Climate Change Is Funny As Shit! Especially on the Gulf Coast!
Still their hero!
The Republican Party of 2012, defined:
President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. [Pause. Laughter.] MY promise…is to help you and your family.
The smarmy-even-for-Romney delivery and the audience reaction made it even worse than it looked on paper. In fairness, shelter is hardly the help that families need. What else can you say? Well, that hiring Jonah Goldberg as a script doctor was a terrible idea.
For those who missed it, the video from Clint Eastwood’s speech is below.
Every time I think the Republicans couldn’t get any more tone deaf, they prove me wrong.
When two trains love each other very, very much, they cuddle together and… kiss. We call that a “train wreck…”
+1.
Boy, that line was brilliant. I can’t wait to see how pissed Loommis is going to be over it especially.
I pay no attention to political conventions. I would have completely missed it if Scott hadn’t caught it.
Looks like Clint Eastwood is familiar with David Barton’s work.
I’m seriously entertaining the thought that he’s an Obama mole.
I think Clint was just trolling. And, banking his appearance fee.
I didn’t see it. Was Eastwood really that goofy? Grandpa Simpson goofy?
Say it ain’t so, Rowdy.
Beyond goofy.
It was at least passable for the first minute or so, and then he turned and started talking to the chair.
“Yelling at furniture”
That’s what the modern GOP has come to.
Obama’s response to Eastwood.
I didn’t see it. Was Eastwood really that goofy? Grandpa Simpson goofy?
It was a complete wreck. He criticized Obama for failing to do things which the republicans oppose (failing to close Gitmo and failing to withdraw from Afghanistan); talked about the closet conservatives in Hollywood who are quieter than the liberals; talked to an invisible Obama in an empty chair who kept telling everybody to go fuck themselves (because we all know how rude and course Obama can be); criticized Obama for driving an SUV and flying in a big plane (unlike Romney, of course); and endorsed Romney by suggesting that its “probably, maybe” time for someone else.
Apparently, Eastwooding is the new Tebowing. (See, for example, Mia Farrow.)
My take is that Clint has an upcoming movie. Nobody knows what to make of it, but people are sure talking about it. And upstaging a major party Presidential nominee on his big day shoots Letterman all to hell.
That is to say, the question isn’t what the hell Clint was thinking, the question is what the hell the Romney campaign thinking?
M-M-M-Max Headroom was unav-unav-unavailable.
It’s capitalism at work. Romney should’ve seen this coming. For being a businessman, he should have asked “why would Clint agree to this?”.
Invisible Obama is in their base, killing their dudes.
Invisible Obama outpolls the actual Obama by 5-7 points in West Virginia, Kentucky, southeastern Ohio, and western Pennsylvania.
For some inexplicable reason.
The vast majority of Americans don’t buy into the “global warming” scam. That line was brilliant and will play very well with blue collar voters.
Did you get your knowledge of blue collar workers from sugar packets, too, Gronpa?
One of you needs a new name.
No, its more amusing this way.
One of you needs a new name.
Don’t worry, Jennie has 80 or so.
Let ‘em drown–they can’t swim anyway. Vote Republican!
Yes, all 15% of them. VAST majority. Did you learn math from Ryan’s budget?
It was a clunky line, inartfully delivered – and that’s apart from the complete detachment from science.
The vast majority of Americans don’t buy into the “global warming”…
Like it or not, this is a true statement.
Oh good, Jennie’s brought out an old crusty sock puppet.
Could you not read the Tragically Flip’s link, Jennie?
Here it is again for you.
huh Abe Simpson speech. Based on what I’ve read, I was expecting East Germany’s favorite cat & mouse duo – Worker and Parasite. As Krusty said, “what the hell was that crap?”
I’ve been disappointed in the lack of Inanimate Carbon Rod jokes after the comedy stylings of Eastwood & Chair.
Climate Change is another Republican plan where people aged 55 and over are exempted from the negative consequences.
