BLCKDGRD

Hood On Your Blands

Russia-Georgia gives McCain a bounce in the polls? Here's a question: How many innocent lives will be saved in October if McCain is ten points up instead of Obama?

Hah! a rhetorical question. Missiles will be flying - American and/or a proxy's - come October, the number calculated to the level of belligerence necessary to ensure Republican victory. Fewer die if McCain is winning, more die if Obama's winning. Is it complicity to goad Bushco/GOP, who view the military as a propaganda organ AND private security force, to gin up violence against innocent civilians to maintain power?

Some yes but more no, but no only if you understand that if Obama wins despite, the lesson won't be lost, though supposing Obama needs to be taught that lesson is ruby.

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• Can I also point out that Obama had better get the crackers to scream nigger, because if he loses because he's a suckbucket - and Obama, as of this struck ! is a suckbucket, though this is better - think his devoutest won't blame racism? Mofos, if Obama loses because of racism, let's see some racism.
• Saaaaay, this wasn't predictable: David Brooks says it's not John McCain's fault he's running a rovian campaign, he was forced to, the saying of which has the advantage of being both true and dishonest.
• The most willfully stupid and self-serving column Dionne has ever written. Helping the poor. Jeebus.
• Mwa-ha-awfuckit. Though I know a guy who owns twenty-sided dice and used to blog. Oh, and a response to this bullet's catalyst. And another.
• Rightwing bloggers = Italian soccer players?
• Truth in advertising, motherfuckers.
• Advertising? Obama's suckbucketful.
• Russian Bear = The Monkees?
• Mwa-ha-awfuckit.
• More Kafka and porn.
• Realist fiction and propaganda.
• Dan's long rumination on Steven Millhauser. I read Martin Dressler years ago, but he's fallen away. Time to pick up.
• Max's list of novels for vacations. Some John Irving love there.

Updates later. Or not.

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Former lover Jill St John is SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD TODAY:

I was only twelve at the time, mind.

So distraught that I dumped her, she dated Henry Kissinger in self-lacerating despair.

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In my head. Be in yours.

Fine Damnlessness Abounds

Not damnlessness, August's blurry focus.

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• Entertain me. I mean, who's Obama gonna lose, people who won't vote for him under any circumstances? (Which is why McCain will always poll at least 42%, so chill.)
• Ioz reminds you to follow the money.
• Agi reminds you to follow the empire.
• Pastor Gerson wants you to know he's not religiously infantile.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Goat Sleaze.
• Colin McKenzie-GUDE?
• I don't see many movies, but I will see this.
• Lit-linky goodness.

Updates later. Or not.

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When a chickenhawk asks you about the existential threat of al-Q:

GOKE! and PODE!

Rube's Code requires I admit that POKE! and GOAD! is a fine strategy to use against me, which is unneeded proof I'm a rube with a rooting interest, and just how fracking ruby is that.

Obama can't call McCain's cracker-trolling cracker-trolling, and I'll pull my ethical hamstring and snit furiously about obamapostasy because he doesn't, which is, what's the word I'm looking for..... STUPID!

But... don't tell me America doesn't want slap-reality show politics, and it's only August 3 and OMFG! Handbags!

If this election is the most important election ever since the last most important election ever and until the next most important election ever, we'd better get down to poking raw nerves and goading from the gutter. Fracking Crackerstan.

OH! Anyone want to bet a pint that HRC won't be Obama's vpotus choice?

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• Maybe The Dark Knight is a fascist wetdream.
• Maybe The Dark Knight is a fascist wetdream.
• We need to pay fucking attention.
• Danzig USA.
• "Uppity's" synonyms, coming soon.
• War on the middle class, part one, part two.
• Happy Anniverary, Bitchez!
• Wal-Mart: Why They Suck.
• Mercenary country.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Friday hope blogging.
• Kevin Drum chides Andrew Sullivan. We. Are. So. Fucked.

UPDATES!

• Debate Obama's debate strategy.
• McCain was never a straight-talker, an irony now that it's obvious he's a buffoon, though give professional media contortionists time and they'll embarrass themselves justifying their reinvented love-ooze.
• The answer to the question sub-head is YES!
• This Fellowjeff is writing about PERE UBU! with mp3 candy!
• This Fellowjeff is mourning the death of a summer voice, reminding me of Bob Prince.
• Dan reviews the new Wood.
• Saving Segundo!
• Meditation on Human Smoke.
• A new Ashbery uses the word "Oprah."
• Thoughts on The Booker. More, here.
• Oodles of lit-links.
• Savannah Cat? Not a cougar.
• Fabulously wealthy bemoan loss of ice cream store to corporate interests that make them fabulously wealthy!
  

