Some years ago I was married into a multimillionaires family and my father-in-law was a Democratic Party Organizer. He was hideously rich and very linked in with big business.
One night when I we both had far too much to drink I asked him, "Why are you a Democrat? The GOP is the party of big business and it would seem they would fit your interests better?"
To which he responded... "Well that's how I sleep at night. God love the poor because they keep me rich and besides the Democrats will always snatch defeat from the jaws of success!"
At the time I was pretty outraged by his cynicism... after looking on the web today I'm not so sure it isn't deserved.
i'm sure we all have wondered just who would seriously consider voting for McBush and why they would make such a choice. Low info voters is a likely description, people that are captured by six second sound bytes and the multitudes of lies told in McAirbus' political ads run during the Olympics opening night? sure, that and then some.
yesterday i had the distinct pleasure of meeting one. pleasure you say? well, let me tell you about it and i'm sure you'll also get great pleasure from it as well...
Homeland Security, arguably the most incompetent agency in the astonishingly incompetent Bush Administration, has announced that it wants to spend tens of million dollars fighting hurricanes. That's right, HS, loser by a knockout against Hurricane Katrina, has staggered to it's feet and declared that it wants a rematch, not just against another hurricane but against all hurricanes.
The project has been given an estimated price tag of around $64m (£32m) over six years. Scientists will first conduct tests using models and small scale experiments before the most promising idea is developed for large scale testing.
Among the plans is a scheme to seed hurricanes with microscopic particles of salt that have been released into a storm from an aircraft. Research has shown that such seeding can cause hurricanes to dump large quantities of rain over the sea before it reaches land. The rainfall also carries away the heat that powers the hurricane, weakening it.
I've been watching CNN lately, and I've discovered something interesting: they've apparently started reporting complete bullshit! If a rumor pops up, they have to get it on the air as soon as possible. Some whackjob out there on some blog claims that Barak Obama might consider making Ice Cube his veep, and the next thing you know, there's Campbell Brown going, "What would the implications be of Ice Cube being the Vice-President? Would this mean there were no more Fridays films? Would we have to peel Iran's cap back? And could Flavor Flav become the ambassador to Germany? We'll be back to discuss it with our panel in a moment!"
In a post over at Hot Air, Malkin stand-in Ed Morrissey desperately tried to justify McCain's incredibly stupid lie about Barack Obama's energy plan. According to McCain, Obama's plan only consists of telling people to check their tire pressure. Given that this miserable lie is even too much for the GOP's bloggers, Morrissey tries to change the topic, insisting that the real issue is Obama's suggestion that Americans could save just as much from proper tire maintenance as they could from offshore drilling. The problem for Morrissey: Obama's statement is true!
I was at Quizno's the other day. I don't eat lunch by myself much these days so it was unusual, and I was there pretty early. So this guy turns up (this is downtown Louisville, KY) in a black ball cap with a 'Merkin flag on it that says:
Welcome to America Now Speak English
If I'd wanted to start a fistfight right there in the store, I would have gone up to this scrawny little redneck jerk and asked a couple of impolite questions.
So I'm sure some of you have heard about the GOP's unstoppable viral marketing campaign. Which is a "brilliant" facebook page of Barack Obama and all the crazy stuff he says and all of his crazy friends who want to destroy America!!! This new ingenious campaign by the GOP will be unstoppable, soon every college student in America will know about Obama's Black Liberation Theology and plot to put down the white man.
Well, well, well, Jim Gilmore and his staff are at it again. Accusing Mark Warner of being a liar is about all his campaign has in its arsenal. That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black don’t you think?
Gilmore or rather "Drillmore" can’t get the facts straight, but then damn the facts and full steam ahead with the stupidity of the Virginia Republican Party.
"When you look at Warner’s disdain for the truth, it makes you think that you are watching the Jim Carrey move "Liar, Liar," said Gilmore spokesperson Ana Gamonal, who pointed out that in 2005 then Gov. Mark Warner vetoed legislation passed by the Virginia General Assembly that called for lifting the ban on offshore drilling. Warner was cited by the Sierra Club for the veto of offshore drilling.
. . . all I got left is cynicism, snark and recycled outrage.
See, it was easy back in '06 - when things were soooo bad. I mean, outrage was running, what – buck-and-a-quarter, maybe six bits a gallon back then, right? I was livin’ large, drivin' the Escalade of outrage – we all were. And it was easy back then to figure out who our collective outrage should be aimed at:
Those filthy, nasty Republicans
- who, after all, were actually running things, so blaming everything on them was totally legitimate.
And I was committed to taking Congress away from those cretinous bastards so we could put a stop to the occupation of Iraq, and to warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to the whole idea of the President as king. You know, like we did 230 years ago, right?
The other day I was riding down some highway, somewhere, and a very large candy apple red truck with one inhabitant (and no payload) passed me in the fast lane. There was a sticker in the back window, the first line of which read HOW TO ANNOY A LIBERAL... but he was going too fast, so I couldn't read the rest of it.
It struck me that he was managing to annoy this progressive person even without benefit of bumper sticker by adding to global warming by driving a vehicle that gets about ten miles to the gallon
Following this line of thought, here are other ways to Annoy A Librul:
I've just read on Balloon Juice that the newest talking point appears to be that Barack Obama does not display humility. But it's really an old piece of trash shined up to look like it's new, and it's been part of the Bully Party's playbook for a long time. As long as I can remember.
It seems to have started not long after the Fairness Doctrine was flushed, though you could say it started with the Imperial Presidency of Nixon and has been gradually refined from one maladroit fuckwit President to the next. Nixon was positively slimy as a human being. Listening to him and watching him talk now it's amazing that anyone bought his schtick. His entire Administration seemed to be built around the premise of "Shut Up, you Damn Hippies!" Gradually however the entire country was told, in less and less subtle terms, that when the (Republican) President, or one of his proxies was speakin' people were to
When I say crazy, I really mean completely totally fucking batshit insane. Times ten. And I apologize in advance for subjecting you to this.
You know what?
Just click the back button on your browser.
You don't want to see this.
Okay, hopefully I've now weeded out the people without masochist/sadist tendencies.
Someone forwarded the following email to members of the local Democratic Executive Committee of which I am a member. I dismissed it as stupidity, which it is. However, the chair of the committee is looking for a "debunking" of this. I think she's wondering if it's "true". The fact that it comes from the bat-guano crazy LaRouche campaign doesn't matter to her, because she likes LaRouche.
I know that this is stupid, but I do not know how to go about debunking this tripe, other than to say, "It's from Lyndon LaRouche."
Should we be surprised that the brainless conservative activists who have been strategically planted in sensitive positions throughout the government would make decisions like this?
Let's say we have a person born into a wealthy, old established WASP family in the suburbs of a major city in the Northern tier of the country. This person grows up around similar people, then atteneds an elite college for undergrad, and then obtains a professional degree from the top Ivy League institution in their chosen field.
Then, some years later, we find that this person, in spite of being a multi-millionaire at the very epicenter of power in America, in a way that is transparently painful adopts some of the trappings of working class culture, speaks with a fake accent laced with rural colloquialisms, rails against educated people, and is somehow widely accepted by the white working class as one of their own. We would be shocked that such a thing could be pulled off.
I was shocked when George W. Bush was able to do it, and I am equally shocked now that Hillary Clinton is doing it.
