The Curmudgeon

The passing of the Weekly World News is noted, and even lamented.

Yeah- its utterly off-the-wall nature was truly unique. Over-the-top, to be sure- but there was always the impression that the Weekly World News never took itself altogether seriously.

While the Weekly World News is gone, we shouldn't want for a lack of the bizarre, the lurid fictions which would love desperately to be true. After all, we still have Fox News, the Drudge Report, World Net Daily, and the Free Republic- any of which could suffice in that gap. Sadly, though, there remains a troubling but decided minority (also known as the drool and crayon crowd) who take the above, and themselves, way too seriously.

Minnesota's Democratic-Farm-Labor party has joined the strange crush to move the primaries as early as possible and will hold its caucus on 5. Feb, 2008. This date, nine months in advance of the actual general election, has gone from being known as 'Super Tuesday' to 'Super Duper Tuesday' and now even 'Tsunami Tuesday'. Your Curmudgeon has decided to just lump 'em all together, and will include any ridiculous hyperbole to follow in naming this day.

Whatever. Seriously. This rush to hold primaries earlier and earlier seems to speak volumes about the enthusiasm to end this criminal Republican regime's reign of error and terror. It also speaks volumes for the relative inability to collectively effect meaningful change on enthusiasm alone.

In fact, this 'me, too' phenomenon really doesn't work in our best interest at all. By moving towards a national primary system, the process of nomination becomes less of a result of reasoned conclusion and more a function of money, name-recognition, popularity, and more money. Notice please that "ideas" doesn't appear in that list. Neither does "vision", "plan", or "platform". Instead of a longer system by which the best candidates becomes the most popular through a process of discussion and argument about the issues, this new compacted system ensures that the candidates with the popularity, controlled marketed image. and money become the 'best'.

Given the sorry condition of our nation today, what is needed is vision, a plan, a rational and sane approach to solving problems, not more of the same damn popularity contests which have created the problems in the first place.

By deciding to also surf the Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday wave, Minnesota hopes to gain a greater share of the determination of the nomination, though of course the spin would replace 'greater' with 'proportional'. The thinking is, I suppose, that if the primaries occur more or less simultaneously, the voters may vote their actual conscience, rather than just voting for the lead dog. That might work, but in that case, it would make more sense to have the primaries later- more near the time of the conventions and general elections- so as to afford the nation the possibility to have the needed national discussions about the candidates and their platforms. Early primaries and caucuses merely afford us a greater chance to experience buyer's remorse.

It is entirely understandable to want to hasten regime change here. Actual, authentic, meaningful election reform could- and should- be a goal for the nation. When an administration goes rogue, we should be able to do more than just count down the years, months and days until the elections. But that is not what is happening with the compacted primary system- the only thing decided in the primary is the party nominee. The real election date remains where it is.

What could actual election reform look like? To be sure, your Curmudgeon has plenty of ideas about that- and will be addressing those issues in the future.

The Not-Yet-A-Candidate Fred Thompson did a tour at the Minnesota State Fair. He smeared some lipstick on his particular brand of 'republican vision' and marched it and his Aqua-Velva encrusted jowls, two past-prime pigs parading and pressing flesh. Still, this got as much attention as the opening of a Minnesota committee for Mitt Romney, if not more.

This is telling, both of the creeping necrosis that has beset the politicians who still march under the fell GOP banner and dwindling number of kool-aid drunk true believers.

The truth is catching on. The Republican party has finally jumped the shark. There is no spin to overcome the reality on the ground that the very essence of Republicans has proved anathema to America. The ego-drenched selfishness and myopic greed are undeniable- no quantity of happy-face divisiveness can overcome the devastation Republican philosophy has wrought- to our economy, to our infrastructure, to our standing in the world, to the very process of our government.

Of the Republicans already in the presidential race, there is all the enthusiasm and vigor of the also-ran, especially when the campaigns in question see the contest as being one of "who can bring the most of the same quickest". That this tactic has fallen flat and trended from there downward is hardly a surprise- folks get it when their jobs disappear, when their cities still lie drowning, when their bridges collapse. Striking the 'more of the same' chord here results in what we see, a damning shamble of a race towards last place.

Faced with reality- and the enormity- of all this, the drool and crayon crowd takes a predictable, faith-based turn. The candidates and the party present no prospects of success, and facing up to own the responsibility for all the failure is clearly no option for this cabal. Coming at last to their dead-end, the kool-aid drunk take the 'psychotic break', and invent an option, a candidate upon whom they can project their wildest fantasies and ideals. Fred "Jowls" Thompson is that 'candidate'- a Rorschach inkblot that can be whatever his supporters want and need him to be.

