Notice me. That’s it, not much to ask, a week of Rene what’s his name, the little Puerto Rican fuck with the thick lips and that awful awful hair….notice me, notice me. Micah Wright? Christ a tenth of my talent he has, the Photoshop hack, yet all the delicious vitriol spilled on him, wasted on him, spent spent spent on him, but — notice. Me. Notice me. I rail and I roil and I boil and assail…notice me. Notice me. Notice me. You want controversy? I’ll give you controversy, not like some UMass microbe dicksucker low on the food chain — no. I’ll do it with pictures, my peculiar blend of humor, love it or hate it but never ignore it because it’s fucking brilliant, I’m fucking brilliant, my art — my art is fucking brilliant. Notice me. Pat Tillman the jock fuck asshole cocksucker with his square jaw and middle American values, makes me want to puke from the reek of bourgeois bullshit. Caspian oil. Pipelines oppression colonial aggression. Pipelines oppression colonial aggression — easy to remember, like a commercial jingle and you suburban drones are programmed to listen. Why don’t you just listen? Instead you hump to visions of muscled heroes, heads filled with funhouse images of patriotism writ large, refuge of scoundrels, messianic apparitions, like a gridiron Christ come to save the whities from the brown people with their sandals and robes and ancient Mesopotamian culture, that beautiful defiant culture. Resident Bush, oh Resident Bush, how can I serve you massah, massah? Like Colin Powell that fucking Uncle Tom fuck him fuck Rummy and Condi with her Marlo Thomas haircut…That Girl? Yeah, fuck that girl and notice me. Notice me. Notice. Me. My art at least takes risks is ballsy has guts, dissents. Nothing more American than — well, apple pie and football and fucking jarhead jocks turning down money or terror widows whining… And — for what? Illegal wars. Oil and oil and oily pricks like Rene Gonzalezpimp and Micah getting all that attention for a fucking lie everyone knew was a lie, everyone knew was a goddamn lie. And so what? Notice me. I try something original, make it out of nothing, whole cloth, just a pen some ink and an empty space, the void, and me and me and me and me. Me. Christ I want a hot dog or something…. Why am I even thinking of that? With onions and diced jalapenos and chips and a soda, something cold, a Diet Coke maybe. But fuck if I’ll let Micah fucking Wright get the attention, or that little spic bastard with the tortured prose and the stupid stupid face. Gives good communists a bad name with that unarticulated drivel. You want anger, look at me. At me. I’m the face of anger in America, American anger at the corrupt bully hogbutcher to the world, to the rest of the world who hates us hates our culture and rightly so with its reality TV and its fast food and its comic strips. Except skip that last one — comic strips rock, heh heh. — Ooh, a burger with chopped onions and some onion rings and a large ice-cold Diet cola… Yeah, see how long it lasts Micah. Shit. No way. I stir the pot I rule the roost I’m the face of the angry left, Bill Maher knows it, the New York Times knew — before those fuckers dumped me, the cowards. Fucking cowards. Everyone knows it, it’s about me. The web, the web, is my domain. The web is my savior and I stir the pot and notice. Me. Notice me notice me notice me. Pat Tillman? Fuck him and his brothers and his family and his honor and the honor of false idols and criminal heroes, all the mercenaries killing Arabs for oil, too dumb to know it, too dumb to care, too dumb will go anyplace anywhere — sent by Bush, Bush, a stinking bush, shrub weed, snatch, stole the election, the chimp. And now this Rene kid wants to take my place — oh. I. Don’t. Thinkso. Notice me notice me notice me. See what you think of my latest cartoon, wingnuts, assholes, bloodyfistedwarmongering dupes. Here’s your hero the asshole the villain the sad stupid jock dupe killed for no reason for no reason, because he’d rather kill Arabs than the spooks on the football field, traded the helmet for the helmet for the Kevlar for the flak jacket for the Hum-fucking-Vee. And now look, put him in a box, nail it shut, cover it with dirt, shovelfuls — and notice me. Me. Me. Notice me. I piss on what you stand for I hate your flag, your cars, your electronic gadgets. Me. Me. Notice. Notice me. I hate your tennis shoes and your strip malls and your SUVs. Notice me. I hate. That’s right: I hate I hate I hate. So, yes. Show me. Give me. Bring the rage to me. I eat it up, chumps, I chew it I digest I crap it back out and it nourishes me. Micah Wright? Fuck him. This is about me and bring on the vitriol rightwing assholes, your pumped up steroid-eating hero is on the slab and fuck him and fuck you and fuck your country and your wars and your patriotism and do what’s right. Notice. Me. Maybe some tacos, I dunno. Something spicy. For me. Yes. For me….*
****
OTB. And more here, from my old friend Sawicky [h/t Moe].
update: More from Mike. And Joe Gandelman — filling in at Dean’s World — chimes in, too.
update 2: Of course, Misha! How could I forget!
kindred soul
eat more
grow
Jeff – I…I think I love you.
Prince of the ‘Sphere.
Simple as that.
I’ll bet that deep in the cobwebs of what passes for the Rallster’s brain, this is exactly the thought process going on.
You. are. fucking. scary.
You magnificent bastard.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Note to self: do not get on Jeff’s bad side.
Rall…Wright…Gonzalez:
The Lunatic Left will be heard! And Bush will still win.
You … you got a gift.
