Soft bigotry of low expectations and so forth
Richard Cohen writes today:
Last month, no American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Last month, the unemployment rate dipped a bit, the stock market ended the year up, the financial system did not crater, Detroit’s Big Three began to get a pulse — and yet a consensus started to form that Barack Obama, who is either responsible for or merely presided over all this good stuff, is a failure.
On the one hand, I see where Cohen is coming from. The fact that Obama is not George W. Bush is indeed a welcome relief for me.
But on the other hand, as I’ll note in a forthcoming op-ed written for the Commonweal Institute, George W. Bush was really a Haley’s Comet type of shitty president, the sort that can only come around once every 80 years lest the country completely sink into oblivion. (Previous Haley’s presidents are James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. As bad as Nixon was ethically, he didn’t leave his successor with a depression or a civil war — or, in Bush’s case, the worst recession since the 1930s and TWO unfinished wars.)
I think Bush has diminished our expectations of the presidency far too much. The president of the United States isn’t supposed to bog the country down in an endless series of foreign conflicts. He isn’t supposed to allow the economy to completely collapse. That Bush managed to accomplish both of these things during his glorious eight-year run is a testament of the man’s unmatched ability to suck at everything.
So yes, I think that while we can thank Allah that Bush is no longer president, we should hold Obama to some higher standards, particularly on his handling of Wall Street. Because otherwise, there won’t be “great” presidents anymore. There will simply be presidents who manage to not get us all killed.
Brad,
Most presidents hew towards average.
Cut the nice man a break.
Holy fuck, Richard Cohen has uncovered a gleaming nugget.
I…um…er…speechless.
PENIS.
Holy fuck, Richard Cohen has uncovered a gleaming nugget.
Even a blind squirrel stumbles over an acorn occasionally.
I just heard a CNN reporter state as fact that the president’s number one job is to protect the lives of the American people. Bullshit. The president’s number one job is to protect the Constitution followed by executing the laws, (you know, the laws that are supposed to apply to everyone without excluding a special class of people who are above the law, nor allowed to obstruct justice under the disguise of national security.) When Libby’s sentence was commuted it was done to obstruct justice and silence a witness, not because he was a “good public servant.” When Saddam Hussein was murdered by proxy, it was not to carry out justice, it was to silence a witness. The need for the bailout was big business flexing its muscles and throwing a temper tantrum, because Obama interrupted their coup with the help of the republicans to overthrow our democratic republic. When Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush were not tried for treason, it was because the system is so corrupt that good intentions have no power. When those who ordered or followed orders to torture were given immunity from prosecution our leaders flushed justice and morality down the toilet. The bin has been taken over by the lunatics who follow the fascists, because the concept of mental health is politically incorrect..
” . . . and yet a consensus started to form that Barack Obama, who is either responsible for or merely presided over all this good stuff, is a failure.”
A Villager Concensus is not a concensus.
Fuck Cokie the Cow, too.
I sort of agree and disagree with you. Don’t you think it takes a pretty decent president to halt the slide caused by the spectacularly shitty one? I do. I don’t think just anyone who was marginally competent could’ve walked in there and prevented the collapse. Just my 2¢.
“At least he’s not as bad as Bush was, or as McCain/Palin would have been” is indeed a low bar, but it really is the only one that matters.
Face it, any presidential candidate that met with 100% approval from true lefties like the sadlynaughts would have precisely 0% chance of winning the primaries, much less the general election.
We can recognize the good Obama has done, support the good he is trying to do, and criticize the good he has failed or will fail to accomplish, but what we cannot do is give up on him, and by extension the Democrats, because if we do that, we can guarandamntee that we will give the Republicans another chance to finish destroying the country.
It’s a bitch to settle for the lesser of two evils, but the alternative is to accept the greater of the two.
re: Nixon
Not only was he not nearly as shitty a President as W, by today’s standards he’d be considered a fucking Social Democrat (EPA, Sesame Street, etc.)
Cokie’s finest hour was still her post-VP debate mocking of Biden for (correctly) referring to Bosnian Muslims as “Bosniacs”. There really ought to be an award for trying to find something dumb/ill-advised that Joe Biden said and failing miserably.
Not only was he not nearly as shitty a President as W, by today’s standards he’d be considered a fucking Social Democrat (EPA, Sesame Street, etc.)
Milton Friedman called him the most socialist president in 20th century.
We’d always fade into Bolivia, not oblivion – but nice try!
by today’s standards he’d be considered a fucking Social Democrat (EPA, Sesame Street, etc.)
Which does say something about today’s standards.
Nixon was the last Republican intellectual.
Nothing but low cortex function Military-Industrial Pimps ever since.
There will simply be presidents who manage to not get us all killed. The president of the United States isn’t supposed to bog the country down in an endless series of foreign conflicts. He isn’t supposed to allow the economy to completely collapse.
You low expectation havin’ mofo’.
/chrisrock
I keep hoping that Obama is building political momentum. As I understand it the GOP is not going to retake the house. That really is extraordinary. That the opposition party in an off year with as much help as they got from the media, still can’t win back a majority in the house, well… that says a great deal.
Yes, I am disappointed in Obama for not going Robespierre on the plutocrats that got us into this mess and health care reform seems destined to suck donkey nuts. BUT he did inherit a massive shit pile from W and is at least making some effort to dig us out. Alas for his media approval, that means moving around a lot of shit. The courtier class just prefers that it pile up secure in the knowledge that THEY won’t be the ones it falls on (which seems a reasonable assumption given that they remain employed despite epic levels of incompetence that would result in termination in any other job on Earth).
That’d be Halley’s Comet. Yeah, sorry to be a pedantic dick, but you did it twice.
I assumed it was a comet belonging to actor Jackie Earle Haley. In that case, I was going to argue that Nixon did fit the bill, since “The Bad News Bears” came out around the same time.
O/T: Michael Steele redeemed from RINOdom, finally embraces core GOP values:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/05/steele-injun/
Oh keerist do we have to go all Bismarckian on you again? There are a few arrows to aimed at Obama but by and large they would properly be Nerf-tipped.
Expectations. Yeah, expectations. It’s not that Bush set such a low bar. He accomplished much of what he set out to do – kill Saddam, enrich his pals, ignore/subvert most existing social and environmental legislation. And so on. And so forth. Trouble is, he did it largely illegally. Unilaterally. So now we (well, you, anyway) expect the Pres. to wave some magic fucking wand, to just change everything, just like that.
Bush left us in the middle of such a shit storm that any improvement, no matter how incremental, is substantial.
We can’t lambast President Obama for failing to make the world into wine and roses when all he was handed was shit on a shingle. The fact that we are now beginning to clean shit off of a higher quality shingle means that we’re getting somewhere.
