Sometimes we get tired of making fun of Nick Gillespie. Fortunately, Jon Chait is on the job:
[B]laming the president for failing to “kick the asses” of leaders of the opposing party is a really dumb way to think about government, and especially so for a libertarian. Your analysis is that the president needs to compel the opposing party to accept policies it doesn’t like? That’s a libertarian analysis?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
OF course it’s a libertarian analysis. As long as you accept that LIbertarianism is functionally no different from GOP Trolling no matter how much they insist they’re ‘independent thinkers’.
Keith P.
At least no one’s said Obama should just jawbone the other side. (no one’s said “jawbone” yet, right?)
Soonergrunt
Nick Gillespie is not, and never has been a Libertarian. He has always been a GOP stooge.
Linnaeus
OT with apologies: I’m sure this was mentioned in a prior thread, but if not, Tbogg is back.
ETA: I now see that it was mentioned. Carry on.
fuckwit
Fuck Fonzie.
I need to do other things than pay attention to this insanity, but I can’t stop.
Auugh…. going outside for a while.
Ash Can
Nick Gillespie is “libertarian” in exactly the way a mob of delusional theocratic extremists are “conservative.” Fuckin’ words, how do they work??
srv
When is the Fonz going to move to Somalia and assume his dictatorship?
Perhaps he means the only way Obama can’t enslave us in his soshulist agenda is if he becomes a dictator.
Does anyone have a citation from the Pinochet-Noonan Book of Logic for that?
Professor
OT if you don’t know already, Charlie Pierce informs us that TBogg is back at the Raw Story. His domain name is Beach Blanket Boredom. Sorry to butt in like this!
ETA Sorry this has already been mentioned!
geg6
@Soonergrunt:
This is true. However, I must say that, for me, it never gets old making fun of the Fonz.
MattF
Aw, reason-shmeason. What does ‘reason’ have to do with anything, anyhow?
MikeJ
@Keith P.:
Judges 15:15
And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
Culture of Truth
Leather-jacket wearing libertarians fancy themselves tough guys, admire authortarians assholes.
clone12
You can either brag having abundance of quaility X or you can actually instantiate it. For example, Albert Einstein didn’t write an autobiography titled “I’m such a smarty smart dude; did I mention I am really smart?”, instead he did things like come up with a completely new paradigm in physics that leads people to say: “Wow, this guy is pretty smart”.
This is all you need to know about the supposed abundance of quality X among organizations that go out of their way to proclaim their overflow of quilaities in “pravda” or “reason”.
debit
Hey guys, TBogg is back!
/sarcasm
Punchy
Yes, because it blames the Preznit. If Nobama could be blamed for Zima, malt beverage boycotts would become a liberterian rallying cry.
dedc79
Question: Might Reason be the least-appropriately named publication in the history of civilization?
Sly
@Soonergrunt:
There’s a difference?
Trollhattan
Each and every time Gillespie show his beleathered self on Maher, I expect Maher to introduce him as The Fonzie of Freedom and yet, that never happens. Then I haz a sad because I know Maher is going to let him spew his typical spew, unchallenged.
NonyNony
Ah, I see that people are assuming that the word “libertarian” and “liberty” are related again. But they’re actually two unrelated words that just look similar in English.
To use an analogy off the SAT:
libertarian:liberty :: feudal:feud
Liberty is of course from the Latin libertas which roughly means “freedom”, while “libertarian” is from an obscure dialect of Asshole libertera which roughly translated means “I got mine, so fuck you all”.
geg6
Well, it’s been fun kicking the mouthbreathers in the House and Nick Gillespie around, but I now have to go and sit through a two-hour presentation on our new healthcare options in the open-enrollment for benefits meeting they’re having today. Wish my employer provided health insurance cost as little as the stuff I found on an ACA premium calculator for people in my income level.
schrodinger's cat
How influential is this Gillespie whom you speak of? I have never seen Reason on the newsstands, ever.
Jamey
That’s not a Libertarian analysis. Libertarians don’t analyze; they “feel.” But because they’re usually such arrogant twats, they contend that their feelings are, in fact, valid statements on policy, economics, and human nature.
So, removing the mythic quantity of “Libertarian analysis,” we’re left with the more obvious outcome: Nick Gillespie is a stupid and small-minded person.
fka AWS
Personally, I never get tired of making fun of that stupid asshat.
eemom
omg, I said to myself, that headline has to be the dumbest fucking thing I’ve seen yet.
Oh, it’s that “Reason” thing? Oh SHIT, I hope BJ doesn’t —
Keith P.
@MikeJ:
George 13:6 – “And he jawboned the people of the desert, as their oil price was unjust. And they ignored him. He walked with them, hand in hand. And they ignored him.”
gbear
The New York Times drops a piano on John Boehner’s head. About time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/opinion/john-boehners-shutdown.html?hp&_r=0
peach flavored shampoo
I’m outside looking for the meteor, because suddenly Sad Jen Rubin is making sense.
