No more lyin’
No more tears fallin’
Stop your cryin’
Ooooh, baby (ooooh, baby)
I’m your fan
Before you go back to your side track
Baby understand (understand)
Danger there’s a breakdown dead ahead
And just maybe you’re in way above your head
– Boz Scaggs, Breakdown Dead Ahead
If Jonah’s earlier silliness about Obama’s volunteer program being comparable to slavery didn’t finally clue you in as to how crazy the right wing is going to be over the next few months, you need to do a quick survey of the battlefield to prepare yourself. In addition to Jonah’s foolishness, which was lapped up by the usual suspects, Hilzoy has found this gem at the National Review’s Campaign Spot:
“So, the recent news out of the Obama camp is that they’re planning a huge rally with thousands of people in a stadium, want to create a mandatory youth corps for national service, and are thinking about a big dramatic speech in Berlin.
Yes. Obama is just like Hitler.
It is only going to get worse. When you consider they hate their candidate, who, by the way has a campaign that is in absolute chaos, they are trailing nationwide in Congressional races that are normally safe seats, they can’t mount a defense of their current standard-bearer and are running from him every chance they get, on almost every issue the public sides with the Democrats, you quickly realize that all they have is a visceral anti-Democratic hatred going for them. That really is it.
Even the war triumphalism is pretty pathetic as of late, with the latest attempt being a rather limp assertion that non-weapons grade uranium that everyone in the world knew Saddam had, including the UN weapons inspectors, was somehow evidence of… a clandestine nuclear weapons program. They are flailing, they know they are going down, and it is going to drive them insane.
And this is only the beginning, so you have been warned. I am using my stimulus check to buy scotch, cigars, and hip waders. I suggest you do the same.
David
I like that one of the scary similarities to Hitler is that he’s popular. “A RALLY! WITH LOTS OF PEOPLE!”
Gus
Dang. Already spent my check on hookers and blow.
ThymeZone
Let them flail. The more they flail, the better we will do.
I think you are going to see a monumental, history-making party implosion here that will be talked about for many years to come.
I look forward to it.
I am going to call it, from this point forward, “Epic Flail.”
Let the festivities begin. Fuck the GOP very much. Very, very much.
Incertus
You know, at least when Moveon had an idiot who put together an ad for a contest that compared Bush to Hitler, not only was it voted down by the members, but it was pulled from the contest. And Moveon has taken undeserved shit for it ever since. Fuck the National Review. Fuck them with Derek Jeter’s herpes’ laden cock.
Steve V
Geraghty followed up that comparison to Hitler with another one, calling Obama’s “national service” plan the “Obama Youth.”
dorkboy
What I find hilarious is that asking kids to donate time for public service in return for tuition assistance is slavery. Yet, asking kids to serve in Iraq through stop-loss programs is a-okay!
Big E
anything & everything is possible for Americans to believe no matter how insane…..
the electorate is now so dumb that according to
Rick Shenkman’s new book, “Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter“:
–Only 2 in 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government.
–Only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.
–Only 1 in 5 know that there are 100 federal senators.
And the most chilling…
–Nearly half (49%) of Americans think the President has the authority to suspend the Constitution.
we’re dooooooooooooooomed !!
BTW:
John, don’t know about Scotch… but, I’ll split a bottle of bourbon with ya….
Davebo
Off topic, but can anyone explain what creature has infested Von at ObWi?
I mean seriously, the dude is off the rails and he was, like John, a conservative I once had respect for.
Ted
I often wonder if they ever become aware of just how ridiculous they sound and look, and how roundly ridiculed they are. Don’t they ever check Memeorandum or something and notice that some of their posts are linked by so many left-wing blogs, and not right-wing ones? And wonder why?
nightjar
ZAIUS NATION captures perfectly the essence of this years Republican Platform to be unveiled at their convention.
Ted
Everyone knows African slaves could have opted out of the ‘system’ at any time, and were only doing the work for tax credits and tuition assistance.
SpotWeld
It looks like the right-wing bloggers are trying to whip themselves up into some sort of dramatic and horrendously stupid action. (With the intent of justifying it by saying “We knew where all this rallying was going, we had to do something!”)
My guess is it be some sort of fund-raising effort centered around a)A patrotic flag emblazoned CD, b) A humorous and mostly insulting gee-gaw that is both wincingly cheesy and flag emblazoned, c) Special “McCain is my president” flag emblazoned flags and/or d) flag-emblazoned mousepads with wrist rest in the shape of McCain dresses in a flight suit.
NR
Right on, John. When you see a winger making an argument these days to another winger about why they should vote for McCain, it invariably comes down to one of two things:
1) “But Obama would be even worse!”
or
2) “But what about judges?!”
That’s it. That’s literally all they have to rally the base with this year.
