(Illustration found here).

The Republican Party — the sweet-smelling sour apple GOP — is probably the most mean-spirited, nasty-faced and schizophrenic organization on the planet — they couldn’t find their multi-collective ass with both hands.
Midterm elections earlier this month not only displayed a nut-house approach to politics, but the foul-mouthed GOP in its desire to crush the current US government has indeed created a much-greater divide among US peoples — the coasts vs the hinder lands.
A Washington Post analysis: Results from November’s midterm elections have exposed a deepening political divide between cities on the coasts and the less-dense areas in the middle of the country.
The Republicans don’t care, however, as they have bigger fish to fry.

Reporter Edward Luce with the UK’s The Financial Times on the Republican push back on US foreign policy, especially the upcoming START nuclear treaty with Russia: He added that Republicans, set about their agenda to make Obama a one-term president, may ultimately go about it unintelligently. “Pick two countries that would like to see a failure of ratification: it would be North Korea and Iran,” Luce continued. “I think if that argument doesn’t work with the Republicans, that sort of basic, elemental national security argument doesn’t work, nothing is. There is a greater hatred of Obama than there is a love of American national security.”
And the one-term prez remark?
Mitch McConnell, the sour-faced Senate Minority Leader, in explaining the GOP goals: “Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office.”
Self first, then country — how much will change for the ‘party of no.’

Paul Krugman in his post in the New York Times this morning examines the GOP via Big Al Simpson, the former GOP senator and budget deficit reductions:

So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. … When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’ ” meaning spending cuts. “And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued.
Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.
…
And on matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for.
On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control.
On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.
Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy.
But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.
…
My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality.
They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country.

Once again — Cry, the beloved country.

DAMN

Chalmers Johnson, the best and brightest of the eyes on US reality in foreign policy, died Saturday at age 79.
Johnson was a voice of reason — fromTPM: In four powerful books, all written not in the corridors of power in New York or Washington — but in his small home office at Cardiff-by-the-Sea in California, Johnson became one of the most successful chroniclers and critics of America’s foreign policy designs around the world.

What blowback to come?

(The above pix from bewarethemarketplaceidols).

One gut-clenching, hands-over-face experience is Jackboot John’s heir apparent Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric — whimsical, Gracie Burns-funny while shitting-the-pants scary — all at once.
If Sarah wasn’t on a possible path to the Oval Office, if she was just maybe a freakin’ governor of a state being interviewed on CBS, if a lot of shit…
This entire scenario would then be black-humored, Dr. Strangelove-like-hilarious.
Watch the incredible Tina Fey as Sarah on Saturday night’s SNL via HuffPost here.
And for the real thing: Sarah interviewed by Couric last week (Amy Poehler plays Couric in the above skit) also via HuffPost here.

This evening Couric interviewed Jackboot John and Sarah, together again for the first time — “gotcha journalism” the scapegoat for Sarah’s foreign policy quip about tracking militants into Pakistan.
Jackboot John has got to be the most-dumb-ass man to ever hold himself up for president.
Marc Ambinder’s blog at The Atlantic has a section of convoluted dialogue between the three — Couric finally being a journalist, Sarah following Jackboot John’s interruptions — the whole scene written-out is reminiscent of a parlor-room scene in a freaked-out ‘Father Knows Best‘ episode.

However, it’s hobbed-about that CBS might have more of Katie’s interview with Sarah from the other night, according to the Washington Post, And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing. (Hat tip to dailykos.)

As was said above with a sitting-on-the-shitter-grimace, Jackboot John’s run for the White House is probably the worse in US history — way-badder than Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, even Michael Dukakis in ’88 — and Sarah is just a horror extension of the McCain presidential campaign.
Sarah is just the obvious lie.

Matt Taibbi, the always-interesting political writer for Rolling Stone, offers up a view of the RNC and Sarah Palin as a reflection of the floating-toward-the-abyss USA — fat, sassy, and from-the-looks-of-it, dumb-ass blind.

• Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States.
  As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove.
  But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.
  Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way.
  All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

And Sarah’s RNC speech:

• It was a virtuoso performance.
  She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.”
  It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
  …
  Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

Read Taibbi’s entire shit-knuckled, right-on piece at AlterNet.

When Jackboot John and Sarah’s flippant gotcha on the worsening Afghan/Pakistan crisis is coupled with now-global-domino collapse of the world’s financial markets, the couple appear like a dream — they just can’t be real.

And the shit goes on…

Don’t Recall has apparently slipped the noose again.

As of noon today, Decider George has been quiet about Don’t Recall’s lying barrage last week up on the Hill. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested from the Bush administration some evidence of Don’t Recall’s truthfulness. But, of course, nothing from the White House. Just about every politican in D.C. has slammed the AG. Don’t Recall is indeed a piece of work.

According to stories in the Wasington Post, Gonzales’s tie to Decider George stretches back to at least 1996, when he intervened to prevent then-Gov. Bush from serving jury duty in Texas, which allowed the decider to keep his own drunken driving conviction a secret years longer. Don’t Recall has been Decider George’s gofer for a long time and will stand with his man until the end.
There’s nothing that good-ole buddies won’t do even with Don’t Recall.

Even Vice President Dufus Dick Cheney has open his yap. When asked in an interview with CBS radio whether Don’t Recall should keep his job, Dufus Dick replied: “I do. I’m a big fan of Al’s. I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances. The debate between he and the Senate is something they’re going to have to resolve. But I think he has testified truthfully.”

Al? ‘Testified truthfully?’ Dufus Dick still has a the gall despite every freakin’ bit of evidence to the contrary and even Don’t Recall’s own words.

Dont’ Recall ain’t that smart, neither. James Moore, co-author of Bush’s Brain, a book on Karl Rove, told Countdown MSNBC host Keith Olbermann on Monday, education does not necessarily make one a brain. “I think — it is amazing to me that people actually think that this man is smart,” Moore said. “If the administration of George W. Bush has proved anything, it is that you can go to a top flight East Coast school and get an advanced degree and not be a very bright person.”

Duh!