Wonkette
In an effort to be “objective” and feel like “a big deal,” the Washington Political Press has decided Barack Obama’s 16-day presidency is in Crisis Mode, possibly collapsing exactly like Nixon, late in his second term, right now! The evidence, so far, consists of Obama doing pretty much everything he said would be done in the first days of his first four-year term, including signing several symbolic/significant bills and orders, appointing three actual Republicans to his Cabinet, and steamrolling an epic Economic Stimulus package through Congress that will (in whatever final form) be the most ambitious thing of its kind since the New Deal. So, uh, FAIL?
Even tossing back three big-name would-be Cabinet members because of their respective tax, nanny and political mini-scandals back home seems, ultimately, to be a good if sad thing for a young president trying to balance the High Moral Calling of Change with the real-world necessity of having serious policy people who can twist arms and bang heads on Capitol Hill.
So who can elitist Washington journalists turn to for PROOF that Obama has already failed 1,000% at everything, forever? How about some dingbat National Review Online blogger who is consistently wrong about everything, always, but somehow gets a pass because he used to teach history and lives on a raisin farm in Fresno?
Victor Davis Hanson, come on down!
As we’ve already mentioned, because we apparently fall for this bullshit too, Hanson wrote some Very Serious Blog Post on the goofy-retard website The Corner, and now Obama should pretty much resign, because this Hanson fellow is a fanatic George W. Bush supporter and is, by the very Authority of Western Civilization, the only person who can judge the success or failure of Obama’s presidency, which began two weeks ago to great fanfare and much enthusiasm and continues to be wildly popular with, uhm, Americans, even though they’ve suffered through 16 days of scandal and horror unseen since the Reign of Caligula and/or Nero, but blacker.
There is only one small problem with using a wingnut NRO blogger as the barometer of Obama’s presidential success: Victor Davis Hanson has been regularly announcing the complete, dismal failure of Barack Obama’s presidency since March of last year. Each and every time, Hanson has been wrong. No matter the historical analogy that might or might not been relevant, no matter the educated certainty of the tone — he sounds pretty smart next to mouth-breathing fartsacks like Jonah Goldberg or Kathryn Jean Lopez! — the endless hopeful predictions of Obama’s failure never manage to actually come true. But keep trying, Victor! Even a broken clock needs to be thrown in the fucking trash.
The Economist has helpfully collected this dude’s constant death knells for Obama going back to the primary battles, and it’s all pretty hilarious … until you remember that the Liberal Main Stream Media is looking to guys like Hanson for “perspective.” Jesus fucking christ.
The danger of writing off Barack Obama [The Economist]
Up periscope.
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review August 11, 1961: “Obama doomed to obscure, meaningless life.”
I didn’t know there were any “fanatic George W. Bush supporter” types still around. I thought they would have choked to death on their moral outrage at a half-breed muslin getting elected president by now.
A girl can dream, can’t she?
Victor Hansen as a serious prognosticator is on the same level as K-Overfed consider a supermodel candidate and Jonah The Retarded Whale qualifying for Delta Force.
the GOP has a right to be featured on CNN, because of 9/11 and climate change.
So who can elitist Washington journalists turn to for PROOF that Obama has already failed 1,000% at everything, forever?
They need D. Broder. He has the mother’s milk.
~
We are all retarded mouth-breathing raisin farmers.
The Hoover Institution is filled with a bunch of loser asshat pseudo-intellectuals. Also.
wonkette quoting economist defending barry against NR.
head ’sploding.
Here’s something to piss you right off.
According to the Madoff whistleblower, he went to a reporter at the Wall Street Journal THREE YEARS AGO with the Madoff story. The reporter wanted to go with it and the EDITORS nixed it.
So can we haul the editors of the WSJ in front of Congress, too…and make them squirm a bit?
Do your job, people.
Aha. My Repub father-in-law thinks VDH walks on water. Now I see why.
oooh… all it took was the one picture of his lips pursed together like that. Not lips I’d like to be around.
Homo don’t play that!
Tomorrow at the Corner: Barry talking to the White House portraits and calling Henry Kissinger for spontaneous White House prayer sessions.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Hanson’s next column addresses Obama’s plan to steal our precious bodily fluids.
Jesus fucking christ indeed.
Wonkette I love you so much for this I clicked on that damn teeth whitening ad. No no really, thank YOU.
I heart the Economist so much.
SayItWithWookies: Was that before or after he shoved Obama’s birth certificate up his ass?
CNN ran a headline entitled “Obama Overload?” with a screen of sixteen competing Obama heads on a giant grid. Meanwhile when “Mission Impossible” went up Wolf and Matthews thought Bush the ladies couldn’t get enough of the swagger.
I think there’s one humorless 75-year old guy determining the editorial slant for the entire broadcast news industry, and he’s probably a white dude.