That is, for now. As long as Jowls Thompson can be officially out of the ring, yet functionally in the running, he has that privilege of being the cumulative host of fevered dreams. Once his campaign becomes official, the shine quickly succumbs to the same tarnish every other Republican candidate bears. Being 'not yet in' affords Jowls the self-presentation of choice; being an official candidate means having to take a stand. Considering the perpetual state of turnover that has marked Thompson's quasi-candidacy so far, that 'stand' will fall invariably on shaky ground.

So, we'll be seeing more of Jowls Thompson. There will still be some buzz around him, at least for now, because what remains of Republicans can only fall out of love with him.

Okay- a fortnight after Karl Rove announced his resignation, we have the Smirking Puppet's pet Tejano, Torture King Gonzales being a good soldier and marching off as ordered. Well, the official story is that Gonzales resigned- yeah, right. Gonzo will walk out the front door come 17 September, and then make his way (quietly) to the back door of this criminal Republican regime, just like Rumsferatu before him, where the dirty bits of work can get done in the shadows.

A couple of things to ponder here-

I am just gonna guess that no matter what else happens this week, the outgoing Attorney General is what the media will be covering, recovering, covering 'in-depth', and so forth. It's a prime chance for some one-cheek sneaking for this regime. Recall, if you will, that the news about the White House authoring the report Gen. Petraeus will be delivering as his own on 11.September came out the week of Rove's resignation.

About the 'coverage' that Rove's resignation garnered- it was a vomitous paean from the lame stream media. It ignored and eschewed the shameful, traitorous litany of Rove's contempt for the nation and the people in favour of rehabilitating his image. Gee, you don't suppose that the same extreme makeover could be in store for Gonzales, do you?

The ongoing investigations into Gonzales' crimes- what will come of them now? My guess- not much- especially if it is left to the Democratic party to pursue. Of course, that isn't what the dems are saying right now, but let's just wait and see if their actions follow up on the words... Bottom line- the criminal Republican regime gets away with the devastation they've wrought.

No, I don't like Mondays, still.

Here's a fun mind-experiment for the weekend: Try to imagine what Ted Nugent's life would be like had he not received some scant celebrity decades ago as a rocker. For bonus points, try to imagine how his bat-shit insanity and demi-intelligible diatribes would be received in a world with an actual grasp of reality.

Whatever scenario results ( I personally came up with a toothless crank-head nutjob using tissue boxes for shoes and loudly having conversation with imaginary figures from the late 1970's, clutching his crotch and rocking back and forth like a child afraid to move lest they piss themselves), it is a near certainty that he would not attain the ignoble designation of Ignoranus of the Moment. But there he is, taking the title from the convicted criminal Republican Mark Olson (who, by the way, has yet to face any reproach from his fellow Republicans). It takes a special mix of insane, stupid, and asshole to crawl lower than a wife-beating, bible-thumping, homophobe Republican, but the antics of a missing link like the Nuge definitely qualify.

I could go on to describe how the has been/barely ever was lost whatever he was using for a mind on stage, how he decided that any of a litany of Democratic party figures should have up-close personal encounters with his machine guns. But, really, wouldn't you rather just watch it?

Um, okay. I thought we were gonna get serious about letting the violent and insane have access to firearms. Note to the NRA: freakjobs like Nugent really aren't helping your cause.

Yeah, the Minnesota State Fair starts today, and will continue for the next twelve days. Minnesotans everywhere, we are (constantly) told, will flock to the event. And if we don't, we should, really.

I, for one, just don't get it. There's no compelling force driving me to jam my sorry butt in a throng of folks trying desperately to convince themselves and everyone else that the whole damn thing is still some manner of cultural touchstone. Honestly, though, does carving an image of Elvis in a block of butter tell us anything about ourselves that is really worth hearing? Does having Sven Sundgaard pop impishly out of a barrel to give us a weather report reconnect with what it means to be Minnesotan? Does finding some new manner of foodstuff breaded, frozen and then deep-fried on a stick actually feed our cultural muse?

The State Fair was once such an event, but that was quite a while ago. Before we had conveniently isolated lifestyles and insular means of being connected to the world and each other, the fair was a social event. Perhaps it was a time of mild intrigue and romance, when star-crossed strangers would happen upon each other (in a bright, wholesome, sunshiny way, of course) and they would get enveloped in the ephemeral magic of it all. But the last State Fair movie is 45 years old, and even that remake was generally considered too corny to be believable.

