It takes one to know one award

It angers me when a member of the pundit class calls ordinary people bad names. Intellectuals are supposed to be above name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Whenever one of these bilge-sodden pigs bladders calls ordinary people names, they get the 'it takes one to know one' prize at Ghost Town Orange.

Therefore, Christopher Hitchens has earned the nomiker Fruitbat and Nutbag:

So as well as being an hysterical paranoid ideologist, or at least being manipulated by people who are, who turned this into Camp Fruitbat and Nutbag, she has decided not to have the courage or maybe the cowardice of her conviction.
--Source: Mediamatters.org and MSNBC

Earlier winners of the Ghost Town Orange 'it takes one to know one' prize were:

• Arnold Schwarzeneggar= "Girly Man"
• Ann Coulter= "Hippie Chick Pie Wagon"

Bilge-sodden pigs bladders all.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Kerry supporter threatened with snipers

From the Des Moines Register: "Campaign event security spurs arrests, removals"

One of the latest incidents came when John Sachs, 18, a Johnston High School senior and Democrat, went to see Bush in Clive last week. Sachs got a ticket to the event from school and wanted to ask the president about whether there would be a draft, about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare.

But when he got there, a campaign staffer pulled him aside and made him remove his button that said, "Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No Billionaire Behind." The staffer quizzed him about whether he was a Bush supporter, asked him why he was there and what questions he would be asking the president.

"Then he came back and said, 'If you protest, it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper,' " Sachs said. "He said it in such a serious tone it scared the crap out of me."

Perhaps the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon has volunteered her services to the Bush campaign.  

Sachs stayed at the event, but he was escorted to a section of the 7 Flags Events Center where he was surrounded by Secret Service and told he couldn't ask questions. "I was just in a state of fear," he said. "I was looking at the ceiling and I didn't know what to expect, I was so scared."

Ronayne said he wasn't aware of what happened to Sachs and declined to comment further. "To the best of my knowledge, no one's lives have been threatened at an event," he said.

Sachs' situation is the latest in a string of stories in which Iowans attending Bush campaign events said they've been made to feel unwelcome.

Other incidents include five protesters arrested outside an event in Cedar Rapids; black and Hispanic students frisked in Davenport; and two people denied admission in Dubuque because they either didn't support Bush or were affiliated with someone who didn't.

Iowa's stories are similar to those being told around the country. According to media reports, Missouri students were in tears after they were removed from a Bush rally because they were wearing Kerry buttons. Others in Minnesota and Wisconsin were asked to leave Bush rallies because they had Kerry T-shirts or stickers.

Thursday night, police wearing riot gear fired pepperballs at protesters gathered at a hotel in Jacksonville, Ore., where Bush was scheduled to eat and sleep after a campaign speech. No one was injured, but two were arrested on charges of failure to disperse. Participants questioned the police intervention because they said they weren't violent or disrupting traffic.

Seriously, the Secret Service needs to be investigated for co-operating with the Bush/Cheney campaign's methods of stifling dissent. Senator Kerry will have some house-cleaning to do when he gets into the White House.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Hippie Chick Pie Wagon Watch

When I first saw this, I thought this interview with Ann Coulter was a joke:

Amazon.com: How important is this presidential election in the larger context of the Republic and its history?

Ann Coulter: Insofar as the survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry, I'd say 2004 is as big as it gets.

Amazon.com: Is there one standout issue, and why does it make a difference? What are the most crucial issues?

Coulter: I repeat: The survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry. I'd say that's the big one.

[snip--read the Bible and my books]

Amazon.com: What's the closest parallel from American history to this year's race?

Coulter: 1864. Bush is Lincoln and Kerry is General McClellan--who, I note, was a great military leader.

Amazon.com: What is the most important lesson from President Bush's term so far?

Coulter: Peace through strength is an idea that never goes out of style. Also, some people can’t be negotiated with but have to be crushed; e.g., the Taliban, al Qaeda, possibly North Korea and Iran, Pat Leahy, Carl Levin, Richard Ben-Veniste...

Amazon.com: What would a Kerry administration mean?

Coulter: Quite possibly the destruction of the Republic.

Here is the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon preparing to vote from the rooftops, crush the enemies of the Republic and turn them into Christians. 

Ann Coulter is possibly the only person on the planet that thinks George W. Bush is like Abraham Lincoln.

And notice the eliminationist rhetoric that conservatives aim at liberals: Democratic senators and Richard Ben-Veniste should be crushed, not even talked to.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Conservatism: what is it and what's wrong with it?

I have often wondered what conservatives really believed--their 'arguments' are so often merely appeals to prejudice and childish name-calling. I stumbled across a link that starts to explain it all: Phil Agre's essay What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? at wood s lot. The opening:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

Go read the whole thing. Here are a few notes:

Characteristics of conservatism: deference to and dependence on to social superiors is natural and good; conservation of institutions is good [at least those institutions that maintain aristocratic power]; disdain for democracy, the true opposite of conservatism (not wishy-washy liberalism); freedom is good as long as the lower classes know their place [else violent repression is regretably needed--law and order, you know; break Victor Jara's fingers for good measure--he'll never play his rabble-rousing guitar again]
How conservatism works:

To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language.

