Somebody tell me I am tinfoil hatting. Please. Seriously.

[Firespirit]

Somebody tell me that I have become too cynical, too fascinated with political "strategery" and chessplaying and mind games, for my own good, and that I am being unduly suspicious because this is simply the way that I think.

The thing is, I CANNOT believe that the GOP has just handed us 2006 and 2008 on a silver platter. And at face value, that is EXACTLY what they have done today. Today, Monday, October 2, 2006, the Congressional Republicans have been implicated in sexual predation of minors while the Senate Majority Leader talks openly of brokering political deals with the very murderous terrorists who committed the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. That little comment has apparently turned several prominent right-wing bloggers against them, according to the diary that is currently frontpaged on Kos. That and the "family values" fundies are the very last bastions of their support, and they managed to take a big old dump on both groups today. They've definitely made the "OMGZ911!!!" people mad. The jury is still out on the fundies, but fundies alone won't win them an election.

After all the years of Rovian plots, could they really be this damn stupid? Did it really all come apart at last?

I have watched these scumbags for six years. There has ALWAYS been another shoe to drop. Whenever it looks too good to be true, it has been. Without fail. We have always been let down.

My initial reaction when I first heard Frist's comments was not to pop the cork on the champagne bottle. It wasn't to jump for joy. It was, I kid you not, to shiver with cold fear.

What the hell have they got up their sleeve this time that they could do and say what they have, and get away with it?

These people are war criminals, as well as "petty" criminals. Although I concede that it is highly unlikely any of them will ever occupy that venerable old defendant's seat that Milosevic once occupied, there is a very distinct possibility that several could see jail time if light is ever shed on all that they have done.

And how many times have we said that this gang of criminals will do anything to hang on to power? Especially if it's not merely losing power that they fear, but literally, incarceration.

I wonder if we are about to see just what that "anything" could be. Are they in touch now with their buddies who know how to work the voting machines? Ready to deploy a virus like the one that the Princeton computer scientists described? Or is it something much more sinister than merely tampering with the vote? (Use your imagination. I truly would put NOTHING past them at this point if they thought it would help them.)

Someone please tell me I'm too jaded, and that there is nothing lurking beneath. That the Republican control of Washington is indeed going up in flames as we speak. I really do want to be convinced of this. With the passage of the Dictatorship Bill, however, I am not.

It's the timing of everything.

Now that they are in a situation where they WILL require undemocratic powers to maintain their grip on the reins, it's quite nifty that those very powers got approved so recently. Is THAT the other shoe? Are they being so monumentally stupid and careless because they know that they can get away with it?

I DO NOT want to be right about this. Please convince me that it's just six years of this crap finally getting to me.

[ProSense]

1. Watch your back!

IMO, the GOP has been playing defense for some time now. They manage to score because of the lock they have on power, but they are in deep shit! Fuck Rove! Not everything is Rovian, but whatever the hell he throws out there, Democrats should figure a way to utilize it to full advantage! Foley is going to contribute to the downfall of these bastards. In the mean time, watch your back!

Alec Baldwin: Forgeddaboutit!

[sandnsea]

2. 'brokering political deals'

I missed that. What's Frist done now?

[ProSense]

3. Maybe referring to this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2860366&mesg_id=2860536

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2860366&mesg_id=2860536

[Firespirit]

4. That's exactly it

Also have a look at this for the rightwing response.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/2/183139/861

[ProSense]

7. That's bizarre!

Still not as bizarre as Frist's statement. Maybe he said in the hopes of reducing his sentence! We all know he's a corrupt bastard!

[ProSense]

10. Here's another

The GOP Can Bite Me
Jawa Report, TX - 42 minutes ago
... now. Now, on top of this Foley debacle, we have Bill Frist openly advocating bringing the Taliban back into the Afghani government. ...


LOL!

[sandnsea]

6. That's just wild

I can't wrap my head around that at all.

[TayTay]

5. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Sometimes it is that easy. Thihs arrogant bunch of bastards believed their own bullshit and believed that they could stay in power forever because it really was as easy as pulling the right levers and targeting the right voting blocks. It was never that easy.

