Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The King is Dea... Wait, Not So Fast! (1.09.10)

I'm starting to get a little worried that President Bush isn't going to go ahead with the theofascist takeover. What's he waiting for?

There's no way I have time to write an all-new post this morning. However, in the spirit of the occasion, I'm revisiting something I wrote a few years ago, because if our cOOnvision is truly omniscient, it should help us to understand our political future. The bottom line, people, is that there is nothing to be afraid of. These men are nihilists. Fucking amateurs. They're out of their element. And they're about to enter a world of pain. As Walter Sobchak himself said, Nothing is fucked here, Dude. Come on, you're being very un-Dude.

When I say that the Obamanauts are about to enter a world of pain, I mean that they will eventually know the dark side of the wave of fantasy upon which they are riding. Only in this case, it seems unusually dark, for it is the same darkness that currently attaches to President Bush. As much as he is hated, Obama is loved, and for reasons that are equally insane because they are a precise and predictable function of each other.

They say that Obama represents the "longings" of a new generation, but I don't believe that at all. Rather, this is baby-boomer 101, the last gasp of a generation that is fueled by a pathological idealism that is just the other side of its dark cynicism.

Although we focus on the moonstream media and their political action wing, the Democrat party, there is probably not enough blame placed on that grazing multitude known as the American public. For if the public were only more sophisticated, they wouldn’t fall for the arguments presented by the left, which rely upon a high degree of emotionality matched by a low degree of logic. Political analysts implicitly assume that people’s attitudes and opinions are the result of rational reflection, but in fact, it has been estimated that fewer than ten percent of the American public are reliably in Piaget’s highest cognitive developmental stage of formal operations thinking. And even then, one cannot escape the cosmic law of bullshit in --> bullshit out.

According to psychohistorian Lloyd deMause, “Most of what is in history books is stark raving mad -- the maddest of all being the historian’s belief that it is sane.” He believes that large groups are almost always driven more by fantasy than reality. Different nations and groups have different “group fantasies” which are designed not to negotiate with reality but to contain fears and anxieties. For example, the further back in history one travels, the more one can identify group fantasies that clearly have no basis in fact and are driven by irrational anxiety and fear -- witch hunts, senseless wars, racial scapegoating. But so long as one can detach from the madness and survey the contemporary psycho-political scene with even-hovering attention, one can see it just as clearly in the present.

For example, the entire “war on terror” is being waged against Islamist fantasists who are completely out of touch with reality. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make it easier to combat them, but more difficult. Israel has been fighting a version of this fantasy since its very inception, but in truth, Jews have been at war with paranoid anti-Semitic fantasists for over two thousand years. Fantasies are obviously quite lethal. The most persistent fantasy is that the God of Israel is not real, which is why the Jews are and will always be targets of the evil ones, whether it is the fantasists of Islam or of the left.

The important point is that the fantasy precedes the reality, and will look for conditions in external reality to support it, identical to the manner in which the paranoid mind operates. According to deMause, the state of the group fantasy is what national opinion polls actually capture. That is, they take a snapshot of the “mood of the country,” which mostly consists of “gut feelings” that have varying degrees of connection to actual conditions, and more to do with the shifting nature of the group fantasy.

Remember, the bulk of the population is not thinking logically, so it doesn’t matter how many cognitively mature individuals there are at the margins of a poll. That the economic downturn was largely caused by Democrat regulation (e.g., the Community Reinvestment Act) is inconsequential. In contrast, FDR was able to sustain a unifying group fantasy despite economic polices that aggravated and extended the Great Depression for years.

Likewise, job one for Obama will be to forge and sustain a unifying fantasy, not to deal with reality. This is one of the reasons the Democrats will be unable to let go of President Bush, because they desperately need him as a "poison container" in order to keep the toxins out of Obama (more on which below). This is a somewhat unique situation, because it means that the Democrats in effect will want us to have two fantasy leaders, which reminds me of how the infant splits the world into a good and bad breast.

