The takeaway whole thing, stolen shamelessly:
This is how it works:
al Qaeda stirs shit up in the Middle East, because it is 9/11 – the anniversary of their greatest triumph, with a riot creating a ripple effect of protests springing up within other countries in the region.Conservatives, led by RNC chair Reince Priebus seize the day and claim this all happened because Barack Obama is a weak-willed ‘Apologizer in Chief” because it fits their narrative about the cowardly Kenyan Muslim usurper which they feel will help them convince Americans to elect Mitt Romney who will save America from 10,000 years of darkness.
Progressives in turn explain that these events are a direct result of drone killings because it fits within their narrative that Barack Obama is a military strongman who has killed more people than Pol Pot and that Obama is an impediment to the election of Mitt Romney whose reign will be so disastrous that a billion Progressive blossoms will bloom and elect Noam Chomsky President in 2016.
In other news: today is Thursday.
BTW-my system spell checker wants to turn Reince Priebus into “rancid priest”. There’s a message in that, I’m sure.
Open Thread
Also, check out this page from Fox News, h/t to commenters Southern Beale and Amir Khalid. Fox Nation is the septic tank to the Fox News sewage line. It all collects and concentrates there. This is why we fight-so that “people” who think that this is an even remotely acceptable form of information dissemination will never get anything they want. We fight so that the individual that spewed this without the personal moral courage to take credit for it will never have his fellow travellers near the levers of power.
Keith
Pierce has the best moniker for Reince Priebus – Obvious Anagram. It is in fact the first thing that comes up on Google’s auto-fill.
chopper
oh tbogg, you’re a national treasure.
cervantes
I can’t say that I’ve come across any such progressives — and I do get around. People (including YT) do indeed criticize the CIA’s license to kill, but I haven’t seen anybody who, on that basis, wants Romney to win. That’s all in TBogg’s fevered imagination.
As for R
eincePreibus, it’s too obvious, although that’s not original with me.Brachiator
Might as well close down the Internets for the day, tbogg has nailed it.
Chris
I add, as a State Department brat, that there’s something ironic about watching them suddenly rally behind people that they normally excoriate as “pussies,” “apologists,” “weak kneed,” “America haters” (State Department personnel) or “parasites,” “moochers,” and “union thugs” (any federal employee not employed by the Defense Department). Remember Pat Robertson joking about how we should toss a nuke into the State Department?
The GOP’s reaction made me think of Rick from Casablanca: “They got a lucky break. Yesterday, they were just two German clerks. Today, they’re ‘the honored dead.'”
Heliopause
I’m frequently stunned by what people around here consider to be funny or effective satire.
Cassidy
@cervantes: Or, as an alternate theory, TBogg is engaging in his very usual, well done sarcasm and you are taking yourself and him a tad too seriously.
jibeaux
@cervantes: Uh, they’re routinely on TBogg’s page. Talking about Jill Stein. Although I personally think that true progressives can only vote for Cindy Sheehan.
srv
I really wish I had photoshop skills to do Obama has Major Kong riding a JDAM.
trollhattan
@cervantes:
TBogg has been tusslin’ with Firebaggers quite a bit recently. Pretty much all these opinions are out there.
Cassidy
@trollhattan: Yet, he’s still at FDL. Isn’t that kind of like shitting in someone else’s china?
jibeaux
@Heliopause: Well, Ow! My Balls! is good stuff too. Don’t worry, it takes all kinds.
trollhattan
@Cassidy:
Nope, that’s bringin’ the sanity.
srv
Oh, UTNE Abides!
http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/UTNE-Cover.jpg
Tractarian
Really, Reince PReiBuS doesn’t need a nickname.
Cassidy
@jibeaux: “I wanna dip my balls in it!”?
lacp
I’m finding it increasingly difficult to read TBogg, not because of his writing chops (which are outstanding) but because of his increasing conflation of a few disaffected Democrats (or people who claim to be Democrats) with the Spartacus League. Think that boy’s been at FDL too long and it’s starting to affect him.
Richard
Reince Priebus is an anagram for…
Beep Cries Ruin
Insure Crib Pee
jl
TPM has good set of posts on how NYT does shoddy journalism, with end effect of covering for vileness of Romney campaign.
Too many links, but look at editor’s blog starting yesterday evening. The put up the old version of the Times story in full, so you can go read both and decide for yourself.
And from another TPM post, looks like Portman got schooled by O’Donnell, who called out Portman when he tried to cover for Romney on TV. Portman had to admit that the timeline did not match his cover story, so Portman either can unprepared and was acting as an ignorant Romney hack, or was being disingenuous (to put it politely).
Edit: I think TBogg is doing DougJ style spoofing. I don’t see a big problem with, but I’m not in mood for that today, and don’t care that much one way or the other.
Southern Beale
Meanwhile, Fox Nation goes into overdrive to make Mitt Romney look like fucking Dag Hammarskjöld.
Un fucking believable. This people turn my stomach. I hope horrible things on them. Horrible.
Comrade Dread
Sounds about right.
