Arise, Ye Socialists!
Now that McCain-Palin have reverted to an overt form of McCarthyism as a last-minute ploy, repeatedly labeling Barack Obama as a "socialist," it's only logical to expect that the last few days of their campaign will become overtly racist.
Those who know me, know very well I'm hardly scandalized by the notion of socialism. And if Obama were such a thing, I'd be an even bigger supporter of his.
But the use of this term by a political nitwit like Sarah Palin and by a decaying cynic like John McCain has a transparent and sinister intent. In this case, the GOP ticket has taken the simple, very American principle of a fair, progressive income tax, and twisted into a specter of communism.
This will fail, of course. Each day brings a new smear tactic by McCain. And each day he loses yet another battleground state.
So sometime around the middle of next week -- perhaps earlier-- the McCain campaign will have but one arrow left in its quiver.
Race.
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has as much as tipped his hand.
Joe McCarthy, meet Jim Crow.
Don't know about you, but this flood of crud has got me really motivated.
Thanks to this latest onslaught of smears, I feel very strongly that such despicable and dishonest elements should be kept as far away as possible from the levers of power. When such craven types as Peggy Noonan starts to get queasy over her own Republican ticket, you know something really stinks.
So, here's my decision. It's a firm but hardly altruistic choice. I've decided I will spend the last 5 days of this campaign in Nevada where I can help turn one of the remaining swing states against John McCain and Sarah Palin (and still play poker at night!).
I hope you will join me.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Reno or Vegas?
October 20th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I’m heading to Nevada too (from Fresno)! See you there.
Another Socialist
October 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
It’s on like popcorn.
I spent Sunday calling North Carolina and let me tell you I heard more N-bombs than on a rap record. It made me sick and sad that the Woody’s of the world don’t get it.
They rather tear the country in half then share it. I can’t go to Nevada, but I will be calling FL this weekend.
So did Rush endorse Mc Cain because he’s white?
If blacks are so blindly voting for his skin color why didn’t Jessie or Sharpton make a bigger impact when they ran, or why didn’t Michael Steele win when he ran in MD?
One call I made was so scary, it made me wonder why should any black person put themselves in such a position.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Hours after a Fayetteville, North Carolina Obama rally during which the tires of over 30 vehicles were slashed, supporters of John McCain heckled voters at a polling place. The yo tube video should really piss you off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R75OMc2SkvA
October 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Rob.. Las Vegas. Culinary Workers.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
OMG. 8 years ago I helped the UFCW local 770 with their field campaign against Wal-Mart in Palmdale. Great fight but we got our butts kicked. Maybe this could be a little rematch and then some. Gotta pull some strings with work…
You know, I’m thinkin’ up a posse…
October 20th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
They’ve already accepted the endorsement of a racist country musician
October 21st, 2008 at 12:26 am
I seriously doubt the McCain campaign will make racist attacks against Obama.
I recall that the Clintons were showered with exactly the same opprobrium with far less reason, but no less vehemence by those doing the accusing.
Let’s not get McCarthyist on the race charge and pull the same guilt-by-association trips the Fox News party is trying to lay on Obama.
The McCain team has tried to use scare tactics and guilt by association against Obama, but I’ve yet to see anything that’s racist in and of itself–even on Fox, though I can’t say I watch much…
Sure, plenty of racists support McCain, but that’s irrelevant. Plenty of Muslim terrorists support Obama, but that’s just as irrelevant.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:59 am
I seriously doubt the McCain campaign will make racist attacks against Obama.
Thick and slow. Do you see the word “racist” in Marc’s post? No. The word is “Race”, and the link is to the plan to use Rev. Wright. Read the comments at that link and even you may be able to figure out how this works.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:18 am
I gotta respond to this:
I’ve yet to see anything that’s racist in and of itself–even on Fox, though I can’t say I watch much…
The entire narrative around Rev. Wright, especially on Fox but throughout the media, was deeply racist. The accusation that Wright is racist is itself driven by racism, and certainly the guilt-by-association claim that Obama is racist because he belonged to the church is driven by racism. The accusation that Obama “threw his grandmother under the bus” by simply calling her “a typical white woman” was grossly racist. It’s the racism of the oppressive group that can’t tolerate any pushback from the oppressed group. How dare those uppity negroes show any resentment!
