Via Sully, this from Reihan:
Remember that the bitterest opponents of the Clinton-era U.S. interventions in Kosovo and Haiti were conservatives like Tom DeLay, who condemned the Clinton administration for treating “foreign policy as social work,” in Michael Mandelbaum’s evocative phrase. The post-9/11 moment represented a departure from this conservative suspicion of nation-building, as Jacksonian sentiments were yoked to the ambitious project of building democracies in the Muslim world. But now that Obama, a man most conservatives dislike and distrust, is the steward of that effort, those conservative instincts are making a comeback. Jason Chaffetz represents the beginning of a wave—and it’s not obvious that Obama can do anything to stop it.
Instincts my ass. What do Clinton and Obama have in common that separates them from Bush?
I already told you what is going to happen. There will be a growing right flank that opposes the escalation in Afghanistan that will become more vocal in the next couple of months. And then, after the “surge,” when Obama starts to draw down forces in Afghanistan, this right flank will become noticeably quieter and then start to yell “defeatist” and “soft on national security” and “Obama wants to lose” along with the rank and file.
We all know what is going on here. Chaffetz might be an outlier, and may honestly believe in bringing home the troops, but anyone who thinks there is a growing legitimate “dove” movement in the GOP is smoking crack rock.
Just Some Fuckhead
High IQs?
r€nato
2010 is an election year, and the GOP has been grasping at straws since 2006.
So yes, they will use whatever is handy to have an issue in the mid-terms, especially if unemployment really has peaked and continues to decline.
Of course, their opposition to Afghanistan will be very principled and very “pro-troops”. I’m sure there is no shortage of right-wing think tank’ers with military and intelligence credentials who will be put forth to make the case that Obama is mishandling the war because he’s a wimpy overly-cerebral effete liberal Democrat.
r€nato
Legitimately elected to the White House.
r€nato
(do I win the internets now? That would be a nice way to start my weekend.)
arguingwithsignposts
I find it so odd that the Right are now the “peaceniks” here. Would they prefer we just muddle along losing hundreds of troops a month for eternity?
On second thought, don’t answer that.
arguingwithsignposts
@r€nato:
I think you have to share that win with @Just Some Fuckhead.
r€nato
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s like “The Argument Clinic” come to life. They’re not making an argument, it’s merely contradiction.
Max
I’m not quite up to date on my street drug lingo, but I believe the proper phrasing is…
smoking crack
or
smoking rock
but not the combo.
/DARE PSA
r€nato
fair enough
Makewi
Low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery?
r€nato
@Makewi:
we were talking about Clinton and Obama, not Craig and Foley.
arguingwithsignposts
@r€nato:
{golf clap}
and WTF does narcolepsy have to do with anything @makewi?
Makewi
@r€nato:
Or Barney Frank! Why do you hate the gheys?
Donald G
Low-grade narcolepsy sounds more like Reagan. Buggery sounds more like Nixon and his hidden microphones.
Zifnab
They’ll swing left and swing right and a few more die-hards will be forced to keep up with the wingnut speed whipbacks. This constant whiplash has left them weaker and weaker on foreign policy.
The internet remembers all. And we’ll be more than happy to dig up all the contradictions and splay them out for the world to see, every time a hawkish Republican decides to go dovish and then hawkish again.
The rap sheets on these jokers just get longer and longer. And it’s going to be another shitty year for incumbents.
Stooleo
OT.
Perhaps the reason why Cole is grumpy. ;)
Montysano
Maybe not a “dove” movement, exactly, but: if…if, if Obama can begin to turn the economy around, and if… if he can get a leg up in Afghanistan, and if… if a decent HCR bill makes it through Congress… IOW, if things are going fairly well 18 months from now, do the young turks of the GOP (Cantor, Pawlenty, et al) continue to ride the Teabagger express to an assured oblivion, or do they begin to inch towards the exits? And once that movement starts, how long is it before only Pete King and James Inofe are left, alone, to chew the carpets and bay at the moon?
Morbo
But the hedgehog can never be buggered at all.
wasabi gasp
Not just you, in stinks most ass.
Donald G
@Morbo:
Let’s leave Ron Jeremy out of this. He’s not been elected to anything.
arguingwithsignposts
@Makewi:
fixed.
lewp
They’re not war criminals?
arguingwithsignposts
@Donald G:
Damn, we now have a third potential winner of teh Internets, in just one thread.
