Agitprop: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda

A Very Endangered Species

Thought it was too late for the Bush administration to do more damage? Think again. They just sentenced the polar bear to death.

The provision of the [Endangered Species Act] that the department is using to lighten the regulatory burden that the listing imposes on the oil and gas industry — known as a 4(d) rule — was designed to permit flexibility in the management of threatened species, as long as the chances of conservation of the species would be enhanced, or at least not diminished.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups that originally sued to have the polar bear listed as threatened, said Wednesday that the decision was an acknowledgement of “global warming’s urgency,” but that it fell short of helping the polar bear.

“The administration acknowledges the bear is in need of intensive care,” Ms. Siegel said. “The listing lets the bear into the hospital, but then the 4(d) rule says the bear’s insurance doesn’t cover the necessary treatments.”

Polar Bear is Made a Protected Species [NY Times]

The Next Generation

Apparently Jenna Welch Bush has married Henry Chase Hager, a graduate student, former aide to Karl Rove, and son of a former Virginia lieutenant governor. One can only assume that they spent their wedding night attempting to procreate, which they will no doubt manage to do at some point. They will provide us with our next generation of rulers - mass-murdering, pasty-white, barely-intelligible conservatives that will somehow get elected to something in some red retard state, thus launching them on a trajectory to national office and continuation of George W. Bush’s war against all of us (especially brown people).

A tribute to Jenna after the jump.

The End of the Republican Party

Yes - I admit - I’ve enjoyed blogging about the rise and fall of Vito Fossella (R-NY). He’s a major-league shitbag who got caught driving drunk and, as it happens, has a second family just outside of DC (pictured).  Now that’s GOP family values!  And if you don’t believe the “shitbag” charge, get a load of this:

His socially conservative positions were in sync with his mostly white, heavily Roman Catholic district, which covers all of Staten Island and a small wedge of Brooklyn. He opposes abortion, favored President Bush’s tax cuts and voted with the Republicans 88 percent of the time last year, according to Congressional Quarterly.

Not enough for you?  He also lied to his girlfriend - said he’d split with his wife.

Like any good Republican, Vito initially refused to resign.  But now it appears he’ll be gone by Monday - perhaps, as Atrios said, to spend more time with his families.

Will there be any Republicans left next year?

UPDATE - More Republican family values:

The rich father and uncle of shame-faced, two-timing Staten Island Rep. Vito Fossella have been making sure his gal pal and love child are well taken care of in Virginia, sources close to the disgraced politician said yesterday.

“Uncle Frank and Vito Sr. were bankrolling the kid,” said one highly placed Republican official

Cheato Vito Kin Help Him Sin [NY Post]

When Republicans Reproduce

Last week [another place I blog] CP reported on Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY), who got caught driving drunk out of his mind in Northern Virginia. At the time, we noted that the scandal did not involve toe-tapping, hooker-fucking, auto-asphxiating, kid-touching, or cocksucking. But now we can at last give this scandal a place of honor on the David Vitter CP Sex Scandal Scale, or whatever the fuck it’s called:

Rep. Vito Fossella today admitted he fathered a love child in a longtime secret affair with the woman who rescued him from the drunk tank.

Fossella, who is married and has three children in New York, did not say if he would step down or seek re-election.

“I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a 3-year-old daughter,” Fossella said in a four paragraph statement.

Let’s see - we have a straight married guy fucking a straight unmarried woman for years, one love child, no known fetishes or unusual equipment, and nothing involving a public rest room or the exchange of cash. Degree of difficulty - not very high since his wife was in Staten Island most of the time. This is 5.5 diapers out of 10, and that might be generous. What say you?

STFU

I am sick and fucking tired of Republicans, conservatives, and GOP kid-touchers getting all pissy about how George W. Bush ruined the Republican “brand”. These are the same people who were screaming for Bush to be appointed in 2000 and who kept him in power in 2004. They are all Bush-enablers who, upon discovering that the majority of Americans had figured out that the Dear Leader was a fetal-alcohol-syndrome fuckwit bent on blowing up the world, decided they might want to distance themselves from him. Too fucking late you piece-of-shit bloodthirsty fucks. This is all your fault.

One of the worst offenders is Newt Gingrich, who took to the pages of Human Events yesterday to whine about how George W. Bush has wrecked an otherwise upright and chaste Republican party. This strains credulity - the Republican party was pretty much cast into the shitter when Gingrich took over, and the seeds of Bush can be found in the insane rantings of that amiable dunce St. Ronnie.

When I saw the Gingrich piece, I of course had to comment (Human Events doesn’t offer a link, so I put it up at Crooks and Liars as well):

You Get One Phone Call

Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) got caught driving drunk last week.  And not just drunk - really really drunk - more than twice the legal limit.  Still, it's not a sex scandal, so it doesn't even register on the Cynics' Party Diaper Scale.

Like any good Republican Vito has refused to resign, instead hiring a PR firm - Susan Del Percio (photo) - to attempt the impossible.  Of course, he's using campaign funds to pay for it.