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Food for thought:

And I'd Do It Again

Obamadmiration makes me feel obamasinine, so it's not love when I obamapplaud obamarmy for not just returning fire but opening fire (he says from a completely morally-neutral spectator of game-playing perch, urp).

Obama play the race card? I kinda look like Eisenhower, but a dime's worth shit anyway even if you kept them in your wallet.

If Obama's strategists, my friends, think poking a half-daft ballistically-tempered time bomb is a good idea, I scream POKE! and GOAD! my friends, POKE! and GOAD!

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• Race card? Black man and white skanks is race card? Oh my!
• Pastor Gerson likes Kaine, which disqualifies Kaine in my book.
• The world's second most shitty human (Blanco won) hates Pelosi, which increases Pelosi's points in my book.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• If you haven't read Ed on future of newspapers and litblogs, do.
• Bob Barr will be 44th president?
• Exactly right.
• Ana Popovic?
• Obama's too fit to be elected. No, really.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Today's birthday has chinacat sunflowers on Franklin's Tower.

UPDATES

• Babs signals she's running for re-election.
• Marysurveillanceland.
• Going through the motions.
• Just because Joe Klein is saying things now one agrees with doesn't mean he isn't the same stooge he was when he was saying things you don't.
• Does enjoying Rachel Maddow slap Pat Buchanan to stuttering rage implicate me in any toxic-stank of complicity?
• Clarksburg Historical District?
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Jack? Shit.
• Like you need another reason to hate Wal-Mart.
• Hey, someone writing about Elkin! (h/t Mark)
• Eclectic bunch of downloads.
  

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OK, click on that to see just how good a photograph that is. It's even more astonishing when downloaded to your desktop and set as your wallpaper. Yes, Planet is a genius. Send me an email if you want it and I'll mail it to you.

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In my head. Be in yours.

Rubitudinous!

Can I remind everyone excoriating Obamawful (dibs BDR!) over FISA that we who are excoriating Obamawful over FISA are despised by most and disdained by all but us'uns? We are the relative at family reunions who sparks involuntary oh-shit grimaces when first seen by grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws.

Even if Obamawful was one of us he couldn't run as one of us, so bitch and moan theatrically or bitch and moan stupidly, scream OMFG! Obamawful isn't campaigning to win our self-righteously strident hearts. If I was Obamawful, I would not only be running away from me, I'd be running with the amoral pliability of this fister.

Obamawful isn't one of us. He wants to be president.

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• World's Shittiest Human hates Obama, which is reason to vote Obama.
• Pastor Gerson likes Obama's religiosity, which is reason not to vote Obamawful.
• Tony Perkins hates Obama, which is reason to vote Obama.
• In case you forgot.
• Peggy Noonan and the McCain Stink Finger.
• Yeah, name this assclown pig-vpotus candidate.
• Henley on yesterday's Heller ruling.
• Richard Cohen gets Wolcotted.
• Big Dog, Little Tail.

UPDATES!

• HEY! Another GHS graduate reaches glory!
• The difference between rights and power.
• How neoliberalism kills.
• Elitism for dummies.
• Doctorow on America as White Whale.
• Nixon and Elvis.
• Contrarianism Today!
• Advertising links.
• Friday Hope Blogging.

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Quit the rubitude: mofos, I'm not giving up next Spring's England vacation with Planet and Earthgirl to donate the money and time to rebuilding a house in Appalachia washed out in an early April flood. I'll send $50 to Red Cross and get me to some Premiership games. Any of you soon-to-be ex-pats living in London in protest of Obamawful, I'll buy you a pint.

My unitary theory of self-interested rubity, mofos.

..

Obamawful's gonna get him a couple, too. Is there a question in your statement, ma'am?

Three Lifetimes Ago

Snigger.

.

Yawn. Clearly the professional piguglies are ceding June to the amateur piguglies.

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• Obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy.
• And fuck Steny Hoyer too.
• Variable 666.
• Is the ICC still necessary?
• Minimum wage's not-so-happy birthday.
  
• Excellent lit-snark. I agree completely that David Foster Wallace is a used Honda Civic in "great" condition. I confess I love the F-14 fighter pilots shooting missiles at cacti in Nevada (P much more than D), and wonder where Powers fits.
• Adam Bede summer assignment? I'll try to catch up, but...
• I read Stoner years ago, back when the label was apt, but not for that reason.
• Patrick Hamilton?

