Overton Defenestration
It’s always mildly startling to read a post by Donald Douglas at American Power, and then days or weeks later to notice more posts by him there. It’s like he keeps emitting lint when nobody is paying attention, like the opposite of a Roomba.
Progressivism as the Radical Left
I have long noted that “the progressive netroots,” as our political antagonists on the other side like to call themselves, are today’s radicals, the ideological descendents of the New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s (people like Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground terrorists).
This is interesting, because we have long noted that “conservative bloggers,” as they are known to the police and other authorities, are today’s Jeffrey Dahmers, the whiffy-kitchened child sex cannibals of the 21st Century. By “are” we mean the same as Douglas means above: that the comparison would bother them, therefore we are jauntily asserting it by pretending to be stupid.
On a related topic, did you know that toilets are the same as sinks because they are both white, concave porcelain devices in the bathroom? No really, I can’t tell. No, look, they both have poop in them, see? Ooh, I am so zooming you.
Today’s progressives have very little in common with the true early-20th progressive reformers, such as Governor Hiram Johnson of California, who brought direct democracy to the state’s voters in 1911.
For instance, they are against the Proposition 8 referendum in California, while Johnson was for referendums. (Opposite.)
I often get smeared as “wingnut” by some reality-challenged bloggers (for example, here and here) for making this argument, because the left today can’t stand being identified for what they truly are.
In the spirit of streamlining, we need someday to draw up a decision tree that starts with “liberals are laughing at me,” and ends in the bottom left and right corners with “they cannot stand the truth” and “I must really be getting under their skin.” In the middle will be no box reading “(Y/N) I am funny like a jester.”
We’ll send out many copies, and Rick Moran will not fail to receive one.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
So it’s with pleasure that I share Michael Lind’s new piece, calling on progressives to end their charade:, “Is it OK to Be Liberal Again, Instead of Progressive?“:
If you were a progressive in the ’60s and ’70s, you were likely to think that Truman and Johnson were warmongering “corporate liberals” under the control of the “military-industrial complex” and that the Democrats and Republicans were indistinguishable. For the moderate and conservative Democrats of the DLC to call themselves the new progressives was the equivalent of moderate, secular Republicans calling themselves the new fundamentalists.
At least the far-left progressives were honest. They genuinely despised the mid-century American liberals, whom they viewed simply as another species of bourgeois imperialists. This is another one of the reasons I dislike the term “progressive” … Why share a label with anyone who romanticized Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro?
Okay, it’s necessary at this point to clarify, first of all, that Douglas didn’t even read this piece, but just made up an argument in his head and attributed it to an imaginary person with the same name as Michael Lind — who is, himself, a writer of known quantity whose November 21 Salon piece, headlined, “Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?” and subheadlined, “Come out of the closet, liberals. Stop using the fashionable euphemism ‘progressive’ and relaunch the old, tarnished L-word,” was apparently open on Douglas’s computer at the time, vulnerable to control-C.
What the actual, objective-reality Michael Lind is saying is abstracted in the headline. Briefly, it is that conservatives have turned the term ‘liberal’ into an epithet, and the center-left has therefore been calling itself ‘progressive.’ But the catch-all term ‘progressive’ does not fool conservatives, carries both centrist and radical connotations that do not accurately describe liberals, and is generally lame, such that it may be time for liberals to proudly reclaim their identity as ‘liberals.’
It’s also necessary to clarify why we’re picking on Donald Douglas instead of, um, for instance, chronicling the day-by-day mental flux of Cap’n “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” Ed as his tenure as a Malkin stooge enters its high baroque period. Or instead of answering the horrifying backlog of email that we are bad and sorry people for not having already done, because good people must mistakenly think that we’re snubbing them. Also, damn.
Apropos the why-Douglas, it’s the Overton Window, that often-cited theoretical entity that describes the ‘area of the possible’ on the political spectrum. To the extent that we have a serious project here, it’s to figure out what the right is doing not by listening to their best talkers and slickest advocates, but by seeing how their idiots screw up all the careful messaging and say things they’re not supposed to. Sometimes they walk around with their clothes on backward like Kriss Kross, saying interesting things like ‘we must get rid of Social Security (by privatizing it)’ when they ought to be saying ‘we must save Social Security (by privatizing it).’ Sometimes they just get things wrong in ways you never would have expected, bringing aesthetic pleasure and an opportunity for insight.
Douglas, Associate Professor of Political Science (yes, really), is pushing at the Overton Window in jolly, time-honored fashion such that liberals are conflated with extremo bomb-throwing terror radicals and crammed all the way over on the leftmost fringe, while the range of normal American opinion is falsely portrayed as stretching from approximately Joe Lieberman to approximately Richard III as played by Ian McKellen. But he’s doing it at a moment in which conservative advocates are frantically trying to claim the newly elected Barack Obama as a “center-right” figure, elected by some kind of gaseous and invisible majority of right-leaning centrists that they can pretend to represent. Watch how Douglas tries to have it both ways:
I imagine there’s still some kind of positive glow associated with the idea of a political movement that supports “progress.” That’s the last thing today’s leftists want, however. They want a new (old) New Deal/Great Society combo, complete with WPA-style government spending programs, taxes on the rich (those making $250,000, which was about $35,000 in 1960, for comparison, but folks at that income level back then didn’t think they were “rich”), and the endorsement of blame-America-first ideology at the highest levels of the foreign policy establishment (in that respect, thank goodness we might see Hillary Clinton taking over Foggy Bottom).
Daniel Halper at Pajamas Media argues that Barack Obama’s already thrown the Democratic Party’s hard-left contingents under the bus. Yet, given the tantrum-prone propensity of the progressive hordes, the president-elect may find their endless harangues a bit overwhelming at some point.Posted by Donald Douglas at 8:24 PM
Incoherent? At odds with the way real-life events are known to unfold? Causing debasement to the English language with a phrase such as “the tantrum-prone propensity [of them]”? Yes, all of those things. But see how he’s attributing actual, announced policies of Obama’s — the tax rate adjustments, the modern WPA program — to this lunatic fringe of Internet bloggers who have already been “thrown under the bus,” while predicting that they may yet break down Obama’s resistance and force him to implement these crazy policy aims of theirs.
Bizarrely — and if Douglas shows up in comments denying that he ever meant such a thing, it’s possible that he’s honestly mistaken as to his own intentions — we have witnessed the construction of an edifice of reason. . .okay, a remarkably short and narrow edifice, a kiosk of reason, in which “the netroots” has been launched as an exact analogue to the shadowy cabal that controlled Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to the common conservative thought of the 1930s.
