This graphic is:
A.) Actually blaming the current global financial crisis and the unemployment created by said crisis on the Democratic control of Congress.
B.) Using the phrase “Democrat Majority” instead of “Democratic Majority.”
C.) Appearing on the Congressional Republican website, and not some idiot right-wing blogger’s own personal shrine to idiocy. The url includes the word “accountability.” I don’t think they know what that means.
When you read that only 21% of the country identifies with the GOP, that is because all that remains of the GOP is a pathetic bunch of wankers who do things like this and think it is clever.
El Cid
ACORN! Barney Frank! Chris Dodd! Greek columns! Elitist! Arugula! Bill Ayers! MSM! Saudi King bow! Jokes with Chavez! Freddie & Fannie! [email protected]! Al Gore! Vince Foster!
Ash Can
You mean the Congressional Republican website isn’t some idiot right-wing blogger’s own personal shrine to idiocy?
Incertus
Well of course they think it’s clever. They’re too stupid to recognize that Stephen Colbert is making fun of them–how are they going to understand this?
Dexter Morgan
I think we need to enhance-interrogate the shit out of these GOP motherfuckers.
El Cid
@Dexter Morgan:
At this rate, soon you’ll be able to leave them out in the rain to drown as they keep trying to look up and see where all the water’s coming from.
demkat620
@El Cid: Yup. They are really trying to be that stupid.
Farley
It seems the Republicans have, um, co-opted Hopey Changey’s font for their website.
Huh.
Dennis-SGMM
The GOP will be in business for as long as 21% of America is more stupid than they are. It doesn’t matter what the party does, or does not do; they will still have a hard core of dummies, fundies and loonys who will clap their flippers at every move.
Palin/Bachmann 2012!
El Cid
@Dennis-SGMM: Yeah, but I just hope they keep getting weirder and weirder until they’re the Grand Ol’ Party Of A Few Crazy Right Wing Dudes In Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, Georgia, and maybe Iowa or New Hampshire. The Neo-Confederate Rejects Party.
One can dream. It’d be much better for the country.
Left Coast Tom
…and those dummies, fundies, and loonies have the eternal gratitude of comedians everywhere.
The Truffle
When they’re down to 35 Senate seats and 150 House seats, THEN will they get a clue?
TenguPhule
The stupid of that picture burns so hard that it tears a hole in the fabric of reality into a naked quantum singularity of insanity that needs to be covered ASAP.
Dennis-SGMM
@The Truffle:
After seeing their response to the losses of ’06 and ’08, I kind of doubt it. They got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.
geg6
I cannot wrap my mind around the stupidity that is the current GOP. Although I am not and have never been a Republican, I do have quite a bit of background in politics, theoretical and practical. I never thought the GOP was anything other than a party of cretinous greedheads, I never thought I’d see the blue bloods of the mostly-just-greedhead “intellectual” set fall to such levels of ideological and moral writhing. It turns out, I was an optimist all those years when I was sure the GOP always had the worst of motives. Imagine my shock that the worst stuff I imagined was Pollyanna compared to what moral depravities they will commit and then rationalize as good deeds. I watched Frost/Nixon this weekend and felt sorry for Tricky Dick because of these assholes. How depraved do you have to be to cause that reaction in someone who credits adolescent outrage over Watergate with her political awakening?
raff
I like the way they note the graph is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which, somehow, validates their supposition.
I assume the original graph didn’t have an image of Nancy Pelosi embedded on it.
I further assume the BoLS graph represents data & not causality.
I await a simliar graph that shows the rising levels of death/violence in Iraq for the last month with Obama’s image as a background.
Max
Loves it! I say to the GOP, keep it coming!
By Obama’s second term, I think we’ll have the votes to get universal pet health insurance.
Incertus
@Max: Yeah, but we’ll never get dental.
gizmo
I was at dinner over the weekend with one of the old Republican bluebloods who is appalled by the present incarnation of his party, but he doesn’t have a clue what to do about it. He is sort of bewildered and demoralized, and just wishes that it was 1956 again. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the demographics in this country are devastating for the future prospects of the GOP. The black and brown hordes are multiplying, and the old yankees are surrounded.
