Oh, and Jeff Godlstein makes a surprise appearance:
Add another, Doug:
No increase in debt limit means O will have to cut spending to 2001 levels. Or else unilaterally declare he can raise the debt ceiling -- openly declaring himself king, supported by Democrats.
Which should remove a lot of blinders and be one of those "teachable moments". As well as an impeachable offense.I know the American People sometimes find crazy attractive, but usually it's when Jack Nicholson or someone like that is playing crazy, not when you pull up the curtain on actual schizophrenics.
UPDATE. I'm sorry I didn't see this Hugh Hewitt headline in time to include it in the column:
When The President Reneges, Harry Reid Overreaches, And The Greatest Generation Rallies To The GOP, Then You Can Be Sure The Democrats Aren’t WinningIt's the sort of rallying cry you only get halfway through before someone sticks a bayonet in your gut. Hewitt's associated article is even worse. It begins thus:
Proposed opening question for the first GOP presidential debate in the fall of 2015: "Was the 'shutdown showdown' of October 2013 good or necessary -- either or both -- and why?"
I don't have any idea how it will be answered by the 10 or so potentially serious candidates who may be on that stage, but the difficulty of predicting the best answer can be found — where else? — in two movies about war.Follow the allusion and you'll see that the shutdown is like Saving Private Ryan and Atonement because war is hell and so is the shutdown, so stay the course argh blargh. Oh, and this line goes in the Bullshit Hall of Fame:
I may be proven wrong, but I may be proven right.I understand propagandists are compensated all out of scale with their worth, which must be nice, and that the people who do the work are beyond shame, but don't they have families?
... Which should remove a lot of blinders and be one of those "teachable moments". ...
ReplyDeleteYeah, except it's the Republicans who are learning the lesson.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit tweeted that the flag was "Prob a plant"
ReplyDeleteA high-concept false-flag operation. I look forward to Alex Jones' interpretation.
"The sample is skewed in a number of ways, and we know who did the poll and we know where they live; we know what their desires are," said Rush Limbaugh.
ReplyDeleteIs that a threat? Is Rush going to show up at the pollster's house and fart through the mail slot?
Having had public opinion turn against them, they now are happily wallowing in victimhood. Perhaps we could write a paper on this: "Perpetual Sore Loser/Sore Winner Syndrome and Its Manifestations."
ReplyDeleteMaybe the funniest bits of all were the, apparently, serious (and seriously deranged) claims that the WSJ had taken a hard turn to the left because a poll didn't go their way. Rupert Murdoch is probably still going "what the fuck?" over that one.
But what continues to amaze--and baffle me--is how a decidedly small portion of the general population has convinced itself that it represents a broad, solid majority. This tendency is always present among extremists, but even George Lincoln Rockwell acknowledged that he had a big climb ahead of him before his ideas were mainstream. These bozos think they've already won the national debate and that the country is solidly behind them, when, in fact, the rest of the country is looking at them, scratching its collective head and collectively saying, "sumthin' ain't right about `em."
And we're getting an excellent idea of what that is....
Umm, that's Jonah's gig, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteAnd how will they know they've "won" the shutdown fight?
ReplyDeleteWhen their poll numbers are in negative numbers, presumably.
I think of a man, and take away reason and accountability.
ReplyDeleteIn the article, Chambers cites various conspiracy theories claiming to show Barack Obama's closeted life in Chicago as a state senator. He takes it even a step further, however, in defending Obama's Christian faith by arguing that people of Muslim faith "are known to stone someone for being gay."
ReplyDelete"Would you be a Muslim if it put you as risk for being killed because of your lifestyle choices?" he asks.
Just when I think the entire nation is obsessing on one, sharply honed argument - Should we or should we not have some kind of national government, at least now and then? - along comes Mr. UnSkewed to complicate everything.
What's odd is that Mr. UnSkewed is one of those hacks covering up Michelle's transformation from Michael. Even though we're all perfectly well aware of her muscular arms, Dean won't go any further than, "Don't tell me his marriage to Michelle and having two children disproves that he's gay." Coward.
Only a king would pay the debts he's constitutionally obligated to pay once the legislature has racked them up? Sure, that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI also love how this means he would "openly" declare himself king -- the insinuation being that he and his minions already secretly hail him as king. You know, because of the way he's spent 6 years simply decreeing his will and seeing it enacted without opposition.
Oh, hell, I don't think it's supposed to make sense. It's supposed to be a call to rebellion. If he's a king, they should be fighting him just like the Founders did.
ReplyDeleteMost of these yahoos are too young to remember Nixon dressing up the White House guards like members of the cast of "The Student Prince."
Kim Messick has an interesting piece up at Salon on the fringers' belief that they represent a majority of Americans. He attributes it in part to the nature of rural life where there's less diversity on display than in cities.
ReplyDeleteBut, Messick writes, that doesn't explain the phenomenon fully. "The explanation lies in the South’s experience with black slavery and white supremacy. ... White Southerners lived in close proximity to a large population they routinely abused, terrorized and defiled. ... The South’s noisily martial version of patriotism has its roots here, as does the region’s love affair with guns. "
The slavers' notion that they were citizens and their slaves were not, that they were the "normative" community and slaves were a degenerate class of outsiders, lives on in Southern political ideology, which has become the GOP's ideology.
