To continue the Theme of th’Evening, here is the inestimable Doghouse Riley, on Politico‘s attempt to gin up the Rove/Perry “feud“:
This is the fucking United States of America, which used to mean something; if Rick Perry and Karl Rove are significant players in our national politics it no longer means anything better than Hold Your Nose. Rove’s artificial genius is founded on the fact that his man–the poster boy for unearned privilege, alcohol-induced Korsakoff’s syndrome, and the worst President this country has even been inflicted with, bar none–“won” an election decided by the Supreme Court in a fucking decision it tried to disavow at the same time it announced it. If America really was exceptional, in a good way, that never would have happened. If America had the fucking sense God gave most mammals Karl Rove would be hiding out in another hemisphere. Meanwhile, Rick Perry is almost literally a Bag of Hair. A feud between these two is not news, because neither of them is anyone worth giving a shit about. And we’re not going to solve anything until the public discourse is reported on by people who are honestly dedicated to the truth, who think it matters, not overgrown versions of the kid on the playground who’d eat a worms for a quarter…
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You don’t think there’s something deeply, deeply disturbing about a country where those two holes in the atmosphere play a meaningful role in politics? I don’t know how anybody believes that Rick Perry is a game-changer, a bull in the bullpen, a formidable candidate assuming-the-race-will-be-decided-on-Phony-ass Telegenics, a sort of bargain-basement version of The Candidate, other than the fact that it worked for Sarah Palin four years ago, when “Hey, she’s hawt” was the only Right/Redneck reaction (that is, public reaction) that initial weekend, while everyone in the country with an IQ above hypothermia went “Wha’ th’ fuck is this idiot the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee?”
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Okay, so there is reason to take Rick Perry seriously as a candidate, because, c’mon, lookit who’s actually been President the last few decades. It doesn’t mean you can’t register a little shock.
Much more true Stoical (i.e., Cynical-in-its-original-sense) entertainment at the link.
Villago Delenda Est
Unfortunately, “Looking good on TV” seems to be one of the more telling characteristics of Presidential candidates nowadays.
It obviously applies to the talking heads of the “news” programs, no matter how airheaded they actually are.
Yutsano
Rove is no longer the power player he was under Dubya, and I think he knows that. He’s content to just suck up the CU cash into his PAC and live high off the hog on wingnut welfare. So he may not necessarily WORK for Goodhair if Perry gets in, but he won’t exactly oppose him either. Grifers gotta grift after all.
TenguPhule
Forget rooting for injuries, this is a murder suicide we’re literally begging to happen.
Comrade Kevin
Rooting for a car carrying Rove to have a head-on collision at high speed with one carrying Perry would be bad, so I will not do it.
FlipYrWhig
I can’t be the only one who thinks that Rick Perry looks, talks, and moves like a lousy actor trying a bit too hard to get a callback for the role of Dubya Bush.
LoudounLib
@FlipYrWhig: You’re not alone. He chews the scenery right good.
Mnemosyne
Here’s the thing that people keep forgetting about Dubya, for some reason: despite his “aw shucks” outsider poses, he was as inside the beltway as it was possible for a politician to be. He was the fucking son of the president, for fuck’s sake. He helped run his father’s campaign in 1996. He was a Villager who occasionally lived in another state.
Rick Perry? Not the son of a president. Not the grandson of a senator. The similarities are strictly superficial and none of the similarities are the ones that got the Village to rally around Dubya during the recount battle in 2000.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe you mean 1988.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Or perhaps 1992, which, after all, Dad lost.
Given that, it’s very plausible that Dubya’s fingerprints are on that debacle.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
@Villago Delenda Est:
VDE’s correct — I meant 1992. It was the re-election campaign for Bush I, not the original campaign.
Spaghetti Lee
I’d think that someone who gets the appellation “Governor Goodhair” should actually, you know, have good hair. His ‘do looks like a Just For Men spokesmodel got into a knife fight with failure, and lost.
Steeplejack
Sliding into full night-owl syndrome, after an epic nap in the early evening. Catching up on the threads and listening to songs on YouTube. Have been spiraling down toward Van Morrison’s Moondance and related (in my mind) songs. Mad that I can’t find the original version of “Redwood Tree” (from St. Dominic’s Preview, which is inexplicably out of print). Good “demo” version from Morrison here, and I have become dangerously fascinated by this Japanese version, whose arrangement is much closer to Morrison’s version on the original album.
