Well I’m just happy that I don’t have to look at Mickey Kaus anymore.

The one who’s publicly obnoxious to a famous liberal is the right man.

…the one who does it first, or best, or most often?

‘Most’ and ‘best’, I think is probably what he means.

Dick Cheney is “the right man” for Frum.

No matter what liberal positions he [Guliani] endorses, he just feels right-wing.

How’s that? “Rock-ribbed for his/her pleasure”?

Just out of curiousity, why do you list the originators of the “shorter” concept every time you use it? I’m sure you explained it before but I usually miss stuff like that.

Morton Downey, Jr. in 2008!

Mickey Kaus has to be very careful of gum disease. It can cause puffing, but not the kind you can let back out.

A
B
C

A = Always
B = B
C = Closing

Always Be Closing.

There’s only one thing that counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me, you fucking faggots?

— David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross.

I’m for closers only.

Even though Rudy leads big right now, I get the feeling that McCain will be the GOP candidate. I think the ReThug powers-that-be will ratfuck Rudy out of the nomination. It’s just a gut feeling but I think it’s McCain’s turn, and that’s the way Republican politics works. Guiliani is not one of their own. They will ratfuck him.

And the ratfuck will deserve every bit of ratfucking the ratfucker can get. Ratfucked, I mean. Ratfucker….

mikey

I don’t know, Didn’t the GOP do the whole “Senator It’s-His-Turn” thing in ’96? Not sure they’re willing to go that road again. 9/11 is their meal ticket, and Rudy’s wearing a hairnet behind the sneeze guard.

I’m not putting any money down on either of these jokers (Mad Jack McCain or Rin Tin Rudy) just yet.

Mad Jack’s got plenty of time to self-destruct, and the fundies just don’t like him. Maybe they’ll get in line with the rest of the tribe behind Mad Jack, but I’m gonna wait and see for the moment.

Rudy’s pretty much hosed, though.

Guiliani scares me most of all. He tried to exploit 9/11 to extend his term of office beyond the term limit. Think what he would do as president. Unlike Bush/Cheney, Guiliani is a competent fascist.

Giuliani is an interesting test case for the John Dean / Robert Altemeyer authoritarianism thesis. Giuliani is a social moderate. But he’s a total authoritarian.

Just out of curiousity, why do you list the originators of the “shorter� concept every time you use it?

It’s the humor of repetition. Like that hilarious thread about fat jokes that S,N!ers arranged over at Feministe (they’re such good sports).

Feministe is kinda the Tony Clifton to S,N!’s Andy Kaufman….right?

I’m not sure why, but I find it deeply amusing that quite possibly the most socially liberal (though also somewhat oddly the most authoritarian) republican nominee in recent memory “just feels right wing” while a guy (Mccain) who is to the right of even the president of most issues (excluding taxes, stem cells, or campaign finance reform) is viewed as a leftie, I mean if that doesn’t show the power of the cult of personality surrounding Bush I’m not sure what does.

McCain benefits by the ongoing frottage he recieves from the media. They view themselves as centrists, so when they all get moist over such a manly man, he must be a centrist, and a straight talker, and a good guy to have a beer with –

all the traits you could ever want in a president

I agree with IB on the authoritarian angle. The Bella Abzug story sounds apocryphal though. It’s just too perfect to be anything more than a wet dream for the kind of person who is terrified of and has demonized Hilary and Pelosi over the years. The kind of wingnut that remembers Bella Abzug anyway. “Bella the fella” is what NY wingnuts used to call her. Fright wingers who dwell in the lower intestinal tracts/comments sections of right wing blogs will hear this story and before you know it it will have morphed into:

Well, he better not try to take away my assault rifles but on the other hand I heard on his first day as NYC mayor he issued a proclamation declaring Bella Abzug a Complete and Utter Cunt. heh. Lock and load.

I mean if that doesn’t show the power of the cult of personality surrounding Bush

I don’t buy that it’s a cult of personality surrounding Bush. It’s an authority cult. The man’s been a joke from the get-go, but because he’s in charge he gets the cult love. Whoever comes out of the Republican primaries will have the same idiots declaring the new idiot a deep thinker.

Guiliani is probably the most dangerous opponent in a general election. McCain has the stink of Bush all over him, which won’t necessarily kill him in the primaries but dooms him in the general election. Romney looks like a cold, calculated, slick politician, but the Mormon thing is just going to be too much to overcome.

