I’ve said this sort of thing before many times. Matt Taibbi’s said it. David Cross does an entire bit about it. But no matter how often it’s repeated, there are still those out there on the left who live in their own little epistemic bubble and don’t seem to get something: the 60s are over and continuing to protest like it’s 1967 will get you absolutely nowhere in the year 2013. Yes, it’ll grab you a little attention, but ultimately not the kind you want. It’s an ineffective model of activism in the new millennium and the predisposition to fall back on it needs to be shelved once and for all.

Yesterday, in a scene as predictable as it was pointless, members of Code Pink crashed the confirmation hearing of CIA chief nominee John Brennan. They stood up with their posters emblazoned with pithy cracks like “Don’t Drone Me, Bro!” waved hands that they’d painted pink, and shouted at the top of their lungs about how Brennan was a murderer and how they stood for mothers who’d lost loved ones overseas in America’s drone campaign against Al Qaeda. One of them even brandished some kind of puppet or doll that I guess was supposed to be a baby. They did this over and over again until Diane Feinstein had to finally clear the room, eventually allowing many back in but exiling the Code Pink people to the arms of waiting reporters outside, where at least this time, as far as I know, they did their histrionic interviews without the assistance of the giant papier-mâché effigy of Brennan they brought to the White House last month.

I made it clear yesterday that while I acknowledge the dangers of a continued drone war overseas and certainly see how the issue of collateral damage on the ground and secret kill lists here at home could prompt some serious discussion, I personally don’t have it in me to get so worked up over any of it that I feel the need to take to the streets. That said, this is America and there isn’t a thing wrong with voicing your opinion on the subject of how the U.S. has been prosecuting the so-called “war on terror.” The thing is, if it infuriates you and you feel the need to work toward changing it or stopping it altogether, you’re going to want a plan for making your views heard in a way that’s potent and that has some hope of accomplishing what you set out to.

In the late 1960s, the way to do that was by making a lot of very loud noise and turning almost every protest into a Kabuki theater-style spectacle. This worked because we were living in a time when the masses were actually terrified of individuality; it was considered a serious threat to the established order, one that had already begun to upend that order, and so any expression of it not only got attention, it got results.

But the rules have changed over the years. Now not only is individualism and public outrage not shocking or dangerous, it’s an almost comical anachronism. As I’ve said before, there is no individualism these days. Nothing truly audacious can stand in our culture, not when our culture has become so monstrously adept at assimilating all forms of rebellion until they become completely meaningless and utterly impotent. Prepackaged, homogenized non-conformity is as close as your local Hot Topic. Agitation is fashion. Defiance is a slogan. Insurrection is product placement. The revolution is not only televised, it can be DVRed and enjoyed at your convenience.

When the Code Pink troops stand up and shout down a confirmation hearing before the guy at the center of it really even has a chance to start speaking — Brennan was just thanking his wife when the hell started being raised — and produce puppets and pink hands in the process they’re not only creating a cacophonous mess, they’re providing endless fodder for the idiots at Fox News, who get to smirk patronizingly and present it as red meat to their audience of bitter old people. It’s left-wing agitators just being left-wing agitators — and what’s more, it barely even gets the point at hand across. Yeah, you made a statement, but who cares if no one can figure out the details of what that statement is besides your not wanting to be “droned, bro?” You made news, but to what end?

By the way, there’s an irony to the fact that the Tea Party right employed the very same kinds of tactics a couple of years back, unwittingly adopting the ridiculous protest model of its enemy, right down to the silly costumes, unfunny “comic” signs and unfocused rage. These antics gave their political adversaries the same kind of thrill up their spines that the right gets from watching those kooky, moonbat lefties ranting about injustice while wearing robot suits. (As David Cross says, “Another silver robot for peace!”) There are so many new outlets and models for effective protest these days — the kind of thing that can capture attention without thoroughly alienating those whose views you want to change and making yourselves look like easily dismissible clowns in the process — that there’s no excuse for not availing yourself of them and choosing instead to stubbornly trudge on with the worn-out Boomer playbook.

If you believe the new technology of killer drones and the potential judicial overreach in using them are a fact of American life in the year 2013 that you simply can’t tolerate, you might want to stop looking back to a time before either of those things existed to find a way to fight back against them.

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Last week on our podcast, Bob Cesca threw out the question of whether it was a good idea for liberals to take on football and demand changes when it comes to the safety of players. He made a great point about how doping may be part of what’s creating monsters on the field so ferocious that their hits now cause permanent damage in the form of, among other things, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Certainly keeping the game as safe as possible should be a major concern football for fans, players, coaches and managers, but my reaction to Bob’s overall question was that overtly screwing around with the institution of football in America was a political and cultural third rail no sane person would get near. The sport is simply far too beloved by those across a very wide spectrum of society.

That said, there are liberals who’ve been desperate to be able to ring the death knell for football in general and the NFL in particular for years; it’s practically a right-wing article of faith that liberals are stereotypical pussies who don’t like football because it’s violent, aggressive and dangerous — everything liberals are traditionally proud to say they’re not.

Yesterday, in a move that to me resembled PETA’s hilariously misguided attempt to run an anti-turkey ad on Thanksgiving a few years back, Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir published a column claiming that football was in a “death spiral.” That recent scandals, suicides and other deaths were tarnishing the game and that it should be allowed to slowly become extinct as America’s number one spectator sport. It was the kind of piece that, as I was reading it, had me saying to myself over and over again, “I really fucking hate liberals,” regardless of my own center-left political dispositions.

First of all, no, football isn’t in a “death spiral” — as evidenced by the fact that last night’s game had the highest cumulative Super Bowl numbers ever — and decrying its aggression, supposed connection to violent behavior, exploitation at the hands of corporate money-changers and so on is such a tired and ultimately fruitless trope. Football is a rough sport and players are going to get hurt. Guess what? No one’s literally drafting these guys; they go into it knowing full well the considerable risks and equally considerable rewards.

Everything that can be done should be done to prevent serious injury, but when 250-pound men are slamming into each other with the power of a damn freight train, people are occasionally going to be injured. Considering that the game involves this kind of brute force occurring over and over again, that damage can even be long term. These guys are absolutely taking their lives into their hands by getting out on that field, but it’s their decision to make and not the responsibility of the better-knowing liberal intelligentsia to make it for them.

You don’t like football? Think it’s dangerous, or savage, or too demonstrative of America’s divisive and militaristic nature, or a promotion of sexist culture, or generally offensive to your personal sensibilities? Feel free not to watch and, as O’Hehir does, publicly declare that you won’t let your kid play it. That’s entirely your call. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that football is going anywhere simply because you don’t approve. If we’re lucky, it’ll get safer and smarter, but the game will almost certainly endure. Too many people love it. Myself included.

Hell, if I could make something I can’t stand go away just by publicly whining about it, every column I wrote would be about Beyonce and she would’ve vanished into a cloud of body glitter long before she became culturally dominant enough to allow for the hashtag #BeyonceBowl.

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A couple of days ago it dawned on me how many columns and assorted quickie pieces of mine have been pegged off of Salon.com articles. For years I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Salon: On the one hand it’s been a home to people like Steve Kornacki, Joan Walsh, Alex Pareene and Mary Elizabeth Williams, all of whom I like quite a bit. (I don’t always agree with Mary Beth but she’s a personal friend and is sincerely one of the best people I know.) On the other, it slavishly played host to the insufferable Glenn Greenwald and inexplicably gave a forum to hack writers like Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek while continuing to roll out the red carpet for the serially comical David Sirota. I suppose I shouldn’t be too harsh on the site, since there’s a lot of great material regularly published there and when it comes to progressive politics it runs the gamut between the center-left and far-left viewpoint, but maybe the fact that it’s willing to give any kind of outsize voice to the petulance of the far-left proves how intolerable I think the far-left is.

Case in point, not one but two pieces currently running over at Salon that act as perfect examples of why so many who consider themselves liberal True Believers don’t deserve to be taken the least bit seriously.

Late last week, Daniel D’Addario, one of Salon’s entertainment writers, penned a column for the site with the admittedly designed-to-troll headline “Is Jon Stewart Turning Off His Fan Base.” The piece isn’t opinion — it’s basically just a straightforward report that wonders aloud through the voices of critics whether Jon Stewart’s effusive praise for Zero Dark Thirty and mockery of the platinum coin as a potential end run around Republican obstruction in the debt ceiling fight will infuriate his liberal fans. The thing is, while I tend to agree with at least slightly more of its politics than I do the other extreme, the far-left is as pissy and humorless as its counterparts on the far-right and therefore deserving of almost as much derision. As I read the Stewart piece, I kept thinking to myself, “If you’re willing to turn on a guy who for the most part not only represents your ideals but communicates them to a national audience in a way that’s startlingly effective just because he says one or two things you don’t like, you don’t deserve a seat at the big kids’ table.”

