75 responses to
“To the New York island.”

1. Sue said on January 19th, 2009 at 10:48 am

   If we have the Dixie Chicks, can we have Heart, too? Ok, I’ll shut up now. And the Voice of God is Alan Rick­man, speak­ing for Ala­nis Morissette.

2. Ellen said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:03 am

   Oh, hon­estly. What are we get­ting with Obama? Can we look at sub­stance instead of enter­tain­ment choices?

   I’ll close Gitmo right away…er…not

   I’ll get us out of Iraq really soon…er…not

   I’ll be all hope n’ change…pardon me while I nom­i­nate the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion for my cabinet…

   And really, Nance, doesn’t the cultish­ness of this event, the quasi-religious hope that peo­ple are putting in Obama creep you out even a *lit­tle* bit?

   Put out all the snappy one-liners about hick GOP­ers that you want, but I can’t believe you’re uncrit­i­cally on board with this train. Disappointing.

3. brian stouder said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am

   Thanks for the link to the nig­gling Noo­nan piece. I was struck by the crabbed, con­tin­gent nature of this pas­sage (with empha­sis added, to her conditions):

   To [President-elect Obama’s] Thursday’s speech itself. It had a clean and clearly stated but rather grand open­ing: “Through­out America’s his­tory, there have been some years that sim­ply rolled into the next with­out much notice or fan­fare. Then there are the years that come along once in a gen­er­a­tion — the kind that mark a clean break from a trou­bled past, and set a new course for our nation. This is one of those years.” This may well turn out to be true, but is per­haps best said by oth­ers and in ret­ro­spect.

   Or, rather, per­haps not!

   Who was the pres­i­dent who said — in a state­ment to Con­gress (essen­tially a State of the Union message):

   “Fellow-citizens, we can­not escape his­tory. We of this Con­gress and this admin­is­tra­tion, will be remem­bered in spite of our­selves. No per­sonal sig­nif­i­cance, or insignif­i­cance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dis­honor, to the lat­est gen­er­a­tion. We say we are for the Union. The world will not for­get that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the respon­si­bil­ity. In giv­ing free­dom to the slave, we assure free­dom to the free — hon­or­able alike in what we give, and what we pre­serve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may suc­ceed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peace­ful, gen­er­ous, just — a way which, if fol­lowed, the world will for­ever applaud, and God must for­ever bless.”

   Hmmmm.

   It has a clean and clearly stated but rather grand sound; and it more or less did “turn out to be true”.

   Per­haps it would have been best said by oth­ers, and in ret­ro­spect, yes? We bet­ter off with­out clear-eyed, evoca­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion from our pres­i­dent? Grandeur should NOT come from there, but only from the scrib­bling class?

   (Does Peggy have prose-envy?)

4. del said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:17 am

   With his grat­ing voice, irri­tat­ing man­ner, and author­i­tar­ian style, it seems likely that Bradley Scholz­man endured much as a child.

5. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am

   Nancy,
   It is hard for me to feel much sym­pa­thy for the out­go­ing party and its fol­low­ers. It was this group, after all, that accused me of being a trai­tor and an appeaser because I saw no sense in launch­ing war on a nation that had noth­ing to do with 9/11. It was this group that branded me a god­less bas­tard because I believe in a strict sep­a­r­tion of church and state. It was this group that accused me of har­bor­ing sym­pa­thy for ter­ror­ists sim­ply because I believe tor­ture is morally inde­fen­si­ble for a nation that presents itself as a bea­con to the world. It was this group that called me an elit­ist (a pretty nifty trick for a kid who grad­u­ated in the bot­tom fourth of his high school class and got his col­lege degree from a land grant col­lege in Ohio) because I believe deci­sions should be based on sci­ence, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, not gut feel­ings. It was this group that called me a stu­pid tree-hugger because I think this planet is worth pro­tect­ing. It was this group that politi­cized every­thing around me –movies, music, books, plays– and demo­nized any­one who doesn’t live in small town Americana.

   The dam­age they leave in their wake –domes­ti­cally and inter­na­tion­ally– will take decades to repair, if it can be fixed at all.

   I am happy to watch them leave. No, I am over­joyed at watch­ing them leave. I wish them a long, cold visit to the bar­ren polit­i­cal wild­ner­ness, where per­haps they can learn how to gov­ern a nation instead of 51% of the country.

6. Susan said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:26 am

   Nancy, some­times I think you sell us con­ser­v­a­tive FW hicks short. I’ve lived in the Fort for almost 20 years and — although I’m con­ser­v­a­tive — con­sider you a “friend” (if that’s not too pathetic to say since we’ve never met). I’ve loved your writ­ing since read­ing your columns years ago. And, though I would never vote for some­one of Obama’s beliefs, I don’t wish him ill. When Bush won, I didn’t feel like gloat­ing to my demo­c­rat friends. I know some (on both sides) do; just don’t paint us all with that brush so quickly.

7. brian stouder said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:37 am

   Jeff — not even “51% of the country” — but only 51% of the “likely vot­ers” in the right com­bi­na­tion of states! And — if the over­all likely-voter turnout needs to be reduced (or sup­pressed) to get the right result on elec­tion night — so much the better!

   Karl Rove, who looked like an elec­toral genius (or evil genius, take your pick) sev­eral sum­mers ago, now looks like a giant ter­mite, hol­low­ing out the branches and the trunk of the GOP, so that now it has pitched over — and they are left with a rot­ting log on the floor of the forrest.…which makes ground-bound gnaw­ers like Lim­baugh per­fectly happy…

8. alex said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am

   Here’s bet­ting the local ignoscenti are pick­ing up all this “Marx­ism” shit from read­ing the blog at Nance’s alma mater, where her for­mer col­league Leo Mor­ris invokes Marx­ism quite promis­cu­ously in just about every­thing he writes. He refers to Obama as “Wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion­ist in chief,” and gen­er­ally a day doesn’t go by when he isn’t also pimp­ing for the global warm­ing deniers or the NRA.

9. del said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am

   Ellen, Obama gives peo­ple hope. Noth­ing wrong with that.
   When­ever I want a sense of what rabid repub­li­cans are up to I turn on Fox “News.” Right now they’re giv­ing the Obama inau­gural non­stop cov­er­age to cre­ate implau­si­bly high expec­ta­tions for the man and to dis­credit and mar­gin­al­ize Democ­rats gen­er­ally. It’s the oppo­site of the Sarah Palin pre-debate spin by which the GOP sought to lower pub­lic expec­ta­tions for Palin. Cre­ate a back­drop of assured fail­ure for Obama. And triv­i­al­ize the Demo­c­ra­tic base. A typ­i­cal FOX News piece would place a micro­phone in the face of the most out­ra­geous inau­gural rev­eller to be found and then have the solemn news anchor shake his head at the enthu­si­asm of a “typ­i­cal” Obama acolyte.
   Ellen, Nancy’s not being uncrit­i­cal. The train hasn’t even left the station …

10. nancy said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Alex, I wish I could feel any­thing for my alma mater other than pity at the moment. Circulation’s barely hold­ing above 20K. What’s more pathetic than read­ing that blog and then see­ing the first com­menter is always the even more pathetic Bob G., who chimes in like Ed McMa­hon: LOL! Leo, you are ONTO SOMETHING.

    Oh, as for the quasi-religiosity of all this, I actu­ally do have some thoughts, but they’re not gelled yet.

11. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 11:56 am

    Brian,
    You’re quite right about where the Repub­li­can Party finds itself right now. Your phrase­ol­ogy is ele­gant yet pun­gent. And the role the “turd blos­som” played in cre­at­ing this predica­ment can­not be over­stated. I’d be much hap­pier see­ing that lit­tle pop­corn fart in fed­eral prison for his many dirty deeds, but rec­og­nize that will never hap­pen. I fully expect W.‘s last extended middle-finger to the nation he betrayed will be a host of par­dons cov­er­ing the ver­min who got us to this place.

    That said, there is no small amount of sat­is­fac­tion in watch­ing the rick­ety polit­i­cal archi­tec­ture built by Rove col­lapse while he watches. From genius to bone­head in four years…quite a feat, Karl, quite a feat. Enjoy the ran­cid fruits of your labor, Karl.

12. moe99 said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    I was in the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, a polit­i­cal appointee, who got to watch the glee­ful Rea­ganauts take over. I remem­ber the rise in con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion that accom­pa­nied them, the increase in use of lim­ou­sines was the most appar­ent out­ward sign. Their glee was loud and shrill and it lasted the full 12 years. What­ever the Democ­rats are doing now is only at best on a par with the Repub­li­cans when they came into power in 1981. Rat bastards.

    And, while I was in the Grand Canyon, I had din­ner at the swanky El Tovar hotel in the south rim and had to lis­ten to a fat, right wing Amer­i­can ass­hole loudly pro­claim to a group of Euro­peans that Obama was noth­ing but a Marxist/socialist whore. It seems that the term has been passed around to the faith­ful neo con under­ground. I expect to see much more use in the future.

13. Sue said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Ellen, I respect your opin­ion; don’t think many of us haven’t been a lit­tle ner­vous about some of the direc­tions Obama has taken. For myself I can point to FISA, pre-election, as my “keep your­self calm, he’s human” moment. Just please don’t accuse “our side” of giv­ing in to reli­gious fer­vor, quasi– or oth­er­wise. We’ve been watch­ing politics-by-way-of-religion from the side­lines for 8 years, and we have, indeed, learned from what we’ve seen. First les­son: inject­ing reli­gion into pol­i­tics will back­fire, and the sever­ity of the dam­age will be in direct rela­tion to the ham-handedness of the tactics.

14. LA Mary said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    I sec­ond every­thing Jeff B said in his first com­ment, and agree com­pletely with the Bet­tye Levette/Jon Bon Jovi com­ment.
    I am so very happy to see the ass­holes who have been declar­ing them­selves spir­i­tu­ally cor­rect, moral, patri­otic and pro­tec­tive for the last eight years GONE. They have been none of the above.

15. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    Jeff Bor­den expressed my sen­ti­ments quite well. How the hell did you get in my head, Jeff? It’s kind of creepy.

    Nancy, I was trou­bled by your line express­ing empa­thy for the hand wring Repub­li­cans out there:

    “ It’s no fun to see the wrong guy win. So now they get to see what that’s like.”

    Any­one who is still in dis­may over the fact that John McCain lost, that Sarah Palin is NOT (I repeat, NOT, HALLELUJAH!) a heart­beat away from being respon­si­ble for repair­ing our econ­omy, res­ur­rect­ing our national sense of pride, and man­ag­ing our national secu­rity is, quite plainly an imbe­cile. (Ash­ley Mor­ris would have said it more col­or­fully than I.)

    The legacy of Repub­li­can rule is abysmally pathetic. If you can think of any­thing, and I mean any­thing that this pres­i­dent did right, I’d sure like you to point it out, because it has eluded me. He did not keep us safe on 9/11/01, when he should have. If you think that we are safer now than when he took office, you are deluded. He totally fucked New Orleans (you’re wel­come, Ash­ley). He did the same to our econ­omy. He arro­gantly strode around the globe offend­ing allies at every turn because they were not his obse­quious lap­dogs. Guess, what? The French were right.

    These are the men­tal pyg­mies that gave us Free­dom Fries, that ques­tioned the patri­o­tism of any­one that did not march lock­step with their neo-fascist quest to crush Amer­i­can democ­racy. This is the crowd that con­tended the found­ing fathers were full of shit with all their Marx­ist pussy long­ing for habeas cor­pus, pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion of crim­i­nal charges, free­dom of speech, free­dom of assem­bly, free­dom to think of any­thing other than what THE PARTY says, and the pinko notion that the pres­i­dent should be bound by the rule of law.

    These folks had us tee­ter­ing on the brink of a fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship, and I don’t remem­ber hear­ing hardly a word of dis­sent from their side of the aisle con­cern­ing vio­la­tions of domes­tic and inter­na­tional law. They have been con­tent to see our Jus­tice Depart­ment turned into a giant fed­eral hit squad that man­u­fac­tured evi­dence and brought charges against Democ­rats in order to engi­neer their vision of a per­ma­nent Repub­li­can major­ity. If that is not akin to the tac­tics of Hitler, WTF is?

    These folks cheered wildly as we went to war against a coun­try because they LOOKED like those who were respon­si­ble for 9/11. They glee­fully aban­doned our most cher­ished val­ues, they scut­tled our national sense of char­ac­ter, they ignored those noble ideals which guided us for over 200 years. And I am sup­posed to feel sym­pa­thy because now they are now wail­ing and gnash­ing their teeth?

    They not only did all of these things, and they did so arro­gantly, dis­dain­fully char­ac­ter­iz­ing any and all who did not enthu­si­as­ti­cally sup­port their idiocy, vio­lence, and crim­i­nal­ity as some­how being un-American. If they had retained con­trol of the gov­ern­ment I fully believe that it could have meant the end of Amer­i­can democ­racy as we know it. And they did not seem to care. They were too inter­ested in shout­ing down any­one who dared to speak out.

    So, I say, God damn them and go to hell. I have no sym­pa­thy or patience for any­one that was not out­raged by the last eight years. They have done as much dam­age as they pos­si­bly could and now they want to sulk. Screw them and the horses they rode in on.

