From Michael Moynihan, “Red America, White Power: Is the Tea Party movement motivated by race hatred?”, Reason:
On November 9, 1938, in the Tyrolian city of Innsbruck, Richard Berger, president of the local Jewish community, was snatched from his home and beaten to death with rocks and rifle butts, his body deposited in a nearby river. On the same evening, in an apartment building on Gänsbacherstrasse, Karl Bauer, of whom little is known besides his religious affiliation and his activities on behalf of Innsbruck’s Jewish community, was beaten to death by plainclothes members of the SS. The vulturine horde moved swiftly upstairs, where they found the Volksfeind Richard Graubart, also Jewish. He was stabbed to death as his wife and daughter looked on.
This is a small window into the wanton brutality that was Reichskristallnacht—often called the “Night of Broken Glass”—in a medium-sized Austrian city. A contemporaneous report compiled in Berlin and presided over by the gruesome SS butcher Reinhard Heydrich estimated that 36 Jews were killed across the German Reich. It was, as historian Saul Friedländer has observed, a rather conservative guess: “Apart from the 267 synagogues destroyed and the 7,500 businessees vandalized, some ninety one Jews had been killed all over Germany and hundreds more had committed suicide or died as a result of mistreatment in the camps.”
Would you be surprised to learn that a similar spasm of violence was recently visited upon African-American politicians in Washington, D.C.? Well, credulous reader, The New York Times recently told readers that the shock troops of the Tea Party movement engaged in a “small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht” while protesting the passage of a treasury-busting health care bill.
This bizarre invocation of genocide was to be found on the op-ed page, from the hysterical ex-theater critic and Tea Party obsessive Frank Rich. Whether or not Rich is aware of it—and when one ascends to the position of New York Times columnist, ignorance is an unconvincing excuse—it is to mass killings that the reader’s mind wanders when the 20th century’s most famous pogrom is invoked. […]
[…]
No one was stabbed this March, no limp bodies dumped into the Anacostia River, no buildings burned. A few lunkheads broke windows (and if this is enough to provoke comparisons to Kristallnacht, the anti-globalization crowd must be the protest equivalent of the Einsatzgruppen) and one unidentified protester called Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) a “homo,” for which he was rebuked by fellow protesters. Despite gleeful recitation by the media, claims of racial taunts directed at African-American congressmen have yet to be substantiated—but more on that in a moment.
One stray columnist comparing the rowdy Tea Party crowds to German genocidaires could perhaps be explained away. An inattentive editor, a moment of regretful anger seeping into the prose. But to Rich’s colleague Paul Krugman, the hyperpartisan economist and Nobel Prize winner, the Nazi comparison was a useful one, although it did demand subtlety. “What has been really striking,” Krugman wrote after the health care bill passed, “has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party’s leaders” (emphasis added).
[…]
Moving downmarket to the New York Daily News, one finds a column by sports columnist Mike Lupica declaring that the crowds of health care protesters are “no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate.” It is unclear what a “storm trooper soundbite” is (or why this would be incompatible with “political dissent,” no matter how noxious), though Lupica is unambiguously guiding readers towards the Nazi image; towards the brown-shirted tough rounding up dissidents, cracking jaws, and kicking teeth.
Examining the Tea Party protesters, Washington Post columnist Colbert King saw faces whose very visual cues betrayed direct lineage to overt racists from a half-century before. “Those same jeering faces,” King wrote, “could be seen gathered around the Arkansas National Guard troopers who blocked nine black children from entering Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.” If the examples of Alabama and Mississippi in the 1950s were too distant, King told readers that he had also seen those very faces in the 1990s, at a rally in support of neo-Nazi agitator David Duke.
It is depressing that, for quick political gain, people like King will debase the legacy of the civil rights movement by comparing peaceful (and often misguided) protesters with the thuggery of Bull Connor and the racist Birmingham police department. But just when it looked like we had scraped the bottom of the hyperbole barrel, the always vapid Jesse Jackson told the breast-obsessed readers of Huffington Post that the Tea Partiers reminded him of an era when some Americans responded to social change “with terror, bombed churches, and killed freedom marchers.”
Many referenced the claim that Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) was, in Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) description, met with a “chorus,” of racist taunts, though no evidence has materialized to substantiate these accusations—and the alleged chorus occurred in an area with a higher video camera density than a Paris Hilton birthday party. Indeed, claims the Cleaver was spat upon were debunked when video surfaced of a spittle-flecked protester shouted “kill the bill” as the congressman passed, but not deliberately hocking a loogie on him.
So if the events on Capital Hill were indeed the moral equivalent of a “mini-Kristallnacht,” then questioning this tale of racism is a David Irving-like act, right? Those who wondered about the contradicting claims surrounding the Lewis charge were, naturally, themselves derided as racist. But if the country’s largest newspapers can accuse those assembled to “kill the bill” of being motivated by racial animus, “eliminationism,” Nazism, or old Dixie nostalgia, is it so unfair to ask for verifiable proof?
[…]
[…] how quickly we forget that in the editorial rooms and bar rooms of the Bush era, the vapid phrase on the lips of my liberal-minded comrades, repeated like a Maharishi mantra, was that “dissent is patriotic.” Now dissent has become the first indication of incipient fascism and subterranean racism. If Rich sees in the current debate the seeds of pogrom, if Krugman sees the rhetoric of “eliminationism,” forget national heath care—we need a national history lesson.
Right observation, wrong solution. What we need is not a national history lesson: after all, “lessons” (to borrow from Jeff Jarvis) are what the legacy media thinks it should be feeding up, because (again, per Jarvis) “anybody can collect facts.” Instead, what we need are more facts and less editorializing from journalists who either hide behind the cover of “objective” new organs, or else people their opinion columns with cartoon villains they couldn’t possibly know, having not been out among the rabble since the last time they needed an air filter changed, or slummed it at a Subway.
My experience with Professor Kiteley’s symbolic back turning was illuminating in many ways — not least because it exposed the mindset of a real-world, educated left-liberal who (unlike Rich or Krugman or Jackson) wasn’t performing for a public audience. During our phone conversation, he repeatedly made reference to the “dangers” of the “far right wing” — and yet he couldn’t seem to differentiate between the “far right wing” as he imagined it, and the kinds of people who might be reading my site (whom, I told him, include quite a substantial number of academics, lawyers, engineers, and private market scientists and members of the professional class). To Kiteley, someone on the “right” is never more than a few degrees removed from “the deep south” or “militiamen”. And trying to disabuse him of that notion proved to be a losing battle.
What became clear to me is that cloistered progressives like Kiteley — who exist almost entirely inside a university’s liberal arts hive mind — are completely susceptible to the kind of rhetoric, coming from elected representatives and the mainstream press, that is intended to divide the nation into those who are kindly and good (progressives, or those involved in “politics,” which is now synonymous with “social justice”), and those who are racist, xenophobic reactionary populists who, given the chance, will tear the republic down out of fear, ignorance, and hate.
In other words, Kiteley isn’t so much “alarmed” by the rhetoric of the “right wing”; instead, he is being alarmed by the anti-Tea Party propaganda his “intellectual” brethren have been peddling. And it is not America he fears for. It is himself.
No wonder the prospect of a soft civil war terrified him so. He believes that those on the right side will devolve into the kinds of monsters he believes us to be, and so any such “war” — my libertarian protestations to the contrary — will end in some sort of bloody theocracy.
