The Primal Screed

2006-12-31T08:28:00.000-05:00

FINAL WORD FROM SY O'NARA "The time has come, the walrus said, "to [cease] talk[ing] of many things." At least, this blog must now go the way of the passenger pigeon where the woodbine twineth. In order to seize on certain linguistico-artisanical possibilities that have been

2006-12-23T10:16:00.000-05:00

Seasonal Jollility When going to the grocery store on Christmas Eve Eve, the Macbeth rule is apt: "If 'twere done, 'twere well if 'twere done quickly." Hence an unaccustomed 8:30AM trip today. The failure of the store muzak to play the following seasonal song is lamentable. DECK US ALL WITH BOSTON CHARLIEWalt Kelly (1963) Deck us

2006-12-19T11:16:00.000-05:00

Deathwatch 2006 The AP reports 2,949 US military dead in Iraq to 12/18. With only thirteen more killing days left before the end of 2006, it will take 3.92 soldier deaths per day to hit 3,000.Now, we (these United States) are fully capable of doing our part. We have doomed them with crackpot, juvenile civilian

2006-12-08T15:37:00.000-05:00

A Tasty Speculation One of the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's old colleagues from the McCarthy campaigns and at the Progressive Populist has knocked the ball out of the park with a charming fantasy about the removal of the pustulous Dick Cheney from office. With insufficient regard for the copyright law, it is reprinted here.

2006-12-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

Southfork on the Potomac The American genius is not for perpetuation but for exploration. Hence our general disdain for history. A New Yorker cartoon of two svelte Upper East Siders, one protesting to the other, caught our national approach to genealogy

2006-12-06T01:13:00.000-05:00

Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite Of all the media sacred cows whose flatulence assails the populace, the editorial board of the Washington Post emits the most consistently repellent methane afflatus. It trades on a reputation for liberalism that does not pass anywhere with a greater population density than Podunk’s. Yet the Post’s local involvement is

2006-11-29T15:52:00.000-05:00

Linguistic Augmentation (No Surgery) Got you a new composite all-purpose political term. Comes from the otherwise odious Andrew Sullivan, the invariably wonderful firedoglake.com and the powerfully snarky Glenn Greenwald."Christianist rightards."Calling 'em "Christianists" is a parallel construction to "Islamists" justified since

2006-11-24T21:44:00.000-05:00

Punished for Taking Paine's Name in Vain Not that Christopher Hitchens' diminuitive reputation requires further deflation, but the neo-con fellow-traveller's infinitesimal private parts have run into a buzz-saw over at the London Review of Books.John Barrell, an expert on the blot on English liberties known as the

2006-11-16T11:12:00.000-05:00

Redistricting? We'll Show You Redistricting... In a ruthless act of copyright violation, the World's Tallest Radio HumoristTM is being hijacked from the people who rightfully pay him and brought to you on the sly, under the table, and with no authorization whatever.40 states is plenty Who needs Wyoming, Utah, Texas

2006-11-15T18:32:00.000-05:00

In Case they Didn't Get the Memo Apparently the Whitewash House staff hasn't quite figured out that the elections are over and they lost. Rightwing judicial nominees not only are not making it out of the

2006-11-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

Contributor Paean Thanks to all the Slangwhanger's friends who went to ActBlue to contribute to the candidates he touted. Six won, one lost, and two are still being counted.Even if they lose, your help kept it close. Batting six for nine is good enough to

2006-11-08T11:15:00.000-05:00

Spine Stiffener If you have a progressive Congresscritter, pound 'em now in the flush of victory. The "conservative Dems are the real winners" story is already infecting NPR. A friend fired off a feuilleton at Rep. Chris Van Hollen (MD-8) which is an exemplar of its kind.Hon Chris Van HollenUS House

2006-11-06T14:49:00.000-05:00

SomeAntiwar Novels The Good Soldier Svejk: And His Fortunes in the World War (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Jaroslav Hasek About This Book Customer Comments (1)Comment on this title and you could win free

2006-11-03T14:15:00.000-05:00

Purest Reasons for Ignoring Treason Disregarding Republican treason is good government, good for the country, and good for the Democratic party. Dems should take a pass on impeachment and go straight to massive and continuous oversight hearings. Historically, the offense of treason lies in “encompassing the death of the King.” Not solely killing

