It isn't "certain people" - it's the 40 million voters at the political core of the Republican Party for the past thirty years. See, in wingnut world, it's all PR. There is no reality - people swooning over Obama are in the same situation, with the same implications, as people swooning over Palin. Swoon here, swoon there, it's all the same foolishness. Swoon over Mussolini, swoon over Gandhi, the implications are the same in that world. Of course, back when the swooning was one-sided, when Gore was not attracting swooners and W was, or when Kerry was running against W, say, and the realistic folks were setting up websites with names like "John Kerry Is A Douchebag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway ( http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/ ), and the visible swooners populating the TV newsdesks were still basking in the glow of Mission Accomplished, the joyous fulfillment of all their dreams of manliness and decisiveness and a big package in the person of a worthless younger scion of one of America's less savory political dynasties, who had just done his worst right in front of them, just ruined their country with their support, swooning was OK.
I agree on both counts. But at least Obama had good qualities to him; he was a great speaker, for one, and said some really inspirational stuff. Palin was just pretty. That's all. All she did was look good. She couldn't string a sentence together, couldn't answer a question without sounding like GW Bush with head trauma, and couldn't pretend to be professional. She was a horrid candidate, and it speaks volumes of John McCain's desperation. It's pathetic. I wasn't going to vote for him anyway, but I certainly lost any respect I had for him after he picked her.
Most of them are. And I had a friend (a giant Dem) covering a Palin rally tell me that she was absolutely electric and jazzed up the crowd. Speaking from personal experience, I can say that Bush is much better in person than he is on television. Whatever, Ice. Take this ball and go home. I know plenty of people who loathed Palin but voted for the ticket anyway. Trying to subscribe general feelings to 40 million people is tricky business, so might want to think about it a little first and actually have some DATA other than your notoriously wrongheaded feelings. Um, yeah. It's all media driven. I spoke to a woman in the mall today with an Obama T-shirt who probably couldn't tell you his first position on anything. Most of the Palin junkies are the same. Party hacks in love with the sensation created by the candidate. As for implications, that all comes down to your viewpoint, I guess. I certainly think Obama is smarter and more qualified than Palin, but there are plenty of people who would disagree with that. This is stupid hyperbole and not worthy of comment. Did that tantrum make you feel better?
Not only guess, but say over and over and believe. There is no reality, at least not one relevant to the event. My claim is that the Palin swooners, the fundies and bigots and trash of Rove's triumph, are the voting core of the Republican Party electoral successes of the past thirty years. The Republican Party cannot win a national election without them. When a simple description, accurate and verifiable, is a tantrum, we must be talking about W&Co and the travesty of American media's handling of them. Walter Mondale said it first, in my hearing: The difficulty in responding to Reagan's attacks was that "if you quote him accurately, people call it mudslinging" . Describe the media treatment of McCain/Palin accurately - or W, or Mission Accomplished, or Iraq, etc - and people call it a tantrum.
Yes, who does the swooning? Not the Republicans, it is the Democrtes, Who gets tingles up their legs over Obama? CHRIS MATTHEWS Who gets giggles of excitement over Obama? CHRIS MATTHEWS MATTHEWS: Ha, ha! He's not exactly a just empire. Anyway, thank you Roger, thank you. What a night! I'm getting giggles! It's so exciting here -- Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell -- because there's news in the air.
When you're talking about politics, there is one reality, but it's the perception that is important. I've had numerous spats with your in which you can't seem to fathom how people could appreciate the outcomes of certain policies or proposals because those policies and proposals seem wrongheaded to you and bump up against your appreciation of reality. This is a problem for your solipsism, and I can't solve it for you. There are, one imagines, many people who would love Palin in office, and would see the implications and outcomes as positive. You, I imagine, would not. Who is correct would be tough to see. So much of politics is not quantifiable, something you fail to appreciate time and again. Your claim is loaded with biases. Flip it around. Once could argue something like lazy union workers, loose women living in cities and uneducated minorities have been the voting core of the Democrats, for example. Yes. All of your descriptions are accurate, simply because you took the time to write them down for us. What a joke. Do you really believe your own bullshit?
If that's what you think, why do you object when I point out that that's what you think? Only in the language of the labels. Again, the reality/PR conflict. How would that be "flipping it around"? What are you "flipping"? (Presuming that you could actually back that up with the same kinds of numbers, of course, which is unlikely but I'll stipulate it for the argument). And are you claiming that your categories there form a coherent, organized voting bloc - that you could, for example, use the comparative proportion of lazy union workers + loose women in cities + uneducated minorities in Texas and Iowa, Oregon and Indiana, Nevada and Louisiana, and predict the comparative election results?
