Some quick thoughts before everybody heads out for Memorial Day weekend to whatever little slice of heaven (I remain here in the pestilential Capital, watching the frontier):
• The American Spring folks who decidedly failed to overthrow ObamaHitler last Friday were good for a laugh, but I have to say I feel for them. Granted, when they're united in a reactionary electoral force to keep the country down, as they have been for decades, they're harder to sympathize with. But when I see them in small numbers howling on the Mall, unable to do America much damage and maybe even livening up some tourists' day, my resistance is reduced and I can see that they have genuine complaints. For example, they're pissed about the VA hospitals and a lot of other things that leaders who gave a shit about America might help fix. But they don't send that kind of people to Congress -- they send instead flim-flam men who make things worse, then tell them it was the dad-burned Gummint that made it bad because it can't do nothin' right nohow. And they tell them all would be well if the Kenyan Pretender and his socialist comrades were turned out of office, and encourage them to imagine themselves the heirs of the original Tea Party: Revolutionaries with the right and the means to overthrow. Fox News does its bit, announcing that "a group of self-described revolutionary-style patriots with a million mobilized militia members are heading to downtown Washington, D.C.," as if it were something other than a pathetic delusion. "A million" perhaps share the fantasy, but their suburban inertia will always keep them from exerting themselves to realize it, apart from hanging a confederate flag in the garage or yelling at the teevee -- only this ragtag band actually walked the walk, and they raged for the cameras, crying that they'd been betrayed, but not knowing, as I once observed of the Sarah Palin Army, that they were marked for betrayal all along.
• I've been asking on Twitter but maybe you guys don't go in for microblogging, so: Can someone tell me what gives with the Right's recent hard-on for the Export-Import Bank? I've seen it on and off for years but in the past few months there's been a buttload of ecrasez-l'infame among the brethren -- including this typically muddled Jonah Goldberg thumbsucker, which all but screams "did I get the talking points right, Mr. Koch? I added some of my signature farrrrrrRRRt." My best guess is, 1.) Victory is easy -- the authorization expires in September, and 2.) the major complaint about the Bank seems to be "crony capitalism" -- which is a major Obama-era propaganda theme among conservatives -- and deauthorizing the Bank is one of the few things they can do that (as they believe) will show the voters that they're not just tools of big business without getting their hands slapped by major donors. What do you think?
• Conservative "reformers" like Ross Douthat with big plans to attract the masses to the GOP (remember the Party of Sam's Club? Good times!) have a hard row to hoe -- sensible people keep pointing out that Republicans crush the poor because they find the poor easy to crush, and even voters outside the reach of these sensible people are brought to the same conclusion by observation and common sense. In this blog post, Douthat acknowledges such observations "prove the case that the GOP includes a strong ideological tendency that cuts against what some of the reform-conservative essayists want to do." But -- I just love this -- "What they don’t prove, however, is that the current Republican Party could never be a vehicle for such a policy agenda." Don't stop believin'! For example, "The Democratic Party of the late 1970s and early 1980s stood rather firmly for all kinds of ideas (price controls, middle class tax increases) that the Democratic Party of the 1990s deliberately backed away from." In other words, the Democrats got more conservative, so Republicans should be able to get more -- not liberal, certainly, but conservative-with-an-explanation. Electoral gold! Interestingly, Douthat acknowledges that the "internal party debate... swung in [a] more Randian direction in 2009-2012," which leads one to wonder where Douthat thinks it's been swinging in 2013 and 2014. The Party of Rent-a-Center? Or of Singapore?
UPDATE.
• "They had a dream," starts Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard (interesting allusion, under the circumstances). "For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth..." Obama is the first person like this to rule since, it would seem, John Quincy Adams (Emery is unclear on this point), and Obama made Obamacare which everyone hates, so the judgment of history is clear: "They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done." Back to electing haberdashers and Nixons! Unfortunately the part where a disgusted electorate threw Obama out in 2012 is missing from the essay. Editing error?
My guesses about the EX-IM Bank are 1.) it's viewed now as part of (or manipulated by) Agenda 21, and thus needs to be stopped before it forces us to give up our dollars in exchange for the Can-Am-Mex currency. Or 2.) it's crony capitalism, arlight--just employing the wrong cronies at the moment.