"Thus we arrive at the paranoid version of politics described above, in which policy disputes signal an insidious betrayal of 'our' way of life. This is surely what animates the conduct of today’s Republicans — the reflexive rejection of compromise, the flagrant violation of long-established institutional norms, the experience of diversity as an invasion by foreign, unfamiliar powers."
Or trying to talk the Joint Chiefs into staging a coup to keep him in office.
ReplyDeleteAll glory to the HypnoNegro.
ReplyDeleteIf he's a king, they should be fighting him just like the Founders did.
ReplyDeleteNot going to happen. They want victory without fighting, benefits without work, rewards without sacrifice. IOW, a bunch of Nixon-campaign-employed ratfucking frat boys.
That Sarah Palin has found she can cop a few photo ops off these guys is wonderful news. WIth the sour apple of John McCain's bloodshot eye out in front, the Revolution of 2013 can only succeed.
ReplyDelete"O will have to cut spending to 2001 levels."
ReplyDeleteUh, stupid, he's the president. Congress sets spending levels. That's constitution 101, not rocket science.
Premature selfinflicted Dolchstosslegende on themselves. I give 'em an idjit for effort.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans who are learning
ReplyDeleteGood one.
Uh...this is Godlstein, not a sentient being.
ReplyDeleteYeah. "Forget it, Jake. It's Godlstein."
ReplyDeleteI do not have much to add except for I was pleased to see a bumper-sticker today on a very nice car in my very upscale neighborhood that said "Old White Guys For Obama". As an old, white, not-guy, I am marginally less disheartened. Also Niners!
ReplyDelete...said Rush Limbaugh. "I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of success in running around trying to convince low-information voters..."
ReplyDeleteThen why do you have a career?
I'm gonna guess those "top five reasons" without looking, then see if I'm right.
ReplyDelete5: Because Obama's a weeniepants pussyboy queer who can't handle standing up like a man, to men, which we are.
4: Because the Rapture's due any day now.
3: Because the Chinese have surprisingly given us the OK on throwing $1.5 Trillion of their assets down the toilet over the minority party's tantrum.
2: Because if we don't win, that means we're losers, and we're not losers. We don't lose. We win, they lose. Because they're losers. Losers! LOSEAAAAGHHH-(tears shirt with teeth).
1: Because we are on the verge of the Great Unskewing, in which everything that's happened since 2008 will be retroactively undone. President Palin is on our side, you betcha! She's one of US! (eyes twitch)
Glenn Reynolds is probably a ficus.
ReplyDeleteAny group of political outsiders can put its own creative silver lining on their lack of success or support. Any group can grouse about their foe's unfair advantages. Any group can create cult heroes, soak in their victimhood, kick out the impure, and so on.
ReplyDeleteThe utter refusal of the right wing's biggest loons to accept anything that doesn't tell them what they already want to hear, from the biggest existential quandary to the most fleeting of daily polls, the complete and total denial of any reality they wish didn't exist, I think that's their great innovation. Even Goldwater knew he was in a losing battle.
Ah, it's more subtle than that: One of the brethren planted the flag, so that Reynolds could accuse libtards of planting the flag, but then it was enthusiastically waved by the schmucks he planted it on and now it's all gone down the merry-go-round. I blame Obama.
ReplyDeleteIt's the old "silent majority" argument. You convince yourself that you have a solid majority of people on your side (your ideas being so common sense and all) and the only reason the polls don't reflect that is that people are keeping their mouths shut and/or not being properly represented. Or, to put in in slightly more appropriate terms: Yeah, everyone posting in the forum hates me, but everyone sending me private messages thinks I'm awesome.
ReplyDeleteI feel you're just about there, but could you try being less coherent? At one point I almost found myself following your train of thought.
ReplyDeleteI blame Obama.
ReplyDeleteJust distill it to that, it's all you really need.
One more such victory, and we are unhinged!
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Jonah can't be everywhere. Sometimes they gotta call in a ringer.
ReplyDeleteQuite right. We've seen sore winning. We've seen sore losing. But when a group acts like sore winners as their asses get pounded into the dirt, you have to kind of marvel.
ReplyDeleteI would be a lot more willing to accept Messick's argument if it weren't for the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Tea Partiers are not rural, but are, rather, suburbanites who grew up as suburbanites.
ReplyDeleteThere is, by now, some fairly convincing evidence that Southern resentment has infected the Tea Party movement--I agree with that, but it's not well-explained why a bunch of suburbanites have affected the attitudes and mannerisms of angry, resentful Southern white sharecroppers. The why of that is not readily apparent, I think--unless one accepts that racism is so deeply ingrained in this society that it can never be minimized as a factor. That may well be true.
My own sense of it is that these are the people who've been well and truly fucked by the Reagan revolution for thirty or more years, and they're brimming with resentment about that, and it makes them easy pickings for movement leaders with a grab bag full of scapegoats. Obama! Muslim! Socialist! Communist! King! Democrat! Tyrant!
It all slides together like a goo of abstractions that's never questioned, because it feeds resentments that have been long in the making.
I can't escape the knowledge that this is not some grassroots movement that's just sprouted spontaneously, but is, rather, a carefully coordinated propaganda effort, orchestrated and funded by a few people who not only want to disseminate their world view, but have engaged the best propagandists/agitators in the business to stoke up those resentments and to focus them on the desired targets.
Yes, I agree--in general, they want simple, absolute capitulation to all demands with no muss or fuss, and they've been both enraged and nonplussed when they haven't gotten it.
