Any other ideas about wingers who might be ready to, if not switch sides, at least start talking reasonably with the rest of the country?

But then they wouldn’t be wingers, would they? Or have you succumbed to the relentness niceness that is The Big O (as explained to Maddow)? Coz if so … Where’s Teh Sadly?

They’re not gonna come to their senses. They’ve been building the dolchstosslegende with ACORN about the election, and an amazing one where the liberals are the reason the past eight years have been so bad.

When you don’t need more than a pinch of reality, it’s easy to ignore facts.

Hard question – but I can tell you who won’t:

Special Ed
Patterico
Sister Toldjah
Anchoress
Anyone at The Corner or Townhall that hasn’t already.

And I amend that to read “among other who won’t” …

Ross Douthat? He went all floopy yesterday.

I have to agree with you re: Allahpundit. I hang out at Hot Air from time to time, and I’ve witnessed plenty of the faithful fling rotten fruit at him in the comments section for doing nothing more than being intellectualy honest and thinking for himself. I’ve seen him called a closet Obama supporter over there already. It may still be a longshot, but even if he doesn’t switch sides, he’s still one of my favorites.

Pamela Geller, I’m afraid, has gone a good way round the bend, with a lengthy, not entirely coherent post…

Wait, this is dated 2008?

Any other ideas about wingers who might be ready to, if not switch sides, at least start talking reasonably with the rest of the country?

Considering Pammycakes a loony is a pretty low bar for talking reasonably. Michael G is right – they’re not going to come to their senses, even though some might balk at the most extreme nuttiness.

Is that eye shadow gone wrong or a couple of shiners she’s sporting?

his wingut lifer of a boss.
I am trying to persuade the Frau Doktorin to use the word ‘wingut’ as an alternative to ‘spare tyre’.

Not really a wingnut, but I heard Bruce Fein (Constitutional lawyer) on public radio yesterday pumping his brand new book about the damage to the US Constitution caused by Chimpy McFlightsuit. His latest positions are well-founded, but the timing smells very very suspicious to me — the last time I remember seeing him surface was as a smarmy talking head on teevee passionately defending the SCOTUS Bush v. Gore decision.

Hmmm, what possible reason could there be to wait until the Pretzeldent is a lame duck to air all these once-traitorous views? I suspect we’ll see many many more fair-weather Republicans in the days to come.

handy: That’s what one’s eye makeup looks like after one has been out all night doing God knows what. If memory serves.

Wingut is much more affirming, SC. You’re fighting terrorism over there with your wingut.

I understand now:
wingut : weingut :: whinery : winery.

My gut is full of win, for values of “win” that include “black-pudding and pickled jalapeno sandwiches”.

Happy Halloween, SC!

Any other ideas about wingers who might be ready to, if not switch sides, at least start talking reasonably with the rest of the country?

In other words, who will begin to use their shit moats to grow beautiful flowers?

Or who will have their conversion moment on the road to DumbAssKiss?

I don’t read enough rightblogs on my own. They usually get pre-filtered for me through such helpful sites as S,N! and BJ. What strikes me is how much their crazy spills out into the real world, such as comments on news sites. Obama has really drawn the crazy out into the open and it is impressive. So the wingnugget bloggers have an audience that keeps them nipple-deep in cheetos. I imagine some of the bloggers will have to get serious because they aren’t all idiots. But the more interesting question to me is what happens to their audience. Will they spend the next 8 years screaming about the tapes that weren’t or will they organize against health care? If the hordes of idiots want tapes, tapes they will get. If they are genuinely in fear of creeping ‘socialism,’ they will go after the health care.

I attended one of Pennsylvania’s Governor Ed Rendell’s “Road To Change” rallies yesterday. When Ed gets on a roll, he’s good. He’s got a very down to Earth way of speaking to people, not at them.

Anyway, I’m going to paraphrase (I mean completely rephrase it to the extent I have to) the penultimate paragraph of his speech.

He spoke on how he run in some really rough races before. As the former Mayor of a city well known for some full contact campaigning he said he’d always managed to maintain a mutual respect with his opponents. He always managed to remember that though they may disagree on many things both sides wanted the best for their city.