2006-11-02T17:12:00.000-05:00

In the Run-Up The Slangwhanger-in-Chief’s multifarious acquaintance extends to several friends who work for multi-trillion-dollar corporations scattered both hither and yon. Two of them whiled away a November afternoon exchanging messages between bouts of feigning work. Suitably disguised beneath cryptonyms below, their thoughts are presented for the

2006-10-31T17:47:00.000-05:00

Kerry Knees Rove's Strategy in the Balls Senator John Kerry: "If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that

2006-10-26T16:16:00.000-04:00

Unassurances The Washington Post headline (Oct 26) read "Bush Is Reassuring." Sorry, no: not factual. "Bush offers reassurances," yes. "Bush wants to reassure," yes. "Bush hopes again," yes. All of these are proveable statements. But the

2006-10-25T11:44:00.000-04:00

Republican Systemic Corruption This is the kind of issue that the Oversight Congress will be investigating starting next January rather than concentrating on impeachment. The cronyism in contracting that has been the Republican hallmark in defense spending in general, in Iraq in particular, in education, in faith-based

2006-10-25T10:49:00.000-04:00

Slaughter Isn't Free Soon, very soon, we may be able to receive reports from the United States Congress that are properly focused on real issues, depending on who gets out to vote in two weeks. Meantime here is a perfectly serviceable British example of the kind of comparison that needs to be done.Wars cancel out

2006-10-15T22:35:00.000-04:00

Why Li’l Kim Deserves Da Bomb Long time ago, right as the slaughter, maiming and starvation of nearly a hundred million humans drew to a close in the Last Just War, half a

2006-10-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

Bottom Line on Bottom Line Joe We have seen the likes of the desperately floundering Joe Lieberman before. When former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini was caught up in the Keating Five S&L scandal, he went mad for the last two years of his term and became unpredictably emotional, personalizing

2006-10-10T17:15:00.000-04:00

Bush, Despot Mr. Terry Jones now becomes the first person to have his copyright interests twice violated by the Primal Screed. If he were not already prepared for such experiences by his Monty Python past, Mr. Jones would receive the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's sincerest condolences. A splendid achievement

2006-10-06T15:36:00.000-04:00

Torture Breeds Terrorism: Breeding Grounds ProtectedThis is a fine review of the consequences, and antecedents, of the "Day the Constitution Died," murdered at the hands of the United States Senate. The Village Voice is the spiritual granddaddy of the internet blog , and Hentoff one of its few remaining bright lights.A Question of “Compromise” by Nat

2006-09-13T13:41:00.000-04:00

Bloggerman Owns the High Ground Keith Olbermann's clean common sense on MSNBC's Countdown continues to shame the bigfeet journos at the Washington Post and New York Times. Again Keith sears the hide off the Lying, Spying,

2006-09-11T15:34:00.000-04:00

Shaming ABC/Disney To paraphrase Jimmy Breslin, ABC/Disney's propaganda broadcast The Path to 9/11 "reached down and molested the dead." A blogger called Defective Yeti got in their face so well that the Slangwhanger-in-Chief cannot forbear crossposting his/her response. Factual Inaccuracies In The Path To 9/11 I was

2006-09-08T15:24:00.000-04:00

The weekend's 9/11 horror-fest will do Osama bin Laden's work for him This repetitious publicity glorifies terrorism as a weapon of war, scaring us far more than the original explosions did Simon JenkinsFriday September 8, 2006The Guardian Turn on the radio this week and a ghoulish

2006-09-06T21:22:00.000-04:00

Get Real or Get Lost Under the Lying, Spying, Torture, Corruption, Incompetence and Inanition Administration, the US has contrived a situation of which one plausible outcome before the end of 2007 is $100 oil, $10 gas, New Orleans abandoned, a housing crash, a stock market crash, an international recession, the obliteration of Ford, GM and

2006-08-30T22:17:00.000-04:00

Keith Punts Don Waaaaay Downfield Run, do not walk, over to MSNBC to see Keith Olbermann's blog in which he hoists Don Rumsfeld on several simultaneous petards. The video from his show tonight is supposedly even more spectacular but, as a print guy from way back, the Slangwhanger-in-Chief will limit his encomium to the

2006-08-30T00:35:00.000-04:00

Disaster Capitalism The privatisation of aid after Katrina offers a glimpse of a terrifying future in which only the wealthy are saved How to Make Money Out of Misery Naomi KleinWednesday August 30, 2006The Guardian The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with

