Sunday, October 06, 2013
NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...
...about the shutdown and rightbloggers' extraordinary efforts to shift the blame from the crew of wreckers in the House to Obama. They're extra frothy on this subject, but that's what usually happens with their major campaigns; with neither the law nor the facts on their side, there's nothing left to pound but the table. I do mention why this might work better for them this time than it has in the recent past. But when the fever's on them, there's always a chance they'll screw it up regardless. That's part of what makes them such fun to watch.
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So, it's looking like the "tsunami of rightblogger bullshit" is heading for the Fukushima that is the Tea Party. May they be beau coup fuku'd before the 17th arrives.
ReplyDeleteThe image of the right-wing saying, "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" made me almost laugh at these horrible, rotten motherfuckers. Thanks, Roy.
ReplyDeleteWell, they're still as petty and grandstanding as Gingrich, but this time they have even more idiot noise on their side.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Tom hanks build that WWII memorial with his own fucking hands?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but that memorial is strictly for the antifacist vets. I guess we ought to vomit up another one for "guys waiting around for the next opportunity to fight for the interests of the Vichy French"..
a Republican 'offensive' toward the American people. Start to seduce cockslap them...
ReplyDeleteFixed
We need to consult with the living members of this group for suggestions.
ReplyDeletePremature facism is the Hitler of Republican something.
ReplyDeleteA pretty good roundup of the loose stool-like commentary from The Brethren. Given that the most recent poll taken before the shutdown put Congress' favorable rating at a mere 10%, with more blaming Repubs than Dems for that sorry reputation, I doubt seriously that forcing a shutdown and an impending default over the ACA has turned around that assessment by the public, especially when the polls are showing that many of the complaints about ACA (apart from those of the rigid right-wing naysayers) are that it doesn't go far enough, or that it can and ought to be improved--not exactly an overwhelming dismissal of it out of hand, which the leaping screamers are claiming to be the case.
ReplyDeleteThere was, leading up to Oct. 1, a distinct cry coming from the Hill that sounded a lot like "Hold mah beer, an' watch this."
They've gone over the bridge abutment, but they're still in free fall and haven't hit the river yet, so it's probably not a coincidence that the freshman class of Republicans--and their cheerleaders--don't realize that they're the set-up for a Jeff Foxworthy punchline.
The best way to put all this memorial trouble to rest is to build our own Sepp Dietrich memorial to anticommunism, complete with a bronze bas-relief of Sepp marching with whatever right wing phantasm is making the pink cocks drip. Hey motherfuckers! Speech is free!
ReplyDeleteStop it Roy! An Associate Law Professor at one of the Minor Ivies did not write "Barry-cades", that's impossible..looking right now...looking...oh shit, right there in the sub-title. Um - where did I put those cyanide tablets.
ReplyDelete"Is there anyone in the Obama administration with common sense?" Charen asked.
ReplyDeleteI think for Charen "common sense" means only jamming the salad fork into an electrical socket, not the dessert fork. The entire right wing seems to think this woman is one of the leading intellectual lights of the movement. What a mindblowing circumstance it will be if they're right.
I love that shot of the WWII monument - ugly POS that it is - but makes it look like something out of the Helen Gahagan Douglas production of "She" - Pink Lady's Revenge!
ReplyDeleteThe "Obama Shutdown" talking point merely underlines basic wingnut ignorance of governance and how it works. It can hardly be "Obama's shutdown" when he's yet to be presented with a bill for funding the government. You'd think the most patriotic Americans would know this shit.
ReplyDeleteAnd basic math, history, spelling, hell, just give us a straw to cling to.
ReplyDeleteIf you find those tablets, first offer them to Jacobson. He apparently needs them more than you do.
ReplyDeleteUm, for Charen, common sense means sticking one's tongue in the light socket, to first see what it tastes like before using the fork....
ReplyDeleteYou would think that. But, you'd be wrong.
ReplyDeleteNo straws. Just straw men, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteYou want to hear some real idiot noise? Wait until the SS checks stop coming, Medicare is shut down and all of Medicare's mobility vendors start repossessing their Hoverounds....
