This is an excerpt from Michael berube's blog. I am putting it here cause it shows how highly polarized America is into Liberal and Conservative camps.



Open letter to conservatives
These are tough times for everyone, but I know these are especially tough times for you. From Iraq to Katrina to this global financial meltdown, you’ve made rather a mess of things, and now your party’s standardbearer is running a historically abysmal campaign made up of one part lies and two parts hate. His proposal for health care is somewhere between stupid and vicious, and his response to the financial crisis is, amazingly, even worse. Who’s his base now? Left Behind fans and people who can get hoppin’ mad at Barack Hussein Obama for spending three million dollars on an overhead projector thingy whatsis. Yes, you have a VP candidate who got the base (and Rich Lowry) excited. But as Hunter pointed out the other day,

The wingnut base is the easiest group of people on the planet to fire up. They get fired up when they think gays might steal their marriages. They get fired up when they have to press “one” for English. They get fired up when some black guy gets all uppity and runs for president. They get fired up when their sub-sub-sub-version of Christianity isn’t the dominant religious ideal of the nation. Holding Sarah Palin in front of them is like teasing a dog through a fence, but that’s about it.

Face it, folks, there’s nothing left. You have a big bag of fail at this point. Just the lies and the hate, which is more than enough to generate a $20 million salary for Sean Hannity but not enough to keep ordinary people from understanding that racial minorities are not to blame for the subprime crisis, and that Bill Ayers is not responsible for the Dow’s collapse.

So, what to do? Those of you who have a shred of human decency and/or intellectual integrity are in a bit of a bind: you can cut your losses, recapitalize your institutions, and try to keep the brand alive a little bit longer. Guys like Charles Krauthammer are offering to lead the way out for you: keep insulting Democrats and their beliefs while admitting that, well, uh, you have nothing. Or you could take poor flailing David Brooks as a model. One day after this humble blog suggested that high-end conservative pundits will slurp down any old slop they’re fed by the party, Brooks was slopping out this review of Sarah Palin’s debate performance:

this debate was about Sarah Palin. She held up her end of an energetic debate that gave voters a direct look at two competing philosophies. She established debating parity with Joe Biden. And in a country that is furious with Washington, she presented herself as a radical alternative.

By the end of the debate, most Republicans were not crouching behind the couch, but standing on it. The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.

Only a week later, having realized to his horror that writing columns like this will soon deprive him of dinner-party conversation with sane people, Brooks has decided to call Palin a “fatal cancer to the Republican party.” Now that’s the way to throw someone under the couch, folks—if you want to maintain some sense of self-respect as a Serious Person.

But what about the rest of you? What about those of you who don’t have any decency or integrity or self-respect? What about all of you who want to spend the next eight years foaming at the mouth every time someone turns up shocking new evidence that Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama’s autobiography, or that the secret Muslim Flight 93 memorial points to Mecca, or that Rachael Ray wore a scary scarf?

Folks, I don’t think you understand how we truly feel about you. We mock you and tease you, I know, and you hate us for it. But we don’t hate you back. Really, we don’t. We’re secular pluralists, after all, and we know we have to find ways of sharing this planet with people who can’t stand secular pluralists. We really just want you to leave us alone. Still, we have our limits. The way you’ve behaved over the past decade or two leads us to believe that you’ll do whatever it takes to make the next decade or two a living hell for everyone who’s sincerely trying to clean up all the messes you’ve made. And we just can’t be bothered with that nonsense right now. This is too important.

Understand, I don’t want to deprive you of your pastimes and your livelihoods. On the contrary: I want you to enjoy them to the fullest extent imaginable—but in a way that doesn’t interfere with sane people. So I have a proposal.

We will spend $500 trillion and create 150 million new, high-paying jobs creating an alternate reality for you. In a state of your choosing—but preferably Utah, Oklahoma, or Alaska—we will construct a massive VR installation complete with all your favorite obsessions and catering to your every resentment. In this separate, self-enclosed universe, President Palin and Vice-President Tancredo will run things just like you think they oughta be; crescents and croissants will be banned; An American Carol will sweep the Oscars; television will consist of two channels, Fox and Fox Sports; and the ten commandments will be proudly displayed in every classroom and courtroom, together with a Very Angry Eagle if you like. There won’t be any elite universities or sneering college professors, of course, but there will be Mexicans, so that you can call for their deportation and then hire them to mow your lawn and work in your pork-processing plants; there will be gay people, so that your sense of sexual identity can be properly threatened at all times; and there will be a black person, played by Gloria Foster, so that you can prevent her from voting.

