Whiskey Fire

Brand Management

by flory

As I'm sure most of you have seen, the NYTimes is doing a series of articles on Big Shitpile and who's to blame for the mess we find ourselves in. Various parties have weighed in on the blame game. All seem to be in agreement that Bunnypants and his fellow travelers (Phil Gramm, Alan  Greenspan et al) bear the lion's share of the blame, which is undoubtedly true.

But everyone is trying to view the Bush Administration's actions thru some kind of principled ideological lens. As if it was a true belief in market fundamentalism that led to the mistakes that led directly to Big Shitpile. The answer is much simpler than that, George W and his enablers -- like his father and St Ronnie before him -- entered office determined to soak up as much of the national wealth for themselves and their cronies as was humanly possible...and they bloody well succeeded.

There were no principles involved:

That Bush had as a goal increased home ownership is, quite bluntly, irrelevant. It is a worthy goal, and certainly one that could be achieved without forcing the collapse of the financial system.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn't a worthy goal -- but it was never the Bush Administration's goal. Their goal was not to increase home ownership, but to increase home construction, thereby increasing the wealth of their developer constituents. The fact that home ownership had to increase in order to drive increasing home construction was incidental to their 'goals'.

Likewise, eliminating oversight in the financial markets never had anything to do with any Friedmanesque argument for letting markets regulate themselves. It was simply a means of making sure that insiders were always dealt the winning hand. Those insiders contributed heavily to Republican causes.

(To be fair, they also contributed to Democrats -- but that doesn't change the storyline; the only ideology involved was making sure the rich got richer).

There are many other examples: Social Security privitazation is the most obvious. The Iraq war -- and Rummy's DoD 'transformation' -- had much more to do with funneling money to defense contractors than it did with "Teh War on Terror". The response to Katrina wasn't accidental incompetence at FEMA; it was a planned effort designed to depopulate the poorer parts of New Orleans in the interest of lucrative high-end redevelopment. School vouchers in a Republican fantasy world would decimate public schools and leave the 'business' of education in private -- and presumably conservative, science hating -- hands.

All of which is why Republican attempts to 'redefine' their brand are so fascinating. How do you redefine greed and the worst sorts of cronyism as something laudable and electorally attractive? More importantly, what does it say about the country if they manage to pull it off?

From Hell to Breakfast

by Ripley (with apologies by typepad)

It's the most wonderful time of the night
When Ripley is drinking
And everyone's thinking
Just turn out the lights....

It's the most wonderful time
Of the night!

It's Festivus time, kids! And if there's anything that can bring us all together - gay, black, white & uptight, gangstas, supermodels, preachers and shiksas - it's Festivus.  Huzzah!  (I said 'Huzzah', damn it!  Get with the program!) 

You there - you're pissed off about the mimmbleflazzit...  Festivus!

And you - yes, you, with the glasses and the attitude... Festivus!

And you, Johnny Bug Up Yer Ass... Festivus, motherfucker! 

One day.  That's all I'm asking of you.  One day to step back and let your love flow.  It doesn't take any effort, it doesn't take any special diet or Chuck Norris exercise equipment... just enjoy Festivus.

We have this one day, kids.  One day to air our grievances...  Ooh, goody!

First - Obama hasn't done quite exactly what I'd like him to do.  Festivus!

Next - PUMA.  Festivus, you fucking low-rent Republican dipfucks! (Hi, Darragh!)

Then - American Big Banks and Wall Street Whores.  Someone will find you and make your life very uncomfortable.  (We'll be rubbing our hands together, gleefully, over our barrels of burning whatever the hell you burn in barrels, when you live on the streets.)  Festivus, you twathounds from Hell !

Then - Limbaugh, Hannity, neocon bloggers and slurp monkeys like Bob (I practically know something!) Owens, Megan (I earned my own money! hee hee!) McCardle, Ed (I'm not Michelle's bitch!) Morrisey, Glenn (I'm a lawyer and... oh, who am I kidding?) Reynolds, that other dipshit's name I can't think of right now, Michelle (I'm fucking relevant, dammit!) Malkin, and whoever the fuck else dips their slippery lips into the wingnut gravy train and expects America to pay them a salary.  Festivus, you pieces of zero charisma, God-fucked-up-won't-happen-again flotsam and... oh, go fuck yourselves!  I mean.. really!

Finally - the Bush administration.  Fuck. You. to Peru and back. Sweet, mythical baby Jesus in a manger, I hope Hell comes to find you before you die. 

And now, we raise the aluminum pole...

