Dennis G’s already covered the “tool speaking truth to fools“, but there’s lots more entertainment value for us godless lie-brals to glean from the “Value Voters” this year. One reason I read Dave Weigel faithfully is that I think of him as my Ambassador to the Monotheistically Mazed:
Conservatives have more cattle calls than liberals do. No bias, just fact. The constellation of social conservative groups, fiscal conservative groups, Tea Parties et al demand that Republicans come and pitch to them. So there are plenty of opportunities to hear conservatives re-heating their red meat, instead of “reaching out to independents.”
I say this to explain how Mitt Romney’s campaign-rattling statement [concerning] embassies became a rallying cry. At the Values Voter Summit, Romney’s “gaffe” has been explained as a Reaganesque statement of heroic principle. Bill Bennett, who was given the task of introducing Paul Ryan, told the audience that Romney had “thundered” — not just, you know, e-mailed — his statement. “When [remarks] are condemned so universally by the establishment press,” he said, “It’s likely that they are true.”…
Later, that same day:
[My bolds.] Lots more, including a slide show of some of the meanest trout-mouths you’ve ever seen, at the link.Time To Panic: Religious conservatives are worrying out loud about Mitt Romney
… The Values Voters Summits began in 2006, based on a simple premise: The voters who had brought the GOP to power were being disrespected. Twenty-two percent of voters had told exit pollsters that “moral values” motivated them. Democrats, engaged in their quadrennial bout of hand-wringing, agreed that social issues had befuddled the country and cost them a victory.Fast-forward to now. President Barack Obama supports gay marriage, and refuses to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. He signed a health care bill that lowers the cost of birth control coverage. He reversed the Reagan-era ban on aid to international family planning programs. He appointed two pro-abortion rights Supreme Court justices. One in five voters still think the guy’s a Muslim. And he’s winning….
Conservatives have started to process that. “There’s a growing segment of the American population that is dependent on government funds and largesse,” says Dean Welty, an activist from Virginia. “Many of them give the Obama administration credit for that. We have the largest number of people on welfare we’ve ever had. We have the largest number of people on unemployment. It’s not good for the country, but it’s good for Obama.”
Most of the Values voters I talk to end up delivering a version of this theory. Ryan’s speech targeted Obama for “more people in poverty, and less upward mobility wherever you look.” If you’ve paid enough attention to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, you see this as intentional. The books on sale on the way into the main ballroom include Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs To Pay for the Cities…In other words, voters are being bribed. Gary Bauer, the deathless evangelical leader who still fills seats at these sorts of events, uses his afternoon speech to name and shame the moochers. “There’s a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day,” Bauer says. “They will turn out in massive numbers.”…
Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy calls out a specimen of the ever-popular Redeemed Convert narrative, Kamal Saleem:
… A self-described “former terrorist,” Saleem came onstaging waving a miniature American flag and whipped the crowd into a frenzy, warning of creeping Shariah and appeasement—if not outright sympathy—from the Obama administration.
This is standard fare. Saleem, a Lebanese-born evangelist, has made a career out of speaking to Christian groups about his experiences with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and ’80s. He claims to have been worked, at various points, for Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, and Yasser Arafat, not to mention Saudi terrorists in Afghanistan. In 1979, he says he traveled to the United States on the terrorists’ dime to build sleeper cells for the inevitable jihadist takeover, before—miraculously—finding the light and converting to Christianity.
But as I reported in a piece for the magazine last spring, much of Saleem’s story doesn’t add up. California police have no record of an incident he describes vividly in the first chapter of his book; the FBI says it has no record of meeting with him. And those who knew him before he began traveling the country under a stage name say they have serious doubts about huge portions of his narrative. Wally Winter, a former roommate during the period Saleem purports to have been grooming terrorists, told me, “He could sell swampland in Louisiana. I really do not believe the story about the terrorism.”
Saleem refused to respond to a detailed set of questions for that story, though. In fact, he almost never talks to reporters. And so, after sticking around for a 30-minute book-signing, I, along with Michelle Goldberg of the Daily Beast, decided to ask him about his past….
Ms. Goldberg usually writes about the politics of religious fundamentalism. Here’s her take:
…If there was one dominant theme at this year’s Values Voter Summit, the right-wing confab organized by the Family Research Council, it was that President Obama is endangering the United States by coddling radical Islamists. “[W]hat we’re watching develop before our eyes today are the direct consequences of this administration’s policy of apology and appeasement across the globe,” Michele Bachmann said of the attacks on American embassies and consulates in the Middle East.
Last year, you might remember, some American counterterrorism trainers were found to be using material so virulently anti-Muslim that senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins wrote an outraged letter to the Department of Homeland Security. Bachmann described the resulting changes in counterterrorism curricula this way: “That’s enforced Islamic speech codes here in the United States, and all done with the help of our president and secretary of state.”
Given the resonance of such language at the Values Voter Summit, Mitt Romney’s recent rhetoric on the Middle East makes more sense. His claim that the Obama administration’s “first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks,” has been widely criticized, even by some staunch Republicans. The base, however, ate it up—when pundit Bill Bennett quoted Romney’s words in his speech introducing Paul Ryan, there were sustained cheers and applause….
There is a grotesque irony in the way speakers at the Values Voter Summit kept invoking the deaths of the four American officials in Libya to argue that the United States needs to adopt a more belligerent stance toward Muslims….From these speeches, one would never know that at least two of the dead were deeply devoted to fighting the sort of politics that the Values Voter Summit represents…
With the goal of “reading these idiots so you don’t have to”, I checked Redstate to see what Erick “Voice of the GOP Gated Community” Erickson thought about the VVS, but he hasn’t posted since Thursday. Perhaps he’s just having too much fun (or saving the good stuff for his CNN gig) but frankly, it is my informed suspicion that this is not good news for John McCain Mitt Romney or this year’s downticket Republicans, either.