A national opinion poll doesn’t necessarily provide objective information about actual circumstances, but certainly tells us how it “feels” to be part of a historical group at a particular time. Not only that, but deMause turns the presidential “approval rating” on its head. He doesn’t believe that it actually measures approval so much as disapproval about how effectively or ineffectively a leader is “containing” the public’s anxiety. Negative passions are much more influential, which is why truly happy people have little impact on politics, since it would never occur to them that a politician is responsible for their happiness. But unhappy people find all sorts of illusory reasons to explain their unhappiness, including politics.

Just as the group is mainly driven by fantasy, it is primarily looking for a leader who can reassure it about the world and diminish its anxiety. In this regard, it is a mistake to think of the leader as an oedipal parent; the process is much more primitive, involving the need for preverbal and pre-oedipal (before the age of three) projection and containment, which is in turn much more "psychotic" and fantasy laden, since it escapes the reach of language. Using this method, one would not say that President Bush has a 25% approval rating, but a 75% “toxicity” rating. Meanwhile, Obama has what, a 12% toxicity rating? As soon as he actually does something, he will begin to accumulate toxins, and this number will rise.

This is one of the reasons it is so wearying to be president, because it involves the day-to-day processing of so much irrational projection of hatred and anxiety (and in the case of the US President, these projections uniquely come from the entire world).

All therapists know how difficult it is to deal with just one borderline patient in their practice, but it is as if a president must deal with the projections of millions of difficult patients who are irrationally experiencing him as either their savior or as evil incarnate. The president must be a receptacle for continuous projections from various levels of emotional immaturity and unreality. And in the case of President Bush, who never fought back and engaged with the projections, it only made that part of the population more enraged with him, just as a borderline patient would feel outraged if the therapist did not take their perceptions seriously, no matter how crazy (or a child will become more enraged at the parent if you don't take the pain behind their "I hate you!" seriously).

Another critical point -- and one of the most important things I learned in my training -- is that idealization is a powerful defense mechanism that serves to protect its recipient from rage, contempt, or devaluation. So if a patient is immediately angry with me, I can deal with that. It's a relief, because they are at least in touch with their feelings. But if they come in and immediately idealize me, then I know that I am in for a bumpy ride, for when the idealism wears off, I will be blamed. It's like, "how dare you not be perfect!" (This is why trolls don't bother me as much as someone who wants to see me as Guru B'ob. You can imagine.)

It is fascinating to note that as the left became so out of touch with their fantasies about President Bush, they came to imagine that he actually did fight back in the most dangerous and extreme ways -- that he didn't tolerate dissent, that he questioned people’s patriotism, that he destroyed our civil rights, that he punished ideological enemies, that he defecated on the Constitution (you can read that projection with braille!). Pure projection. The reality that is “seen” by the left is driven by their own fantasies. (Now they even want to put him in jail; this is exactly what Future Leader says when he's really pissed off at us: "You're in jail! Time out forever!)

deMause notes that people who are stripped of important group fantasies will feel like they are going crazy -- just as primitive groups who are suddenly “decultured” of the myths that have served to organize their cognitive/emotional world. (You will note that no one on the right is "going crazy" over Obama, whereas the left lurched toward insanity right away, to such an extent that they even attempted to steal the 2000 election through the courts.)

It is fair to say that the left has been dealing with this sort of primitive anxiety since the 1980’s, as their various political fantasies have been discredited one by one. But just like a religious group that predicts the second coming, the majority of leftists simply dig in their heels when their predictions prove false. This shows the extent to which outward political ideology often rests on a deeper structure of irrational fantasy that is nearly impossible to eradicate. I think it also explains all of the manic and irrational giddiness we are seeing in the media, as their fantasies are restored.

And now we come to the future. deMause outlines a four-part process that the fantasy leader undergoes in relation to the group. At first the group will see him as unrealistically strong, magically able to unify the group and keep enemies at bay. Certainly we saw this in the months after 9-11, when President Bush was so popular. Again, his popularity had little to do with the actual merits of his policies, but with the public’s need to feel safe, and the feeling that Bush would protect them. Obviously, this is where Obama is, except that the omnipotent fantasies of strength surrounding him are unusually grandiose and primitive.