ReplyDeleteBut, yes, I probably should have added that "fighting" in their minds is largely rhetorical. Nevertheless, there is that contingent with itchy trigger fingers. They're out there, and they are, umm, itchy.
No group of political outsiders can block the beltway with a dozen trucks, no matter how hard they try.
ReplyDeleteBy Jove, I think he's got it!
ReplyDeleteThey didn't even seem to realize the Beltway does not go through DC. It's 100% in Maryland and Virginia. You'd think map reading would be a key skill for truckers, but somehow... Recalculating
ReplyDeleteRatfucker Donald Segretti found eventual fulfillment as Orange County campaign co-chair for John McCain, who's always had an interesting sense of who's good for his image. Can't find anything more recent than that. Segretti's over 70 by now - but still a youngster compared with Zombie Ed Meese. Maybe he avoids taking Socialism Security by supplying pollsters' home addresses to various radio celebrities.
ReplyDeleteJonah can't be bothered.
ReplyDeleteDon't you know anything?
The time is out of joint.
ReplyDeleteAnd so:
It is not nor it cannot come to good.
That will explain why the flag waver is trying to hard to conceal his identity.
ReplyDeletehttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWetmBfCIAAmfCU.jpg
My, won't the USMC be pleased about that. When I first saw the images of this bloke, I couldn't see the insignia on the red flag - I wondered if the irony drought had broken and that he was displaying the old Soviet ensign, stupid furriner that I am. Good luck comrades.
ReplyDelete'sides, he's on a deadline. Brraaaat.
ReplyDeleteRight. And when we're in Great Depression 2: Tea Party Country Screw, THEN all you Demoncrats will see how people love the GOP. When unemployment hits 25%, and the socialist safety nets have been taken away, the pathway to bootstrap success will be wide open to everyone (except those people).
ReplyDeleteI'll take issue with the idea that they want total capitulation. Based on past experience, when they throw even bigger hissy fits when they get total capitulation. To them, it means their demands didn't go far enough. Hence we go from the lunatic fringe of 1994 seeming like moderates today.
ReplyDeleteMaybe when The Scooter Store comes and tows away their Hover-Round?
ReplyDeleteSo was the guy who left the remark "I have not been able to reach my representatives since the shut down" trolling, or for reals? That's on the listicle.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah... Tea Partiers would be dismissed as just another sad batch of snake handling big gummint conspiracy whackazoids if it weren't for the fact that they up to now have been able to back up their yammering by mobilizing large sums of money to fund candidates with their brand of brain damage, and to back think tanks and media outlets. This kind of money, managed by people who are so wealthy they don't need government for anything, will also buy them a state of the art hermetically sealed bubble.
ReplyDeletefanatics do not learn lessons, and those are the starry-eyed buggers leading the pack.
ReplyDeleteI think "DOH" is the quote you're looking for.
ReplyDeleteIn a similar vein, NPR reported this morning on the freak snowstorm in S. Dakota which has killed thousands of cattle and driven some ranchers to the brink of ruin. This is a tragedy, but of course it has persuaded those rugged individualists that, maybe, the Department of Agriculture might need to be re-opened. Just long enough to give the struggling, hard working ranchers a hand, mind you, but not long enough to re-open the debate over SNAP benefits.
ReplyDeleteMy Alaskan Malamute Acheron appears to be a Mensa level genius, even when sleeping, compared to today's conservative men and women.
ReplyDeleteIf there are cameras rolling, she'll be there!
ReplyDeleteSo the fact that Obama is a Christian is proof that he's gay? I can think of how this might apply to some other folks....
ReplyDeleteJonah would ask his readers to go fart through the pollsters mail slot for him.
ReplyDeleteThis argument is based on the false premise that racism is exclusively, or predominantly, a Southern or Rural phenomenon. Racism is endemic to human tribalism, and it is exhibited with exuberance from Maine to Alaska--just with different accents and targets.
ReplyDeleteThe corollary to the "rural people are hostile to diversity because of their homogeneity" is "familiarity breeds contempt." Which axiom should we choose to believe?
I'd say that the insecure delusion that the few represent legions has been a component of this nation since the first morally superior group of religious outsiders began founding Cities of God here.
I grew up in a United States whose majority of citizens seemed to think America represented the pinnacle of civilization and the center of the universe. It has always been assumed that all right-thinking people in the world (and throughout history) were basically Americans with different languages.
Has there every been a time in American history that people did NOT think they were Right and Majority?
Also, if Obama is King, doesn't that take impeachment off the table? The Constitution tell us how to impeach a president, but it says nothing about impeaching a king. That Obama, he's a tricky one.
ReplyDeleteThe guy from Iowa or Wyoming or wherever who was quoted as being opposed to joining Obamacare, preferring to pay the 95 dollar fine--while his TEN FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE CHILDREN are on medicaid is just the same. I read his bio--his father was in the Forest Service and so he was raised on a government salary. Only the generosity of the government, which supplies the foster and adoptive system with medicaid, enables him and his wife to be the parents of these ten children, but he professes himself suspicious of, and without the need of, government. Its more that he basically thinks that what he gets free from the government is good, while what someone else gets as a result of government intervention in the market to permit people to pay into a private insurance scheme is bad. This is worse than "I got mine fuck you" its something like "gimme gimme gimme and fuck you very much."
