Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You are here: Home / And he said one word to me and that was…WOLVERINES

And he said one word to me and that was…WOLVERINES

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This is dumb, even for Bill Kristol:

We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation. And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism, we have to refute liberal arguments and see liberal politicians repudiated at the polls.

So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.

I’m already sick of “refudiate” and am just killing time until Republicans embrace the word “irregardless”.

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  4. 4.

    licensed to kill time

    He’s just slurping on Sarah, poor fool, hoping to get some Starbursts.

  5. 5.

    ThatPirateGuy

    It isn’t enough that he advocate for the ruin of the country, he has to promote the ruination of the language too?

  6. 6.

    FormerSwingVoter

    It’s swell that modern conservatism proudly embraces their complete lack of knowledge and education. That’s terrific.

  7. 7.

    slippy

    I think Kristol is trying to be William Safire.

    Safire was a shithead whose intellectualism was mostly a cover for his trogdolyte views. Kristol is just a shithead with no discernable claim to the label “intellectual.”

    The GOP’s back bench is so skinny all the heavyweights have fallen off of it. I can’t wait to see the next generation of idiocy that they come up with.

  10. 10.

    gnomedad

    Instead of throwing their screwups down the memory hole, they put them in the dictionary. All good duckspeakers know that “refudiate” has always been in the dictionary.

  11. 11.

    schrodinger's cat

    Is this a joke or is he really defending Moronica for her spelling and grammar FAIL?

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Google is not cooperating, but didn’t Irving Kristol say that his dimwitted son basically got starbursty (now there’s a new word we can use: A horniness peculiar to nerdy repressed right-wingers) over Lady Quit-Tah?

  15. 15.

    GambitRF

    Future Bill Kristol column:

    Why is “I could care less” really more correct than “I couldn’t care less”? Shut up, that’s why!

  16. 16.

    Sgt. Jrod and his Howling Commandos

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of stupid and liar.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Arclite: It is truly amazing. His track reord is: Dan Quayle, the Iraq War, and Sarah Palin. So naturally, Rick Stengel and Fred Hiatt got into a bidding war for his column.

  22. 22.

    RSA

    So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.

    I’m on board, for the FUD in “refudiation”. Among its many expansions as an acronym is “Fucked Up Disinformation”.

  24. 24.

    roshan

    Leave it to Kristol to go muff diving on old Sarah. After all, he was the one who found her in the first place.

  25. 25.

    QuaintIrene

    No, Wingnuts. Won’t you don’t need is another pointless bumper sticker.

    What you need, when you start ranting about socialism and trashing the constitution is…..actual FUCKING EXAMPLES!
    How exactly is universal health care or financial reform gonna lead this country to ruin?
    Trying to be ‘deficit hawks’ yet opposing letting the bush tax cuts lapse. Want to explain that?

  26. 26.

    Warren Terra

    I should have expected that column, I think I could have expectorated it, and I’d berate anyone who takes it iseriously.

    (ETA: alternatively, I’d micturate all over them).

  28. 28.

    HyperIon

    @slippy: The GOP’s back bench is so skinny all the heavyweights have fallen off of it. I can’t wait to see the next generation of idiocy that they come up with.

    But Thune is so handsome. (As was Romney before him.)

  30. 30.

    khead

    It must suck to have a job where you have to promote new words to cover for another person’s stupidity.

  31. 31.

    Mike in NC

    Billy Kristol deserves to rot in Hell for eternity for inflicting Palin on an unsuspecting world.

  33. 33.

    Svensker

    So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.

    He said it. Ignorant, obfuscatory and in the way.

    (Is Billy hoping he’ll be able to rub up against Say-rah for that column?)

  35. 35.

    Tonybrown74

    Oh. Mr. Kristol. Just go ahead and fellate Sarah’s strap-on, why don’t you!

  36. 36.

    JGabriel

    Bill Kristol:

    To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism …

    Wait, I thought we liberals were all weak ineffective wusses. How are we supposed to ravage anything?

    .

  37. 37.

    licensed to kill time

    We need a word that captures and conjoins two losers….like KristolPalinQuitterFailin’, i.e. TweedleDumb and TweedleDumber.

