Moving In For The KILL
McCain’s superfical, rhetorical low-point was the stuttering over ‘Ahmadinejad’.
But the real FAIL by McCain was when he challenged Obama to cut all spending but military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements. Obama parried nicely by talking about the health care crisis and energy independence.
But folks, consider this – McCain is now ON THE RECORD as saying he wants to cut all spending but military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements. This is hammer-able, hammer-able shit. Here’s what McCain wants to ignore in future McCain America:
– Healthcare, as Obama pointed out. Fuck ’em. Let ’em ruin themselves over basic hospital bills.
– Alternative energy, as Obama pointed out. Fuck ’em. Let ’em pay $4->$5->$10->$20->$?? a gallon.
– FEMA. Katrina, Ike? Fuck ’em. Let ’em drown.
– Infrastructure. Bridges collapsing in Minnesota? Trains crashing in SoCal due to operator error? Fuck ’em. Let ’em crash and die.
– Education. Kids can’t read? Fuck ’em. Let the Chinese and Indians do our reading for us.
– Start-ups. Fuck ’em. Let Europe build Technology 2.0.
– International Investment. Fuck ’em. Let all those Sub-Saharan Africans die of HIV-Aids.
I’m sure we could go on and on.
Can we call McCain “Mr. Freeze”, or is that too much a geeky Batman thing?
FBI, borders and immigration enforcement, and other domestic security-related program activities.
“Fuck everything except Iraq,” said McMilitary-industrial McMouthpiece.
General science research. There has already been a minor brain-drain to Soviet Canuckistan because of a lack of government funds into science: shall it continue?
A gotcha that Obama could have immediately gone for:
‘John, you want to cut spending for everything but the military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements? That’s interesting. Because five minutes ago you said you supported spending for the $700 billion financial bail-out we just spent the first half-hour of this debate talking about!’
The fact is that McCain smoked Obama tonight. McCain has defined the game and Obama is trying to get close to McCain and the American people don’t buy that act. The most liberal member of Congress cannot turn himself into some sort of moderate.
Only Obama wants to sit and shrug as he meets with the raving dictator who rules Iran.
Only Obama wants to raise taxes as a way to revive our economy. Taking money out of our economy in a time when people don’t have enough money.
Only Obama will lead us to depression, and doom.
McCain is America’s last hope and he should be elected. McCain/Palin: Before it’s too late!
I bet Obama wishes he had a teleprompter.
The fact is, John McCain just clearly won the debate. He crashed his jet into the bridge of the HMS Obama.
Deck chairs on the Hindenburg, indeed.
he fact is, John McCain just clearly won the debate. He crashed his jet into the bridge of the HMS Obama.
Um… wouldn’t that mean that he’s dead? I mean – that’s what happens when you crash your jet, usually.
I bet Obama wishes he had a teleprompter.
No. 1 wingnut talking point that was categorically PWNED tonight.
Yeah that comment about freezing spending was absolutely jaw-dropping. What a complete turd he laid with that one.
Obama basically is not ready to be President. He is too naive and too trusting of dictators. He’s the only candidate with close personal friends who were terrorists.
John McCain is ready. John McCain was the only candidate who tried to solve our economic crisis.
Barack Obama isn’t up to the job.
Gary Ruppert: Eat shit and die. There, I said it.
As Gary Ruppert pointed out, the fact that independents and undecideds broke 2-1 for Obama over McCain tonight is Good News for John McCain!
Obama just doesn’t understand… me.
Most independents/undecideds were out watching high school football.
Only the far-left undecideds were in tonight.
All of the above, and also . . . he smugly, condescendingly, and utterly WRONGLY lectured Obama about how way back when, all the real grownups already knew that Pakistan was a failed state before Musharraf came to power. Fail fail fail, Mister Foreign-Policy-Is-My-Strong-Suit.
Sorry to go kinda OT, but that one really pissed me off.
Only the far-left undecideds were in tonight.
Yeah, I’m sure the far-left were really agonizing over whether they should break form just this once and go with Grumpy McPOW.
Also, can somebody bring back one of the other fake Gary Rupperts? This one’s broken.
I wish Obama had asked McCain why, if American workers are the best in the world, he thinks a cut in the corporate income tax is necessary to keep more U.S. companies from exploiting cheap third-world labor moving overseas.
blarrghg! I was going to write a long post about why Obama won. it doesn’ mater , cause he won convincinly. woo hoo
\
“far-left undecideds”?! Oh Rary Guppert, you crack me up!
Still, please eat shit, and then die.
Most independents/undecideds were out watching high school football.
Only the far-left undecideds were in tonight.
Mr. Ruppert: Do you plan ahead or do you just make it up as you go along?
There was supposed to be a strike through the words “exploiting cheap third-world labor” up there. FYWP.
I listened on the car radio (someone else driving), and I thought it pretty even most of the way — McC playing to his base while the Big O did his rational thing — but by the end I thought McC’s condescension got overbearing so O shaded it. Since, however, O’s base > M’s base, and the game was played on M’s turf, that’s a net big win for O, who sounds more and more Presidential.
But I did not have the visuals. Remember, in 1960 Nixon beat Kennedy among radio listeners, while Kennedy won the TV audience. I assume that Obama looked younger, stronger, calmer and taller — am I right?
John McCain just clearly won the debate. He crashed his jet into the bridge of the HMS Obama.
Fake Gary is on fire tonight!
Hence all the running around and screaming.
Oh, by the way, it’s perfectly possible to crash a jet and survive. McCain’s done it, I believe, five times.
Wow. Congress overrode Bush’s veto of a Medicare spending bill in July because the vast majority of CongressCritters realized their choices were 1) Pass the bill. 2) Find a real job.
Sharpie McPOW turns around and essentially says “Hey, we need to freeze Medicare spending!”
Obama really ought to send McJowl a thank you note. Tonight he wrote all the ads Obama will ever need.
