Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
It’s a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big — really big — in next year’s elections?
Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that’s not the story. “I think what’s going to happen is Obama’s going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010,” says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. “This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things early, fail, or succeed partially, ask Democrats to take really tough votes, and then lose. A lot of guys are going to get beat, but the president has time to recover.”
The only thing I need to have explained, is this sense of shock and irony. Why is anyone surprised about this?
Reminds me of a story:
The story is about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion reassures him that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown as well. The frog then agrees; nevertheless, in mid-river, the scorpion stings him, dooming the two of them. When asked why, the scorpion explains, “I’m a scorpion; it’s my nature.”
Conservatives are still smarting from having the extraordinarily bad idea foisted upon them, by friend and foe alike, to moderate their tone, moderate their tone, moderate the tone some more…and getting their butts handed to them in last year’s election in what is arguably a direct consequence of failing to get any coherent message out. Yes, that is bad, but look to the folks running everything for a view of the alternative.
Liberalism is extreme by its nature. If the left-wing power grab of 2009 is now in its twilight days and the time has come to look back and perform an autopsy on the whole thing, the one thing that stands out is this: There was nothing moderate about any of the things they did, or tried to do, except for their “don’t worry” rhetoric. Which means their lies. They took cookies out of the jar each and every little chance they could get, and when Mom caught ’em doing it they simply told her they weren’t taking any cookies.
That worked — how could it not? Whenever they choose a champion, the champion is selected based on a personal ability to tell Mom one is not eating cookies when one’s mouth is, in fact, chock full of cookie. Think back on the decades…no other talent has ever been applicable. They call it lots of things…charisma…personality…”There’s Just Something About Him I Can’t Explain It!” You’d think there’d be more curiosity about how it is we define the next leader of the free world. Well, the blunt truth of it is it’s all about lying capably. The democrat party always wants to nominate The Perfect Liar, because to them governing a jurisdiction is an exercise in getting away with things. Their discipline is one of selling something contrary to the buyer’s interest, the more of it, the better.
But the strategy was doomed to fall apart when they took on health care. That’s when people really, really want to know they aren’t being swindled. This is to everybody’s discredit. Seek assurances some other guy isn’t going to be euthanized, or some baby isn’t going to be aborted, perhaps tossed in a garbage bin; you can be told lies, tell ya sweet little lies. Spend some other guy’s money, and the sales pitch doesn’t have to be that strong. Seek assurances you won’t be short-changed, and whoa. Time for a much, much higher standard.
So what do the democrats do? Go after health care first.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. We’re just starting to achieve a comprehension of how big and bad the wreckage is, how gaping of a flesh wound has been inflicted on the corporeal form of Obama’s popularity…the faith the country has in Him…the faith His own followers have in Him. It’s just not there anymore. Take His wonderful personality out of the equation, and the problem persists, the situation with distrust unchanged. He has been unmasked as a sales agent, for something that desperately needs a sales agent — which effectively turns His wonderful personality into a “dog bites man” story, since a wonderful personality is something you expect any salesman to have. As Neal Boortz says:
[Y]esterday on my show I repeatedly begged listeners to make a call. Call the show and convince me that Obama and the Democrats are sincerely concerned about our health care. Show me that they really stay awake nights worrying that somewhere there is an American in need of health care yet going untreated. Not one call. Not one solitary, stinking call. Not one caller out of millions would call in to try to make the case that the issue here is health care, not control over the people.
Well…I hope the rest of the country has learned its lesson, a hell of a lot better than they learned theirs. I hope that, but I strongly doubt it.
But why the surprise? To me, the only big question is how can the democrats avoid a huge ass-reaming. As another very wise man said,
We put liberals in charge when we get sick of conservatives, and conservatives in charge when we get sick of the liberals. And we get sick of liberals about three or four times quicker. It’s their solutions, you see. They don’t work.
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Sometimes you really remind me of my little brother 😉
- philmon | 08/14/2009 @ 06:53The issue becomes will the Republicans have the stomach to undo whatever the Democrats have done up to that point? Or at least to make a serious effort? It makes no difference if the Republicans win it all in 2010 if the march of statism is only slowed.
I have strong doubts on that point. Chances are the crap that the Democrats pass into law will not ever be repealed because Republicans are cowards and mostly do not really espouse conservative principles.
I’d like to be proven wrong, but when have they ever managed to roll back the Democrat programs?
- KG | 08/14/2009 @ 11:58That is precisely what I’m afraid of, KG … with this health care bill. It’s a gargantuan expansion of the Federal Government, and it will be very difficult for Republicans to find the will to undo it, and I know that, so it would be best if it never gets done … this will give us more time to try to wake our friends and families and co-workers up to the fact that we’re already down a road that goes somewhere we don’t want to go … it’s time to turn around. If that takes a third party, then that’s what it takes. If it takes the Republicans re-inventing themselves and growing some nads, I’m good with that, too.
