Huh?

It's a pretty good article about the total, unambiguous, catastrophic, probably permanent failure of the GOP, from a semi-libertarian conservative icon. Don't take the sniping at "liberals" personally... He's wrong about that, but he's totally right about the degeneration of "conservatives".

Two things are apparent from that article and this post:

1. Carla Axtman has no sense of irony.
2. P.J. O'Rourke is one million times the writer Carla is, or could ever hope to be.

And by the way...

Anyway, a low tax rate is not--never mind the rhetoric of every conservative politician--a bedrock principle of conservatism. The principle is fiscal responsibility.

Pay attention to this guy.

He may be right, but he's still full of himself. That's why the right foam at the mouth about Ted Kennedy; he's the only leftie to get that inflated Rep. air.

It's like listening to an AA confession. But it's about how they wasted the best years of our lives. So, how about he establishes his credentials to be explaining things to those that always said it would play out this way and didn't make the same mistake? Right to react to name calling in that context!

More than willing Carla but is it a "nice one" ?

Mr. O'Rourke's laissez-faire economic ideology hasn't appealed to me since I went through my Ayn Rand-reading phase as a teenager. (Yes, I regret that phase very much.) However, I would greatly prefer it to what the GOP has been dishing out for the last few decades. At least the libertarians wouldn't have run up the nation's credit card, started an appalling war, run roughshod over our civil liberties, and tried to drum up electoral support by crapping on LGBT people.

Also, I found this passage hilarious:

George W. Bush, at his most beneficent, said if illegal immigrants wanted citizenship they would have to do three things: Pay taxes, learn English, and work in a meaningful job. Bush doesn't meet two out of three of those qualifications.

Carla, I agree that much of what O'Rourke wrote about liberals was asinine, especially the bit about I-95. I wouldn't want to live under his heartless leadership. But even his heartlessness would be an improvement over the heartlessness topped with cronyism and incompetence that has been pushed by the current administration. I am truly ecstatic that this will come to an end in a few months.

George W. Bush, at his most beneficent, said if legal
immigrants wanted citizenship they would have to do three
things: Pay taxes, learn English, and work in a meaningful job. Bush doesn't meet two out of three of those qualifications.

Which one does he meet? "Learn" implies study of correct syntax and grammar as opposed to just picking up some. I assume that was the one he was supposed to meet.

Any kind of humor or irony feels kreepy given the reality. Lest we forget, at his least beneficent he said it was OK to snipe across the border.

Two things are apparent from that article and this post:

1. Carla Axtman has no sense of irony. 2. P.J. O'Rourke is one million times the writer Carla is, or could ever hope to be.

O'Rourke used to be funny. That Weekly Standard piece was simply obnoxious, not funny. Ms. Axtman had it just right.

Well, that was fun. I guess I'm off to drag my hemp-wearing, mandela tatted, America hating self off to my lice-ridden smelly bed in my crack-infested liberal neighborhood housing project in the hardcore streets of Roseburg. Maybe play me some cop-killa rap to help boogie me to sleep while I'm at it.

It's a privilege to take constructive criticism from someone who clearly knows us as well as ol' PJ.

The guy makes some good points and shows signs of human decency. But I don't see how he can reconcile this:

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

with the oozing contempt here:

Under constant political pressure, which went almost unresisted by conservatives, a lot of lousy mortgages that would never be repaid were handed out to Jim Jerk and his drinking buddies and all the ex-wives and single mothers with whom Jim and his pals have littered the nation.

Anyway, no one is a bigger elitist snob than George Will.

"Yeah..well kiss my ass righties."

Carla, welcome to 8th grade.

How sophomoric.

What always astounds me about his writing is how little he understands liberalism.

Anyway, this is fairly classic P.J., in its style. I just sounds so SNOOTY.

O'Rourke is first and foremost, a humorist, and a fine one. While it may be the case that "many a truth is spoken in jest"; it seems to me he's making fun of conservative stereotypes of liberals (i.e. the whole getting stoned on I-95 thing) rather than liberals themselves.

Given the source, I wouldn't get too upset about this. This is a lot different than Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin ranting about treacherous leftists.

Jeez, this yet another new low for BlueOregon. We, as a nation, as supposed to be rolling up our sleeves and coming together to fix the many problems we as Americans face. Bashing a humorist -- and one that, as we speak, is battling cancer -- does nothing to move us forward, and, instead, seeks only to divide us even further. As a flaming liberal, it sickens me to see what children a lot of you are. Grow the F up.

First, this is divisive and unproductive rhetoric that does nothing but dichotomize the "right" vs. the "left." I'm sincerely dreaming of a day when we will all just be Oregonians and Americans working together for pragmatic solutions.

Second, please learn how to use punctuation if you ever want your writing to be read with legitimacy.

The problem for conservative humorists and their fans is that they've killed most forms of it, irony is pointless when your party is one long exercise in it, satire is impossible when your existance is based on exaggeration, what is left is Rickles humor, snide half clever insults. You tell people, "If you keep doing this, this is going to happen," and then they blame you because it happened. It is Rush calling this the Obama Recession/Depression. How are you going to satirize this or exercise irony?

This level of "humor" exercised by PJ may appeal to Joel Dan but most of us got over this about the time we got driver's licenses, the ones that didn't voted for the crap PJ is so over wrought about. PJ's a smart guy, but he put his intellect to work fluffing the surface of his ideology rather than investigating it, he is flatly lazy. PJ does the comic book version of Ayn Rand's potboiler egocentric novels based on the surface appearance of an ideology that has managed to fail spectacularly every time leaving someone else to pick up the pieces and put it back together until the next memory lapse. Ayn may have the excuse of recoiling from Communism and an ignorance of capitalistic history but PJ is a child of privilege and high zoot education - maybe a class induced lack of work ethic is his problem.

He can't figure out the investment mess? You've got $6T in mortgages and $60T paper written on them and you can't figure out why it went wrong? You've got $10 bet on every $1 how many of the $1 going south kills you? Not many and then it cascades because credit is gone and wages going and lay offs... But PJ's real smart real funny guy. He and his wealthy friends will walk away from this wealthy, the rest of us? So what's your recourse? Make me laugh. There is one, but it's frowned upon and illegal since they don't issue tags for ratbastards...there'd be a long line if they did.

Now PJ wouldn't find that line funny would he?

You rock Carla!

I always laughed at O'Rourke. It's just humor. From either side, it slices and sometimes is unpleasantly right on. I'm sure that any conservatives who were listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me yesterday [ok, that's me in fantasy land - never happens!], they'd be foaming at the mouth at the skewers that were repeatedly delivered to Palin et. al. I found myself cackling guiltily.

I knew it was cheap, but, hell, she is still circulating and plans to try for it again. So they plan, as they say, to "We'll stop when SHE stops".

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