Sadly, No!

In comments to an idiot’s post, Avedon Carol says:

You know, I’ve been feeling guilty because I did not defend Gore or critique Bush forcefully enough during 1999-2000, and if more of us had been on the job then, we might not be here now.

Normal people always wonder what they could have done to prevent something bad that happened. To this day, I still think of what we could all do differently if only we could turn back the clock.

Bush assures us that he never does. He and Laura had a good laugh that night, he and Laura had a great year. Now, watch this drive. We hit the trifecta.

True dat. I knew Bush would be bad enough, and that the election would be close enough, that I did vote for Gore in 2000, despite being more of a Green Party type person. I knew if Bush won there’d be a massive kleptocracy, and outright war on the poor, and a new Cold War with someone if they could create it (I figured with China). But I had no idea it would be this bad. Damn right, I wish I’d done more. But then they stole the election anyway.

Blah. Avedon’s real point was the juxtaposition of a blameless but sensitive and conscientious person’s tragic suicide to Dear Leader’s lack of responsibility and sheer inability to express contrition or admit failure. The former person, too decent for his own good, was an unknown, an apparently ordinary American. The latter, occupier of the most extraordinarily powerful position on earth and living idol of a political cult, is too indecent for the world’s own good. The one took too much responsibility, the other takes none at all.

Like Dear Leader, like his followers: wingnuts do now and probably always will refrain from any admissions of failure, acknowledgments of responsibility, displays of contrition. But that is their nature. It’s folly to expect better from them.

And it’s probably folly to expect it from their current or former fellow-travelers, but I wish for it anyway. Would that the Liberal Hawks performed rhetorical seppuku, admitted their responsibility, accepted blame, said they were sorry — and actually meant it! Instead, we got or get throat-clearing asides to the extent of, ‘Ok, I was wrong…but shut up about it; and now that that’s out of the way, here’s what decent liberals should do now for Iraq [insert slightly-tweaked neoconservative bullshit here]…’ And that’s if we get anything from them. This is unsatisfactory. So as a public service, in the voice of a generic Liberal Hawk I will attempt a mea culpa worthy of the fuck-up which should inspire it:

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I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling.

Shorter Michael Medved: Americans view Jews favorably because, unlike many religions, we generally are not known to aggressively proselytize. Maybe that’s the problem.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: In which ways are homosexuals, transgendered people and abortion providers exactly like pedophiles? No, I asked you first.

Shorter Jay Sekulow: A recent federal court ruling permits people of faith to discharge their professional duties however they see fit, which is just super.

Shorter Douglas MacKinnon: Have you ever noticed that, in today’s politically correct society, every single criminal depicted by movies, television and commercials is a white male? For example, take a look at the 1993 film, Falling Down.

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: If Lindsay Graham wanted you to feel safe, he’d let the president do whatever he wants. Since he won’t, he doesn’t.

Shorter Tony Blankley: Stammering Democrats would have been all too happy to surrender to the Nazis and return Jewish refugees to Hitler’s clutches, as illustrated in this fictional speech I’ve written.

Shorter John Stossel: It’s outrageous that some senators continue to resist being thrown in the briar patch. I say we should throw them in the briar patch!

Shorter Walter Williams: Wouldn’t it be possible to return to the days when the federal government hardly spent any money at all, and none of it on charity?

Shorter Mona Charen: I’m sure Americans would form a much higher opinion of Our President if the hostile White House press corps were replaced by a small group of conservative columnists.

Shorter Paul Weyric: Sen. James M. Inhofe: hard-working gentleman.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: While we bicker over who did what in the minutes and hours after Sept. 11, our enemies are prosecuting a war that lasts forever, and that’s a mighty long time – but I’m here to tell you, there’s something else: the afterworld.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: Increasing numbers of liberals are plotting the assassination of the president, even now.

Shorter Ben Shapiro: Who am I to judge the lifestyle choice of a fish who changes his gender as the result of exposure to pollution?

Shorter Maggie Gallagher: If given the choice between a filmmaker who just happens to be a Christian and a Clinton official who steals government documents, I know who I’ll choose to believe.

Shorter Brent Bozell III: Just because a scene or two in the otherwise remarkable film, Path to 9/11, happened to be false and assigned responsibility for the attacks, Team Clinton demanded that the network kill the production. The Reagan movie, on the other hand, was pulled from the air because it made the former president appear doddering and his First Lady looked mean.

Shorter Linda Chavez: I’m beginning to wonder if the president even has an election strategy.

Shorter Austin Bay: Democrats are hypocrites for wanting to censor The Path to 9/11, while basically worshipping “Piss Christ.”

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: The growing popularity of anti-Bush conspiracy theories is further evidence of liberal fascism.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I’ve come to realize that the only way to win the war on terror is to legalize opium.