In other words, the old ways is the best ways, and l’chaim!
* Some photos hiked from the estimable Zombie.
Jebus effin Christ, CitiGroup is tanking. We may get our revolution after all kiddies.
Is that the first time Rick Moran has ever had the word “not” in between his name and “fail?
No one will be able to afford a revolution if things keep going as they are.
Rope isn’t that expensive.
Oh, you LIEbrals have always been revolting, trust me.
Not only will they sell us the rope, we’ll get it on clearance!
Yes! The republicant ‘War On Reality’ TM continues.
“(those making $250,000, which was about $35,000 in 1960, for comparison, but folks at that income level back then didn’t think they were “rich”), ”
First of all, way to shoot yourself in the foot by bringing up rampant inflation and economic turmoil. Smooth.
Second, I don’t believe that statistic, anyways. Let us mosey over to the LA Time link, and…
“Liberals, unlike conservatives, need an accurate definition of wealth because they think it’s an important distinction.”
HA! Silly liberals! Like accuracy and exact measurements are important to mathematics and tax calculations!
“One liberal columnist recently asserted that earning in the top 3% (roughly $200,000) makes you “economic royalty.” ”
Huh. Did the writer just say that the top 3% of income earners are NOT “rich”?
“I guess they figure that’s reasonable, given that the median income in the United States is about $50,000.”
Yes, yes he did. ‘You make four times what the average person in the nation does? Welcome to the lower middle class!’
“Why stop at the U.S.? Why not consider the whole world? ”
Because that would be retarded, and have no bearing on US domestic tax policy?
“A more useful definition would be: savings sufficient to live an affluent life without working. ”
But why stop at having a few million in the bank? Why not define it as: enough money to buy planetary objects? Now no one is “rich”. Hurray!
“If we assume that one withdraws 5% of one’s savings annually for living expenses (a reasonable amount in order to keep up with inflation and not deplete your capital), then it would require about $5 million in post-tax/$7.5 million in pre-tax savings to generate $250,000.”
This confused me, until I realized that he’s talking about the plight of people with $10 million sitting in the bank. Who apparently can’t be bothered to work a part-time job, possibly because they spend all say trying to figure out what % of their meager accounts to withdraw each month.
“In fact, a household earning $250,000 today would have difficulty squeezing out even $50,000 in savings every year — much less quitting work and buying the second homes and yachts and private planes that we associate with the truly rich.”
See: made up standards. You’re not “rich” unless you spend money to buy a plane.
“This does not mean that taxes shouldn’t be touched for those making between $250,000 and $500,000, but why should they pay the same rate as someone making $2.5 million or $25 million?”
I agree, that would be silly. But wait! What’s this?
“That’s the point at which taxes would begin to go up under Obama’s tax plan… ”
Huh, so they won’t be paying the same rate as someone making $25, then? See, “begin to go up” implies a linear, maybe even exponential, increase in something, not s steady line.
“Conservative columnist Ben Stein, for instance, is pushing for a 10% surcharge on the incomes of the truly rich — those whose incomes exceed $5 million — to be devoted to healthcare. Liberals are paying little attention.”
So, yes. He attacks a flat ‘rich tax’ in the same column in which he trumpets a flat ‘rich tax’.
Well I’m sold. Impeach Obama!
I got sidetracked by the damn link. I will give a prize to anyone who can make heads or tails out of the gibberish this idiot is spewing. Poor man seems to be suffering from dementia.
Whoa, text wall. <_< Those these seem way shorter in the typing window.
@ Lesley’s link:
“If that were the value at the current $50-some price of crude, does that mean that that one ship would have been carrying a $300,000,000 load when the price was over $150 a barrel (the price the Democrat Congress has been encouraging for the last two years)”
Shorter Curtis Dahlgren :
http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=001dc1108fc0bdace038b540da33c001
Shorter Curtis Dahlgren :
I’m sorry, but the only Dahlgren I can respect is the one written by Chip Delany. A group of us spent many valuable hours of our youth, when we should have been studying, trying to translate ‘Dahlgren’ into Latin.
We got as far as “Sigitur, cogitabat Cinarae” and then started drinking.
great post Gavin… I really don’t know what is it with this Obama guy; he seems to exude some form of potent brain-scrambling gamma rays that constantly mess up the talking points.
Celebrity or Muslim Terrorist?
Elitist or Communist?
Dangerous Radicalist or Ineffective Centrist?
The anti-Malcolm X or Malcolm X’s love child?
Things were so much easier in the olden days when we knew Bill Clinton was a rapist and a murderer, while his wife was a health-care Nazi…
As one of the whiney “He calls me naughty names here” links stuffed unceremoniously into the ass. professor’s post, all I can say is you have him pegged like a screeching polecat. (inside joke.)
AmericanNeroCon Donald Douglas is all that, and even more of it than you can imagine. And yet, I’m strangely fascinated by the car-wreck that is his blog… I cannot stay away for long, lest I miss my dose of wingnut… (Yeah, I did it again… Called him a wingnut out in public.) ((I’ll note that the other “He hurt my widdle feelings here” link never actually did call the ass. professor a wingnut… not in the post to which Nero linked, anyway…))
Anyway, just wanted to commend the post. Keep hitting those nails on their flat little heads…
Here’s the thing. They’re saying the US is center-right.
In fact, compared to just about every other country in the world, we are, indeed, center right.
But here’s the problem. The Democratic Party is not leftist. It is center-left. And the Republican Party is not rightist. It is hard right.
So when we talk about how the US is center-right, that’s not in comparison to the parties already established here. The distance between the average center-right American ideology and the Democratic party, it’s far closer than the distance between that center-right American and the Republican Party.
The fact is, you liberals can go fuck yourselves.
I’ll wear my mantle of Dohrnism, if Donald will wear his Eric Rudolph mask as proudly.
In 1962, my parents bought a new three-bedroom concrete-block house on a quarter-acre suburban lot in Pinellas County, Florida for $12,900. You can buy two middle-class houses outright out of one year’s salary? You’re rich.
Sorry, “Gary,” we’ve already been fucked over enough. Checked your retirement fund lately–or does Arby’s not have those?
Direct democracy? That’s chavista talk right there. ¡Ojo pelao!
I believe that, as a pro-victory professor, he is still working toward a McCain victory in 2008. Thx for the post. I’m in agreement with Repsac, there is something hypnotic about the level of crazy at American Powermad.
On Dahlgren: Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in the frozen tundra of Michigan’s U.P.
From the looks of his photo, he may also be semi-homeless.
