The Bloomberg political correspondent,
Roger Simon, put it best last night on one of the cable yap shows. He said he had heard people say they had recently read maybe "three Jackie Collins" or "three Susan Browns" but he had never heard anyone say he had just read "
three Shakespeares."
At least he hadn't heard that phrase until he, and some of the rest of us, watched NBC's
Brian William's interview with George W. Bush and heard the Prez use that exact phrase. And, yes, apparently falling under the spell of them-there European writers, Mr. Bush added he had also recently read a book by
Camus. When Williams asked him what that one was about, Bush punted on the answer saying, anyway, that the Camus book was "three books ago."
Holy hot dogs! For the last five years I've preferred to focus on the president's dysfunctional policies rather than worry much about how smart or dumb he might be. But listening to a full length interview with the guy, you've got to conclude that what you see is pretty much what you get with Bush. That is to say, a guy who can't properly answer any question you toss him. He can invent some new words, however. How about eck-e-lectic? Or was it eco-lectic? You tell me.
Maybe The Camus Book that Bush read was really
The Stranger. Maybe Bush think he's
Meursault. When Brian Williams asked him why
Poppy Bush had Bill Clinton as a Kennebunkport guest more frequently than his own son, Bush might have well repeated a variation on Mersault's opening line. You could just imagine him saying: "I killed Poppy yesterday. Or was it today?"
Heck, there's some more uncanny parallels between Bush and Camus' infamous anti-hero,at least if my memory serves me well. Doesn't Mersault get in a jam because he shot and killed an Arab but can't explain exactly why?
Wincing through that interview was like watching a drunken, wobbling waiter tread through a crowded room holding high a tray of plates. Indeed, one suspects that Bush's handlers went ahead with the interview figuring it could only evince sympathy for the faltering President. Listen long enough and you have to feel sorry for him.
I know if I had watched another 20 minutes of it I would have burst out in tears.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 11:06 pm and is filed under Main.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:32 am
The point here is that Bush is stupid, yes? Am I missing any famed left-wing/Democrat party nuance?
Bush is Dumb! What a brilliant argument! It logically follows that people like me, who voted straight Republican in the last election are even dumber!
Impugn the intelligence of the Executive and the intelligence of the electorate! Make no other arguments! Onward, to Victory!
August 31st, 2006 at 12:51 am
“It logically follows that people like me, who voted straight Republican in the last election are even dumber!”
This goes without saying. The key issue, as I have argued in other posts, is why so many Americans engage in the often willful ignorance and stupidity necessary to believe that someone like Bush is a suitable president. It is ultimately an existential choice. But hard reality can, and sometimes does, change the existential equation.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:28 am
maybe shrub is looking for hints on how to kill them gall-durn arabs that are giving him so many gall-durn headaches in his amerikun psyche.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:47 am
PS: did you see this — another example of why the Dems aren’t exactly ‘appealing’ nor collectively much smarter than bush:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-30-matters-choice-edit_x.htm
“They cannot be serious. In 1988, Nancy Pelosi… voted to impeach a federal judge named Alcee Hastings. So did Steny Hoyer, the front-runner to become majority leader.
“Now, 18 years later, these and other Democrats are weighing whether to make Hastings chairman of the House Intelligence Committee if they win in November (or ranking member if the Democrats fall short of the majority). Hastings was convicted by the Senate in 1989 and then elected to Congress from Florida in 1992. He is now second in seniority on the committee behind Jane Harman of California.
“Harman is able, articulate and discreet about intelligence matters, but some Democrats believe she has been too accommodating of President Bush, and she is running up against a term limit as the panel’s top Democrat. Hastings would be next in line, but he was convicted on charges of extortion, perjury and falsifying documents. Not the sort of résumé you want for someone who’d be entrusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets. If Democrats make him the panel’s chairman, they will be saying either that political expedience trumps the rule of law or that both chambers of Congress made a colossal mistake in the Hastings impeachment case.
“With the war in Iraq, high gas prices and a host of other issues working in Democrats’ favor going into the fall elections, the Republicans are eager to assert that the GOP is more trustworthy on national security matters. If House Democrats won’t rule out Hastings as their top guy on intelligence — Pelosi has been non-committal so far — they will go a long way in making the Republican case.”