Punchy
McCane’s campy in chaos? How do you figgy this? He’s got all of talk radio, almost all of the TV media, and much of the print media. While he is not a strong candy, those factors should keep this close.
And since we’ll be in Iran’s airspace by September, you’d better believe he can win.
kate r
Hip-waders, maybe. I say skip the alcohol– the “OmG, did they really say that?” episodes are coming fast and each is doofier than the last. Strong drink isn’t required to make them look hilarious.
Ted
I really wish they had nominated someone their base loves, instead of the guy with an actual shot at winning.
Jon Karak
Hip waders won’t be enough, you’re going to need a shovel too.
jake
Let’s do the Brown Squirt math.
Rev. King = Dirty evil commie.
Obama = Hitler.
Ergo:
The next great African-American leader = Satan.
Oh God please let this shit hit the MSM. I want to see how many groups can tell the fReichtards to fuck off at once.
cyntax
Hip-waders? That sounds optimistic. I’m thinking an inner-tube and rye whiskey. Or maybe stilts (though that could impede my whiskey-snorting).
NR
Short of digging up Reagan’s corpse, that was impossible this year. The fundies hated Romney and Giuliani, the neocons hated Huckabee, and nobody else had a serious shot.
Chuck Butcher
Some of you are placing a lot of faith in polls 4 months out.
AkaDad
I support Obama because he understands we need a final solution to the white problem.
Mike P
Geraghty mus have forgotten about the Nixon Youth…UP WITH PEOPLE!
D-Chance.
Of course, Mr Cole had no trouble similarly demonizing Bill Clinton’s Americorps during the 90s, back when he was a Republican and when the Dumbo Crowd used the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS…
but, we’ll let Mr Cole continue to think this is all brand new and not just a rehash of 16 year old boilerplate crap. After all, it’s in response to the 48 year old boilerplate crap currently being aped by Obama’s gang.
God, this election is becoming so boring… when someone finally comes up with something truly new and innovative, wake the electorate up. Because the summer reruns of Caroline reliving Camelot on the Ass Club side vs reruns of the chickenhawks’ revival of anti-Clinton propaganda is not satiating my entertainment thirst at the moment…
SpotWeld
Like having someone who isn’t a white male as a primary canidate?
calipygian
A long time ago when I was in training at Sub Base in Pearl Harbor, young Seaman Apprentice Calipygian met a big, bad second class instrumentman. His job was to climb into the void spaces and tanks on a submarine to calibrate whatever it was that needed to be adjusted and calibrated in places on a submarine that people weren’t supposed to enter.
Including the shit tank, which held a couple of weeks worth of the waste of 130 grown men at any given time. Pressurized to 700 psi, this mass of shit could be expelled in a giant shit explosion, hundreds of feet below the surface. Thus, when one accidently opened the valve on a toilet and got a geyser of feces shot into his face after innocently going to the bathroom during one of these pressurizations, he is then known as a member of “The 700 Club”.
We’re all going to need what that Instrumentman Second Class wore on the job.
Ted
Cole was blogging during the 90s?
mercurino
welcome, my friends, to the Weissedammerung…
NR
I’m not putting any stock in polls right now.
What I am putting stock in is the sorry state the McCain campaign is in right now; the huge problems McCain has with his base (and yes, it’s McCain who has the base problem, despite the preferred media narrative on the subject); the fact that Republicans are scrambling for their lives in districts that, if they were any redder, they’d shoot Democrats on sight there; and the shape that the economy and Iraq are in, among many other things.
Yes, McCain could still win. That’s a very real possibility. But there are telltale signs out there now that say otherwise, and none of them involve polls.
rob!
i think the perfect “fuck you, dubya” way to spend the stimulus check would be on a wedding gift for a recently-married gay couple.
Chuck Butcher
DChance
Shifting the center to the left is something new over the last 40 years. Even if the change is incremental it is movement in a different direction.
What new and different is it that you expect? People’s considerations don’t change radically: their wallets, their safety, wars. Funny thing about politicians, they keep trying to get elected.
John Cole
Actually, I was volunteering for national service and earning tuition for college in a pretty big federal program during the 90’s. You may have heard of this program. It is called the ARMY.
There were a lot of things I did not like about Clinton. Americorps was not on that list.
Not to mention, the real point of all this is to mock Jonah for likening it to slavery, which is just bat shit crazy.
Joshua Norton
That would be absurd, except for the fact that there’s a Black Republican group who are trying to claim that King was one of them.
Next up: JFK switched partys posthumously.
The Grand Panjandrum
If Obama somehow gets the 2016 Olympics scheduled for Chicago will Jonah be the new Jesse Owens? (OK, I realize sandwich eating isn’t a sanctioned event, but if Jonah and his buddies hustle they could make it happen. You know, that good old American CAN DO attitude, and all.)
D. Mason
I’ve seen the exact same arguments made here about Obama when the FISA threads were so active.