I often get smeared as “wingnut” by some reality-challenged bloggers (for example, here and here) for making this argument, because the left today can’t stand being identified for what they truly are.
Oh, jeezul on diazepam, I had to deal with a guy like this back in September.
Started out when I noticed, through CNN.com’s Sphere blog aggregator, that he was all pissed off that CNN didn’t start 9/11 properly,
Then his original post disappeared, and he then went on to claim I almost destroyed his blog and he had to take the original post down ’cause of the “Lemming Liberals” who were flooding his ISP.
Then he stopped by again to lecture me on bipartisanship and cooperation with guys like him, as we’re all supposed to look beyond the poo-flinging and accusations of treason and act in the interest of America.
Then I found out he’s just a second-rate Lileks, and I let the issue slide. (And he thinks that the Lileks comparison is a compliment. *sigh*)
Of course, there are some bloggers and writers out there who make a career of writing brainless, fatuous, jaw droppingly doltish stuff. Village idiots like TBogg or the folks at Sadly No have taken bathroom humor, playground taunts, and pre-teen sex jokes to a level unseen by most adults.
Furthermore, POOP!
(those making $250,000, which was about $35,000 in 1960, for comparison, but folks at that income level back then didn’t think they were “rich”)
Well, the median income in the 60s was actually just about $35,000, so I guess they wouldn’t have. Of course, it only begs the question of why the median income is one-fifth of what it was in the 60s when you adjust for inflation.
Village idiots like TBogg or the folks at Sadly No have taken bathroom humor, playground taunts, and pre-teen sex jokes to a level unseen by most adults.
And they make it look easy!
Well, the median income in the 60s was actually just about $35,000
Are you sure about that? Wikipedia (sourced to the Census Bureau) seems to say that it was $4080 for white males, who were the highest-paid group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Whoops! All males were $4080, white males at $4296.
I think this crack made Rick’s butt sore.
Whoops! All males were $4080, white males at $4296.
That’s a good price!
That’s a good price!
Same as a Yugo, almost.
Don’t know about 1960, but in 1970 when I applied for college, my parents combined income was about $12K, so, yes, my family would have thought $35K was pretty luxurious living. When I got to college, I knew people whose parents made $40-50K and were jealous that I had financial aid and they didn’t. Just goes to show you the rich have always been a bunch of whiners.
Don’t read the Curtis Dahlgren piece if you’re on acid.
One of the clearest and best posts I’ve seen here. Thanks.
What to do, though?
The Overton Window can’t be counterpushed just by pointing out the idiocy or malignancy of the push, can it?
In any case, clarity is always helpful, at least to me.
If you want to enter the topsy-turvy world of the true wingnut, you need to check out http://www.americandcnt.blogspot.com/. Without a doubt there are fewer places more prone to make one bang their head against a wall. A black hole of insanity, no thought can escape save hate for gays and pretty much anyone else who thinks that Barack Obama is going to institute the Soviet States of America.
we have witnessed the construction of an edifice of reason. . .okay, a remarkably short and narrow edifice, a kiosk of reason,
I love this. A kiosk of reason. I will have to be stealing that, I’m afraid.
We are currently living at the peak of Wingnut policies!
I. feel. so. lucky.
MzNicky, talk me down from the ledge!
~
Are you sure about that? Wikipedia (sourced to the Census Bureau) seems to say that it was $4080 for white males, who were the highest-paid group.
Well, I was looking at a chart for household income, but more importantly, the chart was *entirely* in 2005 dollars, a crucial fact which I initially failed to notice. Looks like I’m a dumbass.
Fortunately, it also makes Douglas more of a dumbass, since $35,000 actually was a pretty damn good income in the 60s.
Douglas’s intentional idiocy is miles beyond your honest error for dumbassitude.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said,
November 23, 2008 at 18:44
Somebody’s achin’ for the banhammer.
The Progressive Hordes are very similar to the Visigoths, only more inclined to support national healthcare legislation.
I suffered my first comment deletion *sniff* last night, Simba B.
I suppose the hammer isn’t far away.
Why share a label with anyone who romanticized Lyndon Johnson or Woodrow Wilson? Christ. Decents sure love to pretend that leftists have a monopoly on unprincipled support of bastards, don’t they?
I often get smeared as “wingnut” by some reality-challenged bloggers (for example, here and here) for making this argument, because the left today can’t stand being identified for what they truly are.
The people who defeated GOD and put the Anti-Christ into office?
Those people?
We are currently living at the peak of Wingnut policies!
Peak Wingnut? Does this mean that we’ll have to spend more money to find new, though less potent, wingnuts?
According to the Census bureau, at the 99.9% level, the household income is $1,600,000./year or better. So to this putz, the top one in a thousand is still not rich. One historian estimated that 97 peasants were needed to service and support one member of French royalty 250 years ago (true? not true? I don’t know.) Are modern rich people rarer than historical royalty? Fuckin’ Poli Sci Majors are fuckin’ out to destroy western civilization.
Dayum, that TGW site is chock full o’nuts, isn’t it? Twice I’ve typed a scathing comment and then deleted it. I jumped fearlessly into the idiot-infested Alkon pond, but the TGW pit just . . . I dunno, maybe I’m afraid the stupid is contagious.
Seriously, though, the TGW type of shit is why none of my teenage son’s female friends want to be identified as feminists, although they clearly are feminists in the true sense of the world as expressed in their goals and beliefs. Is there still sexism around? Hells yes. I guess, according to TGW, this means we should embrace Sarah Palin because in their view she’s a poor helpless female enduring an onslaught of vicious attacks only because she’s a woman? To me, this seems like the very opposite of feminism, but that is apparently what TGW is advocating.
As for the Overton window, I’m so far to the left I never even get to peek through the damned thing. When I hear wingers frothing about how Obama is “one of the most liberal” senators, I just shake my head and marvel that anyone could possibly perceive this to be true. If only.
Peak Wingnuts, when roasted, drizzled with honey and served in a paper cone, are the ideal snack for munching while walking around the gun show
Dalhgren: “And make no mistake, the War on Religion isn’t waiting for January; it is in full swing already in California, Salt Lake City, and Lansing, for example. The combination of the Obama win and the defeat of Proposition 8 on “gay marriage” has given new meaning to the term Culture WAR.”
Real World: Um, sir? Prop 8 in California was passed, not defeated.
Dahlgren: I SAID, make no mistake. That means you. It doesn’t mean me. I make mistake. Because it’s WAR.
Please don’t pick on Rick Moranis. He was so cute in “Honey I Shrunk The Kids”.
according to TGW, this means we should embrace Sarah Palin
I’d rather embrace Tina Fey.
