One of the upshots of the right-wing’s crazed reaction to Obama’s speech before school children is that it creates another opportunity for the Joe Kleins and Tobin Harshaws of the world to yak about how reasonable and serious some wingnuts are. You see, when one wingnut says something batshit crazy and the another wingnut disagrees, that second wingnut becomes a serious person. Joe Klein drooling all over J-Pod:
Joe Scarborough, David Frum and John Podhoretz (here) are speaking out against the proposed Republican school boycott next week. I’ve disagreed, vehemently, with Podhoretz and the neocons at Commentary in the past, but I will say this: they come to their beliefs honestly. They think hard about the positions they take, deal in some version of the facts–although I find their conclusions dangerous and wrong–and therefore live on the same planet I do. It is extremely important they speak out now, lest this country head toward a spasm of violence that will make pink-biting seem a walk in the park.
Tobin Harshaw at the Times approvingly quotes Jim Lingdren at the Volokh Conspiracy as a “cooler head” for writing, among other things:
The Obama administration has backed off its earlier suggestion for students to write “Dear Leader” letters. The sad thing is that government bureaucrats had to be told how inappropriate their plans were before they wised up.
Whether the Republican pushback plays well with the public or not, it may have dissuaded Obama from making statements as aggressively statist or collectivist as he would have made without the pushback.
We can probably also expect a lot of conservatives to get credit for disagreeing with Pat Buchanan’s claim that Hitler was the prince of peace.
That’s just how things work in this crazy country of ours.
r€nato
It is truly amazing – it nearly gave me whiplash – how quickly right-wingers went from, “Americans must trust everything the President does,” to, “Americans should distrust and suspect soc*ialist conspiracies to enslave and brainwash us all in everything the President does.”
demkat620
This really makes me think 2010 is going to be a horror show.
neill
we liburls have always protested dick cheney’s weekly sunday brunches on roasted babies, bunnies, kittens and puppies, and yet Joke Line has never admitted that he thinks we’re sensible or even live on the same planet as he does — which is fine by me…
cmohrnc
So, anyone who is a fellow-traveler with the capitalist swine oppressors only serves, however momentarily accomodating their talk seems, to aid the trampling of the people under their shoes and to undermine the revolution. Eh, comrade?
There are indeed many mornings when I’d like to have Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan taken out back at MSNBC and summarily shot – with slime-filled paintballs, after which they’d be exiled to, ah, um…western North Dakota to ever-after consignment reporting traffic accidents and weather on some small tv station. But on the whole, as long as the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh spew their boorish, stupid pestilence across the land, Scarborough is indeed a fairly minor problem.
Hunter Gathers
“Joe Scarborough, David Frum and John Podhoretz (here) are speaking out against the proposed Republican school boycott next week”
I don’t see the statements from a has-been , a never-was and a never-will-be changing any wingnut minds.
And Podhoretz will burn in hell.
cleek
you mean, like this ?
Lola
I can tell none of those losers have never taught. Teachers love getting lesson plans sent to them for projects like these. Letter writing to the president is an entirely appropriate thing for schoolkids to do. Each week it is something different, birth certificate, death panel, bank accounts, letter writing. The funny thing is how easily the Republican dogs and the corporate media are led.
geg6
Fuck Joke Line. Seriously, fuck him sideways. I don’t care what he says any more, no matter how Village or how progressive sounding. He’s a complete ass and his hissy fit re: Glennzilla and aimai sealed the deal for me. He’s dead to me. Completely and utterly dead.
demkat620
@cleek: On a side note to John’s post. We were driving back from FL for vacaction last week and we saw a “Who is John Galt?” billboard.
My husband asked me what the hell that was. “Is that like a codeword for Jesus?”
demkat620
Did y’all just get that? Joe Watkins on MSNBC just now.:
The reason parents are objecting to Obama’s school speech is because of their respect for the office of the president and their respect for Obama’s speaking ability.
Wow.
jwb
@demkat620: He didn’t mention the voodoo mind tricks? Surprised.
Ejoiner
I teach in a SC school and we were told yesterday that we would be airing the broadcast but that students with a written note from their parents could be sent to the media center with an alternative assignment during the speech.
Here’s a thought: after the speech is aired and it turns out to be the usual “do well in school” stuff do you think these people will be the least bit embarrassed by their freak-out?