Although Hanson is self-described as a raisin farmer (in the same way I paint myself as a tobacco cultivator for cadging soggy cigarette butts from my fellow, ill-clothed hobos), he seems to have confused collecting dried, raisin-size, mouse turds of neo-conservatism ideation with intellectual agronomy.
But, perhaps I misspeak.
i am curious: is a raisin farm a failed vinyard?
Has he accused Obama of shooting Vince Foster yet?
I saw this guy opine on the Peleponnesian War in a PBS documentary recently. Hmmm. Didn’t know he was a Kool Aid drinker.
cynbot: Don’t know when exactly — but it would explain the missing long form.
The Corner? Oh yes, I remember The Corner. That’s the place where John Derbyshire proclaimed all those Virginia Tech students cowards because they ran when they fellow students were shot rather than rush the crazed gunman with the automatic weapon and extended clip.
Bastion of truth and integrity, The Corner is.
Well, now that Rush is the model citizen of repug-dom, the field is wide open. Or the bar has been raised. You gotta out-crazy Rush now just to get noticed on the right.
“Even a broken clock needs to be thrown in the fucking trash.”
Made my day.
Victor Davis Hanson in Penthouse, April 20, 2002:
I never thought something like this would happen to me, but then again, I do have a very big penis. You can tell because I use all my names. When you hear “Victor Davis Hanson,” you immediately think, “Hey, he is not trying to compensate for something.”
Godot: My thoughts exactly. Ken, don’t ever change.
You insult clocks. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Victor? not so much.
“Even a broken clock needs to be thrown in the fucking trash.”
Brilliantly hilarious.
Go away, ‘batin’.
The principal thesis of Victor Davis Hanson’s “seminal” work (okay, okay, keep it down), entitled “The Western Way of War” has been rejected by virtually ever competent historian who has looked at it.
He engaged in the “classic” neocon approach: Rejecting and/or ignoring any facts that did not fit into his preconceived theory that there was something “unique” about the way the ancient Greeks fought. Scroll forward 2500 years or so, and you have the Chickenhawks in the Bush Administration planning their “War of the Flowers” into Iraq.
When, oh Gods, when are these sorts of idiots going to be held to account for their mistakes, evasions and outright lies? The best news of the week is that Alfredo Gonzales can’t find work . . . other than as a gardener or taco truck helper.
(How much would it cost to buy an surplus Alpha class attack submarine from the Russian Federation to torpedo that cruise ship? Don’t the Trucknutz folks owe us a whopping commission?)
HOLY MOTHER OF GAWD I AM WRITING THIS THING. DOING. THIS.
This fucking sucks, because the previously well respected (well, sorta) journalist has gone off the deep end and become a foul wart. The fuckhead wrote such “things” in a critical situation as this:
“But in years to come it may well be said that the president kept us safe for years when none thought he could, and removed the two most odious regimes in the Middle East and replaced them with the two best — and confronted a confident and ascendant radical Islam and left it demoralized and discredited among its own host Arab and Muslim constituancy.”
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson091108.html.
He offers not the best, but a stupid respectable critique of the Iraq war and all that fussy business. HE FAIL though. Also.
but he is apparently a filthy whore. He is so obsessed with himself that Jesus, when he walked on water (allegedly), could hear the voice of Hansen screaming a him, as a warning. You must avoid this man at all costs. Consider him armed and dangerously insane. He will talk you into suicide. He won’t pull the trigger.
According to the ol’ Wikipedia, “Hanson cites the Theban general and statesman Epaminondas…as [one of] his heroes”. Hmm, Epaminondas, eh? What’s he all about? Epaminondas never married…He is known, however, to have had several young male lovers. Yup, we got another buttsecks fan on our hands…
I’ve been trying for some time do decide who is the more retarded of the Hoover Institution douchebags. Victor Davis Hanson or Uncle Tom Sowell? I’ve made up my mind, It’s definitely VDH…
shortsshortsshorts: Narcissism and egomania are the number one requirement for becoming a hack supporter of right wing bullshit. Mr. Hanson comes with a resume chock full of the necessary attributes. The sad thing is that many of the people like Mr. Hanson actually do have writing talent, and presumably a fair amount of intelligence. It’s all wasted in a ritual succumbing to ignorance.
It’s difficult to determine exactly how such people crossed over into the dark side of blind dogma, fear and hate mongering and extreme nationalism when they started off as normal human babies. I would imagine that religious indoctrination plays a major role in the ruination of good minds. Narcissism is often brought on by parental over coddling during a person’s formative years. There are many things that could be considered as contributing to the decline of intelligence among right wing authors.
The bottom line is that we are witnessing something akin to mass hysteria on a huge scale. The fact that a significant portion of Republicans really believe Sarah Palin is the future of their party is fucking insane. It’s totally fucking insane. There is no intelligence or rational thinking involved with it. It’s like they’ve all lost their minds.