  39. 39.

    Arclite

    @FormerSwingVoter:

    It’s swell that modern conservatism proudly embraces their complete lack of knowledge and education.

    We need a word that captures and conjoins their complete lack of knowledge and education.

    So the conservative mental capability is, in a word, lacknowducation.

  40. 40.

    Amir_Khalid

    Leave Bill Kristol alone! He wrote the funniest New York Times columns I have ever read. And he was great in “When Harry Met Sally”.

    I’m sorry, what?

  41. 41.

    Citizen Alan

    1. “Refudiation” is a stupid word that means nothing at all.

    2. Kristol says that “the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.”

    3. Therefore, the conservative agenda is stupid and means nothing at all.

    Seems about right to me.

  42. 42.

    jibeaux

    refudiation

    I don’t know if that’s re-food-ee-ay-shun or re-fyud-ee-ay-shun but either way it really captoins those words well.
    I think we ought to do a lot more of it. For example, why stop at fugly? Fidiotic, fasinine, fasshole…

  44. 44.

    hueyplong

    As roshan notes, Kristol has been invested in Palin from the beginning. The portion of his most recent bloviation that gives dougj the creeps is little more than yet another attempt to clean up after a Palin FUBAR and somehow try to turn it into a positive.

    Arguably, Kristol is the best example of a right winger who somehow keeps a platform despite being wrong as often as (and maybe more often than) Palin herself. It’s difficult to recall anything he’s been right about. He should be thankful that his TV home is FoxNews, which shoves all errors down the memory hole.

  45. 45.

    Rick Massimo

    I wonder whether Mrs. Kristol has been asked to cut her hair a certain way, wear a particular style of glasses and make her voice sound a little chirpier …

  50. 50.

    Brain Hertz

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the concepts of conservative pundits’ overwhelming dominance of the airwaves and print media, coupled with their penchant for being completely wrong about everything all the time. And we need it now.

    I propose the term clusterfuckwit.

    Seems like an apt adjective to describe Bill Kristol.

  52. 52.

    khead

    I wonder whether Mrs. Kristol has been asked to cut her hair a certain way, wear a particular style of glasses and make her voice sound a little chirpier …

    You betcha!

  53. 53.

    scav

    conservatism can never mispeak, it can only be mispeaken.

    (apparently by misspastherpeaken at the moment.)

  54. 54.

    Right Wing Extreme

    @Brain Hertz: No way conservatives have a lock on the print media,m do you read the newspapers and magazines? Conservative, not so much. The only airwaves we dominate is talk radio, you guys have television, not us.

  58. 58.

    Tonal Crow

    I see Kristol is restupidiating himself. He really ought to see a doctor about that.

  60. 60.

    Brain Hertz

    @52:

    Sure, I forgot that conservative clusterfuckwit Bill Kristol only appears on talk radio. He never writes anything, and never appears on television.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    @JGabriel: Our policies allow minorities to ravage our housing market and white women. And since we’re weak we can’t stop them once they start.

  63. 63.

    vtr

    We don’t need any valid policy proposals, we just need a made-up word.

    By the way, could we get rid of our sarah infestation with several very loud columns about how much hotter Nikki Haley is than she is?

  65. 65.

    Highway Rob

    @Warren Terra:

    “Micturate”? Wait a minute…

    Oh freddled gruntbuggly / thy micturations are to me / As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.

    Groop I implore the, my foonting turlingdromes. / And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewordles, / Or I will rend the in the gobberwarts with my blurglecrunchons, see if I don’t!”

    Vogons. Oh Belgium, of course. Now it all makes sense.

    RIP Douglas.

  66. 66.

    Zifnab

    Also,

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation. And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism

    Seriously? This is what we’ve come to? “To save our country we need… A WORD!” Please tell me this is a Steven Colbert column under an ironic pen name.

    I do have to marvel at the conservative desire to constantly double down. In all seriousness, conservatism has dominated the discourse for almost half a century. And here, at the zenith of economic calamity, when Goldman Sachs bankers smugly assert the virtues of humility and austerity for everyone outside their tax brackets and two failed wars continue to bleed away US budgets and foreign national sovereignties – HERE is where Bill Kristol draws the line against “the ravages of contemporary liberalism”.