Which means that the current administration, the majority in Congress, and their media enablers have done their jobs: they’ve created the fear necessary to make scapegoating palatable — and to turn what actually is the kind of dissent the founders would have encouraged into “hate crimes” worthy of censure, if not censorship. We have become Other — and our WalMarts and our strip malls and our fondness for Applebee’s is as terrifying as it is strange.
Where their impulse to keep us in check goes next is anyone’s guess…
Amazing how fast dissent went from being patriotic to being dangerous to one’s career.
And I’m not really Frodo Baggins, but I play him in another thread. Fucking cookies won’t go away now.
And more than the academe is right there too.
You are breeding the hate, right here. OMG!!!
oh. Me I do hate these rapey dirty socialists what have debased our little country.
And I don’t think that’s wrong.
Is it that, or is he afraid of the monsters he works beside every day turning on him if he doesn’t show his loyalty.. I don’t think he is as upset about what you said as he is what his friends might say.
Interesting that Rich would invoke the image of the night of broken glass at the time Obama is isolating Israel.
As baldilocks said;
Obama’s hostility to Israel is one thing. America has a different idea, I think, and see no evidence the Obami are making persuasive inroads on that general opinion. Nope, it’s the likes of us that this piece addresses. We the new jew. Dirty constitutionalists.
Well, or we hope not.
first they came for… oh. Well they’ll come for the lifey ones first I bet so I’ll just be over here in my quiet place.
[…] whom, I told him, include quite a substantial number of academics, lawyers, engineers, and private market scientists and members of the professional class […]
No shout-out for those of us making a living as sex workers, huh? I see how it’s going to be.
we have to applaud the ones who embrace a kind of political pluralism that we’re solidly behind, irony be damned
*
Best line of the article: Many of the protesters seem to believe that the president of the United States of America is a communist, demonstrating that they have a level of historical understanding on par with Frank Rich.
Of course Obama’s not a communist. Van Jones is the self-avowed commernist.
Obama’s a liberal fascist.
“and see no evidence the Obami are making persuasive inroads on that general opinion. ”
Wait, you’ve seen Obama gives a fuck about “general opinion”?
Besides, I was just pointing out the irony of comparing Tea Party people with Nazis.
Because, as we have been told, fascists are a right wing phenomenon.
Is it that, or is he afraid of the monsters he works beside every day turning on him if he doesn’t show his loyalty. I don’t think he is as upset about what you said as he is what his friends might say.
Hey kids! Why can’t it be both?
I think that the academics really do buy in to the caricatures that they profess, but not so much because they are afraid of what’s out in them thar woods as because they so desperately need us to be everything they find vile and inhuman.
They project us as their shadow selves in every way:
• They are tolerant; ergo, we’re bigots.
• They are not racist; ergo, we are.
• They are sophisticated; ergo, we’re brutish louts.
• They are peace-loving; ergo, we’re trigger-happy.
• They are clever and intelligent; ergo, we’re stupid and ignorant.
The fact that it’s NOT a binary thing we’re dealing with, but rather two different frames of reference — differing from each other the way two languages do — is not something their egos can bear, because then they’d be forced out of their comfort zones.
And why shouldn’t they stay comfy in their bubbles? What could be cozier than having an unassailable moral rectitude that requires only striking the same pose as all the right people?
They’re not much different from those sillier Christians who believe that anyone who doesn’t profess Jesus is a depraved, wicked soul whose transition into the fires of hell can’t happen fast enough.
Jeff, I missed your March 26th posting. In reading it now, I find it quintessential Protein Wisdom, and the reason why, irrespective of the trials and tribulations your site has been subject to, I still come back. More often than not, you give voice to those backwoods bozos, such as I, who managed to earn a BA(History)w/Philosophy minor, and a BS(Civil Engineering). I may not have a “Professor” in front of my name, or even a PhD after; in the real world, I find that my P.E. was likely harder to earn and means a hell of a lot more.
I think its an April Fools joke, hf. Either that or AL is a homophobe.
this country is like a bad zombie movie these days
Related by way of pointing out the truly alarming and dangerous.
Compare and contrast…
Where their impulse to keep us in check goes next is anyone’s guess…
I was puzzling that very thing out this morning while driving to work. I wondered how I’d answer the question, “Do you think they’ll toss you in gulags or something?”
And my only honest answer was that I can’t see that happening from here. I can’t see the mechanism (FEMA camps notwithstanding :D), can’t hear the rhetoric, don’t see it in the actors’ known tendencies.
But that’s not to say that the scene can’t change to where I can see it happening.
Remember, the totalitarianisms of the last century were militaristic from the off. They were the “bad father” model of governance wherein you controlled the population through fear, punishment, death, torture. They had the military parades and the uniforms and the whole shtick.
Jonah is right that America’s proggs are not cut from that particular cloth. They are, instead, the “bad mother” model of governance wherein you control the population through a dependency that reduces them to helplessness. They promise to never let anything bad hurt us again, if only we’ll submit to their tender ministrations. And of course that means they can threaten to cut us off if we rebel and try to strike out on our own.
However.
There was a violent strain among the proggs who were in the SDS and Weathermen. Those punks went “respectable” until they could dominate the seats of government; Obama’s crowd includes actual SDS, Weathermen, and fellow travelers, not to mention your garden-variety union thugs.
I also figured that they’d not dare build prison camps because you can’t hide things these days.
True enough.
But who would ride to our rescue? Canada? Honduras? China?
I really don’t know what they will resort to. The past may not supply accurate clues for the fortunes of the USA, because we are sui generis through and through.
More antisemitism from the
Tea Partyleft.Looking at your link, Lee, it appears that terrorist chic is still in fashion amongst the smelly and useless.
do fema camps have a kumbaya sing along in the evenings?
Wow. That LA rally that Zombie linked really attracted the core of the Art Bell crowd, dinnit?
Chem-trail protesters? Really?
Well bh, I’m seeing an ugly pattern forming on the left, and what with the lefts propensity for projection (we’re the racists) and Riches imagery, along with Obamas antisemitic background (Rev. Wright) and tendencies (threatening to shoot down Israeli war planes overflying Iraq), I think rather than be defensive about charges of our racism, maybe we ought to go on the offensive and talk about theirs.
I mean really, I think Obamas foreign policy is potentially more dangerous than his domestic. Want to see your way of life really take a shit? Imagine what happens if nukes get exchanged in the middle east.
This is how we know we’re getting to them and that they are afraid of us. They’re not afraid of anything physical we might do to them (that’s just the meme they keep repeating in the hopes it will take on a life of its own), they are afraid that we’ve figured their communist game out and that we’re not going to be willing players in it.
We keep doing what we are doing. It’s getting under their skin. They cannot take free thinkers or people who want to take responsibility for themselves. It doesn’t fit into their vision for us. Too bad. We keep up the pressure. We do not let up.
Agreed, Lee.
most people aren’t even dirty socialists for real they just hate Team R
I know this from the people
It’s like there are rewards for the hatey bits hf, and it gets to be enjoyable for them that does it.
Maybe we should start a rumor that Team D raped and killed a girl in 1990.
do latino maids clean up after the dirty socialists party?
i think chrissy tingles has the jib of bull conners demorat
I think it’s just branding mostly… Team R is like a magazine you don’t want to be seen reading…
And when you say hey Team R please to be bringing our your charismatic leaderly confidence-instilly ones what do they do? They all point to that one hoochie from laska. Or Mitt Romney.