I mean, I can’t stand some of what the Obama administration does in the foreign policy realm, but I’ve never seen the cure for this as adding more leeches by electing Republicans.
geg6
@cervantes:
You obviously don’t read much of Tbogg’s comment threads or the front page where he blogs. The rapturous paens to Jill Stein are never dampened by anyone, especially Tbogg, pointing out that the only thing Jill Stein is good for is electing Rmoney. And the commenters and front pagers over there say they are fine with that because that is exactly what is needed to bring about the Great American Progressive Paradise and then they will all have unicorns and sparkle ponies.
And I’d add GG to the hall of shame if I actually ever read his shit anymore. I have no idea if he has ever said this stuff or if he says it as boldly as the firebaggers do, but it sounds so much like a paraphrase of so many of his political pronouncements of the past that I’m gonna guess he’s on board.
Roger Moore
@Keith:
I’m rather partial to what you get by removing the vowels from Reince Priebus: RNC PR BS.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@cervantes:
And his comments section.
To be fair, whether that’s a representative sample of progressives is an open question, one I’m not qualified (or really motivated) to answer.
Linda Featheringill
@Southern Beale: #20
Wait. Fox Nation is saying that Romney is gay? There’s nothing wrong with that but I really didn’t know!
jl
For those curious about him, the man who calls himself ‘Sam Bacile’ identified as part of investigation into the killings.
Feds ID California man’s role in anti-Islam film
By EILEEN SULLIVAN and STEPHEN BRAUN
http://news.yahoo.com/feds-id-california-mans-role-anti-islam-film-164554115.html
peach flavored shampoo
Or “Rinsed Penis”
Brachiator
@cervantes:
Hell, one of the standard fantasies of the progressive lunatic fringe is that a total victory by Republicans might be desirable because it will finally lead to insurrecton by the oppressed masses. You can even find examples of this sentiment in various comments by Balloon Juicers.
geg6
@trollhattan:
Yeah, he really has been just trolling them unmercifully for a couple of weeks now. I wonder if he’s trying to get Jane to fire him. I hope so. Maybe he could come over here and take over when Cole gets too depressed to blog.
Chet Manly
@geg6: Sure because criticism from a handful of firebaggers is equivalent to criticism from the mainstream GOP led by their party chairman.
I generally enjoy TBogg’s posts, but this is some of the laziest both-sides-do-it BS I’ve seen in a while.
Davis X. Machina
If a man can’t troll himself, on his own blog, where, and whom, can he troll?
Keith G
Of course there are nuts on both extremes, but what I find faulty with T-Bogg’s post is that it (inadvertently?) paints a false equivalency between the critics on the right and the critics on the left. There are vast differences in both quantity, emotional content, and connection to rational discourse.
T-Bogg’s “Both sides do it” is certainly a cute construct, but a bit weak in execution.
Anna in PDX
@cervantes: I had not heard this “progressive narrative” either but it would be idiotic if so. I am a two-time Nader voter (1996 and 2000) (I am from Oregon! I am sorry! I didn’t live in Florida! Etc) and I think that trying to throw the election over the drone / civil liberties issue is a huge huge huge mistake, for two reasons.
First, because it would get us a hugely horrible president who would do a lot of horrible things domestically let alone in foreign entanglements, if third party idiots manage to take away votes from Obama and Romney wins as a result (admittedly, while this happened in 2000 I really don’t see it happening this time and think there are VERY few of these people around – I am more afraid of such people sitting out the election instead of holding their nose and voting for Obama, this is also stupid and wrong and please no one do that).
Second, there is a bipartisan consensus on drones/ tough on crime police issues/ other horrible things right now, and blithely ignoring that fact is not going to make it go away. It’s not an Obama problem, it’s not a Romney problem, it’s not even a Republican problem, it is a much larger problem. There just aren’t enough elected officials willing to risk being seen as soft on crime/terror and call for less destructive/murderous policies. Until there are, it does not matter who the president is, these policies, which are gleefully supported in both House and Senate, will continue. Vote downticket for better people, create some leverage that will push presidents to not do this shit, and look at it as a long term thing. In other words act like adults…
TD
The progressives that Tbogg describes are real. A couple college friends fall in the category. We’ve had some intense internet debates, but nobody is changing anybody else’s mind.
Too bad, as they are most definitely wrong.
Anna in PDX
Sorry about all the slashes, I sound so very much the local government bureaucrat which is actually what I am…
Amir Khalid
At a tangent to the topic here, check out the headline on this story.
Triassic Sands
I don’t disagree with the gist of TBogg’s message, but surely “Progressives” should be changed to “Some progressives,” since what he describes is hardly true of all, or even most American progressives.
Shinobi
Well the conservatives in my facebook feed think we should just be “open firing” on these people and “Sending them to their virgins.”
My point about international diplomatic incidents wasn’t well received, apparently not wanting to start a war with at least 2 countries is the same as turning the other cheek.
Crazy rednecks.
