Revering Rachel Corrie has all the moral validity of weeping for C-3PO on Bespin.

I may or may not have yelled “Shut the FUCK up!” and incredulously followed the link. I apologize for not believing.

Yes, nothing shows your brilliant wit and insight like hackneyed slogans and Star Wars comparisons.

Not to mention:
If you call for ethnic cleansing, you -should- retire in humiliation and disgrace

How exactly does a country retire in humiliation and disgrace, anyway? Can we settle for just all the Likudniks retiring in humiliation and disgrace?

I have to give Twitter at least this much: it restricts posts to a length that approximates the depth of thouht that the twit posting them has put into the subject they’re twitting. Or twatting…whatever.

Also, too: the depth of thought that the twit posting has put into the subject they’re twitting.

And also too: if anyone sees zrm, let him know about the show business opportunity my co-blogger has uncovered for him.

Hey, check out don’tteasethepanther.com.

If you call for ethnic cleansing, you -should- retire in humiliation and disgrace

Tacky may not be retired, but he knows about humiliation and disgrace on a very personal level.

Tacky may not be retired, but he knows about humiliation and disgrace on a very personal level.

There’s a lot more in his future.

Why the Aaron Burr hate?

Why the Aaron Burr hate?

Sumbitch was about 10 years late killing Hamilton.

Why the Aaron Burr hate?

Professional jealousy.

Why the Aaron Burr hate?

‘Cuz Gore Vidal wrote a book about him, and we all know that we need to stand up and hiss whenever Gore Vidal is involved.

Or maybe it was something to do with peanut butter,

Or maybe it was something to do with peanut butter,

And/or lack of milk?

Chuck Devore has a taste for the long pork. That’s supposed to be a virtue?

And ill-timed radio contests.

Aaron Burr is the Boba Fett of neoCon Tweetism.

My only coherent response to Trevino is along the lines of “eat shit and die, ass breath.” So I’ll leave it at that.

THIS (not) JUST IN: Soccer is ruining America!

Amidst reports of soccer (or futbol as it is known to impoverished brown people the world over) being forced down Glenn Beck’s throat, Fist First Things nailed the culprit over a year ago:

Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with their feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.

Really, the whole thing is so crazy it might be a liberal provocateur, but who can tell anymore?

FYWP

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/03/how-soccer-is-ruining-america-

Since this piece of shit commenting system ate two of my comments, I’m not going to bother with trying again. Just read the fucking link, which was to have been accompanied by a humorous aside at the ludicrousness of conservatives but go fuck yourself and wordpress.

`Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it.

That’s why I don’t run the hurdles anymore.

‘More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score.’

The more I read it the more I think the whole thing is a piss-take by a liberal provocateur, which was a point I tried to make the first two times I posted it but fywp.

re: T&U’s link…Why is Beck talking about the Overton Window? So does Pigface McTittbaby think the conversation has shifted too far leftward? *bangs head on desk*

Also, hasn’t Beck decided he hates soccor just cuz everyone else in the world likes it? I’m all for being contrarian, but jesus christ, pick your battles and fight them using logic that exceeds a 3-year-olds. I think there’s something wrong with that man. I think he may be mildly retarded or something. I realize that’s hardly an original thought, but there it is…

Speaking of mildly retarded…

“soccer”

I want you to know just one thing about @ChuckDeVore: when he’s hungry, he eats terrorists:

HOT.

“Devour” would have made it sing, though.

I thought you spelled it that way on purpose. It fit with ‘cuz.’

Also, soccer is anti-American because it’s anti-free market. All you need is a ball to play. Not nearly enough consumerism. Look at baseball, a bat as well as a ball and every player needs a glove as well. But the ultimate American sport is obviuosly American footbal where every player needs hundreds of dollars of paddding in order to play. Perhaps it should be referred to from now on as consumerist football. How much more American can you get?

Don’t forget golf. Bet heartily approves of that “sport”.

Ok, so I was traveling when the whole Thomas brouhaha occurred, so maybe I missed the pertinent bits, but what I heard was that she said Jews should move to Germany, Poland, or America, where they have a more legitimate and more recent claim to land. Are Jews being ethnically cleansed in those places?

“Revering Rachel Corrie has all the moral validity of weeping for C-3PO on Bespin.” Why is that, asstard? Is it because Space Jesus Chewbacca is going to reassemble Rachel Corrie with her head on backwards as a sort of karmic punishment for not loving Israel enough?

In honor of my Scottish heritage I play golf about once a year. I have a set of clubs I bought at some discount store somewhere about thirty years ago and I just wear my sneakers when I play. My brother plays all the time. He has the latest and greatest and most expensive clubs and golf shoes. He usually ends up beating me by about three strokes. But I have gotten a hole-in-one, which is something he has not.

“Devour” would have made it sing, though.

I was thinking Engulf and Devour.

“Are Jews being ethnically cleansed in those places?”

No, but Germany and Poland Hitler Nazi skree Helen Thomas wants to kill Jews.

Ok, so I was traveling when the whole Thomas brouhaha occurred, so maybe I missed the pertinent bits, but what I heard was that she said Jews should move to Germany, Poland, or America, where they have a more legitimate and more recent claim to land. Are Jews being ethnically cleansed in those places?

You are, of course, right. There was no talk of ethnic cleansing in Helen Thomas’ comments. But in the wingnut universe, that’s not important. The important thing is blarglearglemrrfle keddodle.

Ah, yes. The World Cup. Otherwise known as the time every four years that a large number of Americans display their ignorance, childlike impatience,xenophobia, and self-centeredness openly instead of under the thin veil of fossil fuel consumption and American exceptionalism. It’s a tradition as time-honored as the Cup itself.

I like to think I display my ignorance and childlike impatience every day. You know, it’s not just something to drag out during the holidays.

In honor of my Scottish heritage I play golf about once a year.
The other way to honour it is to support whoever’s playing against England in the World Cup. Just so you know.

“In honor of my Scottish heritage I play golf about once a year. I have a set of clubs I bought at some discount store somewhere about thirty years ago and I just wear my sneakers when I play. My brother plays all the time. He has the latest and greatest and most expensive clubs and golf shoes. He usually ends up beating me by about three strokes. But I have gotten a hole-in-one, which is something he has not.”

I actually have nothing against the sport…and hubby loves it. Do wish it were more inclusive, however.

Well, good, glad to know I’m not completely nuts in my take. I read one guy going on about how “chilling” it was that she called for folks to move to Poland and Germany because of the past, while I thought “damn right, those countries OWE Jews.”

Oh and vaccumslayer for the win: “Pigface McTittbaby”

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I like to think I display my ignorance and childlike impatience every day. You know, it’s not just something to drag out during the holidays.

Similarly, I like to think I display my spaziness and forgetfulness every day, but during the World Cup (and March Madness), they really shine when I unthinkingly reveal spoilers for games Mr. T&U has downloaded.

Otherwise known as the time every four years that a large number of Americans display their ignorance, childlike impatience,xenophobia, and self-centeredness openly instead of under the thin veil of fossil fuel consumption and American exceptionalism.

They’re veiled the rest of the time? The emperor’s new veil, maybe.

How is the kickball tournament going?

I actually have nothing against the sport…and hubby loves it. Do wish it were more inclusive, however

Here in Florida, high falutin’ golf courses abound. I’ve occasionally dreamed of winning the lottery and buying a golf course. Then I would be able set my own standards. Anyone who has spent more than a hundred dollars on their golf attire would not meet the dress code, etc.

So it’s different from the Olympics how?

For the record, I have never either Tweeted nor Twitted.

But Twatting? Heck, I was Twatting way back in the 1980s … & no “Twitter” was involved.

Tacky ‘tardia

More like locomotard exlaxia, amirite?

hasn’t Beck decided he hates soccor just cuz everyone else in the world likes it? I’m all for being contrarian, but jesus christ, pick your battles and fight them using logic that exceeds a 3-year-olds. I think there’s something wrong with that man. I think he may be mildly retarded

Yeah, sad to say, alcohol is a solvent & our brains are made of the same stuff that clogs drain-pipes. If you do enough rockstar/Self-Destruct Fast-Lane drinking – like Beck did – you can very quickly become retarded … & “mildly” is putting it mildly.

Contrarianism is a good response to a radically aberrant or toxic society. Skepticism has a more constant track-record … & is also much less likely to leave you looking like you’ve been snorting an inhaler full of ether at a highly inopportune moment (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with being into that, if everyone involved enjoys the event & its aftermath).

The catch is knowing when skepticism itself needs its own proverbial grain of salt.

You are, of course, right. There was no talk of ethnic cleansing in Helen Thomas’ comments. But in the wingnut universe, that’s not important. The important thing is blarglearglemrrfle keddodle.

There’s never been any talk of fascism in the comments of any liberal either, but that hasn’t stopped… you get the picture.

Ah, yes. The World Cup. Otherwise known as the time every four years that a large number of Americans display their ignorance, childlike impatience,xenophobia, and self-centeredness openly instead of under the thin veil of fossil fuel consumption and American exceptionalism. It’s a tradition as time-honored as the Cup itself.

“HEY, YOU!!! REST OF THE WORLD!!! WE’RE MAKING A DEFIANT STATEMENT!!! NOTICE US, GODDAMN IT!!!”

Annnnnd the GOP clown show continues.

Keith Olbermann Interviews Alvin Greene

Has anyone called Greene “the Joaquin Phoenix of politics” yet? I’d, um, kind of like to if they haven’t.

hasn’t Beck decided he hates soccor just cuz everyone else in the world likes it? I’m all for being contrarian, but jesus christ, pick your battles and fight them using logic that exceeds a 3-year-olds. I think there’s something wrong with that man. I think he may be mildly retarded

Can anyone confirm…?

A friend of mine told me recently that Glenn Beck had once been a minor 9/11 denier, back when he was just spewing conspiracy rhetoric left, right and center instead of latching onto an ideology and attaining notoriety that way.

I haven’t found anything on the web about that, but does anyone know if it’s true or not? I would put it past him.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, the Top Kill method is simply lower a pipe down to the leak and they simply flood the thing with mud and sludge and a bunch of other things, whole bunch of garbage there just to plug the leak. The Top Kill version, that’s what BP is going to try next. Meanwhile, Obama says, “Plug the hole.” So just like when Obama before his inauguration issued a statement and said that the Georgians and the Russians should stop firing, should be a ceasefire, and then they did, it was Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia who went out there and said, “See?” All Obama had to do was speak, and hostilities ended. So what will happen if the Top Kill method works? The Democrats will say, “See, Obama said plug the hole, and BP had never thought of that, BP had never thought about plugging the hole. It was Obama’s direction and his leadership to plug the hole that led BP to come up with the Top Kill method that stopped the leak. He’s been on the job since day one. Nobody is more upset than he’s been about this.”

Great to have you here, folks. Rush Limbaugh back in action, great to be back with you, by the way. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Lots of other stuff in the news today, but I want to stick with sound bites from the oil spill just to illustrate the humor and the folly of this. Last Monday in Galliano, Louisiana, at a press conference, here’s the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar.

SALAZAR: They will be held accountable. We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done.

RUSH: There you have it. We’re gonna really fix this. We’re going to keep our boot on the neck of BP ’til they get this fixed, ’til the job gets done. They’re going to be held accountable, which, at the end of the day, is all that matters to the left. Last Sunday afternoon in Houston, after visiting BP’s Houston headquarters, Salazar held a press conference and during the Q&A a reporter said, “Mr. Secretary, is there a scenario where the US government’s going to take over this cleanup effort instead of leaving it to BP? When will the US government take over?”

SALAZAR: With respect to the rest of the responses, including keeping the oil from coming near shore and onshore and dealing with those ecological values, BP, again, is the responsible party and is on the hook for doing everything that needs to happen. If we find that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way, appropriately, and we’ll move forward to make sure that everything is being done to protect the people of the Gulf Coast, the ecological values of the Gulf Coast, and the values of the American people.

RUSH: The values of the American people? What the hell does that have to do with anything? The values of the American people? Okay, so Ken Salazar with his cowboy hat from Colorado says here, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’re just gonna push ’em out of the way, appropriately, and we’ll move forward to make sure that everything is being done.” Apparently, according to you guys, they don’t know what they’re doing for six weeks now. You know, we’ll push ’em out of the way, we’ll protect the values of the American people. Just a bunch of wordsmiths. All they have is a paper playbook with things to say in time of crisis, to shift blame while making themselves sound like the end-all to all problems. Last Monday in Washington, White House press briefing, US Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen spoke about the oil disaster. During the Q&A a reporter says, “Is there to this point, thought of whether the government can do more, can it push BP out of the way like Salazar said if it feels like the company’s not doing their job? What’s your response to that?”

ALLEN: Well, to push BP out of the way would raise the question, “To replace them with what?”

REPORTER: Do you think that this government right now is doing the best it can?

ALLEN: I’ve been involved with the technical decisions made, especially in relation to the deal with the leak, and they are pressing ahead, we’re overseeing them, they are exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak.

RUSH: So Salazar said if they don’t get it done we’ll just push ’em out of the way and we’ll bring in people with the appropriate action to get it done. Coast Guard says, “Replace them with what?” He obviously was not aware of what Salazar had said at BP headquarters in Houston. Sunday morning, CBS Slay the Nation, Bob Schieffer talked to Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary: “Do you think this could be your administration’s Katrina?”

GIBBS: Well, I think if you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn’t there to respond to what was happening. That, quite frankly, was the problem, even tracking the hurricane for days and knowing fairly precisely where it was going to hit. I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately, we have been there ever since.

RUSH: It’s an absolute lie, it is an abject lie. They’re still not there. The government did get there in the case of Katrina. They did get there as quickly as they could and the local people told them to get out. Blanco said get outta here, I don’t want you guys getting credit for this, I’m a Democrat governor. School Bus Nagin was running around just beside himself here trying to explain why the buses weren’t used. The difference here is we were there immediately. They were not there immediately. And when they were there they sent SWAT team members, and they sent Salazar and Carol Browner to gaze out into the Gulf of Mexico to look and survey the problem. One of the head guys was vacationing in the Grand Canyon and did not come off vacation. Obama is going on vacation for the second time since the oil spill happened and is reluctantly going to stop in down there on his way to vacation for the Memorial Day weekend and give it a gander. Douglas Brinkley, who was on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 120 last night, he’s now at Rice University, used to be in New Orleans, but Doug Brinkley is now a professor of history at Rice University. Anderson Cooper says, “You have the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, saying we’re putting the boot on BP’s neck. It doesn’t seem like there’s much pressure being applied to that boot if there’s any at all.”

BRINKLEY: We haven’t had a bullhorn moment from President Obama, we haven’t heard the passion, and you know he’s sickened by all this. It’s a time we don’t need the cool collected Obama, we need the orator and the leader who’s emotive.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Who is famous for using the bullhorn? Yeah, it’s Bush, not Sharpton. George Bush at Ground Zero at 9/11, the bullhorn moment. The idiot, the dunce, the cowboy, all of these insulting things that were said about Bush and here’s Doug Brinkley, “You know Obama is sickened by this.” How do you know that, Doug? Does he act sickened by it? Or does he see an opportunity here to blame Big Oil, to stop offshore drilling, and to once again point the fingers at capitalism for being greedy and unkind, selfish, and so forth. Is he really sickened by it? We need a bullhorn moment? We need a leader who’s emotive? You know Obama’s got it in him, we just know he’s got it in him, why doesn’t he show up? Maybe that’s not who he is, Doug. David “Rodham” Gergen, Anderson Cooper 190. Cooper said, “It’s sort of fascinating, David, for a president who watched Katrina and saw the failures of the Bush administration, failures at the state and local level, for a president who saw that and was very critical of it, to now find himself in a situation in which he’s being criticized for the lack of response or lack of coordination is kind of stunning.”

GERGEN: The critics who are saying this is sort of a coming Katrina in slow motion have a point. I’m very sympathetic with what the administration has — this is tough, it’s very tough. And President Obama clearly cares and we have to appreciate that. But it’s not enough simply to care; you’ve gotta take charge. And we’ve reached that moment in this crisis when I think he has to take charge.

RUSH: He clearly cares. We know he’s sickened by all this. He clearly cares. He doesn’t act like he’s caring about it much. He doesn’t act like he’s sickened. If anything, he sounds angry that he is being distracted by this. As president, you sit there and say, how is this gonna get fixed? He wants it fixed so he can move on with the rest of his destructive domestic agenda. This is all politically inconvenient and we’ve reached the moment in crisis, gotta take charge. He’s not a take-charge guy, David. He’s an organizer and an agitator. He’s not a leader.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Just to revisit the Boston Globe editorial that I mentioned in the opening segment, a couple paragraphs here: “Plan B should mean more than blaming the Bush administration… But the exemptions from environmental regulations that were granted to BP happened on Obama’s watch, and are still occurring. … Above all, it calls for leadership on behalf of the public interest. That is Obama’s job.” So not even the Boston Globe (terribly sympathetic) is buying the administration line on this. Even his supporters say, “Hey, look, you can’t keep blaming Bush for this when you guys were gonna award BP as a model for safety for oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.” You think he’s not totally oriented toward who gets credit for things, and you think it’s doubtful that he would really deny permits to Bobby Jindal because Bobby Jindal’s a Republican? Don’t doubt me on this. Look, it’s time everybody woke up and realized just who this man is, what it is that animates him and where he’s taking this country. Because it’s frightening. It’s very disturbing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ll tell you what, the attention on Obama on this oil spill is intensifying. This morning on CNN, this is Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson.

NELSON: If this thing is not fixed today, I think the president doesn’t have any choice — and he’d better go in completely take over, perhaps with the military in charge. Not because the military can do this but the military has the apparatus, the organization by which it can bring together the civilian agencies of government and to get this thing done.

RUSH: What? In? The? World? The military? He admits the military, “Not because the military can do this but the military has the apparatus, the organization by which it can bring together the civilian agencies of government and to get this thing done”? This is a Democrat Senator? The military to work with civilian agencies of government? So if this thing isn’t fixed today, if this Top Kill method doesn’t work, then Senator Bill Nelson wants Obama in there, to go in there and completely take over. Senator, it isn’t going to happen. Sad to say, Mr. Obama hasn’t slightest clue what to do here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Memphis, this is Dan, your turn on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush, mega dittos from the home of Elvis and the best barbecue in the country.

RUSH: Where is the best barbecue in Memphis?

CALLER: Downtown at the Rendezvous.

RUSH: Downtown at the Rendezvous.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Cool. Okay.

CALLER: All right. We’re missing the big picture here, to quote Rahm Emanuel, never waste a good crisis.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: You know, going on vacation during oil spill and his lack of leadership in this scenario.

RUSH: Hmm.

CALLER: I think it’s deliberate. I think the administration wants, subconsciously, this environmentalist disaster —

RUSH: Subconsciously?

CALLER: — upon the coast so that, forget BP, he’s wanting to clamp down on the entire energy industry, you know, and demonize oil, coal, nuclear, what have you, and he’s going to use this as leverage with all this stuff floating ashore to get some bills pushed through Congress to tighten up regulations even further —

RUSH: Right. Demonize the private sector at the same time in its entirety. Yeah, I happen to think, I told people last week, they don’t mind this disaster. This is actually something that they can use. This is an opportunity for them. All it took for me to come to that conclusion was when I saw Democrats criticizing Bobby Jindal. Bobby Jindal had an idea. He wanted to get a federal permit to start building some barrier islands per se to soak up the oil before the oil got to the actual Louisiana shoreline. And the Democrats came out and said, “Bobby, Governor Jindal, you believe in small government, you can’t make a suggestion like that. An idea like that coming from you has no validity because that would take government to do it.” So if these people are willing to say, “No, Governor Jindal, you can’t do it because you don’t have the bona fides because you believe in limited,” well, that’s all I needed to hear. These guys were willing to use anything and everything about this to further a political agenda. And there’s no question that many leftists see in this a golden opportunity to do so.

Everything is political. They want the disaster. Folks, I know this is a tough thing for some of you to believe and hear because we don’t think of presidents this way, but we’ve got one now and an entire administration who do think this way, that everything that happens must be seen through the prism of, “Is it a political opportunity or is it a political liability?” And if you doubt this, it’s been six weeks. We now have Democrat commentators all suggesting that we know President Obama cares but he’s going to have to do something to show it. He’s going to have to use a little emotion out there. The cool, calm Obama is not what we want. Now, these are not things that you can fake. If you care about something, you care about it. If it really angers you, you get angry about it. When you’re a leader and things like this happen and you think people are being lackadaisical in fixing it, then you step in, and you see to it that everybody heels to. There hasn’t been any of that. There’s been the usual political posturing.

We’ve had Salazar saying, “We’re gonna keep our boot tight on BP’s neck,” and we’ve had all the czars sent down there, we’ve had all the inspectors, we’ve had the town hall — well, we haven’t a town hall meeting but we’ve had government bureaucracies that have met to discuss the problem. There hasn’t been any action. Occasionally there’s been some harsh words of criticism aimed at British Petroleum, but about all we got from Obama is, “Plug the hole, I’m tired of this, I’m not going to take it anymore.” Look, it’s not easy to say these kinds of things, but it is what it is. Obvious is obvious. Human emotion is human emotion. When it’s not there, it’s not there. It’s not that it’s being quelled. It’s not that it is being restrained. It’s not there. We don’t have a leader. Obama’s not a leader. He’s an exploiter. He creates problems. He exacerbates them for the express purpose of taking advantage of them, pure and simple, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Chris in Atlanta, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Good afternoon. How you doing today?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: From a displaced Montanan. Real quick, one of the things that I notice, and it kind of carries on with what you say about, you know, that words have meaning, is, you know, sometimes it’s not so much what people say but how they say it. And if you look at Obama’s words “how is this problem going to be solved,” you know, that’s the passive voice. That’s how an observer talks.

RUSH: Right. Exactly.

CALLER: Somebody who’s actively involved in solving a problem says, “What is the solution,” or “What do we do to fix that,” and so I’m always very wary whenever I hear somebody speaking in the passive voice because that’s somebody outside looking in that will throw rocks or be one to stir up trouble but not really one to get in there and take the risks of making decisions and trying to fix that.

RUSH: Ed, grab audio sound bite number three. I want the audience, Chris, to hear what you’re talking about, the passive voice, great observation, thanks very much. This was last night in San Francisco at a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer at the Getty home. The Getty family is founded by Big Oil. I mean the Getty family is Big Oil. And there’s Obama out fundraising, and he was talking about the oil spill, and as Chris says here, it’s the passive voice.

OBAMA: Nobody is more upset than me, because ultimately, like any president, when this happens on your watch, then every day you are thinking, “How does this get solved?”

RUSH: Passive voice. Good way to describe it. (imitating Obama) “Like every president sitting there, how does this get solved, who’s going to do this, who’s gonna fix this, how’s this get solved?” Not how am I going to solve this, but how is this gonna get fixed? You don’t have a leader here. There are no leadership characteristics for Obama. He’s an agitator/organizer. What he does is create power for others to use, like the SEIU storming the front yard of a Bank of America executive. There’s a couple of families more upset than Obama is about this. Very true.

Steve in Orange, California, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Can you hear me okay?

RUSH: I hear you fine. Thank you.

CALLER: My favorite sound bite I’ve ever heard in the past 21 years on the EIB is that James Carville sound bite as he’s complaining about the lack of response by the big government that he claims to love and that he supports and campaigns for, and I think we might be hearing our future in that sound bite.

RUSH: Let’s play audio sound bite number six, and we had this in the first hour. This is Good Morning America today, and Carville talking to Stephanopoulos.

CARVILLE: The political stupidity of this is just unbelievable. Here you have a situation where you had 11 hardworking people blown up as a result of corporate malfeasance and maybe criminal negligence, as a result of inept bureaucrats, and the president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this. This thing should be… His approval rating should be up seven points right now if he’da come down. I have no idea of why they didn’t seize this thing. I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands-offie here. It’s just unbelievable. I hope he sees it now.

RUSH: He went on to say, “Man, you gotta get down here, take control of this, put somebody in charge of this thing, get this thing moving, we’re about to die down here.” That was Carville today. It’s interesting when these disasters happen in your own backyard, how your perspective changes.

hasn’t Beck decided he hates soccor just cuz everyone else in the world likes it?

He’s teasing the panther.

The other way to honour it is to support whoever’s playing against England in the World Cup. Just so you know.

But I believe there are Scots represented on the England side. And as you know they have been bitter enemies of the Scots for like forever.

“HEY, YOU!!! REST OF THE WORLD!!! WE’RE MAKING A DEFIANT STATEMENT!!! NOTICE US, GODDAMN IT!!!”

To be fair, America’s defiant stand against cricket has worked much better. Why, EA doesn’t even *bother* releasing their cricket video games over here, while I can’t swing my foot in Best Buy without hitting a soccer game.

Has anyone called Greene “the Joaquin Phoenix of politics” yet? I’d, um, kind of like to if they haven’t.

Not that I know of, but Olbermann did compare him to Chauncey Gardner.