Mr. Ruppert: Do you
planPalin ahead or do you just make it up as you go along?FTFY
I suspect real Gary at 6:19 and 6:28, but not 6:20 or 6:32. In case anyone’s keeping score.
Don’t forget, I offered you dirty lazy fucking hippies $50/hour to pick lettuce, my firends.
Elect me and we’ll see what we can work out.
Pakistan was a failed state before Musharraf came to power
We should think kindly about Musharraf on account of all the energy he invested in rebuilding Pakistan’s institutions, like an independent judiciary.
General science research. There has already been a minor brain-drain to Soviet Canuckistan because of a lack of government funds into science: shall it continue?
Um, yeah. Because otherwise we might waste a few million dollars studying something that sounds stupid to McFreeze, like bear DNA.
Won’t someone give John McCain POW a chance to start and manage one war before he shuffles from this mortal coil? Pleeeeeese?
I’ll bet that “freeze on everything but defense and veterans” was a big hit at Halliburton/Blackwater/neocon HQ.
Is anyone else as absolutely giddy as me over the VP debates? That’s going to be so much fun.
They aren’t even allowing Palin on TV tonight.
I love how Palin is a verb now. That is teh awesome!
“The fact is, John McCain just clearly won the debate. He crashed his jet into the bridge of the HMS Obama.”
Funny on so many levels.
‘Independents’ and ‘undecideds’ can fuck right off.
PS,
Somerby kind of suggests that the entire Kennedy-Nixon thing is received wisdom- there never were any credible studies there.
I think this is all the setup for the next two. McCain was totally disdainful without anything to back it up. When Gore destroyed Bush in the “sigh” debate, Gore was totally masterful on all the policy questions and was a factoid machine (like Clinton when he is on), and the viewers went for it, until the press found a way to make it retroactively about sighing. Obama kept sounding reasonable, and McCain was acting like a pompous ass. People will get the disconnect. “Huh, Obama didn’t sound dangerous or stupid to me, yet John McCain kept calling him dangerous and a child. What does that say about John McCain’s total disdain for all other humans?”
Also, anyone pick up his dog whistle about wanting Kissinger to be there to hear the stuff about Israel? This to me was McCain saying “I wish my Jewish friend were here the listen to the end of the state of Israel from Obama.”
Shorter McDebate: I intend to spend every dime of America’s borrowed money on war but will give each and every American some pocket change for health insurance.
AA, on Kennedy-Nixon: I think Somerby is jumping to conclusions, over-interpreting one side comment, and ignores the equally relevant one in the same post that Nixon had not only a negative on TV (the way he looked, especially the beard) but a positive on radio (better voice — JFK kind of whined). Sorry I don’t have better sources to hand, but I was studying US Politics (academically, albeit as an undergraduate, at Oxford, UK) only 7 years later and Nixon’s radio win was certainly generally accepted then, among circles that — it’s worth stressing — hated the duplicitous bastard long before he did become President.
Mind you, it was mutual, Nixon’s motto being oderint dum metuant — let them hate, so long as they fear.
brilliant McCommenter
“have done said.” parody troll?
John McCain as the Kamikaze pilot of Conservatism. I like it.
Thank you Gary Ruppert.
I want to believe this is a joke:
Listen, since McCain wanted to talk down to Obama all night, he should have looked at him, instead he sounded like he was talking down to America, with Obama not seeming like he needed to be talked down to.
When Gore talked down to Bush, people watching the debates were fine with it because Bush needed to be talked down to. Only after limitless replays of the sighs- that is when AMERICA felt talked down to.
All the tiny things say “win” for O
Real Time should be a joy to watch this evening. Ralph Nader’s going to be on. Har.
“PALIN FOR PRESIDENT!”
Those are the types who think that investigating Palin and saying thing like, “Hey, she actually spent millions of dollars and wasn’t particularly conservative” is a smear.
Woah, gobsmack!
The FauxNews question of the day asks “Who won the first presidential debate in Oxford?” Obama is winning 53% to 47%.
It’s sad when the Freepers can’t even freep a FoxNews poll.
Any criticism of a Republican is a smear. Don’t you understand the New Politics?
But it’s Ok to question any Democrat’s patriotism because they all hate America. Duh.
g:
I mean – that’s what happens when you crash your jet, usually.
Um, your metaphor crashes on the rocks of the fact that McCain has actually been responsible for not only the loss of five American aircraft (well, one he was shot down in) …
But he was also in a cockpit, on the deck of the Forrestal, when the ship done blowed up.
John McCain is capable at many tasks, I suppose. But judging purely from experience? He’s most capable at destroying American airplanes. Next to that, he’s really good at wrecking American aircraft carriers.
Oh, and American S&L’s.
I heard that he also has an exceptionally fine singing voice.
Doesn’t “military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements” account for something like 85% of the federal budget? Even without including the humongous-but-unverifiable off-the-books SEKRIT HOMELAND SECURITY stuff?
So, in Old John McLame’s world, we’re on the brink of bankruptcy, and we’re not going to sell the vacation home, downsize the yacht, or give up the third SUV — but from now on, the dog gets the supermarket brand kibble instead of the expensive organic flash-frozen stuff. Except the dog was *already* eating the generic kibble, because McLame’s Tribe have always cared more about those little luxuries (like education, science, and infrastructure) as a way of showing off in front of the neighbors than they ever did for the “luxuries” themselves…
PS,
I think Somerby’s entire oeuvre suggests that people take a lot of things for granted because it gets repeated over and over. His point was not that the TV thing wasn’t real, his point was that we don’t know.
aaaaaaaargh, NRO contributor Lisa Schiffren is on Real Time.
first statement out of the gate:
LS Republicans rely on rational arguments, not emotional fuzziness.”