Schlemizel
These loons are very fortunate that there is no God or they would be spending eternity in Hell for what they have done to the poor, old and sick in this country, to say nothing of what they are doing to the rest of us
Maude
Sudan rejected the US request to send 50 Marines to protect our embassy. Biden had talked to Sudan Friday and the Marines were on their way.
Now, the non essential personnel and their families were ordered to leave.
Romney needs to shut up.
sydney
I got nothing.
They will die on their own petard.
gene108
That’s the real key this year. Do undo the damage of 2010 on down ticket races.
I hope you are right.
Saw this ad from Shelley Adler today, who is trying to unseat first term Congressman and former Philadelphia Eagle’s offensive tackle, John Runyan.
I thought it was cute. Wonder what other people think about its effectiveness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
Good lord. Tweety said something yesterday about how he was disappointed in “moderates” who don’t hear the dog whistles. At the risk of practicing TV mind-reading and projection, I got the distinct impression he was talking about the media, not voters.
My first read on that was “voters are being tribed’ which would work as a verb in this case.
Ryan likes to mewl that “our rights come from God, not from government!”. I realize that any challenge of this nonsense would be interpreted as an OMG ATTACK ON RELIGION! and Richard Cohen and Chuck Todd would become Very Concerned about one, but I can’t imagine it’s because I’m an agnostic that I immediately think “When did God change his” to use their language “mind about slavery, women having rights, blacks having rights, three fifths of a person and all that other fun stuff?
raven
@Maude: Unass all of them!
PsiFighter37
I;’M DRUMNK again. Hot damn, IU feel ilke I can flyyyyy
PF37 + somewhere around 6. Just did a shot of Barcardi and about to light my fire on hair
Linda Featheringill
These people make up a minority of voters in the US. They’re probably largely white but still they don’t belong to the greater, dominant group. They really are misfits.
So they can get together and have a good time if they want to. That is their right, after all. But they cannot control a national election because there are too few of them. They cannot succeed in an armed rebellion because there are too few of them. They can’t run off and establish their own country because all the land is taken and no other nation wants them.
They really are impotent. I’m not going to worry about them.
the Conster
Commenter beltane a couple of years ago nailed it with a description of these Values Voters/tea party gatherings – they’re “Woodstocks of the Damned” whose attendees will soon be smearing themselves with feces and speaking in tongues. We just need to fight to keep the metaphorical and literal lights on until they end up on the trash bin of history.
Hal
Mr. Welty? I have bullshit on line one for you. Can I transfer him over?
Linda Featheringill
@gene108:
That’s a cute ad! I understood the message and I think others will, too.
Hal
@the Conster:
As many people have said, if these are the folks that will be saved in the rapture, I’ll gladly stay here on Earth. Hard to believe Heaven has so many assholes.
Cacti
@Hal:
And they like to bite the hand that feeds them, and show up at rallies with placards saying “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”!
Maude
@raven:
I’m with you on that.
Just watched the vid. It is wonderful. My upstairs neighbors now know I am crazy as I laughed my rear off.
Cacti
My facebook-fu has been fast and furious today with my Repub family members.
The explanation for Mitt’s giantic fail at his embassy attack smirk-fest is: “The librul media ambushed poor old Mitt.”
Ambushed him. At a press conference that he f*cking organized.
Head, wall, x3.
Another Halocene Human
@gene108: Are you kidding? That ad is flipping awesome. Lots of pageviews, too, so it must be getting some traction.
raven
@Maude: I’ve always been a real Spirit fan and it was great to shoot video that would go with it. It was so lucky to catch the knuckle head pouncing. The thing is that was 6 years ago and the damn thing still lives in that den and Bohdi keeps chasing him.
Jewish Steel
@Linda Featheringill:
Hold up there, sister. I’m getting some information back from this thing called a Curiosity Rover. If Values Voters are game, I’m willing to help them to all the land they can handle.
Baud
@gene108:
Agree. Good ad, cause it really memorable.
I thought the woman at the end was going to mace Runyon. That would have made it perfect.
Southern Beale
Yeah, that’s a really big belief in conservative circles: that Democrats made people dependent on the government so that people would then keep voting for Democrats. There’s just so much flawed with that argument — for starters, most everyone who believes it is dependent on government in some shape or fashion, too.
blingee
Yea, Obama is winning because he’s handing out welfare checks to blacks and women. Yea that’s it.
These people are sooooo clueless it’s unbelievable. Thanks Faux.
rickstershierpa
From the 1940s to the end of the 1980s, substitute “Communist” for “Muslim,” and “Sharia Law” for “Marxist-Leninist” and this would essentially be the same speeches. The psychological need for a “Satanic enemy,” with worse being “Satan’s allies” amongst us is old human trope, especially in American history. But these guys seem to push it to the absurd.
David Koch
SNL kicks off a new season in less than 90 minutes.
Here’s hoping Jason Sedakis has a killer Mittens parody.
AliceBlue
@Hal:
Many years ago, my grandmother was informed that she was destined for hell by one of her neighbors. She replied “if people like you are going to be there, I don’t want to go.” This line has been very useful at various times in my life.
beltane
@Hal: Someone should f*ck with Mr. Welty’s little brain by telling him that all these people love Obama for the same reason the moochers loved Jesus after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (IrishGirl)
While the cattle call IS more appropos than other metaphors, I believe “sheep herding” is the best description available.