But this time, he said was different. With controlled anger he forcefully said mccain has run one of the ugliest, most despicable campaigns in American history. In this race the issues are too serious, too all encompassing. This Rendell said, his voice getting very quiet, almost a whisper, he said, “I want to crush them”. I want to make it utterly clear how bankrupt their policies and personnel are. I want this crushing defeat to be a statement that enough is enough.

Those are my words and the impressions I got from his speech and let me tell you, it was powerful.

My point here is this. I frankly care which, if any of these bloggers change their positions. Great for them if they do. It will feel odd to them, I’m sure, to be on the correct side of an issue for a chance. But to me, they can all rot in hell. I’m tired of their lies, obfuscations, misinformation and blatant disregard for sanity that I think I prefer to stay where they are. I’d rather see them even more marginalized and ignored. I want these people to be a laughing stock because the shit they’ve helped to enable is no laughing matter.

And with that said I’ll recall the brilliant Molly Ivins saying in one of her final speaking dates that no matter what, we have to remember to have fun.

Vote on Tuesday.

FiveThirtyEight now has Obama with a likelihood of victory 97.5%, which will make McCain’s sweep all that more impressive, once they release the Khalidi-Whitey-Fake Birth Certificate-Wright-Ayers-Xenu tape.

I think that’s the numbers with a mistake in them, El Cid (they had Obama ahead in Kentucky because of a data entry error). Sill, I’m hoping it stays >95% when they finish re-running the numbers.

Broken record alert: Anyone who has time to volunteer in the GOTV effort should. Please volunteer, guys!!!

538 update: Oh noes! It looks like Obama’s chances of winning have been downgraded to 97.2%.

When John McCain wins, I will _watch pigs fly past my house_.

How was that, Troofy?

I hope I live long enough to see Pamela turn into Joan Rivers in the plastic surgery dept. A face to match her brain.

(apologies to JR.)

I am very disappointed that FiveThirtyEight is merely predicting a 52.2% share of the popular vote for Obama. Clearly Obama will only win if he gets above 87% of the popular vote and also Jesus comes back and says he won.

If only I could personally hand an actual anchor to drowning Republicans, rather than encourage so metaphorically.

“Why’d you do it? Why’d you waste Cyrus?”

“No reason. I just like doing things like that.”

There just aren’t enough Warriors references around these days. Kudos to you.

Twitter from NTodd who is campaigning in New England:
“Bethlehem town clerk came in to tell us that the Woodland School held a mock election and O won 19-1.”

anyone else feeling super excited/elated? Republicans are going down.

Well, Shit-Eatin’ Bill “The Bloody” Kristol was saying Obama would be a “centrist” president on The Daily Show. He doesn’t really believe any of that “Obama is a socialist” stuff, he just kept repeating it on TV and in the newspapers because erm mumble mumble.

There are plenty of rats aboard this particular sinking ship. Pretty much everyone on board is a fucking rat.

After all this time taking fire, hunkered on the perimeter, looking only for fire support and effective maneuver, yeah. Peace would feel weird. It’s hard to lift your finger off the trigger when the enemy is defeated. These are the fuckers that were in the wire, hurting your friends just a few short months ago.

People have had to learn how to do this forever. You can’t spend forever in a state of no-quarter hostilities. You need to find a way to accept the end, embrace peace.

Does that mean we’re suddenly going to agree on any of the key issues of the day? Of course not. And it most certainly does NOT mean that in the name of peace we accept a compromise that compromises our basic belief system. It does, however, mean that we can go back to a place where reasonable people can disagree reasonably, and compromise is not only necessary, but healthy.

And sure. Y’all can embrace your victory, and shit on the vanquished – hell, the unrepentant ideologues and mindless drones spewing hate and bigotry deserve it. But I’d hope there is a place in our structure where people who disagree in good faith, who can argue with rationality and accept compromise themselves will be embraced, and the petulant ideological thugs will thereby be even more effectively marginalized.

Politically speaking, compromise does not need to equal capitulation. Let’s hope our leadership understands this, and let’s hope we can climb out of the bunkers and sit in the sunshine for a while, at least…

mikey

You know, re: the growing insanity on the right, I think Encyclopedia Dramatica put it best in their Borderline Personality Disorder article—while trolling these types on the Internets may lead to many lulz, their offline potential for very real danger is great (so don’t troll them IRL unless you want to become an hero). And that’s where teh funny stops for me, frankly, because I worry about that if/when Obama is elected.

Oh noes! It looks like Obama’s chances of winning have been downgraded to 97.2%.

Shit! Still not closing the deal.

The banner ads on the left column at John Cole’s site are hilarious. Mine came up with:

1) Michelle Malkin: “Michelle Malkin is a national treasure”

I had to click that one. Takes you to a list of her videos (after another click). I watched a few minutes and, wow, MM is a national treasure… of smug, self-satisfied, pure psychological projection, a.k.a. classic wingnuttery.

I can’t help but wonder how many sexually unsatisfied wingnut dudes would see through the whining if it was another guy saying the same stuff. It’s not really attractive to whine like they do, especially when they whine about us being the whiners (cf.). Personally, I’d find MM quite attractive were it not for the whiny, glibertarian style smugness, and the belief that describing reality the way you want it to be (cf.) rather than the way it is, can magically make reality what you said it was.

I guess I was amused by the unsourced quotes they used to hype up the seriousness (for #1) and the hotness (for #2, and they picked a rather unattractive photo to go with it, sadly) of MM and Dr. Helen respectively. Because you know it was the pseudonymous Cheetoh-encrusted fingers of some random commenter that wrote both of those quotes. I was also amused by the echo chamberiness of having 3 different randomly rotating banner ads that point to other parts of PJ media (by way of doubleclick.net which means they’re paying a third party money for the privilege of linking back to themselves!). At least John Cole is a non-wingnut virus eating away at his corner of the whole enterprise with Balloon Juice.

Argh. Here’s the last part, not as a link:

2) Dr. Helen – “Wow, hotter than burning magnesium!”

Learned my lesson from the first link. Na ganna click it.

3) Who will be the next president? Click here to play and win prizes …

I guess I was amused by the unsourced quotes they used to hype up the seriousness (for #1) and the hotness (for #2, and they picked a rather unattractive photo to go with it, sadly) of MM and Dr. Helen respectively. Because you know it was the pseudonymous Cheetoh-encrusted fingers of some random commenter that wrote both of those quotes. I was also amused by the echo chamberiness of having 3 different randomly rotating banner ads that point to other parts of PJ media (by way of doubleclick.net which means they’re paying a third party money for the privilege of linking back to themselves!). At least John Cole is a non-wingnut virus eating away at his corner of the whole enterprise with Balloon Juice.

* Although many in the wingnutosphere will go down in the history as the first rats ever to be too fucking stupid to leave the sinking ship.

“Bethlehem town clerk came in to tell us that the Woodland School held a mock election and O won 19-1.”

And since ACORN registered them all, they count in the real election too!

they have no senses to come to.

…many in the wingnutosphere will go down in the history as the first rats ever to be too fucking stupid to leave the sinking ship.

It does make them look more like lemmings, doesn’t it?

yeah it doesn’t count, but you have our back.

http://canadiansforobama.ca/

We are a group of enthusiastic Canadians that travelled down to USA to volunteer for Barack Obama at the Washington State caucus.

Majority Of Canadians Want Obama To Be U.S. President: Poll

http://www.theworldwantsobama.org/

World wants Obama as president: poll

Thousands of lawyers to monitor US election

Thousands of lawyers are fanning out across the United States to be on hand if there is the slightest sign of voting irregularities.

Millions of Americans have already voted, with many states opening the polling booths early to avoid what is expected to be a crush on November 4.

Voting may be voluntary but the interest in this election is expected to outstrip previous years.

In Georgia, black Americans like Patricia Lewis are lining up for hours to cast their vote.

“It’s okay, I stand in long lines to shop. Six hours to vote is nothing,” she said.

Ms Lewis is not alone in her determination.

Beatrice Lyons is volunteering as a staffer, working up to 18 hours a day, and she says she will work even longer if it means letting so many people vote – many of them for the first time.

