Perhaps we should coin a word to describe the peculiar mix of amusement and pity that wingnuts often inspire in liberals.

Their behavior kind of reminds me of watching a little yappy dog chasing after a cat, desperately trying to hump it. In that spirit, I suggest YDATHAC (Ee-dathack) as a new word, which is an anagram for Yappy Dog Attempting To Hump A Cat.

Does putting a leftist convention in Las Vegas strike anyone else as slightly odd? Now, I’m not one who demands that critics of society completely leave it to avoid accusations of hypocrisy or something similarly inane, but Vegas sort of rubs me the wrong way, what with being built on gambling and insane water import.
Though obviously it’s also an interesting case study in where we go from here in creating a sustainable social and environmental future.

(note: I’ve never been to Vegas myself)

and Las Vegas is, get this, too hot.

Well, shit, it’s not like any of the casinos, restaurants or convention halls have air conditioning!

Yeah, and it’s not like they’re so huge, and so full of restaurant options, that you even have to leave.

——-

I worked at the Rio for almost 3 years, at the Sky Parade.

Drinks again, Amanda?

Well, shit, it’s not like any of the casinos, restaurants or convention halls have air conditioning!

Don’t be so condescending, mythago.  Perhaps those stalwart Right Americans just realised that, since they’d be avoiding gambling, vice and sinful entertainment, there simply wouldn’t be anything to do in Vegas.

They can sun their bellies by the pool. The Rio’s pool deck is lovely.

“Perhaps those stalwart Right Americans just realised that, since they’d be avoiding gambling, vice and sinful entertainment, there simply wouldn’t be anything to do in Vegas.”

Actually, it seems obvious to me they’d all either be locked in their rooms the whole time watching porn,  catching one of the buses to the Mustang Ranch, or pissing away their children’s (untaxed) inheritance sitting in front of a video poker machine, lighting one cigarette after another from the butt of the previous one. 

In other words, none of them would bother to go to the actual convention just to hear Sarah Palin blather some nonsense like “There’s no separation of church and state in the Constitution!”  Then, after dismal attendance figures were released, the organizers would claim the problem is that Vegas just isn’t a good town for conventions, much like they claimed DC has lousy public transportation.

OTOH, if they laid all the teabaggers end-to-end…
...it would probably be the best possible thing for all of us.

(In the “one of these things is not like the other” file, I’ve always been amused that Sin City is filled with so many staunch conservative Mormons.  Very odd place…)

I suggest “blahrgenfreude”.

“Perhaps we should coin a word to describe the peculiar mix of amusement and pity that wingnuts often inspire in liberals.”

Isn’t that word “disgust”?  How about “nausea”?...

If you’re going to Vegas between May & September, you’re better than I am. I’ve done my time in the desert in July & August, thankyouverymuch.

Given the pictures I’ve seen of the people attenting the Tea Parties, I would think they’d be able to work up a sweat playing blackjack.

I thought you were a humorless feminist.

[I’m sorry to say I won’t make it, I don’t have the money.  Good luck and great fun!]

After reading the comments Las Vegas was chose because of cost.  Sin City has been hit very hard with the recession, so rates are cheap for the convention.

I’m not going but as usual will be helping in small ways.  I think NN is a great thing and I strongly encourage anyone to go, it’s a very good time, a unique experience.

I suggest YDATHAC (Ee-dathack) as a new word, which is an anagram for Yappy Dog Attempting To Hump A Cat.

I like this the most so far

I like blarghenfreude!

Can’t go, the usual story, no money for non-family vacations.  I’m tenatively budgeting some trips next year so I’ll keep NN11 in mind.

So the inevitable fall of a pathetic media-driven movement is starting to sputter?  I haven’t been keeping a tally but in the mainstream media the tea party has just become the term to describe the republicans even as the actual events they mention dwindle further and further.  If/when November fails to deliver a republican house (and it seems possible if not likely at this point) then the tea party as a moniker will completely die.  Even as the polls trend democratic the MM shouts louder how the republicans can take both houses, it seems so obtuse.  This is just another example of the corporate interests trying to tell us the “TRUTH.” 

Some days I wonder how the hell we wrestled control from the corporations for any period of time.

Anders, only if you think of politics as a purely aesthetic exercise.    Netroots organizers love Vegas because it’s a) affordable and b) union-friendly. The hotel is a union hotel.

“Some days I wonder how the hell we wrestled control from the corporations for any period of time.”

