Electric Olio

• Roy brought us such a collection of hopeless pseudo-historical sludge yesterday that I'm still wrapping my head around one sentence from one example ("Today we also know that Sacco & Vanzetti were guilty, as were the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss.") which does have the benefit that I get to post W.T. Vinson's Ethel and Julius, after Norman Rockwell from the National Lampoon's Bicentennial Calendar. And thanks, Mom, for buying me the scanner.

I took some small pains in comments to explain that "we" don't know this, that in fact conventional wisdom now exonerates Vanzetti; recognizes that not only was there no case against Ethel Rosenberg, but that the government knew this and executed her anyway, ostensibly to protect the existence of the Venona Project, but more likely as a high-stakes game of Chicken with Julius, who refused to blink; that Hiss was convicted in the second of two perjury traps, on the testimony of an admitted perjurer, and his modern-day "guilt" is the product of some willful, and disputed, analysis of Venona. (In much the same way the "proof" of Sacco's guilt requires the bearer to simply ignore the rusted chain of evidence which, even if accepted, is equally suggestive of a police frame-up.)

This took enough time that I didn't bother considering Th' fuck this is supposed to prove, anyway? Sacco and Vanzetti were railroaded; that's as despicable with guilty suspects as with innocent. Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted (took three attempts) for being married to a guy who might've been a Soviet courier. Hell, he shouldn't have been executed. The Hiss case wasn't about anything he'd actually done (and certainly not anything he was ever charged with) but "rescuing" the reputations of McCarthy and Nixon and other Cold War dipsomaniacs. Which were, and still are, tattered husks anyway. So people objected at the time. I'd object today, and still do; th' fuck's that got to do with Leftism? And I'd like to hear Ms Now I Too Am Outraged By Chappaquiddick defend the idea that Dalton Trumbo should have died in the joint for malicious screenplayery.

• We sat in agitated horror for ten minutes yesterday afternoon while Colts receiver Austin Collie lay motionless on the fucking field after a helmet-to-helmet hit. That is, we would have sat, and in silence, if CBS didn't continue, inexplicably, to employ one Phil Simms, onetime professional quarterback, now professional language butcher, as "Vanilla Jim" Nantz' color man on CBS's marquee game, meaning Colts fans get subjected to the sumbitch a half-dozen times a season.

Like I say, Collie is stretched out flat, surrounded by the medical staffs of both teams. He hasn't moved since he hit the ground. And Simms spends the entire ten minutes, less exhortations for Miller Lite and Cialis, essentially saying the whole thing was Collie's fault, that he'd had two steps with the ball and thus "become a runner" and had ample time to protect himself. The man's feet are sticking out of a crowd of medical personnel. Somewhere out there his wife, or his parents, or his pastor is listening to this millionaire hillbilly jabber away while Collie may lie paralyzed for life. Thank God he reportedly suffered only a concussion. But, y'know, yeah, there's some dispute about "taking the violence out of the game". And, yeah, the hit may've been something between a helmet launch he happened to get knocked into and One of Those Things. But that wasn't the time to debate it. (Hell, Simms was talking so much he flat out missed the official's call.)

Of course Simms wasn't gonna criticize the NFL (not directly), which diddled for years before deciding a few weeks ago to join the 21st century medical understanding of concussion. It's bad enough listening to people use a supposed technical understanding of the rules (which they don't really have, because the real rulebook is kept secret from everyone but the NFL brass and the officials themselves) to whine that their enjoyment of seeing a man paralyzed for life is being compromised. I hope the league will look closely and fairly at whether Coleman was illegally leading with his helmet or simply playing his position, assess penalties, if any, correctly, and explain itself clearly. But, without question, CBS should be fining Simms for conduct unbecoming a sentient being. Unless that's actually a loophole.

• Ross "You Still Here?" Douthat, inherent electoral superiority once again reestablished by The Base, gets to go back to pretending to blame The Base:

The modest Mr. Boehner leads a party with much to be modest about. Gingrich could brandish an agenda because he had an agenda — a raft of conservative policy proposals, on welfare and crime and taxes, that couldn’t get any traction in a Democratic-controlled Congress. Today’s Republicans, by contrast, know what they’re against (the health care bill, tax increases, cap and trade) but have a world of trouble saying what they might actually be for.

Anybody old enough to remember that Gingrich "agenda"? Any one still prescient enough to recall what, if any of it, rose above a litany of Things The Right Is Against, Or Was At That Moment? Slashing Welfare payments does not become a policy argument just because you say it'll cut illegitimate births among the coloreds. Tort "reform" which consists of making it tougher to sue negligent corporations is not a policy argument just because you think they've got better things to spend the money on. Boehner and McConnell don't have Newt's abilities as a peddler of patent horse liniment. This does not retroactively heal any nags.

Finally Some Good Economic News: Prices For Swampland, Brooklyn Bridges Hit All-Time High

OH, and Local Housing Market Skyrockets on news that Indiana's Once and Future Senator Dan "Lackluster" Coats is considering moving back to the state.

