Kevin—Don’t fight the narrative. The Flatulence is all over this.

Whether you know it or not, you and I and every other Obot is SHITTING OUR PANTS because BO hasn’t named Noam Chomsky as Minister of Retribution and released his edict to replace nutritional information disclosures on all food products with instructions for halal preparation (Better Than Kosher!) and the lyrics to the Kenyan National Anthem.

Here’s the problem: THEY (Townhall, Rush, PUMA, etc.) created the meme that BO is a super-socialist whose supporters worship him as the Messiah and only voted for him because we expect free goodies. Now, they’re catapulting the schadenfreude by floating the equally fucked meme that we must now be pissing and shitting ourselves because he’s turning out to be something of a pragmatic realist.

It’s apparently too big a leap for them to consider that we might just be absolutely thrilled that BO isn’t Hillary, McCain or Palin, that we’re not expecting magic ponies and that criticizing him does not entail either a psychopathic break or an existential crisis.

This is a classic example of what happens when you proceed from a bad first assumption: If you start with the premise that a solar eclipse happens when the Giant Dragon swallows the Sun, it follows that the Sun and the Dragon are enemies, and that you can make the Dragon leave the sun alone by pushing bad people into a volcano.

Then again, consider the source. Darragh and RD strike me as the kind of wounded children who are still pissed off that when they poured the Sea-Monkeys into the goldfish bowl, they never DID see the little picnic basket and blanket. They were TOTALLY LIED TO by the illustration on the box…and gawdammit, Obama and his minions are going to pay!

Darragh and RD strike me as the kind of wounded children who are still pissed off that when they poured the Sea-Monkeys into the goldfish bowl, they never DID see the little picnic basket and blanket.

That’s it exactly. They were promised grinning, crown-wearing water sprites and all they got was a clump of goddamn brine shrimp. It was the first of many bitter disappointments. Attention must be paid.

To Kevin K, StrangeAppar8us and Betty Cracker…well said, well said, well said!  And hilariously done too, as usual!

Yeah, I really don’t get the whole “You Kool-Aid drinkers must be really mad because your Messiah isn’t so liberal after all!” thing. Because a lot of us LIKED the fact that Obama didn’t feel compelled to define himself as either liberal or conservative on issues—given how meaningless those labels are at this point. Mike Huckabee has some “liberal” economic stances, but is far right on social-values issues. Where should we put him on the spectrum? And why does it fucking matter if Obama openly identifies as “liberal,” except to assuage the hurt feelings of people who are upset that they were mocked for being liberals and now want to see a president who will wear the label and make them feel better about themselves? Shit, if you’re a liberal, why do you give a green monkey poop what pinheads like Ann Coulter say about you? The more she mocks, the more you know you’re right.

And again I must point out—no American president has ever passed the Great Liberal Agenda sniff test. Not Carter, not Clinton, not Kennedy, and sure-as-shit not Supreme Court-packin’, Japanese-American-interning FDR, for whom we can also toss “refused to fully desegregate the armed forces” and “refused to raise quotas to save Jewish refugees seeking asylum in America” onto the list of his egregiously illiberal actions.

Let me try to reverse-engineer this whole thing:

1. 54% of voters voted for Obama.
2. Consequently there must be something fundamentally fucked-up about all those voters.
3. Fucked-up people are usually weak-minded losers who can’t run their own lives, live in their mothers’ basements, take drugs and survive entirely on government handouts.
4. In order to capture their votes, Obama hypnotized the REALLY weak-minded, and promised the rest their own basements, more drugs, expanded government handouts and an army of social workers, drafted from the successful populace, to manage their lives FOR them.
5. Only a Red-Assed, Bull-Dyke Communist would have promised all that shit.
6. Only a hell-bent-for-chaos Sith-Lord could have hypnotized the rest and held them in thrall through November.
7. Obama-voters were HOPING to be ruled by a Red-Assed, Bull-Dyke Sith-Lord who would instantly upend the social and institutional status quo in order to establish a Reign of Chaos.
8. Delaying the sunsetting of Bush’s tax cuts and considering Hillary Clinton for SOS are supremely counter-revolutionary betrayals that have created a violent standing wave of cognitive dissonance in the brains of Obama’s fucked-up supporters.
9. Cognitive dissonance makes people sad and angry, and frequently breaks hypnotic control.
10. Sad, angry, awakened Obama supporters will now become vindictive, aggrieved PUMAs. Or, at least they will try…but the PUMAs will merely laugh and laugh as they gulp down Ferrero Rochers and watch Darragh’s “Happy Song” videos on youtube.
11. It won’t matter anyway, because BO was born in Kenya, and the College of Electors will give the Presidency to Hillary, even though she didn’t run.
12. So there. Deal with it.