I wouldn’t bet a lot on that. It’s heating upper faster and faster. I’m 62, probably 20 years to go and I think I may see the consequences.
Unless they own a house in rural Colorado…
It’s safely above sea level! What’s that smell?
Romney more than exceeded expectations. The whole meme of Romney being wooden or being robotic were smashed tonight.
Next week Romney vaults into a lead outside the margin of error. Obama should be panicked, this was a wonderful convention for Republicans.
And pancakes will be free everywhere, just like in nineteen-dickety-two!
That damn Kaiser! I chased him, but had to give up after dickety miles …
Can I have my onion back now?
Have a peanut.
If I was in your position I’d probably also be resorting to drugs. I’d like to think that I’d have more interesting hallucinations, however.
I want what Clint had before he went onstage. That looked awesome. Closeups may reveal that he had coke lodged in his nose, like Neil Young in The Last Waltz.
I thought Clint was doing a bad impression of Dennis Miller. I have no idea if it was on purpose or not.
Give it up for JenBob. He’ll be here all week. Be sure and tip the waitress. Try the veal!
Didn’t you also predict that Obamacare would be struck down? Or was that somebody else getting a little ahead of themselves?
This is the “here is how it will go down next week” guy, right? He acts exactly the same.
Yup, Mr./Mrs./Miss “Bookmark it, libs”. Been thinking it was that old fossil for days now.
I miss Coach Urban Meyer.
Or was that at S,N!?
Yeah, that was definitely Sadly, No! Don’t forget Gary Ruppert, either.
And Dr. BLT, going way back.
Oh man, I had forgotten about that guy.
Yep, it’s the guy who predicted that Obamacare would be struck down. Don’t you feel better about the November election already?
This is excellent news for John McCain.
What EXACTLY is the point of comments like this? The mindless boosterism, my guy ROCKED IT your guy SUCKS cheerleading, all seem deeply and profoundly pointless. And frankly, kinda sad that you feel like you even want to do this sort of thing. [*]
[*] I feel pretty much the same way about Obama boosterism, or Clinton boosterism, or whatever. It’s a pathetic use of pixels. Might as well just shout the name of your favorite sports team — has as much content.
NINERS!
What amazes me is that not only is it mindless boosterism, but that it’s mindless boosterism for like 3 years now. Can you imagine a less rewarding activity? Because I can’t.
Picture the future of the republican party: a eunuch masturbating* forever.
*Insert “on a face” here at your own peril.
please, think of the pixels.
It’s not “mindless boosterism”.
It is trolling.
When you go to a website and lob mindless comments into the comments section where you know that people don’t agree with you[*], you aren’t doing it as a promtional activity for your “team”. You’re doing it to piss people off and to get a reaction.
There are some people who get their kicks out of pissing people off. A lot of them are what we call “conservatives” in US politics these days, who seem to only be able to get sexual gratification if they know that somewhere they’ve annoyed a liberal. Haven’t you noticed this?
Yeah there are mindless boosters out there – but they ain’t sticking up for Mitt Romney. The Ron Paul folks have a good-sized chunk of boosters in their ranks. The Obama campaign did in ’08 (as did Clinton, and Edwards and pretty much everyone else). People “boosting” romney on liberal boards are just trying to “piss off liberals”. And they laugh every time someone rises to the bait.
There are some people who get their kicks out of pissing people off. A lot of them are what we call “conservatives”
And a lot of them are just assholes. This guy is both.
We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where,don’t know when.
But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.
And probably half the country agrees with that opinion.
Jennie, you are indeed a blithering idiot who lacks the capacity to read simple tables for comprehension. Please do try and troll better going forward. Rick Venema of CRACKER HEIGHTS VIRGINIA was way better at this than you.
“Yeehaa, suck this libtard!” is an opinion? Well, I guess in a reductive sense it is. And in a reductive sense, you’re sentient too.
