The 13th amendment shit cracks me up.  It’s like they finally have to admit that Obama’s not a Kenyan and that they simply aren’t going to get any real traction with the birther conspiracy: they’ve gotten all they can practically get out of it.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just yank his citizenship away?  It’s not like he deserves it!”

“HEY!  That Nobel thing!  That’s a FOREIGN award!  Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get him de-citizenized over accepting THAT?! eleventy-one?”

“That might actually work!”

Honestly, it’s hilarious.

Yeah, after that, they imagine that scientists create a zero calorie ice cream and sell it at Wal-Mart for $1.

And that they won’t sell it to liberals.

While you can’t expect much from something as downmarket as the daily caller, the childishness of this is beyond the pale. What is the point? Pundits need to leave the comedy (if that is, in fact, the point) to McSweeny’s and The Onion.

And I think Sully is still a very handsome man (who happens to pull of the bald look with style).

“In general, I think that it’s a bad idea to put your picture up when you’re calling someone else ugly”

This is exactly the reason I never call ANYONE ugly. Considering all the pictures of me online (especially from the 80’s - yikes!), I have no stones to throw.

I think it’s brilliant.  I hope it gets passed, and I hope the Republicans immediately use it to strip Obama of his citizenship.

And, since the language talks about “receiving” titles of honour, I will do my level best to make certain the wingnut right get placed on whatever honours list the NZ government can come up with.  If Labour was in power, they’d be all for the idea.

Or, indeed, the Pakistani government.  The Iranian government.  The Libyan government.  Oh, the potential for mischief here.

Arise, Sir Rush.  Arise, Sir Glenn.  Arise Dame Coulter.  Oh, you didn’t *want* them - too bad, you’ve *received* them…

Holy crap.  If these people gain majority they will do NOTHING BUT think up ways to boot Obama out of office.  The junk with Clinton will be nothing compared to this upcoming circus.  Michele Batshit already said it, but I didn’t want to believe her.

Can this get any more shallow than “they hate us because we are er were beautiful etc etc”?

If that is all you have to trade on - high school politics - then I guess desperate and pathetic are what best characterizes you. 

What was the Al Bundy line again ... weren’t he and Peg just the “it” couple in high school?  Oh yes “I played a little high school football” bwahahahah!

Damn right it’ll be nothing by comparison.  They didn’t actually want Clinton out, they just wanted him discredited.  Obama they want crushed into an asterisk.

It is foolish, but that guy’s not so bad, esp. for his age.  In wingnut circles he’s a dreamboat: think Newt (soooo aptly named), and Lush.  Those guys are Gorgons compared to Rock Hudson here.

When I went bald, I said “Fuck it” and started shaving my head.

I used to think “nice” was merely a wishy-washy, meaningless non-descriptor, but now I see it’s actually a negative.

And, since the language talks about “receiving” titles of honour, I will do my level best to make certain the wingnut right get placed on whatever honours list the NZ government can come up with.  If Labour was in power, they’d be all for the idea.

It’d never work. It’s always OK if you are Republican.

That whole high school bit about Sarah being the cute, jock, prom queen?  Honestly.

Most people graduate from high school and go on to do more important things.  These idiots never moved on; they’re still in cliques and obsessed with being one of the cool kids never realizing most people aren’t thinking about them.

The only way they can look at the world is through a high school prism.

They think it’s insulting to call the Journolist guys “newspaper nerds” and imply they’re just frustrated virgins.  It’s not insulting; it’s pathetic.

Because certainly wishing for the days of slavery has nothing to do with racism.

Oh, wait.  Sorry. Why don’t we go back to talking about how the real 13th amendment didn’t repeal slavery at all?

If I understand hardcore Thirteentherism correctly, it’s not just that the real Thirteenth Amendment wasn’t the one said to repeal slavery, but more than that: it stripped all lawyers from citizenship, office and eligibility for office, because they have accepted the title “Esquire.”  And as a consequence, very little of the measures enacted by the government since are valid, because the government, being full of lawyers, is illegitimate.  So The Amendment That Is Really The Fourtheenth Amendment was not in fact validly enacted.

