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Warning: All of these are rated R for language.
Number one: Der Führer gets banned from Xbox Live:
Number two: Hitler is no fan of Eli:
And saving the best (and most profane) for last, the generals break the news that Obama has clinched the nomination:
In full effect! Here, here and here.
What's Godwin's Law? Wikipedia knows all.
Kevin Bacon, meet Jeremiah Wright:
I don't think this dog will hunt. Richard Moore is the go-to guy for all things White, Male and Corporate. BTW, I intend to vote for him. Only the already converted are prepared to see Moore and Wright as some kind of John Brown-Nat Turner one-two punch in Whitey's mouth.
What else is unbelievable is this "argument" between McCain and the NC GOP. Anyone who thinks that the presumptive Republican nominee couldn't squelch this in an instant is too naive for politics. The "argument" lets McCain stay above the fray while his surrogates do the dirty work.
Fine. That's what surrogates are for. Who the candidate is is of no consequence. If Hillary were the front-runner, you'd be getting email forwards about her lesbianism, and right wing pundits would be clamoring for the Vince Foster case to be re-opened.
An attorney recently told me, "In court, if the facts aren't on your side, you talk about the law. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, then you talk about Mom, Apple Pie and the American Way."
The last option is what the Republicans are talking about. Or more to the point, they talk about how those values are missing on the Democratic side. This means that, even if you'd been under a rock for the last seven years, knowing nothing about Iraq, the credit crunch or torture, all you'd have to do is watch this commercial, and you'd know instantly who's side both the facts and the law are on.
It's bearable these days. I link to him quite a bit. But Eric Alterman still hates his guts.
After they put up the pudgy little PA lady on the screen wanting to know why Barack Obama doesn't wear an American flag, a move that Charlie justified by appealing to the authority of email forwards, I decided to do a little experiment. I would count the number of people the next day I spied wearing an American flag on their lapel.
How many? Zero.
Everyone in Salisbury, North Carolina hates America.
There are a couple of men in my congregation who regularly wear American flag lapel pins on Sunday, but that's it. The men who don't include several vets. Do they hate America too, Mrs. Pudgy Pennsylvania Lady? What do you think, Charlie?
I think that when it comes to patriotism, we ought to apply the same rules that we apply to piety:
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
This is not to say that wearing a lapel pin is wrong. It's just fair warning that one cannot judge neither piety not patriotism by outward displays.
Now Obama was right to say that this is a ginned up controversy. But what I was aching to hear, either from Obama or from HRC, was something along these lines, penned by Tom Schaller:
May I interject for a second before Barack answers that question? We’re about a half hour into this debate and all you two have done is raise ridiculous, distracting issues that most voters don’t care about, yet you and others in the chattering classes are obsessed with. This is a debate about the near-term future of the Democratic Party and the long-term future of the country, so I’m sorry to inform you that it’s not a contest to see who can generate the coolest televised sound bite to brag about at next week’s correspondents dinner. George, having worked in the War Room during our 1992 campaign, you’ve been on the other side and ought to know better. And Charlie, you’ve been around far too long not to know better yourself. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be asked tough questions; we should, of course. But so far none of this stuff you’ve raised is breaking new ground, and meanwhile somewhere in America people are going to bed without health insurance or money for this month’s rent or food on the table, while some of our troops won’t get to go to bed tonight at all because they’re standing a post in Iraq. And you two want to talk about flag lapel pins? Ask a serious question or just let Barack and I have a debate between ourselves with the remaining time. It would be a helluva lot more productive—not to mention informative and probably entertaining—than what’s happened so far.
Mrs. Avdat reports says, "If Hillary had said that last night, I'd have ripped the Obama stickers off our cars." Mrs. Avdat was furious with the unseriousness displayed by our society's very serious media elites.
My first presidential election was 1988. It turned, as I recall, on whether or not to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps we can forgive the media of yesteryear for such banalities. The economy was in good shape. The Soviets were glastnosting themselves into oblivion.
But we're fighting two wars, and neither is going well. Millions of Americans are poised to lose their homes. Food prices are skyrocketing. The planet is heating up. There are wars and rumors of wars in Sudan, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Uganda, Congo, and elsewhere. And in response, our very serious media elites have substituted fashion for tea leaves as an oracle, a looking glass into our candidates' love for America.
God help us.
I keep getting email forwards warning me about Oprah's new course on a New Age Jesus. So does Ben Witherington. He copied and pasted the email into his blog, if you care to read it.