ReplyDeleteThis mindless shit has been pretty well-funded by right-wing tycoons (Coors, Olin, Bradley, Koch, Scaife, et al ad nauseum) for decades. I think what has made it different this time is the enormous media web of Fox, talk-radio, and right wing press and Internet catapulting the propaganda and dumbing down the populace*. To take one example, Fox News has been an active and outspoken supporter (and even funder) of the "Tea Party" since its inception. There was simply nothing like this back in the Bircher days.
ReplyDelete*I know a retired blue-collar worker who's an avid Fox/Limbaugh Kool-Aid drinker. He really does think that when his wingnut idols scream for more tax cuts that they are talking about cutting his taxes, and their talk of cutting or eliminating entitlements has nothing to do with cutting his Social Security and Medicare. Against such ignorance even the gods are impotent.
Actually this is not the argument that he is making. He is making the argument that although the model of the tea party and white supremacy is mythically based on the sturdy independence of the rural white smallholding farmer and cowboy, in reality the entire country has always been multiracial and multicultural but some groups were actively suppressed at a political and cultural level. He doesn't get into it because he shifts from an idealized discussion of rural homogeneity to a more realistic discussion of the historic, slave holding south. But of course the plains and the midwest were also multi cultural and had a large and repressed native american and black population--what were sundown towns after all but an attempt to create ethnic homogeniety where none existed?
ReplyDeleteHe's really and essentially Muslim because: Father. But he is opportunistically Christian because: death to fags. So he can't be trusted, either way.
ReplyDelete"oh....nevermind."
ReplyDeleteWell you can both be right--I didn't like the Messick essay for other reasons, I felt it was too vague and bullshitty, but I think one could well argue that the division between slave and free white was always as much a manufactured cause of competition between workers as is the current tea party/reagan democrat/ethnic white hostility towards blacks and gays. In both cases the oligarchs and elites try to use resentment and illusory perks of whiteness and (nowadays, formerly) Heteronormativity to offer the rubes something in exchange for their willingness to vote tax cuts for the rich and a heavier burden to themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe slavers' notion that they were citizens and their slaves were not, that they were the "normative" community and slaves were a degenerate class of outsiders, lives on in Southern political ideology, which has become the GOP's ideology.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant. I am stealing.
I read about this guy at Charles Pierce's shop over at Esquire.com, and left this comment:
ReplyDelete"Y'know, a lot of people criticized the crowd at the Pug primary debate
when, in response to a question put to Ron Paul about what should be
done for an uninsured person showing up at an ER, the Tea Pugs in the
crowd yelled "Let him die", but damn... I'm beginning to think that if
that's what it takes to convince folks that universal health care is
more desirable than not, then sacrificing a few Rugged Individualists
might not be too steep a price. Greg should be the first object lesson."
Hafta say, I love Dean Chambers. He's got to be the ultimate poster boy for the power of the Internet to elevate the deservedly obscure to celebrity, and the right-wing's appetite for grasping at the most insane shit to keep reality at bay. Dean's current post is a gem: The truth about claims Obama had Breitbart killed. The entire thing goes like this: Could Obama have assassinated Andrew Breitbart? There's a "theory" that he did. It's true that there is no evidence for this "theory," but no evidence doesn't mean he didn't, not at all. In fact, there is a lot of speculation which deserves repeating. And more importantly, there is ample evidence that Obama had both the motive and the opportunity to have Breitbart killed. This doesn't mean Obama did have Breitbart killed, but it's certainly a possibility. Since there is no evidence it could go either way. I'm leaning towards "maybe."
ReplyDeleteOver and over. It's awesome.
The lurkers support me in email!
ReplyDeleteI think they would LOVE 'em some fighting--violence, fear, anger, stone-faced camouflaged special forces dudes rounding up anyone loyal to the United States....they just don't want it to be them, of course.
ReplyDelete10 or so potentially serious candidates who may be on that stage
ReplyDeleteLet the clown show begin!
Mine too, especially when licking his own balls.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, no other proof of the theory is given, no explanation of
ReplyDeletehow it was done or any notion of who did it other than to suggest his
death was ordered the Obama Regime. But the fact remains, there is still
no proof or evidence offered. I ran extensive searches online and still
could not come with anyone who yet has any evidence.
No, Mr. Chambers, simply googling is not "research."
Breitbart has spoke at CPAC and announced he was would releasing reports about Barack Obama that many believed would destroy his chances of reelection later in 2012. Clearly the Obama Regime has motive to take this guy out.
Because this would have been the first time any right wing figure has ever made accusations intended to smear Barack Obama. Barack Obama had no other choice but to assassinate the perpetrator of such an unprecedented act!
Also, too, this gem from the end of the piece:
ReplyDeleteI hope he was murdered, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised is[sic] someone did it.
Emphasis mine. What kind of sick fuck HOPES someone was murdered?
Remember this from Ted Nugent:
ReplyDelete"If Barack Obama becomes the President in November
again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."
I'm frankly disgusted that Obama just isn't willing to keep his promises...
I've seen a bumper sticker that had both the USMC logo and the Confederate battle standard on it. It wasn't a homemade job, either - clearly mass produced, so apparently there's a market for this. Charming, huh?
ReplyDeleteYou just don't get as much proof every day that everybody's not like you.
ReplyDeleteGoddamn if I don't
He is also an example of how very, very, finely a person can logic chop. This is how people whose parents are receiving Medicaid and Medicare simultaneously to keep them in nursing homes can pretend that they are not mooching off the taxpayer--and even be angry that the government expects "claw back" assets if they are forced to assume the costs of Grandma's nursing home when the assets have really been passed to the kiddies.