BM This is the party that nominated Sara Palin
LS How can you deny that she evokes this warm and…
BM But you just said rational, you said rational not fuzzy, you just said that…
Can I take an hour of this?
Lisa Schiffren: I saw a great little Youtube skit where some woman came out imitating Sara Palin and said, “I didn’t get to be the Governer of Alaska by eating mooseburgers and popping out babies.”
This woman is so fucking dumb, a rock would get better grades in school than her.
Has little Sarah now become a verb, or noun? Cool! Did you know that J. Sidney III was never voted Miss Congeniality? I didn’t. Sarah was you know. Its true.
The palinification of our politics
Biden will palin her into a pulp in next Thursday’s debate.
The vice presidency is not worth a warm palin of piss.
She will turn a whiter shade of palin.
McCain’s incompetence palins in comparison to Sarah Mooselini’s.
She is now a palin imitation of her former self.
Palin has become a verb much as fail has become a noun.
“McCain was so full of fail, he almost Palined it.”
I like.
Picture me twisting my moustache and rubbing my hands together feindishly like an old silent picture villian.
Because thats what I do when I think of the Biden/Palin debate. Oooh, its going to be shameful fun, a real rhino vs baby beatdown.
After seeing Palin do so terrible with Couric, I will be disapointed if Biden can’t reduce her to sobbing and/or pulling a Novak and storming off the set.
Possibly American politics could do with more of the hard bigotry of high expectations.
OWNERSHIP.
Apparently, McCain didn’t want his being compared to Herbert Hoover to remain implicit — he wanted to make his similarity explicit, right up to the same contractionary, business-advised tight-fistedness for the public.
Go Hoover / Crazy Ghost-seeing Lady ’08!
…watched some of the debate (had to leave the room often, to go scream obscenity-laced comments on Animatronic John’s insane, condescending bullshit, get another drink, pet a cat or two), then watched Real Time; Senator Obama was calm, measured, patient, his performance should be reassuring to all the hysterics and the squishies out there.
Old Uncle Ralph, on Bill Maher’s panel, was, as usual, right about everything- no matter who wins this November, we lose (i sooo wish he could be president of this lost country, but will line up and vote for the so-very-much-lesser of two evils). But i do have one question to put to the panel here assembled- when did kindly old Uncle Ralph turn into the Reverend Jim? And, has anyone ever seen Christopher Lloyd and Ralph Nader in the same room? …and a fanatical devotion to the pope…
Let me be the first one to predict that in the next debate, McCain will look fixedly at Obama, and keep grinning that rictus grin of his.
“Spending freeze”????
WTF?
How many bridges have to collapse before Mr. “Austerity for Thee While my Lobbyist Buddies Dole Out No-Bid Contracts and Gut Regulatory Oversight” begins to get it?
(Rhetorical question.)
A moment or two before McCain said the bit about cutting/freezing all BUT defense and vet spending,didn’t he say that defense spending needed to be cut? My husband and I both heard that and pretty much said the same thing to each other about that point,so it wasn’t just me.
McCain standing there laughing loud enough to be heard came off as smarmy,nasty and really condescending. Right afterwards Guiliani(on NBC) was a grinning,giggling,sack of shit,I couldn’t watch after the first couple of words. They were acting like high school bullies,and that’s how they looked on teevee.
I’m sure all the little wingnuttians thought Grampy won. Good,let ’em think that. Obama still beats him on being a grown up with some common sense. The country is in trouble,this isn’t some rival high school football team bullshit,it’s a country on the brink of epic fail. The GOP at this point looks like a dramatic soap opera-full of lying,sneaky assholes,not a group of people fit to run anything. Except maybe a corporation. Into the ground.
Also: Palin Comparison.
D. Aristophanes,
You have brass balls. Last night you went out on a limb and said that Barry won the debate. I told you to shut up.
This morning, we’re sober, and the pundits are talking about how Barry won the debate.
Fuck me.
This was supposed to be McCain’s shining moment. Foreign relations is his bag, man!
Was anyone besides us listening to what he actually said? He said crazy things!
After the debate:
http://heylookhear.com/Image/mcdroppings
Was anyone besides us listening to what he actually said? He said crazy things!
He’s been doing that for a long time, WereBear. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, now.
Yes, thunder, I’m sure you’re right… but freezing spending on everything but the military?
Was he saying no more social security, medicare, what?
This is seriously whacked out and yet I’ve heard no one on the morning shows discuss it at all.
I hope McCain goes farther and tells Americans they need to ‘tighten their belts’.
It would make a lot of South Americans and Africans laugh a lot as they remembered their U.S.-led economic “advisers” from the ‘lost decade’ of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.
One thing you’re absolutely ignoring is that government spending requires government taking.
You pre-suppose that *I* have an obligation to ensure that *you* have affordable health care.
You pre-suppose that my body and my mind are enslaved to those people who are not able to provide for themselves.
You pre-suppose that my property is not, in fact, mine. That it is yours to use as you see fit. Sure, you’ll let me keep some of it, but only until you choose to take more.
You pre-suppose that all of those things that you listed do not amount to socialism.
You are wrong.
The one thing Obama said last night that I thought was most full of win, he unfortunately did not hammer hard enough. I hope he will come back to it in the other debates and run ads on it, too.
That was after McCain had talked about his magical plan to give us all a health care tax credit, while, as usual, leaving out the part about how he plans to tax everyone on the health benefits they get from their employer. Obama hit that point. He needed to hit it harder by saying, “John, you’ve been running ads and continuing to misrepresent my tax policy by claiming I’ll raise everyone’s taxes, but here we have a clear example of your plans to raise everyone’s taxes – on healthcare of all things, which is already so expensive it’s out of reach for 15% of the people in the country – and every time you talk about healthcare, you fail to mention that you plan on taxing everyone who is fortunate enough to actually get coverage from their employers. And unlike your false claims about my tax plan, YOUR plan to tax health benefits is written down in black and white in your agenda for the country you’ve posted on your website. So if you’re going to go around telling people about how you’ll “talk straight” to them, don’t you think you should start by being honest about your plans to tax their healthcare?”