Anna in PDX
@Keith G: This is true and if Tbogg were not a blogger on Firedoglake and were more of a national figure, it would be an issue. As it is, he is responding to probably a majority of the people that read him, at least the people who are fans of the site in general.
hep kitty
What the hell kind of name is Reince Priebus anyway? Doesn’t sound AMERICAN, to me. Sounds like a N@zi name
quannlace
Sweet Jesus, hasn’t out country suffered enough.
Dick Morris has written a children’s book:
http://www.amazon.com/Dubs-Goes-Washington-Discovers-Greatness/dp/1439280266/ref=pd_sim_b_4
I noticed despite all the bragging in the Author’s Bio, “most influential political advisor !” he couldn’t get a traditional publisher and had to go the self-publishing route.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: It’s not so much that anyone leftish actively wants Romney to win, but that there’s a school of thought that Things have to hit rock bottom with the current system of culture, society, and government, and in the aftermath of that total collapse, people will finally give up on the broken-down way things used to be and raise the flag of total progressive reconstruction. If that’s your view of history, then an Obama win only shores up a system you need to see crumbling.
The number of people who actually believe this is of course far, far short of the number of dogmatic libertarian douchenozzles, which is itself far, far lower than the number of conventional Democrats or conventional Republicans. But they do manage to find each other, and egg each other on, in places like the TBogg comment section.
geg6
@Chet Manly:
Um,I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means.
What makes you think wingnuts and Jill Stein “progressives” are on different sides? Especially when the “progressives” cheer for a Rmoney victory? This happens in pretty much any post Tbogg posts about the election, so I’m curious as to how you think they are different from wingnuts.
Montysano
@cervantes:
A satirist who utilizes hyperbole? Unprecedented!
You don’t get around quite enough, obviously. Come hang around with our 24 year old son and his friends, and hear the tale of Obama = History’s Greatest Monster.
Cassidy
@FlipYrWhig: Do they realize there is no building back up from that? Next stop is eating people and warlords.
shortstop
@quannlace: There has to be something Chicago thuggish or jackbooted internment camp administrator-like we could do to stop this. What good is always being accused of being tyrannical if we don’t get the benefits?
FlipYrWhig
@Shinobi: Of course that would kind of be like bombing Aurora, Colorado because of that crazy Batman shooter guy, but, well, logic ain’t their strong suit.
trollhattan
@geg6:
Can you imagine the BJ server meltdown if TBogg decamped for here? Would love to see it.
Ignoring for a moment poly-ticks, I suspect TBogg has a major positive effect on FDL’s business (which is what it is). I’m certain he’s among if not straight-out their biggest hit generator and I think it’s a slamdunk he generates more unique hits than any other front pager, i.e., folks like myself who read him exclusively.
He’s good for them; they put up with the occasional shellacings. Besides, what good progressive doesn’t engage in the occasional self-flagellation? He’s there to help.
amk
@Shinobi: They should be drafted first and sent to do all the shootin’. Fucking cowardly chickenshits.
sparrow
@Brachiator: I say this sort of thing (“Maybe if the republicans win, the idiots who vote for them will actually experience such real, serious pain from their policies that the echos will last through generations”) occasionally in a sort of half-joking way when something happens that makes me totally dispair that we are indeed living in a slow slide towards a totalitarian fundamentalist christian government (note: this is not very often, lately, and no I don’t actually WANT this to happen… but I do wonder if we have to hit rock-bottom at some point).
trollhattan
@quannlace:
Wouldn’t that constitute a probation violation? (It would be irresponsible…)
FlipYrWhig
@Cassidy: I tend to agree that post-apocalyptic worlds are unlikely to be humane, tolerant, and egalitarian, but that’s what the dream seems to be.
NonyNony
@cervantes:
Wait around here until TK421 (aka Ian Welsh) shows up to post if you don’t want to go over to FDL and read through the front page.
There is a tiny rump of people who at least call themselves progressives who believe in a form of “disaster progressivism” – that all that needs to happen is that the shit in the USA needs to get really, really, really fucking bad and then all the “sheeple” will “wake up” and realize that what they need to do is vote for True Progressives who won’t ever have to compromise on a single principle ever again.
They exist. They are not strawmen. They’re not even Republican false flags (much as I wish that I could write them off as such). I know too many in real life to believe that. They are frustrated people who really hate the fact that democracy is only as good as the citizens of the country that implements it. And they’re trying to find solutions to that problem that don’t involve generational change. Considering that all of the real progressivism in this country has actually come about due to generations of people organizing and fighting for change, they are very, very frustrated people.
JGabriel
__
__
geg6:
So they’d rather wait eternally for the perfect rather than take the good now.
.
geg6
@Triassic Sands:
Sorry, but these people you call progressives are unrecognizable to me. I’m a liberal and I don’t consider them my kin. No liberal would cheer for a GOP win. Ever.
Progressive is a weasel word. It’s the word that Republicans used to use to sound like they believed in the modern world (example: Teddy Roosevelt). I’m immediately suspicious of anyone calling themselves a “progressive.” They aren’t liberal enough to be liberals and, if they are, they are too cowardly to call themselves what they truly are. And that’s because they accept the GOP framing of the word. Which, automatically, means they aren’t and never will be liberals.