    Guess what? Even if Obama screws up, the Democ­rats will not take away any of your rights. And if they tried to, I would scream just as loudly to pro­tect your sorry-ass rights as I would my own. That seems to be one of the main dif­fer­ences between lib­er­al­ism and con­ser­vatism. We will not engage in any of the whole­sale vio­la­tions of law that Bush & Co. did on a daily basis. The mere fact that Obama dis­plays intel­lect and char­ac­ter imbues me with a sense of hope that we might begin to at least right the very long list of wrongs that have been done to our country.

    It seems that since Gold­wa­ter, con­ser­v­a­tives have not been con­tent to merely attain office and rule, they’ve felt com­pelled to reach for per­ma­nent sin­gle party rule. Sounds like some­thing right out of Stalin’s or Hitler’s play­book. They have tried to mar­gin­al­ize, crim­i­nal­ize, and erad­i­cate lib­er­al­ism once and for all. They do not do so in the free mar­ket­place of ideas, but with the might and force of a gov­ern­ment that remade itself in the image of an increas­ingly stri­dent, nar­row minded sect of true believ­ers within one party.

    So, do I feel empa­thy for those Repub­li­cans now wring­ing their hands? Hell no. Suck it up and get over it. Unlike what you might have done to me had you won, you will not be jailed for your beliefs. If you think you can sway vot­ers to your side, good luck. You will just have to do so with­out the aid of the mil­i­tary or the Jus­tice Department.

16. moe99 said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Ah, but it seems that they still have the main­stream media to do their bidding.

    http://​lafiga​.fire​doglake​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​1​8​/​b​i​s​h​o​p​-​c​e​n​s​o​r​e​d​-​b​y​-​h​b​o​-​p​r​a​y​e​r​-​e​x​c​l​u​d​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​o​p​e​n​i​n​g​-​c​e​r​e​m​o​n​y​-​b​r​o​a​d​c​a​s​t​/​#​c​o​mments

    HBO also failed to intro­duce the Gay Men’s Cho­rus, though they’d intro’d every other group performing.

17. Colleen said on January 19th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    LA MARY said:

    “I am so very happy to see the ass­holes who have been declar­ing them­selves spir­i­tu­ally cor­rect, moral, patri­otic and pro­tec­tive for the last eight years GONE. They have been none of the above.”

    Yes. This. I’m all about the hope Obama is rep­re­sent­ing. Let’s do some things dif­fer­ently. Because the same ain’t workin’.

18. Jeff Borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Gas­man,
    I can think of three instances in which Bush’s instincts were actu­ally good and true. First, no pres­i­dent has done more to fight dis­ease in Africa, par­tic­u­larly AIDS and malaria, than Bush. Sec­ond, he was on the right side on the immi­gra­tion issue, though he gets demer­its because he did not lead or push his party to address this vex­ing issue in a way that is both legal and human­i­tar­ian. Third, while they were largely incom­pe­tent, he included more peo­ple of color in top roles in his admin­is­tra­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, he chose Condi Rice, Alberto Gon­za­lez and John Yoo.

19. beb said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    So depart­ing Repub­li­can appointees can’t find any work. Need I remind them that the army is still look­ing for a few good men and women. Afghanistan will still be with us for years, and then there’s Dur­far which needs a large mil­i­tary pres­ence to crush the ter­ror­ists there. Repub­li­cans have always said how they sup­port the troops…why not sup­port the troops by becom­ing them!

    Over­all, what Gas­man said. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion came in to loot the place and take over as if they were an invad­ing cabel. They couldn’t have done a bet­ter job of destroy­ing out coun­try if they tried. Even under Nixon and Rea­gan I never thought they would so utter under­mine the rule of law.

    I didn’t even know Woody Guthrie was still alive! Land O’ Goshen, I wish I had broad­band so I could down­load and hear him singing. The verse about the tress­pass­ing sign was get but reminds me too much of the worst song from the Hip­pie era — “Signs.” Where the guy jumps over the fence and yells at the house “what gives you the right?” I also imag­ine both bar­rels of a 12 gauge going off about there.

    Econ­o­mist Dean Baker has floated an idea that I like. He pro­poses a Trans­ac­tion Tax on finan­cial instru­ments. The rate would be very low, 0.25 per­cent of face value. But because so much money passes hands every day this would add up to $100 bil­lion a year in rev­enue, largely from the very rich, who can afford it. One side-effect he men­tions is that because this tax would hit every trans­ac­tion it would espe­cially penal­ize the spec­u­la­tors who buy stock then sell it an hour later. This tax would enforce a more long-range approach to invest­ing, reduc­ing the huge swings we see in the mar­ket now. I’m not a busi­ness per­son, but I like the clar­ity of this approach.

20. beb said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    Jeff Bor­den, you are wrong about Africa. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion gave a lot of money to fight AIDS but it was all tied to anti-birth con­trol, anti-condom pro­grams. Bush’s poli­cies actu­ally increased the amount of AIDS in Africa because using con­doms is the best way to halt its spread.

    I don;t know but ques­tion whether Bush have a more diverse admin­is­tra­tion than Clin­ton, but his selec­tion of the likes as Rice, Gon­za­les and Yoo takes away any credit Bush might have for hir­ing peo­ple of color.

21. moe99 said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    What beb said wrt to the ulti­mate fail­ure of the Bush AIDs in Africa policy.

22. whitebeard said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    In my weekly news­pa­per col­umn about car prob­lems, I men­tioned ” I think Detroit’s automak­ers are in a bind right now that is not entirely their fault, but is shrink­ing their sales.
    “Sure, they may have built too many big sport util­i­ties, but they did not put wheels and tires under toxic deriv­a­tives that burned up so much money it crip­pled the world econ­omy.“
    And I get a response like this: “The last item I would like to say you should never put your polit­i­cal point of view in the arti­cle. Respect­fully J.D. Rocky Hill“
    Does any­one think I hit a hand-wringing Repub­li­can who equates any com­ment about the destruc­tion of the econ­omy as a polit­i­cal point of view.

23. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Beb,
    My source for the Africa ini­tia­tive has been cov­er­age of pro­gres­sives includ­ing Bono and Bob Geldof, who went way out of their way to praise Bush for his African efforts. Believe me, I know what you mean about the absti­nence efforts, which hope­fully will be shut down soon. It’s an incred­i­ble waste of money.

    Maybe my sense of what Bush did is com­pletely off-base. I’m sim­ply try­ing to find some­thing, any­thing, in the smol­der­ing wreck­age of this lit­tle man’s eight years that looks rea­son­ably promising.