I don’t know if there’s enough to go around.
Kevin Phillips Bong
@Makewi: Makewi was just stealing a fine line from Dr. Evil’s evocation of his childhood in the first Austin Powers movie. Funny, but entirely irrelevant.
inkadu
Let’s be fair. Maybe conservatives objected to the whole Kosovo thing because:
1) We already have plenty of bases in Europe.
2) There was no guarantee we were going to build bases in Yugoslovia since the campaign there was mostly waged from the air from bases outside the country.
3) There was no strategic value there — no oil, no important routes, no political advantage (an indifferent genocidal dictatorship is a net plus for the US).
4) We were killing white Christians in defense of (admittedly white) muslims.
The neocon agenda is reasonably consistent given the critera.
licensed to kill time
__
This is what it sounds like when GOP doves cry.
inkadu
@Donald G:
What about the Chinese elections?
It’s ridicurous to think he’s not erectable.
Notorious P.A.T.
The Republican party is not led by smart people:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_12/021297.php
Redshirt
Maybe we are in BizzaroWorld, or somehow we’ve been phased into that reality after the 2008 election. Up is down, war is peace, yadda yadda.
Joel
just power.
just as in “only” not “rightful use of”.
cleek
anyone who thinks honest policy disagreement motivates the modern GOP is high. everything it does and everything it says is in service of one goal: demonize the left in order to motivate the base. that’s what keeps the checks flowing. that’s what pays the salaries of all those professional Republicans who clog up our discourse.
it’s all about keeping the rabble sufficiently roused.
i wish i could say there’s nothing like that on the left, too. but i get those panicked and misleading pleas for cash in the mail from lefty groups, too.
but those groups don’t run the party. they aren’t the face of the Dems. they’re out on the fringe, merely wishing they could get the attention the wingnuts do.
Notorious P.A.T.
Learn to fucking spell. Fool.
Noonan
They both let the phone go to voicemail when Hillary calls?
Douglas
conservative instincts = yelling “Nooooooooooo!” whenever a democrat speaks
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Yeah, it’s supposed to be teh ghey (singular, not plural).
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Noonan:
Okay, that is the thread winner.
geg6
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Caught that and posted it in another thread today. Love it. Fucking hilarious the way these asshats got rolled.
And can I just say once again that I love, love, love Sherrod Brown? Damn, I’d love to have him as my senator.
Though I’ll give PA’s newest, shiniest liberal Dem some props today. Snarlin’ Arlen apparently got bloggers the same treatment for protecting sources as the msm (who, unsurprisingly, were against giving the bloggers the same protections as they get).
So props to Arlen today, too.
But I’d still take Brown over him or Casey any day of the week.
Randy P
@arguingwithsignposts:
It’s a reference to some movie line. I think it was Dr. Evil’s autobiographical speech from the first Austin Powers.
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Somebody needs to study the concept of “shibboleth”. Or read their Urban Dictionary.
Legalize
I’m proud to have Sherrod Brown as my Senator. He doesn’t give a fuck about calling out wingers on their bullshit and Ohioans will continue to reward him for it.
kay
@Notorious P.A.T.:
“November 9, 2009
Source: Sandusky Register
By Tom Jackson
Ever since he won his first race for the U.S. House in 1992, Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, has refused to use the federal government’s health insurance program.
Instead, as a protest against the fact many American’s don’t have health insurance, he’s obtained it elsewhere.”
Brown must have been thrilled they gave him the opening to talk about his favorite subject, which is the excellent health care benefits members of Congress enjoy.
OC
They don’t have choo choo trains on their pj’s?
Randy P
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I never thought I’d be one of those curmudgeons who mutters about how he can’t understand a word the young people are saying anymore, but…
I just don’t get the “teh” thing. I get that it’s a misspelling of “the”, but when it gets used and what it signifies… all it signifies to me every time I see it is that I have gone beyond my usual feeling of uncoolness into a place where I can’t even see cool anymore.
geg6
They’re not dry drunks?
Randy P
An open plea to my fellow juicers: Can somebody sometime write a blockquote tutorial? Or is there one somewhere? Specifically: (a) How to blockquote multiple paragraphs, (b) What makes some blockquotes boldface and (c) how to do that blockquote-within-blockquote thing.