Nah, didn’t think so.
The Grand Panjandrum
So the GOP goes spinning out of control and off the deep end and a couple of people lift a pinky to make sure that doesn’t happen and THEY are the good guys. When I see a concerted and coordinated by the likes of these fellos along with Henke and a few others I’ll buy the good guy talk. Until then, they all get lumped in with the racist teabagging fuckers that form the loudest voice in that steaming pile of shit known as the right wing.
IOW they better be standing on a rooftop rending their garments while screaming loudly that they reject the lunatics. NO ifs. NO ands. NO buts. That is what should be required of anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a legitimate voice of the conservative side of the street.
The conservative wilderness must be a lonely place for people like Bacevich and Larison. I’m sure other reasonable conservatives exist, they just don’t come to mind immediately.
I guess I’ve lost my patience after the constant over the top fauxtrage at a president who’s latest desire to tell kids to stay in school and work hard to get good grades gets the big middle finger.
Its a beautiful day here in northern New England and I am going to go bike riding with my two lovely young daughters.
BTW I’ve read up on Van Jones a quite a bit more and I’ve changed my mind. He shouldn’t resign. I was wrong to say he should. He’s not a truther and I see now that the document he signed and what was actually published with his name as a signatory was not the same in fact or spirit.
El Cid
Considering that the standard for torture is now no longer the amount and type of torture but who did it — i.e., when we do it, it’s not torture but it would be totally permissible if we did, and when the guys we currently don’t like do it it’s horrible torture — then the standards will ever be that anyone one inch to the center of the current craziest right wing position is actually within respectable establishment dialog.
Remember, Michael Kinsley of “even the liberal New Republic” used to remind us that we all just had to support Reagan’s death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador, because if they had to kill and slaughter to degrees that make us squeamish about the blood draining down the hillsides, well, that’s just the price we gotta pay for spreading democracy.
Mark S.
I like how the NYT article devotes the most space to Tigerhawk arguing against public education.
geg6
demkat620: Do you suppose he was showing just a sliver of awareness that screaming “indoctrination” in regard to the President’s stay in school and work hard message sounds more than a little unhinged? I mean, sure his argument makes little sense, but it does seem to accept a kernel of reality in that he knew another argument besides “the Preznit is going to turn your child into a zombie” needed to be made.
El Cid
@The Grand Panjandrum: I think that a general operating principle is that no matter what the charges by the hissy fit pants pissing right are about the horrifying, baby raping skullduggery of any Democratic or liberal official, the first procedure ought to be investigating what the hell anyone’s talking about and how many piles of bullshit have been stuffed into the right’s talking point baggies before we agree and call for that official’s resignation.
I know there’s a residual instinct to assume that ‘respectable’ and TV prominent conservatives must somehow be talking about something even obliquely related to reality, but this is an instinct we need to learn how to resist.
Montysano
Aww fer Jeebus sakes….. So now, any statement that has the potential for demagoguery must be abandoned? And, since a) these mouthbreathers can apparently demagogue anything and b) MSM idiots like Tweety will feed air to the “issue”, then Obama essentially can do or say nothing without a distracting controversy.
Obama has far more patience and tolerance that I ever could. I’d already have arrived at “Fuck this shit. Have a nice life. I’m outta here”.
gnomedad
Is the “can’t speak without a teleprompter” meme dead now that we know Obama is a master hypnotist who will zombify our children?
donr
Jim Lindgren is a coward and not an intellectually serious guy. His usual MO on the Volokh conspiracy is to throw out ridiculous flame-bait and then disable comments. One would hate to have such a thin-skinned schmuck as either a colleague or a professor.
Brad Delong used to write posts titled “The Volokh Conspiracy” has a quality control problem. I think it’s been a few years since he’s even bothered.
Mark S.
