The Tattlesnake – Political Short Cuts Part Deux Edition

More short sour snipes at some prominent political and media figures of our bloated Blutocracy, in no particular order.

WI Supreme Court Justice David Prosser – Proudly relying on a former underling and ardent GOP activist to discover more than enough 'accidentally uncounted' votes two days after losing the election to miraculously make him the victor, Prosser has shown himself to be in the same league of unembarrassed conservative judicial giants as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. No doubt if there is ever again a Republican president haunting the White House, Prosser will be at the top of his or her list of US Supreme Court nominees, eclipsed only by the fine legal minds of Scooter Libby, Louie Gohmert and Orly Taitz.

Ann Coulter – Anorexic in appearance; emaciated in thought; bulimic in speech. In other words, she never changes.

Mike Huckabee – His Christian devotion to integrity would be breathtaking to behold at some point in the future. As it is, we just have to take his assurance that he follows the teachings of Jesus on faith, as no independent evidence exists to confirm this assertion.

President Barack Obama – Apparently content to advance through constant retreat which, if you believe the world is round, would eventually result in him sneaking up on his enemies from behind. Conversely, his political opponents believe the world is flat, which is why they're falling off the edge like lemmings. In any race to the bottom, Obama's antagonists have the shorter drop.

GOP 'House Budget Czar' Rep. Paul Ryan – A man whose idea of balancing the budget involves giving away money to the rich and then hoping they will take pity on your impoverished state and provide you with a good job. It's part of the lethal charm of Republican reptiles to insist that this 'perpetual motion machine' of economic thought, which has failed repeatedly in the past, is sure to work this time around. Of course, Ryan himself will have a good job in the future, in or out of politics, inadvertently paid for by the destitute taxpayers without their knowledge.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie – In a large bowl, combine tasty tax cuts for the well-heeled with budget-cutting zeal strained through a sieve with tea infused with Bush Republican crapola. Mix with whatever Ann Coulter's drinking heavily and add a heaping cup of Il Duce's state corporatism. Put in the oven for four years at high heat and – voila! – you have an oven ruined by an unpalatable mess fit only for the trash that is no longer being picked up in New Jersey regularly since the governor privatized the service to break the union.

WI Gov. Scott Walker – His politics honor King Louis XVI, his speeches Newt Gingrich, his 'toughness' a box of rocks, while his eyes pay homage to Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman. One could easily see him in the White House, cleaning up after Bo, and it may be the only job he can get after angry Wisconsin voters recall him next year – it's definitely the only one he's qualified to do.

AZ Gov. Jan Brewer – What happens when a batch of mean goes sour.

Newt Gingrich – He has the fire in the belly, the snow on the roof, the fourth lady-in-waiting, millions in the bank, and the fringe-conservative hamster furiously navigating the CPAC exercise wheel to guarantee his shot at abject failure in the 2012 GOP presidential primaries. Since Newt has an incredibly large vocabulary of words to express his puny ideas and historical deviances, nothing will stop him from embarrassing himself by losing to Sarah Palin in the first few primaries.

Donald Trump – Teabaggers and other neoconservative halfwits would be well disposed to take advice from a failure who couldn’t turn a profit from an Atlantic City casino and can't get a gambling license in Nevada due to his history of bankruptcy. In fact, the only thing that 'The Donald' has ever made money from is his pathetic TV show wherein he hilariously fulfills the rubber-room delusions of his marketing staff by pretending to be a smart businessman. A more perfect presidential candidate reflecting the current state of the Republican Party does not exist. Trump is their man and, if somehow elected, would doubtless spend four years concentrating on his weekly reality show, "Who Wants to Work in the White House?" while the nation further crumbles.

The Koch Brothers – Nuts 'n' money, honey, and a rich Republican's joke is always funny, especially from a couple of billionaire sons of Birchers. They are incontrovertible verification of Dorothy Parker's line: "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to," but even the late, great Algonquin Round Table wit never imagined the Almighty would stoop this low for a laugh.

