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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / Black Jimmy Carter / I Don’t Have the Energy

I Don’t Have the Energy

by John Cole|  October 30, 20107:36 pm| 181 Comments

This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment

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To properly tear into this Pat Caddell piece in the WaPo, so if someone else would like to, I’ll gladly post it. It really is the most breathtakingly shameless thing I think I’ve ever read in the WaPo. I’m sure Breitbart will quote it in his new gig at ABC news. Heckuva job, media.

Also, do we have any reports from the rally?

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Reader Interactions

181Comments

  1. 1.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 7:41 pm

    We write in sadness as traditional liberal Democrats

    Is “traditional liberal Democrats” the politically correct way of saying “nostalgic Dixiecrats”?

  2. 2.

    Unabogie

    October 30, 2010 at 7:41 pm

    Can you post a quote so we don’t have to…you know…actually read it there?

  3. 3.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 7:44 pm

    @Unabogie:

    Put it this way: think of what would result from fusing the genes of David Brooks, David Broder, and David Frum. Then imagine it writing an article about how Obama is to blame for excessive partisanship and failure to respect the dignity of his office. You should include a comparison to Nixon.

  4. 4.

    4tehlulz

    October 30, 2010 at 7:45 pm

    @Unabogie: The money quote:

    Moreover, the divisive rhetoric that Obama has pursued can embolden his supporters and critics to take more extreme actions, worsening the spiral.

    OKC II will be Obama’s fault.

  5. 5.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 30, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    My rich Republican friend linked it on his Facebook. I could tell from the little blurb and my friend’s endorsement that it would be unreadable.

  6. 6.

    PeakVT

    October 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    Concern political consultant is concerned. About his next meal ticket.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    I’m always surprised by the broad range of people who lost their damn minds when Obama was elected.

  8. 8.

    cathyx

    October 30, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    Here’s a summation of the article. Blah, blah, blah. Nothingburger. Blah, blah, blah.

  9. 9.

    scav

    October 30, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    @morzer: pish. Having defined what “America” is (in their own image and serving their own needs), they’ve just moved on to defining everything and everyone else for the same purposes. They’re textually masturbating to a mirror and demanding center stage as “serious folk” — it amuses them but we don’t have to play along.

  10. 10.

    Unabogie

    October 30, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    @4tehlulz: @morzer:

    And we’re losing to these clowns?

    Hahaha!

    Haha!

    Wait, why am I laughing?

  11. 11.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 30, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    I like how if people decide to hate you, that makes _you_ “divisive.” That’s just bizarre. It’s like saying that your mom is “divisive” because you threw yourself down on the floor of the grocery store and refused to get up. That kind of strong reaction shows that everyone in the family doesn’t see eye to eye, and Mom has to be partly to blame for those kind of antics, don’t you think?

  12. 12.

    Linkmeister

    October 30, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    Wikipedia on Caddell. Broke with Democratic leadership after acrimonious disagreement with consultants, it says. He’s a bitter bitter man.

  13. 13.

    Janet in Virginia

    October 30, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    The rally was great. Very entertaining and inspiring. The only thing missing was a group singalong of Kumbaya. Weather was great, the talent was good, lots of typical Stewart/Colbert hi-jinks, the crowd was friendly and earnest, Tony Bennett, Cat Stevens, Ozzy Osborne … be sure to watch it if you can on C-Span or Comedy Central. Oh, and Kareem Abdul Jabar, R2D2. Seriously. Many more guest appearances, I can’t remember them all.
    We heard there were 10 million people there.

  14. 14.

    Mark S.

    October 30, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    New tag: Black Richard Nixon.

  15. 15.

    AB

    October 30, 2010 at 7:50 pm

    All hand-wringing about Jon Stewart and false equivalences aside, I still feel that he’s at his best when he’s deadly serious. Some bits of the rally worked better than others, but his speech at the end was the biggest helping of “fuck, yeah” I’ve had in a while.

    The crowd was also enormous. This is my first time in DC and on the Mall, so there’s no way I’d try and give a numerical estimate, but where I was the tightly-packed standing people went on pretty much forever. Signs and bodies and more signs and more bodies.

  16. 16.

    Elizabelle

    October 30, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    Not gonna read it, thanks John.

    Caddell and Doug Schoen are Dick Morris lite.

    The Hillbuzz skim was enough for me.

  17. 17.

    kwAwk

    October 30, 2010 at 7:52 pm

    Okay. I only got through the first sentence in that post before I had to start laughing.

    Thanks for the link.

    Seriously, anybody who could possibly blame Obama for the breakdown in in bi-partisanship has serious delusional issues.

  18. 18.

    Ked

    October 30, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    I posted mine in the open thread.

    Too tired to write it again. Also, dinner reservations. I see some artisanal cheese in my near future.

  19. 19.

    Jared

    October 30, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    Obama needs to do a better job of reaching out to Republicans and giving them a seat at the table so they can call him a secret Muslim socialist terrorist to his face.

  20. 20.

    suzanne

    October 30, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    Can you post a quote so we don’t have to…you know…actually read it there?

    Seconded. I don’t want to give page clicks to bungholes, or waaste valuable seconds of my life that I’m never gonna get back.

    Just did some GOTV for the AZ Dems today. God, I hope we pull it out.

  21. 21.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 7:55 pm

    @morzer:

    … think of what would result from fusing the genes of David Brooks, David Broder, and David Frum.

    Ye gaaaaaawds… fusing the genes?

    Who got who pregnant?

    And how?

  22. 22.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    That bug eyed fucker gives me the willies. The worst kind of vichy democrat./ A parasite that would sell out his own mother for a juicy political consultant contract sucking up much needed campaign cash for worthwhile projects. They nearly drained dry the corpse of the DNC for years, and iMO were a prime factor for losing so many elections going back to the sixties. It is one thing I will always be grateful to Howard Dean for helping to break that cycle and expand the party funds out into the states. Cadell is now, like his bud Schoen and others, out to destroy Obama and dems for cutting off his DNC sugar tit.

  23. 23.

    pickledjazz

    October 30, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Where the ‘mother arse’ do these people come up with these notions passing for articles? Who are these nonentities anyway? I am pretty sure they are being paid to come up with this sheiss. They have no fricking shame for their slander,spin,and lies. But then, that is all they can do -complain, be cynical, negative,complain,whinge and respond.
    Not one thing productive to offer in a whole article. Pity them.
    These folks are disingenious unpatriotic critters from hell. Go crawl back to your holes.

  24. 24.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    We can think of only one other recent president who would display such indifference to the majesty of his office: Richard Nixon.

    Apparently ‘we’ were in a self-induced coma during the Bush years…

  25. 25.

    Snayke

    October 30, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Phew! If only more Democrats had the guts to say what Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen say. What a bunch of heroes.

    These guys are the precise reason the media has trained people to believe that Democrats should always turn the other cheek and when they bring out the knives, well it’s time to read your Emily Post goddammit.

    Of course, Democrats haven’t helped themselves by being aloof douche bags since 1980, but the trend will not reverse itself anytime soon, not as long as “Fox News Democrats” are on the beat.

  26. 26.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    @pickledjazz:

    Where the ‘mother arse’ do these people come up with these notions passing for articles?

    DeVry University of Political Journalism…

  27. 27.

    El Cid

    October 30, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    The real and underlying problem is that Obama had policies and positions, to some degree.

    Had Obama had no policies and no positions, and just shut up and signed whatever was passed by an even number of Democrats and Republicans, then America Would Be United.

  28. 28.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity:

    I suspect it was a secret ritual involving a turkey baster and a much-fucked chicken. But they aren’t witches.

  29. 29.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 8:03 pm

    @Janet in Virginia: The wingnuts are reporting ten people showed at the Rally. You forgot to apply the wingnut divisor.

