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THE WHITE DOG HOUSE — The annual revelation that a little black scottie dog runs the White House was again met with shock and anger by too few normal human beings.
“Barney,” aka “Bushmaster,” was again portrayed as merely the driving force behind the White House Christmas celebration by a cloying gaggle of the Bush family, gathered around the fireplace.

The disturbing video, produced by “Barney Productions,” was leaked to an eager lapdog press core that took turns slobbering over surreal segments of the Bushes, their children, and new in-law Henry Hager talking to Barney, the obsequious Miss Beasley, and a cat named “Willard,” amid poorly produced visions of grandeur of Barney winning several aquatic Olympic events.

Barney’s paper-thin veneer of social dogitude was apparently stretched to the breaking point recently when he attempted to violently amputate a few digits of Reuters reporter, Jon Decker.  This latest rupture of his genteel facade pales when compared to his attack on liberal Boston Celtics public relations director, Heather Walker on September 19th, 2008, who was savagely bitten on the wrist, elbows, knees, ear, nose, and throat, and lost several pints of blood before being ferreted off to an undisclosed location.  The incident was brushed under the rug until the Decker mauling brought several previous attacks to national attention, exposing a pattern of unprovoked attacks on random dweebs.

The reason Bush sounds as dumb as a hound.

A rift between Barney and Karl Rove became public shortly after Rove’s resignation, when Rove publicly lashed out at the terrier, calling him “a lump.” Back-channel reports said that was coded talk by Rove, that alluded to the fact that Barney used Rove’s White House office as his toilet of choice.

Perhaps the most controversial of Barney’s run-ins with politicos is his public spat with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who publicly ridiculed Barney as a “smaller breed,” unworthy of real world leaders.  Barney responded by challenging Putin’s “mutt” to a no-holes-barred dog fight.  Putin’s black bitch labrador, Koni, was said to have been amused by the challenge, but only said, “Драка с чем? Тот маленький приклад-smeller? Отсутствие fucking путя.”*

•

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*”Vight wit vhat? Dot little butt-smeller?  No voocking vhay.”

Rod Blagardjerkavitch with smarter friends in 1974;  the hair shows early-onset of P.D. had already taken control.

CHICAGO — The early-onset of Pompadour Dementia is being blamed for Illinois Governor Milorad “Rod” R. Blagojevich’s Bluto-Behavior recently exposed by federal prosecutors. The disease is a variant in the family of tic disorders, and is sometimes referred to as Noggin’ Turrets, due to the victim’s propensities to demonstrate totally insane behaviors despite unusually successful careers. The exact cause of Pompadour Dementia remains unknown, but it is well established that both genetic and environmental factors are involved.

Elvis Presley, after whose “pompadour” the disorder was named, is the most famous of all early examples of Noggin’ Turrets (Pompadour Dementia).  The voluminous hair is often associated with physical spasms of a unique character which are often considered displays of talent.

The disorder was named “Pomadour” after the disorder’s main indicator of combing abnormally voluminous hair back in the manner of Elvis Presley, (an early undiagnosed victim) or conversely, after the fashion of “Potsie” (i.e., the “Potsie” variant) on the long running series, “Happy Days.”  Remarkably, another lead character, “The Fonz,” was also afflicted with the condition;  this happenstance set clinicians searching for other examples of multiple cases in close working associations;  (see Fox exemplars, below). The disease is not thought to be contagious, although anecdotal evidence has been shown to exist.

Remarkably, most sufferers of the disorder are quite quickly affected mentally, believing the profusion of hair to be an attractive facet of their uniqueness, and become oblivious to any social stigmatization that may be directed at them from disaffected fans, paparazzi, etc.

Warren “Potsie”  Weber showing advanced-onset.

The “Fonz” displaying the “Elvis” variant.

The CLUSTER FACTOR

On occasion the disorder does produce unfortunate deviations. These deviant exemplars invariably demonstrate the “cluster factor,” often finding employment in similar fields or even the same company. One such famous example: Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, both are exemplars of early-onset deviations, and are currently employed by Fox News.