Because it isn't the same, and you know that. There are subtle and importance difference between the sets of claims, not the least of which is that you're alleging I -- and others you don't agree with politically -- suffer from some self-imposed delusion, and are thus incapable of seeing an objective reality only you and your ilk can. I think that's crap, especially given your obvious biases (No Republican is worthy of merit), your fringe viewpoints (WTC Building 7 calling) and your complete obstinance whenever you debate any point (you're never wrong, never mispeak and your opinions are FACTS). And this is what I mean. You make a statement loaded with opinion -- and then refuse to acknowledge it as such. You're incapable of looking through the other side of the glass. I mean, seriously? Are the terms "fundies and bigots and trash" totally objective and quantifiable? Apparently, in the view from your parents' basement window, they are. Ha! Are you asking for numbers? You? Seriously? C'mon? Ice, just about everything you post on this website is your bullshit opinion. You never quantify or back it up with anything other than your bullshit opinion, and now I throw an opinion back at you and you scurry for the hills and want DATA. Oh, please. This is too rich. Go look at the other discussion we're having. You made an incredible claim that throwing a shoe isn't assualt. I gave you data how it is. So you switched the argument. In that same discussion, you claimed there were no duly elected officials in Iraq. I pointed out there have been two elections, provided a link. So again, you switch the ground and start talking about people being excluded, elections not being represenative and so on and so forth. Not once did you ever provide one link or one bit of proof for anything you said, which is basically why it's a complete waste of time to talk to you. I'm only doing this because it's the holidays and I'm bored. You really are the sound and fury that signifies nothing -- and your debate tactics are tiring, childish and obvious all at the same time. The adjectives are of my own creation and were used to make a point, but yes, those words aside, you can look at single women living in urban centers, union workers and minorities (who generally are less educated) and make election predictions. Hell, people campaign for these specific groups every cycle and polls always exist that detail this. The fact that unions tend to vote en masse for Democrats shouldn't even be up for debate. Elsewhere, I remember getting polling data on single women versus married women. Census data tells us single women tend to live in cities. Minorities are always polled en masse, educated and uneducated. I mean, you act is if I am making this stuff up . . .
Word of caution, any perceived honeymoon for Obama will never end. There are too many people vested in his success, real or imagined and probably more imagined than real. Another word of caution, don't take stories of McCain's diminishing support of Palin too seriously. He is completely in opposition of her and has never fully accepted her. She was a tool for his election. In other words, he used her. Irrespective of all the bullshit said here about her, she was, by far and it isn't really close, the most qualified of the four candidates this last election. The rest are jokes. In fact, if the media hadn't hyped them beyond reality, they would not have ever made it pass the primaries. That includes Obama. I know you have either put me on ignore or simply do not respond, but I felt that these thoughts needed to be put out there. As for the rest of the ignoramuses, I can and will take the hit on my comments. I have broad shoulders.
But I wonder count, why couldn't she return the party to relevance? Please do not misunderstand my statement, I don't think she can. But I do think that her basic conservative philosophies are what the party needs and has been missing for about 6 years now. There is no difference between Washington republicans and democratic/socialists. That is why the base stayed home. That is why Palin appealed to the base, and ultimately what made the election closer than should have been giving the swooning of Obama. It seems to me that if one is disinclined towards the ideas of Palin, then one is satisfied with the status quo. I truly believe, and have said so for the longest time, this country has turned left. Sorry, I don't care what lefties think Bush has done. Primarily, what Bush has done is turn the republican party into an old democrat party where there are patriotic beliefs sprinkled into primarily socialist ideas. I mean seriously when the left changes they go further left. When the right changes it go left. No one goes to the right, in spite of its obvious historical success and intents. To go right means more individual freedom, in the truly nuanced sense. Not the individual right to pretty much ruin everyone else's life. To go right means less government, in its truest sense. That being defense and leadership, and nothing else. In turn this means considerable tax cuts to place them next to nil. To go right means greater freedom of religion, education, and state rights. Not the state rights ideas of antibellum southern politics, which of course was the retention of slavery, but the idea of states being in control of their destiny not the central government. So why is Plain such a scary thing to you? This is the direction she would have us turn. That question is open to anyone, not just count.
