Here is a fun game for you while you watch the show. Go to the wingnut blogs, do a search for the word “dithering,” and count how many uses came before Dick Cheney’s speech and how many came after. I’ll be shocked if any of them ever used it before Darth Cheney gave them their talking points (22 October), but now it is the only word they know.
Automatons.
Earl
That would mean that I’m wasting my time on the wingnut blogs, though.
No need for that…
Derelict
Sorry–I refuse to subject my brain to the abuse needed to Google the wingnut-o-sphere.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Earl:
No shit, I can think of better things to do that would be better for your mental health.
A lobotomy is one thing that comes to mind.
calipygian
Jack Reed is going a good job on Fox News, calmly explaining why Rudy 9iu11iani and “men” of his ilk walk around with loads shit in their urine soaked trousers.
Brian J
I’m going to repost this here, since I accidentally posted it in the last thread which was apparently about Celtic music:
I hate to be that guy this early in the morning, but is anyone else worried that the problems with the House bill—the relative lack of cost controls and the supposed incentives to game the system—will end up screwing us in the end? Perhaps it’s because the conservative blogs I’ve seen (Marginal Revolution and the people they link to, mostly) are not exactly in support of the reform effort to begin with and are thus more likely to make it seem like any potential problems are worse than they are, but I’ve even seen people like Robert Reich suggest there are big problems. Granted, this is just the House bill, and the process, as far as it has come, isn’t over, but I do worry that the complaints from the right will end up being right and that the system will be under enormous pressure to fall apart from the outset. It’d be hard, I think, to try to undermine the expectation of expanded coverage, but if there are issues at the outset, it would be a lot easier.
El Cid
It wasn’t just the right wingosphere. The punditarianship also began speaking of “dither” and “dithering” in amazing frequency, presumably because no matter how ridiculous the things said on the right, they must be cool, because the right is cool, so now we must all use one of the goofiest, least-used English words ever (outside of math and digital imaging) to discuss Obama because we like being cool like Dick Cheney is cool.
kay
Cheney’s not credible. The man’s a liar.
“Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad records to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that “fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.”
Um, I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but is anyone in the press going to call him on this?
Incredible. They created a record.
res ipsa loquitur
I’m sure Broder got it from Cheney, too.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@kay:
__
You’re kidding, right?
bemused
I think the word ‘dithering’ appealed to wingnuts because it has a interesting ring to it even though many of them probably had to look up the meaning. Joe Wilson couldn’t be the only one who had never heard the word before.
calipygian
Good news everyone! I just saw a commercial on the TEE VEE from Newsmax while watching the only Sunday Show that Matters – Fox New Sunday (you know, the show that the ruling party gets to talk on).
You can get four months of everyone’s favorite political analysis magazine, Newsmax if you buy a copy of Going Rogue by President Palin for just $4.97!
Yea!
calipygian
Ooh! Bonus! Liz Cheney is filling the Brit Hume chair on Fox News this week! Liz Cheney AND Bill Kristol!
Yea!
Brian J
@calipygian:
What was the discussion about? KSM standing trial in New York City?
bemused
So ‘dithering’ is bouncing around in my head when I remembered Mr Dithers, Dagwood’s mean, dominating old boss who always refuses to give Dagwood a raise & constantly threatens to fire him.
Brian J
@calipygian:
Why wouldn’t someone piss themselves, strip off all their clothes, and then bang their head against the wall for an hour? The effect would be the same and you’d still have $4.97 in your bank account.
Demo Woman
@calipygian: Are you a masochist?
calipygian
@Brian J: Yes.
Nothing new illumnated. Just people talking past each other, although it is striking how cowardly the right wing has become in the United States and how little confidence they have in our institutions.
