The Rude Pundit

Photos That Make Some Kind of Awful Sense (Palin Version):


That's a worker at the Meijer supermarket in Fort Wayne, Indiana, stacking books on a table near the shampoo aisle. Meijer is kind of WalMart, Jr., for those unfamiliar. The book is Sarah Palin's Going Rogue. You may have heard something about it this week. The worker was prepping for a book signing by Palin herself yesterday. Don't be an elitist: you should be able to meet Sarah Palin and pick up some Alpo and condoms in one store. "'Her values are my values,' said Palin fan Debbie Coning. 'I just really want to thank her for all she's done and what she can do for our country.'" Yes, dear Debbie, for all that she's done. Coning was there at 5 p.m. on Wednesday for the noon Thursday signing.


Those people are seated in the household goods aisle, patiently waiting for Palin. Meijer allowed people to start lining up at 11 p.m. Wednesday so they could sleep in the store. "Meijer officials say the line runs from the Christmas tree section to the outdoor items. Overflow crowds are in the patio area."

And if there's any grace note to end this idiotic week in America, where the desires to put criminals on trial and to give people health care were treated like efforts to nuke babies at Disney World, it's this: They were expecting at least 2000 people for Palin in Fort Wayne. Only 1300 showed up.

Quotes That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Huff Hair Dye and Beard Gel (Refreshingly Free of What's-Her-Name):
1. How about a palate cleansing plate of absurdity? In one of the greatest moments of 24-hour news networks forced banter, Situation Room host Wolf "Behold the Glow of My Resplendent Face Muff" Blitzer and Betty Nguyen held forth on the U.S. Postal Service. Get a friend and read this aloud with as many awkward pauses and confused "can-we-end-this-fucking-segment" smiles as you can manage:
NGUYEN: [M]ail just five days a week? I don't know. Wolf, what do you think?

BLITZER: You know what? I guess Saturday and Sunday -- we don't get on Sunday already.

NGUYEN: Yes.

BLITZER: I could live without the mail on Saturday, if it's going to save $3.8...

NGUYEN: Yes, if it will save some money, right?

BLITZER: If it will save $3.8 billion, that might be worth it.

NGUYEN: I don't know if it will do all that.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: I don't think it will.

NGUYEN: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: I was at the post office, bought some first-class -- you know how much a first-class stamp costs, Betty?

NGUYEN: How much is it now, 43, 45 cents?

BLITZER: Forty-four.

NGUYEN: Forty-four cents.

BLITZER: Yes, always...

NGUYEN: It seems like it goes up every year.

BLITZER: Bought a little roll of 100.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: They're -- they're all self-adhesive now.

NGUYEN: Oh, that's lovely.

BLITZER: That's very good.

(LAUGHTER)

Somewhere, Walter Cronkite, already dead, killed himself.

2. From Ann Coulter's latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the wracking, phlegm-spewing death cough of a self-mutilating she-beast quickly fading into an acid bath of obscurity and irrelevance"), a look at the qualities of diversity in a nation, re: the shooting at Fort Hood and the upcoming terrorist trials in New York City:

"Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations." Yes, whoever forced all those Protestants and Catholics to live together on an island? Wherever did they come from? Oh, fuck, sure, one could waste about a week explaining the thousand things wrong with that paragraph. Or, to put it simply, Ann Coulter has never actually had the word "diversity" defined for her.

She continues, after a few more irrelevant examples, "'Diversity' is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: 'Cancer is a strength!' 'Pollution is our greatest asset!'" She is mocking the notion that "Diversity is a strength," or, to put it another way, "Kill the Muslims."

And then the whole fucking column explodes into a mushroom cloud of bugfuck insanity the likes of which haven't been seen since William Safire kept writing love poems to an invisible marmoset in his later New York Times columns: "Next time you're at a cocktail party, just start saying, 'Chocolate pudding is dramatic irony' from time to time. Eventually other people will start saying it, without anyone bothering to consider whether it makes sense." You get the point? It's a nonsense phrase, like "diversity is a strength."

You don't? No, of course not. Because what you are actually witnessing is the pathetic last heaves of outrage-mongering by Ann Coulter, who is stumbling around like a coke-snorting heiress who's shoved her inheritance up her nose and is begging to still be let past the velvet rope into the club she helped build. She'll be blowing Glenn Beck for appearances any day now.

