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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
driftglass: "Ubik"
Ubik Labels: 2008 race, GOP, wingnuttery
is
Reagan.
“Jump in the urinal
And stand on your head.
I’m the one that’s alive.
You’re all dead.”-- Doggerel/quote from “Ubik” by Phillip K. Dick, and also the vibe that came reeking unmistakably off of the Great GOP Reagan Salad Toss last night.
Nope, didn’t see it. Saw the clips, skimmed the transcript, so in case you were all twitchy/curious about the GOP debate, others have already parsed it thoroughly, from various facets and points-of-view.
The penile…(HuffPo)
The British Isle (The BBC)
Absinthial…(via Peggy "The Cetacean Whisperer" Noonan:)"They stood earnestly in a row, combed, primped and prepped, as Nancy Reagan gazed up at them with courteous interest.
"But behind the hopeful candidates, a dwarfing shadow loomed, a shadow almost palpable in its power to remind Republicans of the days when men were men and the party was united. His power is only increased by his absence. But enough about Fred Thompson."
Antediluvial…"Three of the candidates indicated that they did not believe in it.
None is a front-runner but even so there will be American scientists who will feel deeply depressed that serious politicians in 2007 can be disputing the entire thrust of modern knowledge about how the world was formed and how it, well, evolved. "
Ductile… (Adj. “Easily led or influenced: capable of being fashioned into a new form:.)
From the transcript:(“ Starting with you, Governor, would the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for America.
Romney: Absolutely.
Moderator: Senator?
Brownback (?): It would be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom.
Moderator: Governor?
Gilmore (?): Yes, it was wrongly decided.
Moderator: Governor?
Huckabee (?): Most certainly.
Moderator: Congressman?
Hunter (?): Yes.
Moderator: Governor?
(Unknown): Yes.”
There was excrementitial (every time Tancredo opened his hole) and funebrial (”Dubya Who?”)
Gubernatorial…Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
Former Gov. James Gilmore, R-Va.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y.C.
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R- Ark.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas
Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R- Mass.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Col.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, R-Wis. .
Ventriloquial…(From every silken pocket of St. Ronny’s burial jammies came tiny, squeaky voices thrown from the platform yipping ‘No, I’m Reagan!’)
And, of course, puerile…(HuffPo again)
And yet curiously, no one chose the obvious: A science fiction overview.
So here you go.
Once upon a time there was a writer named Phillip K. Dick. Or you might know him as Horselover Fat. Anyway, he wrote lots of fine novels, many thousands of which seem to have been made into movies, which is kind of a pity, since he hacked around at the margins of success his whole life and only got rich after he shuffled off his mortal coil.
There is a lesson in there somewhere probably.
He also wrote a nifty short story called “Faith of Our Fathers” about an alien invader and/or God that passes itself off as a Mao-like dictator by saturating the food and water with hallucinogens and keeping everybody doped to the retinas every minute of every day. It was a memory collision of that story with Ubik that led to the graphic above.
Anyway, “Ubik” is one of his novels which involves a very unusual future (Or is it the present? Or the past?) dominated by some kind of aggressive entropy on steroids...and a consumer product called “Ubik’. Which can be anything. Cigarettes. Peaches. Cars. Dessert topping. Floor wax. Pomade. Liver pills. Anything.
Here may or may not be some of the advertisements for Ubik lifted from various sites:"Friends, this is clean-up time, and we're discounting all our silent electric Ubiks by this much money. Yes, we're throwing away the bluebook. And remember: every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed."
"Wake up to a hearty, lip-smacking bowlful of nutritious Ubik toasted flakes, the adult cereal that's more crunchy, more tasty, more ummish. Ubik breakfast cereal, the whole-bowl taste treat! Do not exceed recommended portion at any one meal."
"If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings and Loan. She'll take the frets out of your debts. Suppose, for instance, you borrow fifty-nine postcreds on an interest-only loan. Let's see, that adds up to- "
“And remember: every Ubik in our lot has been used only as directed.”
“The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik.”
“Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.”
“Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid prolonged use.”
“So try Ubik. And be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution.”
“If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings and Loan.”
And all the while, our protagonist -- the very confused Joe Chip -- desperately tries to figure out what in the Hell is going on.
Like the GOP, he does not know for sure what is real anymore and what is not...
[[SPOILER ALERT. Advance no further if you want to remain blissful virginal regarding certain Exciting!Plot!Points of the novel. SPOILER ALERT]]
Why are the people and things he knows aging, dying and putrefying around him at phenomenal speed?
Is it some ravaging disease?
Or is everything around him devolving through time? Is something flinging him backwards towards 1939 like a stone skipping across a pond?
Or is he trapped in a cryonic mausoleum in his own time with other half-deads just like him. Sealed into his own mind and hoving between this world and the grave while his life force is gobbled up by something unseen and unstoppable.
The cues he gets via every mass media outlet he sees, reads or hears seem to be directed at him personally, but the messages are deformed and cryptic. All he gets are the ads, and comes to understand that it is only the proper and continuous application of the omniproduct -- “Ubik” (use as directed) -- that is keeping his reality propped up.
Only Ubik keeps terrifying forces beyond his reach and comprehension safely at bay.
Joe never quite truly learns what Ubik is; only that it is the salvation of his reality, and is being offered you today only for the Low!Low! Price of...“So if looming political annihilation and the end of your theocrat sprint towards Democracy’s end-zone is giving you the collywobbles, remember there is nothing as full of electorally refreshing, memory-wiping, pig-people-pleasing, Elmer Gantrifying, hyperpatriot yumminess as good ol’ fashioned American-made Ubik.
*(Prolonged use may cause gastric distress, uncontrollable anal leakage and fascism.)
“Remember, Ubik/11/2001 changed everything, and you are either with Ubik or with the terrorists”*
- posted by driftglass
Grog: "A Tale of Three Republicans"
Three: different, yet alike
Thanks to Grog for this great first post - THANKS G!
Or "Why have they voted for Democrats since 2004 and how might they vote
in 2008".
I have three friends, I've known one since 1979, one since around 1992,
the third since 1995. Since 2004, they've voted for Democrats, to
varying degrees. Recently, I was able to sit down and talk to them
about their votes, why they've changed them and how they see 2008
playing out.
What they say might surprise you.
First, what do these three have in common? All characterize themselves
as stereotypical late Boomer Republicans in that they are socially
liberal, fiscally conservative. All three are white, college educated
and are associated with the federal government either as employees or
are working for contractors who are defacto gubmint subsidiaries. All
three have children. All three live in lily white suburbs, albeit in
vastly different locations and all have children in grade school. All
are between 45-51. And all voted for Republican Presidential candidates
since the first was eligible to vote in 1976, with some exceptions which
I'll outline below.
And all three regret the day they voted for the Worst President Ever.
And all three rue the fact that the Republican Party that they tended to
vote with all their adult lives is not what they want it to be.
Lemme start with the most recent friend. He lives in a lily white St
Louis suburb (aren't they all) and is a typical pointy-haired,
mid-manager type at Boeing. Unlike the other two, he's also a "pro-gun"
person but not out there on the fringes. He owns guns, likes to target
shoot with them but isn't one of these "we all need the right to bear
bazooka" types. Recently on a car ride back east with him and another
friend (who is a DFH like me), he floored us by asking "can you believe
that 30% of this country still supports that moron in the White House?"
I was floored. He went onto say that last year in the MO Senate
campaign, he voted for McCaskill! By now I was glad I was sitting down.
And this from a guy who had voted for No-Talent when that craptacular
piece of party hackdom was his Congressman. But my friend was appalled
not only by No-Talent's unceasing loyalty to a White House run by crooks
and incompetents, but also by his hard move to the right wing
Christopath side of the Party. And this from a guy who voted for the
Worst President Ever both times! And voted Republican for Preznit back
to 1980.
Next up, the middle friend. He's retired Army and during his last tour
of duty, worked in Darth Cheney's office! Yup, the stories he can tell.
