While many people have questioned his timing, his case for replacing Obama at the top of the Dem ticket is by far the most compelling one I’ve heard to date:
I’m a dentist and I don’t think this country is headed in the right direction.
During his speech last night, your preznit showed insufficient gratitude to Bush for his role in our Excellent Iraqi Adventure. Sensing that this would be the case even before the speech was delivered, prominent wingnuts preemptively dialed the Butt-Hurt Advisory Level up to Red.
However, the color-coded warning system reached unprecedented Throbbing Purple status once the last frame of the speech was viewed and the bunch who spent eight years polishing Bush’s knob realized that the Kenyan really, really, really wasn’t going admit the Sun Tzu of Crawford was Right About The Surge.
But fear not, wingnuts: Last night, Rachel Maddow gave Bush and his enablers the full measure of credit they deserve:
I’m left wondering how on earth Republicans haul their ginormous stones around without the assistance of extra-large wheelbarrows.
Finally, Obam-Ra can stretch his world-bestriding legs in an office that doesn’t look like he won it in a shooting gallery at the Iowa State Fair.
Long-time WH staffers will miss the plastic bowl of Saddam Hussein commemorative PEZ dispensers and Dick Cheney’s quarter-operated blood-pressure-cuff chair, but they’ll doubtlessly appreciate the novelty of navigating through a room with identifiable surfaces in several colors and textures, and furniture that isn’t desert-camo’ed to match the walls.
I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”
Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.
The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.
An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.
I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited: Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.
Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.
This was fun to watch live. Please note that even though Beck has stopped gel-spiking his hair, he’s still no closer to morphing into Phil Donahue.
ThinkProgress and MediaMatters are all over this, but it can’t be viewed enough. Beck squirms like a slug-in-salt any time he’s compelled to retrofit an intellectual framework to a worldview that is largely informed by a bubbling stew of unexamined guilt, fear and insecurity. The sad thing is, his self-satisfied confusion seems to be contagious. If you were ever in AA, you’ve seen plenty of Becks:
Since tomorrow is probably going to be wall-to-wall blogging about Glenn Beck’s Rubestock Festival in DC, I decided to skip Joe Biden’s convention speech and fast-forward to that fleeting Golden Hour of Wediditude that divided the Waning Light of the Bush Era from the Suffocating Nightfall of Palinism…if only for half a news-cycle.
Two years ago tonight, I wasn’t on Rumproast, so I can only conclude I was shaving the cats, out stealing yard signs or teaching my weekly ACORN class in Physical Intimidation & Document Forgery. But had I known Hillary Clinton was about to deliver the most impassioned endorsement of Barack Obama by any respected public figure, ever, I’d have popped a tape in the VCR and set the Signal Decoder to “Orange.”
Two years ago today, I was too preoccupied with countering the pathetic thrusts and parries of my online enemies to focus on the irresistible unfoldment of pageantous Destiny that was the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver.
Despite the subsequent massive upgrades to my blogospheric access and the mysterious bags of swag that appear on my front stoop every time I post an Approved Meme on Rumproast, I will always regret that I was unable to be fully immersed and “in the moment” that week when History washed out of our TV screens on an EMP of Hope & Change. Yet, like Victory itself, the Internet Memory is immortal—and we can, in brief flashes at least, relive the highlights of those Four Magical Days That Changed Everything. Yes we can.
Sweet foot-tappin’ Jeebus playing “I’ll Fly Away” on a banjo, check out CNN’s wingnut affirmative action hire, Erick Son of Erick, on the topic of Franklin Son of Billy:
Much has been made this week of Franklin Graham’s comments both about the Ground Zero Mosque and Barack Obama’s religion. It has been more than hilarious to watch all the news networks, newspapers, and pundits try to explain Graham’s comments.
All of those who have been talking about his comments have talked about them from a political point of view.
Franklin Graham could care less. I could care less. What Franklin Graham said is dead on.
Specifically, this week Graham noted that Barack Obama was born a muslim.
“I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name,” Graham told CNN’s John King in a televised interview that aired Thursday night.
Firstly, it’s COULDN’T care less, you noxious twit. If you and Franklin COULD care less, that means you care a little, even if only a teensy bit. See how that works?
Maybe it’s me, but there’s just something about Obama’s new metaphor that strikes me as unhelpful to his condescension problem.
“We put on our boots and walked into the ditch — it’s muddy and hot and dusty and bugs everywhere — and we’re pushing,” Mr. Obama said of the efforts of the White House and its Democratic partners in Congress.