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That’s in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is Supreme.” — Jeremiah Wright
October 21st, 2008 at 6:22 am
I hope the McCain campaign does start running with Wright. With no more debates left, Obama could use the boost and McCain is running out of ideas to push himself further into irrelevance.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:42 am
Marc Cooper: “Now that McCain-Palin have reverted to an overt form of McCarthyism as a last-minute ploy, repeatedly labeling Barack Obama as a “socialist…”
I would suspect that the real form of McCarthyism here is expecting McCain*Palin to play the race card. Obama has been playing the race card all along. AND he is a socialist. Denying that is intellectual dishonesty, but what I have come to expect from all you Obamabots.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:51 am
I can’t get the Peggy Noonan link to work.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:56 am
As for intellectual dishonesty, I’m still waiting for a response to this from two threads ago. You might have missed it as you have recently been engaging in drive by’s.
What makes her to be so qualified to be VP that you and the other Palindrones jumped on board?
October 21st, 2008 at 7:09 am
Well put, Randy. Last summer I went on vacation to see the ocean in sunny Florida. I guess that means I am qualified to be Secretary of the Navy.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:10 am
I am looking for some idea and stumble upon your posting
decide to wish you Thanks. Eugene
October 21st, 2008 at 7:27 am
If a firm belief in a progressive income tax rate AND an extensive policy of tax credits offered to people who have a federal income tax bill that is very small or zero is the measure of “socialism”, then Ronald Reagan himself was a socialist. The intellectual dishonesty on display in this current rain of bullshit is so gross that one can’t take it seriously as anything other than hysteria. Frankly, the more the “mainstream” GOP and a GOP “maverick” like McCain – currently on a path of wresting total humiliation from the jaws of mere defeat – flagrantly out themselves as willing to stoop as low into the wingnut gutter as the Ropers and Woodys, the better. Stick a fork in ‘em…they’re done.
Can’t go to Nevada because of work commitments, but kudos to Marc. I’ve gotta stick to the phone banking to NV and NM. Saturday we registered 40 young folk at a skateboard, rap and grafitti art event featuring Mos Def, a couple blocks from our house. What amazed me wasn’t that we registered a respectable number of young voters, but that most everybody we approached indicated very enthusiastically they were already registered. Also, who woulda thunk a couple of years ago that at a hiphop-oriented event in 2008 the most popular t-shirts would feature various pix and logos of the Democratic presidential candidate.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:44 am
I haven’t read anyone saying, and no one even vaguely connected with the McCain campaign, suggesting that the problem with Rev. Wright is that he’s black.
The guilt-by-association with Wright has only do to with his ridiculous ham-fisted comments about America.
I just don’t see how it’s racist to criticize Obama for attending Wright’s church.
Sure, it’s moronic and, even dastardly, under the political circumstances, but its not racist. The guilt-by-association would be no less malicious or corrosive if Obama had some other ethnic background.
Things are indeed getting nuttier as the race comes down to the wire, but I have to say there is some paranoia making the rounds on the liberal side as well.
The idea that McCain iand/or Palin are whipping up some kind of race war is ludicrous and plain dumb considering that the weeks and months following the election are almost certain to prove predictions of said mayhem wrong.
I have on numerous occasions dismissed the allegation that “you can’t criticize Obama without being labled a racist.” But I have to say I see more and more liberals affixing exactly that label on criticism of Obama that maybe totally unfair and dishonest, but which isn’t racist…
October 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
David, I think the Noonan piece Marc refers to is this one.
I found it at this WSJ link
This pull-quote from Noonan’s piece shows up in the address window of Marc’s embedded link (above) when you click on it.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am
>AND he is a socialist
OK Jim R, I’ll bite. What is your working definition of socialism?
October 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am
Marc– Who’s you’re favorite poker writer?
October 21st, 2008 at 8:36 am
This distinction between race and racism is ridiculous. The McCain camp knows that all it has to do is bring up race, overtly or covertly, and racism will do the rest. That’s exactly what the Clintons did, and it won’t much better for McCain than it worked for them.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
Be careful with your comments, G.M. Marc has started grading them and assigning points that go on your permanent record.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:49 am
Reg — once again, payroll taxes are taxes, they go to the same place as income taxes, everyone who earns a dime must pay them, they’re extremely regressive, and they’re used to pay current Social Security recipients. That is why people who work legally, but who make too little to be subject to income tax, are justified in receiving tax credits. Milton Friedman, that socialist who strongly championed the negative income tax, would agree.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:51 am
Sorry Reg, I didn’t read your comment carefully, I guess you would more or less agree with me on this tax matter, and you were directing your comments at someone else.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:02 am
Marc, you owe me another swing through Carson City
October 21st, 2008 at 9:05 am
Another report from the Socialist International Conspiracy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/report-from-the-socialist_b_136514.html
October 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am
race = racism… wow… do you suppose no one has noticed that Obama is black and it takes McCain to point it out so that the racists (and there are no doubt plenty on both sides of the equation) will flock to his banner. How tendentious.
