While alicubi.com undergoes extensive elective surgery, its editors pen somber, Shackletonian missives from their lonely arctic outpost.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the horrible final days of the 2012 campaign. I'll sure be glad when this election's over. Well, actually, probably not, but you know what I mean.
Al Sharpton will scream 'RACISTS! THIS IS ALL RACIST-ISM!'
There's a word that would seem to characterize the assumption that a black TV commentator would be unable to speak the English language. I can't quite put my finger on it, though.
Aw, shit, y'know, these people are always mortally offended by something, and usually out of all proportion to the purported offense. Say, "the sky is blue," and a chorus rises up in outraged defense of the color-blind.
They aren't going to listen to the "biased liberal media," and they aren't about to agree with the so-called liberals, and there's no one in their own ranks willing to tell them to "just shut the fuck up, will you, for the sake of everyone's sanity," so, I suspect that, like predators without enemies in the environment, the whackdoodles are going to dominate the landscape for some time to come. If we're lucky, they'll start eating each other before they've destroyed too much of the political ecosystem.
One thing's for certain, though--if Obama comes out on November 7th and sees his shadow, we get four more years of nuclear winter inside the Beltway. They won't just be frothing at the mouth every moment. They'll be spewing bile like Linda Blair spews pea soup, and the air will be thick with acid fumes. We have not yet plumbed the depths of pettiness to which these rancorous nincompoops can descend.
A masterpiece. i got worried that Dick Morris was going soft on us what with his hedging due to Sandy, but he's rallied: In this special Presidential Election video commentary, I discuss how, by campaigning and not governing during Superstorm Sandy's recovery and by his partisan remarks, Obama blew his last chance to win! Tune in!
Obama studied law in graduate school. In history graduate school, you don't focus on fucking aphorisms. What you mean is, if Obama had watched the History Channel a lot, he might have recalled ... the famous words of Yamamoto, and then looked at some rightwing sites, and intoned, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve. Oh, wait, no--that's gas, not resolve."
Hey, at least they haven't gotten around to claiming that more empty acres and fence posts voted for Rmoney, like they did with Bush in 2000. But if it's close, expect it to go there.
Jesus Christ. I've read maybe a dozen Chris Muir strips; I felt like I knew what to expect. But this was like some kind of experimental art installation designed to be read in any order-- although the order it's actually presented in is the most confusing one, because first you get the ISLAM DOOM images and then you end up with "eh, Obama's probably going to lose anyway."
It's not supposed to. Rightwing memes do not succeed or fail based on coherence, but rather on their ability to press the correct buttons. It's not supposed to be funny, or wry, or make sense - it's only intended to push the "seekrit MOOSLEM" button in the rightwing lizard-brain.
I have paid my dues with Muir cartoons and will not look at this one. The dialogue always reminds me of the guy who has cut Garfield out of Garfield cartoons. They are sure gonna freak out on the 7th.
Ground glass...isn't that sand? He basically says he will crawl along a beach to vote for Romney. Presumably his pina colada having too little rum will make it the equivalent of Omaha Beach.
I've always heard that, and it certainly gives a nice dramatic touch to the history, but is there any evidence that a top admiral in the Japanese military actually made such a defeatist statement AFTER carrying out what he clearly must have seen as a disastrous strategic blunder? Really? It may be true, but I'm now curious about the evidence of such a flattering assessment of America by an enemy at the time.
But the fact is, there exists no more powerful force on the planet than the combined prayers of millions of God’s people imploring their God tointervene and help them save their country. Combine the prayers of millions of Catholics to those of the Evangelicals and miracles WILL HAPPEN.
I can't keep up with current fads in Christian thought the way I did when I was younger, but as I remember it God was pretty explicit about His interest being confined to one country only. And Jesus Christ, He's sure fucked that one up.
Krugman, as usual, had something to say on this subject, namely that many predict that if Romney wins, he WILL be able to work across the aisle simply because Dems aren't as mind-blowingly obstructionist as the Pugs, and he characterized a vote for Romney as giving in to blackmail. Me... I'd bet that Pugs are looking to get some revenge for 2001, when Bush's inaugural motorcade was booed and egged.
