An absolute menace
Oh my stars and garters. This WaPo profile of Sarah Palin is terrifying. Here are the key grafs:
In 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News she learned from it all. “At the time, it seemed perplexing that people would object. I was very bold about what needed to be done,” she said. “It was rough with a staff who didn’t want to be there working with a new boss. I learned you’ve got to be very discerning early on and decide if you can win them over or not. If you can’t, you replace them early on.”
Palin’s replacements included a public works director who lacked engineering experience but was married to a top aide to a former Republican governor, and she made a former state GOP lawyer city attorney, according to the Daily News. Langill, the former councilwoman, said the new hires fit Palin’s management style.
“Sarah always did and still does surround herself with people she gets along well with,” she said. “They protect her, and that’s what she needs. She has surrounded herself with people who would not allow others to disagree with Sarah. Either you were in favor of everything Sarah was doing or had a black mark by your name.”
Demanding utter loyalty from surrogates? Intolerance of dissenting viewpoints? Appointing unqualified hacks to key positions? We’ve seen this sort of thing before, my friends. It isn’t change we can believe in.
UPDATE: To repeat myself, I hope that women’s rights groups are planning an ad blitz that attacks Palin for this:
Despite the city’s flush accounts, the police department under the chief Palin hired to replace Stambaugh required women who said they had been raped to pay for examination kits themselves, a policy Palin now says she rejects. State legislation passed a year later required the town to pay for the kits.
Her “rejection” of her town’s own rape kit policy is the same as her “rejection” of the Bridge to Nowhere. She only changed her position when the decision had already been taken out of her hands.
UPDATE II: I have obtained exclusive footage of Sarah Palin teaching the Defense of the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts:
I just read this article before I came over here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26691018/
I’m trying to decide whether she is the second coming of Nixon or Bush. I think I’m going with Nixon because I’m really sure that she has an enemies list somewhere.
It’s a match made in heaven! Two opportunistic liars on the same ticket, and both of them so wildly incompetent and insecure. Yes, it’s the absolute apex of all things Republican.
Her “rejection” of her town’s own…policy…
She was for her own policies before she was against them.
Palin satisfies a crucial vacuum in our electoral choice of leaders.
If you liked George W. Bush Jr., but thought Bush Jr. was too calm, collected, diplomatic, open-governing, respecting of the Constitution and the law, incorruptible, and fair-handed, and that he wasn’t apocalyptic Christian enough, you’ll LOVE Sarah Palin as President.
El Cid said,
“If you liked George W. Bush Jr., but thought Bush Jr. was too calm, collected, diplomatic, open-governing, respecting of the Constitution and the law, incorruptible, and fair-handed, and that he wasn’t apocalyptic Christian enough, you’ll LOVE Sarah Palin as President.”
You just described a lot of the republican base.
If you liked George W. Bush Jr., but thought Bush Jr. didn’t wear skirts in public often enough, you’ll LOVE Sarah Palin as President.
As horrifying a picture as this WaPo piece (and the NYTimes piece I linked to on the last thread) paints, this piece paints an even more terrifying picture.
Not only does Palin embody the very worst of George W. Bush, she is also in training to become the next Cheney.
Jesus, if the Dems can’t beat McCain/Palin…I don’t want to think about it. If that happens, I’m afraid we’ll pretty much deserve our nation’s total collapse. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but if we elected those creeps in 2008 we’d have nobody to blame but our selves. Not that that won’t stop some from blaming the Hippies, the fags, the feminists and those Liberal loving MSM traitors. Now I’m depressed, thank you very much motherfuckin’ Republican authoritarian sadist freaks.
The piece Jennifer links to is worth a read: Caribou Barbie was identified as a star by none other than William Kristol, the man who brought us Dan Quayle. But more to the point, they make clear that she is an empty vessel, being filled with all the loony powermad ideas of the neocons (haven’t they been discredited yet?). If this ticket makes it to the White House, expect to hear much more of her as she transforms this country into Palinstan.
The prospect of McCain/Palin actually getting elected and running the country is precisely why I’m saving my last bullet for myself.
She has extensive experience firing people:
And she’s used to hardball politics:
What we’re learning from Sarah Palin–if we didn’t already know it–is that the pattern set by the Cheney-Bush administration, far from being a terribly unfortunate accident, is a deep reflection of the governing philosophy of what passes for conservatism in the U.S. today.
The extent to which Palin-McCain is already reproducing the basic patterns of Cheney-Bush is stunning: actually weak president with strong leader-memes (GWB: businessman, governor, beer-having-with-
dry drunkguy; JSM: POWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOW); Machiavellian VP with strong rightwing credentials and penchant for secrecy and authoritarianism.But this pattern did not originate with Cheney-Bush. This was the neocon dream for the Bush 41 presidency, too. It didn’t pan out because the beta version of Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, really was a moron and George H.W. Bush, whatever his faults, was less of a milquetoast than the hard right thought him to be.
And to a certain extent, when you dig under a lot of the Reagan hagiography, you also find than many on the right thought that St. Ronnie, too, was a useful idiot. A smiling package for the folks who really ran things behind the scenes.
To engage in some armchair history here, I think this pattern is a kind of synthesis of the Goldwater conservative movement with what Rick Perlstein calls “Nixonland,” that place conjured up by Tricky Dick’s style of politics. The lessons of 1964 to 1972 for the hard right were that you needed a Nixon to win, but that he better not be the top of the ticket (or even on the ticket at all). If we see 1988 as the roll-out of this strategy, Palin-McCain might be an even purer example of the phenomenon than Cheney-Bush, as the New Nixons in a “McCain” administration would themselves be hidden behind the curtains at the Naval Observatory (or the Undisclosed Location).
Good times!
Erp….those are the lessons of 1964 to 1974. The main problem with Watergate, of course, from the GOP’s POV was that they got caught. And the best way to assure that they won’t get caught in the future–and to limit damage if they do–is to leave the president almost entirely out of the loop from the get-go.
She’s got the incompetence of Dubya, and the black heart of Cheney!
She’s two-two-two tyrants in one!
Demanding utter loyalty from surrogates? Intolerance of dissenting viewpoints? Appointing unqualified hacks to key positions? We’ve seen this sort of thing before, my friends. It isn’t change we can believe in.
Not to mention what today’s New York Times article points out:
Gee, this all sounds so familiar. Change we can believe in — yeah, changing us back all the way to the bygone days of 2006. That’s political cronyism we can believe in, my friends.
The tough question for McPOW: “Would the man who was spending those 5 1/2 years in POW hell be supporting the kind of nation-risking sleaze you’re doing now?”
MCCain/Palin. Just like Bush/Cheney, but less competent.
And to a certain extent, when you dig under a lot of the Reagan hagiography, you also find than many on the right thought that St. Ronnie, too, was a useful idiot. A smiling package for the folks who really ran things behind the scenes.
Saint Ronnie was particularly useful after he became senile.
A shame that we still have Reagan era thugs like Oliver North and Elliot Abrams haunting our world.
Oh, don’t let them tell you different since Bush Jr’s approval ratings came down from their post-9/11 high: Bush Jr. was Reagan II, just without the Congressional and institutional restraints that Reagan faced. McPalin will be Bush Jr / Cheney II, just being able to start at the Constitution-ignoring / war-mongering extreme position which Bush Jr / Cheney brought us to.
But more to the point, they make clear that she is an empty vessel, being filled with all the loony powermad ideas of the neocons
All she brings to the table is ambition, religion and her own personal touch, loyalty poltics and personal vindictiveness.
Also from the NYT article on her small town cronyism and thuggery:
And to a certain extent, when you dig under a lot of the Reagan hagiography, you also find than many on the right thought that St. Ronnie, too, was a useful idiot. A smiling package for the folks who really ran things behind the scenes.
I think David Frum has said this more or less openly a few times. I think it’s one of the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats seem to see their presidential candidates as actual *leaders*, as someone who can come up with ideas, policies, etc., and make them a reality. Republicans see their presidential candidates as vehicles or puppets for their philosophy. It doesn’t matter so much what he believes–better, in fact, if he believe nothing at all–as long as he’s willing to do what he’s told. I think that’s why Romney, essentially a programmable robot, was such a popular candidate among the GOP flacks while McCain, who really does rebel every now and again, was seen as a disaster.
I’ve often thought that the Republican approach to the Presidency must be a bit vexing for the cabinet members to deal with. Condi Rice and Colin Powell are not stupid people, whatever their other flaws might be. Yet, after they’d spent a week hammering out the details of some policy or other, they’d have to go present it to Idiot Boy, who doesn’t understand half of what’s going on and won’t really listen anyway.
Then again, maybe it’s somehow a comfort for them to know that they don’t actually have to make the tough decisions themselves.
As governor she appointed a high school friend, a real estate agent, to head the Dept. Of Agriculture. Qualifications? The friend said that she just loved cows as a child.
Immerse yourselves in these profiles completely, until they seem unremarkable to you. Because she’s the 45th President of the United States.
I was at a Harry Potter convention in Chicago last month and one of the vendors was selling buttons that read “McCain/Umbridge”. I bought one, and confused a few non-HP reading people by wearing it to the Obama-Biden rally in Springfield, until I explained the analogy. (The HP fans got it right away.)
Who know that the HP fans were so prescient?
You can put lipstick on George W. Bush, but it’s still George W. Bush.
In an attempt to inject some levity here (mea culpa) I presume everyone’s seen the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator?
http://www.personal-space.com/palin/index.php
For example, were I a member of the Palin household *shudder* I’d most likely be called to victuals via “Guzzle Red Palin”.