Randy, I didn’t see your post,but allow me to respond if you will:
, who has no fear of rifles, shotguns and handguns, but lacks the courage to answer questions at a press conference what the hell does her husbands recalcitrance have to do with the price of apples? And if you are talking about Palin, so what, I’ve yet to see Obama or Biden answer direct questions about some of the topics conservatives are concerned about… and the bull shit debates (which I think, on reflection, Obama won on points for all 3) don’t count for shit. They were lousy in terms of information passed to the voters., who has been found to abuse the power of her office for personal reasons and used said power – along with her unelected husband – to further a personal agenda.unproven, that was a report authored by a staffer, not vetted by the committee as a whole and was in terms of opinion only. ”
Your comment and my responses will be in bold..
“You opposed John McCain until he picked Sarah Palin: a candidate whose husband belonged to a secessionist partybut the party wanted to do it the democratic way via the vote, unlike the south who tried to do it with force of arms. And, was I mistaken, did we include in Obama’s questions his wife’s political memberships or beliefs?, who believes geographical proximity confers foreign policy experience why not, david saw the sea and thinks he’s qualified to be sec/navy Actually, I don’t any more think it qualifies any more than Obama’s tax plan and the resulting economic downturn that would make would make him an economist
As to him being a socialist… Oh come on guys, you want him so bad BECAUSE he is a socialist so why are you so afraid of that term.
Socialism: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
If it is obvious to everyone with the ability to think through his actual stated plans and you guys can’t, it doesn’t say much for you so-called progressives which was a lable you designed to keep from being called liberals. Again, you can hurl tendentious bull shit all you want, but don’t expect me to swallow it. It is sufficient for me to watch you guys wallow in it.
And as far as Reagan having some tendencies to socialism… bull shit. But, on the other hand, was his tax policy sometimes stupid… absolutely… and i love it when reg falls into argumentum absurdum. He is so cute when he gets pissed off.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
GM,
i was talking about Sarah Palin. Joe the Plumber has done more press conferences than she has.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:56 am
BTW, you still didn’t answer why Palin made you become a McCain supporter.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:17 am
Roper – you rotting turd, it’s brilliant of you to dimiss an argument based on the FACTS that Reagan, whatever else one might say about his tax policies, endorsed an essentially progressive income tax AND was an enthusiastic supporter of income tax credits for people with children whose incomes were so low they paid no taxes. Those are exactly the arguments being used to make the idiotic claim “socialist” against Obama by ignorant crap merchants such as yourself. I don’t think for a minute Reagan was a socialist, nor Obama, but even Reagan had a bigger reality check and was less dishonest than you current creeps who use his name like some silly Messiah Mantra. Unfortunately even the Reaganbots do a disservice to the man himself.
As for Hagel’s bill, I applaud him. He’s a decent conservative, not one of the minions with their heads stuck up their asses, such as yourself.
Now go suck a lemon…
October 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am
Roper – are you opposed to the EITC ? Are you against any such things as “wealth redistributive” tax credits for health coverage which McCain advocates (after taxing the benefits of those with “gold cadillac” plans to use his “class war” terminology) or education, which I believe both favor to varying degrees ? Do you favor a flat tax rather than a progressive one ?
If so, would you please get off your ass and help promote these neanderthal notions as part of the GOP’s electoral agenda and help insure that future GOP candidates run on this stuff ? I would love for the party to remain dead for as long as possible, and the more influence the wingnuts have on it, the better to guarantee total and utter irrelevance.
Meanwhile, the “socialists” here are busy electing a President…and you’re just a mild annoyance. Get to work and make yourself a real nuisance…to the future of right-wing electoral dominance. Please !!!! You could be a real ace in the hole for us Progressives, if you’re willing to stand up and work hard for your “ideals” in the Grand Old…Very Old…Party.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am
“you still didn’t answer why Palin made you become a McCain supporter”
Identity politics for disingenuous wack-jobs with excessively high opinions of themselves.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:55 am
Roper Doper:
So your idea of fun is a Mad Max world? Do you have Mel Gibson fantasies or just ones of you in some walled oasis while the rest of the world burns, writhes and dies.