“Makes me feel real good. They can just come out, stay all night long. I’ll be right here,” she said.

In Virginia, which is now a battleground state, the state director of America’s civil rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), King Salim Khalfani, is anticipating trouble.

The NAACP has already started legal action, claiming the state and its Democratic governor have not organised enough voting machines or staff to operate them.

“We need to ensure that there are no shenanigans in this election,” Mr Khalfani said.

“We saw what happened in 2000 and in 2004, and we’ve said not on our watch in Virginia. We want our people to be able to vote and at the numbers that are listed.”

New voters

Half a million new voters have registered since January and the group wants the state to cut expected waiting times to vote to 45 minutes or less.

“Re-allocate the equipment and the workers or rent, lease or buy more voting machines and assign more poll workers to these places,” Mr Khalfani said.

“Virginia unprecedentedly has almost 300,000 more registered voters than we had in 2004, and I would estimate that a very high majority of them are African-American.”

The NAACP’s Virginia president, Rayfield Vines, also wants people to be allowed to vote with pen and paper if the wait for a machine is going to be too long.

“Because of the spirit of the times, there are a record number of persons who are going to be voting and we don’t want people to become discouraged because they’ve got to wait in line four or five hours in order to vote,” he said.

There is no hint when the court hearing will take place, but the board of elections has already rejected the NAACP’s accusations, saying there are 10,500 voting machines in the state – an 86 per cent increase from 2004.

This is one of the first lawsuits, and it is unlikely to be the last.

Barack Obama’s team has reportedly organised 6,000 lawyers to head to Florida – a sign of what might lie ahead.

Mikey said, “But I’d hope there is a place in our structure where people who disagree in good faith, who can argue with rationality and accept compromise themselves will be embraced, and the petulant ideological thugs will thereby be even more effectively marginalized.”

Sure, if those people exist. Hell, it would be refreshing to meet those conservatives. I used to be one but the conservative I was has nothing, nothing at all, to do with what these rapacious pricks are now. There’s nothing with evolving. I’ve been there. I just don’t think this particular generation of wingnut has any hope of developing along those lines.

And as the rude pundit once said, the only thing these people understand is complete and vicious defeat. It’s not enough to win, you have to kick the shit out of them.

When John McCain wins, I’ll be doing triple axels with my man, Mephistopheles.

Here’s the thing. Most of the Clownhall types who have turned on McCain/Palin have done so not because they are coming to realize the empty ugliness of the far-right worldview but because 1) the campaign has been an embarrassment and 2) McCain personally is unhinged. I don’t see these people as switching sides or coming out in favor of rational discourse. They just don’t like the tactics their team leader brought to the game. On November 5, they’ll still be wingnuts.

The former GOP statesmen who have been endorsing Obama lately, though — they seem perhaps to recognize that enough is enough. Palin actually scares them.

It doesn’t work this way. Conservatism didn’t fail, it was failed by bad conservatives. Frum and his brethren aren’t any more ‘reasonable’ than they were two or three years ago, it’s just that to stay viable in a modern media universe they can’t stray too far outside the bounds. In the past, those bounds have been so far to the right it’s astonishing, so they played happily in their sandbox. But they see as well as anyone there’s a shift coming, so to protect their ability to get jobs they actually have to pull back a bit, can’t run with whatever Pam writes during a mescaline high while wearing a black strapon.

But two years from now, depending on events and how effective the Obama administration is, they may have avenue to push hard, and they’ll be right back to their old selves.

All I’m saying is, there’s no realignment here. It’s just that the ones who actually can think a little bit are trying to be sure they can still get paychecks, as the total amount of wingnut welfare out there looks to be getting a little reduced, at least for the time being.

These guys will be every bit as vicious out of power as in. If not more so.

yesterday a “Christian conservative” republican in Ohio told the daily show she was voting for Obama because she’s a community organizer and was deeply offended by what McCain/Palin said about community organizers. Many moderate republicans are fed up with the neocons. The hard core wingnuts won’t change but they’ve turned off many of the people who voted for them in 2004.