24. whitebeard said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Like­wise, what Beb said about Africa and the fail­ure of the Bush pro­gram because it was tied to anti-condom stu­pid­ity when that is a vital part of bat­tling AIDS

25. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    Jeff B.,
    ’Fraid not, mi amigo. Three strikes for Bush on those issues. Fisrt, on the AIDS issue, Bush clung tena­ciously to his evan­gel­i­cal lean­ings by with­hold­ing fund­ing to pro­grams that even men­tioned abor­tion or fam­ily plan­ning. Since Absti­nence Only worked so well here, he thought it would sweep across Africa bring­ing Amer­i­can style democ­racy in its wake. He wanted to strong arm NGOs and African nations into tow­ing the Repub­li­can Party Line with­out regard to African his­tory and cul­ture. He had this One-Size-Fits-All men­tal­ity to nearly every­thing he did that reduced all ques­tions to dual­is­tic choices between absolute right and wrong. He also has not lived up the the level of promised com­mit­ments in Africa.

    Sec­ond, I live in a bor­der state and the gen­eral con­sen­sus here is that his immi­gra­tion pol­icy is about as effec­tive as No Child Left Behind. It is utter crap. Since the num­bers of ille­gal immi­grants are down, Bush has con­tended that is proof pos­i­tive of the effi­cacy of his pol­icy. It has more to do with the down­turn in the econ­omy than the bril­liance of his stance on immi­gra­tion. Since he’s respon­si­ble for dri­ving the econ­omy into the ditch he can claim respon­si­bil­ity for inad­ver­tently low­er­ing the num­ber of ille­gal immi­grants. As to the much vaunted wall, if it was truly a mat­ter of national secu­rity, as W con­tended, why did national secu­rity con­cerns dis­ap­pear at gaps in the wall on Repub­li­can owned land? The uber-Republican Hunt fam­ily got an exemp­tion from the wall on their land as did a big swanky — and pre­sum­ably Repub­li­can dom­i­nated — coun­try club. This was typ­i­cally lame, inef­fec­tual, ham-fisted Bush league pol­i­tics as usual.

    Third, I see much more cyn­i­cal moti­va­tion for some of the choices he has made in pick­ing peo­ple of vary­ing eth­nic or racial back­grounds. Alberto Gon­za­les was picked by W for state work while I lived in Texas. The Repub­li­cans saw Gon­za­les as some­one to groom for higher office, not because of his accom­plish­ments, his intel­lect, or even his poten­tial for same, but because he was His­panic. That is just as bad as pick­ing peo­ple for posi­tions because they’re white. Gon­za­les proved that he was incom­pe­tent and nearly totally igno­rant regard­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. The choice of Gonzo was not enlight­ened, it was a cyn­i­cal attempt to appear more cul­tur­ally ecu­meni­cal. To the Rs it didn’t mat­ter that Gonzo was a moron; in their eyes all His­pan­ics were interchangeable.

    Haven’t con­vinced me yet. Any­one else care to chime in on W’s successes?

26. Julie Robinson said on January 19th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    Amen, Beb, espe­cially on the enlist­ing idea! If you click on Moe’s link you can read Bishop Robinson’s (no rela­tion) pow­er­ful prayer. It’s hard to see how any per­son of faith could object, but I’m sure some will find a way.

    This morning’s JG asked cit­i­zens about Bush’s legacy. My favorite: “good reflexes”.

27. jcburns said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    Ellen. You DO under­stand if Obama tried to close Gitmo today or do any of these other things, they’d say “uh..dude…you’re not the Pres­i­dent yet.”…?

    Please give him a chance, take a breath, keep hope alive, and so forth.

28. John said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Woodrow Wil­son “Woody” Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – Octo­ber 3, 1967) is no longer with us. I think it may have been Pete Seeger and Bruce Spring­steen singing “This Land”.

29. brian stouder said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    Bush’s legacy.

    hmmmm.

    Iner­tia. Pre­sump­tion. Del­e­ga­tion of duty, up to (and beyond the thresh­old of) dere­lic­tion of duty.

    His attain­ments in life owe to his ambi­tion, cou­pled to his pre­sump­tion that if his dad could do it, he could too — leav­ing aside that his dad climbed the moun­tain and set the ropes for him.

    One is tempted to think that his iron-clad trust of his “gut instincts” — as if THAT was the key to life (and suc­cess­ful lead­er­ship) slipped, in the end. What is the short­cut to effec­tive lead­er­ship? What if that ‘short­cut’ doesn’t really exist?

    Any­way — if he (or his ghost writer) infuses creep­ing self-doubt into the lat­ter chap­ters of his mem­oir, it will at least make it read­able, even if it’s not true

    edit: psssst; John — I believe Woodie WROTE the song the pro­pri­etress was refer­ring to!

30. LA Mary said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

    Moe, did you dine in the huge room with the fire­places at El Tovar? Such a great place.

31. LA Mary said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    Pete’s grand­son was the lead voice on “This Land.” I’m glad they did all the verses.

32. Sue said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    I found Woody through Arlo by way of Steve Good­man, but the biggest impact Woody had on me was the fright­en­ing story of the dis­ease that killed him, Huntington’s chorea. Couldn’t watch Arlo with­out won­der­ing if it was going to hit him.

33. Catherine said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:55 pm

    That verse of This Land Is Your Land is often left out — con­sid­ered too com­mie, I guess — but I love it. Give me that and all the verses to Amer­ica the Beau­ti­ful and I will def­i­nitely well up (no mat­ter who’s tak­ing office).

    And in the immor­tal words of Tina Fey, Peggy Noo­nan can suck it.

34. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Okay, okay. I whiffed on try­ing to find some­thing pos­i­tive about the loathe­some man from Craw­ford. My lib­eral ten­dency to find some­thing pos­i­tive over­whelmed me, lol.

    I’m just so freak­ing glad he will be gone Despite the tremen­dous mess he is leav­ing behind, at least he can no longer add to it.

35. John said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Bound For Glory is the bio-film about Woody which I viewed from Net­Flix last year. I will not stop hump­ing that com­pany until they do wrong by me. Brian, Beb made a com­ment which ques­tioned Woody’s present state. I merely tried to enlighten her.

36. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    My truck with con­ser­vatism in gen­eral is that it pre­sup­poses an a pri­ori inequal­ity amongst Amer­i­cans: they sim­ply know that they are bet­ter than every­one else. They feel this con­de­scend­ing supe­ri­or­ity that allows them to dis­miss and mar­gin­al­ize any­one that does not agree with them. This is as un-American an ideal as has ever been held. I find seri­ous talk of “right think­ing Amer­i­cans” by Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials repug­nant and anti­thet­i­cal to the notion of democ­racy. Why do they alone get to decide what defines “right?” Since when was being Repub­li­can more noble and patri­otic than being Amer­i­can? It is the very embod­i­ment of Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm:

    “All ani­mals are cre­ated equal, but some are more equal than others.”