Mitt Romney – Loose rumor claims that, during Romney family vacations, it was actually the Mittster who was tied to the roof of the car while the dog drove the station wagon, but let's not go down that road. It's also claimed the charismatic former governor of Massachusetts can charm a roomful of supporters into needing a nap within five minutes flat. His firm handshake is reminiscent of grabbing a dead cod, his personal history is redolent with mirthful myth and confounding flip-flops, and his political notions are agreeably GOP incoherent, plus he's rich and he wants to be president, making him the perfect choice to be the Republican sacrificial tiger in 2012.

Sen. John Thune – Mitt Romney without the zesty personality and sense of dignity.

© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

The Tattlesnake – Political Short Cuts Edition

Brief sour snipes at some prominent political and media figures of our bloated Blutocracy, in no particular order.

Michele Bachmann – When scary met rally.

Arianna Huffington – A mythological Greek goddess who prospers greatly on the free labor of others.

Tim Pawlenty – A polite little Minnesota fart desperately trying to become a big Republican shit.

Sarah Palin – America's trademarked Tweetheart, soon to be our 'Dear Tweeter' right after the Republicans in Congress succeed in outlawing rational thought entirely.

Jon Stewart – If Jon noticed two brown-shirted men wearing swastika armbands beating up another man laying on the ground, he would immediately condemn onlookers who pointed out any similarities to the Nazis, and go on to make the case that the actions of the attackers and the man trying to defend himself are equally deplorable. Then he'd giggle and cut to a commercial for Verizon Wireless.

The Tea Partiers – Their hearts are in the Right place -- next to a pile of cash in a bank vault owned by the Koch brothers.

Comcast/MSNBC – 'Lean Forward' so it'll be easier to kick your ass out the door if you displease the parent company.

Bill O'Reilly – Joe McCarthy after the first bottle, combined with all the charm of a proctologist with a fire hose.

Glenn Beck – Joe McCarthy after the second bottle, combined with Howard Stern following a full lobotomy.

Rush Limbaugh -- An ounce of syphilitic brain tissue trampled in the stands of the football stadium at Ole Miss, circa 1964.

Megyn Kelly – 1. Find valve in back of skull. 2. Insert hose and inflate with helium until head is filled. 3. Check hair and makeup. 4. Insert 'GOP Talking Points' memory card. 5. Turn crank in back until words come out.

Michael Savage – When being a self-hating Weiner just isn't enough.

Mitt Romney – Elmer Corpo-Fudd goes hunting for small vermin, only to keep finding himself.

Jeb Bush – A Republican presidential prospect who wishes he had been born with a different last name, maybe something like 'Nixon.'

Mitch McConnell – Where wealthy wrinkles go to retire and old lies to revive themselves.

Roger Ailes – When he dines on his daily cherub, he wipes his mouth on the closest thing available, which happens to be the seat of his pants.

Antonin Scalia – Judge Dreadful.

Clarence Thomas – "Just because I have a big bet on the team doesn't mean I would necessarily rule in its favor."

© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Big Media Unbalanced By False Equivalency

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Sarah Palin: Slouching Back to Methlehem

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Both the GOP and Dems Taking a Dive in 2010

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Republican Party Unity?

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Is the Big Media Hypnotized?

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The GOP Jobs Plan – Just Kidding, They Don't Have One!

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The Tattlesnake – Dick Cheney Doesn't Have a Pulse Edition

Rachel Maddow reported July 14th that five-heart-attacks-since-he-was-37 Dick Cheney is hanging on by a thread following complete heart failure, kept alive only by a machine called a LVAD resting externally on his belly that keeps his blood moving. Ironically, because an external machine is circulating his blood rather than his damaged heart, Cheney apparently has no pulse, not that I would have sworn he had one before. Although I wouldn't wish death on any human being (leave that to the kill-crazy wingnuts; I'd rather see him in jail), and Deadeye Dick marginally qualifies in that category, this would seem to be close to the end of the line for the Torture Boy – the doctors can do no more except a full heart transplant and he's physically in such bad shape he likely couldn't survive the operation. (Although the sci-fi plot possibilities of Cheney receiving the heart of, say, a peaceful Buddhist monk and publicly renouncing his past self is nearly irresistible. "I've done wrong and now I must pay the price! President Obama, put me in prison for war crimes – waterboard me, I insist! And I'm donating all of my millions in wealth to Green Peace! Liz, stop crying like that!")

