Fear and Loathing in America

Brace yourselves: If shit’s going down, it’s going down this week. John McCain is a man without honor, and he’s desperate.

Pennsylvania GOP disavows inflammatory e-mail [AP/TPM]

Feldman Speaks — But Not About Hoax [TPM]

19 Comments

Who knew that the End Times referred to the collapse of the Republican party?

Political violence and chicanery are spreading over to the Prop 8 battle in California as real US-Americans continue their bullshit with Obama.

So he’s a Muslim, except for the bit about being in a distinctly Christian church (and, conveniently enough, a Christian preacher who is a whackjob). He’s a decent man, who pals around with terrorists. And now the news that he’s a Marxist who will bring socialism to our children. National Socialism.

Next: “he roots for the White Sox yet keeps an ornate shrine to Ernie Banks in his closet, hidden from the world.”

I thought Bob Shrum was going to go down as the worst campaign showrunner in history. Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt, if they finish off the campaign for good this week, will set some Jordanesque records on this score — never-ever-be-broken records.

@chicago bureau: Many a dissertation in poli sci will be written about the McCain campaign.

If this is their idea of an October Surprise, I fear for the future of our favorite Party of Evil.

I feel like we’re trapped in the ending of the Return of the Jedi. The big bad Emperor is dead and Obama Wan Kenobi (I know it’s really Lando, but I like then name Obama Wan Kenobi) is leading the charge into the Republicon Death Star,

Are we the Ewoks?

@chicago bureau:
@Mistress Cynica:
This campaign is Murphy’s Law cubed. Everything that could go wrong did and in the worst possible way.

Can’t wait for the book to come out.

I sincerely hope Republican voters remember three things prior to the election:

1) Shotgun

2) Mouth

3) Trigger

Original Andrew: No, no, no. I want GOP voters to live and be healthy. Especially their eyes, ears and brains. The next two years — should U.S. Americans insert themselves into the tank for Hopey — will be just delightful to watch.

@chicago bureau: Ditto. It would be better for them to live through the torture of (if it happens) one-party rule of the Democratic hegemony.

While the nutjobs grow in their desperation to win, David Frum-bum is encouraging Congressional GOPers to cut their losses, admit to a Unicorn victory and cling on to whatever seats they can in the Senate — terrifying the masses into images of what one-party rule would look like.

I remember what one-party rule looked like, and we called it “most of the Bush Administration until 2006.”

@chicago bureau & @rptrcub:

Hmmm… no, I’m sticking with my recommendation.

If I may soapbox-rant for a moment:

The people you’re talking about are completely insane–there’s no other description for it. They just screech about Muslims and socialists and homos and Messicans and A-rabs and feminists, et al. Everyone who isn’t exactly like them is an enemy that must be destroyed. They’re completely gone, and reality isn’t going to change that. Read the comments on your local news websites if you need any proof (double shudder). That’s at least a third of the population talking.

The total destruction of reality has been Bush II and the Republicans ultimate victory. It seems that we used to have shared experiences and shared understanding of the causes and effects of events. No longer.

Reality is now whatever our “leaders” can convince a plurality of our nation’s stupidest citizens that they say it is.

The second problem is that the federal Demoncrats are only slightly less corrupt and incompetent that the Republicans. We’ve had a total failure of leadership in Congress over the last two years on every issue, and that’s not going to magically change with the Unicorn’s election. The US Congress acts nothing like a functional branch of a democratically elected government, but completely like the royal court of a third-world kakistocracy whose only purposes are to subvert our own laws and loot the treasury.

In 2004, the R’s had both houses of Congress and the White House, but by 2008 they’ll likely have nothing. That’s a stunning, historical political reversal, but it’s also a symptom of a population that doesn’t really understand what either party stands for and a broken political and economic system that’s incapable of giving the people what they want anyway.

In short, winning in November 08 is just the beginning of the battle.

@chicago bureau: Are you kidding? It will fire up the Adkisson Brigades for the end days finale – total confrontation with his satanic majesty Obama, the anti-Christ. If McCain concedes, expect to see caravans of buses carrying hundreds of thousands armed pig fuckers converging on DC, while Talibunny shrieks at FoxNews cameras on the Capitol Mall holding a shotgun over her head, “In the name of Jesus Christ and White Race, I beseech you to reclaim this great land from the prince of satan, Barack Hussein Obama! White power! God’s power! Firepower!”

@Original Andrew: And let’s not forget, even with a “landslide” we’re still looking at 4 in 10 Americans who are complete idiots. They’re not going away, although it will be refreshing change when they’re not encouraged quite as much.

Plus, Barry really is a centrist. He’s going to attempt to govern “from the middle”, which in practice means “compromise the shit out of everything.” We saw that dance when summer started, we’ll see more of it next year.

But he’s also, god bless him, practical. Things need fixing, and he’ll make an honest attempt to fix them. Just don’t expect a progressive Valhalla.

Never follow a kid act, a dog act, or FlyingChainSaw.

@Original Andrew: What they’ve been deluded into thinking is that they can get all the things that government actually does/should provide, even if it’s done in a clumsy and imperfect way — from Social Security to Medicare to education to military protection to money for cops on the street — without paying for it.

The problem is that they don’t want to pay for it or allow for equality of opportunity in getting it, and have been seduced by Bush, et. al., into thinking that they can get guv’mint for nothing. And they also don’t want people who aren’t like them — whether they’re black, Latino, asian, women, poor, gay, urban, etc., from getting the same things.

They’ve been taught to hate and fear people who aren’t like them, and to assume entire races and classes and religions are universally evil — except Christianity, to which you could argue the same thing and they’d shoot you in the face for mocking Jeebus.

These are people who have been told that thinking in only black and white is completely ok, and that to think in shades of gray and about each unique situation is “moral relativism” and doesn’t show chutzpah, gravitas or any other similar word which they can’t pronounce. Other world views are irrelevant.

However, I personally prefer Reeducation Camps or Gitmo for Asstards over extermination. Take your pick.

American schools teach children to recite facts and absorb and regurgitate knowledge, but they don’t teach kids, for the most part (and generally if you’re in honors or gifted classes) critical thinking skills, analysis, synthesis or evaluation. That is the wall we face, so we must take some extraordinary measures.

@nojo: After 8 years of regression, I would be happy to simply return to a Clintonian like imperfect American status quo — but one where science advances and the state is more secular. I would like a wonderful world where churches are forced to pay taxes, gays can serve in the military, gays can get married nationwide, we all have universal health care and we all have cars that run on water.

I just can’t bring myself to think all of that will happen in one fell swoop, considering the economic trouble which will consume most of the new president’s time for the first 100 days, if not until mid-2010.

@rptrcub:

Too true. We didn’t know how good we had it.

Remember those GAO projections of trillions of dollars of budget surpluses? And that all anybody cared about was where Bill Clinton stuck his wang? Def a more innocent time.

@Original Andrew: When you have a couple of hours watch “Zeitgeist Addendum”. Remember Alan Greenspan talking about how BAD it would be to start repaying the national debt back in the late ’90s? Under our current financial system without debt there is almost no money. All Bush and the GOP did by ballooning the debt was to create a flood of new money in the system to be siphoned off into the pockets of their fellow travelers.

Drudge is hyperventilating about a YT video of audio of Obama in 2001, it’s starting.

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