Oh, yeah. Where it is easy to break shit, it’s a helluva lot harder to fix it. Especially when you try to hew close to the rules.
to wave some magic fucking wand, to just change everything, just like that.
That’s how it got that way.
“Cokie’s finest hour was still her post-VP debate mocking of Biden for (correctly) referring to Bosnian Muslims as “Bosniacs”. There really ought to be an award for trying to find something dumb/ill-advised that Joe Biden said and failing miserably.”
Gawd, yes. I’m overjoyed to see that someone else was as appalled by that as I was. The term “bosniak” is importantly different from “Bosnian Muslim” in that the former refers to an ethnic group and the latter to a religious group. The groupings Serbian/Orthodox, Croatian/Catholic, and Bosniak/Muslim coincide almost uniformly, but there are exceptions, and in any rate it is important to keep distinct issues distinct. Biden correctly did this. Rather than think “Hmmm,,,, Biden was involved in extensive negotiations with these groups, and so perhaps he has a clue what he is talking about.” she instead figured “I’m a villager and even though I haven’t spent as much as five seconds studying these issues, I must know more. Bosniaks – haw, haw.”
.
Damn, I’m getting angry again just thinking about it. What a gasbag that woman is.
Rather than think “Hmmm,,,, Biden was involved in extensive negotiations with these groups, and so perhaps he has a clue what he is talking about.” she instead figured “I’m a villager and even though I haven’t spent as much as five seconds studying these issues, I must know more. Bosniaks – haw, haw.”
Well, you know, McCain was the foreign policy expert during the campaign, not Biden. *eyeroll*
I can’t vote against Cokie’s “Bosniac” moment but I also want to nominate her decree that Obama was making a big political mistake with his vacation because “Hawaii is some foreign exotic place.”
I like my Presidents to be ELITE, intellectually curious, smart, funny educated by the top schools,everything you’d want to find in any human being.
I guess I’ll never get to be a TeaBagger now.
While two wars and the subprime led meltdown in the economy have eaten into almost all of what the President can do with his agenda, he has already moved to do one momentous thing and that is health care reform. If you measure the decline in personal income over the Bush presidency then he is one of the worst, but most of that loss was caused by the increase in health care costs. And while Bush let that problem escalate out of control during his presidency, I don’t think you’d say that health care reform is his mess we are cleaning up as much as it looks like Obama is leading a sweeping change. HCR may be far more compromised than it really needed to be. It certainly doesn’t do enough to contain cost as it should, but when it passes, it will be still one of the most important reforms in a long time. On the order of creating Medicare, the ’86 tax reform(RIP), etc. I just don’t see where this is measured by low expectations. It’s certainly not a case of Obama just going along trying to keep the country on an even keel by tinkering around with the same old policies. What exactly are the normal expectations of what can be done in a year’s time?
That’d be Halley’s Comet. Yeah, sorry to be a pedantic dick, but you did it twice.
Bill Haley, douchenozzle 🙂
Um, Obama is disentangling us from two disastrous mis-managed wars, is trying to pull us out of a near Depression, has the respect and attention of our allies, and is about to sign the most important (if imperfect) piece of social legislation in two generations. He has been on the job for less than a year.
Yeah, sounds like a fucking failure to me.
The tricky thing about Obama is all the reasons we have to love him are also reasons to hate him. He’s cool headed and deliberative, so he isn’t going to walk up to Lieberman and crush his balls while threatening his grandchildren. He has an instinct for consensus building, so we will never get our pinko priorities fulfilled. He respects the Constitution, so we have Congress writing legislation and not the First Lady or Howard Dean. Etc, etc.
I guess I expected too much from Obama when I expected him to, you know, keep pushing for the public option which he campaigned on rather than abandoning it in July for an already-reneged-on PhRMA deal. Then again, Harry Reid is more useless than a sock filled with rotten horse ejaculate and the Imperial Senate is filled with corrupt attention whores so I should probably just be impressed that the Senate accomplished anything at all rather than just stuff their schedule with opiate-fueled blood orgies and circle jerks.
“Hawaii is some foreign exotic place.”
Yeah that one’s so obviously stupid that it still sets my teeth on edge. The Bosniac one’s quite gratuitously stupid but in a much more insidery baseball way.
Oh keerist do we have to go all Bismarckian on you again
He responds much better if you go all BizMarkie on him.
And Obama doesn’t come over to my house every night and bake me muffins, either!
TOTAL PREZ’DNTL FAIL.
walk up to Lieberman and crush his balls while threatening his grandchildren
Ideas, newsletter &c.
We need a Democratic Karl Rove.
Surprisingly, I thought we had that in Fuckin’ Rahm Emanuel
Well, Rove has the Villager reputation for being a genius. Which is far more important than anything he actually says or does (Mission Accomplished anyone?)
There is nothing more annoying than trying to win over people who are cognitively incapable of being won over. Remember when the stock market proved that Obama was a terrible president? Well, no one’s talking about that any more. Then the health care bill was going to be his downfall. Like it or not, the fucking thing will pass, in some mangled, deformed shape. Now, teh Underpants Bomber has made him Weak On Terror, and if he doesn’t bomb Yemen into dust it means he hates America and is a secret Muslim and wolverines. It’s not a question of policy. These people will criticize Obama on everything, because doing so is good for their interests, and that’s that.
We need a Democratic Karl Rove.
Surprisingly, I thought we had that in Fuckin’ Rahm Emanuel
Well, technically he is. KR wasn’t all that concerned/good at pushing through legislation that was meaningful to the base, and the Repub base is placated by things like flag burning amendments anyway, when we want complicated shit like robust PO’s.
Apparently if we just set our sights lower we’d be happier…
Apparently if we just set our sights lower we’d be happier…
Ponies. I want my fucking pony!
These people will criticize Obama on everything, because doing so is good for their interests, and that’s that.
Would we have acted any differently if McCain won?
Not that you aren’t right, and not that they aren’t the biggest fucking passel of hypocrites since Captain Reynaud in Casablanca, and oh by the way, whatever happened to “war presidencies”?… but would we?
So did Mona Charen. So congrats, Cokie, you’re in line with D-list wingnuts.
So we’ve gone from wanting our Presidents to be some of the best of the best, leaders capable of moving an entire nation to action, to treating them like the semi-retarded guy you put on the late shift, hoping not that he restocks the shelves and maybe increases sales in some way, but that he doesn’t play with some matches and burn the whole place down by morning?
Heckuva legacy, Bushie!
