Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for bringing peace to Israel:

Israeli fighter-bombers and combat helicopters strike dozens of targets inside Gaza starting shortly after local dawn. Guardian UK reporting 120 dead. Other accounts as high as 180, with over 300 wounded. Video shows that large high explosive bombs were used by the Israelis, and witness report massive explosions. Witnesses say that Gaza's police chief is among the dead.

Most were Hamas security and police forces, but many were also civilians, including children. Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with the casualties. Israel has announced that it's intent is to destroy Hamas, and called for Arab Palestinians to reject Hamas. Inside Gaza the belief is that Israel, Egypt, and the US are trying to destroy Hamas, which is the de facto government of Gaza. Peres stated that there would be no "invasion" of Gaza, , but left open military incursions.

The strikes were expected for Sunday, but were done a day earlier to increase casualties, in what is now clearly the first step to escalation of the conflict. The bulk of the casualties occurred when Israeli jets struck a graduation at the Hamas headquarters.

Remember how everybody was going to be singing "Kumbaya" by now? Good times:

In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel's launch this morning of airstrikes in Gaza -- which so far have left 155 dead -- Bush's pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House.

[snip]

After years of malign neglect regarding the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush launched his renewed peace effort at the November 2007 Annapolis conference. During a subsequent meeting on January 11, 2008 with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush made his pledge of a signed agreement during his presidency:

"I believe it's going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office...I'm on a timetable. I've got 12 months."

[snip]

For her part, Secretary of State Rice finally put an end to Bush's wishful thinking on December 15. After a meeting of the diplomatic Quartet of Mideast peacemakers - the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia – held at the United Nations, Rice announced:

"They won't achieve agreement by the end of the year, but they have achieved a good deal of progress in their negotiations, a good deal of progress in the work that is being done on the ground."

Right. Progress. So what does progress look like, anyway?

One target was the Gaza City police station where a graduation ceremony was taking place (this is raw footage from the aftermath of the attack and is graphic):

Ian Welsh has a good analysis (okay, two) of what Israel can hope to gain from this, which is jack diddly shit. Israel and America both are currently run by men who think the answer to every argument is a bomb. The fact that bombs have failed so often and so dramatically doesn't deter them in the slightest.

Israel didn't used to fight so many stupid wars. The fact that they are now might possibly have something to do with the fact that America, their staunchest ally, has been run for eight years by batshit insane neocon fucktards. Thank you, George W. Bush, for fucking up the world even further than it was already fucked up.

And what's America's response to this development been? What it always is when a Bushie's in charge. They're lying about it:

N.S.A. Spokesman Gordon Johndroe condemed Hamas for breaking the 4 month de-facto truce by firing rockets into Israel.

It was "completely unacceptable" for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to launch attacks on Israel after a truce lasting several months, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

AP

The only trouble is it was Israel who breached the de-facto truce on November 4th with an IDF raid into Gaza killed 6 Palestinians. Hamas reacted immidately to The IDF´s breach of the truce by lanching rockets into Israel later on the 4th.

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen

A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.

Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured.

I can hardly wait to see what other lies they spin around this. And just think, my darlings, he has over 20 days left. That's plenty of time for him to fuck things up even more spectacularly.

We're not likely to see more effective Republicon leadership come down the pike, either. Remember yesterday, when we discovered that Chip Saltzman, one of the contenders for RNC chairman, was handing out racist CDs as part of his campaign and responding to the backlash by saying it's all just good, clean political fun? Remember how there was nothing but silence from the current leadership?

That changed this afternoon, nearly 24 hours after the news broke.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan issued a statement Saturday distancing the party's leadership from one of the GOP's best-known operatives, Chip Saltsman, who distributed a CD containing "Barack the Magic Negro" as part of his campaign to be elected chairman of the Republican National Committee next month.

Duncan, who has served the campaigns of five presidents dating back to Richard Nixon, is seeking reelection as the party's 60th chairman in a hotly contested race that includes Saltsman and several other viable candidates.

Duncan's statement, in its entirety, read: "The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

Um...

That's it?

That's the best he could come up with? Not "this was wrong because racism is wrong." Not "I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate" period? Notice that it's all about consequences, not remorse. Duncan is upset because this debacle makes it harder to sucker people into becoming Republicons. He's acting just like a serial killer. Serial killers who cry when they get caught aren't crying for their victims, but themselves.

So are the Cons. Which demonstrates as clearly as anything that the only thing they find wrong about racist bullshit is that people won't let them get away with it. They see nothing intrinsically wrong with making racist jokes, treating minorities like inferior beings, and discarding them once they've outlived their usefulness.

We allowed these fucktards to be elected. The majority of our fellow citizens trusted them to govern well, govern fairly, and keep the world from falling to bits.

If we'd been paying more attention to their idea of a joke, we would've easily been able to predict how all this would turn out.

Perspective

Captain Future has an absolutely gorgeous diary up at Daily Kos telling the story of how this photo was taken:

The Apollo 8 mission was to just orbit the Moon, not land. The astronauts had been concentrating on the lunar surface, when Frank Borman caught a glimpse of color on the gray horizon, a conspicuous glow of blue and white against the black sky. It was the Earth. While he excitedly snapped photos in black and white, Bill Anders loaded his camera with color film, and got the shot that became historic. We know it as "Earthrise."

And it almost never happened. But you'll have to head over there for the full story, and the full-size photo. I invite you to read the story, and then just spend a few moments gazing at that cloud-swirled blue marble. That's home, rising in a lunar sky.

There's another photo, not quite as famous, but just as awe-inspiring:


Carl Sagan named it "The Pale Blue Dot." It was Voyager's Valentine's Day gift to Earth, a portrait. The distance was so vast - nearly 4 billion miles - that Earth filled less than a pixel, bathed in a ray from the sun.

Seeing Earth like this places everything in a different perspective:

In a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, Sagan related his thoughts on the deeper meaning of the photograph:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Exactly so.

Bugger This. I Want A Better World.

Just past the winter solstice, on the cusp of a New Year, my thoughts inevitably begin to play the retrospection game. I hate it. All of those end-of-year "Best of/Worst of" lists drive me crazy, my New Year's resolutions are always the same, and it's not like things magically change on January 1st. Every year I am firm in my determination not to indulge in the sillyness.

