Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

So many bastards, so little time.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

“They all knew.”

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Archives for 2008

Thank The FLYING Spaghetti Monster

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that Mondale/Ferraro lost:

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.

Go back to your cushy post at Fox news, you big victim, you.

I was only 14 at the time when she ran in 84- was she always this damned stupid?

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National Defense Is His “Strong” Suit

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I can’t wait for four more years of Bush:

Sen. John McCain has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for not traveling to Iraq to see the “facts on the ground.” But a recent statement by McCain about troop levels has his opponents raising questions about his own knowledge.

In comments to reporters on Thursday, McCain asserted that “I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s tough and there will be setbacks.”

In fact, as the Obama campaign was quick to point out, the troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000 right now, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to pre-surge levels.

So other than some tepid criticisms of the worst President ever, McCain has pretty much been wrong about everything for the last eight years. Why again do I have to keep pretending that he is “strong” on national defense?

*** Update ***

Check out this limp response from the kids at the Weekly Standard:

Does the Obama campaign really want to go there?

Team McCain just held a media conference call with the campaign’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and Senator Jon Kyl, who conclude that no, Obama doesn’t want to go there. “It’s instructive that the Obama campaign, rather than deal with that real issue and Obama’s lack of experience, is trying to nitpick the verb or the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home,” said Kyl. Obama hasn’t been to Iraq since January 2006, and McCain has been five times since then.

Maybe he needs to make all those trips because he is a slow learner? I mean, five trips, and he still doesn’t know wtf he is talking about. So, yeah. Obama does want to “go there,” wingnuts.

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Open Thread

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Capsule reviews – Magic Hat Odd Notion Irish Red Ale; Southern Tier Heavy Weizen

I ordered the Magic Hat on the general principle of always trying something new.* It came across as unexpectedly thin for the amber color and substantial head, and the added-in spices were a bit forward for my taste. It reminded me of what would happen if I stirred cinnamon and nutmeg into a Yuengling Black & Tan.

Southern Tier’s Heavy Weizen sat on the other end of the spectrum. Instead of a thin mouth feel like most hefe’s, Heavy is relatively huge for a hefe-wiezen at 8% ABV and chewy in the mouth like a Belgian. The beer nonetheless has that shyness that turns me away from most hefe’s; I normally prefer the emphatic character of barley plus a healthy fistful of hops, yet the combination worked here. I would strongly recommend Heavy Weizen for people who a) don’t like hefe’s, especially (spit) Blue Moon, and b) don’t plan on putting away seven or eight like you can with Hoegarrten.

***

(*) I make an exception for Southern Tier’s Un Earthly. New stuff will have to wait when that magic brew is on tap.

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Chat about whatever.

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Friday Thread

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John has apparently been raptured, so for now it’s up to me to keep the blog going. However, I don’t have time for much more than a hit-and-run so I’ll toss out a bleg.

My 5-year-old nephew has a weird affinity for numbers. When he was 3 he got unnervingly good at memorizing where each Pittsburgh bus line goes. This Passover I helped him figure out that almost all of the Presidents on his American history placemat lasted either two four or eight years (my math not so good). He then pointed out on his own that when one President lasted an odd number of years, the the next guy filled in for a period that added up to four or eight. Then he demanded to know why Grover Cleveland showed up twice. He’s a bright kid.

It struck me that the best way to encourage my nephew would be some books or puzzles that take his interest in math and other practical puzzle solving to the next level. Google could probably get me partway there, but my past blegs (NYC restaurants, productivity programs for the Mac) have turned up some great and unexpected stuff so I’m opening the floor again.

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Permission To Criticize

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Why do I find the Scott McClellan story so irritating? There’s the convenient timing of his rep rescue, coming when his former boss is polling worse than V.D. and a comeback is out of the question. The book seems calibrated to reveal nothing that we don’t already know, except for one bit that McClellan might have dropped by accident on a TV show. The Phil Donahue story broke so long ago that I almost can’t bear to watch the media awarding themselves courage medals for confirming the obvious.

Without a doubt the most annoying aspect of this firestorm is the way that it validates a criticism that Atrios makes of the media all the time. We had credible people arguing these same points back when airing them might have made a difference, but somehow they never made onto the Sunday opinion shows or got credible treatment by the major news broadcasts. The few journalists who did their job were either ignored like McClatchy or fired like Donahue. The evidence wasn’t exactly hidden – guys like Eric Alterman had it in book form while McClellan was still spreading what he now calls propaganda and bullshit. Yet somehow the range of acceptable opinion in the major media stretched from Joe Lieberman to George Bush. Ideas that everybody takes for granted now – that the WMD argument was poorly founded or invading Iraq unprovoked and occupying it indefinitely might have strategic risks – were considered laughably ‘unserious.’ It often seemed like an idea wasn’t worth taking seriously until someone in the administration brought it up.

This latest brouhaha reinforces that point. Scott McClellan wasn’t a very bright or important guy when he served the president, and he isn’t very bright or important now. Yet in the same way that we still call Jimmy Carter ‘President’ McClellan is still a Bushie. Thus, now the press has permission to talk about being willingly led around by power-drunk morons.

It’s nice to hear “respectable” outlets finally acknowledging things I have argued for years, but it leaves the fundamental problem unchanged. I’ll call it progress when self-serving works like McClellan’s get largely ignored in favor of people with a track record of getting things right.

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Nixonland

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Apparently the UPS truck dropped off my copy of Nixonland from Amazon while I was working out earlier, and since I discovered it on my doorstep I have been unable to put it down. I am only 50 pages in and I can already proclaim this is the best book I have read in years. I ordered it the other day when one of you quoted from it at length in the comments, and I sure am glad that I did.

At any rate, consider this an open thread. I am going to go sit on the porch and read.

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