Just Another Asshole.
And as my ol’ gran’pappy used to say…
“Never expect anything from an asshole but shit and you won’t be disappointed when it appears.”
Read on. (Written in response to BurnetO’s fine diary What To Do About An Insane President? on My Left Wing.)
Read on.
There will come a day (If Cheney lives long enough and we survive long enough) when Dick Cheney will give one of those near-dotage interviews that all ex-movers and shakers seem to give, where he will say something to the effect of “Bush? Bush was an asshole!!!” or words to that effect.
We overcomplicate the procedure when we debate what form of mental illness rides this man.
We give him too much credit and we give him an excuse.
“Poor man was sick!!!”
Sorry.
Hell. We give him too much credit when we refer to him as “President”.
Here’s where we are at.
We have potentially the most massively lethal military system that the world has ever seen.
We have an intelligence infrastructure that has relatively successfully controlled the Third World for 50+ years.
We are the wealthiest nation on the planet. Forget about the “debt”. Who’s going to collect considering our military might?
We are the primary country at fault for the onrushing global warming disaster.
Having a nice winter, folks? Warm enough for ya? “Unseasonably warm” say the talking head newscasters throughout most of America. Uncomfortably warm, almost. Enjoy it. It’s just the beginning. It is essentially an irreversible condition and we are in deep shit.
And we have a mainstream, y’see ’em every day, line level asshole in charge.
Nominally in charge, at the very least.
Legally in charge, if he and some others ever really want to pull the strings.
Potentially TOTALLY “in charge” because many of the most important checks and balances to his power have been thrown overboard in a panicked attempt to fight terrorists.
Terrorists who may not even EXIST on the level or in the form that the hype would indicate.
It’s real simple.
He’s got to be fired.
The so-called “opposition” are in a position where they can begin the firing process.
Possibly 80% of America WANTS him outta there, and wants the US out of Iraq too. Despite the years of media hammering to the contrary.
And what do the DemRats do?
Really?
They pose.
“Haw haw haw!!! We got muscle now!!! I am woman, and I am proud.”
Give it a break, Nancy.
I am already embarrassed for you, and you just took office.
And who is that guffawing fool next to her?
That image is as ridiculous as the one at the top of this post.
You want to prove that you are the most powerful woman in the world now?
Go AFTER the asshole before it’s too late.
Nothing less will do.
Nothing.
Do your job.
Do your job or shut the fuck up.
AG
Impeach Impeach Impeach Impeach Impeach Impeach Impeach.
Thank you and goodnight.
AG
Hell, AG, you got my tip and rec at:
Best line I’ve heard in a loooong time. So true.
The part about Bush? Us scientific types call it Occam’s Razor – don’t make an explanation any more complicated than you have to, LOL; the simplest theory is the most likely to be true.
The part about Pelosi is on the mark too. 😉
Actually…I’m my OWN gran’daddy.
(Which requires psychic incest at almost inconceivable levels, don’tcha know…)
Later…
AG
People think psychopaths are COOL.
No idea how THAT came to be.
You don’t want to know how psychopaths think: There is nothing good about thinking like that.
Psychopaths tend to get you killed in horrible ways. You won’t like that either.
But if people insist on being fascinated, yes, let’s call him an asshole instead and get him removed!
Your EMBARRASSED by Pelosi already, Ag? She’s had the damned gavel in her hand what, 24 hours so far, and already you are embarrassed for her??? Wow.
And Bush is “just another asshole”? I wish. How I wish. Ordinary assholes don’t scare me one damned bit. Out of control maniacs with personality disorders, who are in charge of the entire country and have the power to blow up the fucking planet DO scare me a hell of a lot!
Otherwise, I’m with you 100% in that a whole bunch of people better damned well step in, hard and soon, to stop Bush, before he totally destroys this country.
But to ridicule Pelosi for pausing one damned day to celebrate the incredible fact that a woman, a grandmother! has actually become Speaker of the House, for the first time in history just plain pisses me off!
She IS one hell of a powerful women, but it just might take her more than one damned day to undo the mess powerful MEN have made of things for what, 200 freakin years??!!
I agree with AG. Although I’m not embarrassed, I’m disgusted.
Same old story. Same old political game.
It’s all about power. That totally disgusts me, and just because Pelosi is a woman doesn’t make her exempt from the bullshit.
I’ll stack up my absolute disgust with the entire political system right we have along side yours and AG’s any day, Spider, and we’d be all on the same level. And I left the Democratic part many years back, so you will never see me holding Democrats up as any shining symbol of hope for us, either. Best I can say is overall, the Democratic Party seems the lesser of two bad choices, and the whole damned political system is corrupted beyond repair as far as I can see.
