Metaphor. Getting an idea into the heads of readers requires a reasonable command of metaphor.

Finding the right metaphors to describe the godawful mess the Bushite Regime and its hangers-on and willfully stupid followers might possibly understand is difficult, sure enough, but the Incomparable Driftglass strikes a magnificent one in yet another brilliant post:

You and I, we live in a house built by giants.

Flawed giants to be sure – we’re all sinners here – but the men and women who made this place for us stood a full head taller than their times and looked to make us as fine a future as their magnificent, damaged vision could perceive.

The planks of the floor tongue-and-grooved together by Jefferson’s prose. The bricks laid straight and true by Washington. The kitchen kept tight and warm by Franklin. The Southern Wing fumigated by Sherman and made beautiful by Ms. Rosa Parks.

...

We all work in the dark and we all do what we can. That’s the social compact. That’s the deal, and from generation to generation our house gets little additions. New furnishings from Imperial to Populist to Early "Whip Inflation Now."

Sometimes we paint the place Red, and sometimes Blue, and sometimes what those colors mean changes completely, but the compact requires -- absolutely requires -- that we respect the house itself.

And it is in this signal betrayal that the Modern Republican Party is singularly infamous.

The Confederacy tried to tear down this house; and they failed. Their spiritual grandchildren, the Modern GOP, is returning to the family's work only now they use stealthed bulldozers rather than sledgehammers.

Go read the DriftMeister's magnificent prose.

He says what I feel far better than I can say it.

Occasionally I delude myself that I can write. Then I read Driftglass' stuff and... well, anyway, today he posts about the Bushite Regime's tendency to see the world in only two tenses:

First, there is the alky’s Best Friend: the eternally Bright Future about which they talk endlessly. The Bright Future is a wonderful, scrum-dee-lee-icious realm full of Iraqi Corners that are juuuust about to be turned, booming prosperity, magically evaporating deficits and rising Republican popularity.

...

Then there is and the Dim and Distant Past,... that scary place full Dubya’s draft dodgery, drunkenness, lies, broken promises, blood-soaked treason, treachery, betrayal of the nation’s trust, breathtaking ineptitude, fatal arrogance, casual thuggery,

And that’s just in the last two weeks!

Go read it. Its well worth the effort.

There are leaders like King Aragorn, and then there's... Bushie. Viggo Mortensen explains that he's not "anti-Bush":

I'm not anti-Bush; I'm anti-Bush behavior. In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his Administration.

To quote the Instacracker- Heh.

Pre-loaded response to any wingnut blather about comparing their Mighty Preznit to a fictional character: Fuck off.

Hmmmm... perhaps if we abort all white babies, we can eliminate grisly, pointless murders...

Somebody's obviously just got way to damn much money.

Norm Ornstein had a perfectly rational thought, that America must consider the worst case scenario:

...the problems of scandal and polarization result in a meltdown of the W. Administration and a collapse of governance in Washington. No Doubt some hard core partisans and ideologues would exult. But with the domestic and foreign policy challenges the country faces, it would be a disaster for all of us.[emphasis added]

Like the Bushite Regime hasn't already been a disaster? Well, perhaps not for all of us; the 'awl bidness' is doing pretty well on three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. But for pretty much all the rest of us-- especially those poor brave bastards in the Infantry!-- that dumb son-of-a-bitch has been a walking, talking caricature of a disaster. (Yeah, go google up "miserable failure.")

No, I need to know what drugs that other Norm was doing when his solution came to mind.

1. Vice President Cheney resigns-- and President Bush replaces him not with Condoleeza Rice, as the rumors in Washington speculate, but with his father, George H.W. Bush.

2. President Bush resigns, allowing his father to move up to the presidency.

3. Bush 41/44 chooses his best buddy and surrogate son Bill Clinton (42, that is) to be Vice President. Talk about a fusion White House. Talk about bringing us together. Talk about compassionate triangulation.

