Season's Beatings!

So. Anything interesting happen while I've been out?

Just kidding. First of all, Happy Fitzmas to everyone who's spent the last two weeks sitting under the tree, mercilessly shaking the shit out of the presents, hoping to ascertain the veracity of the rustles and clunks within the boxes. Divining Fitzgerald's ultimate intent has kept every amateur kremlinologist out there going full-tilt for some time now, producing some great reading. (An excellent update and prognosis of the case as it stands can be found here.)

Of course, now that the initial buzz is already beginning to wear off, we return to the cold hard Christmas fact that no matter how good the presents are, they never quite hold up against the fever dreams of the previous two weeks. So SuperFitz is not going to bring the halls of corruption down around the despoilers' ears in some dramatic showing. Fitzgerald reminds us that law and jurisprudence, absent the Law & Order machinations, is rather boring and wonky and laden with polysyllabic invocations.

That is the way it has to be, but Americans are used to instant gratification. So we will chafe, and continue to try to divine Fitz' intent as to "Official A", a.k.a. Karl "Are you going to finish that?" Rove. Which is the way it should be. And it's nice to see the media lapdogs finally take a break from weather-chasing and start doing something useful for a change, but merely humping Fitz' leg and regurgitating his occasional gnomic utterances will not be nearly enough. Several myths must be dispelled and debunked, and other stories which have not been covered to date must be paid heed.

(And hey, kudos for showing a little restraint on the current two word repeto-meme describing Scooter as "Cheney's Cheney". Because, you know, I just wouldn't be able to resist calling the little fucker "Dick's Dick". But that's me.)

The media have a lot to answer for -- after all, had they just cooperated with Fitzgerald last year, people might have gotten a clue in time to do something about it. Now we are stuck with a hobbled administration, egged on by creationist troglodytes to continue burning it all down, despised by the rest of the world, and going broke on China's tab. Might have been nice to know all this shit last fucking year.

So fuck Judy Miller, fuck Matt Cooper, fuck Timmeh Russert, and fuck the New York Times. The only way to atone for yourselves, if indeed you even intend to bother trying, is to get up on your hind legs and do what you were supposed to be doing in the first fucking place -- finding out facts and putting them into context. Informing the public. Afflicting the comfortable, etc., etc. Make no mistake -- we are where we are because the people who are very well paid to find out facts and report them to the public, chose instead to simply regurgitate whatever the administration spoon-fed to them.

I mean, don't get me wrong -- I sincerely hope their Nantucket/Hamptons vacation homes are comfy and cozy and well-positioned near wherever Billy Joel happens to be driving, but thousands of people have died and continue to die for this bullshit. We will now enter a phase of sanctimonious hypocrisy from the Kay Bailey Hunchison claque that will make the picayune parsing of "is" and "alone" seem quaint by comparison.

We need astute reporters and commentators who are on top of their game, who will point out the simple, obvious fact that, if there was nothing to hide, why did they try to hide it? What was the role of Michael Ledeen and SISMI (Italian military intelligence) in getting the "yellowcake" scam off the ground? Whether Plame was NOC or not, whether they knew it or not, that sort of information doesn't just "slip" -- so what was the purpose of leaking it? Once again, cui bono? If there's no money, then follow your nose, because this thing stinks to high heaven -- or at least the Oval Office.

And it's just getting started.

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Also on this past week's radar is the belated withdrawal of the Church Lady, surely one of the more hapless and doomed figures to benight the political landscape since -- well, since Mike Brown, I suppose, though Brownie is now apparently a "conservative activist", rather than a mere hack who was way out of his depth. Doin' a heck of job there, Fucko.

Anyway, the Church Lady. Now the professional soothsayers fretfully intone cautious pablum about the "power" of the ultraconservatives who mau-mau'ed poor Miers. Dear Leader simply must nominate a diehard fanatic now, to appease his base. Well, he probably will, at that; Bush is nothing if not utterly, tiresomely, predictable.

But that is a different matter than whether he "must" appease his base. It may simply be time to tell these people to fuck off and die already. They are not the majority; they are not even a plurality. They commission weird little inside polls to attempt to persuade us that 99.9% of Americans seriously believe exactly the same things they believe. But the weapon that is really on the conservatards' side is money. Their support is deep, but depth is not width. More and more people are getting turned off by their sanctimonious bullshit.

What these people want more than anything else (besides a dinosaur ride into the clouds with Jeebus) is for the judiciary to see things their way. The media has been distracted by Roe v. Wade for fucking ever, but what these goofballs are really after is Griswold v. Connecticut. This was the precursor to Roe v. Wade, and it overturned the ridiculous Connecticut law at the time that prevented access to contraceptives.

