Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

[BlogBox]

Can you feel it? Republicans really are on the run. For almost five years, BushCo. has acted like they were Hillary Duff playing the plain, misunderstood high school girl who wins the crown and the football captain in the end. They've assumed that America would buy that script conceit hook, line, and sinker. Not hardly, BushCo. This week, only 32% are still lining up for the Kool-Aid at the compound, and even those numbers are specious.

By Hook Or By Crook

Cenk Uygur at The Huffington Post has dissected Karl Rove's political "genius." Genius? According to Uygur, Rove's tactics have nothing whatsoever to do with either innate intelligence or long-term governing skills. But you already knew that, didn't you? Anyway, Uygur blogs it with panache!

The upside for the Republican Party is that Karl Rove has had an excellent short term political strategy over the last six years. The downside is that it is a terrible long term strategy. I hope they enjoyed their "permanent majority" while it lasted.

Rove has three plays in his playbook:

1. Run to your base.
2. Create fear. Start a war. Rally around the flag.
3. Keep the companies and the crazies happy.

All three of these plays work. But they all eventually become untenable. Then they serve as an albatross around your neck for a long time to come.

Untenable. Excellent word choice. I'll eat my tinfoil stetson if Karl Rove had nothing to do with replacing Scott McClellan with FOX News anchor Tony Snow on the same day that he (Rove) spent four more hours with Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury. Talk about untenable. FOX News live and direct from the White House! But watch out, America - a lean and hungry Rove is infinitely more dangerous than a fat and happy Rove.

The Day The Presidency Died

Bob Fertik at Democrats.com thinks he's pinpointed the individual political death knells that have lead to Bush's dreadful approval ratings. Here's an excerpt:

Perhaps it died during Bush's Q&A with Hu Jintao, following the meeting of "the world's two most powerful men," as the press billed it. There was Bush, sitting "Texan" with his legs apart, literally going through the motions of answering press questions. His mouth kept moving, but only because the answers kept coming in through his earpiece; clearly his mind was somewhere else entirely. Perhaps he had just realized the U.S. was no longer the most powerful nation in the world, that China's 1.2 billion hard-working, well-educated people had created a modern industrial economy that was more powerful than anything the U.S. could ever create in the post-Iraq, post-Katrina, post-NAFTA era. Perhaps he quietly realized that his Presidency was a complete and total failure, and that he would go down in history as the President whose corruption and warmongering allowed China to surpass the U.S. as the world's economic - and inevitably military and political - superpower.

We're not #1 anymore? Thanks, George W.!

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

How stupid is Bob Ney? Evidently he's stupid enough to ignore the whole Abramoff/Congressional Republican luxury golf trip scandal. From Plunderbund:

Do the wives and children of Republican politicians wear "I'm With Stupid" shirts? They should.

Wait! There's more! Sometimes it's the comments after the post that make blogs truly satisfying. After Arkansas Blog's reposting of "Steak Night at the Deer Camp," Deathbyinches commented:

The deer hunters and the NASCAR dads are waking up and seeing what a bunch of fools GWB has made of them all. Piss off a librarian and you might live to see tomorrow, but piss off the good ole boys....and ya better run for the hills.

It just might be the good ole boys who storm the White House and drag President Retard out the front door and off to his well deserved jail cell. Mellon squeezers like me usually lack the guts to find the shotgun and go after the bad guys. Just a few hours of watching old Bonanza reruns with Ma tells me it was always the deer hunters Joe Cartwright gathered up to chase the bad guys. Oh lord, you don't want them guys after ya....woo!

Ya...woo indeed, Deathbyinches.

Ya Gotta Have Art!

What a week for photos, photoshopped or not! From Bob Geiger's Journal:

Dead President Walking


The White House calls it a photo opportunity -- we like to think of it as a future perp walk.

For more political art, WolfBlog has an exclusive photo of the sudden Rice & Pony Rumsfeld Iraq Tour:


Finally, EarlG (sorry, girls! He's getting married) gives us this photo of Tony Snow's first day on the job:


Seen any good BushCo photos lately? Send me your links.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Buzzflash's Last Chance Democracy Cafe now features a speech jukebox. Included are speeches by MLK and JFK. Still listening? Majority Report Radio has a blog, and blogger Not Sam would love to read your recommendations. You want more? DUer Hissyspit and over 60 other DUers have compiled their own DU Jukebox playlist. Wow!

The icing on your listening cake? The Huffington Post's "I'm The Decider." Crank up the volume and enjoy! Let's just hope this new musical trend continues. We've hungered for this for so long!

Just Like Watching "Bob Roberts"

TPM Muckraker Justin Rood has the 411 on Rove's replacement, Joel Kaplan:

New WH Policy Chief Was "Brooks Brothers" Rioter By Justin Rood

To the Burberry ramparts!

The man Bush tapped to fill Karl Rove's spot as his policy wizard is none other than Joel Kaplan, who took part in the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" of 2000. That's when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.

In George Bush's Washington, there's no shame in staging a fake protest to undermine a democratic election, apparently: last year, the Washington Post's Al Kamen noted that "the "rioters" proudly note their participation on resumes and in interviews." Kaplan was even the one to cheekily dub the fracas the "Brooks Brothers Riot."

