Reading some of those comments makes me realize that most Americans are profoundly emotionally retarded and deserve no better than President Palin.

Ugh.  I live Digby and Tristero, but running through that comment section reminds me why I don’t.

That would be “love” vs live”.

And the more people I see calling out Ms. Dowd on the POS from Sunday the better.

I read a lot of blogs and I think there was none better than the thread posted here at Rumproast “You Wouldn’t Like Him if He Was Angry”. That discussion really opened my eyes and the comments here were excellent.

One (of many) things I despise about the anti-Obama league is that they set up these unreasonable standards for him as President and then proceed to demolish them. The thing is, no one else expects those ridiculous standards to exist. No one expects him to create world peace or make Israel and Palestine best buddies. I certainly don’t expect him to fix the damage done by BP or even have a plan in his back pocket to make Wall Street suddenly become filled with honest brokers.

So these Teabaggers and HillaryHuggers are just muddying the water (so to speak) They need to STFU and make some real contributions to the sources of their outrage, not just whine and moan about how The Chosen One has failed them.

When I get a chest X-ray, I don’t want a technician who looks at the film and says “Oh, fuck! Jumpin’ jeezus! How the hell can you still be standing?”

When I call Houston Control from the Apollo 13 command module, I don’t want to hear a sobbing voice reading Revelation 21:4.

When a crisis threatens America, I don’t want a President who leads the nation in a rousing chorus of “Amazing Grace.”

Give me George Reeves. Give me Spock. Give me Raymond Massey. Give me Stephen Hawking. Give me a man with a weary, impassive face whose voice doesn’t crack when he ticks off my options. I want to be saved by someone who’s less freaked-out than I am, not equally…or, worse, more.

Donna, I’d add that all those people whining about how he hasn’t delivered “Change they can believe in” are too stupid to realize that a guy who works from his head, not his gut, and who believes that government can do some good and necessary things IS a big change from what we’ve had in this country over most of my lifetime.

I dunno—I’m beginning to give more credence to the notion that large portions of the political blogosphere, born out of the understandable rage engendered by Bush and Cheney, just doesn’t know any way to function that doesn’t involve spittle and perpetual victimhood.

And yes, I do think that the standards in place for Obama are far higher than for other presidents. He’s already achieved more than Clinton did in one term—and he walked into a much bigger mess than Big Willie.

That would be “just DON’T know any way to function.” When I get pissy, my grammar sometimes goes to heck! (Also when I get pissed—in the British sense.)

I also am reminded of an interview I read with Diamanda Galas, the punk-opera diva, several years ago in <>Angry Women</i>, the Re/Search publication.

Can you imagine someone going to war who didn’t know how to fight? If you try to reach the emotional levels I try for without technique, well—I’ve seen people in mental institutions hit their head against the wall and say “Mama!” for hours at a time, and I’m sure they meant it, but so what?

Exactly. Rootless emotion may provide a temporary balm, but it won’t solve a damn thing. Is NOT pandering to the need for a Big Daddy a political liability for Obama? Possibly. But the very fact that he’s not falling into the faux “I feel your pain” nonsense makes me respect him more.

And as someone who has had some losses (as have we all), I gotta say that it was never the people who tried to outdo me in Misery Poker, or who tried to be my Best Foul-Weather Friend and encourage me to scream and cry, etc. who really helped me out. It’s always been the ones who say “So—what do you need me to DO? What do you want to talk about?” Instead of using my pain as an occasion for them to enact their own narcissistic psycho-dramas out of some fake sense of “empathy.”

I dunno—I’m beginning to give more credence to the notion that large portions of the political blogosphere, born out of the understandable rage engendered by Bush and Cheney, just doesn’t know any way to function that doesn’t involve spittle and perpetual victimhood.

Someone at Balloon Juice suggested that it was a bunch of young(er) people who gained political consciousness during the Bush era and so conceive of everything in a Bush/not-Bush binary. Like there was no history and no politics before him.

I always thought that the reason Bush jr et al were so bad was not that their way of thinking was so particularly outside the norm of American governance but that they took our worst tendencies and promoted/enabled them to the extreme. But America (even in FDR’s time) was never a place where true movement progressivism took hold.

But America (even in FDR’s time) was never a place where true movement progressivism took hold.

Spot on, Paula!