ReplyDeleteIt'll make Alex Jones seem almost sane.
They're past masters at spinning straw into gulled.
ReplyDeleteIf only Obama were as conniving and dastardly as the whingers fantasize (when they're not fantasizing him as feckless), and he could target the oldsters with this shutdown, it would have been over before it started.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who finds Roger L. Simon's idea that Republicans "start to seduce" people thoroughly creepy? Does he plan to mail them a PUA manual? "Hey, bitch, you drunk yet?"
ReplyDeleteI was impressed by the HotAir "writer" who demanded someone "staunch the bleeding."
ReplyDeleteCommon sense is what told people the earth was flat. It took some old-fashioned Greek mathematics to prove it was a spheroid.
ReplyDeleteIt's bizarre to hear the cognitive dissonance of people who have kvetched about the evils of government now complaining that government has ground to a halt. The baggers have gotten everything they ever wished for, and now they're blaming "big government liberals"?
ReplyDeleteIt's going to take billions of Koch/Adelson dollars to dig big enough memory holes to dump this kerfuffle. Even Peter King, shitbag that he is, is blaming his co-GOPers.
Neo-liberal economics has made it a flat earth again except this time it's covered with spherical elephants.
ReplyDeletePJ Media Ozymandias Roger L. Simon thought this would be a great time for "a Republican 'charm offensive' toward the American people. Start to seduce them... This doesn't mean, of course, you don't tell the truth. This isn't rehashed 'compassionate conservatism.' It's more pragmatic than that -- and frankly more cynical."
ReplyDeleteIt isn't rehashed "compassionate conservatism", it's "baby, I won't come in your mouth this time, HONEST" conservatism. Conservethejism?
Are they pounding that table with a shoe?
ReplyDeleteThat's what they should really do to show they mean bizness.
They're getting everything they want--the hated government is shut down, and we're going to default on the debt. But they realize that the incredible damage this is doing (and will do) to the economy and the country will be pinned on them by everyone except the crazy 27%.
ReplyDeleteSo, time to panic! Damn that black man in the White House for making us do what we wanted to do!
I thought it was Tom Brokaw...
ReplyDeleteWell, the shut down might have been over--I understand that one RWCongressman was asked "what about medicare" when he was bloviating about Obamacare being so, so, very, very governmenty wrong and he just answered, blandly "What does medicare have to do with it?" But the seniors and the right wing still would not acknowledge that medicare was a government run program. They would just blame Obama for having cut off their checks. These people are very well defended, psychically, from ever undrestanding anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteOh come ON people--"straw into gulled" deserves all the upvotes our system can manage.
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression that nothing could have been more transparently cynical than compassionate conservativism--especially after it was demonstrated that all pictures of Bush within a few inches of the phrase "compassionate conservativism" was him hugging black people.
ReplyDelete"Folks these are not my words, they are President Obama's words"), and was deluged with comments warning him it was bullshit
ReplyDelete("That is not the correct photo - that is the Milwaukee Art Museum in
Milwaukee WI") before Free Patriot took the page down (our link is to a
cached version)."
Curses!!!!... even Google Cache has been overrun by the evil, 'Murrica hating Libtard hordes!!11!!1
AND Obama has agreed to sign a CR that continues the sequester-level spending cuts. Can you imagine the health care reform we could have had if Dems could learn to fight as ruthlessly as the Pugs?
ReplyDeleteExactly. Wait until the debt default. When the Tea Party geriatrics don't get their Social Security checks Obama's deliberate malice against them will fuel Fox headlines for a month. Resentment always trumps Reality in WingerWorld, where even misdirected outrage is like a crystal meth rush.
ReplyDelete"... wrote Ginzburg. "...[The Administration] has made efforts to
ReplyDeletedeal with Syria, Iran, and the Taliban --- but it is simply refusing to
look for common ground with Republicans."
And when Piers Morgan, Michele Cottle, and Jennifer Granholm (whom I LOVE...), among others, suggested that Syria, Iran, and the Taliban were more reasonable than the Teabaggers, the lynching parties formed outside their homes...
I thought they were storming Nuerenberg?
