Surprisingly, that’s not a rhetorical question. Byron York:
[…] I asked William Anderson, a friend who is a political conservative, a medical doctor, and a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard. “They are angry, but I think they are also scared, and I think it’s because they have a sense that their triumph is a precarious one,” Anderson told me. Democrats won in 2008 in some part because of the cycles of American politics; Republicans were exhausted and it was the other party’s turn. Now, having won, they are unsure of how long victory will last.
“They see that they have a very small window of opportunity to do all the things they want,” Anderson continued. “They see the window of opportunity as small because they know in their deepest hearts that the vast majority of the American people wouldn’t go for all of the things they want to do.” So they are frantic to do as much as possible before the opposition coalesces. And the tea parties might be the beginning of that coalescence.
Then there is the question of self-image. Watching Garofalo and Olbermann discuss the tea parties, it was impossible to avoid the sense that they saw themselves as two good people talking about many bad people. “One of the things about narcissism is that it looks like people who are just proud of themselves and smug, but in fact narcissism is a very brittle and unstable state,” Anderson told me. “People who are deeply invested in narcissism spend an awful lot of energy trying to maintain the illusion they have of themselves as being powerful and good, and they are exquisitely sensitive to anything that might prick that balloon.”
Again, the tea parties could represent a threat. What if the protesters weren’t racists, weren’t violent, weren’t mentally defective? What if their point was legitimate, or even partly legitimate? Those are questions better batted down than answered.
— Which supposes that, given the time and inclination, most “progressives” could formulate and then articulate an answer to such questions. Sadly, I think such supposition gives the rank and file of the left far too much credit: in my experiences dealing with the politically engaged leftist who visits this site (not a scientific sampling of rank and file leftists, to be sure, but my hunch is that those progressives who troll “wingnut” blogs in search of “argument” conceive of themselves as politically well-versed and generally astute), their positions tend to be rote learned and attached to a kind of knee jerk tu quoque-ism, both as a defensive fallback and as a constant ready-made assertion-in-waiting.
Watching people like Garofalo or Olbmermann or Congressional House Dems or Janet Napolitano or our sad little friend with the pet filipina wife, Gordo, quickly lose their stride and so offer conservative psychosis, extremism, and racism / xenophobia / misogyny / homophobia as a retort to policy issues merely firms up what many of us already knew: that many progressives have learned to parrot the few things it takes to make them sound smart, but once pressured, they haven’t the critical thinking skills to extrapolate out even from their own positions — which often leaves them forced to defend arguments that run counter to their own stated positions (recall how Amanda Marcotte’s “social construction” of “woman” argument took her into uncomfortable when the same posts-structural linguistic necessities she applied to “women” were applied to “homosexuals,” eg.), and leaves them with little recourse but to try to stave off “debate” altogether.
And the best way they know to do this — because it is the lesson they’ve learned since they were old enough to admire their first lefty butcher — is to use one of the magic words that, through a social and media consensus, they’ve come to be able to rely upon as kind of gameshow lifelines.
Which is why their “arguments” are often little more than assertions that their opponents or interlocutors are some combination of racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic extremists — people who are either bad by choice or bad by brain chemistry / genetic weaknesses brought about by southern breeding practices.
Progressives are joiners; they crave group acceptance; and it is their ability to consider themselves well-educated and politically conversant for having memorized the party line that more than anything else defines them.
That they’ve been able to create a frame that protects and nurtures their ignorance — indeed, that elevates it to popular acceptance — is hardly surprising: it is easier to pretend to be smart than it is to learn, and, once this lesson is learned at the macro level, it is easier to get a group of people together who will all pretend to see the emperor’s topcoat than it is to find a brave few who will wonder why the old geezer’s let his balls hang out.
Bravo.
And even further, they refuse to attempt to find out things they disagree with. They don’t want to listen or read or know what the other side says, and when confronted they simply reject it out of hand, without consideration or critical analysis. It’s just wrong, its a lie. The facts are distorted, somehow, in the face of all reality and information, their position is still correct, they just don’t have the data to prove it yet. And most of it is from fear: fear that their worldview might be wrong, fear that they won’t know how to understand the world, fear that all they have learned is false and they are left without any foundation. Better to hug themselves in a warm womb of leftist thought regardless if it is true or not.
Didn’t the former Soviet Union have a habit of diagnosing political opinions as suffering from some mental disorder as pretext for hauling them off for “therapy”?
The Left has only two explanations for its opponenents. We must either be mentally deficient (insane or merely stupid, this includes those who act “against their interests” in the class struggle due to Stockholm Syndrome or somesuch) or evil (or perhaps a combination of both).
We don’t see Leftists necessarily as mentally deficient, but having deliberately arrested their thought processes so as to avoid committing thoughtcrime.
http://www.imao.us/archives/001171.html
That link should be footnoted in the above post.
FrnakJ explained the different types of lefties, he got all scientificy and footnotey and stuff, the ones you’re describing are “Beta Liberals”,
Well, taking ideas different from the rest of society makes them feel smart and important because they get to pretend everyone else are the dumb ones though all evidence points to the contrary.
His description of the Alpha Liberals is spot on, post-operational-thought is the only explanation.
…diagnosing those who hold dissenting political opinions…
Having to lie constantly in order to advance “The Greater Truth” would certainly make anyone a bit angry.
Listening to the likes of Gordo, you’d think that the 2004 elections had never happened, let alone a scant 4 years ago. But you wouldn’t think that it couldn’t happen again, because their fear of that happening is palpable.
LOOK!!
RUSH LIMBAUGHGLENN BECK!!1!!Like I said yesterday:
Imagine gord’s suprise when his invocation of the magic word “racist†did not have the expected effect of shutting down the debate.
Quelle surprise! Quelle horreur!
It’s like discovering holy water has no effect on the vampire, or silver on a werewolf.
Or that the gun you’ve been clinging to is loaded with blanks.
Questions ? Maybe libs should have asked questions from time to time. “Am I an asshole? Are we spending too much money on shit that doesn’t matter? Should the president never ever nominate somebody named Janet to a position in government? Am I ok with my president fellating latin american dictators and assholes. Are the democrats money grubbing pork loving whores.” Those are questions …
Spot on Jeff, great post.
Wait, I thought Gordo was a parody. He wasn’t ?
Mostly the Left is angry because the rest of us, having lost the election, haven’t just shut up and accepted the consequences. Like they did back in 2000. And ’04. Er, something.
The other thing is that conservatives and libertarians are familiar with the arguments of the progresive left because we are forced to confront them every day in the culture and media. The Left never (or very rarely) seems to have truly encountered serious conservative or libertarian thought and arguments and thus is ill equiped to engage a real discussion or debate on that school of thought, even if they were so inclined. Maybe they know they are ignorant of all but the most superficial cliches regarding conservatives and libertarians and this fuels their angst and anger.
The thought that they’re angry because things aren’t changing quickly enough is terrifying. How will they react when they’ve gotten what they want and things still aren’t unicorns and skittles?
Matt, I still think it was another troll using the name. But, a parody is also a strong chance.
People who are deeply invested in narcissism spend an awful lot of energy trying to maintain the illusion they have of themselves as being powerful and good, and they are exquisitely sensitive to anything that might prick that balloon
A reasonable explanation of the behavior of the trolls here. It could also just be that they are plain old bad, mean, rude and bitter people rather than narcissists. Aren’t most narcissists “charming” at some point? That does not apply to any of the PAITOR/alphie/actus/Caric/thor crowd.
This is why I come here, and why you’re in my google reader.
Although, you did manage to remind me, in that last paragraph, of that one time I accidentally caught a glimpse of my grandfather’s old man sac the last time he was in the hospital, rest his soul. An image forever stuck in my mental slide projector.
So, thanks for that?
Speak for yourself monster. That said, I wholly suppose it’s possible that these tools are creatures of evil. I’m getting nowhwere.
“Maybe they know they are ignorant of all but the most superficial cliches”
That’s because they work so hard to create those cliches. Their entire argumentum ad stramentam is based on it.
Habit.
Anger. Hmmmm. Who do we know who is primarily characterized by anger? And what was his problem, what the cause of his anger? What did that anger do to him, for him, against him?
Now that I re-read the post, it’s cause they’re a bunch of pussies.
Why are they so angry? I assume it is because their thongs are constricting their nooksacks.
Gordo was real, folks. Really fuckin’ mendoucheous.
I first thought this was Ward Churchill, but it is Gordo.
I think they are angry because alot of them are the bigot type charicatures they portray others as. Just look at all the Prop 8 crap in California. How did they treat people that did not agree with gay marriage? As less than human scum whose opinions they deemed evil. They are the intolerant bigots they imagine their “enemies” to be. So of course he ones we are talking about are angry. They will continue to be angry until the ideas and belief systems they disagree with are destroyed.
It’s tiring dealing with irrelvancies and changing of the subject followed by invective and disengagement. Children grow up, progs sometimes do not. I survived childhood, mine and my children’s, so something must have worked.
I like to ask myself, “what if they are right?” I remain assured that my way doesn’t harm anyone. I have dissuaded no one from learning to care for himself or provide for his future or be a responsible citizen. I can’t say the same about some positions antiethical to mine.
Down deep, I believe many know they are wrong, but it feels good to be caring and sharing, and it doesn’t hurt at all when the shared bounty belonged to someone else in the first place.
