nancynall.com » A small rant.
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A small rant.

I’ve been read­ing about Mrs. Palin. My head didn’t explode until I read this:

She’s a hit [Mona Charen]
I’m get­ting tons of mail like this:

Sarah is real!!! What a fab­u­lous con­trast with Obama, who is not real. Sarah is from Amer­ica. Obama is not.

If it was meant to bait me, well nom nom nom, I am eat­ing the bait. I now offi­cially hate these weasel fucks. And that’s say­ing something.

For 20 years, I lived in Indi­ana, where you can’t make a Dan Quayle joke in mixed com­pany, where our right-wing edi­to­r­ial page reg­u­larly got com­plaints that it wasn’t con­ser­v­a­tive enough, where the same thing was said about Rush Lim­baugh, blah blah blah. I devel­oped a mantra, which I’ve dis­cussed here before, but indulge me. I’d say: I have arrived at this point in time on my own path, and so has this per­son before me. We have reached dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions along the way. Ommmm. This kept me from going insane and per­haps even made me a bet­ter per­son. I should have said it out loud more often. Hell, I should have screamed it in a few people’s faces. I cer­tainly feel like doing so now.

That smelly lit­tle excres­cence above, that’s it in a nut­shell. These are the peo­ple I want gone. Not just out of the White House, off the national stage. I want them out of the coun­try, put on boats and sent to the south­ern ocean to cir­cle the pole until they break up in the ice and drown. Mona Charen, daugh­ter of priv­i­lege, who went from Liv­ingston, N.J. to Barnard to the White House to the Cap­i­tal Gang to the Cor­ner, approv­ingly quot­ing an anony­mous turd-juggler call­ing Sarah Palin “from Amer­ica” and Barack Obama not from Amer­ica. [Enter: Ghost of Ash­ley Mor­ris] Fuck you, you fuck­ing fucks. [Exit: Ghost] You are un-American. You don’t deserve to live in this coun­try. You are sim­ply too much, dare I say, of an elitist.

Since the ascen­dancy of Ronald Rea­gan, these peo­ple have been the self-appointed arbiters of Who Gets to be Amer­i­can. For nearly 30 years, they’ve sat in their well-paid jobs typ­ing with their soft lit­tle hands, mak­ing the world safe for them­selves. They are liars and hyp­ocrites of the worst sort: Divorce is OK for Peggy Noo­nan, bad for you. Work­ing moth­ers named Phyl­lis Schlafly or Mary Matalin or Mona Charen are good, but your job takes you away from your pre­cious chil­dren just so you can be ful­filled, you self­ish bitch. Homo­sex­u­als who want to live together under a legal con­tract will destroy mar­riage, but homo­sex­u­als mar­ried to opposite-sex part­ners (Hi, Mrs. Craig!) won’t. Bill “Double-down” Ben­nett repack­ages Aesop’s fables as “The Book of Virtues” and gam­bles his roy­alty checks in casino VIP rooms, but that’s OK.

I could go on.

Of course it would be Mona Charen who would do this for me. Our paper used to run her col­umn, and I’d read it every so often. Her big issues were com­mu­nism and cul­ture, and like most colum­nists, filed dis­patches from the home front once in a while. She nearly dis­lo­cated her shoul­der pat­ting her­self on the back for stay­ing home with her chil­dren — she’d blush­ingly describe her child-care arrange­ments while she penned her death­less prose as “hav­ing help” — and occa­sion­ally would express her sim­mer­ing resent­ment that she’d given up her career (writ­ing speeches for Nancy Rea­gan: Wikipedia) and its finan­cial rewards for her kids, while oth­ers hadn’t. One day she wrote that a fam­ily with a $200,000 annual income could hardly be con­sid­ered afflu­ent. In her, ahem, elite cir­cles, this is cer­tainly true. And yet she claims to be in touch with the “real” Amer­ica, while every­one with a D after their name isn’t. You couldn’t make this shit up on a head of win­dow­pane, folks. You really couldn’t.

And who wouldn’t be a lit­tle resent­ful? She went to Barnard and George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity Law School! All that to write twice a week for Cre­ators Syn­di­cate and be part of the Cor­ner? That’s a waste of a good edu­ca­tion. (I keep won­der­ing how long it’ll be before these folks come out against edu­cat­ing girls at all, if they’re just going to stay home with their kids any­way. In this arena, the FLDS folks are bleeding-edgers.)

You know why “the base” loves Palin? It comes up time and again, as it’s about the only really notable thing about her: She had her last baby, even though she knew ahead of time it had Down Syn­drome. This is a noble act, to be sure, but I don’t see how it qual­i­fies one for high office. And so much for women being judged as any­thing other than a col­lec­tion of female body parts. (The fringi­est part of the fringe will won­der, if she’s so pure ‘n’ all, why she even had the test in the first place, oppo­si­tion to all pre­na­tal test­ing being a big sig­ni­fier for these folks.)

But back to the cul­ture war­riors. They’ll snicker behind their hands at the funny names black peo­ple give their kids but think Track and Trig and Wil­low are fine names for, er, white chil­dren. Palin, from the 49th state, is “from Amer­ica,” and Obama, from the 50th, isn’t. Palin hunts and fishes in exur­ban Anchor­age — good. Obama works in inner-city Chicago — bad. They’re too self-deluded to see the truth before their eyes, that they’re both “Amer­ica,” an Amer­ica that can sup­port and ele­vate peo­ple from such diver­gent back­grounds, who make such dif­fer­ent choices. But they can’t see that, because only peo­ple who make choices they approve of get to be Americans.

You might say they don’t mat­ter, these lit­tle foot sol­diers. Yes, they do. They mat­ter now more than ever, because they’re the ampli­fiers. They’re the blog­gers and other chat­ter­ers who pick up the talk­ing points and talk them to death.

Later in the day at the Corner:

Not from Amer­ica [Mona Charen]

Did not mean to endorse what one let­ter writer said about Obama not being from Amer­ica. He obvi­ously is — from the fur­thest left part. I just loved the guy’s phrase “more pre­cious than pearls is a woman who likes to fish and hunt.” FWIW, I do neither.

Really, Mona? Could’ve fooled me.

By the way, I fish and have no par­tic­u­lar prob­lem with hunt­ing, although I’ve never done it. And I’m vot­ing for Obama.

Posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 11:04 am
in Media, Uncategorized.

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121 responses to
“A small rant.”

  1. moe99 said on August 30th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Wow! Let me never get on your bad side, Nance.

  2. Danny said on August 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    Totally OT:

    I just have to share with you one of my favorite things here in San Diego — the beach at Del Mar, right around 18th street and the life­guard tower. One of the very cool thing about this beach, other than it being big and clean with soft sand and hav­ing vol­ley­ball nets and bath­rooms is that the train goes by on the cliffs nearby. Yes­ter­day, my nephews and I were catch­ing waves all day while the trains were going by sound­ing their horns.

    Just spec­tac­u­lar.

  3. beb said on August 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    Wow, what a rant. I’m with you fully here. It’s like these Repub­li­can talk­ing heads are some another planet because they’ll say things that are dis­con­nected from any­thing that nor­mal peo­ple see and hear.

  4. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    And if McCain had tapped Rom­ney, we’d be … talk­ing about Tem­ple under­gar­ments. And why his kids all did LDS mis­sion­ary stints, but none went into the mil­i­tary. And flip-flopping as Mass­a­chu­setts governor.

    Paw­lenty? We heard what would have been said about that one the first two hours after the announce­ment of Palin, as Dem strate­gists scrib­bled out Pawlenty’s name on their talk­ing points and made oddly worded (if heart­felt) state­ments about Pawl-Palin’s inex­pe­ri­ence and lack of global understanding.

    The fact that it took Obama’s cam­paign hours to start coun­ter­punch­ing on Palin’s own record and cre­den­tials (or lack thereof) meant that the Speech bump was effec­tively shut out, which Chuck Todd pointed out qui­etly but often on MSNBC. Over grills all week­end peo­ple will chat about life while mak­ing moose­burger jokes, and next Tues­day the focus swings back to whether the wrinkly white-haired guy is cer­ti­fi­ably crazy, just hot tem­pered, or tem­pera­men­tally suited to leadership.

    McCain-Palin: Pick­ing Up the Elec­toral Map and Giv­ing It a Good Shake

  5. a different Connie said on August 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    Wow, Nance, you’ve said it all for me. Congrats.

  6. moe99 said on August 30th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​monthly​.com/

    Just read the first 6 arti­cles. All on Palin. Any­one who thinks she’s a solid pick has drunk the Kool Aid.

  7. jcburns said on August 30th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Wow, Nance represent!

    I’d just like to say as a white-bread guy from Ohio, I am exactly as not-American as Barack Obama. Pre­cisely. proudly, in every detail just as not-from-America. For those weasels of you who draw a line and try to push Obama onto the other side, away from you and “your kind,” I proudly step across that line and join him…and every­one else you exclude.

  8. Jolene said on August 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    I dunno, Jeff. McCain has surely shaken up the news. Whether he shakes up the elec­toral map remains to be seen. My sense is her will mainly bring out white evan­gel­i­cals, who have not been enthu­si­as­tic about McCain. There are a lot of them, I guess, and they can get pretty fired up, but the Repub­li­can base is still smaller than the Demo­c­ra­tic base. There may be some Hillary sup­port­ers who will vote for her, but there can­not be many who are totally devoid of rea­son, as they’d have to be to vote for some­one whose prin­ci­ples are so totally different.

  9. moe99 said on August 30th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    I think this let­ter to Andrew Sul­li­van, who Jeff must agree is a con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit on his same band­width, offers a bit of pause:

    “I had been reluc­tant to acknowl­edge how flawed and dead the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has become; that’s over now. No more excuses, no more cling­ing to old visions of ratio­nal dis­course and prin­ci­pled debate. I really have wit­nessed the death of con­ser­vatism and its replace­ment by a kind of toxic bab­bitry which would be merely laugh­able or cringe­wor­thy if it were not also so extra­or­di­nar­ily dangerous.

