Republicans so wanted Obama to lose in 2012, so that they could call him the “black Jimmy Carter” forever. Such a damn shame that didn’t work out for them.
4.
piratedan
Johnny Maverick has a sad, therefore I has a happy
5.
srv
Who are we going to have to troll all the McGrumpies after 2016?
If Obama would troll harder, we’d have more heart-attacks.
6.
geg6
I see McCain still hasn’t gotten over getting pasted by the big O.
Meanwhile, anyone younger than 35 or so who would read or hear this would say to themselves “What’s so bad about Jimmy Carter? He’s the old guy who does all that work for Habitat for Humanity and for people in Africa. Why shouldn’t Obama want to be like him?”
Clueless old white guys. Bitter, angry and stupid.
7.
balconesfault
What’s that Salon is writing about “cum-running jokes”?
8.
Patrick
Why the hell should anybody pay attention to why McCain doesn’t like Obama’s Syria policy? McCain is the one who was for idiotic war in Iraq ($1 trillion lost because of McCain). He has no credibility whatsoever.
Well, given that he sold his soul (along with his honor and integrity) to get the 2008 GOP nomination, the pickings are slim.
10.
shelly
When is McCain gonna stop yelling at that cloud?
11.
dmsilev
@geg6: At least it’s not quite as bad as today’s NewsMax headline of “Michelle Obama: Hanoi Jane’s My Role Model”. The Vietnam war ended 40ish years ago (Fonda’s visit was near the end, in 1972), and someone who was old enough at the time to be pissed off at Fonda is probably 60 or older. A fair-sized chunk of the population to be sure, but not exactly everyone.
12.
Hunter Gathers
I like how McCain dissed Richard Sherman.
Richard Sherman should have his face carved into Mount Rushmore for completely destroying Skip Bayless on ESPN the other day.
13.
beltane
What’s going on here? I was led to believe that Obama was worse than Hitler. Does this mean that Jimmy Carter is now also worse than Hitler or has Obama been downgraded in the “bad” category?
14.
Cacti
After 30+ years in office, McCain’s legacy will be introducing Sarah Palin to a national audience.
At least it’s not quite as bad as today’s NewsMax headline of “Michelle Obama: Hanoi Jane’s My Role Model”.
And even that’s a timely reference compared to their continual shouts of “Marxist” “socialist” and “communist” as though it was still 1952.
21.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, definitely. Should have specified that. Of course, ‘Bitter, over 60, white’ is probably NewsMax’s prime demographic so one could argue that they know their audience.
“Makes it possible for you to father children” seems to be an obvious one…
25.
dmsilev
@Cacti: I’m still holding out for some imaginary scandal to be described as ‘Obama’s Teapot Dome’. Though we did already get ‘court packing!’, so we’re already back to the 1930s, so let’s be more ambitious: “Benghazi will be Obama’s XYZ Affair!”.
26.
KG
@dmsilev: shiiiiiiiiiiit, McCain isn’t over losing to GWB in 2000, let alone Obama in 2008.
Oh, I’ve been seeing ‘net ads for “the emerging Obama scandal that will rock the world” for, well, let’s be honest, years now. Five years. And counting.
The scandalmongers fail to deliver every single time. Whoremongers eventually have to produce. Scandalmongers never do.
I beg to differ. It is not the loss to Obama that has eaten McCain alive, it was the 99 primary loss to Boy Blunder that split his bile sack and poisoned his soul. The whisper campaign about his mental heath, denigrating his service and belittling the one accomplishment he had that was his alone and not his families doing. The outright lies about his having a ‘colored’ baby when what he did was to adopt a child that needed a home showing that his decency could not spare him. All leading to a series of losses to an unworthy, draft-dodging, coke snorting, piss-ant drunken son born with a golden coke spoon in his nose. THAT is what turned him into the bitter ugly little man we see today. That he has to take his anger out on someone innocent in his assault is just further infuriating as his rage can’t be aimed at the deserving but at someone he knows does not deserve it.
He is a pitiable empty husk of a many who probably secretly longs for the release of oblivion – only wishing he could could see his real tormentors driven in despair before him.
@KG: If I could type I’d have been in before you! :)
38.
RaflW
@dmsilev: No disrespect meant to under-35’s, but would they have much of a sense of where Hanoi is, much less why Jane is associated?
The GOP hasn’t the vaguest notion of how to speak to people under 60. Maybe they reach a few resentful white males in their upper 40s and up, but they really are laughable in their trantruming.
interesting, senator. would, perhaps, bombing the place assuage your worries?
41.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Schlemizel: There’s plenty of evidence to suggest McCain was always a ginormous douchebag with anger issues from a very early age growing up on the plantation in Mississippi.
42.
beltane
@RaflW: I am 45 and it took me a while to figure out who they were talking about. “Hanoi Jane” is something that takes me back to my earliest childhood along with the Partridge Family and the Jackson 5.
Honestly, I’d take the M.Y.2000 McCain over any model year GW Bush, and what Rove & Co. did to him WRT the adopted daughter remains the all-time vile political tactic, in my book.
Pretty good points. Which is what makes his very well publicized hug of the deserting coward all the more damning.
He’s such a disappointment to me. As I’ve written before, he could have been a transformative leader in this country, if only he’d allowed his decency and honor to veto his ambition. But alas, ambition won, and now he’s a shell of a man, shaking his fist at the sky.
47.
Schlemizel
FYWP I made the mistake of replying to 4 people in one comment so naturally I was tossed into moderation. I forgot.
@dmsilev: I really, honestly, don’t ever remember a McCain who wasn’t bitter, angry, dismissive, bitchy, aggressive, and pretty stupid to boot. I’m sure he was ensouled at birth like the rest of us, but it was a pretty crappy soul going by his entire life.
50.
RaflW
@beltane: Yeah, I’m 48 and mostly know this moniker via my now 89 year old uncle.
” Well, gramps has a point: Carter was way better for the GOP brand that Obummer has turned out to be. ”
Yes, but someone needs to explain to Grampa Wargrumps that Carter left office over 30 years go. You have to be near 50 to have any distinct memory of the dispirited 70s.
These gang kidz tiddee and durned youngin’ adults these days! When they think of Jimmy Carter, they think of that cool old ex-president dude who runs around the world and the U.S. with his cool old wifey dudeette who build houses for poor folks and work on progressive stuff.
They don’t think of a mediocre president in a dispirited decade.
Not to mention that Carter’s second term was a real bummer… oh, wait…
53.
Just Some Fuckhead
@beltane: I was having beers down at the VFW with my best friends dad. I excused myself to go to the restroom and when I returned, he grinned and said, “What did you think of that?” and I said, “What do I think of what?” and he said “The picture in the urinals – Jane Fonda.” I replied, “Who the hell is Jane Fonda?” I made him tell me which took some of the joy out of it for him. When he was done, I said, “Jesus Christ Wes, that was almost 50 years ago! How old are you??”
@Trollhattan: I supported McCain in 2000, thought he was the best option that year. Everything that happened during the Bush Administration was telegraphed during that campaign, the way a candidate/nominee approaches the campaign can (and should) tell you a lot about how they’ll approach governing.
Damn, I feel old. I remember watching footage of Tet on the teevee. I remember my mother’s worry that it would go on so long that I would go there. I remember a phone call from my older cousin from his hospital bed in Japan after he lost his leg in the shit.
56.
Schlemizel
@Cacti:
Since our involvement ended in ’75 and I’d say an average age of 10 would be required to really have a memory of it I’d put the age at closer to 50. But the hate runs deep in the morans – I am sure many have transferred an inchoate hatred to some percent of their children. They don’t understand it but the hate it
57.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, I’ve been seeing ‘net ads for “the emerging Obama scandal that will rock the world”
I have watched long enough to find out: Hyperinflation is coming!!
The ‘watch someone appear to draw every image in the video’ technique, absolutely rocks, too.
Otherwise they would get to the nothingburger in 2 minutes.
Did not watch long enough to find out what to do about it, besides sending for their information packet.
But the same people who destroyed him in ’99 would never have allowed him to be that transformative figure. Look what they have done to Obama. They would have done McCain differently but it wouldn’t have been better.
That hug is Stockholm syndrome. It was like a dog that grovels before the human that beats it. I can’t understand it but it make him even more pitiful, a man who sold his soul and his spine.
Ditching the wife who waited for him while he was a visitor at the Hanoi Hilton for someone much younger, prettier, and richer, was pretty douchcanoe of him, for sure.
61.
jl
And the pundits and political reporters, even good ones like Buetler, have been churning out these same analyses of why the GOP can’t change: the crazy base they built won’t let them.
But the pundits always seem to be one step behind the times. Being obstructionist a holes whose only strategy is to stir up trouble and blow things up is really all the GOP knows how to do, and this includes supposed moderates like Boehner.
As a small example the day after Guv Brown announced a drought emergency in CA, Boehner flw his sorry self into the Central Valley to pre-emptively stir up trouble by pitting Central Valley farmers against coastal fishing industry and environmentalists. I mean, that shit will hit the fan soon enough. But for Boehner, why wait, why not fly out now and start making demands?
And a story in TPM today describes the GOP latest idea to wreck Obama care: repeal the risk adjustment mechanisms for comapanies that end up with a worse than average case mix. That might seem like wonky stuff taht no one pays attention too or understands. The only problem is that the GOP is openly yelling through a bullhorn that their basic reason is to wreck the ACA. Everyone can understand that, and most everyone will not like it except the GOP white dimwit racist base.
Speaking of, this factoid does not make me happy, not one bit.
While much of the United States has experienced a weather year with fewer extremes and an easing drought, the record-breaking California drought – the worst since 1895 – is not leaving the region anytime soon, according to climatologists.