This year, the failure doesn't sting. Gazing backward leaves my jaw agape. Just a few highlights: we found water ice on Mars. We learned that America's government approved torture at the very highest levels. The world's economy imploded with horrific speed. Barack Obama became America's first African American president, and gave us all something to look forward to in 2009: a future.

And I became a blogger, joined forces with other brilliant bloggers, and started Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. This is of a piece with voting for Obama. I did all three things for one simple reason: I want a better world.

We can make that happen.

Several years ago, I read a graphic novel series called The Authority. You all know about Spiderman's schtick - "with great power comes great responsibility." Well, Jenny Sparks, leader of The Authority, takes that to its logical conclusion. If you have the power to change the world for the better, that's what you do. No whining, no excuses. Do the job. Fix the world.

Together, we can do that.

We all have our special talents, areas of interest and expertise. We've put them to good use in these last many sailings, battling ignorance, expanding knowledge. We're taking back the word "elitist" and making it respectable again. And it's working. Have you seen the Elitist Bastards Obama's stocked his Cabinet with? There's a Nobel Laureate in there, for the first time ever.

Okay, so maybe we can't quite claim responsibility for that. Not completely. But every one of us who voted for him has played a part in bringing wisdom back to Washington. I claim this year in the name of Elitist Bastard.

We have a chance now to make this a better world. Time we seize it with both hands.

This year, we shall make it our business to spread the love of learning. We shall ensure that the word "elitist" is once again a mark of distinction rather than a cry of derision. We will continue to beat down ignorance wherever it raises its dribbling head.

But we can go further.

Are you fed up with poverty? Act. Support the politicians who are working to eradicate it, volunteer, donate, train people for new and better jobs.

Fed up with ignorance? Act. Watch what your school board does. Push for better education standards in your country. Promote childhood literacy. Educate.

Fed up with war? Act. Push politicians to reach for diplomacy before they turn to armies. Get involved with programs that attempt to bring enemies together. Make people all too aware of the cost of war.

Fed up with global warming? Act. Get the facts out there. Support environmental groups. Plant a tree, green up your house, protest pollution. Roll up your sleeves and clean up a neighborhood.

We can do much more than we think, just by taking action. Signing a petition may not seem like much, but it adds one more voice, turning a murmur into a shout. Donating a few dollars may not seem like enough, but as we saw with Obama's campaign, enough small donations add up to plenty of money for change. A few hours of your time may not seem like much, but a few hours may be all that's needed to change someone's life. Don't hold back just because you can't do much. Become a snowflake, as my character Ishaarda Telsuun recommends:

“The answer is leverage. Place a thousand snowflakes in precisely the right places, and you cause a thousand avalanches.... A thousand snowflakes can reach half the world.”

Ghandi said we must be the change we wish to see in the world. We don't even have to become fabulously rich or powerful or prestigious to do it. All we have to do is add our snowflake's worth of weight to the scales: enough of us together will make them tilt.

And then we change the world for the better.

"Please Don't Divorce Us" - Show of Solidarity

The Courage Campaign is putting together a heart-tugging slideshow filled with same-sex couples, family and friends, all making one simple request: "Please Don't Divorce Us:"

Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008.

Yes, they really did go there after promising repeatedly not to do this.

It's time to put a face to Ken Starr's shameful legal proceedings. To put a face to the 18,000 couples facing forcible divorce. To put a face to marriage equality. Because, gay or straight, YOU are the face of the Marriage Equality Movement.

The Courage Campaign just launched "Please Don't Divorce" a community photo project. They will break your heart and have made me cry on more than one occasion.

Please click through the photos in the slideshow below and then submit your own photo, as an individual, a couple or in a group (perhaps with your family over the holidays). Take a picture holding a piece of paper that says "Please don't divorce us," "Please don't divorce my moms,""Please don't divorce my friends, Dawn and Audrey," "Please don't divorce Californians" or whatever you want after "Please don't divorce..." and send it to: pleasedontdivorce@couragecampaign.org.

As soon as I've gotten myself put into somewhat photogenic shape, I shall be sending in a photo. I'll post it here for you all to peruse as well.

Time for a show of solidarity. The bigots who want to destroy thousands of marriages and deny marriage to thousands more need to see exactly who they're harming, and that these couples aren't alone.

(Tip o' the shot glass to Crooks and Liars, first among others I've found this on.)

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

At least one of us is enjoying the snow:


You can't see it in this pic, but Misha's watching snowflakes falling while her mommy gnashes her teeth. Our parking lot looks a lot like the Arctic Sea. It's full of water, chunks of ice, and huge ruts of churned snow. I was tempted to venture out today until I walked down to check the road and saw a pickup truck nearly wreck on its way through. It heaved like a mechanical bull and then wedged itself to a stop in the deeper snow along the side. This is why I'm home cruising the intertoobz rather than out having dinner with a friend.

Grr. Argh.

Welcome to the paradox of global warming. As the seas warm, more moisture gets sucked up into the atmosphere, skedaddles south, and dumps itself all over normally snow-free parts of the country. And guess what? Things are only likely to get much, much worse very quickly indeed:

According to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. “faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested.” The report, commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, found that global sea levels could rise higher than a 2007 U.N. Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study had concluded:

In one of the report’s most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea levels could rise as much as 4 feet by 2100. The intergovernment panel had projected a rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the last two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice in the Alps.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for eight years of inaction. It sure is nice that pollution, environmental degradation, and foreign wars over dwindling oil supplies could rage unchecked so that your buddies in the oil and coal industries could get rich.

Apparently, they weren't reinvesting that money in containment walls:

By now anybody paying attention is aware of the massive spill of coal-ash sludge that took place in Roane County, Tennessee earlier this week, dumping a reported 1.7 million cubic yards of toxic sludge into the Emory River, a spill many cited as larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

Except that it wasn't 1.7 million cubic yards [link moved]:

Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

As with everything that happens under Bush's watch, the initial reports drastically underestimated the scope of the disaster. What a fucking shock.

Here's a description of the disaster's aftermath from United Mountain Defense. Please contain your surprise upon discovering that the Tennessee Valley Authority has done bugger-all to prevent or respond to said disaster:

TVA says the area is not toxic but you can see coal sludge in the water and dead fish on the banks. The members of this community are without clean water and many without electricity or gas heat. We met people who were given motel rooms by TVA and others on the same street that have been without heat for days in 27° weather and others who have been vomiting for more than 12 hours after drinking the water.

