Whiskey Fire

Shadow of a Gun Nut

Sarah Palin is in the news because the Lame Stream Media doesn't like to be accused of bias towards carnival geeks.

Sarah Palin blasted President Barack Obama and gun control advocates Friday, blaming them for "exploiting" recent mass shooting tragedies to promote their political agenda.

That would be the "political agenda" of not having schoolchildren murdered by crazy people armed with weapons that are remarkably efficient for the purposes of murdering schoolchildren.

Speaking to a welcoming crowd at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, the folksy former governor from Alaska also used chewing tobacco at one point to draw some laughs.

I bet she did.

If I were Michael Bloomberg, whom I have cordially disliked since even before he became a Republican, I would, for shitsn'giggles, pass a law banning the swilling of chew-juice from pint glasses, just to watch Palin try to "draw a laugh" chugging this in front of the happy shouty morons who pay her to talk "folksy."

Annnyway, this:

Politics of emotion, she argued, won't make the country safer. "It's the opposite of leadership. It's the manipulation of the people by the politicians for their own political ends. It's not just self-serving. It's destructive and it must stop."

So, then, if your kid or spouse is killed for some reason, you're not allowed to speak your mind about what you think the best public policies might be to prevent other Americans from suffering your loss, because to do so is to embrace the "politics of emotion."

This is a thesis jaw-dropping in its idiocy and hypocrisy; does it even need rebuttal?

Obama didn't compel the Newtown family members to appear by rounding them up at gunpoint. Or if he did, kindly prove that.

Anyway, what we have here is a situation where a relatively small minority of Americans are claiming the right, ultimately backed up by their posession of weapons, to define the True Nature of American Freedom.

Which is fine, I guess, at least according to CNN...

How this differs in any important philosophical regard from the position, of, say, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, I cannot say.

How it differs in any practical sense, well (McVeigh cough) who knows. Because this is all just hypothetical!

 

Wishful Thinking

Not quite as crazy as some, nonetheless entirely delusional Canadian Republican & former Bush speechwriter David Frum types:

Fortunately, the Republican 2016 field thus far remains mercifully free of the charlatans and crackpots who came to the fore in 2012. The early field is intelligent and hard-working. Paul Ryan has immense policy knowledge, Ted Cruz is a brilliant litigator and debater, Marco Rubio has made himself central to the most important legislative initiative of the year. Even Rand Paul has carefully repositioned himself as a sober-minded U.S. Senator, distancing himself from paranoia and bigotry.

Clap louder & harder, Dave, that always helps.

— M. Bouffant (Et chez moi.)

Not Happy

I did not leave FDL under the happiest of circumstances. But loads of people there are my friends, and overall I respect the wider project...

But this is just embarrassing. The Daily Mail? Really?

What Mr. Bogg said in the comments over there.

UNHAPPY.

Civility Trolling: How It's Done

"Civility" = censorship, has long been this blog's major thesis.

For example.

A line has been crossed when the principal spokesmen for contending opinions have no curiosity whatsoever about their opponents’ ideas and radiate cold, steady contempt for each other. That’s dangerous. Civil society depends on a minimum threshold of tolerance and mutual respect. Fall too far below it, and the seething paralysis* you see in Washington could soon be the least of your concerns. This is America’s biggest political problem -- and Krugman’s not part of the solution.

People not being nice to each other is not America's "biggest political problem"; America's "biggest political problem" would be intractable high unemployment.

If the "biggest political problem" we faced today were an excess of shrillness, well, the obvious Way Forward is for the New York Times to fire Krugman. Then in a month everyone gets a job!

This is a colossally stupid commonplace:

Meanwhile, for the side that thinks it has the better arguments, naked contempt for dissenters is plain bad tactics. That isn’t how you change people’s minds. Better to fire up the base with a little demagoguery (such as calling conservatives racist, as Krugman is wont to do) than reach out to the uncommitted? I don’t think so. The enthusiasm you inspire on your side is canceled out by an equal and opposite reaction on the other. Krugman stirs up the right in much the same way that Rush Limbaugh, for instance, inflames the left. Granted, if you’re going to have a spokesman, better a Nobel laureate than a talk-radio clown. The fact remains that Krugman’s weary disdain for roughly half the country is self-defeating.

Please. Krugman is not talking on behalf of what Crook calls "half the country." Neither is Limbaugh.

The fight here is over who controls Elite Discourse.

The KILL THE DEFICIT nonsense was hardly a consensus arrived at after a period of Learned Colloquy after the 2008 collapse.

Calling for Polite Debate is easy and lazy; controlling the terms of Polite Debate is where the fighting happens.

That Paul Krugman has even caused minute fractures in the Elite Consensus is remarkable.

To the extent that "civility" protects a highly politicized status quo, it is censorship, and ought be pissed on, as there is anyhow nothing else you can do with it.