Rick Taylor
Listening to a few conservative critics of the Obama’s speech, it struck me how concerned they were with style. They didn’t talk much about the substance of the policy (as Obama was giving the generals the troops they’d asked more, there wasn’t much to criticize). Instead, they criticized his rhetoric. He didn’t say we’re in this to win! O’Reilly contrasted Obama unfavorably with a scene of George C. Scott from the movie Patton. And it struck me, they really to think this is what’s important. They really do believe in the tinkerbell effect. Yes of course the troops are important, but what’s crucial is the attitude, that we say the right words with enthusiasm, that we’re doing this to win. It’s as though they really do think that you can change reality by believing hard enough.
OC
@kay: It was in reference to Dr. Evil’s father if I’m not mistaken.
licensed to kill time
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work
For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
hoist with his own petard, and ‘t shall go hard
But I will dwell one yard below their mines
And blow them at their moon: O tis most sweet
When in one bill two crafts directly meet.
Noonan
I think what Reihan is trying to say is that only Republicans can drop freedom bombs.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@geg6:
When the phone rings and it’s the Office of the Vice President on the line, they don’t pick it up immediately and answer with “Yes Sir. Whatever you say, Sir.“
licensed to kill time
@Randy P:
It’s the empty lines that make blockquote go insane.
I think nested blockquotes look icky, so you’re on your own there.
h/t monkeyboy, steeplejack et al
Omnes Omnibus
They have instincts alright. First, attack the Democrat in office. Second, bomb everyone else. Third, stay safely out of harm’s way while bragging about their own toughness.
inkadu
@Randy P: I’m sure there’s competing origins for “teh,” but I’m going to go with it’s popularity coming from lolcats — captioned photos of cats with atrocious grammar.
From that ‘teh’ became a marker for something silly and probably a little stupid, too. So conservatives who are so terrified by homosexuality suddenly become grammatical retards frightened by “teh ghey.” Which points to another delightful wrinkle of ‘teh’ — turning adjectives into nouns.
But if it’s too much to absorb, just think of it as a ;-) . ;)
wag
@ 28
…but the Democrats are!
tripletee
They’ve never had Dick Cheney’s hand up their ass.
kay
@OC:
I like Sherrod Brown.
He had introduced legislation to re-establish habeas as law, and it failed, which I thought was just so dispiriting and sad, so I sent him a maudlin, weepy email. He sent me a personal note in return.
He’s a decent person OR he thought I was scarily unhinged.
Either way, it’s nice, right?
General Winfield Stuck
OT
I think Jane Hamsher has maybe finally lost her mind.
Seems Harry Reid has sent out a flyer asking for people to support the PO like he does to get it passed. And Jane goes ballistic that Harry is selling out the PO by sending out some secret nefarious poll/ At least, that’s what I can gather from the raging blather and maze of links. Maybe she is channeling Meghan Mccardle.
And she has been on teevee quite a bit lately.
even BTD is perplexed
I will be Stuck in my rabbit hole, till it all blows over. Could be awhile.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but that story about the Muslim terrorists watching porn and dancing in an Arabic dialect on an AirTran flight that we were discussing in a thread last night? AirTran have rebutted and debunked the guy’s story, but oddly (to me) they did so on their internal newsletter, not on a public forum. Here’s the story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://www.ajc.com/business/airtran-refutes-flight-297-226517.html
“There were no reports of any passenger standing up in any threatening manner,” the AirTran report reads. “At NO time was there any physical altercation between passengers.
“Upon returning to the gate, the individual on the phone were asked to de-plane and did so in full compliance of crew member’s instructions.”
Petruna claimed that 11 Muslim men dressed in “full attire” and that the men began calling one another, and shouting in a foreign language from different areas of the plane before the plane stopped on the ground.
AirTran said: “The individuals in this party proceeded to their seats throughout the aircraft and were dressed like any other passenger.”
Further, the airline reports: “There have been no reports of any individual phoning any other individual on the flight … there are no reports of screaming or shouting insults to our crew members.”
Petruna has declined over several days to respond to repeated email and phone attempts by the AJC to talk to him.