“Comment by Rob Crawford on 4/21 @ 11:18 am #
The thought that they’re angry because things aren’t changing quickly enough is terrifying. How will they react when they’ve gotten what they want and things still aren’t unicorns and skittles?”
They start building Gulags.
April 21, 2009 11:02 AM
It is good Charles Johnson and his allies are keeping things in perspective. Why not just go that extra step and call them Christanists?
York’s buddy is onto something. The current governing class is reactionary and adolescent. It is impatient, and has a lot to be defensive about, too. But, I’ll still give this baby administration a little more time to learn how to walk – say, about six more months. Then the magnifying glass and the fine-toothed comb are coming out.
I’m looking for the DOW to get back above 9500, GM, Chrysler and Citigroup to fall on their bankruptcy-swords, and a verifiable end to Iran’s nuclear program sometime before October of this year or I’m gonna really start to doubt the Dreamworker’s creds.
Liberals are afraid because to be critical of official lib policies is to “bite the hand that feeds them”.
I’m not fed by government nor government entitlements. The only thing the Federal govt. provides for me is DEFENSE and I EXPECT them to spend my money on that IN SPADES.
Liberals do not have a clue what motivates Conservatives nor Libertarians. It’s FREEDOM AND LIBERTY we love.
They love dependence and control.
Hehe Joe are you on a jihad against CJ?
PS I don’t wanna click on any link to LGF so do you mind if I ask who wrote that shit?
I think what is scaring “progressives” the most is that the smart ones realize what a snow job they had to pull to get Obama elected; how they used every last political victimization talking point available to bring together the easily led beta-“progressives” in to one mass movement.
Now they see these Tea Party gatherings of individuals who normally don’t follow anyone, who seem genuinely pissed off the way that the media and government is treating them, and they know all too well that the days of leftist snow-jobs are soon coming to an end.
People are mad as hell and aren’t going to stand for this bullshit much longer. The writing is on the Tea Bags.
OUTLAW!
Gus: that’s what I cherish…LIBERTY AND FREEDOM. Funny, I don’t think libs really care about that. And I don’t think they understand why those abstractions are important to us. Just the i>feeling<i of encroaching government suffocates me.
I need to learn how to block quote, boldface, and italicize with my posts. How do you guys do it?
Mad HTML skilz.
Timstigator, the easy way is to use Firefox and install this.
I think you are all overthinking it.
Unlike you and I, these people live in a country full of hate, injustice, discrimination and atrocity. All whites abuse and loathe blacks, all men look down upon and denigrate women. Where they live, not just George Bush but generations of leaders as far back as Columbus were awful and expressed only the basest human motivations. Nothing good has ever happened (until Obama got elected, of course — but what’s been good since then?) Oh, and there is no God, so when you die you merely turn into sh*t.
Is it any wonder they are fundamentally unhappy and angry?
I’m just glad I don’t live in that world, although I visited it once when I was too young to know any better. What a crummy place … and one they can never leave, as long as they continue to drink the Kool-Aid!
[quote]Timstigator, the easy way is to use Firefox and install this.[/quote]
Pablo: how does this [b]look[/b]? And thanks very much for teaching me [i]how to fish[/i]. [u]Love ya.[/u]
Hmmmmmm.
Getting there. Quickly?
make sure to use the HTML not Wiki or BB code. Also the
strikeoutfunction is incorrect for this site. you need “del” and “/del” inside the not “s” and “/s”Timstigator,
At the far right of the toolbar, set it to HTML, rather than BBCode.
Thanks for the link, Pablo. Way cool.
Oh, I see you found it.
I am just an unfrozen caveman, making his way in this liberal world.
I feel so…free…so empowered.
Watching Garofalo and Olbermann discuss the tea parties
That’s your problem right there.
If it wasn’t for the right of center chattering class these people would be so obscure as to be more irrelevant than they already are.
The left is angry for the same reason every teenager in the world is angry, they think they are right, but they’re wrong. What they want doesn’t work in the real world, when given enough rope, they hang themselves. Then they spend all weekend stuck in their room, writing bad poetry and drawing fake tattoos on their arms with a Sharpie.
geoffb, you can also spell out “strike” in place of “s”.
For strikeout, going all the way back to HTML 3.2 works: <strike>
strikeout</strike> (or used to — let’s see; no preview here).Regards,
Ric
If I am an
unfrozencaveman, Algore would welcome me with his big, burly arms and sweat.Thanks Pablo!
oh, the underline doesn’t work. : (
Thanks, people. I will stop playing around with my new toolbox of toys.
Sdferr, you’re absolutely
fuckin’correct. Thanks.The left is angry because they are not happy people. They want someone to take care of them. Conservatives are getting angry because to quote Charlton Heston, they want the government to “Get your hands off me you damn dirty apes”. We want to live our lives free of ACORN and other libtard organizations making us PAY THEM so they can TAKE OUR LIBERTY and our MONEY from us. The day of reckoning is coming for Pelosi, Reid and Fwank.
Now, back to the content of Jeff’s post:
Absolutely rings true to me. “Do it all now, cuz we might not be around here for very long.” Kinda shows you what they think of the people they supposedly govern. They know better, and they know enough to know it won’t last.
At the left side of the toolbar is a means to make up your own codes to use.
How much is ACORN getting in the budget?
The good folk over at JOM have run into an angry lefty in the “Sound of one hand clapping transparently” thread, some dude named Don who insists:
to which Ranger replies:
It goes on a bit. Still, the signs are there.
“And even further, they refuse to attempt to find out things they disagree with. They don’t want to listen or read or know what the other side says, and when confronted they simply reject it out of hand, without consideration or critical analysis”
Well, on the internet they have a new technique, which is to write “Shorter [Non-Leftist]: I’m a racist homophobe” or construct some other straw man which they then go buck’wile on.
Sometimes, they’re so dishonest, or come to believe the straw man to the point that they’ll actually begin to use the words that they put in your (or some other non-leftist’s) mouth without the “shorter” part, as if you actually said it.
geoffb, any idea where to save them to once you create them?
I didn’t think they’d try to take the banks over in the first 100 days. I was wrong.
Timstigator, I believe the number was $3,800,000,000.00. Or 13 dollars for every man woman and child in the United States. ACORN is a corrupt leftist group. Why would we give them a dime never mind $3.8 Billion dollars.
We also give PLANNED PARENTHOOD nearly 350 MILLION DOLLARS.
ACORNS money is stimulus money. Someone please correct me if I am factually incorrect.
Don loves America for what it can be, not what it is. Don wants us to die for our crimes.
I’ll have to get back to you on that unless someone else knows better. I played around with it a while back to get a “del” function put together but have forgotten what I had to do to get it working. I know that you need to make up an image to use as the shortcut on the bar.
I think they’re just mad cause their hopey changey piece of shit dirty socialist hungarian muppet fuckhead president hasn’t giving any hint at all yet that he has the balls to propose a final solution.
[…] at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein believes that the mere posing of these questions Which supposes that, given the time and inclination, most “progressives†could formulate and […]
Meet my pet wife.
As for the comments attributed to me on this thread, they were posted by a troll who was banned from my site months ago. Some of the comments are taken from posts that I wrote, some are taken from comments on my blog, but most are just made up. But it was amusing to see how easily you all were driven into a purple-faced rage by a troll cutting and pasting from another site.
And that troll just happened to share several of my IP addresses.
I blame Booosh and the Jews.
How does hatred relate to anger? Is it always a concommitant, going to the object [apparent causative agent of] the anger, or is hatred more a free roaming human attribute, capable of being developed in the absence of anger?
“In time of victory, why is the left so angry?â€
In part, I believe it is because political power doesn’t do everything they need it to do in order to accomplish their ends. Political power does not make people “good,” or truly accepting of things like “gay” marriage. You need to be able to reach into people’s minds and sanitize them and re-arrange their conscience – this you can only do through culture and religion.
Timstigator: you need to add the MeGehee shout:
Wonder HTML Powers: ACTIVATE!!
Thanks, Pablo for the Firefox Add-on. Way. Cool.
Jeff your last paragraph is a keeper. I’ve lost count of how many liberals I have debated who fall exactly into this paradigm.
Now I must go. Me and a few of my buddies are planning a black ops to rescue Gordo’s unicorn.
FREE THE FAERIE WORLD CONSTRUCT!
ah. that explains the incoherence.
oh. hasn’t *given* any hint at all that him or his skeezey woman have the balls to propose a final solution… but mostly I think that yeah mostly they are very very scared. That piece of shit they elected is fucking up our country at an alarming rate. These fuckers will be accountable for that on some level. Their kids especially are gonna bitchslap them when they find out what they done to their futures.
Sometimes it is as simple as many of them are douchenozzles, especially the angry ones.
I would say we weren’t so much angry or ragey, but really bemused. except with the nasty crazy veteran comments. those make me angry. since I live with one.
Since gordo has no comments on his posts, does that mean he banned his only commenter?
In an ocean of critical thinkers, gordo continues to play in the kiddie pool.
Nothing has been explained as far as I can see maggie. This one is going to take a heap of sorting out, if it is worth the doing which I doubt just now, given the uselessness of “how easily you all were driven into a purple-faced rage”. Some assholes just don’t warrant the effort.
I wonder if gordo is related to a certain perfessor of womyn’s studies in Kentucky…
Purple faced rage, Gordo? You haven’t got the slightest bit of a clue, have you?
