Desperation, by Polly Anna [Updated]

I am not inclined to the sanguine view that when biped enemies of humanity start acting completely demented, this is actually good because ‘people will realize’ how off their rockers these specimens are. History offers far too many examples of how easily an entire society can go mad and how dangerously normal extreme behaviors and discourses quickly become.

However, I am mildly encouraged by the signs of desperation and accelerating dementia in the wacko camp. This includes international goons, national lunkheads and local hustlers.

Starting on the bottom end of the garbage heap, Pedro Espada, Jr., our worst Albany politico-entrepreneur—scraping a very deep, scum-encrusted barrel—is showing signs of panic over a primary challenge for his Bronx Senate seat. Espada’s supporters sent out threatening legal-looking letters to people who signed his opponent’s nominating petition. You gotta be biting your nails big time to stoop to that.

New York’s Governor Goofball also added a note of irrelevancy on the Ground Zero Islamic cultural center by suggesting, in his usual clueless way, that he could provide the Muslims with an alternative site somewhere else, thereby completely missing the constitutional, the conceptual and the political points in one mighty blow. This befits a man boosted by an accident of birth far beyond his Peter Principle level of incompetence and even now failing to comprehend that no one cares what he thinks.

Moving up to the national scenario, the Tea Party-plagued Republican party is having its Frankenstein moment on all fronts. Here’s what a Kentucky congressional candidate, one Gunnery Sergeant Bob Pinkstaff [you can’t make this shit up—oh, and click here to view his ‘Well-Regulated Militias’ page] tweeted about his ethnic-Indian opponent:

‘Just like his evil muslim communist USURPER comrad, barack hussein obama, This goyle character is just another ‘turban topper’ we don’t need in congress or any political office that deals with the U.S. Constitution, Christianity and the United States of America!!!’

According to The Daily Kos, the campaign of Raj Goyle, his opponent, captured the rant and is planning to use it—what fun!

Then there’s Harry Reid’s welcome challenger, the ludicrous Sharron Angle, pushing the idea of doing away with Social Security. Seeing that that was not exactly a winning platform in Nevada, Angle went one better by urging that the U.S. follow the lead of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet on state pensions. Angle didn’t say whether she thought those opposed to her plan should be helicoptered out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped in.

This babe is so bonkers that Reid may keep enough of the broken-down, underwater, bankrupt Nevada desert hermits on his side to get re-elected.

Then there is the sudden burst of hysteria about ‘anchor babies’ and the foolish decision our country made 150 years ago to guarantee civil rights to ex-slaves—and their children. Well, since only the NAACP can be accused of racism these days, I suppose it was only a matter of time until we had people asking to reconsider the plantation system.

For the record, the 14th Amendment includes the Equal Protection Clause, which overruled the 1857 Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court determined Mr Scott was not a person but rather a piece of property. Democrats should note that the decision was issued four years before the civil war broke out in 1861, i.e. that decades of bending over backward to keep the slaveholders happy didn’t work.


Finally, we have our Israeli friends, surely high in the competition for the most bipedal of all bipeds on the world stage. As noted by a number of commentators, the fix is in to normalize and pave the way for an eventual Israeli attack on Iran for allegedly wanting to have nuclear weapons. (Why would they want those? Is anybody threatening them?) Juan Cole hosted a discussion outlining exactly how suicidally insane such an attack would be—not that that will slow down the neocons.

But this cornucopia of mental derangement being displayed on all sides is strangely soothing. We are either headed to hell in a handbasket, or these people are desperate—a sign that their crazed schemes are falling apart. For no good reason, I am inclined to the latter view and am experiencing an intuition that better news, albeit of a temporary nature, is nigh.

One hint: Mayor Bloomberg, whom I heartily dislike, deserves a thumping round of applause for telling the Ground Zero mosque bigots to fuck off. Bloomberg made a rousing speech in defense of religious liberty from Governor’s Island, sticking his neck way out on an issue that will not earn him undying love from the assorted yahoos dominating our news cycles these days.

I was going to make snide remarks about Obama’s inability to make similar unpopular and courageous moves, but he finally did so. Okay, it’s election season, but some politicians (George W. Bush, for example,) understood that taking unambiguous positions and defending them makes people grudgingly respect you even if they hate your guts.

[Updated] I stand corrected by a reader that the Goyle race is actually occurring in Kansas, not Kentucky, that the Gunnery Sergeant Pinkstaff is not his opponent and that the weirdo twitter post was a cut-and-paste error. So maybe the heartland Republicans are not quite this demented. However, I took it seriously when I read it on Kos, which says something about how far over the edge is the rhetoric.