    This elec­tion year has been a series of rev­e­la­tions and dis­il­lu­sion­ments – the crudely ugly tac­tics of Lim­baugh and Han­nity (and – worse – their embrace by Buckley’s heirs at National Review), the thinly-veiled racism and nativism of the cam­paign against Obama, the trans­par­ently cruel and God-hating ide­ol­ogy of move­ment Chris­tians; but – even though dis­mayed by McCain’s bizarre cam­paign – I had retained some illu­sions as recently as this morn­ing. I believed McCain to be at least a patriot, sin­cerely con­cerned with issues of national security.

    His nom­i­na­tion of Sarah Palin ended that illu­sion, too.
    No remotely seri­ous politi­cian – no hon­est patriot – would think of plac­ing this indi­vid­ual a heart­beat away from the Oval Office, how­ever admirable she may be, how­ever lively her biography.

    More­over, the ela­tion on the right regard­ing Palin’s nom­i­na­tion made clear to me that none of them has ever been remotely seri­ous about national secu­rity, either. On the con­trary, as the left has insisted for years, for them it really has all been about polit­i­cal advan­tage, noise and blus­ter and ugli­ness with no core of prin­ci­ple, no gen­uine strate­gic commitment.

    The very same peo­ple who, only yes­ter­day, insisted that Obama’s resume was too dan­ger­ously thin to entrust him with the over­sight of our national secu­rity, today are cel­e­brat­ing Palin’s acces­sion as a tri­umph for con­ser­vatism (evi­dently this is because she is hos­tile to both abor­tion and polar bears). Their hypocrisy is stag­ger­ing – they truly do believe in noth­ing but their own enti­tle­ment to power by any means.

    And I’m very much afraid I must con­clude this is as true of McCain as it is of his ghastly cheer­lead­ers, the Lim­baughs and the Han­ni­tys. Noth­ing else could explain the ele­va­tion of a woman so sin­gu­larly unqual­i­fied in every aspect save gender.”

    http://​andrew​sul​li​van​.the​at​lantic​.com/​t​h​e​_​d​a​i​l​y​_​d​i​s​h​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​c​o​n​s​e​r​.​h​t​m​l#more

  10. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Let­ter to, not from … Andrew is still try­ing to get his bear­ings on this one, which i’m sure he won’t sup­port, but his view­point over time will be worth check­ing. Con­ser­vatism is chang­ing, which is not quite an oxy­moron, but it is a pecu­liar thing to watch. Could drift/fracture into two or three move­ments, but i think that’s true just under the sur­face for the Dems, too. Major realign­ment over the next ten years strikes me as smart money to bet, but which issues will be with which group i couldn’t even begin to pre­dict. The biggest chunk, made up either of mostly D-heritage or R-wreckage parts, will be soft-pro-life, or pro-choice-with-reservations.

  11. John Good said on August 30th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Wow. Thanks for speak­ing for those of us who still have to deal with the Sum­mit City Koolaid Tee­to­talers. Nicely done.

  12. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Actu­ally, thanks to Andrew, if you want to reflect on com­pli­cated con­ser­v­a­tives — http://​www​.latimes​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​l​a​-​o​e​-​k​i​r​c​h​i​c​k​2​6​-​2​0​0​8​a​u​g​2​6​,​0​,​1​4​0​0​4​6​0​.story

    And i’m not sure i ever men­tioned — i’m pro-McCain among many other rea­sons because i like the idea of tight­en­ing and defin­ing down tor­ture past water­board­ing, and i’m cer­tain McCain will get that done and make it stick. I’m not for it for both moral and prac­ti­cal purposes.

  13. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    All us chicks ‘n babes are sposed to dash over to the right right now and become cheer­lead­ers for Mrs. Palin cuz Hillary was cheated goldurn it and we want a girl on the ticket. And Sarah can skin an elk and make chili out of him, too. woo hoo … Yep, that’s pres­i­den­tial, alrighty.

  14. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    “TOXIC BABBITRY“
    I love it.

    Danny, on beaches in SD — we love OB for the pier and Dog Beach and Nick’s and OBistro and of course for The Black, Your Momma’s Mug and Rancho’s … I’m mak­ing myself home­sick for SD. wah.

  15. Joe Kobiela said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    N,
    I like you I really do.
    I have read you since you started in the fort.
    I remem­ber your pic­ture by the old Grey­hound bus sta­tion.
    But for God sakes, if this woman had a D by her name instead of a R, you would be singing her praises, at least give her a chance to speak. Every­one said they want change, not the same old Wash­ing­ton ilk, (see Bid­den) now we have some­one dif­fer­ent and you slam her because of what other peo­ple write.
    Put away the Dem vs Rep and give her the same chance and respect you would if she was on your team.
    Pilot Joe

  16. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    “you slam her because of what other peo­ple write”

    Is that why she’s get­ting slammed? I thought it was because of her obvi­ous lack of cre­den­tials, capa­bil­ity, expe­ri­ence and intellect.

    We don’t need a damn des­per­ate house­wife for a president.

  17. MaryC said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    At least, some of Mona’s read­ers are forc­ing her to defend (or weasel away from) that “Obama’s not from Amer­ica” statement.

    Now if we could only get Mona’s cor­re­spon­dent to explain exactly why Obama’s not from Amer­ica and Palin is. What could pos­si­bly be the dif­fer­ence between the two? Palin likes to hunt and fish, that must be it.

  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    Only another day left to donate to the can­di­date who promised to stay with pub­lic financ­ing and kept his promise!

    https://​secure​.john​m​c​cain​.com/​C​o​n​t​r​i​b​u​t​e​/​C​o​n​t​r​i​b​u​t​e​B.aspx

    McCain-Palin: Real Elec­tion Reform!

    (No rush on post­ing the Obama dona­tion web­site, since you have weeks and weeks to donate to that campaign …)

  19. Joe Kobiela said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Ah Suzi,
    She run­ning for v-president, not pres­i­dent.
    and I still say if she was D instead of a R you would love her.
    Joe

  20. nancy said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    Joe, if I failed to make it clear, let me do so now: This has noth­ing to do with Sarah Palin, and every­thing to do with the peo­ple who have decided, on the basis of know­ing lit­tle more about her than the sketch of her biog­ra­phy, that she must be One of Them. Fur­ther, that being One of Them, she embod­ies all that is good and right and true about this coun­try, unlike Obama, who is wrong and bad and prob­a­bly a secret Muslim.

    I prob­a­bly would like Mrs. Palin just fine if we knew one another in real life. We share many of the same interests.

  21. coozledad said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    Sarah’s a slap in the face to intel­li­gent women. It’s hilar­i­ous watch­ing these Repub­li­cans won­der why women won’t back Bub­bles. You don’t get it, guys. Never will. It sim­ply isn’t pos­si­ble for tor­ture advo­cates and racists to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between some­one whose vagina is a clown car, and some­one who has man­aged to make their own way despite the oppo­si­tion of the broth­er­hood of the holy penis.
    Sarah Palin is just another Clarence Thomas:The Repub­li­can par­ody of equal­ity. They laugh about it when they’re pop­ping each other’s fat arses with tow­els in the steam­room.
    The pre­tense to nuance kills me too.These guys want to be able to water­board peo­ple and use it as evi­dence in a court of law. And they will use it on US cit­i­zens. We’ve already seen how their nip­ples get hard when they’re on a witch hunt. If you think water­board­ing isn’t tor­ture, and you don’t think it runs counter to the spirit and let­ter of the Con­sti­tu­tion, then you’re sim­ply a lost cause, and a fail­ure as a human being. You are ill.

  22. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

    I would gladly for­feit our life­long dream of win­ning Power­ball, buy­ing an island and declar­ing an inde­pen­dent monar­chy if I could infil­trate one of those faux town meet­ings and ask McCain “How do we beat the bitch?” And what does the bitch think about Keat­ing Five?

    There is so much of this that assaults com­mon decency and intel­li­gence. Women will vote knee­jerk for a woman that thinks car­bon dat­ing is voodoo, Cre­ation­ism should be nation­ally man­dated sci­ence teach­ing, inter­fer­ing in tawdry small-town romance, low rent ren­de­vous need a governor’s inter­fer­ence, and the Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees a right to untram­meled gun-show deal­ing in assault weapons.

    The love of my life is spit­ting bul­lets over this trav­esty. but I think she’s miss­ing the great­est insult. It’s the name. Michael Palin may be a lesser light in the Monty Pan­theon, b-b-b-but he’s a pescophile that truly loves a Fish Called Wanda. Sarah Palin does dis­ser­vice to his name. This c*nt believes in slaugh­ter­ing fishes for her liveli­hood. Well, no she doesn’t, and any­body that has some idea about her hus­band Fabio reel­ing in the Great White Salmon is an idiot.

    Quite a stut­ter. http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​K​Z​A​C​2​WuEaCc

    God’s sec­ond blun­der was Repub­li­cans. First was prob­a­bly not Michael Palin.. It’s an agree­ably arguable con­tention that Kevin Klein’s char­ac­ter is basi­cally Dick­less Cheney. Is it pos­si­ble some­body could dis­cern a more despi­ca­ble piece of shit?

    Now there’s the sub­ject of how she’s dam­aged his name. Michael Palin is a clown, because it dawned on him one day. His pal, John Cleese, is the comic ren­di­tion of the sun set­ting on the empire. He’s not Ray Davies, but he’s close, and who is? Their com­pa­triot Terry Gilliam under­stood a Stal­in­ist turd like W years ago. Gun-mom is not remotely funny, and if she believes the world is 5000 some­thing years old, she’s an idiot, or a liar, or a Pharisee.

    We fig­ure she’s a “mean girl”.

