President Barack Obama went for the defining television shot in Iraq and got it — pictures of hundreds of U.S. troops cheering wildly as he told them it was time for the Iraqis to take charge of their own future.
The war zone photo opportunity produced a stunning show of appreciation for Obama from military men and women who have made great sacrifices, many serving repeated tours in a highly unpopular war.
Yay! Much better than a defining picture of him with Sarko in stinky old Normandie, that would have been off-putting to the Brits and Germans (not that any of their dead are buried there), because, let’s face it, there’s just not enough Baracky love to go around!
Additionally, Rnoch at Kill Rhythm thinks that today’s anarchists are pussies. Were you aware that that expression (yes, yes, impression, I know) derives from pusillanimous?
Moreover, dead people have begun voting in my hometown, apparently because the welfare benefits are better than in Chicago. Stacy McCain also has a post on Paul Ryan, whom I’ve met, at a fundraiser hosted by one of my brothers.
Unarmed Americans aboard a Danish vessel flying the US flag apparently drove off a party of Somali pirates who earlier had taken control of the vessel, apparently because they didn’t get the memorandum about American unexceptionalism in time, and thought “Let’s Roll!” was still in effect, rather than the new “Let’s Apologize” policy.
In more important news, Jim Treacher’s blog has been renamed in a manner so as not to confuse people with its exceptionalism as well. Samples of twoted tweets:
When they arrested the Unabomber, he had a heavily underlined copy of Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance.” Which he bought to spite Glenn Beck.
***
Newly discovered documents reveal Lee Harvey Oswald acted on orders from 12-year-old Rush Limbaugh. Jack Ruby’s dying word: “Megadittoes.”
Here’s dicentra’s defense of Glenn Beck, featuring Teh Sensible Alliance.
William Jacobson has up a great post on Passover and the Newsweek issue celebrating the decline of American Christianity, which however is not declining nearly as fast as the print media and the networks, just in time for Obama’s worldwide apology tour.
Fwankwy, my deaw, you’we a fwankew.
Vatican just not that into Obama.
I proffer that the AP should have used the word “orgasmically” instead of wildly in describing the cheering soldiers. In for a penny … they say.
And, yes, I’m here stalling instead of doing my work out. It’s hard to put it off when there is no one here to play with.
Paul Ryan is the real deal.
William Jacobson has up a great post on Passover and the Newsweek issue celebrating the decline of American Christianity, which however is not declining nearly as fast as the print media and the networks, just in time for Obama’s worldwide apology tour.
My church (small town) has 6 masses between sat night and Sunday morning. 7 if you include it’s mass at an annex. And, you’d better get there early, or you’ll be standing in the back.
i dont really care that he didnt do the Omaha beach thing. Its been done and the guy has other distractions.
what the AP stringer did not put in was that most any american celeb is met with wild appreciation and gratitude at American bases…almost every soldier I have met, and that is a lot, tells of the soul crushing loneliness and sense of abandonment they get after an extended stay at these bases.
really.
its why ted nugent is mobbed; its why guys dance wildly to the toneless jessica simpson; its why kathy griffin is treated like she is gwyneth paltrow. the d through k listers that will do USO work are viewed as superheroes to guys abroad.
so a POTUS that comes along and tells them, “Its time for Iraqi’s to pull their weight” and “A lot of you are going home and not coming back here” is gonna get hugged and applauded, yeah.
mcgruder: Point taken on Normandy but I’m less concerned with him not scheduling a visit than I am with him rejecting an invitation and using as the excuse the foolishness of possibly offending the Brits and the Germans.
That’s that whole nuancy thing that gets me tangled up, don’cha know.
Excellent point on soldier war zone visits, BTW.
Offending the Germans? In Normandy?
Been there, done that. Got the headstone.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woot
Sorry but I have never known what the word “woot” meant.
Off topic, Dan, but this is related to one of pw’s general themes.
BJT–i hear you. Why would Normandy offend the Brits? they lost 30k dead (on the ground: Bomber Command was a fucking mortuary posting until about 1/45) AFTER 6/6/44…they had skin in the game? The Germans? they made that bed.
I dont agree with a damned thing Obama is about or says but hes my POTUS and I try and pull for the guy, especially overseas.
he makes it real hard not to be hyper Partisan. He is a major tool.
I don’t pull for him. I kinda want him to fail. Especially when he’s dissing this country overseas.
mcgruder: It’s hard to root for “my” POTUS when he spends his overseas trip dumping all over “my” country.
