Monday, June 29, 2015

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

At the seething cauldron of post-gay-marriage panic that is Power Line, Paul Mirengoff has a theory, important enough to be expounded in not one but two posts. How could a court with all these Reagan-Bush appointees so disappoint Mirengoff as this one did? For one thing,
It’s commonly acknowledged that the trajectory for young men is to move to the right as they begin to assume the responsibilities of adulthood, including paying mortgages and helping to support and raise children.
But Supreme Court Justices are almost always past age 50 when they are appointed. By then, the children are, or soon will be, raised; the mortgage has, or soon will be, paid off; and the Justices are looking forward to grandchildren.
These developments shouldn’t drive anyone to the left, but I believe the aging process itself often does. Why? Because conservatism, especially conservative judging, is predicated on the absence of a certain kind of sentimentality (I say “certain kind” because there is a sense in which the main strand of conservatism is quite sentimental). It is predicated on not letting “feelings” dominate the decision-making process...
Let me see if I'm getting this: Men get more rightwing as they age, except for some of them, who grow childish-foolish and want to be nice like the Bird Lady in Mary Poppins. But why would lawyers, of all people, be the ones to go "sentimental"? Anyway:
The same-sex marriage opinions illustrate the point. Justice Kennedy’s opinion overflows with sentiment. It is sappy. (Kennedy’s sentiments, by the way, are in line with those of Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, the classic example of a conservative who moved leftward in his advanced years).
Yeah, Goldwater's gay rights stand wasn't a natural outgrowth of his libertarianism, it was just senile dementia... Hey, wait a minute, Goldwater was never a lawyer. Why didn't he get more conservative?
...The Obamacare cases also were arguably influenced by age. Forget about what Justice Scalia calls the the Chief Justice’s “sommersaults of statutory interpretation.” In my view, Roberts’ opinions are really about caution. In the first case (on the individual mandate), he was at pains not to overrule the legislature. In the second (on subsidies), he was desperate not to upset the health insurance market.
Caution is an attribute associated with advanced age.
So judges and Barry Goldwater, but not other people, get liberal as they get older, but some also get cautious... This isn't really hanging together, so for his follow-up post Mirengoff hauls in some guy  to spell it out: These judges who don't vote his way are just "soft," Some Guy says, partly because they "have essentially made it in life," but mainly because the evil spirit of liberalism steals upon them and drains their essence:
For virtually all my lifetime, liberalism has ruled the culture (including and importantly academia), and being a conservative just takes a lot of energy. For example, it is not only anti-male and anti-white bias that accounts for the fact that so many leftist airheads get jobs as professors; it’s that when you’re on board with the received liberal wisdom, you swim with the tide rather than against it. 
Swimming against it produces harder thinking (which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them), but it also requires a lot of energy. Sooner of later, for most people, it starts to run out.
So liberalism challenges conservatives, thereby making them mentally stronger, but also physically weaker, which is how the Court's conservatives lost the secret Feats of Strength that actually decide their cases. (Ginsburg's thin but she's wiry!)

I guess Mirengoff's beginning to despair that he'll ever get on the High Court and has decided to grace his readers with his Scalia-grade bullshit. Or has the conservative breakdown reached the stage where they're just trying to confuse people?

336 comments:

  1. Or has the conservative breakdown reached the stage where they're just trying to confuse people?

    Since they reached a point where they determined that logic has a severe liberal bias, Conservatives cannot possibly put together coherent intelligible arguments and expect their followers to, um, follow them. So now it's just drop a bunch of "arguments" into a food processor, spell-check it, and hit "PUBLISH."

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  2. Swimming against it produces harder thinking



    though not better writing

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  3. carolannie2:02 PM

    We also note that he uses the dog whistle "liberal airheads" to signify woman things. Plus research tends to show that white men get more conservative as retirement approaches and then passes...

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  4. carolannie2:03 PM

    applesauce

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  5. RogerAiles2:04 PM

    Alinskyheimers.

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  6. carolannie2:04 PM

    You have to think really hard to come up with specious arguments full of persiflage a la William Buckley

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  7. carolannie2:05 PM

    "Thinking is hard," said conservative Barbie

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  8. Gromet2:10 PM

    This is fun! Roberts is 60, which means he's old enough to be cautious -- and we know caution is against the very definition of conservatism...

    But his kids aren't even 10 yet, so he should lack all emotion -- and therefore be the paragon of quality justice for American families...

    Huh... carry the two... subtract common sense... add fantasy...

    Truly, it takes a brilliant mind of geniusity to contain the elaborate equation explaining how it is that Grown Adults decided people should be able to fall in love and not be impoverished by illness.

    Lessee, carry the one... inverse the square of the gay-repair-therapy factorial... divide by zero...

    Nope, I can't do it! Not smart enough I guess. Bummer.

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  9. misterfranklin2:11 PM

    Spell-check would've caught "sommersaults."

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  10. you need to swim upstream to think more betterer

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  11. susanoftexas2:16 PM

    It's the Jonah Goldberg Theory of Theoretics: Conservatives have to argue their position while liberals never need to since they dominate culture. This creates smarter conservatives with better arguments but none of that matters because the mean liberals just make you eat paste or flush your head in the toilet and win anyway.

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  12. DN Nation2:18 PM

    "These developments shouldn’t drive anyone to the left, but I believe the aging process itself often does."

    How about we let you go in my place the next time my aging in-laws have us over for dinner, Paul.

    "which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them"

    http://i.imgur.com/NiObyKu.jpg

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  13. Gromet2:19 PM

    It's a dogwhistle, quite on purpose. Alert conservatives will be put in mind of Gerhard Sommer, the Nazi who massacred 560 unarmed Italians in 1944; by accusing your enemies of "sommersaults," you suggest their position is exactly what the Nazis would have done. E.g., "Liberal scientists, by means of data sommersaults, encourage a belief in climate change... and they call for a Final Solution."

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  14. there are some non-culture-dominating hedge managers i would like paul to meet

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  15. Gromet2:20 PM

    I hear I'd win more debates, but then feel tired. Is it worth it??

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  16. DN Nation2:22 PM

    Also, my old man has gotten liberal in his advancing age, not because he's gone soft, but because Bush took a big steaming one over everything my dad considered to be good about electing Republicans. He liked himself some tax cuts, but that could no longer cover for the stank of military misadventure, embracing bigotry, anti-science, etc., etc.


    That one's on y'all, friend.

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  17. doctors recommend it if you don't want to turn more to the left after 60, but only if you've made it and don't have grandchildren. WAIT, DO have grandchildren---this is so hard

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  18. Giant Monster Gamera2:23 PM

    Who knew that the cry of "Damn kids, get off of my lawn!" was actually a Conservatives way of urging caution, otherwise the kids might step in the dog droppings.

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  19. redoubtagain2:26 PM

    For virtually all my lifetime, liberalism has ruled the culture (including and importantly academia), and being a conservative just takes a lot of energy.

    Yeah, 'cause it for damn sure doesn't take any brains.

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  20. gurkle22:30 PM

    I would say it has more to do with who you hang with and what you read. Scalia has admitted he doesn't read "biased" liberal media, so he actually might believe the crackpot story that the ACA actually intended to deny subsidies to the states. Or at least want to believe it. Roberts is a conservative who still reads the New York Times and things, so he knew that King v. Burwell was based on a completely fictitious history of the ACA made up solely for the Court's benefit.


    Scalia has similarly said he doesn't know any open homosexuals, though he's known some people he suspected of being gay (he didn't ask, didn't tell). If you move in circles where homosexuality is still never spoken of, then you're probably less likely to change your mind on the disasters that will ensue if people are openly gay and proud of it.

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  21. Gromet2:30 PM

    Haha, my dad's approach has been to call Bush "more of a Democrat than a Republican" and carry on unaffected.

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  22. Ooh! Can I treat this crap with far more weight than it deserves?

    The same-sex marriage opinions illustrate the point. Justice Kennedy’s opinion overflows with sentiment. It is sappy...Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion (and to a lesser extent some of the other dissents) is full of reminders that the case must be judged as a matter of constitutional law, not sentiment.

    Roberts' dissent made you think this? The Roberts dissent was based on a logical fallacy, specifically the appeal to tradition. We've always done things this way, therefore we always must do things this way (Which isn't even true as I argued at length on Friday, but never mind). That's not much of a legal argument even if it was valid.

    On a related note, I really do think it's time that political hacks stop pretending that they have these Vulcan robot minds that can never be swayed by littlebrain emotions. "No, you're the one who is being emotional" is such a creaky and meaningless argument, and yet it's always the first thing that the man with no argument throws out. It's the same mindset that leads white men to argue that they are the only ones suited to discuss problems regarding women/black folk because they won't let life experience get in the way. But you're not a fucking Vulcan, dude, and you shouldn't act as though empathy is a defect.

    And all of this is especially rich coming from a man whose entire post is based on a series of hoary old clichés ("It’s commonly acknowledged that the trajectory for young men is to move to the right as they begin to assume the responsibilities of adulthood" "Caution is an attribute associated with advanced age") that Mirengoff is simply assuming to be true. Now, while arguing from rhetoric may not fly in a Intro to Logic class, it's fine in real life. You know what's not fine? Arguing from rhetoric and then claiming that you based it on objective fact. Bush-league bullshit, friend.

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  23. being a conservative just takes a lot of energy

    Oh, poor BABY!

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  24. Dear Supreme Court,
    I am disgusted with the way old people are acting on the Supreme Court. Too many are vibrant, fun loving sex maniacs. Not enough are bitter, resentful individuals like Scalia who remembers the good old days when sex was bland and inoffensive and gay people were merely happy people. Folks would say "My you look gay today." and nobody would think you were talking about buttsex.. The following is a list of words I never want to hear in a Supreme Court opinion again. Number one: black. Number two: women. Number three: poop packer.

    Grandpa Mirengoff
    p.s. I am a crank.

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  25. I'm not even sure what "left" and "right" even means regarding older people given how far that window has shifted. My late grandfather would have been a conservative in his own day, even as he consistently voted for Democrats and held at least a few positions that are considered very liberal now. If nothing else, he'd probably be shooed out of the movement con clubhouse for his opposition to private ownership of assault weapons, something that led him to cut all ties to the NRA in the early 90's.

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  26. Robert M.2:36 PM

    Same with my dad: until 2003 he was a reliable Republican vote. (He voted for Bush in Florida in 2000, about which I still needle him on an occasional basis.)


    But while he's cranky and struggles with empathy, in late 2003 and early 2004 he started to see how badly the Bush administration had screwed things up. That led to him starting to do some research on the effects of the tax cuts, and by the time the Swiftboat attacks came around he was ready to consider exactly what it said that Bush's campaign operatives were willing to smear a decorated war veteran.

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  27. Randy Gibbons2:38 PM

    Paul Mirengoff has a theory

    Oh good. It appeared as if he was just leaking thin broth after being struck in the head with a mallet. Not something one should do in public.


    Anyway, I have a tangentially-related idea or four. All this talk about gays and celebrating progress got me thinking about nosegays. Shouldn't we have festive -gays for all the senses? Euphonious eargays, simple to complex, mechanical to electronic. Eyegays of every description (defined as any ornament of modest size and having no other purpose or designation?).


    In the spirit of sticking with two-syllable words, I propose thumbgays or perhaps skingays.


    Finally, tasty -gays might come in two basic types. Mouthgays to eat; one would wear as few or as many as a social setting seemed to call for. Tonguegays to lick, with the caveat that numerous people should not lick the same -gay unless they have no fear of disease.