The dems are pathetic. absolutely pathetic. Politically arrogant and tone-deaf. And still determined to prove they are as disgustingly corrupt as the repugnacons — which they are. to the core.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:26 am
Is the plural of Camus “Camuses” or “Cami”? Oh hell, fergettit, I’ll just go read three more Dan Browns.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:33 am
When Williams asked him what that one was about, Bush punted on the answer saying, anyway, that the Camus book was “three books ago.”
—-
Actually, Williams asked him what the *backstory* was on that book, kind of a weird question. I mean, maybe the “backstory” was that Laura recommended it to him.
August 31st, 2006 at 3:44 am
Bush doesn’t come off too well in all this, sort of straining for the good ol’ boy “watcha see is watcha get” image … but … after watching both of these videos, I came away feeling that the interviewer was the bigger idiot of the two. The whole thing kinda reminded me of that old rule of courtroom cross-examination: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:00 am
i thought gore put it well in a recent speech in britain when he was asked by the audience if bush was stupid, he responded that bush is “incurious.” that pretty much hits it spot on, the man does not have much desire to learn new things.
but he did get a harvard education, which is not a breeze. i’d say the real stupid people are the majority of americans, especially those who have voted for bush. in general, americans live on a different planet and are clueless.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:29 am
He went to Yale, and it is a breeze when nepotism gets you there.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:31 am
He did get his business MA from Harvard, I stand corrected.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:30 am
Books! I thought Bush only read rumors on the “internets.”
August 31st, 2006 at 8:08 am
“It logically follows that people like me, who voted straight Republican in the last election are even dumber!”
What you fail to recognize Samuel, is that you’ve got an out, which a bunch of folks “like you” are going to choose this time around. You don’t have to do it again. Unless you’re even dumber than you sound.
Remind me next time some GOPer greaseball calls the Democrats the “Party of Death” that they aren’t really viciously slandering that half of the country which can be counted on to vote Democratic.
What a wanker…Yeah, Onward!
August 31st, 2006 at 8:24 am
“It logically follows that people like me, who voted straight Republican in the last election are even dumber!â€
What I cannot understand is how the Repubs convinced millions of middle/lower middle income people to vote against their own self interest.
August 31st, 2006 at 8:55 am
Also, Samuel, with Rummy effectively calling 60% of Americans who recognize that his roll of the dice and lack of an effective strategy has failed in Iraq “appeasers”, maybe you should think twice about the “dumb and dumber” argument. Or at least think once.
The GOPers and BushLove Cult have weakened our country by engaging in serial dishonesty, denial, over-reach and incompetence. That’s the bottom line. It’s ugly, in some cases it’s pure evil, and there’s a better than even chance that it will be payback time in November, even given an electoral system that has been gamed to favor “red” regional minorities.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:21 am
Its simple really. Until recently there was a cottage industry in the media – and not just the right wing media – that Bush was “misunderestimated” . Sure the pundits said, he may not have a lot of fancy bookllearning but he has a native shrewdness that belies all that. Hell, Fred Barnes even saw genius there! Of course it was all the “Emperior’s new Clothes” (required reading to understand the current political climate) but Shrub made the boys on the bus feel comfortable.
Now they didn’t feel that way about Clinton. Say what you will of 42 but no one every would call him dumb. In fact he was usually the brightest kid in the class. And he had the poilitcal savvy of a FDR. No wonder the chattering class hated him! He probably knew more about any subject than they did. And that infuriate the punditocracy – mainly boomers who resent anything that makes them look petty So they made fun of his accent – Southern, you see (Arkansas, even better!) – and for our great and good an accent from dixie is a sign of non-intelligence. And they went after Gore as inauthethic. But GWB was a regular guy! The kind you’d like to have a beer with! Even though he’s a dry drunk.
And even though it was obvious from the debates of 2000 that there was, let us be kind, something missing there – something like gravitas – well he was a good guy and street smart. And when we saw his deer in the headlight act during the Florida Fiasco it was ignored. As was his peculariar activities on 9-11. No, instead we were given Shrub as Prince Hal! See Chris Matthews.
