Late Night Open Thread: Things We Wish We Had Written

Arthur Silber has a new post up at “Once Upon A Time…” The man is a magician with words! His latest is entitled “Out of Your Trance, Assholes.”

So. I’ve tried to catch up a bit over the last few days, and I’ve looked over what various commentators and bloggers have been saying since The Most Significant, Metaphysics-Altering, Consciousness-Raising, Paradigm-Shattering Craptastic Farce Election Since the Multiverses Were a Teensy Eeensy Embryo in the Non-Existent God’s Fantasy Belly. It’s enough to make me advocate forced abortions. Look: it’s fine with me if most people voluntarily choose to obliterate their few remaining brain cells and enthusiastically stick their noses in the filthy, smelly ass of the ruling class. Whatever works for you, you know? But Jesus F. Christ, doesn’t it trouble people at all to make themselves so utterly, fantastically stupid? I mean, shouldn’t there be at least a passing moment of regret that people have chosen to make themselves dumber than unicellular life? It would appear not.

I will not make a show of false modesty here, and instead I will point out that I predicted everything that is now transpiring. I did so on the basis of carefully reasoned arguments based on the available relevant facts, always keeping in mind the nature of the political system that rules our lives. A number of individuals frequently write off views like mine as mere “cynicism.” When such criticisms are offered without much (or any) more, this is simply a way of dismissing arguments one doesn’t like without engaging them. Well, one shouldn’t expect more from amoeba.

He sure can take it to those Koolaid-drinking suckers!

WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

McClatchy: Obama Already Acting as “Co-President”

Barack Obama is a man in a very big hurry. For those of us who have been paying attention, this is nothing new. As soon as he won his Senate seat–if not before–Obama began planning a run for the presidency. A humbler man might have waited until he had a little experience under his belt, but Obama didn’t want to wait.

During his primary run he repeatedly claimed to have already won the nomination. No sooner had he come in first in Iowa, then his minions at the cable networks and the Cheeto blogs were calling for Hillary Clinton to step aside so he could get on with the general election. Hillary managed to slow him down a bit when she won New Hampshire and went on to do well on Super Tuesday. But even as Hillary continued to win primary after primary in traditionally Democratic states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, Obama’s campaign continued to claim that he had already won.

Christmas Wish List Open Thread

Only 29 shopping days left!

The Two “Realities” of Obamanation

Ever since Obama flip-flopped and voted for the FISA amendment he claimed to oppose, he has repeatedly provided evidence that he is not a progressive, let alone a liberal.  The past few weeks have provided even more evidence that Obama intends to govern somewhere from the right of center as he has been announcing Cabinet and other appointments as well as signalling his intention to delay or break keeping campaign promises.

The reaction thus far among Obamanationals falls into two basic categories:

1.  We’re still getting a pony

2.  I always knew we weren’t getting a pony

The first category includes everyone who continues to believe that Obama is a progressive and will govern as such.  They range from the people who rationalize that Obama’s moves and statements are part of a devious plan to those who put their fingers in their ears and say “La la la I can’t hear you!” when presented with contrary facts.  This group is shrinking somewhat but will never quite disappear.  Many of them will hold out hope that their pony will be delivered during Obama’s second term and if (when) he fails to win reelection they will go to their graves convinced he would have finally delivered had he won.

The second category is increasing in size and they would be amusing if their dishonesty wasn’t so annoying.  I’m  not talking about bloggers like Vastleft at Corrente or Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft who were suspicious and critical of Obama but supported him in the end.  I’m talking about the bloggers who dove head first into the Kool-aid vat back in the primaries and never came out.

With a few rare exceptions, the only people claiming during the primaries that Obama wasn’t a progressive were Hillary Clinton supporters (GOPers claimed he was a socialist but nobody believed them.)  Hillary was vilified by Obamanation for being a DLC centrist and was even accused of being a Republican by no less than the head Cheeto himself.  We also heard how she planned to be John McCain’s running mate and how her supporters were just Republican ratfuckers.

So when these same people that viciously attacked Hillary as a centrist and/or praised Obama as a progressive now claim they knew all along that he was a center-right politician it begs the question:

Were they lying then or are they lying now?

There is a third category that has not yet made it’s appearance among Obamanationals:

3.  What the f**k was I thinking?

Tuesday: Are you pondering what I’m pondering?

Q:  Why is Christopher Hitchens, that “drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay”, still getting paid to write for Slate?

His latest piece is called, Serving the Clintonian Interest, is full of the typical anti-Clinton shtick.

China, Indonesia, Georgia—these are not exactly negligible countries on our defense and financial and ideological peripheries. In each country, there are important special interests that equate the name Clinton with the word pushover. And did I forget to add what President Clinton pleaded when the revulsion at the Rich pardons became too acute? He claimed that he had concerted the deal with the government of Israel in the intervals of the Camp David “agreement”! So anyone who criticized the pardons had better have been careful if they didn’t want to hear from the Anti-Defamation League. Another splendid way of showing that all is aboveboard and of convincing the Muslim world of our evenhandedness.

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

Damn, that President Clinton!  Showing everyone up by trying to negotiate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.  Why wasn’t he appropriately attentive to Mark Rich’s unsavory pardon details when he had to have known that the entire media would be covering it?  That whole Camp David excursion was just a conveeeenient distraction.

I can almost imagine a Monty Pythonesque voice in the background saying, “Well, there’s spam, spam, *bacon* and spam.  It doesn’t have too much spam in it.”  It’s the same damn spammy stuff we’ve eaten for 15 years now.  Give it a rest, Christopher.  There’s no THERE there.  I’m beginning to think that Clinton Derangement Syndrome (CDS) has run its course.  The merest mention of an investigation of the two of them fails to raise our heartbeats anymore.  It isn’t going to sell any additional papers.  It won’t get anymore hits to the WaPo online site.  We are all yaaaaawwwwwnnninng.

Maybe this was all part of the Clintons’ diabolical plan.  Let them be overexposed.  Allow some vaguely unsavory connexions to stand for awhile.  Drive the media into a frenzy while Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd exercise their IBM Selectrics for awhile and lead them all into a false sense of security.  It’ll be just like the salad days of the 90’s when there was a scandal waiting under each table in the White House.  Except now, fifteen years later, after investigation after investigation has turned up nothing but a zaftig beret wearing intern, nobody cares what the Clintons are doing.  Now, they really *can* get away with murder.  It’s wicked.

Well, who can blame the Hitchens, Dowd and Rich types?  They’re about to be has-beens, washed up.  They won’t be able to criticize The Precious without having the word “racist” flung at them.  They’re caught between a couple who most Americans admire and a President Elect whose political office will defenestrate from the press plane the first reporter whose prose is not absolutely laudatory and fawning.  That should make for some interesting reading in the next four years.  I am looking forward to a lot of “damning with faint praise” pieces.  Reading between the lines will be very entertaining.

Meanwhile, the new Foreign President, Madame Secretary Clinton, will be lavished with the kind of foreign press that she and her husband always used to get.  Christopher Hitchens should stock up on the Bombay Sapphire.