Ok so what else do you got?
I’ll wait here.
That makes them useful idiots, happy.
And the idea is, they’ll come around if we purge Team R of all the noxious conservatives who insist on conservatism. Is that it?
A few pragmatists have tried to purge me. That makes me afeared.
voyeur
Hey, did you guys hear what Team D did back in 1990?
It’s pointless hf. If you were to replace team R with something else, team D would just be working tirelessly to taint that new and improved brand as well. There’s a common denominator there somewhere, if only I could put my finger on it….
nonono… the point is you can ask the question about why people hate Team R and are loath to identify with it.
My guess is it’s not cause of ideas about small government and fiscal and personal sponsibility.
oh. hah. that our your ambivalence is very telling at #34 I guess
inciting verbal frothing: go palin chick
stalin had alot of party unity
maybe we can just start with replacing Michael Steele, Mr. Makewi
it’s pitiful and frightening how complacent Team R is being in the face of what’s being done on us
the only reason Michael Steele still has a job is cause cowardly Team R is scared to fire a black man, no matter how inept or black tv dad-looking
No, I realize that. It’s all the hatey kinds. Who believe in small government and fiscal and personal responsibility also, but who the left is able to make all icky by tying them to THEOCRATIC DESIGNS and HOMOHATING and LYNCHIN’ and such.
Like, for instance, me. And most of the readers here.
Oh, I’m not arguing that team R doesn’t suck. They do. I’m just saying that the reason team R sucks is not the reason that people don’t want to read magazine R and has more to do with the secrets that team D writes about team R on the bathroom walls.
For a good time call Sarah P.
I wouldn’t worry about camps. What they really want is to burn some kids in a bus.
A generation rite of passage.
Derek
well some of that can’t be helped, but antagonizing people by smearing Sarah Palin on them isn’t tactically savvy I don’t think…
but beyond that Team R doesn’t even seem to have a Plan at all Mr. Jeff, and what plan they do have certainly doesn’t focus like a laser on non-alienatey things like the small government and the fiscal responsibility.
that last comment works for both #45 and #46
For someone who can’t fucking stand Palin, happyfeet can’t stop talking about her.
mrs. palin and her retard son know more about oil production than the retard precedent
You think small government isn’t alienatey hf?
You haven’t been paying attention. Government is supposed to take care of all our needs and desires these days.
Look who is cast as a better person all around than Palin, the fiscally conservative small government promoter.
It must be true, all the cool people tell me so.
yay doesn’t make sense Mr. Flacy… she offends… and she gets the news cycles when she wants them and she’s doing some stupid show very soon on the Fox News no?
People need to understand she’s a damaging distraction before it’s a passe thing to say that Sarah Palin is a damaging distraction. She’s a gingivitis spreading across our little country.
I don’t know why the word yay is there.
It was supposed to be that
lee I don’t think staying on a message of small government is going to drive centristy people away… but more I don’t think Team R can stay on a message of small government. Cause Team R is not about small government.
Team R are the gaywads that nominated McCain, remember.
LBascom,
Oh dear. That little drawing will surely raise the ire of some lily-white progressive Democrats…
Kiteley is simply defending his tribes shibboleth from defilement… their virgins too, lest there be intermingling of *gasp* ideas.
He’ll eventually go to the same place all self selecting inbreeders go, a left wing intellectual version Fredonia, Utah.
Instead of gingham dresses, bonnets they wear Che Guevara berets and Obama T-Shirts while watching Inconvenient Truth; rapt as if it is a reading of the future, containing clues to immortality.
Then they go out and wonder why soy burgers still taste like the cardboard I wiped my butt with
Rep. Johnson doubles down.
Which could make some sense, but, geeze Louise.
Guam 212 sq mi
Population 175,000
Manhattan 22.96 sq mi
Population 1,634,795
Now I can explain 9/11. Manhattan just tipped.
Impure ideas! RUN AWAY!!!
=^0
my point is there’s not a single homopublican what is worthy of any deference from me or you or independents or lepers or screen actors guild members … not the laska one, not that Romney goof-ass not Meghan’s daddy… every one of these fuckers need to earn some deference, and I don’t see as how they’re bringing their A game
There is Paul Ryan and there are a handful of governors. That’s the sum total of Team R’s talent pool.
maybe we ought to go on the offensive and talk about theirs.
That doesn’t work. They are by definition not racist, not violent, not hateful.
Ask them point-blank: If we really are as bad as you say, shouldn’t we be put down like rabid dogs?
My guess is it’s not cause of ideas about small government and fiscal and personal sponsibility.
Yes, ‘feets. We all know the answer. It’s because of Sarah Palin. It couldn’t possibly be what I wrote at #13, could it? Because before Palin and Romney and McCain, EVERYONE wanted to be on Team R.
they are afraid that we’ve figured their communist game out and that we’re not going to be willing players in it.
Rahm Emmanuel might, but the intelligentsia doesn’t have enough self-awareness to come to this conclusion. They’re no different from the European nobles who were incapable of seeing themselves as oppressive or unjust. The disparity between rich and poor was natural, don’tcha see. God had put the nobles where they were and the peasants where they were, and as long as the nobles were not overtly cruel, all was well. All rebellion was seen not as an effort to break one’s chains, but as ingratitude and ill-breeding.
happy,
For all your concern about Palin, Obama and his ilk are doing far worse to the country. Real damage, not just political. Stuff that we will be dealing with for years, decades down the road.
If we last that long.
Having gone on a free vacation, I’m still stupid.
Yep, the Democrats are just better. It’s because the Republicans are homos and dirty lifey cumsluts. What a wonderful world.
Personally I don’t think either one is all that awesome, but given the choice between full steam ahead to the nanny state with a side of SHUT UP you racist or half steam with the possibility of less steam, no steam or reverse steam, well imma go with the homo cumsluts.
But that’s just the way I roll.
my point is there’s not a single homopublican what is worthy of any deference
Deference? Are you kidding? They’re politicians. All they deserve from the populace is constant examination, criticism, and correction.
Mssrs Jefferson and Madison would have wanted it that way.
dicentra your #13 just speaks to the dirty socialists, not the vast majority of mushy-headed political aspirationals…
and Palin is an alarming exemplar of oh my God these Team R goofballs don’t get it and our little country really really really needs them to get it…
we are the ones what have to win all the time… the dirty socialists are the ones what only have to win once…
Team R needs to bring it, and they’re not.
that’s why she comes up so much.
hf
That is because the talent in Team R is working for a living.
Not living off of being on the boards of non-profits, government committees.
Where I live we have a Democrat city councilman (they are all Democrats so they refer to themselves as progressives instead). This sucker fish has never held a substantive job in the private sector.
He is good looking, well spoken and… very unfortunately… white… but other than that, he has done nothing but all the left things.
City Council, stipends from boards of non profits… blah blah blah.
I hate the guy. He is a shiny weasel dragging a douchebag.
He’ll win because the people that we need in government are busy working to generate the wealth that pays the taxes
Obama is awesome! The awesome-est ever!
The Jews know it!
The middle-class know it!
The small Business’ know it!
The ‘Independents’ know it!
The doctors know it!
The coal miners know it!
The car dealers know it!
The General motors and Chrysler execs know it!
