La Cosa Nostra

cross-posted at Broadway Carl's Blog-O-Mania

-- NOTE : I am now guest posting over at my friend Broadway Carl's place, this site is still otherwise shut down --

Please allow me to introduce myself.

My nom de plume is Armadillo Joe. My old blog was (is?) called Expatriate Thoughts ...from a Texan living in New York City because, well, because Texans and New Yorkers each think they've got it all figured out, have outsized egos about their own importance and no qualms about telling everyone else what they think. I guess I thought if I could combine the reflected glory of my heart's two homes, I could reach out and change some minds and, well, make a difference.

Somewhere.

Somehow.

After three and a half years of blogging, about three weeks ago, I shuttered that blog with fewer cumulative hits than driftglass gets on an average weekday afternoon. With no audience, I really had to ask myself what I was doing when I realized that my readership was limited to people I could actually call but more probably would just poke individually on Facebook. Who was my audience?

Frankly, I had hoped it could be my dad. My Nixon-hating, Vietnam War-opposing, gun control-supporting, tree & greenery-loving, Navy vet dad. My Reagan Democrat dad. My Clinton-hating, Limbaugh & Hannity-worshipping, Fox News-watching dad. My Texas Republican dad. Who lives in Dallas. Where the most recent ex-President is calling home. Where our last great president died. He chose well, Mr. Bush, as Dallas is an intellectual cesspool swimming with brain-washed Fox News zombies who will loudly and proudly and with guns defend their man should the nation turn on him and demand retribution for any of his crimes, from looting the treasury to authorizing war crimes. My dad would man the barricades with them. And I thought he'd somehow read my measly little blog and get his mind changed.

Ha!

So, not so much. As I learned about a month before the election. More to come on the fine-grained details of that topic.

But it was such a glorious plan, though, really. Because it seemed to me, and to all us bloggers madly clacking away on our keyboards at every outrage emanating from the putrid soul of Nixon's GOP, that in George W. Bush's America, that post-9/11 Märchenland of metasisizing corporate feudalism and billowing pollution with visions of torture and death and drowning amid waking authoritarian nightmares where sons turn their fathers in, it seemed to a few of us that perhaps arranging electrons on a glowing screen into black squiggle-marks expressing thoughts and ideas in a new variation of the ancient Art of Writing in service of our own Résistance française -- our own Radio Free America -- broadcasting it out there into the vast and nebulous inter-webs in an attempt to express our inner anguish, hoping to find like-minded souls from the safety of our homes and apartments (better than a street corner -- beset as they were by GOP brownshirts -- or the Tee-Vee -- infested as it was with bootlicking opinion enforcers), somehow trusting that it all was connecting to someone, somehow, somewhere...

...and trusting that it all mattered.

The seeming futility of it all, at first. When John "Glass-Jaw" Kerry went down in 2004 with $15 million in the bank (some of those were my dollars, BTW) and barely a whimper, I know that I retreated in anger from the internet and almost all other news sources beyond weather and sports for almost six months and it never occured to me to actually post my thoughts on anything like a blog. When I emerged in mid-2005, I read and read and finally had to start writing. And writing. At LiveJournal, here. Then I switched to Blogger, here.

Such grand plans we all had, eh? Well, by the fall of 2006, yes. We helped to turn the tide. And 2008 belongs to us, too. The hard work isn't done, but it is all starting to seem worth it, just a little.

I never changed my dad's mind and I think I may have hardened him in the other direction. Alas, a new day dawns in America without him. I'm with Fraulein here in enjoying how much Barack Hussein Obama drives the racists, and my dad, nuts just by being who he is: post-racial, erudite, urban, intelligent, worldly, classy, urbane and, well, black. Beautifully, dashingly, unambiguously black.

He inspires me.

I'm guest-posting here at Broadway Carl's invitation, because if Billmon can return from the dead, I guess I can too.

Thanks for reading.