Stage two is the “cracking” stage, when the feelings of magical nurturing begin to deteriorate, so that the public’s mood begins to feel unstable and dangerous. The leader begins to be experienced as weak, unable to control events. Here again, when this happens, look for the left to frantically attempt to re-project all of this into President Bush, in order to perpetuate the fantasy.

Stage three, “collapse,” occurs when the public begins to feel that the fantasy leader is helpless to prevent catastrophe -- when the group’s anxiety has become unhinged and uncontained in a completely unrealistic way. This brings on pure rage and free-floating paranoid fantasies of death and destruction. Thus, in the case of President Bush, he was unrealistically blamed and vilified for all sorts of things outside his control -- hurricane Katrina, rising gas prices, "global warming," the Democrat-fueled housing bubble, etc. At this stage, the fantasy leader is seen as weak and vulnerable, which triggers a wave of near homicidal anxiety that aims to purify the group by ritual slaying of the divine king, identical to what took place in the most primitive tribes. So today is not just the coronation of the new king, but the ritual blood sacrifice of the old one. But he was scourged for so long, that he was virtually dead anyway -- or only "alive" with primitive projections.

Obama doesn't seem prone to locate our enemies externally, where they actually exist, i.e., in Islam. But every theology needs a satan. Again, for this reason, I think the fantasists of the left will be unable to "let go" of President Bush, since he has become so vital to their psychic equilibrium. But they don't fool us.

72 comments:

julie said...

Heh - "Change we can belive in."

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walt said...

Deborah J. Saunders wrote about the challenges ahead for O, and began her article with, "To trash Bush was to belong."

Oh, that's right! The "tribal" thing, the group dynamic that so escapes the Raccoon. Now we get a big dose. Thanks for today's analysis.

And I appropriated this tidbit for my own use:
All therapists know how difficult it is to deal with just one borderline patient in their practice...

I didn't know that about your profession. There are parallels elsewhere, too.

Anonymous said...

Global warming is a problem. Right now I'm fairly roasting in hot air. This post is a shot of freon stright up, with a xanax chaser.
I feel cooler and calmer already.

JWM

Anonymous said...

Bob said,
"It is fascinating to note that as the left became so out of touch with their fantasies about President Bush, they came to imagine that he actually did fight back in the most dangerous and extreme ways -- that he didn't tolerate dissent, that he questioned people’s patriotism, that he destroyed our civil rights, that he punished ideological enemies, that he defecated on the Constitution (you can read that projection with braille!). Pure projection. The reality that is “seen” by the left is driven by their own fantasies."

I had just this "discussion" with a pair of Obamanauts before leaving on vacation. One "wrong" statement by me and the volcano erupted. I just let the magma flow and cool on its own and planted a few seeds by asking a few questions. Of course it was all my fault for saying the wrong thing.
Unfortunately they're watching my house while I'm gone. Hopefully the Coronation bliss will last until I get back and I won't return to a charred wreckage.

It'll be interesting to see what Putin, Chavez and the boys have planned for Obama. With world oil prices down, they may not have the funds to do all they wish.

robinstarfish said...

I did want to watch the inauguration but the tribal drums of the networks made it impossible. Thank God for C-SPAN where at least the mindfuck was kept to a minimum.

I'm now watching people leaving the Capitol mall. They apparently have forgotten the message already as piles of trash are littering the grounds.

Obama just signed his first official act. He said, "I'm a lefty. Get used to it."

Anonymous said...

Rest assured external enemies are coming to aid Obama's need for a unifying force.

The problem will be in a country north of Israel and the U.S response will be like nothing we've ever seen during the Bush admiminstration. This will be more like WWll.

Obama has been identified in our think tank as a nonpareil war-monger cloaked as a leftist. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. When he comes out of his coccoon of passivity the world stage will shake.

Van Harvey said...

Allow me to be the first to crack. Rev. Warren, Aretha Franklin & Elizabeth Alexander, sucked.

Thank God for the Musical (actual musical) Selection by John Williams and performed by Itzhak Perlman (Violin), Yo-Yo Ma (Cello), Gabriela Montero (Piano), Anthony McGill (Clarinet).