But that was then.Now, after Iraq and Katrina and so much more the blinkers have come off. And as the elites worry about the future the sheer incompetence of a man way over his head can’t be hidden any longer. And as the boy-king struggles we ask ourselve how in the hell we ever got here as even Rupublicans like Joe Scarborough can ask, in all seriousness – “Is Bush an Idiot”
August 31st, 2006 at 10:49 am
Marc, its been a while since I’ve read the Stranger, but I recall Meursault killed the Arab because it was “hot” outside.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:50 am
I suppose by now everyone here who is interested has seen or read Keith Olberman’s remarks yesterday on Rummy. if you have not then go to CROOKS AND LIARS. Some are calling it a “Murrow Moment.” I’m just not surprised since KO first came to attention as a sports reporter and in Sports they have much higher standards for knowledge and accuracy than they do in the politcal realm. As Rush found out when he was on “Monday Night Football.” You just can’t pull comments out of your ass. I guess that’s why the “Dean” David Broder switched to politics – he couldn’t cut it in the press box.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:53 am
Man, strip away the pomp and circumstance of the presidency and he becomes so ordinary and feeble. Normally we see him on a dais flanked by security and important men in fancy suits and the overall impression, despite his linguistic gaffes, is one of some one in control. I’ve never approved of the direction he’s taking us, but I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong sense that Bush doesn’t really know what’s going on. That stupid comment about keeping expecations low and his attitude that we can’t judge him until 40 years have passed (not a very powerful statement of faith in the democratic process, is it?) are just some of his emptiest plattitudes. I used to have the sense that those talking points were part of the trick of keeping everything secret. Less light seemed to be the strategy in all things. More and more it’s become obvious that, in all things, they were hiding not just programs and ideas that might be politically unpalatable, but also an intellecutal nudity. These videos only increase my sense that the most powerful man in the world doesn’t really have a good grasp on much of anything.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:00 am
He lost me at “NUKULAR”. And, man, does it suck to lose to such an idiot!
August 31st, 2006 at 11:21 am
Traditionally, any individual who is persistently one dimensional and subjectively disconnected from reality is likely to exhibit this kind of behaviour. Whether he/she is republican/democrat is irrelevant. What is important is that vital world concerns are dealt with responsibly. Not pragmatically.
August 31st, 2006 at 11:26 am
I assume that many of you have heard Bush’s speech by now or at least excerpts of it. We had a discussion recently about why so many Americans still think there were wmd in Iraq, and the speech helps to explain why–Bush made that claim brazenly and he was not talking about the early nineties. But even the stupidest American is going to have some trouble with the continuing stay the course rhetoric, especially since fifteen US soldiers have been killed since the weekend and there is no end in sight. For better or worse, few Americans are up to the kind of senseless sacrifices that Bush is asking them to make.
August 31st, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Maybe Bush could have spiced up his speech by chatting about the Maine Army National Guard’s fascinating “Flat Daddy” program:
http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/006922.html
“The Guard pays to have a photo of the troop member blown up and provides supplies to families to attach the photo to foam board…
Taking Flat Daddy out in public can draw some funny looks, Mary Holbrook said, but many tell her they think it’s a great idea.
‘‘Any time I get invited somewhere, I take it with me,’’ she said. And the gynecologist? ‘‘He just thought it was really neat,’’ she said.”
I actually thought this was some kind of sick joke. “Flat Daddy”? Sounds like a great way to give your kids permanent psychological damage.
Of course, a lifesize cardboard photo of your husband sure makes for a great ice-breaker with the local gynecologist. Er, yeah.
August 31st, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I don’t understand why so many liberals and leftists like Keith Olberman. He’s a sportscaster, and not an intellectual. He is everything thats wrong with mainstream liberalism in terms of his style. Give me Amy Goodman or even Peter Jennings before him. Yes, he’s got the right politics, but to say his words on Rumsfeld were a “Murrow moment” is sad.
The funniest thing about Bush’s reading list is the amount of titles on it. Who – especially a president – has time to read that much…I thought Bush gave up jajo….
August 31st, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I thought the Camus thing, at first, was just a smart ass line from Tony Snow!
Locicero, part of the big special plead for Bush was that, well, he’ll surround himself with really great people. Thus, Token Powell and he Jerry Ford All Stars took to the stage.