Bill O’Reilly of Fox News shows the heart-breaking and rare “Loofa” deviation.

Sean Hannity of Fox News;  confirmed exemplar of the “Slimey Bastard” deviation.

Other Exemplars of Famous
Pompadour Dementia

Karl Rove;  very early “Slimey Bastard” deviation.

Samuel L. Jackson; only known photograph of full-blown symptom, Jackson often shaved his head to hide the disorder;  the movie Pulp Fiction was rare exception.

The Ronettes were all early examples of the Cluster Factor in women.

Amy Whinehose in advanced stage of Beehive deviation; actually thinking it looks cool is the beginning of the end.

Sarah Palin, Beehive Variant with unusual “Grizzly” deviation.
Critics of her recently revealed hairdresser expenses are largely unaware of her disorder, which requires daily pruning.

Unknown exemplar of advanced Beehive deviation.

In one of the more surreal moments of an already surreal campaign, John McCain got into the spirit of the holiday by appearing in an amazingly creepy “Underdog” costume, while standing next to someone else dressed as Underdog.

WASHINGTON — As we stagger through the final hours of Halloween this election cycle, John McCain and Barack Obama are pulling out all the stops in their efforts to sway comatose “undecided” voters.

Barack Obama is blanketing Tee Vee Land with his main message, that the United States must change the ruinous course we’re on.  John McCain continues to slander Barack Obama with everything vile and foamy in the Karl Rove Book ‘o Slime, and to his eternal disgrace, McCain has saved the Wright Stuff for last.

Dressed in a bizarre “UnderDog“ costume for some stupid fucking reason, Halloween, McCain howled to several hundred people,

“The pundints [sic] have written us off, just as they’ve done several times before. We’re a few points down, but we’re coming back.”

“My friends, My opponent, Barack Obama, is urging Americans to “share the wealth” tonight, by giving candy to strangers. When I’m president, we’re not going to let that happen.”

Although momentarily stunned, the crowd eventually cheered wildly, breaking into a chant of “Socialist! Socialist!”  McCain then pantomimed flying in a circle, supposedly as a grounded, waddling Underdog might; the other Underdog joined in by running circles around John “Underdog” McCain.

However, the latest CBS-NY Times national poll has Obama-Biden at 52 percent, McUnderdog-Palin at 39 percent.  Other national polls show Obama with a substantial lead nationwide.

Meanwhile, McCain’s trick or treat robocalls continue to pummel Americans across the battleground states, including Obama’s home state of Illinois, in McCain’s continuing efforts to link Obama with convicted felon Tony Resco, or anything that anyone might consider scary or questionable. (No such calls linking McCain to convicted felon and nutball, G. Gordon Liddy, have been made by anyone.)  One McCain robo-message claims Obama dresses up as a Druid at least once a year, and roams Chicago neighborhoods looking to cast spells over innocent men, women, and children.

Ex-president Bush shakes hands with ex-president McCain, who was officially replaced as president today, after a stroke left him with the communication skills of a very bright rutabaga, (a cross between a cabbage and a turnip.)  McCain’s wicked shiner was not explained.

Excerpts from Mark Crispin Miller:  (my emphasis)

The choice of Sarah Palin has been widely and repeatedly assailed as evidence of John McCain’s “bad judgement.” Certainly that choice was very bad. Indeed, it may prove to be catastrophic. But to take it as a sign of John McCain’s mere recklessness is probably a big mistake. First of all, there is no reason to believe that the decision really was McCain’s, since Karl Rove’s minions are in charge of his campaign, which means that Rove himself is running it (as he evidently has been from the start). And while it surely was a rotten choice in moral and/or civic terms, it certainly was not an instance of “bad judgement” in Rove’s moral universe, where winning is the only thing that counts; and Sarah Palin was selected so that (she and) John McCain could “win”—and, even more important, get away with it.