I will post more on each of these with fresh examples soon!
Conservatism in American history vs. the always experimental, entrepeneurial nature of democracy. Agre concludes with his prescription for how to defeat conservatism. An outline:

• Rebut conservative arguments
• Benchmark the Wall Street Journal
  I'd add the hippie chick pie wagon, Rush 'hubba hubba' Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Lielly
• Build a better pundit
• Say something new
• Teach logic
• Remember: Conservatism is the problem
• Critically analyze leftover conservative theories
• Ditch Marx
• Talk American
• Stop surrendering powerful words
• Tipper Gore is right: some pop culture is degrading, dehumanizing trash
• Assess the sixties
• Teach nonviolence
• Tell the taxpayers what they are getting for their money
• Make government work better for small business
• Clone George Soros
• Build the Democratic Party

Conclusion:

Life under aristocratic domination is horrible. The United States is blessed to have little notion of what this horror is like. Europe, for example, staggered under the weight of its aristocracies for thousands of years. European aristocracies are in decline, and Europe certainly has its democratic heroes and its own dawning varieties of civilized life, and yet the psychology and institutions that the aristocracies left behind continue to make European societies rigid and blunt Europeans' minds with layers of internalized oppression. People come to America to get away from all of that. Conservatism is as alien here as it could possibly be. Only through the most comprehensive campaign of deception in human history has it managed to establish its very tentative control of the country's major political institutions. Conservatism until very recently was quite open about the fact that it is incompatible with the modern world. That is right. The modern world is a good place, and it will win.

Grounds for further research:

• Gordon Wood on the Radicalism of the American Revolution; the Creation of the American Republic
• Jacques Barzun: disdain for demotic culture
• Linda Weiss: entrepeneurism
• Jurgen Habermas: public relations for corporate power
• Ella Baker: psychology of conservatism
• John Keane: civil society as counterbalance to govt in democracy
• analysts of information and institutions:
  • Thorstein Veblen
  • John Commons
  • Joseph Schumpeter
  • Karl Polanyi
  • John von Neumann
  • Mark Casson
  • Joseph Stiglitz
  • Paul David
  • Bruno Latour
  • Michel Callon.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Electoral predictions and thoughts on the Democratic National Convention

It has been a good week of speeches at the Democratic National Convention. I watched on C-SPAN so I wouldn't have to listen to Republican pundits and the SCLM tell me what I just heard.

The only sour moments:

• Senator Kennedy misusing FDR's "nothing to fear" to make a cheap political shot at President Bush.
• I do not like the Democratic Party's position on abortion.

Even Rev. Sharpton's speech was better than I thought it would be.

This is my modest prediction, based on hunches, not polling data: Senator Kerry wins even without some of the battleground states. Use the Wall Street Journal's Electoral Vote Calculator to test out different scenarios. To paraphrase John Kerry, we are not really divided into "Red" and "Blue" states; we're all "Red, White, and Blue States!"

I am making a commitment to read columns by the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon to see what Republicans think of me. This will keep my anger level high enough to keep working for John Kerry's election. Here are some examples from her column of July 28 [my responses in brackets].
According to her, Democrats ...

• ... are representative of the nation only if the nation we're talking about is Brazil. For Democrats, there is [sic] only the maid and millionaires. There are no Americans in the middle. To the extent Democrats are forced to recognize working-class white men, they call them "fascists."
[as a working-class white Democrat, I wonder what she's talking about.]
• ... weren't interested in liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from woman-hating Islamicist fanatics.
[What about Saudi Arabia? As evil as Saddam Hussein was, he wasn't an Islamicist fanatic. He was more of an Arab-nationalist Stalin.]
• ... don't believe in capitalism and don't worry about taxes on earned income because they can't imagine there is any way to "earn" money other than the Teresa Heinz-John Kerry way.
[I don't believe in capitalism? Huh?]
• ... unable to conceal their America-hating pacifism were relieved of their anti-war signs and escorted to the free-speech veal pens a few blocks from the convention center.
[I am unable to conceal my God-fearing pacifism.]
• Convention organizers even forced the delegates to choke their way through the Pledge of Allegiance -- something the teachers' students are not allowed to say. The delegates play along, pretending they know the words and making the occasional random reference to "God," trying not to sound ironic.
[Here in Oklahoma, my children still say the Pledge of Allegiance, and I know the words and recite it with them, at Scout meetings, for example. I have reservations about the potential for flag-idolatry--I am a citizen of God's kingdom first.]
• ... are not angry about 9/11.
[Well, I am still angry that Osama bin Laden has not been the focus of my country's response to 9/11.]

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Hippie Chick Pie Wagon (aka Ann Coulter)

Here are some excerpts from Ann Coulter's unpublished [unpublishable by any legitimate media outlet] column for July 26:

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazened with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.

[snip]

...My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.

Apparently the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon thinks she's a pretty girl. Pretty = Republican; ugly = Democrat. Who says Republicans aren't divisive name-callers?

The nuts in the cages are virtual Bertrand Russells compared to the official speakers at the Democratic Convention. On the basis of their placards, I gather the caged-nut position is that they love the troops so much, they don't want them to get hurt defending America from terrorist attack. Support the troops, the signs say, bring them home.

That's my new position on all government workers, except the 5% who aren't useless, which is to say cops, prosecutors, firemen and U.S. servicemen. I love bureaucrats at the National Endowment of the Arts funding crucifixes submerged in urine so much -- I think they should go home. I love public school teachers punishing any mention of God and banning Christmas songs so much -- I think they should go home.

Echoes of the Reagan era theme that 'Government is bad' [except for that part of government that carries guns and can send people to prison. {I wonder how firemen got in the Hippie Chick Pie Wagon's favored list--they don't carry guns!?}]

Looking at the line-up of speakers at the Convention, I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We'll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he'll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them.

[snip]

...I want Americans to get a good long look at the French Party and keep the 7-11 challenge in mind.

Ad hominem attacks are the best the Hippy Chick Pie Wagon can come up with? This is a prime example of Republican divisiveness: nothing about policy, public service, etc. Just government-bashing and name-calling.

I apologize for resorting to name-calling myself, but whenever politicians and pundits engage in it, they have earned a nickname from me:

• Arnold Schwarzeneggar= "Girly Man"
• Ann Coulter= "Hippie Chick Pie Wagon"

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)