If you follow American politics at all, you’ll undoubtedly have heard of Christine O’Donnell’s win in the Republican primary for the Delaware Senate seat.
You may have even seen this video from the mid 1990s discussing O’Donnell’s youthful obsession with, um, “purity”:
I can’t help but be reminded of some classic Gillies report (the relevant gag is right at the start):
Seriously, though, when Karl Rove calls out a right-wing candidate for saying “nutty things”, points out serious concern about their probity and background (expanded upon in This New York Times editorial), and completely writes off their electability in a state that the favoured Republican establishment candidate, moderate congressman Mike Castle, was heavily favoured to win, you have to wonder what’s going on. It seems like endorsements from the Tea Partiers, and especially Sarah Palin, really do have a lot of power in the GOP at the moment. In this case they appear to have kicked a massive own goal, unfortunately. It’s almost certainly cost them a crucial Senate seat, in a climate where they are outright favourites to take control of the House of Reps and are in with a shot of gaining a Senate majority.
While 2012 is a long way away, the start of early campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination isn’t. And, given the results in Delaware and elsewhere, it’s given rise to some speculation as to whether Palin really does have a serious shot at it. Kevin Drum points to some serious debate amongst right-wingers about this.
Like Drum, I remain unconvinced that it’ll actually happen, and if she does run and win the nomination there’s every chance that it would be a disaster for the Republicans. But what’s truly remarkable is that the possibility has to be seriously considered. It’s only three years since the GOP lost in a landslide, in the wreckage left by a charismatic (apparently) but utterly incompetent galoot of a President, and there’s a serious chance that they’ll choose an even more unqualified and obviously incompetent individual as their presidential candidate?
Can’t wait until I get home and may see the vids.
I’m a little worried that some who write of the possible future political successes of the GOP due to the endorsement of Tea Parties may be wrong. What if we ended up with these nutters!
“moderate congressman Mike Coons”
You mean Mike Castle. Coons is the Dem nominee. You can get some interesting background on the internal GOP/Tea Party debate (hint: not “right-wing”, a meaningless term at present) by reading Ace and Patterico, for starters.
“a charismatic (apparently) but utterly incompetent galoot of a president…”
Which one are you referring to? We have/had two in a row now…
btw, do you think the Governor General’s back-benchers will force Gillard to call a no-confidence vote against the Coalition?
See, that’s what you sound like to me. D’ye think it’s possible you understand less about American politics than you think you do?
Continuing the North American obsession with preventing masturbation initiated by John Harvey Kellog when what we really need them to do is campaign against Republicans reproducing.
j_p_z: Thanks for the correction.
And I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on American politics, but you don’t need to be one to figure out that Sarah Palin lacks the basic level of competence required for high office.
Furthermore, she’s also extremely unpopular outside her minority circle of fans. See here, for instance.
It’s now clearly time for Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans to pull together in defence of American democracy.
But isn’t the right to wank in the American constitution?
“a charismatic (apparently) but utterly incompetent galoot of a president…”
Nup. Only one of them has ever been charismatic.
I recall how one of them proclaimed that he intended to spend his “political capital” after being re-elected. Something about “reform” of Social Security.
Remind me, what did he spend it on, again?
I didn’t get Christine’s message, but was ,thankfully, spared the blindness. I wondered if she had matured since the earlier youthful political foray.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/roughsketch/2010/09/christine_odonnell_on_human_mi.html
Aparently not.
Teabaggers strain every muscle to be mistresses (and masters) of their own domain — America.
Katz: heh heh. But ya know, you’ll never get a sincere defense of Bush from me. It’s astonishing how much damage the man has done, both at home and abroad. Doesn’t mean Obama can’t try to match him, however; the one good thing I’ll say about Obama is that I don’t stay up sleepless at night worried that he’ll start any more preposterous foreign wars. Nope, it seems the one he’s waging at home will suffice him.
RM: well like William Goldman said, No one knows anything.
Palin I don’t think should be president (I also don’t think she will be president). But it’s also the case that she’s a lot more interesting than you and your types give her credit for. I don’t blame you that you can’t smell it, youse don’t have the nose for that sort of thing. But I do.
Here’s my prediction: if the GOP makes serious gains in both houses in the midterms, then Obama will be comfortably re-elected in ’12. The GOP doesn’t at present have a leader who covers all necessary bases, and the voters will be content with a divided government that keeps Obama at bay.
If the GOP blows its momentum, or wins only a marginal gain, then it’s much tuffer to call.
But either way, Chris Christie will be president in 2016. If he can lose a bit of weight.
BilB’s link is hilarious.
Question: if a Nazi turns up at your house hunting Jews, is that Nazi breaking Godwin’s law? And if s/he is breaking Godwin’s law, would God want you tell tell the Nazi that s/he is breaking Godwin’s Law?
Would Godwin want you to tell the Nazi that s/he is breaking God’s law?
jpz: what war at home?
Obama has been a thoroughly predictable, rather timid down-the-line Democrat.
As for Palin, she’s interesting as a social phenomenon. So was Pauline Hanson.
what kind of an election could we have had here with masturbation restraint as an active issue??
must get that on the agenda for next time – surely it’s grist for Tony’s mill?
RM: OK. If you say so.
Katz: IIRC, in fairness to O’Donnell, it was Bill Maher who broke Godwin’s law, not the other way around.
Doesn’t make O’Donnell a rocket scientist. But then again if people think Bill Maher is insightful, I may have to explain to them what a rocket even IS.
Of course, they both belong in the entertainment sector, and far away from the actual news.
Vote for Alvin Greene!
Unfortunately??
Maybe he could add “withdrawal” to that grist as well? I’m sure he would have much to say on that topic.
Tim: unfortunately for them, of course.
However, there’s always the possibility that O’Donnell (or for that matter Palin) might win.
So I have to tell my baby boy that when he goes over there next year, not only can’t he have a beer, but he can’t find other uses for his hand either?? lol.
He will have to settle for being a chick magnet.
Seriously though, where do they find these people?
“where do they find these people?”
Well like Woody Allen used to say, 90 per cent of success is, just showing up.
btw, where do “they” find these people?
Vote for Alvin Greene!
True enough. *shudder*
Why is it the extreme right is so utterly obsessed with sex and whether, in what position, and how many people have it?
Why do they think poking their florid cupboard-drinking noses into people’s bedrooms or, for that matter, their kitchens, bathrooms, tables and chairs is so much more important than addressing poverty, human rights abuses, preventable childhood diseases, gender inequality and suicide to name a very few pressing issues?
Hmmm. Couldn’t be because they’re lazy, uncaring, potential peeping toms?
Because the religious right have taken it upon themselves to ensure that as many folk as possible end up in heaven.
It’s the ultimate cross-generational transfer.
Or, by making the barriers to entry impossibly high, keeping that noice country club atmosphere.
Those who care for the future of the USA and the world can only hope that these wingnuts will serve the purpose of ensuring that the GOTV efforts of the Democrats keep yielding a positive return.
j_p_z, Woody Allen also said “Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love. (Annie Hall)
What a horror it must be for these Righties to discover that Heaven has compulsory unionism, and God is the union boss.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/the_top_ten_christine_odonnell_quotes.php?ref=fpa
Obviously an expert on everything.