@Ejoiner:
Oh, you call it a “media center.” How do we know it’s not a re-education camp run by FEMA?
cleek
they’ll never even know the content of the speech, they’ll only know the Limbaughized version. so, they won’t even know they have reason to be embarrassed.
reality has little impact on those who choose not to participate – and when its effects are felt, they are mysterious and scary and best left uninvestigated.
someguy
Talk about the soft bigotry of low expections… pretty much any Republican who isn’t currently killing abortion doctors or trying to shoot up Jews at the Holocaust Museum can expect a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from Joe Klein.
aimai
Oh my god. I just realized that not only is demkat’s husband right (Jesus was the first avatar of John Galt) but that parents who send a note in to school asking that their children be excused from watching the President speak are the new radical, DFH’s refusing to allow their children to pray in class. I’m old enough to have lived through the tail end of compulsory public school prayers and the first attempt to “get around” it with the compulsory “moment of silence.”
There has always been a strong strain of populist anti government hysteria in the right wing–its only when they are the authority that authority is respected and they would heartily disagree with Lear’s observation that “even a dog in office is respected.” If its not your dog, its not getting the respect.
Plus, its the final cultural insult to have some black dude lecturing white kids about staying in school. If that isn’t the last vestige of white privilige, I don’t know what is. Anyone remember how even conservatives were hopeful that Obama would lecture ghetto kids about staying in school? NRO had some pieces on it. They were all for the bully pulpit then. But god forbid that a black guy should rise so high that white kids have to look up to *him* and take his advice.
Getting people to believe that (some) government is necessary and that (some) government officials can be trusted, or useful, or honest has been the work of democrats and liberals over and against generations of anti government propaganda from the right. I’m wondering whether, in the end, this nihilism won’t come back to haunt them. If you drive your base voters out of the habit of respecting elected authority entirely they may not come back to the fold long enough to vote for your own candidates.
aimai
Genine
This reminds me of Chris Rock’s:
I think it was from 1995 and it’s very apt for today’s Republican “serious thinkers”.
gnomedad
@Montysano:
You want patience? Check out Al Franken if you missed the post. If I had any doubt that the man has the chops for his office, they are gone.
Genine
Oops! Blockquote fail. :-(
MattF
Yeah, well. Can I point out that wingers were relentlessly attacking Clinton throughout his terms in office? And they were advocating impeachment long before Bill did the stupid with Ms. Lewinsky? I’m too lazy to look it up myself, but what did Klein think about all that? Not to mention his current ‘rational’ right-wing pals.
demkat620
@geg6: Yeah, I think this is going to bite the GOP in the ass. I think they are starting to figure it out.
I can’t be the only parent pissed off about the tantrum.
The Grand Panjandrum
And as an afterthought aren’t these the same people who believe my children should be forced to listen to a pledge that includes the mention of their god?
@El Cid: Agreed. It was my mistake for not getting more information about Van Jones before making any pronouncment. Particularly knowing that this all began with Glenn Beck I REALLY should have been more cautious. Sigh. I guess that means I really am a legend only in my own mind.
geg6
gnomedad: Al Franken has made very, very proud to have never doubted for a minute that he would be an excellent public servant. I predict that, if he stays in the Senate, he could be one of the great progressives of all time.
bedtimeforbonzo
King of the asshole media outlets.
gnomedad
@aimai:
Excellent observation; I missed this angle.
Max
@demkat620: Yesterday, Joe Watkins said that the time the kids have in school is “too precious” to be spent listening to the President.
There is a special place in hell for republican strategists.
bedtimeforbonzo
I thought this New Yorker piece painted a very positive picture of Senator Franken.
Made me see the guy in a different light.
gwangung
Oh, so the Discovery Institute strikes again, hm?…..
Max
@Ejoiner: I liked Keith’s take on it last night… the republican kids won’t get the stay in school message, so they will become drop outs and work at Burger King, while the democrats kids will do their homework, study hard, get good grades, go to college, be successful and rule the world.
Let the republicans make their kids dumb. Secures our democratic party place with the younger generation.
gnomedad
@bedtimeforbonzo:
Sorry, your link is defective. Does anyone know what causes “looks like a link, but doesn’t work”? I see this regularly here.
gnomedad
@gnomedad:
OK, I checked the source, it’s a link markup with no href attribute.
dr. luba
More republican crazy in the WaPo comments on the government’s plan to open up immunization centers for H1N1 flu virus:
Why? Is this a psy-op or preparation for martial law? It seems this will be a very mild flu season, since Baxter H1N1 displaces the other and is less harmful. As long as people refuse vaccines everyone will be okay.
The government is willing to kill you for money.