The unseasonal balmy but dry weather is the result of an equally unprecedented high pressure ridge lurking offshore and blocking the typical winter storms needed to drop precipitation all along the West Coast. This ridge has persisted for 13 months and the longer it lingers, the less likely it is to leave, points out climatologist Brian Fuchs, from the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. This high pressure ridge system is feeding on itself, “creating a sort of perfect environment for perpetuating the dry conditions” it creates, he says.
The GOP is still waiting for the right moment to release the whitey tape. When that happens Obama will be finished.
66.
RaflW
@Schlemizel: Uhuh. I’m 48 and have no recollection of watching any Viet Nam coverage on TV. Not even the embassy evacuation. And my brother and I watched a lot of TV – but it was all sitcoms, cartoons and junk. I’m sure my parents ushered us out of the room – or we ran away from the boring old men on the TeeVee – when Cronkite or Brinkley or Chancellor came on.
Anything I can picture of Viet Nam or the protests is from seeing documentaries, and movies like the Deer Hunter and Platoon later.
They yell about it because they can call it a bailout. (Similar with TARP and bailout.)
But they will not touch it because it breaks the insurance companies BEFORE it breaks the ACA. Just like the demands to end the mandate.
Breaking that breaks the insurance companies first.
The greats. It was quite sad that the end of Brinkley’s career was playing host to such scum as Cokie Roberts and George Will. Detracts from his earlier work.
Only Rather came within yelling distance of these three after they were gone. Chancellor was bodily removed from the 1964 GOP convention for being, well, John Chancellor, I guess.
72.
beltane
@RaflW: I have some very vague, context free memories of war coverage on TV. Well, the only thing I really remember was the South Vietnamese flag itself but I didn’t know what it was. I also remember my babysitter wearing a pin that said “War is bad for children and other living things”, but again, no context. Incidentally, this is the same way my own children have “experienced” 9/11.
I was thinking that the movies about Viet Nam carry much more weight than the war itself. I don’t think anyone of them makes the war look ‘good’ in retrospect. Steeped in Hollywood history I would think you kids ;) would wonder why people were PO’ed at Fonda.
74.
catclub
@Gex: You make it sound like there are no angry old women in that crowd. I think there are some.
The weekly bodycounts, on the nightly news. During dinner.
Such fun times.
76.
JustRuss
@Schlemizel: I’m 51 and I remember the Fonda hate. I don’t remember her trip to Hanoi, but the rage it caused lingered pretty strongly through the 70s.
77.
jl
@Trollhattan: No, it is not good news. I heard an interview with a meterologist on the news this last weekend who said that the best CA can hope for it that it looks like the ridge will bend in February and let some rain through, but it may stay here through the rest of the winter.
But, this kind of thing is very consistent with predictions for California in regional models of climate change. Most of the time there will be this ridge. causing drier than average weather, and rain will come when tt will bends (edit: rather than going away), bringing sloshing bucketfulls of rain that will cause floods. Whooppee! We may have a chance to see one of those California superstorms in our lifetimes! I think the last one, during the Gold Rush, nearly swept everything between Stockton and Sacramento out to sea.
78.
RaflW
@smerconish
Just got email “petition” from @SenJohnMcCain re “repeal” of ACA, of course, including a $$ solicitation. It’s all about the fundraising now
Even random people on Twitter are noticing the grift.
79.
catclub
@jl: “Most of the time there will be this ridge. causing drier than average weather, ”
Atacama desert is on the same coast. Just further south.
80.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thinking of newsmen, there was a local guy, John McDougall, not a bad guy I guess but te crew broke him up just before air time one night. He was trying to suppress giggles while reading the casualty list for the week. It was the end of his career.
I was 18 in 1970 so the war is right there for me. I was 4F because of my birth defects & damn grateful. But it didn’t take long to understand that a large amount of anti-war sentiment came from kids my age who would not have had a problem with the war if they themselves were 4F. Nothing that has come after, REagan et al has been a surprise. It fits the ‘me before all others’ of too many of my peers
To be fair, I’m visited daily by Al Franken, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren, Jeanne Shaheen, and someone from Organizing For Action, all asking for a donation. I probably left out a person or two in that list, also.
Steeped in Hollywood history I would think you kids ;) would wonder why people were PO’ed at Fonda.
Yep. She was the home video aerobics babe in the leg warmers to us. Were we fascinated/horrified when we finally rented Barbarella (“My babe twisterella”).
if only he’d allowed his decency and honor to veto his ambition.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
84.
Eric S.
@Cacti: I’m 42 going on 43 and have no conscious memory of W.W. Nam. It has had such a large influence on my parents and our politics I’ve spent time learning about it. I understand many of the rhetorical references to it but not from first hand experience.
Were we fascinated/horrified when we finally rented Barbarella (“My babe twisterella”).
I saw that in college, at an all-night SF film marathon. As the hours got later, the films got worse and worse. Barbarella came on at something like 5 AM if memory serves.
Its a damn good thing we don’t need California to produce fruits and vegetables for the rest of the nation. We are a lot closer to the horrors of radical climate change than is popularly believed. Losing food production (or depopulating the West in order to have water to farm) should be a really exciting thing to live through.
I suppose it’s not nice to laugh at what you did to deflate the old geezer but I did.
I can’t imagine how these nutters connect Hanoi Jane and Michelle O and I’m not going there to find out. It won’t make a bit of sense anyway.
88.
Tommy
McCain needs to get over it. I used to be a big fan of the guy. Let me try to explain. I think I was five. Father was teaching at the Army War College. He told me we were going to see a great American speak. That American was John McCain. He rocked the place. It is something I will never forget. He talked about being tortured. I recall the room, and it was in the “Great Hall” thousands of people yelling at the top of their lungs in support. I am a liberal but I tend to like McCain cause of this. But IMHO he is a caricature of that person I recall.
89.
RaflW
@catclub:
I’m a snowboarder. Last Feb I went to Tahoe to ride, and conditions were acceptable but below average. In November I booked for this coming March. Airfare is non-refundable, so I may just bring hiking boots.
Heavenly resort has received 2″ of natural snow in the past 30 days and the forecast is for 0″ in the next 5 or more. Mean monthly snowfall should be at least 40 inches, though there is a significant standard deviation. That deviation should not persist month after month as it has.
My first viewing of Barbarella was when it was part of a double feature with Rollerball, the original and best, when it was first released. Barbarella came out in ’68 I believe…too lazy to open up a tab and go to IMDB to confirm.
@Villago Delenda Est: Ditching the wife who waited for him while he was a visitor at the Hanoi Hilton for someone much younger, prettier, and richer, was pretty douchcanoe of him, for sure.
Yep. That’s the one I really hold against him.
96.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused: MO expressed some admiration for Fonda in a people magazine issue. I don’t know what she said. The NewsMax headline that caught my eye is that Brokaw sat down to play footsie with O’Reilly. Which is almost on topic because McCain was, I suspect, was one of the big factors that turned Brokaw into a GOP apologist. That and the massive personal fortune that came from, as Pierce puts it, inventing World War II
97.
Tommy
@RaflW: Well I am a hiker. Love going to Tahoe “off” season. It is something I do on purpose, heading there off season. Cause it is dirt cheap. You said Heavenly. I would just like to say as a walker/hiker being there without snow is nice.
Man, I remember skiing Heavenly back in the last Ice Age the ’80s, and any winter that didn’t leave the slopes with at least ten feet of base was considered a “dry” one. Up here in the Berkshires, the local ski hills have every foot of run they can afford to piped and hosed with snowmaking gear, and blast it out every minute they can when weather permits (this year, A LOT). When you have to rely on Nature, like in the Rockies and the Sierras, well: it’s only the skiers who get hosed…..
And Geez, McCain is still bashing Jimmy Carter: 37 freakin’ years after he left office?
Yes, the good ol ARk Storm model. When that hits, Boehner and Hannity and the Westlands Water District board can bob around in boats in downtown Fresno and yell, “If only we had eleventy-five moar dams we’d capture all this water, but hippies and bait fish kept us from doin’ it so it’s all goin’ to the sea, WASTED!”
102.
El Caganer
If Poopdeck Pappy thinks the US gov’t is letting al-Qaeda skate in Syria, he’s even more out of the loop than I thought. Which is probably a good thing.
For this year, when you’re eyeballing the Sierra backcountry guidebooks subtract at least two months from when they say the trails are typically open. By mid-summer there will hardly be running water anywhere. Last summer, things opened up about six weeks earlier than usual.
That sentence is doing a lot of the work in your story.
105.
GregB
Remember: GOP Art of War 101.
References to Jimmy Carter, fair game for political attacks. Use frequently.
References to George W. Bush, how dare you bring up ancient history and blame the previous President. Off limits.
106.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, its also true that California goes through 30 to 40 year drought cycles, and the last really bad multi-year drought was in the late 1970s. I don’t think global warming effects will come one year all of a sudden and then just sit here permanently.
And if the predictions I read, CA will not have drought problems as bad as other parts of the U.S., averaged over years. Big problem will be fact that longer dry periods, with wetter wet periods. I guess that will mean building humongous flood control projects for wet years, with humongous underground water banking system in Central Valley (and that project has already been started in southern San Joaquin and Kern Basin.)
But, probably we are already on our way so what we see this year will gradually become more common. The temperature patterns have sure followed the predictions I read a couple of years ago from the regional models. The average temperature and degree days over the whole year will not rise along with rest of west (edit: and last two years, they have both been below average in CA, over the whole year), but the minimum temperatures will rise, and winters will be much warmer (which is where the snowless Sierra Nevada in 50 years prediction comes from). Anyway, last couple of years the temperature patterns have followed the predictions so closely it was spooky.
It has something to do with effect of global warming on air and ocean currents coming from west of Alaska. I forget the details.