A hoot!
Of course! In precisely the same way as a dadaist celebrates her dada.
And to think I only started having serious problems witrh my sight after I went on medication that completely removes my libido. I hardly ever even think about sex, except when I comment on posts like this.
Including a feminist, O’Donnell must also be an ornithologist and apiarist.
Pausing only to ponder what you mean by ‘your types’, JPZ, I don’t think anyone here would deny that Sarah Palin is interesting.
Yes! And an analyst … Oh.
Never mind.
Interesting similarities between Oz and US Politics:
Both the election of KRudd and Obiwan were hailed as the destruction of the conservative right. Both administrations have subsequently tanked and were/are threatened by a resurgent conservative vote.
The rise of the Tea Party in the US is comparable on many levels to the One Nation experience in Oz. The media treatment of them is also very similar – disdain and dismissal followed by realisation that they are a potent political force despite their eccentricities and lack of structure or effective political structure and policies.
The most obvious reason for the rise of One Nation/Tea party type movements is a perceived seperation of the major Political Parties from disenfranchised middle classes. The major political parties have both failed to stick to their core principles on which they were formed because they are trying to woo marginal swinging voters. They have also failed to listen to the concerns of the Tea Party/One Nation types or have dismissed them – the Gordon Brown comment of calling a UK Labor voter concerned about immigration a bigot is typical of what has happened.
Howard, followed by the ALP, was forced to adjust policy in order to win back the dienfranchised. It will be interesting to see if the Republicans and Democrats are abl to follow the lead set in Australia given the inherently looser party political discipline that exists in the US.
. . and just because a small minority of them are nutbags it doesn’t mean they can’t do plenty of political damage.
Katz said:
She may say she’s against masturbation, but her words betray her. She is an onanist with her own mind.
Naturally we all lie awake at night worried that Islamic extremists might one day get hold of a nukular device. But perhaps we ought to be more worried at the rise and rise of people like Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell in the USA.
I used to laugh at them because they were funny. Now I think I laugh as a kind of defence mechanism, to bolster my tottering belief that they couldn’t possibly ever get into the executive government.
Then I remember that the yanks elected Cheney/Bush not once but twice, and the second time they certainly knew what they were doing … and it’s hard to sustain the merriment.
Still, ANZUS eh? Western values and human rights. Although now I think about it I haven’t heard much about the latter from our great and powerful friend lately …
Ken – that is a ridiculous comparison. Palin and th Tea Party may have some poltically and socially extreme views but they ain’t in the same nuttiness league as AQ adn the Taliban or Imadinnerjacket.
I seem to remember, back during the Cold War, when human rights and civil liberties were broadly regarded as irrefutable evidence of the superiority of liberal democracy over communism. Ironically, they seem to be regularly dismissed as lefty nonsense these days.
Don’t know that the Nuttiness Quotient (NQ) is something that the world needs to have tested anytime soon, Razor.
It was Palin’s potential elevation to the dicky hearbeat away from the Presidency that re-energised me politically 2 years ago – at least as far as the USA was concerned.
Any of the three with a fingernail anywhere near the red button would be a nightmare we might not wake up from.
Don’t see a hell of a lot of difference frankly. Palin:
Yes, we should pray alright.
@38 – and you think Joe Biden is a paragon of balanced pronouncements?
Indeed Paul Norton @ 6 but if they do so, they may have forgotten that every sperm is sacred:
(We could of course be optimistic/generous and assume it’s a part of the Tea Party’s carbon policy on “man made” emissions?)
Mr Denmore – c’mon. Drawing a very long bow there. Every country that goes to war beleives that God is on their side and invokes God’s support. Doesn’t necessarily mean they are as insane as AQ, the Taliban or Imadinnerjacket.
Razor @ 40.
A tendency towards verbal gaffes does not an extremist make.
Joe Biden is an experienced legislator and was a Senator for the best part of 40 years. To compare him to Sarah “Half-Term” you-betcha Palin is laughable.
The whole ‘pray for our troops’ thing would be extreme for an Australian politician, but I wouldn’t have thought it that out of the ordinary for an American one. The USA is more religious than we are.
@43 – Biden may have gained some gravitas due to his length of service but that doesn’t make Sarah Palin an itchy finger on the atomic bomb button.
Threat is the combination of intent and capability – no one here is able to produce any evidence of intent by Palin to nuke anyone if she ever had the capability. Any suggestion that she would use such power in an irresponsible way seriously calls into question the total security apparatus, processes and personell of the US Executive and military. In doing so it reduces many of the commenters here to ill informed fear mongers, which I amn sure if they reflected deeply upon their comments they would be very embarrassed by them.
O/T
In Firefox, the vid at the top borks the front page layout.
[thanks for the heads-up - tt]
Razor said:
Well you know, The Taliban was, not so very long ago, a friend of the US and the creation of a US client state — Pakistan. When they came to power, they kept themselves to themselves, concentrating on oppressing people in a small area, unlike the US which oppresses people in a large area, and was at the time, bombing Iraq in concert with the UK and allowing its NATO ally, Turkey to bomb Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq.
Mr Ahmadinejad is indeed a most brutal and violent character, but again, all of his nastiness is concentrated within Iran, and one may say that if the US had not taken out Iran’s enemies on two frontiers between 2001-2004 he’d have been less of a problem.
And there’s simply no evidence that a unitary organisation called Al Qaeda actually exists, except in the wag the dog fantasies of US imperialism and their fellow travellers. Al Qaeda is the Tommy Hilfiger of international jihad.
As far as can be told though, those said to be part of this “organisation” have killed a tiny fraction of the number of non-combatants killed by the US and NATO in their various adventures.
So really, for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Tea Party stands a much better chance of plunging th world into chaos than does Al Qaeda, or the Taliban Or Ahmadenijad. Indeed, even if we confine our view to the US, they are a much better chance of inflicting mass misery on the population there than any of the aforementioned groups or individuals. One has to think that any bona fide hater of Americans could but salivate at the prospect of a Washington Tea Party in 2012.
http://www.theawl.com/2010/03/sarah-palins-planet-earth-and-the-end-times
Maybe she expects God to do the job for her. But FWIW, I don’t know how anyone can listen to the woman and not be scared shitless.
The anti-Tea Party rhetoric on this thread and site is in the same league as the 9/11 Truthers – ridiculus.
with an o
So not the Harry Potter version, then.
Mr Denmore @ 39
Razor @ 42
I agree with Mr Denmore, there’s little difference when it comes to fundamentalists of any persuasion. I wouldn’t trust Palin with a finger near the red button any more than Iran’s supreme leader. Both seem to have an “uncanny” ability to interpret “god’s will”.
Steven Weinberg:
If fundamentalists get it wrong on
masturbationsmall bang theory and practice, the chances of getting it wrong on big bang theory and practice must be astronomical!@48 bmitw – a similar sort of argument could be cobbled together for Obiwan and his disowned Pastor and Church. How is it Obiwan could sit through years of Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s racist rants and never notice or be effected by them yet Palin is obviously totally in league with the fundamentalist end of times rapture nutters? Doesn’t cut both ways?
