Must be election time

At a time like this, the last thing either party needs right now is for some drug-addled hippie ® to start asking serious questions about real issues---it's all about rallying the base, you know.

Enter the birthers . . .



Hey don't knock it down . . .



. . . it sure took care of the health care "debate," didn't it?


MORE >

Don't Blame Obama

After all, what is a New Democrat to do?



Shush! Senator Palpatine is speaking...

Let's try and see if we can overhear what he is saying to his young Padawan.






"But...but what of the grassroots movement, what of the deep vein in the contemporary American psyche that the Obama campaign had tapped into?" you ask.

"What happened to all that?"

Good question.

I reckon you must be referring to the f&*king r%!ards.

The same thing that happened to Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, I suppose.

I suspect foul play.



MORE >

Much ado about nothing...

But then again I never ran for office.



Let me be clear:

I am not in favor of marriage - period!



That said, you do not see me lobbying congress for the abolition of marriage on the ground that I find it a backward and barbaric institution, now, do you?

The way I see it, what people want to do with their lives is entirely their own business.

"As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent."
~Socrates


MORE >

Goodfellas

"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster."
--- Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955

Modern day gangsterism . . .


...it really comes down to how many zeros you're looking at.



Gone are the days of Alphonso Capone and Nitti.
Today's Goodfellas are driven around Washington in Limousines.
Give it up! In this business, Eliot Ness has sold out.
Satan is celebrating the Mass. And so don't expect anyone will be confessing soon.

Il rêve de politique pour être un gangster moderne...
Gangster moderne, c'est juste ajouter quelques zéros
Jadis c'était : Alphonso Capone et Nitti
Aujourd'hui Les Affranchis roulent en Berline à Paris
Laisse ! Dans ce business, Eliot Ness est de mèche
Satan dirige la messe. Donc personne ne se confesse.

MORE >

The price of power

Well, you know what they say...



... If you have to ask...


MORE >

The Voice of Reason

-

Thank you! Thank you for trying to educate them liberal "dogmatist" out there about the reality of politics. It's a tough job but someone's got to do it. Max Baucus could not have said it any better.

Let's face it, most liberal "dogmatists" do not understand realpolitik the way Obama does.

Maybe this will help:

President Obama declared last week on ABC News that without healthcare reform the federal government would go bankrupt.

It's a reality. The Republicans know it. The Democrats know it.

This is the first refreshingly honest words that ever came out of Washington about what the so-called reform is really about. It's not about the people---it never was. It's about $$$.

Enters The Bill:


It's a bill that the Insurance Industry can live with and it will fix a situation that was threatening to become unmanageable for the government---any government.

You've heard it straight from the horse's mouth.

This, essentially, is what the bill is all about.

It's not a progressive bill.

It's not a centrist bill.

It is pretty much to the right of the political spectrum as such bills go.

It's a bill that the GOP could have written and could have been proud to own.

It's a good Republican bill.

Except that had a Republican congress or a Republican president, like say Bush, or even Reagan the great, tried to push such a bill, liberals (and these "dogmatic" leftists that Obama was decrying, and quite possibly Unions) would have been up in arms in the streets.

It took Nixon to go to China.

And it took Obama to shove that bill down the throat of his progressive base.

And ultimately it took Lieberman to put that pesky Public Option to rest---at long last. Well done "brother".


It is more or less the health care plan Max Baucus had introduced three months ago---before, imagine the nerve, congress dared tamper with it to include a public option, much to the White House's chagrin.

It is the bill that the main stream media had been cheer-leading for---the bill Chris Mathew was advocating on MSNBC.

All is well.

Quinty is right, Obama is "not a miracle worker"---he only played one on TV during the presidential campaign.

Obama is a grocery clerk. A store manager. A corporate state administrator whose job it is to take and implement the unpalatable decisions that the GOP wouldn't and couldn't take---what are Democrats for?

Just what the doctor healthcare industry ordered.
MORE >

The Newt American Century

-

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) which emerged as one of the leading architects of the government's public policy during George W. Bush presidency. More than twenty AEI alumni and visiting scholars and fellows served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions. AEI rents office space to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the leading voices that pushed the Bush administration's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq. While the PNAC has gone dormant and is nowadays keeping a low profile, a rebranded version of the project was recently launched by Bill Kristoll under the name of Foreign Policy Initiative.


Did someone say partay?