Auden says: We are put here in earth to do good for others. What others are here for, I don’t know.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:20 pm
How liberals argue (Language caution, but you expected that.)
October 21st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
GR Roper — Its sad how people here see fit to insult you, call you rotting turd and so forth. What happened to civility? Kids these days.
That said, the Global Poverty Act you worry about does not allocate funding. It says the President should support world-wide efforts to do something about global poverty. And then it requires the US to do…absolutely nothing. The UN proposal for global taxation — among laundry list of suggestions in UN Millenium Challenge — is a non-starter. We’ll have colonies on Mars before you get a global tax. Although the Georgist proposal to tax rental value of land and natural resources sounds great to me. And if global carbon caps and generous foreign aid help keep tired poor huddled masses from immigrating to America and Europe after global warming fries up their own lands, I would call that money well-spent.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I don’t know if they’ll go “overtly racist,” but desperate times require desperate measures, so nothing would surprise me.
I wondered though if Palin’s appearance on SNL was a type of capitulation, one in which she wanted to go out as a good sport.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Thanks for the Noonan link, Listener.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Utterly amazing video, Woody. Is “Anna Churchill” by any chance Dr. Shanara Reid Brinkley?
October 21st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
No, but I was sure long haired hysterical guy with glasses jumping up and down and screaming “I’m an asshole” was either you, white boy, or Woody.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I guess if I told you about a corner of America where residents collectively own the rights to the natural resources – without investing one cent – and get checks from the government each year allocating to each person equally taxes collected from corporations (which don’t have the right to buy these resources and own them as private property but who have to continually make payments to those who happen to be living in the proximity for the right to use the resources productively) it would sound like a socialist scam….
And Sarah Palin brags about it because she “took on” those oil companies to increase the checks she sends out to non-taxpaying Alaskans. (Not to mention the pork scam that Alaskans have going with federal tax dollars – bringing money in at a rate of nearly $2 to $1 they pay in federal taxes. More of that wealth redistribution this supremely and malicioiusly dishonest woman rails against.)
As for civility, Roper surrendered his right by tossing idiotic insults against liberals in every post long ago.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Randy, you are right. I forgot… getting senile in my old age or it is still the “chemo-brain” of the old chemotherapy. OK, I’m in because I think (that is the operative word here) that Palin and McCain won’t get elected this go round (though I will vote for them) and she then becomes the likely front runner in 2012. She has then, four years to firm up her conservative credentials. I was for almost anybody but McCain, but I think by picking Palin he showed some balls, something he’s not done much of in the past as he has been either a fence sitter or bounced over to the liberal Democrat side because he thought that the “Maverick” label was so cool. Personally, I think his stance on taxes, immigration, campaign finance, etc. Just don’t cut it as far as my way of thinking goes. I’m not sure why he got the nomination, I would have preferred almost anyone else in the Republican stable except Huckabee (who reg is in love with – guess he’s just stuck on them folk from Ar-Kansas).
Be that as it may, I’d rather see McCain there then Obama and Palin in line than Biden. Too, I honestly thought, up until june or so that Hillary might take the cake. Now, i can’t stand her either but it never occurred to me that the Democrats would fall for the smooth talking but ultimately empty suit of an untried Democrat with less than 150 days of Senate service, 8 or so years as a state senator who had no guts and vote “present” so damn often and who has the audacity to think he’s qualified to be president. he was obviously qualified to run for the presidency, but that you guys gave him the nomination is just flat out unbelievable. Hell, you couldn’t have done worse with Dodd.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
If you link back far enough on Roper’s “Global Poverty Act” one ends up with a Glenn Beck rant. Which means one knows as much factual information about the subject at hand as you’d get from interrrogating Bozo the Clown. Glenn Beck is probably the stupidest, most dishonest – and did I mention crazed – guy with a non-FOX TV show. Oh wait a minute – he’s moving to FOX. I can’t believe we’re treated to shit like this…and then waste time discussing it.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
So you support Palin because…she put a windfall tax on oil companies ? Or because she gets more pork per capita than any other governor in America ?
Total dumb shit…
October 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
reg, are you so ignorant that you can’t have a discussion without resorting to gutter language and stupid remarks? and you need not say anything about my stupid remarks, because that doesn’t absolve you in the least bit.
Go away little boy, just go away! No, better yet, this old man will go away and let you folk fall back on preaching to the choir.
By the bye folks, did you notice that it only takes a couple of posts in here from a conservative to rile you guys up. At least if you come over to my blog, you will get some respect… well, maybe not you reg… but anyone else would get some respectiful argument. Ahmed drops by frequently and though he and I are worlds apart and think each has an IQ just above that of a carrot, we still can chat.