Peter @ 52 – I’ve got a happy clapper fundy for a sister and Brother-in-law – creationists and all that – but they don’t believe in committing atrocities in the name of their God in the same way as AQ, the Taliban and like minded Fundy Islamists. Neither do most fundies – for example the most horrible recent thing was a threat by a Pastor to burn the Koran, which he gave upo on a few nutbags decided to leverage off – mostly to their own disadvantage. If that is the worst that fundy christians can come up with at the moment then I can live with it.
As an Atheist I completely agreed with the piece this week by Pembury on The Punch website about fundy atheists making gooses of themselves.
Razor your blindness to empirical evidence is astounding. The USA has used its military power to kill an enormous number of people in foreign countries over the last 50 years. Its blind reliance on overwhelming force has reached the stage where it issues death warrants on its own citizens without even the pretence of due process. It is perfectly consistent with their demonstrated morality and objectives for many members of the US establishment to use nuclear weapons in certain circumstances.
But carry on with your puerile crap about Imadinnerjacket and Obiwan. It demonstrated what a serious and mature analyst you are.
Ken – if we are talking empirical data – are you calling all civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan the responsibility of Coalition troops or do you allocate casualties to the side that pulls the trigger?
Jeesuz, Ken. A few pet names on this sort of forum hardly is a new thing. I even call Mr Rabbit the Monk because I think it suits him, not because I believe he is going to take us back to the Inquisition.
Mr. Denmore — If I recall correctly (and I know Palon said this but I’m not sure if the instance is identical with your quote), Palin was pressed to explain this remark and she pointed out that she was echoing Lincoln, who said words to the effect (re US civil war) that ‘we should not proclaim that God is on our side, but rather we should pray that it is we who are on God’s side.’
The distinction is both important and profound to anyone who believes in God. To others, maybe not so much. And in fact the distinction is evident in a reading of Palin’s words which does not involve an a priori sneering and groaning.
If you want to make her out to be a trog, you’ll have to do a bit better. Petard, hoist, etc.
Score so far:
Roadrunner 1
Coyote 0
Correction, astronomical and orgasmic.
Razor @ 54
Maybe you’ve forgotten this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Just some low echelon flunkies that perpetrated those atrocities in the name of
not god“god bless” the USA?Re the jibe against militant atheists, there would be none but for the vastly more numerous militant theists.
j_p_z re
Palin:
Worse than Trog j_p_z, she’s a demagogue, ratbag christian, liar, dissembler, ignorant beyond belief and what’s even worse she doesn’t believe in separation of church and state.
FFS Christine O’Donnell. How come there are so many stupid god bothering lunatics clagging up politics in the US.
If it is not intellectual morons like Palin it is the self righteous ‘you have to do what I say’. Yet the US is one of the most hypocritical nations around. Corruption in business, politics, regulators and defence establishment every bit as systemic as the worst examples in SEA.
The US is about to go down the economic plug hole and no doubt politics will then become littered with loonies like Palin and O’Donnell. However it will probably be an improvement on the current paid for corrupt US Senate and HOR who exist solely for the transfer of wealth to corporate America.
The real Thomas Paine would be spinning in his grave if he could see the US today.
Under President Reagan, the neoconservative movement, including the likes of Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Robert Kagan, had its beginning.
Neoconservatism emerged from an elitist tradition advocated by philosopher Leo Strauss, who argued that it was their proper role to manipulate the less-educated masses and guide them in directions favoured by big business.
Christian conservatives were especially malleable to this intellectual manipulation. The Tea Party is the modern manifestation of this manipulated mass. There is little wonder that the Tea party is populated by Christian conservatives like O’Donnell, because Christian conservatives comprise the least educated amongst the American population.
How anybody could see Palin as anything but an ignorant, self promoting idiot has obviously never listened to what she says. She barely speaks without stupidity gushing.
MacCain let this ugly Jeannie out of the bottle. She isn’t even aware that she is an imbecile, and that is being kind.
The Tea Parties have a lot in common with One Nation in the sense that they are attracting the older people who are losing out from the GFC and other changes that are taking place in the US. They are quite rightly pissed off but their analysis of the causes is not always completely rational.
In addition there are some smart, rich supporters who see the Tea Parties as a way of advancing causes that are not in the interests of most of the members. (Ask who the One Nation support for flat taxes was benefiting.)
In Australia, preference voting would encourage the Tea Parties to run as a new party. In the US the absence of preference voting and the primary voting system means that the Tea Party can only try and meet its objectives by voting in the primaries for candidates it likes. It is sobering to remember that One Nation go about 25% of primary vote in one Qld election – Enough for them to have taken over one major party if we had a primary system with optional voting.
The Republican approach to Obama is to block as much as possible and then attack Obama and the Democrats for doing nothing. Sounds a bit familiar.
Any one who is interested in a fact based analysis of the chances of Republicans winning might like to look at this article in FiveThirtyEight.
Might want to read Markos Moulitsas’ “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right”
http://www.amazon.com/American-Taliban-Power-Jihadists-Radical/dp/1936227029
j_p_z’s
Occam’srazor re Sarah Palin: my assumptions approaching infinity are inversely proportional to the Palin good hypothesis.Razor’s
Occam’srazor re Iraq: my analysis of “bad” trigger fingers to “good” trigger fingers makes multiple assumptions that the casualties need not worry about it.Peter Kemp — Obama launched his formal political career at a meeting in the home of William Ayers. He attended the church of Jeremiah Wright.
Ever read “Prairie Fire”? Ever read James Cone?
It seems to me that, distasteful as you may find it, your Palin quote at #60 is technically literally true.
If you think it’s a falsehood, please explain how/why.
And remember, pointing and sputtering in apoplexy isn’t an argument.
Also, “ratbag christian”. Heh. Now that’s what I call a first class temperament.
Don’t forget Ron Paul/Peter Schiff combination will probably also run.Palin is trying to hi-jack the tea party movement.
A few moths ago Ron Paul polled almost on equal footing with Obama of 42%.So the race will be wide open.
j_p_z re:
Rubbish. Seems like you’ve recycled the McCain 2008 campaign propaganda, attack ads and robocalls hook line and sinker.
Praire Fire was written in 1974. Cone wrote about “Black Liberation Theology”. Neither author constitutes any threat to the US these days. Obama met Bill Ayers when he was eight years old when Ayers’ “detestable acts” were some 40 years prior.
Saying that Palin’s campaign quote is “technically literally true” simply demonstrates your support for Palin and her smear tactics.
She makes Jerry Ford look like a genius.
One more step j_p_z, tell us Obama is a Muslim, go on, you can do it
” … The USA has used its military power to kill an enormous number of people in foreign countries over the last 50 years. Its blind reliance on overwhelming force has reached the stage where it issues death warrants on its own citizens without even the pretence of due process. … ”
Any chance you might elaborate on that last sentence? Surely it must be the product of someone’s delusion, and is extremely difficult to accept on face value.
Government of the stupid, for the stupid, by the stupid.
Here’s a link Phillip. It’s a product of stupidity and paranoia that astounds. Naturally suspicion alone would suffice, but think of the savings in court costs!
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief-us-american-terrorist/story?id=9740491&page=1
Ayers targeted “his own country” in the same way that John Brown “targeted his own country”.