They picked Palin not because she is a woman, and might therefore appeal to diehard Hillary supporters. They picked Palin because she is a theocratic true believer, who has the Christianists all swooning at the prospect of her reign (which will commence as soon as Jesus answers all their prayers for John McCain’s quick death). To get some sense of their millennial excitement, read this excerpt from an email recently sent out by one of them, to others of her kind:

I believe you are aware that Dutch Sheets [http://www.dutchsheets.org/] was used by the Lord to call prayer before the 2000 election that was so close. He said this morning that this election is perhaps even more critical than 2000 because of the Supreme Court. If the right political posture is not elected, we stand to lose decades of progress and the results could be enormous. Last year Chuck Pierce and Greg Hood prophesied that in 2008 we would not be electing a president but a vice president. Dutch said he could get no release in his heart to back Huckab[ee] even though he was pressured by many in the body of Christ. Huckab[ee] is a good man and a strong believer, but he was not God’s choice. Dutch also told us that he knows a man who gave McCain a prophetic word that McCain had made a vow to God when he was at the bottom during his POW days and now God was calling in that vow. McCain was visibly moved by this word. Dutch was traveling to Texas on Friday and when he landed in the airport his wife called and told him to get to the TV asap. He watched McCain introduce Governor Palin and he said he began to weep, even though he knew nothing about her. He asked God, “What is the significance of this 44-year-old woman?” And he saw the clock said 4:44. He asked the Lord what that was all about and the Lord said, “Ezekiel 44:4.” “He brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple; so I looked, and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD; and I fell on my face. NKJV ….. North gate representing Alaska [sic].

And so on.

We could take his arrant fetishism in a positive light, and reason ourselves lucky he didn’t take all those 44’s to mean a 44 caliber Peacemaker to blow the toes off McCaint or even sister Sarah; sometimes these things can go every which way.

Such fervor, which now unifies the Christianist community, was not stoked merely by the sight of Palin’s glowing kisser on TV. More importantly, the governor became the instant darling of the Christianist far right once all the top dogs of the theocratic movement looked at her, and pronounced her good. To some extent, she was their choice—and so it’s wrong to claim, as some indignant pundits have, that Sarah Palin “was not vetted.” The governor was vetted by the Council for National Policy, the secretive and highly influential steering committee of the Christianist far right, which seeks to junk the Constitution and replace it with Leviticus and other flights of Holy Writ.

[Palin's] reckless policies derive from an apocalyptic wish to see the planet die, so that Lord Jesus will come back here, and start kicking ass and taking names.

[Read more →]

The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme. - The Urantia Book

Looks like the pray for rain camapaign by Focus On the Family, aimed at dousing Obama’s acceptence speech in Denver last night, may have triggered a karmic backfire.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

GOP Considers Delaying Convention

Tropical Storm Obama Gustav Is Forecast to Hit U.S. Next Week as Hurricane

By Dan Eggen and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 29, 2008; A21

Republican officials said yesterday that they are considering delaying the start of the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul because of Tropical Storm Gustav, which is on track to hit the Gulf Coast, and possibly New Orleans, as a full-force hurricane early next week.

The threat is serious enough that White House officials are also debating whether President Bush should cancel his scheduled convention appearance on Monday, the first day of the convention, according to administration officials and others familiar with the discussion.

For Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Gustav threatens to provide an untimely reminder of Hurricane Katrina. A new major storm along the Gulf Coast would renew memories of one of the low points of the Bush administration, while pulling public attention away from McCain’s formal coronation as the GOP presidential nominee.

Senior Republicans said images of political celebration in the Twin Cities while thousands of Americans flee a hurricane could be dubious. “Senator McCain has always been sensitive to national crisis,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, noting that the senator postponed announcing his presidential candidacy in 2000 because of the war in the Balkans. “We are monitoring the situation very closely.” [...]

Staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge for either political party. But GOP officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the Bush administration’s bungling of Katrina and its aftermath in 2005.

A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico could also cast unwelcome attention on the offshore oil rigs that McCain has championed as a solution to rising gasoline prices — they are now being evacuated in the face of the coming storm. [...]

“You would have to dramatically change the nature of what you do. Much less partisan. Much less political,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because internal discussions are ongoing. He added that all the speakers would have to retool their addresses to reflect the storm and its impact. “Otherwise, it’s the elephant in the room.” [...]