Fact-Checking Sarah Palin Is a Waste of Everyone's Time, But Fuck It:
Sigh. This is getting repetitive, isn't it? Yeah, it's still fun, but, Christ, there's only so many times you can do it. But let's see if we can get it up for one more sore, exhausted fuck before we have to go back to doing real work.

Here's Sarah Palin on Rush Limbaugh's House of Donuts (Glazed and Ass) yesterday: "Let's go back to what Reagan did in the early eighties and stay committed to those commonsense free market principles that worked. He faced a tougher recession than what we're facing today. He cut those taxes, ramped up industry, and we pulled out of that recession. We need to revisit that."

Beyond the fact that this recession is worse than what Reagan faced in the early 1980s, he raised taxes multiple times. Fuck, when he was governor of California and facing the first deficit in that's state history, "Reagan ended up approving a $1-billion tax increase on a $6-billion annual budget, which was, proportionately, the biggest tax increase in state history."

And while Reagan did slash the fuck out of taxes on the wealthy, thus ensuring our path to economic doom, he also raised taxes multiple times. In 1982, he rolled back some of the tax cuts passed in 1981, which, in today's political rhetoric, would be "Holy fuck, Ronald Reagan is gutting your incomes like a shank-carrying white supremacist in a prison race riot." That would have been the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. Notice that. "Fiscal responsibility" meant for the right wing's great god Gipper that one might have to raise taxes. It was "the largest peacetime tax increase in American history," as Reagan and Bush the Smarter adviser Bruce Bartlett put it.

Reagan raised payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare in 1983. Says Bartlett in a 2003 article for the National Review, "This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year." Yeah, Reagan raised taxes just about every year he was president, with the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act (again, notice that title), and more in 1985, 1986, and 1987. Of course, most of these tax increases affected the middle class since the wealthy had had their taxes sliced to bits in 1981 while the trickle down from that act never happened.

By the way, he signed a gas tax hike in 1983. It was something Reagan wanted in order to, you know, pay for stupid shit like roads and bridges. For some reason, it seemed reasonably conservative then to say that people who use the fucking roads ought to pay for their upkeep, which would created tens of thousands of jobs. So he more than doubled the federal gas tax.

Of course, Reagan also dropped coin like a drunken sailor at a Shanghai whorehouse that takes credit cards, sending the deficit into the stratosphere with defense spending. So at least by raising taxes, he didn't completely wreck the economic train, but he sure as fuck built the track and pulled switch. It would take George W. Bush's Palin-esque understanding of economics to send us careening off the bridge.

Other crap dropped out of Palin's mouth in her talk with Limbaugh, who took each one of those mouthturds and saved them to mold and then kiln dry to create a perfectly-shaped shit dildo to fuck his ass with later. Said Palin about the GOP, "You know another key to this, too, is to not hesitate duking it out within the party. This is what I appreciate about the Republican Party. We have contested, aggressive, competitive primaries. We're not like this herd mentality like a bunch of sheep -- with the fighting instincts of sheep, as Horowitz would say -- like some in the Democrat Party."

Putting aside her quoting David Horowitz, did Palin even realize that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ran against each other for an endless, divisive battle while McCain pretty much just cruised to the inevitability of his nomination?

And on climate change, "I think there's a lot of snake oil science involved in that and somebody's making a whole lot of money off people's fears that the world is... It's kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate." Goddamn all those shady scientists making the megabucks off the solar panel industry while the poor oil executives just sit there, wondering when their pay off will come, wondering if anyone will listen to them.

Yesterday, in a bookstore here in a very red town in the middle of Tennessee, the Rude Pundit stood aghast by a table stacked with Palin's book. It reads like a passive-aggressive Rick Warren tome, where the message is that you can self-actualize through Jesus if all those fuckers holding you back get out of the way. Two or three people grabbed copies and headed towards the cash register. People are lined up for hours to meet her in Michigan today. In the end, the facts of the the book don't matter. All that matters is that idiot America has its queen.

Tomorrow: for fuck's sake, something else.

What's with the New Backlash Against Women? (Part 2: Palinophilia on the Right):
Here’s a bit from Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue: "I moved to go speak with him [a reporter from Anchorage], but a campaign handler grabbed my elbow and said, 'No, no, no ... this way.' A few minutes later on my way out of the building I saw the same reporter and photographer back behind a rope line.

"He yelled out 'Alaska!' But as I tried to holler back, different pairs of hands hustled me into the campaign's Suburban. It was not a respectful thing to do. I had turned my back on our own local press. Right then and there, I knew it wasn't going to be good."

