Friday, June 27, 2014

FRIDAY AROUND-THE-HORN.

•  Sam Stein and Michael Calderone find that "If You Were An Iraq War Critic, You're Probably Not Being Asked To Go On TV," and boy ain't it the truth. But for the most part they're concerned with the dearth of televised People Who Were Sane From The Start who also belong to the officially-sanctioned class of pundits and pols. Really, I don't care if Russ Feingold pipes up or not; I'd like to see Digby or Atrios or Tbogg on the tube, asking a shocked and disdainful Dick Cheney how it came to be that they could see what a clusterfuck this was going in and he couldn't.  But that's obviously out of the question -- wingnut shouters like ham-faced Erick Erickson may get promoted to bigtime TV, but whenever the nets need a nominally-left blogger-type, they call up some golden-boy trimmer. Thus we get "YADDA YADDA JESUS CARVED MERICA OUTTA THE WILDERNESS WITH A BIBLE AN A GUN"  versus "Well you make some good points." Bah. Sometimes I think they keep things vanilla like that just so their credentialed conservatives don't get scared; get this, from Victor Davis Hanson's latest bullshit about how everybody makes mistakes that cost thousands of lives on the other side of the world:
A number of prominent columnists, right and left — from George Will, David Brooks and William F. Buckley to Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius and Thomas Friedman — supported Saddam's forcible removal.
Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius and Thomas Friedman! That Overton Window is somewhere over in the next fucking county.

•  Speaking of Ezra Klein, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry's attacks on Vox don't bother me -- number one, who cares, and number two, so what -- but he uses Klein & Co.'s perceived biases as proof that liberals have the real epistemic closure problem. (Plus, "another symbol of growing epistemic closure on the left is The New Republic" which Gobry liked when it was "an idiosyncratic magazine critiquing liberalism," two Andrew Sullivan identity crises ago.) Gobry concedes conservatives had a little problem with E.C. for a couple of minutes, but not now...
A flurry of innovative young writers like Yuval Levin, Reihan Salam, Ross Douthat, Tim Carney, and Avik Roy put out fresh, 21st-century ideas on everything from tax reform to health care to social mobility to poverty to curtailing the power of Big Business. Many of these ideas are now compiled in a seminal new book... it's clear that the GOP is becoming the party of ideas again.
That "seminal new book" is Room to Grow, which I reviewed some weeks back, and which is a rat-bag of old-fashioned drop-the-minimum-wage, school voucher, and marriage promotion clunkers, with some sweet sauce poured over to make it look tastier. Also, how long are we going to keep calling Ross Douthat and his crew "innovative young writers"? It's getting to the point when I imagine even the kids at the Free Beacon are embarrassed when Salam drops some beats.

•  Fans of hot messes will be pleased to hear Rod Dreher is still the hot mess he's always been. In a post called "The Empire Takes Culture War To The World," he quotes a new report:
Seeking to mobilize a global front against anti-gay violence and discrimination, Vice President Joe Biden declared Tuesday that protecting gay rights is a defining mark of a civilized nation and must trump national cultures and social traditions.
Dreher comments on this:
The mark of a civilized nation. Well. Let it be noted that as far as the Obama administration is concerned, traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are vestiges of barbarism.
Well, now that you mention it...
It’s been clear which way this country is going on religious freedom. I hadn’t expected that we would be getting there so quickly. Signs of the times, people, signs of the times.
Oh go take another Paris vacation ya big drama queen. Later:
UPDATE: To clarify, I’m completely on board with the anti-violence stuff. If that’s all this was, I would support it. But we all know it doesn’t stop there, because what Biden defines as “prejudice” is what many, many of us believe is truth.
And in another update Dreher produces proof that Emperor Obama's homo dystopia "goes far beyond opposing violence against LGBT folks. For example, USAID is providing funding for gay-owned start-up companies in other countries."

It's about time for Rod and his comrades to start writing songs of their oppression. Maybe for starters they can just add new lyrics to old ones -- here, to the tune of The Wearin' of the Green:
Oh I met with Maggie Gallagher a-cryin' o'er her books:
"They used to give us cash," she cried, "but now just dirty looks.
It's the most disgraceful pledge drive that NOM has had in years --
They're stiffin' us fine Christians for the Ragging on th' Queers."

271 comments:

  1. Derelict1:22 PM

    "From the far Right to the center Right, we bring you the full range of political opinion!"

    Nope, you'll never see any of the people who made the right call on Iraq being asked about it today. As Our Little Megan noted, they were right for all the wrong reasons.

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  2. coozledad1:22 PM

    Ah. Victor's beloved Sicilian expedition come to naught, because everybody from hardline conservatives to hardline conservative blowing NPR assmonkeys couldn't see what was coming.


    Has he already said it was the liberals who knocked the cocks off the herms?

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  3. Glock H. Palin, Esq.1:23 PM

    But if they let one or two actual liberals on, all their dozens of conservative guests would complain about how they had a liberal bias. And we can't have that.

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  4. susanoftexas1:23 PM

    Matty-Watty Yglesias, who said, "Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it's entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States." Nothing is more liberal than stating that poor people must die so garment factory owners don't have to lose any profit.
    It's nice to know that in the interest of fairness our media promotes both the left and right 1%, as long as they remain loyal to their class and economic interests.

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  5. Re: the Overton Window


    I once had a coworker who thought that Alan Colmes was a prominent liberal pundit. Before then I'd just sort of blithely assumed that everyone was aware that he was a straw liberal, and that they were playing along in the same way that we all just quietly pretend that reality TV is a depiction of actual events as they actually occurred, at least while we're watching it.


    But really, it's astounding how many conservatives have no conception of what leftist thought and ideology actually is, presumably because they think it's what Colmes is saying. There seems to be a weird imbalance in that regard. I mean, I feel I could accurately and fairly sum up the ideological positions of American conservatism - I'd even manage to do it without resorting to phrases like, "complete lack of empathy," I swear!


    Whereas many conservatives seem to think that liberalism is actually about things like "big government," as if that's an end in itself. Or gun control! Christ. If I thought putting a handgun in the hands of every American would actually reduce gun violence, I'd support it wholeheartedly. I wouldn't oppose it just because "ew guns" or anything. It so happens that I don't believe that doing so would reduce gun violence, so I don't support it.


    Point is, a lot of conservatives don't seem to grasp what the actual aims of leftist ideology are. It's not big government for the sake of big government, or taxation for the sake of taxation (especially given that anarchism is a chiefly left-wing position, but that's another point).

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  6. susanoftexas1:25 PM

    I don't think they care one way or the other. They base their ideology on their emotions and assume we do the same.

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  7. Colmes actually is pretty liberal, he just had to play a wimp to get on TV. I'm not exactly a fan of his, but I've seen and heard enough of his post-FNC stuff to know that that was basically a character.

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  8. With a chain saw, one presumes.

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  9. That sad thing about Yglesias is that unlike Tom Friedman (of whom Matty is basically a clone), I don't think he is the 1%. He's just your workaday bootlicker, hoping that our wealthy superiors will one day make his juvenile fantasies come true - or at least pay his rent.


    It's a fine gig, and the only requirement is that you have no self-respect at all.

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  10. susanoftexas1:30 PM

    Because they are all knee-jerk pacifists because they hate America, want it to fail, are afraid of guns, and are childish, weak, passive and effeminate.
    And now they are attempting to tell us that their inability to reason proves they are superior to those who can, since getting everything wrong teaches you how to succeed the next time you want to illegally invade another country.

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  11. Jay B.1:34 PM

    A number of prominent columnists, right and left — from George Will, David Brooks and William F. Buckley to Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius and Thomas Friedman — supported Saddam's forcible removal.


    In a decent country, that would read more like an indictment of pseudo-intellectual pretension than the defense Hanson means it to be.

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  12. susanoftexas1:34 PM

    His father is a successful (and good) writer, who went to Horace Mann. Matt went to Dalton and Harvard. I'd call him a card-carrying member of the elite based on his writing, which is ethereally devoted to mind games that always seem to screw the poor.

