Whiskey Fire

"Get the fuck back in your fucking hole, now!"

When we want to hear from you again, shitwhistle, we'll say, "tell us your shitheaded opinion and go paint another fucking by-numbers of a puppy next to the sink."

MAS. Your dad is a fairy.

And thus we Advance the Discourse, eh? (Their comments section seems to work fine, and bully for them...)

MUCHO MAS. I really am sorry for the comments weirdness. Youse all are like the obnoxious dysfunctional family I actually like, as opposed to the obnoxious dysfunctional family I had to go to family with. So bear with it, redsnouts.

The Short Joust

The a lot of reasons why there's not much talk in Serious Circles anymore about the hideous disaster that was, and is, the Iraqi Adventure. But one such reason that deserves attention is that the only way Serious People ever discuss any fucking thing ever nowadays is in terms of bullshit competitions of at most a week's duration -- and where yesterday is garbage.

Here look. Duncan is totally right that Richard Cohen is very good at what he does, even when you can look back and want to throw up upon contemplating what he did.

But the key here is not simply what Cohen did or said; sure he was a dick. But he was hardly alone in this madness. The point is to identify the reasons why this madness took hold so powerfully among the class to which Cohen belonged.

And you can't forget that while to the vast majority of the inhabitants of this planet the clever turns of phrase of people like Cohen are utterly meaningless, in the intimate world of the Village Cohen likely dined out for years on "fools and Frenchmen."

These people compete very intensely against each other. The New York Times and WaPo opinion pages are not meant to inform anyone of anything. They are lists in which morons don elaborate heraldry to engage in fancypants shitheaded jousts.

In such competitions the prizes are awarded, say, weekly. Being proved right ten years later? Who the fuck cares about ten years later?

I agree with everything Scott says here. I remember the dsquared post referenced vividly; I remember reading the original and thinking "I knew that from Irish history, and also from trying to get contractors to give honest quotes on the roof, that the Iraq war was stupid."

The insight here is not that "fibbers lies are useless," but that "people who want to 'win the week' need to shut the fuck up about policy."

They won't. But what's poignant is that these contests aren't even over money.

They are over the weird Rules of Who Rules Pundit Mountain.

Out of the Barracks

One supposes that certain critics sincerely believe they have a point of some sort as to improprieties regarding "reporters" and "law enforcement" and "double standards" and the Petraeus Affair.

One... supposes.

But such finger and tongue-wagging smuggeries are mere priggish prudery.

So -- General David Petraeus has been "caught" having an affair with someone not his wife.

So -- General David Petraeus has been revealed as possessing an illicit, "dangerous" sexuality.

So -- what?

The cant! The hypocrisy!

Let us all face the truth. Let us stride manly forth into the daylight and say YES! YES! THIS IS WHO I AM!

Let us be bold. Let us be honest. Let us... be true to ourselves.

Admit it:

Who among us, in America, does not want to fuck a General?

Yes, we have all heard the slander, we have endured the pervasive cruelty. We have often been accused of being, as they say, generalosexuals. Or worse! But let us own the epithet. Let us say, loud and proud: I am an American, and I am a General-fucker.

Republican or Democrat, we have all wanted to fuck General Petraeus; we have for years cast him coy glances, batted our eyes, simpered, primped, and preened, flirted shamelessly, desperate for his favor, his manly charms.

Don't deny it!

That dear, dear David has cast his favors upon an unworthy BITCH, excuse me, TROLLOP is the polite term I am informed, must not discourage us.

Someone else will come along just like him soon enough, and since we will be faithful and true and sincere general-fuckers, we'll stay steadfast and unchanging, and be rewarded by getting well and truly fucked in the end.

I mean, not quite as fucked as certain foreigners, sure, but whatever.

Just BELIEVE.

MAS. In an apparent effort to make this all even more inane, were that possible... "Tuesday, the house remained quiet aside from the media circus.  A woman could be seen inside the home's large bay windows, but it was not clear if it was Jill or her twin sister."

Don't you fuckers know there's a war on?