  30. 30.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 8:03 pm

    How many times did the word “uppity” occur in the article? (I’m not going to check myself.)

  31. 31.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    @kwAwk: That was my experience as well. I only made it through one sentence. Then I started thinking that maybe it’s time to reread Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.

  32. 32.

    Hunter Gathers

    October 30, 2010 at 8:08 pm

    Well , Caddell’s gotta eat don’t he? By the looks of him and his buddy Doug, their tab at the Sizzler is quite hefty.

  33. 33.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 8:09 pm

    @morzer:

    Indeed… and involving David, David, and David…

    Perhaps they should bill themselves as The Three Castrati and go on tour…

  34. 34.

    Martin Gifford

    October 30, 2010 at 8:09 pm

    WaPo = Concern Trolls

    Nevertheless, I enjoy seeing weak, incompetent, immoral politicians getting attacked.

    And it’s a beautiful irony that he grovelled to the Republicans and let them off the hook in every way, and now gets attacked for being divisive. LOL.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 8:11 pm

    Some good snark from commenter johnnyzhivago at Wonkette:

    No more than 10-20 people there, but the librul media has Hollywood CGI guys make it look like 100,000. You can tell because when you zoom in, they appear to be walking and standing on their own (no scooters, no walkers, no QVC lawn chairs), so they can’t be real.

  36. 36.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    Sniffing angel panties again, or is that glue?

  37. 37.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    Yeah, but anyone over the age of 15 knew that was going to happen…

    Just look at the way they treated Clinton no matter how many times he rolled over and gave them just what they wanted…

    I guess Obama got bonus hate for simply being black…

  38. 38.

    thomas Levenson

    October 30, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    Let me say of Caddell what Carville said of Ham Jordan after Jordan went to work for Ross Perot:

    “I wouldn’t piss down his throat if his heart were on fire.”

  39. 39.

    quaint irene

    October 30, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    I’m sure Breitbart will quote it in his new gig at ABC news. Heckuva job, media.

    Latest I read over at News Hounds is that Breitbart made the whole thing up on his website. ABC has released that it B is not a consultant, has not been hired by ABC, will not be providing election night coverage, etc, etc. The only thing he was invited to do was be one of many others in a kind of town hall format on Tuesday to give their particular take.

    I suppose Breitbart will just say he was just acting as a kind of provocateur.

  40. 40.

    pto892

    October 30, 2010 at 8:16 pm

    I went and couldn’t see anything. I arrived via the Green Line before noon, but the mall was so incredibly crowded that I couldn’t see the stage, or even a jumbotron. So I spent my time walking around and taking in the signs, talking to people, and hanging out. The crowd was pleasant and mellow, everyone seemed in a good mood. So while I didn’t see any entertainment in person, I’m still glad I went. For what it’s worth that crowd was as big as I’ve ever seen in DC, short of the Obama inauguration. I managed to get out ahead of the escalator collapse in L’Enfant Plaza, but my son got stuck in the aftermath.

  41. 41.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    October 30, 2010 at 8:19 pm

    Pat Caddell is a quisling. And I liked Foucault’s Pendulum.

    As for the Rally, fun, great, inspiring, fun. The best part was not the rally but those who came. I met many wonderful people on the Metro who came long distances to be counted. The thing is, sincere is good, and the Rally was sincere, but earnest is troubling, so many shy away from earnest.

  42. 42.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    @Mnemosyne: That was some excellent snark in the comment thread.

  43. 43.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    @quaint irene:

    I suppose Breitbart will just say he was just acting as a kind of provocateur.

    And no doubt this somehow involved furry handcuffs, Vaseline, and a dildo…

  44. 44.

    Shalimar

    October 30, 2010 at 8:21 pm

    You really need to give Doug Schoen equal credit for this garbage. Even Caddell isn’t capable of producing it alone.

  45. 45.

    sven

    October 30, 2010 at 8:21 pm

    Here is what I learned about Doug Schoen after 10 secs with the Google:

    He says he is a liberal

    He is an analyst for Fox News

    He is a partner in Mark Penn’s political consulting firm

    He is co-authoring a book with Scott Rasmussen called
    Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    @quaint irene:

    Considering that ABC is the most conservative of the three networks, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a trial balloon to see if they could get Breitbart back on the air without anyone protesting.

    Fortunately, the answer turned out to be, “Nope.”

  47. 47.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    @sven:

    He says he is a liberal
    __
    He is an analyst for Fox News
    __
    He is a partner in Mark Penn’s political consulting firm
    __
    He is co-authoring a book with Scott Rasmussen called
    Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System

    Altogether now: “Which of these things is not like the other things?”

  48. 48.

    Onkel Bob

    October 30, 2010 at 8:27 pm

    That’s the worst you got? WaPo has much better Concern Troll material here: Stromberg on Sanity (as if he’d recognize it when he saw it.)

  49. 49.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    OT: John C, I hope you are being well paid for these stupid Rick Perry ads I’ve had to endure for the past couple of days. It’s really irritating.

  50. 50.

    HRA

    October 30, 2010 at 8:30 pm

    I don’t have the energy either. Pat Caddell, IMO, was washed up a long time ago and nothing he says matters now.

  51. 51.

    fasteddie9318

    October 30, 2010 at 8:31 pm

    I imagine Caddell’s thought process when co-writing this to have been something like:

    “Hum-ah! This hee-yah Nee-gro has defiled–I say, DEE-filed–the honahble office of the presidency! Next he’ll be a-comin’ for owah fine, upstandin’ white ladies! This, suh, cannot–I say CANNOT–be allowed to stand!”

  52. 52.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 8:33 pm

    @sven:

    He is co-authoring a book with Scott Rasmussen…

    A book that will disappear down the memory hole once a white Republican is back in the White House and the Tea Party goes poof overnight.

  53. 53.

    Mike in NC

    October 30, 2010 at 8:33 pm

    Patrick H. Caddell is a political commentator and pollster.

    All you needed to know. All pollsters need to be strung up by their tiny balls and beaten with baseball bats.

  54. 54.

    Oliver

    October 30, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    You folks are ever bit as thin skinned as our haughty President. Somebody drop one little negative comment and you all start crying just like He does.

  55. 55.

    Alex S.

    October 30, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    Doug Schoen is a member of the consulting firm Penn, Schoen & some 3rd guy, that is, Mark Penn’s place. They were the ones who put out that “half of the Democrats want a primary challenge to Obama”-poll. I guess that this whining about “sad traditional liberal Democrats” is part of a campaign that will probably kick into high gear after the midterms and the ensuing self-flagellation among Democrats. Who knows…if they can’t get Hillary to run, they might choose Evan Bayh.

  56. 56.

    demkat620

    October 30, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    I remember Caddell going on Hannity’s show right before the ’04 elections claiming that he had polling that showed that African American voters were leaving the Democratic party over gay marriage.

    He said George Bush and the Republicans were bringing an electoral hurricane down on the Democrats and he predicted Bush would win well over 350 electoral votes in ’04.

    That happened right?

  57. 57.

    Martin Gifford

    October 30, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    @General Stuck:

    Sniffing angel panties again, or is that glue?

    Does that mirror talk back?

    @The Republic of Stupidity:

    Yeah, but anyone over the age of 15 knew that was going to happen…

    But then why didn’t Obama know it would happen? Maybe he did.

    He missed a historic opportunity to do the right thing and set America back on track, but cemented corruption in place with his bipartisanship, and not looking back. Then he gets criticised for being divisive.

    I think it’s best to tell the truth and dig for the truth, and if that is divisive – in the short term – then so be it.

  58. 58.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    Does that mirror talk back?

    lame

  59. 59.

    MikeBoyScout

    October 30, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    Somebody over at the Kaplan Kerfuffle needs to write a piece blaming Obama for their cat throwing a hair ball.