Any other ideas about wingers who might be ready to, if not switch sides, at least start talking reasonably with the rest of the country?

Bill O’Reilly will follow the money and ratings. He’ll switch to CNN and be put on as the same time as Olberman, and he’ll race into the “Red Zone” trying to out-Lefty Keith. Expect him to call for show trials of neo-cons and Maoist-style purges of the State Department and the Pentagon.

As a committed capitalist, I’d have to grudgingly give hin a tip of the hat.

Lesley, I just watched that episode and the community organizer piece was very well done.

But the thing that made that episode worth watching was the Bill Kristol interview. Jon Stewart beat him down with a quickness. Dude’s face was red with embarrassment half the time he was being interviewed: he’s just so nervous because he’s clearly intelligent to know when he’s being disingenuous, and he knows that Jon Stewart’s going to call him on it, so he was at least brave enough to walk into the trap, even if he’s too cowardly to admit to the world how full of shit he has been by repeating the wingnut untruths (like the NY Times bit).

David Brooks might come awake.

…(snort)…hah ha hah hahahahaha!!!! Ah, jeez. Just couldn’t keep a straight face. Nah, Brooksie’s just gone into super-secret camouflage. He’s barely even mentioning conservatives and Republicans now. Instead he’s concentrating exclusively concern-trolling Democrats and their upcoming struggle between crazy liberals and helpless sensible moderates….

In all seriousness, maybe George Will. He sets my teeth on edge, but he’s still the closest thing to a sane conservative pundit in the mainstream media that I can think of.

I dunno. Arianna Huffington is the only prominent pundit I can think of who did a 180 from right to left. Most of the others, like the Kristols and David Horowitz, started out as lefties and leaped right.

Those guys sometimes got into vicious internecine fights. Years ago in the National Review, someone said in reference to a former leftie (it might have been Kristol pere, I don’t remember), “Everyone is glad when the town whore gets religion. She can even sing in the choir. But when she starts telling the pastor what to put in his sermons, things have gone too far.”

I wonder how much of that sentiment is seething beneath the surface today.

show trials of neo-cons
Show trials? In my day we used to call them “pilot episodes”.

A different Jake, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Kristol bullshit his way through yet another interview.

Some brave soul threw a pie in his face once, but what he needs is a superglue pie that won’t wash off.

I like the comments at Atlass Juggs (and they ARE marvelous, the jugs, I mean).

One reports how 76% of the Jews poll for McCain — (West Bank settlers with American passports or some such group, I guess). The second, totally unimpressed, moans

“I am also flabbergasted that Jews support Obama in such large numbers. I find that Jews as a group (and I am Jewish) … blah blah”. Then a feat of logic: “What galls me is that these suicidal Jews like Sarah Silverman will be safe in their mansions with all the other left wing Hollywood Jewish elite”. So they are morons for being suicidal and cowards for playing it safe.

On a similar note, I read that Obama is a socialist who shamelessly caters to Wall Street and the financial elite.

Also, I know it on a good authority that Obama believes in Evolution. If the Bible is deemed errant, than he does not believe in the Covenant giving Holy Land to Jews, or that Jews are the Chosen people, ergo, he hates Jews. How a Jew can vote for an evolutionist who palls around with other evolutionists?

Huh.

I’m curious, reading this.

So we’re certain, beyond all doubt, we’re right about everything, and there’s no valid opposing view?

Wow. I think there’s a word for this….

mikey

Although I enjoy Jon Stewart beating up on the nimrod Kristol again, it wasn’t anywhere near as enjoyable as John Oliver exposing the ugly vicious f*** named Vadum who was saying that community organizing pretty much leads to crack cocaine dealing.

All I’m saying is, there’s no realignment here.

How about the sensible center grew larger and moved to the left. Isn’t that where politics actually exists? Not in the actions of reptiles and insects openly working to shrink government and wreck society.

The realignment that’s most needed is in the public discourse. The establishment media needs to stop blandifying hate speech and normalizing bloodlust and extremism.

Show trials? In my day we used to call them “pilot episodes”.