Baud
I have to applaud this guy. He saw an opportunity to separate fools from their money, and he seized it.
Maude
@raven:
When I was a kid, there was a neighborhood groundhog that had a network of tunnels. One day. the men of the neighborhood went around and plugged up all the holes except for one. They turned on the hose and flooded the hole, being very proud of their efforts. The groundhog was sitting behind them watching.
gbear
@the Conster:
Or Galtamont.
I can’t wait to find the on-line version that Romney program you were play-by-playing earlier this evening. Sounds like a delicious take-down.
Baud
@the Conster:
Devolution is not just a theory — it’s a fact!
amk
@Linda Featheringill: whatchusaid. In the mean time, it’s fun to have fun at their expense.
raven
@Maude: Like this.
Narcissus
@David Koch: damn son I forgot about that
Maude
Romney is using the Reagan playbook. he thought he was so clever when he said the US was apologizing.
It backfired on him.
hhex65
@Baud: Amercia, what a country!
AliceBlue
@AliceBlue:
The first line should have read “was informed that she wasn’t going to heaven by one of her neighbors.”
It’s been a long day.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: +6 what homeskillet?
Another Halocene Human
@Linda Featheringill: They provided cover for the flip from Dem to Rep for many low-info white voters who didn’t want to think of themselves as racist low-lifes.
But they overplayed their hand, a generation grew up in the church and rejected it, the LSD era ended and scandals took them down and the internet has made it possible for atheists to evangelize (again–not since the 1950’s red scare have atheists been so open in American life, I think). New evangelical leaders are wondering aloud why their church never talks about poverty, while young people look at the hate-mongerers askance. And hatred–of sluts (unmarried women having sex, and/or feminists) and then gays–was the horse they rode in on, until the whole thing started to unravel. It turned out the same people who cared so much about “teh babees” didn’t care so much for clinic bombings and the knee-jerk, unthinking hatred and disgust for homosexuals didn’t survive increasing exposure and familiarization.
The evangelical fundamentalists have built an empire of lies, half-truths, smarm, fear-mongering, and rhetorical tricks. Thus, their time of greatest triumph became their downfall. Drunk on power, their precipitated their own fall, time and time again. The people you have swayed by pretending to be reasonable are not easily herded along when you seize the opportunity to enact radical change. And now they know you for who you are. And now they know you for what you are.
Hate on, haters. Sooner or later there will be not one group, not one person, young or old, of estate grand or mean, that you have not slandered, denounced, or threatened in the vilest language imaginable. As your body deteriorates and your hangers-on drift away, all that is left is the fantasy that the glory that was, still is, as you rant to a microphone in an empty room.
ETA: re: LSD: my understanding as I wasn’t there was that druggies did and still do provide a goodly number of converts to strict, out-there, and/or culty religious communities.
Howard Beale IV
@Linda Featheringill:
Actually I would love for one of those states where this thinking is prevalent to have a one-time vote within their state to secede. If they win a plurality, then within 24 months any US defense assets gets yanked, they create their own currency (as we have seen with the EU crises, no fscking way will they be able to use the US dollar if you’re not a US state), their own military and border patrol, their own treaties with the US and other sovereign nations, all corporations with HQ’s in said state get a chance to re-incorporate back into the US, the whole nine yards-just like when the Slovak Republic broke off from the Czech Republic (sans currency).
Would it cause the rest of the US heatrburn? Hell yes-but the price they would pay will be far worse.
Maude
@raven:
Bookmarked. thx.
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: 2 Torpedoes, 1 Bud Light, 2 Dogfishehad Punkin Ales, 2 Magic Hat IPA, 1 shot Barcdi, 1 shot Gray Goose, and 1 other beer
I am seriously shitfaced right now, and it’so nly 10:20. My fiancee may not be happy with mer tomorrow morning ,bu t this is na nighht to live like I am 5 years tounger tyhan I really am
raven
@Maude: One more, my little girl on the run!
Howard Beale IV
@gene108: Cute ad. Hope it works out.
gbear
@PsiFighter37:
And feel 50 years older than you really are for the rest of the weekend.
raven
@Another Halocene Human: Acid opened a lot of doors, not all were that great.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: Good Sweet Christ. Lightweight.
Thank goodness you’re only TUI, typing under the influence.
Southern Beale
Apparently Glenn Reynolds has called on Obama to resign because he’s a FUCKING MORON and thinks a president will resign 2 months before the election.
Corner Stone
I always wanted to be able to type Druid language. I guess I need whatever he’s having.
Linda Featheringill
@Jewish Steel: #18
Land on Mars for the Values Voters:
I would try to contribute to their transportation fund!
gnomedad
If Saleem insists he’s a terrorist, why argue? Throw him in Gitmo.
Baud
@Jewish Steel:
And still the Rover’s hunt for intelligent life will go on…
Southern Beale
From the New York Times, regarding criticism of their flawed story on voter fraud:
Maude
@raven:
Bookmarked.
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: That’s okay. becuase when I TUI, the end result is inevitable, ivariably worse.
PF37 +12
DO THAT BRAND NEW THANG
PsiFighter37
@gbear: Its okay, We akk die evntually, wjhich is why I crush it frm hetre to etnerity
raven
@PsiFighter37: go to bed
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: I think you’re just spoofing us now.
Maude
@Jewish Steel:
Curiosity doesn’t deserve that. She’s a good rover.
Corner Stone
@Southern Beale: I actually am feeling some resentment towards you now that I have read that garbage. That was unstoppably painful.