2006-08-19T10:39:00.000-04:00

Forecasting Today's War from 1869 Last week saw the Second Anglo-Iraqi War endure longer than US troops were in World War II. The Brits, like Thursday's child, have far to go. Their WWII lasted 5 years, 11 months, 10 days while ours was "only" (ha!) 3 years, 8 months, 6 days.Back when the current war was being promoted in

2006-08-19T07:47:00.000-04:00

Preznit's Signing Statement to Judge Taylor Upon being shown a copy of Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling in ACLU vs. NSA (Case #06-CV-10204), Preznit G. W. Bush -- breathing laboriously, his tongue sticking out between his teeth, his brow furrowed with effort -- painstakingly scrawled the following signing statement:"

2006-08-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

Moribund on the Right Though there is much to dispute in the below train of thought, there is much to admire. The repeated, extensive and now recognized failures of the neo-cons and libertarians to grapple with the real world unfits them for government. However, the Slangwhanger-in-Chief foresees more hope for "capitalism with a human face," that

2006-08-14T10:52:00.000-04:00

God Deliver Us The Slangwhanger-in-Chief's knees are bent in constant supplication to the deity at hand. He keeps praying that Hillary is too smart to run. The personal vitriol quotient from the right will drown out any issues, as it

2006-08-04T03:43:00.000-04:00

The Return of the Old Lie Virginia Woolf was only artistically right when she said, “The modern world began on or about December 1910.” She referred to painting and poetry and they are, like all arts, always the canary in the coal mine. The bursting of forms in images

2006-08-04T03:34:00.000-04:00

Invincible Ignorance Blessed Tom Tomorrow in the Village Voice:

2006-08-03T01:45:00.000-04:00

Racing to Armageddon How Israel's gung-ho leaders turned victory into calamityOur government, in its desperation to outgun its predecessor, spurned a glorious chance to come out of this with honourNehemia ShtraslerThursday August 3, 2006The GuardianThere was one moment during the war when we had the upper hand. It was the moment

2006-08-01T17:55:00.000-04:00

DC Zoo and August Market Doldrums (Demand Function Deltas) Microsoft learns PCs are over Pepsi jumps Coke in market value Panda tickets no longer needed Disney repents of creative efforts Corporate thugs loot worker pensions Panda tickets no longer needed McDonalds brand found “tired” in Europe GM, Ford dive down the crapper Panda tickets no longer needed IRS: rich dodge $5

2006-07-29T18:34:00.000-04:00

Journalists Blast Rove's Role in Journalism By THE AMALGAMATED PRESSFiled at 4:35 p.m. ET Saturday July 29, 2006Special to The New York Herald Journal Tribune American SunWASHINGTON (AP) -- Journalists said Saturday that Presidential adviser Karl Rove often criticizes journalism professionals because he wants to draw attention away from the ''corrosive

2006-07-29T02:23:00.000-04:00

A Reckless Lack of US Middle East Urgency Published: July 26 2006 03:00 Financial TimesFew ceasefires in the Middle East amount to more than an opportunity for the combatants to reload. Yet never was one more needed than in Lebanon today. That is not just because of the suffering inflicted on civilians on both sides of the border between Israel

2006-07-20T01:27:00.000-04:00

A Protracted Colonial War With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon Tariq AliThursday July 20, 2006 The Guardian In his last interview - after the 1967 six-day war - the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify

2006-07-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

Corporate Media Gets it Right for Once Lieberman's Real Problem, Harold Myerson, Washington Post (registration required.)mr harold myersonwashington postmr myerson:you called it bang right on sen joe lieberman and CT in 2006 exactly because you understood pres lyndon b johnson and the USA in 1968. your killer observation was that

2006-07-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

World Cup 2006 Sometimes a bloggist has to work two months of sixty-hour weeks. And sometimes for relief a bloggist just has to go watch/listen to

2006-06-07T00:49:00.000-04:00

Drat Them Gay People, They's Losing Us Iraq! In Morning Martini: Preparing for the Worst, fellow blogista Pissed Off Patricia is very thorough on the subject of what we can all do to repel the gay subversion of real America.A certain denizen of Lower Bloggovia known to you felt it necessary to comment (at 9:48PM June 6.)

