See You Next Tuesday

It's just sad to consider the remote -- but still, in a nation of 320 million people, many of whom are simpletons, all too real -- possibility that someone out there still takes Sarah Palin seriously on any subject at all. She's a liar and a calumniator and a fucking dunce, and the world will be a better place when she finally fucks off and goes home for good. We should all just chip in five bucks and bribe her to go the fuck away already. It would be money well spent. Whoever these brain-dead morons are that still listen to her nonsense, they would seriously be better off if they went back to eating their own poop and impregnating their siblings.

For the millionth time:  no one wants to take your precious guns away. Nobody in their right mind even thinks it's possible. But it's not unreasonable to say that if you're not allowed on an airplane, you probably shouldn't be allowed to purchase a gun, likewise if you're a raving lunatic who's been investigated by the FBI.

Billion Dollar Baby

I'm not familiar with PoliticusUSA, so cannot vouch for the veracity, but for one, it seems far more professionally written and laid out than rightie sites, such as your Bartbrite or Right Wing News or Western Journalism, and for another, it's about Donald Drumpf Fuckface Von Clownstick John Miller, so frankly, I don't give two fucks if it's even accurate or true or not anymore.

But it sure as hell sounds one hundred percent accurate:

When Donald Trump told Republicans that his campaign had money, it was a lie. In meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump’s campaign privately admitted that they have no money and will not be able to run television ads until after the GOP convention in July.

So, let's recap, shall we:  One of Miller's biggest positives, according to the double-digit IQ mouth-breather cultists who support him, is that he's "self-funded" and therefore beholden to no one. But just in the last couple weeks, Sheldon Adelson (you know, the other casino-owning scumbag), has already pledged $100m to the cause, since his last 100m pledge -- to Newt Gingrich in 2012 -- flamed out hilariously. And now it turns out that Miller doesn't want to pull a Meg Whitman and dump his own money into this after all.

Thin Skin Is In

Nothing more hilarious than an e-beef between two sorta-famous morons. On the one hand, this rapper I've never heard of needs to stop believing everything she reads in The Onion before going off on how someone needs to get gang-banged; on the other hand, it's almost pathetically charming to watch Sarah Palin act like she's the only public figure to have ever been maligned and treated rudely. Has she heard what some of the folks in her own party routinely say about the current president? Oh, that's right, as often as not, she's leading that pack.

Palin Terminal Stupid Disorder

Since the Arctic Sorceress swept down from the frozen tundra the other day to celebrate Peak Wingnut with Fuckface Von Clownstick, folks have speculated that she might have been drunk. Watch the video for yourself, if you've got the stones. She doesn't seem drunk at all to me.

But she did seem coked up, or on whatever "mother's little helper" legal scrip type of pill that has the same effect. Manic, rambling, incoherent, shrill, in love with her own catchphrases and bons mots -- all the usual characteristics we've come to know and loathe about her were cranked [snorts giant rail off huge square mirror with rock band logo won at county fair] up to eleven. Even Trump looked like he couldn't wait for her to shut the fuck up already.

So it turns out that at about the time Sarah Palin flew to Iowa to dump her word-salad benediction on yet another gaggle of witless morons, her oldest child, Track, flew into a drunken rage and beat up his girlfriend, threw her phone so she couldn't call for help, and held an AR-15 rifle against his own head, threatening to kill himself. Track Palin was then remanded to custody on fourth-degree (domestic violence) assault charges, and denied bail.

Trump and Trumper

You know, as much fun as it would be to watch Trumpalin blow up what's left of the GOP and defecate on the ruins, maybe it's time the grisly mama went home and took care of her kids, at least the ones who are still young enough to steer clear of their two oldest siblings' paths.

Nah, we're stuck with the fun, whether we want it or not. Might as well make the most of the tossed word salad.

It should be clear with every mention just who exactly these maroons represent -- other maroons. After letting her neglected "web channel" die of neglect (sure hope someone's back at the ranch making sure the younger Palins are getting fed), Miss Thang landed a gig at something called One America News Network. It does not require a particular gift for deconstructing agitprop code for that moniker to ring familiar bells.

Speak English or Die

If this nation had any sense of irony anymore, it would be ironic -- a vapid, notoriously incoherent moron whinging about immigrants not learning Gawwwd's Favrit Language quickly enough for her liking. But irony is deader than William McKinley at this point, so not only does no one get the joke, most of 'em don't even understand that there is a joke.

Let me tell ya something, sugar-tits:  if I had just a goddamned penny for every time I saw a native-born 'murkin confuse you're/your or they're/their/there, write "ect." instead of etc. (which fucking stands for et cetera, see), or throw apostrophes around like they got paid for each use, I could have retired at the ripe old age of fifteen.

And there seems to be some sort of law of inverse proportion to these mutton-heads -- the more strident they are that everyone should learn English the day they get off the boat and receive our blessings, the more likely it is that they make these comically dopey, basic errors of usage.

I am just arrogant enough to tell you with 100% confidence that I can tell you with almost absolute certainty how much  -- or if -- someone else reads, just by reading a few lines of what they write. Even celebritard ass-sniffing magazines know how to use homophones and apostrophes (or in the current dipshit parlance, homophone's and apostrophe's, since every word that ends in s need a fucking apostrophe).