  23. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    Joe Kobiela says:
    August 30th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
    Ah Suzi,
    She run­ning for v-president, not pres­i­dent.
    and I still say if she was D instead of a R you would love her.
    Joe

    Oh Joey, gee thanks for splainin’ it to me. Like Dubya, I might enjoy havin’ a beer with the lil dar­lin’. She still seems more like the head of the cheer-leader squad, not the head of the class.

  24. Mary O said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Thank you, thank you. You just put into words what I, a work­ing mother of 3, have been feel­ing for awhile. Which is why you have your web­site and leagues of devoted read­ers like me.

    I hope I make it through this elec­tion with­out bean­ing about half of my fam­ily. I just had a sur­real con­ver­sa­tion with a younger brother who went off on Obama and his con­nec­tion to Bill Ayers. This guy was 4 years old when the Weather Under­ground was around, and now “knows all about it.” Yes, the Fox news ver­sion, of course. I kept my cool as he got hot­ter and hotter.

  25. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    BTW, Joe, if John-boy croaks, Sarah becomes the Prez, capish?

  26. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    Some ass­hole prayed that God would rain on Obama. God seems to have made his choice. Heck­uva job. Fuck­ing morons.

    god

  27. Hattie said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Why any­one thinks this is any­thing but a big fat mis­take on the part of the Repubs is beyond me. But I appre­ci­ate the rant. If I had to live around the kind of ass­holes who think McCain-Palin is the “real” Amer­ica, I’d be pissed off too.

  28. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    They don’t want the human tragedy con­nected with Kat­rina. Of course they don’t. They don’t give a shit, but they’re afraid it will look bad, These peo­ple are aholes.

  29. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    OK. Does any­body in their wildest imag­i­na­tion think this idiot is Hillary? She doesn’t believe in uni­ver­sal health­care. She believes Cre­ation­ism is equal to actual sci­ence. She’s a Repub­li­can Step­ford idiot.

  30. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    What we don’t need is another light­weight ide­o­logue with too much hubrus and too lit­tle pro­cliv­ity for deep thinking.

  31. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    Ladies,

    Sorry , Bitches,

    Whoa, we meant cumts.

    John McCain thinks women are dumb.

    I don’t claim to under­stand women. It’s my firm belief that women rep­re­sent the best the human race has to offer.

    Here’s the deal. This idiot believes every­body ought to be armed with an assault weapon. She’s a jerk. She’s basi­cally a moron bevo-hair Repi­b­li­can lady. She has no clue but Miss Congeniality.

    She’s basi­cally Lind­sey Lohan sans brains. And when Gus­tav hits, these pep[le dom’t care about human beings. Why would they? They’re Repub­li­cans, abd there isn’t any cash there.
    .

  32. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Suzi, She seems like the mean girl. But you know what, McCain is the mean gitl. He seemed to sign on with the Swift Boaters. McCain latched on to Kerry’s sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tions. And kept arms length. Ahole.

    Do you believe Bush lied his ass off about WMD? You know he lied his ass off. These peo­ple sub­borned the Constitution.

    They lied, she lied, do we vote for ass­holes that lie their asses off? Sorry, but these are dick­heads. She believes real sci­ence is made up. She’s a moron. And McCain is con­tem­plat­ing his nexr tro­phy wufe if she’ll bleach her hair.

  33. moe99 said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    Joe, Let me clue you into some­thing. There were many women in the Demo­c­ra­tic side who actu­ally opposed Hillary. And were not afraid to speak up about it. And Hillary, like Sarah, is a woman!!! So don’t you dare think that if Sarah had been appointed the VP for the Dems that plenty of women would not have spo­ken up about what a frakkin trav­esty it was. Doesn’t mat­ter party, she’s unqual­i­fied at the present time to hold this office.

    And, yes, I was one of those women who spoke in oppo­si­tion to Hillary.

  34. susang said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    hey nance

    If you want to lower your blood pres­sure and have a good laugh, check out Gail Collin’s col­umn about the VP pick

    (http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​3​0​c​o​l​l​i​n​s​-​.​h​t​m​l​?​_​r​=​1​&​a​m​p​;​h​p​&​a​m​p​;​o​r​e​f​=​slogin)

  35. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    McCain rode Kerry’s idea that there was some­thing to be said for law enforce­ment. Where the hell does some nitwit like W get off. What an ass­hole. He made his way on tha, but Kerry tiook down Raygm for any­bidy with a brain. Gus­tav is about to nail Mawleans. Tjese aholes fucked that up beyond belief.

    I’d ask intel­li­gent peo­ple to con­sider. Ix the USA in some lonh war? An intel­li­gent per­son would decide it’s some­thing for law enforce­ment. It asure as shit doesm’t mean some Stralin­ist whack-jobs ought to trash thee Constitution.

    It is fairly clear Repub­li­cans buy into Grover, and they think the Pret­zeldent is sup­posed to be king. Holy shit, not these assholles. Rov­ian is 666.

  36. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    So, she’s OK. She believes creai­inonsm is sci­ence. Shes a moron.

  37. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    Holy shit. She believes. What a mpprn. This cunt is a flam­ing ashole

  38. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    Ehat I’d say

  39. Suzi said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Obama — Colum­bia and Har­vard Law.
    Palin stud­ied Jour­nal­ism in Idaho …

  40. brian stouder said on August 30th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    It’s like these Repub­li­can talk­ing heads are some another planet because they’ll say things that are dis­con­nected from any­thing that nor­mal peo­ple see and hear.

    Lit­er­ally true. Here in Ft Wayne, the local radio lip-flapper, and a fel­low who seems to wannabe a tool (and one-time radio part­ner with The Pro­pri­etress) Pat White, made me flat-out angry yesterday.

    I am very slow to actu­ally call some­one a “liar” — but Pat White is either a lead-pipe liar or else a rock-headed sim­ple­ton. In dis­cussing McCain’s run­ning mate, he repeated and point­edly said that she made ALL her remarks “off the cuff” in Day­ton; NO notes, and NO teleprompter, and by the way Obama is an empty-suit who hasn’t an orig­i­nal thought in his head, and who is lost with­out his teleprompter.

    He repeated this litany 4 or 5 times, and of course his amen-callers began repeat­ing it as ‘some­thing they noticed, too’.

    When I got home, and saw the video, it took me approx­i­mately 3.5 sec­onds to see her teleprompters!! Pat White is a damned liar or a f___ing idiot, or both.

    Now — one could cor­rect him on this point of fact, but how many numb­skulls will always believe it? It rein­forces the idea of the shif’less dumb ol’ black guy who has a slick song and dance to per­form, and the earnest, vir­tu­ous white woman, who is “one of us”.

    Granted this is a microscopically-small exam­ple, but it cap­tures what Lim­baugh and Han­nity do every sin­gle damned day.…and think­ing about agin now, it makes me angry enough that I can hear my heart beat­ing in my ears!!!

    Sorry Jeff — You are indeed mild man­nered (or well man­nered, if you will), and I enjoy read­ing your takes, and I know we would get along swim­mingly if we ever met.…and there is no “but” fol­low­ing this state­ment. Peo­ple like YOU are really “one of us”, the good folks, the thinkers and the fair-minded.

    Lim­baugh and Hannity.…and on a much smaller scale, Pat White (et al) are the worst of us; liars and big­ots and rab­ble rousers, mak­ing a liv­ing off of other people’s igno­rance (which gives them every rea­son to increase that ignorance!)

  41. nancy said on August 30th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    In the future, please refrain from refer­ring to Palin as a cunt, Cal­iban. And any­one else who feels inclined. She’s not, and it clouds the discussion.

  42. Catherine said on August 30th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    I won­der if it is pos­si­ble to keep the dis­cus­sion about Palin on the things that mat­ter? That is, to poli­cies, expe­ri­ence and so forth? If the attacks on her start get­ting sex­ist in the way those on Hillary were, I might have to find more than bare min­i­mum of sym­pa­thy for her.

  43. Deborah said on August 30th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

    This was one post that is exactly the rea­son I read your blog. You can say it bet­ter than most.

    I’m a woman who was never for Hilary, always for Obama, and I’m of a cer­tain age too, way closer to Hilary’s age.

    Oh and Mona, who’s she? And for that mat­ter who’s Sarah?

  44. Rana said on August 30th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    I won­der if it is pos­si­ble to keep the dis­cus­sion about Palin on the things that mat­ter? That is, to poli­cies, expe­ri­ence and so forth? If the attacks on her start get­ting sex­ist in the way those on Hillary were, I might have to find more than bare min­i­mum of sym­pa­thy for her.

    I agree, but — “start”?  — The sex­ism is already well under way.

    (And I resent that I find myself hav­ing to defend this anti-choice, pro-oil, anti-science Repub­li­can from such attacks. Sex­ist attacks = lazy, easy, unpersuasive.)

  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

    To mel­low on a late August evening — take some Farmer’s Mar­ket long fat green beans, topped and blanched, throw them in a trough of heavy duty foil, drip a bit of lemon juice, throw a bit of rose­mary and thyme on top, driz­zle with olive oil, seal ‘er up, and throw on the side of the coal before you put the grill top on and do up some steaks (or black bean burg­ers for the vegans).

    After all the main course comes off the grill, pull the pouch and dump the con­tents into a bowl, and enjoy the evening.

  46. Colleen said on August 30th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    Thank you for artic­u­lat­ing that, Nancy. What you said. I just feel like this admin­is­tra­tion is…mean. Scold­ing. Point­ing fin­gers and decid­ing who “deserves” what. I’m sick of it.

    And Joe, if Obama had cho­sen the Dem equiv­a­lent of Palin for his run­ning mate, there would be a LOT of us walk­ing around say­ing “WTF did he just do?” Hav­ing a D after the name doesn’t mean a free pass.

  47. LA Mary said on August 30th, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    I won­dered about the pre­na­tal test­ing too. If she had no inten­tion of ter­mi­nat­ing the preg­nancy, why test? It is a some­what risky pro­ce­dure.
    I had a brother with grand mal epilepsy who was also what we called men­tally retarded, now devel­op­men­tally dis­abled. I had test­ing with both my preg­nan­cies. Amnio on one, CVS on the other.
    Did she just want to know the gender?