Joshua Norton
Maybe if they decide to give medals for being able to stuff the most Cadbury eggs in your mouth at one time.
KCinDC
I thought the latest attempt to rally the base (and bamboozle the media) on Iraq was the claim that when Maliki called for a timetable for withdrawal it was just a translation error.
Krista
Noseplugs, too.
Then again, hip waders, a shovel and some noseplugs….that sounds a bit too much like a Republican “come-hither” ensemble.
Ted
It was a facetious question. Since I knew you couldn’t have been blogging before there were blogs, I wondered how D-Chance knew you DEMONIZED AMERICORPS OMG!!
stickler
Calipygian:
Your little anecdote horrifies and fascinates me at the same time.
I guess I can figure out what a member of the “700 Club” wore.
But what did your crewmate wear when he went into the underwater latrine? A diving bell? Hip waders?
p.a.
I usually find this kind of winger lunacy humorous, but then I remember 25% of the population feels that way. It is not a good sign. Last week I watched The Tin Drum for the first time in many years. The line ‘There once was a gullible people who believed in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus turned out to be the gasman‘ made me feel uncomfortable.
nightjar
As Goldberg continues penning his literary dissertation on liberalism in America, we have learned from preceding installments that combine liberals as “Fascist Slavemasters”.
What be the next chapter in his epic treatise: OMG- liberals were the Torie Loyalists who poo-pooed the Constitution and ran the original “Washington Be-trayed us” in the New York Times; or could liberals be descendent’s of Druid Witches come to put a pox on the glories of Conservatism; or maybe Amazonia Cannibal immigrants, secretly plotting an economy based on the slogan “A Wingnut in Every Pot”.
calipygian
To clarify a bit, the instumentman did not go into the shit tank at sea, while the tank was full. He did it in port, when it was ostensibly empty.
But its still a shit tank.
Its kind of like McCain. Ostensibly, he’s a maverick. But he’s still full of shit.
calipygian
Who can forget THIS classic Jonah-ism:
“The White Man is the Jew of liberal fascism”
I guess that means that Obama is going to make me wear a Hellman’s mayonaise logo on my arm and I’ll have to get used to living in a boxcar with 60 guys just like Jonah.
ThymeZone
Not unlike how we all felt on December 12, 2000.
Wilfred
Better put Lou Dobbs on the no sharps list:
I’m beginning to wonder how long before he craps out and they draft Petraeus.
Chuck T
Hang on here with this “mandatory youth corps” nonsense…
Right after my freshman year of High School, most of the school boards near me (Eastern PA) instituted a mandatory public service policy for students as a requirement for graduation. As there was a Republican in office (Bush The First, looking increasingly like a goddamn political genius compared to his dipshit son), I recall this was lauded as a good thing, designed to foster a sense of community and civic pride in the local teenaged population.
It was also a method to keep us dern kids off people’s lawns, by George. Any and all attempts to label this as forced service were swatted down, and the damn things have been in place for 16 years or so now.
Someone tell me why Obama mentioning these programs is a bad thing now?
stickler
Calipygian:
Ah. Some clarification. But I’m still curious: what did the instrumentman wear? Presumably some kind of protective gear.
And how did the 700-Club initiation happen? Miscalibration of pressure, or malicious prank?
I have no idea why I find this so interesting, but I do.
NR
They’re saving Petraeus for 2012.
Kathy
My daughter’s Catholic High School requires 25 hours of community service per year, not to mention that 20 hours was a requirement for confirmation. I had no idea that the Catholic Church was such a hot bed of slavery :)
Puts a whole new light on the vouchers argument, no?
calipygian
The submarine toilet is basically an aluminum bowl with an opening that is covered by an aluminum cover. It drops straight down into the shit tank. You sit down, take a shit, get back up, wipe, open a sea water tap that looks exactly like a tap that you’d find in your garden, fill the bowl with sea water, pull a lever that moves the aluminum cover so that the pipe opens and your shit, the sea water, whatever drain babies you’ve made and whatever else you’ve dropped in there (like eye glasses, belt buckles, pens or radiation measuring devices you wear on your belt) goes into the shit tank. You then push the lever back up, the cover moves back over the pipe and you fill the bowl with a little sea water for the next guy.
After the shit tank gets full, the submarine has to do what is known as “blowing sans”. If the submarine is at any sort of depth and not at the surface, that involves pressurizing the tank in order that the giant bolus of shit overcomes sea pressure so that it can evacuate the boat. Which means that that little aluminum cover covering the pipe leading to the tank in the toilet is all that stands between a potential user and a solid stream of shit hitting you in the face, like Dick Cheney hunting with a shotgun full of feces.
But, while sans are being pressurized and shit is being expelled, no one is supposed to be using the shitter because hopefully, the machinist on roving patrol has hung little signs on all the stall doors that read, “Head secured. Blowing sans” or some such.