Updates later. Or not.

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Yes, Evelyn, it's me. Here's the song.

Yes, I'm happy. I'm very glad to hear you are too.

Here, have this too.

Happily Aarghless in Aarghville!

I'm not surprised I'm enjoying my decompression, though I am shocked to not feel the slightest symptoms of the bends. Remember that six centuries between Texas/Ohio and Pennsylvania? Ba'al, that's a blink compared to the five months ahead, and no use raging about the ugly until the ugly truly gurgles. I can wait, and while waiting, turn to urgent matters.

Here's what I want to know: yesterday, at the club watching the fabulous last twenty minutes of Turkey/Czech Republic on the arc, the front desk had tuned in the 80s' muzak station: How far from consciousness have 10,000 Maniacs fallen?

...

Natalie Merchant, another of my former lovers, and her session band were HUGE! Absolutely ubiquitous on the radio, everywhere.

I confess, I'd always preferred looking at Natalie Merchant than hearing her. I never bought any 10K Maniacs or her solo stuff (for me; for Earthgirl, yes). The music didn't offend (beyond spawning shitty 10K Maniac imitation bands like the truly shitty Edie Brickell and Her Band of Shitty Set Musicians). I don't miss hearing it (though it didn't bother me to hear it then, or yesterday). I was just surprised when hearing it yesterday how long it'd been since I'd heard any.

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• Still, Obama is a smart politician.
• Still, Obama is a smart politician.
• Why Hillary as veep. Why not Hillary as veep.
• Leave them alone to grieve, all will be OK.
• Leave them alone to grieve, all will be OK.
• Though is deserves remembering that mcauliffisters turned me anti-Clinton, cause if she surrounds herself with mcauliffisters, she's a mcauliffister.
• A maverick unto himself.
• This is sooooo going to happen.
• Mo'better Liberals, please.
• My only acknowledgment is posting this.
• Today's Tool or Fool candidate is clearly tool.
• Water sanitation problems of the Third World.
• Three days late, Friday Hope Blogging.
• NO WAVE!
• Don't anger the cat. (Or, this is the cat my Sara would be if she wasn't a, um, coward.)
• Kitten Warz: The Sequel.

Updates later. Or not.

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Google weirdness updated:

pOOf! After seven days of 600+ hits a day on this, yesterday at precisely 4PM EDT, the spigot was shut off, and I've not received one hit on those search terms since. WTF?

No, seriously. WTF?

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Kitten Warz resuming? Fleabus, staying alert?

Obamadvocacy: Obamapostasy

I am surprised I think America will surprise this November, not because Obama is jeebus, because the pigugly will be so toxic as to horrify all but the pigugly, and I'm rube enough to think the true and devoutly pigugly are a minority.

This has always been the core of my obamadvocacy: Goad. Poke. We are the enemy.

That Obama appears better than advertised, that his opponent is Misteridiculous, lordy, the forecast is for pig-tornadoes, pig-hurricanes, pig-earthquakes, pig-volcanoes, pig-splatter.

Excellent.

And if the pig-tornadoes, pig-hurricanes, pig-earthquakes, pig-volcanoes, pig-splatter work?

Excellent. Not in a good way, but necessarily excellent nonetheless.

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• It is surely just a coincidence that Obama is looking lustfully at the five year old white girl. Buy the tee-shirt!
• Pastor Gerson, I swear to Ba'al, begrudges the significance of a black man as major candidate for president, but says the true miracle is John McCain, who was soooooo tortured in Vietnam. He watches snuff films in his VC pajamas, the Pastor.
• Modo, I swear to Ba'al, is a hack and viper and one truly shitty writer, which, sans self-aware irony, allows her to capture the zeitgeist of the post-ironic cocktail set.
• Tom Friedman, I swear to Ba'al, is stupider than his mischievous evil, more evil than his mustache.
• Speaking of stupid and evil, Max Boot

....

says his victory spear's limpness is Baghdad's fault.

• Short list? Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Sam Nunn.
• Revenge of the Paultards.
• How to (not) spot anti-Semitism. (h/t Richard)
• Some fine dampen your enthusiasm here.

UPDATES later. Or not.

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Obama is a tool. He won't be nationalizing the energy industry. He won't saw off an inch of any leg of the military industrial complex. He won't sign a single piece of legislation that isn't aimed at strengthening American empire. He will be beholden to moneyed interests. He will be a bitter disappointment to believers in Obamajeebus.

