Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
— George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946 (h/t Juan Cole)

Politics is weird.
And creepy.
And now, I know, lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality.
— Shepard Smith, Fox News, May 2, 2012 (h/t Crooks and Liars)

Smith was waxing truthful on yesterday’s who-gives-a-shit-news of Newt Gingrich’s final curtain call on his bid to be president, blubbering near-incoherent while pushing aside last December’s narcissistic bluster it was ‘obvious‘ he “…was going to be the nominee.”

Well, Newt ain’t the only fruitloop left in the bowl.

We still got Mittens, and anybody with the initials GOP.

(Illustration found here).

Beyond, but not far from politics: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco blew off a lawsuit yesterday against John Yoo, the pompous author of the now-infamous “torture memos” which allowed George Jr. to waterboard, prick pricks and pull fingernails against anybody who moved during the most-successful war on terror.
And dumb-ass, bat-shit craziness from Judge Raymond Fisher: “…we cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture.”
What can any sane, non-delusional person say to that — maybe how about international law, Ronald Reagan, common decency, Nazis, etc.
Besides, were there anyone working for George Jr. resembling a ‘reasonable official‘ in 2001-2003?
Yoo’s response: “He has now lost before two separate courts of appeals, and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison.”
One asshole among so many that should themselves be behind bars.

And this should be a man the barricades, Occupy everything call to arms:

Between 1979 and 2005 (the latest data available with these breakdowns), the share of total income held by the top 1.0 percent more than doubled, from 9.7 percent to 21.0 percent, with most of the increase occurring since 1993.
The top 0.1 percent led the way by more than tripling its income share, from 3.3 percent to 10.3 percent. This 7.0 percentage-point gain in income share for the top 0.1 percent accounted for more than 60 percent of the overall 11.2 percentage-point rise in the income share of the entire top 1.0 percent.
…
From 1978–2011, CEO compensation grew more than 725 percent, substantially more than the stock market and remarkably more than the annual compensation of a typical private-sector worker, which grew a meager 5.7 percent over this time period.

And this from old Romney buddy Edward Conard and how the rich are different…and better, and you boys and girls at the bottom should accept that fact, just get way-greedy and life will be wonderful.
From the NY Times on Tuesday:

At a nearby table we saw three young people with plaid shirts and floppy hair.
For all we know, they may have been plotting the next generation’s Twitter, but Conard felt sure they were merely lounging on the sidelines.
“What are they doing, sitting here, having a coffee at 2:30?” he asked.
“I’m sure those guys are college-educated.”
Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life.
In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential.
He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs.

Conard’s book, “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” has been dubbed to be most-likely “…the most hated book of the year.”

Does one have to be an asshole to be bat-shit crazy?
The answer: No, but apparently being an asshole sure accelerates the process.