I’m hoping that vast hordes of American Maoists will pull people like Kristol out of their place of employment, beat them with copies of “Dreams From My Father”, and force them to sit on a stool with a dunce cap on while confessing their transgressions against the proletariat.

I’m curious, reading this.

So we’re certain, beyond all doubt, we’re right about everything, and there’s no valid opposing view?

Speaking for myself, I’m not saying there’s no valid opposing view. There’s just plenty of hilarious ones that this website mocks for my enjoyment.

So we’re certain, beyond all doubt

My default mode is crippling uncertainty, nevertheless…

and there’s no valid opposing view?

From anyone to the right of, say, Broder?

Nope. Not based on what they’ve wrought.

Moderate conservatives are welcome to step forward. It should be safe now.

So we’re certain, beyond all doubt, we’re right about everything, and there’s no valid opposing view?

No. Certainly not about everything. But there are certain things — like the Bush Doctrine and its corollary xenophobia — that I am absolutely right about. I do not believe that supporting wars of choice and automatically fearing/despising people you don’t know based on ignorance is a valid point of view. I really don’t see the point of assuming rational discourse will develop with any prominent right-wing mouthpiece who continues to stubbornly flog that point of view.

Screw every last one of them in every imaginable orifice & condemn them to the deepest pits of hell!!

Personnally. I’m thinking it’s time for another Civil (or not so) War in these United Snakes.

I don’t give a flying fuck what any of those rightwing fucks do.

Ever.

Hokay. That’s fine and all.

Just seems kind of a bleak future.

Know what?

I can live with that.

Are you sure you can?

mikey

Vadum expands on his organizing equals dealing hypothesis at the Capital Research Center’s blog.

He also has a longer study on ACORN (pdf), in which he calls the organization “the Weather Underground’s little brother.” It turns out ACORN is very, very powerful and very, very scary. A sample:

Creating a Financial Crisis

Some writers have suggested the actions of ACORN and other Alinsky-inspired organizations who adhere to the Cloward-Piven Strategy of manufactured crisis have helped cause the meltdown on Wall Street. Certainly radical activists had had their eyes on Wall Street for a long time. A cheeky conservative might even argue that the crisis on Wall Street is a kind of Reichstag fire but that this time the Communists really are the arsonists.

On the same page (p. 15), a little appeal in a box:

Please remember Capital Research Center in your will and estate planning.

Sure. I’ll get right on it.

“mikey said,
November 1, 2008 at 3:49

Huh.

I’m curious, reading this.

So we’re certain, beyond all doubt, we’re right about everything, and there’s no valid opposing view?

Wow. I think there’s a word for this….”

Yes Mikey, the word is “strawman”.

I do know that my view, the rough approximation of whatever one can call a liberal view, of things is much more in touch with reality than the right version. So relatively speaking yes, I’m right about everything. Or more to my point, they’re wrong about everything.

Valid opposing views are fine, honest people to put forth those ideas in the spirit of genuine discussion is quite another. If such exist on the right I’d love to hear their names recited. especially if they’re running for or in office. I suspect that there are, if any, very, very few. it’s nearly impossible to be, simultaneously, a republican and have any intellectual or moral basis for that view in 2008. What in the eight years especially and the last thirty years in general doesn’t speak to that?

Mikey:

Richard Mellon Scaife is a very rich man, and he and his ilk will keep on funding wingnut a*holes until he dies or his fortune runs out.

Reality and comity have absolutely nothing to do with it. So preach togetherness and peace and kum bay yah all you want; there will be a Ruby Ridge/Black Helicopter faction of the right wing with deep pockets, just flinging poo in your face forever. They will not stop, they will not declare “peace,” they will go on and on and on.

Just watch.

radical activists have had their eyes

Don’t look for too many wingnuts on the Interwebs to suddenly “see the light” – come on, a black moderate as POTUS? That’s a wingnut wish-list item come to life … as long as the faithful keep flocking to their spittle-flecked gibberish & maintain their hit-rates, they’ll keep it coming indefinitely.

I think they’re just getting warmed up – the real clownshow begins after Inauguration Day. As the Bush years are exposed as the political Dark Ages they were, the heat will be on these mouth-breathing blockheads to rewrite history more zealously than ever before – & I’m pretty sure they’ll meet that challenge head-on with a snootful of pharmaceuticals & a gob stuffed with Cheetos.