My favorite part is when homosexuality is held up as a great evil in our society. That’s funny. I thought drinks with little umbrellas, expensive clothes and fine cologne were all part of a fun Friday night. Apparently it’s of the devil though. Also.
[sigh]
according to VDH’s wikipedia :
“Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, he attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. At Roosevelt Junior High, he and Alfred were in a band, “Mustard Outhouse”"
anyone got any Mustard Outhouse bootlegs?!?!?!?!?!?
Wonkette : political meta-commentary :: Zero Punctuation : video game reviews
jb: I believe the technical term is explosive diarrhea.
Neon Trotsky: Pursed lips, jacket + sweater over buttoned-up-shirt-with-no-tie (aaargh!) — pedo buttseckser, for sure.
On a trivial and la-la-la, carefree note, Victor Davis Hanson is one those “Clash of Cultures” assholes, a (military) historian who believes that Western society’s democratic ideals (popular participation in decision making; promotion of scientific inquiry; spread of literacy) can , like a fist or a good rubber plunger, fend or defeat totalitarian cultures because of an inherent liberal, intellectual core.
Which doesn’t quite explain how the Bolsheviks got the upper hand over the Menshiviks, the National Socialists over the German Democrats, the Spartans over the Athenians, the Romans over the Greeks, the Goths over the Romans, the Giants over the Jets. Details, definitions and comparisons. Details, definitions and comparisons.
“Victor Davis Hanson [about the Obama administration], ‘I can’t recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century.’”
That’s an ancient history scholar’s perspective for you. Details, definitions and comparisons.
I trust that I have made myself obscure.
2druk2phluq: Ass fucking, also. Gimme a minute.
Raisin farm? Like, they help provide the 72 raisins Muslin suicide bombers get when they go to heaven?
The big question is why would anyone go on this cruise if Joe the Plumber is not going to be there?
2druk2phluq: Very nicely stated. Cheers.
Even a broken cock needs to be sacrificed to Aesclepius.
Bonehead. I’ll say it again: Bonehead.
S.Luggo: Exactly. They treat history like it’s some goddamn morality play and not the actual messy series of events made by flawed people. Ack, and tell Africa, South East Asia, and South America that! Western Civilization was great for them.
2druk2phluq: Jeebus man I will have to get back to you on this one. I cannot even go beyond the concept of a keyboard right now. I THINK I SHOULD STAWRT EH BLAWGS.
Speaking of Hansons, I think someone should book a ticket on that NRO cruise for Chris Hanson, so he can host A Very Special Episode of ‘To Catch A Predator.’
I just had a real revelation after 10 phone conversations and a desperate attempt at keeping a bunch of Lizard People up outside that have been TRACKING ME WITH THEIR SHADOW GOVERNMENTS. The real deal consists of Putin’s Art, a writer from the National Review from within the last 3 years, when they really started to suck, an AOL Political Machine commenter, a lox bagel, and Celine Dion.
Let’s do this.
Was just looking at an ad for this years NR cruise, taking place in the Mediterranean. The Lineup: Karl Rove, Dick Morris, K-Lo… Gag me with a spoon.
Fresno, Gateway to Bakersfield!
Senor Victor… these grapes, they taste like, like, FRESNO!
The E-Communist has cool nicknames for its commentators:
Charlemange (for YouRope)
Lexington (for Amerikkka)
Bagehot (for Britianey)
Buttonwood (for Monies)
Atheist Nun:
Also they could use the band Hanson as the jailbait.
Re VDH: his words look crazy on the printed page. But if you read them aloud, assuming the voice of the late Charlton Heston, they totally make sense.
let’s not discard the clock. Instead let’s strap the clock to a seat, tape the clock’s eyes open and force the clock to watch movies of Hopey Mc Hopeington until the clock tells us the time right and proper.
“Predicting a president’s doom is a high-risk game. Or it would be, if pundits were held as accountable as, say, cabinet nominees.”
I would prefer it if being a pundit was like free climbing a rock face. The temptation to be an outlandishly irresponsible moron might be repressed a little if accountability meant a 200 foot drop onto solid granite.
Most of America seems swept up by Obama fever, but there’s a certain group who have NO idea what is going on. They are terrified; it is awesome. They’re very confused and don’t understand or even notice that their culture war whining no longer gets the same response. The GOP loves the Southern strategy so much that it’s all they’re left with. PALIN 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
insert boilerplate ‘voyage of the damned’ comment here
“Let us stipulate straightaway: Victor Davis Hanson is the worst historian since Parson Weems. To picture anything remotely as bad as his pseudo-historical novels and propaganda tracts, one would have to imagine an account of the fiscal policies of the Bush administration authored by Paris Hilton…”
To read the rest (no blogwhoring here):
http://www.counterpunch.org/werther09072005.html
alt text: Fail Boat
Incivility reigns.
