George Will thinks that firing blackety-black-black President Obama will prove once and for all that we live in post-racial America. Also, too, baseball:
Managers get fired all the time. The fact that the Indians felt free to fire Robinson — who went on to have a distinguished career managing four other teams — showed that another racial barrier had fallen: Henceforth, African Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.
Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC’s excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.
Today I learned that voting for Obama is the political equivalent of a mercy fuck.
shortstop
Every time I think they’ve reached the acme of the apex of not getting it on race, they push that ceiling a little higher.
Kadzimiel
George Will might as well go all the way and start sending out chain emails featuring the president dressed as a witch-doctor accompanied by sneering racist Republican upchuck du jour.
Culture of Truth
George Will, as usual, of course, pinpoints the problem precisely – America’s long and agonzied history of giving black people every possible break and advantage, which reflects the nation’s endlessly generous and compassionate heart; but is, as he says, not to put to fine a point on it, stupid.
1badbaba3
I think a better way to prove post-racial America is for Will and his ilk to kiss my black ass.
Much more satisfying too.
Culture of Truth
He’s right about one thing – MSNBC sees racism everywhere! Also, anyone voting for Obama is a racist.
Ash Can
Could George Will possibly be any more of a parody of himself? …Never mind, don’t answer that.
SenyorDave
@1badbaba3: Ditto, except he and his ilk will have to kiss my white (well, its really more beige) ass.
gogol's wife
Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. “Pin-up”? I can sense he had a hard time not adding “boy.”
Villago Delenda Est
Another piece of shit who needs a tumbrel ride.
AxelFoley
Oh, George, I see what you did there.
Comrade Jake
A recent conversation I had with a colleague:
Colleague: “George Will is a smart commentator.”
Me: “He doesn’t believe in climate change.”
Colleague: “What? No…”
Me: “Yes.”
Colleague: “OK then. I take back what I said.”
Spread the word. George Will is an idiot. The more people know, the better.
rumpole
The Thinking Man’s Racist (TM).
amk
will must be talking about dubya + dubya.
TooManyJens
They really cannot imagine a world in which people actually disagree with them for substantive reasons. Republican projection again, if you ask me — the Republican Party today is practically defined by its lack of substantive reasons for anything it does other than “rich people want this and liberals don’t.”
handy
Reluctant not to give up on? How does that work?
The Moar You Know
I’m not “firing” Obama because he’s been sandbagged since day one of his presidency by a bunch of racist cracker assholes.
George Will and his bowtie can go fuck themselves.
biff diggerence
Watch Georgie the Fop cheer when the Confederate Papists on the USSC get the next case arguing for reinstatement of the Reserve Clause.
Quincy
Thanks for giving it a thread. Obviously Will isn’t usually worth wasting time on, but this piece bothered me so much that I wouldn’t fee right about the world without seeing it properly ridiculed.
General Stuck
It has finally dawned on me why the republican base is so adamant that Obama is an abject failure, which is nothing more than twisted projection that says,
“he beat us coming and going”
“stimulus, with r and d cash for alternative fuels”
“Health Care Reform (they had successfully blocked for 100 years”
“passed DADT repeal, ushering in new era of voter tolerance for gay marriage, and gay rights in general”
“11 dimensional chess leading wingnuts to club their own golden military industrial complex goose with large mandatory cut”
“and a bunch of other day to day shit”
Obama failed to burp wingnut baby jeevus, and all hell broke loose.
But Will has a pint. We could be post racial in the alternate universe the nutters are moving to in a fleet of rented u hauls. This poll proves it.
Tally ho!!
reflectionephemeral
1. Good luck diagramming that sentence.
2. That… that’s not a Warren Zevon reference somewhere a third of the way through that trainwreck sentence, is it? That would really bother me, not least ’cause I’ve used a Warren Zevon song about a Sox pitcher, “Bill Lee”, for post titles at least two or three times.
3. Along with his pompousness and general sneering dismissal of anyone not like him, he’s frustrating to read because he can’t even make up his mind as to why he hates the president so much. A little bit ago Pres. Obama was “a floundering naif” or a “real radical”.
low-tech cyclist
@Comrade Jake:
Indeed. A few years back, I blogged about the WaPo opinion pages, which forced me to actually read all the columnists for a season.
George Will won the prize for dumbest regular columnist, and it wasn’t even close. Which was a challenge, given the presence of Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, and Robert J. Samuelson on those pages.
How he got the reputation as an Intellectual Conservative is beyond me. Maybe the same way Paul Ryan got a reputation as a deficit hawk and budget wonk.
piratedan
yeah George, exactly what this country needs is a vulture capitalist running things, he’s got lots of shareholders and partners to satisfy and look at those pension plans that can be looted!
SatanicPanic
Before the arrival of Glen Beck, George Will was the smarmy pundit I most wanted to punch in the face.
Schlemizel
I hate to be picky – NO, really! I do! I get what your trying to do but the line is “Hello darkness my old friend”
I know, I have an intimate relationship with darkness but not with blackness.
Cacti
@Comrade Jake:
George Will proves that if you wear glasses and a bowtie, people will assume that you’re smart.
hep kitty
How much longer must we have to endure these doddering old farts?
jwb
@General Stuck: “Will has a pint.” By election day, he’ll be drinking several pints a day.
