After following JK’s link to Ed Morrisey’s silliness about Obama’s speech:
I’ve run the speech through a word frequency counter and found the following results:
* 56 iterations of “I”
* 19 iterations of “school”
* 10 iterations of “education”
* 8 iterations of “responsibility”
* 7 iterations of “country”
* 5 iterations each of “parents”, “teachers”
* 3 iterations of “nation”
In other words, Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined. And to think that people accused Obama of self-promotion!
It’s not the secret-message-finding John predicted, but it’s close.
Meanwhile, Sully’s manservant Conor Friedersdorf takes a break from discussing “The Game” to do his best TNR-style “I’m not a winger but there are legitimate issues blah blah blah” imitation.
Wingers say batshit crazy thing. Halperin/Politico tout said batshit crazy thing. Conor Friedersdorf/Charles Lane/Marc Ambinder/Ross Douthat say the crazy thing is going too far but that there’s grain of truth to it and that the whole controversy is ultimately Democrats’ fault.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Update. Cleek finds that Saint Ronnie liked the first person singular too:
just for reference, here is Reagan on:
i: 17
i’m: 3
i’ve: 3
i’d: 1
i’ll: 1
school: 1
education: 0
responsibility: 0
country: 7
nation: 4
parents: 0
teacher/teachers : 0
Mike P
What I want to know is :do wingnuts communicate amongst themselves without the use of personal pronouns?
dmsilev
Move over, da Vinci Code, the Obama Code is here. I understand that if you take the original (vault copy) of his speech and hold it under a UV lamp, it reveals the location of the whitey tape.
-dms
Comrade Mary
Doug, the more you ignore them, the closer they get.
CapMidnight
What’s the word-frequency, Kenneth?
Max
Big Mouth Strikes Again!
Bob Dole
@Mike P:
Bob Dole says ‘what’?
Linkmeister
@dmsilev: Well, at least Obama and his speechwriters are better wordsmiths than Dan Brown.
I mean, have you ever tried to read The DaVinci Code? Blech!
gnomedad
He used “the” a lot, too, but I’m not falling for it.
General Winfield Stuck
I just od’d on reading the winger blogs yesterday, can’t do it no more. They are locked into every detail of every move Obama makes searching for any violation of the RW code of crazy. And if they can’t find one, they just make something up. It’s like watching first graders swarm around a lollipop/
John Cole
The best thing about Ed Morrisey is he sold himself out for so little. Truly a fool in every sense of the word. At least Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck are making Bank. Special Ed is just making a fool of himself.
Polish the Guillotines
@CapMidnight: Win.
RSA
I used to do this sort of word counting for fun during the Presidential debates: Did Obama choose unifying words? DId McCain tend toward the belligerant?
Of course, I’d filter out so-called “stop words”, which happen to include “I”, “you”, and so forth. (It turns out that there are 143 occurrences of “you” in Obama’s talk. What does that say about self-promotion, I wonder? Nah–I don’t wonder at all.)
Demo Woman
Doug, In the earlier post someone pointed out that Ed started his paragraph with I. Ed’s comment would have been more effective with out the use of I I I I I I I.
Tonal Crow
If the GOP were selling worthy products, they wouldn’t have to spend most of their time lying, spinning, defaming, denying, delaying, and deceiving.
Quiddity
I ran the speech through the word counter. Guess what? There were 5 instances of “America”, which Morrisey ignores.
Got that? Ed Morrisey doesn’t give a damn about America!
(Or “homework” 4 instances, “family” 4, “mother” 3)
Ed Morrisey doesn’t give a shit about a mother helping the family with homework!
Citizen_X
From mikrofon at freeperland:
In other words, they’re horrified that Obama is addressing schoolkids in his, uh, address to schoolkids.
Citizen_X
Arrgh, html fail.
The quote ends at “2,400”
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
Ed was torn some to give up CQ. He absolutely hated trolls with a passion, but couldn’t bring himself to ban them out of some free speech loyalty. I think he went with Malkin so he could be his true wingnutty self without having people like me or you question it behind Malikns reinforce wetsuit registration. He turned full wingnut on his very first HA post and hasn’t looked back..
smiley
@Linkmeister:
Or Eco’s The Name of the Rose. It’s a much more serious novel about medieval intrigue in the Catholic church but good FSM, there were endless passages that were really hard to get through. Was The DaVinci Code like that? I know … apples and oranges.
John Cole
@General Winfield Stuck: He’s just a joke. There is no point doing anything but mocking him and Allahpundit at this point. Remember when it was Preston who was the laughingstock?
Modulo Myself
‘Reasonable’ conservatives are under the delusion that next year is going 1994 redux. They are short-sighted, impotent, sad, and insane, but they really see America in the same position. Note that this was the best decade ever for the right. None of their ideas really ended up being tested and proven as a failure, they farmed out their craziness and reaped the reward, while nothing really shook up the power structure. And plus, everybody who was anybody got their check: crazy plus neoliberal bullshit paid.