Uh-oh, deep meaningful thesis clean-up on Aisle 7!
Hells yeah! Why NOT apply teh lulz as a vitamin – surely to goodness they’re plenty acidic enough to qualify.
At least we don’t need overpaid professionals to help us do THAT too, sport.
PROTIP: political labels in general are prone to become what Ivan Illich called “plastic words” – he cites nouns like “fascism” or “sexuality” – with meanings so horribly variable that they wind up categorically preventing ANY stable & lucid thinking around their subjects. Stable & lucid thinking wants to be your BFF, & wonders why you don’t visit it more often, like you did when you were both younger … don’t leave it in the lurch.
I disagree, to the tune of one consonant.
The Devolution will not be improvised.
I’d rather embrace Tina Fey
She also has the advantage of being far less likely to smell of moose innards.
The Devolution will not be improvised.
You mean we’re gonna have to go to rehearsals?
🙁
Dahlgren:
Oh, no! He’s cracked our scoff, sneer, and smirk code!
From his extended bio blurb:
Free storm windows—these, too, are part of God’s design for you and me.
The Devolution will not be improvised.
This is sure to stifle creativity.
The Progressive Hordes are very similar to the Visigoths
Another difference is that they travel around in vehicles called ‘droves’ (which I imagine as being akin to little Shriner cars) in which they are wont to desert the Democratic Party whenever they are disappointed with its policies.
I’d actually rather make $35,000 while living in 1960 than $200,000 today.
You’d be able to live very well, and dood, have you seen “Mad Men”?
The shit you could get away with! Drinking all day at work and all the chix had to shut up and have sex with you and and and….
Ok, maybe not. But that was a real nice living fifty years ago….
mikey
Oh, ittdgy™³²®©, ittdgy™³²®©, ittdgy.™³²®© How many times must I beg you to stay away from that insane asylum? It’s just not nice to tease the inmates with logic and reason. You know by now such comments will just be disappeared. I’m unbanned again but have decided that never commenting there again shall be their punishment forever and ever. Now back away from the ledge slowly and go have a nice cold beer.
You mean we’re gonna have to go to rehearsals?
Nae sweat thy peg o’er it, laddie – we’ve got it right pat like trained seals with rubber balls by now!
This is sure to stifle creativity.
Indeed it is.
Has been stifling it since before I was spawned.
Just calling it like it smells, now.
Meanwhile, my inner Devil’s Advocate whispers:
“Too much creativity can be much more deadly than too little – just ask Einstein.”
Candy: TGW, once a decent liberal-feminist site, went stark raving lunatic-wacko when Obama won the nomination. The place became infested with the most vomitous packs of PUMAs, racists and ratfuckers you can imagine. What you see over there now is calm and sane compared with the last 4-5 months. It’s fascinatingly sad.
the range of normal American opinion is falsely portrayed as stretching […] to approximately Richard III as played by Ian McKellen
Viz..
I had an ear drum graft last week so all noise annoys the hell out of me currently, plus with one ear not working at all I can’t tell where the noise is coming from. I settled on reading the news rather than hearing it, and you know what? It’s just as annoying, but I know where its coming from. This Douglas guy though, where he’s coming from is either (1) anywhere that logic goes to die, or (2) his ass.
He can make fun of SN! or Tbogg all he wants, but according to one of their members, Tbogg is the officially designated conservative ridicule machine. Come on people, we’ve got a new title to compete for!
Indeed, I hold my commercial experience to have been my most important field of education, divinely prepared to fit me to be a competent translator of the Bible, for it taught me what men are and upon what motives they act, and by what influences they are controlled.
12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves: 13 And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.
it taught me what men are and upon what motives they act, and by what influences they are controlled.
Voices tell me things. Evil things.
Why share a label with anyone who romanticized Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro?
Why indeed. When you can go the whole hog
Damn, the Sadly Crew just gets better and better!
I think this writer knows he misread Lind’s article. However, it is a power mis-reading, in a Peter Elbow sort of way, as the mis-reading allows the writer to employ the original text as an argument from authority. Although any critical reader will be able to compare the original and the writer’s interpretation and understand the error, we must assume the writer knows his audience.
As per the writer’s bio, he hates left-wing discourse, but he sure understands how to use it.
my family would have thought $35K was pretty luxurious living.
Hells, yeah.
Back in my neck o’ the woods, when I was just a squirt, the phrase “forty-thousand dollar home” was reserved for the places where the families of doctors, lawyers, and successful local business types lived. They had other people (me) cut their grass, generally had more than one car (which they traded in every two or three years), and not only “went away” on vacation, but did so several times each year.
As I look out the Overton Windows of my basement lair, I can see Islamosexual zombies shuffling in my yard, sniffing around, trying to track down my precious bodily fluids. I suspect that only the badgers can save me now…
Candy, MzNicky – you might try this one out on the TGWs:
You say Palin was the victim of sexism, that her abilities were denigrated on account of her gender, and she is completely experienced and capable. So…what about the winking? Why did she think it was a good idea, in the middle of what was essentially a job interview where she needed to demonstrate her seriousness and ability to perform a serious job, to flirt with the interviewers? How can you object to being reduced to nothing more than a sex object when that’s what you are portraying yourself to be? Do you want us to vote for you because you are capable and serious, or because you’re cute and flirty? Talk about your mixed messages.
I can’t get a response to that from the loons over at Secret Agent Flowbee’s joint.
Though I did point out to them that, by ascribing to “sexism” things that are better explained under the rubric of “politics” or other headings, they are ironically working at cross-purposes to that which they claim they are trying to achieve. That by attributing any and all criticisms and failures of females to “sexism”, they reduce women as a group to victims, weak persons in need of protection, as in traditional societies. Which is, you know, the opposite of equality.
the poo-flinging
I just want to say that this business of physically hurling faeces — or leaving them in burning paper bags on the doorstep — is looking increasingly archaic and unsuited for the modern world of abstract virtuality. That is why we at Bimler Research Laboratories have been working on the idea of an apparatus that can scan a turd and encode it as a pattern of 1s and 0s, which can be transmitted along a phone line (in the form of modulated sounds) to a similar apparatus that will reconstitute the turd at the recipient’s end.
We call it “sending a fex”.
Back in my neck o’ the woods, when I was just a squirt, the phrase “forty-thousand dollar home” was reserved for the places where the families of doctors, lawyers, and successful local business types lived
Forty thousand dollars??? That’s over ten times what my tar paper shack cost!!! Of course, mine was sorta expensive cause I brought in a contractor, Ted Kackzynski, to do the detail work on it.