But, then, maybe its all a fraud and plot! Maybe Obama lent the climate researchers his time machine, so they could zip around back and forth over ten or twenty years and fudge the statistics.
107.
Jay C
OT, but weird wildlife sightings here in Western MA today: it’s sunny but cold – 5.5F right now, down from a balmy 8 or 9 this afternoon, yet I’ve seen flocks of birds flying around my hillside today: lots of robins, and a male cardinal, too (can’t miss that red!) – and, I just saw a fox trot on down my driveway. I would have thought the weather would keep the critters (especially birds) tucked up – those that haven’t booked for warmer climes yet, anyway, but I guess not….
I grew up in the Reagan Era. My associations with the words ‘Hanoi Jane’ were that apparently Jane Fonda was a big protestor of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War famously sucked and we should never have been in it, so she must be pretty great.
@Villago Delenda Est: I find it kinda funny that I agree with Nancy about anything, but there was stem cell research, so it’s not unprecedented :)
I am currently reading a most interesting book, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
The author dates the epic power struggle back to 1964, when Rockefeller failed to win the nomination and the moderates began losing their grip on the party. I have not gotten much past that point yet in the book, but I’m sure each inviting of crazee into the tent (started with Birchers and ended with evangelicals) was another move that created short-term bounce and long-term anchor-around-the-neck.
111.
catclub
@El Caganer: Isn’t the real solution to stopping al qaida bombing
Saudi Arabia? (Or at least closing their bank accounts).
So what’s up with Michelle and Jane Fonda? I refuse to click on the link. Jane Fonda has done a lot of work with teens and teen pregnancies. Unfortunately, for some good deeds will not be enough to over come the fact that she went to Hanoi during wartime.
BTW what is happening in Fallujah? What happened to the successful (according to MSM and McCain) surge, that McCain likes to crow about.
114.
Suffern ACE
@Frankensteinbeck: You obviously didn’t have the same Ollie North loving teenaged friends I had in the 1980s. Jane Fonda and those protestors lost that very winnable war.
115.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, the simple answer now is “we got out too early” if you’re John McCain and a serious person. “We got out just in time”, if you’re not in the serious set.
116.
jl
Too bad for the GOP this goofball can’t run in 2016. And even if he did, the GOP base hates him almost as much as Obama, at least in CA.
But, if the U.S. annexed Austria, and had a Congressional vote and friendly Supreme Court, eh, maybe he could get in the race (though I shouldn’t give them any ideas)
Ha, dumb as I imagined. I can see a similarity between the two women, both hot, fit and gorgeous but I don’t think that was exactly the connection the nutters were going for, lol.
@Trollhattan: How can we ensure that the Ark Flood flushes the Westlands Water District out to sea for good?
122.
El Caganer
@Trollhattan: Yes, it was all Obama’s fault that Dubyuh signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw US troops….he’s sneaky that way.
123.
cckids
@Trollhattan: From things I’ve read over the past 3-5 years, this really isn’t a “drought” we’re having here in the Southwest; as scientists have gained the knowledge about weather/climate from past centuries, this is a more typical weather pattern than the uncommonly wet decades of the mid 1900’s thru 2000.
We built all these cities & dams & farms and there just isn’t the water to support them. The future for the southwestern US is pretty bleak.
@bemused: I saw in Yahoo news that there is, or will be in a few days, an interview with Michelle Obama where she says some nice things about Jane Fonda. Mostly as a role model for women, but looks like Michelle also said Fonda was ‘politically savvy’. Not sure I would go with that last comment, but nobody is right all the time.
Did not watch long enough to find out what to do about it, besides sending for their information packet.
If they’re predicting hyperinflation, they’re probably trying to sell precious metals, probably in the form of “rare” coins whose alleged numismatic value is used to justify selling them for way above bullion value. That or emergency supplies.
127.
Tommy
@Trollhattan: I have this huge picture gallery in my living room. All things in and around Heavenly. They see my naked butt jumping into a lake, Echo Lake. You hike in many miles and there is that lake. A place you can, well at least for me, I always strip down and jump in.
So they are getting their version out early and fire up the old geezer wingnuts. I remember it was the picture of Jane posing with the tank or artillery or something that really drove rightwingers insane. They went ballistic.
132.
RaflW
@Jay C: Oh, CO and Taho are snowmaking Meccas now. Big part of the money model is big Xmas and MLK bookings.
But it looks like its so bad in Tahoe this year that they can’t keep up. Highs in the mid 40s and lows around 30 make for faster loss than they can re-spray.
I wonder if there are caps on the gallons they can pull, too. Certainly the electricity cost for the pumps, chillers and fan-guns are part of the calc. Heavenly is maybe 40% open?
I’m 47. Most of my earliest memories are of my dad being gone, because he was career Navy and when I was little he was doing sea rotation after sea rotation, doing WESTPAC cruises in the South China Sea. I have a very clear memory of asking him once, when he came home, if the war with Vietnam ended – “Who will we be at war with then?” The concept of being at war with nobody at all had not occurred to me as a possibility.
And I was 45 years old before I could bring myself to watch anything with Jane Fonda in it. (The Newsroom, if you’re curious.) And it still felt like a betrayal of my parents.
I am currently reading a most interesting book, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
I read that a couple of years ago (right after it was published). I remember it as being very interesting, reasonably well written, and quite germane to a lot of what we were all talking about early in the 2012 campaign. If memory serves (it may not!), one of the regular BJ commenters mentioned it originally, and I thought for a short time that we would do a book chat about it. Definitely more substantial than This Town!!
She sat on an ant-aircraft gun, may have had an NVA helmet on, I forget the details. I can understand someone who was there being angry about that. Me? I’d be much more pissed off about the assholes who sent me there but still I can understand why they may have some bitter taste from Fonda.
What’s happening in the Colorado Basin might be just that–the hydrology surveys conducted to predict how much water the basin would reliably deliver were done in an ahistorically wet period. We’re perhaps now dealing with the actual “normal.” California’s situation is a little different, with one scientist saying it’s the worst conditions in 500 years. I hope and pray to the holy Rainbird gods it’s not our new normal, too.
@Trollhattan: Did Obama also break Gates’ neck? He was wearing neck brace at his PBS interview.
139.
jl
@bemused: I’m with the commenters above who were too young at the time to really get caught up in the psychic trauma of the Vietnam war.
I have a vague memory of a fuss about Jane Fonda doing a tour of North Vietnam and the pic with an anti-aircraft gun. When Vietnamese refugees started coming to CA, I did not understand the resentment against them at all by older people (and even in retrospect, it was anti-communists mostly who came over, so the resentment seemed absurd to me). (Edit: wasn’t going to mention this, since it is not PC and this is a family blog, but thy that time, I was cool with idea of a new group coming to the U.S. that had a high quotient of hot chicks)
When the high hippie Summer of Love was going on, I remember reading a tabloid headline about it while standing in line in a store. Headline went something like “Dirty Hippies: free sex, drugs, no baths!”. And I was about the age where the free sex and drugs did not mean much to me, the ‘no baths’ sounded great.
There’s a relatively new car in my neighborhood with a “This Vet Is Not Fonda Jane” bumper-sticker. Who the fugg carries their anger around for that long?
A) You’re still upset about something Jane Fonda did over 40 years ago.
B) You’re upset about it enough that you put a new bumper-sticker on a new car.
C) You think this is still something worthy of attention. IT WAS OVER 40 YEARS AGO. Only 40% of the US population was alive then.
D) She’s apologized profusely multiple times. You don’t know her and you’re still upset?
E) At some point, you need to move on with your life.
F) Why not also get a bumper-sticker asking when Khrushchev is going to release Francis Gary Powers?
Every time I drive by the car, I wonder what kind of a raging ass this guy probably is.
141.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Trollhattan: I can’t remember which Villager, a Betlway “liberal”, wrote in the review of Gates’ book 1) that Obama told HRC that his opposition to “the Surge” was also based on primary politics, which is not what Gates said though it’s a very garbled passage; and 2) stated as fact that “the Surge worked”.
142.
El Caganer
@Seanly: My first reactions would be A) this bozo isn’t a vet, B) he doesn’t have a clue who Jane Fonda is, unless he’s seen her on the teevee, C) he couldn’t find Vietnam on a map, even if it were circled by a purple Sharpie, D) he’s getting his ragegasm on because Newsmax and….FREEDOM, E) he paid somebody good money for a dumbass bumper sticker that was probably printed up in reaction to the Newsmax headline.
St. Paul, MN got the largest percentage of those refugees in the US. I was probably around 30 & heard the word “gook” way too often, with a lot of accompanying anger. There was a rumor that they were killing & eating neighborhood dogs that led to several police raids that discovered they were raccoons. I never understood why the nutters hated on these folks, they had been our friends and biggest supporters while we were fucking over their country, we owe them a whole hell of a of better than they got.
144.
jl
@Trollhattan: Thanks for the link. I fear what she says is pretty solid. Starting five or six years ago I started looking for regional studies on and predictions for my beloved Left Coast USA. Turns out there is quite a literature on it.
Two or three years ago I started looking at various stats, and as I said above, the temperature patterns matched what I had read so closely, it was spooky. (Edit: and remember, what I had read were predictions from models that had been developed in mid-90s and early aughts)
Longer droughts and more superfloods for good old CA. And I might see a day when the Central Valley looks like it did when some ancient great grand aunts and uncles in the family talked about being able to boat from Fresno up to SF Bay during the spring floods. If there are any left, the salmon will have fun!
At least with those models there’s a great deal of ‘conditioning’ rain. It would take at least a few decent winters just to get the Sierra snowpack back up in order to be melted by massive spring rains.
It’s hard to overstate the valley’s susceptability to flooding in a relatively short time, although it’s usually just a single river basin that gets nailed. The Feather, for instance.