Yes, Thirteentherism is some crazy shit, and I just have to say that it wins out over the Journolist unhotmaleliness affair.

Comment #1: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 07/29 at 05:48 PM

The 13th amendment shit cracks me up.  It’s like they finally have to admit that Obama’s not a Kenyan and that they simply aren’t going to get any real traction with the birther conspiracy: they’ve gotten all they can practically get out of it.

Meh, not really.  That’s an objection that can easily be avoided by judicious use of the phrase “for the sake of argument.”

The Caller article was staggering awesome. Hard to believe it was written by an adult, and published on a high profile, allegedly credible site. It was such a product of middle school angst and bitterness.

And like an adolescent rant, it had absolutely no cohesive point. I kept waiting for him to get to calling out Ezra Klein for being ugly or some such silliness, as promised in the title, but then he went sideways into Andrew Sullivan is stupid (who wasn’t even on journolist) and Sarah Palin is hawt.
WTF?

Well, he did call Ezra ugly.  It was a general swipe against all the men of Journolist.  Which makes it even funnier, because once again, it’s not wise to call someone ugly and invite comparisons.

I swear I saw “prom queen” and read it as “porn queen”.

oooooh….lonnie’s back with….nothing.

Pummeled with so much raw beauty, athleticism and sex appeal – and she’s nice, too, goddamn her – these fearless chroniclers of reality were left sputtering – and seething.

NICE?!? NICE?!? Ms. Mama Grizzly? Nice? Her most faithful faithful could come up with about 2,000 words to describe her before they came up with “nice.” Her entire point is being nasty to the people whom Real Americans are supposed to be nasty to.

Caren: They don’t care about consistency. Whatever gets the n!@@er out of the White House is what they’ll go with.

Is it just me, or does the pose and background in that photo make him look like he’s posing for his senior yearbook picture? “Voted most likely to be a total douche.”

Because certainly wishing for the days of slavery has nothing to do with racism.

Certainly not, Marcotte - it’s all to do with helping the strategically important sugar and cotton industries.  It’s liberals like you who scream “racist” all the time who are the real racists!

I swear Iowa isn’t all bad! We have gay marriage! and Harken is pretty liberal. We used to be really progressive on racial issues too!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa#Civil_rights

Most of the state is really sane; there are just lots of crazies that have been embittered by the death of the small town/farming way of life.

Most of the state is really sane; there are just lots of crazies that have been embittered by the death of the small town/farming way of life.

I would say, “much” as opposed to “most.” I was born in Orange City (ISU alum, ‘93).  For those of you not in the know, this is Dutch Reformed country in the northwest corner of the state. My relatives are Steve King folks, and that part of the state…well, let’s just say the decent Dutch folks stayed in Holland.

I thought Ezra’s presence would be Exhibit A against his contention.

I really, really hope that people remember not to let Republicans take back either the Senate or the House. Its going to be non-stop idiocy from Congress for two years at least if they do.

When will all this wignuttery stop? Ever since the 1960s, we have been dealing with an ever increasing amount of insanity on the right that never seems to end. It just increases and increases without ever bursting. When will it stop and we can get to serious governing.

So liberal men are like feminists and lesbians? I’m so confused: I thought the problem was that they were all promiscuous and some of them even having Le Gay Se Hot, which, as we know, is so hot that even the most heterosexual of bible-thumper must succumb to its lures.

But I still think the orginal 13th thing would have to win. Assuming for the moment that Congress hasn’t given blanket assent by limiting loss of citizenship to those who take positions in foreign military organizations etc, they’d be stripping citizenship from David Petraeus, Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf.  (Among others)

Errr.. didn’t Bush and pretty much every American president before him accept gifts from foreign dignitaries ? Can we deport him now ?