But, you know, the last thing the world needs is another tedious language lesson. What's more interesting about La Palin's plaint is that, as Suckaterry o' Energy in a Trump administration (brought to you by Brawndo), her goal would be to disband that agency. Because we have an infinite supply of oil and coal, and no other energy source matters or is useful, and climate change is a complete hoax. Seriously, what fucking planet do these idiots live on?

The real problem with people like Sarah Palin is not their opinions per se, which any reasoning person can instantly dismiss as the random, opportunistic jabber that it is. The real problem is that plenty of fools buy into the nonsense, believe what these dummies are saying. Worse yet, they drive automobiles, reproduce, vote. It's like they set out to prove Mencken right, over and over again.

The Dumbest Thing Ever Said Aloud, Until Sarah Palin Opens Her Cakehole Again

Anthrax, ham radio, and liquor. -- Clutch, 50,000 Unstoppable Watts


Christ on a cracker, this broad just never seems to miss a good opportunity to shut the hell up. Especially on a subject she knows exactly jack shit about.

I just don’t see the benefits of [net neutrality] at all, lemme know if you know of the benefits of government taking control of the Internet. Gimme your feedback on this, because I must be missin’ something.

Yes dear, you are missin' something. You are missin' everything. Again. Always. You consistently fail to observe every possible chance to get one goddamned thing right, like ever.

In the fantasy dictatorship you live under, the eeeevil fascist overlords want to enact this "net neutrality" thang in order to disenfranchise the gullible rubes who seriously pony up ten bucks a month to watch you mosey your way through life, and beg you to run for preznit, though you never will, because actual work is involved.

And by the way, sweet cheeks, the gubmint created the internets. True story, I shit thee not. You can check it out on....well, the internets themselves. Which is what they'd want you to believe, I suppose. But then we have a recursive cycle of empty skepticism and unnecessary disbelief.

If you can think of a better summation of what constitutes Sarah Palin's public utterances, the sum and substance of her empty jabber and verbal oatmeal, then I encourage you to post it in comments.

Bonus: Remember that yahoo who had the scrawled "Fuc_ You Michael Moore" placard, because we have to excise profanity and promote civil discourse and all? Yeah, that asshole. He's going to be Sarah's son-in-law. Good on ya, Chief, we'll see you in the National Enquirer in about fifteen months.

I'm With Stupid

Forgive me if I'm enjoying the gradually-then-suddenly decline and fall of Meth Valley Barbie a little too much, but this broad's glass-breaking jabber has simply gone on so far past its sell-by date, so we're not just gonna let it go. It needs to be hammered into 'murka's seeping lizard brain just how corrosive her nonsense has been to what's left of a national political body, to allow this person to hang around as long as she has.

Especially when people pull out these ham-fisted "I'm not defending her, but...." pieces that are really just intended to highlight the lamestream media's manifold hypocrisies and inconsistencies.

I'll grant him one point, at least:

And as for all of the attention paid to Palin's supposed white trash brood, remember that Joe Biden's son Hunter was given a special waiver to join the Navy at age 43 only to be kicked out for doing cocaine at age 44. This is the same son who had rather questionable ties to a Ukrainian gas company.

Absolutely. Hunter Biden's appointment to the board (as legal advisor) of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma does and should raise eyebrows and questions, especially since it just came months after Putin's annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and our subsequent saber-rattling.

I mean, it's not quite as questionable as, say, Dick Cheney making a metric fuckton of money from a war that he pushed like Ron Jeremy for, but sure, at the very least, Hunter Biden's journey over the last twelve months should remove all doubt that there are at minimum two Americas.

But impressively, the author manages to undermine his own point in the very next sentences:

Despite being far more consequential problems than whether or not Palin's kids got in a scrape at a snowmobile kegger, these scandals barely registered and media sure as hell hasn't pointed many fingers at the Vice President for the decisions of his kids. With all the tabloid coverage of Palin and her family since 2008 her critics certainly act like they're vindicated, but it's telling they don't even try to make the argument that Joe Biden was a superior man for the job.

A few things here. One is the obvious, that Palin has spent the last few years repositioning herself in the eyes of the American public. No, I don't mean "she was asking for it", but she has become an entertainment figure at least as much as a political figure. She was smart enough to realize that there's far more money and less actual work being the former than the latter. But she forgot that the reward for being a celebrity is that journos rummage through your trash and hang on every stupid thing you say. And when your reputation is for saying stupid shit, well, don't be too surprised when they look at you like a dog looks at a T-bone.

Secondly, Palin has made a bad habit of padding her ascent to reality teevee queen with plenty of social conservative red meat, such as advocating abstinence -- for your kids anyway, not hers. This is not a reflection of Palin as a parent; teenage girls get knocked up, although that number is indeed declining, except of course in abstinence-only states. But even if you're an ordinary mom in the supermarket, if you have a teenage daughter who got knocked up, you kinda have a moral obligation to STFU about the choices of other females. If you hold or have held or are pretending to try to attain in the future some sort of political office where your words might have actual influence over those choices, you definitely have a moral obligation to stay out of it, or at least not insist on the opposite of what your own children did. It's worse than hypocritical, it just makes you look like a buffoon whose words mean nothing at all.

