Who ARE These People?, Part 1: Freakshow Politics

GOP brain trust? Standing behind Speaker-to-be Boehner are Republican intellectual powerhouses Reps. Darrell Issa and Joe Barton. (Thanks to Bujeeboo for the Issa correction!)

by Noah

Remember when, during the Rodney King riots, Rodney King expressed the frustration and disgust of so many people nationwide by saying, “Can’t we all just get along?" Well, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid are like Rodney King. The difference is, they are saying it while they are being beaten senseless by the thugs with the clubs.

The answer to this question could not be more obvious, but with their minds clouded by whatever’s in the water inside the Beltway, they fail to accept the ugly reality that the brown-shirted Republican Party offers only one answer to such a pointless question: a resounding NO. Instead of accepting this ugly reality, Obama and Reid act like abused housewives who somehow think the drunken neanderthal they married will stop beating them every damn night -- right up until the moment he kills them.

Obama and Reid are appeasers. They are Neville Chamberlain redux, dealing with modern-day panzer divisions of sadistic sociopaths who would rather see fellow American citizens they don’t give a damn about continue to suffer just for the sake of political supremacy. One has to wonder if there are any Republicans who can walk past an oven without smiling at the darkest thoughts possible.

My own senator, Chuck Schumer, is also an appeaser. He not only wants to continue tax-bailout low-end criteria to go up from $250,000 to $1 million, but he also deliberately failed to challenge the nomination of John Roberts to the so-called Supreme Court, all in the interest of “getting along.” The immediate result was a horrific decision in the Citizens United case (the case was barely mentioned at all in the election coverage on the big “news” networks) that resulted in untold tens of millions of dollars from unknown sources flooding in against Democrats. Thanks, Chucky! Just who are you working for?

Corporations who have more allegiance to China than to Americans have made their purchases, and we now will see them sitting in both houses. The only people happier with the current setup in Washington, other than the corporations and the Repug Party, are the Chinese themselves. All of that money, combined with a complicit media (especially the Chinese agents on Fox) that allows blatant Republican lies and talking points to go unchallenged, and goes as far as to promote them, convinced way too many voters to vote for their own self-destruction in 2010.

Still, Obama and Reid talk about working with Republicans while Repugs like Rubio and Boehner and Steele say no to any compromise at all. We need Barack “Barry Knuckles” Obama, and instead we have Barry the Ball-less, along with his dippy little spineless sidekick Harry. Batman and Robin they ain’t.

Here’s Cenk Uygur on how the Democrats are working with the Repug Party on one major issue of our time.



Clearly, neither party has been working for the people.

We expect evil of Republicans. It’s who they are. But why do the Democrats aid and abet the criminal element in the two-party system? Theys have been weak, and it has opened the door for a dark circus of freaks that looks like Roger Corman and John Waters teamed up to make a movie. Only, this is all too real. Because of the behavior of the Democrats, the two-party system is a farce: two parties, one bad result.

Now, as a result of the 2010 midterm elections, things are about to get even weirder. If you thought the campaign season was surreal, just wait ‘til you see the rotted, wormy fruits of the results.

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Welcome back, my friends, to the Freakshow That Never Ends. 2011 is upon us. Step right up! For the wacko party, and therefore for us, impeachment is back on the table. The wackos love to talk about the deficit and saving your tax dollars. Yeah, the new Republican House wants a continued tax bailout for the top 2 percent, thus further ballooning the deficit up to $700 billion -- or more when you figure in the cost of the loans or bonds we’ll need to cover the loses to our treasury.

What we’ll also see, however, is millions of our tax dollars spent on investigations and impeachment hearings. The Congressional nutbags will make Sen. Alphonse D’Amato’s $40 million (some say $100 million) Whitewater investigation look like chump change, at a time when they will nightly say that they have no money for the unemployed and no money for improving the health of their fellow citizens.

The key to all of this is twofold. One, the man in the White House is a Democrat, and a black one at that, and two, the middle and working classes do not count. They exist only to be exploited for the benefit of the corporations who stuff the pockets of the senawhores and congresscretins who say they represent the voters. As one of their lead media frontmen, Glenn Beck, says, the unemployed are un-American. That is how they feel, and they prove it time and time again, no matter how often President Obama speaks of working with them. I can hear the laughter.

