Whiskey Fire

Whiskey Fire Book Club

By Monica_A

You must read "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" by Jeff Sharlet. Once you have read this book, the past eight years will make sense. The banality of Bush. Scary, but informative.

Shh... Don't speak - just savor the moment

by Ripley

This leads to this, which states this:

Here’s the thing — if we make Earl Pomeroy’s [D-ND -- ed.] life extremely painful for the next week, Republicans are going to think twice about jumping ship and so will a lot of the Blue Dog Democrats.

This fine dog poop can be shipped to Earl Pomeroy at

Office of Congressman Earl Pomeroy
3003 32nd Ave S Suite 6
Fargo, ND 58103

Likewise, you can tie up his phone lines by calling (701) 224-0355 and then (202) 225-2611 to express your dissatisfaction.

*Note: if you use our link, I can track the orders sent and Amazon kicks back some cash to RedState too! A win-win.

Rip -

Instadouche Link Bait

Hugo Chavez's poodle, Barry Obama, coldly employs Chicago-style politics in [*enter outrage du jour here* HONDURAS] as he cowardly appeases America's enemies and stabs our friends in the back. Yet another foreign policy disaster for the One, like when he bowed to the Emperor of Saudi Arabia, gave the Queen of England porno DVDs, and grabbed Santa's crotch on live teevee. Wonder what his TELEPROMPTER thinks! LOL! Gateway has more as does Fausta, Allah, and that douche over at Cornell.

Seriously, as an Intellectually Honest Liberal, even I can say it was Very Wrong for Obama to crush the democratically elected government of Honduras with an armed invasion, nuclear strikes, and economic sanctions, and then turn the country over to the harsh tyranny of Hugo Chavez's jackbooted thugs, who had all the leaders of the so-called "coup" shot, and then all the rich people in Honduras stripped of their worldly possessions, doused with honey, and devoured by fire ants. 

Because that''s, like, what happened? I haven't been paying close attention to the goings-on in this particular Fruit-hatted Lesser American nation, but skimming the right-wing reaction, it sure sounds like it!

Meet the new Coke

by Ripley

Remember the other day when you were mumbling/texting/Twitterfying to yourself, "Hey, it's today!  What stupid thing could Erick Erickson possibly have to say to us?" and you sat there and waited and nobody raised their hand so you thought, "Hmmm, maybe he didn't say anything stupid today."?  Not so fast, Brain-o!

Turns out, Erick the only begotten son of Erick was test marketing his bad self in a manner most inappropriate and self-aggrandizing:  (h/t to the Goon Squad at Shorts and Pants)

By the time you read this, a lot of ink and air time will have been spent on this Politico article suggesting that the Republicans tremble when conservatives like Rush, Hannity, Beck, or even me says something.

Give me just a moment here...  OK.  Um, really, Erick?  Republicans tremble when you say something? I had no idea.  But hey, I'm a magnanimous motherfucker and I'm willing to give a fellow blogger the benefit of the doubt, so let's check out that Politico article... shall we?

Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or influence.

OK, I see your Limbaugh and your Beck there... let's double check and... nope, don't see any mention of "ERICK ERICKSON" anywhere in that paragraph.  Oh, I know!  CTR + F with my Firefox intertwangatron viewmaster device!  Huh... there's your Hannity, down there at the bottom... still no mention of "ERICK ERICKSON", though. 

This is certainly odd.  If I didn't know better, I'd think Erick Erickson was just making up stories about how he was totally at that huge party with all the cool kids and OMG! he was so wasted!!  And totally got laid!  What?  He's laid plenty!  Girlfriend, Canada, etc. 

But perhaps I judge too harshly.  Upon further reading, we see that Erick is a true team player.  After all, there's no "I" in RedState, right?

This is all coordinated. Harry Reid does not have the votes. And Obama is now determined to split the GOP. The best way to do that is to play to their vanity — accuse the Republicans of being Rush Limbaugh’s boot lickers. How do they prove otherwise? They vote for the public option and prove they aren’t tools of tea party activists, talk radio guys, and RedState bloggers.

