Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let there be snark.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Infrastructure week. at last.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2008 / Who Will Be The First?

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  3. 3.

    Jen

    Hi everybody! Do y’all miss me over the weekend? I just wanted to say that I listened to the Poli-Sci-Fi podcast this weekend, done by Steve Benen of Carpetbagger and some other guy of candleblog, which I’m not familiar with. They talk wonky politics and Battlestar Galactica and sci-fi in general, so I of course thought of you guys.

    So, on topic, Bill Kristol is like a living experiment in how many times, and how egregiously, a person can be wrong and still be taken seriously as an Important Political Person with Serious Opinions. I used to think that George Will was heading up this experiment, but I’m pretty sure Kristol has lapped him by now.

  5. 5.

    jack fate

    Who will be the first Hillary supporter to link this as a serious reason that Obama should not win the nomination?

    My money say anyone writing a diary on TalkLeft.com.

  6. 6.

    Bob In Pacifica

    Hey, when you acknowledge class-based complaints, as in the poor folk ain’t just whistlin’ “Dixie” and just shuckin’ and jivin’ around the campfire but actually don’t like gettin’ screwed over by politicians, you are making a class-based analysis. It’s only a step or two away from Marxism. In that sense Kristol is right. Obama isn’t an elitist, he’s a Red (the old-fashined kind). However, when the reactionaries chose their color for their coloring books they destroyed the traditional slanders against populists. It wasn’t ever about red v. blue, or left v. right, but top versus bottom, and just about everyone having breakfast here at BJ are closer to the bottom than the top. Just saying.

  7. 7.

    Garrigus Carraig

    When you’re already carrying Maureen Dowd, can you afford to lug Kristol around? And yet here we are. How did we get here? I’ve heard he & Pinch Sulzberger went to school together… but that’s not enough. I’m thinkin’ Pinch nailed Kristol’s wife, Kristol found out, Kristol got a column.

    Idk help me out here.

  10. 10.

    Dennis - SGMM

    Who will be the first Hillary supporter to link this as a serious reason that Obama should not win the nomination?

    All of them.
    SA2SQ

  11. 11.

    Xenos

    Bob-

    I was a student at Scooter Libby’s prep school when Reagan was elected, and had the pleasure of living with the offspring of many notable plutocrats (Mellons, Bancrofts, Duponts, even McNamara’s kid). Believe me, those people have more class consciousness than any Welsh coal miner. Turned me into quite a socialist, because even at 14 I could see the power of the state was clearly needed to be aggressively countering these greedy, sociopathic parasites from ruining the country.

    Gave me a real appreciation for the bourgeois revolutionaries who overthrew the British ruling class and established this country.

  14. 14.

    gypsy howell

    We have a winner! Commenter jes at Larry & SusanUnHinged’s World of Crazy

    Comment by jes | 2008-04-13 23:49:31

    There’s a new article in the NY Times by Bill Kristol that delves into Obama’s “bitter voters” remarks. He really sticks it to Obama.

    The Mask Slips
    By WILLIAM KRISTOL
    Published: April 14, 2008

    “What does this mean for Obama’s presidential prospects? He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

    And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opinion/14kristol.html?hp

    Reply to this comment
    Comment by bert | 2008-04-14 02:09:02

    Devastating. Kristol knows how to do it. Very effective critique. I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Bill Crystal!!!!!!! Every word of it. Is the sun going to rise in the west tomorrow?

    Thanks for sharing the link.

  15. 15.

    PeterJ

    Damn, all of the good ones were taken. I guess I’ll have to go for a CNN special on this topic.

    Pssst… No Quarter is still up for grabs…

  18. 18.

    RSA

    Kristol opens with this:

    I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s, when I taught political philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

    I haven’t done much work in logic since I was in grad school in the early 1990s, on my way to a Ph.D. in one of the top ten departments in my area, but I think it’s a bit much to introduce an argument with an assertion of one’s authority. Especially by someone who’s been wrong about pretty much everything for the past five years.

  19. 19.

    Jen

    Sheesh, I didn’t actually read the Kristol column. Obviously “real” Americans write op-eds in the New York Times featuring the words “hauteur” and “supercilious”. This will definitely hold sway with unemployed former steel mill workers. I’m pretty worried now.

  20. 20.

    Kevin K.

    Whoops, sorry, Zifnab, may have spoken too soon…

    Comment by bert | 2008-04-14 02:09:02

    Devastating. Kristol knows how to do it. Very effective critique. I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Bill Crystal!!!!!!! Every word of it. Is the sun going to rise in the west tomorrow?