Leelee for Obama
@smiley: Anne Rice is like that too. And each book has 200-300 pages that are the last half of the last book, changed just enough to suck you in.
dmsilev
@Linkmeister: “better than Dan Brown” is setting a low bar indeed. Still possible to do worse than him, though (see: Bush, G.W.).
-dms
JenJen
You forgot Candy Crowley! “Well, the Presidential team definitely failed in getting the message out. We’ll see how they recover.”
But that was yesterday… and honestly I don’t see how the wingers are going to pull this one off, after seeing the speech. It’s more like them to completely ignore that they ever made a fuss, and just move onto the next issue, a la Jamil Hussein aftermath, only bigger.
General Winfield Stuck
@John Cole:
don’t remember Preston, but I have never read HA much, except for Allahpundit, but now he’s as bad as Malkin. What was interesting when Ed switched over to HA, there were quite a few of his long time minions who didn’t like Malkin and thought she was off her rocker. These were people I spent hours with listening to their detailed conspiracy theories that Hillary and Bill were undercover ChiCom spies. They are just plain crazy, all of them, nothing else to say.
kth
According to my quickie awking and greping, the same speech contains variants of the word ‘you’ nearly 200 times.
Demo Woman
@JenJen: MSM and Fox and talk radio will move along and pretend they weren’t assholes. (The democrats will let them)
donovong
The real question is, how does Chairman Limbaugh recover, now that he has been dethroned by Chairman Beck?
Funkhauser
Obama should speak in the second-person more often, as in “And to those of you numbnuts out there….”
It’s impressive (read: dumb) that they believe that anyone who uses the first-person to convey a personal message is narcissistic.
smiley
@Leelee for Obama:
Obviously a successful strategy. I don’t generally go for “series” reading but I’ve fallen into a few. P.D. James’ Dalgiesh mysteries for example. Her last book was published last year. She turned 90 last month. She is one of those amazing people who keep productive all their long, long lives.
smiley
@smiley: I said last month. I meant last year.
smiley
@smiley: No I didn’t. I’m confusing myself. Never mind.
JK
Tammy Bruce links to Ed Morrisey’s word count by noting: “Taking a look at the speech, we have finally determined what Obama’s focus is–himself.”
Bruce is still curious about the earlier draft:
“WH releases what is now the Urkel speech to kids tomorrow. Personally, I’d like to know how the speech read last week before they decided to change things.”
http://tammybruce.com/2009/09/shots-from-the-show-9-7-09.html
Leelee for Obama
@smiley: I may try those-I liked Inspector Morse and now Inspector Lewis on PBS, so Dalgleish should be interesting. Amazing she could still write at 90, my poor Mom barely remembers how to chew.
Demo Woman
So is anyone registered at Captain Ed’s so that they can inform him about Ronny’s speech?
Leelee for Obama
@JK: Personally, I’d like Tammy Bruce to STFU. What are my chances, do ya think?
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Bring some heat
Demo Woman
@Demo Woman: Never mind, I just went over and it’s not worth it.
Common Sense
Of course they will blithely move on and forget they ever raised a ruckus. Just like they did with the ABC town hall infomercial that turned out to be a wingnutfest.
JenJen
@JK: (via Right Said Ed)
“The Urkel Speech?” So now, Republicans get to define “nerd”? You have got to be kidding me.
Christ. This is ultimate shark-jumping. It’s like a freeze-frame of Fonzi actually jumping the shark.
kth
@General Winfield Stuck: ah, now I see: CQ = Captain’s Quarters. For about a minute there, you had me thinking that Congressional Quarterly had hired that dumbshit to blog for them. Probably only a matter of time, though.
arguingwithsignposts
OK, as someone who’s done a few of these word analyses and done quite a bit of studying of actual textual analysis, let me just say that Ed Morrissey should be court martialed by the academic police for conduct unbecoming someone with a post-secondary education.
Word counts are, in and of themselves, simple bullshit counting. It is only when you get into word combinations and their appearance in proximity do you even get close to any sort of valuable textual analysis.
What a piece of shit.
There are actual programs that would go beyond the word-count shit that Morrissey is playing. Unfortunately, they aren’t available on whatever planet he’s living on.
mai naem
The liberals usually don’t like Malkin and Coulter. Personally the two wingnut women that drive me nuts are Mona Charen and Tammy Bruce. Mary Matalin and Bay Buchanan are bad but Tammy and Mona should be pied.
IndyLib
Benen
IndyLib
@arguingwithsignposts: Thanks si much for the help, I got it to work.
arguingwithsignposts
@IndyLib:
good to know.
is this a great community or what? whether the problem is relatively simple (yours) or complex (mine a while back), someone’s there to help out.
peace. :)
arguingwithsignposts
@IndyLib:
One other thing to watch for:
the paste URL function automatically puts in an http:// prefix, so you’ll want to make sure that is highlighted before you paste your URL, or else the link will not direct properly.