He most certainly was. He was a speech reader. A good one, I’ll give you, and exceptionally well cast for the target audience, but still nothing more than B-movie actor in the role of his life.
Back in the day, as Tip O’Neill was retiring, and Ronnie was a lame
dickduck, the Globe excerpted Tip’s memoirs in their Sunday magazine. (Ah, for the days when newspapers were newspapers, but I digress.) Tip basically came out saying “Hey, I’m out, he’s out, no politics, here’s what I think of the guy. Great at cocktail parties. Fun. Nice to hang with. All around good guy. He’ll talk baseball stats from the 30s with you ’til your ears fall off. The second you bring up policy, he sits down and shuts up because he just doesn’t know.”As I saw it at the time, he was Bush-1’s method of pulling three if not four terms. That would be why I spent most of the 80s, pre and post Hinckley, sporting a “Shoot Bush First” button. Again, I digress.
Nah, cue the Cheney “Why so serious” photoshop…
I just watched George Stephanopolous accept silently and smilingly a flat-out lie from Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina said “It is a fact that Sarah Palin did not accept money from Congress for the Bridge to Nowhere.”
No.
The fact is that she asked for the money. And she kept it.
Do you think Steffie would let anyone but Republicans get away with lying straight to his face?
Palin is just the 2008 version of Rove’s original monstrous creation. He’s taken the basic Bush formula and added a few new ingredients. And voila! The latest newest Rovenstein’s monster.
I looooove my Palin name:
Comma Liberty Palin
It’s almost as good as my Unitarian Jihad name:
The Gatling Gun of Seeing All Sides of the Question
She said it wrong. It’s supposed to start, “The fact is…”
She gets no Ruppertstars today.
To repeat myself, I hope that women’s rights groups are planning an ad blitz that attacks Palin for this:
Despite the city’s flush accounts, the police department under the chief Palin hired to replace Stambaugh required women who said they had been raped to pay for examination kits themselves, a policy Palin now says she rejects. State legislation passed a year later required the town to pay for the kits.
That would be great, but I’m worried that since we haven’t seen anything yet, we’re not going to see this matter go any further. That info has been out there for a while now and no one seems to give a shit about how terribly she treats her own gender.
Change, my ass.
Stepper Choke Palin, moi?
And to think for years I blasted chimpy for being an incometent fascist.
I left the typo because it fit so well.
“Sarah Palin had $15 million for an ice rink, but no money for rape kits.”
that line needs to be repeated by every obama surrogate from now until election day.
combine it with mccain’s perverse attacks on obama for supporting legislation to protect kids from sex predators, and you have a devastating ad.
[…] hat tip to Jennifer, commentating over at Sadly, No! […]
Just for the hell of it, I pumped in a few neocon names into the generator. Here’s what I got.
Politicians:
George Bush: Open Aircraft Palin
Dick Cheney: Wood Corps Palin
John McCain: Steam Fangs Palin
Sarah Palin: Flack Gobbler Palin
Hacks:
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Clamp Noodle Palin
Rich Lowry: Bullpen Cola Palin
and my favorite….
Jonah Goldberg: Hunger Tallest Palin
McCollapse/Palinpocalypse 2008
-GSD
On competence, check out the compilation of the recent legislative record of Obama and McCain, impressively put together by Hilzoy at The Washington Monthly, in three parts:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014711.php#more
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014707.php#more
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014711.php#more
Worth a careful read. I’m wondering if McCain knoweth what be this thing called “spam” … cue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE
syndactyly said,
September 14, 2008 at 17:21
“Sarah Palin had $15 million for an ice rink, but no money for rape kits.”
It’s not just that, but she also left the tiny town of Wasilla with 20 million in long term debt.
She’s the high profile distraction. McCain has gained in Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia. Sorry to say, its gone past being a fluke. Those three states are recoverable. The stuff that will work; mccain’s a liar who will say anything if he thinks it will get him elected, obama’s got a comprehensive economic plan for pulling out of recession while mccain wants more of what we have, mcain will tax your health insurance premiums, obama has a well-thought out plan to get us out of Iraq and a lot generals think it will work. Go for the big issues and the big differences. McCain’s an unbelievable liar, Obama is telling the truth. Leave Mandy Moosestew to the 527’s and the comedians, they can do the most damage to her, they can remove the idea that she’s a serious candidate (“how disrespectful!”). And ask The Big Dog to make speeches in a series of smallish towns in Ohio.
That.
have no idea why that isn’t being shouted to the rooftops 24/7 at this point. It’s a death knell.
Whoops, “I have no idea.”
El Cid said,
September 14, 2008 at 17:09
I just watched George Stephanopolous accept silently and smilingly a flat-out lie from Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina said “It is a fact that Sarah Palin did not accept money from Congress for the Bridge to Nowhere.”
That’s actually extensive parsing, along the lines of what is the meaning of the word “is”.
Sarah Palin didn’t accept money from Congress for the Bridge to Nowhere, because Congress never offered her any.
The lies are: 1) The claim that Palin TOLD Congress she wouldn’t take money for the bridge, and 2) that she even opposed it at all, before Congress decided they wouldn’t provide any federal funding for it.
She did “officially” kill the bridge to nowhere…long after Congress said that the money they had appropriated for it could be spent by Alaska, on anything other than the bridge.
Which is exactly what they/she did. There’s a whole lotta lying goin’ on, but depend on the rethugs to parse their words carefully (except for McSame. For five 1/2 years, he couldn’t parse his words, my friends).
See Bob.
She’s scary, all right. I made the Umbridge comparison a while back.
Fiorina most certainly lied, given that under no circumstance did anyone watching believe that Congress had been offering Sarah Palin money; Palin requested the funds; the funds were awarded to Alaska; Palin accepted the funds; and Palin kept the funds.
So, no, it’s not parsing — Palin accepted money from Congress specifically for the Bridge To Nowhere.
El Cid, from the Daily Howler link:
In response to that public firestorm, the Congress rescinded its “Bridges to Nowhere” earmark in November 2005.
Furthermore:
1) The bridge “became a national scandal” in the fall of 2005.
2) Palin was elected governor in November 2006.
3) As governor, Palin stopped the project in September 2007.
Yes the rethugs are lying, but some of them are being sneaky about it.
When Carly says Palin never accepted money from Congress for the bridge, she is technically correct. Money from Congress, for the bridge, was never offered to Palin.
The money was still offered to Alaska, if it was spent on anything other than the bridge (hey, is there an echo in here?). That money was accepted by Palin, and spent on other stuff…including, ironically enough, roads to the nonexistent bridge.
But no money was ever offered by Congress to build the bridge, hence Sarah Palin never accepted money from Congress to build the bridge.
Palin for V.P. : What a cunning stunt.
I’m starting to think the best thing the left can do to hurt Palin is pretend we all love her.
Michael Moore should declare his love publicly, and often.
I want a Ward Churchill endorsement of Palin, too.
And Chomsky.
McCain/Umbrage ’08
Missouri State Rep. Scott Muschany, (R)-Frontenac, was indicted today, Aug 6, 2008, in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17
But Senator Obama is bad for wanting to protect kids from assholes like this?
Yeah, right.
I know why Repigs are against abortion and birth control — the perverts in their party need a fresh supply of victims every few years.
From the New Yorker profile:
According to “Sarah,” a biography by Kaylene Johnson, Palin had got into politics after she befriended the man who was then mayor and his police chief at a step-aerobics class. She made them her allies and ran for City Council. Then she challenged them for control of City Hall, and drove them out. As she purged her former friends and patrons, she denounced them as “good ol’ boys,” although her takeover of Wasilla had been aided from the start by Alaska’s Republican Party establishment.
this seems to be a pattern of hers. She worms in and then turns on those who helped her.
Watch your back, McSame.
Also,
Gayboys for Sarah.
The gayest of gay rent boys on a traveling party float pole dancing and singing “sarah sarah sarah we love youuuuuuuu”.
Have Barney Frank say how awesome it’d be to have a gay icon in the White House, and Rupaul ask for fashion tips.
Argh. FYWP. wtf. Why’d it suddenly change its mind?
Carly was a craven lying hack in her days aboard the Lucentania. Leopard, spots, etc.
It’s an amazing show watching all the narcissistic losers circle McCain. He’s an industrial strength jackass magnet these days.
And by “circle” I mean “fluff”.
We can only wish, but I doubt they’d do it. Chomsky: definitely not. MM: he might do it, but in a ha-ha comedic way. Churchill: actually, being an attention whore, he probably would do it.
How quickly would Hannity flip flop on national radio if Bill Ayers (or someone claiming to be Bill Ayers) called in and said that he did, in fact, apologize for everything he’d done, and he wanted to call for everyone to vote for President Palin, um, I mean, um, McCain?
The passage of the Mayflower over the Atlantic was long and rough. Often before its bosom had been torn by keels seeking the golden fleece for kings, but now the kings themselves were on board this frail craft, bringing the golden fleece with them; and the old deep had all that she could do to bear this load of royalty safely over. Stern as she was, the men borne on her waves were sterner. More than a new empire was intrusted to her care, a new freedom. ‘What ailed thee, O sea?’ When this historic ship came to her moorings, not unlike the vessel tossed on Galilee, she was freighted with principles, convictions, institutions and laws. These should first govern a quarter of the globe here, and then go back to the Old World to effect its regeneration and shape its future. THE PILGRIMS knew not that the King of all men was so signally with them in the bark, and would send them forth as the fishers of Gennesaret were sent, on an errand of revolution. In intellect, conscience and true soul-greatness, these quiet founders of a new nation were highly gifted, so that song and story will send their names down to the end of time on the bead-roll of fame. The monarchs of the earth have already raised their crowns in reverence to their greatness, and they are canonized in the moral forces which impelled and followed them.