If you do enough rockstar/Self-Destruct Fast-Lane drinking – like Beck did – you can very quickly become retarded … & “mildly” is putting it mildly.

Yeah, where I live I see the effects of long term alcohol abuse everyday. It’s an irritant and abusers are left dumb and angry. They can’t understand what’s going on around them so they grow increasingly frustrated and irritable. Kinda like this:

Jake La Motta Wall Beating

Oh, so fifteen years from now there’ll be a Forrest Gump of politics blatantly ripping off Greene’s schtick and getting way more accolades for it.

If Obama really wanted to show that he’s sirius about making sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again he would immediately appoint the survivors of the Deepwater Horizon explosion to top positions in the government oversight of offshore drilling.

If Obama really wanted to show that he’s Sirius about making sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again, he would turn into a dog and follow Harry Potter around to protect him.

Obama: Agitator, NOT a Leader

Ah, but somebody has to be leader of the agitators.

Yeah, otherwise you’ll just end up like Troofie, who has to agitate with no one but his Phyllis Schlafly RealDoll for company.

Agitators? We have better technology for washing machines than that. The very best use ultrasound. Obama is the ultrasound of agitators, only wingnuts can hear him.

Obama: Agitator, NOT a Leader said,

June 12, 2010 at 18:59

Be sincere, be brief, be seated, Troofus.

I was a senile, crippled Socialist who sold out Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta.

Obama: Agitator, NOT a Leader said,
June 12, 2010 at 18:59

RUSH:

(pause)

I’m sorry; I wasn’t listening.

How is the kickball tournament going?

4 games, 2 of them ties and only 5 goals so far. Pretty fucking boring.

And ill-timed radio contests.

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!!

@Vacuumslayer:

re: T&U’s link…Why is Beck talking about the Overton Window?

Beck has an elimination-fantasy-thinly-disguised-as-a-novel coming out, titled “The Overton Window.” It sounds like an update of “The Turner Diaries” for a whole new generation of loony racists.

And yet I still got more action than Troofie will ever get in his wildest dreams! (and are they wild! Why would Sarah Palin and 7 of 9 be in a jungle in the first place, you filthy child?)

I was a senile, crippled Socialist who sold out Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta.

A kernel of a grain of truth to that. Roosevelt and Churchill chose to delay launching the second front until 1944 (despite Stalin’s repeated requests) when they could have done it earlier, and they didn’t push their troops nearly as hard as Stalin was pushing his, which contributed to letting his troops go all the way to Berlin.

The reason for that, of course, was because they wanted the Soviets to do most of the work for them (I believe something like three quarters of the Wehrmacht’s casualties were inflicted by the Red Army). While the Soviets bled themselves dry fighting the elite German units, the British and Americans operating through Greece, Italy and France secured control of Western Europe and the entire Mediterranean (and, when it came to Germany, they also got the heavily industrialized Rhineland).

The result left America in an unquestionably better strategic position, but the point remains that Roosevelt could be a pretty cold-hearted bastard when he needed to.

I still have no dick though.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said,

June 12, 2010 at 19:22 (kill)

I am amazingly ignorant of history for someone who actually lived it. [paraphrase]

FEMINIST HULK

Gems:

HULK SAY BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM IS FOR WUSSES. HULK NOT PASSIVE IN HIS APPROACH TO GENDER IDENTITY.

HULK HUMBLED BY MS. INTERVIEW RESPONSE. WARMTH IN HULK HEART, LIKE FEELING HULK GET FROM BIG HUGS AND POST-SMASH VEGAN COOKIES.

HULK DREAM: REMNANTS OF ABJECTED FEMININITY PUT ON A MUSICAL, WITH REVOLUTIONARY DANCE NUMBERS. NO MORE KRISTEVA BEFORE BED.

Sweeeeeet….

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said,

June 12, 2010 at 19:22

This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.

@noen: LOVE Feminist Hulk. They did it with a buncha others too:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/05/28/beyond-feminist-hulk-the-tweets-of-other-feminist-comics-charac/
(Sorry, I’m at best the Matter-Eater Lad of link tags. And everyone knows Matter-Eater Lad is the Jew of liberal Legion-ism.)

We all lost to a senile, crippled old Socialist.

Ah well, at least one of us beat Truman… right?

???

But I believe there are Scots represented on the England side. And as you know they have been bitter enemies of the Scots for like forever.

Scotland has their own national team, which didn’t qualify.

4 games, 2 of them ties and only 5 goals so far. Pretty fucking boring.

*sigh*

To be fair, America’s defiant stand against cricket has worked much better. Why, EA doesn’t even *bother* releasing their cricket video games over here, while I can’t swing my foot in Best Buy without hitting a soccer game.

Well, really, if we don’t have the attention span for soccer, cricket’s really never going to take off here. Plus, what the fuck are the rules in that fucking game? It’s more of a mystery to me than football is,..

Plus, what the fuck are the rules in that fucking game?

We Americans are pretty rule bound aren’t we? I think that reveals a deep insecurity. That if there are no rules things will just fall apart. They won’t, of course.

tigris said,

I want you to know just one thing about @ChuckDeVore: when he’s hungry, he eats terrorists:

“Devour” would have made it sing, though.

DeVore fits, I think.

/occasionally disturbed by own knowledge of obscure fetishes. DAMN YOU, INTERWEBS!

Oh, and good luck against the limeys (the O.G. Imperialist Aggressor), you’re going to need it.

RE: Roosevelt & Allies holding off – I should think that the fact that the US was busy in the Pacific as well might have had something to do with the speed at which they moved in Europe.

Whether that explains it or not, to this day I’m still pretty amazed at the simplistic thinking most Americans continue to engage in regarding the whole Soviet annexation of eastern Europe following WWII. Sure, it was expansionist and communist totalitarianism is no way to live, but I imagine any country which suffered 12 million casualties in a conflict would seek to establish a buffer zone around the “homeland,” which is essentially what the Soviets did with their takeover of eastern Europe.

We Americans are pretty rule bound aren’t we? I think that reveals a deep insecurity. That if there are no rules things will just fall apart. They won’t, of course.

I think we hate it even more when there are rules that we don’t understand.

BTW, I don’t want to come off like some huge soccer fan here–it’s probably my favorite sport, but that just means that I’m willing to sit through a game even if I don’t have snacks and beer and I’m moderately familiar with the game. And, really, the largest number of people in South Africa for the World Cup right now are from America, so it’s not like all Americans are rabidly anti-soccer, either.

It just cracks me up/irritates me when people talk about how they hate it because it’s normally a low-scoring game and seem to forget that it’s a game loved and watched by, like, BILLIONS of people.

Obama and Wilson
By David Pietrusza

Barack Obama has been compared to Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, and JFK, among others. But few have noted his interesting parallels with Woodrow Wilson. Historical comparisons have their limits. But Wilson-Obama similarities abound, starting with both men’s use of the label “progressive.”

Wilson was no “community organizer,” but like Obama, he was an academic — among the most prominent political scientists of his day. No other two presidents hang their pre-White House careers so much on academic curriculum vitae. Both then augmented their nascent careers by authorship: Wilson by a treatise on congressional government, and Obama — an individual perhaps even more self-absorbed than the imperious Wilson — with a bestselling memoir.

Here the comparisons diverge: Wilson spends key years as president of Princeton, while Obama sojourns in the Illinois State Senate, voting present. But both then achieve statewide office in states in which they not raised: Virginia-born Wilson as governor of New Jersey, Hawaii-born Obama as a United States senator from Illinois. Both succeed Republican incumbents. Both serve just two years before making their move for the presidency.

Both register reputations as orators. Both challenge highly regarded congressional front-runners in hotly-run contests for the nominations. Wilson bests House Speaker Champ Clark in 1912. Obama triumphs over Senator Hillary Clinton. Both easily run roughshod over a badly-dispirited opposition that November. Both appoint high-profile secretaries of state: the aforementioned Clinton by Obama, the aging party warhorse William Jennings Bryan by Wilson. Both Bryan and Clinton soon find themselves largely shunted aside by their respective patrons.

Both more than flirt with racists. Wilson cherishes the South’s Lost Cause and segregates federal offices. He praises D. W. Griffith’s controversial Birth of a Nation as being “like writing history with lightning.” Obama allies himself with black liberation theology advocate Jeremiah Wright. Only political necessity induces him to break with Wright. Nothing keeps him from embracing the execrable Al Sharpton.

It is here that the similarities of style come to the fore. Both Wilson and Obama receive tumultuous receptions in Europe: Obama in his pre-coronation visit to Berlin and Wilson in his unprecedented 1919 European tour. Worshipful crowds greeted Wilson throughout Europe. The adulation, Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote, “might have turned the head of a man far less responsive than the President was to public applause, and have given him an exalted opinion of his own power of accomplishment and [own] responsibility to mankind.”

Yet there remained in Wilson — and resides in Obama — a strange academic coldness that stiff-arms natural foreign allies. “I could not bear him,” a frustrated George V complained. “An entirely cold academic professor — an odious man.”

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson campaigned as the “peace candidate.” Supporters praised him for keeping “us out of war.” By April 1917, however, Wilson demanded that Congress declare war on Berlin. In 2008, Obama derided George Bush’s Iraqi surge and vowed a quick exit from that nation. He not only reluctantly remains in Iraq, but he has implanted his own surge in Afghanistan.

And while Obama piously vowed to bring an unprecedented “transparency,” to Washington, Wilson pledged himself to “open covenants, openly arrived at.” Both promises soon entered the dustbin of history.

Wilson’s ultimate covenant was, of course, that of his beloved League of Nations, an obsession that caused him to crash his presidency as he stubbornly sacrificed everything to implement a new order of international governance. “The United States must go in [the League] or it will break the heart of the world,” Wilson confided to his young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, presaging Barack Obama’s obsession with subordinating American interests to a nebulous world opinion.

Convinced of the necessity of his League, Wilson arrogantly excluded Republicans from the negotiation process and, having compromised at all sides at Versailles, stubbornly refused to allow for any compromise with Republicans (or anyone else) at home. Barack Obama’s League of Nations is his national health care plan.

Rather than compromise, Wilson — and Obama, his fellow Noble Peace Prize laureate — attempted rather to orate their dreams into reality. Their aim was and is to force a recalcitrant Congress into acquiesce by the force of their oratory — and their diminishing personal charm. All the while, both chase their dreams while ignoring rapidly deteriorating economies.

Wilson, deciding to circumvent opposing senators, embarked on a grand whistle-stop tour designed to directly sway tens of thousands of constituents, commencing a grueling twenty-two-day, 9,981-mile speaking tour to save his League. Obama hit to road to college campuses and hastily convened town meetings — and inexplicably even fantasized that he could charm Fox News viewers.

The result for Woodrow Wilson was broken health, broken dreams, no League of Nations — and twelve years of Republican ascendancy. Enjoying partisan majorities that Wilson did not, Barack Obama finally shoved his League of Notions through Congress, but the result may be a broken health care system, a bankrupt federal government, and a legacy quickly overturned by an overwhelmingly outraged and energized opposition.

For in the end, Barack Obama, despite a Sunday afternoon’s bought and bullied triumph, may end up making the world safe not only for Democracy — but also, once again, for Republicans.

Sure, it was expansionist and communist totalitarianism is no way to live, but I imagine any country which suffered 12 million casualties in a conflict would seek to establish a buffer zone around the “homeland,” which is essentially what the Soviets did with their takeover of eastern Europe.

Well, I think it’s hard for a lot of people to understand that, given some circumstances, people would feel more comfortable under a government different than ours if it provided some of the security and comfort they lacked, even if it was oppressive. See also: Iraq.

RE: Roosevelt & Allies holding off – I should think that the fact that the US was busy in the Pacific as well might have had something to do with the speed at which they moved in Europe.

That and the nasty tendency in America and Britain to understimate the ability of Communist fighting forces (which would bite us on both ass cheeks again in Korea and Vietnam.) My impression was that the speed of the Soviet advance came as a nasty shock for Britain and the U.S.

Oh, Jesus. So copypasta would have us believe that Wilson’s “broken health” was the result of him pushing Congress to do something it didn’t want to do?

Try “the Spanish Flu”, shitbreath. Which is not only a more plausible and reasonable explanation for Wilson’s “broken health” but has the added advantage of being, you know, factual.

Try “the Spanish Flu”, shitbreath.

I’m sorry, but what does President Wilson’s horniness have to do with the League of Nations?

Plus, what the fuck are the rules in that fucking game?

I don’t see what’s so complicated about it. You have two teams, a rectangular area of play, and a large circle around it. One guy throws a ball, another guy tries to hit it up into the air with his bat, and behind him is a guy to catch the ball, along with a grouping of sticks with some pieces of wood balanced between them.

The guys throwing the ball intend to knock over the sticks so they can eliminate the guy batting. If they eliminate those guys, they can’t bat again.

If the guy batting knocks the ball up, he runs from one end of the rectangle to the other while the team standing out in the circle gets the ball and throws it back to the pitching team. If they catch the ball without it hitting the ground, I think, the teams switch.

That’s how you score points.

Also, they have to meet a specific score (I think something like 300?), which is why cricket takes for-fucking-ever.

Admittedly, this is all me basing information off my memory of Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India. So things may have gotten scrambled in the translation from Bollywood historical sports film.

America’s Three Worst Presidents
By Ari Kaufman

Presidents Day has taken a deep back seat these days on our holiday calendar to the point that not only do schools go on as scheduled, but so do many state and government offices. This is not surprising in 2008, and many revel in it. Presidents Day now celebrates all presidents, not just our greatest. That being the case, let’s “celebrate,” or at least recall, the three worst presidents in our country’s otherwise proud history.

All 43 had their faults, and though mainstream media sources may not agree with my choices, many who understand history will, as a recurring theme continues. During each of these men’s short times in office, they were responsible for deterring progress and negatively affecting the future for America. Thankfully, two of them were followed by two of the greatest commanders in chief of all time.

From the bottom:

Jimmy Carter: (1977-1981)

Few would deny Mr. Carter’s place in infamy. I will confine myself to his actual time in office, although Jimmy Carter arguably has actually been as detrimental to freedom, democracy and the American ideal as during his catastrophic tenure.

Many historians rank him around the mid 20s, some liberal publications place him even in the top 20, and some conservatives in the low 30s. But these are 1980s and 90s ratings. It no doubt takes two post-presidential decades for more complete observations, as we saw with President Reagan, and will likely see with President Bush, depending upon the successor.

One absurd decision, considered “controversial” by even his ardent supporters, was the final negotiation and signature of the “Panama Canal Treaties” in September 1977. Those treaties, which essentially would transfer control of the American-built Panama Canal to the nation of Panama, were bitterly opposed by a majority of the American public. The treaties transferred a great strategic American asset – one that nearly 30,000 men died while constructing it over a decade — to a corrupt third-world military dictatorship. Mr. Carter could not care less.

America’s worst president also terminated the Russian wheat deal, which was intended to establish trade with USSR and lessen Cold War tensions. Even as a former farmer, Carter didn’t value the grain exports, which would have been beneficial to many people employed in agriculture. This embargo marked the beginning of terrible hardship for American farmers.

If all that were not tragic enough, the main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter’s dealings with the Shah of Iran. Though Carter’s presidency was marked by several major crises, the final year of his term arguably was his worst. It was dominated by the Iran Hostage Crisis, during which the United States struggled to rescue diplomats and American citizens held hostage in Tehran, paving the way for the rise of Radical Islam now threatening the free world.

The Shah had been a strong ally of America since World War II. He was also friendly to the Jews of Israel, an idea subsequently non-existent in Iran for more than three decades now. Al Qaeda and the Taliban did not exist and Radical Islam lacked a major state sponsor. Shah Reza Pahlavi was one of the “twin pillars” upon which U.S. strategic policy in the Middle East was built.

When the Iranian Revolution broke out, the Shah was overthrown, and the U.S. did not intervene. The Shah, in permanent exile, was refused entry to the United States by the Carter administration, even on grounds of medical emergency. Nearly a year later, Washington relented and admitted the Shah into the U.S. Gaining strength and confidence, Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage.

The Shah died a few months later in Egypt, but the hostage crisis continued, dominating the last year of Carter’s presidency and putting his misguided policies on display for the world to see, embarrassing America in the process. Carter’s response was to do nothing at first. He simply stayed inside the White House. Then he attempted a rescue he closely managed, which failed. (Contrast this to President Bush after 9-11, though he was still criticized in the press). The redeeming factor in this telling ordeal was Carter’s crushing defeat by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election.

The hostages were released on January 20, 1981 moments after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th President of the USA. Carter’s greatest achievement was leaving office.

James Buchanan (1857-1861)

Slavery persisted deep into the 19th century, and more than 600,000 brave young American men lost their lives in order to abolish the cruel practice and preserve the Union. Democrats were in charge of America leading up to the beginning of hostilities in April 1861, and bear a special historical responsibility. Of course, on campus there is a noticeable gap in studying party’s history during the last half of the 19th century, which academics also underplay when discussing the casus belli of the War Between the States. The worst among a bad lot of Democrat presidents, ranked at the bottom of several ranking lists, was the man who preceded Abraham Lincoln and left the country in ruins, Pennsylvania-born Democrat(ic) President James Buchanan — the only man who was a bachelor when elected to the presidency.

Though Franklin Pierce, who served directly prior to Buchanan, was just as disastrous (as was this entire era of Democratic politics), during Mr. Buchanan’s administration the Union broke apart, and as he left office, the only Civil War in US history was 39 days away.

The country was divided in the middle of the 19th century. Not divided in the ‘red state, blue state’ way that today’s emotional media decries, but divided over the serious issue of slavery. Violence was everywhere, with abolitionists murdered in Kansas having their murders avenged by radical northerners in Virginia, lynchings and so on.

What did Mr. Buchanan, apparently learning nothing from the failures of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that led to this tipping point, do? He kept to the Democrat status quo, asserting that slavery should be a matter for individual states and territories to decide for themselves. The Southern slaveholders, largely Democrats, approved. His opponent in the 1856 presidential election, Senator John C. Fremont, literally the first Republican presidential candidate, argued that the federal government should prevent slavery from spreading into the new western territories. Buchanan won the election, although he failed to get a popular majority over Fremont and former president Millard Fillmore, candidate from the erstwhile Know-Nothing party.

Buchanan, still ignoring common sense and appeasing evil, decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging the admission of the territory as a slave state, endorsing a proslavery constitution. In his inaugural address, he even encouraged the Supreme Court’s forthcoming Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress had no power to keep slavery out of the territories.

Republicans won the House in 1858, but every significant bill they passed fell before Southern votes in the Senate or a Presidential veto. The Federal Government thus reached a stalemate, and sectional strife then forced the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the Presidency.

When the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected. The South advocated secession. Like the Democrats 150 years later in dealing with Islamic terrorists, Buchanan hoped for compromise or diplomacy, but secessionist leaders did not want compromise. He sat idle as the furor of the situation spiraled out of control, naively believing that the Constitution did not give the president power to act against seceders.

In March 1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland, where he died seven years later, leaving his successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the nation.

Even the White House website seems to concur:

“Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)

I will avoid discussing LBJ’s adventures in foreign policy. Like Mr. Carter, his presidency was so full of mishaps there is not enough space to cover them all, and Johnson’s foreign policy was particularly contentious. Rather, I will focus on his long lasting social policies which have had lasting, regressive, deadly effects.

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s policies laid the groundwork for victicrats Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Inner cities and black America have been relegated to poverty and lack of incentive to succeed as a direct result of Johnson’s socialist policies. Many contemporary historians may consider LBJ a “progressive pioneer” but I see a different story.

Johnson was sworn in as our 36th president at Love Field in Dallas, roughly 100 minutes after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. LBJ was preceded by a romantic figure cut down in Johnson’s home state.

Though he was elected in 1964, the GOP may have aided that victory with a somewhat polarizing candidate in Arizona senator, Barry Goldwater. The Republican nominee had a great record of supporting civil rights, but Goldwater opposed certain preferences in the bills that became the Civil Rights Act. His vote against it ultimately led to a 44 to 6 state triumph for LBJ in the general election. Johnson benefited greatly from a profound expansion in liberal control over much of the mainstream press, Hollywood, and academia, a process that, of course, continues today.

Not remembered much in current history textbooks or the media of today, was that in the 1920s Republicans proposed anti-lynching legislation, reflecting back to Civil War times when Democrats, including founders of the KKK, had been involved in this horrific act. The legislation passed the House , an opposition speech was given by a Democrat Congressman from Texas named Lyndon B. Johnson, but was killed by the Democrat-controlled Senate. Finally in 1939 it passed the Senate.

LBJ and the Southern wing of the Democratic Party persisted in supporting anti-black positions. Consider, as LBJ’s term neared:

– In 1956, Democrats expressed their opposition to the desegregation decision of Brown v. Board of Education in the “Southern Manifesto.” One hundred members of Congress, all Democrats, signed the manifesto.

– In 1957, REPUBLICAN President Eisenhower authored a Civil Rights Bill, hoping to repair the damage done to blacks and their civil rights by Democrats for nearly a century. Passage of the bill was blocked by Senate Democrats.

– In 1959, Eisenhower authored a Voting Rights Bill, again, in an effort to undo the disenfranchisement of blacks by Democrats through poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence by the KKK. And once again, passage of the bill is blocked by Senate Democrats.

But then, following the JFK assasination:

– In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is the law originally authored by Eisenhower in 1957. Democrats, including Senator Robert Byrd (a former KKK member), filibustered the bill. Once the filibuster was overcome, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for passage than did Democrats.

– In 1965, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law, the Voting Rights Act of 1964. This is the law originally authored by Eisenhower in 1959. A filibuster was prevented, and passage of this bill also enjoyed support from a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats. Johnson, of course, is now president and gets “credit” for this legislation — authored by Republicans, designed by Republicans to undo a century of damage done by Democrats, and voted for by a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats.

– This was followed by the Great Socety programs designed to eliminate poverty and racism.

At this point, the media and academic elite began using a powerful combination of information control and revisionist history to engineer a massive electoral shift. Falling for the blandishments of the Democrats and their media allies, blacks, once exclusively Republican, began voting Democrat in numbers greater than 90 percent,

The actual consequences of Johnson’s Great Society were disastrous for blacks, discouraging initiative, encouraging a sense of entitlement and victimhood, and creating a permanent dependency class. Until 1965, 82% of black households had both a mother and a father in the home — a statistic on par with or even slightly higher than white families. After 1965 (the year the Democrats and President Johnson decided it was time to stop oppressing blacks and start “helping” them), the presence of black fathers in the home began a precipitous decline; today, the American black out-of-wedlock birthrate is at 69%.

Unlike its socialist cousin (the New Deal), the Great Society emerged in a period of prosperity. Johnson presented his goals for the Great Society in a speech at an elite liberal public university, the University of Michigan, in May 1964. So-called “do-gooder liberals,” having little faith in their common man, loved its aims. The elitist “White Guilt” (see Shelby Steele’s book of the same name) resulted in terrible long-term impacts. Soon after, the programs were heavily criticized by conservatives as being ineffective and creating an underclass of lazy citizens. They have been proven correct. Current evidence makes Johnson the villain. If he were alive today to see the effects, he’d cringe.

Socialism clearly makes individuals worse. Incalculable damage has been done to the black family by the neo-socialist policies begun under Johnson, which are a perverted form of what Eisenhower wisely began a decade prior. And for that, even ignoring the Vietnam adventure, LBJ goes down as one of our three worst presidents of all time.

It’s an automatic “Bullshit” on any list of “America’s Worst 3 Presidents” that doesn’t include George W. Bush.

After 1965 (the year the Democrats and President Johnson decided it was time to stop oppressing blacks and start “helping” them), the presence of black fathers in the home began a precipitous decline; today, the American black out-of-wedlock birthrate is at 69%.

If only black people weren’t allowed to vote or use the same bathrooms as white people, more of them would be married today.

Oppression is marriage’s helpmate.

Also, I should think that guy who died a month in, or Harding’s loss of all the White House’s fine china in card games (along with the Teapot Dome scandal) would easily outdo Jimmy Carter.

I don’t see what’s so complicated about it

I understand the basics of the game, but there are all these weird rules. There are, like, twenty ways a batsman can get an out, and then there are sometimes two batsmen? I don’t get it…

1. Reagan
2. Cheney
3. Nixon
4. Reagan
5. McKinley
6. Reagan
7. Bill Pullman
8. Reagan

“there are sometimes two batsmen”
VMaTR?

and then there are sometimes two batsmen? I don’t get it…

Well, Bruce Wayne had his back broken by a South American wrestler, so he had another guy acting as Batman.

But that was ages ago.

But to be more serious, the two batsmen thing seems like it’s just an ancestor of baseball. You have the batter, and then the guy waiting to bat. The only difference is those two are the only ones who’re going to be on the field until someone is out, instead of having something like four guys on the field with one waiting in the wings.

