happy happy joy joy

Let’s see. The Bush Administration is spying on everyone’s email and telephone conversations while underlings put together a deal to hand over the management of six U.S. ports to a company owned by Dubai of the United Aram Emirates.

So, what does George Will have to tell us?

Conservatives are happier than liberals!

Hmmmm. Methinks George is tying that bow tie too tight.

“A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that conservatives are happier than liberals -- in all income groups,” Will writes. “While 34 percent of all Americans call themselves "very happy," only 28 percent of liberal Democrats (and 31 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats) do, compared with 47 percent of conservative Republicans. This finding is niftily self-reinforcing: It depresses liberals.”

Let me see. What do liberals have to be unhappy about?

Could it be that Liberals are still waiting for answers about the security failures leading up to September 11 – yes, the September 11 that George W. Bush has used to skyrocket the federal deficit (no doubt a further cause of liberal angst), bludgeon his way into a war with Iraq and scare the piss out of the electorate in order to continue his giveaway program for his wealthy supporters.

I can see that upsetting more than a few liberals.

Or could it be the inept way the Bush Administration dealt with Hurricane Katrina? Name another president who has seen two major American cities devastated under their watch.

Could it be the fact that conservatives have hung a For Sale sign on Congress? Jack Abramoff sold access to a long list of legislators. Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham faces a stretch in prison for selling himself to special interests. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is under indictment for his role in gerrymandering Texas’ legislative districts in order to advance the Republican majority. Ohio congressman Bob Ney is under investigation, as is Senate majority leader Bill Frist for improper stock dealings – the same Bill Frist who snuck blanket immunity to pharmaceutical companies into a piece of legislation in the dead of night.

Could it be that the Supreme Court has shifted mightily to the right, has reproductive rights in its gun sites, and is primed to elevate corporate rights above human and civil rights.

Or could it be that the Bush Administration has used the Bill of Rights as toilet paper and the president has referred to the Constitution as “just a goddamned piece of paper.” Let’s put it this way: this administration has asked the American people to trust them more often, with less reason to trust them, than any presidency in history.

Enron screwed its own employees out of their retirement funds. Airlines have dumped their pension responsibilities onto the federal government. But, hey, Halliburton’s profits are up – just not up as much as oil company profits.

With that going on, no wonder conservatives are so happy. Their fellow conservatives have really taken care of the deficit. They’re cleared the way for torturing prisoners in the war on terror – the most ambiguous excuse for creating a unitary executive ever crafted.

Right, George. Conservatives are happier than liberals.

Anyone with half a brain and even a remote interest in current events would be royally pissed off.

More soon.

ahhhhhhh, arianna

Way back when, in the days when I was still married, my ex-wife considered making a pet out of a pot-bellied pig. Never mind that fact that her cat had a pot belly any pig would be proud of, she thought a little pig running around the house would be fun.

To stave off the adoption, I insisted on naming rights.

Now, my ex was about as apolitical as they come, but an undeterred Reagan Republican – a contradiction, I know. Then again, facts never stood in the way for my ex, as the divorce petition proved. Her decidedly middle-class family also were staunch Republicans, spending the majority of their retired morning listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. While I helped them move into their new apartment when they moved from Royal Oak, Michigan to Bellevue, Washington to be nearer us, they played “The Best of Rush” on the radio. They at least laughed politely when I called that an oxymoron.

But I digress.

First, I insisted, it had to be a female pig. Second, my ex would have to choose from three names: Phyllis Schlafly, Gloria Allred or Arianna Huffington.

Needless to say, she never adopted a pig.

I tell that story in order to confess that I have changed my opinion on Arianna Huffington.

Unlike some of her conservative counterparts, Arianna always had a sense of humor. I laughed at the pieces she did with Al Franken on Politically Incorrect. I roared when Bill Mahrer proposed to her on the last PI episode – asking her to be his first guest on his next show. That sense of humor separated her from the Ann Coulters of the world.

And then she started to change her outlook. She started to stray from the ranks of knee-jerk conservatives.

And now she’s founded a progressive outpost on the Internet: The Huffington Post.

I’m not sure if I completely trust this about-face she’s made. Perhaps some of this change in attitude is simply that the enemy of my enemy (in this case, George W. Bush, et al) is my friend. Still, there is no doubting the contribution she is making to the voices of dissent in this country.

And now she’s gone and done something loveable. Damn. After this one, I may actually consider proposing myself.

You can see the whole thing here.

The aforementioned Ann Coulter is, in my mind, the most vile piece of dreck ever handed a microphone. Anyone who pays any attention to this shrew is in dire need of psychiatric counseling and, probably, a lithium drip. The fact that the right wing consistently gives this woman a microphone is the most effective indictment against the so-called conservative movement. She’s a liar and a bomb-thrower – a caustic, shoot-from-the-lip darling of those with small minds and me-first attitudes.

Sean Hannity, who has no redeeming social value in his own right, invited Arianna Huffington onto his show, Hannity & Colmes, along with the Vile, Blonde Twig.

Hannity’s modus operandi is to throw out quotes from some liberal du jour and then ask his guests of they agree with the statement, or if they’re embarrassed by the statement. On this occasion Hannity and his heavily sprayed coiffure turned Coulter loose to bash liberals at will.