RedState bloggers, yes.  Perhaps the most feared and respected voices on the... wait a minute.  Skippity flippity Hell, let's check that article again!  CTR + F, ho!  Oh... that's sad.  Once again, Firefox has failed to find any mention of "ERICK ERICKSON" or "REDSTATE" in that darned Politico piece.  Maybe it's my computer but I can't even find the word "blogger" in that article.

Well, shit... Now I'm right back to my original hypothesis, i.e., Erick Erickson is a self-aggrandizing ass clown trying to ride the coattails of real, actual media personalities in an effort to make himself appear relevant and possibly important.  I know, it sounds crazy but... 

Sometimes the internets just make me sad.  Oh, wait!  Rock salt!  Yay, relevance! and what have you...

[Update] - Artist's conception?  It goes a little something like this.

Rip -

Blogger's Union Fight Song

One of the genuine problems the right wing has going forward that the Conservative Movement ought to contemplate, but won't, is that the people spearheading their resurgence are stupid assholes. Erick Son of Erick, for instance, is about as intelligent as a fucking dirt-clod, and that's all he anyhow has to throw.

Here the Son of Erick burbles about how Liberal Bloggers were Very Silly for going after Joe Lieberman in a primary.

Thank you lefty bloggers so very much for primarying Joe Lieberman and helping him be bold enough to shaft you.

The reason Joe Lieberman got targeted in a primary is that he's not now and has never ever been a reliable liberal vote on anything that matters to us. In other words, he got targeted because he had, and has, a very clear tendency to support the Other Side whenever it comes to anything important. 

But whatever. Debate the wisdom of a certain move by the Left Base, if you will. But don't so it while you're waging a fucking jihad against GOP Moderates, lest ye look look like at best a crowlin ferlie, and at worst a shithead. (That last link is et passim, of course. It also shows a rather spectacular ignorance of NY state politics.)

It is also worth pointing out that one of the key differences between the Left Base and the Right Base is that the Left Base isn't barking loony. On healthcare, it really is true that every other Western Democracy has tons more governmental involvement in doctoring than the US does, and yet none of these countries are run by Totalitarian Despots. Norway and Blade Runner are different. Norway has better healthcare. Even Scotland is no dystopia! The Left Base admits this; the Right Base squeals "socialism" and pees themselves.

Sigh...

And then there is this. I've been trying to cope with the awesome idiocy involved in Erick Erickson trying to explicate a Great Book written by Jonah Goldberg... it wearies the soul. 

As you may know, RedState has started a Great Books style program. We are rather slowly making our way through a series of books on conservative thought and ideas. We have started with Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

When Jonah Goldberg's Great Ideas are going too fast for you, shoot yourself.

“Contrary to his relentless assertions in Mein Kampf, Hitler had no great foundational ideas or ideological system. His genius lay in the realization that people wanted to rally to ideas and symbols. . . . Time and again in Mein Kampf, Hitler makes it clear that he believed his greatest gift to the party wasn’t his ideas but his ability to speak,” Goldberg writes. I’m reminded of that story Harry Reid tells about Obama where Obama said he, Obama, had a gift. “A real gift, Harry,” he said. It was oration.

This is not to make an Obama=Hitler comparison.

Yes it is. That's why you made it.

It is just to note that like most good demagogues, Hitler and Obama both know the public is more interested in the silver tongue and the Greco-Roman columns as a backdrop than they are in the substantive policy positions.

So Hitler = Obama. Reagan knew "this" too, but let's not mention him. Or any other fucking politician ever. Ha ha! You are eloquent and have stagecraft! You know that most people are not conversant with intricate policy issues like tariffs and such! JUST LIKE HITLER!

That, perhaps, more than anything is the take away from Chapter 2 of Liberal Fascism. Hitler stood for nothing except hatred of the Jews. He was happy to do or say anything to get elected so long as it meant extermination of the Jews and a bolstering of the Germany self.

Lebensraum? Crushing Weimar parliamentary democracy? Rearmament? Reoccupation of the Ruhr? Repudiating Versailles? "The Germany self"? Is Erick Erickson really this baby-brained?

What is also worth nothing is that contrary to left-wing myth about corporatism and the Nazis, derived in part because of the rivalry between communism and nazism, when the Nazis did put out public policy positions, they were right out of the progressive left.