Whiskey! Democracy! Fuck Me!

Golly. It sure is a mystery why whenever them fuzzy l'il foreigners get the right to vote, they totally forget that the True Meaning of Democracy is "voting however American shithead politicians demand they vote."

MAS. This is also wonderful. Power Tools!

Let’s hope that the Obama administration doesn’t follow the Jimmy Carter playbook for dealing with revolutions in strategically vital Islamic nations.

Once upon a time, way back ten years ago, we had to invade a strategically vital Islamic nation to Create Democracy. Now we need to maybe consider attacking a strategically vital Islamic nation because of Democracy.

Hooray!

Power Tools explicitly informs us that the best thing we can do for the peoples of Strategically Vital Islamic Nations is to maintain proxy military dictatorships.

Truly, they hate us for Our Freedoms.

D or D: Bloody Caesar vs. Bloody Mary

Verdict: GUILTY! Err, Bloody Caesar wins. Might be just a matter of the sodium content, or maybe not. In spite of my natural concerns re: "clam juice" as a cocktail additive, I judge for the Canuckistanians.

(Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place and even at Three Bulls!? Moose over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.)

~

Idiot Empire

In these dark, uncertain, scabic times it is good to know that we can always count on Jonah Goldberg to supply the nation with noisome bullshit.

And so it ends. The United States is leaving Iraq.

We're leaving Iraq now. It's in our eyes. There' no disguising it. It really comes as no surprise to find that Obama planned it all along. And now, sure as the sun has crossed the sky, this lie is over. Lost, like the tears that used to tide us over. Etc.

I'm solidly in the camp that sees this as a strategic blunder.

Whatever camp you're in, man, you're solidly there. Nobody ever said otherwise.

Still, there's an upside. Obama's decision to leave Iraq should deal a staggering blow to America's critics at home and abroad.

After all, what kind of empire does this sort of thing?

That's actually a rather good question.

My thesis about the True Reasons for why the Iraqi Adventure was launched has for a long time been that they did it because they were a gang of demented ideologues. Yes: they wanted the oil. But they also wanted to Prove Melodiously Triumphant a cacophany of horrendously ludicrous wingnut theses about how the world might be brought into sweet sweet music. It never ocurred to them that they were sub-kazoo class incompetents. But they were! Jonah is still trying to get an A-flat out of a Gowanus Trombone...

In many quarters of the Middle East, the war on terror is cast as a religiously inspired front for crusader-imperialism. This nonsense overlooks the fact that America has gone to war to save Muslim lives more often than any modern Muslim country has. Under Democrats and Republicans we've fought to help Muslims in Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya. We've sought the conversion of no one and -- with the exception of Kuwait -- we've never presented a bill. When asked to leave, we've done so.

When asked to stay home, we haven't, also too. "Thank you for the invasion! Also the drone bombs."

What sort of an empire are we?

Invasions did not make us popular amongst the invaded. Ingrates. Weird!

Today's Asshole Of The Day

From (No surprise!) TheDC, an asshole called Mencken (It's a pseudonym. Gutsy fellow.) announces:

“What about Ron Paul?! He took second! Doesn’t he warrant a mention?” This meme has been echoed even by the likes of Jon Stewart, whose fanciful quest to ferret out every trace of hypocrisy on the side of his opponents has instead led him down the rabbit hole of self-righteousness and false punditry, always thinly veiled by a layer of badly applied clown makeup.

OK, just stupid & juvenile so far. No need to hold your breath, however. Just your nose.

Because Ron Paul is a joke at the expense of the Right, and his second place showing in the straw poll was the bad punch line. The man tracks with (and may agree with) racist, conspiracy-mongering mongoloids so vile that they would instantly discredit libertarianism if any liberal media outlet more relevant than The New Republic ever bothered to cover them. Those who disagree are invited to explain the chumminess between Ron Paul and the Mises Institute, whose patron Saint Murray Rothbard once made a habit of paling around both with Maoists and with the followers of David Duke, for the simple reason that the responsible Right failed to display a sufficient hatred of America relative to those two groups.