The Lunatic Left will be heard! And Bush will still win.
May I offer an amendment?
The Lunatic Left will be heard! That’s why Bush will win.
Scary and beautiful.
Amazing. Congratualations on a wonderful piece of work.
Hardcore.
Thank you, Jeff. Hallei-frickin-lujia. After seeing Rall’s “cartoon”, you made my day.
-TJ
’Scuse me, can I get a word in edgewise between all the dick-sucking going on here…?
To begin: this Jeff person is obviously very talented. He certainly seems to provide plenty of entertainment to all like-minded people caught up in their endless search for validation on the right-wing Blogs. Ever consider reading something that doesn’t just confirm everything you already think? That’s what I did, and it changed the way I look at the world.
I will say this- if Rall’s gonna go out on a limb and directly insult the latest propaganda poster-boy, I’d say he should expect whatever he gets. Not to say that he’s wrong, but he must realize that all the good little chickenhawk automatons around the country will respond instantly in Pavlovian attack-dog fashion to his commentary.
As for Tillman himself, I pity him as much as I pity every other soldier who has been deceived by our government into giving up their lives for corporate profits. It’s not his fault, and I truly believe that. As for the rest of you, I hope you wake up before it’s too late and we have another four years of the Bushies. I wonder if America will finally open its eyes when the draft is reinstated. Rall may be a publicity hound, but his basic message is right on the money, and more people should read beyond their knee-jerk conditioned response to him.
The magic words! Yes. Dance, monkey! Wheeeeeeeeee…!
.
Good grief … speaking of Pavlovian automatons, get a tune-up Mike … your left-drivel is in overdrive and you’re out of freakin’ gas.
I think you’re giving far too much credit to Mr. Rall. Do you really think there’s that much cogitation going on in his lumpy, viscera-packed hat holder? I doubt Ted could process that much data in a day without external stimuli.
That said… I’ll join in on the cock-sucking. This is just beautiful.
I can’t figure it out – Is it Hillary or Bush paying these geniuses to blow the Kerry campaign?
I have to ask: Does your head hurt?
Mine sure does, and I just had to read it. You actually had to channel all of that…
Oh, and Mike? When you hear Ted say, “Stay out of the bushes”, he’s not talking about the family in the White House, a la Je$$e Jack$on. He actually wants you to stay out of his bushes!
I felt filthy after writing that. Seriously. That’s why my next post was about puppies. It was like, I dunno, blog sorbet or something…
A whole twenty posts in, and no one attempted the obvious analogy? Well, okay…
Jeff’s channeling James Joyce! Call it “Portrait of the Artist as a [fill in the blank]”
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moonbat coming down along the road….
Ted Rall kinda makes the whores at mustang ranch seem respectable.
He loves the attention.
And see now here’s the thing: to his fans, the fact that we’re offended is what proves how great he really is.
Thanks for the mention, Jeff.
Now allow me to join the throngs of people eager to worship. Anybody who’s willing to suffer through channeling whatever limited activity goes on in Rall’s mind and who does it so outstandingly well is a true gift to satire.
‘Cept I’m not sure that you didn’t just publish a page of Rall’s diary or something. Or maybe… Tell me, Jeff, did you borrow the VRWC Evil Zionist Cabal’s mindreading apparatus again? I thought we decided at the last sooper sekrit meeting to stop doing that.
This just makes me sad. This is the reason that I don’t write. Because I know in my heart that I’ll never be this good and its just depressing.
As for James Joyce … he was the best that ever lived. Ever. If you take all the punctuation out of “The Dead”, the whole things reads as one long epic poem. His own personal joke. Joyce thought of himself as a poet instead of an author. He was TWISTED brilliant. And, yeah, this vaguely reminds me of Joyce.
Mike, translated:
“Hey! How come nobody is sucking my cock, huh? Come on, little Mikey’s cold—it wants a little hug!”
The only thing I can add to this is that even though the word ‘fuck’ is used a lot, there is nothing in there talking about how conservatives are scared of sex and how Ted revels in sex. The only thing missing that I could find.
Now I have to go take a shower.
Mike=obvious
Andrea:
That was clever… did you spend as much time coming up with that as Jeff did on his little stream-of-consciousness rant against the right wing’s latest liberal whipping boy of the week? Really, just go back to playing with your etch-a-sketch and everything will be ok.
McQ:
It’s hardly drivel if it’s true. I know you think, much like most righties, that it will never happen to you, but believe me, the government would send you off to die just as quickly as they would someone who didn’t spend all day promoting their agenda. That’s what you people have to get through your heads… liberals are not like you; we want to protect everyone from the government, even mindless reactionaries. I know it’s hard to conceive of anyone not acting in unmitigated personal interest, but if you put down the copy of Ann Coulter’s latest berserker screed and actually think about it for a minute, I bet you could do it.
Matthew:
I’m not sure if that was meant as a compliment or not. If it was, then thanks, but the problem is that as crystal clear as it is to you and me, most of the people here are so blinded by their false sense of “patriotism” (which in the right-wing world is a synonym for “my country right or wrong”) that they simply can’t see it. I’m not sure what’s so hard about understanding the idea that the powers-that-be are not interested in the well-being of anyone but themselves… it’s about as complicated as 2 + 2 once the propaganda filter is removed. I think the most effective aspect of this kind of indoctrination is the fact that citizens are trained to feel threatened by anyone who criticizes the very system that keeps them under control. Extremely powerful and scary stuff.