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
It’s more that they vote in off-year elections and most people don’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the GOP lost the House this year.
Another Halocene Human
@blingee:
ooooold Bircher notion, just updated a little for these modern times
I used to frequent the Housing Bubble Blog. it was fun except for being lousy with such clods (also crossover with John Galt-fans. bleh).
There was apparently a classical formulation of the elitist notion that universal suffrage would work great until the rubes figured out they could vote themselves checks out of the common treasury. (I forget the proper wording or attribution.)
Uh.
Yeah, I guess that’s a real fear if you’ve been locking up the common revenues for your own special interests this entire time.
Having the City pay to resurface a golf course truly is a more thoughtful, useful, farseeing use of money than spending it on a public library and direct services to needy residents….
piratedan
it’s funny how all these folks appear to long for a church/state model that would guide them in their daily lives yet how none of them want to move to Iran to experience it.
Another Halocene Human
@Southern Beale:
You’re missing the point. It’s them vs. us. As ever.
? Martin
@Southern Beale: First they came for our softcore porn directors and I didn’t speak up…
Another Halocene Human
@Southern Beale:
=I don’t give a fuck who wins, I’m insulated from the results of elections
#actualelitists
David Koch
Looks like Burnsy picked the wrong week to give up smoking.
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: The gf99d ppeps at GIOS kno thatnt this is how I rol.
tHE FACT THAT Yyou disbelieve me is a bit appliinng a nd hurtful
BD of MN
@PsiFighter37:
Bud Light?
+4 myself, Founder’s Breakfast Stout, Founder’s Dirty Bastard, and couple of homebrew Robust Porters…
Another Halocene Human
@? Martin: Surprised this isn’t getting more play.
Stopping porn seems to be the one issue Mitt is actually passionate about in this election.
I don’t consume the kind of porn with live actors myself (I like to read … naughty things … also imagine them) but the notion of the government going after that industry, or the consumers, or the distributors, or the rest of the sex industry?
I. can’t. even.
This issue alone should make people very afraid. I guess it doesn’t fit people’s preconceived notion of Mitt.
Santorum, people would believe that of him. And yet his major notable acts while in Washington were a) grifting from his home state, continuing to claim residency credits there when he lived in VA and b) trying to help a PA company steal from all of us by giving Accuweather the sole right to distribute weather data and forecasts from NOAA. Thankfully, he failed at both.
GxB
@Corner Stone: I clicked on it and immediately saw a quote from Doug Mataconis – oh how will we ever counter such a logic laden one-two punch juggernaut?
Another Halocene Human
@piratedan: Or even South Carolina.
Chris
Yep, just like with health care costs a few years ago, their argument’s that it’s the government intervention and welfare that’s causing the lack of upward mobility… And yet, everywhere you look in Europe, it turns out that the country with the bigger, more comprehensive welfare state has more upward mobility, not less, than the U.S, just like it spends less on health care – the exact opposite of what you’d expect if the welfare state was the problem.
As for “it’s good for Obama” – you trying to say that the financial crisis, by making a ton of people unemployed through no fault of their own, has finally made quite a few mouth breathers realize that it’s not just moochers and parasites and lazy people who end up on the losing side of the capitalism game? Well, hallefreakinlujah.
Another Halocene Human
@BD of MN: Haagen Datsun chocolate/peanut butter premium ice cream, milk, soda, ice, and Malibu coconut rum holiday edition with the little coconut pieces
really good except for the hardened peanut butter globs
plain old choco would have been perfect
live and learn.
Ruckus
@Jewish Steel:
Please tell me the plan requires them to be telleported. We have a big pile of soylent green machines not doing nothing. We could convert them to telleportation machines for about $300 each and some paint. Run um in the front and they are gone! We could charge them $500 each for the flight. This is gonna be a money maker.
Corner Stone
What the F is the media doing now?
Yahoo! News has a headline that “Ryan Hits Obama on Foreign Policy”
and Reuters on Google News has a headline that “Romney Hits Obama on Looming Fiscal Cliff”
These fucking guys.
Another Halocene Human
@gnomedad: Only if you promise to throw aid-n-comfort-to-terrorists Peter King in with him.
Richard
I don’t think there is a more vile group of people on the planet than the bunch who attended this summit. Their number one value is hatred, followed closely by hypocrisy. Jesus would not recognize these deeply dishonest fucks as Christian.
Another Halocene Human
@Corner Stone: hm, I wonder if they are trying to attack the “obama could take romney in a fist fight” meme
yahoo news is a cesspool
Another Halocene Human
@Richard: Money-changers in the temple, Pharisees?
Oh, I think Jesus would have had their number.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: I apologize, and of course you are correct.
The gf99d ppeps do know how you rol.
PsiFighter37
@BD of MN: I was at a Yankkes ballgame in the middlen of all this, Ti keep rolling til its viver
Ruckus
@Richard:
If jesus is real, and BTW I don’t think so, he is probably warming up the planet getting the wingnuts warmed up and ready for their eternal resting place. They sure as whatever deserve it.
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: Srascsm i s nto apreicated in this time and state pf being
Another Halocene Human
@Another Halocene Human: Didn’t Paul, yes that Paul, say the greatest give is love? Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
Chris
Yes, because that’s EXACTLY who a Muslim Brother would be working for. Oh, but they’re all brown and speak similarly shaped squiggly-talk! They must be in it together!
Pig ignorant fucks couldn’t find their own hands if you started them looking at their wrists. I gotta give the man his props, though, he’s tapped one of the richest veins of wingnut welfare on the map.