Makewi
@tripletee:
Don’t be so sure. When Dick Cheney wants to put his hand somewhere, the Washington establishment knows it’s best to just keep quiet and stay still until he decides to leave.
Max
@kay: I think he has a very sexy voice.
Yes, I’m that shallow.
D-Chance.
Ah, yes… “the military is trained to do two things: kill people and break things”… “our military isn’t some international meals on wheels”… I remember all the Limbaughisms from the Clinton 90s. Strange how silent he went when we got all those reports of the military building electrical grids and hospitals and soccer fields in Iraq all during the Bush years…
General Winfield Stuck
@Max:
He could be the most interesting man alive.
SiubhanDuinne
@kay: I like pretty much everything I’ve seen of Sherrod Brown, which admittedly isn’t a lot. But the fact that he responded personally to your note tells me he’s a good guy (I guess you would have known if it had been a pro forma letter macro signed by a robopen, and it sounds like it was not that). Have you read either of the books by his wife, Connie Schultz? Life Happens and And His Lovely Wife. Both very good, interesting reads.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Winfield Stuck:
There are a number of very interesting progressives in Congress: Sanders, Franken, Weiner, Grayson, etc.
Would that they had the majority and weren’t beholden to Presidents Snowe, Lincoln, Lieberman, etc.
Ryan S.
They can both pronounce the word “nuclear”.
Don’t have things thrown at them while traveling abroad.
I smell a new BJ meme.
aimai
I don’t agree about Jane Hamsher. If you read the post carefully she links to what she sees is a long history of both Reid and Obama trying to shift blame for ditching the Public Option back and forth to each other. She sees the various moments when Reid “saved” the option as feints before it gets traded off for triggered co-ops. And I don’t think she’s wrong. If you’ve really been watching the horsetrading its clear that Reid and Obama have both offered up various inducements to the balking Senators but only for halfway cloture votes or partial agreements that always leave the Public Option hanging. I think Jane believes that if you have a credible threat–like telling Blanche Lincoln you’ll kick her off the ag committee, you should have used it to force her to support the whole public option right through the third round of cloture votes. The fact that Reid clearly didn’t do that is sufficient to make Jane doubt his intentions. She also thinks, and has stated very clearly, that she feels Reid is list harvesting/fundraising off a Public Option he has simply no intention of allowing into the final bill. I actually agree with her on this. I don’t see any other logical reason for Reid and Obama to have pre-emptively hamstrung and gutted the PO to the extent they have without getting to Yes. They have consistently traded away bits and pieces of the legislation without ever getting a serious commitment from the waverers to support the final legislation.
aimai
General Winfield Stuck
Here is the so called “Poll” that Hamsher is so pissed about.
Max
@General Winfield Stuck: His wife is badass too.
General Winfield Stuck
@aimai:
Let’s see. That’s one disagree. There, got it.
arguingwithsignposts
@Max:
Better than Kucinich’s?
ellaesther
@arguingwithsignposts: ah, you and your crazy dreamin’!
kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
No, I haven’t read her books. I met her once, because his Senate campaign contacted me and asked me to find a forum for her to take questions. I live in a 70/30 R county, and they were making a determined effort to reach out to Republicans.
He’s fearless on that, and he’s a real liberal, so that’s noteworthy. He doesn’t run from Republicans, and he doesn’t apologize for being liberal. It’s worked for him here.
We held the forum, at the library, actually, and she was great. She’s funny and smart, and she took every question head-on. I think her being a newspaper person helped there. She’s not at all imperious or fussy, and she speaks in clear, plain sentences.
He won the county, although he lost my precinct.
jetan
@Noonan:
Ding! Ding! Ding! Win.
arguingwithsignposts
Apropos of nothing, I love the rude pundit:
Can’t remember who linked to him earlier, but thanks for the LOLs.
Corner Stone
@OC:
I’m…not sure what you’re trying to say?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@inkadu:
I think of it as more of a diminuitive, but yeah, that’s essentially it.
cleek
@inkadu:
pretty sure that “teh” predates lolcats by quite a while. it was part of leet (whence “pron”, “pwned”, “haz”, “moar”, “evah” – which, like “teh”, are common misspellings which became part of the vocabulary).
‘lolcats’ is how cats would speak leet.
Corner Stone
@inkadu:
I just must simply applaud this one.