Every bad thing you've heard about cherry picking intelligence, having a
policy set in place and the facts be damned and a woeful ignorance of
the world as it existed in 2003, well, he'll confirm it. He lives in
the DC area and works for a contractor. In 2000, he states he made the
biggest voting mistake of his life by voting for Nader. He at least saw
thru the Dry Drunk but couldn't bring himself to vote for Gore,
primarily because of how Gore campaigned. So, he voted for Nader.
Oops. He voted for Kerry in 04 and obviously voted for Webb for Senate
in 06. He's seen first hand what the neocons have wrought, not only on
this country, but the world and his party. And like the first friend,
he's scared to death by the Christopaths and crooks running the party.
Finally, the last, and oldest friend. He's a Marine reservist who works
for....an intelligence agency. Like the middle friend, he bemoans the
total lack of talent and skill that's being "recruited" into his agency.
No longer are people prized for their analytical skills, instead, they
hire lots of journalism majors and tell them to mostly just compile
"facts" into reports. Just like the Washington Stenographer Corps has
been doing for the better part of a decade now. This friend voted Repub
until 1992 when he voted for Perot. But he voted for Dole in 96 and
Dumya in 2000. I don't think he voted for a Presidential candidate in
04, that's how irked he was with both sides of the equation. He voted
for Webb in 06 and still apologizes to me for voting for the Worst
President Ever. He never imagined things would get this bad.
There you have it. Three very disgruntled voters who tend to vote
Republican. But when asked about how they'll vote in the Presidential
election next year, the answers surprised me.
All three consider the current Republican candidates not worth voting
for. They have various reasons from how many of them represent the
Reich Wing of the party, sorry, they've seen how that group has fucked
things up here for the last six years. McCain is viewed as too old and
too pandering. Ghouliani is well, Ghouliani, in other words, they
recognize him for the nutcase that he is. The rest? Waaaaay too
socially conservative for their tastes. None brings even a glimmer of
liking from these guys.
But what they have to say about the current field of Dems was
surprising.
Friend #1, the one who didn't really bail on the party until last year,
is probably the most open-minded of the three. He'd consider voting for
Clinton and is willing to give her, and everybody else on the Democratic
side, a fair shake. An amazing reaction given how Clinton is viewed by
many people and the media spin that continues to fuel that perception.
Friend #2 wants "the adults to come in and take over". He's become a
big Gore fan over the last couple of years and truely hopes Gore ver 2.0
enters the race soon since he sees Gore as the only "adult" on the stage
who could provide the leadership and training needed to drag this
country out of the mess this regime has put us in. If not, Edwards is
his current pick of the Dems. What he has to say about Clinton is not
kind. Many of us will fight her tooth and nail in the primaries but in
the end, will hold our nose and vote for her. Not Friend #2. He simply
won't vote. Or find a third party candidate, remember, he voted for
Nader in 00.
Friend #3 also wouldn't vote for Clinton under any circumstances. Like
Friend #2, he's got just enough of an independent streak in him to not
vote the party line just like he did in 92 when he voted for Perot.
Aside from that, like Friend #1, he's giving the rest of the Dem field a
good look and feels there are some good candidates in there.
Although at first glance these three might look like what Kos terms
"Libertarian Democrats", they really aren't. Friends #2 and #3 have
decidely non-libertarian and certain non-neocon views of US foreign
policy, probably due to their backgrounds whereas Friend #1 doesn't
really care that much. And their domestic policy leanings are far from
even soft libertarians. Yeah, they view a lot of government as bloated,
pointless and counter-productive but they also see that government has a
vital role to play across society and value competently run government
programs and agencies as being beneficial to society as a whole. And
unlike most self-professed libertarians I've met who've used that
ideaology as mostly an excuse to trying to cut their tax payments, these
guys don't mind paying taxes if they feel what their putting into the
system is managed wisely.
So, where does this leave us? Assume for a moment that this country is
divided into 3rds, 1/3 True Believers on the Right, 1/3 like us, and 1/3
somewhere in between. My 3 friends fall into the latter group but
obviously the latter group is much more diverse than 3 white guys living
in the suburbs.