Corollary: Saul Alinsky was a man. Ergo, all men are Saul Alinsky.

Ipso facto, QED. PUMA HAKA!

I’d like to hear more about the Wounded Children Hypothesis (WCT) advanced by StrangeAppar8us and Betty Cracker.

I’m wondering if it may be that these are folks that are used to getting their way.  Even if they had to huff and puff, eventually parents, teachers, and other authority figures gave in. So when they got to the Dem Primary this year, they didn’t take the loss well.

Since they didn’t get what they wanted, they only had the argument that their nominal adverseries (Obama supporters) didn’t get what they wanted, either.

Or, the only reason they didn’t get what they wanted is because Obots drank the Kool Aid, but eventually Obots will have to admit that the PUMAs were right all along.

You guys are all too funny (and right on) so I’m not even going to try!  But I saw talking heads on MSNBC this morning wringing their hands about liberal cognitive dissonance over Obama’s cabinet/staff picks.  Oy.

Kevin, do you have to have Firefox to use Screen Grab?  What is Firefox?  As you know I’m not the most tech savvy person in the world. :(

Is there really a Great Liberal Agenda Sniff Test? What are the questions on the test?

One of the problems with the “blogosphere” is that a lot of people on it are excessively focused on the “blogosphere” itself, and believe that trends of opinion there represent or greatly influence public opinion in general. I don’t think this is so. Not very, anyway.

A grand example of how un-so it is, in fact, was the case of the bizarre PUMA cult, which garnered a lot of attention on the planet Blog, and which the media and Republicans noticed and tried to promote into a quasi-“liberal” and/or “feminist” anti-Obama movement that would sway a significant number of voters. The PUMAs, IMO, were worthy targets of criticism and ridicule because of that attempt. But in the end, PUMA didn’t mean much—unless the McCain camp really was stupid enough to make them a factor in their pick of Palin (“There’s potentially MILLIONS of PUMA voters out there, and with Sarah on the ticket, they’ll all come SWARMING to our side!”) Maybe that was the case. If so, they helped Obama get elected, bless their hearts.

But I want to say that, while I enjoy this blog, I don’t agree with the view being implied or sometimes stated outright here, that Obama’s picks for posts in his administration shouldn’t be a subject of fretting, because he hasn’t taken office yet. These choices are key developments, and some of his choices have been a surprise and a disappointment to a lot of his supporters.

I and a lot of other Obama supporters (including many, like myself, who did NOT criticize his every move during the campaign) chose to back him during the primary season because we wanted an alternative to the agenda represented by Mrs. and Mr. Clinton and their allies. That’s not because the Clintons aren’t flaming-liberal enough, whatever that might mean. It’s because I and others are concerned about issues of trade, regulation and foreign policy on which the Clinton record doesn’t jibe with what I consider to be a traditional Democratic Party agenda, represented most of the time by most of the Democratic presidents of the 20th century, especially FDR and his successors.

I certainly don’t regret supporting, contributing money to, voting for Obama. I have high hopes for his administration, especially when it comes to domestic policy. But the prospect of HRC as SOS leaves me worried about the direction of this coming administration on foreign policy, most specifically, interventions in the Middle East. So, I am fretting. So, sue me. After all, it’s because of concerns like this, about important issues, that I read stuff about politics on the internet (and elsewhere) in the first place.