    If Amer­ica stands for noth­ing else, it stands for equal­ity for all, no excep­tions. Repub­li­can rule as of late has been an Orwellian exer­cise in the muta­bil­ity of his­tory and the denial of real­ity. They have shown that they hold no truth to be sacred, no ideal sacro­sanct, no prin­ci­ple worth fight­ing for except the acqui­si­tion and main­te­nance of power. They have been con­tent to lie, invade, occupy, tor­ture, spy upon U.S. cit­i­zens, kill, and dis­man­tle the Con­sti­tu­tion. Next, they have vin­dic­tively attacked any who ques­tioned their actions.

    Their argu­ment is not with mod­ern lib­er­al­ism, it is with the framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion them­selves. Con­ser­vatism has waged bat­tle with the very ideals upon which this coun­try was founded. For the con­ser­v­a­tives to suc­ceed, they not only have to silence present day lib­er­als, they must den­i­grate and dis­credit Wash­ing­ton, Jef­fer­son, Madi­son, et al. and the found­ing fathers’ legacy that is our notion of lib­erty, jus­tice, and equal­ity. To that end, they have not suc­ceeded and I do not believe that they ever will.

37. Dexter said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    After sleep­ing on the thought, I’ll call it a tie for Show­stop­per: grand old Pete Seeger & Bruce and all singing the Guthrie clas­sic, and Bet­tye LaVette & Jon Bon Jovi doing the clas­sic Sam Cooke song “A Change is Gonna Come”. That song was both writ­ten and per­formed by Cooke.
    Both per­for­mances brought tears of joy, for LaVette’s singing, and also for just see­ing Pete Seeger run­ning off the stage, after I had heard he was near-death three years ago…I am so glad that was a lie! I guess I didn’t know Jon Bon Jovi could belt out a bal­lad like that…man, he was great.

38. LA Mary said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    When I saw Jon Bon Jovi doing an acoustic ver­sion of “Livin on a Prayer” on the post 9/11 fundraiser, I was amazed. He’s a lot bet­ter than most of his music would indicate.

39. Dexter said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but has Bet­tye LaVette stepped into the void left by Odetta’s passing?

40. moe99 said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    LAMary – Yes, that was El Tovar. It would have been a per­fect din­ner with­out that right wing SOB muck­ing up the sound waves. Right after New Year’s is a per­fect time to visit because the crowds are down.

    PS: here’s some proof on the dis­as­trous African AIDs poli­cies of the Bush administration

    http://​media​mat​ters​.org/​i​t​e​m​s​/​2​0​0​9​0​1​1​5​0​0​1​6​?​f​=​h​_​latest

41. brian stouder said on January 19th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    When I saw Jon Bon Jovi doing an acoustic ver­sion of “Livin on a Prayer” on the post 9/11 fundraiser

    gasman’s protes­ta­tions to the con­trary notwithstanding — 

    Bush has one cred­i­ble claim he can make, and which indeed he (and his sup­port­ers) HAS made — assum­ing we don’t absorb a major ter­ror strike in the next year (which would rightly be blamed on him, and not President-elect Obama), and that is that we have not been hit again since 9/11/01.

    Give the devil his due

42. jcburns said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Yes, and he has pro­tected us from mete­ors larger than, say, VW buses. Thanks ever so much, G.W.

43. mark said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Sorry, Nancy. I’m not feel­ing gloomy. Not seething or hos­tile. I haven’t had the desire, today, to call any­body or any group morons or imbe­ciles, to wish suf­fer­ing upon any­one or to express rel­ish at the thought of such suf­fer­ing. I’m ready for change.

    It is past time for Bush to go. I pre­vi­ously voiced my reser­va­tions about Obama’s likely eco­nomic poli­cies and I still have reser­va­tions. But bush and Paul­son, and a major­ity of Con­gress, did more to dam­age free mar­ket eco­nom­ics dur­ing three weeks last fall than Obama is likely to do in eight years.

    It doesn’t change the issues, the ideas or the dis­cus­sion. It may pro­vide a few new data points. I’ve never called Obama names and don’t see any value to direct­ing vul­gar­i­ties at Bush and Paul­son. I hope some­day there is great inves­tiga­tive report­ing on Paul­son and what went on behind the scenes with TARP. I sus­pect crony­ism at the least, but I deplore the action regardless.

    I have lots of hope for Obama. I admire his civil­ity and lack of ran­cor. I think most of his views are sin­cerely held and the result of thought, not cal­cu­la­tion. I like his style and his opti­mism. He inspires mil­lions in a good way.

    Not at all polit­i­cally cor­rect of me, but I hope he becomes a moti­vat­ing role model for black Amer­i­cans. Some­thing has to change the incar­cer­a­tion rates, ille­git­i­macy rates, illit­er­acy rates and unem­ploy­ment rates in that large cor­ner of Amer­ica. Fifty years of fed­eral pro­grams, angst and hand-wringing hasn’t been enough.

    Image isn’t every­thing, but it can be a lot. Obama’s image is very pow­er­ful and he projects it nat­u­rally. He is at ease with him­self in a way I haven’t seen since Rea­gan. He instills con­fi­dence, which Clin­ton did for a while, Bush II and Carter couldn’t and Bush I didn’t. Lots of rea­son for optimism.

    If Obama’s eco­nomic views are enacted in full to the worst of my fears, I’ll sur­vive and so will the US and the world. I’ll dis­agree and make my case the best I can. The ideas are impor­tant. But mostly I’ll fol­low along so I can adjust my own life as nec­es­sary to accom­plish what I want for myself.

    Ever read John Rawls AND Robert Noz­ick? Bril­liant men with dia­met­ri­cally opposed ideas of how to achieve a just and pros­per­ous soci­ety. For one to be right, the other had to be wrong and wrong in a way that works against their mutu­ally desired goals. They were great friends, had offices in the same hall and lunched together routinely.

    Per­haps if Olber­man and Han­nity had been ascen­dant years ear­lier, Noz­ick and Rawls could have used zeal­ous and exces­sive pun­ditry by TV per­son­al­i­ties as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ridi­cul­ing and belit­tling each other instead.

44. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:25 pm

    Brian,

    I think that’s a tough call to make, but by and large, I’ll agree. How­ever, it could be pointed out that al Queda has no rea­son to attack us again because they already got every­thing they wanted from the first strike:

    1.) Amer­i­can armed forces have been bogged down and dam­aged for six years and count­ing.
    2.) Our spend­ing to sup­port those troops and try to sta­bi­lize Iraq con­tin­ues to bleed hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars.
    3.) The ongo­ing pres­ence of Amer­i­can troops in a Mus­lim coun­try is a pow­er­ful recruit­ing tool for jihadists.