Villago Delenda Est
@amk:
Prezactly. That’s who he had to have been thinking of.
I take back the tumbrel. It would be far more appropriate for Will to be dealt with in the manner of the DeNiro portrayed Al Capone.
Betsy
Gad, what a fucking idiot.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Jake: You should have added “and he’s always been this way.” really. He has been.
hueyplong
Will is just one of many from his generation who thinks the White Man discharged any and all responsibilities and/or guilt regarding race once he decided it was OK for ni-clangs to play professional sports, and who decided they were hopelessly uppity and filled with a sense of entitlement when one of them challenged the reserve clause and Fked Up Sports For Good.
Impatience is getting the best of my sure and certain hope that twenty years from now they’ll all be dead or quietly eating Jello in non-public forums. Twenty years from now it could all be FUBAR and unsalvageable.
BGinCHI
Shorter Will:
People who understand how racism works are racists, especially your browns.
Schlemizel
@reflectionephemeral:
Well, to be honest Will has always given me an “excitable boy” vibe. I’d have the cadaver sniffing dogs working his property if I could and I believe they would turn up evidence of what that plastic exterior is hiding
shortstop
@Comrade Jake: I would say that conversation went pretty well. I was expecting your colleague to join in hotly denying climate change.
MattF
@General Stuck: Wingers just… have a problem with Obama. He’s just obviously… something. But they can’t quite… put their finger on it. And it can’t be…
Villago Delenda Est
@reflectionephemeral:
Well, it’s the general wingnut cognitive disaster of that Obambi guy…he’s simultaneously a stupid ni*CLANG* who needs a teleprompter to read the morning paper, but also he’s this incredibly cunning and subtle guy who has this surefire plan to confiscate all your precious bullet firing dildos in collaboration with the Plan 21 stormtroopers of the UN.
Quarks
Yes, Will, because firing the black guy and replacing him with an out of touch gaffe prone business executive who has so far demonstrated that he can’t run a presidential campaign, much less a country, will really get that post-racial message across to everyone.
shortstop
@Schlemizel: At least three stiffs could be hidden under that horrifically bad toupee.
Ash Can
@reflectionephemeral:
I think he knows damn well why he hates the president, but he also knows he has to tap-dance around it, because if he came right out and said it, it would be a bridge too far, and his sweet gig of being paid well for being stupid goes out the window.
pk
What I want to know is how do I get a job which allows me to be so clueless about everything all the time? So AAs vote for Obama because he’s black (forgetting that they have been voting reliably democratic forever). What about women, or latinos, or other non-whites. Why do white men always vote republican? What’s up with that? If poor or middle class whites vote for a white guy against their own interests it’s not racism, but if blacks and other non whites vote for a black guy because it is in their own interest, it’s racism. You know what’s racism? Newspaper columns and TV screens full of old white men spewing garbage forever. When will we be rid of these foul old men?
NotMax
Where to begin?
The piece is like the balloon-popping booth at a carnival, colorfully displaying so many inviting and easily deflated targets.
Suffice to say that any columnist of prominence (albeit faded and diminished prominence – see just about anything Will has written on global warming) who promotes – even obliquely – that McCain/Palin represent the better choice for America to have elected automatically discredits every single word preceding and following such egregious flim-flammery.
General Stuck
And more clear evidence Obama is tanking in a coming landslide for Mitt Romney, dispatched from across the great divide.
That ain’t no flip flop. It is a triple axle with a nailed landing, if you’re a drunk ballerina.
And more commie tampered polling. This one from teahadistan, USA.
Read more: http://www.wmur.com/news/politics/Poll-shows-Obama-with-15-point-lead-in-NH/-/9857748/16806904/-/evbu84z/-/index.html#ixzz289PJj9Oi
BGinCHI
This is exactly the kind of column one writes when one does not have a candidate to praise or support.
Every minute spent talking about “firing Obama” is a minute he doesn’t have to spend eating a Romney shit sandwich with extra Ryan sauce.
aimai
Oh my god its the soft bigotry of low expectations again! I would love to see someone write the column that is begging to be written:
Mitt Romney! You’re fired! We will finally know we are in a truly post 1% world when even a rich guy can be told, in no uncertain terms, that he can’t buy the presidency.
aimai
PeakVT
@hep kitty: Punditing, good or bad, is pretty easy on the body, so the answer is a lot longer than we want.
And since the only people that healthy, well-off old fart pundits know is other healthy, well-off old fart pundits, they don’t understand that raising the retirement age for everybody is a bad idea. This guy does, though.
shortstop
Well, let’s remember that he’s not writing for us or any other normal humans. And it doesn’t even matter if he believes what he says. The point of this column is to provide further cover to racists who need to believe they’re not racists. He’s giving permission to bigots to feel racially righteous about not voting for the guy they were never going to vote for.
