Preach it
One can’t cast one’s eyes toward Iraq, or read of the still-struggling Gulf Cost, or greet another infuriating 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, or hear about a family who lost their home because of the catastrophic combination of a healthcare crisis and no health insurance, or a crumbling infrastructure, or American students falling behind their global peers, or American scientists falling behind theirs, or any one of dozens of issues that have Rove’s grubby fingerprints and Bush’s crummy signature all over them, and fail to think about the scheming that has changed our country and our lives, not for the better by almost any estimation.
And the pot of shit behind it all has the temerity to suggest that Michelle Obama doesn’t love her country—the proof of her insufficient affection being, evidently, that she hasn’t endeavored for the past four decades to destroy it.
Fuck you, Rove. Fuck. You.
What’s been generally amazing to me about this convention is how much the talking heads focused on personality-based elements: “Have Barack and Hillary made up yet? Is Michelle Obama a scary, angry black woman, or is she a phony pretending not to be a scary, angry black woman? What do the Democrats have to do to prove that they don’t hate America?”
Absolutely nothing about policy, absolutely nothing about the disaster that the past eight years of right-wing rule have wrought upon the country and the world. It’s all one big soap opera for these assholes, and as long as they’re entertained, Rome can burn.
What? Rome is burning?! We need to get the location vans out there now!!
Thanks for the tip.
-the MSM
Uuhm Brad, why is that amazing to you? It looks like business as usual to me.
Ooooooh.
What Christian said. Spoiler alert! – that’s how it’s gonna be until we either collapse or the Chinese send a repo man to take the entire country as payment for all we owe them. The stupidest nation on earth can’t understand anything unless explained through the viewpoint of a soap opera.
As the World Burns? One Meaningless Life to Live? Generally No Hospital?
it’s safer and easier to talk about the personalities, especially when they’re just stuffing the candidates’ words into pre-defined narratives – the stories are already written, just drop the appropriate quotes in where ever they fit. if they actually talked about the policies, reporters would have to take time to actually learn and understand complex topics which are hard to explain to the drooling retards that make up our country.
You can’t expect the media to give up those heart breaking stories about families who’ve lost job/homes/loved ones thanks to greedy bastards without a fight.
John McPOW. Lower taxes.* Higher ratings.
*Some restrictions apply. Offer not valid for those living in the lower 99%.
The Bold and The Unconstitutional?
Sadly, McPOW is such a cool nickname that, even when used disdainfully, it lessens my white-hot hatred for John McCain
How about, “How many other POWs are as rich as JiSM3?”
If JiSM3 is entitled to the world’s great riches for his suffering, what about the rest of those who were imprisoned and tortured?
The Young and the…hey, you kids, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Yep. A little over two months and I have attained a complete, zen-like fatalistic serenity. President McCain kills America more quickly and violently than President Obama. Either way, we’re in the death spiral now and you can see the event horizon, even if you can’t precisely identify it’s date.
It’s a bit like being in an airliner struggling to make it to an alternate emergency landing field with one engine burning. The pilots have managed to keep the nose level and the fire seems to be growing slowly. But ultimately, well before arriving at a place to land, the last control slips away and the plane rolls over on it’s back and begins the long, fatal dive. During the struggle, when signs of impending doom could be clearly seen, there was still much to be hopeful, even optimistic about. But as a passenger you are gripped with a gut wrenching fear, because you understand the consequences and you know, deep down in that part of you that can only do dispassionate analysis and is incapable of lying that you are not going to make it, that the hope is built only on the fact that the actual time of your death cannot be predicted with accuracy.
Then, when that last bit of hope slips away and you are falling, minutes away from your death, the fear goes away. You get it now. You never had a chance, and it was the trying to convince yourself that you did that produced the terror. Now, in the cold light of certainty, there is, at last, peace.
That’s where I am now. Things may get a little better, and they may get a lot worse. But the die is cast, the path is set, and there is neither the political will nor the human courage to make the hard decisions and take the radical actions necessary to avert catastrophe.
And I am at peace…
mikey
Hey, did you know that Obama is friends with some people who once may have built a bomb, or knew people who did? OMG WOW!
Coincidentally, John McCain has personally dropped hundreds of pounds of bombs on people and apparently wants to continue doing so.