Haiku

My friend Broadway Carl gets some love from The Rude One in the wake of his call for 2008 End od the Year political haiku:

One day soon Limbaugh
Will clutch his chest and collapse
I will dance a jig

Other good ones:

From Chuck D. (no, not that one):
Farewell, W.
Please accept this flying shoe
As your good-bye gift.


From The Rude One:
Did Giuliani
really think America
needs Nosferatu?

Obama said, “Yes,
we can.” And we finally
believed that we could.

Regarding Justice

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Simply Marvelous

Not as angry with the Obama Administration right now. Still bitter about the ugliness of the naked pandering in the Rick Warren selection, sure, but this story about a quieter and far more morally commendable aspect of the inauguration is the kind of small-scale victory that I hope will only become more pervasive and commonplace as the idealism inspired by the ascent of Barack Hussein Obama takes hold of the national psyche (from NYTimes, via Mahablog):

ON Thursday, Dec. 11, Jim Donnelly got the call at his office on Jay Street in Dumbo for the biggest job he had ever had. Emmett Beliveau, the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, told him that Precise Continental, Mr. Donnelly’s 26-year-old printing company, had won the bid to produce one million gold-and-black engraved invitations for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

[...]

Precise Continental was selected over rival printers because it is a union company, it uses recycled paper and it is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which promotes responsible forest management.

[...]

“This is a real economy,” Mr. Donnelly said of the printing business. “This is not that bogus economy of Wall Street. This country used to manufacture things.”

Yo, Brooklyn, U.S.A.! BTW, Dumbo means Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass for those who don't live in New York.

Good, well-made, earth-friendly products, made by solid union labor, and made in America (howevermuch this particular part may be judged as "anti-" by people whose forefathers committed treason by seceding - natch). Despite a faltering economy, some of my union brothers and sisters are working this holiday season and that is a good thing.

Happy Christmahanakwanzika everybody.

More Shooz

OK, time to wade in hip deep. We all saw this:



and this is what The Editors had to say about it. I happen to agree whole-heartedly:

George W. Bush has spent most of his life fucking things up horribly, and then escaping any consequences for his incompetence and indifference. This is who he is. What you have seen is not a moment of quick thinking, it was the man’s essence.

So may this shoe-throwing moment come to represent his entire presidency, in fact it can and likely will become the very symbol of his whole miserable life.

Though I was rooting for the pretzel.

Conservatism's creed, simplified

From driftglass:

1. “The common good” is an evil delusion
2. Looking out for "the least of these" is a Socialist plot.
3. Looking out for Number One is next to Godliness.
4. And therefore the rules of courtesy, reciprocity, tolerance and prudence are strictly for suckers.

Smart & Angry

Matt Taibbi is truly a journalistic rock star. He is a latter-day Hunter S. Thompson who is angry and sharp-witted and can basically out-argue pretty much anyone.

And his prose style is vicious. I love this guy.

He writes for Rolling Stone magazine as well as at The Smirking Chimp and below is what he had to say about Moose-a-lini. I meant to highlight this a few weeks ago but got side-tracked until a conversation with my sister yesterday reminded me about it:

Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

[...]

[Sarah Palin] appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, "five children later" is "still my guy." It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

[...]

Barack Obama might be every bit as much a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.

Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

Lest you think he can only function in front of a word processor and not really think on his feet, check out this exchange with Byron York of the National Review (h/t John Cole at Balloon Juice):

M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don’t understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I’m interested to hear.
Because what we’re talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?

B.Y.: Are you suggesting that critics of Fannie and Freddie are talking about the default of a single homeowner?

M.T.: No. That is what you call a figure of speech. I’m saying that you’re talking about individual homeowners defaulting. But these massive companies aren’t going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They’re going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond. I’m still waiting to hear what your idea is of how these trades work. I’m guessing you’ve never even heard of them.

I mean really. You honestly think a company like AIG tanks because a bunch of minorities couldn’t pay off their mortgages?

B.Y.: When you refer to “Phil Gramm’s Commodities Future Modernization Act,” are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?