    Thanks for sharing the link.
    Reply to this comment

    Comment by beebop | 2008-04-14 04:41:22

    It is a preview of all of the opinions to come if he is the Democratic candidate. It doesn’t really matter that we think he is not electable. John McCain has every intention of making certain that everyone who has not heard or parsed or defended or explained the San Francisco statements hears them again and again and again and by the time people stand in voting booths, undecideds will have no doubt as to who — without an iota of reasoning behind it that resonates with voters — has a low opinion or them.

    No Quarter never disappoints.

    Am I the only person who’s noticed the similarities between 9/11 Republicans and rabid Hillary dead-enders? Everything changed after the coronation derailed.

  21. 21.

    KCinDC

    Gypsy, it’s hard to tell nowadays, but the confusion between Bill Kristol and Billy Crystal makes me wonder whether that’s a spoof. Probably not, alas.

  23. 23.

    Pelikan

    Folks, what we are watching is the official moment when the right wing began to lose it’s grip on the heartland.

    I just can’t figure out why it wasn’t the moment that they represented themselves with either a clown in a bow tie (Carlson) or a nebbish in a pink shirt (Brooks)

    Not exactly square jawed heroes are they?

  24. 24.

    Sam

    It’s not up at Taylor Marsh yet :( That was my bet.

    There was something even better though:

    http://www.taylormarsh.com/hot_topics.php#2776

    Links to some random blogger: http://rixstep.com/2/1/20080414,00.shtml

    Read the end: “And if it’s #3 [Obama winning the nomination and White House] – a replay of Hitler hijacking Germany with a measly 30% of the popular vote – it’s Good Night Amerikkka. At which time it’s everybody for themselves. Buy a cave in the hills of Afghanistan and go there and hide.”

    So, Obama = Hitler. I can’t wait till later today, when the Taylor Marsh folks get the Kristol article, so Obama = Karl Marx. Wouldn’t Jonah Goldberg be proud!

  25. 25.

    RSA

    Buy a cave in the hills of Afghanistan and go there and hide.

    So, Obama = Hitler.

    Not to mention Average American = Osama bin Laden. Pretty bizarre.

  27. 27.

    Liz

    Who will be the first Hillary supporter to link this as a serious reason that Obama should not win the nomination?

    Answer: Lanny “Don’t you get it he’s BLACK” Davis

  28. 28.

    flyerhawk

    Well I can’t say I’m surprised to see No Quarter take the prize. While Taylor Marsh and TalkLeft are largely delusional they are still tenuously holding on a slight ledge of reality.

    No Quarter has been completely unhinged for months now. There is no attack deemed too petty or base.

  29. 29.

    PeterJ

    I think this thread is a disgrace. You shouldn’t be allowed to bet on insane people. There’s no pattern to what they will do.

  31. 31.

    flyerhawk

    Sam,

    Could you please warn us before posting Not Safe for Sane People material?

    I take back my state that the Taylor Marsh site still had a tenuous grasp on a sliver of reality.

  32. 32.

    Sam

    Sorry about that flyerhawk. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble at work for reading various insane ramblings of the Taylor Marsh crew.

  33. 33.

    glocksman

    Normally the old adage ‘even a stopped clock is right twice a day’ would apply to Kristol.
    The problem in his case is that the ‘stopped clock’ is an LED digital model w/no battery backup.

  34. 34.

    b. hussein canuckistani

    Normally the old adage ‘even a stopped clock is right twice a day’ would apply to Kristol.
    The problem in his case is that the ‘stopped clock’ is an LED digital model w/no battery backup.

    Kristol is more like a clock that was set 4 hours and 13 minutes out of synch. He isn’t right, has never been right and never will be right, anywhere in the world.

  35. 35.

    Nikki

    How much of the anti-Obama rhetoric is based on dislike of his race? I simply can’t imagine anything that would make me dislike a Democratic candidate so much that I would agree with and cite rightwing talking points to bash that candidate. I even changed my belief in a higher power controlling evolution when I realized it was what the Intelligent Design crowd was pushing. Do some of these “progressive” bloggers have racist agendas?

  37. 37.

    flyerhawk

    New bet. Which batshit crazy blog will be the first to front page the Bill Kristol article?

    You just know Larry Johnson is dying to use Kristol’s talking points.

  38. 38.

    tom.a

    Billy Kristol assures us that Obama is a Marxist

    This is now the Republican talking point, Michael Gerson said the same thing after the “faith and compassion” forum last night on CNN.

  39. 39.

