I think I would enjoy having a beer with John Scalzi

[digitaldiscipline]

Dear Democrats: You managed to lose the House in historic proportions to a party whose strategy was to harness the inchoate anger of old white people so stupid that they don’t sense the inherent contradiction of screaming about a smaller government whilst cashing their federal checks. You are morons. Please find someone who can play this game and put them in charge of your electoral strategy, because what you’re doing now isn’t working.

[just a snippet from http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/11/03/election-thoughts-2010/]

Comments

[rat-bastard.livejournal.com]

He writes good fiction too!

Keep calm and carry on.

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

It was a typical midterm backswing (the party of a new President almost always loses seats in the first midterm of that Presidency), and it was big because a. the 2008 forward swing was huge, b. frustration with the slow pace of change, and c. the media kept mindlessly chanting "tidal wave, tidal wave, tidal wave."

It wasn't the "tidal wave" that the media predicted, and the media are still reporting it as a "tidal wave" because they never change their narrative no matter what the facts are. It isn't because reality matched their predictions--it didn't except in the races that everyone knew the evil ones (incidentally, fuck Jon Stewart and all the other apologists for the Repugnantklan) were going to take, and they lost a few we thought they'd take (e.g. Sharron Angle, who was ahead in the polls but still lost-- I thought I was going to have to start referring to that state as West Utah, but sanity won out).

The media never let reality get in the way of a good narrative (or a dumb one-- these days, the media are mostly talking heads chosen for diction and good hair, so most of them don't even know the difference). Don't be snowed.

It was bad-- and I worry about Bachmann's obsessive desire to reinstate HUAC-- but it wasn't worse than expected, it wasn't the catastrophe the corporate media predicted, and it wasn't a repudiation of America's core values. It was a temper tantrum, not a revolution.

In short, keep calm and carry on!

Re: Keep calm and carry on.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Re: Bachmann and HUAC - funniest moment of the coverage I saw last night was Chris Matthews grilling her about it, and her complete obliviousness and inability to answer... and then Olbermann just barely keeping his shit together when they cut back to the studio after Matthews asked if she was hypnotized into not answering his questions.

Bachmann's barking moonbat act: http://youtu.be/GVQvuQ1s11k

Re: Keep calm and carry on.

[hermine-93.livejournal.com]

That was pretty striking, wasn't it?

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I may be white, but I'm not old, and I voted to kick the Democrats to the curb because I fucking hate what they're doing... but Dear Incumbents, please keep deluding yourself that it was all just a fluke and totally irrelevant and incoherent and could never ever happen again and certainly didn't have anything to do with like, what they did when they came into power.

Circle jerk or learn from your mistakes, your choice.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, none of the elections for national office for which I could vote had any incumbents to unload - there's now a socially-repugnant-to-me guy with no experience as our senator-elect (and our governor), and they sure as hell didn't get my vote.

I am fed up with the democrats for not doing *enough* of what I want; the republicans are actively going against the vast majority of the things that I value when casting a vote (primarily on social issues; I may be white, straight, middle-income, and in a LTR, but I think that stuff like equal rights, and safe and healthy access to abortion, and education, and infrastructure are kind of important).

then again, i think the only guy who was remotely aligned with my preferences - anti-tarp, anti-war, pro-choice, pro-healthcare reform (in a meaningful way, not the half-assed thing we got) was russ feingold, and he got canned in wisconsin.