@bemused: I think she repeatedly apologized. I don’t know if she ever expressed regret about marrying Ted Turner.
Which reminds me of the joke:
Jane Fonda found God… and discovered it wasn’t Ted.
150.
jl
@chopper: Before I knew about the superfloods, I remember looking at the records of CA rainfall totals (what can I say, I am a statistician, and have odd tastes in how to waste time). I remember seeing this strange series of multi-year humps of rain totals starting during Gold Rush years, and then climaxing in early 1860s. It was weird enough to stand out and to stick in my mind.
So, at least the 1960-61 superstorm was preceded by several multi-year waves of heavy rainfall. Back then, probably a lot of it was stored up over the years in Sierra snowpack. If we get a superstorm in 20 or 30 years from now, the much warmer winter Sierra might moderate that store of frozen water.
Of course, if that next superstorm comes after ten years of severe drought, miight not be enough people or agriculture left to be as big a deal as it would be now.
@Schlemizel: Spot on Schlemizel! You described Dubya perfectly. The Republican primary was especially vicious that year. The illegitimate black love child whispers came directly from South Carolina and did great damage to McCain. So Old Man McCain loses to an amoral sociopath and has to eat a HUGE shit sandwich by supporting Dubya for the next 8 years. So 2008 comes and it’s Old Man McCain’s turn to be POTUS. Well, that didn’t quite work out so the Old Man has to rage at someone. Might as well be the upstart Negro who just made the past 8 years of eating Dubya’s shit all for naught. Too bad. So sad.
154.
IowaOldLady
@Villago Delenda Est: We’ll know Christie is done when FOX puts a D after his name.
155.
jl
I thought a couple brain cells had started to fire away in these dingbats’ heads, and they called off this garbage. Too look on the brighter side, if the GOP wants to pull this crap just as voters start to think about the midterms, then let them go right ahead.
@Seanly:
There are a lot of Vietnam vets who just can’t accept the fact that their government sent them across the globe to fight and die for a worthless cause. And they can’t accept that, unlike their fathers who fought in WWII, they didn’t win their war. So they take their anger out on Jane Fonda instead of the men who really betrayed them by sending them there in the first place.
It’s sad. But on the other hand, they’re goddamn grown men now, and if they still can’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see who REALLY betrayed them, well then, I can’t feel sorry for them. Fuck em.
157.
OGLiberal
What always strikes me is that these folks conveniently forget that St. Ron the Gipper turned tail and ran after we got blown up in Beirut then traded arms with the evil Eyeranian moo-lahs to free hostages (mostly failed efforts, they just kept taking more hostages and getting more arm) while funneling the proceeds to nun killers…commie hating nun killers, mind you. Obama is effing Rambo compared to their Sainted One. Yeah, he told Gorby to tear down a wall but Gorby was going to do that anyway, for reasons that had nothing to do with Bad Ass Dutch.
158.
Eric U.
I’m 55, and I think my familiarity with Hanoi Jane is mostly due to the fact that it was brought up over and over. I saw the tape of her talking in Hanoi fairly recently, so people are still bringing it up. The republicans got a lot of mileage out of it in the Rambo era in the ’80s, because real-time it blew over pretty quickly.
According to all the accounts I’ve seen — not that I particularly follow either of them — Jane and Ted are still very close friends. They just can’t be married to each other.
When my office was in CNN Center, we used to see Ted all the time around the building, and then occasionally Jane when she came to visit him in his penthouse (before they were married). And because our office had not only the spaciousness but also a great out-the-window view of the Atlanta skyline, CNN selected it, rather than any of their own studios, for a lengthy sit-down interview with her, I think maybe for her 60th birthday. Quite the buzz.
160.
beltane
Just for the record, Jane Fonda is 76 years old. I don’t recall, back in the 1980s, so much venom being spewed against any WWII era Americans.
E) At some point, you need to move on with your life
I think this is the key to everything else. This person has absolutely not gotten on with their life. They’re mentally still stuck in Vietnam whenever they were there, and that will keep being their obsession for the rest of their life.
Has Turner ever expressed an opinion on what has happened to his creation CNN?
Sure. Here’s an example (not limited to CNN):
When CNN reported to me, if we needed more money for Kosovo or Baghdad, we’d find it. If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that’s how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch. I had the power to make these budget decisions because they were my companies. I was an independent entrepreneur who controlled the majority of the votes and could run my company for the long term. Top managers in these huge media conglomerates run their companies for the short term. After we sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, we came under such earnings pressure that we had to cut our promotion budget every year at CNN to make our numbers. Media mega-mergers inevitably lead to an overemphasis on short-term earnings.
[…]
Consolidation has given big media companies new power over what is said not just on the air, but off it as well. Cumulus Media banned the Dixie Chicks on its 42 country music stations for 30 days after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush for the war in Iraq. It’s hard to imagine Cumulus would have been so bold if its listeners had more of a choice in country music stations. And Disney recently provoked an uproar when it prevented its subsidiary Miramax from distributing Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. As a senior Disney executive told The New York Times: “It’s not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle.” Follow the logic, and you can see what lies ahead: If the only media companies are major corporations, controversial and dissenting views may not be aired at all.
169.
Narcissus
Ditching the wife who waited for him while he was a visitor at the Hanoi Hilton for someone much younger, prettier, and richer, was pretty douchcanoe of him, for sure.
To be fair, ditching was what he learned to do in the Navy.
One of the reason some people are so bent out of shape about Fonda’s Hanoi visit is a story that a couple of POWs surreptitiously gave her messages to be smuggled to their families that she instead turned over to the North Vietnamese resulting in punishment for the POWs. The stories have been proved to be false – the men who are named in the rumors have confirmed they had no contact with her – but like the whitey tape, lots of people “know” it happened and hate her for it, which wouldn’t be unreasonable if the story were real.
St. Paul, MN got the largest percentage of those refugees in the US. I was probably around 30 & heard the word “gook” way too often, with a lot of accompanying anger. There was a rumor that they were killing & eating neighborhood dogs that led to several police raids that discovered they were raccoons. I never understood why the nutters hated on these folks, they had been our friends and biggest supporters while we were fucking over their country, we owe them a whole hell of a of better than they got.
Smallminded bigots are always wary of the ‘others’. I’m sure there was similar sentiment towards the Japanese a few decades earlier. Enemies serve a useful purpose for all manner of grift.
I grew up in Fayettenam- age 10 thru high school and 2 years of local college ending in 71. It was hell. All the bars had Viet waitresses, all styled to look like the dives in Nam. I was already prepping a Canadian ‘vacation’ but got a lucky ping pong ball. The military presence weighed on that place like dense fog. 150K troops throws the ratio waaay out of whack in the wrong direction. I split for Atlanta a couple months after my gf moved there and never looked back. That place and that time was the suxxors.
I wish McCain would just stfu. People of his ilk have always mystified me- I guess it’s a liebrul thang… hard to fathom the level of vanity and hatred that drives an old dishrag like him.
173.
Cervantes
@bemused: Those remarks are from his article (“My Beef With Big Media”) in the July/August 2004 issue of Washington Monthly.
174.
Ruckus
@jl:
I believe we had something close to that in 1968, maybe 69, too lazy to look. It rained pretty hard for lots of days, there was talk of building boats and such. Houses 5 miles from me up to the eves in mud, every river and storm drain full to the brim for what seemed like forever. Remember driving across one bridge that normally had about 25 foot clear span and the water was above the bottom of the bridge and looking like the road was going to be under water. The LA river was almost full and running full bore and that’s a lot of water.
On the worstestness scale, Obama >>> Hitler >>> Carter, so McCain’s statement is still viable
It would make more sense then by their logic if they said “Carter/Hitler is as bad a president as Obama”, since by their logic Obama is the ultimate evil.
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dmsilev
It gives me great pleasure to observe how bitterness over his 2008 loss is eating away at what little remains of John McCain’s soul.
Certified Mutant Enemy
McCain still can’t get over losing to Obama
Comrade Jake
Republicans so wanted Obama to lose in 2012, so that they could call him the “black Jimmy Carter” forever. Such a damn shame that didn’t work out for them.
piratedan
Johnny Maverick has a sad, therefore I has a happy
srv
Who are we going to have to troll all the McGrumpies after 2016?
If Obama would troll harder, we’d have more heart-attacks.
geg6
I see McCain still hasn’t gotten over getting pasted by the big O.
Meanwhile, anyone younger than 35 or so who would read or hear this would say to themselves “What’s so bad about Jimmy Carter? He’s the old guy who does all that work for Habitat for Humanity and for people in Africa. Why shouldn’t Obama want to be like him?”
Clueless old white guys. Bitter, angry and stupid.
balconesfault
What’s that Salon is writing about “cum-running jokes”?
Patrick
Why the hell should anybody pay attention to why McCain doesn’t like Obama’s Syria policy? McCain is the one who was for idiotic war in Iraq ($1 trillion lost because of McCain). He has no credibility whatsoever.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Well, given that he sold his soul (along with his honor and integrity) to get the 2008 GOP nomination, the pickings are slim.
shelly
When is McCain gonna stop yelling at that cloud?
dmsilev
@geg6: At least it’s not quite as bad as today’s NewsMax headline of “Michelle Obama: Hanoi Jane’s My Role Model”. The Vietnam war ended 40ish years ago (Fonda’s visit was near the end, in 1972), and someone who was old enough at the time to be pissed off at Fonda is probably 60 or older. A fair-sized chunk of the population to be sure, but not exactly everyone.
Hunter Gathers
I like how McCain dissed Richard Sherman.
Richard Sherman should have his face carved into Mount Rushmore for completely destroying Skip Bayless on ESPN the other day.
beltane
What’s going on here? I was led to believe that Obama was worse than Hitler. Does this mean that Jimmy Carter is now also worse than Hitler or has Obama been downgraded in the “bad” category?