Wonder when some of you guys will learn to do that?
October 21st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Whoops, forgot something… WCB… Read again please sir:
October 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Truth is, you can’t respond on the basis of facts.
Don’t come in here yammering about “Obamabots” and expect to be treated like you’re some paragon of civility. You’re not. You’re a malicious creep.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
And before anyone gets a bee in their bonnet, I will repeat my phrase: “Wonder when “some” of you guys will learn to do that?” Not all, just some.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Anybody who bought into Bush has a lot of goddam nerve lecturing us about Obama. You’re marginal and have been wrong about damned near everything you’ve touched.
But the Iranians thank you for supporting the use of young Americans to help them gain hegemony in the Gulf…
October 21st, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Silly season, indeed.
The hand wringing about a possible socialist future is possibly the right’s most tone deaf warning in a campaign filled with tone deaf proclamations. We can’t have government intervening in the economy. What we need, they insist, is more of the same! Meanwhile, the current Republican occupant and the Republican nominee both support the nationalization of banks. What’s a free-marketeer to do but call names?
October 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Kenneth Adleman has endorsed Obama:
I never thought I’d agree with Adelman, but there you have it.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Important reminder to G.M. Roper
October 21st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Obama’s New Endorsements – Four Weathermen terrorists and Mark Foley
October 21st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Guys, I can’t seem to shut up. Can you help me out here?
October 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Amazing. With all the comments that reg makes, and someone tries to insult me over those two one liners by pretendng to be me. There’s your liberal mind–or, lack of.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
GM:
I suspect you’ll end up being wrong about Palin in 2012. It seems like a lot of conservatives, or at least conservatives of some stripes are holding out this hope, and I think she’ll give it a try, but I don’t think she has any chance of overcoming the national joke she has become.
Surely the red-meat right will support her, and she may even make a real run at the nomination on that basis, she has no actual shot. Republicans who hail from more sane regions of the GOP map are jumping ship left and right over this pick. She’ll manage to memeorize a lot more stuff between now and 2012, but she’s fundamentally unserious, and that fact won’t change.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:49 pm
If the Republicans want to run Sarah Palin in 2012, they should just go right ahead. But don’t count on the GOP making it that easy for Obama to win a second term.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
GM Roper says he expects for Palin to “firm up her conservative credentials” over the next four years so she can win the nomination in 2012.
I can’t wait to watch that unfold since her hallmark “conservative credential” is that she has little education and/or knowledge of world affairs. She was selected to symbolize the anti-intellectual resentments of a demographic who wear their ignorance not with pride but with arrogance and astounding self-regard.
Palin calls it the “real America” her way of telling her supporters that it’s OK to be so butt ignorant you’d believe Obama is a Marxist Muslim and Saddam Hussein is pals with bin Laden.
Just how will she “burnish” that particular conservative credential? How is she going to become even more ignorant of world affairs than she already is?
After Bush was re-elected I wondered whether the party would respond to the coming disaster by sticking to its pattern of nominating someone who’s primary appeal is as a symbol that it’s ok, or even good, to be ignorant. How, I wondered, could the party find another candidate that dumb, but still capable of raising money and taking the other steps necessary to win the nomination.
Turns out, the party couldn’t really repeat that, so McCain won the nomination. He picked Palin primarily to pitch to the Bush voter that good old Republican idea that ignorance is good and academic achievement is bad.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I don’t know which Woody is which, but that link purporting to show Weathermen and Mark Foley endorsing Obama is the rankest sort of guilt by attenuated associations, thrice removed. Barbara Ehrenreich once knew some radicals, so hers is a radical endorsement??? Is there a right-wing org that gives awards for the most nonsensical anti-Obama argument this fall? If so, the competition for it is indeed intense.
Back to Marc’s challenge, I am going to Ohio– Mansfield, specifically. And who knows where from there. It must be a good sign that us old warriors are getting up out of the rocker and back on the road. Or perhaps a sign of the Rapture, since Obama is the Antichrist, for those who believe the hallucinogenic nonsense of Revelation.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Could GM be holding out for the Sarah Palin/Ted Nugent ticket?
October 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I am like a hydra, Michael–you can’t kill me, and you never will.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
For a different perspective on Palin, more to my way of thinking, but presented here so that you can see some of what I’m talking about The Volokh Conspiracy
DanO, Interesting observation. Well, we shall see won’t we.