Now, the fair provides us with the chance to tell ourselves the lie that we are still somehow a community. Being crammed into a mass of humanity doesn't in itself make a community, it just concentrates the individual anonymity of it all.

Think about it, this notion of the 'Great Get-Together'. It is attended by families, or social groups of some manner. While gathering so many such groups suggest the opportunity to have actual interactions, do those interactions really follow? Bluntly, it only happens to the extent that it must happen, and then it is kept as brief and impersonal as convention will permit. Mostly, it is just an exercise of the socially introverted in gawking en masse at the socially extroverted in the hopes of some level of entertainment that will justify the expense of being there (and risking, you know, some stranger actually talking to you) in the first damn place.

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"You have the right to free speech," the song goes, "As long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it." The city of Minneapolis, getting out in front of the 'problem' that free speech may pose, is considering an ordinance which would restrict those who would dare exercise free speech vis-a-vis public demonstration.

Oh, you didn't hear about this? Didn't see it on the news, or in the papers? Neither did I- until the good folks at MNspeak spotted it at the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

All this fussin about regulating demonstration is laying the groundwork for the GOP convention next year. The Republicans don't want their convention sullied by people who have, at long last, awakened to the fact that the GOP is uniquely incapable and undeserving of anything even remotely resembling political power. The Republicans don't want any dissenting signals getting mixed in with their noise machine.

It should be noted that the actual convention will be over in St. Paul, which has not yet gone down this particular road. I guess Minneapolis is just considering taking a preemptive approach here. It isn't just a preemption here, though, not just a solution to a non-existent problem; the proposed restrictions will continue to restrict well after the convention has become just a shameful memory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been taking some time off. It was part computer problems, part burn out, part introspective sojourn- none of which have been completely resolved. But I am still here, and I'll be ramping up my production presently.

The technical problems will hopefully be the easiest to resolve. A little repair session and hopefully not too much money should take care of the issue. I've kinda been limping along with this machine, relying on home-cooked voodoo remedies and generally working around the problem. That working-around formula has become too cumbersome as of late, though, and so off to the shop we go.

Truth told, though, the technical problems have been a convenient crutch- an easy and valid excuse for the bigger stuff. I reached a point of utter burn out a few weeks ago, and while that state persists to some degree, the show must still go on. I gotta lower the shoulder and get through the burn out.

It isn't some great inspiration which informs all that drive. The new inspiration is that there is no inspiration. While pondering my burnout, looking for some hope, or some reason for any modicum of optimism, it became clear that there was none. There's no reason for any cheerleading that I can see, at least not for the foreseeable future.

So- what to expect as regards this blog and this site? I'll be chronicling the route along an express lane to perdition, because things are bad, and are gonna get worse.

Yeah, okay, I'll admit that the news about Karl Rove's resignation seemed like a bit of freakishly good news, especially for a Monday. At least initially, it really felt surreal, like a cosmic birthday present. For a brief moment, I wondered if someone needed to pinch me.

However, like with most things Republican, the shine wore off rather quickly. This wasn't a cosmic karma in motion. Rove wasn't being frogmarched out of the White House to face a laundry list of charges (the nation still reserves the right to kill traitors, yeah?). No, the sonofabitch is walking free and at liberty to wreak more of his havoc.

And I am sure that whatever primordial ooze gets nominated for the GOP presidential ticket next year will avail themselves of his services.

This site got its name -The Pubhouse Dialogues- from a time when folks from all across the political spectrum could sit in a bar and talk politics. There would be disagreements, even arguments, but it never escalated into a fight. When we left the table, there was still the friendship that was there when we sat down to chat. It was the great national conversation in microcosm.

I miss that time- and those conversations. They don't happen anymore, at least the conversations across the spectrum. Now, there's a ginornmous gorilla in the room preventing those talks, taking giant gorilla dumps and flinging its crap. Hell, even getting to the point of acknowledging the gorilla and the mounds of dung is a contentious matter.

I'd guess you could say what I am missing is that pre-9/11 mindset, before every damn thing became an all-in clusterfuck. You know the rhetoric: with us or against us, heroes vs evildoers, Jesus vs Mohammed. Perhaps, even, you have grown as tired and sad and utterly pissed-off about those canards as I have.

So, take a moment and ponder today as it might have been. Imagine the States as they could have been, had the vacationing President taken notice of a daily briefing delivered six years ago today... and acted to prevent it.