ReplyDeleteAs for Douthat's brain fart, I remember well when that ultra-extreme leftist Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls. Damn those Demoncrat presidents who got elected as Republicans!
Well I guess I'm 140 characters of f'in chopped liver.
ReplyDeleteThey shuffled the deck and it's the import-export bank thing's turn in the three card monte game of election season media saturation. Something needs to be "reauthorized", like a debt ceiling, and all sorts of hay can be made.
ReplyDeleteThere could well be some special-pleading billionaire jiujitsu going on with the E-I Bank business. The major function of the bank is pretty much one thing--it vets the ability of foreign buyers of American goods and services to pay. If they are perceived to be able to pay, the American exporter gets a federal loan guarantee to complete the order.
ReplyDeleteThat sort of works against the ongoing program to move American production offshore. If your business model is to decapitate the American worker by destroying jobs and putting Americans into greater debt to make up the shortfall in income, well, the E-I Bank isn't helping with that. It might also be a ploy as part of a longer game to get repatriation of profits parked offshore. if the E-I Bank goes away, the multinationals might then be able to say that they need that money to finance exports and without getting it into the country at greatly reduced tax rates, the country's current account balance goes to hell.
One thing for sure, if it has anything to do with money, the real reasons for the intended action are going to be made as opaque as possible. Let's put it this way--the notion that the party that invented crony capitalism is now on a crusade to eliminate it is part of that process of obscuration.
Sorry, BEM, I thought you were kidding. Though it makes as much sense as anything else.
ReplyDeleteThis. Plus, think about the idea of the American people being informed. If your company or consortium wants to borrow over $100 million from the American people, you have to tell them how much you want, why you want it, and where it's going. And the American people can say "no". This is the literal antithesis of crony capitalism.
ReplyDeleteWe're up Shit Cleek without a paddle, man.
ReplyDelete~
. . . the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex . . .
ReplyDeleteAs the CEO of Artistic, Inc. said to the board of directors of Academic International Corp., "Just wait until we get the pundits on the production line churning out socialized medicine. THEN we'll see a workers' paradise!"
Then, too,
Shorter: "Rabble-rabble GLOBALISM something something!"
ReplyDeleteIt's odd that Emery doesn't mention Wilson, who is the obvious example of the kind of snobbish intellectual president they want to pretend Obama is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how do you make a list of aristocratic presidents with ties to the intellectual establishment and not mention H.W. Bush? Y'know, other than being a huge fucking partisan hack?
For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth...
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is a 'new deal' with our politicians, where we liberals search for 'new frontiers' with our candidates to find a politician that can tell an off the cuff joke or something. Sadly, all we have is a bestselling author who writes movingly about the father he never knew. It's obvious we need to go back to the salt-of-the-Earth types like FDR and JFK.
"They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This from the people who still believe in the Laffer Curve.
Also ignores the existence of Thomas Nast and Mark Fucking Twain, but I don't expect scholarship.
ReplyDeleteHell, they still claim Hoover was right.
ReplyDelete~
Speak of the devil, ol' Scratch hisself was on Fox yesterday to opine that raising the minimum wage was "anti-poor."
ReplyDeleteI tell ya, Hell's gonna be overflowing when the Reagan-era twits start dying off.
They don't actually believe in the Laffer Curve. In fact, I think a strong case can be made that nobody--not even Arthur Laffer himself--ever believed in the Laffer Curve as a basis for economic policy.
ReplyDeleteThe explanation that fits the evidence was offered up by Galbraith: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Unfortunately, they all seem to be immortal.
ReplyDeleteWell, Mencken wrote some things and said some other things, and if you squint kinda this way while hitting yourself on the head with a champagne bottle, you find that Mencken was just another extreme leftwinger. It's the same way that you come to the conclusion that Englishman in New York is a great conservative rock-n-roll song.
ReplyDeleteOh brother, I just tried to read the Emery thing. It goes on and on and it reads like a precocious, hilariously misinformed high school sophomore writing an essay about America from the point of view of an unnamed Lord of the Rings character. At least, the first third does. That was all I could take. Why can't these idiots ever put their terrible ideas in usable prose?
ReplyDeleteIIRC they go after the Import/Export bank periodically. I seem to remember that it is one of those things that have been focused grouped and tested with the rubes in the heartland. Its like the Alinsky of banks or maybe like some Jungian echo of the hatred of our agrarian forefathers for banking generally.