    …and, she’s not a cheer­leader. She’s the vicious bas­ket­ball player. Cindy McCain was a cheer­leader at USC (aka uni­ver­sity of spoiled children).

    I also have a brother who has been a coun­cil­man in a town of about 25,000 for a few years, before that on the school board. He’s got more time in than Sarah, but even as a lov­ing sis­ter, I can’t imag­ine him being ready to be president.

  48. Calliope said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    Karl Rove on the pos­si­blil­ity of Obama choos­ing Vir­ginia Gov. Kaine:

    “With all due respect again to Gov­er­nor Kaine, he’s been a gov­er­nor for three years, he’s been able but undis­tin­guished. I don’t think peo­ple could really name a big, impor­tant thing that he’s done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in Amer­ica. And again, with all due respect to Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, it’s smaller than Chula Vista, Cal­i­for­nia; Aurora, Col­orado; Mesa or Gilbert, Ari­zona; north Las Vegas or Hen­der­son, Nevada. It’s not a big town. So if he were to pick Gov­er­nor Kaine, it would be an intensely polit­i­cal choice where he said, ‘You know what? I’m really not, first and fore­most, con­cerned with, is this per­son capa­ble of being pres­i­dent of the United States?”

  49. MaryC said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Re the pre-natal test­ing, I won­dered about that too but she has said that she wanted to know so that she could be pre­pared. It looks like the pre-natal test is being spun to make her seem more saintly than those par­ents who have refused the tests, pre­fer­ring to accept what God or fate sends them. Inter­est­ing how that works.

    By the way, the lat­est rumor is that the baby is actu­ally her old­est daughter’s — which seems a lit­tle over-the-top to say the least. I know it’s been done many times in the past with the help of a friendly fam­ily doc­tor but this was a pretty pub­lic pregnancy!

  50. moe99 said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:18 pm

    LA Mary, I’ve also heard USC referred to as the Uni­ver­sity of the Scholas­ti­cally Chal­lenged or U$C. Mostly from Stan­ford graduates.

  51. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    She also believes Catholics are devil’s spawn. I dont’ think we’re some sort of cult. I’m pretty sure we pre­dated Mar­tin Luther’s bad bowel move­ments. If there’s a Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury philoso­pher more pre­scient than Teill­hard, lets hear it from W’s brand of rich ass­hole self absorp­tion. Bring the ass­hole on and mis­sion accom­plished. Kiss my ass, Ms Point Guard, and wel­come to the occupation.

    Rabid anti-Catholics are basi­cally whack jobs. She is a bigot, and sit­ting in that gun­stand and shoot­ing at papists is seri­ously heinous. Shoot­ing immo­bile moose is another story. What Randy New­man said. Jesus, what a jerk. You shoot some mam­mal that doesn’t move. Ahole.

  52. deb said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    won­der­ful rant, nance — you’re fab­u­lous when you’re pissed.

    LA mary, i’m as irri­tated with the palin pick as the next guy, but i don’t know how much we can read into her deci­sion to have amnio. i did it at 38 because there were med­ical issues on both sides of the gene pool. ter­mi­nat­ing the preg­nancy wasn’t even on our radar. if there were prob­lems, we wanted to know sooner rather than later so we could start deal­ing with them.

  53. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    My dad is a pedi­a­tri­cian. He loves kids. This was bull, and any­body thinks this had to do with any­thing but bull­shit is an idiot.. You despi­ca­ble piece of shit.

  54. caliban said on August 30th, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    She’s an idiot. She believes Cre­ation­ism is sci­ence and should be taught in school. You can’ get stu­pider than that.

  55. LA Mary said on August 30th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    Mona should know that Alaska is from the far­thest left part of the US, not Hawaii. Check that lon­gi­tude, Mona.

    I wiki’d Liv­ingston, NJ and I’m sur­prised how rich folks are there. Back before Amtrak, we rode the Erie Lack­awanna through Liv­ingston and it looked almost as shitty as the rest of north­ern NJ. I always read the name of that town in the voice of the train conductor.…LivingSTON…LivingSTON.
    My home town (where the bro is a coun­cil­man) has shrunk in pop­u­la­tion dra­mat­i­cally. Turns out I know about half the bor­ough coun­cil per­son­ally, and I think I know the mayor’s sis­ter. We had a fight in the girls room once. I don’t really miss NJ.

  56. dand said on August 30th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Great Rant.

    She makes me think of Mon­ica Goodling.

    I fig­ure McCain does not think that death and taxes apply to him.

    She must be an up and comer. If cor­rup­tion were the Olympics then the Alaska Repub­li­can party is the Michael Phelps of cor­rup­tion. Here Palin is barely 2 years in office with her own ethics inves­ti­ga­tion. Most peo­ple would take 5 years to get that far.

  57. Dexter said on August 30th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    I also adopted a phi­los­o­phy , “this per­son has a rea­son for believ­ing the way s/he does, let them believe; it’s not my job to try to change him/her.“
    This was arrived at after I used to ridicule Rea­gan­ites and show them the error of their ways; it never worked, I stopped. I took it way left of lib­er­al­ism and was known as a rad­i­cal. A few union broth­ers under­stood, but I was too rad­i­cal to relate to most fel­low work­ers.
    This is why I enjoyed this rant-topic so much. I read every word mut­ter­ing “yes!”. I have my per­sonal anti­dote to apoplexy that is brought on by Lim­baugh and all of FOX News…I avoid it. I have to. The late George Car­lin was inter­viewed decades ago in Play­boy; he said he had seven heart attacks because he was so god­dam mad at Nixon he was in a rage all the time. Finally some­one talked to him and con­vinced him killing him­self with hatred might not be for the best. Car­lin eased up a bit on Nixon and lived another 30 years.
    My daily tonic is deliv­ered into my head via head­phones , from Air Amer­ica. I lis­ten to Randi Rhodes and it’s all bet­ter.
    She relent­lessly attacks these weasels and calms my soul.
    FOX News and Han­nity and those peo­ple are not wor­thy of my anti-elitist time.

  58. Linda said on August 30th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    The Democ­rats should not tie them­selves up in knots fig­ur­ing out how to deal with Palin because she is a woman: just treat her like another can­di­date. Sub­ject her state­ments to the same scrutiny that you would any other can­di­date. I’m sure the gov­er­nor who said she didn’t keep up much with the surge because she was pay­ing atten­tion to Alaska stuff at the time will come out smelling like a rose.

  59. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    Danny, given your loca­tion, i’m guess­ing you’ve seen “The Stunt Man,” and if so, recall the scene where Eli Cross/Peter O’Toole talks about his direc­tor friend who wanted to make the ulti­mate anti-war movie?

    I think i just watched dailies on that set.

  60. Suzi said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:12 am

    To learn even more about Palin, check out Fem­i­nists for Life
    http://​www​.fem​i​nists​for​life​.org/​i​n​d​ex.htm

    They would ban abor­tions for rape and incest vic­tims, for women whose lives are at risk and also the pill and morn­ing after pill.

    This is one of those groups that would like to brain­wash us all into beleiv­ing that abor­tions cause men­tal ill­ness and that “abor­tion fac­to­ries” are rak­ing in buck­ets of money from poor vic­tim­ized females who aren’t capa­ble of man­ag­ing their life decisons with­out the guid­ance of enlight­ened pro-life coaches.

  61. del said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:45 am

    Nancy, I clicked on the Wikipedia link to Mona Charen and found that I tried a case against her hus­band in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in 1999. He was with Paul, Weiss, et al’s NY office. Hmmph.

  62. Gasman said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:24 am

    The notion that McCain is tough on national secu­rity has just been exposed as total bull­shit. If he were such a secu­rity genius why in hell would he pick Sarah Palin? Her cre­den­tials are unim­pres­sive for some­one a heart­beat away from the White House. Let’s remem­ber that the heart we’re talk­ing about is in a 72 year old can­cer survivor.

    I’ve heard from R talk­ing heads that Palin actu­ally has more for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence than Obama or Biden because her state bor­ders Rus­sia and she com­mands the awe­some forces of the Alaska National Guard. Alaska has fewer peo­ple than Albu­querque. Her longest polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence was in a town of less than 7,000 peo­ple. If the United States Sen­ate doesn’t pro­vide ade­quate train­ing on the inter­na­tional stage, being Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska sure as hell doesn’t. Being Gov. of the nation’s small­est state (pop­u­la­tion wise) for a year or so is also scat prepa­ra­tion. And I’m sup­posed to take McCain seri­ously? If Obama had picked the mayor of Albu­querque (who inci­den­tally, prob­a­bly has more for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence than Palin) I would have said he was nuts.

    Joe, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass whether or not she had an R or a D behind her name. I find her to be rather mis­an­thropic polit­i­cally. She appears to be Ted Nuggent’s female twin. No think­ing D will be swayed sim­ply because she is cute or has an inter­est­ing, if very brief polit­i­cal bio. Her choice was such an overtly patron­iz­ing choice to the cave dwellers on the right that it is HIGHLY unlikely to sway any­one from the center-right/left. And as for cap­tur­ing dis­af­fected Hillary vot­ers, that may be the most telling thing about the McCain camp. They are so dis­mis­sive of women that they find them all inter­change­able. Very much of a Dan Quayle pick.

    There is no way in hell you can spin her total lack of expe­ri­ence into some sort of for­eign pol­icy advan­tage. Her pick indi­cates just how cyn­i­cal and patron­iz­ing the Repub­li­can Party still is. It is insult­ing to any­one truly inter­ested in national secu­rity or any of Sen. Clinton’s issues.