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  13. There's this very aristocratic attitude among the chattering class, and that's why someone like TBogg is never going to get through, even though he was right. It hit me when I heard George Will defending himself, and he actually referred to his detractors at "the rabble." Political insiders view themselves as superior to we filthy, blog-writing plebes, and they've got an exclusionary system in place to back it up. That's why the architects of the cluster-fuck keep getting invited back - because one of us who was completely wrong (and an asshole to boot) is more honorable than one of those who was right in a most crass manner.

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  14. Oh, he's certainly well-connected, but that doesn't necessarily make him wealthy. A lot of our political aristocrats maintain their station by having a lot of wealthy and influential friends.

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  15. coozledad1:38 PM

    To some extent this is true, but when your emotional intelligence is hovering around the level of a paramecium, it's impossible for you to imagine just how far empathy goes toward making you much smarter than a Republican/ Libertarian. This probably accounts for them having no clue how stupid they appear to even slightly more contemplative people.

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  16. susanoftexas1:40 PM

    Journalist and political blogger Matthew Yglesias bought a three-bedroom, three-bath condo on Q Street in Logan Circle for $1.2 million. In a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio. Yglesias writes about business and the economy for Slate.

    http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/homes/luxury-home-sales-what-76-million-buys/

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  17. susanoftexas1:42 PM

    Yes, that is true as well. And their authoritarianism makes them even more stupid, since it destroys any ability to think critically.

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  18. I could mine a few pop culture refs here, but it would make it seem trite and facetious; all the same, it is perversely fascinating to watch history get rewritten right in front of your eyes.

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  19. But thats just as weird, really. Its like they dont know that, information and propaganda they see are constructed, artificial, truman show esque.

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  20. dstatton1:47 PM

    Try checking the guest lists for the Sunday shows and you'll se Republicans consistently outnumber Democrats, sometime three to one (not counting FOX), and the Democrats tend to be people like Diane Feinstein.

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  21. Than why do they keep kicking our asses? Corey Robin has made the point that just because an ideological orientation is brutish and effectively stupid doesn't mean its exponents or adherents are; it takes a great deal of creativity and nuance to justify and make a system of political thought out of reactionary thinking.

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  22. dstatton1:48 PM

    Buckley changed his mind after no WMDs were found and was therefore shunned on the cruise.

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  23. Spending five minutes in nearly any public corner of the innertubes will pretty well convince anyone that being stupid is a badge of honor for far more people than I would prefer, at any rate.

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  24. I think "mandarin" is the term we're looking for here.

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  25. susanoftexas1:51 PM

    We see libertarians do it all the time. They don't need to use a lot of nuance or creativity (McArdle!), they just need to keep repeating what they want everyone to believe. And people choose to believe, no matter what they know to be true. They want to be taken care of, even if they end up with the short end of the stick. Childhood patterns keep repeating.

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  26. susanoftexas1:52 PM

    Yeah. He has the brains of an orange.

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  27. susanoftexas1:55 PM

    Giles: You mean life?
    Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?
    Giles: What do you want me to say?
    Buffy: Lie to me.
    Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
    Buffy: Liar.

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  28. gocart mozart1:59 PM

    To be fair, the “Jesus riding a dinosaur” idea is relatively new and innovative as is
    the “Religious freedom of corporations” idea. Palin and Golmert, et al
    are innovators on the cutting edges of stupid. so there's that.

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  29. I'm in basic agreement with you--as an example, someone (I think Josh Marshall, not exactly a lefty) pointed out that the defining mark of Cheney's political career has been failure: his every idea, as a congressman, cabinet member, VP, has come apart. In time, he same will be said for guys like Paul Ryan. And yeah Jonah is a fool and a bad writer; same with McArdle, as are lots of the brethren Roy covers. But smart--and devious, and cunning--people can still support and gird a similarly smart and deviously cunning system where every result is a stupid and ugly one. I just think it's mistaken if we always say a dumb idea means a dumb person believes it.

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  30. LittlePig2:02 PM

    David Ignatius is left? Horseshit. I heard him today on Chickenshit Central, aka The Diane Rehm Show, say the U.S. needs troops in the Middle East for the next hundred years, because 9/11!


    Goddammit, anybody that thinks 9/11 posed an existential threat to the United States is either an idiot or else believes the country is on the brink of collapse. One hundred thousand dead American troops won't be enough to make David Ignatius or Diane Rehm feel safe, because the problem is in their heads. These people need counseling, not be given a national pasttime to play out their insecurity fantasies.


    The fact that lightening is far more likely to kill people than terrorism in the U.S. means nothing to these people (or if it does, the War On Lightening has passed my notice). Get these people away from the megaphones, they aren't right in the head.

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  31. LittlePig2:11 PM

    No, scared people believe it. The fear is the motivator, and these folks want mommy and daddy to tell them it's ok.


    They aren't necessarily dumb all over, but as far as politics go, fear overrides reason. They want those sweet little lies (which is why St. Ronnie still rates so large in their minds). Even the nuts going crazy about a black man in the White House are motivated, ultimately, by fear.

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  32. it's clear that the GOP is becoming the party of ideas again.


    Christ, they were saying the same thing about Paul Ryan a few years ago.

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  33. brandonrg2:15 PM

    The liberal progressive Diane Feinstein

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  34. LittlePig2:19 PM

    Ignatius pissed me off as well with his "we left troops in Germany, Japan and Korea, why not do the same in Iraq?"


    Gee, maybe because those first three had actual governments that had worked for some time before being occupied, rather than being a artificial state drawn by the British and French around a place with a thousand years of internecine religious warfare, and five thousand years of tribal scores to settle?

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  35. Glock H. Palin, Esq.2:21 PM

    They're all bad ideas, but they're still ideas.

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  36. susanoftexas2:23 PM

    This is why we lose. They use psychological warfare and we do not. They throw up everything against the wall and see what sticks. They don't care how they win as long as they win.
    I think it was Mark Ames who said that it was a mistake to call McArdle dumb because her propaganda was smartly done. I call her stupid because it is one of the few things that might force her overreact and make even more mistakes and dumb decisions in public. It undermines her authority. It opens the door to pubic criticism of her. It's a weapon.

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  37. LittlePig2:25 PM

    Hell, the only reason most of it was "crass" is because pundits these days are WATB (Whiney Ass Titty Babies, for those not aware of all internet traditions). Any counter-argument, no matter how reasoned, results in "Mommy! They're picking on me again!", and so becomes crass by definition, crass in this case meaning 'thinking something beside what I tell the rabble to think'.

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  38. DN Nation2:27 PM

    I looked it up, and holy shit, Ross Douthat is only three years older than me?


    I don't know how to rectify the man's face. Hair of a 45-year-old, facial hair of a 14-year-old.

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  39. Spaghetti Lee2:35 PM

    We talking O'Brien's monologue from 1984? Because that's what came to mind.

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  40. Either way, he's not as smart as he looks.

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  41. Spaghetti Lee2:38 PM

    That's one of the ones that I can't wrap my head around, no matter how I try. Forget Colmes: people think Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and George Stephanopoulos are liberals? Have they ever met a liberal in their lives?

    Of course, I'm sure a lot of them don't actually think this, and are just looking to redefine anyone who doesn't actively kiss the feet of any conservative in their presence as a 'radical liberal.' The problem is that it's so hard to determine whether you're dealing with a complete idiot or a shameless huckster.

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  42. willf2:41 PM

    This probably accounts for them having no clue how stupid they appear to even slightly more contemplative people.



    It's Dunning-Krueger all the way down.

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  43. Spaghetti Lee2:42 PM

    Paul Ryan seems to have been dumped like last week's trash by the GOP braintrust, at least compared to pre-2012 when they trotted him out every other day as their gee-whiz boy genius. Thank heaven for small favors.

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  44. Spaghetti Lee2:47 PM

    McArdle is the pinnacle of that way of thinking. She has never, to my knowledge, had anything that resembled a valuable insight or original thought, but she had the right parents, went to the right schools, interned at the right places--it was inevitable as sunrise that she'd stumble into some high-ranking media perch. In the Very Serious Media, even the people who disagree with her (rare enough as they are) never think to ask how such a stone-dumb moron got her job in the first place. It's only natural that she did--they can't think of a reason why she wouldn't. Determining who is 'respected' in public discourse is the opposite of a meritocracy.