In the press’s war on Gore in 2000, we should also remember, Al’s very formitability was portrayed as a drawback, i.e., who like a Mr. Smarty Pants. Maureen Dowd wrote with dripping contemept of these “policy wonks”, that is, guys who actually crack a white paper.
The Democrates do a horrible job answering the smear tactics; I hear one doing a terrible job of it right now on the P.B.S. news. A flipping 10 year old ought to be able to take the air out of these WWII Analogies in about five seconds. It’s sad.
August 31st, 2006 at 4:54 pm
“The Democrates do a horrible job answering the smear tactics; I hear one doing a terrible job of it right now on the P.B.S. news. ”
I share your pain, Wall. It’s like sitting watching Jeopardy player get the $10 question wrong, over and over and over. You really wonder how they made it to show in the first place.
Having said that, we can’t forget that debate within the mainstream media on Iraq is framed in a way that makes effective liberal response extremely difficult.
For example, prior to the U.S. invasion, it was virtually impossible to assert the simple truth that Saddam probably did not have WMD and was not a significant military threat to the U.S. It remains impossible to question the fundamental principles on which the invasion is based or to question the Bush administrations legitimacy on the issue in any systematic way.
Liberals, for the most part, have to make their case from within a framework that assumes absolute U.S. moral superiority vis a vis broadly defined “terrorists” and their “supporters.” (I think this is why people like Marc Cooper supported the war in the first place. I think they could smell what a shit-fest it was going to be, but lacked the intellectual fortitude to batter away at the fundamental assumptions.)
Chomsky and many others are quite up to this task, but they remain locked outside the media mainstream, so it’s no surprise that Alan Colmes Democrats dominate the airwaves and get the $10 questions wrong over and over and over.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:06 pm
What was really funny was Tony Snow insisting that he and Bush had sat around and talked about “the origins of existentialism”.
I’m glad my stomach was empty when I first heard that.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Abbas,
I’m sorry my bladder as full when I heard that.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Camus was communist homosexuel and Bush father the same in morals, peacenik appeaser of Sodom Hussein and elitist libs who hate all enerprise and ambitions.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:45 pm
I’m Ty Rouge, Democracy Daddy.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I like the Starship enterprise. On the other hand, the best episodes were where they went to another planet.
I don’t think you have to be Noam Chomsky (I sure ain’t) to say: “Look, first of all, During WWII everyone was asked and expected to pitch in. During the invasion of Iraq, for the first time in U.S. History, Bush provided massive give aways to the rich that have put the country in hock. And now he brags that the deficts he created may not be as masively huge as worst case senarios. You obviously know nothing about WWII, just as Bush knew nothing about Vietnam before draging the country into a quagmire that in some ways is much worse. Iraq is a hotbed of terrorism because of The bumbling of Republicans, and now you ask for a vote of convidence? How dare you try and scare me with Bin Laden, who you have FAILED to illimate.”
Ya know, something like that.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Following on Wall’s comments, here’s Fred Kaplan dissecting the Sorry Little Asshole-In-Chief and offering an essential note of realism. How “dumb” is Bush ? “Dumb” enough to think the rest of us are dumber than he is, assuming he keeps giving disingenous, chickenshit speeches like this last one.
http://www.slate.com/id/2148742/fr/rss/
August 31st, 2006 at 9:33 pm
I also think Kaplan raises a question that the “anti-war” folks should take more seriously. Has Bush, through gargantuan folly, created dangers of spiralling chaos in Iraq that require some consideration other than simple withdrawal or a “date certain”. Frankly, if this is in fact true, which it might well be – I’m not a fan of “out now”, although neither are Jack Murtha or most of the rest of the Dems trying to devise an exit strategy – it’s an even worse indictment of this administration than anything else I could imagine. And, as Kaplan demonstrates, they are such dishonest, wack, partisan bastards that they’ll be the last folks on the planet to devise a strategy for correcting their folly.
I’m distraught.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:22 pm
OT – but this is good. It might well join Wall and Cooper, “reg” and Balter as a valid critique of the Beltway Dems, whatever our differences over “realism” vs. “idealism”.
TimeSelect, so I offer it in full.
September 1, 2006, New York Times Guest Columnist
RENDEVOUS WITH OBLIVION
By Thomas Frank
Over the last month I have tried to describe conservative power in Washington, but with a small change of emphasis I could just as well have been describing the failure of liberalism: the center-left’s inability to comprehend the current political situation or to draw upon what is most vital in its own history.
