Whiskey Fire

Ann Althouse: Perfect Shit

The shitquessence of Althouse.

I win forever.

GWPDA!

Sample of the Edifying Discourse chez Althouse:

It is good that this liberal and progressive jewish formulated media construct of victims, moral authority, special wisdom from victimhood and emotional blackmail against any that criticize the Puppetteers manipulating the Cindy Sheehans and Gabbys - arrived fairly recently.

Wow.

My Comments Section is populated by Degenerate Redsnouts... but holy shit!

!

And then, moar Althouse Commenter Smartitude:

Gifford is a dumb stupid bitch. Fuck her and her weenie husband.

Yeah, you deserve mass-killing guns, Mister Althouse Commenter. Because of how smart and well-adjusted you are.

Hi Ann Althouse! I remember everything!

Unpossible

Wait -- sharp cuts in government spending are bad for economic growth?

As if! Looks like the li-beral lame-stream media is out fooling the sheeple again. As one of our nation's top economic minds explains,

What’s perhaps more stunning is the idea that the so-called recovery in its fourth year still cannot stand on its own legs without massive government stimulus.  After all, federal spending has remained at the $3.8 trillion level for four years, with its percentage of GDP around 25%, far above the 20% post-1960s norm.  Perhaps that’s part of the reason that the economy is still stagnating, rather than a reason to expect recovery.

Stupid federal spending, being the only thing keeping us from dropping into total collapse. Clearly, we need to cut all federal spending immediately. In the ensuing crisis sales of AR-15s will spike in response to the demand provided by local patriotic militias, leading to immediate recovery and the end of the national debt.

On "Gobshite"

So, Erick the Son of Erick is no longer doing whatever the hell he was doing at CNN, beyond being stupid there for money.

This from E+E is winsome.

For three years I have received unmitigated hate and loathing from the left and, ironically, from a lot of folks on the right.

I don't hate Erick Erickson. I love Erick Erickson! That Erick Erickson is a major figure on the American right is awesome! He's an obvious goddamn unlikeable horrible twerpy idiot! MORE ERICK ERICKSON! MORE ERICK ERICKSON!

That CNN hired him in the first place was surely a disgrace -- to CNN.

But let us talk about swear words. Our friend Charles Pierce shouts to us out:

 First of all, I'm absolutely certain that the redoubtable Thers, my fellow Ringsend cowboy, who runs the Whiskey Fire shebeen along the docks of Blogistan, has played the gobshite card as much as I have. As for the observation by my old Zuccotti Park buddy sub-Left'enant Blimp there, I do not dismiss all who "dissent" as gobshites. Here at the blog, the term is strictly reserved for the people on the Sunday showz. Other people with whom I disagree are omadhauns, gossoons and, occasionally, thooleramawns. I hope that clears things up.

"Gobshite" is a wonderful word. It does not, I think, translate precisely into American. But the full connotations of the intended meaning are nevertheless quite clear, nationality aside. Get called a "gobshite" and you know what you've been called. It's lingua fuckyoua.

(This blog has long pioneered the term "fucknose," in the Interests of Science. I say this for posterity.)

But then let us recircle to The Small Fry of The Same Name, Erickson -- bearing in mind this from the stuff C Pierce quotes:

The most recent, from August 2012, was a quote from an apparently right-wing "political observer" named Charlie Cooke. He was discussing, you guessed it, Charlie Pierce: "Pierce's hyperbole transcends mere disagreement, as does his dismissal of all those who dissent as ‘gobshites.'"

Oh right.

What these gobshites like Cooke, or Erickson -- or Lord save us, Goldberg -- really hate is being called names like "gobshite," even though all they do is talk ridiculous bullshit.

What they want is Backdoor Legitimacy -- the right to talk perfect crap because they are Conservative Tribunes, and as such, Sensible. Deserving of being taken seriously... just BECAUSE. FAIRNESS. CIVILITY.

A clever ploy, it worked for a while. And it still works. Lots of dead Iraqis and unemployed Americans are grateful everyone had a nice polite conversation on an unwatched Sunday morning teevee show.

Fucknoses.

Crow on a Quilted Tent

So yesterday early evening I was trawling around for comical right-wing nonsense, and I wasn't finding very much. I ended up where all snark ends, in the foul rag and bone shop of the internet's arsehole.

The 13-Year-Old comes up behind me and peers at the laptop screen. He sees the Twitchy headline, which at that point was blazoning about how a player for the Eagles had canceled his Twitter account, for some reason.

"Really?" He said. "Someone canceled his Twitter account? Really? What is this?"

A fair cop.

The sad reality is that Greater Wingnuttia is not producing anything remarkable nowadays as far as goofiness goes. It's like looking for halfway decent dim sum in outer suburban Mordor. Maybe you'll find it, but you won't want it, it's so hellishly sad and warmed over. Even Ann Althouse is just reruns; she doesn't understand English and took the SATs, and wants links. Seen that! Boo. Boooooo.

