George's Warhawk Boogie
Following up on one motif of recent posts (Grieg's "Morning" came to mind in off-line posts), how could I have missed U2's "It's a Beautiful Day"? A terrific mix of euphoria and darkness. Try it on.
But here and now I am assembling works by the dutiful deconstructors of the tremendous events of this week.
From the terrific Jane Hamsher:
We can only thank Jeebus that George Bush is so arrogant and thick-witted that he believes his own bully boy Iraq slogans and decided to drag his war drums out and beat them in the week running up to the election. Ned Lamont's candidacy may have initially dislodged the Rahm/Chuck ballgag from the mouths of Democratic candidates who were suddenly free to talk about Iraq, but had not the President decided to launch the Mighty Wurlitzer in a phyrric battle against John Kerry just prior to election day the overwhelming Democratic victory might never have reached "wave" proportions. Even members of his own party are now giving voice to the cringing horror they felt when Junior broke into the warhawk boogie before the cameras at the most colossally ill-timed moment imaginable, wondering why he was doing the work of their opponents for them.
And there's no telling what would have happened had he decided to make the Rumsfeld sacrifice play at a time when the GOP could have capitalized on it, but when he made his post-election speech and announced that he didn't want to influence the election by replacing Rummy in advance, I'm sure I wasn't the only one thanking him for perhaps the first and only time of his presidency.
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And, an aside for 43:
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
(U2: Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of)
From Down With Tyranny:
I'm sure many DWT readers were extra overjoyed to see Opus Dei numbskull Rick Man-on-dog Santorum (still #1 on the google search page) get trounced. I doubt we'll be hearing about his presidential aspirations again. Nor the presidential aspirations of another blight on the Senate's good name, George Felix Macacawitz Allen, although I, for one, will sure miss laughing at him.
Pennsylvanians in the northeast corner of the state are entitled to a double celebration, having lost not just Santorum but also their own Congressman Choker, an embarrassment not unlike the embarrassment residents in the southeast part of the state can also celebrate seeing the last of, uber-corrupt and somewhat zany in a Moonie kind of way, Curt Weldon. Weldon was trounced 147,347 to 114,056, quite the send-off for a soon-to-be-jailed congressman of 20 years.
Conservationists and environmentalists were popping the champagne corks over the political demise of the hated Dirty Dick Pombo. And the extra bonus there is that, unlike Santorum's and Macacawitz's replacements, the man who beat Pombo is a genuine grassroots progressive. I'm sure the departure of reactionary Arizona bigot and anti-Semite, J.D. Hayworth is being much cheered in many quarters and none of the 3 Indiana wingnuts, Chocola, Sodrel and Hostettler, will be missed by anyone who doesn't happen to be an active member of a KKK Klavern. Similarly, Kansas' fanatic loon Jim Ryun, the congressman with the worst voting record of any defeated House member, is a general boon to humanity.
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"Peace on earth" Bono is now singing in my ear. What a concept. As compared to, say, "how can I find an excuse for a big enough war to make me look heroic enough to be able to out-brag Dad and mute those inner demons always talking about what a dismal failure I've been."
Those internal dialogues can probably be hell.
I hope.
And, the capper, the redoubtable Mr. Krugman, briefly out from behind the Times' pay-per-view. There's at least a hint of the love of words and play here that has always endeared me to songmeister John Hiatt:
I’m not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give ’em hell, Harry and Nancy!
Here’s what I wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection “The Great Unraveling”: “I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.”
At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.
Tuesday’s election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate” two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.
The election wasn’t just the end of the road for Mr. Bush’s reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.
Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.
Now, I don’t expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.
In saying that, I’m not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that’s as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.
-clip-
But here and now I am assembling works by the dutiful deconstructors of the tremendous events of this week.
From the terrific Jane Hamsher:
We can only thank Jeebus that George Bush is so arrogant and thick-witted that he believes his own bully boy Iraq slogans and decided to drag his war drums out and beat them in the week running up to the election. Ned Lamont's candidacy may have initially dislodged the Rahm/Chuck ballgag from the mouths of Democratic candidates who were suddenly free to talk about Iraq, but had not the President decided to launch the Mighty Wurlitzer in a phyrric battle against John Kerry just prior to election day the overwhelming Democratic victory might never have reached "wave" proportions. Even members of his own party are now giving voice to the cringing horror they felt when Junior broke into the warhawk boogie before the cameras at the most colossally ill-timed moment imaginable, wondering why he was doing the work of their opponents for them.
And there's no telling what would have happened had he decided to make the Rumsfeld sacrifice play at a time when the GOP could have capitalized on it, but when he made his post-election speech and announced that he didn't want to influence the election by replacing Rummy in advance, I'm sure I wasn't the only one thanking him for perhaps the first and only time of his presidency.
-clip-
And, an aside for 43:
You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
(U2: Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of)
From Down With Tyranny:
I'm sure many DWT readers were extra overjoyed to see Opus Dei numbskull Rick Man-on-dog Santorum (still #1 on the google search page) get trounced. I doubt we'll be hearing about his presidential aspirations again. Nor the presidential aspirations of another blight on the Senate's good name, George Felix Macacawitz Allen, although I, for one, will sure miss laughing at him.
Pennsylvanians in the northeast corner of the state are entitled to a double celebration, having lost not just Santorum but also their own Congressman Choker, an embarrassment not unlike the embarrassment residents in the southeast part of the state can also celebrate seeing the last of, uber-corrupt and somewhat zany in a Moonie kind of way, Curt Weldon. Weldon was trounced 147,347 to 114,056, quite the send-off for a soon-to-be-jailed congressman of 20 years.
Conservationists and environmentalists were popping the champagne corks over the political demise of the hated Dirty Dick Pombo. And the extra bonus there is that, unlike Santorum's and Macacawitz's replacements, the man who beat Pombo is a genuine grassroots progressive. I'm sure the departure of reactionary Arizona bigot and anti-Semite, J.D. Hayworth is being much cheered in many quarters and none of the 3 Indiana wingnuts, Chocola, Sodrel and Hostettler, will be missed by anyone who doesn't happen to be an active member of a KKK Klavern. Similarly, Kansas' fanatic loon Jim Ryun, the congressman with the worst voting record of any defeated House member, is a general boon to humanity.
-clip-
"Peace on earth" Bono is now singing in my ear. What a concept. As compared to, say, "how can I find an excuse for a big enough war to make me look heroic enough to be able to out-brag Dad and mute those inner demons always talking about what a dismal failure I've been."
Those internal dialogues can probably be hell.
I hope.
And, the capper, the redoubtable Mr. Krugman, briefly out from behind the Times' pay-per-view. There's at least a hint of the love of words and play here that has always endeared me to songmeister John Hiatt:
I’m not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give ’em hell, Harry and Nancy!
Here’s what I wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection “The Great Unraveling”: “I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.”
At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.
Tuesday’s election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate” two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.
The election wasn’t just the end of the road for Mr. Bush’s reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.
Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.
Now, I don’t expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.
In saying that, I’m not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that’s as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.
-clip-
posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:14 PM
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