Cacti
After 30+ years in office, McCain’s legacy will be introducing Sarah Palin to a national audience.
Nothing can top that for punishment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
I lost to a near guy. A NEAR GUY!
Hey, walnuts, at least you can wallow in your misery with the Marquis de Mittens.
Dang, there goes the schadenfreude meter again, pegged out.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Whatever is left of John McCain’s soul is the exclusive property of one Lucifer B. Satan, so I doubt this is doing much to it.
azlib
It is really embarassing to have John as one of my Senators. Of course the other is hardly any better.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Mind you, a bitter subset of the 60s plus crowd, too.
dmsilev
@beltane: No, not at all. The sequence goes
Carter < Hitler < Obama
Unless (dramatic music) Jimmy Carter IS Adolf Hitler.
Cacti
@dmsilev:
At least it’s not quite as bad as today’s NewsMax headline of “Michelle Obama: Hanoi Jane’s My Role Model”.
And even that’s a timely reference compared to their continual shouts of “Marxist” “socialist” and “communist” as though it was still 1952.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, definitely. Should have specified that. Of course, ‘Bitter, over 60, white’ is probably NewsMax’s prime demographic so one could argue that they know their audience.
Anton Sirius
@beltane: On the worstestness scale, Obama >>> Hitler >>> Carter, so McCain’s statement is still viable
LanceThruster
Len Hart is one of the best when writing about what should be Jimmy Carter’s true legacy.
Villago Delenda Est
More Noisemax goofiness:
Nobel Research Reveals 5 Testosterone Benefits
“Makes it possible for you to father children” seems to be an obvious one…
dmsilev
@Cacti: I’m still holding out for some imaginary scandal to be described as ‘Obama’s Teapot Dome’. Though we did already get ‘court packing!’, so we’re already back to the 1930s, so let’s be more ambitious: “Benghazi will be Obama’s XYZ Affair!”.
KG
@dmsilev: shiiiiiiiiiiit, McCain isn’t over losing to GWB in 2000, let alone Obama in 2008.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Is that like how Tom Cruise IS [insert name of current Cruise vehicle here]?
Suffern ACE
Yeah, but unfortunately, those aging white radicals are all in their 40s and 50s and you’ll be dealing with them for 20 more years.
jeffreyw
I’m so old and grumpy I’m still pissed at The Keating Five.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Are you accusing Adolf Hitler of being a Scientologist? That’s a pretty low blow.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Oh, I’ve been seeing ‘net ads for “the emerging Obama scandal that will rock the world” for, well, let’s be honest, years now. Five years. And counting.
The scandalmongers fail to deliver every single time. Whoremongers eventually have to produce. Scandalmongers never do.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Not as low as comparing him to the deserting coward.
RaflW
Well, gramps has a point: Carter was way better for the GOP brand that Obummer has turned out to be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
When it turns in to the fog of a land war in Asia.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Nobody’s said “this is good news for john McCain” yet?
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: These are people who think a woman cannot become pregnant as the result of rape. Nothing is too obvious for these nitwits.
Schlemizel
@dmsilev: @Certified Mutant Enemy: @geg6:
I beg to differ. It is not the loss to Obama that has eaten McCain alive, it was the 99 primary loss to Boy Blunder that split his bile sack and poisoned his soul. The whisper campaign about his mental heath, denigrating his service and belittling the one accomplishment he had that was his alone and not his families doing. The outright lies about his having a ‘colored’ baby when what he did was to adopt a child that needed a home showing that his decency could not spare him. All leading to a series of losses to an unworthy, draft-dodging, coke snorting, piss-ant drunken son born with a golden coke spoon in his nose. THAT is what turned him into the bitter ugly little man we see today. That he has to take his anger out on someone innocent in his assault is just further infuriating as his rage can’t be aimed at the deserving but at someone he knows does not deserve it.
He is a pitiable empty husk of a many who probably secretly longs for the release of oblivion – only wishing he could could see his real tormentors driven in despair before him.
@KG: If I could type I’d have been in before you! :)
RaflW
@dmsilev: No disrespect meant to under-35’s, but would they have much of a sense of where Hanoi is, much less why Jane is associated?
The GOP hasn’t the vaguest notion of how to speak to people under 60. Maybe they reach a few resentful white males in their upper 40s and up, but they really are laughable in their trantruming.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Alas, your observation is all too true.
chopper
interesting, senator. would, perhaps, bombing the place assuage your worries?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Schlemizel: There’s plenty of evidence to suggest McCain was always a ginormous douchebag with anger issues from a very early age growing up on the plantation in Mississippi.
beltane
@RaflW: I am 45 and it took me a while to figure out who they were talking about. “Hanoi Jane” is something that takes me back to my earliest childhood along with the Partridge Family and the Jackson 5.
Trollhattan
@KG:
Honestly, I’d take the M.Y.2000 McCain over any model year GW Bush, and what Rove & Co. did to him WRT the adopted daughter remains the all-time vile political tactic, in my book.
chopper
@shelly:
when it’s a mushroom cloud.
catclub
@dmsilev: Benghazi will be Obama’s XYZ Affair!”
Whitey tape will be Obama’s Zimmerman telegram.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
Pretty good points. Which is what makes his very well publicized hug of the deserting coward all the more damning.
He’s such a disappointment to me. As I’ve written before, he could have been a transformative leader in this country, if only he’d allowed his decency and honor to veto his ambition. But alas, ambition won, and now he’s a shell of a man, shaking his fist at the sky.
Schlemizel
FYWP I made the mistake of replying to 4 people in one comment so naturally I was tossed into moderation. I forgot.
Cacti
@RaflW:
No disrespect meant to under-35′s, but would they have much of a sense of where Hanoi is, much less why Jane is associated?
Still too narrow a group.
No one under 40 has any living memory of the Vietnam war.
aimai
@dmsilev: I really, honestly, don’t ever remember a McCain who wasn’t bitter, angry, dismissive, bitchy, aggressive, and pretty stupid to boot. I’m sure he was ensouled at birth like the rest of us, but it was a pretty crappy soul going by his entire life.
RaflW
@beltane: Yeah, I’m 48 and mostly know this moniker via my now 89 year old uncle.
aimai
@beltane: Wasn’t it a fun sit com about a young mother trying to make it in Southeast Asia?
jl
@RaflW:
” Well, gramps has a point: Carter was way better for the GOP brand that Obummer has turned out to be. ”
Yes, but someone needs to explain to Grampa Wargrumps that Carter left office over 30 years go. You have to be near 50 to have any distinct memory of the dispirited 70s.
These gang kidz tiddee and durned youngin’ adults these days! When they think of Jimmy Carter, they think of that cool old ex-president dude who runs around the world and the U.S. with his cool old wifey dudeette who build houses for poor folks and work on progressive stuff.
They don’t think of a mediocre president in a dispirited decade.
Not to mention that Carter’s second term was a real bummer… oh, wait…
Just Some Fuckhead
@beltane: I was having beers down at the VFW with my best friends dad. I excused myself to go to the restroom and when I returned, he grinned and said, “What did you think of that?” and I said, “What do I think of what?” and he said “The picture in the urinals – Jane Fonda.” I replied, “Who the hell is Jane Fonda?” I made him tell me which took some of the joy out of it for him. When he was done, I said, “Jesus Christ Wes, that was almost 50 years ago! How old are you??”
He changed the subject.
KG
@Schlemizel: you were just way more descriptive.
@Trollhattan: I supported McCain in 2000, thought he was the best option that year. Everything that happened during the Bush Administration was telegraphed during that campaign, the way a candidate/nominee approaches the campaign can (and should) tell you a lot about how they’ll approach governing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
You’re right.
Damn, I feel old. I remember watching footage of Tet on the teevee. I remember my mother’s worry that it would go on so long that I would go there. I remember a phone call from my older cousin from his hospital bed in Japan after he lost his leg in the shit.
Schlemizel
@Cacti:
Since our involvement ended in ’75 and I’d say an average age of 10 would be required to really have a memory of it I’d put the age at closer to 50. But the hate runs deep in the morans – I am sure many have transferred an inchoate hatred to some percent of their children. They don’t understand it but the hate it
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, I’ve been seeing ‘net ads for “the emerging Obama scandal that will rock the world”
I have watched long enough to find out: Hyperinflation is coming!!
The ‘watch someone appear to draw every image in the video’ technique, absolutely rocks, too.
Otherwise they would get to the nothingburger in 2 minutes.
Did not watch long enough to find out what to do about it, besides sending for their information packet.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
But the same people who destroyed him in ’99 would never have allowed him to be that transformative figure. Look what they have done to Obama. They would have done McCain differently but it wouldn’t have been better.
That hug is Stockholm syndrome. It was like a dog that grovels before the human that beats it. I can’t understand it but it make him even more pitiful, a man who sold his soul and his spine.
dmsilev
@catclub:
Playing the race card!
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Ditching the wife who waited for him while he was a visitor at the Hanoi Hilton for someone much younger, prettier, and richer, was pretty douchcanoe of him, for sure.
jl
And the pundits and political reporters, even good ones like Buetler, have been churning out these same analyses of why the GOP can’t change: the crazy base they built won’t let them.
But the pundits always seem to be one step behind the times. Being obstructionist a holes whose only strategy is to stir up trouble and blow things up is really all the GOP knows how to do, and this includes supposed moderates like Boehner.
As a small example the day after Guv Brown announced a drought emergency in CA, Boehner flw his sorry self into the Central Valley to pre-emptively stir up trouble by pitting Central Valley farmers against coastal fishing industry and environmentalists. I mean, that shit will hit the fan soon enough. But for Boehner, why wait, why not fly out now and start making demands?