ReplyDeleteGreg really believes that there is some difference between accepting the medicaid for the children and actually "taking" something for himself. The money is fungible. What he and his wife take for the children from the government enables them to live on the remaining salary he takes in for whatever fake job he has.
Yep, decades of it - my dad was an early adopter in the 1950's but now that he has Fox News and an internet connection he's convinced The Word is now dominant and winger paradise is upon us. I'm not quite sure how he squares "winger paradise" with "monthly Social Security check + Medicare",, but that's true for all of them, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't know why anyone would be surprised. The irascible scots-irish who fought for the confederacy also joined the USMC in record numbers and they see no contradiction between the two iterations of their military history.
ReplyDeleteJesus, you'd think he has enough on his plate without having to honor Ted fucking Nugent's promises, too. I mean, I'm not even President or anything and I put "making sure Mr. Nugent doesn't look like a fool because of what came out of his pie-hole" pretty far down on my task list.
ReplyDeleteI agree--it is a very good formulation.
ReplyDeleteI may be proven wrong, but I may be proven right.
ReplyDelete... Well, shoot. I'm pretty sure I've already used the inevitable PIL reference,
though the comment was probably lost to posterity when the old bloggery
went callimastian-skyward. So:
I could be wrong, I could be right
The Prez is black, he is not white
I could be right, I could be wrong
We all are white and he is black
Our time has come to save our skin
The cost so high the gain so low
Walk through the valley
The lib media is a lie.
May the gorge rise in you
May the gorge rise in you
May the gorge rise in you
I could be wrong, I could be right
I could be wrong, I could be right
I could be wrong, I could be right
The Prez is black, he is not white
I could be right, I'm could be wrong
We are not black, we all are white
I put a hot wire to my head
To say the things I shouldn't have said
And made my decency go away
Tea Party citizen in every way
CHORUS
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Isn't this another version of Dunning-Kruger: there are people who are too insular to grasp just how much a minority they are? They tend to exaggerate their own "normality" and they fail to accept that there are other people out there who are more normal/typical/average/statistically common than they are?
ReplyDeleteYes, that is why an agreement with the fringe is always receding ahead of us--a distant horizon we can never meet because, to them, when parallel lines converge the universe ends. If you could find anything that we would accept, any form of capitulation or ransom, they would instantly think they had underbid and regret that they had pushed for that particular compromise. Its more than "rule or ruin" its "ruin for its own sake."
ReplyDeleteI may be right/I may be crazy...
ReplyDeleteSo, about 30 in total, then? Big field.
ReplyDeleteWait, a horribly out of shape rage addict suddenly keels over with a heart attack, and there's some kind of mystery/ The only mystery is why he stayed alive so long.
ReplyDeleteWell, duh. They'd have to impeach him, but fail to convict him, which the Clinton debacle demonstrated makes things even worse. So rather than admit that they don't actually speak for the majority of the American people, they turn Obama into an unaccountable king who has to be removed by military coup, at least according to one of the religious leader connected to such deep patriotic thinkers as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Sam Brownback, Jim DeMint, and Rick Perry.
ReplyDeleteOne in three potentially serious candidates? I think you might be giving them too much credit.
ReplyDeleteLink for that? I know Haig put precautions in place just in case, but I've never seenanything indicating that he actually tried it.
ReplyDeleteAll of this grandstanding by Republicans at national monuments is kind of infuriating. It's like an arsonist showing up at a burning building to yell at firefighters. They've got to know that they lit the damn thing on fire.
ReplyDeleteIt might be Ted Cruz you're looking for.
ReplyDeleteWhat he meant to say was that the guy probably had the same IQ as a plant.
ReplyDeleteHow I love the alicuratti.
ReplyDeleteYou know what? This is a time honored tradition in writing-for-pay. There are entire magazine empires built around the fact that June Brides will pay to find out whether other June Brides are wearing white again this year, and Martha Stewart photographs her Thanksgiving issue in March, with fake fall leaves. And yet people buy it, year after year.
ReplyDeleteBlood of virgins? Not much of a mystery.
ReplyDeleteNot only that--they oppose most monument set asides and the idea of public land that is held in reserve for the actual public.
ReplyDeleteHe needs to recuperate his Super Powers after expending them on Brietbart.
ReplyDeleteWWII vets are on our side; that pushes us over the top! There must be millions of them, amirite? Clap harder, Hugh; Tinker Bell still can't hear you.
ReplyDelete"I may be proven wrong, but I may be proven right."
ReplyDeletethis is actually from billy joel's little known work of political philosophy, you oughta know by now: how jack kemp can give the republican establishment a heart attack ack ack ack in 1984.
Well, most of them are dead by now, but by God the zombie WWII vets are all on our side. As soon as they eat some brains.
ReplyDeleteAnd there was something in the Wikipedia article which I hadn't known previously. Prior to his fatal heart attack, he had had one a few months before. His heart was already a ticking time bomb.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as they eat some brains.
ReplyDeleteSo given that they're surrounded by teabaggers, you're saying we have nothing to worry about.
You should never argue with a crazy mi mi mi mi mi mind
ReplyDeleteYou oughta know by now
You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime
... Okay, two separate Billy Joel references so far, and only one John Lydon reference? At alicublog? This needs to stop.