None of the three major GOP candidates would seem to have much appeal to the fundies. Fundie anti-abortion groups will start going after Guiliani HARD. Right now they’re unaware of Rudy’s pro-choice history. Right now, Rudy has the fundie vote but I guarantee you that will evaporate. Those people vote how they are told to vote.

I think the primary process is likely to leave the fundies extremely pissed off. They’re spoiled after eight years of The Decider, and will demand a fundie candidate. It’d be real sweet if some wingnut would run a fire-and-brimstone third-party candidacy and siphon off some of the Jeebus bloc in the general election.

McCain benefits by the ongoing fromage he receives from the media.

Fixed your typo.

Coffee said,
March 9, 2007 at 5:16

I’m for closers only.
—

Are they all here yet?

Well, I’m going anyway.

Put yourself down.

You are for closers only.

You think I’m fucking with you ?

I am not fucking with you.

I’m here from downtown.

From Sadly, No !

And I’m here on a mission of making fun of fat people …

Wait … I’ll come in again …

Giuliani is an interesting test case for the John Dean / Robert Altemeyer authoritarianism thesis. Giuliani is a social moderate. But he’s a total authoritarian.

Yep. Though, I think its important to remember that Altemeyer distinguishes between Right-Wing Authoritarians (self-righteous followers who sacrifice their moral autonomy to Big Daddy in exchange for child-like certainties) and those possessing traits consistent with high social dominance (vicious, punitive leaders whose morality turns on a dime depending on what position offers the greatest personal power). Rudy is clearly the latter.

Right you are, kingubu. I almost made my post more nuanced by mentioning Social Dominance Orientation…but then I remembered that this a blog that digs fatty and tranny jokes, so I figured I’d keep it simple.

Bah, I say, IB.

SadNo wouldn’t be nearly so much fun if it wasn’t run and populated by people who are mature enough to realize that a balanced mental life includes both nuanced analysis and Teh Poop Jokes.

Daddy wants to fuck … !!!

“A candy colored clown they call the Ann-man hands …

Tip toes in my server every night …

Just to sprinkle gay porn stardust and to whisper …

Go to sleep, everything will be all white … “

This is a nice distillation of contemporary GOP-ism: Policy? Fuck policy. Let’s just vote for the biggest asshole.

This is a nice distillation of contemporary GOP-ism: Policy? Fuck policy. Let’s just vote for the biggest asshole.

They would have loved George Allen.

Moore/Allen 08!

(please please please)

Giuliani is an interesting test case for the John Dean / Robert Altemeyer authoritarianism thesis.

After reading Altemeyer’s book, I am 99% certain the Republicans will choose Giuliani. He fits the profile. People who read Sadly No! care about issues, and think Republicans care about issues. They don’t. They just want someone to rule them like a king. So what if he’s pro-choice or anti-smoking in restaurants or whatever?

Policy? Fuck policy. Let’s just vote for the biggest asshole.

That is Frank Booth, ladies and gentlemen, your next FOX-CNN-USA President.

“I vote for anything that MOOOOOVES !!!!”

[maniacal laughter, then tires squealing …]

Frum may like American’s mayor, but New York firefighters don’t: http://www.firefightingnews.com/article-US.cfm?articleID=27125

“What Giuliani showed is a disgraceful lack of respect for the fallen and those brothers still searching for them. He exposed our members and leaders to arrest. He valued the money and gold and wanted the site cleared before he left office at the end of 2001 more than he valued the lives and memories of those lost.”

http://ufalocal94.org/news/index.php?d=122606_2

“Mr. Cassidy declined comment on the ex-Mayor, but the impression given by both city fire union leaders in the past was that if Mr. Giuliani’s head was on fire, they’d try to put it out with a shovel.”

Its McCain’s “turn” (which typically counts for a lot inside the GOP machine) but evidently the gatekeepers are worried that he can’t win the general and they think Rudy’s 9/11 cred makes him a better bet. You can see this in the fact that the Big, Big, Big Donors are pretty evenly split between the two.

What tips the scales to Rudy, ultimately, is that he exudes the faux-macho holier-than-thou certainty that the Fundies (and Chris Matthews) find so manly and appealing. Even if he’s not coming at it from the same religious place, he’ll pass muster because he’ll give them moral authority and permission to hate all the right people.

Those Fundies are the GOP’s ground game in most states and Donors are pragmatic: if Rudy can get them to work and McCain can’t, Rudy gets the nod (no matter whose “turn” it is).

It’ll be interesting to see what McCain does. He’s had to eat a lot of shit in the name of waiting his turn and if he gets stepped over again (his last chance) he’s going to go postal. More popcorn, please.

