The Rude Pundit's 2010 Iconic Fourth of July Photo Kicks Your Photo's Ass:


Fireworks in the background? Check. Skyline of Manhattan, too? Check. Little girl on her daddy's shoulders? Fuckin' check, man. Bonus points: The little girl is wearing a red, white, and blue outfit. Bonuser points: she and her family are recent immigrants from Pakistan. Checkmate: They're Muslim.

So, fuck, yeah. Suck it, AP. The only thing that could make this more goddamn 21st-century American is if an oily eagle was eating apple pie out of her hands.

(Note: After this photo was taken, the little girl got scared and started sobbing. Her mother comforted her while her father continued to watch the sky explode. The Rude Pundit took in the show over the Hudson River until the end, grateful that no one had brought a radio for the musical accompaniment, stunned that most people were silent except for spontaneous reactions during the display. Then he remembered he was in Weehawken, New Jersey, standing pretty much where Aaron Burr shot the fuck out of Alexander Hamilton, and, barring any reenactments, there was little to do but head back to his friends' house and start shooting the vodka that the Russian couple had brought, eat grilled chorizo, and share a pipe with the Korean guy who refused to say where he'd gotten the dope. Rockets' red glare, man, 'til the dawn's early light.)

July 4th Weekend Along the Shore of the Gulf of Mexico:


That's what the beach at Gulf Shores, Alabama, looked like yesterday. If Pensacola is the Nice of the Redneck Riviera, then Gulf Shores is probably its Saint-Tropez.


That's Vicki Guillot (pronounced "Ghee-yot") walking alone in her now-closed Debbie's Cafe' in tiny Gheens, Louisiana. It had been open for only six months and doing well, but once the price of shrimp went up 50% (let's not even talk about the oysters), well, any restaurant owner will tell you that if something goes wrong in the first year, you're not gonna make it.

This weekend, the usual flood of people on the beaches of Pensacola, of Gulf Shores, of Grand Isle will be reduced to a trickle. Dauphin Island, Alabama has had cancellations of up to 80% of its vacation bookings. That means the shops and restaurants will not have customers, which means the waitstaff won't get the tips that a busy July 4th would bring, which means they won't have the money to spend on groceries, which means, which means, which means. You don't need a basic economics lesson. Or maybe you do. Apply this to any number of workers, like the cleaning crews at the hotels, or to the condo owners, many of them senior citizens, who supplement their incomes with rentals, many of whom don't even live on the Gulf and thus spend the money they would have made on condo rentals in their communities all around the United States.


That's Susan Sundell from New Hampshire discovering last week that everything she'd seen on the news is real (and probably worse). All of the waters from Pensacola to the Florida state line are now under a health advisory.

The bright spot? Mississippi won't be hurt quite as bad (although it's taking a beating) because people love the casinos. If one corporation has screwed up your world, simply give your money to another. Just like the Founders intended over two centuries ago.

Is President Obama Ready to Make Republicans Shit Blood Again?:
The Rude Pundit knows, Christ, he knows, that there's much to pile on regarding how President Obama has squandered many, many opportunities in his first year and a half in office. Obama's failure to close Gitmo is the most starkly broken promise. It's analogous to Bill Clinton's failure to end the military's discrimination against gay soldiers - oh, wait, no, Obama's failure to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell is analogous to that. This could go on, with promises unkept (Will the Afghanistan war actually end?) and compromises kneecapping the reforms he has gotten passed in the thuggish Congress (like taking the public option off the table during the health care reform "debate"). But there's one significant measure that the Rude Pundit has decided to await: how much is Obama willing to fight to keep the Congress at least nominally Democratic?

If yesterday is any indication, the answer is: "Oh, fuck, it's on."

In Racine, Wisconsin, President Obama seemed like a man who's finally had enough, like he's a single parent who has come home from a weekend away to find the house trashed because his teenage son has had a party with 100 of his closest asshole friends. No, motherfucker, it ain't time to put the PS3 in time out and limit junior's internet time to school work. It's time to toss all his shit out, break his credit cards, hammer his iPod, flush his pot, get rid of all the indulgences and comforts you've allowed him just to make your life a little easier. Yeah, you're to blame, too, but you're the one who can make it better.

Following through with what his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said last week, Obama laid bare, in stark relief, the utter depravity of Republican ideology:

First he put out the evidence and explained what they were doing that was so assholish: "Now, you’d think this would be pretty straightforward stuff, but I’ve got to say that lately we’ve been having to wrangle around what used to be pretty noncontroversial things -- providing loans for small businesses, extending unemployment insurance when 8 million people lost their jobs during the recession. But lately, there’s a minority of senators from the other party who’ve had a different idea. As we speak, they are using their power to stop this relief from going to the American people. And they won’t even let these measures come up for a vote. They block it through all kinds of procedural maneuvering in the Senate."