It’s totally a win-win. You’ll love it, and you’ll be out of our hair. And all you have to do is lie down in this comfy little pod of pink goo.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 08:19 AM
Excellent. I’m glad that’s settled. I’d completely overlooked the denial enhancing potential of virtual reality. Guess that’s why you’re the blogger and I’m the commenter.

One thing, I don’t think they should get to take Conservative with them when they move into their cone of silence. Conservative is too useful to all of us — there are many problems that respond quite well to conservative solutions. The whole Conservative = Republican, Liberal = Democrat was *their* idea which is to say yet another example of institutionalized failure.

They should be required to take the term “Republican Party” with them. Outside the cone “Republican Party” will be semantically cut adrift, allowed to find its true meaning. I’m thinking “asshole with polished shoes” but that’s just a guess.

Posted by black dog barking on 10/10 at 10:01 AM
Oh Michael, you have so outdone yourself with this! On what peak do you next set your sights when the pinnacle has already been attained? Alas and Woe!

Posted by Bill Snedden on 10/10 at 10:18 AM
I think the GOP branding of “fear” is rapidly losing it’s market appeal. Be afraid of commies, muslims, blacks, mexicans, Hugo, Osama, Obama, William Ayers, anyone who lives within 6 blocks of William Ayers, gays, Wall Street, banks, gays a few more times etc.

The reality is that the biggest thing we have to fear is the GOP.

e.

Posted by Elliot Tarabour on 10/10 at 10:27 AM
bdb, you’re right, we will need the term “conservative” and we will still need sane conservatives. I hereby put you in charge of the Department of Appellations. Bill: where to go next? there’s always down, you know! And Elliot, I’m with No More Mister Nice Blog on this—they’re not even interested in the market appeal anymore.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 10:50 AM
Great, win-win idea, except how do you propose to pay for your plan?
Perhaps we could accomplish at least some of these worthy objectives on the cheap by just turnin’ ‘em all loose in the Red Zone...sort of a Buffalo Commons scenario, only with package stores.

Posted by Sven DiMilo on 10/10 at 10:57 AM
No Faux Buziness channel? You plan on sticking the rest of us with Neil Cavuto?

Posted by Bulworth on 10/10 at 11:34 AM
Would the cost of the VR facility be offset by the energy generated by Republican copper tops? Or does the Republican brain even generate enough wattage to be useful?

Posted by harmfulguy on 10/10 at 11:36 AM
That is almost perfect. I think they will need a token liberal to scapegoat, also. A DFH with a penchant for burning flags would do.

Posted by The Venerable Ed on 10/10 at 11:48 AM
I would willingly pay the trillions necessary to make the wingers into pod people. Willingly.

Posted by Exurban Mom on 10/10 at 11:55 AM
Nice one, holmes!!

Posted by Comrade PhysioProf on 10/10 at 12:03 PM
Can’t we just eat them?

PS My captcha is “found” but the name field is “lost” w/o a URL apparently. . .

Posted by JDC on 10/10 at 12:33 PM
Missed you. Glad you’re back.

Posted by spinkbottle on 10/10 at 12:34 PM
Never mind. Just a javascript thingie.

Posted by JDC on 10/10 at 12:34 PM
Yeah, let’s just eat them. I want that $500 trillion for US!

Posted by Hilde Lindemann on 10/10 at 12:37 PM
I eagerly await the neo-Neo (I’m thinking Jonah) vs. Agent Bérubé battles.

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/10 at 12:45 PM
+1 for “little pod of pink goo.”

Posted by Robert Rushing on 10/10 at 12:47 PM
And whether or not it’s physically in Oklahoma, it should at least be Virtual Oklahoma* so everyone can drive around with specialty Global War on Terrorism License Plates on their Hummers. (Irony bombs in Oklahoma.)

*Although “You’re Living in Your Own Virtual Idaho” has a nice ring to it as well.

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/10 at 12:55 PM
Sven @ 5: Great, win-win idea, except how do you propose to pay for your plan?

Um . . . credit default swaps?

bulworth @ 6: No Faux Buziness channel? You plan on sticking the rest of us with Neil Cavuto?

Oh god no. Three channels, then.

harmfulguy @ 7: does the Republican brain even generate enough wattage to be useful?

Hey, the energy that went into ascribing Dreams From My Father to Bill Ayers could power all of Oklahoma until 2025. Or so George Clinton, Energy Secretary-designate, tells me.

Ven Ed @ 8: I think they will need a token liberal to scapegoat, also. A DFH with a penchant for burning flags would do.