Ash Can
So Ed Morrisey shows once again that he’s got sweet fuck-all to bring to the table. Nothing new there. It doesn’t make me at all miserable; I just point and laugh.
smiley
@Leelee for Obama: Sorry to hear about your mom. Mine, at 80, is as sharp as a tack, as she’s always been. My father too. We’re really lucky that way. Of course, 10 years at the end are about as consequential as 10 years at the beginning. I hope she stays sharp – and that it portends well about how my sisters and I will be at that age. BTW, go for the P.D. James. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed but you just might realize what a hack Ann Rice is ;>)
demkat620
I always thought it was Jay Tea from Wizbang. What ever happened to him?
pcbedamned
@Demo Woman:
I am, but I haven’t been able to allow myself to log in for quite awhile now. Nor have I been able to get through a whole post and comments without shutting down the page. The posters over there have gone completely off their rockers, and NOTHING you say has an effect (unless you count the name calling and talking point rebuttals an effect). The major turning point for me was a couple of months ago during the health care debates going on over there and the constant ‘Canada is Socolist’ crap (hope that keeps me out of mod). As a Canadian, I felt it my ‘patriotic duty’ to point out the errors of their ways and was accused by some yokel of not even being Canadian; only a liberal troll. (the funny part of it was that this was a new registree and I have been there for almost 2 years). Whatever. Most of the original commenters have left. Guess that’s why Ed has been having more ‘open registrations’ lately – gotta keep those numbers up!!!
jenniebee
@Mike P: Yes, just like those humble men of the people, Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
In 1991, GHW Bush spoke to schoolchildren. The text is here. It is 4 pages long, the word I appears 28 times (according to my quick count).
In 1988, Reagan spoke to schoolchildren. the text is here. It is 13 pages long, there are 108 uses of the word I in it.
Using the same spacing and font, I estimate that Obama’s speech would be six or seven pages long.
This shows Obama Derangement Syndrome by the numbers.
IndyLib
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yep, pretty damned cool. That’s why I come back here everyday.
Mark Gisleson
You can see a “wordle” of Obama’s speech here:
http://norwegianity.wordpress.com/files/2009/09/obamas_speech_to_school_kids.png
When you look at it, the emphasis on the kids is glaringly obvious. “I”? Not so much.
Max
I stand by my projection from a few weeks ago that soon we will hear how Obama murdered Vince Foster and Michelle helped him cover it up.
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
And followed by a scandal no one could have predicted.
Obama Framed Roger Rabbit
You heard here first folks.
Demo Woman
@IndyLib: Now I’m like John, has MomAnon posted recently?
TenguPhule
I literally can no longer keep track of the Right’s Bullshit.
They’ve not just jumped the shark, they have stuck the shark on a rocket, launched it to the moon and then insisted the shark is at fault for not jumping over them.
minachica
@Mark Gisleson: Of course, “wordles” have a liberal bias. :)
JK
@JenJen:
“Urkel” is tame language for Tammy Bruce. She previously described Barrack and Michelle as trash.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/23/tammy-bruce-calls-the-oba_n_178109.html
General Winfield Stuck, Leelee for Obama
Tammy Bruce is seriously fucked up. On her website she describes herself as “an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, authentic feminist”
Sloth
Obama is playing them like a fiddle.
Mike
I bet he <a href=http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/18/abizaid-extremism/never mentioned the word “Islamic terrorist, Islamic extremist, Islamic fascist, terrorist, whatever combination of those words you want to use” either.
Michael G
The problems is that the word “I” is for elitists.
“Me want to tell you this important message. Me think education important. Me think childrens should stay in school.”
That’s how Bush would have done it.
Mike
I bet he never mentioned the word Islamic terrorist, Islamic extremist, Islamic fascist, terrorist, whatever combination of those words you want to use either.
kay
@Phoenician in a time of Romans:
They get everything wrong. There’s an actual education debate brewing, in this country, and it involves Obama and Arne Duncan and teacher’s unions, and it will probably get ugly, and it will be conducted within the Democratic Party.
The moronic media and right wing screamers miss the point, and the story, yet again.
We’re having some real debates, education, health care, completely within the Democratic Party, the problem is the “opposition” won’t stop screaming, and the media refuse to report on anything but the opposition screaming.
I don’t know whether to be thrilled that media are chasing right wing bloggers, or horrified, but they’re missing the real debate.
mai naem
Tammy Bruce is like David Horowitz and Ken Hamblin. Ken Hamblin used to come on after Alan Berg on KOA in Denver and he was a way out lefty. Really super annoying esp. after you had been listening to Alan Berg who was a very sharp funny libertarian lefty. Ken Hamblin figured out the easiest way to make a buck was to become a black conservative and that’s what he did. BTW whatever happened to him? Ditto for Bruce a former NOW official and Horowitz another radical lefty.
Brick Oven Bill
I think it is time for President Obama to take another vacation and start his third autobiography, or at least put in the call to Ayres. This has been a long summer.
Ash Can
@JK: I just assumed she was a run-of-the-mill bigot.
Demo Woman
don’t feed the trolls, don’t feed the trolls, don’t feed the trolls
Now I feel better.
Jason
@arguingwithsignposts: Ed’s just writing his prospectus on discourse analysis, y’know, a study on political blogging, genre, and uptake. And his butt.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brick Oven Bill:
FSM, I find myself in agreement with BoB for the first time ever, thanks to Cleek’s pie filter. Rock on, BoB! Love me some pie!
JK
FLA GOP Chair now feels good about Obama speech
“It’s a good speech,” Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer said Monday. “It encourages kids to stay in school and the importance of education and I think that’s what a president should do when they’re gonna talk to students across the country.”
In a phone interview as he headed to Tallahassee for a round of TV interviews ahead of tonight’s FSU-Miami football game, Greer said the WH made “changes” to teacher prep materials – and the speech itself – as a result of the political pressure he applied.
“The speech that’s out today is one that he should give, and I’m pleased to see that the White House has made changes to what was gonna happen.”
h/t http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/09/florida-gop-chair-on-obamas-speech-to-students-its-a-good-speech-ill-let-my-kids-watch.html
arguingwithsignposts
@Jason:
Well shit, he should just go whole-hog and say it’s semiotics. At least then he’d have some kind of academic imprimatur of legitimacy for it. :)
Sloth
The opposition is too busy fiddling with their word frequency calculators to notice.
RedKitten
@IndyLib:
I come for the profanity, but hey…whatever floats your boat.
lamh31
Uh oh…wingnuts are gonna explode, Obama has officially “corrupted” NASCAR…
A Back to School Message from NASCAR…
Winguts heads gonna explode??
Sloth
OK, people, we can rest easy now.
Max
Aides say President will be “very forceful” in his remarks on Weds.
I suspect we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Linkmeister
@smiley: Neddie Jingo wrote the nastiest review I’ve seen of Brown’s opus, coincidentally just a day after I’d written mine.
I keep hearing your complaint about Eco’s Name of the Rose, which has kept me from trying it.
kay
Merit pay, tenure and charter schools. That’s the debate within the Democratic Party, and it is going to heat up.
Conservative activists and the media that follow them are doing the public a real disservice by reporting exclusively on what the Florida GOP have to say about a speech.
I’m not sure it matters. I’m torn. I don’t know that we need coverage at all, as it turns out. We’re having a health care debate without substantive media policy coverage, and I suppose we can have an education debate without media input or information, too.
Town halls and speeches, and in the end there will be healthcare reform, and an education policy, I guess, with or without information disseminated to the public.
Demo Woman
@RedKitten: A real site would allow you to say c*ial*is and soc*ial*ism and s*h*oes and all those good words. Here you can only say fuck..
How’s the baby? Sleeping like a baby? My first would kick all night in utero and arrived to this world the same way. It took months. The second was easy.
Max
@ Doug J.
Your post title prompted me to play The Singles cd. Thank you. I mean that in a non-snarky way. I love that cd.
Tonal Crow
@TenguPhule: I wonder whether there is *any* level of dingbatshit insanity, such that, when the right engages in it, it will cause them to lose all credibility and be banished to the electoral wilderness for decades.
Leelee for Obama
@JK: As long as attention is paid, one assumes that Greer will still have oral diarrhea on national television? Talk about a poverty of sense! Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?
RedKitten
@Demo Woman: He’s still not really on any sort of a schedule. For awhile, he was great at night — would sleep three 4-hour shifts, with about a 45-minute food and diaper-change break in between. But the last few days, he’s been fussy as hell (I think he’s going through a growth spurt.) Last night he slept from 11 to 4:30, which was awesome, but then he just wouldn’t go back to sleep after that, so the husband was up with him after that. He took a couple of relatively lengthy naps this afternoon, so I have no idea what tonight will bring.
And yes, I find that really damn odd that sh0es kicks in the mod filter, but we can say “fuck fuckity fuck fuck!” until the proverbial cows come home.
Ash Can
This is slaying me, watching the GOP/RW assholes scrambling to cover for their own idiocy by claiming that the text of Obama’s speech to the kids is different now, because of pressure they put on him. I wonder if anyone in the print or broadcast media will bother (or even think) to call bullshit on them.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@demkat620: I always thought it was Jay Tea from Wizbang. What ever happened to him?
These days he’s busy writing 99% of the comments at Oliver Willis’ place.
kay
@Sloth:
I don’t even care. I suppose if I want to find out what Arne Duncan thinks about tenure, or what the teacher’s unions think about what Arne Duncan thinks about tenure, I can google. So I did, and wonder of wonders, there’s a debate!
I’m slowly coming to the realization that media don’t want to admit there is no substantive debate re: Republicans versus Democrats, so they have decided to cover Republicans screaming accusations at Obama, while the Democrats quietly battle each other on policy and priorities, with no coverage. Maybe it’s good? I dunno.