My reaction to this diary was to its targeting of Pelosi. I don’t know any more than anyone else does what she will or won’t do in the days ahead, but she sure doesn’t deserve to be ridiculed for not “doing more,” when she just freaking assumed the office!
Well that is certainly true enough, but what she’s already done is tell the CBC to back off and gotten Conyers to leave the President alone, let alone taking impeachment off the table. That’s not a good start in my books, and certainly one that takes any shine off of a woman assuming the role of speaker.
And, personally, I do think she’s only in it for the power (her dad was mayor of Baltimore, she’s long-time politico), hence this statement after talking about the marble-ceiling: “All right, let’s hear it for the power,” she screamed as the jubilant applause continued. Huh? not the people, not America, but for her power. At least that’s the way it reads to me.
That statement she made “Lets hear it for the power!”. certainly could be interpreted as you did, as referring to her own personal need for power. Or it could be interpreted as referring to the power of women so long barred from high office, or the power of the people, or all sorts of other interpretations. She’s really the only one who what she meant that statement to mean. If she was crowing about her own power, well, I guess she’d be no different than most male politicians. Time is going to tell us a whole lot more than we can know right now about the outcome of how this Speaker uses her power.
Could be, you are right, time will tell.
But I did leave out what she said first before yelling “let’s hear it for the power” –
That appears clear to me that she was talking about herself, but I could be wrong.
Yeah.
I’m not too knocked out by her family references, either.
Here is what I wrote here in a comment regarding the little Pelosi/McKinney flap that erupted after Cynthia McKinney filed articles of impeachment againt Butch as her last official act as a Representative on Dec. 8th.
(BREAKING Friday night: McKinney files impeachment articles)
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Cynthia has courage
I would be VERY curious to see the racial makeup of the neighborhoods in which Ms. Pelosi grew up.
The schools she attended.
I would love to hear the conversations around the dinner table when the relatives came a’calling.
I really would.
Do you know which ethnic group all up and down the Northeast Corridor of the US was most guilty of “white flight” when black people began moving out of their ghettos?
Yup.
Italians.
I know this for a living fact, having moved INTO those changing neighborhoods for well over 40 years in both Boston and New York in search of a border neighborhood where I could both afford to live and not have my white ass stick out TOO damned strongly on the street when I came home from gigs at 3 AM.
Pelosi is the daughter of one Italian mayor of Baltimore and the sister of another. (Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. and Thomas D’Alesandro III)
Hmmmmm…
I wonder how THEY got elected?
She graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. in 1962. Largely if not completely SEGREGATED Trinity College in segregated Washington, D.C. at the time.
Here is her father’s biography:
And here is her brother’s.
Now color me suspicious, but…
I KNOW Baltimore a little. from both sides of the color line. I played at the Left Bank Jazz Society’s Sunday jazz get togethers a number of times in the ’60s and ’70s (This was a Baltimore tradition, this Left Bank Jazz Society. A predominantly black Baltimore tradition at the time. Bet on it.) , and I have worked in that city often as a musician in the ensuing years. I have also worked on both sides of the color line in Baltimore’s sister cities Wilmington, DE and Washington DC. Philly, too. I know which way the racial winds blow in that area, and HAVE known since the middle ’60s..
Baltimore is, was and remains to this day essentially a segregated city. As far as I am concerned the real Mason-Dixon line starts somewhere just south of Philadelphia (Maybe even further north…like just south of the Canadian border. I like to call in the Manson-Nixon line.) and clearly includes Wilmington, Baltimore and DC in its purview.
Now Ms. Pelosi grew up the daughter and sister of mayors of this segregated city, and went to college at a Catholic school in Washington DC before “civil rights” was much more than a dream for most of the black population of the at that time THOROUGHLY UnSista-ed United States of White America.
Let me ask you…how many uppity black sistas do YOU think she encountered in her formative years?
Or for that matter during the REST of her life.
Not very damned many, I will guarantee.
Bet on it.
This is the basic fault with most of the white power structure now in place in the the US. Business, political AND military. With the sole exception of Bill Bradley, I cannot think of ONE WHITE PERSON IN A POSITION OF REAL POWER who I can imagine EVER having had a person of color as a real role model.
Certainly not as a general rule, for sure.
So when Cynthia McKinney stands up and (righteously) raises holy hell, Ms. Pelosi’s whole subconscious upbringing screams…ohhh, I don’t even want to THINK of what it screams.
Ugly like a motherfucker, though.