White House press secretary Dana Perino said yesterday that it was “premature to say” whether the storm might have an impact on Bush’s scheduled appearance Monday night. [...]

Some Republicans bemoaned an apparent GOP curse when it comes to summer storms and noted the contrast between the approach of Gustav and the sunny weather in Denver for the Democrats. “The Republicans can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Karl Rove, a former Bush adviser, on Fox News yesterday.

Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida as a Category 5 storm in August 1992, and the sluggish federal response was castigated by state leaders as well as then-candidate Bill Clinton in his successful bid to defeat President George H.W. Bush that fall. …

I was at the gym yesterday when I saw the live broadcast of John McSame’s press conference, during which he made his risible pronouncement that:

[I]n the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.

In my subsequent blog, I missed this angle mentioned by Greg Sargent over at TPM (so many hard bodies to ogle, so little time):

At a press conference just now, John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia.

Hunter at Daily Kos picks up the ball and runs with it:

So if merely giving a speech in Germany is “presumptuous”, how freakin’ “presumptuous” is it for a candidate to send their own diplomatic team into a foreign conflict? Isn’t that, you know, a job for the President, not a candidate?

Why no outrage on this? I think it’s safe to say that if another candidate did this, conservatives would burst into flames from fury, and the talking heads would be beside themselves talking about how unprecedented it was for a candidate to inject themselves into an international crisis — politics should stop at the water’s edge, and all that. Instead, McCain is using a shooting war to buff his credentials? Seriously? And nobody in Washington sees a problem with that?

Indeed. Why is our corporatist media, who were all over Barack Obama for daring to even look presidential during his recent trip abroad, not covering this angle?

Perhaps because it would expose a fundamental flaw in their narrative of St. John, that lobbyist slaying maverick, and the role that lobbyists and registered foreign agents like Randy Scheunemann are playing in his campaign for the White House. On Tuesday, WAPO noted that:

Sen. John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Repubican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.

The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

Randi Rhodes reports that he has received an additional $600,,000 more. Recall that Scheunemann was the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and a board member of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), responsible for pushing the country into the ruinous ruinous Iraq war and occupation.

McSame’s media enabled hypocrisy is bad enough, but more important is how such relationships work out in the real world. Case in point: emptywheel over at Firedoglake wonders whether Georgia’s aggression in South Ossetia was arranged beforehand between the White House and the McCain Campaign, using Karl Rove as the go-between. Rove was in Yalta at a conference attended by Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili a few days after Secretary of State Condolezza Rice’s [Georgia] visit:

I mean, given that Rove was talking about the upcoming election as Saakashvili was walking in the room, it sure does make you wonder whether Rove said anything to Saakashvili about how a firmer hand in South Ossetia might help Georgia ensure its strong relationship with the US going forward…

I’ll say this: the Administration is even more desperate to push back against claims that they encouraged Georgia’s initial crackdown than you’d think they would be (compare, for example, their response to claims we gave Israel the go-ahead to invade Lebanon in 2006 or bomb Syria in 2007, and their response to claims that we encouraged Maliki to crack down on Basra). There’s something going on–and given Karl Rove’s presence close to the scene of the crime, I’ve got my suspicions.

“Scene of the crime” has an additional meaning— Rove was on the lam at the time, ducking a Congressional subpoena. But I digress. Hunter gets the last word:

Honestly. Take all the worst things about the Bush administration, double them, then add Joe Lieberman. A McCain administration would be the presidential equivalent of a slasher flick.

John McCain lives in a very special world. . .

. . . A very special world where hecklers are hustled off in a heartbeat, so the duffer doesn’t have to put up with their opinions long enough that he forgets what he was talking about; a world where the “third estate” is a fun-to-be-with bunch of sycophantic barbecue junkies; a world where a man with a kazillion monies and a dozen houses he calls home can ridicule a political opponent as elitist; a world where “Victory with Honor” can become a reality by simply saying that it’s our goal.

