Aliens from a Star Trek: Next Generation episode about a race of aliens who appear to be operating technology a bit beyond their intellectual capabilities.

Pakled Commander Reginod: We are strong.
Lieutenant: You’re now armed to the teeth.
Pakled Captain Grebnedlog: Teeth are for chewing.

***

Lieutenant: The Pakleds seem pretty… sincere.
Pakled Captain Grebnedlog: We want what we want.
Commander William T. Riker: Our computers are non-negotiable.
Pakled Captain Grebnedlog: We want them.
Lieutenant: Believe me, they’re nothing if not… persistent.
Pakled Captain Grebnedlog: We want to be nothing if not persistent.
Lieutenant: Nobody ever said they were great conversationalists.

Conclusion is obvious (the moreso as I am writing this as the R. debate with Wolfie is on in the other room and they are competing as to who will be the most enthusiastic about hitting Iran with tactical nukes): Republicans are Pakled.

and unfortunately, we have no one to send them to sleep.

There is but one way for a newspaperman to look at a politician and that is down.” Frank H. Simonds

BTW, 6 foot 6 inches is NOT 2m tall - it’s 198cm, but that would not have sounded sufficiently imposing in metric, I guess.

I apologize to non-Trek geeks but I have to put up with your refs to Buffy and BSG and other shows *I* never watched, so live with it and be grateful I do not wander off into anime.

Ruth, I know we’ve been comparing the Rs to the Borg for a long time: mind-controlled humanoid-based but robotically enhanced beings all functioning as a hive-mind controlled by a mysterious figure who we don’t find out until the very end is female. (Hmm, anybody hear this rumor going around of nominating Lynn Cheney to replace the Wyoming senator who just died? Dunno what made me think of that….)

The situation may be one of evolution though. After the episode where the borg known as “Hugh” experienced the joys of individuality, returned to the Collective and corrupted others, all of whom were then exiled, we saw that Borgs cut off from the hivemind do very poorly on their own without extensive socialization a la Seven of Nine. Indeed they wander aimlessly rather like bees suffering Colony Collapse Disorder until gathered together by a new leader who provides the direction and organization they have never learned to generate for themselves.

This is not what we’re seeing now. Watching the debate last night (6-5) I sure didn’t see a new Borg Queen emerging. (Although it would be fun if “Catchers” Mitt Romney pulls away from the pack over the next few months to refer to him as the New Borg Queen. Photoshop opportunities for a sequence removing Bush’s head from the Borg torso and having the mechanism come down to install Romney’s in its place would be particularly amusing.)

Anyway, they’re striking me more as Pakleds at the moment. Acting stupid to engender sympathy while at the same time using that sympathy to steal from others, or induce them even to give away, what they can’t make on their own: decent policy plans that don’t, like, suck.

I mean, what do Democrats do to play to the base? Demand an end to war, universal healthcare and restoration of the Constitution? Oh, what a tough sell that’s gonna be to the general voting public when the primaries are over.

The Rs on the other hand have to at this point flog

—the most rabidly anti-woman position available (i.e. the government controls your internal organs, not you),

—pro-war because it was so necessary and is gonna be going great, um, any day now (yeah, that’s doing so well for McCain ain’t it),

—kill-all-the-brown-people (um, guys, there’s really only one group that hates new immigrants, and that’s immigrants from the generation immediately before. These are ladder-puller-uppers and those anxious to be more-Murkin-than-thou. See Shah-refugee Iranians and Castro-refugee Cubans for more detail. Bottom line: these engines are not working and not even Geordi can help much here.)

You saw a little flag up from Tancredo last night of the theme they’re working on most: None of our endeavors are going particularly well but that’s because of Bush being so incompetent, not because the endeavors themselves are evil. As Lambert [quoting Digby —Lambert] is fond of saying, “Conservativism can never fail, it can only be failed.” This, imho, has Pakled written all over it. See quote above,

Lieutenant: Believe me, they’re nothing if not… persistent.
Pakled Captain Grebnedlog: We want to be nothing if not persistent.

The race is waiting to be won by the first Democrat who comes out openly and says what we all know: we are selling our liberty for a specious sense of “security,” selling our climate for the right to run madly around the landscape 24/7 which has damn near everybody exhausted by at this point, and selling our future to China for a war everybody hates and cheap plastic crap at WalMart.

This does not mean China is evil (hey, they’ve been the Middle Kingdom for 3000 years and are just resuming their rightful position in the midst of their client states) it means we all are Pakled sometimes.

For those ignorant of Teh Pakled (as I was), this from WikiPedia:

Pakleds are short, stocky humanoids with large bushy eyebrows. They are fairly simple-minded, but they keep pace with the capabilities of other spacefaring races by stealing technology (such as shields of Romulan design) from ships they encounter.

Pakleds tend to speak in a very simple and childlike way (for example: “We look for things. Things that make us go. Can you make us go?”). This can fool a Good Samaritan into thinking the Pakleds are harmless and helpless; the Pakleds wait until their benefactors’ guard is down, then use a show of force to take what they need.

Too a propos. The Republican 10, definitely, all share the Pakled nature.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.

just what the Republics need, a higher being. Or as Lurch would say, Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Ruth