Will websites like this one be forced to run cute kitty-cat pictures for lack of ripe, slow-moving targets from the deep dark valley of wingnut fogthink?

Happily, Never!

the concept of a “left/right” political spectrum is obsolete and is used by lazy morons of the em ess em.

They will not stop, they will not declare “peace,” they will go on and on and on.

Let’s compare and contrast with the way the right demonizes the left. The way the hate becomes institutionalized, the way we pass our religions on to our children.

I don’t know how I could have tossed a softer softball. Not the ideologues, not the bigots, not the wingnut wackjobs, just those people who want to find a new kind of discourse, a new (or maybe old) way of doing political debate.

And as I hear it, your answer is no – they are not welcome here. We’ll take endless war and no solutions over any kind of negotiated settlement, salted earth and destruction, wreckage and hatred.

Know what? That’s not just ugly, it’s stupid…

mikey

“the concept of a “left/right” political spectrum is obsolete and is used by lazy morons of the em ess em.”:

No and yes. It’s not obsolete, but it is abused by the MSM. When some propagandist for the right calls Obama “far left,” (Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.), it requires only the most cursory intellectual honesty to point out, “No, see, ‘far left’ means, as it always has, socialist/communist. You–and your listeners/viewers–literally don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This, yes, is beyond the MSM. But the spectrum left/right is still meaningful.

Mikey – there’s plenty of valid opposing views. Maybe on guns, maybe on choice, maybe on the economy, maybe on something else entirely.

My point is this — the term ‘wingnut’ refers to someone who, over the past eight years, has swallowed their doubts about whatever issues they might have disagreed with the wingnut gestalt about, and fallen into lockstep with the overall wingnut agenda.

That, for them, has meant stifling their doubts and objections to say, torture, or financial deregulation, or choice, or wiretapping. For the most part, it doesn’t really matter what they compromised on. The effort, on the proverbial wingnut’s part, has been to occlude differences in the cause of presenting a united front, to further membership on a winning team … entirely for (it can’t be stressed enough) it’s own sake.

This process has killed our dialogue, our polity and our country, in that order. We who opposed this process from the start have been joined by more and more disenchanted voices as each year has gone by, to the point where we are in a position to wrestle back the country from the brink of insanity and disaster.

We now find ourselves in the majority position (fingers crossed), with all that this entails. We’ll soon have a rational president and a rational legislature that reflects the direct opposite of the truth-killing, debate-stifling, war-starting, dissent-bullying apparatus that has dominated this country for the first decade of the 21st century.

This is enormous. This is cause for rejoicing and celebration and great sighs of relief.

But it will also be over soon, perhaps the very instant it begins. Wednesday morning (or in my case and that of most here, I suspect, Wednesday evening), we’ll wake up to find our ship has finally come in, but our work has just begun. We’ll find ourselves jockeying for the causes we hold most dear against those for whom other issues are more pressing. We’ll see that the particular way we interpreted ‘hope’ and ‘change’ is at odds with how erstwhile allies interpreted those same things.

And power will corrupt, quickly … and few here will be at all happy with the Obama administration come next June or July or August. Some stuff will get done that we like, but more won’t that we’d like even more … toss in a ramp-up of violence in Pakistan and you’ve got the recipe for an all-out assault from the left on the man we’re all fighting to see elected, just months after he’s sworn in.

So be it. That’s life and the ongoing mystery of life marching on. Wouldn’t want it any other way. And that’s why, to get back to Mikey’s original question, it’s not so scary that, sometime after the great victory and national course correction, maybe the Right, maybe the people who’ve had their doubts about this whole enterprise, start really asking the questions that can’t be answered so patly by us liberal Obamanauts. Maybe they start presenting answers that are better than ours. Maybe it all goes full circle and it’s their turn to lead again.

But if we’ve learned any lessons, this shouldn’t be frightening. It’s natural, and generally works itself out. All we ought to be concerned with at this moment in history, is righting the ship as best we can now, and when tomorrow’s different set of problems emerges, deal with them then.