Daniels' political tip: Zip your lips
By Mary Beth Schneider
November 5, 2010

Memo from Gov. Mitch Daniels to candidates thinking about the 2012 election: "Just stifle yourself."

That goes for himself, too.

Daniels, who has left the door open to a run for the White House, said Thursday that he won't be talking about his potential candidacy until at least after the state legislature finishes its work in April.

And with one election just finished, every other candidate ought to take a timeout as well, Daniels said, to focus on governing.

Daniels issued his hush-up advice after being asked about the possibility of U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Columbus, seeking to succeed him as governor.

Standing next to Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, who also likely has her eye on moving up to the state's top job, Daniels said Pence is "a great guy, and he's served well."

But, Daniels said, "I'll ask anybody who is thinking of running for any office in 2012 to be quiet about it for the next several months. We just finished an election. We now ought to all be about the business of delivering on the change and the duties that we have. So I'm going to ask anybody who is thinking about running for anything to just stifle yourself for a few months."

Our Story So Far: As the Daniels for President campaign enters its ninth, twenty-fourth, or forty-sixth month, depending on whether you're counting from, respectively, his announcement that he was "leaving the door open" (and not, Ms Schneider to "a run", but to "people who want to convince him to run"; let us take people at their word, especially pathological liars); the beginning of the Daniels for President artificial hubbub in locations as diverse as The National Review and The Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages; or when he started lying about his record as Governor, with an eye to creating a Reaganesque fiscal mystique, and nearly as much long-term fiscal carnage, per capita, our coy and petite candidate would like all those other candidates to kindly be quiet for the next four months while he pretends to manage the two-House Republican majority he just bought himself.

This is known as "Urging restraint". Which shouldn't surprise us, in a world where raising the state sales tax to the second highest in the nation is known as "cutting taxes".

(By the way, that "so close to an election" routine is the seemingly effortless Daniels Genius at Work. It is, in fact, the whole of Reaganism appropriately in a nutshell, an excuse for everyone else to work in your own self-interest offered up as a cherished and time-honored platitude you've based your life on. The terminally bored may recall that way back in Aught Eight the recently re-elected Daniels, shiny Republican hope in a sudden sea of Blue, thought the appropriate response to just finishing an election was to disappear from the public eye for the next few months while economic reality slammed into his trail of campaign lies [which were constructed of cardboard, so there was no real reason to duck from the potential fall-out, not that any occurred anyway]. Not to mention how Rumor of a Run was scraping the fender of his resolute declaration that he'd just finished his last campaign. That Daniels wasn't too keen on catching every last echo of the Vox Populi.)

The Bantam Menace now has precisely the same metaphysical problem Pence just solved, except Running Away isn't an option. (By the way, the Pence for Governor??? thing is, well, interesting, in that "Governor" wasn't mentioned when he won that Iowa straw poll, and damn that state's got a lot of straw. I said it as a gag, but I'll say it seriously now: th' fuck would you want to follow Mitch Daniels when he's spent two terms locking you into starvation rations, and when he's already sold off everything that has a price tag? Particularly when your Ego's stuck on "Palin"? The very suggestion seems conveniently in Daniels' favor, emphasizing, as it does, Pence's "non-executive" track record, and potentially removing an Indiana Republican who's a helluva lot closer to the base. Pence is a Jesus nut and a fiscal Procrustian; he's gotta look at what Huckabee did last time and realize the whole Teabag Party Has Abandoned the Culture Wars thing is a piece of shit, especially where the Republican primaries are concerned. There's a pile of money to be raised, there's no credible Jebus candidate besides the Huckster, and corporate Republicans haven't exactly fared well on the hustings. And while I haven't heard anybody saying this, it sure looks to me like Palin's one of Tuesday night's big losers, since "female" and "female and insane" were both something less than an A Ticket, and she can't even win an election in Alaska. If raising money and supporting candidates meant anything to anyone besides those candidates, Richard Viguerie would have his own reality program.

And, for what it's worth, Pence is at least six inches taller and better looking than Daniels. But who isn't?

Mitch, on the other hand, gets to preside over a rubber-stamp General Assembly, which will slice more meat from education to preserve what it can of his artificial surplus. Of course, no Republican primary candidate will be able to call him on it, but Miracle Mitch is shortly to become Held the Line Provided You Don't Ask About Specifics Mitch, which is a helluva lot less inspirational, and not what they set out six years ago to run on. Whether or not there is actually anything which could be described, however fancifully, as a Budget Surplus is a matter of debate, in no small part because the thing's been kept half-hidden all along. If Daniels breaks out of the box, if he manages, say, to be 2012's Romney and not its Giuliani, and it comes time for whomever else is left to start swinging, his vapor jobs creation and massive sales tax increase is gonna suddenly get noticed.