    We can’t get a bank tax through the Senate. We can’t get Medicare reform passed in the House. We can’t have a serious conversation about growing the military budget by less than 4% a year when we already outspend every other country on earth combined. But the real problem facing America is radical Marxist confrontational popular contemporary liberalism.

    ORLY?! And you’re going to be it… with a word?!

    HOW HAVE WE EVER LOST TO THIS GUY?

  67. 67.

    thingsbreak

    Ah. I see Kristol is retconning for Palin again. In 6 months, if this were to catch on, they’d deny that it was ever a gaffe by Palin, just like the Tea Baggers never used the phrase “tea bag”…

  68. 68.

    beltane

    Do we know for a fact that Bill Kristol is not the best Soviet sleeper cell ever? There is no way he could have written this with a straight face. “The ravages of liberalism” is another giggle-inducing phrase.

    There used to be some on the far, far left who felt that the Republican party was a force for good in that it would hasten the inevitable end of capitalism. There is a distinct possibility that Bill Kristol is of that ilk.

  69. 69.

    Alex S.

    @Right Wing Extreme:

    You confuse the absence of opinion with counter opinion. Just because conservatives have politicized every aspect of life it doesn’t mean that other, less political people share the same view.

  71. 71.

    CalD

    Q: What do you get if you cross a Wolverine with a Mama Grizzly?

    (I don’t have an answer. I’m asking)

  73. 73.

    QuaintIrene

    And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism,

    An verbal version of the Bat Signal. Alert Commissioner Gordon!

  76. 76.

    Hal

    Kristol is still in love with Palin, and because she used a word that doesn’t exist and was mocked for it, he must now work feverishly to protect his paramour.

    If Sully does ever perform a paternity test on Trig Palin, he should start with Kristol.

    He’s stuck with Palin, his reputation (at least among conservatives) depends on her success.

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bill-kristol-defends-sarah-palin-stepping

    “Kristol fell in love with Palin, kinda like Sanford fell in love and called his Argentinian girlfriend his soulmate.

    The most ardent promoter, however, was Kristol, and his enthusiasm became the talk of Alaska’s political circles. According to Simpson, Senator Stevens told her that “Kristol was really pushing Palin” in Washington before McCain picked her. Indeed, as early as June 29th, two months before McCain chose her, Kristol predicted on “Fox News Sunday” that “McCain’s going to put Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, on the ticket.” He described her as “fantastic,” saying that she could go one-on-one against Obama in basketball, and possibly siphon off Hillary Clinton’s supporters. He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” he said. The moderator, Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”The next day, however, Kristol was still talking about Palin on Fox. “She could be both an effective Vice-Presidential candidate and an effective President,” he said. “She’s young, energetic.” On a subsequent “Fox News Sunday,”

    Kristol again pushed Palin when asked whom McCain should pick: “Sarah Palin, whom I’ve only met once but I was awfully impressed by—a genuine reformer, defeated the establishment up there. It would be pretty wild to pick a young female Alaska governor, and I think, you know, McCain might as well go for it.” On July 22nd, again on Fox, Kristol referred to Palin as “my heartthrob.” He declared, “I don’t know if I can make it through the next three months without her on the ticket.”

  78. 78.

    bkny

    christ, it took bloodthirsty bill a week to come up with that. sorry, billy, refudiate is all played out. no one gives a shit.

  79. 79.

    Shinobi

    Every time I read the word that is “the conservative agenda” on a computer screen a little fear grows inside me that I will some day actually use “the conservative agenda”by accident.

    Can people stop posting about it now? Because the more I see “the conservative agenda” the more I fear it.

    (Oh wait, that last part actually makes sense…)

  80. 80.

    New Yorker

    I really do think Bill Kristol sums up everything that’s wrong with the right in this country better than anyone else, even Palin.

    He has pretensions of being an intellectual even though he shows no discernible intellect. He sneers at the “elitism” of the educated, urbane coastal culture that spawned him while continuing to benefit from the ugly elitism that does exist within some circles of that culture (I mean, is there any doubt he’d be some assistant HR manager somewhere had he not won the sperm lottery?). Worst of all, he shows no need to concede error despite being wrong about pretty much everything that has ever passed through that mediocre mind of his.

