Republican Party : The Face of

Senator Sessions, the face of the glorious Republican Party.

To start, his real name is: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
- One part Jefferson [Davis, president of the Confederacy?]
- One Part Antebellum South (Beauregard....Beauregard? Seriously?)
- One part comic paterfamilias idiocy: His father was proud enough of that name to deign him the third?

Sessions didn't name himself, but the irony of a Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III calling out anyone else on their lineage is laughable.

Born in Selma. Selma? He graduated college in 1969 and he wasn't fighting for black voting rights -- it appears he was working against them.

Sessions called the ACLU and the NAACP "communist-inspired."

He jokingly (well, he later claimed it was a joke) said that the Ku Klux Klan was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana.

He was denied a Federal Judgeship because of his racist comments. Even a Senator from his own state (Howell Heflin) voted against him.

More via Steve Benen:

A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but claimed to have been joking.

What's more, Thomas Figures, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama and an African American, later explained that during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he "used to think they [the Klan] were OK" until he found out some of them were "pot smokers." Sessions once again acknowledged making the remark, but once again claimed to have been kidding. Figures also remembered having heard Sessions call him "boy," and once warn him to "be careful what you say to white folks."

The once and future Republican Party.

Finally, it's too easy to make fun of people for their voice and accent. But if the Republican party wants to make Foghorn Leghorn-esque speech patterns the voice of their party, then keep Jeff Sessions in the forefront. May you lose many more national elections. [Run, Haley, Run!]

Middle-School Orthography

Versha Sharma at TPM has done us a service: Pasting text of Palin's freakish "taking my remaining marbles" speech. Palin's gubernatorial site has a version of the text up, but it's been changed to eliminate some of the more egregious middle-school-caliber affectations.

For instance, compare this snippet from your original with the cleaned-up remnant on her website:

Original (from TPM):

But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to "opposition research" - that's money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers - or safer roads

Palin's cleaned up version on the Alaska state website:

But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money not going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads.

So TPM has done a good thing by preserving the original--she's childish not just in thought but in writing. Maybe Bill Kristol writes with RANDOM capitalized WORDS and that's why he LIKES her so?

Separated at Birth?

Young Warren Oates and Timothy Olyphant


An interesting-sounding biography of Warren Oates is out: Warren Oates: A Wild Life. WFMU interviewed the author, Susan Compo, which is where I saw the Oates photo.

Why I Don't Read Slate

I used to read Slate a lot, back for the first year or so it existed. Why'd I stop? "Doghouse" Riley points out one reason:

Bats Left/Throws Right: "C'mon, Dickerson. It's Slate! It's the home of the Special Reverse Twist Counterintuitive Contrarianism masquerading as Just Common Sense."

William "Lord" Saletan, concern troll, is another reason. As is the fact that I can't justify giving page views to a publication that pays Mickey "Goat blower" Kaus, he of infinite chips on his shoulder, a salary.

Mark Sanford of the Palmetto State

Palmetto is Buenos Aires slang for a hand job.

Way to go Mark, you sanctimonious hypocrite!

Farsi for Chalabi

The Republicans who want Obama to stamp his feet and screech about the situation in Iran are the neocons who only speak to Persians with surnames that are Farsi for "Chalabi."

John Ensign: Piety for thee, but not for me!

Commandment Seven (or six, depending on your sect):

YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

When he was a Representative, Sen. John Ensign voted for the public display of the Ten Commandments on government property during the Judge Ray Moore (Alabama) fracas.

The bill Ensign voted for includes:

- States that the Ten Commandments have 'a significant impact on the development of the fundamental legal principles of Western Civilization' by setting a code of moral conduct and promoting respect for the laws of the United States

- States that the Ten Commandments are a "declaration of fundamental principles that are the cornerstones of a fair and just society"

- States that the public display of the Ten Commandments should be permitted in government offices and courthouses

The Ten Commandments were so important to John Ensign that they needed to be put in government offices. They weren't so important that he has to obey them himself.

The Capital of the World

Since when is a housing project in the South Bronx the Capital of the World?

