The Party of Ideas

Repub Internet Lessons:
1) It’s not just for Porn.
2) Top down internet organizations don’t work as well as bottom up
3) Seriously, it’s not just porn.
4) I doubt that your powers to be will allow the “base” of base to dictate how things will work on THEIR party
5) On the tubes no one will care what your REAL sexual orientation is.
6) Quoting Conservipedia doesn’t generate anything but laughs on serious discussion boards.
7) Hard to remain ideologically pure especially on the intertubes.
8) FYI, no one appreciates ALL CAPS posts or emails.

And they totally need a supply of Mountain Dew Voltage to go with those Cheetos.

To assure future success, the RNC needs to merge with NAMBLA and promote an energy policy of leveraging GOP leaderships’ ass raping of children by equipping them with hip harnesses and connecting rods to drive small generators.

clearly, the GOP did not attack Obama enough, was not aggressive enough with pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war, anti-homosexual rhetoric. We also need to purge the party of any remaining moderates so that Americans can be presented with a stark, clear choice between the parties.

Yes, do that please, so next time around the only state you win is Alabama.

You’re forgetting about Mississippi, nabisco. Shame.

Seriously: look at Pennsylvania. The Bishop of Scranton basically said that people who vote for Black Eagle kill babies in their spare time. Meanwhile, the clinging-to-God-and-guns line was played on a continuous loop. And what happened. Pennsylvania was called the moment the polls closed. Obama 55, McCain 44. Thanks for playing.

Meanwhile: “Voter Guides” are handed out in churches. The Republican National Convention was a four-day three-day Godfest. What is there left to do? Hire Gideons to fling Bibles towards the stage at Democratic rallies?

But also: anybody else remember the Dubya speech at the RNC, and the line about the “angry Left” that the crowd just loved? I think we can file that blast under FAIL now. Wouldn’t you agree?

[giggle fit]

@nabisco: @ManchuCandidate: I have an inkling that the Republican Party may eventually be reduced to a regional party only. Kinda like the Bloc Quebecois in Canada, without the liberalisme they generally believe in. And just like the Bloc, they’re in a federal legislature just itching to secede. Or perhaps the Reform Party (which basically had Manitoba, Sask., and Alberta) during the 1990s — splitting the conservative movement.

Meanwhile, the remaining fiscal conservatives and the moderates elsewhere in the blue states (or at least in the not-as-fucked-up red states) will form their own regional not-as-crazy conservative party.

So, we’ll have a nice decade or so of Democratic government, and perhaps HR-38, before they all wind up blowing it in a stupid controversy over golf balls (I oversimplify, natch) and patronage.

Jeebus, I know way too much about Canadian politics.

Oh, the GOP could argue for the replacement of the constitution with the bible – as interpreted by a select group of televangelists. It would unite the base: survivalists, neo-confederates, neo-Nazis, snakehandlers, pederasts, meth-heads and cannibals. And it would get all those pesky amendments out of the way, like the 14th that lets Marxist Islamofascists run wild and transform America into a caliphate.

@chicago bureau: What is there left to do? Hire Gideons to fling Bibles towards the stage at Democratic rallies?

Mmmmm, deep fried embryos. That’s right, jeebus freaks, we’re coating them in nacho cheese powder and snacking down on those yummy, nutritious stem cells.

@Mistress Cynica: I like them with a nice, pungent aioli.

@homofascist: I am completely consistent on the issue of embryo-eating. I would welcome the opportunity to try fetal veal any day.

@rptrcub:
Your analysis is pretty much spot on.

They’re basically fragmenting for the next decade or so.

However, the “New” Repubs are going to have a tougher time than Reform and the Tories because their economic ideas (low taxes and raping, er, deregulation) were still considered viable back then. They have to find something besides the used toilet paper rantings of Uncle Milty.

BTW, the Sacramento Bee says it is ALL the fault of teh Blacks, this passage of this referendum against teh gay marriage.

We gotta do something about this. You have to admit it was genius of Rove to realize that the one single fucking issue that creates a cleavage between teh blacks and teh democrats is teh gays, and the republicans have been desperately trying to use it.

Fuck, its even fucking up my own ex-church, what with the anti-gay episcopalians all schisming and joining the diocese’s of these virulently anti-gay anglican bishops in Africa. How does a fucking episcopal church in Orlando join a Kenyan Diocese, I’d like to know.

Hey you blacks, what you got against teh gays? From what I saw on that prison TV show, you have no problem with going there, when its convenient. What about prison wives?

Fundies calling for GOP moderates to be excommunicated.