Shorter Nathan Tabor: Now that we have Plan B, I suppose we won’t be needing Plan A – legal abortion. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Shorter William F. Buckley: While we all should admire the president’s steely-eyed determination to kill every last Muslim who wishes to do us harm, perhaps he might set his sights a bit lower so we may declare victory and move on.

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Right now is an excellent time to purchase a variable rate mortgage.

Shorter Cal Thomas: An initial report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence confirms many of the darkest suspicions about the president held by his greatest detractors, while a recent ABC docudrama does the same for Clinton’s opponents. However, we can’t afford to play the blame game now that we are in these wars.

For a long time now, the totality of the Republican platform has consisted of this demagogic ‘fact’: If it were not for Dear Leader’s heroic codpiece, in the form of torture, and Constitution-shredding, and warwarwar, you would be dead — dead, damn you, dead! And if it were not for brave armchair-Reveres continually chanting, “The Muslims are coming!” — which is the true Viagral force behind the codpiece — your home in Corncob, Yokel County, Red State America, would be a fuckin’ smokin’ crater, with turbaned heathens dancing on the rubble and your ashes!

So it is with great horror that Stanley Kurtz considers the thesis of John Mueller, who says all this fearmongering is overblown. Colonel Kurtz says that Mueller’s view is “plain stupid” and “dramatically misguided”. Sarcastically, he tells K-Lo: “Maybe you should just forget this whole 9/11 thing and refocus the site on domestic policy.” Clever way to underline Mueller’s sacrelige there, Stan.

But Kurtz does allow that something doesn’t quite add up in the neoconservative calculus:

Mueller does raise one legitimate point. It is a matter of great interest and significance that America has not seen a raft of attacks modeled on the Washington sniper. Cheap, low-level terrorism by someone willing to sacrifice his life could fairly easily bring chaos to our society, while being very difficult to stop. It’s tough believe that al Qaeda couldn’t arrange a series of such attacks if it really wanted to. This is a mystery to be solved, but especially given the London airliner plot, it does not show that al Qaeda has given up its terror plans.

Blarg! It is a mystery! Why indeed, Stanley, has this not happened? Don’t they hate us for our freedom? Aren’t they all nihilists, geopolitical serial killers? What happened to the suicide-bomber mentality that we were assured was universal among Muslims? In a world teeming with Islamofascists bent on genocide, why has this not happened? Don’t they sleep at night on their dirt beds, Koran under their turbans so that they may absorb hate of America by osmosis, dreaming of crushing the flower of Western Civilization underneath their charging camels? What’s going on here?

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Why do I loathe George W. Bush? Just read this transcript of his chat with Matt Lauer to find out:

Matt Lauer: And yet you admitted that there were these CIA secret facilities. OK?

President Bush: So what? Why is that not within the law?

Matt Lauer: The head of Amnesty International says secret sites are against international law.

President Bush: Well, we just disagree with him.

Well, that settles it, then. It’s legal if the president says it’s legal. And if someone disagrees… ehn, we’ll just keep doing it anyway. I guess we’re all ethical relativists now.

But wait! It gets better:

Bush: Plus, my job is to protect you.

“Yeah, shut up, Lauer! My job is to protect your ass, so don’t ask me how I go about doing it!”

Bush: And most American people, if I said [to them] that we had who we think is the mastermind of the 9/11, they would say, “Why don’t you see if you can’t get information without torturing him,� which is what we did.

Matt Lauer: I don’t want to let this “within the law issue� slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?

President Bush: I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing.

Again, the message here is clear: “Shut up, shut up, shut up. Do not question me about my methods. If you do, the terrorists could kill you. Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

Asshole. I cannot wait until the Democrats investigate your corrupt monstrosity of an administration and disgrace you before the entire world.

Five years later, I can’t think of anything more appropriate than the best song on my favorite rock and roll album:

David Bowie & Arcade Fire – “Five Years”

Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn’t a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlor, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don’t think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you’re beautiful, I want you to walk

We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got
We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got
We’ve got five years, what a surprise
We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes
We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that’s all we’ve got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

Kaye, is “on”… “fire,” this “week”:

The comeback kid . . . has his own “made for TV” mini-series

Kaye Grogan
September 9, 2006

The Democrats always want you to believe that they are straight-shooters — unless of course the pistol is aimed at them, then they want those who couldn’t hit the side of a barn door if their life depended on it, pulling the trigger.

Kaye, I think I speak for all humanity when I say that no one likes having a gun put to their head, regardless of party affiliation.

When the shoe is on the other foot, the Democrats start getting bunions — raising cane and demanding that their good name and image be restored. What good name? — and forget the image altogether.

That reads like a retarded kid’s attempt at writing an E.E. Cummings poem.

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The last comments thread has exploded into zaniness and spam-bottery. So consider this thread here an emergency open thread for now.

I’ll add some links or something in a bit.

Okay.

— Um, Adbusters is selling shoes now? Dunno what to think of that.