Manhattan is maybe the capital of the world. A housing project in the South Bronx is farther away from that "Center" than an Amish farm in Lancaster County, PA.

Sotomayor also didn't just "get into" Princeton. She spent four years there and was the first or second person in graduation grades.

You can possibly get in with affirmative action slide-by (though you still must be very smart), but you can't get virtually every professor to give you A's for four years. She was a very smart person as an undergraduate. I doubt John Derbyshire could have ever gotten so high on graduation, even in his homeland of the UK.

Those who want to paint her as a dummy are thinking that every superlative achieved is "affirmative action" if the receiver isn't white.

And. speaking as a while male, I think that's why no one darker than me (or lighter, for that matter) should ever trust a Republican.

Can this be true?

Concerning the 1968 true-crime drama The Boston Strangler: "20th Century Fox originally hired English playwright Terence Rattigan [The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version] to write the screenplay based on Gerold Frank's book, but he wrote it as a comedy and was replaced by Edward Anhalt. In Rattigan's version, the killer was revealed, by a computer, to be [20th Century Fox head] 'Daryl F. Zanuck' ."

It's at IMDB (which is suspect) but also at Turner Classic Movies and at Fox Studio Classics [UK], though all are similarly worded and perhaps repurposings of one error somewhere.

But if it's true, major kudos to Terence Rattigan.

500 Years

What a creepy and ahistorical lot. First Lindsey Graham says "...one of the reasons these techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work. "

Now Gary Bauer comes up with what is (to him) a Jesus-approved justification for torture.

The more appropriate question is, 'What is a follower of Jesus permitted to do?'"

Well, Gary, Torquemada was an extremely pious religious man. And he wasn't even the worst of the torturers of the time.

Clearly, he was a follower of Jesus and was permitted to torture-- and that's part of why those techniques have survived for five hundred years.

Lindsey Graham: Grand Inquisitor

Lindsey Graham: "I mean, one of the reasons these techniques have survived for about 500 years is apparently they work. "

Yes, these techniques work great for identifying witches.

Also, for gathering false information to start a war in Iraq. They work great for that, too.

I'm supposing...

Since Charlie Crist has announced he will run for senate, I'd wager there's some artificial insemination going on so he and his beard wife can have a bouncing baby to strengthen his candidacy.

Kevin Eldon + The Cassettes: Mobile Phone

I'm announcing in my candidate for Summer Single 2009 right now, with the nuanced, multilayered, and darkly undertoned brilliance of "Mobile Phone" by Kevin Eldon and the Cassettes.

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Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Or visit here: View eldon-mobilephone-mp3

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Kevin "The Actor" Eldon is already the Olivier of his generation, with roles in Big Train, Nighty Night, Lee and Herring (and merely Lee) projects, Brass Eye, and many more great things including the splendid Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg movie Hot Fuzz.

Little did we know that he was a musical genius as well.

Great song, Mr. Eldon!

If you haven't heard the BBC Radio 4 series Poet's Tree featuring Kevin Eldon and written by Eldon and Stewart Lee, you're in for a treat.

Photo of Kevin Eldon by David Bailey's Son. Nice job!

+++
UPDATE April 2010
For some reason this has become quite popular, and I'm not at all sure the file host above will survive too many downloads. Just in case, here's another.

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Or visit here: View eldon-mobilephone-mp3

I'm not sure where I found this originally-- it may have been on Adam and Joe's BBC 6 Music show.

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RE-UPDATE: April 14, 2010

Thanks to the commenter Google Got Lost, I've discovered that the reason so many are downloading this song is because Adam Buxton played it on this past Sunday's (April 11) edition of his excellent new Radio 6 Music show Adam Buxton's Big Mixtape. Listen to the whole program on the Big British Castle's website via BBC iPlayer here.