  63. MaryC said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:26 am

    By the way, Nancy, if you want a really egre­gious exam­ple of Who Gets To Be An Amer­i­can, here’s a quote from Jonah Gold­berg of the National Review on the appear­ance of Lily Led­bet­ter, the Alabama woman who sued Goodyear Tire for wage dis­crim­i­na­tion, at the Demo­c­ra­tic Convention:

    “Toot­sie with a south­ern accent. I burst into laughter”

    Imag­ine, if you will, a Demo­c­ra­tic writer with a New York address and a Jew­ish last name mak­ing the same remark about a speaker from Alabama at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion. Why, con­ser­v­a­tives would throw a big­ger hissy fit than Lucia de Lam­mer­moor. Because in that case, of course, the speaker would be a real Amer­i­can and the Dem would be an elit­ist … non-American.

  64. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:47 am

    Sarah Palin may not be a total bim­bette, and pretty soon, she might be suf­fer­ing from the Tru­man Syndrome.

    http://​www​.iht​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​a​r​t​s​/​t​r​u​m​a​n​.​p​h​p​?​W​T​.​m​c​_​i​d​=​n​e​w​salert

    Me, I’d pre­fer Mick Travis if I had to take on some movie char­ac­ter psy­chosis, or nor­mal­ity in the face of lunacy and abject crim­i­nal­ity. But crim­i­nal­ity and being a Repub­li­can is kind of au naturel, like Nixon, and that’s a vision nobody wants to live with. Or Jack Lint. Michael Palin in the role of a life­time. I’ve always found it exhil­a­rat­ing that the best Monty was the American.

    It’s pos­si­ble Amer­i­can vot­ers are so purely blood sim­ple stu­pid they might select the gri­mac­ing, lech­er­ous old­timer and his high school fan­tasy VP pick. It’s going to be dif­fi­cult with Ken­neth Black­well on his way to prison. He’s not? Quelle sur­prise. But Ohio knows how to do it right:

    http://​www​.cleve​land​.com/​e​d​i​t​o​r​i​a​l​s​/​p​l​a​i​n​d​e​a​l​e​r​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​?​/​b​a​s​e​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​1​2​1​4​0​3​7​1​0​2​3​2​0​0​8​0​.​x​m​l​&​a​m​p​;​coll=2

    Seems old after a while, but there was never any­body other than Eve­lyn Waugh and Eric Blair that exposed the total self-righteous sense of enti­tle­ment that nitwits like the Bush fam­ily exude. Not supe­rior to me. Not supe­rior to the aver­age Nan­cy­Nall con­trib­u­tor. Sure as shit not supe­rior to the Con­sti­tu­tion, even if mom is the Quaker Oats guy.

    Any­way, HL said Democ­racy is the the­ory that the com­mon peo­ple know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
    I love that guy, but I pre­fer H. I. (You know, Rais­ing Ari­zona.). Actu­ally, the entire chase scene after the Hug­gies with a panty on his head is pretty much a per­fect metaphor for Junior’s idi­otic inva­sion of Iraq. And if some­body wants to bring up psy­chosis, there was Desert Storm, and this lit­tle pisant couldn’t ever outdo Daddy. Mis­sion fuck­ing accomplished.

    I want Barack to be Pres­i­dent. I want my coun­try cleansed of crooks and unmit­i­gated creeps like Karl Rove and the McCarthy stooge Ronald Ray­gun.. Lee Atwa­ter damned these jerks on his deathbed. Bush One bailed out of a plane. Bush More Impor­tant said Mis­sion Accom­plished. Flam­ing ass­hole. McCain said all of that was alright, and he threw Kerry under a Short Bus to do so. Slan­dered by these sub­hu­man scum, but he sucks up to them. Randy New­man has this right. Jesus, what a jerk.

    Ms. Palin sul­lies her sur­name. Bad joke, and I believe evan­gel­i­cals are Actu­ally Amer­i­cans and they don’t buy this gun-mom bullshit.

  65. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 4:05 am

    Mona Charen seems to be hav­ing some sort of tri­an­gu­lar love affair with Mau­reen Dowd and Hillary Clin­ton. Hillary is not in the mix except for cam­paign­ing for Obama. These ladies can’t write their ways out of bags.

    Mona Charen’s byline photo is basi­cally straight out of Oscar Wilde, and Dorian Gray would like his pic­ture back. There are “national” colum­nists that are inex­cus­able. Mona’s right up there with David Broder. Mau­reen Dowd’s obscene obses­sion with what a cunt Hillary is is gain­ing all the time. Fine. OK. You made your asi­nine point. Shut the hell up. She’s not run­ning any­more. God, what a con­flicted moron, that’s too cute by miles to be a decent writer. Meow, dumbass.

  66. Danny said on August 31st, 2008 at 4:11 am

    Jeff, no. But I will make a note to check that movie out (love O’Toole). And I think I get your drift about the dailies! I was think­ing more along the lines of Dr. Strangelove: “Gen­tle­men, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”

    Again, apolo­gies to all for not being around much to join in the fun. I only have my nephews around for another few days and we are try­ing make the most of it.

    My impres­sion (albeit from a quick scan) is that many of you are going a lit­tle over­board. Really, some of you need to check your­selves. Seri­ously. With the excep­tion michaelj/caliban, no one else here gets carte blanche to type stream-of–uncon­scious­ness.

    Suzi, OB was the first place I lived when I moved here in ’84. The thing I was get­ting at with Del Mar is that to have these col­or­ful, cheerfully-horn-blaring trains whizzing by on the sea cliffs whilst catch­ing a wave … in the sun … with a biplane over­head with a trail­ing adver­tise­ment … is kinda like if being in a Thomas Kin­caid had he been a surf bum. Maybe I just am not describ­ing it cor­rectly, but there is just some­thing so deli­ciously incon­gru­ous about the sit­u­a­tion (like hav­ing your cake and eat­ing it to) that it occu­pies a spe­cial place in my heart. And I ain’t even a train freak. It’s just very cool.

    Some of the best things in life are free.

  67. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 7:02 am

    Can Amer­ica screw the pooch on this one? You’ve got a guy and cheer­leader, and he’s an angry old fart that claims to be a war hero because he dropped bombs and got shot down. You’vw got a bunch of idiots tha think they proved their man­hood by drop­ping hose bombs on Viet­Nam. Viva Via­gra. You’ve got, in the other cor­ner, the first black man to make it this far, pos­sessed of actual intel­li­gence. I fig­ure, if capa­bil­ity for nuanced think­ing is bad, why not elect one of those guys from Blue Col­lar Com­edy? But please make it Tater Salad.

    What the hell, vote Sarah Palin and make America’s streets safe for Streetsweep­ers from the gun­show. It’s inter­est­ing. Did the crabby old­timer think this was going to ener­gize Hillary sup­port­ers? Prob­a­bly did, but not in the right way. Hon­estly, McCain used to seem like he thought of women as sec­ond class cit­i­zens. Now he’s proved he thinks women are idiots. Or bitches, or cunts, or whatever.

    How is it pos­si­ble that Amer­ica con­tem­plates elect­ing some­body that called his wife a cunt in front of a bunch of reporters? He’s mar­gin­ally more intel­li­gent than W, but that’s not say­ing a whole lot. Amer­i­cans, ask your­selves, are base stu­pid­ity amd abject sex­ist inanity the criteria?

    For decid­ing on a Coman­der in Chief? Demon­starable stu­pid­ity doesn’t make some­body a man, and a man doesn’t den­i­grate women. We’ve been down that road, and it defined fail­ure on the decks of air­craft car­ri­ers. Unless you think trash­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion is a good thing, this elec­tion is strictly no-brain.

    This manly men crap is sim­ply a load of Rush Lim­baugh crap. Weasels that couldn’t stand up in a fist­fight. You know Rush. Resem­bles Jabba. Made fun of Chelsea Clin­ton. Well, she’s gor­geous and he con­tin­ues to be a truly revolt­ing mound of blubber.

    How the hell did vot­ers buy W as the defender of the OClub and Nixon’s boy could slan­der Kerry. Amer­i­can vot­ers are stu­pid. I always wanted my coun­try to be more intel­li­gent, It’s really a drag to find out that intel­li­gence and com­pas­sion are detri­men­tal to polit­i­cal success.

    Alan Price had some­thing to say on this subject:

    Poor peo­ple are poor peo­ple -
    And they don’t under­stand
    A man’s got to make what­ever he wants–
    And take it with his own hands.

    Poor peo­ple stay poor peo­ple -
    And they never get to see
    Someone’s got to win in the human race–
    If it isn’t you, then it has to be me.

    So smile while you’re makin’ it–
    Laugh while you’re takin’ it–
    Even though you’re fakin’ it–
    Nobody’s gonna know.
    Nobody’s gonna know.

    It’s no use mum­bling.
    It’s no use grum­bling.
    Life just isn’t fair–
    There’s no easy days
    There’s no easy ways
    Just get out there and do it!

    And sing and they’ll sing your song–
    Laugh while you’re get­ting on–
    Smile and they’ll string along–
    And nobody’s gonna know.
    Nobody’s gonna know.
    Nobody’s gonna know.
    And nobody’s gonna know.

    He also had this to say:

    When there’s a blue­bird singing by your win­dow pane
    And the sun shines bright all day through
    Don’t for­get boy
    Look over your shoul­der
    ’Cause there’s always some­one com­ing after you (la la la la)

    When every­thing in life seems just as it should be
    At last suc­cess seems just around the door
    Don’t for­get boy
    Look over your shoul­der
    ’Cause things don’t stay the same for­ever more (la la la la)

    Hope springs eter­nal in a young man’s breast
    And he dreams of a bet­ter life ahead
    With­out that dream you are noth­ing, noth­ing, noth­ing
    You have to find out for your­self that dream is dead (la la la la)

    Dead (la la la la) repeat to fade

  68. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 31st, 2008 at 7:30 am

    Cal­iban — re: Eric Blair and Eve­lyn Waugh:
    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​3​1​/​b​o​o​k​s​/​r​e​v​i​e​w​/​H​o​l​t​-​t.html

    Hot off the presses, a review of a book about the two of them as twins sep­a­rated at birth. Inter­est­ing take on what bound two unlikely writ­ers together.