It does, however, explain why some think Palin is qualified … even if she would, in reality, steal the money out of the register, load up her car with pints of Evan Williams and McCormick gin, burn the place down, and then blame it on the black guy who walked by earlier that evening.
The worst thing about NPR–worse than Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, worse than This American Life trying to squeeze one more iota of ratings out of David Sedaris, worse even than Terry Gross–is that they run the Cokester on, of all the times, Monday morning. It does not make getting out of bed any easier, tell you what.
Mark, you get the President you deserve. We can “want” all we want to, but a quick look at Presidents just in the past 100 years alone reveal we end up disappointed far more often than gratified.
they run the Cokester on, of all the times, Monday morning.
Dear God, that’s even worse than running A Prairie Home Companion TWICE in one weekend!
How did I miss this on “wait, wait’s” website? Photos Of TV
Remember when criticizing the C.I.C. in a time of WAR! was treason? Ah good times.
George W. Bush was really a Haley’s Comet type of shitty president, the sort that can only come around once every 80 years lest the country completely sink into oblivion.
Sadly, no.
I think a lot of people drastically misunderestimate just how heinous Ronald “Mr. Abwehr Goes To Washington” Reagan was – pointlessly crash-diving from #1 creditor to #1 debtor isn’t a minor blip, & neither is arming & training the pseudo-Muslim nutjobs in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Saudi Arabia that are now providing the (warned-of & shrugged-off) blowback America has “enjoyed” ever since … & neither is setting up a treasonous secret cabal to subvert the government (& then getting off scot-free for doing so).
That the world later threw him a mulligan like Gorbachev does little to cancel out the abysmal change of course – straight into a sewage ditch – that Reagan executed, boasting while doing so that the worse he screwed America’s government up, the better it was for his neocon agenda. Even a fratboy like Bush balked at the idea of overtly & intentionally wrecking everything in his path – whereas Reagan ENJOYED doing just that.
Reagan’s reaction to 9/11 likely would’ve been to assume Russia did it, & to Let The Eagles Soar from every silo, sub & B-52 … not to go to his ranch & cut brush for months on end. Better to have a lazy imbecile with nuclear launch-codes than a zealous one.
It might be worth noting that Obama’s agenda dwarfs that of the last two presidents put together … & that he’s trying to put it in place amid the worst economy since the fashion of the times was an onion in one’s belt. Audacity of hope, indeed. He’s remarkably close to being right on schedule with it to boot – so it looks to me like you’re already getting some Magic Wand action there, kids.
Does any of the legitimate criticism of Obama come with a best-before date? If not, I’d say maybe an election year isn’t the perfect time to start getting overly huffy with the expectations & the righteous indignation (cf. Hamsher-Norquist Axis Of Butthurt), especially when you have a desperate opposition fapping to beat the band over faltering approval ratings for the current administration (& a pack of media hyenas playing up their “newly energized” base at every opportunity), who’ll gleefully jump on your critique to “prove” that liberals & conservatives alike hate Obama & want him & his party out of Washington ASAP.
here it is 1935 already and roosevelt didn’t create universal health care by fiat and nationalize the plutocracy
failure!
Well, Actor, I can’t bring myself to say no, if only to leave the possibility open. But this sort of talk leads to the kind of relativism that brings debate to a screeching halt. Being honest, fair, non-partisan, whatever word you want to use, it’s not about hating everybody equally, or passing an equal amount of judgment on people, or trying to politically position yourself in the absolute center. It’s about defining your principles, sticking to them, and judging politicians based on how they match up to them. I’d welcome any Republican ideas I thought were good or useful ones, but those haven’t been around for quite some time.
Dear God, that’s even worse than running A Prairie Home Companion TWICE in one weekend!
How is it that whenever I turn on NPR on the weekend, I *ALWAYS* hear Garrison Keillor croaking his way through that goddamn theme song?
As for “This American Life,” they should’ve hung it up after The Onion kicked their ass.
. I want my fucking pony!
I have absolutely nothing to say about that.
I have absolutely nothing to say about that.
Frankly, I’m shocked you don’t
C’mon folks – NPR aint what it could be but criminy, compared to everything else?
</dutiful_NPR-PBS_spouse>
I think Jim, as usual, has it right. I hate to use that sort of the-boogeyman-will-get-you logic when talking about how much criticism Obama should be getting from the left, but it’s depressingly true. If there’s too much infighting among liberals, Republicans will seize the opportunity, storm back into power, and these days of arguing whether the president is “liberal enough” will be a distant fantasy. I wish none of this were true, but here we are.
That looks nothing like D-KW’s mom.
Also, yeah, what’s with the NPR hate? Sure, it’s trite and musty at times, but I’ll take that over the brain-numbing filth that constitutes most of the media.
That’s cuz she’s here
N F S W!!!!!!
How is it that whenever I turn on NPR on the weekend, I *ALWAYS* hear Garrison Keillor croaking his way through that goddamn theme song?
I know, right? I know for a fact that it only plays twice a week, but I swear to GOD, it has to play about four times a day.
Not only was he not nearly as shitty a President as W, by today’s standards he’d be considered a fucking Social Democrat (EPA, Sesame Street, etc.)
He gets no credit from me for this. He was every as extreme as Sarah Palin or Rush or whomever you can name today in his personal views, but he operated in a dominant liberal political order which wouldn’t tolerate today’s antics, so he did what he had to in order to survive.
If he was around today, he’d be cheering on Pete Peterson’s commission to make old people eat cat food, and chuckling at tea baggers on the news carrying racist signs. Nixon taught the current movement conservatives everything they know about race baiting, stoking resentment and ratfucking. He’d be a proud godfather to see it all blossom like mushrooms in shit.
Everyone needs to read Hunter S. Thompson’s obit on nixon:
Ponies. I want my fucking pony!
Give me my sparkle pony or give me death!
That counts Obama out as a participant.
But Prarie Home Companion is merely an example of harsh programming techniques. But not to worry, NPR has heard your complaints and will act upon it immediately by running a Garrison Keillor marathon from now until some Republican administration cuts all our funding.
And I actually heart NPR. It’s really the only news media I consume that’s not on a computer, especially since we can’t pick up the PBS signal anymore.
I still hate A Prairie Home Companion, though.
NPR is a dutiful podcaster. You never have to listen to Keillor EVER if you want your NPR.
C’mon folks – NPR aint what it could be but criminy, compared to everything else?
The problem with NPR (and PBS) is that America radically underfunds them. The CPB gets about $400M a year to fund both orgs. Contrast that to the CBC which gets over $1B from Canada and the BBC which gets $5B in the UK.
Properly funded public broadcasters don’t need to beg shady foundations for money and be subject to their whims. The CPB is getting about 1/20th of what it should get, no fucking wonder quality of the programming suffers.
