The King's plot

Of course you know that Christine O'Donnell isn't guilty of misappropriating campaign funds, since she is you, after all, and I'll bet you have a darn good alibi.   But whence the charges? There's no remotely logical grounds for the accusations, so it's got to be a conspiracy. It's a witch hunt, and the hunters are members of the all-powerful Delaware Republican Party, who don't want a Tea partier crashing their exclusive club... No wait! It's the members of the all-powerful Delaware Democratic Party, who know they could never defeat Christine a second time.   "You don’t need a tipster to show that this was politically motivated. We were informed..." "Wait, wait," I said, interrupting Christine, solely for the purpose of point clarification. "You said that you don't need a tipster, but then you say you were informed. Which is it?"   "I was told by someone I know with a lot of inside connections," Christine explained. "It was a friend, not a tipster. They said that the Delaware political establishment was going to use every resource available to them, including launching phony investigations, tying me up with lawsuits to make sure I can’t move forward politically. I even expect more things to come. That’s their tactic." I had a strong urge to ask Christine if she knew the difference between tactics and strategies, but believing the line of questioning to be futile, I kept my silence. But who unleashed these monsters and empowered them to launch their cretinous crafty Christine crushing crusade? "Given that the King of the Delaware Political Establishment..." Christine began to explain, before I once again rudely interrupted to ask who this King of the Delaware Political Establishment was. Because I had no idea. I wasn't even aware that Delaware was still a monarchy.   Christine was visibly perturbed. "Gawd! I was trying to tell you. It just so happens to be the Vice President of the most liberal Presidential administration in U.S. history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table."   No it would not. Just think about it... Of course. It all makes sense. It's the man she almost defeated by a margin of 35% to 65% back in 2008 in her last failed senate campaign - the nefarious Joe Biden. The King of the Delaware Political Establishment, they call him. He's the only man who could possibly be able stop her ascendancy to the presidency in 2016.   "Bingo!" confirmed Christine, nodding her head enthusiastically. "I figure people are getting dumber every day. I only got 4% of the vote in 2006, but in 2008 I was up to 35%, and this year 40%. I figure by 2016, the sky's the limit, as long as the King is exposed."

Hey, you know who reminds me of a Nazi?

Rich Iott (third from left) reenacts the Battle of  Löwenbräu   At long last, an American political candidate has emerged for whom it makes perfectly good sense to refer to in a sentence containing the word Nazi - Rich Iott, Tea Party backed Republican candidate for Ohio's 9th district. The Atlantic this weekend broke the story of Iott's proclivity for dressing up in a German Waffen SS uniform and wiling away the hours as part of a group reenacting the merry exploits of the Nazi's 5th SS Panzer Wiking Division. A patriot through and through, Iott said that he chose the Wiking division because they fought primarily on the Eastern Front against our evil allies, the Bolshevist Russians. Presumably this means that when Iott was playing war, he did not have to reenact the slaughter of any American troops.    In what is perhaps the single worst defense of bad judgment in recent years, Iott claims that he joined the Nazi cross-dressers - I'm not making this up - "as a father-son bonding thing".   Pictures of Iott (who's middle name is not Id) have been removed from the Wiking website, but don't get the idea that this is just because he's running for Congress. Heil no. It's because he quit the group a couple of years after his son, apparently having reached the age of reason, lost interest in playing dress up with Dad. Apparently that father-son bonding thing isn't all that it's cracked up to be.   On 'FOX News Sunday', House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, representing the entire Jewish contingent of the congressional Republicans, became the first member of the GOP to distance himself from Iott. After being cornered by intimidating Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to repudiate Iott, the normally defiant Cantor bravely said "I'm doing it right here, Debbie". Given the state of the Republican Tea Party, it's a repudiation he'll soon be likely to regret.