Hey, want to watch Jonah Goldberg's Adam's apple palpitate? Bloggingheads TV has a great video interview with the spawn of Lucianne, aptly named "Conservatives still cracking up." If lies were whales, we wouldn't have Jonah to kick around any longer.

Satire Is Back... Big Time!

One of the funniest sites on George W.'s "Internets" is RepublicanPress.com, whose motto is: "To Deliver The News With Honor, Morals, Integrity, And Shit Like That." I had a chance to interview the RepublicanPress writers this week:

Delilah Boyd: How did you get started?

RepublicanPress: Pat Robertson, of the 700 Club, came to us in a vision and said that we could either start a Republican news site, or give him ten thousand dollars. Since we had no money, we decided on creating RepublicanPress.com.

The creators/writers of RepublicanPress.com are Chris and Jay, two damn good Democrats from Tennessee. We started the site at the end of 2002. We saw all the media outlets becoming increasingly conservative to capitalize on the commercialization of patriotism. We found the republican pundits to be one dimensional. You had blonde media divas, senile old war correspondents, Reagan devotees, religious nuts, and even country music singers who began to pop up on the political shows to sell their albums. So we decided to start RepublicanPress.com, a fictitious right wing media outlet, with satirical op-ed writers.

Delilah Boyd: What kinds of feedback have you received?

RepublicanPress: We get lots of feedback from Republicans who actually think RepublicanPress.com is real right wing news site. One of our most popular columnists is Kathleen Kuntly, a very crude GOP media diva. Kathleen likes to speak in sexually explicit political analogies. We get emails from Republicans who say things like, "I really agree with your opinions Ms. Kuntly, but I wish you wouldn't be so graphic." I guess that's morals and values for you.

Delilah Boyd: Do you accept article/idea submissions?

RepublicanPress: Currently, we don't accept submissions. Jay and I are the only writers for RepublicanPress.com at present. However, we do accept suggestions, and we listen to feedback. If the site keeps growing, we may have to recruit some help at some point in time.

Delilah Boyd: What are your plans for the future?

RepublicanPress: We hope to keep supporting the Democratic cause with our site while getting feedback from people who enjoy our work. We've done a few radio appearances to promote our site, (posing as columnists from RepublicanPress.com) and we'd like the opportunity to do more of that. So if anybody is interested, email us at [e-mail]. We've appeared on the Meria Heller show, and also on the "The Other Side," a liberal radio show in Houston, TX, as well as local radio shows here where we live.

Check out RepublicanPress.com and send Chris and Jay some feedback. They'd love to hear from you.

Still craving more satire? DeadBrain is happy to oblige. This week's top stories: "Illegal Immigrants' Status in Danger; Price of Strawberries Triples;" "The Moussaoui Trial," or "A Mid-East Side Story;" and "The Health Report: White House Crisis - Medications Failing America!"

Those Pesky Trolls

Hughes for America, blogging at Democratic Underground, has posted the definitive How-To-Spot-A-Discussion-Thread-Troll treatise:

Occasionally, we find our progressive blogs' comment threads infested with trolls. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the term, think of a troll as the drunk who pushes his way into your barroom conversation. The proverbial turd in the punchbowl, in the rather unlikely case there's a proverb out there about turds and punchbowls. You get the picture.

Comment trolls tend to be Republicans of varying stripes intent on disruption. From the blunt-force troll with little to say that's not of the four-letter word variety to the benevolent troll who stops by to lecture everyone on the best practices of blog management, trolls are annoying as shit.

But why stay annoyed when you can have fun instead? Make lemonade out of lemons, folks. Trolls are an everyday reminder that someone, somewhere, disagrees with what you're saying and considers it important enough to respond to. So stand proud, progressives! They hate us. They really, really hate us.

Read the rest. You'll be glad you did. Remember, they wouldn't bother attacking if they didn't fear you. Be kind to the trolls, but never ever feed them!

Mea Maxima Culpa

Last week, I inadvertently confused Tucker Carlson with Cynthia Tucker (I can't even imagine how I could do such a thing!) while lamenting the lack of a war on Easter. Easter egg on my face. Thanks to DUer defkon__4 for noticing.

This week's blog lesson: a threatened Republican is a dangerous Republican. Thanks to the thousands of bloggers and a few brave elected Dems who've been systematically chipping away at BushCo, the Potemkin presidency is finally crumbling. And thanks again to all of you who sent me such great blog links this week. Keep blogging, and remember the (hilarious) words of Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest: "Never give up! Never surrender!"

[AtomicKitten]

1. Dare we hope?

What the hell, I'm game.

[ginnyinWI]

2. When Rove is indicted

I predict a lot of Christian Fundies will really start to bail. So many criminals around * makes him very suspect too. "True Christians" respect the law. It's one thing if Cheney's man Libby is a criminal and liar; it's quite another if *'s man is.

edited to add: No Retreat, Baby, No Surrender!

[peace frog]

3. Wasn't that a Tim Allen line in Galaxy Quest....

[kevsand]

4. By Grabthar's hammer...

...I swear you are correct!

[0007]

5. Good post and welcome to home......