Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

New hero: Buzz Bissinger. Okay, not a hero–I barely know anything about him but he wrote “Friday Night Lights,” the book, not the tv show. Whatever. Apparently Tony LaRussa and Al Pujols went to Beck’s thing this weekend? Not cool! So Buzz has been letting it rip on his twitter thingee:

I wrote FNL not God. And every time there is a sale I don’t point to the heavens. I point to my pocketbook. Called honesty, Albert.

News flash to Albert: God doesn’t care about your home runs or your race for the Triple Crown. He has a lot on the plate right now.

Pro baseball players the least sophisticated of all pro athletes. More to right than Mussolini. Think a yarmulke is rain gear for midgets.

I will take on any right winger any day of the week. Bunch of smug self-satisfied bullies who don’t believe a fucking word they say.

Beck is an Elmer Gantry snake oil former drunk and addict con man who doesn’t believe a single fucking word of what he says. All for $$$

It goes on and on. I love this guy/nutball.

When I woke up Sunday morn and happened upon local Fox News’ airing of the Fox News Sunday program (tv was left on that channel from the Bears game the night before?) I saw a portion of the interview with Glenn Beck. Poor Mike Wallace’s son Chris was interviewing him, and I say “poor Mike Wallace” because look at what he hath spawned…but anyway, Mike’s son asked questions and Beck gave answers that spun around into little balls of nonsensical twine and then shot out again, like when he asked him whether he was losing his eyesight:

Beck goes into some long, incomprehensible word goulash recitation where he says, he realized “I’m not seeing something because I have eyes.” Essentially, at some point a doctor told him he might at some point go blind, and he laughed and said, “My mom told me that when I ran with a stick.”

Um, no, Glenn. Your mom said that if you masturbated too much you would go blind. Get it right. But really, the only thing that really struck me from the “interview” was when Beck said he was one of those guys who boozed it up heavy way back when and then at some point he stopped and replaced that addicts’ thirst the way that so many do, with some kind of extreme religious conversion. Just like our favorite ex-president, perhaps?

It used to be “never trust anyone over 30,” until that stopped being useful, so now my new motto is “never trust an ex-boozehound who filled that void with excessive Jesus.” Seriously!

Look at the positives: football season is nearly upon us.

In other positive news, Prop 8 was declared unconstitutional despite the president’s undeclared support, Kagan the alleged liberal was confirmed, and that mosque is going to be built right on top of the rubble of the World Trade Center so that the towers cannot be rebuilt. Or, that’s what they told me at the Tea Party.

Look, I don’t like churches any more than the next guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m against anyone building them, even when I know the b.s that’s going on inside of them. I just choose not to go in them. It’s real easy. This whole mosque-that-is-not-even-that-close-to-Ground Zero-business is ridiculous. Only really really stupid people could get worked up about–what? Huh?

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”

Newt Gingrich. Ah. Yeah, that guy. Whadda dick. What’s with these right-wing nuts thinking they know what New Yorkers want? Ground Zero is not Republican-owned territory, despite what George Bush tried to do with the megaphone act. It’s a place where people from all different countries, backgrounds, religions and beliefs died. End of story.

I like what Joe Klein wrote about Newt yesterday:

Newt Gingrich is clearly running for President. How do I know? He gets dumb and angry when running for office.

Possibly. Or maybe he’s always that way and we’re just not paying attention to him all the time. It’s a good idea, though, to ignore goofs like him. Build the damn mosque, who gives a shit? Jesus Christ!

Map via Matt Yglesias’ blog.

Andrew Sullivan on “The Unwinnable War:

When one weighs the extra terror risk from remaining in Afghanistan, the absurdity of our chief alleged ally actually backing the enemy, the impossibility of an effective counter-insurgency when the government itself is corrupt and part of the problem, the brutality of the enemy in intimidating the populace in ways no civilized occupying force can counter, the passage of ten years in which any real chance at success was squandered … the logic for withdrawal to the more minimalist strategy originally favored by Obama after the election and championed by Biden thereafter seems overwhelming.

When will the president have the balls to say so?

End the war.

Ken Buck, the Colorado Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate, thinks birthers are dumbasses:

“Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera,” Buck said to the worker while laughing. “God, what am I supposed to do?”

Haha! You better start acting crazier, Mr. Buck, or you’re gonna lose your people!