I thought cricket was a silly sport until one of the English guys on my soccer team organized a game for us American and Latino guys last summer. I think he got sick of us saying it was incomprehensible. It didn’t take long to figure out the rules and it was a lot of fun but it was frustrating that baseball skills, except for fielding, didn’t transfer as well as I thought they would. Not being able to bend your elbow when you “bowl” is the only thing about the sport I still think is stupid. They should totally change that rule so I can be better at it.

They should totally change that rule so I can be better at it.

I’m starting to think this is all baseball actually /is/, honestly. A bunch of rules changes so people that sucked at cricket could play something like cricket.

But to be more serious, the two batsmen thing seems like it’s just an ancestor of baseball.

That makes sense.

I’m not knocking cricket in general–just saying I’m not smart enough to understand it. However, I didn’t know that there was an offense and a defense team in football until a few years ago, so…

Negros weren’t lazy until the Democrats made them commies. You’re the racist.

Excuse me, coloreds.

“Shorter Troofie”
Not possible.

I suggest seeing Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India if you want to explore cricket. It’s entertaining as heck because it follows all the tropes of well, a sports movie; except it’s Indian peasants who break out into Bollywood song-and-dance numbers playing cricket against the evil British colonial military bastards.

Somewhere along the way, you start to pick up a *little* bit of cricket, at least. Especially since the Indian peasants don’t understand it either, so you get to learn with them!

Did I mention the song-and-dance?

It’s an automatic “Bullshit” on any list of “America’s Worst 3 Presidents” that doesn’t include George W. Bush.

In 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

Also, as far as Carter, if we’d listened to him we would not have this big BP mess in the gulf right now. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps it was the congress that was in at that time instead.

Also, as far as Carter, if we’d listened to him we would not have this big BP mess in the gulf right now. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps it was the congress that was in at that time instead.

I’ve always thought Carter was fucking underrated as a president. His biggest flaw, I think, was the fact that he was far too nice to be president.

I mean, dude had fucking solar panels on the fucking White House. Of course, Reagan, that spiteful fucker, tore them off as soon as he took office.

“Put on a sweater” is still excellent advice, in my opinion.

Also, an update on the kickball tournament. The Colonials are tied with the Brits 1-1 at halftime. I think Bill Buckner’s cousin is in goal for England.

Carter was exactly what the conservative snake-wavers all insist they want in a president: a born-again true believer.

Problem is, he practices his beliefs, rather than just using them as an excuse to hate on poor people, coloreds, and homos.

After 1965 (the year the Democrats and President Johnson decided it was time to stop oppressing blacks and start “helping” them), the presence of black fathers in the home began a precipitous decline; today, the American black out-of-wedlock birthrate is at 69%.

The presence of black fathers in the home in Sweden is even lower than here! SHOCKING!

PS, black “illegitimacy” began declining under Clinton, and that trend reversed under Bush. Whodathunk?

T & U – that’s perhaps the most revealing lifting of the curtain around St. Ronnie Big-Government-Is-Wasteful Reagan, IMO. Dude took something that was working fine, already paid for, and saving taxpayer money, and spent taxpayer money tearing it up.

That’s pretty much the Reagan years in a nutshell.

Carter’s biggest flaw has honestly been that he’s been busy actually doing shit for the past 30 years, while the right-wing has basically done nothing but vilify him over and over again because he existed.

That’s pretty much the Reagan years in a nutshell.

Pretty much the conservative mindset in a nutshell, really. They talk about how emotional we are…I’m pretty sure that spite, jealousy, and anger actually are emotions, too, guys.

Who’d have expected West Ham’s goalie to turn out to be such a stiff? /trollinganotherkiwi

[Jimmy Carter] tells us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don’t believe that. And, I don’t believe you do either. That is why I am seeking the presidency. I cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us our high standard of living, the result of thrift and hard work, is somehow selfish extravagance which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarcity. I don’t agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to other hands. I am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world.

America’s Three Worst Presidents
By Ari Kaufman

This is from American Thinker. So was “Obama’s Treachery” on the last thread. Mattafact, so is “Obama and Wilson. Hmmm.

If death squads don’t rape nuns, George Washington and baby Jesus cry.

owever, our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you’d think that the 1980’s were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there.

If Martin Luther King didn’t want to get shot, his uppity ass shouldn’t have gotten in that “civil disobedience” bullshit.

Ah yes, American Stinker – a website practicing truth-in-advertising, with its logo of Uncle Sam concentrating mightily on pinching an immense loaf.

When Ronald Reagan got Alzheimer’s, how could they tell?

Abraham Lincoln freed the black man. In many ways, Dr. King freed the white man. How did he accomplish this tremendous feat? Where others — white and black — preached hatred, he taught the principles of love and nonviolence. We can be so thankful that Dr. King raised his mighty eloquence for love and hope rather than for hostility and bitterness. He took the tension he found in our nation, a tension of injustice, and channeled it for the good of America and all her people.

I very publicly opposed making Martin Luther King day a holiday until a veto-proof congressional majority knocked me on my wrinkled ass, like they normally did when I tried to take a stand against uppity niggers (see also apartheid).

[Jimmy Carter] tells us we must learn to live with less, and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been; that the America of the coming years will be a place where — because of our past excesses — it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. I don’t believe that.

“So I’m going to do my damnedest to guarantee it.”

They’re claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there.

Yeah, so were they, hence the “greed and neglect” thing. I mean Jesus H., you were fucking PROUD of it, asshole.

1. Cheney (George W. Bush)
2. Cheney (George H. Bush)
3. Cheney (Ronald Reagan 2nd term)
4. Cheney (Ronald Reagan 1st term)
5. Cheney (Richard Nixon)

Also, wasn’t Reagan’s entire criminal defense that he couldn’t remember the 80s, nor where he was at any given time?

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.

Who else but St. Ronnie could (less than two decades after implying he brought his murder on himself) think that King’s greatest accomplishment was “freeing the white man”?

When Ronald Reagan got Alzheimer’s, how could they tell?

He could actually hit his drool cup?

Fap fap fap fap fap

Seriously, get back in the fucking grave, you old shit. Don’t think I won’t stake you.

How could I, after being in the upper ranks of the West Virginia Klan, turn around and say what a champion of civil rights I am?

How could I, after being in the upper ranks of the West Virginia Klan, turn around and say what a champion of civil rights I am?

By being an adult and owning up to your past. Something you will never know.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

Never truer than when he and his acolytes are the government.

How could I, after being in the upper ranks of the West Virginia Klan, turn around and say what a champion of civil rights I am?

*yawn* And that’s pretty much all you got, isn’t it? SAD.

R U watching Eng. v. USA?

Not boring.

Not boring, but HOLY HELL I want the horn blowers to DIE DIE DIE.

I love how “B-b-but Klansman Byrd!” is all righties have to deflect criticism of their own record on civil rights over the past 30 years or so.

Not boring, but HOLY HELL I want the horn blowers to DIE DIE DIE.

I understand why they relented and let people have them in the stadium, but why didn’t they at least restrict the number that were sold? Apparently, they’re loud enough that they can cause hearing damage.

I’m waiting to watch it with the husband when he gets off work. This way, I’m also less likely to inadvertently give anything interesting away about the game.

I love how “B-b-but Klansman Byrd!” is all righties have to deflect criticism of their own record on civil rights over the past 30 years or so.

Yeah, because ONE DUDE who is repentant about his history of racism erases the Southern Strategy and engineered economic oppression that has affected POC most.

“Beck has an elimination-fantasy-thinly-disguised-as-a-novel coming out, titled “The Overton Window.” It sounds like an update of “The Turner Diaries” for a whole new generation of loony racists.”

Swell. I’ll be first in line to buy one so I can take a dump on it.

This is why Democrats are basically happy to go up against Fiorina; she’s pretty much running on her skeletons in her closet.

“Yeah, sad to say, alcohol is a solvent & our brains are made of the same stuff that clogs drain-pipes. If you do enough rockstar/Self-Destruct Fast-Lane drinking – like Beck did – you can very quickly become retarded … & “mildly” is putting it mildly.”

maybe it’s drink. Maybe it’s sociopathy….but that man is SICK. Sick and twisted and hateful and delilusional. I wish he’d go away. His fat ugly face matches his soul.

OK, no spoilers.

The horns were tame in this match. The SA-Mex game sounded as if there was a giant bee hovering over the stadium.

Maybe the TV crew has adjusted the mix.

Swell. I’ll be first in line to buy one so I can take a dump on it.

I’m sure you can just take a dump on it in the store.

Barnes and Noble, here I come.

“Beck has an elimination-fantasy-thinly-disguised-as-a-novel coming out, titled “The Overton Window.”

Mediamatters has excerpts

He bent to her, closed his eyes, and her lips touched his, gently, and again more urgently as he responded. He felt her arms around him, her body yearning against his in the embrace, a knot like hunger inside, heart quickening, cool hands at his back under the warmth of his jacket, searching, pressing him closer still. With everything to see and hear around them there at the very crossroads of the world, soaring billboards, scrolling news crawlers, bright digital Jumbotrons that lined the tall buildings and blotted out the whole evening sky, it all disappeared to its rightful insignificance, flat as a postcard. That place was left outside their small circle, and if asked right then he might have stayed there within it forever. But he felt her smile against his lips as they were brought back to where they stood by the brusque voice of a passing man, who advised in his native Brooklynese that maybe they should go and get a room.

A light drizzle had begun to fall, and down the block they found a coffee shop with two seats by the window where they could wait out the patch of rain. When he returned from the counter with their cups he found her sitting with a folded newspaper, not reading it but lost somewhere in her thoughts. It was a while before she spoke.

“Noah?”

“I was starting to worry you’d forgotten I was here.”

Molly took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself for a moment.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“If we hired you, your company, what would you tell us to do?”

He frowned a bit. “You mean if you and your mom hired us?”

“It’s more than just the two of us, you know that. A lot more.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What is it you want to accomplish again?”

“We want to save the country.”

“Oh. Okay. Is that all?”

“That’s where we start, isn’t it? With a clear objective.”

“That’s right.”

“So?”

“Okay. Let me think for a minute.”

Molly had become deadly serious; this wasn’t party talk. She didn’t take her eyes from his as she waited.

“I guess;’ he said, “I’d begin by sitting down with all these different groups and trying to focus everyone on the things they agree on — the fundamentals. A platform, you know? Make it easy for people to understand what you’re about. Propose some real answers.”

“Give me an example.”

“I don’t know-start with the tax code, since your mom is so passionate about that. How about a set of specific spending cuts and a thirteen percent flat tax to start with? Get that ridiculous sixty-seven-thousand-page tax code down to four or five bullet points, and show exactly what effects it’ll have on trade, and employment, and the debt, and the future of the country.”

Your mom is so passionate that…….

OK, no spoilers.

That’s cool, whatever. I’m on the Twitter machine and I’m at an indie theater/bar/bakery where people were just watching the game, so I don’t expect to avoid it.

I’m sure you can just take a dump on it in the store

I was making a regular point of “accidentally” dropping a Beck book behind the shelves at the local library until I noticed a CC camera nearby.

Good thing I didn’t take a dump on it.

He bent to her, closed his eyes, and her lips touched his, gently, and again more urgently as he responded. He felt her arms around him, her body yearning against his in the embrace, a knot like hunger inside, heart quickening, cool hands at his back under the warmth of his jacket, searching, pressing him closer still.

*HORK*

I mean, I have been trying to lose weight, so maybe I should get this book…then again, any calories from food lost due to nausea would probably be replaced by alcohol.

Lulz!! Indeed.

Nothing gets my motor running like talking about taxes. I’m going to think about a 17% flat tax while I pleasure myself now.

“cool hands at his back under the warmth of his jacket, searching”

You won’t find it there.

Nothing gets my motor running like talking about taxes. I’m going to think about a 17% flat tax while I pleasure myself now.

Sounds like you would also enjoy rough sex with a metals magnate (heh) in a train tunnel…

Who’d have expected West Ham’s goalie to turn out to be such a stiff?

On the London Underground, why is the station between West Ham and East Ham not called “Anus”? It kills me…

“Would you like to see my spread sheet?”

Eh. Imagine a close italics tag.

My safe word is “John Galt.”

“My safe word is “John Galt.””

That’s no safe word. That’s a trigger.

My safe word is “John Galt.”

Does hubby ever mishear that as “John of Gaunt,” think you were talking about a 14th-C noble, and get confused?

Imagine another close italics tag.

Does hubby ever mishear that as “John of Gaunt,” think you were talking about a 14th-C noble, and get confused?

No. He knows my serious commitment to libertarian ideology, which really is just BDSM acted out in society, only mostly non-sexual and for real. And with fewer cool toys.

Imagine another close italics tag.

That’s what she said. (I don’t know. I’m slightly tipsy).

Nothing gets my motor running like talking about taxes.

You said it.

I’m going to think about a 17% flat tax while I pleasure myself now.

Flat tax?!! Pfft, I think of punishing the wealthy by pegging enormous tax rates, rising to unbelievable new heights, to their “income”.

I’m slightly tipsy

You should spin the screw under your right front foot to level out, otherwise you’ll jam during the spin cycle.

Flat tax?!! Pfft, I think of punishing the wealthy by pegging enormous tax rates, rising to unbelievable new heights, to their “income”.

You had me at “punishing the wealthy”.

It’s getting kin-Kay up in here.

You should spin the screw under your right front foot to level out, otherwise you’ll jam during the spin cycle

Thanks for the advice. I might try it on my washer, too. It currently makes terrifying noises that cause the cats to hide under the bed.

terrifying noises that cause the cats to hide under the bed.

Veiled screamer reference.

Check out this quote from the DK Saturday hatemail:

“You should run for (faggot) president!

All hail Queen Markos HOMOulitsas, princess of Gaydom, countess of Fagville!

You know what you should do? Run for president in 2012! SRsly! you could win! Obama is so unpopular (maybe 30% approaval in 2012) that he would lose to a ticket with sarah palins mutant baby and Hugo chavez. You havea real opportunity here! Dont believe me? Let me explain. There are only two stpes: 1) Win democrat primaries and 2) Win genereal election. The first step is really simple. Ive seen some of thwe people who vote in democrat primaries. They are limp-wristed, cum-chugging, lisping, pretentiuos faggots who eat vegan food and wear birckenstock sandals. They also drive pink toyota Priuses which have special faggot-customized man-purse holders for their dolce&gabana handbags and faggot cigarette lighters for their menthol-flavored pussy smokes. They will vote for whoever is the most “”diverse””. Now you are both a wetback and a faggot, whichis more “diverse” than Obamas niggerhood.The primary faggots will give you a landslied vctory.

The general election will be a bit harder.You will however have the leftist press (which is all the press) 100% on your side. they will print the usual democrat lies about all your oponents (Huckabee is in the KKK and snorts cocaine, romney wants to cancel medicare and the FBI and so on). Soon the people will hate the republican candidate and your America-hating communism wont seems so bad! as for money, just do what faggots do: suck cock for donations! I bet you could raise millions just by blowing Warren bufett once a day. You can also raise millions from NAMBLA/ACORN (the liberal base) by promising to pardon them for their sex crimes. Then you just need the right vicepresident. It should be a kike so you can get the kike money/votes. And then your all set! You’ll win the race with the usual democrat voter fraud (one mexican, one vote ROFL) and then your inthe White House! Then you just kick back and let ward churchill, Moveon and CAIR run the country (United Socialist Arab States in a few years). Its that easy! no more “age of consent” or “god” or “patriotism”! youd like that, wouldn’t you faggot?

FAGGOT/KIKE 2012!”

So many questions…I’ll start with this–what is Faggot President and how come I’ve never been asked to run? *pouts*

Veiled screamer reference.

Nah, they’re used to that.

I mean…uh……..I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Brain, brain. What is brain?

Check out this quote from the DK Saturday hatemail:

You know, I’m not normally prone to slurring homosexuals by suggesting that total asshole fucktards are closet gays, but goddamn, I think I may have to in this case.

Now you are both a wetback and a faggot, whichis more “diverse” than Obamas niggerhood.

Why did this read in my head in a high-pitched voice saying “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

Why did this read in my head in a high-pitched voice saying “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

Again: Closeted. Homosexual.

What’s weird is that a good portion of kos’ hatemail reads like (really hateful) gay porn. I almost don’t know how you don’t go straight to “closet case”.

I don’t think anyone in TWOO was closeted. Well, maybe Bert Lahr, but no one else.

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

How can we tell?

Witches are made of wood.
Wood floats
Therefore, if she floats she must be a witch.

That’s logic!

Therefore, if she floats she must be a witch.

So Shelly Winters in The Poseidon Adventure wasn’t a witch. Good to know.

What’s weird is that a good portion of kos’ hatemail reads like (really hateful) gay porn.

Which is weird, because he’s not even that cute.

I don’t think anyone in TWOO was closeted. Well, maybe Bert Lahr, but no one else.

Well, no, but, I mean…Judy Garland?

Was Judy really closeted or just confused? (I honestly don’t know.)

We here at Sadly typically deal with the bottom of the barrel but it seems lately that some big turds are rising to the top.

Oklahoma State Senator Aims To Stop ‘Liberal Judges’ From Imposing Sharia Law

“Oklahoma State Senator Rex Duncan (R) is pushing for a ballot measure that would prohibit courts from considering international or sharia law when deciding cases. He says the measure is a “preemptive strike” against “liberal judges” who want to “undermine those founding principles” of America.”

You know it’s getting bad when you can no longer tell the Debbie Schlussels of wingnuttia from a state senator.

Rex Duncan

Did he accidentally put his porn name on the ballot instead of his real name?

Was Judy really closeted or just confused? (I honestly don’t know.)

I have no idea. I was just suggesting that Teh Gheys really like her. Never mind. That’s what I get for dealing in antiquated stereotypes, anyway.

You had me at “it’s as if hundreds of fappers suddenly cried out and then… suddenly cried out MOAR”.

You know it’s getting bad when you can no longer tell the Debbie Schlussels of wingnuttia from a state senator.

It’s Oklahoma, what would you expect?

“Oklahoma State Senator Rex Duncan (R) is pushing for a ballot measure that would prohibit courts from considering international or sharia law when deciding cases. He says the measure is a “preemptive strike” against “liberal judges” who want to “undermine those founding principles” of America.”

I say we should preemptively require him to wear a veil. And damn, dude, you have a real job now, open your damn wallet and STOP CUTTING YOUR OWN HAIR.

It’s Oklahoma, what would you expect?

Bullshit as high as a wingnutee’s eye.

It’s Oklahoma, what would you expect?

Honestly, I’ve never been there. Maybe driven through back in the 80’s. I live in Minnesota, close to downtown. I have two organic co-ops within bicycling range.

So, like, are liberals godless heathens who hate religion and want orgies and crack on every street corner, or are they ultra-conservative Islamists who want to bring about a theocracy? I haz a confoosed.

I haz a confoosed.

Jeez, lady, at least draw the curtain.

We want both!

I’m bored. I might actually be forced to turn off the PC and clean around the house.

The following critique, originally published in the East Africa Journal in 1965, was written by Barak H. Obama, father of the current US Democratic frontrunner, in response to the Kenyan government’s ‘Sessional Paper No. 10,’ which had been published earlier that year. The author of the Sessional Paper was Mwai Kibaki. Obama senior was working on his doctorate in economics at the time.