Everyone knows it!
Awe-some su-per gee-nius O-bama!
well baracky is mr. vd
“lee I don’t think staying on a message of small government is going to drive centristy people away”
No, but the cool people will tell you anyone that’s promoting those principles is personally unfit. They will get the same Alinsky treatment Palin got, and you will be forced to denounce them too, ‘cuz of the uncool, hick, redneck, whoryness of them.
If you buy into that blatant propaganda that is…
In happyfeet’s defense, lee, Palin did decide to have a retard.
i like miss sarah’s slow cooker moose recipes
Heidegger gave Arendt — among others — the brush-off, though he didn’t seek to expunge the history, that I know of. On the other hand, he was schtupping her adulterously, so there’s that.
I wonder how everyone else interprets Palin’s active support for McCain?
That still bugs me. Partially because I feel that if we give McCain any more support and then he goes and does the inevitable again on something important, we’re probably dumb enough to deserve all this.
Well, I don’t think she actually set out to have a retard, but obviously she does have a very shaky concept of what “choice” is all about…
That’s one of those indicators of judgment bh….. or lack thereof, no? Not shiny.
I think Palin supports McCain cause he’s the only “respectable” national Team R one what will hang with her.
She creeps out all the other ones.
But it’s not loyalty. Sarah Bailin’ is not a loyal person. She’s a self-serving person.
Like Florence Henderson or Courtney Love.
go sarah make all sides unhappy
One afternoon of anti-globo rioting eclipses everything anyone remotely connected with the Tea Parties has done, or will do.
she’s loyal to the uswa whose motto is: scam baby scam. todd be union thug.
I think Sarah’s fans are loyal people and they project.
I don’t think I buy the Bailin’ Palin characterization anymore. I did for a bit because I thought it would encourage more frivolous lawsuits against our governors but easyliving pointed out her PAC contributions and national campaigning she’s been doing. Those aren’t things she could be doing effectively in office and seem to be a net plus or in other terms not an incentive to continue attacking our sitting governors.
Moreover, if that’s the premise for the unloyal perception, see above.
Really, for me, it’s McCain support. I don’t get it and I don’t like it. Her other efforts involve recruiting new veterans to run and going with the most conservative option that can win a primary race or general. McCain sticks out. He grates.
He also essentially launched her. Maybe it’s gratitude.
project loser MCsame
Fred Thompson supported McCain, as well.
Republicans have a kind of unspoken seniority. They need to stop that.
I don’t think veterans are more worthy of election than other people all things being equal. Not after how Meghan’s daddy’s behaved. And Colin Powell is a pussyface. And Jack Murtha was a crooked crook. And Jim Webb… well you just ask JD about Mr. Webb.
do a shout out to mccain and then leave the politician to his own devices
a union shop no?
launched her like a new brand of scouring powder or maybe like the whipped cream cheese which is very tasty but you can never find strawberry
That could be it in a nutshell.
I don’t know. Maybe I need to put it in perspective and realize I like 90% of what she’s doing and that she seems to be angling towards kingmaker regardless.
Or realize it’s most likely that McCain’s day has past and he’s really more of a Dole or a Kerry now, regardless of his aspirations or my fears.
Pawlenty just came out and spoke of his undying devotion to Meghan’s daddy. Well I say fuck you Mr. Pawlenty. I piss on you head.
Why on earth should that hoochie be making kings? That’s just senseless. She needs to be making cookbooks and turquoise jewelry for QVC.
Well, I’m not going to dig a military guy if he’s a statist, like the ones you list, ‘feets.
But, simply put, I’d say many veterans on our team have qualities that make it hard to say “all things being equal”. They seldom are.
I think we’ve seen enough to know that they’re just people. I won’t vote for a biography. Not no mores. Not after we’ve seen what that can do in the fullness of its horror.
If she’s supporting predominantly conservative people, that has the other candidates for kingmaker beat, ‘feets.
My obvious exception would be a re-energized Club for Growth.
i’m in north vietnam with baracky praying to johnnie mac
And what was up with that one weasel? The CNN one with all the sweaters?
He gave me the wiggins.
Another 14 hour slogfest at the office … I come home, light a cigar, pour a beefeaters on the rocks, tune into pw, read another great JG post, then go to the comments and see that, once again, it has turned into a referendum on Palin. WTF?
At least Sarah Palin didn’t give it up for Greg Brady.
As far as we know.
Someone has a burning obsession he needs to thrash.
No I think you need to take this up with Sarah Palin steph and Mr. Norman. She’s just so intrusive and she has no respect for boundaries.
Somebody a few days ago, Lee?, linked an article which laid out the same case I would on why Palin endorsed McCain. I wish I could find the link but it would be in the history on my other machine. And right now I’m getting jammed at work.
hf didn’t give it up for Greg Brady, as far as we know.
Karen:
We keep doing what we are doing. It’s getting under their skin. They cannot take free thinkers or people who want to take responsibility for themselves. It doesn’t fit into their vision for us. Too bad. We keep up the pressure. We do not let up.
I agree. Steady as she goes. The proggs expected nirvana – they got Obama instead, a man who’s essentially failed in everything he’s tried as President. Hell, he’s not even average, and everyone knows it. This puts the proggs even more left alone with themselves – their worst problem, including their fear of their own meaninglessness – which they realize – and self hate. So we can just hold steady being ourselves, whatever that turns out to be. In the face of their continued decomposition.
Everyone was expected to just roll over for them. Hahaha.
not if Sean Astin had anything to say about it
hey hf, Texas is on the phone… seems Big Sandy is missing its passive aggressive bullshitting misogynist.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sarah Palin is a silly thing and that doesn’t make me a misogynist.
It’s alarming to see Team R reduced to pimping a spokesmodel instead of working on policies and governance and substance. Especially now. And she’s partly responsible for her actions I think, not just the ones waving money in her face.
Yeah, I’m wondering if thor and Nishi don’t have the old hf locked in a basement somewhere while they type.
Fred Thompson, Laura Ingraham, Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan, Britt Hume, Jim DeMint, Rick Perry, Haley Barbour. And that’s just the Team R’s I can think of off the top of my head that are well worth supporting. And yes, Sarah Palin. Just because they won’t drag McLame out into the town square and behead him as Kahlid Sheik happyfeet commands, they’re bad? ‘feets, I’ve seen more tolerance in the Duke Angry Studies Department than you display, for all your babbling about how judgmental Palin or anyone else is.
Intrusive? let me know if your definition of intrusive changes when Obama’s on the other end of the proctoscope. I think living in CA has been a bad influence.
She’s a has-been politician. Why is she gamboling on the national lawn like she has a function?
She doesn’t have a function.
Yes. More Haley Barbour and Tom Coburn please.
That’ll help.
Back in the kitchen and make me a sammich, bitch!
amidoinitrite, hf?
I do not unnerstan your words.
I was just suggesting that maybe that retard factory Palin might have a function…
It’s really hard to argue with a cartoon. WTF are you talking about? Your words: “She needs to be making cookbooks and turquoise jewelry for QVC.” Hey, maybe Spanky, Stymie and Alphalpha can help youy build the “boyz club only” tree house you dream of, with “no girlz allowed”.
PS to the faithfull listeners. Next comes the hf “I didn’t mean… blah blah blech”
I do not like the inference that I give a shit about Sarah Palin having a baby that had some chromosome thingers out of wack. As long as she doesn’t try to force anyone else to have one I could care less.