Two Roosevelts and a Johnson. 

Teddy was able to use the fiscal insanity in the wake of the Gilded Age to break up many of the monopolies.  This set a tone, for a while, that lead to, among other things, the breakup of Standard Oil, which makes BP look like a lady’s quilting club in comparison.  If Standard Oil had remained intact, I shudder to think of the corporate nightmare we’d be currently living in.

Franklin was able to rein in the bankers and the Wall Streeters because they screwed up so bad there wasn’t much they could do to palm it off, and they didn’t quite have enough souless politicians in their pockets to stop their day of reckoning.  Plus by the time FDR took office, Hoover had already tried several years of their magic “the market will correct itself if we let it!” voodoo to address the financial collapse to no effect.

Johnson only got things like Medicare passed because the medical-industrial-complex was still nascent, and the Vietnam War and the Cold War were major distractions (I believe this was also true for Civil Rights legislation).  Plus he knew the inner workings of Washington so well he could pull the right levers and push the right buttons to accomplish something good, despite being a fairly despicable human being himself.

These opportunities come along every once in a while, but the MBAs and the CEO’s have been learning how to prevent them from becoming weapons used against their selfish interests.  In fact, they’ve learned so much about how to work the politics of greed and resentment they are becoming stronger in the wake of the financial collapse, not weaker, as they deserve to be…

This set a tone, for a while, that lead to, among other things, the breakup of Standard Oil, which makes BP look like a lady’s quilting club in comparison.

Here’s some interesting info… BP is largely made up of one of the major legacy companies of Standard Oil.

Standard Oil got broken into 37 separate companies… one of which was Standard Oil Company of Indiana. 

Standard Oil Co. of Indiana then bought American Oil Company of Baltimore, and changed their name to Amoco Corporation.

In 1998, BP bought Amoco, and here we are today.

You’ll find similar trends in telecommunications, where the original 1984 breakup of AT&T;has practically come full circle, and almost all of the Baby Bells have been reconsolidated into two huge telecoms - Verizon and AT&T;.

Two Roosevelts and a Johnson. 

Does everything on this blog have to be allusions to genitals?

You’re all a bunch of sex-obsessed perverts, and I’m the only normal one here.

”Two Roosevelts and a Johnson”

Abe Lincoln says hi

Perhaps we should coin a word to describe the peculiar mix of amusement and pity that wingnuts often inspire in liberals.

You left out a couple, no, SEVERAL, other emotions they induce.  (Induce, as in ‘induce vomiting’.)

As to their convention getting cancelled: to me, this just points out the incredible laziness of the teabaggateria.  They can sit around, stuffing donuts in their piehole in front of the tv box welded to Faux ‘News’, or mayyyyybe stir themselves to create a typo-laden sign and go stand with their fellow-travelers in some park (hey, that’s a party, baby!), but actually attending a convention that’s more than twenty minutes away?  No thanks.

I’m a bit disappointed.  The tea parties are fascinating, and right now I’m reviewing “Tea Party Patriot: A Tale of American Tyranny.”

MikeEss, What about Nixon? EPA and other interventions.

Murrow, I was in Ohio when all the Sohio stations (and their analogs in nearby states, which used the brand name “Boron”), changed to BP; so at least one branch of Standard Oil was bought by Teh British prior to Amoco (the merger with Amoco was what moved BP out of Cleveland, which did that city a lot of harm).

Well, KaNewtRocky, you’ve definitely left me unspired.  You’ve got a talent for that sort of thing…

No, Knute the Clute, that’s reserved for conservatives who believed they’re the center of the universe and are right about everything, including illiterate gloating on liberal blogs.

Remember, the typical teabagger is 55+.  I don’t blame them for avoiding heat.

And the Tea Party IS overblown. It’s like Pets.com in 1999, there’s nothing there and the media will realize that soon enough.

“It’s like Pets.com in 1999, there’s nothing there and the media will realize that soon enough.”

...only if something of equal value to the media comes along.  Of course, if/when the teabagger thing does finally implode, it will leave behind far more than a sock puppet with buttons for eyes…

Eric_RoM @23, actually it probably has less to do with lazy teapers than with the convention costing over five hundred bucks just to get in, plus travel costs, plus hotel, plus food, etcetera. (Vegas has very good package deals for conventions; this does not mean it is actually economical to attend.) Driving to go hang out in a park and wave signs is a lot cheaper, especially if you are trying to budget for the eventually of Big Government interfering with your Social Security check.