    Personally, I'd be willing to compromise if the major networks agreed to let TBogg, Digby, Atrios, and Roy replace the nightly news for one day and have absolutely no restrictions what to say or who to go after. A lot of these people are so easy to break down that one day is all you'd need, and the magic of the internet would preserve it forever.

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  45. tigrismus2:49 PM

    fresh, 21st-century ideas on everything from tax reform tax cuts! to health care markets! and tax cuts. to social mobility 'merica! and tax cuts. to poverty tax cuts AND markets AND 'merica! to curtailing the power of Big Business. Free speech! Also tax cuts, markets, and 'merica.

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  46. willf2:50 PM

    Then why do they keep kicking our asses?

    Partly because our party leaders are corrupt and mentally captured fuckheads who fundamentally agree with their meaner and crazier opponents on just about every issue, and the people in charge of winning elections seem intent on throwing winnable races in a futile attempt to re-stock the house and senate full of... well, whatever you call blue dogs these days.



    And things will stay that way until the democratic base gets fed up and does something about it.

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  47. Derelict2:53 PM

    Some of their success indeed relies on teh stupid. Some is due to appeals to authoritarianism.

    But I think a lot of their success is due to 1.) the non-stop appeal to "you're struggling and others are just sucking the system dry--and I'll stop that!" and (perhaps more importantly) 2.) the vast majority of people don't want to have to think about government.

    At the end of the day, all most people really want out of their government at any level is to know that it's taking care of business. It's paving the roads, fixing the sewers, locking up the bad guys. Beyond that, most people are so focused on day-to-day survival that they don't have the time or energy to think about government or politics. (And the fact that the media frames everything as "Network Battle of the Talking Heads!!!" doesn't help.")

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  48. Derelict2:55 PM

    Needs Moar TAX CUTS!

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  49. sharculese2:57 PM

    Pseudo-intellectual pretension is what they pay Hanson for, after all.


    The sad thing is I can't tell if he's lying or he's generally in so deep that Fareed Zakaria is indistinguishable from Dennis Kucinich in his mind. I'm leaning towards both.

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  50. Derelict2:58 PM

    But he does have a certain, uh, peel.

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  51. willf3:00 PM

    But doesn't that make his behavior all the more inexcusable?


    I think that everyone - I mean every person who runs across Alan Colmes on a daily basis - should treat him the way he let himself be treated on FOX.


    The baristas should shout him down when he tries to order a latte. The waiter at his favorite restaurant should talk over him and not let him get a word in. Cabbies should tell him to stuff it, every time he tries to tell them his address, and should drop him off where-ever they want, regardless of his wishes.


    I think he should face that behavior every minute of his life, since he likes it so much.

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  52. willf3:01 PM

    Buffy: "Sarcasm never helped anything, Giles."


    Giles: "It's kind of an end in itself".

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  53. mortimer20003:02 PM

    If Paul Bremer's busy, Arthur is still kickin'. His opinion on Iraq has to be at least as valid as any of the clusterfuck's progenitors. Plus he has experience in actually firing a gun.

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  54. susanoftexas3:03 PM

    He can plant the seeds of an idea, water it with the sweat of his brow, and see it grow up and bear fruit that is glorious in its dumbfuckery.

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  55. tigrismus3:03 PM

    It's the Massengill of political ideas. SO FRESH.

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  56. Brian Schlosser3:04 PM

    "Russ Douthat, shitting in his hat, forever"

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  57. Derelict3:05 PM

    Goddammit, anybody that thinks 9/11 posed an existential threat to the United States is either an idiot . . .

    Oh, there were LOTS of people who were convinced al Qaeda was going to conquer the U.S. in short order. Sadly, I know some of these people personally, and they were quite alarmed. Pointing that a bunch of people armed with rifles living in caves 4,000 miles away might find it difficult to take over the most heavily armed nation on Earth would be met with blank stares. "Don't you understand!?!?!? They want to impose Sharia!!!!"

    Idiots? Sure. But look around you. I'd hazard a guess that the folks who comment on THIS blog all have IQs above 120. Get out and spend some time with Joe Average. Be shocked at how vacant Joe's mind is, how bereft of fundamental knowledge of history, government, civics, science, and art Joe is. And then wonder no more at how Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh can find huge audiences.

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  58. DN Nation3:08 PM

    The wingnuts freaked out over Biden grinning throughout his massive Ryan ass-kicking, but that night was the beginning of the end for Ryan's political relevance. But yeah, wingnuts, keep trying to convince yourselves that Biden's jovial mood was somehow a GAFFE!!!!.

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  59. Mickey_Zellberg3:10 PM

    Ezra "Ezra" Klein makes my skin crawl so I clicked on that link hoping he'd come in for some good abuse, only to discover that my other options are...Ross DOubthat and Reiham Salaam. One flavor of twerp or another. To blazes with all of them.

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  60. Derelict3:11 PM

    Also missing from the Japan-Germany part of that analogy is the fact that we actively recruited former government and military personnel to run the day-to-day operations. We heavily recruited SS officers in Germany (my father was part of that operation). We actually forced the Japanese army to occupy southeast Asia for a year after the war because the French couldn't quite get back there fast enough.

    As for Korea, one might note that we restored the existing South Korean government, and remained there to help protect that government from a foregn power. But, then one would be an elitist by having such knowledge.

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  61. Kurzleg3:14 PM

    "I'd like to see Digby or Atrios or Tbogg on the tube, asking a shocked and disdainful Dick Cheney how it came to be that they could see what a clusterfuck this was going in and he couldn't."


    Assumes facts not in evidence. Cheney would almost certainly be the disdainful asshole he's always been, but shocked? In spite of his age, he's the nimblest dissembler this side of Donald Rumsfeld, so no accusation - however accurate - will phase him. There's no lie Cheney won't tell, no reality he won't misrepresent, and no liberal he won't blame in order to deflect and re-direct blame onto others.


    In a perverted way, Cheney possesses a skill set unrivaled by his fellow politicians. In a market where shamelessness is the stock in trade, Cheney will always be the majority shareholder.

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  62. coozledad3:17 PM

    Ideas don't come any fresher than this:

    http://gawker.com/gop-hopeful-my-public-masturbation-fetish-and-felonies-1596975303

    This young man will take matters in hand. If he can't get an economy revved up, he'll beat himself trying.



    I'm sure that many will find his "stool of conservatism " passes the smell test.

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  63. BigHank533:17 PM

    That Overton Window is somewhere over in the next fucking county.

    Oddly enough, it opens onto the same landscape that it always has: the backside of Victor Davis Hanson's scrotum. It's the first thing he sees when he pulls his head out of his ass.

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  64. KatWillow3:21 PM

    They have the financial support of corporations and billionaires who find the idiot conservative way highly profitable.

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  65. Derelict3:36 PM

    I can only imagine the smile on his face when he realized what a bunch of pathetic wankers and morons were packed on board that ship, and they were shunning him!

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  66. TGuerrant3:36 PM

    Pithy.

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  67. gocart mozart3:36 PM

    I was just at Politico (shudder) and a commentator called Politico left leaning

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  68. FlipYrWhig3:36 PM

    I don't remember there being much wrong with Colmes's actual opinioneering, just that he suffers from being kind of funny-looking, funny-sounding, and charisma-deficient -- which is part of why he was hired to be Mr. Liberal on Fox.

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  69. Derelict3:38 PM

    So, you're saying he's a seedy character?

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  70. LittlePig3:40 PM

    I know (believe me, I know), but even when the WMD crap was going on, after pointing out the unlikelihood of there being any in the first place, I would ask a simple question I never got an answer to: what exactly is the evidence of Iraq's ICBM program?

    Other than the occaissional mumble-mumble-Israel, I got nothing. Then I would inqure about the 5 megatonners of proven technology sitting in Kazakhstan - why aren't you worried about those? Didn't even get an Israel out that one.

