Are you going to finish that?
Open thread.
by Tim F| 36 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
by DougJ| 78 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
George Will is Paul-curious. Personally, I think Paul lacks the Hayekian modesty necessary for a successful third-party run.
Expect the calls for a third-party candidate to get louder and louder if it appears that Gingrich will be the nominee. And even the liberal Nate Silver hears the Siren song of a brokered convention.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 57 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
by Dennis G.| 80 Comments
This post is in: Crazification Factor, David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Election 2012, Open Threads, Assholes, Clown Shoes
The pundits/gasbags of Wingnutopia are focused on the The Professor. Some like Rushbo are moving towards a full embrace of Scarborough’s Gingrich meme:
“Who was the last person to actually cut government? Who was the last person who actually led a movement that balanced the federal budget? . . . The last time there was true welfare reform, the last time government was cut, Gingrich did it.”
The Wingnut potentate is telling his minions that the “establishment” (Left AND Republican) is out to silence Newt. It’s pretty close to an endorsement and it’s clear that The Professor is preferred over Mittens. Meanwhile, the establishment voices of Wingnutopia’s Beltway tribe are yelling at the base and telling them “NO, Stop, please don’t choose Newt”. All of this gives the Grifter from Georgia more street cred.
Will, Noonan, Douthat, Krauthammer, and a host of other members of the Conservative establishment are doing what they can to stop the base from embracing Newt. I think they will fail. It will be fun to see how each on them walks it back to proclaim The Professor a Conservative Hero and the best of all possible people to be President.
And then there is Bobo. I expect that his walk back and embrace of Gingrich may be the most tortured of them all. His column today was packed with all the regular hilarity, but there was a gem that really stood out (emphasis added):
In the two main Republican contenders, we have one man, Romney, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1950s, and another, Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s. He has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with ’60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form.
I’ve often wondered about the hatred of the 1960s by the Wingnuts, but this line from Bobo clarified it for me. These traits–narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance–are core to the modern conservative movement, but they are embarrassed by them. They like to pretend they belong to somebody else and so they invented fantasy memories of the 1960s complete with phantom hippies as the home for their shadow material.
That said, I think you could make a strong case that roughly half of all Baby Boomers have embraced narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance as core to their world view, but then again half of all Boomers have grown up to be Conservatives, Dittoheads and TeaBots. The Venn diagram of the two groups would almost completely overlap.
The truth is that these conservatives were pricks in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties when they were young and still are today–they just like to justify their dickishness by blaming it all on fantasy hippies from a mythical time. Regardless of when they were born, they have a desperate need to project these traits elsewhere as a way to avoid any and all responsibility for their actions–and so we all must hate the 1960s as described by their collective false memory.
Mr. Brooks is haunted by the narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance of the modern conservative movement, but rather than confront these traits, he chooses projection and blame shifting. No surprise that he blames it all on phantom hippies from a decade that only exists in his imagination. This avoidance of bad conservative thinking and behavior is part of the glue that holds Wingnutopia together. And when they need to disapline a member of the tribe they lob the biggest insult that they can think of: “you’re a hippie”. And so that became the heart of Bobo’s swipe at Newt.
Sometimes I think that Bobo must have had a bad hit of Purple Haze and never recovered. That would explain a lot about Bobo but there was never enough bad acid to explain the modern conservative movement.
Cheers.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 35 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
This one goes out to Rick “Montemayor” Perry:
ETA:
Dan “Bee” Spears, who played bass on the road with Willie Nelson for more than 40 years and appeared on many of his classic albums, died unexpectedly late Thursday.
My condolences to his family.
Open Thread – Frequently, secretly fond of each other…Post + Comments (35)
by Tim F| 54 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Lord only knows how I stayed married this long without such expert advise.
Also: if you’re a complete wanker then wank about religion, because it’s not like anyone is going to prove you wrong.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads