The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[Philberto]

I've got no beef with the Clusterfuck. I could do without the partisan hackery that seems to invade from time to time, but I'll accept it in exchange for all the new crap I've learned and the legitimate debates I've been able to read/participate in.

This.

The good stuff from Desipiots on both sides makes putting up with the arguing worth it. And the arguing is kind of entertaining in a car accident kind of way.

Believe it or not, I'm way more educated on our nation than I was before these threads started. I've also met some insane people people like Irish Yeti. Which is awesome.

Correct'd?

You flatter yourself, Yeti.  Mike C. was around here long before you were, my friend.

I was referring to Mike C and Merkle's Boner. Yeti's a blip on the Insane Doppler 3000.

I seem to have MISSED THE POINT.... again.

FAIL

[Thrillho]

I've got no beef with the Clusterfuck. I could do without the partisan hackery that seems to invade from time to time, but I'll accept it in exchange for all the new crap I've learned and the legitimate debates I've been able to read/participate in.

Anyway, interesting piece from a veteran political writer at the Chicago Reader about Emanuel and Obama in relation to the Chicago Machine. I agree with TJ on this subject - one of my problems with Obama is his refusal to endorse Claypool over Stroger and to take on the Machine in general. This guy does a good job of adding some context to the situation.

So thanks to Mayor Daley, Emanuel got to go to Congress, where he railed against Republican corruption and scandals, conveniently overlooking all the corruption and scandal in his hometown.

In contrast, Obama's what passes for a reformer in Chicago -- at least he took a longer, more circuitous path to winning Daley's good graces. Running for state Senate in Hyde Park, a liberal independent-minded neighborhood near the University of Chicago, Obama basically pretended as though Daley and his Machine didn't exist. He didn't run with Daley, but he didn't run against him either.

While waiting for Obama's presser to start this afternoon, I was flipping between the cable news channels and found Chris Matthews, Eugene Robinson and some white broad I didn't recognize talking about this magical new place they are apparently just now discovering called "Chicago."

Do you think Chicago could be the real Gotham?
Actually, Chris... Batman was filmed in Chicago.
I did not know that.

What's that one place called?
The Billy Goat Tavern?
That's it, yeah. No fries.

http://tornadoslide.blogspot.com/2007/12/2007-recap-printed-words.html

I live in New York City, yet I am surprised almost every day by the number of people here who want to talk about Chicago all the time.

These people tell me that they once passed near or through Chicago, and some claim to be living there, even as we speak. This is strange enough. But what really surprises me is how many of these self-appointed Chicago experts seem to believe that Chicago actually exists. Not as an idea or as an allegory. They really believe that the city stands there, in all its legendary green-rivered, fire-prone glory, and that once every 100 years, when it rises out of Lake Michigan, you can visit it.

Now, I understand why the concept of Chicago is so alluring. It has been sung to us, like a lullaby, by our culture in story and song for nearly as long as there has been an Illinois.

...

Undoubtedly there is something in us that needs Chicago as an idea: a dream as fanciful as the notion of an elevated train. But when you attempt to bring the train to ground, to put it on a map and say this exists, it is not merely insane, it threatens to make what is magical merely banal.

...

Time and again, the Chicago-is-real theory simply does not stand up to scrutiny. There are no man-eating vines on the wall of Wrigley Field. No Al Capone. No John Wayne Gacy. These are stories invented to frighten children.

This is not to say there are not Chicagoans. But I would suggest that they are a nomadic people, whose lost home exists only in their minds, and in the glowing crystal memory cells they all carry in the palms of their hands: a great idea of a second city, lit with life and love, reasonable drink prices at cool bars, and, of course, blocks and blocks of bright and devastating fire.

http://chicago.decider.com/articles/john-hodgman-debates-the-existence-of-chicago,501/

My whole book is about how stories become so much more powerful than facts, which is unfortunately something we see in the political scene today. But I think it's a universal condition. I think most fiction was designed originally to provoke social cohesion and instruct in history. That's what urban legends are—and what is Chicago, if not a very comforting urban legend? A fantasy world, if you will, of gangsters and Italian beef sandwiches and two—not just one—but two baseball teams competing with each other all the time, and streets paved with gold where lobsters walk, or whatever. It's like an El Dorado of North America.

A real Candyland of the mind.

[Kerm]

Does this mean ESPN is going to start covering the Cubs?

[Internet Apex]

Call it what you will, but I am not in favor of the Gubment taking more of my money.

No one in their right mind is.  But some of us would rather pay more now than pay more later with interest added on.

When the government is running a deficit, you are not over taxed.  You are either undertaxed or over serviced.  I tend to believe we are over serviced.  That said, 52% of the country voted for a guy that says we are still under serviced.  OK.  I gotta live with that now.  My request would be for him to find a way to pay for those services and not defer that expense to when I'm on a fixed income or on my kids.

And, if you can't pay for it, don't do it.

Heh. Funnier than 30 Rock.

[morpheus]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

P.J. O'Rourke with an excellent, excellent post-mortem...

[Thrillho]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

P.J. O'Rourke with an excellent, excellent post-mortem...

And... this is where he lost me:

Mind you, they won't live in Hyde Park. Those leafy precincts will be reserved for the micromanagers and macro-apparatchiks of liberalism--for Secretary of the Department of Peace Bill Ayers and Secretary of the Department of Fairness Bernardine Dohrn. The formerly independent citizens of our previously self-governed nation...

Hell of a democracy we had before that fucking election.

I'm often assured that O'Rourke is the prototypical "funny" conservative.

