It appears colors are weak and traitorous.
I can see it now: "John McCain: Taking black-and-white thinking to the next level."
The McCain candidacy is fantastic. I loves me some crazy.
At Ezra's, someone points out that he's using the SS color scheme.
Giuliani's not bad either. It's a good year for the crazy.
Someone else at Ezra's described those things at the bottom as the creepiest Mac ads ever.
Holy fucking fuck, that video is creepy. "Triumph of the Will" creepy.
And the Reagan one is great too. How other pilots in the POW camp told him all about the Governor of CA and his lovely wife. Fabulous.
Jesus, the Reagan video is even creepier, in its way--talking about being the greatest force for good in the midst of all that's happened in Iraq is terrifying.
These are not the crazies you are looking for.
Anyone read through his national security agenda? I'm having flashbacks to the height of the Cold War.
Wow, there sure is a lot of stuff in there about the importance of having a gigantic, ass-kicking military.
I see your 'Imperial Stormtrooper Chic, and raise you a Riefenstahl.
re: 14
I don't know, Gerg Eneerg has a certain 'imperial stormtrooper' chic all of it's own...
"All hail General Gerg"
At Ezra's, someone points out that he's using the SS color scheme.
'If it ain't pink, it's SS!' No, he's not. He's way more Star Wars IV than SS. 'Involving You, Informing You, Connecting You' plus the giant exploding-jaw headshot looks more 1984 to me.
Also, he gets a star, so apparently he got promoted somewhere along the line... to a rank so high, it has no name!
That bulge in his jaw is where the alien parasite that controls him lives, isn't it? It certainly appears to be tired of living in him in that picture above 'Courage'.
m, 'How can I rule the world from this loser's body?'
If we use colors, then the terrorists win.
McCain is just beyond seeing color. Like Stephen Colbert. He really can't tell a difference between the people running across the border into his state, and those durn terrorists in Iraq.
Looks to me like a great website for the South Carolina primary. Maybe you are always fighting the last war but that decision seems tactically sound. Don't worry, he'll add a pastel-colored section on health care policy in time for the general.
The politics that these common-sense conservatives espouse sound dangerously close to those of a certain pro-terrorist, anti-religious East Coast eco-radical to me.
The music sounds like the soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean.
("Vote McCain, ye scabbrous dogs! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!")
That "Stand Up" ad is perfect if he's running for President of Cybertron.
My wife had a meeting this week with the only non-scary Republican who's running. I'm not planning to vote for him, but we could sure do worse.
23 - Before I moused-over that link, I thought for sure it would point to this guy.
Looks to me like a great website for the South Carolina primary.
Non-expert that I am, Romney's looks better. Traditional red, white and blue, focuses largely on "family values." Romney's faith aside, your average South Carolina Republican is more likely to dig that than huge glowing disembodied heads.
Romney's website is all about family family family; while McCain's is all about McCain McCain McCain. I'm not sure how that woos a voter who doesn't like McCain to start with.
(Btw, one of Google's text ads is for a site called "mymanmitt.com." What's a manmitt? Is it like a thong?)
What's a manmitt?
It's the equipment you use to handle your glove-boner.
Jim Webb earned my campaign contribution the day that the Senate was all wringing its hands about the Poor Soldiers That America Must Protect and he pointed out that, um, being in danger is kind of the military's job. He left where he was going with that, that if a war isn't worth risking lives for we shouldn't be fighting it, as an exercise to the listener.
Dude, I pitched something on McCain's aesthetic just yesterday. I hope the editor doesn't read Unfogged.
You think? I'd have been scared more five years ago, thinking that war fever was going to take us someplace really really spooky. Now, it just looks silly. Maybe I'm wrong, and people are ready for the Iron Dream to make us all safe, but I think the public is past that point.
I like the gunmetal gray, I like the creepy fascist star logo, I like the video with him chanting "we are Americans! we are Americans!" over the throngs of admirers, but you know what would really pull the whole thing together? A few clips of the senator in a big black helmet choking liberals with the power of his mind.
I dunno, I still think that Bush is unpopular only insofar as it looks like we're losing in Iraq, and not because lots of people have died or that we've shredded domestic and international law. And there really hasn't been much of a challenge to presidential authority. Now come McCain and Giuliani, who are both truly wackjob authoritarians, with apparently only Mitt Romney standing between either of them having basically a 50/50 shot at the White House. So yeah, I'm scared.
only Mitt Romney standing between either of them having basically a 50/50 shot at the White House
You really think so? I'd say it's very likely that some other candidate (maybe Brownback or Huckabee) will emerge as the "real conservative" alternative, garner the support of the many Republican primary voters who hate all three of the current frontrunners, and end up with the nomination.
I'm more scared of Romney than McCain, I think. He's a complete cipher, and running hard right on foreign policy & civil liberties issues--wiretapping mosques, etc.
I agree with LB's 30. I'm interested in the republican congressional tactic to keep insisting that we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so as not to fight them here, etc. They've not lost with this before, so they'll keep using it until they do.