Some people have asked me what I think about this course. Of course I think it's claptrap, but I'm not bristling with indignation about it the way that the author of the email is. These heresies are best knocked down with laughter, not with anathemas.
For instance. Just read this little lesson by Oprah's partner in this project, Marianne Robinson, about how you can loose yourself from the prison of the past. Here's a woman who's thrown some of her vague recollections of college philosophy debates about universals in with TM jargon she picked up from, I don't know, the Free Expression Tunnel (?), to create a "lesson" that sounds like she's either mocking meditation or the stupid things you debate in philosophy class. Except that it's entirely earnest.
This guru is ripe for a You Tube send up. Any takers out there? No? Maybe an SNL sketch?
Well, I am glad that Obama won the South Carolina primary because, having not had enough political drama over the past eight years, I sure would hate to see anybody sew this thing up anytime soon. And I suppose I agree with the latest CW that claims that Obama's smashing victory was payback for an increasingly negative campaign waged by a certain well-known Hillary Clinton surrogate on her behalf.
That said, I'm underwhelmed by how negative the Democratic Primary was supposedly becoming. What the Clinton people were saying was more cause for eye-rolling than genuine outrage. I mean, just how were we supposed to believe that Barak Obama was both a closet Reaganite and an old style Chicago pol at the same time? These are two candidates who basically agree--on domestic policy at least--and so they seem to be forced to make mountains out of mole hills in order to get some daylight between each other.
Another thing--even though I like Obama more than HRC, and I have had my share of goosebumps when hearing the man talk, I cannot break into rapturous joy over last night's win the way that, say, Andrew Sullivan seems to have. This was not the victory of good over evil. This was not the destruction of the Death Star, Eruzione scoring or anything remotely resembling it. Only the Hillary-haters would see it that way.
And why do they hate her/them? Ten years later, and I'm still scratching my head. The 42nd President was guilty of perjuring himself in a lawsuit later deemed frivolous by the presiding judge. Policy wise, he was rather centrist, a sort of Eisenhower figure who governed in peaceful times and reconciled his party to the economics of his wildly popular predecessor--of the other party.
As for Hillary herself, they seemed to hate her because she wasn't some Tammy Wynette Stand by Your Man chick, and then they hated her even more when she, you know, stood by her man. Or was it the health care plan? "OMG, I can't choose my doctor!" And now, 15 years later, nobody can choose their doctor, and millions are still uninsured.
Does this make any sense?
I can understand Bob Barr, partisan hack that he was, getting himself into a right state over (the) Clinton(s) destruction of democracy, but what's with these people in the media? They really should know better.
Like many intrepid explorers of Left Blogistan, I have had little to say about martial law in Pakistan because I know so little about the topic. But all those "stans" out there shoved me on a merry little jaunt down memory lane. When I was in high school, we revered an older extemper on our debate team because of his Ron Paul-like mixture of brilliance and kookiness. In perhaps his finest hour,in the middle of a speech he drew a blank on the name of an an African nation that was germane to the topic, so he just made one up.
Zengaro.
I think it's in east Africa somewhere.
Anyway, General Musharaff's declaration of martial law has caused mention of the Pakistani province of Waziristan to go viral. I always thought that Waziristan was the Zengaro of central Asia, a plausibly real, yet ultimately fictional place. But No! There is such a "stan!"
And our debating mentor didn't get away with it. On his ballot was written, "There is no such thing as Zengaro."
So you say!
I could go on and on. So I will! When not debating, speechifying, or having a locker room-style conversation about the size of our file, we would spend much of our time mocking other extemp speakers. These were the days when Prime Minister Zia-ul-Haq died (was shot down?) in a plane crash. And there was much laughter about one hapless and earnest speaker who tried to do justice to a Pakistani-like pronunciation of Zia's name, but sounded more like Gollum retching at Sam's stewed rabbits.
Oh, and did I mention that the smart boys and girls at TAPPED finally explained Atrios's ponies?
I love blogs!
Oh yeah? Well, did you also know that y=mx+wingnuttery? Now, solve for wankery.
A Prairie Home Companion was in Charlotte last night. The opening song was, um, not so funny. It was full of data about Charlotte, average rainfall, population, county seat of Mecklenburg County. As if Garrison Keillor wrote it with one finger holding the Almanac open.
Could it be that Charlotte's just so dang boring that there's nothing there to satirize?
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