Wish-I’d-said-that Dep’t: Michael Moore on Dopey Harry

25 thoughts on “Wish-I’d-said-that Dep’t: Michael Moore on Dopey Harry”

1. It doesn’t help that the handful of conservative Hollywood stars seem to have a much higher ratio of nuttery.

2. I thought it was just part of the GOP plan to ween America onto returning to the days when your parents moved in with you if they started to suffer from dementia once they axe most of Medicaid and dole out Medicare coupons. I mean, in their speeches Mitt Romney talked about how families want to “do more for their elderly mom who’s living alone now” and Paul Ryan was full of nostalgia for when his grandmother moved in after Alzheimer’s struck. It’s all part of how awesome America was back when you had to live fearing that your childrens’ potential might be limited by the personal and financial costs of your long-term care.

3. The post title seems to be invisible. Is this commentary?

   1. No, just error. Fixed now.

4. It was all about the attitude– a big FU to Obama and the horse he rode in on. Plenty consistent. Not normal convention fare, but the audience reaction showed they got it. Really, although we have to dissect policy fakery like Ryan’s and romney’s, for teepers and shouters it isn’t about the policy. Underneath it all, it’s about the attitude. They hate the guy and will energetically cite 87 mutually inconsistent things before breakfast just to prove it.

   1. Eastwood’s performance metaphorically captured the modern Republican party’s collective psyche, and projected the following descriptors into my mind as I watched: unhinged, unmoored, unanchored, unteethered, dotage, endangering all who may come in contact with it!

      The attendees who applauded the empty chair schtick are the ones to keep our eyes on as we traverse into the future – not a fearful eye, but one that is vigilant to the creeping political madness engulfing the party whole!

5. It was still the best speech of the whole convention.

   1. The chair is now a prohibitive favorite for the 2016 nomination.

6. ‘Speech’, yes I liked it because it was a non speech, amdist all the hopelessly canned and very predictable speeches. Clint’s endorsement was real with all the hesitations, equivocations and mistakes. Too bad for Romney, Clint was past his best form, but otherwise it was more watchable, (maybe not for pure wool Republicans), than almost anything else I saw last night.

7. “Fahrenheit 9-1-1′s descent into Trutherism helped re-elect Bush”

   What preposterous rot.

   Quick, name all the US incumbent presidents who failed to be reelected while US troops were fighting overseas.

   Answer: only LBJ, because he chose not to run.

   1. How many incumbent Presidents lost re-election in the remotely modern era? The ones that occur to me are Hoover, Carter, and George HW Bush; if pressed I’d add Ford, but it’s a stretch to call him an incumbent, as his ’76 race was his first time on a national ballot, and the post-Watergate election was in any case an extraordinary circumstance.

      Meanwhile, eight incumbent Presidents have won re-election: FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Dubya. And of those, not counting FDR (who was re-elected once before WWII began in Europe, and again before the US entered the war) or Truman (re-elected in peacetime, and before war broke out in Korea), the only ones who even fit your thesis areDubya, and LBJ – but LBJ had just started escalation of US involvement in Vietnam when he faced the voters in 1964.

      Basically, your thesis looks extremely weak. This is especially the case if you move beyond incumbent President to their designated heir. Three times since WWII we have had elections during major direct, on-the-ground involvement of American troops in overseas conflicts in which the incumbent President wasn’t running, and his party’s nominee was: 1952, 1968, and 2008. In all three cases, the nominee of the incumbent’s party lost rather badly.

      Basically, your notion that ongoing war is a common strategy or a good thing for the incumbent administration seems a bit chancy.

      1. In other words, no sitting president who ever ran for reelection in ANY era has ever lost if there were troops fighting overseas.

         Thank you for agreeing with that.

         But the professor charges, with no proof, that Moore helped reelect W. It wasn’t that Kerry was a terrible candidate, Or that the mighty Wurlitzer of the press were still infatuated with W’s big package on the high seas off San Diefo. Nope, it was Michael Moore. What crap.

         1. Sure no sitting president has lost reelection in a war in the modern era. But if you exclude the extraordinary (LBJ with the mantle of the martyred JFK and barely in a war, and FDR facing his third reelection contest and with the war clearly going our way), it’s only been tried once. And the other three times the President’s party tried to hold onto the office in wartime, they failed.

            You seem extremely confident of your glib notion under the circumstances.

   2. I’m not convinced Mark actually saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I watched it in the theater and was struck by the fact that it was not about Trutherism. It was about Bush/Cheney’s negligence before, during and after the attacks. And it was about how close they were to the Saudis which compromised their investigation. And then it was about how they politically manipulated public fears after the attack to start a war against a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks, namely Iraq.

      And really, Mark’s hyperbole gets the better of it to think that Moore’s film helped Bush. Why would someone vote for Bush after watching that film? It’s ridiculous. It’s just Mark channeling his hatred of the Chomsky oriented Left, which has no power, but is a convenient punching bag for Clintonoid-Obamanians like Mark.

      1. God how naive. You Chomsky-types are the Akins of the left. Your power is to revolt moderates and drive them to the right, and you exercise it regularly. If you didn’t exist, the RNC would have created you.

         1. in what sense naive? and in what part of the mainstream media would it be possible to see a chomsky-type point of view long enough to generate recognition much less revulsion? and let’s not even get into how much documentation chomsky offers when he makes an assertion. all chomsky does is hold up a mirror to the united states. it’s not his fault if the image isn’t pretty.

8. Note that none of Romney’s handlers wants to take responsibility for the debacle. It’s a sad day when a law professor at a top school has less respect for her credibility than a bunch of spinmeisters have for theirs.

   I cannot imagine that their concern is with credibility (or they’d not be associated with this campaign). I suspect they understand how bizarre it was, and possibly damaging to their candidates, and do not want to get blamed, credibility be damned.

9. Mitt Romney stars as “The man with no Shame”

   Today’s GOP: “The Gold, the Bald and the Smugly”

   Paul Ryan: Hyped Lame Grifter

   Mitt’s Plan for the 99%: “Every which way you lose”

   The Romney Campaign: “Liar-vox”

   What won’t get built under Romney: “The Bridges of ANY County”

   Tea Party mantra: “Vindictus”

10. I’d be happy to debate Althouse on Eastwood’s performance, but the last time we were scheduled for a Bloggingheads she backed out because she didn’t find me “playful” enough…

    Perhaps she could be represented on Bloggingheads as an empty chair uttering a steady stream of “@#$@ yous” and “@& yours”.
    Would that be “playful” enough?

11. Mark: “ Either Ann Althouse has no intellectual integrity whatever or she’s completely lost her mind. Eastwood’s ramble was: “Great! Hilarious… subtle… well-paced…”? Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.”

    You’re catching on only now?

12. I can’t stand Althouse. It would be a shame to waste yet another bloggingheads on her!

13. Jon Stewart said it best: Mr. Eastwood was talking the the Obama only Republicans can see.

    1. The scary thing is, these people are so delusional that by this time next week, at least half of the convention attendees will have convinced themselves that they witnessed an actual debate between Eastwood and Obama, and that Obama actually said those things.

       Seriously, I give it a week at most before we start seeing some of those lines showing up on RW blogs as Obama “quotes”.

14. Ditto, ditto, ditto on Althouse and I’ve know her personally for many years

15. The Dems should have an empty chair on stage for the entire DNC, & when anyone asks who it belongs to, they can say Osama bin Laden – Chris Rock

Comments are closed.