It goes back to before the Civil War. Frank Rich on the not-newness of the krazees:
ReplyDeletehttp://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/government-shutdowns-2013-10/
Add to that the encouragement, praise, sense of moral virtue, and consoling hope all delivered by religious faith. When you grow up believing in an invisible super-hero and his resurrected "son," in a context that invites you to ignore all the contradictions and nonsense in your magic book, all of which assures an afterlife of eternal ecstasy (as you enjoy the eternal torment of anyone you don't like), it's easy as pie to ignore reality.
ReplyDeleteIt's second nature and, within your community, common knowledge. The "reality" in your mind (Obama is Muslim; the Constitution expressly forbids abortion; etc.) is the superior, truer-than-true reality out there among the liberals and the ACLU. If everything out in the world is a lie, then everything in your head (and in your heart) must be the truth.
So what if your life is entirely sustained by the truth of science that you dismiss when you feel like it? So what if you depend on government programs to feed, clothe, protect, and educate you so you can get up every day and hate "government"? And so what if literally none of your predictions ever come true? They will tomorrow.
There's a difference between convincing them and causing them to be low-information in the first place, I think.
ReplyDeleteAre they mostly suburbanites? The suburban vote is a lot more split down the middle than the rural vote, and most of the biggest congress teabaggers are from rural areas, not suburban ones.
ReplyDeleteBut I also think that for suburban white people in general and Republicans in particular, southern-ness became at some point a political statement and a state of mind rather than a mere demographic group. It's why rednecks in places like Maine and Wisconsin fly confederate flags, why country music is so huge among middle-aged suburbanites who have never seen a farm, the national success of Paula Deen, Rachel Ray, Duck Dynasty, and other aggressively-southern pop culture figures.
I suspect that nitwit meant to type "wasn't," but didn't have time to fix it because he was too busy exhibiting the sharp attention to detail that is the hallmark of his movement.
ReplyDelete"I may be proven wrong, but I may be proven right."
ReplyDeleteSly said it better.
The mission of Rush, et.al., is to take low-information voters and transform them into mis-information voters.
ReplyDeleteDuh, that of a failed traitorous rebellion is way more patriotic.
ReplyDeleteFrom Seymour Hersh's "The Pardon" in the August 1983 Atlantic Monthly:
ReplyDelete"On December 22, 1973, a few weeks after Gerald Ford’s swearing-in as Vice President, Richard Nixon held his annual ceremonial meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One member of the Joint Chiefs, a four-star officer, recalled in a recent interview that the President's performance was bizarre and alarming. "He kept on referring to the fact that he may be the last hope, the eastern elite was out to get him. He kept saying, 'This is our last and best hope. The last chance to resist the fascists [of the left].' His words brought me straight up out of my chair. I felt the President, without the words having been said, was trying to sound us out to see if we would support him in some extra-constitutional action. He was trying to find out whether in a crunch there was support to keep him in power . ."
The officer did go on to say that others didn't seem to take it that way, but doesn't that sound like a "have I not a friend in court" moment ?
You're being far too fair to Rush. I'm quite certain that to him "low information voter" is a euphemism for negro.
ReplyDeleteJust don't do any Goat-scaping.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the Silent Majority is silent because they are busy doing real work, unlike unemployed moochers and people doing phony-baloney "work," people with plenty of time to run their mouths.
ReplyDeleteIt should come as no surprise that he's not just some guy from Idaho, he's an überlibertarian Republican candidate for State Representative. He's also a weasel, a hyprocrite, and nuts. Here's his response to his critics. An excerpt:
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of the comments directed towards me try to paint me as a hypocrite for being a limited government advocate and having my kids on Medicaid. My political beliefs are certainly not popular, and in this case, there are many people in the liberty movement who want to take me to task. Again, we are dealing with a situation where people have been socialized into believing a lie.
Let me set the record straight. Yes, I participate in government programs of which I adamantly oppose. Many of them, actually. Am I a hypocrite for participating in programs that I oppose? If it was that simple, and if participation demonstrated support, then of course. But, my reason for participation in government programs often is not directly related to that issue in and of itself, and it certainly does not demonstrate support. For instance, I participate in government programs in order to stay out of the courts, or jail, so that I can take care of my family; other things I do to avoid fines or for other financial reasons; and some are simply because it is the only practical choice. With each situation, I have to evaluate the consequence of participation.
As with all welfare programs, Medicaid should not exist. If you don't want my kids on Medicaid, get them off by terminating the entire program. I would be the most thrilled if that were to happen.
Holy crap. He gets paid for this?
ReplyDeleteThe Bad cop knows his job.
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that, as we all know, everyone in Hollywood is a flaming liberal, the movies have also been instrumental in promoting the glamorous lost cause of the South (starting with "The Birth of a Nation").
ReplyDeleteA little more RANDOM CAPITALIZATION and misspelling would help, too.
ReplyDeleteI will assume that having his children on Medicaid is "the only practical choice" since, as far as I know, there is no requirement that one participate in the program if one is eligible. Providing medical care for a large family is quite expensive and our hypocritical buddy would rather not pay out of pocket. Tea Party logic.
ReplyDelete"O will have to cut spending to 2001 levels."
ReplyDeleteAt which point we can put concurrent wars with Syria and Iran on the national credit card. Oh wait. . .