(comments, sentiments and opinions are the views of their maker, and may or may not reflect the views of Others)

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

It seems to me that most people aren't terribly crazy, but when you combine the little bit of illness we all have into one big mass it becomes complete insanity.

There's a good reason why we stay quiet in Church.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Also, it goes without saying that in democracy, it is important for a leader to be popular but not too popular. The more popular a leader, the more virtue he must have. The difference between law and tyranny is measured in popularity - all that remains is for the leader to be willing to take the crown.

The only thing that concerns me now is Obama's popularity. Is it devotion or euphoria? If the first, then Obama will be in for a test of virtue (which he has shown no evidence of manfulness) or if the second, there will be a giant fantasy letdown like you've suggested...

How much toxicity can one man contain?

wv: fuser ... is this thing sending us logoi?

Unknown said...

Van said "Allow me to be the first to crack. Rev. Warren, Aretha Franklin & Elizabeth Alexander, sucked."

On the money Van. The Naval singers were amazing as well it brought a tear to my eye and softened my cynical heart.

Herman Benschop said...

Bob, one of your better pieces, I love it when you take on the left. By the way, I bet you didn't know you have fans in the Netherlands?

walt said...

HB -

Stonewall Jackson?

Anonymous said...

On a scale of one to ten, this is definitely an A+ and will probably go into your Permanent Record.

Speaking to any leftist about matters political, no matter how "nice" they may be otherwise, is like being trapped in the jail cell with Abbott & Costello in the old Niagara Falls routine. "Slooowly I turned..." You end up with spittle on you.

I guess there is a certain satisfaction from finding out from the doctor what's killing you, even if there is no cure.

Aloysius said...

I posted a link to this article on several web sites that have a slightly liberal bent. You can imagine the vituperation. One called it a spam link.

The copgnitive dissonance is furious.;

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Well, today marks the day when it has gotten vastly easier to both pray for the dead and one's enemies - at the same time!

wv: urine

...

wow.

Anonymous said...

At least the Dalai Lama loves George W. Bush. I knew the guy had raccoon potentiality...

Times of India article here

besides, got the story via Gil Bailies blog, who, I think, would very much concur with Bob's most splendid writing today.

/Johan

NoMo said...

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America..." - Barry O

wv: affib (don't we wish)

Anonymous said...

Great post. My sentiments exactly.

Van Harvey said...

From Johan's link "...He said that the only way to tackle terrorism is through prevention. The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said "I love President George W Bush." He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties..."

I'll bet Richard Gere still doing his porky pig impression.

and of course wv wants to get in on it:porkseta

Anonymous said...

"he was unrealistically blamed and vilified for all sorts of things outside his control -- hurricane Katrina, rising gas prices, global warming, the Democrat-fueled housing bubble, etc."

He wasn't vilified for things out of his control, he was vilified for how he reacted to them(and to this day, everything that happened on his watch, he didn't fix.) I understand that the causes of many of the problems in the US today were out of Bush's control, but the fact that they didn't get solved is what makes Bush a bad leader.

You can't blame Carter today for being stupid for implementing a policy that contributed to the housing bubble without having to assume some things. (which I guess your simplification of matter with numerous causes is your way of choosing politics over logic, which makes you as bad as those stupid liberals you seem so fond). There have been a few republican presidents that have let that bad policy resume, so essentially they knew it was bad but didn't care to do anything? Well you've basically painted several presidents as traitors to the interest of their own nation, or you consider them stupid as well.

I don't understand your "logic". You seem to think you should blame the guy who caused the mess, but unfortunately blaming somebody who doesn't have the power to fix it is merely wasting your breath. Bush had the power to fix a lot of the problems, he even had advance notice of the problems, but continually took the wrong actions. People are forgiven when they correct mistakes, theirs or not. Bush is hated because mistakes affected his administration and he did nothing.

If you want to apologize for how bad of a president he was, don't logic your way into blaming another political party. Sorry, the failure does not lie with those who are to blame, but with those who are expected to implement solutions. If and when Obama fails to deliver solutions, he will be hated just as much. But the difference between Obama and Bush is you're justifying why people will hate Obama, and you're still apologizing for Bush. Get over it.