Bet on that as well.
And there we jolly well are, aren’t we?
Ruled by white racists who probably are not even conscious of their own racism.
Hard to reform when you do not know you have a problem, even with the best of intentions.
And there we jolly well are…
Impeach?
She can’t even integrate!!!
Not really.
Not deep down in in her brittle little soul of souls.
So it goes.
Keep the faith.
And be surprised by nothing.
AG
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So you see…on a NUMBER of levels I am not too enthused by Ms. Pelosi’s rise to position and power.
And don’t give me that old Anti-Italian Defamation League line, either. I lived in Crazy Joey Gallo’s Red Hook, Brooklyn when Joe Columbo was RUNNING that little scam; I quite happily married into a dead-honest Italian family, and I know both sides of the mob line as well as I do those of the Manson-Nixon line.
Bet on it.
Nancy Pelosi.
She’s no Mario Cuomo.
Bet on that, as well.
AG
Wow AG, I hope you never get ahold of my history and start making assumptions about what it all means. My history of southern white priviledge would put your description of Pelosi to shame. And my parents, siblings, uncles and grandparents did and continue to do some amazingly awful things.
BUT…I am not them and never will be. As an adult I made my own way. And I will NEVER judge someone because of who their family is or has done.
Criticize Pelosi if you want. But not on the basis of where/how she grew up and who her family is.
Y’know…if she was in any of a thousand other positions and had any of a thousand other resumés, I would APPLAUD her ascension from the political cesspool in which she was undoubtedly raised.
But she is not.
She has criticized the wrong people and allied herself with the wrong people consistently since I began watching her act, and I have a hunch that she is not going to take care of the business that needs taking care of.
We all have our skeleton-filled family closets. Myself included.
We either transcend them or we do not.
AG
Actually, what I said was that I am embarrassed FOR her.
That is an admittedly small difference..one way of speaking essentially means that I am AGAINST her, the other that I am for her but embarrassed at her posturing. But I mean really, scribe. C’mon. That is a HORRIBLY weak and stupid image. if she is such a pro, she must remember AT ALL TIMES who and where she is, or she is going to get Howard Deaned right on out of real power so quickly that she will be a trivia question in about 6 months.
Bet on it.
She blew it with the Murtha for whip thing.
She stated publicly that “Impeachment is off the table.” What? About 5 weeks ago?
I disagree.
Strongly.
And now this bullshit.
This is not a promising start, scribe.
Man, woman or anything in between.
Not a promising start at all.
Sorry…
AG
I just heard on CNN that a letter has been delivered to Bush from Pelosi and Reid. (paraphrasing) It stated that a) surge has already been tried and failed and b) they won’t be supporting another.
I agree, overall, from just what I also can glean from what info is available, it has not been a promising start since the Dems gained power in November. However, Congress HAS just convened, and we do not know what WILL happen.
And I admit it may be “desperate hope” still surviving somehow, somewhere in me, that simply wants to believe that what I can see may NOT be all there IS going on right now, out of the public sight, on the part of some in power, both Dems and disillusioned Republicans, who ARE courageous enough to be putting together a strategy to stop Bush.
I also think that, if this is a possibility, they are not going to be likely to put in on cable news in advance. I also have had ample years in which to learn to “never say never”. Too many times, (for me) it’s closed doord though which good stuff was about to walk!
I am equally well braced to have that slim wobbly hope die in the same messy deathbed all the other hopes I have ever had to see this government actually work as it was intended to.
there’s a corollary to yer ol’ gran’pappy’s adage AG:
wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up
we shall soon see just what this new congress is made of.
After 12 years of Republican-dominated bullshit, I’m willing to let the speaker have her brief silly pose, her endzone dance, if you will. There is no denying that her new office constitutes a milestone for women, and certainly worthy of at least a brief recognition. While vommit-inducing photo opps seem to be a regular part of DC life, I’m willing to give her a pass on this one. I’ll wait just a bit longer before passing judgment.
and enjoy your dining on your own. Give me a freaken break. One day makes for all this hunbub? It was history in the making yesterday. She had every right to toot her own horn. She never even worked until she was 47 years old. It seems to me that some people will never be happy. We NEED the power and the majority. It is going to take more than one freaken day to turn 17 years of corruption from the repubs around. Take a breath for cripes sake.
Leezy, she was chair of the Northern Cal Dem party in 1977 – that’s a job I assume? she would have been 37 at the time. In order to get elected chair, she would have had to be working for the party before that in at least her early 30’s.