Imperial bombast in James I had chuckled over this band of strong-souled ones. He ‘had peppered them soundly,’ as he loved to boast, and ‘harried them’ out of his land in the bitterness of their grief; but when their sturdy feet pressed Plymouth Rock they had a conscience void of offense toward Holland, England and God. An invisible hand had guided the helm of the Mayflower to a rock from which, in a wintry storm, a group of simple-hearted heroes, with bare heads, could proclaim a Church without a bishop and a State without a king. Next to their adoration of the Lord of Hosts, their great religious thought at that moment was English Separatism. This thought had bearings in embryo upon the future births of time, in the genesis of such truths as only mature in the throes of ages. The founders of Plymouth were not Puritans, or Non-conformists, but Separatists, who had paid a great price for their freedom, and had come from an independent congregation in Leyden. Their great germinal idea was deep-seated, for their love of liberty had been nourished with the blood of a suffering brotherhood. They ranked with the most advanced thinkers and lovers of the radical principles of their age, and yet, though they were honestly feeling their way to those principles in all their primal simplicity, they had not already attained to their full use. They intended to be as honest and as honorable as the skies above them. History has laid the charge of rigid sternness at their door, but they evidently established their new colony in love to God and man.
Fuller, Collier, and several other old writers show that the Brownists, from whom they sprang, caught their idea of absolute Church independency from the Dutch Baptists. Weingarten makes this strong statement: ‘The perfect agreement between the views of Brown and those of the Baptists as far as the nature of a Church is concerned, is certainly proof enough that he borrowed this idea from them; though in his “True Declaration” of 1584 he did not deem it advisable to acknowledge the fact, lest he should receive in addition to all the opprobrious names heaped upon him, that of Anabaptist. In 1571 there were no less than 3,925 Dutchmen in Norwich.’ Also Scheffer says: ‘That Brown’s new ideas concerning the nature of the Church opened to him in the circle of the Dutch Baptists in Norwich. Brandt, in his “Reformation in the Low Countries,” shows that when Brown’s Church was dissolved by dissentions at Middleburg, in the Netherlands, where the Baptists were very numerous, some of his people fell in with the Baptists.’ And Johnson, pastor of the Separatist Church at Amsterdam, wrote, in 1606 that ‘divers’ of that Church who had been driven from England ‘fell into the errors of the Anabaptists, which were too common in those countries.’ Bishop Sanderson wrote, in 1681, that Whitgift and Hooker did ‘long foresee and declare their fear that if Puritanism should prevail amongst us, it would soon draw in Anabaptism after it. . . .
These good men judged right; they only considered, as prudent men, that Anabaptism had its rise from the same principles the Puritans held, and its growth from the same courses they took, together with the natural tendency of their principles and practices toward it.’ He then says that if the ground be taken that the Scriptures are the only rule so as ‘nothing might lawfully be done without express warrant, either from some command or example therein contained, the clew thereof, if followed as far as it would lead, would certainly in time carry them as far as the Anabaptists were then gone.’
This clear-minded prelate perfectly understood the logical and legitimate result of Baptist principles, and this result the Plymouth men had readied on the question of Church independency, but they were still learners on the question of full liberty of conscience aside from the will of magistrates.
The permanent landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth began Dec. 20th, 1620 (O. S.), but on the 11th of November they had entered into a solemn ‘compact,’ thus: ‘Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.’ For about a month after founding the settlement their government took something of the patriarchal form, with the governor, John Carver, as the head of the family. Soon seven assistants were given to him, who in time became his council. In 1623 trial by jury was established in case of trespass between man and man, and of crime. Then laws were passed fixing the age of freemen at twenty-one years, provided, that they were sober, peaceful and orthodox in religion. To secure the last, membership in the Church was made a test of citizenship, and so they fell into the blunder of making their civil and ecclesiastical polity one, a strange combination of iron and clay, intended to be inexorable after the pattern of the ancient Hebrew Commonwealth, although that exact form of government had perished two thousand years before, and long before the Church of Christ with its spiritual laws existed.
They themselves had first tasted the sweets of civil and religious liberty in the Netherlands, under the advanced Christian idea of government for man as such. They had availed themselves of that liberty which Christian patriots, and amongst them the Dutch Baptists, had suffered so much to purchase; and yet they had failed to learn the primary lesson of full liberty of conscience in civil government, as the first right of each man in the State.
Their mistake was inexcusable on the popular plea that this idea was in advance of their age. But for that idea and its practical use they would not have founded Plymouth; for without its shield they could not have found an asylum in Holland, when they were driven from their own home in England. Their liberty in Holland, while; in fact, the greatest possible reality to them, was treated in Plymouth as a mere impractical ideal, when they came to found a ‘civil body politic’ of their own. And this is rendered the more remarkable from the fact, that they were placed under no chartered religious restriction themselves. When they applied to England for a charter in 1618, Sir John Worsingham asked: ‘Who shall make your ministers?’ Their representative (‘ S.B.’) answered: ‘The power of making [them] was in the Church, to be ordained by the imposition of hands, by the fittest instruments they have; it must be either in the Church or from the pope; and the pope is Anti-christ.’ That point was waived, therefore, and Felt says that S.B. ‘asked his worship what good news he had for me to write tomorrow’ (to Robinson and Brewster). ‘He told me good news, for both the king’s majesty and the bishops have consented.’ The patent which was given them was taken in the name of John Wincob, a Christian gentleman who intended to accompany them, but who failed to do so, hence they could not legally avail themselves of its benefits, and really came without a patent. The petulance of the king would give them none, and they left without his authority, saying: ‘If there is a settled purpose to do us wrong, it is easy to break a seal, though it be as broad as a house floor.’ Felt says again: ‘The Pilgrims are aware that their invalid patent does not privilege them to be located so far north, and grants them “only the general leave of his majesty for the free exercise of the liberty of conscience in the public worship of God.”‘
In any case, therefore, with the patent or without it, they were left untrammeled in the exercise of their liberty of conscience, both as it ‘regards the form of religion which any citizen might choose, and his right to citizenship without any order of religion, after the Holland pattern. Under their own ‘compact’ then, they first formed a ‘civil body politic,’ and then a Church, the colony to be jointly governed by the officers of both. In some aspects of this union the State was rather absorbed into the Church than united to it, but the elders and magistrates were so united that together they enforced the duties both of the first and second tables of the Ten Commandments.
The elders did not always consult the civil functionary in Church matters, but the civil functionary did not act in important public affairs without consulting the elders.
THE PURITANS, who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1628, eight years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, were another people entirely. They had paid a less price for their religious freedom and were less tolerant in spirit; while in regard to the separation of the Church from the State they stood substantially with the Pilgrims. The Plymouth men had separated from the Church of England as a corrupt and fallen body, but the Puritans continued in communion with that Church, although they refused to conform to many of its practices and denounced them warmly; and hence were known as Non-conformists or Puritans. They believed firmly in the union of the Church and State as a political necessity, while the Pilgrims believed in it as a spiritual necessity, and in turn they were denounced by the Puritans as ‘schismatics.’ While the men of Massachusetts Bay were on shipboard, they sent an address to their friends in England calling the Established Church there their ‘dear mother,’ from whose bosom they had ‘sucked’ the hope of salvation. When the Atlantic stretched between them, however, they organized Congregational Churches and established them by law, limiting political suffrage to membership therein, obliging all citizens to pay for their support, coercing all into conformity therewith, forbidding all dissenting Churches, and enforcing these prohibitions and requirements by penalties of disfranchisement, fine, imprisonment, scourging and banishment, the same as in cases of civil crime. All is substantially summed up in this decree, passed May 18, 1631, by the general court: ‘No man shall be admitted to the body politic but such as are members of some of the Churches within the limits of the same,’ that is, the Colony. The Puritans having equal aversion to the Separatists of Leyden and to the assumptions of the Church of England, they aimed at working out a third way; but when they came to put their theory into practice the logic of events brought them to substantially the Plymouth position, and as the two colonies came to know each other, their prejudices and misunderstandings almost vanished. The agreement, however, between the men of the ‘Bay’ and those of ‘Plymouth’ concerning the constitution and polity of a Church was never perfect. The Plymouth Church order, at first, contained a trace of aristocracy in the ruling eldership, but this only continued during the lives of three men: Brewster, chosen in 1609; Cushman, in 1649; and Faunce, 1657.
After that the vital hold of the eldership was broken, the constant tendency being toward a pure democracy, giving to every member an equal voice. The ‘Bay’ Churches, on the contrary, gravitated toward what was called Barrowism, which placed Church power in the hands of the elders. But in 1648 the Cambridge platform gave the elders ‘the power of office,’ defined to be the right of ruling and directing the Church. After that the eldership became the ruling power in the Churches of New England, although this aristocratic tendency was less hearty in the Plymouth colony. The leaders in the Churches generally were from the higher walks of life, and were not prepared to admit the principle of a pure democracy in Church or State. They stood with Milton, Locke and Lightfoot in intelligence and literature, with Cromwell, Hampden and Pym in statesmanship. It is computed that the 21,000 persons who came into New England between 1630-40 brought with them ?500,000–?2,500,000, which, reckoning money as worth then six times more than it is today, they brought property to the value of ?15,000,000, and with this all the conservatism which wealth implied in those days. The most of this money was brought by the Puritans, as the Pilgrims were very poor. So long as the ‘body politic’ was one with the Church, their joint polity must be more rigorous and concentrated than the democratic form allowed, and so in a very short time proscription, bigotry and intolerance asserted themselves bravely. Bishop Peck, an admirer of the Puritans, who is ready to excuse their faults whenever he can, is compelled to say: ‘It is both curious and lamentable to see the extreme spirit of Protestantism reaching the very proscriptive bigotry of Romanism, and the brave assertion of Puritan rights resulting in the bitter persecuting tolerance of prelacy; and yet historical fidelity compels the admission. We must confess, however reluctantly, that the spirit of proscription and intolerance in New England is exactly identical with the same spirit which we found in Virginia.’
