I don’t know who’s scarier — the grinning lunatic who guns down a congresswoman, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, among others, or the assclowns who are in the public eye because some folks treat the ballot box like a drive-up window at Mickey D’s after the bars have closed for the night (“Oh, just give me whatever.”)
Take Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Terror Babies), who thinks some folks (not him) need to tone down their rhetoric. Or Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-McCarthyism), a neotard who equates health care with terrorism — and who chairs a House committee on higher education and lifelong learning. And of course Caribou Barbie herself, who just can’t bear to see a TV screen bereft of her image, a grinning clown mask hung on an empty skull. A big shout-out to John “Get Off My Lawn” McCain for dropping this flaming sack of moose shit on the national stoop.
It must all be terribly frustrating for the staff at “The Daily Show,” with satire running a very poor second to reality. As Steve Benen at Political Animal noted, “The jokes write themselves.”
Mad Blog Media 
As I often say, “you can’t make this shit up”. Sadly, screwballs get their hands on weapons of war and sometimes use them to shoot lots of others. I don’t understand how making tthese weapons EASIER to get reduces violence or makes us safer but that seems to be the logic put forth by the passionate gun nuts lobby.
Great comments on Caribou Barbie…I heard a bit on Faux News recently where they introduced their spiel about her as “successful governor of Alaska….” A ditz who quits after two years when public scrutiny threatens to expose potential wrongdoing is described as SUCCESSFUL…and in a context of being fit for higher office. Who believes anything they say on Faux News? I guess on Murdoch’s TV channel, you CAN make this shit up!
I tend to agree with Steve Benen that C.B. is probably not smart enough to know why her claiming “blood libel” is not only preposterous but highly ironic, given that the Congressperson IS Jewish.
Indeed, Sarah is going to singlehandedly put The Onion out of business.
We reap what we sow. And, we have sown a lot of really bad seeds of political dysfunction.
http://labikes.blogspot.com/2011/01/was-this-second-amendment-remedy.html
Dummies, dummies, everywhere. While in Santa Rosa I found myself behind a truck with two homemade bumper stickers, both reading, “VOTE NO.” On what — candidate, referendum, “Dancing With the Stars” pairing — was not specified. But then some folks seem to get a lot of mileage out of saying, “No.” It’s like the terrible twos, ad infinitum.
Must have been a Republican, The Party of No.
Our President hit the long ball tonight, even if he was not trying to do so. This reminds me why I gave him money and voted for him. That man can talk! (I also like what he does.)
The Half-Baked, Part-Term Alaska Governess, on the other hand, raises up duelling as the standard of political discourse (“The Founding Fathers duelled, so me calling folks Traitors is just fine”). I think her Presidential prospects took a big hit in the last few days. But, I dearly hope the Repugs find a way to nominate her. I do love me a shellacking!
Dale
We have closet repug/TP candidates running for library board who have made the claims:
Teenagers do not belong in the library
That he village does not need to invest in the current library or spend any money to replace the undersized awful building ’cause residents can just go mooch off near-by towns.
and if you can’t get what you need at the village library you should walk to the next library over cause walking is good for you. This from a doctor in response to the ADA access issues that bar many from half of the non-fiction collection.
Stupidity, myopia, cheapness attack every level of public service.
To borrow from brother Jim…”People are Strange.” Though the rest of the song doesn’t really apply. So far 2011 is not shaping up so well. A crazy, 22-year old nutbag kills a slew of innocent people who had their whole lives ahead of them…while at the same time, a doctor from Colorado (one of your people Patrick) has let it be known in stalker-like fashion that he is going to sue my husband and I over some land we own in Missouri. Calls us in Texas 2-3 times a day – who does that? Another nutbag that’s who. We finally went out and got an attorney.Wish we could roll back the clock on this year for sure.
Wake me when the short term Guv’s time is up because Lawd knows the Warhol time expired a LONG, LONG, long time ago.
Interesting article on the “blood libel” fuss in the Washington Post (link below). So who is being libeled? All Republicans, or just right wing nutjobs? The hyperbole is what is amusing. Apparently this is the latest sound bite to hit the airwaves and Sarah was not the originator.
Most of the critics I’ve read of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Sharron Angle, et al., (excluding O’Grady, of course, who thinks they drink the blood of small children) have attacked their deliberate use of inflammatory political rhetoric and downright false claims, not their blood line or for that matter the entire Republican party.
I would have to agree that one cannot firmly claim that the poison rhetoric lit Jared’s fuse. That’s a stretch. What is not a stretch is that such rhetoric has poisoned the entire political well.
The use of blood libel is clearly a metaphor nowdays but really ignores its roots, which goes back to lurid anti-Semitism (which is why using it in this context is rather interesting). But meaning these days is pretty flexible.