It seems to me that gordo or his sock puppet were working their way into spittle flecked psychosis except, as maggie pointed out, for that whole veterans suicide thing. That was just dangerous insanity.
Oh, well so much for the black ops. WE’RE COMING FOR THE UNICORN, GORDO!!!
Gordo had potential, but he ended up being a second rate alphie instead.
Enjoy your moment in the sun Gordo, the left days in power are numbered in weeks, not months, and you know it.
*The right answer is Cheney is a lying sack of human waste and a profoundly degenerate and morally flawed man.*
He forgot “poor shot.”
I think I’m only watching 24 right now still hoping Garofolo is going to get one in the brainpan. I found Larry Moss annoying but any scene with Garofolo makes me hit the FF on the DVR. Fortunately, she rarely factors into any plot point, unless she’s trying to interfere with somebody doing something to stop terrorists. So I guess in many ways, they’ve captured the very spirit of a liberal. however, she doesn’t look much like “field team” material. And has Agent Walker been getting paler or is it just me ?
Pablo, of all the socialistic things that have happened in the past 3 months, that is the one thing that disturbs me the most- they’ve totally backdoored nationalization of the banks and 52% of America is either oblivious or don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.
At least Gordo’s not as long-winded as Warren Bonesteel.
Uh, Gordo? If you didn’t post them, how do you know who did?
*except with the nasty crazy veteran comments*
I get really pissed about this too. One of the best parts of the tea party in Tampa was when one of the organizers asked everyone who had served to raise their hand- there was a spontaneous and loud cheer and long applause. My woop apparently scared the living crap out of the gentleman standing next to me, who had raised his hand and served in the Pacific in WW 2. Interestingly enough, he was at one point, serving on the same ship on which my father was a gunner.
The tequila finally wore off. Alka Seltzer is his friend. (Nice catch, Pablo!)
Is Gordo for real or is he like Obama’s birth certificate, and ACORN. Fraudulent.
Maybe Gordo was a judge at MISS U.S.A..
He just knows!
RACIST! (See how I did that, gordo? Really, anybody can!)
“Comment by Pablo on 4/21 @ 1:05 pm #
Purple faced rage, Gordo? You haven’t got the slightest bit of a clue, have you?”
“Some people couldn’t get a clue during clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if they smeared their bodies with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.”
BLACKADDER!!!
As I’ve said before: My only real concern is that we don’t have enough lampposts to hang all these fuckers from. But that’s mostly just an idle thought I get from time to time. Nothing purple-fwaced about it.
When the time comes, calm, cool detached vengeance is what is called for.
BTW and FYI the first mention I ever saw to the “Text Formatting Toolbar” was around a year ago in the comments at the pub by topsecretk9. That is who I thank for the tip to that add-on that has made HTML commenting so much easier to do.
Lots of room on highway overpasses, bridges, and other suitable substitutes.
CONSERVATIVE: “Vengeance is a dish best served cold.”
GORDO: “Vengeance is a dish best served vegetarian with free range produce grown on commune farms within 100 miles of the cooking site and pre-inspected to meet carbon neutral standards and oh, by the way, vengeance is not a proper path to take to solve disputes when listening and compromising would accomplish much more positive and progressive results and WARMONGERING RACISTS!!!
y’all are having entirely too much fun at the Gordo’s expense I think.
Well, hf, you have Obama. Fair is fair, I think.
It’s a friendly thing, hf. After all, one doesn’t flaunt one’s nipples at complete strangers.
Maybe I’m wrong about that last.
It depends on the context, Slart. Strippers in a bar? OK. Customer in a strip bar? Not OK.
Pablo, this page should help to customize the toolbar.
SEXIST!
Gordo’s reservoir of simple is deep and wide.
Peter Huber writes with good sense at City Journal about energy production and the impossibility of curtailing carbon burning across the world. h/t Powerline. Here is Huber’s concluding paragraph:
Damn straight.
Thank you Pablo for the formatting tips.
“fwqaced”? WTF? How did Barney get in here and sabotage my post?
Bastard!
Hey, why isn’t Garfalfa playing the head of the FBI, or the director of the top secret lesbian special forces. She’s just a two-bit gopher-skank on 24. She’s not representing women very well.
If her character is not going to die a violent death on the show, I’d at least like to see her captured by jihadis where they tie her down and take turns crapping on her. For the artistic value, of course.
Why is the Left enraged? Simple: As Marx pointed out, his ideology is inevitable. We mossbacks are standing in the way of an unstoppable force. How dare we.
I need an HTML bailout
That’s it. I quit.
(I still have the weird gradual disappearance of text on the left side. It’s like it’s tilted. So, it’s not really my fault. But I still quit.
After all, one doesn’t flaunt one’s nipples at complete strangers.
Well, not all three, at least.
ginsocal
upgrade your browser if you can
It seems as though Gordo’s tequila wore off, but not the peyote, as he is still bugfuck nuts. You can heap all the opporbrium in the world on that rectal ramrod, and it will still not be enough.
Feel free to heap up that opprobrium as high as a ladder to the sky and GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!
Aren’t most narcissists “charming†at some point?
Only when they want something from you. And you’re new to them, so they don’t know how easily manipulated you are.
There’s narcissism and there’s narcissistic personality disorder. The latter is pretty much set in stone forever and ever amen.
The former is more lightly acquired and therefore more lightly cast off. But they still really really really want to feel superior to the uncool people, so it’s pretty hard to persuade them to knock it off already and get real.
Usually, life has to deliver a 2 X 4 to the head before they catch on, if ever.
Why are they angry? Well, if I may go all Mormon on you, it’s because “wickedness never was happiness.” (Alma 41:10) I’ll leave it to you to determine the nature of their wickedness.
52% of America is either oblivious or don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.
Or they know that they can’t do jack-squat about it. No tea party of any size will stop them from what they’re doing. Notice that Obama made a lame 100 million gesture to “placate the proletariat.” The saddest part is that he thought we’d buy it.
My take on the anger revolves around the meaning of “leader” on the left as opposed to the right.
For the left their leader is the one who will lead them to that promised land of human perfection. Their Utopia. The leader is the human embodiment of this perfection. He must be and always be seen to be as perfect.
All missteps, mistakes have to be attributed to his fallible followers or to the evil workings of his enemies. When he can’t deliver Utopia as expected there is no way to blame him. Several comments last night were of that variety. Obama was ill served by his appointees.
Like the child who cannot blame the abusive parent but must blame themselves or some other for the failings of their parent. Lots of internal frustration and anger that has to go somewhere other than where it should be properly placed.
Because it is not directed at the source of the problem, the leader, the anger can’t actually help solve the problem which grows worse. Either they will finally see the leader’s imperfections and drop him or they will have to find a scapegoat to heap all of the blame upon. We are to be that scapegoat if their leader can arrange it.
This fear of being the scapegoat is what is driving the “pragmatics” to attempt to distance themselves from the conservative right. They hope to escape the flames while letting us burn. They don’t see that the left can never satisfy this urge for perfection and will simply find another scapegoat.
The only escape is to expose the imperfection of the leader for all to see. That will collapse their system untill they can raise up another “perfect one”.
Don’t take gordo too seriously when he calls you names, Jeff. He once called me a misogynist when I asked for a tuna fish for lunch.
Really! Then he made me wear a sundress.
Given a couple of generations educated with the belief that nothing they do can ever be wrong, that the most important thing in life is feeling good about themselves, perhaps the boundary between those two has been eroded.
1) Gordo read a Chomsky book
2) Gordo thinks he is really rather clever
3) Gordo is, in fact, rather dim
All you need to know, really.
Alpuccino, Garofalo could represent women better if she washed her hair at least once a month, or if she sought a qualified dermitoligist. Her face is a smooth as a porpupines ass.
gordo thinks that squirrels are sexist for hoarding nuts.
For the left their leader is the one who will lead them to that promised land of human perfection.
And for the conservative, the leader just has to be a locus of organization, an articulator of ideas (not empty bromides) and one who can stand in the face of enemies and hand them their heads (literally or figuratively).
Gordo read a Chomsky book.
I doubt it. His writings don’t bear the same stench of pretension.
Obama: This ends a dark chapter for our country. We are going to end torture and gain back our moral high ground.
Translation: We own the press, so there ain’t no way they’ll leak our torture.(which is way more painful than that pussy waterboarding, AND we’ll torture Americans if we need to)
Same boilerplate, pamphlet Chomsky crap, pre-digested pap for the Gordos of the world. Uncritically swallowed whole, to be regurgitated at parties of likeminded progs, or trotted out in front of wretched rethuglicans to better educate them.
The worst weekend was when gordo read that book that Chavez pimped to our President. Great faeries, it was “Racist America” this and “Capitalist Exploiters of the Natives” that and reading long, mind numbing passages until I wanted to gallop full steam into rock ledge.
Then it was the horror of donning the Incan Ceremonial Garb for a ride across the desert celebrating the “Liberating Other!” or some such. I mean, ogres, it’s like the guy has stacked his dilithium crystals into some bottomless power supply to feed the worlds most powerful force field of “Teh Obtuse.”
I’m trapped. No. Critical. Thinking. Can. Get. Through.
WHEN WILL I BE FREE?!?