I guess Adam obliquely refers to this blog during the following, his lead out announcement of the track:

Kevin Eldon and the Cassettes there with a track called "Mobile Phone." I'm pretty sure you can download that if you search for it on the Internet. It is available. And Kevin, of course, in case you don't know, is one of the country's finest comedy actors. He's been in TV shows like Big Train and Nighty Night and Brass Eye. He was in Dead Set, Charlie Brooker's zombie sitcom recently. His character Paul Hamilton, who is like a very pretentious poet is amazing. If you ever get the chance to see Kevin doing that you should definitely take it. He did a series on Radio 4 I think called Poet's Tree, with Paul Hamilton doing his poems. And "Mobile Phone" by Kevin Eldon and the Cassettes is just a guaranteed smash in our car, at least. I hope it has a beneficial effect wherever you are.

"Mobile Phone" starts about 17:30 into the program, and the whole show is excellent. I'm glad it's not for sale anywhere because I'd hate to have put it up if it were commercially available.

Here's one American who digs you, Corporal Buckles!

As a bonus, here's a blog post at A Silly Blog with Adam's comments about what he's listening to, including "Mobile Phone."

The "Anarchists' Convention" Republican

I never was a lefty, so I couldn't make much sense of the various schisms and divisions and splits and feuds that grew within lefty movements. John Sayle's short story "The Anarchists' Convention" [collected in the book of the same name] captured the idiocy of it all: the fights over trivial issues, doctrinal tussles that seemed medieval, personal slights that grew into great battles with no discernable external effect, and the long-burning feuds that are rarely referred to openly but which twist a petty vendetta machine into an "ideology."

I suspect this process is why Mickey Kaus is now unreadable by few besides Glenn Reynolds. Someone pissed Kaus off in the eighties and he can't get over it-- but he also can't explain it or even understand he's caught up in it any more than the people in the Sayle's story can.

Such a grand movement! A glorious impulse (real or imagined) that splintered into petty and irreconcilable shards of supposedly similarly intentioned do-gooders, each of which had, to others in the movement, an unseen despicable purpose. To outsiders it was all so labrynthine, so boring, so idiotic, and so utterly without purpose. However, if you're a villager, it all makes senese.

I said I wasn't a lefty, so I never bought into this kind of cannibalism. I've long been a Democrat, so I saw tough times but not nihilism like the lefties and anarchists see daily -- and not what the Republicans see now.

The GOP seems to be approaching that territory now. [With the understanding that Republicans will always have a large set of Big Money Boys to fill a trough in which all can abide.] The Teabag Parties are a good sign of this already -- God help us if the capital L Lefties had a Pacifica Radio that was as large and as well-funded as Fox News. The Teabag Parties would have hyper-caffeinated all US soil and all its territorial waters.

• Pissing matches near the top
  
• Blame cast broadly
  
• Recriminations
  
• Despite their great (and misplaced) belief in Twitter, even there their leadership splits and fails.
  


• Funny that Christians approve of torture more than non-Christians. Well, that's the kind of Christians that Republicans have created.
  
  

As I said, the Big Money Boys won't let this go on for long. They'll have a few "thinktanks" and some astroturf to salvage what will become a pretty strong braindead group from all this detritus of their movement. And facts on the ground will make things easier for them, I'm sure (things will get better, which they will exploit; or things will get worse, which they will exploit).

But it's fun to watch for now, because it's a spectacular flameout.

Very Skillful, Mr. Colbert

"[T]here was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements...." *

That's a real testament to the skill of Colbert.

I'm not generally fond of the improvisational funny, partly because the bounds of "improvisation" are, oddly, fairly circumscribed in a narrow and specific way. The observer is meant to laugh at how well the performer is improvising: "Gee, they thought up that quip on the spot!" But we've all known people who can make up funny quips. Even Peter Cook couldn't make them funny all the time.

Colbert has created his own little world he works in. Most of his show is written, but the countless gestures, moues, and quips aren't-- he improvises lines and gestures in addition to the writing. And he has a fully fleshed out character (one that's defined as "that specific Colbert twat" rather than the general Improv Comic's world of "someone who may make a funny quip occasionally."). His character is so fully formed that he can actually perform the Talk Show Interview in character.