I’m with Brad and Melissa. I just posted a similar at roy’s:
It’s stultifying, these gasbags and their attendant idiot dopplegangers in the blog world. Every utterance is false on some level — to be sure, so are the Conventions themselves — but at least the Democrats are giving the speeches more or less in good faith. And I mean that because, as a Democrat (have mercy on my soul), this is more or less what I believe in and how I act — ordinary, prosaic, interested in a better life, blah, blah, blah. This is why I’m so mystified when I read about going off halfcocked to start a war with Russia or how if we’d just eliminate the Department of Education people would be smarter. I’m no utopian, or even much more than a cynic, but I long — literally long for a stitch of normalcy in this country, a feeling that what is happening is plain and real.
When Michelle Obama talks about her dad you believe that she had a father and didn’t come from a tube or something. And Teddy, as a living relic from a less glib time, had something that approached real gravitas. Ted was a man that mattered, whatever else he was.
But he’s so far out of his realm in Potemkin America here he may as well have been speaking Latin.
When he talks about helping the many and not the few, you know he means what he says. It’s not a pose. It’s not fake. It’s not layered with the endless bullshit that is the lingua franca these days.
Mikey, the thing with America is that it’s not real in the sense that an airplane is real. If this country collapses, the ground is still there, the air, all that stuff — our standard of living takes a real bad hit probably but it’s not like literally being engulfed in hundreds of litres of burning jet fuel (I say “litres” because the next nation on this dirt had dang well better use the metric system).
The livelihood of the pundit class is dependent ratings and popularity. They believe (and may be correct) that personality based infotainment is what the ignorant masses want. Hence, drivel such as The Chris Matthew Show.
Also, gossiping requires no talent or effort.
The really sad thing is after the country disintegrates and these goobers get the police state they long for they’ll probably still be bitching and whining.
I need to work for mikey’s Zen calm. For it is written, ‘the stupid will always be with you…”
Well, when America collapses, there will be no more need for pundits.
Of course, there will be a funny side: A lot of folks that think those pieces of paper have inherent, absolute value will be in for Le Suprise Grande.
Mikey is a national treasure.
I love Mikey like Richard Cohen loves McCain.
Ewww. On second thought, scratch that last one.
This is not a soap opera. Soap operas are TV shows, not essential parts of a deliberate scheme to destroy whatever decency remains in this country.
No one ever died because of a soap opera. No one ever went without medical care, or education or food. No one was ever thrown in jail without charges, or savaged for daring to speak the truth.
It is only if all of us speak the truth that we can turn things around. This means openly stating that the United States has become a filthy, miserable country which has used its power to savage people around the world. It is a country that runs on greed and hate, and has a horrible record of criminality. This includes John McCain, who was shot down attacking a civilian target in an illegal war of aggression, who deserved whatever he got at the hands of the Vietnamese people, and who is not a hero but a war criminal.
Wow, those Shakesville girls have absolutely no sense of humor.
I was just told I would be banned for saying:
about Karl Rove.
What is it with self-avowed feminists and a complete lack of humor?
Nobody ever died because of a soap opera? Are you kidding? 5 mins of Eastenders nearly killed me!
What is it with self-avowed feminists and a complete lack of humor?
As far as Shakesville goes, jokes about Obama being the One, the Precious and the Magical Unity Pony are always well received.
The fact is, Karl Rove is an awesome patriot and Michelle Obama hates America and is a phoney. You cannot refute the facts libs. You obviously have BDS soon to turn into McCDS and are biased by the liberal left media towards USA hatred.
That was a classic Ruppert post.
I give it a 9.7. It really had all the elements…
Hmm.
“Biased toward hatred”.
That’s an – interesting – construction.
But essentially I guess you think we don’t really hate anyone, we just kind of lean in the general direction of hatred. Mostly we’re just irritable, but we are biased toward hatred.
Hokay. Thanks for pointing that out. Clears everything up for me…
mikey
So is Obama Derangement Syndrome a real disease? Are we going to be able to use all those “BUT HES A SITTING PRESIDENT” and “WE WON. YOU LOST. GET OVER IT” things that were endlessly (endlessly!) trotted out since 2000?
my guess is Sadly No.
Doctorb: I like your point.
Repug Ad: Obama knows a person who bombed a building 40 years ago!
Dem AD: McCain (singing) “BOMB BOMB BOMB, BOMB IRAN!”
Dem announcer: “BTW, McCain was a bomber pilot.”