It was obvious long ago (for example, on February 26, 2010) that the GOP was going to do whatever it could to sabotage Obama’s presidency. Or, it was not going to participate in any useful way in trying to fix what Bush (and they) broke in the eight years previous. So while I appreciate Howard Dean’s sentiment here, I’m wondering where he and every other progressive has been for the past year or so.

After the year and a half this country has just been through, it is pretty obvious that the right-wing has no intention of cooperating with anyone, and that they will do anything to regain power, just as they were willing to do anything to hold on to it. The only reasonable approach is to stand up to them as you would any group of bullies. Call them out for what they do- or don’t do as the case may be.

You think? Add to this the fact, no matter what, history will lose seats for the Democrats in the mid-term elections. It’s damn-near guaranteed. It happens regardless of the success or failure of the party in power. It’s always cool to vote out the people in! So…why the ball-less approach? What’s to lose?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I can’t say that I watch this show, or any cable news show, with any regularity or really at all, but I’ve certainly seen it. And Rachel Maddow appears to be the most sensible person there is on any of the three mostly terrible networks. This segment, most importantly, kicks ass, and I highly recommend it. If only to put the myth of the Fox News ratings juggernaut into perspective.

UPDATE:

President Obama may want to watch this. Over-reacting to such a small, lunatic segment of America’s right-wing is not going to accomplish much of anything. It really is easy to ignore these folks, I do it all the time. By the way, when I say “President Obama,” what I really mean is “the White House.” I truly don’t believe that Obama himself cares so much about these things but it is obvious that there is a staff mentality that is keeping close watch on these dummies. Why, I have no idea.

Yes, it is summer and it is busy and stuff. Lots of travel and what not coming up, and of course the constant ongoing celebration of Lord Stanley’s Cup, for the lack of a better reason. But anyway, as the oil spill disaster horrorshow slowly unfolds before us without any sign of stopping and we all watch the images helplessly, it’s easy to get really pissed off. I happened to see just a snippet today where the protester interrupted the testimony of BP CEO Tony Hayward and it made me want to punch this guy in the face–not because of his reaction (there was none)–but for the primal need to inflict pain on this corporate asshole. Someone deserves to be punched for what’s been done, right? And the sight of this woman with painted oil hands screaming at the guy tapped that caveman instinct inside of me. String him up!

But that’s not the way it works. BP will pay, and they will suffer, and possibly go under, but how different are they from every other oil company? I need a goddamn oil change in my car! What the hell am I gonna do? We’re so screwed here. And it’s my fault because I need it just like everyone else. I’m gonna get in a plane soon and then I’m gonna drive the shit outta my van soon and all of this oil is gonna burn and I’ll refill the gas and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It totally sucks. And I have no further revelations or answers, it’s just out there and that’s it.

So then there’s politics and of course I think it’s silly to blame Obama or get worked up about the response, this isn’t Katrina and there aren’t people waiting on rooftops for rescue or dying in the Superdome. The government can’t fix this, they can only get money for it and help the people affected by it, and so that’s what Obama is doing, and has done. I didn’t see his speech and haven’t read much about it but I like Andrew Sullivan’s comments here (“Getting Shit Done”):

Obama’s incrementalism, his refusal to pose as a presidential magician, and his resistance to taking the bait of the fetid right (he’s president – not a cable news host) seems to me to show not weakness, but a lethal and patient strength. And a resilient ambition.

Obama, I don’t worry about; it’s everyone else. I heard that his speech was regarded as too far above the heads of his viewers, too “professorial.” Why not just say “people are really stupid”? We prefer things dumbed down, it’s the American Way. This guy just doesn’t get that…thankfully.

I’m off again, for a while. I’m sure nothing will have changed much when I return…

I don’t know much about British politics but it appears that “conservative” does not mean the same thing over there as it does here.

“One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you’re injured or fall ill – no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you’ve got – you know that the NHS will look after you.”

That’s the new Prime Minister David Cameron–of the Conservative Party–championing the National Health Care they have over there in Britain. National Health Care. That’s socialized medicine to you and me. Socialism! Aaaaaaah! Get me a spot o’ tea and a racist sign, quick!

Cameron may hold other views that are right-wingin’ but I have no idea. All I know is that it appears “conservative” does not mean “crazy” like it does here.

Glenn Greenwald is really on top of this one. I don’t have a solid opinion formed yet on Elena Kagan but I am curious to understand why it is that the Supreme Court is kept consistently free of true progressives and instead filled with center, center-right, and right-wing judges?