The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
The museum collection holdings contain more than 100,000 artifacts ranging from a White House dog house for Millie, to solid gold palm trees, to the Kuwaiti Door located in our Gulf War exhibit. The museum collections also include over 3,000 of the gifts from the foreign heads of state that George Bush received as president as well as the gifts that he received as vice president.

I’m sorry, but it’s still weird to me that conservatives think Sarah Palin is super hawt.  She’s pleasant-looking, especially for a politician, but so throbbing with “raw beauty, athleticism and sex appeal” that she pummels other women into the ground?  Really?  Because she basically looks like me, only old.  And I’m pretty sure the guys rhapsodizing over her looks are the exact same guys who used to tell me I was ugly and unfeminine because I’m tall, brunette and wear glasses.  I guess if I’d babbled some garbled Republican talking points, then winked, I would’ve turned into a supermodel before their eyes.

Beauty is subjective, I guess.  But growing your hair high because you can’t grow it wide: never a good idea.  Sadly, you just know the guy looks in the mirror and sees Bruce Willis circa the original “Die Hard.”

Absolutely everything is there to be used as a cudgel against Teh Librul, Shaenon.  They’re making their own reality; if they repeat it often enough, it will be true!  Taking the converse of your point, if Sarah Palin suddenly started talking like Nancy Pelosi you’d suddenly start hearing about how old Palin is, how irresponsible a parent she is, and how weak her grasp of policy (just like the left’s been syaing for years!) is.  These motherfuckers are like clockwork—cheap, grimy, predictable clockwork.

Well, it seems the Daily Caller seems to be recognizing some reality, as I see they called Palin pretty, athletic and sexy, but not smart.  Athletic, pretty and sexy might make her a triple threat at the Mrs. Wasilla Pageant, but ideally, not in politics.

So, Obama, still eligible for presidency, but Rudy Giuliani loses citizenship, as well as any chance at running for office again?

hmm… they might be on to something.

MAJeff—I like to tell myself that the Dutch don’t count . But at least you guys got some nice tulips.

Alysia, the only decent things to come out of the Dutch sections of Iowa are tulips, almond pastries, and me.

I’m sorry, but it’s still weird to me that conservatives think Sarah Palin is super hawt.  She’s pleasant-looking, especially for a politician, but so throbbing with “raw beauty, athleticism and sex appeal” that she pummels other women into the ground?  Really?  Because she basically looks like me, only old.  And I’m pretty sure the guys rhapsodizing over her looks are the exact same guys who used to tell me I was ugly and unfeminine because I’m tall, brunette and wear glasses.

Thank you, I find Palin pleasant looking but by no means movie star quality.  Course I don’t care if my politicians, journalists, or anybody who’s job it is not to be explicitly pretty or attractive to be such.  I care if they do their jobs.  Course this all about playing into High School politics still.  All about sending the message that liberals are the outcasts and misfits in the high school metaphor and nobody cares about them.  While the conservatives are captains of the football team and cheerleaders. 

As for the 13th amendment resurrected what would the investment in foreign lands by large corporations who accept concessions from their governments?  Do they get to be considered traitors as well?  How about the honors bestowed by Israel on all those right-wingers who attend the conferences?  Do they get to be marked for execution as well?

Course this all about playing into High School politics still.  All about sending the message that liberals are the outcasts and misfits in the high school metaphor and nobody cares about them.  While the conservatives are captains of the football team and cheerleaders.

This explains the regular “check my ratings, bitch!” outbursts from BillO and crew. Seriously, the last time I tried to watch that guy’s show he spent the first five minutes on his ratings. What kind of sociopath does that? How can you even pretend to be a news show after doing that?

I’m not aware of most of the names on the list, but Chris Hayes and Ezra Klein are both really good looking.  I personally have always had a terrific crush on Eric Alterman. 

Of course I’m not the kind of girl who finds the Cryptkeeper McCain or George Bush hawt.  (and I don’t care how many socks the latter stuffs into his flightsuit).  But let’s face it, Obama is a pretty hot guy. 