If he goes, are we going to be subjected to the full-pomp, days-long state funeral, or will every news outlet but Fox let him pass with just a brief mention and obit? I also wonder if, in his final moments in this realm, a fearful-of-judgment Cheney will pull a Lee Atwater and ask forgiveness for his past crimes and deceptions?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

The Tattlesnake -- The Alvin Greene Fraud (and More) Edition

Just How Stupid Are South Carolina Republicans?

"I'm the Democratic Party nominee. I mean, I mean, the people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina."
-- Alvin Greene, apparently accepting the Dem nomination for US Senate from South Carolina, as quoted by CommonDreams.org.

Did the South Carolina GOP really think they could sneak this poor hapless vet through without anyone noticing? Regardless of what the Bias-Belted Insider Punditocracy says, I think the SC GOP, including cynical rump-pimple Sen. Jim DeMint, are a lot more vulnerable than the Big Media Babblelonians realize. It's the only reason the GOP dirty tricksters would try a lame stunt like this – what with the aftermath of the Mark Sanford scandal and the Republican-run state cratering economically mired in record unemployment, they're getting desperate.

Sadly, 13-year military vetetran Greene resembles an advanced PTSD case in the way he speaks and acts. He may also have a drinking or drug problem that needs servicing. Such people are easy to hornswoggle for money into buffoonish charades such as this. If the SC Republicans abused a brain-damaged vet this way, they should be boiled in BP's Gulf oil. (They should anyway, but that's another story.)

It shouldn't be too hard to find out how an unemployed man who had declared himself indigent a couple of months ago came up with $10,400 to put his name on the ballot, didn't spend a dime for anything else in his 'campaign' (even his t-shirt reads 'Greene Family Reunion,' although he wears it as if it had something to do with his senate run), and somehow won against an experienced former judge and state legislator, Vic Rawls, who actually went out and campaigned across the state. (Maybe it has to do with the fact that in SC Republicans can vote for Dem primary candidates, or the state's easily-hacked, no-paper-trail touch screen voting equipment manufactured and installed by GOP-friendly companies.) This stinks of blatant election fraud and it would seem easy to prosecute the seamy GOP lowlife that is surely behind it.

Not only that, but SC Rep. Jim Clyburn's Democratic primary opponent, a shit-grinning 'bidnessman' named Gregory Brown, supposedly spent $70K to challenge incumbent Clyburn. Curiously, more than a third of that money was paid for 'marketing strategies' to a firm owned by Preston Grisham, who worked as a special assistant and campaign manager for Republican Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson up until November of 2009, and was flacking for two SC Republican candidates at the same time he was being paid by Brown. Move along, nothing to see here, stop connecting those dots.

Perhaps this is to be expected in a state that spawned the late Lee Atwater and his nasty and devious approach to political campaigning, but certainly Eric Holder's DOJ can take action to charge those responsible for such obvious, and stupid, attempts at defrauding South Carolina voters – these were elections for federal office, after all.

Read more:

"Clyburn's Dem Challenger Denies He's A 'Plant' -- But Hired GOP Rep.'s Aide"
-- Christina Bellatoni and Justin Elliot, TPMMuckraker, June 11, 2010.

"Clyburn Alleges Conspiracy To Plant Candidates In Three Dem Primaries In S.C."
-- Christina Bellatoni, TPMMuckraker, June 10, 2010.

"The Alvin Greene Interviews; a TPMtv Original Video"

© RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

The Tattlesnake – CPAC Proof GOP is Still Doomed Edition

CPAC's Corporate Mythmakers and True Believers Headed for a Hard Fall

"Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the 'True Believer Syndrome.'"
-- Matt Taibbi, "Wall Street's Bailout Hustle," Rolling Stone, Feb. 21, 2010.