MORE >

Courageously fighting "needless and dangerous transparency"

Somebody's got to do it:

"Transparency in government is an American value, but it is not without limits,
no more than any of the values embraced in our Constitution, the transparency
in this case is needless and dangerous transparency."
---Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Press Conference: June 9, 2009)

MORE >

Move over Dick Cheney

A new GOP leader has emerged.

"The King is a visionary leader, and has the opportunity to be the new face of the Republican Party, which we need," say GOP strategists.

The GOP image makeover campaign has begun in earnest.


Don't be left out. The King needs YOU! All suggestions are welcome: Burger King Sign Generator.





MORE >

The Women Of Summer Want Men With Power

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, US President George W. Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney attend the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon December 15, 2006 in Arlington, Virginia. Praise was heaped on the outgoing secretary by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld used his farewell speech to call for an increase in military spending.

The New York Times

May 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Cheney Grabs a Third Term
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Dick and Rummy are at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, holding court. The maître d’ fawns. Waiters hover. Tourists snap pics on their digital cameras. Cable chatterers stop by to ingratiate themselves.
It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left.
They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists.
Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.
“That was funny when you were on Fox and Neil Cavuto called you Obama’s ‘ball and Cheney,’ ” Rummy grins, taking a gulp of his brunello.
Dick grunts, raising a fork of his Risotto Gucci with roasted free-range quail.
“The punks thought they could roll over us,” Vice mutters. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
Eyeing the quail, Rummy shakes his head. “Can you believe the nerve of that dadburn whippersnapper at the press dinner, saying your memoir would be called ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People?’ Whatever happened to the great White House tradition of giving respect to your predecessors?”
Dick is looking over at himself on the TV behind the bar, where Fox is doing a segment about how Republicans on the Sunday talk shows praised him for his shock-and-awe campaign against Obama.
“I can’t believe how easy it was to bring Obama into line,” Rummy says, gnawing on Gorgonzola. “We wouldn’t have needed waterboarding if everybody cracked like a peanut. It was even easier than getting the bit into Junior’s mouth. Way simpler than if we’d had to contend with McCain. In the end, the right guy won.”
Dick is surprised, too, but who can tell?
“You’re running national security now and everyone knows it,” Rummy says. “You got Obama to do an about-face on the torture photos. He’s using our old line about how it would endanger the troops. He’s keeping our military tribunals. His Justice Department invoked our state secrets privilege to try to get that lawsuit on torture and rendition dismissed. He’s trying to stop any sort of truth commission, thank goodness. He’s got his own surge going in Afghanistan. He’s withdrawing from Iraq more slowly. He’s extended our secret incursions over the Afghan border into Pakistan.”
Dick smiles on one side of his face.
“Transparency bites,” he snarls.
“By golly, yes,” Rummy says. “We controlled Junior by playing on his fear of looking like a wimp just as his dad did. And now we’re controlling Boy Wonder by playing on his eagerness to show that the Democrats are tough on national security. He’s a sucker for four-star generals, can’t resist anyone in uniform. Petraeus and Odierno speak and he jumps. If we want to roll him, we just send in the military brass flashing their medals.”
Rummy knocks back some more brunello, and shoos away some Japanese tourists after confiscating their cameras.
“I hear Poppy Bush is furious at you,” he says. “He’s telling folks he put Junior in your care and you stole his presidency and destroyed the Bush name and derailed Jeb’s chances to ever be president, and P.S., you wrecked the country and the Atlantic alliance to boot. He has it in for Lynne, too. Thinks she spun you up, like she did in high school with her flaming batons. He thinks you got loopy from all the heart procedures. And Colin’s mad at you.”
“He can go to yoga with Pelosi for all I care,” Dick growls.
The two old connivers clink glasses. “So,” Rummy muses, “what do we make our new White House boy toy do next?”
“Well,” Dick says. “He’s got to keep Gitmo open. It’s rich that his own party won’t give him the money to close it. The NIMBY factor works every time — no terrorists in my backyard. He’s got to stop this pansy diplomacy with Muslim nations. He’s got to let Bibi take out those Iranian centrifuges. He’s got to stop his Kodak moments and Commie book club with Hugo Chávez. He’s got to release those C.I.A. memos proving that we were right to rip up the Constitution. And, of course, he’s got to pardon Scooter.”
“Can we get him to do all that, Dick?”
Dick twinkles. “Yes, we can.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/opinion/20dowd.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

MORE >