Daniel Halper at Pajamas Media argues that Barack Obama’s already thrown the Democratic Party’s hard-left contingents under the bus.
Waitwaitwait. I thought Obama was going to be Adolph Von Fidel Joe Castrostalihitler and now you’re telling me he’s not the frothing lefty you’ve been claiming for months?
You know, sirrah, I’d almost believe you right-wingers are just making shit up.
Do you want us to vote for you because you are capable and serious, or because you’re cute and flirty?
Isn’t being a seriously capable flirt a cute enough reason?
Tbogg is the officially designated conservative ridicule machine.
Demonic conservative ridicule machine, that is.
Dahlgren: Since they rounded it off to 700 BILL, I rounded off the population of the U.S.A. to 300 billion…
You know, it HAS seemed more crowded lately.
We are currently living at the peak of Wingnut policies!
This is a lie! There are vast pools of Wingnut just waiting to be discovered. I also firmly believe in the abiogenic theory. How else can one explain how wells previously pumped dry of Wingnut are now found to be filling again? Huh? ‘Splain that one to me.
…and just wait til they harness the Wingnut fusion process (any day now)!!!
noen: if wingnuts were abiogenic, I think we’d be better off; alas, they seem to be biogenic in origin.
…and the phrase ‘pumped dry of Wingnut’ is making me twitch…
the Wingnut fusion process
The magnetic confinement approach is not working. Inertial confinement is the way to go.
…aaah, inertia!
Demonic conservative ridicule machine, that is.
This is like an Aerosol Grey Machine, but faster-acting.
They can always go the “New, Improved” Wingnut route.
…”improved” is definitely a two-edged sword
Jennifer: You are obviously a self-loathing female misogynist who has been mesmerized/hypnotized by the Obamamites and the DNC, which stole the nomination from St. Hillary of Clinton and handed it to their Precious Chosen One, who totally demonized Hillary with vile sexism and lies and whose ape-like wife has a big butt and doesn’t know how to dress and whose minister is a racist terrorist. Besides which to make fun of Sarah Palin in that turkey holocaust clip makes you a total hypocrite unless you are a vegan, and in fact to say anything negative about Palin also means you are a misogynist.
Plus to say mean things about Michelle Obama and also Donna Brazile doesn’t mean a thing, is NOT racist, and is so totally consistent feminism besides, because shut up.
No no no! Like Dahlgren said (see quote at 20:27), the fact that there’s no evidence that Obama is going to swing to the extreme left proves that Obama is going to swing to the extreme left. By the same token, Obama’s having “already thrown the Democratic Party’s hard-left contingents under the bus” absolutely proves that he’s part of the hard-left contingent. And when Obama winds up being about as radical as Eisenhower, then that will triple totally absolutely prove that he’s really a stump-humping anarcho-maniac hallucinogenic Maximalist berserko.
He’ll just do all his evil left-wing stuff on the astral plane where you can’t see it.
MzNicky, Jennifer, Candy vs TGW
…what more can we say?
Indeed, I hold my commercial experience to have been my most important field of education, divinely prepared to fit me to be a competent translator of the Bible
So, he translates ancient languages? Commercially? And still can’t coherently write in English?
I have many favourite surreal PUMA moments, including Obama is CIA and this email that is being discussed satirically by snopes proves it. Although there was a point I was reading PUMAPAC and they were consulting astrologers on how Hillary would end up taking the oath of office on January which was equally awesome.
..you’re a bit premature in your ejaculation
What that enema nozzle fails to mention about making $35k in 1960, is that the tax rate for $32-38k was 65%. If you’re going to piss and moan about a rate that is half of that, and wail like a stuck pig at a three percent increase, it might be best to avoid making parallels with anything in the Eisenhower era, when the top rate was 91%.
He’ll just do all his evil left-wing stuff on the astral plane
… All you will see is the chemtrail from the astral plane as it flies overhead.
amusing = I’ve got nothing
http://www.americandcnt.blogspot.com/
I read that as “american cunt” when I first saw it.
Here all along I thought you’d won, and instead your Wise Master Obama is installing Clintonites. This is very amusing.
Long as he keeps the shmendricks that make up the Bush/Palin/McCain wing of the GOP out of there, I personally could care less. Hell, compared to anything we’ve had since at least LBJ, Clinton’s the closest the White House has had that was almost worth the oil it would’ve taken him to boil him in hell. McCain/Palin would have been disasterous at best, and the Clintonites are at least capable, instead of being the incompetent, incurious. mendacious, greedy pinheads and bullies that ran the show for the past 8 years. Jesus, give me the bland corporate-friendly centrism of the Clinton years over the My Penis Is So Not Tiny/Brown People Suck/FAGGGOTTTSSS! idiocy of Bush/McCain/Palin/etc. and so forth.
Hey there “The Tr-oaf”; I thought you said we’d be agonizing because McSame would win the election. Who would McSame’s SoS have been, Lieberman? Lindsey Graham? Now you think we’re agonizing because some “eight years of peace and prosperity” playas are re-running the show? Don’t you have an appointment to play Leisure Suit Larry, you miserable piece of shit?
I mean, really. I’ve seen this sputtered by wingnut blockheads all week, and it boggles my mind. After eight years of lies over Iraq, needless deaths, a military stretched all to hell and gone, a crumbling infrastructure, Katrina, Enron, we treat the entire world like we’re a beer-drunk redneck threatening to beat his kids in the Wal-Mart parking lot, the erosion of checks & balances, an out-of-control Executive branch, states flat broke if they’re lucky, sky-rocketting debt, the goddamn spy plane in China, attempts to change the friggin’ Constitution so’s it can deny rights to a specific group of people, upticks in out-in-the-open bigotry and homophobia, and fucking John Fucking Ashcroft you really think I’m gonna be rending my garments because the people who gave us the ’90s and actually act like the give a fuck about people other than the rich are gonna be making decisions instead of the fucking Bush Administration?
Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ. What kind of fool are you.
Out of all the snarky comments I could say about this post, the only one that currently comes to mind is, “Damn, it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof.”
I really need some coffee now.
And I didn’t even like Clinton when he was office, the spineless corporate ass-kisser he was. Bubba lost me with the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bullshit with gays in the military. Fucked up welfare, draconian drug laws and NAFTA.
Still, the worst Clinton was better than the best Bush. Eight years of abject, total failure, and I’m supposed to be losing my shit because the people who balanced the budget make up a number of The First African-American President’s* cabinet, which I – along with anyone who actually knew what the fuck s/he was talking about, since the only folks who considered Obama’s “savior” status legit were them that weren’t gonna vote for him in the first place – knew from the get-go was gonna be Clintonesque centrist/moderate. Not all of us are that goddamn stupid, sheesh.