I know that Zero Dark Thirty has become not just a punching bag for the left but a kind of litmus test for one’s liberal bona fides, but to me it’s exactly the opposite; not only do I think it’s a terrific film, I immediately know when I read a piece on it self-righteously claiming that it should be shunned by all for endorsing torture that whoever wrote it generally isn’t somebody whose opinions I give a crap about. As for the platinum coin, I never thought it was a terrible idea and I can certainly understand why liberal stalwarts like Paul Krugman — a very smart guy by any account — would endorse it. But there’s simply no denying that at first blush, the notion of a trillion dollar coin parlor trick to solve what’s sure to be the upcoming debt ceiling debacle is damn ridiculous. I get that Stewart’s critics love to rake him over the coals for his willingness to fall back on the fact that in the end he’s just a comedian — they consider it a lame cop-out — but if we need to mint one magic coin to bypass our government’s inability to get anything done, thanks almost entirely to House Republicans, we’ve set ourselves up to be a laughingstock. That’s worth making fun of.

Meanwhile, today, there’s another piece written by the aforementioned David Sirota — a guy who’s almost never worth reading — that warns liberals against succumbing to the lofty rhetoric and apparent progressive designs on display in Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech. Sirota trots out a couple of the usual liberal cause célèbres, drones and such. But for the most part he seems to still be smarting over the fact that the Obama administration and those associated with it have at times dismissed hardcore liberal “firebaggers” for being the whiny children they are. There’s never been anything wrong with voicing an extreme left opinion; that viewpoint has as much right to be heard as any other. But more so than any president I can remember, Obama has reaped the wrath of the far-left as much as he has the far-right, with liberal activists apparently ignoring political reality in favor of some utopian progressive ideal that Obama was never going to be able to deliver but which the left demanded. The left has relentlessly hectored the Obama administration at every turn, despite this president having enacted some of the most progressively minded legislation of the last 50 years. Sure, he wasn’t able to do everything the left wanted, but he was always the best it was ever going to get in a country with the political demography of the United States. Considering the venom Obama’s been subjected to on the left — by those who are pretty much his own team — it’s no wonder his people lashed out at it on occasion.

On the plus side, at least this time around Sirota didn’t try to shoehorn in some shitty 80s pop culture reference in a clumsy effort to sell more copies of his most recent book, which laughably attempts to tie movies like Ghostbusters and Die Hard to our current political climate.

Still, it bothers me that Salon continues to allow liberals to paint themselves, without any help from outside detractors, as unbearably humorless pains-in-the-ass who lecture from on-high and who apparently suffer from the same persecution fantasies as those on the far-right edge of the political spectrum. Yes, everyone deserves a voice, but dear God is that voice one I really can’t abide listening to.

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For the first part of New Year’s Day, I thought the far-left “Obama caved” crowd would take the prize for the most insane political faction of the day considering how, as soon as a deal was reached, they accused the president of capitulating to the Republicans, even though the deal was quite good given the alternatives. But then the House Republicans stepped onto the stage and posed a serious challenge to the insanity on the far-left by engaging in further sabotage and brinksmanship before finally voting to pass the deal.

So no, the “Obama caved” left wasn’t responsible for the only infuriating responses to the deal, but they were infuriating nevertheless because, after all, liberals are supposed to be the smart, rational ones. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Again.

As soon as the deal was announced on New Year’s Eve, the far-left kneejerked into its predictable boilerplate apoplexy: calling for the president’s head with the scripted refrains of “He betrayed the left! IEEEEEE!” even though the fiscal cliff deal is mostly composed of a 4.6 percent tax hike on the top tax bracket returning it to the Clinton-era level, along with an extension of unemployment benefits for long-term jobless Americans, and $15 billion in spending cuts. $600 billion in revenue versus $15 billion in cuts. By the way, the $30 billion in unemployment benefits will result in $48.6 billion in economic growth, per Moody’s calculations. Good news and a good investment in the economy.