Buy the Romney fag-bashing special and get a free order of plutocracy! Pair it up with the Ryan combo and get a Supreme Court makeover and a road map to Gilead! Come back again in four years and earn your chance to wipe your ass with the face of an actual real welfare queen!*
*for the purposes of this giveaway, 'welfare queen' is defined as any person having a net value of less than five million dollars. So you'll be using your own face, moocher.
One could argue that their obstructionism was largely to deprive Obama of a second term, and that more of the same would harm their chances in 2016, so they should be more amenable to compromise. But that argument would only apply to sane people, so who knows?
Campaigning: appointing someone competent to run FEMA, coordinating with state and local officials, touring storm sites in safe states, arranging for the military to provide gasoline
Governing: Conducting an Ohio photo-op rally to hand out "Fire Obama" shirts under the cover of collecting canned goods that the Red Cross doesn't want.
I can't keep up with current fads in Christian thought the way I did when I was younger
Given that until a few weeks ago, Mormonism was still officially a cult, this is unsurprising.
And Jesus Christ, He's sure fucked that one up.
Well, it's not really His fault. Things would have been much better if the Jews hadn't rejected Jesus, but had instead become Christians ... like a non-negligible percentage of the Palestinians SEGMENTATION FAULT (CORE DUMPED)
In a district Obama carried handily in 2008, early voting was suspended due to a bomb scare. Talk radio host Teri O'Brien announced she would ask her guest that night "whether democrats are planting fake bombs in Winter Park, FL."
Uh-oh.. She's cannily conflating "calling in fake bomb threats about non-existent bombs" with "planting fake bombs." NOW who's making with the eleven-dimensional chess?
Intriguing** how their theology dovetails so nicely with their approach to economics, isn't it? "Just you wait, thirty-year bonds will show some indications of real inflation someday, and it will all be the fault of the stimulus." "Hi, I'm Peter Schiff, and I've spent the past couple of decades predicting imminent bear markets every other month. In late 2008, I was proven right." "You see, godless Democrats? Prayer did bring rain in Texas ... eventually."
**And by "intriguing," I naturally mean "Utterly unsurprising, and pathetic."
Er, I think he does. Just look at his electoral map, and see if you can figure out a correlation with eating shitty fast food just to affirm being a vicious ignorant authoritarian follower who hates fags.
I don't think Kevin Dujan either expects or wants Romney to win. He may seem as daft as his followers, but he is really a con man from way back who believes only in PayPal. With a Romney win, his blog would have no reason to exist since its whole point is to pander to the worst instincts of people who are enraged by the sight of a black and/or Democrat president. His rosy predictions for Romney won't embarrass him at all, he has his "It was fraud, I tell ya!" posts already written and he can stretch this out for months. In the meantime, he's enjoying the new hits on his blog. He's even selling cookware!
Woah, are you guys talking about the Chris Muir "Bartender-girl's fever dream of gate of vienna pushback"? I actually get it--we are "free" and without chains because Christians eat both pork meat and whores. I mean, wait...let me come in again.
(2) the peculiar theocratic right-wing authoritarianism of 1861 has unfortunately managed to win a few converts since then, unless we let Pynchon draw the Mason-Dixon Line for us.
I think it's actually worse than that: something on the order of "Islam sucks, except that part about consent being meaningless because your wife is literally your property a la Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm", ha ha, just kidding, sort of." Chris Muir's one remarkable talent, if you want to call it that, in a career of submediocre scribbling and frantic dogwhistling to the choir, is his ability to digitize the tactile sensation of slime.
A great deal of the problem is that there's a near-complete disconnect between the writing and the art. The art doesn't even have to be that detailed--Randall Munroe of xkcd gets much better emotional expression out of stick figures*--but Muir wastes effort on fussy little things like getting the liquor bottles and beer pulls right (there's at least three brands that should be instantly identifiable if you have even a modest awareness of booze) while as per usual sadly neglecting his people, who look severely embarrassed to be there, like actors roped into mouthing the lines of the world's shittiest playwright.