Or when, from time-to-time, they have the facts shoved in their faces: that they represent about 1/4 of the population's views, probably less, they just claim to be the persecuted minority. They easily believe impossible things all day, not just before breakfast.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, all of their behavior seems to be based on "belief". They don't "believe" in global warming, They do "believe" there were WMDs in Iraq, etc.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor was telling me how we used to get about 6 feet of snow over the course of the winter (Reno NV) up here in the hills, but now: PFFFT! Maybe 2 inches per winter. Then she HASTILY added "But I don't believe in that global warming stuff!" Since I know its useless to argue, I said "Well, something is going on, don't you think>?i>" and she agreed. I suppose she thinks its a Liberal Plot.
Different strokes for different folks!
ReplyDeleteNo joke or reference need ever be explained, no matter how obscure.
ReplyDeleteA Lifetime Original Movie: Blizzard In Galt's Gulch. Starring Rainn Wilson as "Greg Collett", who has to find and bring home his cows children, with no help from the "government", in the worst storm ever seen in Galt's Gulch.
ReplyDeleteAlso starring Ed O'Neill as "Governor John Galt", and featuring Hilary Clinton in a cameo role as "The Wicked Storm Witch of the East."
Agree with Spaghetti Lee. From what I've read, the 'burbs have gone increasingly blue.
ReplyDeleteWhere shall we find the Smedley Butler of our time?
ReplyDeleteActually my irascible scots-irish ancestors fought on the side of the United States.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Rich's point tracks with Messick's. It's not the Lost Cause - the disastrous end of the war - that's replaying endlessly as noble victimhood as much as it's the circumstances that made starting the war alluring to the endlessly bellicose slaveholders in the first place.
ReplyDeleteGreat thread, folks. Thank you.
I think it's cultural. Not only is late-capitalism destroying their nice middle-class prosperity and sending it up to the one percent, it's compounded by the culture shifting away from them. The America they grew up with (and lorded over) is disappearing, becoming less white, less hetero dominant, less english speaking, less male-dominated, and less Christian. Their privilege is being whittled away from both sides (economic and cultural) and they want it to stop and they're looking for scapegoats. And it's a lot easier to blame gays and moslems and illegals and Hollywood and fake president Ebony Stalin than to actually think about the real causes of their despair.
ReplyDeleteThe Fox/Koch/Limbaugh/Beck teabaggler project is meant to channel this inchoate rage and fear into being useful to advance their interests, and they use mostly cultural signalling to do it. It why their demands and arguments are so incoherent. It really is just one big primal scream directed at all those Others who went and stole their post-WWII prosperity, dressed up in tricorner hats and toy muskets.
Am I a hypocrite for participating in programs that I oppose? If it was
ReplyDeletethat simple, and if participation demonstrated support, then of course.
See, he's not a hypocrite because NUANCE!
I don't think many northern suburbanites listen to country music, celebrate Paula Deen, or associate Rachel Ray with southern culture (Rachel Ray is, I think, famously a New Yorker). Southerners spread outwards from the South along certain fairly well defined routes and are found in pockets in places like Ohio and Michigan and throughout the mid west and the far west. A Whole lot of southerners moved north at the same time that black southerners did for jobs. Those people can be urban or rural or suburban because the post war boom in suburbs gave them a place to move into. I think it matters which suburbs we are talking about, in other words.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I actually had some good success talking to someone about global warming by just sticking to present facts that they knew about and making them ask themselves for a good explanation. These people who blurt out "but I don't believe in..." are like women who say "but I'm not a feminist" because they think you will demand they whip off their bra and burn it, not because they don't live a basically feminist existence.
ReplyDeleteKing Obama is the most half assed tyrant in the history of tyrants. If I were King, the FEMA re-education camps would be over flowing. Just building them would be a huge boost to the economy.
ReplyDeleteHow many eggs does an MRI cost?
ReplyDeleteThe US City avg price for eggs in Aug 2013 was 1.838. http://www.bls.gov/ro3/apmw.htm
ReplyDeleteAn MRI costs $5,315 for an uninsured person.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/stories/2012/december/09/mri-cost-price-comparison-health-insurance.aspx
34,700 eggs.
(The egg price cited was per dozen, obviously)
ReplyDelete." His heart was already a ticking time bomb."
ReplyDeletePositively tell-tale, wouldn't you say?
Is this the point where a reference to Mickey Kaus is appropriate?
ReplyDeleteAlong with the conviction that there is some type of society which allows these two, the slavers and the slaves, to live in a peaceful and mutually satisfying lives in close proximity.
ReplyDeleteAnd so they are always evoking that fantasy, too.
So, wait. This uber-libertarian government hater has ten (10) adopted/foster kids in his care, and he's drawing government money - a good bit, I imagine - that he won't quite explain why he cannot just refuse said monies. I'm cynical and I've had a bad week and I've about had it with obnoxious honkies in general, so I'm not proud of the first thought I had when I read that:
ReplyDelete"Damn, that's creepy as hell. I shudder to think the kinds of shit those kids must catch." I really do hope I'm just being an asshole on this, but damn.
"But I also think that for a large number of suburban white people in
ReplyDeletegeneral and Republicans in particular, southern-ness became at some
point a political statement and a state of mind rather than a mere
demographic group"
That is one of the most devastating indictments of the conservative culture I have ever read. If I thought I was becoming southern I would study the Three R's, and make my choice between razor, rope or revolver.
True. He's no Jimmy Carter, King of All Monsters. Now THERE was a guy who really knew how to be a tyrant.
