This latest nonsense (Wafflegate), ginned up by the Talk Left crowd and others, is positively absurd:
What’s the big deal? Why is this news? Because, as Jay Newton-Small at Time’s Swampland explains, Obama hasn’t given a press conference in 10 days and the reporters had no other opportunity to ask him.
I dunno. Campaigning for a year solid for 16 hours a day, criss-crossing the country while morons question you about the deep thoughts of your former pastor, and whether or not your pastor is patriotic enough for you to be President, and I can’t imagine why someone would just want to eat their damned waffle and not talk to Jake Tapper and his friends.
Maybe the press could spend some time digging into Cindy McCain’s tax records if they are so damned bored.
*** Update ***
I concur. Thank GOD he was not eating French toast.
Zifnab
*sniff* *sniff*
Is that Canadian bacon I smell on Obama’s breath? Fucking traitor.
paradox
I thought you were going to take time off to stop inflicting yourself and us with this incredible nightmare.
paradox
Is there any credible polite way to communicate to Reid, Pelosi and Dean that 2008 should be the very last time the Party even dreams of putting its people through this unholy rack of primary for month upon month again?
Never again. Fix this incredible mess or simply give up the idea of being a party Democrat.
Many earnest Democratic citizens in other countries that actually function are desperately looking to us to get the country out of this insanity. Belgium, United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark. They speak excellent English and have watched it all, and my embarrassment and humiliation knows no bounds.
This election is not about these two Democratic twerps who, outside of their supporters, have made everyone else want to vomit by now. The issue is beating the Republicans to save the country, and our two decent candidates have just been whapped around week after week in a process neither one can come out ahead in.
Everyone is sick of you, Democratic Party. We want you to shut up and produce a nominee so we can get to the fight. I apologize for being so blunt, but I’ve had it with this insanity. For love of baby Jesus, fix this and make it the last time we every go through this.
flyerhawk
Apparently Obama is locked up in a bunker somewhere where the media has had no access to him whatsover.
Oh wait. He’s actually done several interviews. What he hasn’t done is hold any press conferences for a week and a half. Wow. He is such an elitist. He’s acting like he has something better to do than answer the same stupid questions about Ayers and Wright over and over.
Apparently the media is upset because they really really really want Obama to publicly condemn Carter over his hamas trip eventhough Obama has already done so.
The Talk Left loonies are also getting on Obama for being snotty in a Daily Show interview. That’s right. A Daily Show interview.
Zifnab
Oh noes! Did he scratch his cheek again? Did he fold his hands? WAS HE WEARING A LAPEL PIN?!
The horror. The horror.
jake
Quick, did he smell like smoke? Tobacco or crack? Did he drink his OJ with his pinkie sticking out? Did he cut up his waffles into individual bites and then start to eat or did the cut a bite, eat and cut another bite?? How many times did he chew before swallowing???
Inquiring “minds” want to know!
Billy K
He sighed and looked at his watch.
cleek
you should avoid church, too.
Face
While I wont actually do this, this primary has taught me why so many people support the Republican party despite its many failings. It’s organized, it doesn’t eat itself, it’s well-oiled, and loyal. If Bush and his cronies weren’t such the cancer they’ve been, and McCane’s penchant for doing the same shit, I’d be inclined to vote R this cycle. I’m THAT sick of this bullshit that’s called the Dem party. And I thank Hillary for this disgust. There’s sore losers, and then there’s Clinton.
Billy K
Except one candidate is ahead in every significant metric.
Most of the blame lies with the party, sure. But you also have to look at the national press who has served as Hillary’s enabler. Everyone (politicians and media) is afraid to tell her to GTFO, so we get this protracted bullshit.
The Moar You Know
For fuck’s sakes, let the poor guy eat his waffle. Damn. He can answer questions afterwards.
If I got up in the morning and first thing I had to do was to face the damn Spanish Inquisition day after day like he does, I’d be more than a little snippy; I’d probably kill somebody.
Xanthippas
This crap defines the campaigns, doesn’t it? See, what you have to understand is that to the nimrods at TalkLeft this is a REAL issue because if Obama is unable to finesse the media, well that makes him less electable than Clinton right? And electability and the ability to answer “tough” questions (along with EXPERIENCE) are all that Clinton has left to hang her hat on, so if Obama gets fussy about answering questions about his secret Muslim identity and his connections to Wright and Rezko…well, that’s suddenly a talking point for the Clinton campaign and their proxies at TalkLeft! If Obama won’t get down on his knees and fellate the media, then he’s obviously unfit to be President!