  83. 83.

    dm

    It’s more accurately spelled “reFUDiate”, and it means “recycle/repeat Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt”. It’s the whole “terrorists-will-eat-you” strategy in a nutshell, and not a bad description of the Kristol-meth form of conservativism, really.

  86. 86.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation. And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism, we have to refute liberal arguments and see liberal politicians repudiated at the polls.

    And when we come up with the word we must be certain to write it on our hands in case we forget it.

  89. 89.

    Jennifer

    Perhaps Kristol is unaware that we already have a word for the conservative agenda: bullshit.

    And since Kristol’s all about new words, here’s one that describes him: ignoranus. Just like “refudiate” is a portmanteau of “refute” and “repudiate”, the Kristol adjective is a combination of “ignorant” and “anus”, or in layman’s terms, “stupid asshole.”

  91. 91.

    Eric U.

    refudiate pisses me off because it’s close enough to repudiate that innocent people will probably be hurt.

  92. 92.

    maya

    And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism,

    which has run out of Handiwipes cleaning up the bloody splatterings of 8 years of conservative dysentery.

  93. 93.

    Susanne

    I have been reading this blog for some time now and had to come out of lurker mode just to comment.


    “I’m already sick of “refudiate” and am just killing time until Republicans embrace the word “irregardless””

    DougJ must have never been or listened to a politician from the Great State of Rhode Island. I believe they invented “irregardless’ . LOL!!!!!

    I love reading this blog, thank you.

  94. 94.

    daveX99

    I have been saying this for, like, 2 weeks now, but perhaps you could care less:

    The word refudiate will eventually enter the English Language.

    This is because it actually works as a word. English is crazy that way. This can be explained by the science of Linguistics, supposably.

    Irregardless of your feelings, it’s going to be a real word.

    …Unless everybody starts ignoring it now~! Pretend you never heard it!!

  96. 96.

    slag

    Great. I guess this means that Bush’s war on the English language is just as endless as all the other wars he started. Mission accomplished.

  97. 97.

    Mike in NC

    Chris Wallace, finally had to ask Kristol, “Can we please get off Sarah Palin?”

    Chris wasn’t just speaking figuratively here, either.

  98. 98.

    The Dangerman

    @bkny:

    it took bloodthirsty bill a week to come up with that

    His first priority was to exhaust his “conservative agenda” (also known as masturbatory fantasies about Palin).

  99. 99.

    Cat Lady

    killing time until Republicans embrace the word “irregardless” seppuku.

    khxbai.

  101. 101.

    debbie

    Does Kristol believe his base is too stupid to handle two adjectives with an “and” between them?

  102. 102.

    Mike G

    http://privcorr.blogspot.com/2009/07/wingnut-monday-subverting-meritocracy.html

    “Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

    The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

    With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. ‘I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’ ”

  103. 103.

    Jennifer

    @Mike G:
    I love that story. It just never gets old.

    My favorite thing to do with that story is to paste it into every comments section on every Kristol piece at the WaPo. There are always a few folks over there that have not yet tasted its majestic pwnage.

  104. 104.

    El Cid

    You people make fun of Kristol, but what has anybody ever got outta bein’ smart? Does book learnin’ actually help anybody with anything?

    Like, if you build a bridge or some shit, do you need some fancy la-di-da architect and a teem of engineers, or just some good old boys with some power tools and 2×4’s? Well?

    You don’t need no damn dictionary to tell you what’s a word or not. You use what you need, like a real man.

  105. 105.

    Kyle

    Echoes of years ago during the Chimp’s misrule, when Repigs suddenly insisted that “nookyuler” was the correct way to the pronounce the word all along. Lysenko would be proud.

    Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes used that pronounciation last night, and I wanted to vomit. Her credibility just went off a cliff. DC media whores.

  106. 106.

    Pasquinade

    @Jennifer, well done

    And since Kristol’s all about new words, here’s one that describes him: ignoranus. Just like “refudiate” is a portmanteau of “refute” and “repudiate”, the Kristol adjective is a combination of “ignorant” and “anus”, or in layman’s terms, “stupid asshole.”