Have I mentioned Bill Ayers yet?

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 01:07 PM
OOOOOOOOhklahoma OK!

Posted by Hattie on 10/10 at 01:13 PM
This could work. We’ll have to move quickly, while the Captains of Industry and Finance still have some of their many millions of dollars. That should fund the project’s early days. The pod people will need to be marketed to effectively—so we’d better get O’Reilly, Limbaugh, et al. on site pronto. If you build it and rant about life on the liberal outside, they will come.

Posted by Orange on 10/10 at 01:38 PM
Some key questions before I sign on.

1. One, will my mother’s basement still exist in this world (and can I still stay there)?

2. Will there be Cheetos?

Posted by jonah on 10/10 at 01:43 PM
I think Ward Churchill might be a little saddended that Bill Ayers has assumed the #2 spot on the “Liberal Anti-Christ” betting pool run by the wingnuts. Obviously, Barry X Hussein Stokely Carmichael Che Trotsky Obama is #1.

Captcha: “trial”...Hmmmmmm, will we be having some of these once we’re in power?

Posted by Mat Scheck on 10/10 at 02:17 PM
Appeasement. How typical of a leftist liberal elite french-named College Perfesser.

Posted by Torteya on 10/10 at 02:37 PM
As a conservative, and primarily an Evangelical Christian social conservative at that, I find the proclamations of the cultural Right’s demise to be premature. The current problems faced by the Republican Party have more to do with economic downturn and GOP leadership pursuing policies favorable to corporate special interests over the last eight years. The Religious Right was just one pawn in the Karl Rove’s strategy and even Palin’s vice-presidential nod doesn’t change the fact that most of us are aware of that.

That doesn’t mean that the Left intelligentsia has won and that it can shuttle off Middle America to a gulag. What it means, sadly for you, is that you Leftist ideologues will watch your party be compromised in favor of winning mainstream appeal. The Democrats will have to lose their purity and adopt policies that please the lumpenprole in Kansas - drilling offshore to provide cheap fuel for the masses, abandoning the gay marriage initiative, locking down the borders, setting higher limitations on personal liberty in favor of national security, or letting people keep their guns and religion however silly those may seem to you. Obama/Biden have already said such things and if they gain power, in two years and four years, to hold that power, they will move closed to the center.

Middle America is not supporting McCain for a number of reasons: because right now they are afraid of the future, because McCain is a long-time insider who helped create the current mess, because McCain has long expressed his distain for the Religious Right; because Obama has remade himself to be as close to them as he can become without alienating his own base.

But after the election, regardless of who wins, they will still be there and many of them won’t be happy. But Obama will appease them and try to build consensuses and reach national unity, while you will become a voice howling in the wilderness, at least until the next Democratic Primary, as which time they may toss a few scraps your way. You know, kind of like in 1996.

Posted by Toadvine on 10/10 at 03:03 PM
Amazing. I’ve been running around for the past couple of months ranting about the desirability of partition of the US to anyone who would listen. Just today, I was wondering how we could give the wingnuts enough contiguous states to fit them all, without giving away any that we might want to keep. And sadly, I was having trouble working it all out geographically. But you’ve solved the problem for me, Michael--and so elegantly, too. I am fully on board with the Jesusland virtual-reality installation.

Capcha: “home,” as in “this country is ours too, not just yours, wingnuts. And we want it back.”

Posted by Amy on 10/10 at 03:09 PM
At first I was worried about the inhumanity of sending innocent gay people into The Zone, but then I remembered the Log Cabin Republicans.

Posted by Bill Altreuter on 10/10 at 03:28 PM
Toadvine @ 24: That doesn’t mean that the Left intelligentsia has won and that it can shuttle off Middle America to a gulag. What it means, sadly for you, is that you Leftist ideologues will watch your party be compromised in favor of winning mainstream appeal.

This blog is all about compromising Leftist ideological purity, Toadvine! Always has been. Welcome, though, and thanks for the comment. But as to your specific points of compromise, well --

The Democrats will have to lose their purity and adopt policies that please the lumpenprole in Kansas - drilling offshore to provide cheap fuel for the masses, abandoning the gay marriage initiative, locking down the borders, setting higher limitations on personal liberty in favor of national security, or letting people keep their guns and religion however silly those may seem to you.

