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[TA]

I can't help but feel like abortion is being looked at entirely backwards.  "When is it okay to terminate this life" is already a biased point of view.  Abortion, to me, always seemed like an issue of "When a woman who is pregnant wants to no longer be pregnant, when and under what circumstances is it okay to tell her 'Too bad'?"  Though maybe that's equally as loaded, because hell if I can think of any.

[Norondor]

The answer is "none."

[Detonator]

I can't think of any definite rule to follow except "judge each case for itself" which is not saying anything new.  I'd like to think I could lay down some line where I could say "an abortion is absolutely unacceptable in this situation", but that would be arguing hypotheticals, and I could probably be easily swayed into allowing it.

[sei]

The baby is fine and 9 months in, the bitch be crazywoman is mentally unfit to make decisions or do much of anything but gestate while strapped to a bed, and the government facilities can raise the baby without fucking the kid up or using taxpayer dollars?  Maybe the woman menstruates gold, once the kid is out of her.  You know, for good measure.

[Thad]

Jesse Jackson: "I want to cut his nuts off."

Easy joke: Too late.

[Thad]

Obama takes McCain and Gramm to task for suggesting the remedies to our economic problems are psychological.  He says this is something real, not something that people are just making up and can get over with a positive attitude.

You can probably guess which recent statement he made that I would like to contrast this observation with.

Meantime, though: yes yes yes oh my yes, please please PLEASE keep Phil Gramm front and center in the McCain campaign.  There is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, better for the Democrats right now than the Republicans referring to America as a "nation of whiners" and dismissing the concerns of the electorate as trivial or imagined.

It sort of makes it harder for them to make the "elitist" label stick to Obama.

"Nation of whiners."  My God.  Somebody said that.  Out loud.  In a newspaper interview.

I mean, I've been referring to Republicans as the Blame the Victim Party for years, but they're usually smarter about it.

[Brentai]

I wonder how easy it would be to get one of them to say "Let them fill their tanks with cake."

[Zaratustra]

How long until someone says global warming is psychological?

[Thad]

Obama op-ed in the NYT emphasizes al-Maliki saying we need to get out.

This is important.  The Iraqis want us out, the Americans want us out, and the only motherfuckers who want us to stay there are the Neocons.  Obama's done some really boneheaded shit over the past month, but this is exactly the right thing to emphasize right now.

[Mongrel]

Well, there's crass and then there's crass.

Yeah, I understand the intent just fine, but then there's satire and there's satire with blowback.

(THAD EDIT: Spoiler tag removed.  Link refers to New Yorker cover with Obamas as Muslim militants.)

[Thad]

(Oh Jesus, so now people are drawing up battle lines.)

I'm falling somewhere in the middle on this.  I don't think it's funny or well-executed, but I also think its intent is blisteringly obvious and anyone who says it isn't is either stupid or lying.

At any rate, I find it absurd that it's probably going to dominate this news cycle.  There's REAL shit to talk about.

But it would've been loads better if it'd had some teeth.  Even a little Fox News logo in the corner would have vastly improved it.

[Royal☭]

It's really sad because everyone seems to be getting up in arms about what is essentially the Onion's political cartoons.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, my main beef is that it's presnted as something that the average intelligent individual will 'get', when the quality of public debate has long since fallen way way farther than that. It's enourmously depressing but there ARE a significant number of peopple who will see that image out of context and take it at face value. And those people even vote sometimes.

A Fox logo or something similarly funny would have been what was needed to push it just over the edge. Even simply a showcase article subtitle 'The Politics Of Fear' would have worked, though I know the New Yorker never uses cover subtitles. 

Projection: Unless Obama blows this off as a tempest in a teapot ASAP, the Democrats are going to get hit on this simply for overreacting.

[Mongrel]

Tangeant: Note that an article on 'The Politics Of Fear' is using an exclusively partisan image. I'm not sure if a more bipartisan parody would have been a better choice, but it's something to think about (however breifly).

[François]

Tangeant: Note that an article on 'The Politics Of Fear' is using an exclusively partisan image. I'm not sure if a more bipartisan parody would have been a better choice, but it's something to think about (however breifly).

I get what you mean, but I'm not sure what exactly is commonly said about McCain that is as false as what is said about Obama. He's old? He agrees with Bush a lot? You can draw a picture of him on puppet strings held by GWB, and a grim reaper in the background looking at his watch, and maybe the demented ghost of Ronald Reagan. But then it's not a bunch of outright lies; it's just an exaggeration. (As far as I know.)

Of all the things McCain's opponents commonly say to criticize him, are there any that aren't actually true? I mean, there probably are, but I wouldn't know.

[Brentai]

I'm falling somewhere in the middle on this.  I don't think it's funny or well-executed, but I also think its intent is blisteringly obvious and anyone who says it isn't is either stupid or lying.

I think this has been said already, but the problem is that a lot of people are stupid.  And, at the same time, a lot of people are lying.  You gotta remember we're dealing with a public that actually believed the Swift Boat campaigns.

But yeah, it's gonna be shit if this becomes a main talking point.  Where's that "I don't care" image macro, damn it?

ADDENDUM: McCain gets accused of having way more health problems than he actually does.  Still just an exaggeration in the general sense, but you can probably dig up a few that are blatantly false (early-onset Alzheimer's, recurring cancer, etc.)

[Royal☭]

And health problems are blatantly anti-American.  They cost our hard-working health insurance companies lots of money they spent so much time conning from us.

[Thad]

Yeah, my main beef is that it's presnted as something that the average intelligent individual will 'get', when the quality of public debate has long since fallen way way farther than that. It's enourmously depressing but there ARE a significant number of peopple who will see that image out of context and take it at face value. And those people even vote sometimes.

The people who believe the "OBAMA IS A SECRET MUSLIM" chains do not read The New Yorker.  So whose fault is this, The New Yorker, or everybody else who's making a big goddamn deal out of it?  (Not an either-or proposition.)

[Mongrel]

Tangeant: Note that an article on 'The Politics Of Fear' is using an exclusively partisan image. I'm not sure if a more bipartisan parody would have been a better choice, but it's something to think about (however breifly).

I get what you mean, but I'm not sure what exactly is commonly said about McCain that is as false as what is said about Obama. He's old? He agrees with Bush a lot? You can draw a picture of him on puppet strings held by GWB, and a grim reaper in the background looking at his watch, and maybe the demented ghost of Ronald Reagan. But then it's not a bunch of outright lies; it's just an exaggeration. (As far as I know.)

Of all the things McCain's opponents commonly say to criticize him, are there any that aren't actually true? I mean, there probably are, but I wouldn't know.

Perhaps non-partisan would have been a better choice of words than bipartisan. Appeals to fear are a problem that affects more than just one side of the political spectrum in a single country.

For Bonus Points.

[Royal☭]

I think the picture is perfectly fine.  It doesn't make me laugh out loud, but I don't really find the New Yorker all that funny in the first place.  What's said is that it's getting a lot of negative reaction from the left.

I think the main tip off for this thing is the bump that Michelle and Obama are doing front and center in the image.  This gesture caused a lot of embarrassing publicity for the neo-cons who tried to paint it as some anti-White, anti-American terrorist code and became famous as an example of the misplaced fears of right about Obama.  It's prominence in the center sends a clear message to the average New Yorker read (who probably isn't some pinko, baby-killing leftist) that the entire affair is satire.

But instead of focusing on that, we get the left declaring (which is the only side I've heard so far) declaring that it's bad art, distasteful, and crass.  When did we lose our sense of humor?