And finally, while Diamond Joe Biden has certainly had his share of WTF moments before and since becoming vice-president, the fact of the matter is that Biden has spoken eloquently and extemporaneously on a variety of subjects, especially foreign policy, has written about those subjects, and has never given a speech like these drunken word-salad moments that have long been routine with Palin. Even if you leave out last fall's drunken snowbillies crashing someone's party and starting a brawl, and just pit Palin against Biden, qual for qual, brain cell for brain cell, quote for quote, there's just no contest.

You know and I know and Mark Hemingway certainly knows that if we all got in a room with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, and talked about serious issues of foreign and domestic policy -- not some bullshit formatted show-pony debate, but a deep-level detailed multi-point discussion on issues, causes, and possible solutions -- Biden would mop the floor with Palin. Hell, you or I or Hemingway could do that.

It's too bad, because there was a time when Palin could have been seen as someone who understood the travails of the working class, how the elites really have screwed them over, and used that as a basis for proposed policy changes. Instead she chose to turn that opportunity into random sequences of memorized catch-phrases, props, and insults.

In other words, just another blogger.

Endless Kabuki

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. -- Frank Zappa
Hollywood is like high school, but with money. -- Martin Mull

Traditionally the "silly season" for "news" has been in the summer, since people (somebody, anyway) are on vacation and paying even less attention than usual. But it seems like this week -- heading straight into what is an unseasonably nice weekend here in the NorCal (I'm barbecuing steaks in about an hour, fool, so suck on it, snow country! Global warming, amirite?) -- has had more than its rightful share of sheer nonsense.

Starting with the State of the Union, a completely useless pseudo-political appendage, nothing more than an extended plug for the now-perpetual campaign that undergirds this nation's version of political engagement. Yes, Obama managed a few bons mots at the stone-faced dipshits on the other side of the proverbial aisle. He's always talked a good game, that's how he got in. Walking said talk has always been another matter, the tedious, mindless intransigence of the opposition notwithstanding.

Somewhere along the line, the SOTU has morphed from a routine of the president giving the speech, and an individual from the opposition party being appointed to giving a single rebuttal, to multiple responses in the same key, all of them stupid. It would be one thing if the respondents each had a fresh take or perspective on what, let's face it, is simply a barrage of self-serving hortatory rhetorical boilerplate. But they don't; instead of orchestrating their views, the teatards all play a triangle, and ting it at random intervals, or perhaps to some indiscernible inner rhythm.

I think we all had the most fun with soup-brained cornhole Senator Bread Bags, who apparently grew up in Dust Bowl Oklahoma in the mid 1930s. Listen close, you dingbat -- I grew up poor, with farmers and dairymen in my family (though we didn't get the gubmint subsidies Senator Hawg Ballz' kinfolk got, apparently not enough to buy her actual shoes). I know what it's like to wear the same clothes and shoes two years at a time, to stretch the same dinner three or four nights.

But I never wore bread bags over my shoes, not the least reason for which is that bread bags are not particularly known for their exceptional durability; they are, after all, made specifically to encase a food item which typically lasts less than a week. I mean, we all know these "stories" are 100% grade-A bullshit, but usually there's at least some believability to some of them. Hawg Ballz didn't even bother to brush the peanuts off this one when she pulled it directly out of her ass.

Hey, whatever. If you're the sort that takes some sort of weird "pride" in stuffing plastic bags and cardboard into shoes that really should be replaced, more power to you. Hell, you might be up for the one-two jib-jab of the King and Queen of Holy Derp pretending one more blessed time to throw their pointy hats in the ring. Will anyone fall for it this time?

Do we really need to ask? No matter what the question is, regardless of the ninth-circle example of sheer stupidity, whenever you read it and ask if anyone is really that fucking dumb, invariably someone shuffles forward, finger jammed into nostril up to the third knuckle, as if to say, "Uh, yup."

Trump and Palin are just two of the speakers -- and you know I use the term loosely -- gathered at something called the Iowa Freedom Summit (because "Fuckfest 2016" would have been too obvious). A larger collection of card-carrying shitbirds you will not find outside of a state penitentiary. These are people who literally cannot wait to destroy what's left of their country, spread the profits among themselves, and then find newer and better ways to export said destruction as far and wide as possible.

The icing on this shit sandwich of a news week is the manufactured outrage over Michael Moore and Seth Rogen tweeting smartass remarks of mild dissent regarding Duh Most Patriotic Movie Evar. You see, when it's some frog rag getting lit up over its disparaging remarks about Islam, every conservadouche is suddenly a fucking free-speech champeen, never mind that Charlie Hebdo had said nasty things about the Catholic Church as well. But it's all good because booga-booga-moooslim.

But a couple people say that the movie felt a little propagandistic (gee, ya think?) and even Dean Fucking Cain (hey, I kinda remember him, I think) comes unglued. You would think that Moore had directly referred to Chris Kyle (PBUH) as a "coward," rather than mentioning that because Moore's uncle was killed by a sniper in WW2, Moore's family had routinely referred to that mode of killing as cowardly in general. (For the record, I happen to disagree; for the most part, killing is killing. I'd say a drone bombing of a wedding party is pretty fucking cowardly, though.)