In order: (1) drill, baby, drill, but you’re going to be disappointed about the relationship between offshore drilling and cheap fuel. Just fyi. (2) There is no gay marriage initiative—just support for civil unions so that people who love each other can visit each other in the hospital, will them property, etc. Simple human-rights kinda stuff, to be worked out by the states. Kansas can take a pass if it wants. (3) Higher limitations on personal liberty—OK, I can see where we needed to establish a Cheney Archipelago of torture sites and conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ travel records, personal phone calls, and emails. I think the Fourth Amendment and habeas corpus definitely had to go—they were quaint. But I’m still surprised that these are considered part of a “conservative” agenda. Own your radicalism, m’fren’, you’ll be happier for it. And (4) please, have all the guns and religion you want. Well, up to a point.

And you mean 1992, not 1996, right?

Torteya @ 23: Exactly so. This blog has also always been about appeasement. And Mat @ 22, who’s Ward Churchill?

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 03:35 PM
I hereby put you in charge of the Department of Appellations.

Woo hoo!!! I assume the Department of Appelations is part of the portfolio of the Secretary of Being Fine.

Posted by black dog barking on 10/10 at 03:41 PM
What this country needs is less talk about pink goo, and more actual pink goo.

Speaking as a leftist ideologue, I find the notion (expressed by Toadvine @ #24 above) that the Democrats might abandon the purity of wholesome left-wing goodness to appeal to the crunchy center of the American body politic to be shocking SHOCKING!

Actually, I don’t. But I do find it funny. As if there were any such think as Leftist Ideological Purity! Snort! We can’t even agree on where to have breakfast.

Posted by thepuppethead on 10/10 at 04:00 PM
Toadvine:I’m really tired of hearing people talk about Middle America as if it were some deity. Please note a)the bulk of the US population is located on the coasts, not in the middle; and b) the blue states contribute more money to the federal revenue stream than they get back in funding, while the red states suck up much more funding than they contribute.

What do the blue states contribute? Well, mostly, soldiers: their sons and daughters are the ones who die in the war they keep on supporting.

To summarize: in the blue states we pay most of the taxes and have most of the people, and we vote for people who will tax us; in the red states you’re against the taxes, but you’ll take the money, and send your kids to die in an unnecessary war that WE tried to stop.

Yeah, let’s split the country. Red vs. Blue. We’d buy some large-scale crops from you (wheat, corn etc.), and have to hire your kids as mercenaries, but that would be OK because we’d be rolling in money. Meanwhile, your dams and roads would crumble and your water and sewer systems would fail...unless you swallowed your pride and accepted foreign aid. I hope Blue America would have the sense of irony to funnel that aid through the UN, if only because it would be acid on your hearts.

Come to think of it, we’d have a terrible immigration problem. I myself grew up in Michigan, and gods know I’m never going back THERE, let alone a bona fide red state.

Posted by Xopher on 10/10 at 04:26 PM
Oops. I meant, of course, that the RED states contribute soldiers.

Posted by Xopher on 10/10 at 04:27 PM
Or, of course, the pink goo. “Look, children, it’s a neocon. No, he doesn’t have rabies; the foam around the mouth is just something they do. If you look at the monitor there, you can see that he’s just seen two men holding hands. No, I don’t know how they keep their heads from exploding; good question. That would be messy, wouldn’t it? Scatter brains all over the…

“What?

“Oh, you’re right. Well, it would scatter blood and bits of skull all over, then.”

Posted by Xopher on 10/10 at 04:31 PM
Would the cost of the VR facility be offset by the energy generated by Republican copper tops?

[Reflexively snaps Poindexter(TM) sliderule in half]

On this blog, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

so everyone can drive around with specialty Global War on Terrorism License Plates on their Hummers.

That license plate is made of fail. The bald eagle isn’t even weeping.

Posted by mds on 10/10 at 04:36 PM
Hannity really gets 20 mill a year?

That’s pretty depressing.

e.

Posted by Elliot Tarabour on 10/10 at 04:38 PM
Well, Xopher, Toadvine does have a point: the Obama Administration (see previous post) is going to have to make deals with Republicans and conservative Democrats, even if it comes in with 58 Senate seats and 260+ in the House. I do remember 1992 very well, as it happens, and I remember Bob Dole congratulating Bill Clinton on his victory by saying, “fuck this shit—57 percent of the American people didn’t vote for you, and so it’s my job as Senate Minority Leader to fuck your shit up, whatever you propose.” That philosophy of governance has been part of GOP bipartisanship ever since, and to gauge by the tenor of the McCain campaign, we’re going to get a double dose of it in ‘09.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 05:56 PM
Michael, does this mean that the various indian tribes that got relocated in the original “not-like-us-so-let’s-relocate-em” scheme get to move back to their ancestral homelands as compensation for giving Oklahoma to the wingnuts? C’mon, these folks have been fucked over enough; must they get saddled with the “real un-Americans,” too?

captcha: last. Oh, if only we could live to see the last of the Republohicans.

