’)The right is quickly slipping back into its conspiratorial nutjob posture 
that it had during the Clinton presidency, seeing black helicopters and one world UN government under their beds at every turn. As a friend of mine noted they were lunatics when the object of their ire was a white southerner. One can only wonder what someone they perceive as a black muslim intent on installing Sharia law will prompt them to do. And because these psychos form the activist base of the Republican party, congress will just encourage them.
Until they hurt somebody. Although that might not even stop them.
Clear Channel and Fox are shouting fire in the crowded theater of syphilitic minds
I expect we’ll see a spike in spree shootings over the next few years along the lines of the wing-nut shooting up a church in Tennessee. The Rovian machine truly thought they were building a life-time Republican majority, and their weak-willed followers simply can’t fathom that once elected, politicians need to govern semi-effectively to avoid being thrown out again on their asses.
Not to make light of spree shootings either — they ruin the lives of family and loved ones. But unlike the bed-wetting momma’s boys that vote Republican and think there’s a dirty teruhist under every bed, reality-based adults (the overwhelming majority of Americans) know that with leaders like Comrade Limbaugh and cry-baby Glenn Beck, the Republican party is going to go out with a whimper, not a bang. Not a serious one anyways.
A few thoughts:
1) Oliver has linked to an opinion piece, and he has repeatedly established that one cannot take an opinion piece as a news article — the standards are much lower. So it really isn’t that important
2) The gun-buying? Hey, it’s nice to see there’s SOME part of the economy that’s doing well thanks to Obama.
3) The move by the Left to define who the leadership of the Right is continues apace. It’s similar to the open primaries — those not part of the party are influencing what should be an exclusive role of the membership. It’s perfectly legal and fair, but should be recognized as such and fought.
That reminds me… I should meander over to Democratic Underground and see what the intellectual and ideological leadership of the Democrats are up to these days. And is Kos still considered a kingmaker among the Democrats? I should ask Senator Ned Lamont…
J.
The same Ned Lamont who forced long-term incumbent and Bush sympathizer Joe Lieberman to become an independent? The same Markos Moulitsas who took it upon himself to follow up on Dean’s 50 State strategy when the institutional Democratic leadership got cold feet? The same Markos who helped do the unthinkable and engineer presidential wins in Blood Red states like Virginia and mother-loving North Carolina? The same DailyKos.com site that any Republican like you would be shrieking hysterically about if you got even 1/10th of the traffic and more importantly, 1/10th of the political muscle re: fund-raising in close races?
But yeah, happy to take your bet. As O-dub has rightfully pointed out, the Democratic Party has a fringe of chiba-smoking environmental activists. The Republican Party has a base who were repeatedly stoked to acts of racial violence during the presidential campaign and to this day are being incited to outrageous, illegal behavior by the likes of Comrade Rush and Glenn “teary eyed” Beck.
Please, keep trying to play the false equivalency game, because you will continue to lose.
In addition to realizing the Republican Party can’t govern, Americans have also realized that they’re, for lack of a better word, pretty damn ugly. There’s a reason Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the party these days, and there’ a reason people don’t want to be associated with a thrice-divorced, drug-addicted bigot.
J.G.Thayer: “I should ask Senator Ned Lamont…”
Lamont won the primary and Lieberman only beat him because REPUBLICANS abandoned their party to vote for Lieberman.
But you knew that. You just don’t care about intellectual honesty.
There’s a reason Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the party these days, and there’ a reason people don’t want to be associated with a thrice-divorced, drug-addicted bigot.
Jaim, remember what I wrote the other day: the size of Limbaugh’s estimated daily audience is less than 10%
of the GOP electorate. Rushbo gets about 4 million listeners a day. 60 million voted for McCain. That’s a LOT of Republicans who aren’t regularly listening to his bullshit.
Thus, the fat fucker’s influence on his party’s rank and file is grossly overstated.
“…seeing black helicopters and one world UN government under their beds at every turn.”
that’s quite a metaphor, Oliver! (not that your point isn’t well-taken)
Thus, the fat fucker’s influence on his party’s rank and file is grossly overstated.
He owns 10% of the rank and file, and 100% of the “leadership.”
You think Limbaugh fans are unhinged, try your local talk radio host now and then. Makes freepers look well-adjusted.
Cons, criticize, by all means. But why lie? Why tell lies about ipods and President Obama supplicating before King Abdullah and Sec. Clinton being a doofus in Mexico?