The new lineup in the House may not get Obama removed from office by the Senate, but they’ll be very happy to vote for impeachment, if only to go on record as saying that the president has no birth certificate, was born in Kenya, is an undercover agent from planet Zoltan, or whatever. The facts will mean nothing. Zero. Doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters when you are a lunatic or a demented freak that feeds on hate from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn. “Don’t confuse me with none o’ your damn facts. He’s ‘other.' He’s ‘alien.' Look at him! No one but our rich benefactors matters; screw the people! Let us count the ways! Screw Obama! Nothing else matters!”

This is what I call Freakshow Politics. If we were a more intelligent society and species, we would build a high wall around the Capitol and put a sign on the gate with the visiting hours so that medical supplies could be trucked in and relatives could visit. Drop the food in by copter and let them fight over it like a pack of rabid dogs. Watch them quickly trade in their plastic dashboard faux-Jesus crap for a Cargo Cult religion.

GET A LOAD OF A SAMPLE OF

SOME OF THE LEADING LIGHTS

new or otherwise, who will be flaunting their prominence in Washington in 2011:

• In NY-19, progressive John Hall lost to a rabid faux teabagger named Dr. Nan Hayworth. She’s Ivy League (Princeton) and a Teabagger. She manages to be the darling of both the Teabag set and Wall Street. Of all the new congresscretins, bet on her to be a one-termer, especially if her Teabagger supporters catch on to her fakery. The only things that might keep her in office are laundered Wall Street cash and the fact that she represents a very Republican district. Hall might have gotten elected in 2008 on Obama’s coattails and as a reaction to Dubya as much as anything.

* In North Carolina-5, a literally brainless pile of human ectoplasm in a seemingly endless series of ugly print dresses named Virginia Foxx, a woman (I think) who appears to have stepped from the pages of a Don Martin cartoon (Joe Fonebone, to be specific) in a 1960s-vintage Mad Magazine will continue to represent the people she’s told to represent and ignore the rest.

* In a south-of-the-border Teabag country called Florida, Alan Grayson, the kind of guy who would make a fine president, was targeted by Rove’s millions, most likely because of that, and lost his seat in Congress to Taliban Dan Webster, a cretin who believes in stoning women, probably just because they are women. At the same time, of course, Republicans blather on and on about sharia law: same thing, different name. I guess Webster’s version is Sharia Law for White Folks.


* Then there’s teabagger hero and Ann Coulter fave Marco Rubio. He is now a senator from Florida. Webster wasn’t enough? What’s next? Ladies and gentlemen, Florida Sen. Osama bin Laden? I’m hoping that Florida makes it all official and either secedes by this coming spring or falls into one of the giant sinkholes the state prides itself on. Why not bring new meaning to the words “spring break”? It’s just a big theme park anyway. Making Shamu the governor would have made more sense than putting Rubio in the Senate. I have a distinct feeling that more than half of this nutbag state of Florida actually would vote for Shamu if they could, because “they feel comfortable with him” and he “puts smiles on the faces of the children.”

“Draft the whale!”

* Kentucky Sen.-elect Rand Paul? The man never met a civil-rights law he could vote for. That’s a recurring Republican theme these days. Expect Politico to be pushing him for the VP slot on the Repug 2012 ticket.

* California’s Darrell Issa? It’s hard to look at his eyes and not see the reflection of SS insignia on his lapels; a twisted totalitarian with toilet-training issues if there ever was one, a classic Republican who can watch The Great Escape and root for the Krauts, and wonder how some of us warped, misled Americans can find the Steve McQueen character to be sympathetic. He’ll be leading the House Inquisitions, er, Investigations, er, Oversight Committee, and already has plans to waste millions of your tax dollars on up to 300 hearings during a severe recession in which 15 million Americans are unemployed and wondering how they are going to feed themselves and their kids. Remember what I said about that money that D’Amato spent back in the '90s. Do you think vermin like Issa care? If you do, you’d probably be twisted enough vote for him.