    Danny, from unre­li­able mem­ory, O’Toole’s char­ac­ter says “He wanted to make a great anti-war film; when they pre­miered it in his home­town, mil­i­tary recruit­ing went up three hun­dred per­cent.” Richard Rush claimed that he had heard Stan­ley Kubrick say this about him­self after “Paths of Glory.”

  69. Jolene said on August 31st, 2008 at 8:36 am

    Here is an inter­est­ing take on Gov. Palin–a WaPo webchat w/ a reporter from the Anchor­age Daily News. Very much worth reading.

  70. basset said on August 31st, 2008 at 9:58 am

    will this be the thread that finally gets Cal­iban banned? we can only hope…

  71. coozledad said on August 31st, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Back to the us ver­sus them, it seems I heard some­one dis­cussing extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion as yet another “tool in the tool­box”. Does this mean, when the DOJ is entirely staffed by Regents Bible Sales Col­lege grad­u­ates, we can only be cer­tain that tor­ture will be defined as what­ever John McCain says it is?
    Will water­board­ing be used as a test for crim­i­nal unbe­lief, or merely used to extract con­fes­sions from polit­i­cal ene­mies?
    At what point do you deter­mine when to grab the extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tion tool out of this “tool­box” in abject vio­la­tion of due process to redress per­ceived polit­i­cal imbal­ances, such as hap­pened in the Siegle­man case?
    I’m curi­ous, because I’m anx­ious to learn every­thing I can about elim­i­na­tion­ist the­ol­ogy, and why evan­gel­i­cals are keen on replac­ing the gospels with “The Witch-Finder Gen­eral”.
    I sus­pect it’s because of an essen­tial fail­ure to grasp the dif­fi­cult moral choices which face peo­ple of mature con­science. The framers under­stood that there are peo­ple who res­olutely refuse to put away child­ish things, and they crafted the law to pro­tect us from them and their phantoms.

  72. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 31st, 2008 at 11:52 am

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​d​i​s​c​u​s​s​i​o​n​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​2​9​/​D​I​2​0​0​8​0​8​2​9​0​2​0​5​2.html

    Yes, worth read­ing … to learn about the reporter’s view­point. He knows so much about what Palin “really thinks” or feels, but when asked has no idea how she han­dles the child­care thing. An incu­ri­ous fel­low in some odd ways …

    You shoulda heard the moms and dads in the cof­fee line after wor­ship this morn­ing at a main­stream Methodist exur­ban church. The most neg­a­tive com­ment — “i wouldn’t name a kid after my Piper Cub float plane, but i guess it must make sense in Alaska. But nam­ing a boy Track? I’ll bet they gave him a hard time in basic training…he leaves for Iraq on Sept. 11, doesn’t he?”

    We’re putting up a blue­grass, county sym­phony, and fire­works at 9 pm con­cert this after­noon at The Dawes Arbore­tum (30 miles east of Colum­bus) for any­one around cen­tral Ohio. First act at 3:30 with a guy who played fid­dle for Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” and two more blue­grass bands (mod­ern and tra­di­tional, both led by the head of Denison’s music depart­ment), then the ol’ sym­phonic chest­nut parade end­ing with 1812. It isn’t free unless you’re park­ing cars, but as i recall it’s just a few bucks. BBQ for sale or bring a bas­ket and a blan­ket. I’m the tall geeky guy in an orange vest, wave and say “Obama rocks!” and i’ll be delighted to wave back to a fel­low NN.C commenter.

  73. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 31st, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Cooze, i believe you mean the “Malleus Malefi­carum.” It’s on my shelf next to “The Necro­nom­i­con” and the Gnos­tic Gospels. Gotta stay up on the oppo research!

  74. ROgirl said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    These are the peo­ple who say we could have won the Viet­nam War if we hadn’t cut and run. Their moral hypocrisy rises every time they invoke God. The sleaze that they unleashed on the world over the past 8 years is sick­en­ing. Yet…they’ve man­aged to sell their mes­sage mas­ter­fully to peo­ple who don’t ques­tion their motives or abil­ity to frame the debate. Isn’t it always eas­ier to spin the argu­ment at the level of the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor than to explain a posi­tion in depth and with intelligence?

    I hope enough peo­ple in this coun­try can see past the bull­shit, actu­ally go out to vote in Novem­ber, and defeat the fuckers.

  75. Suzi said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Who does this remind you of?

    “… she tends to over­sim­plify com­plex issues, has had dif­fi­culty del­e­gat­ing author­ity, and clearly has some dif­fi­culty dis­tin­guish­ing the line between her pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ties and pri­vate wishes … ”

    If she became POTUS would she appoint a bunch of incom­pe­tent churchy cronies to high offices, maybe make that smarmy lar­dass, War­ren, her veep?

  76. coozledad said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Nah: I meant the movie with Vin­cent price. Do you hon­estly believe Regents grads read? Or is it a mat­ter of faith?

  77. Danny said on August 31st, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Cooze, i believe you mean the “Malleus Malefi­carum.” It’s on my shelf next to “The Necro­nom­i­con” and the Gnos­tic Gospels. Gotta stay up on the oppo research!

    Jeff, Don Vito Cor­leone would approve.

    Hey, you sure do read a lot for being a “stu­pid” con­ser­v­a­tive. Cut it out or we won’t let you sit in the back of the bus with all the cool kids on our way to the winning-the-election field trip in November.

  78. derwood said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Nice rant…I so enjoy you guys! Even Caliban!

    The Palin pick scares me because of this: I work with 3 women, fairly con­ser­v­a­tive but not far right wing. All three were con­sid­er­ing vot­ing for Obama…two of them had com­mit­ted to it in our con­ver­sa­tions. All three of them were giddy, lit­er­ally giddy over this pick. It was mostly the fact that she was a woman. They said they would do some research on her back­ground but they all were now con­sid­er­ing vot­ing for McCain because of the chance for a woman to become President.

    That scares the hell out of me. These are intel­li­gent people…if they are hav­ing these thoughts in mid­dle Indi­ana cer­tainly it is occur­ring in other areas.

    My pack of Obama crap can’t arrive soon enough.

    d

  79. Danny said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    The Palin pick scares me…

    der­wood you hit the nail squarely on the head. This is why the left-wing blo­gos­phere is hav­ing a major melt-down right now. I dare­say, a few here have become unhinged too.

    Lord Vader’s coun­te­nance is twisted into a ric­tus of joy.

    Actu­ally, I just fun­ning y’all while we’re get­ting ready for the beach. Every­one, have a great holiday.

  80. LA Mary said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    Danny, I’ve left beaches because the train noise and the damn fly­ing ads com­pletely screw up the day of enjoy­ing the water, the sound of the wind, the sun.
    Maybe those trains were blow­ing their whis­tles because the Amtrak LA to SD train ran out fuel again.

  81. coozledad said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    Per­son­ally, my head is explod­ing because God is piss­ing on your con­ven­tion, and I didn’t even pray for it.

  82. MichaelG said on August 31st, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    Der­wood, see my 6:42 PM com­ment on Nance’s Fri­day post “What a Weasel Wants”. Link below. Your story is exactly what I had in mind.

    Mary, the “Capi­tol Cor­ri­dor” train runs from Auburn through Sacra­mento to San Jose. It overnights in Auburn. I got stuck one morn­ing because they couldn’t get the damn thing started.

  83. MichaelG said on August 31st, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    I wasn’t aware that Alaska had an actual bor­der with Rus­sia. It had always been my impres­sion that some­thing called the “Bering Strait” inter­posed its pres­ence between the two coun­tries. Oh well, live and learn. Given this new read­ing of geog­ra­phy, could Delaware be said to have a bor­der with Por­tu­gal? I know there used to be a lit­tle water between them, but it’s only a mat­ter of degree, isn’t it? Now I’m begin­ning to won­der if Cal­i­for­nia has an actual bor­der with Mex­ico or whether Michi­gan truly abuts Canada.

  84. LA Mary said on August 31st, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Until the tore down the Thomp­son Yard I could hear trains all day, every day. Now it’s the Metrolink main­te­nance yard and a park. I’ve got light rail train sta­tion at the end of my street, which is very nice. I can start out on foot from my house and get pretty much any­where in the coun­try via train. I’m two stops from Union Sta­tion.
    That’s why when I go to the beach, I don’t want to lis­ten to trains.

  85. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Some­body should ask Mrs. Palin about selec­tiv­ity of cold dead hands and gun ownership:

    http://​www​.star​tri​bune​.com/​l​o​c​a​l​/​2​7​7​0​3​7​5​4​.​h​t​m​l​?​e​l​r​=​K​A​r​ksUUUU

    Repub­li­cans do believe in Cheney’s idea of uni­tary exec­u­tive. That is, unques­tion­ably, monar­chy, old style. I expect we’ll be hand­cuffed and detained for call­ing Dick­less Dick­less and sug­gest­ing King George is pretty much an idiot. Our mayor down here in Beau­fort County is a ver­i­cally chal­lenged liit­tle Napoleon that went to the Citadel. All sorts of delu­sions, and mar­shall law is prob­a­bly not out of the question.

    Please con­sider the fact that if Shrubs had the long war sus­pen­sion of habeas cor­pus and every human right civ­i­lized peo­ple don’t even need to dis­cuss, those peo­ple in Twin Cities would prob­a­bly be on their way to Guan­tanamo, with stops in Morocco and Egypt.

    Repub­li­cans have made it clear they stand for mind­less uni­for­mity of san­i­tized thought. They aren’t Lud­dites, because they did know how to make all of the incrim­i­nat­ing emails dis­ap­pear. But inveigh­ing against intel­li­gence, the GOP stock in trade, seems demonic. CS Lewis had never heard of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist when he invented Screw­tape and Worm­wood, but if the shoe fits Cheney and W, they wear it.