And you'd think that Rogen had called Kyle a Nazi or something, instead of merely alluding to the reputedly (I haven't seen it yet, not in any rush, will probably Netflix it eventually) propagandistic nature of the film. And so now Dean Cain and, um, Kid Rock want to kick Rogen's ass or something.

There's a thread in the tenor of these hirsute defenders of Chris Kyle's sacred honor, as if they themselves had a vested interest. More to the point, the "he did this in order to give you your rights" tack is just nuts. I don't have an issue with Kyle's feelings about the people he shot, or Iraqis and Muslims in general. No doubt most of the individuals Kyle encountered or dispatched were, in fact, what most of us would regard as "savages"; I sure as hell can't think of many better words to describe the sort of motherless fucks who torture people with power drills.

But that is orthogonal to whether Iraq or any of its demonic hordes presented anything resembling an actual threat to the Homeland, or that we even had a clue as to what sort of people we were supporting or aligning ourselves with. "Destabilizing unfriendly regimes" has a nice ring to it, for the ear of the hegemon; the reality of it is much different, now more than ever. But it's not like any of the people Chris Kyle killed from afar were on the verge of hopping a plane the next day so they could strap themselves with Semtex and ball bearing and hit the nearest mall food court. Yet that seems to be the thrust of the arguments, the japing at Moore and Rogen (who, if you haven't heard, are fat).

Maybe when Martin Mull famously opined that showbiz (and that's all any of this is, folks; you might as well have TMZ doing political coverage anymore) was like high school with money, he was being too generous. Because these days it seems more like preschool.

Dingbat Logic

NewsCorpse has a nice rundown on Palin's latest delusional stab. Whether or not it's a good idea for Obama to personally back-channel communications with the Iranian mullahs, even a mouth-breathing dimwit like Palin should know by know that the ISIS thugs and the Iranians are deadly, bitter enemies -- in fact, the whole reason ISIS gained traction in Iraq is because the government, led by the Shiite (and thus an Iranian stooge for all intents and purposes) politically marginalized the Sunnis who comprise the ISIS movement.

And of course, to invoke Saint Reagan -- you know the guy who traded arms for hostages with those same Iranian mullahs -- should drive home the cold, hard fact that Palin is even dumber than you thought. She should stick to what she's good at, which seems to be crashing parties and pissing off her neighbors with her drunk, obnoxious brood.

Karma may be coming in the form of Palin's web channel (started by a lamestream media weasel, doncha know) derping along at low traffic levels, perhaps because her low-info demo actually has at least a couple of IQ points to rub together.

The Mouth That Bored; Or, A Farce to Be Reckoned With

Life is uncertain, but July has come to mean two immutable facts of life -- one is the sweltering itch of swamp crack, and the other is Sarah Palin honking something stupid into a towel, knowing that her idiot fan club will worship it like it's the Shroud of Turin. Not content to rest on her mama-of-the-year credentials, Palin continues her tireless quest to become the go-to rainmaker and prognosticating mynah bird of the dim set.

It doesn't matter that, as inept as Obama has been on multiple fronts, no laws have been broken, and you'd think even a maroon like Palin would know that you need to be able to cite chapter and verse what part of the legal code has been transgressed. Chewed-on complaints and stale "battered wife" jabber won't cut it.

Then again, who knows? It's midterm season, which for the Goopers means keeping turnout low but passionate. They'll hold the House, and if they can take the Senate, they can easily ramp up the mischief factor, and may even find a way to stretch some penny-ante bullshit into impeachment. Unlikely, but all of this would have been deemed unlikely 5 or 6 years ago, when these hooting jerkoffs had gleefully plowed the country into a garbage scow.

Palin has even asserted that she could and should host her own talk show, or be on The View panel. And why not? People make fun of, say, Fox and Friends, and rightly so, but The View has had more than its share of mouth-breathing fools (including current F and F cupcake Elisabeth Hasselbeck, uncomfortably sandwiched between leering doofuses Steve Doocy and Not Steve Doocy) spouting some of the dopiest things imaginable.

It might be worth giving Palin a small platform in the dingbat ghetto, braying her nonsense at bored hausfraus who are just waiting for Dr. Oz to sift through their poop, just to get her out of the nation's ass already. On the one hand, she fits perfectly Dorothy Parker's classic observation that if you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the sorts of people he gives it to; on the other, no matter how much filthy pelf she rakes in with her dumb jokes and dumber assertions, her kids will blow it all on magic beans and monster trucks.

Gravy Train

“I’ve considered it, because people have requested me considering it." -- Future U.S. SenatorPermanent punchline Sarah Palin

OK, we should know better than to throw chow to America's Concern Troll, but this now-annual flareup of mad cow disease, like political herpes, is still worth a jab of rhetorical Valtrex:

Really, Mark? Really?