* Joe Barton, from Houston? The Texan who apologized to BP. He even calls himself General Patton, in his saner moments. Barton campaigned to head the Energy & Commerce Committee. Houston, you are the problem. Joe Barton makes me think of my favorite part of the movie Independence Day. I’ll let you replay that movie in your mind until you remember the scene I’m thinking about. You can always send your guesses into the comments section.

* Let’s not forget Buy-bull-quoting climate-science denier Rep. John Shimkus from Illinois. He too wanted to head the Energy & Commerce Committee. Neither he nor Barton got the job; Republican leaders settled on Michigan's Fred Upton -- "considered a relative moderate," according to that far-from moderate source the Washington Times. (Do consider the source, and that word "relatively.") I had this fantasy of Barton and Shimkus sharing the job, maybe alternating days. Better yet, you could have just stuffed the two of them into one big fat suit. They would each get one arm and one leg, with their heads popping out of the collar, trying to push each other away from the microphone with some good old-fashioned close-quarters head-butting.

Shimkus is yet another loony Republican who thinks he speaks for God. There seems to be an unending supply. You may want to follow him on Twitter and get his constant stream of Bible quotes; another clown who sounds just like an islamic jihadist. I bet he was mystified as to why his God hasn’t removed Barton and Upton from the scene and cleared a path for him. If the Rapture he keeps talking about means that all we’ll have to deal with is his reeking footwear, then bring it on! Oh happy day! We can donate the shoes.

AND THE CRACKPOT PARTY'S LOSERS?

* How about in Minnesota, where Tom Emmer, a champion of a “kill the gays” ministry, just yesterday finally conceded his narrowly failed bid for election as governor of a whole state! Oh, and one of the biggest retail chains in America helped fund his campaign. Think about that next time you go to Target to wander amongst their endless aisles of Day-Glo shower thongs and other slave-made crap from God-knows-where.

* In New York’s affluent Westchester County, white supremacist Republican District Manager Jim Russell got the Republican nomination for Congress and ran against 12-term Democratic incumbent Nita Lowey. This guy was so bad that even some GOP honchos eventually found him to be an embarrassment, but only after some local media exposed him. Apparently, a whole lot of Republican voters didn’t find him embarrassing at all. He pulled 38 percent of the vote! 38 percent. White supremacist, Westchester County!

Russell has run five times. I wonder if the Republicans will have him on the ballot next time. He’s a persistent bugger, but he may have to settle for a gig on Fox. Just as ESPN hires fired coaches and managers as commentators until they get their next job, Fox has become the home for crackpot politicians. The difference is that most politicians wouldn’t have any way of getting work if their lives depended on it -- unless, of course, that “work” was given to them. Now that’s welfare they can believe in!

I have to say at this point that the more you look at who the Republican Party put up for election in 2010, the more it looks like the party was deliberately testing the limits of just how far to the extreme right they could go when presenting candidates to the voting public. God knows what they will come up with in 2012, but it looks like Republican voters have no problem with candidates with ties to white supremacy and candidates who want to kill gay people. (Don’t forget The Family, those lovable, wacky DC C Street Congress guys.)

“Well, gee, just don’t be so overt about it, you know?” Make no mistake, the Republicans will push it further and further. It doesn’t take any imagination to expect the people on Fox commenting on how white supremacy is a valid belief system that is worthy of some positive attention. Really, aren’t they there already?

* Then we have Christine O’Donnell. She lost in Delaware, and lost big, but thinks she won -- only on the delusion ticket. And then there's Sharron Angle in Nevada. There’s been plenty written about her; I don’t need to take the time and space to repeat it. Yeesh. She lost to Harry Reid. That says something right there. Suffice to say, both O’Donnell and Angle are insane and appear to have never gotten past fifth grade.

* Alaska’s Joe Miller says that the minimum wage is unconstitutional. Now there’s a real constitutional scholar! His “reasoning” seems to be based on the fact that the words "minimum wage" aren’t mentioned in the Constitution; you know, sort of like dinosaurs never existed because they aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Miller is sort of like O’Donnell. He lost, but he refuses to accept it. In what passes for his mind, he should be Alaska’s new senator just because the goddess Sarah anointed him. He claims that the write-in votes for incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski shouldn’t count because of bad penmanship and misspelling. The word fruitcake comes to mind. Someone could put an end to this real quick and just ask him on live TV how he spells Murkowski. 10 to 1 he flubs it.