Sure, sure, I'm wrong all the time, but I'm not selling this like it's a hot stock. I just haven't ever seen where this Daniels shit was supposed to be heading, aside from the rake. He was the wet-dream candidate of the semi-wonkish, semi-realistic, wholly desperate NatRev writer when the GOP was in the dumps. It isn't anymore. Photogenic non-entities like Pence now imagine they can beat Obama. Make that "will", since every Republican gain comes with God's Own Guarantee attached for these fucks. Daniels isn't the Libertoonian Intellectual in a field of Crackpot Sarah and the Losers from Last Time. The man has nothing left to sell to anybody. Except the Indiana state lottery. Bidding is already open, in case you're interested.

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

SO "Choirboy Mike" Pence is abandoning the impure Republican party just as he gets his opportunity to a) say something that means something and/or b) get put in a position where he'd have to choose between his public principles and the dirty business of governance. Pence chooses, instead, to resign, or, in other words, to double down on Empty to preserve the Rhetoric.

Of course the story gets played as "Mike Pence running for President and/or President of Indiana", which I hope to Allah is true; in fact I'm pulling for him to be elected, and Jesus to return just after he takes the Oath, after which there's a sudden, intense burst of light, and I wake up in the shower and the last forty-five years turn out to've been a dream. Shunted off to the margins is the fact that as part of the "New" Republican Leadership he'd'a been forced to get behind their apparent--or at least presently bruited about--willingness to cooperate with the White House and other agents of the Infernal to make themselves look like something more than perpetual scolds. (The Over on this plan is Groundhog Day, but it ain't gonna surprise me none if somebody tries to impeach Obama during the Lame Duck session. At any rate, asking Mike Pence to be something other than a perpetual scold is like asking Lady Liberty to take a seat.)

As far as running for Governor is concerned, well, anything is possible once the blood gets up, but personally I'd advise against it, quoting Woody Allen's dictum to the Stevenson fundraiser stage manager in Annie Hall: "You don't have a comedian follow another comedian".

Indiana's fucking doomed, Brother Pence; everything that could be slashed, given away, or fucked up beyond all endurance in an effort to get the unemployed to move someplace warmer has already been enacted, or is about to be with a two-house Republican majority. Not to mention the fact that there's already twelve real and hopeful Hoosiers for every one imaginary job that Mitch Daniels has created. Follow your Dream.

President's a much better bet; you can always declare announce a war if things get rough. And look what it got The One True Religion in '92 and '96, this playing ball with the heathens. The real problem with Republican Purity Tests is that they haven't been pure enough.

As for the rest of you, I'd like to remind you once again that when you reward the Republican party Indiana is the rash it breaks out in. Dick Lugar, in '68, the Nixonian mayor of Indianapolis bound for beige-er things, who is to the Overton Window what Barbara Walters at ABC's anchor desk was to proper diction; Dan Quayle, then Dan Burton, Potatoe Head and Pumpkin Splatterer, spawns of Reaganism; Mark "Abstinence For Thee" Souder of the Gingrich Revolution; Mitch Daniels, Bush OMB Director now come to save the Common Man, and now Pence. I'm pretty sure we can keep this sort of thing up forever, America. I'm just not sure that you can.

Well, Somebody Had To Supply The Wimper…

Evan "How Soon Can You Move?" Bayh, "Where Do Democrats Go Next"? November 2

FIRST, "November 2" is the dateline, but the only evidence that it's 2010's Blame the Democrats routine from Indiana's Top Democrat is that he name-checks Healthcare instead of Insufficient Warmongering, Sore Losermanism, or Hummers From Interns. Let the record show, Your Honor, that this man was supposedly on Candidate Obama's short list for VP. That fact alone should have made the race closer than 53-46.

Second, the worst news I got last night was not that Bayh would be replaced by Dan Coats, a stuffed pig who now goes back into the legislative wholesale business after ten years as a purchaser's rep; ain't no change at all, so far as I'm concerned. It wasn't even the return of Harry Reid, which galls not so much because it's Harry Reid, though that's bad enough, but because it reinforces the easy, comfortable, and utterly refutable on its face notion that the American voter is savvy enough to reject the clinically certifiable, if only by a narrow margin.

[By the way, Reid's reelection has given me an idea which will fix the Senate, a simple procedural change: just require every Senator to be in his seat at all times while any one of 'em has the Floor. We won't need term limits--we may need metal detectors--and we won't need new filibuster rules. We'll just need the threat of listening to Harry Reid, e.-fucking-g.]

No, the worst news I got was that Mitch "Pretender" Daniels bought himself a Republican majority in the Indiana House, which will, by the Wolf Moon, have begun to finalize the Californication of Indiana, excepting that there's no brake here on reduction of services or corporate giveaways or protection of the environment. Our insanity is too profound and earnest to be entertaining.