FlipYrWhig
@sparrow: I don’t know if there is a rock bottom, though. It’s jagged rocks all the way down.
Shinobi
@amk: They thought I should be one of those people in the embassy and then maybe I’d be more pro killing civilians.
I read this shit and all I can think is “Grow the fuck up” this is the real world. Read a book.
shortstop
@trollhattan: Yes, but they always want to be the ones to pick which cat o’nine tails will be used on them that day. We’re not supposed to be presumptuous enough to help.
Slightly OT, I hate ceding words like “progressive” and “leftist” to that crowd, although I admit I have no alternative verbiage that anyone’s likely to like. I’m pretty fucking left. I just like to pair it with a healthy pragmatism and basic understanding of the political process.
Chyron HR
@FlipYrWhig:
The fact that 8 years of Bush destroying the country culminated in the election of someone they un-ironically refer to as “the GOP’s house ni**er” is, of course, never addressed.
Cassidy
@NonyNony: Basically, they want a dictator who thinks like them.
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe they just skipped to the end of Book of Eli.
FlipYrWhig
@NonyNony: I hadn’t thought of it before, but I think you’ve totally nailed it: the dream of catastrophe causing a spontaneous wake-up call also has the distinct advantage of obviating any need to build a movement or otherwise do the hard, painful slog of persuading and converting people into progressives. It just happens one day, and the scales fall from the eyes of the people who suddenly see how wrong they were. Not that far from The Rapture, come to think of it…
JenJen
@Southern Beale: That is just unfuckingbelievable!!
No wonder the nutburger cons at my work are in such a tizzy today. They actually believe this shit and have been spouting it all day long.
The Bobs
Charlie Pierce and his friend Tom Junod can go to hell. Obama has to deal with the complexity of reality and accept the consequences. Junod’s arguments are entirely one sided. Obama has to actually be concerned about failing to stop an attack, something Pierce and Junod never consider.
FlipYrWhig
@geg6: Maybe there’s some of that, but there are even older splits between leftists and liberals, wherein leftists deride liberals for being too squishy and too reconciled to the structures of power that currently exist. Some of the people who won’t call themselves liberals do it because they see themselves as radicals, i.e., more willing to uproot the prevailing order of things.
Culture of Truth
@FlipYrWhig: That’s put in mind of the guy who made the anti-Mohammed movie. Allegedly it was called “The Innocence of Muslims” in the hope that muslims from all over Los Angeles would go see the movie, then learn from the film that Mohammed was a pedophile and the scales would fall their eyes… sometimes these conservatives have a weird naivete that’s almost touching in its childishness…
Soonergrunt
@Amir Khalid: screen capped and added to the story.
Thanks!
eemom
@geg6:
You gotta check out Greenwald over at his new Guardian digs
— he’s falling all over himself playing to his new Brit audience, and it’s fucking hilarious.
wrt TBogg, I’ll never deny he’s a great writer…..however, he lost me as a good guy on the day he fell on his sword for Lady Jane over here and was an asshole to me in the process.
Davis X. Machina
@NonyNony:
He was pretty much a reliable commenter at Lawyers Guns and Money until the pancake hammer came down.
Southern Beale
@Linda Featheringill:
LOL. Didn’t know Dag was gay. Hell, I had to Google him to get his name spelled correctly.
Southern Beale
What’s really funny is that the Nutbaggers are now saying Obama fucked up by not calling Egypt an ally. I mean, I’m so old I remember when they blamed Obama for allowing elections which resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood taking over.
So which is it? Are we allies with the Muslim Brotherhood now?
They’re so fucking retarded they can’t even remember what they were outraged about 3 months ago.
W. Hackwhacker
Funny — my spell checker has him as “Reince Prepuce?”
amk
@Southern Beale: The wingnutz are wannabe obama antonyms.
catclub
@Davis X. Machina: Buttermilk pancake hammer.
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid: #35
Sigh. I guess it is to be expected.
I think Obama is trying to encourage the govt of Libya to Do The Right Thing. He probably is a great parent.
Maude
@quannlace:
Is the Morris book title, I can count my toes?
Linda Featheringill
@hep kitty:
I understand that’s not the name he was born with. He chose that name.
And no, I don’t understand it, either.
trollhattan
@shortstop:
I hear you. I’ve become moar liberal, or something, as I’ve aged (not more conservative like we’re “supposed to”) and earlier in my life, had endless run-ins with right-thinking lefties. As an example, I used to work with heavy duty “sandalistas” who lurved them some Daniel Ortega and anything drenched in the cologne named “La Revolucion.” I could never have a conversation about why suspending constitutions while exchanging one dictator for another was perhaps not such a good thing for the actual, you know, people. They carried a certain air of paternalism.
Or bog help me, the Pol Pot fans I once knew, or the folks who forgive Mao his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Hey, what’s a few tens of millions of dead Chinese?
