Message Redacted

I have just exported all the posts from this blog into I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing. Maintaining three, count ‘em, three of these things (including Liquid Diet) was more than I could handle, so Mermaids is now where I will post my political commentary as well as everything else.

If you’ve enjoyed what I’ve done here in my brief stay, please come on over and join the ongoing fun. I appreciate your support.

What he said.

And two notes of my own: they seriously put some woman on to ask why Obama doesn’t wear a flag pin? Seriously?

And shouldn’t somebody have pointed out that Charlie Gibson’s capital gains tax questions misstated the facts and was merely a rehash of right wing distortions?

I gotta vote this Tuesday and, after last night, I almost feel dirty about it.

MSNBC is refusing to run this advertisement because it is too controversial:

Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman, on the other hand, are the very symbols of reasoned and fair discourse.

When Al Gore or John Kerry did anything similar in the last two presidential election years, it was always considered waffling and a sign of serious character defects. Now that it’s the Ol’ Straight Shooter, such behavior is merely a matter of “changing course.” No surprise, sadly.

In an attempt to maintain whatever hold he has over angry middle-aged white males who build their days around three hours of Rush Limbaugh Bloviating on their radios every afternoon, Johnny Mac did have to mix his (barely evident, but useful when the polls dictate) compassionate conservatism with a promise that his Justice Department would “investigate potential criminal activities, such as fraud” among the (undefined) “deserving” homeowners who might seek a loan, because angry middle-aged white males who build their days around three hours of Limbaugh Bloviating on their radios every afternoon need to believe that someone, somewhere is cheating and getting an unfair advantage. Otherwise, why are their lives so empty and dead that they need to spend three hours of etc., etc.

Some thoughts:

It was difficult for me to watch the questioning and not slide back toward the belief that Hillary Clinton is clearly the best-prepared person among the trio from who the the next President will likely emerge. So I’m back on the fence.

I would really, really hope that someone will report what exactly was so important that Barack Obama had to rush in and rush out of the hearings, sort of like a Hollywood star doing a bit part but not really committing. His questions were good, his lack of interest in not being there all along or hanging around and following up was telling.

Comes to that, how long were John McCain, Clinton and Obama in the room except for their TV face time?

Seriously, is it unfair or merely reasonable to think that Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham and James Imhoff are so obviously assholes that it’s okay to say so, even in polite company such as this?

Gotta run. Some Republican guy is on the Hardball with Chris Matthews thing getting all stern and firm about Johnny Mac’s “Straight Talk” and I have to a) switch it off and b) go throw up.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine will have a cover feature on Chris Matthews and his Hardball TV embarrassment this coming weekend. Can’t wait? You can read juicy parts here here. Sadly, from what those show, it doesn’t look like writer Mark Leibovich really takes a serious look at Matthews’ role in turning our political discourse into infantile and obsessive blather about everything but the issues facing the country. And if Matthews does somehow end up as host of Face the Nation, just go ahead and start partying hard. There couldn’t be any clearer sign that the end of civilization is nigh.

UPDATE: For them as cares, Liebovich’s entire Matthews feature is now online.

I don’t know what all the confusion is about the Bush Plan for Iraq, it seems pretty clear to me.

We can’t cut back on our troops because conditions will get worse if we do, which means we certainly can;t cut back if things get worse either. On the other hand, if things somehow get better, we can’t back on our troops then either because things might then get worse again.

There is no plan, of course, no timetable, no end game, no idea of what the hell we’re doing. Or why.

Simple as that. Why is anybody confused?

The silly, foolish little man in the Oval Office keeps saying that he is counting on history to validate a presidency which ain’t nobody currently aside from the wingnut fringe saying much good about.

It would appear that his chances of that are pretty damn slim.

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

Can you even begin to imagine that sort of indictment written about any other president in our lifetime, even by his worst enemies, much less “one of trhe most distinguished historians” in a survey?

From, of all people, Joe Klein:

[I]n these last, raggedy days of the rightward pendulum swing, with Republicans clogging the jails and Bushian foolishness having demoralized the nation, it is risible for conservatives to even pretend to care about “national improvement.” In our lives, we have seen conservatives use racism as a political tool, war as a witless quest for domination, patriotism as a scourge, government as an instrument of greed, religion and “morality” as camouflage for spreading fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The guy has been under unremitting, and justified, attack by the non-nutcase blogsphere for months and months, but these few words can wipe away a lot of sins. I’ve rarely seen a better summary of the despicable, mindless milieu which the radical right has created for itself, from its most evil and mendacious enablers to its very epicenter.

This absolutely brilliant paragraph is from Charles Pierce’s always must-read letter in the Friday installments of Eric Alterman’s Altercation blog:

This should have been John Yoo’s week for being roasted on the public spit. His memos came out. There’s an interview in Esquire where he attempts (badly) to get out from under his role as the waterboarding consigliere. He stands — behind a podium at a respected law school — revealed as the almost perfect apparatchik, a guy who would have found a way to make the trains to the internment camps run on time. The Frontline series on Bush’s war demonstrates pretty clearly that moral courage was in short supply in and around the Avignon Presidency. (Secretary Powell? Isn’t this your soul in the sink? Hello? Bueller?) But the people who really are astonishing are people like Yoo, who sprang with such alacrity to the task of dismantling America. A guy picks up the phone at the DOJ over a weekend and he’s blue-penciling the Bill of Rights, and the respective role of the Congress and the president, and the integrity of international treaties, and virtually everything that differentiates the United States from East freaking Germany? Too bad the janitor didn’t pick up the phone. Is there any doubt that, if C-Plus Augustus had wanted a legal opinion that allowed him to pick off pedestrians at random from the Truman Balcony, Yoo would have written a memo to that very effect? He should be pumping gas in the Imperial Valley for a living. He should be kept away from the law for the same reason we keep Charlie Manson out of the cutlery drawer. He should have been the story but, of course, Barack Obama went bowling.

That last sentence is a killer, innit?

The evidence keeps mounting and the Congress and mainstream press keep running away from the inevitable truth: this administration, starting with buffoon in the White House, committed war crimes and should be hauled away in chains as soon as someone has the guts to charge them.

And if Dick Cheney should have a fatal heart attack while busting rocks in the slammer….

So?