You know you're in trouble when your keynote speaker is Glenn Beck, the current Dancing Bear of the Fox Evening Zoo and promulgator of preposterous pompous carnival-clown revisionism of everything from the political thinking of progressive Tom Paine to the nature of Marxism. (Well, at least he left the cry-eye Vick's VapoRub in the dressing room for this event.) Beck, like the rest of the Fox News team, seems to delight in unapologetically getting it wrong, time after time, and he knows his fans never read such authors as Paine or Karl Marx so, with skillful editing, ventriloquist Glenn can plant whatever Bizarro World ideas he desires in the mouths of the departed and defenseless. The most dedicated inhabitants of TV's Beckistan no doubt reject the proof of their own eyes and ears when confronted with any reality that veers from the Ringmaster's teachings, as any mind-locked True Believer does. It's a matter of faith -- in a Republican Jesus, or Roger Ailes' political ads disguised as news, or Frank Luntz's fright-laden euphemisms, or a former beauty queen turned half-term governor from Alaska. It's amazing that they wave the flag of freedom so strenuously – they apparently only want the freedom to follow a leader, and down the narrowest of ideological paths, at that.

Speaking of Gov. Mrs. Palin, she was not in appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference; not only could the organizers not meet her hefty price for speechifying, but she perhaps discerned, with the dumb canniness sometimes given to the vapid, that she wouldn't be welcome in a crowd that voted Mitt Romney first in their last three presidential straw polls.

And then there's the bright-eyed Romney himself; like most of his party, the former Massachusetts governor stopped making any consistent and coherent sense long ago; his speeches are now grab-bags of memorized GOP Talking Points and anti-Obama crowd-pleasers, but he has mostly refrained from the cringe-inducing personal vignettes such as tying incontinent pets to the roof of the family ride for a jaunt on the open highway or his Milquetoast macho-man exploits of gunning down small rodents with a hunting rifle. The things most people would be embarrassed to admit, Mitt banters about airily with a male model's manly grin, which I guess proves he is a Republican to his core.

And speaking of core Republicans, we have Mr. Cheney, Richard the Lyin'-Hearted, a man with no intelligence or military experience (an appointment as Secretary of Defense does not make one an expert on interrogation or confinement), who openly boasts that his unconstitutional torture program worked, believes he competently handled his role as White House counter-terrorism chief prior to 9/11, and has a long, clanking string of wrongheaded predictions following him like a trail of empty cans tied to a cat's tail. Cheney is arguably the most disliked politician in America, but in the upside-down world of CPAC, he is a national champion and was greeted with the garlands of approbation by the assembled worshippers in Washington that he once erroneously said would be thrown at our troops in Iraq. Perhaps as a sign of how far out in the ozone the gathered Republicans and their neoconservative cohorts orbit, many lustily cheered a Cheney run for president in 2012; Bush's superordinate vice president had enough sense to tease and then quickly squelch that notion and spare himself the humiliation of a 50-state landslide victory for President Obama.

Cheney, on cue, availed himself of the opportunity to produce another of his wacky spells of side-splitting clairvoyance – the Republicans would be resurgent in 2010 and Obama would be a one-term president. With his shot-in-the-face record of the exact opposite happening, you'd think he'd bury his cloudy crystal ball and stop making an ass of himself in this way but, then, you don't know Dick – he seems to thrive on being wrong and then denying it. Regardless of the Beltway Conventional Wisdom, three races where the Republican won against miserable Dem candidates does not make a trend and, as the overworked Cocktail Party Punditocracy cliché goes, "in politics, a month is like a year." With Cheney's smug regurgitation of this trite BCW on the glowing prospects for Republicans this year, it's bankable that it won't be quite as bad a year for the Democrats as the GOP would like it to be. And defeating Obama in 2012? Perhaps Dick should have a candidate in mind first to complete that task – none of the current GOP front-runners would come anywhere near to pushing Obama out of the presidency except Ron Paul, and Cheney and the GOP elite loathe him.

There was plenty of other entertainment at CPAC to those with a sardonic sense of humor, including mass booing for 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate and former GOP congressman Bob Barr for denouncing torture, and against some obnoxious knucklehead who was ironically jeered for going after a gay group. Said knucklehead's crime was that the gay group was Republican and the Grand Old Pious party needs every adherent they can get these days as the number of registered voters willing to confess they support the Republican brand continues to dwindle and age, along with the audience for the Right-Wing Disinfotainment Industry. The world turned upside-down indeed.

Of course, our Big Corporate Media that disguises itself as pure and objective did another habitual public disservice in its coverage of CPAC by not pointing out that most of the attendees were not average Conservo-Americans by any stretch – instead they were mostly lobbyists, party hacks, media dipsticks, the big money bags, Republican politicians and staffers, and those who earn their livelihoods by peddling products to this rarified bunch. In other words, these were the high-flying DC insiders who can afford to take off work, or who make their money by bowing and scraping to the GOP elite, which is why Cheney was greeted as a conquering hero, and lightweights such as Mitt Romney were taken seriously – they are both high-flying DC insiders as well.

Perhaps most indicative of the insider bent of the CPAC house of wax was the final results of the presidential straw poll – Ron Paul won it going away with 31 percent of the vote. Distant number two was Mitt Romney at 22 percent, and 'Joan of Dark' Palin wasn't even in double-digits. It was surreally amusing, if predictable, to watch a large portion of the assemblage howl down its own presidential pick: Paul represents the old-line libertarian/conservative Republican who wants to drastically cut the Pentagon's inflated budget, get us out of foreign wars, dissolve the dreams of empire, end the privatization of our military, shut down the ludicrous drug war, and enforce the terms of the Constitution, all items not popular with the DC insiders who reap billions of taxpayer dollars from supporting and advancing that list of misery. Worst of all, to the GOP elite, Paul is sincere – they hate that.

But another alarm bell auguring an unrosy Republican future was sounded by none other than recently elected hero-turned-zero Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who had the temerity to part with the break-Obama GOP leadership and vote for a Dem jobs bill that he thought would be beneficial to the residents of his state. In all the excitement over winning Ted Kennedy's old seat, some of the Republicans apparently forgot to check Brown's record in Mass. state government – he was ranked more liberal than three-fourths of the statehouse Republicans in a state that has the most liberal Republicans in the country. Today he is being condemned by the right for being a 'traitor' and a 'RINO' simply because he thought the government should act in the interest of the people rather than the GOP. In a sweet twist, he may turn out to be a great asset to Obama, and fix the doom of the current Limbaugh-loving fringe-right neocon Republican Party. When scared GOP incumbents begin buying pick-up trucks and start campaigning as independents who will cooperate with Obama to make government work for the citizenry, the nasty Talking Points Choir of the Rove-Luntz Axis of Evil that has dominated the party for over a decade will finally be at an end.

Yes, there's no denying the Democrats have been lame since Obama's election but, compared to the fire-breathing maniacs and corrupt corporatists presently running the GOP, the voters might very well prefer reasonable and lame to racist and insane.

Quoting the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Tattlesnake reiterates his prediction that for the GOP Elite of the DC Insiders, "the doom comes soon," with an irresolvable spilt between the rational Colin Powell/Ron Paul Libertarian Realists and the babbling-idiot Glenn Beck Regressive Christopublicans, and likely before the 2012 election -- maybe even in 2010, if the Democrats pass real health care reform.

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

GOP Populism: Hey! It's Fake!

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The Tattlesnake – Once Again, Jon Stewart Shows the BM How It's Done Edition

Good on Jon Stewart for showing the 'infotainment' arm of the Big Media, once again, how to do their jobs. Last night on The Daily Show, Stewart's guest was Newt "Like The Reptile" Gingrich and they were discussing trying terrorist suspects under American criminal law. Newt claimed that the 'Christmas Underwear Bomber,' Umar Abdulmutallab, shouldn't be tried in a U.S. court and had no rights since he wasn't an American citizen. (Not true, incidentally -- even foreign nationals have rights when charged with a crime in our country, but a topic for another time.)