Still it is a pure mockery of historical truth, and an unjust reflection upon the Puritans themselves, to put in the special plea of modern discovery that the Massachusetts Bay Company was a mere business company, a body of ‘mercenary adventurers,’ as their worst enemies loved to brand them. The charter which they first received of James, and which Charles enlarged, made them a ‘body politic,’ so far as a colony could be, under which they both asserted and exercised the right of self-government in home affairs for more than half a century. Their charter endowed them with power to make laws, to choose civil officers, to administer allegiance to new citizens, to exact oaths, to support military officers from the public treasury, and to make defensive war, all independent of the crown. Nay, they made some offences capital, which were not capital in England. So thoroughly did they understand these rights and determine to defend them, that in 1634, when England appointed the archbishops and ten members of the Privy Council, with power to call in all patents of the plantations, to make laws, raise tithes for ministers, to remove governors, and inflict punishment even to death, Massachusetts Bay flew to arms, and rightly; too, as a Commonwealth, and not as a business corporation. All the pastors were convened with the civil officers of the colony to answer the question: ‘What we ought to do if a general governor shall be sent out of England?’ Their unanimous answer was: ‘We ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions, if we are able; otherwise to avoid or protract.’ And with the spirit, not of traders and mercenaries, but of patriots, they begun to collect arms and ammunition, to drill and discipline their men, and to fortify Castle Island, Charlestown and Dorchester Heights. The General Court forbade the circulation of farthings, made bullets a legal tender for a farthing each, appointed a military commission, established a strict military discipline, and erected a beacon on ‘Beacon Hill,’ to alarm the country in case of English invasion. More than this, the Military Commission was empowered ‘to do whatever may be further behooveful for the good of this plantation, in case of any war that may befall us.’ They also required every male resident of sixteen years and over to take the ‘Freeman’s Oath,’ and intrusted the Commission with the power of the death penalty. A facetious writer may be allowed to say that the Puritans came to this country ‘to worship God according to their own consciences, and to prevent other people from worshiping him according to theirn,’ and we can pardon his playful way of putting this matter. But it is unpardonable in a grave historian to impose upon his readers, by belittling these grand men, and underrating their virtues by ranking them with those who came here in search of religious liberty for themselves alone. To say that they looked upon their charter only as the title-deed of a grasping community holding their possessions by right of fee simple rather than as their only country which they had sworn to protect, is to do them the grossest wrong. They came for another purpose, of the highest and holiest order that liberty and the love of God could inspire. They sought this land not only as an asylum where they could be free themselves, but as a home for the oppressed who were strangers to them, else why did they enfranchise all refugees who took the oath and make them freemen, too? According to Felt, Styles, and many others, they founded a Christian ‘State.’
President Styles well said, in 1783: ‘It is certain that civil dominion was but the second motive, religion the primary one, with our ancestors in coming hither and settling this land.
It was not so much their design to establish religion for the benefit of the State, as civil government for the benefit of religion, and as subservient, and even necessary, for the peaceable enjoyment and unmolested exercise of religion–of that religion for which they fled to these ends of the earth.’ Their charter under Charles left them on the basis pointed out by Matthew Cradock, governor of the company; July 28th, 1629, namely, with ‘the transfer of the government of the plantation to those who shall inhabit there.’ as well as with liberty of conscience, so that they could be as liberal as they pleased in religious matters. They neither were nor could be chartered as a purely civil nor as a purely spiritual body, but all that related to the rights of man, body and soul, was claimed and enjoyed by them under their charter.
John Cotton understood that the colony possessed all the rights of a ‘body politic,’ with its attendant responsibilities. In his reply to Williams, he says: ‘By the patent certain select men, as magistrates and freemen, have power to make laws, and the magistrates to execute justice and judgment amongst the people according to such laws. By the patent we have power to erect such a government of the Church as is most agreeable to the word, to the estate of the people, and to the gaining of natives, in God’s time, first to civility, and then to Christianity. To this authority established by this patent. Englishmen do readily submit themselves; and foreign plantations, the French, the Dutch, the Swedish, do willingly transact their negotiations with us, as with a colony established by the royal authority of the State of England.’ No fault, therefore, is to be found with the Massachusetts Bay authorities for the punishment of civil and political offenders, even with banishment and death, as in the case of Frost, who was banished for crime in 1632, under the sentence: ‘He shall be put to death,’ if he returned. In 1633 the same thing was repeated in the case of Stone, this Commonwealth assuming the highest prerogative that any civil power can claim, that over life and death. Twenty distinct cases of banishment from the colony are on record within the first seven years of its settlement, fourteen of them occurring within the first year.
Their wrong lay not in these and similar acts for criminal and political causes, but in that they punished men for religious opinions and practices; under the plea, that to hold and express such opinions was a political offense by their laws, although the charter made no such demand of them; but permitted them, had they chosen, to extend equal religious rights to all the Christian colonists, with those which they exercised themselves. The simple fact is, that they wielded the old justification of persecution used by all persecutors from the days of Jesus down: ‘We have a law, and by our law he ought to die,’ without once stopping to ask by what right we have such a law. With all their high aims and personal goodness, they repeated the old blunder of law-makers, that those who were not one with them in religious faith should not exercise the rights of men in the body politic, because they must be and were its enemies. There can be but little doubt that with all their high aspirations after civil and religious liberty, the late Dr. Geo. E. Ellis, of Boston, stated then case with what Dr. Dexter pronounces ‘admirable accuracy,’ thus: ‘To assume, as some carelessly do, that when Roger Williams and others asserted the right and safety of liberty of conscience, they announced a novelty that was alarming, because it was a novelty, to the authorities of Massachusetts, is a great error. Our fathers were fully informed as to what it was, what it meant; and they were familiar with such results as it wrought in their day.
They knew it well, and what must come of it; and they did not like it; rather they feared and hated it. They did not mean to live where it was indulged; and in the full exercise of their intelligence and prudence, they resolved not to tolerate it among them. They identified freedom of conscience only with the objectionable and mischievous results which came of it. They might have met all around them in England, in city and country, all sorts of wild, crude, extravagant and fanatical spirits. They had reason to fear that many whimsical and factious persons would come over hither, expecting to find an unsettled state of things, in which they would have the freest range for their eccentricities. They were prepared to stand on the defensive.’
This frank and manly statement of the case is truly historical, because it tells the exact truth; although, perhaps, it never occurred to the men of the Bay, that Elizabeth and James had ranked them and their Plymouth brethren with the ‘wild, crude, extravagant and fanatical spirits’ of their realm. Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, had boasted that he would drive every Lollard out of his diocese, or ‘ Make them hop headless, or fry a fagot;” and what better had the Puritans been treated in English ‘city and country?’ The barbarous cruelties which had failed to reduce their consciences to submission should have suggested to them at least, as incurables themselves, that it might not be their special and bounden duty as magistrates, to crush out all eccentric religionists who happened to be ‘crude,’ ‘extravagant’ and fanatical,’ as enemies of good civil government. Whether they were justified in so treating those who asserted the right and safety of liberty of conscience, is hardly an open question now. So far as appears, the first resistance made to the politico-religious law of the colony came from two brothers, John and Samuel Brown, members of the Church of England. In 1629 they set up worship in Salem according to the book of Common Prayer, alleging that the governor and ministers were already ‘Separatists, and would be Anabaptists.’ Upon the complaint of the ministers and by the authority of the governor they were sent back to England. Endicott says that their conduct in the matter engendered faction and mutiny. The ministers declared that they had ‘come away from the Common Prayer and ceremonies,’ and ‘neither could nor would use them, because they judged the imposition of these things to be sinful corruptions in the worship of God.’ The first false step of the Puritans of the Bay compelled them to take the second or retreat; but they now proceeded to narrow all admittance into the Commonwealth by the test of religious belief, a step which opened a struggle for liberty of conscience, lasting for more than two hundred years in Massachusetts.
This statement of the civil and religious status of the two colonies of Plymouth and the Bay seems necessary to a proper understanding of the state of things under which Roger Williams, the great apostle of religious liberty, opened the contest, which compelled these great and good men to take that last step, which now protects every man’s conscience in America.
The chosen teacher who was to show these two bands ‘the way of the Lord more perfectly,’ as usual, at the cost of great suffering, was now brought unexpectedly to their doors. The old record says: ‘The ship Lyon, Mr. William Pierce master, arrived at Nantasket; she brought Mr. Williams, a godly minister, with his wife, Mr. Throgmorton, and others with their wives and children, about twenty passengers, and about two hundred tons of goods.’
Spam.
Did everyone else but me know that the whole basic story of Exodus, about the Jews fleeing Egypt and wandering about in the desert, was simply made up whole cloth? That there appears to be zero historical evidence whatsoever of either a massive Jewish population in Egypt, working as slaves for the Pharaoh, or leaving?
Or that in some books of the Bible, Noah’s flood was about racial purification, about preserving a genetically pure group of humans (in Noah’s family) while too much of the rest of humanity had begun interbreeding with some mysterious giants of Hebraic mythology, sort of angels (the Nephilim)? I had never heard that the Noachic flood was about racial purity before.