M.T.: In point of fact I’m talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.

Tick tick tick. Hilarious sitting here while you frantically search the Internet to learn about the cause of the financial crisis — in the middle of a live chat interview.

B.Y.: Look, you can keep trying to make this a specifically partisan and specifically Gramm-McCain thing, but it simply isn’t. We’ve gone on for fifteen minutes longer than scheduled, and that’s enough. Thanks.

M.T.: Thanks. Note, folks, that the esteemed representative of the New Republic has no idea what the hell a credit default swap is. But he sure knows what a minority homeowner looks like.

B.Y.: It’s National Review.

Because they are all stupid.

They have no core principles or ideas beyond easily regurgitated catch-phrases and when pressed for actual facts, they inevitably choke because they cannot summon any answers more intricate than the GOP-HQ-issued talking points. So, I can easily say to our dear friend Byron York, nice try but...

...SWING AND A MISS!

Wild Thing, you make my heart sing...

So, I don't know when this happened, but I am now among driftglass' "Wild Things." As Strong Bad would say: "Check me out. No really, check me out!"

I got some traffic from driftglass, which I found out when morris b. clued me in in a comment from a post I wrote several weeks ago. I may be slow on the uptake, but I did let d.g. know I am grateful. FWIW, this is what I wrote in a comment -

I'm writing to you here because it's your latest post, so sorry for being off-topic. Thank you for adding me to your Blog Roll. I don't know when you did, but I got some traffic from you and I am much obliged. I'm a huge fan of your work so I consider it quite a honor to be counted among your Wild Things.

This has been an Expatriate Thoughts Special News Bulletin. You may now resume regular blogging and political junkie inter-web surfing.

Layout for morris b.

Made some changes for reader morris b., who not only complimented me on my similarity to the ever-impressive driftglass (if only my crayon-on-indian-pad scrawl was even in the same universe as d.g.'s fiery eloquence - but thank you for the props, morris), but in so doing offered some pointers for improving his Thoughtfully Expatriating Experience.

Happy to help, m.b.

So, readers, you see how suggestible I am? Keep 'em coming. I can't promise money or sexual favors, but just about anything else is yours to be had for just a little attaboy.

Our Energy Future

So, I got a little tip in the comments from my (now old, in blog years positively pre-historic) post about a post-oil future from July 22nd. Doctor Biobrain (who I once read daily, until I wasn't on my computer daily, so now I read him every couple of days - whenever I can get time on my computer... you know what I'm saying) clued me in on a little secret - and I quote:

Dilithium crystals are created by filtering unicorn farts at high speeds through fusion-induced rainbows

Wow. If only I had known it was that easy, I wouldn't have been so gloomy about this whole Peak Oil business.

But I'm mostly stoked that Doctor Biobrain read something I wrote.

I love blogging.

The Inter-Webs: Not Just For Political Blogging and Porn!

So, via a site that I don't visit nearly often enough (unspeak.net), I found a link to another website called wordle.net where I was able to generate this totally awesome thing called a "Wordle" from the text of my blog:



But you can do it with any text you like. For instance, here's the text of Obama's wonderful speech on race from a few months ago:



And this is from "Hamlet," 'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!' (Act 2, scene 2, 555-612):



And this is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:



And those are just the one's I made myself, here's a link to their gallery. I found these gems, like "Santeria" by Sublime:



And "Sweet Child O' Mine" by G-n-R:



And the entire text of "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy"



And "The Raven":



And, in honor of Billy Joel's performance tonight at Shea (the final music performance ever at Shea - apart from the national anthem at Mets games), and to highlight my friend Broadway Carl having attended the second-to-last show night before last, I give you "We Didn't Start The Fire":



Seriously, go check it out. It's a lot of fun, actually.

.

joy

Two things bring me joy today.