Of course in response, Obama can point to the delegate and popular vote lead, as well as the fact that more Dems and Independents appear to actually like him more and are more likely to vote for him in November…but in TalkLeft world if Obama won’t answer a question with a mouthful of waffle then he’s out! They’ll just ignore the fact that as few as three months ago they themselves would be bitching about how the media loves “straight talkin'” McCain because he spends 16 hours of the day with them (and that in three more months they’ll be writing the same.)
Andrew
These waffles are good news for Rudy Giuliani. Delicious, delicious waffles.
Face
Oh my.
Then again, it’s SC. Someone needs to egg the pastor’s double-wide or slash the tires on his 1984 Ford pickup. Perhaps hide his KKK outfit so he’s forced to go hoodless at the next grand dragon election.
Dave_Violence
Wafflegate? Man, if this were GWB, the media’s be all over him – and those ties to Big Agriculture who supply the waffles…
D. Mason
Wafflegate? Seriously? Stuff like this makes me think a McCain presidency might be the right thing for America. I mean, maybe Bush didn’t yet drive people close enough to the brink to wake up and smell the greasy pile of shit steaming on their fine plush carpeting. Perhaps America hasn’t sunken far enough into ruin just yet if this kind of spew is still palatable.
Our press seems to be the first obstacle between the people and a decent government.
Svensker
Apparently the pastor in that church hasn’t internalized the message that we are all God’s children, and we are all brothers. Maybe that would be too Christian for him.
Kevin
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
The Moar You Know
We’re not even close to that point, D.Mason, and my greatest fear is that we’re going to get the President and Congress we deserve, rather than the one we need.
bartkid
>and the reporters had no other opportunity to ask him.
Uh, didn’t Chuck & George spend like 45 minutes grilling him & Hillary on flag pins and Bosnia the night before last or so?
Teh stupid, it burns.
TIME gets no sympathy from me until it does a 10-page cover story on the US Attorney firings. [insert sound of crickets]
The Grand Panjandrum
The Very Serious People of the corporate media outlets are upset? Awwwwww shucks. That really is a damn shame.
And all the Poor Little Bloggers That Couldn’t must be in conniption fit overdrive. Is that Taps I hear off in the distance? Don’t forget to remove your headgear boys and girls. The Clinton campaign hearse is about to pass by.
Billy K
Sadly true. People are starting to figure this out, but we’re a long way from the tipping point.
(puts on tinfoil hat)
New media, like blogs, is really the only hope. But not enough people get the internet. And not enough people “get” the internet yet, either.
You think our poor rate of broadband adoption is by accident or neglect? Yeah….just like Katrina. The internet has the power to actually enlighten people (as we’ve seen in this election so far) and bypass the Traditional Media filters of flag pins and waffles. That is why “they” don’t want the masses to have fat pipes, or a general understanding of the intertubes. That is why they have to marginalize the new media, and that is why Net Neutrality will never happen. Too much at stake – all them ad dollars and the entire power structure of the government supported by the media.
(takes off tinfoil hat)
Whoa. What just happened? Why am I wearing a Ron Paul T-shirt?
Ken
Imagine if he had been having french toast. The media would go nuclear.
Good for Obama. The media are braindead robots.
nightjar
Rick Taylor
From a while back on Taylor Marsh, Obama being rude to a guy repeatedly asking to take a photo with him so he can sell it on ebay.
jenniebee
Paradox – are you kidding? Voter turnout in PA is expected to be 50% (up from 20% last presidential primary). States have been jockeying like mad to push their primaries earlier because everybody in a state that votes later than Super Tuesday is effectively disenfranchised in the nomination process – this push through the convention turns that around. The old dynamic means that the race doesn’t get decided by votes and the public’s exposure to the candidates ideas – it means that the nomination process really gets decided by the momentum the candidates build before Iowa and New Hampshire – in other words, by their big-money fundraising. Hillary, for all her faults, has given a lot of people the chance to feel like they’re involved – even if they get involved by voting against her.
Personally, I think that this has done more good than harm to the party. Sure, Hillary can talk about Superdelegates and what states should count and what states shouldn’t, but that’s just talk. The harm doesn’t come from her talking, the harm only comes if the superdelegates actually throw the election her way (na ga ha pen).
In the meantime, there have been some petty paper cut kinds of BS, but my impression is that it’s done more to innoculate the candidates (esp Obama) from petty BS than hurt him. That’s the thing about using petty BS – go overboard once, you break the spell. Bowling scores and cheesesteak are so farcical an issue in a presidential election that bringing them up only puts people who are aware of the jabs into the habit of asking “why does this really matter?” and that’s (gasp) good news for Democrats.