Damn I’m enjoying this.

Sweet FSM nojo, that Feedback Forum is a gift from baby Jesus. It is so hard not to go on there and be an asshole, which, I sorta did a couple of times.

Did anyone see that petition that Michelle Malkin started to “Thank Sarah Palin”? That was also a sweet wonderful gift, as it let you read the true thoughts of those who really thought she was the shit (scary!), and was also of course taken over by libtards thanking her for helping Obama win. Alas it is closed now, but you had better believe not before I offered by sincerest, most heartfelt thanks.

@blogenfreude: And Barry stakes his claim as a Practical Centrist.

The Republicans are becoming the Catholic church: dogma over inclusiveness. Rove and the neocons did their work well.

@Prommie:

I went to my Nephew’s christening last Sunday in my hometown church. Now, bear in mind that I am both a member of the church and literally a part of it, as upon my sister’s death in 1974 the family donated a stained glass window depicting Christ, my sister, and myself with the words “Let The Children Come Unto Me” set under our images. My family has been a major contributor and members of my family, including both my father and my mother, sit on the governing board.

Right before the christening, and right after I had placed a largish check in the collection plate, it was announced that the Pastor had been suspended for two weeks for performing a gay marriage at a country club using Methodist rites.

While the decision came from the Western General Conference, and not from our individual church, I wrote a letter Monday requesting that I be stricken from the church rolls. Even though the very liberal Western Conference could have fired the Pastor and denied him his retirement for the offense, the very fact that they did not stand up to the Eastern Conference and instead delivered this slap on the wrist tells me that while my money is good enough for them, my identity and my life are not.

@blogenfreude:

Oh, please, please, please let them run that up the flagpole as far as it will go… can you say “Permanent Republican Minority”?

@homofascist: I was going to cherrypick “Thank Sarah Palin,” and then I saw the marvelous pranking going on at the suggestion box. I was clicking and copying all evening, watching how fast the good ones disappeared.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I think they are all going to move to Alaska to be closer to their Chosen One. That would be awesome. They can rename it Northern Alabama.

@blogenfreude: I find that fascinating, especially because it’s reflecting a schism that we’ve been seeing here in Arizona for the past year or so. There’s been a lot of infighting in the AzGOP between the moderates/business interest wing and the fundy wing. Last year’s election for party chair reflected that. The fundy candidate won which led to the business wing to pout and keep their money. Yet despite the fact that fundraising was in the crapper and local Dems had so much more money to play with, the state and county GOP candidates kept most of their seats, even in places where moderates were kicked out in the primary and the Repugs sent some crazy wingers to the general. We simply didn’t see the Dem wave come through here.

I’ve been enjoying the schadefreude of watching the GOP fighting themselves all year but it sucks to see so little electoral change as a result.

I love this one:

Weak homes – the result of on-demand abortion and the destruction of traditional marriage – breed a generation of Americans that will be more dependent on the government from everything from the food they eat the morals they learn. That, in turn, will consume more and more resources as our economy suffers from the entrance of this generation into the work force. The ultimate end, of course, is a weakened position for America in the world, and our relegation to becoming the France of the 21st century.

Oh noes! Deep-fried fetuses and gays are turning us into France!

@Pedonator: On-demand abortions, does that come with basic cable or something? For abortions, press 1. To get gay married, press 2. If you would like to destroy western civilization, please stay on the line, and an operator will assist you shortly.

And, um, isn’t France the France of the 21st century, or did they get annexed by Belgium when nobody was looking?

@Pedonator: That’s just the tip of the iceberg. FotF and Dobson have long been edging their way toward full-fledged fearmongering wingnuttery, but they’ve finally arrived at its black, life-sucking center: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctpolitics/2008/10/an_obama_admini.html

Highlights include urban crime rising because guns are taken off the streets (wuh?) and homeschoolers departing in droves for Australia and NZ (huzzah! Go already!).

drinkyclown: At this point, Belgium couldn’t annex itself. The country is a sham marriage where the sham is just about to be totally exposed.

Pedonator: You wanna talk about relegation? If it weren’t for the LDS throwing eleventy million dollars or whatever it was at Prop 8, the wingers would be headed for the drop. Hell: they couldn’t pass a ban on abortion is South Freaking Dakota. Seriously, assclowns: you just got yourselves a royal BEATDOWN. Learn something.

@Pedonator: On the plus side, maybe we will finally be able to get really good baguettes. The trade-off is worth it for me.