    Though it surely mat­ters not to Osama bin Laden, he got a bonus: Our own lead­ers turned their backs on our Con­sti­tu­tion, the Geneva Con­ven­tions and the rule of law.

45. Adrianne said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    Let me just give a shout-out to Pete Seeger, my Hud­son Val­ley neigh­bor. He was more jazzed about per­form­ing with school­child­ren at the Bea­con Bap­tist Church today on MLK Day than his appear­ance at the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial Sun­day. There’s a move­ment to get Seeger nom­i­nated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here’s what he told one of our local reporters about that: “It’s just one more bit of fame, and fame is a snare and delusion.”

46. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    brian,
    You wrote:

    Bush has one cred­i­ble claim he can make, and which indeed he (and his sup­port­ers) HAS made — assum­ing we don’t absorb a major ter­ror strike in the next year (which would rightly be blamed on him, and not President-elect Obama), and that is that we have not been hit again since 9/11/01.
    Give the devil his due

    No fuck­ing way. By that logic, since their were no inci­dents of for­eign ter­ror­ism on Amer­i­can soil, Jimmy Carter was a bet­ter pres­i­dent in terms of national defense. Bush could also claim that any bad thing that did not hap­pen is because of his steady lead­er­ship. Nonsense.

    You can­not plau­si­bly make the case that Bush gets to take credit for a lack of attacks post 9/11 if you do not hold him respon­si­ble for what hap­pened on his watch prior to that date. There are moun­tains of indis­putable proof that Bush & Co. had received many warn­ings of immi­nent threats of attack from Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, yet, even then they were focus­ing on gin­ning up rea­sons to attack Sadam Hus­sein. They pro­moted dis­cred­ited intel­li­gence, cherry picked intel­li­gence, and man­u­fac­tured intel­li­gence to jus­tify an attack on Iraq.

    Aside from out­go­ing neo-cons or their right wing media bitches, there is almost no cred­i­ble national secu­rity expert that believes that we are safer now than when Bush took office. How could we be? Al Qaeda has a greater global pres­ence in 2009 than it did in 2001. Our mil­i­tary forces are stretched to the break­ing point and can­not con­tinue to be used as they have been. At present, we would be unable to respond to a gen­uine mil­i­tary cri­sis else­where in the world in a timely man­ner because of their ten­u­ous con­di­tion. We have lost cred­i­bil­ity with our allies. Con­ser­v­a­tives love to bitch and moan about our allies, but we can­not suc­ceed mil­i­tar­ily in a global war with­out their help. We never have up until now.

    Because of his unwill­ing­ness to lis­ten to the best judge­ment of informed intel­li­gence experts who were pre­dict­ing an Al Qaeda attack on Amer­i­can soil, Bush is directly respon­si­ble for what hap­pened on 9/11. He arro­gantly dis­missed anyone’s advice that did not mesh with the doc­trine of his neo-con han­dlers. Why should he lay claim to every good thing that hap­pened on his watch yet assid­u­ously avoid respon­si­bil­ity for the bad?

    They don’t get to claim credit for the sun­shine if they do not also claim the rain.

47. Deborah said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    I’m going to play the school marm here. Believe me, I’m a big bleed­ing heart lib­eral and I can’t wait till noon tomor­row when we can refer to FORMER Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. But can we tem­per our rhetoric a bit. When we’re talk­ing to the choir we can say what­ever we want, rant, shout, let it all hang out but not in mixed com­pany. Some­how, some­way this coun­try needs to lose the polar­iza­tion that has par­a­lyzed us for so long. Yes, we all know which side had way more to do with those divi­sions. Even so, can we start the heal­ing process? Let’s be the adults in the room.

48. jeff borden said on January 19th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Gas­man,
    Elo­quently argued. I don’t know if any­one can say with any cer­tainty that 9/11 would not have hap­pened if Al Gore had been in the White House. What we DO know is that a Gore Admin­is­tra­tion would not have ginned up a bull­shit war with Iraq. Gore would not have been sur­rounded by war-mongering chick­en­hawk neo­con­ser­v­a­tive lunatics.

49. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    I, nor any other lib­eral in the land, are respon­si­ble for the deaf­en­ing lev­els of par­ti­san ran­cor that have increas­ingly beset our land for well over a decade. Mine is but an item­ized list of griev­ances in response to that par­ti­san­ship and to inef­fec­tive and dis­hon­est rule.

    Lib­er­als are highly unlikely to tor­ture, wire­tap, or arrest any who dis­agree, so why the con­ster­na­tion from the right? Could it be that if lib­eral lead­er­ship pro­duces demon­stra­bly bet­ter results it will once and for all dis­pel any ves­ti­gial claims to con­ser­v­a­tive superiority?

50. mark said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    I don’t think the tax­payer invest­ment in Chrysler is going to work out well. The side­bar google ad on Nancy’s site from Chrysler has a lead for “Chevro­let hybrids”. You all might want to click on it, sev­eral times, to see what I mean.

    Edit: Damn. The thing is gone now. I swear it was there just moments ago. Per­haps if we all click on all the ads, sev­eral times, it will return.

51. Rants? Dennis Miller is a piker. « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    […] Rants? Den­nis Miller is a piker. Filed under: I want my coun­try back. — Lex @ 5:25 pm Here’s your real ranter, com­menter Gas­man at Nance’s blog: “I have no sym­pa­thy or patience for any­one that was not out­raged by the last eight years.&#822… […]

52. Lex said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    @Gasman 12:42: Dang, I need a cig­a­rette. And I don’t smoke.

53. mark said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    For those who pre­fer to stay more overtly polit­i­cal, I just dis­cov­ered there is also a google ad for an Obama col­lec­tor plate. You will have to click on it, how­ever, to real­ize what a “his­toric and price­less value” it is. Free Obama col­lec­tor coin too!

54. nancy said on January 19th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    Thanks, Mark. I’ll add it to this.

    BTW, I once read a very qua­v­ery col­umn in a major news­pa­per defend­ing this sort of thing as impor­tant to the non-elitists who love our out­go­ing pres­i­dent. So it cuts both ways.

55. coozledad said on January 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm

    This “Ooh. scary reli­gios­ity” from the peo­ple who ven­er­ate that plas­ter saint Ronald Rea­gan? These are the same peo­ple whose unswerv­ing faith in cap­i­tal­ist reli­gion let a bunch of Amway sales­men destroy the nation’s wealth. I’d be more inclined to feel­ings of char­ity if there weren’t so many dead.
    There seems to be an end­less reserve of self pity among the dis­graced party. They don’t need mine.

56. mark said on January 19th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Gotta love col­lec­tor plates. I’m con­vinced a cen­trally planned econ­omy would neglect the impor­tant mar­ket for chotchkies.