But we persevere.

Barrel-scraping reveals that there exists the thoroughly ghastly Daily Beast, acting bravely to preserve the world's supply of bathetic horseshit.

Critics charge that ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ fails to point out torture is immoral. That ‘Girls’ is racist. And ‘Portlandia’ somehow denigrates women. Why must we demand political correctness in art—rather than just let art be art?

Oh for the love of fuck. Is there a gratuitous E. Arthur Blair reference somewhere in this mess? There is.

Dear me.

Let's back up.

The notion of "art for art's sake," "let art be art," is not some sort of Eternal Law. It is an idea that was fought for. Flaubert, the Bovary trial, and so forth.

What this means (sliding way over a lot of arguing here) is that it is disrespectful and cheapening to claim an "it's art!" defense if you are clearly falling between two stools, as it were. Are you doing art? Or politics? Or attempting history? Or what?

If you are doing art, admit the artifice. In the final analysis, Madame Bovary doesn't read like a satire -- which is not to say that it is not deeply critical of the society it so nastily depicts. It is not realism either, though.

Art is a lie that is not phony. It demands a certain odd integrity. I haven't seen Zero Dark Thirty, and so won't comment, but I'm not for a second buying the defenses laid out in the linkage. You can't claim to be making a "historical" movie and then claim "art" as a get-out-of-jail free card. Richard III is great art but crap history. Pick a camp.

Or don't -- it's a free country. But don't expect any free passes.

At any rate "stop arguing about this, it is art" is an awfully stupid thing to say.

A Long Day's Journey into Stupid

David Mamet has decided, in the twilight of his career, that his Official Artistic Achievement Statistical Records should include an asterisk indicating that as far as politics goes, he would like to be also remembered as a moron and asshole.

This is more than a little embarrassing.

For obvious reasons.

But let's get a bit closer to the bone. Mamet has truly gone nuts.

Or not -- worse, he's gone tedious.

The piece opens with a lot of childish bullshit I'll ignore out of, well, charity. And I'll just quote two paragraphs in a row in the hopes that, well, someone close to him can make him stop.

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. “One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

These are two consecutive paragraphs.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds here as to what this sort of indefensible raving means insofar as how one ought to assess Mamet's art. It rather depends on what it is you're looking for, and what criteria you're applying.

Whether a play, or a TV show, or a film, succeeds or fails according to strictly aesthetic criteria, that's a fair means of assessment.

But then when an artist becomes fairly explicitly political, or cultural political, and Mamet has long been open about how his stuff is an intervention into such debates, it's open to critique on those grounds. (I'm way glossing over a lot of arguments here, but bear with me.)

My big problem with Mamet's work is that he keeps trying to write real people into preconceived, dumb, ideological boxes. Oleanna is an interesting disaster -- it's what happens when a keen observer of the human condition accepts as preconditions of human behavior NewsMax-class sociological determinism.

Keep the Home Covering Fire Blasting

The National Review is an interesting publication. From it we learn many very fascinating lessons. For instance, The National Review tells us interesting things about American women.

On the one hand, we learn that American women should never be in military combat in other countries.

And on the other, we learn that American women, when they are in this country, are in their own homes so vulnerable to violent assault that they require the next closest thing to military-class weapons currently available.

See, that's some pretty fucking interesting shit right there.

I asked MollyI about this, and she's an American woman her own self, not that I've seen her birth certificate, and even she didn't know that American women should not be trusted in Military Combat but should however have handy in the kitchen enough firepower to defend a home or else, if the occasion arises, to shoot up an elementary school.

Color me enlightened.

Strictly Rifle Games Comedy

The American Spectator informs us that "57,000 conservatives can't be wrong," as a means of wishing me to "like" the American Spectator on Facebook.

I remain unconvinced.

I discovered this interesting hypothesis while examining this Jeffrey Lord post. Jeffrey Lord is a merry fellow; bright blue his jacket is, and also he's a twatwaffle.

Jeffrey Lord is bothered to inform us that Conservatives Have Senses of Humor while liberals, as exemplified by Conor Fruzendorff (!), are dour scolds what don't get the infinite laffs that must blossom from, for instance, this hilarious Rush Limbaugh-icism:

You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.

Right.

I can't say "I don't get it," because, I get it.

Not laughing, though. O! my charcoal heart.

After the post the American Spectator asks for your credit card information.

Because, they solemnly inform you, if you wish to login or register at the American Spectator, you will be able to participate in the Lofty Debate that is the Jeffrey Lord comments section, which would be, entirely, he's the only commenter, this:

Shit.

Imagine that you paid cash money to post an internet comment and this is what you managed to achieve.

Uh, hold on --

None of you redsnouts are allowed to comment here unless you pay me six dollars first! I'm not palying either!