That’s the kind of thing that could have really unleashed the flailing fail and/or a full-scale McCain meltdown. I’m glad Obama brought it up, but he should have really hammered it, because it’s such a glaring example of not only McCain dishonesty, but also of how out-of-touch gramps is. More than anything else, it completely cuts the legs out from under McCain’s portrayal of himself as a tax-cut avenger, which is the #1 most important thing to do to peel off some of his support.
As for the punidtry, I think Gergen hit the nail on the head: “McCain needed to win this one; tying in this situtation was not a win for him.” He didn’t come off terrible on the foreign policy part of the debate – but he didn’t come off better than Obama, either. And he needed to.
Dude, when you live in a shack in the woods, gather your own food, and make your own clothes, you can talk like that.
The rest of us prefer an actual civilization.
F*** you, Mike K. If you don’t want to pay for a decent society, then don’t f***ing live in one. If you want to bitch and moan about your stupid f***ing tax dollar all the time, then please go to some third world hellhole so that you can watch the beauty of society crumbling all around you.
I think we’ve put up quite enough with you pathetic bitchers and moaners who never stop with the cowardly bullsh*t about any time your money gets taxed.
You know what? You get the g** d*** society and economy you pay for. If you want to live in a sh*t-hole, broke-a** country, go ahead, no one’s stopping you. But stop thinking you’re leading some liberationist retard brigade who all think it’s worth it to turn this nation into a flaming turd ’cause you think anything else is ‘socialism’.
Thank f***ing GOD that a hell of a lot of the super-rich in FDR’s day were grown-ups, and had the g** d*** balls to push FDR to tax THEM so that we could have a decent society and drag the stupid f***ing backward a** American South out of its third world sh*t-hole status with starving (literally) mill workers and sharecropper peonage and give it massive, massive Socialism which at that time the white cracker politicians just ATE UP. Roads, factories, education, health programs, electricity, military bases, all that SOCIALIST sh*t that the f***ing grownups who got tired of pathetic coward a**holes changed for the better.
All of you f***ing freaks with your stupid a** tax obsessions need to go drown yourselves on one of the Wall Street banker yachts you nimrods have been financing for the last 40 years. F*** the whole lot of you.
McCain showed up and was breathing. Huge huge victory right there. Meanwhile, Obama FAILED to solve every problem facing America. Not sure how he can recover from that gaffe!
So far, my favorite interpretation of McCain’s refusal to look at Obama: the primatologist’s analysis. We definitely need more evolutionary anthropology injected into this race.
It would make a lot of South Americans and Africans laugh a lot as they remembered their U.S.-led economic “advisers” from the ‘lost decade’ of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.
The irony is we’re now entering our lost decade. A little late compared to everyone south of the Rio Grande, but better late than never. I’m anxious to see which international institute of finance will impose its package of neoliberal shock therapy on the United States.
You pre-suppose that…
Some of us also presuppose a relationship between state and society.
El Cid,
You pre-suppose that people cannot care for themselves, and require the community to care for them. That is a fundamental flaw of thinking.
I feel bad for you. Because your perceptions always start with yourself. You feel that you cannot care for yourself, so society must help you.
I hope that you can overcome that feeling and one day realize that you do have the ability to work and provide for youself, without the crutches of a socialist society.
BTW – your response did not attempt to refute my claim that the things you listed amount to socialism. That indicates that you think socialism is ok. That’s fine. You’re entitled to that opinion.
But history has proven socialism to be destructive to all societies. The reason the US has prospered for so long under our current economic system is that it is only quasi-socialist. Large parts of the economy are still completely controlled by the free market.
If the entire economy was free-market, it would be stronger, things like the Community Reinvestment Act would not have caused things like the current “economic crisis”. The free market would have allowed for lenders to seek the sub-prime mortgage market, yes. But it also would have naturally corrected those mistakes sooner, allowing only those that entered into those bad contracts to be hurt by their mistakes.
I hope that one day you and stop living in a world of only idealist rhetoric and start thinking about the fundamental ideas and take them to their logical end. These are noble things you are asking for, I do not judge your character by your desire of these things. But they cannot be acheived, without the erosion of freedom. History has taught us that. We need to pay attention to all those societies that have attempted to serve all, and what happened to them.
Mike K, some of us remember what happens whenever the ‘small government’ types take over the government.
Kleptocracy
Wars
Ilegal spying
Giant Deficits
Enough of that shit, already.
McCain smoked
Obamawaaay too much embalming fluid-infused pot tonight.Bring back tax farming! It’s the free-market way!
Mike K. don’t worry about it! All of your tax dollars are being given to Halliburton to burned up in Iraq. Plenty of Killing and destruction you can be proud of.
Its my money that is paying for K-12 education and bridges.
Happy?
I loved that, thanks!
The “not looking him in the eye” thing is taking off. It bothered me, too, but there were so many issues I didn’t really think about it at the time.
But apparently it is resonating with people who might have had their first real look at the candidates last night.
Wait — is the new fake parody troll Mike K. arguing that the economic crisis happened because Jimmy Carter let black people steal $700 billion dollars worth of housing while we weren’t looking?
Now, that’s f***ing impressive.
But seriously, all you fake ‘libertarian’ types, get your useless, crazy a**es out of the country and go somewhere like Somalia or certain ingovernable zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo or Waziristan so that you can bore someone else with your fantasies of the “free market”.
Mike K. said,
You pre-suppose that *I* have an obligation to ensure that *you* have affordable health care.
Yes. You do. It’s called being a human who cares for others the same as one’s self.
You pre-suppose that my body and my mind are enslaved to those people who are not able to provide for themselves.
Without others, you are not able to provide for yourself.