She was a career woman who now for some reason is trying to paint herself as coming ‘straight from the kitchen’. Nothing wrong with either, but a bit disingenious.
My mistake. That really wasn’t my point though. Have a nice weekend.
It is what was being said on MSNBC and CNN yesterday so I guess I should have done more research on that point. Sorry.
No worries, just wanted to set the record straight. You have yourself an excellent weekend as well.
Right.
Because that’s not “REAL” work.
That’s politics.
More like theft than work, really.
Just as it’s always been.
AG
Just need to say that there are plenty of local party chairs that are volunteer positions. I can’t say I know about this one.
Good info NL, and you may be right about the early Chair position, but she kept moving up the chain and before she was asked to run by her long-time friend (and member of SF ruling class/ longtime heavy weight politico family) on her deathbed, she was Chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, certainly a paid position, and in only the loosest sense “straight from the kitchen” and “didn’t have a job, family was the only priority” as she tells it now.
Her official house.gov page makes no mention of any of these positions and reinforces that she “came out of nowhere” to run for Congress which is also curious.
Never worked?
Until she was 47?
Another minus, in my book.
Sorry, aloha…I’m smellin’ ratz.
DemRatz.
It’s not about “today”. Or yesterday.
It’s about Rahm and Pelosi and Small K kerry and Schumer and the whole crowd of centrist Dems who allowed this takeover to happen by their lack of fire, courage and effort in 2000 and 2004.
Read what Terry McAuliffe said about Small K in his new book?
By Associated Press
Friday, January 5, 2007 – Updated: 11:22 AM EST
WASHINGTON – Former Democratic Party boss and Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe is lambasting John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, calling his effort to unseat President Bush “one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics.”
In his scrappy memoir, McAuliffe criticizes the 2004 campaign that he was responsible for defending but ultimately lost to what he describes as a more organized Republican machine. McAuliffe calls the Kerry campaign gun-shy, distracted and incompetent. —snip—
Now I know that this ALL politics…McAuliffe is cauterizing the small K kerry leak for Ms. C. just like she and her advisors/spinners are busily pooh-poohing Obama and Edwards as serious challengers while simultaneously grooming one of them…Obama is my bet…as running mates.
The DemRatz are the ones who got rid of Dean and then later propped the Kerry Korpse up there in the first place in that hideous excuse for a 2004 convention.
And here they are “in power”. Not because of ANYTHING much that they actually did…just because the Butch thing got so rancidly obvious that it even semi-awakened the America sleeple.
“What’s that SMELL, John? Woke me right out of a sound sleep. Go downstairs and vote. will ya?”
And suddenly we have a landslide.
The same fools who allowed Butch to back up his BushCo truck into Iraq and loot that country voted in the Pelosi machine.
And I do not trust it.
Lots of mouth, but we shall see when push comes to shove.
No sense in postponing the inevitable when a fight is brewing.
May as well just go in and try to cut Butch off at the knees now.
Unless of course…you are not planning on DOING that.
Which is my fear.
Pelosi is heavily pro-Israel. You could look it up. (Votes is BETTER ‘n gold, m’dear. And when you can get BOTH…) She’s tight w/Big Oil, too.
Big Oil and Israel are pro-Iraq War, possibly pro-Iran War too.
And Pelosi is supposed to OPPOSE Butch?
Or is it more like she is supposed to appear to oppose him?
Jimmy Breslin said it best. About a master of the game, Tip O’Neill.
JIMMY BRESLIN, How the Good Guys Finally Won, Notes from an Impeachment Summer, pp. 33-34 (1975).
i know Ms. Pelosi is blowing smoke. She wouldn’t be where she is if that wasn’ t her main game. The question remains…towards whose mirrors is she really blowing it?
Time will tell, and we shall see.
Surge?
Stasis?
Retreat?
Impeachment?
We shall see…
Meanwhile…she just don’t smell right to me.
Sorry…I go with my gut when surrounded by liars. Especially professional ones.
AG
Well, you and Spiderleaf may well be 1000% right in writing Pelosi off so soon. She may indeed be only a female version of the good ol rich white guy network. Wouldn’t surprise me, given the fact that only those who already have LOTS of power and money have a even tinkers chance in hell of buying….uh, ‘scuse me, winning their way to any high elected office.
I really don’t remember claiming Pelosi was the equivalent of the Second Coming in the first place: I just didn’t see the need to ridicule her, and then accuse, convict and judge her before she in in office a week!
I also think it is VERY BIG DEAL, to see a women elected Speaker of The House, even if she IS a privileged white woman. (Wanna tell me how any OTHER kind of woman could have gotten up to where she is at this stage in our pathetic sexist, racist, history?)
