A Song to Describe How it Felt to Learn of Andrew Breitbart's Death -- And, yes, I know this is petty but it's a tough fucking world and you're supposed to make it more sane, honest, loving, and compassionate -- not less.

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Saintorum

It's ironic for a guy who hates sex as much as Santorum to so deliberately and gleefully fuck himself. But that's what he's doing. Having sat out much of the early rounds in this Star Wars bar of a Republican primary as one goon after another dissolved into irrelevancy, now that someone's actually glanced over at the sad, pear-shaped, weak-chinned gnome nursing a soda pop and walked over to chat him up, suddenly he thinks he's pretty. Suddenly, he actually thinks the world wants to hear his vision for America instead of just getting a hand job in the parking lot. And so he's gleefully shooting his mouth off.

No public education, because it puts un-Godly ideas in people's heads and is "an anachronism." As opposed to schoolin' based on a literal interpretation of a 2000-year-old book. No pre-natal testing because it detects Down Syndrome fetuses so they can be sucked out before they can enter society and smile adorably. No birth control because it interferes with God's plan to mass produce Christians. No pre-marital sex because it doesn't mass produce Christians. No gay sex because it doesn't mass produce Christians. Someone needs to explain something to Ricky -- Nobody cares! To most of us living here in the 21st century, these are non-issues. We're past that. The culture wars are a dodge. Political misdirection. Something Karl Rove and company dreamed up to fire up the hicks and propel themselves into office so they could go about the real business of Republican rule: making themselves and their friends rich. Like the so-called "fair tax." Everyone pays the same. Sounds fair. And Americans believe in fairness. But the trick is that the rich simply want to pay less and if the price is other people getting to pay less as well; well, who gives a fuck?

So for a quick, shining moment, the media took a look at Rick -- A guy who was born too late to follow his true calling as a judge at the Salem witch trials. One look at that smug, patrician scowl and you can see him leaning over his bench, pointing an accusing finger at some poor waif and shrieking "burn her!" And while the thought of him anywhere near actual power sends a cold shiver down one's spine, there's a part of me that would like to see him get the nomination. First off, just to wipe the sense of entitlement off Romney's face and that Nero-like sneer off Gingrich's. And as for Ron Paul -- who cares? He's a primary skin tag. Yet, he has the unique distinction of being the one Republican candidate who, if you listen to him for 5 minutes, he makes a lot of sense. But when you listen for 10, you realize he's out of his fucking mind.

So, if by some fluke the Republican faithful become so enthralled with their pet culture warrior that they drip Santorum on one another and nominate the weasel -- well, then -- great. I'd love to see the little shit on a debate stage with the president. It's one thing to preach to the retarded choir that attends these debates about the president's private "environmental theology." It's another to stand on a stage and debate the man, at which point the country will see him for who he is -- the mealy mouthed kid who talks tough on the team bus on the way to the game, then gets into the game and gets his ass kicked.

But that fantasy will probably have to remain as such because as Santorum continues to fuck himself via the act of talking, the punditocracy has once again focused on Romney, a guy whose calling in life is to sip a ginger ale in the clubhouse of a restricted country club. So instead of another round of culture wars, we'll have to endure another half-year of Mitt standing on stage in his mom jeans, flashing that excruciating smile as he painfully and pathetically tries to connect with actual people while firing up the base with the boogeyman du jour -- Obama's war on the rich! Obama's war on religion! Iran getting the bomb! Government taking your freedom! Immigrants taking your jobs! Be afraid of the intelligent black guy in the white house! But pay no attention to the Mormon behind the curtain.

Though maybe Santorum will take the Veep slot under Romney where he can fight the culture wars to his sanctimonious little heart's content and take his rightful place in history as the second coming of Dan Quayle. Heads up to the gay couple on Modern Family -- you've been served.

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE FAILURE...

Only this "fucking asshole," as an Iowa voter called him to his face, could stick up a spot like this. A spot that is, at one and the same time, unctuously Christmassy, and blatantly cynical. The sight of Newt's smug, jowly mush next to his Plasticine Pat Nixon clone of a 3rd wife waxing all "from our family to yours -- best of the holiday season" is as vomit-inducing as watching Nixon in the Oval Office with James Brown. For all the jingle-jangle holiday horseshit, there's nothing this toad does that isn't politically calculated and motivated, particularly his recent entreaty to Mitt to lay off the negative ads. 

Newt knows that his recent surge has been beaten back through negative ads dragging out his warehouse full of baggage, so to call for a return to civility and "let's debate the issues" is a blatant attempt to neutralize his opponents' best weapon. On every right wing issue, he's vulnerable as shit. An anti-government crusader who took gobs of cash as a lobbyist, then has the arrogance and audacity to claim it was for his expertise as an historian. A three-times married unfaithful husband calling for a return to old-fashioned values. A man running for the Presidency who would arrest judges whose opinions he doesn't agree with. That he can trot out these lies with a straight face only demonstrates his utter contempt for the rest of us. The people. The press. Everyone. Even O'Reilly called him out on it. How full-tilt gonzo do you have to get before Bill O'Reilly goes "ok, now wait a minute, you can't be serious"?

As to Newt's momentary comeback from pussy-whipped, Aegean-cruising, Tiffany buying newtered hubby to the head of the GOP wolf pack, to the point where he even declared himself the "presumptive nominee" I am decidedly mixed. While the consensus is that he'll lose to the President in the general election, putting this pompous dictator-wannabe that close to executive power is a frightening prospect, especially to a country just getting over the soul shivers from Sarah Palin's potential irregular heartbeat away from the Oval Office. 