I don’t agree with the view being implied or sometimes stated outright here, that Obama’s picks for posts in his administration shouldn’t be a subject of fretting, because he hasn’t taken office yet. These choices are key developments, and some of his choices have been a surprise and a disappointment to a lot of his supporters.

Actually plenty of people do fret here!  The point is anyone can say anything on this blog and while some people may disagree with you (or not) nobody’s going to swarm you or block you.  Intelligent discourse is not trolling.  I think myself that Hillary is a risky choice for SoS but could also be a brilliant one. My personal inclination is to “wait and see” with most things but I’m married to a big-time fretter so I see that point of view also!

Mar, Firefox is a free web browser that is SO much better than Internet Explorer.

Thanks.  I’ll give it a try.

pete—Understood.

Your concerns are warranted, and you certainly aren’t alone.

My complaint is with the pundits and bloggers who believe there is some monolithic block of identical, extruded-plastic Obama supporters who expected BO to keep all of his promises, rename the country “Obatopia” and build an Executive Branch populated exclusively by hitherto unaligned and untainted Far Left Geniuses who would then release a cloud of benign nanites to rearrange the molecules of Democratic Society and usher in the New Aeon.

We all knew he was a politician. We all knew that there were compromises, quid pro quos, paybacks and trade-offs that he would have to navigate and negotiate in order to accomplish anything at all. And, at some level, we all pretty much understood that there were going to be days when we smacked our foreheads and said, “WTF is WRONG with him?”

Personally, I haven’t ruled out the possibility that he’s an evil alien robot who plans to enslave us all. However, based on the information and the options available on Election Day, I voted for the candidate who seemed more intelligent, more aware, more capable and overall more attuned with my general sense of how the world should work. (He was also the only one who wasn’t an obvious, dangerous nutbag—but that goes without saying.)

I just balk at the notion that—every time he appoints a legacy Clintonista, inclines rightward or seems to embrace a policy that I find objectionable—I’m going to run screaming through the streets like Kevin McCarthy shouting “He’s not who he says he is! You’ve got to believe me!”

I didn’t elect a cipher who promised me Nirvana. I played, for me, the smart odds…and I’m at least going to let him sit down in the chair before I freak out and demand a recall.

The notion that the mindless “Obamabots” are rending their garments as they dimly awaken to the knowledge that they were DUPED-DUPED-DUPED is the sort of manufactured story that poisoned this whole cycle. Even if I HAVE been sold a lemon, I’m not going to trade in this shiny new ride until the New President smell has a chance to wear off.

Pete, my point is that there has never been a truly “liberal” president across the spectrum of issues generally identified as progressive (economic justice, environmental protection, a war-as-a-last-option approach to foreign policy, civil liberties, and human rights being some of the biggies that come to mind for me), so anguishing over whether or not a president can wear that “liberal” label without being a hypocrite is an exercise in futility, historically speaking.

That by no means is my way of saying “Hey, none of ‘em were all that when it came to liberalism, so shut up and don’t complain!” Indeed, I wish there had been sufficient pushback on FDR to prevent the internment camps. But I see a bit of a pattern of cherry picking through some of Obama’s appointments, mostly by those who weren’t inclined to support him anyway, and using them to say “Hmmmpph! This just proves to those Obots that he’s not so progressive as they think! Picking HRC! Hmmmpphhh!” (And I’m on record as being skeptical of her management skills, among other things, BTW, but I’m willing to see how it plays out—for now.)

That cherry picking is kinda insulting at all levels—first it presupposes that Obama went out of his way to falsely paint himself as a populist progressive hero (no, he didn’t) and it also presupposes that all his supporters are as StrangeAppar8us satirically categorizes them (in the minds of some pundits): “extruded-plastic” Obamabots,” instead of people who made the best choice they could between imperfect options.

This is the same brand of idiocy that has GOPinheads declaring that this past election proves they need to increase their focus on “Traditional Values” (Trans: Stomp on the kw33rs, harass the brown people and make women have lots of babies).

A crash course in basic statistics or even math might help (See? 2% is less than 98%), but then they wouldn’t be so funny.

[Makes more popcorn]