Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Knock, Knock, Knocking on Welch's Door...

Okay, okay, I hear you loud and clear. And it sounds like this: Quit your bitchin’ Snarky Boy. Fine. You won’t hear another peep out of me about the unseemly business side of the ever-growing Snarky empire. Nope. Instead, you will simply await the grand surprise of the goodies to come. But, to quickly break the promise of only 27 or so words ago, I still await the little bird that wants to land on my shoulder and say: I want to play with Snarky Boy because I know Wordpress and the Web enough to make it one big fucking hoot. There. Done.

The good news is that I’m in one foul snarky-assed mood. Yep. Triple dose of snarkiliciousness coming your way. Buckle up.

Let’s start with Peter Welch. What the fuck is it about this guy that just makes me want to hate him? Oh yeah, he’s the embodiment of every little prick-know-it-all that we all knew in school. He was the kid, for example, who always had his homework done and – worse – joined the teacher in giving the rest of us that smug little look that said: “Why are you underachieving?”

And for purposes of my own battered self-esteem (fuck you, Wordpress), I’m going to ignore the fact that Welch went on to be a congressman and I’m an underemployed painter for now. I mean, who cares if that “why are you underachieving?” look was a sixth-grade prophecy? I can still hate him for it, you know. Hey, why stop underachieving now, baby.

Welch is on my mind because I was just absolutely tortured by the interview the increasingly inarticulate Anthony Pollina did with him on WDEV this afternoon. Welch basically practiced the art of filibustering with Pollina, gobbling up the minutes with his whiny little voice regurgitating the same old same old. Yawn.

Here’s a recap: It’s all Bush’s fault. Everything. Never mind that the Dems have been handing Bush those “blank checks” that Peter pretends to be opposed to. Oh yeah, and never mind that even though Peter the Pelosi-Puppet blames everything on Bush and is convinced he’s trashed the Constitution, broken laws and the nation’s trust, he doesn’t think impeachment is a good idea. Go figure.

And of course Pollina and his three-steps behind thinking never could quite catch up with Welch’s rambling to ask him anything challenging – let alone coherent. Sometimes I think the Progs are Progs just because it seems fashionable and hip rather than because they have any fundamental beliefs to set themselves apart from the two-party duopoly. Because why else would Pollina, the sleeping granddaddy of the Progs now that Bernie dances so comfortably with the Dems, be so bland and unchallenging to the Dem congressman? I mean, Welch gets more grief in the mainstream media than he got going toe-to-toe with the Prog man. Weird.

Speaking of Welch and grief, it’s nice to see that the Vermont impeachment crowd is, indeed, taking aim at Welch this week. Well, kind of. Because the first thing they’re planning to do is aim to knock on Welch’s door and request a little chat. I guess they’ve got a lot of time on their hands because it’s pretty damn clear that Peter will pull out his auto-responder-template and say something really close to these words (accompanied, of course, by the grade school look discussed earlier): “Oh, there’s no one in Vermont who is working harder against the presidency of George Bush than I am.”

But then he’ll go into a litany of hearings, bills, and anecdotes that will put the room into nothing short of a deep state of somnolence, only able to come back to semi-consciousness at the sound of his goddamn dog barking because it’s not only bored, too, but it also has to take a piss.

And then Welch will make his first major stumble of his term – notwithstanding his war-funding vote and his shameful pursuit of the Bush autograph – and blurt out these uncharacteristically honest lines: “You know, I owe my current job to two beings: That damn dog and President Bush.”

It’s a good thing most everyone in the room will be fast asleep and miss this rare moment of Peter candor. Too bad.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, Peter the Pelosi-Puppet will be meeting with the impeachment crowd later this week so he can be annoyingly condescending to them and have yet another opportunity to take a warm piss on the left. Thanks for coming!

Unfortunately, given the chipper-chirpy nature of the impeachment leadership, the warm piss will be greeted with little more than enthusiastic “thank yous” all around and a promise to continue to be oh-so-fucking happy to stop their lives, spend their time and money, and otherwise inconvenience themselves so that Welch can continue to ignore them.

They won’t, for example, be the least bit insulted by Peter’s use of the old trick amongst smarmy representatives that goes like this: Tell the angry mob to take their anger elsewhere but to keep in touch and – most importantly – keep the pressure on. It’s like yelling to the schmuck knocking at the door that you’ve got no intention of answering it but keep knocking!

Let’s hope the impeachment folks don’t fall for the old trick and, instead, refuse to leave the very nice meeting until Peter does what he should instead of issuing them more democracy homework. But, sadly, I think the impeachment movement has come to its dead end. Like the Vermont antiwar movement, the passions and dreams of this movement will be largely extinguished by the three-dollar-bill promises and faux-sincerity of Welch. And the closer we get to the next election, the less the libs are going to want to rock the boat. They’ve got Kool-Aid to make, baby! Not to mention Bush-bogeyman posters!

It’s the elections that matter, we’ll all soon be told over and over again. Forgetting, of course, that not much seems to be happening between the elections. Well, other than rearranging the deck furniture on the sinking ship. Gurgle. Gurgle.