Shorter Jen-Bob Briggs: I’m afraid of a chair!
Especially considering they’ve enter latter-day Spinal Tap territory. 37 million viewers for Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, 20 million for the zombie-eyed granny-slayer’s(h/t Charles P Pierce}.
“Does this mean the popularity is waning?”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.”
Nobody noticed. We were talking about Eastwood most of the way through Romney’s talk.
Anyone else suspect Eastwood and Rubio were set up to make Romney look good? Not too old, not too young; well-spoken and coherent but not wooden and uncertain?
Next week Romney vaults into a lead outside the margin of error.
And the week after that, Roberts overturns Obamacare, right Jennie?
You’re gonna need another walrus.
no he already did that, next Roberts and SCOTUS are going to declare the Kansas City Royals and the Houston Astros to be winners of the Ballgame leagues
It’s a good thing the Republicans waited until nobody was mad at vulture capitalists anymore to nominate a vulture capitalist to be President.
Just wait until Romney releases those tax returns and shows he has nothing to hide.
…but inside the Saginaw Plaza Hotel.
Keep those predictions coming!
I think the Obama campaign boosted youth turnout at least 5% in the last few days, between the reddit appearance and this.
They don’t pay the twitter guy enough.
That was brilliant.
Really, really looking forward to the debates.
Obama is going to run so many circles around Romney that Romney’s going to faint from dizziness.
Biden and Ryan are probably a more even match but Biden has warmer, better personality and comes across more humane. Although thats always easy when dealing with an Ayn Rand fan.
Ryan and Biden? Huh?
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Ryan is all that clever.
Biden, OTOH, is actually a pretty good debater.
True. The reason Biden puts his foot in his mouth as often as he does is that he is one of the few politicians who actually talks rather than recites.
If the debate questions are just cues to recite spiel, Ryan will do OK. If he actually has to talk, he could be in trouble.
And yet, as far as expectations go, people will be basing theirs on his 2008 performance, when he debated with one had tied behind his back, to avoid looking like he was beating up a girl.
Instead, he hung back and let Bible Spice beat up on herself. Best tactic for the situation, really.
Although it’s hard to think of anything that will effect the election less than the VP debate. Almost universally completely forgotten within days. The only things it seems like people remember are Stockdale sounding crazy and Bentsen getting in a quip at Quayle. Who cares.
Don’t forget the time Sarah Plain gave Rich Lowry
a bonerstarbursts!I am doing my best to forget that, thank you very much.
Although I guess this is kind of my point. This thing will obviously generate a lot of totally pointless discussion from people like Lowry, but among undecided voters? The presidential debates could have an impact at the margins, but what’s the biggest thing that could happen at the VP debate. Biden puts his foot in his mouth again, or he gets off a really cutting line like the one about Giuliani, and people laugh about it for a few days, and then they move on to something else.
I’m just always looking for reasons to talk about Rich Lowry’s boners.
By the time the debates are over Rove is going to be begging his billionaires for another $300 mil, pronto.
Say what you want about Obama, but damn can the man connect.
The Reddit thing was very cool, even though not especially useful. It just makes him appear so in touch. That coupled with his warm personality really makes him easy for younger people to connect to.
We’ll meet again,
Don’t know where,don’t know when.
But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day.
Too cruel, Scott. (And me, a Harry Reid fan.)
Bad actor, over-rated director. Also, I can’t lie, I tried to get drunk enough to watch this shitstorm. Eastwood’s was the first one I saw, and as dumb and mean as it was it seemed like he’d been shooting speedball martinis to prep for it.
Totally substance-free jabber. Wingnut gold, etc, etc. Dana Milbank will love it and deem it effective.
But damn, Jon Voight is so strung out they had to so this to the Man With No Name?
No ill-will towards Clint, partisan fire has its limits. But that was just awful.