    By the way, how in 2010 is Caddell relevant and to whom?

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    @Oliver:

    You folks are ever bit as thin skinned as our haughty uppity President.

    Fix’d.

  61. 61.

    change

    October 30, 2010 at 8:43 pm

    Three days left until change…

    You would do well to listen to Caddell. He personally say during the Carter years first hand what a failed Presidency is like…and we’re witnessing Carter II as we speak.

  62. 62.

    pointer

    October 30, 2010 at 8:45 pm

    Gotta love the way they say Obama should tone down the rhetoric while themselves using incendiary language:

  63. 63.

    Mark S.

    October 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    @Onkel Bob:

    Wow, that was some Grade-A dogshit. Any criticism of corporations or war is malicious and unreasonable. And I’ve never heard of a 2% asset tax proposal, but apparently it’s worse than anything Hitler ever did.

  64. 64.

    Jeffro

    October 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    Best sign at the Stewart/Colbert thing today:

    “My wife thinks I’m out hiking the Appalachian Trail”

  65. 65.

    Liberal Sandlapper

    October 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    I couldn’t get past the first fucking paragraph. What a dick wad.

  66. 66.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 8:46 pm

    @Oliver: You want the pink capsule, not the white one.

  67. 67.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    @jwb: I get Al Paladino ads and Sharron Angle for Senate ads. Make it stop.

  68. 68.

    Jrod the Cookie Thief

    October 30, 2010 at 8:48 pm

    @Oliver: We’re saying that the negative comment was a bald-faced lie. That’s different from crying. You know, lies? Things that are factually untrue? You don’t know what I mean? Of course you don’t.

    Sure, Obama’s the thin-skinned one. Bush had to resort to drastic, unconstitutional measures to keep the barest hint of criticism well away from himself, lest he spend all night pouting until somebody brought him some ice cream, but that’s nothing compared to Obama calling bullshit on blatant bullshit one god damn time.

  69. 69.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    You haven’t got very far on your road to enlightenment, have you, lad?

  70. 70.

    Tom Q

    October 30, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    @Mnemosyne: How can you tell which of the three old networks is most conservative? CBS has Chip Reid spewing anti-Obama bile covering the White House every night; Brian Williams has appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and thinks Peggy Noonan is due for a Pultizer; and ABC has Jake “Fox is our sister station” Tapper explaining how badly things are going for Democrats. I think it’s whatever you’re watching at the moment that feels most conservative.

    Whenever I try to convince myself the mainstream media are just obtuse and easily gulled rather than openly right-leaning, I have to remind myself that they allow people like Caddell –who’s been trashing Democrats since the Clinton years — to self-identify as liberal Democrats, and I don’t think anyone could be that gullible and hold down a job.

  71. 71.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 8:50 pm

    @Oliver:

    Your comment is approximately two years past its sell by date, but thanks for your invaluable contribution.

  72. 72.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 30, 2010 at 8:50 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    And it’s a beautiful irony that he grovelled to the Republicans and let them off the hook in every way, and now gets attacked for being divisive.

    The really sad thing is that he [Obama] is correct in that bipartisanship would be good for the country. We do have a lot of problems that need to be tackled together. And it would have been wonderful if we could have done just that.

    But alas, it was not to be.

    Now if we as Democrats could just get some street smarts, just enough to march over the Republicans and do what needs to be done anyway.

    [Yeah, I would love to kick them while we are marching over them but he is a better person than I am.]

    But is it funny when a good man is ridiculed for trying to do the right thing? No. Not by a long shot. Will you and everyone else get away for laughing at his discomfort? Probably.

    Because the world suck, that’s why.

  73. 73.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 8:51 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    He missed a historic opportunity to do the right thing and set America back on track, but cemented corruption in place with his bipartisanship

    This kind of puerile nonsense usual comes from the very young. You have no idea what you are talking about, other than some around the edges that Obama could have tried differently, the levers of government in this country are about numbers when crunch time comes to voting. The Republicans have staged a capitol coup of sorts and stopped participating. Whatever concessions Obama offered them, and they were mostly meager, they rejected outright in favor of carrying their coup of NO. So Obama has been functioning legislatively with a margin of one or two votes in the senate, IN THE DEM CAUCUS, occasionally getting a lone GOP vote, but rarely.

    There is much he likely would do different with fixing the economy, I am sure, but rightly diagnosed from the beginning, when that economy was fully moribund, as he stated, first thing was to get it breathing again. It is now, unlike before, but he will get no cooperation from the wingers to make necessary changes presently. I mean, what would you do, coming into the presnitcy, first black presnit with a near world wide econ collapse to greet you. Do all sorts of drastic changes at once? that theorhetically may be necessary for the long term health of that econ, but likely creating a calamity in the process?

    It is a fair and relative question, imo, when analyzing Obama and his econ policy. Where there is certainly room to criticize, but with the reality of the situation to consider.

    firebagging is shallow and cheap, for the intellectually lazy.

  74. 74.

    maye

    October 30, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    The message I got from the rally:

    Don’t let Congress or cable tv ruin your life.

  75. 75.

    change

    October 30, 2010 at 8:59 pm

    I wonder how many SPEESHUL COMMENTZ Keith Olbermann will have after the GOP landslide?

    Will Michale Moore finally do us all a favor and move to Canada as he threatened to do under Bush?

    Questions, questions on how crazy the liberal loons will be after the GOP takes Congres…

  76. 76.

    sven

    October 30, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    @Ash Can: Every conservative I meet was ‘deeply skeptical’ of the Bush administration. In a few years they will also have opposed the tea parties and Sarah Palin.

  77. 77.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 9:01 pm

    @change:

    I wonder how many SPEESHUL COMMENTZ Keith Olbermann will have after the GOP landslide?

    I hope he says, this is “change” we can flush down the toilet. As I propose, right here, right now. tonight.

  78. 78.

    wazmo

    October 30, 2010 at 9:05 pm

    The recent Washington Post editorial by two people who should have been put out to pasture a decade ago, much to no surprise, is trying to give a dog a bad name and hang it-in this case, President Obama. Obama had the guts to run against all odds, realizing that the US is indeed a unique country-albeit with its share of schizophrenic behavior in the case of its government.

    What’s really happening is-he has succeeded where many have tried and failed before-and his reward is to be slandered both in private and in public. And the GOP, having been successfully hijacked by the most intellectually ignorant and power-hungry folks that had selected Sarah Palin to be one heartbeat away from the football-has begun a purity purge that have Buckley and Goldwater spinning in their graves-all the while engaging in invective that is long on qualitative fury-yet short of anything quantitative.

    Nothing is more telling than McConnells pronouncement that the GOP’s main goal is to make Obama a one-term president-which, in the most recent WaPo waste of bandwidth, curiosuly is absent, while they try to paint Obama as some kind of an neo-Nixon, and while the WaPo fiddles an does a poor job covering the crises of our economic well-being played out, are being journalistcally eviscerated by many bloggers-who seemed more concerned and motivated to do the nuts-and-bolts reprting than the current sorry crop of so-called jounralists in the dead-tree space that is the WaPo.

    We have a choice Tuesday. And, as part of that choice, we have the ability to vote with our browsers as well. Let’s hope that sanity prevails, and that the WaPo realizes that Freedom of Speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

    I call for a boycott of the Washington Post. Don’t give them the clicks that make them tick.

  79. 79.

    Yutsano

    October 30, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    @change:

    Questions, questions on how crazy the liberal loons will be after the GOP takes Congres

    Protip: it’s not usually a smart idea to call the opposite side crazy when your own has been demonstrating said fact for at least 20 months now.

    OT: had no idea Martha Plimpton was such a fucking awesome alto. Even if it was wasted on “God Bless America”.

  80. 80.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    @change:

    Which newspapers and magazines do you regularly read?