True, Reagan did bad things (Iran Contra, blaming nuns for getting raped and murdered in El Salvador, record # of officials indicted and convicted, arming Afgahn religious nuts, huge deficits) and he does receive undeserved credit for ending the cold war, but he did moderate his foreign policy in his 2nd term and he did accept Gorby’s overtures despite outrage from his right (look it up), he didn’t double down in Lebanon and gave up trying to dismantle the social safety net if only because he had to deal with a Democratic congress. Bush wins the golden turd award hands down. Reagan was in the bottom 5 in the past 100 years along with Hoover, Nixon and Wilson.
NPR is great in their apolitical stuff; they produce/distribute the most interesting stuff on the radio. Some of the affiliates like WNYC do great local coverage, and “On The Media” is generally quite good.
But the vast majority of their news/political coverage? Awful. Pretty much average by American media standards, which is abysmally pathetic. “Democracy Now” is a useful point of comparison.
Speaking of mom, here’s Jigme Khesar’s mother.
But not to worry, NPR has heard your complaints and will act upon it immediately by running a Garrison Keillor marathon from now until some Republican administration cuts all our funding.
There’s the problem in a nub. I don’t mind listening to both sides of an issue if both sides have an actual point to make. NPR tried to report the news, and unfortunately (or fortunately) facts have a liberal bias.
It wasn’t until Newt and his Congresshits decided that culture wars were worth fighting in order to control government-sponsored media (something we were fighting in every other fucking country on the planet, we should note) that NPR had to genuflect to the same moronic conservative “Ooooh, they don’t like us! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”mbulancing that corporate media ended up slaving to.
I know, right? I know for a fact that it only plays twice a week, but I swear to GOD, it has to play about four times a day.
The NPR affiliates must get it cheap or something, so they play it over and over again to fill space.
The alternative–that NPR is responding to demand because there are *that many* people who really really still want to listen to it–is just too depressing to contemplate. I can’t even come to grips with the number of people who applaud wildly when he launches into the Lake Wobegon bit. I keep hoping that it’s a bunch of rabid fans who just follow him around from place to place like Deadheads.
I like NPR–heck, I actually like Terry Gross and Fresh Air–but after listening to it on my commute every morning for three years, there’s a lot that’s staler than last century’s fruitcake.
why is it necessary to veer between ecstacy and despair? any president must convince a supermajority of 535 fractious congresspeople (not to mention the courts) to go along with him, the power of big money is very difficult to overcome, and the phrase “human nature” does not usually refer to something good
it is the duty of a citizen of a democratic country to criticise the government, but summary judgements are unproductive
But not to worry, NPR has heard your complaints and will act upon it immediately by running a Garrison Keillor marathon from now until some Republican administration cuts all our funding.
Heh. The only thing worse than their reporting on torture is their reporting on Israel. God fucking awful.
Nixon may have grudgingly accepted a liberal social order, but Reagan overturned it, and replaced it with something far more sinister. Whether you judge by results or intentions, Reagan will always be a worse president than Nixon.
But the vast majority of their news/political coverage? Awful.
Yeah, but having Cokie Roberts’ voice piped into my bedroom sure gets me out of bed quick.
Granted it’s to go find a baseball bat to tune the radio with but still…
NPR is a dutiful podcaster. You never have to listen to Keillor EVER if you want your NPR.
True, and I do like listening to Back Porch Music that way. I suppose I could set up my car radio so I could, like, podcast whatever I wanted, but I don’t know how to do that. Oh well.
The alternative–that NPR is responding to demand because there are *that many* people who really really still want to listen to it–is just too depressing to contemplate
Unfortunately, that’s the truth. And I thought it was just old people…oh, no…I have friends who listen to it. I had a 32-year-old boss who went to one of his shows. How is something simultaneously so bland, yet so obnoxious?
I keep hoping that it’s a bunch of rabid fans who just follow him around from place to place like Deadheads.
Sadly, No.
As I keep reminding my European friends, 6 in ten Americans believe that, at best, evolution is just a theory.
I can’t tell you how embarassing that is to me. I want to be from a smart country, dammit!
simultaneously so bland, yet so obnoxious
the pat boone of non-conservative non-totally-stupid media
I want to be from a smart country, dammit!
You go to cocktail parties with the country you have…
6 in ten Americans believe that, at best, evolution is just a theory
The phase that constantly springs to mind when I hear this statistic is “stultifyingly ignorant”.
Tragically Flip: Also, the good things under Nixon (EPA, EEOC, etc) were passed by a large majority Democratic congress and signed for political reasons. I don’t for a second beleive that Nixon cared a rats ass about the environment or employment descrimination or any domestic issues other than illegal spying on dirty hippies. He cared foremost about foreign policy and killing South East Asians. I think Vietnam and the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Watergate more than qualifies him as one of the all time worst presidents.
I meant ‘phrase’, but phase will do if the ignorance is only temporary.
Yeah, let’s all hate on NPR and PBS, and bitch about how lame their programming is, and how disappointing their air-personalities are, and make sure we don’t contribute or God forbid enroll as members so we can actually have a voice in our local stations’ programming, because they aren’t our ideal progressive, perfect outlets. Then when they all go tits-up and off the air, we can be sure to enjoy another wonderful Clearchannel outlet packed full of commercials and “classic” rock in tight 2-hour rotation.
That seems to be the strategy we are embracing in politics: make the perfect the enemy of the good, to ensure the continued domination of the mediocre and the awful.
Fuck you all: I LIKE A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, Car-Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Fresh Air, World Cafe, Whaddaya Know and, yes, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. That doesn’t mean I think all of the commentators and reporters–or even most of them–are paragons of journalistic excellence. But they are a damn sight better than what you get on corporate media.
“Reagan will always be a worse president than Nixon.”
You’re leaving out Vietnam and causing the Kmer Rouge to come to power in Cambodia: A slight oversight.
Willy, I wish it was, but that’s only slightly off from the historical trend for the past hundred years. It’s systemic, this ignorance.
The only bright spot in that study, as I recall, was that the percentage who believe the Bible is literal truth (e.g. 7 days, no dinosaurs) dropped from 60% to 51%. But that went hand in hand with the rise in the number of people who believe that evolution is sort of real, but that God designed a blueprint and has guided it along.
Also, Pinochet in Chile, also.
http://ithoughtobamawouldgetmelaid.com/index.php3
Again.
You go to cocktail parties with the country you have…
Part of the reason I grabbed dual citizenship was to blame someplace in Europe for me.
Jim:
Is Teh Awesome. It encapsulates perfectly what I think is wrong with that bullshit.