Max
@Incertus:
Well played.
Left Coast Tom
@geg6:
I was a Republican once…I gave that up in revulsion around 1990. I came to see the GOP as an unstable mix of fundies and greedheads. I’ve been waiting for 20 years or so for the GOP to break itself into pieces from it’s inherent contradictions, as it did in the 1930s and 1950s.
At no point during those 20 years did I think the Wall Streeters would simply hand over the party, whose media noise machine they fund, to the likes of Sarah Palin. I’m stunned.
We really might have to look at the Whig’s collapse to find a parallel.
John Cole
@The Truffle: No. They will run Operation Leper 2 and convince themselves they were not conservative enough in 2010.
El Cid
There’s a very, very clever and funny British TV series of 7 episodes with writer / comedian Charlie Brooker looking at the news industry (primarily British but a lot of U.S. stuff, too, many people saw his segment on Glenn Beck). It’s called News Wipe.
You can view much of the 7 part series on YouTube.
**************************
From Charlie Brooker’s column in The Guardian about the show:
…Another thing I noticed is that my timing’s absolutely dreadful. At the time of writing, the news seems to consist solely of financial apocalypse, celebrity illness, terrorism, and spree killings. They may as well replace Sky News with a channel called Abyss 24; a dark, bottomless chasm for the viewer to stare into. Although it might prove hard to sell advertising space. Current Affairs Land is a profoundly depressing place to visit. I preferred my time on Ignorance Island. At least it was warm there.
Newswipe is not aimed at politics junkies or (for want of a better term) Radio 4 listeners. It’s aimed at people like me: average types who feel like they’ve fallen behind and are a touch ashamed about it; people who feel the world has become a dark joke they don’t fully understand. And people who appreciate bum jokes and swearing. Not that it’s all bum jokes and swearing.
kid bitzer
flattering picture of pelosi.
i’d hit that.
course then, i always have dug younger chicks.
jon
I actually want to start a “Democrat Party” so I can take the blame for all this nonsense. I think it could be quite fun to have something as ridiculous and meaningless as the Republic Tea Party. Plus: convention hookers!
MNPundit
So much stupid. They are like Heidi Montag, when you look at her you can just see the lack of intelligence in her face. It streams off her in waves, just like the GOP.
Incertus
@Max: What can I say? It was four root canals and crumbling wisdom teeth that made it so I couldn’t pay my credit card bills three years ago, and put me through Chapter 7 last year.
Max
@Incertus:
Pet dental health is no joke either… Teeth Cleaning for a Wheaten Terrier = $500.
Left Coast Tom
That would be fifteen. It just seems like 20.
+3.
geg6
Yes, Left Coast Tom. That is what stuns me. The money guys let the game get away from them. They believed their own marketing devices. And the idea that they were masters of the universe and lords of the permanent majority clouded the limited judgment of the only GOPers who had even minimal brains and judgment. Really quite stunning, the rapidity of the fall of the monolith, eh?
r€nato
I’m looking forward to the chart of pirate attacks since the beginning of the Demonrat Commie Islamofascist Poopyhead Majority™.
Ash
@MNPundit: Does that make Karl Rove like Spencer? The evil one behind the st00pid?
And oh god, are we really talking about this?
kay
The local Republicans here are giving grudging admiration to Obama because he works so hard.
HRC, too. They like her now. They mention her work ethic, “toughness”, etc.
They’re ALL about hard work, as I know, because they tell me all the time.
I don’t believe I have ever had a conversation about Nancy Pelosi with a local Republican. I only discuss politics with the sane ones, though. I stopped engaging the others years ago.
omen
@demkat620:
Yup. They are really trying to be that stupid.
i’d gloat more if i hadn’t lived through 8 long years of seeing how stupid sells.
camchuck
Unemployment is the most popular lagging indicator…
At least the chart has numbers and only one grammatical error. That’s progress, no?
tc125231
Let’s see if they even break 20% in 6 months. Democrats have issues –but Republicans? Oh, wankers is far too kind.