The problem with this is, as a practical matter, the Democrats are, actually, all by themselves, going to implement education policy, but no will know anything about it. They’ll know something or other about a speech.
Sloth
It’s very much like a parent giving positive reinforcement to a child who is throwing a temper tantrum. Not good for the child or the parent, but maybe easier at the time…
lamh31
Uh oh…looks like Obama has indoctrinated Laura Bush too:
Lauran Bush on School Speech: “Thumbs Up”
Run for the hills wingnuts…
TR
On the upside here, this utter stupidity has actually gotten reporters and pundits — Harwood, Friedman, even Scarborough — calling it out as, well, utter stupidity.
Maybe this can be the turning point where the media stops acting as the unquestioning conduit of the right’s bullshit.
kay
@JK:
That’s it then. That’s the new low standard. You can now be smeared based on what the Florida GOP imagined was going to happen. Not on what you said or did, but what your opponent accused you of doing, without a shred of proof.
And the American media went along with that, happily. That’s not going to end well, for anyone, really.
kay
@Sloth:
I think they’re deeply conventional, and they cannot adjust to what is actually happening. It is not, in fact, 1994, but don’t tell them. There is no rational “opposition” other than that contained within the Democratic Party.
Conservatives are opposing imaginary things, like death panels, or indoctrination speeches.
Leelee for Obama
@kay:Seems to me it serves them right after 6 years of ramming whatever they wanted through and not a single veto until the Dems controlled Congress. The Blue Dogs are plenty conservative for this debate and education and energy. The wingnuts have made themselves superfluous. Fine by me.
JK
@Leelee for Obama:
“Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?”
I’ve got another question: Are There No Intelligent Republicans Left in This Country?
@kay:
Everytime, I think the MSM simply can’t sink any lower, they surprise by sinking lower.
Far too many reporters covering national politics are nailbiters, thumbsuckers, or bedwetters. They’re scared to death of being labeled LIBERAL, so they just roll over and let Republicans go unchallenged with their bullshit allegations.
TR
IndyLib
@Demo Woman:
I think I saw a post from her yesterday or the day before. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track when John and Doug are post happy.
@RedKitten:
Well, hell, that just goes without saying.
Demo Woman
@RedKitten: In a few months, you won’t even remember those short nights. Wait until the time comes when you sleep all night and wake in a panic cuz he didn’t wake you up. It’s nice that you have such a long leave of absence.
Keith G
While I was reading the above comments (some ok, some insipid) the News Hour, on mute was, coming to an end.
Catching my eye, a few moments in progress, was a series of pictures – fresh faced kids who never will celebrate the end of summer again. About ten, I think. Our kids….our forgotten, dear, kids. All killed in Afghanistan.
We need to stop this… We need to get out.
Now, I have an incurable disease that will kill me before “my time”. I am uninsured now, but that’s water under the bridge. We need HCR now, but I would trade that for getting our children, and our friends, out of that war, now.
I’ll be watching Obama on Wednesday. And I will be whispering to him, “Get busy. You have another job to do.” And I will be making calls. I am so tired of learning about dead 20 year olds.
/rant
Leelee for Obama
@JK: Maybe a few-none of them really Congressional Leadership people. Mostly the last of a dwindling herd that were socially liberal, fiscally conservative and interested in Public Service. Let me think-Christie Whitman, after she got out of the Cabinet, and most of the time before. The three guys Obama tapped for Admin positions: LaHood, McHugh, and the Ambassador to China (can’t remember his name. Bob Gates and Colin Powell. Small herd, like I said.
Max
Andrew Sullivan surfaces in the Sunday Times UK.
My favorite part.
Leelee for Obama
@Keith G: Thanks for this post. There is nothing that makes me ache more than the In Memorium list at the end of this week. Never fails to bring tears. So man, so young. Time to call it Victory and get them home.
IndyLib
@RedKitten:
After the first month, my first one was so easy. She’d sleep from 10:00 PM until 3:00 AM, I’d change her and feed her, then I’d lay back down with her in bed with me and she’d sleep until 7:00 AM.
Then my boys came along. They are 9,9, and 11. And I haven’t had enough sleep since the oldest one was born.
Demo Woman
@IndyLib: Thanks, we are certainly a motley crew.
mcd410x
Things that make wingnuts wet the bed:
Hawaiian birth certificates
health care for everyone
the President using the word “I”
…
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: Ambassador Huntsman! Knew I’d remember.
Demo Woman
@mcd410x: Gee, How would you like to be their maid.
Leelee for Obama
@Max: Gonna go read this now, but I just want to share that I’m hearing Elton John singing “I’m Still Standin” as I go! It just popped into my head!
grumpy realist
Umberto Eco. Great writer. Get his “Travels with a Salmon,” even through it’s been very badly translated. (Puns don’t travel well from one language to another–I’m looking for a copy in the original.) Very much enjoyed “Foucault’s Pendulum”. Do stick–if you have the linguistic capabilities–to his work in the Italian or French editions.
chopper
@Demo Woman:
yeah, after your baby starts sleeping through the night its like a choir of angels shining down on you. that first night is the greatest night of your life.