Chris
@Maude:
For my money, get everybody the fuck out, essential or otherwise, until the shit’s been cleaned off the fan. That government’s not friendly enough to be trusted with security. IMHO.
Hill Dweller
CNN has a story quoting the Egyptian Prime Minister as saying several of the protesters were paid.
This entire things smells. There is some ratfkcing happening here, but I doubt we’ll ever know the culprits. At the risk of sounding like a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, I’m betting there are some wealthy wingnuts involved.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Halocene Human:
That one came up on Usenet back in the 1990s all the time. These guys liked to claim that this eternal cycle, identified by the ancients, of tyranny to oligarchy to democracy to fiscal collapse, anarchy and back to tyranny again had happened inexorably in every civilization throughout history, and that the 20th century welfare state was clearly modern civilization entering the collapse phase. It seems to be big with libertarian science-fiction fans.
CW in LA
@Another Halocene Human: “yahoo news is a cesspool”
So much This. It’s Fox news for people with basic reading skills.
Steeplejack
In the “trout-mouth” slide show, I liked the comment from William Been of Pennsylvania:
Yes, it’s clearly that, not any sort of economic disaster or people wanting to, you know, eat or something.
And this guy is a Christian?! Jesus wept.
Corner Stone
@Another Halocene Human: I thought that was Paul McCartney with The Beatles?
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
This exactly. That was the religious right’s function from the start.
I’ll add that IMHO one of their problems is that there’s a large number of people in their congregations who love the label “Christian” as a tribal marker, enjoy themselves some slut shaming and gay bashing, but would still be very uncomfortable with the idea of people like their pastor running society – he might get the wrong idea and go too far in his religious puritanism, which wouldn’t be good at all because truth be told they enjoy sinning as much as anyone.
Always suspected this was why the two times the religious right’s tried to run their own candidate for president (Robertson and Huckabee) they not only lost but ended up behind people that most of the party considered RINOs.
beltane
@Hill Dweller: I have been wondering the same thing. But even the fact that this is being mentioned openly gives me some hope the guilty wingnuts will be found.
PsiFighter37
+14
you can;t stio m,e
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@Hill Dweller: yeah, but I suspect those wealthy wingnuts aren’t American. My sense is this, like Bin Laden’s tape from fall of ’04, is intended to help the Republicans, as is Bibi’s sudden reqeust for an interview and his appearance on MTP tomorrow. If only the mouth-breathers the noble, doughty clear-eyed heartlanders who will decide this election would notice that neither Bibi nor whichever members of the Saudi royal family who are fucking with our politics have the best interests of our country first and foremost.
Matt McIrvin
@Linda Featheringill:
They can still do a tremendous amount of local damage in their own communities. And that’s going to be the case for a long time to come.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
In the Bircher days, the undeserving moochers were white and a fuckton of them were Southern or Western. Hence, it was all good. (“If farm subsidies are socialism, then we’re socialists!”)
The fact that it started going to “those people” is what catapulted the Birchers from fringe lunatics to mainstream respectability.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: brthero mine, that shizz unnerstood Peece3 0utr
beltane
@Chris: I wonder who or what induced the Sudanese government to change its mind. A sack of cash perhaps? Iran-Contra should tell us that absolutely nothing is beyond the capacity of the Republican party and its supporters. It’s not tin-foil-hat; it’s history.
pluege
the republican freak show rolls
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: fatkfc you ,. i really ahten how tyo deibt; vkevue nt erubabkess at kak
F that, fm you
Yutsano
OT: Standford just whupped USC.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Alexis De Tocqueville.
Corner Stone
Speaking of freak shows, NatGeo is showing where an Orca attacked and killed a great white shark in view of a tourist boat. With video and all. This is some really crazy shit.
MikeJ
@Chris:
My ex-gf had to pretend she was Swiss to get out of Islamabad when they torched the embassy there after the rumour spread we were bombing Medina. Of course she was in 3rd grade[1] so she wasn’t grilled too extensively.
[1]Please note this was the 1979 embassy attack, not anything from this weekend.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37: Oh yeah? You kiss your mother with that mouth?
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
As if any human society has ever spent enough on poor people to be even mildly inconvenienced, let alone collapse.
Steeplejack
@Southern Beale:
That’s about the only way Romney could win. And I’m not sure a write-in campaign for Richard Hertz or Heywood Jablomé wouldn’t still beat Mitt.
Corner Stone
@beltane: C’mon people. The Republican party nominated Romney for fuck’s sake. They aren’t paying the Sudanese govt money to reject more Marines in country.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yutsano: That was awesome.
Corner Stone
@MikeJ: How does an 8 year old pretend to be Swiss?
Chris
@beltane:
Perhaps, but I don’t think the Sudanese need the encouragement. It’s an islamist regime, and just in case that in itself wasn’t enough, it’s already pissed off at the U.S.A. because we support the new country that just broke away from them. And changing schedules and plans at the last minute – “yeah, sorry, we said we’d let you send ten people but we’re only allowing two” – is a time-honored diplomatic way of giving someone the finger.
@MikeJ:
Yikes, I’m glad she made it out okay. (And even gladder that that was not, in fact, something from this weekend).
Corner Stone
Ok, just flipped over to ConAir on TNT. Shutting it down except for the lizard part.
This is going to get ugly from here on in.
MikeJ
@Corner Stone: Mostly by having the nice lady from the Swiss embassy show up at school, collect all the USians and loudly pronounce that all these kids are Swiss and are going with her.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Neat trick that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@MikeJ: I was guessing it was a dirndl and some adorable floppy-eared goats.
? Martin
@Yutsano: Excellent. USC makes baby Jesus cry. Work will be fun on Monday.