I assumed everyone was playing the Romney drinking game. Take a shot every time he says “Obama”, you get a chaser each time he mentioned his actual policy plan.
i must give the republican props where it’s due. they have become consistently awful. if there were an academy award for awful, they’d win, and it would then be retired.
i’ve also considered the possibility that the whole convention was staged to intentionally be awful, on a grand scale. the thought process (assuming any actual thinking occurred) being that, like the dog that’s so ugly, it’s actually kind of cute, that the convention would be so horrible, it would actually be kind of cool. i don’t think that’s working very well, as it’s just coming off looking, well, pretty damn awful.
So the Republican convention is the political equivalent of Jewel Kilcher?
I can buy that.
I can’t believe you’d bring up the lowest point in the history of the blog. When Dave Noon made a mockery of his own life’s work, he betrayed America on that day.
I can’t believe you’d bring up the lowest point in the history of the blog.
I never once mentioned Loomis or Joplin.
That whole Worst American Birthdays series was excellent.
At least old Clint agrees with that portion of the republican platform calling for the immediate closure of Gitmo and withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I feel like the whole convention was about Republicans claiming they’re going to do things they’re against. We should make a list:
Bipartisanship
Stronger Middle Class
Lower taxes for low income
Medicare
Telling the truth
Clean politics
President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.
Just one more promise broken. He’s done nothing in four years about this.
You really are an idiot, Jennie. Rick Veneema of CRACKER HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA could out-troll you with one hand tied behind his keyboard.
And Rick Venema had the testicular fortitude to troll with his real name. This coward hides behind multiple aliases.
I thought it was parody trolling, the joke being it’s pretty hard to stop global warming in 4 years…especially when there are powerful forces out there making sure people dont believe it’s real.
Considering that doing something about it goes against entrenched interests and is an extremely difficult collective action problem, it’s not surprising that not much progress has been made.
As if you gave a shit about climate change.
Since Obama came to office, the United States has reduced its CO2 emissions more than any other country in the world.
This has mainly been the result of the widespread closure of coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, he has boosted funding for public transit, increased CAFE standards dramatically, regulated carbon emissions from all power plants, and boosted investment in clean energy to record, world-leading levels.
Basically, all of the policies that we would have implemented in the 3 years after the passage of a serious climate change bill have been implemented by executive order.
I assumed this was also not real. You really don’t think a party who doesn’t believe in climate change can run on the platform that they’re upset Obama didn’t stop climate change, right?
Not to mention the obvious impossibility of getting it down with such an awful Congress
NPR played a clip of Bush talking after Katrina. To this day, the fact that this two-bit huckster was our President amazes me. It’s something you kind of forget until you hear him speak.
Liberal media lies! There was never any President named Bush! The Crash of ’08? Obama was president. 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? None of that ever happened.
At least, this is what I inferred from the convention….
Well, since all the debt from those two wars magically showed up once Obama was President, it’s safe to assume those wars were started by him. Right?
I actually thought that was a pretty good jab, hitting what was a ridiculously grandiose line from Obama. The target wasn’t so much global warming as Obama’s messiah schtick — one of those occasional moments when Obama lived down to the right-wing stereotype of him.
How much paraphrasing did Rmoney do to the original “ridiculously grandiose line from Obama?”
Serious question, since I don’t know which line you’re referring to. And given the GOP penchant for making shit up, well …
My response is below. Romney, surprise surprise, pulled it out of context to make it look worse than it was. I retract my praise for line.
It would have been, if the New Orleans region wasn’t being flooded again.
Half of life is timing.
At the risk of appearing to support a troll, I actually didn’t think the line was that bad or smarmy. The line is a reference to Obama’s line back in 2008. I can’t recall it exactly, but it was something about looking back on this historic moment and realizing that “this is the time when the Earth’s oceans stopped rising” or some such. Even at the time, I thought the line was pretentious and ridiculously messianic (I’m reminded of God’s speech in Job where he rhetorically asks Job where he was when he told the oceans: “Hitherto thou shalt come and no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed”). It’s quite worthy of some mockery.