In addition, the payroll tax holiday will expire, and the estate tax will increase to 40 percent from the Bush-era 35 percent. This, evidently, is the president “caving” to the Republicans — the reversal of 20 years of Republican tax policy. The party that pledged to never raise taxes voted for a nearly 5 percent tax hike on the rich, while extending an import section of the social safety net for another year.

Now, I have a sense of what some on the left would’ve preferred, but, as usual, what the left wants and what’s politically achievable are often two different things, considering the intransigent congressional Republicans. It’s clear the Republicans would never have voted for the ideal liberal package. They came closer than ever before, but they’ll never break the zero barrier. Not these Republicans. They wanted Social Security and Medicare cuts. They wanted to renew all of the Bush tax cuts. They wanted severe spending cuts to everything except defense. Instead, the Republicans voted for practically no cuts at all, and a tax hike on earners who George W. Bush famously referred to as his “base.” $41 in revenue for every $1 in spending cuts. That’s exceptional.

Given the contentious eleventh-hour outcome, it’s safe to assume the Republicans wouldn’t accept any further demands, and we can assume that if the president had held out for the most liberal version of a deal, there wouldn’t have been a deal at all. Consequently we’d risk a recession; a Wall Street sell-off today; the loss of unemployment benefits for millions of Americans; and a 50% tax hike on the lowest bracket — workers earning $0-$8,700 per year. For reasonable liberals, this is totally unacceptable. Coincidentally this is exactly what the House Republicans were willing to risk. Once again, as with the Affordable Care Act, the characters farthest to the left have somehow met up with the characters farthest to the right. I joked on Twitter that perhaps the usual liberal suspects would revive the effort to team up with Grover Norquist to kill the bill.

Throughout the day, the same phrase popped up: the president continuously moved his “line in the sand.” Paul Krugman, who I generally admire, wrote, “He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position.”

Two things about this. First, drawing a line in the sand is a negotiation tactic and not the ultimate expectation for a deal. Unless you’re a dictator. Negotiators draw a line in the sand in order to get their enemies as close to their position as possible, though obviously the Republicans, and especially the House variety, would never agree to everything the president or the left were demanding on that side of the line. Never. Second, Krugman also admitted that the president basically won the negotiation with many of the things he wanted. In response, John Aravosis wrote:

We got what you wanted, but you [Krugman] still feel we lost because you don’t like the way the President got what we wanted. What was wrong with the President’s approach, I ask? He caved on his promises, you say. But if the President caved on his promises, then how did we end up with what you wanted?

Negotiations are fluid affairs: chess-matches with fake-outs, gambits and uncertainty. If the president had drawn a line in the sand, the only thing left at the end would’ve been a really, really principled line in the sand. Everything else would’ve disintegrated.

This is one of the reasons why I strongly believe there are those on the left who would’ve screeched the same “Obama caved” gripe no matter what. Why? Peer-pressure and liberal cred. Because if they were to ever full-throatedly praise an Obama accomplishment, other liberals would shout them down as Obama-apologists and capitulators. Resistance is futile, and so forth. Admittedly, though, if the deal had included chained CPI on Social Security or cuts to Medicare, or an across-the-board renewal of the Bush tax cuts I probably would’ve lined up against the deal. But it turned out to be a far better result than I thought, and I honestly don’t care how the president got there at this point.

In the real world where there are real people coping with real problems, a deal was mandatory, as was a few concessions to the Republicans since they happen to control the House and nearly half of the Senate. If there was a whip count for everything the “Obama caved” liberals wanted, I’m happy to hear about it, but I don’t think it existed. It’s fine to try to push the president towards your personal legislative priorities, and the elimination of the chained CPI idea is probably a result of that effort, but liberal advocacy and activism shouldn’t include risking damage to the incomes and lives of the people who liberals are otherwise trying to help. That’s the same kind of sabotage and hostage-taking used by the congressional Republicans, and I don’t want any part of it.

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By Ted Lieverman: I get uneasy when I see liberals and progressives complaining so vigorously about President Barack Obama’s lack of accomplishments. Sure, the last four years have seen many mistakes and disappointments by the White House. But when I think about the realistic choices in the 2012 election, I remember with embarrassment my own private scandal from many years ago.