We visited approximately 40 households and many people were frustrated they had not received any information other than what they could figure out from the minute long television segments or an isolated phone call from the water or gas utility. Residents say that they are not surprised by the flood because TVA has been fixing leaks in the retention wall for years and one person said this wall had been leaking for months before it broke.

And, for good measure, an email from one of the United Mountain Defense folks that puts paid to the idea that the response to this disaster has been anything like advertised:

After our chat we set out to find the silt screens, Coast Guard, gravel berm, and live fish that TVA has been advertising as truths in the Emory River adjacent to the spill site. We launched a boat after witnessing three kayakers yesterday. To our surprise we were not chased down by the Coast Guard. We did not have to paddle over any silt fences. We did not have to portage over any gravel berms. We did not have to look hard to miss the fisherman or fish.

And yes, if you're wondering, the TVA is a federal agency, not state. Bush's traditions of lying, obfuscating, and denying disasters flourish from top to bottom. This is what happens when we let Cons play at governing for eight years.

And what are the Cons doing while Tennessee chokes? Proving they have a tin-ear when it comes to racist overtones:

Last month, we learned that Katon Dawson, a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the RNC, has been a longtime member of a whites-only country club in South Carolina. This month, Chip Saltsman, the former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, embarrassed himself in a far more obvious way.

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman's Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called "Barack the Magic Negro," first played on Rush Limbaugh's popular radio show. [...]

The CD, called "We Hate the USA," lampoons liberals with such songs as "John Edwards' Poverty Tour," "Wright place, wrong pastor," "Love Client #9," "Ivory and Ebony" and "The Star Spanglish banner." Several of the track titles, including "Barack the Magic Negro," are written in bold font.

[snip]

Saltsman defended his gift to RNC members, noting that he's a longtime friend of Shanklin and his songs for Limbaugh's program are meant to be "light-hearted political parodies."

Ta-Nehisi Coates added, "There's also a tune called 'The Star Spanglish Banner.' Get it? Negroes!! Spanglish!! No?? Clearly your too PC. Seriously, where do people get this idea that the GOP is racist? It really is one of the great mysteries of our time..."

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish the Smack-o-Matic wasn't virtual, that I had a license to employ it as frequently as needed, and that it had the power to knock some sense into these raving fucktards. Of course, I'd have to ramp up on the protein and start working out five hours a day in order to develop the upper-body strength that would be needed. Even though the Smack-o-Matic is semi-automated, the sheer volume of rampant stupidity is too much for my muscles to keep pace with.

But what about those Cons who luurves Obama? Aren't they the voice of reason that could lead the Republicon party to harmony? No. Digby reminds us what song they're really singing:

It seems that everywhere I turn professional Republicans are falling all over themselves about how much the love our president elect. While I don't doubt that many GOP members of the public are enthusiastic, let's just say I'm a little bit skeptical that all these beltway insiders are being altogether sincere in their praise.

Newtie started the trend with his little scold to the RNC about the Blogjevich controversy, which I explained here. It's a ploy, don't believe it. When you see snakes like Alex Castellanos saying this, watch your back...

[snip]

He's the guy who said that calling Hillary Clinton a bitch was just a descriptive term. If anyone thinks this guy (or Pat Robertson) has been converted, think again. They are doing this for political purposes. They want to make sure that he owns the next couple of years, which are likely to be very tough. They will obstruct, of course, but all this happy talk is a pretense designed to appease the masses who are hoping against hope that Obama can turn this ship around.

Watch for the knife in the back. The smarter Cons are singing Kumbaya right now because of numbers like these and these, while humming under their breath "Just you wait." When Obama doesn't right the ship instantly upon taking office, you can bet they'll start clucking over how disappointing it all is and how much the stimulus is costing and how much better things would be if only the Cons were in charge. And quite a few people in America will be stupid enough to chime in.

The groundwork is busily being laid. Fortunately, most of it looks about as stable as the sludge in Tennessee:

The last time Democrats won the White House, Senate, and House, it was 1992, and their majority status was short-lived -- 1994 didn't go well for the party. The National Review's Peter Kirsanow believes there's a similar opportunity awaiting the Republican Party in two years from now.

Rod Blagojevich, $1 trillion "fiscal stimulus", Harry Reid, expiring tax cuts, Nancy Pelosi, socialized health care, Charlie Rangel, reinstitution of the oil drilling ban, Joe Biden, liberal judicial nominees, Al Franken (maybe), nuclear Iran, John Murtha, car czars, Dennis Kucinich, PC culture, Chris Dodd, entitlement explosion, Barney Frank, entitlement implosion, Barbara Boxer, card check, the Clintons, Russian adventurism.

If Republicans can't come back in 2010 they should be sued for political malpractice.

Anything's possible, I suppose, but this doesn't strike me as much of a gameplan. Indeed, if these are the variables that are supposed to lead to a GOP "comeback," it's no wonder Republicans are depressed.

It's not that I don't think they'll eventually be able to con the public - they always do. It's just that I think they're going to have to find better arguments than this to win over more than the 23% who say they'll miss Bush.

Hopefully by the time they come up with something, Americans will be too addicted to responsive government, affordable healthcare, clean air and water, green technology, and the absence of toxic sludge in their yards to pay much attention.

Friday Favorite Winter Wonders

I'm trying very hard right now to think good things about winter. Considering my road and parking lot are buried under nearly six inches of icy slush that's nigh-impossible to navigate, this is difficult. But there are redeeming qualities to winter. I even have a few favorite things about snow.

For one thing, it makes shriveled berries look rather artistic and lovely:


Everything looks prettier with a coat of new snow. And it's a lot of fun to go tramping through. Long rambles going nowhere in particular, watching rays of sunlight set the snow aglow, is tremendous fun. I like watching how the light varies: now bright and sparkling, then muted and soft-focus. Then there's the running: when you come across a long flat stretch, it's almost impossible not to indulge in a good gallop, just for the sheer wacky fun of it.

Just ask this guy:



So yes, snow can be fun. And what better tribute to it than Loreena McKennitt's song "Snow"? I found this video montage of figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi set to it, and thus combined two of my great loves: beautiful music and art on ice.