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    @Tom Q:

    How can you tell which of the three old networks is most conservative?

    Easy — it’s the network that ran the Bush-worshipping “Path to 9/11” bullshit and tried to pass it off as non-fiction. Even Fox didn’t have the balls to try that.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    October 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm

    @change:

    I wonder how many SPEESHUL COMMENTZ Keith Olbermann will have after the GOP landslide?
    __
    Will Michale Moore finally do us all a favor and move to Canada as he threatened to do under Bush?
    __
    Questions, questions on how crazy the liberal loons will be after the GOP takes Congres…

    Two typos in three sentences, and that’s not even counting the deliberate misspelling in the first sentence.

    I have to admit, that’s pretty impressive.

  83. 83.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm

    @Martin Gifford:

    it’s a beautiful irony that he grovelled to the Republicans and let them off the hook in every way, and now gets attacked for being divisive.

    I’m blockquoting this, in bold, because, even though you evidently don’t realize it, you’ve summarized the entire problem nicely in one sentence: Obama is being, and will continue to be, criticized and blamed for every fucking thing. Whether he’s doing it, not doing it, or maybe possibly thinking about it in someone’s overactive imagination, people will piss and moan about it. BFD; it goes with the territory of being president and I doubt he gives a crap about all the whining. But said whining is accentuated in his case because 1) he’s taking over after a particularly bad eight-year bout of Republicans (cf. the traumatized Left), 2) he’s a Democrat (cf. the Right), and 3) he’s PWB (presidentin’ while black) (cf. a large portion of White America).

    It makes our asses tired.

  84. 84.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 9:12 pm

    @Oliver: Why don’t you just call him uppity? That’ll be more honest.

  85. 85.

    Yutsano

    October 30, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    @Anya: He did. He just went out of his way to avoid the word. Sort of like taboo deformations of ni**er.

    @Ash Can: Remind me to not piss you off. :)

  86. 86.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    @sven: Don’t forget my personal favorite, “Mistakes were made.”

  87. 87.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 9:15 pm

    @morzer: Whatever’s blowing around the park bench at the time.

  88. 88.

    wazmo

    October 30, 2010 at 9:17 pm

    And another point…

    After seeing Cablevision cave to Fox over re-transmission rights, I also call for a petition to the FCC to mandate ala-carte cable and satellite programming.

    The power of the purse, baby….

  89. 89.

    stuckinred

    October 30, 2010 at 9:18 pm

    @change: get lost numbnuts

  90. 90.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 30, 2010 at 9:21 pm

    I like how there are these people out there who have convinced themselves that there was One True Way to smite the Republicans forever, and because Obama didn’t do that, he totally deserves to fail. Let’s say this evening’s edition of the One True Way is “relentlessly investigating the Bush administration.”

    Here’s how that plays out: Fox News squawks about how Democrats got elected to solve problems and instead they’re settling political scores. Republican guests on network news do the same thing. Sunday network talk shows intone gravely about how America is facing grave problems and needs to look forward. It gets hammered and hammered and hammered again. Also, the economy keeps struggling. The Republicans say the reason why the economy is struggling is that Obama is a radical Muslim socia1ist who has let his party waste time with partisanship. As their poll numbers decline, mostly because of the economy, the Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats–who are always looking for an excuse to show that they’re not like those pesky liberals–start sounding off about how terrible is it that these investigations have bogged down the business of the nation, and they can’t in good conscience support them. Liberal and illiberal Democrats fight and point fingers at each other. _We’re right back in the same place_.

    There’s no magic thing that he woulda coulda shoulda done. The Republicans came to town after the election intent on being the biggest dicks they could possibly be, because their numbers were so reduced they had nothing to lose. Regardless of what Obama did, _they were going to do that anyway_, and they’ve been an abhorrent political party for roughly a century and still pull down 47% of the presidential vote in a bad year because the country is full of malevolent jackasses whose foremost pleasure is doing things they think piss off the librulz. Douchebags gotta douche. That’s the problem. They weren’t going away.

    Mitch McConnell is right about one thing: it doesn’t matter how much you act like an asshole in politics if you’re a Republican, because you face zero repercussions, not from voters, and not from the media. There are always enough Republicans that all they have to do is hang together and they can make everything enormously difficult. There used to be Republicans who cared at least somewhat about using their elected office to _do something_. They’re all gone. They’re going to be like this forever, because everyone who thought that this kind of behavior was a problem has already either left or been purged. It doesn’t matter who the president is or what he does or how he talks or how frequently he uses the “bully pulpit.” This is what’s going to happen. Because Republicans just don’t give a shit.

  91. 91.

    mslarry

    October 30, 2010 at 9:23 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    preach it…

  92. 92.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    I still don’t know why the Wannabe Left says that Obama “grovelled to Republicans.” When did that happen? If there’s anyone he has had to coddle repeatedly, it’s been the conservative Democrats. They might hold the views Republicans used to hold, but they’re not Republicans, at least officially.

  93. 93.

    General Stuck

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Primo rant!!

  94. 94.

    bootsy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    One I thing I noticed at the rally was a pretty good proportion of olds to youngs… Sure there were a great deal of younger people, as expected, but it was more like 60/40. Whereas the teabag hate-rallies are 100% decrepit and 70% semi-immobile.

    (Also lots of minorities are there, despite the fact that Colbert and Stewart are white, last I checked. But I thought it was minorities who were the real racists???)

  95. 95.

    Chris Grrr

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    @sven: Props.

    And of course, all of today’s deficit warriors were just as incensed about it three or five years ago.

  96. 96.

    Jim, Once

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    I hope he says, this is “change” we can flush down the toilet. As I propose, right here, right now. tonight.

    Beautiful, Stuck. This thread was so full of win until that little fucker got in. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a night on The Juice more. And that Post abomination? My take on it is, “Obama said the Republicans are divisive! OMG, he’s so divisive for saying that!”

    @Ash Can: Remind me to not piss you off.

    No reminder needed here. Well put. Well put.

  97. 97.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    October 30, 2010 at 9:24 pm

    Also, do we have any reports from the rally?

    I’m about .5 seconds away from falling asleep at the computer so I’ll just say it runs a fairly close second to the Inauguration in terms of “I’m so glad I dragged my lazy misanthropic ass out of the house for a change.”

    Also, I came to a conclusion re: TeaCons.

    They hate us for our ability to have fun.

  98. 98.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 9:25 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Hmmmmmmmmmm…

    ***tap… tap… tap…***

    Not to mention the cheap stereotyping inherent in a trite phrase like ‘liberal loons’…

    Geeez… who was whining here yesterday about ad hominems?

  99. 99.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 9:26 pm

    @change: Since we’re fortune telling, I wonder how many of GOP’s class 2010 will be caught with rent boys, hookers, soliciting an undercover cop in a public place (park or washroom), or any other decidedly non family value scandals?

  100. 100.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    @change: Pie is indeed most excellent, but, as I said last night, strawberry rhubarb is a waste of a good crust.

  101. 101.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity:

    Also too, didn’t the silly child threaten to return on Tuesday? I must say, I find standards of time-keeping and spelling in the troll community quite unsatisfactory. What are they teaching them under those bridges?

  102. 102.

    Jim, Once

    October 30, 2010 at 9:28 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Douchebags gotta douche.

    This is the poster I wanted to see at the rally today. Excellent post, Flip.

  103. 103.

    Yutsano

    October 30, 2010 at 9:29 pm

    @Anya: IOKIYAR has no limits. They can do whatever the fuck they want, say Jeebus haz forgiven them, then go right back to whatever assfuckery they were doing to begin with. This dance never ends.

  104. 104.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 9:29 pm

    @Anya:

    Heh…

    I was going to suggest we form a pool and put down some bets…

    What’s really kinda weird about this is the fact that BJ isn’t really a ‘liberal website’…

    I used to hang out at some truly hardcore lib sites, and this ain’t one of ’em…

  105. 105.