Until Arianna turned the tables.

"Do you agree with your guest, Ann-do you agree that Democrats have an affection for terrorists? … Yes or no?”

Hannity started stumbling and Coulter had to rush to his defense.

The subject of the earlier tirade had been Hollywood actor/activist Alec Baldwin, and rather than answer Arianna’s question, Butt-boy decided to continue his rant against Baldwin. Arianna answered: “How many times are you going to say that? Would you like to go through a litany of the toxic statements made by your other guest, Ann Coulter, with which I’m sure you don’t agree? You know what? For you to be suddenly so, so, so hypersensitive about what Alec Baldwin said when you’ve allowed Ann Coulter to be on your show and say things that are so unbelievably toxic... Sending liberals to Guantanamo, having televised torture, sending Daisy Cutters to the Middle East… And I have not seen you distancing yourself from these toxic and (unintelligible) statements."

It’s about time someone, anyone, asked those questions of the talking heads at Fox News.

Thank you, Arianna. I could kiss you right now.

Hannity, et al, have been absorbed with the notion that Liberals are so extreme as to be out of the mainstream. The looney left, they assert, are so far overboard that there are no lifeboats available to bring them back.

They busily rustle up tempests in teapots. They drag in Hollywood activists like Alec Baldwin or Sean Penn and pillory them.

But the truth is, there is no voice on the left to match the extremism and bombast of Coulter.

Remember the criticism the right has traditionally leveled against the left? That we're a bunch of fuzzyheaded intellectuals who overthink everything. Coulter runs against that grain, charging the left with the Right's maladies and then attacking them for it.

It's just damned nice that someone finally calls her, and them, on it.

More soon.

scary lady with a sour puss

Mary Matalin and her husband, James Carville, were always an odd pair – he with his aw-shucks, down-home, pass-me-the-hush-puppies manner and her with a stick up her ass the size of a redwood and a face that always looks like she’s just gotten a whiff of a particularly pungent fart. As a couple they have all the charm of a mongoose and a snake.

Carville makes the Ragin’ Cajun act work for him. Matalin is vile enough that, were she the last woman on earth, most men would opt for celebacy.

That latter fact came home to roost again today with Meet The Press.

Timmy-Boy Russert allowed “Shotgun Dick” Cheney’s” Dragon Lady plenty of room to flat-out lie in defense of the trigger-happy, stonewalling Veep.

I’m always uncomfortable when reviewers attack people for what they wear, and in this case there was a great deal made of Matalin’s brooch. Okay, calling that thing a brooch is insulting brooches the world around. Arianna Huffington, calling the whole episode “The Mary Matalin Horror Show,” likened her attire to Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and included side-by-side images to back up the comparison. Effective.

Meanwhile James Wolcott’s post, Mary Quite Contrary, read as follows: “I only caught the bitter end of Meet the Press so I'm not sure what provoked Mary Matalin's pout-fest, but she made quite a petulant spectacle of herself, shaking her head from side to side in silent, lemon-puss disagreement whenever Maureen Dowd and David Gregory made mildly critical comments about Shotgun Cheney. Even without the immature pouting and pissy expression, Matalin would have been a car wreck in repose: With a bad haircut topping a mistaken facelift and a ghastly floral pin that looked like spray-painted aluminum, she looked like the Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot. Maybe defending the defensible is getting to her, and the acid reflux has gone to her brain.”

Lady MacCheney, as one blog called her, gave a typical Bush/Cheney song and dance: it’s all the fault of the liberal media. She claimed that the vice-president did not send underlings out to blame Harry Whittington for hunting accident – an odd claim since Matalin was one of the chief underlings sent out to do just that.

Of course the vice president wasn’t drinking, she claimed, although she was several thousand miles away at the time AND Cheney admitted to drinking a beer at lunch. Anyone who knows him can tell you – Cheney doesn’t drink, Matalin ranted. Except for the facts that the vice president was charged on two occasions with driving while under the influence of alcohol during his younger years AND several witnesses said this past week that after he returned from the hospital Saturday night, Cheney fixed himself a cocktail at the ranch bar.

Watching Matalin pout and priss was painful – especially as NBC reporter David Gregory and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd made salient point after salient point. At one point she accused Gregory of going on a four-day jihad in the White House press room. When Gregory pointed out that her reference to the term “jihad” was at best unfortunate, she spat back with particular venom: “Oh, OK...were you saving up for that line?”

Dowd war particularly insightful (compiled by Huffington):

“The reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he passes, but we don't really know what he's up to. We don't know his schedule. We don't always know where he is. We don't know what democratic institution he's blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior and judgment operated pretty much in real time -- with the delay, but pretty much in real time. ... And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgment in bungling a crisis. I mean, if there's one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan, it's damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn't even care about the damage. ... Mary, it isn't only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He's got a fever of about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq.”

It struck me that watching Mary Matalin work overtime trying in vain to spin the week’s events to a place where it might, MIGHT, not be damaging for Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, that this was what it was really all about for this administration: an especially disagreeable woman with an expression that shows just how foul-smelling her job really is. Sometimes, when you work so hard to spin bullshit, all you end up with is a bullshit frappe.

More soon.