  107. 107.

    The Dangerman

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation.

    Hey, this could be fun; we also need a word to describe this word conflation and the purulence it reflects. Presto:

    Conflatulence

  109. 109.

    TuiMel

    From the party who contributed to our vernacular both “normalcy” and “misunderestimate.”

    Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice – won’t get fooled again.

  110. 110.

    TuiMel

    @Kyle:
    I have to admit that the manner in which this mispronunciation has come into vogue with people who should know better is disheartening to me. Willful ignorance garners badges of honor and belonging.

  111. 111.

    aimai

    I’m pissed off about “conjoin”–what was wrong with “join”? Or is the “con” the “con” of conservative? First they need their own wiki, then they need their own bible, now they need their own individual words?

    aimai

  112. 112.

    Catsy

    @RSA:

    I’m on board, for the FUD in “refudiation”. Among its many expansions as an acronym is “Fucked Up Disinformation”.

    That was my thought. Who wants to update the Urban Dictionary to define “refudiate” as “to attempt to counter inconvenient facts with FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt),” or something to that effect?

  113. 113.

    rootless_e

    in talmud, when referring to a stupid son of a famous father, they say “vinegar, son of wine”. In Bill’s case though, his dad was Ripple.

  116. 116.

    Warren Terra

    This thread is fun, and I’ve certainly been as bad as most anyone on this topic, but it’s worth remembering that there is a method to Kristol’s inanity: so long as he can make sure the debate is about Palin’s semiliterate construction of a portmanteu word, he’s winning – or at least, he’s not losing the way he ought to be. After all, the entire Republican argument these days is that there’s a grand struggle between the salt-of-the-earth undereducated white folks on the one side (together with God and Ronny Reagan, of course), and on the other side are the Real Racists of the NAACP, the dusky hordes from Messico and points south, the Islamofascists, teh ghey menace, and the pointy-headed elitists. And when we attack the word “Refudiate”, we are those pointy-headed elitists, and we reinforce the Republican strategy of tribal identity.

    When Palin’s “Refudiate” tweet came out, I chuckled at her weak grasp of English too – but I was glad that most of the commentary I saw focused on the fact that, entirely aside from the specific words she used, her message was utterly vile, a transparent appeal to bigotry. If we let Kristol’s idiocy bait us into talking about “Refudiate”, that means we’re not talking about the real story – and so he wins.

  118. 118.

    Catsy

    So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.

    Setting aside the appalling anti-intellectual assault on the language, it’s nice that he agrees with Democrats that conservatives have no solutions to offer other than chanting “no”.

  121. 121.

    MikeJ

    @Warren Terra: Like you, I’ve spent the past few weeks wondering when it was that Republicans came out of the closet and decided to publicly declare their hatred of private property.

  122. 122.

    Comrade Kevin

    @Punchy:

    WTF is wrong with “irregardless”? Webster says its good. So irregardless of your opinion, please leave it the fuck alone.

    Which is why Merriam-Webster, on the page to which you link, says ” Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.”

  123. 123.

    KG

    @Catsy: but, but, but… that’s because the Democrats won’t let the Republicans be involved in negotiations.

    /wingnut

    That’s really the argument I’ve heard. I’ve had this conversation with more than a few Republicans I know (friends and family included) where they bitch that the evil Democrats won’t let the Republicans in.

  125. 125.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @KG:

    That’s really the argument I’ve heard. I’ve had this conversation with more than a few Republicans I know (friends and family included) where they bitch that the evil Democrats won’t let the Republicans in.

    Yes, and that’s the infuriating thing. Anyone who’s paid attention would know that Obama has been far too deferential to the Republicrats in Congress, despite their bloc intransigence.

  126. 126.

    shortstop

    He pointed out that she was a “mother of five” and a reformer.

    I sure don’t mind you putting “mother of five” in quotation marks, mostly because it so thoroughly pisses off the wingnuts, but how did “reformer” manage to go quote-free?

  128. 128.

    Jacquelyn

    Are Kristol’s Starbursts giving him congestipation? I hear that if you brown nose too closely, you get that!

  130. 130.