Demo Woman
While surfing the web, I read that Obama said I to many times, that he has not changed dadt yet(americablog), that he’s selling out to Baucus (talkingpoints,firedoglake and kos) and he has not yet opened up travel with Cuba (washington note).
Sometimes you just shake your head and keep on walking.
RedKitten
@chopper: Well, he just conked out about 5 minutes ago, and didn’t wake back up (yet…knock on wood!) when I carried him upstairs to put him in the bassinet. So hopefully, if the gods are kind, we’re golden until about 2am or so, and then will get another stretch of sleep from 3 to about 7 or later.
But yes, I’m really looking forward to when he sleeps the night through — everything else is so much easier to deal with when you’re well-rested. I really can’t complain though — the kid is pretty great. (Although I still can’t believe he slept through an entire parade, with sirens and bagpipes and everything!)
asiangrrlMN
I think that Ed Morissey should go fuck himself with a corkscrew, but that is only my personal opinion, held by a majority of me.
General Winfield Stuck
Piss on the wingnuts. I want Kritters!
Alvin looking for dinner
JK
@asiangrrlMN:
I’ll second that.
ellaesther
@IndyLib: Just this summer, for the first time in the decade since my oldest (of two) was born, did my children start sleeping in after a late night. It used to be that if the four year old, or whatever, was up until 10:00 for some crazy reason (it was a holiday, or s/he didn’t fall asleep in the car on the way home, whatEV) — that four year old was STILL up at 6:00 am. With all the you-can-imagine-it mood swings. Sheesh!
Starting in June, we actually found ourselves waking before the children (now 10 and 6 years old) a few times! The entire family slept past 9:00 on a few weekend days! It’s like — we’re people again! I barely know what to do with myself!
OHOHOHOH!! And when they wake up before us on the weekend — they come snuggle, and then GO DO THEIR OWN THING!!! I suddenly no longer have to leap to my feet within moments of waking! Oh, joy…!
Leelee for Obama
@Demo Woman: See, Nooners isn’t wrong all the time-the words work if applied to the correct problem.
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: It makes me smile to read stories about you and your LittleKitten. I hope to see more pics soon.
IndyLib
@General Winfield Stuck:
Love the chipmunks. I miss seeing them, they are usually more people friendly than squirrels.
JackieBinAZ
@Max: They better take all that multi-dimensional chess into account when they’re parsing his speech too.
asiangrrlMN
@JK: Then I can feel comfortable saying that we are a majority of two who thinks Ed Morissey is a big, fat tool. I feel better knowing that I am not the only one.
ellaesther
@asiangrrlMN: “a majority of me” will from now on be my go-to demographic. Because damn it, a majority of me is almost always right!
burnspbesq
@General Winfield Stuck:
Dude, that’s not news. It’s been known for a least a year that Obama is Judge Dread and Emanuel, Axelrod, and Plouffe are the Weasels.
General Winfield Stuck
@IndyLib:
Yes, I have a thing for Chippers and Squirrels. Must have a couple of hundred on my Flickr favs.
smiley
@grumpy realist:
Oh. OK. Don’t know how that escaped me (eyes roll)…
RedKitten
@asiangrrlMN: Will do. My MIL has a really great camera, so I’m planning on borrowing it sometime this week and will see if I can get some really nice pics of Samuel to get printed off for a “brag photo” for the grandmothers’ wallets (and mine too!) If they turn out well, I’ll ask John to post one.
IndyLib
@ellaesther:
The problem with my boys is that they all seem to have different internal clocks. I’ve got one early bird who seems incapable of sleeping past 6:30 AM, and one night owl, who if left to his own devices in the summer will stay up 4:00 AM.
General Winfield Stuck
@burnspbesq:
May have been known. But it ain’t news till the Queen of Outrage gets around to dropping it in the Mighty Wurlitzer. She’s had her hands full, what with Obama brainwashing kids and Porkulus fail. And it took a full two weeks to write the Opus on Obama’s failed presnitzy. A Queen can only inspect so many countertops in a day.
arguingwithsignposts
Where are the open threadenators when you need them?
ellaesther
@IndyLib: Oh.My.God. In no conceivable way is that right!
nathaniel
I didn’t read through everything to see if anyone has pointed this out, but Special Ed has failed to make even his ridiculous cherry picked point.
Noticed he said “5 iterations each of “parents”, “teachers”” for a total of 10 references. I added up his list and got a total of 57, which is more than Obama’s 56 I references.
IndyLib
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’ve got some happy squirrels in my yard, they have acorns, walnuts and apples to eat and lots of places to store food, but no chipmunks.
The chipmunks are more playful, of course the squirrels in our yard are always on the lookout for our dog, so maybe that’s why the squirrels are so…squirrely.
burnspbesq
“We can do the innuendo.
We can dance and sing,
When it’s all said and done,
We haven’t told you a thing.