*Unless he's doing a straight-up infographic like this one--the sort of gorgeous, stunningly-detailed work you'd expect of a future society in which Edward Tufte is bigger than Jesus.
I've occasionally wondered myself whether DuJan was not so much crazy as crazy like a fox, but honestly, when you're self-delusional enough, I'm not sure that there's a real distinction, if people are happy enough in your personal reality distortion field that they're willing to pay you to be able to bask in it. The first comment in the post that Roy linked to is from someone who claims that Obama could lose San Francisco. That's all you need to know about that particular kool-aid kult. If, by some freak chance, Romney did win, DuJan would keep on keepin' on through resentment that Mittens didn't appoint Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell to key posts, plus of course his ongoing war against people of color in Chicago (a great deal of his hate for Obama seems to be rooted in anger that Boystown isn't kept a white, upper-middle-class gay male enclave).
Wiping your ass with the face of an actual real welfare queen? RIMJOBS FOR JESUS!!! Confession, I just wanted to write "rimjobs for Jesus", a phrase shockingly absent from the t00bz.
Sad to say, it's probably true that a President Romney will get more cooperation from the Democrats. Because Dems always try to make lemonade out of shit, even if it is unpalatable.
I wonder how long it will take for the Christians to return to hating the filthy heathen Mormons. My prediction? Before the balloons hit the floor at the start of Obama's victory speech.
"Romney was not my first, second, or third choice, but I will crawl over ground glass to vote for him."
ReplyDeleteI guess that would chafe if you crawled far enough.
these people of the Right "stood in line for hours at Chick-fil-A restaurants to buy chicken sandwiches in response to politicians' bullying,"
ReplyDeleteMitt Romney: Just as important as a chicken sandwich!
A shitty chicken sandwich. Nate Silver rates the odds of gastrointestinal distress at seventy-eight percent.
ReplyDeleteAl Sharpton will scream 'RACISTS! THIS IS ALL RACIST-ISM!'
ReplyDeleteThere's a word that would seem to characterize the assumption that a black TV commentator would be unable to speak the English language. I can't quite put my finger on it, though.
Mitt with his arms around Tagg and Matt: chickenhawk sandwich.
ReplyDeleteElection or no election, the right doesn't need any reason or season to freak out. Yet more horrifying humor awaits us no matter the outcome.
ReplyDeleteAw, shit, y'know, these people are always mortally offended by something, and usually out of all proportion to the purported offense. Say, "the sky is blue," and a chorus rises up in outraged defense of the color-blind.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't going to listen to the "biased liberal media," and they aren't about to agree with the so-called liberals, and there's no one in their own ranks willing to tell them to "just shut the fuck up, will you, for the sake of everyone's sanity," so, I suspect that, like predators without enemies in the environment, the whackdoodles are going to dominate the landscape for some time to come. If we're lucky, they'll start eating each other before they've destroyed too much of the political ecosystem.
One thing's for certain, though--if Obama comes out on November 7th and sees his shadow, we get four more years of nuclear winter inside the Beltway. They won't just be frothing at the mouth every moment. They'll be spewing bile like Linda Blair spews pea soup, and the air will be thick with acid fumes. We have not yet plumbed the depths of pettiness to which these rancorous nincompoops can descend.
That cartoon was incoherent even by Chris Muir standards.
ReplyDeleteIt's not often I look at something on the internet and say, "What the hell was that?!?" But then I prefer to spend quality time with the sane.
Photo ID for Democrats, ground glass for Republicans. I could live with that.
ReplyDelete"A lot of Republicans -- and, judging from polls, a lot of independents
ReplyDelete-- feel this way. If there are enough of them, Romney will win, and win
big."
Uh, yeah, if enough people vote for Romney, he will win.
The guy gets paid to write this?
Revenge is a dish best served with arugula. And brown mustard. And Swiss cheese. And orange juice ...
ReplyDeleteA masterpiece. i got worried that Dick Morris was going soft on us what with his hedging due to Sandy, but he's rallied: In this special Presidential Election video commentary, I discuss how, by campaigning and not governing during Superstorm Sandy's recovery and by his partisan remarks, Obama blew his last chance to win! Tune in!
