The Applause from the Talk Shows and Game Shows Washed Out the Propped-Open Door Like Distant Rain

It is interesting, said Thursday Night Pints' special guest W, a presidential historian, that there is ZERO effective push back from the Left on the gutting of progressive programs Obama is proposing. Every time Eric Cantor throws a shit fit Obama throws a shit fit about Cantor's shit fit and then moves right towards Cantor who then moves further right.

God bless Eric Cantor, I said, the skeevy motherfucker. Suppose, for giggles, Cantor has gone off-script and thoroughly pissed-off Corporate, wrecked Corporate's storyboard, wouldn't that be great? Too bad it's a motherfucking work.

Do you think Cantor's on- or off-script, D asked W. He's the trial balloon, said W. There's three weeks of drama to go before the August 3 deadline, watch how his string is played out and wrung back. Note what Cantor is demanding today to what Obama concedes by August 3.

Everything's a work, I said. I work you, you work me; we like or dislike each other over the way we work each other. Huh, asked W. He proposes the same fucking equation every week, said L. I bought her a scotch, she bought me a beer.

• When your bleggal overlords fight!
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• The first Tea-Party president!
• Trust Obama? 
• Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready: First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals. Put it this way: If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.
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• Sealing our fate, part one.
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• Gaithersburg!
• Germantown!
• The important of being Ernest.
• The dangers of plot-driven fiction. The only Gaddis on kindle is Agape.
• Looking for a spectrum.
• How about some Killdozer?
• Hungry so angry.
• Sweet 17.
• One of the greatest covers ever:

SONG OF YES AND NO [COFFEE & DOLLS]

April Bernard

It was a storefront for a small-time numbers runner, 
pretending to be some sort of grocery. Coffeemakers 
and Bustello cans populated the shelves, sparsely. 
Who was fooled. The boxes bleached in the sun, 
the old guys sat inside on summer lawn chairs, 
watching tv. The applause from the talk shows and game shows 
washed out the propped-open door like distant rain.

It closed for a few months. The slick sedan disappeared. 
One spring day, it reopened, and this time a sign 
decorated the window: COFFEE & DOLLS. 
Yarn-haired, gingham-dressed floppy dolls
lolled among the coffee cans. A mastiff puppy, 
the size and shape of a tipped-over fire hydrant, 
guarded as the sedan and the old guys returned.

I don't know about you, but I've been looking
for a narrative in which suffering makes sense.
I mean, the high wail of the woman holding her dead child,
the wail that filled the street. I mean the sudden
fatal blooms on golden skin. I mean the crack deaths,
I mean the ice-cream truck that cruised the alphabets
and sold crack to the same deedle-dee-dee tune as fudgsicles.
I mean the raw scabs of the beaten mastiff, and many other 
   things.