    D0n Camillo

    Kristol is more like a clock that was set 4 hours and 13 minutes out of synch.

    Kristol is more like a clock that tells time in Celsius and Fahrenheir. He is functionally incapable of being correct.

  40. 40.

    rawshark

    Why does anyone care what Kristol thinks? Obama is talking about us. Do we really need to look to beltway journalists to see how we should react to someone speaking about our own lives? How the fuck would Kristol know? And what type of moron do you have to be to not realize that republicans have been running their campaigns based on heartland bitterness?

  41. 41.

    D0n Camillo

    Unfortunately, we have to care what Bill Krystol has to say because the New York Times in its infinite wisdom has given the undeserving pieface a column and that means that cable talking heads can use the excuse that “even the liberal New York Times” thinks that what Obama said has damaged his campaign.

  42. 42.

    rawshark

    Then who cares what the New York Times said? Are people holding back on expressing an opinion on Obama’s remark because the NYT hasn’t given any direction yet? If Obama was talking about a subject I didn’t understand then I would look to sources for info but he’s talking about me and other regular people. Don’t we know ourselves? Do I need someone to tell me if the word ‘bitter’ was appropriate to descibe how I feel about my government?
    This is why we fail.

  43. 43.

    D0n Camillo

    Personally, after Judith Miller I don’t give a shit what the New York Times has to say. Unfortunately, we have to be ready to push back because the NYT is still regarded as a “liberal” paper and as such gives cover to talking heads seeking to attack progressives. Therefore, we have to be ready to push back whenever the “liberal” New York Times starts spouting horseshit.

  45. 45.

    Timb

    Damn! I am having serious trouble keeping straight the reasons I am supposed to be afraid of Barrack Obama. The first was that he’s a secret Muslim terrorist. Second, that he’s an insanely passionate Black Christian race warrior. Third, he’s an elitist, above the rest of us, with an anti-American wife. And now, fourth, he’s a secret Communist!

    Do these people have any ideas? Is this all they do all day, sit around and call Barrack names? Do all the accusations have to contradict the preceding by 180degrees (I mean, he’s a scary black liberation theologist one minute and the next he’s an elitis, and the the next he’s an atheist. Does Billy know that elitists are good Commies or didn’t he get that far in the book?)

    Why can’t I tell the difference between Hannity, Hillary, and Lanny Davis.

    Is Barrack the second coming of John Kerry, all rich and feminine and too phoo-phoo for the wingnut crowd or is he the scheming black boogeyman out to unleash Jeremiah Wright’s fearsome revenge on whitey? In short, is he windsurfing or hitting Reginald Denny in the head with a brick?

    Dammit, I want to know which caricature they need me to believe so I can keep the warmongers in power.

  46. 46.

    June

    I’m 75, and have watched a lot of silliness in many campaigns. But I am really tired of the attempt to degrade Obama parsing this statement, and with the old worn-out “elitist” charge. Just who else in this campaign has organized folks in South Chicago — not a place where an arrogant person who didn’t believe in the working stiff would begin his working life. And finally paid off his student loans by writing a brilliant book. But then, consider the source of the criticism!

  47. 47.

    Pug

    In short, is he windsurfing or hitting Reginald Denny in the head with a brick?

    Are they mutually exclusive? He can be both an effete latte sipping wind surfer and a viscious whitey killing brick thrower. It depends on your mood.

  48. 48.

    ImJohnGalt

    Comment by bert | 2008-04-14 02:09:02

    Devastating. Kristol knows how to do it. Very effective critique. I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Bill Crystal! Every word of it. Is the sun going to rise in the west tomorrow?

    Yeah. Me too. I don’t think men and women can just be friends, either.

  49. 49.

    We Need New Gov't!

    Oh – this is just TOOOOO delicious: we may have a Winner in Joe LIEberman!

    On the Brian and the Judge radio show today, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano asked Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if Obama is “a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?”

    “I must say that’s a good question,” replied Lieberman, before stepping back to say that he would “hesitate to say he’s a Marxist”…

    See (and HEAR) at: “Lieberman: It’s ‘a good question’ to ask if Obama is ‘a Marxist.’”
    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/14/lieberman-its-a-good-question-to-ask-if-obama-is-a-marxist/

  50. 50.

    Beej

    Go read Glenzilla’s take on the whole “elitist” flap. You’ll find it toward the end of his first post, and boy does it ring true.

  51. 51.

    Nancy Irving

    Op-ed (or column), not editorial. The Times has not (yet) sunk so low as to put Kristol on its editorial board.

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