You left out a couple, no, SEVERAL, other emotions they induce.  (Induce, as in ‘induce vomiting’.)

Ipecaptivated?

Well, the dotcom bubble at least left us with so much IT infrastructure that broadband became cheap and accessable for the masses (or at least the middle class) in the early 2000s. The teabaggers aren’t likely to leave something THAT valuable from their bust.

You left out a couple, no, SEVERAL, other emotions they induce.  (Induce, as in ‘induce vomiting’.)

Ipecaptivated?

Blatherotaxic nausea.

OK, we currently have the Standard OIl of Indiana/Amoco/BP which is still located in Whiting, gearing up to process tar sands oil.  Now we can have our own little oil disaster on the Great Lakes, Gulf of Indiana - only difference is - a heckuva lot more people depend on this water for drinking.  But BP’s exploitation has a long history here.  For your entertainment pleasure- ignore the effects, pleas - low budget recording:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOO1rjXnHQA

I nominate FRW, as it seems to encompass it all in three little words, as the old song goes:

“Faintly Repulsive Wildlife”.

For the Chiroptera of the wingnut phylum:

“When their mouths are open and their insect-gnashing teeth exposed, they look like the sort of particularly unpleasant lap dog that a Barbie doll would have in her spiteful and neglected old age.”

Link

or FRAW, with the word anthropoid as the third letter.

Unfortunately, this is the same weekend as San Diego Comic Con.

And I already have my tickets for that geekfest.

Is Knutie posting drunk tonight?  He’s even more incoherent than usual.

So the inevitable fall of a pathetic media-driven movement is starting to sputter?  I haven’t been keeping a tally but in the mainstream media the tea party has just become the term to describe the republicans even as the actual events they mention dwindle further and further.  If/when November fails to deliver a republican house (and it seems possible if not likely at this point) then the tea party as a moniker will completely die.  Even as the polls trend democratic the MM shouts louder how the republicans can take both houses, it seems so obtuse.  This is just another example of the corporate interests trying to tell us the “TRUTH.”

The problem is, even if they don’t take either house (they won’t take the Senate and probably won’t take the House, either), they still are safely positioned to finish Election Night with more gains than losses.  And regardless of how miniscule those gains may be, if they so much as turn one blue Senate seat red and one blue House seat red, the MSM will position it as a stunning rebuke of the Obama Administration.

Earlier this year, there was a lot of buzz about the possibility of the Republicans overtaking both houses of Congress.  As it has become more and more apparent how incredibly unlikely that is to occur (they would have to win 27 out of 36 Senate races to get to 51 seats - all 17 seats they are defending plus 10 of the 19 seats that Democrats are defending), they’ve been backing off their earlier initial predictions of taking both houses.  Harry Reid is a huge target for them, and as little as I like Harry Reid, it’s funny to me how the teabaggers have taken a race that should have been in the bag for them and nominated a candidate so disconnected from reality that Reid may actually get to keep his job in November.  They may put a big dent in the Democrats’ House majority, but getting a swing of 40 seats to their side isn’t going to be as easy as they think it will be.

In any case, I’m probably still gonna want to reach through the TV screen and wring Chris Matthews’ neck on election Night when he blathers about what a rough night it was for the Democrats and Obama, even if they only lose 2-3 Senate seats and 10-15 House seats.

I get the impression that the typical Tea Partier has far more time than money, particularly when there seems to be no shortage of hypocrites around to interview at a weekday event, braying about how everyone should work for what they have when they have the day free because they don’t work and receive social security, disability or state-paid health care for their 12 home-schooled children.

particularly when there seems to be no shortage of hypocrites around to interview at a weekday event

But at the same time, they explain low turnout by saying “We demonstrated on a weekday, so all the people who support us but had to work weren’t there.”

“The teabaggers aren’t likely to leave something THAT valuable from their bust.”

When they go, the most damaging thing will be moving the political sanity needle even further over toward Insane in the Membrane, a political system in even further decay, the rise of Sarah Palin, Grand Duchess of Wasilla, Princess Bachmann of Minnesota, and a Mainstream Media even more useless than ever before.  All-in-all the teabaggers will consider this to be a triumphant success…

<strike>Perhaps we should coin a word to describe the peculiar mix of amusement and pity that wingnuts often unspire in liberals….....how ‘bout narcissism? </strike>wharglbargl

Comment #25: Knuterockne

FTFY

I love how Nuterrockne, true son of teabaggery ‘he’ is, includes typos in his posts.  Is this bagger solidarity or something? “Ril ‘Murican’s dun’t spel.”