And being seen as human and thus fallible, they can have failings and still be a leader. They must acknowledge the failings and strive to do better. It’s why conservatism and Christianity have resonance with each other. Both accept humans as imperfect beings. It is the struggle to be better that counts. The failure is expected. Only one perfect one has walked the Earth.
“top secret lesbian special forces”
Thanks, alppuccino, for mixing two great tastes that taste great together, at least in the realm of fantasy.
I’m trying to get gordo to quit dating lesbians.
FOR THE FUTILITY!
Elections are only the beginning of the change. The Republican Party, through its de facto leader Rush Limbaugh, has made plain its desire that President Obama fail. You can expect that those who support the president will keep supporting him. If you want to call that “anger,” then go right ahead.
Schadenfreude is a dish best served microwaved, and covered with Hershey’s syrup and whipped cream.
I love unicorns. Gordo’s, not so much.
their “arguments†are often little more than assertions that their opponents or interlocutors are some combination of racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic extremists
Boy, they certainly went to town with it. I taught them simply assertions of economic forces, but they add this whole list of stuff, wow.
Thing is, I really screwed them because I taught them that kind of shit is all an argument can be. Hey, it was a living.
So what is the follow-on? Can you say, do you know? Or is specificity unimportant in the context you have in mind?
Hey, it’s David Axelrod! ASTROTURFIST!
BTW: Does anybody have a copy of Limbaugh General Order #32-1096? I think I accidentally added it to a stir fry.
That comment was tight, MD! No wasted motion.
Why would anyone want the FBPOTUS to fail? I mean c’mon! It would mess up the historicalness. FBPOTUS has GOT-TA.GOT-TA.GOT-TA succeed!
“…it was “Racist America†this and “Capitalist Exploiters of the Nativesâ€
Here’s a question: if the American racist, capitalist exploiters of the poor and defenseless have refrained from using and exploiting Cuba for the last umpteen number of years, why is it still a socialist shithole?
“BTW: Does anybody have a copy of Limbaugh General Order #32-1096? I think I accidentally added it to a stir fry.”
BJT, you have to get the latest version of teh sooper seektet VRWC nasal implant.
Get the v2.3a software upgrade and you’re good to go.
I don’t know about you guys, but my de facto doesn’t need a leader. My de facto finds its way around just fine, if you know what I’m saying.
Magic Dog – Thank you for the sober and cogent analysis. You may now remove your head from your rectum.
Can’t do the implants, Mr. O’Brain. they make me sneeze. The VRWC-RL won’t let me use E-Mail because I’m on Goggle, which is verboten.
I get mine by courier bikes. You know, the oppressed brown illegal aliens we enslaved to deliver messages. I just wish they’d stop writing the darn things on rice paper.
Well, at least Magic Dog didn’t use “de-Lardo.” That’s something, isn’t it?
The threat of anger and scorn is a useful tool for “helping” people decide which ideology to default to when they would rather not spend a lot of time thinking or caring about it.
Perez Hilton makes Andrew Sullivan weep.
I would vote for gay marriage. I just do not think it should be imposed from on high from judges. Let legislatures and voters decide the issues. But this attack by the Queen of all Media against Ms. California is a very bad idea.
“You can expect that those who support the president will keep supporting him.”
Ahhh, hubris. It will make the looks on their faces in 2012 so much more satisfying.
The worst weekend was when gordo read that book that Chavez pimped to our President. Great faeries, it was “Racist America†this and “Capitalist Exploiters of the Nativesâ€
All you need to know about the economic disparity between North America and Latin America is this:
Spain recreated the feudal system in its colonies
We had the Homestead Act
finis
I’m on the Alkins Diet BJ. I can spread lard between two pieces of ham and deep-fry it in lard, and then garnish it with a little rosebud made out of lard.
Great. Now I’m hungry.
al: Alkins?
al: Alkins?
It’s a modified Atkins.
I add more fat and red meat. And I make tortilla shells out of bacon.
I smell like Sunday dinner all the time.
Geez, al, I think I hear Polka Music…
That wasn’t me. No carbs, no farts.
After Easter they had the high end spiral cut hams on sale for .49 cents, normally $3.50 a lbs. That is a full ham for less than $10. I bought four of them and stuffed the garage freezer. You are welcome to come over and diet, just bring the beer…D’OH! No beer on Adkins! That sucks!
Looks like I am going to start having to smoke pot instead. It is about dieting you know!
You can expect that those who support the president will keep supporting him.
What’s next? My dad can beat up your dad?
Amazing how often they appeal to authority and popularity as a defense. Never to a cause-and-effect formula. They can’t even summon a random quote from a philosopher.
Sad, sad, sad.
*I’d at least like to see her captured by jihadis where they tie her down and take turns crapping on her. For the artistic value, of course.*
Now THAT would be television worth watching. Have a guest appearance by Ward Churchill as Chutch.
Looks like I am going to start having to smoke pot instead. It is about dieting you know!
Careful there Joe. That ganj makes the Swiss Cake Rolls literally jump into your mouth. You’ll wake up with a couple empty boxes by your head. That’s what I’ve heard.
LMC, As this is ostensibly a “work” computer, I can’t upgrade anything.
Speaking of the right wing, it would seem that both the Republican Party and your echo chamber are disintegrating before our eyes. Which side of the civil war is this blog on?
MD, if you had the reading ability or attention span of a four-year-old, you’d know that our host had a pretty big dustup with Patterico over exactly this issue not very long ago.
You are the weakest link. Buh-bye!
Which return troll is Magic Dog?
I can confirm on the Swiss Cake Rolls thingy. Also, these ones. Which only have like 480 calories. I think. It’s definitely under 500. What I like about them is they are crispy and also they are crunchy. Both. It’s kinda neat.
I accidentally bumped into these the other day. Life altering, really. I’ll never look at a Peppermint Patty with the same lust again.
Late!
The headline questions wrongly, I think (though its answer is fine, kind of, and Jeff’s finer, mostly).
This isn’t “victory.” It’s a chance for it — for the “angry,” their first. So it’s being strained at, called to more loudly because it seems possibly in reach. The “angry” shit describes victory.
Random quote from a philosopher:
Me, too. Also gay divorce, gay child support, gay community property, and gay alimony/palimony. All part of the package.
Real civil wars normally involve lots of messy dying and stuff. This doesn’t rise higher than Family Feud
Which side of the civil war is this blog on?
The correct side?
Nietzsche, figures.
Magic Dog is yet another mental midget.
I’m all for Magic Dog cornholing himself with a frozen swordfish while I consider which side to choose, though.
If by “figures”, you mean, “Ah, good, an honest philosopher!” I’m with ya geoffb.
The most hilarious thing about magic dog is his/her short attention span. WTF? Does this mean the left disappeared when they were losing elections, too? Damn, they reappeared! Just a stupid individual.
You are correct, it is all part of the same package.
“Comment by Magic Dog on 4/21 @ 3:19 pm #
Which side of the civil war is this blog on?”
The northern, Republican anti-slavery side.
Not the southern, Democrat slave-holding side.
Sure am glad none of that dime store psychoanalysis describes me because when I hit you with the bang stick it’s because the lab tests confirm your DNA identifiers are that of Hick! Fangless, greased and stinkered, three-toed and full of butt worms, you’re a snot snortin’, wet dick, hick-hickety HICK!
Anger is easy. And once you let anger loose, really rant and rave, it doesn’t go away but continues to build up. It perpetuates itself. The left has been wallowing in it – really wallowing in it – for the past eight years.
I guess I better go with the mushrooms then. I have heard it said that eating a lot of them and watching a cremation in Bali is quite the experience.
Kulaks! Wreckers!!
Remember, folks, ignore the inbred mouth-breather.
Thank you.
Still? You don’t know much about Cuba or Cubans, do ya, butt wipe. A wee-weenie ignorant Yanqui like yourself best keep 68-miles north of that proud island nation of Cuba, unless you want a serious Teófilo Stevenson bitch smackin’ put on your wet candy ass. Ha!
Here’s a question: if the American racist, capitalist exploiters of the poor and defenseless have refrained from using and exploiting Cuba for the last umpteen number of years, why is it still a socialist shithole?
Intersting – because according to the lefty playbook contact with American culture through trade is an unalloyed bad thing – except for Cuba, for which no contact with America is the cause of all Cuba’s troubles.
People with absolutely nothing to say should shut the fuck up. People who’ve been asked to leave should get the fuck out. So why don’t you, thor?
Ah, Pablo – just ignore the mental mayfly.
Comment by Pablo on 4/21 @ 4:27 pm #
Please ignore the mental midget.
Thank you.
You don’t know much about Cuba or Cubans, do ya, butt wipe.
Yes, it’s an earthly paradise.
You can tell by the way that people leave there on rafts they’ve made of trash bags filled with styrofoam packing peanuts.
Why don’t you tell us the going rate for 15 year old slave girls down there, big man?
Comment by Mikey NTH on 4/21 @ 4:26 pm #
Bingo.
So very much smarter a reply than the nattering bandersnatch.
Comment by SBP on 4/21 @ 4:39 pm #
Please ignore the talking STD.
Thank you.
I’ll ignore him, N.O’Brain, because I’m recovering from a fever already, and reading his nonsense will cause my head to hurt worse than it does already. But I did read some of yesterday’s Gordo thread; has anyone made a determination whether or not he’s lying upthread here? Did someone steal his nick and post under it, or is he the ‘nozzle what’s just embarrassed today?