What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years. All that is missing is a return to the gold standard and a war to Christianize the Philippines.
Historically, liberalism was a fighting response to precisely these conditions. Look through the foundational texts of American liberalism and you can find everything you need to derail the conservative juggernaut. But don’t expect liberal leaders in Washington to use those things. They are “New Democrats†now, enlightened and entrepreneurial and barely able to get out of bed in the morning, let alone muster the strength to deliver some Rooseveltian stemwinder against “economic royalists.â€
Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity. What our modernized liberal leaders offer — that is, when they’re not gushing about the glory of it all at Davos — is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation and to try to understand how we might retrain or re-educate ourselves so we will fit in better next time.
This last point was a priority for the Clinton administration. But in “The Disposable American,†a disturbing history of job security, Louis Uchitelle points out that the New Democrats’ emphasis on retraining (as opposed to broader solutions that Old Democrats used to favor) is merely a kinder version of the 19th-century view of unemployment, in which economic dislocation always boils down to the fitness of the unemployed person himself.
Or take the “inevitability†of recent economic changes, a word that the centrist liberals of the Washington school like to pair with “globalization.†We are told to regard the “free-trade†deals that have hammered the working class almost as acts of nature. As the economist Dean Baker points out, however, we could just as easily have crafted “free-trade†agreements that protected manufacturing while exposing professions like law, journalism and even medicine to ruinous foreign competition, losing nothing in quality but saving consumers far more than Nafta did.
When you view the world from the satisfied environs of Washington — a place where lawyers outnumber machinists 27 to 1 and where five suburban counties rank among the seven wealthiest in the nation — the fantasies of postindustrial liberalism make perfect sense. The reign of the “knowledge workers†seems noble.
Seen from almost anywhere else, however, these are lousy times. The latest data confirms that as the productivity of workers has increased, the ones reaping the benefits are stockholders. Census data tells us that the only reason family income is keeping up with inflation is that more family members are working.
Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. But they won’t on their own. So pressure must come from traditional liberal constituencies and the grass roots, like the much-vilified bloggers. Liberalism also needs strong, well-funded institutions fighting the rhetorical battle. Laying out policy objectives is all well and good, but the reason the right has prevailed is its army of journalists and public intellectuals. Moving the economic debate to the right are dozens if not hundreds of well-funded Washington think tanks, lobbying outfits and news media outlets. Pushing the other way are perhaps 10.
The more comfortable option for Democrats is to maintain their present course, gaming out each election with political science and a little triangulation magic, their relevance slowly ebbing as memories of the middle-class republic fade.
Thomas Frank, a guest columnist, is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?’’
August 31st, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Shorter Thomas Frank: It’s a massive bummer I wasn’t around during the Great Depression.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Anon says:
“i’d say the real stupid people are the majority of americans, especially those who have voted for bush.”
Man, it must be tough to beleive in democratic government, small d, when you also beleive that Americans are basically stupid.
It must be even harder to claim to represent the interests of the “people” (the polite word for “sheeple”) when the “people” reject your putative benefactions, over and over, again and again.
What you left-wing religionists can’t even begin to comprehend is that we dumb American “people” have no particular love or reverance for W or Republicans; we just prefer corrupt, stupid, incompetent, venal hypocrites who nevertheless have a demonstrated grasp on reality to certifiably bat-shit insane members of the Democratic party, who have to keep kissing the arses of the hippie/NewLeft/Po-Mo activist base to win a primary.
It’s not that we like Republicans; its that we like you far less.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:54 pm
“hippie/NewLeft/Po-Mo base”
You’re stuck in a fucking time warp, among other things. What the hell planet do you live on ????
August 31st, 2006 at 10:56 pm
“we like you far less.”
Incidentally, I’m an “American people” and so far as I can tell, I can’t stand the likes of you. You’ve run the country into the ground with your bowing and scraping to W and the rest of the bullshit you peddle.