2006-05-30T00:46:00.000-04:00

My Country, 'Tis of Thee

2006-05-29T14:09:00.000-04:00

My Soldiers, My Veterans--Walt Whitman The last sunbeamLightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,Down a new-made double grave.Lo, the moon ascending,Up from the east the silvery round moon,Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,

2006-05-26T15:24:00.000-04:00

Let Us Now Praise Obscure Men The secret about addiction recovery that began to be revealed 71 years ago on June 10, 1935 in Akron OH (when Bill W. gave Dr. Bob his last drink to steady his hand during an operation) is twofold. Recovery comes through one addict talking to another, and both of them need to work at achieving what the old-style members of

2006-05-21T13:57:00.000-04:00

Jack Abramoff meets Robert Burns This Robert Burns lament for the demise of Scots sovereignty must date from around the Act of Union of 1707, though the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's grasp of Burns' dates is limp at best. In view of the national disgrace brought upon us by the Republican culture of corruption, it has grimly been rewritten

2006-05-17T21:19:00.000-04:00

Aviator in the Dust The Poetess-Priestess of Puget Sound sends the following reminder that we must never underestimate the public relations campaign powers of that genetic slime-pile known as the Bush Family.His ratings abysmal, his reputation shattered, his staff under investigation, his political allies under indictment, his party in retreat, and still

2006-05-15T14:15:00.000-04:00

Ancient Days, Modern Times The Ol' Perfesser, materially aided by one of his former students, sends the following observation, possibly in honor of the Feast of St. Isidore, Patron Saint of Farmers, but even if not, at least in coincidence with it: A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.

2006-05-15T03:10:00.000-04:00

And THAT Takes Care of the Manicheans! The Austin polymath Lisa Jones reports as follows, adding, "Actually the subject I wanted to use was "Party like it's 1549", but couldn't remember the exact range of the Council of Trent. Damn that Medieval Studies degree!" (Ms. Jones does herself a disservice, as the dates of Trent

2006-05-08T19:06:00.000-04:00

Rightists Skewer Rightists as "Liberals" Some may remember that in the world of Orwell's 1984 a statement could be designated, with no notion of silliness, as "double-plus un-good."

2006-05-08T15:11:00.000-04:00

Poem of Hope Berlusconi,Bush and Tony,cool and clever,there for ever.So they thought,butBerlusconigot the push.So will Tony.So will Bush.--Michael Swan, Cambridge, England

2006-04-30T23:14:00.000-04:00

Ridiculin' th' Bastids Good n' Proper Tony Snow moved directly from the Faux News Channel, where he was a commentator, to the White House, where he became the new Bush press secretary. Karl Rove's analysis went like this: "This move sets the stage, if Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retires, for the nomination of Justice O'Reilly." --Joe Bob Briggs

2006-04-21T00:50:00.000-04:00

Casualties of Whine House Rejig? Hardly... In the cosmic order, there are few people as unimportant as press secretaries. Sen. Gene McCarthy used to say that no campaign was real until you had sacrificed at least one campaign manager (who mattered some, but not much) and one press secretary (who didn't at all, but the press thought s/he did.)

2006-04-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

New Email Signature Courtesy the energetic and far-sighted Kam Magor of Austin TX, the below e-mail signature has been adopted (as amended by the Slangwhanger-in-Chief) for all accounts. Go thou and do likewise.DANGER: Owing to illegal and unconstitutional Executive Orders, the National Security Agency reads email without warning, warrant,

2006-04-15T09:29:00.000-04:00

God Bless the Village Voice Once the only Queen of Snark, the Voice is less distinctive than it used to be. But that's what happens to pioneers. Entire communities grow up around them. Next thing you know, they're not on the frontier anymore.Her formerly eldritch voice may now be muted, but the old girl still packs a

2006-04-15T01:17:00.000-04:00

Consummation Devoutly to be Wished Here is a heartening prediction of what life will be like for Enron's Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling the first week subsequent to their forthcoming fraud convictions.Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump" 'Toon Calls the Enron Turn

2006-04-12T18:58:00.000-04:00

Wisdom of Billy-Bob Quoth the AP of Wm. J. Clinton speechifying this week:[Clinton] also reflected on his own decisions when, as commander in chief, he was urged to launch a military strike somewhere in the world.''I always thought of Senator Fulbright and the terrible quagmire in Vietnam and how many times we sent more

2006-04-10T17:48:00.000-04:00

Why Bush Loved Ken Lay Enron czar Ken Lay hasn't testified in his own defense yet, but his chief hatchet-man, Jeff Skilling, took the stand Monday and will likely be there all week and possibly into next. In a copyrighted Enron-Trialwatch blog on the Houston Chronicle site, reporter John Roper captures the similarities between the Bush

2006-04-09T03:19:00.000-04:00

Four Thousand and Ten Words poor baby... his legacy memorialized... once and future... coming soon...