Posted by jimbob on 10/10 at 05:59 PM
My friends,

please consider what could happen if Hussein takes over.

Posted by wolfgang on 10/10 at 06:26 PM
jimbob—funny you should ask. I was just pondering this aspect of my plan, and I think I can best answer in a song. And wolfgang, I think my decisive rebuttal to that post (in the LGM thread to which you link) took all the air out of that crazed dystopian scenario of Paul’s.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 06:28 PM
I meant 1996, as that was the election year that was characterized by Clinton’s welfare reforms and abandonment of universal health care, which demonstrated a move toward the center. I also think that the Democrats will take a majority in both the Senate and the House and Obama would have it within his power to be an American Mugabee, as some on the Right fear. But he won’t; it isn’t in his temperament. He will work for consensus, so he can be re-elected in 2012, when hopefully there will be neither a war nor an economic crisis. In part, I draw this from his early years (e.g. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all ), but even if I don’t support him, I don’t doubt his intelligence. He will be looking out for how history will remember him; and he would rather be remembered as an FDR than a Lenin.

Xopher, interesting ideas, and basically I agree Middle America would turn into Nuevo Mexico if we split up the country and you would be Canada Lite. Oddly, enough, I like Mexico. My Mexican associates that I work with love it, but then they are all well to do. They can’t stop telling me how much better their doctors are down there. Their social welfare system is to convince the poor to pack up and trek across the desert rather than wait for handouts. Sounds Republican to me.

Posted by Toadvine on 10/10 at 07:10 PM
That is almost perfect. I think they will need a token liberal to scapegoat, also. A DFH with a penchant for burning flags would do.

No good. I wouldn’t subject any real DFH to such banishment, not even Ayers or Churchill. Fortunately, a strawman with the label DFH should be more than sufficient for the scapegoating function. Or better yet: superglue a dreadlocks frightwig on the Rev. Fred Phelps since he actually does hate the troops.

Posted by RobW on 10/10 at 08:48 PM
Their social welfare system is to convince the poor to pack up and trek across the desert rather than wait for handouts. Sounds Republican to me.

More than you know. The migrants are poor because Archer Daniels Midland looted their country. I blame Bob Dole.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/10 at 09:03 PM
As a person who foams with no decency or self-respect, I must take umbrage with your characterization of me as a McCain voter needing a World of Warcraft RV park. You do the unhinged an injustice, sir.

Hmmph.

Posted by vachon on 10/10 at 09:07 PM
That was posted by vachon.

Posted by vachon on 10/10 at 09:08 PM
Or better yet: superglue a dreadlocks frightwig on the Rev. Fred Phelps since he actually does hate the troops.

Point taken.

Posted by The Venerable Ed on 10/10 at 09:16 PM
Understand, I don’t want to deprive you of your pastimes and your livelihoods. As in they have done that for themselves (and us as well).

my job as Senate Minority Leader to fuck your shit up, whatever you propose. He did have all that free Viagra, what else would he use it for??

Of course we cannot doubt the sincerity of that rabble mob of tilted wingnuts: McCain Booed For Telling Audience To Be Respectful of Obama.
An audience member suggests: “We want you to fight at your next debate… we want to see a REAL fight at the debate, we want a STRONG leader for the next four years.” ....

McCain responds, “I respect Sen. Obama and his accomplishments.” People booed at the mention of his name. McCain, visibly angry, stopped them: “I want EVERYONE to be respectful, and lets make sure we are.” The crowd boos loudly.

The very next questioner tried to push back on this request, noting that he needed to “tell the American the TRUTH about Barack Obama”—a not very subtle way, I think, to ask John McCain to NOT tell the truth about Barack Obama.

McCain told her there’s a “difference between record and rhetoric, and I plan to talk about his record, respectfully… I don’t mean that has to reduce your ferocity, I just mean it has to be respectful.” The crowd boos and hisses.

“I’m scared to bring up my child in a world where Barack Obama is president.”

McCain replies, “Well, I don’t want him to be president, either. I wouldn’t be running if I did. But,” and he pauses for emphasis, “you don’t have to be scared to have him be President of the United States.” Another round of boos.

And he snaps back: “Well, obviously I think I’d be better. ”

Somewhere in all this is that story of the crowd feeling betrayed by its leader, and then consuming the leader’s body and drinking his blood.