JustAnotherBob
@Linda Featheringill:
This.
And they are likely going to fade in numbers. Young folks today are being exposed to a wider range of thoughts and experiences. A lot of the stuff that twists these folks bloomers makes no sense to most younger people. They got no problems with Bert and Ernie.
Mike G
@Matt McIrvin:
Because the problem with America is that the rich and powerful aren’t rich and powerful enough.
Jewish Steel
@MikeJ: Let’s call the screenplay Schindler’s Swiss.
I smell Oscar.
MikeJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker: Dammit, I told her she wasn’t supposed to show that video we made that weekend to anybody.
GregB
Every time I see Gary Bauer I think of him flipping for Jesus and hotcakes.
Link.
Another Halocene Human
@Ruckus: If jesus is real, and BTW I don’t think so
Jesus is real in terms of being a manifestation. What you have to realize is at that time in history, “Jesus”, aka “Joshua” the Jewish warrior in the Mosaic legend, is a nom de guerre. So you have various religious thinkers and revolutionaries and religious radical revolutionaries calling themselves “Jesus”. But memories fade and after a time they get mashed up in people’s minds and then someone takes it upon themselves to write pious [fictional] hagiographies and the rest is history.
If you want a fun controversy, dig into the various theories about the origins of the teachings in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. The Germans theorized a unique source, called “Q” from Quelle, German for source. (19th century German scholars are known for their humor and out-of-the-box thinking.) As “Q” is a theoretical document which has never been found there is much fun to be had speculating as to who created it, where, and why.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker:
I read this a couple times before I realized you weren’t saying “dradle”.
Because I was like…that shit wouldn’t be helping any.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@Another Halocene Human:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
Mark S.
Stanford’s beaten USC four years in a row now.
Another Halocene Human
@Mike G: The petty bourgeois have always been talented at getting their envy on.
Chris
@JustAnotherBob:
Always been struck by the strong gap between my generation and my parents’ on that particular issue. I first heard gay marriage discussed on the radio when I was fifteen or so, my immediate instinct was “that’s retarded, why don’t they let them marry?” and my mother’s strong objection to that notion was as incomprehensible to me as my opinion was to her.
I’m not gay, I wasn’t sticking up for my own rights. Didn’t even have gay friends, the only gay person I’d met was a royal bastard. I already had political opinions about some things but had never heard gay marriage debated before. I honestly couldn’t tell you where my views came from. Guess my generation just grew up in a world where it was no big deal.
Another Halocene Human
@Matt McIrvin:
Daffyd ab Hugh? And his socks?
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
This is a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL example of cultural centrism. Athens went through a cycle of developing Democracy and then collapsing. Rome went through a cycle of developing Democracy (not that they ever got there) and collapsing. Rome was known for being generous to poor Romans in Rome itself (the bread and circuses). They think this MUST be typical of everywhere. Didn’t happen in China, didn’t happen in the major West African nations, didn’t happen in the Central/South American empires – this cycle ONLY describes (and then with a lot of fudging) the two ancient societies we’re culturally descended from. Didn’t happen to any of the societies in-between, either.
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: Maybe less societal homophobia? There was a big push by psychologists against homosexual behavior and gender non-conformity in the late 1950s (Neo-Freudianism) and people raised in that era still suffer the wounds from that.
And let’s not discount the purge of homosexuals from in turn the military, the civil service, and then teaching. In an era of great fear, that had to have turned the dial to eleven even for nominal heterosexuals about the stray homosexual thought or “looking” gay by expressing too much affection for a same-sex friend… and of course the HUGE pressure to make sure your child isn’t oneofthem and thus marked for a broken life in the shadows.
Another Halocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: Eastern Native Americans had representative democracy, and they didn’t collapse–they were decimated by foreign diseases and then attacked by opportunistic foreign invaders.
I’m sure some wingnut can find a totally made up wild ass explanation for how the Iriquois Nation’s social welfare policies* led to their military defeats. They’re good like that.
*-I’m sure any Indians reading this are laughing now
burnspbesq
What I’d like to know is: who is the alien life form that has taken over Saletan’s boday and caused him to write two sensible articles in the same week, and what is his/her/its motivation?
slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/human_nature/2012/09/mohammed_movie_embassy_attacks_don_t_let_i…
gwangung
@Yutsano: I haz happy!
Origuy
@Corner Stone:
Sing “Edelweiss” and “So Long, Farewell”?
mclaren
And how is this different from Obama grifting the liberal marks with his faux-populist rhetoric in the 2012 presidential campaign while the middle class erodes and disappears and Obama signs off on extending the Bush tax cuts for billionaires?
Chris
@efgoldman:
Now pay attention, 007!
Yutsano
@gwangung: Lotsa my Husky buds are quite happy with today’s events all around. :)
magurakurin
@Chris:
and that my friend is a wonderful thing.
gwangung
@Yutsano: Not that I’m displeased, given that I also have a degree from the UW, but methinks the Cardinal had a slightly larger challenge….
(My preferred nick for the alma mater rotates between Trees and Robber Barons. I only tolerate the “corporate” Cardinal designation….)
Soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: I saw that a couple of months ago. It freaked everybody out. Even more with how sharks all around the area reacted within minutes of the event.
It led to whole new lines of study about shark pheromones and orca attack methods.
max
@Another Halocene Human: Stopping porn seems to be the one issue Mitt is actually passionate about in this election. I don’t consume the kind of porn with live actors myself (I like to read … naughty things … also imagine them) but the notion of the government going after that industry, or the consumers, or the distributors, or the rest of the sex industry? I. can’t. even.