ReplyDeleteBut if you were to put it into a science fiction novel the story of a society or a civilization in which the novels of Ayn Rand and something scribbled on a cocktail napkin became the basis of a new religion/economic belief system you would be laughed out of the editors meeting. Or maybe they would say "here is a geniue, a Borges for our Martian people." Because honestly, the novel of this absurdity just writes itself. (although, come to think of it, its been done with both the Bible and Scientology.)
ReplyDeleteThey shuffled the deck
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, we should have expected the Right to treat the name of "Cards Against Humanity" as aspirational.
Yeah, J. Edgar.
ReplyDeleteExport? Import?
ReplyDeleteWait a minute ... that's furriners!
Well, there is that suspicious word "import" in the name, as in stuff made by furriners.
ReplyDeleteEmery might be sure that Obamacare is a disaster but a lot of struggling people are now paying much less for health insurance. No matter what they say, conservatives aren't going to forget who promised them more money and who actually delivered.
ReplyDeleteDouthat is going to have a hard time convincing the poor that cutting welfare and unemployment insurance, giving tax cuts to the rich, and attempting to remove minimum wages were beneficial to them. Fortunately for everyone they probably have no idea who he is anyway.
Shorter Noemi: Electing smart people doesn't work. Elect Republicans.
ReplyDeleteExIm Bank: Our old friend Veronique deRugy at the Merkochtus Center and sometime NRO Cornerite can tell you its all about dreaded Green Energy! Solyndra! Obama's Cronies! Winners and Losers! Bernadine Dohrn! Maoist guerillas and Saul Alinsky! Er, maybe not those last three...though the brethren will logically follow her thread there.
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/pe9bauv
Well, because terrible ideas don't lend themselves to elegant exposition. I don't remember anyone saying that Mein Kampf, despite its subject matter, was a literary gem.
ReplyDeleteConservative writers have, pretty much, a single objective--to protect, defend and reinforce the dominance of the reactionary wealthy as a class. That requires them to embrace a long litany of bad ideas, or no ideas, as necessary. Written simply and elegantly, their paucity of thought and their inherent bias becomes obvious, so they must disguise it in rhetorical fallacy.
That, interestingly enough, takes some talent or, at minimum, some cleverness, which most conservatives writers do not have. They know that they must do something to hide the awfulness of their ideas, but they simply aren't clever enough to do it with some style. Hence, the wretchedness of Emery.
I believe strongly in self delusion.
ReplyDeleteAmity Sleestak still loves Silent Cal f'r crissake..
ReplyDeleteOn what grounds is a higher minimum wage "anti-poor"? It teaches the poor to be dependent on money?
ReplyDeleteThat it in a nutshell.
ReplyDeleteRun by Art VanDeLay, who if I remember my Seinfeld, exports potato chips.
ReplyDeleteIs she aware of what Mencken thought of FDR?
ReplyDeleteObama made Obamacare which everyone hates
ReplyDeleteSigh. Obama didn't make Obamacare, the Heritage Foundation and Congress did. And everyone doesn't hate it.
Urban Dictionary on A. VDL:
ReplyDeleteAn alias that can be used for almost any purpose. The most popular careers of this particular alias include architect, marine biologist, importer-exporter, author of "Venetian Blinds", and manufacturer of latex.
Welp, I'll be remaining here in the pestilential capital of the known media universe, where the humidity is approaching Washington levels.
ReplyDeleteFor almost a hundred years now, the famed
ReplyDeleteacademic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a
government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose
intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on
earth...
Wait, I thought Obama was a Chicago Gangsta
It's a little known fact that the first draft of the gospel of Mathew was written on cocktail napkins.
ReplyDeleteYou just think you do.
ReplyDeleteAlso Frick, Carnegie and the Pinkertons.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/05/histories-gilded-age-written-hacks-new-gilded-age
Sort of" "The economic case against the minimum wage exists, and has been made by me and others often enough. But there’s another, even stronger case against the rule. That is the humanitarian case."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalreview.com/article/378433/repeal-minimum-wage-amity-shlaes
ALL YOUR DRY AIR ARE BELONG TO US!
ReplyDelete- Berkeley Springs, currently sunny, windy, and very pleasant.
~
This theory is as good as any.