At any rate, Stewart sensibly countered that the 'Shoe Bomber' Richard Reid was tried and convicted by the Bush Administration in an American courtroom and then Newtie, as usual, blatantly lied to make his point – he said Reid was a U.S. citizen and Abdulmutallab was not. Stewart let it pass as I yelled in futility at the TV, "Bullshit, Reid was a British subject!"

Following the commercial break, however, after the interview had ended, Stewart came back on to say his staff had checked and Reid was not an American citizen but a British national. This was a simple, unbiased fact, and it made Gingrich look like the horse's ass he is and laid bare his lame argument to the light of day. If every 'real' news show adopted this practice of fact-checking guests and informing the audience where they lied during the show, not only would it better serve the news consumer and the country, but it would have the side benefit of keeping politicians honest – if pols knew that at the end of the show (ideally accompanied by a crawl across the bottom of the screen), their falsehoods would be exposed they might become more circumspect in their habitual dishonesty. BTW, I also think would be good for ratings.

Of course, this will never happen on Fox News, if only because 45-minutes of each hour would be taken up correcting the lies of the first fifteen minutes, and most of the other networks would shy away since it would cost them 'access' to prominent politicians, not to mention discomfit their corporate bosses, but just think – no more Republicans spreading fraud on national TV and fewer quisling Democrats trying to justify their cowardice! No doubt this measure would pass by a massive majority if subjected to a national referendum.

Since that's not going to happen, all you can do is write or call your favorite media outlet and refer them to Jon Stewart's interview with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010, but don't expect miracles – the BM will likely change the same day Newtie the Lizard bangs the drum for universal single-payer health care.



http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/newt-gingrich-lies-jon-stewart-claim

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Our Liberal Media at Work on John Edwards

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Anti-American Influences in Our Media, Part One

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The Tattlesnake – Why the GOP Hates ACORN and the Poor Edition

Remember those ACORN-office videos that a right-wing ringer named James O'Keefe, posing as a pimp, surreptitiously taped with Hannah Giles, a young woman pretending to be his prostitute, that were a media kerfluffle a few months back?

Watching them gave me a familiar feeling – it was the same feeling I had back in 2003 when glowering TV Doctor Colin Powell, performing at the U.N. Club in New York, shook a vial of white powder in front of the camera and claimed it was Saddam's Very Own Anthrax. The feeling only increased when 'Dr.' Powell produced artist's renderings of super-secret Iraqi chemical-labs-on-wheels, views that we apparently couldn't catch photographically from sophisticated spy satellites or aerial reconnaisance overflights because – well, he never actually said why.

This feeling, as close as I can come to describing it, is akin to doing Houdini's Chinese Water Torture trick, wherein the master magician was suspended upside-down in a glass-paneled cabinet filled to the top with water -- only instead of water, imagine horse manure.

The Tattler was wincing with disgust while laughing as I watched geeky white boy O'Keefe, dressed for all the world like Sonny Bono when he had Cher, babe, trying to pass himself off as Mr. Bad Ass Pimp to a collection of black women from the 'Hood who had doubtless seen the real thing at sometime in their lives – it was like casting Wally Cox as Don Vito Corleone: "Gee whillikers, we'll make 'em an offer they won't get mad at and refuse!"

Hannah didn’t play her role much better – she was dumb enough, but a little too clean and preppy – but hers wasn't the important role.

The college-educated ofay voice of O'Keefe, in the same tone as a census-taker, earnestly asking for help to avoid paying his pimp taxes and advice in running a brothel with underage girls rightfully had the ACORN women stifling grins. This was a surreal spectacle that only a teabagger could swallow whole without gagging on the absurdity.

Well, a teabagger, our vacuous illiberal media, and the growing crop of space cadets in our Congress.

It was expected that the GOP would indulge in their usual over-popped level of fake moral outrage – they paid for the video, after all -- and the pundits live off their crumbs, but couldn't we have had at least one Democrat call 'bullshit' on this silly nonsense? No one but a halfwit would believe this skinny white boy wearing his mother's old chinchilla coat is actually a pimp, and anybody who's been around a city block more than once knows it. But the risible sight of O'Keefe in his cartoon pimp outfit is instructive, both as to the contempt with which the corporate Republican elite hold the public, and to their knee-shaking fear of the extension of democracy and equality to people without money.