Anonymous said...

". . .which reminds me of how the infant splits the world into a "good breast" and a "bad breast."

I'm a lactation consultant and I've heard a lot of references to breasts but this is a new one! Where's it come from and what's it mean?

Anonymous said...

"What better way is there to celebrate the return of America's greatness than a Haiku contest? Show the world how much you love our new President in verse!"

Gagdad Bob said...

Splitting.

Gagdad Bob said...

That was for the lactation expert. There's much more to breasts than you realize.

Anonymous said...

(You will note that no one on the right is "going crazy" over Obama, whereas the left lurched toward insanity right away, to such an extent that they even attempted to steal the 2000 election through the courts.)

Besides the ongoing trials going to the supreme court about his birth certificate, the right already went crazy and had time to pass that. The left did have legitimate issues with 2000, considering in retrospect Gore ended up winning the full recount in Florida, even if it didn't change things. Remember Bush won through the courts, because the Supreme Court stopped a recount with clear indications that the election was still a tossup(and who says the Courts are liberal?)

Van Harvey said...

anonnymouse said "I'm a lactation consultant and I've heard a lot of references to breasts but this is a new one! Where's it come from and what's it mean?"

Yeah... gets way too involved, just look at it the way I do:
If it's a breast(female), it's good.

There. Muuuch easier.

Anonymous said...

You've obviously never seen Helen Thomas.

Aloysius said...

Anonymouse at 6:22

You posted an outright lie. Gore did not win the recount. Even the NYTimes agrees that he did not.

Van Harvey said...

Cousin Dupree said "You've obviously never seen Helen Thomas."

O
M
G

I think we've just found a replacement for waterboarding.

mushroom said...

All therapists know how difficult it is to deal with just one borderline patient in their practice, but it is as if a president must deal with the projections of millions of difficult patients who are irrationally experiencing him as either their savior or as evil incarnate.

That makes sense. I suspect something similar goes on with lots of celebrities and people who have a degree of fame. There's something beyond the corrupting influence of mere money. I was once fairly well acquainted with a guy famous enough that a TV news magazine did a hit piece on him. Nothing they accused him of was quite true and would not have been a big deal if it were. But the man just fell apart trying to refute the lies that were told. I'm not worried about GWB after he goes back to Texas.

wv: madis -- doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

julie said...

Speaking of celebrities and bodily parts that excrete fluids,

"I pledge... [to] provide him with whatever portion of my precious bodily fluids he may need to save all mankind..."

JWM said...

Anonym ass @ 3:30

Somewhere theres a moonbat who's derelict in his duties. Your rope, unpissed up, awaits. Please waste no more time in crwaling back down to your well earned place in the gutters of derangement, your proper station in the great scheme of things. The race to the bottom is still going. You still have a chance to make it in time.
In the mean while, invest in a new pacifier. Yours is chewed right down to a nub.

JWM

Anonymous said...

". . .which reminds me of how the infant splits the world into a "good breast" and a "bad breast."

Thanks for the link. Lots of theory but I like evidence. Somehow I really doubt that Melanie Klein ever spent much time around nursing babies. --LactLady

JWM said...

I'm a lactation consultant

So there are women out there who actually have to hire a consultant to figure out how to breast feed their infant. Do you charge by the squirt, or by the squeeze?
How many years of intensive on-the-job training must it take to acquire such a technically demanding profession?
Behold the ravages of BDS. Maybe you can wean yourself from the rage and loathing with an extended regimen of methamphetamine, body piecings, and a facial tattoo or two. Oh, and buy youself a ferret while you're at it. I hear they make lovely pets.

JWM

Thomas Sebring Jr said...

After today, I can't shake the feeling that, as a conservative Christian, that I have just become an alien in my own country.

The implications of this post are staggering; the vast majority of the US has a personality disorder. Or perhaps the entire US has become teenagers? Wow, that thought could make for an interesting sci fi novel. Wait, it's already happened; 1930's Germany. Perhaps Racoons should be added to the Endangered Species List.

