Mr. Ratfucker Wants to Have a Quiet Word

It’s been a long time since Mr. Ratfucker has found a need to speak out. So long, in fact, that some Ratbang readers may not even recognize the name. Mr. Ratfucker is happy to elucidate. Way back when the Ratbang Diary was called the Ratfuck Diary, a particularly dim numnut had a particularly irritating wild hair up her nose and called the Ratfuck blogger Mr. Ratfucker. In the instant, Mr. Ratfucker came into being. This morning, Mr. Ratfucker would like to note that he finds it most annoying when some readers comment on ancient Ratbang posts and then take the blogger to task for being behind the times. Mr. Ratfucker wonders if it has never occurred to these benighted readers of old posts to look at the date of the post before making a comment? And while he’s at it, Mr. Ratfucker would like to comment on the doubts of some persons that Hillary Clinton will take the Secretary of State appointment or that in fact she wants it, what nonsense! The name of a considered appointee is never leaked by a President Elect if that person has not said he/she will accept the appointment if named. It would not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Barack Obama had asked Mrs. Clinton to be his SOS the day after he won the candidacy, contingent on the outcome of the vetting of both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. It would further not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Mrs. Clinton had accepted immediately. Mr. Ratfucker thanks you for your time.

Blah, Blah, Blah

Now that the election is over and the pundits and op/ed writers are rummaging around for things to mull over and write about, their output has largely become tortured ruminations and boring blah-blah-blah. Tom Friedman is a classic example. From his halcyon days of being considered a dynamic force in the future of the middle east--his 2006 trip to Syria and subsequent columns on how to handle Syria, for example—through his spiraling down into ego-centered rants and nonsense, now today he is pontificating about Barack Obama possibly choosing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and telling us of his “worries” on that score. “Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?” Friedman asks. (Among other deadly failings, Friedman glories in his turns-of-phrase and stand-up comic one-liners.) Then he tells us that he, Tom Friedman, knows more than anyone about what a relationship between a Prez and a Secretary of State should be because he covered James Baker when Baker was GHW Bush’s SOS. The world must be aware, Friedman says, that an SOS speaks for the Prez. An SOS and Prez must be totally in each other’s back pocket, their world-view must be identical with nary a disagreement between them...ever. And Friedman, from his high perch as know-all-see-all sage relates his concerns. Journalists and talking heads must not be allowed to see “daylight” between the Prez and SOS or they will jump on the flaw and tear them to shreds. “When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.” Why not? one wonders. Who is Friedman to assume that the Baker-Bush model is the optimum form that must be followed? Who is Friedman to assume that two smart people cannot have different ideas and also arrive at a consensus that will indeed change things for the better? When will Tom Friedman realize he's become a has-been hack? Once again, Tom Friedman has fed 750 words into his laptop, emailed them to the NYT and gotten a check. And blah-blah-blah.

Fear Not, Politics Is Still A Gapers’ Delight

As Frank Rich points out this morning in his Sunday Morning New York Times Op/Ed piece: “Election junkies in acute withdrawal need suffer no longer.” The presidential race may be over but, ”The cockfight among the losers has only just begun. The conservative crackup may be ugly, but as entertainment, it’s two thumbs up!” The Repubs are blaming each other, the fact that Bush is an inept dolt, the clueless McCain campaign and the rampant greed of the GOP for their defeat. But Rich says the problem is more fundamental than that. “The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like ‘guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,’ he was the first to correctly call the election.” The Repubs have been in denial for decades. They think they can hoodwink voters into believing they are inclusive and pro-minority by talking about it rather than being pro-minority. Rich notes that, “a conservative Wall Street Journal editorialist asked whether “the G.O.P. doesn’t in fact have a perception problem, that it is no longer viewed as a big tent.” “A perception problem? Hello — how about a reality problem? The reason why they are promoting Palin and the recently elected Indian-American governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as the party’s ‘future’ is not just that they (Jindal and Palin) are hard-line social conservatives; they are also the only prominent Republican officeholders under 50 who are not white men.” To me, the most unsettling thing in the Frank Rich article was this Gallup poll finding: 45% of Americans want to see Sarah Palin have a national political future while only 52% do not. Almost half of the Americans who just witnessed Sarah Palin running for Vice President and saw her being stupid, ignorant, pandering, corrupt, silly, hate-spewing and a right-wing religious zealot into the bargain, say they would be pleased for her to have a future in Republican politics. And the worst of it is that although it’s nice to see the GOP in such moronic disarray, still, as the Frank Rich tagline says: “At a time of genuine national peril we actually do need an opposition party that is not brain-dead.”