ReplyDeleteThe shutdown is both the greatest thing since sliced bread AND evidence of Obummer's evil-doing! Yes, if you're a Republican you can have everything both ways!
ReplyDeleteBut..but..but...he SAID he wouldn't negotiate!
ReplyDeleteWell, at least Simon's finally admitting that no one's paying attention to him.
ReplyDeleteIn the roundabout way that won't necessarily trigger a cutoff of funds from whoever is paying him. No shutdown for PJ, which is the real tragedy here.
If the stock market tanks, the Kochs and Adelsons are going to remind the teabagger wing who really holds the strings.
ReplyDeleteKeep a staph upper lip.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing neither of you has seen the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA, which makes the WWII memorial look like the Arc d'Triumph. There aren't even many images on the web, and with good reason: it's about as photogenic as a Jiffy Lube. It actually contains--and I am not making this up--a sculptural feature called "The Overlord Arch".
ReplyDeleteUm, I think the Koch's holdings are mostly privately held companies. The market still matters, but not as much, to them.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to know that the Party of Personal Responsibility has decided that running up the credit card and then dodging the bill is some other guy's fault.
ReplyDeleteThe buck stops over there somewhere.
True, plus the Koch's major source of income is oil and gas, which they will gladly sell to any international buyer. That's rather the point behind the Keystone pipeline and markets in China. The US may slip back into a serious recession, but the Koch's are willing to go there in order to cash in their investment in US politicians. They're so well diversified and so damned rich that they could care less if they tank the US and world economy in pursuit of their Kill The New Deal and Anything That Looks Like It goal.
ReplyDelete"Bordering" meaning, on the other side of the border, right?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I mean, even if the WWII memorial didn't look like that, Vadum's comment would be hilarious given that I can't think of better jack-off ground for aspiring fascists than a fucking war memorial.
ReplyDeleteThe resemblance to the fever dream of a cut-rate Albert Speer just makes it extra special.
This. "Resentment Trumps Reality" should be engraved, in Latin, across the lintel of every Tea Party member from coast to mighty coast. Oh, all right. In English. Phonetically.
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't mean, of course, you don't tell the truth.
ReplyDeleteLOLWhut? Nothing is, or can be, more cynical that a PJ Media scribe calling on his readers and colleagues to "of course" tell the truth. Or is it all a joke? Have I just lost my sense of humor? Damn.
I want to give this comment a standing ovation FROM A SAFE DISTANCE.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's to spare the fork from being damaged. People are coming any minute for dinner!
ReplyDeleteYeah, but what sort of payment are the Kochs expecting to receive? Gold specie? Busloads of 15-year-old virgins? Yuan? Giant stone coins from Yap?
ReplyDeleteToo late for your article, but Jonah Goldberg just farted, in his usual fashion, that the shutdown is the GOP's fault, but its continuance is Obama's. I did not bother to read further; I don't get paid to read his stuff. That's Roy's job.
ReplyDeleteTom Tomorrow is way ahead of poor Roger.
ReplyDeletehttp://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/40020/lightbox/TMW2013-07-17color.png?1373636733
It looks like a NASCAR test track and repair facility. (Which maybe is the point.)
ReplyDeletePounding the table, all right. With a spoon, from a high chair.
ReplyDeleteGiant stone coins are a good hedge against inflation. Learned that in Ron Paul's newsletter.
ReplyDeleteWow. I just googled that thing and it's unspeakably hideous.
ReplyDeleteThey've had those things around since the last shitdown. They're more Newticades than Barry-cades.
ReplyDeleteI am wrong for wishing that Obama and the Dems would "leak" a "secret" memo detailing where/when/how much they are planning to take when they arrest the Koch brothers after the crash. You know, something headed:
ReplyDeleteLIST OF BILLIONAIRES WHOSE ASSETS WILL BE SEIZED TO HELP PAY FOR THE COSTS OF THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN/CREDIT BREACH.
a sculptural feature called "The Overlord Arch".
ReplyDeleteYou laugh now, but just wait until I've acquired enough neodymium to render it fully operational.