I used to be an enormous figure skating fan. One of my best memories is the Alberville Olympics. My friend JT and I spent weeks watching the figure skating competitions together. You have not experienced a truly surreal figure skating viewing experience until you've sat there getting all ooey and aahy with a 6'4, heavy-metal listening, cowboy boot wearing, red-blooded male. After several weeks of exposure, we both decided that we absolutely had to drive to Flagstaff and indulge in some skating ourselves. So no shit, there we were, filled with visions of triple axels, inching our way across the ice like ancient grannies. The reality definitely did not match the fantasy. And then there was the speed-skater-in-training who snookered us into holding hands with her. We didn't expect her to take off like a rocket and drag us along.

We discovered we were not speed skaters, but we were certainly speed fallers.

That was the year I fell utterly in love with Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova. They are the epitome of art on ice. They aren't just phenomenal ice dancers, they are superb storytellers. Not to mention Marina is a drop-dead gorgeous redhead, which adds a whole new dimension of beauty.

Here they are doing Dracula:





Even if you don't like figure skating, you have to admit that was something outstanding.

Here's another something outstanding. If you want to see courage defined as endurance for one moment more, go watch Elvis Stojko win the Olympic silver in 1998. Most viewers had no clue he was suffering from a groin pull until he nearly collapsed after finishing his long program. It's a moment I'll never forget.

So those are a few of my favorite winter wonders. Turns out it's not such a bad season after all...

Open Question

I spent a goodly part of Christmas Day on the phone with a friend, discussing various and sundry. What interests us here is the bit where we talked about writers and detail.

Detail is one of those bêtes noires of fiction writing. No one seems quite sure how much or how little should be included. Styles range from the stupefying onslaught of minutae during the age of Deathless Prose to the Spartan anorexia of Hemingway. Compare Les Miserables to For Whom the Bell Tolls, for instance: two gargantuan stories, very different styles. Victor Hugo spends a good part of his 1,463 pages plunging off the main path into the thickets of whatever captured his fancy, breaking into the story to write essays on things only tangenitally related to the novel; Hemingway gets the job done in a mere 471 pages, without side trips. You don't learn quite as much about life, the universe and everything, but at the same time, at least you don't get so bogged down in detail that you forget what the characters were doing before the author stopped the story in its tracks to describe every aspect of an incidental something.

There are fans of both types of literature. I happen to be one of those who can't stand Hemingway. I've read a few of his stories and attempted a novel once or twice, and I just can't get involved. It's so sparsely written that it feels like an outline, especially his dialogue. I need flesh with the bones of a story, or I'm just not able to immerse myself. But I drowned in Hugo's magnum opus. Only the musical saved me.

I've read with close attention for decades now, and I still can't figure out why some authors manage to detail very nearly every thread in someone's coat without stopping the story dead, and others get in trouble merely mentioning that someone's wearing jeans. My friend and I think it has a lot to do with relevance: if the detail tells us something about the character, if it's in service to the story and not just there from some misguided attempt to make the world feel "real," then it works. But he and I part ways when it comes to how much detail is necessary or desirable. He likes more left to the imagination: I like enough to form a thorough mental image. I can't connect to a story unless I can see the people I'm dealing with, the landscapes they're moving through, and the objects they're interacting with. As long as the story moves, I don't mind if the author's detail is as rich as Belgian chocolate - I prefer it that way.

Detail's very much on my mind right now because I'll be writing fiction again soon. I want to avoid worldbuilder's disease, but at the same time, I want to ensure that the world I'm creating is detailed enough that readers experience it fully. And so, I'm curious: how do you lot like your detail? How much is too much, and how little is too little? Any particularly egregious examples of Authors Gone Wrong? Any prose passages whose detail captivated you so fully that you remember them to this day?

Have at. I'm off to try to wrestle with ye olde basics of rebuilding a world with cracked foundations.

Sheriff Joe Jumps the Shark

Apparently, being treated as some sort of redneck hero for dying jail underwear pink and creating tent cities has rather gone to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's head. He was always an authoritarian bully, but he's been getting crazier and crazier over the years. This year, it appears, he's finally tipped himself right over into fascism:

I'm spending my Christmas vacation in lovely Maricopa County, AZ, this week with my in-laws. And I have to tell you that, thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his gang of thugs deputies, I'll be somewhat relieved when I leave.

After all, how would you like to live in a place where law enforcement actually arrests you for applauding briefly at a public county council meeting? Where they threaten and intimidate you just for showing up in the first place?

That's what's been happening here.

It all has to do with an anti-Arpaio group called Maricopa Citizens for Safety Accountability, which formed last spring in response to investigative reports and studies demonstrating that Arpaio's insane obsession with illegal immigrants was destroying his office's ability to actually deal with real law enforcement work.

MCSA's members have been turning up at meetings of the county Board of Supervisors and trying to speak, but the board refuses to let MCSA do so except for brief comment periods at the end of its meetings. Moreover, the board meetings are now patrolled by a huge contingent of deputies who treat the citizens who attend like criminals.

Last week, they went even further:

[snip]

And, of course, deputies and security agents at the Board of Supervisors meetings have begun to arrest spectators. That development came Wednesday.

During the meeting, Board of Supervisors chairman Andy Kunasek warned spectators that they were being disruptive by applauding speakers, but deputies neither dismissed nor arrested spectators who applauded an animal advocate or a public transportation advocate who sang a birthday song for Kunasek.

The scene was different when about 15 spectators stood and clapped for 20 seconds after a Maricopa Citizens group member spoke critically of Arpaio during her turn at the lectern.

Deputies arrested Joel Nelson, Jason Odhner, Monica Sandschafer and Kristy Theilen on allegations of disorderly conduct and trespassing.

[snip]

Deputies made the arrests in a clear attempt to intimidate people associated with Maricopa Citizens, said Carlos Calindo, who attended the meeting.

"It is incredible the way they behaved," said Calindo, who is not a member of the citizens organization. "You come in there and the atmosphere is incredibly oppressive. They yell at you. They scold you. They try to intimidate you. It is improper."

Must be because Faux gave him a teevee show. He thinks he's acceptable.

It's time for me old home state to wake up and smell the reality. Joe must go.