You pre-suppose that my property is not, in fact, mine.
It’s not. All things must pass.
You pre-suppose that all of those things that you listed do not amount to socialism.
Call it what you will. It’s the only way the human species will ever survive.
If the entire economy was free-market, it would be stronger, things like the Community Reinvestment Act would not have caused things like the current “economic crisis”.
Kool-aid drinking.
The CRA has nothing to do with the real estate bubble.
Absolutely nothing.
El Cid, that’s actually the line the wingnuts are being fed by the philosophers of Clear Channel.
Remember that guy texican from the MMM board? It’s the same thing.
On their planet, hordes of liberals forced poor innocent bankers to make loans to poor people.
Mike K. presupposes his pre-1863 political ideology is pertinent to the United States of 2008. Quaint.
Who let in the kid that just read Atlas Shrugged?
We should all be proud. In four or five years, if he’s both lucky and smart, he will have completed his Ivy League undergraduate degree courtesy of wingnut welfare and/or his wealthy parents and we will see him blogging for the Atlantic.
If we’re lucky, we’ll get him to keep posting so we can see his existential breakdown as he learns (the hard way) that he does not personally create all the value he enjoys.
hordes of liberals forced poor innocent bankers to make loans
I’d like some of that action, but only if I subsequently get bailed out of having to pay any of it back.
The lizard brain in action
It didn’t fail in a geographic location. It failed in the secondary market. That’s how the industry works. It’s your liberal philosophy that failed, you moron.
You passed laws requiring loan companies make loans to people that couldn’t pay the money back. Then they, SURPRISE!, defaulted on the mortgages. It’s that simple. What did you think was going to happen?
~
Dear Mike K –
Please elaborate for the rest of us how a “free-market” for-profit health system can provide us with the care we need at an affordable price, when the objective of a for-profit system (making as much money as possible) is diametrically opposed to the objective of a functional health care system (provide people with appropriate care for their health problems). Please explain to all of us “socialists” how a for-profit system can be made affordable, or even be made to work, when denying people the care they have paid you – handsomely – to provide for them when needed improves your bottom line.
A little early in the morning to be fisking faux-“libertarians,” but WTF.
Get back to us when your health insurance, from whatever source it comes, disappears — and it will — and you have an injury or illness and need help. You’ll see things differently.
So you’re going to forego Medicare when you’re old and experiencing health problems, are you, Mike? Got $1 million or so socked away to pay for that, do you?
Yes, yes he and everyone are entitled to their opinions. Thanks ever so. Get over your dreaded fear of the concept of “socialism.” Without it you’d be even more uneducated and unenabled than you are. It’s also “socialism” that will now save this country from the damage done by free-market unregulated capitalist corporate greedbags.
Like all generalizations, this one is false.
Wrong. The reason the US has not gone down in flames already under the weight of its own “I got mine, fuck you” arrogance is because of those “quasi-socialist” structures that have long been in place.
You R a idiot.
Your rhetoric is a little pompous and condescending for a college student. You might want to work on that.
Mike K: I wish to vehemently disagree with Jennifer. Please do not attempt to waste our time with your attempts at fantasizing free market bullsh*t. The Reaganite loonies have had their 30 years. It’s over. Good f***ing riddance.
El Cid,
You pre-suppose that people cannot care for themselves, and require the community to care for them. That is a fundamental flaw of thinking.
Yeah, don’t be silly, El Cid. You can buy that MRI machine when you need it! And administer your own chemo, should, God forbid, you need that type of care. Or perform open-heart surgery on yourself.
You pre-suppose that people cannot care for themselves, and require the community to care for them.
Mike’s 90 years old and dementia has set in. Where’s his attendant?
“I feel bad for you. Because your perceptions always start with yourself.”
This comment coming from a randroid is pretty prescious.
Open-heart surgery you can kinda do, with mirrors and some practice.
But when Glenn Beck needs his next assectomy, he will require some help.
Jennifer: You’re right. Besides, it’s hard work dealing with actual reality and history. I’m going to throw away all my real books in exchange for children’s books about how capitalism works.
Fixed
Mike K reminds us that Conservatism is the search for a moral justification of selfishness. Also, conservative (n): A person who is often frightened by clothes.
Which candidate was wearing a flag pin? That’s all that matters.
Mike K,
A couple of weeks ago when a wind storm knocked out almost everybody’s power in Columbus, my company agreed to rent a freezer so we all wouldn’t lose our food. That’s socialism. If instead we had all chipped in to rent the freezer, that would have been communism. What’s not to like?
The Mike Ks of the world always think they’ll be the Top Dog, the Unstoppable Warlord, the Last Action Hero, in the World that Is to Come.
Somehow, they always end up dead in a ditch with a few score more bodies piled on top of them.
The irony of Mike K making this statement while using the Internet and an electrical grid is, of course, central to my point.
Best part of the debate (actual quote):
John McCain: “It was festooned with Christmas tree ornaments.
Had John Kerry used a word like “festooned” back in 2004, he never would have heard the end of it. I think we should return the favor for McCain. Can we think of other ways that McCain might use the word “festooned”?
“America is festooning out McCain’s ornamentations…”
What is the greatest lie ever created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery … the Holocaust … dictatorship … NO! It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built. Altruism.
Whenever anyone wants others to do their work, they call upon their altruism. “Never mind your own needs,” they say, “think of the needs of …” of … whoever. Of the state. Of the poor. Of the army. Of the king. Of God. The list goes on and on.
How many catastrophes were launched with the words “think of yourself”? It’s the “king and country” crowd who light the torch of destruction. It is this great inversion, this ancient lie, which has chained humanity to an endless cycle of guilt and failure.