And the interesting distinction here is that Daniels, bless the black hole of corporate buggery where his heart's supposed to be, actually spent a portion of his graft pile to elect other Republicans. Granted he did so in his own interests, which may be charitably described as "getting himself elected President, and hence the hell out of Indiana before its notoriously time-addled citizens get wise". Daniels spent money to make money; Bayh has just built himself ever bigger counting houses for the last three decades. He reportedly turned loose (was perhaps embarrassed into turning loose) a mil for his designated Democratic heir Brad Ellsworth, posed for a couple pictures, and vamoosed (same as he did for the 2004 and 2008 gubernatorial elections) while corporate Republicans (but I repeat myself!) pummeled the man into submission for six fucking months. Here's how bad things are in Indiana: the eleventh hour appeals for Ellsworth featured the shade of Lee Fucking Hamilton; evidently they couldn't coax Jim Baker to stand with him in a show of dishwater bipartisanship. The Chair recognizes the Right Honorable Birch Evans Bayh II, though it wishes it couldn't:

It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate.

The Reader's attention is directed to the results of the 2006 mid-term elections, and the landslide 2008 Presidential election that installed a man who's middle name at the time was "Change", not Hussein. The Reader is asked to explain what th' fuck could've been clearer? In present political terms, 2006 was a knockout punch, 2008 a whitewash, and a--pardon me, remain seated--"filibuster-proof Senate" was an Act of God. Which, as it turned out, could be repealed by Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh. Who knew?

Talk of a “political realignment” and a “new progressive era” proved wishful thinking.

Yeah, boy, that must've rankled. First time in the history of the Republic that back-to-back historic realignments of both Houses was considered a call to end business as usual.

Exit polls in 2008 showed that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives and 44 percent as moderates. An electorate that is 76 percent moderate to conservative was not crying out for a move to the left.

Let that sentence wash over you long enough and we'll make you an honorary Hoosier.

Ladies and gentlemen: this is a man who was elected Governor of Indiana as a Legacy pledge, who came out on election night to announce his admiration for Ronald Reagan, and who didn't take it back 24 hours later when the bright light of a leafless dawn hit him right in the Dom Perignon* hangover. He's been dining at the taxpayer trough his entire adult life; he's amassed "campaign" funds estimated at between $11-13 million, and his wife pulls down the GDP of Tonga annually for her expertise in directing pharmaceutical companies. No one can point you to a single thing Evan Bayh has done in twenty years, and now he's taking early retirement, better fixed than a Hall of Fame shortstop whose career spanned the same decades. Two terms in the Senate, and all he ever did was make sure he could collect campaign contributions for reading fucking exit polls.

We also overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession. It was a noble aspiration, but $1 trillion in new spending and a major entitlement expansion are best attempted when the Treasury is flush and the economy strong, hardly our situation today.

Unlike back in '99, when the Bayh Universal Healthcare Initiative Bill passed by acclamation.

And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent.

Jesus Fuck; I don't think I need to remind anybody that the main reason it took until 2010 to deal with this collection of Republican Talking Points was that 2009 was given over to placating the likes of Evan Bayh on the serious, morally-correct and economically-wise matter of reforming our healthcare system, nor that he's one of the main reasons it couldn't be done unless the insurance companies wrote the bill. Gays in the military? Kinda sorta being not totally opposed to the idea, provided they're not Too Gay, is a recipe for election disaster? Enshrining the Bush Tax Cuts for all but the wealthiest 2% of Americans is political suicide? Then, forgive me: when th' fuck will it be time for these "legitimate issues" and "noble aspirations"? When they no longer appeal to the Evil Left? Once the Republicans have returned us to economic good times? When that 2%'s the only people left who can afford your wife's patent medicines?

Christ, what's wrong with Democrats? How many fucking times a day do you look in the mirror, Senator?

___________

* intended as a paragon of Knowing the price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, not as an endorsement of the most over-priced brand name on the champagne, or any other market, period. Buy two bottles of Veuve Cliquot. Buy one bottle of Krug if you want to show off.

I Didn't Say Tea. I Said Me.

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Hey, We Waited Until Paragraph Twelve. That's The Patience Of Job In Journalism Terms.

James Hohmann and Marin Cogan in Politico's Stewart Rally coverage:

Most signs fit with the happy-go-lucky ethos of the rally, but others were crude. One sign had Hitler mustaches on pictures of Sarah Palin, Eric Cantor, Glenn Beck and John Boehner. The message said, “Afraid yet?” This is particularly insulting to Cantor, who is Jewish and in line to become House Majority Leader if Republicans win next week.

OKAY, assuming this is so--and nobody ever says that Hitler mustaches are particularly offensive to Barney Frank or Doogie Howser, or that that Goldberg book is particularly offensive to descendants of the liberals who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade--shouldn't Hitler mustaches on anyone, other than Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, and maybe that guy from Sparks, be particularly offensive to Eric Cantor? (And, granted, he's complained about Limbaugh. I'm not knocking Cantor. I'm sayin' maybe it would be easier for the guys from Politico to keep it in their pants if they learned how a zipper works.)

Putting The I In "Intuit". And The Twit.