The Social Democrats always wanted to put forward the Nuremberg laws, then, but never got around to it in the 1920s? The Social Democrats wanted to deep-six parliamentary democracy in exchange for the Leadership Principle? The Social Democrats were the prime movers in favor of expropriating Jewish businesses and firing Jewish professors? It was the "progressive left" in Germany in the 1920s that let Hitler out of prison after attempting what was clearly armed treason?

Erick Erickson is pig-ignorant. So is Jonah Goldberg, for that matter. But Erickson is even dumber, Lord Preserve Us:

Jonah does a great job showing that Nazism was distinct from Mussolini’s Fascism and where Mussolini derived much of his platform from his own thinking, Hitler built on existing ideas and, frankly, used leftwing ideas more for filler so he wasn’t just campaigning on the extermination of Jews.

Even accepting the "logic" here, the fact that Hitler never really believed any of that left wing hooey is supposed to be evidence that Hitler was a Man of the Left...? How does that work?

Oh but what am I even saying. Erick Erickson and Jonah Goldberg are very, very stupid people. Gah! Gah! Gah!

A. Grandma's Underpants

Q. What we see through you like.  As Bart Simpson put it.

In the comments to the last post:

You know I find this a little disconcerting. First Obama goes into all this gay rights crap that nobody cares about, and now Reid introduces the Public Option? Most of us don't want to see socialized medicine. Now I voted for Obama last time, but if the Democrats succeed in socializing medicine, or even try to do so, I will NOT be voting for him or any other Democrat next time around. Just my two cents.

Posted by: center left grrrl 

First week on the Internet, is it?

The Finest Joke Is upon Us

Gracious.

In a statement released just before Reid announced his chamber's final reform bill will include an iteration of the government plan, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) charged Reid was a "partisan bully" who is out of touch with his own constituents.

"Wah Harry Reid successfully picked on us" = least impressive complaint ever.

And Kermit Thought Being Green Was Tough

--MonicaA

This was on the RNC Facebook page... for an entire WEEK! What can you say after viewing such hatred? Some things you can laugh off. This is not one of those things.

h/t: Watertiger

Waste No Time Lacking Guts

This is very interesting. Apparently Newt Gingrich is going to run for president if the citizenry demands it of him. Or, as he puts it, if "there's a requirement as citizens that we run."

I've long been at a loss as to the necessity or even point of Newt Gingrich, and I cannot imagine the nature of the emergency that would cause the nation to cry out as one, "hurrah! THAT'S OUR FAILED UNLIKEABLE HALFWIT DOUCHEBAG! This is his hour, that shithead!"

I don't think I'll ever see this eventuality arise, nor do I especially wish to. But the circumstances involved would be extraordinary, to say the least.

Kathryn Jean Lopez Keeps Stiff Upper Lip in the Face of Dangling Testicle References

Over at The Corner, the inmates are still all open-mouthed at the mention of dangling testicles. Jay Nordlinger, for one, has long been fascinated with the concept of testicles between the lips. The mere notion of teabagging suffices to make Kathryn Jean Lopez gasp:

Re: Teabagger  

I suspect many of the people who will happily describe their movement as such will not really know of or not particularly care about the definition 360 and the rest are into. I may be delusional, but I think the American Revolution still trumps the urban dictionary in much of the country.

She may be delusional, of course, but surely she has a point about how "tea-bagging" has long been associated with the American Revolution in the popular imagination.

The general consensus in those precincts is that the tea-baggers should attempt to claim the tea-bagger term in exactly the same way as black people get to use bad words that white people can't. Nordlinger:

This is the way I put it in a post on Monday: “I myself am afraid that ‘teabagger’ is here to stay. And perhaps conservatives will ‘own’ the insult, as they say? Or maybe they have owned it already? Alternatively, is ‘teabagger’ to be a conservative N-word, acceptable — even joyously employed — among conservatives, but nasty and impermissible from liberals?"

I think this is an excellent idea for them and I recommend it without reservation as something they should campaign and agitate for relentlessly. I can't think of a single thing that could possibly go wrong with right wing activists calmly explaining to the nation that they are Out and Proud Teabaggers in exactly the same sense as black people call themselves niggers.

K-Lo and the gang all need to commence "joyously" calling each other "teabaggers" immediately. Jesus, I am sure, demands it.