September 1st, 2006 at 12:27 am
“Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again. But they won’t on their own. So pressure must come from traditional liberal constituencies and the grass roots, like the much-vilified bloggers.”–Thomas Franks
Interesting piece you reproduced here, reg. However, does it not strike liberals and leftists that if the Democrats have to be cajoled to be more progressive, to grow a backbone as someone here said, to take a stand against x, y and z, and if they still don’t do it, that we are trying to make the Democrats into something that they are not and will never be? There are still two years until the next presidential election, will we spend that wondering and hoping that the Democratic candidate is a progressive and still wind up with Hillary Clinton or maybe even worse?
September 1st, 2006 at 12:30 am
Addendum on the question of electability. John Kerry would have won the last election if he had strongly and uncompromisingly attacked the Iraq war and argued consistently and persuasively that it was the wrong course. It was his waffling on the issue that cost him the election. General point is that yes, progressives could run on their principles and win elections IF they spend their time arguing their positions rather than running from them. Why don’t we try it and see?
September 1st, 2006 at 12:40 am
Samuel.. Pointing out that George W. Bush is painfully dumb doesnt mean that everyone who voted for him is the same. Inversely, just because a lot of people vote for you doesnt meant you’re not dumb.
I teach grads and undergrads and anyone who spoke in my class the way Bush speaks to the country would immediatelty strike me as a pathetic dumbkopf.
Under a political system like ours in which a president concentrates so much power in his hands, and who takes it upn himself to personify and explain life and death policy, it seems absolutely fair to evaluate his intelligence… which in his case is scant. I derive no pleasure from that conclusion.. only cold dear.
September 1st, 2006 at 4:02 am
As far as the American people go; it is precisely the old equasion: half empty or half full. Because that’s what Bush got: half. In 2000, it was in the face of massive advantages handed him by the nation press; no fair person can conclude that the media wasn’t slanted his way to an absurd degree. 2004 was a sadder performance by the people; yet even then Iraq was still trying to be passed off as some viable program.
OR….. you might say worrying about Bush’s brain at THIS point is not too swift of US. How about taking an honest look at how a stumble bum for the most reactionary elements of the poliitical spectrum came to power in the first place? Marc Cooper’s “up Clinton’s ass” jokes are a good place to start; proceed to “The Daily Howler.”
September 1st, 2006 at 5:13 am
What’s a Po-Mo?
“Has Bush, through gargantuan folly, created dangers of spiralling chaos in Iraq that require some consideration other than simple withdrawal or a “date certainâ€. … I’m distraught. ”
There are actors that should be very interested in the stability of Iraq and could possibly influence the various factions there. Unfortunately their names are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. Suggesting a diplomatic dialogue with them to help calm down the violence in Iraq, along with the offer of withdrawal, while a potentially positive course, won’t get anyone elected.
September 1st, 2006 at 7:52 am
I don’t know about “lurker’s” suggestions re elections, but Po-Mo stands for “postmodernist” as in a school (I’d say an anti-school) of (anti-)intellectual thought exemplified by Lyotard, Jameson, etc. that is increasingly passe since somthing called the “Sokal Hoax.” Academia has extricated the positive elements of PoMo thinking – the need to reconstruct narratives, etc. – and the dominant trend right now is “Post-Marxism” – interesting thinkers like Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, etc.
Look it up.
September 1st, 2006 at 7:57 am
When has a sitting President ever lost an election, in the US, during a war?
And don’t you think Rove and Bush realized this?
Look what happened to Bush the First, he kicked Hussein out of Kuwait and captured that Hitler in Panama…and that didn’t help him for reelection. If Bush the First could have made that war last longer, he would have won.
Truman and Johnson didn’t seek reelection because they didn’t want to only win “the baseâ€.
A chunk of the American populace is infected with boot-lickers.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:20 am
What ever happened to Bin Laden and the Saudis and Pakistanis who financed the attacks on 9-11?
Bush sure did a fine job distracting you all with Iraqis and Persians.
Yet, this is to be expected from right-wing nationalists.
This is what right-wing nationalists do in almost any tradition. Warmonger and claim ghosts and demons are everywhere, while killing their own countrymen in orgies of paranoia.