* I will never get tired of saying this.
If you were a progressive in the ’60s and ’70s, you were likely to think that Truman and Johnson were warmongering “corporate liberals” under the control of the “military-industrial complex”
If you were a progressive in the 60’s and 70’s, I hope you had better things to do than worry about the legacy of President Truman (April 12, 1945 – January 20, 1953).
We’ll have to invest in green, alternative sources of wingnuttery. They will be just as easy to mock, but will the mockery will be better for the environment, and could help roll back global warming.
Boy, that would have been much better if only i coulda previewed it.
Yep.
I’ve never expected anything more from Obama than just a reasonable amount of competence – but even just a reasonable amount of competence will be very satisfying after eight years of concentrated stupiditude.
Michael Lind is a dipshit Sensible Liberal who has been cooing with changey hope this entire election cycle about the possibility of Sensible Liberals (except Saint Rush has been using that word as an insult, so let’s not use it) being allowed to finally shed the terrible burden of civil rights and anti-war radicals.
He is to partisan politics what Tom Lindsay Friedman is to economics.
I think saying that the wingnuts misread him is unfair. The entire point of a good part of his article is ‘wah, teh scary progressives were against the war!!’.
Shit, I wish Obama woulda made Hillary the AG and told her that blood made the grass grow. You’d see some folks runnin’ then. Rush Limbaugh might’ve blown up right on the air.
One of Lind’s prior articles discussed how the big reason liberals foundered in 2004 is that we were the McGovern party running against the Nixon party.
Everything about his arguments and vocabulary screams ‘Republican’, including the fact that he projects current partisan dong-waggling onto the past as a handy personal rubric. Code Pink’s shameful radicalism kept MacArthur from stopping the yellow Reds.
Incidentally, Newsmeat returns two results for Michael Lind, each of whom gave a couple hundred dollars to Republican candidates (the CA one to a House candidate, the MN one to Bush-Cheney ’04).
I’m sure there are plenty of Michael Linds out there, but I wouldn’t exactly be surprised.
So, he translates ancient languages? Commercially? And still can’t coherently write in English?
The passage reads like Dahlgren’s pitch to a publisher. “You should pay me a large advance to finish my book (working title: Business Secrets of the New Testament: Jesus is my CEO) because my experience in commerce uniquely qualifies me to see the Bible’s central message of hard-headed unsentimental realism — a message missed by all previous commentators, blinkered as they were by their liberal-humanist belief that human beings could improve themselves and transcend selfishness. Later chapters in the book will include an exegesis on Acts of the Apostles, revealing the advice concealed therein for conducting a leveraged take-over, and a full list of companies whose shares, in Christ’s opinion, are trading below their actual value.”
Soon, Obama is going to jump under the bus *himself*. Does anyone ever get *on* the bus, where is it going (in circles?), who is driving it?
Your precious black Jesus, President George Willard Bush, is drinkin again:
http://www.dependablerenegade.com/dependable_renegade/2008/11/screw-it-ahm-of.html
We get the better end of the deal?
It is sad at TGW. So predictable and no sparks or laughs.
Since their love-fest with Palin, now after a minute there, I mutter–“Hell, you would defend and vote for Phyllis Schlafly if she had been on the ticket!”–and off I click.
But here, I (mostly) enjoy what someone called adolescent, bathroom humor since it was verboten at my house when I was a teen.
JOHN MCCAIN
Only tangentially related, but my single favorite thing about 2008 was Romney. He was an unremarkable New England republican (e.g. moderate by Dem standards, an anachronism in the GOP), and yet because he gabbered on and on more than anyone else about pink welfare morning in the Evil Empire, people like Malkin and Acey wept and rent their garments when he dropped out of the race.
When I say ‘Michael Moore could win the conservative vote by saying ‘Reagan’ often enough’, I am only half-joking.
Yes, Heaven forfend Obama find people who worked for the last Democratic Presiden
I don’t know if you can get on the bus, but you can miss the bus. It happened to poor Adolf.
I was going to get on the bus — I had the correct fare ready and everything — but it turned out to be a bandwagon.
I was standing at the goddam bus stop.
Fucking bus went right by.
Never slowed down.
But now that they’ve extended unemployment benefits for like, sixty years, I didn’t wanna go to that job interview anyway.
mikey
What makes The Truth’s current mantra even more pathetic is the fact that the George W. Bush administration had many of the same players as the George H. W. Bush administration, and as uninspired as Bush the Elder’s tenure was, it was Camelot compared to the complete clusterfuck of his idiot son’s reign. It really matters who the person at the top – the decider, if you will – is. Having Clintonites in his administration does not mean that Obama’s presidency will be anything like Clinton’s; given our current circumstances, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Obama’s policies will be very different from Clinton’s. Even so, as several people have noticed, a Clinton Third Term beats a Bush Third Term like a fucking drum.
Finally. Josh Marshall asks the IMPORTANT questions:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/245556.php
mikey
This.
Now that would be funny. Sort of a shame, at times, that Dems aren’t as vindictive as the Pubs.
Shit, I wish Obama woulda made Hillary the AG and told her that blood made the grass grow.
This is the kind of left-handed toss that makes me hope that I can learn to write well before I die.
Matt T. can say in two dozen words what I can’t say in a thousand.
Rock on, Matt!
mikey
President Nogomuch Maribeth’s Dama Gazelle Risotto
Ingredients:
1 dama gazelle
1 ounce La Vache Qui Rit, leftwardly dressed
7 jiggers controversial aged Gouda
5 tablespoons pagan glowlight danio skull
1 portion coffee
1 teaspoon unsweeted chocolate
Grinningly grease a cookie sheet. Cream the dama gazelle with a small fork. Mix the La Vache Qui Rit with the aged Gouda over high heat in a wok. Stuff the resulting potion into the dama gazelle. Find some low-fat milk and drink it. Glaze the glowlight danio skull, coffee, and the unsweeted chocolate levelly. Heap everything together evocatively. Leave raw but pretend it’s cooked. Serves 5 appreciative individuals with scary stomachs.
It’s funny.
I’ve always thought of myself as an abnormal sea toad.
mikey
Oh, I forgot: because I mentioned Malkin (fuck you, me) I am required by law to link you to a Google search for ‘obama “thug thizzle”‘.
mikey: What’s extra-funny is, I’ve always thought of myself as 7 jiggers of controversial aged Gouda! Go figure.