Thank goodness extraordinarily intelligent people like you can see right through the nefarious structural indoctrination being foisted on us by the powers-that-be, Mike. Otherwise we’d all be sunk.
Thanks for protecting us from ourselves. Smart people really do rock!
Outstanding, and if you read it in the voice of golem it is dead on, precious.
Mike,
Not a compliment. Sorry.
Love,
Predicatably brain-washed righty
you should have posted a picture of spit on the keyboard to go withi it, you know when they write their little scribes that its probably covering everything. just remember, each time they step a foot farther down they just show their true colors for all to see.
I have to admit, when I first started reading it, I was wondering if the text wasn’t actually written by Rall…and I had just misunderstood about it being a parody….
Mike,
Notice how you use the term “righties”. Instantly, you have put people in a binary category: right or left. In other words, you take a hardline, “you’re either with us or against us” stance.
Thank you for showing your hypocrisy.
Also, if anyone here has ever read Mark Moford, this rant would seem eerily familiar in style.
“we want to protect everyone from the government, even mindless reactionaries.”
And how do you propose to do that? More legislation, more regulation? Unless you’re a Libertarian, which I doubt given your mindless regurgitation of leftist nitwit dogma, you’re proposing a ridiculous thesis here. The left is the bastion of creeping socialist intrusion, which flies directly counter to your avowed noble cause. Nice try though, schnookums.
Outstanding Red Team! Getcha’ a case of beer for that one.
If the Gawd before whom us Fundie nutbags grovel daily really DOES exist, He will make it so that Ted Rall bumps into Pat Tillman’s Ranger brother in a Costco parking lot.
Hilarity will ensue.
“Mike”, able to read people’s minds over his dial-up connection—whatta tool.
–furious
Im a troll
dont feed me
This is my first visit Jeff, you fearful jesuit, now I’v gone and added another to my personal blogroll… thanks.
Mike,
Your arrogance is wonderfully refreshing. I certainly am glad that you know better than I do, and that in your humbleness have decided to protect us poor ‘nescienati’ who lack you both your wisdom and consummate language abilities.
Rall is the perfect example of what is wrong in today’s society; ME! ME! ME! ME! – IT’S ALL ABOUT ME! that’s why FREAKS like Rall (and his ilk) can’t understand a Mensch like Pat Tillman, because dingleberries like Rall don’t have the BALLS to do what Tillman did; believe in something higher than THEMSELVES and go out and put your money where your mouth is. An entire generation did this during World War II. Then again during the Korean War and then again (the ones who went) in Vietnam. Rall suffers from the “Baby Boom” complex – IT’S ALL ABOUT ME!
Rall – you’re a fucking pussy and a sorry excuse for a man. you probably sit down to take a leak. the problem all started when your old man pulled out too soon…
Pitch-perfect deconstruction. Bless you.
Mr. Goldstein,
You have obviously been snorting Drano again, thereby qualifying you to become the GOP presidential nominee.
Mr. Goldstein,
You have obviously been snorting Draino again, thereby qualifying you to become the GOP presidential nominee.
Does anyone else ever find it ironic when you read message by people complaining about “corporate profits” and all the evils we perpetrate in their name? I mean, the computers they use to type and publish these rants are made by, !gasp!, corporations using plastics and metals that are provided by !gasp! corporations and execute software largely written by !gasp! corporations. These are the same folks that will walk to the coffee shop/grocery store/abortion clinic (likely run by a corporation) wearing shoes made by a corporation, shipped by a corporation to a store owned by a corporation… Do you see where I’m going with this, Mike?
You should be thanking your lucky stars for corporations.
Brilliant. You nailed it. Thanks.
Mike,
I love the way you simplify the complex, and complicate the simple. I especially love the big government left protecting us from government bit. “Let’s make is as big and powerful as we can, then protect everyone from it.” Of course! That makes so much sense!
How the left wants to protect people from government:
1. Take away all the people’s guns.
2. Use hate speech against them, then accuse them of violating your rights when they disagree with you.
3. Send as much of their money as possible to the national capitol and then dole it out to them via big expensive bureaucracies.
4. Speak out against national defense as often as possible.
5. Pass the national sovereignty to an unscrupulous and incompetent international organization.
6. Call the President an idiot, then nominate someone who doesn
Bravo!
As an actor wanna be, I was reading it in my mind as if it were a spoken monologue and all I can think is…..
Look out Vagina Monologues….
But seriously, Nice..Very nice.
“we want to protect everyone from the government”
Great idea. Lets start with dumping the education department…….
Priceless!
Great response to that VILE CRAP. When I saw that cartoon, after having read Gonzalez’s letter, I was real PO’d, but this actually brought a smile to my face. Had to link to it and add you to the Blogrole.
Nail on the head!
Brilliant. Perfect.
“because dingleberries like Rall don’t have the BALLS to do what Tillman did; believe in something higher than THEMSELVES and go out and put your money where your mouth is”
Well said.
Nicely done Jeff. Id and ego are all this waste of skin knows. Mike obviously isn’t far behind as he obviously enjoys coming back to see who’s paying attention to him.
Pat Tillman died serving his country. He died fighting for the freedoms that filth like Rall et al abuse.
