Sunday, June 29, 2008

PUMA, a GOP plot? You gotta be kidding...

Ah, it has been a very manly 24-hour period. Shaved my head, pumped some iron, practiced knife tossing, bought some cheap American beer, made a big damn pot of chili, finished reading a book about the CIA -- and now I plan to spend the evening listening to the really butch parts of La Boheme.

First, though, a few words on the Obama front.

A site called Pandagon has (allegedly) identified the PUMA movement as a massive Republican plot. All of those writers who have done so much to create this movement don't really exist, y'see. It's all a Potemkin Village, created by GOP consters.

Look at how Pandagon scribe Amanda Marcotte defines the movement:
Female Clinton supporters who are so bitter about her loss that they will throw equal pay, reproductive rights, the environment, and a chance at peace under the bus to get their revenge by voting for McCain.
"Female"? Please re-read the opening paragraph of this very post. I'll say it again: This isn't about Hillary Clinton; this is about Barack Obama. The guy is a crook and a chronic liar. He is no progressive; he merely plays one on TV. His support for Georgia's John Barrow is but the latest piece of evidence proving the point.

Our beef is with the Lightbringer, with his repellent cult of personality, and with the progressive movement itself. I hold Barack Obama personally responsible for every insane, paranoid, libelling thing said on Kos and the other cultic campgrounds.

To cite but one example: When Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame came out for Hillary, the Kossacks spread conspiracy stories about them! Moulitsas censored all pro-Hillary commenters, yet he allowed the Obots to call for the Wilsons to be jailed.

The Obots continue to fire off threats of violence against any who displease them, including yours truly. And they will not hesitate to use dastardly tricks to shut down blogs they don't like.

This disgusting behavior has gone on for half-a-year, and no amount of kumbaya-ing will eradicte those memories. Yet the Pandagon-style progs refuse to admit what they've done. They'll attack. They will insult. They'll sneer: "Where ya gonna go?" They'll bring up Roe-v-Wade incessantly. But they won't apologize.

Obots are psychologically incapable of dropping their arrogance for twenty consecutive seconds. They can't even fake humility when doing so would help them tactically. They would rather scrape their nipples off with a vegetable peeler than admit that they fucked up.

Pandagon writer Amanda Marcotte reaches the heights of silliness in her attempt to "prove" the John McCain holds PUMA's leash. Even though the movement started on the Confluence with Riverdaughter and other former Kossack writers, and even though many a well-known prog-in-exile (including yours truly) has pushed the thing along, Marcotte pretends that the entire thing was started by one Darragh C. Murphy, who appears to have given John McCain $500 in the year 2000.

That, says Marcotte, proves it's all a big fat Republican plot!

Actually , Marcotte's post proves that we are dealing with a big fat Obama plot -- since she lightly re-writes an Obot "talking point" previously sent to this blog, and to other blogs. The term for this sort of practice is, I believe, Astroturf. In other words, Marcotte simply re-typed a message handed to her by Obama Central.

The PUMA blogs, by contrast, do what they do on their own. We have no Comintern, no Central Commitee, no leaders, no home office, no money. Hillary has told Dems to support the Lightbringer, and we have told her no can do.

I have not received any communication from John McCain's people. Nobody pays me a dollar.

Don't believe it? Still think that McCain is behind PUMA?

Then try this experiment. Work up your own PUMA blog, using material pilfered from other sites. In an hour's time, you should have a pretty good similacrum of the real thing. After you've done that task, ask the McCain people for some financial backing.

Wait for the money to come rushing in.

Alas, you'll have to wait quite awhile. In the meantime, wave hi to Jesus as he comes back, goes away, then comes back again. That's how long you'll be waiting.

The Big Big Cash goes to the pro-Obama blogs. One behind-the-scenes source tells me that much of the money for a certain well-funded pro-O operation does not come, as is generally supposed, from the former hubby of the site's proprietor. (I'll have much more to tell on that score if I can get verfication.) Everyone knows that Moulitsas is rolling in the long green. Josh Marshall doesn't seem to be hurting.

And yet we're supposed to believe that the PUMA people have been purchased. Riiiiiiiiight.

15 comments:

gary said...

Ok, so just because the leading PUMA activist who gave the "movement" its name is a Republican doesn't mean that the Republican are behind it, I suppose. Oh, wait a minute, it does.

Joseph Cannon said...

Shut the fuck up when you don't know what you are talking about, gary. The movement began with a column by riverdaughter on the Confluence.