Anyway, part of Romney’s critique is that Obama has raised a series of false hopes and unfulfilled promises (hence Ryan’s image of the college student staring up at the Obama poster). So as I read the line, it’s less an effort to deny global warming (though I’m sure many listeners got that message too–it’s no doubt part of its goal) and more intended to skewer Obama’s pretentiousness. It’s intended, in other words, to turn one of Obama’s strengths (his ability to inspire hope and redemption) into a liability.
Now, I don’t think any of this was terribly effective, nor do I think it will matter (the whole convention was pretty much a train wreck). Still, I was less disgusted by the message than most of the folks here were.
Oops. mizner made the same point while I was writing, though I wouldn’t agree that it was a “good jab.” I just didn’t find it awful either (or no more awful than our politics usually is, which I must admit, is pretty terrible).
This must have been a Limbaugh hobbyhorse for it even to be mentioned. I don’t even remember Obama saying it.
I think gmack’s right, then; for it to have been effective, as opposed to a mere of fondle of the base, that line had to be common knowledge — which I thought it was. I guess not.
And looking at the passage again, I see that he spoke of “we” and the work ahead, so it wasn’t really megalomaniacal, just hyperbolic.
Seeing it in context, it wasn’t as bad as I recall.
Thanks for digging up the quote. You’re right; the line wasn’t as bad as I remember it being, though I’m still not terribly fond of it. But whatever. I’m guessing that calling all toasters is right that Obama’s comment has become part of right wing lore.
That’s quite possible. I don’t keep up with right wing media. More broadly, your comment hints at the reason why I don’t think the jab is all that effective. It relies way too heavily on right wing tribal symbols and tropes in order to be understood (i.e., it’s of a piece with the teleprompter jokes). Maybe there are lots of non-movement conservatives out there receptive to the idea that the problem with Obama is his tendency toward pretentiousness and messianism, but I somehow doubt it. This strikes me instead as an appeal to the base.
It struck me as a particularly stupid comment to make while just a couple of states away there are people with homes inundated with flood water.
I only heard about ten minutes of Romney’s speech while I was driving from the bowling alley to the bar. It happened to include this part. The rest of what I heard was nonsense, not in the Paul Ryan bullshit way, but in the random-sequence-of-unrelated-sentences way, like “We’re going to lower taxes on job creators. My wife is awesome! President Obama went on an Apology Tour.”
driving from the bowling alley to the bar.
What the hell were you doing at a bowling alley without a bar?
The bowling alley and the bar inside it close at 11!
Those bastards!
In the proper context, Romney is good to make fun of it. How naive was the President to think Republicans would work with a Democrat, let alone a black one!?!?
He used “we” like Republicans would be any part of anything he approves of. They sure showed him!
Shorter Mitt Romney: ‘You have no idea, the power of the dark side!’
This is hilarious:
Michelle Malkin:
For once, I believe it.
Jonah Goldberg:
Not really. They were already going to update “asshole” with Jonah’s picture. Synergy.
I enjoyed the poor camera shots on Mitt Romney for some of the convention. I could tell what he was going to say before he said it, because it was scrolling on the teleprompter like right in the middle of the camera shot…
Can SEK do some visual rhetoric on the director for the RNC to tell us the hidden message?
What is amazing about that Goldberg tweet is that he somehow thinks that Clint Eastwood’s status as a “badass” was somehow cemented by this rambling joke of a speech at the Republican National Convention. The decades of playing “badass” characters like the man with no name, Harry Callahan, Josey Wales, Will Munny, etc., did not require those dictionaries to be updated. But now that Eastwood gave a horrendously received speech at the RNC, he’s clearly redefined the word.
The speech was bad, he came off like an ass.
I’m just watching large excerpts of the Romney speech.
This guy is a bigger piece of shit than I gave him credit for.