Krauthammer: Keep Hope Dead
Today Charles Krauthammer explains why he's voting for John McCain even though he considers Barack Obama the better man. If Obama wins...
1) "Large men will come to your house at night and ask you to sign a card supporting a union."
2) "The so-called Fairness Doctrine -- a project of Nancy Pelosi and leading Democratic senators -- a Hugo Chávez-style travesty [will try to ] abolish conservative talk radio."
3)"Judges [will be] chosen according to Obama's publicly declared criterion: empathy' for the poor or African American or gay or disabled or old."
Wow. Scary.
But, he concludes, Obama will win anyway, because people will fall for "the blinding promise of Obamian hope."
And there's the key to the column. Krauthammer is the guy who openly despised the late great Christopher Reeve because he offered disabled kids "false hope."
McCain then is perfect. He offers none, neither false nor real.
Relative to Paranoid Charlie's enumerated fears:
1) I've been in a union. No big deal there. I noticed few if any large (subtext: threatening) men hanging around during union meetings or elections.
2) 'Splain me how this is a bad thing.
3) As opposed to judges who favor their patrons' corporate donors, overly vocal religious interests, and profit over people? Again, on close examination, where are the grounds to worry?
Have they yet developed a cure for the sort of hatred-fueled paranoia afflicting Krauthammer? And if so, can we take away his writing implements instead so he suffers in silence?
October 31, 2008 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Damn! Sounds like my legislative wish list. We can only hope (though I doubt it) that at least some of this actually does happen.
October 31, 2008 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just to say that, from the perspective of a non-American non-Jew, the entertainment value of these weekly tirades against Krauthammer is colossal. Another reason to look forward to Fridays. Keep it up, M.J.!
October 31, 2008 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Did I tell you about Kraut going nuts in synagogue? Yeah, I guess I did.
October 31, 2008 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I want to thank you for adding that on the end of you post. I had almost forgotten about that incident. In fact I don't think I had even given it a thought since...oh maybe last night, late.
October 31, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
MJ,
using the words Kraut and synagogue in the same sentence brings up visuals I'd rather keep repressed.
October 31, 2008 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Charles Krauthammer has Hope bound and captive in his basement where he subjects it to vile and unwholesome sexual practices of a sadistic nature. He keeps trying to force Hope to confess it's liberal nature but Hope, unlike John McCain, refuses to give in under torture and insists it belongs to all people and is on a mission from the Old Ones at the Center of the Galaxy that is inviolable.
In his next life, Krauthammer will be reincarnated as a coprophage. Oh, wait, that's his current incarnation!
October 31, 2008 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Christ, c4, that post turned me on.
October 31, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I keep trying to push politically incorrect into the politically toxic zone--but--really--if Krauthammer were merely a cretinous imbecile like Joe the Plumber and Dumber--I could AT LEAST understand that comprehension what simply beyond his native talents. But Krauthammer, has evidenced signs of intelligence, even cleverness, so he CHOOSES to be wrong minded--and he takes money for it. If there IS a Hell, there are special places in it. Beelzebub has definitely set a devil aside with Krauthammer tatoo'd on its forhead.
So he might as well take money to be filmed being raped by wild wolverines--it's not like it would be any more degenerate than what he is already doing...
October 31, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
c4,
besides, he's creepy looking. He actually looks like one of the scary guys in a certain fright movie but I can never place who it is.
October 31, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
You might be thinking of Vincent Schiavelli who played the nasty subway ghost in the 1990 Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore film 'Ghost'. As soon as I saw your post, it came to me.
October 31, 2008 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
A coprophage? Yum. What an image.
November 2, 2008 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
America is at War. At War I tells you! Besieged on all sides by terrible enemies! Only a strong Dictator^H^H^H^H Commander-In-Chief can save her from bloody defeat and Islamo-fascist slavery! Vota for McCain - he's not a cringing defeatist like Obama.
October 31, 2008 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chris,
the Godless hordes are coming over the hill!
Hide your kids. Get the word out; THE LIBERALS ARE COMING, THE LIBERALS ARE COMING!!!!
October 31, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know what LIBERAL is, but if it scares them, I LIKE it. I want to be a LIBERAL too. As a Buddhist, I am already Sans Deus.
October 31, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Krauthammer's been so fed up with McCain's antics and missteps and shortcomings that he did a complete turnaround and announced his..... complete support for him?
Perhaps Krauthammer was so enraged that he overshot his intended 180 degree turn by 180 degrees--thus landing him exactly where he started.
October 31, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Trillion dollar debt. Nothing to show for it.
Nothing.