    Oliver

    October 30, 2010 at 9:30 pm

    Come on folks;after nearly two years in office even dumb shits like you should be able to see what a complete moron you elected in a burst of insanity in 2008. He has the word “loser” written all over his sorry ass face.

  106. 106.

    I have issues with Baltimore

    October 30, 2010 at 9:30 pm

    Got home from the rally an hour ago. It was a blast. Accidentally got a great parking spot down at the Nationals ballpark. Accidentally got a great spot in the crowd 1/3 of the way back from the stage, just past 3rd Ave. Accidentally fell asleep with a half-chewed bite of pull-pork sandwich in my mouth at a friend’s post-rally bbq. My only complaint: Kid Rock. WTF? The way Stewart built up the introduction, we were convinced it was going to be Springsteen. Instead it was some dude who we thought had died of a heroin overdose 10 years ago.

  107. 107.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    @morzer:

    Yes…

    If one is going to lie about such basics…

  108. 108.

    gogol's wife

    October 30, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:
    This.

  109. 109.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 9:32 pm

    @morzer: And time keeping aside, you’d think change could find some better way to occupy his time than coming over here and ranting about the virtues of strawberry rhubarb pie!

  110. 110.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 30, 2010 at 9:33 pm

    @Anya: Does any of that stuff actually ruin a Republican’s political career anymore? Vitter, Ensign, Sanford… they all just don’t budge. When Rick Scott can head a company that is fined a billion dollars for Medicare fraud and still be _leading_ polls in Florida, I don’t think anything matters. The Republicans realized that at some point, and their whole political philosophy became “Fuck you, make me.”

  111. 111.

    Yutsano

    October 30, 2010 at 9:33 pm

    @Oliver: Really? I see a whole shit ton of progressive legislation and the biggest advance in healthcare since 1965 getting passed. But if that is your definition of “loser” I can accept that.

  112. 112.

    Jim, Once

    October 30, 2010 at 9:34 pm

    @Oliver:
    Come on, kid. You’re not even trying here.

  113. 113.

    morzer

    October 30, 2010 at 9:35 pm

    @Oliver:

    I am sure our president would be gratified to know you’ve been staring at his face for two years. That’s serious worship, right there.

  114. 114.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 9:36 pm

    The trolling standards around this place have really declined. Either they are all sock puppets minded by inattentive masters or they know they are in for a world of butthurt if the Goopers are actually successful on Tuesday.

  115. 115.

    mslarry

    October 30, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    the majority of the voters are pig ignorant and proud, the opposition party is filled with at best bad actors and at worse sociopaths. honestly, i wouldn’t blame obama if he pulled a Palin at this point and just quit america. how are you supposed to govern when a large majority of this Country is a puss oozing asshole?

  116. 116.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    @Oliver: You just desperately want Obama to be as bad as Bush was, don’t you, you poor thing?

  117. 117.

    Kathy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: and @mslarry:
    Preach it all youz!

  118. 118.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    @jwb:

    No they haven’t…

    Trolling standards never existed in the first place…

  119. 119.

    sven

    October 30, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    @Chris Grrr: I visited a local tea party event last month. They spent at least 45 minutes discussing nothing but wasteful agricultural subsidies. I also learned about a new activist group called “Seniors Against Phased-In Cuts to Entitlements”. They seemed very passionate about personally shouldering some of the burden for budget cuts. This time Republican Rule really will be different!

  120. 120.

    bootsy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    @Yutsano: No no no, you misunderestimate him. That is his definition of the “word” loser, which is a much more complex concept, a vertiable fractal of ambiguous meanings… Starting with the question of what is a “word”, anyway? And then continuing on to a meditation on the profound loss suffered when one “loses” a “word.”

    (This is 12-dimensional teabaggery! The testicles manifest inside your mouth, without touching your chin.)

  121. 121.

    TR

    October 30, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Fuck and yes.

  122. 122.

    KG

    October 30, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @Ash Can:

    Obama is being, and will continue to be, criticized and blamed for every fucking thing.

    While not actually in Article II of the Constitution, that’s pretty much one of the main aspects of the job. Has been since Washington was sworn into office in New York City.

    @FlipYrWhig: bipartisanship (which, ironically, is what polls are still showing people want) doesn’t work without the “bi” part. You need two parties to be bipartisan. You’re absolutely right that the GOP has had no interest in being bipartisan as a minority party. Conversely, when they were the minority in the first half of the Bush Administration, Democrats were actually willing to work with Republicans. Didn’t do them much good.

  123. 123.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: No, I think the trolls around this place used to be far more interesting. I had to pie the two on this thread almost immediately, the stupid was so thick.

  124. 124.

    Kathy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    @Oliver: Fine, you hate Obama and have nothing constructive to contribute. I suggest you go hang with your fellow jobs, both nut and whack.

    h/t Angry Black Lady (p.s. tampons are on me next time)

  125. 125.

    Yutsano

    October 30, 2010 at 9:41 pm

    @bootsy: I’d buy that if there were any evidence of his intellectual capacity to understand extra-dimensionality. As it is, I doubt he could get through an episode of Star Trek without descending into fits of cornfuzzlement.

  126. 126.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    @Yutsano: The only exception to this rule is if the hypocrite is gay since they all hate the gays. Bt at least they cannot lecture us on family values after they are caught.
    @The Republic of Stupidity: Let’s start this pool. I must admit that I don’t know much about the crazies coming from the South.

  127. 127.

    Loneoak

    October 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    If Obama was more black or less black this wouldn’t be a problem. His dual nature and ambiguous Muslinity is to blame for our propensity to lose our fucking minds all the time.

  128. 128.

    Chris Grrr

    October 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    @I have issues with Baltimore: Springsteen was my expectation too. And my eventual reaction – exactly as yours.
    Not that wannabe again…

    @sven: Well, entitlements do comprise one hundred and eleventy percent of the federal budget, so it really doesn’t make any sense to impact KBR’s reciepts any.
    I’m so gosh-darn reassured to hear that this time it’ll be different.

  129. 129.

    bootsy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    @bootsy: OK, my comment makes even less sense now that troll-boy fixed where he had his quotation marks. Whatever, his president is black, neener neener.

  130. 130.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    October 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    @Oliver: Sigh. You couldn’t hold Darrell’s jock strap. Whatever happened to the great trolls?

  131. 131.

    Ash Can

    October 30, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    @KG: Absolutely, and that’s what I meant by “it goes with the territory of being president.” But in Obama’s case the crazy has been ratcheted up an extra notch.

  132. 132.

    Tim I

    October 30, 2010 at 9:47 pm

    What right does Barrack Obama have to be Black? Who does he think he is?

  133. 133.

    Dennis G.

    October 30, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    @morzer:
    You got that right…

  134. 134.

    Kathy

    October 30, 2010 at 9:49 pm

    @Anya: What is the over/under that someone from the teabag class of 2010 will be caught with a rent boy in a public restroom trying to get his dipper changed? I say 70 %. Kathy plus 1 martini and 1/2 bottle of wine.

  135. 135.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 9:49 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: I must admit, I don’t get the people of Florida? Are they that uninformed or they just don’t care? It seems that as long as the candidate has R next to his name, they will elect him governor.

