Thank you, Tom Toles, and GoComics.com.
I finally get an offer for some of that blogospheric swag one hears about… and it’s from a Penguin sub-sub-subsidiary spokesperson offering a review copy of what sounds like a truly dreadful book about Nancy Pelosi. Complete with glowing tributes from Gingrich, Breitbart, Fred Barnes at the Weakly Standard, and the president of the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute (whatever that is). This book is so obscure, the publication date was last week, and there aren’t even any “I don’t have to read it, I already know what I like” reviews on Amazon. I don’t think it would be medically advisable for me to undertake 272 pages of ‘I read these morons so you don’t have to’… and I just can’t come up with a Miss-Manners-approved phrasing to suggest to the poor little drone of a publicist that a blog which has enshrined ‘NANCY SMASH’ in its lexicon may not be the best market for this book-shaped object…
Michael
I keep having this dream where I get to personally curb stomp Fred Barnes into a bloody pulp just for being himself. Of all the pundits, it is his sneering face that I’d just love to turn toothless.
Loneoak
NANCY SMASH!
trollhattan
Belief Tanks!
http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2007/01/28
mds
Well, the book does apparently manage to be somewhat complimentary to Ms. Pelosi, in the backhanded sense that even the repeatedly-debunked lies it tries to resmear her with are such weak sauce; i.e., the horseshit about her demanding a bigger plane. Ooh, scary. Nancy Pelosi is in the People’s House, demanding bigger “private military planes.” Also, she’s only pretending to be “mothering,” because it turns out she’s actually an experienced political operator. Is your head spinning, too? I’m not sure if there’s any sourcing of the assertion that she’s trying to be mothering, with the possible exception that she’s mentioned that she’s a grandmother. Oooh, scary. Nancy Pelosi has children, and those children have children. Why does Nancy Pelosi support children having sex?
Kryptik
I seriously need some kind of good news right now. Something to make me actually look forward to voting come November. I’m honest to god afraid of what I’m going to read come Nov. 3rd to the point of literal depression.
Fuck, maybe I’ll just drown myself in games further. Anyone here play Super Street Fighter IV online?
jl
OT, but Krugman has a short column today on distinguishing between structural problems causing sluggish economy, and the specific issue of structural unemployment. They are different things, as I pointed out in comment on some post yesterday.
I recommend it, though it is too skimpy with specific examples from current US economy, it sets out the conceptual issue clearly.
Punchy
Open thread, eh?
Ya know what clearly would have stopped/prevented this entirely? Allowing all students to carry concealed handguns and chako sticks on campus.
Clearly, if 10-12 students had all been able to open fire on this guy, he would have died and nobody would have been injured.
kindness
How about we all copy Jesus’ General and just put honest appraisals of a book we have no intention of reading on Amazon’s review listing?
Linda Featheringill
@Kryptik:
1. Go here:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Note that yes, there is a fight ahead but no, all is not lost.
2. Find and animal or a child and tell them they are pretty. That will be a good deed.
3. Play games.
Cris
Hey everybody, cleek is 40!
inventor
As someone (Dorothy Parker?) once said of Atlas Shrugged: “This is a book that should not be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force!”
The Other Chuck
@inventor:
Never did that with Atlas Shrugged, but man did I bang up my copy of The Fountainhead from repeated throwing. Actually not my copy, since I can’t see myself actually paying for birdcage liner, especially when I don’t have a bird.
Xboxershorts
@Punchy:
You’re kidding right? A bunch of post pubescent armed kids with little experience all firing into a central point….and no one gets injured by 30-40 wildly aimed rounds?
You do not live within the same reality as the the rest of the planet sir.
Linda Featheringill
@Xboxershorts:
It was said in jest, sir.
Ash Can
@Xboxershorts: I’m confident that was snark.
In other news, Jimmy Carter has been hospitalized in Cleveland. Fingers crossed that it’s nothing serious.
El Cid
Get out there and fight, losers.
Get off your asses, morans!
I really doubt the effectiveness of such haranguing on the people who already seem less likely to turn out, rather than to remind likely Democratic (or highly liberal voting independents) voters why they ought to turn out.
SiubhanDuinne
Good thoughts and white light, please, everyone. Former President Jimmy Carter has taken ill and rushed to a hospital in Cleveland.
He’s a treasure. Turns 86 this week. I hope he fully recovers.
ETA: Ash Can got there first.
Face
@Xboxershorts: Please take your snark detector in for recalibration.
PurpleGirl
…Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute (whatever that is)…
It’s a
right-wing think tankconservative leadership training institute for women. Their motto: Preparing and promoting conservative women leaders …Also, too: Takes conservative ideas to young women and mentors them into effective leaders, and works to make parents preeminent in the education of their children.