Horror of Horrors: Socialized Medicine

To hear the Cons tell it, universal healthcare will be the End of Everything. Of course, for them, it seems that anything which benefits a broad swath of humanity is a Terrible Evil that Must Be Fought. So a story like this must truly strike terror into their shriveled little hearts:

[Our son] was first diagnosed by our pediatrician, a private sector doctor, who sent us to the (public) specialised pediatric hospital in Paris for additional exams. We did a scan and a MRI the same day, and that brought the diagnosis we know. He was hospitalised the same day, with surgery immediately scheduled for two days later. At that point, we only had to provide our social security number.

Surgery - an act that the doctor that performed it (one of the world's top specialists in his field) told us he would not have done it five years before - actually took place the next week, because emergency cases came up in the meantime. After a few days at the hospital, we went home. At that point, we had spent no money, and done little more than filling up a simple form with name and social security number.

Meetings with the doctor in charge of his long term treatment, and with a specialised re-education hospital, were immediately set up, and chemiotherapy and physical therapy were scheduled for the next full year.

Physical therapy included a few hours each day in a specialised hospital, with a varied team of specialists (kinesitherapy, ergotherapy, psychologist, orthophonist) and, had we needed it, schooling. As we lived not too far away, we tried to keep our son at his pre-school for half the day, and at the hospital the other half. Again, apart from filling up a few forms, we had nothing to do.

My wife pretty much stopped working to take my son to the hospital every day (either for reeducation or treatment) - and was allocated a stipend by the government as caregiver, for a full year (equal to just under the minimum wage). Had we needed it, transport by ambulance would have been taken care of, free of charge for us (as it were, car commutes to the hospital could also be reimbursed).

During the chemiotherapy, if he had any side effects (his immune system being weakened, any normal children's disease basically required him to be hospitalised to be given full anti-biotic treatment), we'd call up the hospital and just come around. Either of us could spend the night with him as needed. We never spent a dime when we did so.

Sounds absolutely awful, doesn't it? I mean, who in their right mind would want to have state-of-the-art healthcare ready and available should a catastrophic illness strike? How can anyone expect to get better if they don't have the invigorating fight with insurance companies (if you even have insurance), your employer (if you don't get fired for missing too much work), and impending bankruptcy to look forward to?

Reading this diary made me realize exactly why the French sometimes look down on us as barbarians.

All Quiet on the Northwestern Front

With the onset of peace, art has returned to the world.

We're doing our best to stay warm and take advantages of the benefits peace brings.


Turns out dogs have unexpected uses. Whodathunkit?

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Yes, even though it's Christmas, there's still a wee bit o' news. Sorta.

There's been quite the dustup over Bush's attempted pardon:

Yesterday President Bush abruptly revoked a pardon he gave New York real estate developer Isaac Toussie after reports disclosed that Toussie’s immediate family contributed nearly $40,000 to Republicans. The White House said the Justice Department did not review Toussi’s clemency application because it “was filed less than five years after Toussie completed his sentence,” thus making him ineligible for a pardon according to the department’s guidelines. Instead, the White House counsel’s office considered Toussie’s application as a special case. But not only has press secretary Dana Perino repeatedly stated that the White House would follow DoJ’s pardon guidelines, but so has President Bush himself, in a Jan. 2007 interview...

Which, for most politicians, would be controversy enough. But this is Bush we're talking about. You know there's got to be a little something more:

Perhaps the most intriguing matter is the process by which the White House decided to issue the pardon. Toussie had hired Bradford Berenson, a former top lawyer in the White House counsel’s office from 2001-2003, to handle the case.

Berenson may have been responsible for persuading his former White House colleagues to bypass the normal procedures. It wouldn’t be the first time Berenson has acted in that manner. In Angler — an introspective book on Dick Cheney’s vice presidency — author Barton Gellman documents an earlier attempt by Berenson to pull a fast one.

In Nov. 2001, with Berenson’s assistance, Vice President Cheney hastily pushed a legal memo through the White House which ordered that all terrorism suspects in U.S. custody could be detained indefinitely without charge. Berenson skirted normal vetting procedures:

After leaving Bush’s private dining room, the vice president took no chances on a last-minute objection. He sent the order on a swift path to execution that left no sign of his role. After Addington and Flanigan, the text passed to Berenson, the associate White House counsel. Cheney’s link to the document broke there: Berenson was not told of its provenance.

Berenson rushed the order to deputy staff secretary Stuart W. Bowen Jr., bearing instructions to prepare it for signature immediately — without advance distribution to the president’s top advisers. Bowen objected, he told colleagues later, saying he had handled thousands of presidential documents without ever bypassing strict procedures of coordination and review. He relented, one White House official said, only after “rapid, urgent persuasion” that Bush was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay.

In an interview, Berenson said it was his understanding that “someone had briefed” the president “and gone over it” already. He added: “I don’t know who that was.”

[snip]

The Toussie case isn’t over yet. “The president believes that the pardon attorney should have an opportunity to review this case before a decision on clemency is made,” Perino said. And that means Berenson will have an opportunity to continue to bill Toussie for another few weeks in an effort to secure an illegitimate pardon, again.

That's more like the corruption we've come to expect from our Clown in Chief.

The Bush bandits may try to tell us that they've changed their minds based on new facts, etc. etc., all in an attempt to sound less like self-interested fucktards and more like Responsible Adults, but Digby's here to remind us that self-interest is still their primary motive:

In case anyone's wondering why Bush retracted the pardon of his contributor's son, it's not because he had an attack of conscience or even because it looks bad politically to pardon a mortgage scammer.

It's sadly because the pardon would have made it harder for the Republicans to tank Eric Holder's nomination on the basis of the Marc Rich pardon. One of their most substantial hissy fits was that that Holder signed off on it when it hadn't gone through proper channels (something that was not unprecedented then either.) It turns out that this Bush pardon was granted under similar circumstances.

Kinda hard to call the kettle black when you're standing neck-deep in the same muck. Not that they wouldn't have tried. It's just that someone finally got hit with a particle of sanity and realized that after eight years of straight bullshit, it's getting harder to get the public to swallow.

Speaking of straight bullshit, Faux News is busy spending the holiday trying to blow smoke up the nation's arse:

I appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss both the Blagojevich flap and the imminent economic recovery package from the Obama administration. You can watch the clip here. As you'll see, on that latter issue, Fox News is starting its campaign to stop Obama's big spending plan by stating - as assumed fact - that "historians pretty much agree" that Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression, and that therefore, Obama shouldn't try another New Deal.

When I say Fox News' assertion about historians is patently false, they literally laugh at me as if I've said something so clearly untrue, something Americans supposedly assume is so obviously stupid, that it's worthy of ridicule.

I hope they enjoyed that chuckle, because it's their ridiculed guest who gets the last laugh:

Now, it's true - back in 2004, two UCLA professors published a little-noticed report claiming the New Deal's government intervention prolonged the Great Depression. But that assertion has been subsequently eviscerated by, ya know, actual data.

Here's University of California historian Eric Rauchway:

For a start, New Deal intervention saved the banks. During Hoover's presidency, around 20 percent of American banks failed, and, without deposit insurance, one collapse prompted another as savers pulled their money out of the shaky system. When Roosevelt came into office, he ordered the banks closed and audited. A week later, authorities began reopening banks, and deposits returned to vaults.

Congress also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which, as economists Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz wrote, was "the structural change most conducive to monetary stability since ... the Civil War." After the creation of the FDIC, bank failures almost entirely disappeared. New Dealers also recapitalized banks by buying about a billion dollars of preferred stock...

The most important thing to know about Roosevelt's economics is that, despite claims to the contrary, the economy recovered during the New Deal. During Roosevelt's first two terms, the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent, with the exception of the recession year of 1937-1938...

Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms. In part, the jobs came from Washington, which directly employed as many as 3.6 million people to build roads, bridges, ports, airports, stadiums, and schools -- as well as, of course, to paint murals and stage plays. But new jobs also came from the private sector, where manufacturing work increased apace.

This basic fact is clear -- unless you quote only the unemployment rate for the recession year 1938 and count government employees hired under the New Deal as unemployed, which conservative commenters have taken to doing.

So, as Rauchway says, the hard data about bank closures, job creation and overall economic growth rates proves the regulations and spending of the New Deal helped end the Great Depression. In fact, Rauchway notes that the data actually suggests that the major, data-driven criticism of the New Deal is that it didn't spend enough money fast enough.

But, OK - let's say you want to cherry pick the unemployment numbers like a right-wing pundit. Let's say that, as Rauchway notes, you are a conservative dittohead totally comfortable dishonestly "quot[ing] only the unemployment rate for the recession year 1938 and count[ing] government employees hired under the New Deal as unemployed." Shouldn't you be blaming conservative ideology, and not New Deal-ism, for those numbers? After all, as Paul Krugman recently explained to a stunningly ignorant George Will on ABC News, 1937-1938 was the period Roosevelt dialed back the New Deal in the name of conservative demands that he stop spending...

I hope they keep attacking like this. It's really just too fun using their own stupidity against them. I'm going to thoroughly enjoy trotting out the above factoid the next time some neocon dumbshit tries to argue using Faux News talking points.

Not that they're likely to notice the blow - the sort of people who take Faux News as the gospel truth have already kicked Mr. Reason out of their house, and they never were on speaking terms with Mr. Reality or Ms. Evidence. Still, there's a certain satisfaction to be gained by simply watching them sputter.

Lest you think outrageous political stupidity is only Made in the USA these days, have a look at Israel's Prime Minister:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is appealing to Palestinians in Gaza to stop the Islamic militant group Hamas from launching rocket attacks.

Olmert, speaking directly to Gaza residents during an interview Thursday on the Arab satellite station al-Arabiya, told viewers, "I say to you in a last minute call, stop it," The Jerusalem Post reported.

Ian Welsh gives Olmert's heartfelt plea the proper context:

What Olmert doesn't note is that there was a long cease-fire, during which Israel kept blockading Gaza, so that they don't have enough food or water. He's been starving them because he doesn't like their democratically elected government. Not launching missiles hasn't worked for citizens of Gaza. From their point of view there's little reason not to fire missiles at Israel. Being shot by Israeli soldiers probably doesn't seem like a much worse way to go than starving... or watching their children starve.

Can I just add, if a majority of American citizens couldn't get their president to get the fuck out of Iraq, much less stop breaking the damned law, how much clout do you think Palestinian citizens have with the people holding the rocket launchers?

Sadly, Olmert's peace plea rhetoric seems like so much window dressing. He's posing himself as trying to stop what he actually wants to do:

Pencil in another appointment with chaos in the Levant. Reports are now solid that Israel, which has blockaded Gaza since November, is set to invade Gaza. Thursday they canceled an aid truck amidst increasing mortar and rocket fire, even though a ship ignored the Israeli blockade to deliver supplies, its crew knowing they would be arrested as a result. Israel also struck at a rocket launcher, while Hamas backed militants continued to fire into Israel.

This is in the wake of the Egyptian brokered cease fire ending, and a growing perception that if Israel's governing party wishes to win elections against rightist Bibi Netanyahu's Likud Party, scheduled for February, that it must prove that it can strike with force. For its part Hezbollah seems unwilling to continue a cease fire without tangible benefits for its cooperation. According to Hamas this meant re-opening the Gaza, which was exactly what Turkey pressed for earlier this week.

Hezbollah has begun deploying rockets in Southern Lebanon. This means that Israel will likely face a two front war, and on one of those fronts, against an enemy that was able to inflict severe losses in their last military encounter.

So much for peace on Earth, then.

But stupidity on Earth is alive and well:

When a reporter asked him about the recent Supreme Court decision not to hear a similar case [challenging Obama's citizenship] from New Jersey, Wiley Drake speculated the justices were fearful of riots and as evidence he cited the fact that they didn't post their decision until Monday:

"I’ve been pretty keenly aware of what’s going on in the Supreme Court. You’ll notice the date when they decided the case would go to conference was on a Friday. Typically, if you go to conference, you take a vote, thumbs up and down, whether to schedule for a hearing. They knew that a lot of people would be discouraged if they made an announcement Friday that they would not take the case. Washington, D.C., is a powder keg. They knew they’d already be at happy hour Friday afternoon and be drunk. Even if a ballgame goes one way or another, they start burning stuff because they are drunk. I think the Supreme Court put the case off until Monday because they knew people would have hangovers and not be drunk."

I'd like to know where Pastor Wiley goes on Friday afternoons (I'll bet it isn't church).

I'll bet it is. If this loon had ever actually ventured out into the real world on a Friday night, he'd have to confront the fact that he's living a paranoid little fantasy. "Pretty keenly aware" my arse.