Now imagine Hillary Clinton in that situation. Do you think for a second that she would have allowed herself to be forced away if she had wanted to answer a question? Feminism is about agency - that is, the ability to act on one's own. In that moment, as in so many others, Palin didn't assert her agency. Now she claims she finally is. It's a bullshit conversion to a depoliticized feminism, and she reflects, about as clearly as anyone, the kind of feminism-lite that passes for liberation. It's reaping the benefits of the feminist movement without giving a shit about the actual goals of the movement.

Palin likes to insinuate comparisons to Clinton regularly. She empathizes and treats Clinton like a victim of the evil Obama machine, which is pretty much the polar opposite of how Clinton would want to be perceived. It’s much the same way she sees herself as a victim of those gosh-darn mollusksuckers on the the McCain team, like Fatty McShouter, Steve Schmidt.

Of course, the absurd reality is that Hillary Clinton has worked her ass off endlessly for her country; agree or disagree with her or her goals, she has sure as fuck had a lot more on her mind than how funny it would be to make reporters walk in muck (as Palin delightfully recounts). Sarah Palin wouldn't know a policy debate if it tweaked her tits and called itself Jesus. She invokes Clinton in order to try to make some of Clinton's accomplished glow rub off on her through a confusing conflation. It's sort of like when people try to say that Michael Moore is the liberal Ann Coulter. It discredits Moore while legitimizing Coulter.

And her elevation to the status of someone any women should look up to and admire for anything is pure cynical anti-feminism. The very things that Palin is celebrated for by conservative bags of fuck are what feminists have been condemned for: being outspoken, combining work and family lives (although, you know, Palin decided she couldn't have it all), standing up to even the men who have supported her. But she is a sex traitor. She uses her femininity to support policies that enslave other women. And she derides the accomplishments that allowed her to become governor in the first fucking place.

She is worse than a joke. She is a disgrace. If she is the end result of the work of Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan and so many other women, who were attacked with the language of violence and rape by politicians and the mainstream media (not from some asshole bloggers) that makes Palin's little buffeting about gentle, then that work needs to kick back into high gear. And now she's out there as if she's standing up for women's rights to...speak, one supposes, as long as the lines are the in a general framework of what the right wants her to say.

There’s this fantasy that the right has that Palin shouldn’t be underestimated, like, they claim, Ronald Reagan was. What people like Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol (who, one should always be reminded, even on a daily basis, was Alan Keyes’s campaign manager) are doing is falling into an insider’s trap. The only people who didn’t think Reagan was a viable candidate were the inside-the-beltway circle jerkers who pooh-poohed the upstart outsider. It’s what they did with Bill Clinton, too. But the people in the rest of the nation had different ideas. Reagan and Clinton both had been elected and re-elected to governorships. And polls indicated that they were popular beyond the scribblings of David Broder. Not so with Palin. The vast majority of the nation thinks she's an incompetent twit.

Besides, she ain’t running for jackshit. Once she resigned as Alaska’s governor and told the state’s citizens who elected her to suck her clit, any political career was over. She knew it. She probably had an agent who told her that she was super-hot right now and if she slogged away for a couple of years more in Alaska, her brand would get stale. Strike while the iron’s hot, bitches. Make that money, ex-Governor; there's a lot of blood and sweat spent in this nation's history so you could. Not that you'll care as you stand on their bones.

It's a goddamned insult to women, to the American political system, to the media that we're still even talking about her.

Rudy Giuliani and Republicans Are Goddamned Cowards:
One of the things we often cringe to admit is that the worst stereotypes exist. The loca chica, the gangsta, the asshole Wall Street exec, they all are real. Gay male stereotypes, too. In New York City, you will find every kind of limp-wristed, mincing, lisping queer guy that would give Fred Phelps nightmares (or, more likely, dreams come true). Skinny jeans-wearing twinks, chorus boys who shriek for episodes of Glee, fashion diva queens, and more, all gay in that cartoon way gay haters portray gay men. And nearly every single one of those proudly cocksucking twinks, boys, and queens is more macho than Rudy Giuliani or just about any Republican.

Because you can put money on the fact that the Republicans are bigger pussies about the trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others in New York City than just about any of the good gay guys listed up there. What the fuck happened to the right? The party of Ike and Teddy Roosevelt? What a bunch of Marys they've become in the wake of Eric Holder's announcement that Mohammed would be tried in a federal court in Manhattan. Not only that, but if our justice system sucks so hard, then we should probably do something about that.

Snarled Giuliani on This Week with George Stephanopoulos's Hair regarding the previous successful prosecutions of terrorists in New York, which Giuliani had himself praised, "[W]e also demonstrated that our federal system has an enormously protracted process that's going to go on forever. That it grants more benefits than a military tribunal will grant. There's always the possibility of acquittal, change of venue. And the reality is, George, it also creates an extra risk that isn't necessary. It creates an extra risk for New York."

Mohammed ain't Magneto, nemesis of the X-men. He's not going to use his mutant Islamic powers to melt the chains and blow up the heads of the dozens of snipers around him, all while ululating some sinister shout that'll bring back the dead of the Crusades to liberate him. In other words, this ain't a movie. He's beaten man who'll be spouting crazy blather in hand and ankle cuffs while shitting his diaper who wouldn't even be coming to trial if his case wasn't a done deal, who will be sentenced to death. And if anything happens that could lead to acquittal, he will be taken right back into indefinite detention. In other words, we're not doing this for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He'd over. We're doing it for us.

And then there's the one big aspect that so many on the right are just flat-out fucking wrong about. Here's Giuliani, whose creepy-ass grimace and passive aggressive sneers are just played out, this time on Fox "news" after Chris Wallace asked him about bringing the Gitmo torture victims to New York City: "We generally don't bring people back to the scene of the crime for justice."

No, actually, that is what we do. It's what the Constitution says in the Sixth Amendment: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law..." Even if a change of venue is granted, it is usually in an area in reasonable proximity to the scene of the crime. Now, the Rude Pundit may not have a fancy law degree like America's (Most Craven Manwhore Desperate to Cash in on Being) Mayor, but that amendment seems pretty fucking clear.

Giuliani kept making the bizarre assertion that the trials and convictions for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, which, again, he once said demonstrated how strong America is, were wrong because we didn't predict 9/11 happening (although how another kind of trial would have prevented it is a connection he doesn't make). And he kept saying that Mohammed wants a trial in New York and "I didn't know we were in the business of granting favors to terrorists." Which is like saying that if he asked for water, you'd have to be a total asshole to give it to him. Finally, Giuliani fell back on military tribunals, which are being used for other Gitmo prisoners who attacked the USS Cole. The tribunal system could still be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But, if that happens, then Giuliani would have something else to gnash his painful-looking teeth at.

Still, no one out-wrongs or out-pussies Bill Kristol, and The Weekly Standard editor, who, one should always be reminded, was Alan Keyes's presidential campaign manager, didn't disappoint. Also on Fox, he repeated what is becoming a mantra of the right on Mohammed: "There are huge problems with this. These guys were not given their Miranda warnings...[W]here was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed arrested? In Pakistan in a pre-dawn raid. He wasn't read his rights."

Oh, calm down, Nancy. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan. The most stomach-churningly charitable reading of his torture and treatment for years at Gitmo is that he was like a detained suspect in a crime who is questioned before being formally arrested. That's the whole "enemy combatant" status thing. You can pretty much bet that he'll be Mirandized once he's officially under arrest, if he hasn't already. But, no, don't let that stop another talking point that sounds like it's from an episode of Law and Order: STFU.

We on the left have now become the defenders of law and order by simply saying the rules should be followed. We're the tough guys and they're the fruitcakes. The right has become the cowering wimps who want to toss the rulebook in the shitter when it doesn't suit their game. Put up or shut up, motherfuckers. You don't like what's in the Constitution? Then try to change it. Otherwise, it's goddamned obvious that we're doing what should have been done six or seven years ago.

The Rude Pundit Chants with Stephanie Miller Tomorrow:
There is nothing more physically and spiritually gratifying than spending a Monday morning in the Tantric embrace of the Rude Pundit and Stephanie Miller on her fine radio show. Get your chakras shaken at 9:30 ET/6:30 PT.

Conservatives Are Scared of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Liberals Are Not:
So it was that in a hangover haze, desperately thirsty, sore, and craving pancakes, the Rude Pundit opened his laptop this morning to see he had received a frantic email from Erick Erickson of the blog RedState. Knowing that he had never subscribed to any spam lists on that creepy fucker's site, the first thing the Rude Pundit did was curse whatever son or daughter of a bitch signed him up. And then he opened the message, which waved its little arms like a crazed Kermit the Frog by being subject-lined, "Stop Obama From Importing Terrorists Stateside" (man, the tariffs have gotta be heavy on that shit).