2006-04-09T02:39:00.000-04:00

Hersh Blows Lid Off Bush Plan to Nuke Iran Writing a copyrighted story in the issue of the New Yorker that hits the stands Monday but is already online, Seymour M. Hersh shows the inner workings of the Bush/Cheney/Rove Maladministration's ripening scheme to drop nukes on Iran. But his reporting also shows how the Administration's

2006-04-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

DeLay's Successor Clearly no motive is too low to be assigned to DDTom DeLay. Obviously he did the hari-kiri dance to keep the campaign money for a defense fund, and to try to save the seat for the Reptilican Party.However,

2006-04-03T23:06:00.000-04:00

Sharp Texas Scripture Disgraced, feral ex-House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay will apparently announce his resignation tomorrow, effective in May. He might not only go to jail, he was in danger of getting beat in his home 22nd District. DeLay has been indicted in Texas and almost certainly now faces federal charges as Jack Abramoff sings to

2006-03-31T19:35:00.000-05:00

Dismal Rethug 2006 Prospects Delight Countryside In a WaPo comment on the top 20 close House races, quoth RMill: "The impact of Abramhoff and further developments in Iraq could shift this to a more decisive Democratic year. That remains to be seen."Yep, those shoes have yet to drop. But.No way any good news comes out of Abramoff for the Rethugs.

2006-03-31T14:36:00.000-05:00

Lying, Spying, Torture, Corruption and Incompetence Administration

Holy Kazooties!

2006-03-30T17:45:00.000-05:00

The eight states nearest 50% Preznitial approval are: a) still below it; b) stuck in the f%sk$in' sticks, every single one.What do AK, ID, NV, WY, NE, OK, LA, and MS have in common?"The back of beyond" as one of the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's Irish great-grandmothers would have phrased it. "Out where God lost his shoes," as Jean Ann Goldy taught the S-i-C, or "Way past the corner of 99th Street and

2006-03-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

Pointed Letter from a Friend dear all-the time has come, the walrus said, to kick unconstitutional butt. please handwrite, in pen, to your two senators and ask them to cosponsor S.RES 398 to censure george w. bush.below is a sample text i prepared for nicky in california. of course, substitute your own senators' names (and kill the

2006-03-17T16:55:00.000-05:00

Desertions Continue Among the Mangrove Swamps

2006-03-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

No Lawyer Left Standing Initiative Impatience with the slowness of efforts to close the courts to litigants is what drove the Administration to literally fire the first shot in its groundbreaking "No Lawyer Left Standing" initiative.Everyone remembers that Vice-President Dick "Lying Sack of Excrement" Cheney, hunting on a private lawyer ranch near

2006-03-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

God: I've Lost Faith in Blair All the signs are that the Almighty is unhappy about efforts to implicate Him in the attack on Iraq, writes Terry Jones on Wednesday March 8, 2006 in the Guardian.A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources

2006-03-06T00:32:00.000-05:00

A Friend Writes Someone sent a friend of the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's a piece of foultempered Republican propaganda pretending that Starbucks (yes, the other evil empire from Seattle) refused to sell its coffee to GIs in Iraq because it supported neither the war nor the soldiers.The friend wrote back to the deluded

2006-02-28T16:37:00.000-05:00

If Bush's Approval Percentage Were a Stock Price Only because he was chasing a girl who worked there, the Slangwhanger-in-Chief once spent a year as an interviewer on an economic research project in Texas. Although a confirmed artsie, subspecies English major, to him the process of finding out what and where small businesses

2006-02-24T19:26:00.000-05:00

DeLay Trails Opponent in Campaign Funds Disgraced feral beast Rep. Tom DeLay is behind his likely Democratic opponent, Blue Dog former Rep. Nick Lampson, in funds raised in the first 45 days of 2006, as well as in funds on hand.The cratering of DeLay's support, despite his defiant stance, has been

2006-02-21T20:36:00.000-05:00

Shot, Ensuite The Carlyle Group is what the Trilateral Commission always wanted to be when it grew up.On responsible governance the Republican Party has adopted the Vatican policy toward premarital sex: complete, rigid abstinence.You know Enron's Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are in trouble when their lawyers object to a