Problems Facing Our Socialism – Barak H. Obama

Since many of the African countries achieved their independence there has been much to talk about African Socialism. More over, there has been no individual or country which has at any time defined this socialism, nor has there been any common ground among the leaders as to what they meant when they talked of African Socialism. Where, then, could we look for the definition of this “ism”? If it is accepted that it is the leaders of a country who usually formulate and define ideologies, then the only source for this definition would be to get it from either through their speeches, press reports or papers or through their actions. So far the statements made by such leaders as President Nkrumah, Nyerere, Toure etc, have not had much in common. Likewise, the actions of these leaders, while diverting a little from the capitalism system have not by any means been directed towards any particularly defined ideology, be it scientific socialism – interalia – or communism.
As a first step, the Kenyan Government must be congratulated, for it has tried to clarify the situation in so far as it is possible to do so in the light of its planning needs. It not only specifies the objectives by which this country should be guided, but states the policies through which it hopes to fulfill these objectives. It also sets out targets, taking into account the priorities and shows ways by which to achieve these targets. The paper goes further to deal with matters of wide policy. The statement about non-alignment is for the first time explicitly expounded and one cannot help but be happy that those who wrote this paper realized the importance and the great urgency of this policy statement. The paper realizes that, as is true of any country, we must encourage international trade, foreign investments etc, since it is through these that we can hope to get the foreign exchange which we so desperately need for the purchases both of capital goods and consumer goods which we cannot produce locally, thereby enhancing development.
On population growth, the paper notes our high rates of growth and recognizes that this factor can be very detrimental to growth. The paper recognizes the detriments and adverse repercussions which nationalization can have on growth in this country. The policy of the government in this paper is to try to raise per capita incomes. This, it recognizes it can only do by getting high rates of growth there must be a high rate of capital accumulation. The government then tries to spell out means by which it intends to encourage accumulations and this is most important for development. It should be hoped that the government shall find the means by which it intends to achieve these objectives.
The title of the paper is given as “African Socialism and its Applicability to Planning in Kenya”. One would wonder whether the title is not misleading. Is it Kenyan Socialism that we are talking about or African Socialism?
One would have been pleased to see African Socialism defined and how Kenya fits into his definitions, and an indications of those characteristics in which Kenya is unique before one can think of the applicability of this definition to Kenya. The part which deals with the applicability can be excused in so far as the planning is taking place in Kenya, hence it has to be done within Kenya’s peculiar and unique conditions. But this would mean that we have defined the larger context i.e African Socialism and that our plans while having points of variance, do not diverge so much from the defined context. Not only would we question the ideology as undefined, but we may find reason to question the pattern of the plans as to whether they follow the condition prevailing within the country and their practicability.
The applicability of planning within the embryo of African Socialism, while essentially an economic matter, cannot be divorced from the politico-social-cultural context in which we find ourselves and as such we should not ignore these factors as seems to have occurred in the Sessional Paper No.10. To avoid jumping the gun, however, I wish to follow what has been included in the paper and analyze each point sequentially.
The first part of the paper deals with wide topics such as the objectives of societies. The paper states that there are universal desires of societies and these include political equality, social justice, human dignity and freedom of conscience, freedom from water diseases and exploitation, equal opportunities and, lastly, a high and growing per capita income and equitable distribution. While one may question the universality and precedence of these ideals in all societies, let us assume that as is said in the paper we want to satisfy these objectives within the context of African Socialism.
We have noted that African Socialism is undefined. We note also its independence from foreign ideologies, but this is not a positive description of an idea. It says that it abhors foreign ideology, but what foreign ideology is meant here? Does what occur in Ghana, Tanzania, Great Britain, or the U.S.A, considered foreign? When looked at in this angle one immediately notices the first mistake viz, not defining African Socialism so as to embody a cross-section of Africa as the paper by its very title purports. It would have been more clear and logistic to define African Socialism and then state its independence. After all, how can one talk of the independence of something people do not know?
We then have a short description of African traditions and what these traditions imply within contemporary society; yet the inter-relations which this bears to what follows is lost. This does not lead to any basic factors. As an example, the African tradition is fundamentally based on communal ownership of major means of production and sharing of the fruits of the labours, so expended in production, to the benefit of all; and yet the paper advocates land title deeds and private ownership of land– a major means of production. How do these two conflicting factors reconcile?
Paragraphs 13 and 14 attempt to define African Socialism. Yet even these paragraphs are incomplete as the very definition is lacking. In fact, one wonders how the statements made here differ from scientific socialism unless one takes the statement “society in turn will reward these efforts” to be different from “reward to each according to his needs,” Certainly, the principle is the same. It is only in the manner the principle is fulfilled that may differ, but this is true in every case that applicability of ideologies have to be in accordance with prevailing circumstances.
If one says that the African society was classless as the paper says, what is there to stop it from being a class society as time goes on? Is what has been said in the paper, if implemented, enough to eschew this danger? It may be true that African traditions had no parallels in European Feudal society so that the problems arising there may not arise here, but can one be as blind as not to see that all through the colonial period this same class distinction was transplanted here?
Can one deny that the African, while not pleased with the system, did not covet the high place given to the European and Asian? Can one deny the fact that we Africans have likewise started the same thing and that we have the haves and the have-nots, which are poles apart, both in the living surroundings, social contacts and language? How then can we talk of different causes to the same problems when we should be talking of how to correct them? Certainly it is solutions that we are interested in and one cannot say that solutions cannot be the same where causes are different. The question is how we are going to remove the disparities in our country such as concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands while not destroying what has already been achieved and the same time assimilating these groups to build one country?
It is interesting to note that the paper recognizes failure of both Marxian socialism and laissez-faire in solving these problems, yet recognition only leads to trying new means of doing things and it is a far cry to say that the blueprint put in the paper will enable us to solve them. It is basically passive rather than active as I shall come to show later.
The paper thus goes into foreign relations. It is a tautology to say that we want to be independent of other countries since every country has always wished this. It would have been more important to talk of how we intend to break our dependence on other countries politically and economically, since this is fait accompli. It may be true this is still the case because of our lack of basic resources and skilled manpower, yet one can choose to develop by the bootstraps rather than become a pawn to some foreign powers such as Sekou Toure did. While the statement of the policy of non-alignment is good and encouraging, one would wish to see it put into practice.
Let us examine the operating characteristics of African Socialism as put down in the paper. Here the paper goes into use and control of resources. The first statement concerns conflict of opinion on attitude toward land ownership. It is true that in most African societies the individual had sole right as to use of land and proceeds from it. He did however, own it only as a trustee to the clan, tribe or society. He could give it on loan to someone outside the tribe to use, but he had no right to sell it outside the tribe. In fact most of our wars were fought because of land. How then can there be a conflict of opinion on communal ownership? The paper should have made this point clear. The paper on the other hand leaves the question there and plunges into the use of resources. How can one talk of use, whether proper or improper, before one defines the owning unit and the rights therefore? It is true that proper use of resources are of paramount importance if we are going to increase both productivity and capital income, but we cannot deal with this unless and until we deal with ownership and within the African socialistic system.
The paper goes further to say that these traditions cannot be carried on indiscriminately in a modern, monetary economy. This is curious unless the paper means that what is produced communally is unsellable. The paper says that because of credit requirements there has to be land titles and registrations. If this is the case, must these land titles and registrations be done on individual ownership? Does it mean that co-operatives cannot be registered or that what is owned in common cannot have title deeds? Is communal ownership of land incompatible with land consolidation? It is surprising that one of the best African traditions is not only being put aside in this paper but even the principle is not being recognized and enhanced. It is true that mismanagement can occur both in private as well as in public ownership, but we ought to look at the matter within the social context. Looked at this way, we can avoid power economic concentration and bring standardized use and control of resources through public ownership, let alone the equitable distribution of economic gains that would follow. One need not talk of state ownership of everything from a small garden to a big farm. One need only look at the problems now encountered in getting lands consolidated in some areas. Will these be easily done through individual actions, through co-operatives or through governmental ownership? Realizing social stickiness and inflexibility and looking at the society’s distrust of change, one would see that, if left to the individual, consolidation will take a long time to come. We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise.
Would it not seem, then, that the government could bring more rapid consolidation through clan co-operatives? Individuals initiative is not usually the best method of bringing land reform. Since proper land use and control is very important if we are going to overcome the dual character of our economy and thereby increase productivity, the government should take a positive stand and, if need be, force people to consolidate through the easiest way, which, I think, would be through clan co-operatives rather than through individual initiative. If one were to suppose that the state is an instrument of society and if the society regards growth as well as the correction of the lopsided development which has characterized this country as important then, the society, through the government, which is its instrument, should enforces means by which this growth and change can be brought about. This is not incompatible with the objectives enumerated in the first part of the paper. If the government should, however, feel that the individual ownership is the best policy to take in order to bring development, then it should restrict the size of farms that can be owned by one individual throughout the country and this should apply to everybody from the president to the ordinary man.
On class problems, the paper states that since there was not such a thing in Africa, the problem is that of prevention. This is to ignore the truth of the matter. One wonders whether the authors of the papers have not noticed that a discernible class structure as emerged in Africa and particularly in Kenya. While we welcome the idea of prevention, we should also try to cure what has sipped in. the elimination of foreign economic and political domination is a good gesture towards this, so are plans to develop in order to prevent antagonistic classes. But we also need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now. It is a case of cure and prevention and prevention alone. The paper says that the principle of political equality eliminates the use of economic power as a political base. It is strange that the government can say this hen, wherever we go, in America, in Africa, in Europe, the dollar, the proud and the mark have been used as political weapons despite professed ideologies. It is good to be optimistic, but so long as we maintain free enterprises one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others, nor is it likely that in a country with low per capital incomes, to subject the poor into submitting to political ideologies and to persuade them to vote for those who offer them money, would not be difficult and has, in fact, been occurring.
We then turn to foreign investors. Here the paper outlines how foreign investors can take an active part in the development of the country and outlines areas of social responsibility in which they can take part. These are: making shares available for Africans, employing Africans on management levels as soon as qualified people can be found and providing training facilities for Africans”. Noble as these objectives are, one cannot fail to see that the government is not committed to any specific and active policy in guiding foreign investors i.e. foreign commercial firm to integrate themselves within the Kenya economy.
It is true that we do not have many people qualified to take up managerial positions in these enterprises nor those who could participate intelligently in policy making functions. Bit this is not to say that there are none. At present, many highly qualified Africans are employed by commercial firms and are given very pompous titles. This is done only publicity. If one were to go into the workings of these companies, however, one would find that they actually have no voice in the companies which give them these high titles. Key positions should be Africanized. They are given public relations work which is the only high position an African has held in commercial firms and this understandable, or they are made directors in name but lack knowledge about the company’s workings so that they are rubber stamps of what is decided. How can this go with the government’s knowledge without her taking a positive stand by seeing to it that real Africanization is taking place? Certainly foreign commercials firms are not going to push this enough unless the government takes a positive stand.
It is “strange” to note that some of the very big commercial firms deal in some products which are the lifeblood of this country but without the people of this country taking an active part in the formulation of policies thereof. If some of these firms were to stop standstill. Let the government take an active part in these spheres and see to it that the people are actively represented in them. It is true that there is lack of skilled man power in the country, but I would rather that benefit of the country by giving them responsible positions in commercial firms as is being done in public bodies. The government are not yet qualified but should also see to opportunities to do something for the country. It is strange to talk of lack of skilled manpower when the few who are available are not utilized fully.
The paper wishes to encourage domestic accumulation. This is a good gesture except for the underlying assumption which one only private enterprices and business that tends to encourage accumulations. True, in the paper there is a realization that taxation can be used as a means of forced saving, but it is given a secondary place in this respect. Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits deprived from public services by the society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay. It is a fallacy to say that there is this limit and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings. How are we going to rid ourselves of economic power concentration when we, in our blue print, tend towards what we ourselves discredit? In paragraph 47 the paper states that the company form of business organization is a departure from the direct individual ownership typical of Marx’s day. Yet one who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to s advanced stage of capitalism but Marx even called it finance capitalism bywhich a few would control the finances of so many and through this have not only economic power but political power as well.
On the subject of application of African Socialism and planning in Kenya, the emphasis is put on economic growth. While recognizing the importance of growth, one can emphasize it to the detriment of other objectives. We should not only put all our efforts on growth, but should cover a wider subjects which is development. We can have a high rate of growth economically and yet not develop both economically, politically and socially. A paper such as this one, produced by the government, which should be and is a blueprint of the country’s policies, cannot confine itself to mandate and picayune factors when it ought to deal with development which includes growth. Surely this is the more encompassing subject which the paper should have dealt with fully.
I am. This paper notes what we are short of and seeks way to correct these shortages. Yet recognition of what we are short of is not the realization of why we are short of them nor how we can remedy these shortages. To say that per capital incomes are low is a thing that any man can see. Likewise, to say that we are short of domestic capital because of the low rate of saving is a tautology. The reasons are that the majority of the populace have such a low per capita income that it is almost impossible for them to save. There is a small minority of people and worse still, on a racial basis, who have high incomes and who can afford to rely on one group or a small segment of society to do all the saving. Nor is all of this saving being invested in this country. Some are sent a broad in form of dividends and for many other reasons. What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all and the same time be able to channel some of these gains to future productions. This is the government’s obligation; it should have come out with a plan in the paper to achieve this. The government recognizes that each pound saved can generate three pounds in both foreign aid and assistance. Is not this the reason the government should tax the rich more so as to generate high tax surplus?
Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income. Assuming that development and the achievement of a high per capita income is a benefit to society as a whole I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and siphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development, there by reducing our reliance on foreign aid.
The paper notes lack of qualified and skilled manpower. Training must be expanded so that our already qualified manpower can gain the experience to participate fully in advancing development while the unqualified. Through some of the statistics given on paragraph 63 one can see what we have and what we lack in terms of skilled manpower and the period it takes to train it. It is, in fact, quite an achievement that the government has done so much within a short time. Yet one sometimes wonders why, despite these facts, the government sometimes refused some scholarships which are given to Kenya students, and is fussy in deciding those who can go abroad and those who should study in our East African Universities. Are we looking at a gift horse in the month when we refuse scholarships?
It is important that we should give priorities in training to what e lack most, but these does not mean that we have to stop people from going to study abroad just because they are not going for what we want them to study, particulary when no one applies for what we want our people to study. It should be realized that one person who goes out to study leaves a chance in our universities for another person who would not otherwise have had the chance. It is the reason why we should not be so choosy in what we get in terms of scholarships. In fact, sooner or later we are going to to wish we did not turn down some of the scholarships which we have been offered and that we had not been so choosy as to discredit those who have offered us those scholarships.
While it is true that Kenya does not suffer from foreign exchange shortages right now, we cannot say that we will not suffer from it in the near future. We should take measure to encourage more import substituting industries and have selective controls with high preference being given to capital goods purchased from abroad. A form of import licensing ought to be introduced which will only look at the goods imported in terms of their contribution to growth and development, unless they are things that we do not produce ourselves. In this way we will be able to make full use of foreign exchange which we can earn through our exports while at the same time satisfying the needs which we cannot satisfy locally.
Coming to critical issues and choices, it is surprising that no general mention is made of the dual characteristic of our economy. How can we afford to ignore the pockets of this economy which are underdeveloped without some positive statement about their development. In Kenya the colonial government only developed the so-called white areas. Thus we find that the central province, some parts of the Rift Valley and some parts of Kericho are developed, in farming, roads, water systems and the like when most of the former African reserves areas are eking a living on poor areas without even good road networks to serve them. How are these areas going to be monetized and bring development when we do not even the infrastructure on which development depends unless the government takes a positive stand and does something to correct this lopsided way of development.
The government talks of dealing only with areas where the returns out off any development programme are ostensible. But surely the returns are low only because these areas are and were undeveloped in the beginning. Must we be so short-sighted as to look only into immediate gains when these areas are rotting in poverty? In these areas we find lot of disguised unemployment which, if we were to plan sensibly, could be utilized to the benefit of society. The government says that people who came into the cities in search of jobs should return to the land and farm it. This would have been more sensible if they had a land worth farming. I wonder whether the government really means that a family can live on an acre of undeveloped land. If these people came in search of work, it is because these lands are poor and it is because their marginal productivity is zero. In fact, their return to the land is only to stop them from contributing to increased output since those who remain on the land produce the same amount of product as when those who came out are also on the land. Isn’t this the reason why the government should find projects either in the cities or in rural areas which could absorb them? It is a curious thing that the government does not recognize these facts in its policy paper.
There is a statement made on nationalization. True there are cases in which nationalization is bad, but there are, likewise, quite a few benefits to be derived from it. On this subject, I would like to refer the authors to Prof. Bronferbrenner’s work on the “Appeals for confiscation is Economic Development”. Nationalization should not only be looked at only in terms of profitability alone, but also, or even more, on the benefit to the society that such services render and on its importance in terms of public interest. If we were to look at these things purely on profitability, then the railways would not have been nationalized worldwide since it is the least profitable so that in all countries it is subsidized by government. There is also a statement that nationalization will apply to African enterprise when such enterprise do not exist. If we are going to nationalize, we are going to nationalize what exists and is worth nationalizing. But these are Europeans and Asians enterprices.
One need not to be Kenyan to note that nearly all commercial enterprises from small shops in river Road to big shops in Government road and that industries in the Industrial Areas of Nairobi are mostly owned by Asians and Europeans. One need not to be a Kenyan to note that most hotels and entertainment places are owned by Asians and Europeans. One need not to be Kenyan to note that when one goes to a good restaurant he mostly finds Asians and Europeans, nor has he to be a Kenyan to see that the majority of cars running in Kenya are run by Asians and Europeans. How then can we say that we are going to be indiscriminate in rectifying these imbalances? We have to give the African his place in his own country and we have to give him this economic power if he is going to develop. The paper talks of fear of retarding growth if nationalization or purchases of these enterprise are made for Africans. But for whom do we want to grow? Is this the African who owns his country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country? It is mainly in this country one finds almost everything owned by non-indieginous populace. The government must do something about this and soon. For these reasons, all paras, 80,81, 82, 83 and 84 in the sessional paper are unfortunate in that they did not state the problem clearly and came out with possible solutions.
The paper touches on recent demographic trends in this country and says that the population is growing at the rate of 3% per annum or more. True is a high rate of population growth, but we have to look at it in terms of the population base and the areas of Kenya. Surely we are not an overpopulated country. We have vast areas which are lying idle or sparsely populated or which could be inhabitable if irrigation and proper projects were to under way. We cannot only absorb three times the population we have now, but even more with proper planning. Further, we should not only look at the population as consumers of goods and services, but also as producers of these goods and services. If we realize this then we should not be worried about the rate of growth of population. All we need to think of is to plan properly and find projects, given priorities, which will absorb this populace. In this way we will not only be able to absorb the rising population growth, but also the overwhelming disguised unemployment.
On the question of priorities, there is nothing more demanding and important now the consolidation and proper utilization of land in the former African areas. After consolidation, we should introduce modern farming methods. Consolidation will add relatively little to output unless productivity is increased and productivity can be increased if the old methods and tools of production are abandoned. It is the more reason we need modern methods of production, and on this respect the government will have to play an active part, through the purchase and loaning of more small machinery and intesfying the training of people on how to use them in their lands and teaching them intensively ways of rotation of crops, grazing and prevention of erosion. Further there will be a need for more model farms run by the government as example. The government instead of worrying with the settlement schemes should have started with this in the beginning.
There is a statement in the paper about encouraging tourism. It is surprising that the government thinks only about lodges but not making it cheap so as to include those who are not rich. At the present time, the cost of living is too high for tourists. The hotels charge exhorbitant rates and there are no price controls so that only the very rich can afford to come to Kenya as tourists. How are we going to encourage tourism and on a wide basis if we make it too expensive for the middle class people? The government ought to do something about this.
Despite the remarks, it is laudable that the government came out with the paper. But this is not to deny the fact that it could have been a better paper if the government were to look into priorities and see them clearly within their context so that their implementation could have had a basis on which to rely. Maybe it is better to have something perfunctorily done than none at all!

“So, like, are liberals godless heathens who hate religion and want orgies and crack on every street corner, or are they ultra-conservative Islamists who want to bring about a theocracy? I haz a confoosed.”

Liberals are all on welfare and drive around in limos and drink expensive wine.
Liberals are the real racists because we support equal rights for blacks gays and hispanics.
Liberals are responsible for the BP oils spill because we wanted tougher regulations and were against off shore drilling and drilling in ANWAR.
Liberals are responsible for the financial collapse because we wanted tougher oversight of the banking industry.
Liberals are part of the culture of death because we are against war and the death penalty and favor health care for all.

Consrvatives are an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in bacon and smothered with nacho cheeze.

Notice how I was a student of Marxism-Leninism.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…read my little paper.

Has anyone considered the possibility that Trevino and the truth-troll are the same person? They seem to follow the same m.o. of spouting offensively stupid trash in the hope of earning the contempt of anonymous strangers on the internet.

“Read my little paper”

Little?!!

Has anyone considered the possibility that Trevino and the truth-troll are the same person? They seem to follow the same m.o. of spouting offensively stupid trash in the hope of earning the contempt of anonymous strangers on the internet.

That m.o. being so unusual as to raise these suspicions?

In my “Trevino = creepy stalker troll” Unified Theory, the outbursts of DOS-attack spam are a form of compensation after struggling to fit one’s logorrhea into the narrow confines of Twitter (a problem that no-one ever experienced with DKW’s mum).

you can no longer tell the Debbie Schlussels of wingnuttia from a United Sstates Ssenator, Chuck Schumer.

That m.o. being so unusual?
ALL.ONE.GUY.

That m.o. being mineso unusual as to raise these suspicions?.

read my little paper, libs!!!!

Hey, my stupid trash isn’t offensive! Usually!

There is the chance that they enjoy commenting here after jerking each other off while taking turns reading passages aloud from “The Fountanhead”.

Usually!

No no no, I’m being self-deprecating, in a lame attempt to deal w/ some of MY issues.

Let’s look at someone else’s problems: Not a vacuum slayer exactly.

Consrvatives are an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in bacon and smothered with nacho cheeze.

Mmmm…snotchos!

M., you have issues? You always seem appropriately angry to me. At any rate I bet you, UNLIKE SOME, are wearing pants.

Let’s look at someone else’s problems: Not a vacuum slayer exactly.

Those problems make my problems look rather like opportunities, as the corporate vampire lingo go..es.

UNLIKE SOME, are wearing pants

Whatever. Nothing wrong with airing it out a little.

That’s what Mr. Vacuum Cleaner said.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President to be, this convention, my fellow citizens of this great nation:

With a deep awareness of the responsibility conferred by your trust, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States. I do so with deep gratitude, and I think also I might interject on behalf of all of us, our thanks to Detroit and the people of Michigan and to this city for the warm hospitality they have shown. And I thank you for your wholehearted response to my recommendation in regard to George Bush as a candidate for vice president.

I am very proud of our party tonight. This convention has shown to all America a party united, with positive programs for solving the nation’s problems; a party ready to build a new consensus with all those across the land who share a community of values embodied in these words: family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom.

I know we have had a quarrel or two, but only as to the method of attaining a goal. There was no argument about the goal. As president, I will establish a liaison with the 50 governors to encourage them to eliminate, where it exists, discrimination against women. I will monitor federal laws to insure their implementation and to add statutes if they are needed.

More than anything else, I want my candidacy to unify our country; to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values.

Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.

The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership –i n the White House and in Congress — for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.

My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation.

I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation’s highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.

We need rebirth of the American tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. The United States of America is unique in world history because it has a genius for leaders — many leaders — on many levels. But, back in 1976, Mr. Carter said, “Trust me.” And a lot of people did. Now, many of those people are out of work. Many have seen their savings eaten away by inflation. Many others on fixed incomes, especially the elderly, have watched helplessly as the cruel tax of inflation wasted away their purchasing power. And, today, a great many who trusted Mr. Carter wonder if we can survive the Carter policies of national defense.

“Trust me” government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs–in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.

Three hundred and sixty years ago, in 1620, a group of families dared to cross a mighty ocean to build a future for themselves in a new world. When they arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they formed what they called a “compact”; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws.

The single act–the voluntary binding together of free people to live under the law–set the pattern for what was to come.

A century and a half later, the descendants of those people pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their lives; none sacrificed honor.

Four score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln called upon the people of all America to renew their dedication and their commitment to a government of, for and by the people.

Isn’t it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives; all that gives meaning to them–for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?

Together, let us make this a new beginning. Let us make a commitment to care for the needy; to teach our children the values and the virtues handed down to us by our families; to have the courage to defend those values and the willingness to sacrifice for them.

Let us pledge to restore, in our time, the American spirit of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative; a spirit that flows like a deep and mighty river through the history of our nation.

As your nominee, I pledge to restore to the federal government the capacity to do the people’s work without dominating their lives. I pledge to you a government that will not only work well, but wisely; its ability to act tempered by prudence and its willingness to do good balanced by the knowledge that government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

The first Republican president once said, “While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.”

[continued]

If Mr. Lincoln could see what’s happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. But, with the virtues that our legacy as a free people and with the vigilance that sustains liberty, we still have time to use our renewed compact to overcome the injuries that have been done to America these past three-and-a-half years.

First, we must overcome something the present administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one party deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach.

Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. Those are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the government that it is all somehow their fault. We do not have inflation because — as Mr. Carter says — we have lived too well.

The head of a government which has utterly refused to live within its means and which has, in the last few days, told us that this year’s deficit will be $60 billion, dares to point the finger of blame at business and labor, both of which have been engaged in a losing struggle just trying to stay even.

High taxes, we are told, are somehow good for us, as if, when government spends our money it isn’t inflationary, but when we spend it, it is.

Those who preside over the worst energy shortage in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline, and natural gas a little more slowly. Conservation is desirable, of course, for we must not waste energy. But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs.

America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity.

Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores, untouched because the present administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more energy.

Coal offers great potential. So does nuclear energy produced under rigorous safety standards. It could supply electricity for thousands of industries and millions of jobs and homes. It must not be thwarted by a tiny minority opposed to economic growth which often finds friendly ears in regulatory agencies for its obstructionist campaigns.

Make no mistake. We will not permit the safety of our people or our environment heritage to be jeopardized, but we are going to reaffirm that the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.

Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control — all of which led us to this state in the first place.

Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, “Well done?” Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, “Keep up the good work?” Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, “Let’s have four more years of this?”

I believe the American people are going to answer these questions the first week of November and their answer will be, “No–we’ve had enough.” And, then it will be up to us — beginning next January 20th — to offer an administration and congressional leadership of competence and more than a little courage.

We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.

It is essential that we maintain both the forward momentum of economic growth and the strength of the safety net beneath those in society who need help. We also believe it is essential that the integrity of all aspects of Social Security are preserved.

Beyond these essentials, I believe it is clear our federal government is overgrown and overweight. Indeed, it is time for our government to go on a diet. Therefore, my first act as chief executive will be to impose an immediate and thorough freeze on federal hiring. Then, we are going to enlist the very best minds from business, labor and whatever quarter to conduct a detailed review of every department, bureau and agency that lives by federal appropriations. We are also going to enlist the help and ideas of many dedicated and hard working government employees at all levels who want a more efficient government as much as the rest of us do. I know that many are demoralized by the confusion and waste they confront in their work as a result of failed and failing policies.

Our instructions to the groups we enlist will be simple and direct. We will remind them that government programs exist at the sufferance of the American taxpayer and are paid for with money earned by working men and women. Any program that represents a waste of their money — a theft from their pocketbooks–must have that waste eliminated or the program must go — by executive order where possible; by congressional action where necessary. Everything that can be run more effectively by state and local government we shall turn over to state and local government, along with the funding sources to pay for it. We are going to put an end to the money merry-go-round where our money becomes Washington’s money, to be spent by the states and cities exactly the way the federal bureaucrats tell them to.

I will not accept the excuse that the federal government has grown so big and powerful that it is beyond the control of any president, any administration or Congress. We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government. The federal government exists to serve the American people. On January 20th, we are going to re-establish that truth.

Also on that date we are going to initiate action to get substantial relief for our taxpaying citizens and action to put people back to work. None of this will be based on any new form of monetary tinkering or fiscal sleight-of-hand. We will simply apply to government the common sense we all use in our daily lives.

Work and family are at the center of our lives; the foundation of our dignity as a free people. When we deprive people of what they have earned, or take away their jobs, we destroy their dignity and undermine their families. We cannot support our families unless there are jobs; and we cannot have jobs unless people have both money to invest and the faith to invest it.

There are concepts that stem from an economic system that for more than 200 years has helped us master a continent, create a previously undreamed of prosperity for our people and has fed millions of others around the globe. That system will continue to serve us in the future if our government will stop ignoring the basic values on which it was built and stop betraying the trust and good will of the American workers who keep it going.

The American people are carrying the heaviest peacetime tax burden in our nation’s history — and it will grow even heavier, under present law, next January. We are taxing ourselves into economic exhaustion and stagnation, crushing our ability and incentive to save, invest and produce.

This must stop. We must halt this fiscal self-destruction and restore sanity to our economic system.

I have long advocated a 30 percent reduction in income tax rates over a period of three years. This phased tax reduction would begin with a 10 percent “down payment” tax cut in 1981, which the Republicans and Congress and I have already proposed.

A phased reduction of tax rates would go a long way toward easing the heavy burden on the American people. But, we should not stop here.

Within the context of economic conditions and appropriate budget priorities during each fiscal year of my presidency, I would strive to go further. This would include improvement in business depreciation taxes so we can stimulate investment in order to get plants and equipment replaced, put more Americans back to work and put our nation back on the road to being competitive in world commerce. We will also work to reduce the cost of government as a percentage of our gross national product.

The first task of national leadership is to set honest and realistic priorities in our policies and our budget and I pledge that my administration will do that.

When I talk of tax cuts, I am reminded that every major tax cut in this century has strengthened the economy, generated renewed productivity and ended up yielding new revenues for the government by creating new investment, new jobs and more commerce among our people.

The present administration has been forced by us Republicans to play follow-the-leader with regard to a tax cut. But, in this election year we must take with the proverbial “grain of salt” any tax cut proposed by those who have given us the greatest tax increase in our history. When those in leadership give us tax increases and tell us we must also do with less, have they thought about those who have always had less — especially the minorities? This is like telling them that just as they step on the first rung of the ladder of opportunity, the ladder is being pulled out from under them. That may be the Democratic leadership’s message to the minorities, but it won’t be ours. Our message will be: we have to move ahead, but we’re not going to leave anyone behind. Thanks to the economic policies of the Democratic Party, millions of Americans find themselves out of work. Millions more have never even had a fair chance to learn new skills, hold a decent job, or secure for themselves and their families a share in the prosperity of this nation.