A “related” song, also previously hard to find on YouTube: Jesse Colin Young, “Ridgetop.”
James E. Powell
@Villago Delenda Est:
My recollection is that the lesson Little Bush learned from his father’s loss in 1992 was that a Republican can never allow the right-wing religious base voters to put away their pitchforks and torches.
Santiago
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Oh sure. Show up right as I’m about to contemplate passing out. I see how you are. :)
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
The night shift is going through a bit of a diminuendo lately. Wifey never shows up hardly at all, and I have been working way too many day shifts. (My boss is on vacation for three weeks, so I have been summoned from the dark side to take over.)
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Wifey has been having a problem with the tone on the blog lately. She and I have been discussing it, and if things improve (like last night was too much of a hoot for her to not join in) she might ease back in. Me myself I’m too much of a stubborn old bitch to quit easily, but I’ve been having to wake up early way too damn often lately to really get too much late shift work in. And FH#1 is playing International Man of Mystery on us. Bnut is kinda in the same boat as wifey. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few peeps here.
Xenos
It is August. I usually at least lurk and read through the wreckage by 4:00 am EST (which is 10:00 am for me), but there is just too much craziness to take it all on lately.
The flame wars between the same four or five guys just get really old.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Isn’t FH#1 going through a work/life crisis: less lawyerin’, more, uh, something else?
As for myself, I have been sustaining myself with music, maudlin and otherwise. A dismal summer. A longtime friend (and former love of my life) appears to have leukemia, and I am waiting on some skin-cancer biopsies myself. Probably just basal cell carcinoma–the very best kind of skin cancer to get, believe me!–but there’s always a little suspense until you make sure you don’t hear the M-word. Supposed to get the lab results this coming week.
Continuing with my maudlin music research tonight: Ace, “How Long Has This Been Going On?” Love the poster’s comment explaining the picture of Ace Frehley of Kiss. “I know that Ace isn’t Ace Frehley, but I used to think they were the same thing in elementary school. So the pic stays.”
Steeplejack
@Xenos:
True dat.
ETA: But, still, it seems like it’s less than at other blogs.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack:
He got a new gig. But he won’t spill any details about it. So we’ve been wildly speculating about what exactly he’s up to. I’m pretty sure he didn’t follow the life-long ambition of becoming a pastry chef. I think. It’s very very interestink.
PS Jake Gyllenhaal shaved his head for a movie. I don’t think he should grow it back. It kinda suits him.
And Caz is shitting all over dead threads. Cute and pathetic at the same time.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Hmm. Sounds like you need to get down there on your vacation time and report from “on the ground.”
God help me, I have gone down the Floyd hole all the way to Seals and Croft, “Diamond Girl.” I didn’t count on getting sucked into the black hole when I foolishly started dabbling with maudlin (but catchy!) ’70s music.
Must deploy some Allman Brothers or Little Feat in hopes of saving myself.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Baby steps: Firefall, “Cinderella.” A little venom beneath the country-pop veneer.
Next in the queue: “It Doesn’t Matter.” Good treatment of a Stephen Stills song.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: You need some tequila good sir.
(Yes I’ve linked it before. But dude, Grace Potter. Don’t even try to tell me you wouldn’t want to be drunk in that house with her.)
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Thanks. I do like me some Grace Potter.
ETA: Kenny Chesney’s voice always reminds me of Danny O’Keefe. (Tying it all together this evening.)
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I kinda hear that. O’Keefe has a few more bass undertones than Kenny, but Kenny’s also a natural tenor. That’s not unusual.
I think I’ve hit the wall. Gonna be mid 70’s here tomorrow. I less than three Seattle.
kdaug
@Santiago: I’ll largely second most of what he said in the op-ed you linked to.
Big yep on his not naming names, those with agency, as if this had been a natural disaster.
Up in the air whether that’s waiting for a second term or not. Could cost him a second in the end.
Missing final chapter in “Dreams of My Father”, though? Meh.
Pragmatists ain’t iconoclasts. Assignment to him of others’ desires is bound to disappoint.