Then he gave it some context for how we got here: "Now, some of this is just politics. That’s the nature of Washington. Before I was even inaugurated, there were leaders on the other side of the aisle who got together and they made the calculation that if Obama fails, then we win. Right -- that was the basic theory. They figured if we just keep on saying no to everything and nothing gets done, then somehow people will forget who got us into this mess in the first place and we’ll get more votes in November. And, you know, that will make people pretty cynical about politics."

Which led to: "Now, let’s be fair though. The other party’s opposition is also rooted in some sincere beliefs about how they think the economy works. They think that our economy will do better if we just let the banks or the oil companies or the insurance industry make their own rules. They still believe that, even after the Wall Street crash, even after the BP oil well blew, that we should just keep a hands-off attitude. They think we should keep doing what we did for most of the last decade leading up to the recession." That line, "let's be fair, though," is just fucking awesome. Calling Republicans "sincere" in their ideology means that, no matter what they say, at the end of the day, there are beliefs that aren't gonna change.

Then the knife twist: "So their prescription for every challenge is pretty much the same -- and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here -- basically cut taxes for the wealthy, cut rules for corporations, and cut working folks loose to fend for themselves. Basically their attitude is, you’re on your own."

Read the whole speech. Obama goes on to wreck Republicans, mocking them and calling them out: "There were people who said that Social Security was socialism, said that Medicare was a government takeover. There were automakers who said that installing seat belts was unnecessary, unaffordable, and would ruin the auto industry. There were skeptics who thought that cleaning our water and our air would bankrupt our economy. Right here in Wisconsin -- if you look at the lake now and look at the lake, what it was like 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And there were people who said, well, there’s nothing we can do about all the sludge and drudge and whatever is going on in there. But they were wrong. They were wrong then, and they’re wrong today."

The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying it: Obama plays rope-a-dope with his opponents. He did it with Hillary. He did it with McCain. He wants to see what your best swing looks like before he unleashes. For all his faults, and there are many, the man knows how to make Republicans shit blood at the thought of going up against him. They have to know it's coming. They just don't know when. The question, of course, is if it's too late in the match.

If there was a takeaway from the speech, a talking point for other candidates to use, it was this: "So I want everybody to understand, this debate that we’re having in Washington is not about big government or small government. It’s about responsible government. It’s about accountable government. It’s about whose side government is on. It should be on the side of the American people."

It's always nice to see someone rip the corpse of Ronald Reagan out of the earth and smack it around in front of an audience.

Conservatives to the Poor and Elderly: Suck on Our Deficit:
1. Take It. Take the Whole Deficit, Bitches:
On the Fox "news" show Cashin' In, the hosts and a guest were aghast this week that the Congressional Budget Office reported that 40% of Americans paid no income taxes in 2007. Said that hour's random blonde hostette, "[D]id we just find a way to solve America's debt crisis, do you think?"

Later, after the frighteningly simian-looking guest spitter spat that taxes on the rich are "tyranny," the show's random brunette with blonde highlights called for the repeal of the Earned Income Tax Credit: "You want to get rid of the stuff at the top? You get rid of the stuff at the bottom. That is the -- it is wrong. Nobody pays tax because of that."

The blonde and the brunette were competing to see which one would get to hand job Roger Ailes and which one had to finger his asshole. It was a tie. So everybody won.

(Note: The blonde and especially the brunette are not, in fact, idiots. They are people who actually know shit. That's the scary part.)

2. Yeah, You Know You Love Sucking On Our Deficit:
House Minority Leader and melanoma spokesperson John Boehner, in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, declared, "We're all living a lot longer than anyone ever expected." He called for the retirement age to be raised to 70 and for wealthier retirees to get little or no Social Security, although he declined to call it "means testing," even though that's exactly what it is. Republicans have been wanting to do this for a couple of decades now because it would make wealthy retirees put more money in private investments in order to make up for the loss of Social Security income, thus pleasuring the banks and such.

Why do we need to look at how to cut money for old people? Because, Boehner said, we need to be able to pay for the wars. Well, duh.

Oh, and in the same interview, Boehner said he wanted to roll back planned reductions in Medicare. Somehow, the irony of this didn't dawn on Boehner.

(Note: John Boehner actually is an idiot. And if the Republicans win back the House, he'll be just two heartbeats away from the presidency. That's the scary part.)

(Note: If Democrats were as scuzzy as Republicans, they'd say that Boehner is forcing the elderly to work. "Senior slavery," perhaps?)

3. C'mon, Swallow That Shit:
Meanwhile, House Republicans yesterday blocked a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. And in the Senate, Republicans put a hold on a bill to help homeless veterans. Republicans don't want to add any more spending to the deficit, they say.