Oh, it's not all bad. I compliment Matthew Vadum for this observation:
ReplyDelete"As a whiff of fascism blows through the nation's capital,"
Why, yes, an angry legislative minority attacking the very legitimacy of the current government, and destabilizing it through deliberate sabotage, are indeed hallmarks of fascist power grabs. As is the hollow fetishization of the military once again so amply demonstrated by GOP members of Congress. So, kudos to you, Mr. Vadum, for recognizing the ongoing Nazification of your party. But what remedies do you sug-
the president is demonstrating to the whole world how revoltingly out-of-control the hyper-bloated U.S. government..."
Oh, whoops, sorry. I briefly mistook you for someone who wasn't just another illiterate Constitution-shredding seditious psychopath. Please, carry on pushing for an Enabling Act to stop those democratically elected fascists in their tracks. Don't worry, irony's ashes were scattered long ago.
Asking why Obama negotiates with Iran and not Tea Party Republicans is not a good idea.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think Obama SHOULD sit down and negotiate. He shouldn't actually GIVE them anything... in fact, he should start off by saying: "You know that CR to continue funding the government at sequestration levels? Well fuck that. I want a list of tax loopholes that you said you wanted to talk about last year by tomorrow. I want a list of corporate subsidies you're willing to cut in the name of "sharing the pain". And I'm NOT renegotiating the Affordable Care Act, since you yutzes have never proposed anything like an alternative except to keep the parts of the ACA you like without spending money on them. Then he should turn to David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos and ask: "How's that for negotiations?"
ReplyDeleteI find this entire shut-down and now, imminent default quite tediously predictable, pretty much since Obama was elected, although the crisis would be precipitated over 'foreign policy'. Hasn't anyone ever worked in a company which got it's first minority or women exec or supervisor before? Everybody breathes a big sigh of relief and says "Good, they finally got a decent scapegoat around here."
ReplyDelete"Resentment trumps reality"
ReplyDeleteThat's it.
It sure as hell got mine! I bet it was a woman thought it up, too! Oh well, I've suffered from Venus envy most of my life.
ReplyDelete"You laugh now, but just wait until I've acquired enough neodymium"
ReplyDeleteSo that's why all the damn magnets are gone from my speakers!
Have you seen the Super-Power machines (The, I am not kidding, "Pain Station" and the "Oiliness Table" among others) in the soon-to-be-operational Scientology building in Clearwater Fla?
ReplyDeleteTony Ortega's "Underground Bunker" is the place to follow Scientology's swan squeal.
Or, since atttaching a bunch of ransom demands is exactly the republic-destroying behavior that should be discouraged, perhaps Obama shouldn't make it even easier for the MSM baboons to continue flogging "Both sides do it," by giving them an actual example of both sides doing it. It's better for him to say, "You want to negotiate? Fund a clean emergency CR at existing sequestration levels. Then appoint the conference committee that you've spent the past six months blocking because you've refused to negotiate over the Senate's better-than-sequester-level budget." Of course, "I'm NOT renegotiating the Affordable Care Act" can stay in there. Bringing the Senate's languishing budget proposal front-and-center would manage to highlight just how uninterested in "negotiation" the GOP is, while still not stooping to emulating their toddler tantrum tactics, even to make a point. "The Senate passed a budget months ago. Where have you been, Senator Cruz?"
ReplyDeleteLeading to the inevitable "Speakers: how the fuck do they work?" Which, lo and behold, manages to be on-topic.
ReplyDeleteCountry First! Right after foot-stomping and blame-laying!
ReplyDeleteHaha ugh, I was just reading a Facebook comment where someone wrote to the effect of, "Ever since Obama gave that speech denouncing Christianity and celebrating Islam, I expect the very worst from him." People be readin' a lotta cached pages...
ReplyDeleteZounds that D-Day memorial is not good. I don't know what's its worst quality -- the Overlord Arch, the grotesque diorama of just four lonely bronze statues wading/dying in the fountain to seize the granite beach (did Virginia run out of money for a whole mediocre-artwork platoon? Somehow I feel like this bad art would be better if there was more of it) -- or is the worst thing the Mickey Mouse shape of it all:
ReplyDeleteEVERYONE WALKING THROUGH THE PARK SERVICE BARRICADES AT CLOSED PARKS IS GOING ON AN NSA AND IRS LIST.