Spam?
so that’s where all the Throgmortons’ come from! every town i visit has a Throgmorton Boulevard and four pages of Throgmortons in the phone book. and of course there’s the famous rap star Rastus Throgmorton and wide receiver Jamal Throgmorton and pop starlet Jamie Hilary Throgmorton. fuckin’ A, Throgmortizzle.
Puritan spam?
That’s the fourth sign of the Crapture.
Ike seems to be passing by me to the North.
The trees started waving a couple hours ago, and they’re whipping back and forth now. Pretty amazing, since it’s not even a tropical depression anymore, and Columbus is in the middle of Ohio.
i’ve always had respect for librarians, and it seems they are doing the heavy lifting in this election season. the little old li-berry-an with the “McCain=Bush” sign and now the Wasilla li-berry-an who punted the pitbull with lipstick. it wouldn’t hurt to celebrate these heroes in youtube. positive and funny stories with rethugs as bad guys.
I hope McCain has a food taster,seriously. Palin doesn’t strike me as someone who wants to be second to the top banana at ALL.
White just threw the book at us.
People with integrity know their limitations, recognize you have to acquire experience, pay your dues, be mentored, on their way to the top jobs. Not Palin. She’s certain that her hicksville’s Mayor’s experience makes her the best candidate for the VP position. She should have turned the offer down but she doesn’t have it in her to be honest about her limitations.
I’ve worked with people like this and they all dream of being in senior positions instantly. One young fresh out of school guy I worked with recently told me that his lack of knowledge and experience gave him an edge over those of us with years of experience. He claimed that not knowing (procedures, techniques, processes) made him superior, more “open-minded,” and “receptive to new ideas.” No shit. This arrogant schmuck repeatedly cut corners, made serious mistakes, didn’t follow procedure or protocol and never accounted for his mistakes. His arrogance was through the roof. Few of us could stand him. He’s since left and good riddance.
Just a little lecture on American history since it appears you liberals need it, as you know nothing about the Christian history of our great nation.
Btw, back to the discussion last night, those dancing Palestinian were not the only muslims cheering the 9/11 attacks. I remember after 9/11 reading a poll that stated that 52% of Egyptians thought America deserved the 9/11 attacks. Some allies huh?
What about all the Pakistanis who routinely burn American flags in the streets? Or how about the muslim population of Britain where 75% support living under sharia?
My point is, why should we as Americans feel any sympathy when a few hundred “innocent” muslims are killed in the crossfire? These are the same people who hate us and supported the 9/11 atrocites.
I have no sympathy for terrorists or terrorist supporters. Any muslim who even secretly supports terrorism should be killed. Even if they don’t act on it. Their tacit approval alone is enough to encourage the jihadists to continue their acts of terrorism.
Habeus Corpus? Why? The last I checked the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written to protect the rights of American citizens, not our foreign enemies. Geneva Conventions? Get real, they must first wear a uniform and march under the banner of a nation’s flag to even be protected under international treaties. Last I heard the Geneva Conventions explicitly state the document does not apply to terrorists or rebels.
It would be lawful to send a marine firing squad into Club Gitmo and gun down those terrorist scum dead. They have no human rights or worth. Whatever human rights or natural worth they were born with were forfieted the moment they engaged in their acts of terrorism.
I’ve got an idea on how to deal with captured terrorists, but for some reason I don’t think you liberals are going to agree with it. Any captured terrorists should be immediately brought before a military tribunal with no right to legal counsel. Once convicted they should be immediately hanged with no questions asked.
How’s that for an anti-terrorism measue?
When this place starts getting Amish spam, I want to see the IP address it’s coming from. Some kid with a beard and no mustache with a goat powered generator in the basement of his mom’s barn. Oh well, he’d still be more in tune with the American zeitgeist than David Brooks.
Robert White is aptly surnamed. He is hide-under-the-bed-scared of those mean furrin brown people! If we just kill off a few million more, everything will be oke-ely doke-ely!
Meanwhile, his 401 (K) is being raided and his children’s future demolished by a mob of lily white scoundrels a lot closer to home. But you’ve gotta have your priorities.
kill whitey.
and by whitey i mean mr. white.
Now, if Alaska had had more Arabian horses, necessitating an association of sorts, Palin would have had a better selection of qualified individuals to draw upon.
Geneva Conventions? Get real, they must first wear a uniform and march under the banner of a nation’s flag to even be protected under international treaties. Last I heard the Geneva Conventions explicitly state the document does not apply to terrorists or rebels.
Bullshit. Link to that.
Anyone who says this hasn’t read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Bob white is a small bird.
I remember after 9/11 reading a poll that stated that 52% of Egyptians thought America deserved the 9/11 attacks. Some allies huh?
With the proviso that I shouldn’t assume you have a fact on your side, 52% is pretty charitable considering they live under a dictatorship propped up with American money.
I’ve got an idea on how to deal with captured terrorists, but for some reason I don’t think you liberals are going to agree with it. Any captured terrorists should be immediately brought before a military tribunal with no right to legal counsel. Once convicted they should be immediately hanged with no questions asked.
This could have been written by Osama bin Laden. Just substitute “cut off their heads.”
What guys like Robert White continuously fail to realize is they are no different from the terrorists in their thinking or their methods.
“She replied, ‘I want to be president.‘ ”
Yes, this is just a stepping stone for Sarah. Even if this campaign fails she will be back in 2012. Oh… that has an ominous ring to it doesn’t it?
What do you believe should be done to an American who supports terrorism, secretly or not?
Any captured terrorists should be immediately brought before a military tribunal with no right to legal counsel.
How do you know they’re terrorists?
Once convicted they should be immediately hanged with no questions asked.
If you already know they’re terrorists when you bring them in, why bother with the tribunal?
I suppose sitting on that tribunal is another one of those dorky Republican patronage jobs for the especially bloodthirsty specimens.
What do you believe should be done to an American who supports terrorism, secretly or not?
Clear enough from what he’s already posted, if they’re Muslim Americans.
Robert White=terrorist.
They think they’re right. He thinks he’s right. They have God on their side. He has God on his side. They advocate the mass murder of western civilians. He advocates the mass murder of Muslim civilians. They have no trials. He’d have no trials. They cut off heads. He’d hang them.
There are no differences between fundie Republicans like Robert White and the Taliban. None at all.
I suppose sitting on that tribunal is another one of those dorky Republican patronage jobs for the especially bloodthirsty specimens.
Well sure, cause what the heck else is First Dude Todd Palin gonna do for a job otherwise?
Of course an American citizen is protected under the Bill of Rights. But an American who openly supports terrorism should by charged with treason under the federal penal code. There is a line between free speech and treason, and outspoken support for terrorism crosses that line.
I mean any American.
A small bird said:
“Just a little lecture on American history since it appears you liberals need it, as you know nothing about the Christian history of our great nation.”
What a boring pedant you are. Yes, I know a good deal of American history. I had long discussions with Francis Schaeffer back in the early 80’s. I was fully aware of him and Rushdoony way back then. You aren’t telling me anything new so fuck off. Was your mommie wiping your ass back then?
Robert White said,
But an American who openly supports terrorism should by charged with treason under the federal penal code.
So who do we call to have you charged with advocating terrorism?
So, you would broaden the crime “Treason” to include statements of support for terrorism, is that correct.
Yes.
Robert, you are by your own definition, a terrorist. You do realize this don’t you?
Just like what’s happening in Britain, London mosques being used to preach Wahhabism and other extremist strains of Islam. The Imams in those mosques routinely cheer acts of terrorism including the July 7 London Tube bombings against their own citizens. Those Imams should be charged with treason, absolutely.
Robert White = traitor to everything America has ever stood for.
Hang ’em.
Since the founder of the separatist Alaskan Independence Party was murdered while dealing for plastic explosives, does this not make it a terrorist group? What then would it mean that we have a terrorist group adherent running to head the Fourth Branch of our Government?
OK. Now, can you please provide a succinct definition of what terrorism is, in your eyes?
Lesley, you’re attempting to engage in reasoned discussion with a shit stain. It’s useless.
I’d like to take a crack at explaining the bridge deal, because everyone is getting one detail or another wrong.
First off, Congress did say “no thanks” to the bridge in the Fall of 2005. They took the earmark out of the funding bill at large, and thus the mandate to use that federal money for the bridge. Sen. Ted Stevens, who was then Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, used his clout to work out a compromise, under which Alaska would still receive the money from the earmark. There would be no federal mandate to use the money for the bridge, but Alaska could still choose to do so on its own. A year later, in the 2006 campaign for Governor, Sarah Palin was in favor of doing just that. That is where the “thanks but no thanks” is a lie. Congress had already said “no thanks” a year earlier. Palin scuttled the bridge after she was elected, and used almost all of the federal money on other projects. This is only meant to explain just one specific fib… why her slogan, “I told Congress thanks, but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere”, is a lie.
I’m talking about advocating jihadist terrorism, which is perpetrated by a group of foreign nationals who suscribe to a belief system and a religion completely alien to anything in American society. I don’t believe in criminalizing legitimite dissent which is what the Alaska Independence Party is. I also don’t believe in criminalizing Americans who criticise their government, thats not what I’m advocating at all. I am talking about criminalizing a belief system that is antitheoritical to everything Western liberty stands for. If you don’t see the difference thats your problem not mine.
Until tooling around looking for secessionist sentiment, I was unaware it was so widespread among the lunatic fringe.