Perhaps the Queens of Denial?
Corner Stone
Fuck you Richard Ben-Veniste! Fuck you up your stupid ass!
El Cid
I didn’t think they even made full arguments, even sentences, against Nancy Pelosi anymore. I thought the closest thing to the last full sentence accusation was “NANCY PELOSI! WENT TO SYRIA!!!!”
And now it’s just “NAAAAAAANCY — PEEEELOH-SI!!!”, as though that were some sort of 10 paragraph indictment in and of itself.
KG
@18: I feel for your friend, if only because I’m (marginally) in the same position. The party I grew up in has gone fucking nuts. I’m by no means a blue blood, but I could at least understand them and work with them; the defense hawks, I can understand (as opposed to the actual warmongers that many have become); the so-cons, though, are a whole other matter, I’ve never been much of one, I’ve never had much inclination toward their policies. But since high school (in the early/mid 90s) I’ve been waiting for the party to break up, I don’t know that it’ll happen, but a southern so-con/populist party like the European Social Democrats forming would probably allow the grown ups to actually get some real work done.
kth
The graph makes no visual sense, of course. The x-axis is composed of a continuous line representing a continuous stream of time. Any point on that x-axis represents an infinitesimal moment of time. And mapped to those milliseconds are job loss figures in the millions;
example: f(2008/01/01 12:00:00) is between 4 and 5 million. For the graph to be literally true, between 4 and 5 millions jobs would have to have been lost at exactly that instant.
For a line graph like that to make any sense, the y-axis would represent the rate of job loss, and the cumulative job loss would be the area under the curve. But (a) that picture wouldn’t be as pretty (the curve wouldn’t be nearly as steep, unless you scaled it misleadingly), and (b) it would be way beyond the technical ability of that wingnut.
Corner Stone
FSM bless me but comments 12 & 13 back to back on this thread make me want to believe there is goodness and light in the world.
Wile E. Quixote
Hey, compared to their “budget” this represents real progress. I mean it actually has some numbers in it.
Corner Stone
@kid bitzer: Oh, fuck yeah! In a completely complimentary way if that’s possible.
And if it’s not then FSM help me.
Cat Lady
The Joe Barton episode is the epitome of current GOP gooberism, followed by the Cantor Boehner McConnell crayon brigade. I doubt Barton has the faintest inkling of his own massive fail, although he must know he was ridiculed. They are not capable of any self-awareness, which would lead to self-correction. It’s mind boggling that there are that many districts with a majority of voters that are all that stupid too. Clearly, there are two diverging human evolutionary paths.
TenguPhule
“Drill baby drill!” used as a serious phrase outside of a porno.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
all that remains of the GOP is a pathetic bunch of wankers who do things like this and think it is clever.
Again, decades of anti-intellectualism come home to roost.
Somehow they ended up with a party made of stupid people.
r€nato
Other fair and balanced charts I’d like to see:
Government deficit spending from January 20,2001 through January 20, 2009.
Incidents of GOP family values politicians busted for various sex-related crimes, plotted against job losses from 2006 through 2008.
Jobs growth from 1/20/01 through 1/20/09.
somguy
More Republican pants pissing. “Oooh, look, Air Force One is in the sky. Must mean we’re under attack. Everybody
ruuuuuuuunpaaaaaaaaanic!” The City government was told but couldn’t quite manage to put the word out. Apparently, even the liberal Republicans (Republican?) are incompetent panicky wankers.El Cid
When I heard the “drill baby drill” stuff from coworkers etc., I pointed out that stats showed that Americans were driving less, and using less gas.
So I asked them what, exactly, were the market reasons an oil company would start investing to produce more oil in a time where demand for their product was shrinking.
“I don’t know, but we just need to do it,” they’d say, as if an oil company was some sort of patriot charity organization instead of a profit-seeking company.