At the time of the Weathermen, the US was fighting an illegal war abroad and the Nixon administration was illegally interfering with the rights of American citizens at home by means of, among several other programs COINTELPRO and MK-ULTRA.
To quote Jefferson:
In other words, both Brown and Ayers weren’t targeting their country, they were attempting to save their country. Their means were mad but their aims were patriotic.
Poor John Adams. He’s never going to live down the Aliens Act.
And jusat on that – you can see why the Tea Partyers want to erase Thomas Jefferson from American history books and substitute Joe McCarthy, FFS!
Peter Kemp #69: “Rubbish. Seems like you’ve recycled the McCain 2008 campaign propaganda, attack ads and robocalls hook line and sinker.”
Au contraire, mon frere.
The evidence for an Ayers-Obama relationship is at least strong enough to repel any claims that Palin’s statements make her a “liar” or “dissembler” on this count, as you have suggested. Unless you wish to resort to the Clintonian “is/is” defense. P. Kemp #1: Fail.
As a supplement, considering how you’re so opposed to “propaganda,” consider this MSM attack on Palin’s position: “Before her campaign plane took off for a Sunday fundraiser here, CBS News asked Sarah Palin to respond to an analysis by the Associated Press that concluded her attempts to establish a friendship between Barack Obama and Weather Underground member William Ayers were “unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.”
So we have an ostensibly “neutral” news org asking loaded “racially tinged” questions in an arena (CAC politics in Chicago etc) where “race” is not the substantive issue. Wow, who would ever have expected that?
You wanna talk propaganda with me, mate? Be careful what you wish for.
Peter Kemp: “Prairie Fire was written in 1974.”
Yes, and the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848. And the New Testament was extant circa 100 A.D., yet you have no problem calling Palin a “ratbag christian.” What’s your point? Ideas don’t have a statute of limitations. Ayers was photographed stomping on an American flag in 2001. It beggars belief to suppose that Obama was ignorant of what Ayers thought, and of what he had done. Not only Fail, but a Childish Fail.
Peter Kemp: “Cone wrote about “Black Liberation Theology”. Neither author constitutes any threat to the US these days.”
Good grief, do I have to connect every dot in the world for you? Here is what you quoted Palin as saying, ostensibly as evidence that she is a “liar”:
PALIN: “This is not a man [we presume she means Obama] who sees America like you and I see America.”
I submit that it is reasonable to say that the theological and Black Christology views of Cone and Wright, to which Obama gave his tacit consent for years and years, are not “the same way” that Palin and her audience see America. Whatever else you want to say about Cone (and ya know, I read him at length, back in the day), this is not evidence that Palin is being untruthful in her assertions. She’s stating a defensible point of view. Done and done.
Peter Kemp: “Obama met Bill Ayers when he was eight years old when Ayers’ “detestable acts” were some 40 years prior.”
Yeah, I wonder what Simon Weisenthal would have to say about that whole “40 years ago” thing. And besides, Barry met Ayers repeatedly, and worked with him, as an adult, long after Obama was eight years old. I don’t know what you’re saying here. Silly Fail.
Peter Kemp: “One more step j_p_z, tell us Obama is a Muslim, go on, you can do it”
Well, when all else fails, pound the table and change the subject. Isn’t that what they teach you?
You’re a good boy.
Katz: “blabbity blibbidy bloo about Ayers and John Brown”
Well ya know, politics is kinda sorta about disagreement, now, innit? So, what you think about the value of Ayers’ actions is, well, different, than what Palin and her constituents might think about the same. And she was talking to her constituents, not to you.
So your argument here really butters no parsnips. General W.T. Sherman: good or bad?
Sorta depends what state you’re passing through at the moment, bud.
After all my blather I should make it clear that I’m just defending Palin on particulars, I’m not a fanboy.
My feeling about her is similar to what I think of Obama: both represent a certain core constituency that deserves a voice, even if that voice annoys you; both have a useful place in American politics; but in my view, that place is not the White House.
Well, too late for Bammy I guess. But like I said above, I very much doubt Palin will be president, and I also don’t think it’s her optimal role.
2012: Obama redux.
2016: Christie/Rubio, in a titanic landslide.
Razor @ 54,
What aside from the Christian terrorism in the US involving the killing of doctors and blowing up clinics because they provide abortions?
-In the U.S., violence directed toward abortion providers has killed at least eight people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort.
-According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.
-According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid (“stink bombs”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence_in_the_United_States#United_States
Razor @32:
One big difference is that the Tea Party are extreme economic-deregulationists whereas the Old Hansonites (xenophobia aside) are not all that different from the Hanson-Youngites in their (very non-deregulationist) economic views.
Ken @55:
How often a year do you think Dick Cheney breaks open a Bible, reads it, prays, and then decides “That’s it then. God wants the US to invade Iraq”?
Richard Nixon? Bush I? Even Reagan?
Jacques de Molay @79:
“Eight” killed? The word “million” or at least “thousand” got deleted there, right? Because you’re seriously arguing here that Teh Christianist Right Wing in America are comparable to the Islamic fundamentalists and it would be obviously ridiculous to claim that eight (8) individuals killed over 30+ years in a nation of 200-300 million people is in the same ballpark as the Taliban/ al-Qaeda score… right? Because otherwise that’d be like likening, say, a bikie gang to the Soviet Communist Party in terms of body count, and that would be pretty obviously laughable… right?
Yairs…
Politics is about disagreement. But politics isn’t only about disagreement by any means. Politics is also about credibility. And Palin’s “thinking” in the cited passage displays the same utter lack of credibility, logic, coherence and intellectual honesty as O’Connell’s risible semantic onanism (thank you FB!) on the subject of femiinism.
And you are correct to point out that I certainly am not one of Palin’s constituents. Yet Palin has released her “thoughts” into the world where, whether she knows it or not, or whether she cares or not, these “thoughts” impact upon my world right here on the opposite face of the globe.
Occasionally, perhaps, some Americans may stray on to this site, where they might find articulated what annoys them about Palin without quite being able to put words to their sense of worry and unease.
If those Americans find some clarification, then perhaps my small efforts will not have been entirely wasted.
Alternatively, millions of Americans may already have achieved clarity about Palin and the low quality of her contributions to public debate. These folks may be pleased to read that they are not alone in their disapprobation of the appalling woman.
Re-reading my last comment @80 and wish to modify the bit in reply to Jacques de Molay. I am not making light of people being murdered. More a matter of whether the response is proportionate (see Kirby dissenting in the Jack Thomas control order case as to whether the Commonwealth “defence” power means it can go after bikie gangs and petty criminals). Note too that abortion-doctor killers like Eric Rudolph and Paul Hill have been pursued, prosecuted and punished (in Hill’s case, executed) by public officials who were conservative Christians too and, IIRC, anti-abortion themselves… just as, to be fair, Indonesian Muslim prosecutors put Amrozi on death row.
(No, not saying “capital punishment is the only appropriate penalty”, just that “if a society executes bank robbers but spares religio-political terrorists then others will smell a rat as far as bias is concerned.”)
jpz, hhm, re-reading your comments, am still unsure, so just in case… ‘ratbag’ has a long & particular usage down ‘ere:
unthinking troublemaker, loose cannon, crazy/fool, dickhead.
ie. “my mate’s a total ratbag”.