Meanwhile, they're trying to figure out how to extend the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in January. Should the GOP win the House, you can bet that Boehner will try to cut Social Security by making people work until they're 70 while continuing to cut taxes on the rich. Hey, deficits matter, conservatives tell us. Spending matters to them. Except, you know, when it doesn't.

Kagan Hearings: Al Franken Kicks Republican Asses All Over the Hearing Room:
Apparently the Republican strategy during the hearings on Solicitor General Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court is to portray her as a nigger-loving kike. As it's known in the popular political parlance, that's called "playing to the base." Yeah, that's a big tent there.

For what else was Jon "The Other Cactus Fucker from Arizona" Kyl implying when he quoted a Politco article: "Kagan’s experience draws from a world whose signposts are distant from most Americans: Manhattan’s upper West side, Princeton University, Harvard Law School and the upper reaches of the Democratic legal establishment." Wealthy? Elitist? Yes, and Jewy. And not the right kind of Likudnik Jew that Republicans love.

And what else could the repetitive slamming of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court, mean? In what is for some one of her best qualifications for being on the court, Kagan clerked for Marshall. For Republicans, not so much. John Cornyn of Texas, in an opening statement that could best be described as "fucking nuts," drawled, "[F]rom his self-described judicial philosophy and his performance on the bench, it is clear that Justice Marshall was a judicial activist." Well, no shit, cowboy. Too bad you can't lynch him physically now. Kyl even went so far as to decry Kagan for saying that Marshall had an "unshakable determination to protect the underdog – the people whom no one else will protect," as if that's a bad thing. That's the GOP: the Simon Bar Sinister of political parties.

Most fun was Alabama's Jeff Sessions, whose opening statement was a compendium of "people what is evil." Other than Marshall, Sessions name checked Earl Warren, Michael Dukakis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who Sessions, classy as ever, disparaged the day after her husband died), Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and civil rights champion Judge Abner Mikva, who is considered another of Barack Obama's socialist mentors by the wackanoid right. Sessions even gave Glenn Beck an under-the-table hand job by mentioning Thomas Paine's Common Sense in a lie about Kagan saying the government could ban political pamphlets. Sessions, hand sticky with Beck spunk, is never deterred by "facts."

It was up to Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota to bring the noise about the true meaning of the proceedings. In clear, concise language, Franken addressed exactly what effect the Supreme Court has on the day-to-day life of his constituents. His low-key, but outraged, dissection of the Roberts court was devastating:

"Minnesota has more wetlands than all but three states. And yet in a case called Rapanos, the Court cut countless streams and wetlands out of the Clean Water Act - even though they'd been covered for up to 30 years.

"Our state has banned all corporate spending on elections since 1988. And yet in January, in Citizens United, the Roberts Court nullified our laws and turned back a century of federal law by allowing corporations to spend as much money as they want, whenever they want, in our elections. Not just federal elections. Duluth elections. Bemidji elections. Minnesota elections.

"There is a pattern here. Each of these decisions was won with five votes. And in each of these decisions, that bare majority used its power to help big business."

In his ballsy nine-minute opening statement, Franken demonstrated how Citizens United directly damages democracy and, more importantly, its potential impact on the very bodies of Americans. He used it to mock the notion of liberal justices as "judicial activists" and to show the states' rights crowd that it ain't just about abortion or gay marriage.

In other words, while Republicans were fretting about truly meaningless designations based on a worthless theory of the judiciary, Franken said, more or less, "Fuck your rhetoric. This is about lives."

Dead Byrd:
The Rude Pundit will leave it to West Virginians to work out now-dead Senator Robert Byrd's complicated legacy with their state, filled with the so-called "pork" that brought West Virginia into the 20th century in its roads and classrooms and industries, as well as with Byrd's support of coal companies over environmental concerns. He also won't go on about Byrd's KKK past or his late-career role as an eloquent last-man-standing against the Bush administration's mad march to war in Iraq.

As many of the encomiums to Byrd will tell you, the Senator believed in the primacy of the Congress in the governing of the country. He was, as many noted during the recent health care debate, the one who knew the rules and how to abide by them. He saw the constitutional role of the legislative branch as the representatives of the populace, and thus they had to be independent of the executive branch. They had to simply think for themselves. Part of Byrd's railing against George W. Bush was that he felt the Congress was abdicating its role as a check on presidential power. Indeed, for most of the Bush II presidency, Byrd watched aghast and expressed revulsion at the Republicans simply bending over for the White House so Karl Rove could have easy access to their asses.