ReplyDeletewithout a doubt, it's been the best election ever. i feel it in my gut, you see, and my guts are the polls.
ReplyDeleteObama studied law in graduate school. In history graduate school, you don't focus on fucking aphorisms. What you mean is, if Obama had watched the History Channel a lot, he might have recalled ... the famous words of Yamamoto, and then looked at some rightwing sites, and intoned, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with terrible resolve. Oh, wait, no--that's gas, not resolve."
ReplyDeleteHey, at least they haven't gotten around to claiming that more empty acres and fence posts voted for Rmoney, like they did with Bush in 2000. But if it's close, expect it to go there.
ReplyDeleteJesus Christ. I've read maybe a dozen Chris Muir strips; I felt like I knew what to expect. But this was like some kind of experimental art installation designed to be read in any order-- although the order it's actually presented in is the most confusing one, because first you get the ISLAM DOOM images and then you end up with "eh, Obama's probably going to lose anyway."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is in expecting it to make sense.
ReplyDeleteIt's not supposed to. Rightwing memes do not succeed or fail based on coherence, but rather on their ability to press the correct buttons. It's not supposed to be funny, or wry, or make sense - it's only intended to push the "seekrit MOOSLEM" button in the rightwing lizard-brain.
I have paid my dues with Muir cartoons and will not look at this one. The dialogue always reminds me of the guy who has cut Garfield out of Garfield cartoons. They are sure gonna freak out on the 7th.
ReplyDeleteNate Silver needs to stop looking at data objectively and realize Obama is going to lose by a million electoral votes!
ReplyDeleteConservatism: The endless search for a superior moral justification for hating gays.
ReplyDeleteI've heard his kidneys do quantity surveying at night.
ReplyDeleteGround glass...isn't that sand? He basically says he will crawl along a beach to vote for Romney. Presumably his pina colada having too little rum will make it the equivalent of Omaha Beach.
ReplyDeleteI've always heard that, and it certainly gives a nice dramatic touch to the history, but is there any evidence that a top admiral in the Japanese military actually made such a defeatist statement AFTER carrying out what he clearly must have seen as a disastrous strategic blunder? Really? It may be true, but I'm now curious about the evidence of such a flattering assessment of America by an enemy at the time.
ReplyDeleteBut the fact is, there exists no more powerful force on the planet than the combined prayers of millions of God’s people imploring their God tointervene and help them save their country. Combine the prayers of millions of Catholics to those of the Evangelicals and miracles WILL HAPPEN.
ReplyDeleteI can't keep up with current fads in Christian thought the way I did when I was younger, but as I remember it God was pretty explicit about His interest being confined to one country only. And Jesus Christ, He's sure fucked that one up.
I would pay good money for someone to set up a camera to watch Kevin Dujan as he watches MSNBC on election night.
ReplyDeleteI suspect someone on Fox will finally drop the N-word on Tuesday night.
Now put some chicken and homophobia in that and we've got a whole new fast food joint!
ReplyDeleteKrugman, as usual, had something to say on this subject, namely that many predict that if Romney wins, he WILL be able to work across the aisle simply because Dems aren't as mind-blowingly obstructionist as the Pugs, and he characterized a vote for Romney as giving in to blackmail. Me... I'd bet that Pugs are looking to get some revenge for 2001, when Bush's inaugural motorcade was booed and egged.
ReplyDeletedo i hear 8 million?
ReplyDeleteFrom the pissy tone, I've been assuming he usually had his kidneys do the talking.
ReplyDeleteOh, they have a lock on the post demographic. Bags of hammers, boxes of frogs and doorknobs too.
ReplyDeleteBuy the Romney fag-bashing special and get a free order of plutocracy! Pair it up with the Ryan combo and get a Supreme Court makeover and a road map to Gilead! Come back again in four years and earn your chance to wipe your ass with the face of an actual real welfare queen!*
ReplyDelete*for the purposes of this giveaway, 'welfare queen' is defined as any person having a net value of less than five million dollars. So you'll be using your own face, moocher.
