MoDo's Insatiable Quest For Testicles

Today's Loose Translation of Dowd the Destroyer: If Obama doesn't want me and my fellow Villagers to do to him what we did to Al Gore, he better not accept the Vice Presidency under Hillary.

The superdelegates are watching to see if Obama can stiffen his backbone. After seeing their candidates lose races they should have won in 2000 and 2004 because they flinched at Republican political waterboarding, Democrats do not want to watch the bully swipe their lollipop a third time.

No Maureen, the superdelegates are watching you mete out exactly the same schtick you used to bludgeon the last two Democratic candidates, both of whom were Vietnam vets and vastly more qualified than the Disgustus Tex you and your ilk foisted on the nation, and praying this time the rest of the Villagers in Versailles on the Potomac ignore your insipid penis envy.

... he will now have to come to grips with something he has always skittered away from: You can’t be elected president unless you prove you’re tough.

Unless of course your name is Hillary, and then you have to prove you can be feminine, but not too feminine, since everyone already knows you're tough. Seriously, it must take a tremendous dick to satisfy this succubus? No doubt her vibrator has a kickstand.

How many clever dog whistles can we find to alert the rest of the press corps to grab their torches and cry, "Homo!" as they launch their tired game yet again -- this time to in support a broken old man whose time is long past, yet one of the few GOPers who didn't duck out of putting their ass in harms way some 40 years ago.

She describes Obama as, "... slender, chewing Nicorette and perfectly groomed in his crisp white shirt ..." and complaining, or actually, "whiny." Translation: "Obambi" is gay, insecure, metrosexual, bitchy.

Man the battlements boys! To Arms!

In the world according to Dowd, Senator Obama's advisers are a decidedly French sounding, "coterie." They lack all the asshole gene that enables Hillary to be ""shameless" and her "kneecapper" hacks to be complete hypocrits, "with a straight face," as if that's a desirable quality in public service -- superior to any "egghead ... effete and vaguely foreign," member of Obama's staff.

If he thinks Hillary has cut him down to size lately, he’d better imagine what his life would be like as the Clintons’ vice president.

Actually Maureen, I think we have a very good idea exactly how deeply you plan to rhetorically emasculate Barack Obama even if he is at the top of the ticket. Would you feel better if he bought himself a ranch?

Kneejerk Shouts Of "Misogeny"

Even more so than the 24/7 news cycle, bloggers are caught up in the zeitgeist of politics almost by the nanosecond. The backlash against John Edwards for stating the obvious, that a President needs to exude a confident demeanor regardless of gender, is just such a phenomenon.

Naturally, Mr. Greenwald figured it all out and explains it even so Amanda can understand it. They're playing you, even you media savvy liberal bloggers who are "on to them."

For those of us willing to examine the professorial level tutorial on the media narrative that is getting shoved down our throats, take a look at the last two days of what Bob Somerby says about the end of a 16 year high tech, slow motion lynching and the evidence of this slow kill.

It's hard to do, hard to restrain yourself. But if you've got more than a few unsent rants in your email cue written when pissed at someone, and a couple of drafts of posts about a inexplicably dumb story that you decided you wanted to rethink before publishing and never pulled the trigger, good. You're learning the most important lesson you can about resisting the Village Press' most insidious weapon -- forcing the ill timed thoughtless remark on incomplete facts.

Keeping the press honest is like holding back the wind. It takes a sturdy structure, something Blogtopia is just starting to build.

No, Duh!

Amanda has figured out that she (and Edwards) got played by the usual suspects in the Village Press.

Okay, Digby's Right. Duh!

I've been resisting the "Village" epithet Digby, Atrios, TRex and The Carpetbagger have adopted to describe the press and beltway insiders that inhabit Washington D.C., preferring instead the idea of Versailles Courtiers dancing along the Potomac.

I've been disabused of this notion. There is little in the people that populate the Nation's Capital that can be confused with the term, "elegant."

Like many a political observer, until I read this, I thought of DC as being more like a European Court filled with jesters and courtiers and grey eminences advising in the shadows. But Versailles could never be this hypocritically provincial --- and proud of it. DC is America, through and through --- America, ca. 1690. The Reverend Broder sentences the heretics to the stake while Sally Goodwyfe runs around screaming "burn them, burn them!"

And yes, if you haven't already, take a look at Digby's argument and see if you agree.

Make no mistake, The Villagers dearly miss that kinder, gentler time when witches and wayward women knew their place or were drowned; and shooting, whipping and enslaving brown people was all the rage. Life is so much more complicated now.

Krugman

Court Jester of Versailles.