We all know that crap is king.”
-Don Henley, “Dirty Laundry” (1981)
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
That’s a good Democrat kritter you have there, lookin for a handout.
This is a Republican kritter.
jeffreyw
oops, that was a reply to the general
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
I notice the resemblance.
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
Of the snake to wingers. A little comment shuffle there.
Kathy
RedKitten-great to hear from you!!!! A Fuck yeah!!!! in your honor. When I had my son, I was so spacy from the lack of sleep, I think I told my daughter’s teacher to “fuck off.” It was ok, she had a new born and told me to fuck myself back.:)
Blessings to your family. Yes, sleep will come.
Finally, “I am keeping my kids home from school because somebody has to pick up the garbage, fill the prisons and buy Grand Theft Auto.” I am a conservative :)
IndyLib
@jeffreyw:
Snakes is right.
Beautiful dogs. What breed are they?
General Winfield Stuck
@IndyLib:
We don’t have many right were I live. But a few miles into the mountains there are some. The squirrels are called Aztecs here in the SW and they have these cool long ears that stand straight up about 3 or 4 inches. But they are very shy and hard to spot in the wild.
The one I linked to is from a flickr friend in Maine/
slag
@lamh31: I love that Obama’s working the NASCAR demo via the community service angle. That is truly using common ground to make connections.
@JK: Good to know that the Democratic President of the United States is running his speeches by the head of the Florida Republican Party before he gives them. Bipartisanship in action.
@arguingwithsignposts: Rocking out to every 80s band except for Rick Astley, last I checked.
MikeJ
Hoboes don’t like hard work. Nor do kitties. Hobo kitties? No way they’d like it.
http://apelad.blogspot.com/2009/09/laugh-out-loud-cats-1228.html
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: A few decades back while living in IL we had a nice size garden with a few rows of corn. The corn was ready to pick and I went out so I could shuck and freeze the kernels. The corn was gone. My next door neighbor called me over to see the mess the critters left under her tree.
Just recently I saw the lovely little critters climbing over the fence with a tomato in their mouths.
Lovely critters for pictures, yeah right.
General Winfield Stuck
@Demo Woman:
LOL. They are industrious little fellas.
IndyLib
@General Winfield Stuck:
You’re in New Mexico, right? What part?
asiangrrlMN
@Keith G: Sorry to hear that, man. This was a beautiful post that has put tears in my eyes. You are so right.
noncarborundum
@smiley:
Loved TNOTR. Every word of it. I understand I’m in something of a minority, though. Neither my sister nor my mother-in-law could get past about page 50.
General Winfield Stuck
@IndyLib:
Southwest part. Near Silver City, in the foothills of the Gila Forest.
jeffreyw
@IndyLib:
Those are brittanys, the smallest is my rescued lil boy (long story).
ominira
On the bright side, I bet many of the kids held back from school because of the speech will read it because their parents have told them *not to* (if I remember anything about being a kid). And I’ll bet that their bullshit detectors about the whole ginned up controversy will go off (kids are also good at this) and some will ask their parents uncomfortable questions about said parents’ basic sanity. Should be interesting.
I absolutely loved the speech.
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: Cool. Babies are the happy-making for me, along with kitties (*cough, Tunch) and goggies (Lily!).
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw:
Oh wow, didn’t see the doggies. They are beauties!:
IndyLib
@General Winfield Stuck:
You’re kind of in between my old stomping grounds. I grew up in Alamosa in Southern Colorado and lived in Phoenix for 10 years.
jeffreyw
@General Winfield Stuck: Feel free to browse the stream, more doggie pics, and kittehs, and birdies and stuff.
And food!
IndyLib
@jeffreyw:
I thought they might be, but I figured if I said so definitively I’d be wrong for sure. I’ve had 2 Springers which I dearly loved. They were the best dogs, except for the dead birds at the back door.
Chad N Freude
Morrisey tries to redeem himself (sort of) by acknowledging that Reagan did it. I think he worded his (sort of) apologia rather weakly.
From “Update III” on the page where he counts his I’s (while minding his P’s and Q’s):
jeffreyw
@IndyLib: LOL, know what ya mean. Ours seem to prefer deer bones, alas. Quite a lot of deer hunting around here, and the season approaches.
Sloth
Oh, to be a fly on that wall:
Kid: Hey, Dad, so I watched that speech you were so bent out of shape about. It was lame, but what was the big deal?
WN: We got him to change it!
Kid: You got the president of the U.S. to change a speech? (Thinking: right, I believe that, Dad. Suuure. )
WN: Yes!
Kid: So you have the original? I wanna read that. I can hack it.
WN: No! It will rot your moral core!
Kid: You don’t have it.
WN: Well, no….
Kid: And when you were a kid, the president tried to indoctrinate you?
WN: No! Reagan just talked to us, it was *not* an indoctrination!
Kid: Right. And you know this how?
WN: I ran the speeches through a word frequency analysis!