John Cole
@somguy: That wasn’t pants-pissing, that was justified terror, and there were people evacuating skyscrapers because of it. That was stupid, stupid, stupid of them to do that.
somguy
@ Max
On top of that, thanks to Republicans, we have the worst veterinary dental care system in the world.
Okay, maybe that isn’t literally true, but it would be if Republicans had been involved to any extent in veterinary care.
omen
@r€nato:
how often and by what margins dems regularly voted for bush proposals, in order to contrast that with republican obstructionism.
r€nato
@John Cole:
what I heard was that the bonehead at the WH who ordered up this photo shoot, told state and local authorities but also asked them not to tell the public.
Or is that just CYA from the locals?
somguy
@ John Cole
The City government was told about the flyover. Bloomberg (R-NYC) didn’t bother to tell anybody, and is now feigning outrage over it and trying to blame the WH. Shit yeah the people were scared – but it’s Bloomberg’s (R-NYC) fault, and the fact that Bush conditioned them to fear a basically illusory terrorist threat. Eight years of fear mongering coming home to roost.
r€nato
@El Cid:
there is, apparently, a widespread belief among wingnuttia and other everyday ignoramii that there is plenty of oil in Alaska and off our shores, enough to make us energy independent, but those damned environazis won’t let us drill for it.
Incertus
@r€nato: That’s probably because a large number of Republican politicians have been saying precisely that for the last year or so.
Brick Oven Bill
That rumbling you sense is not the Republican Party falling apart. That rumbling you sense is the foundation of the Democrat-Republican framework falling apart. The world under Obama looks exactly like the world would look under McCain:
1. Labor costs will continue to be reduced through increased immigration of low skill individuals.
2. Labor costs will continue to be reduced through negligible tariffs.
3. Americans capable of independence will continue to have their political power undermined by new arrivals who are unable or unwilling to achieve independent living.
The goal of both of these political parties is to continue to empower and isolate the political class. One illustration of this is the DC school voucher program, which was eliminated by the Democrats. The Democrat political class, along with the Republican political class, did not want their children, who are forced to be schooled in DC, to be exposed to the reality that is Washington DC demographics, even the screened version.
Thus the taxpayers now pay $15,000/yr to send Washington’s inner city children to inner city schools, instead of the taxpayers paying $8,000/yr to send a screened portion of Washington’s inner city children to sit alongside the children of the political class in decent schools.
I call on congress to volunteer to give up their lifelong pensions, and benefit plans, in the spirit of shared sacrifice.
Dennis-SGMM
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
They really punked themselves when they sold out to the fundies. Although they likely congratulated themselves for grabbing a reliable bloc of voters at the time, the GOP also put itself in the position of having to stand for every a-historical, anti-science, medieval belief of their new BFFs. As they lost moderates and mainstream voters they decided that they had to cater to this base all the harder lest they be left with nothing.
They remind me of this:
El Cid
@r€nato: I get that. I was even granting them the notion that oil fields were laying about, ready to be exploited, except that Nancy! Pelosi! was standing in the way.
My question was the simple one of what the market incentive was for an oil company to start producing more product when (a) demand for that product was contracting, and (b) the product is at record high profit levels per unit.
Any oil company who began producing more under those 2 conditions would be undermining their profitability.
Nobody ever argued that there was a big market incentive to do so under those conditions, but they just hoped the oil companies would anyway, or that ‘someone’ would start an oil company up to do it if the big ones didn’t.
Left Coast Tom
@El Cid:
Wouldn’t Peak Oil suggest that the value of a drilling lease on public land should go up regardless of near-term market conditions? So obtaining a lease now would be quite valuable in the future, as long as one doesn’t actually drill on that land until well into the future.
There was a bit of hostility to attaching “use it or lose it” conditions to leases.
They deny “peak oil”, but their behavior says otherwise.
Cat G
I have as much fun as anybody else making fun of the stupidity like Rep Barton thinking he stumped Energy Secretary Chu. But this is starting to look seriously scary. One party rule is a dangerous thing.