What I mean steph is that Sarah Palin needs to learn to monetize her undeserved fame in socially acceptable ways, not by smearing her dumb all over the only political force that can hope to challenge the dirty socialist emperium.
Sarah Palin and John McCain were at my local Borders this evening, trying to force us to give birth to babies with chromosome thingers out of whack. Damn, no uterus.
I’m not saying you care one way or the other about the fact of the retard baby, happy. Just that it’s part of what makes Palin all icky with the stench of Jesus.
I mean, the way she trotted it out like a slack-jawed skin purse? Sure, maybe that gets a Tebow tit atinglin’, but it probably also makes some women feel guilty.
And that’s just wrong.
I would welcome the black and hispanic communities rising up under their own steam and challenging certain cynical liberal exploitation. Both sides use racial or social status as a bloodless data point. But I really can’t stand on the sidelines shouting “You’re being used!!” becauase I would be ignored or worse.
I’m sorry that happened to you.
The Proggs had almost everything lined up, figured they’d never have a better chance to hit the jackpot, and went all in. Unfortunately for them, the Information Age hit before their plans could come to fruition. All of that time and effort — generations of it! — put into corrupting and co-opting the media, the academy, and the government bureaucracy, and for what? Along comes AM talk radio and Fox News and teh Intarwebs, and their carefully groomed messaging goes pear-shaped. On top of all that, every professional with a BA in Management sooner or later realizes that the guy he hires to unplug the kitchen sink makes more money than he does, and has time to go fishing once in a while, to boot.
So over the past decade or so, they’ve seen their investment sour. Professors don’t command nearly the level of respect they once did; neither do newsreaders. Fewer and fewer people listen or read or watch the news. The only politicians people have felt really enthusiastic about were a couple of “outsiders,” because we’re all well and truly sick of the insiders.
Even so, they almost pulled it off. Half of us were either in on the plan or else blissfully asleep. But the other half sat up like a bucket of cold water just hit ’em in the face, and now we’re waking up the sleepers who didn’t realize what was going on.
We look at statistics like 50% of the population not paying income tax, and we despair. But a lot of those folks are retired veterans and the like, who have no great love for socialism even if they are drawing a check from Uncle Sam. We can win them over without much effort at all.
And for every “fat cat banker” that Keef O. drags out for the two-minute hate, there’s a local print shop owner telling his employees and his neighbors that he has to close up shop because he can’t make a living when the State is sucking him dry. Soon, people will understand that class hatred makes no sense when the targets of the hate are the people you sit next to in church, or play poker with on a Friday night. Hell, even the labor unions can see what their leadership is doing to their futures. And on top of everything else, we have the vast swath of productive Americans who are being bled dry.
We’ll never convince the guys with their hands on the levers of power (which includes politicians of either party, and especially the entrenched bureaucrats). Nor will we get those who really are dependent on the State for their care and feeding. We may not even win over all of the undecideds. But we don’t have to, because we’re in the majority without them.
Like happyfeet, I wish Team R would pull its collective head out of its ass. But I’m confident that one side or the other will come around, because it’s quickly becoming obvious that our side is the one with the momentum.
And hey — worse comes to worst, we’ll just watch the bastards go broke, lay low for a while, and then pick up the pieces and start over. Sure, it’ll suck, but at least we won’t have to listen to the environmentalists whine about our carbon footprint for a while.
Mostly, Mr. Jeff, I will tell you this. The Battle of Sarah Palin Hill has been lost. She is a casualty. Fated to forever to wander our little country as an object of ridicule. Or at least forever for our purposes.
She can’t help make things right. But she can make the jobs of the people what can much harder. And at a very very critical time.
“Somebody a few days ago, Lee?, linked an article which laid out the same case I would on why Palin endorsed McCain. ”
Yeah, it was this.
I think there also might be some of this.
forever wander I mean
Jeez. If the Tea Party needs “delivering” we’re already screwed.
Yeah, that’s why I’m here. It’s hard not to like a good stylist.
Well, I’m gonna cry a uncle here and head off to bed … 11:23 pm and another 14 hours at the mill tomorrow. HF, we disagree about alot of things. But, if I’m ever in your area, I’d love to buy you a drink, and a meal, and have a good time. But only if dicentra is there to get my back. You really push my buttons sometimes. All is fair in love. Cheers everyone.
I get to buy you a cupcake then. I’m in a bad place is all cause I can’t game this with Mr. Squid’s optimism.
I don’t see how this has a happy ending.
Yeah, um, sorry about the torrent of words up there. I got into a groove, I think.
Now I’m off to the airport to pick up a dear friend from the ‘Burgh, which means that I’ll be otherwise occupied for the next few days. Try not to make any more academics cry ’til after I get back.
It’s not even Sarah Palin. It’s that there has been given to us a Sarah Palin. That she is so much a product of our times. A manufactured personality reality television type icon but situated smack dab in the center of politics in a way that no manufactured personality reality television type icon was ever permitted to be situated… until Barack Obama.
And now Team R is eager eager eager to jump on board with that circus wagon.
This is the work of the devil.
Good comment, Squid.
‘feets, sometimes I think this: why would you think someone like me is more optimistic than someone like you? I spent the first 20 years of my life dirt poor and I figure I have 40 years left before the eternal void. Why not wait on being world weary until you’re actually done with the world?
WWSAD? That’s a bracelet I wear. What would Sean Astin do?
A Rigaudon, not the work of the devil.
Or, in other words, the first rule of knowing it can all go to shit? Don’t mention it. It scares weaker people and hurts the cause.
Me I’m not world-weary. It’s us that I worry for. Not me so much. And not just us. The whole world is going to suffer immeasurably. Progress is going to suffer. The idea of progress is going to suffer.
The idea of America is going to be extinguished and we get to watch and it’s doubtful there will be any kind of closure at all…
Like in that snippet geoff had about the dissenter in Russia.
It’s awful.
I like this bh kid.
oh. I guess that was breaking the first rule in a big way there.
What this country needs is a Universal Red Velvet Cupcake Reform Bill. Make no mistake about it, there’s a Red Velvet Cupcake Gap, and we can’t afford to leave the middle class behind. Every child in this great land of ours, the land of Jefferson, the land of Lincoln, the land of Roosevelt, the land of John FUCKING Kennedy, this land, that was made for you and me, that goes from sea to shining sea, this land where the sun goes down on an old Kentucky home, and where the sun always shines bright. Mr Speaker! Mr President! It’d be a fucking big deal. Mister President, this country, OUR country, DEMANDS a RED VELVET CUPCAKE REFORM SHIZZLENUT BILL!
(Exit right to the Funpad, and I’m off to bed.)
that’s a beautiful dream, steph
I like you to Mr. Reagan. And when our science is finally ready? Recombinated you and new bodied Walt Disney are going to town.
Dance monkey, dance.
Ok, a Gavotte then. If that doesn’t fix it, I dunno.
Really, for me, it’s McCain support. I don’t get it and I don’t like it.
I don’t think anyone likes it except maybe McCain. On the other hand, McCain’s primary opponent is a Birther and not terribly impressive otherwise.
Laura Ingraham
She’s running for something?
No one tell Mr. Reagan that I’m midgetgay now.
Sdferr, turns out almost all piano music is about a girl I knew in college. Weird, huh?