It is time to put America back to work; to make our cities and towns resound with the confident voices of men and women of all races, nationalities and faiths bringing home to their families a decent paycheck they can cash for honest money.

For those without skills, we’ll find a way to help them get skills.

For those without job opportunities, we’ll stimulate new opportunities, particularly in the inner cities where they live.

For those who have abandoned hope, we’ll restore hope and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!

When we move from domestic affairs and cast our eyes abroad, we see an equally sorry chapter on the record of the present administration.

– As Soviet combat brigade trains in Cuba, just 90 miles from our shores.

– A Soviet army of invasion occupies Afghanistan, further threatening our vital interests in the Middle East.

– America’s defense strength is at its lowest ebb in a generation, while the Soviet Union is vastly outspending us in both strategic and conventional arms.

– Our European allies, looking nervously at the growing menace from the East, turn to us for leadership and fail to find it.

– And, incredibly more than 50 of our fellow Americans have been held captive for over eight months by a dictatorial foreign power that holds us up to ridicule before the world.

Adversaries large and small test our will and seek to confound our resolve, but we are given weakness when we need strength; vacillation when the times demand firmness.

The Carter Administration lives in the world of make-believe. Every day, drawing up a response to that day’s problems, troubles, regardless of what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow.

The rest of us, however, live in the real world. It is here that disasters are overtaking our nation without any real response from Washington. This is make-believe, self-deceit and — above all — transparent hypocrisy.For example, Mr. Carter says he supports the volunteer army, but he lets military pay and benefits slip so low that many of our enlisted personnel are actually eligible for food stamps. Re-enlistment rates drop and, just recently, after he fought all week against a proposal to increase the pay of our men and women in uniform, he helicoptered to our carrier, the U.S.S. Nimitz, which was returning from long months of duty. He told the crew that he advocated better pay for them and their comrades! Where does he really stand, now that he’s back on shore?

I’ll tell you where I stand. I do not favor a peacetime draft or registration, but I do favor pay and benefit levels that will attract and keep highly motivated men and women in our volunteer forces and an active reserve trained and ready for an instant call in case of an emergency.

There may be a sailor at the helm of the ship of state, but the ship has no rudder. Critical decisions are made at times almost in comic fashion, but who can laugh? Who was not embarrassed when the administration handed a major propaganda victory in the United Nations to the enemies of Israel, our staunch Middle East ally for three decades, and them claim that the American vote was a “mistake,” the result of a “failure of communication” between the president, his secretary of state, and his U.N. ambassador?

Who does not feel a growing sense of unease as our allies, facing repeated instances of an amateurish and confused administration, reluctantly conclude that America is unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations as the leader of the free world?

The Carter Administration lives in the world of make-believe.

Like Lando Calrissian when he allowed Darth Vader into Cloud City, amirite?

Pants, & both paws visible above the desk, on the keyboard. (Flip-flops, though, no damn shoes!)

And I vote for the immediate deletion of AmThink copypasta.

a garage that did not belong to him
That’s the creepy thing. Also, what happened to the vacuum-cleaner afterwards? In a strict interpretation of Leviticus 18:23, both the man and the vacuum-cleaner shall be put to death, though I am not a Talmudic scholar.

Who does not feel rising alarm when the question in any discussion of foreign policy is no longer, “Should we do something?”, but “Do we have the capacity to do anything?”

The administration which has brought us to this state is seeking your endorsement for four more years of weakness, indecision, mediocrity and incompetence. No American should vote until he or she has asked, is the United States stronger and more respected now than it was three-and-a-half years ago? Is the world today a safer place in which to live?

It is the responsibility of the president of the United States, in working for peace, to insure that the safety of our people cannot successfully be threatened by a hostile foreign power. As president, fulfilling that responsibility will be my number one priority.

The rest of us, however, live in the real world.

And guess who’s dead here?

We are not a warlike people. Quite the opposite. We always seek to live in peace. We resort to force infrequently and with great reluctance and only after we have determined that it is absolutely necessary. We are awed and rightly so by the forces of destruction at loose in the world in this nuclear era. But neither can we be naive or foolish. Four times in my lifetime America has gone to war, bleeding the lives of its young men into the sands of beachheads, the fields of Europe and the jungles and rice paddies of Asia. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.

Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a “rendezvous with destiny.” I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny.

Tonight, let us dedicate ourselves to renewing the American compact. I ask you not simply to “Trust me,” but to trust your values–our values–and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth who came here in search of freedom.

Some say that spirit no longer exists. But I have seen it — I have felt it — all across the land; in the big cities, the small towns and in rural America. The American spirit is still there, ready to blaze into life if you and I are willing to do what has to be done; the practical, down-to-earth things that will stimulate our economy, increase productivity and put America back to work. The time is now to resolve that the basis of a firm and principled foreign policy is one that takes the world as it is and seeks to change it by leadership and example; not by harangue, harassment or wishful thinking.

The time is now to say that while we shall seek new friendships and expand and improve others, we shall not do so by breaking our word or casting aside old friends and allies.

And, the time is now to redeem promises once made to the American people by another candidate, in another time and another place. He said, “For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government–federal, state, and local–costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching. As an immediate program of action, we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate unnecessary functions of government…we must consolidate subdivisions of government and, like the private citizen, give up luxuries which we can no longer afford.”

“I propose to you, my friends, and through you that government of all kinds, big and little be made solvent and that the example be set by the president of the United State and his Cabinet.”

So said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention in July 1932.

The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands. But, to do this will take many of us, working together. I ask you tonight to volunteer your help in this cause so we can carry our message throughout the land.

Yes, isn’t now the time that we, the people, carried out these unkempt promises? Let us pledge to each other and to all America on this July day 48 years later, we intend to do just that.

I have thought of something that is not part of my speech and I’m worried over whether I should do it.

Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.

I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest — I’m more afraid not to — that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer. God bless America.

In a strict interpretation of Leviticus 18:23, both the man and the vacuum-cleaner shall be put to death, though I am not a Talmudic scholar.

I thought the man could agree to pay the bride price and marry the vac? Unless it’s a Shop-vac, that is an abomination.

Senator Hatfield, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, Vice President Bush, Vice President Mondale, Senator Baker, Speaker O’Neill, Reverend Moomaw, and my fellow citizens:

To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of ma in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. By your gracious cooperation in the transition process, you have shown a watching world that we are a united people pledged to maintaining a political system which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other, and I thank you and your people for all your help in maintaining the continuity which is the bulwark of our Republic.

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we’re not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truckdrivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.

Well, this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this “new beginning,” and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.

We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are not heroes, they just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter, and they’re on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They’re individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet, but deep. Their values sustain our national life.

Now, I have used the words “they” and “their” in speaking of these heroes. I could say “you” and “your,” because I’m addressing the heroes of whom I speak—you, the citizens of this blessed land. Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God.

We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic “yes.” To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I’ve just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.

In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow, measured in inches and feet, not miles, but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles there will be no compromise.

On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, “Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of . . . . On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”

Well, I believe we, the Americans of today, are ready to act worthy of ourselves, ready to do what must be done to ensure happiness and liberty for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children. And as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.

To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale.

As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.

Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

I’m told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day, and for that I’m deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inaugural Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.

This is the first time in our history that this ceremony has been held, as you’ve been told, on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city’s special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man, George Washington, father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence. And then, beyond the Reflecting Pool, the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery, with its row upon row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom.

Each one of those markers is a monument to the kind of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno, and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Under one such marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

We’re told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words: “America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.

God bless you, and thank you.

I’m pretty sure publicly fellating corpses is a path straight to stones-ville, though.

after your professional colleague endorses ethnic cleansing

I had managed to forget that the Settler movement had re-purposed the term “ethnic cleansing” to mean “any suggestion that people should stop seizing and occupying land on the West Bank”, so thanks for reminding me, not.
For people who claim dibs on the word “Holocaust” and have pearl-necklace-clutching spasms whenever anyone uses it in a non-Shoah context, they are surprisingly happy to appropriate the mantle of anyone else’s experience of atrocity.

Founding Father James Madison was not an imposing figure, standing only about 5 foot, 4 inches and weighing less than 100 pounds — think Victoria Beckham after a month-long fast. George Washington called him “a withered little apple.”

He may not have been imposing to look at, but he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with.

He was a major player at the Constitutional Convention and is often referred to as the “father of the Constitution.” And what better source to go to in order to talk about something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: the 17th Amendment.

Do you know about the 17th Amendment? It was passed in 1913 — Woodrow Wilson supported this. Immediately now, when I see that Woodrow Wilson something, I can be quite certain that it’s not going to be a good outcome.

Before 1913, U.S. senators were appointed by state legislatures. Madison explained that the House of Representatives would always be regarded as the “national” institution because its members were elected directly by the people. But the Senate, on the other hand, would derive its powers from the states.

The idea was to have the senators be the representatives of the states’ interests — sort of a like a lobbyist for the state. You’d think progressive would have liked that.

The 17th Amendment changed that and instituted direct popular election of United States senators: Two senators from each state, elected by the people. And since that time, states have had no direct representation in Washington.

In 1821, Thomas Jefferson warned: “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

Progressives will tell you that the change was needed because the states were becoming too corrupt. Well, what’s happened since? It allowed special interests to lobby senators directly, cutting out the middleman of the state legislatures.

Has anyone else noticed that senators routinely get large influxes of campaign cash from outside the state? Remember Chris Dodd? I didn’t know anyone in Connecticut who was ready to give money to Chris Dodd. Yet he was getting tons of cash nationally. How is that representative of Connecticut?

Let me give you an example of the 17th Amendment coming into play today: Obama’s health care bill would never have seen the light of day. A senator looking out for the interest of their state would likely not even consider anything with an unfunded federal mandate attached to it. Think of a state like Massachusetts: Why would they pay more taxes for mandated health care that they already currently have?

James Madison and the Founders didn’t intend for the federal government to have that much power. What would they do if they were around today?

Reagan was the best friend Khomeni ever had.

James Madison and the Founders didn’t intend for the federal government to have that much power. What would they do if they were around today?

Go around to “Glenn Beck’s” house & horsewhip him w/in an inch of his life, I imagine.

halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill

I know Pork Chop Hill! It’s across the river from Palmerston North, with a nice view down on the city, though the couples who drive there at night and fill the carpark are not really interested in the view if you know what I’m saying.
It is news to me that anyone died there for our freedom. Perhaps there should be a plaque.

James Madison and the Founders didn’t intend for the federal government to have that much power. What would they do if they were around today?

I dunno, order black folks to bring them mint juleps? Be shocked women wear pants? They also were really really against a standing army, and in fact prohibited it specifically in the Constitution, and yet that never seems to bother any of you assholes nearly as much as your evidence-ignoring assurance that NONE of the Founding Fathers believed in a strong Federal government.

Seriously, time to kill the copypasta troll.

I’ve always figured it’s only a matter of time before extremist Republicans like Trevino just give up the game and ally themselves publicly with Osama bin Laden. It’s pretty clear they despise American values and institutions. How many more months will it be before Trevino walks into a cop shop or day care center or shopping mall, screams “Death to America,” and blows himself straight to hell?

Name one Founder who called for big government and centralized economic planning, massive debt, and tax increases. Just one. Quotes, please!

The 17th Amendment changed that and instituted direct popular election of United States senators: Two senators from each state, elected by the people. And since that time, states have had no direct representation in Washington.

Obviously the first step is to get a Supreme Court ruling that says states are citizens.

Name one Founder who called for big government and centralized economic planning, massive debt, and tax increases. Just one. Quotes, please!

Sure. We’ll get right on that, as soon as you name one Founder who called for a permanent military larger than that of the next 15 countries combined. Or the one who called for an interstate highway system. Or laws against child labor.

What would they do if they were around today?

Scream and claw at the insides of their coffins.

Only a fool would confuse modes of transportation or foreign policy with timeless principles.

Name one Founder who called for me not to dig up Reagan’s grave and use his skull for a toilet. Just one. Quotes, please!

Name one Founder who called for me not to dig up Reagan’s grave and use his skull for a toilet.

Unpossible. I dug it up two years ago and have been using it for a bong ever since. Not once has it said “Just Say No.”

Well, okay. Can I use the rest of his bones to beat Damp-Britches Beck into an irreversible coma? I don’t think the Founders said anything against that, right?

UNLIKE SOME, are wearing pants
– – – – – – – –
Whatever. Nothing wrong with airing it out a little.

It looked so good out this morning I thought I’d just leave it out all day long.

Name one Founder who called for big government and centralized economic planning, massive debt, and tax increases. Just one. Quotes, please!

Way to move those goalposts. You pasted text about the FF not wanting to provide health care, perhaps you should read this. Some were against it, some weren’t, hardly the clean sweep you sort like to pretend.

That was a direct James Madison quote, by the way.

Well, okay. Can I use the rest of his bones to beat Damp-Britches Beck into an irreversible coma? I don’t think the Founders said anything against that, right?

The Ghost of James Madison tells me that not only is that not prohibited; it is to be encouraged. He assures me that all the Founder’s Ghosts are in accord on this issue.

I think that makes it official and unanimous — the Founding Fathers thought Glenn Beck was an utter douchecanoe and felt that no good American would listen or follow him. In fact, they strongly believed that Rush Limbaugh should’ve been beat down like a dog years ago, that Sarah Palin belongs in jail, and that Josh Trevino should stop putting glass Coke bottles up his bottom.

Seriously, time to kill the copypasta troll.

Or give us some hints where he’s posting from. How hard would it be for a few people here to track him down?

Shine a little light on the peckerhead and he’ll dissolve.

Mods?

The badgers seem to be dancing on Reagan’s grave.

Dance, badgers, dance!

Founder’s Keeper…Is that like the Promise Keepers, only way more stupid?

Well, obviously copy and paste are still a goal that can be accomplished by the functionally illiterate.

big government and centralized economic planning, massive debt, and tax increases

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, but you might try googling the Revolutionary War, which forced all of the above.

Meanwhile, I’ll google the procedure for rendering a blockquote in html. That is all. Thank you. Buhbye.

FYI, the 17th Amendment passed Congress in 1912 and was supported by President Taft, who knew more than a little bit about the Constitution. Wilson supported it, but wasn’t responsible for its passing. But then, Beck is an idiot.

Badgers smell like poor self esteem and lack of education.

Dance, badgers, dance!

You’re supposed to shoot at their paws when you say that.

FYI, the 17th Amendment passed Congress in 1912 and was supported by President Taft, who knew more than a little bit about the Constitution. Wilson supported it, but wasn’t responsible for its passing. But then, Beck is an idiot.

Historical timelines and contextual facts are theft. Sukitlib!

Sure. We’ll get right on that, as soon as you name one Founder who called for a permanent military larger than that of the next 15 countries combined.

Actually, many of them distrusted a standing army or a navy larger than a few ships needed to defend the small handful of major ports…

You’re supposed to shoot at their paws when you say that.
Spitballs work?

You mean, the piece of paper that Rachel Corrie torched makes her not a patriot? How about the american-made tractor than ran her over?

WTF is with these guys? They probably burn more American flags starting the bbq than Rachel Corrie did.

You’re supposed to shoot at their paws when you say that.

I prefer to lure them to an electrified mat with 7-11 nachos, a Nascar hat, and a can of Copenhagen. That way, the enjoyment isn’t spoiled by all that aiming and reloading.

zrm, in case you missed it, my co-blogger has posted some info about zombie extra roles.

Actually, many of them distrusted a standing army or a navy larger than a few ships needed to defend the small handful of major ports…

Agreed–See Thomas Jefferson vs. the navy and the opening of the War of 1812. But we’re not telling you anything you didn’t already know, right, trollboy? Right? Hello?

Learn the Freedom Principles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwJMMsF110

Somehow I doubt any of the “progressives” and liberals on here will watch this video…too intellectual for them, and might disturb their worldview.

It seems rather unfortunate that we have a zombie in our arsenal, but he is powerless against these brane-free trolls. Unfair, I say.

28 Ideas That Changed the World:

1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is natural law.
2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and a morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders.
4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent and to him they are equally responsible.
6. All men are created equal.
7. The proper role of government is to provide equal rights, not equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
9. To protect man’s rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law.
10. The god-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
12. The United States of America shall be a republic.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.
14. Life and liberty is secure so long as the right to property is secure.
15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free market economy and minimum of government regulations.
16. The government should be separated into three branches–legislative, executive and judicial.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.
18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only limited amd carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people.
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of man.
23. A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
24. A free people will not survive unless they remain strong.
25. Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations–entangling alliances with none.
26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Pee yoo. Smells like troll in here,. I should have ridden some more.

In contrast, the goals of Communism, which wishes to undo the principles of the American Revolution and The Founders, are:

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. Skousen claimed that an American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums.
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” Skousen claimed Communists sought to encourage the practice of masturbation.
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

I should have ridden some more.

There are trolls in the next county, too, pardner.

I don’t need to watch some shitty conservatard youtube video to know to learn about the principles of the Founders. I, unlike you, have actually read the Federalist Papers. You know, that series of essays that Madison, Hamilton, and Jay wrote in support of ratification of the constitution. The ones that give insight into the thought processes of the drafters.

You know, all that boring shit you haven’t read because watching Glenn Beck foam at the mouth is so much more entertaining and reinforcing of your fucked-up Weltanschauung.

Jeez, lady, at least draw the curtain.

Those are some mighty strong bynockyoulars you got there, N__B.

Ackerman just posted a blurry cell phone pic of the McMegan wedding. Why the fuck he is there, I do not know.

Those are some mighty strong bynockyoulars you got there, N__B.

That’s why I have to wear boxers.

Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.

Thank you, communists, for inventing the internet.

Somehow I doubt any of the “progressives” and liberals on here will watch this video…too intellectual for them, and might disturb their worldview.

I’m too busy watching Drunk History, which is probably more accurate.

Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.

Wait. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

The Communist Party is encouraging masturbation. Our republic is doomed.

Mwahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!! [thunderclap]*

*VVDR

Stop laughink! Is cold out! And is still bigger zen Troofie’s, needless to say.

There once was a pud whacking fool
Who would jerk to men fucking a mule
‘Til one wonderful day
When a troll showed the way
And he found he’d a communist tool

Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.

Wait. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Masturbation should not be “encouraged.” It must be carefully cultivated to achieve the requisite mix of fetishism and shame.

@N__B: I have much to learn from you.

Seriously, you might want to update your list of bogeymen wishes when McCarthy, East Germany and the Soviets are still on it.

Isn’t masturbation more of a libertarian thing, you know, rugged individualism and pulling your own bootstrap, fuck everyone else . . . wait, scratch that last part.

Seriously, you might want to update your list of bogeymen wishes when McCarthy, East Germany and the Soviets are still on it.

I’ve got a lot of badgers on my screen right now, so I’ve got to ask: is the right-wing troll afraid of Eugene McCarthy, Charlie McCarthy, or Joe McCarthy?

promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.♪

♬ These are a few of my favorite things ♫♪

Masturbation should not be “encouraged.” It must be carefully cultivated to achieve the requisite mix of fetishism and shame.

Dude, we can’t *all* be Catholic.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

Ain’t no one gonna interfere with the operation of my Communist apparatus.

Dude, we can’t *all* be Catholic.

You obviously haven’t seen Gaga’s Alejandro video.

I’ve got a lot of badgers on my screen right now, so I’ve got to ask: is the right-wing troll afraid of Eugene McCarthy, Charlie McCarthy, or Joe McCarthy?

You forgot Andrew McCarthy.

You forgot Andrew McCarthy.

Wishful thinking.

Wow, I spend one day away from my computer and I miss this gigantic troll-fest. [Stamps foot] I never get to have any fun.

I do wonder how St. Ayn of Rand would feel about all the copyright infringement going on up in here today. Maybe the troll will be visited by three spirits and learn the True Meaning of Property.

Where Toofus gets this stuff: About the author:

“Skousen spoke against communism,[19] throughout his career. He stood fast with John Birch Society co-founder Robert W. Welch Jr.’s contention that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent.”

Annnndd…Glenn Beck is pimping this guy’s work, apparently.

I’ve got a lot of badgers on my screen right now, so I’ve got to ask: is the right-wing troll afraid of Eugene McCarthy, Charlie McCarthy, or Joe McCarthy?

Actually, it’s Andrew McCarthy. One too many viewings of Weekend at Bernie’s.

Walrus thought it was Paul the badgers were dancing about.

(Practicing Swanking)

You obviously haven’t seen Gaga’s Alejandro video.

I just went to watch it, but somebody is tying up all the bandwidth downloading World Cup games.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groupsThe Tea Party should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.

Fixed for great wingnuttiness.

I just went to watch it, but somebody is tying up all the bandwidth downloading World Cup games.

Just kick the damned cat off the computer.

[Stamps foot] I never get to have any fun.

It really wasn’t all that fun. Trust.

Just kick the damned cat off the computer.

I think the cat wants to watch the Gaga video as much as I do. She’s a tortie. They’re like the Lady Gagas of the cat world, really.

“Somehow I doubt any of the “progressives” and liberals on here will watch this video…too intellectual for them, and might disturb their worldview.”

Well I suffered through it and I don’t think the word “intellectual” expresses the clear truth you were trying to convey. Try the words “crusty underpants” for greater accuracy.

There once was a pud-whacking fool
Who’d whack to 2 girls eating stool
‘Til one wonderful day
When a troll showed the way
And he noticed his communist tool

FYWP. Eating limericks is a little bit much.

Ain’t no one gonna interfere with the operation of my Communist apparatus.

Except you, early and often, but we totally encourage that.

Only 66 results for Lady Jar Jar.

Godammit. Do you know what it’s like to scroll thru this thread when 75% of it is copypaste troll jizz? My finger’s tired.

Would somebody please shoot zombie Reagan and the zombie Founders in the head? Who are all these people fighting the Cold War with stale Cold War propaganda? All this wasn’t stupid enough the first time?

Use firefox. Use greasemonkey. Love Fred Ludd.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/53593

I’m on my iPhone. I installed a “scroll to end” script but I wanted to see what missed. Not much but troll fap material I see. *sigh*

I’m on my iPhone

TMI

Would somebody please shoot zombie Reagan and the zombie Founders in the head? Who are all these people fighting the Cold War with stale Cold War propaganda? All this wasn’t stupid enough the first time?

Here’s my theory:

Most “movement” conservatives and “Reagan Democrats” and other assorted morons are well into their golden years by now. 65+ was the only age group McCain won. Look at a teabagger rally sometime–nobody under 50. In the 18-35 age group, the GOP has a favorability rating somewhere between the HIV virus and genital warts.

What does this mean? It means our opposition isn’t crazy. They’re just senile. That’s why they’re reverting to 20th Century Cold War talking points.

“TMI”

Not in that way, silly. Not until they come up with a vibrating app.

Now, not all seniors are wingnuts. But, increasingly, the vast majority of wingnuts are senior citizens.

Spontaneously vibrating iPhone.

What does this mean? It means our opposition isn’t crazy. They’re just senile. That’s why they’re reverting to 20th Century Cold War talking points.

They’re reliving the happier moments of their lives, shaking their rumps to Charlie Daniels and stroking off to the Mandrell Sisters.

Speaking of Republican Oldie McOldersons…

The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is natural law.

What the fuck does “natural law” mean? I got your natural law right here.

T&U–

It’s almost like the CPSU in it’s dying days, isn’t it? When Gorbachev, at 55, was considered “young”.

What the fuck does “natural law” mean?

It means no lawyers with implants.

stroking off to the Mandrell Sisters.

Those weird-looking monkeys? Man, conservatives are FREAKY.

Oh, fuck. So someone’s spamming speeches someone else wrote for an Alzheimer’s-addled old actor?

Speaking of Republican Oldie McOldersons…

Now, now, if they aren’t young, they can’t shrug off their peccadilloes as youthful indiscretions.

Those weird-looking monkeys? Man, conservatives are FREAKY.

Just wait until tomorrow’s Wonkette post- Sarah Palin has had her ass died purple.

Uh, dyed.

Ignore the man behind the cretin!

Well, really, if we don’t have the attention span for soccer, cricket’s really never going to take off here. Plus, what the fuck are the rules in that fucking game? It’s more of a mystery to me than football is,..

Read enough Wodehouse and you’ll get it alright. Or, as I sarcastically put it to someone who couldn’t get it straight, “It’s a fucked-up prototype of baseball”.

I love the fact that Sarah Palin and Greta Van Sustern are together tut-tutting the idea that one of them would get extensive, appearance-altering cosmetic surgery.

O.J.has three crimes on him that he’ll never live down:

1) The murder of Nicole Brown

2) The murder of Ron Goldman

3) Launching Greta Van Sustern’s career

>> The Carter Administration lives in the world of make-believe.

> Like Lando Calrissian when he allowed Darth Vader into Cloud City, amirite?

I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.

Only 66 results for Lady Jar Jar.

Body-fluid-hoarding is more of a guy thing.

So we’ve been largely troll free for many weeks. School’s out though, coincidence?

It’s almost like the CPSU in it’s dying days, isn’t it? When Gorbachev, at 55, was considered “young”.