Also, I have to agree with your assessment of Worst Presidents. Reagan was a horrific train wreck, and it was Reaganism that shat all over our constitution, laws, economy, and institutions. I watched the world I grew up in gradually fall to pieces throughout the Reagan years and the aftermath, and I’ve never forgiven the worthless bastard for it. Just today I found myself on some website that had pictures of the fucking godawful Reagan Statue and a bunch of conservasheep baa-baaing their approval of it. I dropped a stinky turd of a comment in that the statue really should have been in the sleeping pose, since that’s what Reagan appeared to do through most of his Administration while other people made the important decisions and handed him a script to read while he pretended he was in charge.
I haven’t been back to see if eyeballs have exploded in outrage at my failure to cock-gobble the memory of the Second Worst President.
Bush is the worst. I’d say it goes Hoover then Reagan . . . but sometimes I think Reagan really deserves that second spot because of course without Reagan, we’d have never had such a useless fuckoff like Bush.
Tangential and inside hockey –
The Canuckistani version of Garrison Keillor is Stuart MacLean of the Vinyl Cafe – right down to the old-timey rumbling baritone . Gavin Crawford of This Hour Has 22 Minutes does an absolutely bang-on impersonation and it is gut-bustingly hilarious. Wish I could find a YouTubery or somesuch, but no luck so far. Anyways, wouldn’t make sense without the background anyways, also, too.
Long rambling story aside (I guess PHC has influenced me a bit) – what I’m suggesting is some sort of parody Keillor, where News From Lake Wobegon talks about all the folks with the two wetsuits they keep dragging out of the back room of the Chatterbox Cafe. LOL!
Republicans will seize the opportunity, storm back into power
I see this written as if it is a given, far too often. The GOP hasn’t resolved their teabagging civil war, and I’m can’t envision a sequence of events in which they resolve it prior to the mid-term elections. In other words, Doug Hoffman, motherfuckers.
Reagon had the earned income tax credit and amnesty for illegals. This would make him a RINO today among teabaggers.
Reagan will always be a worse president than Nixon.
I don’t know how to answer this. Without Nixon, there would be no Reagan. Opening his campaign in Philidaelphia, Mississipi and “welfare queens” is all right out of Nixon’s playbook. Certainly Reagan did implement more actual conservative policy, to disastrous results. Nixon planted the seeds though.
You people are cute. Listening to the radio! For fun! Incredible.
Part of the reason I grabbed dual citizenship was to blame someplace in Europe for me.
Well here’s hoping you latched onto someplace on the continent with all the healthcare and cheese and whatnot. Extra points for one of those Scandavian countries that are economically successful and mildly socialistic–leading cause of hypertension in wingnuts.
Yeah, let’s all hate on NPR and PBS, and bitch about how lame their programming is, and how disappointing their air-personalities are, and make sure we don’t contribute or God forbid enroll as members…
Hm, how did those Fresh Air and This American Life and local NPR station coffee cups make it into my kitchen cabinet? Must have been magic!
Actor,
All too true that those numbers won’t move much in my time.
But I console myself with this George Carlin quote.
Slippy, I’d say it goes Bush, Nixon, Hoover, Reagan, Wilson.
in 1980 i thought reagan would repeal the new deal and medicare, institute school prayer, ban abortion, and move close to war with the ussr
The ironic thing about Hoover is that he wasn’t really a bad person but just couldn’t get past his free market ideology. Sticking your thumb up your ass during the Great Depression for three years while millions were starving gets major points as a fuck up though.
And, ya know, back to the topic at hand.
I’m unhappy with some of of Obama’s lack of action on certain issues, but we’re one year into his presidency and I wasn’t expecting him to be some sort of progressive god. I’m pretty much resigned to the idea that things may be fucked up beyond repair, so anyone who doesn’t cause me to feel crushing despair is all right.
what I’m suggesting is some sort of parody Keillor, where News From Lake Wobegon talks about all the folks with the two wetsuits they keep dragging out of the back room of the Chatterbox Cafe.
*stroking chin*
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..
Reagon
you’re not supposed to reveal his ferengi name!
I just heard a CNN reporter state as fact that the president’s number one job is to protect the lives of the American people. Bullshit.
Yeah, the job of protecting the lives of the American people is best left to random Dutch dudes.
WOLVERINES!!!!Effete Europeans!!!!But I console myself with this George Carlin quote.
But this is America, where we’re all above average!
(neatly tying the Keillor subthread in)
But this is America, where we’re all above average!
The children are above average, the women handsome, and the men handy…or something like that.
That seems to be the strategy we are embracing in politics: make the perfect the enemy of the good, to ensure the continued domination of the mediocre and the awful.
Really? Now NPR and Obama are both off-limits? Isn’t this love it or leave it stuff a little too binary?
I thought that link to the Onion’s piece on This American Life was spot on and pretty damn funny, and I say that as someone who contributes and listens to NPR.
I get the feeling that I’m coming off as something of a concern troll. Swear to God, that’s not my intent. I just can’t force myself to be optimistic about the Democrats’ chances in 2010 given all I’ve seen this year. Maybe I’m wrong, and all the blather about the “re-energized Republican base” and the teabaggers becoming a major political force is just a bunch of hot air and shit-talking from a group of morons that has nothing else to do. Jesus, I sure hope that’s the case.
Wilson: Needlessly entered WWI based on lies (500,000 Americans dead) jailed 2300 Americans for expressing 1st Am Rights including Eugene Debbs, destroying Haiti by installing Papa Doc Duvalier through unprovoked war, Klan supporter, and lets not forget the Treaty of Versailles.
Reagon had the earned income tax credit and amnesty for illegals. This would make him a RINO today among teabaggers.
In 20 years George W. Bush will be a RINO for failing to fire any nuclear warheads or to waterboard the poor until they agree to be rich. Reagan will continue to have always agreed with them, much like Jesus.
Also, how have both sides in this debate managed to accuse each other of false dichotomies and “take-it-or-leave-it” policies?
I sense anger in the Sadlysphere. Won’t someone please post something funny and PENIS-related to quell it?
…all the blather about the “re-energized Republican base” and the teabaggers becoming a major political force is just a bunch of hot air and shit-talking from a group of morons that has nothing else to do. Jesus, I sure hope that’s the case.
Well the base seems pretty fractured. Sure elements of it are fired up and the teabaggers sure are good at sturm und drang but whether that translates to them uniting behind candidates at the ballot box is whole ‘nother thing. Just look at what happened in NY State’s 23rd district for how it could go badly for Republicans.
In 20 years George W. Bush will be a RINO for failing to fire any nuclear warheads or to waterboard the poor until they agree to be rich.