Jim, nah, I don’t even like the way Nugent sings.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Marc, my friend, you are making the ultimate patriotic sacrifice by going to Las Vegas for Barack Obama!
Incidentally, invoking the Wright Stuff has been a focus of heated debate in the McCain campaign. Anybody who thinks it might not happen doesn’t understand politics.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Bill…
Thank you for recognizing my selfless national service. I return your salute.
Is there a number on the roulette wheel you’d like me to play for you?
October 21st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/is-obama-a-socialist/
October 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
“Ahmed drops by frequently and though he and I are worlds apart and think each has an IQ just above that of a carrot, we still can chat.”
Okay, fair enough, but please do not use my name as a way of substanciating the utterly despicable and vacuous poltics that you’re now engaging here and on your own blog. Reg’s approach to you is, IMHO, principled and on target. One of the most heartening aspect of this pressidentail campaign, for me, has been to watch the emerging maturity of the American voter, who has for the most part not been swayed by despicable red baiting, attempts to other Obama by linking him to Islam, William Ayers, “anti ameircanism” or whatever other crap you and Woody have been slinging around these parts. I just visited your blog, as I do from time to time, in part due to a sense of morbid curiosity, and see now that you’ve got a post connecting Obama to farrkhan, Rashid khalidi (the bogey man here being that he is Palestinian, a crime according to Roper and friends) and others. What you’re engaging is the poltics of extreme reaction, fuulled no longer by nay cohesive and positive political program, no it feeds only on the vilest foms of bigotry and xenophobia. In a time of crisis i have no doubt that you and your ilk would pose a sunstancial danger to the health and welfare of a free, ecuminical and healthy democracy. Now, have a nice day
October 21st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Okay, someone who is not me keeps posting comments with my name, so, if you see something stupid written, just know that it’s not by the real Woody.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:14 pm
GM Roper — The quote you provide about the Global Poverty Act is false, as you can see here by reading the text of the bill. It doesn’t call for any expenditures:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.02433:
I doubt McCain will try a racist attack, it will look desperate and he must know it won’t gain him one single additional voter beyond those already planning to vote for him.
Surprisingly, given how racist we’re supposed to be, most white people didn’t give a damn about the good Rev. Goddamn America. We know many blacks are angry as hell and periodically need to blow off steam, and once Obama made clear that he personally wouldn’t be joining in any riots, or blaming rioting on them, they shrugged their shoulders. He made it clear that he had more in common with Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and maybe Jimmy Carter than with with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or the Rev. Wright, and he talked intelligently and compassionately about the issues. At that point they judged him by his character, and in all likelihood a majority or near majority will shortly elect him to the highest office possible.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Marc Cooper: “I hope you will join me.”
The only finger I’m going to lift for Obama is the middle one. Like fire fighting fire, one f-word responds to another. One f-word I try to never use is forget.
GM Roper: “[H]e is a socialist. Denying that is intellectual dishonesty, but what I have come to expect from all you Obamabots.”
There is no level of redistributiveness of tax revenue that can constitute “collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.” Tax revenues are not means of production and distribution, they are a portion of the income made from selling the results of production and the service of distribution. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about this.
It’s one thing to be ignorant of the meaning of the word socialism and to think tax revenue redistribution fits the definition. It’s one thing to look up the definition and to persist in labeling it “socialist” after having enlightened oneself. However when you call people liars, accusing them of intellectual dishonesty, because they know what the word means you forfeit your right to complain about a lack of civility. You also demonstrate that you are immune to reason and should therefore be treated no differently than a common troll.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
As for the race hail-mary alluded to by Marc and hinted at by Bradley’s inside connections to the campaign, I’ll simply add that the temptation to go harshly negative on a race you’re losing is very high.
Even in the face of personal principle that militates against it, I’m sure it’s very seriously on the table. These guys aren’t in it to lose, and while in rational, quiet moments they may see the odds of winning as extremely long, they may even know they are going to lose, I can guarantee you that in their heads they are spinning out what seem like realistic paths to a win. There are very few of those paths left aside from a major dive for the bottom. Facing those long odds, the risky and unthinkable, start to lose their unthinkable aspect.
In this late stage, trailing as they are, the strategy talk is all about what you can do to have a chance to pull it out. With two weeks left the choice is nukes or nothing. Blow it all up or accept your fate.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I don’t see that McCain has ever actually had a strategy in approaching the electorate with a coherent message. Everything he’s done since Day One is essentially tactical – on an underlying premis that he’s such an awesome guy that the country would be foolish to pass on him.