I love you all. (With the exception of those noted above and some spineless Democratic elected officials of great renown)

Times are tough - we all know it and many of us are living through it.  There is hope.  I've been fortunate enough to be involved in the KINship Project, where I could try to bring a little bit of joy to some folks who need joy.  This is what we do - because we care aout people, not party or ideology or voting record. 

I'm so grateful to Thers for giving me a wider platform for my odd and occasional ramblings.  I'm grateful for all of you who take the time to read my sometimes profane blitherings and make the odd comment.  They can mock me, but they'll never mock me like we mock them.

You truly are the reason for the season.

(What, like you didn't think I'd end with that bit?  C'mon,  I love you all, but... it's Xmas, G!)

[Update] - Typepad is on my Naughty list.  So, here's the damned video:

Rip -

Last Wishes, Xmas Edition

by va

Dear Santa,

I've been piecing together evidence of a vast right-wing conspiracy against you! This has required painstaking reading of conservative venues for upwards of 15 minutes. The strategy is two-pronged: they're waging a PR battle, saying things like, we need to save Xmas from atheists! and, We'll start a Civil Fucking War if we can't have Jesus everywhere? And the other prong is basically to huff and puff and melt your place down with Global Warming. And then to drill the very fuck out of it! Take for example the President of the Chevron, David O'Reilly (no relation to Bill?) who just last June told Larry King,

Well, nobody's really finding oil at the North Pole

which you might feel to be a great relief, given that Larry King's question was "What about drilling at the North Pole? Cheaper to drill there?" until you see just with what word David O'Reilly concluded that nefarious sentence, which in point of fact is

YET.

Santa, you are FUCKED dude! It's pretty obvious that Chevron has infiltrated your workshop with elfin spies who are sneaking off to look for oil when they should be making those horrible Hess trucks. Basically you've been totally disappeared from the public consciousness with all this horseshit about Xmas being about Jesus and Mary and wise men and some camels and asses and other irrelevant personages (St. Joseph, e.g.), so no one will notice when you drown in the icy arctic waters. Thus your remains may turn into fossil fuel in the next million years; thus future Big Oil can drill you up and pump you into the gas tank of a CEO in the future United Megachurches of Amerikkka to power a piston-burst or two while he drives his SUV from the local gun shop to the bedroom of a suspiciously under-reproductive couple where said CEO will carry out his mission to ensure that no coitus is to be interrupted! Fuck! I'm not such a big fan of this Xmas mortivity scene!

***

This is all by way of saying that this year, my Xmas wish list has a certain urgency. I write to you tonight, looking out my window on the city's jagged silhouette of church spires and apartment buildings and smokestacks billowing smoke in the frigid wind, across the dark night sky, under which reside all the good citizens who love and breathe and grieve and dream, to make some final requests on our behalves before the True and Good Spirit of Xmas vanishes from this busy Earth forever. FOREVER! It's "below the fold." My wish list is.

The Gob: Smacked

Here is a very interesting sentence from an NYT article on the enduring legacy of Bush v. Gore, which, as nobody could have ever predicted, seems to have become a precedent after all, despite the SC majority's invocation of the Constitutional doctrine of "whoops no backsies." I swear to you that this is a real sentence spoken by a real Law Professor who is not from Wisconsin:

"Bush v. Gore introduced an important idea," Professor Issacharoff said. "It is that the political process has rules, the rules have to be fairly applied and what those rules need to be known up front."

!

Yes, that is my comment:  !

!

"Apparently there is no limit, Joe remarked. Anything can be said in this place and it will be true and will have to be believed."

(Just to note that the article is fine -- but that is one mind-bender of a quotation...)

A Special Note Re: Rankin-Bass

Hi. This is Thers, acting Ranking Grand Supreme Skull-Lord of the Whiskey Fire Central Institute for Advanced Research in Saying Bad Words on the Internet.

Most readers know that the opinions expressed on this blog are Thers's own and don't always reflect the views of the Whiskey Fire Central Institute for Advanced Research in Saying Bad Words on the Internet. Such is the case with Thers's comments about Rankin-Bass animated Christmas specials. Our Central Institute has partnered with Rankin-Bass on a number of important projects -- including an update of "Frosty the Snowman" entitled "Fuck You, Frosty, And Your Hat Looks Stupid" -- and have a great deal of respect for their cute little Snow Misers and their whimsical depiction of soul-numbing, conformist, "reindeer games." They are key leaders in the holiday-nostalgia industry and we look forward to working with them in the future.

MORE: Instagit is such an ass. 