Country before POTUS is my motto, whether Obama or Bush.
It would be easier to do if he’d pull equally hard for us, especially overseas, though, wouldn’t it?
ELLA WINS!!! (curse you!)
Given, the…uh, rather
unseemlyborderline pornographic attention the media heaps on this cat, I’m somewhat relieved the writer didn’t use money shot.all–agreed.
I once told someone that the major difference between the Dems and the GOP is that in the end, no matter ineffective, corrupt or flat out wrong the GOP is, at least you can feel comfortable that they are rooting for the US.
Outside of Lieberman, I rarely get the feeling that the Dems really love America.
Get outta here!
The biggest leftist I know recently asked me “Do you think Keith Olbermann was always a collossal jerk?” To which I pointed out his firing from ESPN despite the high ratings of the show he co anchored and his difficulty finding work since that time. Nobody likes him. I don’t even think he likes himself.
*Ahem*
The correct spelling is w00t.
Oh, nevermind. Stupid fonts.
Outside of Germany and the Holocaust is there another country on earth that participates in this sort of historical self-immolation?
The Japanese never talk about Nanking. Hell, they’ve tried to get it expunged from their textbooks until the Chinese wailed about it. The British were in the slavery business for well over two hundred years and they, along with Spain, France, Holland and Portugal (to name a few) spent several hundred years dominating natives, pillaging resources and generally strutting around like elitist Imperial peacocks.
Certainly Russia and China don’t spend a minute in historical navel gazing.
But our genius in chief thinks that it it a good idea to to engage in this Tour de Europe mini mea culpa as a way to … what? Build bridges? Demonstrate our newer, more gentler souls? I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts (mmmmm … donuts) that every European leader is either laughing or shaking there head in astonishment at this rhetorical thrust.
Nah. The European leaders, like every other top politician on the planet, are looking at one another and saying, “Jeez, can we ever roll this guy. Get those wishlists filled out!”
Regards,
Ric
Funny, when I saw the video from Obama’s stop in Iraq I remarked to my wife how quiet and subdued the troops were – especially when compared with the raucous reception given George Bush in his visits to Iraq. It was also patently obvious that the presidential handlers rearranged the troops on stage to put all the black, Hispanic and female troops in the first row. Makes you wonder what the AP “reporter” was witnessing…
BJT-FREE
Yeah, other societies do it too. Look up Legiao Urbana, Brazilian version of Queen. Their music kinda sorta revolved around how much their country sucked. That and gay sex, but mostly country sucking.
Western Europe gave us our current regime (in the dietary sense) of politically correct self-immolation. Jonah Goldberg remarked the other day on the corner that much of this anti-westernism can be traced back to soviet meme weapons used as agitprop and disinformatsaya during the cold war, but I think that it predates that. Beneath the damaging meme is the desire to accept the meme on paltry evidence, the desire to call other sinners to repentance, and that desire exists outside cultural boundaries. The soviet machine merely capitalized on the desire.
Blaming the community’s sins for the untimely rain and prescribing appeasement of the gods through self-flagellation predate boutique multiculturalism by a few millenia, but at the core they’re based on the same desire.
I think the extreme level of cynicism when using the underlying desire may be a modern invention, though.
Well yea, Ric, that too. I’d contend it is a logical progression from the laughing and the astonishment.
Hadlowe: I wasn’t referring to societies. I was referring to “Leaders.” Every society has, to differing extents, critical voices as to the historical suckage of their respective countries. The difference is that their leaders don’t go to other countries and self-immolate.
However, your point about Soviet era propoganda is spot on, I think.
It would be nice if software programs didn’t correct your typography for you. They’re always changing the zeroes to Os, the little fascists.
I can’t find the HTML code for the number 0.
>>HTML code for the number 0
Let’s try &048; — &048;
Nope, didn’t work.
I expected Treacher to rename his blog to suit its new
rutdirection.“Twit” and “shit” rhyme. LOL~%^P
But the name he did pick is lamer enough, I guess.
Excuse me? And what would you know of Russia? Really, what the fuck do you know outside of 10-cent dime store flag-pins and hammer and sickle stick-’em labels?
Russians beat the fuck out each other, they shot each other and the exiled each other all over which version of history and the fight to break from state narratives. You’ve always had a free wag of the tongue.
What a abysmal generality and gross misrepresentation of the unconquerable Russian soul.