The possibility of the US totally collapsing is one of the main reasons that my husband and I plan to maintain our differing citizenships (US and Kenya). We can always relocate to whichever country is less shitty.
I don’t begrudge anyone his or her coping strategy, but I can’t adhere to mikey’s fatalism.
Hey Hey Mikey!
It’s always Darkest Before the Dawn! It ain’t over till the Fat Lady Sings (memo to all Fat Ladies: Don’t Sing!)
Thanks to the internet, American people are showing real interest in our Government, and beginning to Take Back Power. I won’t put all my faith in Obama… look what Pelosi & Reed did after ’06. Look at our Dem convention being sponsored to the amount of MILLIONS by AT&T.
But an energized people can do miracles.
What is it with self-avowed feminists and a complete lack of humor?
It’s not a lack of humor — it’s intellectual consistency. A basic tenet of feminism is that women should be judged on their bodies, as I’m sure you’re aware, so what kind of integrity would I have if I disallowed comments making jokes about women’s bodies but allowed comments about pinky dicks?
Disagree with my principles all you like, but chalking it up to a lack of humor is just lazy as all hell. And boring.
Goddamn it, I am not a spammer! And I didn’t copy and paste my lengthy comment either. Why isn’t our wordpresses learning????
And what has the world come to when the Sadly,No spam filter tells me to remove profanity? Sounds like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse!
Something is really wrong with the spam filter.
If I can’t cuss at S,N! I’m sure the world is coming to an end.
And where has HTML been?
WordPress needs a giant spam sammich
I think word press IS learning.
It’s learning to be st00pider.
Melissa McEwan said @ August 27, 2008 at 1:02
That should have been “women shouldn’t be judged on their bodies.” Duh.
Bwwaaa Haaaa Haaaa Haaa….
Okay, now I is a Spammer too.
So anyways, what i was trying to say is –
I’ve been pretty harsh towards McEwan (wev), but this here post is Focking Awesome.
Focking. Awesome.
That is all.
WordPress apparently doesn’t like the act of secual intercourse unless you spell it wrong. But this way, I managed to get some o’s in.
hey, mikey – when things get really bad, remember you do have friends. Here in the frozen north we care quite a bit about our crazy cousins (and we suffer through some of the same retard politico/punditry).
Compared with Richard Cohen’s analysis in the previous thread, The Truth at least has the asset of brevity.
Fozzetti
On that note: gratuitous vidwhoring.
Fadgeophile: Just want to announce that as a self-avowed feminist, I absolutely adore dick jokes and consider a well-placed queef joke something to be treasured.
Also: The US already is dead.
This country passed the economic tipping point circa 1973. We imploded nearly two decades before the Soviet Union, and so on purely technical points we didn’t even win the Cold War. Our federal government endures only by making near-daily trips to the CoinStar machine.
Lockstep corporate hegemony is what’s up. Soulless avaricious bottom-line corporations own everything in the US, and increasingly in the world, from labor, immigrant and othewise, to local politicians to corporate-owned mainstream media to lobbyists to the military-industrial complex to the pharmaceutical-health industrial complex to corporate-owned national politicians. Isn’t it obvious? Why would we ever have national health care? What corporate interest would that benefit? Why would MSNBC or CNN even pretend to be “objective” regarding Code Pink or Michelle Obama or the Clintons? Their narratives were codified memos dispatched long ago. There is no politicial discourse anymore; there is only the default (corporo-neocon) and the necessary “other,” the “left/liberal/Democratic” foil against which the dominant corporate paradigm defines itself as what is, as opposed to the scary “what if.” All else is a charade, shadow-boxing. In short, what mikey said.
Speak for yourself. I just puked into that pocket in the seat back with the airline magazines…
Oops, that was me puking on the plane.
What is it with self-avowed feminists and a complete lack of humor?
fadgeophile: Aw man, you wound me to the core. Am I not a self-avowed feminist? Do I not possess a stunningly keen sense of humor?
Dibs on that bottle of in-flight whisky!
Don’t do it, kids. Don’t give in to your cynicism.
They are TRYING to drain your energy. This is the point of all the vacuous stupidity. Obama wins on excitement – he loses when we throw up our hands. Pretty obvious, right?
Soap opera narratives are a way of hiding what has actually happened: eight years of theft, hatred and societal corrosion. At this point, undermining Obama (whatever reservations we all may have) is a form of treason.