    QuaintIrene

    Npr’s ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’ comedy news quiz had a snippet on La Palin’s tweets.
    “Sarah Palin can create new words with the power of her mind. She has to do that ’cause she can’t use a Thesaurus. She say’s everybody knows they’re extinct.”

  131. 131.

    Nylund

    awww…sounds like someone misses Bushisms. I think that he is “misunderestimating” the current crop of conservatives. Both “refutation” and “repudiation” sound like like elitist words to me. They’re the arugula of the English language. Kristol would do better at reaching the GOP base if he could somehow combine “momma grizzly” and “islamofascist.”

    By personally championing Sarah “You Betcha” Palin, he’s played a crucial role in creating a GOP base that can not only not pass the analogies section of the SAT’s, but are proud they can’t and see it as a sign of virtue.

  132. 132.

    shortstop

    She has to do that ‘cause she can’t use a Thesaurus. She say’s everybody knows they’re extinct.”

    Jesus did ride ’em, though.

  133. 133.

    Nylund

    Regarding the title of this post, I believe that in order to keep the rhyme intact, his favorite flavor must now change from “cherry red” to “tangerines”.

  134. 134.

    Doctor Science

    @aimai:

    “Conjoin” is not by any means a new word, it goes back to Middle English. I assume that these days it is intended to evoke “conjoined twins” (aka “Siamese twins”): in this case, Kristol is saying that he wants what used to be called a “portmanteau word”. He wants the two root meanings to be visible, just like the two twins are visible.

    Or he’s just being a pompous blowhard. That’s possible, too.

  135. 135.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Warren Terra:

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the foulness of Bill Kristol’s objectives and the devious methods that he uses to pursue them. And that word is KristolMeth.

  136. 136.

    Resident Firebagger

    Palin’s never going to run anyway. She already has her dream job in wingnut welfare. Where Kristol sees starbursts, Palin sees dollar signs. Really, too little attention is given to her raw, naked greed.

    This thread has been an uplifter though. As much as I resent many of you for falling all over Obama, you people are seriously way more clever than I am…

  140. 140.

    trollhattan

    Kristol fell in love with Palin, kinda like Sanford fell in love and called his Argentinian girlfriend his soulmate.

    Fred Sanford had an Argentinian girlfriend? Which episode? Did he serve her Champipple?

    Fred Sanford had more sense than Kristol, by a factor of about a hundred.

  141. 141.

    DougJ

    @Susanne:

    My Republican aunt who lives in Rhode Island uses that word all the time, so you may be on to to something!

  143. 143.

    Tonal Crow

    @Nylund: Since this is Snarkhome:

    …he’s played a crucial role in creating a GOP base that can not only not pass the analogies section of the SAT’s, but…

    The SAT’s what? Or, are you looking for a job at the NYT writing about “SUV’s”?

  145. 145.

    apocalipstick

    Man, that picture of Palin that Kristol uses to masturbate must be getting crusty.

  146. 146.

    Jeffro

    @Resident Firebagger:

    This thread has been an uplifter though.

    Uplifter? This thread is Da Bomb. =)
    Looking forward to the eighteen or so new entries in the BJ lexicon tomorrow…

  147. 147.

    JGabriel

    @bago:

    Teabaggers embrace anonymous.

    Hmm. Inappropriate meme stealing is to /b/tards as honey is to flies. I look forward to watching the swarm.

    .

  148. 148.

    JGabriel

    apocalipstick:

    Man, that picture of Palin that Kristol uses to masturbate must be getting crusty.

    Nah. Kristol always rinses it with tears of gratitude and shame, afterwards.

  151. 151.

    Bella Q

    @Arclite: Kristol still has a column because he’s not an at will employee. Duh. Even though he’s a pompous blowhard in search of starbursts. The Great Northern Grifter woulda [email protected]#&ed him in a heartbeat, if she thought it would make her fortune. So sad for him that his fevered fawning got her to where now she doesn’t have to.

  153. 153.

    Triassic Sands

    What is obvious here is that Palin was not cleverly creating a pormanteau word to do the double duty that Kristol claims the conservatives need. Rather, she’s an ignorant rube who actually believed that the word “refudiate” already existed.