@flippin eck:
I don’t think our Oz and Kiwi friends would appreciate a wave of semi literate frothing fundies invading their shores.

Considering the quality of most home skule bac “larning” they’d all end up in Mexico anyway.

flippin eck: homeschoolers departing in droves for Australia and NZ (huzzah! Go already!)

Yeah — this is the flipside of our nation’s flirtation with Hope. There will be a bunch of wingnuts fleeing and going off to the Outback or the South Island or Manitoba. And the people of these nations will totally hate them, and blame us for producing them. And then these nations will come to hate America again as a result, thus completing the circle of life.

@blogenfreude: It’s perfect. The GOP really needs people to get down to fundamentals and advocate a Rapture policy that will destroy the world and deliver all the Republican voters to heaven. Yeah, that will fix things.

homofascist: You ain’t freaking kidding. The Midwest doesn’t do good bread, for some reason unknown to me.

@flippin eck:

And don’t forget:

Another hypothetical scenario is that because no Christian is willing to write books critical of homosexuality, many Christian publishers go out of business.

Because, as you know, there is absolutely nothing left for a Christian to write about if he can’t write about teh gayz.

Is anyone else bothered by the dirt under the fingernail of the person pictured? It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.

@chicago bureau: The midwest doesn’t do good food, with the exception of some relics of the german immigrants, such as your various wursts.

The midwest is why they gas oranges to make them turn that bright, artificial, disgusting organge color. Its the place where they think Velveeta is cheese and Miracle Whip is mayonnaise. They put ketchup on hotdogs, they think Pizza hut sells pizzas. It is a vast wasteland of bland, deracinated imitations of food. Bah, I say, Bah.

@homofascist: Alaska has ALWAYS been known as Alabama with snow.

@Prommie:

Actually, back in the seventies or early eighties columnist Herb Cain of the SF Chronicle accused my hometown in Northern California of being “the one place in California where Velveeta is kept in the gourmet cheese section”, or something along those lines.
We’ve never quite forgiven the Bay Area punditocracy for making us rearrange our dairy sections.

@Pedonator: Oh please, please, could we be the new France??!!! Please!!!!

@homofascist: We have great baguettes here. Great bread altogether.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I’m trying to see you in a church window with Jesus. I have me in a picture with HWLBGT Bush, or whatever the fuck he was called. Really, their fantasy initials and middle names are not interesting. I might post it next mix.

@Benedick:

Well, I was only seven. If it helps you visulize it I am CLEARLY on my knees in the window.

@Benedick:

Come to think of it:
Here it is!

Scroll down, it is at the bottom of the page…the little boy in the lower right-hand corner is me, the girl with her head in Jesus’s hands is my sister.

@Benedick:

Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice the name change. Doing some Shakespeare?

@mellbell: You’ll have to watch the CNN video from the link, but that dirty fingernail belongs to the Texas preacher who found the Jesus Cheeto. Although as he demonstrates, you turn it a different way and it looks like a dog.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I’m very sorry to see that your sister died so young.

As to the rest of it… You seem like a well-brought up young man who will go far.

@nojo: Yes, and if you turn it a third way it looks like Marlon Brando.

@ManchuCandidate: The Right Wing has been reduced to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. Heh.

@chicago bureau: Not needing a weatherman to see which way the wind blow, the priest at the biggest parish in Las Vegas NM gave a (really long) introduction f’tha Next First Lady of the United States of America! when she was there a couple of weeks ago. Last time out (2004) the Church was all nutball-y in opposing Kerry in abortion-related grounds. Of course we had nothing like Prop Hate on our ballot this year, which I fear could pass here in New Mexico had the conservative movement not been utterly destroyed by Task Force Eagle.

@Jamie Sommers: Leslie Marmon Silko calls AZ “the Alabama of the Southwest”.

@chicago bureau: They will have to meet some requirement of the occupational shares listing (not as easy now due to expanding educational opportunities) to even be considered and then they’re vetted pretty hard, including for ideologies of hate. When the South Africans began running to Australia when Apartheid was melting down, they found a number of them were white supremacists essentially attempting to stage the retaking of South Africa after Apartheid fell. It’s not ’44 with immigrant and bride ships pulling up to Circular Quay any more – or even 1972 when the Aussies would pay someone with a college degree a plane ticket. The growth industries in NZ are things like horticulture, IT, advertising, etc. and methinks the fundie homeschoolers will not produce a lot of candidates for those industries.