FAIL is WIN only backwards and with fewer and completely different letters.
ThePuckStopsHere: I’m a classicist by training. VD Hanson is a punchline in the field.
It is time for America to heal, to grow and prepare for hard times to come. If we continue to allow McCarthyism, the primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists these partisan minded doom and gloom obstructionist and undermining elected and past officials continue to interfere; we will never heal, grow and move forward.
Secessionist such as Limbaugh, Crystal and Hannity and others like them that want the US to fail with those administrations of opposition are secessionist, worst traitors against the country in creating lies, fear and anger preventing growth and unity for the people.
Laws need to be written and instituted against those that preach known provable lies, propaganda and proven false statements. The airways of information belong to the people and communism is spread by lies and organizations and people. I truly believe in freedom of speech and press but not if they are twisted and spun or out of context or parsed for their own destruction of the truth… Either be responsible for using the airways and information highway or be removed, licenses revoked and persons and organizations be fined, that is the right thing to do…….
Next time they have one of those cruises, Wonkette really needs to send a correspondent to document all the ass-fucking!
InKnockYouUs: the Peloponnesian War? Oh really? So he would be familiar with the Sicilian Expedition. A misguided, disorganized operation, that diverted resources from (much) more important matters. The results were catastrophic for Athens. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. And VDH was and is totally in favor of the Iraq expedition.
jagorev: I know! I’m totally thinking about having their babies.
Actually, come to think of it, they probably hate the Palinite neocon Republicans more than just about anyone else for driving the richie riches away from the Republicans and leaving only the cuckoos. The Economist has a sad.
S.Luggo: “Clash of Civilizations”? If these morally-challenged cockroaches think that
popular participation in decision making; promotion of scientific inquiry; spread of literacy
describes the Bush Administration, then they are distinctly off-planet. Scramble Air Wonkette, please, and blast that shit out of my sky.
2druk2phluq: There is growing evidence that there is a genetic predisposition to a political party. Currently, if I read the last thing I saw correctly, the evidence SUGGESTS that those who lack empathy and have a low tolerance of fear tend to be on the right side of the equation.
I admit I’ve actually read his columns for many years, plus three of his books and they are all very thought-provoking, well-researched, well-written and often honest and self-deprecating. His book on farming, “The Land Was Everything,” reminded me a lot of Orwell’s “Road To Wigan Pier.”
On some topics, like how our Universities are producing a lot of half-educated shrinking violets who spend their college years studying nonsense. I have to say I agree that 4 years and $150K is a lot of money to spend on a Women’s Studies degree.
But he definitely has total Obama-Derangement-Syndrome. Just can’t think straight about him at all. And he refuses to admit Iraq was a mistake.
I heard Obama failed so hard that even his ancestors are sucking lemons.
gLAZYeyes: Agreed. Just 40 years ago, a decent public high school taught Latin, the classics, real science, etc. I’m sure glad I read Gibbon and Will Durant on my own, because I sure as hell never learned anything like that in school.
Capitol Hillbilly: Forget that. We need to scrape up enough whore diamonds to buy Sunburn missiles from some Bond-villain rogue Chinese general. There’s already a trash pile the size of Texas bobbing along somewhere in the Pacific, so it isn’t like anybody would notice them. Certainly, nobody would miss them.
psilage: Does that mean we can make Hanson drink hemlock?
Just 40 years ago, a decent public high school taught Latin, the classics, real science, etc.
40 years ago? I graduated from high school in 1982 with five years of Latin (started in junior high) and real science classes, including long film strips about fruit flies and evolution.
shortsshortsshorts: “I just had a real revelation after 10 phone conversations and a desperate attempt at keeping a bunch of Lizard People up outside that have been TRACKING ME WITH THEIR SHADOW GOVERNMENTS. The real deal consists of Putin’s Art, a writer from the National Review from within the last 3 years, when they really started to suck, an AOL Political Machine commenter, a lox bagel, and Celine Dion.
Let’s do this.”
Shorts, for god’s sake — get a grip….
What is “real science” to this tool? No evolution, only Jesus-magic?
The problem with the types at NRO,
is that they long for an America
when only 10% of the population
had ever set foot on a college
campus, and anyone with a degree
was looked upon with awe by the remaining
90% of the LUMPEN.
All of the “intellectual” discussions
that took place involved on 3% of
the college graduates (i.e. only 3
out of 1,000 of us) and BULLSHIT was
so much easier to peddle.
Goddamn levelling librul bastards.
IceCreamEmpress: My husband went to a horrible public San Antonio high school of 3,000 students or so in the 90s and went on to win some national Latin championship or other. It’s not really about opportunity - it’s about whether everyone is forced to sit down and git larnin’ or let roam free and give people swirlies all day long.