Category: Post-Election Malaise

The big name blogs are just FUNNY today…

From DailyKOS – Friday Night Snark: Focus on Your Own Damn Family

Through his parents, I have been granted access to the following excerpts from a log prepared by an individual I will identify only as “Todd”. Todd’s diary entries consist in large part of a series of reports intended for Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and tells the tragic story of… well, you shall see. I print this here so that others may be warned from Todd’s tragic fate. — Hunter

Go. Read it. Now.
Continue reading “The big name blogs are just FUNNY today…”

There are still some good guys left in Washington…

OK, I realize this is not his main point in the piece, but I this bit from a new diary of Senator Feingold’s on MyDD really impresed me:

At a time in the country when we need free and open discourse, when the Senate is rubber stamping a bankruptcy bill which hurts those who have no power, when the country is involved in a war with no timetable for an exit strategy, we must be able to speak our minds without fear of recrimination from the government.

The main point, on the relationship of the blogosphere to the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance act (BCRA) is worth reading too.

Link via the MyDD front page

“That’s all he has, and he knows it.”

I am going to make this short but sweet: The only weapons Pres. George W Bush has in his intellectual arsenal are book burning, brainwashing, and intimidation. That’s all he has, and he knows it. For complete details, I refer you to my forthcoming book on the subject. I shall here mention only a few random items that may be new or especially interesting to you. For instance, it is more than a purely historical question to ask, “How did his reign of terror start?” or even the more urgent question, “How might it end?”. No, we must ask, “Why does he want to inflict more death and destruction than Genghis Khan’s hordes?” Here’s the answer, albeit in a somewhat circuitous and roundabout style: He possesses no significant intellectual skills whatsoever and has no interest in erudition. Heck, he can’t even spell or define “erudition”, much less achieve it. To deny that Pres. Bush bases his treatises on the belief that the most valuable skill one can have is to be able to lie convincingly is effrontive nonsense and political irresponsibility. It is nonsense because the horny and testy nature of his prank phone calls should indicate to us that something needs to be done. And it is irresponsible because someone has to be willing to summon up the courage to take a proactive, rather than a reactive, stance. Even if it’s not polite to do so. Even if it hurts a lot of people’s feelings. Even if everyone else is pretending that the cure for evil is more evil.

It’s amazing how apt an automatic complaint generator can be, in this case.

See Scott Pakin’s automatic complaint-letter generator or generate one specifically about our idiot-in-chief (I don’t recommend going to the White House web page and emailing it, though.)

New “Visit America” tourist slogans

Pretty funny…

Now that the Bush administration’s mandate has been extended for another four years, President Bush has indicated that improving our image abroad will rank very high on his list of priorities. To that effect, he has commissioned the Department of Homeland Security to increase the flow of foreign tourism by adopting a catchy slogan for our country. A highly-placed source at the DHS, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the highly confidential list of options being considered at the present time.

10. Come see where your job used to live.

9. Our religious nuts only rarely kill people for violating their own particular interpretation of scripture.

8. How much weaker does the dollar need to get for you to visit? (no really, tell us)

7. Come for the loose morals, stay for the systematic erosion of civil liberties.

6. Give us your spry, your wealthy, your huddled masses yearning to buy commemorative shot glasses. And for God’s sake,
keep the Mexicans.

5. Visit America, or we’ll send our army to visit you.

4. America: Because you miss hereditary monarchies.

3. Forcing the world to adopt democracy since 1776.

2. Baby, I didn’t mean it… The CIA told me to do it.

1. America, byotch!

Sadly, this was from an unattributed forwarded email. If you know the origin of this, please let me know in the comments.

My response to “Kerry Sucked.”

This was my comment on “Kerry Sucked” on AMERICAblog:

Face it. He was a shitty candidate. My question is why it’s ok to talk about everyone else who screwed up but not Kerry?

OK, count me in the “unwilling to turn on Kerry” column. I don’t agree that he sucked… unless, of course, we as Democrats also sucked by choosing him.

I mean, I rather liked that he was something of an intellectual and had some pretty good foreign policy credentials. But he was also a relatively stiff and colorless moderate… out of a field of candidates where I saw little to be enthusiastic for. In the initial debates, the only candidate with any real fire was Sharpton… who was no just “not electable” but well, genuinely unelectable.

Frankly, given that I actually went so far as to consider voting for former-Republican Wes Clark should indicate just how bad I felt our field of “electable” candidates was.

In the end, by the time the primaries got to California, it didn’t really matter. I voted for Kucinich, since despite the lack of a real shot at it at least he didn’t announce that he was dropping out and he was a genuine liberal.

Didn’t matter, of course. The tide of Kerry victories carried on by “electability” concerns continued.

And we got what we asked for… and “electable” colorless moderate, who got beaten – though closely – by one the worst Presidents since Buchanan.

It would’ve been a Wonderful Life

Sunday’s Maureen Down column in the NY Times:

RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!

CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn’t exist, so you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43’s vice president. W. chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq or unilateralism or “Old Europe.” Here’s Colin now, heading for the Oval Office.

Yep, it’s an “It’s a Wonderful Life” parody. Worth reading, and get it while it’s hot since it’ll disappear into the pay-only archives soon. (Requires login 🙁 ) Via AMERICAblog

Today’s blatant shilling:
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
It’s a Wonderful Life the classic film.