I think I may have to euthanize myself if I want it to stop. It’s all a secret plan to make us gouge out our eyes and destroy our eardrums. Just make sure to fill out that living will a full 20 years before you have that car accident that leaves you brain-dead.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
l’ve already got a living will, thank you very much. l’m a lot more worried about meeting an untimely demise at the hands of one of the wackos….
like this guy in new hampshire prior to obamas town hall…or whoever this looney was who dropped a gun at a “meet n’ greet’ with rep gabrielle giffords in arizona.
somebody’s going to get killed before this is over.
Just be glad you weren’t alive in the 1950s if you really want to talk stupid.
I feel the same way Booman, I was just out trolling around some regional newspaper sites and reading comments and I am boiling over again. Honestly, this is bad as having Bush in office, insofar as how frustrated I am with people in this country. I am embarassed again to say I am an American. What fools live in the country.
Lordy, will it ever stop.
I am embarassed again to say I am an American.
To paraphrase Office Space:
“Why should I be embarrassed – they’re the ones who suck.”
I’m somewhat embarrassed on their behalf because they don’t seem to realize just how stupid they look. Some of them I feel pity for, but for most of them it’s just scorn. But I refuse to let them make me feel embarrassed. I’m done with that crap. They’re either opportunistic bastards or crazy people. The opportunists I scorn and mock – the crazy people I feel pity for and hope that they someday realize that they need help.
And when that day comes, I hope they have some kind of government subsidized psychiatric care to help pay their bills.
Be sure to include a clause in your living will that specifies that under no conditions are conservative Congressmen allowed to placate their base by having a say in your demise.
It makes sense though;
We live in a representative government. He is a republican. That is what many republicans believe. So he is just representing what many of his constituents believe.
If only we could get the Democrats to do the same!
nalbar
From the same director who did “Mrs. C” based on the script launched here last year.
http://www.vfagenda.com/bananarepublic/steps.asp
Vote for this film – enter to vote and possibly win $1000 yourself!
And on top of that, there is this good news (also from TPM):
It appears that this shit is fucking working.
Yes, and we ignore it at our peril.
I don’t think any of us are ignoring it. The question is what we can do about it.
When I was a little boy, my mother used to tell me that you can’t reason with the unreasonable. It never occurred to me to ask her what you can do with them.
It bothers me that there seems to be a reluctance by many of our Democratic “leaders” to just come right out and call this for what it is. —LIES—. They seem, at times, to be almost apologetic in the face of this misplaced outrage. While dealing with this head-on with blunt language will likely not change the mind of these shrieking people at the townhall meetings, it will at least create an opportunity to change the narrative in the media. As long as elected Democrats try to thread the needle with non-confrontational language and continue to appear daily on national television with this deer-in-the-headlights look when someone disagrees with the health care reform efforts, they will continue to lose ground on this issue.
Once again, it appears that many of our elected Democrats just don’t know how to fight the winger tactics. They continue to use the same old failed methods that have resulted in them being tattooed as weak and spineless. Facts are wonderful things, especially when they support your position. But they are not going to win this simply by being right on the issue. It just seems like they are incapable of learning anything from the past. I’m really beginning to wonder if they will ever just stand up and fight.
Exactly. While the Dems whine about these tactics (in part, imo, to pretend that there is all this opposition to real health care reform justifying no real change) they never really do much to fight it structurally. In fact, the Democrats are just as much to blame for enabling these crazies to hijack our politics as the crazies are to blame (the media is to blame as well).
It’s like a parent complaining at the dinner table with friends as their pre-teen comes downstairs periodically to talk extremely snotty to her parents and guests (“what can I do?” the parent says, “Kids will just tell their parents to F’ off and go to hell.”). However, it’s partly the parents fault for allowing the dynamic to occur where the child routinely talks snotty to her parents. The Dems are like a very permissive parent that allows her children run all over her.
Democrats are either traitors to what they claim to believe in or are political retards. It’s a bit of both imo.
Democrats never bring the big emotional response to anything other than slapping down the left of their own party. Think of the few times where Dems said certain people were beyond reasoning, beyond acceptable, beyond the pale, and when they brought their big guns out to attack these opponents using emotional political arguments. All the examples I can think of involve attacks on the left. And it’s usually starts with a right-wing attack and then the media and right wing egg the Dems on (e.g. Rev. Wright, MoveOn, Nancy Pelosi vs. CIA, Kucinich is crazy, etc.).