My journey to Rapture was my second exodus. In 1919 I fled a country that had traded in despotism for insanity. The Marxist Revolution simply traded one lie for another. Instead of one man, the Czar, owning the work of all the people, ALL the people owned the work of all of the people. And so, I came to America, where a man could own his own work … where a man could benefit from the brilliance of his own mind, the strength of his own muscles, the MIGHT of his own will.
I had THOUGHT I had left the parasites of Moscow behind me. I had THOUGHT I had left the marxist altruists to their collective farms and their five-year plans. But, as the German fools threw themselves on Hitler’s sword for the good of the reich, the Americans drank deeper and deeper of the bolshevik poison, spoon-fed to them by Roosevelt and his New Dealers.
And so, I asked myself, in what country was there a place for men like me? Men who refused to say yes to the parasites and the doubters. Men who believed that work was sacred and property rights inviolate. And then one day the happy answer came to me, my friends: there was NO country for people like me. And THAT was the moment I decided … to build one.
McCain’s foreign policy is festooned with opportunities for Armageddon.
At least Mike K. corrects his spelling and composes actual sentences and paragraphs.
For that alone, Sadly No! should give him a literary award.
Mike K for Republican VEEP!
If he got a passport before last year, he’s got it nailed!
I see we have a new troll. He went away though, looks like.
Too bad, I wanted to ask him a question:
Large parts of the economy are still completely controlled by the free market.
Mike K – name one part of the economy that is completely controlled by the free market without any government regulation. Name one.
When McCain’s elected, I can start clear-cutting Yosemite. w00t!!1!
JFSebastian: Perhaps you are unaware that for five and a half years John McGrampy wasn’t able to festoon anything and had no Christmas tree ornaments, buster.
His North Vietnamese captors repeatedly festooned John Sidney McCain III’s head and body with sharp kicks and well-aimed punches. Thanks goodness he wasn’t tortured.**
**No intent to cause major organ failure or death
So as not to overload the packed memory cells further, I condense political stuff to a sentence or two and hope the memory system won’t explode when it’s sent in.
Last night’s debate: McCain cares about war, corporations, and himself; Obama cares about struggling Americans, militarily fighting the real enemy in Afghanistan, and reclaiming America’s prestige in the world and her ideal of hope for the world. (Warning: I’m an old fogey still believing in ideals.)
Let me be the first one to predict that in the next debate, McCain will look fixedly at Obama, and keep grinning that rictus grin of his.
Only until his monkey brain explodes, g.
Which, by my reckoning, will be about 4 and a half minutes, max.
DoD = $500 billion, 19.5% of federal spending (FY 2009 proposed)
VA = $95 bn, 3.7%
(appropriations for Iraq/Afghanistan operations are an additional $165bn, but that’s “off budget”)
Entitlements?
Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP = $650bn, 25.5%
That brings us up to nearly 49%, but leave out the other biggie that we absolutely cannot cut:
Treasury = $550bn, 21.7%
That’s almost entirely interest on the national debt and, of course, BEFORE spending another $700bn on any bailout.
So, that’s 70% roughly.
Everything else (State, Energy USDA, Transportation, Labor, Commerce, Education, Justice, Interior, the Federal Judiciary, DHS, EPA, NASA, CDC, NSF, NIH, SBA, Civil Defense, FDA, etc.) fits into the other 30%.
So. All this “wasteful spending” that’s gonna balance the budget if we cut it is coming from where?
“A couple of weeks ago when a wind storm knocked out almost everybody’s power in Columbus, my company agreed to rent a freezer so we all wouldn’t lose our food. That’s socialism. If instead we had all chipped in to rent the freezer, that would have been communism. What’s not to like?”
Here’s where you people are seriously misunderstanding the world.
What you described IS the free market. People, deciding ON THEIR OWN, to use their own property AS THEY SEE FIT. Your company decided to use its own property to help others. It could have also decided not to do that, as other companies did in the scenario you described.
On the other hand, if the government had come in and said, “we’re taking this freezer because others need it”, THAT is socialism. And it’s the absense of freedom. It’s the absense of the right to property.
You people all assume that the free market is full of evil people who will not help others. You’re wrong. Humans are by far, kind and helpful to one another.
The point you’re missing is whether people are choosing to help others or being forced to help others. Force equals the absence of freedom.
BTW – I have read some of Rand’s works, but not Atlas Shrugged or any of her non-fiction. And college ended many many years ago for me.
I will politely bail out of this conversation now. I see that this community does not welcome opposing points of view. You’d all rather have people come here to reinforce what you already believe. There’s no room for growth or learning here.
oops, those goal posts moved again…
I will politely bail out of this conversation now
Don’t let the door hit you on the ass.
absense
A decent coinage.
Bye Mike!
Don’t let the door hit you on the ass.
Frankly, these days I want to see the door hit them in the ass and send them flying like a silent-era physical comedian. And if they faceplant into a dog turd, it’ll be like early Christmas.
Mike obviously builds his own roads, learned to read and write in a private school with no public investment whatsoever, has a septic tank and a well that was put in completely by labour paid for by barter (currency is a regulated collective endeavour of the government, oh noes!), doesn’t eat food grown by farmers supported by agricultural subsidies or enabled by New Deal programmes like rural electrification, and all that. Tsk.
I’d really like to know how Randroids think they can just, you know, opt out of modern industrial (state-run) civilisation, while still getting all the benefits from it. That’s sort of like wanting a divorce and insisting that you should still get sexual favours.
No, Mike K., don’t politely excuse yourself. Seriously. F*** off. Stay the f*** away. When you are decent enough to want a society that would last more than 5 minutes, maybe somebody might want to talk to you. When you’re blowing a bunch of sh*t around about free market libertarian mythology, it just means you should f*** off to some third world hell-hole and die. Really.
Ha! McCain won because he stood behind a podium for 90 minutes without soiling himself or passing out. Unlike most 72 year old men. Roger Simon says so!
I see that this community does not welcome opposing points of view. You’d all rather have people come here to reinforce what you already believe. There’s no room for growth or learning here.