One - the GOP is so embarrassed by W that they want him to stay away from the convention. I hope this trend continues into his post-presidency across all his social arrangements. Perhaps universal shunning will have to replace the orange jumpsuit and shackles I normally wish to see set upon Fibby McLiesAlot and his entire putrid administration in their post-White House years. For a man who thinks history will vindicate him after he has met his maker in some kind of Harry Truman-esque rehabilitation of his legacy and reputation - and until his dying day protected from any sort of punishment by a power-worshipping political culture long since curdled by fallout from the Nixon years coupled to the insidious power of the Bush Crime Family - unreturned phonecalls and an empty datebook will have to suffice as punishment for the aging, dull-witted, frat-rat man-child who will soon shuffle off the stage of history. I rather like the idea of him white-haired and doddering around his Texas ranch, hollering at Laura, muttering to himself about how he beat his daddy by not only getting elected twice but by taking down Saddam Hussein to boot and wondering - sometimes aloud to Laura or to whichever sycophant Rethugli-doofus came by to lick his boots that day and sometimes to no one in particular as he clears brush in the blazing Texas sun - why no one comes calling to get his perspective on things.

Two - Johm McSame hates me.

As Oscar Wilde once wrote - the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. And, as an ex-girlfriend once said to me - the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

(heh-heh)

I can't figure out which thing makes me happier.

Double h/t to C&L

GOPieta

Infrequent blogging recently (very busy now with more to come) but this tidbit from driftglass analyzing the collective Village freak-out over Wes Clarke's perfectly reasonable comment on Johm McSame's willingness to use his ex-POW-status as mighty shield against any manner of questioning of any kind ever for all time until the end of history (authoritarianism is just such a knee-jerk impulse for all those droves of Rethugli-bot sheep that McBush is a natural - why do they hate him so?) was too intergalacticly awesome to go un-noted:

For seven years, the cowards, crazies and chickenhawks of the GOP have carried out their crimes and betrayals by scampering behind a series of blinds. Like insurgents caching weapons in a mosque and then crying “Infidel!” at anyone who tries to drive them out, the Republican Party set up their filthy, fascist sniper’s nest inside the death and terror of 9/11 and used the shadow of that tragedy to shield their treason from public view.

[...]

...at long last, they are starting to find Senator McSame attractive: the thrilling prospect that his years as a POW will offer the GOP one, last safe-house into which they can crawl and from which they can operate their despicable enterprises in relative safety for a just little bit longer.

Writing that sharp and darkly poetic makes me wonder why I even bother blogging when just reading driftglass first will save a click or two. Please, just go read the whole thing.

Let this picture inspire you:

Important Question

Is Obama a Muslim?

...Pass it on...


UPDATE:
Not enough info?

Try here.

Now, pass that on...

(h/t Broadway Carl, via Dr. Biobrain)

Dreams Really Can Come True

OK, so they haven't actually done this yet, but they might. John Conyers has issued subpoenas for Karl "Dark Sith Lord" Rove to testify before Congress, which he has repeatedly refused, in the Don Siegelman case. I haven't written a whole lot about it, even though I carry a Don Siegelman banner on my sidebar, but I think this is one of the pivotal conflicts before us in this country right now.

It is not exaggerating to say that Don Siegleman was sent to jail for being a popular member of the opposing party. The particulars of his case you can read here, but not only was his election victory fraudulently stolen in the middle of the night (after it had been called in his favor) with a surge of votes from one precinct, these same operators (at the behest of Rove) trumped up a bribery charge and sent him to jail.

'Cuz they like to twist the knife after they stick it in.

Now, I've argued for a long time that the so-called "New South" is little better than a third-world shithole pretending to be part of the modern world, a failing only masked in the popular imagination by the fact that they speak English. The brand of politics practiced down there is mostly akin to the kind one finds in a corrupt banana republic - complete with violence-prone paramilitary shock troops to enforce the political doctrines of the ruling class on the general populace - the Klan, in case I hadn't been obvious enough. The fact that they're jailing the opposition party is just a natural evolution of a system of (mis)rule they've been perfecting since before the Civil War.