Colbert can pay attention to the shifts and drifts of the daily and weekly news, and to the currents of ideology that week. He can make that funny with his pre-formed character, a lot of funny gags from writers, and his own improvised delivery and asides. And he makes the character seem as natural as Bill O'Reilly or Hannity playing themselves--as the study above seems to indicate.

Of course, Colbert is by all accounts a very nice guy. But, most of all, he's funny.

And, of course, your average Republican really is dumb.

---
*
SOURCE
The Irony of Satire
Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report
Heather L. LaMarre -The Ohio State University, HLaMarre@gmail.com
Kristen D. Landreville - The Ohio State University
Michael A. Beam -The Ohio State University

Simpletons think Complex Questions are Simple

From (Republican, of course) Rep. Joe Barton's YouTube page, with this info: "When Rep. Joe Barton asked the Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, where oil comes from - he got a puzzling answer."

Dr. Steven Chu is a Nobel-Prize winning Physicist.
Joe Barton is evidently a sub-idiot.

This really is exasperating. It's like a very young child asking one of those "simple" questions such as : "How does television work?" There is a simple metaphorical answer ("Images come over the wires!") that doesn't tell an adult much.

But if an adult asks such a question, one has to probe how much they already know about how the world works.

In the case or Rep. Barton, I guess one would have to ask him "Have you ever heard of geological time? Plate tectonics? Continental drift? Subduction? Pangea or Gondwana? As for Alaska, have you heard of glaciation?"

It appears, from Rep Barton putting that clip on his own Youtube page that the answer would be "No, I don't really know about any of those."

And then, the answer to him would have to be, as it would be for a six-year old child: "God put it there."

And again we are forced to ask, What are the bipartisan solutions that can be reached with someone who is proud of asking that and thinks Chu's answer is "puzzling" but doesn't realize the question is juvenile?

I realize that there are Democrats who aren't geniuses, too. But Republican congresspeople, like Barton, seem to be proud of it.

Jeez.

Miscellaneous notes on my mind

• Re the DHS report (which was initiated under Geo. Bush): Hey, wingnuts: If your hero is Ronald Reagan and you're collecting Ayn Rand books, you're fine. If your hero is Timothy McVeigh and you're collecting fuel oil and fertilizer, you're not.
  
  Why do Republicans want to be associated with Timothy McVeigh, the KKK, and Stormfront? Can't they just say "Good: keep us sane conservatives safe from those violent kooks?"
  
  
• Re the OLC torture memos: really disgusting stuff from a bunch of sadistic cowards. I would hope that Yoo, Bybee, and especially Addington could be prosecuted.
  
  But I'm with Kevin Drum's current thinking on whether the CIA operatives should be prosecuted: " It just seems as if tackling the practical issues involved in figuring out who did what, and under what circumstances, is too vast an undertaking for too small a probable return. "
  
  You'd basically shut down the CIA during the investigation.
  I figure there's a better than 50/50 chance the CIA operatives would be acquitted anyway, thereby legitimizing torture by a jury of their peers.
  
  If there weren't 20 other epochal crises left to Obama by Bush, I'd be more inclined to say go for the prosecutions of the CIA guys.
  
  
• Related: I'm still stunned about the absolutely horrible collection of shit-hurricanes that Bush and his Fox News government left behind. Not just a wretched recesssion, but a financial crisis that cripples attempts to ease recession (Federal Reserve interest rate at zero -- for the first time ever -- by the time Obama took office), and a huge deficit to boot, during the only time when governments must spend massively to prevent collapse.
  
  From the big things to the smaller things. For instance, here's George W. Bush in 2001, speaking to the President of Mexico:
  

  Mr. President, you and I are keeping the pledges we made in Guanajuato this past winter to expand the freedom of trade, to build an equitable prosperity, and to honor the rule of law.
  
  We have before us a great prospect, an era of prosperity in a hemisphere of liberty. In this task, our cooperation is broad and unprecedented. Our sense of trust is strong, and it's growing.

  
  
  Then 9/11 happened, Bush got all "Let's get Saddam for no good reason," then Bush got tired of playing President and Mexico has gone to hell just like nearly everything else the idiot touched.
  