ReplyDeleteI hope you learned your lesson, susan.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCLTRjF2eq0
~
"...the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex..."
ReplyDeleteI'm with the notorious artistic-academic-industrial punditry complex, those other jerks are splitters.
Doesn't the Bible also say 'Thou shalt not take...Moochers... into they... hut!'
ReplyDeleteJohn Campbell published a series of stories by Sprague de Camp, set on a planet on which the culture was a mash-up of (1) The Last of the Mohicans and (2) 17th-century Scottish religious extremism (due to the limited reading matter available to the settlers). I can't be arsed looking up the cover art, which is as silly as you might imagine.
ReplyDeleteGood God, that is some powerful dumb.
ReplyDeleteThis actually sounds like a very strong theory. They know that the house can pass any damn crazy thing they want and they still aren't going to get it past Harry Reid or get a presidential signature.
ReplyDeleteThis is the failure to reauthorize. If they do absolutely nothing they can claim victory. Actual policy has nothing to do with it. They just want a win.
Has anyone tried stakes yet?
ReplyDeletePolitical Poetry Professors Local 1 is HARDCORE.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's leaving aside the glaringly obvious: turn that phrase back on them - they assume that they should not just be given a chance, but be given unquestioned full control of everything. And several times during the past 35 years they've had it: under Reagan and under Bush the Lesser, they had periods where they controlled everything, and the results were secret unconstitutional programs, massive deficits and growth in national debt, a complete rogering of the middle class via tax policy which shifted the burden and encouraged offshoring of jobs, the continuing failure of suppy-side policy, and massive financial catastrophes brought about by the deregulation they continue to insist is necessary for economic growth. And far from being done, they promise that if the voters will just trust them again this one time, once back in office they'll continue to do the same things.
ReplyDeleteCompare to the records on all of the above for the Clinton and Obama (so far) presidencies, and the "They blew it" is almost farcical, while the "They're done" is just pathetic.
This reminds me of a book I skimmed about three little sisters in the Old South. The lady author said that while some people were against slavery there were arguments for both sides so she would refrain from addressing the issue.
ReplyDeleteShe then went on to tell of the sweet hijinks of three little girls on a plantation and their little slave playmates. Each little girl owned one of the little slave girls and by-and-by the slaves would be trained as their owner's maid.
Shales: "When rules intrude, the loss to personal ambition, workplace satisfaction, and civic culture is great."
All she needs is mutton sleeves and ring curls.
they're pissed about the VA hospitals and a lot of other things that leaders who gave a shit about America might help fix. But they don't send that kind of people to Congress -- they send instead flim-flam men who make things worse, then tell them it was the dad-burned Gummint that made it bad because it can't do nothin' right nohow.
ReplyDeleteThis, precisely. Their will keep shoveling out pork because they take care of the people who take care of them, and we know that that's not the voters.
Also, I want to make note of this Tumblr post of Roy's, and the company that it links to. Not too early to do that Christmas shopping!
Emery: "If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, this camel was a
ReplyDelete2,801-page non-bestseller filled with labyrinthine riddles that nobody
seemed to know how to solve."
Metaphor mangling like this should be tried at the Hague.
I believe this is the source document for the Christianist Anti-American Girl doll series. I can't find a link to the doll company right now but here is an example of Christian backlash against American Girl Dolls that is too good to waste:
ReplyDeleteTo Lighthouse Trails: I just thought I’d pass this on. I have let my daughter watch American Girl movies; they have always been fine. However, I did a search at our local library on American Girl and found a couple of books [the company publishes], & one of the books I requested was very disturbing, It is titled Spa Fun (pampering tips and treatment for girls). On page 18 it tells girls to do Balloon Breaths, Mini Meditations & Mantras! Also, in the book are instructions on how to make you own Zen Garden & laughing Yoga. These are geared toward younger girls; please help warn other parents. I have not & will not let my daughter see it or any other material from American Girl again without reading or viewing it prior.
In Russia, Delusion has you.
ReplyDeleteInternationalist scum.
ReplyDeleteMitch McConnel is trying to square this circle right now by insisting that it is possible to repeal Obamacare but not touch the incredibly popular Kynect (Kentucky ACA exchange) which to date has insured some 450,000 (ahem) voters.
ReplyDeleteChrist Randomworker, I had just managed to have the part of my brain that handles Veronique deRugy surgically removed. I don't have many other parts to spare. Stop pollutting whats left.