ReplyDeleteSo, Breitbart is to Obama as Vince Foster is to Clinton? Breitbart was an Arkansas drug mule and Obama had him killed because he was banging Michelle and was going to spill the beans on Obama's shady Arkansas land deals?
ReplyDeleteWell, sure, I'm not saying everyone in that class fought for the confederacy.
ReplyDeleteWell, he's pretty up front that although he opposes medicaid, specifically, he does not see any reason to turn it down for his kids. He probably thinks he's doing us a favor adopting someone else's cast off kids and thus, in a sense, they and he deserve the foster care payments and the subsidy in the form of medicaid. But why he thinks he's any different from anyone else--poor parents who hang on to their own kids but need medicaid to pay for their health insurance, is beyond me.
ReplyDeletebut the difficulty of predicting the best answer can be found — where else? — in two movies about war.
ReplyDeleteTwo movies about war? Further proof that they're not living in the real world. Of course, all of these guys are draft-dodgers and chickenhawks, so they can't bring real experience of war into their analogies.
He also kicked Megalon's ass thirty ways from Sunday!
ReplyDeleteDon't going putting a hot wire in your head!
ReplyDeleteYes, I was just about to defend the honor of my Scots- Irish ancestors ancestors as well, all of whom fought on the USA side. And a number of their Presbyterian churches throughout PA and NY served as Underground Railroad stops, though you wouldn't know it from those grandstanding Quakers who always try to hog all the credit.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, we are still capable of irascibility.
A lot of southerners did indeed spread to the industrial north, but as a native Detroiter, I see a lot of faux southerners who think of themselves as the confederacy in every way but actual birth or ancestry.
ReplyDeleteIf conservatives could do that, they'd bother the rest of us all a lot less.
ReplyDeleteLets invent a term for it, shall we. How about--separate but equal?
ReplyDeleteI can take your money and hate you for it.
ReplyDeleteAt least its not classic comics. That's where I go for my war insights.
ReplyDeleteCriminals returning to the scene of the crime, as it were ...
ReplyDeleteIf Breitbart wasn't murdered, his death was the fault of an uncaring universe. If you could prove that he was murdered, obviously you have to respot the ball and let him come back the game after sending Obama to the gas chamber,.
ReplyDeleteOr just Bad Jackie again.
All of them, Katie.
ReplyDeleteThe Scots have had a few of those too.
ReplyDeleteLike a Self-Promoting Dipshit Tom Joad.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of Republicans in Congess are not fanatics. They may be assholes, but they are not fanatics.
ReplyDeleteHeck, we've got Molon Labe types and Rush Limbaugh/Toby Keith radio here in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteEven 'midst the blue, a certain white nationalism stirs.
That wasn't Sharon Angle who said that; it was the somewhat less horrible Sue Lowden.
ReplyDeleteThe shutdown is kind of like Atonement since it consists of a story made up by someone who was a massive jerk to people who didn't deserve any of it just to make herself feel better about herself.
ReplyDeletebut are the majority of republicans leading things?
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's Ted Nugent who should keep Ted Nugent's promises. Yo Teddy! Either a.) report to jail immediately, b.) kill yourself immediately, or c.) admit you're a fibber and a big old tease.
ReplyDeleteThe errors in reasoning here are glorious.
ReplyDeletepeople of Muslim faith "are known to stone someone for being gay.
And here in the US, the Muslims hold a stoning practically every other weekend. The liberal media just covers it up.
"Would you be a Muslim if it put you as risk for being killed because of your lifestyle choices?" he asks.
Right, because no one has ever put up with persecution from the religion or culture of their birth out of a feeling of loyalty to their family or desire to fit into that culture.
Also, "lifestyle choices". The 90s called and they want their terminology back.
If you don't want my kids on Medicaid, get them off by terminating the entire program. I would be the most thrilled if that were to happen.
ReplyDeleteIs he really daring us to make his kids go without health insurance?
I can't decide between Sgt. Rock for president and Sgt. Fury for president. Nick Fury's subsequent career in international skulduggery is both kinda questionable and kinda cool.
ReplyDeleteThis would only be the start... j/k, wingnut lurkers! Don't turn me into another Erik Loomis!
ReplyDeleteVery modestly; he's writing for examiner.com.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure that he hadn't been a former drummer for Spinal Tap?
ReplyDeleteThat sort of is-it-irresponsible-to-speculate-it-would-be-irresponsible-not-to halfassery is so rote that it has to work like Mad Libs at this point; just fill in the latest frothings from Alex Jones, Matt Drudge, and that tiresome Infowars-T-shirt-wearing bore at the head of the line in Starbucks who won't shut up and stop interrupting the barista who looks as if she would love nothing more than to unload a carafe of Pike Place Roast right into his face and see if he's still opposed to Obamacare after all, "death camps" and all.*
ReplyDelete*May be based on a true story.
Basically sounds like a fine upstanding member of the I've-Got-Mine-Jack Party.
ReplyDeleteFrom just about everything that I've seen, read or heard from Marines--in print, online, and in person--the overwhelming sentiment is one of a deep-seated resentment, particularly toward the other branches of the military. Fits in quite well with the Lost Cause.
ReplyDeleteNo, the body was still intact after death. But he was a drummer, you have that part right.
ReplyDeleteOne of my Scots-descended ancestors deserted from the Texas Rifles during the Civil War 2 weeks after he had an arrears in pay. First documented sign of intelligence in that side of my family.
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