I’ve lived in 2 places that have had long term one party rule…Utah and New York City. It leads to graft, incompetence and serious inbreeding when it comes to ideas. I voted for Rudi Giuliani twice because of the long term consequences of “orthodox” Democratic rule. And while he did some things that I was unhappy about, I have never regretted those votes. In Utah, the political environment is appalling. The legislature is filled with unbelievable nutters and is much more radical than it was 25 years ago.
An efficient, functioning democracy really does need at least one competent loyal opposition party.
Right now, the nation is just SOL.
omen
@Left Coast Tom:
peak oil would also explain a failure to build new refineries.
They deny “peak oil”
it’s been admitted to:
Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world’s largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production. Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just five years.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Heh. You’ve turned into a caricature of yourself at this point, Bilious.
Time to get a new persona and start over.
Incertus
@Cat G: Fortunately, the Democrats are a coalition that can’t wait to rip itself to pieces most of the time, so one party rule in their hands, at least on the federal level, isn’t nearly as hazardous as it is on a smaller scale. For example, Waxman is having to delay the climate change bill because Dems from coal and oil states have made it impossible for him to move forward.
Left Coast Tom
@omen:
Yes!
That was the original thing that led me to accept peak oil as a geologic fact. Shrub came up with crap proposals like giving away coastal land to build refineries. I live in CA…one doesn’t simply give away coastal land! But beyond that…why should we have to give oil companies anything to build refineries as gas prices escalate, unless future drilling rights are worth far more than future refining capacity.
Brandon T.
I was trying to think of what the “Jobs Lost in the Democrat Majority” graph reminded me of, and now I remember!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FSM_Pirates.png
Global Average Temperature vs Number of Pirates
Corner Stone
@Cat G:
Ummm, ok. I’m pretty sure we’re done at this point.
Mookie
Lil’ Johnny Cole, you’re my flavourite!
Shawn in ShowMe
I’ve seen this posted at least a 100 times on the intertubes but I submit that’s just a rule of thumb, not a law of nature. FDR used to run circles around a similarly stuck-on-stupid GOP and it was all for the greater good.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Cat G:
No, the nation is not SOL. Your putative “one party rule” has been in effect for about 12 weeks. Wait twelve years before you bitch and moan.
Nature and politics abhor a vacuum. If the GOP can’t get on its feet, something will come along that will.
Dennis-SGMM
@Cat G:
Both parties have become so accustomed to the fact that one or the other of them will have their paws on the levers of power and their noses in first rank at the trough that their striving is not to do the best by the country but to make sure that the other guy doesn’t win. If this wasn’t so then we’d have had universal health care decades ago. Any good that they do for the rest of us is incidental and usually a part of the calculus of staying on top.
Corner Stone
@Shawn in ShowMe:
No.
Shawn in ShowMe
Like I said, FDR used to wheel circles around the GOP.
omen
@Cat G:
the man filled his pocket with 9/11 blood money.
Calouste
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Indeed. FDR had at least 2/3 of the Senate and over 250 House Seats for a decade. During that time he resolved the Great Depression and got a decent start towards winning WWII.
LBJ had similar numbers.
db
I know I will probably get flamed for saying this…..
But I think those graphics are quite impressive…. imposing faces of the opposition upon graphical representations of data. Impressive, indeed.
Now, here is the critique that will hopefully save me from getting flamed:
WHAT IS THE FUCKING ALTERNATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. Notice the all caps and excessive use of exclamation points that I have learned from myriad conservative web sites.
P.P.S – In reviewing my comment, I noticed that multiple exclamation points are not accepted. However, ALL CAPS are accepted!!!! WTF, John Cole?!?! DONT YOU KNOW HOW TO SCREEN OUT TRUE CONSERVATIVES ON THIS SITE?!??&*%$#!*()(%[email protected]#()@#[email protected]#
P.P.P.S. – Oh, WOW! Multiple question marks are accepted????????????????????????????????