And a story in TPM today describes the GOP latest idea to wreck Obama care: repeal the risk adjustment mechanisms for comapanies that end up with a worse than average case mix. That might seem like wonky stuff taht no one pays attention too or understands. The only problem is that the GOP is openly yelling through a bullhorn that their basic reason is to wreck the ACA. Everyone can understand that, and most everyone will not like it except the GOP white dimwit racist base.
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t forget that Wife #1 was also in the hospital.
But did you know that John McCain was a POW?
catclub
Ann Margret looked fantastic in that movie.
Trollhattan
@jl:
Speaking of, this factoid does not make me happy, not one bit.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0121/California-drought-Scientists-puzzled-by-persistence-of-blocking-ridge-video
GregB
The GOP is still waiting for the right moment to release the whitey tape. When that happens Obama will be finished.
RaflW
@Schlemizel: Uhuh. I’m 48 and have no recollection of watching any Viet Nam coverage on TV. Not even the embassy evacuation. And my brother and I watched a lot of TV – but it was all sitcoms, cartoons and junk. I’m sure my parents ushered us out of the room – or we ran away from the boring old men on the TeeVee – when Cronkite or Brinkley or Chancellor came on.
Anything I can picture of Viet Nam or the protests is from seeing documentaries, and movies like the Deer Hunter and Platoon later.
catclub
@jl: “repeal the risk adjustment”
They yell about it because they can call it a bailout. (Similar with TARP and bailout.)
But they will not touch it because it breaks the insurance companies BEFORE it breaks the ACA. Just like the demands to end the mandate.
Breaking that breaks the insurance companies first.
RaflW
@dmsilev:
No. Really? Please tell me about it in your newsletter.
Anoniminous
@aimai:
You forgot “corrupt.”
Gex
@Villago Delenda Est: Good lord. The entire Fox News demographic is a bunch of old guys hopped up on T and popping boner pills. It’s disturbing.
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
The greats. It was quite sad that the end of Brinkley’s career was playing host to such scum as Cokie Roberts and George Will. Detracts from his earlier work.
Only Rather came within yelling distance of these three after they were gone. Chancellor was bodily removed from the 1964 GOP convention for being, well, John Chancellor, I guess.
beltane
@RaflW: I have some very vague, context free memories of war coverage on TV. Well, the only thing I really remember was the South Vietnamese flag itself but I didn’t know what it was. I also remember my babysitter wearing a pin that said “War is bad for children and other living things”, but again, no context. Incidentally, this is the same way my own children have “experienced” 9/11.
Schlemizel
@RaflW:
I was thinking that the movies about Viet Nam carry much more weight than the war itself. I don’t think anyone of them makes the war look ‘good’ in retrospect. Steeped in Hollywood history I would think you kids ;) would wonder why people were PO’ed at Fonda.
catclub
@Gex: You make it sound like there are no angry old women in that crowd. I think there are some.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
The weekly bodycounts, on the nightly news. During dinner.
Such fun times.
JustRuss
@Schlemizel: I’m 51 and I remember the Fonda hate. I don’t remember her trip to Hanoi, but the rage it caused lingered pretty strongly through the 70s.
jl
@Trollhattan: No, it is not good news. I heard an interview with a meterologist on the news this last weekend who said that the best CA can hope for it that it looks like the ridge will bend in February and let some rain through, but it may stay here through the rest of the winter.
But, this kind of thing is very consistent with predictions for California in regional models of climate change. Most of the time there will be this ridge. causing drier than average weather, and rain will come when tt will bends (edit: rather than going away), bringing sloshing bucketfulls of rain that will cause floods. Whooppee! We may have a chance to see one of those California superstorms in our lifetimes! I think the last one, during the Gold Rush, nearly swept everything between Stockton and Sacramento out to sea.
RaflW
Even random people on Twitter are noticing the grift.
catclub
@jl: “Most of the time there will be this ridge. causing drier than average weather, ”
Atacama desert is on the same coast. Just further south.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thinking of newsmen, there was a local guy, John McDougall, not a bad guy I guess but te crew broke him up just before air time one night. He was trying to suppress giggles while reading the casualty list for the week. It was the end of his career.
I was 18 in 1970 so the war is right there for me. I was 4F because of my birth defects & damn grateful. But it didn’t take long to understand that a large amount of anti-war sentiment came from kids my age who would not have had a problem with the war if they themselves were 4F. Nothing that has come after, REagan et al has been a surprise. It fits the ‘me before all others’ of too many of my peers
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
To be fair, I’m visited daily by Al Franken, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren, Jeanne Shaheen, and someone from Organizing For Action, all asking for a donation. I probably left out a person or two in that list, also.
RaflW
@Schlemizel:
Yep. She was the home video aerobics babe in the leg warmers to us. Were we fascinated/horrified when we finally rented Barbarella (“My babe twisterella”).
Hanoi Jane? Whazzat?
Gypsy Howell
@Villago Delenda Est:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Eric S.
@Cacti: I’m 42 going on 43 and have no conscious memory of W.W. Nam. It has had such a large influence on my parents and our politics I’ve spent time learning about it. I understand many of the rhetorical references to it but not from first hand experience.
dmsilev
@RaflW:
I saw that in college, at an all-night SF film marathon. As the hours got later, the films got worse and worse. Barbarella came on at something like 5 AM if memory serves.
Schlemizel
@jl:
Its a damn good thing we don’t need California to produce fruits and vegetables for the rest of the nation. We are a lot closer to the horrors of radical climate change than is popularly believed. Losing food production (or depopulating the West in order to have water to farm) should be a really exciting thing to live through.
bemused
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I suppose it’s not nice to laugh at what you did to deflate the old geezer but I did.
I can’t imagine how these nutters connect Hanoi Jane and Michelle O and I’m not going there to find out. It won’t make a bit of sense anyway.
Tommy
McCain needs to get over it. I used to be a big fan of the guy. Let me try to explain. I think I was five. Father was teaching at the Army War College. He told me we were going to see a great American speak. That American was John McCain. He rocked the place. It is something I will never forget. He talked about being tortured. I recall the room, and it was in the “Great Hall” thousands of people yelling at the top of their lungs in support. I am a liberal but I tend to like McCain cause of this. But IMHO he is a caricature of that person I recall.
RaflW
@catclub:
I’m a snowboarder. Last Feb I went to Tahoe to ride, and conditions were acceptable but below average. In November I booked for this coming March. Airfare is non-refundable, so I may just bring hiking boots.
Heavenly resort has received 2″ of natural snow in the past 30 days and the forecast is for 0″ in the next 5 or more. Mean monthly snowfall should be at least 40 inches, though there is a significant standard deviation. That deviation should not persist month after month as it has.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
Interesting times. In the Chinese sense.
This is not going to be pleasant.
scav
@bemused: Exercise. Un’mercan. ‘Feel The Burn!’ was clearly a presage if not outright instructions for 9/11 and the fire in the towers.
catclub
@bemused: I figure the link between Jane Fonda and Michelle Obama is this: “She was the home video aerobics babe”
WaterGirl
@Tommy: I saw McCain speak, maybe 8-10 years ago, when my niece graduated from law school. He was about as lame then as he is now.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
My first viewing of Barbarella was when it was part of a double feature with Rollerball, the original and best, when it was first released. Barbarella came out in ’68 I believe…too lazy to open up a tab and go to IMDB to confirm.
WereBear
Yep. That’s the one I really hold against him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused: MO expressed some admiration for Fonda in a people magazine issue. I don’t know what she said. The NewsMax headline that caught my eye is that Brokaw sat down to play footsie with O’Reilly. Which is almost on topic because McCain was, I suspect, was one of the big factors that turned Brokaw into a GOP apologist. That and the massive personal fortune that came from, as Pierce puts it, inventing World War II
Tommy
@RaflW: Well I am a hiker. Love going to Tahoe “off” season. It is something I do on purpose, heading there off season. Cause it is dirt cheap. You said Heavenly. I would just like to say as a walker/hiker being there without snow is nice.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Interestingly, it’s one that Nancy Reagan holds against him as well.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
“B.” for Beelzebub, I assume.
Jay C
@RaflW:
Man, I remember skiing Heavenly back in
the last Ice Agethe ’80s, and any winter that didn’t leave the slopes with at least ten feet of base was considered a “dry” one. Up here in the Berkshires, the local ski hills have every foot of run they can afford to piped and hosed with snowmaking gear, and blast it out every minute they can when weather permits (this year, A LOT). When you have to rely on Nature, like in the Rockies and the Sierras, well: it’s only the skiers who get hosed…..And Geez, McCain is still bashing Jimmy Carter: 37 freakin’ years after he left office?
Trollhattan
@jl:
Yes, the good ol ARk Storm model. When that hits, Boehner and Hannity and the Westlands Water District board can bob around in boats in downtown Fresno and yell, “If only we had eleventy-five moar dams we’d capture all this water, but hippies and bait fish kept us from doin’ it so it’s all goin’ to the sea, WASTED!”
El Caganer
If Poopdeck Pappy thinks the US gov’t is letting al-Qaeda skate in Syria, he’s even more out of the loop than I thought. Which is probably a good thing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10588308/US-secretly-backs-rebels-to-fight-al-Qaeda-in-Syria.html
Trollhattan
@Tommy:
For this year, when you’re eyeballing the Sierra backcountry guidebooks subtract at least two months from when they say the trails are typically open. By mid-summer there will hardly be running water anywhere. Last summer, things opened up about six weeks earlier than usual.
Gypsy Howell
@Tommy:
That sentence is doing a lot of the work in your story.
GregB
Remember: GOP Art of War 101.
References to Jimmy Carter, fair game for political attacks. Use frequently.