One could make an argument (and the Rude Pundit has) that the first year of Barack Obama's presidency was an attempt to get Congress, and the Senate in particular, to return to its role as an independent branch of government. Neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush spent time in Congress. Hell, neither of them was elected to any legislative body, so of course they privileged the executive over all. But Obama did legislate, in Illinois and in the Senate. One could argue that the effort, a chance for Congress to redeem itself and operate outside overt White House influence, was doomed to failure from the start and that the theory fell to pieces during the health care debate, when Democrats panicked because Obama was so hands-off. In other words, like Byrd did, Obama wanted Congress to act like the goddamn Congress, like a majority of the members were elected to do a job. It must have sickened Byrd to no end to watch Republicans abuse the filibuster. It must have sickened him even more to know that nothing could be done unless Republicans suddenly became honorable partners or the rules were changed.

During the cretinous rush to impeach Bill Clinton, Robert Byrd believed that the President had indeed lied under oath. He thought any discussion of the facts was idiocy. But he had other concerns, as he said on the Senate floor on September 9, 1998:

"The president's situation and the Congress' and the media's and the public's all consuming obsession with it has contributed to a loss of focus on and attention to many aspects of our national life that have far-reaching consequences. And we shall see a continuation of that loss of focus when and if the time ever comes that we have to vote on an impeachment resolution. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of foreign policy.

"In the few snippets of newspaper and news shows, which attempt to turn our attention from our unfortunate domestic travails and focus instead on events overseas, you can see the troubling signs of a long and difficult winter ahead.

"In the Balkans, the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army has reportedly rounded up ethnic Albanian men and boys of fighting age in the province of Kosovo, labeling them all terrorists. This action bears the bloody stains of earlier Serbian ethnic cleansing in neighboring Bosnia. That event really led to a massive intervention by NATO. What action, if any, should the United States take? I fear that our lack of attention may allow the situation to get even further out of hand.

"In Iraq, troubling questions have been raised about an unwillingness to deal with continued Iraqi intransigence over weapons inspections. Russia's economy, and indeed, her very government appear on the verge of dissolution. North Korea has launched a long-range missile right over our ally Japan. In China and elsewhere, many tens of thousands of people face the coming winter hungry and homeless as a result of floods and fires and droughts. And not least, acts of terrorism against U.S. embassies and interests continue to threaten.

"All of these unhappy circumstances will challenge the U.S. economy and U.S. leadership. It ill behooves us all to become so enmeshed in the current web of scandal that we ignore or obscure our opportunities to deal with these serious challenges before they escalate into full-blown crises. We cannot continue to swirl in this miasma of misery if we are to judiciously carry out our duties as the representatives of the people."

The Congress had a job to do. Republicans wanted to stop everything else for a meaningless act of hubris and power-grabbing. Robert Byrd, disgusted at the White House, but more disgusted by his colleagues, just wanted to do the work of the people. And, voting to acquit, he warned in his statement at Clinton's impeachment trial of the poison that afflicts our nation:

"[H]atred is an ugly thing. It can seize the psyche and twist sound reasoning. I have seen it unleashed in all its mindless fury too many times in my own life. In a charged political atmosphere, it can destroy all in its path with the blind fury of a whirlwind. I hear its ominous rumble and see its destructive funnel on the horizon in our land today. I fear for our nation if its turbulent winds are not calmed and its storm clouds somehow dispersed."

Byrd hoped the nation would come together to heal. He hoped that "we can, together, crush the seeds of ugliness and enmity which have taken root in the sacred soil of our republic, and, instead, sow new respect for honestly differing views, bipartisanship, and simple kindness towards each other." And in words that ring true today as they did at the disgraceful end of the previous century, Byrd said, "We have much important work to do. And, in truth, it is long past time for us to move on."

Behold the Evil Face of Contemporary Conservatism:


So the Rude Pundit's been doing a lot of thinking after seeing Toy Story 3 (possibly because it's the only mainstream film this summer that's been worth a damn so far). (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert, but not much.) At first he thought of the character up there, Lots-O'-Huggin Bear, as Dick Cheney, with the toddler room of the Sunnyside Daycare as a Guantanamo prison camp substitute. That's not bad as analogies go. There's torture. There's cells. There's forced confessions.

However, when the Rude Pundit saw that Republicans (and Democrat Ben Nelson, a man who always looks as if he just finished masturbating to kiddie war porn) had filibustered a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits to millions of Americans, even after Democrats did the usual dance of adding in tax breaks Republicans wanted, even after the total the bill would have added to the deficit would have been $3 billion a year (that $30 billion figure you've been hearing is spread over a decade), he began to think differently about the Pixar film.