Meanwhile, more people are meeting the candidates, more people are talking to them, more people are feeling involved from the start, and both polls and man-on-the-street interviews clearly show that most Democratic-leaning voters (which today means most voters) are happy with either candidate.
Personally, I’m looking forward to 2016, when maybe (just maybe) we can get a real populist or progressive to stay in the race all the way to convention instead of having two candidates with near-identical centrist ideologies duke it out on personality “issues.”
peach flavored shampoo
Waffles, or Belgian waffles?
F’in elitist snob, eating imported breakfasts in his fancy diner, sucking down OJ and adjusting his red Hammer And Sickle lapel pin.
Zifnab
We always get the Congress we deserve. Sometimes we get the President we deserve, and sometimes the SCOTUS picks him for us.
Rick Taylor
To be honest, Waffle-gate doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the disconnect from reality where they still seem to think Clinton can win. The argument seems to go
1) The popular vote is sacrosanct; that’s what should determine elections. It is more important than delegate counts or anything else and trumps all other considerations, for it is what truly determines the will of the people. If Hillary looses in pledged delegates but wins the popular vote, the super-delegates can, should, and likely will vote for her en masses, giving her the victory.
2) The popular vote is defined so that it almost ignores most of the caucus states, entirely ignores four caucus states that didn’t record the popular vote, and counts the uncontested unsanctioned primaries in Florida and Michigan, giving Obama zero votes in Michigan as he wasn’t on the ballot there. Florida and Michigan must be counted! It’s not the peoples’ fault if their state government and/or the DNC screw them over. It’s unfortunate the caucus states can’t be counted, but it’s their fault they hold caucuses; citizens in those states should get them to at least record the popular vote. As for Obama getting no votes in Michigan, it’s Obama’s fault for not being on the ballot and for blocking revotes (you can be banned from a thread for objecting that Obama did not and could not ‘block’ revotes). Obama still has the lead by this definition of the “popular vote” but it’s very narrow, and Hillary overtake him.
This is pretty much the common wisdom there.
cleek
“wisdom” is generous.
instead of “common wisdom”, i’d go with “devotional incantation”.
Z
You know, the press is (maybe shouldn’t be but is) a business, and they will produce what people will buy. TalkLeft, No Quarter, etc have proven to me that there is a real and substantial market for the kind of crap that passes for news. It isn’t that the press is forcing crap on the people. The people are demanding the crap. If that wasn’t the case, if it actually WAS the press that was driving this, then stories like the ridiculous one about the waffles wouldn’t be linked to ad infinitum. Its easy to screech about the dealers, but the biggest problem is the users.
cleek
his waffles…
they’re on…
eBay.
WTF
Billy K
Yes….but.
When the only kind of food for sale is waffles, you’ll eat waffles. You have no choice. “The Medias” all peddle waffles, just slightly different flavors. Now the internet is selling something different – let’s call it scrambled eggs. And a lot of people are switching to scrambled eggs. The precipitous decline in network TV viewership and the rise of internet news readers bears this out.
Yes, there are people who will always eat waffles. But most just don’t know they can eat scrambled eggs instead.
(It’s lunch time and I am hungry)
Pb
jenniebee,
If she has, I assure you, it was entirely unintended–it’s pretty clear that her campaign strategy all along was that “the nomination process really gets decided by the momentum the candidates build before Iowa and New Hampshire – in other words, by their big-money fundraising“. Well, that, and also her huge name recognition advantage. It just started falling apart when we actually started having the elections, and she came in third in Iowa instead of first…
Jake
Fuck the war on terror. We really do need a war on STUPID.
MDee
Once upon a time I thought online communities would be above the petty faux trivialities of the traditional media. But every misstep by either of the candidate’s has turned into the tradmed’s missing-white-woman overdrive.
Now, even if there are no missteps, you have faux-offendi-fests like Talk Left creating them. The fact they are blowing up the level of stupidity over these trivial things is one of the saddest things that has come out of this primary.
I’m supposed to forget all this ridiculousness when we “unify”? Yeah, right, not bloody likely. Some sites are going to have to do some major scrubbing to even pretend to be taken seriously again.
When you have front pagers getting the vapors if Obama scratches his face the wrong way. “Oh look, he’s flipping the bird at Clinton! The bastard.”, you’re going to have to do a lot more than say, “It’s politics, get over it.”. Because darling, in my eyes, you just turned into Bush’s 31 percenters; partisan morons who think fighting and sticking up for their blessed leader is more important than rational thought.