References to George W. Bush, how dare you bring up ancient history and blame the previous President. Off limits.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, its also true that California goes through 30 to 40 year drought cycles, and the last really bad multi-year drought was in the late 1970s. I don’t think global warming effects will come one year all of a sudden and then just sit here permanently.
And if the predictions I read, CA will not have drought problems as bad as other parts of the U.S., averaged over years. Big problem will be fact that longer dry periods, with wetter wet periods. I guess that will mean building humongous flood control projects for wet years, with humongous underground water banking system in Central Valley (and that project has already been started in southern San Joaquin and Kern Basin.)
But, probably we are already on our way so what we see this year will gradually become more common. The temperature patterns have sure followed the predictions I read a couple of years ago from the regional models. The average temperature and degree days over the whole year will not rise along with rest of west (edit: and last two years, they have both been below average in CA, over the whole year), but the minimum temperatures will rise, and winters will be much warmer (which is where the snowless Sierra Nevada in 50 years prediction comes from). Anyway, last couple of years the temperature patterns have followed the predictions so closely it was spooky.
It has something to do with effect of global warming on air and ocean currents coming from west of Alaska. I forget the details.
But, then, maybe its all a fraud and plot! Maybe Obama lent the climate researchers his time machine, so they could zip around back and forth over ten or twenty years and fudge the statistics.
Jay C
OT, but weird wildlife sightings here in Western MA today: it’s sunny but cold – 5.5F right now, down from a balmy 8 or 9 this afternoon, yet I’ve seen flocks of birds flying around my hillside today: lots of robins, and a male cardinal, too (can’t miss that red!) – and, I just saw a fox trot on down my driveway. I would have thought the weather would keep the critters (especially birds) tucked up – those that haven’t booked for warmer climes yet, anyway, but I guess not….
Frankensteinbeck
I grew up in the Reagan Era. My associations with the words ‘Hanoi Jane’ were that apparently Jane Fonda was a big protestor of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War famously sucked and we should never have been in it, so she must be pretty great.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Bad as that is, choosing Sarah Palin as his VP candidate was much worse.
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: I find it kinda funny that I agree with Nancy about anything, but there was stem cell research, so it’s not unprecedented :)
I am currently reading a most interesting book, Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party.
The author dates the epic power struggle back to 1964, when Rockefeller failed to win the nomination and the moderates began losing their grip on the party. I have not gotten much past that point yet in the book, but I’m sure each inviting of crazee into the tent (started with Birchers and ended with evangelicals) was another move that created short-term bounce and long-term anchor-around-the-neck.
catclub
@El Caganer: Isn’t the real solution to stopping al qaida bombing
Saudi Arabia? (Or at least closing their bank accounts).
Why doesn’t McCain ever suggest that?
JPL
So what’s up with Michelle and Jane Fonda? I refuse to click on the link. Jane Fonda has done a lot of work with teens and teen pregnancies. Unfortunately, for some good deeds will not be enough to over come the fact that she went to Hanoi during wartime.
schrodinger's cat
BTW what is happening in Fallujah? What happened to the successful (according to MSM and McCain) surge, that McCain likes to crow about.
Suffern ACE
@Frankensteinbeck: You obviously didn’t have the same Ollie North loving teenaged friends I had in the 1980s. Jane Fonda and those protestors lost that very winnable war.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, the simple answer now is “we got out too early” if you’re John McCain and a serious person. “We got out just in time”, if you’re not in the serious set.
jl
Too bad for the GOP this goofball can’t run in 2016. And even if he did, the GOP base hates him almost as much as Obama, at least in CA.
But, if the U.S. annexed Austria, and had a Congressional vote and friendly Supreme Court, eh, maybe he could get in the race (though I shouldn’t give them any ideas)
Arnold Schwarzenegger Goes Undercover in Gold’s Gym for a Good Cause
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/arnold-schwarzenegger-goes-undercover-in-gold-s-gym-for-a-good-cause-183409050.html
catclub
@Jay C: “those that haven’t booked for warmer climes yet, anyway, but I guess not…. ”
They might be just those. Lulled by previous mild winters into not migrating.
bemused
@scav:
@catclub:
Ha, dumb as I imagined. I can see a similarity between the two women, both hot, fit and gorgeous but I don’t think that was exactly the connection the nutters were going for, lol.
Trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
The Surge(tm) worked until Obama brokded it. One suspects Gates has a chapter about that in his awesome book.
Suffern ACE
@Trollhattan: At what point do we get to say that the Iraqis are to blame for their own troubles?
ranchandsyrup
@Trollhattan: How can we ensure that the Ark Flood flushes the Westlands Water District out to sea for good?
El Caganer
@Trollhattan: Yes, it was all Obama’s fault that Dubyuh signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw US troops….he’s sneaky that way.
cckids
@Trollhattan: From things I’ve read over the past 3-5 years, this really isn’t a “drought” we’re having here in the Southwest; as scientists have gained the knowledge about weather/climate from past centuries, this is a more typical weather pattern than the uncommonly wet decades of the mid 1900’s thru 2000.
We built all these cities & dams & farms and there just isn’t the water to support them. The future for the southwestern US is pretty bleak.
Villago Delenda Est
@SiubhanDuinne:
That, or Beetlejuice. Or Bob. Of the Bobs.
jl
@bemused: I saw in Yahoo news that there is, or will be in a few days, an interview with Michelle Obama where she says some nice things about Jane Fonda. Mostly as a role model for women, but looks like Michelle also said Fonda was ‘politically savvy’. Not sure I would go with that last comment, but nobody is right all the time.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
If they’re predicting hyperinflation, they’re probably trying to sell precious metals, probably in the form of “rare” coins whose alleged numismatic value is used to justify selling them for way above bullion value. That or emergency supplies.
Tommy
@Trollhattan: I have this huge picture gallery in my living room. All things in and around Heavenly. They see my naked butt jumping into a lake, Echo Lake. You hike in many miles and there is that lake. A place you can, well at least for me, I always strip down and jump in.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE:
Never. These things are always the fault of someone with a (D) behind their name. Always.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
The Spanish Hapsburgs are on line two for these dumbshits.
Trollhattan
@ranchandsyrup:
I’m thinking we stage a few Caterpillar D9s to help, in case they get hung up on a gravel bar or something on the way to the Bay.
bemused
@jl:
So they are getting their version out early and fire up the old geezer wingnuts. I remember it was the picture of Jane posing with the tank or artillery or something that really drove rightwingers insane. They went ballistic.
RaflW
@Jay C: Oh, CO and Taho are snowmaking Meccas now. Big part of the money model is big Xmas and MLK bookings.
But it looks like its so bad in Tahoe this year that they can’t keep up. Highs in the mid 40s and lows around 30 make for faster loss than they can re-spray.
I wonder if there are caps on the gallons they can pull, too. Certainly the electricity cost for the pumps, chillers and fan-guns are part of the calc. Heavenly is maybe 40% open?
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused:
Anti-aircraft guns.
To shoot down American planes dropping bombs on rice paddies.
elmo
@Schlemizel:
I’m 47. Most of my earliest memories are of my dad being gone, because he was career Navy and when I was little he was doing sea rotation after sea rotation, doing WESTPAC cruises in the South China Sea. I have a very clear memory of asking him once, when he came home, if the war with Vietnam ended – “Who will we be at war with then?” The concept of being at war with nobody at all had not occurred to me as a possibility.
And I was 45 years old before I could bring myself to watch anything with Jane Fonda in it. (The Newsroom, if you’re curious.) And it still felt like a betrayal of my parents.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
I read that a couple of years ago (right after it was published). I remember it as being very interesting, reasonably well written, and quite germane to a lot of what we were all talking about early in the 2012 campaign. If memory serves (it may not!), one of the regular BJ commenters mentioned it originally, and I thought for a short time that we would do a book chat about it. Definitely more substantial than This Town!!
Schlemizel
@bemused:
She sat on an ant-aircraft gun, may have had an NVA helmet on, I forget the details. I can understand someone who was there being angry about that. Me? I’d be much more pissed off about the assholes who sent me there but still I can understand why they may have some bitter taste from Fonda.
Trollhattan
@cckids:
What’s happening in the Colorado Basin might be just that–the hydrology surveys conducted to predict how much water the basin would reliably deliver were done in an ahistorically wet period. We’re perhaps now dealing with the actual “normal.” California’s situation is a little different, with one scientist saying it’s the worst conditions in 500 years. I hope and pray to the holy Rainbird gods it’s not our new normal, too.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/21/states-water-woes/
schrodinger's cat
@Trollhattan: Did Obama also break Gates’ neck? He was wearing neck brace at his PBS interview.
jl
@bemused: I’m with the commenters above who were too young at the time to really get caught up in the psychic trauma of the Vietnam war.
I have a vague memory of a fuss about Jane Fonda doing a tour of North Vietnam and the pic with an anti-aircraft gun. When Vietnamese refugees started coming to CA, I did not understand the resentment against them at all by older people (and even in retrospect, it was anti-communists mostly who came over, so the resentment seemed absurd to me). (Edit: wasn’t going to mention this, since it is not PC and this is a family blog, but thy that time, I was cool with idea of a new group coming to the U.S. that had a high quotient of hot chicks)
When the high hippie Summer of Love was going on, I remember reading a tabloid headline about it while standing in line in a store. Headline went something like “Dirty Hippies: free sex, drugs, no baths!”. And I was about the age where the free sex and drugs did not mean much to me, the ‘no baths’ sounded great.
Seanly
@dmsilev:
There’s a relatively new car in my neighborhood with a “This Vet Is Not Fonda Jane” bumper-sticker. Who the fugg carries their anger around for that long?
A) You’re still upset about something Jane Fonda did over 40 years ago.
B) You’re upset about it enough that you put a new bumper-sticker on a new car.