And also often used to describe those (or ideas) on the fringe of groups & movements with extreme/provocative or unsophisticated view/positions.
After watching Palin in the VP debate.. I’d be more likely to apply rat-cunning. The woman is not to be under-estimated, imo.
Phillip @ 70 I hope you followed the link @ 72. However I was thinking of an actual decision to kill an American citizen who has never even been charged with anything.
Too many people, regrettably, ignore information like this on the grounds that it must be ‘the product of someone’s delusion’. I mean we are the good guys right? We don’t do stuff like that.
BTW following my comment @ 84, the truly scary thing to me is that not many people in the US seem particularly concerned about their government assassinating fellow Americans. I mean if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about, amirite?
I agree, Jo.
Palin is a very slick megaphone who amplifies the otherwise inaudible thoughts of millions of Americans who are trapped between the jaws of the rhetoric of the American dream and the unpalatable reality that their dreams are impossible.
Palin successfully encourages these folks to think that if they dream hard enough then reality will melt away.
I’ll be interested to see what these folks will do next when they discover that Palin has been exploiting their dreamlike state.
If we try to make Obama responsible for every ratbag he came in contact with in his lifetime, it follows we must make every politician responsible for every ratbag they came across in their lifetime. I don’t think there’ll be many left.
Ken NYT is behind paywall but here is Glenn Greenwald of Salon making the point
And in a new article Greenwald says “..now Barack Obama is being sued by an American citizen who is forced to plead with a court to protect him from due-process-free, state-sanctioned murder.”
Maybe Barack had always something entirely differnt in mind when he said, yes we can!
I don’t see the problem with Jeremiah Wright. You need to put his judgement pronouncements upon America in context of the African American style of preaching which descends from the Slavery days. You remember them, don’t you?
Ken Lovell,
I followed and read those links, however without wishing to be argumentative or obtuse, I would suggest to you that the average U.S. citizen has more reason to fear being struck by lightning than being targeted by his or her own government for assasination, unless he or she weighs the odds heavily against himself or herself by becoming involved in “terrorist” activity. That may well be part of the reason why, “not many people in the US seem particularly concerned about their government assassinating fellow Americans.”
I think the United States of America offers plenty about itself to warrant criticism, but to most people, bumping off “terrorists” isn’t high on their list of things to worry about. If there is a slippery slope here, it’s probably somewhere over near the grassy knoll.
Here is a good article on Wright:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1735662,00.html
Not to do a Godwin; but America is looking a lot like the last days of the Weimar Republic.
Absolutely Phillip. All that innocent until proven guilty stuff is so 20th century. Just let the government decide who are the terrorists, they can kill them, and then the world will be a better place.
Let me guess – you don’t see anything wrong with people being held in Gitmo indefinitely without charge either, correct? I mean them’s the risks you run if you want to pal around with terrorists. Us average citizens have got nothing to worry about and who gives a continental about anyone else anyway?
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says that
It all sounds depressingly familiar. Perhaps it is time to start talking about Tony Abbott’s Tea Party? (TATP?) Never underestimate the power of the great big lie about everything.
“All that innocent until proven guilty stuff is so 20th century”
Don’t be such a hypocritical jerk, Ken. You were only too happy for an employer to force an employee to take leave and submit to counselling that no doubt will involve the threat of dismissal, for engaging in legitimate political activity in his own free time on another thread, without natural justice being applied.
@90
Thanks for the heads up Phillip. So, what’s your position regarding Obama’s safety and wellbeing then? Obama’s been “pallin’ around” with terrrrsts, you know. I guess, by your logic, he has “weighed the odds heavily against himself” now, hasn’t he?
This is the danger of the wingnut right: Palin has gone out of her way to associate Obama in the wingnut “mind” with terrrrsts — who we all know are fair game and who can be killed without due process, with impunity…up to and including the President.
The terrorist Right in America, who also bomb public health facilities and public offices, have been trying to stir up a lone gunman to take out the President with their inflammatory rhetoric.
Hey, why not? It’s worked before. A couple times, actually.
@95 WD40, you have got to be kidding. Ken’s position — the guy was going through an administrative procedure to which he had signed up when he signed his contract, that would most likely result in his re-instatement at a future time when the investigation was complete — was entirely consistent with principles of natural justice and you have grossly misrepresented what Ken was saying on that thread.
Ken can defend himself adequately I’m sure with a rebuttal if he so wishes, although when your opening gambit is to so grossly misrepresent his argument, I’m not sure he’d bother replying to such piffle.
But nice try for the derail. Don’t keep it up.
“D’ye think it’s possible you understand less about American politics than you think you do?”
Not at all, personally
j_p_z, in 20 years the two main US parties are Vice Magazine and the Tea Partiers. Which side of the same fucked-up and nasty free-market paradigm will you vote for?
Ken Lovell,
I don’t want to argue with you. I spent 22 years upholding the rule of law and the presumption of innocence etc, but the reality is that there are some things I care about more than others. However, you made it sound like all 300 million-odd Yanks are at risk of being assassinated by their own government, when the reality is that a person has to do some very specific things and engage in some very specific behaviour before he or she has anything to fear. Eloquent wording won’t change that. If you want to criticise the U.S., you really need to do better, and I will readily acknowledge there is plenty of scope for criticism.
As for John, who said, “… America is looking a lot like the last days of the Weimar Republic. .. ”
I want some of what you’re smoking.
Razor @ 76 re:
Evidence of a relationship (eg on the board of CAC) is not evidence of “pallin’ around with terrorists”.
1) Ayers was a bad guy decades ago
2) Therefore Ayers is and was always a terrorist
3) Obama was a fellow member of the board of directors of CAC with Ayers
4)Therefore Obama and other board members were pallin’ around with terrorists.
5) (Subtext for braindead rednecks: Obama is also a terrorist.)
Logic fail at (2) creating false conclusion at (4) and typical smear tactic of guilt by association/association fallacy. Dismal fail 1.
Ayers stomped on a US flag
Ayers is a bad man for doing that
Obama must have known about it.
Therefore Obama must also be a bad man.
Association fallacy again. Fail 2.
Shorter Razor: Palin creates a racially tinged subtext for the vote gathering of brain dead rednecks. The MSM is not allowed to question her on this simply because Razor sez there’s no possible subtext of “race” with an African American candidate.
Wow, who would have expected that from a Palin apologist???
Bare assertion fallacy with inherent form of vicarious hypocrisy. Fail 3.
I never said she lied on this point. It’s so palpably obvious that brain dead rednecks/fundamentalist x’tians see the world differently.
Red herring argument. Fail 4.
Reductio ad Hitlerum argument. Fail 5.
(Good luck with her as a Republican candidate for president.)
“pallin’ around with terrorists”
And, honestly, in addition to Peter Kemp, was there any evidence of more than one, j_p_z? What *wasn’t* Palin dissembling here?
Though maybe that US Gerard Henderson type in that US Quadrant you linked to can help, since he clearly thinks anyone who’s ever staged or been involved in a protest is a dangerous radical activist on the slippery verge of doing who knows what!1
No wait, that’s Palin. Kurtz is more a ‘left-wing Chicago protesters were quite literally responsible for causing the entire GFC’ kind of always nearly join the dots theorist.
