The Circus

Obviously, with the Republicans taking control of the House we can expect plenty of shenanigans aimed at lining the vaults of the already well-monocled whilst also convincing ordinary Americans that attempts to stop their insurance carriers from dropping them at a moment of dire need or to prevent their mortgage holders from breaking into their houses and stealing their stuff are sure signs of the Republic’s impending doom.  Still—broken-hearted Son of Liberty that I am—even I did not foresee Pete King’s argument that babies tossed into garbage cans were evidence that the ACA should be exempted from the Commerce Clause.

I suppose we’ll be learning lots of new things in the days and weeks ahead, and for a while it’ll be LOLz.  But then I have a feeling that the fun will wear off, and soon and badly too.  The nice thing about the circus is that you can leave when you want.

—Jason

Friday’s Bounce-Back Random Ten

Nothing really happens here.

10.  Every Mother’s Son – Traffic

9.  I’ll Take Romance – June Christy

8.  While You Were Asleep – Ok Go

7.  The Talisman – Iron Maiden

6.  Extrasupervery – Frightened Rabbit

5.  Dancing Shoes – Arctic Monkey

4.  Come in Alone – My Bloody Valentine

3.  These Wooden Ideas – Idlewild

2.  S.A.D Light – Glasvegas

1.  Bulletproof – Major Lazer and La Roux

Bonus:

—Jason

President Bachmann?

It really is a deluded cavalcade of nut jobs thinking about running for POTUS on the Republican side in 2012.

-Ian

Filibuster This!

Looks like Reid might be serious about reform. This will be an interesting few days to watch.

Reid:

Here’s the bottom line: We may not agree yet on how to fix the problem – but no one can credibly claim problems don’t exist. No one who has watched this body operate since the current minority took office can say it functions just fine. That wouldn’t be true, it would be dishonest. No one can deny that the filibuster has been used for purely political reasons — reasons far beyond those for which this protection was invented and intended.

-Ian

The Revolution Will be Televised

I didn’t think it was possible for him to get any crazier, but then…

What’s amazing to me is that we’ve already had a couple of incidents of Beck-inspired near bloodshed.  And then Glenn goes on teevee or the radio and makes some quiet noises about how he [cough cough cough] abhors violence, and that’s good enough for the powers that be at Fox and he’s back at it again the next day.

—Jason

Friday’s Lazy Week Random Ten

I’m too tired to drive anywhere anyway right now.

10.  When I Was a Young Girl – Feist

9.  Singapore – Tom Waits

8.  Halfway to Crazy – The Jesus & Mary Chain

7.  Drive – The Cars

6.  Tunic (Song for Karen) – Sonic Youth

5.  Lose Yourself – Eminem

4.  Shadow People – Dr. Dog

3.  Free – Cat Power

2.  Great Expectations – Gaslight Anthem

1.  Witch Hunt – Wayne Shorter

Bonus:

—Jason

Friday’s Totally Frozen Random Ten

I’m on a good mixture.  I don’t want to waste it.

10.  She Loves Me – Muddy Waters

9.  Everyday – The Field

8.  Too Long – Daft Punk

7.  Oh, Goddamnit – Hot Hot Heat

6.  Dance or Die – Janelle Monae

5.  Sonny Feeling – Wilco

4.  Hair Down – Cold War Kids

3.  Don’t Haunt This Place – Rural Alberta Advantage

2.  Something’s Wrong – The Jesus & Mary Chain

1.  October Fires – Wolf People

Bonus:

—Jason

Pissed Christ

Jesusy Republican pols sure do like the idea of killing people.

—Jason

Evil Fed Watch

Here and here.

There was a moment there, early on, when it looked as though sanity might prevail, if even in only in some small way.  But…no.  Our Rulers have decided that the only way to restore our economy is to drop mountains of money on the criminals who created the crisis in the first place, while issuing stern lectures from the Wall Street Journal opinion page and the cables about the Very Serious necessity of the little people sucking it.

—Jason

Morning Music Break

You may now to dance.

—Jason

He’s-a-Liberal Watch

Joe Scarborough is about to become a liberal.  You heard it hear first.  (Okay, not really.)

Palin’s usefulness lies not so much in her political utility (she’s pretty bog standard, when it comes to that) but rather in an almost devout conviction among conservatives that she Pisses Off Liberals [tm].  They’ve even invented an amusing (if grim) little myth that liberals hate her because she refused to abort one of her pregnancies.  How this makes any sense at all—how exactly it’s supposed to enrage pro-choicers—is never quite detailed, but details aren’t really what matters.  In a way, I admire Palin.  Far from hating her, I find her an almost quintessentially American creation:  A relentlessly, catastrophically self-assured grifter who uses her purported love of country like a cudgel, and who when she’s not nattering on about “liberty” and “freedom of speech” is quacking insults and volleying outrageous slanders at those who disagree with her.  Her tweets about ordinary Americanness emanate from her enormous mansion and the thumbs of a paid employee, and the rubes are so besotted by it all that even though they never take their eyes off the hustle they never quite manage to see it.  What’s more American than that?