David Brooks, "The Next Two Years". October 28

THE other day I went looking for some piece of Brooks' bio--damned if I can remember what now--and a promising Googlead turned out to be a sort of cracked mirror image of myself. It's not surprising, of course, that there are people out there who admire Brooks when he's dispensing right-wing talking points, and dislike his periodic forays into mock-reasonableness. (It is perhaps a bit surprising that anyone who thinks that way bothers with him.) What really did take me aback, momentarily, was that this guy actually buys the whole routine, and was incensed that Brooks had moderately praised Rahm Emanuel, or moderately deplored nuclear war, or something' (I'm kidding; it was Rahm. There's no way Brooks would criticize our last sixty-five years of explosive military diarrhea.) So this is not the reverse of my position, which maintains that Brooks suffers from Pernicious Reaganinfantilism, and can't identify enough of the truth to miss or bend. It is, rather, that same blasted American cultural landscape in which Coke is It, Pepsi hits the Spot, and people are interesting because they're on th' teevee. You may agree or disagree with Brooks, or Beck, or Snooki, but you are not permitted to question the integrity of either of their two dimensions. (I used to shop in the same grocery as The Teevee Weather Lady; observing the reaction she provoked you were forgiven for wondering why this country ever imagined it had to rid itself of Monarchs. This is, I think I've mentioned before, the single cultural trend, or occurrence, or whatever it is, that I would flat not have believed had you revealed it to me via Time Machine in 1972. It was, perhaps, the only point in my youth where idealism trumped the eye-opening results of growing up on the westside of Indianapolis: I was absolutely convinced, to the point of not even considering it, that a generation's familiarity with advertising, through the newfangled color teevee box, would breed a contempt so thorough that the mere hint of lying, the merest whiff of hard sell or softened soap, would be enough to bankrupt a brand forever. I knew this as certainly as I knew that a transparent boob like Ronald Reagan could never become President.)

Could you and I, O Reader, have conspired for ten minutes eighteen months ago--nay, if you matched my own cynicism, two years ago!--to write today's Brooks column for him? Historic defeat, blah blah. Generic polls blah blah blah. Big Spender, blah, out of touch with real America, blah blah blah blah blah. And, of course, the prescription: Obama must now become more like David Brooks!

Which sorta raises the question, for me, of where exactly this David Brooks was when spiteful January raised her head in 2008, and Barack Obama looked like the Republican's one chance to avoid losing to the bitchful Hillary:

Then he got defined as an orthodox, big government liberal who lacks deep roots in American culture.

Somewhere the Cracked Mirror Riley is incensed that Brooks merely suggests that Obama isn't an American, rather than owning up. And somewhere, in some parallel universe where he has the time to give a shit, Bruce Springsteen is demanding his poster back.

I, on the other hand, merely wish to point out that a couple centuries of being as rooted to a particular place as the trees they occasionally swung from didn't do African-Americans a world of good.

Anyway, Mr. Brooks: you're fifty years old. Near half a lifetime has passed since you touched the hem of Milt Friedman's garment. That's seven mid-terms ago; one--the pants-pissing contest of 2004--went the President's way. I'm more wooly mammoth than spring chicken myself, so I don't expect you not to crow about virtual poll wins and historic gobbledegook. I do expect that at some point you might pause to consider what's what, if only for the sense of novelty. You may be better off than you were twenty-nine years ago (granted, I'm no expert in assessing the psychic pits, pockmarks, and tumors of a life spent lying for money), but do you really imagine the country is? That country you imagine inherently agrees with you, except when it's misguided? Three decades, historic slashing of tax rates, historic inequities, four historic recessions, two jobless recoveries, and a political culture which has gone from corrupt, dishonest, and banal, to corrupt, dishonest, banal, and breathtakingly stupid. Now you think Americans "fear their nation is in decline"? Now we're threatened by debt, deficit, bailouts and self-indulgence? Th' fuck were you when Reagan tripled the Debt? When Bush I bailed out the S&L mess created in the hot torrents of incontinent deregulation? The historic reversal of our deficit trend under Bush II was okey-dokey by you, until after the 2004 elections, when your middling expressions of concern, safely beyond repercussion, meant nothing besides a hoped-for salutary effect on your own Moderate career.

I don't know who you think this is foolin', Dave. Okay, I do, I just wonder if you think you're foolin' yourself. I've just sat through the stupidest election cycle in Indiana history, and only 2000 and foregone conclusions have kept it from the all-time top spot. That's not my partisan opinion. It's fucking incontrovertible fact. In a state which has led the nation in Stopping Voter Fraud Which Has Never, Ever Occurred, we're about to elect as Secretary of State--the state's top voting official--a guy who voted illegally in 2008, preserving a fraudulent registration so he could keep his government job. His campaign ads depict him as a Tax Cutter; the Secretary of State has no revenue responsibilities whatsoever. He might as well've pledged to buy cheaper envelopes this time, and check the ads for toner sales. The incumbent State Treasurer is campaigning on the fact that he managed to earn interest on the money we had lying around. Unlike the last Democrat, who kept it under his mattress. Mitch Daniels is spending some of his PAC money plugging state races; being forced to watch campaign ads for state races alone should make a proud and free people rise as one and beat the shit out of him, but the remarkable thing to me is, they're all canned, like he allotted fifteen minutes for the whole process, and catch him in half-profile, which accentuates his Nixonian hauteur to near-parody. The Democrat (note: graded on a curve) running for the seat Evan Bayh is just too distraught to defend has accused the Republican of being insufficiently anti-abortion. That's Dan Coats, by the way, one of the myriad Republicans who vow to end the Socialist Obamacare in order to strengthen Medicare.