Ash Can
@SiubhanDuinne: It figures, when I “get there first” it’s with bad tidings.
The MSNBC story makes it sound like a simple case of airsickness. Let’s hope so.
Poopyman
@Cris:
Cheer up, Cleek. You hit your peak about 20 years ago. You’re not even halfway into your slide into oblivion.
Steve
@El Cid: I think, unfortunately, the President has bought into the theory that the enthusiasm gap is mainly a problem among the “professional left.” In fact, the Jane Hamshers are only a tiny fraction; for the most part, the liberal activists are going to be out there doing what they do.
The problem is convincing the rank-and-file voters, particularly Obama’s first-time voters from 2008, that it’s important and necessary to vote for Democrats this year. College students who cast their first vote for Obama in 2008 are not reading the Politico!
Nicole
@inventor: Sadly, this famous quote was not actually said about Atlas Shrugged though it should have been.
I can never get enough of this quote from Kung Fu Monkey, though: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
Xboxershorts
@Face:
Done, definitely in need of recalibration. me thinks Box-O-Wine will do the trick
Lynnehs
Why do some people get so upset about Pelosi anyway? Someone I know called her an “extremist,” and I asked, what has she said or done that you think is so extreme. He couldn’t answer me.
Xecky Gilchrist
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s a treasure. Turns 86 this week. I hope he fully recovers.
I too hope that he ends up OK and lives many more years.
If he doesn’t make it, at least we have the consolation of knowing that the wingnuts will not denigrate him so heavily as they have – they’ll triple their venom.
El Cid
@Steve: Even if this is your point of view, don’t simple statistics indicate that the sorts of people whose absence from voting in almost no way resemble the sort of ‘progressive left’ or ‘whiners’ they keep talking about, and few of them even hear such commentary?
Reporting on how even labor union leadership is having a difficult time convincing members to turn out and vote Democratically indicate some other problem than some proliferation of ‘whiners’ or firebaggers or whatever.
I just don’t see how this helps.
El Cid
@Lynnehs: Nancy Pelosi caused the entire deficit by way of her visit to Syria and her big expensive jet airplane. I reckon that was about a trillion dollars in itself.
MikeJ
@Lynnehs: It’s the (D) after her name.
Cris
That could have used a good f-bomb infix.
“People need to buck the fuck up.”
Steve
@El Cid: I think the administration, like all administrations, exists in a bit of a bubble, and they absorb their information from the usual Beltway sources. As we know, the media loves to tell stories about Democrats in disarray, which usually takes the form of vocal activists saying they’re abandoning Obama because he’s no better than Bush. But for every activist like that, there’s 10 or 20 dispirited union members, or first-time voters who don’t understand the urgency of a midterm election. Thing is that nobody writes articles about the latter people; they just quietly don’t show up on voting day.
Remember when the media thought the PUMA movement was the biggest deal ever and Sarah Palin was going to pick off all these disaffected Hillary voters? The PUMAs didn’t have numbers, as it turned out – but they were loud.
SiubhanDuinne
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I’m already sick at heart imagining what Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, et al are saying about him. Not thinking silently to themselves, but saying out loud. I may need to avoid Media Matters for a few days.
Linda Featheringill
A few days ago, we discussed the rather abrasive anti-Miller ad that was suggested for Scott McAdams in Alaska use.
Here is the one he actually went with.
http://www.scottmcadams.org/
or this link might be better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrdqxMOiwzs&feature=player_embedded
Rather nice, I think.
Corner Stone
@El Cid: It’s just narrative building.
ThresherK
@Lynnehs: The tip-off that you’re talking to someone ODing on low-information media is that they could barely name the last GOP speaker, or their own congresscritter and senators, and now know who the Speaker of the House is.
That goes quintuple for anyone with a “Fire Pelosi” bumpersticker outside of San Francisco. It’ll likely be pasted over the “Daschlecrat” sticker from 2002.
quaint irene
Ah, Sentinel HC. The same publisher who brought us those fine tomes, ‘No Retreat, No Surrender’ by Tom Delay and ‘The Truth About Hillary.’ by Edward Klein.
General Stuck
WhinerGate, FDL edition
Peak Butthurt?
TooManyJens
As they did in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the wingers are once again bringing their A game to court:
via TPM
Alwhite
Maybe you could give this book away as a prize to the best troll on BJ?
As for Obama’s apparent lack of understanding what the fuck is “wrong” with Dem voters – it seems to me to be another case of “its everyone’s fault but mine”
He, and the weak-knee, weak-spine, weak-tea Dems surly can not be held responsible for the missing enthusiasm.