Considering I’m in the satanic north east, I find that delightfully obtuse. It’s the blue areas who have been propping up the red areas for decades now.
Perhaps we should let them pull on their bootstraps some?
I meant criminalizing the advocating of jihadist terrorism.
noen, perhaps we should just hang him now?
Good news: Sarah Palin was apparently chosen by none other than William Kristol The Lesser, who is also known for being wrong in every one of his columns in the New York Times and having to be corrected all the time.
But who will publish the correction for Sarah Palin?
Gee, thanks a lot White. I’d never heard of these, what’d you call them? Pilgrims? I’d never heard of these pilgrims before you brought them up today.
Robert, what is your opinion of this group?
http://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/
Btw, these kids aren’t being trained just to kill foreigners, but anyone who hasn’t taken Jesus as their saviour. They are being trained to hate and possibly kill Americans, too.
What specific actions taken by Jihadists constitute terrorism? This is what I mean by a definition.
‘antitheoritical.’
Hoooo-kay.
You’re in way over your head here, Bobby.
Your ideas are antithetical to the Constitution of the United States, and to the values of the people who wrote it. For all his faults, Tom Jefferson didn’t pee down his leg and run away screaming at the idea that a bunch of dipshit religious fundamentalists might not like us, and we weren’t close to being the economic, military and intelligence powerhouse we are today. He sure wouldn’t have used it as a lame excuse to destroy all our civil rights.
Go to Philadelphia, take the tour, find out what courage and human liberty are all about. You might learn something. Then grow a pair, for God’s sake.
Attacking a sovergin nation, its citizens, infastructure or interests. The jihadists have engaged in all these acts of terrorism.
We are not running away screaming either. The last I checked conservatives are calling for the destruction of the jihadist enemy. Define what you mean by running away screaming?
You are running away screaming.
It sounds like you’re brave, but we detect the frantic stink of fear in your “kill ’em all!” rhetoric.
While all the while, your rich white corporate masters are quietly plotting your serfdom.
Do you know how much they laugh at you for your loyal blog antics? For falling for their con game and giving up more of your own money, for them, who have more than they can spend in three lifetimes?
Because they do consider you a sucker.
And now you are a bloodthirsty one.
It makes me feel bad that George W. Bush Jr. gave Osama bin Laden everything he said he ever wanted. Osama bin Laden said he wanted U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, and he got it. Osama bin Laden said that he wanted the U.S. in a big expensive battle in a Middle Eastern Muslim nation, and he got that. Osama bin Laden said it was unfair that Saudi oil was at $30 / barrel when it should have been at $150 / barrel. He got that too.
I suppose that with the bin Laden’s generally being such good friends of the Bush family, the dumbest Bush just couldn’t help but give wayward son Osama bin Laden everything he wanted too.
Or maybe he was just so frightened of bin Laden that Bush Jr. wanted to make sure bin Laden never came after him again.
I never thought I’d see an American President so afraid, running and hiding in one military base after another, just ’cause he had been too dumb and arrogant to pick up on all the warnings of attack that Osama bin Laden had been sending to this good Bush friend of the bin Laden family, and I guess at the time Bush Jr. was really ashamed of himself and wrongly afraid that the American people would hold him accountable for this massive, massive failure just like they would have held a President Gore responsible for the biggest attack ever on American soil.
OK. What if a non-Jihadist does one of these things? Is that terrorism as well?
Attacking a sovergin nation, its citizens, infastructure or interests. The jihadists have engaged in all these acts of terrorism.
Try and be specific Robert. There are no terrorist groups called “the jihadists.”
If you’re referring to the events of 9/11 – and it seems you are – then you mean Osama bin Laden’s Taliban. (The same one the CIA funded in the 80s and George Bush lost interest in going after in 2003.)
If you mean some other group(s), please identify them. Also, past or before 9/11 what events might you be referring to?
Thank goodness little bird’s definition of jihadist terrorism lets good ole boys like Timothy McVeigh off the hook.
That’s just good ole fashioned dissent!
atheist is leading a thirsty horse to water, but will he drink?
You’re running away screaming with my civil rights, and yours, too. PATRIOT Act, anyone? FISA “reform?” That’s not conservative, that’s authoritarian “Daddy I’m scared of the monster in my closet, protect me!” crap. And they’re playing on your fears to keep you in line and keep you scared. These are not honest brokers you’re dealing with; if “the jihadist enemy” (formerly known as the communist menace) didn’t exist, they’d have to invent it. Not to keep “the enemy” in line, sweetheart; to keep YOU in line.
my goodness, this pause is very pregnant.
my goodness, this pause is very pregnant.
Has its water broken yet?
We interrupt this lag to bring you video of robert and atheist. (hint: atheist isn’t the cat.)
Attacking a sovergin nation, its citizens, infastructure or interests.
By that definition, the invasion of Iraq was an act of terrorism, as would any act of war taking place on foreign soil.
Ah, so the sound I heard was Bob’s toenails as he was skittering away on the hardwood floor.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t stop the pregnant pauses?
Anyway…
My gf liked the cat video by the way
Meanwhile… a nice little Anti-Sarah rally in Anchorage:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/
That was adorable, Lesley. Thanks.
What really scares me is Palin’s Rapture tendencies. Because there’s one thing about Rapture fans.
They can’t wait.
Grrrr…. that didn’t turn into a link…
this pause is very pregnant
It may give birth to a dictatorship if enough people listen to it.
Holy shit, I killed the thread
Sorry people
Robert is certain of his opinion and yet he can’t defend it. He’s like a graduate of that Jesus Camp. Do as you’re told, do not think, do not ask questions.
I wouldn’t mind if he were harmless, but he’s advocating capital punishment without trial.
You did good, Atheist. If I ever get an infestation of wingnut at my house, I’d pay big to have you lure it out into the light of logic and then frighten it away.
He seems to have taken teh troof™ with him.
So there’s that, at least.
cuteoverload.com bans commenters who mention or link to animal welfare agencies. I didn’t realize caring for the animals they post pics of is verboten. (The woman who owns that site is making a 6-figure income on it.)
I won’t be patronizing it anymore.
Well, thanks. I also wanted to see what Robert would come up with… could have been interesting.
Day-um! Didn’t know that.
Won’t forget it. It’s not one of my usual stops, anyway, but what a sick choice.
Robert and The Truth sounded like the same person.
OK, I’m considering leaving the country at this point if she gets in. She’s that scary.
Meanwhile… a nice little Anti-Sarah rally in Anchorage:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/
It’ll be interesting to see how many Alaskans vote for McCain/Palin.
Re cuteoverload: I posted a link to the elephant sanctuary and PAWS in the comment section of their post of the Oregon zoo baby elephant and it was removed. In my comment I described how these two American sanctuaries are healthy alternatives for elephants and cited scientists who study elephants in the wild. I was told I was being contrary and negative and my comment was removed. I am no longer able to post any comments over there. They’ve tossed my IP address into the spam filter.
I didn’t realize the site was completely non political. i.e. apparently they value the cuteness of animals, but not their actual lives. Pity.
Sound pretty mild to me. They sound very inflexible- to a degree that’s kinda silly. Thanks for letting me know that about them.
Perhaps Mr. White might want to read this
Probably not..
Urgh….Rove on Fox. How the hell could Obama be behind in polls at this point? I mean it is a Rove on Fox interview, but still….they’re slightly better than the ones shown on “Meet the Press”. WTF?!?!?
I am Buster Taint Palin!!
(so is justme, IIRC).
Liberals are well behind the neocons in polls in Canada too. I am very worried.
For pete’s sake we just had a tainted meat scandal up here and fifteen people died. The cons have deregulated meat inspection and made food labelling optional. They’ve also gotten rid of the mad cow inspection program. Even the national food manufacturing association wrote to the PM and told him this would be a very bad thing to do. And people still think they are the better choice? I can’t understand what’s happening.
The jihadists have engaged in all these acts of terrorism.
Which jihadists? Can you identify them? Can you cite them? Which ones? How do you know what they engaged in?
Robert, you just see brown-skinned boogeymen under your bed and in your closet, and you’re calling them jihadists because that’s the latest fad.
We are not running away screaming either. The last I checked conservatives are calling for the destruction of the jihadist enemy. Define what you mean by running away screaming?
Coming to liberal sites and posting nonsense.
We are not running away screaming either.
When Robert ran away from this comment thread, he didn’t make a sound.
What’s happening is the logical culmination of the PR century, combined with mass media.
There’s always been manipulation of people’s minds, but it used to have more societal purposes, and more immediate feedback. Shaman-type says throw virgins in the volcano to make the corn grow, and they do it. Either it works or it doesn’t, but if it doesn’t, Shaman-type “loses the election” and they get another Shaman-type. Shaman-type eventually yields to the monarchy and the church, but the church has an edge; no one comes back to tell if what they say is true, or not.
It wasn’t until the early part of the 20th Century that mass media appeared in a vacuum devoid of authority trappings, and Freud had come up with workable psychology by that time. So we had advertising; the ephemeral anxiety industry. “Would your best friend tell you?” So people buy stuff.
The machines had a hold of the political process at the time, with face to face contact and patronage, but in the fifties they realized candidates could be marketed, too. And now we are in a state where people are lied to routinely, and they simply choose the lies they like best. “The liberals look down on your and raise your taxes” has been embedded in their heads, helped along by the panic caused by the civil rights movement. Want to know why the righties are so invested in the culture wars, even now, almost fifty years later? Because that’s their power.
However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The last few generations are actually developing antibodies to this kind of mass marketing. They have their own networks, for one thing, and for another there were a lot of savvy parents (I was one, she said humbly) who would point out that the toys didn’t really do that, who would freeze frame the VCR to read them the fine print, who would tip them off they are being marketed to, and how they are being manipulated.