Yeah, when the young movers and shakers are older than the President, I’m not all that impressed…

Also, too, Chuck Schumer can go fucking fuck himself.

I know I’m a little late to this particular ball game, but

If all that were not tragic enough, the main conflict between human rights and U.S. interests came in Carter’s dealings with the Shah of Iran. Though Carter’s presidency was marked by several major crises, the final year of his term arguably was his worst. It was dominated by the Iran Hostage Crisis, during which the United States struggled to rescue diplomats and American citizens held hostage in Tehran, paving the way for the rise of Radical Islam now threatening the free world.

When the Iranian Revolution broke out, the Shah was overthrown, and the U.S. did not intervene. The Shah, in permanent exile, was refused entry to the United States by the Carter administration, even on grounds of medical emergency. Nearly a year later, Washington relented and admitted the Shah into the U.S. Gaining strength and confidence, Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage.

The collapse of the Shah was a disaster for human rights. You are kidding, right? This is the man who ended democracy in his own country via a military coup (almost completely carried out on his behalf by SIS and CIA officers and their paid agents, because, unlike Pinochet or most other coup leaders, he couldn’t muster even a shred of support from within his own country). Who then ruled Iran for a quarter of a century via a secret police which held “human rights” in about as high a regard as the KGB did… and it infuriated enough Iranians to unite almost the entire population against him in 1979.

But hey. He was nice to Jews and women didn’t have to wear scarves, so that makes him a fucking humanitarian’s wet dream to teh Troofus. Seriously, the fact that the right wing still worships dictators like the Shah’s a pretty good indicator of how much they actually care about “spreading democracy.” Though most Americans might not notice, the people in the Middle East sure as hell do.

And what the hell’s all that shit about the hostage crisis? Let me guess; did Carter try to free hostages by paying ransom to the Iranians in the form of weapons, which not only armed a terrorist regime but emboldened them to go right on kidnapping Americans, since they now knew they could hold hostages over our head any time we wanted? Oh no, he didn’t; that was Saint Goddamn Reagan, the fucking tough on terrorism president. Christ, was a crock; the man was a better friend to Khomeini that Carter could ever have dreamed of being.

Schumer better not go full retard Lieberman on us.

Not until they come up with a vibrating app.

I smell business plan!

Shit, there was supposed to be a strikethrough on retard.

Get it straight, libs!

Americans supporting Communist/Socialist ideas* = crypto-marxism = EVIL. Americans mortgaging their grandchildren’s kidneys to Communist China = another trip to the megamall = AWESOME!

Also, Japan’s marriage of business with government is in its own way even more ultra-Commie than the USSR was (definitely more Marxist: can you imagine the fat-cat bastards in the Politburo ever having to have taken orders from the managers of farms & factories?), yet I haven’t heard any Japan-bashing in the US media for decades now … what’s up with THAT?

————
* Offer not valid inside the Pentagon … or on Wall Street … or in Silicon Valley … or …

Jim that’s because Japan isn’t an economic threat anymore They’ve been in a recession for the past two decades. That, and they’ve built a lot of factories here that have employed a lot of Americans (though they’re not unionized, at least in the north they pay union wages).

China is the new Japan, the Yellow Peril that will take over the world or whatnot. Until THEIR bubble collapses, anyway.

Next it will probably be India.

China’s property bubble is even more incredibly st00pid and wasteful than ours was. Instead of building useless McMansion suburbs, they’re building useless cities.

Oh yes, and as for radical Islam not having a state sponsor;

Congratulations on knowing that the Shah was one of the “twin pillars” of our Middle Eastern defense system (I’m talking to the person you copy-pasted that from, by the way, not you). Know who the second pillar was? Our good friends the Al-Saud, who’ve been the warmest backers of radical Islam from the very beginning. Who the fuck do you think created the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Hint; it wasn’t Iran.

So have Reagan, Bush or Bush done anything to curb that country’s influence on world affairs? Nope. Anything to get them to keep them from spreading their ideology throughout the Islamic world? If they have, it’s not working too well. How about protecting those poor, hapless victims within Saudi Arabia from the cruelty of radical Islam? Still no; by any measurable standard, Jews and women are treated far, far worse in Saudi Arabia than they ever were in Iran. (They’re much farther away from becoming a democracy, too).

Yet another conservative trying to pretend he or the rest of his crowd gives a flying fuck about human rights. LMAO.

Also to, Japanese Americans, and thus the Japanese by extension, have largely become white-ified. Also, we put them in concentration camps and no one got mad, so they are cool and not-brown.

UNLIKE THE INDIANS WHOM WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE BEEN AT WAR WITH soon enough.

Japan isn’t an economic threat anymore They’ve been in a recession for the past two decades. That, and they’ve built a lot of factories here that have employed a lot of Americans (though they’re not unionized, at least in the north they pay union wages).

Next it will probably be India.

From the most popular conservative military fiction author of our time,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_of_Honor

Short plot; Japan, China and India all conspire to take over the world together, bringing back the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as it were. Japan attacks America, China plans to conquer Siberia (and tries it in a later novel), India plans to conquer Australia.

He must’ve preemptively read your mind.

Oh, too too. Desmond?

He must’ve preemptively read your mind.

He did, however, take it to the next level by tying all the Asian bogeymen together!

The other end of the Asian Bbogeyman is the Asian superman, which is the equally racist carictature Thomas Friedman pumps up by calling the brutal Kleptocracy that rules China “reasonably enlightened”, and actually suggests our government should be more authoritarian cause they can build trains and stuff. And then assures us that, hey, China’s bubble won’t pop, because they have so much in foreign currency reserves*

*Fun fact: The USA in 1929 and Japan in 1989 also had a shitload of foreign currency reserves. Bug, not a feature!

The other end of the Asian Bbogeyman is the Asian superman, which is the equally racist carictature Thomas Friedman pumps up by calling the brutal Kleptocracy that rules China “reasonably enlightened”, and actually suggests our government should be more authoritarian cause they can build trains and stuff.

What context was he saying that in?

Cause if he was comparing the Chinese to that whackjob in North Korea, or even to the Chinese leadership of a generation ago, he’s probably right. That’s more of a comment on how fucked up Mao and Kim Jong Il are, than a compliment to the current rulers, but still…

UNLIKE THE INDIANS WHOM WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE BEEN AT WAR WITH soon enough.

But does India want us to masturbate?

Other fun fact in the “Yellow Peril” category; although it mostly subsided after 9/11, in favor of “brown peril” stuff, it took a while for some people to get the point. As late as 2003, you still had the odd conservative book coming out trying to connect China with 9/11, or saying that the 9/11 attacks somehow proved that we should be even more wary of the Chinese threat.

Perhaps with iPhones.

Chris, he was comparing them to the democracies of the world. That’s what I got from the article, anyway, when he started salivating over the wonders of “top-down control”. It had a real whiff of “at least the trains run on time!” to it. Why not praise Brazil if you want to hold up a developing country success story of the past 20+ years?

The people in Brazil are kinda brown, so I think that answers that.

happier moments of their lives, shaking their rumps to Charlie Daniels and stroking off to the Mandrell Sisters

Sheesh, by the time I was shakin’ to the sisters, the happier moments were already getting fewer & farther between.

But does India want us to masturbate?

Phone sex banks.

Chris, he was comparing them to the democracies of the world. That’s what I got from the article, anyway, when he started salivating over the wonders of “top-down control”. It had a real whiff of “at least the trains run on time!” to it. Why not praise Brazil if you want to hold up a developing country success story of the past 20+ years?

That’s crazy, indeed…

Foreign Policy had an article a few years ago debunking claims that the Chinese authoritarian model was the best… they compared Chinese and Indian growth models and pointed out that in both cases, authoritarian government have actually stifled growth while increases in personal freedom had boosted it in both countries.

Either way, there are good reasons to encourage developing democracies like Brazil, India or South Africa rather than the friggin PRC. No one wants another totalitarian superpower replacing us at the top of the world order.

Actually, Brazil is plurality white, if barely.Though I guess most conservatards would consider them to be an off-white.

Brazil just isn’t that scary of a threat. How scary is the thought of being ruled over by Brazilians? Not very.

How scary is the thought of being ruled over by Brazilians? Not very.

Oooh, Carnival!

Brazil just isn’t that scary of a threat. How scary is the thought of being ruled over by Brazilians? Not very.

It is if you’re Glenn Beck; instead of death panels, Teh Darkie Government will be herding terrified citizens at gunpoint into soccer stadiums and forcing them to watch that ungodly sport.

Exactly, as usual the facts don’t matter. Brazilians are to the south of Mexicans so they are brown (or as you point out, browner, which is bad enough).

But does India want us to masturbate?
Phone sex banks.

Perhaps iPhone sex banks? A business opportunity!

I was trying to say that “off-white” is just lib-commie-speak for “browner”.

As an actor I ratted my fellow actors out to the government, as Governor of California I restricted the Second Amendment rights of its citizens, as president of the United States I sold arms to our enemies, cut and ran from the Middle East after our Marines were murdered and supported every half-assed murdering psychotic dictator who’d bother to give lip service to “fighting Communism”. And still the Right worships me as some kind of paragon of freedom. Some people are just terminally fucking stupid aren’t they?

Those weird-looking monkeys?

Louise Mandrell.

Also: MANDRILL!!

But does India want us to masturbate?

Computer says yes.

Bing, BBB? You use Bing?

MANDRILL!!

VPR?

Bing, BBB? You use Bing?

Firefox crapped out on my old laptop- I downloaded the new version, but the damn thing won’t work.

GRR!!

Try Chrome. Anything is better than fucking IE.

I’m really pissed about Firefox not working… I WANT MY TABS!

MANDRILL!!

VPR?

Could be. The only time I chanced on them they were playing from the back of a flatbed truck at a festival on Polk St. in 1971. A not un-gay event. Never actually though of it before, mostly amused by their album cover w/ the baboon on it.

C’mon, Chrome for the … y’know.

(The Great Gizoogle won’t work in IE? You cannot be lazier than I am!)

(The Great Gizoogle won’t work in IE? You cannot be lazier than I am!)

I just couldn’t be arsed booting it.

Krazy Pammy gets letters. Is PayPal in cahoots with the international MuslimMarxistHomoAcorn conspiracy? Only the voices in Glenn Beck’s head know the real truth.

Subject: Notification of Limited Account Access RXI072
Date: 6/12/2010 10:56:46 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
From: service@paypal.com
Reply To: aup@paypal.com
To: writeatlas@aol.com

Dear Pamela Geller,

We appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to send and receive payments for your transactions.

However, after a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.

The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the following URL:
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_US

To learn more about the Acceptable Use Policy, please refer to our Help
Center page here: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?&cmd=_help

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/06/paypal-cuts-off-atlas-truth-is-the-new-hate-speech.html

We are hereby notifying you that it has been determined that you are in
violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy regarding payments received
from website: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/.

Please refer to transaction #:
62V159922K894400X

We are hereby notifying you that it has been determined that you are in
violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy

I came LOLed.

Maybe she can get some of those nice kids over at Stormfront to stage a protest in solidarity?

PayPal is the Reichsbank of LIEberal Facebookism!

But does India want us to masturbate?

I am not buying a webcam just for India’s sake.

I am not buying a webcam just for India’s sake.

ChatSmutroulette

Research indicates that despite the positive-thinking promises, Candidate Devore has not yet ‘take[n] down the lefty “netroots”.‘ Disappointed Smut is disappointed. I can only speculate that this is Trevino’s fault for putting more effort into defending the interests of a small Middle Eastern country and its right to kill Americans then he does into promoting the politician who employs him.

Maybe she can get some of those nice kids over at Stormfront to stage a protest in solidarity?

PayPal is the Reichsbank of LIEberal Facebookism!

Oooohh, I got an idea, let’s get Hottie Hannah and Jimmy O’Queef to do a sting operation! This time I’d like the schoolgirl outfit, Hannah. Thank you.

Or the naughty nurse….

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffap

HA! When I was trying to post the word “fap”, WP stepped in and warned me that I’m doing it wrong. Slow down, it said.

Good call, WP.

Say your pwayuhs, thwead! huhuhuhuhuhuh

say your pwayuhs, thwead!

Does it really count as a threadkill at this hour?

Does it really count as a threadkill at this hour?

Can you PLEASE not interrupt my childish game?

Did someone say childish game?

I’m not dead. I’m just pinin’ for the fjords.

But, how can I kill the thread if there’s no new thread? I mean isn’t this alive by default as it were?

That’s probably an album name, right?

Latest release from Snarkleponies. Not as good as their second album–you know, during their drug phase.

Now is prime time: Wide awake drunks (too much coffee at that last stop, forced on them by the bartender) tired of wandering the angry negro streets looking for a fix & all that, home w/ just enough coffee buzz to make ninnies of themselves before falling asleep, face on the keyboard, drooling.

Think about this before you brush your teeth.

Fluoride – The Lunatic Drug
http://www.rense.com/general3/fluo.htm

I mean isn’t this alive by default as it were?

Undead thread

IS NOTHING SACRED?

The Hidden Agenda Behind Pornography

“Porn is so freely available on the Internet, I can’t believe anyone pays for it. Yet, supposedly porn is a $12 billion a year industry in the US, of which the Internet represents $2.5 billion.
I suspect porn receives a hidden subsidy from the Illuminati so it can be free. This subsidy may take the form of money laundering.”

Henry Makow Ph.D.
http://www.henrymakow.com/the_hidden_agenda_behind_porno.html

I can’t sleep and I found this great wackjob site. You gotta a problem with that?
http://www.rense.com/

Heh, the troll posted this yesterday
The Communist Takeover Of
America – 45 Declared Goals

http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm

Heh, the troll posted this yesterday
The Communist Takeover Of
America – 45 Declared Goals

I see your “Heh” and I’ll raise you a “Tea Hee Hee”- from Rense.com:

The Most Format & Content-Plagiarized Site On The Net

TR00FUS!!!!

braaaaaains …. BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNS! OM NOM NOM NOM BRAINS GRAR ARGLE GLARGLE BRAINS

OK, now it is dead; I’m going to sleep, or at least to seek amusement from the telly & not the boring early Sunday a.m. Internet

D00d, I still have an hour and a half to work!

*yawn*
*slurps coffee*

Is it dead? Or just sleeping?

It’s stunned, but it’ll come back.

“And everyone knows Matter-Eater Lad is the Jew of liberal Legion-ism.” – The Kid from Kounty Meath

Epic. And accurate.

Jimmy Carter sure seems to bug the hell out of these people.

I was a bit surprised to hear one of the senior engineers in the (quite large) utility company I’m indentured to these day sing Jimmy Carter’s praises for supporting grid modernization and monitoring technologies. It was in a company class (in which this guy was lecturing) . I shouldn’t have been surprised by hearing it, I guess, but getting a non-ideological assessment was pleasant.

It was actually Reagan, although not named explicitly, who came out the bad guy with “unfortunately the development was somewhat stifled in the ’80s”, As our descendants read my candlelight, they might well conclude the same.

N__B said,

June 12, 2010 at 23:01

Now you are both a wetback and a faggot, whichis more “diverse” than Obamas niggerhood.

Why did this read in my head in a high-pitched voice saying “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

Thanks for ruining Billie Burke for me. ‘Preciate that.

Jimmy Carter sure seems to bug the hell out of these people.

Mebbe it’s coz he spent the last thirty years helping people who need it. And that history is showing that if we had listened to him a little more carefully we might (just might) not be where we are now. In other words, Carter was right.

I suspect that’s what bugs the hell out of them about Jimmeh.

the 9/11 twoofers take rense.com VERY seriously. It’s full of “great research” (eye roll)

I suspect that’s what bugs the hell out of them about Jimmeh.

Suspect, hell, I *know* that’s what it.

That and Reagan was a grade-A douchenozzle. They know that, too.

I suspect that’s what bugs the hell out of them about Jimmeh.

Also, too Fatty Fatty Fat Fat McFatterson Algore. Fat.

I refuse to watch the useless Sunday talk show programming (at least until Christiane Amanpour takes over This Week [has that happened and I missed it?]), but from what I can tell via the Twitter machine (STFU), David Gregory is being as pathetic as usual by just letting Fioriana blab on and on and on….I wonder if President McCain will be on again soon?

Why don’t they just get Luke to host that shit? He’s about as good, and at least he has the Russert *cough*overrated*cough* name.

That and Reagan was a grade-A douchenozzle

Who screwed most of them sideways (and every other way) with his “free-market” transfer of wealth upwards.

Denial is not just a river…etc.

Who screwed most of them sideways (and every other way) with his “free-market” transfer of wealth upwards.

NUH UH. We’re screwed because liebruls give brown people and freeloading hippies all our money!

BTW, Looch, I think I responded to your last email via my personal account, to which all my T&U emails are forwarded. If you’re wondering who the fuck emailed you (though I think it’s pretty easy to tell from context). I’m trusting you with my secret identity, man… 🙂

I’m a little manic this morning. Maybe I should do some, like, productive shit.

I want Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to run for president. That chick is SQUARED AWAY.

I want Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to run for president. That chick is SQUARED AWAY.

Yeah, she is the fucking shiz.

T&U: Your secret is safe with me. As long as the dog-communication issues remain secret as well.

OK, off to The Rotten Little Perisher’s ball game. I gotta let him chug a beer before the game so he relaxed at the plate.

Mebbe it’s coz he spent the last thirty years helping people who need it. And that history is showing that if we had listened to him a little more carefully we might (just might) not be where we are now. In other words, Carter was right.

That and the fact that he actually was the family values president, something none of the Republicans we’ve had in office since can claim to. He was the only president in ages who really, actually tried to bring Christian values to the office of the presidency, which is something I suspect the GOP resents strongly. It’s only supposed to be a marketing slogan, as Jonah Goldberg once pointed out.

T&U: Your secret is safe with me. As long as the dog-communication issues remain secret as well.

Ha! I think you were the one who revealed too much in this case……

Thanks for ruining Billie Burke for me. ‘Preciate that.

Any time. Actually, most times.

I gotta let him chug a beer before the game so he relaxed at the plate.

Sounds like he’s headed for the bigs.

Even further OT than I usually stray…if anyone (besides me) ever gets the bright idea of building some furniture using padauk wood, don’t. That shit is harder than I can believe – I’ve burned to uselessness three 3/16 bits so far and I’m only half done. Before this misbegotten project, I hadn’t burned a bit since I was a kid.

The only thing worse than your mother-in-law friending you on Facebook and your mother Facebook stalking you is your estranged (now) ex-minister father friending you on Facebook. Fucking Facebook. Fuck. Maybe I’ll cancel my account.

Oh, hey, N__B, that’s tangentially related to my post, given that my dad is now apparently building furniture? I don’t know. I guess he was making too much money as a minister.

Sorry for my inappropriate rant.

What are you building, N__B?

TV stand with shelves above for our ridiculously large collection of DVDs. Bamboo plywood – which is enough of a pain in the ass to work with – for the shelves and risers, the dreaded padauk for connector pieces. So far, I’ve drilled 30 holes through the 2x2s. It would be a lot easier with a table saw and a drill press, but no workshop in a two-bedroom apartment.

Okay, that’s weird. I typed “2” “x” “2” but it’s showing up for me as if I used a math multiplication symbol. Does anyone else see that? I’m on Firefox 3.6, OSX 10.6. Is Firefox smart enough to know what a two by two is?

Oooh, but the contrasting color will be pretty!

I’ve always wondered if city folk could rent a space and have a co-op workshop or something…though I suppose it would be pretty cost-prohibitive, especially if you don’t make use of it often. So, does the lumberyard/home improvement place deliver the materials?

I’ve always wondered if city folk could rent a space and have a co-op workshop or something

There are a few such things in Brooklyn, but Mrs. __B and I lack both a car and a driver’s license. The transportation wold be a bigger pain than remembering how to cut and drill straight.

All the wood was delivered.

There are a few such things in Brooklyn, but Mrs. __B and I lack both a car and a driver’s license. The transportation wold be a bigger pain than remembering how to cut and drill straight

Obviously. That makes sense…I knew there was a problem with my plan…

No driver’s license? What kind of American are you, anyway?

Oooh, but the contrasting color will be pretty!

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Also why I’m using bronze bolts.

No driver’s license? What kind of American are you, anyway?

Piss poor according to Troofus – the other day when he went after a Canadian here (James, maybe?) I made a comment of support and Troofus acknowledged it in his next anti-Canadian rant when he listed among the losers who were providing support big city dwellers.

Maybe I’ll cancel my account.

You can’t.

He did, however, take it to the next level by tying all the Asian bogeymen together!

Just like Sax Rohmer.

*sigh*

Piss poor according to Troofus – the other day when he went after a Canadian here (James, maybe?) I made a comment of support and Troofus acknowledged it in his next anti-Canadian rant when he listed among the losers who were providing support big city dwellers.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Mr. T&U and I had only one car for 2-3 years, and you would have thought we were monks or some shit. We probably would have stayed that way, if a) I had a way to get to appointments on time without taking an entire day off, and b) my family didn’t live 5 hours away and the husband works weekends. My co-workers acted like the fact that I had to walk in the rain to get to the bus station was some form of spousal abuse.

You can’t.

You’re right. I should have said “deactivate.”

zrm, in case you missed it, my co-blogger has posted some info about zombie extra roles.

Zombie bait, eh?

Bizzy zombie!! Saw post, no time for commenting!! On my schedule!! Gonna switch to decaf!!

when I was in college I bought beer illegally ONCE. I claimed I lived in New York City so didn’t have a driver’s license. The guy didn’t believe me but sold it to me anyway… ( I was only 1 month from turning 21, FYI)

Not in that way, silly. Not until they come up with a vibrating app.

jeez, vs, isn’t the screen hard enough to keep clean?

Apparently there may also be some work for a “zombie motivational coach”.

RE: Facebook: I finally put up a page just to get all the droids off my back. But I haven’t filled out the info on the profile or put anything on the page. I just ignore all the friends requests. Fuck Facebook.

I’m a little manic this morning. Maybe I should do some, like, productive shit.

or just play with your iPhone. I hear there’s a new app….

boy, talk about CONTROLLING THE MARKET.

Apparently there may also be some work for a “zombie motivational coach”.

Someone who waves branes around and then runs gets the title “coach”?

I’ve always wondered if city folk could rent a space and have a co-op workshop or something

In the city where I work, I know there is a sort of woodworking collective that gets together and uses the wood shop at one of the local highschools. Nobody’s using it after 4pm, after all, and that’s much higher grade equipment than most hobbyists can afford, or have room for. Of course, that only helps if local schools have a wood shop and these days, many don’t. And it doesn’t help me because, though I work in that city, I do not live there.

N__B, thanks for the tip about padauk. I doubt I’ll ever trust my skills on anything more exotic than birch, but if I ever get to feeling all uppity, I will take your advice to heart. And now I will head back to my tiny shop, currently full of plywood, and try to figure out where the half-finished cabinets are supposed to go while they wait.

LC – You’ll miss out on the beautiful smell of scorched steel I’m currently trying to drive out of the apartment. The padauk’s beautiful – it’s sawdust looks exactly like curry powder – but my arms ache and the budget for new bits is over the top.

I long for the good old days when i was in college and could sneak into the wood shop in the school of architecture whenever I wanted…as long as it was between 8 PM and 6 AM.

I think it’s hilarious when a bitch who probably has the same hairstyle as her husband makes fun of someone’s hair.

Ugly contest

its, too.

The show is retarded, but this advertising is a huge WIN

jeez, vs, isn’t the screen hard enough to keep clean?

I practice safe phone sex.

I practice safe phone sex.

Go on…

Maybe we’re doing it wrong?

The show is retarded, but this advertising is a huge WIN

All right. Honeymoon’s over. We’re enemies now.
😉

Ha! I love the show. It’s so campy and sexy and silly and scary all at the same time. It’s right up my alley. And, you’re right, that advert is genius.

I practice safe phone sex.

You have 911 on speed-dial?

All right. Honeymoon’s over. We’re enemies now.
😉

Ha! I love the show. It’s so campy and sexy and silly and scary all at the same time. It’s right up my alley. And, you’re right, that advert is genius.

We had to part company somewhere along the way. Truth be told, I sat through both seasons and watched them. So who’s the REAL retard?

You know who else watched shit he thought was retarded?

You have 911 on speed-dial?

Yes, and they keep telling me to quit talking dirty to the dispatchers.

You know who else watched shit he thought was retarded?

My mind goes straight to Hitler.

I practice safe phone sex.

You have 911 on speed-dial?

Operator: “911, what’s your emergency”

VS:”bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzUHzzzzzzzzzUhHUHzzzzzzzzzzzzzUHzzUHzzzUHzUhzzzzzzzzzzAHHHHHHH YESSSS!”

Operator: “Hello? What’s your emergency?”

VS: No worries. Emergency over. Carry on. I need a cigarette.

VS: No worries. Emergency over. Carry on. I need a cigarette.

That’s just the kind of thing they frown upon. It’s like 911 operators have better things to do. Sheesh.

My mind goes straight to Hitler.

