I Don't Like You Either

Snark O' the Day: Roy Edroso's Top Stupid Wingnut Moments for 2008

Roy Edroso posts his "top 10 stupid right-blogger tricks" for 2008 at The Village Voice.  An excerpt:

Pop stars made a video for Obama and the American Spectator compared it to Triumph of the Will. National Review called Obama's national service plan the "Obama Youth." Obama spoke in Germany, and Melissa Clouthier compared his signage to that of the Third Reich.

Jonah Goldberg said liberals only liked Obama because they didn't know any real (that is, poor and dangerous) black people; Taranto said Democrats were intimidated into nominating him, as an old lady might be intimidated into surrendering her purse to a mugger.

Blago Found Guilty by Association with His Own Hair

Wonkette and Princess Sparkle Pony are all over this one.  Princess Sparkle Pony has courtroom drawings!  And says:

I love the dominance of Blagojevich's mighty hairdo. ...It's like the artist got dazzled by the enlarged coiffure, pulled into its vortex. I can't blame him! Me, too!

Ken Layne at Wonkette:

Here’s a quick tip for voters on the lookout for “clean” candidates: If they have hair like this, in 2008, they are a complete fucking criminal. No exceptions. (Rod Blagojevich’s Terrible Hair Found Guilty of Everything)

Snark O' the Day: IOZ, Larison, & TBogg Dis Camille Paglia, Raising a Question that Begs an Answer

Yeah. First IOZ, addressing Paglia's genius at connecting the dots between separate universes and wagging the dog by its tail.  IOZ:

Because he is a cruel man, Daniel Larison reminds us all that Camille Paglia . . . exists . A . . . passage:

InstaSnark: Jeb Bush for Senator?

He did not actually get Florida involved in an illegal war.  But when you have said that, you have said it all.

Attack of the Blue Meanies (Mean Progressive Blogger Round-Up)

So mean.  No wonder the wingnuts moan, rage, and clutch their pearls.

Snark O' the Day: GM Constructs a Memory Hole (Agitprop)

If you hadn't just lived through 8 years of Bush and Cheney, you wouldn't believe this could be possible.

Since you just have, your outrage and incredulity meters shorted out a long time ago and there's nothing left of them but a few busted springs going boingy-boingy-boingy 24/7.   You'll probably just say, "Huh."   So I'm noting this for later, when we've all had our sense of moral outrage restored at least to pre-Katrina levels.

Wingnuts in the Nutshell: William Kristol

by Teh Puppet Mistress |

Before he Goes [Kristol]

Nutshell version:  Bush could perform a real service to me and other discredited neocons by (1) lying some more; and (2) pardoning the worst offenses of his minions so that no one connected with his administration can discredit us further.

The "Spite Caucus": One Right Wing Woman's Personal Journey...

by Damozel  | ....wielding Jonah Goldberg's hilarious, oxymoronic diatribe as her personal weapon of choice.  As chronicled by Gavin M. of Sadly, No!, this tale is (partly, though only partly) the tale "of her New York rampage, baying through the streets with book awave."

Suffering Fools: GOP Senators Get Sent to Funky Town

by Teh Puppet Mistress | I don't usually find The Politico laugh-out-loud funny, but this article filled me with effervescent glee.

Maureen Dowd: But I'm a Frenemy Tooo!(Mean Girls Part ####)

by Teh Puppet Mistress | Ah God.  Well, you knew she wasn't going to be able to keep quiet once the rumors started going round that Hillary might still be asked to the prom.  Here's some first rate concern trolling, along with my translation.

Full text:  Team of Frenemies

Snark O' the Day: Just Put the Economy Out of Its Misery Already

by Blue Stockings | So here is IOZ, a king in the land of the disaffected, tilting back his chair and raising his eyebrow at the valiant physicians of the left trying to pump some life back into the economy while brushing a fleck of the gold standard off his velvet sleeve.  In a post called Bail. Out, he writes:

A Swift Examination of Mr Obama's Serial Gaffes

by Mr J.Q. Public | On the heels of Powerline's concern about Obama's recent unseemly gaffes comes Jon Swift's withering summation of Obama's disastrous press conference.  It seems that Mr Powerline---I do not believe that is his name, but I haven't time at present to look him up---may be right after all, despite the mockery to which his piece was subjected by my liberal co-blogger.   Obama does require tutelage in speaking without going awry and should probably take W as his model, as Mr Powerline (again, apologies) suggests.