Or why, as Greenwald points out, did liberals, independents and rational thinkers of America “elect a Democratic President, a huge majority in the House, and 59 Democratic Senators,” and yet are expected to be satisfied with a candidate that may push the Court further to the right?

Or, really, why does Joe Lieberman think Kagan will make the Court slightly less liberal“? And he’s happy about it. That can’t be good.

So, what’s the case for Kagan? Here’s one at Think Progress. I am one of those people who holds a relatively strong faith in Obama’s judgment, so there’s that. But I am curious to learn more about this woman’s views before I get behind her nomination.

I don’t know who this dimwit Ken Blackwell is (the other black Republican?), but he is clearly not used to making coherent points. In this case, it happens to be about a book he allegedly wrote (“there are twenty-one points that ‘we’ make”). Ohhh, I don’t want to know what kind of dummy is going to buy this fluff–his book is titled “Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency”–but I have a pretty good idea.

As always, Stewart is way too respectful of Blackwell; he should be ripped to shreds for this trash, but he gets fairly spanked anyway. Goddamn, these guys…I’m always amazed at the stupidity! But then, perhaps I am confusing stupidity with “marketing.”

Here’s another take on it at The Huffington Post. They thought Stewart tore him to shreds. Okay. He certainly handled it well, I just wanted to see blood at some point.

Part II and Part III:

These are some strong words, right?:

“Obama is to me a quality human being and someone that, given the limitations of the two-party system, that’s trying to do a good job. But I have to grade the whole thing on a curve because the two-party system to me is not yielding the results I want to see. I think what really is the problem with the two-party system is that it’s very difficult for people without power to make a difference unless they try very hard. But the more people that do try, the easier it gets.”

Eh, not really. I pretty much agree with it. So what’s with the liberal (NBC) media headline: “‘Hope’ Artist Shepard Fairey Not Pleased With Obama’s Performance”? Yep, that is the real headline.

That’s the entire quote up there, spread throughout the article, by Fairey. Never said he wasn’t pleased with Obama. In fact, he said he was a “quality human being, trying to do a good job.” Huh. Pretty safe, bland story. That’s not gonna work though, is it?

Why is this a big deal? It opens a door. It allows someone to put it together with another story about Obama reconnecting with Latino and African-American voters and give it a headline like “Obama Plays the Race Card,” and just like that, you are Matt Drudge, selling more bullshit to dummies. Why, you may even get the wrong impression. Wow, not even that “Hope” artist is gonna fall for Obama’s race-baiting! When you lose him you’ve lost America! Obama, you’re finished!

With friends like the “liberal media” who needs Fox News?

No, it’s not Anderson Cooper…

For your consideration, a hearty list of accomplishments from a year and a half in to the Obama administration, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan. I mean, come on, who actually gets in there and gets this much done? Bush? Clinton? Nope! Dude’s just getting started…I am very glad to have given him my vote, despite any impatience concerning certain wars, etc. No wonder the right-wingers are so crazy.

Here we are a year and a half in and what do we see?

An end to illegal torture of terror suspects. A beginning to a saner method of detaining, trying and convicting terror suspects.

Adept handling of the worst financial crisis and recession since the 1930s, leading to a profitable bank bailout (excluding Freddie and Fannie) and a return to growth. Check.

Salvaging of the automobile industry, which is now showing signs of life.

Passage of an ambitious stimulus package that has helped repair many crumbling parts of the US infrastructure and poured money into green industry.

The biggest social policy reform since LBJ – guaranteeing access to health insurance for all Americans.

Financial re-regulation of an out-of-control Wall Street, and the beginnings of real scrutiny (see Goldman) of the self-serving corruption at the heart of the financial industry.

Repaired relations with Russia, leading to a new START treaty, and better relations with China, leading to a revaluation of the yuan.

Joint Chiefs’ endorsement of ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

A tough re-balancing of the US position in the Middle East, away from the Likudnik-oriented jerking knees of the last eight years, and an assertion that US foreign policy should be conducted to advance the interests of the United States, not the interests of a belligerent faction in a foreign country.

My view is that Obama should aim for immigration reform next. Why? We need it. And it will force the GOP into an even whiter, nastier, angrier posture as they fight for the midterms. The long-term damage to the GOP among Hispanics will cement Democratic electoral dominance for quite a while.

Change we can believe in? How much more could you possibly have asked for in eighteen months?

This is a dramatically effective administration.