P.P.P.P.S. – What about every other….. ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Shawn in ShowMe
Which is why I find the handwringing over one-party rule bizarre. Without that one party rule, there’d be no Social Security, no FDIC, no GI bill, etc.
We don’t have universal health care because the Dems haven’t had the upper hand since LBJ squandered the party’s capital on a stupid war. The Dems have been trying to dig their way out ever since.
Dennis-SGMM
@Shawn in ShowMe:
True that. It’s also wise to remember that Obama (Like FDR) is an anomaly and although Obama really does seem to want to mostly do right by us, his own party is chock a block with vermin who would sell him out in two seconds if they thought that would guarantee their personal re-election.
GregB
Grand Old Phuckheads.
-G
jvill
Anyone notice the Public Debt Outlook slide at the URL?
Take a look: http://www.gop.gov/accountability
It’s missing the year 2011 on the timeline axis.
God, I love these guys. The can’t even be douchebags without looking like total idiots.
demimondian
@Brandon T.: Indeed.
And, of course, that explains why desperate and impoverished Somali youth have taken to privateering once again — it’s an attempt to combat global warming!
You gotta give ’em props for trying, at least.
Dennis-SGMM
@demimondian:
So piracy is Al Gore’s fault. Thought so. Give us back our ice floes, you fat bastard!
Ed Marshall
The production values on that are impressive for republicans. The weird halftones, they have figured out to use numbers in the last few weeks.
I think they are a long chalk from figuring out how to powerpoint away the vast general conception that Republican destroyed the goddamn country in a way you wouldn’t even think possible. Partisan republicans don’t even argue with me, it’s just somehow Obama will make things worse. This is one hell of a country, it would be incredible if true.
Where I see a glimmer of hope in their eye is imagining some terrorist strike that kills everyone and gives them some opening to come back to power. I don’t think that would work out the way they think it would, but these dispirited “patriots” wait with bated breath and that’s why they can come out out 100% to defend torture and can’t be bothered with much else.
JK
@Cat G: Obama is 100 days into office. What is your damn problem?
Obama can’t wave a magic wand and simply solve all the nation’s ills.
Obstructionist, dead-ender Republican senators are holding up several high level appointees just to be dicks.
As for Giuliani, the police commissioner deserves a lot of credit for the drop in crime.
Source: Memo Details Objections to Command Center Site , http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/us/politics/26emergency.html?ex=1359003600&en=f8f9beda8c92edd0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11
http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-07-31/news/rudy-giuliani-s-five-big-lies-about-9-11/
Aside from the tragic loss of so many innocent lives, one of the worst things to come out of the 9/11 attacks, was this fiction of Rudy Giuliani being a courageous, brilliant leader.
b-psycho
The graph w/ Pelosi in the background looks like they were trying to draw someone pissing in her mouth but got interrupted before they finished.
TenguPhule
And with that, you have donned the gimp costume and hung the sign on your back saying “Fuck me over, I’m gulliable”
omen
@JK:
crime was in a steadily downward trend before giuliani even won office.
Tonal Crow
The GOP have reached self-satirizightenment. No more can be said.
SixStringFanatic
@JK: And let’s please not forget why Rudi wanted the emergency command center in the WTC: it was nice and close to City Hall so he could fuck the mistress during working hours.
Chuck Butcher
One Party rule? Either the Republicans will fix themselves or the schizophrenic Democrats will break into something new. There are all kinds of fault lines in Democratic politics and the enlargement of the Party invites more and deeper ones. I’m a Democrat of left orientation, but I am far from authoritarian or elitist and my sympathies lie with labor (not capital L but all labor) and I am also a small businessman. I drive some of my fellows crazy because I won’t sign on to some things they consider progressive and I call BS. Then you have the Ben Nelsons of the (D) and you just wonder. Eight or ten years of dominance and electoral growth will really accentuate some of these things that are today just tolerable. I won’t pretend to be able to predict how things will go, but assuming the same Democratic Party ten years from now seems to me unlikely.
sdstarr
I didn’t know that Enya’s latest album was called Jobs Lost. How refreshingly timely!
omen
@TenguPhule:
i don’t think she should be punished for her honesty.