Okay, it’s time to come clean. Remember the election of Richard Nixon in 1968? That was my fault.

So there I am, a college sophomore, helping to run a local campaign office in Rockville Centre for Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar Democrat running for Congress in the Fifth District on Long Island. It’s the night before the election, and we are busy finalizing plans to contact voters, offer rides to the polls, respond to election irregularities, and flood our district with flyers.

Four nights before, President Lyndon Johnson had announced a partial halt in U.S. bombing of North Vietnam as a way of jump-starting the peace negotiations in Paris – and helping Vice President Hubert Humphrey win a close race against Republican Richard Nixon.

Lowenstein, who did more than anyone to dissuade Johnson from seeking reelection, who recruited Eugene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy to run against him, has so far refused to endorse Humphrey. Now, he says in a large meeting of staff and volunteers, the bombing halt and Humphrey’s recent speech in Salt Lake City on the war have convinced him that endorsing Humphrey is necessary. Many of us are dismayed at his decision and, though we continue to work hard for Lowenstein, resolve not to help Humphrey.

As we work on election eve, a union rep comes in and, noting the lack of any campaign materials for Humphrey, starts loading up our front table with flyers, brochures and bumper stickers. We coolly inform him not to leave those materials there, as this office is not supporting Humphrey. Angry and incredulous, he storms out. We pat ourselves on the back for our moral conviction and work through the night to prepare for the big day.

Election Day is hectic, and we’re still at the campaign party at 3 a.m. the day after. Lowenstein has won by a narrow margin, and the vote for President is still too close to call, with Humphrey trailing slightly.

You know the end of the story. Nixon wins, keeps the war going, expands it to Cambodia and Laos, wiretaps his friends as well as his enemies, amasses huge amounts of illegal slush funds, assembles a secret spy team known as the Plumbers, obstructs justice, and ultimately goes down in flames, resigning from office in 1974 while facing near-certain impeachment by the House of Representatives.

And why did Nixon win in 1968? Plenty of reasons, but the most immediate, and the one we had some control over, was the lack of effort by antiwar Democrats and the New Left who saw no important distinction between the candidates.

Maybe that’s true if you take the 30,000-foot view of politics – but almost no one lives their lives at 30,000 feet. They live on the ground, with their hopes and fears as they raise families, seek and keep employment, pay the mortgage, and cope with the outside world. Here on the ground who becomes President means the difference between health and safety regulations being enforced or ignored, between the water becoming more drinkable or more dangerous, between corruption being attacked or encouraged, between quality health care becoming more accessible or further out of reach, between pointless wars being encouraged or avoided.

The 2012 election presents a pretty stark choice. Either you support President Obama and fight for a government responsive to the needs of living human beings, based on the principle of one person, one vote – or you go with Mitt Romney and the Republican vision of one dollar, one vote, where corporations and fetuses are people but women and workers are second-class citizens.

If Romney wins, Wall Street will be invincible and Sesame Street will be toast. Oh … and the Supreme Court? Kiss it goodbye for a generation.

Some lefties talk about the trap of electoral politics, and how voting distracts from the real world of organizing. I’m all in favor of organizing (quick – which candidate used to be a community organizer?), but no one says organizers can’t take 30 minutes one day every two years to vote. Voting is not the denial of popular sovereignty but its affirmation.

This is not about the lesser of two evils. This is a choice between two roads, between moving – however slowly and haltingly – to protect citizens through democratically elected government; or moving further towards de facto government by corporate giants. Your vote, your choice.

But don’t make that stupid, naïve decision that it doesn’t matter. Even though Humphrey took New York by over 350,000 votes, I still feel like I learned the hard way.

Ted Lieverman is a free-lance photographer and former lawyer in Philadelphia.

(Originally published at ConsortiumNews.com)

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Further evidence of a superficial high-school-level political party.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss the impact of far-left anti-Obama voters on the president’s chances in November; the potential of a Romney electoral bump from Paul Ryan’s P90X good looks; and the threats of violent rebellion from far-right zealots.