Kid: Alrighty then. (Thinking: oh christ, I need to take that computer away.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Chad N Freude:
So much for all that “fact-checking” blogosphere stuff, eh? God, these people are pathetic.
arguingwithsignposts
@Sloth:
Win!
burnspbesq
@Chad N Freude:
That he even sees a question there just reinforces how fundamentally silly he is. And not in the sense that the Warner Brothers cartoon character meant when it broke the fourth wall and said to the audience, “I like him; he’s silly.” In the “what, you mean I’m supposed to take this dickhead seriously?” sense.
cathaireverywhere
one of my friends is doing the coolest thing for the speech tomorrow. Her stupid school is not showing the speech, so she is taking her kids to school for 20 mins. then picking them up, taking them home to hear the speech, then returning them to school. She is putting “patriotism” as the reason for signing them out.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: I repeat: rather weakly. “If Obama did what we claimed without knowledge that he was going to do, should we have gotten mad at Reagan for doing what he actually did?” My textual analysis skills are stretched to the breaking point.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: And I really miss a new Warner Brothers cartoon before the feature every week.
General Winfield Stuck
@cathaireverywhere:
That’s great, but very sad and infuriating she even has to do it.
Just hope she’s doesn’t get in trouble from the unpatriotic nutters.
IndyLib
@jeffreyw:
Yep, my girls would bring me pretty much anything dead. But you could tell that the bird-retrieval gene was strong, they were so incredibly proud when they had a dead bird hanging out of their mouth.
IndyLib
@cathaireverywhere:
That’s excellent.
General Winfield Stuck
car hair everywhere. LOL. YOur on the right blog.
burnspbesq
It’s been a while since I lived in NoVa, so I may be remembering the gang geography all wrong, but isn’t the school where Obama is speaking tomorrow full of junior MS-13 types?
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: BTW-thanks for the heads up on JWW, that’s some definite strangeness there.
TR
Ed’s first update said this:
Commenter Faraway counts up references to Obama and to country, and finds 55 self-references and four to the nation.
I thought that conservatives were all about individual freedom and personal responsibility, and that they frowned upon a political system which stressed loyalty to the state above all else.
But no, it seems talking about yourself and not talking about the glorious motherland is bad now. Good to know.
Demo Woman
@cathaireverywhere:
When Dukakis ran for President the “weekly reader” mentioned that if he lost that he would return to the governor’s mansion. My son was talking about the election and I mentioned that no, he would return home. MA does not have a governor’s mansion. He went to school the next day to tell his teacher, feeling very proud, and the teacher pretty much told him the”weekly reader” would not make a mistake. (This is in Roswell, GA) Even though she was corrected, the humiliation set him back.
Fortunately, you do not sound like you live in the south, since the kids will only be in school for twenty minutes.
asiangrrlMN
@cathaireverywhere: That’s fucking cool. Good for her, and welcome.
wasabi gasp
Breaking that down like that is how democrats lose.
wasabi gasp
Lose.
Anya
Because of his “manservant Conor F.” I refuse to visit Sully’s site anymore.
Keith G
@asiangrrlMN: Thanks ever so…..Its all good on my part, destiny is is to be embraced. But we must protect our kids – especially when the village leaders seem not to care.
Chad N Freude
@Leelee for Obama: He’s really writing strange stuff in the Brown Menace thread.
See, for example, https://balloon-juice.com/?p=26515&cpage=6#comment-1359020
cathaireverywhere
@Demo Woman: I live in CA, as does my friend. Tomorrow will actually begin the 3rd week of school for us. Out here, the speech will start at 9:00. I emailed my daughter’s teacher because the school hasn’t said whether or not they’ll be showing it, so if I don’t hear back by tomorrow, I’ll call the school and let them know I’ll be bringing in the kiddo after the speech.
Thanks for the welcome! I lurk here every day and only occasionally post. I frequently quote the things I read here- such intelligent comments! (except for the occasional troll) We have 4 cats and 2 dogs, so cathaireverywhere seemed particularly appropriate.
Mike P
@JK: That dude is just a gigantic douche.
kay
@Chad N Freude:
They erupted in outrage over a speech they hadn’t read.
Obviously, it isn’t about the speech. They hadn’t read the speech. They don’t want this President in their schools. Listen to the comments from conservative parents, played endlessly.
I repeat: they do not want this President in their schools. Just this President. Not Reagan. Not Bush. Just Obama. Why is that?
I’m always a little ashamed when adults make complete asses of themselves in front of children. This is like that, but on a national level. The children are going to know why their parents don’t want this President in their schools. We’re not fooling them with this “speech” bullshit.
Media made asses of themselves too. Christ. Their performance during this shameful and revealing national episode has been cringe-worthy.
RememberNovember
It’s sad to me that a level headed guy like Joe Gandelman calls him “Friend”.
CalD
In fairness, that “I” thing is something that has always creeped me out a little about Obama’s speechifying. He seems to use the word in a lot of contexts where it could easily be replaced by “we.”