    How does a mod­er­ately intel­li­gent human being buy this “at war” with Al Quaeda bull­shit? There is actu­ally a coun­try that makes Al Quaeda pos­si­ble, and that’s Saudi Ara­bia. Do the New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ri­ons want to go to war against them? Hand-holding among Cheney, Rummy and var­i­ous Aya­tol­lahs got Ray­gun elected while keep­ing hostages impris­oned. Repub­li­cans in office have mur­dered for­eign lead­ers, moved guns and drugs to sup­port bru­tal fas­cists, and lied their asses off about all of it to Con­gress. And they con­tinue to lie.

  86. LA Mary said on August 31st, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    Sarah Palin may be a swell per­son. Her pol­i­tics and mine are not com­pat­i­ble. In fact, McCain is closer to my pol­i­tics than she is, so now I’m even more bummed that the GOP might win.

  87. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    If you believe global warm­ing doesn’t exist, and you aren’t buy­ing some ver­sion of evo­lu­tion, are you a dum­b­ass, cute, some­body it gives most peo­ple the creeps to see embraced by McCain, Repub­li­can woman? It doesn’t require a global renais­sance but imposed stu­pid­ity as a pre­req­ui­site for cit­i­zen­ship and patri­o­tism seems kind of counter-productive.

    And she could be blond in the drop of a bot­tle of per­ox­ide, and she’s younger than Cindy. There is the prob­lem about the cash. And how does this greedy wrasrl skate on Keat­ing? Keat­ing was Nation­wide before Rose­mary gave birth to Nation­wide. And McCain was grub­bing money from middle-class Amer­i­cans’ hopes and dreams. Terr isn’t a new con­cept, and the Repub­li­can Party is well practiced.

  88. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    I wouldn’t go so far as admit­ting the Lords of New Feu­dal­ism were human, because, being one, which I can’t do any­thing about, I hope humans have some redeemable char­ac­ter­is­tics, but there’s always Calvin and Hobbes:

    http://​www​.gocomics​.com/​c​a​l​v​i​n​a​n​d​hobbes

    Come to think of it, love may fail, cour­tesy will pre­vail. Kerry was Har­ri­son Berg­eron, and we’re all sup­posed to think being stu­pid and thug­gish, and a bully that’s actu­ally a cring­ing wimp is a stan­dard to be achieved.

  89. derwood said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    I actu­ally enjoy the sound of trains. My wife’s grand­par­ents live in Minot, North Dakota right by the Amtrak sta­tion. It was always cool to visit and lis­ten to the freights blow their whis­tles. I also go on rolly rides for hours at a time…maybe I have a defect.

    d

  90. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    McCain in a nutshell:

    http://​www​.gocomics​.com/​d​e​e​pcover

    Noun, verb, adjec­tive, adverb.

  91. julia said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Accord­ing to Time, the annual com­pen­sa­tion for a part­ner at her husband’s firm is well over $1 mil/yr — even with­out her wingnut wel­fare income, she has no way of know­ing what it’s like to strug­gle along on $200k.

  92. ROgirl said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    Let’s see…

    1)Republican women are embrac­ing the Palin selec­tion because she’s a woman? They hated on Hillary some­thing fierce, and they didn’t give her any props for her gender.

    2)And her lack of for­eign pol­icy knowl­edge is some­thing she can can get on-the-job train­ing for? McCain’s ads intoned in dra­matic nar­ra­tion and scary drum beats that Obama, with very lit­tle for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence, was a scary prospect, and a celebrity with no sub­stance. Hmmmm.

  93. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    Actu­ally, this looks more poten­tially like “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”

    http://​www​.gocomics​.com/​f​o​r​b​e​t​t​e​r​o​r​f​o​rworse

    If I were Super­man, I’d have a hard time decid­ing whether the Shrubs or the Pat­ter­sons needed anni­hi­lat­ing first. But I guess how­ever I decided, I’d be hand­cuffed and detained.

    Der­wood. Trains are a sound­track. Mys­tery Train, Train Time, Train to Nowhere, Train Kept Rollin, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry, Orange Blos­som Spe­cial, Wabash Can­non­ball, Last Train to Clarksville, Mid­night Spe­cial, the spec­tac­u­lar Train in Vain, Night­time in the Switch­ing Yard, Fol­som Prison Blues, Casey Jones, Smoke­stack Light­ning, oh, and Love in Vain, and the Rolling Stones did a decent ren­di­tion of the song from the Devil at the Cross­roads. And Peo­ple Get Ready. So gor­geous it breaks your heart. I heard Cur­tis sing it at a Bobby Kennedy rally on Tuxedo Street in down­town Detroit, and it may sound corny, but that does seem to me to be what America’s about.

    Hate to beat a dead horse, but we’d still have viable trains in the USA if Dwight Eisen­hower didn’t build the inter­state sys­tem for Jimmy Hoffa.

  94. caliban said on August 31st, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    Here ya go:

    http://​www​.gocomics​.com/​t​h​e​n​e​w​a​d​v​e​n​t​u​r​e​s​o​f​q​u​e​e​n​v​i​ctoria

    Fact is it wouldn’t make a notice­able change.

  95. Dexter said on August 31st, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    ROgirl, right on! Look at Viet­nam today and it’s hard to imag­ine how and why the US spent so much in lives and dol­lars, and for what? It just seems like such a mis­take , as it did to many of us dur­ing the “Amer­i­can War” as the Viet­namese refer to it. Still, these peo­ple Nancy wrote of would want us to believe that by even more bombs and troops, some­how we could have won that war, and a good many of them think the US should have nuked Hanoi and all of the North.
    It’s these same peo­ple and their chil­dren who believe the filthy non­sense spring­ing from McInsane’s mouth regard­ing the “noble mis­sion…” —all that shit — about the US occu­pa­tion of Iraq.
    Chang­ing sub­jects for sec­ond , only Bill Maher ques­tioned Obama’s deter­mi­na­tion to esca­late the Afghanistan war.
    Any bets on how long it will take Obama to oust Osama bin Laden up outta the cave?

  96. Dexter said on August 31st, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    an icon from my youth has left…

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​9​/​0​1​/​s​p​o​r​t​s​/​0​1​k​o​w​a​l​s​k​i​.​h​t​m​l​?​_​r​=​1​&​a​m​p​;​h​p​&​a​m​p​;​o​r​e​f​=​slogin

  97. Jolene said on August 31st, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    More Palin enter­tain­ment: Her com­ments on the Pledge of Alle­giance, as reported in a can­di­date ques­tion­naire com­pleted dur­ing her guber­na­to­r­ial race.

    11. Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Alle­giance? Why or why not?

    SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the found­ing fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance

    The prob­lem: The Pledge was writ­ten in 1892, at which point it would have been dif­fi­cult to find out how the Found­ing Fathers actu­ally felt, and the “under God” phrase was added in 1951. Even I knew that. Well, actu­ally, I’d have had to say that it was added “in the ‘50s.”

    Here are her responses to the whole can­di­date ques­tion­naire, which demon­strate why “the base” is so ecsta­tic about her selection.

  98. moe99 said on August 31st, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Is she the mother of the baby? I real­ize this is National Enquirer ter­ri­tory but we’ve been here before with John Edwards, so what’s sauce for the goose.…

    http://​www​.dai​lykos​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​0​0​8​/​8​/​3​0​/​1​2​1​3​5​0​/​1​3​7​/​4​8​6​/​580223

  99. Suzi said on August 31st, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    Fort­Waynites, Palin reminds me of Matt Kelty — attrac­tive, pop­u­lar, reli­gious, family-values fig­ure, and naive, under-educated for polit­i­cal office, not too deep and dan­ger­ously igno­rant of the law.

  100. Dexter said on August 31st, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Jolene , that’s a good one! We had to stand and recite The Pledge every day as kids , heart cov­ered by hand, and I remem­ber dis­cus­sion as to how it had recently been changed (sev­eral years before, in my instance). Later on it flared up again as The Amer­i­can Athe­ists under Madeleine Mur­ray O’Hair demanded the offend­ing changes be stricken.

  101. Dexter said on August 31st, 2008 at 8:19 pm

    As the sun rises many thou­sands will walk the Mack­inac Bridge from St. Ignace to Mack­i­naw City. My wife and I and assorted friends made this walk many times, mostly in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. It’s a great expe­ri­ence. Bon voy­age, walk­ers!
    (and you no longer have to worry about trip­ping over (for­mer) Gov. John Engler’s triplet stroller!)

    http://​www​.mack​i​nacbridge​.org/​a​n​n​u​a​l​-​b​r​i​d​g​e​-​w​alk-7/

  102. coozledad said on August 31st, 2008 at 8:43 pm

    McCain, in one last jab at saint­hood, dri­ves a knife through the heart of Rove’s Party. Talk about a hell Obama speech.

  103. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 31st, 2008 at 10:43 pm

    Teach your daugh­ters well –

    http://​surber​pic​tures​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​c​a​r​i​b​o​u.html

    I’m think­ing she can han­dle Putin or Medvedev. Ah, what a beau­ti­ful sun­set over cen­tral Ohio, and beau­ti­ful fire­works with ribs and a Mol­son i didn’t have to pay for, all to the 1812 Over­ture after some Orange Blos­som Spe­cial with blue­grass ensem­ble and county sym­phony. Life is good!

    McCain-Palin: Shoot­ing Up In the Polls, Not Just North of the Arc­tic Circle

  104. Gasman said on August 31st, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    Jolene,
    That Palin gem ques­tion­naire answer regard­ing the Pledge of Alle­giance reminds me of an oft told tale in Texas. In the early 1920s, Gov. Ma Fer­gu­son was asked about her stance on the then hot issue of mak­ing Eng­lish the offi­cial lan­guage of Texas. Her response: “If the King’s Eng­lish was good enough for Jesus Christ and the twelve dis­ci­ples, it’s good enough for me!” Kind of hard to argue with that kind of logic. Palin appeals to those sim­ple­tons who believe that the found­ing fathers actu­ally did have a hand in writ­ing the Pledge.

    Gov. Palin is lookin’ more Quayle-like with each pass­ing day. Maybe she really is the best that the Repub­li­cans can muster. More’s the pity.