Margaret Thatcher used to say, “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” So, thank you, Mark Begich, for making me and others exceptionally cheery today! Mark, after looking at your voting record I can see why you are looking for a distraction. You have voted FOR Obamacare, FOR massive tax increases, FOR carbon taxes which could cost Alaskans 21,000 jobs, AGAINST pro-life legislation, and there’s so much more. You even flip-flopped to oppose the nation’s balanced budget amendment. You agree with, and vote with, ultra-liberal Senators Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid approximately 90% of the time.

Setting aside the high-school girl zomg!srsly?! intro, corporate dogsbodies like Schumer and Reid are "ultra-liberal" only in comparison to unrepentant knuckle-draggers and obstructionists like -- well, like pretty much every do-nothing, glad-handing dipshit in the Republican side (and much of the Democratic side) of Congress.

And while it would serve Alaska and America just right to hand this dingbat a Senate seat, as punishment for not ignoring her enough to make her go away already, as noted yesterday, it's almost certainly not a concern:

Whatever you think of Palin, you have to give her this: She is a genius marketer of the “Sarah Palin” brand. She has turned herself into a celebrity. She is a well-compensated speaker, author and now, again, Fox News Channel political analyst.

And, to Nelson’s point above, Palin knows that the worst thing for that brand would be to return to the political arena as a candidate and lose.  To run would be to risk the  cachet and marketability she has built up in conservative circles. And Palin is plenty smart enough to know that.

And that's all there is to that. There is no there there, and never will be again. She'll never run for office again, preferring instead to pretend to be a rainmaker for unibrow backbenchers out in Gawwwd's country who otherwise would get laughed out of dog-catcher elections.

And when the audience for her ghost-written freedom/jebus/obamanazi/libruls stole Christmas doorstops finally dries updies in a tragic Hoveround pileup at the candy-corn Oreo display at the WalMart, then you might notice a distinct lack of shrillness, a bit less of the roofing-nails-on-chalkboard wail in the air.

Of course, by then an even bigger pain in the ass will have shown up, because that is how this country rolls.

How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

It's an odd-numbered year, and Saint Sarah has yet another unreadable, ghost-written doorstop in the works, so we have to pretend that she might run for Mark Begich's Senate seat next year.

At this point, Palin is basically the Black Eyed Peas of politics -- so far beyond suck that the light from suck takes years to reach, yet refuses to face or believe the truth, because there's just enough maroons to shield them from it for some reason.

The Big Lie

Just in time for the, ah, "National" Day of Prayer (and hey, I didn't, don't, and won't, and I'm willing to bet that almost no one else did either, whether they profess to believe or not), comes this steaming pile from the folks at Big Babywood, or whatever the despondent followers of L. Ron Breitbart (PBUH) are calling it this week.

So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)--whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.

And it's been sternly retweeted by #jesuschristnotyouagain, so it must be true!

Oooh, heavy duty! Love that Mama Grizzly thinks she can order the preznit like she's telling one of her kids not to do drugs or have premarital sex. He'd "better clear this up today, right now", or I'll, I'll....go on Greta Van Susterenenen and make seagull noises until someone pays me to stick a cork in it.

Noted call-girl aficionado Charlie Sheen once famously cracked that he didn't pay hookers for the sex, he paid them to go home afterward. There may be a corollary theory in the second half of that equation somewhere with regard to Palin. The voice is screechy, but even her writing instantly makes me think of the "wonk-wonk-wonk" muffled-trumpet sound of Charlie Brown's teacher.

Then again, the last time this broad got a wild hair in her ass, someone got shot. So you might not want to piss her off.

Last Thoughts on CPAC

Here's a thought to warm the cockles of your hardened heart:  Is it just me, or does it really seem like this year's Gathering of the Smuggalos got much less coverage than in the past? In past years, the Arctic Sorceress' doofy stunts would get written up and commented upon for the ensuing week, but this year's scamboogery didn't even make it to the Monday morning yukfests.

In fact, the RNC autopsy got lots more coverage, in no small part because it actually had some intellectual honesty to it, for a change. Confronting the tragic (for them) facts that catering to angry old crackers is no longer enough to get you elected is a huge step for them. Not that the prospect of a Serial-Adulterer/Man-On-Dog ticket wouldn't have been all kinds of hilarious, but the possibility of a deliberately regressive and dysfunctional party starting to get its shit together is much better.

Of course the CPAC will continue on business as usual for at least the next few years while the money wing of the GOP figure out how to get the goofball base to tack center a bit. Besides, there's plenty of bullshit swag to sell to the rubes along with the hotel accomodations and $15 watered-down rum-and-cokes. Hell, I seriously thought for a hot second, after seeing Saint Sarah's stoopid Big Gulp schtick, about setting up a quick-and-dirty CafePress account, writing up a quick slogan, and moving some tee-shirts and bumper stickers on the wingnut fora. As the saying goes.

Anyway. It would be nice to look back and see this latest convention of cray-zay as the swan song of the loudest, most obnoxious and tendentious voices of the pseudo-populist right. We'll see. But at least the lamestream media finally stopped taking the dingbat's bait.

Scenes from a Bawl

Fucking Big Gulps, how do they work?