Now I’ve wandered into the weeds.
fuzz
somewhat OT but has anyone else been reading about how the movie that started everything was likely made by an Egyptian Copt? He had to realize the danger this puts the ones that still live in Egypt in right? Does he really think it’s ok for people to die and to cause this type of chaos just to prove a point? It makes me really hope there is a hell.
Maude
@The Bobs:
62 Called 101st Chairborne.
Heard one of the radio for a few seconds this morning. She was oh so snooty about all this. She had the answers.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig:
You know what this REALLY says? “I’m too fucking lazy to get off my ass and work for the change I want.”
Because breaking the system to get progressive changes is NOT the easy way to go.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig:
Hah. Wait till they see what kind of work it’ll take to convert people to progressivism in THAT kind of environment.
Sly
I think I’ll go down to a local PFLAG meeting and tell everyone there that the only way gay rights can be advanced is if more people like Matthew Shepherd are tied to fence posts and beaten to death. I’m sure it’ll be the winningest argument they’ve ever heard.
trollhattan
@Soonergrunt:
Dear lord, they went there. Before I quickly hopped back onto the boat (pours peroxide on shoes) I was able to discover, “Why the president’s reelection hopes are vanishing.”
Okay, got it “Fox Nation.”
http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama/2012/08/22/opinion-president-s-reelection-hopes-are-vanishing
BTW, are “thanking” and “apologizing” the same thing? Trying to keep my memes organized.
GregB
Fuck Godwin, Roger Ailes is Goebbels.
Cassidy
@gwangung: “Eating him is a violation of his civil rights. Let’s talk about it.”
JenJen
@Southern Beale: Yep. At my workplace it’s been OBAMA LURVES THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT GO ROMNEY HE SHOULD’VE HIT OBAMA HARDER!
WTF?
They’re also positive that Romney is going to win. We’re in Ohio, and they are just under this belief that everyone here thinks the way they do. Well, I guess Denial is one of the stages of grief, so there is that.
Perfect Tommy
@srv: I really wish I had photoshop skills to do Obama has Major Kong riding a JDAM.
http://imageshack.us/a/img543/7213/a81bfb697eaf5cdad2adc8c.jpg
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
I think TBogg is also friends with Jane Hamsher, so that probably explains some of his site loyalty.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: Re: LGM, I’m starting to feel like Erik Loomis is to labor as Glenn Greenwald is to civil liberties.
danielx
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, that particular fantasy ranks right up there with the wingnut fantasy that if/when Romney loses it will be because he wasn’t a true conservative. And in 2016 they’ll nominate a true conservative – say, David Duke or Genghis Khan – and they’ll really win big. Because by that time Congress will have repealed the Voting Rights Act, brown people will be politically irrelevant, and angry old white guys will live happily ever after.
Or something. It’s hard to tell with wingnut fantasies, they don’t follow a coherent logical framework…
hep kitty
@Linda Featheringill: How Hollywood Liberalish of him!
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig:
This is an old story. The German Communists in the 30’s used to say “Nach Hitler, Uns.”
So who cares if millions have to die for the paradise of the left? I guess you just can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, eh?
Ronzoni Rigatoni
Progressives-Liberals-leftists, etc., s’all the same to me. We are all in the same boat I like to think, even tho’ SOME of us are a bit off the wall. I do agree that Tbogg does not belong over at FDL given the so-called “progressive” attitude over there, but, contrary to one observer here, Tbogg has been an “A List” blogger since long before FDL existed, and he joined up (despite our pitious pleadings. There were over 1500 comments on his last independent post) long before Jane Hamsher went crazy. Some of her FP folx ultimately did leave (e.g., Emptywheel), and some were pushed out (TRex), and I figger Tbogg’s a short-timer there as well. But maybe not. Maybe he just wants to provide some “balance.” Anyway, he’s as good as he ever was, and he was damned good.
hep kitty
@JenJen: You poor thing. You have my sympathies. Of course, come election day you can be smug and watch them be all depressed which will be awesome.
FlipYrWhig
@Cassidy: But not vote, because that’s a frightful infringement of the rights of the rest of the circle. And our deliberative process demands inclusion, not silencing. Also, I’d like this guy to stop eating me or I won’t be able to facilitate the rest of this council.
scav
@fuzz: Egyptian Copt? Well, look only so far as certain factions of the Irish et alia, also cozily fomenting danger for their cherished brethren closer to the dangerous shooty and blasty things.
Villago Delenda Est
@danielx:
It’s tired and cliche, but it’s also precisely the way the wingtards think, if you can call what passes for cognitive ability in wingtards “thinking”, but it’s the best we can come up with as an analogy:
Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
NonyNony
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah that’s basically it. It’s understandable in a way – most folks I know who fall into that camp are people who work for a living. They don’t have the money to stop working and volunteer for a cause, and they generally don’t have the skills to get hired full time for the kind of activist group that could make real change. So they get frustrated – the only real way to cause change is to put together a movement that will push for it over multiple generations, but they literally don’t have the resources to build the movement that they want, and they’re not finding a movement to join that would work for the agenda they want. A few of them bought into the 2008 election as a “movement for change” instead of an election campaign and that has them frustrated as well, since they didn’t get the movement that they think they were promised.