I don’t give a flying fuck to which of the seven sexes she belongs.
That’s how liberated I am.
i do not THINKthat it is a big deal.
Y’know what WOULD be a big deal?
And once again,I wouldn’t care if it was a transvestite Mongolian with green hair or the straighest looking, good ol’ boy southern pol you ever saw that did it.
A big deal would be for a person in a position of real national power…Like Reid, like Pelosi, like kingmakers Schum,r and Rahm, like Ms. C….to stand up in public and say “Y’know what? This motherfucker is crazy AND he is incompetent. And we have to get rid of him before he sinks us all..”
Until then…it’s just the seemingly eternal yap yap yap yap yap yap of Dem doggies selling wolf tickets.
I ain’t seen it yet…
And it’s not like they haven’t had almost 8 years’ worth of chances.
AG
I think I understand where you’re coming from over all. You know I usually am right with you 90 to 100% and still am in terms of not having ANY remaining faith in this corrupt system to change until it absolutly has to, or otherwise destroys itself so we can start the hell over.
I also have a hunch that had you lived your whole life as a woman, (even given all the rest of what’s wrong with this lousy set up,) seeing a woman finally rise to this position might possibly be a bit more meaningful to you. Maybe not. 🙂
Meanwhile, it is very meaningful to me and will continue to be, even if she turns out to be as bad as all the rest of ’em, because I’m looking at the big picture, and I believe part of the solution, if there even is one, will be women making it into those “hallowed halls” and breaking up that ol boys club, in due time. No one else has been able to stop it.
Good evening scribe. You rock…you do.
I was disappointed in Pelosi’s chest thumping myself. Just felt it wasn’t needed. Take the high road…and all that, you know? But it’s really a small thing to me. I’m fully aware and delighted in the big picture of what her ascension to the speakership means for all women in America. last night my daughters passed through the living room as I was watching a repeat of her taking the gavel on C-span. I stopped them to let them know that that is Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to ever be elected Speaker of the Hose, thinking I was passing on some great unknown historical moment to them, and feeling pride and hope for my daughters, don’t you know ;o) They barely skipped a beat or interupted their stride as they both said, “we know Daddy”! :o)
Ah yes, those good old moments of parental “deflation”.We undergo this transformation, doncha know, from being “all wise god-like beings”, to being mere boring humans, then irritants, jailers and finally old fashioned fogies who couldn’t possibly know one relevant thing about anything!
But how grand for them they have a father who wants to make sure they don’t miss moments like this! You rock TOO, Super!
Scribe, I certainly don’t want to appear not to think the first woman Speaker is not a significant milestone and one to be applauded. If I gave that impression I apologize.
I just have serious doubts about her and the Dems as you know. Today it was 2 things – one, the claim that she didn’t work until she was 47, when she was Chair of the Dem party in CA in one form or another since she was 37. Why lie about that if not to try and create a mythology to manipulate opinion and cater to “middle America” vs. us uppity leftist feminist career women… That really disturbs me.
Then there’s the interview with Rangel about how she muzzled the CBC.
It really bothers me that she is celebrating being a woman with power while telling the African American Reps (women included), who have a reason to celebrate their own newly found historical power, to subborn themselves to the rich white privledged class’ wishes. To essentially head to the back of the bus.
It’s not right, and I hope I’m wrong, but I’m just going by what is out there in the news, and it ain’t pretty.
Let alone taking impeachment off the table and saying that she wants to be “partners” with war criminals and crooks vs. the CHECK AND BALANCE…
It got to be too much for me today unfortunately. Sorry if I came off harsh towards you at any point.
I have PLENTY of days when it’s all too much for me, so I know how you feel. That’s why, on rare occasion, when it appears to me there just MIGHT be a small sliver of a tiny reason to feel hopeful about SOMETHING, politically, (even knowing it could be a illusionary flash in a pan) and even knowing its not something likely to bear much fruit in my lifetime, I choose to grab it while it’s here.
Age may play a factor. It’d be pretty damned hard to die and leave my grandkids behind, if I had NO hope at ALL for her future safety and freedoms.
You are absolutely right.
But I certainly wouldn’t want to give them false hope vs. reality and a recognition of the way forward to change things.
Tomorrow, when 2 yr old Ivy gets here, as soon as she’s done trying to catch the cat by the tail, I will sit her right down and make sure she is not harboring any false hopes for Speaker Pelosi’s integrity, ok? (The other one, who is 25, already knows better than to trust any politician, ever. She learned that from me.)
‘Nite all!