Jason Bylinowski
Hey guys, you know, we cannot possibly lose as long as we use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.
SiubhanDuinne
@kay: What a nice experience! I would certainly go out of my way to hear either of them. And I think you’re right that Connie’s background in journalism (I’m talkin’ journalism what is journalism here!) is an asset in communicating in person. The one time I saw her on TV — I think it might have been Book TV on C-SPAN 2 (which thank you very much, my cable provider Charter Communications has decided I no longer need) — I found her very impressive. As you say, funny and smart.
arguingwithsignposts
Not to bring teh sad, but damn, this just sucks (from Bizenator in an earlier thread).
I hope he’s reading, and I hope he knows we care.
kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
I was a doubter, so I was an easy mark for his campaign. Guilt.
When I found out Brown was the chosen candidate (I don’t know if you remember, but it was controversial, Schumer blocked Brown’s primary challenger, pissing Democrats off, including me) I OPINED locally that Brown was too liberal and would lose.
My lefty local friends still bring it up. How VERY WRONG I was about Sherrod Brown.
joe from Lowell
There’s a legitimate dove movement in the GOP: the Paulites.
Ron Paul got huge applause at the 2008 primary debates when he bashed the Iraq War.
But they really have nothing to do with the GOP leadership, and have zero input into messaging.
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts: I read that. I was gonna say something but it sounded inadequate so I’m just gonna wish him and the victims’ family well.
Comrade Mary
@licensed to kill time: Ooh, I’m the Queen of Icky!
(Now watch me screw this up).
Here’s what the code I used above looks like, with square brackets instead of angle brackets. I have put the “child” pair of blockquotes surrounding the nested quote from Randy in bold so they stand out better. Open and close each little nest separately. Don’t cross the blockquote tags! That would be — bad.
[blockquote][blockquote]An open plea to my fellow juicers: Can somebody sometime write a blockquote tutorial? Or is there one somewhere? Specifically: (a) How to blockquote multiple paragraphs, (b) What makes some blockquotes boldface an c ) how to do that blockquote-within-blockquote thing.[/blockquote]
Blockquote Tutorial
__
Place two underscores at the beginning of each empty line between paragraphs and it shall never spill out of the box.
__
Place two underscores directly above your blockquote and it shall not go bold.
__
Begin your blockquote directly below a line of text or reply link and it too, shall not go bold.
__
It’s the empty lines that make blockquote go insane.
__
I think nested blockquotes look icky, so you’re on your own there.
__
h/t monkeyboy, steeplejack et al[/blockquote]
Comrade Mary
Meh. The nest turned out bold this time and I’m not sure why.
Note that my code excerpt seems to show empty lines, but each “empty” line actually has two underscores. The web browser lies.
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano:
Yeah, there is no adequate for that.
Comrade Mary
Oh, that’s horrendous news. I’m so sorry.
Max
@arguingwithsignposts: Connie Schultz (Mrs. Brown) is badass in substance.
Don’t know anything about Kucinich’s wife.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: When a good friend died of breast cancer at 27, one of my other friends said to her husband, “That’s just a fucking kick in the balls.” Less inadequate than many things, but still inadequate.
Good thoughts for the families of those touched by this horror.
Nylund
If Obama asked the GOP to give him a list of everything they’d want a president to do and he did them all, they’d still go on TV and criticize everything he did.
They simply hate every policy of a Democratic President. Not because of the policies themselves, but because they came from a Democrat. No other reason. No larger ideology. It really is that simple.
Omnes Omnibus
@Max: Young, tall, and gorgeous, if I remember correctly.
bago
Alright olds, listen up. “Teh” originally comes AOLamers. The people WHO TYPE LIKE THIS!!! Mocking them became great sport, and the use of it by lowtax when mocking all of the new people flooding onto the net on the late ’90s. The satirical character known as JEFFK was a source of amusement, and the the meme took off. From there it spread to 4chan.org, especially the /b/ board. I am not linking it because it is pretty much the most NSFW thing ever. The /b/ board had a celebration every saturday called caturday. Given that any moron with pbrush.exe could make a lolcat to post on caturday, almost everyone posted caturday pics, Due to the fact that this basically killed the servers because they were getting so popular, someone throught of a great idea to make a buck off of the phenomenon, and thusly icanhazcheezburger.com was born.