Others merely assume that the government is trying to kill us with thimerosal or squalene, or that it’s a plot to help the jews make a fortune selling Tamiflu. I kid you not.
Montysano
@gnomedad:
That was a ray of light in another unbelievably dark week. I’m expecting great things from Al.
I watched this excerpt from “1984′ the other day, The Two Minutes Hate, and thought about this passage from the book:
Yikes..
bedtimeforbonzo
The Franken piece in the New Yorker was called Enter Laughing.
Let’s see if that linked.
Leelee for Obama
Aren’t these the same people who believe in spanking their kids when they have temper tantrums? Seriously, who in the leadership of this group of wild-eyed haters has the COURAGE to actually call out these juvenile delinquents? I have been a Liberal since before I was born, or so the legend goes, and my kids knew I didn’t believe in hitting for most any reason. They also knew that pushing the edge of the envelope too far would buy them grounding, time-outs, loss of privileges, and The Look-they knew where I drew lines and rarely crossed them. When they did, they took the sentence promised. Not to say they didn’t hate me, but they don’t now, and their kids have benefited from that.
The Brits will say “one despairs” rather often and I think it becomes more true every day lately.
Joke Line should be calling this what it is, and stop giving credit to people whispering truth in the whirlwind. I’ll credit people who are booming out the truth.
Orwell said it and I mentioned it last night. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” I think I’m gonna include that quote in all my e-mails to politicians, and my weekly LTE.
SGEW
I’m going to step out of line here and defend Klein and Harshaw a bit [1]. Kind of. Bear with me. (Or don’t, as this is way, way too tl;dr).
I think that it’s important for people to point out that there is a line between opinions based on some rational process (e.g., some things that Frum and Podhoretz write [2]) and the absolutely insane statements that many “mainstream” “conservatives” propagate on a regular basis.
For instance, I believe that there is a categorical difference between saying something such as “What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn’t the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?” (Podhoretz, 2006), and saying something like “Democrats have no problem going against the majority of American people and usurping the rights of parents by sending Pied Piper Obama into the American classroom . . . . to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American’s youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves.” (Florida GOP chair). In the first instance, Podhoretz is advocating ethnic cleansing (basically). In the second, the Florida GOP chair appears to be suffering from straight up paranoia and severe delusion.
Now, in the above examples, I would say that Podhoretz’s statement is a much more morally culpable one (that is to say “evil” – he is actually advocating ethnic cleansing after all, a crime against humanity!), while the “OMG Obamunism is sapping our vital bodily fluids!” statement is a relatively ethical one to make (subjectively speaking – that is, if the GOP chair actually believes this nonsense). However, the difference is that Podhoretz is arguing from a “reality based,” non-delusional standpoint (i.e., it can be argued that a genocidal approach to Iraq or Palestine could be “effective,” based on real world evidence and rational thinking), while a great deal of the hysteria about Obama is simply insane – not just “wrong,” or inaccurate, or evil, or pig-ignorant, but wildly irrational.
Analogy attempt using Climate Change: Person A doesn’t believe in it because they’re a retired meteorologist who is using outdated and incorrect models. Person B lies about it because they don’t care about the next generation, or poor people, and just want to stay rich. Person C reads the information from A and B, and believes it. But Person D thinks that God created the world 6000 years ago, and that all scientists are evil atheist liars, and that Jesus is returning within their lifetime, and that the angels in their garden told them that global warming is a plot of the lizard people. In my estimation, A is a good faith actor who should be respected (but corrected). B is acting unethically but rationally. C is just a dumb ass. But D is dangerously irrational, [3] and should be treated differently.
I think that it’s a good thing that Scarborough and Frum and Podhoretz are making a stand against the crazy category D, and that Klein and Harshaw are applauding them for it. The criticism should be: why do ignore categories A through C, in the above analogy.
[1] You know me, always with the “let’s be fair” thing, despite my personal, ethical, and ideological objections to the people being defended. But criticisms of this “benefit of the doubt” approach itself should be differentiated from criticisms of the specific point I’m making here.
[2] When they’re not transparently shilling patently disingenuous nonsense for partisan purposes, of course. Which is often. But see category B in the analogy.
[3] N.B.: Christian irrationalism is socially accepted, or course, so I threw in the lizard people bit to make the crazy clear.
SGEW
Also, re: Orwell.