October 31, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
M.J.: Any comments on what Joe Klein has just written: "For people like Doug Feith et al, their Jewish identity--their ethnic nationalism, not the religious part of it--had an awful lot to do with their plumping for war with Iraq and, more recently, Iran. Feith et al advised Binyamin Netanyahu, in a paper called "A Clean Break," to go to war with Iraq when he was Prime Minister in order to protect Israel. I find the conflation, by some Jewish neoconservatives, of Israel's interests and America's--and their truly dangerous misreading of both--to be appalling." I'm sure lots of non-Jews have long harboured dark suspicions of this kind, but have never dared to say them out loud. But if Joe is right, then US foreign policy was improperly influenced by people who were effectively agents of a foreign power. One can be put on trial for that, can't one?
October 31, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
To give neoconservatives "credit" for dual loyalty is giving them credit for one too many. I have never read or heard about a neocon who cares about America.
And, yes, Feith et al should be tried.
October 31, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
R U Serious???
Obama will destroy the fabric of this country. Bush has had the unenviable task of dealing with Clinton's screwed policies of the 90s. Spread the wealth?? How f'kd up is that? Giving to others, what other hardworking Americans earned themselves? How does destroying the motivation of others benefit this nation? And for taxing only the wealthy? Get Real! Does anyone in their right mind believe that really works? The wealthy will only drive up the costs of the goods and services they produce and then everybody pays more. In managing the economy it has been proven time and time again that by reducing the burden on all Americans, people all across the economic spectrum, benefit. Back to Obama and his lack of National Security experience/ policy. He will allow Iran and North Korea to break down America's power and will allow Russia to return to be one the World Powers they once were. By the time Obama's done, instead of America being the only true world power, there will 4 or 5 and America will likely fall 3 or 4 down the scale in the world. So thank you Obama supporters for being a conributing factor in the fall of the good ole U S of A.
October 31, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
All the things you fear Obama would do, especially in terms of America's world power, America's standing, both economically and militarily have already been immensely diminished.
If you don't think we've severely depleted these leverage points, you're replacing reality with ideology.
October 31, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is really good satire! Congratulations! For a brief moment I thought you were serious, and that is the sign of great satire.
October 31, 2008 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
albarnes,
didn't I just see this same post on another thread? Are you getting paid piecework?
October 31, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
You cannot possibly be as ignorant as you sound. This is a put on right. Re distributing the wealth is what progressive tax policy has done for many, many decades. It's what John McCain was for before he had to fight Obama for his political life. Sarah Palin has redistributed more tax dollars to Alaskans than any other governor. As for leading the world, what, in failed military misadventures? In collapsed credit default swaps, broken collateralized debt obligations. Sorry, Bub, that happened on the Republican watch. You don't know much, do you...
October 31, 2008 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you realize that producers only produce goods and services that they expect to sell? Production will be ramped up to meet demand, but demand has to be both need/desire for the goods and services together with the money needed to buy them.
Goods and services are mostly purchased by consumers - who get their income from work. The amount consumed by the wealthy is negligible. There aren't enough of them.
America's problem is that since 1970 the real wages of consumers have not increased. The increased value caused by increased productivity has been siphoned off by the wealthy. Consumption has increased because consumers have increasingly gone into debt. It is debt that suddenly is no longer available because the unbalance economy can no longer support the parasitic wealthy individuals sucking off the wealth created by increased productivity.
A combination of a stronger progressive income tax, increased capital gains tax, and a significant inheritance tax is what it will take to bring the economy back to a sustainable balance.
It's not like the CEOs and extremely wealthy are earning the excess money they receive. No one adds 400 times the value produced by the average worker. There are also sharply diminished returns to the motivation provided by greater rates of pay. The wealthy don't do ten times the work for ten times the pay.
The wealthy have institutionalized theft of the value produced by the workers who actually do value creation. That's what the $700 plus billion bail out is all about. It is the wealthy taxing the workers and siphoning off the value created by those workers, and as David Cay Johnston pointed out, the profits of Wal-Mart are about equal to the tax rebates given them as incentives by local governments to build a new Wal-Mart. Of course, that new Wal-Mart drives local retailers who are paying full taxes out of business, reducing both jobs and local taxes overall.
The economy is going to remain bad as long as the fantasy of trickle-down economics is supported by the government. The government has to focus on supporting the middle class rather than the rich if our economy is going to really recover and not become just another Latin American economy with a population of about 15% wealthy and well-to-do and 85% poor and struggling.
November 3, 2008 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why can't they just substitute Lionell Barrymore's picture - as "Mr Potter" in "It's a Wonderful Life." for Bitter Crippled Charlie's picture?
Precisely the same personality.
October 31, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just can't waste words on Chuckie Craphugger!
November 1, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink