Well, there's always Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review...
For speaking lazily and giving his opponents another cudgel with which to hit the quite genuine opponents of abortion on demand, Richard Mourdock should feel regretful this morning. But he has nothing else for which to apologize.And The Anchoress...
It’s actually a very broad-minded question, and an invitation to talk and think about things larger than ourselves and our prideful ideas. Which is why it must be derided as a stupid, ignorant and previously-unheard-of piece of woman-hating misogyny. The narrowness of ideology and political correctness will not allow deviation from the bumperstickers. Even a couple of my more-progressive friends [!? - Ed.] are emailing appalled notes that so many in the press are so willing to immediately spin or squelch what does not fit the narrative.And NRSC Chairman John Cornyn:
In fact, rather than condemning him for his position, as some in his party have when it's comes to Republicans, I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life.And Freedom Outpost:
Nothing in Mourdock’s statement is shocking to those of us who believe what the Bible teaches. That does not diminish the emotional aspect of rape, but quite often we find out that we make the wrong decisions when they are based on emotion and as a result people lose liberty or they lose life.DrewM at Ace of Spades takes what we might call the moderate Republican position if moderate Republicans still existed:
I strongly disagree with Mourdock's position but what's there for him to apologize for? He believes what he believes.Etc., along with the usual liberal-media's-the-real-problem guff, e.g. "Desperate Left tries to Akin-ize Richard Mourdock."
I recall, in the dim, distant past, how as Democrats put forward ever mushier neo- and pseudo-liberal national candidates, Republicans would bring up the remaining more-liberal Democrats and go, oh yeah, what about Al Sharpton (or the recently departed George McGovern, whom we now learn was really a libertarian). For a while the Republicans had to play a little, too, disowning outliers like David Duke and (eventually) Strom Thurmond. Now, though, there's plenty of room for a Mourdock in the Grand Old Party. It's become a big tent, after all.
I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's nice (for some definition of "nice") to hear a prominent republican just flat-out admit that "life" is really a code-word for "controlling women by any means necessary, including violence." It's just too bad that the country at large doesn't take him at his word.
It's been a big tent for some decades now -- for all suckers who are willing to cast that ballot for the plutocrat/oligarch.
ReplyDeleteFunny how the Repugs have been making that big tent look like there's a tent meeting going on inside....
ReplyDeleteThe Cankeress: "The narrowness of ideology and political correctness will not allow deviation from the bumperstickers."
ReplyDeleteOh yes, as if the uptight whitey brigade would ever celebrate the "gift of rape" if it were one of their own children receiving the present, particularly if it were black on white rape. Let them put their money where thir mouth is. I'm heading over to Cafe Press right now to create one of those yellow diamonds that says "Rape Baby on Board" and a tee shirt saying "My daughter was raped by a black basketball team and all I got was this lousy biracial baby." We can advertise them on wingnut websites and watch them fly off the shelves, right? Right?
I personally know two women whose good Christian families forced them to have abortions after they became pregnant from CONSENSUAL sex with black men with whom they were in relationships with. Spare me all the gift of rape blather: that's for other people, and the poors.
I'm pretty sure the day will come when some upstanding Republican will blurt out the word "n****er", and the next thing you know assholes like Anchoress and Stacy McCain will explain that it's about time that word was unleashed and allowed to be used by all, for the good of the national psyche and in the interest of opening up dialogue or somesuch bullshit.
ReplyDeleteNot to come to the defense of this jerkoff, but has anyone who favors abortion only in the case of rape or incest ever given a coherent explanation of why some little blobs of cells are people and some aren't?
ReplyDeleteThe Anchoress' more progressive friends? They're the ones who burn witches but believe in giving heretics a chance to repent.
ReplyDeleteHer more progressive friends are the ones who have electricity in their homes.
ReplyDeleteI am doing the right thing.
ReplyDeleteYou are making a terrible mistake that you will regret.
She is an irresponsible, filthy slut.
Hey, George Zimmerman said "it was God's will" that put Trayvon Martin in front of him, and look how well that defense has worked out.
ReplyDeleteThere's a long tradition of godly men giving the gift of rape to women the length and bredth of the Americas and Africa. This asshole isn't even original!
ReplyDeleteFiguratively also, too: This Christmas, give the gift of rape (and a diamond with which to remember it).
When I saw "Desperate Left tries to Akin-ize Richard Mourdock" my first thought was how it was only a few letters away from "Malkin-ize," which would be an instantly understood transitive verb to anyone with a countertop. And lo! The author is none other than the gorgon herself. Poor sad, dead irony.
ReplyDeleteLeaving to better minds the question of whether an egg fertilized by rapist sperm is a gift, a bonus, or merely a token of appreciation from Our Lord, the part of Mourdock's statement I find most, um, interesting is this: "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen." Our winger brethren claim this is nothing more than a statement of faith, but Mourdock wasn't making such a statement, he was making an argument: "...and that's why I'm in favor of using the power of government to force all impregnated rape victims to carry their rapists' spawn to term whether they want to or not." He didn't say this but that's the point of his God-intended inseminations, i.e., all of them: not to celebrate "life" but to deny any woman power over her own.
I can't add anything to this because it makes me so angry I can't see straight, let alone be clever or witty or even snarky. I hope he doesn't have a wife or daughters; how could they have any self-respect after being related to him?
ReplyDeleteWhy can't women just submit to God's will? Hmmmm... "submission to God's will" sounds familiar. Is there a single word which encompasses this concept, maybe a foreign loan word?
ReplyDeleteThat does not diminish the emotional aspect of rape, but quite often we
ReplyDeletefind out that we make the wrong decisions when they are based on emotion
Silly wimmenz, getting all irrational about becoming host to an alien parasite as a result of forced impregnation.
That does not diminish the emotional aspect of rape, but quite often we
ReplyDeletefind out that we make the wrong decisions when they are based on emotion
Women are so emotional, and go all irrational after forced impregnation turns them into hosts for an internal alien parasite.
Inshallah, B4
ReplyDeleteClose, but I was thinking of another word.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the bible, the judeo-christian god is okay with rape, at least of unmarried non-virgins, and is a rapist Himself. And if abortion is legal in the case of rape and incest, we run the risk of aborting Jesus the next time god rapes some woman to create one.
ReplyDeleteAs far as there being no more moderate republicans, the old joke from the 80's that yes there are they're just called democrats is more true now than it was then. As has been noted, Nixon was far to the left of any Democrat. The first George Bush is practically a lefty these days. It probably won't be too long before Obama is remembered as some kind of liberal.
Exactly. And I wish more of these True Believers would speak their minds, instead of hiding their beliefs until they get into public office. I kinda agree with Ace O Spades on this--a Morlock is a Morlock, and should not apologize for what it is. I wish more of his creed would let it all hang out for us to smell.
ReplyDeleteThe dark, primitive root of superstition and paternalistic authoritarianism needs to be shoved right into the face of society as a reminder of how dangerous it is to human progress.
Despite good intentions, doing a "bit of heroin" only on Sunday mornings doesn't usually turn out well.
but they still sit in the dark when a lightbulb blows--being as it's god's will and all.
ReplyDeleteOf course, his brilliant "explanation" was that no, of course God doesn't cause rape, he simply gets the girl pregnant. Because that's so much better.
ReplyDeleteI'll believe this argument when one of them announces that he would never accept cancer treatment as God clearly wants him to die.
I'm not a student of abnormal psychology, but don't some sects of Xtianity refuse medical care for that very reason?
ReplyDeleteRather than one of those angry shouty links Roy posted above, I recommend you click on Doghouse.
ReplyDeletehttp://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/2012/10/thats-total-distortion-of-what-i-wish-i.html
~
Q: How many "progressive" fundamentalists does it take to change a light bulb?
ReplyDeleteA: I'll pray for you, you filthy sinner.
As I suspected all along, there is no position too extreme right to get a rightwinger ostracized from the party. I'm going to guess that, as the party "expands" to the right and lauds remarks like to of Mourdock, we can continue to watch it shrink from the middle and begin excoriating or expelling members who speak out in support of things once thought middle-of-the-road.
ReplyDeleteThe pregnancy-as-punishment crowd. If the woman didn't want a baby, see, she should have kept chaste, or at least stuck to BJs. (Also why birth control being part of a health care requirement is an abomination unto the pink invisible unicorn; see also Fluke, S.)
ReplyDeleteShania?
ReplyDeleteWell as LBJ said about J. Edgar Hoover "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, for the the GOP too many of them have... uh...bladder control issues.
10 years ago the Republican party reintroduced torture as tool of modern governments. Today, the Republican Party is in serious danger of being placed back in charge of government, There does not appear to be any position so far on the right that a majority of voters won't cast their ballot for it.
ReplyDeleteThat comment from the Anchoress is pretty ironic, as in the context of her post she seems mostly to be irritated at it because she's preoccupied with waving the bloody shirt of Benghazi; she's back in tireless signal-boosting mode, reposting links from the usual suspects such as the Ole Perfesser (probably one of those "more-progressive friends" she cites, on account of the whole sexbot-transhumanism thing). "Pravda-creepy", indeed.
ReplyDeleteIslam(ophobia).
ReplyDeleteIn the Qur'an, God has ninety-nine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_names_of_Allah#List_of_99_Names_of_God_as_found_in_the_Qur.27an>names.</a> Not one of them is "The Rapist".
In the Qur'an, God has ninety-nine names. Not one is "The Rapist".
ReplyDeleteThe Cankeress: "The narrowness of ideology and political correctness will not allow deviation from the bumperstickers."
ReplyDeleteForget the rape talk, just the hubris of a conservative writing that sentence is breath-taking. A party of people who brook no deviation from ideology...hell, if they allowed independent thinking, they wouldn't be stuck with this incontinent freak, they would have Lugar up by 20 points
Only if you are the appropriately named Christian Scientist...to be fair, God's will is absolute and cannot be understood by mortals, but, if you pray enough, sometimes he decides not to kill you.
ReplyDeleteIn religion, god is really mean and in Christian Science, he is also whimsical and arbitrary and a bit flighty
You'll also note that the Christian Science folks are (1) extremely polite and respectful of others' beliefs, and (2) nowhere near foolish enough to try demanding that anyone else live by their rules. So: crazy, yes, but pretty nice about it.
ReplyDeleteRichard Lugar was pretty much a lock for his seventh (!) term as Senator until Tea-Party Mourdock beat him in the primary. And he wasn't especially moderate--he just dated from the era when Democrats weren't automatically assumed to be satanic fifth-columnists.
ReplyDeleteThey're the ones who burn witches using a magnifying glass and the sun's sacred rays. Renewables!
ReplyDelete"my more-progressive friends"
ReplyDeleteShe means the auto insurance spammers.
"I strongly disagree with Mourdock's position but what's there for him to apologize for? He believes what he believes." I'd go along with this. Remember Todd Akin's absurd "apology"? Being a bigot is not something to "apologize" for, and pro forma apologies for saying what one continues to think, for saying exactly what one meant to say, are ridiculous. Mourdock should be defeated, he needn't apologize.
ReplyDeleteSome people are more equal than others?
ReplyDeleteGod designed women for one purpose: to have babies. Getting an abortion for any reason is going against god's will, and a sin.
ReplyDelete" It probably won't be too long before Obama is remembered as some kind of liberal." Oh, how can you say such an awful thing?! President Obama, Blessed Be He, is the incarnation of the Hope of Liberalism and Progressivism!
ReplyDeleteTorture has always been a tool of *our* modern government. (See Al McCoy's A Question of Torture.) Usually the US outsourced it to our clients, but they were trained and mentored and supervised by US officials. The US was just ahead of its time, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI was looking through The Rape of Lucrece for something to use for a joke but was instead struck by that might make a good epitaph for the mainstream Republicans:
ReplyDeleteThose that much covet are with gain so fond,
For what they have not, that which they possess
They scatter and unloose it from their bond,
And so, by hoping more, they have but less;
Or, gaining more, the profit of excess
Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,
That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
2) is not true.
ReplyDeleteThey force their beliefs on their children by denying them medical care. :/
One of the beauties of the Tea Party is that they control the primaries, and thus push for candidates who most mainstream voters find detestable. The other edge of that blade is that it just keeps dragging the entire country further to the right.
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't like the use of religious belief to keep children "safe" from life-saving treatment. But every child is vulnerable to their parents, and the number of young Christian Scientists that croak pales in comparison to the kids killed by drunk parents, or beaten to death, or who hang themselves because they're gay in a fundamentalist family, or because that's the only path out of being daddy's fuck-puppet. Christian Scientists don't picket the Red Cross Bloodmobiles or shoot oncologists. On the threat-to-civilization scale, they don't even bump the needle. Fundies do.
ReplyDeleteGod has ninety-nine
ReplyDeleteBut the bitch ain't one.
It’s actually a very broad-minded question, and an invitation to talk and think about things larger than ourselves and our prideful ideas. Which is why it must be derided as a stupid, ignorant and previously-unheard-of piece of woman-hating misogyny
ReplyDeleteSee, if it's "an invitation to talk" about an issue YOU don't get to predetermine how other people can respond. Personally, I think it IS stupid and ignorant, but unfortunately it is nowhere near previously unheard of.
Certainly the Congress was far to the left of Nixon, which, of course, is why we have the EPA and OSHA. Ray Price was to the Left of Nixon, the "house liberal" in the Administration, along with Moynihan. The rest of it -- the idea that Nixon was liberal -- is just cherry-picked lazy worship that Mr. Daddy President does everything, so all outcomes belong to him. So yeah, you are talking out of your ass. I used to think you were smart, and right to be so bleak on some level, but it's just a different set of talking points, isn't it? If Nixon had drones, he'd have used them. He encouraged domestic wiretapping in the name of "law and order". His civil rights policies strongly favored the South. He supported public funds for parochial schools. He left the cities to rot. And he opposed abortion. That's to say nothing of the untethered foreign policy and general bloodlust which directly led to the deaths of literally millions of people. You are so full of shit, it's coming out of your ears.
ReplyDeleteThe country was to the left, the party to the left of him was much farther to the left and Nixon was a relative moderate who was very much outgunned in the legislative arena. He stoked racial resentment to cleave off a section of the country that used to have at least some economically liberal leanings. He led a massive, illegal war that puts your darkest fantasies of Obamahitler to fraudulence. His civil liberties platform was neo-fascist. Obama is milquetoast and a shit in so many ways. But you obviously lived through the Sixties and Seventies to forget them so fully.
"broad-minded question"
ReplyDeleteShe means he was thinking about broads, and what men should allow them to do.
~
Anky's more-progressive friends are Zombie Franco and Zombie Torquemada.
ReplyDeleteOh of course. She broked my lady-brane!
ReplyDeleteHe should also be treated with scorn, contempt and revulsion by decent people everywhere, but really, you're not wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the use in his breed of scum apologising? We all know how sincere that would be. At best, the man's a crackpot and a crank. You may as well ask a schizophrenic to apologize for not understanding reality.
Todd Akin and Joe Walsh want to undo science all the way back to before the Enlightenment. Mourdock wants to undo theodicy back to before Augustine. I thought that the GOP was just philosophically nihilist, but at this rate they'll actually want to reverse the Big Bang, or I guess formless void with darkness covering the face of the deep.
ReplyDeleteSure 'nough, he didn't apologize. First he said that anyone who thought he was saying that God makes rapes happen is "sick and twisted," then said that he was "humbled" by how many people misinterpreted (read: gave a literal reading to) what he said.
ReplyDeleteIf you've followed the many own-goals of evangelicals in the past, it's clear that "humbled" is code for "fuck off." It's like "bless their hearts" but with some admission of strategic error.
But it's not just something the Christian Scientists do. I've seen a few news articles in recent years about fundie x-stain "parents" who let their sick kids die of treatable things because it was Gourd's Will that they die.
ReplyDeleteMoynihan, who stigmatized poor women for having the temerity not to be properly "owned" by men before having babies, isn't my idea of a progressive, either.
ReplyDeleteNice, but since when does nougat "pour"? It just kind of sits there.
ReplyDelete"Being a bigot is not something to 'apologize' for"
ReplyDeleteNo, but it's sure as shit something to be shamed for.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, Taranto is claiming that Moredick clearly said that the conception was intended by G-d, but not the rape.
ReplyDeleteApparently Taranto's G-d is so impotent that He needs rapists to impregnate women. No wonder Taranto kneels before Him.
Mark my words, never the Twain shall meet!
ReplyDeleteI think that Jehovah Witnesses in New Zealand have done this and some still do.
ReplyDeleteI do not get the bit about Gawd being involved in each and every conception. Very early miscarriages, such as are quite common with first time pregnancies, are him changing his mind?
ReplyDeleteSorry I am thinking logically again, my bad.
Support of life until you pop out of the womb, then it's every baby for itself.
ReplyDeleteAs noted elsewhere, Morlock should be questioned as to the propriety of forcing the rape victim to take the product of the rape to visit the rapist on prison visiting days, since to the best of my knowledge being a convicted rapist does not strip one of parental rights. Is it also God's will that for the next X years the victim of the rape and its innocent by-product make regular treks to the penitentiary to visit someone that neither of them may even really know, or want to know?
ReplyDeleteJeez Jay, it's just a comment on a blog post. Calm down.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, although not politically conscious back then, I am aware of the points you make. Yet Nixon did propose universal health coverage far, far, far beyond anything that Obama ever put on the table. And how quaint is Nixon's domestic wiretapping in the shadow of the fucking "patriot" act? The point that Nixon was relatively liberal by today's standards is not so far out. Plenty of non-loonies have noted it in recent years. Sure, there are reason's why, but again, it's just a throwaway line in a comment on a blog post. Do you really like being one of those guys who goes into a rage at people with similar views over minor disagreements which are arguable? I think you're the longest tenured commenter here on alicublog. Fucking act like it.
Fantasies of Obamahitler? Nope, just the facts, ma'am.
Well, see, that's after the birth and who cares about that?
ReplyDeleteYeah but, this guy is bad press for the Morlocks, who are just predators, not assholes. There's a difference.
ReplyDeleteYou've been taking "How To Be Annoying" lessons, haven't you Chuck?
ReplyDeleterapists rule!
ReplyDeleteThat should be "How many "progressive" fundamentalists does it take to screw in a light bulb."
ReplyDeleteThere's a Baldung Grien painting of Lot in the Berlin Gemaeldegalerie which in its sheer vile creepiness seems to capture something of the Republican soul. I took a photograph a while ago, which I am now going to blogpimp IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY.
ReplyDelete"woman hating misogyny"
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to that other kind of misogyny, the non woman-hating woman-hating.
Where can I go to get an abortion on demand? How does that work, do I walk in and say "I demand an abortion"?
ReplyDeleteRetaining self-respect is the least of their worries.
ReplyDeleteBig tent, five rings.
ReplyDeleteIsn't being "humble" one of the virtues Jesus preached? Meaning, he is more humble than you, so he's better at Jesusing than you, so he wins.
ReplyDelete"Progressive" fundamentalists don't screw in light bulbs, it might lead to dancing.
ReplyDeleteI googled Baldung Grienand was surprised at how good his work was. Also that painting...yeh Lot really looks like he is so insensible from drink he is going to be raped by his daughters. Even in the 16th century they knew what bullshit from skeevy old men sounded like.
ReplyDeleteLook, it was good enough for Mother Mary, it should be good enough for them! Hell, maybe their kid will grow up to be the next Jesus!
ReplyDeleteNo.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, as I keep saying, sincerely, if my little jokes and observations anger or annoy you, please don't read them.
And if you don't like having shit flung back in your face, or more likely, being made a straight man in an absurdist comedy, then don't throw shit. Do you ever see me attacking anyone under their comments with rightblogger type name calling? No, you don't. Am I ever impolite to anyone who's not impolite to me? I like to think "no," but maybe sometimes I slip and sincerely regret it.
But if you're still one of those people endlessly reliving high school, by all means, hit the little down arrows to your hearts content. I'm out smoking weed in the parking lot and truly don't give a fuck what goes on at the student council.
And again, Jay, seriously? "So full of shit it's coming out your ears?" Aren't you supposed to be some kind of literary person? If you all just can't stop yourself from being nasty, at least try to be a little artful about it. "Shit coming out your ears?" Jesus Fucking Christ. Or should I say Thomas Fucking Kincaide? That's embarrassing, dude. Should be anyway. Guess I just chalk it up to yet another example of how badly Obama's fucked up the left.
Check your remote control for your on demand options.
ReplyDelete"And again, Jay, seriously? "So full of shit it's coming out your ears?""
ReplyDeleteIf that's the worst you've got from Jay, count yourself lucky and walk away.
Look, you toss out one of your little petards, get righteously smacked down, and then whine about calming down, it's only a blog comment, blah blah. Even some of us who sympathize with you are getting a bit tired of this disingenuous crap. You may not use nasty words, but you've got the condescending passive-aggressive shit down perfectly. Much worse than foul language in my book.
Oh yeah, we don't have to read you if we don't like it. Right. Thing is Chuck, you are sometimes worth reading, but keep this nonsense up, and you'll get what you wish for.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall ever having been smacked down?
ReplyDeleteBut again, if my little jokes an observations anger you:
1. Don't read it. Please, please, please.
If you must read it:
1. Don't attack with lame-ass rightblogger type shit. Condescending, aggressive (passive? I don't think so) shit may come right back at you.
2. Disagreements are fine. I certainly don't know it all and wouldn't be able to communicate it in a fucking comments section if I did.
If you must attack:
1. Try to do it with some flair at least. I wasn't criticizing Jay for his use of foul language so much as his use of tiresome cliché.
And finally, I'm not going away and you all are really uglying up this comments section, so please, give some serious consideration to the advice I've outlined above. Keep this comments section clean. Ignore chuckling. It's really that simple.
Yup. Witlesses are opposed to blood transfusions, for some damn reason. Something in (or maybe not in) the Bible.
ReplyDelete"Keep this comments section clean. Ignore chuckling."
ReplyDeleteFucking hilarious, mate. On several levels.
If you believe a zygote is an human being on principle, of course you will go from that principle to severely restricting the freedoms of actual persons---those who begin with absurdities will end with barabarities.
ReplyDeleteAnother way of putting it: right-to-lifers are attacking the fundamental institution of humanity by redefining it!
My advice then is to stick with my top level comment, which I try to make interesting, and ignore any replies I might make to any lame attacks underneath. For my part, I should just stop replying to the lame-o attacks, but all too often I find that difficult. Some kind of misplaced pride, I guess. Quite a bit of nostalgic sadness though, too.
ReplyDeleteyep.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what Mourdock claimed. "Rape no, impregnation yes!"
ReplyDeleteSo, if Mourdock's wife had, lebenty-leben zillion yrs. ago when she was still fertile, been raped & Gawd had decided for impregnation, can we assume Mourdock would have loved the baby as his own, supported it, paid for college, yada?
ReplyDeleteI would say, however, that Clinton was much better than Obama, at least to this point. That surplus Clinton left was a good thing and he got it without a lot of austerity. Just read today that Obama wants a grand bargain on the deficit in his second term. Judging by the bargaining skill he's shown thus far, his compromise will be to enact the Ryan Plan, only with less money for "medicare" vouchers and bigger tax cuts for the wealthy.
ReplyDeleteDISQUS! ! !
ReplyDelete(can't edit, can't delete. . .)
So you want to be disappointed, eh chuck? So much more in sorrow than anger. I feel such shame!
ReplyDeleteI've been trying not to read your rote Disappointed Lefty act for months now, but sometimes I even make the mistake of talking you and your arguments seriously, so I responded to one of the hoariest of them. Nixon killed millions of fucking people. He ran his own fucking Patriot Act. You want to play the stupid naif, go with it. Just stop whining about civility when you decide to plunge in with "facts" that don't, at all, match reality.
You don't want to vote for "Robamney"? Who gives a flying fuck? You want creative put downs? Trust that the next time you decide to give Nixon a pass, I'll work on some.
Man, Chuckling, you go from attack dog to whiny ass titty baby in the tremulous blink of a rheumy drunk's eye. Your "top line" comments are rote, fake, ahistorical faux leftist crap and they are generally followed by a rapid descent into first anger and then bathos.
ReplyDeleteaimai
"That surplus Clinton left was a good thing and he got it without a lot of austerity."
ReplyDeleteFucking horseshit, dude. "He" got it because of record low unemployment rates, which his actual policies (NAFTA, for instance) had jack shit to do with. (Unless you're praising Clinton's welfare-to-work reforms, you know, the ones that were too fucking cold-blooded for Reagan to ever get away with? Is that an example of his "bargaining skill" too?)
"judging by the bargaining skill he's shown thus far"
As I pistol-whipped you about the last time you trotted out this bullshit (and of course you had no fucking response), Obama saved the EITC and the 10% income tax bracket at a time when "liberal heroes" like Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold were prepared to do jack shit -- if they even understood the situation.
I don't know who you think of when you think of "bargaining skill", dude, but I've got a clip I can dig up of Lawrence O'Donnell having to explain THE VERY EXISTENCE of the 10% income tax bracket to Alan Grayson during the 2010 budget showdown. There apparently are your fucking heroes -- ranting drool-flecked morons who don't have enough connection to reality to know what the right thing is, much less do it. But if they call themselves liberals, they're good! Who cares if it leads to actual liberal policies.
Who cares if the actual president has to negotiate with some of the most regressive morons on earth and no support from the left wing of his own party. Somehow it's all Bammerz' fault. Because magic!
I guess that's the joy of being a low information voter. You get the pleasure of feeling intellectually superior without having to know anything!
Okay, well, I didn't mean to give Nixon a pass. He was a deeply flawed individual, no question. Comparing our posts, seems we agree that the politicians are far to the right now than where they were in the late sixties early 70's. That's pretty much all I was saying.
ReplyDeleteAh, I wondered how long it would be before we heard from the country club liberal. Unlike the country club republican, the country club liberal is not necessarily wealthy but is ofttimes even more of an insufferable snob. I'm sitting out in flyover country with the other morons and we're all laughing at your superior intellect, in case you were wondering.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was thinking of the fact that Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy while Obama gave them a massive tax cut, among other atrocities that benefit the most corrupt greedheads.
ReplyDeleteI know it's been complained about for years, but I still don't get why the internet turns people who are otherwise decent into such creatures of rage and derision.
Nixon, Clinton, Obama -- they all did good things, bad things, and many things in between. Yes, Nixon was by far the worst, a horrible war criminal by any reasonable standard, but it's true he was for universal health care and arguable that he would be considered a liberal by today's standards. Just like it's arguable who is less liberal between Obama and Clinton. So why the ugliness? It's not like we're talking wingnuts. It's the left screaming at the marginally more or less left. The Judean People's Front against the People's Front of Judea. It's fucking absurd.
And alas, sometimes it's poor chuckling's lot to show it for that, to turn it into a kind of theater of the absurd. Unfortunate, really.
"insufferable snob" "we're all laughing at your superior intellect"
ReplyDeleteHere's Chuck being artful, staying above the fray, and keepin' it clean. That's embarrassing, dude.
You're missing the joke.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I've changed my mind. Is it too late to get violentacrez back?
ReplyDeleteWait, what? Is the insult that I'm a country club snob who isn't even wealthy enough to be a real snob? Or that I'm not a real liberal because I can't even afford to belong to a country club? I'm neither, of course--like Roy's darned Holy Roman Empire--I'm neither country, nor club, nor snob. I'm actually a yellow dog democrat who is, at heart, a a serious radical but I vote the way I vote because I'm too smart to waste my time just spewing fake cynicism and pretending that I'm not "playing the game" because I'm above it.
ReplyDeleteits true that I don't live in "flyover" country but that, of course, is a right wing humblebrag not a real place. I mean, I live in country that lots of people fly over, but I don't consider it any kind of judgement of me. Nor of you. Your maunderings would be puerile from whatever bunker.
aimai
He was "for universal health care" but he didn't get it for us. Why is that? Did he not want it enough. Or did the mean old democrats prevent him from getting it? Did Nixon somehow operate within the complex constraints of a political system with many different players including the fucking AMA? So what does that mean? Obama wasn't for "universal health care" but he got 40 million people health insurance. You are just talking spiteful gibberish now. It barely makes sense.
ReplyDeleteaimai
As you know, the "morons in flyover country" is a direct quote from you. And you have made other comments disparaging the intelligence of normal decent people. Perhaps you were just angry or frustrated and didn't really mean it, but given that it's been a recurring theme and you've never recanted when it was brought to your attention, I believe that that's who you really are.
ReplyDeleteAnd unfortunately, I think your "morons in flyover country" comment represents a very real problem for the democratic party. I wish it were just a right wing humblebrag (nice word but according to urban dictionary doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. I take it you mean something along the lines of fantasy or lie or wishful thinking), but unfortunately it's all too real. Beyond my little experiments here, I see liberal elitist put downs of regular people all the time in the media, most recently by Bill Maher. As you would probably agree, if everyone voted their interests and morals, the republican party wouldn't control diddly squat. Sure, a big part of it is lies and ignorance, but a small part is attitude. Who likes being told they're stupid?
So I trust you think very well of yourself and are, or once were, a good person at heart, but you do have a habit of telling people who don't act the way you would like or who disagree with you on minor points that they are stupid and that makes you come off sometimes as in insufferable snob. It not only hurts the politics you work for, but I'd bet it takes away from your happiness as well. I think if you were to learn to genuinely respect and care for people, you would be much happier and much more effective as a political activist. You might want to give it some thought.
According to Wikipedia, he didn't get it because Ted Kennedy blocked it.
ReplyDeleteMy belief is that Obama came into office with a powerful mandate that he squandered as fast as was humanly possible. Had he put a single payer system on the table and bargained from there, he could have gotten a much better deal. Sure, his Heritage Foundation designed, Mitt Romney executed health care plan is better than nothing, but not nearly as good as he could have gotten. Krugman, as I suspect you know, has written extensively about Obama's truly horrible bargaining skills. I think it fair to question whether he's just that bad at the table or if he's more a conservative implementing a conservative agenda, but I see no basis in reality to argue that -- if he really wanted the best possible health care system -- he handled the whole thing competently. I realize poor chuckling is just an absurd character on the internet, but plenty of well-credentialed, progressive-type folk in the real world have made similar arguments.
What are you talking about? Under the freewheeling conservative ideology The Anchoress could one day be Pope!
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of "he shouldn't apologise, we should all see what terrible people these are"... I have some sympathy. But I think in the end, yes, he should be forced to apologise, not because he'd mean it, but as an example to the others. Every time someone gets away with saying this terrible shit, it's an example to people who harbour these views but might not have the vehemence to act on them: saying "no, it's okay, it's cool. This is an acceptable viewpoint." Ideally, we should be able to make a lot of noise every time someone brings out the old-school misogyny, until the speaker has to show up in sackcloth and ashes and tell the nation that he believes Jesus is upset with him for what he said.
ReplyDelete(I like to think "and it is always him". But it's not. Plenty of misogynist women out there. It doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense. I suppose it's "if I talk the talk, I'll be overlooked; also, it's nice to have someone to step on".)
We can't, because there's just too much hate and not enough time. But in the cases that get wide attention, I think we should be calling for apologies up to the point of ritual fake-seppuku (it's like hari-kiri but done with a Magic Marker, because people being killed isn't cool). Just to tell everyone that's watching, this shit, people, it is not cool, and we do not accept it as a society.
I mean, it's an idealist viewpoint. More likely it'd have people reacting with "you only attack him because he's RIGHT and that THREATENS YOUR LITTLE LIBERAL MIND". But without big, important, wide-ranging pushback, I'm worried about the impressions we're sending to kids and morons.
No way, he said "neighbour".
ReplyDeleteApologizing is making an effort to be nice, and demanding one is asking for grovelling.
ReplyDeleteI support both of course.
"Hell, maybe their kid will grow up to be the next Jesus!"
ReplyDeleteTo listen to Franklin Graham lately, that spot's already taken by Romney.
It's not about the Asshole Olympics, it's about harm reduction. Stopping fundies from imposing their standards of medicine from the rest of us doesn't conflict with stopping Christian Scientists from imposing their standards of medical care on their children.
ReplyDeleteI'm more than willing to get along with anyone, even fundies, right up to the point where their actions cause harm to others.