Thusly, usage of teh is an homage to memes across the net.
Omnes Omnibus
@bago: You, sir or madam, are truly aware of all internet tradition. Please accept this laurel and hearty handshake.
bago
With the addition of the lexicon, Balloon-Juice itself is already quite the meme factory. Somethingawful is pretty much the big bad daddy of meme factories however, so much that meme usage is culturally frowned on after all of the funny is wrung out of it, usually about 2 weeks.
arguingwithsignposts
@bago:
Okay, I’m going to date myself here and posit that it actually came from typewriters without teh edit buttonz, when people were typing too fast and typed teh instead of the (a common situation that still occurs despite the presence of spell check).
The fact that it is an Internet Tradition(TM) doesn’t mean it originated there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: traditions not tradition. My kingdom for an edit function.
arguingwithsignposts
@arguingwithsignposts:
We all remember those, right?
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Mary:
WordPress is our Ming the Merciless.
eemom
@General Winfield Stuck:
vociferous agreement here. She’s our side’s version of Sarah Palin, except for being smarter. A bully, a hypocrite and a craven self-promoter.
Yutsano
Dead serious, I shit you not, CIGNA sent me some paperwork with this exact typo. I honestly wish I was kidding. I was half-tempted to ask them what kind of idiots they have running that company. Since they stop being my insurer at the end of the month and they asked me for the exact same form AGAIN I might as well.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Notorious P.A.T.
I love you.
arguingwithsignposts
@Notorious P.A.T.:
And we love you and all teh uncool. Because that’s how we roll.
CalD
I think you could say that right-wing crazies believe that people who disagree with them disagree because they are evil. On the left, we seem more inclined to think that the people we disagree with are evil because they disagree with us.
We’re generally willing on the left to let bygones be gone and forgive evil disagreers who forsake their disagreeing ways. On the right however, when someone they have disagreed with later comes around to their own way of thinking on some issue, it’s quite common to see people change their own positions to remain in opposition.
I’m not sure that’s 100% true but I believe it’s true more often than not. And I’m not just talking about plain old garden variety hypocrisy, like the party that’s out of power in DC suddenly becoming the sworn champions of states rights or the majority party in the senate lamenting the evils of the filibuster. This I think is something deeper.
bago
Were people intentionally typing teh on typewriters? I don’t think so. Thusly the meme evolved from intent, not from behavior.
Notorious P.A.T.
Leet needs to be dropped in the garbage can of history. Can we please stop celebrating ignorance? It amazes me that the same people who lament the rise of Palinism simultaneously think they are making some kind of point by intentionally grievous misspelling words.
Notorious P.A.T.
@arguingwithsignposts:
You are asking for it, bub.
General Winfield Stuck
Consider it a pagan sacrifice to the FSM. To ask why misses teh point.
JMC in the ATL
This thread is so full of win, I can’t stand it.
General Winfield Stuck
Nobody go out lest you have to. Grammar Nazis are checking papers.
arguingwithsignposts
@bago:
Not precisely. The meme would have had to evolved from *observed* behavior. You can’t be suggesting that “teh” arose tabula rasa? For the meme to have “evolved,” it would have had to have a progenitor, i.e., typewriters.
I’ve seen enough “teh” prior to teh Internets to know better.
arguingwithsignposts
@General Winfield Stuck:
Wow, 110 comments before Godwin’s law is confirmed.
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Big wet kisses to you too. ;)
Makewi
I didn’t use teh, because someone on one of the other threads asked please stop. They said please, and even though they weren’t talking to me I felt the politeness of the request should be rewarded.
ghey is just funny, more so when preceded by the (or teh if that’s they way your rude ass rolls).
Makewi
Both of them are the first black POTUS.
Shawn in ShowMe
Lots of words were misspelled prior to the internets. But the tradition of mocking proudly ignorant AOLers who routinely misspelled words and used all capital letters is an Internet tradition. We’re just mocking wingnuts these days instead of AOLers.
inkadu
@Comrade Mary:
Those who say they understand the blockquote do not understand the blockquote.
It’s a zen thing.
inkadu
@arguingwithsignposts: Even if it did start with typewriters, signposts, cats are still behind it.