I sure get tired of the supposedly rugged Republicans who can’t own their assholery, but need to be validated for it at every turn. Bunch of candyasses.
reflectionephemeral
@low-tech cyclist:
Well, I wasn’t there at the time, but Will apparently used to be capable of at least sometimes creeping up on the verge of being kinda thoughtful. There’s a bunch of sane quotes from the 1980s at this column. It’s not just that Will has declined into an mean-spirited Andy Rooney with a fancy for alliteration (though that is part of it). It’s that in the past thirty years, conservatism gradually ceased to be a mode of thought, and became a tribe, held together by common scorn of outsiders. Will has cast his lot with the tribe, and chosen to use the powers of his thesaurus for evil.
BGinCHI
@aimai: Well, it would really be a post-1% world if after Mitt was shitcanned we taxed him at, oh, say 67%?
hueyplong
Judge has apparently ruled in PA voter ID case.
TPM says: “A Pennsylvania judge partially blocked the state’s voter ID law on Tuesday in a ruling that will still allow poll workers to ask for identification at the polling place. Under the judge’s ruling, the state will be forced to accept provisional ballots from individuals who lack identification without that individual having to show photo identity within six days of the election.”
Probably half a loaf.
amk
Moving on to more important things in life,
PA Court rules voters can cast ballots without ID
General Stuck
@amk:
I had thought that was already at the PA supreme court. Oh well, good news anyways.
NonyNony
@low-tech cyclist:
Bow-tie, glasses, and an ability to wax on and on (and on, and on, and on) about the merits and minutia of baseball.
Really that’s about all I’ve ever seen with Will. He can talk about baseball and politics. That makes him S-M-R-T!
ThresherK
I’d think the racial barrier is hiring a black manager to manage some talented players, a.k.a. something at risk. But that whole scenario was before my time. The Indians had a history, anecdotally and second-hand, of not having much to lose for many years until the 1990s.
Totally as a reverse of The Onion’s idea that “Country is in such bad shape America let a black man run it”, I’d like to know from fellow BJers their opinions on “Which was the first black manager hired with a good roster of players to manage?”
Comrade Mary
Put up the Kay-signal!!
Judge halts enforcement of the Pennsylvania voting law for the election
SatanicPanic
@BGinCHI: No kidding. We can fire Obama, but it’s not like we won’t have to fill that position again.
J.W. Hamner
This is just a continuation of the idea of Obama as an affirmative action hire.
hep kitty
@PeakVT:
That being the case we will indeed be putting up with them much longer than necessary and/or bearable. :p
Which is why I let brave souls like the FP’rs to the dirty work (reading/listening to them) for me so I don’t have to.
1badbaba3
@pk: I see your problem here. You’re actually using your brain.
Quincy
I don’t even think Will was talking about black or latino voters, he probably forgot that they’re allowed to vote. When he says that America wants to see Obama succeed, he’s referring to the long gone center-left newspaper editors he came of age with who were always trying to help the poor and non-white with their silly social programs. I think George Will’s senility manifests itself in the belief that he’s still a token conservative among the 1970s villagers and that mocking the liberal establishment’s ideas on poverty, race and the environment remains a fresh approach.
amk
@General Stuck: Of course, the thugs are gonna appeal. But don’t know they got the mother time on their side.
NonyNony
@amk:
That’s what the headline says. But the ruling actually says that they can cast provisional ballots and, for this election only, don’t have to show up with photo ID within six days to prevent their provisional ballot from being thrown out.
Their provisional ballot can still be thrown out just like any other provisional ballot. It just can’t be thrown out because they didn’t show up with an id.
So the headline is a lie. The judge’s ruling says that they can refuse citizens to right to vote if they don’t have id. They just have to be more sneaky about it and not tell them up front that their vote won’t be counted. When their vote doesn’t get counted later on, nobody will ever know.
Hoodie
So, Will seems to be saying we have to fire Obama to prove we can be assholes and fire a guy for no reason other than he’s black, because the other stuff (Solyndra, the Libyan “scandal”) he talks about is largely a bunchy of made up Fox News horse manure.
What else can you make of this:
Obama has to go, not because he’s incompetent, but because John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and the George Wills of the world are impatient or incompetent? Isn’t that what the Robinson story means? After all, it’s not like it didn’t take more than a decade after Robinson’s firing for the Indians to be other than the butt end of a 1989 Charlie Sheen vehicle. Maybe Will is just trying to be subtle, like one of those inexplicable David Brooks attempts at satire, and is saying that there actually is no basis for firing Obama other than racism.
Comrade Mary
Oh, crap. Just as Kay warned us:
PeakVT
@hueyplong: Yeah, sounds like half a loaf. The number of people taking provisional ballots may still cause chaos and possibly disenfranchise people through excessive wait times. And the provisional ballots could still be challenged.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
Conservatives are the weirdest lifeforms on Earth. How many liberals have any of you known who thought of President Obama, when he was first running, as some kind of superhuman demi-god or savior or messiah, or even, as Will puts it, a “pin up”? Who believed this? I don’t know of anybody who did, though I guess there might have been such people. Does anybody here know of anybody who talked of then-Senator Obama this way?
But conservatives are beating this drum now for the fourth year. Surely if this feeling about the president is as widespread as they think it is, somebody would know, or at least know of somebody who thought this way.