Kristol is frantic and apoplectic.
becca
To be fair, dithering is an awesome word
Brian J
@calipygian:
If there was one enjoyable thing about the 2008 election and everything surrounding it, it was RUDY!!!!!!!! Giuliani’s downfall. Here was a candidate whose entire candidacy was built around trumped up accomplishments and “experience” he didn’t have, no matter what particular tale was being touted that day. He may have done some good things in New York while mayor, but that doesn’t replace the fact that the primary rationale for his candidacy was 9/11, where he didn’t do much of anything besides not cower in a corner. He also reeked of corruption. Plus, he strikes me, on a personal level, as a nasty asshole, the sort of guy who would knock his own mother down a flight of stairs to get some sort of advantage in life.
I really, really hope he decides to reenter political life, only so he can be rejected once again.
Bad Horse's Filly
I’m trapped in the middle of one of the red states, stymied by a snow storm across the eastern plains of CO. I just stopped by here for some friendly faces. If you don’t hear from me again, it means I fell asleep and the pod people got me.
me
Seems they’re the ones dithering.
dmsilev
Why oh why do I ever click on the comments of a Politico story? Especially one as inane as this one about the Bow That Shook The World. Nutpick just a dozen or so down:
Sigh.
-dms
RedKitten
No. You can’t make me.
Anya
I think Darth Vader was hoping that the President would be saddled with the label Mr. Dither, just like Canada’s former Prime Minister Paul Martin came to be known as the ‘Mr. Dithers’ of Canadian politics. The Economist had a cover with Mr. Martin’s picture and the headline “Mr. Dithers” in February 2005, the became a meme and it damaged his image, I am sure Darth Vader, knowing the gullible media was counting on this becoming a meme.
Max
Sweet Jesus. John “gots me another show to spew GOP talking points” King asked Axe if Obama was going to read Palin’s fan fiction.
Time of death has been called.
Maude
@kay: They spent a lot of time making thigs up. There are people who state things as fact and they do it instantly, they are either lying or making it up. There seems to be a lot them.
I am putting everything in my kitchen into boxes becaue the apt. building is going to be sprayed tomorrow for roaches, and not the type you’d want to put up to your lips. It would just be easier to move.
Anya
@res ipsa loquitur: Clive Crook also used it in is Financial Time column.
Brian J
@dmsilev:
Okay, assuming this wasn’t some sort of bizarre way to greet another world figure–and nobody reasonable is suggesting that it is–then they are just trying to gin up a controversial story. Are these the same people who complained when Hillary Clinton wore the wrong type of scarf when meeting the Pope? If so, why are they now bitching that he is trying to follow protocol? Hell, if they don’t care about protocol at all, why observe any sort of tradition?
Also, is this more or less of an embarrassment than Bush puking on the Japanese head of state?
chrome agnomen
doesn’t the right regard obama also as just a figurehead of state? if that is the case, why all the dithering on the right?
Anya
@Brian J: I think what makes the bow so visible is that the emperor is very short the the President tall so if you follow the protocol and bowed below the head then the President bows down really low. I am against the whole bowing thing and I have no respect for monarchs but these silly outrages are mind numbing. Can’t they find anything else to obsess over.
Little Dreamer
John,
You are far more equipped to go into those depths of hell and bring back the lost gems. I cannot see how my going there would be healthy for me. You’re supposed to read wingnut sites so I don’t have to. That’s why I come here (well that and Lily).
Mark
This is what Google Trends is for:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=dithering&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0
Balconesfault
I love this MTP thing – Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich working together on education reform. Haven’t actually listened to any of it – but I love the visual image. Looking forward to Obama appointing a special task force on immigration reform made up of Rev. Wright and Caribou Barbie.
licensed to kill time
Liz Cheney Floats Dick as 2012 candidate
Shoot me now.
Also, I just wanted to post “Liz Cheney Floats Dick”.
licensed to kill time
expert BQF!
Bill Arnold
Google Trends is good. There are still newsgroups, believe it or not, and google/groups will let you search bracketed by start and end dates (it’s imperfect, sometimes a search will show no results).
There was RW discussion about Obama dithering about Afghanistan (e.g. over the troop request) by mid September.
licensed to kill time
I still think Liz Cheney Floats Dick is really funny. I’m gonna say it again so I can get my reply arrow of the day.