Powerline: "Undisciplined" Speaker Obama Should Take Precise and Careful Speaker Bush as a Model

by Teh Nutroots | Ha ha ha ha ha ha!  I love watching them clutching madly at straws, only to end up sticking them in their hair.  Via Sadly, No!, here's Powerline's latest air brick:

Jane Hamsher Responds to Sarah Palin's Slam Against Liberal Bloggers

by Blue Stockings |  The Caucus:

Ms. Palin directed most of her media criticism at liberal bloggers, whom she twice called, “those bloggers in their parents’ basement just talkin’ garbage.”

After reeling off a list the credentials of liberalism's most formidable, Hamsher asks:

How would Sarah feel if someone called her an ignorant, freeloading bubble headed piece of trailer park trash whose daddy told the AP she spent the weekend scrambling to return her stolen clothes to the RNC?

The Kippie Awards for Excellence in Wingnuttery

by Miz Teh Puppet Mistress |  The Toot:

In honor of the coming 8-year mental breakdown which will consume and destroy Wingnuttia, the legendary Kippie Awards for Excellence in Wingnuttery will be returning this year, bathed in glory and/or gin. 

More Tales from the Nutterdammerung: Are You a Socialist or a Dupe?

by Teh Nutroots & Damozel | Roy Edroso has a post up at The Village Voice about the division of opinion on the right about the end of the world as they know it:

When the end came, rightbloggers were at first torn as to its meaning.

Shorter Bill Kristol

by Damozel |  Full version of article:  GOP Dog Days

Nutshell version:  While I shall stubbornly go on contending that it wasn't that much of a victory for Obama and the left, and that the public has not thoroughly repudiated me and my noxious brand of conservatism, I can no longer deny it:  Obama is as cute as cuddly puppy from the pound---if a puppy had a dry wit and charisma---and therefore formidable, and we conservatives can but trust that the worldbeating recession that we have willed to him may yet bring him down.

PS.  The country is still center right and Obama must govern accordingly.  That's the meme, and I'm sticking to it.

Blogger reactions at Memeorandum

Snark O' the Day: Did Obama Crib His Acceptance Speech from Hitler?

by Teh Puppet Mistress | Wingnuts all over the blogosphere are busily whipping themselves up into pleasurable extremes of terror.  It's worrying---what do bloggers such as the one cited below intend to achieve, one asks?---but also, if  you can preserve your detachment, exceedingly funny in a horrifying kind of a way.

From Scott at World O'Crap:

I thought the news of Obama’s victory would strike wingnuts in one of two ways.  Either they’d sit, stinking and unwashed in a corner of their room, blinking rapidly and speaking in tongues to a headless Barbie doll — what we might call “the K-Lo Option” — or else they’d attach a hobby horse to their computer chairs, sort of like those Cowboy booster seats you used to sit on at the barber shop, and charge at full gallop into the World Wide Web on a suicidal crusade of blood and thunder, hacking at heretics and heathens and howling in rage and agony like a gutted Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart.  It never dawned on me that they would arise the next day, scratch their cat under the chin, pour a nice cup of tea, sit down at the keyboard, and in a prim, dainty, ladylike fashion, go quietly batshit insane, as though we’d entered an alternate universe where Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote was the star of Dexter. But color me abashed, because RenewAmerica is proudly offering Mary Mostert’s latest:

As we’ve said before, this wasn’t an election, it was the world’s longest Usenet thread, and Godwin’s Law is no longer an observation on probability, it’s a regulation imposed by wingnuts, sort of like those Homeowner Association bylaws that require everyone to landscape solely from the pre-approved list of shrubs, and to paint all exterior trim a uniform beige.....[More]

Shorter P.J. O'Rourke

by Teh Nutroots |  From Liberal Hell, P.J. has penned:  We Blew It

As Conservatives, we have tragically failed ourselves, our movement, and the rising generation through our inability to convince Americans that liberals (including all Democrats) and liberalism are by definition stupid, worthless, evil, venal, clueless, hateful and economically and ethically challenged, and that everything that has happened during the last eight years is all Bill Clinton's fault.