Inauguration Trolling, Jenghazi Style

UPDATE: Speaking of war criminals, who does Jenghazi quote criticizing the Administration for national security management failure on 9-11? That's 9-11-2012, silly people, not that other one (whatever it was):

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony yesterday vividly demonstrated that competence is as critical as ideology when it comes to the highest ranks of national security officials.

Former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams writes, "Having worked as an assistant secretary of state and a deputy national-security adviser, I can report that even in those posts one is entirely swamped by cable traffic and needs a system to cope with it — to be sure that the really important ones get through. From all the available evidence, Hillary Clinton failed to establish such a system for herself, and that management failure is a far more important fact about her tenure than being the third woman to hold the post or having flown more miles than Condoleezza Rice."

P.S. I recommend Charles Pierce's take on all this.

Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
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Maybe the Thing with the Shoe Was a Bit Much

I didn't watch the inagural, but I'm pretty sure I have the gist of it down from reading some of the smarter, more sober commentary on it, such as this from the Wall Street Journal: Obama's "main theme was that the people are fundamentally defined through government action, and his government is here to help you." Or, coming from a thoroughly different intellectual angle, is Fred Barnes:

President Obama wants more government. In his second inaugural address, he masked the message with phrases like "collective action" and doing "things together." But these were stand-ins—euphemisms, really—for a bigger and more ambitious federal government.

Various careful observers from across the ideological spectrum have come to similar conclusions. For instance, "When he says that we're all in this together, what he really means is a benovolent government will set the agenda and the rest of you rubes will fall in and obey. No more of this nonsense about individual liberty or individual achievement."

Other thoughtful reactions include this writer's unexpected perception that the speech was an "ode to big government and collectivism," or this calm conclusion that Obama "threw the Founding Fathers to the ground, butt-reamed them, especially Thomas Jefferson, to gratify his monstrous collectivist urges, to push his extremist collectivist agenda." Gracious. (By 'butt-reamed" he means "buttfucked," but is too civil to say so.)

Now, to be fair, it's hard to dispute these conclusions, when you look at the text of the speech these expert analysts apparently heard, which has been on more or less continual repeat for over a half century, give or take.

Right.

I'm always impressed by how dull reality is when compared to the Exciting World-Historical Drama that is the Wingnut Phantasmagoria. Christ, go get a fucking job.

Rifle Games, What a Drag

We have been wondering why anyone would need, for ordinary, civilian use, a semi-automatic rifle capable of efficiently murdering numerous schoolchildren. Upon examination, we have deemed previous explanations unpersuasive and, indeed, shitheaded.

We have not however thus far contemplated the opinion of any of the fine stable of writers at National Review Online, where they all eat hay and poop on the floor. Oh, hello, Daniel Foster.

Who Needs an AR-15?

Most of the to-do over “assault weapons” is based on ignorance.

So if you ask the question, "why do you need a semi-automatic weapon capable of murdering numerous schoolchildren," you are ignorant. Fascinating.

There is some nonsense about David Letterman, and then --

in the interests of Red-Blue American harmony, I figured I’d see if I could figure out why rifles modeled on the AR-15 are the most popular in America.

Needle scratch.

No, that is not the question. That would be: why does anyone need one of these weapons?

We don't get closer than this crumb of ersatz cornpone:

Ringo tells me 5.56 is good for “varmints” but recommended the .50 Beowulf round for “hogs”

For fuck's sake.

But then we get a bit of honesty:

It can’t be denied that the cool factor is part of the popularity of the AR-15. “Tactical” is close to an erotic adjective in certain circles, and where aghast liberals see a certain brutalism in the military lines of the AR-15, others see clean lines, utility, and tactical badassery. Some folks like Ferraris, others prefer Volkswagens.

We are far removed from questions of "need."

Which would be precisely why "liberals are aghast."

I cannot accurately calculate the precise number of shits I do not give about the aesthetics of any particular make or model of rifle, or any of the thoroughly tedious ballistic boring details.

So.

You don't need this shit.

A tiny fraction of the imbeciles buying this shit are concerned with varmints. Otherwise, it is all about a masturbatory bang-bang "tactical" fantasy involving Bad Guys and the Bad Government.

Lovely.

The collateral damage of the popularity of this mass make-pretend self-absorbed hooey is that since lots of these dangerous weapons get made, inevitably a fraction of these dangerous weapons will get into the hands of maniacs.

And absolutely none of the masturbatory "tactical" nuts give a shit about the "dead kid" consequences of their selfish, dickish, geekery.

Glad to have that cleared up.

MAS. Our NRO jerkoff pal follows up, the verb shift from "need" to "want" utterly forgotten in the uninteresting bang-bang geeking. Jesus fuck, kiddies, go build sonic screwdrivers or some shit and grow the fuck up.