What did the screechy deacon have to say? "Today Barack Obama is going to announce that the terrorist mastermind of September 11th, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be sent to New York City for a criminal trial in a civilian court." Huh. Seemed eminently reasonable. If he is the 9/11 masterblastermind, then the city of the crime would be where he has to be tried, no?

If you're Erick Erickson (and if you are, the Rude Pundit says, "Dude, seriously?"), the answer is "Oh, fucking no fucking way, motherfucker." Or, as he wrote, "In that trial, the terrorist will get all the rights afforded an American citizen in a criminal trial, including the right to a fair trial, the right to a taxpayer funded attorney, the right to review all the evidence against him, potentially including classified intelligence matters, the right to exclude evidence against him including, potentially, any confession obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques, etc."

Now, the Rude Pundit's no lawyer like Erickson once was, but he's pretty damn sure that the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution says, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" and then talks about the rights that entails. That really doesn't distinguish between citizen and non-citizen and, indeed, there have been many decisions that allow for fair and speedy trial for immigrants both legal and illegal, as well as for non-Americans extradited to the United States for trial.

"At best, this will be a show trial fit not for the American Republic, but a third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime," continues Erickson in his missive. So, just to give you insight into a fairly well-regarded conservative mind: it's a stronger show of democracy to indefinitely detain a man without charge. To charge him and try him is an action fit for a tyrant. It's not unlike saying that if Erick Erickson had a choice to fuck a knothole in a wooden bench or his wife, he'd decide to fuck the knothole because, splinters and callouses be damned, it won't care if he loses his hard-on.

Since the announcement of Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement, the reaction over in the nutzoid ghetto of Right Blogsylvania has been predictable. Michelle Malkin madly barked, "If this White House thought Tea Party activists were an 'angry mob,' wait until they see the backlash from 9/11 family members and their supporters nationwide." She quotes a message from one of those family members: "[W]e will fight with every remaining breath in our bodies both their bringing KSM and the rest of the 9/11 conspirators to federal courtrooms within walking distance of where they slaughtered our loved ones." Does that mean a Brooklyn courtroom would be better? What proximity would satisfy them?

The microphones of right wing radio hosts are cringing at the thought of the spit soaking they're about to get. Rush Limbaugh has put on his skinny underwear to irritate his balls and ass crack so he gets extra cranky. Sean Hannity has taken an injection of wolverine semen right into his chin because he thinks it'll make him more savage. Michael Savage...well, fuck, he'll just do his usual thing and bite the heads off screaming bunnies on air. It keeps the rabbit population down in California.

Why does the notion of putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial drive them past the edge of insanity and "get the rhino tranq" frothing? Mohammed will more than likely get their beloved death penalty. Erickson seems to think Mohammed might pass classified information on to terrorists. But one of his readers inadvertently hits the nail on the head. In a comment, jdub19 writes, "I see this as another way to bash the Bush years. No OBL and after all the years in custody, KSM will be brought to justice. They have to keep reminding the public of GWB failures."

Ah, dear jdub, there is the problem. It's not that Barack Obama is going to put us in danger. It's that he's showing how justice is supposed to be done. Just doing that simple thing, abiding by the laws of the land, demonstrates the failures of the last administration. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll say it again: so much of the anger at Obama is a projection of right wing anger at George W. Bush. Obama has to fail at everything in the right wingers' sad world, just to show that they didn't devote eight years of their pathetic, deluded lives to abetting the destruction of the nation. They are shitting themselves in fear, not just in the intensely unlikely scenario of hot terrorist on terrorist action. They are afraid of what evidence at trial might reveal about how far down the rabbit hole to actual tyranny we fell.

We on the left are not afraid. We have the courage to confront the truth and not hide it away in a cell forever.

Just to reiterate another point: it's not weak to say that our laws are strong enough to take care of terrorists. In fact, believing in our justice system actually makes Barack Obama more patriotic than all waterboard-loving, conservative pricks and cunts who just want Mohammed disappeared. Nidal Hasan killed more people than just about anyone ever at Gitmo, yet no one's saying that he should be detained forever without charge or trial.

By the way, the Rude Pundit unsubscribed to Erickson's spam. And he's gonna need whiskey on those pancakes.

(Note: to those expecting part 2 of yesterday's part 1, the intention was to do it next week, after Sarah Palin's book comes out.)