I’ve often felt that being familiar with Orwell has been a terrible burden on my spirit these past years. See, e.g., here or here.
Zifnab
@Max:
What happens if he’s just in reading “My Pet Goat”.
SGEW
[insert “. . . why do they ignore categories A through C . . . ” in final sentence of my long ass comment]
[typos make SGEW angry! edit function plz plz]
someguy
SGEW – whatever. A hundred million people in this country have the sort of psychological makeup that in an earlier age would have gotten them locked away in an asylum. They are insane and quite probably very dangerous. Just because a couple of them are less dangerous doesn’t mean you should leap to defend them. They are merely high functioning mentally ill people, as opposed to their lower functioning more cretinous brethren.
Leelee for Obama
@SGEW: Yeah, me too. I can’t quote him or link to stuff the way you do, but the spirit of Orwell laid upon me from high school. Being an idealist I believed that, surely, the warnings would be understood by my Country’s leaders. Then, many times, and especially after 911, I watched 1984 used a guide to how things should be done, and I started being more worried and frightened than angry.
Political Pragmatist
I’m gonna get killed for this…
Joe Klein isn’t as bad as you guys are saying. It is very hard to be a moderate right now. The middle is between the rock and the hard place.
Where does a rational person go? Far left? We are making a big mistake when we laugh at the wingnuts and bash the conservative Democrats. They may frustrate us, but we need them to keep the middle.
Another reason the clan sucks. They make us have to like people we would rather hate.
Political Pragmatist
@SGEW: We were writing at the same time, but you did it soooo much better. My compliments.
Zifnab
@Leelee for Obama:
You spank your kids because they are smaller and weaker and poorer than you. And you do it when you are having a tantrum.
Once your kids get big enough and strong enough and rich enough that they don’t have to put up with your shit, you cry and moan about how they never appreciated anything you did for them, and if you’d only listened and done everything they said, you would be in a better situation than you are currently in (which applies if you’re an out of work joe or a neurosurgeon)
I know enough conservative parents to know the drill. And you’ll still occasionally get the threat of being bent over one knee, if the parent thinks he or she can get away with it.
SGEW
@Political Pragmatist:
You come here. Obviously.
satby
@Political Pragmatist:
Well, back in the day the middle didn’t sit between batshit crazy and positively evil. Maybe that’s the problem Jokeline has.
Leelee for Obama
@Political Pragmatist:
El Cid
I bash conservative Democrats when they advocate for bad policies and base those arguments not on legitimate policy debate but because they somehow think their position is ideologically superior and more in the middle of their imagined plain of permissible thought.
If a ‘moderate’ or ‘conservative Democrat’ wants to actually argue about policy substance and about the quality and truthfulness of an analysis, bring it on.
On the health care / insurance reform debate, for example, I haven’t heard any public policy argument from ‘conservative Democrats’ that the policies like a public choice insurance plan are bad policies, but that somehow they’re either impossible or ideologically unaccepted to their idiot view of Americans’ desires, which, strangely enough, appear to constantly be aligned with the preferences of insurance company lobbyists.
You have ‘moderate’ Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee reportedly (i.e., by journalist interviews with them and insurance executives and lobbyists) pushing for policies which will make the situation worse and more costly for the vast majority of citizens and yet much more wonderful for insurance corporations.
Note that this is not the difference between a weakly helpful reform and a better reform — this is actually making it worse.
In their words — in the insurance lobbyists’ words — they’re hoping for a “bonanza” of lots of mandated brand new customers while avoiding any real regulation and even shifting more of the share of costs onto the consumer.
Yay! Moderate! Not Extreme! Not Liberal! YAYYY!!!!
If such moderate, middle of the road, thoughtful, centrist, conservative Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee (at least as reported via multiple sources) had their way, then, the majority would end up absolutely despising Democrats and getting absolutely toasted at the ballot box, and all because we got used to thinking about issues as though anyone on the left-liberal side is automatically wrong and anyone more to the ‘middle’ of someone’s imagined scale is obviously more correct and will do better for the Party.
asdf
When these things come up, I like to see what the folks at Free Republic have to say.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2332812/posts
Someone there has a .gif file representing Obama as a Nazi/Joker leading children in a Nazi salute. I kid you not.