Sure he’s entitled to his opinion. He’s also eligible to have his teeth knocked down his throat.
You should start composing Rall: The Musical.
Mike,
Ever consider reading something that doesn’t just confirm everything you already think? That’s what I did, and it changed the way I look at the world.
Well, given that (a) you have absolutely no clue what any random poster here reads, any more than I do; and that (b) if everyone on the “right” insisted on reading only things they knew they’d agree with in advance, none of them would so much as heard of Ted Rall . . . I’d say you don’t know what you’re talking about.
. . . latest propaganda poster-boy [. . .] all the good little chickenhawk automatons around the country will respond instantly in Pavlovian attack-dog fashion to his commentary [. . . ] I pity [Tillman] as much as I pity every other soldier who has been deceived by our government into giving up their lives for corporate profits.
Golly, Mike, are you saying that we shouldn’t even have been in Afghanistan? You do know that that’s where Tillman was stationed, right?
Trouble is, the proper response to it all should be,
“Ted Who?”
Stop ganging up on poor Mikey! I have it on good authority he missed his nap, and straining on his tippy-toes to reach the keyboard is obviously exhausting the poor little tyke!
Mikey, can’t we settle this over some warm milk, cookies, and a new pair of Barney slippers? Can’t we? Huh?
What changed? Until lately, the Right said “First, Order!” and the Left said “First, Justice!” and both sides wanted “power” just as the tool needed to create their visions.
Now, the Right wants order AND justice, and the Left apparently just wants the power, in order to stop the progress of the Right at the most fundamental level, where individuals need incentives to find in the culture the things the culture needs them to find, if the culture and the individual are to maintain current form. The left, until just very recently outed, operating under the cover of “progress”, has strung this string out pretty far. Now the alarm bells are ringing everywhere, and people feel that something is coming, and it’s either disaster or salvation. We’re all hotter than we would need to be, if we weren’t so hot.
Thank goodness for you people on this site. The Ralls and Mikes of the world are frozen to the spot where they first realized that Nature wasn’t going to be in the “fair” business, whether they liked it or not. They think we can’t see, but the truth is we see all too well, we just chose to not get stuck. We moved on, knowing how human we are, and how crucial is the question of right-and-wrong.
The Big Conspiracies that so threaten Rall and Mike are nothing more than individuals organized to protect the culture, make a living in it, and to hope to find ways of being pleasures to themselves and others.
Ranks right up there with Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.
Apologizing should not be enough for this scumbag Rall. He should never be allowed to sell another of his mental farts he calls cartoons. I sure as hell will never buy another paper with his cartoons in it. Our troops are fighting and dying and this piece of shit DARES say something about them? These guys and girls have more integrity in their small finger than Rall in his whole spineless body.
TELEGRAM TO DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
DISTANCE PARTY FROM NUTJOBS STOP YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION STOP MAKE YOUR TIME FULL STOP
Postscriptum:
I want to know how these individual elements all manage to fit together into some sort of coherent whole:
– we’re for the troops but against the war
– fuck the troops they’re zomboid killbot jock assholes
– we deserved 9/11 because of our support for oppressive regimes throughout the world
– we have no right to overthrow, isolate, or enter into any sort of conflict with oppressive regimes
– the world hates America because we are so shallow and selfish
– why should we spend billions of dollars and American lives in overthrowing a brutal regime that didn’t even attack us directly?
– other peoples and other cultures are equally as valid and as capable as our own
– arab nations are probably generally unsuited to democracy and freedom
– nations and borders are passe
– the national sovereignty of an unelected tyranical regime is sacrosanct
– you can’t argue for war unless you’ve served
– you can argue against war if you haven’t served
– but pretending you’ve served and being against war is ok too
How about a little Googlebombing, just for chuckles? I was thinking “talentless hack,” but that’s a bit weak. (Besides, it’s been done.)
Aren’t you (everyone) forgetting something?
The rag that actually chose to publish that comic started all this in the first place.
Not that I’m forgiving Rall. (Oh no, THAT’ll never happen.)
But the controversy might never have come to be – had the editorial staff chosen to NOT RUN THAT COMIC in the FIRST PLACE.
So, as far as I am concerned, both Ral and the editor(s) fit the same mold.
They reek.
I now return control back to your vertical hold.
Thirty years ago, there was a guy in Illinois named Frank Collins. He was the chairman of the National Socialist White People’s Party – the American Nazis. Collins lived to get people pissed off at him. He would organize “rallies” on college campuses, and incite people to scream at him. He even tried to organize a march through Skokie, Illinois, which in those days was home to many Holocaust survivors, because it made people furious with him from coast to coast. Frank carried on his guerilla theater of the absurd until the day it was revealed that he was half-Jewish, and the Nazis kicked him out.
Why do I mention Collins? Because Rall is Collins for our day. A man who fights for tyranny. A man who has allied himself with our enemy. Most importantly, a man who thrives on anger. It would not surprise me if he lurked on sites like this one and grinned at the impotent fury of the commentators here. It is our fury – and our clicking on the web sites that carry him and viewing the advertising they carry – that lines his pocket.
Without our anger, he is nothing. Tune him out. He will dry up and blow away.
Boy, it sure is easy to stir up the hornet’s nest around here… as I said, Pavlovian attack dogs. But whatever, you can believe me or not, and of course I might be wrong, but if I get at least one person to start actually thinking rather than just reacting, then it’s worthwhile.