The political Gathering of the Juggalos known as CPAC is underway, and two of its most emblematic buffoons are performing their respective dancing-monkey routines right on cue. First is La Donald, he of gold-plated terlets and the classic freeze-dried comb-forward, spouting his deep thoughts to a half-empty room of what appear to be a largely geriatric group.

Maybe there was complimentary Maalox at the breakfast buffet. But, you know, it's a convention, a party, and as such, Trump shoulda known better than to take the 8:45AM slot. Even morons like to get shitfaced and (try to) get laid at a convention. It was the first slot of the day, though, and our boy just couldn't help himself.

And of course it wouldn't be a par-tay without the Tila Tequila of conservatardery, the one and only Saint Sarah. Palin can't even get her "jokes" straight, but what would you expect from someone who once, for a notoriously cheap sight gag, actually wrote "energy" and "tax" on the palm of her hand. See, the Big Gulp works on many levels, who cares if they're just about the only thing stupid Nanny Bloomberg didn't regulate with his stupid nanny regulation, so shut up you guys!

Extra points to the butthurt common taters and conserva-tweeters at the usual sites. It is actually possible to be "liberal", and to both view Bloomberg overweening nannyism as borderline retarded, if not simply useless, and to see Palin for what she really is at this point -- a garden-variety jackass, reduced to split-second attention grabbers like sipping on a Big Gulp (way to stick it to The Man, Truth Teller!) and cracking wise about her own tits. (See, Todd got the guns, Sarah got the rack. Ahahahaha. I know, right? Fucking George Carlin must be spinning in his grave, going, "Why didn't I think of that one? It's fuckin' genius!")

But then again, these are people for whom buying a Chick-Fil-A sammich last summer was a brave political stance. They can close their eyes and pretend it's stil 2009-10, Palin's schtick is so well-preserved and unchanged. Surprised she didn't say something about "pallin' 'round with terrorists." For the believers, this is manna from heaven; for Palin, this is just a paid breather between reality shows, now that Fixed Noise cut off her allowance. They'll turn out in droves later in the year for her War On Xmas book, coming this 1998.

Someone needs to explain to these bozos (like it'd even be worth the time) that "humor" tends to work better when it's grounded in reality. Since no one has done anything to the Big Gulp, sacred avatar of 'murkin freedom and consumerist self-actualization, all that happened here is that someone took a drink of a sodypop (no word on whether it was Faygo or not, or if she sprayed the oldsters with it), and no one but Miss Thang's laughing-and-trying-a-bit-too-hard fan club really gives two shits. Enjoy your adipose deposits of sodium benzoate, laughtards.



Sarah! Sarah! I maded dis for youse!

No matter. These are figures of no consequence any longer, not getting it yet that the people who are actually listening to them are not allowed to leave the house with money, and that actual sentient beings have moved on. As with their musical Juggalo brethren, rather than hatred or fear or even contempt, it's best to simply regard them with a mixture of humor and bemusement. These are nothing more than tremendously silly people, some of whom still don't get that their fifteen minutes were up several years ago.

[Update:  The Guardian has a pretty good live blog of this hot mess. I didn't realize just how spot-on the comparison with the GotJ was. Jay-zus. If I'd been thinking, I would have printed up 5,000 cheap-ass tee-shirts with Big Gulps on them, and sold them for $40 each outside the, ahem, ballroom. You know, at the Gaylord.]

Yep. You really showed 'em, honey.

 [Sorry about the multiple edits and updates. This stuff really does keep writing itself.]

I Wish I Was Taller, I Wish I Was A Baller; Or, Drill Baby Drill

Hilarious. Not damning -- if there's a less surprising thing in this world than a 23-year-old sports reporter hooking up with a college basketball star, I have no clue what it would be -- but from our Patron Saint of Abstinence, at least as hilarious as her first two progeny becoming parents before marriage.

Even the allegations of drug use -- our last three presidents, including the current one, have at least tacitly admitted to occasional use. (Which one might think would at least in principle undermine the validity of the massively failed War on Some Drugs, but that's another post.) This will only endear her further to her base, who must be growing tired of defending her manifold stupidities by now, but which is also their raisin-detree. Without a perfidious librul booga-booga to rail against, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves.

This, however, is just weird:

But for the Chicago Tribune and Newsday and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to drop
DOONESBURY for a full week because the strip contained quotes from THE ROGUE?

....

Has Sarah become the Blessed Virgin, and the USA a new Vatican City?

Major newspapers in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta refuse to run–for a full week or more–a comic strip that refers to excerpts from a book that dares to criticize a woman who once ran for vice president and then quit as governor of her state and has subsequently made millions of dollars by doing reality shows and appearing as a highly-paid political commentator on a right-wing TV channel?

Funny, Faux News has never worried for a hot second about Saint Sarah's slanderous calumniations, but these shit-scared media dinosaurs can't scramble fast enough to appease the threat of a slander suit. Over a comic strip.

Gutless, but like the story itself, not a bit surprising. For all its First Amendment pretensions, the vaunted fourth estate rarely misses opportunities to cave to corporate misgivings and apprehensions.

