Olio

• I Knew He Was Going To Say That: Surprising, no? that the nets didn't bother to invite any spokesmen for the nation's White Supremacist or Holocaust Denying organizations on air to renounce the Museum murders? To declare themselves Dedicated to Peaceful Change? What a difference one little week can make. Instant Karma, dudes. Check the recent history of the Republican party. You didn't think that was possible either, did you?

Of course it isn't all that recent, is it? The Reagan Miracle collapsed about as quickly as it was enacted, and it didn't take long before David Stockman had to admit the whole thing had been a conjurer's trick, something which came as an enormous surprise (not the conjuring bit, but the fact that there were some people out there who needed to be told). How many times--and how severely--were you burned by the Bush administration? I'm not asking when the accumulated levels of Obvious Bullshit will reach the point at which you feel desperate enough to start telling the truth, rather than shaping it, because we already know the answer is "Never". I'm just asking how you do it, personally, and how you still manage to look in the mirror, which for some of you must be eighty times a day. I do not believe, at the upper levels of network news, e.g., that everyone is that stupid. Nor do I believe that, in 2009, you're still afraid of right-wing emails, or still believe Zombie Dick Nixon will slink out in the middle of the night and revoke your Press privileges.

Then again, what was absolutely identical was the announcement that police think We've got a Lone Nut here! which, again, ran what must have been concurrently with them going through his pockets for the first time. It's incredible, and I mean that literally. I happen to live in a city where the murder rate exceeds the national average by a sizable fraction, and I never hear that about local snuffs. The cops haul in anyone in the general vicinity of a suspect, and when it's a Red Ball it's arrest 'em in time for the local news, then kick 'em in the early AM when you hope no one's looking. People are arrested for driving a vehicle that half-matches a partial description the cops got from an eighty-year-old glaucoma sufferer down the block. In the big feticide case last year (pregnant bank teller shot during robbery) they had about fifteen people in custody at one point, none of whom turned out to be involved, and the news hairdos were still spinning out everyone's alleged roles after they'd been cut loose. They nabbed two high school students because they were trying to sneak back into the nearby school which had been locked-down while they were off larking. It may very well be that these were Lone Nut cases, but instantaneously is not the time frame when that should be decided.

• All This Blather about the Consequences of Gay Marriage, Not a Word about the Nineteen Years and Counting of Public Cock Sniffing: Terry McAuliffe loses a Virginia primary. "Thank God. The Clinton era really is over, innit?" sez Sully. "One big loser was Bill Clinton, as the McAuliffe loss will be seen (rightly, mostly) as an echo of the Clinton loss and another blow to the Clinton brand," sez Ben Smith. "McAuliffe Loss Wraps Clinton Era," shouts the National Journal. These are your professional political pundits, folks, and welcome to 'em. Although this did provide a moment's merriment, when my googling took me to the Booman Tribune, where a similar-themed rant prompted AliceDem to ask, "Which didn't you like, was it the peace or the prosperity?"

Here's HuffPo columnist and Obama anal protuberance Jacob Heilbrunn:

McAuliffe epitomizes an earlier era, when political success translated into quick financial gain. He is redolent of the sleaze that permeated the Clinton presidency without any of its redeeming aspirations. Somehow McAuliffe parlayed a $100,000 investment in Atlantic Crossing, the forerunner to Global Crossing, into $18 million. As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, his only mission was to raise funds rather than devise a new political mission for the party. It has fallen to President Obama to stake out a new course that combines electoral savvy with genuine idealism.

Good Lord; Terry McAuliffe made money on the internets in the 1990s? How is it he's not still in prison?

Fer chrissakes. Is Terry McAuliffe a sleezy operator? Sure. Would I vote for him for governor of my state? Depends on whether he was running against Mitch Daniels or not. Would I throw him out of the Democratic party? Well, it's neither my party nor my problem, but if it were I'd damn sure be more circumspect about whom I called "redolent".