Posted by spyder on 10/10 at 09:32 PM
45: From that same rally (I think}:
Indeed, [McCain] just snatched the microphone out the hands of a woman who began her question with, “I’m scared of Barack Obama… he’s an Arab terrorist...”

“No, no ma’am,” he interrupted. “He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”

I sorta doubt it, but could *this* be the movie scene that McCain is going to play out? Madness!

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/10 at 09:45 PM
And I gotcher compromising Leftist ideological purity right here: I am grumpily gladly giving money to my local congressdude whose seemingly “winning” commercial has him going down and making sure that the Mexican border fence is not being built with Chinese steel. Simply (captcha) because the alternative is Melissa “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been Sarah Palin” Hart. Oh, an I hate America, too.

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/10 at 09:59 PM
I’m all for respect and secular pluralism and all that nice liberal stuff, but is Toadvine really coming over here and telling us that a Democratic centrist is going to continue being a centrist, as if that is news? As if he’s dispensing some kind of hard-earned wisdom to us naive idealists who think Obama is going to usher in teh Revolution, which will not be televised?* I think we need a new political grammar here to describe this sort of future anterior concern trolling: remember on November 5 that you will have been recipients of my wisdom!

*Gil Scott Heron, peace be upon him.

Posted by John Protevi on 10/10 at 10:07 PM
John@48: Good point. The Revolution will not be YouTubed.

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/10 at 10:14 PM
Toadvine @ 39: thanks for coming back, and thanks for clarifying. I see what you mean about ‘96. I still think ‘92 better suits your argument, though, because Clinton had basically given away the store by ‘96; triangulation, Defense of Marriage Act, welfare reform—they were now official state policy. Gay servicemen and Lani Guinier were thrown under the bus by mid-’93, and universal health insurance (not universal healthcare) was dead by the end of the year. Except for Clinton’s budget—which increased the EITC and led to all those surpluses too, and which now appears to be the most progressive tax legislation in thirty years—the game was over. (And I joined the New Party in ‘95 as a result.) Whereas in ‘92 you had an unlikely Washington outsider sweep into the White House (winning Georgia and Nevada!) and proceed to squander whatever mandate for “change” he possessed.

My sense is that Obama will do a good deal better, and throw fewer people under the bus. His first 100 days will surely be better organized than Clinton’s, but that’s setting a very low bar. But you and I agree, I think, that he’ll govern as a liberal-centrist compromiser. That, however, won’t stop wingnuts from treating him as Barry X Hussein Stokely Carmichael Che Trotsky Obama, just as they treated the liberal-Republican Clinton as a cross between Lenin and Abbie Hoffman.

RobW @ 40: good to see you back here! And I second that emotion.

spyder @ 45: I saw that clip too. Credit where credit is due: good on McCain. Hope it’s not too little too late, especially w/r/t that lunatic “Acorn” ad now in the tubes.

And JP @ 47: sellout.

Posted by Michael on 10/10 at 10:16 PM
I can see no reason to credit Charles Krauthammer with shreds of either human decency or intellectual integrity, based on the above-linked column or any other moment of his public life. He is a snob, however, which no doubt leaves him longing to find Obama’s “first-class intellect and a first-class temperament” in a conservative candidate. I assume he’s not holding his breath.

He has every reason to want to keep the brand alive, though. It’s provided him with a good life. There are two kinds of conservatives: those who really want to bring about their vision of how the world should be, regardless of what sacrifice may be required, and those who want to have the most comfortable life possible for themselves while sneering at everyone who doesn’t agree with them. Krauthammer is the second kind. Where’s the human decency or intellectual integrity in that?

Intellectual integrity, or maybe it’s human decency, forces me to admit that you could mostly separate liberals into those two categories, also. I guess that’s more like human nature than a political persuasion.

Posted by Maud on 10/10 at 10:22 PM
*Gil Scott Heron, peace be upon him.

Is Gil Scott-Heron dead? I don’t think so… I wonder if he’s free to serve in the Obama administration. Perhaps he can head up NASA and put Whitey on the moon for good.

Posted by va on 10/11 at 12:29 AM
Is Gil Scott-Heron dead?

No, but he’s fallen on hard times (in and out of prison, HIV-positive), so I thought that was a nice thing to say. But I gather you’re only supposed to say it if someone is dead. IOW, it’s the equivalent of “RIP”?

Posted by John Protevi on 10/11 at 09:21 AM
But when I checked Wikipedia on Scott-Heron to check I noticed that he had been born in Chicago! That’s not coincidence we can believe in, my friends.