It’s mind boggling. I understand the Republicans have long used character assassination as a political tool, it would be easy to make a list of instances of such here. But Obama as a criminal? A mass murderer? As a symbol of race hatred?
I just don’t know what to make of it. If Obama is Hitler do the denizens of Free Republic think that they are the Jews in this scenario? Glen Beck did say that he thought Obama hated white people, didn’t he? Something like that.
Something funny is happening here and it is not funny ha-ha.
Leelee for Obama
@Zifnab: Agreed, but did you notice, I didn’t say they should spank them, I said they should call them out and provide time-outs, loss of privileges etc, like sane parents do. My question pertained to the Conservative embrace of “Spare the rod, etc.” If you think it’s not popular, you should have seen the waiver for corporal punishment my son was supposed to sign when his ex was putting his boy in a Christian Academy. Needless to say, he didn’t sign and my Grandson didn’t go.
Zifnab
@Leelee for Obama: All I’m say’n is that the culture that believes in spanking its kids doesn’t spank them to instill any kind of discipline that except the kind leaving you goose stepping to Nuremberg.
And that would be Godwin in 60.
Leelee for Obama
@Zifnab: I agree with you, zifnab. Spanking, like almost all power trips , is not about discipline, it’s about power. What I’m stumped by is how there seems to be no one on the other side who is willing to really Call this BS out and put these temper tots in a corner.
ominira
I apologize if this already came up in a previous thread, but I can’t get over the story of the Texas man wrongly executed. Prosecutors said he set a fire that killed his children, experts and scientific evidence say the fire wasn’t arson, but it’s too late for him now. This makes me physically ill.
cs
I’ll go out on a limb and say that I can’t fault Klein for what he said. I subscribed to American Conservative for much of Bush’s second term and remember reading some of Pat Buchanan’s editorials where he would attack the administration over the war, civil liberties, deference to Israel, etc., and thinking “That Pat’s not so bad after all.”
Of course, I was wrong overall about Pat, but it’s not wrong to cheer on conservatives when they break, even just temporarily, from the insanity.
inkadu
I just hope schools send the names of all the parents who send in notes excusing their children from the Presidents speech directly to whitehouse.gov to add to the growing enemies list of the government.
At this rate, we are going to have to forget about storing these people at military camps in new jersey (which are already overcrowded) and think about making some real policy changes. For instance, if we released everyone tried for non-violent drug offenses from jail, we’d have an enormous capacity in our regular prisons. Which would lead to some great conversations in the yard:
“What are you in here for?”
— “Tea bagging.”
They’ll make friends quickly.
SGEW
@ominira: If you’re interested, DougJ’s post on Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution is here.
ominira
@SGEW: Thanks — I missed that thread entirely.
shelley matheis
“Welcome to the new Republican Cafe. Can I tell you the ‘outrage of the day?’ Everybody’s ordering it.”
DougJ
Where does a rational person go? Far left? We are making a big mistake when we laugh at the wingnuts and bash the conservative Democrats.
Bullshit. Do you actually read the nonsense conservative Democrats spout?
I don’t care what people call themselves — conservative, moderate, liberal, whatever. I judge them by the intelligence of what they say. And conservative Democrats’ position on health care — “I want to be fiscally conservative by opposing measures that would lower costs” — is utter nonsense.
DougJ
@SGEW
I see your point in principle. And that’s why I link to Frum, Larison, etc. when they say something genuinely valuable.
But I think the Chris Rock analogy here nails it.
A Mom Anon
I’m calling our school district on Tues and telling them I support the President encouraging kids to stay in school. This loud minority of obnoxious, spoiled, self important babies should not be allowed the last word on anything at all. Ever. I can’t stand this willful ignorance anymore.
They are precisely why we can’t have nice things. I’m fucking sick of it. Maybe it’s living half my life now in fucking GA,but I am OVER it. I hate this shit,and I’m sick really loathing most of my dumbass,spiteful neighbors.
tc125231
@Hunter Gathers: Personally, I don’t believe in hell. I side with Bishop Pearson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Pearson
Nonetheless, these clowns are going to be most chastened to discover that calling yourself a Christianist does not provide the same cover in the afterlife that following cohesive set of ethical principles does.
Too bad for them. Fools.