National Review Online Takes It to the Keyboards

by Teh Nutroots | Oh man.  Check out Sadly, No!'s two-minute version of the NRO symposium par excellence as they ponder the nation's Great Black Hope.   Then click on the link to the real one and laugh even harder.

"When Will They Ever Learn?" Apparently, Never

by The Puppet Mistress | Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Nachos:

If you were worried the Republicans might finally wake up after two straight ass-kickings, and realize the right-wing schtick isn't working anymore, rest easy.

The House Republicans have just selected their new leadership team. John Boehner (R-Oompa Loompa) will stay in charge of the dwindling Republican minority, but the second and third in commands will now be Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, two congressmen whose loyalty to the far right is only rivaled by their own stupidity.

Otto Man has a February 2007 Tweety interview of Cantor to prove it!

He also said:

There are many things to be excited about with the election of Barack Obama, but the emergence of Republican-on-Republican violence is certainly at the top of my list.

Ours too. 

"Landslide"/"Mandate" v. "Not a Landslide/Not a Mandate"

by The Puppet Mistress |  Blue Texan points out that the right wingers have suddenly raised the bar for what constitutes a mandate.  All things considered, Obama's historic win was...historic.

I think a "landslide" probably should be reserved for any EV count over 400. By that measure, it wasn't a landslide. But...

• Obama received the most votes of any presidential candidate in history -- over 63M, besting W's 62M in 2004.
• Obama received a higher percentage of votes (53%) than George W. Bush in '04 or '00, than Clinton in '96 or '92, and more than St. Reagan in 1980 (50%). He matches George HW Bush's mark in '88 -- and posted the highest percentage by a Democrat since LBJ's 61% in 1964.
• Obama received more electoral votes (364) than George W. Bush in '04 (286) and '00 (271), more than Carter in '76, and more than Nixon in '68, Kennedy in '60, and Truman in '48.
• Obama brought with him increased gains in the Democratic Senate and House -- the first time Democrats have extended their majorities in back-to-back elections since the 1930s.

Bottom line: the size of Obama's win crushes either of W's, who posted two anemic, 1-state wins, and lost the popular vote in 2000. And this is the guy who they chriped for years about having a "mandate" and was going to remake the country with permanent majorities for the GOP and Peggy Noonan was savoring.

He also links to this excellent nutshell summary of how McCain managed to lose it all.

BTW, the blogger formerly known as "Captain Ed" a/k/a "Special Ed" had a different interpretation of the data.  Or, as Whiskey Fire puts it, "Nation Apathetic about Obama, If You Look at Data Like a Moron."

Snark O' the Day: "Splitters!"

by Damozel |  I normally wouldn't draw our daily dose of snark from the same blog two days running, but TBogg is a master, and this---like yesterday's---is masterly, both in its ruthless efficiency and accuracy in identifying and lancing the latest unattractive inflammatory groundswell and its peerless use of pop culture references as the instrument of choice.  Yesterday, it was Galaxy Quest.  Today:  one of my top five all-time films, Life of Brian.

Obama got elected three days ago and the wingers are all depressed, which they consider to be proof that they are also now, and destined in the future to be, oppressed.  They're always mad, but now they're even madder---as well as in a panicky tailspin---and so the leading lights of the right are busily organizing a Republican Resistance movement.   

Sadly, their defeat has forced them to confront how much they actually hate one another.  None of them can agree even on the fundamentals of how to build a better GOP.

TBogg considers the struggle of the emergent warring sects to find some common ground, and their ensuing abject failure:

Divided we stand"...no...wait...um... "united we flail" ...no, that's not it. Crap, I think I wrote it down on a Wendy's napkin. Look in the back seat of my car.... Oh, here we go....