I can’t help but be amused by the Right’s talking heads going on ad on about the hateful, deceitful, murderous Left, when:
1: The Left did not found the United Klans of America, write the Turner Diaries, or found Fox News
2: The Left did not abuse the judicial process to stop a legitimate election on FL in 2000
3: The Left didn’t blow up the Murrah building in OK City…McVeigh was Republican, ya’know?
4: The Left’s most popular (and all I’ve seen of even the more popular) talking heads call for understanding and constructive criticism, as opposed to calling for lynch mobs or grabbing guns and starting armed revolutions.
I’d feel sorry for these people, if they weren’t so well armed, and making noises like they’d be willing to kill me and mine over words…so, they scare me more than I can pity them their psychoses.
One can only chuckle at the irony of Oliver babbling incoherently about “black helicopters” while rambling on himself as though he’s locked in a room covered with aluminum foil.
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard from “I see dead people” leftists over the last 15 years how the “angry white right” was going to engage in some kind of violent overthrow of the government and it’s freaking hilarious.
The irony is even more lost on people like Oliver considering all of the SHIT the left has flung at President Bush over the last 8 years. Talk about helicopters. Half of you people needed to be committed because you were so paranoid.
So Oliver? Stop projecting.
and making noises like they’d be willing to kill me and mine over words
Don’t worry. With what you wrote, nobody would harm you because it would be tragic to harm the mentally handicapped.
Cripes, they’re really coming out of the woodwork now.
SHIT the left has flung at President Bush over the last 8 years.
That he was lying about WMDs and used September 11th as an excuse toinvade Iraq under false pretenses, he advocated the use of torture, claimed almost unlimited power to detain anyone he chose without trial outside the theater of war, he fondled the German Chancellor, and that he had no idea what he was doing? Turns out the left was right about that! Are you saying otherwise?
But, no, Jay, torture doesn’t upset you. But when a Democrat has the audacity to because president, you and your cohorts throw tantrums of the sort I rarely see outside of,well, the sort of think you hear on talk radio on a daily basis. Jay, here’s the problem– your shilling and support for Bush over the past 8 years turned you into a morally deranged, twisted human being. All you’re left with now is a bunch of drooling and spitting over how muich you can’t stand Obama and drumming up any incoherent, illiterate talking points to continue your moronic axe-grinding. You right wing freaks have served as lying shills for the Republicans for years, and as a consequence, the moral effects have resulted in your being a bunch of screwed up people unable to grapple with the Obama administration in an intelligent fashion. We’ve seen nothing but a bunch of trivial moronic spew while freaks like Michelle Bachmann call for “revolution” and right-wingers all over proudly proclaim how they’re stockpiling guns to defend themselves against Democrats.
It was the *Democrats* who had the political successes and the drive to intelligently formulate policy and turn it into political action. It has been the *Republicans* who have decompensated into a group of strange people screaming about “socialism” and the threat of the gay menace. You’ve spent so much time associating with the Republican party that you’ve lost your ability to be serious anymore.
And is Kos still considered a kingmaker among the Democrats? I should ask Senator Ned Lamont…
Jesus, I don’t even have a joke to make about that. It’s like O.J. bragging how at least he won the first trial.
I honestly just don’t understand how they write that without being embarrassed. I imagine Jay is very much right now.
The same Ned Lamont who forced long-term incumbent and Bush sympathizer Joe Lieberman to become an independent?
Forced? I don’t recall that at all.
I hate to say this, and I hope I’m wrong, but I can forsee the first ever American suicide bomber sometime in the next 7 years. And it probably won’t be a person of Muslim faith.
that’s quite a metaphor, Oliver! (not that your point isn’t well-taken)
Does that mean the helicopters are reaaly small? Liliputian, in fact?
“all of the SHIT the left has flung at President Bush over the last 8 years”
Like how his presidency is a failure?
That’s fact son, not shit.
This is why America is a left-center party these days. Republicans had eight years to govern, and they did a terrible job of it.
all of the SHIT the left has flung at President Bush over the last 8 years
Let me ask you Ronald Reagan’s question. Was the country in better shape when George W. Bush left office than it was when he took office?
I say no. You?
Jay,
“Kos” as kingmaker. In 2006 Democrats picked up two Senate seats by razor-thin margins in races targeted by Kos, where Kos delivered both money and passionate volunteers to the Democratic candidates. That would be Montana and Virginia. I say Kos made the difference in races the GOP had expected to win easily. That is a four-vote swing in the Senate, and the GOP would like to have those Senate votes back, wouldn’t they?
More importantly, who knew that Chuck Norris was such a scholar. He can kick your ass and quote the Founding Fathers while doing so.
And is Kos still considered a kingmaker among the Democrats?