Ultimately, Lotso (as he's called) represents the genial yet ultimately sinister and power-mad face of the Republican Party and, indeed, contemporary conservatism. Promising a happier day for all cast-off toys and fooling them into trusting him, Lotso has a true goal to repress large numbers of the toys in order to maintain control and comfort for himself and those that he deems worthy. Hell, he even talks like Haley Barbour or any number of good ol' boys. The unworthy toys, consigned to the toddler room (as opposed to the older kids' room), are told that they can work their way to success and pleasure, even though the system is rigged for them to fail and stay in their harsh, awful jobs.

The Rude Pundit's not going to beat this to death because, hell, it's Friday, and, in the end, sometimes it's best to enjoy a cartoon as a cartoon. But, without giving too much away, Toy Story 3 is, to this blogger's despairing mind, about mourning for an idyllic America, about the destruction of that illusion, and, most movingly (no, really), about the path forward, which can only be achieved if we acknowledge that times have changed and if new paradigms of existence are embraced. But that only happens in the movies.

Release the Petraeus:
Did you see that? No, seriously, did you fucking see it? Because it was insane, man. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, walked into GOP headquarters yesterday and, like some kind of unholy combination of ninja and recluse spider, he fucking stabbed the shit out of 2012 Republican presidential hope with a poisoned stiletto and left it on the ground to foam at the mouth and die. Then he sliced its balls off. And that was after he had presented the dildo of civilian control of the military to General Stanley McChrystal and said, "Lick it." It's a new version of falling on one's sword.

By firing the idiot general and replacing him with General David Petraeus, the golden sun around which almost all of DC revolves, Obama effectively neutered any criticism of his actions because the Petraeus is beloved by Republicans in a way that's so disturbingly deep that it could best be described as "codependent" or "stalking" (and this love seems to be one of the only things the GOP isn't fickle about). It provides continuity for the "mission" in Afghanistan (more on that in a sec). And Obama has more or less taken out the man who was probably the only hope Republicans had for taking back the White House in 2012. No, the Petraeus hadn't announced; you can sure as hell bet he was being courted as hard as a hot Dixie debutante at the Sons of the Confederacy cotillion. Who the hell do they have now? Palin? They'd have a better chance running a grilled cheese sandwich.

Of course, it seems now as if Obama said to Petraeus, "Okay, motherfucker, this is your strategy. Make it work." And what a strategy it is, that counterinsurgency, or COIN. As Michael Hastings describes it in a less-quoted passage from his Rolling Stone article/hari-kari, "COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve."

In other words, our great and mighty plan for winning the war in Afghanistan (and Iraq) is to simply stay long enough until the civilians are so sick of us, they just say, "Okay, fuck, whatever you want." Petraeus does realize he's dealing with people who harbor grudges for centuries, right? Considering the amount of time it's gonna take to bring about peace using COIN, we may as well say that the plan is, "We're gonna get a bunch of young, pretty, white Americans to go in and start dating the locals. They'll start fucking them and, soon, the locals will have half-American babies; the American chicks will have half-Pashtun kids, whatever, as long as they're raised loving the USA. We'll just keep the fucking going until, in, like three or four generations, we've pretty much completely changed the complexion of the entire population and bred a nation that's our ally." Hey, look: the Rude Pundit can be a general, too.

The lesson here? Don't say stupid shit about your boss in public. Unless you realize your job sucks and you want to get fired...

In Brief: Things That Matter More Than Gen. McChrystal's Drunken Contempt of the President:
No matter what President Obama does to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the reckless bastard should be fired. That was juvenile nonsense in the Rolling Stone article - name-calling and backroom nutslapping. It's surprising that McChrystal didn't order his aides to perform a sketch where one of them in blackface and gag ears had to give blow jobs to all the white-faced ones.

But if there's one good thing to come from the exposure of this hubris-filled failure of a general, it's that, for a few minutes, people are giving a shit about Afghanistan. So there's a little more going on than Stan thinking someone's a wimp:

1. We're funding the Taliban: "A criminal investigation has begun into allegations that the US may be unintentionally financing the Afghan Taliban through logistics contracts in the country. According to a US military document, as much as $4m per week in US taxpayers' money could be ending up in the hands of the Taliban...The payments reportedly reach the Taliban through a $2.1bn Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan."

2. There's gonna be a surge on the surge: "The report comes as the U.S. military is deploying an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this summer in an effort to quell a rebounding insurgency."

3. Ten NATO troops were killed.

4. The Taliban continues to attack Pakistan. "Afghan Taliban says it has captured dozens of Pakistani soldiers following an attack on their checkpoint during a cross-border raid."

When we decide to actually act on getting the fuck out of Afghanistan as it becomes the madhouse it is going to become no matter what we do, then we can give a damn who's a wimp and who has balls.

The Rude Pundit on Monday's Stephanie Miller Show:
Stephanie Miller offered to press her body against the Rude Pundit for the entire day. The Rude Pundit eagerly agreed. Oh, and the issues of the day were discussed:

Powered by Podbean.com

Enjoy the Rude Pundit draped around your brain by subscribing to the rude podcast.

