Hangover Discurso

There's so much delicious depravity I just can't keep up these days. It's time for morning-after opining on the public discourse once again. Bring me some hair o' the dog and let's get to it, my darlings.

First up, dday at Digby's Hullaballoo has a delightful dissection of "McCain's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Week":

I hope somebody's taking notes on this week's travails for John McCain, because if this was October and anyone was paying attention, his entire staff would be fired and the RNC would be gamely talking about random downballot races and how "2012 looks to be an up year."

It's a whirlwind tour of some of the most outrageous bullshit ever to come out of a presidential campaign. Simply gorgeous. Go read it. I'll just sit here sipping quietly until your return.

Welcome back. Let me pour you another. I've got another brilliant take-down of McCain, this time from the incomparable Glenn Greenwald, who points out just how far John "Torture is Wrong - Let's Authorize More!" McCain has gone in creating the moral morass we find ourselves in today:

An article by The New York Times's Mark Mazzetti this morning discloses a letter (.pdf) from the Justice Department to Congress which asserts "that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law." In other words, even after all of the dramatic anti-torture laws and other decrees, the Bush administration insists that American interrogators have the right to use methods that are widely considered violations of the Geneva Conventions if we decide that doing so might help "thwart terrorist attacks."

There are two reasons, and two reasons only, that the Bush Administration is able to claim this power: John McCain and the Military Commissions Act. In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display -- with great media fanfare -- of insisting that the MCA require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. That law pretends to compel compliance with the Conventions, while simultaneously vesting the President with the power to violate them -- precisely the power that the President is invoking here to proclaim that we have the right to use these methods.

Isn't that precious? The President gets to decide. I guess McCain really took all that "I'm the decider" malarkey to heart. His political ambitions even overcome the fact that he understands the evils of torture from first-hand experience. I don't know about you, but I truly do not want a deceptive shitsack like this as our next President.

And you might notice something about this little snippet that sounds an awful lot like Scalia's recent "torture doesn't violate the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because it's not punishment" poison. This is what our culture has been reduced to: semantic arguments. They torture bodies, and then they torture the law to justify it.

I can't put too fine a point on this: I fucking despise these goddamned motherfucking assholes.

And I loathe their media enablers:

Last week, Politico reported that John McCain has an "unorthodox strategy" to capture the presidency -- he "will rely on free media to an unprecedented degree to get out his message."

Interesting word, "rely" -- the American Heritage Dictionary defines it not only as "to be dependent for support, help, or supply," but also as "to place or have faith or confidence."

Planning a presidential campaign around confidence that the news media will get your message out for you might ordinarily be considered a risky gambit. But the media wasted no time in establishing that McCain's faith will be rewarded.

Jamison Foser of MediaMatters.org is relentless in deconstructing the media's passionate desire to attach their lips firmly to McCain's bare buttocks. It's just sad that he has so much material to work with. "Fair and balanced" has apparently come to mean reporting fair and lovely things about McCain while balancing vicious attacks on the Democratic candidates equally between Obama and Hillary.

I feel a desire to protest coming on. Someone get me a picket. Preferrably a sharp one.

From that same article comes this statement that fair took my breath away:

On Tuesday, The New York Times ran what should have served as a reminder to other media outlets that stipulating to McCain's purity is not journalism, it is cheerleading. The Times revealed that McCain helped Donald Diamond, one of his biggest fundraisers, purchase a stretch of California coastal land from the Pentagon -- a purchase that netted Diamond a $20 million profit. Diamond explained: "I think that is what Congress people are supposed to do for constituents. ... When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why wouldn't you want to help move things along? What else would they do? They waste so much time with legislation." (emphasis incredulously added)

Oh my fucking gods did Diamond really just say something that outrageously stupid?

Does this assclown not realize that Congress is the fucking legislative branch? They write and enact legislation. That's what they do, at least when they're not in bed happily humping "big, significant businessmen" like Diamond.

Remember, McCain likes to present himself as a straight-talking, straight-shooting, lobbyist-and-earmark-fighting maverick. I think that myth has been as thoroughly debunked as the "scientific" theory of Intelligent Design, don't you? If you're undecided, go read the Times article. It even shocked me, and I thought I was long past being shocked by McCain's scumbaggery.

This is our political landscape, my darlings. Look upon it and weep. And then get bloody angry and vote these fuckers out of power, flay the media that licks their toes, and boycott the businessmen who turn our lawmakers into toadying douchebags.