However, sometimes those signs get misplaced, they fall off, someone takes them off. Which is why the smart submarine guy only cracks the head valve a little bit before flinging it open – if you see bubbles, quick, slam it shut so you don’t get a 700 psi geyser of shit straight in the face.
Thanks to the miracle of privatization, I don’t think that climbing into tanks and void spaces is a job that the Instrumantman has to perform when the boat is in shipyard anymore, I don’t know.
I also don’t know what the poor guy who DOES have to do it would wear.
All I know is that you couldn’t pay me enough.
Liberal Masochist
This blog officially rules. We have a generally thoughtful issues discussion salted with Doughbob smackdown running concurrently with a tour de force of shit tank edification program.
Just fabulous!
calipygian
Upon closer examination of my dissertation, please replace “aluminum” with “stainless steel” and “head valve” with “ball valve”.
Thank you.
rachel
@calipygian
“Next up on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs…
AnneLaurie
Fixted
jake
Yep. And here is how fucking stupid their members are: 1. They are located in my neck of the woods (D.C. metro). 2. They were shocked. SHOCKED, when people of all ages, sexes and races banded together and climbed up their asses to look for their brains.
I don’t think they’ll run the ad this year. Unless they want to have to change their phone numbers. Again.
jake
And “giant bolus of shit” with “Johan Goldberg.”
Innocent Bystander
In fairness to Mr. Liberal Fascism, I’m sure he’d have made the same stupid comparison if someone, like John McCain, had proposed this. No?
I always thought Republicans were big on service to country (well, except for military service). Wait, I get it….it’s lip service to country that they excel in. When they’re not lip servicing their RW editorial meal ticket.
gbear
Yes, you’re going to need a full wet suit, possibly two. And get some rope too. You never know what might come up…
Notorious P.A.T.
That is so totally awesome.
Delia
The leaders of the VRWC are in a dither. They thought they had the legacy of the class traitor Roosevelt all but shattered, and his heirs, the great American middle class, either bamboozled into Christianist gooperism and/or slipping into Walmart pauperism. Now, out of nowhere comes this upstart, this uppity, um, black man, who can give better speeches than anyone can remember and also knows how to run a better campaign than anyone’s ever heard of. And they’re candidate is a grumpy old man who has to keep reminding everyone of an old war they’d all rather forget because that’s when he was a hero.
So anyhow. The VRWC is all in a panic. And if HIllary went into kitchen sink mode, they’re throwing the whole house. Here it is, not even the middle of July and they’re already throwing Hitler. All these repug miracle workers who are going to fix McMaverick’s campaign better get cracking. They can’t seem to fix Johnny’s smile. They can’t call Obama Darth Vader. That’s already taken. So they just have their Keyboard Kommandos come up with more silly names.
calipygian
Dont mention Republicans, wetsuits (plural)and rope in the same sentance. You never know what ideas that would give people:
stickler
Calipygian, thank you for that explanation.
It was both hilarious and informative. I don’t know how I’m going to use that factoid in the future, but mark my words: I will.
I’m still chortling.
Original Lee
I’ve stopped watching a lot of the cable news because my blood pressure was spiking. However, I did watch the Jim Lehrer News Hour last night because I wanted to find out about the new Iraqi withdrawal request. They had a piece about Hispanic voters and interviewed surrogates for each campaign about how their candidate was doing in that demographic. McCain’s surrogate was doing her best to slip in the recent GOP talking points very casually (such as Obama’s alleged flip-flop on Iraq withdrawal), and Obama’s surrogate very very strongly rebutted and attacked back. McCain’s surrogate also tried to make out that McCain was more influential in almost getting immigration reform passed than Obama, but since I am probably a typical voter and can’t remember who exactly did what back then, I’m not sure how valid her points were. Obama’s surrogate essentially pointed out that if Obama had actually been working to trash the bill, then McCain wouldn’t have thanked him for his support, which I don’t think was a very strong argument. Obama needs to continue doing this with his surrogates, though – they need to be very aggressive about refuting the falsehoods, because they sound very plausible if you’re low information on that particular topic.
cleek
i always assumed he was, given that he was killed before Nixon brought the racists over to the GOP. his father was a Republican, and even endorsed Nixon.
cleek
lemme add: if conservatives want to make a big deal out of the (assumed) fact that MLK Jr. was a Republican, they might take a second to think about why that seems like such a surprise.
bartkid
>“[W]ill Jonah be the new Jesse Owens?”
Jonah won’t even be the next Owen Wilson
grendelkhan
Hey, when have you known Jonah Goldberg and Arthur Silber both agreeing that Obama has constructed a movement that’s disturbingly Hitlerish, it’s gotta be true.
jvill
I like the line, “The McCain campaign is in chaos.”
People should repeat that a lot.
It’s bad and it’s true.