Commander-in-Cheese John “Peter Quincy Taggart” McCain says he will “Never surrender” his fantasy world, where first Dick Joe Lieberman, head Toadie Lindsay Graham, Master Dick Karl Rove, economic Dick Phil Graham, and main squeezebot Cindy Creamcheese flounce around in his power vacuum, looking for ways to bolster his authoritieh to rule the planet. Note the unretouched universal pasty-whiteness of his crew.

“Our American troops will come home with victory and with honor; and that’s my message, my friends.” Yeah. Except those that continue to come home with missing limbs, with devastating life-changing brain injuries, or come home in flag-draped containers. McWar’s “victory with honor” fantasy is a vestigial figment of the last century’s misunderstanding of the value of war, a discredited and backward looking philosophy that believes minds can be changed by blowing them apart.

Our next Commander-in-Chief of our country will have to be a forward looking man of peace. That can never be John McCain, who’s “vision” of global politics is based on taking on smaller nations and beating them into submission; sort of like Vladimir Putin is attempting to do in Georgia.

Since Chimpy is busy flag-waving pool-side in Beijing, it will be instructive to see how Mr. Never Surrender frames the conflagration burning out of control in Georgia. Will it be another affront to his teevee show bravura? or simply another opportunity to crank up the factual gaffe after gaffe machine as he wrestles Karl Rove’s talking points to the ground in front of hand-picked MSM drones.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama has said there “is no possible justification for these attacks,” and called for a high-level international mediator, and an international peace-keeping force, adding the United States, Europe, and all other concerned countries must stand united in condemning this aggression while seeking a peaceful resolution to this crisis.

[McCrew image by Terry Kruger]

The McCain Ad Team has been infiltrated— Is “The ONE” ready to lead?!? Wul, Hhyuh, Grandpa. . . Why duh ya think they call him “The ONE”?

The ONE— Disabling the onslaught of evil Repuglidung pellets hurled up by the McSame Camp Pain in sheer desperation

Buzz this ad up on YouTube; maybe they’ll keep making this kind of mistake Barack Ad until November. I mean, shit! You can’t buy this kind of connection to the higher neural pathways of the great unwashed. Obama’s people wouldn’t make this kind of ad for obvious reasons, but just as obviously, the Repugs who did make it will never get the Chris Matthews “Tingle down the leg” thing, so they have no clue what they do when they invite their own simple-minded sheeple to seriously contemplate— Could Barack Obama be a divine blessing on America?

No doubt they think it the height of clever ridicule to compare Barack to Keanu. That “celebrity” brush they’re currently flailing around. But do they have any idea how many disaffected young Repugs are looking for a way to unplug from the Matrix? Uh, no. . . So you make them ask, Is Barack Obama “The ONE“?? Mmm Golly; don’t wanna make no mistake on that. . . At’d be as bad as rejectin’ Our LORD hisself! (And rejectin’ the ONE would look real bad on duh Judgment Day rap sheet. . . ) Better vote for him— just in case.

And the clip of Obama talking about a light coming down. . . a few turnip-heads will fall off the truck there, but most of’em will be sharp enough to realize he was making lite of Republican ridicule there in the first place.

But the truly transcendent stroke of subliminal genius-coup de grâce is the selection of NRA superstar Charlton Heston as Moses, whom every right-wing fundamentalist knows as the real Moses, being invoked and equated to Barack Obama. Do those arrogant twits really think undecided Republicans are going to see Heston as someone to ridicule??  Nuh uh.  And thus Obama gets linked to Heston as Moses.

Arrogant presumption is a dangerous line to walk, even though Karl Rove has managed to walk it so successfully for so long. The dimbulbs who light up for this kind of sacrilegious snark are lost souls already; while the ones who are still susceptible to its oily residue of ridicule are also the ones whose faith in the divine is borderline as well. But the shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle— constitutes falseness. And it is the falseness of the Republicans— their premeditated perversion of principle— that is at the noxious heart of their undoing.

[The ONE image by Krugerocks.com]

Stupid Fingers!

Rob Stafford writes over at HufPo:

“. . .here are four questions I’d like someone to ask Senator McCain, and that I’d like him to answer — without parsing, without equivocating, just answer. And if he doesn’t answer — we keep asking. And if these questions no longer seem topical—we ask something else. I don’t want to act like the Republicans, but I do want to make sure our narrative gets equal play—that’s what gets “teh Googles” to wake up and pay attention.