The questions:

Do you think the Firebaggers, Greenwaldians, Libetarian Leftists and other various and sundry anarcho-nihilists will have any impact in diminishing the vote for Obama (via convincing people to stay home or to write in a vanity candidate) in swing states this year?
-Christopher

Ben: They could well do. I definitely get the need to be critical of Obama, but the Libertarian Left is actively damaging to the progressive movement in general. While they preach only to their own acolytes and don’t attempt to engage in meaningful dialogue with anyone else, they do have success in converting people who are disillusioned with the Democrats and the direction of the country. I understand this, but it’s self defeating and pointless at the end of the day. Yeah, the Democrats suck, but some of them do good things and it’s worth getting behind them when they do. Also, the alternative is so awful that it’s almost criminal to let them get anywhere near power. Sadly, the Firebaggers/Greenwaldians etc etc are so obsessed with their own flawless ideology that they can’t see how damaging their behavior is, particularly when the stakes are so high. I hope their influence isn’t too big in swing states this year, but given how driven they are to destroy Obama, it could be a big threat to his re-election.

Chez: I think there’s going to be a disillusioned segment of the progressive electorate that’ll basically cross its arms and pout like my four-year-old when I won’t buy her Skittles, but I think it’s a very small, very far-left bloc, and that it’s basically complaining among itself and creating an echo chamber only it hears. I’ve said it before but I can’t stress how serious I am about it: I really don’t think most people give a crap what Greenwald, Hamsher, Sirota etc. have to say. They’re all the worst kind of liberal cliches — and at least two of them are in it for thoroughly self-serving reasons (the third simply suffers from Asperger’s). I have to believe that most people in this country who are center-left really are center-left — they’re independent thinkers, they’re not ideologues, and they understand political reality. Plus I think that Romney and Ryan have now set up such a contrast with Obama when it comes to ideas and plans for the future of this country that most people really do realize that there’s a lot at stake in November.

Bob: It depends on how close the election is. If the election comes down to a few swing districts and the margin is narrow, there could be hell to pay. I didn’t think Ralph Nader would have an impact in the 2000 election, but it turned out that if everyone in Florida who had voted for Nader had, instead, voted for Al Gore, Gore would have won that election. The same effect will occur whether they register a protest vote or if they stay home. But whichever way they decide to register their childish disgust with the Obama administration, they’ll just be helping Romney get closer to 270 electoral votes. Any liberal who would prefer to see a Romney presidency is an phenomenally huge idiot.

What do any/all of you make of the Paul Ryan “Pretty Boy” factor? Is it even close to the really weird Sarah Palin attraction that some guys had in 2008?
-Nadine

Chez: If you’re the kind of person who lusts after the Winklevoss twins then you probably think Paul Ryan is 100% gorgeous man-meat. Like most hardcore conservatives, there isn’t a damn thing cool or sexy about Ryan, but that’s the point: the pickings are mighty slim for women on the right. Ryan is one of those guys who isn’t really attractive, but since he happens to not look like, say, Louie Gohmert or Newt Gingrich, you know he gets tons of Republican pussy. Or he would, if he weren’t consumed by Catholic guilt for all the times he’s masturbated. But yeah, Bob made the point on the podcast this week that it’s only a matter of time until beefcake pictures of Paul Ryan are released in an effort to sell Ryan in a more superficial way than the usual “he’s a serious wonk” thing — and those pictures will be released by the GOP. You can count on it. And yes, since it’ll all be part of the big message, Dana Loesch will play the role of Rich Lowry this time around and openly discuss how wet the image of a shirtless Paul Ryan gets her and how she needs to seek the immediate relief of her detachable Kohl shower head with the rapid-massage setting.

Ben: Hmm, interesting take Nadine. Ryan has some actual intelligence – he’s completely wrong about everything, but he can string a sentence together, and that makes the parallels with Palin a little tricky. But he is a doll like politician there to appeal to a demographic rather than be a serious running mate, so I guess there’s a comparison. I think the GOP has learned from the Palin debacle, and they won’t put up anyone that idiotic again.

Bob: I don’t think women — even conservative women — are as easily fished-in by superficial good looks as men are. I think we all remember how creepy middle aged men went nuts for Sarah Palin and her task-master substitute teacher look, and they all but ignored the fact that she could barely string together a coherent sentence. Conservative women will still vote for Romney/Ryan, but moderate women will vote based on the usual criteria. However, try this on for size: I think men — self-identified straight men — will vote for Romney/Ryan based on their looks. It’s the “central casting presidential stereotype” factor. Way too many men could vote for the Republican ticket because they’re good looking, chiseled and — most importantly — white. This goes for both Romney and Ryan.