But this is a thing with them.  There isn’t a con woman I’ve come across who doesn’t seem to somehow believe that Sarah Palin being hot makes them personally more fuckable.  They’re really shallow, venal people with empty lives and hearts filled with hate and anger.  God love em cause nobody else can.

Eh, Palin is weird.  Sometimes she can look really good, but other times she can look pretty bad.  There’s something about her mouth that lends itself to loads of pictures of her looking like a snarling dog.  I think she has a mean mouth.  There’s probably a reason for that.  In person she’s probably more goodlooking than not.  Let’s face it our ideology colors our perceptions, or at least, for some of us.  I know that for me when those pics of Scott Brown way back in the day came out (today he ain’t nothing), I could see that he was very goodlooking, and yet…I still felt like “YECH!”

Largely the fact that Fox News has great ratings has to do to the nature of right-wing belief systems.  The need to reinforce lies repeatedly and often and the congregation supports this attitude.  In essence they’re self-perpetuating by their congregation.  So once you take that psychology into effect the fact that they have great ratings isn’t hard to believe. 

To give an example, if a network were devoted to pedophilia the pedophiles would flock to it in order to feel justified in their feelings.  The ones who felt a tinge of guilt would have their feelings turned around by the leaders of such a network.  Now replace the concept of Pedophilia with the love affair of no taxes on the rich and other clearly ludicrous ideas.  This is what Fox News represents and needs to for it to work.  The argument of Palin’s attractiveness falls into this category and beyond into the male patriarchal system where she is as much a political entity as a fetish tool for men to desire.  While I quietly think Nancy Pelosi is still fairly attractive for a woman her age and Barack Obama is certainly a handsome man it doesn’t effect my opinion of their abilities.  It just is a side-thought in my mind. 

For conservatives who are now tying themselves more and more to race (and thus racial features) they are becoming slaves to their argument.  Now resorting to calling journalists unattractive as if that somehow effects their ability to do their job.  To some extent on-air pundits need to be attractive but that is more an issue of television than politics. 

I think I started to ramble somewhere along those lines but to make a point to close on.  The conservative media really lacks substance and drives their approach on feelings.  These attacks on appearance really fall back and feed into the “Us vs Them” feelings they thrive on.  Then doubling into the high school model they insist on using because their base (as they see it) were the jocks and not the nerds.  Though the nerds are the ones running fortune 500 companies for the most part while jocks ended up working a mid-management job at some nameless corporation or worse yet, were destined to head the small town leadership by familial linkage.

If that is all you have to trade on - high school politics - then I guess desperate and pathetic are what best characterizes you.

Most people graduate from high school and go on to do more important things.  These idiots never moved on; they’re still in cliques and obsessed with being one of the cool kids never realizing most people aren’t thinking about them.

It’s what happens when when you’ve spent so much of your life trading on your looks & popularity that you never bother to develop an intellect or personality.  Then when you try to invoke your old high school privileges and everyone laughs, you pretend that they’re is just secretly jealous of your retconned adolescent greatness.

Oh, and what RickMassimo said.  Palin’s appeal isn’t being ‘nice;’ in the wingnut imagination she’s the ultimate Mean Girl who will make sure those uncool liberals who mocked them will totally not have dates for the prom.

Imagine someone that petty & vindictive with the power of the Presidency at her disposal.

I wonder if conservatives use the highschool metaphores because they didn’t go to college, or because to them college was just always a continuation of highschool…

“Imagine someone that petty & vindictive with the power of the Presidency at her disposal.”

We already had Richard Nixon for a term and a half.  He was about as petty and vindictive as you could get.

Bush Jr. was pretty bad in that respect too.