Shawn in ShowMe
And while I don’t believe there’s been any official surveys, there’s probably quite a bit of overlap in the demographics of the proudly ignorant wingnuts and the proudly ignorant AOLers.
arguingwithsignposts
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I wonder if this isn’t a chicken-egg type question. “Teh” is probably the most misspelled word in English typing (because it’s hard to f*ck up “I” or “a”), even prior to the Internet. Were people mocking that prior to the Internet? I know I was (as a grammar Nazi). This is an interesting discussion, and I’ll give it to the AOLer/4chan people for moving the mock to the Internet, but I stick by the point, which is that evolution must move from something prior, and that prior is typewriter behavior.
arguingwithsignposts
@inkadu:
Well, that goes without saying, doesn’t it?
Randy P
Blockquote experiment.
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Thanks all for the education on all things “teh” and all things blockquote. I could swear I tried the double-underline thing unsuccessfully once before. Perhaps I’ll be presently surprised this time and one of the above experiments will work.
As for intentional misspellings, I mentioned shibboleths. Originally it’s apparently some Old Testament thing, a word that was used as a test for native speakers from your tribe. The sense of “an intentional misspelling that’s kind of an in joke in this community” comes from the urban legends newsgroup, alt.folklore.urban (I think the regulars there are connected to snopes.com in some way), a place I used to hang out a lot in my newsgroup days. An example there is “cow orker”, as in the common preface on an urban legend, “This really happened to a cow orker of mine…” Another is “voracity” used in place of “veracity”.
“Moran” would definitely qualify in the left blogosphere.
And in all those cases, they were not originally intentional, but they are used intentionally by the community to kind of mock the original unintentional use.
Sly
The GOP will do what they deem most politically expedient for them. If the past decade are any indicator, that expediency will depend on the attention span of your average American voter and their ability to remember events that took place two years prior or more.
CalD
CalD
..
Makewi
@Sly:
They will be able to get away with this due to the Democrats insistence on once again showcasing their inability to govern.
CalD
CalD
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CalD
I think I scared it that time. |-D
General Winfield Stuck
@CalD:
You are playing with dine-oh-mite my friend.
Yutsano
@General Winfield Stuck: If we breaks Word Press, can we haz new platform plz? Kthxbai!
Sly
@Makewi
Something of an exaggeration, I think. The problem, at least in the Senate, is that there is a governing majority of 60 in the Democratic caucus. For the purpose of bringing policy proposals to the floor, the Republican caucus doesn’t exist, because that isn’t what they see as their job. Their job is, essentially, to delay policy implementation to the extent that the country becomes so dysfunctional that people forget how shitty they are at governing and turn on the Democrats.
And its important to keep in mind that the target of this strategy isn’t independents or regular Republican voters. It’s regular Democratic voters. When you’re a demographic minority, which the GOP is, the best strategy for winning is to shrink the total voter base on the side of demographics that reliably vote against you. Get enough Democrats pissed off at Democrats to the extent that they don’t vote, and your prospects don’t look so bad. It may work. It has in the past, but only because your average Democratic voter isn’t as smart and perceptive as he or she likes to think.
The Democratic Senate Caucus only looks incapable of governing because the lack of a faithful opposition in a 60-40 split allows anyone in the Democratic Caucus with delusions of grandeur to fuck up the process. There will always be 40 votes against any serious proposal, so all it takes is one to kill it. The upper chamber is basically operating under the principle of unanimous consent.
You can blame Reid, or you can blame people like Ben Nelson or Blanche Lincoln, but always remember that the situation wouldn’t exist if the Republican Caucus had any desire to address legislative issues in anything other than campaign slogans. The Democrats, as is typical, are merely operating in the dysfunctional context that the Republicans created.
Comrade Kevin
@r€nato:
No it isn’t.
Ian
@r€nato:
Best. Post. Ever.
Ian
@lewp:
Clinton ordered bombing of electric utilities, water and sewage systems, and hospitals in Serbia. That qualifies as a war criminal. (Even if that is only a pale shade compared to Milosivic or Bush)
vaux-rien
And indeed a quick google groups search of a.f.u shows that folks were using “teh” that way for about 10 years before /b/ was around. It’s hard to tell definitively since it’s such a common typo but it does seem to show up primarily in the most jokey or obvious troll posts. Damn kids think they invented the internet,
licensed to kill time
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Thank you, that is all.