2006-02-19T07:27:00.000-05:00

Democratic Reconstitutionalization Every year a junior Senator is told off to read George Washington’s Farewell Address on President’s Day. The Senate chamber is customarily empty for the exercise. This year, the words rang with a certain heavy relevance. It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those

2006-02-13T17:38:00.000-05:00

Target Recognition Poster Harried securocrats, alarmed by one more threat, are putting up the below remedial education poster in the Old Executive Office Building where the shotgun-wielding, NRA-rule-breaking VP Dick "Lying Sack of Excrement" Cheney has offices. Also it is to be posted in the VP's official residence

2006-02-12T06:05:00.000-05:00

post and abramoff again jim brady, editorwashington post .comdear sir:defending incompetence with arrogance is never successful. stop trying.the post has got, is getting, and will apparently continue to get it wrong. no abramoff money went to democrats. pretty clear. tribe money went to democrats. pretty clear, too.

2006-02-11T21:53:00.000-05:00

American War Criminals In a gesture of sanity, an international tribune of respectably-occupied people has come to the not-unstartling conclusion that the policy of the United States in Iraq violates international law, moral decency, and humane standards. Similar to the Russell Tribunal on the Vietnam war held in

2006-02-09T18:42:00.000-05:00

The John Paul I/Neves/Casey Scenario The Slangwhanger-in-Chief, presumably for his sins, has recently endured a hectic work schedule that has meanly curtailed his presence here in Scenic Lower Bloggovia. However, the light is where? At the end of the tunnel. And it has done what? Broken on a new day. And how lieved are we? Re.Never a man to fear

2006-01-26T17:58:00.000-05:00

Eight Headlines Deserve Another Bush to Ignore Hamas, Saying, "I Was For Democracy In The Middle East Before I Was Against It."UPDATE Friday January 27, 2006State Dept. to Review Aid to Palestinians 3:12 p.m. ETWASHINGTON (AP) -- If Hamas takes control of the Palestinian government, as now appears likely, all U.S. aid to the Palestinian people will be put under

2006-01-20T18:05:00.000-05:00

Message from Ellen McCarthy News on the broadcast of the Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy Memorial Service that took place last weekend on Saturday, January 14th at the Washington National Cathedral has been forwarded by Ellen McCarthy."The National Cathedral Public Relations office advised me today that C-SPAN filmed the entire EUGENE J MCCARTHY MEMORIAL SERVICE and will

2006-01-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

Insincerity, Thy Name is GOP Headlines like GOP Proposes Lobby Limits appearing across the country convey the impression that Republicans are shocked, shocked and amazed, to discover that there is corruption in Washington even after those evil Dems were driven from power!Well then, here are a few other headlines we may expect to see any day now if the same

2006-01-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

The Bad (MLB) vs. the Ugly (DC) The main thing to remember is, there are no good guys in the Washington Nationals DC baseball stadium foofaraw. Clearly Major League Baseball (the bad) is a bunch of shyster tax-dodge lawyers (Bob DuPuy) fronting for used car salesmen (Bud "

2006-01-16T13:27:00.000-05:00

McCarthy's Memorial Service News Coverage In direct contravention of the copyright laws of the United States of America and the normal practices of the cyberprovince of Upper Bloggovia, presented in full below are the news stories covering Saturday's memorial service for Senator Eugene J. McCarthy. Bottom line: it wasn't a funeral; it was a

2006-01-13T15:14:00.000-05:00

We Beat the Mob, We Can Beat DeLay At the Houston Chronicle, a torpid and skewed establishment bastion since Jesse Jones owned it before the Depression, they must think DDTom DeLay is toast. At least, they let Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid publish a reform proposal on their editorial pages that explicitly connects DeLay with the Mafia. Here's the scoop:

2006-01-10T17:59:00.000-05:00

Myth of Objectivity Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz’ s work (e.g. today's Slanted Press or Slanted Blogs?) needs corrective scrutiny fully as much as the rest of the media needs, or at any rate is given, his. Recently he docilely repeated the canard that Jack Abramoff directed contributions to Democrats. No, Howard. Some Abramoff

2006-01-05T11:40:00.000-05:00

Memorial Service for Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy Photo: APOn Saturday, January 14, 2006, at 11 o'clock in the morning, a public memorial service for Senator Eugene J. McCarthy will be held at the National Cathedral, Washington DC. The eulogist will be former President Bill Clinton, one of whose earliest national campaign experiences was as a McCarthy volunteer in 1968.All

2006-01-04T11:26:00.000-05:00

hiatus, n., a pause hiatus, n., a pause that both implies previous, and promises future, activity. ("When he himself might his hiatus make / With a mere merkin?" --Ld. Bacon, Hamnet, ou Le Distrait, III.i.83-84, 1607) [from Latin hiatus, from past participle of hiare, to gape.]

