Monuments To Republican Political Chastity & Other Asshattery

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This week's hot blog topics: Ann Coulter's beauty secret revealed!; when Republican campaigns go bad; Fess Parker would not be amused, Fred Thompson; BushCo to Reid: "Don't call my incompetent asshat an incompetent asshat!"; Lieberman: "If Kristol says what I'm doing is right, it must be right."; the other side of bigotry - if FOX News had always been around; Chris Matthews admits he "ain't got shit"; and "On journalistic blogging: To pussyfoot or let rip?" All this plus DUers Philosoraptor, Demeter, and Faux pas tell it like it is. Enjoy!

As Beautiful As A Talking Kite!

World O'Crap's scathingly brilliant tribute to Ann Coulter (aka the talking kite) is well worth printing and passing around liberally (pun intended). Here's a taste:

Ann Coulter's Beauty Secret

CONSERVATIVE VIRGINS DONATE BLOOD FOR COULTER'S BATH

by Scott C., WO'C's Children of the Night Correspondent


When best-selling author Ann Coulter arrived at Charles Coughlin College in Lynchville, Illinois, Ceci Lawrence was shocked." She looked so different from her photos," the 22-year old co-ed marveled." She had these long, bony fingers, and her skin was all stretched and thin like rice paper, and I remember thinking during her speech: she looks like a talking kite." It was then that Ceci and several of her sorority sisters resolved to do something for their distinguished visitor.

"We decided to have a blood drive," Ceci said, "So that Ann could renew the unholy forces which animate her flesh by bathing in the blood of the innocent.

As Rachel Ray would say, "Yummo!"

When Republican Campaigns Go Bad

What a week for Republican prez wannabes! First up: Rudolph, The Would-Be Warrior Giuliani, was a no-show for the Iraq Study Group. Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo has been on this story all week. Here's a snippet from his first reaction to the Rudolph brush-off:

How did we not learn about this sooner?

From Newsday ...

Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

Here's a juicy tidbit from Marshall's first update:

I think this sticks to him like tar. Not because it's the worst thing in the world. Not because it's the most important thing about him or his campaign. But because it's like bubble gum on the shoe of his signature issue. Pick your metaphor, a pin to his balloon. A can trailing after his car. Whatever. It will stick in people's minds and it hits him where he's supposed to be strongest. He cares so much about the Iraq War he couldn't bother to reschedule a few rubber chicken speeches. It's just a matter of which of his opponents throws the first gob.

Then came this from TPM's Greg Sargent:

If a newspaper breaks a story that by all rights should be damaging to Rudy's "national security credentials," and the rest of the media fails to pick up on it, did the story ever break at all?

Followed by this:

The Rudy campaign is disputing the big story today saying that he blew off Iraq Study Group meetings even as he found the time to make big money giving speeches.

But Rudy's pushback is easily proven to be entirely bogus.

And this:

So according to Rudy's statement, he appears to be claiming that he bagged on the Baker-Hamilton commission after it became clear he was going to run for president. But as Greg Sargent shows here, Rudy was already an all-but-announced candidate many months before to signed on to the commission. Okay, so the presidential candidate dodge doesn't really work. What next?

And then, Rudoph G's campaign chair in South carolina gets busted big time for dealing crack cocaine. Of course, Josh Marshall responds:

Hmmmm. I'm used to Republicans getting indicted, but not for dealing coke.

SC State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel indicted for conspiracy to distribute crack.

Wow! A powerful Republican actually indicted for drug dealing? Watch out, Dubya! TPM also has the video. Poor Rudolph. Just when he thinks he can worm his way into the White House on national security street cred, his terrible horrible week gets... um, worse.

From The Carpetbagger Report:

Will Bloomberg make it a three-person race in '08?

For months, something has been driving rumors about NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg running for president as an independent, but to hear Bloomberg tell it, he's not responsible. On the record, he tells anyone and everyone that he's not running and he plans to enter philanthropy once term-limits force him from office in 2009.

But signs keep popping up that keep interest brewing. Bloomberg brought his campaign website back online. He's giving more speeches outside NYC — including one in New Hampshire. A month ago, the Washington Times quoted a "long-time business adviser" to Bloomberg saying that the mayor has set aside money to "go for it."

And as of yesterday afternoon, Bloomberg ended his affiliation with the Republican Party.

Welcome to the Independent Elephant House, Perot Nader Bloomberg. Meanwhile...

Fred Thompson: "I'm Just Like That Guy Fess Parker Played On TV!"

Pensito Review's headline says it all:

Fred Thompson's Campaign Confuses Home State Icon Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone


The campaign team for Fred Thompson, the Tennessee-born former lobbyist who is running for president, made a mistake on its website that wouldn't get past your average 10-year-old from Chattanooga: They confused Tennessee-born frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone, the trailblazer who was born in Pennsylvania, raised in North Carolina, and served in the Virginia legislature.

(snip)

Framing Thompson, who worked as a Washington lobbyist for 18 years and served in the Senate for nine years, as a "citizen legislator," the campaign site says:

In the tradition of Daniel Boone of Tennessee and President George Washington, citizen-legislators and leaders Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory to seek new challenges.

Leaving aside the wildly hubristic comparison with George Washington, the facts about Daniel Boone are wrong.

Read the rest. It's a hoot! Speaking of idiotic Republicans...