- philmon | 08/14/2009 @ 12:02to moderate their tone, moderate their tone, moderate the tone some more…
BS. If you substitute “spend” for “moderate their tone” then you might be on to something. Not to mention all the frickin’ ethics scandals. Tom DeLay and his buds did us no favors, amigo. You may counter with “ethics scandals were trumped up” and I might agree with you, in part. But that shit plays in Peoria. As does four years of mismanaged war before Dubya got on the right track. Your “moderate” (verb,transitive) dog don’t hunt, Morgan.
- bpenni | 08/14/2009 @ 12:05The issue becomes will the Republicans have the stomach to undo whatever the Democrats have done up to that point?
It’s a good question. The democrat hands upon us are very much like a sledgehammer upon a railroad spike. Our getting repulsed by liberals four times as quickly, six times as quickly, or even ten, can be likened to the railroad spike spending ten times as much time not getting pounded as getting pounded. But the hole still gets drilled.
I don’t have an answer for how to fill it in again. You’d be especially distressed if you lived in the state I call home (assuming you do not), where it’s wall-to-wall “budget crisis” every hour of every day. The Golden State resident bears witness to a fascinating psychological flaw in the widespread populace, and perhaps it’s worthy of a post of its own. Highlights: You can NOT buy a paper that doesn’t carry some kind of state budget woe on its front page. It’s all weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth…people are real good at echoing the misery…everyone complaining…dirges fill the air…
…and then when someone points out the third graders don’t have Barcaloungers with vibrating massagey seats all over their classrooms, all budget problems are forgotten in an instant. For the next year and a half solid you can remind them about budget misery five times a day, force them to echo it, and they’ll still be getting a chirp in edgewise about the poor little toe-heads and the Barcaloungers.
My test of what you want done is very simple: First in, first out. So scare up the political capital to deep-six Social Security, or at least grandfather it away. If no one’s got the brass ones to pull that off, I’m not holding my breath on the rest of it, and I can’t advise you to hold your breath either. It’s sugar in the gas tank. Things’ll never be the same, never, never not ever.
Your “moderate” (verb,transitive) dog don’t hunt, Morgan.
Buck, m’friend, your theory cannot be considered seriously because it cannot be falsified. The Republicans put all their faith in moderates last year, did they not? Something about Fred Thompson didn’t have enough fire in the belly or some such drivel like that? They got their asses kicked good, did they not? How’s that “Let’s ditch Fred he’s not lively enough” decision looking now?
Every single beef and bitch about Republicans I hear — within reason — is something that was soundly addressed by Fred. But the powers-that-be tried it your way…sell the sizzle not the steak…appeal to those who value packaging over substance. Something about wanting to sway the moderates. One year after, I can count the moderates so swayed on the fingers of one hand. Epic fail. People don’t vote for something that doesn’t have the good old fashioned balls to state what exactly it is. Not unless it happens to be adorable, like His Holiness. If it isn’t fun to look at, and you have to spend more than a few minutes staring at it to figure out what it’ll do…then no sale. You’re plenty knowledgeable about people, and plenty savvy, to see that.
Evidently, you seem to think some different sequence of observables needs to trudge on down the conveyor belt of time, before your current point of view can be revisited and called into legitimate question. If the events of last year through November didn’t quite do the trick, then with all due respect I’m wondering what it takes. Seriously. Methinks for a moderate-verb-transitive guy you’re guilty of having made up your mind on something that isn’t quite ready to have its lid riveted & welded in place just yet. That’s supposed to be the sin favored by us rabid, wild-eyed, spittle-flinging extremist folks.
- mkfreeberg | 08/14/2009 @ 12:28When I try to think of the end point of the Democrat agenda for America, where the gov’t controls pretty much everything and things start to really become totalitarian… my imagination fails.
Are we going to just sit and take it? It’s really sad that it seems there is nothing we can do beyond voting in more frauds to replace the ones already in.
At what point will potential recruits for the police and military refuse to join the tyranny? Will existing police and military support the state of affairs?
Sorry for these questions that are probably pointless, but I feel restless…. I am reminded by that quote from, I believe, Solzhenitsyn, where he says that those Russians who did not agree with the Bolsheviks later wished that they had resisted more forcefully when it was still possible. I’m afraid that their regret will become ours.
- KG | 08/14/2009 @ 12:58Methinks for a moderate-verb-transitive guy you’re guilty of having made up your mind on something that isn’t quite ready to have its lid riveted & welded in place just yet. That’s supposed to be the sin favored by us rabid, wild-eyed, spittle-flinging extremist folks.
