Robbin' for the Hood: New LOLconservatives Thread

[dieblucasdie]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/poll-gop-base-thinks-obama-didnt-actually-win-2008-election----acorn-stole-it.php?ref=fpb

The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%.

Clearly a leading question but still pretty funny.

edit: origin of the thread title needs to be on every page, really

[dieblucasdie]

Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes.  There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?

Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are!  Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN.  And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization.  So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

Hannity: This is a blockbuster, what you’re saying here.  You guys have more tapes, you’ll release them before the election, that could have a big impact on the election, obviously…

[elpollodiablo]

Going Rogue review:

I stood in line to get my copy of this book from the local bookstore fearing it might be sold out early. Hot chick on the cover, so far so good. Then I opened it and started reading.

To my chagrin it didn't start out well. I thought well at some point this has to get better. But guess what it doesn't! There's nothing at all about dex rolls, dps builds, searching for traps, sneak attacks, assassins, +4 daggers or anything!

All it is some woman whining about how everyone in her party wouldn't let her make any decisions, about how something called a Couric made her look like a complete idiot (I couldn't find it in the monster manual but, I'm guessing it must be like a Sphinx), and how her group leader McCain wouldn't let her be rogue enough.

Well, I don't even know where to start addressing this stuff. She doesn't even have any daggers! I mean, that's hardly the group leader's fault! She should have loaded out before the quest started!

Plus, on every single page she bemoans her 8 INT build and blames her horrible playing on everyone else! It's her fault for putting all her stat points into Charisma!

To sum up, this book is terrible. It's anti-rogue if anything. If you want a book on how not to be a rogue this has got to be the bible.

I'm going back to the store now to see if I can get my hard earned plat back for this awful drek.

[FreddyKnuckles]

Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes.  There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.

Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?

Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are!  Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN.  And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization.  So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

Hannity: This is a blockbuster, what you’re saying here.  You guys have more tapes, you’ll release them before the election, that could have a big impact on the election, obviously…

Yeah that was pretty interesting.  Hannity seemed both like he cared but didn't really care at the same time. 

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, that's just Breitbart being a total ass.  If he had anything good, he would not be sitting on it.

[dieblucasdie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2qil4Swcew

When this first started, I though it was a liberal-blog parody thing mocking tea-partiers.  Apparently not.

The best part is how they keep showing the same black dude over and over.

[milly balgeary]

That guy doin voiceovers for that, I want to hire him to do a voiceover for me, on a near constant basis. Like everything I thought or did, if that voiceover guy for that tea part revolution movie could say it, that would be enchanting. OH, and har har on the movie. DR FRED > NATE

[Thermofusion]

"A GREATER CAUSE...UNITED THEM" (cut to a little dog trotting around with a sign on his back)

that was my favorite part

[Good Intentions]

Your country really has completely lost its shit, hasn't it?

[Good Intentions]

In South Africa in the bad old days we had some crazy ultra-conservative fringe movements - fuck, we had some really gold-standard ones (I think you'd have to look in a place like Israel to see ones as extreme and influential). But even at their strongest (read for instance about this completely fucking crazy event where they invaded a self-ruling black territory) they were portrayed as a lunatic fringe in the mainstream. Even when the Conservative Party was in power (who complained that the National Party was too soft and liberal, you know, the National Party whose president argued in parliament that blacks should be denied comprehensive education so they don't see the trappings of western society that's denied them), when there was state-sanctioned seperation between the races, etc, the people who were saying the types of things (adjusted for SA, of course) that the tea party twats are saying were publicly ridiculed. I always take the news I hear in the US about impending civil wars and shit with a lot of salt, because there's always going to be a bias in reporting extreme cases, and because it's completely crazy. But this current right-wing outrage is really making me think that you guys have gone round a bend. What I'm saying is that in Apartheid South Africa, one of the most twisted and comprehensively fucked up nations in modern history, the standard of public debating was much higher. You should worry about that.

[elpollodiablo]

Your country really has completely lost its shit, hasn't it?

Just the white people

And that one black guy.