So “blow it all up and the sheeple will wake up” is their fallback fantasy that they’ve come to out of frustration. In this they have a lot in common with libertarians I used to know (and how I keep attracting these nuts I will never understand).
danielx
Favorite anagram for Reince Priebus –
Crib Seep Urine
Villago Delenda Est
@JenJen:
It’s telling that the denial is coming nearly two months before the election.
amk
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: emptywheel left that cesspool ? She was the only one I read there when I was kindergartener in the blogosphere.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@GregB:
Here’s something fun I’ve taken to doing: Next time a friend or relative pushes some meme from Fox News as The Real American Truth, blurt out “Oh, Fox News? The network founded by that Australian guy whose married to a Chinese National? That Fox News?”. Then walk away.
Does nothing to uplift the dialog, obviously. But watching the little android-necklace blinking on and off as they stare off into space to try and process WTF you just said to them makes it worth it.
hep kitty
Just got a DCCC email that said a new Reuters poll puts Dems in the lead by 6% in congressional races, but I can’t find poll on internets.
Woodrowfan
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
Nice STOS ref!
trollhattan
@NonyNony:
The bit they’re missing is “what kind of total disaster will unleash UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH to our side?” N=0
Calouste
@hep kitty:
Priebus is a city in Germany and Reince’s real first name is Reinhold. If Reinhold Priebus sounds to you like the name of a staff sargeant in the Wehrmacht, well, you’re not far off.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@amk: Yah, re Emptywheel, she left about the time Jane formed “new alliances” with the devil. She was great during the Plame/Scooter Libby BS and I think practically invented “live blogging” at the time. She’s listed on Cole’s Blogroll.
If she was a print “journalist,” she’da won a Pulitzer.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@trollhattan:
They must have been awfully disappointed when, after he was defeated in an election, Ortega willingly stepped down and Nicarauga had a peaceful transition.
Of course, apparently Ortega is now a nutty pro-lifer (sorry, no linky, but it’s in his Wikipedia entry).
Richard
Part of the insanity of the “paving the way to progressive paradise by getting more wingnuts elected” plan is the fact that the message that gets sent to a Democratic politician who loses to a GOPer isn’t “I should have been more progressive”, it’s “I should have been more conservative”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
“Norman, coordinate!”
NonyNony
@trollhattan:
For some of them the destruction of the corporate system is actually one of the things that they’re hoping comes from the disaster. Not the destruction of capitalism entirely as a model, but that a giant disaster will lead to strict regulation of corporations like we had before Reagan.
In many ways it’s like they look at US history and the lesson learned is “the only way to advance liberal ideas is to have conservative ideas cause a disaster that needs to be fixed”. That lesson taken from the Great Depression. Unfortunately they miss the other big lessons from the Great Depression – the rise of Hitler and Soviet Communism.
NonyNony
@Calouste:
Sounds more like a character from Hogan’s Heroes.
AxelFoley
@Heliopause:
And yet, you come here almost daily.
amk
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: Good for her. Thanks. Will try to catch up with her.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Same difference. And right now, based on his despicable comments about Libya, Romney is not just rock bottom; he is the slime under the rock.
I don’t know about the numbers and don’t much care. And as noted, I have read similar comments from some Balloon Juicers (or maybe just DougJ trolling on a bad day).
But I have been around probably as long as the original poster on this, and have always run into a few progressive fools who have a fantasy of the oppressed rising up after being kicked down. Hell, now that I think about it, I remember a nasty conversation I had with a Westside (Los Angeles) liberal who had the nerve to talk about how comfortable he would be if Bush were elected president, but that he only hated Bush because he thought that the man was stupid, and that maybe if he ruined the country then somehow by some magic unicorn fart, the massses might rise up. I said that if they did, I sincerely hoped that the first thing they did would be to find his comfortable house and burn it to the fucking ground. Still makes me mad.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
One of Major Burkhalter’s flunkies, probably.
AxelFoley
@geg6:
In other words, every other day, right? ;)
gelfling545
@Linda Featheringill: Unless he was born with the name that goes with the initials AH, this is not an upgrade.
Triassic Sands
@geg6:
No true liberal would. But, then, neither would a true progressive. As for accepting the Republican framing of the word liberal, it was the American media and then the wider American populace that accepted the winger framing of the word. By the time people resurrected the word “progressive,” the word liberal had already fallen into almost universal disrepute.
How often do you hear President Obama refer to himself as a “liberal?” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him use the word progressive a lot more. I agree that liberals were complicit in the destruction of the word liberal by not fighting the Right Wing framing as the life and death struggle it should have been considered. Neither have I ever been confident that resurrecting a word from the early twentieth century would help the cause of the Left, and my reservations are at least partly borne out by your insistence on vilifying people — many of whom hold beliefs that are probably nearly identical with yours — because they gave up on a word that many, if not most, Americans had already decided was not a good thing.