So...How Many Days Now...70?

This is going to be difficult. One could not help shouting a Dan Ackroyd-ism at Sarah Palin on TV yesterday: Sarah, you ignorant slut! And Karen Hughes on CNN’s Situation Room...where’d she come from and what’s she been doing since her days as Bush’s counselor and holder of the world’s silliest title, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy? Talk about ignorant! She’s still defending George Bush but now she’s also mouthing gummy platitudes about how wonderful president-elect Barack Obama is in his blackness. (Oh please! tell me born-again-stupid Hughes is not going to manage Palin’s born-again-crass political career. Although it would be a boon for the comics.) And George Bush all over the news...unrepentant and unapologetic as ever, but acting like he had finally come to terms with his failures by saying maybe he does regret a couple things...the dead-or-alive thing, and the sailors who put up the “Mission Accomplished” sign which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. Ugh! Seventy more days of baboon-speak. And the Republicans acting like 8 years of the worst administration since Nero never happened, while preening and puffing themselves up. And even talking about how the Republicans now have to get back to the business of showing the world how to run a smaller, more restrictive government that will be advantageous to the rich. And Grandpa McCain on Leno being (I hear) cute and self-deprecating. I couldn’t watch it. Gack and gag! Nor, I’m almost positive, will I be able to watch the ignorant slut on Larry King tonight. After these walking-on-eggshells, sappy, 70 days of clueless folk saying mindless things are over, how long will the Obama honeymoon be? Someone on CNN said it would be very long. We’ll know the honeymoon is over when the pundits, politicians and comics lay aside the fact that Obama is black and start ripping him apart like every president that has gone before him.

I Like Judge Judy, But She Made a Bad Call

Larry King’s guest last night was Judith Sheindlin, the 66-year-old peoples court firebrand who was a family court judge in New York City, but on cable TV as "Judge Judy" is actually an arbiter not a judge. You either like Judge Judy or hate her. I like her. People who know Judith Sheindlin say that in real life, she is nothing like the persona she inhabits on her Judge Judy show. People say she is a nice older lady who is soft-spoken. Last night, appearing to have had yet another face lift (she surely rivals Larry King in that department), but looking very pretty in a bright green jacket and light green dress, Judge Judy talked about Barack Obama. She is a fan of Obama’s and said she thought his wife Michelle would be a "dynamite" First Lady. She also disagreed with people who said Mrs. Obama would put her well-known ambition on the shelf while her husband is President of the United States and would concentrate on being a mom and First Lady—as in, take a leaf from Laura Bush’s manual on how to be the wife of a President. Sheindlin, who has five children by two marriages said Michelle Obama need not choose between her own ambitions and being a dutiful First Lady. “She can do both,” Sheindlin said. True. And these days, few people will find fault with a First Lady who has her own agenda and power base. Then, having given her unqualified support to Barack and Michelle Obama, Judith Sheindlin went off her trolley. Larry King asked how she felt about Sarah Palin. Sheindlin said Palin is smart, she said Palin was blind-sided by the McCain team. Sheindlin said Palin was unduly maligned by the press. She said Palin is an accomplished person who was a good Mayor, a good Governor, a good mother and was thrown under the bus by everyone. Sheindlin said the potshots taken at Palin by the pundits, the press, the politicians, and by people in general were “disrespectful”. Oh please! That’s crap! As Judge Judy herself so often declares, “If it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t true.” Sarah Palin may be canny and a quick study, but she is not intelligent. And into the bargain, she is ignorant and woefully arrogant about her ignorance. Sheindlin feels Palin was taken advantage of like a lamb led to slaughter. And nothing could be farther from the truth. If there is anything admirable about Sarah Palin at all--and though I marvel at her hubris, I personally do not find it admirable--but if one can find self-absorption and hubris admirable, one has to admire the way Sarah Palin took advantage of the morons who tapped her to be John McCain’s running mate. From the moment she took the fateful phone call advising her she was being considered as a candidate for Vice President of the United States, Sarah Palin grabbed the opportunity and milked it for all it was worth. Not for her country-- had she been thinking of her country, she would have said “No thanks” to the McCain crew-- but for a shot at becoming the next American idol on some stage, any stage, somewhere, anywhere. It may be that Sheindlin is amused by the stupidity of the old pols who had totally wrongheaded ideas about women in general. It may be that Sheindlin is captivated by a ballbusting female who doesn’t give a rat’s behind (another Judge Judy locution) about playing by the rules, particularly rules invented by old men who want to go back to living in the 1950’s. But I suspect that Judith Sheindlin was giving voice to some knee-jerk reactions she’d had to Sarah Palin. I suspect Sheindlin had not done any research on Sarah Palin and was simply standing up for another mother of five who had decided women don’t have to stay in the kitchen. Had Judge Judy been faced with Sarah Palin in her court, she would have ripped her to shreds for being silly, dumb, a bad mother, egocentric, uncaring, manipulative and crass.