Because CENSORSHIP = UNEMPLOYMENT BEING CONSIDERED LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE DEFECIT AMONG ELITE YAPPERS.

A state of affairs which HAS OBVIOUS POLICY CONSEQUENCES.

(Good Lord... did I use... all caps?

AIEEEEE!

Well, fuck me then.)

* Can "paralysis," in point of fact, "seethe"? Fuck no!

Someone Whack the Friedmanbot a Few Times, Won't You?

Tom Friedman has apparently entered a comical Write Like Tom Friedman cometition.

Holy tobasco.

It’s hard to have a conversation today with any worker, teacher, student or boss who doesn’t tell you some version of this: More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt. So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.

Tom?

Thomas?

Could you, please...

Not put your finger exactly there, in public?

And please allow me to tell you where to stick that finger?

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say “it is a 401(k) world.” Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it.

You will be increasingly robbed and exploited by utterly unaccountable corporate rentiers, who will make you fervently believe your humiliating subordination is your own stupid fault because you never got off your ass and designed some horseshit phone app.

After all... are there not poorhouses MOOCs?

 

When You Add up the Numbers

The arguments in favor of Austerity Forever are difficult to challenge, in the sense that clouds have difficulty rebutting the wisdom directed at them by shouty old men. Here for instance is Rick Moran, one of the Finest Minds of the Online Right, responding to this.

Does cutting the budget cause a slowdown in growth? As we all know, Washington isn’t “cutting” anything, but rather reducing the rate of growth in government programs. In the sense that the “normal” growth in spending for a government program is cut back slightly, it may affect certain procurement programs like weapons purchases. This would indeed be a loss of economic activity and thus put a damper on the economy.

Gosh. So cutting spending in a recession is bad?

Here though is the load of which you you should get.

Regardless of any justification for cutting spending by scholarly papers, the need to cut the budget and cut it now is a necessity. What Krugman and other “stimulus” advocates never mention is the politics of budget cutting, which is not concerned with the numbers of deficit reduction as much as it is with the art of the possible in negotiating a fix for our short and long term deficit problems.

Does anyone seriously believe if we get back to robust growth in the economy — 4% or more — that the political will to deal with our long term debt problems, our entitlement problems, and further deficit reduction will exist? It isn’t so much that the deficit and debt are “immediate” crisis in the sense that unless we balance the budget by next year, the economy will collapse. But once the economy improves, and revenue begins to recover, the need for deficit reduction disappears and Congress will go back to business as usual.

That’s the political reality. Without a spur to their behinds, Congress won’t deal with our debt and deficit problems. And that spur — uncontrolled deficits and a continual increase in our national debt — will disappear once the good times are rolling again.

See, we can't have robust economic growth spurred by increased government spending, because if we had that, it would solve the deficit problem, and that would completely destroy the political will to enact the government spending cuts we would need to enact to solve the deficit problem that would have been already solved by the robust economic growth spurred by increased government spending.

Rick Moran's gift for not understanding anything, and thus inadvertently clarifying the deep idiocy of his own side's propaganda, is glorious to behold. All hail the Ignoramus Savant.

Laffs

Townhall dot com has a section of their site devoted to Humorous Political Cartoons. Maybe you didn't know that. Now you know that. You're welcome.

These cartoons fascinate in that the artwork itself is often quite commendable, but the jokes are... inscrutable, would be the kindest term.

For example:

I think I sort of get what the artist was shooting for here, but that's only because I pay attention to crazy far-right discourse.

If you're not into that, this is just fucking weird, and oddly sloppy -- the Count is about counting, not about "today's word," which isn't even a Sesame Street thing -- they do letters.

Which I don't think is nitpicking. Smart cartooning gets the culture right. That is because people who want to tell jokes well bother to understand, uh, consensus reality.

I mean, I'm sure there are Sea Org Comedy Clubs where you can get up and rip on Zenu for an hour or so, and kill, but anywhere else, oh lordy.

The "dog in every pot" gag: Christ, really?

Apparently so.

Holy smokes.

 

"But then God, of course, is not cool, and never has been"

Noted hateful twerp Alan Sears has collected words and sentences and has presented these items to the internet.

For those who don't know, Sears is one of those people who realized decades ago that yelling shit about "the homosexual agenda" beat getting a real job all to hell, and who now smells the end of the end of the long con like a dachshund senses the final splat of a long-produced footlong turd.

But never forget that Sears is Cuturally Important -- after all, he has a Wikipedia entry, wherein it is duly noted with all appropriate fanfare that he is a Townhall Columnist. And as such, he says some gloriously weird shit.

A friend of mine, a teacher, has been telling me about her efforts to ready her third, fourth, and fifth grade students for a pint-size production of The Music Man. Things aren’t going well.

As enthusiastic as the children were to put on the musical—as excited as they were about trying out for featured parts, putting on costumes, and practicing the dances—the bloom is off the rose, now that it all comes down to actually memorizing lines, hitting marks, and, especially, emoting. Several of the parts call for outsized performances, and some players are feeling self-conscious.