If we’re really lucky, the Republicans will run a Newt Gingrich + Sarah Palin ticket in 2012 and everyone’s petty-and-vindictive meters will break from pegging out so hard…

The Journolist-men-are-ugly thing is certainly immature and ridiculous (and I’d be surprised if it’s not there to lay the groundwork for an ‘Oops, we forgot about the ladies! Check out those hairy spinsters!’ post)

But the thirteenther thing wins hands-down. It’s like some teabagger college students went on a coke binge in the law library, trying to come up with some rationale for impeaching Obama STAT. Making fun of dudes on Journolist is juvenile, trying to alter the constitution to retroactively get rid of Obama is some serous tinfoil hat shit.

If we’re really lucky, the Republicans will run a Newt Gingrich + Sarah Palin ticket in 2012 and everyone’s petty-and-vindictive meters will break from pegging out so hard…

From your mouth to God’s ear.  That ticket would at best win 10 maybe 11 states and end up with a 42-45% share of the vote.  Romney would have better luck but not by much.  I’m secretly hoping for a Palin victory in the primaries to finally pit her against Obama and let the electoral landslide of a 2 vs 48 win for Obama push Fox News into a tail spin of insanity.

Wait, on page 1, he makes a Tolkien reference; and then on page 2, he makes fun of Dungeons & Dragons nerds?

Also, Sarah Palin is like one of those girls in high school who is exceptionally nice to the ‘right group’ of people, and incredibly cruel to everyone else. Of course the Daily Caller is going to call her nice - he’s in the right group!

When ever I see Chris Hayes, I half accept him to start speaking in a British accent because he looks likes a grown up Harry Potter to me.

That should be I half expect him…

The funniest thing about the Thirteenthers is that they’d strip the US citizenship of Frank Buckles, the last remaining US WW1 vet, and Jerry Lewis. Damn them for being awarded the French Legion Of Honor.

Funny you should mention Harry Potter. I was watching “Order of the Phoenix” the other day. The character Bellatrix so reminded me of Palin and Bachman—same insane joy in doing evil.

So, retroactively revoke the citizenship of Theodore Roosevelt?  Not to mention Jane Addams, Woodrow Wilson, George Marshall, Elihu Root, Cordell Hull, Henry Kissinger, Frank Kellogg, Ralph Bunche, Elie Wiesel, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Martin Luther King.  (And we haven’t even started on the economists, physicists, chemists, authors, or doctors.) Sounds like a great idea!

Also, Sarah Palin is like one of those girls in high school who is exceptionally nice to the ‘right group’ of people, and incredibly cruel to everyone else. Of course the Daily Caller is going to call her nice - he’s in the right group!

No, see here’s the thing: they don’t sound like they are in the in-crowd.  They sound like the desperate toadies that will do anything to be in the in-crowd.  The toadies that will buy the slushies or organize the pep rally or do anything so that the really cool kids will tolerate them.

So, they come off sounding doubly pathetic.

Maureen Dowd should sue this guy for stealing her schtick, but he actually makes her look insightful, which is no mean feat.

I guess we’ll have to strip Ronald Reagan of his citizenship posthumously.

MAJeff: Interesting point, Bellatrix is depicted as taking a nearly sexual joy in acts of destruction and violence. It would be a sexual joy if the Harry Potter series was aimed at an older audience. Palin and Bachman seem to be the same, though thank God, without the magical powers. Whenever they say something mean or outrageous and hurt somebody or some group, who can see a twisted look of happiness on their face. I have nightmares of the Evangelicals making Palin and Bachman Co-Christian Empresses of this and every other reality.

  I think we struck gold with our collective observation that many if not most conservatives haven’t really progressed out of high school or party college level in their worldviews. It makes a strange and disgusting sort of sense. The leaders and rank and file of the conservative movement are the jocks, cheerleaders, and bullies who made life miserable for those that didn’t fit in during high school or who dominated the social scene of the party colleges. Conservative “intellectuals” like Ross Douthat, who can occassionally be insightful ,and strategists like Rove are nerds who think that they can be part of the cool kid clique by toadying up to the jocks and cheerleaders. Real conservative intellectuals like Richard Posner or at least serious conservatives like Frum and Bartlett are adults who look at the younger generation and dispair.

Thank you, I find Palin pleasant looking but by no means movie star quality.