September 1st, 2006 at 1:23 pm
just to clarify, i don’t think that there are a lot of stupid americans because many of them voted for bush, though that does indicate stupidity. i mainly base it on their behavior and comments when i run into them, i live outside the u.s. i am speaking in generalizations, but in comparison to people from the rest of the world, americans are spoiled, often can not speak more than american-english, have a uppity superiority complex about them and their country, display bad manners, and their foreign policy opinions are punctuated often with “bomb this” or “destroy them” or otherwise violentally do away with their adversarys. Needless to say, their hypocritical denouncements of other countries political and economic systems is also not only proven wrong, but its become ideological in its fervor and is becoming a breed of facism itself (also considering the American power to get its way.)
September 1st, 2006 at 4:45 pm
I’m an American,
Anon, your observation ain’t far from the truth.
Warmongering is a famous American pastime.
Muck like lynching.
September 1st, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Someone who posted on this blog who I cannot now find because I am too drunk says :
“What I cannot understand is how the Repubs convinced millions of middle/lower middle income people to vote against their own self interest.”
What I cannot understand is why anyone would think that the question of how wealth is produced is a closed one; why anyone buys the “What’s wrong with Kansas? argument.
Speaking as someone who flatboated through Das Kapital with patience, admiration, and deep respect for the brilliance of its author, I don’t understand why I am geting lectured to by rich people (I am poor) and especially, I don’t understand why I am getting lectured to by people who live on unearned increments of capitalist wealth: I.e.: people who neither live on nor depend upon their own earnings.
Scratch the Left and you will find Trust-fund babies, Wall-street millionaires and people who had Daddy give them the money on their down-payment at a strategic moment.
The professional poor and professional rentiers with degrees from Bard and Amhearst and Oberlin vote Democrat. The rest of us pick and choose.
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:29 am
Scratch the Left and you will find Trust-fund babies, Wall-street millionaires and people who had Daddy give them the money on their down-payment at a strategic moment. —————————————–
shit! I wish!
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am
Scratch the Left and you will find Trust-fund babies, Wall-street millionaires and people who had Daddy give them the money on their down-payment at a strategic moment.
That is so silly as to not merit a response, except for NeoDude’s.
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:50 am
“As far as the American people go; it is precisely the old equasion: half empty or half full.”
You got the equation right Wall, but failed, as the left aways do to the advantage of the right, to understand the variable is attitude, not a measuring stick to verify if it is half empty or full.
To liberals and the left, it is always half empty. You all have an negative attitude problem. You’ve been reading to many ‘fictions’ and need a good dose of “As a Man Thinketh” and “How to Win Friends and Influnce People” and “The Power of Positive Thinking”.
Notice you follow your statement above Wall with EXCUSES. None that YOU(I use YOU in the collective sensse) are willing to share any responsibility for. You are complaining, hand wringing, blame throwing, negative attitude losers.
This is why the electorate don’t like you, you’re personalities are depressing. It ain’t them, it’s you. And here in lies the inability for your party leaders to make tough decision and take a stand, because they don’t want to take the RESPONSIBILITY if they’re wrong.
I offered this at the outside chance your party leaders might read this and change, providing Sam and I a viable alternative(competition). But, on second thought it occured to there is little chance because “they are right”…… in their negative little minds.
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:27 am
Anon:
The middle class is taking quite a beating here in the states. Most of the uppity Americans you’re meeting are wealthy and, aside from issues of physical security/safety, accurately perceive that the two factions of our Business party (Dems and Repubs) are doing the right thing with regards to the economic mgmt of the country.
They’ve been subjected to a very effective indoctrination, including a free but heavily self-censored press, to the American way: Business Uber Alles.
Try to be patient with them…
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:12 am
And it gets worse. ABC will mark the anniversary of 9-11 with a miniseries that will say that the attack was, wait for it – all Clinton’s fault.
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:15 am
Oh and by the way, I read Marx too and am pretty left-wing. Could someone please tell me where my trust-fund is? I seem to have misplaced it and could really use it about now. Funny, but the only trust fund baby I Know who is in the news a lot lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and seems to have had some Affirmative Action help his career.
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:35 am
Jim R,
If liberals would have given up on the whole anti-lynching kick, they would have been more popular in the South!
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:33 pm
” I am too drunk ”
Explains nearly everything I’ve seen so far from this nitwit.
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Well, Jim is more than onto something; and it explains how the right winger glories in the dark side of human nature. To look at the sick, destitute, and those injured by war and say “you’ll get better” is surely the hight of optomism. They’ll have a lot of that to do in the coming years after what they’ve done to this country.