Soon, Obama is going to jump under the bus *himself*. Does anyone ever get *on* the bus, where is it going (in circles?), who is driving it?
Hey man, all I remember is you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.
..you might be on the “short bus”
Never get off the bus. Absolutely Goddamn right. Unless you’re going all the way.
What?
I’ve always thought of myself as Magritte during his La Vache Qui Rit period.
Thanksgiving.
Know what I’m thankful for?
I’ll tellya.
I’m thankful that it’s nigh on to impossible to fuck up Pad Thai.
Always delicious. Always.
Yay!
mikey
…an unexpectedly crude, playful, and intentionally “bad” manner
sounds about right
So wait…Bush’s sexond term is really Clinton’s third term?
Can I have some of whatever The Truth is having?
(as always, remember The Tooth!)
Smut. Dood.
Bunnies??? Fucking Bunnies playing DRUMS?
Ok, look. You’ve got a certain reputation here. It is your responsibility to uphold your image and your rep.
You are the source of disturbing images of pagan rites, birds’ nests full of dicks and death meted out for inappropriate supernatural behavior.
There is no room for fucking bunnies unless they are eating virgin flesh.
I hope we’re clear…
mikey
La Vache Qui Rit?
Is that French for Disapproving Rabbits?
Well, to be fair, Open Secrets lists three donations by someone named Michael Lind, including the Bush-Cheney donation.
That one comes from the apparent owner of Lind Crop Service & Sales in East Grand Forks, MN, though – and Washington think tanks being what they are, I’m dubious that he got a plum spot at the New America Foundation in ’01, started up the crop service in ’04 and went back to NAF a year or two later.
I’m more interested in the idea that the same guy donated to Amy Klobuchar two years after donating to Bush.
I missed the bus into town, but I found a ride on a turnip cart.
The bus you throw people under, patiently waiting for its next victim.
On, under, behind, missed the bus . . . When I hear any of those phrases about buses, I think of Ken Kesey and his “Magic Bus” going across the country. It was a serious question for followers: Where you on the bus or off the bus (i.e., a Merry Prankster painted in Day-Glo, or not)? Back when drugs could still be cool, and being a freak really meant something, dammit. Of course, the question was finally answered when busing was enforced.
La Vache Qui Rit?
Those who say they remember 4:26 weren’t really there and are condemned to repeat it.
If someone feels like Obama the Moderate is good frame I’m not going to throw darts at it, but GWB is nationalizing banks. This ain’t Clinton. We are in waters last charted during the great depression that put Clinton-era supply-sideism into the drink for about fifty years.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a guy making more than 250,000 a year to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Render unto Caesar, bitches!
Ceci n’est pas une vache..
If someone feels like Obama the Moderate is good frame I’m not going to throw darts at it, but GWB is nationalizing banks. This ain’t Clinton. We are in waters last charted during the great depression that put Clinton-era supply-sideism into the drink for about fifty years.
So Bush’s Second Term is ending like Henry Wallace’s First Term would have?
* Some photos hiked from the estimable Zombie.
By the way, Mr. Zombie would like you all to know that the war in Iraq is over and we won, because he says so:
http://www.zombietime.com/vi_day/
I especially like the “RIP” after John F.Kennedy. I’m sure there are a few people out who were unaware of the untimely death of the former President.
“Overton Defenestration” as a phrase, is, mindblowing. It says lets break this fucker (the current political paradigm) by throwing someone (the republicans, i guess) out of the political process.
That’s way too analytical. Needless to say, any use of defenestration kicks ass.
Honi Soit La Vache Qui Rit
As sung by John Cale.
The Great Pacific Surge situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.
My favorite propaganda phrase/euphemism for slavery ever!
Hontou, sora wa ore no pointo ni naka zo.
fucking John Fucking Ashcroft
Wow, that reminds me: Will those bits of marble or stone or whatever it was that once embarrassed Hizzoner now be uncovered? Perhaps this is the best test of whether the U.S. will remain center right or outer wrong or whatever.
Oh, willya just look at the time. Gotta go catch my bus.
you were tricked into dividing yourselves into “liberals” and “conservatives”. this is all part of a big show, meant to distract you from rational thought.
national politics is a television show. it doesn’t really matter if “knight rider” wins or “the a team” wins, because ultimately it’s the network that wins. your job is to absorb messages from the two sanctioned parties and respond narrowly within the mandated framework.
some of you will be loyal to “tide” and others will be loyal to “gain” but as long as you are all loyal to the system that produces sanctioned brands, you will do nothing to upset the system which extracts wealth from you, and deposits wealth into the hands of a few whose names you’ll never know.
Well, all us imperialist nations have our little http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731“>little secrets, yes?
When you take that bus, you get there.
Michael Lind defected from the conservatives in the mid 1990s
it doesn’t really matter if “knight rider” wins or “the a team” wins, because ultimately it’s the network that wins.
Oh yeah? Well fuck you you fucking motherfucker! Like some lame-o popping off with “I pity da fool!” could ever beat a TALKING CAR!
AS IF!!!
Oh, and also, a new non-political Get Your War On that’s still funny as hell.
http://www.correntewire.com/content/lets-brush-our-german
Boycott this racist website. Post this link on sites in which this site is blogrolled; the “commentary” is vile and pathetic. These people are scum.
Hey if he had published that today it might be relevant but since its from May it’s just pathetic.
Like some lame-o popping off with “I pity da fool!” could ever beat a TALKING CAR!
Some LIEbral is too young to have ever viewed “My Mother the Car” on vintage TV.
Oh man, don’t pick on my A-Team. I still love that fucking show, even if Murdock is now a right-wing radio host with frequent guest spots by fellow wingnut Dirk Benedict. I just try to remember the good days.
By “are” we mean the same as Douglas means above: that the comparison would bother them, therefore we are jauntily asserting it by pretending to be stupid.
This just makes me want to come up with more examples of “are” myself, or better yet, see them written here by you fine folks (Truth exempted).
Has it ever occurred to anyone how many billboards there are on the highway written by God? More than you think…
I always admired the A-Team’s ratio of explosions to people getting hurt (as the number of explosions approaches infinity, the number of people hurt remains at zero).
Knight Rider, on the other hand, had a talking car…and David Hasselhof. Not necessarily a good thing, imho.
*sniffle*
Rick Astley @ 9:42:
Well hell son, any ol’ poli-sci or journalism grad student knows that. We didn’t make up the rulez, we’s just figurin’ out how to “win” by them. When the ol’ paradigm shifts we’ll be happy to see where it sets itself down. From the looks of things, that could actually be in a better place next time.
Dammit! That was moi.