Yet, I have to believe that the majority of Americans are sane and decent people who just happened to innocently swallow the Kool-aid and, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, fall asleep on election night. But, unfortunately, the consequences will be reaped for at least four years.

Gagdad Bob said...

New mothers know them as "lactation nazis."

Anonymous said...

jwm: Why does the thought of a lactation consultant so disturb you? If you look around a bit you will find that a great many women tried and failed breastfeeding in the 20th century. To say why that happened goes beyond the space available but lactation support combines old cultural wisdom with modern scientific knowledge in service to the biological competence of women.

Gagdad Bob said...

See what I mean?

Anonymous said...

Gagdad bob: You got something against women being biologically competent? Women's sexuality, ie reproductive role, is more than intercourse. It's ovarian cycle, intercourse, pregnancy, birth and lactation. Notice that two of those roles involve interpersonal relationships. Both can be intensely rewarding and satisfying. As a lactation consultant, I don't 'nazi' women, I help them as they direct me to. And why does someone with your intellectual power resort to name calling anyway?

Thomas Sebring Jr said...

Hey anony-mess;
yer forgettin the role of the CONGRESS in all this s***; Barney Frankenstein and Chris Doody and the gang, who bowed to the pressure of ACORNHOLE, took money from the newly liberalized Fanniehead Mae and Freddie MacDaddy, and allowed all kinds of deadbeats and hangers-on to get subprime mortgages, to match their sub-prime intellects. This happened under Clinton and was OPPOSED by McCain, the guy who we decided we didn't want.

JWM said...

You're right lactoid. I find the notion profoundly, and deeply disturbing. It has echoes of satanic practices, child immolation, and may just well be one of those gateways into the deep netherworld of deviancy that few see without lasting psychic and emotional scarring. I'll discuss the matter with my defecation consultant in the morning, and when I see my urination consultant late in the week, I'll ask him about it too.

JWM

Anonymous said...

JWM - Speaking of nubs, you know what they say - if you've seen one breast...you'll want to see them all.

I think I hear my mother calling.

Van Harvey said...

lackingAition said "...ion. Notice that two of those roles involve interpersonal relationships. Both can ..."

I've always been fascinated by that... being the highly paid professional consultant that you are, could you please give me an example of human relationships which are not interpersonal?

PSGInfinity said...

"but in fact, it has been estimated that fewer than ten percent of the American public are reliably in Piaget’s highest cognitive developmental stage of formal operations thinking. And even then, one cannot escape the cosmic law of bullshit in --> bullshit out."

So I looked up Piaget. Do you really mean to tell me that most people think at a sub-teenager level?! Did I miss something obvious?!

WV: fradjur Fraud Du Jour?

PSGInfinity said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
julie said...

"Do you really mean to tell me that most people think at a sub-teenager level?!"

Like, totally, dude! OMG!!

Er, which is to say, based upon my own experience with interpersonal relationships I'd say that's an accurate assessment.

Unknown said...

Man! I need to check in more often this thread has gone everywhere today. I love it!!

Anonymous said...

Obviously the anonymouses (anonymice) had one nip too many of the breast-grog.

David R. Graham said...

Yes, brilliant!

Perhaps of some support.

Representatives of the Corps of Cadets led the parade. At least that is as it should be!

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"But unhappy people find all sorts of illusory reasons to explain their unhappiness, including politics."

Sing it bro! Sometimes I wonder "don't these Leftist whinos ever listen to themselves?"

Or did they all get hit by the night train (driven by W. of course)?

Actually, these are rhetorical questions, and yes, I know there are some Conservatives and Moderates (whatever the hell they are) that are also whinos (thank you in advance, Lefty Whinos for pointing that out since, apparently, you can't see yourselves for what you truly are),
but damn! This is plumb academic (literally) and epidemic, not to mention pandemic on the Left.

Our little remnant band of Raccoons looks a bit smaller today, but hey! We never was a large percentage of the population. Otherwise, what's the point, right?

I'm beginnin' to get an inkling of an idea of what those 300 Spartans or George Washington and his Troops and fellow Patriots felt like.

So in light of the coronation that went on yesterday, let me just say this: Bring it on! Nuts!