    There. It's too bad Paul Mirengoff didn't bother thinking as much, because then he'd have given me something more on-point to type about.

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  28. Fizzy_Shellfish2:40 PM

    1. Denial - "The law is unconstitutional therefore not legit!"
    2. Anger - "Activist judges need to be impeached!"
    3. Bargaining - "If gays can get married I should be able to discriminate against them because I'm religious"
    4. Depression - "This is another nail in the coffin of America. Turn off the lights!"
    5. Acceptance - "Fine, let them be miserable like married straight people"

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  29. willf2:43 PM

    Or has the conservative breakdown reached the stage where they're just trying to confuse people?



    Considering the bullshit talking point that Roberts - Chief justice of the most business-friendly SCOTUS in US history - ruled in favor of the ACA - the most business-friendly healthcare law in history - because he was being blackmailed by Obama, I'd say we were well into the confusing people stage.

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  30. Of course, as Mirengoff would remind you, conservatism is an intellectual movement. As you all know, people become more intellectual when they have children but less so when they have grandchildren, and become more intellectual around age 30 and less so around age 60, all of which is common sense and therefore doesn't need to be proven.
    Extrapolating, then, we can see that if a man in his forties with children starts screaming on television about how gay marriage means that the boots of tyranny are on the march to crush everything that is good and decent, we need to listen. What sounds like paranoia and juvenile hyperbole is actually the most cerebral answer.
    Women, of course, are silly creatures and we never have to listen to them.

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  31. John Wesley Hardin2:47 PM

    "It’s commonly acknowledged that the trajectory for young men is to move to the right as they leave the idealism of youth behind and discover that they'll get no help from anybody, especially the government, and so they start to take that Ayn Rand bullshit seriously."

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  32. BigHank532:50 PM

    The Mirengoff columns are simply chock full o' nuts:

    There are libertarians, social conservatives, neoconservatives,
    paleoconservatives, and even something called crunchy conservatives.


    I'm gonna need a cite for that last one, Paul, and no: Rod Dreher doesn't count.

    Particular Justices aside, it will be difficult for conservatives to
    ensure that Republican appointees remain solidly conservative as they
    reach old age.


    Well, it might also help if you guys didn't keep moving the goalposts from "Eisenhower" to "Reagan" to "somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun".

    It (judging) is predicated on not letting “feelings” dominate the decision-making process.


    If that were the case, Paul, you'd think that our conservative judges who didn't approve of gay marriage would have been able to muster some actual fucking arguments against it, wouldn't you, instead of pissing and moaning about how bad they felt over a tradition getting expanded?

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  33. Downpup E2:53 PM

    You clearly don't understand the logicks of Han & Bushmen.

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  34. crunchy conservatives

    If I remember correctly, this was a term for eco-conscious conservatives who were fully willing to ignore the implications of the other policies they supported in a vain attempt at social relevance, kind of like Log Cabin Repugs.

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  35. LittlePig2:56 PM

    Brother Pierce may be on to something with his prion disease theory...

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  36. Downpup E2:57 PM

    If Scalia read his own opinion in NFIB v Sebelius, he wouldn't believe that crackpot theory. The guy isn't even trying to look honest anymore.

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  37. How DARE you look back at stuff that's been written!

    (Unless it validates a conservative's viewpoint, of course)

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  38. Downpup E3:00 PM

    Salmon swim upstream. Then they die, because old salmon are saltwater fish.
    Scalia floats.
    Ice cream is conservative because reasons.
    What do you have against ice cream, lieberal?

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  39. I both sit and stand in utter awe of this comment.

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  40. With or without sin-a-man?

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  41. Mirengoff is in desperate straits, so he is just engaging in a little gambit that Trekkies know as "explaining the rules of Fizbin" to distract his opponents:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v77SF4TFUoM

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  42. Fizzy_Shellfish3:02 PM

    NBC dumps Trump:

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-nbc-universal

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  43. Jay B.3:02 PM

    which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them


    Except, evidently, when they argue in front of a conservative Supreme Court.

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  44. geraldfnord3:06 PM

    I don't like hearing the 'The other side's arguments are entirely emotional.' from the Right, but (like all bad 'arguments') I absolutely loathe it when I hear it from my side. As generally used, it' s really just a restatement of 'You all poopy-heads/we good.'

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  45. Until we eliminate the outsize influence on politics of liberals like the Koch brothers . . . uh, Richard Scaife . . . um, Sheldon Adelson . . .err, well, um, OOOHH! George Soros! Yeah--until we stop this one guy who once donated some money to set up an organization I don't like, we're doomed.

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  46. Helmut Monotreme3:07 PM

    Does Scalia think he's fighting a desperate scorched earth retreat against an invading grand army of godless liberals? Does he think that if he can delay long enough and suck up enough to rapacious capital and wannabe theocrats that liberals will overplay their hand, run out of food and be forced to retreat? Or is he just trying to run out the clock and prevent as much justice as he can while he's still breathing? I think the only thing that keeps him going is greed and spite.

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  47. Brother Yam3:09 PM

    You know, this whole "Right of Attila the Hun" is starting to bug me. Attila was pretty keen on taxes, didn't fight unless the enemy refused to surrender and was not at all concerned by the daily lives of his subjects (e.g., religion or sexual mores). This is more than we could say of just about any current Republican.

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  48. Salmon swim upstream. Then they die, because old salmon are saltwater fish.

    They die, but not before having the most amazing sex of their entire lives. Is that a conservative or a liberal thing?

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  49. Scalia floats.

    So does shit.

    THEREFORE....

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  50. satch3:12 PM

    "Justice Kennedy’s opinion overflows with sentiment. It is sappy."


    OK, Paul, I'll play:


    "Justice Scalia's dissent was a pissy, foot-stamping tantrum that read like an eight year old yelling "I'm smarter that you all... why won't you LISTEN to me!!!"


    Hey, this is fun!

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  51. JennOfArk3:12 PM

    The good news is, he's 79 years old.

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  52. Functioning government meant something to Attila.

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  53. OH NOES, another brave voice has its First Amendment taken away! WHATEVER WILL WE DO.

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  54. geraldfnord3:13 PM

    I was waiting for Mirengoff to propose mandatory FOXNews at high volume after fifty to make sure that old people think the way they're supposed to by sixty, goddamnit!

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  55. I would like to invite this comment to my dinner party, at which it can meet various liberals and vanquish them in debate to the delight of its own imagination.

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  56. Swimming against it (liberal culture) produces harder thinking (which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them), but it also requires a lot of energy. Sooner or later, for most people, it starts to run out.


    What I find fascinating about the right and its half-wit pundits is the reams of puerile pitter-patter they scribble and the ass-digging finger-sniffing they all habitually perform all in the service of denying the reality of perhaps the largest truism we know – Life Is Change.

    This Mirengoff pud-pulling is a perfect example. He and his ilk cannot for one moment acknowledge that the SCOTUS same-sex marriage decision
    reflects the changing attitudes in America, reflects reality, because to do so would acknowledge that life is change. Instead he
    noses into the usual soupy sweaty underpants of right-wing reasoning and sniffs out…well, ageism and sentimentality and a dearth of fucking energy fer crissakes. This from someone who can’t summon the zest to create and put forward anything more than boilerplate
    conservative obfuscation.

    So yeah, I guess being a conservative doesmean having to think harder, because trying to tediously tap dance all around the truth that life is change, that change is often effected by people looking for basic human rights like dignity and equality, well, spending all your time denying reality must be really fucking exhausting.

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  57. Because conservatism, especially conservative judging, is predicated on the absence of a certain kind of sentimentality (I say “certain kind” because there is a sense in which the main strand of conservatism is quite sentimental).

    The main strand of conservatism is predicated on dissentimentality, sentimental yearning for the days when they could exclude "those people" from their clubs, their pools, their towns. They denigrate eusentimentality, having a contempt for livable downtowns, decent wages, and strong unions.

    It is predicated on not letting “feelings” dominate the decision-making process...

    Oh, fuck no, their decision process is 100% based on their raging id, other people and, indeed, the fate of the planet be damned.

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  58. Brother Yam3:19 PM

    mandatory FOXNews at high volume after fifty

    Just ending my 50th year and there ain't no fucking way that's happening at the Casa de Batata...

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  59. Check and mate, loony libs!

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  60. Wait, conservatives "love debates"?

    Why were they so unwilling to have them in the last few Presidential campaigns, then?

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  61. coozledad3:21 PM

    It is predicated on not letting “feelings” dominate the decision-making process...

    Are there no prisons? No workhouses?

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  62. Marion in Savannah3:22 PM

    Only the good die young. That bastard will probably live to 110, and never retire.

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  63. JennOfArk3:23 PM

    Why should we let silly things like human emotions have any bearing on the laws we make and uphold for humans?

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  64. Randy Gibbons3:26 PM

    Swimming against [the supposed liberal tide] produces harder thinking (which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them), but it also requires a lot of energy.



    On the whole, Mirengoff demonstrates that you can't lose a debate if you have no discernible position. Ask Jonah Goldberg.


    I guess it'd be no partisan fun to just observe that there are different types of mental activity, that mental exercises strengthen the mind in distinct ways, that the mind-body dichotomy is overstated, and that aging brings about changes that vary greatly from person to person. Etc. Zzzzz ... wake me up when the smug, self-consciously conservative confirmation-bias circle-jerk is underway!

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  65. satch3:26 PM

    From the previous post:

    "Our nation has become like a dead body floating downstream, to what destination only the devil knows."

    So...even if Tony croaks soon, there's another gig waiting for him.

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  66. BigHank533:27 PM

    Yeah, he's a better example. Next time!

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  67. coozledad3:27 PM

    If A young man isn't liberal, he has no heart. If a slightly older man has a mortgage, he should join the SS.


    Winston Churchill- My Big Book of Things to Say When I Crack The day's Second Fifth of Scotch

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  68. They also consider a sustained "Gish gallop" a debate victory.

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  69. Brother Yam3:29 PM

    But he'll get more liberal, right? Or is it more conservative. Maybe he'll have kids...

    I'm so confused.

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  70. Marion in Savannah3:30 PM

    "Or has the conservative breakdown reached the stage where they're just trying to confuse people?"


    Does this mean that we're approaching Peak Wingnut?

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  71. butcher pete3:31 PM

    Bravo.

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  72. Damian Hammontree3:32 PM

    Enjoy debates and win them; are argumentative assholes who refuse to admit when they're wrong. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

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  73. Downpup E3:32 PM

    Sadly, no. Peak Wingnut is Zeno's Paradox with a moving goal line.

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  74. coozledad3:32 PM

    Dancing With The Stars of The Seventh Circle.

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  75. susanoftexas3:33 PM

    Intellectual, finely honed arguments against gay marriage:
    1.)Gay sex is icky.
    2.)I'm afraid God will be mad at me if I allow it.
    3.)I love God so, so much and I just want to worship and obey him.
    4.)I get mad when people say gays should have civil rights too.
    They're never wrong, they're just misunderstood.

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  76. He ways the same as a duck and is made out of applesauce?

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  77. The things I learn here...

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  78. Randy Gibbons3:33 PM

    I wasn't aware of the term, thanks. So true. An especially popular tactic on TV, given its typical time constraints. On Sunday morning I caught a minute or so of motherfucking Newt Gingrinch. Enough said.

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  79. HKatz3:34 PM

    It's possible to be full of emotion and present logical arguments at the same time. It's also possible to speak in cool, level-headed tones and with dry words while spouting nonsense, getting facts wrong and failing to construct a logical argument. I see so many people (typically men, but not exclusively) put on this "hyper-rational" pose and use certain jargon and assume, based on this, that they're more logical than their opponents or somehow perfectly objective and neutral.

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  80. M. Krebs3:34 PM

    "God is great, God is good. God takes everyone except the ones he should."

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  81. susanoftexas3:35 PM

    I would answer but....

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  82. ohsopolite3:36 PM

    Mr. Prima would like a word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VVYKN2JCAQ

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  83. BigHank533:38 PM

    motherfucking Newt Gingrinch

    ...how on Earth did he manage to distract Callista? I mean, she's not dumb; she knows exactly what Newt will get up to if he's not chaperoned.

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  84. Indeed. I'm also to understand that these human emotions are especially pernicious every twenty-eight days or so. One shudders.

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  85. Randy Gibbons3:41 PM

    So yeah, I guess being a conservative does mean having to think harder, because trying to tediously tap dance all around the truth that life is change, that change is often effected by people looking for basic human rights like dignity and equality, well, spending all your time denying reality must be really fucking exhausting.



    Quoted for emphasis. Thinking harder is like working harder, it's not always a sign you're doing it well. Thinking well, facing reality, and being open to change are invigorating, albeit scary. Tiring, but it's a good tired? Denying reality day-in and day-out probably feels like living with sleep apnea before getting treatment. (I'm feeling much better on that account.)

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  86. Its generally considered a really bad idea to try and swim against the Tide. On the other hand, if you let the tide carry you off, you may end up over your head in shark-infested waters! GAY sharks! Gay sharks selling affordable health-care! Oh, the horror of it!

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  87. tsam1003:43 PM

    Agreed. They just like being in charge. They liked it women were stuck marrying and had no way out. They like that a crime against a black person is much less of a crime than the inverse. They like running governments, having a say over who eats and who goes hungry, they like having their rotten kids get all the education and have a huge advantage on the rest of the population. This is the core of the resistance to removing the traitor flag from the SC Capitol.

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  88. calling all toasters3:44 PM

    "In my view, Roberts’ opinions are really about caution...
    Caution is an attribute associated with advanced age."


    From this we can conclude that Roberts is the oldest of the justices. Since Elena Kagan is the only younger justice, we may conclude that there are only 2 justices on the Supreme Court. Two votes are not enough to pass any liberal decisions. Therefore QED and ex post facto, none of those decisions happened.

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  89. If everyone would spell "Pique Wingnut" correctly they'd realize there's no upper limit.

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  90. Swimming against it (liberal culture) produces harder thinking


    Swimming against the tide = drowning.

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  91. tsam1003:46 PM

    I'll bet not as much energy as being a sniveling tantrum farm on the internet.

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  92. tsam1003:47 PM

    Everyone knows saults are for fawl and wintor.

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  93. Brother Yam3:49 PM

    Or Ste Marie.

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  94. butcher pete3:53 PM

    My father finally started to glom on to the idea that the Reagan revolution had run its course about a decade ago. But, he was never a regular Fox viewer.

    My grandparents rode the Fox Express all the way to Krazyville.

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  95. In the Wingnuttia universe an irresistible force and an immovable object can not only exist, but are good friends.

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  96. Helmut Monotreme3:58 PM

    Look, he was no saint, but he had some innovative ideas on remedying the critical shortage of Turks on stakes that was paralyzing Transylvania.

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  97. BigHank533:59 PM

    If I remember correctly, Rod Dreher invented the term so he could claim to be supporting conservative goals while still stuffing his nagging insecure pie-hole with artisanal mushrooms grown by hippies and wine made by surrender monkeys.

    Either way, I've got a better chance of finding an ivory-billed woodpecker than a crunchy conservative.

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  98. This is all about ethics in impaling your enemies.

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  99. Helmut Monotreme4:03 PM

    I hear that if you haunt the finest eateries in Lyon in the next week or so, you might have a shot at spotting the onliest crunchy con in existence.

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  100. Marion in Savannah4:03 PM

    I love the new spelling and will adopt it forthwith. It says volumes...

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  101. merl14:04 PM

    I'm getting more liberal as I grow older just so I won't be associated with those WATBs and down right fucking morons that the Repub Party has become.

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  102. redoubtagain4:04 PM

    AKA "The Buckley"

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  103. susanoftexas4:09 PM

    He calls himself crunchy yet does he crunch when eaten? We need a velociraptor to find out. We're logical that way.
    He'd be like a Turducken stuffed with wine, mushrooms and oysters.

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  104. glennisw4:11 PM

    I thought only dead fish went with the flow, according to the wisdom of Caribou Barbie.

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  105. Having actually read the book, it's about conservatives who lead what a hack might consider a "liberal" lifestyle - so working at a co-op, buying organic produce living in a trendy loft and having cocktails with trendy people, something like that. If you want to be brutally honest, it was Rod Dreher arguing that him, his wife, and his friends were not just better than liberals, but also better than those heathen simpleton conservative types. God, that book was so snobby.

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  106. Randy Gibbons4:23 PM

    Eww. But I bet she doesn't watch him on TV in talking head mode. He could get away with anything, simultaneously even, having had so much practice.

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  107. BigHank534:28 PM

    Ha. NBC just realized there's no point in letting him talk for free when they could charge him for the airtime.

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  108. TGuerrant4:32 PM

    Will increasing the number of gay and lesbian households with mortgages and children inspire yet another Libertarian Moment? Stay tuned to find out!

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  109. LittlePig4:35 PM

    And Sommer is STILL ALIVE (age 94).

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  110. Soon enough, you can ask prison guard Goldberg, he's morphing into Doughbob.

    https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/615608490200072192
    ~

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  111. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person4:53 PM

    At the seething cauldron of post-gay-marriage panic that is Power Line, Paul Mirengoff has way too much freakin' time on his hands.

    Srsly, somebody call the Job Creatures, because Paul desperately needs one.

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  112. Scalia comes from a family and cultural style in which as you age fewer and fewer people are supposed to be able to tell you anything at all--they have to listen to you, you don't have to listen to them. Its not surprising that he is massively ill informed and angry about how he is being treated by history and liberals and the media. He stopped listening and stopped learning a long time ago.

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  113. ohsopolite4:58 PM

    Conservatives just want to do us a huge literary favor. If we just implement their policies, the world that results is sure to produce a new Dickens. Why do liberals hate great literature?

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  114. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:00 PM

    (which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them)

    I look forward to the Summer 2015 Rush Limbaugh Debate Tour, and I hope I can afford tickets this year...

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  115. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:02 PM

    You stole Karl Rove's math!

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  116. glennisw5:04 PM

    My parents were both life-long Republicans. They were fiscal, but not social, conservatives.
    When they retired they moved to Louis Gohmert's district in East Texas.
    Dad died in February 2002. By November 2002, Mom was voting Democrat.
    I'm not sure whether Dad would have evolved the same, but Mom definitely cited abortion rights, the Iraq War, and gay rights (or, rather a laissez-faire attitude toward gay people) as the reasons for her transformation.

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  117. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:05 PM

    And the packed audience seal the deal.

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  118. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:10 PM

    Walk up to one, each into your pocket, pull out a fact and go "Fact!", and you'll be drowned in Tears of Conservative Righteousness.

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  119. He says that "conservatism ... is predicated on not letting 'feelings' dominate the decision-making process."

    That sort of thing drives me up the wall -- The idea that liberals make decisions based on emotion, and that conservatives do not. We are ALL creatures of emotion. I hear the conservative talk radio, and it's all emotional appeals all the time. Anger and fear are emotions too, after all. So are resentment and pride and shame.

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  120. So true. The right is eaten up with those feelings. They only look down on feelings like empathy and love.

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  121. mrstilton5:17 PM

    I would like to say to this comment, "Why yas, mamame, I am drunk; but you'r uhluh am mmmrow Imma srobe+o3bjo vkj v".

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  122. Gromet5:17 PM

    At that age, he's gotta be to the left of Mussolini. (Fascists are liberal, right?)

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  123. That's annoying. It reminds me of that "playing chess with a pigeon" joke:
    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YwjORDnEQ8k/UzIXGAuX_CI/AAAAAAAAwO4/T67U9LuSzp0/s1600/arguing-with-idiots-is-like-playing-chess-with-a-pigeon.jpg

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  124. mrstilton5:20 PM

    ...stuffed with wine, mushrooms and oysters, and painfully rigid self-righteousness, and bitter resentment.

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  125. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:23 PM

    Well, logically, he could hardly get *more* conservative...

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  126. mrstilton5:26 PM

    conservatives like debates and more often than not win themCase in point: Jonah Goldberg vs. Juan Cole. Suck it, Libtards -- VICTORY LAP!!!

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  127. slavdude5:27 PM

    I should like to have this comment be my guide to the Inferno (h/t coozledad below).

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  128. I like imagining that for some reason. I'd like to see it enacted onstage.

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  129. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:34 PM

    spending all your time denying reality must be really fucking exhausting

    This is the website that gave us G W Bush as "a man of vision, like unto genius", don't forget. These guys must be living on weed, whites and wine. At least I hope they are...

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  130. Bookmark it, libs!

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  131. I hope you didn't actually pay for that book.

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  132. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:43 PM

    By the NRO? Yeah, they's always lookin' fer good hep...

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  133. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person5:51 PM

    But it does get harder to read. Does that count?

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  134. billcinsd5:55 PM

    also, the salt from his tears acts to enhance the flavors of the mushrooms and oysters

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  135. LookWhosInTheFreezer6:02 PM

    A Good Hard: Why Some Boners Matter More Than Others has already been copyrighted for the title of the expanded book version of Scalia's Obergefell dissent.

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  136. By conservative definition, the most amazing S-E-X only happens when Gawd has sanctioned it in heterosexual traditional-for-a-couple-hunnert-yrs.-now marriage.

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  137. I figured 'cause the Democrats were in power again.

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  138. They love debates with empty chairs.

    ReplyDelete
  139. . . . flush your head in the toilet and win anyway.

    Picture Jonah Goldberg receiving a swirlie . . . FOREVER!

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  140. He calls himself crunchy yet does he crunch when eaten?

    After stewing for as long as Dreher has, there's no crunch left--it just sloughs off the bones.

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  141. Well, the last campaign had lots and lots and lots of debates--just debates among the Republican candidates and not Romney and Obama.

    And given how hard Reince Priebus is working to restrict both the number of debates and who can participate, I'm guessing that the last campaign pretty much soured the GOP on debates. After all, it did allow the nation:

    To discover that Rick Perry can't count to three
    To watch Herman Cain prattle on about his 999 solution (and then find out that he had 999 problems, and an outside woman or three was more than one of those problems)
    To watch Michelle Bachmann's eyes spin like the fucking wheel of fortune
    To find out that Newt Gingrich really is dumber than a box of rocks
    And, mostly, to gaze in awe as Republican primary voters repeatedly said, "We want somebody OTHER THAN ROMNEY!!"

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  142. Jonah invoked I Don't Wanna, which is the greatest defense known to man. He followed up with the favorite established conservative offensive weapon of I WON!!!

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  143. But it's only a theoy.

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  144. Rugosa6:51 PM

    That campaign reminded me of an old Tank McNamara cartoon. At the time, the NBA was expanding the number of playoff slots*, but kinda pretending they were just streamlining the playoff system**. The scene is a group of NBA officials looking over a document that supposedly describes said more streamlined system. "Damn." One of them says (or family-newspaper equivalent). "Now we've dragged in a couple of teams from the Canadian Basketball League."