—Jason

Learning Deficit

Nobody cares about the deficit, of course, and when they do pretend to care they do it so badly as to defy belief.  But what won’t stop our Media Overlords from taking the “deficit hawks” seriously or relentlessly pushing the Very Serious Truth that the only way to bring our economy back to sanity is to cause the greatest number of little people possible to suck it.

—Jason

A Personal Army of Union Thugs

There’s just no tense situation that this psychopathic clown can’t make more dangerous.

—Jason

30

Salon presents the thirty worst political pundits in America.  Couldn’t we just stop with Mickey?:

“Obama by double digits” in N.C.: Predicted by a blogger using a sophisticated model that ignores … what’s been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. Wright. I predict this person is wrong! … Update: He was right. … [via Insta] 9:27 P.M.

Update: Just adding that I really don’t think Jeff Goldberg belongs on this list.  He’s too utterly awful a human being to be relegated to a mere list of bad pundits.

—Jason

Fetus: The Housekeeper Did It

Conservatives are often very, very strange people.

—Jason

Grievance: The Timeless Dance

Please make it stop.

“She’s enduring a lot.”

—Jason

Psychopaths Rule Our Discourse

The Ol’Perfesser:

JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: North Korea fires artillery barrage on South. If they start anything, I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs. They’ve caused enough trouble — and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too. We can’t afford another Korean war, but hey, we’re already dismantling warheads. . . .

What kind of human do you have to be to so causally call for this kind of violence?  Obviously, such a thing would pretty much signal a horrendous and utterly catastrophic turn in the course of human history.  The bloodshed and suffering would be positively incalculable and the United States would be forever remembered as a global mass-murderer. And all that means so little to this insane asshole that he even manages a stab at New START.

The only question is when does Newt hop on board?

—Jason

Um…Never Mind

And this, my dear friends, is why we’re so totally fucked as a civilization.

I don’t know what happened to make everyone so goddamned crazy and mean and apparently completely unable to recognize their own bullshit, but we need to get over it and get over it fast.

—Jason

Rightwing Crazies Watch

Chait has the lowdown on O’Keefe’s latest stunt, and, yea, it’s every bit as awful and nauseating as we’ve come to expect from one of Earth’s Worst Humans.  My question is why do pols and news organizations feel safe attaching themselves to this clown’s antics?  I mean, here’s the governor of New Jersey citing O’Keefe’s “work” as evidence of the perfidy of teachers unions.  And despite everything that O’Keefe has pulled in the past—and despite the fact that one of his last stunts nearly landed him in a world of actual criminal legal trouble—the tape is still widely disseminated and the teacher in question is suspended without pay.  That’s depressing.  What’s more depressing is that this dynamic—rightwing sociopaths pitch an insane fit, normal humans buckle—has become almost routine in our political culture.

—Jason

Morning Music That Thing We Do

—Jason

Deficit Hoax

Surprise, surprise.

Look, this isn’t that hard.  People care about jobs and their mortgages and the extent to which they feel they’re covered in the event of a health emergency and etc.  Which makes sense!  The idea that immediate self-interest somehow takes a back seat to the problem of the federal debt is and has always been completely fucking insane, and obviously the fetish of people who don’t have to worry about, you know, how they’re going to afford the room ever their head from month to month.

—Jason

The One

I don’t really think there’s much wrong with idolizing public figures—heroes are important, after all—but it’s still pretty funny coming from the gang that’s been screeching about Obama worship for a couple of years now.

Village Idiocy

What Digby Said [tm].

I predict that the answer will be more tax cuts at the marginal rate.

—Jason

Long-Term

No, the long-term deficit won’t be easy to fix.  Yes, we are doomed.

I have to admit that even an old cynic like me is pretty surprised by the dishonesty of the most recent election cycle.  For months and months (and months!) we were treated to one long SKREE! from Tea Party types and their gleeful GOP establishment beneficiaries about the problem of the deficit.  The.  Greatest.  Threat.  To.  American.  Survival.  And now, moments after the ballots have been counted, the first order of business is the extension of a tax policy that rips the idea of deficit reduction in half, pisses on its corpse, and burns the evidence to ash.  And…crickets.  From the Tea Idiots, from the political press (is there a more worthless professional class in modern life?), and even largely from Democrats.

I actually don’t think the deficit should be our first or second or third order of business—and I’m amused that actual deficit-reduction policies (like HCR) are widely reviled and attacked by the lunkheaded fiscal responsibility mob—but it doesn’t seem like very much to ask that those who do think it should be the first, second, and third order of business at least keep their stories straight until John Boehner’s tears have dried.

—Jason

Friday’s Random Ten

I have weird memories of you.

10.  Thieves in the Night – Black Star

9.  Too Close for Comfort – Peggy Lee

8.  In a Future Age – Wilco

7.  Moving Pictures Silent Films – Great Lake Swimmers

6.  Tightly – Neko Case

5.  July Jones – The New Pornographers

4.  Roseability – Idlewild

3.  Blind Love – Tom Waits

2.  Kansas City – Albert King

1.  Mother Nature’s Son – The Beatles

Bonus:

—Jason