C) You think this is still something worthy of attention. IT WAS OVER 40 YEARS AGO. Only 40% of the US population was alive then.
D) She’s apologized profusely multiple times. You don’t know her and you’re still upset?
E) At some point, you need to move on with your life.
F) Why not also get a bumper-sticker asking when Khrushchev is going to release Francis Gary Powers?
Every time I drive by the car, I wonder what kind of a raging ass this guy probably is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Trollhattan: I can’t remember which Villager, a Betlway “liberal”, wrote in the review of Gates’ book 1) that Obama told HRC that his opposition to “the Surge” was also based on primary politics, which is not what Gates said though it’s a very garbled passage; and 2) stated as fact that “the Surge worked”.
El Caganer
@Seanly: My first reactions would be A) this bozo isn’t a vet, B) he doesn’t have a clue who Jane Fonda is, unless he’s seen her on the teevee, C) he couldn’t find Vietnam on a map, even if it were circled by a purple Sharpie, D) he’s getting his ragegasm on because Newsmax and….FREEDOM, E) he paid somebody good money for a dumbass bumper sticker that was probably printed up in reaction to the Newsmax headline.
Schlemizel
@jl:
St. Paul, MN got the largest percentage of those refugees in the US. I was probably around 30 & heard the word “gook” way too often, with a lot of accompanying anger. There was a rumor that they were killing & eating neighborhood dogs that led to several police raids that discovered they were raccoons. I never understood why the nutters hated on these folks, they had been our friends and biggest supporters while we were fucking over their country, we owe them a whole hell of a of better than they got.
jl
@Trollhattan: Thanks for the link. I fear what she says is pretty solid. Starting five or six years ago I started looking for regional studies on and predictions for my beloved Left Coast USA. Turns out there is quite a literature on it.
Two or three years ago I started looking at various stats, and as I said above, the temperature patterns matched what I had read so closely, it was spooky. (Edit: and remember, what I had read were predictions from models that had been developed in mid-90s and early aughts)
Longer droughts and more superfloods for good old CA. And I might see a day when the Central Valley looks like it did when some ancient great grand aunts and uncles in the family talked about being able to boat from Fresno up to SF Bay during the spring floods. If there are any left, the salmon will have fun!
chopper
@Trollhattan:
At least with those models there’s a great deal of ‘conditioning’ rain. It would take at least a few decent winters just to get the Sierra snowpack back up in order to be melted by massive spring rains.
Mike G
@Seanly:
I’ll bet dollars to donuts he was one of the people who were sneering “Get over it” a month after the Bush Crime Family stole the 2000 election.
I’d give a pass to guys who were actually in the Hanoi Hilton, but everyone else needs to Get The Fuck Over It.
Trollhattan
@jl:
It’s hard to overstate the valley’s susceptability to flooding in a relatively short time, although it’s usually just a single river basin that gets nailed. The Feather, for instance.
http://middlekauff.tv/rodeo.html
(Worth reiterating from the story that the dog is sitting on the roof of a THREE-story house.)
Last measurable rain at home was December 7. “Rainy season,” my ass.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think she repeatedly apologized. I don’t know if she ever expressed regret about marrying Ted Turner.
WereBear
Which reminds me of the joke:
Jane Fonda found God… and discovered it wasn’t Ted.
jl
@chopper: Before I knew about the superfloods, I remember looking at the records of CA rainfall totals (what can I say, I am a statistician, and have odd tastes in how to waste time). I remember seeing this strange series of multi-year humps of rain totals starting during Gold Rush years, and then climaxing in early 1860s. It was weird enough to stand out and to stick in my mind.
So, at least the 1960-61 superstorm was preceded by several multi-year waves of heavy rainfall. Back then, probably a lot of it was stored up over the years in Sierra snowpack. If we get a superstorm in 20 or 30 years from now, the much warmer winter Sierra might moderate that store of frozen water.
Of course, if that next superstorm comes after ten years of severe drought, miight not be enough people or agriculture left to be as big a deal as it would be now.
bemused
@WereBear:
Good one!
Ripley
Just build the dang guillotine.
Faux News
@Schlemizel: Spot on Schlemizel! You described Dubya perfectly. The Republican primary was especially vicious that year. The illegitimate black love child whispers came directly from South Carolina and did great damage to McCain. So Old Man McCain loses to an amoral sociopath and has to eat a HUGE shit sandwich by supporting Dubya for the next 8 years. So 2008 comes and it’s Old Man McCain’s turn to be POTUS. Well, that didn’t quite work out so the Old Man has to rage at someone. Might as well be the upstart Negro who just made the past 8 years of eating Dubya’s shit all for naught. Too bad. So sad.
IowaOldLady
@Villago Delenda Est: We’ll know Christie is done when FOX puts a D after his name.
jl
I thought a couple brain cells had started to fire away in these dingbats’ heads, and they called off this garbage. Too look on the brighter side, if the GOP wants to pull this crap just as voters start to think about the midterms, then let them go right ahead.
Republican Leaders Will Pick Yet Another Debt Ceiling Fight
SAHIL KAPUR TPM
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/republicans-will-pick-another-debt-ceiling-fight
Gypsy Howell
@Seanly:
There are a lot of Vietnam vets who just can’t accept the fact that their government sent them across the globe to fight and die for a worthless cause. And they can’t accept that, unlike their fathers who fought in WWII, they didn’t win their war. So they take their anger out on Jane Fonda instead of the men who really betrayed them by sending them there in the first place.
It’s sad. But on the other hand, they’re goddamn grown men now, and if they still can’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see who REALLY betrayed them, well then, I can’t feel sorry for them. Fuck em.
OGLiberal
What always strikes me is that these folks conveniently forget that St. Ron the Gipper turned tail and ran after we got blown up in Beirut then traded arms with the evil Eyeranian moo-lahs to free hostages (mostly failed efforts, they just kept taking more hostages and getting more arm) while funneling the proceeds to nun killers…commie hating nun killers, mind you. Obama is effing Rambo compared to their Sainted One. Yeah, he told Gorby to tear down a wall but Gorby was going to do that anyway, for reasons that had nothing to do with Bad Ass Dutch.
Eric U.
I’m 55, and I think my familiarity with Hanoi Jane is mostly due to the fact that it was brought up over and over. I saw the tape of her talking in Hanoi fairly recently, so people are still bringing it up. The republicans got a lot of mileage out of it in the Rambo era in the ’80s, because real-time it blew over pretty quickly.
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
According to all the accounts I’ve seen — not that I particularly follow either of them — Jane and Ted are still very close friends. They just can’t be married to each other.
When my office was in CNN Center, we used to see Ted all the time around the building, and then occasionally Jane when she came to visit him in his penthouse (before they were married). And because our office had not only the spaciousness but also a great out-the-window view of the Atlanta skyline, CNN selected it, rather than any of their own studios, for a lengthy sit-down interview with her, I think maybe for her 60th birthday. Quite the buzz.
beltane
Just for the record, Jane Fonda is 76 years old. I don’t recall, back in the 1980s, so much venom being spewed against any WWII era Americans.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Got it in one.
Roger Moore
@Suffern ACE:
When a Republican would take the blame if America is at fault. SATSQ.
bemused
@beltane:
I suspect being a woman and Hollywood actor probably did and still does get wingnuts’ goats.
Roger Moore
@Seanly:
I think this is the key to everything else. This person has absolutely not gotten on with their life. They’re mentally still stuck in Vietnam whenever they were there, and that will keep being their obsession for the rest of their life.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
Has Turner ever expressed an opinion on what has happened to his creation CNN?
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Personal growth. It’s not for sissies.
Jebediah, RBG
@SiubhanDuinne:
I thought it was Burnard.
Cervantes
@bemused:
Sure. Here’s an example (not limited to CNN):
Narcissus
To be fair, ditching was what he learned to do in the Navy.
bemused
@Cervantes:
Good comments.
drkrick
One of the reason some people are so bent out of shape about Fonda’s Hanoi visit is a story that a couple of POWs surreptitiously gave her messages to be smuggled to their families that she instead turned over to the North Vietnamese resulting in punishment for the POWs. The stories have been proved to be false – the men who are named in the rumors have confirmed they had no contact with her – but like the whitey tape, lots of people “know” it happened and hate her for it, which wouldn’t be unreasonable if the story were real.
jayboat
@Schlemizel:
Smallminded bigots are always wary of the ‘others’. I’m sure there was similar sentiment towards the Japanese a few decades earlier. Enemies serve a useful purpose for all manner of grift.
I grew up in Fayettenam- age 10 thru high school and 2 years of local college ending in 71. It was hell. All the bars had Viet waitresses, all styled to look like the dives in Nam. I was already prepping a Canadian ‘vacation’ but got a lucky ping pong ball. The military presence weighed on that place like dense fog. 150K troops throws the ratio waaay out of whack in the wrong direction. I split for Atlanta a couple months after my gf moved there and never looked back. That place and that time was the suxxors.
I wish McCain would just stfu. People of his ilk have always mystified me- I guess it’s a liebrul thang… hard to fathom the level of vanity and hatred that drives an old dishrag like him.
Cervantes
@bemused: Those remarks are from his article (“My Beef With Big Media”) in the July/August 2004 issue of Washington Monthly.
Ruckus
@jl:
I believe we had something close to that in 1968, maybe 69, too lazy to look. It rained pretty hard for lots of days, there was talk of building boats and such. Houses 5 miles from me up to the eves in mud, every river and storm drain full to the brim for what seemed like forever. Remember driving across one bridge that normally had about 25 foot clear span and the water was above the bottom of the bridge and looking like the road was going to be under water. The LA river was almost full and running full bore and that’s a lot of water.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anton Sirius:
It would make more sense then by their logic if they said “Carter/Hitler is as bad a president as Obama”, since by their logic Obama is the ultimate evil.