* So, let’s talk about Winky Girl. Sarah Palin is the Freakshow Queen, but she should not be so easily dismissed. Nobody does it better. Remember, there was a time when even some Republicans thought that Reagan was not electable. Also remember that this is a party whose voters booted a sitting Democratic senator in Georgia, Max Cleland, in 2002, calling him unpatriotic after he had lost three of his four limbs fighting for them in Vietnam, and electing a crank named Saxby Chambliss instead.

Sadly, most people have short memories. If the current state of politics proves one thing, it's that crazies can be elected. We share over 98 percent of our DNA and chromosomes with the chimpanzees, and it’s proved every time your turn on your TV. This is why my wife had to put up a chicken-wire barrier in front of ours.

Palin’s brand of politics is more than just a Freakshow. Hers is Celebrity Politics, Celebrity Politics Gone Wild. The Cult of Celebrity is driving American politics right now, and Palin’s handlers know it. Don’t believe me? Chew on this: Tom DeLay, a recent Republican House majority leader, was under indictment and has now been convicted, but the Hollywood airheads that are responsible for a piece of crap TV program called Dancing With the Stars thought he was a surefire winner, hideous taste in '70s clothes, legal problems, and all.


"The Hammer" on Dancing With the Stars: Why can't we be friends indeed?

Did the brain-dead millions watch? You betcha! So what came next? Palin’s daughter Bristol! After Mom spent a year complaining that the “lamestream media” should stop “exploiting” her daughter. Palin is the definition of --

P-H-O-N-Y.

Remember what I said about Shamu. Remember that millions of Californians elected the guy from Kindergarten Cop, The Terminator, The Last Action Hero. The voters of California put an iron-pumping body-builder in office just because he had a poster of himself in a leather suit, cool shades, and a snappy futuristic shotgun. Remember also, the voters of Minnesota voted for a pro wrestler named Jesse Ventura, and a whole country voted for a senile B-movie actor ‘cause he was affable and they liked his hair -- twice. 80 percent of politics is about getting your name out there. Name recognition, a wink, a smile. Us magazine. Daughter on Dancing With the Stars. A compliant media that shouts her name from the rooftops and willfully ignores her terrorist connections and her secessionist moves.

Instead, she has been aided in creating a media frenzy. Palin is blazing the new celebrity path to political office, circumventing the traditional system. Books and phony bus tours. A highly paid slot on the Crazy Channel. A “reality” TV show in which she clubs fish that are already on their way to fish heaven and shoots at whatever. One can only hope that she tries to get friendly with a real momma grizzly. Now that would be reality TV I could get into! I’d even watch it pay-per-view and buy the DVD. No, I'd buy the Blu-Ray and a Blu-Ray machine, just so I could watch it before I go to bed every night and sleep peacefully, knowing that she will never get near the nuke codes.

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Here’s what President Obama should have said to old orange-leather-face Boehner: “If you’re gonna just continue to represent the Chinese, the multinational boards and the Top Two Percent, you’re gonna have to go through me. To you, those may be 'the American people,' but think again, or for the very first time.” Boehner might have even started to cry. We need a president who can turn Boehner’s life into a living hell and reduce him to a quivering puddle of tears and frustration in a straitjacket, not one who kisses his orange butt.

Maybe Palin will play her professional victim shtick to the max and get the 2012 nomination. Then she’ll quit the race on Labor Day because “this running for President is so darn hard.” In that case, Obama or Hillary or even somebody good gets elected. But by 2016, Britsol will be the “all-new Octomom 2,” and Levi will be a phantom hitch-hiker on Ice Road Truckers. Then Sarah will do some more books, get a “cooking with Sarah” show called Stab It & Slab It, and run again, telling her millions of sucker fans that it was all the lamestream media’s fault back in 2012. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney will curse her name to the howling winds and go torture the family dog again.


TOMORROW: A closer look at John Shimkus

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