Beck rally bores thousands

The warning signs were first apparent Friday night after Glenn Beck make a surprise appearance at a FreedomWorks  convention. "When I first started planning this event, it was supposed to be political," Beck told the stunned TEA party group. "And then I kind of feel like God dropped a giant sandbag on my head." "I wish God would drop a giant sandbag on his head," said Joseph Barker. "When he told us last night that he had decided his rally was too important to be used for simple political goals, I felt like I'd been sucker punched. We'd already heard from Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, then Beck comes in and takes all the air out of the room. Nice work, dude." And so it was that in front of the Lincoln memorial, on a beautiful Washington day which was quite temperate for August, Glenn Beck did the one thing that nobody expected - he slowly and methodically bored the shit out of everybody. "George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Moses, and Martin Luther King - what's that got to do with taking back our country?" asked TEA party member Harriet Thatcher. "I'm a proud American and a devout Christian, and let me tell you, this was like being in church. For half the day. And I hate church, but at least today I got to wear shorts. Know what else I hate now? Beck. Who does he think he is, coming out here to lecture us and act like we need to be educated by him? I think we've been calling the wrong person 'the Messiah'." "He was out there talking about Martin Luther King, not Barack Obama," said attendee Joe Fulton. "For this I drove all the way from Memphis? I could have been at the big auto show down at the Cook Convention Center today. Tickets were only seven bucks, and I'm gonna end up spending more that ten times that much just on gas for this trip. And for what? Beck didn't rouse a bit of rabble, and that's flat out bait and switch. Sarah Palin didn't even wink at me. If I can ever make it back to my car, I'm heading straight down to Richmond and getting drunk as a skunk. At least that way this trip won't be a total loss." "Half the people he had on stage were black, and so was nearly all of the entertainment," said sunburned Tommy Addison. "This was supposed to be the TEA party Woodstock, and there were no rock bands at all. Gospel music? I just don't think that's appropriate at a rally where we were supposed to be taking back the civil rights movement. Oh, and lets not forget the bagpipes. Everybody loves bagpipes. If it wasn't for Jo Dee Messina, I would have given the whole show zero stars, but she didn't even sing any of her hits. I got one question for you Beck - Where was the Nuge?" Conservatives and rock fans weren't the only people disappointed by the event. Members of the media were left holding the bag on a story that never happened. "Yeah, I feel pretty betrayed by this whole thing," said Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. "We'd had our eye on this story for weeks, and Beck wastes the opportunity for what I guess you'd have to call public repentance. We didn't even get anything provocative out of Sarah Palin. What a waste of a day. Well, at least we have a new story line - The TEA party is hopelessly dull. I don't know why the heck we've wasted all this ink writing about them. Probably the only person happy with this is Rupert Murdoch, for FOX's decision not to air it live." Crowd size was estimated from as low as 100,000 to as high as a half million, but all sources agreed that it was probably the largest assemblage of bored people in the nation's history.

the Bachmann agenda

Michele Bachmann, Queen of the House TEA Party caucus, has taken a swipe at Minority Leader John Boehner's "pathetic little agenda" which she likened to a schooner of warm piss. "It's sad to see such a total lack of boldness and real ideas in a man who imagines himself in the role of Speaker of the House. He wants to roll back health care, but he knows that can't happen before 2012. What we can do is completely defund it so it just sits there piteously as a monument to Obama's broken promises. Keep taxes low? I don't think so. Get rid of taxes all together, that's what a real constitutional conservative would say. Where in the Constitution does it say the government has a right to tax your income? Don't give me that 16th amendment crap, that wasn't put in till 1913, it's not what the framers wanted. They were all deceased. Repeal it. Am I being bold? You bet I am. Let's see, what else was on our leader's agenda. Block cap-and-trade? It's dead, bonehead, so you've got nothing to do but tan. When I get to be Speaker, you're going to see some real action." Aside from repealing the 16th amendment, there are a number of others on her chopping block: the 14th ("It's been thoroughly exploited by illegal immigrants"), the 18th ("God, prohibition was repealed by the 21st, what's it still doing in there? Leave it to a woman to have to do all the housekeeping"), the 19th ("The framers didn't care if I could vote or not. That's a State rights issue."), the 22nd ("If it wasn't for that one, Bush would still be President and we would have avoided all this Obama mess."), and the 25th ("I just don't like it.") High on Bachmann's to-do list is returning the economy back to the corporations where it rightfully belongs. "Before Obama, the private economy was 100 percent held in private hands, while today 65 percent of the economy is now held in government's hands. That's an increase of 65 percent. No, wait a second, I've got my numerator mixed up with my denominator. Zero percent was held by the government and now it's 65, so that's like an increase of 6500 percent." Her main agenda item for the next two years, however, is to get payback by endlessly subpoenaing the Obama administration. "Oh, I think that's all we should do," Bachmann explains. "I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is gone on. People want to hear the sound of gears locking, so it's very important that when we come back after the election that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people's patience is about as big as this hand grenade, and they're about to pull the pin. So we have to make sure that we do what the people want us to do or they'll kill us."

