Nasty stretch

Classy Freddie Blassie takes on the Golden Greek John Tolos at the Olympic

We are in the home stretch of the campaign and everybody is getting really chippy.  I got tickets for an election and a hockey game broke out...

My favorite dog whistle of the week was when the impending rain caused the dems to have to move from Bank of America Stadium where the Carolina Panthers play, to an indoors location and Rush Limbaugh said, "When you have the ego Obama has, trust me folks. I know where of which I speak –you’re used to filling auditoriums and you don’t fill them any more—that’s big. It is not new. He has not been filling arenas of 18 or 20,000. This is because Obama has become a “joke,” and “people laugh at him. Now he can’t fill up this 73,000 Black Panther Stadium.”

Clever, semantically link the president to a black terrorist organization. This is just ugly talk, our black president now on the same figural mantle as Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown. A phrase that triggers and exploits the whole white fright phenomenon, a victim of the marauding, savage negro. And don't hold your breath waiting for a repudiation from anyone in the GOP regarding rushbo. Ain't going to happen.

Playing tit for tat, the dems likened South Carolina Governor Haley to Eva Braun, eliciting condemnation and groans from the right and a plea from Romney for democrats to stop comparing Republicans to nazis.

Both sides are equally adept at playing the poor me, victim card and all the fake hurt posturing is making the average American want to hurl.

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Krauthammer is an incredibly bright man. An ex psychotherapist I think, he has been writing a very conservative column for the Washington Post for eons. Started out as a speechwriter for Mondale, of all things. A Harvard M.D., he discovered a whole new class of mania. I rarely agree with him, and don't in this instance, but take my hat off to him for the depth of his literary venom. The specific column is titled The Empathy Gap.

This is the part that killed me. He is discussing Bush I and Slick Willy before setting his cannon sights on Obama:

George H.W. Bush, Romney-like in aloofness, was once famously handed a staff cue card that read: “Message: I care.” That was supposed to be speech guidance. Bush read the card. Out loud. Not surprisingly, he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who lives to care, who feels your pain better than you do — or at least makes you think so. In politics, that’s a trivial distinction.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is sarcasm at its sharpest and a superb bit of elocution. I can't stand you, Charles, but well done.

He continues:

The problem with swallowing the “he cares, therefore he does” line is that it so plainly contradicts what we’ve seen over the past four years. Barack Obama is a deeply committed social democrat who laid out an unashamedly left-liberal agenda at the very beginning of his presidency and then proceeded to try to enact it.
Obama passed Obamacare, regulated Wall Street, subsidized Solyndra because that fits an ambitious left-wing agenda developed in his youth, now made possible by his power: redistributionist, government-centered, disdainful of success, suspicious of private enterprise, committed to his own vision of social justice.

Krauthammer continues the standard right wing narrative, framing the president as Comrade Obama, raised at the knees of Reverend White and Saul Alinsky, whelped on heartland baby flesh, eager to install a muslim, marxist state right here in the USA. The reality is that this guy has been a real disappointment to me and most liberals that I do know, actually more like Bush III. Far too conservative. He tried to be the conservative's friend in the beginning and ended up getting punked over and over. I am glad that he is finally growing a spine. Now about the Patriot Act, medical marijuana, assassination of american citizens without trial, and a host of other issues, I am really pissed at the guy. Obama is far more conservative than the average liberal I know. You're lucky I'm not in power. You want to see some shit...

But like Mitt is going to be any better? Sorry, as Anne Romney let us know this morning, we aren't going to talk about gay marriage or contraception or abortion rights, or prayer in the schools, Americans don't care about any of those things. It is only about the economy. And more drilling. They won't talk about them because if people knew what they were actually planning to do, they know they will lose. So they just won't say. It's not about paying for contraception, it's allowing any contraception. Just watch.

They said that it was only about the economy once before and people believed them. Shame on them. They lied. Look around at all the personhood amendments, all the fundamentalist crusades simmering underneath the surface. These people get their foot in the door with the economy and then it's the second coming of John Calvin.

Hence the civil war.

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The Jerusalem/God platform spat was pretty funny. Charges and then denials that AIPAC had vetted the speech and then word comes down the pike that Barack himself was the father of the word switcheroo. Doesn't surprise me considering his antipathy for the neighborhood.

The great line was from Ryan. He said that the dems were against god before they were for him.

Can't wait for this thing to be over. Obama wins, nothing will change. The GOP will obstruct and we will continue hating each other and continue to have a dysfunctional system. Romney wins, obamacare gets repealed, bye bye abortion, another Scalia or two, environment gets plundered by pillaging vultures, we get more religion in the schools, rich get richer, and we get to watch the poor die. Wasn't let them die the rallying war cry, the biggest applause getter of the whole republican primary?

Do what you want.