Cross Burned On Lawn Of N.J. Obama Supporter
Family’s Obama Banner Went Missing The Night Before; Police Believe It Was Draped On 6-Foot Cross
Incident Follows Alleged Bat Attack On Staten Island Teen
NEWARK (CBS) ― Acts of racism have popped up in parts of the tri-state area since Barack Obama was elected president on Tuesday night.

In the latest, a family who had supported Obama’s campaign emerged from their home in the northwestern New Jersey town of Hardwick Thursday morning to find the charred remnants of a 6-foot wooden cross on their front lawn.

Pieces of a homemade bed-sheet banner reading “President Obama — Victory ’08,” which had been stolen from the yard the night before, also were found, leading investigators to believe the banner had been wrapped around the cross before it was set afire.

Lt. Gerald Lewis of the New Jersey State Police said his agency is treating the incident as a bias crime.

Police believe the cross, made of two-by-fours bolted to a metal pole like those used to support road signs, was placed on the lawn sometime between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m., and fell over after being set on fire.

Homeowner Gary Grewal said he had noticed the Obama banner missing from his lawn the night before and reported it to police.

Grewal said his 8-year-old daughter, Arianna, spotted the banner wrapped around the burnt cross as they walked toward their car to drive to school.

“She saw it, that’s what bothered me the most,” Grewal said Thursday. “You can imagine the types of questions she was asking. It was very tough to explain.”

Grewal, 51, a management consultant who emigrated from India, has lived in Hardwick Township, a largely rural community of about 1,500 people in Warren County, about 40 miles northwest of Newark, since 2001.

He said Obama campaign signs were regularly swiped off his lawn. His wife, Alina, actively supported the Obama campaign in the largely Republican area.

“I’m not going to be intimidated by something like this,” Grewal said. “I don’t go on anyone’s property and do this. God forbid if I was African-American. We’re living in the 21st century, and we’ve got to be afraid to express our beliefs?”

Grewal described his community as a nice place “with many wonderful people.” But he said his daughter is afraid to sleep in her room, knowing someone was on the lawn while they were home.

“I’m amazed this can happen in this time and age,” Alina Grewal said. “We’re in the Millennium, the world has changed.”

This followed an incident on Tuesday night when a black Staten Island teen was viciously assaulted in what police believe was a bias attack sparked by Obama’s presidential victory.

Ali Kamara, 17, whose family emigrated from Liberia, is still in great pain after being beaten by four young men with baseball bats.

Kamara, a high school student who is Muslim and lives in the Stapleton Section of the borough, was attacked while walking home around 10 p.m. the night of the election. He said as he approached his street, a gold car with four white men drove up behind him, with the men yelling Obama’s name.

“That was the first word that came out of their mouth, ‘Obama,'” Kamara recalled.

@Benedick:

Ah, very sad, yes. It happened a long time ago, though.

@flippin eck: Home Schoolers? DO NOT WANT!!

Oh and New Zealand goes to the polls today. Check out Helen Clarke battling the sheep-fucking conservatives, and loony New-Zealand First party! New Zealand Herald

@Prommie: Speak for yourself, but Chicago has wonderful food. It is a great place to be a foodie, even if you don’t have much money. I am currently lunching on a fabulous falafel and hummus wrap and a bowl of delicious and peppery lentil soup from the Lebanese place in my neighborhood. $6.

@homofascist: Well of course, the city food is good because you are not eating traditional midwestern food, you are eating lebanese food, which is good. I am sorry, I must be more clear; the traditional cuisine of the american midwest sucks sweaty, scaly balls. Fortunately, you can get better food there now.

@homofascist: I liked the Russian place around the corner from Symphony Hall in Chicago. Food was fine and the service was reasonable enough to get you in and out in 45 minutes in time to get to you seat for the concert. Pelmeni were just right.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: That is so fabulously Medieval I can’t stand it.

@homofascist: That sound so much better than the yogurt and granola I had for lunch.

@Prommie: What, are you too good for hot dish?

@homofascist: I have grown accustomed to certain modest indulgences, yes.

Prommie: Actually, we here in Chicago do not put ketchup on our hotdogs. In fact, if we are snooty about any single food-related thing, it is this: ketchup on hot dogs is verboten. But — and the whole culinary rebirth in Chicago from Trotter and assorted fellow-travellers? Yes.

Prommie (later, sadder): Racism didn’t die on Tuesday. Racists, however, may be regarded more uniformly as backward morons. I has Hope, the only cure for which is Change.