Now, as for the actual substantive points made, which were rather few and far between…
Nick:
What’s really funny about your little manifesto was the fact that you essentially used all the same terminology to describe some kind of “liberal conspiracy” that His Holiness The Jeff peppered his Rall thing with. Jeff was obviously trying to make the point that liberals use stock phrases and rhetoric to make accusations against the government; looks like you’re doing the same thing, except against the people who aren’t in power. Seems to me like you’re searching for a way to portray conservatives as the victims; now that is really pathetic. On top of all that, you were so far off it doesn’t even bear spending time refuting each of your points line by line. Suffice it to say that if you really believe what you wrote, you need to take a big step back and actually think about what liberalism means rather than just what Bill O’Reilly tells you to think.
Michael Morgan:
Liberals are not against corporations per se, we just don’t think their profits should take precedence over peoples’ lives. This actually seems to square much more with the teachings of your savior than with the standard Republicrat pro-business ideology. This one I just don’t get. How can you think that the liberal belief in lives over profits is not better than what the Bushies are doing? I can’t believe you all just want to go around killing people, which is why I have to assume that it’s due to propaganda and ignorance.
Michelle Dulak:
Well, a) I can guess that most people here have never read anything that challenged their worldview based on the way they argue their points, which is pretty much “No, you’re wrong. I’m right. I win.”, and b) The thing about Rall became an issue because it was turned into one by the right-wing media and all the good little soldiers followed right along as they’ve been trained to do. You give me a single good reason why anyone should give a shit about what Rall says, particularly given that he’s in such a small minority and his voice is utterly overwhelmed by the Orwellian chants of hatred and support for anything and everything the government does to people outside this country that spew forth from every conservative media outlet on a daily basis.
Robb:
One big difference is that I’m not advocating bombing or otherwise murdering people who disagree with my views; on the other hand, I have seen so many Internet-false-bravado death threats against Rall that I stopped counting long ago. The problem is that the right wing seems to think only in black and white… “bad people” have to be killed one way or the other, regardless of the severity of their offense. Also, maybe I shouldn’t be as hardline as what I wrote, and normally I probably wouldn’t be, but sometimes I just get fed up with the smugness and self-righteousness that absolutely oozes from every single conservative political site I visit. I try to keep my horizons broad by understanding what the other side is thinking, but most of the time it just ends up being the same old endless vitriol against all things liberal. Look up the definition for “ad hominem” on dictionary.com. It mentions that people who have a weak case often base their arguments on the supposed failings of the “other side”. Seems to me that’s precisely what goes on in the right-wing political realm.
I find it amusing that you think we’re trained attack dogs, Mike, but I think Misha is the only one who’s got that covered. You can put your hands over your head and play victim, if that’s what floats your boat.
Golly, Mike, are you saying that we shouldn’t even have been in Afghanistan? You do know that that’s where Tillman was stationed, right?
“Pipeline! Unocal! Profits! Silent genocide!”
(I’m just guessing here.)
There’s nothing wrong with Ted Rall’s head that a few minutes in a 3-ton hydraulic press won’t cure.
All his fans are welcome to get in line behind him.
Jeff:
Now this is funny… did you actually read the definition of irony? Nowhere does it express the concept you were quite clearly trying to convey, which is “hypocrisy”. Very clever setup, though. You must be a pretty clever guy. As Tyler Durden would say, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
As to the hypocrisy itself, maybe you’re a little bit right, and I apologize if I went overboard with the characterizations of conservatives. I probably shouldn’t bother reading these sites at all, since I’m bound to get frustrated, but I do like to understand the perspective of the “other side”.
I know why you read these sites, Mike. I know because I look in on the lefty sites. You visit conservative sites for the spelling, sentence construction, logic, courtesy, and general coherence. And who can blame you?
Buddy Larsen:
(AHEM)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Thanks, I needed that.
I know, it showed. Glad to be of service, Mike. Power to the People!
Ok, this is priceless. WE’RE acting like victims? PAY ATTENTION! We’re not the ones pitting every ethnic, gender, or religious group against every other one. We’re not the ones who tell people to, when confronted by a criminal, just give them what they want and hope they’ll go away. O’Reilly? What happened to Rush? I thought I was letting Rush do my thinking for me? The truth is, I don’t let anyone do my thinking for me. I just watch what the left does, as opposed to what guys like you say, and make up my own mind. It’s not difficult. As for my “terminology” matching Jeff’s, well, it just goes to show you. The truth seems to look the same, no matter who says it. What the fuck does terminology have to do with anything anyway? Like the left doesn’t spew the same crap with the same terms all the time. I also love the way you used the term “conspiracy.” The funny thing about that is you’re using the same terminology as Hillary Clinton. Isn’t that interesting. I don’t know that there is an actual organized conspiracy, but there is no question that the left, at least those in leadership, are specifically interested in power, and nothing else. That they support each other shouldn
That which is manifestly wrong should not require refutation, but I shall endeavor to do so in the simplest possible terms, point by point. Please let me know if anything I say is too complicated for your football-loving, government-trained and hate-filled brain to comprehend.