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  71. FlipYrWhig3:41 PM

    Since the cable news era, media machers fall hard for (1) Republicans who are (2) not Bible-bangers and (3) not pudgy straight white men. That's the kind of person they like to point out to assure themselves that they're not living up, or down, to the Librul Meedya stereotype.

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  72. LittlePig3:44 PM

    These folks are freaking absolutists of the first water (which is why they are slowly One True Scotsmaning themselves to perdition). I wish NPR would figure that one out. You cannot compromise with insanity.

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  73. If you're not actively calling for Obama's impeachment, the complete abolition of welfare, and the invasion of at least three foreign states, you're left-leaning.

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  74. Bigby3:47 PM

    This whole mess of wrongness is like some alternative ending version of Paths of Glory in which Colonel Dax is lead away in chains and given the "Breaker Morant treatment", General Mireau is promoted to Field Marshal and given 7 comely wenches, while General Broulard is telling Le Monde how smelly Dax was and what a good man Mireau is.

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  75. NonyNony3:49 PM

    To be fair, that doesn't necessarily make him rich. He may have enough money to pay for a 1.2 million dollar house or he may just be an idiot who lives way outside of his means.

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  76. Spaghetti Lee3:53 PM

    Lifestyles of the Rich and Fatuous.

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  77. They can fuck with history all they want, but until they put a fucking rat cage over my head, I'll stick with the evidence of my lyin' eyes.

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  78. willf3:56 PM

    National Public Relations?


    Please. They got their funding cut back in the 90s, and have been running to the right ever since, trying to chase enough business friendly dollars to stay on the air.


    Jesus, their coverage in the run up to the invasion of Iraq was nausea inducing.


    But it's the same story as with almost any other liberal institution you care to name. They have been half destroyed by the conservatives, and half by their own actions, and seem unwilling to do anything to change the status quo.


    They are unable or too scared to fight, and their leadership is more than willing to meet the conservatives halfway, laying the groundwork for further destruction.


    In the meantime, go get out your checkbook and write us a big one while you listen to this interview where Cokie Roberts talks to Frank Luntz about the problems faced by democrats going into the 2016 election.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. Planting and nurturing fear of otherness is something the right does superlatively. Look at the fucking House, fercrissakes. THAT'S ALL THEY DO - FEARMONGER. No ideas, no initiatives, not a shred of energy spent in positive solutions. Just full-on full-time full-volume fucking fearmongering. And their base laps it up like a mongrel gets after its own vomit.

    ReplyDelete
  80. And watered down it's just plain lethal. Because we all know OJ kills.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Gromet4:08 PM

    To clarify, I’m completely on board with the anti-violence stuff. If that’s all this was, I would support it. But we all know it doesn’t stop there



    Ah, the insidious slippery slope! We must oppose the Vice President's call for an end to dragging gays behind pickups and crucifying them on fence posts, for if we don't, in what hell on earth does it end?

    ReplyDelete
  82. A perfect Republican. Attains intense pleasure from manipulating something that won't go anywhere knowing the payoff will end up in his palm.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Halloween_Jack4:23 PM

    Oh I met with Maggie Gallagher a-cryin' o'er her books:"They used to give us cash," she cried, "but now just dirty looks.
    It's the most disgraceful pledge drive that NOM has had in years --
    They're stiffin' us fine Christians for the Ragging on th' Queers."


    I would spend years learning the luthier's art in order to repair The Minstrel Boy's harp just to play this tune.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Helmut Monotreme4:35 PM

    Why do conservative authoritarians keep winning elections? Because they can and do get out the vote on the off years when electoral maps get redrawn. Because they aren't shy about pandering to big money and don't hesitate to lie to the electorate and or pander to their basest prejudices. Because they aren't shy about working the refs, and rewriting electoral rules to their advantage. Because they identify wedge issues like abortion and gun rights that give them a solid core of motivated voters. Because the framers of the constitution thought it would be dandy to give states full of empty space the same two senators that California or New York gets.

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  85. Gromet4:45 PM

    Ah, McArdle, will you ever achieve self-awareness and become dangerous? That column is a trove. Great find. May I recap it?

    1) Her first sentence predicts Krugman will not win the Nobel, one year before he wins it.

    2) She praises Krugman as "one of the greatest economics writers in history" and says "enough of his critics are... economically illiterate conservatives caught in the grip of some fringe economic scheme" that Krugman can justifiably "dismiss them all as Bush-worshipping (or market-worshipping) cranks," BUT...

    3) She can't see any reason why the very "lucid" Krugman doesn't like Bush; to her, it seems a free-floating hate, prompting no further thought.

    4) In fact, she accuses Krugman of accusing Bush of being worse than Hitler (without any illustrating quotes -- who's free-floatin' now?).

    5) She complains that his NYT column is too often not about economics, and to illustrate this she lists his past 13 topics and does not appear to realize that 10 of them concern the economy.

    6) And when he writes "outside his field," such as on foreign policy, "he makes what are (I am told) elementary mistakes."



    I think I love #6 best. McArdle, admitting she doesn't know enough to attack him on a subject, attacking him on it anyway. Although I also like the part where she brags she doesn't subscribe to the NYT. I'm sure that helps her form useful opinions.

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  86. Derelict4:46 PM

    If the internet had existed 55 years ago, you can bet that people like Dreher would be on their Web sites whining about how letting Blacks vote, go to White schools, and eat at White restaurants is just crushing their religious freedom. Buckley tried that with how civil rights was crushing Southerners' traditions and freedom, but he did not have the power of the Rightwing Wurlitzer as we know it today.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Derelict4:49 PM

    I like #5. She was, after all, the Business and Economics Editor.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Derelict4:50 PM

    Blather, rinse, repeat?

    ReplyDelete
  89. sharculese4:52 PM

    "I'm not stuck on here with you, you're stuck on here with-


    actually never mind, I've thought about it I'm stuck on here with you. My entire legacy is basically dogshit, isn't it?"

    ReplyDelete
  90. sharculese4:55 PM

    GI Jackoff

    ReplyDelete
  91. sharculese4:59 PM

    The best part about that is that it's a lie. Dreher's position on the gays is best described as shoot first and ask questions never.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Not only has Fred Hiatt filled his staph with Team Chickenhawk members (adding Michael "Pastor Sanctimonious" Gerson and Marc "TORTURE IS COOL" Thiessen from the Bush-Cheney junta), he feels the need to constantly bring in guest war criminals like Elliot Abrams and Michael Mukasey.

    And that's why I call it:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_RB2EBocHk_I/TUWvW52BcRI/AAAAAAAACjk/QujRc-g74vI/s400/The%2BWashington%2BPost%2Blogo%2Bpaint%2B2.jpeg
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  93. BigHank535:14 PM

    "Bartender? Here's $200. Bring me a double whiskey every ten minutes until you see me fall off my stool. Then start bringing them every five minutes."

    ReplyDelete
  94. AlanInSF5:20 PM

    Curse you liberals, taking away our freedom to take away other people's freedom.

    ReplyDelete
  95. smut clyde5:26 PM

    the insidious slippery slope!Insidious slippery slopes are the worst kind, where you don't initially notice how slopey they are, or how slippery. It's like the proverbial head of the camel in the tent, easily overlooked, until the rest of her sneaks in, her slopes all slippery and lubricated, and

    I'm sorry, what was I saying?

    ReplyDelete
  96. Gromet5:27 PM

    I sometimes wonder how the average person is not more aware of reality as artificial. It seems obvious that when someone is on TV there is a set, a costume, and makeup, that some vocabulary is okay and some not, that every news reporter adopts the same nasal tone and measured pace. Do people really think reporters were all born with that demeanor?


    Most people commenting here probably noticed how the word "gravitas" came into being in American politics in 2000 when Bush nominated Cheney for his "gravitas." Before 2000 it was not a word anyone said; then reporters picked it up and ran with it, and it was everywhere (decreasingly, but still) for the next 8 years -- it became a meme, in the original (not internet) sense. It was entirely artificial and lifeless, but once created, it became part of reality, such that millions of voters actually started to ask of a candidate "but does he have the gravitas" rather than asking would his policies be any fucking good. "Gravitas" became our reality. It made us a little dumber. And it happens all the time -- even "freedom" and "liberty" became memes on, lessee, 9/12. What does "liberty" even mean now? It's a big, complex concept, but today people especially on the right will drop that word like it alone means something very clear. It doesn't. It was hammered out to sell a war against people who "hate our liberty" because that's a hell of a lot easier than saying "We should invade Afghanistan to prevent future attacks that are going to occur in response to how we conduct our national interests in Israel and the Saudi Arabia." Yes, much easier.


    But the long-term consequence is all these teahadists running around now on fire about their "liberty" -- the word has no real meaning, but it sure as hell signifies something. There's a huge crowd of people who probably also couldn't tell you what it means, but it functions as a secret handshake. Person A says he's for "liberty" and Person B knows "he's one of us!" -- safe to assume you both hate Obama's "government takeover" of health care, etc. It's a nice short cut but it cuts out all the thought, and I don't understand how people think that's good.


    It's political language devised to construct reality, as are the very formats of the Sunday morning shows, and all this constructed reality ends up doing real damage in a way that should be obvious to anyone who had to read "How to Shoot an Elephant" in high school, or to anyone who ever watched any movie, for pete's sake. But for some reason, it just is not obvious.


    I mean Gretchen Carlson is an Oxford scholar and classical violinist who spent years pretending to be a nitwit opposed to elite culture in order to conform to established memes about who a good American is. That is super fucked up.

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  97. smut clyde5:33 PM

    I guess if you wanted to leave a permanent occupying garrison, it was a bit of a mistake to include "Restoring Democracy! Freedom! Self-determination" as a prime excuse for the invasion.

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  98. That's a rind-about way of saying it.

    ReplyDelete
  99. smut clyde5:45 PM

    According to the Kagan clan, the fact that the Sicilian Expedition was such a devastating defeat for Athenian power was not the fault of the war-mongers; the ones to blame were the pro-peace side who tried to talk the Athenians out of imperial over-reach.
    (I am not making this up).

    ReplyDelete
  100. If I can guess their ideas do I get a prize?


    Tax Cuts!
    No regulations on big corporations!

    Big Guns!
    No Homos.
    More Jesus.
    Drill Baby Drill!
    Markets.

    ReplyDelete
  101. smut clyde5:50 PM

    It's a lemon-tree, my dear Watson.

    ReplyDelete
  102. smut clyde5:57 PM

    being stupid is a badge of honor for far more people than I would preferBack before the Interlattice, I was living in the UK for a while, where I realised that people on the Tube were reading holding copies of Murdoch tabloids for precisely that reason -- to display and maintain their ignorance simultaneously.

    ReplyDelete
  103. Just trying to add some zest to this conversation.

    ReplyDelete
  104. That's the great thing about being a pseudo-intellectual: he's not quite smart enough to know when he's bullshitting.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person6:29 PM

    Friday Around The Bend...

    "The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma’s 3rd District will be contested by the Candidate, Timothy Ray Murray," Murray wrote in a press release posted on his campaign website. "I will be stating that his votes are switched with Rep. Lucas votes, because it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike."


    I won't say this indicates Peak Crazy, for obvious reasons, but...dang.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Mooser6:31 PM

    Ask Dan'l if he'll loan you his golden one.

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  107. Mooser6:35 PM

    Don't forget, there are children growing up who have never known anything except post-Reagen America.

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  108. Derelict6:44 PM

    One quibble: Bush did not nominate Cheney. Cheney was tapped to head up the VP search committee for the Bush campaign. After thoroughly ignoring all other possibilities, Cheney concluded he was the only man for the job. It should have been America's first clue as to how incurious George was when Bush said, "Yeah. Gud thinnin', Dick!" and picked Cheney.

    Otherwise, pretty spot on. America does worship dumb. You can go back to 1950s Sci-Fi movies and see how the eggheads, intellects, and scientists are always being saved/undone/unmasked by the strong but not-too-educated hero.

    And I find the Carlson thing quite disturbing--especially when you look at someone like Cokie Roberts who's a post turtle* if ever there was one.

    *You see a turtle on a fence post and you know it doesn't belong there, you know it didn't get there by itself, and there's really not much it can to except flail its legs and head.

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  109. Derelict6:45 PM

    I always thought NPR stood for Nice Polite Republicans.

    ReplyDelete
  110. coozledad6:48 PM

    You're Thad Cochran?

    ReplyDelete
  111. Derelict6:51 PM

    The Kagans would be the ones in the bunker with Hitler in March of '45 telling him "Mein Fuhrer! If we can just raise two or three more divisions of school children, we can beat these Russians and Americans!"

    And after the fall of Berlin, they would have been the ones screeching that it was all the fault of those pre-schoolers that Germany didn't prevail. If the kindergartners hadn't have been such babies, the Third Reich would have been victorious!

    ReplyDelete
  112. Derelict6:56 PM

    Five more years and the entire Republican party will be a Python skit.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Kordo6:59 PM

    I think symbol-manipulation plays a big part, too. You teach a child about symbols (A is for Apple) to help them start learning about the world, but later on most intelligent people learn to separate Symbol from Object. AFAICT, Authoritarian media strategy relies heavily on confusing the two. Makes sense from their veiwpoint: symbols can be manipulated, whereas Reality has a pesky way of imposing itself regardless of your business plan.

    "The governing principle, as we wish you now to understand it, is whatever the individual believes most directly affects his/her survival"

    -Frank Herbert

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  114. coozledad7:03 PM

    Says my old one to your old one
    'how might we fund a lawsuit
    to stop the fags a marryin'?'
    "We'll hock the old man's wetsuit!"


    what'll you have?!
    I'll have a pint
    I'll have a pint of bitters
    But i'll have to whizz outside
    cause the lesbians own the shitters!

    ReplyDelete
  115. ohsopolite7:22 PM

    I regret that I have only one upvote to give for the DKs.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Smurch7:24 PM

    Re: Cheney's search for Bush II's VP: I recall very clearly the laughter of Diane Rehm's guests when they discussed Cheney's pick... I mean, Bush II's pick for VP. They called it a classic DC scenario: Cheney said, "I looked, and I looked, and when I stopped looking, there I was!" And Diane's panel of insiders laughed and laughed and laughed.....


    I bring this up because Cokie's husband Steve Roberts used to be a regular commentator on the Diane Rehm show. I don't recall if he was on the panel that day, but that's not really important. What's important is that from that day forward I realized that for the major Establishment Media, it was far more important to appear sophisticated and "in the know" and an "important" part of the Establishment than it was to report honestly on Washington corruption.

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  117. Susan of Texas7:29 PM

    They stand athwart history telling it to slow...down....

    ReplyDelete
  118. smut clyde8:17 PM

    My understanding of the Sicilian adventure is this: Alcibiades and his mates were saying "We're an empire now! We make our own reality! It'll be a cake-walk, the Syracusans will welcome us with flowers and open arms!" Nicias was the voice of reason, all Shinseki, pointing out that invading Sicily was a daft notion because it would require all the troops & triremes Athens could muster. To which the voters responded "ATHENS, FUCK YEAH!", and committed all their troops and triremes. Very few of which came back. Nicias died in Sicily; Alcibiades jumped sides and became a strategist for the Spartans.

    So in Doug Kagan's account, Nicias - by counselling for peace and realsim -- was responsible for the whole debacle

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  119. JennOfArk8:19 PM

    "We have both kinds of pundits - dumb and dumber!!!"

    ReplyDelete
  120. Gromet8:29 PM

    On that note, she also says it's impossible to write an econ column twice a week, because there just isn't that much to write about in econ. You'd think she'd then cut Krugman some slack for not writing about econ twice a week... or might reflect on the limits of her own imagination that she can't think of two things worth saying each week in her own chosen field. But neither possibility bubbles up into awareness. It's kind of amazing.

