Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Falafel Fascism


So this guy Mike Stark went out to Falafel Bill's house and razzed him, and handed out the ruling from the Andrea Mackris case to all his neighbors and put up some snarky signs referencing all this. And Daily Kos published his blog about it all, just in case O'Reilly wasn't sure where Kos stood on him and his. Soon lots of Kos fans were tut-tutting in the comments - just 'not fair play,' 'getting down to their level' et cetera.


That stuff nauseates me -- the vaporish whining about lefty incivility that is. Progressives or liberals or whatever who engage in it are collaborationist idiots, the "Can't Happen Here" crowd who'll be whining about civility as they're being loaded into boxcars.


It is absolutely mortally important to understand that these proto-Fascists like Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly are fomenting actual Fascism. The proto-Fascists and the actual Fascists (Cheney et al) have the White House, the courts, the police, the prisons, the mainstream press, all the networks being pulled right by the black hole of Fox. We have (at best) parity in Congress, and the slim reed of the people's decency and sense. Nothing is more crucial than countering the fascistic message and agenda with every legal and imaginative means -- especially by undercutting their counterfeit credibility and their spurious moral authority.


Recall that the Nazis promised to fight the "degeneracy" of intellectualism, and especially effete Jewish and homosexual intellectualism. O'Reilly sings in exactly the Nazi key. It's vital that he be shown up, whenever possible, for the liar and lecher he so clearly is.
Money quote from Mackris case: "During the course of Defendant Bill O'Reilly's sexual rant, it became clear that he was using a vibrator upon himself, and that he ejaculated. Plaintiff was repulsed."


If we don't stop them with argument and ridicule, it will eventually come down to force of arms.



Sunday, July 29, 2007

Neglected Question Department


Why have none of our journalists and politicians taken the slightest interest in this question: has the Bush administration been using its various surveilance programs to spy on its domestic political opponents, to thus rig elections et cetera? Michael hayden, NSA chief, the guy in the best position to know won't say they haven't. Probably because they have. What else would account for their desperate stonewalling on all this? I mean apart from their basic love of lying....

They haven't any need to break into Democratic Headquarters because they can do it all digitally now.

Courtesy Matt Stoller

Gen. Michael Hayden refused to answer question about spying on political
enemies at National Press Club. At a public appearance, Bush's pointman in
the Office of National Intelligence was asked if the NSA was wiretapping
Bush's political enemies. When Hayden dodged the question, the questioner
repeated, "No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically
oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but
are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush
administration?" Hayden looked at the questioner, and after a silence called
on a different question.

Given what we now know about, and know we don't know, about all of
this, isn't it time to return to this question, and perhaps put it to Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller et al -- the people who saw the lawlessness in something or other
the Bushies were doing.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Oracling Delphically


Especially in light of Abu's Turbo-lying testimony yesterday I have this fearless prediction: Gonzales will resign during the August recess and Bush will appoint someone during the recess who won't have to answer the Senate's questions about executive privilege, will you enforce a charge of contempt etc, etc.


Harrt Reid should skip the recess, but he won't since he's a cowardly chickenshit, along with all the rest of the Vichycrats who should have been vetting these assholes for the last six years. Heckuva job Harry, et al.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

ANALogs


Probably most Fox fans aren't big on subtle disticntions, but I wonder which is the closer relation, that of Al Quaeda to Al Quaeda in Iraq ("the same people" according to the Decider), or that of the Republicans to the Republican Guard?

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The Pod Couple


There are two very stolid young people, a couple, in my neighborhood, who sometimes ride my bus. On it they are always talking to each other volubly and with such altogether body-snatched zeal and such seamless self-satisfaction about the most hideous reactionary clap-trap, e.g. “Mitt would be fine with me, as would any of our top three.... " "Yes, top of his class, Law Review, they can't call him a C student"


I’ve really never quite seen the like of it. They talk unnaturally loud, like people name-dropping in restaurants, just aching to be overheard -- as if each of their "ideas" added wattage to the aura of their young glory. They are clearly very glib (that is to say fluent with sentiment and generality) and ambitious and they surely work in the Party machine somewhere. It could be they're Hill staffers, or flunkies for the Party itself or perhaps one of its privateering sub-rackets on K-Street -- but in any case they seem to think that we should be impressed by the brilliance and righteousness of whatever they say. They have blogs ("I wrote on my blog today about why it's unfair to compare the product of our think-tanks to academic papers....") which we can be assured are wholly given over to voicing the Love of the Party. Yesterday Pod-Girl was carrying a paperback entitled Taking on Tehran – good to know these people aren’t out of ideas for invasion, especially since the last one continues so successfully.


In any case their voluble chat annoys and alarms me -- especially since the prevailing custom here in Washington is silence and solitude on mass transit. It alarms me because I wonder how many more of these lost and despicable souls there are out there (many I imagine darkly), and I don't see how we are to be rescued from their fascist zeal and lawlessness without violence. But in the near term and in close-up, they brings up an ethical and aesthetic dilemma: at what point can one inject something into these loudmouth's broadcast, and what should it be? I'm tempted to take their picture and explain to them, “If you’re going to make this bus your soap box you can't get stingy with your images.”


Instead though I have devised this plan: I'll simply study them, note their many scintillating bon mots and send them up as the Pod Couple. I find this abstracts them and their ilk, neutralizing the salutary hatred they engender. Perhaps if I ask them to..."Speak louder and more slowly; I'm having a hard time getting this down."

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Pinkdependence Day!


In honor of the day that Lady Liberty divorced her daft and abusive husband George (but then took up with another George, and another and another…) we should all blow something up today -- in a safe and legal manner of course.


I myself passed by the parade up Constitution Aveneue today. Very stirring. Lot's of flag-flair in evidence, and free speech being exercised. My favoriet aspect, Code Pink gals handing out little Constitutions right on Constitution Avenue. How subversive!