Sadly, No!

David Sirota sez:

This [“President Pushover”] story line is a logical fallacy. Most agree that today’s imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.

Considering this, and further considering Obama’s early congressional majorities, it is silly to insist that the national political events during Obama’s term represent a lack of presidential strength or will. And it’s more than just silly — it’s a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe “their” president is with them.

Such apologism, of course, allows liberals to avoid the more painful truth that Obama is one of America’s strongest presidents ever and is achieving exactly what he wants.

Yup! Obama had as much political capital as any incoming President since Reagan; he certainly had more than George W. Bush when he entered office. And like Bush, he used what he had exactly how he wanted; unlike Bush, he used it to thwart rather than to fulfill the wishes of his base. Some of the things Obama’s supporters thought about him are true: he’s smart, shrewd, smooth, an inspiring speaker, charismatic, just tons of personal charm — he, not George W. Bush, is the first politician you’d want to have a beer with. But his actions since taking office have proven that the most important thing Obama supporters believed about him is false; the man is just not a liberal.

Since the Democratic candidates first started campaigning in 2007, no one had supporters quite like Obama had supporters — except, of course, for Hillary Clinton and PUMAs (but Obama’s fans were so fanatical even then that lefty Obama-skeptics were accused of PUMAryness or whatever, even when such skeptics were equally suspicious of Mrs. Clinton). When Obama won the nomination and thus required every decent person to either vote for him or not vote at all, many of us who doubted Obama’s liberalism were assured: Don’t worry, he has to sound centristy and wishy-washy to fool the Villagers; once he’s President the trickfuck will be on them! Well, the trickfuck happened, all right, but not the way they thought. In retrospect, the PUMAs and Obamabots both got screwed though they’ll be the last to admit it: Obama has governed like a triangulating Clintonoid to the eleventieth power, and worse, he’s done it not out of desperation nor even out of cold political calculation, but because it’s what he believes in.

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Shorter Dan Poop
Denuded Merkin
“Jabberwocky”

• You’re all a bunch of communists.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above: Der grosse Schlusselsnotzi sez,
“Blarg! I vill eat der Norge!”

Shorter Not-So-Little Debbie Schlussel
Der Anschlussel.com
“Karma #2: Norway Utoya Camp Was Also FATAH PLO Terrorist Camp”

• Those Norwegian kids totally had it coming.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above: Crack Pipes, left; crackpot, right.

Shorter Daniel Pipes
America’s Shittiest Website
“Norway’s Terrorism in Context”

• Yeah, so Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist and mass-murderer, did all this stuff — shooting people and what-not, blah blah blah, whatevs — but the real issue is that in doing so he purposely and willfully tried to destroy my reputation.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above: ‘If it weren’t for this Death Star, all you idiots would be speaking Chinese.’

Shorter William Kristol
The Weakly Standard
“Decline is a Choice”
“‘A Somewhat Sinking Feeling'”

• On the one hand, yay for the budget deal fucking people out of social security and medicare; but on the other hand, defense cuts weaken my precious, precious empire.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Don Surber (left), Brad McElhinny (right)

Shorter Don “Jim Bob” Surber, The Charlztun Daly Mial:
It’s Now The United States of Audrey, Jr.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above: Chef Boyhardeeharhar

Shorter Tom Friedman
The New York Times
“The New Hama Rules”

• Yeah, it’s gonna be really hard for all these Arab nations to transform into democracies without a “neutral arbiter” like the United States military on hand to “referee” by bombing their people, destroying their infrastructure, and installing more or less puppet governments to rule them by; but I’m sure things will work out for the best eventually.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Stephen Stone (not Craig T. Nelson)

Shorter Stephen Stone, RenewAmerica:
Special message: Update and thanks

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Patrick Pexton
(without any Photoshoppery whatsoever)

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You probably don’t recognize the guy in the preposterous picture on the right. That’s Patrick Pexton in the caca d’oie colored plaid sports coat over the brown turtleneck track suit (with the fetching zipper) and with the windswept tuft of hair sitting on the top of his head like a lonely Shetland pony. This is his publicity photo. He uses it on purpose to tell people that this is what he looks like, apparently proud of having been dressed by Barry Manilow and coiffed by Donald Trump’s hairstylist. I should note, by the way, that it is perfectly fine for me to have a tuft on my head like that, but that is only because I am a cartoon character.