That she could get around to that extent, you betcha!
It is all Maggie’s fault though bh (clip six).
A manufactured personality reality television type icon
Feets, do you think you can give it a rest? Or are we going to have to invent a bunch of “Happyfeet’s Etiquette for Non-Sucky Conservatives”
Tip #39
When your server suggests the salmon, eye her suspiciously and ask, “You get that ‘laska fish from that hoochie with a retard baby?”
Is Jeff going to have to announce that “he’s a humorless, useless, brainless sanctimonious commenter who has nothing to do all day but bitch and crow about how Sarah Palin is a luuuuuser whom he will drum off the national stage, primarily by being a 24/7 asshole in the comments.”
(No offense to our host, but the thread at that first link had me choking with laughter last night.)
The real problem is, if you even want to be a politician these days, I don’t fucking like you. Unless you come along kicking and screaming — and only because people are demanding that you do.
Sdferr’s comment at #145 is either some scary mind reading or he’s an (musical?, textual?) interpretive savant.
Why would that offend me?
Thank you Lee, that first one was it.
Work has been a b**** tonight but is almost over.
I’m not the one who needs to give it a rest, dicentra. laska needs to give it a rest. She’s soaked the rubes enough enough enough I think.
I’m sorry, Jeff. I know that Ace is one of those sensible conservatives who hates your ever-living guts, but his commenters can come up with some devastatingly funny stuff. You collected the brains; he got the wise guys.
I mean, look:
Warden
Garbonzo the Garrulous
Micheal Steele
I hope they keep on calling everyone not-them racists. They are pushing that word to the point of being meaningless.
I’m not the one who needs to give it a rest, dicentra.
For my money you do, ‘feets. I find this Palin-bashing tiresome, repetitive, and useless, not to mention a thread-jacking, crashing bore.
It reeks of troll, duud. Give it a rest.
They are pushing that word to the point of being meaningless.
I thought they reached that mile-marker years ago.
I don’t get it.
I didn’t start off bashing Palin it was Michael Steele and Romney and I threw in Palin cause she’s the epitome of useless. Then all anyone wanted to talk about was Palin. Exemplifying how she is the epitome of useless.
Ace hates Jeff?
I had no idea.
I gave Ace monies when he moved to NY. No idea why I did that. I guess I thought it all sounded romantic.
I don’t know that Ace cares about me one way or the other, to be honest. Hate? Seems a bit strong.
Then again, I do seem to bring that out in people.
Thankfully, I never bring it out in the people I want to sleep with. So it’s all good.
What was this thread about again?
Hot midgets.
Sumpin about Ernst vom Rath, I think.
It was about how they try to define us.
Democrats and their sycophants calling the Tea Parties names.
Happyfeet made them look like slackers.
that’s manichean I think lee. Is that a word? It has a red line. Team R has not demonstrated that it is a force for good in our little country. It certainly won’t be a force for good if it requires changing leadership.
Losers.
and this silly fiction that Team R and the Tea Party are somehow separate entities is a silly fiction… it is Team Not-Dirty Socialist against Team Dirty Socialist and you know it and I know it and ok maybe you don’t know it but I sure do know it and the people who try to tell you different the loudest probably are working an angle I think
There was a thread a couple three months ago where I was posting links to your old stuff (this is when you started contemplating the pay site) and because I was pulling them off my old Blogspot place I ran into some stuff from Ace’s, and I posted them too and was trying to be witty by saying, “wait, that’s Ace’s” or something, and then you said, “Oh, so you think Ace is ready to launch a pay site?” and I took it to mean you weren’t amused.
that’s manichean I think lee. Is that a word? It has a red line.
Supposed to be Manichean on account of it being a proper noun. The capital M makes the red line go away.
thank you… I’ve been working on my capital letters but I missed that one
but may I say one thing before bed?
Help us, Rod Dreher. You’re our only hope!
I won’t hear it because I’m gone before you.
Say it quick, I think it’s just you and me left, and I gotta hit the sack too.
oh. Hi Lee. It was about your comment. Your comment implicitly assumes I think inasmuch as I’d been bagging on laska, that laska and the Tea Party are synonymous.
This should never be implicitly assumed I don’t think.
It’s kind of creepy, actually.
(that) inasmuch I mean
*
Oh, I wasn’t assuming that, I was just saying when it comes to calling people names, with the effect of de-humanizing, demonizing, and generally devaluing someones worth, no one holds a candle to you.
oh. Thank you, lee. Kind of. But it’s not like I talk about real people like that.
**
Mr. bh that’s my favorite you’ve ever linked I think.
I think the illusion that “Sarah Palin” is a real person is somehow at the root of all this.
Let’s make a deal, happy. You worry about the Tea Partiers who are going to hurt the reclamation of the country, and I’ll work on the pragmatists.
Like Wonder Twin powers. Shape… of a winner!
I’m wondering if the illusion that Nishi is a real person is at the root of all this.
form of a turtle!
ohnoes
These damn cats simply resist herding.
Second look at otters? I’m just sayin’.
Here’s a story I’ll tell because I’m not sleeping:
The only genius I’ve met said, “Take everything and try to figure out that small amount you actually care about. Stop pretending about the rest.”
The last time anyone saw him was on the red line train and they said he looked like a bum. Still…
Talking about me behind my back huh. I like the bum look.
Did you ever make it to that Sox game?
?????
Ah, unmasked by a true artiste.
Red line, south to White Sox, north to Cubbies.
I understand. It’s hard to be a misunderstood genius on the El.
Especially since the only commuter trains I’ve ever taken were in NYC in 1969 when I lived for a while in the East Village.
Now Anne I expect rode that every day going North from Flossmor and Homewood to work in the Loop. But I could be wrong.
Is there ever to be a Sherlock Holmes review? My copy arrived today which made me think of that. I was looking forward to it.
Good night bh and Goodnight Mrs. Calabash.
‘Night.
Angst from the white kkkristian tea party. They can not accept who they are.
Hey, Robby isn’t it time for your “oil job”. Then you can plug into the port on the wall, recharge and download some better, though still dumb, talking points.
Really, Robby, everybody knows that the KKK was the wet-work action arm of the Democrats until the SDS retreads took on the job for less pay.
Now go to your cubicle and lube up and plug it in.
Go piss up a rope, Rob.
North from Flossmor and Homewood to work in the Loop.
Illinois Central Railroad. (now Metra)
Sorry train geeks, now Metra Electric.
. They promise to never let anything bad hurt us again, if only we’ll submit to their tender ministrations. And of course that means they can threaten to cut us off if we rebel and try to strike out on our own.
Yea, Di, if the government can only regulated the economy more, they’re won’t be any more of those bad economic downturns. Isn’t that why Obama went to France? Global regulation.
[shudder]
Laura Ingraham isn’t running for anything that I know of but she says a lot of the same things as the Tea Partiers and doesn’t mind Palin that I know of.
“Comment by Rob on 4/2 @ 12:58 am #
Angst from the white kkkristian tea party. They can not accept who they are.”
Oooo, a Klan reference.
How…..original.
Did you know that the KKK is the terrorist arm of the Democrat party?
I don’t think anyone likes it except maybe McCain. On the other hand, McCain’s primary opponent is a Birther and not terribly impressive otherwise.
Hmm. I’ve been plenty impressed with him before. As I can see, his only detractions seem to be porking and birthering.