So what’s wrong with these people? What makes them so wed to the belief that liberals all worship the president? Why can’t these people let this go? Is it projection? Is this how they see their leaders, so they think we must see ours that way, too? Is it something else altogether that I’m missing here? What’s the deal here? I don’t get it. I swear, some enterprising psychology doctoral student could get famous working out what the hell these people are thinking…
Randy P
Ii@Schlemizel: I actually assumed Mistermix knew the original line.
I’ve just been grateful the past few days for all the song references I can recognize. I sympathize with Captain America in the Avengers movie when he perked up at a “flying monkeys” remark. “Hey, I understood that reference!”
Comrade Mary
On second reading, what does that “without” mean? Could be typically quickie hard to parse TPM writing?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Will has pushed this meme before, but as with most Republicans, he gets his racism mixed in with his idea. We would be in a post racial America if a black man is fired for being incompetent, or, in a presidential election, being the more incompetent of the candidates. But considering how freaking long it took for Republicans to fire Michael Steele, it’s obvious they cannot yet see past the skin color to the person. It’s obvious Will cannot see past Obama’s skin color, no matter how many words he uses to cover it up.
TooManyJens
@Comrade Mary: I don’t understand that at all. If they’re not going to require the voter to come down to the county offices or wherever to show ID within 6 days, then what’s provisional about the ballot? Why not let the person cast a real ballot?
Roger Moore
@low-tech cyclist:
Florid prose. He writes a bunch of stuff that the wingnuts have a hard time understanding, and they assume it’s a sign that he’s really smart. It’s one more example of a Republican “intellectual” being a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person is like.
Steve
George Will is onto something. The country is afraid to fire Obama because we think he might sue.
kindness
That being the case how can I get a vote for Michelle Obama?
Tacky? Yes, but considering the political stuff I read in the MSM it’s just coarse and childish. I can live with that.
hep kitty
And let’s not forget that if Romney shows one single solitary “human moment” in the debate, regardless of how he performs otherwise, it’s all over, allll over, people! Game over, man, game over!
LGRooney
I reject your opening premise
amk
@NonyNony:
lacp
Reading Will is too much effort for too little result. I can get the same opinions from my wingnut drinking buddies without having to use Babelfish to translate Constipated Fustian into English.
MikeJ
@aimai:
This will be Bobo’s and Will’s and McMegan’s column the day after the election.
“Why does everybody think the rich have it so easy? They can’t even buy elections any more! This just demonstrates that Citizens United is harmless and we need tax cuts for the wealthy along with the elimination of corporate taxes.”
Roger Moore
@hueyplong:
That’s actually unfair to Will. He’s the rare conservative who came out on the players’ side in their disputes with the owners, saying that the players are the ones upholding conservative values. They demand a right to negotiate in a free market, while the owners demand a socialistic system. Or at least he made that argument until he bought a share of the Orioles, at which point the players became the worst thing ever, proving that he understands the true core of Conservative values: show me the money!
Comrade Mary
@TooManyJens: I’m trying to grab various other reports to make sense of this. What we were dreading was the scenario where voters w/o required ID could cast a provisional ballot, but would have to provide acceptable ID within 6 days. This would be a clusterfuck that would depress turnout and lead to delayed results for the state.
It looks as if the TPM story is trying to say that this bad news scenario came through — that the law was partially blocked — but the use of the word “without” in that sentence doesn’t parse.
Meanwhile, the original source I linked and Time say that the law was completely halted and will not be enforced this election.
(Kay??)
BobS
I’m expecting Will to show up during broadcasts of the Nationals (or possibly Orioles) playoff games, giving me one more reason to want to throw him off a tall building.
hep kitty
And may I say that all sports analogies to political races are pure, unadulterated BS and should not be tolerated in a public forum.
Ash Can
@Hoodie:
Years of perfidy, mean-spiritedness, and utter lack of humor on the right have obliterated my ability to detect their snark when it does appear. Maybe you’re right, and Will is just jumping on the bandwagon of “humor that the liberals won’t get.” I can’t tell, myself.
Culture of Truth
I don’t trust the AP report on this decision.
Randy P
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): It’s always projection. Remember the photoshopped Warrior Breitbart. And they literally worship and build shrines to Ronnie.
Hal
Did you folks know that George Will and Charles Kruthwhatever aren’t allowed to physically touch? It’s based on the same premise you see in time travel movies where if your future self touches your past self, the space time continuum collapses and destroys reality. In this case, the smugness and pompousness from the two of them will cause a singularity that will swallow the earth whole. It’s true.
BGinCHI
@hep kitty: If there’s one thing we shouldn’t tolerate, it’s intolerance.
JGabriel
__
__
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
Short Answer: Yes, projection is a big part of it.
Longer Answer: Bob Altemeyer, among others, has already done much of that psych research: The Authoritarians.
.
hep kitty
@Hal: It would be interesting to see them cross streams. :)
Comrade Mary
OH LOOK MORE VOTER FRAUD FROM THOSE DAMN DEMO — oh…
Redshift
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): They can’t tell the difference between eyes shining with admiration and eyes glazed with worship, because that’s all they allow for their heroes. So, more projection.