— Interesting

— Classic. Oh, did I say classic? Surely I meant something like “ever-embarassing”, and “conspiracy theory”. But then politics began in 2001. This piece is Just. Too. Radical!

— The Decline of American Civilization: The Final Bush Years. While previous albums were uptempo and raucous, this is dirgy, almost Swedish in its death metal vibe. Yet it’s more honest because so pessimistic.

— The Kingfish pushed FDR left, which was a good thing, and more than pays for his spawning of Gerald L.K. Smith on American politics (not to mention on my state, where Smith settled, the adornments of his Jesus Freakery polluting a once beautiful Ozark hillside).

Well, I’m feeling a bit peckish. What to do.. Oh, there’s Marie. She used to flirt with me back in the day. So, what’s up Marie?

“Oh, Redardo, last week I went on and on with the stab in the back theme.”

Enchantress!? Mein gott, ja!

Really? Wow. Umm ok. So who’s stabbing Dear Leader in the back this time?

“Leftists, of course.”

Oh, Marie, I love it when you go all Ilsa the She-Wolf on me. It’s not normally my taste but what can I say? You wear it well.

“But there’s more, Redardo. Now the proof, the undisputingable proof is gonna be shown on ABC that Bill Clinton stabbed America in the back! See, there were Saddam – bin Laden links but you Leftists didnt do anything about it when you had the chance and, well,

The Democrat Party has become a dangerous millstone around America’s neck, as they constantly undermine the president by repeating and their out and out lies and moronic talking points. They feed the listless brainwashed American public through a liberal biased media.

Honor the victims of 9/11 by watching the docudrama that tells the real truth. It is time to understand that a war on terror will not go away until all freedom loving people are resolved to stay the course in Iraq and do whatever is needed to protect our civilization. We can only be successful when every American is fully knowledgeable and supportive of President George Bush, our Commander-In- Chief.

I love it when you demand obedience to Dear Leader, Marie. I’m feeling an enemy within right now — within my pants! Would you like to see my fifth column? But there was no link, and ABC’s movie is fiction. Moreover, isn’t your demand that everyone support Dear Leader a little bit idolatrous for a self-professed Christian? I mean, that’s no problem for me, atheistic homo liberal abortionist that I am, but I’m sorta surprised at you…

Anyway, you are yin to my yang, Marie, but I think your jackboots are sexy, and it’s a great fashion statement that they match your bage.

So far as I know, AJP Taylor‘s essay on the Irish Famine is not online anywhere in its whole form. I think it’s his finest; it speaks to my brain and my bones, but beyond any tribalist or ideological way, it speaks to my sense of outrage. So I’ll copy it out in my two-fingered manner, from this source.*

It’s more relevant today than one may suspect. Read it, relish it. And if you can, think of whom nowadays the villains in Taylor’s essay resemble. Lord John Russell and Sir Charles Trevelyan have been dead as fried chicken for many years, yet their type persists and indeed has flourished in our ugly age.

Sorry, boyos, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!

Genocide
New Statesman. A review of The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith (1962)

When British forces entered the so-called ‘convalescent camp’ at Belsen in 1945, they found a scene of indescribable horror; the wasted bodies of 50,000 human beings who had died from starvation and disease. Kramer, ‘the beast of Belsen’, and his assistants were hanged for this atrocious crime. Only a century before, all Ireland was a Belsen. Nearly two million Irish people died of starvation and fever within five years; another million fled, carrying disease to Liverpool and the New World.

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In comments to this post, a neoliberal troll tells me that:

The “free market� is indeed a good thing, despite what you command-economy commies seem to think.

“Comrade Retardo”? Really? Actually umm.. how you say? No. Non. Nie. Nyet!

While I do indeed prefer Karl Marx to Ayn Rand, not to mention Kier Hardie to Maggie Thatcher, Bob La Follette to Barry Goldwater, FDR to Ronald Reagan, Eugene Debs to Leonard Peikoff, etc., does that make me a Commie? More to the point, does my habitual thrashing of neoliberalism make me an heir of Josef Stalin?

“Sadly”, No!

This photo belies that fact that I, Retardo Montalban, am simply a good ol’ social democrat, on international trade and capital matters a pragmatist, and on so-called framing issues a person who wages a war of attrition on the American fake center, which is often objectively pro-wingnut, and by historical and international standards not centrist at all:

Retardo: Not a Commie, though he plays one on TV

PS — Free Trade sucks. Also, if your idea of acceptable Leftism is somewhere to the right of Richard Nixon, you’re an idiot. You know who you are and you know what I mean.

PPS — Just for the fuck of it, and because late last night I finally saw the video after all these years, this is one of the events that made a “Commie” out of me. Along with personally seeing the effects of outsourcing and downsizing which includes working for one of Chainsaw Al’s companies, the first Gulf War, Waco (yes, Waco pushed me Left), the Drug War, Ronald Reagan’s Rapture-with-nukes schtick, etc.