I will compare:

just those people who want to find a new kind of discourse

with:

Moderate conservatives are welcome to step forward. It should be safe now.

mikey,
From what I read, most people here only want to marginalize ‘the ideologues, …the bigots, …the wingnut wackjobs’, just like you. I have yet to discern an extremist among the S,N! regularos. I can’t see anyone here poisoning their children.

They may, however, point to the Bush years as a cautionary tale.

h. lewis

As far as being disappointed in our electorate choice goes – yeah, sure. I may be disappointed in Obama.

I for one will be a fuckuva lot happier come June, July, or August with the Obama administration than with the McCain administration.

Let’s keep it in perspective.

g – absolutely. just trying to maintain my anarcho-syndicalist creds here, mate.

It’s easy to be magnanimous in victory, if one is willing and wise, but victory has to come first. If our opponents tire of getting their collective ass kicked, they are welcome to switch sides. We’ll sit nice on Wednesday morning.

The single most beautiful thing about this whole change of government is that it is happening without a shot being fired. It’s still a streetfight.

I have Obamagoogle chickens. But they are still in the shell! Luckily, I managed to parlay two-thirds of those holdings via credit default swaps into 60x returns and was able to trade straight futures on the remainder to the tune of one-point ammortization yields per egg.

The upshot is that nobody holding my Obama paper can afford to see him lose, so win-win all around!

When John McCain wins, I will ______

To be honest Mr. Truth, I’d be so excited that I’d probably spit in your ear and hump it with my willy.

Go McCain!!

Jesus comes back and says he won.

They wouldn’t hesitate to throw JC under the bus…

I think we should really start working on getting rid of those pesky “term limits”.

They are after all, a COMPLETE violation of First Amendment rights.

Happy Happy, Joy JOY!

They wouldn’t hesitate to throw JC under the bus…
This would result in a radical change in Christian iconography: artistic portrayals of death-by-bus instead of the crucifixion scene. Fragments of the One True Bus would become sacred relics, with no fewer than 17 churches claiming to possess the left side-mirror. And instead of making the sign of the cross, priests would bless the faithful by turning an imaginary steering-wheel back and forth.

I have Obamagoogle chickens.
When do they come home to roost?

Hmmmmmmmmmm, I can’t think of any candidates. All of the D-list winger blogs I read are in Pam territory, digging in so deep that they have to turn off their comments and/or simply drive away all their readers with an IQ higher than, oh, 2. Betsy’s Page, for example. She’s focusing on the current talking points, the election/media/DOJ is rigged for the Dems and the poor GOP is going to have dig deeper next time. It’s downhill from there. The rest of them are heading into Patriot Act (which, of course, was clearly designed to suppress the GOP) territory by, oh, advocating Red Dawn-type armed revolution.

Any other ideas about wingers who might be ready to, if not switch sides, at least start talking reasonably with the rest of the country?

Ann Althouse.

Okay, who the fuck am I trying to kid!

Did someone say Jesus under a bus?

I’m so so sorry. The Power of Christ® compelled me.

We need our own Jack Chick-type tract to spread around; something that would reassure wingnuts that no matter how debased and delusional they’ve become in their believes, they may come to salvation by admitting their sins and receiving the light of rationality*. It could be left in the corn-based snacks aisle in the supermarket, the interracial section of the adult video stores, boxed-merlot section of the wine store…

*Except for Amy Alkon.

I look forward to the day when a Christian will where a little gold bus on a chain around his or her neck.

So Juggs is in Boca. I knew there was something familiar about the thick accented harpie that I served at table 5 on Thursday night.

to answer:

grilled chicken Caesar,
30%.

“So Juggs is in Boca. I knew there was something familiar about the thick accented harpie that I served at table 5 on Thursday night.

to answer:

grilled chicken Caesar,
30%.”

30%?

She was likely hoping for some extra dessert, if you know what I mean.

[…] have to deal with a group of people dedicated to the proposition that he is absolutely evil, and any foul sewage they throw at him will be absolutely justified. It’s going to make the Clinton years look as mannered as a formal Japanese tea […]