ReplyDeleteIs the acronym AcArtFartInCo?
ReplyDelete"... a society or a civilization in which the novels of Ayn Rand and something scribbled on a cocktail napkin became the basis of a new religion/economic belief system.."
ReplyDeleteThat's truly profound, and I must ask your permission to borrow the idea for inclusion in my book (the real one, not the yeti porn one).
Feathered headdresses, bare chests and kilts? That's certainly fashion-forward....
ReplyDeleteLatex. George had applied for the position of latex salesman with VanDeLay Industries.
ReplyDeleteI think the argument is that Obama failed to account for just how willing the Republicans would be to sink the ship of state if it spited him. Which only goes to show what a hoity-toity pointy-headed dork he is. He also carelessly continued to be black.
ReplyDeleteI'm not optimistic. They pulled Cheney's heart out and nothing happened.
ReplyDeleteConservatives don't like it cause it has foreigner on it.
ReplyDeleteBut it don't feel like the first time.
theo
ReplyDeleteWhich is central to my point. A liberal smarty pants would try to parse Emery's words in a search of internal or external consistency, seeking to impose European diktats about the meaning of words or that quality so beloved of Hollywood, talent. Salt of the earth 'Mericans just gut it out with faith in the Lord above.
ReplyDeleteHe's a lich. You'll probably have to find the heart in whatever grim phylactery it resides and burn it before he goes down.
ReplyDeleteI always thought Cheney's heart should have been one of Voldemort's horcruxes.
ReplyDeleteWait. No… yeti… porn… ? WHAT?
ReplyDeleteThe yeti porn is a separate project. The Yeti Banged Betty, the title suggested I believe by B^4.
ReplyDeleteIt gets them all hot blooded.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to being arsed, I'm always very - but whatever I was looking for was hurled from my train of thought when I found Sprague de Camp had written a novel about Sarah Palin.
ReplyDeletehttp://s29.postimg.org/ag06p14p3/648_1.jpg
Found it. It teaches girls to, ahem, "give themselves a marble massage." Hmmm, it's on sale. Only $5 and you can add a set of 12 hangers for $8. I don't quite get how that merchandise combo works, but I'm sure the book has pictures. Since I'm apparently not getting any yeti porn around here no matter how long I wait for it.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so where does this Eduardo guy get off knocking our micro bloggery just because we ignore him on Twitter?
ReplyDeleteJust set up a new hashtag on the twitter machine: #WhatsInFrackingFluid. Idea being that since they don't have to tell us, and it's illegal to reveal it, you can claim that ANYTHING is in fracking fluid, and it's both irrefutable and not legally actionable unless they tell us what IS in it. Or you can reply to Jesus HidalgoCristos @JesusHCristos.
ReplyDeleteMy initial guess: murdered puppies. You get the idea.
"They had a dream," starts Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard (interesting allusion, under the circumstances). "For almost a hundred years now, the famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex has dreamed of a government run by their kind of people (i.e., nature’s noblemen), whose intelligence, wit, and refined sensibilities would bring us a heaven on earth..."
ReplyDeleteHey, waiddaminnit. Isn't that the blurb from John Galt's resume here?
Dowhat is just exhibiting the laziness that's afflicted conservatarians for a while now. More and more they can't even be arsed to create a plan that Will Make Things Better, Honest and then throw together a handful of Powerpoint slides that are 90% pictures of All American Families. Instead they slur "Trust me baby, things'll be great if you just take me back," and then try to borrow $2,000 because they've heard about this hot new thing they can't really explain but is guaranteed to make you both rich.
ReplyDeleteBlush. Please do include me, even if only to give one of the sexy yetis my nym.
ReplyDeleteThose cocktail napkins were convert from toenail clippings by Jesus. It's one of the lesser-known miracles.
ReplyDeleteI'm uprating and hoping someone else can complete it and make a trifecta.
ReplyDeleteOh, hell, might as well be me who can check it and see.
ReplyDeleteBut he did say that the word "Obamacare" was cool with him. Ipso facto, quid malmborg in plano, quod erat demonstrandum.
ReplyDeleteI tried to read it, but halfway through it became page after page of gibberish interspersed with appeals for money.