    *playoffs generate more interest = eyeballs = money
    **this version is subject to my admittedly fallible memory

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  145. Rugosa7:01 PM

    I really don't understand how Newt does it. He's not good looking and has a whiny voice and loathsome political views. But Callista has to watch him like a hawk. Are conservative women really that desperate for anyone who seems to have adequate blood circulation?

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  146. Tony Prost7:05 PM

    I bet this guy is a real dick at committee meetings. And....if Barry Goldwater is too liberal for these guys, god bless america!

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  147. Conservatives cannot possibly put together coherent intelligible arguments... So now it's just drop a bunch of "arguments" into a food processor, spell-check it, and hit "PUBLISH."

    Orwell called it "duckspeak". It's just stringing together the correct political catch phrases with no regard for meaning whatsoever. A form of newspeak, the ideal duckspeaker can maintain an ongoing monologue that shuts out other speakers and can do so without ever engaging their own brain.

    Like the Gish Gallop, or any Sarah Palin speech.

    http://www.orwelltoday.com/duckspeak.shtml

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  148. LIBERAL: But ... this is backgammon.


    CONSERVATIVE: [Overturns table]

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  149. "which is one important reason conservatives like debates and more often than not win them"Sorry, Paul, I can't hear you over the sound of conservative legal titans Cannon and Adler getting the snot beaten out of them by a 6-3 Supreme Court decision.

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  150. Howlin Wolfe7:11 PM

    Scalia floats? I knew he was a witch!!!

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  151. Howlin Wolfe7:15 PM

    Not to mention Sam Butera.

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  152. ken_lov7:23 PM

    A bit O/T, but are places like PowerLine and Hot Air and Gateway Pundit still popular in right wing circles? I would have thought Facebook plus the big corporate news sites might be crowding them out by now.

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  153. ken_lov7:24 PM

    I'm surprised he doesn't think they win them all, given the judges are inside his head.

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  154. ken_lov7:26 PM

    Did you know some right wing dicks just started writing about 'peak leftism' and proudly claim it's original?

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  155. Ellis_Weiner7:32 PM

    "Because conservatism, especially conservative judging, is predicated on the absence of a certain kind of sentimentality..."

    What is NOT sentimental about prizing tradition for its own sake, citing what almost by definition is an idealized notion of the past in support of suppressing social change, and imagining that marginalized and oppressed segments of society "will just have to understand" that that's how it must be?



    But then, whatever PowerLine thinks it means by "conservatives," it sure isn't congruent with the actual definition. Not after they spent eight years cheering while W trashed every known conservative tenet. No wonder they "run out of energy" doing all their "thinking." It's exhausting, having to defend the indefensible.

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  156. ken_lov7:32 PM

    But they are evolving. Used to be that winning political fights was purely a matter of Will. Adding 'energy' to the mix is the start of a capacity to grasp complex chains of reasoning, much like the first cell that divided in two successfully led to where we are today.

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  157. Derby McBowlerson7:34 PM

    My god, it's full of mental gymnastics!

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  158. That you don't like hearing makes it no less true, though. What rational, non-emotional arguments are you hearing from conservatives lately? Especially regarding the issues of SSM and Obamacare?

    They need their weapons because they're scared of their neighbors. They're afraid of the UN. They hate Obamacare because of death panels and a government takeover. They use constant racist dogwhistles because they hate and fear non-white people. They hate taxes because they're greedy and selfish. All the while their leaders, even their clergy, them that's how they should be, that's the right way to be. There was not a single argument against gay marriage that wasn't based on hate, fear, and disgust, or lies.

    Know what phony argument bugs the shit out of me, regardless of where it comes from, every time I hear it? "Both sides do it."

    False equivalence is false.

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  159. "It's possible to be full of emotion and present logical arguments at the same time."

    QFFuckin'T.

    That's why my response to "you're just being emotional" is "that may be true. I'm also presenting an argument, which you're now avoiding."

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  160. All of the above still appear frequently in memorandum, for whatever that's worth; I'm sure they all have Facebook pages where they link to or re-publish their varying spews.


    THEY'RE THE ONLY PLACES YOU CAN HEAR THE TRUTH!!11!

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  161. Probably the biggest dick at the Dick Committee meetings, even.

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  162. tigrismus7:59 PM

    and discover that they'll get no help from anybody, especially the government

    Or acknowledge it if they do, like Mr Craig T. "I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No." Nelson.

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  163. tigrismus8:03 PM

    Alas, doomed to be the coal-rolling Hummers of political positions.

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  164. tigrismus8:13 PM

    The Roberts dissent was based on a logical fallacy, specifically the appeal to tradition.

    Dude, you're trying to reason with a guy who just posted a bunch of ad hominem to prove he's on the side of sound, logical thinkers.

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  165. M. Krebs8:27 PM

    Meine Damen und Herren, the American South.

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  166. Sweet Jesus they are fucked up. The crash is a thing of great beauty.

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  167. M. Krebs8:35 PM

    Where and when do these debates occur? I can think of about four in the past ten years. Or is he talking about shouting matches on Fox News?

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  168. Pretty dam easy too, since that's a fair description of his argle blargle.

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  169. M. Krebs8:50 PM

    Does this mean that we're approaching Peak Wingnut?


    Not likely. Most likely it's an essential singularity.

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  170. montag29:17 PM

    I find that statement all of a piece with conservative thinking. They love debates because it gives the insecure ones the mistaken belief that they are winning on the facts.

