Pay No Attention to the Mouthbreathing Rightwad Behind the Curtain

If you read “liberal” news sites, you’ve already known for the past year about the sickfuck twisted devious methods of Republican strategists. But then, if you go to those sites, you’re probably a liberal anyway — aka “preaching to the choir.”

But now — finally! — the mainstream media is actually waking up. For this brief moment, the general public is finding out what the rest of us have known all along.

You already knew that Republicans eat their young. The GOP is nothing but a gang of slippery lowlifes who will do anything — whatever it takes! — to keep their corporate masters propped up. And now John Q. Public knows it too.

Even with the public’s notoriously short attention span — Hey! Quit Looking Around! — this might be a case of not being able to put the toothpaste back into the tube (as one of the Watergate conspirators put it).

After all, when you find out how a magician does his tricks, you’re no longer gonna go “Wow! He pulled a rabbit out of his hat!” Hopefully some of the independent/swing voters will consider the source when they hear the next outburst of “Socialism!” “Government Takeover!” “Muslim!” “Born in Kenya!” And just maybe, some of the top GOP donors will be a little less “giving” after seeing themselves described as “ego-driven” and “easily pacified with tchochkes.”

Rolling Stone is another vehicle for reaching millions of people who probably don’t read DailyKos, AlterNet, Think Progress, etc. Matt Taibbi’s articles and exposés have been a Godsend. And the newest Rolling Stone has The GOP’s Dirty War by Tim Dickinson. Come on people, get informed.

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And now, calling all elderly Dinosaurs: Ron Banks, lead singer of the Dramatics, died of a heart attack yesterday. The only song I remember from them was “What You See Is What You Get.” That song just killed. It was one of the few radio hits that I never ever got tired of, no matter how many times it got played.

R.I.P.

Republican “Grassroots” “Populist” Anger

Believe it or not, the public’s unarticulated unfocused fury is actually being harnessed by Republicans. Republicans have spent eight years (or is that 28 years?) creating most of the problems that the public is angry and frustrated about. And now Republican leaders are actually channeling and using this mass fury for their own purposes. Go figure.

Maybe they’ve been inspired by the occasional news story about a firefighter who sets a fire and then charges in and rescues everybody so he can be a hero.

These two articles (here and here) both describe the Republicans’ recent success at manipulating a scared, confused and gullible public. It doesn’t seem to matter that Republicans don’t have any solutions of their own; not a single specific idea. Apparently it’s enough to just keep yelling “Obama Socialist Nazi Communist Fascist,” “government takeover of Your health care!” and “Death Panels!” and millions of gullible assholes will go “DUUUHHH, yeah that’s right.”

Personally I think it’s too early to make any predictions about the 2010 election. Until a few weeks ago, the “experts” were saying the Republican Party was shattered and they’d stay in the minority for a looong time. Now suddenly it’s “Obama is plummeting in the polls, Democrats will stay home and get stoned on Election Day since it isn’t a presidential election year, and Republicans will retake the House.”

One day at a time…

But it really is infuriating that the Democrats are just paralyzed by all this chaos and public anger, and the Republicans can just step in and start soothing and manipulating the masses. Sort of like an animal trainer who can calm a vicious snarling Rottweiler and then train him.

The newest issue of Rolling Stone has an article about this. The article isn’t available online. The website shows it on the table of contents — “The GOP’s Lie Machine” by Tim Dickinson.

If you’ve been reading liberal blogs and “alternate” news sites (Think Progress, Raw Story, AlterNet, etc.), this article won’t tell anything you don’t already know. But it’s encouraging to see a mainstream magazine like Rolling Stone publicizing this, since most of the mainstream “media” isn’t touching these issues.

The most revealing thing in the article is a quote from Dick Armey (former House Majority Leader; founder of FreedomWorks). Armey was asked why there wasn’t any of this populist fury over high taxes and “big government” when Bush was driving us trillions of dollars into debt. His response:

“We used to use the old saying in the West, that you got outta town just one step ahead of the hangman. That’s pretty much what happened with Bush. And poor old President Obama walked into town, y’know, just at high noon.”

Straight from the horse’s (ass’s) mouth.