57. caliban said on January 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    I’m so proud of my coun­try I just can’t stand it. My mom and dad black­mailed a mater­nity ward in Lit­tle Rock into accept­ing a black patient that was my dad’s med stu­dent, and a black woman. My dad car­ried her into treat­ment while my 5′-2″ mom held off the Lit­tle Rock cops.

    But that’s not what makes me proud. It’s the out­pour­ing of blog com­menters that have stood their asses up to claim they’re just as qual­i­fied as Car­o­line Kennedy to be a mem­ber of Con­gress How about inur­ing yourselg against the iniq­uity of tak­ing bribes like Ted Stevens. . How in the world did Har­vard and Colum­bia Law man­age to process all of those stu­dents? There was Dan Bur­ton who was well into his for­ties , and the odds that he’d got­ten over his predilec­tion for sex for cash were slim and none.

    Why would any­bod pre­fer a good mother with a his­tory of look­ing out for the least of God’s crea­tures, and rais­ing spec­tac­u­lar amounts of cash for NYC’s least con­sid­ered, with an admirable edu­ca­tional back­ground and a solid ground­ing in doing the best for peo­ple in a bind be qual­i­fied to be a Sen­a­tor? She never ingested malathion like Tom DeLay. She’d never used her spouse shame­fully like Mitch McConnell.

    But why I’m proud? Mil­lions of nitwits can claim this woman is not qual­i­fied. News­pa­pers would prove she is. The intern­ert is what­ever truth you make of it. And mostly, it’s bull­shit. Seri­ously. Palin vs. Car­o­line? Sorry, if you pick the bimbo, you’re an idiot. So why am I proud. Not, really. It’s a coun­try that deval­ues female intel­li­gence. Women don’t think women are smart because they’re women. You’re just smart or you’re stu­pid. And maybe you’re racists.

    Racists amongst you, wake up. It’s a brand new world, and that wedge disappeared.

58. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    Was? Den­nis Miller is a piker. The big pussy.

    As for all of the Obama schwag out there, it has not a damn thing to do with lib­er­al­ism. It is an expres­sion of pure greed from huck­sters cash­ing in on what­ever they think will sell. If the Rs had won you’d have had all sorts of schlocky moose huntin’ trin­kets and John McCain com­mem­o­ra­tive plates replete with him in his uni­form in a bomb laden jet.

    I feel about the same way as those that mar­ket to gullible born again fundagel­i­cals that think you sim­ply have to adorn your­self, your home, and your car with tacky “Jesus” crap that was made in China by slave labor.

59. joodyb said on January 19th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

    mark: does the phrase MADE IN POLAND ring any bells?

60. Linda said on January 19th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    Gas­man, I under­stand your con­tempt about inau­gural trin­kets. But a local news sta­tion just did a bit about a laid off auto worker who is hus­tling these things till her job – or any job – comes back. I under­stand that.

    But when it comes to empa­thy, my give a damn is busted when I think about the Repub­li­cans who are get­ting thrown out of work. These were the peo­ple who had the nerve to refer to poor peo­ple as “lucky duck­ies” because they sup­pos­edly sponged off the sys­tem. Let them find out first hand that the min­i­mum wage is really not min­i­mum for sur­vival. Also, let them get a real job – not stok­ing the echo cham­ber, but actu­ally pro­duc­ing a good or ser­vice – in the free mar­ket sys­tem they love so much.

    This is espe­cially sweet for me, as a per­son who works in the pub­lic sec­tor (librar­ian). They are all hot about cut­ting the pub­lic sec­tor – mean­ing the peo­ple who actu­ally do some­body some good, while feath­er­ing their own nests with more pub­lic money than I will ever see. To hell with them.

61. caliban said on January 19th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    When I was a lit­tle kid, Peo­ple showe’ed up at my house in Fedo­rahs. We werem’t threats to anybody’s sed­curi­ity. W was on vacat­ton. He goy a PDB that said Bin Laden was going to grab a plane.
    that didn’t alert gis sorry ass? Let me put it this way. If it had been some warn­ing about the Me Kong. Kerry would have pulled that bas­tard out of the drink. W would have feen defend­ing the O Club in, what, Austin?

    Swigt-boat ass­holes were the biggest liars that ever lived, if you don’t count Ken Black­well. He robbed Gore and he robbed Kerry. The ass­holes roffed two pres­i­den­tial boyrd and installed the most despi­ca­ble, piti­ful failed Pret­zeldent that ever lived. These peo­ple did this got cash. Cheney has made his money.

62. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 19th, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    Spent the day super­vis­ing sled­ding by 8 to 10 year olds, but only after my 10 year old and i parked our­selves on the sofa and watched/listened to the CNN noon broad­cast of the full, uncut, orig­i­nal “I Have a Dream” speech by Rev. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. As a preacher and sto­ry­teller, it’s end­lessly riv­et­ing to watch him after about 11 min­utes, when the draft speech­writer insists Mahalia Jack­son called out “tell them about the dream, Mar­tin,” and he flips the text over in front of him, and you see in the film the facial responses of a man who is work­ing with­out a net, but with a firm sense of foun­da­tion beneath him.

    To be fair, there’s a moment when he’s work­ing out the “swel­ter­ing … injus­tice … swel­ter­ing …” and my heart is in my mouth, think­ing “ok, dream, dark side, flip­ping to the hope out of …” and then he pulls it out and just RIPS into the finale, swing­ing old Amos’ verses like a right­eous swift sword, cut­ting through every ambiguity.

    Y’know, there’s lots of con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans who are dad-gummed hope­ful and encour­aged, and who still think many of Obama’s chief sup­port­ers think a lit­tle — no, lots — of social­ism would be swell, but are more happy to have the Mosbacher-Fahrenkopf wing of the GOP tossed out on their ear than i am wor­ried about creep­ing Com­internism. Count me among their number!

    Any­how, then, after talk­ing about who King was and what was hap­pen­ing tomor­row (“Dad, are you cry­ing?”), we went out into 17 degrees and soaked up what ice rimmed sun­light there was — my Face­book page has the evi­dence of our mis­spent after­noon if you’re curious.

    I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from my col­league up on the dais how the encounter between Rick War­ren and Gene Robin­son goes in the Capi­tol chapel, right before they all walk out onto the West Front. If i learn any­thing i can pass along, i will so do. Enjoy tomor­row, y’all, and smile — ya won!

63. del said on January 19th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    Eight years. End of an error. And Bush’s time did not start well. After he “won” his con­tested elec­tion with Gore in 2000, dur­ing a church ser­vice or invo­ca­tion near the time of his inau­gu­ra­tion he invoked the Lord and spoke of how “every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son.” As if he had been anointed. Think of it. All the pain of that con­tested elec­tion. Elected with a minor­ity of the vote. But instead of humil­ity he claimed to be an incar­na­tion of Divine Will.