One could argue that their obstructionism was largely to deprive Obama of a second term, and that more of the same would harm their chances in 2016, so they should be more amenable to compromise. But that argument would only apply to sane people, so who knows?
ReplyDeleteCampaigning: appointing someone competent to run FEMA, coordinating with state and local officials, touring storm sites in safe states, arranging for the military to provide gasoline
ReplyDeleteGoverning: Conducting an Ohio photo-op rally to hand out "Fire Obama" shirts under the cover of collecting canned goods that the Red Cross doesn't want.
Okay, off to update Dickipedia.
I can't keep up with current fads in Christian thought the way I did when I was younger
ReplyDeleteGiven that until a few weeks ago, Mormonism was still officially a cult, this is unsurprising.
And Jesus Christ, He's sure fucked that one up.
Well, it's not really His fault. Things would have been much better if the Jews hadn't rejected Jesus, but had instead become Christians ... like a non-negligible percentage of the Palestinians SEGMENTATION FAULT (CORE DUMPED)
In a district Obama carried handily in 2008, early voting was suspended due to a bomb scare. Talk radio host Teri O'Brien announced she would ask her guest that night "whether democrats are planting fake bombs in Winter Park, FL."
ReplyDeleteUh-oh.. She's cannily conflating "calling in fake bomb threats about non-existent bombs" with "planting fake bombs." NOW who's making with the eleven-dimensional chess?
After how they got it to rain in Texas with all that prayer, I'd say we should be careful about making fun of these yayhoos.
ReplyDeleteWhy DOESN'T Nate Silver use more bigoted fried-chicken-buying in his model? And you wonder why he has skeptics!
ReplyDeleteIntriguing** how their theology dovetails so nicely with their approach to economics, isn't it? "Just you wait, thirty-year bonds will show some indications of real inflation someday, and it will all be the fault of the stimulus." "Hi, I'm Peter Schiff, and I've spent the past couple of decades predicting imminent bear markets every other month. In late 2008, I was proven right." "You see, godless Democrats? Prayer did bring rain in Texas ... eventually."
ReplyDelete**And by "intriguing," I naturally mean "Utterly unsurprising, and pathetic."
Er, I think he does. Just look at his electoral map, and see if you can figure out a correlation with eating shitty fast food just to affirm being a vicious ignorant authoritarian follower who hates fags.
ReplyDeleteThe only correlation I see on any electoral map is the same one that's been there since 1861.
ReplyDeleteApparently, it's now frowned upon in Christian circles to fuck your new fiancee before filing for divorce from your wife.
ReplyDeleteJust ask Dinesh D'Souza.
I don't think Kevin Dujan either expects or wants Romney to win. He may seem as daft as his followers, but he is really a con man from way back who believes only in PayPal. With a Romney win, his blog would have no reason to exist since its whole point is to pander to the worst instincts of people who are enraged by the sight of a black and/or Democrat president. His rosy predictions for Romney won't embarrass him at all, he has his "It was fraud, I tell ya!" posts already written and he can stretch this out for months. In the meantime, he's enjoying the new hits on his blog. He's even selling cookware!
ReplyDeleteAnd for afters, a latte (sipped in the most liberally effete manner, obviously).
ReplyDeleteI dunno - seems to me there's more of a cloacal quality to all of it.
ReplyDeleteAfter many awful months of drought in Texas, way back, I did a topless rain dance on a back porch, by myself, and it worked. So there.
ReplyDeleteWoah, are you guys talking about the Chris Muir "Bartender-girl's fever dream of gate of vienna pushback"? I actually get it--we are "free" and without chains because Christians eat both pork meat and whores. I mean, wait...let me come in again.
ReplyDeleteAlso the "We'll show those liberals!" button.
ReplyDeleteWell, in my defense:
ReplyDelete(1) those correlations overlap, and
(2) the peculiar theocratic right-wing authoritarianism of 1861 has unfortunately managed to win a few converts since then, unless we let Pynchon draw the Mason-Dixon Line for us.