For judicial mouthbreathers like these, Griswold is an abomination because of the "right to privacy" penumbra it imputed to the Bill of Rights. It is the heart and soul of judicial activism to them; as far as they're concerned, Connecticut citizens should have risen up and voted in legislators that would overturn it. Indeed, that is the way it's supposed to work on paper, but the practicality is often far different. People should not have to surrender their basic rights because subsets of morons happen to be politically aligned just enough to thwart rightful access to said basic rights.

Look, we are indeed a nation of laws and not men, but the whole purpose of the law is to enable men (and, not incidentally, women) to live their lives as they choose. That is, after all, what that pesky word "freedom" really means. Shall we align scads of women outside of abortion clinics with purple index fingers upraised, to help these losers get the picture already? Or do we just stop wasting our time trying to get through to them, and realize that they cannot be reasoned with? There is no longer any point to asking what the fuck is wrong with Kansas; eventually we have to realize that they are apparently content to have stupid people running their school system into the ground, and when they are no longer nationally accredited enough to get their kids into real colleges (as opposed to, say, Bob Jones "University"), they might get the message.

As a wise man once said, fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

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Finally, we turn to what I think was, pound for pound, by far the story with the most potential impact: Iranian president Mahmoud Dontgiveafuckijad's threat to wipe Israel off the map.

As regular readers may have noticed, I never discuss the Israel/Palestine situation. It was one of the very first things I became politically aware of, way back in the day, and I suppose I was a fairly solid supporter of Israel back then. Gradually, as more tales of atrocities against Palestinian civilians came to light, that naturally shifted.

But at this point, I am essentially at a "fuck 'em both" stance on it. It's just not worth wasting time on -- these people have been at each other's throats for 5,000 years (or, for you morons out there, since shortly after God rode down on a dinosaur and created the entire universe on a weekend bender). They're probably going to be finding new and inventive ways to kill each other 5,000 years from now.

Actually, I do have a solution which neither side will like -- which means it's perfect: give them one week (or whatever suitably brief period of time) to pack their shit and leave temporarily. Then go in and fucking raze every temple, mosque, and holy arty-fact to the fucking ground. Enough is enough. The world has tried to mediate, in generally good faith, between two clans of cousins fighting over competing forms of Abrahamic dogma. So fuck it -- remove the rallying points, yank 'em up by the roots, pulverize them, scatter their ashes into the sea. You want to fight over fucking books? There's your fucking books. How do you like them now?

Ahem. At any rate, the bottom line is that Suckmycockijad's rhetoric is unacceptable. I keep waiting for mainstream Muslims to condemn this bullshit, but I suppose I may as well wait for Catholics to publicly criticize the Vatican for systematically protecting and enabling predatory pedophiles for decades. Religion does some crazy shit to people's brains; they will become utterly amoral, all the while sanctimoniously lecturing everyone else on their unforgivable decadence.

The [Iranian] Foreign Ministry said the international community was treating Tehran unfairly, accusing it of failing to come to Iran's defense when it comes under attack from the United States or Israel over claims it is developing nuclear weapons or supporting Islamic militants.

Awww. Boo-fucking-hoo. Look, douchebag, you are developing nuclear weapons, and you are supporting violent, murderous, Islamic thugs like Hezbollah. You think you're fooling anyone with this "peaceful use" shit, Mahmoud? Now, I'm certainly realistic enough to understand that we are in no position right now to forcibly, unilaterally disarm Iran, not without incurring horrible levels of civilian casualties. And I can even charitably envision a scenario where Iran wants nuclear weapons technology just to protect itself from its nuclear-armed neighbors (including, it must be pointed out, Israel).

But the more I see a million assholes marching through Tehran every few Fridays screaming "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", the more I'm inclined to say "Fuck you, Iran". I don't care if this makes me sound culturally or religiously intolerant. If I'm gonna smack down the American Taliban, I'm going after these thugs too. There are fucking assholes in exotic cultures too, and like the US, it is up to the population to put its back down, start thinking for a change, and weed them out.

And I am not some rube with an "Ayatollah Assaholla" T-shirt, with a bumper-sticker hatred of The Other. I know exactly what the history is, and what the geopolitical ramifications are, and I have heard too many times about the incredibly hospitable nature of Iranians to not give credence to it. And I keep hearing how Iran wants to be taken seriously as a world power.

But if you want to be taken seriously, quit talking about wiping your neighbors off the map, and quit inciting your countrymen to come out en masse and get their Two Minutes Of Hate on. I know we haven't been as fair as we could (or should) have with you, and I know you hate us for our evil petrodollars, but this nonsense is not going to solve your problem.