Sigh. This shit again. I'll pick just one, to keep the length down: Which misses the point - in the argument you presented them in contrast to another organized voting bloc, as an organized voting bloc. That is what I objected to, and I think with reasonable clarity and specificity. That was the factor in my arguments. That is what the whole thing was about. A voting bloc, not a bunch of categories however individually useful. That was the whole point, the major issue, the matter involved in that phase of the argument. Your interpretation of my post as denying the usefulness of categories of people in predicting election results is not reasonable. You either very stupidly missed the point, or chose to misrepresent the argument. You do that more often than not, and by now it's safe to say that everything you have said about anything I have posted is and has always been based on your failure to follow simple arguments or deal honestly with the issues presented. What you have said about me, a minor concern despite its major presence (often the major - even sole - content of quite long posts), gratuitously in every case and accurately in none, is a matter for the same approach involved in Rorschach Blot interpretations. People willing to deal with that kind of stuff get paid. I'm not getting paid. Every single one of the opinions of mine and assertions of mine alleged by you is an invention of yours, assigned to me by you, and in "error". You present a bizarre fantasy completely of your own invention, and ask me to answer for it. You do this obsessively, repetitively, at very great length. Your individual misreadings and distortions can appear as innocent error (occasionally understandable, where I have not been clear) or stupidity taken one at a time (discounting the language): in the pattern, other motives and character traits become visible. You give yourself far too much credit by assuming you represent your political views, so that I would hold everyone who shares your political views in the same contempt I hold you. Meanwhile: The "sad constituency" seems to consist of people who have for some reason bought into the standard, mainstream, mass media emphasized Republican Party claim that W is an aberration, that he and his administration were some kind of unexpected and surprising betrayal of core Republican Party principles that were adhered to until very recently. So the people who are genuinely puzzled about what happened to the Party of Reagan can relax - it's right there, ready for Palin, the next Great Communicator. Just as it was right there, ready for W - who was not,after all, an aberration, until after the results began to come in.
(Insert Title Here) No, no. But it's a longer explanation than you probably want. I think that's a bit cynical. President Bush has set the bar so low that Obama could continue to lose ground on the economy, fumble the wars somewhat, and still—if he deals with the American people forthrightly—see good numbers. And, to the other, he's squandering what political capital liberals gave him early. Some of this, like his cabinet selections, isn't a big deal as some dissatisfied progressives would suggest. And some of it is exaggerated, like the brouhaha over Rick Warren. I do wish I understood that choice a little more, though. But it's only a vague "centrist" group in the center—the torture-supporting, Civil Rights-rejecting, domestic espionage-loving, amorphously-principled center—that is giving him that kind of blind honeymoon. And, trust me, it would be easy to cut that one short. All he needs to do is start instituting "radical" changes to the left, and then he will lose everyone but the true liberals. And she was all too happy to be used. But, yeah, like I wrote at the outset, I do wonder how long those two would have made it before the rift erupted publicly. In truth, I'm not sure what to say to that. I suppose it depends on your criteria for qualification.
Or you could do your usual: Go back to presenting falsehoods as truth, as that's been your modus operandi in two other threads this month. . . Then quit whining about it from your parents' basement. I mean, seriously? Was there a point to the above rambling. You didn't address one thing I wrote. You just drone on, in typical fashion, about how I didn't "get" your earlier argument or have chosen to be dishonest. At no point, did you post anything of substance. No, Ice. I can read. The simple fact is you like to slither from position to position and obfuscate and refuse to be pinned down on things. It's tiresome. It really is, but it's all you do. No, I ask you fucking questions. You refuse to answer them. I make counterarguments. You refuse to acknowledge them and say I have misunderstood your typically opaque prose. This is our pattern. This from the asshole who totally confuses two incidents in another thread, lies about it and then attempts to cojoin them after he realizes his error with bullshit to cover his own stupidity? Sure, whatever. . . I take your contempt as a badge of honor. As I said elsewhere, you're an intellectual brown-shirt, and lately, not a very smart one. Or are the terms "fundies and bigots and trash" to be taken as totally objective and quantifiable demonstrations of your intellect? This is the way you write, in between talking about WTC Building 7, lying about Ronald Reagan, lying about Iraqi elections and denying the meaning of the word assault because it doesn't fit with the political viewpoint you conjured up in your parents' basement.