You really imagine this bunch, and this approach, is the key to rescuing Columbia Herself from the twilight tailspin into Oblivion? And maybe Bond in Seconds, Get Teeth Their Whitest, and Kill the Germs that Cause Bad Breath? Best of luck. Is it too soon to write your November 2012 column for ya?

May You Never Get Old

Matt Bai, "In Time of Change, Nostalgia Has Appeal". October 27

I B'LIEVE I'm on record as granting permission to anyone who wants to to bash "Boomers" for a multitude of real sins: opposition to the enormity of US involvement in Indochina, which lapsed as soon as the threat of conscription did (in fairness I, born in the closing moments of 1953, was eligible for the last six months of the draft; so 2/3 of Boomers, by median if not mean, never risked a government-sponsored jungle trip at all). Blame 'em for insufficient resistance to the the post-facto rewrite that portrayed that war as a fine little patriotic excursion spoiled by a few chronic grumblers and ungovernable loogie launchers; for the hypocritical descent into mindless consumerism and real estate acquisition of the Reagan/Yuppie era; for Reagan himself; for the soul-deadening shallowness that replaced the News, and our politics; for that commercial that uses Melanie's "Brand New Key"; and for everyone named "Dylan".

Here is a partial list of things you cannot blame on Boomers. In fact, let's rephrase that. Here is a partial list of thing you must either be a total idiot, a liar, or a sad-sack careerist mining the endless lode of "My Generation Uses the Internet, while Yours Had Enormous Rotary Phones and Sideburns", or all three, to blame on us:

• Boomers are not responsible for the fact that old people tend to xenophobia, terminal crotchets, and a lack of familiarity with the latest dance steps. Similarly, your generation is not to blame for inventing the extraordinarily broad and unwarranted generalization that puts your sorry, complaining, never-did-nothing-worth-spit ass in the best possible light by comparing it to something worse and imaginary.

• We're not responsible for the rise of that paranoid and post-war domestic fascism program which eventually merged with the Republican party around the time the oldest of Boomers was learning to drive.

• In fact we're not responsible for the massive propaganda campaigns which, since 1946, convinced Americans that invasion, subjugation, and forced sex with garlicky foreigners was right around the corner unless we kept our military brass crotch-deep in jet/atomic/digital-powered bombers and golf courses.

• Nor the corporate takeover of America, of roughly the same vintage.

Let's just note here that, while you're so busy congratulating yourself on living in a post-racial neighborhood you've done nothing whatsoever to address the rapidly expanding implementation of the last three, with a particular note about how easy it's been to scare Post-Racial, Internet-Savvy America with the specter of brown men stealing our freedoms with shampoo bombs. Just like everyone else.

And yet, a less noticed undercurrent is pulling politics in the opposite direction, too. The latest polling suggests we may see the election of several venerable politicians to offices they held before, including some who haven’t governed since the days when “apple” and “blackberry” referred primarily to fruit. And this suggests that as much as we talk about closing the book on the last era of American politics, we may be having some trouble letting go.

Y'know, I love it when a totally artificial meme is stood on its head by the very people who perpetrate the fraud in the first place, and then the crazy juxtaposition! is displayed as some sort of glimpse at a parallel universe, which somehow then proves the original contention. It's why I try to start every morning off by reading Slate.

The poster septuagenarian for this new crop of resurrected office-seekers is Jerry Brown, who was the youngest governor in the country when Californians elected him to the first of two terms in 1974. (Mr. Brown was famous then for dating Linda Ronstadt. You can Google her, or just ask your mom.)

Okay, we're often called upon here to explain some humor basics. First, like most people, this construction (bygone cultural icon + "ask your mom" = funny) worked on us the first 6 or 7 thousand times we heard it, but since then, eh. Second, the humor [if any] really requires that Bygone Cultural Icon be someone the average audience [if any] member had at least some vague familiarity with, i.e., someone still in the public eye but increasingly seen as a tired relic squeezing out link sausages to a rapidly deceasing audience. The Eagles. Ask your mom. Bon Jovi. Ask your mom. It doesn't really work when 52% of your audience really would have to ask its mom who someone was. It doesn't work on someone whose last album/tour was twenty years ago, unless that person was the most hugely colossalest star of his time. Garth Brooks. Ask your ma.