Besides, sounds like once the final chapter is written, it is set in stone. Life is fluid, and if we’re lucky, we keep learning.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Bastard. Going into the 90s here again tomorrow. Although only the low 90s, which feels good after the living hell that was July. Hottest July on record here in Washington.
I’m out. Must return to my crypt before dawn.
Todd
If it isn’t crappy journalists, it’s crappy pundits: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2330#comic
JPL
@Todd: lol
Keith G
Perry will fade as he is a minor con man. A presidential campaign is as much about internal mechanics as it is about the Q factor of the candidate. That’s why my money is on Romney, as I think he has learned a lot about this silly process. He will still make mistakes, all candidates do, but the nomination is his to lose. Obama will have to fight like hell and be very lucky to be reelected.
By then, Perry will be earning money as the prime star of the real wingnut universe (not that he is one, but that is where his $$$ is to be made).
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
korsakoff’s syndrome, that was amusing.
rick perry gets in, if the other major players falter. being the candidate-in-waiting is a better gig. plus texas is really screwed up, if facts and reality should ever come back in fashion.
Mark B
@Keith G: Perry’s major asset is that he’s a blank slate. He’s always been willing to say whatever he thinks would be advantageous to get elected, and he’s also collected such a consistent record of non-achievement that it’s hard to criticize anything he’s ever done. He’s been chasing the evangelical vote for the last 5 years or so, but he started his career as a moderate Democrat, or what passes for one in Texas.
bkny
who’d eat worms for a quarter
that’s the funniest line i’ve read in a while … and so apt. i wish one of these chattermonkeys would remind the faithful that rick perry called for prayer for rain a few short weeks ago … how’d that work out.
i guess perry isn’t as influential as he proclaims. just another loud-mouthed texan who needs to stfu and go away.
gnomedad
If we’re going to have a theocracy, I want the Big Guy Himself to run, not one of these clowns promising to make Him chief of staff or something.
Samara Morgan
meh. the negative correlation of religiosity and IQ is well documented.
coupled with Right Wing Authority tendency, fact blocking and backfire effect enforces selection for low information (read low IQ) individuals in the GOP base.
gnomedad
When they pray for jobs, they think God’s answer is to elect Republicans, but when they pray for rain, they don’t think God wants us to control greenhouse gases.
BalJu Commenter #2401
Ha ha ha ha ha
There are six major symptoms of Korsakoff’s syndrome:
anterograde amnesia
retrograde amnesia, severe memory loss
confabulation, that is, invented memories which are then taken as true due to gaps in memory sometimes associated with blackouts
meager content in conversation
lack of insight
apathy – the patients lose interest in things quickly and generally appear indifferent to change.
Wish I had heard that one 12 years ago.
harlana
I’ve been agreeing, much to my surprise, with Tweety about almost everything lately, but then he’ll wander off the reservation and get all tingly about Perry, he wants republicans to get all excited about bag o’ hair and even they are all like, uh meh, sure Chris; followed by barely-concealed looks of desperation.
drkrick
I know we’ve already established that this was a typo, but I can still easily imagine the dumb SOB trying to run a campaign in ’96 and wondering why nobody was showing up for the rallies.
Montysano
@Villago Delenda Est:
Kurt Vonnegut had this figured out in his first novel “Player Piano” in the early 50s. I’ve read it probably 5 times over the years, and it gets more terrifying every time. But funny as hell, of course.
WaterGirl
@Comrade Kevin: You don’t happen to be the Kevin that used to hang out at the Obama blog before the election, do you?
MikeBoyScout
Any real Texans with a grudge would draw pistols on Main Street at noon.
elftx
Anyone else read the line in that link re: Schiavo and think of John ???
No offense intended, but it was kinda funny.
. . . and your little dog too
Teevee pundits seem to think Rick Perry would be a threat because he was re-elected Governor of Texas last year over the popular (in Texas) Kaye Bailey Hutchison, and then over the entirely credible Democratic candidate Bill White.
Folks, the only reason he won is that Perry refused to debate Bill White.
Perry has a way of pausing before he gives an answer, looking dully into the middle distance, and then uttering something approximating “Do whut?”
There’s no way he could be a national candidate and not have to debate. And when he does he’ll be a laughingstock.