  105. nancy said on August 31st, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Jeff, since you bring it up, please parse the dif­fer­ence between those two pho­tos. Sarah shot a big mam­mal, so she has a big­ger dick than John, who just shot a lit­tle birdie? I’m curi­ous. I mean, we all know Kerry’s a big fag because he likes wind­surf­ing, but I’m a lit­tle behind the curve on my bird-hunting code.

    I assume she ate that thing. Can we get some more shots of her remov­ing the gut pile?

  106. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 31st, 2008 at 10:56 pm

    Cal­iban — did you buy the argu­ment link­ing Eric Blair and Waugh in the NYTBR? Inter­est­ing, but a stretch. In the end, i wasn’t sure what absolute val­ues it was the author claimed they shared, other than hon­esty. Which is rea­son enough to value each, but doesn’t link them in any way that explains their differences.

    [update] Sorry, just saw Nancy’s ques­tion — i would assume she ground it into sausage and froze it, hav­ing not heard good things about cari­bou steaks. Kerry looked like he was pok­ing his grouse ner­vously wear­ing a jacket that just came out of the store cel­lo­phane, but who said fag? Who’s mak­ing penis com­ments? I just thought it was cool that she was will­ing to be pho­tographed teach­ing her daugh­ter to hunt, which not every politi­cian would have the {koff} guts to do.

    Really, i have no time or truck with demo­niz­ing Kerry or Gore or who­ever that fel­low is the Dems are run­ning this time for pres­i­dent. I just think that i could like the Repub­li­can can­di­dates this year and not be sub-human. As always, i could be wrong.

  107. Dexter said on August 31st, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Oh my! Thank you! I thought Kerry was a big fag cuz he likes bicy­cling!
    Audubon shot the birds he painted and stud­ied; Kerry was just hun­gry for a pheas­ant.
    MOOSE STEW TONIGHT!! OK, I ain’t no veg­e­tar­ian, but this photo is still dis­gust­ing. Go watch “Into the Wild” and see how Chris McCan­d­less ( Alexan­der Super­tramp) fared try­ing to pre­serve his fallen moose.…
    (by the way, Jon Krakauer is a hel­luva author…I’m cur­rently read­ing “Into Thin Air” (1996)…a real page-turner! )

  108. nancy said on August 31st, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    Yes, God knows being pho­tographed hunt­ing is a sure career killer in ALASKA.

    That link draws a con­trast between the two: “…as opposed to.” I’m just won­der­ing, hon­estly, how opposed they are. One is a woman with a lit­tle kid, pos­ing with a cari­bou, and the other is a man with another man, and he has a bird? Clearly Don Surber thinks this is just as oppo­si­tional as can be, and I was won­der­ing if maybe you could see some­thing I can’t.

    Actu­ally, Dex­ter, as I recall, some did find oppo­si­tional pho­tos between Kerry (road bike) and Bush (moun­tain bike) wor­thy of dis­cus­sion. The con­clu­sion was that moun­tain bik­ing is Of the Peo­ple, whereas road bik­ing is, well, faggy.

  109. Dexter said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:06 am

    Christ, where does that leave me, ped­alling around a small town on a cross bike?

    Oh. I want to share this video with fel­low cyclists. I saw this live on the 2008 Tour De France TV cov­er­age and it was scary, but the rider was unhurt…not for the squeamish…

    http://​www​.live​leak​.com/​v​i​e​w​?​i​=​e​5​c​_​1​2​1​6​753545

  110. Phoenix Woman said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:09 am

    McCain was bad­gered into this by the Fundies. They told him in no uncer­tain terms —  You pick Lieber­man, we walk:

    http://​blogs​.abc​news​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​r​a​d​a​r​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​h​o​w​-​p​a​l​i​n​-​c​a​m​e.html

    So his staff picked the ultra-Fundie Palin, who her­self was on the short list of accept­able run­ning mates reeled off by none other than the South­ern Bap­tist Convention’s Richard Land three weeks ago:

    http://​www​.cbsnews​.com/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​0​8​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​a​l​p​l​a​y​e​r​s​/​m​a​i​n​4​3​3​1​8​6​3​.shtml

    Just as in 2000, when they screwed him in South Car­olina, the Fundies have once again shown McCain that they own his butt and he can’t make a move with­out bow­ing down to them.

    By the way, here’s an Alaskan blog­ger with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pic­ture of beau­ti­ful down­town Wasilia, Alaska, the boom­ing metrop­o­lis that Palin left $20 mil­lion in debt when she was kicked upstairs in 2006:

    http://​mud​flats​.word​press​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​2​9​/​w​h​a​t​-​i​s​-​m​c​c​a​i​n​-​t​h​i​n​k​i​n​g​-​o​n​e​-​a​l​a​s​k​a​n​s​-​p​e​r​s​p​e​ctive/

  111. MarkH said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am

    Wow, I go away to a Labor Day camp-out at Colter Bay, and look what I find when I come back. Trip was cut short; weather is ter­ri­ble, mas­sive cold rainy front blast­ing in from the north­west. Con­tin­u­ing through tomor­row night, com­plete with snow(!).

    Nancy, thanks for admon­ish­ing cal­iban. Please do it more. I am tir­ing very quickly of his (seem­ing) narcotic-induced repeti­cious rants and the vul­gar­ity adds noth­ing. I just skipped through after his first three or four.

    ALTHOUGH: cal­iban, I like the Tod & Buz ref­er­ence the other day; I’m one of the few here who picked up on those two, I sus­pect. Long live the ’62 Corvette! The epit­ome of the model.

    But, Nancy, pick­ing on Mona Charen is WAY too easy. She’s like a fifth-rate com­men­ta­tor on a three-deep team. I used to cringe watch­ing her on “Cap­i­tal Gang”. You bet­ter be able to do bat­tle with Mark Shields and Al Hunt, and she just wasn’t up to it. By the way, FWIW, I knew you were (right­fully) sep­a­rat­ing Palin the can­di­date from those idi­otic pas­sages. Time will tell about McCain’s choice. Mean­time, I’ll go with Jeff’s last para­graph in his 10:56PM post.

  112. Colleen said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:23 am

    Again…why do the repubs try so hard to court the fun­da­men­tal­ists? Because it’s not like they are gonna go vote for any­one else…

  113. Jolene said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:35 am

    Because, Colleen, there are more Democ­rats than Repub­li­cans, espe­cially after the enor­mous increase in Dem voter reg­is­tra­tion that has taken place this year. Thus, they need ALL their vot­ers to come out. Sup­pos­edly, it was GWB’s ground game, dri­ven by social con­ser­v­a­tive vol­un­teers, that enabled him to win Ohio in 2004. This year, they have been unen­thu­si­as­tic about the can­di­date at the top of the ticket; but, appar­ently, they love Sara Palin, so McCain’s pick helps to shore up his pre­vi­ously weak right flank.

    It doesn’t, though, ensure that he will gain the vote of Sara Palin’s mother-in-law.

  114. Joe Kobiela said on September 1st, 2008 at 12:49 am

    This next nine weeks should be fun here with the divine miss N lead­ing us through. I know those of us on the right are going to be tak­ing shots but I won’t take them per­son­ally. I learned a long time ago that the more edu­cated left wings,have a hissy when they real­ize there are more of us than there are of them, and we don’t really care what they think of our views.
    Ya’ll have a good labor day.
    I’ll be watch­ing Gus­tav take out N.O. again.
    I fig­ure it’s Bushes fault.
    Pilot (not to the Gulf coast) Joe

  115. Gasman said on September 1st, 2008 at 1:45 am

    Joe,
    By what data do you arrive at the con­clu­sion that “there are more of us than there are of them?” There are fewer peo­ple that are reg­is­tered as Repub­li­cans nation­ally than Democ­rats. There are demon­stra­bly less of ya’ll than us. Just once Lord, please show me a Repub­li­can than can actu­ally get facts straight!

  116. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:12 am

    The pro­pri­etors at Mak­ing Light dis­emvowel chronic troll post­ing, which includes unnec­ces­sary pro­fan­ity. So Nance, how about dis­emvow­el­ment? There’s a web­site out there that you can use:

    http://​www​.infor​ma​tion​week​.com/​s​h​a​r​e​d​/​p​r​i​n​t​a​b​l​e​A​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​j​h​t​m​l​?​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​I​D​=​1​9​9​600005

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​D​i​s​e​m​v​o​weling

  117. Dexter said on September 1st, 2008 at 2:49 am

    Godammit­tall any­way. How could any­one shoot a beau­ti­ful moose like in that Palin pic­ture, anyway?

  118. moe99 said on September 1st, 2008 at 3:08 am

    http://​www​.mani​ac​world​.com/​t​w​i​n​-​b​a​b​y​-​m​o​o​s​e​-​i​n​-​s​p​r​i​n​k​l​e​r.html

    I’d like to know, after watch­ing this video, how any­one could kill a moose.

  119. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 7:25 am

    It was a cari­bou. They’re rude, dis­agree­able, and argu­men­ta­tive; not like moose at all.

    Really, hunt­ing amuses me not at all; the irony (i thought) was between politi­cians who pre­tend to hunt for elec­tion sea­son photo ops, and some­one who has a freezer full of game that they reg­u­larly eat.

  120. coozledad said on September 1st, 2008 at 8:05 am

    How about politi­cians who wade into a canned hunt­ing ground drunk, and maul their friend’s faces with a shot­gun. I sup­pose it’s best to for­get lit­tle details like that when you’re hawk­ing that Amway shit.

  121. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 1st, 2008 at 8:12 am

    Heck, who needs Amway when you’ve got this to hawk:

    http://​exur​ban​league​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​2​9​/​s​a​r​a​h​-​t​h​e​-​r​i​v​e​t​e​r.aspx

    Palin-Jindal 2012: Exor­cis­ing Ghosts of GOP Fail­ure With Com­pe­tence and Coher­ent Speechifying!

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