That’s what happened under Edwin Meese when they went after all the porn guys (and girls). Of course, they won’t say they’re going explicitly after porn, they’ll just say they’re going after this or that related thing. And the porn.
Bush did some of the same stuff, but they were too worried about Muslims to waste much time on it. Mitt a priss, and as he said to that lady, ‘You’re not my kind of Mormon, why do you keep coming to church?’, so I don’t doubt that he’ll sic whatever on us degenerate types. (Not the rich degenerate types, just the regular degenerates, which is most of us who aren’t Mormons.)
Now, if you’re the type to want to make utterly dishonest propaganda flicks stuffed to the gills with racist and/or bigoted bullshit, you’ll have it made, apparently. Libertarians will go back to complaining about how terrible the R’s are about everything but taxes but at least they’re better than the Democrats, which is clearly the Slut Party at this point.
max
[‘And I say, I like sluts just fine, and I don’t like perfidious pusillanimous pompous prissy prima donnas at all, so I am OK with that.’]
DonkeyKong
“Forces of Evil in a Bozo Nightmare”
Soonergrunt
@efgoldman: What’s up?
Pinkamena Panic
@mclaren: Are you done yet? Yes? Good, now go back to your dark, depressing little corner.
Corner Stone
@max: Listen. I’m reasonably torched so that’s cool and all. But I read this at least 3 times now.
What?
Steeplejack
I’m still up, but I’m tuckered out and fading. My cat is pretending to sleep with her head draped on one of my hands, so it’s hard to type. But it’s not my mouse hand, so I can continue to read, if not comment.
SNL was actually okay tonight, with Seth MacFarlane as host. Still some clunkers, but more funny stuff than I expected. Actually, that’s the first whole episode I’ve watched in a very long time. Too lazy to change the channel, and not much else on.
Corner Stone: Con Air? Srsly. That sucks, even for lizard-brain food.
Corner Stone
@Soonergrunt: Kind of reminded me of elected officials in a way.
dance around in your bones
@PsiFighter37:
Somebody’s gonna be a bit embarrassed en la mañana.
Slow down, darlin’.
Kyle
@max:
Mormons are some of the most avid consumers of porn; Utah is one of the leading states in per-capita consumption.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Put. The Bunny. In The Box.
Soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: when you gut one, all the others run for it?
Soonergrunt
@Kyle: Followed very closely by “the buckle of the bible belt”, Oklahoma.
Corner Stone
We can’t all be Bogie.
Corner Stone
@Soonergrunt: I was thinking the stink in the waters made them all run for the exit, way before anyone else ever knew something happened.
Corner Stone
Ooooo, I had somehow forgotten the motorcycle scene in ConAir…
aangus
OT but
Just for fun I googled (video) ni-clang and this was the #1 hit.
youtube.com/watch?v=cjNIARQGIYA
: ))
Corner Stone
@dance around in your bones: Honestly, I can’t tell you how hard I have been laughing on that. I actually kind of hope it turns out it’s a new language I have previously been unaware of, like Ferb Latin.
xian
@Hill Dweller: people were paid to. attack the protesters during the revolution too, according to my Cairene friend.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
For chrissakes, GoodFellas is on AMC. Cleanse your mind with that.
Hanna coming up on HBOP at 2:30 a.m. EDT.
Corner Stone
If I met my daddy for the first time and he had that cheesy, greasy mullet?
I would whisper so my mom would have to lean down to hear what I was saying. Then I would pimp slap that fool.
BruceFromOhio
50 Sheds of Grey
‘Hurt me,’ she begged, raising her skirt as she bent over my workbench. ‘Very well,’ I replied, ‘You’ve got fat ankles and no dress sense.’
‘Punish me,’ she cried desperately, ‘Make me suffer like only a real man can!’ ‘Very well,’ I replied, leaving the toilet seat up.
‘I’m a very naughty girl,’ she said, biting her lip, ‘I need to be punished.’ So I invited my mother to stay for the weekend.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: I don’t get movie channels. WTF? You think we’re all multi-thousandaire playboys like you?
dance around in your bones
@Corner Stone: Hopefully, some ‘erb’ was involved.
Pinkamena Panic
Off-topic, yes, but relevant to everything: TOM from Toonami tells us why haters can fuck off.
@Corner Stone: So you know what you’re going to do today? (Also, too, where’s Perry?)
aangus
@BruceFromOhio:
ROFLMAO!
or whatever.
Soonergrunt
@efgoldman: New thread up.
Corner Stone
@BruceFromOhio: I have a few of those I’d like to quote here but right now I am busy with Matt Stoller’s latest.
It’s An Important Read.
BruceFromOhio
@dance around in your bones: Why, because someone’s erubabkess is showing? Gaia help me, I’d die of embarrassment just thinking about it.
aangus
@Corner Stone:
YAWN!
aangus
Multiple NEW THREADS!!
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Isn’t AMC pretty basic?
There’s Ocean’s Twelve on Spike. Surely you’ve got that? That’s on a par with TNT.
A richly varied cable package and über-fast Internet are my only extravagances. Other than that I’m positively monastic. Well, that and the champagne.
xian
@Matt McIrvin: in the warblogging days “libertarian science-fiction fans” called themselves anti-idiotarians. I always call them Heinleners.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack:
Ooh! Ooh! I have been watching it too!
I love the scene when they go to ‘Mom’s’ house and eat dinner (while the almost-dead guy is in the trunk) and Joe Pesci borrows a knife “to cut the deer’s hoof out of the front of the car”.
That’s Scorsese’s mom IRL.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: But whither the Important Read? !