Sod this for a game of larks. It's time for me to be off making me Christmas fajitas.

I'll Be Goofing Off for Christmas

Substantial political snark will return to this blog after I'm done playing around the intertoobz. For now, I'm playing Santarina and bringing you the gift of awesomely silly Christmas weirdness.

This shall take its place among the most politically incorrect Christmas stories ever: A Joe Camel Christmas.

Have you ever wondered how monks under a vow of silence could put on a Christmas concert? Firedoglake has the side-splitting answer:



Did you know there's a War on Solstice? Man your battlestations!

And finally, a Public Service Announcement from Santa Claus:


Whatever holiday you celebrate, have a wonderful one!

A Winter's Tale

Can't... do... more... stupid ... *thump*

I can't do it. Not tonight. I found myself merely skimming my usual haunts, passing over the outrage for the silly stuff. And then I gave up and played on YouTube for a couple of hours. You'll see the fruit of that labor tomorrow.

One day, just one single freaking day, I want to leave the Mayberry Machiavellis to their own devices. I want them out of my house, off of my mind, and I want to play.

This does not, alas, lead to fruitful blogging.

I offer you instead a fragment from the first book in my series, which I shall be plunging back in to after some thorny backstory issues have been worked out. I know excerpts can be maddeningly confusing, plucked from context as they are, but I like the point Baa'raaman makes and so hopefully it won't get lost in the sea of the unknown.

Philosophy, Winter's Gate

"Give over, Jorvaa. You Southlanders never do find warmth here."

Silahnova gathered his cloak in tighter and tucked his hands under his armpits. He thought that he would not be so cold, and give Baa'raaman less chance to laugh, if he turned away from the windows, but he managed less than a quarter-pivot before the view arrested him.

Baa'raaman Kiinsheo stepped up beside him as he stared and stood without speech for a moment. The windows stretched ceiling-to-floor, with no ledge beyond, giving the uneasy sensation that the room had no fourth wall, and that one misstep would send them plunging into the chasm below. The depths of that chasm were lost in mist today. Opposite, sheets of ice cascaded down the sheer mountainside, so deep and cold against the gray rock that it looked now blue, now clear green, more than white. Ages of trickling water had created thick ropes and undulations in the sheet. It looked as if billions of candles had melted, spilling their drippings down from the peak.

Silahnova wished he had another cloak. And wings, just in case.

Baa'raaman tilted his head. In a moment, the stone walls creaked under a sudden influx of heat, and the floor made Silahnova's feet sweat in their boots. He started shivering in earnest now. Baa'raaman threw back his head and laughed, the sound bounding off the thick glass windows that seemed to radiate winter into the room despite the soraan's efforts. "I could dip you by your ankles in a magma chamber right now and you would still shiver. Why you insisted on coming up here, I will never know."

He clapped Silahnova on the shoulder, hard enough to make his torso lurch forward and put the panic of a thousand-foot fall into his spine. Once, a thousand feet of sheer mountainside would not have concerned him, but he had no hooves now, and regardless, he had never tested those against such implacable ice. "I wanted to see Winter's Gate," he mumbled through jaws clenched tight against queasiness.

"From what I hear of you, you want to see everything." Baa'raaman patted him more gently this time and swung away. His stride was flat, fast, the walk of a man with too much to do and not enough time to do it, or perhaps the stride of a man used to having to move swiftly so as not to freeze in place. Silahnova turned in increments and watched him swoop on the drinks tray on the one clear space on his bleakwood desk. "You should have become a professional Traveller instead of a military man."

Traveller. He was that, at least. In many ways. "Xtalea needs defenders more than rhapsodizers," he said.

Baa'raaman shook his head over the decanter and cups he was filling. Frosted glass, of course. Everything was frosty about the Winter's Gate but her people. "Most people can be taught to kill. Fewer can be taught to really see the world they walk through, and show others what it is. I think you may be one of those last, but maybe not." He turned, cups in hand, one sending off more steam than the other. "I see a part of you wanting to throw yourself over that edge and take all of it into yourself, and another part of you dragging that one back. That is what tragedy is, my thin-blooded friend."

Silahnova took the extended cup. It was hot enough he had to wrap it in his cloak to keep from burning himself, but still too cold. "Is doing what you must do such a tragedy, then?"

"Oh, yes." Baa'raaman chuckled, and shot a look at his chaotic desk. The shelves behind it were little better, with books jumbled and papers spilling over, barely held from a fall to the floor by chunks of odd rock and other idiosyncratic treasures. "Especially when you know you must clean and organize, but doing so would take so much precious time away from better things."

Silahnova's lips resisted his efforts to keep them straight. Impossible not to smile, with that chuckle filling the room, and he wanted to grin. "How much of that precious time do you waste looking for things you need? You could gain more time with a little organization."

"Yes, you military types like it all neat." Baa'raaman snorted, nose buried in his cup for a moment. That cup was sweating, Silahnova noticed: the man's steam had been from cold, not heat. But he would suffer a hot room for a guest. "I waste no time. If I had all of this just so, do you think I could lose myself for hours rediscovering things I had forgotten? Order is the enemy of discovery, my dear silly soldier: never forget that." He pointed a stern finger alongside the cup. "Lose yourself just once, Jorvaa. Get away from everything, release all ties, and just be. Immerse yourself in the world instead of merely looking at it." The finger rapped against the cup. "Obligation will be the death of you."

Silahnova burst out laughing. Obligation had been the death of him, would be thousands of times over, and Baa'raaman would see that joke someday. "Obligations are too hard to set aside, but I appreciate the advice."

"Stiff, stiff, stiff." Baa'raaman shook his head. "All of you Southland soldiers, stiff as the blades you carry, but remember that soraani can bend those blades like meadow grass. If I had no kaataan, I would bend you myself."

Silahnova nodded somberly as he could manage. "Then it is a very good thing you have a kaataan."

"Such a loss for you." Baa'raaman closed his eyes for a moment in mock sorrow. "You need bending, Jorvaa. I should find you the one who will do it."

"Best not." Silahnova shifted his grip on his cup.

"Oh, that upsets you." Baa'raaman searched him. "Even soldiers get married. Even they are allowed such gifts, and I think for them it is more important than for anyone else. Fighting for someone you love gives back meaning. Even Ticaal believes that, for all he has no one. He fills himself with Xtalea herself. You, on the other hand, fill yourself with duty, and that is not so lasting."