What happened to him anyway? He threw about 50 tonnes of mud in the months leading up to the election…and then…oh, look, surprise…he wrote a book called Radical-in-Chief.
Peter Kemp @ 100 –
That was me replying to you, not Razor.
Anyway, good heavens. Your confused thicket of juvenile reasoning (well, it isn’t even reasoning, really, but I have to call it *something*) and hate-filled screeching about rednecks is just too much brush to clear, for one guy workin’ for free. I’m going to have to decline trying to straighten you out b/c it would just take too damn long.
Good luck wandering the dark and weird caverns of your own mind, though. I’m sure it’s very entertaining in there.
Nick — aren’t you the guy who @ #98 boasted of your deep understanding of American politics?
And then you wrote a comment like the one @101?
Okay.
Well, just let me know when your next seminar begins, sifu. Clearly I need to bone up on my Curious George…
Japerz, you old white man [don't get 'angry' too, or you'll be playing right into my leftist hands] can you tell me what you think about Sarah Palin’s intellectual abilities, ideological coherence or fit-to-hold-office-ness?
I’m hoping if I flush you out of your sniper hole, where you can safely take potshots about what (largely straw-) ‘leftists’ reckon about a right-wing figure, we might discover some convergence of opinion.
Perhaps convergence around the position that she is not all that bright (in the book-learnin’ sense), holds ideological positions that don’t make very much sense, has scant regard for the separation of church and state, and would be a very poor President.
Worth a try anyway.
Mercurius,
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak, or in your case write, and remove all doubt. You got the facts on the Stewart case completely wrong, for example he didn’t breach his employment agreement nor is reinstatement an issue as he was never “uninstated” ie dismissed.
So the point of Ken’s hypocrisy remains.
Anyway, I think we can at least agree that Palin is an ass, although I personally hope she does become US President as the results would be mightily entertaining.
“boasted of your deep understanding of American politics?”
I read it as claiming that his opinion of his level of knowledge was an accurate one.
Seems to me that the commenters here are at cross purposes. Americans such as jpz don’t seem to “get” the Australian POV being that of a people who are less conservative, less religious (or less ostentatiously so) and more cynical than them.
We look at the Sarah Palins et al and go WTF? But the comments on here from some quarters seem to indicate that what Aussies regard as batshit crazy is par for the course over there.
And let’s face it, an avowed atheist like Julia Gillard would never be considered suitable for high office in the USA.
FDB — don’t you know not to bug a feller when he’s on a roll?
As to your earlier comment, I gave my opinion of Palin twice, earlier upthread.
If she runs, which I hope she doesn’t, she won’t win. Obama will crush her in debate, her natural weaknesses will manifest on the campaign trail, the MSM, in a last suicidal burst of Nazgul fury will pawn the few remaining scraps of their credibility to smash her any way they can, and given that she’s such a lightning rod of hatred from you, er, lovers of humanity, she’ll draw all the lunatics out to the polls to vote against her, thus galvanizing the left just when we most want them to sit down and shut up.
It’d be a big mistake for her to do that, when she has such solid-gold nuisance value as a kingmaker and a gadfly. If you study the Siege of Malta, Palin is far more useful in the role of Fort St. Elmo or Mdina, than she would be as the main garrison.
Obama will probably be re-elected in 2012. I don’t think the GOP right now has a single candidate who possesses the full suite of skills needed to defeat him. This is because Christie and Rubio are still too green for 2012, and they shouldn’t make Palin’s mistake of entering too early. But in 2016, if he keeps his health in good order, Chris Christie will be president with Marco Rubio as his VP who will in all likelihod succeed him after two terms.
btw, “straw left”?! Have you been reading the blithering on this thread?
Heh Phillip @ 99 you’ve given a textbook display of right-wing tactics when faced with criticism of increasing government interference with personal liberty:
1. Say it’s not happening – the person making the claim is deluded.
2. When confronted with proof that it IS happening, dismiss its significance because it’s only being done to bad people.
3. When reminded of principles that are supposed to be followed before even bad people are punished, (a) sniff that you don’t want to argue about it (hey, you just want people to accept being called deluded), (b) profess that you care so much about the rule of law and the presumption of innocence it hurts (it’s just that some things are more important, such as … ummmm … assassinating fellow citizens with funny names), and (c) grossly misrepresent the person you are not arguing with to make them look like an absurd extremist (you said the US government was potentially going to kill every single citizen! What an insane thing to say!).
Like I said, a textbook example of dishonest wingnut rhetoric. I salute you.
WD40 I don’t know the facts of the Stewart matter and to the best of my knowledge neither do you. I suggested that having him take some leave while the matter was investigated was no big deal. I stand by that opinion and fail to see how it offends the principles of natural justice. Indeed it is completely consistent with them.
I suggest most people would regard being assassinated by their own government as a marginally more serious infringement of their rights than being compelled to endure counselling from HR.
Exactly, FDB. Quite the opposite, j_p_z.
Palin’s own words, and Kurtz’s confirmation bias-ridden exposés speak for themselves. Your clearly more in-depth knowledge of your own country’s politics and culture hasn’t convinced me otherwise this time around. That’s all.
j_p_z @ 102 (Apologies to Razor)
Argumentum ad hominem. Fail 6.
A brain dead redneck is simply a brain dead redneck, j_p_z so no screeching is required.
It’s a much shorter way of describing southern state people with the most appalling low levels of education, steeped in ignorance and often poverty, and sucked in by religious charlatans like the late unlamented Jerry Falwell and more lately by similarly ignorant politicians like Sarah Palin whose policies (if ever allowed and ironically) will sink them deeper in the mire.
But again good luck if she ever gets to be the president, survivalist literature and training could well be a good investment.
Pter Kemp
In moments of whimsy (or disgust, take your pick) I sometimes wonder whether it might not be a good thing if the dimwits supporting the Tea Party had their wishes granted, just so they could experience how it would actually play out in practice. It would be fun to do a sweepstakes on how soon buyers’ remorse would kick in.
Of course, I can’t see how it could be done without opening the door to generational harm to the world and to Americans as well, so it is indeed whimsy, but sometimes you wish the people proposing this could stare directly at the full horror of what they, in practice, are asking for. Perhaps if they could, the US would get a more progressive polity.
Mind you, I primarily blame the Dems, and Obama in particular, for being a bunch of naive lily-livered wimps after September of 2008. This nonsense is largely their political failure. Obama is a smart guy, but what this shows is that being smart is not close to being enough to get stuff done, whereas what Bush showed was that being stupid was not necessarily an impediment.
For progressives, you need not only to be smart, you have to be prepared to make the most of tactical and political advantages. If you aren’t making progress you are losing ground.
@67
I call weasel word on the “technical” in “technically accurate”. You obviously aren’t to sure of yourself are you?
“Argumentum ad hominem”
Well… no, actually. And if you can’t see why not, then you’ve pretty much satisfied my opinion of your reasoning. Oh well.
The rest of your comment is… well let’s just say “suspicion confirmed,” and leave it at that.
Now what do you say we head into the kitchen and get a slice of that pie Uncle Charlie baked, before the rest of the boys finish it off?
(cue closing theme music)
Sorry I meant “technically literally true” which looks like a double weasel with pike (out).
