Day: March 29, 2010

Whether a loss of, say, 19 House seats and 3 Senate seats [by the Democrat in 2010] would be regarded as a “win” by the media is hard to say

Nate Silver, funniest man alive.
What is hard to say is: if The Democrat were to somehow post a net win of 19 House and 3 Senate seats, would that be regarded as a “win” by the media. I think the answer is pretty clear.

The 2008 campaign was an extended tour of the swamp wherein reside [John McCain’s] various grudges, pretensions, and poisonous ill-will toward anyone who didn’t recognize his Green Room-endowed right to run the country. He sold himself to all the people who’d immolated his well-loved 2000 campaign. He violated the campaign law that bore his name. He said that, in retrospect, he wouldn’t have voted for the half-sensible immigration-reform law he’d proposed. Then, in his biggest bow to the Nervous Hospital that the base of his party had become, he picked an ambitious, half-bright goober from Alaska to run with him, made her a star to people who should not be trusted to cut their own meat, and then, when her innate clownishness had made her (and him) such a laughing stock that the Republican ticket lost in places like Indiana to a black man whose middle name was “Hussein,” he sent his remaining loyalists out to emphasize (anonymously) that his running mate was even dumber than the rest of us imagined.

He then walked back to the Senate and engaged in a prolonged temper tantrum that culminated in his announcement last week that he was so insulted by health-care reform that he would hereafter decline to do his job any more – a refutation of his old “Country First” slogan that was so obviously hilarious that even Harry Reid noticed. Meanwhile, back home, he was being primaried to within an inch of his life anyway by J.D. Hayworth, a former sportscaster who went on to a brief, Abramoff-enriched career as the dimmest bulb in the congressional chandelier. So, here I sit, today, in Arizona, and not eight miles from this computer. John McCain has flown in Sarah Palin to be the featured speaker at a rally that he hopes will push him to victory over a guy whom even all the other congressional dumbasses thought was a box of rocks. She’s endorsing him but, at the rally, HE’S introducing her, and all I can think of is a paraphrase of the late, great Dr. Thompson’s memorable vale to the cursed 1972 campaign:

“Jesus, how low do you have to stoop in this country if you want to almost be president?”

Charles Pierce, writing to The Nation’s Eric Alterman, first channeling the good doctor, then quoting him. Magnificent.

Cheneyism’s Test

Domestic terrorist plot unsealed:

Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an anti-government uprising.

Presumably the Tea Klan and the right-wing noise machine will come out strongly in support military tribunals, repeated torture, indefinite detention without trial, and all manner of other fundamentally anti-American treatment for this lot of thugs. It’s the only way for the Republic to survive, right? Right? I mean, we can’t be worried if we need to get some Christianists wet and splash them with a little water if that’s what it takes to Protect The Homeland. Right?