GWB isn’t actually a conservative. Haven’t you heard?
“you’re not supposed to reveal his ferengi name!”
Ferengi are intersteller Randians therefore all conservatives are secret Ferengi.
Reagon also raised taxes numerous times. Today, Norquist would be funding a primary challenge to Reagan.
But this is America, where we’re all above average!
The children are above average, the women handsome, and the men handy…or something like that.
This got me thinking…and forgive me but this is going to require more than 140 characters so it’s not easily tweetable…which means y’all are going to have to stop and think, and not read and go back to Oprah…
It’s precisely this kind of thinking, and I do not believe it is a joke, that gets America in trouble. When nearly one in five Americans believe they are in the top one percent of wage earners, we have a real fucking problem not only with education, but with our goddammed collective self-image.
That bothers me. I don’t mind people being egotistical…goodness knows, I’d have to hate myself…but I do mind people hyperbolic about it. Would someone, asked that question, stop and ask “well, what constitutes ‘top one percent’?” and when told, say “Oh. No. I’m not. Can’t be.”?
No, they blithely and idiotically just go on their merry way believing that stay-at-home envelope stuffing/e-mail spam service that earns them $300 a week somehow magically transports them to Candyland with all the unicorns you can buy. And instead of dealing with that reality, they fucking go out and mortgage the house they already couldn’t fucking afford to buy the trappings they think a person “in my position” deserves, like a car that does more than get them to the WalMart ahead of the nonogenarians who creak down the aisle like tortoises, thus draping themselves in the mantle of “wealth” that really is just Saran Wrap and toilet paper.
There. Fucking tweet that, tweetholes!
Actor,
America: The Home of Dunning-Kruger effect:
1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
It’s precisely this kind of thinking, and I do not believe it is a joke, that gets America in trouble
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: American Exceptionalism is fucking toxic, not only for the rest of the world, but also for us.
Actor, on a deeper level, that’s what causes so many people to have a seizure at the word “socialism”, and I’m pretty sure it’s the only reason someone would believe in objectivism. Everybody believes they’re part of the elite class, and everyone else is the barbarians at the gates, and any sort of socialization could only bring them down from their lofty perch, not bring them up, which would most likely be the case. Any cursory glance at the distribution of income in America would show them that they’re most likely not as awesome as they think, so it’s gotta be psychological, people refusing to think that they might not be part of the chosen ones, the elite, the special. They refuse to admit it, and acting like they aren’t only worsens their situation, which they proceed to blame on teh librulz, and the whole merry cycle begins again.
It’s precisely this kind of thinking, and I do not believe it is a joke, that gets America in trouble.
Unless you’re Oral Roberts. Then it makes you rich.
Trilat,
You guys outside of NY may not have heard of Rev Ike, but he was the first minister I heard who actually spoke of getting rich here on earth (made Joel Osteen look like a Boy Scout). The evangels must have been sitting in on his services, because I noted the changes almost immediately.
Felonious, that’s precisely right and precisely why the whole “liberal-conservative” thing is such a scam for the right wing.
The economic royalists take great pains to drive that wedge, as well as the racial wedge, in between the two sets of proles who service their capitalist needs: profit and capital gains.
Yea, a couple of liberals profit from it too, like Gates or Soros or the Hollywood cabal (such as it is), but at least they don’t try to shine me off with the whole “Them” trope.
Unless you’re Oral Roberts. Then it makes you rich.
I was actually on that campus the other day. The architecture is so fucking bizarre and a little disturbing, especially without any students around. It was like he had some weird vision of the future that was dominated by spaceships and evangelicals.
It’s precisely this kind of thinking, and I do not believe it is a joke, that gets America in trouble. When nearly one in five Americans believe they are in the top one percent of wage earners, we have a real fucking problem not only with education, but with our goddammed collective self-image.
AHEM
A212, is/was Rev Ike worse than Creflo Dollar, that other “Prosperity Gospel” shill?
It was like he had some weird vision of the future that was dominated by spaceships and evangelicals.
Well, it *was* proposed to him by a 900-foot-tall Jesus, as I recall. Seems like he could’ve had trouble adjusting for differences in visual perspective.
A212, is/was Rev Ike worse than Creflo Dollar, that other “Prosperity Gospel” shill?
As a proto-shill, it’s hard to say that he’s better or worse, much like Babe Ruth could not possibly hold the home run record if he played today, assuming only his talent and training from the 20s, but this wouldn’t detract from his achievements.
MC 900 Ft. Jesus was ahead of his time.
much like Babe Ruth could not possibly hold the home run record if he played today
Well, these players today wouldn’t do so well on steroids from the 20’s either!
Well, it *was* proposed to him by a 900-foot-tall Jesus, as I recall.
That guy must have made 70-foot-tall Jesus look like a leprechaun.
Isn’t “The Secret” just a repackaging of the ‘prosperity gospel’, with a little Rand thrown in for flava?
It was like he had some weird vision of the future that was dominated by spaceships and evangelicals.
The Gospel According to Gernsback
70-foot-Jesus has kind of a nasty look on his face, doesn’t he? I mean, I would too, if my body was made of milk cartons draped in tablecloths, but still, that thing’s gotta scare some Arkansan children.
Isn’t “The Secret” just a repackaging of the ‘prosperity gospel’, with a little Rand thrown in for flava?
It also includes affirmation$
Isn’t “The Secret” just a repackaging of the ‘prosperity gospel’, with a little Rand thrown in for flava?
And some Inner Child work, yes.
So I’m going to have a few minutes with Christopher Hitchens this evening. Not just the two of us but probably a dozen or two dozen others.
Suggestions*?
* By which I mean questions to pose or perhaps mots to bon. None the less, other types of suggestions will also be entertained.
Fair questions, PeeJ, or sandbags?
Suggestions*?
Ask him what he thought about the Cotton Bowl, then say “Hotty Toddy” enthusiastically.
Is Hitchens the one with that weird strand of hair always flopping down over his forehead? What’s he hiding?
If you’re asking him legitimate questions, is his fervent support of military interventionism an outgrowth of his avowed atheism, a sort of “eliminate God one religion at a time” school, or is it based on his view that Marx predicted the downfall of American capitalism countless numbers of times, so it was a way to avoid that collapse in his lifetime?
If you’re sandbagging, ask him if he approves of Ann Althouse’s box of wine selections.
Is Hitchens the one with that weird strand of hair always flopping down over his forehead?
Yup. He’s so greasy. Peej, ask him why he’s so greasy.
Is Hitchens the one with that weird strand of hair always flopping down over his forehead?
You’re thinking of this guy
A pie.
You’re thinking of this guy
Now I want to pull a football out of Hitchen’s way as he goes to kick it!