ReplyDeleteI want this comment to hold me close when the night is darkest and I'm most afraid.
ReplyDeleteI tell a lie, the author was Mack Reynolds (writing as Guy McCord).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ericsiegmund.com/images/analog/1967_11.jpg
That thing couldn't hold even the tiniest piece of soul.
ReplyDeleteC'mon, Goldberg can do more than dance!
ReplyDeleteHe's fart blooded, fart-blooded!
I never learn. I am still awestruck every time I read McArdle.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but. Judging from the cover, they anticipated the bad plastic surgery.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think that cover shot is a screen cap of her stand-up at the turkey farm.
ReplyDeleteI think the companion book to this has the title The Dude Abides.
Hey! Liberty Blend coffee is only $19.95 a pound! (At least it's a real 16 oz. pound and not a free-market 11 oz. coffee-pound. Credit where credit is due.)
ReplyDeleteAnd you can get the perfect mug for drinking it:
Shit. Stupid transparency shows up black. Let's href="http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server3200/90c91/products/2265/images/4654/gunmug__13600.1368122973.200.200.png?c=2try this:
ReplyDeleteWell, he's no fun, he fell right over!
ReplyDeleteRoy, your first paragraph here is a perfect example of why the right is so screwed up. We look at these people and see that their pain is real even though their ways of dealing with it are terrible. They look at us and see only the threatening hobgoblins inside their own minds.
ReplyDeleteAll I ask is that at some stage the Yeti eats spaghetti. Off of Betty is OK
ReplyDeleteHodor
ReplyDeleteMaybe they think it's part of the U.N. and/or connected to the Trilateral Commision.
ReplyDeleteM.
ReplyDeleteHis hair is a bird's nest. Your argument is valid.
ReplyDelete... which entered via the radio airwaves.
ReplyDeleteThese people think of themselves as "hard-headed realists" but they don't give a shit about evidence or reality in general--they make their own reality, as we've been told--and they are completely in thrall to their own mythological self-images.
ReplyDeleteOh, to be a historian in the 22nd century, given the 10-foot rise in seal levels, of course. Surfin' the Everglades! Word up!
Cana wedding guest: Man, this wine is great!
ReplyDeleteAncient economist: Hey, let me show you something I've been thinking about.
Less Art, more Fart.
ReplyDeleteStem cells from the fetuses inside aborted fetuses.
ReplyDeleteMicro-buggery? I may actually measure up.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, it IS fetuses all the way down.
ReplyDelete"I am a liar."
ReplyDeleteWell, the "hard-headed" part is correct.
ReplyDelete... especially Blue Cross Blue Fuck You.
ReplyDeleteAnd some McArdle on the side.
ReplyDeleteCheck it and see!
ReplyDeleteHe's pants-loaded, pants-loaded!
ReplyDeleteI'd rather not "check it and see."
Sorry I stepped on your foot there.
ReplyDeleteYou da man! Be proud!
ReplyDelete"Am I in yet?"
ReplyDeleteShe Go With the Mi-Go
ReplyDeleteWhile quite sweaty.
ReplyDeleteYeti eatin' sketti off o' Betty on the Serengeti while quite sweaty, while digit' Eddie Vetter.
ReplyDeleteIT'S CONCENTRATED EEEEEEVIL!
ReplyDeletePlease, Kentucky Jesus, tell me they won't it.
ReplyDelete"What they don’t prove, however, is that the current Republican Party could never be a vehicle for such a policy agenda."
ReplyDeleteThe mathematical version of this would be something like "Two plus two is so five, so never give up, never surrender!" I think. Didn't his editor take him aside--or just IM him through the office net--and say, um, Ross, if some future version of the GOP turned out to indeed be "a vehicle for such a policy agenda", that would be, like, a *future* GOP, and not the current one. K?
Not that I expect much from Rightie columnists, for obvious reasons, but for someone like Cardinal Douthat, whose wrongheadedness is usually more intelligent* and articulate (if a tad un-self-aware at times), this is really dumb. This is 2nd-Tier-blog quality.
* OK, "sounding".
I'm pretty sure the kinds of people who vote for McConnell, or who never vote, are just badly informed enough to have accepted the Kynect program without questioning it, and to relinquish it without doing anything other than blaming Obama for it if McConnell did succeed in repealing it.
