Whiskey Fire

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.

About the Comments....

Hi all --

I axed TypePad about the comments problem, and this is what I heard back:

We've recently begun moving our accounts to Impermium, the system we'll be using to help combat spam from this point forward. We have more information on this here: http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/retiring-typepad-anti-spam-and-switching-to-impermium.html. Impermium will have some growing pains as the filters improve.

In the meantime, please continue to publish the comments that were incorrectly marked as spam. This will help teach the new spam system what to let through.

Again, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. It'll definitely get better and we appreciate your patience with us during this time.

I hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Longtime readers will know why we're here at TypePad.

Anyway, sorry, it is what it is.

MAS. If there are still problems, let me know in the comments.

Wait....

West By God

This God

As we know, to err is human.
But forgiving is for liberals who aren't tough enough to waterboard.

P.S. Yes, the Whiskey Fire filter is on the rampage again.

But I can only rescue ones that are on posts I write.

Posted by ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© and cross-posted at my place. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
~

The Smart Ones

The Internet Right believes that they Know Things, which is amusing, yet troubling.

Here is a comical emanation from Freedom Works, for instance. The barely sentient chimpanzee who was paid in syphilis to produce it believes that he has Done a Number on the Left because on the occasion of the first Earth Day in 1970, a lot of people said "we're fucked if we don't do anything."

And then the Federal Government created the EPA, and in lots of easily measurable ways it worked, and so the bad things predicted in 1970 about what would happen if nothing were done... turned out to be broadly accurate, because something was done!

Hooray for democratic government! The river in your city is unlikely to ignite; that is a Win for Freedom from Combustible Rivers.

But there are always gigs open for revisionist history, as this Townhall monkey demonstrates in his desperate, screechy plea for MOAR BANANAS. Best part!

What is true, I venture, is that our national trip into the vortex of the Iraqi-Afghan-Muslim-terror-war whirlpool was predestined under existing circumstances -- an aspect of fate; postponable, maybe, but unavoidable.

Such was always the dolorous fate of the Ty-D-Bowl Commander-in-Chief-Man, I guess.

As to why exactly these people write like Bulwer-Lytton just ate six cans of beans, who can say, but light a match under them, I dare you. Or inquire about who generally you can count on for a fancy prose style?

Other Dexter-class geniuses inform us that it is totally stupid and perhaps gay but anyway LIEBERAL to at all wonder if the older Boston bomber might have gone crazy, at least partially, because he got hit on the head a lot.

Here is the Snappy Riposte of Jim Treacher, who if he has not been hit on the head a lot, is devoid of excuses for talking:

As for Tamerlan’s little brother? That wuss doesn’t look like he could beat up Honey Boo Boo. Although he’s almost as good as her at driving a car.

Honey Boo Boo! Wuss! Honey Boo Boo! These are jokes! AIRPLANE FOOD IS NOT VERY GOOD!

The little brother was a wrestler; "Jim Treacher" is someone who exists on the Internet. Let the utterly pointless asinine cock-measuring begin!

"Treacher" wants us to know that it is absurd to think that one of the reasons the older brother started to go crazy might be brain damage, because the Obvious Answer is Islam. This is because almost every Muslim plants bombs and shoots cops, while every multiple concussion sufferer hugs kittens.

Which is not to say that the concussion theory is all-explanatory! It obviously isn't! Yes, crazy far-right Islamism exists! (Al Qaeda is obviously far-right, conservative-fascism. Radical Islam is dangerous, like the NRO Fifth Column.)

But is "Islam!" an even worse explanation?

Let's ask Katie!

Guns, guns, guns. Love, love, love. America needs guns and love.

See?

Now we have made progress.

This One Is on the House, This One Is Better Than Ever

A debate about civil rights, the law, & terrorism is occuring. Everyone wants to hear from John Yoo!

It's all quite disgusting, but here is the weevil in the biscuit:

I agree that treating an American citizen as an enemy combatant is an extraordinary step. But it is an option. What is disturbing is that President Obama and Attorney General Holder are so in the grips of their ideological belief that terrorism is a law-enforcement, rather than military, problem that they made this decision with insufficient information.

If only they'd waterboarded him as a prudent first step, who knows what they would have discovered.

Nuts.

MAS. Surely these two had Professional Backing and Advanced Terrorist Training.

Ordinary criminal law cannot possibly cope with such sophisticated Armed Jihadist International Plotting.

Why Does Talking Make Conservatives Sound Stupid?

One of the toddlers at Powerline has thrown down the rattle.

It's the usual boo-hooing about how Liberals are Dumb and Conservatives are "normal people," which is rather a stretch and convinces nobody.

Nevertheless evidence for the thesis that Liberals are Stupid is presented. The Powertoddler:

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Gov. Deval Patrick said it’s hard to imagine why someone would deliberately harm “innocent men, women and children in the way that these two fellows did.”

Hark to the playpen riposte!

It is, indeed, hard to imagine if you aren’t evil. But this is a banal and singularly unhelpful observation. Experience tells us that some people do indeed want to harm innocent men, women and children in this fashion. Muslims alone carry out, on the average, several terrorist attacks a day for the purpose of harming innocent men, women and children, and they are by no means the only source of evil in the world. So our public officials should stop expressing amazement at the existence of evil and start figuring out how to protect the rest of us from it.

In some universe this is a Winning Rejoinder. In this universe, didn't Governor Patrick just shut down a major American city in order to catch a single terrorist?

Anyway it is not clear what the Powertoddler means by talking about Muslims, who are, startlingly, "not the only source of evil in the world." Presumably what Patrick is doing in regards to the evil-protecting part of his job would be "maintaining state and local law-enforcement agencies."

The Powertoddler's critique is rather mushbrained. Perhaps he is wondering why the MA National Guard has not as yet invaded Kyrgyzstan?

But there is more Incisive Commentary! The Powertoddler takes issue with a piece in the Atlantic arguing that it would be wrong to think of all Muslims as terrorists. This is because, while "normal people" know that "terrorism is rare" in America, "Islam is the main source of terrorism and mass murder in our time," and so in order to figure out Sandy Hook, we must look to Tehran, or something.

We also learn the following:

In proper English usage, “privilege” is a noun, not a verb.

Which is, as it happens, wrong.

One of the more lamentable but unsupportable contentions of American Conservatives is that they are not absolute nostrilfucking toe-web-douching shit-for-earwax extruding dinglefucker idiots.

Ochone.