But Social Security isn’t a big problem that demands a solution; it’s a small problem, way down the list of major issues facing America, that has nonetheless become an obsession of Beltway insiders. And on Social Security, as on many other issues, what Washington means by bipartisanship is mainly that everyone should come together to give conservatives what they want.

We all wish that American politics weren’t so bitter and partisan. But if you try to find common ground where none exists — which is the case for many issues today — you end up being played for a fool. And that’s what has just happened to Mr. Obama.

Paul, please leave your key to the executive washroom with the front desk on your way out. Higher Broderism will not tolerate this level of truthiness.

They Think We're Stupid

Thursday: 2 US Soldiers, 47 Iraqis Killed; 33 Iraqis Wounded

Okay, I'll try to "Respect the Dodd," but Greenwald has a point.

Every time Congressional Democrats failed this year to stop the Bush administration (i.e., every time they "tried"), the excuse they gave was that they "need 60 votes in the Senate" in order to get anything done. Each time Senate Republicans blocked Democratic legislation, the media helpfully explained not that Republicans were obstructing via filibuster, but rather that, in the Senate, there is a general "60-vote requirement" for everything.

It isn't just the Mukasey nomination, but damn near everything.

Okay, Congress finally overturned a Bush veto -- saving precious pork projects for the home team. But this isn't a matter of ignoring versus pandering to the "base" of the Democratic party. 95% of people who call themselves Democrats and a 60% majority of Republicans, along with 68% of Independents have absolutely HAD IT with this spoiled brat of a President in my all important Swing State of Ohio. Those numbers track nationally and Ohio traditionally polls more conservative than average.

You don't indulge a spoiled child when they throw a tantrum -- you ignore it, send him to his room or give him a time-out. If they're really out of control, you spank them. You certainly don't make excuses for him.

But that's what the Democrats, at least enough of them to make a mockery of the word discipline, always seem to do when going up against George W. Bush.

And what do they tell us, what excuses do they make? "The alternative is worse." Or, "The timing isn't right." Or most cowardly of all, "the GOP will use this against us in the next election."

I don't buy this whatsoever. We hate what Bush is doing, hate Congress even more for not stopping him, and yet they fear opposing him because, what? We'll hate them even more? Is that even possible? Could they be more cowardly?

I think the Democratic Party, at least the leadership, is suffering from decades of abuse at the hands of the GOP, who've made sport of abusing them. They're acting irrational, and against the public will (which will get them unelected faster than anything) because they're suffering from a collective post traumatic stress disorder.

Shake it off! Quit running scared. And just stop thinking that you can fool us. We're Democrats because we aren't dumb enough to believe what the GOP has been trying to bamboozle the public with for the last 40 years -- so we aren't buying your bullshit either.

But even more distressing is being smart enough to really know the Democrats are not cowards, and fully understand their motivation for risking the perpetuation of this myth:

The answer is simple: they're not poll-driven cowards; they're cynical electioneering manipulators. -- Spoons

Of all the ranting and raving I've seen on the Intertoobz, from the snarky to the in depth policy analysis -- and even the psycho/sociological examinations of right versus left, nobody has hit it out of the park with a out-of-the-box perception like ThereIsNoSpoon's take on the current political dynamics inside the Capital Building.

In fact, to act at all in such a way that would demonstrate they have real power, would be to take responsibility for the absolute mess this country is currently in--from housing troubles to currency collapses to global warming issues to foreign policy disasters to a host of other troubles.

On the other hand, to fan the flames of public resentment against the current holders of power for perceived wrongs is nothing short of electoral gold. Republicans were brilliant about doing this for years in their role as a minority opposition party: they would successfully trash Democrats while offering no coherent solutions of their own beyond a culture of "I've got mine; screw you." It was only when forced to actually attempt to govern that Republicans ended up sowing the seeds of their own demise.

An important and utterly perverse corollary of these two premises is that, so long as we have an unpopular Republican president and a Democratic legislature, the Executive must be seen as overwhelmingly powerful compared to the Legislative for Democrats to win. So long as the public believes that Bush is driving the train and the Democrats are itching but unable to get into the driver's seat, the public will be so angry by November 2008 that they will toss Bush and anyone associated with him out of the driver's seat and put Democrats in charge. Thus, so long as Democrats keep their eye on electoral victory rather than on their oath of office, Article I of the Constitution is doomed to near irrelevance if not extinction.

Hopefully, that's just in the short term. Frankly, it makes me want to start from scratch. But if it works -- and the reelection of Bush in '04 suggests it is -- then the Republicans are right: We are stupid.

And as long as the Versailles Press goes along with the program, most of America will be none the wiser.

G.Will Just Couldn't Leave Well Enough Alone

Sunday Update: 83 93 Iraqis Killed, 53 67 Wounded

He just had to go there. In an otherwise thoughtful piece about the usurpation of Congressional war-making powers that is timely and included historical allegories that bear directly on today, George Will opened up his mouth wide enough to fit both feet in.