You make no counterarguments, and ask no honest questions, when replying to my posts. I see no reason to pretend otherwise - you're barely making the effort yourself. You do this: A list of things entirely invented or asserted by you, attributed to me. Preceded and followed by personal insult and slander, as per usual. Nothing on thread topic - also frequent, in your case. Did you get your new pet term "parent's basement" from Palin, back in November, btw? The irony was pretty rich, in that one - might still be, for all I know. Meanwhile: Maybe a suggestion of an answer there - a cushion for the coming jolt ? One can hope - - -
OK, Ice. Let's try something simple, since, as usual, you have succeeded in derailing this conversation. In an effort, then, to refocus: Are the terms "fundies and bigots and trash" to be taken as totally objective and quantifiable?
You asked about her qualifications? To me this is simple, Obama was and probably always will be a lobbyist. I know he was a community organizer and senator. But both are simply explained, a community organizer is nothing more than a glorified lobbyist. A senator in far too many cases is nothing more than horse trader, or car salesman. Biden, Obama (now with dual shyster qualifications),and McCain (also with dual qualifications, his second is faux republican). The only person in the bunch with executive experience was Palin. A real leader not a shyster, or self- appointed one leader, but a real one. I have a fairly positive opinion about you. Tell me was not Palin more conservative than McCain? (This has nothing to do with qualifications. Just asking a simple question.)
I'll not let this pass. Typically my response to you are "yawn", and thanks for temporarily waking me occassionally btw, or remind how you are old news, which you still are. But this may be different, actually the more I think about I guess I will pass. There is too much ignorance to debate with you. Given your history and fundamental lack of comprehension, I will pass. But again thanks for waking me!
Interesting perspective Interesting perspective. The question is, however, what that experience equals, and in her case, it amounted to pretty much zero. One of the problems with the appeal to experience is that it necessarily pretends that time spent is time well spent. If she had come out of the gate with intelligent words flowing from her golden tongue, perhaps the appeal to experience would carry greater weight. But two glaring facets of her executive experience are her tendency toward loyalty before common sense, and the belief that, as executive, she and her advisors are above the law. The economic aspect of her experience did not strike me as positive. And her social policies, as we are well aware, are a failure. Nothing about her political experience made for much of a selling point, which was why we were left with things like, wow, she can see Russia on a clear day. It would seem to be that she was more conservative than McCain. I admit I'm curious as to why you ask.
I will respond first to your Palin comments. My greater point is that as a governor, Palin is more in line with the actual process of being a president. Admittedly, a smaller scale than the president but a similar process all the same. Of course, I understand that statement will play into your argument slightly. But I also think that when one follows msm about her, naturally it will reflect a negative image. If you don't think so, follow the coverage of JM, BO, & JB. We know who they are and they get favorable coverage. Palin is not them, even by your own admission. And look at the coverage she gets!! I am not sold on the supposive lack of intelligence. Additionally, I think that some of your comments on Palin are confused with Tina Fey. But aside from that, why do you think she comes off as unintelligent? One interview? Because she doesn't use fifty cents words, or ten dollar phrases? Intelligence is not measured in one interview or the price of word or phrases. She expressed ideas and thoughts that were truly the only difference between all the candidates. Biden, McCain, and Obama simply played three man roll to see who could express the greater expansion of government. In the meantime, Palin was expressing ideas and thoughts that didn't necessarily include government expansion. Thus, if that is the measure of intelligence (expression of government expansion and by virtue of that expansion greater intrusion on individual freedom, than I am by far the least intelligent poster here. And if this is true, I will accept this label. Because I don't want to be intelligent by those standards) than I guess you are right. Not one shred of intelligence ever came out of her mouth. Forgive me, that was not a vent, however, I am sure it probably seemed like one. Nor was it something to seem as an expression of negativity towards you, I am simply saying what I believe to be a truism of many on these boards. I don't differentiate between those who sympathize deeply with victimization (real or perceived) and expanding government. That is a nuanced statement, so please don't lump into one big basket, even if it appears I just did. As to your second statement, actually a question, I asked because I wanted to be clear that you could see a philosophical difference between McCain and Palin. This is the greater reason for any rift between them. There is a huge philosophical gap between them. That is why I cannot believe McCain actually asked her on. Perhaps, McCain being who he is wanted to crush her before she ever had the chance to see the light day politically. Judging from the election fallout and media coverage, he has done a pretty good job.