Steeplejack
@dance around in your bones:
I can’t go over there and look, because I’ll get sucked in for the duration of the movie. It’s one of those that when I’m flipping through the channels and I hit it I can’t quit it and I have to watch the rest of it.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
You’re like an East Coast version of Yutz.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: Yup. That’s what happened to me.
Stuck in the Goodfella Zone.
Corner Stone
@aangus: Sounds like someone needs a fresh diapy and a snuggie blanket for nighty nite.
dance around in your bones
@BruceFromOhio: His erubabkess is prolly bright red and quite prominent ATM.
Kinda like this.
Ruckus
@Another Halocene Human:
Remember a few things.
This book has been rewritten a few times in history to suit someone at the time. It has been translated how many times? It was written(in theory) at a time when most people could not read nor write. The only way they knew what was in the book was to be told the passages. There are so many conflicting stories there is no way to know or believe any of it. It was as best as I understand it never to be taken literally, it was a book of parables and explanations of things that no one understood. The sun rotates around the earth, the earth is flat. Not to mention there are how many conflicting religions? But that’s OK you don’t like this one, start another one. You don’t like that someone appears to be born by magic that’s OK cause they really came on space ships. The world is only 6000 yrs old and jesus rode on dinosaurs. BTW he was also white with long blond hair. If you didn’t like the dominate religion during certain times you could be beaten or killed for that. Oh wait…
Personally I believe religion is for comfort. It’s a way to hide out from the fact that life can be real shitty most of the time even in today’s world. It doesn’t make it any better but it supposedly gives one hope that at some point life maybe won’t suck so much. But you’ll be dead so you won’t be able to complain anyway. So really it’s not very comforting.
Rathskeller
@Southern Beale: That was exceptionally deranged. Does GG really think the president is personally coordinating LA country police operations? The DSM should have a page or two on Political Purity Syndrome, something Glenn and the PUMAs appear to suffer from.
Corner Stone
@Rathskeller: Please try reading the link again.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Hey, I’m down with that. Except that Brony stuff. That’s just weird. Now, Phineas and Ferb . . .
Steeplejack
@dance around in your bones:
Whoa, baby got back!
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: There’s a fuckton of clinical diagnoses to be made by watching the P&F show.
Isabella? Candace? Irving?? Buford!? Baljeet!!
The whole freakin thing is a lit fuse.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Don’t get me started. I have trouble grokking the dysfunctional yet symbiotic relationship between Perry and Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: Got it goin’ like a turbo ‘Vette.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: You haven’t figured out yet that Perry doesn’t actually exist?
Why do you think he “disappears” at certain points of the story, yet shows up when all is “safe” again?
What do you think Dr. Doof really is? Or why somehow his “failed” innators always seem to coincide with the removal of whatever fantastical creation the “boys” have made that day?
It’s pretty clear to me that the mom character has suffered a mental break with reality and is in fact re-imagining herself as a child in the form of Candace. Something really awful happened to her actual children and that’s led to the powerful impetus to keep a perpetual eye on the two boys, in some vain attempt to “bust” them. It’s a misguided attempt to keep her offspring from the harm she couldn’t stop in her real life. The dad/husband is clearly a traveling lecturer/professor/charlatan who wasn’t there to protect his family from whatever hell they experienced.
Why do you think she can’t ever seem to turn her head at *just the right time* to see the dangerous end result of what the boys are up to?
I know what Major Monogram is doing but have yet to figure out what Jeremy represents.
But man, there’s some sick shit going down in the Tri-State area.
Why do you think her alter ego Dr. Doof is continually trying to control it?
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Holy shit, this is like the master key of Eckankar. Thank you! The Protocols of the Elders of Ferb, if you will.
Must study up on this. Your newsletter, I must subscribe.
jshooper
@mclaren: DAMN…That’s the best you got mclaren ?…It’s getting harder and harder to be a firebagger these days
The Sailor
@gbear: “Galtamont” is stolen.
Origuy
When I clicked on the link to @50ShedsofGrey, Twitter tells me
Similar to 50 Sheds of Grey >
@MittRomney
I don’t think I want to know why.
Kane
The same people who plotted to block the recovery of the economy because they thought a bad economy was a winning strategy to make Obama a one-term president, are the very same people who are now lamenting that Obama is benefiting from a bad economy.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: I suggest you not park in a garage anywhere they can bust a water main and drown your ass. You know, “they”. “Them”.
Applejinx
Oh please let this be a new category :D
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
Dude, you need to be laying off Phineas and Ferb. Hey, Arnold! is clearly more your speed. It will give you ALL the fucked up psychological drama masquerading as a kids’ show you need.
Bubblegum Tate
@Southern Beale:
So has this wingnut blogger. I love the whining.
Patricia Kayden
“In other words, voters are being bribed.”
Yes, by the promise of affordable healthcare, gay rights, women’s rights, immigration reform, the auto bailout and other goodies.
Too bad the Repubs are only trying to bribe the richest of the rich with lower taxes. I guess catering to the 1% is not enough to win elections.
fuckwit
I made some calls for Obama this weekend and got some real winners on the phone on the R side. Including a guy who claimed Obama is “a communist dictator son of a bitch” (and told me never to call him again).
The level of hostility is stunning. The Republicans are distilling down to a small, white-hot core of violently angry absolute nutcases. Everyone else is kind of recoiling in horror from them.
This by the way is exactly what happened in the Civil Rights era South. As the segregationist ranks got smaller, they got louder and more disgusting, which caused most white folks to recoil in horror, which caused the segregationist ranks to shrink even more and get even louder, which spiraled even more, etc.