64. caliban said on January 19th, 2009 at 8:52 pm

    Betty La Vette? Aw we’re nor talkin bout Shaft. Not really, we mean Superfly.

65. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Oh, and God is Audrey Hep­burn — watch the movie “Always,” with Holly Hunter, Richard Drey­fus, and John Goodman.

    Works for me. G’night.

66. caliban said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Denis Miller is the most despi­ca­ble pussy any ever came about. Senis Miller, not a joke any­more. He’s just a jerk.

67. ellent (not the 1st commenter on this ellen, but famous name-dropping one) said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    And now a word in defense of Toby Keith: The man is a Demo­c­rat. And has said respect­ful things about Obama.

    http://​www​.the​boot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​2​0​/​t​o​b​y​-​k​e​i​t​h​-​p​r​a​i​s​e​s​-​o​b​a​m​a​-​f​o​r​-​m​i​d​d​l​e​-​e​a​s​t​-trip/

    The name line should say (not the same ellen as the 1st com­menter on this thread, but the famous-name-dropping one)

68. Gasman said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    Linda,
    I heard a story on CBS tonight about how much money is being made via the sale of Obama schwag. From the report:

    “By some esti­mates, the Obama indus­try is worth at least a quar­ter of a bil­lion dollars.”

    Hey, if it can help turn the econ­omy around, I’m all for it. Let’s start mar­ket­ing this crap abroad and see what world­wide sales will amount to.

    http://​www​.cbsnews​.com/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​1​9​/​e​v​e​n​i​n​g​n​e​w​s​/​m​a​i​n​4​7​3​6​3​3​4​.shtml

69. nancy said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    I think Kobe Teeth must be con­fused about what being a “life­long Demo­c­rat” entails.

70. caliban said on January 19th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    And Audrey Hep­burn thinks these peo­ple are morons.

    know what? Here’s the deal you digrace­ful ass­hole. Kerry and Bush. One guy thought what the hey as long as some­bo­duyelse might get hurt. Another guy thought they wo’nt get me when I’m prot­edt­ing the O Club in Tejas.

    How does this lit­tle piece of shit pull this shit time after time.? Ketty’s a hero, Ws wooging coke aomew­jere in Alanama. What was wrong with Amer­i­can vot­ers in Cuya­hoga County? Well their botes didn’t cound because Ken Blavk­well never intended they’re votes to count.

71. basset said on January 19th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    Some­one cut Cal­iban off.

    mean­while, Flickr pics from tv pho­tog­ra­phers in and around the inau­gu­ra­tion site:

    http://​b​-roll​.net/​t​o​d​a​y​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​b​-​r​o​l​l​n​e​t​-​i​n​a​u​g​u​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​hotos/

72. MichaelG said on January 19th, 2009 at 10:02 pm

    Put me on the Den­nis Miller is a jerk bandwagon.

    Ter­ror­ism is not dead. I’ve heard on good author­ity that the birds that brought down US Air 1549 were rene­gade Al Queda trained avian agents. They’re all around us. Whoops, time for Tony Bourdain.

73. Dexter said on January 20th, 2009 at 12:44 am

    It’s finally here. Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, 2009. Cheney’s in a wheel­chair with a pulled mus­cle and Obama will be stand­ing tall.
    And so the Bush era ends, hope­fully the door is closed for good.
    It’s been a long, hard siege, liv­ing through the admin­is­tra­tion of the worst pres­i­dent in his­tory.
    For the final time, I reit­er­ate that I can­not under­stand how the elec­torate returned Bush to 1600 after his dis­as­trous first term. I’ll let that go now.
    It looks like Obama has no inter­est in pros­e­cut­ing Bush and his crew for ille­gal tor­ture at Guan­tanamo Bay , or any­thing else. That’s a shame, but if we’re just leave the Bush hijinks inthe dust, let’s move on.

74. caliban said on January 20th, 2009 at 12:52 am

    OK. The New York Island. Well the dick­head got the PDB that said Osama was inter­ested in attack­ing in the US. It said he was inter­ested in hija­jack­ing planes. His Sevu­rity adviser told him this ws hair on fire. That was all before the WTC was bombed. How did the lit­tle moroon keep any­body safe?

    Asleep at the wheel while attack­ing mesquite.

    Agter that, there were the anthrax attacks. And those were sort of funny bevause they were clearly home-grown and the tar­gets seemed to se Demo­c­rat and nobody that had lun­cheob with Cheney. So what the hell.

    Then we got seri­ous. We caught the pizza guys, and the shoe-bomber, and that truck dri­ver that was boing to take down the Brook­lyn Bridge with an acety­lene torch in broad day­light. Saved. Mean­time, trains in Spain were vic­tim­ized and what­ever about some plot on the Btit Under­gtound, where Brit cops mur­dered some inno­cent guy. Because everuy­body was so scared.

    Going very well. And then there were those das­tards in Miami that wanted boots. Tjhand Fod the lit­tle sjit saved us from those maser­minds so he could con­tinue Guanatanamo.

    More than 1000 peo­ple were plucked and incar­der­ated. There are at least a cou­ple of peo­ple with no connedyion to ter­ror what­soe­ber that were were snatched and flown to hgod knosw where for tor­ture. How dos any­body yty to lvaim they were jus­ti­fied.? Doesn’t mat­ter how you look at all of this. There were war crimesd commted.

    For W to claim he didn’t do anthing he knew was womg, wellm, he’s prob­a­bly a liar. They left him out of the PNAC, and he so des­per­ately wanted to be one of the big guys, he thought blow­ing up a whole coun­try made him one of the foys..

    It wasm’t ever about the oil, with the Bush Fam­ily. It was all anout oil field ser­vices. Jussssssssst ask April Glaspeie. HW told her to tell Sad­dam it was cool to invade Kuwait for slant-drilling with Amer­i­can tech­nol­ogy to rog Iraq blind., HW told Sad­dam to invade the part of Kuwait that is a his­tor­i­cal part of Iraq. Cute.

    I don’t think that if you think back to that und­ni­able Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Prescott (I mean. what choice did he have?
    )

75. caliban said on January 20th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    What exactly did the lit­tle shit defend us from” Those guys in Miami that wanted to net eVWRY­BODY TOLD THIS FUCKINNG MORON AHEAD OF TIME, oSAMA AIMING AT BUILDINGS WITH CAAPTURED PLANES,

    oK, we know he’s an idiot, huy, holysahit, nobody is so god­damn fuck­ing stu­pid t miss this. Ir’a the most amaz­ing thinf. Peol­ple actu­ally think this scurvy lit­tle shit pro­tected then from any­thing? Fuck­ing stu­pidi­ity is under­rated. Look, you morons, this ass­hole endan­gered you.