Consider for one moment that 'the other shoe' is the media and how they have enabled the Republican corruption machine to purr along and have helped to deflect all the charges that have been leveled at this Admin. That media is turning against them. We saw how incredibly powerful the media can be when they wake up and do their jobs in the aftermath of Katrina.

The media, symbolized by the ultimate insider Bob Woodward, is turning strongly against them. This is the 'other shoe.' If the Dems can use the media to get their message out then this Admin is toast. The day when everybody at once has finally reached the point where they just can't take it anymore may be here.

Without the media, they can't spin the exit polls. Without the media, they can't spin 9/11. Without the media they can't pretend that Foley was just a bad apple and the rest of them didn't know. Without the media, they are dead in the water.

They lost the media. You saw it. That's why. And that just means what it means for now, it certainly doesn't mean the Dems have the media, it's just that the Thugs do not.

Arrogance is an all blinding thing. You can no longer see yourself or anyone else in a true light. It makes you open to committing mistakes, it prevents you from righting yourself and it leaves you open and naked to attacks that can no longer fend off. As Sen. Kerry has said many times, these people are arrogant. They will now reap their own whirlwinds.

[Blaukraut]

8. be vigilant until after the election in November

As it stands now, the rethugs should begin to poll at record lows, and we are expected to pick up a certain number of seats easily. Watch the polls, pay attention to the media reports, you know - the usual. If the polls miraculously recover in favor of the thugs, if the latest scandals and revelations vanish from view within the next couple of weeks, then you'll know it's the same old, same old.
Half of me agrees with you; they fought too hard and long to just hand it over to the Dems without a fight.
It's also quite out of the ordinary how their usually so well-oiled spin machine is showing cracks. This could only mean two things;
As others have said already; the media isn't willing to play ball anymore, and there is dissention within rethug ranks.
The fall of the rethug party was only a matter of time. As Tay put it; absolute power corrupts absolutely. They've been overreaching more and more since Bush slunk into office. It has finally caught up to them.

[TayTay]

9. The classic political poem, tell me it doesn't apply here

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Who knew the 'rough beast' was W?

[Blaukraut]

11. What an utterly depressing poem

And it describes W and the current situation so well; you're right. What rough beast indeed!

[Firespirit]

12. OK, I'll try to chill and hang tight and see how this plays out

I don't trust it yet, but it kind of reminds me of watching a hurricane develop -- a "hobby" I've had since 1999. Storms undergo all kinds of changes. Some are transient and some mushroom. A general rule of thumb I've observed is that if a change in the storm persists through 24 hours, it's a lot more likely to mushroom and become permanent -- or as permanent as anything can be in a weather system that lasts a couple of weeks at most.

Right now we might be entering rapid intensification from a regular hurricane to a badass Category 5 monster that will smash GOPville come November. Or we might not. We'll know soon enough.

(Yes, I've had "a couple" tonight, in case anyone asks. :P)

[ProSense]

13. Frist is probably

trying to increase traffic to his website. Say something controversial, then retract it:

America will Never Negotiate with Terrorists or Support their Entry into Afghanistan's Government
http://www.volpac.org/index.cfm?FuseAction=Blogs.View&Blog_id=483&Month=10&Year=2006

Why hasn't this reached the media yet? I can't even say it's a distraction. Frist is a sleaze!

[Firespirit]

14. Frist is worse than pathetic

"Dr." HAS-BEEN.

I'm not a huge fan of Ford, but he's bound to be better than this useless pathetic cat-killing sociopathic sack of crap currently inhabiting the seat.

[TayTay]

15. Did you see this in TalkingPointsMemo??

(October 02, 2006 -- 10:39 PM EST // link)

Is it me or is all hell breaking loose in this country's politics? We're in the last month of an election cycle and there are maybe four or five stories, each of which could totally dominate the national political news on their own. And each is flaming out of control at once. You've got the Foley debacle. The revelations in the Woodward book. The NIE revelations that almost seem like old news now. A major part of the pre-9/11 story that somehow never saw the light of day and may bring down Condi Rice. And did I mention the election?

-- Josh Marshall

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And yes it can all come down just that fast.

[ProSense]

16. It's amazing! Check out this NYT editorial

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2861280&mesg_id=2861280