A HA! That means….probably something, I guess.

That’s just the kind of thing they frown upon. It’s like 911 operators have better things to do. Sheesh.

I know, right? Worst place to try to score a date EVAR.

I made/uploaded my first video. I’m excited!

I know, right? Worst place to try to score a date EVAR.

Second only to the suicide hotline. Talk about people who don’t like to party.

I made/uploaded my first video. I’m excited!

Ha! “Iz tird, but still hatz u!”

I know! They’re not even trying!!!

I know! They’re not even trying!!!

Nice shirt in the bio pic–Now I see how you found out the suicide hotline people are wet blankets. However, this does qualify you to be Suicide Girl! Win!

Ha! Thank you…I wore that on a trip to see my Dad and stepmom… I kept having to reassure him it was just a joke. I would tease him and say only the first part was true.

I made/uploaded my first video. I’m excited!

Funny. I can’t decide if they are trying to high-five each other or practice the mirror gag bit for a Marx Brothers revival.

I haz secret to killing threads:

1. Post boring videos of your cats
2. Tell boring little anecdotes about yourself

I give you all pemish to use my slaying secrets. But use them wisely and with care.

That’s not a catfight! They’re giving each other high fives. I’d check to see if everything that’s supposed to be vertical is, in fact, vertical.

“LittlePig said,
June 13, 2010 at 19:56

I made/uploaded my first video. I’m excited!

Funny. I can’t decide if they are trying to high-five each other or practice the mirror gag bit for a Marx Brothers revival.”

That made me laugh.

or just play with your iPhone. I hear there’s a new app….

I don’t have an iPhone!!!! Maybe I should break up with my Android and get one…being able to please a lady is an important feature in a smart phone, no?

PS: If you like what I write here, go check out the crap I just posted over at actor’s blarg.

Please be gentle.

PS: If you like what I write here, go check out the crap I just posted over at actor’s blarg.

You need to stop holding back on how you truly feel. Let it all hang out, so to speak.

VwhathaveyouR)

( —> “Hey, wait for me, I was supposed to in that last comment!”

Why so serious?

You need to stop holding back on how you truly feel. Let it all hang out, so to speak.

I like to give horrible first impressions and then build up from there. It’s nice to have nothing to lose. 🙂

I actually often find myself apologizing for, like, EVERYTHING, and I’m trying to shake that. So, if I’m being an asshole, I’m more than happy to be called on it and will gladly revise my stance, but I’m not going to hem and haw and pretend I don’t believe what I say just to avoid offending people pre-emptively.

Why so serious?

I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside…

Unfortunately, if I’m not talking about wingnuts or boning, I tend to be a Very Serious person. Maybe I was doing a little bombthrowing…I don’t know. Hopefully I’m not kicked off because of it….

Hmmm, I see nobody has found any quotes to prove that any of The Founders supported big, centralized government.

This country was founded by SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES, full-stop.

That’s a serious web log there, that’s why.

WAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Oh, I totes forgot your mom jokes! Wait, does that qualify as talking about boning?

That’s a serious web log there, that’s why.

What kind of lunatic misanthrope would create a serious blog and invite others to write on it?

Loser? I believe you’re the loser, since you can’t prove that even ONE of The Founders were big government leftists.

I see nobody everybody has found any quotes to prove that any of The FoundersTroofie’s mom supported big centralized government cock.

Fixxored for maximum your mom and boning content. Accuracy, also, too.

On the topic of the idiocy and bullshit shoveled by the tards…

Rand Paul shows what “libertarian” actually means.

Rand Paul has claimed to be board certified, but it turns out he is certified by a board (National Board of Ophthalmology) that he incorporated and heads, and of which his wife is vice-president. The CJ could only find seven ophthalmologists besides Paul who were members of or were certified by Paul’s group, and all of them also had the “real certification” of the American Board of Ophthalmology.

Oddly enough, none of the Founders were aircraft mechanics, software developers, stock market speculators or personal trainers, either.

none of the Founders were aircraft mechanics, software developers, stock market speculators or personal trainers, either.

A few, however, were ecdysiasts.

Rand Paul has claimed to be board certified, but it turns out he is certified by a board (National Board of Ophthalmology) that he incorporated and heads, and of which his wife is vice-president.

Well, that’s fucking scary. He at lest had to have a license to practice, though.

“at lest”? Wev. I have no idea what I’m going to make for dinner.

Well, that’s fucking scary. He at lest had to have a license to practice, though.

Sure, he has a license and I’m willing to posit that he actually knows something about ophthalmology. But he is a member of a cult that demands freedom from all regulation…which is just what I’m looking for in a doctor.

Wasn’t one of the “R U A Glibertarian Ninny” quiz questions whether or not you believed that professional certification raised costs to consumers?

Bear in mind also that “Doc” Paul doesn’t want his Medicare fees reduced any.

And.

From M. Bouffant’s link: “I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.” Somehow this story has got linked to La Palin’s implants.

But he is a member of a cult that demands freedom from all regulation…which is just what I’m looking for in a doctor.

I have a feeling a number of mediocre doctors are libertarians. And, of course, a lot of them are Republicans. It does crack me up that someone who graduates with $150,000 in debt (on the conservative side) would be a Republican.

M., that makes me a little violent.

Only an idiot would confuse timeless values and principles of government with professions or technology.

Is “love thy neighbor” out of date because Jesus didn’t couldn’t fly an airplane?

Jesus was a member of Carpenter’s Union

Jesus was a member of Carpenter’s Union

I hear Alexander the Great was a mason.

No, he was a Shriner.

Maybe a Knight Templar.

I thought he was in the Fishmongers Local 33. No?

Spamming shitweasel troll renders blog unreadable to anyone with a slow connection, then complains about cogent reasoned response.
Spamming shitweasel troll really should start his own blog. “www.spamming_shitweasel.com” is still available.

Will someone please talk to me?

Please?

Will someone please talk to me?

Sorry, but I don’t do miniatures.

Alone! I’m all alone!

(I tried to start my own blog but everyone called me a “spamming shitweasel” and left.)

Furries? Do you do furries, perhaps?

Do you do furries, perhaps?

I don’t time the Mrs. shaving, if that’s what you mean.

I’m on my iPhone.

The present incarnation of WebTV.

Dr. Paul’s certification board / association / thingy has a much less rigorous procedure. The Rand clearly felt that _he_ certainly should not have to be subject to _someone else’s_ idea of the way things should be. The other board strives to ensure that practicing physicians are competent. In typically Randroid fashion, the Randroid Paul says “how dare they question me!” Gawdam I have to stop writing about those people; thinking about them makes me nauseous.

thinking about them makes me nauseous.

Rand Paul, as a “board” “certified” “doctor,” “can” “prescribe” “something” for that.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

UPDATE: Overwhelmed by the support and all those writing to paypal. They won’t win. They think they have. What they don’t know is, we have not yet begun to fight.

UPDATE: A number of trolls have written to admonish me for taking an un-Randian approach to the paypal affair. I beg to differ.

Businesses are free to conduct business with whom and however they choose and let the market decide. Absolutely.

I do not believe for a moment that the government should step in and regulate or force a business into doing bad business (i.e., sub prime mortgages) and/or changing its policy. But I also believe that it is in my power to call attention to bad business practice and make it known and let the market decide. If paypal is going to punish courageous voices and free men while sanctioning evil, people should know that before they give their business over to such quisling companies.

UPDATE: Powerline quoteth Atlas: “Truth is the New Hate Speech”

UPDATE: A rare moment of lucidity from the green padded cell at Bellevue: “The heroine of the right wing blogosphere. ‘We’re all Pamela Geller now!’”

These people never suffer outrage fatigue.

Backstory: I suck so lustily I’ve taken to trolling my Facebook friends’ political posts, lying in wait for conservatives to react badly. (I don’t have any conservative friends of my own.) Then commenceth the vicious mockery.

Today, one such person flew into an outrage fit because 1) federal funding for schools is wrong, it should be at the state level, so it’s okay to spend all our federal dollars on killing darkies instead of edumacating our youth; 2) how dare I fail to see the connection between illegal immigration and terrorism; 3) our addiction to cheap produce is causing more problems than any war.

My head exploded, but I gamely kept up the mockery. Now she and her posts have vanished — I think she deleted herself from my friend’s friend list.

I know it’s wrong, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA choke [thud]

That’s from Jugs’ site. Also, that Bellevue reference refers to littlegreenfootballs.

Also, what a bunch of historians you guys are. Alexander the Great was the founder of the Rotarians.

Alexander the Great was the founder of the Rotarians.

I didn’t realize he was THAT boring.

Even better, the post at lgf that she links to lambastes the fuck out of her. She doesn’t get it – that closing line that she quotes was written in mockery. HAHAHAHA

This makes me happy. Schadenfreude makes the nausea go away.

Anything said by a conservative, regardless of what platitudinous bullshit it is, automatically becomes true and wise after 10 years. I was reminded of this while glancing through Reagan’s oratory above. It’s more than just revisionism, it’s alchemy. Lead becomes gold.
The reverse is true for liberal’s speeches. They start out true, and within a couple of minutes they’re less true, and after a couple of months they’re well-known lies.

Backstory: I suck so lustily I’ve taken to trolling my Facebook friends’ political posts, lying in wait for conservatives to react badly. (I don’t have any conservative friends of my own.) Then commenceth the vicious mockery.

I know it’s wrong, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA choke [thud]

You are an asshole, and it is oustanding.

Seriously, it’s not like you’re going to get any meaningful conversation from a conservative, so driving them insane’s probably much the saner thing to do. Jesse Ventura’s one of the people who understands that and really know how to do it.

Anything said by a conservative, regardless of what platitudinous bullshit it is, automatically becomes true and wise after 10 years.

What they say doesn’t become true and wise, only the people saying it do.

E.G. Ronald Reagan is a saint. But campaigning against the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, against MLK Day, vetoing an embargo on Apartheid South Africa, selling arms to Iran, that doesn’t really make it into public discourse anymore. (Even PJTV was banging their head against the wall when Rand Paul came out against the CRA instead of simply using the dog whistles).

It’s more accurate to say that conservative icons have their histories rewritten so that what they actually said doesn’t matter.

BTW, have you voted for Zach yet? NO ATLANTIS IS TOO UNDERWATER OR FICTIONAL.

the idea that people making a revolution against a long established monarchy which was designed to maintain an established order were somehow conservatives is so bizarre as to beggar the imagination. And note they replaced the ultimate weak, decentralized, states-right’s government with one that included a power executive, a legislature with wide-ranging powers, AND a court system with national responsibilities.

But then, Twoofie has always demonstrated his historic and political illiteracy.

errata: powerful executive.

I thought Alexander was a Lion? or was it a Moose? the records are vague on that point…

We have here with us on the battlefield today, an elk.

Even better, the post at lgf that she links to lambastes the fuck out of her. She doesn’t get it – that closing line that she quotes was written in mockery. HAHAHAHA

“If I close my eyes really tight I am invisible!”

Um, I know this is a scary thing to even contemplate, but she doesn’t have children, does she? I mean living ones. That haven’t offed themselves. Just tell me “no” and I’ll sleep better tonight.

Thank you.

she doesn’t have children, does she?

I think she not only has children but makes them do backup singing in her “hot like me” vlog.

Or I may have nightmared that.

Or I may have nightmared that.

Oh, thanks.

Now I’m gonna nightmare that.

Eeek. Eeek. Eeek.

This country was founded by SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES, full-stop.

As Woodrowfan points out, they were not “conservatives” if that word means what it means. The conservatives were on the other team.

However, let us grant that they were in favour of “small government” (whatever that means). So? The Framers of the US Constitution were not prophets of the Lord our God. Moses did not bring it down the slopes of Mt. Sinai. They were men. Good, wise and enlightened men, for the most part, but men, limited by the time in which they lived and limited, as all politicians have been before and since, by political reality and the art of the possible. What’s more: they knew they were limited. They were wise enough to know they could never think of everything, so they gave Congress the right to enact legislation in the common interest, and they gave to Congress and the states the right to modify the Constitution as needed.

But, why am I arguing against myself? I urge you, nay, I implore you, and all the Republicans, to campaign henceforth on the Original Intent platform. A nuclear weapon in every garage, no votes for anybody who isn’t a property owning white man and re-institution of slavery! That’ll get your guys back on top for sure!

I implore you, and all the Republicans, to campaign henceforth on the Original Intent platform. A nuclear weapon in every garage, no votes for anybody who isn’t a property owning white man and re-institution of slavery! That’ll get your guys back on top for sure!

L.C.:

Doood! That’s the plan!

Which is why we are building FEMA camps. Shhhh. Mum’s the word.

A confusing subject, conservatism. Edmund Burke is often considered its intellectual father, and the money quote is this;

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.

In other words, two reasons to be conservative. 1) because we think people are st00pid (convenient argument against anyone who has the gall to put forth a new thought), 2) do it because that’s the way we’ve always done it (and that way was put forth by a group of people who were as st00pid as the rest of us, but let’s ignore that).

That’s why conservatism’s so hard to pin down. It’s not a coherent ideology, simply a belief that things should either stay as they are (whatever that is) or go back to the way they were (whatever that was).

So if you’re in America today, conservatives are small-government bordering on Objectivism. Two hundred years ago, they’d have been Tories. In Europe, they’re mostly defenders of the post-war mixed economy status quo (whatever their positions on other issues). In Russia and China, they’re communists. In the Middle East (including Israel and the Christian parts of Lebanon), they’re religious fundamentalists. Etc, etc, etc.

Okay, yeah, I’m sick of the World Cup.

I know it’s wrong, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA choke [thud]

Nice. My friends have been known to call me to smack down idiots on their Facebook pages. I have some conservative “friends” on Facebook who either ignore me or are afraid of me.

GLENN: I want to get right to talk about the president who has now summoned, who has now summoned the BP President and CEO. I’m sorry. Wasn’t it just yesterday or the day before when we were talking about what the president had said about the president of BP who he has not yet spoken to, he said this.

REPORTER: Have you spoken directly to Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have not spoken to him directly and here’s the reason. Because my experience is when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.

GLENN: Okay. Let me ask you this. What is that guy like, the BP CEO? What is that? I’m trying to figure that one out. Can you imagine — I said this to Bill O’Reilly last night. Can you imagine if I would say, if we were — if I had some sort of a, you know, rif with Al Sharpton? “Have you spoken to Al Sharpton directly one on one?” And I said, “Let me tell you, my experience tells me speaking to people like Al Sharpton does no good; he’s going to say what he’s going to say.” What do you mean people like Al Sharpton?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: What do you mean people like Al Sharpton? What do you mean people like the CEO of BP? Is it English? Is that what it is? Because we know he has a problem with the English. We know he has a problem with the English. Didn’t his wife write a dissertation when she was in college, some sort of a — it may have been her final —

PAT: Her thesis at Princeton.

GLENN: It may have been. I think it was how racist the English were. So we know he has a problem only — just not based on that. Based on the fact that he gave and boxed up and sent back a gift from England, the bust of Churchill. Now, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like that.

PAT: It’s a weird move because they gave it to us and they said, no, no, we gave that to you; keep it.

GLENN: No, it was for 9/11.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: They gave it to us as a — it’s like boxing up the Resolute desk and saying, yeah, you know, this desk is kind of old and, you know, we don’t really have a place for it here. It was a gift from the people of England. Have you — may I ask the president, have you ever received a gift from a relative that you — you know, like a little Hummel figure that you are like, oh, this is… oh, man.

STU: It’s like in a Christmas story when the aunt comes over, you wear the pink bunny suit.

GLENN: You wear it. That’s what you do. And you say thank you. If you want to insult them, you don’t wear the pink bunny suit.

PAT: I’m not wearing the pink bunny —

STU: No, you are wearing the pink bunny suit when they come over.

PAT: I’m not wearing it.

STU: Because that’s what mom says to do.

PAT: I’m telling Mom no.

GLENN: Barack Obama, is that you? Okay. So maybe it’s just that he doesn’t like the English and he has a problem with the English. Let me tell you something. When you just talk about people, you know, like,
‘the English, well, they are going to say whatever they want.” Okay, so that means all Englishmen are liars and they don’t care about anything. Or is it that he — do we know what color this guy is? Is he white?

STU: He is white.

GLENN: So is it that you talk to people like that, all these white people and they will say whatever? Is that what it is? Is it capitalist? This is the one I think it is.

PAT: Me, too.

GLENN: You talk to these capitalists and they will say whatever they want. They will say whatever they think I need to hear. I’m interested in action because I’m a revolutionary… oops, did I say that? Oop, maybe I said too much.

STU: I don’t remember that quote from Obama, but —

GLENN: No, you will. You will hear it.

Okay. So which is it?

STU: Could it be rich people? Maybe it’s rich people.

GLENN: It could be rich people.

STU: Maybe it’s CEOs.

GLENN: Well, CEO is a capitalist really.

STU: Yes, but a certain type of capitalist.

PAT: Head of a major corporation, uh huh.

STU: Could be that.

GLENN: Yeah, could be.

STU: Could be he has curly hair.

PAT: People who remind him of his grandmother.

GLENN: Could be — pardon me?

PAT: It might be people who remind him of, you know, typical —

GLENN: Oh, typical white people.

PAT: You know?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: She is a typical white person.

GLENN: All right.

STU: You know what they are going to say.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into —

STU: Of course, it’s been bred in.

GLENN: Bred into her. She’s a typical white person.

PAT: It’s bred into you. You can’t help it.

GLENN: No, I know.

PAT: That’s why he shouldn’t bother with calling the CEO of BP because there’s a reaction to a president that’s been bred into him and he knows.

GLENN: What a very good point, Pat, very good point. Using his own words to describe his grandmother.

PAT: Well —

GLENN: That when you see a typical person like the president of BP, he has a reaction.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: You know, to those people that has been bred into him. Okay. All right. Now, that actually kind of works.

PAT: It does.

GLENN: If you understand who his parents were and who his grandparents were because they are not really the typical white people. His mother, his mother wasn’t. His mother was a revolutionary. His father wasn’t. A revolutionary. His grandparents, they went to the Communist Little Red Church just outside of Seattle. They had communist friends. So it’s almost like Marxism has been bred into him. Like what — play the audio again because I want to make sure I use just his — the way he speaks.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: She is a typical white person who — you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into —

GLENN: Let me get this right because I want to craft this exactly right.

PAT: Okay.

GLENN: So Barack Obama, he’s just the typical Marxist that, when he sees a CEO of like an oil company that he doesn’t know.

STU: Right, right.

GLENN: He just has a reaction because it’s been bred into him.

PAT: Mmm hmmm. Hmmm.

GLENN: I’m comfortable with that.

STU: I’m sure the media would be comfortable with you saying that.

GLENN: Sure. Of course they would. And they would say that I could write that in a book.

Well, let me just, let me start where we, you know — finish where we started and that is this. It’s good that the president of the United States who has been looking for whose ass to kick, quoting the president —

STU: Quote/unquote.

GLENN: Has a boot on his throat.

STU: Boot on his throat, yeah.

GLENN: Whose ass to kick and has not wanted to meet with the president of BP or the CEO because he knows people like that will only tell him what he wants to hear and he’s not interested in that. He’s only interested in action, it’s good to see now that he has summoned that CEO and president to the White House. Not invited them, not said, hey, can we get together, not had a beer conference. No, no, no. Summoned them. Almost the way Napoleon used to, or a… chancellor.

The Founding Fathers were worried about any group that could accumulate enough power to threaten individual liberty. in their day that generally meant, a) the government, b) the church, c) the military. The TeaTards would have us believe that, were they alive today, they would not be concerned with a new possibility d) big business/economic power. Jefferson hinted at the possibility with his desire that the US be a nation of small independent farmers, but otherwise it remained largely outside their field of vision.

It’s not a violation of the legacy of the Founding Fathers to have government try to prevent large economic interests. To the contrary, since the government represents all of the citizens, even more now now than in 1789, it’s allowing moneyed power to run roughshod over the average person that is a violation of their original vision.

Argh. I hate typos. ahem..

It’s not a violation of the legacy of the Founding Fathers to have government try to prevent large economic interests from interfering with the liberties of the individual.

The Founding Fathers were worried about any group that could accumulate enough power to threaten individual liberty. in their day that generally meant, a) the government, b) the church, c) the military.

Hmm, yes. And look just which institutions it is that the Tea Tards gravitate to and treat as if they were above reproach.

Keep going, Troofie. Pretty soon you’ll hear the ringing at your doorbell, and Glenn Beck will come in to put his glistening, uncut Plan right into your Overton Window.

He might even bring his chalkboard.

2) do it because that’s the way we’ve always done it (and that way was put forth by a group of people who were as st00pid as the rest of us, but let’s ignore that).

Chris; This is the issue that puts me in a violent rage. It’s the egocentrism, the sanctimonious, condescending way they assign blame for everything that is wrong to “getting away from our values”.

Were we a more moral nation when black people couldn’t sit at the same lunch counter as whites? Were we more moral when racism was so institutionalized as to be socially acceptable–in fact a part of school curriculum? I really don’t think so.

Having done something in the past does not make it acceptable. Only a complete fool would use Nick at Nite for a history book. The attempt to paint this nostalgic picture of an America where everyone was happy and families got along, no teen pregnancies, no alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, rape, murder is the most laughable fallacy.

So I’m going to have to insist that conservatives shove their ‘good old days’ argument up their asses.

Nice. My friends have been known to call me to smack down idiots on their Facebook pages. I have some conservative “friends” on Facebook who either ignore me or are afraid of me.

Yeah, I tend not to engage many of them. Occasionally I’ll jump in a comment stream on someone else’s post that brings the ‘Tards out, but even then I am only briefly entertained. The stoopit runs pretty deep on FB.

Right now, I’m in a low-activity mode with it. I like how I can keep widely dispersed-friends up on what’s going on in my life but right now I find it the last place I want to hang out.

GLENN: I’ve got to play Barbara Boxer because just when you think these people are completely out of touch, then you hear Barbara Boxer and then you are like, you know what?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: They got it going on. Here’s Barbara Boxer.

BOXER: A host of quotes from our national security experts who tell us that carbon pollution leading to climate change will be, over the next 20 years, the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm’s way and that’s why we have so many returning veterans who want us to move forward and address this issue.

PAT: I love that because there’s no facts there, there’s no figures, there’s no stats. She’s just throwing out some baseless generalities, you know, that all the troops that are returning really want us to take care of this problem because they know more than terrorism, more than threats from other nations —

GLENN: Global warming.

PAT: It’s carbon. Carbon is their main enemy that they fear.

GLENN: Wait, wait, wait. Can I tell you something? I can make a hasty generalization here that may be more plausible.

PAT: All right.

GLENN: That our troops come home from the desert. You tell me which one’s more plausible. You make the choice. Which one’s more plausible? Our troops come home and they have been fighting a war in, you know, in the Middle East, seemingly for no apparent reason, you know, to these guys in congress, and they come back and they say, “You know, why don’t we maybe have our own energy supply so we don’t have to go over to that nightmare part of the world anymore and be beholden to them and fight a war for oil.”

PAT: No.

GLENN: You think so?

PAT: No.

GLENN: It’s more likely to —

PAT: No.

GLENN: Let me give you the other scenario.

STU: She was very specific, though. She said —

PAT: She said they are all coming back.

STU: Well, she said so many of them.

PAT: So many of them are coming back.

STU: So she gave us a specific number.

GLENN: Here’s the specific — here’s the other choice.

PAT: All right.

GLENN: We just got back from Iraq and let me tell you something.

PAT: It’s hot.

GLENN: It is hot and global warming is going to be the leading cause of conflict and that’s why, please, pass this carbon exchange program.

PAT: That’s exactly.

GLENN: Cap and trade, please, don’t let another man die for anything other than the carbon exchange.

PAT: Carbon, carbon, yeah.

STU: Well, you guys know like when it’s a hot summer afternoon how testy you get when you don’t have air conditioning. You get testy with your family, you get into some fights. That’s the conflict that’s coming.

PAT: Yes.

STU: That conflict is coming to the world. That’s why so many soldiers are coming back and saying that.

PAT: And when it is hot and humid outside, I always blame. I don’t think that two million degree burning orb in the guy, that’s just stupid.

STU: Those are flat earthers.

PAT: I think carbon, this damn carbon today is making things so hot! And so humid! I can barely stand it.

GLENN: Hang on just a second. May I just say this, may I just say this. I think we have our answer but I just ask this question. How many returning vets do you think approach after they come out of the Iraq or Afghanistan war and approach Barbara Boxer?

PAT: So many of them.

GLENN: For solutions to anything related to war or national security.

STU: So many. So many. You can’t count them, there’s so many.

PAT: She couldn’t count them, there were so many.

GLENN: Really? She couldn’t count them?

PAT: That’s why she couldn’t put an actual figure to it?

GLENN: So many.

PAT: So many, so many do that, you know. So —

GLENN: So many.

PAT: So many.

GLENN: Okay. Well, I think that says it all.

Right now, I’m in a low-activity mode with it. I like how I can keep widely dispersed-friends up on what’s going on in my life but right now I find it the last place I want to hang out.