Now then. I, Boomer, was among the first batch of eighteen-year-olds allowed to vote in a Presidential election, in 1972. This means that, in my rapidly-dwindling lifetime, I've had the opportunity to vote against Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (twice) G.H.W.H.M.S Bush (twice), and Bob Dole. It was twenty years before I had the change to vote for one of my generational buddies, and ten more before the first (and probably next-to-last) chance to pick between two. So shut th' fuck up about Jerry Brown, fer chrissakes. Or better yet, move there, vote against him, and help the younger, internet-savvy inmates take over the rest of the asylum. Ask your mother.

By the way, has anyone calculated the odds that the sort of person who makes a career of making shit up about randomly ascribed collections of birth years will also claim that two instances of something unremarkable constitute a Trend?

Who, What, When, Where, And Nobody Likes A Sarcastic Wimp

David Brooks, "No Second Thoughts". October 26

I NEVER kept a journal back in the quill and parchment days, and my advice to the legions of up-and-coming bloggers--beyond the fact that it's not as glamorous as it looks--is to choose your bête noir with more care than I did mine.

I'm not apologizing. I've noted here before that while Brooks may not be as stupid as Erick Erickson, or as faux-incendiary as Ann Coulter--consider, Reader, how difficult it is to choose a single avatar for those conditions!--he is Your Race Leader in Hypocrisy. In fact, David Brooks is the fucking wrapper Republican Hypocrisy comes in these days, or was 'til they went with the Teabag brand, not that that's slowed him down. He's a virtual Swiss Army knife. He's the German Shepard of all-arounders. He's among the career leaders in Pretending Republican Talking Points Are the Product of Your Own Ratiocination (13,655), Facile Moralisms (43,866), Assuming the Mantle of Middle-American Worker Without Ever Living In Middle America or Working (9,427), Average Speed in Defending Republicans Doing What Should, By His Supposed Principles, Be Indefensible (1.2 columns), and Smarm. He's got nine Gold Gloves for his work in defending his supposed moderation, by having mastered the technique of half-grimacing on those rare occasions when Jim Lehrer or--heaven forfend!--Mark Shields brings up some example of the hydrophobic rat infestation which is his side of the political spectrum. David Brooks is the sort of reasonable Conservative who doesn't mind if gays marry or serve in the military! He's the sort who probably doesn't think abortion is always murder! He is, however, the sort who doesn't exactly stand up for those "principles" when his party goes a'harvesting votes from that direction.

And I am from Middle America. To me the guy with the bone-through-the-nose Obama poster is much less a danger to the Republic than the guy who's too smart to do it himself, but doesn't mind other people doin' it for him, so long as he reaps most of the benefits. It's President Palin vs. President Daniels. President Nixon vs President Brain-Damaged B Actor. They're both out to mug you. It's just that with one of 'em you can hear the war whoops two blocks before they reach you.

On the other hand, I really had no idea, back when I started doing this, that a) The New York Times would wind up being a regional shopping leaflet; and b) that Brooks was capable of the levels of disingenuousness he's shown there. (Meaning, of course, compound disingenuousness, not the simple sort of which his career is built.)

When times get tough, it’s really important to believe in yourself. This is something the Democrats have done splendidly this year. The polls have been terrible, and the party may be heading for a historic defeat, but Democrats have done a magnificent job of maintaining their own self-esteem. This is vital, because even if the public doesn’t approve of you, it is important to approve of yourself.

Y'know, no one's gonna goad me into defending Democrats, but Reality is a different matter. The Democrats aren't in whatever situation they're in (election results are a week away; maybe we can wait that long to count the votes) because of hubris; they're where they are because they've been running from Ronald Reagan for thirty years. They found themselves, last January, with two bad choices: a compromised healthcare bill, or a failure to deliver on the healthcare promises their landslide President had made. Surprising at least one observer (me, who expected them to fold yet again), they took option A. They are now blamed for this; had the vote gone the other way they'd be blamed for that. And they are to blame, because even if they couldn't see which way the wind was blowing they could've checked in with 1992 again. They didn't lose those fights through supreme self-confidence. They lost because they thought they could win by refusing to fight. It's stupid, and when you see a crowd of ostensibly smart people doing something stupid--assuming that surprises you in the least--you look for some ulterior reason. And that reason is they're still running from Ronald Reagan thirty years later. They're afraid to propose the United States of America spend money on programs that benefit anyone other than the wealthiest 5%, for fear of being called Tax n' Spenders, and they're afraid to cut the astronomically absurd "Defense" budget for fear of being called unpatriotic. They're afraid to make corporations pay fairly, and in full, for their benefits and for the sound operation of a free and just society, and they're afraid to make them pay for shipping American jobs overseas. They're afraid of Roger Fucking Ailes. They're afraid of using the system to their advantage the way Republicans do without blinking, and they're afraid of their own constituencies. They're afraid of Ben Fucking Nelson and Evan Bugwit Bayh. Mostly they're convinced, and have been for some time, that electability is more important than being right or doing what's right, and they're convinced that corporate donations are more important than defending a belief system.