Mongoloids. Ha ha. What is it, 1955? Also funny: A pseudonymous clown typing for TheDC claiming that "liberal media outlet" TNR isn't relevant. And here's the big fun:

What Paul’s partisans fail to apprehend is that the reason that coverage is not forthcoming for their hero is because Paul has made himself the avatar of a time-tested brand of Republicanism: That is, self-hating Republicanism. The reason disingenuous sniggerers like Stewart sympathize with Paul, and why Rachel Maddow will fawningly ask him to explain his crackpot theories between heaping mouthful [sic] of carpet is because Ron Paul attacks his own party with twice the zeal he ever uses against liberals. He spouts the same nonsense talking points as members of the Pacifist Left (“Iran is only defending themselves!”) and the Socialist Left (“Corporations aren’t people! Only people are people!”) with the ingenious capacity for somehow duping legions of devoted followers into believing these time-tested left wing gobs of spit are somehow true conservatism. It’s time someone explained precisely why this designation is as fantastical as Paul’s chances at election are.

Does he mean Rachel Maddow is as nutty as Hitler, who was alleged to be rug-chewingly mad? Or have I somehow missed the hard core carpet-munching that is (Subliminally?) interspersed w/ Ms. Maddow's questions?

Because TheDC needs clicks, there are four more pages of this (Granted, an easy condemnation of Rep. Paul's economic cow patties.) but I'd as soon poke myself w/ a sharp stick as use that stick to search through the urine-filled tank to spear more poop nuggets. I will share that Pseudo-Mencken's main gripe w/ the Texas Turkey is that he is not bloody-minded enough to engage in pre-emptive attacks/strikes/wars against any nation, group or individual that looks cross-eyed at these United Snakes. Help yourselves if you like. Just don't say you weren't warned.

— M. Bouffant (Available here in the first person plural.)

No Sky

That is the end of Mubarak. What is to come, I know not. However.

As the streets of Gaza exploded with celebration on Friday night with masked Hamas militants marching defiantly to cheer the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Israelis reacted with quiet and deep concern because the regional leader on whom they had relied most was suddenly gone.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintained the same studied silence it has sustained for more than two weeks on the assumption that nothing it said could serve its interests: if it praised the pro-democracy movement, it would be seen as disloyal to its ally, Mr. Mubarak. If it favored Mr. Mubarak, it would be dismissed as a supporter of dictatorships.

But behind the scenes, officials willing to share their thoughts anonymously expressed worry because they believed that whoever followed Mr. Mubarak would be less friendly to Israel.

But this Israeli govenment clearly was rooting for a tyrant.

A state whose security depends upon the vast majority of the people who live in the region where it exists remaining subject to tyrranical rule, is not a stable or sustainable state.

I suppose a more basic point would be that if your favorite ideology is threatened by someone else's freedom, your favorite ideology sucks.

Civil Demon Defense

All exorcism, all the time!

Image courtesy of NotionsCapital.

This horsecrap pretty much "writes" itself, & thanks to the miracle of electronics, I don't even have to get up from the chair to pluck it off the wire machines. Two or three (seated) clicks & it can argle-bargle for itself, although it does raise a question: Are we to be subjected to two more yrs. of these drones a-dronin' on about snarky, mean ol' elitists (to name but a few codes for resentment & bitter clinging) & their show-offy cognition?

While Christopher Hitchens looks to politics as a canvas for the great Washington novel, the irony is that politics, for all its noise, just isn’t a big enough theme for a great book. By making “The Exorcist” about good and evil, faith and its loss, and the boundary where science ends and the mysterious begins, Blatty reached deeper than any political novel could (perhaps it is difficult for Hitchens the atheist to grasp this).

I believe the irony here is that a "Washington novel" is political by definition. (And the dig at Hitchens from another goon who's simply horrified at all the "brittle, hateful snark and petty rage." Idiot atheist, no grasp at all.)