Japerz, what brand of sauce are you imbibing this evening (early morning)? You’re providing stellar entertainment by even your own exceptionally high standards. Good tiemz.
Fran @112 agree and particularly:
Exactly like Rudd. Got a mandate but let so much stuff slide and do the small target schtick with the Murdocracy.
Good one!
Fran: Timing is also important. It is often smart to let the idiots run for a while and then stomp – Particularly when the GOP has the power to block any legislation in the Senate.
We will wait and see how Obama plays the mid term election with interest.
Obama seems to be getting quite a bit of real climate action going even though he is making no progress on ETS.
” … you said the US government was potentially going to kill every single citizen! What an insane thing to say. … ”
Ken,
Please, if you wish to quote me, then at least use the words I used, or perhaps more importantly, please do not misrepresent their meaning. I hadn’t planned to add anything to this post, (as if I had in the first place), but I think I should respond to what you have written. You wrote, initially:
” [Referring to the USA], … Its blind reliance on overwhelming force has reached the stage where it issues death warrants on its own citizens without even the pretence of due process. .. ”
Now, you seem like a smart guy, so you know as well as I do that such a comment, written in those words, would suggest, on face value, to a person of normal understanding, that any old U.S. citizen is at risk. You failed to qualify that once the link is followed, the linked article indicates that only a certain, highly specific, segment of the citizenry, who engage in certain, once again, highly specific behaviour, are at risk. I think the term for what you did was obfuscation, but it doesn’t really matter, and I hope the inevitable correction of my vocabulary does not lead to a derailment.
What I said was:
” … However, you made it sound like all 300 million-odd Yanks are at risk of being assassinated by their own government … ”
On face value, what you wrote, earlier, suggests just that, and if you doubt me, please go back and read it for yourself.
As for dishonest, wingnut rhetoric, it’s a free country, so if you wish to call me a wingnut, then that is your prerogative. I have been called worse, but you demean yourself by stooping to insults. I do not think I was writing anything dishonest, and I am not even sure it amounted to rhetoric, either. However, with all due respect, I suggest to you that your rhetoric was dishonest in the first instance.
Also, I did not “say” you were deluded. I said that what you wrote sounded like the product of somebody’s delusion, because it seemed so far removed from my own understanding of the way the civilised world works that I imagined it was some sort of delusional urban myth that you were repeating.
We all interpret things through the prism of our own understanding. It turns out that what you wrote was not actually 100% false, but it is, however, highly subject to qualification, (which you failed to mention, I suspect because it would weaken the point you were trying to make). Please note that I only suspect that, so I am not actually accusing you of doing so. I assume a man with your appreciation of the English language and its subtleties will grasp that.
Thanks for the salute, BTW. Was that Nazi style, (with or without Sieg Heil?), or standard Australian Army?
One last thing, Ken. I’m with you on Ms Palin. I think she’s a lunatic, and there are probably few places outside of the USA where she could reach the level of success she has so far. So, at least we agree on some things.
Gosh Phillip for someone who doesn’t want to argue with me you sure write a lot of crap disagreeing with me.
Sadly you need to read my comments more carefully. I didn’t ‘call you a wingnut’, I said your earlier comment was ‘a textbook example of dishonest wingnut rhetoric’. Focus on the argument not the person, eh? That’s the way to keep things civil. Maybe you wrote your comment as an undergraduate assignment and it doesn’t reflect your true opinions at all. For all I know you’re a classical liberal with a soft spot for extra-judicial killings.
BTW I need to correct one of the many errors in your latest comment. You may think that Sarah Palin is a lunatic but if so, you are not agreeing with me. IMHO she is one smart grifter.
Phillip, if you feel Ken was well off the mark re the US of A President executive execution power, then I would argue your description of Palin as ‘lunatic’ is not accurate either. She might be dangerous, but not necessary foolish, unpredictable or mentally ill, as per DSM IV. However, to rephrase WDs point, she IS mightily entertaining, which is a prerequisite for the panem et circensis in todays Collosseum of flat screens.
“D’ye think it’s possible you understand less about American politics than you think you do?” Good question Jaypertz.
As they say The more you know ….
Point taken, Ootz, although I half-expected to be picked up in some way for the term “lunatic”.
Ken,
There I was, thinking we actually agree on something. Okay, I respect pedantry, it runs in my family, and my brothers and I joke with each other about it, so, “touche.” May I say that we both disapprove of Palin, then?
As for the other stuff, I offer no further comment, other than to acknowledge that you did not in fact call me a wingnut, (not that it would have really mattered to me if you did), but simply associated what I wrote with wingnut rhetoric. So, I guess everyone’s happy.
Now, let’s get back onto Sarah, before this thing derails into a train wreck.
The US administration as such as it is cannot continue to be nice and polite, it is time for some very harsh words and the abandonment of decorum.
‘The American economy is on its knees and the suffering has reached historic levels. Nearly 44 million people were living in poverty last year, which is more than 14 percent of the population. That is an increase of 4 million over the previous year, the highest percentage in 15 years, and the highest number in more than a half-century of record-keeping. Millions more are teetering on the edge, poised to fall into poverty.
If Republicans take over the policy levers, forget about it. The party of Palin, Limbaugh and Boehner — with its tax cuts for the rich and obsession with the deregulatory, free-market zealotry that brought us the Great Recession — will only accelerate the mass march into poverty. ‘
HOWEVER it really makes no difference at all who the President is. Obama was the right guy for the times. But if the best coach in the world, with the most talented players in the world, will never win a game if most of those players are corrupt and are taking money to throw every game. AND that is the situation in the US Senate, HOR and regulatory bodies. Basically these guys are all throwing the game to aid their real owners.
It is not as though most people don’t know this. It is obvious. The CTFC and SEC are jokes. Rather than regulate the aid and abet corruption of markets and metals.
I fear the only way the US is going to get out of this bind is for a major crash and depression followed by truth commissions and public executions.
Palin’s appearance on the scene is timely, as the culmination of how low the US has become.
A link for those quotes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/opinion/18herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Something else from TP’s Herbert link:
Fascinatingly, the many dedicated foot soldiers of the Tea Party movement are the same folk whose real incomes have fallen by 5% in the last decade — the crumbling, white, middle classes.
But the question is, why do they do it? My guess is that for many of them, it is status politics. Many of these folks sense they are slipping into the abyss of the mostly non-white underclass. Desperately, they seek the re-casting of a political economy that restores them to their condition of relative privilege.
Yet the Tea Party movement is large and inchoate. Doubtless, many of them do not sense any particular threat to their status. I read somewhere that most Tea Party supporters do not want to make major changes to Social Security. Why should they? As older taxpayers, they stand to be the greatest beneficiaries of the system as it is presently constituted.
There will come a time when the fissures within the movement will become patent. How that moment is negotiated will tell us much about American political culture in the first half of the 21st century.
http://journalexpress.net/local/x213895262/Palin-draws-record-crowd
Journalists who use anonymous sources, people who criticise America how fecking evil is that? Let those 1000 flowers bloom so she can cut them down!
Time tested truths, oh dear, she’d probably love a “Ministry of Truth” (run by Karl Rove and Glen Beck?)
TP # 125: “The US administration as such as it is cannot continue to be nice and polite, it is time for some very harsh words and the abandonment of decorum.”