He a successful activist. Seems more than you can say for yourself. Plus he has a better moral track record, not having spent the last 8 years, as you have, being morally compromised due to your insistence of being a professional liar for Bush.
You know, it’s kind of funny– the Democrats are now politically dominant, and Jay is screeching, “See! All you Democrats are a bunch of LOSERS!” That’s the problem with wasting your life as a professional liar for Bush– eventually you forget that you’re merely a liar, and you become a true-believer who is deluded by your own lies.
And on Sat. morning a wingnut in Pittsburgh proved OW’s point…
One of Hal Turner’s friends, eh, Randy?
remember what I wrote the other day: the size of Limbaugh’s estimated daily audience is less than 10%
of the GOP electorate. Rushbo gets about 4 million listeners a day. 60 million voted for McCain. That’s a LOT of Republicans who aren’t regularly listening to his bullshit.
Thus, the fat fucker’s influence on his party’s rank and file is grossly overstated.
If Rushbo isn’t such an influence, why has Michael “MC” Steele(among many other Republicans), rushed to apologize after speaking the truth about Limbaugh? Why did they need to apologize for calling him the hate monger he is? Sounds to me like he is more a “kingmaker” than Markos.
When joking about the “failure” of Lamont to win in the general after ousting Holy Joe in the primary, they forget to consider that consistent polls show that if that election were re-run any time over the last year, Lamont would win handily. Why? The people of CT have realized what the rest of us already knew: Lieberman was lying through his teeth when he said he was a moderate Dem at heart. In endorsing McCain after Obama did everything within reason to help him in that primary, he has stabbed enough people in the back that his own dog wouldn’t trust him at this point.
As to the danger of the black helicopter crowd, the danger of pushing loopy wingnuts over the edge is real. A cursory look at the history of political violence in the history of this country will show that the vast majority of it comes from the right: from busting civil rights marchers and antiwar protestors to murderously attacking unions (hell, go all the way back to Preston Brooks nearly beating Charles Sumner to death in the Senate with his cane!). What few examples are usually trotted out the other way from the 19th and early 20th centuries are usually the fault of anarchists, not the actual left.
Yes, yes, we all know there was that terrible rampage by Bill Ayres’ mighty Weather Underground armies, but the few unfortunate people killed by those wackos are but a drop of water compared to the comprehensive ocean of right wing violence over the history of the U.S.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512560,00.html
Well that makes the score
Oliver 1000000000000000000
Wingnuts -10000000000000000
Charles Blow is a confirmed hypocrite and his column today is a joke, even for the New York Times.
Charles Blow advocates public flogging, screeches at hyperbole
From his column on Tuesday:
I’m not saying that the Despots of Detroit deserve a break (Wagoner should be flogged in the streets for the Hummer alone), but the use of the guillotine could be a tad more egalitarian.
His column wouldn’t even be considered a decent comment on a blog like this, much less an informative blog article.
I think its funny, in a pathetic sort of way, that conservatives think it makes any sort of sense to trivialize liberal bloggers. All of us, from sites like Kos at the top, me at the middle tier and others with one or two visitors a day are part of a progressive media infrastructure that was a key element of a historic presidential electoral victory and the movement of both houses of the congress from one party to another. So successful was this so-called fringe movement that the right online has tried and tried and tried to duplicate our supposedly fringe activities. And they’ll probably get their one day, but to do so while trying to minimize what we’ve accomplished is the sort of ridiculous nonsense I’ve come to expect from the right in America.
Until they hurt somebody. Although that might not even stop them.
It’s not like Oklahoma City slowed them down. Heck, they used Crazy Laurie Mylroie’s theory that Saddam was behind the bombing as an excuse to invade Iraq.
Sixteen — that’s 16 — people have died in less than 48 hours and all right-wingers can do is stand by and say, “Well, I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously when I said immigrants were stealing all of the jobs or that Obama is going to come take all their guns. It’s not my fault they listened to me.”
I think its funny, in a pathetic sort of way, that conservatives think it makes any sort of sense to trivialize liberal bloggers. OW
I didn’t consider this Blow guy a left-wing blogger, and what I stated was more or less a compliment to the posters here (with a few exceptions). Many of them are far more circumspect than this column was. His column wouldn’t be a good article or blog post by even a middle-tier blogger. What I said wasn’t a dig at left-wing bloggers. Most of the better ones put in more thought and better examples than this guy did. What he wrote was just the usual three-week old crap you guys got bored with a while ago, or maybe are stating to anyway.
Curiously though, he didn’t mention Rush Limbaugh.