Well, I think McSame is so gosh-darn predictable, I’d like to answer those questions for him, Rob; so fire away, the Senator is awake, alert, and will not now answer your questions:

1. Senator McCain, it’s my understanding that Karl Rove, known to some as “Bush’s Brain” is acting as an informal advisor to your campaign. Are you aware that Rove is currently evading a congressional subpoena, that he has left the country & shows no inclination to appear?

Ah, Mr. Rove does not speak for me, or my campaign. And as far as I am aware, I’m totally aware, that he feels he has a right to declare executive privilege, regarding his activities in the government, and now it is an issue for the activist bench at our courts to decide. I wish him luck.

2. Are you aware that several members of the Bush White House have now failed to respond to congressional subpoenas? What is your opinion of people who show contempt for you & your fellow congresspersons in this way?

Well, I’d take issue with your use of the word “contempt,” even summers can be hectic in Washington, and the Bush team is pretty busy these days. My friends, it would probably be closer to the truth to believe that they’ll be getting round to the subpoenas just as soon as they can.

3. You have supported President Bush on many issues, including his handling of the war and his stance on tax cuts (which, before you were running for president you opposed), you have been photographed publicly embracing him, and yet now you have a little old lady arrested for holding up a sign that reads “McCain = Bush.” Please tell us why you would not like to be associated with President Bush? Why is he a political liability to you now?

Presdent [sic] Bush and I agree on the transcendent issues of today, and always have. He is not a political liability to me, or my campaign. The woman that, the protester that was arrested, was in violation of the rules governing the use of the facility, and it was only fair to the other attendees that she follow the rules as they did. Instead, she chose to be arrested. (shrugs)

4. I understand that you have distanced yourself from Phil Gramm’s comment to the effect that “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” and yet, I find it hard to believe that you chose this man to work on your campaign on economic issues, you have worked with him closely for a year, and yet you were unfamiliar and/or in disagreement with this sentiment. Clearly, if Mr. Gramm had known this statement would embarrass you, he wouldn’t have said it. Do you think it would be unfair, given this context, to argue that you have distanced yourself from the public declaration of this comment, but not of the sentiment itself?

Yes, it would be unfair, I said before that Phil Gramm doesn’t speak for me, and that is still the case. But I think the press was making too much of his comments, in that he was pointing out the steady drumbeat of the blame America first crowd, who always take the negative over the positive, and overlook the power of the psychological over the minds of many Americans, who think the country is in worse shape than it really is, because that’s all they hear about from the cable monsters.

Well, Rob, there you have it. Milquetoast answers, all neatly packaged in mind-fog you can believe in.

Hateful to me, as are the gates of hell,
Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart,
Utters another.
—Homer, Iliad

A pilot named Karl (not his real name) is circulating a devastating email on teh internets titled A pilots [sic] perspective on Obama, that should wake up LIBERALS and Rebublicans too, or any other label you care to use to describe people swept up in their own personal feelings of hope and unity. The letter should scare the living shit out of them. Oh, not for supporting Barack HUSSIEIN OBAMASAMA BIN LODIN. But because there are Americans who believe this kind of Rovian garbage, and they know where the poles are. Here it is, with a special commentary by Karla, (not her real name), Karl’s eviler twin:
PILOT Karl: ,,,,,,,,,,DO I HAVE THIS STRAIGHT?

KARL’S EVIL TWIN, KARLA (not her real name): How should I know?

HIS FATHER WAS A BLACK AFRICAN MUSLIM FROM
KENYA.
Strike one.

WE HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIS AFRICAN FAMILY.
Strike two. . .

HIS MOTHER WAS A WHITE AMERICAN ATHEIST FROM
KANSAS.
Strike three! My God! An ATHEIST!! And white! And from KANSAS! And a MOTHER! (They go to hell too, don’t they? I mean there’s no exemption for them for their not believing in God, is there? God will make bipedal marshmillows out of you stupid atheists, white or not, mothers or not, and roast your sorry asses in hell!

WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF HIS AMERICAN FAMILY?
Strike four!! Anybody who can afford to be born in Kansas but live in Hawaii, where middle class white people can only afford to visit once in their lifetime, can certainly afford at least one photo album! And a camera! All white people have cameras, don’t meseginistic– mesigenestical– don’t black and white people have cameras?? Do you expect anyone to believe you couldn’t afford it?

HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER WHEN HE WAS ONLY TWO YEARS OLD AND WENT BACK TO AFRICA BY WAY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HOW? WAS HIS FATHER WEALTHY?
Strike five!!! A black man with money! And a bad marriage! And a great ivy-league education! How is that not uppity?? Is it just me?!

HIS MOTHER MARRIED AN INDONESIAN MUSLIM AND THEN MOVED TO JAKARTA WHERE HE WAS ENROLLED IN A MUSLIM SCHOOL.

Dirty INDONESIANS! Dirty JAKARTANS! Dirty MUSLIMS! Dirty MUSLIM school! [Read more →]

Former Bush Administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new tell-all book, What Happened:Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, hasn’t even officially hit the bookshelves yet and there is already a ton of reviews and political analyses, thanks to advance copies provided to the well-connected. My local Borders is not among the elite, however, so I’m going to have to rely on others for the accuracy of the quotes provided herein.

The emerging consensus is that the book contains little, if any, in the way of new revelations. What’s being emphasized is that judgments about same are coming from a once loyal Bushie insider. McClellan was one of the Administration’ chief propaganda mouthpieces, a go-to guy responsible for bamboozling the public and what he describes as the “complicit enablers” of the Fourth Estate.

The latter is probably the real public policy meat of the book. And the one guaranteed to receive the least amount of analysis by that self-same media, if the controversy over the Pentagon’s reverse embed “message force multipliers” is any precedent. This makes it ripe for evisceration by the liberal blogosphere. (See, for instance, the perspectives of the relentless Glenzilla, and Editor and Publisher’s Glenn Mitchell .)

Meanwhile, the right wing blogosphere and their counterparts in the MSM will do what they do best–ignore the message and attack the messenger, especially since they haven’t found any actual factual content to take issue with.

Given that the MSM and the blogosphere are our virtual agora (where just about everything has been said but not everyone has had a chance to say it), I’ll direct my comments to a dimension of the story that I haven’t seen addressed yet– what Scottie’s little morality tale tells about the ingenious ability of the human mind to deceive itself and others. And how that, in turn, can be used to appraise Scottie’s own truthfulness.

————

Deception, in both human and non-human primates, was selected early on by evolution for its obvious survival advantages. Tossing a rock into the brush to fool a rival sentinel, or distracting a fellow tribal member from a piece ripe fruit (or a ripe female) would help insure an individual’s genes would be propagated down the evolutionary time tunnel to thee and me.

Naturally, conspecifics developed such that the ability to detect deception in others was also selected, precipitating an evolutionary arms race of sorts. Effective deception detection, especially since the inception of human language, requires the ability to read a variety of neurolinguistc “tells.” These include facial expression, parlance, prosody, voice quality, eye movements, small movements of extremities, and emotional microexpressions. (Stevens, et al. (2007). Deception, Evolution , and the Brain. Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. MIT Press, 18, 517-540)

What, then, is the adaptive response, the counter to the counter? How does the deceiver mask all these powerful yet subtle electro/chemical/somatic clues, working so insidiously behind conscious awareness to betray our true, i.e false, intentions?

In a word, self-deception. By convincing ourselves of our own lies, we can more effectively deceive others. Thus are deliberate falsehoods consigned to the unconscious, which requires fewer metabolic resources to maintain.

(Further refinements in the evolution of self-deception involves the use of the narrative and autobiographical parts of the brain to construct false but plausible versions of a given reality. Other psychological phenomena that testify to the power of human deception include confabulation, delusion misidentification syndrome, delusion redupliciation syndrome, false memories, and false recognition; ibid.)