Nevermind the fact that the wingnut base would go absolutely batshit fucking crazy. KKKlintoon as VP? Puh-lease.

I just think there's absolutely NFW that blockheaded son-of-a-bitch is going to walk out of the Oval Office without a fight, not that the GOP dominated legislature would consider giving him one. And if he's gonna go down, the dumb bastard will happily take the rest of the country with him.

Georgie's concern for the fate of the Republic could be measured in nano-givashits.

God help us.

Now, as usual, it's a British newspaper-- a decidedly conservative British newspaper exposing the behaviour of the Bushite Regime:

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

So, its not that Dubya is the vile treasonous dog that he seems, its that he's just a fucking idiot. But then, that is consistent with our observation of the man, isn't it?

Painful it must be for Republicans, though, to see just how far from the tree this particular rotten apple fell. The old man, George Herbert Walker Bush-- combat veteran of World War II, architect of Gulf War I and its successful conclusion-- was a titan on the world stage compared to his son, the ninny.

“There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.”

No shit.

Via Shakespeare's Sister, the reason I'm giving up and becoming a Republican.

Steve Gilliard at The News Blog cudgels Bill Kristol:

Kristol is being purposely dense here. Classified information, sure. Plame's name and role was not classified. It was Top Secret-SCI, restricted to the Directorate of Operations and its most senior officials. Her work at the CIA was a state secret. Revealing it was a crime. It wasn't just politics as usual. But it wasn't her name alone, but revealing her work as an employ of Brewster-Jennings which caused the real problem. When a judge is asked to review Fitzgerald's requests, he's never been turned down. Most of his public papers are redacted. People probably died as a result of that revelation. You can bet Fitzgerald has that information on tap. It was a major intelligence defeat and a self-inflicted one at that.[emphasis added]

He's never been turned down. He put Judy Miller in the slammer. And for all the wingnut blather that Valerie Plame was not really "undercover" (like the CIA doesn't know who their own fucking spooks are), people died for this "leak."

UPDATE: Some days I don't know my Kristol from my Kristhof.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -Napoleon Bonaparte

Right now I think Harry Reid may be channeling a certain short but successful French general. We're not hearing a lot from the Democrats right now despite how desperately we-- okay, I want to twist the knife.

Indictments.

The return of the roosting chickens. The roasting of the chickenhawks.

Patience, my dears, patience... this is going to be an interesting autumn.

I have this co-worker. He's a pretty good guy; but definitely a conservative Christian. We've been on a couple of business trips together, and once the subject of black voters and the Republican party came up. I pointed out to him guys like David Duke and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and Trent Lott and... told him that even though black Americans were largely conservative and Christian in their personal lives and in their outlook, the Republicans would have to go pretty far to bring them in.

The other day I saw him in the hall, walked up and said, "If the question of why black people don't vote GOP ever pops into your head, I've got two words for you to remember: Bill Bennett.

He seemed rather surprised that I should take offense.

And the poor bastard doesn't think he's a bigot at all. He doesn't meanto be a bigot. He doesn't want to be a bigot.

But he's surprised that a black man would take offense at the idea that aborting black babies would reduce crime.

I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

I really need for somebody, anybody, to tell me how this is not racial bigotry.

I really need that.

The issue is not the suggestion of aborting all black babies. It is that his modest proposal makes a "known" connection between blacks and criminality. Period.

Bill Bennet demonstrates the casual bigotry that knows black people are prone to criminal behavior. It is the backbone of "law and order" conservatism, and always has been; the sure knowledge that given the opportunity, Negroes will prey on innocent people. Innocent white people.

So, Bennett's words have become, for me, a sort of litmus test. I wish I could just walk up to them all and ask one question: "Do you agree with Bill Bennett?"

The answers would no doubt be quite illuminating.

Okay, so I've been busy. I've also been sick. But mostly busy.

But I think I'll be around for a bit, so-- more later.