    From Kristol’s Weekly Standard post:

    Presumably, Palin was wavering between “refute” and “repudiate,” and, in the heat of the tweeting moment,

    As with all things Kristol, this is simply dishonest. There was no “heat of the tweeting moment.” Palin had already used the word before (clip available online) and since no one called her on it, she undoubtedly continued to believe she would find the word in the dictionary if she were to look it up (if she owned a dictionary and knew how to use it).

    The English language continues to grow and add words, but I think it’s preferable for new words and usage not to be coined and established by the most ignorant among us.

    I know that’s elitist…

  154. 154.

    Jeffro

    @Triassic Sands:

    “heat of the tweeting moment.”

    I think Kristol is giving a lot away with this short phrase. Nothing we didn’t already know, but still…geez, Bill…

  155. 155.

    Jennifer

    @Triassic Sands:
    Exactly.

    As I pointed out somewhere on the internets after the Twit tweeted it, people make mistakes in pronunciation when they use words they’re only used to seeing in print.

    They repeat those “pronunciation errors” in print only when they didn’t know the word in the first place.

    Not only that, but she used the non-word on two consecutive days, IIRC. In any case, within a 3-day period, she had used the non-word on-air at Fox, then tweeted it the following day or the day after. Which strongly suggests that Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt, after no one pointed out to her that no such word existed after her Fox performance, assumed she had a shiny new word toy that would PROVE to all us elitist English-speakers that she did SO read “all of ’em.”

    It’s not a mistake that anyone accustomed to seeing the word used in print would have made. Ergo, she’d never seen it in print before – because she doesn’t read.

  156. 156.

    Bender

    State of the Leftist Media 2010:

    ACORN — non-story.
    JournoList — non-story.
    Climate-gate — non-story.
    New Black Panthers — non-story.
    SEIU thuggery — non-story.
    Rev. Wright — non-story.
    Sarah Palin says “refudiate” — STOP THE PRESSES!

  157. 157.

    kay

    @Bender:

    You left out Sherrod – non-story.

    That one goes to credibility. The others do too, but you needed to get nailed good on one before people started to discern a pattern and practice.

    Odd that you forgot to include it.

  159. 159.

    gnomedad

    @Warren Terra:

    And when we attack the word “Refudiate”, we are those pointy-headed elitists, and we reinforce the Republican strategy of tribal identity.

    Good point. Which makes me wonder whether Palin salts her speech with gaffes deliberately.

  160. 160.

    Triassic Sands

    @Jeffro:

    Thanks a lot, Jeffro — with that image in my mind I may never sleep again. I feel more than a little sick. Urp.

    @Jennifer:

    …after no one pointed out to her that no such word existed.

    That fact bothers me. Normally I expect people in public office to have people looking out for them, if for no other reason than to make sure they don’t make fools of themselves. Someone near Palin must have heard her utter “refudiate.” When I first heard the clip, I visibly cringed when she said it. I respond that way to “irregardless” and the many other usage problems that are so common (and getting more so all the time) among today’s media personalities.

    Anyway, someone close to Palin must have heard her say “refudiate,” but apparently no one said anything to her, which allowed her to return to her shiny new word shortly thereafter. I can imagine that correcting Palin or pointing out an error might arouse a fairly unpleasant response from her. She is probably quite sensitive about her intellectual shortcomings, especially given how profound they are and how publicly they have been exposed in the past.

    @Warren Terra:

    And when we attack the word “Refudiate”, we are those pointy-headed elitists, and we reinforce the Republican strategy of tribal identity.

    I think your comment is quite good and wholeheartedly agree that we must not focus entirely on Palin’s intellectual deficits. However, the fact that she is an idiot is as important, at least in my mind, as the fact that her message is vile. I don’t support lefties who have the right message, but are stupid, because I worry that they will do considerable damage should they hold a position of responsibility.

    Clearly, Palin’s mental failings are not a problem for her fans and supporters, whether they be the Kristols of the world who are responding to the ache they feel in their loins or others who think she’s just a common-sensible woman with real answers to this country’s problems. That’s why the media should not harp endlessly on “refudiate-gate” (damn, I hate that suffix!). That will reinforce what you aptly call the Right’s tribal identity.