On the other hand, the Dem approach to crazy on the right has been, over the last decade or two, to appease it and to try to reason with it and basically making the argument that people should vote for the reasonable moderates–the Dems (but they forget reasonable people do not reason with crazies). So the Dems condemn their left and meekly do the right’s bidding to show they are moderates. By taking the bait and condemning liberals (e.g. Dem-controlled Senate resolution condemning MoveOn, something the GOP would never do to one of their own, like, say Limbaugh, which isn’t a fair comparison to MoveOn) the Dems are hoping they appear reasonable unlike the GOP. It’s a failure of a strategy and does nothing but make the crazy stronger and legitimizes them.
It started with Al Gore trying to counteract the taint of Bill Clinton’s sex scandal and the right-wing obfuscation and charges that Gore was somehow involved by being VP. Instead of counteracting that charge straight on (“I did the policy work with Clinton and take credit for that, but it’s ridonculous to accuse me of being in on the blow job, I didn’t do that and I oppose that and told Clinton I opposed his extra-marital blow job”). Instead of taking on the right-wing charges (“I will restore honor and integrity to the WH” wink wink) Gore ran away like a typical Dem coward and tried to pretend he wasn’t associated with Clinton and tried to make Clinton disappear in the campaign–all in all giving credibility to the crazy argument that he had something to be ashamed of in the blow job affair. Since then it’s become the Dem MO to legitimize crazy GOP charges by running scared from the crazy.
It’s even gotten so bad that the Dems adopt the lies on the right to appear reasonable (e.g. Guantanamo is filled with “terrorists”, Iran is seeking the bomb, Russian attacked Georgia first). That’s also why these charges of socialism are hitting home–the Dems haven’t done anything over the years to make the ideological argument and to engage these charges–instead they try to show how reasonable they by siding with the right more and more on economic matters (we’re not socialists, we gave big tax cuts to industry!). The Dems are so used to playing on the right-wingers home turf that I now think their brains have been re-wired. They haven internalized much of the right wing craziness. It’s pretty hopeless.
I think what has brought this home for me has been their being taken by surprise by the right’s coordinated response and angry reaction on the health care issue. Anyone who has the slightest inkling of political sense would have known well ahead of time what the playbook would be on this. How many DFH’s on any number of political blogs have predicted what the likely scenario would be? Hell, I’ve heard this debated endlessly for the last 18 months on what the right would do to derail health care. It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before. It is the textbook right-wing response to anything Democrats propose and has been for over 20 years, for Christ’s sake!!
And now I have to hear Robert Gibbs stand up at the podium and make excuses for the fact that the White House might have “lost control of the message” on health care because the President is now forced to spend time publicly debunking things that should have never made it beyond the pages of the National Enquirer or the most radical right-wing nut-blogs. Just what freaking planet have these guys inhabited for the last two decades?? How in the hell can what is supposed to be a major political party in this country stand up every day and be taken by surprise by what is happening?? And the only people who have been screaming from the rooftops about being prepared to counterpunch the right-wing narrative and providing an actual strategy to do it are the dumbass hippies who are berated and disparaged on a regular basis by the very Democrats they are trying to help.
Just how damn stupid are these people? When I watch Howard Dean’s clueless performance opposite Newt Gingrich on some Sunday gabfest, with him having no idea about Newt’s flip-floppery on the end-of-life issue, I have to wonder if there is anyone on the inside of the Democratic Party who reads anything not published exclusively for Villager consumption. I mean, c’mon people! There are a hell of a lot of people out here who hold down full time jobs, take care of families and don’t have a staff taking care of all our daily minutiae who still seem to know what the obvious weak points are in the winger playbook. When are they going to get their heads out of their collective asses and do something besides play defense and be reactive to the most stupid things imaginable.
I agree with you. It’s pretty hopeless.
Wish that the Dems read more history. This is exactly the same playbook that Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany used eighty years ago.
For ex, compare our militia movement with the Black Reichswehr:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reichswehr
Or the tea baggers with Mussolini’s blackshirts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackshirts
Expect more and more disgruntled, uncared-for vets back from Iraq and Afghanistan to begin joining the ranks of the confused duffers who are disrupting the town halls.
I would send out for assistance but there’s someone on the signal wire
And the corporation logo is flashing on and off in the sky
They’re putting all your names in the forbidden book
I know what they’re doing but I don’t want to look
You think they’re so dumb, you think they’re so funny
Wait until they’ve got you running to the
Night rally, night rally, night rally
Everybody’s singing with their hand on their heart
About deeds done in the darkest hours
That’s just the sort of catchy little melody
To get you singing in the showers
Oh, I know that I’m ungrateful
I’ve got it lying on a plate
And I’m not buying my share of souvenirs
You can stand to attention
You can pray to your uncle
Only get that chicken out of here
Everyone gets armbands and 3-D glasses
Some are in the back room
And they’re taking those night classes
You think they’re so dumb, you think they’re so funny
Wait until they’ve got you running to the
Night rally, night rally, night rally