Perhaps Woodward is still a little traumatized after having been threatened with a good dinner and flattery by a thuggish member of the Obama administration.
Or, perhaps, somewhere deep within the man (if that’s possible at all at all), he needs to discredit himself by daring more careful reporters to throw facts at him like a carnival dunk-me clown. Predictably, though, at the Village carnival, the game is evidently rigged, and Woodward stays dry as a bone.
Rest assured that while there’s an unemployed photogenic psychotic willing to preen in front of bright lights and pocket Wingnut Welfare, FOX will be assiduous in helping malevolent loons fail their way to the top, if by “top” we mean the bottom of a barrel similar to the one West likes to torture Iraqi policemen in.
Has anyone noticed that the GOP Faux Outrage Machine has been somewhat subdued on the recent revelations that the Department of Justice has been secretly poring over news reporters’ phone logs? Odd, isn’t it? Sure, we all know how Republicans feel about the LAMESTREAM MEDIA!!!1! and it’s insufferable Librul Bias. But, FIRST AMENDMENT! FOUNDING FATHERS! etc., plus, really, Flip-Flops R Us. So why aren’t Republicans getting all apoplectic over this now that they have their big chance to expose Big Brother-ish, Fascist tactics?
Maybe it’s because you’d have to really beat the bushes to find a Republican who isn’t a huge fan of spy vs. spy stuff or who doesn’t believe that anything—anything—that the intelligence community, the military or federal law enforcement does in the name of National Security is out of bounds. And what a slippery slope political talk about limitations could land us on if we’re not careful, eh?
Besides, remember all the way back to the 2012 campaign when Republicans were screaming foul about deliberate White House leaks on national security coups strategically designed to make President Obama look good in an election year? Stories like how the CIA had foiled an Underwear Bomber 2.0 plot that could have taken down a passenger-laden jetliner? Or the sexy one about cyber-spying on Iran’s nuclear program?
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) circulated the letter . . . signed by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Kelley Ayotte (R-NH), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Barrasso (R-WY), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John Thune (R-SD), among other Republican senators.
It was 31 in all who signed the letter demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate national-security leaks from the executive branch:
The numerous national-security leaks reportedly originating out of the executive branch in recent months have been stunning.
If true, they reveal details of some of our nation’s most highly classified and sensitive military and intelligence matters, thereby risking our national security, as well as the lives of American citizens and our allies. If there were ever a case requiring an outside special counsel with bipartisan acceptance and widespread public trust, this is it.
So. Months later we find ourselves “uncovering” that very investigation.
With the exception of Margaret Dumont in a white toga performing her plus-size version of the Rites of Spring, nothing makes Classical Occultism less appealing than Stevie Nicks levitating in a cloud of silken Underoos. Needless to say, I was never any kind of Fleetwood Mac fan until I discovered “Tusk” on the B side of a 45 RPM Top 40 single. Talk about relentless rhythm!
Think of this as today’s rock n’ roll sorbet. Cleanse your palate. Enjoy the interplay of exotic pop riffs, and don’t thank me just because the band isn’t dancing all over the YouTube video.
So, Heavily Armed Disgruntled People Of America, how’s every little thing?
Our special correspondent (kitted out at his insistence in Cloak of Invisibility and Kevlar Pants) was attending that little treasonish trade-show-cum shindig of yours last week, when he happened in on the creative gun-storage seminar “Store Your Semi-Automatics In The Kids’ Closet” which sounds like a David Sedaris title but turned out to be really real. So many small children having either smoked their siblings or been smoked in general recently, he began to feel slightly peaky, and unable to appreciate your full spectrum of defiant ballistic wackadoo, detailed here by the vastly more stalwart Bette Noir.
Any old hoo, rankled 2nd-half-of-the-2nd amendment fans, sometime between the Glenn Beck philippics on Michael Bloomberg, Nazi, and fifteen minutes of mike-melting audio purporting to be the thoughts of Gammy Gunrack, yr. correspondent thought, “Line-Dancing Jeebus With A Chaw and a Blowsy Girlfriend In A’Women Hunt’ T shirt, I sure hope these people never have a legitimate grievance—they’re halfway to an armed march on Washington as it is!”