My mind remains open, Morgan. You, OTOH, seem to have this recurring theme that runs something along the lines of “moderation sucks,” to be brief about it. Before I dive too deep, let me remind you that we agree on much more than we disagree. But… that said… perception is reality. You perceive our current political reality to be the failure of moderation; I think it’s more a failure that has everything to do with the Republicans losing their way (excess spending, expansion of Big Gub’mint, self-serving interests that bordered on the illegal and were most certainly UNethical).
As for “the powers that be” that sold sizzle rather than steak… again: BS. What we saw last summer and into the Fall was quite possibly THE most ineptly managed presidential campaign in history. McCain couldn’t sell any goddamned thing, and more over: he had no coherent message, to begin with. Or rather he had too many messages and no focus. There was way too much attention paid to focus groups and less to being what he truly was: a basically honest man who wanted to do good by the country. When McCain concentrated on being McCain he generally did fairly well. But when he listened to his handlers he fell on his frickin’ face. Don’t confuse ineptitude with moderation.
That’s the way I interpret things, but then again I could be wrong. I accept that possibility, unlike some of us who remain convinced of their infallibility.
- bpenni | 08/14/2009 @ 14:14Another thing: Buck, m’friend, your theory cannot be considered seriously because it cannot be falsified. WTF? If my theory can’t be “falsified” then is it not true? Or am I misinterpreting something, to wit:
fal⋅si⋅fy
/ˈfɔlsəfaɪ/ verb, -fied, -fy⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1. to make false or incorrect, esp. so as to deceive: to falsify income-tax reports.
Your move. Over.
- bpenni | 08/14/2009 @ 14:31I’m entirely in Buck’s corner on this one.
The only reason we’re dealing with all of this Obama/Pelosi/Reid bullshit at the moment is because the congressional GOP screwed the pooch. They governed badly and deserved to get kicked to curb for their wild spending, crap legislation and ethics violations. We would have lost the White House, but getting our asses handed to us in the legislative branch was the killer.
I’m still pissed off at our supposedly good government, conservative reps and senators behaving like raving drunken despots. They deserved to be fired.
McCain lost because he was fricking 115 years old and sounded like Tinkerbell. Besides, I don’t know a soul who would call him truly conservative other than squishy centrists and liberals.
- Daphne | 08/14/2009 @ 15:02I am so loving the header!!!
- Daphne | 08/14/2009 @ 15:03Ask the wikkans:
McCain’s primary appeal, at the time he was nominated, was not his honorable military service. I don’t know of a single Republican who said, either with regard to his own feelings or speaking credibly on behalf of others, “Let’s pick McCain over Rudy or Huck or Mitt, because his military service record will make him a shoe-in.” No, the concern was that these coveted middle-of-the-roaders might be alienated, or to be more positive about it, an opportunity to win over our 2008 “Reagan democrats” might have been lost. So best to nominate McCain, about whom occasionally even the New York Times has some wonderful things to say. Can’t hurt; might help!
Now between the Republican convention and Election Day, how many nice things did McCain’s old friends at the NYT have to say about him?
I stand by my comment: Epic fail.
You’re right, we do agree on far more than we disagree. The problem with the whole spending thing you cite is part of our agreement…I hope you’re not thinking it’s evidence that my outlook is somehow bollywonkers, because it isn’t. Reinforces my point, actually, if nothing else. If McCain wins — look at all the messages that do NOT get sent. We don’t send a message to Washington to control spending; we don’t send a message to ignore MoveOnDotOrg and lay the smack down on the next Saddam Hussein that comes along; we don’t send a message to get our tort system under control, or that we want to see more Sam Alitos and fewer Ruth Baders.
If it happens to be raining on Tuesday evening, why miss a re-run of Friends? Palin going through her list of “Victory in Iraq is in sight, he wants to forfeit, Government spends too much money, he wants to grow it more” — that does the trick. There’s a message there. So the DVR will catch Friends.
But McCain, who’s ready to let in illegal aliens, and thinks global warming is a serious problem just so he doesn’t alienate some Washington pals of his?
Nope. The teevee beckons. Meanwhile…democrats are missing surgery appointments to vote for His Holiness.
Funny thing though — when candidates on the right avoid giving specifics on the issues, they lose support, and they get it back again when they talk candidly about those specifics. On the other side, it seems to work bassackwardly from that. Just in general.
- mkfreeberg | 08/14/2009 @ 15:28Ask the wikkans:
I am schooled; thank you. One could also make the case that your “moderate” argument fails this test, as well. We will agree to disagree on this point, as usual.
- bpenni | 08/15/2009 @ 11:49