Not that kids don’t dive into fads of their own, or get swayed by gadgets. But this is a lot more individual, and a lot more subdivided, than it used to be. And of course, this doesn’t apply to everybody. But it’s reaching a critical mass.
Their own success is undermining them even as we speak. We got the beginnings of the serf society that they dream of, but there were things they didn’t realize. That their shenanigans would destablize the currency, for one thing, and for another; serfs have no disposable income.
In a consumer society, that’s a real drawback.
To engage in some armchair history here, I think this pattern is a kind of synthesis of the Goldwater conservative movement with what Rick Perlstein calls “Nixonland,” that place conjured up by Tricky Dick’s style of politics. The lessons of 1964 to 1972 for the hard right were that you needed a Nixon to win, but that he better not be the top of the ticket (or even on the ticket at all).
Yeah, just a couple weeks ago I used to think Obama’s Secret Service agents had the scariest job in American governance. Now I wonder if McCain’s Secret Service guys can get any sleep for worrying about what Der Palinator’s handlers have in mind for Old John McLame.
Cue Robert White impersonator in… 3… 2… 1…
I call fake Gary.
Wait…. Someone actually said ‘antitheoritical’.
The latin language curses you sir. It curses you.
This article demonstrates a lot of your points, werebear.
The cons are extremely adept at the political game. Of late, our Prime Minister has appeared in sweaters instead of suits in his campaign advertising. This has “softened” viewers’ opinions of him. He understands he needs to convey the appearance of being more moderate than he really is to reel the voters in so for now he supports public health care, gay marriage and reproductive choice. Like a good old fashioned neoconservative revolutionary that he is he’ll do whatever’s necessary in the short term to gain the power he needs to become the decider. If lying through his teeth is required, he can manage that with perfect sincerity. Because he’s completely convinced his way is the highway and the proof is the fact that all the other parties have gravitated to the right over the past two decades.
By appearing as social democrats who listen to Canadians and apply democracy, liberals are made to seem wishy washy and wimpy. Conservatives with their hard line approach to social policy, appear strong and virile. Liberals have yet to find a way to counter the cons’ false paternalism. They resist being dogmatic and mean, but I think they’re going to have to start being that way to counteract this insidious approach conservatives have mastered.
Conservatives are certain they have Canadians in the bag and if the polls are to be believed, they do. They’ll play along for awhile as nice affable guys in sweaters and when they get that long sought after majority in parliament, we’ll all be waking up in caves of their making.
On the one hand the Bush crap pile grows higher.
And in the other, Donald Luskin joins Wapoo pollyanna George F’ing Will in saying, “Hey, me and my friends are doing great. What’s the big deal?”
I wonder if McCain’s Secret Service guys can get any sleep for worrying about what Der Palinator’s handlers have in mind for Old John McLame.
I hadn’t even thought of this, but it makes sense considering McCain didn’t pick her. He’s also faded to fog. It’s hard to believe he’s even running for the top job now that she’s in the spotlight. Somebody had better be on banana peel duty.
There’s always been manipulation of people’s minds
Yes. Some of us call it language.
Damn, Leslie. We can’t flee to each other’s countries anymore?
I think the reason the cons are so good at the game is that it is only a game. It does not trouble them to lie.
We lost two Democrats (John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer) in sex scandals (BTW, I can’ t think of Spitzer anymore without hearing Jon Stewart say, “He’s out with a career ending penis injury!”) because they, at least, have a sense of shame and have retired from public life, while Louisiana has a US Senator, David Vitter, who continues as Senator even though it was revealed he visits prostitutes. And wears a diaper.
Truly, some people have no shame.
However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Wait, so if I call you a douche only one person ever will call me a douche back?
I am interested in your metaphysics lessons and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
BUT WAIT! MASS MEDIA VIOLATES THE SECOND LAW OF EQUAL AND OPPOSITE DOUCHBAGGERY!
Quick, POP THE COLLARS!!!
Maureen Dowd comes out swinging against Palin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14dowd.html?hp
Just some good news, folks. The MSM is waking up & reporting truth about Moosalini. A friend just said her staunch republican friend just came over to the Obama side when she learned the big wool blanket McCain & Co. were trying to pull over her eyes. McPalin has jumped the shark, they are not going to get any positive “suprises” out of her, and as women realize her extreme right-wing position, you will see independents and republican women staying at home in droves.
Something pertinent I read on Salon today that Glenn Greenwald brought up: Why isn’t either candidate talking about The Bush Doctrine? McLame backs it 100%. Obama doesn’t. Wouldn’t pointing this out show that McLame =Bush?
MoDo is just the third most popular girl in sophomore year, taking pot-shots at the others. I find her to be irrelevant – she’s nasty to everyone on both sides.
Smut,
Only in such a great state as Alaska could there be two, yes two, Buster Taint Palins.
Makes ya proud to be an American, don’t it?
Werebear, I fear Canada is doomed to experience the eight years you just had. We have a war-mongering bible thumping fundamentalist Christian in power right now. He just deregulated independent food inspection. That alone speaks volumes about his core values. Not even Bush has done that. (In fact, he’s opposed to the strict rules the American government has in place for food inspection and seeks to let companies off the hook completely…)
He’s fired top scientists and other civil servants who challenge his views or speak publicly without his permission. He has centralized government and made it impossible for civil servants to do anything without it being vetted by his staff. He trusts nobody.
He prematurely called an election – breaking a law he put in place to prevent manipulative election calls. He claims the opposition is getting in the way of him making decisions and carrying on government business, which is a lie. What he means is he doesn’t want any opposition. His election platform is “less government, unrestrained free trade, and fewer restrictions on foreign ownership of Canadian resources and companies.” He will, if he can, reverse the law that supports gay marriage and he will do his damndest to make abortion illegal except in cases of rape and incest (I’m guessing).
At least one of our cabinet ministers believes the earth was made 6000 years ago and that dinosaurs and man walked the earth together. This man, for time, was our foreign affairs minister. He got sacked from that job after making numerous gaffes, including suggesting publicly that God killed Arafat with AIDS. (He is also, he says, repulsed by people who have AIDS and believes if they have AIDS it’s God’s will.)
I never thought I’d live to see the day these cretins would gain so much power but they have it and many Canadians just nod their heads and go along with their shit. It makes me sick.
Lesley
I’m really sorry to hear that. Hopefully they will lose somehow.
This continent is getting some major issues.
Lesley, just maybe Canadians will look south of the border and see what is happening to us, right now (aka as in this weekend).
P.S. This is central to my point:
INDEX PRODUCTS
CONTRACT LAST NET CHGE
S&P 500 DEC08 1228.60 B -2990
E-MINI SEP08 1227.50 -2975
E-MINI DEC08 1229.00 -2950
NSDQ100 DEC08 1743.25 B -3625
Only in such a great state as Alaska could there be two, yes two, Buster Taint Palins.
Brother and sister?
Hey, this is great: We get to re-run 1932!
Will we re-elect Hoover?
Or try that risky Roosevelt?
Will we re-elect Hoover?
Or try that risky Roosevelt?
I think the current rethug battle cry is, “Hoover got us into this mess. He’s the only one who can find the way out!”
But we may have to check with da troof for confirmation.
The only problem with Hoover’s plans is that they haven’t been given a chance to work! And Hoover’s got an exciting new strategy for change but it’s got all the classic Hoover elements you loved!
Hoover got us into this mess. He’s the only one who can find the way out!
Of course! He has far more executive experience regarding messes than his opponent.
Maybe someone here can help me understand how the hell this is supposed to work:
So the VP pick’s husband belonged to a secession group for years. Secession by it’s very definition is about as treasonous and anti-American as you can get. And yet they are using this shit to attract the uber-patriotic flies? Honestly, every time I think about it my head explodes. This to me is beyond crazy and no one seems to be discussing it much. I mean, do I have a brain tumor or something keeping me from getting the logic – however twisted – behind this?
Help me out here, please!
Guzzle Red Palin
Actually, it’s really unfair to compare Hoover, a good man, a thoughtful man, well-educated, extremely hard working, caring, and at times enormously useful to society, with today’s camp of scumbag Republicans.
Hoover, for what it’s worth, actually thought that his pro-business policies were the best route out of the Depression. He was wrong, but he really, really did his best to think it through given his philosophies.
Today’s Republicans don’t give the slightest damn if their policies will ‘solve’ what you or I seem to think is a grand problem with the economy. All that matters is what fits their and their selected members of the upper class’ schemes, whether that means intentionally impoverishing us or simply giving enormous amounts of public money away in crony schemes.
And there are still trillions of dollars to be found in Social Security for the eager Republican ‘reformer’.
It’s pretty awful when you feel bad comparing the current Republicans to Hoover because you feel bad for Hoover.
Help me out here, please!
About the only way I’ve managed to reconcile it all is if you assume that “Patriot” = “not liberal”. I don’t think the secessionist stuff is patriotic in its own right, just all the other stuff like airplane-based hunting, teen pregnancy encouragement, etc. is not-liberal and therefore much more important.
ManOnBlog:
It’s the same phenomenon which allows many of my fellow Southerners not only to celebrate the treasonous, secessionist, pro-slavery ‘heritage’ of the Confederacy, but to be embraced as simultaneously more patriotic than non-treasonous Yankees and Big City types.