But, if Clinton is nominated, we might just lose 2/3s of that
demographic of the vote. These guys aren't looking for someone centrist
or more to the right on certain issues, they're looking for someone who
they feel will provide the leadership and vision this country needs over
the next decade and both don't see Clinton providing that. These guys
have a strong conservative streak in them and yet, they detest DLC-style
campaigns that were alledgedly designed to woo voters just like them.
ATTENTION DLC: WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Argh, I hate the whole "electability" perspective but that's just what
I'm lurching into with this diary not to mention coming right up the
line line in terms of Hillary bashing. And clearly, 3 data points do
not a trend make! Nonetheless, my three friends provide an insight as
to how a certain conservative-leaning demographic can
easily vote for a bold Democrat in 08. Two of them are
holding their breath but have also watched the Democratic Party time and
time again over their voting lifetimes end up choosing the "wrong"
candidate.
- posted by Grog
Res Ipsa Loquitur: "It's Over"
Labels: GOP
Someone break the news to 'em, for god's sake
Thanks to Res Ipsa Loquitur for this insightful cross-post from Rising Hegemon - THANKS RES!
There's a great scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch and Sundance break into Sheriff Ray Bledsoe's house to to ask him to help them evade the "super posse" by enlisting in the army. Furious that he may be seen in the company of "known outlaws," Bledsoe takes the opportunity to explain the reality of their situation to them.Bledsoe: You are crazy. Both of you: crazy! They'd throw you in jail for a thousand years each! They forget all about the years of thieving and robbing and they take you into the Army - which is what you want in the first place. There's something out there that scares you; but it's too late. No, you should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had the chance. You may be the biggest thing that ever hit this area, but you're still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid. But you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over! Don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody! And all you can do is choose where.
Watching the clips of Victoria Toensing lying testifying in front of congress today, reading the transcript of Tony Snow spinning at today's gaggle, and thinking about why the administration chose Wednesday to announce that the guy who confessed to planning 9/11 five years ago had confessed all over again, I couldn't help but think of Butch and Sundance. They thought all they needed to do was to escape the posse. But Bledsoe understood the deeper truth: that the world had changed and that E.H. Harriman and the rest of the people in it weren't going to put up with Butch and Sundance robbing them anymore.
The Republicans have a Butch and Sundance problem. They've either failed -- or are petulantly refusing -- to realize that 11/7 changed everything. Americans are onto their bullshit and no amount of Kate O'Bierne yipping, "She wasn't covert!" or Matt Drudge screaming "Clinton fired U.S. Attorneys (and got a blow job)!" or Anne Coulter screeching, "He's a faggot!" or Madingaling howling, "The mosque wasn't 'destroyed'!" is going to change that. Americans have had enough. It's over.
Remember how it ended for Butch and Sundance? I wonder how it will end for the Republican party?
- posted by Res Ipsa Loquitur
Tom Watson: "Party of Bigots"
National shame
A big thank you to Tom Watson for this terrific cross-post - THANKS TOM!
A few years ago, a business trip took me through some of the great battlegrounds on this continent. Birmingham. Montgomery. Tuskegee. Selma. To my tour guide at the time, a liberal white judge from Alabama, they were as sacred to the American text as Gettysburg and Yorktown. He spoke with deep reverence about the struggle of black pilots to fly in the Second World War, the bus boycott, the Freedom Riders, and the bombings in Birmingham. He didn't shy away from the personal history, either, and strongly recommended Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home, the memoir of the daughter of a white supremacist family in Birmingham. Her story, he said, was the story of thousands of white sons and daughters of Alabama.
When we walked through the brilliant Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, he had a quiet suggestion: things change, Alabama has changed, we've all changed.
And he was right. We have changed. But lately, I've come to feel we're not as far down the road as many of us think we are. Even as Alabama does a bonanza business in civil rights tourism, the history feels nearer; the bigots in our grand American tapestry are not so neatly sown into the margins. They're right there in the middle. They have a place in the national party of bigotry.