The Republican Party's fringe-right wingnuts, excuse me for repeating myself, have long had a bitter grudge against ACORN, the community service group that registers voters and helps poor people. Why? Because, to put it simply, the GOP hates the poor, even though they work diligently to produce more of them to reward their corporate backers with a large pool of ever-cheaper labor. This is filtered through several levels of the corporate Republican psyche:

Level One: They hate them, naturally, because they've been incredibly effective at registering low- and no-income voters who tend to vote for Democrats. I've seen ACORN in action on several occasions and, contrary to right-wing myth, never once saw an ACORN representative tell anyone what candidate or party to vote for but, since they operate in neighborhoods where Bill Kristol wouldn't go for a nightcap with friends, even Mommie Dearest from Wasilla could figure out how the new register is going to cast his or her ballot once in the polling place.

Level Two: ACORN shows people how to claim their rights and there's nothing a Republican hates more than some sepia-shaded minority or poverty-stricken white demanding their damn rights. Rights, in their opinion, are for the landed gentry, preferably those with at least two 'lands': main residence with a circular driveway and spacious vacation home. These modern Scalia Federalists know that the only right an indigent person deserves is the right to clean their house, cook their food, raise their kids, or trim their lawn at whatever wage and under whatever conditions the employer determines is fair, without interference by meddling Big Government, or ACORN, trying to insure the menials have 'rights.'

Level Three: This taps into the deep panic of every Republican that one day they, too, could be out on the street, flat broke and without a relative or sugar daddy to help them, selling StreetWise or begging change with a foam coffee cup. In a sensible person, this would lead to support for social safety net programs and the like, in case they ever happened to hit rock bottom; in the bizarre psychological landscape of the wingnut, this becomes a vicious loathing of poor people, perhaps as an easy self-justification for their hatred: 'They're poor because they deserve to be poor.' For all of their neverending blather about hard work and pulling up bootstraps, some of the more intelligent wingnuts, deep in their dark little hearts, know very well life is largely a crap shoot; a gamble that starts with the accident of who you are born to, and continues with lucky breaks and class advantages all along the way. They are well aware that most of American life is not a meritocracy where your fate is cast by your talent or intellect – the aforementioned Kristol lad and George 'Junior' Bush being two prime examples – and that success is usually rigged in favor of those with the proper family connections or the ability to suck up in a manner that would embarrass the average swamp leech. One of the major reasons the official Washington GOPocracy so despises Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has to do with their personal histories – they came from humble beginnings and actually used their talent and intelligence to prevail in a game that's supposed to be the sport of the privileged and well-born. And, of course, they were all helped into the Big Show by ACORN-registered voters.

It's no surprise that Democrats as well as Republicans voted to defund ACORN – most of the Dems seem as afraid of offending the Right-Wing Attack Dogs and their corporate funders as any cracker GOP politician – but federal money was only ten percent of ACORN's revenue, so they'll still be around.

Then, when some gun-toting teabaggers, inspired by Fox News or Limbaugh, barge into an ACORN office and start 'refreshing the tree of liberty' with the blood of these uppity voter registration tyrants who refuse to call the white man 'Suh' anymore and celebrated the election of that black Hitler in the White House, our Big Media, nudged by the GOP, will play it as a political contest as to who is at fault for the attacks – yes, it was wrong for these enraged patriots to open fire on innocent unarmed people, but didn't they invite it by continuing to belong to a communist/socialist/fascist/terrorist/criminal organization that hates America like ACORN? Why, just look at these undercover videos of them encouraging a pimp and his hooker to break the law!

And we will move another inch closer to the ignorant new Dark Ages of President Palin 2012 as Obama is blamed by the Pundi-twits for not doing enough to prevent the attacks, such as forcing ACORN to disband with federal troops. In the cause of freedom, of course.

© 2009 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.