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  121. JennOfArk8:32 PM

    I have this saying I came up with: there's way too much stupid in the world for it to all be the result of stupid people.


    Meaning of course that everyone does some stupid shit. It's just that for smart people, it's not a lifestyle.

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  122. coozledad8:45 PM

    It's amazing the various glosses a bunch of hucksters can put on classical texts. They're just like the Bible that way.


    Enoch Powell got his start reading them, and wound up with the "keep England white" set. Are they a predictor of future fascist inclinations? An archaic version of the Hitler channel?

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  123. JennOfArk8:50 PM

    Sobering reality: half of all people are below average intelligence.

    ReplyDelete
  124. JennOfArk8:54 PM

    I thought you were gonna say the view out the window revealed a Messican making off with a chain saw.

    ReplyDelete
  125. JennOfArk9:01 PM

    OT, but thought you all should know: others are hopping on the dildo/gun bandwagon.

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  126. coozledad9:20 PM

    it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike

    But his bass playing has improved dramatically.

    ReplyDelete
  127. TGuerrant9:27 PM

    It's more than a bandwagon. It's a Movement.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Derelict9:28 PM

    I think they get caught up in the "manly men leading with leadership and willing their will to be done!"

    ReplyDelete
  129. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person10:05 PM

    Camelnose, cameltoes, what's the difference...

    ReplyDelete
  130. Is there any event that doesn't cause these soggy pants to start singing the I'm the Real Victim Blues? Wanna stop anti-GLB violence? Waaah! That's discrimination against Christians!! Wanna stop violence against women? Waaah! That's discrimination against men!! Wanna stop suicide? Waaah! That's discrimination against ... um ... People who like the idea of people killing themselves!!

    ReplyDelete
  131. Spaghetti Lee10:15 PM

    If by children you mean anyone under 30 or so, then yeah.

    ReplyDelete
  132. Tehanu10:15 PM

    C.S. Lewis (yes, I know the rightwingers think he was all theirs) repeatedly argued that one of the very worst sins was the desire to be in the inner circle, which almost always ended up being even more corrupting than the love of money or power.

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  133. Actually I think from Mccardle's point of view she didn't have the right parents. She's always acted like the outsider kid with her nose pressed up against the glass window, desperately attempting to attract the favorable attention of the other girls who have the better clothes, the better educations, the better everything. McCardle comes from a certain kind of connection and money but its basically one or two government contracts and corrupt under the table "gifts" and, in her case, a prolonged period of unemployment to disaster. Or at any rate social death, which to her is the same thing.

    ReplyDelete
  134. redoubtagain11:46 PM

    "Gravitas" became our reality. It made us a little dumber.


    When you hire someone like Dick Cheney for his "gravitas", know that graves are sure to follow.

    ReplyDelete
  135. redoubtagain12:11 AM

    Years? Minutes.

    ReplyDelete
  136. Pope Zebbidie XIII12:26 AM

    Pandering to the resentment of the moderately well off has been a winning strategy for 40 years. And not just in America.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Pope Zebbidie XIII12:34 AM

    I remember when the first big batch of Wikileaks cables came out, that were a lot of establishment journalists angrily dismissing them because "we all knew that was happening!" Yet they never saw fit to mention it to their audience.


    So you're right - as long as they have the inside story, it doesn't matter that the public doesn't.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Pope Zebbidie XIII12:35 AM

    But what if Tbogg brought along a big bag of salted dicks?

    ReplyDelete
  139. Pope Zebbidie XIII12:38 AM

    If corporate tax rates are cut to zero, they'll no longer need to suborn the political process. And if you cut out all the other taxes, they'll stop trying to guzzle at the public trough. At long last we'll be free.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Pope Zebbidie XIII12:41 AM

    The perils of the class system: we end up being ruled by the mediocre children of the previous set.

    ReplyDelete
  141. M. Krebs12:53 AM

    I think you mean median. But your point stands.

    ReplyDelete
  142. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:53 AM

    all most people really want out of their government at any level is to
    know that it's taking care of business. It's paving the roads, fixing
    the sewers



    Yeah, about those streets, bridges,. and water mains...
    People *do* want those things, and the Ds are misplaying a good hand there. If they pointed out our deteriorating infrastructure, and the good that massive maintenance programs would do for just about everyone, half as much as Atrios does, we might see some improvement.

    ReplyDelete
  143. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:54 AM

    It's all in your (political) local vertical...

    ReplyDelete
  144. BadExampleMan1:04 AM

    As I watched the towers burn live on tv, I was terrified. But what terrified me was Bush was President.


    From December of 2000 up until that point I was thinking of the country like a clapped-out 80s-era Chevrolet. The brakes are shot, the tires are bald, one of the cylinders is blown and the others are complaining, there's that dangerous creaky-scrapy noise coming from one of the front wheels...but you only need it to get to work and town and as long as you're careful and don't run it too hard you hope it'll last another couple of months until you can afford something better, and then BAM! the fucker throws a rod right through the block and just like that, you're toast.


    Clinton handed off a country that was in pretty decent shape, all considered - ignoring that whole election-theft-corruption-at-the-highest-levels-of-the-judiciary thing - and I had hopes that we could just kind of coast through 4 years and as long as nothing really bad or unexpected happened, we could quick turn over the reins to someone who could clean up the mess.

    ReplyDelete
  145. BadExampleMan1:08 AM

    He says his stool has three legs. I'm remembering my Play-Doh Fun Factory and trying to imagine which mold his butthole must most resemble.

    ReplyDelete
  146. BadExampleMan1:09 AM

    If they were kitten dicks Cheney would gobble them and sneer as the blood dripped down his chin.

    ReplyDelete
  147. DocAmazing1:30 AM

    I don't know how to rectify the man's face.

    What, it isn't rectal enough?

    ReplyDelete
  148. DocAmazing1:52 AM

    It's also breathtakingly hypocritical. "Error has no rights" was, of course, one of the mottos of the Inquisistion. The religious fanatics are trying to tar secularists as a new form of religious fanatic.

    This dovetails with the bullshit "tyranny of the weak" claims that Libetarians love to vomit forth.

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  149. montag21:58 AM

    The mere mention of Buckley and ships brings to mind the all-too-evident sophistry he tried to employ during an early `70s interview for Playboy. The interviewer asked him about his stance on marijuana. He said he wasn't for its legalization, but then said that he'd tried it and it didn't do anything for him. He much preferred a good Scotch. The interviewer pressed on, saying, IIRC, something like, "you willingly broke the law to assess it?" (The tone of that question was probably in response to his earlier foghorning on law `n order.)

    Which is when Buckley put his foot in the bucket, whirled flailing over the railing and into the sea: "Oh, no, I didn't break the law. I went out in my sailboat past the three-mile limit and smoked it."

    There was no follow-up, and I suspect the interviewer simply left it there for posterity's casual inspection, i.e., this is the extent to which the Great Man will go to deny his own actions, because unless he had a joint helicoptered in from a neutral country in which its sale was legal, well, Buckley had committed a felony by possession alone.

    A small, but important, lesson in the workings of the conservative mind: Nixon wasn't the only one who thought he was above the law.

    ReplyDelete
  150. montag22:06 AM

    Oh, I think simulated drowning will do just fine. Rats are a bit time-consuming to catch, and we're in a hurry, here.

    ReplyDelete
  151. Just wait until we break out the comfy chairs!

    ReplyDelete
  152. DocAmazing2:39 AM

    That was a pip.

    ReplyDelete
  153. montag23:29 AM

    MeMeMeMeMeMeMeMegan has, inexplicably, learned only the tools necessary to fail upwards. Most conservative thinking, reduced to its essence, is troglodytic. Most of it induces a mental image of a tobacco-chewing redneck in a wife-beater and a seed cap with a severe neurological handicap.

    McArdle manages to be, first, so bland that artificial vanilla is screaming, "I won! I won!" Second, she's mastered the art of seeming not to be invested in her own writing; it's an artificial distancing that superficially appears to be objectivity. Third, she's not egregiously bad in the grammar and syntax departments--not stylish, mind you--but, she has enough facility with language to deceive the casual reader into believing there is an active mind behind the page, even though nothing could be further from the truth. Finally, because she has no ideas of her own, she associates with other ideas or facts, without actually using them or explicating them, because more often than not, using them would destroy her arguments.