Not exactly cardinal sins in this political environment, especially compared to McCain.
I do not understand why it is such a godawful horrible thing he might be a ‘birther’. I mean, of all our politicians do, god forbid he might, I dunno… demand presidential candidates prove their eligibility.
I’m not a birther but that’s not exactly how I envisioned Ragnarok.
Granted, it may not be politically expediant or useful. But neither is McCain’s amnesty shenanigans.
It reminds of that line about libertarians. “Oh no, the libertarians are going to take over and …. leave you alone!“
I see birther as now a trap laid by the Hillary people. They started it. If there was anything usable her operatives already have it and have scrubbed all other evidence clean. Always best to have the only piece of blackmail.
So now it is something to use against any other politician to make them the right wing equivalent of a lefty truther. It is now a pure smear to be used as needed. Once you touch it you are branded for life.
‘Kiteley isn’t so much “alarmed” by the rhetoric of the “right wing”; instead, he is being alarmed by the anti-Tea Party propaganda his “intellectual” brethren have been peddling. And it is not America he fears for. It is himself.’
That is to say he’s paranoid and delusional. This is very common among the court intellectuals, and why I ignore their every argument from authority.
But that assumes it is really an effective albatross, and not a tempest in a teacup. I do not think it is, except among 2 groups:
1) Goofy liberals who’d never vote for us anyway. They are OUTRAGED! (Note: This includes D politicians and Media)
2) Conservatives worried about electability and image amongst other people. They won’t vote for a candidate because others won’t vote for them, they’ll slam a candidate because his crash-and-burn is inevitable and they see themselves as cutting losses.
The former is irrelevant. The latter are forever re-enacting a play called Oedipus Rex.
Unemployment near 10%, Iran building Teh Bomb, pinko’s nationalizing the healthcare industry, and virtually every other political issue from amnesty to immigration to the Dept of Education and the post office not delivering on Tuesdays, and everything else we’ve ever discussed in the last 30 years, is gonna take precedence over that.
Does Joe Blow from Idaho really give a crap about the kerfluffle over Barry’s birth certificate? I don’t think so.
Conservatives who detract from birtherism by calling it an epic distraction from stopping the socialists are right. It is.
But stopping birtherism is also an epic distraction of equal magnitude.
And what is the offensiveness or justified outrage over this (admittedly, misguided) birtherism that makes it so ‘toxic’ to the electorate?
It has to an aspect of playing into their definitions, their assumptions, their ‘framing’ of the ‘narrative’. By fleeing from Birtherism we’d be as distracted as any. Rather then challenge the premise you’ve merely taken up the antithesis of their thesis within their framework. It’s truly reactionary.
Their logic goes: Birtherisms are (What? Le raciste? Mildly paranoid in a way not remotely close to a Truther? I don’t even know.) Conservatives are birthers. Therefor, conservatives are (whatever).
Our retort is what then, ‘no no, we aren’t birthers!’
So what if we were though?
Thanks guinsPen.
It’s the stoopid.
It’s the stoopid.
Seriously?
That’s ‘toxic to the electorate’?
…
Seriously?
And it’s the most stupid thing you can find going on in politics?
Yesterday I watched some dude fret over whether 8000 marines landing simultaneously on Guam would capsize the island.
Birtherism seems entirely unimpressive to me.
I’m with Mr. Entropy as far as what’s the big deal I think
At this point, Barry is the con-man who’s given up his ruse because he knows he’s doesn’t need it, he’s beyond reach, he turns to taunting the fools he’s taken in, ah-ha says he, ya’ll sure were dumb there, too late now. None of the records mean anything to Barry except to prove how stupid the electorate is and how easily he had them on.
It’s the “offensiveness or justified outrage.”
Don’t recall saying that. Stupid is never in short supply.
Sean Hannity wroted a book!
Right. They’re just morons, not cumsluts and hoochies, both of which are a terminal threat to the Republic. Though that Lila Rose would make one hell of a safe schools czar, I think.
Entropy,
We shall have to simply disagree on this.
I mistrust any controversy that was started by the Democrats and depends on records keep in trust by a State their party has owned always. It would be like having everything depend on some record held by the Chicago machine. One Governor no more changes the heart of the civil service there than Reagan could change it at the federal level. Lot’s of good people in civil service but the rabid partisans are there and they are mostly left.
kept not keep.
they’re just not really on my radar I don’t think
“I think the illusion that “Sarah Palin” is a real person is somehow at the root of all this.”
That’s genius. I think you hit the nail square on that. At the risk of being accused of continually bringing up Palin, let me just reply, and I’ll drop her. errr, it.
See, I do see her as a real person. More real than any of the blow dried, PR infested lawyers that have never produced anything in generations, that we refer to as the Elite, currently stinking up Washington.
Happyfeet, you characterize people who wish success for Palin as identifying with her, and that’s not quite accurate. It’s a loaded way of describing what is going on.
Palin represents me, in the political way. When I was wishing an end to professional politicians and for more citizen legislators, I was thinking of people with a background and perspective that would better serve the interests of the Nation (OK…me). Palin has the perfect pedigree if you ask me.
But because there is such a large block of actual voting real people that were thinking the same thing (actually a coalition of Rush/Beck listeners, the NRA, Republicans, and those sick of environmentalists and Global Warmists; like that), and because it is so hostile to progressive thought, there was a vast effort to personalize (judgey!) the candidate and destroy her, and send a message to any other outsider even considering public office.
I remember Jeff had a post with a lengthy list of accusations heaped on Palin, and he had links debunking every one, and that was early in her campaign. They made so much smoke, It didn’t matter there was no fire. The illusion was created that she is a mess. Then after the election, the pressure continued, making it impossible for her to effectively do her job. By stepping down, she did the right thing, as opposed to the political thing.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Palin to run for President in 2012, but I thought she was qualified to be vice president, and capable of inheriting a McCain presidency in 2012.
Also, I too hate that she is campaigning for McCain now. I don’t condemn her for it though. I think she had a devils dilemma; if she didn’t campaign for Johnny, she would have had to defend charges that every thing she said in the campaign was bullshit. Plus, being a Tea Party icon, it may have alienated the Republican Party more from the Tea Party, increasing the chances for another third party fiasco.
As it stands now, she is supporting a moderate, not a conservative. But still, I’m glad she isn’t supporting the other guy, because that would encourage others to run as the Tea Party candidate, endorsed by Palin!, and the center would not hold. The Tea Party will only be effective as a grass roots coalition, voting for people that represent American exceptionalism and resisting the urge to run third party. Like it or not, we have to work within the two party system.
If you want to continue portray we whom wish Palin success as star blighted noobs, have at it. I think your judgment of the situation is corrupted.
I do not like the inference
Go suss yourself.
I think Sarah wants you to think that without her the center cannot hold. But that’s selling Tea Party ones a lot short I think. They’re not that dumb.
And if the center doesn’t hold then at least that’s honest I think.
What has she said that leads you to believe that?
It’s not that without her the center cannot hold, it’s that if she started endorsing Tea Party candidates against the Republican, the right would dissolve into factions, when it needs to remain a coalition.
She yammers on about how she doesn’t think the Tea Party should be a third party as if she had any influence on that at all. If she every once called for a third party her she’d be sucking Ron Paul’s cock for spare change in a fortnight. Again. Tea Party ones are the least-dumb political actors on our blighted little country’s political stage. Except for the dirty socialists. Who are kicking ass and taking names far as I can tell.
