thereafter Shelton left the Benighted States for France, taking his prescience with him. In 1995, he told The Idler: “The Christian fundamentalist right are … scary. I just didn’t want to be involved. The whole way that America wants stupid people in power, and the way they want to remove anyone with any ideas or any education, get rid of the bright people.”

R.I.P., health-care reform?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments
Sen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Asshat.
Sen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Asshat.

Hm. We seem to have drifted into a parade of obits here. So let’s have another — this one, for health-care reform, which apparently croaked last night with the election of dingbat Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate.

Political Animal’s Steve Benen seems particularly sour this morning, noting that a Senate seat once held by John F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge and John Quincy Adams “is now filled by a dim-witted wingnut, and that’s a real shame — for Massachusetts, for the Senate, and for all of us.”

I can’t say I’m exactly jumping for joy, either. I’ve never been sold on the idea that this haphazardly stitched Frankenstein’s monster of a health-care bill is the final answer to a complex problem, but f’chrissakes something has to be done. Our premiums just shot up 34 percent, and I’ve spoken with others who report hikes of 40-plus percent. Anyone out there seeing their take-home pay increase by a similar or greater amount? Yeah, me neither. I recently had to make myself very unpopular with an editor just to get paid for work performed, so I’m not exactly counting on a fat raise anytime soon.

And I’m not expecting much out of the Senate, either. Not with Brown adding his wingtips to the Repuglican foot-dragging.