    If it weren't for rhetorical fallacies and outright, bald-faced lying, conservatives wouldn't win either elections or debates. They've proven themselves to be the most dishonest bunch of horse thieves in the country's history (cf, how often have conservatives been quoted accurately, denied that they ever uttered the quoted statement, then been confronted with video or audio evidence, and then whined that they were "taken out of context?"). The only thing that gives them the temporary advantage is that it takes a while to check their assertions.

    At least Benjamin Disraeli, a conservative himself, was honest about it: "Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy."

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  171. Randy Gibbons9:19 PM

    In the words of Elmo, "Yes, great! Yes, great!"
    http://www.clickhole.com/article/did-sesame-street-go-too-far-yesterday-when-big-bi-1911

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  172. montag29:20 PM

    It must have been a huge effort trying to keep up the pretense. He always looked kind of shifty to me.

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  173. coozledad9:29 PM

    I can have you killed. Who is your familam?

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  174. Bitter Scribe9:29 PM

    Or has the conservative breakdown reached the stage where they're just trying to confuse people?


    When you're chronically confused yourself, you don't have to try to confuse people.

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  175. mgmonklewis9:31 PM

    Impaling in defense of Transylvania is no vice!

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  176. montag29:33 PM

    M'self, I think he's in search of crunchy frogs, having heard about them somewhere:

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  177. mgmonklewis9:34 PM

    To the dismay of some on the Left.

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  178. mgmonklewis9:35 PM

    Has not Samuel Beckett already written this scene? If not, he should have.

    ReplyDelete
  179. Clearly the solution is Death Panels for everyone over the age of 50!

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  180. mgmonklewis9:36 PM

    It might scan better if he had written it while swimming. Illegibility would've helped it.

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  181. Isn't he basically tightening up on the belief that only certain [white male hetero] people can be objective? I remember the way the RW shrieked "Je Recuse!" when they learned Judge Vaugh Walker was gay. I suppose the claim that Obama was elected because of deluded white people feeling white guilt fits there as well.

    But now that they're seeing they can't trust anyone it's "Only certain white male heteros [ie. those I believe will think the way I want them to think] can be objective."

    In the RW brain, a lack of "objectivity" is grounds for a do over. The fact that they aren't going to get one is just fine, because it gives them a new grudge to suckle.

    ReplyDelete
  182. billcinsd9:48 PM

    Allen (Colmes) doesn't live there anymore

    ReplyDelete
  183. CONSERVATIVE: [Overturns table]

    And then demands another turn because NO FAIR!!!

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  184. [Overturns table, drops table on foot]
    CURSE YOU OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

    ReplyDelete
  185. coozledad9:53 PM

    He also transparently reasons from the gut. It's the Mussolini school of jurisprudence.

    ReplyDelete
  186. montag29:53 PM

    This "thinking harder" business is just so much bullshit. Pick any one of the 14,000 GOP candidates for President and ask yourself if any of them are thinking at all. Every one of them is desperately afraid of antagonizing even one part of their batshit insane base and afraid of saying anything that could be construed as sensible.

    Conservatives have been running away from reality for a long, long time and, as a consequence, have been avoiding talking about it an equally long time. Thinking harder? Good gawd, their heads explode any time they're expected to think, period.

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  187. "Only certain white male heteros [ie. those I believe will think the way I want them to think] can be objective."

    But that's the problem now, ain't it? Roberts was one who would "think the way [conservatives] want him to think," but now they find that his thinking is almost pure corporatist and not fundamental wingnut.

    The immediate reaction from the Right's leading intellects consists of 1.) let's just do away with the Supreme Court (and what's this "constitution" thing you're talking about?") as proposed by Bobby Jindal, or 2.) let's make Supreme Court justices elected positions (and what's this "constitution" thing you're talking about?) as proposed by Ted Cruz, or 3.) let's just ignore the Supreme Court and hope it goes away until it delivers verdicts I like (and what's this "constitution" thing you're talking about) as espoused by Huckabee and most of the rest of the right.

    ReplyDelete
  188. montag210:03 PM

    "Are conservative women really that desperate for anyone who seems to have adequate blood circulation?"

    It would seem so. There are few enough of them in the ranks of conservatism that it has created an artificial shortage.

    ReplyDelete
  189. I would write to this comment:

    Let us go then, you and I
    Beneath the moon, beneath the sky
    Let's copulate and multiply!

    ReplyDelete
  190. If you thought the workout on the uneven parallels was impressive, just wait until they start the floor exercises.

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  191. The narration is priceless, but the surprise ending had me rolling on the floor.

    ReplyDelete
  192. Yes, which is why Mirjerkoff's True Scotsman looks like he was put together by a coked up Dr. Frankenstein.

    I mean, there's a reason the RW is constantly shouting RINO! and only truly worships people who are dead.

    ReplyDelete
  193. Libertarian lesbians? Hmm......

    ReplyDelete
  194. THAT will surely deal with Social Security reform!

    ReplyDelete
  195. Tehanu11:19 PM

    "Scalia has similarly said he doesn't know any open homosexuals"

    Oh please. He knows Lindsey Graham and Larry Craig, doesn't he?

    ReplyDelete
  196. StringOnAStick11:25 PM

    Reading Scalia's rant reminded me that one of the first signs of incipient dementia is uncontrollable anger that is inappropriate for the circumstances. Just saying.

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  197. AGoodQuestion11:25 PM

    Please forgive what may be my naivete, but isn't ideological purity kind of a not-good thing for judges? Like, I've seen hearings, read transcripts, what have you. These prospective justices promise that they'll try to be equitable, not align themselves with one political bloc or another. Mirengoff seems pretty pissed that judges he supported might not have been lying.

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  198. FDRliberal11:29 PM

    "It [conservatism] is predicated on not letting “feelings” dominate the decision-making process..."


    Coming from a clown who who thought launching a massive land invasion Iraq was the logical thing to do after being attacked by some Saudi Arabians in a plane, that is pretty damn rich.

    ReplyDelete