Hitchens, like too many other observers, equates Washington with politics. To him a book about the city calls for the drama of geopolitics and power. But Washington is a largely apolitical city. Walk through the 90 percent that does not comprise Capitol Hill and you see it’s a town of churches, jazz clubs, and old neighborhoods — even ones that predate the federal city itself.

Few still anticipate the great Brattleboro, VT, or San Bernardino, CA novel, no matter how many old neighborhoods & jazz clubs those two no-doubt-wonderful burgs may (or may not) have.

Now that the typist (Mark Gauvreau Judge is the author of several books, including Damn Senators and God and Man at Georgetown Prep. His articles and essays have appeared in various publications.) is revealed as a ninny, we can examine how, a yr. later, he's still steaming about one of the truly great outrages of our time, seven minutes (I'll just go ahead & assume he's familiar w/ the exact length of the indignity because he has a recording thereof, & plays it obsessively.) of tea-bagging talk, perpetrated by more-likely-smirking-than-howling (What the hell did any of that mean?) liberal activists. (That rattling sound you hear is a string of pearls being vigorously clutched by Mr. Judge.)

Forty years after “The Exorcist,” it is not the wars or espionage that hack novelists mine for bestsellers that marks our era as much as brittle, hateful snark and petty rage. When the Tea Party movement began a year ago, liberal activists Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox spent seven minutes on the air simply repeating variations on the word “tea bagger,” which is a slang term for a degrading sexual act. Liberals who howl, or more likely smirk, at what they would perceive as the overblown comparison of a sexual double entendre with the devil just don’t get it. The power of the final argument of “The Exorcist” is that it shows that it is not as much in the wars or the natural calamities or the Capitol Hill deals that the demonic is revealed; rather, it is in the smug put-down, the dehumanizing sexual smirk, the cruel — and cowardly — personal attack. These can cut deeper than an actual physical assault.

He probably deserves credit for that first sentence. Two+ wars on the other side of the planet really haven't marked our era, or the era has been so stained that we no longer notice how warped & discolored the picture is.

The last two probably call for an actual physical assault. Perhaps a few Afghanis or Iraqis who have an extra shoe because one of their feet or legs were shocked & awed right off their bodies could toss it at this appalling bastard. Assuming, of course, they have arms left w/ which to throw, or an eye remaining w/ which to aim.  

And while Judge isn't sure about what may have happened in 1949,

... a horror novel called “The Exorcist” about a girl who may or may not have been possessed by a demon — or by the devil himself. The book and subsequent movie were smashes.

from paragraph to paragraph (my emphasis),

With the 40th anniversary of “The Exorcist” approaching, I revisited the book for the first time since high school. It still terrifies, probably because Blatty based the book on a real case of demonic possession that occurred in Maryland in the 1940s. There are some dated elements — at one point a character speculates that the trouble with Regan, the possessed girl, may have something to do with the “hippies” who are into the occult and hang out in the bars on Wisconsin Avenue — but for the most part the book deals with themes that are relevant today.

I'll just bet he's all in for exorcism of uppity liberal activists & their dirty, filthy, degrading mouths, but only if a psychiatrist who'll railroad libs into an institution & shut them the hell up w/ drugs & a bar of soap in the mouth can't be found. 

Were any of these events real, beyond having really been authorized by Catholic pencil pushers? Some investigation would indicate no. Summarized here, begins here. (Shorter summation: Intransigent teen, crummy family dynamics, mother & maternal grand-mother loony Lutherans who converted & had the young victim baptized a Catholic. In my day -- not that much later -- less-superstitious solutions included threats of shipment to boarding school. Then threats of military school. Recently, officially approved drugs. America's been eating its young for some time now.)

Sudden gasp: What'd I just miss there? A halt to hippie-bashing? Worries about the occult are no longer relevant? Spread the word Brother Judge, spread it far & wide, because a few of your fellow travelers may not have heard yet. Actually, none of them have. And let them know that Godless Communism is no longer a threat, while you're at it.