I seem to recall it did say yesterday that it was working in the ‘FOX News Bldg.’ in New York, which might support a hijacking claim, if he is living/lying in Tucson.
Doesn’t matter; either/both incarnations of Gordouche are mindless, monotonous, and moronic.
Oh, and thanks for whoever pointed to that Putney Swope series on YouTube. I’ve made it to #6 (which won’t be around long because of the naked chicks… )
Serr8d – it was lying about it having someone else post under his name.
N. O’Brain @4:40 pm:
When you have the standard incoherent pastings of insults as a reply it is just another way of saying “Look at these shiny baubles over here! Over here!”
N.B.: The stuff you read from him isn’t invective; real invective doesn’t need coarseness, real invective is a rapier. For example: Mr. A. and Mr. B. are personal enemies and meet face to face on a street. Mr. A. says “I never step aside for a bastard.” Mr. B. steps aside and says, “I always do.”
Or one woman says to another, “What does a whore know about honor?” The other woman replies, “I don’t know either; let us call your mother and ask her.”
You’re that special breed of American ignorant degenerate whose only hope of elevating himself is to call out evil imagined others, a full-on pussy of a man, a worthless leech by every definition.
I’m sorry to have to constantly remind you, turd lump, but you’re hopelessly ignorant.
Did it actually post a pshop of Jeff? Really?
A bit exposed, Sonny Gordo, to be doing that sort of thing.. )
You can almost always guage the level of Barcky’s suckitude by the level of thor’s idiocy.
Comment by JD on 4/21 @ 5:49 pm #
Please ignore the doorknob licking buttmunch.
Thank you.
I’ve always liked this one, Nth:
If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.
– Lady Astor (to Winston Churchill)
If you were my wife, I’d drink it.
– Winston Churchill, in reply
You know what we haven’t really addressed here? Baracky’s absolutely asinine answer to Ortega’s speech. Does the narcissism have no limits? International politics is now all about him.
Ugh. I’m just disgusted.
But, hey, Baracky cut $100 million, so we’ve got that going for us.
Sdferr, #171.
Yeah, I don’t like Nietzsche but he’s not trying to mask over what he’s saying. The left will only unmask after they figure they have triumphed.
4 trillion =
4 million million
100 million
4 million
million100
million100 dollars out of 4 million. man the dude’s a skinflint
Joe, you will still get hungry, and eat. But you will puke it up, and it will be in technicolor.
Willpower is the only way to go.
I like how Jeff’s point is borne out by at least three rather angry trolls posting here. It is almost as if they cannot help themselves.
Jeff: Note the illogical anger on Left.
Troll: #$%&!!! You @#$%&s!
N. O’Brain @ 5:56 pm:
That is always a good one. It shows wit. Spending one’s days putting together a string of insults based on human reproduction and human waste excretion so as to have a cut-and-paste list to drop into a comment thread? A focus on pettiness, and an acknowledgment that the commenter – despite his protests – really doesn’t have anything better to do with his time. Grandiose claims with petty actions is the descriptive of “All hat, no cattle”.
#199 – the special non-maskiness of the tertiary syphllitic? I took a crack at reading “Ecce Homo” in German back as an undergrad. I think I had to drink a quart of gin whilst wrapped in several editions of the Frankfurter Allgemeine to clear that out…
Another way
4 trillion dollars divided by 300 million population equals $13,333.33 each.
100 million dollars divided by 300 million population equals $0.33
Obama charged us each $13,333.33 and now gave us back the 33 cents. Yippee, half a candybar if it’s on sale.
“Oh, and thanks for whoever pointed to that Putney Swope series on YouTube. I’ve made it to #6 (which won’t be around long because of the naked chicks… )”
Like geoffb said, that was sdferr, I’m training myself to always check out his links.
By the way, as a public service for the younger guys, could we tag all older movies with naked chicks? So I can studiously avoid them that is. Perverts.
LTC John: I would have thought the gin would have been enough – especially if you used ‘Crystal Palace’ gin *shudder* That bottle lasted the entire year and was used to clean the shower. That it was effective at shower-cleaning should be enough of a review for anyone. (N.B.: you can take ‘penny-per-proof’ too far.)
My experiences with philosophy is that some get it so wrong because they start so wrong. If you do not acknowledge the cardinal sins and virtues and that they are all in play in every person, then you are going to get it very, very wrong. GIGO on a metaphysical level.
Mikey,
Oh no – Bombay or Bombay Sapphire. I was taught well, at least in regards to gin.
The Sapphire Collins Lite:
2 parts of Bombay Sapphire Gin
1 part freshly squeezed lemon
ice
a dash of Nutra Sweet
..stirred
I wasI was too. But there you are in undergrad, pinching pennies, and next thing you know – Crystal Palace.
It did scare the shower clean, at least.
And beer? back then Shop-Rite on Trowbridge had Goebel for $6 a case. Enough reason to carry that case back to Wilson Hall in the winter on foot. Life in the 1980’s.
Have you guys decided that Nietzsche got it wrong? (Whatever the hell that means.) It, or Hing?!! [slide over in the clip to 5:30]
I’d say perhaps we should look again, he may not be so wrong after all, at least about some aspects of humanity. And too, the man was a philosopher, not a party leader.
Mikey, I had that E-5 Natn’l Guard drill check, my enlistment bonus and Montgomery GI bill going straight into the liquor budget…but I did save on beer. Rhinelander ain’t too bad for a cheap one.
OK. Let’s analyze the logical errors in this LOL.
Starting with the assumption that Social Security = Socialism.
[quote]Comment by happyfeet on 4/21 @ 3:26 pm #
I can confirm on the Swiss Cake Rolls thingy. [/quote]
Have you tried them frozen yet, ‘feets?
shit. That is why I don’t like new stuff.
Okay, I think I figured it out.
Have you tried them frozen yet, ‘feets?
Cool!
Looks like your toggle is set to “BBcode” B Moe. Put’er on HTML and your good to go.
ZOoops, refresh is my friend. Sorry B Moe.
Good call. Any psychedelic always worked for me, even if I could manage to actually cook something the idea of eating it was just too funny to try.
Here, Fido,tweet,get away from the computer and quit humping Mr. Thor’s leg,he likes it too much.
Call me dumb, but why did Gordo post the picture of his mail order bar girl?
Mikey, in the 60’s you would get kicked out of MSU for having any booze in the dorm. I made homemade “wine” in my upper closet shelf in Wonders.
BMoe – I know he tried them deep fried … not sure about frozen.
Rhinelander was good, but Point was better.
I could always cook but the eating was out of “Tom Jones”, the movie that is.
I loved, loved Rics take on it.
Before we put gay marriage into law, lets have congress declare cows vegetables so vegetarians can eat hamburgers.
LTC John: I had a free-ride scholarship to Henry Ford Community College. That was two years. I had a minor scholarship at Michigan State. I had what I saved from summers working and in the dorm cafeteria. That was school and housing. Dad subsidized the rest to the tune of about $40 a week. So saving the pennies was high on my priority list. (Dad also bought the books, and yes – I had used books wherever I could find them.) It was law school that gave me student loan debts – thank God I had the full-ride scholarship so long as I kept my GPA above 3.0.
And law school was after 4.5 years of substitute teaching ($50 a day, $60 if you had a long-term, over two weeks – assignment). The student loans were to pay for rent and food, what working as a law clerk didn’t cover. Summers was full time clerking and then working nights at Camp Dearborn on the weekend.
Cheap eer and cheap liquor was needed – also lots of Rammen. Lots of Rammen noodles.
JD,
Point?!
geoffb: My late uncle Fred got kicked out of MSU for having a beer keg in his dorm room in Mason-Abbot back in the late forties-early fifties.
Since it was so obvious an infraction I know he was looking for that.
Eh, he became a publican in Roscommon, where he could indulge his fly-fishing. He did love fishing.
BTW – Fred’s is being reopened in Roscommon, Michigan. If anyone is passing by, stop in. (My mom likes the new owners.)
General unhingement I’d say. Or, playing the sympathy card.
Try ‘desperation’ serr8d.
I’m single and never been ‘hot stuff’ with the ladies, but I know my limits there, and don’t need that to reinforce and uphold my image of myself.
As the great philosopher Popeye has said, “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”
Brent Stephens, WSJ, Our Selective Moral Outrage:
Sdferr,
Lovely. I see the Red Army hasn’t changed a bit.
.
I seem to recall Rutger Hauer did that to Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hitcher, btw.
LtC John – We were poor. Point and Schaefer’s.
I noticed that when Pres Obama spoke to the Turkish Parliament he never once mentioned Russia, nor Turkey’s nextdoor neighbor, Georgia, though Armenia got a mention along with Nagorno-Karabakh, Cyprus, Israel v Palestine, Israel v Syria, Iran, Iraq, the Kurds,……..
I suspect that your life is more crappy then you let on assclown. I also suspect you may be something of a dickhead.
Borne out points, huh? Do a post-count, troll, and add.
What cracks me up about a supposedly educated man such as yourself is that you know I’m right, but you choose to bite your tongue, you know, to fit in a group. When a mental butt loaf like P’brain calls Cuba a socialist shithole it could be you, LTC John, that posts something heady in response, such as, hey, P’brain, Haiti was the first democracy in the Caribbean and economically they’re not doing too hot.
