BLOG POLITICS

As you probably gathered from recent posts, I’ve been spending far too much time in the blogosphere attempting to grok the fullness of it, and today the report from the ether is categorically political. The following snippet is from the right, quoted by a solid Bush supporter who wants not only to outlaw a woman’s right to choose, and take us back (all except the rich) to the backstreet horror of pre-Roe v Wade, but also make abortion the conservative litmus test yet again. The interview with Wes Clarke is by Joseph McQuaid of the Manchester Union-Leader,

Clark: I don't think you should get the law involved in abortion.
McQuaid: At all?
Clark: Nope.
McQuaid: Late-term abortion? No limits?
Clark: Nope.
McQuaid: Anything up to delivery?
Clark: Nope, nope.
McQuaid: Anything up to the head coming out of the womb?
Clark: I say that it's up to the woman and her doctor, her conscience...You don't put the law in there.

And after that the commentary departs into a fantasy of waiting until the fetus is at it’s junior prom and killing it on the dancefloor. Meanwhile, a liberal/progressive blog offers a clip from the New York Times...

Consultants for Mr. Bush have tried in vain to get him to control his smirk. Still, the smirk slips out from time to time, as it did during the president's State of the Union address when Democrats clapped at Mr. Bush's warning that the Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law, would soon
expire. “Bush is vulnerable when that smirk rears its ugly head,” said a Republican strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It comes across as not only cocky, but arrogant, and nobody likes an arrogant politician.”

And since I so totally agree with this, let’s work the smirk, in hope the whole country sees him revealed by it as a sneering, lying, oaf-of-a-richboy with neither wit, brains, or conscience. In other words, let them see him the way I do.

LATE POST

Roger reminds us that this is the 45th aniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. (See comments board.) No wonder it was such a rotten and bloody day. Maybe more on the subject tomorrow.

FROM THE EMAIL (And there’s a ton of it – which is good because it saves me ranting at the end of a wet and wretched Monday.)

Doug Lunn, master bassplayer and once and future Deviant passes along the following shaggy president joke...

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?" The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and 9-11, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, he and Powell are caught in their lie that the weapons inspectors were thrown out of Iraq under Clinton, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press conference. So we're taking up a collection for him."
The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"
The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning."

And our old pal Henry Cabot Beck comments, first on last weekend’s terror alert...

Well, the prognosis was that we'd get hit on Jan 7th (I got this from an inside-the-news source). and that came and went, and then we were worried about the Superbowl. and I was told last week of Jan, first week of Feb, and that doesn't seem to be happening. We're like kids waiting for dad to come home, either to punish us or bring us a present--I guess it's where anticipation meets anxiety. And cynical me keeps saying keep your gloomy forecasts to yourself--it may well fucking happen, just like death, but worrying is just tossing your energy down a suckhole, and I haven't got all that much to spare. What's more, it's the worst kind of self important self indulgence. But then you know that. Them fucking terrists. All buildup and no punchline. We've been living a shaggy dog joke for 2 1/2 years. I'm just glad I'm not Catholic--they're prefab doom clocks--original sin sundials, the whole lot.

And on the German cannibal conviction (see Saturday Jan 31st), to which HCB alerted us to in the first place...

Still doesn't explain the ten wiener/eight bun conundrum. Funny, though, that cannibalism isn't illegal in Germany. It's like that old Lenny Bruce routine about drafting legislation to deal with animal sexual abuse--there had to be a crime for the legislature to draft a law “The sheep aren't safe! What are they doing in Sacramento?”

Finally from Mike Stax, editor of Ugly Things, the great garage band ‘zine, or, as he bills it, “wild sounds from past dimensions.”

Re: the upcoming elections. Now that the media has marginalized Dean completely it seems Kerry is our only hope of salvation from Dubya. While I'm not exactly knocked out with Kerry, he does have at least three things going for him:
1) He played bass in a garage band in the 60s -- OK an East Coast prep school band, but it's oddly comforting to know that he has more than a passing acquaintance with R&R. (They were called the Electras; there's a pretty great photo of them on the Internet somewhere.)
2) He protested against the Vietnam War -- after fighting in it.
3) He could, just possibly, beat Bush.

LINK

Our homegirl hipspinster has a great blog on David Bowie live in LA at http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

CRYPTIQUE – Don’t vex me, MacGregor!