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Kick Radar in the Nuts While Wasted on Soju:


No, that's not the newest giant monster in a movie by the director of The Host, although the similarities are striking. That's former President (really) George W. Bush, and he was speaking to 60,000 people at a prayer ceremony in Seoul on the 60th anniversary of the Korean War which, you know, hasn't officially ended yet.

Bush praised U.S. troops in South Korea and said that the nation was "a shining example of the power of freedom and faith." Some Christian groups were a little less than pleased that Bush was chosen to represent their faith: "It is just nonsense to bring to the Korean War prayer meeting the former US President Bush, who started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have him give testimony." They added, "No, really, there's Christians out there who haven't started wars who could've talked. Just don't get the molesty kind."

This angered the Bush Giant, who ate a thousand peaceful pilgrims and decimated the kimchi warehouses of Busan. He was last seen stomping off the coast towards Jeju Island to hump Hallasan volcano because, according to the former president, "it's hot and wet, like pussy," before drifting to sleep.

Rahm Emanuel Makes It About Ideology Again:
The Rude Pundit hadn't paid much attention to the Sunday blabfests yesterday because, even if it has its charms when you're participating, a circle jerk is just weird and depressing to watch, especially on a weekly basis. But then, in one of her standard blurps of incoherency, Sarah Palin tweeted from "her" Blackberry, "RahmEmanuel= as shallow/narrowminded/political/irresponsible as they come,to falsely claim Barton's BP comment is 'GOP philosophy'Rahm,u lie". The Rude Pundit's first reaction, after breaking out the decoder ring and setting it on "fucktard" (it's right after "Enigma"), was "Vicodin's a helluva drug." But then he wondered what President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the subject of such recent disdain out here in the hinterlands of Left Blogsylvania, had said.

Apparently, an unfed Rahm Emanuel is a worthless and/or destructive being (as in his unending willingness to compromise during the health care debate). However, you give him the raw meat of campaign mode, and that motherfucker becomes the nasty wolverine you want on your side. To those paying attention (like the aforementioned former demi-Governor of Alaska), on This Week with Placeholder Jake Tapper, Emanuel offered more for Democrats to battle for than any administration official has in months.

First, he got the administration's back on its role in the BP oil spill response: "BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren't going to do that." Did you know that? Because that should be towards the top of any response to criticism of the President on the underwater black gold geyser.

But when Tapper asked about Texas Rep. Joe Barton's offer to suck Tony Hayward's CEO dick while fingering his own own asshole, Emanuel showed just how to use a carving knife: "It's dangerous for the American people, because while the ranking Republican would have oversight into the energy industry, and if the Republicans were the majority, would have actually the gavel and the chairmanship. That's not a political gaffe, those were prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach to what they see."

So Sarah Palin's thong was already twisted when Emanuel started offering up pieces of the GOP for devouring, as when he said, "The approach here expressed and supported by other voices in the Republican Party, sees the aggrieved party as BP, not the American -- not the fishermen and the communities down there affected. And that would the governing philosophy. And I think what Joe Barton did is remind the American people, in case they've forgotten, this is how the Republicans would govern."

And, as if to prove Emanuel right (and contrary to the desperate backtracking that Palin and Mitch McConnell and other craven Republicans are doing on Barton), here's crying California Rep. Darrell "Are the cameras on?" Issa on what he'd do with subpoena power in a House of Representatives run by Republicans: "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing." You got that? Issa's saying that the White House is the enemy that needs to be attacked, not corporations that pollute and steal and kill.

Emanuel is testing a strategy here, laying out a case that ideology matters. If this is the battle line for the midterms, it's got possibilities. It ain't politicizing the oil spill - it's politicizing the Republicans' response to it. Not bad at all. When that snarling bastard Emanuel gets his teeth in something, he's gonna take chunks out of it.

(Tip o' the rude hat to Oliver Willis for the Issa link.)

Memo to Republicans: Don't Write BP a Check You Can't Cash:
First off, let's put this in context: $20 billion over a few years ("$3 billion this summer and $2 billion in the fall, followed by $1.25 billion per quarter until the $20 billion figure is reached," according to MSNBC) ain't gonna wreck a company that made over $6 billion in profit in the first quarter of this year. In fact, it'll barely dent BP. So anyone crying for BP is a capitalist tool. You can bet that even the BP board room ain't crying for BP at this point. They've covered their asses for the time being. Fuck, the stock went up yesterday. At this writing, it's up again today. That's while it still can't stop the goddamned leak. And don't be naive: Barack Obama didn't threaten BP. He asked, "How can we do this so you're not fucked, but you pay the bills? We got it? Good. Now go to Congress and take your lumps."