Or, did the spambot lexical database get corrupted?

Such a lot to comment on.  Just got back from Vegas last night.  We stayed at the Paris, which is unlike Paris during the day, but staggering back to the room from Bally’s having played poker from about 9:00 until 4AM every night, it reminded me very much of the empty, late night streets of Paris as I remember them while staggering back to a hotel room at 4AM.

Yes, Vegas was built on gambling, but if you object to gambling then you shouldn’t go to Vegas, and I don’t object to gambling.  A lot of people object to porn.  I don’t have a massive revulsion to porn, but be forewarned that porn is unavoidable in Vegas.  The teabag crowd would not, as someone suggested, have spent their time watching porn in their hotel rooms.  They would have probably gone out for it, since it is live and, I would guess, more satisfying that way.  Every street corner on The Strip has guys in T-shirts that say “Girls Direct to Your Room in 20 Minds” handing out hooker playing cards.  Seriously, they’re like baseball cards, only for hookers.  Sex is a big commodity in Vegas and it isn’t treated like a secret.  As I said, I don’t have any significant objections to porn, but these guys being everywhere annoyed the shit out of me.

Anyway, Vegas is a big party for tourists.  According to the cabbies, the best shows in town are O, Ka, Jersey Boys, the Elvis Cirque d’Soleil (yes, Cirque has three of the top five), and La Reve.  That’s what they said they’re fares are all saying.  Do NOT go to Chris Angel’s Believe, which I was told is really crappy and the worst show the town has had in years.  We saw Ka and I thought it was good, but not as good as the Cirques that are more acrobatic and less story-oriented.  The biggest star of Ka was the stage and the technology behind the stage.

For poker players, Stay out of Treasure Island.  It didn’t read “right” to me when I played there.  Flamingo is okay.  Bally’s is okay.  (I’m assuming you folks are 1-2 players and not 5-10).  If you go downtown, be forewarned that the Golden Nugget’s card room is okay (I like it, actually), but they are using the most worn out decks I have ever seen and I imagine the sharper locals can read the decks.  When I say “worn”, I mean the backs are so worn out that they are essentially marked decks.  Also, a lot of then have bends which can be used to read them as well.  I complained to management there and everyone should until they have been shamed into buying new cards.

You can get five dollar minimum blackjack at Bill’s on the strip.

That’s it.  I would tell you more, but I didn’t get back here in MN until 11 last night and after staying up until 4 AM for five days, and then the time change, I’m mentally shot today.

Two Roosevelts and a Johnson.

I was being facetious.  I completely know how and I wonder if the corporations of today have corrected those loopholes by co-opting even the moderately independent candidates with threats of vast media blackouts to get them to play ball. 

The problem is, even if they don’t take either house (they won’t take the Senate and probably won’t take the House, either), they still are safely positioned to finish Election Night with more gains than losses.  And regardless of how miniscule those gains may be, if they so much as turn one blue Senate seat red and one blue House seat red, the MSM will position it as a stunning rebuke of the Obama Administration.

I’m starting to think it may be possible for the senate to gain a seat (since several senators are retiring on the republican side).  If that happens all hell will assuredly break loose.  I’m sure though they’ll spin it that way if they lose a few seats, hell they’re spinning Obama as a weak president already because his administration has faced gridlock while for six years Bush got to rubber stamp the right-wing platform.  The media has a short memory span and exceptionally deep pockets that lobbyists like to fill.

When my father and his siblings were small, they invented a language, of which a few words have come down to me, one of which is “evano”, which means approximately this.

A person for whom one feels evano might very well be told, “loonpon” (“go sleep on the floor”).

Being a typical New Mexican, I am going to the Colorado for my summer vacation, you know like very high altitudes. Also a short trip to the Sandia and Jemez mountains for the weekend. Southwesterners visit desert canyonland areas in March, April and October. I am encouraging conservatives to try an August mule ride into the Grand Canyon.

I had a deviated prevert, but it was corrected with a simple outpatient procedure.

Heh, I wish I could make it, but I’ll be at the Rio the next week for the Defcon computer security convention.  Considering the BlackHat security conference is running from July 27-July 29th, and hackers from all over the world will be converging on Vegas to go to those two conferences, I’d probably recommend that the Netroots nation attendees be a bit cautious in their internet usage.