This needs to be sung out.
Get back on board!
Corrected Troof: “Michelle flaunts her black supremacist views, gets hurriedly yanked off the public stage, and is repackaged weeks later as a Stepford wife. It is to masturbate myself raw over.“
Obama is better than McCain in the same way that Syphilis is better than AIDS. It’s not a better outcome. Left untreated, you die, and you die hard.
Pakistan. Iran. NorKor. The world is unwinding before our eyes. The solutions are not simple, and cannot be presented in a sound byte. The costs of our temporary and entirely imaginary domination are not only clear to see, but they have historical precedents.
What we need is a confident, strong, steady hand and a commitment to American Constitutional principles. What we get is American Exceptionalism, the military solution, authoritarian restrictions and hard borders. Useless, unsustainable and utterly valueless. But that’s what a terrified populice without a remaining option drives you to provide.
We’re going to commit national suicide, and we’re going to discuss the pros and cons of national suicide right up to the moment we bleed out. It’s beyond sick. It’s unprecedented and it provides absolutely NO options.
Lockstep march into that sad good night.
Yay….
mikey
Come on everybody. Hankies out. Big blow. Biiiiiig blow. Let it out.
There, that’s better now isn’t it?
Now back to fighting the good fight.
Thank you.
In my experience, the end result of all the stupidity is not quite as quickly fatal as you thought it was going to be. It’s still horrible, but it’s never really over. Sorry.
The pundits do indeed have no problem whatsoever with “Rome burning” – just as long as they can either withdraw to stalag-style gated communities, or simply move abroad for good.
When you look into the bullshit, the bullshit also looks into you.
The soap-opera narrative closes the feedback loop – the other end of which is too many years of lowered educational standards (to keep the mommies & daddies placated with phony grades, while Junior’s skull becomes a septic-tank) … the sweet sweet scam of keeping Junior dumb works like a charm to make him into an awesome delivery-system for low-paid labor, as well as an excellent rube for all the brands of consumer-goods snake-oil that Teh Magical Free-Market Unicorn can crap out … but there’s a hangover to every scam, & in this case, eventually Junior gets old enough to vote. That’s when the REAL shit hits the fan.
Or, in this case, when an entire trainload of shit derails on a trestle situated directly above a windmill farm, in the middle of a hurricane.
I think this will be the last more or less “normal” decade for all of us lucky ducks in North America. The next one is going to be a real doozy – the impending switch from light sweet crude to sour oil (& nuclear, & coal, & all the rest) alone is going to be a baseball bat in humanity’s nutsack, & that’s just one of MANY upcoming thrill-rides we’re all going to get to take a trip on.
Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.
That’s a brilliant, brilliant image (although I want to say that WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY).
Doctorb:
But did you also want to mention that since the middle (or “Eye”) of a hurricane is actually deadly calm, my cutesy little trope would only result in a trashed train & a bunch of rank-smelling windmills?
My poetic license will only expire when I do.
[…] Brad at Sadly No! sums up our elite media’s attitude towards this election: What’s been generally amazing to me about this convention is how much the talking heads focused on personality-based elements: “Have Barack and Hillary made up yet? Is Michelle Obama a scary, angry black woman, or is she a phony pretending not to be a scary, angry black woman? What do the Democrats have to do to prove that they don’t hate America?” […]
At this point, undermining Obama (whatever reservations we all may have) is a form of treason.
Oh, drop dead. I wondered when the mainstream liberals would get around to collecting kindling for all those heretics who need to be burned at the stake. Same as it ever was. The same middle-class professionals with advanced degrees who oh-so-ironically call themselves DFHs can’t wait for the chance to start attacking actual leftists for daring to point out what a hollow suit their golden boy is. I look forward to the excuses you’ll make for the bombs that Obama drops on whoever the Hitler of that particular week will be.
Absolutely nothing about policy, absolutely nothing about the disaster that the past eight years of right-wing rule have wrought upon the country and the world. It’s all one big soap opera for these assholes, and as long as they’re entertained, Rome can burn.
it’s a pity Mark Warner was scheduled on the same night as Hillary and not on Monday night, because he hammered this point home over and over again. Great speech, but doomed to an asterisk.
Obama’s too centrist for my taste too, but that’s not going to make me write in Fred Felching Phelps.