Nothing so darkly portends the collapse of Traditional Heterosexual America as the unwillingness of Our Youth to fully commit to Musical Theater.

You remember.

I remember? I remember what?

What if I go big – step out – say the line – and: nothing? What if I’m standing there, flushing scarlet, as people look at each other and whisper, “Did he really say that? What a fool! Wayyy over the top.” Better to just say the line as quietly, non-commitally as possible, and let the show roll on. Being “okay,” even being “bad,” is better than being embarrassed.

So yes, American schoolchildren must be taught to give big, brassy performances whenever they are cast in musical theater productions. They must learn to be fabulous!

I am on board!

Excellent dramatic advice!

Wait, what?

That’s what my teacher friend’s plight makes me think of, as I watch the manufactured groundswell of public support for redefining marriage...

What?

But one thing everybody knows, whatever their political or religious persuasion: they want to blend in. They don’t want the “audience” – their family, their friends, their co-workers, even strangers – to look at each other and whisper, “Did he really say that? What a fool! Wayyy over the top.” No matter how old we get, no matter how secure or successful we become, for many of us, nothing ever takes the place of being “cool.”

Is same-sex marriage “cool?” That’s what the “cool kids” tell us.

So... if you don't like gays having equal rights, you should be Very Brave -- exactly like those bold 6th graders willing to Give Their All in an amateur musical?

The entire column is strewn with Wonderful Jewels; "But then God, of course, is not cool, and never has been."

But the joke is that the only people who sincerely confuse melodrama with real-world morality are people like Sears. Christ, never put him in charge of Hats Off to Hanukkah, he'd reduce more than one cast member to tears.

Dance for the Ant-God

I myself always assumed there would eventually be some sort of attempt to dig up Zombie W and parade around his reanimated corpse gussied up as an American Hero -- even though W was a horrible disaster nobody liked, not even Fox News, on account of his traitorousness.

See, the thing is, SO?

Liberals disliked him, and talking about him like he wasn't a colossal fuckup is bound to piss off liberals... QED: GWB 4EVA! The dumbass vanity licence plates write themselves, and then they're pounded out by convict labor.

Hence this specimen of puerile ressentiment.

All of it is astonishingly smug and precious; Ann Althouse only strives towards a rhetorical ethos this sociopathic.

I'll however just examine the Challenge presented as the Electrifying Conclusion.

Upon what do you base your view of President Bush’s intellect? How much is it shaped by the conventional wisdom about him? How much by verbal miscues highlighted by the press?

After 9/11, especially, seldom was a president so fellated. Pretending that W was the victim of a hostile press is at variance with easily verifiable recent history. Al Gore got it worse from the press in the late 1990s, also too.

Do you discount your estimate of his intellect because he’s from Texas or because of his accent? Because he’s an athlete and a ranch owner? Because he never advertises that he went to Yale and Harvard?

My question would be, why woud an adult possessed of anything remotely approaching self-respect ever try to fool other adults with humiliatingly sycophantic garbage like this -- for free? Grima Wormtongue is disgusted. Sigh....

Bush isn't from Texas, his accent is an affectation, he's no more and perhaps less an athlete than Obama, his "ranch" is not a ranch, and he's always had flaks to remind anyone who cares that he went to Ivy League schools because he's a Northeast blueblood when it suits him to be, and also other flaks who will take pictures of him clearing brush.

I'm sorry, didn't MWO cover this sufficiently...?

This is a hard one, for liberals only. Do you assume that he is unintelligent because he made policy choices with which you disagree? If so, your logic may be backwards. “I disagree with choice X that President Bush made. No intelligent person could conclude X, therefore President Bush is unintelligent.” Might it be possible that an intelligent, thoughtful conservative with different values and priorities than your own might have reached a different conclusion than you?  Do you really think your policy views derive only from your intellect?

Why is this hard?

When everything you did led to terrible blood loss and scarring, who the fuck cares if your Deep Reason for sticking your dick in the blender was Advanced Calculus?

MAS. On the comments thing, it looks like this grand new system decides to treat every comment as spam unless specifically told otherwise. Once your comment has been pulled out of the spam filter though it seems to know you're not a bot bent on telling the world about your world-historical quest to make penises bigger through chemistry, and later comments go through fine.

"Get the fuck back in your fucking hole, now!"

When we want to hear from you again, shitwhistle, we'll say, "tell us your shitheaded opinion and go paint another fucking by-numbers of a puppy next to the sink."

MAS. Your dad is a fairy.

And thus we Advance the Discourse, eh? (Their comments section seems to work fine, and bully for them...)

MUCHO MAS. I really am sorry for the comments weirdness. Youse all are like the obnoxious dysfunctional family I actually like, as opposed to the obnoxious dysfunctional family I had to go to family with. So bear with it, redsnouts.