I'm infinitely more afraid of Huckabee and Brownback than I am of McCain or Giuliani.
Two of McCain's big supporters are a rich California couple who normally support Democrats. The enthusiasm for McCain among some Democrats scares me sometimes. The money democrats are a pretty unappealing bunch.
Bush is unpopular only insofar as it looks like we're losing in Iraq
Bingo. And a candidate (McCain) who can present himself as Proud to be American--especially when we're losing in Iraq--is going to be very, very popular indeed.
I'm infinitely more afraid of Huckabee and Brownback than I am of McCain or Giuliani.
Well that doesn't make me feel better, given that handing the imperial presidency to a guy who tried to cancel a fucking election already sounds plenty bad enough, thanks.
Dude, Giuliani likes teh gays and isn't bothered by worldly culture; the crescent you'll have to wear will probably be very stylish.
He's really bad news, man. You want government secrecy and a complete shut-down of any perspective not in accordance with the man in charge? Giuliani's your guy.
Less scary to me than Brownback or Huckabee.
38: Sure, some random candidate who could present himself as Proud to be an American right now would be very popular, but McCain already has a reputation and track record that make him very unpopular with the hardcore conservatives who vote in Republican primaries. All this crypto-fascist stuff is at least partly an attempt to counteract that, but I can't see it ultimately working.
This is one of those 'worse the devil you know' moments. From what I know about Giuliani, I'd feel safer and more secure with anyone else -- I don't know much against the other two beyond an outline of their politics.
I really think our first priority should be keeping nutcases--whatever their politics--out of office, so McCain and Giuliani worry me.
Giuliani doesn't have a chance, folks. In addition to being socially liberal and personally unlikable, he's got a closet jam-packed full of skeletons. There's a "Rudy-can't-win" meme going around in conservative circles already.
I hope 43's right, but I fear that his obvious and overwhelming popularity is going to get him the nod and the presidency.
I'm not convinced—my phrase for the week—of this "Proud to be American" appeal right now. That doesn't always work, and now might be one of the times it doesn't.
I've been reading The Plot Against America, which may be influencing me. (Fun book, but I remained baffled by Roth's reputation.) For me, the first priority is limiting the power of Southern Conservatives. (NB: Almost all the bad guys in the book are Blue staters.)
47: See, I don't think his popularity's all that obvious or overwhelming these days. In my experience the really serious conservative Republicans loathe him, and his recent opportunistic moves to the right have probably lost him some of the more liberal fans he acquired from his equally opportunistic moves to the left back in 2000.
Eh, my aunt and my dad--both Very Catholic liberals--think McCain's the cat's meow.
Roth's reputation is not based on a book like that, although there are wonderful things in TPAA. Joe Conason's been talking up Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, which I've never read but may now.
I remained baffled by Roth's reputation
His older stuff is what made his reputation, not The Plot Against America.
Brownback's sincerely well meaning (one of the best republicans on, e.g., asylum law), but nuts.
Crazy-hawkish and authoritarian are slightly different things in my book--McCain's maybe the worst about the former, but not the latter. Of course crazy-hawkish may be if anything more destructive.
Hey, I'm in the middle of reading The Plot Against America too!
Human Stain sucked. I'll try some of his older stuff.
51: Are they voting in the Republican primary?
We need an open thread about personals ads.
My main observation: Ladies, stop using the line "Well-behaved women rarely make history" as your subtitle!
Give me a day or two, Adam, and I might have one for you.
58: No, thank god, but if they like him I bet there are plenty of registered Republicans who do too.
The worst part about personals, instead of just meeting people face to face, is that everything one says is so much more cliched when its obvious they had time to htink it out. If i cliche just pops out of your mouth, its not really a strike against you.
I think McCain has made a deal with the devil for his "reasonable" persona - he, in fact, is not a centrist, but a significantly right-wing voter in the Senate, has pretty much endorsed creationism and panders to such pond scum religo-righties as James Dobson.
To speak to McG's point: With the somewhat paltry death toll at Pearl Harbor - less than 2500 people - being the only time in modern history that the US has been attacked on its own soil*, Americans, as a population, have no concept of what being in a war truly means. "Going to war" ["for a good cause" being only tangential, apparently] has been romanticised for two reasons: One, the populace has never experienced anything like the London Blitz or the war in Bosnia or the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa [reality trumps romanticism every time; nothing dampens enthusiasm like being bombed to rubble or watching one's daughters raped and murdered] and two, since the 1920s music - predominantly country music - has been used to great advantage both to reflect and to shape middle-American cultural acceptance of a somewhat jingoistic patriotism. [Later, film would begin to serve the same purpose: all those clean-cut soldier boys going off to war, being noble and heroic and whatnot - and, until quite recently, not showing any effects from the rigours of war. Or wrinkles on their uniforms. It's no accident that the present administration refuses to allow pictures of those flag-draped coffins.]