ReplyDeleteI just listened to an interview on NPR with people who fell through the hole in the ACA created by the Supreme Court's ruling on the Medicaid expansion and the decision by the Republican states to deny the Medicaid expansion. To a person they were simply not educated enough, or politically aware enough, to have the faintest idea that the fact that they fell into the gap and could neither get subsidies nor go on medicaid was not the fault of Obamacare.
I think it was the "Life of Faith" doll set that I was thinking of.http://prolifeaction.org/hotline/2005/dolls/
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough it was promoted by the "vision forum" which seems to have folded after 15 years of soporific rabble rousing.
Remember, any sufficiently advanced magical religion is going to look like science.
ReplyDeleteLotsa depictions of Koschei the Deathless, but all would benefit from moar Cheney.
ReplyDeletehttp://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/286/0/0/koschei_the_deathless_by_tristan_despero-d30ppuu.jpg
Well, I guess that proves one thing - human stupidity may be endless, but the energy that can be extracted from it is not. I don't believe for a moment that all those hordes of nutcases from a few years ago have disappeared, but it does seem like they've said, "fuck it. All my yelling and screaming hasn't unseated the President, and all the President's presidenting hasn't brought about the Apocalypse, so to hell with this exercise in futility. What's on TV?"
ReplyDeleteI should have known that while hoping for reason and sanity to return was futile, sooner or later apathy was bound to reassert itself. That's almost a comforting thought, really.
so call me maybe
ReplyDeleteGet your filthy government hands off my KYNect!
ReplyDeleteThat sentence gave me cancer.
ReplyDeleteThe Secret Service would frown on an attempt to set Dubya's head on fire.
ReplyDeleteThat was some funny stuff. Loved the part about natural gas and nuclear fission being "green energy".
ReplyDeleteAnd he's both Hitler and Chamberlain.
ReplyDeleteKYNect is way better than than awful Obamacare!
ReplyDeleteAren't these references to the video game Bioshock and the s.f. classic A Canticle for Leibowitz?
ReplyDeleteI've got a fever of 39.444...
ReplyDeleteThis is why we can't let you libruls make us switch to metrics.
"would bring us a heaven on earth..."
ReplyDeleteOh, right, the editorial/whiningly victimized "us." There they go again. The Second Law of Wingnut Thermodynamics holds that when they invoke "we" or "us," they're shifting into Cranky Teenage mode, and what follows will be a false and pathetic stab at invoking a commonality with people about whom they otherwise don't give a fuck.
(The First Law is: "It's always projection.")
Oh for fuck's sake, write your own. Then post it here as a "comment." We may have helpful tips!
ReplyDelete"They know that they must do something to hide the awfulness of their ideas..."
ReplyDeleteReally? You think their attitude is, "I know this is bullshit, but it's a living"? I honestly don't know. Most of the time it isn't a living, though.
In any case, you're right about their objective. I probably think they have authoritarian impulses which prompt them to find their cause and enlist in its advancement, without ever attaining the self-awareness you mentioned. (This is me being charitable, mind you.)
Of course. If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a Kentuckian For Grimes, I am Cautiously Optimistic. The polls are dead even, and Grimes won a lot more Dem votes in the primary than Turtleface McGee did. I'm crossing fingers that there are enough Bevin voters who will stay home to let us pull this off.
ReplyDelete"And you wanna be my latex salesman..."
ReplyDeleteTwin brother to Buck Naked
ReplyDeleteLucky you. It killed me and I am now commenting from the Great Beyond
ReplyDelete"Madam that won't do, I need a majority"
ReplyDeleteLike Gozer the Destructor, he's whatever you want him to be
ReplyDeleteDear PlayYurt,
ReplyDeleteI never thought I would write to a dirty magazine, being as pure as the driven snow myself. But I have to tell you about last night's raid on a mountain climber's camp.
My best girlfriend came over to my cave to get ready for the big night. We braided each other's pelt and painted our claws and I couldn't help but notice how she kept stroking my fur seductively. I told myself I was imagining things and that she would never want to hibernate with me the way I yearned to hibernate with her.
Suddenly we heard a scream from the human camp below. I tossed aside my ribbons and grabbed my friend's hand, laughing and panting as we ran to join the fun. We thrust ourselves into the thick of the action, tossing millionaire climbers right and left and giggling girlishly as the feathers from their shredded down jackets floated around us.