Linda
@shortstop: You mean “not getting it on pretty much anything.” This posting, and the McArdle posting under it, lets me think the left will create most of the new ideas in this country for the next 20 years, just because the intellectual firepower of the right is gone. It’s like the major league team looks at its farm system, and sees the Bad News Bears.
RSA
@AxelFoley:
I bet he was chuckling to himself at the time.
NotMax
Since part of the thread is on voting methods:
Reading about Venezuela’s voting machines makes me cringe about this being the coming trend.
Whenever talk of auditing digital systems appears, it generally seems to play out as plugging in the memory card or stick more than once and reading out its (obviously identical) tally again.
And I have to firmly and forcefully disagree with Jimmy Carter, as quoted in the article. Too much blind faith is placed in the assumed inerrancy of high tech because it is high tech. Digital systems can be hacked or compromised in manners far less traceable or readily discoverable than in the case of mechanical or physical systems. Not to mention the havoc a single uncaught bad line of code can wreak.
cal1942
@1badbaba3: Would you like to reconsider? Will has no lips.
Comrade Mary
@NotMax: Paper ballots. Distributed processing (i.e. teams of poll workers counting each ballot in their assigned ballot box and reporting to their supervisor). Paper trail. It works. It really goddamn works.
ericblair
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
SATSQ, yes. And for the lefties snarking on about Dear Leader, they’re just as authoritarian as the wingers and have the same confusion about limitations of powers.
hueyplong
I probably read the opinion too fast, but it appears that Obama campaign people need to come up with and distribute a form affidavit to voters who lack the PA voter ID, and they’ve got to either (1) get those people to make a second trip during the week after Nov 6 to file it, or (b) arrange for efficient faxing of those affidavits, or else risk a successful attack on their provisional ballots.
The affidavit has to swear is that the voter is the same person who voted last Tuesday, and that he/she is indigent and can’t get the PA-required ID. Not sure about the measuring stick for that second part, but I guess merely filing it creates a burden of challenge on the GOP types.
As in most cases, “who has the burden of proof?” is the real issue.
If provisional ballots are counted separately/later, it will highlight which party gets screwed by voter ID laws in a way that is pretty difficult to dispute.
The GOTV people in PA need to get cracking. They’ve got 5 weeks to get an efficient system in place. They’re probably up to the task.
The Dangerman
First cup of coffee here on the West Coast…
…but, WHAT THE FUCK? The reason people are voting for Obama is because they don’t want to fire an African American?
This was actually printed in a newspaper? Did the newspaper actually pay for that shit?
George Will must have been hit in the head by a baseball as a youth; I can think of no other explanation.
Hal
@RSA:
George Will does not chuckle. He guffaws.
Comrade Mary
Anyway, TPM has updated. Reilly (who write the linked article) says that poll workers are “allowed” to ask for ID, while Kurtz thinks that they arev “required” to ask. I think Kurtz is wrong, but provisional ballots are still a pain in the ass. This might have been the best ruling we could get from this asshole judge, though.
MaxxLange
I guess this makes sense if you think that Obama only won because people voted for him to “prove” they are not racist
GregB
@Hal:
It would create the equivalence of the cat/buttered toast perpetual motion machine.
piratedan
man, what a double dose of stupid… first McArdle and her administrative assistant view of business acumen (and her being the worst kind, the job is just a job and she reports to Mr. Munchkin w/o ever figuring out just exactly what he does) extolling the business virtue of a guy who only feasts on the wounded corpses of businesses and hasn’t produced anything except profits for his cronies and put people out of work. Couple that with Will, who believes that the Black guy has gotten a huge pass in job performance never mind the fact that the opposition to his mere existence is unprecedented in American politics for the last 150 years. Will apparently feels that the last economic depression was just a blip since nobody’s head ended up on pikes outside the walled compounds and we should return to the blessed state of Country Club politics.
christ, it’s a good thing that we’re cultured or else I’d set these asshats down in Somalia with a grocery bag of rice krispy treats and say, feel free to barter your way to the top of the political food chain you wankers.
Culture of Truth
projection? Nah. Hey did you hear about the Paul Ryan Calendar coming out? The shirtless Congressman reenacts 12 scenes from Atlas Shrugged. All proceeds go to elder abuse.
Lurking Canadian
Is there room for Will in the hole into which Derbyshire was banished?
MikeJ
@Comrade Mary:
from the decision:
Of course earlier he said: “Importantly, Petitioners concede that parts of Act 18 (relating to proof of identification for absentee voting) do not cause injury and may be implemented. ” So they were never really even asking to get rid of the ID requirement, just trying to make it easier to get one.
TooManyJens
I’ve read the ruling itself and I’m not any less confused. Voters without ID don’t have to cast provisional ballots, except that the only part of the law that the judge is enjoining is the part that says voters have to show up with ID within 6 days or their provisional ballot gets thrown out? IANAL but I can usually understand judicial opinions reasonably well, but this one seems pretty muddy.
chadwig
“Henceforth, African Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.”
Does Will not comprehend that Republicans are the “impatient team owners” and “incompetent team executives” in his analogy?