Just remember, all liberals are hideously ugly and all movie stars are liberals.

Several sharp hammer blows to the cranium will aid in accepting that logic.

Holy crap.  If these people gain majority they will do NOTHING BUT think up ways to boot Obama out of office.
Comment 7—gahblah

Then I don’t foresee them keeping a majority for long; I doubt the average American, even the average Republican American, wants their member of Congress focusing on this grade-school bullshit.

And secular atheism must be extraordinarily depraved, much worse than - what - religious atheism?
Comment 41—bad Jim

Religious athists are Dawkins-thumping godless-botherers: so patently hypocritical and repellant as to not require refutation. Secular atheists simply live normal lives, but wthout religious practice—and every day, every moment we fail to be struck by lightning is another crack in the hyperreligious worldview.

Wait, on page 1, he makes a Tolkien reference; and then on page 2, he makes fun of Dungeons & Dragons nerds?
Comment 50—Ismene

Tolkein is cool now: the movies made lots of money.

Hershele Ostropoler: Do you really want to endure two years of nonsense and damage that would make the Republican take over of Congress in 1994 look like a time of productive liberalism?

  When the Arab-American winning Miss America bru-ha-ha happened a few months ago, Jonathan Chait of the New Republic made a very interesting observation. He noted that American conservatives invest a lot in the physical attractiveness of women in the conservative movement, thats why they get so many of their recruits from the beauty pageant circus and constantly create lists of hot conservative women. Chait noted that for conservative men, women are only allowed in the clique as long as they are considered beautiful or hot and that this matters more than their conservatism. Apparently this love of physical beauty applies to men to, who would have guessed considering all the homophobia in the conservative community. I suppose its just a reflection on their superficiality.

  I think someone on Jezebel noted that there is an implication that the men on Journalist aren’t hot because a lot of them are Jewish but I can’t find the exact article or point. Bleh, I keep telling right-leanign Jews that conservatives aren’t your friend. Neither is much of the Far Left*, the proper place for Jews in the political spectrum is center-Left from squishly liberal to social democrat. Its safer for us.

  *There is a video floating around in the Zionist community regarding the BDS movement consisting of a bunch of choice quotes by members of the movement that basically provides evidence about what we expected of them, the goal of BDS is to destroy Israel and not to help the Palestinians. The use of the most extreme anti-Semitic tropes in their battle isn’t exactly encouraging either. If you want to see it you can find it on Yaakov Lozowick’s blog, Jeffrey Goldberg’s blog at the Atlantic, and elsewhere. I’d recomment Yaakov Lozowick because you can actually comment on the site.

I thought I posted this remark last time: I’ve seen the “Original Thirteenth Amendment floating around the Web for years. Echt conspiracy theorists don’t merely want it to have been ratified; they believe it has been secretly ratified, and, as sacundim noted, bars lawyers from office—making every president since Monroe ineligible except William Henry Harrison (for all the good it does him), Taylor, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Harding, Hoover, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, Reagan, and Bush pere and fils.

Lee, if your account of Chait is correct, he’s giving too much credit to the conservatives’ aesthetic.  These people seem to regard Laura Ingraham and even Michelle Bachmann as “hot”; that’s gotta be an ex post facto evaluation based on their politics.

As for BDS, I know Judith Butler doesn’t agree, but I think it should be allowed between consenting adults when the usual precautions are taken.

Hershele Ostropoler: Do you really want to endure two years of nonsense and damage that would make the Republican take over of Congress in 1994 look like a time of productive liberalism?
Comment 63—Lee

I don’t think they’d get anything done. Liberal programs wouldn’t move forward, but the only conservative program even attempted until May 2012 would be ousting Obama, and they wouldn’t accomplish that either.

the Klan is back.

Here is a link to the Jonathan Chait post, painfully hand-typed out to reflect my lack of computer skills:

  www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/75247/the-conservative-beauty-paradox-explained.

Its the last post in a three-part musing on the issue but it sums up everything nicely.