Also, has anyone here ever suggested that WordPress should get fucked?
Eh, I always saw B.A. (Mr. T) and The Van as one entity, so they sort of had a talking car. One that couldn’t act.
Yep, I love those explosions, they only seem to disable the ability to shoot back at the Team. No maiming or killing, but they certainly can’t shoot back anymore. The entire A-Team arsenal was set on “stun” somehow.
The Truth said,
November 24, 2008 at 0:54
I’m enjoying Clinton’s third term, liberals. Are you?
Hello, Liar.
Also, has anyone here ever suggested that WordPress should get fucked?
I did buy it a bustier and some Jimmy Choos, but I don’t think it took the hint.
In 1962, my parents bought a new three-bedroom concrete-block house on a quarter-acre suburban lot in Pinellas County, Florida for $12,900. You can buy two middle-class houses outright out of one year’s salary? You’re rich.
My parents were offered a three story brownstone on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for $10,000 in 1960.
I still, STILL, can’t believe they didn’t snap it up…dad was a carpenter and made fairly nice coin even back then. Thing would be worth something like $20 mill now.
Soon, Obama is going to jump under the bus *himself*. Does anyone ever get *on* the bus, where is it going (in circles?), who is driving it?
JOHN MCCAIN
Ah, the Straight Circle Express…
We’ll have to invest in green, alternative sources of wingnuttery. They will be just as easy to mock, but will the mockery will be better for the environment, and could help roll back global warming.
I’ved already set up a shell corporation to mine for geothermal hot air sources.
actor 212,
If only for all the might-have-beens. While your dad would have dwarfed my fortune, I had a chance to buy a pristine ’66 Corvette, 427, side pipes and knockoffs for $3950 in 1978. I was into restoring cars as a teenager and could have gone to town making it into something that looked like off the showroom. There were some others, too (a Ferrari 250 GT) that I could have swung getting, but i always passed for the one reason – insurance. They didn’t get that I wanted to restore them and not drive the shit outta them and get mangled. When you’re 18, they NEVER believe you. There were dozens of others, too. The black Dodge Charger Daytona, the silver Lotus Europa or the yellow Elan. The GT40 which needed TLC. Ah, well.
mikey:
The Femmes feel your pain:
Papa Zita,
A few friends in the neighborhood pooled their resources in the late 70s and bought a cherry red 1964 Mustang and restored it.
Cost them $500 (pretty serious coin for a couple of 17 year olds but it was 15 years old or so). They rented a garage space (dad was a….an influential Italian businessman) and spent about a year restoring it. I can’t recall what they ended up getting for it when they (eventually) sold it, but I’m pretty sure it was in the five figure range.
Damn, if that wasn’t one of the finest cars I was ever allowed to breathe on…
Speakin’a influential Italian businessmen, my dad to this day can’t watch Casino – it’s just a long parade of people he knew growing up murdering each other under fake names.
Good movie, though.
Alec,
Youse frum dis areea?
Context – it can really grab you by the short-hairs.
I’ve thus seen about 90% inflation in my lifetime so far.
Now I reckon if the economy keeps getting curbstomped long & hard enough, I could wind up seeing more than 90% inflation per day.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I know it’s not your argument, but Jesus, are we really supposed to think the American New Left were so awful because they “romanticized” Ho Chi Minh? I fail to see who was actually hurt by this romanticizing, whereas it’s all too easy to see who was hurt by the mainstream oh so moderate Democrats and Republicans who devastated south east Asia.
Vegas, baby.
The end of the movie is exactly right – it’s just Disneyland with tits these days – but when my parents were growing up, you couldn’t take a piss without the Casa Nostra hearing about it. And my granddad worked in the damn casinos.
Between that and the fact that his father-in-law was evidently a Company man, the family history is more cover story than history. (It’s a proud tradition going back as far as von Gosick at the beginning of the 19th century, who ostensibly came here after having denied a commission in the Russian Army and having his family killed, but I like to think of him as a draft dodger with delusions of grandeur.)
Well, yes. In a prior article I deigned to tear the shit out of, Lind whined about how our attachment to civil rights legislation and suggested we were ‘the McGovern party’ – the suggestion being that Nixon won the 1968 election not on promises to end the war and keep an increasingly violent elite stable but because of busing.
I openly suspected that he was a trojan horse then – and if he isn’t, he’s done a remarkably shitty job of ‘converting’.
Alec,
K, cuz I’m from back where the bosses is.
Woohoo! I’m famous. Curiously, I’ve gotten far more click-throughs from your quote here of Donald’s post than from Donald’s post itself. Why, one would almost suspect that Donald’s readership isn’t quite as significant as that of Sadly No’s. But of course, the truth must be that his readers are too savvy to bother reading a radical nihilist like me.
And it should be noted that the link he gave of me referring to him as a “wingnut” does not actually contain that word; which I now consider to be a huge oversight on my part. And while he doesn’t mention it, one of his favorite terms for me is a “slimy Texas-dragged polecat,” for reasons that entirely escape me. I suspect he includes the Texas part because it drives him bonkers that he lives in liberal California, while I’m a true denizen of the greatest state in the country. I am always amazed that anyone actually hired him to teach anybody, and am just glad he wasn’t hired to teach impressionable youths.
But that guy’s been stalking me ever since I destroyed him in our first online encounter, and he continues reading my site regularly, without ever finding anything to he can actually find wrong with what I write. And he’s still trying to win a debate we had last spring over the meaning of the word “obvious,” as he insists that I used it incorrectly in a trivial part of a post I wrote about Reverend Wright. Our first debate was on whether or not Bush’s statements about his own feelings can be used as indisputable proof about Bush’s motives for war; needless to say, he was on the side of indisputable proof. I truly feel sorry for that man’s students.
he continues reading my site regularly, without ever finding anything to he can actually find wrong with what I write.
Not to be a grammarfascist, but I think I’ve found something. ; )
RobW – Doh! You got me there.
Actually, Donald DOES find grammatical errors, though they’re usually pretty weak. Like the time he attacked me for writing “commonsense” instead of “common sense.” Yeah, it’s that bad. It took about four comments before I could convince him it wasn’t a mistake. But to be honest, I truly enjoy debating Donald Douglas, in the same way my cat enjoys debating lizards in my backyard. But he now refuses to debate me until I agree that my use of the word “obvious” was a logical fallacy. Needless to say, we don’t really debate much anymore, though he still insults me at his blog for being a radical nihilist leftist.
I’m a true denizen of the greatest state in the country
“Denizen” est le mot juste.
Not “citizen”. “Denizen”. How apt.