Culture of Truth
I don’t have the opinion in front of me, but I have the court summary, which strikes enforcement of the ID portion as instructed by the higher court, but the state can still proceed with “transition” to the law, including “education efforts”, which can include, I imagine, demanding ID even though no one is required to have it.
aimai
@hueyplong:
That’s horrible. Provisional ballots are, for all practical purposes, not counted. What a fucker.
aimai
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): I know one. They’ve got a wall in their house dedicated to Obama. It’s really fucking creepy to be honest.
NotMax
@Culture of Truth
It has no numbers and no specifics as to days or months.
Those will all be released the following year.
PeakVT
I think this is the relevant passage from the decision:
So I (think I) was wrong @above. Provisional ballots will not be taken.
TooManyJens
@MikeJ: They were asking to get rid of it for in-person voting:
Keith G
Will is an old timey mashup of Sully and Andy Rooney. He is a curmudgeon who is a wordsmith with a talent for longer form writing. Still, he has become a shallow thinker and seems to have checked his intellectual curiosity at the door in the late 60s.
Last week while doing chores, I listened to Alec Baldwin interview Will. His lack of care for the poor took my breath away. He was even more of an effete shit than I remembered.
This quote was from the comments:
But it was enlightening. I remembered that he is a petty man whom I need not care about.
MikeJ
@TooManyJens: That’s what I get for reading and posting to fast.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Mary:
What’s really unclear is exactly why the Republicans are trying to get Democrats to change their official party affiliation. It’s not as if it’s going to change the way they vote, and the Republicans don’t get any extra money by doing it. And they’re very likely to be found out, as they were in this case. So why bother?
TooManyJens
@Roger Moore:
Because they’re just that immature, dickish, and lacking in respect for the democratic process.
JGabriel
__
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hueyplong:
Maybe they’re up to the task in Philly, but you’ve clearly never been to Wilkes-Barre.
.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
My feeling is that if you want to use electronic voting machines, they should still spit out a pre-printed paper ballot. You could have the votes encoded as something like a QR tag to make them easy to count by machine but also have them printed in plain text to make it easy for the voter to make sure their ballot was correct and to make hand recounts and audits possible. Yes, that would be a bit more expensive than a pure electronic system, but it seems like a worthwhile price to pay for being confident our votes are being counted correctly.
japa21
Okay, if I am reading Will right, he is actually making the case to vote for Obama. By comparing the situation to Robinson, he is saying that if voters are impatient, they may vote Obama out of office, but if they are patient and vote for him, they will probably be rewarded. After all, he appears to be saying that based upon Robinson’s success later, Cleveland was wrong to fire him when they did.
Ash Can
@piratedan:
To hell with the rice krispy treats. Bootstraps, people!
@TooManyJens: I don’t get it either. If the judge is essentially treating provisional and regular ballots the same, why make the distinction at all? I wonder if he’s doing this deliberately, with the intention of highlighting the flaws and contradictions inherent in the law as it’s currently written.
Comrade Mary
@Roger Moore: The rest of the article suggests this:
Gosh. That can’t be a pattern, can it?
Linda Featheringill
So George Will has given us his permission to no vote for Obama? That’s nice.
Roger Moore
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Yeah, I find all the requests to sign birthday and anniversary cards for the First Family to be more than a bit creepy, too. If people really want to do that stuff for themselves, I think that’s fine, but for the White House to solicit that stuff seems way too close to encouraging a cult of personality.
Bill in Section 147
@Villago Delenda Est: “That’s not a tumbrel. That’s a bus.” Overheard on the Alameda de los Tumbrels in the town of Villago Delenda Est.
Culture of Truth
My bathroom is a shrine to Joe Biden.
sharl
Tweet from Dan Froomkin:
Jay in Oregon
I think Willy Wonka says it best:
http://i.qkme.me/3r6006.jpg
Daddy Love
@shortstop: While simultaneously and paradoxically sinking to new lows.
Cannoneo
This is the same “argument” that got Rush Limbaugh quickly bounced from ESPN, a place where decision makers have to interact with actual black people on a regular basis. Will the WaPo honchos see the same insanity in this political forum that was so obvious to sports fans? Not holding my breath.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@NotMax:
The only real reason for a government to buy high-tech voting machines is to give a nice spendy contract to some crony’s company.
Paper ballots. Hand-counted (or at least hand-countable should there be an issue). And if you’re worried about fraud, there’s always the ‘dip your finger into indelible ink’ trick. It’d be just like Ash Wednesday (“Yes, I voted”), except on a Tuesday.
Speaking of ink, remember when every GOP Congresscritter showed up to some Bush speech with inky fingers, as a show of solidarity with Iraqi voters, who had had their first election that day? Funny how those very same critters would likely fight against using the same technique in our own country, tooth and nail.
Redshift
@Comrade Mary: Another possibility is that they were greeting paid for registering Republicans.
donnah
@Schlemizel: At least three stiffs could be hidden under that horrifically bad toupee.
One actually is.
danimal
@Cacti: It’s amazing how “looks smart” translates to respect.