@chicago bureau: Ah, not only does your food suck, you midwesterners are apparently provincial and thin-skinned. (I am hoping against hope that the mere fact that this would be mean if I meant it, and also the fact its obviously not true, is enough to alert you to its non-serious nature and to its otherwise not being intended as an attack or a criticism, and that it is rather some dialogue I have written for this persona I have temporarily adopted, that of the intolerant food snob who is himself provincial and who engages in petty “my region of the country is better than your region of the country” arguments in a sincere and real way, as opposed to in a smirking, post-modern, air-quoting way). Have I not spent the whole day making fun of my own State and its strange culture? Or is it my ebonics? Why sad?

@homofascist: Green chili, potato and pork loin strew made by mother in law for lunch, black tea. Free. Good for a cold, too.

@mellbell: Yes, first thing I noticed.

@Mistress Cynica:

The window, you mean? Yeah, my maternal grandfather was a cross between Barry Goldwater and Henry the 8th, and he put up the money for it.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: The United Methodist Church, in all honesty, along with the Episcopalians, might truly consider schism a blessing. Coming from a family of Methodist ministers (descended from Anglican priests who landed in Virginia, natch, and made their way down the Piedmont to Georgia), it’s heresy, but I think everyone would be happier in the end even if it makes baby Jesus cry.

My feeling is that the Methodist Episcopal Church & the Methodist Episcopal Church South (formed before the Civil War), which merged I think in 1920-something, would have been better apart.

Well, I tried to help…

20 votes have been returned to you!

Rebuild the Party 10 votes remaining

1 Stop having sex with men in public bathrooms was inappropriate
1 Get some really nifty stormtrooper uniforms was inappropriate
1 more cowbell! was inappropriate
1 Acquire the Ark of the Covenant was inappropriate
3 free delived bags of cheetos was inappropriate
1 Listen to Bill Kristol a lot more was inappropriate
3 pray for rain! Rain of Biblical Proportions! was inappropriate
3 run Jeb Bush for Pres. in 2012 was spam
3 say the words “Hussein,” “Ayers,” and “Rev. Wright” a lot was spam
3 blow me was spam

@rptrcub: I agree. I’m sick of trying to pacify people who want to live in the Middle Ages (without the cool stained glass windows picturing patrons with Jesus). It could be a lovely liberal denomination with the pretty liturgy, vestments, and ritual, and without the ridiculous bigotry. Kinda like the Unitarians, but more organized and with much less interpretive dance.

@nojo: Hey Kristol – your own kind don’t want you. And obvs Jeb’s already inundating their servers.

@Mistress Cynica:
Dont forget the carob. Those damn Unitarians with their carob chips.

@nojo: Oh noes!! But that was like their whole platform – till they can run Pamela Sue Anderson.

BTW. I got back through WordPress (don’t ask, I’m still trembling) and arrived here.

@smapdi: Yes. The Methodist pot lucks are much better, with all the wonderful variations of mac ‘n cheese, green bean casserole, hot dish from the former Lutherans, fried chicken, ham, (and at least down here, even in the Libtarded UMCs) tea so wonderfully sweet it’ll make your teeth dissolve instantly (I drink it only at such potlucks, as a sacrament).

I need a new stent, please.

@rptrcub:
I will eat anything that has a crust of Tater Tots.

@rptrcub: I suspect I’ve tasted hot dish before but right now I’m feeling totally virgin and wanting to try.

@smapdi: A Tater Tot, crusty on the outside with a creamy potato filling, is the ultimate good thing.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: You’re from Chico? Wow, we should go hiking together sometime. No snark here, I find it very sweet that there is a church window up there for your sister.

@Prommie: Jesus H., one of my best friends has the same last name as those victims of Jersey hate crimes, and he lives with his husband mere miles from that shit.

@redmanlaw: My gawd, do I get green chili stew from Mrs.-I-L RML without first proving a sinus infection? Why do Texans move to ABQ and Santa Fe? Three words: Green Chili Stew.

@Pedo:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1626,155164-246194,00.html
Gaze upon this hotdish and despair.

@smapdi: I love tater tots. They are my guilty pleasure. McCains makes these frozen mini-potato pancakes that are the same exact thing but slightly more socially acceptable.,

My church was way into their Pancake Dinner on shrove thursday or whenever it was. Pancakes and breakfast sausages. Then they asked me to cook.

I made three choices: fresh chorizo sausages, a masa-based pancake, and a fresh pico-de-gallo relish; fresh, very garlicky kielbasa, potato pancakes, and a sour-cream, dill, and cucumber topping; and regular old pancakes and breakfast sausage, for the kids and those filled with fear.

I give them credit, they loved it.

@Promnight: Open invitation to cook me breakfast any day.