36 responses to
“They haven’t changed.”

1. Colleen said on October 30th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

   At least they spelled “a lot” as two words…

2. jcburns said on October 30th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

   I won­der which lot it was?

3. Dorothy said on October 30th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   The lot where they buried Mark and then replaced him with his evil twin, Mike.

4. moe99 said on October 30th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   JTP failed to show up for the Defi­ance rally. Dang!

5. brian stouder said on October 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

   When we heard that jtp was awol, Pam joked that, no doubt, he was all tied up in high level nego­ti­a­tions with his pub­li­cist and a country-western record­ing label.…..(or pos­si­bly, in his capac­ity as idiot-savant spokesper­son for the McCain-Palin cam­paign, he was on a stage some­where, hold­ing forth about how Obama will utterly destroy Israel, if he becomes president)

6. Dexter said on October 30th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

   Nance: The Dems are run­ning some very con­vinc­ing attack videos against Souder, with the tag line being some­thing about Wash­ing­ton has been very good , for Souder…not so good for Indi­ana. (I live in Ohio but we get Fort Wayne TV sta­tions.)
   These are the best ads of the sea­son, by far.

7. Kevin Knuth said on October 30th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

   I should also point out that ear­lier this year the NRC put out a press release call­ing THEIR Con­gress­man Michael Souder (http://​www​.jour​nal​gazette​.net/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​6​1​5​/​L​O​C​A​L​0​2​0​2​/​8​0​6​1​5​0​4​5​3​/​1​0​0​2​/LOCAL scroll down to “what’s in a name”). Just shows he is for­get­table– even to his own party!

8. Kevin Knuth said on October 30th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

9. Gasman said on October 30th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

   If you saw Olber­mann last night, he men­tioned that not only is Joe shop­ping around for a book deal, he’s look­ing for a Nashville record­ing con­tract, and con­tem­plat­ing a run for con­gress. Wow. That is a lot — or as Joe might say, “alot” — to digest.

   Based upon the utter imbe­cil­ity sug­gested by his off the cuff remarks, I’m not sure that Joe has read that many books, so the writ­ing process should be pretty unfa­mil­iar to him. What the hell could he pos­si­bly have to say that would require more than a very thin pam­phlet at best? Pre­cisely how many peo­ple would actu­ally shell out their hard earned money to read any­thing which Joe had writ­ten — or had ghost written?

   Is there any evi­dence that the man has even the slight­est ves­ti­gial trace of musi­cal apti­tude? As a work­ing musi­cian, this one really gets under my skin. He isn’t even licensed in his own pro­fes­sion and now he wants to be a pro musi­cian. Any­one want to take bets on how cheaply his CDs would go for come inau­gu­ra­tion day?

   As for Joe run­ning for con­gress, has the prob­lem in Wash­ing­ton really been that we have had too FEW uni­formed blowhard Repub­li­cans there? I’d like to hear George Wills, David Brooks, and other con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als chime in on Joe the Congressman.

   I’ll ded­i­cate my quote of the day to JTP, who basi­cally might not be bad guy at heart, but is get­ting pre­sump­tive and giddy with his time in the rar­i­fied air next to the stars. He is begin­ning to believe that he is some­one impor­tant, some­one who the coun­try wants to hear from on any and every sub­ject. I wouldn’t even go to him for plumb­ing advice, let alone for­eign pol­icy mus­ings. Joe, this one’s for you:

   “Ordi­nar­ily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stu­pid.“
    – Hein­rich Heine

10. caliban said on October 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    We get Savan­nah TV in Hilton Head, so we’re treated nightly to Sack­less Cham­b­liss that actu­ally claim his Sen­a­to­r­ial oppo­nent sup­ports solic­it­ing chil­dren for pros­ti­tu­tion. Once you’ve mor­phed Max Cle­land into Osama, this shit is like heroin. Mitch McConnell is play­ing polit­i­cal Saw with Ted Stevens.

    As much as I want to see those three quin­tes­sen­tial GOP aholes humil­i­ated, McCain remains the ulti­mate avatar of abject Repub­li­can rep­tile brain des­per­a­tion. Most piti­ful ploy right now? Tossup. On one hand, the twat is claim­ing the LATimes is pro­tect­ing Obama. TLA fing Times. That employs Jonah Gold­berg and Max Boot as its star pund­intz. What a per­fect storm of panic, igno­rance, and total dis­re­spect for the electorate.

    Still, resort­ing to robo-calling in your home state five days before the elec­tion, well, gosh­darn it, you almost feel…yeah, right. Run a cam­paign like so many Mole Men, and you get what you deserve when you break into a whole new cir­cle of hell.

11. Dexter said on October 30th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Colleen: That bugs me “alot”, too. Really…I bet over half the pop­u­la­tion believes “alot” is a word!

12. MichaelG said on October 30th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    That’s alot of the pop­u­la­tion, Dexter.

    Back from my brief sojourn as MichaelJ. Just check­ing out an alter­nate identity.