Suddenly Ironmember, the lustiest, yeti-ist creature to ever stride a glacier, strode into the tent. We threw ourselves on him, bloodlust and lustlust throbbing our very bones. We grabbed his
Why of coursenuclear fission is "green energy", according to the scholarly duo of Lee & Kirby -
ReplyDeleteHoly shit.
ReplyDeleteBlessings Expressions of Faith offers three lines of Catholic-themed dolls:
Catholic school girl dolls, with a wide variety of uniforms
First Communions dolls, especially suitable for First Communion gifts
Nun dolls, with the habits of 300 different religious communities
Where's the Martyr line? How can a little girl pretend she is committing suicide to preserve her virginity without a Martyr doll?
I was just holding it for a friend.
ReplyDeleteBonus points for the pseudo-pillow fight; just needs a little more "spank me! No, me!".
ReplyDeleteYou may not realize just how true that is. I had a winger tell me yesterday that this cute little town in Kansas that was destroyed by a tornado 2 years ago isn't being rebuilt because "no one can afford to build to the required green standards". Some guy at the local not-tornado-destroyed gas station told him that, so it has to be true.
ReplyDeleteIn keeping with a desire to stay current they are going to bring out a doll who gets pregnant, refuses life saving treatment in order to protect the fetus, and ends up brain dead herself on life support and gets beatified by the doll pope.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianna_Beretta_Molla
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping for a nostalgic Wheel Of Fortune craze this fall.
ReplyDelete"which leads one to wonder where Douthat thinks it's been swinging in 2013 and 2014"
ReplyDeleteFFS, there oughta be a rule against "Douthat" and "swinging" being in the same sentence together. Probably even the same graf, just to be sure.
Or is she confused because Mencken used to poke fun at American business men like his pal Sinclair Lewis did in Babbit?
ReplyDeleteNo Sherpas were harmed in the making of this yeti porn.
ReplyDeletethe famed academic-artistic-and-punditry industrial complex
ReplyDeletefile photo, below.
CHUNKY REESE WITHERSPOON!
ReplyDeleteTough room!
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a refreshing change.
ReplyDeleteSelf appeasement, eh? Work in a yeti somehow, and we're golden.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure the kinds of people who vote for McConnell, or who never
ReplyDeletevote, are just badly informed enough to have accepted the Kynect
program without questioning it
Yup.
Given KYNect's obvious success, it might be worthwhile for Grimes to (1) point out how well it's working, and (2) finally stop being a goddamned pants-wetting coward about "Obamacare" every time someone brings it up.
ReplyDeleteOh, I know. But I was thinking more along the lines of Limbaugh, et alia.
ReplyDeleteWOOOOO!
ReplyDeleteany sufficiently advanced magical religionAHEM.
ReplyDeleteThese people think of themselves as "hard-headed realists"J. K. Galbraith remarked on that same tendency. He wondered what precisely was so desirable or admirable about cranial rigidity.
ReplyDeleteLess risk of damage when someone twaps you over the head for being a sociopathic asshole?
ReplyDelete"Douthat"? As far as I'm concerned, his first name is 'don't'.
ReplyDeleteRobert Smith, OG furry.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/MI0a9hTh5AU
Synchronicity is a hell of a drug. What a great, great, post, SM!
ReplyDeleteAimai's Contrapositive of Clarke's Law!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant!
Ditto. Excellent.
ReplyDelete"colour out of space" warmed the cockles of my wee piggy heart.
Not to mention the high-brow play in progress, The Snowman Cometh.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's Gödel with the win!
ReplyDelete"Pick me up
ReplyDeletebefore you go go,
out gangbanging
with the Mi-Go..."
Yes, its not only leftists and commies who promise a utopia here and now if we just follow the rules. Its just a different set of rules that Galt's free market grift is supposed to produce.
ReplyDeleteBrava! Brava!
ReplyDeleteIt's takes a while to absorb the Quantum Fetus Theory. Give it time. Relativity wasn't built in a day.
ReplyDeleteSnap into a Slim-Jim<™>!
ReplyDelete"During the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick
ReplyDeletesupplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many
Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor
that day, I can tell you!"
Damn them Sumerians had some wild times, didn't they?
However the anti-Quantum-Fetus demonstrations have already begun.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a good band name.
ReplyDelete