I have seen many posts by neo-con friends that say they will take back is country by ballot or by bullet. I’d like to know who they are going to shoot.
-Kristi

Bob: They won’t shoot anyone because they’re all cowards. Most of them are chickenhawks and slack-jawed, tubby weekend paintball warriors who have no idea what warfare is really all about. And they’re certainly not educated enough to understand the death and destruction of the American Civil War. 620,000 Americans were killed and the states’ rights side was totally decimated and was forced to surrender. Not a strong precedent for success. But you know, part of me would like to see them try. A gaggle of semi-drunk NASCAR yokels against the American military. Good luck with that.

Ben: Neo cons are completely full of it – they all preach war but none of them would (or could) actually fight when it comes down to it. Empty threats in my opinion.

Chez: If you have to ask it’s probably you.

——

Got a question for the mailbag? Email us at TheDailyBanter@gmail.com!!!

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One of the problems – and they are multifold – with Air America is that so much of it has always been set up as a more partisan version of NPR. If people want an NPR experience, they’re going to turn on NPR. NPR will do a better job.

Now apparently Air America plans to ask its listeners for donations. This is ridiculous. They are, theoretically, a talk radio network. After all these years, they should act more like one. How about some talk radio programs and not NPRish content. NPR entertains and informs but it doesn’t often drive people to political action – that was supposed to be the reason, as well as business, behind Air America – and it has failed at it several times now.

P.S. I should note that if, six years ago, you had told me that the random idiots on computers would be light years ahead of the multimillion dollar liberal talk radio effort, I would have laughed my ass off at you. That said, its not all annoying.

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You might remember that before inauguration I had a hell of a time bitching at people on the left who were ready to whine and moan about Obama’s position and initiatives on certain issues before he was even sworn in. Three months in, I think that was the right call. It seems to often that especially on our side of the aisle, anything less than perfection calls for one to be burned at the stake.

On balance of course I feel that for every 1000 good things the administration does there is one they screw up. For instance the foot dragging over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is kind of hard to understand. It isn’t the cultural hot-button it was back in 1993, and if anything its simply a national security issue – well qualified military members are getting kicked out solely for their orientation and that’s whacked.

So far we’ve got an administration that values common sense and science over ideology and a perverted view of religion and that’s cause for hope. While personally I would rather congress not be such an impediment to enacting the President’s agenda, the idea is that he and his people get challenged to do the right thing and not just be given a rubber stamp like the GOP congress gave to Bush.

The biggest test on this is likely to be health care, where the Obama team’s apparent moderation needs to be pushed to be more ambitious from the left and not just incremental change for p.r.’s sake that accomplishes the right’s mission of leaving the system broken as it is. If for no other reason than national pride we shouldn’t have a second rate health care system.

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Patrick Ruffini writes another one of those “the left is screwing everything up, the right can capitalize on this with our silly nonsensical slogans and policy proposals” blog entries and winds up:

The right will be galvanized to action by the theft of the free enterprise system. What will the left be galvanized by?

Me: A competent and consistent well working government in the tradition of the American people.

One of the only reasons George W. Bush won the electoral college in 2000 (while losing the popular vote) was that the Democrat in office had done such a good job the American people figured that there was a limited amount of harm a conservative Republican president could do – we had surpluses for Christ’s sake – and even under those circumstances the Republican had to run as a “compassionate conservative” and not the fringe sort of Palin/Limbaugh conservative that the Republican base now thinks is a normal person. Seriously, how could you not look at the Republican leadership and prominent Republicans like Jindal, Palin, etc. and not laugh your ass off?

The Republican party is now in “crazy base world” and has no way out for the near term. Even if they knock off a few Dems in conservative districts next year, they’re likely to react to McCain’s loss by picking a diehard “savior” who’s likely to have the same sort of electoral luck when the Republicans tried that strategy in 1964 and when the Democrats tried the liberal version in 1972 and 1984.

Should that happen, 2016 is less likely to be 1968 or 1980 as they so badly want, but rather, its likely to be a 1940.

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It’s totally impossible for the U.S. government to run a large organization without it being a colossal failure. Big programs under government control always fail.

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