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/friday-resolved/

I'm perfectly happy to have Murphy on board, but she's but one cog in a much larger engine. Stop reading the Obot script and do a little independent research, for Chrissakes.

Joseph Cannon said...

Added note: You know how I know that Marcotte was typing from a script supplied by another? In the first place, because I had received (and rejected) comments bearing the same script. But also because of the way she wrote her poorly-written post. Look at it carefully -- she neglects to introduce us to who Murphy is before establishing her as the scarecrow.

OTE admin said...

Marcotte is one of the vilest of the vile and no doubt is on the Obama payroll.

Joseph Cannon said...

Well, I don't know THAT either, Susan.

But I think that when this election season is over, we're going to learn some rather odd things about which bloggers received monies from which parties. I keep hearing hints -- stuff that even I would not print. But verification may one day come.

Perry Logan said...

PUMA is easily the fastest-growing political movement in the U.S.A. The "progressives" have no idea how badly they have damaged the Democratic Party.

Joseph Cannon said...

Yeha, but Perry -- they will always blame McCain or Clinton or some outside force. They will never blame themselves for their own rotten and alienating behavior.

They remind me of a husband who beats his wife every day. One day the wife leaves him. The man tells his buddies: "It's those feminists on TV. They put the idea in her head." He can't admit that HE was at fault.

Unknown said...

Joseph, go read http://lynjaci.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-tactics-and-risk-management.html, on the Republican role in the Dem primary season.

Joseph Cannon said...

What pure horseshit! Supposition parading as fact. This has NOTHING to do with anything that Rush Limbaugh ever said. Not one piece of evidence links the PUMA movement to the GOP. That is pure wishful thinking on the part of the Obots.

Look, I'll say it again. And again and again. You want PUMA to start to wither?

OBOTS MUST APOLOGIZE.

Show some humility.

Stop being arrogant.

Stop trying to blame the Eternal Other. IT'S YOUR FAULT. YOU FUCKED UP. JUST ADMIT IT!

If you could only admit what you did, maybe then some PUMA folk might come around. Not me. But others might.

My god, G -- gary? -- how can you be so fucking STUPID? Just re-read virtually ANY anti-Hillary Kos Diary or TPM comment from January to June. Bask in the sheer vehemence and verbal violence.

The Wright affair was blamed on Hillary! NAFTAgate was blamed on Hillary! Hillary was accused of snubbing the Katrina victims! Hillary was endlessly accused of being racist! EVERYTHING was blamed on Hillary!

And then -- when months of hatred and smears and sheer SHIT sparked a healthy and inevitable counter hatred -- you damn Obots lack the ability to criticize yourselves. You tell yourselves: "Naw, it can't be anything WE did. It's gotta be the Republicans!"

Well FUCK YOU.

Obots AND ONLY OBOTS created this fissure. Obots drove me, a guy who VOTED for Obama, into the PUMA camp. And Obots -- ONLY the Obots, not Hillary, not McCain, not the Illuminati, not the Flying Saucer People, but THE OBOTS THEMSELVES AND NOBODY ELSE -- will be responsible for the scarlet red map you're gonna see on election night.

Unknown said...

Whoa, I've been flamed! I wish I could find your email contact, because I don't want to take over the comments.

I think you read jacilyn's post too quickly. She is not saying or implying that PUMA is a Republican operation, but that Republicans interfered with the Democratic primary season. Actually, she sounds like a PUMA to me ("Also, if McCain is elected, we might actually get some opposition from Congress. Especially if we show them that we are now not going to vote for any Democrat who does not uphold our agenda.").

Rather than enumerate her points -- she does a fine job of making clear where she stands ("Obama signals loud and clear that voters are irrelevant. Whatever the source of his power, I say we should be very afraid of that source of power, because it is totally indifferent to democracy. If we have any power left as voters, we should use it to restore democracy - even if that means voting against the Democrat.") -- let me say that I have suspected Rove's hand in all this since the O team first accused the Clintons of racism.

Rove's signature M.O. is attacking his opponents' strength. Now look where we are -- the party of the Civil Rights Act, whose racists left for the Republican party, divided by charges of racism. More division: age, class, sex. Half the traditional party told to stay home.

This sounds like Republican rat-fucking to me.

What I think: The Republicans have worked to produce Obama as the Democratic candidate. Whether Obama or McCain wins, they'll be happy. Hillary was the one they feared. She's a fighter and a winner. I was so proud of Americans that working-class men responded to her addressing their interests. (And I'm really nervous that Howard Dean says she will be given the courtesy roll-call -- while I read that the party is replacing her delegates.)

