Tiller’s Willing Executioner

How nice of Bill to make Barry a Patriot.

What?

A special place in hell, indeed.

OK, now this is fun. (Yes it means visiting at the big W. I guess we’re just gonna hafta put our manpants on) Apparently the teabaggers are now co-opting the Rainbow™ to spread gay joy for Jerusalem Pride or some such. If you click over to W you might go to hell but you will get a linque to their homopage which is worth a visit. It’s raining men indeed.

@Benedick Arnuldsson: Wow, a post by Ken Layne. I haven’t been over there since the Exodus.

@Dodgerblue: Shhhh. Don’t tell noje. You know how he gets. It’s a funny™ story.

@Benedick Arnuldsson Manpants: BTW, I’ve read Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which, I take it, is referenced by Nojo’s title for this thread. It reinforced my opinion that we should have dropped the atomic bomb on Germany.

@Dodgerblue: Well now, see, I’m of the opinion – unpopular in these parts – that given Vietnam and now Iraq we are in no position to criticize Germans for what they might have failed to do. In the case of Iraq we failed to stop Bush. I think we are all responsible. Not to compare the scale of devastation but I think one woman having to pick her way through a shed full of body parts in order to find the pieces of her dead son is enough. The teabaggers are storming heaven for nothing. We – and I mean me, not necessarily anyone else – got on with our lives and pretended nothing was wrong. I wonder how Iraquis would write about us. I think about it every time I go into a supermarket.

I will now go to the gym and allow you all to ban me in absentia.

@Benedick Arnuldsson: My hat is off to the bracelet entrepreneur who, stuck with thousands of tacky bracelets no self respecting sodomite would be seen dead in, convinced these morons that the rainbow was the perfect symbol for the TP movement. The teabaggers, whose only familiarity with “branding” involves cattle or dominatrixes, fell for it. Brilliant.

BTW, could the “design” on W be any more hideous? As Ana Marie would say, “MY EYES!!!!!!”

@Benedick Arnuldsson: They finally dropped the old Gawker-era design! And the comments are readable! Sucks as a whole, but it’s a practical improvement.

@Mistress Cynica: For your delectation I will now quote my email to owner of site and his reply. Which has me all choked up in any number of ways.

I don’t know how to do block quotes. I’ve led a sheltered life.

Me: You do know that the rainbow has come to stand for gay rights and that gay Americans fly the rainbow flag?

In Truth & Love,
H

Jesus: Bitch, please.

@Benedick Arnuldsson Manpants: facepalm

@Benedick Arnuldsson: Now you’ve done it: Twitter suggests I follow “hunterw”, who identifies himself as a “TV Reporter, TheWrap.com”, based in Los Angeles.

Well, at least Megan landed at TPM.

@blogenfreude: I know. What can I tell you? I’m not one to take half-measures. But I do believe it. Not that we’ve done anything on the scale of what was perpetrated by the Nazis – yet – but I think we’re on very thin ice to now criticize the German citizens they terrorized. I don’t think we’d do any better than any other common-or-garden liberal-minded citizen of Weimar trying to make a living and get through life without too much aggravation. Of course they found many only too willing to help – so would we, we have already – but some refused to give in. We were watching a fairly putrid movie last night with Conrad Veidt, who is a pretty good example. Did you know he made the highest salary in Casablanca? I didn’t. He sent most of it to the British war effort.

Plus, the country was devastated by WW1, a whole generation of young men had been killed, the armistice imposed crippling reparations causing the economy to collapse, people were literally starving as they watched profiteers grow rich. We’ve just had a recession and look how people are carrying on.

I will now go soak my head but it’s not going to help.

@nojo: You didn’t have to read the rest of it. I just thought the teabagger jewish gay pride was worth a click.

@Dodgerblue: The firebombings with contemporary technology probably did more damage. A friend from another life, editor during Flanagan’s reign at Scientific American, ended up assigned to Germany as a lieutenant in 1954, initially stationed in Dresden. When he got off the train he mentioned to the senior officer in the group that it seemed silly to set the train station miles distant from the city. Bill cringed when he was told he was standing in the center of Dresden.

@Benedick Arnuldsson Manpants: Speaking of what was done in our name — and continues to be done in our name — there’s an interesting little thread developing at the Washington Monthly where truly nice guy Steve Benen is trying to make the case against The Enthusiasm Gap.

His case — reflected by other Beltway Libs — is that Obama isn’t getting sufficient credit for all those (granted, incessantly capitulated) legislative accomplishments.