JK
@omen: I agree with you. I was simply pointing out that to the extent that crime decreased during Giulian’s tenure, a largely sychophantic media gave him more credit than his police commissioner.
I’m no fan of Giuliani and hope he’ll content himself with exploiting the 9/11 tragedy to earn millions of dollars in the private sector instead of running for public office.
JK
@SixStringFanatic: Excellent point. I really hope that 2008 marked the final political campaign for Giuliani. The thought of him as governor of NY makes me sick.
Chuck Butcher
@Dennis-SGMM:
I invite you to take a look at the Oregon delegation and try to back that assertion. I’m not going to try to defend every Democratic member nationwide but that’s a damn broad brush you’re using there and it pays to remember that getting every Democratic vote in a district or state won’t get you elected, you need more than that even if the Rs are fucked.
If you want to try something real damn difficult try running for federal office, I have and it’s a SOB.
Calouste
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Depends on which party does the one party rule. The last two times we had Republican one party rule for more than 2 years we ended up with the Great Depression and the current fustercluck (aka Great Depression II).
JK
@Cat G: If you can handle the truth about your beloved St. Rudy, follow these links:
http://therealrudy.org
http://rudy-urbanlegend.com/
Onetime Giuliani Insider Is Now a Critic
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/politics/22giuliani.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
Razzle Dazzle: Rudy Running and Ducking
http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2007/0608/Razzle_Dazzle
Johnny Pez
B-b-b-but Nancy Pelosi! San Francisco! Gaygaygaygaygay! Scary gay! Scary!
I predict this will be the theme of their 2010 “comeback” campaign.
Luc
Can anybody explain to me the strategy behind the “Democrat Party” schtick?
Thanks in advance!
Ed Marshall
That’s like thirty years old, Reagan used to rail off on the Democrat party. I don’t know if it ever had a point, but it’s some old ass agitprop.
Ed Marshall
I think the point is that the adjective democratic has some positive value where democrat as a noun could be denigrated.
Hob
My guess about the “Democrat” thing is, they figure it’ll remind people of unpleasant words like “bureaucrat” and “aristocrat.” That assumes that people don’t know anything about the roots of the English language, but, well.
Bill Teefy
@Luc: I had heard they did some marketing research and focus groups and Democrat Party scored much lower than Democratic Party.
What makes that plausible is that that seems to be their answer for everything. The right spin, the right PR, the right look and it’s a WIN.
The best part about it now is that it is a tell. If anyone is talking to you about politics and is pretending to be independent and they say, “Democrat Party” you know they are a liar and you can proceed from there.
Jrod
Plus, they sound like morons saying it. It’s just bad grammar.
Just one more aspect of the Permanent Republican Majority that had less long term appeal than they’d hoped.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
When I first started noticing this “Democrat Party” shit 30 years ago, I thought it just made anybody who said it sound like an imbecile, so–have at it!
Maybe it was a better strategy than I thought to begin with, because lately it’s progressively, more and more, annoying the fuck out of me. And that’s its purpose, right?
Maybe I’m just getting old and don’t have the tolerance I used to.
Brandon T
I liked Barney Frank’s moniker “Republicanistical Party” for the GOP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71n97Rlp79w
Josh Hueco
It ain’t so funny when you live in Texas and a good chunk of that krayzeestoopid 21%…dare I say…has you surrounded.
Cat Lady
@Josh Hueco:
That must have been what Glenn Beck meant. From here in Mass., it was a total headscratcher.
@Brandon T:
Frank will be around for a long time. No one here in my district has even tried to primary him for years.
WereBear
@Incertus:
Good post. It suggests that that stupid is bone deep.
I see a lot of “we need to have two parties” comment here, but ya know, there’s enough Blue Dogs and idiots in the Democratic Party, too, we really don’t need the Republicans at this point.