Yeah, me too. My cousins post pictures of their kids and stuff, so I check it, but definitely a lot less than I used to.

Fuck you, Troofie. I’m going to have to switch to Firefox, aren’t I?

Keep going, Troofie. Pretty soon you’ll hear the ringing at your doorbell, and Glenn Beck will come in to put his glistening, uncut Plan right into your Overton Window.

Well, Troofie can tell him about his CIA connections, introduce Beck to his hawt ex-stripper wife, and show him his thriving Internet bidness. And then tell Blecch when the Great Liberal Freakout will begin.

Right, Troofie?

I’m going to have to switch to Firefox, aren’t I?

You haven’t lived until your entire screen is full of badgers doing jumping jacks.

Yeah, me too. My cousins post pictures of their kids and stuff, so I check it, but definitely a lot less than I used to.

Yep. And awareness of “all Internet traditions” is a little low. It’s got an AOL/circa 1998 feel to it.

Well, Troofie can tell him about his CIA connections, introduce Beck to his hawt ex-stripper wife, and show him his thriving Internet bidness. And then tell Blecch when the Great Liberal Freakout will begin.

Right, Troofie?

Shhh, he’s busy ctrl-c/ctrl-v’ing the words of Chalkboard Chuckie for us (at laest that’s what I think he’s doing; alls I see are my kinfolk dancing). I’m sure as soon as he loosens the top wetsuit a little, he’ll gain enough breath to throw a few Asspie references and accusations of living in our moms’ basements before once again proclaiming something to the effect of “Fuck you, I’m done here!’ and laying low until the next time he sees a chance to throw a tantrum.

Gah. No sainthood needed for last comment. Nymchange phale.

Re Troofus: I just looked in my spam filter. 318 of the 477 emails caught had the word “viagra” correctly spelled in the header; another 42 had some (presumably deliberate) misspelled version of the word.

So, what I don’t get is why the lady just didn’t sleep on the dude’s couch like a normal person. This would greatly reduce the likelihood of panther-teasing.

and laying low until the next time he sees a chance to throw a tantrum.

True. But it seems to me the frequency is lower.

I don’t know if there is anything as rational as “seeing a chance” to spaz out in play here. It’s more like after somewhere between 100 and 150 instances of sticking a butter knife in the one wall socket in the basement it occurs to him that it would be a good idea to show up.

It’s just the time it takes to get the reps in that determine his appearances.

what I don’t get is why the lady just didn’t sleep on the dude’s couch

It’s bad enough when a cat does that. A full-grown woman doing it could suffocate a man.

What?

proclaiming something to the effect of “Fuck you, I’m done here!’

I predict: “Fuck you, I WIN, I’m done here!”

Hmmm, I see nobody has found any quotes to prove that any of The Founders supported big, centralized government.

This country was founded by SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES, full-stop.

First sentence = correct.

Thinking that the reason for this is your devastating logic & not the utter inanity of your premise makes you one mighty fucking sad individual. America had a population of well under a million people in the 1700s, many of whom lived in utterly isolated colonies with total autonomy: “big, centralized government” was about as likely as big, centralized industrial sectors, or Dalek invasions. Yes indeed, the Founders “opposed” something that was an impossibility anyway … & no, British colonial rule was NOT either big or centralized: any order from their batshit-insane King wouldn’t even arrive until years later, local reps of the Crown had & often used discretionary powers, & the British Parliament was at least as much of a freak-show then as the US Senate is today, rendering the prospect of major statist initiatives a nightmare at best. Nobody on either side of the Revolution favored or could’ve installed a big government. A centralized government – rather than 13 squabbling colonial ones – was obviously one of the Founders’ main objectives. Your “point” is meaningless.

Second sentence = bullshit.

The status quo at the time was monarchy. Conservatism is predicated on CONSERVING the status quo … or reverting to a previous one. It’s right there in the name, just as “liberty” & “liberalism” have a similar uncanny resemblance. Let’s do what you’re doing & pretend that terms like “liberal” & “conservative” actually had a specific political meaning back then, & look at the Founders. They sure as hell weren’t liberals – what with the slavery thing & all – but they were closer to liberalism than conservatism by a country mile. Pro-civil liberties? Pro-regulation of taxation? Organizing things like a national census or agricultural innovation, & making them mandatory by law? Sorry, dude – with a platform like theirs, Washington, Jefferson, et al wouldn’t last a New York Minute in the GOP. Their deism/atheism/agnosticism would’ve bought them serious prison time if not hanging in some parts of Europe, & their enthusiastic support for science & technical innovation wouldn’t’ve been a big hit with conservative pro-theocracy elites there either. Unless you’re saying the Founding Fathers were advocating either monarchy or a return to neolithic local warlord-rule, this statement is bogus.

You just got a reasoned cogent response, you pathetic, ass-munching toerag … now GTFO.

Fuck you, Troofie. I’m going to have to switch to Firefox, aren’t I?

Why the hell would you not want to? Or Opera, which is even better and it also supports userscripts.

Saint jim, Patron Saint of Bitchslapping said,

June 14, 2010 at 3:55

Man, I love this website.

“Glenn Beck said,
June 14, 2010 at 2:56”

Did you post that as proof that Glenn Beck is a dumbfuck? If so then well played sir.

Why don’t liberals constantly troll right-wing blogs with long, unedited Noam Chomsky transcripts? It would probably be equally persuasive.

So, what I don’t get is why the lady just didn’t sleep on the dude’s couch like a normal person. This would greatly reduce the likelihood of panther-teasing.

Yeah, maybe, but who thinks getting touched by popsicle feet is foreplay? Never teases my panther, let me tell you.

Another Great American Casts Off The Shackles Of Gov’t. Regulation & Common Sense

HUNTINGTON BEACH — A body found last Memorial Day in a burnt-out car has been identified as an author of a book called “America In Distress,” a retired Marine who categorizes the United States government as a corporation that has been stolen from its people.

James Purcey, 59, was identified by the Orange County coroner.
According to his web site, Purcey was a Marine — a Vietnam veteran — with three grandchildren and a brother. He also published a book entitled “Am I the Only American Who Thinks This Way?” which features a photo of an American flag flown upside down on its cover.

Among other things, Purcey maintains that Americans do not have to pay off their mortgages, pay taxes, obtain drivers licenses, or obey other government regulations.

His son, Doug Purcey, said foul play has been ruled out by police, and that the author apparently accidentally triggered an explosion while using alcohol and gasoline to unclog a fuel line in his Mercedes. The fire was triggered when the senior Purcey reached into his other car, possibly to answer a cellphone, and possibly accidentally plugged in the car’s cigarette lighter.

The barely-recognizable remains of a human were found after a car fire in the parking garage at the Pelican Cove condominiums, 16960 Algonquin Street on May 31, according to the coroner’s office.

“It was burned beyond recognition,” Huntington Beach police Lt. John Domingo said. Coroners identified Purcey using dental records.

Or: Gasoline & alcohol don’t mix, but gasoline straight ain’t bad.

Why the hell would you not want to? Or Opera, which is even better and it also supports userscripts.

Because I left it for Chrome and now I’m not used to it.

Oh, hey, yeah, why I dropped in. You know that Afghanistan war-thingy that’s been going on for, like, ever? I think it’s quite clear now that it will never end.

Ain’t colonialism fucking great?

Ain’t colonialism fucking great?

Well, it worked so well in the 17th and 18th centuries. Why not revive it? It’s like totally retro. It’s easy to kill when you don’t have to look a man in the eye and do it. (Or a woman or child, for that matter). I would like to upgrade to a 50″ TV, so we’d best invade someone else.

just as “liberty” & “liberalism” have a similar uncanny resemblance

Where? I don’t see it.

Conservatism is predicated on CONSERVING the status quo

Funny how conservatives miss that point. I don’t think, however, that it’s the status quo they wish to conserve. They want life to become just like on the TV in the 1950’s.

My standard anti-conservative rant:
You fucking conservatives were the Tories in the revolution, those who would not let go of slavery, went to war against this nation to preserve the slaveowner’s way of life, even tried to use the Bible as a moral defense for it. You fought every affirmation of the Constitution (ie-The Civil Rights Act), you fought suffrage for women, the unions who brought you the 40 hour work week, pensions, workplace safety regulations, you have villianized gay people for so long that half of the country still discriminates against them openly. You still cry freedom of speech when anyone (Anyone never including law enforcement or the government) calls you to the carpet for your overt hatred of those not exactly like you. You fear anything you cannot control. You resent the idea that not everyone shares your fantasy of a conservative utopia. The reason we don’t share your vision is because history has shown us where your policies lead. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you

You cling to a mystic world that you’ve somehow managed to convince yourself once existed. Now for you very rich conservatives, that world did exist, and still does. For the rest of you, you are pining for a time when you subsisted, nothing more.

So don’t you try to tell me that liberalism is anti freedom. Liberalism is the very nature of freedom–civil, economic and personal. Excellence and upward mobility are not possible without a healthy and educated population. That means all of us. All of your petulant crying about equal opportunity and acceptance of others merely highlights what egocentric, sanctimonious and condescending assholes you really are. All of the nuance you try cannot cover up your fear and loathing. So if you wish to change your world, take control of your mind, live, and let live.

Wow, sorry for the lousy writing. Lesson kids; Either drink or keyboard, but avoid mixing the two.

You fucking conservatives were the Tories in the revolution, those who would not let go of slavery, went to war against this nation to preserve the slaveowner’s way of life, even tried to use the Bible as a moral defense for it. You fought every affirmation of the Constitution (ie-The Civil Rights Act), you fought suffrage for women, the unions who brought you the 40 hour work week, pensions, workplace safety regulations, you have villianized gay people for so long that half of the country still discriminates against them openly. You still cry freedom of speech when anyone (Anyone never including law enforcement or the government) calls you to the carpet for your overt hatred of those not exactly like you. You fear anything you cannot control. You resent the idea that not everyone shares your fantasy of a conservative utopia.

Pretty much. There’s a few unifying principles through conservative movements worldwide (elitism, racism, sexism, authoritarianism…) but really, the single common thread running through them all is that they’re wrong.

In France, the word “conservative” is considered an epithet, as much if not more than “liberal” over here – a situation I rather like. If you have ideas about how the political system should work, then by all means, talk about them. But people whose idea of political beliefs are “this is how we’ve always done it hyuck hyuck” have no business being anywhere near the reins of government, and putting them in charge is a sure way of making sure that nothing will ever be solved.

There’s a few unifying principles through conservative movements worldwide (elitism, racism, sexism, authoritarianism…) but really, the single common thread running through them all is that they’re wrong.

Heh–no doubt about that. Other people are wrong too, but the term conservative is, in many respects, synonomous with wrong.

It’s funny, no matter what they’re wrong about, there is always this really silly longing for some world that never existed. For 1000 years, Christianity ruled the Western world–we now (somewhat unfairly) call that the Dark Ages. There was a time when racism was a perfectly acceptable facet of American culture. We roundly rejected that and continue to work toward the day when that psychosis is eliminated from our collective mental health chart. Every time the conservatives win anything, everyone except those extremely wealthy assholes who think that people are things–tools, if you will.

The worst part is that the conservative mentality is so entrenched in our culture. Hell, people from OTHER COUNTRIES buy into the self-righteous bullshit. This is a great country. I doubt anyone would argue with that. Ask any professional athlete if he/she could improve on the game. Aside from the ones who buy into the whole rockstar athlete bullshit, they’ll all tell you yes, there are parts of my game that could improve.

wealthy assholes who think that people are things–tools, if you will. , loses big

Wow, I need to stop strangling the language before it dies.

James Madison and the Founders didn’t intend for the federal government to have that much power. What would they do if they were around today?

Fighting like hell to get out of them coffins, I bet.

If paypal is going to punish courageous voices and free men while sanctioning evil, people should know that before they give their business over to such quisling companies.

Sanctioning evil? Like they set up a regulating body for it, maybe sponsored an international tournament of evil? The World Cup of Evil, Brought To You By Paypal. It’s everywhere free men don’t want to be.

Quisling? Paypal is perfectly within their rights as a corporation; they’re just committing treason and supporting the Nazis. Why not get a bit more modern with the traitorous adjectives? How about Soeteroesque (*)? McCartneyian?

Since she was apparently fine with Paypal as a corporation up until they cut her off, the TLDR version is that not wanting to have to deal with this batshit crazy alcoholic lady makes you a traitor to your country. Which is a message you can get outside of the 7-11 at around 2 AM as well, but at least at 7-11 they also have nachos.

Also, fuck, lady. That sentence is terrible. You can’t start a sentence in the singular but end it in the plural. OK, OK, fine, I guess you can. Jeez. At least go behind back and do it in the alley if you’re really going to.

(*) Yes I know Obama can’t be a traitor to his country if he wasn’t born in this country. I also know that you know that that don’t matter to them.

But people whose idea of political beliefs are “this is how we’ve always done it hyuck hyuck” have no business being anywhere near the reins of government, and putting them in charge is a sure way of making sure that nothing will ever be solved.

See: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zeigler%27s_Law

I was all set to buy this until they told me that the turning water into wine thing was not guaranteed to work for real.

http://www.mcphee.com/shop/products/Deluxe-Miracle-Jesus-Action-Figure.html

This might prove to be more popular among the Sadly Naughts.

Phil Agre’s 2004 essay on conservativism as aristocracy remains one of the better pieces explaining what they’re really about.

I go a step further and add the evolutionary biology explanation: Conservativism is a genetic strategy of amassing resources and control over those around you that made some kind of (harsh) sense in the pre 1800s world of permanent scarcity. Once we entered an age of “there’s enough to go around if we could spread it fairly” conservativism is pointless when it isn’t wholly destructive.

But the mentality of a Hobbsian nasty brutish and short Malthusian world still pervades their thinking. Everything is zero-sum to them, and anyone else getting a better deal means they must suffer. That we can all benefit when we all benefit is some kind of impossibility to them, like dividing by zero.

Well, it worked so well in the 17th and 18th centuries. Why not revive it?

It’s cute that you think that it was once dead…

I leave this thread for the night and I see people are actually carrying on intelligent conversations. Worse yet, no mentions of me or my cats. WHAT GIVES YOU THE FUCKING RIGHT?!

I keed. I’m reading and enjoying. 🙂

T&U…I read your post on actor’s blog. Nicely done! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a good rant now and then. BTW, how does his blog work, exactly? Is there a home page I can link to? I clicked on the top banner but it just took me back to your article.

Phil Agre’s 2004 essay on conservativism as aristocracy remains one of the better pieces explaining what they’re really about.

Having never heard about it, I just read it – good essay. Especially liked this part;

One of the most important patterns of conservative message-making is projection. Projection is a psychological notion; it roughly means attacking someone by falsely claiming that they are attacking you. Conservative strategists engage in projection constantly. A commonplace example would be taking something from someone by claiming that they are in fact taking it from you. Or, having heard a careful and detailed refutation of something he has said, the projector might snap, “you should not dismiss what I have said so quickly!”. It is a false claim — what he said was not dismissed — that is an example of itself — he is dismissing what his opponent has said.

Projection was an important part of the Florida election controversy, for example when Republicans tried to get illegal ballots counted and prevent legal ballots from being counted, while claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election.

Indeed, projection is central to the conservative psychology and to pretty much any public discourse from them.

The text in the header should take you back home…weird.

@TresPenis How much cum does @ChuckDevore ejaculate? Can u swallow it all? Kthxbai.

I clicked on the top banner but it just took me back to your article.

The top banner should take you to the main page. Since her article was the last one posted, it appears at the top. You may have mistaken it for the article’s page.

And I agree, the post was extremely good. But I expected it would be 🙂

Awww, thanks guys.

VS, I can’t get your video to work. I don’t know wtf. Maybe I’ll try it in Firefox.

Phil Agre’s 2004 essay on conservativism as aristocracy remains one of the better pieces explaining what they’re really about.

I don’t agree. I think there’s an economic royalist element to conservatism, but conservatism also includes people who are more concerned with social issues, something most economic royalists couldn’t give a crap about.

I think the large share of conservatism lies with rednecks and morans who vote against their best interests. That’s hardly aristocratic.

That’s hardly aristocratic.

But it is mostly because of a superior feeling based on a false metric…

My mortal enemy is already annoying the shit out of me this morning.

VS, I can’t get your video to work.

VS should upload it to YouTube. Presumably she’s paying for bandwidth and hosting video is a big drain…

I don’t agree. I think there’s an economic royalist element to conservatism, but conservatism also includes people who are more concerned with social issues, something most economic royalists couldn’t give a crap about.

I think the large share of conservatism lies with rednecks and morans who vote against their best interests. That’s hardly aristocratic.

Replace “social” with “racial” or “identity” and you’ve got a point. I think Phil’s article accurately summarizes what’s going on in the heads of the conservative party leaders and the big money that’s supporting them, which is, of course, economic royalism – big businessmen get to be all-powerful and untouchable, the rest of us get to work for the greater glory of them.

It does gloss over why so many regular people would choose to join such a movement, which is where you’re right. (It’s like the Nazis mobilizing a populist movement in part in reaction to the Great Depression, and receiving in exchane a system in which the rich were even more firmly in control of the economy than ever).

I think the large share of conservatism lies with rednecks and morans who vote against their best interests. That’s hardly aristocratic.

Idiots and idiot wranglers. Sarah Palin combines the best of both worlds.

I think Phil’s article accurately summarizes what’s going on in the heads of the conservative party leaders and the big money that’s supporting them, which is, of course, economic royalism – big businessmen get to be all-powerful and untouchable, the rest of us get to work for the greater glory of them.

In that faction, yes, and to a degree, in the Religious Right faction.

It’s interesting to me that the Teabaggers seem to be rebelling against the economic royalists but not the Social Rightists.

Sarah Palin combines the best of both worlds.

So does Glenn Beck. This is why he’s replaced Rush as the factotum of the morans. He’s able to talk to both sides of that divide. Rush’s pro-business sentiments are a little too obvious.

So does Glenn Beck. This is why he’s replaced Rush as the factotum of the morans. He’s able to talk to both sides of that divide. Rush’s pro-business sentiments are a little too obvious.

I think it also helps that Beck has a little bit more moral authority than Rush.

Rush’s pro-business goatse sentiments are a little too obvious.

Ficksed for better pattern recognition.

Rush’s pro-business sentiments are a little too obvious = I think it also helps that Beck has a little bit more moral authority than Rush.

IMO

In that faction, yes, and to a degree, in the Religious Right faction.

Actually, I think the religious right’s dead in the water. I’ve thought that ever since the explosion of fury over health care that happened last summer, when the religious right seemed to mostly sit it out and let other factions in the party (libertarians, racists, strong-on-defense types) take the lead. (Sure, maybe there were a few crazy pastors who spoke out, but I heard very little from the Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons of the world).

And indeed, at that time, I saw a lot of commentors on PJTV-like websites arguing that things like abortion and gay marriage should, well, not be ignored, of course, but take a back seat to the really important stuff like “stopping socialism.”

When you look at the weak showing Huckabee had in the primaries (beaten by not only McCain but Romney) and the changing landscape of American culture, it’s not hard to see what these people were thinking – after all, a hell of a lot of the GOP’s support comes from suburban, middle-class yuppies who couldn’t care less about all the religious issues. The religious right was never more than a prop, but now it’s a prop that’s beginning to outlive its usefulness.

I’ve thought that ever since the explosion of fury over health care that happened last summer, when the religious right seemed to mostly sit it out

Actually, most of them came out (mildly) in favor of healthcare reform. Jesus’ and taking care of the poor and sick, you see.

Rush’s pro-business sentiments are a little too obvious = I think it also helps that Beck has a little bit more moral authority than Rush.

I was actually talking about his personal life more than anything, but yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that Beck is much more tuned into the moral conservatives than Rush is.

And also – after 30 years of being told by Republicans that if they would only help them achieve complete, unfettered control of government, they would shame the sluts, outlaw abortion, and kill the gheys…and having seen none of those accomplished during 6 years of complete Republican control, some of them finally wised up and figured out the game.

See, this is why I’ve never been overly concerned that the pukes would reverse Roe v Wade: if they were to do so, it would give a large portion of their base no reason to continue voting.

Actually, most of them came out (mildly) in favor of healthcare reform. Jesus’ and taking care of the poor and sick, you see.

The leadership never made much of a statement either way, if I remember right, precisely because they were stuck between their right wing friends and congregations that know what Jesus said about the poor and sick.

I was actually talking about his personal life more than anything, but yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that Beck is much more tuned into the moral conservatives than Rush is.

Four wives. Oxycontin. Viagra in Guatemala. This stuff makes the Fundies nervous.

The killer? Elton John playing at his latest nuptials.

The Fundies will take Rush, still, but they won’t take him in, anymore.

And also – after 30 years of being told by Republicans that if they would only help them achieve complete, unfettered control of government, they would shame the sluts, outlaw abortion, and kill the gheys…and having seen none of those accomplished during 6 years of complete Republican control, some of them finally wised up and figured out the game.

Indeed.

I’ve wondered for a while if Democrats would have any success reaching out to the evangelical community at this point. We’ll never flip them all, or even most of them, but a lot of them especially in the younger generation do care about things like UHC and social justice, which could present an opportunity to siphon off some of what was previously a solid GOP voting bloc.

Chris,

Agreed, they pretty much stuck to the bench during the debate.

Sub, here it is on YouTube.

actor, anyway I will BOOKMARK IT, LIBS (your blog).

Have the wingnuts finally run out of crazy? Hard to believe, but that would explain why we have no new post at Sadly, No!

I’ve wondered for a while if Democrats would have any success reaching out to the evangelical community at this point.

I think 2008 proved that the religious community is not as homogenous as we thought. Not only did we land some of the moderate religions in the vote for Obama, but many black church groups backed such odious votes as Prop 8

anyway I will BOOKMARK IT

Thank you, VS.

Or, the more likely case, there is too much crazy and those who would blog about it are running down the street screaming incoherently.

Sub, here it is on YouTube.

Cats are weird. Also, awwwww…look at the fatties!!!!

Have the wingnuts finally run out of crazy? Hard to believe, but that would explain why we have no new post at Sadly, No!

Or the guys had a rough weekend. Hard to tell.

I’ve wondered for a while if Democrats would have any success reaching out to the evangelical community at this point. We’ll never flip them all, or even most of them, but a lot of them especially in the younger generation do care about things like UHC and social justice, which could present an opportunity to siphon off some of what was previously a solid GOP voting bloc.

I agree. Also, environmentalism is a big deal among a lot of younger evangelicals. And they don’t tend to have the same racial, uh, hangups as the older generation, so I can see them becoming disillusioned from the GOP quite easily.

Cats are weird. Also, awwwww…look at the fatties!!!!

THEY’RE. JUST. FLUFFY!!!!!! GOD!!

THEY’RE. JUST. FLUFFY!!!!!! GOD!!

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

Actually, I believe you. I can tell that the tuxie has longish hair.

Besides, I’m not judging. I have a fatass cat in my household.

Cats are weird. Also, awwwww…look at the fatties!!!!

Yea, my god! Can’t even lift a paw to have a decent fight!

Mine dart all around the house, making weird noises and beating the shit out of each other. Then again, they really don’t get along, so that might be it instead of their relative level of fitness.

I think 2008 proved that the religious community is not as homogenous as we thought. Not only did we land some of the moderate religions in the vote for Obama, but many black church groups backed such odious votes as Prop 8

Yes, and

I agree. Also, environmentalism is a big deal among a lot of younger evangelicals. And they don’t tend to have the same racial, uh, hangups as the older generation, so I can see them becoming disillusioned from the GOP quite easily.

Also yes. Although I’m still not a fan of a lot of the evangelical community, I’ve often had much more productive debates with very conservative evangelicals than I have with “mainstream,” “moderate” conservatives in the mainline denominations. I’ve also found them more accessible to themes like “war is bad,” “exploitation of third world countries is bad,” and the like. (I’m talking about the rank-and-file BTW, not the leadership).

The reason, in my mind, is that their Christianity is a lot more likely to be a way of life to which they’re seriously dedicated and try to live up to. For a lot of mainstream conservatives, it’s not a way of life, simply a label that it’s important to cling to because it makes you better than these filthy Mary-worshippers and Moses-worshippers and Mohammed-worshippers on the other side of the tracks.

The reason, in my mind, is that their Christianity is a lot more likely to be a way of life to which they’re seriously dedicated and try to live up to. For a lot of mainstream conservatives, it’s not a way of life, simply a label that it’s important to cling to because it makes you better than these filthy Mary-worshippers and Moses-worshippers and Mohammed-worshippers on the other side of the tracks.

DING DING DING DING!

Which is also why the mainstream conservatives you’re talking about usually go to those huge Wal-Mart churches…for them, it’s not about being a part of a community or even actually worshiping, but about appearance.

Which is also why the mainstream conservatives you’re talking about usually go to those huge Wal-Mart churches…for them, it’s not about being a part of a community or even actually worshiping, but about appearance.