PeeJ, pull the football trick on Hitchens!
Ask Hitchens how he feels to have been on the same side of the Iraq war issue as Kissinger who he beleives should be tried at The Hague for war crimes (he wrote a book about it), what it feels like to be waterboarded (he was) and if his fellow war hawks Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should be charged with war crimes for practicing torture?
Say the most inane religion-fueled thing that you can think of. Then maybe you’ll make his next book!
PeeJ, pull the football trick on Hitchens!
ding ding ding we have a winner!
Now I just have to figure out how to make it happen. Something involving whisky, I should imagine.
Also, what is the best scotch for the best price. I’m sure he buys in bulk. This last one is important. Please report back.
“There are no atheists who aren’t fuckholes.”
Now I just have to figure out how to make it happen. Something involving whisky, I should imagine.
You should use a bottle of Tullamore Dew instead of a football.
Or do you think he’s more of a Jameson man?
So I’m going to have a few minutes with Christopher Hitchens this evening. Not just the two of us but probably a dozen or two dozen others.
Suggestions*?
Been to lunch with the guy a number of years back, and be sure to keep an eye on your drink. That guy will drink anything that isn’t in someone’s hand.
And did he really need to be waterboarded to know it was torture?
Now I just have to figure out how to make it happen. Something involving whisky, I should imagine.
Whiskey piñata!
Whiskey piñata!
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to hit Christopher Hitchens with a bat, even if you are blindfolded.
God-is-not-good grief.
Suggestions*?
Visine.
Also, what is the best scotch for the best price. I’m sure he buys in bulk. This last one is important. Please report back.
I can handle that one right now. Hands down, Dalmore 12 year old. It’s not superb but at $30 a fifth (okay, a 750, old habits die hard) it’s a single malt one can easily love.
Ask him why he hates Clinton so much. Was it because the Clenis banged his girlfreind when they were at Oxford University together? This is my theory.
I…wow, I can’t think of any questions I’d want to ask Hitchens–at least, none that he’s likely to answer. Let’s see:
* Which Middle Eastern countries *shouldn’t* we invade?
* In your time, you’ve changed from a standard-issue Trotskyite to a fervent neocon. What’s your next trick, O Contrarian One?
Say the most inane religion-fueled thing that you can think of.
“There are no atheists who aren’t fuckholes.”
Awesome!
And did he really need to be waterboarded to know it was torture?
Now that’s good. I’ll phrase it a bit differently, as in “wtf were you thinking? WERE you thinking? Were you perhaps hoping for an opportunity to downplay torture you fucking asswipe?”
“Aren’t militant atheists just as bad as fundamentalist Christians?”
“You were great in the British version of The Office.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: American Exceptionalism is fucking toxic, not only for the rest of the world, but also for us.
Except…I got nothing.
There are no atheists who aren’t fuckholes.
Surely you mean: There are no atheists in fuckholes.
Whiskey piñata!
I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to hit Christopher Hitchens with a bat, even if you are blindfolded.
Quick! I need to be elected mayor of whatever burgh PeeJ lives in so I can pass an ordinance!
Say, “Mother Theresa, what a Saint that woman was!” Then watch him go off on a 15 minute tirade about how she was such a bitch.
“wtf were you thinking? WERE you thinking? Were you perhaps hoping for an opportunity to downplay torture you fucking asswipe?”
Yeah, in case you couldn’t guess, he really handles vigorous challenges to his authority well and welcomes opposing points of view.
On the plus side, I’m sure he’ll be pretty trashed before you can get a word in edge-wise so even if he tries to take a swing at you (he’s that kind of drunk), at best he’ll just topple over.
I got it!
PeeJ, ask him how his brother is, and indeed, didn’t the Red Army post their horses at Hendon after all?
“You were great in the British version of The Office.”
Wow. Pretending to confuse him with Ricky Gervais is effing brilliant: maximum apoplexy.
Downside: someone might have to perform CPR.
Have I mentioned recently that Richard Cohen look like a demented, chinless beaver?
Actually, I give him credit for doing it for an article. Gutsy/stupid sure, and I think he was always against torture.
I’m with slippy.
Hamsher-Norquist Axis Of Butthurt
is an epic win. Bravo, Jim.
Except in the practical sense of not supporting torturers.
Have I mentioned recently that Richard Cohen look like a demented, chinless beaver?
I always assumed someone’s demented lawn gnome got a gig at the WaPo, but I like where you’re going with this…
Nixon went to Venezuela once and got the reception he deserved.
I’m open to arguments about who sucked worse than Reagan, but this is central to my point.
And CJR does the math on Cokie vs. Katie:
Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined.
Where a black suit and white shirt and tell him its not to late to save his soul. Then offer him a copy of the Watchtower magazine.
They have chins???
Oh, wait, nevermind…
Ooh! Go in character as Gary Ruppert! Figure out what a “heartland” accent sounds like, raise your hand and say “The fact is, Hitler was an atheist, and also an Islam.”
Actually, I give him credit for doing it for an article. Gutsy/stupid sure, and I think he was always against torture.
Meh. It really looked to me more like an opportunity to burnish his bad boy credentials. And it seemed to trade on the same sort of idiocy in news reporting that demands they send someone outside in a hurricane for a stand up spot confirming that–yes–the wind is really strong and it’s wet out there.
I think he was always against torture.
“Except in the practical sense of not supporting torturers.”
I think this is called “Doing an Andrew Sullivan.”
You know I wouldn’t be surprised if that incident (which I didn’t know about) in 1958 has a lot to do with the current right wing antipathy to Venezuela.
…this is called “Doing an Andrew Sullivan.”
Damn, I expected even Sully to have better taste than that.
Have I mentioned recently that Richard Cohen look like a demented, chinless beaver?
I always assumed someone’s demented lawn gnome got a gig at the WaPo, but I like where you’re going with this…
You’re both right. A demented beaver gnawed the chin off a lawn gnome. The beaver writes the columns, the gnome posed for the photo.
“Ooh! Go in character as Gary Ruppert! Figure out what a “heartland” accent sounds like, raise your hand and say “The fact is, Hitler was an atheist, and also an Islam.”
Or even better, say “Darwin and atheism caused the Holocaust.”
I have mixed feelings about Hitchens volunteering to be waterboarded. On the one hand, it lends credibility to the notion that it was ever credible to claim waterboarding wasn’t torture.
On the other hand, realistically, a lot of people believed that nonsensical idea. Dumb as it was, maybe it really did need a few prominent people to voluntarily undergo it and tell these morons that yes, being drowned feels bad.
I could wish it was someone other than hitchens who did it, but then, in order for it to have any weight it had to come from someone who liked all the bombing brown people that is going on.