All this has me wondering if Holy Mother Church is looking to cash in on the fortieth anniversary of The Exorcist, starting w/ ExorFest 2010, or if this was mere reaction to whatever Hitchens typed. (Which is mercifully unavailable on-line, at least to the slothful, but note the nest of vipers it was printed in.)

-- M. Bouffant (Unfinished version. Compare & contrast.)

Dinesh D'Lusion

Dinesh D'Souza (ably assisted by Kathryn Jean Lopez) sets the record straight, right there at the National LampoonReview.

This would explain Obama’s fierce allegiance to the federal government.

Fierce allegiance? He did swear an oath or something, didn't he? Like a couple months after he was elected to be the president of the federal government, right? Fiercely allegiant, yet ready to sell us out to his MuslimKenyan brothers on a moment's notice! For reparations.

For instance, there is a lot of speculation now about whether Obama will be a centrist after the midterm election, like Bill Clinton became after 1994. My theory says that he won’t because he cannot. Clinton was largely a non-ideological guy. If Obama came by his liberalism in the faculty lounge, then sure, he can see it hasn’t worked and he can modify it. But if Obama got his formative ideas when he was very young, and if they are the result of his traumatic relationship with his father, then they are built into his psyche. He’s not going to change because, to his anti-colonial mindset, meeting the Republicans halfway is a form of sellout. He would be untrue to his principles if he were to cut deals with a group that he considers to be the neocolonial party.

Say what you will, little Barack must've been pretty damn smart get those formative anti-colonial ideas when he was very young. And BHO, Sr. must've spent a lot of time shoving Frantz Fanon down the throat of a child who was two when Sr. cut out. We'd love to hear much more about the psychology of traumatic parental relationships & the embrace of anti-colonialism. And we should all get a laugh from the idea that not meeting the Republicans "halfway" (Oh, sensible, split-the-difference compromise, wherefore art thou?) is the fault of anyone but the obstructionist & neo-colonialist Republicans.

Don't think for a moment that vain arrogant narcissist Obama is the only anti-colonial elitist here. If elitists are "people who think they're better than everyone else," Kathryn Jean certainly thinks D'Souza is better than you know who.

LOPEZ: If you have so much in common with Barack Obama, how did you wind up as a conservative intellectual, now president of an evangelical university?

D’SOUZA: Obama remains frozen in his father’s time machine. His anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of Africa in the 1950s: state confiscation of land, confiscatory taxation, and so on. My anti-colonialism is the anti-colonialism of India in the 21st century. Recently, the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, gave a speech at Oxford in which he gave two cheers for colonialism. He said India is growing fast and is on its way to becoming a superpower. How? Because the Indians speak English, they have technology, they have universities, they have property rights, they have democracy. And why do they have these things? They got them from the British. Now, Singh could never have said that a generation ago. But the world is changing. Poor countries today have a better solution to the legacy of colonialism. They are able to use their cheap labor costs to make what other people want to buy. This is what the economist Thorstein Veblen once called “the advantage of backwardness.” So the difference between Obama and me is that I have embraced the new world of globalization and free trade, and he continues to be haunted by his father’s ghost.

Oh, holy fuck, just put a sock in it already. Meet the New Anti-Colonialism: Globalization & free trade, & a chance at exploitation by a corporate entity rather than an emperor. D'Souza might try thawing himself from the Portuguese colonialism his ancestors embraced. And what is evangelicalism but religious colonization? 

Degeneration into "Go fuck yourselves, you insufferable buffoons" territory comes not long after.

LOPEZ: Why does Barack Obama look so angry on the cover of your book? 

D’SOUZA: Obama looks angry on the cover because he is angry. The cover image captures Obama’s suppressed rage and is true to the argument of the book.

Central to his thesis as well.

So there is a sublimated rage in Obama that is reminiscent of the rage of Barack Obama Sr., a man who often sat outside his hut and went into drunken rages against the West for denying him the fulfillment of his anti-colonial dreams.

This too is central to the thesis. After all, w/o the West, Obama Sr. wouldn't have had to have any anti-colonial dreams, would he?

M. Bouffant