We’re 900 and 96 thou short of a mill.
Remember: it’s this guy versus a guy who likes to fire people.
by DougJ| 46 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture
We’re 900 and 96 thou short of a mill.
Remember: it’s this guy versus a guy who likes to fire people.
by DougJ| 162 Comments
This post is in: Music, Readership Capture
That earworm thread was one my all-time favorites, especially these two comments, so I thought I’d try another one like it on this crappy, rainy afternoon.
My favorite genre of music is songs that give you that kicked-in-the-gut, can’t-move, can’t-breathe, something-awful-is-happening kind of feeling: stuff like “Love In Vain”, “I’d Rather Go Blind”, “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground”, “I’ve Got It Bad”, “I Loves You Porgy” (“don’t let him touch me with his hot hands” gets me), and, even though I’m not such a high-brow guy, the ending part of “Madame Butterfly”. (My second favorite genre is the “I’ve been kicked in the gut and I can’t breathe, but fuck it, I’ll try to have fun anyway” type.) But there are some songs like this I literally cannot get all the way through, because there’s too much of a gut kick — “For The Good Times” (I can’t get past the “tomorrow and forever and ever and ever” part) and “Simple Twist Of Fate” (I can’t listen to “I still believe she was my twin”) are the two main examples.
What are your favorite kicked-in-the-gut songs and what songs are you unable to get through?
Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting softPost + Comments (162)
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Election 2012, Open Threads, Readership Capture, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
According to the Media Village, it is supposed to be very poignant about Dick Lugar, the “Longest-serving Senate Republican in fight of his life“. In a report from home ground, Doghouse Riley explains for David “Possum” Brooks, why the withers of at least one of Lugar’s constituents remain unwrung:
… Fifty-some years in politics and Lugar absolutely freaked to be opposed by some nobody Teabagger. This tells you all you need to know. It certainly tells you more than Brooks’ column, excepting the unintentional revelations.
So that we in Indiana are now entering our third? seventeenth? month of Dick Lugar campaign ads which run something like this: I’m Dick Lugar, and I hate that black guy in the White House as much as you do! And I’ve been as dilatory and obstructionist about it as anyone! Pipeline!
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This is Dick Lugar, The Oldest Surviving Scam in the US Senate. And what’s more, it’s the real Dick Lugar, Dave. The “respected and thoughtful” Lugar is a canard, and the “independent” Lugar is a Fucking Lie. He moved to the Senate from being Nixon’s Favorite Mayor. That only qualifies one as a “moderate” by today’s whacked-out standards. He’s voted the party line for forty years. Absolutely reliably. One of his Obama-bashing ads–which is, come to think of it, the only kind he has, other than the one that bashes his Teabagger opponent for daring to question him–says he “Sponsored a Balanced Budget Amendment Seventeen Times.” Yeah, and voted for deficit spending thirty-five times.
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Dave, if it gives you a sad to see Dick Lugar, Octogenarian Wingnut Fellator, you either haven’t been paying attention, or you’ve lost whatever ability to tell reality from fantasy you began with…
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Really, all this time as a “principled” “conservative” who winked at the rabid racists of the base at election time, secure in the knowledge that you weren’t actually one of them, all those Burke weekends dreaming up snappier slogans to get the rabble to Vote Aristo, and now you’re beginning to realize that actions have consequences? And now you wanna know why your brand of well-born party official didn’t take on Rush Limbaugh earlier? The way you did: the measured snark that none of his listeners would ever hear, or get if they did? They at least have jobs to lose; you’ve got a sinecure. When did you speak honestly and openly about the culture wars (oh, you’re sort of for gay marriage and reproductive rights, provided the wind blows your cloudy pronouncements just right), let alone speak sense about global climate change, energy policy, banking reform, campaign reform, or any of the other crackpot schemes you “reasonable Republicans” need to keep the spigot turned on? Fer chrissakes, you don’t like the Rabid Right, now that it may cost you an election? You gotta set the Wayback Machine for a lot earlier than five years ago to kill it in its cradle.
Speaking of unintentional self-disclosure, I’m thinking about using “David ‘Possum’ Brooks” on a regular basis, because if there’s anyone who fits the description “tremble for a few seconds then slip into an involuntary coma every time they’re challenged aggressively from the right”, it would be DougJ’s least-favorite NYTimes columnist.
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Readership Capture, Republican Stupidity, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
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Let this be remembered as the day Erick “Voice of the GOP Gated Community” Erickson went full-metal Crazification Factor:
When you have a candidate few people really like, whose support is a mile wide and an inch deep, whose raison d’etre (a 4am fancy word) is fixing an economy that is fixing itself without him, and who only wins his actual, factual home state by three percentage points against a guy no one took seriously only two months ago, there really is little reason for independent voters in the general election to choose him if the economy keeps improving.
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Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like.
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If Republicans in Washington are not panicked and trying desperately to pull Bobby Jindal in the race tomorrow, or someone like him, the party leaders must have a death wish.Mitt Romney continues to run an uninspiring campaign only able to win by massively outspending his opponents to tell voters how much worse the other guys are. That may work in the primary, but it will not work in a general election where the President of the United States won’t be outspent 5 to 1…
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Hello? Bobby Jindal? You paying attention?
My emphasis. Shorter Infinite Ericks: If we’re gonna beat the Brown Guy in the White House, we need a brown guy of our very own! (Because that worked so very, very well for Alan Keyes!)
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What other antic japes are on the agenda this evening?
by DougJ| 238 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture
At some point(s) tonight, the liberal Hollywood communists will say or do something that makes the wingers foam at the mouth. I don’t know what it will be, there’s so many possibilities, and I’m not as adept with winger hermeneutics as I used to be.
If I’m Rick Santorum (sorry for the Grudenese, but there’s no off-season anymore), I’m thinking about turning Michelle Williams’ Palestinian scarf or Viola Davis’s terror fist pump or whatever into a Two Minutes Hate fund-raising, attention-getting opportunity. Use this an open thread to comment on the Oscar moments that might get the right riled up (remember, it could just as easily happen on the red carpet as during the awards ceremony itself).
Update. Here’s the mistake I think Republican candidates make: they wait for Rush or Drudge to find something crazy to yell about, then they fall in behind them and yell about it too. They should be more pro-active, have a staff that finds crazy stuff to scream about, and get out in front of the Two Minutes Hate. Sarah Palin is good about this, “death panels” was a big hit for her. Why don’t the presidential candidates take more fliers on things like that? When it pans out, it can be political gold.
Update. I just tuned in. Why is Billy Crystal dressed as a matador?
What they want, I don’t know, they’re all reved up and ready to goPost + Comments (238)
by DougJ| 271 Comments
This post is in: Music, Open Threads, Readership Capture
What are the worst ear-worms you have ever experienced?
For me, it’s John Mayer’s “Daughters”, which has afflicted me for the better part of the last decade (the “girls become lovers who turn into mothers” part), “Sister Golden Hair”, which threatened my already tenuous hold on sanity last fall (the annoying guitar intro part), and a battery commercial Stevie Wonder did in the early 80s (“you can depend on me”, don’t pretend you don’t know it, fellow oldsters) that my therapist suggested I try to forget.
by DougJ| Leave a Comment
This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture
For some reason, I really love this song, even with the awful video.
Talk about whatever.