But he might send a few more dollars to Head Start. He might nominate for SCOTUS a less piggy pig than Sam Alito. He's got to be less shitty than Misteridiculous.

The difference may be between an owner who gives his dog half a biscuit versus an owner who gives his dog no biscuit after letting the dog back in after shoving the dog out in a thunderstorm to piss.

Whether to feel grateful for the half biscuit is the moral debate. The dog owner certainly thinks you should.

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In my head? Be in yours:

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In my head?

Hey, Ilse, here's the Siouxie song I couldn't remember a couple of weeks ago:

Nobamadoom!

Rube that I am in a youtubed world, I think the Right's crazy uncles will scare the bejeebus out of everyone but fellow crazy uncles, especially as Obama's edge increases in proportion to their craziness. Obama will drive the Right's insane insane.

I've seen nothing from Obama's campaign that suggests they aren't prepared for what the Right will spew and not agile enough to parry and then counter-attack and drive them crazier. I've seen nothing from the Right that suggests they won't happily go as crazy as they really really want, and boy do they want.

I say minus youtubes of Michelle Obama screeching to the amening that all white male infants be de-balled during circumcision and Obama in dyshiki personally handing briefcases of $20s to Osama bin Laden, Obama stomps.

I bet you an India Pale Ale of your choosing Obama kicks McCain's lame ass come November.

And that's before taking into account 10% unemployment, $5.50 gallon gas, families living in refrigerator boxes after their homes are foreclosed, that whole Iraq clusterfuck thingee, and every and all Bushco shitpiles that'll be squeezed out like rancid poodle-grapes between now and November as Bushco insiders and sycophants try to get ahead of their legal peril by dumping their turds during the noise of the election.

Takers?

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• Republican Christianity explained.
• A new twist on the old story of Liberal success.
• I agree: Webb as veep is doubling-down on Obama as elite meme. Another nope for Webb.
• Dionne says Biden as veep is Obama's best choice for re-establishing empire momentum.
• The single most condescending Hillary column ever written. Yes, of course it's Richard Cohen. Imagine Cohen unlatching his sansabelts and massaging his balls as he basked in his brilliance upon the column's completion. Punditry! bitches.
• In the Fred Hiatt: Tool or Fool debate, Poor Man says fool.
• We're not going to blog our way out of our cages: A Reminder.
• A response to yesterday's Krugman column.

UPDATES

• Sadly, No! goes Applebaum where I hadn't the energy.
• Failure and the imperial temptation.
• The depth of belief that Obama was the establishment candidate is constantly astonishing.
• The depth of belief that misogyny main cause of Clinton's defeat constantly astonishing.
• Misogyny in the Clinton campaign?
• More Misteridiculous.

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Yesterday a colleague at BoB, in a comment to a post of his declaring his Obamadoom, offered up the elite-meme against Obama to another colleagues defense of Obama:

So my next post and those ever after (until the Labor Day Gallup poll is released) will be roses and rainbows, singing the praises of the Exalted One. The One in who’s name everything that’s wrong with the world will be right…

wOOf!to my wOOt!

Mofos, beyond rooting for the uniform, which is everything, beyond acceptance that Obama is a brilliant product with brilliant (so far) marketing, beyond proof yet that Obama's any less hollow than any other product on the market, here's what I expect out of an Obama presidency:

Anything better than slightly less shitty than a McCain presidency is gravy.

Just slightly less shitty than McCain ain't much, but it's still better than just as shitty.

Post-Primary Blues Explained, or: Gummi-Bears Don't Spread Darkness and Death, Do They?

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• What went wrong is that the candidate who ran on inevitability in a change election lost to the insurgent.
• I never expected Paul Krugman to be a poor loser.
• Bill Kristol preemptively blames McCain's campaign.
• I suppose this doesn't qualify as obamapostasy since one must have been a believer first, but....
• Though Obama telling Joe Lieberman to STFU? Wins points from me.
• Fred Hiatt defends his complicity, implicitly absolving his op-ed page of any duty but cheer-leading.
• Eighteen million hostages.
• Comcastic!
• I guarantee the asshole who did this won't vote for Obama.
• Oof! Vendler attacked, Vendler responds. Tepid, actually, but the criticism of Vendler is valid.
• I haven't got the bolanorgasms (or not enough to learn how to tilde my Spanish Ns), but I think Ed is somewhat sick of the universal hallelujahs for bolanorgasms.

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In my head. Be in yours:

See, here's the thing. If I forced myself to play a stupid desert island disc game, New Order wouldn't be in my top five, maybe not in my top ten, but there's ALWAYS a New Order song in my head.