Cat Lady
OT, but no one could have predicted that ABC News would have catapulted the propaganda:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28abc.html?_r=1&hp
Tom
@Brandon T:
Issa sounds *pained* just saying Democratic Party. What an asshole.
Ash Can
On the subject of how far the GOP has fallen, while I never hesitate to bash Ronald Reagan and his cronies for starting the GOP on its path of destruction, I’m reminded every so often that his administration was nevertheless clearly superior to the Bush II administration. That’s not saying much, I know, but his DoJ did prosecute a Texas sheriff for waterboarding prisoners. (via GOS)
joe from Lowell
Joe McCarthy invented the term “Democrat Party*.” Seriously. He was accusing them of all being commies, and wanted to use a term that didn’t suggest they believed in Democracy.
*There was a brief period in the early-mid 19th Century when the party of Jefferson and Jackson was sometimes called the “Democrat Party,” but it died out and was independently discovered by McCarthy.
Panurge
@Johnny Pez:
As I always say, don’t forget hippies! San Francisco means hippies AND gays, not just gays! (Why Democrats keep ignoring this I have, well, some idea, but it’s worth noticing that they’ll bring up gays before they bring up hippies.)
Svensker
@JK:
Re: Guiliani. By the time 9/11 came along, everyone hated Rudy G including people who had voted for him twice. 9/11 gave him a brief rise in popularity, but that quickly evaporated and when he floated the idea of staying on as the permanent mayor due to the emergency, he got roared out of office.
However, I was in NY when Rudy took over. It went from being a city that was disgusting and scary to be in — from shit on the sidewalks and muggings and aggressive and nasty panhandlers — to one that was safe and clean. I give him a lot of credit for that. By his second term, he was going overboard on the fascism stuff, busting street artists and chestnut cart owners and basically trying to do away with anything that made the city interesting. Which is why his popularity was waning rapidly until 9/11
Whether Rudy’s actions were what cleaned up NY, or it was a coincidental confluence of events, it needed happening and I for one was grateful. It is not fun having to work in a city where you decide how you are going to get to the bus stop based on which street is less scary to be on depending on time of day, make sure your purse is on and clutched so as to be least likely to be snatched, make sure you make no eye contact and walk in a self-confident aggressive way to deter potential muggers — all the while stepping over piles of human feces. I remember.
lonesomerobot
more evidence of solid gop thinking: eric the red’s “obama trying to rush next terror attack” because if it happens early they can blame bush…
i had to sign up for twitter just to give him this…
it’s weird how they seem to act like right now is the only thing that’s ever happened.
Cyrus
@Luc:
It demonstrates dominance to call someone by a name you made up rather than their own name, like how Bush gave everyone nicknames. If that sounds like a stupid, juvenile strategy, well, remember who we’re talking about here.
My own just-so story about why “Democrat Party” polls worse than “Democratic Party” is that “democratic” describes a belief system while a democrat is a person. Saying that someone is a member of the Democratic Party ascribes to them a belief in the importance of democracy or something, while a member of the Democrat Party could be just anyone who lives under a certain kind of government. The phrase “Democratic Party” assumes a greater degree of free agency and principles on the part of its objects than the phrase “Democrat Party.”
Any comparison to the Republican Party is superfluous here.
chrome agnomen
never did the phrase ‘circle jerk’ seem more apropos.
chrome agnomen
the republicans may be forced to embrace reverse darwinism after all, since their party shows all the signs of walking it backward in the evolutionary process.
Marc with a C
As a social science researcher, this graph makes me want to kill people.
First of all, I’d like to see what the Job losses were like in the two years leading up to the 2006 election, and I would like to know why the slices of the X axis are getting progressively wider while representing the same period of time.
If this was done by any quasi-“legitimate” research organization as opposed to some monkey with photoshop, they need to be investigated for fraud.
Dan Spira
Thanks for sharing this funny-yet-sad commentary on the state of right-wing political posturing.
Interestingly, Pelosi’s office put out a slightly (but only slightly) less misleading graph using the same data: http://danspira.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/same-data-different-graphs/