I don’t think that Chait is exactly agreeing that conservative women are hot, just noting that perceived hotness, prettiness, or beauty are prerequisites for women among conservatives. Personally, the conservative aesthetic in women’s beauty seems to go for a sort of superficial sexiness. It might reflect the jockish personality of many conservative men. Personally, Bachman looks like a nitwit. There is this one photograph of her, which shows an almost surreal lack of intelligence.

Hershele Ostropoler: Your basic belief is that if the Republicans win the 2010 mid-terms and spend the next two years trying to impeach Obama than it would result in a massive land-slide against them in 2012?

King Water Ice: I’m not even going to dignify this with a response. If you can’t tell the difference between a real beauty like Audrey Hepburn and a superficial sort of prettiness, you need to really think more.

I am going to use your comment, to post a link to what I was depressed about in post 63 for those interested. Warning, Dr. Lozowick’s blog, he’s a PhD, attracts pro-Israel people from all over the political spectrum. I’m probably the further left commentator on his sight. His posts are worth reading though.

http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2010/07/goal-of-bds-is-no-israel.html

@72
Right!  We all know that it is commonly believed that women, or “chicks” as they are colloquially known by your older and/or more obnoxious <strike>sexists</strike> Republican men, get more attractive as they age (this-and the lack of a period or accidental pregnancy- is why it is a stereotype for men to refuse to date pre-menopausal women) and so, Republican women (who for the most part are older) are more attractive than Democratic women (who, demographically, are younger).

Original 13th Amendment, fine. But why do Republicans want to posthumusly strip their hero Milton Friedman—author of Capitalism and Freedom—of his US citizenship?

And that Mark Judge article was a sad exercise in projection. The Tea Party is a dorkfest and Sarah Palin is their Queen. The A-V Club feels privileged that The Divine Sarah will speak to them as if they were people.

The main thing he gets wrong is that Sarah is not nice: her role in the Heath family vendetta against her sister’s ex-husband is proof of that. But he thinks she’s hot, thus she has all the virtues.

Look, there is no question that women on the right are vastly better looking then women on the left.

Not everyone finds the look of sexual repression to be “hot.”

The right has two sex symbols, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. And Ann defines hotness only in Kipling’s sense of “a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair.”

Republicans/conservatives/teabaggers/wingnuts are so ugly on the inside, how does it matter what they look like on the outside?

The old saying is “beauty is only skin deep”.  The Republican corollary is “...but ugly goes right down to the bone”...

The obsession with saying “our” women are hotter on the right—-considering that the right is objectively older on average on the left, this is a statistical impossibility, as long as you accept that youth tends to be more beautiful (sad, but I think widely accepted)—-is threefold.  One, they’re insecure and sexually prudish, and this is their way of competing on a level they understand, i.e. simple.  Two, they get to pretend they own women.  Three, their prudery puts them in a position where they conflate performed femininity with actual beauty.  So someone like Ann Coulter is considered more beautiful than Rachel Maddow, even though Maddow is, by any reasonable standard of health, symmetry, and genetic lottery by far the more beautiful woman. 

I’ve often been told by conservative men that I could be cute if I shut up.  This, if you consider beauty a fixed trait, is illogical.

I personally think that conflating beauty and adherence to tired gender performance of submission and heavy investment in fashion 15 years out of date is unimaginative.  But that’s what describes conservatives, so I believe them when they think someone in boxy, out-of-fashion clothes who gallivants around like a 1950s cheerleader is hotter than someone stylish, modern, and self-assured. 

I will add that the other reason conservatives dwell on this is that fundamentally, beauty is subjective.  They don’t win on facts, so they prefer to keep the discussion to the subjective.

Well, impossibletospell@47 was exactly right. All this was just a way for them to segue into their usual “Democratic women are ugly!” talking point. So predictable.