I’m gonna send you an Executive Order. Straight from my heart, fucker. You know what an Executive Order is? It’s a bullet. straight from my gun, fucker. Once you get an Executive Order from me, you’re fucked forever.

I’m not putting any money down on either of these jokers (Mad Jack McCain or Rin Tin Rudy) just yet.

Coyote willing, Newt ‘The Newt’ Gingrich will get tired of his “I won’t volunteer ‘cuz I want you to beg me” tap-dance solo at the edge of the spotlight soon. Newt and Rudy are probably best matched in terms of sheer natural meanness and pissy-assed ugly impulsivity. Neither one is probably electable in an honest contest, but it would be nice for us outside observers to watch the two of them go at each other like the rabid mustelidae they are.

Willard “Mitt” Romney is just as soulless as those two, and I have the horrible suspicion he’s being groomed as the Corporatist Candidate, but apart from the Mormon Underwear jokes, he’s not all that bright — his name-brand successes (vulture capitalist, Salt Lake City Olympics “savior”) seem to have been acting as a well-groomed, personable figurehead with no compunctions against grabbing credit for every success and deflecting blame for every failure. Willard wouldn’t last six news cycles pitted against either Rudy or Newt (although it provide a certain schaudenfreude to those of us who lived through WMR’s four-year failure to govern Massachusetts).

A year ago McCain would have been the automatic winner in the tradition-worshipping Repub “It’s his time” sweepstake, but Teh Maverick is looking more wore down and tired out than ever just as the more reality-based Repubs begin their “kick out the old rascals (make room for the new rascals)” campaign of pretending that Dubya and Dicky-Ticker are both some kind of tragic anomaly instead of the natural culmination of the last 30 years of Repub philosophy in practice.

Gingrich is actually the one I’d fear most as the 2008 Repub candidate; I think he’s the early-boomer’s own version of Dick Nixon, an unstoppable monster representing every ugly, cruel, self-centered impulse of the breed. On the other hand, the Talibangelical Repub fundamentalists probably get this one more chance to force candidates to choose between primary success and national failure, and no matter how deftly Newt dances I don’t think his all-too-public infidelities, not to mention his fascination with fundie-dreaded scienterrific issues not mentioned in the Bible, can be explained away in a mere two years.

Frum is one of the more embarrassing Canadian exports. Please DO keep him.

back in the Reagan era, i had a subscription to The Atlantic Monthly, which came to a tire-shredding halt the day that the new issue featured a long love-letter to L’il Davie Frum’s latest crush, then-Senator Phil “Either-Yore-Eeun-Tha-Wayygunn-Rahdeen-Orr-Yore-Bahahnd-Tha-Wayguhn-
Pooshin-Gramm- for those who don’t remember him, that specimen from Texas
was tied with Jesse Helms for most dirt-mean and rock-stupid Rethuglican on the national scene (he has since retired, beguiling the time with his kiddie SM porn collection and his freezer full of monkey brains). Frum is also one
of the main reasons i stopped listening to NPR, which regularly gave him air time which would have been better employed by giving that guy behind the
dumpster a forum for his views on life, love, and the spacemonster-Jewish
conspiracy to steal his toes.

please excuse the bizarre vers-libre format of the above, Firefox seems to
think this is an entry in a poetry competition, and insists on breaking lines
up in its own delightfully insousant fashion.

Can there actually be such a thing as a “shorter” David Frum?

What means the‘most’ and ‘best’?

What means the‘most’ and ‘best’?

The way I see it is this – every Republican candidate will be publicly obnoxious to famous liberals, because they know the base will demand it. The way HTML Mencken phrased the “shorter” above, it sounded like Frum was implying that a candidate only needed to do it once. That didn’t sound right to me because I think the Republicans, hoping to recapture their glory days, are going to go on a Clinton-rules Democrat / liberal bashing binge the likes of which we haven’t seen since … well, the last Republican convention, or CPAC.

“Most” just means that the obnoxiousness will need to be repeated and frequent; “Best” has to do with whatever elicits the most fist-pumping and high-fiving responses from the wingnuttery. It doesn’t have to be meaningful, just has to push the right buttons and do it often.

Reagan proved that deficits (of comprehensibility) don’t matter.

[…] because David Frum, who was then a paid “consultant” for the candidate in question, effusively cited Rudolph Giuliani’s obnoxiousness (over John McCain’s relative civility!…, it doesn’t excuse me from saying, with much sneering and in sarcastic tone, that David Frum […]

[…] The “less extrem[ist], more civil” David Frum has been working this same schtick for several years now. Yeah, David Frum. […]