1. Take away all the people’s guns.
-No one needs an AK-47 in their home, and anyone with kids should be responsible enough to have legal firearms trigger-guarded and well-hidden. Unfortunately, there are far too many idiots who fail to take even the simplest precautions, and their kids end up killing themselves. We want to prevent this. You don’t?
2. Use hate speech against them, then accuse them of violating your rights when they disagree with you.
-Please, if you’re going to try to co-opt an issue, at least make it a plausible one. The right has always had to be fought tooth and nail for every expansion of civil rights starting with women. “Hate speech” is advocating segregation, whereas pointing out the government’s lies and deceptions is not.
3. Send as much of their money as possible to the national capitol and then dole it out to them via big expensive bureaucracies.
-As opposed to the right wing, which wants to dole it all out to big corporations. I’ll give you half a point on this one, because the Republicrats are even closer on this particular aspect of government malfeasance than they are on everything else. Again, however, the Democratic wing of the Republicrat party are not real liberals.
4. Speak out against national defense as often as possible.
-This one can be demolished in so many different ways, it’s not even funny. Look, it’s very simple really: what kind of nation other than an empire would spend half its federal budget and more than the rest of the world combined on “defense”? Why does “defense” always conveniently involve sending troops to oil-rich regions of the world? Why are all the latest military projects (the Stryker, the F-22, mini-carriers, etc) geared toward *offensive* action (and in the case of the Stryker, urban combat)? Does the possibility really not even occur to you that this is too much power for the few hundred old guys who run our government to have? Is it not somewhere within your Hollywood-distorted mind that blowing stuff up is not cool when people actually die?
5. Pass the national sovereignty to an unscrupulous and incompetent international organization.
-The U.N. sucks mostly because it’s so utterly dominated by the U.S. It is completely unable to carry out meaningful multilateralism when the interests of a single nation so overwhelm all aspects of its operation. Of course we shouldn’t give up sovereignty, but see there’s this gray area between unilateralism and giving up sovereignty called “cooperation”. Since this concept is obviously foreign to you, I refer you again to our old friend dictionary.com.
6. Call the President an idiot, then nominate someone who doesn
Jeff:
Thanks for snipping down the laugh thing so we don’t have a 200-character-wide page… my bad.
No problem. I try never to edit contents, but the aesthetic affront impelled me on this occasion.
Two quick comments, then I must go tend to my kid:
1) the irony I referred to was situational irony. I know I don’t have an “about” me page listed right now, but you can trust me when I tell you I know what irony is.
2) I quite enjoy the twacking sound made by a good collection of Bible thumpers. Reminds me of the beginning of “Hooked on a Feeling.”
Well, there seems to be two Nicks on this board. I’m not the Nick that made the list (wish I could take credit for it), rather I’m the Nick who made a typo while complementing Mike’s brilliant use of the English language. Anyhow, speaking of language and specifically words…
ad hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason
person 1: “I think jumping off a thousand foot cliff onto jagged rocks won’t kill you.”
person 2: “You’re an idiot.”
Well, person 2 must be wrong, he obviously has a weak argument. So weak that instead of trying to attack person 1’s argument, he cuts through the protective cloak of meaningful words used so far out of place they have lost their abstract connection to reality, and instead attacks the source of the idiocy, person 1. So, is it safe to jump off a thousand foot cliff onto jagged rocks, well I hope so, it sure sounds fun! But just to be sure, before all us mindless conservatives go stampeding down the slop in our skives, laughing, giggling, and frolicking joyously at our new found enlightenment, we thought to take a look at physics. Run the numbers, acceleration due to gravity, doesn’t look promising, but person 1 is adamant, “Jumping off a thousand foot cliff won’t kill you.” So, more analysis, months worth, velocity at impact, atmospheric conditions, and after several months of papers and studies and much animosity back and forth it is found that; If you jump of a cliff, depending on atmospheric conditions, material composition of the rocks at the bottom, initial jumping speed, fractional differences in gravitational acceleration, clothing worn, gender, race, age, and sexual orientation (only since there was a small statistical correlation between orientation and clothing worn), initial orientation of jumper, angle of impact, and orientation at impact (not sexual orientation this time, but body position of impactor), it was found that there is a .0001% chance that jumping off a thousand foot cliff onto jagged rocks will not kill you. [We could have arrived at this number earlier had we counted the ten thousand people who immediately went laughing, skipping, joyously jumping at their new found enlightenment, secure in the knowledge that person 2 was a nut because they were thoughtful enough to read the definition of ad hominem. The one survivor (one of the latter to jump, possible surviving because of the ‘soft’ landing provided by the mangle mash of dead flesh of the thousands that went before him) was horrified to find that the basic notion of, “Go jump off a cliff,” has been around for millennia and generally avoided by those who survived to propagate the species.]
So, two months later, lets look at the original statements again and ask, who was right, person 1 or person 2?
person 1: “I think jumping off a thousand foot cliff onto jagged rocks won’t kill you.”
person 2:”You’re an idiot.”
hum,…. Mike, you’re an idiot.
Three Month Update: After another ten thousand people jumped off a thousand foot cliff, distrustful of the original governmental study, “Survivability of Thousand Foot Cliff Jumping with Consideration to Rock Bottomed Landings.” the two survivors were interviewed by a sports reporter. One noted that she and one other survived and that the government report was blatantly misleading and she suspects an administration cover-up but was unable to elaborate as the pain killers for her broken back and shatter extremities began to take effect. The second survivor said he was aware of the original cliff jumpers conversion to an anti-cliff jumping position, but that since the publisher of his story had once been in the same city as an administration official, he suspected the veracity of his anti-cliff jump claims and had to experience it himself.