    In other words, she knows just enough to appear intelligent and informed without having to expend any mental effort. If she's propped up her ideology, no matter the contortions required, her job is done and she can go back to the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. When she is inevitably drawn up short by the people who do read her more carefully than she deserves, her response is the literary equivalent of a shrug and a hand-stitched sampler reading, "O Ye Of Little Faith."

    One of the striking features of the current crop of neo-conservative pundits is that they have consciously, studiously, sought to adopt a tone and demeanor of long-suffering reasonableness, great patience and immense mental effort in arriving at their conclusions, but it's all a mask--their ideas are even more bloodthirsty, vicious and predatory than those of the leaping screamers they've replaced. (One of the great horrors of the modern age is the smiling, avuncular visage of Bloody Bill Kristol on television, advocating in modulated tones death and destruction and chaos as if it were a better toothpaste.) My own sense is that this flattened affect was one of the first lessons taught to the crazies by Paul Weyrich.

    McArdle gets that--you can't pitch people crazy, self-destructive policies by sounding crazy. You do it by sounding reasonable. Her job is to sell an ideology that benefits the 1%, and she gives the superficial appearance of being competent at it, which is why she will probably always have work. Actually reading and thinking about what she writes is all the proof necessary, however, to realize that it's a sales pitch for a busted watch.

    ReplyDelete
  154. montag23:39 AM

    He really does mean Ignatius, I think. Look at the company in which he puts the guy. That Ignatius is the CIA's go-to journalist in Washington doesn't figure into the calculation.

    ReplyDelete
  155. montag23:41 AM

    Bonus points for: Fuck the Poor!

    ReplyDelete
  156. montag23:53 AM

    Ignatius' thinking on the matter is an inch wide and a millimeter deep.

    If only because we have fucking troops everywhere, and that hasn't exactly endeared us to the world. There's a large class of people in Washington who think neo-colonialism is a good thing, even though they would never say so out loud. Ignatius is a member in good standing of that class.

    ReplyDelete
  157. Geo X3:59 AM

    To clarify, I’m completely on board with the anti-violence stuff. If that’s all this was, I would support it. But we all know it doesn’t stop there, because what Biden defines as “prejudice” is what many, many of us believe is truth.

    Hmm...what are the words I'm looking for here? Okay, how about this: no, fuck you. You cannot say, oh, we support legal discrimination against people, we support the notion that they're damaged/diseased/not fully human, but physical violence, oh ho, that's where we draw the line. The violence is part and parcel of your rhetorical stance. You can't pick and choose, and you're a contemptible coward who, along with his many, many other faults, doesn't even have the courage of his tiny, evil-minded convictions. Fucking own it, you fucking fuck.


    I think I may have noted this before, but It really always amazes me the way these people don't actually believe the whole "Bahble sez fags bad" business in any principled way (well, okay, it doesn't "amaze" me; I understand it perfectly well. But the intellectual cowardice and dishonesty is still something to see). If they did, they wouldn't be pussyfooting around like this; they would actually be advocating fire-and-brimstone stuff, as opposed to just being passive aggressive dicks about it, by opposing gay rights about which the Bible does not say word one. Of course, it's at least in part because they want to continue to be taken seriously by society; they don't want to look like westboro baptist types, but it really shows up how totally flimsy and situational their "ethics" are. I guess to give them the very benefit of the doubt, we could maybe say that some of them would in fact be genuinely horrified if their "logic" was taken to its logical conclusions, and thus they fall back on this. But gosh--either way, they're following a "religion" that they've just made up out of whole cloth, and the fact that they think that they're cool with following this made-up faith that consists of nothing but petty dickishness--not even the grandeur of Old-Testament sturm und drang!--that they think that in this, of all places, they're finding some sort of transcendence or numinousness ("what many, many of us believe is truth," as Rod, in his self-satisfied, religiose way)--is just mind-bogging.

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  158. montag24:03 AM

    Well, it worked in the first gulf war. How many times did Bush the Elder natter on about restoring democracy to Kuwait (a monarchy with a toothless senate)?

    Paraphrasing Capt. Willard: the bullshit piles up in the U.S. so fast, you need wings to stay above it.

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  159. montag24:11 AM

    I guess we'll find out in November if he's a floater or a sinker.

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  160. montag24:22 AM

    Is there any evidence to support the claim that Hanson has ever pulled his head out of his ass? Inquiring minds and all that.

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  161. smut clyde4:42 AM

    the desire to be in the inner circle
    Cocytus is certainly closer to the guy in charge but overall it does not appeal.

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  162. montag24:55 AM

    The story is that the crazies in the camps got the idea to attack the Brooklyn Bridge from watching "Godzilla," according to Abu Zubaydah.

    So, what were this guy's campaign staff watching recently? "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," or "The Stepford Wives?"

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  163. davdoodles5:36 AM

    Suuuure, Dreher is "on-board with the anti-violence
    stuff"
    (yeah, I can
    really imagine him intervening to stop a gay-bashing).

    But any
    opprobrium against his millennia-old god-given right to engage in
    nation-wide, institutionalized anything-short-of-violence bigotry
    against the filthy ass-fuckers, or "truth" as he prefers to describe it,
    has him rushing to defend the very religion he claims
    justifies his grotesque fetishes
    from any suggestion that it
    is displaying "vestiges of barbarism".

    What a guy. No balls, no fucking morals, and proud-as-shit about it.
    .

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  164. Christopher Hazell6:12 AM

    The phrase "error has no rights" and the ideas that accompany it make me mad for two reasons:


    1. I find the hyperbole offensive. Error most definitely has rights. Even the kind of overtly racist asshole everybody modern hates, like Donald Sterling, is more secure rights in 2014 than a black man or a woman was in this same country 1914. Or even 1954. We've seen what it looks like when people in this country have no rights, and Rod Dreher is not one of those people, nor do I see any desire to make him one of those people. I see no evidence that Christians will be lynched in the streets by pro-gay mobs in any foreseeable future.


    2. I'm not entirely unsympathetic. Social pressure, and particularly economic pressure, is not nothing. It can be very unpleasant and disruptive.


    If you think that, say, employees should have more protection from being let go due to boycotts over their political beliefs, I am totally willing to hear that argument.


    What I'm not willing to hear is a person who argues that any such social pressure is the first step down an evil slippery slope, while at the same time arguing that those exact same social pressures should be freely applied to gay people.


    You shouldn't invoke a slippery slope if you're going to enthusiastically push us down it.

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  165. Derelict6:17 AM

    You might think so, but Democrats have even managed to fuck this whole thing up. First, by buying into the whole "ZOMG! Never raise taxes! Ever!" bit, they have lost the ability to raise revenue for these projects. Second, they discovered 20 years ago that you could punt these projects decades down the road and taxpayers won't hold you to account.

    But the third and biggest factor is the sudden attraction to bringing in the outside experts for absolutely everything. Road projects that used to just be "Close off some lanes at night and repave" now require two or three consulting reports, then a round of consultants to analyze the reports, then the results need to be forwarded to the stakeholders before being kicked back for more reports.

    Our local example of this was a highway welcome center. It's a tiny little thing with restrooms and an information counter. It took 12 years, ended up being located so that people traveling through the town can't get to it, and cost $7 million. The best part? It was built by contractors from so far out of town that none of the locals got jobs. And this in a state were Republicans are as rare as chickens with gingivitis.

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  166. Derelict6:56 AM

    I think you might be giving McCurdle much more credit than is due. She write this stuff because she actually believes this stuff. And like all articles of faith, they only seem to work if you don't spend any time thinking about them.

    So of course tax cuts for the wealthy always produce more jobs! Always! When pressed on the fact that we now have 50-odd years of experience with giving the wealthy tax cuts and it has NEVER produced jobs, she jams her fingers in her ears and la-la-la's off to the next subject.