This r-wing Purple Popsicle cult you’re in is not fitting of a man with a formal education such as yourself.
See? Wallowing in anger does nothing but feed anger.
The Wings won tonight. Time to go to bed.
Much to do to tomorrow.
Movie Russian Army Afgan war, The Beast.
Yeah that is really fucking profound right there, thor.
Wish I had thought of that.
how about those haiti dictators thor man? do you eat straw or spout it?
That would mean Haiti had the first democratically elected black president, too, huh? How did that work out for them?
See what I did there?
I have not done the frozen swiss cake rolls. I’ve gained weight since the quitting of the smoking to where I’ve let the swiss cake rolls go. We just need some time apart. If the swiss cake rolls really love me they’ll come back and if they don’t they were never really mine.
Here is the sad truth about gay marriage, if legalized, Lesbians will line up. Gay men, a few will tie the not…but not so much.
My dad had a different perspective about this. When I said I would vote for it, he said–why should I vote for gay marriage, those gays vote liberal on every other issue. What have they done for me?
Other than Broadway of course.
What cracks me up about a supposedly educated man such as yourself is that you know I’m right, but you choose to bite your tongue, you know, to fit in a group. When a mental butt loaf like P’brain calls Cuba a socialist shithole it could be you, LTC John, that posts something heady in response, such as, hey, P’brain, Haiti was the first democracy in the Caribbean and economically they’re not doing too hot.
That’s one for communist tyranny. Anyone else?
Forgot about the quitting smoking bit, try sunflower seeds for that. The ones in the shell, give you something to do and don’t have a lot of calories.
It’s hard not to like the people here.
hf, how long ago did you quit? How’s it going? I think I’m finally over the hard part.
What you usually do, spout something inane and insulting.
router… what sort’a nub would go by the nick router? Why not bottle, or teaspoon, or cooling fan?
Anger is easy. And once you let anger loose, really rant and rave, it doesn’t go away but continues to build up. It perpetuates itself. The left has been wallowing in it – really wallowing in it – for the past eight years.
And you’ve had only three months. But what a three months it has been! The Republican Party is falling apart and the right-wing blogosphere is split over the vital issue of Little Green Footballs. Tell me, are your heads exploding yet?
Exploded? Dude, they’re noggins have imploded due to lack of conscience or substance.
“…the right-wing blogosphere is split over the vital issue of Little Green Footballs. ”
Another moron chimes in.
Apparently Magic Dog’s head has assploded.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 4/21 @ 8:26 pm #
Please ignore the broke dick liar.
Thank you.
“Comment by JD on 4/21 @ 8:58 pm #
Apparently Magic Dog’s head has assploded.”
I think it was his ass.
Dude, try Imodium.
Gordo, assclown, Magic puppy, and thor all in one day … Again, you can guage the level of how poorly Barcky is doing by the level of vitriol from the trolls.
corn nuts are tasty. They just are. This is day 9 and it was really easy except for the eating side effect. I started a year ago when I quit coffee. I quit making it at home I mean. I did just that for 6 months. Then I switched to marlboro light menthols and smoked those for three months… then I switched to the ultralight menthols and got on chantix and zyban and did the chantix for three months. I smoked all three months – but the drugs make you cut back dramatically and you can practice not smoking at all your usual smoking places… you smoke less and you catch yourself only smoking half a cigarette a lot and after the third month of chantix was out I quit. I for sure can’t smoke now cause the chantix isn’t there to block the nicotine and I’ll get addicted again. But it’s been pretty easy. Also it helped that our dipshit dirty socialist president passed a tax where he wants me to help pay healthcare for little kids whose parents drive way better cars than I do. Fuck him and his dirty socialist cigarette tax.
also, mom
i thought barack was pretentious
You people still haven’t told me what side you’re on. Little Green Footballs: Yea or Nay? Come on, out with it!
routers are like data shepherds I think. Without routers all the packet thingies would just gambol about willy nilly.
I said already that Charles Johnson’s blog isn’t even half as relevant as the blog of that guy everyone hated hated hated and wanted to die die die when he was on the Star Trek tv show with the bald guy. He grew up to be a good person unlike Charles Johnson who got weird and creepy and you can’t leave him alone with children or small animals.
Speaking strictly for myself, I never really cared for LGF. Hardly ever read it.
What you usually do, spout something inane and insulting.
He who says A must then say B, thor. Why is it inane or insulting…it seems perfectly reasonable to ask why democracy imploded in Haiti where it flourished elsewhere. What do you think the contributing factors were?
Just bears repeating, doesn’t it?
Speaking strictly for myself, I never really cared for LGF. Hardly ever read it.
Personally, I liked a lot of Charles’ music clip posts. I got turned on to Keith Jarrett from LGF. Other than that, he always seemed to get stuck in ruts. At times, it resulted in great stories, most times it was tiresome.
For my part, I miss most the pleasures of reading Den Beste on politics and foreign policy, with the occasional bits of physics and engineering thrown in when he cared to. It grieved me when he hung that up to attend to other things.
Magic Dog just can’t understand how people who supposedly support the same party can disagree. I mean, that’s just not done! You don’t have to fall in love, just fall in line, eh Magic Dog?
Sorry. Individuals sometimes disagree. Whereas joiners…
Incidentally, it’s sad how thor tries to glom on to every troll here as if he’s found a kindred spirit. He lectures us about intellectual honesty even as he tries to pretend people like assclown or Magic Dog or gordo are anything more than meme puppets, content to live their lives with Axelrod’s hand up their asses.
In Charles’ defense, it is easy to get stuck in ruts when you do this long enough.
But his very public attempt to try to distance himself from the right wingers is a rather transparent cry to be brought in from the cold by his left-leaning pals.
He wants to go back to the days when, as a liberal musician, he could wear his pony tail and cycle without irony.
Maybe it was due in part to America’s invasion and its installing of a pro-American puppet dictator there, or maybe it’s just that Haiti is a little half-of-a-island country with no resources to speak of outside of the resourcefulness and talent of the people. How many years have you endured a human knife fight on a rocky socket? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
A lot of good writers and vibrant artisans are from Haiti. Some good voodoo too.
“…or maybe it’s just that Haiti is a little half-of-a-island country with no resources to speak of outside of the resourcefulness and talent of the people.”
Meh. Been there, done that. Got a Godzilla problem too.
thor —
You really need to get over this romanticizing of everything not bourgeois. It’s infantile talk dressed up in fancy rhetorical flourish.
Personally, I’m disappointed in Charles Johnson because he’s become adept with Thai stick fighting.
Hmmmm. Thought I’d try that gambit out myself but it does just make me sound gay.
Gojira wa?
How do you fight with Thai sticks?
And why would you want to?
Bombay Ten martini:
Throw your martini glass in the freezer for ten minutes or so. While it’s cooling:
cut yourself a longish (4-6″) slice of lemon peel. You’re going to twist this so that the oils pop out, and then rub it all over the inside of the glass. If you absolutely have to have more lemon oil in your drink, leave it in the glass.
Then, shake four or five ounces of Bombay Ten over ice until it’s just about as cold as it can get. Possibly, keeping your bottle in the freezer will get the job done better, without polluting that lovely gin with ice thawage.
Pour in the lemon-oil swabbed glass, and drink as slowly as you can stand to.
This is the best fucking martini in the world, says I.
Donde esta la bibliotecha?
Yeah, sdferr, I never picked up 10% of the Japanese from my jiu jitsu. Outside of recognizing that it’s syllabic, I read gojira wa as spicy pork with noodles.
Maybe it was due in part to America’s invasion and its installing of a pro-American puppet dictator there, or maybe it’s just that Haiti is a little half-of-a-island country with no resources to speak of outside of the resourcefulness and talent of the people.
Hmmm, sounds like Singapore, Hong Kong or Japan. I’m just a stump-toothed hick out here in the hinterlands, but didn’t those places work out pretty well as compared to Haiti?
And how were things in Haiti in the intervening 120-odd years between Toussaint L’Overture and Woody Wilson’s excellent adventure, bright boy?
B Moe, different reply for you. For the earlier ingestion question? Toss a few caps into a blender with lemonade. But Thai stick? That was all Northern Lights, Amsterdam something or another and Cali hydro in my day, mid 90’s.
Thai stick is mythical to me. Like a mellow Afghan purple.
I deny I ever wrote this comment. And if I did, I wrote it about a decade ago.
It’s a happy glom, not a sad glom. After hand tossing rattle snakes all day, deep inside I’m just a Outlaw shootin’ the tin cans with kindred spirits, long pulls on plausibility with a whiskey chaser, rolling thunder, red skies at night, embers cracking in the silent yonder, admiring constellations, one star at a time.
Pppp.
I like my shrooms mixed with peanut butter, Thai sticks were the first experience with sticky bud most of us had back in the day. Quite a surprise if all you had ever smoked had been home grown leaf.
Oh wait, I confused glom with gloam. My bad.
hi thor look I founded this for you on the Internet!
¤ø„¸¨°º¤ø„…ø¤º° ¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º°¨
¨°º¤ø„¸ GO! Susan !!¸„ø¤º°¨copy and paste
¸„ø¤º°¨Ur Awesome!!! `°º¤ø„¸if you think
¸„ø¤º°¨¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤ø„¸¨°º¤ Susan Boyle is the best ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ Thank You Susan!