It mitigates our rightfull contempt of the national press; the media are a commecail entity, and how do you sell news this bad? Dust hadn’t settled on The Twin Towers before it was being framed as a triumph of the human spirit, yeah, that’s the ticket. For those with a bullying pride in their mediocrity, like Jim ( Glad Sacks, Garry Wills called them) all news is good news. Don’t trouble his bueatiful mind with complicated truths. And when they get out of power, they turn happy like rabid jackels.
So, we must ask, why do the “blame America Nevers” squeak by with only a slim, technical majority, given that one who laughs laughs with the whole world and all that? Because, Anon, the for most of those people you’ve come in contact with are just insecure goofs (like the guy in Randy Newman’s “Political Science) and they cave pretty quick when you call them on their jingoism. I do it all the time.
Disregaurd Cooper on Clinton or Rummy on WWII; most people are basicly fair. The billions the right spends on controling the debate is hardly thrown away. It may not save them this time around; but I’m no optomist. It might be too late anyway.
September 3rd, 2006 at 8:06 pm
What’s really absurd in this campaign to prove W has gavitas is that they couldn’t fake a more plausible number and selection of books. Whoever dreamed up this list was more out to lunch than Bush himself.
September 3rd, 2006 at 8:15 pm
“Bush is Dumb! What a brilliant argument! It logically follows that people like me, who voted straight Republican in the last election are even dumber!”
We don’t need to rely on logic; you’ve given us plenty of empirical evidence.
September 3rd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
“Addendum on the question of electability. John Kerry would have won the last election if he had strongly and uncompromisingly attacked the Iraq war and argued consistently and persuasively that it was the wrong course. ”
It would have demonstrated more integrity, since it’s almost certainly what he believed. I’m not convinced it would have won him the election.
September 3rd, 2006 at 8:25 pm
“Scratch the Left and you will find Trust-fund babies, Wall-street millionaires and people who had Daddy give them the money on their down-payment at a strategic moment.”
Sam — sober or drunk you’re not afraid to speak the hard truths.
September 4th, 2006 at 5:14 am
“Impugn the intelligence of the Executive and the intelligence of the electorate! Make no other arguments! Onward, to Victory!”
“Man, it must be tough to beleive in democratic government, small d, when you also beleive that Americans are basically stupid.”
“Scratch the Left and you will find Trust-fund babies, Wall-street millionaires and people who had Daddy give them the money on their down-payment at a strategic moment.
The professional poor and professional rentiers with degrees from Bard and Amhearst and Oberlin vote Democrat. The rest of us pick and choose.”
What a fool Bush is! All of those tax cuts and corporate handjobs his administration has been whoring out for six fucking years have been going to those money-grubbing Democrats! Those sneaky fucking liberals…. Makes me wanna drop out of college and forget about a rewarding career as a member of professional poor. Education? Financial security? Integrity and accountability in elected officials?
Fuck it, pass the forty.
p.s.,
“we just prefer corrupt, stupid, incompetent, venal hypocrites who nevertheless have a demonstrated grasp on reality to certifiably bat-shit insane members of the Democratic party, who have to keep kissing the arses of the hippie/NewLeft/Po-Mo activist base to win a primary.
It’s not that we like Republicans; its that we like you far less.”
Sammy, we’re not forgetting about the Christian Right, are we?
Let me remind you then:
“corrupt, stupid, incompetent, venal hypocrites who nevertheless have a demonstrated grasp on reality to certifiably bat-shit insane members of the [Republican] party, who have to keep kissing the arses of the Religiously Fanatic/NeoCon/Interpretivist/Jingoistic activist base to win a primary.
(and since when is Po-Mo an insult? turning liberal into a bad word was impressive, but Po-Mo? Perhaps the GOP should read 3 Shakespeares and get their goddamn hubris in check, cause its sickening)
xoxo
September 4th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Now this thread is getting entertaining.
March 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Hi man! Your site is cool! Please visit my homepage too:
March 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Hi there! Your site is cool, indeed! Please also visit my site:
March 30th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Awesome site! Design is great! Visit my sites, please:
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:47 am
pre teen pageant gown