the new message

Protestors are out in full force in New Orleans, Mobile and Pensacola today as the initial impact of the British Petroleum debacle manifests itself on the local coastlines. Many of the most vocal of those attending the street rallies are members the TEA Party who see the crisis as a continuation of the mismanagement and naked power grabs of the Obama Administration. Joe Catalino is one such demonstrator who takes such a position without irony. "Irony? Don't try pulling that irony crap on me," says Catalino. "There's no conflict in protesting Obama and his socialist takeover of the banks and auto companies and health care, and protesting about his refusal to take over BP. It's two sides of the same coin, brother. Over-reaching, under-reaching, what's the difference? You tell me. The people want this done. Yeah, but when does Obama ever listen to the people? I think it's time to light a fire under Congress' ass cause the black peril has arrived here on our shores. And I'm not talking about Obama, either so don't try to make that sound racial." In 1989, during the first Bush administration, Congress passed legislation after the Exxon Valdez spill which dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with all aspects of industrial accidents, relegating the Federal role to little more than providing oversight and lending technical expertise. "Bush? Don't start playing that Bush crap on me. Obama always wants to blame everything on Bush. I didn't start paying attention to politics until the TEA Party came along, so I didn't even know he was in office back then. But it does prove the TEA Party point about needing term limits. And for Barack Obama, that limit is going to be two years. Cause in November we're taking our country back." All in all, correcting this minor historical error seemed largely irrelevant. "Now that part about only being able to provide technical expertise, that's bullshit," Catalino continued. "See my sign? That's the real deal, Marx not Stark. Unlike Obama, Karl Marx knew how to kick ass and take names. And that's what we need right now. Maybe Tony Stark is a wealthy industrial engineer who can give brilliant advice, but he's still a tool of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. Hell, he's got his own corporation, just like BP, so you know he's part of the problem. He puts on that Iron Man suit and just goes out and wrecks everything in his path. It's because just like Obama, he takes the law into his own hands." The immediate problem with Catalino's strategy, aside from the fact that it doesn't take place in a reality-based framework, is the lack of practical expertise and appropriate equipment available to the federal government. "Reality-based framework? Don't give me that reality-based framework crap. You know, it only took Tony Stark a few week to synthesize the Vibranium atom, so don't tell me BP doesn't have the expertise to stop this leak. We just need to nationalize the corporation and force these geniuses to solve the problem or face charges of treason. But Obama won't do that, it's not part of his agenda. But just you wait, in November the true conservatives are going to rise up and we're going to nationalize the oil industry." Point made, Catalino turns to leave, pausing for one last message. "What we really is a president who's not afraid to show some empathy. People down here could use a hug."

Perky out in 2010

Half-governor Sarah Palin was the main speaker at a Tea Party gathering in Boston today, drawing a disappointing crowd of around 5,000, far less than the 300,000 people organizers had predicted. Some interpreted it as a sign that many conservative are beginning to tire of her repetitive drivel. "We'll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion and you can keep the change," she said. "Don't believe the lies of the lamestream media," she said. "Yeah, let's drill baby drill, not stall baby stall, you betcha," she said. "Holy cow, did she really say that," asked an incredulous Susan Nichols, an office manager who calls herself very conservative. "I used to be a fan, but lately I'm starting to think that Sarah Palin just goes around repeating the same few catch phrases over and over, like Jimmy JJ Walker. Dy-no-mite, Sarah. Gawd, I can't believe I took a day off for this." "She kinda reminds me of my ex-wife," said John Massey, a Massachusetts Tea Party activist who skipped the event. "I don't know, all her perky sarcasm just gets to me. When she says 'How's that hopey changey thing workin out for ya' in that irritating sing-songie voice of hers, I wanna tell her, 'I don't know, Sarah, I guess if you're a liberal, it's working out pretty well'." "I hope the Tea Party folks don't get the wrong idea," said Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who also was not in attendance. "I appreciate their help in my election, and fully support their activism, but this event... I guess I was afraid the stupid might rub off on me." The signs that Palin is quickly becoming last year's model are further born out by the news that SarahPAC, her political action committee, took in only $400,000 during the first three months of 2010. By way of contrast, boring flip-flopper Mitt Romney took in a million and a half, and even invisible man Tim Pawlenty pulled $560,000. In more bad news, a new Rasmussen poll finds that 76% of self-described conservatives believe that she is 'not the future of the Republican Party, no way, you betcha', and a full 47% now admit to finding Palin totally inane.

a friend on the court

The LA Times reports today that Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has created a new TEA party group, Liberty Central Inc. "The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources - including corporations - as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court." Isn't that convenient, the loosening of those corporate/political restrictions? I'll bet that might even work to the benefit of Liberty Central, cause there's probably at least one or two corporations who are so cynical that they imagine some possible benefit could be derived from donating to a lobbying group where the CEO just happens to be married to a Supreme Court Justice. Justice Thomas is quick to dismiss any possible conflict of interest, noting that it would be virtually impossible for him to rule in a more corporate friendly way than he already does. "Now if a specific corporation was to donate heavily to my wife's group and a case involving them came before the court, there are those who might say that I should recuse myself. To them I say screw you, there's nothing in the law that says I have to, and quite frankly, I've got this gig for life." In spite of his wife's political activism, Justice Thomas remains a committed Republican, although he express a certain solidarity with TEA party dogma. "I too believe that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood and tyrants, but it also needs to be fertilized with plenty of corporate booty."