For the record, I'm not a Gary but a Gilda. I'm not so "fucking stupid" that I ever voted for Obama (his raising Social Security was the first red flag, followed by the freezing Rezko tenants in his district). I donated to Hillary to encourage her to keep going. I don't expect an apology, but it would be nice if you apologized for misreading lynjaci. I'm sorry I dragged her into this.

Evidence:
http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/Archive/Winter08/2008Election.html ("Did Karl Rove Use Barack Obama to Defeat Hillary Clinton?").
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E5DC123DF932A15751C0A9659C8B63("Frustrated Democrats Make Friends in G.O.P.") and http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2674-2003Mar9?language=printer ("White House's Roving Eye for Politics"). February and March 2003 articles on the close relationship between Rove and Donna Brazile.

Anonymous said...

"OBOTS MUST APOLOGIZE.

Show some humility.

Stop being arrogant."

You have nailed the cult of O. His financial backers and "executives" who control the viral marketing channels to brainwash the masses gave birth to this NEO-HUBRIS movement that has k.o.'ed the Democratic party.

Sure, Kossy is bringing in a little green but those other blogger wannabes you mention (exception Josh) are offering up their mindless, painfully poorly written (I'm not the only one who has noted this?) outlines of this half-baked manifesto in hopes of eventual redemption in the form of being accepted to some glorious Blogroll in the afterlife of the election.

Anonymous said...

Amanda Marcotte? Pardon my French, and for arguing ad hominem, but this woman is a total idiot. She is incapable of understanding anything except the crudest form of pseudo-feminism. She's the dope who signed on as Edwards' webmaster, and when it was discovered that she was a rabid anti-Catholic, got dumped, and whined about it like a 2-year old.

I mean, geez, she couldn't get the elementary fact that there are many Americans who are sincere, believing Catholics. I'm not one of them - but so what? If I were working for a major candidate, I'd shut my fucking mouth and try to accomplish the GOAL. Not Marcotte.

So it's not surprising that she should be tone deaf to issues of sensitivity, and sensibility. She's a complete, total screaming asshole.

Unknown said...

If we're still on speaking terms:

What also makes me anxious:

1. Rove pulls a bait-and-switch at the Republican convention: McCain is out, Romney/Bloomberg (or some such) is in.

2. Rove waits till after the Democratic convention to launch his October surprise, destroying the Democratic party (not that that looks so bad to me right now). After all, the Republican party has discredited itself, so destroy the alternative.

3. Obama presides over the new libertarian/Republican/Blue Dog Dem party, destroying the old, FDR Democratic party. It takes a Republican to go to China and a Democrat to steal Social Security.

The Dem elite may be in on it -- why else would O & the Obots still act so bullying, insulting, and anti-Unity?
That thread at Pandagon -- wow. Look at all the insults from "Grand High Emperor" Dan at 4:23 PM. Way to win people over. Not a clue that they should listen to losers -- people to whom a little money means a lot. Samantha Vimes thinks if you're anti-O, it's because you didn't do your due diligence. Amanda Marcotte thinks it's Clinton-to-McCain voters who don't realize they're being lied to. Ms. Kate thinks PUMAs are all losers, too, from "decaying, dying, depressed parts of the country," but thank god younger people will replace them. The classy moron calls Geraldine Ferraro "a crude, racist guido from the burroughs." Is that the same as a "garlic nose"? As myiq2xu says, "Gee, for some strange reason being insulted is doing nothing to make me want to vote for Barack Obama.
Why don’t you try saying something about my mother?  Maybe that will change my mind."

These posters strike me as young, passionate, and unserious.

Anonymous said...

I so agree with you. It's been their behavior that has driven me, a life-long Democrat into the PUMA camp. They find no wrong with their Chosen One and all evil resides in Hillary. Puh-leese.

Nope, I'm no Republican. I'd sooner slit my wrists than be one. But I own my vote. And it isn't going to Obama.

Bob Harrison said...

I wasn't on the original conference call, but I was bloggering around when it all came down. I've been calling for a movement for months but Confluence came up with the catchy name and logo and they deserve the credit- certainly not the GOPers. There may be GOPer tracks around the organization, after all cock roaches are everywhere, but the PUMA is most assuredly not connected to nor directed by John McCain.

Go Puma!