One national political party does business with bigots - openly and in thinly-coded language.
One national party came to power on the strength of a regional strategy aimed at scratching the scars of the civil rights era till they bled, and delivered a stream of bloody-red electoral votes.
One national party tolerates bigoted speech at its national gatherings, on its mainstream blogs, and on the lips of its grand commentators and media wizards.
That party is the Republican Party - the only national party where bigotry is accepted and in some quarters, openly encouraged.
In what other political movement could a prominent commentator call another human being a "faggot" at a national conference and still possess a career or a pulpit; or worse, have apologists line up to wave it off as "humor." The Republican candidates all issued the usual statements about Ann Coulter's anti-gay attack on John Edwards, but they sounded like a platoon of little captains dressed like Claude Rains in Casablanca. Shocked, one and all.
"With a single word, Coulter sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees," mourned Michelle Malkin.
But Malkin's got it wrong - Coulter didn't sully the hard work of CPAC's tribe; she represented it. She didn't tar their collective reputation; she embodies it.
Keep in mind, these people cheered and applauded wildly after Coulter's remark. These are people who believe it was fair game, that they're fighting a righteous battle against the "homosexual agenda." Coulter didn't offend any of them.
Don't believe me? Go read the comments on Malkin's blog, or over at FreeRepublic, or any of the "mainstream" clubhouses where conservative Republicans hang their virtual hats. Or take a look at some of the hats and t-shirts they were selling in the hallways. Or watch MSNBC: I just watched Pat Buchanan call Coulter "courageous" and Tucker Carlson agreed with him. Intolerance sells to this crowd. Any candidate who speaks to CPAC must know that. Indeed, this was a return appearance for Coulter. They like her. Here's what she said last year, to raucous applause:
"I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"
Coulter's word offended like a back-hand to the face of our political conscience, but Newt Gingrich showed what the real Republican Party apparatus thinks in his remarks about New Orleans at the self-same Conservative Political Action Conference. Hurricane Katrina, declared almost-candidate Gingrich, merely uncovered:
"...the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."
Mmmmm. Those folks in the Ninth Ward aren't good citizens. We get it, Newt. We get it. Ever since Reagan's successful and utterly calculated southern strategy, one party has leaned hard on its end of the pool table - and done its best to collect the bigot vote. As blogger John Cole - no liberal - puts it:
Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the same visible, high profile, symptom of the problem with what is modern ‘conservatism.’ Throw in Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Dinesh D’Souza, and the rest, if you still don’t understand....the reason her comments are a problem is that the majority of the ‘conservative’ movement is dominated by people who think there is something wrong with homosexuality and that there are few things worse than being a “faggot.”
Prejudice doesn't leave us easily, and our collective march toward real civil rights is not as far along as many of us think. In this year's race for President, we have a woman, a black man, and a Mormon and each has taken the arrows of bigotry. After all, this is a country where Rush Limbaugh is a millionaire and Maureen Dowd collects a paycheck from the New York Times on the basis of her ability to stereotype; in her world, Barak Obama is a little boy in need of wise (white) counsel while Hillary Clinton is a "feral" woman, conniving and calculating.
I started this post recalling a trip to Alabama for a reason. Two Democrats were in Selma this weekend to commemorate the historic march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, and while the press played the civil rights gathering as a battle between the Clintons and Obama for the black vote (some truth to that), I was struck by how the entire legacy of civil rights is anathema to Republicans and conservatives. It was easy to recall how the conservative intellectuals of the 50s and 60s, led by a young William F. Buckley, opposed civil rights.
Their legacy is a party in which hate and intolerance are winked at, shrugged off as humor, used in barely-coded language, and celebrated in electoral victories as "true conservatism."
UPDATE: Digby, as usual, gets it right: "For forty years the Republicans have been winning elections by calling liberals "faggots" (and "dykes") in one way or another. It's what they do. To look too closely at what she said is to allow light on their very successful reliance on gender stereotypes to get elected."
- posted by Tom Watson