Labels do not define people — at least they shouldn’t. Anyone can call herself a liberal; anyone can call himself a conservative. But what matters is beliefs and, even more important, actions. I heard someone on the radio yesterday quote Obama as describing himself as a “fiscal conservative.” Of course, no Republican would accept that description of Obama, and given what has become of so-called “fiscal conservatives,” I’m not sure calling oneself a fiscal conservative is a very good idea. Although there is still widespread belief that being fiscally conservative in the US is an unalloyed good thing, if you look at the policies and actions of those who have traditionally called themselves fiscal conservatives, you’ll find the most reckless spenders in American history. So, does fiscal conservative apply to the people who claim the title or the people who act accordingly — since they are not the same?
I know many people who still claim to be “liberals” and they are among the wishy-washiest, squishiest invertebrates I’ve ever known. I know people who now refer to themselves as progressives and they’re working hard for the re-election of Barack Obama. I don’t really consider myself a liberal (though any conservative would) or a progressive (though I have many beliefs that are certainly progressive); I prefer to think of myself as a “lefty,” and I don’t care if that has an association with socialist or even communist, because I am neither, at least not in a pure, historical sense.
When I’m looking for allies, I don’t care what they call themselves. I understand why some have given up on liberal, just as I understand why some believe it is important to resurrect the word liberal — since it has represented many of the best policies in US history. However, the same can be said of progressive.
Show me a person (on the left) who is calling for Obama’s defeat and I’ll show you someone who either is not a progressive (or liberal) or who, in my opinion, is probably tired of voting for lesser evils and — disastrously, I believe — thinks that the way to liberal/progressive victory is by letting Republicans wreck the country. If one is willing to overlook the catastrophic suffering that will result from that course, it just might be the most direct way to rid ourselves of Republicans. I’m not willing to accept the damage, which will be far more than just short term. We’re going to be trying to repair the damage Bush II did for decades to come. A Romney administration would, in all likelihood, be far worse.
I think language matters and using the word “progressive” to condemn a whole class of people, only some of whom are guilty of the sins you accuse them of, is just as bad as mindlessly using the word “liberal” in a pejorative sense.
gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
Only if you’re a liberal wuss. The real tough guy way to make an omelette
Paula
Actually, has anyone mentioned LGM’s St. Ralph Lecture/ Retrospective Voting Series? They’re not just poking the firebaggers with a stick — they’re dousing them in gasoline and lighting a match.
Eemom, is GGs’ new audience particularly British? I always got the feeling that the Comment Is Free section is populated by bloggers who had a following before they came on the site and they take their audience with them (what’s her-face of Shakespeare’s Sister). Certainly with references to “kool-aid” and “birther” it sounds like an American chat room.
Bless their hearts, some non-hysterical people are trying to have a real argument in the threads, but GG hasn’t personally logged in and insulted them one by one yet!
Emily Latella
Why is everyone so upset about people who rent Prius’. I think more people should rent Prius’, or better yet BUY one. They are good for the environment and they reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I thought you liberals were all for that. Silly me.
Tonal Crow
Who put the moronade in your glass this morning? Or are you just returning to this blog time-honored tradition of promoting circular firing squads?
Death Panel Truck
@geg6:
This.
I used to think that “progressives” were people who simply ran away from the word “liberal” so as not to upset delicate Republican fee-fees, but their cowardice runs deeper than that. They’re content to sit on the sidelines and pout because they haven’t gotten their rainbow-colored ponies while the GOP plots to end America as we know it. Let it all collapse, they say, then you’ll see that we were right all along.
I don’t know who’s nuttier: a rabid progressive or a rabid libertarian. The one thing they have in common is that their visions of America, if allowed to come to fruition, would result in anarchy. A true libertarian society would be a lawless disaster; progressive petulance and inaction gives the GOP free rein to complete their goal of selling America to the highest bidder.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Dare I mention that people who subscribe to that school of thought are totally ignorant of both history and sociology and don’t seem to understand that history shows that mass movements arise not when people are in total despair, but when they’ve had a few victories that make them hope they can rise even further?
People like that think that Martin Luther King Jr. founded the NAACP when it was actually founded 20 years before Dr. King was even born.
Fred Fnord
@Death Panel Truck:
First off, of course, there are about three of these progressives that people are talking about. But because it makes a better narrative, we must of course treat them equally with the host of insane nutbars on the right.
Second, people call themselves progressives because the right has succeeded in making liberal a dirty word, aided ably by neoliberals. If you don’t like that, perhaps you should try helping to reclaim it.
Third, as always, ‘Anyone slightly to my right very serious, and is to be respected. Anyone further to my right is dangerous, and is to be respected. Anyone slightly to my left is a wild-eyed idealist and should be ignored. Anyone further to my left is DANGEROUSLY INSANE and MUST BE DESTROYED.’ That’s the new ‘liberal’ credo, right?
Right?
Soonergrunt
@Tonal Crow: Reading comprehension. You do not have it.
Tonal Crow
@Soonergrunt: Trolling again it is. Ah well, it was a refreshing month or so when this divisionism somehow fell off the front page.