But, hey, Republicans, tea baggers, and other right wing spoogebuckets, if this is how you wanna play this game, if you wanna call the escrow account a "shakedown" of BP, if you want to give sympathy for the devil, bring it on, motherfuckers. 'Cause when soon-to-be-divorced (certain patterns being fixed and unchangeable) Rush Limbaugh said of the fund, "It is all about extortion by threat of legal hell. And it's redistribution. Where is this money going to go?" he pulled back the sheets and told BP that America should play bottom tonight. You think America wants its ass fucked this time, no matter how lubed up it may be?

Beyond Tony Hayward making British bumbling about for answers, Hugh Grant style, forever odious, and beyond Rep. Joe Barton actually demonstrating how to suck his own cock but being a spitter and not a swallower, the GOP has offered absolute, concrete evidence of just who they give a fuck about: international corporations over American states, shareholders around the world over American fishermen, oil over wetlands and wildlife.

So go ahead, GOP. Keep on with your oh-so-clever "Chicago-style shakedown" bullshit. Keep on with the new fearmongering, that BP will go bankrupt and drag away more jobs. Keep on with the obeisance to your corporate masters. You'll look like those dying, crude-coated fish on the beach, desperately jawing the air for water.

And if Democrats can't turn this into right-wing crushing ads, then they should just lay down next to 'em.

Now That You've Asked, Why the Hell Doesn't God Do Anything About the Oil Spill?:
Really, one of the only questions left regarding the BP oil spill has to be "Why the fuck doesn't God get off his lazy ass and do something about it?" God's just sittin' around, eatin' Cheetos, trippin' balls, gettin' handjobbed by Marilyn Monroe while watchin' the World Cup, wonderin' what side he should take each game, and, hey, babe, could you use your other hand to pass that beer? Apparently, that holy sack of shit can't even take a second to pinch the oil well and seal it off.

Because if God was paying attention, then the Super Duper Prayer Team wouldn't have been called to rouse the invisible sky wizard into action. The Rude Pundit joined the Super Duper Prayer Team of the Family Research Council (motto: "Occasionally, something distracts us from gays and abortion"), and every week he receives his prayerection orders, telling him for what he's gotta drop on his knees and work that Christ crank. This week, it's oil, motherfuckers:

"Something must be done now to reduce the oil escape, waste and damage, but a television broadcast from the oval office [sic] won't get the job done. Even more important, are we listening? The troubles we face in America are all listed in Deuteronomy 28, where God promised Moses that such would happen to peoples and nations that disobey Him." Wait a second. Deuteronomy 28 is some badass shit, OT style. Is the FRC saying that we were asking for an oil leak?

The prayer target letter continues, "Do Americans, even Christians, see the hand of God in the extraordinary 'judgments' we see today? Do we recognize that Big Government cannot solve our problems but can make them worse? Will we turn our eyes God-ward and cry out to Him who is our nation's only hope?"

That's right. The Family Research Council believes that Godjeebus wants the people of the Gulf of Mexico, most of whom are churchgoing Catholics and Baptists, to suffer because "Big Government" is bad. Man, God, just stay on your couch and do nothing, 'cause you're a dick.

But, still, alas, yes, being a member of the SDPT carries its burdens. And we must pray, "May God graciously intervene to stop the gushing oil and limit the damage! May our President humbly seek God for guidance and may those who can help be released to do so." So God caused the spill to teach us a lesson, but we need to pray that he'll stop it. Yes, God is like a mob boss who can keep burning down your businesses unless you pony up what's due to him.

Of course, the President did say that "we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day." And see how much good it did? Now oil is probably leaking even faster, coming through cracks in the sea floor. Hallelujah. God is...No, not "good." Apathetic at best? Bitchy at worst?

The Rude Pundit on Tuesday's Stephanie Miller Show:
Oh, the Rude Pundit was ridden hard and put away wet at Bonnaroo, and he sounded like it while jumping into the middle of the case of Stephanie v. Mooks, regarding Obama and the oil leak:

Powered by Podbean.com

You can get your weekly rude dose of audio by subscribing to the free podcast. It's free and poddy.

Obama's Oil Spill Speech: Us and Them:
Who the fuck was Obama talking to last night? Because he said that he was going to outline "what we’re doing to help our neighbors in the Gulf," as well as, referring to the possible future, "It is that same faith that sustains our neighbors in the Gulf right now." Obama may as well have said, "you people" in reference to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Could someone tell the President that they've got TVs down there? And that, like many Americans, they were tuned to him speaking? 'Cause, see, if they're "our neighbors," that means he wasn't speaking to them. It means that "they" aren't "us." It means that it's something distanced, something different, an Other, in the political discourse. It's goddamned patronizing.