@Comrade Mary: Hey, that’s my neck of the woods. Don’t be shocked by dirty tricks in the Inland Empire this year, we’re the swingingest part of the Golden State. Two-thirds of the State Senate in Dem control could mean a world of difference. Also, for those looking for a House race Dem to sponsor, Mark Takano is in a winnable battle in CA 41.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I had a dweeb friend in high school who was really into politics and Reagan. He was big on George Will. I was, put nicely, pretty unaware, save that I instantly saw that Reagan was a world class monster who fapped at night while dreaming of killing all the disobedient young people.
I also saw that George Will wore a bowtie, a piece of clothing that’s only permissible to wear in public if you’re working as a member of a barbershop quartet. I figured out solely from this that he would never have anything of value to say.
Well, thirty years later, I’m smarter, my friend is now a Dem and also quite a bit smarter, and I was right about Reagan and I was even more right about George Will.
scav
Still, as a cunning plan, first screaming about fraud so that everyone is going over the registrations really really carefully; then hiring firms that have committed fraud in the past (by dodgy forms, now being actively looked for as well as by outright d-form tossing); and then making it to the end workers financial advantage to turn in D registrations as Rs (which will then make it past the dumping fraud at least), well . . . I guess it’s all part of that Ryan Math(tm) that is too complicated for us folk. Sowing confusion, they’ve certainly managed that.
marianne19
General Stuck:
I just went over to the WMUR website and they are going crazy in the comments.
nastybrutishntall
@Villago Delenda Est: George Will’s obituary will be filed under “Backpfeifengesicht.”
shortstop
@scav: It’s just too hard to untangle. (Throws up hands.) Politicians! They’re all the same!
Suffern ACE
Once fired by the country’s owners, Obama went on to a long distinguished career Presidenting for other countries. He did well in those countries that had no sense of tradition and opted for the socialist designated Secretary of Transportation rule, which ruins the strategy of governing if you ask me.
? Martin
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
I thought there were a lot of clues in the NYTimes book review that Brachiator posted a week ago or so:
You have to read the whole thing to really capture it all, but the argument here (and the more I agree with it, the more it explains various things) is that the right didn’t go batshit over Obama, or even over Clinton. Rather, they realized ages ago that Progressivism was inevitable in the evolution of societies – Europe went that way, Japan went that way, various other nations have gone that way after crisis as well, and that the US is steadily creeping down the same path. The right has determined that progressivism is every bit as dangerous as fascism, and they keep spinning this every larger and ever more dire fable about it. Guys like Clinton and Obama merely show up to be dropped into pre-determined villain roles and so no sooner does Obama get inaugurated that the right has gone after him for redistribution and increasing taxes. He did neither, but that doesn’t matter – in this fable, its inevitable that he will do those things if given the chance, because those things are inevitable according to the fable, if not for a determined band of wolverines willing to stand athwart history and bring the human race to its senses.
If you subscribe to this progressivism will come and destroy us all fable, just like you’d want to go back and tell Germany in 1930, or many religious texts proclaim, then the only way someone like Obama could ever get elected in the first place, riding this wave of evilness, is if his supporters were worshippers, blindly obedient with no ability to assess the world around them and the obviousness of the damage that a progressive leader would cause us. Only fanatics could elect Obama, because who the fuck would willingly elect Hitler?
This also explains why the right is so touchy about the racist claims. The root of their hatred isn’t Obama’s race, but that he’s the latest horseman of the apocalypse who just happens to be black. They can’t help in their desperate attempts to warn us from certain American doom to regularly spill into racial attacks, but the sudden hatred for Obama may not stem from his race at all. We obviously can’t tell the difference because the progressive doom fable is the craziest fucking thing imaginable, so the biggest piece of new evidence we can recognize is Obama’s race, and that’s what we blame the sudden hostility on.
I think it ties up some loose ends quite nicely.
Alex
My favorite George Will column is still the one where he complains about kids these days wearing blue jeans – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041502861.html
tamied
@Culture of Truth:
For or against?
El Cid
I remember listening to my grandfather talk about when he was a boy, all of the baseball games were on the radio, and he and his childhood friends would gather together, tune in, bring handfuls of homemade snacks, and all yell together as the game started “George Will is a Fucking Idiot!”
Ah, the good old days.
BrianM
@NotMax: You think you’re joking, but there’s tangible evidence. http://twitpic.com/b0fld7
Vlad
If anyone in this thread would like to mercy fuck and/or vote for me, go right ahead.
SRW1
Would it be out of bounds tasteless to wonder whether voting for Romney would then be akin to volunteering for a rape victim experience?
Suffern ACE
@? Martin: When I read that review, I realized that the whole “Anglo-Saxons Good. Germans bad” idea isn’t really about fascism at all. It’s just that the intellectual roots of American Conservatism come out of the England post civil and their bugaboo was the rise of Germany. Of course Wilson studied Germany. Lots of folks did. Not to learn about Hegel. But because those universities were kicking ass in the late 19th Century and doing such things like awarding Doctorates in the Sciences – you know. The future and stuff. OMG – and they had improved their bureaucracy by writing down rules and shit.
So when you want to make fund of them, instead of “racist” you should go with “OMG. The Hun. The Hun!”
patroclus
Firing Barack Obama would be like benching Jackie Robinson from 1947 to 1955 – maybe baseball writer George Will can wrap his head around that one.
