Somewhere, A Village Is Missing Its…Oh, Wait

The following rant (courtesy JD Rhoades at Balloon Juice) should be engraved in the foreheads of every member of the Villager elite, so that they might have something useful to read during their cocktail parties:

After Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran’s war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter saying the “only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate” President Clinton, Coulter claiming 9/11 widows were “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease, ads falsely claiming Barack Obama favored “comprehensive sex education for Kindergartners,” Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester, ads claiming Kay Hagen was “godless,” Michelle Bachmann calling for an investigation of ‘un-American views” among the Congress, “If ballots don’t work, maybe bullets will,” “Obama hates white people,” ‘GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!” “YOU LIE!”, wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a “street whore” for wearing a peace sign on her t-shirt, outright lies about “death panels,” “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” cheering for executions, booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn’t feed, “’we’ve got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” supposed “Christians” suggesting that people pray for the President using Psalm 109:8 (“May his days be few; may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”) as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady “uppity,” and on and on and on, all without a single peep from the Right…They can take their whiny-ass bullshit about liberal “rudeness” and peddle it somewhere else. We ain’t buyin’ it here.

Civility means “lie down and die like the scum we think you are.”

Smells Like…Desperation

With the Herman Cain train about to run out of…steam, attention turns to the next flavor of the month, old Newtron Bomb himself.  The Balloon Juice crowd delights in taking him apart.  Personally, I don’t think the FSM likes us nearly enough to grace us with Newtered as the GOP nominee.

Don’t get me wrong, Gingrich would make a perfectly awful candidate, his likeability (or lack thereof) dwarfed by both his track record and his hypocrisy. The current state of the economy points to the fact that the policies Gingrich and his party have championed for decades have, and would continue to, fail.

As to his supposed intellect, there isn’t enough popcorn in the world for an Obama-Gingrich debate. Gingrich is merely an A-list grifter who has the capacity to play the role of a learned man; he may present himself as a political Hawking amongst the GOPers, but to everyone else he’s rather Wile E. Coyote-esque. Krugman summed it up as well as anyone can: “a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like,” thus pointing out the problem with both Gingrich and the GOP base.

Right now, he’s Mr. Fifteen Minutes (and that’s so long as he can keep his mouth shut). His time will pass soon enough, because the bag men of the GOP may be stupid, but they’re not THAT stupid.

Mr. Muntz Would Like A Word

In our last episode, the hardworking peeps of Steven J. Baum, P.C. threw a Halloween party wherein the attire was somewhat less than tasteful.  Their playful antics were chronicled in the NYT, where one would assume they would be drowned out in the clamoring for centrism or whatever it is the oligarchy thinks would make the 99 percent shut the hell up already.

Only thing is, not so much (h/t ABL):

Well, looks like the firm, Steven J. Baum P.C., has had to shut its doors, and the firm’s named partner blames New York Times reporter Joe Nocera for the firm’s downfall.

In true job-creator fashion, no less a titan than Mr. Steven J. Baum his own self takes Nocera to task for daring to point out that assholes are indeed, you know, assholes:

 “Mr. Nocera — You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC,” said the letter. “It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.”

Hey Stevie – I submit that Mr. Nocera didn’t destroy a damned thing – you and your “people” did that, and if you had any dignity about you whatsoever, you would take ownership of your own actions.  You and the brain trust that thought making fun of the foreclosed (whose plight was making you money) was a GOOD idea could use some lessons in humility, and apparently the first lesson hasn’t sunk in yet.  Maybe it will before you wind up like those you mocked.

Atlas Headdesked, Repeatedly

TBogg posted a bit that will go down as one of the greatest takedowns of Pam Geller EVAR:

Insane yenta Pam Geller does not want to wake up Black Friday morning only to find out that everyone in line at Best Buy is now a Jew-hating Muslim looking for an early bird special on a flatscreen TV. How might this happen, you might ask, because you are a reasonable non-insane person? I will let Pam explain:

“Did you know that the turkey you’re going to enjoy on Thanksgiving Day this Thursday is probably halal? If it’s a Butterball turkey, then it certainly is — whether you like it or not.

In my book Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance, I report at length on the meat industry’s halal scandal: its established practice of not separating halal meat from non-halal meat, and not labeling halal meat as such. And back in October 2010, I reported more little-noted but explosive new revelations: that much of the meat in Europe and the United States is being processed as halal without the knowledge of the non-Muslim consumers who buy it.”

He takes that bit of insanity and runs with it to its illogical conclusion, and outs another spy in the process.

yIt vo’ tuH

In the aftermath of the hideous actions she ordered taken against students at UC Davis (and her pitiful attempts to deflect blame), Chancellor Katehi does the walk of shame:

Awesome job, and I can only think of one thing that might have improved it:

UPDATE: Per John Cole at Balloon-Juice, Katehi has now conveyed UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza underneath the wheels of a rather large personnel-moving, uh, conveyance:

UC Davis placed Police Chief Annette Spicuzza on administrative leave Monday in the wake of controversy over the pepper-spraying of student protesters last week by campus police officers.

The move by UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi came less than a day after she put two UC Davis police officers on leave.

I don’t think she’s figured out how she’s going to remain upright when the ship is sinking around her, though:

Katehi has resisted calls by some UC Davis faculty members for her to resign.

“I take full responsibility for the events on Friday and am extremely saddened by what occurred,” Katehi said in the release.

That sucking sound she hears is her non-wingnut career circling the drain…