Hershele Ostropoler: Your basic belief is that if the Republicans win the 2010 mid-terms and spend the next two years trying to impeach Obama than it would result in a massive land-slide against them in 2012?
Comment 71—Lee

Perhaps not massive. But yes, if the person I sent to Washington to run the country spends a year and a half trying to get rid of the president on increasingly flimsy pretexts, I’m not likely to be happy with him or her.

Obama’s approval rating is 44%. If he’s seen as persecuted, he’d win over a lot of the don’t knows (8%) and I’d conservatively estimate, say, a tenth of the disapprovers (and I’ll bet it’s more than that). Republicans could push his approval rating to 55% or higher even if he does nothing else (or the Obama Paradox makes it seem like he does nothing else). And sitting around plotting against the President is not the job of a mamber of Congress even, I’d say, to a fair number of those who disapprove of the job he’s doing. Just as the majority of Democrats, I assume, went on with their lives after the 2000 and 2004 elections, I don’t think a majority of McCain voters think Obama isn’t entitled to be president. They think he’s a natural-born citizen who won the election as fair and square as anyone ever has and believes in policies and policy goals they don’t agree with.

Pandagon commenters, I suspect, are in a bubble, we have a tropism towards politically active liberals and so tend to forget about the politically indifferent majority, who have opinions, but not strong ones, and find it easy to not villify the other side.

Well, except King Water Ice, who’s just an idiot.

Uh-huh, yup, ‘tis just a misogynist troll is all. Moving on.

Don’t forget white supremacist.

So liberal men are like feminists and lesbians?

God knows, I’ve found advice about lesbian sex from Susie Bright to be extremely helpful in the bedroom - does that count?

But amongst politically active young white women (the type you see in the “Young Republicans”), the Republican girls are miles more attractive than their Democratic sisters.

Sour grapes because anyone other than a wingnut won’t sleep with you when you make the mistake of talking, huh?

I’ve never been able to understand that.  You are the definition of a “5”. 

Boy, Anonymous Internet Troll sure put Amanda in her place. What does publishing two books matter, compared to a random clown’s assessment of her physical appearance?

Re Susie Bright: she gave me something I’ll always treasure: an autographed advance copy of her Sexual State of the Union.

Daniel-138, oh good. I thought I was the only heterosexual man who finds Rachel Maddow attractive.

“They are also black or hispanic, which means white guys aren’t going to be pursuing them anyway.”

Apparently there are a lot of us white guys who didn’t get the message, judging by the numbers of mixed couples I see every day.  But I suppose in King Head Lice’s world they don’t count…

This cracker needs to go.

Woah, the 70’s called, they want their faux feminist outrage back.

Dude, my Republican GRANDFATHER finds that shit offensive and it was pretty much born the same time he was.

Oh and BTW, Hispanics are pretty much just white, but since it’s one of those brown mexican sounding words let’s just lump them in with the ethnic hordes.

I walk away for a day and the trolls come out of the woodwork.  Who are the ethnic hordes?  Technically we all have some ethnicity, just like we all have some form of race to define us.  Are you claiming Hispanics are some unwashed heathens that know not the glory of being Caucasian?  While yes, biologically most latinos in places like Mexico are more Caucasian than proto-Asian/Native American it is hard to argue that when they reach a certain level of complexion whites in non-Mediterranean groups and in general separate them off into a new category. 

Culturally they have different values than European immigrants and have distinct cultural cues.  They’ve been bullied for the past two centuries by “whiter” people and used against Black Americans in businesses to create a racial rivalry for the lowest rung. 

So, I think your statement is both unquestionably racist but half-assed.  I do like talking about the Caucasian factor in Hispanic people but to simply lump them in and therefore making them better is a bit hard to believe.

Oh, shush, King Water Ice - white men are getting with Latinas like it’s going out of style. Also, since when does white male interest become the primary barometer of female attractiveness, anyway?

It is foolish, but that guy’s not so bad, esp. for his age.  In wingnut circles he’s a dreamboat: think Newt (soooo aptly named), and Lush.  Those guys are Gorgons compared to Rock Hudson here.
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