2005-12-29T16:53:00.000-05:00

Epithets Extended After review from the booth of a previous venture in home-brewed invective, it is clear that several more figures about whom we will be hearing in the next year needed to have their Homeric epithets firmly affixed, some by means of railroad spikes under the repeated blows of nine-pound hammers.The UglyThe Whitehogwash

2005-12-28T17:49:00.000-05:00

Electoral Tsunami, Name of Wiretapping Meandered across to the DarkSide™ just to see what flavor Kool-Ade™ they were regaling themselves with this Holiday™ winterim week. Wore some brand-spank-new Christmas™ Asbestos Underwear™ just for safety. Over at redstate.org the level of discussion, overflowing as it was with a ripe expectoration compounded equally of froth,

2005-12-27T17:58:00.000-05:00

Clouds No Bigger than a Man’s Hand The leading edges of some future storms are becoming visible over the Potomac basin as the year draws in. A few are outright political. Some are economic, with political overtones. And the most fascinating is purely scientific, concerning the edges of reality itself.Post-Christmas, the Whitehogwash

2005-12-24T11:46:00.000-05:00

New Life Amid Old Darkness In the Slangwhanger-in-Chief's lexicon, this is the Holiday Season, which contains individual days some of which are called Hannukah, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In his estimation as a hardened media-sifter, the Irish Times does Christmas Eve the best. They always print an actual poem. On the

2005-12-23T16:38:00.000-05:00

He Own'd the Soft Impeachment This is so delicious, the Slangwhanger-in-Chief can hardly stand it. Like the Brothers Grimm's Rumplestiltskin giving away knowledge of his name in an ecstacy of gloating, the echt-neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer today reveals that the White House fears impeachment enough that it has to have an anti-impeachment strategy. Strategy

2005-12-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

Legalism Beyond the Bounds of Reason Upon first perusing this expression of some nameless, but highly-to-be-praised, Osgoode Hall law student's jeu d’esprit on a bulletin board in Toronto in about 1970, the Slangwhanger-in-Chief instantly concluded that it is one of the finer demonstrations of professional deformation ever seen. From this

2005-12-22T15:11:00.000-05:00

Restoration of the Old Order The Financial Times is, like the Economist and the Republican Street Journal, a Tory paper. But the FT seems to remember the roots of Toryism better than the pure free market theoreticians, red in tooth and claw, who constantly fulminate against government, any government, in the pages of the

2005-12-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

Supporting the Censure Inquiry Resolutions The unmuzzleable Hon. John Conyers has just introduced H.Res.635, which will create a select committee to investigate the Administration's:intent to go to war before congressional authorization manipulation of

2005-12-19T23:23:00.000-05:00

Naming Names, Epithetically The Slangwhanger-in-Chief's sainted mother told him never to call names. Yet she was wrong, at least insofar as the naming function is an important part of politics. Think of the soon- to- be- defeated Rep. Mean Jean Schmidt (R-OH).It is, after all, an ancient human practice to characterize the names of prominent figures

2005-12-19T12:56:00.000-05:00

Defeat, Irreversible, Continues The sanguinary and intractable logic of the situation in Iraq persists in trumping any relentless Administration PR to the contrary. The woeful appearance of a somber, but unrepentant, Preznit on Sunday TV prolonged the attempt to sell continued violence as if it were soap flakes. Keep repeating the message and the

2005-12-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

More McCarthy, Positive and Double-Plus Un-Positive Editorialist Keith C. Burris at the Manchester (CT) Journal-Inquirer has won, hands down, the Eugene J. McCarthy Best Obituary sweepstakes, for which the munificent prize is a virtual full-fidelity audio CD of one hand clapping, existentially. Burris also wrote a just

2005-12-13T15:17:00.000-05:00

Remind Me Again Why We're in Iraq The Bush administration has decisively proved itself unable -- even with the aid of charts, mendacity and persiflage -- to describe what victory in Iraq would look like. Yet with oil remaining, and likely to stay fixed, above $50 a barrel, BushCo might be forgiven for thinking, in its usual muddled way, that it has now