Guys so young, 4 decades ago I’d have
writtendonedenied that.You remember Colombian Gold, B Moe?
No, stump-toothed hick, not so much.
I copy and pasted because Susan is the best!
the bestest ever!
With the bushiest brows ever!
He’s lying is he says he does. Trick question, that.
is = if
Nice ASCII gfx, actually.
Countries in tropical climes have a hard time being prosperous. If you have to deal with winter, you acquire the habit of making hay while the sun shines or else you starve through the winter.
When there’s always fruit on one tree or another, when it doesn’t matter when you plant the crops, when you can do it either today or mañana, it’s hard to get people to pick up the pace a bit and actually get productive.
no. bushiest eyebrows ever here for you. It’s very sad. No it’s not. It’s terrifying.
You remember Colombian Gold, B Moe?
I remember hearing of it, never had any come around. I lived up in the hills back in my smoking days, once you met the right folks the home grown was plenty.
Yeah, that’s it, Di. It had nothing to do with a century or two of Whitey Christians torturing those darkies who attempted to learn to read or write. They were born to cut sugar cane and dig salt until they died, not to speak or think. God made them so, said the God fearing.
But nobody has ever been tormented like the Mormons! OMG!
I don’t think she is talking about just Haiti, Einstein. Can you name any culture anywhere on the globe that prospered technically in a tropical climate?
Mmm, a fresh kegger of burden has been tapped. Plastic cup of White guilt, anyone?
Australia.
Yeah, those abo’s were mechanical fucking geniuses.
Where would the modern world be without boomerangs and didgeridoos?
Greece.
Greece isn’t tropical. Idiot.
Heat is not a good tack. Civilization comes from hot areas. Africa, Iraqish, Egypt, the Mediterranean.
I tend towards a “how easy is it to differentiate labor in this place” explanation myself.
Not picking fights with friends here but climate seems secondary to me.
Christ, I sound like Jared Diamond. Someone shoot me.
Well if you’re simply talking tropical, herr coffee bean picker, why not Florida. When I lived in Europe I used to play golf in the dead of winter in the Algarve, that’d be Portugal, and then there’s the coast of Spain.
The Lotus Eaters was Greek mythology and a poem by Tennyson, poetic fiction. Reeeetardositas!
It would seem that this, Obama Administration Will Not Rule Out Prosecuting President Bush For Torture, if followed through on should once again stoke up the anger on both sides. Perhaps that is it’s purpose.
I hear they’re going to waterboard members of the Bush administration until they find out who authorized the waterboarding schedule.
Dick Cheney assured ’em that it’s an effective tool.
I hope they get a list of all the congress critters that were on board (sorry) with it too.
I hear Nancy was a little skeptical that waterboarding was doing enough back in ’03.
Somehow I think the buck will stop before any elected dems though…
On the topic of relative success, sdferr actually linked to a few related explanations.
Tie Nietzsche’s transmutation of values with the attempted “prepolitical crust of bread” discussion.
Culture. It’s all culture.
Not picking fights with friends here but climate seems secondary to me.
Fine, then give an example of a culture that progressed beyond the stone age in a tropical climate, thor doesn’t even seem to understand the concept, maybe you can do better.
I keep hearing that its been proven that torture doesn’t work bullshit being drug out again. I would really like to see exactly how that was proven.
B Moe, to start, we have to try and untangle tropical with other factors to find causality.
Because right now, there are plenty of tropical areas living in the modern age.
If you’re asking for an ontological explanation, I’m going to turn it around on you. Show me a tropical area with the fertile combination of population, culture, and easy agriculture from flood plains and readily cultivated native grains.
Or, we can avoid that quagmire and progress our origins to culture.
Culture seems determinative to me. If you culture rewards effort, you do well. If not, you don’t.
That’s the transmutation of values. Did your culture hit that first level of enlightenment that came from trade? If so, we hit the “prepolitical crust of bread”. Did the culture develop institutions that created trust rather than conflict? Learning rather than machismo?
B Moe, to start, we have to try and untangle tropical with other factors to find causality.
Because right now, there are plenty of tropical areas living in the modern age.
But none of them got there without outside influence from people migrating from more temperate areas.
Show me a tropical area with the fertile combination of population, culture, and easy agriculture from flood plains and readily cultivated native grains.
Tropical areas don’t need to develop agriculture or cultivate crops, that was dicentra’s point that thor can’t seem to grasp. What we consider advanced cultures don’t seem to develop in area’s where living is easy.
I gotta crash, pick it up again in the am.
We’re cool regardless, B Moe. By filling me in that Thai stick was the early sticky, I’m in your debt.
Australia is a British Colony, which contributes.
However, back in the 1970s, my uncle, who owned a local analog of Taco Bell, tried to expand the chain into Australia. But the high minimum wage and the lackadaisical attitude of the Aussies did him in and he came home.
Oz is more Europe than U.S.
Of course weather isn’t the only factor in a country’s prosperity, but it seems to be rather predictive. Latin America also struggles with the legacy of being a Spanish colony. The Spaniards sent soldiers first, who upon conquering the natives, were given plots of land as a reward.
And because manual labor is dishonorable for a soldier, they had to use the natives as slaves, and after the natives proved unsuitable, they imported Africans. Furthermore Spanish Catholicism tends more toward superstition, resignation, and pessimism in contrast with the Protestant work ethic that we North Americans inherited.
Latinos to this day aspire to be rich enough to not have to work. But they don’t associate hard work with becoming rich: you have to know someone, or you win the lottery, or you marry into money. Their economic systems are not designed to permit socioeconomic mobility. They don’t have a concept of career satisfaction.
And if you’re successful, you’re expected to engage in cronyism, because what kind of friend doesn’t share the largess? Getting a job on merit and qualifications doesn’t happen very often. Furthermore, la mordida is in operation in varying degrees throughout, which discourages external investment.
They’re also very class conscious. I knew people who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing jeans in public (paging George Will) because they didn’t want to look like gamines: street children. (We gringos were baffled that they would sacrifice comfort for style.)
Class consciousness is a barrier to economic progress. Even with the racial bigotry we have here, the poor of Latin America who come here still have it better socially than they did back home (and their kids are also well accepted, comparatively). Those who immigrate here are also much more motivated than those who stayed behind, just as our ancestors had more gumption than the Europeans who preferred their staid class system.
Weather doesn’t have the last word, but having to beat the clock or face starvation does tend to focus the mind.
I keep hearing what the CIA did was torture, which is bullshit.
When pushing someone into a wall made to give so the person isn’t injured, or put into uncomfortable environments under doctor supervision is called torture, the word has become meaningless.
Them as dismiss the effect of climate, please indicate how much time you’ve lived in a tropical clime (not been a tourist). I lived in Colombia, my mom lived in South Africa. We both noticed the same thing.
Which are the “plenty” of tropical cultures that prosper? And that don’t sit on a buttload of oil (which you don’t have to work to get)?
the word has become meaningless.
Mission accomplished, then.
</leftard>:
</leftard>
BTW, I’m reading a book about how the Scots created the modern world. It’s fascinating: all about the cultural factors that they acquired that we still have and that made us prosper.
I’ll fill y’all in later at the pub.
Dicentra, I don’t know that we disagree here. If I weaken “climate is predictive” to “climate is correlated”, I agree.
Why were the Europeans successful in South America? Hot days and siestas sit a few places lower than strongly applied labor differentiation and more widespread literacy for me.
Or maybe your uncle was a lazy turd who peddled greasy dingo meat tacos. Maybe clean, civilized, energetic Australia isn’t a fertile place for lethargic horse meat hawkers. Perhaps they the Aussie birds simply hate annoying bike-riding Mormon missionaries, who can really say.
And, well, it doesn’t really matter if I’ve lived in a tropical climate. Because I grew up near Canada where we were all super freaks of season changing power and that isn’t all that empirically applicable either.
Did thor really claim that Greece was “tropical”?
Hahahahah.
God, what a tool.
Buy a clue, thor.
That aside, I’m not really sure I buy the thesis.
India/Sri Lanka, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Inca, all developed fairly advanced civilizations in tropical or subtropical areas.
I’d go with correlative rather than causative, or maybe contributive, myself.
Climate has a strong effect on cultural attitudes about time and what it takes to have enough to eat. Europeans who went to South America prospered when they maintained their attitudes.
However, you’ll notice that the conosur — Argentina and Chile — have tended toward more prosperity than their neighbors to the north. It gets cold enough in Chile to grow apples, see.
India/Sri Lanka, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Inca, all developed fairly advanced civilizations in tropical or subtropical areas.
I didn’t mean advanced; I meant prosperous. India and Sri Lanka are not all that prosperous, and their late fortune has to do with their status as ex-British colony. Their knowledge of English makes them valuable to Western companies, for example.
The Inca were wholly illiterate and had a totalitarian society. The others were obsessed with their demanding gods. I don’t know the degree to which you could call the ancient civilizations prosperous, especially if you consider the whole populace. It’s one thing to have a large middle class and a not-so-bad-off lower class. It’s quite another to build huge temples to satisfy the vanity of the
godsrulers, which later impress the archaeologists.Countries in tropical climes have a hard time being prosperous.
That was my original statement. Hardly looks like I was identifying climate as the one and only factor, does it?
Define tropical culture. Not that it matters because I’m leaning more to your being a foolish, fat, half-educated bigot whose inbred bigotry is responsible for false delusions of your intractable superiority.
I’m saying I think you’re too lazy to make it as a peasant. An uncultured loafer! A catatonic bag of needs! A remora, lice, a blood tick, a swamp leech, a tapeworm, an American dependent on a healthy host to feed off of!
I stand, turn and piss on floaters, then flush.
No, you didn’t. Sorry, if it sounded otherwise.
I do agree with a modified weak form of the argument though. Lactose tolerance, embracing the inner omnivore, greater out breeding for disease resistance, smaller groups allowing quicker cultural change… so, yeah, I just move it back a few thousand years, add a few learned behaviors and call it culture.
The fuck are you on about, broke dick. That Greece isn’t tropical? It’s seasonally tropical, dumbass. Peddle your rickshaw more quietly so that the adults may talk of worldly affairs.
Di is revealing her delusions of being a White Jungle Jane in a Amazon of inferior cultures and races.
I’ll tell where there’s no culture of prosperity, Utah.
Comment by Sdferr on 4/21 @ 10:00 pm #
Gojira wa?
Okay, Godzilla, right? By the clock, I’m around three hours dumb. I can deal with that. It’s part of my new less Google, more thinking initiative.
Montesquieu wrote about climate affecting the temperaments and customs of a country.
Those who live in warm climates have stronger but less durable sensations. They are more fearful, more amorous, and more susceptible both to the temptations of pleasure and to real or imagined pain; but they are less resolute, and less capable of sustained or decisive action. The manners of those who live in temperate climates are “inconstant”, since “the climate has not a quality determinate enough to fix them
But then, he was no thor.
Yeah, that middle paragraph should have been a blockquote.
That Greece isn’t tropical? It’s seasonally tropical, dumbass.
“Seasonally tropical.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Stop digging, thor.
He lectures us about intellectual honesty…
And private property.
[…] Liberals have free reign of Washington. So why are they still so pissed off? – Jeff Goldstein (Protein Wisdom) […]
Weds. morning links…
Bloggers for hire?
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programm…
“What we consider advanced cultures don’t seem to develop in area’s where living is easy.”
To steer this conversation in the direction of learnedness, I prescribe one reading of Guns, Germs and Steel, and don’t call me in the morning. I need my rest.
Please ignore the lying dickwad.
Thank you.
Define tropical culture.
That would be a culture that developed solely in a tropical location, without any outside influence.
Not that it matters because your going to respond with a knee-jerk personal insults because we dared refute you in the past on no one is allowed to question thor the almighty.
Seasonally tropical is my new favorite phrase. Thanks.
Wow, I think I might need some coffee.
Undoubtedly that’s the climate where a balloon fence would work best, no?
I think the whole Fertile Crescent should be surrounded by a balloon fence, so as to protect our founder crops.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that the Fertile Crescent might just nuke itself. Maybe lots and lots of balloon fences?
I think balloon fences, combined with a mile-high berm, Slart. Can’t be too cautious.
“Haiti was the first democracy in the Caribbean and economically they’re not doing too hot.”
I’m still wondering why this would excuse the running of what was essentially a first-world Nation on par with many nations in Western Europe of the time (Cuba) into the ground?
Prolly gonna want to work a slew of trampolines in there.
You could combine the balloon-fence and trampoline notions by just inflating an elastic dome over the area. That way, missiles could just bounce off. In a just world, that bouncing would return them to their source.
Yeah. That’s the ticket.
I don’t know why you guys are downplaying the effectiveness of mile-high berms.
It’s a material issue, Carin. Given the angle of repose of soil, you’d need approximately 1.75 cubic miles of earth for each linear mile of berm, and that’s for a zero-width top. In reality, you’d want a little bit of flat spot on top in case you wanted to double up and put a balloon fence at the apex of your earth berm.
You don’t need the flat spot; just anchor them to beams buried in the berm.
Neo-tunnel rats.
Slart, I want you and Mikey NTH to get on that. ASAP, please.
Slart, why couldn’t we use garbage for those berms, since they tell us we’re running out of landfull space? Green Day is upon us, and I’m feeling the spirit. No more landfills!
Garbage is racist.
Post consumer waste?
Maintenance road.
Subsidence. Oh, and Gaia-slaying greenhouse gas outgassing.
Sorry, N’Obrain, but that guy needs to find his teeth flying about and on the pavements.
If he’s got any left. I’m thinking, given his permanent anal pore demeanor and his worried aversion to ‘hicks’ he’s kept at least an office full of dental reconstructionists busy for years. No wonder he’s a Democrat; that sort of surgery costs a fortune, and Dad is tired of footing the funding for it.
Cover the southern slope with solar cells to harvest the electricity the northern slope plant with switchgrass for biomass fuel.
Also the whole thing can be tunneled out into an arcology(sp?) habitat to house all the human race and thus return Gaia to it’s more natural state.
All dreams come true in one project.
Every time I feel a little jaded, I think of seasonally tropical Greece, and a little sunshine enters my day.
There is, or was, a sort of gastronomic HotSpicy-Belt that runs around the earth in approximate orientation to the tropics and is, or was (pre-globalisation) noticeably absent in the temperate and colder zones.
What’s up with that, I wonder? Was it merely due to a lack of temperate/colder peoples not having had the pleasures of habits of eating the capsicum peppers since they don’t grow well in the cold and therefore, lacking the pleasure, not bothering to trade for them? Or is there some hidden but effective physiological correlate with eating them in hotter climes and not in colder?
“Sorry, N’Obrain, but that guy needs to find his teeth flying about and on the pavements.”
Well, yeah, but reacting to it’s little gerbil poop posts only encourages it.
I’m guessing, Sdferr, that early man somehow cause immense greenhouse emissions around that Hotspicy belt you mentioned. They’ve been experiencing global warming ever since.
Sdferr, if I remember my peppers correctly, aren’t Capiscums native to Mexico, and like tomatoes, potatoes, cocoa and tobacco, only introduced globallly post-Columbian?
Help yourselves to any l’s you may need.
As to the HotSpicy belt, I’ve heard it said that capsaicin stimulates the hypothalmus and promotes cooling. It certainly promotes the release of endorphins, which may give relief in sticky climates.
SW, you get gold stars all-round, pepper identity, world encircling trade and adoption of said peppers, stretching even to a conjecture tending to brain chemistry! Wow.
Carin, you get the gas.
With gold stars, I could work at McDonalds. “Silver Whistle 2 Stars” could be my nickname.
But it’s running people off, I’m afraid.
But can you bring your Habanero’s to work with you and introduce them to the customers?
Sdferr – The heat does promote cooling. When Better Half busts out the native food, I start sweating before I even get to the table.
My FIL, who is Jamaican, swore that eating habaneros (Scotch bonnets to him) had a cooling effect. Eating hot pepperpot soup with a whole pepper in, in the summer, would have to cool you down, or else, why?
I can imagine a condition SW, where the inducement of another (distinct) strong pleasure could cause one to ignore the fact that he temporarily feels hotter, but that’s an hypothesis only.
Actually, thinking on it, it could also amount to an inducement of a distracting pain rather than a pleasure:
“Why is Charlie Brown banging his head against that tree?”
“Because he feels better when he stops.”
STOP WATCHING ME!!!
Having erected your hypothesis, it would seem incumbent on you to test it. We await your findings, published in the Journal of Strong Pleasures.
Carin – I missed it – what did our dipshit president person what other people elected what hate America not me who a lot loves our little country say about Ortega’s speech? I bet it was gay but I didn’t hear anything.
Neo-neocon covered it pretty well, hf.
Tes
tthank you – lately if Drudge or you guys don’t link it I’m not gonna get the memo. The instapundit one is more quantity than quality of late… except ok I might make that chicken dish with the cinnamon just cause the copy really a lot sold it. I really need to just flat out not think about foozle though.
cool html mostly works except for underline. What is the code for blockqoute?
Happyfeet – He apologized to Ortega for us naming taco shells after him, and thanked him for not blaming Barcky for what the bad old white men did.
put quote here
Just be sure to reverse the “ou” ‘s to read: “quote”. I purposely misspelled it so it wouldn’t be read as code.
woops, that dint work. sorry.
so. “” before and after blockquote. use / in the trailing command to end it.
kripes
look here.
oh. We went to a taco stand awhile back what the internet said had tacos just like mom’s with like the hard shell out of the box taco shells. They were right. We won’t be going back. NPR was a lot enthused when Ortega got elected again I remember.
“All dreams come true in one project.”
Except that it would inevitably be interrupting millenia-old migratory patterns of birds and mammals, not to mention the probable alteration of the climate due to the presence of a new, mile-high mountain range. One with no passes, even.
It’d be climatological disaster, even if only on a local scale.
The world is one big circle, ain’t it, ‘feets?
Your Investor Dollars At Work…
As the Rhetorican suggests, “Mr. Olbermann, Call Your Office”:
Things got testy Wednesday at the GE shareholders meeting courtesy of several complaints about political bias at its media division, NBC Universal.
Just don’t expect to ….
I had rest home tacos with my grandma once. She died soon after that.
test
again
maybe
or this
OK Thanks got it!
I’ve written web pages by hand with tables, links, and pictures with mouseover effects. But I always get my butt kicked by the quirks in how comment sections process html.
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