There was also this guy who did the same thing.
I could wish it was someone other than hitchens who did it, but then, in order for it to have any weight it had to come from someone who liked all the bombing brown people that is going on.
That’s a fair point. I want to say that there were already some military people saying pretty much what Hitch said about it, but I’m not confident I’m remembering correctly, and those people may have come later.
Serndipity! It’s precisely 250 days since Hannity said he’d get waterboarded to prove it aint torture. Whatever became of that…….
Serndipity! It’s precisely 250 days since Hannity said he’d get waterboarded to prove it aint torture. Whatever became of that…….
After carefully analyzing all the variables, I think the only feasible conclusion is that Hannity is a dick-eating coward who can’t back up the shit he spews.
Downside: someone might have to perform CPR.
Sounds like a good way to get staggering drunk cheap, though.
And did he really need to be waterboarded to know it was torture?
Ask him his views on whiskeyboarding.
Cohen is paying too much attention to what economists call (if I’m interpreting this correctly) a “dead cat bounce,” i.e., a brief, meaningless uptick in some economic indicators. Paul Krugman had a good column on this in the NYT the other day.
Not only was he not nearly as shitty a President as W, by today’s standards he’d be considered a fucking Social Democrat (EPA, Sesame Street, etc.) – Chris
Nixon is the Hitler of liberal fascism?
Anyway, I have a different take on Nixon than Tragically Flip: Nixon was in his dark cold heart a liberal/moderate Republican. It was political and personal considerations (i.e. the moderate Republican plutocrats hated his ass) that caused him to ride a wave of righty-tighty-ism into office. Of course, Nixon’s surfing that wave of wingnuttism is what helped bring wingnuttery into the “mainstream” — so Nixon certainly can be blamed for our current Overton Window in which Nixon would be considered a liberal, but Nixon certainly was no wingnut but rather a manipulator of wingnuts.
*
Oh, yeah. Where it is easy to break shit, it’s a helluva lot harder to fix it. – PeeJ
Well, the “why doesn’t the woman just deliver the viable fetus rather than aborting third-trimester” crown clearly doesn’t get this. They don’t get the difference between delivering a baby without damaging it and just pulling a fetus, in pieces if necessary, out.
Remind me never to have a wingnut deliver a valuable package to me: they would stuff it through a letter slot in the door figuring that it’s easy to push a parcel through a narrow opening without damaging it.
There are no atheists in fuckholes.
You can tell by how they keep crying out the Lord’s name.
Cohen is paying too much attention to what economists call (if I’m interpreting this correctly) a “dead cat bounce,” i.e., a brief, meaningless uptick in some economic indicators.
Well, sure, that makes sense to anyone who actually gives a fuck about economics, but I think Cohen is more pointing out that it’s not fair that everything bad is his fault, but nothing good was ever his doing. Double standards, and such. If that dead cat eventually does come back to earth, I’m sure the wingnut firing squad will load their rifles again and go back in early-’09 stock-market-collapse mode.
early in the editorial, Cohen quotes a Rasmussen poll. at that point I cut my losses by abruptly discontinuing to read, and wrote a post telling him why.
I guess PeeJ has already got his whisky football figured out, but if I had the chance, I’d ask Hitchens if he wanted to by some Nigerian yellowcake.
Linkee for Nigerian yellowcake.
DAS, I see what you’re saying and you’re probably right, in that Nixon personally doesn’t care about the guns, god and gays side of right wing issues very much, but it’s ever that way with the right wing leaders. As Krugman pointed out, George Bush ran in 2004 on saving America from gay married terrorists, and then the day after he wins, he announces he has a mandate to reform social security.
They campaign in poetry hatred, and govern in prose fucking the poor.
hmm strikethrough works in the preview but not when you post
TF, do <strike> a simple “s” don’t work
The fact is, this thread is really good.
Are the overlords of SN! going to hand out commenter awards for 2009? Based on my unscientific and twice a week perusal of some of the threads, I would nominate the following people just off the top of my head for MVP: Actor, DKW, Steerpike, RB. Maybe a few others.
You guys keep me coming back…
Re Richard Nixon; what’s interesting is that he was also the last Republican president to have come from any kind of lower or middle class environment – Reagan and certainly the Bushes were both from the cream of America’s elite. The fact that Nixon was such a Keynesian president might just be him playing politics, but it might also be that he knew a lot more about the hard side of life than his successors.
Re the bomber; he was a repeat of Richard Reid, which happened on Bush’s watch just months after 9/11 to the supreme indifference of everyone. The bomber didn’t make Obama look weak on terrorism, conservative media barrages launched long before he was president made him look weak on terrorism, not because of anything he actually did but just by repeating over and over “Obama is weak on terrorism.”
Re Reagan being worse than Bush; first, Reagan was a race-baiting, rat-fucking bastard long before Nixon was President. Read his 1964 speech at the Republican convention. Second, Reagan’s foreign policy might not have been as destructive as Nixon’s (thank you Congress) but it sure wasn’t for lack of trying; see Iran-contra, especially the contra part. Third, I don’t think there’s a hole in hell deep enough for him having ushered in the resurgence of Gilded Age, free-market fundamentalism – especially its union-busting component – which remains what sets him aside from Nixon in my book. Some blame Goldwater or Nixon for modern conservatism; I say sure they, and others, played a part, but it’s Reagan who brought the whole thing together and he deserves the biggest part of the blame for that.
Reagan was not.
Have I mentioned recently that Richard Cohen look like a demented, chinless beaver?
Beavers have chins?
So that really WASN’T her tongue! I owe her an apology…
Gary Marvolo Ruppert said,
January 6, 2010 at 3:32
Thanks! Errr, I think.
Thanks! Errr, I think.
wev, dude. Least you got top billing.
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/104729/Is_this_the_Tea_Party_decade
Mainstream media weighing and saying this could be the “Tea Party decade.” Most depressing part of the article; the person commenting that Palin is the leader of the movement and that she’s made death panels “the most widely understood” objection to ObamaCare.
Seem to capture the essence of the movement perfectly that their rallying point would be against something that doesn’t exist.
When you follow the “Haley’s Comet” President, then you get to spend a great deal of time putting out the fires from the Comet’s passing, don’t you? So, it takes a while before you can get on to being a “great” president, when you’re ameliorating so much shit. And Bush didn’t just fuck it up, he deliberately burrowed his lifer-asshole-adherants in, so that they could try to continue their bullshit policies. This isn’t just clean up, this is cleaning up a rat infestation that has moderate intelligence, and it’s trying to BITE him.
Cut the poor bastard a break, OK? Jesus.