Wednesday, February 24, 2010

"Who will rid me of this meddlesome legislatural procedure?"

Amanda Marcotte (actual photo)

Back in the halcyon days of pwoggiedom, when the dems were a senate minority and their useless pwoggie allies had 1001 excuses for their master's mendacity, the senate filibuster was "wingnut insurance" - the last line of trenches that poor beleagured yet heroic Dems could man to repel the noxious tide of Repububthugrapelican aggression. Back then, the Panderdome fairly rang with demands for the D's to filibuster this or that. Their furor over the hated Other War Party's threat to use the "Nuclear Option" could not be contained by mere pixels. Why, the venerated Filibuster was even revered as an institution second only to Amnesty International on The Panderer's list of that which must be forever preserved from Bushian eeeeeeevil!11!!!one!!eleventy!!1!!

But now that we live in the Age of Ponies and Rainbows, the venerable filibuster has fallen on hard times. The pwoggie bloggie brigade, which once enshrined it as an indispensable shield against the forces of darkness, now scheme it's very destruction. "Kill it!" shrieks Amanda Pander, and her bobble-head bloggie chorus, carefully culled from the finest democrat jellyfish the intarwebs has to offer, takes up the call. "Kill the demon filibuster!" There hasn't been such an uproar in the Panderdome since Edwards kicked her and Shakes from his campaign.

Now, I put it to the jury. Is Pander a flaming hypocrite? Or is she just a clueless pwog? I leave it to your capable judgement...

(Update: Before the filibuster became "crazy" and "arcane", La Digs was urging her minions to go out on a wild and crazy limb and actually do something to protect it. True, that something was a lameass PFAW call-in scheme - but, hey! That's about as active as pwoggies ever get.)

12 comments:

  1. I'm thinking both. For lack of anything more original, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

    Besides, all I know of filibustering is what I've heard handed down in glorious legends in high school history class. I've never seen a real live filibuster, and I'm rather disappointed.

    I thought for sure we were going to see one over the Healthcare, Insurance And Pharmaceutical Industries Giveaways... uh, that is, the Healthcare Reform Bill -- granted, it would've likely been delivered by Joe Lieberman in that annoying-assed mumbly, mealy-mouthy voice of his -- but everybody on the Hill wussied out at the last minute. Harrumph. I thought I was really going to see some shit, at last.

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  2. Hah hah hah hah (actual laughter)

    Excellent Janus-headed Marcotte!

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  3. FWIW, Ben Alpers pretty much nails Amanda Pander's bi-partisan perfidity to the wall in the comments section...

    "The Republicans, while happy to make abortion less accessible to poor people, are never going to pass a Human Life Amendment. And the Democrats are never going to pass a PO or union card check. Both parties will happily vote for these things when they’re in the minority, however. It’s a matter of behaving in ways that please your base while never actually doing anything that angers the folks paying the bills."

    The Panderqueen doesn't lightly accept actual truth being told on her blog. Expect Ben to be banhammered from the Panderdome in the near future.

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  4. Ben will understand. Those of us who have been booted from lib-pwog blogs and forums for similar behavior understand.

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  5. Oxtrot was booted from over there? I'm jealous.

    My low nausea threshold made me quit that dive in disgust a couple of years ago, at least. But I didn't go out in a blaze of glory or anything. If Alpers manages some entertaining drama in his exit, more power to him. :)

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  6. I'm also jealous. If you ask me, being booted from one of those blogs is a badge of honor.

    Too bad you couldn't go the blaze of glory route, though, Ms. X. My own personal philosophy has been to be totally balls-out, and go for the gusto; I figure if you're gonna go for it, either go whole hog or go the fuck home.

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  7. Everyone who's anyone has been booted from the Panderdome. One might say they are "Beyond Panderdome."

    Sorry.

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  8. No I didn't get booted from there but I did get booted from quite a few others. Daily Kos, firedoglake, Moon of Alabama, Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory, Crooks and Liars, Smirking Chimp. And a couple Marxist sites too.

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  9. Eh, sorry, Mike. Guess my get-up-and-go got up and went sometime around '06. I keep meaning to go out and look for it, but the liquor store is only three blocks from the house and, well...

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  10. Whoa, Oxtrot! You got booted from Crooks and Liars? They always struck me as a fairly even site. And, Smirking Chimp...? Man, that must've taken some doing -- or, maybe not. Believe it or not, I don't read a whole lot of Liberal blogs, so I couldn't really tell who's more anal than who about dissent from the Left.

    As far as being kicked off of Daily Kos -- hell, I'll bet even Rachel Maddow could do something to be kicked off of there. All you'd have to do is display a basic grasp of normal objective reality.

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  11. It was a good while ago, 2003-2006 era. All one had to do back then was question whether the Democrats helped Bush implement his particular form of fascism. It only took a few posts. Of course the style of posting may have had something to do with it.

    Daily Kos was the first to banish me. Then Greenwald. The others were a blur. I'm pretty sure Arianna's Fashion Show banished me too.

    One place I don't think anyone could be kicked off is Information Clearing House. The comments there are some of the most absurdly distorted I've ever read. Anti-Jew stuff by the truckload; nimrod libertarianism aplenty.

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  12. Charles F. Oxtrot writes:
    ...Of course the style of posting may have had something to do with it...


    Style of posting? Y'mean, just blurting out the straight raw truth? Yeah, I can see how that'd make your average Liberal Donkeycrats crap their drawers in indignation. Of course, for me, it makes pushing their buttons that much more fun.

    Outfits like Red State or Free Republic will pitch a fit, too, but they'll actually engage you in an attempt to change your mind or point out how you're aiding Bin Laden or you're a "moonbat" or some shit. At least the right wingnuts are comfortable with themselves. The Liberal Donkeycrat bloggers, however, seem so totally consumed with guilt and self-doubt -- seemingly aware, deep down, of how wrong they are, of how totally they're being played, and how thoroughly motivated by fear and desperation they are -- that pointing out the straight raw truth to them just totally sends them over the edge.

    That's why I get so much more satisfaction doing cartoons that needle the Liberals and Donkeycrats. Lampooning the right wingnuts is easy, like shooting fish in a barrel; everybody does it; they're the low-hanging fruit. It takes real serious cajones to attack Liberals and Democrats from the left, though, and therefore much more rewarding.

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