For today's Democrats, resistance to unilateral presidential war-making
reflects not principled constitutionalism but petulance about the
current president.

You know, it's that kind of haughty dismissal of how about 70% of Americans feel, and probably 99.9% of Democrats, that just pisses off those of us who aren't part of the Versailles press.

Jesus, what an arrogant prick.

No.

In case I wasn't clear in my last post why I included Nancy Pelosi as a symbol of the Versailles Courtiers whose very existence is like an infection on the body politic -- or more precisely a boil on the anal pore that is Washington DC, I can only explain in Blogtopian parlance . . .

What Bill in Portland Maine said . . .

Retroactive immunity for the telcos? "No." War funding for anything other than the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq? "No." Continuing to deny Habeas Corpus rights? "No." Illegal wiretapping? "No, no, no."

And how about doing something about all those witnesses---like Karl Rove and Harriet Miers---who gave you the middle finger by not showing up for congressional hearings?

But no.

It's as simple as that Nancy. Or weren't you paying attention when that other Nancy from the southern part of your State was saying, "Just Say No!"?

Quit apologizing for doing nothing and start making sure the folks in the Palace on the Potomac do no more. You might even want to beginning rolling back the crap the Courtiers have been getting away with for the last seven years. Quit being Gutless and Gullible.

One more thing for the sake of clarity. There no doubt is a certain utility in having a comedian like Stephen Colbert on Meet The Press. (And that comedian actually in performance mode, unlike Bill Cosby's unwatchable appearance the week before.) It brings the young-un's in.

More on the flip.

For the first time across the nation as whole new batch of teenagers watched at least part of MTP for the first time, ever. That's a good thing. The way Colbert and Jon Stewart make current events appealing to young and old alike beats the crap out of the traditionally lame way kids are "taught" about what's happening in their world today.

However, it's still a sad commentary that we must resort to pure entertainment to reach the otherwise blithely uninformed -- and Meet The Press, even on good days, is nothing more than an piece of entertainment served up for mass consumption.

And that is, and always has been, why the tax-cutting theme the GOP owns outright gets everybody's attention. For so many, seeing a few dollars more or less on their paystub is the one and only piece of "news" they absorb and understand on a weekly basis. Everything else is someone else's problem -- just more bread and circuses -- taxes touch them directly, even if that deduction box never really changed. The very idea, the promise of it going down is delightful, and all they remember.

In fact, the constant drone of incompetence and over reach by the conservatives displayed as entertainment on the T.V. simply reinforces the general population's disdain for the Federal Government and adds to the resentment of that deduction box on their pay check feeding this beast. The media play of faux balance also reinforces this narrative -- they all do it, so let's go with the guys who say they hate government too. No surprise there that the government haters suck at governing.

Sadly, the Fourth Estate, their quest for access and fear of being considered biased driving their insipid consistency of presenting "both" sides of an issue no mater how absurd one side's views may be, has completely lost touch with the very nature of their power they scrupulously attempt to disguise.

What the media absolutely fails to do is simply say no. So fearful of being banished from Versailles, they don't say "No" when Ann Coulter's publicist calls to book an interview. They don't say, "No" when they get a juicy titbit from an administration official who demands that they can only use the information if it is sourced anonymously, or even deliberately misleading the public the media exists to inform -- like when Libby insisted he be referred to as a "former Hill staffer."

The corporate megaphones have lost track of the fact the politicians need them more than they need the politicians. Who cares if FOX gets the scoop on everyone else in the Versailles Press if they start demanding some accountability in our public officials. FOX will get the "exclusives" anyway, and everyone else will wink and nod and understand that Petreaus spending an hour on FOX is acceptable propaganda, that Cheney only appearing on Limbaugh is acceptable propaganda, and competing for these kinds of "scoops" is a fool's errand.

If CNN and NBC/MSNBC and the NY Times and Washington Post and Disney and Viacom and the LA Times all collectively start saying, "No, Mr. Rove" we will not refrain from reporting your words as Your Words when you want to spin us and provide "background."

What are the big media outlets afraid of? That they'll lose out on that exclusive sit-down with Commander Guy? FOX will be getting those exclusives whether you play ball or not. Grow. A. Pair. These guys need the media to give the illusion of legitimacy to their destruction of everything we as Americans should hold dear. If Mr. 24% can only reach the cult watching Bill O'Reilly, his minions will come back with their hat in their hand, begging for advise on what they need to do to get in the media's good graces.

It seems that today, at least in Washington, you CAN play ALL the Courtiers for suckers ALL THE TIME. One simple word ends the charade.