Andrei Sakahrov – boom – maybe you heard of him? Joseph Brodksy – non-boom! – maybe as well?
You get to wear the PW dumb-hat today.
Treacher is good at Twitter, but I prefer the full -frontal assault Treacher. And, I liked the old blog name.
AND SOMEONE KIDS THOSE KIDS OFF OF MY LAWN.
hey if you have a stick you can find russian paintings and stuff a lot of people don’t know that but it’s true
I’m going to post this just to get my name back. Ignore it.
You know who else is very popular with the troops? Al Franken.
It’s true. Look it up.
I guess that Olbermann quote belongs up above on the other post eh :/
White House: “It wasn’t a bow.”
Ben Smith: “Oh?“
“Certainly Russia and China don’t spend a minute in historical navel gazing.”
I’ve heard it said that Russia has two kinds of peoples at its borders: vassals or enemies. That may be correlated with a lack of “navel gazing.”
Awright, thor! You win the non-sequiter (look it up, you lazy asshole) of the day award!
You know what this thread need? Maggie.
I can’t believe she hasn’t commented on a post with “W00T” in it. I’m guessing that opera stuff is interfering.
So you guys think Obama projected some weenie theme in Europe, and everyone will henceforth mince all over this country? Really? I would snort, but my sinuses have collapsed.
cynn, O’Bambi went to Europe and gladhanded everyone. M’chelle became a fashion icon, with totally rawks for J. Crew and those who love her. And, he extracted exactly nothing of what he hoped to gain from the trip. No stimulus, no help in Afghanistan, no nothing. But he looks good doing it.
Aside from that, America, how did you like the show?
Has anyone noticed anything mostly missing from those clips? Something about the diversity?
The British were in the slavery business for well over two hundred years and they, along with Spain, France, Holland and Portugal (to name a few) spent several hundred years dominating natives, pillaging resources and generally strutting around like elitist Imperial peacocks.
Europe invented the whole concept of empire. We put an end to it. Yet we are saddled with the guilt.
We need Europe’s press agent, I think.
Excuse me? And what would you know of Russia?
Jesus Fuckin’ Christ thor, do you really not realize what a Goddamn clown you are?
A naked dearth of intellectual stimuli in the darkened bowels of the classic rural mud bunker. It’s here where Russians, preeminent in the field of Literary theory, linguistics and semiotics, are christened lacking historic revisionist awareness, where the land of Dostoevsky has been declared too dumb to recognize divergent narratives by an American troglodyte class word-slinger. This followed by a challenge to query the definition of non sequitur by a lower neanderthal who demonstrates nary the rigor nor curiosity to spell said challenge word correctly.
I do not want to be a republican if it means I have to go along with false interpretations of narratives wherein even post-explication there’s a continuation of His Majesty Obama being worried of insulting either the British or the Germans for reasons other than his attempt to balance their fawning wants of a collective photo featuring America’s half-African Boy King of Europe, otherwise known as a front page photo-op. I’d stick my head into the pussy of Elsa the Horsewoman rather than share time in your mud brick safety bunker. It’s doubtful such numbing echoes could exist in Elsa’s pussy. Save me! Spare me! Horsewoman, help me!
So how many hours have you stood worshiping in a Russian Orthodox Church? Fuck Dostoevsky and all his little intellectual coffee house poseur friends, how may hours have you stood in a church with no pews and searched for the God of the Russian peasant?
Did you ever even go to a Russian Church? Or did you spend Sunday morning sleeping off the drunken debauchery you had forced on your Russian servant girl?
Don’t project your pig ignorance on me, asshole. I am the fucking working stiff you think you want to be, but will never have a clue about.
Well, there’s that church in the middle of Red Square. Does that count?
Fuck Fyodor Dostoevsky? Why you phenomenal curse, you wankered stiff, fuck you!
When with a word of fervent conviction,
from the lowest dregs of dark affliction,
A soul from eternal doom I saved;
And in horror and in torments steeped,
Wringing your hands, your curses heaped
Upon the life that you once craved;
When your unheeding conscious at last
With your guilty memories flaying,
The dreadful story of your sin-stained past
To me you narrated, pardon praying,
And full of horror, and full of shame,
Quickly in your hands you hid your face,
Unconcsious of the flood of tears that came,
Shaken and indignant at your own disgrace… etc, etc.
Nekrassov, in yo face!
Well, there’s that church in the middle of Red Square. Does that count?
Does it have heat? Does it have pews?