Five cents, please.
ReplyDeleteThe fee will be waived if you stop there, rather than pursuing the "pork" thing any further.
Creme fraiche is a communist plot.
ReplyDeleteWell, DUH! I mean, who DOESN'T know that the Rain God likes tits?
ReplyDeleteLong Pig At the "Y" (bandname)
ReplyDelete[Scoots stool closer]
ReplyDeletePray, continue ...
I think it's actually worse than that: something on the order of "Islam sucks, except that part about consent being meaningless because your wife is literally your property a la Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm", ha ha, just kidding, sort of." Chris Muir's one remarkable talent, if you want to call it that, in a career of submediocre scribbling and frantic dogwhistling to the choir, is his ability to digitize the tactile sensation of slime.
ReplyDeletePray, continue
ReplyDeleteIs there nothing prayer can't do?!
Consider also the Egyptian sky goddess Nut [NSFW, unless you work in a museum]
ReplyDeleteOne could have made similar predictions in 1996 about Clinton's second term, and how, exactly, did that turn out?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't have said it better myself.
ReplyDeleteA great deal of the problem is that there's a near-complete disconnect between the writing and the art. The art doesn't even have to be that detailed--Randall Munroe of xkcd gets much better emotional expression out of stick figures*--but Muir wastes effort on fussy little things like getting the liquor bottles and beer pulls right (there's at least three brands that should be instantly identifiable if you have even a modest awareness of booze) while as per usual sadly neglecting his people, who look severely embarrassed to be there, like actors roped into mouthing the lines of the world's shittiest playwright.
ReplyDelete*Unless he's doing a straight-up infographic like this one--the sort of gorgeous, stunningly-detailed work you'd expect of a future society in which Edward Tufte is bigger than Jesus.
I've occasionally wondered myself whether DuJan was not so much crazy as crazy like a fox, but honestly, when you're self-delusional enough, I'm not sure that there's a real distinction, if people are happy enough in your personal reality distortion field that they're willing to pay you to be able to bask in it. The first comment in the post that Roy linked to is from someone who claims that Obama could lose San Francisco. That's all you need to know about that particular kool-aid kult. If, by some freak chance, Romney did win, DuJan would keep on keepin' on through resentment that Mittens didn't appoint Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell to key posts, plus of course his ongoing war against people of color in Chicago (a great deal of his hate for Obama seems to be rooted in anger that Boystown isn't kept a white, upper-middle-class gay male enclave).
ReplyDeleteWhy DOESN'T Nate Silver use more bigoted fried-chicken-buying in his model? And you wonder why he has skeptics!
ReplyDeleteI would like to apply the secret sauce to this comment. And by secret sauce, I mean grease.
That cartoon was incoherent even by Chris Muir standards.
ReplyDeleteIncoherent? More Kantian nihilism from the Left, I see.
In the aggregate, twelve out of eleven devotees of deep-fried, factory-mangled chicken think Nate Silver is light in the loafers.
ReplyDeleteWiping your ass with the face of an actual real welfare queen? RIMJOBS FOR JESUS!!! Confession, I just wanted to write "rimjobs for Jesus", a phrase shockingly absent from the t00bz.
ReplyDeleteMuir wastes effort on fussy little things like getting the liquor bottles and beer pulls right
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing he applied filters to photos, because his figures prove he is incapable of actually drawing things the way they look.
Any employer who would fire you over this is actually doing you a favor. Life's too short to work for an asshole.
ReplyDeleteSad to say, it's probably true that a President Romney will get more cooperation from the Democrats. Because Dems always try to make lemonade out of shit, even if it is unpalatable.
ReplyDeletei'm doing election stuff in a swing state. what i'm hearing in the office would chill your bones, gang.
ReplyDeleteNow that's a return to good old-fashioned entertainment
ReplyDeleteI wonder how long it will take for the Christians to return to hating the filthy heathen Mormons. My prediction? Before the balloons hit the floor at the start of Obama's victory speech.
ReplyDeleteDon't sell yourself short.
ReplyDelete