Behold! the Fat Man cometh.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Coming to save the world in January 2017… by which time of course, it may be too late.
Thanks for the vid Japerz.
I was wondering whatever happened to Tony Soprano.
If he loses about 30 kgs by the look of him.
Having looked at Christie’s extended response to the teacher, I can see why Christie is attracting attention.
Christie is a conservative who is prepared to employ the rhetoric of limits. Since Reagan and his self-induced dreamlike state about the exceptionalism of the United States, the rhetoric of limitlessness has crowded out old-fashioned, small government republicanism.
Christie harks back to Coolidge, the last unsullied, successful old-fashioned Republican. The moment of transition came when Truman offered Republicans the poisoned chalice of the Marshall Plan — a torrent of government money that wedded the pecuniary interests of business to major government initiatives.
Eisenhower came to recognise the danger of Truman’s bargain, as he revealed in his Farewell Speech, but by then, it was too late for Eisenhower. And then the Republicans dallied with Nixon, and then Reagan.
Christie is a powerful corrective for the brain-frazzling rhetoric of Sarah Palin. At least he is talking about reality.
I found the video interesting enough to go look for some broadsheet journalism on Christie: he’s got an awfully big challenge ahead of him to deal with the reality of government deficit in New Jersey, and if he can’t crash through on that then I wonder how long his current GOP honeymoon will last on the refreshing rhetoric of fiscal transparency alone.
Making ethics such a prime focus is painting a great big meticulous probity target on his own back, too: he could easily find himself hoist on his own petard there. It will be most interesting to see whether he dodges the pitfalls.
tigtog: “Making ethics such a prime focus is painting a great big meticulous probity target on his own back, too: he could easily find himself hoist on his own petard there.”
Prior to being elected governor, Christie was a US Attorney (viz., a federal prosecutor) for 7 or 8 years, and he seems to have specialized in prosecuting government corruption, so I assume he knows enough about that landscape to maneuver within it. Plus, one of his outer-ring family relations is a notorious mobster, and he’s dealt with the public-relations issues about that successfully to date, so he seems to be able to keep his head. You should recall that he won as Governor in one of the most left-liberal Dem states in the country, running against an incumbent Dem gazillionaire who threw his personal fortune into the campaign. So he’s survived a Category 3 vetting to date.
Looking at his Wiki page I noticed some things that could turn into political liabilities, so we’ll see how he handles them. But there’s going to be a pretty objective test of his abilities in Trenton for the next few years: if he really does turn Jersey around successfully then he’ll be unstoppable. (It’s a complex, populous, urbanized important state with problems that are a microcosm model of the nation’s, so reforming it is an excellent proxy test for a president — unlike, arguably, Alaska or Connecticut.) If he doesn’t succeed at the task, then it’s an objective indicator that he shouldn’t be president. But my money is on the Big Man. There are other decent-enough GOP governors in the mix like Pawlenty, Jindal and Mitch Daniels, but they lack a spark, and you don’t really see the flash of native intelligence and humor, the way you do with Christie. I don’t see them as national leaders. Something spectacularly weird would have to happen, to imagine any of them defeating Obama.
It’d be good to have a president who’s passed such realistic tests. Bush was so tested prior to his run, and failed every single bloody time, yet mysteriously went on. Obama wasn’t tested at all. The sort of ordeals Palin has gone through have been moderately severe, but usually not of compelling relevance.
You returned recently to the eternal discussion (so popular in the last US election) about ratbags Obama came across in the past with the conclusion that Obama must be, if not actually responsible for their behaviour/philosophies, eternally tainted because of them. Yet a Republican can have a “notorious mobster” in his extended family and you are mysteriously able to recognise the fact that we are not necessarily in ideological lockstep with our loopier family members, colleagues, or acquaintances.
This is double standards, j_p_z.
Is is reported this morning that Christine O’Donnell experimented with witchcraft as a teenager but now identifies with Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings. The slogan of choice has changed from “Stop it or I’ll turn you into a frog” to “Stop it or I’ll chop it off with my great big sword.”
Having a notorious mobster in one’s family may well be the sine qua non of electoral success in New Jersey.
Of course, not having a notorious family member may not be fatal to success, but as far as I know, that experiment has never been attempted.
Witchcraft, eh?
How do the god-fearin’ folk who voted for CO’D know she isn’t still a witch, or at least possessed by incubi?
CO’D may well claim that she is clean, but she would say that, wouldn’t she?
When was the last you ever heard a candidate for high public office say, “Yes, I am still possessed by incubi (much more satisfactory than masturbation!) and I am still a witch”? Never!
It is a notorious fact that Satan tells witches to deny all.
Perhaps one of these should be purchased and utilised by the Republican Party, for their own good and to ensure that any future candidates don’t thrust open the gates of hell.
At least now we know why she’s such a desperate fundy. She was de-pprogrammed. Probably would’ve been better for the American polity if she stayed a witch. At lesast, as I understand it, they have a creed of doing no harm.
Mind you, at least one celebrity liberal Democrat is also into plausibly deniable Satanism:
Chris Christie? The yanks may finally have summoned the nerve to elect a kind of darkish candidate, they may even elect a woman one day soon, but I can’t see them ever electing an obese person to the presidency. The president is supposed to represent their aspirations, not reflect their reality.
I do wonder though, do we not focus too much on the personalities here. Isn’t there a chance, given the present precarious state of the US of A, that events may take over and leaders are then either made and broken by such realities. Take the current rate of economic decline and social fragmentation in the US, how far can can such trend continue until some circuit breaker will trip? Take the present political environment, insert any of the above mentioned characters, the only influence they will have is on the speed of decline and timing of some game changing event.
To look it in an other way, does New Jersey have the capacity and Christie the time to prove himself in order to be elected for the top job, as jpz was speculating?
Ken Lovell @ 41,
But … but if you scroll down on this link you’ll see America has had at least one fat President.
http://forum.darwincentral.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=36716
Yeah Paul but the past is a foreign country. Obesity wasn’t regarded as a moral failing back then. (Harding was pretty fat too I think).
Ken @ 144,
Harding was the President I immediately thought of. I had a look at his pictures but he didn’t seem to have a lot of weight on him. Which is why I chose Taft. The moral failing btw is not obesity, its McDonalds and other fast food outlets that cause the obesity. And though we all realise that nothing is done about it, from what I can work out. corporate America’s profits from fatty foods are killing its customers. If America crumbles it will be from inside and its decline will have nothing to do with terrorism, but wholly with the excesses of untrammelled capitalism.
Grover Cleveland was the other truly ‘weighty’ POTUS.
Incidentally, as well as being the most recent POTUS of significantly-above-average-BMI, Taft was the most recent President to have facial hair. (Who knows what would have happened if Gore had won?
)
I see the Republicans are now whining at how unfair it is to bring up something that O’Donnell said 11 whole years ago, when she was just a college student. These are the same people who have also been whining for years that Obama won’t make his undergraduate dissertation available for perusal, and who opposed Elena Kagen’s appointment to the Supreme Court by citing selective extracts from a college dissertation she wrote more than 30 years ago.
The absence of principle in US politics is breathtaking. No wonder Palin is so good at it.