*ever* once called for a third party I mean
third party she’d be I mean… sorry… it’s hard to write about Ron Paul’s cock when the boss walks into your office
Whatever. I’ve given you my rational (I think) take on Palin, I’m done now.
I just very much disagree that… here is how I think Mr. lee.
If the right is even remotely at risk of the dissolving into the factions? If the right can’t stand against dirty socialists what are defacing our little country?
Then game over. Losers. Dirty socialists won America lost.
Plus also there’s no more divisive figure on the right than Sarah Palin I don’t think. It’s been amazing watching how fast the consensus has built that no she has no business thinking about the presidency.
And I find that to be a very hopeful sign.
Wait, so expressing her (commonly held) opinion about 3 parties means that she thinks the center can’t hold without her? I’m afraid that when I ordered my coffee with cream and sugar this morning, I might have that current tax policy makes me the Fresh Prince of Rhode Island.
Sarah Palin is not divisive. People who insist on dividing on the basis of Sarah Palin are divisive. Know anyone like that?
Oh, and “pragmatists” too.
No Mr. Pablo I mean she acts like her opinion is of import. It’s not.
She’s a cable news wench with delusions of political superstardom.
But at best she’s just a more fecund more web savvy more Fox friendly Ann Coulter I think.
“I mean she acts like her opinion is of import. It’s not.”
It’s not that her opinion is important, it’s that her opinions align with a large segment of likely voters. You too if you could admit it.
Her opinions are DUH opinions. Manufactured opinions. Calibrated opinions. Have you looked at her facebook page?
She holds forth on Iran even.
Sweet Jesus.
Her opinions are not at all accidentally your opinions.
She’s a fiscal conservative, States rights, Constitutionalist. With common sense. What’s not to like?
She’s a cult of personality what is modeling personality cult-building in a little country what way way way bad doesn’t need that model.
Well, I already gave you my opinion about that judgment, so we will just have to agree we have a different perspective.
I hate it when you heap abuse on someone I like though…
I’m genuinely alarmed and disheartened by her.
That’s maybe not a very good defense.
but I’m much more heaping abuse on the idea of her I think. To my mind.
The coalition of mean girls on the left that decides who must be destroyed using the usual high school mean girl tactics, set their sights on Palin. The good news is that she won’t be the last, and the better news is that they have found some cool wannabees on the right to help them.
I agree she was targeted and I defended her until she became indefensible and I’m not going to defend her just for the sake of defending her.
It’s like the daffy hoo keeps falling down on railroad tracks on purpose.
If her opinions weren’t of import, the White House wouldn’t lose it’s shit over her Facebook posts. Results matter. Outcomes.
he’s a cult of personality what is modeling personality cult-building in a little country what way way way bad doesn’t need that model.
What crap. She was a solidly fiscal conservative doing the sort of work we mostly only dream politicians would do before you ever heard of her. Now all of a sudden her record on the issues we give a crap about has to take a back seat to a bunch of pre-teens yelling that she likes the wrong band on her myspace? Sorry. Fuck that, I’m not playing.
Bad italics. Bad.
do over M
she reeks of Jonas Brothers
It must be the huge crowds doing that to her, or maybe it’s the millions of books sold, or the big fat checks that TV people always seem to want to write her.
Political superstardom is reserved for Barack and Ron Paul, huh?
What the hell is she thinking, I wonder?
What she needs is a crappy Euro synth soundtrack. For the gravitas.
I’m saying Team R doesn’t need Tiger Beat pin-up politicians they just need ideas and competence. That’s all our whole little country needs. The fucking American presidency should be a set it and forget it operation, not an exciting and charismatic leader whose victory validated every fiber of your being.
Gack I say.
The Jonas Brothers play their own instruments. They work hard to be musicians while Disney works harder to ensure they are idols. Because the Jonas Brothers aren’t keeping it real by not having Disney package them, they are unworthy of the right sort of cool.
Thing is, if you like the music they play, isn’t the rest just a distraction?
you’re opposed to reject the analogy to Tiger Beat pin-ups, Makewi
let’s start over
At this point the messenger and the form it takes is such a distant consideration to me that I don’t really care who it is that delivers it. The message is simple. The path we are on is unsustainable and is more and more contrary to the ideas of individual liberty that this country was founded on.
consensus!
“Thing is, if you like the music they play, isn’t the rest just a distraction?”
That was awesome Makewi.
Also, I don’t care what the MSM says about that Japanese fellow, I like Toyota.
here are festive Christians for to see
I love it how we get to steal back “unsustainable.” For the present invoking a sustainable future is a neat trick and conversational bludgeon.
Seriously, haven’t you seen the sudden blanching, the look of confusion, like they’d been hit on the head with the Tennessee State Flag on a poll. “Unsustainable” carries such persuasive pathos for them they are quite overwhelmed and they are helplessly dragged off by its currents.
Sustenance deliver us, monkeygods, we beseech thee.
[…] Goldstein, linking to the same Reason article, hits on exactly the same idea that I wrote about a few days ago (and which is also linked above): In other words, Kiteley […]
Wow, leave for a while and ‘feets goes from mildly annoying to out-and-out troll douchebag.
I heard that.
Where you been?
Thanks Lee. I like Toyota cars as well. Having owned a couple in my life I found them to be reliably quality vehicles.
hf, it would be good if we could figure out how to ensure an alliance between the Palin hating abortion lovers and the uterus enslaving Palin fanboys. For the good of the future of the country I mean.
I think that alliance is solid already.
I really do.
OK then. I think that’s good news if true.
It will have to be what passes for good news in these dark dark times.
Urrp.
*GASP*
Christians! How are they dispersed??? I will show you!!
Here is where they are in the world.
These ones are in America!!! There is a thin red line of Methodists. What does it mean???
I do not know!
Here are the European ones.
The way they made these is to do geolocational voodoo on search engine requests or something.
here they applied the same methodology looking at the different popular deities…
And that was your religion infographic minute I’m your host happyfeet happy easter everybody!
oops.
the first link should be here
nice of them to make more Buddha saffron and the gods of Hind more fiery reds so Jesus blue like sad where Allah’s green like cash
the Allah ones must not be very internetty… who knew?
He knew.
I’ve got to wonder why they think England is Catholicky – do they think nominal (low church) Anglicans are Catholicky?
they must lump them in cause it makes no sense
Towards your question, SW.
There are a lot of Mormons in Hawaii. It’s true, and it’s one of those things that would likely never occur to you if you didn’t hear about it from someone else.
That doesn’t quite add up, bh, because on that global one, they don’t even include Anglicans. I would have thought low church Anglicans were closer to Protestants than Rome. But that’s just my view – is there an Anglican in the house tonight?
I think they’re simply admitting failure, SW:
oh. I should have linked the actual links for the explainy parts sorry.
Yes, that’s almost got it, bh. “Indeed, terms such as the “Church of England,” “Church or Scotland” or “Church of Ireland” are used equivalently to “Anglican” in the U.K. but were not one of the keywords in our study.” There was a Calvinist reformation, a war and everything up here. It even made the newspapers.
[…] Somehow, yesterday, I missed Andrew Breitbart’s latest on media-abetted fraud. Jeff has his own ruminations on the subject. […]