    She is, indeed, perfect for her position. And utterly incurious true believer, incapable of recognizing evidence right before her very own eyes--indeed, capable of writing sentences that not only refute themselves but negate the entire argument she has constructed, and not even vaguely recognizing that she has done so.

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  167. Derelict7:01 AM

    I wish these spalpeens would aspire to medicocre. Name one that has risen to even the level of "dangerously incompetent." For the most part, they are exactly what you might expect: People who inherited their positions, have clear idea what that position actually entails, and thus are reduced to aping their forebears without understanding anything at all.

    Just ask Luke Russert. Or Bloody Bill Kristol. Or Liz Cheney.

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  168. Derelict7:04 AM

    He's a regular dinner guest at the Suderman's. I wonder how much Himalayan salt he's had to pour over McMegan's culinary catastrophes to make them approximate food?

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  169. Derelict7:08 AM

    Hmmmmmmm........

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  170. Derelict7:10 AM

    Oh, I'm sure that once he's in a position on a gay, he shoots first.

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  171. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Athens wasn't ever quite the same after that debacle.

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  172. Derelict7:22 AM

    If they did, they wouldn't be pussyfooting around like this; they would actually be advocating fire-and-brimstone stuff

    Like Westboro Baptist Church? Yeah, they'll sling the fire and brimstone. And they'll preach about the fags going to hell.

    But here's the thing: Near as I can tell, most of those who are anti-gay have a deep-seated fear that they, themselves are gay. Many of them actually are, and find the prospect so terrifying that they lash out in the opposite direction. More of them actually are gay, and indulge in all this anti-gay crap as a cover for their own night-prowls.

    So what scares them about homosexuals and lesbians being accepted as just like other people is that they'll have no more excuse to hide from themselves. To hide from the monster in their own closet--the monster they've come to rely on for their own identity. Just ask Lindsey Graham.

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  173. montag27:30 AM

    I think you might be giving McCurdle much more credit than is due. She
    write this stuff because she actually believes this stuff. And like all
    articles of faith, they only seem to work if you don't spend any time
    thinking about them.



    Well, yes, that's true. I hoped I was addressing a more prevalent tendency of which McArdle is a representative example, that of conservative pundits today adopting all the literary trappings and mannerisms of the public intellectual without doing any genuine thinking. Try as he might, Dreher, for example, cannot rise above his laundry list of small-minded complaints. He doesn't think. He whines. If he did think, he'd understand that he's simply using the grand cloak of his religion to reinforce his prejudices. In thinking, he would be forced to acknowledge that his embrace of a religion means he chooses its prescriptions and proscriptions for himself, and that has no bearing on the rest of society, nor should it. But, then, he'd have nothing to write about.


    McArdle is like many of today's published conservatives. A spiffy exterior polish, provided mostly by the right credentials, but there's sawdust in the gearbox.

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  174. I'm guessing they thought that proportional representation in the House would balance that. They didn't anticipate that one day a major political party would become a non-stop bullshit generator with the single aim of cutting the heart out of its own federal government. It's Civil War 2.0.

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  175. I wonder if they let him use the company limousine.

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  176. Upvote for good history plus "foghorning."

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  177. I think--I know--that the gold standard for "dangerously incompetent legacy hire aspiring to mediocrity" is George W. Bush. All the others are merely vying for second place.

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  178. Geo X8:01 AM

    Meh. I've never particularly bought the "they must be gay/fear they may be gay themselves!" argument. Sure, a few are, but I don't see any real evidence that it's particularly widespread, and there is absolutely NO requirement that you secretly fear that you ARE something for you to hate and loathe it. See: racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, et al.

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  179. God doesn't play dice with the universe, He openly fucks with it.

    ReplyDelete
  180. Actually, he looks like a dentist.

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  181. montag28:10 AM

    Au contraire, mon ami. When they achieve zero taxation, they will then lobby for increased subsidies to further improve their profitability. In all seriousness, their aim is for the U.S. Treasury to be their personal piggy bank and the tax code, their hammer.

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  182. anonymouse8:11 AM

    "It's not big government for the sake of big government, or taxation for the sake of taxation"


    Dear Sir/Madam,


    It would appear that I have subscribed to your newsletter in error and I write to request that you cancel said subscription and return the balance of my account forthwith.



    When I subscribed to Leftist Thought Weekly, I was assured that I would be receiving a weekly publication dedicated to big government and taxation as ends in and of themselves. Imagine my surprise, and outrage, to read your comments herein! Further, I have not seen a single column by Alan Colmes, Matt Damon or any other prominent Leftists, despite being promised a monthly column. Good day to you.

    ReplyDelete
  183. montag28:49 AM

    By all the evidence, Bush wasn't even aspiring to mediocrity. I'm pretty sure that, from an early age, he understood that mediocrity was well beyond both his grasp and his talents.

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  184. Long, boring discussions about What is Intelligence? aside, that's fine until you get to below average Emotional Intelligence, because that's where the vain, mean assholes with poor impulse control hang out.

    When George Q. Voter votes for someone who promises to screw him over, he doesn't do it because he isn't smart enough to figure out what Politician X is saying. He does it because Politician X has said a bunch of mean stuff about people Mr. Voter doesn't like. The act of voting becomes a way to harm Them.

    Similarly, Politician X keeps coming up with new and inventive ways to be mean about Those People, even when it harms his chances of getting elected because he wants the instant gratification of the attention and adulation he gets from his equally immature supporters.

    See also Pissing off the liberals.

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  185. montag28:58 AM

    Looney Louie from yesterday:

    http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/gohmert-obama-luring-scabies-infected

    Looks like Louie's been dipping into the Owlsley purple while reading Infectious Diseases again.

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  186. JennOfArk8:58 AM

    No, I meant what I said. The IQ distribution is Gaussian.

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  187. tigrismus9:20 AM

    (yeah, I can really imagine him intervening to stop a gay-bashing).

    "Stop, this is horrible! Look, those little pebbles don't do anything, use these big brick pieces. And put some oomph in it. Here, I'll show you..."

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  188. mommadillo9:40 AM

    it's clear that the GOP is becoming the party of ideas again



    The problem isn't so much a lack of ideas as the quality of those ideas. "Party of ideas" doesn't mean much when your ideas are all . . . how should I put this? Oh, yeah - derp.

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  189. montag210:02 AM

    In other words, the Custer Syndrome.

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  190. mgmonklewis10:02 AM

    They must not have thought that radical differences in population between states would occur, or that even if they did it wouldn't be a problem. Plus, I don't imagine most of them conceived of radical population shifts over time. I mean, when California entered the union, it had about the same population as Kansas or Iowa. In fact, it might have had slightly fewer people than either of them. However, that didn't hold forever, obviously.

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  191. montag210:07 AM

    Fuck me. Hasn't he heard that old adage, you're known by the company you keep?

    It's not exactly bragging that you're hunting buddies with Dick Cheney, but, c'mon, Matt, show at least a little self-respect.

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  192. dstatton10:11 AM

    I do remember that interview and that incident, but I didn't make the connection about possession. I read Playboy for the articles, as I'm sure you did, too.

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  193. mgmonklewis10:19 AM

    If only we could bring McArdle and L'il Luke Russert together. It would be love at first sneer.

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  194. mgmonklewis10:20 AM

    From what I've read, he really wanted to be baseball commissioner. In retrospect, I really wish he'd gotten that instead too.

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  195. M. Krebs10:22 AM

    Some men are born mediocre; others have mediocrity thrust upon them.

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  196. mgmonklewis10:23 AM

    My corollary: Everybody you went to school with is working somewhere now. (Well, maybe not in this economy, but you know what I mean.) When you think about that, it's almost a miracle that society functions at all.

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  197. mgmonklewis10:30 AM

    A.k.a. the Cluster(fk) Syndrome.

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  198. M. Krebs10:32 AM

    "Gee, maybe because those first three had actual governments that had worked for some time before officially surrendering to end an actual declared war ..."


    FIFY

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  199. montag211:22 AM

    Now, there's a match made in the bowels of the corporate boardroom....

    ReplyDelete