Brick Oven Bill
We have previously proven that Sarah Palin is smarter than Ashton Kutcher. I am beginning to become ever more concerned about Ashton, as I believe that he is degrading. From his introduction to the Obama address to school children:
“[we] pledge to be a servant to our president and to all mankind because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”
Ashton is welcome to serve whoever he wants.
But this is a good illustration of why people should go to church. The Christian faith is tried, proven, and relatively benign. This Obama guy is kind of weird. He would not be my friend in college because of the color of my skin.
SGEW
It is important to note that B.O.B. fits the description of all of the people in my analogy (A through D). This is actually kind of fascinating.
Kind of.
Meanderthal
Damning with faint praise. My miniature schnauzer is smarter than Ashton Kutcher. This is not a difficult exercise.
Political Pragmatist
@DougJ: While it may feel good and make us righteous, it also makes us exactly like the Republicans. If we diminish our numbers by kicking out those who do not agree with us all the time, we will lose. Repubs are simply better at negative politics than we are. We can only win through superior numbers and moving the ball in short gains but moving the chains.
I’d love to throw the bomb and get single-payer health insurance, but that would be intercepted easily.
I may not like Rahm’s way of doing things, but it’s better than achieving nothing on principle. That’s where the GOP is at now.
metricpenny
A Mom Anon @ 68
Go for it! I wanted to yesterday but my daughter graduated from Cobb County GA Schools in 2004. Complaining without any skin in the game doesn’t carry much weight.
But, be sure to watch at home later with your child(ren).
During my daughter’s tenure in Cobb County’s public school system, I had to:
1. Teach her how to tell time using a standard clock. They were only teaching it one day because we now have digital clocks. Like the power never goes out or a digital clock/watch never stops working (waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before cell phones).
2. Teach her how to spell. They were encouraging the children to “just spell words the way it sounds to you because what’s important is getting comfortable writing”. Yeah. Tell that to the SAT people. Plus, the girl had to explain every story to me ’cause I just couldn’t decifer her spelling.
metricpenny
me @ 75 decifer – LOL! Spellcheck is my friend. Decipher.
KCinDC
“Pink-biting”? Maybe a typo for “pink-baiting”?
shelley matheis
While these people object to Obama advising kids to study hard, it seems they’re teaching their own kids a lesson. The person who screams the loudest, even if it’s nonsense, wins. Good going!
Leelee for Obama
@metricpenny: The second problem you had has been prevalent since my 31 yo Daughter was in school, back on Long Island. It used to make me nuts. She didn’t inherit my love of reading, so her interest in writing was more clinical than romantic. It took us forever to beat back the just spell like it sounds horse hockey. Now, here in FL, she’s fighting the same battle with her kids, and it’s really ridiculous. Then, you have the lazy-daisy teacher who used the wrong answer key to check a correct homework page, who then proceeded to embarrass an already shy student in front of her class. Needless to say, the apology wasn’t anywhere near as public, and my Granddaughter still talks about the incident.
Meanderthal
@Political Pragmatist:
It’s not a question of “those who do not agree with us all the time”. We’re talking about politicians blocking their own party’s legislation regarding subjects that are part of their own party’s core identification. And for no discernible reason.
DougJ
While it may feel good and make us righteous, it also makes us exactly like the Republicans. If we diminish our numbers by kicking out those who do not agree with us all the time, we will lose.
For God’s sake, no one is kicking anyone out. Look, just because someone calls himself a conservative or a moderate doesn’t mean I excuse them saying things that are demonstrably false.
Political Pragmatist
What I’m saying is everything has to be negotiable. If we hold Democrats to the same standard as Repubs do theirs, we’re going to lose. The middle is waiting for Dems to screw it up so they can complain about having voted for him. He got a lot of “Independents” who are really Republicans. Any reason they get to get away from their vote will be taken.
I wouldn’t be as concerned if there were more Frums and less Becks, but there aren’t and the Frums are ignored. Even Brooks is starting to take a lot of heat from conservatives for being a “squish.”
I detest the Nelsons and Baucuses (Bauci?), but we have to deal with them to get something done. Doing nothing is death.
(Then fuck Nelson.)
**I don’t remember who said it, but I agree. Let’s work for those who are with us and not at all for those who aren’t.**
Comrade Luke
@Political Pragmatist:
Thanks stopping by, Rahm.