And now, look you, after over four years of Birthy confabulations and paranoid delusions about your government, not only may you actually have had your ticket to ride the steam locomotive to Zanyville stamped by the actual IRS, but it seems that Nostrils Of Governmental Overreach have been hoovering up Associated Press communiqués, little, until now, to the A.P.‘s beknownst*
It was at this point that the old back-office telex machine started its musical chattering, and churned out a missive from our special correspondent: “My understanding file reports on people perpetually wrong,from own inviolable position of moral superiority. Currently drowning self in pink gin at expat bar on riverfront. Suggest reply only by telex until further notice or Holder bounced down Capitol steps on keister.”
If you’re rooting for the Republican Party to survive until 2016, you probably believe that Benghazi-Gate is a game-changing strategy of diabolical brilliance. In fact, it’s really pathetic and graphically demonstrates how utterly out of juice the GOP has become.
For the first few months after the Reality of 2012 set in, some Republicans actually toyed with the idea of substantive changes to their antiquated policy platform by convincing themselves that Latinos were natural-born, big-C conservatives. The RNC did it’s little soul-search and discovered that some “serious Republicans” could stomach reaching out to black, Hispanic and Asian voters because they just knew that, if only they could articulate what’s in their little conservative hearts, minorities would drop everything and register Republican.
The GOP beat the bushes and found themselves some folks of the “right persuasion” to head up their outreach programs in the states and to sign up “more of their own kind.” Slight miscalculation. Yesterday, in Florida, one of the most important outreach outposts, the newly appointed RNC State Director Of Outreach, Pablo Pantoja, had to regretfully resign his post and switch his political affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
Here’s how he put it:
It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.
Who could’ve seen that coming? Meanwhile, while one faction of the GOP is strategizing about how to come up with enough voters to win a national election, again, ever . . . Hillary Clinton emerges as the Democrats secret weapon for 2016 already raining on the parades of the GOP’s Earnest Young Men potential candidates. Hillary could beat any, or all, of them tomorrow, if necessary.
This probably ranks up there in things that had to be done eventually. Canadian space cadet Chris Hadfield, floating in a tin can, faaaar above the world, gives us his styling of Bowie’s 1969 megahit, backed by a fabulous invisible cheesy celestial rock orchestra.
This raises a few questions, like: What sort of payload snafu lets him cart a grand piano up there, but not a Stylophone? And is it an astronaut’s discipline that doesn’t allow him to break “the rules” and go thumb-over for the barre chords in the C-F-G-A guitar bridge, which would have totally nailed it? And would it have killed the budget to let the poor guy take along a guitar strap?
Cuban leader Raul Castro’s daughter, a sexologist and supporter of gay rights, has urged Cubans to join a traditional “conga” dance against homophobia taking place in Havana on Saturday.
Well done, Ms. Castro. May your conga line stretch from Alamar to Zaragoza.
By the time I met Harlan Ellison in 1975, he had been a powerhouse of American science fiction and pop culture for about 15 years. Unfortunately, I met him on the day he was booked to make an SRO presentation to students at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. i had just picked the lock on a glass display case in the student union and was helping myself to autographed copies of Ellison’s publicity photo.
Suddenly, Ellison stuck a steel index finger into my 17th vertebra. “You’d better wait ‘til this guy is dead before you start pilfering his promotional totems.” Without turning to look behind me, I improv’d fastest, dumbest retort I could think of: “Why should I bother? As near as I can tell, this midget is no bigger than you are, Shrimpie!”
On that note, Ellison spun me around. “Do you know who I am?” he growled. “No,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure your owner is losing his or her mind right now. Come with me, and I’ll take you down to the Lost and Found.”
What can I say? I have a magic way when it comes to making first impressions.
Crackling with infectious energy, :Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth” pays homage to the dark prince of American letters, Harlan Ellison. Master of his craft, Ellison has heroically produced over 75 books and more than 1,700 classics of fiction and non-fiction on one of his Olympia manual typewriters, including the single most popular Star Trek episode (“City on the Edge of Forever”) —from Trailer’s promo
Yes, indeedy. Floyd The Barber, Gomer Pyle, Deputy Dimwit And Baalok the drunken alien nemesis in a futuristic chaise-longue. Ron Howard’s slightly older brother Clint returns after nearly sixty years to reprise his tiny tippling tyrant in the Star Trek episode, “The Corbomite Maneuver.”