Palin is washed up. If she’s got a future in national politics, it’s as a successor to Phyllis Schlafly. Maybe a talk show. Perhaps the motivational speaking circuit. The notion that she’ll be a serious contender for the Presidency is as hallucinatory as most of the crap Roper serves up as his “wisdom.”
October 21st, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Obama’s up 14 points in the latest Pew Poll.
I hope McCain digs in the dirt – I don’t want the idiots like Richard Cohen to attempt to “rehabilitate” this useless old prick. Looking forward to his humiliation.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:42 pm
In the Wall Street Journal poll, Palin tops the list of voters’ concerns about McCain – something like 34%. Runner up is that he’ll continue Bush’s policies – somewhere in the 20s. So the genius of McCain is that he added an even bigger drag to his campaign than George W. Bush.
And some think this is a reason to vote for him…
October 21st, 2008 at 10:47 pm
“Arise Ye Socialists”. How Iron Heel of you Marc.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
DC Sniper, in defining socialisim, you can focus on the tools, such as government takeover of businesses, or the goals of socialism, which is redistribution of the wealth. For the latter, Obama is clearly a socialist and only current laws, which are being changed daily, will keep him from the former.
- – -
Also, the arguments that tax handouts don’t count if some beneficiary also pays social security taxes is one of the sorriest defenses that I’ve ever heard. It ignores the future benefits to be received from social security or, worse, that Obama would be raiding the social security system and making it even more insolvent. Why don’t you guys be honest rather than mouthing talking points that you hear on CNN?
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Report from the Socialist International Conspiracy
Surely you have heard by now of the imminent socialist takeover of America, and if you find the prospect unlikely, ask yourself: How many socialists do you know who lost millions in the recent stock market crashes? Just as I thought—none—and that’s not only because you don’t know any socialists. The truth is that we, the Socialist International Conspiracy, not only saw this coming, we are the ones who made it happen.
The plan took shape during a particularly intense criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an Akron IHOP. We realized that we’d been recruiting no more new members per year than the Green Bay Packers and that, despite all our efforts, more Americans have been taken aboard UFO’s than have embraced the historic promise of socialism. So we decided to suspend our usual work of standing on street corners and hissing, “Hey, how’d you like to live in a workers’ paradise?” Instead of building socialism, one worker at a time, we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.
First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che t-shirts, suited them up in Armani’s and wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss. Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, and as soon as the money starts rolling in, send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find – subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes – anything goes. And oh yes: Spend your own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of — $10,000 martinis, fountains of champagne – so as to fan the flames of class resentment.
These brave comrades did far better than we could have imagined, quickly adapting to lives of excess and greed punctuated only by squash games at the Century Club. But we could not have inflicted such massive damage to capitalism if we hadn’t also planted skilled agents in high places within the government and various quasi-governmental agencies. When all this is over, Phil Gramm, for example—the former senator and McCain economics advisor — will be getting a Hero of Socialism award for his courageous battle against financial regulation. That’s the only name I can name at this moment, but I will tell you this: If you happened to have been in a playground in the suburbs of DC any time in the last few years, and noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his weekly orders from the central committee.
Things were going swimmingly until about a week ago, when the capitalists suddenly staged a counter-coup. We had thought that the nationalization of the banks would bring capitalism to its knees, but instead, the capitalists were craftily using it to privatize the government. Goldman Sachs, former home of Henry Paulson, has taken the lead, planting its agents so thickly about the erstwhile public sector as to earn the nickname “Government Sachs.” Among the former Goldman Sachs operatives now running the country, in addition to Paulson, are the president’s chief of staff, the chairman of the New York Fed, the man appointed to take over A.I.G., and the 35-year-old boy wonder selected to oversee the bail-out program.
According to the New York Times, “Goldman supporters” insist there is no “conspiracy” and not a black helicopter in sight – just a bunch of public-spirited investment bankers sacrificing their normal 8-figure salaries for the good of the nation. But we socialists know a conspiracy when we see one, and some in our ranks are complaining bitterly that as capitalism began to collapse, the bankers seized the life raft that was intended to save the laid-off, the foreclosed-upon, and the exploited masses in general.
Ah well, we socialists still have the election to look forward to. After months of studying the candidates’ economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses John McCain!
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 am
GMR: Obama has been playing the race card all along. AND he is a socialist. Denying that is intellectual dishonesty
Even if you were right that Obama is a socialist (which only a moron and ignoramus could actually believe), your charge would be intellectually dishonest, because it doesn’t account for the well-understood (even by you) fact that sometimes people deny truths because they wrongly believe otherwise.