  136. 136.

    lacp

    October 30, 2010 at 9:55 pm

    I clicked the link, and my first thought was that this had to be snark. Then I remembered that these were Very Serious People writing in a Very Serious Newspaper, and recalled Mary McCarthy’s comment about Lillian Hellman (very unfair there, very apposite here): “Everything she writes is a lie, including the words ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

  137. 137.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 9:58 pm

    @jwb:

    I must have missed those days…

    I actually wish we had opposition here that could ya know, actually ‘debate’ an issue… had some real ‘ideas’… would formulate a ‘ meaningful reply’…

    I’m so frickin’ tired of ‘Nananananananaya…’ being passed of as ‘thought provoking commentary’…

    I was at a friend’s house around the time of the Masters Tournament, I think right after Scott Brown had won that special election in Mass for Ted Kennedy’s seat…

    And during a commercial, whilst flipping channels, I came across Pat Buchanan & John McLaughlin giggling like giddy schoolgirls over Teh Newest Hawtie on the Senate Block…

    Needless to say, I felt queasy the rest of the afternoon… goes ta show ya, just how low our national dialogue has sunk…

  138. 138.

    Uloborus

    October 30, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    @Martin Gifford: and at the same time @General Stuck:
    No, this is ‘He should have prosecuted Bush and Cheney’. I think it’s amazing that people think a bit of revenge we’d all love to have had would somehow have changed everything.

  139. 139.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 10:02 pm

    @Anya:

    Yer on…

    My money…

    ***slaps Andrew Jackson down on beer-soaked bar…***

    Sez we catch John Bohner in bed w/ Sean Hannity…

    Oh wait…

    ***palm to forehead…***

    Bohner’s ALREADY in bed w/ Hannity… old news… my bad…

  140. 140.

    Kathy

    October 30, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: I see your “Bohner in Bed with Hannity” and raise you Rush in bed with David Vitter and his prostitute.

  141. 141.

    jwb

    October 30, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: Mark my words, if the Goopers win on Tuesday, neener-neener debates will count as sophisticated discourse for the next two years.

  142. 142.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 10:16 pm

    @Kathy:

    Nonononono…

    ***wags finger in Kathy’s direction…***

    ‘El Rushbo’, as he likes to call himself… is strictly an Oxy-and-little-brown-boys-in-Speedos’ kinda depraved moral freak…

    Vitter is waaaaaaaaaaaay too old for Rush, but the diaper does give the… the… ‘air’ of infantilism to that scenario, dunnit?

  143. 143.

    Cacti

    October 30, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    Pat who wrote what?

  144. 144.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    October 30, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    Pat Caddell is a fine example of the bipartisan consensus and cooperation that President Obama has been so successful at eliciting and which he has vowed to continue after the election come what may.

    The man simply doesn’t have a quitter’s bone in his body.

  145. 145.

    Triassic Sands

    October 30, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    The Republican Party has offered no narrative or broad solution, and it has campaigned exclusively to take advantage of the negative environment. It contributes merely a promise of a more hostile environment after Tuesday.

    The second-to-last paragraph in an essay devoted to criticizing Obama. Yet, the first sentence is no more true today than it was on January 21. In Caddell’s parallel universe (where David Broder is Emperor) Obama needs to continue to make every effort to compromise with people who have made it clear they absolutely won’t cooperate with him. The old cliche about insanity applies here. A lot of Democrats think Obama continued to try to compromise with Republicans long after it was obvious his efforts were a total failure. He accepted weakening legislation in order to attract Republican votes when it was obvious those votes were not going to be forthcoming (and even if they had been, they weren’t worth the price). Yet, the Caddells and Broders think Obama should have redoubled his efforts, proving beyond any doubt that he is totally insane. And now, two years into his first term, with no evidence whatever that Republicans would ever have cooperated with Obama on anything (even legislation written by Republicans), the Bro-dells think Obama needs to offer the country a strengthened vision of compromise.

    I think Obama is doomed. In a country where there is almost no media integrity left, he is never going to get a fair shake. His real failings, and he has some serious ones, are almost insignificant when stacked up against the imaginary failings that he keeps getting blamed for having.

    Another thing that points to the complete inanity of this Caddell/Schoen essay is FDR. He is almost universally regarded as on of our best presidents (ranked somewhere between 1st and 3rd), yet his rhetoric was filled with harsh criticism and partisanship. When a party is as empty as the modern GOP, the only place to rally sane people is in complete opposition to the Party of Know Nothing/Do Nothing/Tax Nothing. In my estimation, if Obama is guilty of anything in this regard, it’s too little, too late.

    And then “sven” writes this:

    This time Republican Rule really will be different!

    WTF?

  146. 146.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: Michelle Bachmann sex vid with Ben Quayle.

  147. 147.

    SIA

    October 30, 2010 at 10:29 pm

    Since I was idjit enough to read the effing column, I decided to read the comments too. I skipped the ones using “Obummer” etc.

    mpl2 wrote: “We write in sadness as traditional liberal Democrats…”
    ___
    Caddell and Schoen, would you stop playing us all for fools? You’ve been FOX “News” commentators and the farthest thing from “Democrats” for a helluva long time. If you’re “Democrats”, I’m the Queen of Sheba. Stop the charade. No one but other FOX “News” junkies are buying it.

    BBear1 wrote:
    It’s quite apparent that the people who currently run the WaPo are building a right wing base to increase the value of the paper in anticipation of a sale to Rupert Murdoch.

    larrybellinger wrote:
    Goldpitt – these guys are Democratic pollsters and strategists who lost in the 2008 primaries. The only place you see them these days is on Faux News where they peddle this horse spit for fun and profit.

  148. 148.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    @jwb:

    I hafta agree w/ that… as amply evinced by the assorted troll musings posted here in just the last two days…

    At least two more years of “Dang… paste DO taste better’n boogers” being treated as meaningful commentary…

  149. 149.

    Maody

    October 30, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: Bravo

  150. 150.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 30, 2010 at 10:40 pm

    @Anya:

    I’ll see ya and raise you a girl-on-girl of Bachmann & Palin…

  151. 151.

    M

    October 30, 2010 at 10:41 pm

    Couple notes on the rally – there were at least 300k people there and 2) I saw, and got pics of, the FSM

  152. 152.

    Mojotron

    October 30, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    it was a metric shit-ton of people. I was at 7th street and could barely see anything other than a mass of people in all directions and a jumbotron. They did not expect this many people and didn’t plan to shut streets down, but did it when it got overwhelming. Lots of good signs (the one sticking in my head right now had a pic of O’Donnell and Palin- “Long-haired Freaky People Need Not Apply”), lots of ironic non-signs, lots of people climbing trees, someone dressed at Dr. Rockso, some alien anchor babies, and a bunch of other good costumes. Audio was terrible throughout the place during the mythbusters thing (which was pretty lame) but was fine for bands, and was fixed for us by the time Stewart came on (though I understand most people beyond 8th street couldn’t hear squat). The Peace Train/Crazy Train/Love Train was the highlight for me, I left when Kid Rock came on and watched Tony Bennett and the serious speech from a bar. even the side streets were packed when I left. Much fun.

  153. 153.

    Chris

    October 30, 2010 at 10:58 pm

    “Traditional liberal Democrats,” my ass. Schoen’s a traditional corporate-whore cash-chasing hippie-hater, and Caddell could only be Fred Hiatt’s favorite Democrat because he’s (1) done nothing for the party this year/this decade/in the last thirty years, (2) a reliable concern troll, and (3) the DC establishment’s idea of what a Very Serious Democrat should be. Which is to say, someone who hates actual Democrats as much as the rest of the right.

    Which means they’ll always be able to get onto the Post’s op-ed page.

  154. 154.

    Anya

    October 30, 2010 at 11:21 pm

    @The Republic of Stupidity: you’ll lose on this one because Palin strikes me as boy crazy.

  155. 155.

    Steeplejack

    October 30, 2010 at 11:56 pm

    I just got home about 10:00 from a long but exhilirating day in the District of Columbia: first attending the Stewart/Colbert rally–and undergoing a big adventure just to get there–then seeing the documentary Waiting for Superman and finally having dinner at the excellent restaurant Ten Penh. I am spent, and my Droid is spent. It is hooked up to the charger with its tongue hanging out.