Pexton is the ombudsmen for the Washington Post, and it appears that his main job is to defend Fred Hiatt’s right-wing hacks when they go a little too far and get the Post‘s readers upset. Yesterday, Pexton circled the wagons around the loathsome Jennifer Rubin for her non-apology over her initial blog post that blamed the Norway killings on, of course, Mussulman terrorists. Her apology: well, even if the shootings were by a Christian Norwegian, it could have been done by Muslims who are, after all, more likely to kill white people than Norwegians are. So, she claimed, her point still stood, and we should continue to invade Muslim countries to keep them from killing people at summer camps, which they could have done in this case, even if they didn’t.

Pexton starts out defending Rubin with this:

When I received my Post e-mail alert about the bombing in Norway, my first thought was that it was al-Qaeda. That was reinforced when the second alert came about the youth-camp shootings.

This is, apparently, a simple and direct admission that, as far as the Pexton is concerned, Post writers are paid to report on the first thing that pops into their minds, unconstrained by any facts and giving free rein to any prejudice the particular writer has. I’m glad we got that out of the way.

If your politics are liberal and you don’t generally read Rubin, but you read her Norway posts, you probably would be pretty offended. But if you are a conservative, or someone who reads Rubin regularly, you’ll know that this is what she does and who she is.

Rubin was hired by Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Post, to be an opinion blogger who would appeal to conservatives and people who want to follow conservative politics. She does.

In other words, the point isn’t whether she was right or wrong, but whether or not she appeals to conservatives, which she does. The job of a journalist ombudsman isn’t to pass on a reporter’s accuracy but only to determine whether the reporter conforms to the particular bias for which he or she was hired. Who knew?

Of course, what has Pexton most worked up is not that a conservative columnist would stoke anti-Muslim prejudices, because that was, apparently her job. Instead Pexton sees the real problem here is — this should come as a big surprise — the liberal blogosphere. The liberals are, says Pexton, a bunch of meanies who don’t understand that Rubin’s job was only to spout conservative talking points without any regard to whether they were, you know, true or, even, loathsomely racist.

The liberal blogosphere, propelled by tweets, picked up Rubin’s piece and spread it around rapidly, helped by a trifecta of posts from theatlantic.com. … In a long chat with Rubin last week, I found her forceful and unrepentant, yet not unreasonable. She is not an ogre or a racist. And she does not deserve some of the calumny she got. Some of the e-mail she received was way over the line — ugly, obscene, vile and, worst, containing threats of physical harm.

You know where this is going. The anti-Muslim extremists like Rubin aren’t the real extremists; the real extremists are people who criticize Rubin. And we should be more concerned that they will cause violence to Rubin than that Rubin’s writings — such as her claim that Muslims are more likely to kill people than “blond Norwegians” — are ugly, obscene, vile, and odious and may incite violence against Muslims.

This brings us back to the shootings in Norway, an act committed by a disturbed man who drew some of his inspiration from extremist Web sites. A blogosphere given to vitriol and hasty judgments ought to consider the possible consequences of its own online attacks.

And with that, Pexton dismisses Rubin’s own vitriol and hasty judgment about the Norway killings, and decides that the liberals who called her on it are guilty of hasty judgment and vitriol that might incite attacks on Rubin. The real victims aren’t the targets of Rubin’s vitriol; the real victim is Rubin herself. It’s just another tired variation of the old wingnut chestnut that liberals, by not tolerating intolerance, are the people who are really guilty of intolerance.

ABOVE: Neil Stevens (not Photoshopped)

Shorter Neil Stevens, Red State Trike Force:
On GOProud and CPAC

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™