He's got the list, the clip, and the final word. 

Arrested Development, Republican Style: Defeated Wingnuts Gibber, Rave, Point Fingers, Threaten, Screech, Shake Their Tiny Fists at the Cosmos, Etc.

by Blue Stockings | Sadly, No! has published what might be the definitive post on wingnut rage, fear, and screeching. 

Why are they so afraid all the time?  What are they so afraid of?  Is chronic craven fear really the trait that distinguishes the crazy-asses of the Republican base from normal people?

So it seems.  I've finally worked out the answer to the question:  Why, oh why do they hate us liberals so?

They hate us for our fearlessness. 

They're in a perpetual state of bug-eyed rage and panic, alternating with fear and fury.  How it must gall them that liberals don't share their fear of the monsters under the bed; that we have, in fact, put away childish things and moved on. 

Snark O' the Day: The Palinites

by Teh Nutroots | Angry wingers gird up their nuts to defend the honor of St. Palin.  Check out TBogg's response: By Joe the Plumber’s hammer, by the sons of Wasilla, you shall be avenged. 

Has the Victory Palled Yet? Let's All Join the New, Fun, Young Republican Par-tay!

by Blue Stockings | Hey, who doesn't love a party?  Bring back the party of Republican Party Reptile and former Rolling Stone reporter P.J. O'Rourke and it might even be possible for them to realign the realignment.  But they're not going to get a fair share of the youth vote if they keep trying to combine "small government" with social conservatism.  Kick the Christianists to the curb, GOP!

In the meantime, I say we jump on the bandwagon and make 'em eat universal health care and gay marriage.  Ambinder has the whole tale, along with their plangent appeal for a new beginning or whatever. 

K-Lo Speaks

....and drivels.

People are in for a rude awakening. And a mature conservative movement, with both an ear and a solid voice, will be needed.

Sadly for K-Lo & Co., no such exists.  Thanks Christ they're out of power. 

Now That's Mavericky! Palin to McCain: "Dear John..."

Steve Benen:

Three days until the election, in arguably the biggest and most important swing state, Republicans held a rally and forgot to highlight their presidential nominee.

Uh...oops? CNN [via Memeorandum] on a Palin rally in Polk City, Florida.

[O]n closer inspection, the GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.

[M]embers of the audience proudly waved “Country First” placards as Palin delivered her stump speech. Those signs were paid for by the Republican National Committee. The other sign handed out to supporters read “Florida is Palin Country,” but those signs were neither paid for by the Republican National Committee nor the McCain campaign.

Taylor Marsh:

The "diva" has officially dumped her political sugar daddy.

Man, if he wins, he should kick her to the curb.  I'm not kidding.  I really doubt he's enjoying all the mavericky fun playing second banana to Palin as much as Palin would have us believe:

Snark O' the Day: Who is Megan McArdle?

by Teh Nutroots | ...that is to say, the Megan McArdle employed by The Atlantic as their so-called econoblogger?

Susan of Texas provides a clue.

The first time, you think Megan has a tin ear for insulting and potentially damaging comparisons.

Barack Obama will break 90%--or do really well, with third-world dictator popularity levels.

But by the second time, you know it's deliberate.

This is not particularly urgent, since my voting "options" were New York and DC; in both places, the question is not who will carry the state, but whether Obama will get a mere 80% or so of the vote, or achieve Saddam Hussein-like vote totals*.  *Before you say it--no, not by fixing the election, by being so popular that he achieves fairly what Saddam achieved by force.

Gaaaaah.  That just might be a "subtle" enough dog-whistle to confuse the people who read her column (judging strictly by the comments). 

Right-Wing Jabberers Gloat, Moralize Over Murder

by Teh Nutroots | You might have heard the horrific story of HuffPost blogger Carol Anne Burger's brutal murder of her lover.  What you probably need to top it off is a good round of sanctimony and hypocrisy from Teh Right, courtesy of Roy Edroso.   

The paradox of wingnuts:  Even when they're as wrong as they can be, they're always so Right-eous.