At any rate, Conyers has had enough. (From Paul Kiel at TPM Muckracker via C&L)

Just off the House floor today, the Crypt overheard House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers tell two other people: “We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.”

Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn’t, said Conyers, “We’ll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We’d hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested.”

[…] Yesterday, in somewhat more diplomatic language, Conyers refused Rove’s offer to testify in writing.

Well, it seems the MSM is finally catching on as well. Catherine Crier talking to Dan Abrams on "The Verdict." (Also via C&L):

I’m a big rule of law (fan), this has nothing to do with politics for me, it is respecting the rule of law, regardless of Democrat or Republican, and at this point in time if they don’t show back bone then there are not three branches of government in this country.

We moonbats in the looney left have been trying to tell the numbskulls in the press for a long time that these people are dangerous. I just hope they haven't caught on too late.

Nothing to see here

Go read d r i f t g l a s s.

This Just In....

Armadillo Slow here just found The Group News Blog, where former commenters at and contributors to the late, great Steve Gilliard's unrivalled News Blog (including the recently linked at this very site Sara Robinson) soldier on in his name.  

I used to link to The News Blog all the time.  If you are wondering about what it was, or who Steve was, I blogged about it at my old site here and here.

I just added The Group News Blog to my Blog Corral.

You may now resume normal programming.

Now that's writing

Driftglass is a blogger I frequented several years ago, but stopped for one reason or another, in that way you check a certain blog multiple times a day for a few weeks or months until they start a line of topics you aren't interested in, or they reveal some sort of ugly thing about themselves or their beliefs or you simply disagree with something they write. Sometimes, they stop posting for a period of time and you move on in the interim. Other times, you just find yourself reading them less and less until one day you realize you haven't been there for several months and stop going altogether. I don't remember why I stopped reading driftglass, but I checked back over there today for the first time in a couple of years.

Glad I did.

Boy howdy am I glad I did.

I wish I could write as succinct a deconstruction of right-wing blow-hards as this beautiful piece of word craft decimates and then obliterates William "The Bloody" Kristol:

It’s not that Kristol is a bad writer, but that he is a painfully bad writer. A painfully bad writer with his own little cabin “of clay and wattles made” smack in the middle of the NYT.

[...]

The problem with Kristol is that what he genuinely believes is both execrable and ossified to the point that he has becomes a self-parody: a bile dispenser with a permanent, death’s-head-rictus grin lacquered to the front of his skull.

He’s a fascist -- out-and-out -- in a country that fought a World War to eradicate the diseased, degenerate ideology that is at the dead, dark heart of NeoConservatism. Kristol is a True Believer in something truly evil...

[...]

And so like the entire Right Wing Noise Machine, outside of some cold, lumpy, boiler-plate pabulum about “Luvin Murrica!” the bulk of Kristol’s words are always devoted to lashing acidly out.

With him – as with the rest of the the Noise Machine – it is all-attacking-all-the-time. And in that world, a piece of oratory or page of writing is judged not by how well it advances an argument or cogently and persuasively is debates policy, but instead is measured almost exclusively by how much it offends, irritates and mocks the Dirty Fucking Hippies.

It is hatespeech-as-genre; a genre in which Kristol is so saturated that he cannot go more than a paragraph or two without reflexively trying to shiv a Liberal somewhichway. Kristol and his ilk remind me of nothing so much as a German National Socialist from, say, 1931; so steeped in hateful ideology that they literally cannot resist slipping “…and because of the Dirty Jews” into every argument.

Kristol’s writing fails in its first duty because he shows us nothing.

He risks nothing.

He illuminates nothing.

Instead he has built himself a toasty little sniper's nest on the roof of the New York Times and merrily pot-shots anything to the left of Mussolini.

If I were immortal and had unlimited word processing resources, I could type for 2000 years and not produce anything half as incisive as just those few, terse and searing lines.

So, driftglass, welcome back to my regular readership and just on the strength of the posts currently on the front page of your blog, I'm placing you in my blog corral.

That should reliably increase readership over there by at least two to two and a half people.