We, as a country, haven't experienced what happens during a war since the 1860s - and even then, civilians came to picnic at the first Battle of Bull Run. We don't have the physical reminders that the Brits do, or the Bosnian; we don't have random landmines scattered across our territory or the harsh reality of mutations caused by radiation or Agent Orange. We have been insulated, isolated, wrapped in cotton wool. [Is it any wonder our troops suffer so often from PTSD? Hell, we don't even allow cartoons to be "traumatic" anymore.] We confuse Tom Cruise movies with reality, dissent with treason and double-speak with victory.
* Do not bring up 9/11. 9/11 was not war. It was an attack by a group of religious fanatics spurred on by an ideologue. Tragedy tho' it was, twenty times more people died in London during the Blitz, which wasn't confined to a single day. Or the day after. Or the day after that...
There should be a comma after "1920s".
Shouldn't we be talking about something reely important, like Britney's whack-job hack-job on her hair?? [Apparently, she has confused "balled" and "bald", so when BFF Paris said "we should get balled today"...
D. Editrix must really hate America. She doesn't even bother to mention the Japanese occupation of Attu and Kiska in 1942, the shelling of Fort Stevens, the firebomb attacks on Oregon forests, or the ballon bomb in Bly.
re: 63
There is, for example, a certain black amusement to be had from the fact that that nation branded as 'cheese-eating surrender moneys' in fact lost a vastly higher percentage of their population in military action in both WWI and WWII than the nation doing the branding.
D.Editrix is very right, but even understates the case. The nation is ornamented with trophies and monuments to our genocidal victory.
Dakota. Massassachusetts. Manhattan. Every day we dance on mass graves.
"Daddy, what language is that?"
"Son, many languages of vast nations. But don't worry about it, we killed them all."
I can't come up with any plausible scenario where McCain or Giuliani gets the Republican nomination.
48:I am no longer pessimistic, but remain wary.
The "Solid South" is still a dangerous factor in American politics. Democrats know have some security, but I still think McCain (or whomever) will have to campaign in less states than his opposition.
And I guarantee, unpredictable bad things will happen. We might yet be headed for a 1968.
64: I mentioned it on the Anna Nicole thread, but it disappeared pretty quickly off the sidebar. I kinda feel icky watching her spiral downward.
Philip Roth is only readable for deep-souled men whose rich experience of life has led them to misogyny not entirely unmixed with lust for their granddaughters' friends.
63: To be all boring and fiddly, PTSD isn't exactly new, and it's not surprising that a war like the Iraq one causes it--consider "shell shock" among British soldiers in WWI. That had nothing to do with a lack of manly trauma in daily civilian life and everything to do with a crappy, long-term stress situation in the trenches and also the way such a situation messes up how your body produces adrenaline. "We" as a nation are definintely insulated from war, but "we" as in soldiers on the ground in Iraq are not.
You're too ald for me, Alameida.
What about Detroit? British North America (rump division) gets no respect.
74: I'm well aware of that; it was called "battle fatigue", as well, and certainly isn't confined to American soldiers, nor to soldiers caught in this particular conflict. My point was more that Americans, as a general populace, have been more insulated from war - and, indeed, terrorism - than most, and, to the extent that efforts have been made to insulate children from everything even vaguely cathartic, much less traumatic, are less well prepared to deal with it.
However, it can be argued that populations who live in greater proximity to ongoing conflict become inured to a certain amount of trauma - it's that, or curl up into a little ball and scream. Hell, the residents of South Central Los Angeles [which we are now supposed to call "South Los Angeles", as the former appellation was associated with, oh, the gangs and drive-by-shootings that plague the area] deal with far more trauma on a daily basis than do the residents of most of middle America, and do so with a fair amount of resignation. Living in the UK, I got used to the orderly everyone-off-the-train events that made tube travel so interesting. Back then, IRA attacks were a fact of life one dealt with, not something that set off gibbering hysterics - and I heard more than one person chat about how much worse the Blitz was, you young 'uns....
The fascinating thing is that here in the States, it's the people who say "don't freak out, you gibbering hysterics" that are portrayed as weak. Of course, that has to do with their reluctance to kill.
72: yes, Emerson rocks. Do I have to wait until I have granddaughters with lustworthy friends before I can truly enjoy Roth? Or am allowed to be a dirty old man before my time?
Imagine that you're old and grumpy, and get your girlfriend to dress up in one of those Catholic-school outfits.
I would, but I just got dumped on Wednesday, remember? Zing! All of a sudden I *do* feel grumpy, though.
Excellent; now you're halfway to a state where you can appreciate Roth.
Maybe I should be paying more attention to the online-personals thread ... having a Portnoy reference as a title might work well.
For years, the right has demonized the so-called political correctness movement as a bunch of liberals who want to make you say faggy things like "vertically challenged." The funny part is that the idea of "any man or woman in the military is a square jawed hero who is protecting your wimpy pinko ass from the terrorists and must be worshipped" is the most dogmatic form of political correctness on the right. Any republican politician who even thinks otherwise is on his way to a primary defeat.