Still, as amusing at it is to watch the pack go at each other, the one point I don't hear from Democrats is that, while it may matter politically who the nominee is, from a policy point of view it doesn't. They need to make the point that the policies advocated by the GOP are the same policies that put the country into financial freefall. Putting aside the culture wars and their attempt to drag us back to the 19th century, or perhaps the 1st century, it is the economy -- first, last and always. Even this week's political maneuvering in the house over the Payroll Tax bill shows that the GOP is so obsessed with beating the President in 2012 they would deny him any success, even when it's based on a bi-partisan compromise that already passed through the Senate. Even when it means fucking the rest of us in the bargain. And even though "the rest of us" includes Democrats and Republicans. If you're Boehner, I can't imagine how you spin this one. 

For all the comic moments the GOP pre-season has brought -- the gaffes, the goofs, the mistresses, the oops moments -- someone needs to make it clear that it isn't their incompetence or their desperation that's making them look like a collection of  -- to quote that Iowa voter-- fucking assholes.  It's the paucity, and frankly the danger, of their ideas. 

Coincidence?

Rick Warren -- Hands off Hitchens, You Sanctimonious Boob

As the tributes for Christopher Hitchens pour in from every geographical and ideological corner, none I imagine would have provoked a lash from his acid tongue more than the words of sanctimonious JE$U$ freak, the Rev. Rick Warren, who tweeted: "My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved and prayed for him constantly and grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now." Note the capital "T" in truth.

Sorry, Reverend, but Hitchens is dead. He knows nothing now because there is no him left. No brain function. No personality. No ego. He is atoms. Molecules. Cosmic stuff. Not a happy spirit getting off the bus in God Camp, staring up at His Divine Presence while smacking his forehead like some buck-toothed goober, thinking "D'oh! Was I wrong!" Only a true intellectual coward would fire a cheap debate shot after the man is dead in a vain attempt to score a point he's unable to rebut.

And if Jesus really were the time-travelling death-defying uber human product of magic sex between some fictitious bearded sky daddy and an earth lady, my only wish would be that he would come back now just to bitch slap the living shit out of you for trivializing his message for fun and profit.

There is no God in the sky. No magical place called heaven. And if there were a hell it would be here on earth where where greed merchants have discovered that you can exploit people's ignorance, fear, and gullibility to make millions in the religion business. So if you truly have any of the decency I imagine you claim to have, please let the man die with his thoughts and integrity intact.

RIP Hubert Sumlin - Still Playing The Blues

Sperman Cain and the No-Soul Train

    

     As if the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct weren't enough. As if the Libya gaffe wasn't enough. As if the smoking campaign manager wasn't enough. As if the silly 9-9-9 economic plan wasn't enough. Now we get the closer: a Georgia businesswoman has just opened up to a local Atlanta station about a 13-year "inappropriate relationship" with the pizza guy turned presidential aspirant. And she's got proof. Not that it matters. Like Governor Oops, Herman looked good through Republican beer goggles for about five minutes. But the true damage wasn't that he opened his fly. It was that he opened his mouth. Now he's polling in single digits, and as he "reassesses" his campaign; i.e. gets ready to bug out, we're on to the new flavor of the minute: Newt. I guess, in Republican politics, everything old is Newt again.

     Newt the sage, the historian. The three-times married traditional family guy, who could've given Herman some advice: if you're going to fuck around, you gotta marry 'em. Otherwise you look like a hypocrite spouting the old-time values. But compared to the misfits they keep throwing up on that stage, Newt is a genius. And through it all, Mitt's still sitting there polling in the low 20s and acting like the chick in high school who wouldn't put out but knew the boys would come back around when they were ready to settle down. 

     It must be even tougher to endure this debacle from the GOP side. The only honest statement out of the mouth of a Republican in the last three years was uttered by Mitch McConnell: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President." Everything they've said and done in all that time has been in the service of that one objective. So, it must be torture to have spent three years grooming a champion to take back the White House only to end up with this non-tourage. This clown college. This movable farce. I imagine, for the more sober, old-school Republicans, at some point you have to look at this group and think: "it really doesn't matter who they fucked. What matters is that they're fucked."

     And while one can take some delight in each gaffe, each misstep, each oops, and each "I barely knew that woman" the joy is not pure. Because as soon as one incompetent derails it just opens the field for another one even more onerous. Cain disappears. Great. Bachmann babbles her way into obscurity. Whew. Still, that leaves Newt and Mitt. There must be some schadenfreude-like word for the momentary joy one feels at each fool's disappearance only to have it quickly replaced by sadness brought on by the realization of the fools who are left.
  
     For all the rancor that has permeated the political debate over the last three years, the only thing we may share during this process, both Democrats and Republicans, is the knowledge that this group is just fucking sad. Though given the tired Republican platform, maybe Perry the fighter, Mitt the statesman, Newt the scholar, and Bachmann the waitress are the true standard bearers of some very tired, mean, outdated, discredited ideas.

     Still, by the time they're done, the dull Mormon at the end of the bar nursing a diet Coke may end up being their guy. The man who made hundreds of millions of dollars buying companies and stripping them for parts while throwing people out of work. That's the job creator. The man who brought health care reform to Massachusetts but still can't find the right door to open so he can moonwalk away from it. A suit and a haircut in search of a personality and some conviction. This is the great white hope. That's got to hurt.

    Emotionally, it must be like that joke about the neophyte in Hell who sees the denizens standing knee-deep in shit and thinks "Hell doesn't seem so bad." Then a voice bellows out of the speakers: "Ok, break's over!  Everyone back on their heads!"