    I took a bunch of pictures at the rally and will try to get a Flickr stream up tomorrow morning. For now here are some impressions:

    First the adventure of getting there. The Metro system is going to get a huge black eye, because they were totally unprepared for the number of people who showed up. It looked like they were running a regular Saturday train schedule until well into the early afternoon, at which point they were desperately playing catch-up (and failing). It took my brother and me almost two hours to get from the Ballston Metro station to the Smithsonian station, which usually takes about 15 minutes. And we had to do it by taking a train from Ballston going the wrong way and riding it all the way west to the end of the line and then back into the District. That was the only way we could even get on a train. The first three trains coming into Ballston from the west were packed to the gills–I mean Tokyo-bullet-train packed–at which point we decided to cross over and go the other way. And our train was packed to the gills by the time we reached the west end of the line, because of people at other stops using our same strategy.

    Once we finally got downtown, we found that the whole area around the Mall was very crowded. All of the streets in the immediate vicinity were blocked off for pedestrian traffic only, and the crowds were thick. The Mall itself was packed, although the crowd might look bigger on TV than it really was, because a lot of the grass quadrangles toward the back were fenced off to prevent trampling. So the crowd was not completely “wall to wall.” And there was a lot of spillover into the adjacent streets.

    I was pretty far back in the crowd and missed a lot of the content of the show, because there weren’t enough Jumbotrons and the sound system was very anemic. I think the organizers themselves were not prepared for how many people would show up. My semi-informed wild-ass guess (former journalist who covered some big events back in the day, but I didn’t have access to the jetpack or the helicopter today) is 150,000 to 200,000 people. I’m willing to be corrected, but not by any estimate under 100,000. And I could well be underestimating the crowd myself.

    Janet’s comment at 13–“We heard there were 10 million people there”–is, of course, a joke, because we heard that from Jon Stewart himself, who looked over the crowd and said that it didn’t matter how many people were actually there, it only mattered what the mainstream media reported. So he said everyone should push the number 10 million. I’m fine with that.

    One indication of crowd size: the cell towers were so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even send text messages, much less make voice calls. (At other big events voice call access sometimes dies but you can still send text messages with no problems.) So I was unable to send any pictures to the Balloon Juice front-pagers. I did send one of a jammed train at Ballston to Cole’s e-mail address, but it will probably languish until it gets erased in his next “I hosed your thousands of messages” rampage. But I digress.

    Like I said, I missed a lot of the rally content, but from talking afterward with friends who were closer I don’t think I missed much. The musical talent was all over the place. Tony Bennett sang “God Bless America” toward the end–WTF?!–but that was redeemed by Mavis Staples ending the show with a rocking version of “I’ll Take You There.”

    My brother and I knew going in that we would probably see less at the rally than we would on TV, but we both wanted to be there in that “I was at Woodstock! Really!” “Yeah, right” kind of way. Mission accomplished.

    The crowd was awesome. I was really impressed with the demographic cross-section. Lots of young people and a lot of diversity. It wasn’t just (as I half-feared it would be) middle-aged DFHs striving for some sort of retro Dead concert/politically relevant déjà vu thing. I think even Matoko_chan would have been satisfied. Lots of people with dogs, lots of people with kids and babies. Even people in wheelchairs and–gasp!–scooters. The anti-Tea Party.

    In particular, I was impressed by the signs people were carrying. Lots of them were very funny and very pointed. Occasionally I worry that as an avid Balloon Juice reader I’m in danger of spiraling downward into some really “inside baseball” political cul-de-sac with its own murky lingo, so it was heartening to see a lot of signs riffing off the same memes and language that we do here. What crystalized that for me was when I saw one guy’s huge sign that simply said “Meh.”

    Other signs:

    “I masturbate and I vote.”
    __
    “Gay Islamic Mexicans are raising my taxes.”
    __
    “Boycott Fox–Oops, I Forgot How Much I Love Glee.”
    __
    “Am I Too Late for the Glenn Beck Rally?”
    __
    (Picture of Uncle Sam): “I Want YOU . . . to Stop Drawing Hitler Mustaches on Everyone.”

    All in all a great day. I was glad I went. Now I’ll be interested to see the media coverage over the next few days.

  156. 156.

    ljdramone

    October 30, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    I got down to the Mall about 1:15 after waiting almost 2 hours in line at the College Park Metro (lots of newless cluebies who didn’t know how to buy a farecard.)

    Never got closer than 7th St, quite a ways from the nearest Jumbotron. Had binoculars, so I was able to recognize Ozzy and see part of the Peace Train/Crazy Train/Love Train bit. Happy fun crowd, great signs. Organizers and authorities clearly didn’t expect that many people. We decided to get back on the Green Line just before the rally ended to beat the rush.

    Heard from my sister, who didn’t make it down there until after the rally was over but hung out for 3 hours anyway, people-watching and checking out signs.

    CBS News says 215,000 people were there (+/- 10%), using the same aerial photo service that estimated 87,000 for Glenn Beck’s shindig in August.

  157. 157.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 12:11 am

    @Steeplejack:

    Some good pictures from CBS News. (h/t Zuzu’s Petals)

  158. 158.

    Zuzu's Petals

    October 31, 2010 at 12:14 am

    Link to CBS News crowd estimate here.

  159. 159.

    D-Chance.

    October 31, 2010 at 12:17 am

    Also, do we have any reports from the rally?

    The 53 car wins at the end…

  160. 160.

    General Stuck

    October 31, 2010 at 12:24 am

    @Steeplejack:

    I didn’t watch the thing, but aside from some of the disappointed liberal memes, I like that Stewart held this rally, if for no other reason to see a bunch of people gathered with some anti tea party signs, after seeing nothing but wingnuts rally with “Don’t tread on me” and Obama witchdoctor placards.

  161. 161.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 12:37 am

    More rally sign pictures here.

  162. 162.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 12:48 am

    @General Stuck:

    Yeah, I was kind of surprised at the level of venom in the other thread criticizing the rally for not accomplishing some noble but unspecified goal. (I’ve been catching up on that thread.) I never expected the rally to be some sort of epic comedy milestone, but I thought that it could be–and after the fact I do think that it was tremendously successful as–an opportunity for the suffering silent majority of “normal” Americans to come out and have a (good-natured and polite, of course) “Fuck you, Beck, Palin and Tea Baggers” moment. And to let the mainstream media know that their narrative of the last two years might have a few (gaping) holes in it.

    Mission accomplished, as far as I’m concerned. And, what the hell, the weather was great, I enjoyed seeing the tremendous diversity of the (mostly happy) people’s faces, and later in the evening I had a wasabi-marinated steak that blew my mind. The streets were still busier than usual when I left downtown at 8:30 p.m.

  163. 163.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 12:51 am

    @Steeplejack:

    TPM slide show here (60 pictures).

    ETA: FYWP! Eating comments again. Grr!

  164. 164.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 12:53 am

    @General Stuck:

    [. . .] Obama witchdoctor placards.

    Heh. There was actually a hilarious Jon Stewart witch doctor picture/sign at the rally. Someone went over the top and loaded it up with every cliché in the book.

  165. 165.

    Mister Papercut

    October 31, 2010 at 12:55 am

    I just got back. Aside from 1) the trip almost being over before it began (I and everyone else had the same idea about taking the Metro from Springfield — when I got there just before 11 a.m. and saw that the line probably, 4 abreast, went out the station, across the skywalk, through the garage, and out onto the road towards Springfield Mall, I figured that did not bode well and nearly turned around and drove the 2 hours back home), 2) getting stuck in a truly scary clot of crowd at 7th St. once we arrived, and 3) ending up so far back that we couldn’t see or hear anything (whatever, I can catch a replay), it was awesome.