Nate's story:
"Nate, a young black man from Detroit, Michigan, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 from an upbringing that taught him to mistrust America because of the color of his skin. As a Libertarian with a paradigm shift and a newfound understanding of the nation he loves, he is risking the anger of family and friends by joining the march against a President’s policies that would victimize the very people he loves the most."

[donblood]

Your country really has completely lost its shit, hasn't it?

Fond memories of 2002

[Andrew_TSKS]

I think the real problem for us is that we only have two parties. The super-crazies who'd form their own extreme right-wing party like the BNP in England or Le Pen's Front National in France, or I guess the Conservative Party in SA, are constantly told that forming a third party is a waste of time, and for the most part, that is what US citizens believe (I'd guess 1% or so of the population actually bothers with third-party politics). So what happens is that the people with more extreme beliefs attempt to influence whichever of the two major parties is closer to their own personal beliefs.

What caused the current dramatic shift, I think, is that Karl Rove, George Bush's campaign manager, realized that he could include dog-whistle phrases and pander to certain core tenets of the extreme right during Bush's campaign and in so doing gain the votes of a lot of people who are generally too extreme to turn out in any real numbers during major elections. Then Bush and Rove and Cheney, et al, ran the presidency like a permanent campaign for 8 years, continuing to use the extreme populist fringe of their party (which, as I said, would probably be a third party in another country where minority parties are seen as viable) to get what they wanted, which generally was limited to war and crony capitalism. At this point, they've inextricably identified their party with the extreme right, to the point that the Republicans, after losing the 2008 election by running a moderately conservative candidate at a time when the country was in a liberal mood, have taken the wrong message away and are going into extreme purge mode.

That second paragraph you mostly already knew but what I find really interesting right now is that this tiny but vocal minority is pulling themselves farther and farther from the mainstream, to the point where they're probably losing all of the center-right leaners who are more moderate but vote with their party and help them win elections. They're boiling it down to the core base, and in practice, that will look more like a minority third party in Europe or somewhere. They'll have maybe a third of the population supporting them at most, but because, again, we only have two parties, it will look like half the country is on the crazy extreme side. And then the TV news reports it that way, and makes it seem like a majority movement, even though the truth is that 70% of the country is horrified by the tea party crazies.

They're in for a rude awakening if they continue on like this. The wave election they expect to materialize in 2010 is doomed for failure, as is Palin's candidacy for president in 2012.

xpost GI

[Andrew_TSKS]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/poll-gop-base-thinks-obama-didnt-actually-win-2008-election----acorn-stole-it.php?ref=fpb

The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%.

Clearly a leading question but still pretty funny.

By the way, if anyone catches wind of a response to this poll by Nate Silver, please link it. I would love to hear his analysis of the polling methods used to generate this response.

[Good Intentions]

Except the Conservative Party in SA wasn't a fringe movement, they were the official opposition for much of the 80s. That was a dandy situation, btw: the party in power put Apartheid in place, and the opposition were there to defend Apartheid from them. That's what happens when you narrowly restrict your electorate, I guess.

The bit that amazes me about the public debate in the US isn't how popular these fringe views are or might be, but how large of a part of the public debate they are, where people in prominent positions are saying these things with straight faces, and are taken seriously.

[Good Intentions]

I still don't believe that the US is racing towards civil war, btw. I'm just shocked that views like that aren't laughed out of the house.

[dieblucasdie]

In fairness, the teabaggers do come in for a lot of public mockery. 

[Good Intentions]

Still, I see footage of elected representatives in Congress denouncing the 'socialist' healthcare, and a few months ago, passing motions on Obama's place of birth. And the teabaggers get a lot (a lot) of public cheering on in the mainstream media. That's... crazy!

Like what usually happens when I think back of life in apartheid SA (I was very young at the time, of course, but the bits I remember that I myself were involved in were crazy enough) I end up reading a lot about events in the years-long state of emergency, the massacres and assassinations and oppression. I've posted this before here, about a lone vigilante doing a mass-killing of blacks in Strijdom Square in central Pretoria, and I've already linked to the invasion of Bophuthatswana up thread. Sometimes thinking about it all just overwhelms me a bit.