ReplyDeleteNOT BEING ABLE TO PEE IN A NATIONAL PARK SERVICE BATHROOM IS TYRANNY! AN OUTRAGE AS BAD AS A THOUSAND BENGHAZIS!11!
ReplyDeleteHey, folks, here's some good news. Judge Scalia is 77.5 years old and fat.
ReplyDeleteThat's why his name is Tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteIt would be funny if Obama announced that he was going to withdraw our troops from the mid-East now, decriminalize illegal drugs and direct most of the DEA's funding to drug treatment, oh and replace Eric Holder with Glenn Greenwald. Sigh. Oh yeah. I bet they'd pass the budget in a flash, and the debt limit too.
ReplyDeleteAnd the stock market tanking wouldn't affect them negatively? Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteA few people (mostly wishful-thinking progressives) have been suggesting that Obama ought to be upping the ante with a new demand for each passing day. No movement on Day One? Demand passage of a bill to fully fund alternative energy research. Nothing on Day Two? Demand passage of bill for single-payer. Day Three, expand Social Security, etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, that's so far beyond what this administration has deemed possible that it's very, very unlikely, but at this point in the impasse, it couldn't hurt. There's no small number of wackos in Congress that really think they're going to win something by this, and Obama has yet to convince them it's a losing strategy. Maybe he can't. Maybe no one can. It's pretty much impossible to negotiate with the clinically insane.
They've done a pretty good job of insulating themselves from shocks here. One article I read, a few months ago, said that they've really added to their personal cash reserves by making a killing on interest swaps derivatives. They may have made more money on those than on their core businesses, betting on Italy and Greece going further in the tank. I have little doubt that they would do the same thing here if there was a chance to make a buck on it. So the market self-destructs? They've got the reserves to pick up assets cheap. They seem to take very seriously Andrew Mellon's aphorism that "it is during depressions that assets return to their rightful owners." And someone like Charlie Koch, who thinks he's entitled to have it all, definitely thinks he's that rightful owner.
ReplyDeleteIf you were looking for poster children for predatory capitalism, you couldn't do better than the Koch brothers.
When even an architectural ignoramus like myself can see that something's a shitshow, it's pretty much got to be a Category 3 or higher. That memorial either makes me incredibly depressed or furious, given the amount of time. money, and effort that went into it. I'd be surprised if it sees more than 2000 visitors a year.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that there's a smaller divide between disaster capitalism and chaos than we'd all like to think. I am sure the Kochs grind their teeth with envy when they look at how Russia's plutocrats got away with looting that country. But shoving the global economy off a cliff because you think you're well positioned to make a grab for the pieces is a plan that's got so many ways to go pear-shaped. As anyone who stayed awake in their economics class can tell you, once something is gone from the market, it doesn't matter how much money you have: it can't be bought.
ReplyDeleteBy "something", of course, I am referring to such minor details as the protection of a state, the better to enforce your profitable contracts and keep every other wannabe John Galt from stealing anything of yours that isn't bolted to the ground.
And I shoot from the hip.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't mean you don't tell the truth... Or DOES it? You'll never know, sheeple!
ReplyDeleteWow. In a long history of semi-tipsy late-night drivebys this may be my proudest moment, considering the rarefied milieu. I'm honored by the overwhelming response to this flippant quip!
ReplyDeleteThought process: Hmmmm, straw: there must be a clever reference thereto... let's see, what are some common cultural references to straw? "Needle in a haystack," nope... Ahh, "Straw into gold?"
A mental search for playwords on "gold" quickly turned up "gulled" as particularly apt, and I thank you all for your appreciation of its appropriateness.
Oh, and Mooser: I'm a dood, but thanks for the compliment.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, sane people acknowledge what you say as true. But, these guys are not sane. Looking at it from their point of view, the state as currently composed is an imposition--it's inhibiting them. Protection of their assets? As the courts have shown, they're the thieves from whom other people need protection.
