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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Republicans like to use writing as cover for affairs

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whose recent unexplained absence from his state for four days was first explained that he was hiking the Appalacian Trail and then that he was "writing something," admitted today that he had actually spent the weekend in Argentina, fucking his girlfriend.

The writing excuse sounded suspicious to me because you may remember that one of Ted Haggard's excuses for his frequent trips to Denver was that he liked to hole up in a hotel room to work on his books. Of course, he was holing up in a hotel room for different purposes. But isn't it funny that this has become a common excuse?

In light of this, perhaps we should wonder about the recent announcement that Dick Cheney is working on a memoir. Yeah sure, Dick! Since when did you need an excuse to disappear for weeks at a time in the first place? The "undisclosed location" excuse is still good as far as I'm concerned.

technorati: Mark Sanford, writing, Cheney

Labels: Bad Behavior, Cheney, Ted Haggard, writing techniques

Monday, January 19, 2009

Burden of surrendering reins of gov't too much for Cheney

Cheney Pulls Muscle and Is in Wheelchair

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back on Monday while moving boxes and will be in a wheelchair for Tuesday's inauguration ceremony.

The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said Mr. Cheney was helping to move into his new home in McLean, Va., when he injured his back. His doctor recommended that he use a wheelchair for the next couple of days. Ms. Perino said Mr. Cheney was all right otherwise.

"The vice president is looking forward to being there for tomorrow's historic inaugural activities," she said.

Quiz: What was Cheney really doing when he threw his back out?

    a.) Shredding incriminating documents
    b.) Trying to shift responsibility for his crimes to someone else
    c.) Trying to lift his administration's poll numbers above historic lows
    d.) Trying to get that weird grimace off his face
    e.) Loading his shotgun in order to stage a "hunting accident" tomorrow

technorati: cheney

Labels: Cheney

Saturday, December 08, 2007

'Line Up' piece gets typical reaction

Some politically oriented pictures of Bush, Cheney and other administration figures in an exhibition of prints in the New York Public Library are creating controversy. The NYT's comments are spot-on, saying the mug-shot like images of Bush and his cronies would hardly be unusual on "The Daily Show," for instance, but in the context of a staid show at the library, they're electric.

See a video version of the show here.

Predictably, the right wing is saying stuff like:

At first I wondered who put al-Qaida (sic) in charge of the New York public library, but then of course remembered the American left is doing their bidding for them.

God, that shit is tired. I mean, images of Bush et al as criminals are almost as tired as that, but surely people who listen to right wing radio are getting tired of it, aren't they?

No, I guess they're immune to that. The left will get tired of anything and say "enough already" but rage junkies never get tired of their rage. Who could have imagined they'd still be demonizing Jane Fonda, for example?

technorati: Bush, Cheney, Republicans, art, political art

Labels: art, Cheney, Republicans

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Uneasiness

Today's New York Times has one of their regular, pleasantly voyeuristic articles about a bizarre medical condition -- this time Capgras Syndrome, a form of psychosis in which the sufferer becomes convinced that their family and regular acquaintances have been replaced by doppelgängers -- inexact copies of the genuine people, sinister duplicates who, while resembling their real loved ones, somehow are not them. It's as if the sufferers have been dropped into the first half hour of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," where a Chinese laundryman insists to Donald Sutherland, "That not my wife!"

Sometimes I have that feeling about our country. In many ways it looks like the country I grew up in, feverishly rushing into the future while constantly evoking nostalgia for its past -- now that the 1940s and the late 1960s have been thoroughly mined for nostalgia, it's the early 1960s that are being polished and put on display, what with AMC's "Mad Men" and the hoopla around the 50th anniversary of "On the Road." We continue being willing to sell anything to anybody, stopping only when the evidence that it's killing them is incontrovertible. We continue filling the earth with tons of shiny crap and living like there's no tomorrow. That sure hasn't changed.

But in many sinister ways, this country has changed. When I was a kid, there were one or two things we thought set our country apart from our enemies -- special characteristics that were reinforced in the movies over and over again. We treated prisoners of war humanely -- better than ours were treated. We didn't torture people. And most of all, we didn't invade another country for purely cynical reasons.

Of course, to varying degrees, those myths were false, even in the 1960s when I was a kid. But it was still possible to believe them. Who today can even pretend those things are still true?

I also grew up with the idea that the Constitution, with its protections against any branch of the government becoming too powerful and against invasions of privacy, was inviolate. During the last six years the President and his administration have acted as if those protections did not exist. We don't even yet know all the ways the shadowy men like Addington have quietly knocked the props from beneath the Bill of Rights. We will only find out in the years to come. (Read the July 3, 2007 New Yorker piece on Addington, called the force behind the administration's most egregious assaults on the Constitution and this country's reputation around the world.)

And why is it that none of the Democratic candidates for President have spoken out about the assaults on the Constitution by the Bush administration? Why haven't any of them detailed the ways they will, in their first days in office, roll back these changes? Because they, too, want to take advantage of them. They aren't stupid. They realize how much easier their job will be -- if by "their job" you mean protecting the privileges of companies and corporations over those of individual people -- if they hang onto these expanded powers.

That's why I am suffering a bit from Capgras Syndrome today, the 6th anniversary of the plane crashes of 2001. My country looks somewhat the same. But in many fundamental ways, it is not my country anymore.

technorati: Constitution, Bill of Rights, nostalgia, David Addington, 9/11, privacy

Labels: 1960, Addington, Cheney, Iraq war, politics, zeitgeist

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Rights of spring

I didn't want to miss pointing to this AP story headlined Christian Right at crossroads, about how the movement's founders (Robertson, Falwell, Dobson) are etting up there and how there are few figures standing up to take their place -- especially now that Ted Haggard has been neutralized. Also see my post from March 7 on the same topic.

Otherwise, Bush and his rapidly shrinking administration are officially beleaguered, even if the President himself can't spell that. But there are other things to worry about -- I found the interview on "Fresh Air" Monday with the author of a book on Blackwater USA completely chilling. The author's thesis is that Blackwater and the other "security contractors" hired to protect civilian and government interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots represent the outsourcing of the American military, with the object being to avoid Congressional oversight.

Never mind what the CIA and other security agencies are doing -- the Addingtons of the world are way ahead of you. Blackwater and its ilk can operate in complete privacy, ignore requests for information, ride roughshod over any notion of civil rights and the rule of law, with impunity. And author Jeremy Scahill's description of the secretive, powerful and far-right evangelical leaders of Blackwater is positively frightening. You really should listen to that "Fresh Air" segment -- if you're already depressed today, that is.

technorati: fascists, religious right, Cheney, David Addington, Blackwater, Fresh Air

Labels: Addington, Cheney, crypto-fascists, Focus on the Fundies, mercenaries, Republicans