Here's a hint to Barack Obama's speechwriters: in the future, go with "fellow Americans" or just "we" and "us." Mexico is our neighbor on the Gulf (not "in the Gulf"), not other Americans. It's our Gulf coast states. It's our waters and economy. It's us, man, not them.

The President's big Oval Office speech was a bullshit pile of news updates, vague promises, and toothless threats. Look, we know that Obama wants the leak to stop. We know that the government is doing a lot of shit to make that happen, we know that the oil and tar and dead things need to be cleaned up, we know that BP is on the hook, we know that shit is fucked up for fishing fleets and shrimpers. We know that he has limitations on what exactly he can do.

But the man said, "Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny." And he's right. So tell us what to do. Lead us. That's what we want; it's what we've wanted all along, not an especially skilled anchor informing us that oil spills are bad. "As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -– but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment," he said. So fucking seize it.

Obama's cautious approach to governance made him speak in generalities with little vision for the future. He could have said he was wrong about further drilling. He could have laid out a path that said, "Here's where we are. Here's where we want to be. Here's how we get to this new place." And he could have called on all of us to help. Jesus Christ, how about one mention of conservation (beyond having "conservationists" on one of the endless stream of panels studying shit)? How about saying that it's time, once again, for American drivers to give up their big-ass SUVs? How about enlisting us in the fight, or making it into a fight for our survival? "It's wind energy or The Road, motherfuckers. Which do you choose?"

But he didn't. Instead, he said that there is a future, "Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there." No vision, but it is better for the children, he assured us.

Yeah. Somebody better inform the neighbors.

(Tip o' the hat for the observation on Obama's use of "neighbors" to a rude reader from Louisiana, Kevin A., who also added, "This is the progressive movement's Bush moment -- the moment where they can no longer deny their guy is in over his head. Tonight was Bush in Jackson Square...We are so, so fucked." He has a right to his despair.)

High School Valedictorian Who Wants to Cure Cancer, Go Home:
So this guy, Eric Balderas, a college student who was valedictorian of his high school class, no, even better, a Harvard University student, no, wait, even betterer, a Harvard University student majoring in molecular and cellular biology who wants to cure cancer, was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was four years old by his mother. The twist, of course, is that they've been living here illegally for the last 15 years. So Balderas was stopped by airport security last week before boarding a flight from San Antonio, where he was visiting his mom, to Boston, where he is, as mentioned before, studying to one day cure cancer.

This kid's a better human being than at least 90% of the people who get to be Americans, so of course he faces deportation to Mexico because we are a stupid, fearful, racist nation, and it's what we do. Bill O'Reilly will lose his fucking mind if an illegal drinks and drives, but you never hear about people like Balderas, just trying to negotiate a medieval immigration system and do well in this country. Unlike nearly every other undocumented immigrant, Balderas has Harvard behind him, so there might actually be a happy ending, god bless the plutocracy.

Meanwhile, Arizona, continuing in its quest to force white people to keep up their own damn lawns, is considering a bill that would deny citizenship to so-called "anchor babies." An anchor baby is a child born to an illegal immigrant mother on American soil. Our pesky Constitution says those kids are automatically citizens. But, because the state's cruel and idiotic, Arizona doesn't need no stinking 14th Amendment, even though it would seem like the decision as to who is and who is not a citizen of, you know, the nation would be decided at a federal level. Apparently, states' rights extends to disregarding the laws of the land.

If Balderas is deported and he goes to a Mexican university to finish his studies, the Rude Pundit hopes he comes up with a cure for cancer and his patent says that it can never be sold or used in the United States. When someone asks Balderas why he would deny the nation just to the norte a miracle drug, Balderas could say, "Because fuck them."

Trying to Get Back to Planet Earth:
In trying to catch up with the news he missed while he was in a Bonnaroo haze of mud, heat, music, and what-drug-is-that?-Well-okay for the last four days, the Rude Pundit saw that the oil was still leaking in the Gulf, which prompted the douchiest headline he's seen in a while: "Whither the dead bird, tar ball and oily boom?" The answer to MSNBC on that would be "Shut the fuck up, you pompous cockknobs, and just give us the story."

Mostly, though, the news of the nation and the world left the Rude Pundit with one observation: "Wait, you mean I can't show porn to a nineteen year-old? That'll seriously change my Thursday night plans."

Honestly, though, at this point, having just awakened in a real and actual bed, the Rude Pundit isn't even sure where he is, let alone who is dicking over who and when the fuck did Oklahoma become a lake?

Back tomorrow with regular rudeness.

New Rude at Bonnaroo:
The second installment of "The Day of the Roo" is up over at Rude at Bonnaroo. The zombies must be stopped.

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Run for City Council:


You can bet taxes are going to go down with Matt Swallows.