POPPING A CAP on Matt Yglesias. Sorry, if you can’t stand what bloggers blog, don’t pretend you’re cool enough to hire bloggers. Because when you do what Jennifer Palmieri did, you demonstrate that you’re just a bunch of political hacks with a blog, and you’ve undercut your blogger’s position in the future. Dumb. Too dumb for a position in the Obama Administration, I’d think.

Kill me. I hope to Christ that no one in the Obama administration at any point ever thinks to themselves, "gosh, I was going to give this otherwise qualified person a job, but look here! It seems that she violated the largely imaginary rules of blog etiquette!"

And what on earth makes Glenn Reynolds think he is not in the class of "political hacks with a blog"?

Merry Make It Stop

The children insist upon endless viewings and re-viewings of Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Fuck Rankin/Bass Christmas specials.

You may have a warm space in your heart for Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, a certain nostalgia for childhood evenings snuggling up on the couch in your footy pajamas, hot cocoa in your pudgy little paw, pudding curdling in your tummy, feverishly counting down the minutes until Rudolph and his cretinous Christmas-Town pals would come on the screen and sing horrible holiday shit at you -- and you ate that shit up, didn't you? Didn't you? Do you know WHY you loved that godawful crap about Snow Misers and Bumbles and MeisterBurgers and all that other Kris-Kringley drivel? Because even then you were a weak-willed, cringing little milksop, devoid of taste. "But I was only six!" you exclaim, cut to the quick. THAT IS NO EXCUSE. You should have insisted upon more wholesome Yule-tide fare. Gregorian chants, perhaps. You and your family should have shut off the damn television for ONCE and held hands next to the Christmas Tree and chanted, chanted, MOTHERFUCKING CHANTED until the tears dripped down your red, raw nose and fell with a sad little "plink" on the floor. Then you should have gotten Dad a nice glass of whiskey and slunk away, ashamed, off to bed to reflect on your disgusting little sins, resolved in your mushy little heart not to be such a pain in the ass to your long-suffering father in the long years to come.

FUCK RANKIN/BASS CHRISTMAS SPECIALS. Let me just go see what happens when you put a DVD in the microwave.

UPDATE. There is no "joke" here. This is REAL.

UPDATE. In a world where the end of I Am Legend did not provoke Bloody Reprisals, anything is, after all, possible.

FURTHER. Molly Ivors and I have a Profound Disagreement, as to the music that might be played at our funerals. If she dies first, I am to play "Salisbury Hill" -- I find this unacceptable, as I've never thought that song was all that great. I mean, it's good, but you know? On the other hand, Molly I only laughs whenever I say that if I die, I want my funeral hymn to be "Momma Said Knock You Out" by LL Cool J. But that song has very great emotional resonance for me. This is a Conundrum of Modern Couplehood and I adduce it as such.

The Shoes Have It

-By Jake T. Snake

So I have been thinking a lot lately about this whole shoe throwing episode and pondering how this fabulous display of utter disrespect might be leveraged and extended. I mean we all have shoes. Couldn't we simply display them both as a sign of our own disrespect for the current administration and as a sign to the Iraqui people that yes, it is horrendously fucked up what our country has done to their country? What would happen if we all decided to publicly display a shoe on our mailboxes, office doors, doors to our homes etc? Get creative, but go ahead and put out a shoe and when people ask, tell them January 20, 2009 can't come fast enough. Excuse me if you will, I have to go tie something on the mailbox.

Let the Competition Begin; Meet My Team

The Editors have the Wingers up. The Editors provide no pictures of Kip Winger though, which is too bad.

Here I'm going to link to a cool Kip Winger picture. It comes from an Unofficial Kip Winger Tribute Page. It is the greatest Web Site anywhere. The picture is great because in it Kip Winger is all cool dressed like a Marine, and all around are these flying blond chicks with nightgowns and wings. He has a rifle and you know nobody will fuck with him.

In conclusion, Kip Winger is cool.

Hate Speech, the Fairness Doctrine, and Silencing Religious Heartland Voters

Scott has a post up which is well-intentioned, but unfortunately incorrect on the merits. Pastor Rick Warren is indeed in very grave danger of being silenced by intolerant bigots who are intolerant of and bigoted against intolerant bigotry.

To follow up on this, it's not merely that the California court's decision was directed entirely at state actors, and had no bearing on the actions of private churches at all. It's that the whole category of "hate speech," as it pertains to American law, doesn't exist. The state cannot restrict speech solely based in its content no matter how hateful or potentially dangerous; this has been well-settled federal law for nearly 40 years. (The separate category of hate crimes, which deal with the intent of the perpetrators of violent crimes -- which is always relevant -- as opposed to their beliefs per se is again of no relevance to Warren's claims.) This is recognized by critics of the libertarian American approach as well as those (like me) who generally favor it.