The Big Exhale

What a relief! And I just want to say to all those black Repubs who now are talking about what a great day it is that a black man has been elected president: SHUT UP and go hide in a hole! You should be ashamed of yourselves for backing the worst president we have ever had, and for wanting to continue the ignominy that the Republican Party had sunk into. To his credit, Barack Obama never ran for president as a black man. He ran as a proud American. And he has given all of us the enormous gift of being able to be proud of America again. If John McCain had not run as a wounded veteran, he would have had a much better campaign. McCain would not have won, of course, but his campaign would not have been the total embarrassing spectacle of bad taste that it was. As if the disastrous terms of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were not enough, John McCain added his campaign to the list of GOP mistakes and infamies. Bill Maher was on Larry King Wednesday night. He said we would never be rid of Sarah Palin. He said she would be around in 30 years when she is 74, either in politics or show biz. And that may be true. Sarah Palin is one of those freakish personalities who do not care what they have to say or do as long as they have an audience. Yesterday, she complained that she had wanted to deliver a concession speech Tuesday night and was not allowed to. Speechwriters had written two speeches for her, a victory speech and a loser’s speech. Campaign strategists wisely said No. John McCain needed no help to lose this election. He was going to lose. He was carrying on his back George Bush, the arrogance of the Republican Party, the Party’s eight years of failed policies, the Iraq war, his age, his infirmities, his temperament, his reputation as a loose cannon and his nasty wife. And then, as if to ensure that he not only lost the election but that he lost while people laughed at him, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I think most people, me included, would be content to let Sarah Palin go back to Alaska to live out her days in repentance and doing good works. But everyone knows that is not in the Palin DNA. That is why the Repubs are now letting the Sarah Palin story out of the box. They may not be able to pull her off the stage, but they can show how stupid she is. Comics already are saying they are going to miss George W. Bush. They are saying it’s going to be difficult to find stuff to satirize with Barack Obama. But they will always have Sarah Palin.

Palin’s Medical Records

Oh I do love this! Repub Vice President candidate Sarah Palin won’t, or at least hasn’t, as of this moment, released her medical records. We suspect it’s not her physical medical records she doesn’t want to reveal. We suspect it’s psychological records she wants to keep secret. We suspect she’s on no-nonsense psychiatric meds for her no-nonsense psychiatric problems. Which, of course, makes no matter either way to the election on November 4th. But it matters alot if Miss Know-nothing Moron expects to have a career in politics after this election. And the medical records will come out...you know they will. Oh goody! Something to look forward to after this coming Tuesday.