—————

Fast forward to the Chimpocentric Universe, whose present coordinates in the time-space manifold are found at 1600 Pennslyvania Ave, Washington, D.C., USA, Urantia.

Imagine, if you will, a master manipulator— call him Darth Cheney— has taken control of the White House. In order to mask his true intentions, he removes himself from public scrutiny as much as possible, setting up a redundant, deception detection deflection machine composed of people convinced of their own integrity and idealistic correctness, all the better to propagate his desired falsehoods with a patina of complete sincerity.

The first brick in the firewall was, of course, our easily manipulatable, intellectually incurious president. A self-described CEO who doesn’t even bother to follow the news. An undoubting, unreflective, man born to privilege who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “accountability.” For instance, when he was asked by Timmeh on MTP whether in retrospect he saw Iraq as a war of choice or of necessity, W. [told Scottie] that he was “puzzled” by the question, and indeed he was. “Puzzled” was also word used initially by Administration hacks to describe their reaction to McClellan’s book.

Here was a president, the very personification of self-deception, who immediately surrounded himself with eager sycophants only willing to feed his malignant narcissism and delusions of messianic grandeur, carefully insulating him from anything that might cause him even a moment of cognitive dissonance (if for no other reason than to not be on the receiving end of one of his legendary outbursts of rage). A president who, according to McClellan, invaded Iraq because he saw an “opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.”

By his own account, McClellan has finally seen through the years of spin and propaganda— he can’t quite bring himself to call them “lies.” He decries the replacement of public policy with the Bushie mindset of the permanent political campaign, so relentlessly overseen by Karl Rove who lied to his face about his own treasonous role in the Plame-Wilson outing.

Scottie says he still admires Bush, but realizes now that Bush is deluded, clinging to the hope that he will somehow be vindicated by history for what the rest of us outside the “White House bubble” see as his monumental, strategic and operational blunders. Scottie’s disillusionment with the Great Man began when in 1999, at a hotel “somewhere in the Midwest,” Bush replied to rumors that he had once been a cocaine user by telling him:

“The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors. You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.’

Says McClellan:

“I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It’s the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true. And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious— political convenience. . .”

I hate to tell you this, Scottie, but “political convenience” is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg. But do go on.

“[Bush] has a way of falling back on the hazy memory to protect himself from potential political embarrassment. In other words, being evasive is not the same as lying in Bush’s mind…It would not be the last time Bush mishandled potential controversy. But the cases to come would involve the public trust, and the failure to deal with them early, directly and head-on would lead to far greater suspicion and far more destructive partisan warfare.”

Perhaps ten years from now Bush won’t remember ordering the invasion and destruction of Iraq. Or that he wasn’t greeted as a liberator in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina stopped by for a visit. . .

The authors of The Urantia Book write:

Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate disillusionment.

Young Scottie seems to have gotten the message. But I sincerely doubt that old man Bush ever will. He has been culturing deception for far too long.

HOLLYWOOD, CA (C.U.News) The godfather of Republican dirty campaign tricks, Lee “Willy Horton” Atwater, revealed through one of the world’s most respected psychics today that Billary would be the stronger candidate against John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview granted to this reporter, the medium (who insisted on anonymity, and only after she was satisfied as to my claim of being one of the world’s most diligent vagitarians) said that despite the difficulty in penetrating the third circle of hell, where Mr. Atwater currently resides, her confidence in the accuracy of the transmission was “very high.”

In a related development, Hillary Clinton, out on the campaign trail today in Prestonburg, Kentucky, cited Atwater’s former apprentice Karl Rove as confirming the psychic’s pronouncement:

“There has been a lot of analysis about which of us is stronger to win against Sen. McCain, and I believe I am the stronger candidate,” said Clinton, repeating a line from her stump speech. Then she veered from her usual argument.

“Just today I found some curious support for that position when one of the TV networks released an analysis done by - of all people - Karl Rove, saying that I was the stronger candidate,” said Clinton. “Somebody go a hold of his analysis and there it is.”

Yes, there it is. Rove joins his current employer, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, and former Billary basher extraordinaire, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, as Hillary BFsF.