Up next: Ted Rall defends his latest cartoon. Rall purports the government is severely misdirected in its anti-cliff jumping campaign since, Rall maintains, it was neither the jumping nor the cliff that caused the deaths of the cliff-jumpers.
Mike, it’s kind of fun watching your dillusions take form in words. You group all right wingers into homicidal maniacs, you automatically assume we only watch Fox News (the only time Fox is on my tv is for 24), that we’re not well read, Playstation! haliburton! Shills!
You’ve got the ‘conservative mind’ so fixed in your brain that you cannot even begin to see beyond your predefined notions. You have too many incorrect statements about me to even think about fisking, so I’ll generalize it.
You. Are. Wrong. Period. Your definitions of me (as a conservative) are wrong. I do not relish killing people, I believe more in freedom than you can even imagine (I just have that nagging ‘responsibility’ thing I attach to freedom that many on the left cant grasp), I read all sorts of books, my X-Box hasn’t been turned on in several months….good God I could go on for days. But it won’t matter. You already appear to have everyone in the other side defined in some prefab-conservative mold.
It’s funny to see you talk of open mindedness…
Robb:
First of all, I was talking specifically about Nick (the one with the list), and admittedly charicaturizing right-wing thinking. I don’t think any of the stuff you said, so you can stop crying now. I do think it’s funny though that you tried to refute my little barb about the Playstations by saying that your X-Box “has not been turned on in several months”… it’s all relative, I guess.
No Mike, you were talking about me directly. When you use generalizations such as “the right” or “conservatives” you speak of groups who I share many ideas with. You lump me in the category then attack the category, it’s the same thing.
As for your ‘nuanced view’, shove it. Wishy washy fence-sitting doesn’t solve problems. Ideas by themselves are worthless concepts, it is not until action is taken that ideas gain merit. And taking action means making a decision, something ‘nuanced’ people never get around to doing because they get stuck in analysis paralysis.
Nick (the one with the language problem):
That’s a great story, and I’m sure you had fun writing it. Of course, it’s a rather poor analogy and in fact demonstrates that you fall into at least one stereotype of conservatives, which is black-and-white thinking. Basically what you’re trying to say is that use of ad hominem necessarily means that one is wrong. In fact, that’s not at all what I said. What I did say was that right-wingers tend to base their entire arguments on the “left” being wrong. Most of these arguments seem to be base emotional reactions to a challenge of the conservative worldview. To an awful lot of righties, real-world evidence is inconsequential; it simply is that way because it is. Any evidence offered is simply dismissed as “liberal propaganda”, without consideration. Again, remember Language-Nick, I’m not saying this is true of all conservatives, but the tendency is clearly there, and overwhelmingly so in the “blogosphere”.
Robb:
Thank you for proving my case, I appreciate it.
Oh, almost forgot, Robb… it’s “delusions”, not “dillusions”. Nice try, though. I can see how you sort of tried to throw that together from “illusions” and, um, “d”.
George Bush’s Internal Monologue:
As long as we’re correcting spelling and diction, Mike, what the hell is “charicaturizing”? Did you mean “characterizing”? Or was “caricaturing” what you were going for…?
Mike, what case? The fact that you can’t refute any points but rather attack my spelling? If I were attacking your spelling, then that’d be fine, but as you see, Jeff already pointed something out about that.
Well, whatever makes you feel superior.
Jeff:
OK, so there’s no such word as “charicaturizing”. You got me. “Caricaturing” would be what I was going for. Please don’t bomb me.
Robb:
When you use words like “wishy-washy fence-sitting” to describe objective consideration of the merits of a case, you don’t need to be refuted. The refutation is in the utter lack of thought behind the statement itself.
I really wasn’t including you specifically in whatever blasphemy I uttered toward conservatives before -especially since I wouldn’t begin to claim knowledge of who you are or what you believe- but now you have demonstrated that you do belong in that group. In any case, righties do the same goddam thing when it comes to putting people into categories- except they do it far more often, far more stridently, in far more prominent places, and with far more consequences for real people. When will the right wing stop trying to co-opt liberal ideas?
Mike:
Well, a) I can guess that most people here have never read anything that challenged their worldview based on the way they argue their points, which is pretty much “No, you’re wrong. I’m right. I win.”<i>
You know, you’re reading a comments thread about a parody here. The comments before you started in were pretty much all along the lines of “Damn, that was spot-on parody!” What exactly were you expecting? “Well, this one was kind of unfortunate, but there’s something to be said for some of his stuff”?
<i> [and] b) The thing about Rall became an issue because it was turned into one by the right-wing media and all the good little soldiers followed right along as they’ve been trained to do. You give me a single good reason why anyone should give a shit about what Rall says,
A question perhaps better asked of publications that carry his pathetic stuff, yes?
particularly given that he’s in such a small minority and his voice is utterly overwhelmed by the Orwellian chants of hatred and support for anything and everything the government does to people outside this country that spew forth from every conservative media outlet on a daily basis.