    The crowd, the signs and the vibe were fun and funny, and the experience of The Internet being made corporeal was quite something to behold (for example, I saw at least half a dozen xkcd “citation needed” signs just from my vantage point and brief exploring of that section of the Mall, and I got a chuckle out of every one).

  166. 166.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 1:03 am

    Can’t resist quoting this sign from a photo on TPM:

    The Tree of Liberty Must Be Refreshed from Time to Time with the Tears of Morons

  167. 167.

    Kenneth Almquist

    October 31, 2010 at 1:04 am

    The president…campaigned in 2008 by referring not to a “Red America” or a “Blue America” but a United States of America… [On Monday he] urged Hispanic listeners to vote in this spirit: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

    We’re shocked that someone would suggest that people vote for candidates they agree with and against candidates they disagree with.

    Recently, Obama suggested that if Republicans gain control of the House and/or Senate as forecast, he expects not reconciliation and unity but “hand-to-hand combat” on Capitol Hill.

    Which is strange because Republicans, under pressure from Tea Party activists, have been blanketing the airwaves with promises to cooperate with Democrats. Hell, 42 Republican candidates for Congress have pledged that if Republicans win a majority in the House they’ll keep Pelosi as Speaker.

    We write in sadness as traditional liberal Democrats who believe in inclusion.

    If only Obama would come out and admit that he wasn’t a real American, we wouldn’t have all these unpleasant arguments about whether Obama was a real American or not.

    We can think of only one other recent president who would display such indifference to the majesty of his office: Richard Nixon.

    We think trees are blue.

    (OK, let me take a second crack at the last one.)

    Chewing the fat over one too many beers, we were debating whether it was still possible to criticize a Republican in the pages of the Washington Post. We decided that since the Washington Post played a major role in exposing Nixon’s crimes, it would be permissible to allude to those crimes in a piece otherwise devoted to attacking Democrats. If the Post publishes this piece of dreck, we were right.

  168. 168.

    Mark S.

    October 31, 2010 at 1:04 am

    Over 200,000 is amazing.

  169. 169.

    Davis X. Machina

    October 31, 2010 at 1:52 am

    Over 200,000 is amazing.

    Yeah. 250,000 too-cool-for-school Nader voters who just know that it’s all a shuck, and that acting as though any of this politics stuff actually matters is so not fashion-forward.

    Irony, not tyranny, is what will finish off this Republic.

  170. 170.

    Mnemosyne

    October 31, 2010 at 2:08 am

    @Davis X. Machina:

    I think you have the wrong end of the stick here, given the reports that have been posted. Yes, it was a TV personality-driven rally like Glenn Beck’s — which was the stated reason.

    As I said in the other thread, I think the real message of this rally was, “Look, we were able to get 200,000 people to show up for a comedy show. That’s more than twice as many as showed up for Beckapalooza. Will the media please STFU about the powerful powerfulness of the teabaggers now?”

  171. 171.

    Mike G

    October 31, 2010 at 2:43 am

    the escalator collapse in L’Enfant Plaza

    Was anyone screaming that it was a “plot” to sabotage the rally, like the teatards did when faced with some of the escalators being broken?

  172. 172.

    GregB

    October 31, 2010 at 3:01 am

    Read Caddell and Schoen? Sorry, I’m going to run a cheese grater over my nuts then sit in some rubbing aclohol.

    It’s much less painful.

  173. 173.

    JenJen

    October 31, 2010 at 3:18 am

    @Steeplejack: Having worked a double today, I missed the whole thing until getting off work and watching it on the DVR. And I’ve been scanning the internets ever since for a really good report, and you nailed it! That post read as though it were a bowl of ice cream.

    Last time I was in DC was for the Inauguration, and that feels like 10 years ago now. Damn, did this rally ever look like fun. Wish I would’ve just said “to hell with it” and attended. The rent is too damn high, so it was killing me all week for choosing to stay here and work, while the little devil on my shoulder was saying “you know you want to go, and you just should.”

    Thank you so much for taking the time to write this!

  174. 174.

    JenJen

    October 31, 2010 at 3:38 am

    @Steeplejack: Bwaaaah! Those are hilarious!!

    My favorite. I imagine I would’ve walked around all day reading signs and just laughing my ass off, and that sounds like a fine day indeed.

  175. 175.

    Angry Black Lady

    October 31, 2010 at 5:58 am

    Rally was awesome. There were easily eleventh billion people there. I drank too much gin and passed out.

    This is why you should stick to scotch and always leave a note.

    Where am I?

  176. 176.

    Angry Black Lady

    October 31, 2010 at 6:03 am

    I think my favorite bit of the rally was watching three “teenage muslim ninja turtles” with a sign that said “don’t fear our Muslim garb” looking for their fourth Muslim ninja turtle.

    Also, too, don’t drink gin.

  177. 177.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 9:25 am

    @JenJen:

    I imagine I would’ve walked around all day reading signs and just laughing my ass off [. . .].

    That was it exactly. It was a tremendous amount of fun to do that and look at all the people in costume. Or, hell, just to stand in one place and let them stream by you.

    Last night I forgot another of my favorite signs:

    Keep the Fear in Cape Fear
    Tarheels for Panic

    Gotta get a cup of joe to wake up, and then I’m going to see about uploading the pics from my phone to a Flickr stream.

  178. 178.

    Dr. Wu

    October 31, 2010 at 9:49 am

    I now know two guys who’ll be getting all-you-can-eat cocktail weenies at Peggy Noonan’s.

  179. 179.

    Steeplejack

    October 31, 2010 at 11:18 am

    @Steeplejack:

    Oof. My photo-fu on the Droid sucks. Haven’t had the phone very long, and I’m still learning the ins and outs. I lowered the picture resolution because I was worried about running out of space on my SD card, and I went too low. I have a few keepers, but not enough to motivate me to put them up on Flickr. Check the TPM slide show; it’s gold, pure gold.

  180. 180.

    Carol

    October 31, 2010 at 12:36 pm

    @General Stuck: Amen. Cadell’s types refused to fund anything but commercials.

    I also blame them for not allowing Democrats to have a media strategy when the Republicans started taking over talk radio. For years Rush and his followers had unchallenged control of the public discourse. Meanwhile, a lot of local Democratic chapters died on the vine, Southern seats we used to have died completely. An example I remember from the Dean campaign: Dozens of precinct captain seats had long been vacant-it took new Deaniacs in Texas to fill them.
    There were aging Democratic operatives who long needed to retire, but because the baby boom generation was mostly discouraged from entering the party, they were still trying to hang on. Dean began training organizers to go into these places and continue the work.

    The Caddells of the world hated this because it took money and control away from consultants.

    The big difference was that Obama completely showed them up. He didn’t, and doesn’t need them, and he hasn’t hired the crew from Washington. Every political consultant and advisor he’s hired has been from out of town.

  181. 181.

    rickstersherpa

    November 1, 2010 at 8:55 am

    I found out in Frank Rich’s column that Doug Schoen wrote a book with Scott Rasmussen. celebrating the “Tea Party” published by Murdoch. “Typical of this smokescreen is a new book titled “Mad as Hell,” published this fall by a Murdoch imprint. In it, the pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen make the case, as they recently put it in Politico, that the Tea Party is “the most powerful and potent force in America.”

    Rich goes onto defenestrate the book and its use of creative statistics.

    As for Pat Caddell, he also has semi-permanent business relationship with Fox and has been serving as a concern “troll” about Democrats and Democratic politiicans for 20 years. http://mediamatters.org/research/200409160005?src=item200702260002

    Finally, WaPo has probably declared war on the Obama administration because its Department of Education had the gall to point out what a rip-off Kaplan’s for profit college is to both its students and the taxpayers.

    And none of these conflicts of interests, and how the column is simply part of a business plan, is disclosed in the colunm.

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