[...] The right is quickly slipping back into its conspiratorial nutjob posture that it had during the Clinton presidency, seeing black helicopters and one world UN government under their beds at every turn. As a friend of mine noted they were lunatics when the object of their ire was a white southerner. One can only wonder what someone they perceive as a black muslim intent on installing Sharia law will prompt them to do. And because these psychos form the activist base of the Republican party, congress will just encourage them. [Source: Oliver Willis] [...]
Sounds to me like he is more a “kingmaker” than Markos.
As Repack said, Limbaugh has the ears of less than 10% of the GOP electorate, but 100% of the GOP leadership. A pathetic leadership that faces the danger of being rejected by the electorate if they continue to swear fealty to an unelectable drug addict.
And if Rushbo’s such a kingmaker, how come his party got their balls fed to them last November (and, possibly, this past Tuesday in NY)?
So successful was this so-called fringe movement that the right online has tried and tried and tried to duplicate our supposedly fringe activities
And the results from the right at trying to copy the very successful model they decry? Red State Strike Force, boo ya!
Wow, that’ll show you liberals once and for all that they are a serious force to contend with!
Oliver: And they’ll probably get
theirthere one day, …Fixed.
(I’ve seen you make that mistake more than once. Personally, my fingers INSIST on typing “teh” instead of “the” in words like the and then. Your fingers have their own tendency to make the their/there/they’re mixup?)
You make a solid point O-dub. The pooh-poohing of blogs actually comes more from the MSM than from the right, IMO. You can just see the goose-pimples raise on David Broder over the last few years when he had to deal with the “filthy, unwashed” etc. Then you’ve got the “losers in pajamas” meme, which is funny when you look at incredibly successful professionals like Moulitsas and Duncan Black and Glenn Greenwald, guys who were doing just fine as authors and professionals before they started blogging.
Of course, on the right you’ve got wing-nut welfare recipients, many of whom had to stop blogging when sugar-daddy Charles Johnson stopped giving them an allowance.
By the time the Right “figures out” a viable inernet-based network for raising money and micro-targetting close races, we’ll be on to a new paradigm anyways. What that is, who knows, but the left, natural progressives that they are, will be way ahead of the curve.
I don’t think any ideology has a lock to be ahead of the curve on new mediums. The left had grassroots newspapers in the civil rights and Vietnam era. The right had books and pamphlets with the rise of the Goldwater right (Brent Bozell ghostwriting Conscience Of A Conservative, for instance). The right owns talk radio, and has a considerable megaphone in cable news. The left has the web right now, mostly because we felt frozen out of the rest of the media at a key moment – the Iraq War.
We don’t know what the “next” medium will be and I don’t think anyone can honestly say which side will warm up to it first.
Good points. Allow me to clarify my optimism — in demographic terms, the Democrats remain a younger party, and one that has a higher percentage of college graduates. (Not trying to flame here, but it’s a fact.)
I think those two things alone make for Dems to be more likely to “get” the next paradigm, but you’re correct that it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Jaim,
That college graduate thing is pretty amusing. I doubt there has ever been a generation more ignorant of American History or basic civics than the current batch of puppies currently graduating. The pendulum swings back and forth. Currently it has swung extremely hard to the left. Obama will cause a fair anount of harm but you guys will be paying and paying and paying for it all of your lives.
“Obama will cause a fair anount of harm”
Please define “harm.” We had eight years of Bush II, six of which with a Republican Congress. What did we get?
Two unfinished wars.
A crippled economy.
A dead major American city.
The largest deficit ever.
The largest Federal government ever.
The largest amount of Federal spending ever.
It’s like you guys can pretend eight years of Republican governance didn’t happen. Guess what? You can’t.
Obama’s presidency is being defined, as we speak, by his attempt to clean up the Bush II/Republican financial mess. Coming close on the heels of that, whether or not Obama can salvage something from the incompetent handling of Iraq and Afghanistan. My guess is he will, but just as with the economy, you can’t clean up eight years of Republican idiocy overnight.
Hate on Obama all you want. I realize you sort of have to, given your ideological brain-washing. But at least admit that Republicans did a hell of a lot of “harm” when they had control of all branches of government. And this comes as no surprise — Republicans are the party that hates government. And they’ve proven to us Americans that, indeed, they really suck at it when given the chance.
[...] Oliver Willis. http://www.pineviewfarm.net/weblog/wp-trackback.php?p=7335 [...]
“…seeing black helicopters and one world UN government under their beds at every turn.”
–Like the one in the photo? Eh. Maybe if you’re a Georgian peasant or an errant Chechen. That’s a Russian “Hokum.”
(Hey, if you’re gonna make fun of “gun-nut” reactionaries, at least give ‘em something plausible)