“And we’re slipping and sliding and sweating, and the other side, the Republicans, they’re standing there with their Slurpees watching us,” Mr. Obama said, building up to the punch line, which he has been refining (minus the Slurpees) for several months. “Finally we get this car to level ground. Finally we’re ready to move forward, go down that road once again to American prosperity, and what happens? They want the keys back.”
“Well, you can’t have the keys back,” he said to cheers in Milwaukee on Monday. “You don’t know how to drive. You got us into the ditch.”
Two things we learn from the new TV spot by the National Republican Senatorial Committee: (1) Democrats are sneeringly contemptuous of the American public, and (2) Republicans hope to Christ you’re too stupid to remember when that was cool:
“I disagree with what the majority of the American people want.”
—Sen. John McCain, on Iraq (3/10/2008)
“Polls are nothing more than just like a poof of air.”
—President Bush (2/15/2008)
COURIC: But polls have shown that Sen. Obama has actually gotten a boost as a result of this latest crisis, with more people feeling that he can handle the situation better than John McCain.
PALIN: I’m not looking at poll numbers. (9/24/2008)
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
RADDATZ: Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. (3/19/2008)
Also, please note that Republicans are dynamic, colorful individuals, while Democrats are all scowling black-and-white escapees from a Hitler documentary.
Oh, and Republican candidate percentages are always bigger than the Dem numbers, even when the Dem is winning.
The attempt to establish a Muslimfrei zone around Ground Zero isn’t about 9/11. The wingnut solicitude for “Dr.” Laura’s supposedly lost First Amendment rights isn’t about “Dr.” Laura’s right to repeat racial slurs on the radio.
Fox News’ relentless pimping of the New Black Panther Party non-story isn’t about voter intimidation. Arizona’s anti-immigration law isn’t about illegal immigration. Breitbart’s Shirley Sherrod smear wasn’t about “reverse racism.”
The persistent suggestions from multiple quarters on the right that President Obama isn’t a Christian or an American aren’t about his religion or nationality. And the Prop 8 campaign wasn’t about protecting straight marriage.
As noted earlier, today the US Supreme Court told Orly Taitz to pay her $20K fine for clogging the courts with crazy. What’s that livid red welt on the Birfer Queen’s cheek? She’s glad you asked:
As she did last year, Taitz on Monday once again compared herself to Nelson Mandela. “Nelson Mandela was in prison for years, he went against the regime, but ultimately he prevailed,” Taitz said. The fine, said Taitz, “was means of intimidation and harassment.”
She vowed to fight what she said amounted to “a slap in the face of each and every American citizen.”
I’m glad Taitz eschewed The Bitterz most favored metaphor and didn’t say the Supremes “shoved the ruling down [her] throat.” It’s much trickier (not to mention fraught with peril!) to illustrate that than a slap in the face.
Still, it’s curious how often birfers and other, slightly less deranged Obama-hating dead-enders use the slapping and throat-shoving imagery. [Paging Dr. Freud. Dr. Sigmund Freud, please pick up the white courtesy phone.]
Vladimir Putin would have air-dropped from a Hind helicopter into the Gulf waters at the Deepwater Horizon site, then snorkeled a mile down to inspect the well-head, all on a single breath. Plus, he doesn’t give a damn who takes a picture of his reflective alabaster torso, because he knows he can smash your camera and kill you with a savate kick if your images make him look insufficiently heroic and sexy.
President Obama, in contrast, refused to let the media rubberneck a “private” swim with his daughter Sasha at Panama City, FL. Worse yet, he elected to swim at Saint Andrew Bay—an inlet not technically considered part of the Gulf—because the nearby Gulf beaches had been closed on account of a suspiciously-convenient “hazard” that a White House spokesperson cryptically referred to as “riptides.” Yeah, right. “Riptides.” You can’t make this shit up.
And, so what? Even if there were such a thing as “Dangerous Underwater Conveyor Currents,” Vladimir Putin would have stripped off his crimson Speedo, hurled his children into the vortex, pitched a bucket of fishheads and chum in after them, then laughed—laughed, I tell you—in celebration of his own majestic contempt for weak Capitalist modesty, sappy human sentimentality and responsible parenting.
Count me as one more disappointed Socialist Lackey. I voted for an Iron-Fisted Narcissistic Crypto-Tyrant, and all I got was Ward Cleaver.