Priceless, endless, thoroughly no-strings-attached thanks to Betty Cracker for the much-needed ST inspiration. I hadn’t thought much about America’s first dusty Western in outer space in a very long time, but now I can’t escape the feeling that I’m vibrating on a Barcalounger filled with Tribbles!
Via J-Two-O via Another David S., an Audi ad featuring the Two Spocks:
Nerd-Child and I already have our Star Trek Into Darkness tickets and are eagerly awaiting the premiere. We both love the franchise, but the kiddo is even more stoked than usual because the wonderfully named Benedict Cumberbatch has joined the cast as Khan. Nerd-Child informed me that Cumberbatch’s fans are referred to as “Cumberbitches.” Not in this house, they aren’t.
Anyhoo, has any classic TV series produced as many national treasures as the original Star Trek, which gave us Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, William Shatner, et al? Discuss! Or talk about whatever…
While most of us were hoisting a cerveza to celebrate Cinco de Mayo [or Cinco de Mao, if you prefer], this weekend, the NRA was hosting its annual member shindig in Houston, TX. Because the NRA is all about selling guns, ammo, gun accessories, gun paraphernalia, gun books, gun art, gun everything the George R. Brown Convention Center was packed with the people who make and sell all of those things and the peaceful, law-abiding responsible citizens who buy them for peaceful, law-abiding, gun-loving fun, utility and sport.
By now, we’re all pretty familiar with the notion that there are two kinds of gun owners/users: good guys and bad guys. And, according to the NRA, there’s nothing much we can do about the bad guys except outnumber and outgun them . . . and keep our heads down and our kids inside when the firing commences.
The NRA doesn’t actually endorse shootouts in the streets of America’s towns and cities, they just expect them, and therefore they want all Americans to own the firepower necessary to stay alive in 21st century America. Children should have guns. Nuns should have guns. Hookers should definitely have guns—in fact, all God’s women should have guns. Nerdy guys, conspiracy theorists, neighbors, teachers, clergymen and pizza delivery guys should all have guns so that fewer of them die at the hands of “bad guys.” Even lying socialist Lie-bruls should have guns [and then maybe they’‘d wise up?]. Limiting access to guns won’t help because the bad guys will always be able to get them, therefore the good guys needs mo’ gunz!!
Because it seems inevitable that guns are in our future, in a big way, I’m concerned that perhaps the NRA bad guy vs. good guy profile of gun-owners is a little too simplistic and, perhaps, we need to expand it a bit to take in all possibilities. I’m proposing this breakdown: bad guys, good guys, freaking idiots.
I’d also like to propose that instead of expanded background checks, Congress should consider IQ and EQ (a test for emotional maturity) testing for gun permits. Now, I know that this will be an equally hard sell to the NRA because some percentage of gun manufacturers’ market share is clearly Freaking Idiots and, if my proposal were adopted, gun manufacturer profits could plummet. The upside would be that we wouldn’t have four-year-olds receiving rifles for their birthday, or folks firing off 8,000 rounds to get a stiffie on a Sunday, or people killing their own kids while: cleaning, sighting, pretending to be James Bond or practicing their quick draw.
Today, the fifth of May, marks an insidious annual attempt to lure John and Jane Q. Public into ignoring the threat to America posed by the Mexican Menace, also known as El Peligro Mejicano. While unsuspecting Americans quaff frosty bottles of Corona beer (the name symbolizes the attempt to establish an Aztec kingdom in the U.S. after the overthrow of the democratic republic), the campaign to destroy America proceeds rapidamente. The threat is subtle, as even corn-fed Midwesterners are being transformed into Mesoamerican corn people through, you got it, the consumption of corn. If God wanted humans to consume corn, corn would be naturally edible, with no need to resort to fiendish Aztec alchemy to render the stuff wholesome. At any rate, last year, the man who puts the MO in moron stumbled upon the connection between the Mexicans and the Communists. The following is a recap of a post I wrote last year before joining the Rumproast team…
"[W]e wholeheartedly endorse the excellent Rumproast blog" -- Jim Newell, Wonkette
"Mind you, don’t let yourself be trapped dialoging with these guys: truth is their enemy; pyschological warfare and misinformation dissemination is their profession." -- TeaParty.org