It's not hard to move a voting bloc. And it should be especially easy to move voters to the right. Sensible adults are conservative in most aspects of their private lives. If this weren't so, imagine driving on I-95: The majority of drivers are drunk, stoned, making out, or watching TV, while the rest are trying to calculate the size of their carbon footprints on the backs of Whole Foods receipts while negotiating lane changes.

Huh?

I've honestly laughed more at Dennis Miller than at this cliché-milking pud. Who you guys got on the bench?

[GNM]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

P.J. O'Rourke with an excellent, excellent post-mortem...

I remain unconvinced that the Right is dead for the foreseeable future.  My generation is unfamiliar with Reagan's America and even more unfamiliar with the role of socialism in the Twentieth century.  We have grown up in a Centrist America and never seen the results of empowering one side of the political spectrum.  You can bet that after four years, we will become familiar with the consequences of the Leftist paradigm shift.  Obama may well be an eight year president, as the basic fluctuations in the economy virtually assure that he will preside over an economic upturn.  But, don't expect the Left to be in power for ever.

Sooner or later, all the youth the voted for Obama will graduate from college, get jobs, and find themselves in the nations upper tax brackets.  Once they are the ones paying for it, the notion of a greater roll for government won't be nearly as popular.  Sooner or later, all those idealists will see that involving the feds in healthcare and social welfare will work about as well as involving them in education and energy has. 

This too shall pass.

[Wheezer]

You can bet that after four years, we will become familiar with the consequences of the Leftist paradigm shift.

[ChuckD]

I'm often assured that O'Rourke is the prototypical "funny" conservative.

He's alright on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.

Huh?

I've honestly laughed more at Dennis Miller than at this cliché-milking pud. Who you guys got on the bench?

Go easy on him, he's already received any punishment he deserves in the form of a festering tumor upon his anus.

[Tonker]

I bought, and read all of PJ O'Rourke's books when I was a young man - he's "written" (i.e. cobbled together from newspaper and magazine articles) eight or ten or them, I guess.  I found them very entertaining indeed.

I tried to read one again the other day, and simply couldn't.  Whatever it was I saw in them before is gone, and it ain't coming back.

Surely one is supposed to start off as a goat-wool-sock-wearing wishy-washy peacenik liberal, and slowly harden up into a borderline fascist as one gets older - not the other way round?

[Quality Start Machine]

I bought, and read all of PJ O'Rourke's books when I was a young man - he's "written" (i.e. cobbled together from newspaper and magazine articles) eight or ten or them, I guess.  I found them very entertaining indeed.

I tried to read one again the other day, and simply couldn't.  Whatever it was I saw in them before is gone, and it ain't coming back.

Surely one is supposed to start off as a goat-wool-sock-wearing wishy-washy peacenik liberal, and slowly harden up into a borderline fascist as one gets older - not the other way round?

And then some people are just fascists, with the borderline just a dot in the rear view mirror of their zeppelin.

[*In a Nutsack]

I've got no beef with the Clusterfuck. I could do without the partisan hackery that seems to invade from time to time, but I'll accept it in exchange for all the new crap I've learned and the legitimate debates I've been able to read/participate in.

This.

The good stuff from Desipiots on both sides makes putting up with the arguing worth it. And the arguing is kind of entertaining in a car accident kind of way.

Believe it or not, I'm way more educated on our nation than I was before these threads started. I've also met some insane people people like Irish Yeti. Which is awesome.

Correct'd?

You flatter yourself, Yeti.  Mike C. was around here long before you were, my friend.

I was referring to Mike C and Merkle's Boner. Yeti's a blip on the Insane Doppler 3000.

*flies under the radar*

[RV]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

P.J. O'Rourke with an excellent, excellent post-mortem...

I remain unconvinced that the Right is dead for the foreseeable future.  My generation is unfamiliar with Reagan's America and even more unfamiliar with the role of socialism in the Twentieth century.  We have grown up in a Centrist America and never seen the results of empowering one side of the political spectrum.  You can bet that after four years, we will become familiar with the consequences of the Leftist paradigm shift.  Obama may well be an eight year president, as the basic fluctuations in the economy virtually assure that he will preside over an economic upturn.  But, don't expect the Left to be in power for ever.

Sooner or later, all the youth the voted for Obama will graduate from college, get jobs, and find themselves in the nations upper tax brackets.  Once they are the ones paying for it, the notion of a greater roll for government won't be nearly as popular.  Sooner or later, all those idealists will see that involving the feds in healthcare and social welfare will work about as well as involving them in education and energy has. 

This too shall pass.

I wouldn't be so sure. Have you ever tried interviewing for a high-salaried job with Obama's dong hanging out of your mouth?

[5laky]

You can bet that after four years, we will become familiar with the consequences of the Leftist paradigm shift.

I love that shit. No lie. I've had at least 10 cans of it in the past few months.

[morpheus]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/791jsebl.asp?pg=1

P.J. O'Rourke with an excellent, excellent post-mortem...

I remain unconvinced that the Right is dead for the foreseeable future.  My generation is unfamiliar with Reagan's America and even more unfamiliar with the role of socialism in the Twentieth century.  We have grown up in a Centrist America and never seen the results of empowering one side of the political spectrum.  You can bet that after four years, we will become familiar with the consequences of the Leftist paradigm shift.  Obama may well be an eight year president, as the basic fluctuations in the economy virtually assure that he will preside over an economic upturn.  But, don't expect the Left to be in power for ever.

Sooner or later, all the youth the voted for Obama will graduate from college, get jobs, and find themselves in the nations upper tax brackets.  Once they are the ones paying for it, the notion of a greater role for government won't be nearly as popular.  Sooner or later, all those idealists will see that involving the feds in healthcare and social welfare will work about as well as involving them in education and energy has. 

This too shall pass.

I really, really hope you're correct on this.