CarolDuhart2
@gwangung: And of course, none of those people ever think the bad guys could win permanently. Or about the suffering of folks who really need that safety net because they are too sick/old/poor to move anywhere.
Of course they haven’t really read history. Things may improve after a collapse, but it might be closer to warlordism than democracy and progressive ideas. Google “Dark Ages” and “feudalism” for a possible idea of how things turn out after chaos. For that matter, any modern dictatorship.
geg6
@Death Panel Truck:
This. Yes, this exactly. I might even despise these people more than the wingnuts. The wingnuts at least know what they believe. These so-called progressives are actually authoritarians who have somehow deceived themselves that they aren’t. I have no respect for any of them. They disgust me as much as libertarians and the Catholic Church do. And if you knew me IRL, you’d know that is a bottomless well of disgust.
geg6
@Fred Fnord:
In case you haven’t noticed, I proudly call myself a liberal. I do it online and IRL. I am not ashamed of the word and I refuse to let assholes redefine it.
As for the rest of your post, it’s too stupid to even reply to.
Anna in PDX
@fuzz: I lived in Egypt for many years and there is always a danger of sectarian violence based on some stupid thing that usually is either totally or partially untrue. I am very upset that he is a Copt. The Copts have suffered enough without one of their coreligionists inciting violence against them. I was hoping the Egyptian rumor mill would not get hold of this but they already have (I have lots of Egyptian friends on Facebook) and now I am very worried. I was there when the Danish idiocy happened and when there were riots on New Years in Alexandria, these things just happen so suddenly, and they cause a lot of grief and sorrow.
Publius39
@Fred Fnord:
You can rest easy after this comment. Your war on the Strawman Nation is now complete.
Heliopause
@Tonal Crow:
It would be an interesting experiment to find out if Obama or any other member of the center-left could win an election with zero votes from the progressive left. Somehow, Tbogg, Soonergrunt and the Juicers seem to think running that experiment in the real world would be emotionally satisfying.
By the numbers, %12 of adults describe themselves as “progressive” and 7% describe themselves as “very liberal” (there is some overlap).
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
How many of them are registered voters, and how many of them voted in 2010?
It doesn’t matter what you call yourself if you don’t bother to drag yourself to the voting booth on Election Day. Contrary to what many “progressives” seem to believe, not voting doesn’t actually do anything to change the current system.
Heliopause
@Mnemosyne:
So you want to run this experiment too?
Matt McIrvin
It sounds like he’s an inveterate fraudster Copt who fell in with American wingnut evangelicals (and tried to pose as a Jew to deflect the backlash). It would indeed be terrible if the Copts get the backlash instead.
Matt McIrvin
Anyway, about people on the left urging progressives not to vote for Obama, my impression is that it’s not so much that they’re hoping for a Romney win. It’s that they think of politics as about personal expression and moral affiliation. If Obama is morally tainted, then a moral person can’t vote for him, and the consequences are completely irrelevant.
There are also some who insist that all mainstream American politicians are completely functionally identical, and progressives might as well hope for a Romney win because at least then liberals won’t fawn over him. I see them around in the comment boards on Crooked Timber. They tend not to self-identify as liberals.
There’s a more sophisticated version, too, which I see around: people saying that they personally live in deep-blue states so their votes for Jill Stein aren’t going to matter anyway, and they might as well do it as a protest. I know there’s an argument that popular-vote margins make a perceived moral difference in a close election. But I figure that I can’t really begrudge them their votes, because the alternative to voting for Jill Stein or leaving the presidential oval blank is probably that they stay home entirely, and I’d probably like them voting for the other stuff on the ballot, like the Congressional elections, ballot questions, etc.
Soonergrunt
@Heliopause: No, you’ve got it wrong. Which is not anywhere near as surprising to me as you might think.
See, the only people who want to run that experiment are the people who think that they’ll withhold their vote, and if enough good and true progressives do so, Romney will win, and then destroy the country leading to a progressive rebirth and renewal. Such people are known by the nickname of “fucking morons,” and they are also distinguished by their inabilities to understand that two large monolithic parties fighting over the ideological center, and thus having to moderate their positions to win that center is the system working as designed, and the other distinguishing characteristic being their inability to understand that it is their failure to present a coherent platform or position that is attractive to enough of their fellow Americans to actually win something, and not the eeeeeevil, mustache twirling conspirators that are keeping them down.
Donald
It’s perfectly possible to criticize Obama for drone strikes while agreeing that Romney would be far worse. Maybe Tbogg can’t do it, but it’s possible, because I just did.
Bill Murray
Sooner Grunt,
you do realize TBogg is doing exactly the same thing as the people he is criticizing, and so his opinion is no more valuable than those opinions
Heliopause
@Soonergrunt:
What’s this, I’m rubber and you’re glue? We’ll skip the rest of your pointless reiterations of childish schtick and ask you to answer a simple question; do you think Obama needs the so-called progressive vote to win this election? And don’t go off on some silly tangent about half a dozen commenters at Firedoglake, focus on the demographics. Do you want their votes or not?