"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friends Like These
At least scumbags like Tom DeLay and Karl Rove never tried to fool anyone about what they were, and what they were up to. Put it this way -- if Obama wins and doesn't immediately exile Holy Joe to the Senate version of Siberia (say, the Committee to Tickle Huckleberry Graham's Prostate), then he doesn't belong in the game. Lieberman's the sort of treacherous, slimy shit for whom tarring and feathering was invented.
Monday, December 17, 2007
It's Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Dickless
Don't play dead, 'cause maybe someday
I will walk away and say, "You fuckin' disappoint me".
Maybe you're better off this way. -- A Perfect Circle, Passive
The
"Being a Republican is important. Being a Democrat is important. But you know what's more important than that? The interest and well-being of the United States of America," the Democrat-turned Independent said in announcing his decision Monday morning in New Hampshire.
"Let's put the United States first again, and John McCain is the man as president who will help us do that," he said.
Lieberman, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2000, said the next president needs to "break through the reflexive partisanship that is poisoning our politics today and stopping us from getting anything done in Washington."
Huh. Seems to me like the only thing "stopping us from getting anything done in Washington" is the obstructionism and deliberate opacity of the White House. Congress can throw all the whinging contempt charges they want; it has no effect on people who scorn the law reflexively, indeed as a matter of operational policy. "I have to hide under your bed to wait for the boogeyman" is not a coherent strategy, but fortunately for them, there are plenty of incoherent voters, disinformed by a complicit media.
McCain's big beef with the war is that it wasn't prosecuted heavily enough, not that it was a strategic blunder in the first place. If he just had the balls to say "if I knew then what I know now" it'd be different. But he's a different man now than he was in 2000, before he became a butt-boy to this administration's agenda. At least Charlie never push-polled the retards in South Carolina about McCain's black love child.
He's the one guy who knows first-hand about real torture, both as method and policy, and his opposition, while obviously heartfelt, seems infused with the foreknowledge that it will be disregarded, even by the voting blocs he himself wishes to court. This is a party -- and a demographic -- at odds with itself, with the country's institutionalized principles and values, with its own future as a viable organized political party, as opposed to a dissociative gaggle of poltroons and carnies.
The Connecticut senator decided to endorse McCain because he considers him "the most capable to be commander in chief on day one of his administration, and the most capable of uniting the country so that we can prevail against Islamic extremism," a Lieberman aide said earlier.
This is clearly going to be the preferred narrative for the campaign season, "unity". Let's let bygones be bygones and move forward, shall we? Well, no. I'm not for letting people off the hook for running this country into ditch, for turning another country into a nightmarish husk for no goddamned reason, for insinuating that everyone who disagreed with them was a Baathist stooge. Fuck unity, I have nothing in common with these criminals, and I'm not going to pretend that I do.
It's as if a year of habitual capitulation by the Democratic majority hadn't taken place, as if they were still (or hell, ever) a bumptious, unreasonable opposition making trouble for Dear Leader and potential Dear Leaders like Poor Ol' Straight Talk. And for the media, since the horserace-industrial complex thrives on the appearance of a tight contest, it's all good. They can pimp their tedious Rodney King homilies instead of drawing responsible policy distinctions between the parties and candidates.
Fortunately, it seems axiomatic that Lieberman's move will serve only to further marginalize himself and McCain. In the meantime, one hopes that Reid will at least find enough goddamned spine to kick this motherfucker to the curb already, stop letting him caucus with Democrats. If Holy Joe hasn't the sack to jump over to the dark side yet, then fuckin' push him already. The man is political ballast.