It’s the same phenomenon which allows right wing militia groups to spread throughout the country in the 1990s, fleshed out by a crazed radio campaign of separatism and white supremist paranoia, and then when one of their kind blows up an entire U.S. government skyscraper, it’s just seen as some sort of weird, isolated incident, and the crazy militia types are just seen as all-American eccentrics.
It’s the same phenomenon which encourages people to hate Americans who think a particular war as wrong and call these people “anti-American,” while people at the pro-war rally carry Confederate and secessionist and militia insignia, and they are the ‘patriots’, and typically described that way in the newspaper.
troll alert: as soon as ‘robert white’ got what he came for “america is errorist for invading iraq” [paraphrased] he went away. the site has been sabotaged and diverted from its original ‘she’s a provable liar’. and Troofie has made a reappearance, but he’s not ‘robert white’, he hasn’t got the literacy. These wingtards have two bugaboos: paying taxes and brown people who deserve fair pay and collective bargaining amongst the bottom two quintiles…These wingtards have three bugaboos…
El Cid –
As one who grew up in a Southern state – I agree with your point and would add only that the growth of political power in the South since 1968 has led us to this abysmal place.
Basically, there is some bizarre nativism/nationalism combined with a visceral dislike and distrust that government can do any good whatsoever that seems to drive political thinking in the South. Yes, it is present across the Union, but the fact that the South was politically neutered from 1865-1968 deprived them of any real political leverage.
Of course, those are also the years in which America went from being an agricultural backwater to the leading industrial nation on the planet, and we have arguably been regressing ever since… but who’s counting, right?
But think about it:
= pro Confederate – check
= secession is OK – check
= “patriotism” as nativism – check
= likes war – check
= gun nuts – check
If we re-established the Confederacy tomorrow, does anyone here doubt that the old North + West would pass all manner of progressive legislation, go back to being the leading responsible global citizen, and do all kinds of cool stuff, while the New South would morph into a North American Brazil without the skimpy bikinis?
The New South would probably bring back Jim Crow laws and invade Maryland.
Sorry, but this is more menacing-er.
The Alaskan secessionists are pathetic, deluded clowns akin to neo-Confederates, white supremecists, survivalists, and the like. They obviously aren’t a political movement that is going anywhere.
But I certainly agree that it is strange that the American conservative base that constantly obsesses over patriotism is not concerned that a VP candidate and her husband are demonstrably associated with an anti-American secessionist movement. How is it they go apeshit over Rachael Ray in a scarf and yet completely ignore this? Think of all the ridiculous Obama guilt-by-association BS they lap up, yet they don’t have a problem with this.
I have been picking up news items about Canada, but not in the detail Leslie mentioned. A few years ago people worried about the plague coming back; well, it has.
Only this time, it’s a social disease.
There’s always been an element in America who fear losing what little they have, so they strangle the life out of where they are, and cripple the children so they will stay, too.
The smart ones, the desperate ones, the ones so abandoned they have nothing to lose, flee to the cities. And the cycle grinds down another notch.
This is what the Republicans have become–the arrogant haves, and the whining wanna-bes.
Gina Gershon Strips Down Sarah Palin
Uhm… while we were yammering in our happy little corner of the internetz…
It seems that… well…
The Economy is Going Tits-Up Now
Here are the current headlines on Bloomberg.com’s financial news page as of 9:39 EDT, 14 Sep 08:
Breaking News
•Bank of America Agrees to Buy Merrill Lynch for $44 Billion, WSJ Reports
•Lehman Prepares Bankruptcy Filing as Bank of America, Barclays Quit Talks
•AIG May Seek Help From Federal Reserve, Rejects Private-Equity, WSJ Says
•Banks Consider Fund to Invest in Troubled Firms, Fed May Expand Lending
•Treasuries Surge as Lehman Falters, Leading Investors to Buy Safer Assets
•Dollar Weakens Against Euro, Yen on Concern Lehman to File for Bankruptcy
•Centro Shares Slump to Record Low After Buyer Pulls Out of U.S. Asset Sale
•Hurricane Ike Leaves Houston Without Drinking Water, Power; Curfew Imposed
•Thailand to Vote on Prime Minister This Week After Emergency Rule Lifted
The Lord may yet allow me to see my first ever rent decrease.
That’s gonna leave a mark
historically, there’s always been nativist triumphalism [Lee Marvin in “Raintree County!”] {ludicrous postage stamp kingdoms referenced by Mark Twain} etc. Its only the target that changes. That a third of the country picks on the confederacy, which only existed from December 1860 until June 1865, is only relevant to people like me who think those people are shit. The idea that Klondike Klaatu would groove on some mythical Alaskan nation is only slightly more stupid.
Hail, Hail Freedonia !!!
Because there’s such a dire lack of ice in Alaska.
But loads of sympathy for their disregard of human rights, eh, Robby-boy? Funny: a lot of folks consider YOUR viewpoint as being a kind of terrorism in itself. Denying basic human rights to one’s enemies, being “fine” with the murder of innocent civilians, cheerleading for fascist tendencies domestically – yep, smells just like terrorism to me. Pot black, kettle, also black.
LOL – not since Chimp-boy signed the Military Commissions Act. Hope you never get popped by mistake for “SUSPICION of complicity with terrorism” … because that happy little dream of yours will be most rudely interrupted. You can puke up Puritan cut-&-paste with the best of them, but you’re not playing with a full deck if you actually think the Bill of Rights remains intact with an elephant like the MCA sitting on its throat. Fail.
Rather a creative form of “legitimate dissent” if it involves the party’s leader buying plastic explosives, eh? Cherry-pick much?
What you BELIEVE means jack – what your spiritual twin in the Oval Office is DOING is putting the US Constitution in a blender & emboldening the most barbaric extremist fringe of Christianity to try for a real theocracy, death to infidels, praise the Holy Junta, the wholle 9 yards. He’s also fine with first demonizing & then crimnializing ALL dissent, including yours, bright-eyes.
The Truth Says:
September 15th, 2008 at 0:29
I’m not going anywhere liberals.
… indeed … which is central to my point.
If you liked George W. Bush Jr., but wished he looked better in red heels, you’ll LOVE Sarah Palin as President.
My point is, why should we as Americans feel any sympathy when a few hundred “innocent” muslims are killed in the crossfire? These are the same people who hate us and supported the 9/11 atrocites.
Yes. There is absolutely *no* reason for them to hate a nation that doesn’t feel sympathy when hundreds of their innocent people are killed. /sarcasm
If someone tried to pull the kind of shit the USA pulls on brown people on *me* I’d hate the fuckers too, and be thrilled when they got murdered.
…my quotes have epic fail. Just like the American zeitgeist…
…and you guys got rid of the troll already anyways. I should quit everything else and stay home reading Sadly, No! I guess.
It’s the same phenomenon which allows many of my fellow Southerners not only to celebrate the treasonous, secessionist, pro-slavery ‘heritage’ of the Confederacy, but to be embraced as simultaneously more patriotic than non-treasonous Yankees and Big City types.
More irony: during the Civil War the northerners who opposed the war and sympathized with southern goals were the “Copperhead” Democrats- most of whom were from the big cities like New York and Chicago.
Actually, it wasn’t so much that they were sympathetic to the defense of slavery, it was more like, screw ’em, let them go. So that hasn’t changed much.
The Bridge to Nowhere (Not) Taken
by Sarah Palin
Two truths diverged in a yellow wood,
And knowing I could not utter both
And be vetted, long I stood
And trampled one down as far as I could
Until it gasped in the undergrowth;
Then claimed the other, ‘cause all is fair
When one’s on deck for batter McCain.
Because he is glassy and worse for wear
(And for all his bluster, his passing near),
I assure you we’re really about the same.
We both one moment equally laid
Our cars on the Rove-and-Cheney track.
Oh, I kept ethics for another day!
(Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubt if I should ever come back.)
I won’t be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two truths diverged in a wood, and I –
I claimed the truth most like a lie.
My base doesn’t know the difference.
Catherine wins.
I’m more frightened of the bank situation than of Palin, or possibly it’s a tie. Still, Roosevelt all the way.
Eidos:
Problem is, just because they’re completely fuckin’ crazy, doesn’t mean they aren’t influential.
“I’m not going anywhere liberals.”
Well, it’s not like we are advocating internment camps for dull, fat, humorless, homophobic, sexist, fundamentalist white guys. There will always be places for you.
Can I have fries with that?
I bow down to Catherine. Robert Frost bows down to Catherine.
(‘I think that I shall never see
a politico as creepy as Sarah be’
No, huh? How about
‘Abou Bin Laden, may his tribe increase,
awoke one night from a deep dream of peace
and saw within the moonlight of his room
Sarah with a shotgun, making a boom’)
Nope, can’t do it. Catherine wins.
I’m not going anywhere liberals.
Truer words were never typed by you. Huzzah and kudos!
BTW, you might wanna slip a comma in there, chief.
I’ll tell you why: Canadians are complacent and tend to believe that what happened in the USA is due to American stupidity. At the same time, polls show that Canadians like majority governments, as long as it’s any majority government.
This is very much like the situation at the reelection of the Mike Harris government in Ontario. Seriously, this is Mike Harris writ large. Combine that with a decentralist Québec that is no longer voting directly on sovereignty. Harper can quite credibly tell them that he’ll dismantle the federal government without actually requiring them to vote yes. That’s a really popular position in Québec.
The really sad thing is that people actually support Palin’s rape kit policies:
http://calvinists4conservatism.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/sarah-palin-a-maverick-on-rape/
Did you realize that that’s a spoof? Or are you spoofing too?
I don’t think it is. He goes to very extreme lengths to deny it, and reputed writers have cited it as a legitimate source, including Fredrick Clarkson.