Apocolypse may be nigh.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@gbear: I’m waiting for a yacht to drop on him.
schrodinger's cat
Grumpy Old Party Shuts Down the Government with links to MSM outlets that get it right.
shelly
I’m preparing for Teapartier’s to scream ‘Obamacare failure’ cause there were problems with people accessing the website and phone number.
Yeah, cause so many people are trying to get on. It’s popular!
ranchandsyrup
Unfrozen Caveman Fonzie sez: “Your statism frightens me, I am but just a caveman with a penchant for tanned hides.”
ETA: I miss Phil Hartman.
John S.
@Trollhattan:
That’s because Maher is himself a Libertarian, albeit a slightly different flavor.
Trollhattan
Happy 123rd birthday Yosemite. Now close until further notice.
http://www.nps.gov/shutdown/index.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/1001/Yosemite-National-Park-closed-for-its-own-birthday
Someone left the cake out in the rain. Only it’s not raining.
IowaOldLady
Cripes, Shelley Fabares. You have to be as old as I am to recognize that one. Wow, I grew up with a lot of sexism being poured into the airwaves.
burnspbesq
Chait:
Not sure why that would be amazing.
MattF
@peach flavored shampoo: Worth noting that Rubin, last I heard, hates Obamacare. So, her admission that the Teeper strategy has failed is not trivial. She also has notably negative things to say about Sen. Cruz.
Davis X. Machina
The green lantern shines on left and right alike.
lamh36
Jon Stewart finally gets it. I wonder how long this will last though.
Jon Stewart Ripping Into the GOP Is a Thing of Beauty
dmsilev
Of course there are some benefits to the shutdown. TPM headline: “KKK Rally At Gettysburg Military Park Canceled Due To Gov’t Shutdown”
Schad
@dedc79:
No; so long as American Thinker remains in business, no one will ever take their title.
Hungry Joe
“I want a brave man, I want a cave man”: No disrespect to Joanie Sommers, but k.d. lang’s cover of “Johnny Get Angry” gets it RIGHT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8OyRj1NkJw
Trollhattan
@John S.:
Yeah, that predisposition leaks out pretty often, such as he likes him some gunz because “home invasions!”
But then he’ll turn around and roast some Republican ass on a white-hot skewer, so modest redemption there.
http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/295-episode/article/new-rules.html
catclub
@dmsilev: I larfed.
IowaOldLady
@Hungry Joe: Are you telling me that two singers covered “I want a brave man, etc” after Shelley Fabares did it? That is hard to take in.
Hungry Joe
@IowaOldLady: Shelley Fabares did “Johnny Angel,” not “Johnny Get Angry.” I really, really wish I weren’t old enough — and lame enough — to know this.
“Johnny Angel
How I love him
How I shiver when he passes by”
as opposed to —
“Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad
Give me the biggest lecture I ever had”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@IowaOldLady: Whenever I hear something like “Every girl wants someone who/She can always look up to” I think of this song. (Spotify, pop, obscure, safe for work, etc., etc. Yes, I’m in fandoms with lots and lots of warnings.)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Hungry Joe: Shelley Fabares did it on the same album as “Johnny Angel”. Track 20.
PurpleGirl
Repeat of my post to last thread (#22X or something)
I went to vote in the Public Advocate runoff (NYC). When I finished, I over heard one of the poll workers and a guy talking about the repercussions of the shut-down. The woman was complaining that she was laid-off. The guy was commiserating with her. I had to say something, had to.
So I mentioned that they should consider that the one program that the Republicans wanted to end/kill/whatever was the one program that was open for business today. It didn’t matter that the web site might be hard to get (after all you can bring it at other times, over night even). The program was open for business. Everything else is affected, but the one program the Republicans have wanted to kill, that they’ve been prepared to do ANYTHING to kill it, was open for business. I repeated Republican and kill the program as often as I could. They didn’t have any comments for me and their faces looked sick. (I’m sure they were both Republicans or at least anti-Obama.)
It made me feel good.
Hungry Joe
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Wow! I had no idea.
But even without hearing her version, I’ll take k.d. lang’s.
Suffern ACE
Every leader is either Patton or a wuss.
There. I can now write 1/2 the leadership columns. Where’s my contract.
Liberty60
If you want real fun with libertarians, link them to Corey Robin’s discussion about Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher, and Pinochet..
Chris
@Ash Can:
Their meaning in politics tends to change over time as reality overrides theory. E.G. “Communism” used to mean “a stage of development in Marxist thought in which capitalism has been superseded and the state has faded away.” The twentieth century turned it into “totalitarian psychopaths whose only redeeming quality is that the people they overthrew were often no better than they were.”
In the same way, “libertarianism” might have meant something else back in the day, but nowadays it’s pretty much synonymous with “Republican.”
eyelessgame
Well, here’s this – I think that’s exactly right for Libertarian analysis. Libertarians believe the only difference between constitutional democracy and totalitarian dictatorship is that there’s less of the former. That means they see all government as essentially totalitarian, and prefer it to be led by people who act like it.
Failure to see that the difference between constitutional democracy and totalitarianism is a difference of kind, not only degree is the fundamental flaw in libertarian thought.