BushCo To Pace: You're Fired! BushCo To Reid: How Dare You Call Pace Incompetent!

Josh Marshall scores the point to win the game:

Thinking back over the blather last week over Sen. Reid's (D-NV) comments about Gen. Pace, it's quite astonishing that the White House could with a straight face attack Reid for questioning Pace's competence only day's after they'd fired him. Think about that. The White House fires Pace as part of its many-month effort to sack everyone from the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. And Reid is in hot water for questioning the man's abilities?

While we're still on the subject of incompetence, TPM's Steve Benen has an update on the 5-year search for WMD in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said, "This is really absurd. We're approaching five years now of this exercise in futility."

Finally, the exercise appears ready to come to a merciful conclusion -- several years too late.

And then, there's this week's incompetent media whore moment from Crooks and Liars:

Chris Matthews gets caught with his potty mouth on camera again…

Matthews: We're all reacting here and putting on shit...we have nothing...

Watch the video (at the link). It's a doozy. If Matthews admits he knows nothing, where does that leave Lieberman?

Hey, Hey, Holy Joe! Tell Us What You Think You Know!

From Crooks and Liars:

"If Kristol says what I'm doing is right, it must be right."

I don't think any more needs to be said about Joe Lieberman.

Well, there you have it. Bill Kristol says Joe Lieberman is "right." Right of what, Bill? Fanaticism? Hit the showers, cheerleader!

The Other Side Of Bigotry (Or, If FOX News Had Existed Throughout History)

You think today's FOX Fascist Fundie "News" coverage is bad? Kontraband's humorous look at historical events through the FOX lens is... not so funny, really.

Thank A DUer!

Thanks to Philosoraptor for posting this "want ad":

We need a 'Guest President' to do the work that our president won't do.

I'm not picky about what country this guest president comes from, we hire someone really competent with a sharp brain, pay them slightly less than what bush gets for his lousy performance, let them do the hard work of restoring democracy and stopping imperialism, and then send them back where they came from.

Our president, if you can actually call him that, won't do the hard work that is needed to save America from the Nazis, cause he's one of them. He won't do what we the people want him to do, his overall job performance should have gotten him fired.

SURELY we can find someone who could do a better job, and doesn't mind working up a sweat, and will follow OUR will, and earn his or her wages honorably. I don't think any Americans want the job, and most are too fucking stupid to cross the street. We are idiots with an idiot king, and we need to look overseas or to Canada or Mexico for a qualified guest worker president.

Then of course we need to deport our illegal president back to Kennebunkport.

There's only one thing wrong with that deportation to Kennebunkport idea. Bush would never go anywhere without extradition protection.

Thanks to Demeter, who has the best (IMHO) DU sigline, which aptly describes the idiot-in-chief:

There MUST be a loophole...This kind of thing ALWAYS has a loophole...NOBODY should be kept from being a Queen if she wants to be one...It's UNDEMOCRATIC!

--Lucy Van Pelt, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Everyone's still blaming Lucy for Charlie Brown's annual football f-ups, Demeter. Poor Lucy! More sinned against than sinning in this Dubyaville world.

And many thanks to Faux pas for this nifty come-back, suitable for all Repukish occasions:

Comeback for those who Don't like liberals(? ) Fine, then give us back...

Our clean air and water standards, worker safety protections, the 40 hour work week, the social security program, the civil rights movement, the equal rights movement, the free speech movement, discrimination protections, the school lunch program, birth control, rural electrification, organized labor, child labor laws, minimum wage, employee health care benefits, public assistance, Americans with Disabilities Act, fair housing legislation, the Freedom of Information Act, the Voting Rights Act, food and drug safety regulations, federally subsidized student loans, collective bargaining....and everything else we have done to put power back in the hands of the individual and out of the hands of the ruling and corporate elite.

Thanks, DUers!

Back To Those "Monuments Of Republican Chastity"

Thanks to p.m. carpenter for the inspirational phrase. Carpenter takes on Politico.Com this week and filets its "fair and balanced" bending-over-backwards- to-protect-its "journalistic integrity" (aka "bullshit"):

On journalistic blogging: To pussyfoot or let rip?

Those "missing" White House emails are a source of meticulous but ambivalent caution for The Politico's blog, "The Crypt." Its front-page headline was, "RNC lost thousands of White House e-mails"; its inside headline was, "Deleted?"

(snip)

The Politico's "Crypt" needs to decide, as does every blog, if it's a blog or a straight-news column.
As we all know and have come to expect, blogs are for frolicking through the news with extreme prejudice and prodigious bias, two bents that often produce the extremely and prodigiously correct. In short, blogs are a way of bellowing what the news will merely whisper months from now.
So let the news pussyfoot; let the blogs rip.

Let the blogs rip, indeed. Imagine what life in Dubyaville would be like without blogs. Keep sending those great blog links and keep fighting the tightie righties, y'all. We are all... all of us... our only hope.

-- Delilah Boyd

[TwilightGardener]

1. Fred Thompson--"citizen legislator"...WTF is THAT?

Can I be one too? Is it like making a citizen's arrest?

[Demeter]

2. Thank You Kindly For the Mention, Delilah!

[nxylas]

3. "Talking kite", like it

Is Coulter related to Lady Cassandra from Doctor Who by any chance?