Sponge Logic

It's been a while since we've taken a run at DoughBob LoadPants™, who appears to more adept at making excuses for failing to complete his long-awaited opus, the serendipitously-titled Are You Gonna Finish That?, than much of anything else. And when it comes to critiquing the Democrats -- who, mind you, have been in power all of about twelve weeks -- he has his rubber-glue shields at the ready:

So here’s the ironic part. Suddenly, it looks as if the Democrats are the Republicans on fast-forward. It’s early yet, and the Democrats did finish their mini-Contract with America — the so-called first 100 hours — with mixed success on the substance but great fanfare in the media. Yet items like upping the minimum wage and shafting oil companies, although certainly not insubstantial, were primarily symbolic.

"Shafting" oil companies? Seriously? The most rapacious, profiteering club of hustlers to set hoof on the planet, and they're being shafted? Hey asshole, I'm paying forty-five bucks to fill up a fucking Honda Accord so I can get to work, you want to talk about "shafting". I got your symbolism right here, Lunchbox.

Things like "defending" marriage and taking on the growing threat of flag burning or video games are "primarily symbolic". In fact, they're totally symbolic -- they serve no practical utility whatsoever. Helping out the growing underclass just a sliver, and taking a mild run at an industry that gives its CEOs half-billion dollar golden parachutes -- they're not enough, but they're a start.

But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They’ve completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted — timetables on top of timetables — that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a co-sponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can’t explain them.

CNN’s John Roberts played a clip on Late Edition from a news briefing in which Obey muddled nearly every detail of the Democrats’ plan. Roberts then asked Sen. Joe Biden, “How do you pass or enforce something you can’t even explain?” It’s a good question.

Uh-huh. This is sort of like how we've been hearing about "winning" for four years going now, without much in the way of an explanation or definition, much less a plan.

He goes on like this, reciting the usual litany of "they do it too" tropes, again ignoring that the Democrats have had a congressional majority for all of twelve weeks, after twelve years of post-Trotskyite Gingrichism. The permanent revolutionaries have finally been kicked out on their snouts, and they're still trying to steam-clean the hoofprints out of the furniture, and here's Helpy Helperton smugly asking why everything's the same as it ever was.

Don't you have a book to finish, Jethro, or were they just expecting you to design the cover, and let the lower-rent hacks take it from there?