Whatever the decision Prop 8 sought to overturn had said, therefore, it simply could not have made any action by a church criminal, and anybody who actually knew anything about American politics and constitutional law would know that.

This analysis is fine, as far as it goes, but what Scott neglects to mention is that as soon as the new president and the Democrat congress ram the Fairness Doctrine down the nation's throat, violently and repeatedly, then it will be punishable by jail time in a very gay jail to say anything bad about gays, in public or in private. Pastors will be especially vulnerable, particularly after they are banned from mentioning God in their sermons. Warren is very likely to be led off in irons after speaking at the inauguration. And since everyone's guns will be confiscated, citizens will be unable to protest in any way.

You can find evidence of this upcoming legal reality on many highly reputable Internet web sites; I'm surprised Scott hasn't considered it. And given how suddenly everything is about to change forever, it's hard to see why homosexuals should be upset at being denied equal rights under the law. Any objective investigation of contemporary society must inevitably conclude that straight white Christian men are, as always, the most oppressed people ever.

Little Lines They Say

In brief:

1. Caroline Kennedy is having trouble with the upstate NY media...? I have no problem with her running for office in NY. But she has to run. I mean, damn! Nothing screams "not ready" more than a botched trip to Rochester, of all places. If you're ever in a position where you find yourself obliged to go to Rochester, NY, in order to make a good impression crucial to your personal future... you're in bad shape already, never mind if you then proceed to fuck it up. Should have started off in Plattsburgh, maybe, or if that's too fast-lane, Vestal Center, saying "hi!" to our chickens. Sheeeeeeesh...

That said, Charles Krauthammer is pretty comical; look who you gave us as president, ya big galoot. Kennedy would certainly be a better Senator right now than, say, Peter King, who has loads of "experience," but is also a horrible asshole. If Paterson were to nominate a placeholder, and CK wants to spend 2 years gearing up to fight King, then, well, excellent. THAT campaign I'll volunteer for, all out.

I just don't see it working in NY for her, being appointed, long term. Of course I may be wrong.

2. Fuck Rick motherfucking Warren, anyhow.

3. Mark Felt is dead. Nixon's revenge is complete. The fiend.

4. Mona Charen is talking about PORN!

Hugh Hefner, the godfather of mainstream porn, apparently does not have normal sex with his many girlfriends. Despite the presence of up to seven comely young women in his bed at a time, he uses porn for sexual satisfaction. Think about that.

Actually, please don't think about that, because it would make you scoop out your eyes with a grapefruit spoon, and then how would you read my blog?

But that is not to say there are no lessons here. Chief among these lessons is that, apparently, Mona Charen thinks about how Hugh Hefner masturbates, and she disapproves. If it were not for the Internet, I would never have known that. And now you know it too! I think that's great. Hooray for the Internet! Hooray! Hooray!

Dammit. When Mona Charen climbs into bed with seven comely young people, she fucks 'em, just like God intended! And when she masturbates, she does not use PORN, but presumably, only her fingers and the bottomless resources of her imagination. Hooray!

(I keep up with Hef via The Soup. And how could you not? -- Last link not safe for work. Or home, for that matter.)

5. I'm on a kick where I'm reading books that we have in the house, that are books I should have read, but for some reason have not. For instance, I just finished Dracula, by Gram Smoker. Never read it before, but had it in the house. It reads fairly well, though a lot of it is tedious 19th-century farting around. And then you also get a lot of stuff that should be scary, but then oddly, turns out to be rather dull, even for the characters themselves. The most egregious of these scenes occurs late in the book: Von Helsing is camping out with Mina, and the three Scary Chick Vampires show up to hassle Mina, but VH has put down Holy Communion Anti-Vampire Paste, and so all the Undead can do is say a lot of spooky shit and gesture a lot. VH says he isn't afraid, nothing happens, the sun comes up, the freaky broads go home, and VH takes a nap. Gripping stuff: "I got bored, eventually got some sleep, was never very alarmed" -- way to build the tension, Gram.

But then how much can you complain about a novel that kills off a stereotypical Texan just because someone has to die? Still, Wilkie Collins did this sort of thing a lot more entertainingly, if not much more deftly. Writing Victorian thrillers, that is, not killing Texans. At least, insofar as I'm aware.