You’re perfectly free to grow and learn. For starters you can learn that showing up at a liberal site expecting everyone to swollow everything you say and reinforce your opinions is really fucking stupid.
Come back to us when you are building and paying for your own roads, your schooling, your waste water plant, your landfill, your garbage trucks, your streetlights, and your safety.
The Truth said,
September 27, 2008 at 18:54
Ha! McCain won because he stood behind a podium for 90 minutes without soiling himself or passing out. Unlike most 72 year old men. Roger Simon says so!
Dean Broder got all sweaty, too.
ifthethunderdontgetya wrote:
David S. Broder gummed:
Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.
=========================================
Most viewers caught Saint McCain’s face-making and pegged it for what it was: juvenile high school behavior.
Congrats, Dean Broder. You’re the only person who could get everything wrong since Richard Nixon’s impeachment, and still get paid to write this pablum for the Washington Post.
~
9/27/2008 1:10:10 PM
McCain as the alpha male
Sure, Broder. And Palin is gonna shoot him from on high and chop off his left foreleg. Bounty hunters, up!
All you socialist libertards keep forgetting one thing:
A is A, biznatches!!
/endzone celebration
Obama embarrassed himself, liberals.
is that why everyone scored him as the winner?
Yeah – my first impression was that it was a wash. Then I began to think about some of the really messed-up shit Johnny The Jet-Killer had said … & the fact that he spent a LOT of time talking about Iraq (a very dumb move since it’s in the “Top Five GOP Screw-ups Hit Parade”) … & that I could tell they’d coached the shit out of him to try & make him seem less creepazoid, & failed with the lid off … & instinctively KNEW I’d be reading the next day about at least one or two of his “zingers” being revealed to’ve come from a bull’s ass … & then it just didn’t seem quite so even anymore.
—————-
Mmmmmm, fresh troll.
Looks chewy.
Ah, who am I kidding? You’ve got dick-all to say.
YOU pre-suppose that you have any philosophical validity or intellectual content when you spew the same Bush-League “Free Market Uber Alles” agitprop that has driven the US to the verge of total fiscal ruin, while leaving thousands of its men & women dead or maimed for life in an illegal & futile (but oh so highly profitable) Iraq war. The proof of the free-market model’s total failure is as close as your national newspapers’ front-page … or your neighbour’s “House For Sale” sign.
Take a good long hard look at the fucking US economy, twit, because what you’re seeing is the ugly bastard child of years of deregulation … the spawn of an inherently malevolent free-market ideology made flesh. In debt up to the tits with no end in sight, infrastructure ever more rapidly decaying with no funds to fix it, & kids looking forward to growing up with LOWER standards of living then their parents, for the first time in modern US history. That’s your bloody free-market in action – a loaded machinegun. Suck on it.
If the entire economy was free-market, you would probably be dead very soon. Pandemics are a bitch, & most of the medical developments that’ve helped stop them from happening regularly in your lifetime were public initiatives, NOT private ones.
Your love for drama-whoring blanket statements that lack any basis in reality is a big flashing neon sign displaying to one & all your galloping fucktarditude, & it makes one seriously wonder if you can even feed or wipe yourself. Your ability to construct a nifty paragraph avails you naught if its content amounts to the semiotic equivalent of septic pus strained through the pancreas of a jackal.
YOU presume that government HAS to tax in order to spend, when any ADULT mind knows that governments can also INVEST in a wisely regulated & healthy market & use the dividend to fund & promote real valuable social programs – if it’s done right, the government can then PAY citizens some of that dividend to boot, in cold hard cash.
The view from inside your own silly ass must be warm & comforting. I do not now nor will I ever share it.
Your infantile fanaticism is eclipsed only by your historical autism.
Somebody may have covered this, as there are 800 million comments already, but regarding A gotcha that Obama could have immediately gone for:
‘John, you want to cut spending for everything but the military, veteran’s benefits and entitlements? That’s interesting. Because five minutes ago you said you supported spending for the $700 billion financial bail-out we just spent the first half-hour of this debate talking about!’
didn’t MacDaddy vote against veterans’ benefits earlier this year? Webb’s bill? And I know that wasn’t the first time he’s done so.
McCain opposed the Veteran’s benefits bill but just didn’t vote because he’s a political coward.
*sigh* I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Yet another right-wing dumbass who wouldn’t know a Socialist if one rammed a red flag up his ass while bellowing “Arise, ye prisoners of starvation” at the top of their lungs.
I’m gonna run out of red flags at this rate. And my throat’s getting sore…
David S. Broder gummed:
Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.
In Broderworld, McCain’s unwillingness to make eye-contact is a sign of higher status. I canonly suppose that Broder is descended not from primates, but from a race of highly-evolved chameleons.
“canonly” being an adverb meaning “sticking strictly to the canon”
The eye-contact canon or the intra-species hierarchy canon?
What the ancient, dilapidated Broder saw as “signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male” was really just Obama’s display of good manners by showing respect for his elders. Really, really, really elder elder.
That Davesey Broder! Such an alpha male.
The Roman alphabet may be too recent to apply to McCain. How about ‘Aleph male”?
Make that ‘Greek alphabet”. Need more coffee.
Don’t let the occasional Randroid that wanders on here bother any of us. There are two big reasons.
1) everybody has already pointed out how socialized economic structures such as roads, bridges, electrical grids, etc make a mockery of the Selfish Simpletons’ “arguments”. Just ask them to pay $5 every single time they use a road – per mile.
2) a deeper point, and one that they will NEVER get, is the basic macro economic principle that the main measure of the vitality of any economic system is money velocity. Having “enforced” (for lack of a better word) economic activity by a Big Mover like the government via public works, and Bad Things like the military-industrial complex, keeps money velocity at some finite level.
