Just a misunderstood genius, like Ronald Reagan, also.
Sarah Palin
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes
Just a misunderstood genius, like Ronald Reagan, also.
by John Cole| 88 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
According to everything I have read and everything the talking heads on my television have said, last night was John McCain’s best performance, but that Obama committed no gaffes, held his own, and then finished strong. I have to say at that I am relieved that McCain had a better night, as there is still a chance that he could pull it out and win. Anything can happen, and it would be nice to think that if Obama does lose, the next administration would not be a total disaster.
On the other hand, I think this take on things is probably delusional:
Tonight we finally saw what so many of us have been waiting for. John McCain mopped the floor with Barack Obama.
Throughout the night, Barack Obama looked distant, like he did not want to be there, like he was annoyed. He really looked annoyed all night.
McCain on the other hand looked like the comeback kid — the guy who knew he had to do well. And he did.
Here is why it mattered.
Between October 24th and 27th of 1980, Jimmy Carter was ahead of Ronald Reagan by six points. Obama is up three in the traditional Gallup poll and up eight in the expanded Gallup poll.
This becomes very doable for John McCain tonight. It becomes very doable.
Doable and plausible are two different things, and we need to square this “mopped the floor with him” rhetoric with the polls:
CNN poll of debate viewers: Obama 58%, McCain 31%
CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 53%, McCain 22%
Still making their own reality over at Red State.
This post is in: Clown Shoes
From the comments at the Townhall post on the hoax Michelle Obama story:
A few comments later, this reply:
clendon & animalgirl:
the flag you’re asking about is the state flag of ohio.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Republican base. Kind of explains why the Corner is the way it is, doesn’t it?
(via)
by John Cole| 93 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
“Yes, we are so stupid we believe anything we see on the internet.”
Sorry, folks, the “whitey” rant is all a hoax. However, I bet if you check with some more reputable sources, you can find the real truth about Obama’s gay affair with Larry Sinclair. Plus, I once heard a rumor Obama was a space alien. And before anyone gets too worked up, Johnny Cash didn’t actually kill a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I am sure it is just a coincidence that all these morons are McCain voters.
by John Cole| 54 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
More nonsense from the Corner, this time from Jonah Goldberg, responding to Byron York:
Reading Byron’s post about Kos wanting to crush the conservative movement (“Bring it on!” I say), not to mention the absurd ruby-slipper-clicking nonsense from Harold Meyerson, it occurs to me that liberals should be more careful about what they wish for. I agree with John Hood entirely (and T.S. Eliot) that the cause cannot be truly lost because no cause can truly be won.
But, what if these guys got their wish? What if the free market chorus was crushed and discredited entirely? Pelted from the public stage? Do these people really think there would be no “rightwing” in America? No Republican Party? That is moronic. What would happen if you got rid of the free marketers and fusionists is you would have an unadulterated party of populist, rightwing, progressives competing with a party of poplist, leftwing, ones. Our politics would be worse, not better, by liberalism’s own standards because the GOP would be taken over by Buchananites to the “right” of Buchanan who would make Mike Huckabee look like Milton Friedman. If everyone agreed on pervasive economic interventionism then politics becomes a question of who gets to benefit from intervention, elections become a contest to pick winners and losers, or beneficiaries and shakedown victims. In such an evironment, cultural factors become more central, not less.
Putting aside the bullshit assertion that Democrats oppose free markets (has Jonah missed the Bush administration nationalization binge?), the Corner argument for voting for McCain and Republicans has now devolved from “The Democrats are worse” in 2004 to “You can not completely destroy us, because it would create a power vacuum in which even worse right-wingers will come to prominence.” It should be interesting to watch them work this into slogan form so the base and right-wing bloggers can understand it. I would suggest- “Sure, we suck, but you will miss us when we are gone.”
Actually, Jonah, we really won’t.
by John Cole| 93 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes
Another notch in Taibbi’s belt, as he just shreds yet another Cornerite:
M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work? Because I get the feeling you don’t understand. Or do you actually think that it was a few tiny homeowner defaults that sank gigantic companies like AIG and Lehman and Bear Stearns? Explain to me how these default swaps work, I’m interested to hear.
Because what we’re talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?
B.Y.: Are you suggesting that critics of Fannie and Freddie are talking about the default of a single homeowner?
M.T.: No. That is what you call a figure of speech. I’m saying that you’re talking about individual homeowners defaulting. But these massive companies aren’t going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They’re going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond. I’m still waiting to hear what your idea is of how these trades work. I’m guessing you’ve never even heard of them.
I mean really. You honestly think a company like AIG tanks because a bunch of minorities couldn’t pay off their mortgages?
B.Y.: When you refer to “Phil Gramm’s Commodities Future Modernization Act,” are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?
M.T.: In point of fact I’m talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.
Tick tick tick. Hilarious sitting here while you frantically search the Internet to learn about the cause of the financial crisis — in the middle of a live chat interview.
B.Y.: Look, you can keep trying to make this a specifically partisan and specifically Gramm-McCain thing, but it simply isn’t. We’ve gone on for fifteen minutes longer than scheduled, and that’s enough. Thanks.
M.T.: Thanks. Note, folks, that the esteemed representative of the New Republic has no idea what the hell a credit default swap is. But he sure knows what a minority homeowner looks like.
B.Y.: It’s National Review.
I bet Rich Lowry wishes York had not corrected him at the end and had let people think York actually wrote for the New Republic. This has to have been the worst year for the National Review, ever.
At any rate, this just gets back to what everyone across the country is beginning to figure out- the bullshit artists who have been running this country and propping up the Republicans have no idea what they are talking about- ever. They have relied on invective and personal attacks and fear appeals and personal narratives for so long, we are to the point that they can not even debate coherently anymore. When pressed and pushed away from the talking points and the convenient scapegoating, they whiff. Reciting “fight them over there rather than over here” or yelling “no surrender” or babbling incoherently about American exceptionalism really doesn’t work when you are asked a specific question.
And for the record, I have only the fuzziest idea of how Credit Default Swaps work. It seems to me they are a ridiculously complex instrument whipped up by folks who in previous generations would be using their mathematical models to study theoretical physics. From what I have read, Ponzi scheme really does seem to sum up what they are.
(via)
by John Cole| 73 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008, Republican Stupidity, Clown Shoes
Yglesias is absolutely right:
Specifically, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on whose board Obama served gave a grant to an outfit called the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS). CIESS was “linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system” called the “South Shore African Village Collaborative.” According to Kurtz, this network which was linked to an organization which got a grant from a group on whose board Obama served, “was very much a part of the Afrocentric ‘rites of passage movement’” and also at time did events featuring guys named Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard. These two, in turn, seem to have held fringy opinions somewhat similar to some of Jeremiah Wright’s fringy opinions. Ergo, according to Kurtz, Wright is back on the table.
I’d say McCain’s in luck with this one! Obama’s doomed!
Seriously, though, is there anyone who could withstand this kind of guilt-by-association. Obama was on the board of an outfit that gave a grant to an outfit that was linked to another outfit that organized an event where some dude spoke, and thus Obama is responsible for the dude? Really? I spoke at the Heritage Foundation once. Does that make Heritage’s board members responsible for stuff on my blog? It doesn’t make any sense.
It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to scare people. Radical! Liberal! America-hater! Scary black man! Booga booga booga!
It all boils down to what we have been saying over and over again- the conservative movement is dead. They have no ideas. They have no vision. They have soundbites about tax cuts and American exceptionalism, and little else. Hell, in unguarded moments when they put down the pom-poms they will admit they hate McCain’s ideas when he talks about anything other than permanent war.
Go read the Corner. The only thing you will find are lame guilt-by-association attacks, tawdry smears, glowing reviews of An American Carol and whinges about media bias.The premiere conservative magazine, the National Review, has not had an honest to goodness new idea in it for as long as I can remember, and instead, has a dozen brain-dead hacks like McCarthy and Kurtx and K-Lo and Goldberg who do nothing but spend time telling you why the opposition is evil and must be defeated.
This is a movement on life support. It is time to pull the plug.