13. caliban said on October 30th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    “Alot” is sort of like a ver­bal tick, like peo­ple that know bet­ter unable not to say “new-cue-lar”. The one that gets me is endemic mis­use of “bias” for “biased”. What the hell? “I am Woman”? “We are Mar­shall”? “I am become death”? “We are all bias”?

14. LA Mary said on October 30th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    Whole nother is used alot.

15. moe99 said on October 30th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    http://​www​.bal​loon​-juice​.com/​?​p​=13069

    The mod­ern day equiv­a­lent of the golden calf.

16. Dexter said on October 30th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    My brother has short­ened “ball­park esti­mate” to just “ball­park”.
    So…who is going to win the elec­toral col­lege? Give me a ball­park, don’t be bias,
    I have heard alot of stuff about Palin, but that’s a whole nuther ball­game!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Our trick or treat was tonight; more kids showed up than I remem­ber from past years. The weather was great and the cos­tumes were creative…my fave was a girl dressed like a fly­ing bug, green spot­ted wings and a crazy mask with a Z-shaped bro­ken stinger for a nose. I kind of lost it, laugh­ing so hard. They took all the candy we had, so the last-fifteen-minute-stragglers got bub­ble gum only. The last kid got the tub dumped into his sack…a LOT of bub­ble gum…but I have a mouth full of den­tal crowns and no way do I want any bub­ble gum around.

17. brian stouder said on October 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    You know, no mat­ter how much Souder irri­tates me, I sim­ply can­not vote for his silly opponent.

    It would have been so much eas­ier if Jill Long had run for her old con­gres­sional seat again

18. JGW said on October 30th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    I’m not in that dis­trict — I got to vote between Mike Pence, per­pet­ual can­di­date Ed Welsh, or write in, hee hee. Since I’m a precinct judge I love play­ing with the Microvote and the write in field. Mr. Burns almost got my vote, but I stood strong for Obama and the ticket.
    Plus as the old adage says, A vote for Burns is a vote for McCain. And the idea of V.P. Palin, well, put an “e” on the end and all makes Quayle look like FDR. The nice part is 90% of amer­i­cans can’t tell the diff between her and Tiny Fey.
    But D that I am, I still dis­like car­pet bag­gers. And Mon­tagano has to spend 90 mins a day on den­tal care. But Souder’s ads. Char­lie Rangel isn’t the devil, it’s a GOP attempt to play the race card and the harlem card, Spooky in Hoosierville.
    The Souder attack ad is funny, with Mon­tagano grilling in chef hat, then snoozin in a ham­mock. At least he cooks his grub and doesn’t go on beserk­ers in the con­gress din­ing room over grilled vs. toasted turkey sand­wiches. I’d have went for the Sen­ate Bean Soup, but after 14 years ya need vari­ety.
    Assum­ing Mon­tagano is a paisano, he will find Alfredo’s and Miri­ams in DC and be just fine. Or Sut­ton Place Gourmet. I didn’t know how to take the name pro­noun­ci­a­tion les­son com­mer­cial with his dad, but my mom is a Man­garacina, so I see the ben­e­fits of that ad in a state that says “Eye-Talian.” Out east that’s like using the N word in the wrong part of the Bronx. Say you want “eye-talian” dress­ing in Ben­son­hust, Brook­lyn and then duck.

19. caliban said on October 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    That Kha­lidi guy McCain is try­ing to tie Obama to? Might want to go Emily Lit­tella on that one. All Bozos on that Straight Talk Bus.

20. joodyb said on October 30th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    wires at this hour have clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Press Office (the Nashville PR firm) that the Plumber’s record­ing con­tract is rank hyper­bole but the pub­li­cist is go. as they are said pub­li­cist, i guess they’d know.

21. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 30th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    Actu­ally, the church regional gath­er­ing i was at this past week­end included a guy play­ing a gar­den hose and a fun­nel — Joe the Not-Really-Licensed-Plumber-Whose-Records-Have-Been-Combed-By-the-Dem-State-Officials could have done “Flight of the Bum­ble­bee” on that assemblage.

22. Terry WAlter said on October 31st, 2008 at 6:51 am

    A spe­cial invi­ta­tion to my many NBF’s. Wan­der over to the Wall Street Jour­nal site and read the col­umn ‘Obama and the Pol­i­tics of Crowds’. It’s writ­ten by Fouad Ajami, an Arab. But I’ll bet he’s just not telling us his mid­dle name is Tom.

23. beb said on October 31st, 2008 at 7:27 am

    The thing about Joe — the — Plumber’s 15 min­utes of fame is that there is never a meter maid around to tell them that their time has expired.

24. Jolene said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:22 am

    What prompts your invi­ta­tion, Terry? Are you think­ing that those of us who sup­port Obama are liv­ing in Dreamland?

    I think we know that Obama is not the Mes­siah, that there will still be choices to make, and that every­one won’t get every­thing they want on Jan­u­ary 21st – or ever.

    But what we can get from Obama, I believe, is a sys­tem­atic, intel­li­gent approach to our real prob­lems and the sense that we can do bet­ter — that we don’t have to just let things be how they are and hope for the best. We can try to fix the things we know are not working.

25. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:27 am

    I’m visu­al­iz­ing a brigade of uni­formed women in Andy Warhol wigs on Seg­ways, scoot­ing around the coun­try, zip­ping up to folks past their sell-by date talk­ing in front of a cam­era or a lis­ten­ing reporter, writ­ing up a cita­tion, rip­ping it off their clip­board with a flour­ish, and hand­ing it to the Six­teenth Minute Offender (“You have the right to chal­lenge this deter­mi­na­tion in court within seven days, or to plead guilty by mail­ing the fine to the address printed on the reverse of this form.”)

26. nancy said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:30 am

    Fouad Ajami was born in Lebanon, but emi­grated to the U.S. in the early 60s, where he’s lived ever since.

27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:45 am

    Terry, i read that piece yes­ter­day, and was baf­fled by it myself. Ajami is try­ing to raise the ambi­gu­ity point about Obama’s pol­i­tics, which is fair enough and needs doing (still will after Jan. 20, for that mat­ter), but does so in the most unhelp­ful way imaginable.

    It doesn’t help that he book­ends the piece with quotes from the wrongly hon­ored Elias Canetti; as a big Iris Mur­doch fan, let me just add that any reader of Mur­doch can tell you that Canetti was a mon­strous ego­cen­tric mis­an­thrope, Nobel or no. Draw­ing a crowd should not be seen as omi­nous for Obama … or Palin, and that claim has been made both direc­tions across the aisle.

    Enough of anti-populism. We don’t nec­es­sar­ily need a resur­gent pop­ulism per se (pace Wm Jen­nings Bryan, Ignatius Don­nelly, et alia), but this idea that some­thing large num­bers of peo­ple like is there­fore highly sus­pect and uncred­itable (Nor­man Rock­well, John Rut­ter, Cold­play, John Grisham, Charles Dick­ens, Geor­gia O’Keefe) is pseudo-elitist bullpuckey.

28. alex said on October 31st, 2008 at 9:14 am

    Regard­ing Kha­lidi, the WaPo put it best:

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​3​0​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​1​0​3​0​0​3​2​4​4.html

29. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Alex — great arti­cle; thanks for the link.

    As some pun­dit said — the McCain cam­paign doesn’t have any high cards left — but they’re play­ing all that remains in their hand.

    It IS some­what sur­pris­ing that McCain is going down in such a dis­hon­or­able way. His pres­i­den­tial run pre­sume­ably marks the curtain-call of his career on the national stage, and to end on such a Nixon­ian note is more than a lit­tle odd. (his cam­paign looks more and more like the farewell-balloon ride of Pro­fes­sor Mar­vel in the Wiz­ard of OZ “I can’t come back! I don’t know how to fly it! So long, folks!!”)

30. The Subtle Rudder said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Not sure if this has been posted yet, but here’s an analy­sis of whether bad times lead to more zom­bies: http://​tinyurl​.com/​6mjh3q

    Check out that chart!

31. moe99 said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Alex, there’s a few blog­gers that I think got it right about Khalidi:

    http://​obsid​i​an​wings​.blogs​.com/​o​b​s​i​d​i​a​n​_​w​i​n​g​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​i​f​-​y​o​u​-​h​a​v​e​-​a​-​r.html

    http://​icga​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​r​u​b​i​n​-​m​y​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​-​n​e​o​-​n​a​z​i.html

    http://​www​.harpers​.org/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​h​b​c​-​9​0​003779

    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​2​8​/​m​c​c​a​i​n​-​f​u​n​d​e​d​-​w​o​r​k​-​o​f​-​p​a​l​_​n​_​1​3​8​6​0​6.html

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​monthly​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​i​n​d​i​v​i​d​u​a​l​/​2​0​0​8​_​1​0​/​0​1​5​4​49.php

    http://​www​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​2​4​1​2​53.php

    The prob­lem with the McCain cam­paign is that it has devolved into zero pol­icy and 100% per­sonal attacks. There is no redeem­ing value in McCain or Palin at the present time.

32. RoryonLanGuyland said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Know what I also hear alot of? “Ast­er­ick.” No, you morons, it’s “Aster­iSk!” Please, get it RIGHT! God, even heard a girl on a local radio spot say “ast­er­ick” the other day. Ack!

    Rory the for­mer Copy Chief

33. LA Mary said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:04 am

    Um, I went out to din­ner with Fouad Ajami once. When I man­aged a gourmet shop on the Upper West Side he used to stop in, buy stuff, and flirt with me. He got famous when Iran got crazy and the all the news shows needed some­one to explain what Shi­ites are. I think he was a pro­fes­sor of poli sci at Colum­bia before that.
    We didn’t talk pol­i­tics at din­ner. He mostly was com­ing on to me.

34. nancy said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am

    And Mary wins the thread in 33! Wooooo!

35. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:19 am

    Mary rocks!

    (and in so doing, proves once again that women have ALL the power, and too much refine­ment to uti­lize it)

36. Terry WAlter said on November 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 am

    So Mary, wouldn’t you say he was an asstute observer, and a great judge of character?