ReplyDeleteIs there a line they'd cross which would ensure their undoing? Sure. But, they've reportedly put $200 million into campaigns leading up to precisely the default most everyone else hopes doesn't happen, so I suspect that they already have a strategy in place to profit from it. Shorting the dollar, snatching up companies out of bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, who knows? Maybe they're just entrenching a group of politicians that will get most of what they want for them in a hobbled, ineffectual government. I'm not sure, but with the kind of money they have behind them ($72 billion net worth according to the last Forbes list), they have the capability to be world-class bullies.
One thing's for sure, though--if they think they can make big money on an economic collapse, they're damned sure working toward that end.
Of course I'll never understand the warped mentality that drives billionaires to provoke chaos in hopes of reaping even greater riches and power-- which is one of many reasons I haven't even managed to reach mere millionaire status.
ReplyDeleteThere's an upper limit built into the system?
ReplyDeleteAFAF
He does tend to Yap on endlessly.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood the weird kind of super-greed than seems to develop in some people who strike it rich. Once you're a billionaire... what the fuck is the point. Enjoy spending it, instead of making others miserable.
ReplyDeleteThe more general misery there is, the more the contrast between your status and the little peeps.
ReplyDeleteAnd "spending it?" Are you nuts, or just missing the whole point of big money's ultimate purpose?
I just scanned eBay quickly, and there aren't nearly enough tempting offerings that would make a noticeable dent in a billion. It's a sad, lonely world out there.
ReplyDeleteMy Estonian colleagues will be relieved to learn that the Tallinn Independence Victory Column is *not* the world's ugliest architectural waste of money after all.
ReplyDeleteWhat, dying with the most toys and having your last word be rosebud?
ReplyDeleteIt's blackly entertaining that the Kochs are rapidly becoming the world's best argument in favor of the one thing they fear and hate the most: confiscatory taxation.
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is, they probably do fear and hate confiscatory taxation more than being very slowly and painfully killed by an enraged mob re-enacting the murder of Emperor Andronikos I. Presumably they figure a private army will protect them from the latter, while it's slightly harder to hide from the IRS. (Personally, I'd go with "both/and" rather than "either/or," but that's
ReplyDeletebecause I'm overflowing with rage about these vicious thieving parasitic
Krupp wannabes.)
Yeah, but you realize why he can be so certain that Satan literally exists, right?
ReplyDelete... Also, that's actually only good news if Democrats retain the Senate and abolish the judicial filibuster. Because you think you're seeing a deranged tantum of intellectual diarrhea right now? Imagine if Obama dared to try replacing Scalia with anyone to the left of Roland Freisler, minus the intellectual honesty.
ReplyDeleteAre they providing bunkers for the extended families of their private army? Because when you've got a half-dozen ex-Blackwater guys hanging around all day, it can get unhealthy to crack jokes about those schmucks that croaked in a food riot--you never know whose sister/aunt/best friend was there.
ReplyDeleteYup. I've long been of the opinion that the old rates of taxation minimized the political mischief that the oligarchs could do--especially when a lot of that mischief was focused on increasing the profitability of their operations. Yes, it was still possible for them to funnel money into suspect hands (as old Joe Coors did giving money to the Contras, but that didn't directly affect either his brewing or ceramics operations). What the Kochs are doing, often, is encouraging a lot of bomb-throwing so they can make financial gains under that cover of confusion. I guessing that the Waltons are, too, to a lesser degree.
ReplyDeleteToo bad that the crazy people with too much money in this country aren't into castle-building.
The Tallinn monument is comparatively a model of restraint. You could at least give it an offensive nickname and drink beers under it when you're in high school.
ReplyDeleteVadum:
ReplyDelete"And it's not just BLOATED, no sir... why, it's HYPER bloated! Revoltingly out-of-control hyper bloated!!11! (did I make my point, or do I need more hyperbole? Aw, screw it... to much is NEVER enough)
No... no... the Mickey Mouse thing HAD to be an accident, right? RIGHT???
ReplyDeleteOh, weird! He attacks Republicans in addition to all that Droney stuff?
ReplyDeleteStand AT LEAST four inches away.
ReplyDelete