Posted by JP Stormcrow on 10/11 at 09:31 AM
JP, are you saying you won’t enjoy working in the underground sugar mines with the other melanin-deficients? Bob Owens has some advice for you!

Posted by John Protevi on 10/11 at 11:24 AM
I like the fact that my comments section is building all these subterranean connections to LGM. Perhaps one of these days we can free Dahlia Lithwick after all!

And I think “peace be upon him” can be used in connection with any of the prophets. So yes, the pbuh-ed person must be dead, but it’s not precisely “rest in peace.”

Posted by Michael on 10/11 at 11:43 AM
I wish these frightening social conservatives would realize, they lost the culture war. Its done. Go home.
But make no mistake. The reason I support the 2nd Amendment is so these crazies can’t come running to my house draped in a flag and carrying a cross to take my life, my property. I don’t think they even comprehend that the rest of us are more afraid of them than we are of anyone overseas.
I say terrorism starts at home and these people including inciters like Ms. Sarah High Heels will get what they having coming to them, which is to say, the mad dogs they entice now will eventually turn on them.

Posted by Suzanne on 10/11 at 01:35 PM
You’re going to need some blue goo, too. No way any of the male members of the foaming class are going to get into a pod of PINK goo. They might catch the gay!

I’m also thinking you might want to swap Palin and Tancredo around - having a female VP is one thing, but you don’t want her actually being the boss or nuthin’.

Posted by mythago on 10/11 at 03:08 PM
what a dumbfuck. just as bad as the neocons on the other side.

Posted by bill doe on 10/11 at 04:48 PM
I think Bill Doe raises an important point.

Posted by Michael on 10/11 at 08:04 PM
Bill Doe’s point reminds me of something ... But be careful, Michael, he might be back to accuse you of being a callous sophisticate.

Posted by John Protevi on 10/11 at 10:05 PM
But what about those neocons on this same side?

Posted by Jason B on 10/11 at 10:58 PM
The callous sophisticates laughed at Judy’s tiny head. (Old Kliban cartoon).

Posted by Hattie on 10/12 at 01:27 AM
what a dumbfuck. just as bad as the neocons on the other side.

I think Bill Doe raises an important point.

But . . . what is it? This dumbfuck - is it Michael? What is it he is so bad at? And what are the neocons on the other side of? Michael makes the effort to be very specific about just what is wrong with other people, and along comes Mr. Doe and thinks he can just slap a dumbfuck sticker on some unnamed blogular forehead and his job is done. I call it lazy.

But I guess this campaign really has sucked the life force out of some folks. Perhaps this is just Mr. Doe’s last tiny gasp of invective before he falls face first into the goo.

cap: second. as in, any second now - splat.

Posted by Maud on 10/12 at 06:46 AM
captcha: why. (kids’ choral voices)…K-E-Y Why? ‘Cause we like you. M-O- (the chorus gathers momentum) U-S-A

Posted by black dog barking on 10/12 at 12:59 PM
Not in Utah or Alaska, please. There’s lots of good scenery that the wingnuts just want to rape and pillage anyway, so let’s keep it for ourselves.

Posted by Sean Peters on 10/12 at 05:42 PM
wish these frightening social conservatives would realize, they lost the culture war. Its done. Go home.

My short take on an example of this from last night. To sustain my health benefits during these wonderful golden retirement years, i took a part time job as a graveyard concierge for a big hotel. Last night we hosted the annual banquet and coronation for the Imperial Sovereign Court of Spokane w/ special guests from the Baronies from San Fran and Seattle. We also were hosting large contingents of alumni and students from the University of Montana (football game) and fans and players from the WHL Silvertips (mostly Canadians). This made for a very interesting social mixing.

I noticed that most of the Montana men (cattle men, wheat ranchers, developers, and their ilk) didn’t much care for the ISC formal ball gown attire, but their wives were all over it, acting like serious tourists getting their pictures taken with these very well coiffed people (genders very much blurred). The Canadian hockey fans and players were generally non-plussed, while their US counterparts were also very tourist focussed and oriented. The most irritated group were the male hotel employees who had served in Bush/Cheney wars. Somehow they felt threatened by dozens of full-glam drag queens.

My conclusion from observation was that i agree with Suzanne. The culture wars are over. When the ICS started pulling out their jewels and crowns from the hotel safety deposit boxes, one could easily recognize that ostentatious wealth is very much part and parcel of our culture, regardless of politics.

Posted by spyder on 10/12 at 09:00 PM
No amount (captcha) of suspension of belief can turn fiction into reality like this little story: An adult education student has been charged with threatening to burn his English teacher a day after asking her if she was a witch.