Krishna H. Vishnu, do you fucking whippersnappers think the Democratic party was lily-white before Bad Billy Clinton came along? It wasn't. It was dirty and mired in a national losing streak--to, may I remind you, the Fucking Psychopaths of the Republican party--that gave no signs of letting up. Was he my choice for President? Only in that I voted for him twice. Only in that he was preferable to four more years of the hind end of the Reagan administration, followed by eight years of J. Danforth Quayle. Get a pre-paid phone card and call somebody who knows. You fuckin' fucks trot out "sleeze" and "NAFTA" and "welfare reform" because you heard somebody else say it. We're not yet six months into the Genuine Electoral Savvy and Idealism regime. Has President Obama done nothing you've disagreed with? If so, you're an idiot. You think it took "electoral savvy" to defeat the Republicans in 2008? Really? What do you think it took to defeat the ass end of Reaganism, at a time when the Repugs threatened to regain Congress with every election? Pah. Bill Clinton wasn't my Dream Chief Executive, either, but then neither did I think he was the one-eyed snake of America's Fall from Grace. Then, or especially, now.

Just out of curiosity, any of youse guys remember who Sully supported for President in 2000?

• Oh, and sorry we missed that Legislative deadline: Despite crossing paths twice last week with Bonzai Mitch we never could quite work in the Final Solution to Indianapolis' little negative $45 million problem with the Capital Improvements Board (Motto: "Public Funding for the Private Good"), which was a real corker. At that Daniels 2012 photo-op last week the Mighty Atom stood next to Mayor Gomer Pyle, USMC, and depantsed him without anyone in the audience noticing. After prefacing the thing with a "The mess this man (Gomer) inherited..."--delivered, with a straight face, by the man most responsible for said mess--he proceeded to announce the (proposed) elimination of the Board and the gentle folding of its portfolio into the Marion County Building Authority, creating a new entity which would now have a minority of its members appointed by the mayor, as opposed to the old CIB, which was pure local hog fat.

The real treat--it's no trick for Mayor Pyle to act like he doesn't understand what's going on--was how suddenly two consulting firms which looked at the CIB operations noticed that it seemed to cost an order of magnitude more per revenue dollar generated to operate these facilities in Indianapolis than anyplace else the consultants could locate on earth. You didn't see this before? The recommendation now is for $27 million dollars in expense reductions for an operation which was only $30-some-odd-million in the red before the Pacers demanded $15 million in concessions, or else they're gonna go shoot up some other town's strip clubs.

No word yet on whether the discrepancy will trigger an investigation by the Inspector General young Mitch required the Republican legislature to create for him in 2005, the better to root out corruption in previous Democratic administrations. In fact, there's been no word on the Inspector General, well, ever, since the office was used to knock off a couple of skimming State Police officials the week after it was created. For all we know the man may be dead in there. And the other thing was that, if anyone happened to notice that the solution to the CIB problem bore a distinct resemblance to the Daniels-orchestrated takeover of the Football Barn Construction Program, itself a major cause of the red ink, they were too polite to mention it. This is Indiana.

• The Last Extra Mile: Can't leave without mentioning how truly moving the coverage of weepy ex-Chrysler dealers was, particularly coming from the same fucking people who were demanding massive restructuring and union give-backs what seems like thirty minutes ago. Indiana, of course, was smack-dab in the center of all this, being the claimant seeking a Court stay, as well as having Chrysler plants and associated businesses idled, and dealerships closed, so it was interesting watching local news use national feeds to cover the story, rather than, y'know, putting their choppers to use flying over to a closing car lot and talking to someone themselves. The single exception was the face-time given state treasurer Richard Mourdock, the suit behind the suit. Now that the state has gotten, predictably, nothing out of the deal but the $million-dollar price tag for legal fees, Mourdock's making the rounds saying he was legally obligated to file the suit--maybe; I dunno--and how he was never overruled on a single point of Law! The operation was a failure, and the patient died, but damn!, Dick, nice shiny set of scalpels.