They find themselves here because they imagined, somehow, they imagined, yet again, they could deal rationally with a bunch of criminally self-serving pathological liars. Because they imagined they could compromise with the likes of you, Dave, and then you'd let them hide behind you when your people started saying mean things.

Y'know, I don't give a fuck if Dems go down to defeat next week; I think it would've been better for them if their pathetic track record in 2006-2008 led to a defeat last time, one which woke them up to the fact that "moderate" Democrats are the Möbius Band of American politics: you travel along and get nowhere but back where you started. The only thing worse than defeating deserving Democrats is replacing them with the Clown Car from Hell which is the Republican party. Y'know, Dave: the party that remained supremely self-confident as it destroyed the US economy and our military and diplomatic standing overseas. And the only thing worse than electing more of those idiots is the sort of "moderate" Republican who pretends he's not quite sure how they got seated at his table.

Olio

• We're leaking, but the good news is it can't possibly be brain fluid: four days after we got 400,000 pages on the Great Cluster Fuck in Iraq, the Times coverage--after thoughtfully including a top-of-the-Sunday-frontpage exposé of how Julian Assange Just Isn't Our Kind (Daniel Ellsberg went to a psychiatrist!)--I'm convinced, by the way, that absent Ben Bradlee and whatever honor remains among thieves, the Times would have hired Sally Quinn away from the Post years ago--the whole thing's down to a box in the corner. So Last Week! I am reminded of what I said in 2002: the main argument against our invading Iraq, or anyone, for that matter, is that this country is too juvenile to handle it. We should have picked up on this when the warfloggers blamed Life for My Lai. Now our newspapers can't handle the news.

Reggie Bush returned his Heisman. On his own. Just saying'.

• On the other hand, "Karzai takes money from Iran" has legs. Or maybe that's just to make up for "Secret donors run US campaigns: Who are we to judge?"

• My memory's going: has there been a national election since 1980 which was about anything?

• GM PAC gives Mitch McConnell $5000. In other news, Mitch McConnell accepts $5000 from GM.

Enjoy the next couple months, motherfuckers, until the Teabaggers take over.

• Somerby:

As we’ve noted, every journalist flies to Finland to examine its high-scoring (middle-class) schools. This furthers a preferred press corps narrative: Our own public schools are a mess!

But please note: No one has ever flown to Finland to explore a second question: How do they provide health care at such a very low cost? Here are the OECD data for the U.S. and Finland:

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007:

United States: $7285

Finland: $2900

How weird! Why does no one fly to Finland to examine this major achievement?

• You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to slip a similarity past a Post staff writer:

Nevertheless, the similarities to Beck's rally are just the sort of thing Stewart himself would satirize on his show if, of course, it weren't his rally and his TV show in the first place.

• No, really: Joe Frontiera and Dan Leidi, columnists, consultants, and concerned clip-art bystanders, "Don't Get Fooled Again: The Baby Boomers' leadership failure".

• Your Moment of Zen:

Admirable is he, who when he
sees lightning, does not say
"Life goes by like a flash."

-Basho

A Lady In Private And A Whore In Public

NBC News Raccoon Brian Williams:

TVNewser: It’s been an interesting month for the TV business, with Rick Sanchez let go by CNN, and now FNC’s Juan Williams fired by NPR. What do you think of all this, and what do you think of the media coverage of these controversial developments?

Brian Williams: We’ve [covered] Juan the past two nights. The other two networks led with Juan Williams last night. I didn’t think it was quite at that level. But this is ‘eye of the beholder’ stuff. This is where, as someone said on our air last night, the First Amendment gives you the right to say what you want. It doesn’t give you the right to be employed.

So, these media organizations are exerting their own right to employ or not employ these folks. But I think there has been a little bit of a thread of media people, in the public eye, saying things and paying a price for it.

Yet Brian Williams, whom NBC Brand News goes With, both teased and opened the story on Thursday by saying it "raised questions about Political Correctness", before tossing to Andrea Mitchell, who had thoughtfully interrupted her tireless pursuit of Just Who in the Brown Campaign Called Meg Whitman a Swear to cover another major story.

Then the goddam thing rates a second night! More fallout! Jesus, Brian, your name's on the fucking show. If you know the story can be summed up in a sentence, tell me why didn't you sum it up in a sentence?

Political correctness? Sheesh, the only person making it about "Political Correctness" was Juan Williams, and he had a million reasons to do so. (None of which included his integrity as a commentator, of course, because he has none, which is what NPR should have said in the first place. Like at his job interview.)

Is this the way you covered the Sanchez story, Brian? Th' fuck makes "Scary Muslims want to blow up planes" less offensive than "The Jews run everything"? Other than the fact that the Jews run everything, I mean? Why don't you dedicate the second half of your career to actually being a journalist? What's the worst that could happen? How many meals are you going to miss from here on out?

The Internets Are Now Closed

CablinasianDem, in comments at Wonkette:

Even when Juan Williams is fired for making inflammatory comments, they're dull, cliche, and uninspired.