I’d chalk it up to CGDS (Clinton Grand Delusion Syndrome) but I see it in some Obama supporters sometimes as well. “Bill Clinton said “shit” on the air! They’re finished – it’s his “macaca moment!!!”. Thankfully, most of those easily offended Obama supporters don’t have front page privileges or linked blogs to push these “outrageous scandals” into the feeding frenzy.
Turn off, tune out, drop out. I’m beginning to believe that’s the only way to remain sane.
Bob In Pacifica
TalkLeft is in Clinton bag huffing away. At some point they will come back out and see the real world. I can only hope that it’s in time to vote for the Democratic candidate in November.
It really is sad to see people being so delusional. It’s the way of the world. Most people mostly delusional most of the time.
John Cole
The worst is the Armando concern trolling. Rarely does a day go by without him excoriating the Democratic party over Florida and MI, claiming they want to lose them in the fall. Were those delegates all Obama’s, he wouldn’t give a shit. But right now, he is totally in the bag for Hillary, so he is elevating intra-party disciplinary actions to the level of MASS DISENFRANCHISEMENT.
It is fucking irritating.
FYI- I always thought Larry Johnson was crazy, so watching their decline has been not surprising. Watching Jeralynn go batshit insane has been sad, though. I never knew much about Taylor Marsh.
Cyrus
Indeed. Democratic debate and electoral competition are confusing, challenging, and force people to take a stand on what they believe or don’t believe. Oligarchy, plutocracy, robocracy and fascism are much easier. Well, the political responsibilities of people living in those systems at least. Actual life, not so much.
I’m not accusing you of fascism or whatever, I’m just pointing out that there’s a big difference between what feels like good internal politics and what actually is right or gets better results. The problem is Hillary — to the extent that there is any problem at all; as others have pointed out, there’s no evidence yet that this really hurts the Democratic Party in November, and the primary hasn’t been more venomous in any given week than previous primaries, it just seems that way because it’s taking longer — or the influence of money in politics, not the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party worked like the Republicans, Hillary would have been the nominee for months now, just like McCain.
flyerhawk
Rick Taylor,
Great post. Spot on.
So now BigTent is arguing about how revolutionary Clinton’s “Nuke ’em till they glow” strategy is. I really don’t get it.
He now is claiming that the race must go on so we can delve deeper into these matters. What exactly does he expect to happen? Both candidates will be required to get their war on while tip toeing around Iraq.
bhagamu
I like waffles. Obama should have said something like: “Leggo my Eggo!”
Incidentally, does anyone think it’s odd that the Clinton camp & Co. complains that Obama gets positive press coverage but at the same time complains that Obama doesn’t give access to press?
Billy K
Hillaryvania FTW!
Rick Taylor
Responding in passing to blogs criticizing the confusion in the Clinton campaign on whether she was expanding proposing making it an officially policy to extend our nuclear umbrella to the countries in the Middle East, “Big Tent Democrat” writes:
Yes, because clearly getting concerned that Clinton is making public statements that even he admits would be a big change to our current official position while her staff is back pedaling furiously is the same sort of nonsense as asking Obam if he wears a flag pin or attacking him because of statements of his pastor. Yup.
Josh E.
Yes, reviving an Eisenhower-era doctrine is such fresh original policy thinking. Armando has a child’s understanding of international relations and arms proliferation.
Rick Taylor
Sorry, I meant to post that last post in another thread, so the context isn’t clear. Clinton’s staff are back peddling, saying that she wasn’t really talking about using nuclear weapons. It’s getting to the level of farce, and I was saying that if Obama had done this, pro-Hillary blogs would rightly have been all over him: amateur hour, not ready for prime time, this is why you need someone experienced in the white house.
Rick Taylor
The funny thing is, on pro-Clinton blogs, the attitude is this just evidence of Clinton’s sophistication, and that those are sitting here slack-jawed going ‘wtf?’ just don’tunderstand deterrence theory.
Bibblesnæð
It makes me sad to see those people so desperate. I can’t think of any time I’ve ever seen grown up people thrash about so wildly and pathetically for anything to beat up on a candidate with. They need to begin dealing with Clinton not being the nominee.
Grumpy Code Monkey
= twitch =
Paul L.
Awaiting posts from John C, and Ezra K. and Glenn G. on how this is nonsense and a swiftboating distraction.
Obama linked to gun control efforts
The Other Steve
Looks more like desperate.
A. Hidell
I wonder if anyone will change their pie filter to a waffle filter now…..Waffles, yum!
merl
He’d get my vote if he’d say “get the fuck out of my face, asshole, I’m eating.”
Duros Hussein 62
I can’t imagine why someone would just want to eat their damned waffle and not talk to Jake Tapper and his friends.
It must be tough not to just punch Tapper in the throat and call it a day.