One of the primary problems that kept the Great Depression going as long as it did was lack of money velocity. People sat on whatever tiny bit of money they did have because things seemed so bad that you had better save for even worse times ahead. People would use barter even if they had the cash to do something.
Wastefulness is central to a functioning capitalist system. This is one of the things that dooms capitalism over the long haul. The environment just cannot handle it anymore.
Another thing that dooms capitalism is less and less access to cheap raw materials to add value to. In 1880 you would just swoop into the Congo, for instance, and steal their bauxite, casually shooting the natives if they objected. Now it is harder and harder to find cheap (good) or free (best) sources of raw materials. You can’t keep invading countries and stealing their raw materials (sound familiar?) The natives fight back, and even with all the military technology we have managed to engineer to kill people with, you don’t win so easily or at all.
Sorry to be all serious and yadda yadda yadda, but the sancimonious and superior tone that the Randroids always seem to present seems to unnerve some of the steeliest posters here. Don’t worry. They have nothing. No understanding at all of the real world or of real economic principles.
A good way to estimate if you should be worried about some fascist idiot’s “argument” that wanders on here is to give it the Child Test:
Would a child understand their argument?
Since any 3 year old could discuss Randian concepts as well as Greenspan while he was slobbering over her at one of her “salons”, you can rest easy. The Randroids are as unthreatening to reality as Palin’s Brain To Nowhere.
Addendum to above long-winded non-snarky for-which-I-apologize-in-advance:
Upon re-reading my post, I see it is a bit disjointed in the middle. I composed the first half, went off to do something that needed to be done (the unnameable Time Critical Task), and finished it. Feel free to offer connectives to the two muddling halves.
And to elaborate upon the Child Test: Children would understand Randian concepts as easily as Greenspan or any other blithering idiot since the idea of “That ball is MINE! Keep your paws off it!” is central to any child’s persona.
The Randroids never outgrow that stage. If Freud had been more aware of economic principles, he might’ve added Selfish to the Anal and Oral stages. (although he did identify selfishness as part of the Anal Stage)
That is some successful trolling.
There’s no room for growth
We’ve got lots of room right here on this cuddly warm petri dish, pal. C’mon in!
Just don’t get too close to that nafcillin-soaked little disk over there. That neighborhood tastes funny.
I see that this community does not welcome opposing points of view.
Is S,N! supposed to be a debating chamber? I had understood it to be more like a sports bar. If someone were to wander off the street into a sports bar and shout out “Feck the All Blacks! Go the Boks!”, then the absence of “room for growth or learning here” is going to be the least of their worries.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.
Funny how Glenn Beck NEVER talks anymore about all those dogs he tortured and killed (pit bulls).
You mean this isnt’ the Univerity of Sadly, No? Then why has Gavin M. been depositing all those tuition checks this year?
And I’m so close to a double major in political snark and scatology.
WP ate my joke so I’ll try it again without the link:
It’s distance learning, Susan, so you’ll be able to claim a degree in e-scatology.
Oh goody.
Another S,N! thread reduced to arguing with parody trolls.
It’s a little like watching old “Odd Couple” reruns.
You know all the lines, you even know where the commercial breaks come in.
Except it’s not funny…
mikey
tigrismus-
I think Obama stayed away from the Vet stuff, because he didn’t want to hand Grampa grandstand a prime opportunity to be offended. O made the right call. He needs to wait for it to come up in a more organic way. This was a smart pass by O.
It’s distance learning, Susan, so you’ll be able to claim a degree in e-scatology.
For some reason this made the song Unforgettable start looping in my head, except with the word “unforgettable” replaced with “scatological” . . . I’ve had 2 hours of sleep in 40 hours. Twelve hours of that time spent at University of Iowa hospitals with partner’s da. Saw and heard horrible things. No choice but to eat at IHOP at 5:00 AM. Hours driving on I-80. Scatological, the new hit song with a bullet on the charts of Candy’s frazzled brain, is the last straw. Bed now . . .
Unforgettable, that’s what you are
Scatological though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before has someone been more
Scatological in every way
And forever more, and forever more
That’s how you’ll stay, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why, darling, it’s topological
That someone so scatological
Thinks that I am scatological too
Funny, I wasn’t getting a whiff of “parody troll” from the Mike K. unit, so much as a pong of “articulate-yet-myopic glibertarian crypto-fascist know-it-all” but YMMV.
I think parody trolls generally merit about as much tolerance as the real deal do … like I’ve said before, the better one mimics cerebral diarrhea the more likely one is in fact infected with it. Its presence alone is an insult, & it doesn’t look false to the more ignorant REAL trolls – it just looks to them like they have more support out there. If you’re enough of a sick fuck to think that giving moral aid to wingnuts in 2008 is just “part of teh funnay” you deserve the beatdown just as much as the bonafide wingnuts do. Besides which, folks here may have noticed that I have a certain sentimental soft-spot for well-deserved invective toward wingnuts … & this place lets me indulge that “guilty” pleasure.
That comment is out of order, sir! Please wait for the troll’s rebuttal before submitting your query!
Oh wait – it got all butthurt & ran away when it ran out of sloganeering mindsludge & couldn’t answer anyone’s responses without looking (even more) hydrocephalic. Pity.
The challenge is respectfully withdrawn … carry on!
Win. I want to make a joke about “cramming for the finals” or “acing the oral exam” here, but my punning-mojo is broken.
@SmutClyde
Are you then a South African living in New Zealand…? (All Blacks & Boks)
I suggest doing the reverse would also inhibit ones enjoyment of all the finer things in live, like living…
(All Blacks & Boks)
I am merely a contrarian.
Visitors occasionally complain that S,N! is a liberal echo chamber. This is completely untrue. It is in fact a reverb module. Whereas the Poorman Institute is a flange box, and TBogg is a wah-wah pedal, or possibly the other way around.
Hey, Troof, how are the polls looking these days? Epic fail!