Straight to Video

Doop de doop, let's check in on Rupert Murdoch's American agitprop tabloid arm, and see how Precious' Triumph of the Shrill hagiography is doing:

"The Undefeated," a glowing look at failed vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has already sold out a show in Grapevine, Texas (population 46,000), according to the distributor Cinedigm.

Grapevine isn't exactly a teeming metropolis but the film is set to roll out across Tea Party country in 10 AMC theaters.

In addition to Grapevine, the documentary by conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon will expand to Indianapolis, Ind.; Independence, Mo.; Kennesaw, Ga.; Houston, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Highlands Ranch, Colo.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Orange, Calif.

Packed house, folks -- though oddly, no actual number provided. Funny, that. Usually phat numbers is the first thing a PR flack sets on, like flies on shit.

Unless, of course, "theater 8 at AMC Barrett Commons 24" has roughly the capacity of an airport Sbarro's. Naw, that couldn't be the case. There were millions, kajillions even. It's Palin Nation, people, you just live in it. Suck on that, faggy librul!

Oh, the hilarity, she ensues, in this blurb from the Houston screening, further down the page.

"The Undefeated", the new documentary that showcases Sarah Palin's rise in Alaska politics, has arrived in Houston.

The movie is only open in a handful of theaters across the country, including the AMC Gulf Pointe 30 off the South Sam Houston Parkway East.

The lines were for Harry Potter, but the costumes on Friday night are for Sarah Palin and the movie about her.

Faithful fans arrived early. Donna Galloway drove all the way from Beaumont for the debut.

"Undefeated is about having losses but coming back for victories," said Galloway.

[squinting eyes, pinching nose in pained expression]

Kee-rist. Let's take these in reverse order:

• This word "undefeated" -- I don't think it means what you assholes think it means. She was defeated, along with her addled, dyspeptic running mate, not in small part because every time she opened her piehole, a team of political Superfund environmental hygiene experts had to hit the scene to quickly shovel shit. But regardless, they lost. Badly. Perhaps y'all heard, it was in the papers and everything. I'm pretty sure it was even on Faux News, to the benefit of their ratings since.
• Gawrsh, all the way from Beaumont to Houston, Aunt Bea? Quite the feckin' pilgrimage to Mecca there. I mean, considering they're only showing this train-wreck in ten theaters in the entire country, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that many of the faithful would have to travel at least 100 miles if they're going to see this thing. Maybe there's tailgate parties out in the parking lots of the theaters, where these old bastards competition-guzzle cans of Ensure and char some round steak until it's really well-done, then sneak some Metamucil into the theater, thus thwarting The Man once again.
• Finally: costumes? Seriously? It's bad enough when Star Wars/Harry Potter nerds pull this crap, but at least they have an excuse -- most of them are in seventh grade. Then again, at least intellectually, so are these bozos. You get to a point where you stop asking "what's wrong with these people", and decide it's simpler to just ask if anything at all is right with them. Driving two hours, or going in costume, to a two-hour informercial for a person who, despite being in her late forties, having a college degree and a family and some measure of political success, still cannot reliably complete a sentence that wasn't previously rehearsed to maximize borscht-belt timing for reckless calumniations.

And of course in the end it turns out to be somewhat selective bunkum, as most things Palin are in the end: in the conservatard enclave of Orange, CA the only person to attend the midnight premiere screening was the reviewer.

(A increasingly frequent defensive meme, which you'll see down in the comments in the Atlantic piece, is that at least Saint Sarah never said there were 57 states. Perhaps not, but the difference is, even people who hate him know that Obama simply misspoke. They know, whether they'll admit it or not, that Obama does not actually think there are 57 states. It is not generally that obvious with Palin, as she managed to irretrievably botch even the bowdlerized Paul Revere legend that most 'murkins learn by fourth grade, during her Magical History bus tour, which sought to highlight important places and events in American history by spending more time with Donald Trump than at Gettysburg.)

At this point, Palin-watching as a spectator sport is merely an extended exercise in schadenfreude, waiting for the next inevitable failure, both on her part and on the part of all the PMS (Palin Messiah Syndrome) followers. They are going to be disappointed, on many levels -- their hoped-for Passion of the Kee-rist turnout is never going to materialize, and their wampeter, content to earn pelf spinning ever more burbling foma, will not run, not in any genuine earnest anyway, perhaps only enough to give them another richly-deserved fleecing.

But what she serves as most of all is a barometer of this country's limbic urgency to follow failure with more failure, ridiculous stupidity with even more ridiculous and inarticulate stupidity. It is a doubling-down of id, the man who loses his car on a spin at the roulette wheel, then proposes to get it back by betting his house, then proposes to get it all back by stealing the deed to his neighbor's house and betting that.

I'm sure the next inevitable reality show to emanate from this cultural sphincter will be worth its weight in comedic gold.

A Beautiful Mind

One of Saint Sarah's less-than-gruntled former toadies has scrawled a "tell-all", adding to the publishing industry's largest segment, which is books no one in their right mind would read.