But noting intellectual dishonesty from Roper is like noting bear shit in the woods.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:42 am
Kenneth Adelman (corrected) has endorsed Obama
I’m seriously going to have to reconsider my vote for Obama.
Oh darn, I already voted.
P.S. Al Qaeda is for McCain.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:48 am
By the bye folks, did you notice that it only takes a couple of posts in here from a conservative to rile you guys up. At least if you come over to my blog, you will get some respect… well, maybe not you reg… but anyone else would get some respectiful argument. Ahmed drops by frequently and though he and I are worlds apart and think each has an IQ just above that of a carrot, we still can chat.
Wonder when some of you guys will learn to do that?
When you stop being a lying sack of vile, dangerous shit who doesn’t deserve any respect.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
P.S. The danger I referred to is as given by your friendly chat partner, Ahmed:
“In a time of crisis i have no doubt that you and your ilk would pose a sunstancial danger to the health and welfare of a free, ecuminical and healthy democracy.”
October 26th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
woo woo man says:
Why don’t you guys be honest rather than mouthing talking points that you hear on CNN?
…if anyone were mouthing talking points from CNN the conversation would go something like: blah blah blah blah McCain; blah blah blah McCain
Surely you meant to reference MSNBC?
woodbrain says: that Obama would be raiding the social security system and making it even more insolvent.
uhhhhhhhhhhhh. Thats McCain’s plan. Read the fine print.
Woody, what is “socialism”?
October 26th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Woody (the real one) is the gift that keeps on giving…you guys are too ernest and missing all the fun. If this were a Brit blog things like this would be the hi light of all the posts:
# Woody (the real one) Says:
October 21st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Okay, someone who is not me keeps posting comments with my name, so, if you see something stupid written, just know that it’s not by the real Woody.
October 26th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Passing Through what is your blog address?
October 26th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
DC Sniper:
Rather than whining about Obama’s voting travesty re the telecoms spy bill why not–like I have tried to do–parachute in Nader’s dead to rights platform?
Nader has addressed every issue that pisses everyone off. But do supposedly true blue progressives support him? Nooooooooooo they then wage a smear campaign against him saying he’s a “spoiler”.
I am convinced that most of those that call themselves liberals are nothing more than people who prefer to whine and moan about how awful and stupid everything and everyone is. If someone like Nader comes along who walks the talk and has the squeaky, cleanest record in the history of the world they will say he’s “arrogant” blah blah.
As Ridgeway said: Democrats (read liberal–progressives) are the meanest of motherfuckers.
Rather than flipping the bird and morphing into the Terminator why not support a guy who would have been a real Terminator.
I posted a brilliant article by WIlliam Greider on Nader. No one comments. I posted that Nader made a speech at a Wall St rally that had it been given prime time airing–he would have won the election. No one responds.
The whole comments section is just full of progressives posting and riposting over the obvious about McCain and Palin or smacking Woody.
No one wants to address the fact that there are people who actually have tried to take on the bullshit but can’t get any traction from people who should be their allies.
Do you think Ralph would have not ripped that telecoms bill to shreds? Oh. Can’t talk about that. Then I can’t be indignant.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:24 am
When all this is over, Phil Gramm, for example—the former senator and McCain economics advisor — will be getting a Hero of Socialism award for his courageous battle against financial regulation. That’s the only name I can name at this moment, but I will tell you this: If you happened to have been in a playground in the suburbs of DC any time in the last few years, and noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his weekly orders from the central committee.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:28 am
I can name at this moment, but I will tell you this: If you happened to have been in a playground in the suburbs of DC any time in the last few years, and noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his weekly orders from the central committee.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:45 am
A SUPPORTED BY THE DEVELOPER TOOLS? It was interesting. You seem very knowledgeable in ypour field.
June 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
i am so very glad they lost the election. Palin is very scary. It is amazing how obtuse she is. I just don’t understand why conservatives are SOO extreme. Not just in their views but they way they present them as well. Like my way or the highway attitude.
October 30th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Maybe you could change the post subject Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Arise, Ye Socialists! to more catching for your content you make. I loved the blog post still.
November 10th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Super post
I know how profitable gold investing can be. My brother made really good money doing just that, and myself I am making good money investing in gold.
I recommend to anyone who’s thinking of starting to invest in gold to read a book or two on this topic, as there so many mistakes and blunders that are possible to make when you first start in this industry.
Thank you for sharing this with your us.