Note for the reading comprehension challenged Left: You can take that as two complete sentences (if you can count that high) or one complete sentence (if you even know what a sentence is).
See, I made it simple for you. That's the compassionate side of my Classical Liberalism talkin'. :^)

Great post, Bob!

Anonymous said...

I think the lefties in fact know they're crazy as hell and enjoy the benefits of it. Sort of along the lines of a mugger who shows little sign of sane reasoning being more likely to get your wallet.

Steve

phil g said...

Yes I think you're on to something. We now fully celebrate our craziness versus trying to keep it hidden away and controlled.

The O is riding a tiger that he fed and nurtured...God help him.

Rick said...

Julie, Van, thanks for your replies yesterday. I’m glad you didn’t interpret “throwing it in” as meaning anything more than just pulling the pin on the daily news caboose. Seeya-laytuh-bye. There will be another train along shortly.
As for our Glorious Cause, no worries there.
…and I wanted JWM to know he wasn’t the only one.
BTW, I see he just showed up at the Toots club.
Hey JWM!
Toot!

Rick said...

Hey Ben!

You said, “Our little remnant band of Raccoons looks a bit smaller today…”

Did we lose a Raccoon? Or maybe it was the Other that just got a bit bigger. I think I mentioned I’m not up on all the news….
But you saw we have a new addition to the sidebar? That reminds me, if this keeps up we’ll be able to get that all-meat salad bar in no time.

Anonymous said...

Boy, should have come to OC yesterday and taken part in the Lactation Consultant seminar, rather than rubbing salt in my wounds at places like AT and BC. You guys were having more fun.

"I think the fantasists of the left will be unable to "let go" of President Bush, since he has become so vital to their psychic equilibrium."

But isn't the question what will contain the anxieties of the bulk of us? I don't think George will provide that service much longer, if at all from here on out.

And do you really think BHO and his cabal are that smart? They seem pretty good, but riding the delusion by invoking Lincoln doesn't demonstrate much awareness regarding the drawbacks of building up His Messiahness. And there was a lot of tin ear in that speech, from beginning with the Malaise Speech theme to chastising the country for laying down on the job until we had the good sense to elect him to encouraging parents to nurture their children when he knows he's going to try to expand abortion rights ASAP.

I just doubt that Mr. 57 states and 44 past presidents is that clever and suspect he/they won't know what hit them when the rage and disappointment come along.

Van Harvey said...

Ricky said "But you saw we have a new addition to the sidebar?"

Yep, new on mine too.

(ahem... two new posts too... just sayin')

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Our lactation consultant... maybe she was a Catholic school nun? Because that is some grade-A scolding and guilt-tripping right there.

Rule 1: Take yourself too seriously and you will get made fun of.

Rule 2: Make fun of yourself and you will get taken seriously.

Rule 3: Getting taken seriously means being seen for what you really are.

oh, Lawdsie, it is time for coffee and work.

Bless you, Mz Lactation Consultant! (In whatever way God sees fit.)

I had a few ways in mind but I'm not the cap'n.

Van Harvey said...

Yeah, on the one hand, I've got to give mz. lackingaition a nod, I mean I couldn't do the work... sorta like a an alchoholic being a bartender, not the (must... resist making ... the ... pun...) best (phew) of ideas.

Rick said...

Bob,
Love that performance at the end. Never forget it. One of my favs. With the banner of flags along the top too – that’s perfect.

Rick said...

Not to take away from that performance, but I thought Billy Joel did a fine job with “New York state of mind” that night.

Anonymous said...

For Aloysius:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1095

Obviously news organizations weren't going to scream to the public that the wrong guy was in office. Wouldn't want to upset the liberals. 8 years later and you would think the events wouldn't matter enough to bother people when they hear the historical perspective.

As for the person yelling about congress, so what? President Bush still got away with whatever he wanted. Just because congress was bad makes Bush ok? Even if congress is the worst in history, they didn't debilitate any of Bush's policies. He was still a bad leader, and so is congress.

When you can explain why what congress didn't do made Bush make all those bad decisions, then I'll understand your perspective... maybe.

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