1+1 is three, right Winston?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011206734.html
Moving to Italy just keeps looking better and better. There we’ll just have to endure the Berlusconi antics. Some of our Italian friends are calling him a pedophile these days. We’re hoping to get a year over there starting in the fall as the smart half of our marriage scored herself a sabbatical..she’ll do a ton of research and write a few books while I ride my bicycle and do the grocery shopping. Nice “work” if you can get it. Getting out of the USA will almost be the best part.
She will do a ton of work and you will ride the bicycle and shop? Sounds to me like you are pretty clever yourself, Larry.
I was on a series of seemingly endless, 11 month, 50% soft money contracts when I was in the Ivory Tower so my connection with sabbatical was also indirect, from my better half’s experiences. She would bury herself at home or in far away places with stacks of good literature and think about new directions to take her future curriculum at the CC.
Back to Sarah in Wonderland. If we could manage to keep the right wing nutjobs (or left wing nutjobs, if that is ever an issue) so busy with young and nubile pleasure that they don’t have time to cause trouble, that would actually be fine with me. As long as the youngsters are legal, of course.
I can’t stand this shit anymore, I’m going for a bicycle ride even though it’s raining it sunny california,see you
I’m not clever, just lucky. For all of Silvio’s right-wing faults his country is still far to the left of the US of A. Healthcare for everyone and plenty of laws keeping evil corporations from sticking it to the masses, plus a respect for a quality of life almost totally missing from the US are just some of the reasons we’ll retire there (if we can get in of course) eventually.
I’m interested in seeing what (if any) effect Caribou Barbie and her Tea Party folks have on the Repuglican-dominated House now that they’re in power. They’ve already caved on the idea of no new spending without corresponding reductions elsewhere since they’ve cleverly exempted the destruction of healthcare reform from these constraints. I think it’ll be more BS and little action….and I find it hard to believe Palin and Co will be working so hard to toss out the folks they just put in after two years, no matter how little they’ve managed to change things. But with any luck we’ll be watching all that via BBC news from Italia!
No cycling here on the frozen plains of Iowa but some local folks are grooming XC ski trails nearby — we’ll skate around on ’em tomorrow for a few hours.
Hey Larry, looking forward to sliding around my fat arse this weekend too – finally got a base back after January thaw. ‘Spose to dip down into the BELOWS later next week.
Italy sounds pretty good to this guy.
I just love how the Palin-lead divide and conquer tactic is working so well. Dividing the Republican party in half and then taking your smaller portion and trying to out flank the big boys using your single digit IQ’s for artillery is one brilliant strategy. I don’t recall Sun Tzu writing about this in “The Art of War”.
I have no “base” when it comes to ski-skating…I just flail around like most bike riders, horrible form with just one technique, though you probably can’t even call it V-1…it’s more like an old air-cooled VW Beetle with a clogged air filter! But I can get a darn good workout (and work up a darn good appetite) in barely an hour on skiis…I just hope nobody’s there with a camera to take blackmail photos! Perhaps we’ll cut ’em off at the pass on that idea by taking our own and posting them on the CycleItalia blog.
That’s why I stick to classic Nordic, Larry. Watching me on skate skis is like watching a Three Stooges episode. Woo-woo-woo, nyuck, nyuck…
Just started skate-skiing a couple years ago, and I’m crappy at it, but good enough to have fun and get a HUGE workout (pant, pant, pant, thump-thump-thump-thump-thump). Some of the guys I ride bikes with actually live for winter — they come flying by, poetry in motion, with no apparent effort. Going uphill? Even worse. But it does allow me to drink plenty of Spare Tire Ale without the consequences so brilliantly caricatured by our beloved host.
Good to have you back, Patrick!
The jokes write themselves … maybe the funniest art-imitates-life-imitating-art moment is that the second SNL Palin skit, which is generally considered to the be funniest of the bunch, consisted of no actual written jokes, but just Tina Fey repeating things Palin actually said.
I have a different theory about what’s going on with our national discourse. I don’t think there’s really a problem with heated debate or hyperbole or over-the-top rhetoric. The problem isn’t the format, it’s the delivery agents. George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, H L Mencken were all as inflamatory and antagonistic as possible, but because deep down inside they were smart guys, it worked.
The problem today isn’t the temperature or the tone … it’s the intelligence. Too many folks with zero credentials who think they know what’s best for everyone. Rush, the Hannitizer, Skeletor … collectively, how many businesses have they run? Courses have they taught? Offices have they held?
I am wondering why the nut-jobs of this world are able to take out the good people and some how miss the people that need to go away. I’m really not saying or wanting more bad things,but it seems lopsided. But that said we certainly don’t want any martyrs made out of them. J. D.