SiubhanDuinne
@shortstop:
I see what you did there, shortstop.
Lyrebird
@Schlemizel: Yah, eww… I’m sure no one is still reading this, but I gotta say I’d never before gotten that vibe from George Will, but what he said in the quote is GROSS.
Like, I would not agree to a closed-door meeting with this guy gross.
Above and beyond being bloody effing racist.
I’m sure Black people never got fired before whatever baseball story he’s telling, yeah riiiight…
Lyrebird
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
Strastvuitye, Anatoliy,
Ronnie Janoff-Bulman works on this to some extent, though the answers (trends, more like), don’t fully explain our Age of Lack of Reason.
More importantly, I hope the mumphreylets are doing fabulously, and their maman as well!!
Bruce S
George Will no longer wears his bow tie in public, but I’m dead certain he dons it when he writes creepy shit like that last column.
Bruce S
@Alex:
Dispositive proof that George Will is, at his core, anti-American. He unloads the imagined ravings a European political philosopher against “the real America.” Shocking stuff.
Tom
“George Will, as usual, of course, pinpoints the problem precisely – America’s long and agonzied history of giving black people every possible break and advantage, which reflects the nation’s endlessly generous and compassionate heart; but is, as he says, not to put to fine a point on it, stupid.”
Darn, I always thought the real “problem” was providing affirmative action access to Ivy League schools to the self-entitled sons of the well-born and wealthy , like George Will!
Another Halocene Human
@Culture of Truth: WTF, you think they would have flogged that not only dead, but I’m not so sure it was ever living horse, maybe it was a hobby horse, to death back in the 1980s.
jake the snake
@Villago Delenda Est:
you don’t understand, George Soros, the notorious Jewish Nazi, is the brains behind the Kenyan Marxist Muslim Usurper.
Another Halocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: tumbrel? too good for him
Another Halocene Human
@Tom: Yes, it certainly seemed that way to MY younger, no-connection-having, barely-middle-class white-assed self. Who knew I could just blame it all on Black people?
When I attended a (joke of an) exam school in the 1990s, it seemed to me like half of the students who sat for the exam were students of color, but the number who got in you could count on one hand. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT WORK.
Well, oops it turns out that was affirmative action on behalf of white suburban students by the Montgomery County Public School District (desegregate? oh, we’ll show you desegregation).
At least I’m not crazy.
Another Halocene Human
@amk:
will must be talking about dubya + dubya.
dumbya
eta: FYWP, also dumb, also
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck:
Jai ho!
Another Halocene Human
@reflectionephemeral:
George Will: reduced to mining old MoDo columns for material.
It’s that or pretending to be an authority on baseball.
Another Halocene Human
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.):
I had one friend who, as she put it, “fell in love with Obama” and worked like hell on his campaign, then “fell out of love… and it was ugly”. She participates in a weekly 9/11 TROOF conference call and goes on about drones. In other words she (btw, she was born in Canada, think about that) is FAR to the left of Obama and always will be.
She handed me a Greg Palast book to read that was so incendiary I couldn’t get through it… too damn depressing. She also handed me a pretty lightweight, uncontroversial Glenn Glibertarian book. I told her he was a libertarian and she didn’t believe it. But he is. Smarmy fucker. Who btw wants to benefit from other people’s work moving GLBT issues into the mainstream but feels comfortable taking potshots at the president from his perch overseas, smarmy, privileged little fucker that he is. WAAH, PONIES.
We’re ALWAYS outnumbered and outgunned in the good fight. But emotional infants wish it weren’t so.
Another Halocene Human
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Maybe if you sub Michael Steele/Reince Priebus.
Steele got canned for stopping the cash spigot. The party actually did fabulous under him, but the bigot donors were outraged by a) Black man, b) attempts to be hip and relevant, c) fake lesbian stripper club scandal. Sure, that last totally was justified and provided the excuse to can him. We laughed at him a lot but he wasn’t a terrible spokesperson for the Republican Party. He seemed more human than his voting record would indicate and aside from fake-strip-club-gate, where is his list of failures?
Now look at RNC PR BS… he’s ridiculed too. Colbert didn’t even need a muppet to mock him because Priebus presented the material himself. He’s a mean-spirited College Republican rat-fucker who has no shame backing “legitimate rape” Akin. If you look at the clowns like Angle and O’Donnell that Steele had to defend and how relatively gaffe-free that went, as compared to Priebus…
Steele looks like a genius.
But Priebus is one of the good old boys. He is not going to be yanked for sucking and the dollars will flow like it’s Citizens United’s birthday.
Another Halocene Human
@NotMax: I’ve used the thumb machine at Disney and the handshape scanner at work.
THEY SUCK.
Just use the old indelible ink. It works, it’s cheap, and your main problem is good old voter intimidation at polling sites, ballot stuffing/stealing, you know, the old Tammany Hall playbook.
bemused senior
Back when the New Republic was actually a liberal magazine, there was a recurring satire column (can’t recall the author) that designated George Will as “George the Third”. He retains that designation at our house.
Wally Ballou
@BobS: What really sucks is that politics aside, I’d actually prefer Will in the booth to, say, Tim McCarver.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
Will is such a condescending little prick