Silahnova shook his head, then had to shake the hair out of his eyes. "You are an insightful man, but you missed your strike."

"What do you love, then, Jorvaa? Who?"

He shrugged, shifting one foot beneath him and dipping his chin down in a twisting motion. The Drusav gesture tensed his neck uncomfortably. "I am full," he said. "Leave it at that."

"If you are full, why are you walking the world searching?" Baa'raaman waited a moment. "Full men hardly drink as frantically as you do, Jorvaa."

This ground was far more dangerous than that sheer, slick drop one breath outside the windows. Silahnova shifted back. "The curious do. You have your kaataan, but you still drink philosophy as deep as you can. We can have more than one thirst."

"And so you bury your blade to the hilt." Baa'raaman laugh bounded through the room again. "All right, then, we should drink. You drink from that cup, and then I will take you to have a draught from mine."

A Fragile Peace

The dogs have sued for peace, and as this allows us to concentrate our efforts on the war with Greater Mausistan, we magnanimously agreed. We have even allowed them to claim their "superior" technology as a factor. Why quibble when we know we are worshiped as gods?


The cessation of hostilities has allowed us to focus our attentions on more deserving enemies:


Needless to say, we were not fooled by such pathetic tactics. Our war with Greater Mausistan ended abruptly. Our soldiers are home just in time for the holidays, and peace reigns.

Some of our troops are finding it hard to adjust.


And the dogs are finding that holiday cheer can be humiliating.




While we are discovering that holiday cheer can be hazardous.


If we survive this truce, it will be nothing short of miraculous.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

It may be Christmas Eve, but stupid never takes a holiday. And Ann Coulter, the diva of Greater Wingnuttia, is attempting to take the crown:

The other day, my friend Ron Chusid had an item arguing that Ann Coulter's piece on Sarah Palin was clear evidence of "the wrong direction the conservative movement is moving in" and the dominance of "anti-intellectualism" on the right.

I finally read Coulter's piece, and I have to admit, it's even more inane than I expected. Coulter, heralded Palin's selection as "Conservative of the Year" and applauded the Alaska governor's role in politics. To hear Coulter tell it, Palin is a hero because she sent "the left into a tailspin of wanton despair."

Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President? She was running with John McCain! There was no chance that ticket was going to place her anywhere near the presidency. In fact, I can't think of a better place to put someone you wanted to keep away from the White House than on a ticket with McCain.

Palin was a kick in the pants, she energized conservatives, and she made liberal heads explode.

Got that? Palin is necessarily wonderful because liberals didn't like her. (That plenty of independents and Republicans found the thought of her vice presidency horrifying is irrelevant.)

Now, I realize that Coulter is a circus clown, and quite possibly a liberal plant meant to make conservatives look ridiculous as part of some kind of satirical performance art, but over the course of nearly 2,000 words, Coulter couldn't actually point to any of Palin's genuine strengths. Coulter blasted the media, Democrats, women she finds insufficiently attractive, and John McCain, but in applauding the greatness of Sarah Palin, she neglected to mention anything that makes Sarah Palin great, outside of Coulter's disdain for Palin's detractors.

I hope she is a liberal plant, because the idea of someone this fucking ridiculous actually being taken seriously, even by the Limbaugh lobotomites, is just depressing.

Karl Rove tries to be a close runner-up:

Yesterday, a water main break in Maryland trapped a dozen commuters in their cars and sent rescuers scrambling to pull motorists from frigid floodwaters. Despite the fact that officials had been warning for years of the dangers of the crumbling pipe system, Maryland did not have the money to make the necessary repairs. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, the water main break is a wake-up call for the need for massive infrastructure spending by the federal government.

Just hours after the water main break, however, Karl Rove belittled the idea of infrastructure spending on Fox News, calling it “goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas,” and agreed with host Rich Lowry that infrastructure spending doesn’t “make[] any economic sense”:

ROVE: What we’ve got to worry about some of these sort of goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas in which this wisdom of the government is substituted for the wisdom of private individuals in the market, and there we have every right to question. For example, look, I’m in favor of infrastructure spending, but let’s be honest about it. It’s not stimulative. […]

Think Progress really has things too easy. Their blog is dedicated to refuting silly right-wing statements, and when people like Rove say that things like desperately-needed infrastructure spending is a "goofy, pie-in-the-sky" idea, it's altogether too simple for even a pressed-for-time unpaid blogger such as myself to shoot them down. Three words: Works Projects Administration.

Bush isn't a good enough dancer for the fancy footwork this little backtrack requires:

Only a day after issuing a presidential pardon to Isaac Robert Toussie, a real estate scammer from Brooklyn, President Bush decided to reverse the pardon, after it emerged that Toussie's father had contributed almost $30,000 to the Republican party.

Pardons are absolute. They can't be reviewed or reconsidered or overturned, even by the president who issued them. According to the White House press release, President Bush had sent a "Master Warrant of Clemency" with 19 names to the Pardon Attorney at DOJ to execute. But he hadn't executed it yet. In other words, the White House is claiming none of these folks had actually been pardoned yet. So the president can just send word now not to 'execute' that one pardon.

If you want to know who Toussie is, Steve Benen has a blistering rundown. Basically, the reason why Bush is trying to walk back this pardon is because it stinks even to those who think that pardons for cash are ordinary business.

Now, all of these folks have displayed stunning stupidity, but for sheer tone-deaf, misogynistic, idiotic, must-be-missing-a-brain fuckuppedness, you really can't beat Dennis Prager:

As Paul Krugman pointed out, if you're a right winger --no matter what crazy, f*&ked up thought you utter, it's A-OK.
Case in point is wingnut extraordinare Dennis Prager. Here's a sample:

The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is not in the mood and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.

It gets more preposterous from there. In right-wing culture, it's always the ladies that are at fault.

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

I think James Dobson has it wrong. It's right-wing freaks like Prager who want to destroy the institution of marriage. Yet this nut is a frequent guest on CNN. Why does he get the megaphone that he does?

Because our mainstream media is simultaneously dazzled by the brazen batshit insanity of the right, and terrified of getting hit in the face by them.

There's plenty more, but alas, I am out of time. A very merry Squidmas Eve to you all, my darlings.