The Eyes Roll Back And The Sea Goes Red By: Mark W Adams

JUMP!

Shark reference brought to you by the cloistered Ladies of Perpetual Outrage and Publicity Hounds. (Yes, that was a dog metaphor. Sue me. How appropriate G.H.W Bush - 41 - is jumping out of a perfectly good airplane again today.)

I guess there aren't any important issues to discuss, slow news week and all. Best to dive head on into the Politics of Grievance the tabloid media prefers. Von Brunn would approve. We can talk about North Korean Nukes and hostage journalists, Iranian elections shaping the Middle East for the next decade, health care, the rise of right-wing violence, the economy or those two pesky wars when we don't have Sarah Palin's hurt feelings to console.

Maybe I should take heart, that this is merely part of the death rattle of the conservative movement. But better minds than mine are still trying to grip with the right wing mentality -- and the examination of the Paranoid Style of American Politics has been going on for a long time with no satisfactory answers or effective strategy to bury it. This description of the phenomenon from 1964 applies to rages against the Illuminati as well as rants against the fictional Liberal Fascist ghosts: (H/T Jay Rosen)

America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

P.S. Hey Steve. Palin should stay "above the fray?" You're hilarious dude. How would she get any airtime that way?

Today's toll: 11 Iraqis Killed, 23 Wounded