Posted by spyder on 10/13 at 12:02 AM
Welcome back! I’ve been humming “We need a little Christmas, Right this very minute” for a long damn time.

Posted by Rev. Bob "Hussein" Crispen on 10/13 at 12:03 AM
Open Letter to Conservatives:
Dear Conservatives:
WTF?
Sincerely,
Sven DIMilo

Posted by Sven DiMilo on 10/13 at 08:15 AM
Interesting. I can think of lots of conservative positions that leftists might misrepresent and scoff at, but I wouldn’t think that opposition to the planting of a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the Flight 93 crash site would be one of them.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. Is the left actually in favor of building a terrorist memorial mosque on the graves of our heroes?

I know the left spent the last five years trying to intentionally lose the Iraq war. (Democrats in Congress voted FORTY times to defund the war effort and force retreat in 2007.) Thus I can’t say I am surprised by left wing support for a memorial to the terrorists, but it seems odd for you to put it forward as an example of the obvious.

Croissants, by the way, actually do have an Islam-related meaning, but they are an ANTI-Muslim symbol, not a pro-Muslim symbol. They were invented by the bakers of Vienna in 1683 to celebrate victory over the Ottomans, who used a crescent flag.

Posted by Alec Rawls on 10/14 at 12:14 PM
I’m pretty sure the left’s position on that memorial, if I recall that Offishul Left Sekrit Kabal meeting accurately, is that calling out the design as being more than vaguely reminiscent of a Muslim crescent was like seeing a face on Mars: in a word, delusional.

I seem to recall a kind person commenting on my own blog post on the topic to inform me that while s/he agreed with me in spirit, the words I used to describe the wingnut opposition to the memorial were in fact unfair to actual paranoid schizophrenics.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/14 at 12:28 PM
Of course the left always begins by concocting the most obvious seeming grounds for dismissing whatever they take to be a conservative position. The facts are more stubborn. The memorial design is very clearly laid out in the configuration of a giant crescent and star flag, and it is trivially easy to verify that the giant crescent actually does point almost exactly at Mecca.

My deeper question is why the left would assume this to be a right-left issue. If the memorial actually is a giant Islamic shaped crescent that points to Mecca (as it is), can’t left and right agree that this is inappropriate as a memorial for fellow citizens who were murdered by Islamic terrorists?

In other words, why START by pulling ignorant excuses for dismissing the Mecca orientation claim out of your ears? Shouldn’t you start by checking the facts? Then you would see that the claims about the design are real and that this should NOT be a left-right issue.

Posted by Alec Rawls on 10/14 at 12:50 PM
Alec Rawls, lui-même? Who’s bringing the popcorn?

Captcha, and I am not making this up: blood, as in “there will be.”

Posted by John "Hussein" Protevi on 10/14 at 12:55 PM
I got gummed by a six-week basset puppy once. There was blood then too. Teething sucks.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 10/14 at 01:03 PM
Good of you to stop by, Mr. Rawls. And thanks for calling my attention to the way I pulled my ignorant excuses for dismissing the Mecca orientation claim out of my ears! I’m sorry I can’t indulge your pet obsession at the moment, however, because right now I am hard at work proving that Barack Obama ghost-wrote Fugitive Days.

In the meantime, you might want to look more closely at the Obama bumper sticker that features a suspiciously turban-like “flame” emerging from a single white star. I think that bumper sticker alone explains precisely why the left has tried so hard to lose the war in Iraq.

Posted by Michael on 10/14 at 02:02 PM
Professor Berube:

This is my first entry on your post.

I find your above piece hilarious and original. I am attracted to people who have a good, sick, twisted sense of humor like me - though I may be just one shade darker in my humor than you.

I am really trying to resist the temptation to give you a list of groups who have advocated the idea of a seperate nation, but I do not want to suggest that you share anything in common (ideologically)with them.

Being the twisted person that I am, I am going to suggest “tolerance” for those who are trying to make your life a living hell. At least for now. Why?

It is good for economics. For example, think of all the seminars and publications that would not be produced by the Right if there was a nation void of sinners. On the flip side of the coin, think of all the educators and activists that might have to look for different work if “structural inequalities” according class, race, or gender did not exist. Careers on both sides would be greatly diminished.

I think the genuis of this nation is how we turn our moral and social problems into industries where people can build their careers.

For now, the two sides are like an unhappily married couple who need each other’s incomes to pay the mortgage to pay for each other’s BMWs.

I’ll check back....

Have a good weekend....

Adam