We all know you get one phone call if you get arrested.  The question now is why Fossella, whose campaign manager lived near the police station, didn't call him.  Instead, he called the woman you see above - Laura Fay.  Fossella is a married father of three.

Fay and Fossella attended an Air Force-sponsored dinner in Britain on July 27, 2003, with dozens of other guests for then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Documents show Fossella was one of only two members of Congress whose spouses' names were not listed on a guest roster.

D.C. insiders questioned why Fossella called Fay instead of chief of staff Thomas Quaadman, who lives in Alexandria.

"I don't get it. I don't know what he was thinking," a GOP source snapped.

So stay tuned - we may get a sex scandal out of this yet.

Vito Fossella's Relationship With 'Mystery Woman' Under Scrutiny [NY Daily News]

Republican Family Values

Here in greater New York City we have one, and only one, Republican in our congressional delegation.  His name is Vito Fossella, and he’s a complete tool.  We have the fuckwits over on Staten Island to thank for his presence in the House.

If you read this blog, you know that pretty much every Republican gets into trouble at some point.  If it’s not one thing it’s another - toe-tapping, hooker-fucking, auto-asphxiating, kid-touching, cocksucking - it’s seldom boring.  Vito didn’t manage to get caught fucking someone/something (there’s always tomorrow though), but he did manage to get a DWI by blowing more than twice the legal limit:

Staten Island Rep. Vito Fossella’s blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when he was nabbed for drunken driving in Virginia - which may mean he is going to jail.

Fossella begged forgiveness from his family and constituents yesterday but would not say whether he plans to fight the charges.

More after the jump.

How Many Mortgages Would Jesus Have?

The mortgage lending crisis now upon us has produced lots of fun new terms - “jingle mail”, “trash-out”, and “moral hazard” are just a few.  Lenders demand that buyers ignore logic and continue to make payments on homes that are worth less than the loans on them (”buried alive - face down”).  It’s a “moral hazard” when buyers “walk away” instead of behaving like good little capitalists.

Of course, dirty fucking hippies like you (and cheerful godless heathens like me) aren’t really all that moral.  Faced with a $450,000 house that had $625,000 in liens, we’d probably mail in the keys and take the washer, dryer, and refrigerator to boot.  But you’d expect our friends in Jesusland to keep paying because not honoring your contracts makes the Baby Jesus cry, wouldn’t you? Not so fast:

Next up is 5015 Meadowlark Court in the Foxwood Forest neighborhood in northern Albemarle County. Here, the owner owes $500,000 on the first deed of trust. But this time there are two additional liens on the property– $150,000 on a second deed of trust and $75,000 on a third note, a credit line, according to Albemarle County records. . . .

Lenders have allowed the owner to pile more than $725,000 in debt on a property assessed by the county at only $691,200. But the real shocker is the owner’s vocation: he’s Chris Prang, a mortgage broker.

“It was really bad timing for us,” says Prang. “We had bought a house a Wintergreen and dumped a lot money in it. Then there was the news about mortgages–” news that affected Prang’s own business.

Prang works out of his house for Carteret Mortgage; he says his mortgage consulting is geared toward the Christian community and home schoolers, which is what his wife does with their three children.

More morality after the jump.

Land of the Free, Home of the Five Dollar Mocha

I used to work on New York Avenue in DC. From the Starbucks near my office you could see two more. If you walked a block east and looked north, you could see yet a fourth store.

But Starbucks’ glory days, at least here in Amurrica, are over:

From the WSJ: Starbucks to Cut U.S. Store Growth But Plans to Accelerate Overseas

Starbucks Corp. plans to drastically reduce the number of stores it builds in the U.S. over the next three years …

Starbucks said Wednesday that this year, it plans to open 1,020 locations in the U.S., down from the 1,175 that it had planned for as of January. But over the next three years, Starbucks plans to cut that number by more than half, opening less than 400 net new locations per year in the U.S.

As my favorite financial bloggers say: “We are all subprime now.”

Starbucks Cuts U.S. Growth Plans [Calculated Risk]

Civilization Teeters on the Brink

Lots of annoying things have forced themselves onto my radar.  Michael Bolton, Yanni, Kenny G, and Cher for example.  Knowledge of the existence of Sylvester Stallone (he of the third testicle) is lodged in my brain, and I know of the oeuvre of Pauly Shore.  I am also aware of lesser mediocrities like Adam Sandler, Mandy Patinkin, and the perpetually-overrated Garth Brooks.  I have been dragged,  kicking and screaming, to a Stevie Nicks concert, and I lived.

On the other hand, I’ve expended lots of effort to avoid knowing who Hannah Montana is - until the Vanity Fair kerfuffle, I didn’t know the name Miley Cyrus.  I had never heard her speak nor had I heard her sing. I was blissfully unaware that Hannah was the spawn of the bathetically awful Billy Ray Cyrus.  If pressed, I could not have picked her out of a lineup.

But no more.