    However, when Palin’s opponents (most of us here, for example) do harp on Palin’s stupidity in private and on blogs like BJ, which most Palin supporters will never read, it reinforces our tribal identity and most of us know that being correct is not elitist. I don’t believe a person’s worth can be measured solely by his or her vocabulary or advanced degrees, but neither do I think that it makes much sense for me to feel superior to another group because they know more than I do. Effectively, that is what the Republican tribe does when they all rush to support Palin when she proves for the umpteenth time that she’s a total dope.

  162. 162.

    FlipYrWhig

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the essences of Bill Kristol’s punditry. And we need it now. That word is bukkakophony. It’s masturbatory, it’s projectile, and it sounds terrible.

  164. 164.

    Jennifer

    FWIW, I came up with a new project for Billy in his attempts to get Sarah Palin to touch his weiner promote Sarah Palin. Details at my joint.

  165. 165.

    Zuzu's Petals

    We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation.

    Kristol 2000: We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of misunderstand and underestimate.

  169. 169.

    brantl

    @Punchy: What’s wrong with it is that it contains the word that is supposed to mean the same thing as it does, with a prefix that is equivalent to “anti”, so it’s just fucking stupid that it could possibly mean the same thing as “regardless”. It’s a word for the clueless.

  170. 170.

    brantl

    @Right Wing Extreme: You need to stop listening to talk radio, learn how to read, and sample a couple of papers. As far as TV, maybe you’re not listening, or maybe you’re just stupid.

  174. 174.

    Dr. Psycho

    So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation.

    Very appropriate: “refudiation” is not a real word, and the conservative agenda is equally imaginary and unsuited to the real world.

    Indeed, this is perhaps a perfect summary, and widely applicable:

    The conservative form of foreign policy is, in a word, frammistat.

    The conservative approach to health care reform is, in a word, greeble.

    The conservative response to global climate change is, in a word, b’deah-b’deah.

  175. 175.

    SFAW

    Dr. Psycho –
    Actually, I think your comment has the potential to be a great Dem campaign ad this Fall.

    Of course, it would help if the DNC were committed to winning, but what’re ya gonna do?

  177. 177.

    Right Wing Extreme

    @Alex S.:
    I can not turn on my television without hearing some left-wing hack spouting either lies or the party line, so do not even try to get on your high horse and tell me that the left is not proselytizing.

    @brantl:
    It is amazing how every time anyone has a differing opinion you lefties either pile on or start in with the as hominem attacks. I read, a lot. I only listen to one talk radio show, and only read lefty rags like Newsweek and U.S. News when I am trapped in a doctors office and those Pravda wannabes are the only option. I do listen when I watch t.v., that is why I said you lefties have it locked up. Fox news is the exception, but I do not watch that either unless something is going on. As for being stupid, I will admit to the possibility, but I think it is a mark of intelligence to work your way through problems, and arguents, with logic rather trying to do what feels right no matter how stupid it maybe in a vain attempt to appeal to my own self love. I have a suggestion for you, ponder the following quote,
    “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
    — Abraham Lincoln
    Ad hominem do not make you witty, smart or even correct, the merely reveal you lacking and unable to engage in the councils of you intellectual betters. Remove yourself from the grownup table until you learn better manners and how to think you naughty scamp.

  178. 178.

    SFAW

    R.W.E. –

    As Atrios might say: did Alex and brantl hurt your fee-fees? Because most of what you blathered bore no resemblance to reality.

    Except the part where you apply Lincoln’s comment to your own dismal attempt at a response.

    “Left-wing hack”? “Pravda wannabes”? As with your wingnut brethren, you’re long on outrage and screeching, short on reasoned arguments. Here’s a flip side to your rant:

    I can not turn on my television without hearing some right-wing hack either spouting lies or promoting the destruction of the country and government.

    See how easy it is to throw out a useless statement, without benefit of facts? Of course, my statement is a lot closer to reality than yours was. (Right-wingers love them some secessionist talk, tax-revolt talk, overthrowing Obama talk, usw.)

    I hear Erick Ericksdottir is looking for a new writer, though – his schtick is getting repetitive, maybe you can bring some new inchoate/incoherent stuff to the table.

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