Dostoevsky sold out at the end of Crime and Punishment. He had written the perfect Progressive novel and then he sold out to the moralistic Godbotherers. Raskolnikov was right all along, he should have stayed strong and fucked the police.
Dostoevsky would have loved Sarah Palin.
Better poet:
And this place our forefathers made for man !
This is the process of our Love and Wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us–
Most innocent, perhaps–and what if guilty ?
Is this the only cure ? Merciful God !
Each pore and natural outlet shrivell’d up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt ; till chang’d to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot ;
Then we call in our pamper’d mountebanks–
And this is their best cure ! uncomforted
And friendless Solitude, Groaning and Tears,
And savage Faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon,
By the lamp’s dismal twilight ! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deform’d
By sights of ever more deformity !
With other ministrations thou, O Nature !
Healest thy wandering and distemper’d child :
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing,
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit heal’d and harmoniz’d
By the benignant touch of Love and Beauty.
aw. and yeah, I’ll probably be kinda quiet till after next weekend.
Say the grease was extra hot in the deep fryer, and Palin was pre-soaked in butter and bathed in the Colonel’s own secret spices, then I can’t see that I can argue against her breasts and thighs.
I don’t know about Dostoeyevsky, but Tolstoy might have had something to say about living up to Christian (even Orthodox ones) values, in a increasingly
amoral world, that was the issue he was trying to reconcile in Resurrection.
Thor has trouble with his personalities. One minute, it’s power to the people. The next, it’s elitism gone wild. Silly, and kind of sad, stuff.
I told my self that I wasn’t going to do this ever again but … one more time:
If I were to take the thor approach to this chest pounding insult fest and gross misrepresentation of my intention I would simply write that thor is a learning disabled faux literary slug beast but, hey, I don’t go that way. Instead…
thor, you might want to recheck the basis for your reading comprehension. You might note at #25 when Hadlowe made the assumption that I was talking about societies or individuals. Realizing that I had not been as clear in my comments at #22 as I should, I replied to him at #27:
Wasn’t that clear enough for you, genius boy? If not, let me make it clearer with small words so that I can penetrate the drunken haze: Other than Holocaust inspired moments for Germans what other country’s leader goes to a foreign event and self immolates in a navel gazing way by criticizing their own country?
Got it now, MENSA boy, or should I draw you a diagram?
Of course I’m familiar with the endlessly deep ability of the Russian people to wail about their history. One doesn’t have to live in the country to know and understand that. My question to you, wunderkid, is what Russian leader has ever gone to another country and proclaimed his country’s arrogance or imperialism or moral responsibility for, well, anything?
Name. One. (and take your time as it will be a long and fruitless search.)
So my only question to you, Sherlock, is did you miss what was a perfectly clear explanation of my intention or did you just choose to ignore it so that you could engage in the usual gifted child/recess nyah-nyah’s that so delightfully endear you to no one but your own cackling, sewer engorged cranium?
Do tell, Einstein. Inquiring minds want to know.
#56 Winner for Beat Down of the Year.
Undrugged wonderboy is sure to come back with something. I hope it’s not communicable.
Let me give you the key words of whatever response transcendent intellect makes:
“flag pins”
“redumblicans”
“hicks”
“dyuh!”
“moose farts”
“stall foot tapper”
Wash, Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum. What will be missing will be any attempt to respond to the post in anything resembling a coherent and literate argument.
Why are you asking me to show you where a Russian leader has … blah, blah, blah … after you’ve already declared it so?
You know flag-pins. You don’t know your ass from Russia.
The arrogance!
By the way, you should have seen President Clinton navel gaze (whatever the fuck that truly means) when he was in Rwanda. It took me ten seconds to recall that, Mr. Russia.
That Google thing sort’a works, BJT. You ought to try it sometime.
http://www.upenn.edu/pnc/politicalapologies.html
When you can take time away from being arrogant, that is.
And yet, genius. Not a one of the apologies listed involves a Russian leader and everyone listed is for one specific incident made my the leader of their own country, in their own country.
Other than Clinton’s navel gazing on Rwanda (again, in response to a specific incident) you still have nothing of any leader going to a foreign country and making blanket apologies for things like “arrogance” and “moral responsibility.”
Is that too nuancy for you, booze brain?
Thus you are the hick head dumass in this argument but are, apparently, too dumass stupid to realize it. You are also to addled to realize that I admire a Russian leader who does not go navel gazing in an other country for the express purpose of denigrating his own.