Yes, I’ve noticed that overwhelming conservative approval of the Abu Ghraib abuses myself. Everyone is cheering! The “spew” of enthusiasm from Fox alone is staggering. Every conservative blogger has weighed in with a hearty “well done!” to the people responsible, and I hear rumors that Richard Mellon Scaife is putting up millions of dollars to get the court-martialed soldiers the best defense money can buy.
Not.
Mike, get a grip. Please.
</i></i>
Yup, you got me Mike. There’s some misspelling in there, a couple I get to blame on typos, A couple I can’t hide from! The comma splices, fragments and run-ons were intentional, goofy story that it was, it didn’t read write with-out ‘em.
Goofy-yes, but to accuse conservatives of black and white thinking? For a thought experiment, try substituting 1000 feet for 100 feet, and jagged rocks for soft marsh land. I’d bet the cliff-jumpers would have a 10-20% survival rate then, but would jumping off a cliff be any wiser?
Don’t confuse black-and-white thinking with avoiding the pit-falls of moral equivalancy.
But this is the real gem:
I’ve had this feeling of late that the left has been accusing the right of exactly the things the left is guilty of itself. This is a truely wonderful example of that reversal in action. Classic, truely classic, thanks Mike.
Brother Mike:
Forget trying to reach these idiots. Their thought trains aren’t expandable to the level of common-sense one requires for debate. They only go in one direction (right) and are narrowly confined to the tracks. No original thinking allowed. Once you get !All Aboard! the Conservative Express, “ditto, ditto” is the only acceptable expression.
I note how little discussion there is of Rall’s point. It’s one thing to fight to defend your country. It’s quite another to buy into a position that impels you to go into the heart of another country, amidst people who bear you ill will for countless good reasons, on a search and destroy mission to kill or capture their local hero.
Do a little thinking, you knee-jerk neocon pussies. Tillman had the most honorable of intentions when he joined up. He allowed that intention to be sufficiently twisted so that he could justify rolling into Afghanistan as an invader.
He became a “sap” when he gave himself blanket approval to become a tool in the hands of this country’s corporate and political elite. He became a “sap” when he chose to ignore the logical inconsistency between his noble desire to defend his country and his hated presence in another.
How many of you dickheads cheered for the Imperial troops in Star Wars? How many longed to be a hero of the rebels, ala Luke Skywalker?
Guess what? Pat Tillman, for all his good intention, marvelous ability, and nobility of spirit permitted himself to become an Imperial Trooper. How is that laudable?
The guys who ambushed him and his squad are outgunned and under-nourished, yet they fight fiercely to defend their homeland from the invader.
Wouldn’t you be doing the same if the invader came to your home in DickSuck, Iowa? Isn’t that what you SAY you’re keeping your precious guns for?
Rall had every right and reason to suggest that Tillman and the others like him are ‘saps’ and ‘idiots’. Pat Tillman bore responsibility for putting himself in that position. He paid the ultimate price. Isn’t the the equation you neocons advocate?
Pat Tillman went out well, if you credit the Army’s account. Ooorah for him.
If that makes you feel okay about his fate and about the ultimate assholes who placed him in situ, fuck you.
BTW, I’m a Vietnam vet, been in the shit, and have only universal luck and God’s grace to thank for my life. Pat Tillman was a great soldier. Too bad he wasn’t a great thinker.
Rant on…
See Language-Nick, here’s the thing. You say the left has been “accusing the right” etc etc. It’s not really an “accusation” in the sense of accusing someone of a crime without knowing whether that person is guilty. In this case, I am not making any “accusations”. I am simply reporting observations that I’ve made. What’s really funny is that you’ve done nothing but reinforce that perception. Not only that, but you managed to entirely miss the point of my argument. Really, arguing with you is sort of like beating up a cripple (an anology to which I’m sure many of your redneck friends can relate), so I think I’m done wasting my time.
Stuart —
We will rant on, “Brother.” And here’s a tip for you, free of charge: people might take you more seriously if you stopped talking like the outtakes from an Oliver Stone movie.
“Been in the shit?” Christ. You’re a cliche, just like your practiced boilerplate.
Neither the time nor the inclination, as they say. Fuck me? I pay for the bandwidth here, dickhead. So no. Fuck you. And see ya.
Stuart:
Were you in the same Ranger battalion as Micah Wright?
B-Chan
Former MM3, USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65)
Mike, with your “cripple” remark, you just destroyed your entire liberal indentity-premise. Your quick invention of some parenthetical ‘rednecks’ to cover your ‘cripple’ blurt proved, with perfect clarity, that when it comes to principles, you stand for sentences.
Somehow, I very much doubt that.
Jeff, I’m in awe. Wonderful.
[Post by agitpropster deleted. Not because I care at all what he said—Repugs (Republicans) shop at Wal-Mart, like NASCAR, fuck their sisters, etc.—but rather because he complained that Ted’s First-Amendment rights were being violated. And no, it’s not his ignorance of the how the First-Amendment works, even as he presumes to lecture on it, that got his post deleted and his IP banned. It was the delicious irony I’m taking out of banning someone who spent literally 3000 words bitching about how his speech was being chilled.
I mean, this just feels sooooo goood.
Peace out.]
blah blah blah
[insert sterotypes on conservatives here]
trolling, trolling, and more trolling
Now I’m going to go off and read the Communist Manifesto because I’m, like, sooo much smarter than any conservatives! Totally bigoted!