Naturally, the attention Frank Bailey has garnered so far, focuses around Sharia Plan's rather Leona Helmsley-like demeanor with people who can't directly help her political career, and her well-documented vindictive streak. But for me this little quote tells you everything you need to know about Palin's utter lack of even marginal intellect:

In his fervor, Bailey at first didn’t care that Palin lacked expertise — she had common sense. As she once e-mailed him, “Remember: amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” But Bailey came to doubt his devotion, particularly after the presidential election defeat when Palin seemed to care little for governing Alaska and far more about cashing in on her celebrity.

[emphasis mine]
Set aside for moment that Frank Bailey is a fucking chucklehead who got taken for a ride, and now is trying to cash in on his time in the belly of the beast. Let's deconstruct Saint Sarah's attempt at profundity, not just for the complete lack of evidence and plausibility in the first part, not just because the Titanic sank not because it was poorly built, but because it hit a fucking iceberg.

Those nine words neatly encapsulate the mentality of Sarah Palin, and her addled flock. The smirking disdain -- delusional in its scope -- completely derides the notion of competence, of becoming better at what you do by learning as much as you can about it.

This was what I always despised about George W. Bush -- he exhibited the smugness of someone who seriously believes that he has long known everything he needs to know, that there is nothing more to learn. Palin is obviously cut from the same ragged cloth, no shock there. And no shock that she prefers the simple affirmations of fairy tales over empirical data.

But at some point, it needs to register with a critical mass of people -- voters and the skeevy corporate media monkeys they rely on for their daily dose of bullshit -- that beyond the breathless infotainment coverage of cock-teasing idiots like Palin or Trump, people who add to their fortunes by dangling months of guessing games to legions of dumbfounded dipshits, someone needs to be an adult.

A big reason America is in a period of epic fail right now, aside from its willingness to let Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon continue to skull-fuck the country with absolute impunity, is its inability to recognize unserious and marginal people for what they are. A serious, intellectually honest person does not let cartoon characters like Palin and Trump waste their time with this nonsense, and a nation serious about getting its shit together most certainly doesn't let these bozos jerk them off for months on end.

Their ability to stay in the conversation long past their sell-by dates feels to me like the sign of a nation that's given up on itself, has lost the capacity to identify entities that should never have been in the discussion in the first place, and are indeed simply using the process and its concomitant permanent campaign industry to enrich themselves. Maybe it's the natural by-product of a decade of hyper-cultural immersion in the mindless excesses of reality teevee, with it's deliberate vapidity and meanness. Maybe we were always mean and stupid, and are just not bothering to conceal it anymore. I don't know.

What I do know is that we are heading into a period that, for starters, will be characterized by more and more scarce energy supplies, and we are barely making token efforts to do anything about it, apparently assuming that some great Energy Fairy will providentially come along and fix it all. Shit, 'murkins cannot even be bothered to use environmentally friendly packaging for its snacking products, such is the affront to their dignity.

So it makes pathetic sense that a society that has lost its collective mind, preferring the comforts of magickal thinking, would put up with the notion of putting Sarah Palin or Donald Trump in charge of anything. Americans have had their heads lodged up their asses for so long, they have given up trying to extricate themselves.

Enjoy the view. It's only going to get worse.

A Star Is Bored

Howie Kurtz helpfully transcribes what may turn out to be the very truest thing ever said about oh-so-brief-but-transcendentally-brilliant phenomenumbskull, La Palin:

“Her real constituency is the media,” says former John McCain adviser Mike Murphy, who views Palin as a “niche candidate” incapable of winning the nomination. “The media have always overestimated her appeal. They’re drunk with interest in covering her. It’s a partnership—they’re in business together.”

Indeed. The downside of all this wondrous technology at our fingertips is that it's enabled this slovenly, grotesque infoporn market to crop up amidst us, influence the order of things inside-out and upside-down by sheer muscle and gall. The 24-hour news cycle, which is really the same half-hour of sound bites on a repeat loop, 48 times per day times a bazillion channels, has metastasized into the perpetual campaign industry machine. From the very second an election ends, discussion of the next one commences, two years or four down the road.

Remember a mere half-decade ago, when a preponderance of the country -- indeed, the world at large -- were certain that American hubris, id, and willful stupidity had reached its blessed apotheosis with the Bush/Cheney junta? You want to go back in time and warn those naive, beaten souls of the depths to come, made possible in very large part by people whose sole purpose is to sell pharmaceuticals and big trucks, with dressed-up factoids and famous nobodies paraded in between, a constant barrage of mediocrity at best, dangerous buffoonery most of the time.

But golly gosh, I sure do hope it all works out for Saint Sarah. She's just given so darn much in the service of pure fabulism, calumny, and chronic butthurt over the meekest response to her constant smartassery. It takes an empty industry to reward an empty personage, white noise for white noise, for the esteemed pundits to parse.

The clown car is crowded for the Republitards these dark days, made darker still by the fact that enough 'murkins are just stupid enough to vote 'em back in anyway. What would we do without Sarah's free-verse burbling, her snowbilly glossolalia, runway-circling syntax displaying a truly accomplished lack of knowledge on an impressive array of subjects? Friends 'n' neighbors, it really is hard goddamned work to go nearly fifty years in life without being able to converse competently on at least something, even trickier to gull millions of gomers into admiring you for it.

If this politics thing doesn't work out for her, there's still time for her to get into journamalism.