[dieblucasdie]

I think the real problem for us is that we only have two parties. The super-crazies who'd form their own extreme right-wing party like the BNP in England or Le Pen's Front National in France, or I guess the Conservative Party in SA, are constantly told that forming a third party is a waste of time, and for the most part, that is what US citizens believe (I'd guess 1% or so of the population actually bothers with third-party politics). So what happens is that the people with more extreme beliefs attempt to influence whichever of the two major parties is closer to their own personal beliefs.

What caused the current dramatic shift, I think, is that Karl Rove, George Bush's campaign manager, realized that he could include dog-whistle phrases and pander to certain core tenets of the extreme right during Bush's campaign and in so doing gain the votes of a lot of people who are generally too extreme to turn out in any real numbers during major elections. Then Bush and Rove and Cheney, et al, ran the presidency like a permanent campaign for 8 years, continuing to use the extreme populist fringe of their party (which, as I said, would probably be a third party in another country where minority parties are seen as viable) to get what they wanted, which generally was limited to war and crony capitalism. At this point, they've inextricably identified their party with the extreme right, to the point that the Republicans, after losing the 2008 election by running a moderately conservative candidate at a time when the country was in a liberal mood, have taken the wrong message away and are going into extreme purge mode.

That second paragraph you mostly already knew but what I find really interesting right now is that this tiny but vocal minority is pulling themselves farther and farther from the mainstream, to the point where they're probably losing all of the center-right leaners who are more moderate but vote with their party and help them win elections. They're boiling it down to the core base, and in practice, that will look more like a minority third party in Europe or somewhere. They'll have maybe a third of the population supporting them at most, but because, again, we only have two parties, it will look like half the country is on the crazy extreme side. And then the TV news reports it that way, and makes it seem like a majority movement, even though the truth is that 70% of the country is horrified by the tea party crazies.

They're in for a rude awakening if they continue on like this. The wave election they expect to materialize in 2010 is doomed for failure, as is Palin's candidacy for president in 2012.

xpost GI

I mean, I know this is the popular analysis but I don't see Rove's '04 strategy as a fundamental shift--dude may have been mechanically better-than-average at exploiting the far right, but it's not something new.  In all the current "OMFG, what the hell is happening in the GOP?" people are forgetting just how fucking crazy things got under Clinton.  It's been like this for a while!  The only concrete difference, I think, is that now they have Fox News and internet as organizing tools.

xpost, well, they get a lot of cheering on Fox. 

[Good Intentions]

Isn't Fox far and away the most popular news network, though? They definitely are the most popular cable news network. They're certainly mainstream on any construal of the term. As is the recently debarted Lou Dobbs. And that's without counting people like Rush Limbaugh and his astronomical following.

The point is that even SA at it's Bantustan-creating Chemical-weapons-against-blacks-developing craziest didn't have anything resembling the ass-over-tit insanity of Fox News in the mainstream.

[coldforge]

They're the most popular news network, but I think when it comes to measuring the popularity of their own brand of craziness you really ought to compare their popularity to everyone else's combined.

[Good Intentions]

1) I think they still come out pretty popular if you do that;
2) Fox isn't the only place you hear this nonsense;
3) My point still stands: Apartheid SA didn't have a Fox equivalent. You're a large and varied country over there, way larger (but not more varied) than SA past or present, but still. I think that's significant.

[Good Intentions]

OK, it's a little unfair of me to refer to debates in the US chambers of government, because, as I've mentioned, some of the debates in Apartheid SA's parliament would make a religious person question the existence of God.

[dieblucasdie]

I mean, yeah, like I suggested, I don't think the American far right is more sizable or crazier or more pissed off than in the past--even when the GOP controlled all three branches of government they were finding imaginary things to flip out over--I do think they are more well organized than in the past.  I think the big tests are going to be a) how much of a scare they end up giving Crist, and B) how well Palin and Huckabee (or someone else they glom onto between now and then) do in 2012.  The tea-party set has had some small victories w/r/t moving the GOP to the right, but those have been in low-turnout elections with some major assists from the worst RNC organization in recent memory.

It's really going to be something if the Erick Ericksons of the world end up running the GOP.  I don't see it happening, but it would be hilarious.

[Heathcote]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1390395.stm

this was the best and most tense thing I've read in ages