  
• Following from the above: I've long been a partisan Democrat, but I've voted for a handful of Republicans in the past. After seeing how horrendously these people can clusterfuck everything they touch, I'll sit out an election with a bad Democrat rather than vote for another Republican, no matter how anodyne they seem. The "decent" republican I vote for (say, if I had the opportunity to vote for Olympia Snow, though I don't live in Maine) may end up supporting the countricidal lunatics years down the road. They're unsafe in positions of power.
  
  If the scale of the failures weren't so immense, I probably wouldn't feel that way. But they are immense, they were supported by nearly every elected Republican for nearly eight years, and I do feel that way.
  

I've seen various wingnuts complaining that Democrats keep pointing an accusing finger at Bush when discussing America's current problems. Well, I'm pointing at the problems he created or exacerbated. The economy and foreign policy are the main things the President has to pay attention to, and he didn't just fuck them up in ways that ended in January 2009. The consequences of Bush will last for years if not decades.

I'm still hearing giggles from wingnuts about the horrible deeds of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and neither of them left the steaming pile of fetid sewage behind that Bush and Cheney did.

Thomas Paine, Not a Republican

I've been gobsmacked to see references to and (apparently) readings from Thomas Paine as part of the wingnut freakout du jour.

Many of Thomas Paine's ideas were not just radical for his time, but would be scandalously radical now.

For instance, Paine was a proponent of a guaranteed minimum income (note, this is NOT the minimum wage, but a guaranteed minimum income.

He was a scabrously anti-religious deist ("The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum." and "What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.")

Those comments couldn't be uttered without corporate apology on Fox News today, 200 years after Thomas Paine's death.

Chris Kelly has a short rundown of Paine clashing with the Republican Party ethos.

I'm amazed that self-professed conservatives would evoke the radical spirit of Thomas Paine, given how his spirit would knock out their underpinnings.

While Obama isn't a radical, it's less surprising that he would evoke Thomas Paine, as he did in his inaugural address.

As some of you may note, I enjoy UK radio, and there's a nice current series called "Mark Steel's in Town," where Mark Steel goes to various smaller places in Britain and does a standup routine written for that locale. I enjoy Steel quite a bit (he did a wonderful series called "The Mark Steel Lectures" for both radio and television, one episode of which, in each medium, focused on Paine). [These Lectures also gave Emma Kennedy a chance to perform for the public, and Steel is sainted in that regard.]

One of the towns he visited for "Mark Steel's in Town" was Lewes (pop. 16,222), where Paine spent some years. I've put it up for those who may be interested. The section about Paine begins around 8:30 in, but the whole episode is quite ably handled and funny.

Mark Steel's in Town: Episode 3 - Lewis. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on April 1, 2009.

Finally, one more Paine quotation that reminds me of Obama:
"Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice."

A Drizzling Easter Morning

And he is risen? Well, be it so . . .
And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.

I stand amid them in the rain,
While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest--though risen is he.

Thomas Hardy wrote many great things. If only he'd have been a slam poet, thoughtful as they are.

Happy Easter.

Nice one, Charlie Brooker

I really like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but the US could use someone like Charlie Brooker. [I presume a prole at the Guardian put "Daily Show" in the subhead for this article, sadly.]

He's a columnist for the Guardian, but I knew him first from his TV. He does tv-fiction (a previous comedy called Nathan Barley about new media peasants like those in Shoreditch Twat, and a reality-show-based zombie horror thriller dramedy called Dead Set.] And he does tv-factual -- His new show about news, Newswipe, is as funny as his TV-in-general show Screenwipe, but feistier.

Newswipe on Youtube [On Youtube each link is only to part 1 of each episode so you'll have to scour youtube for later segments, but it's worth it]:

Newswipe Episode 1

Newswipe Episode 2

Newswipe Episode 3, the most recent episode. --they include a nice look at the looniness of Fox News and especially Glen Beck from a Brit. And a thought-provoking mini-documentary from Adam Curtis about "Oh, Dearism" and how it obfuscates political argument. Episode 3 is the best so far, at least to this Yankee.