What Benen and his fellow cheerleaders never mention is national-security policy, in particular all those Bush-era war crimes that continue to be practiced. When someone mentions it in the comments, that person is invited to enjoy the coming regime of President Palin.

My take is that all those precompromised domestic successes would be easier to swallow if we weren’t still living in a national-security tyranny — even allowing for the Obama Administration’s refusal to seek justice for previous war criminals. There’s an Enthusiasm Gap because there’s nothing to cheer for.

I’m still voting, of course, because that’s what I do. But I ain’t doing anything else. Other than griping.

@nojo: Yes, of course. Our presidents have become hostage to the Pentagon. Bush 2 got off on being Commander in Chief so he loved it but I think it’s been true since WW2. The military have more or less done whatever they liked. At least after the Vietnam debacle there was a sense of shame abroad, a sense that maybe, just maybe we had done A Bad Thing. But then Hollywood got to work regenerating the image of the Soldier and now Our Brave Troops are beyond reproach. Meanwhile they’ve spent the country into the ground.

I think the other item that has demolished the enthusiasm which brought Obama the presidency is the 60 vote rule. I simply don’t understand why 60 votes are necessary for everything. The Republicans didn’t need them. They’re already gloating about a 51 vote majority. We look at the Democrats in the senate and see a spectacle of capitulation. Yes, they’ve done good things. Just yesterday I found out that my uncle’s wife who has recently been diagnosed with cancer and who has no insurance, will be able to get insured under the HRC no pre-existsing condition rules. The premiums are expensive but manageable. So good is being done.

Maybe it’s our fault. Maybe it’s the Democratic voters who are not vocal enough or focused enough. Our counterparts in the padded ward get a lot more out of their ‘elected representatives’ because they demand more. Or perhaps I’m imagining that.

For me this began with Rick Warren at the inauguration. Talk about pissing on your base.

@Benedick Arnuldsson Manpants: I’ve been whining Expressing Concern since August 2008, but yes, symbolically Rick Warren really put me in a Bad Mood. Quite literally, my Enthusiasm Gap started with the Inauguration itself.

We already knew he was going to triangulate marriage equality. He didn’t have to rub our faces in it.

And the filibuster, well, that gets Complicated, but the Demrats could have made a real show out of it instead of (or in addition to) fingerbanging Olympia Snowe at every opportunity. For one thing, they could have dropped the Polite Filibuster rule and forced the Repugs to actually do it.

There’s an old Star Trek episode where the Enterprise visits the Planet of Virtual Warfare. Instead of real bombs, each side plays Battleship, and the “attacked” civilians willingly walk into extermination booths. No blood! No destruction! Very tidy!

Oh, and it’s been going on for centuries.

So Captain Girdle pulls the plug on the computers, forcing the two sides to conduct actual warfare — and peace talks immediately commence, because real war is icky.

Me, I would have enjoyed watching Jim DeMint read the Charleston phone book on C-Span, but the Dems were too chickenshit to put him up to it.

Speaking of Brand W, today is the 10th birthday of the Millenial Development Guidelines per Bono’s incoherent op-ed in today’s Times.

@SanFranLefty: Already read MoDo, and one incoherent Times op-ed is all I can handle.

And dammit, I can’t remember MDG Girl’s name. Shame on me.

@FlyingChainSaw: I used to work with a guy, now in his 90s, who was one of the planners of the firebombing of Tokyo. He understood that, if the U.S. lost the war, he would likely be executed as a war criminal.

@SanFranLefty: The MDGs are a UN thing. Wasn’t the Brand W gal going about the Borg Initiative or something like that?

@nojo: Nadine

@Nabisco: Ah, yes. Nadine. And the Borg was some kind of outgrowth of the MDGs. Or based on them.

Unless I’m completely covering up for the fact that the Stinque parent company is also abbreviated MDG, and I’ve been stringing you along all these years.

“The Roots of Obama’s Rage”? A whole book about a nonexistent phenomenon? It’s far worse than rightwingers simply being out of touch with reality. They’re in obscenely intimate communication with a wholly imaginary realm.

If only he did have some rage. In public at least.

@lynnlightfoot: A whole book about a nonexistent phenomenon?

To paraphrase James Dean: What are you praying about? What do you got?

@Nabisco: No, Nadine was just the general kooky pants one. It was someone else who was all in to the MDG, which I always read as MGD, my waitressing era abbreviation for that piss-water called Miller Genuine Draft.

@SanFranLefty: I have the same problem, but for me MGD is million gallons per day, the units we use for wastewater discharges (about equally tasty as Miller Genuine Draft I expect).