How To Confuse A Neocon (So Easy It Should Be Patented!)

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What confuses neocons beyond math, logic, facts, and multi-syllabic words? Lots of complex concepts: humor, pointing out their bad manners and indecent behavior, Internet savviness, pop quizzes intelligently designed for the cognitive capacity of a George W. Bush stem cell, and "what if" scenarios, like... what would happen if the Ten Commandments were the laws of the land? If you want to know how to confuse a neocon, ask a blogger... it's much easier than you think.

Hit Them Where It Hurts

Have you been to Pollyticks yet? It totally rocks with its snarky satire posts, text bubble photo toons, prescient breaking news stories, and g-inormous doses of neocon kryptonite: humor. Here's an example of the snarkiness:


Definitely bookmark-worthy and oh-so-suitable for confusing neocons, who think that Bedtime For Bonzo got stiffed by the academy and that bathroom humor should be included in the public school fine arts curriculum. Speaking of bathroom humor… last week I linked to Bedpan Art, but did you know that ½ of the profits go to fund The Cityhood Project, a non-profit the artist is starting? Check out the mission statement:

The goal of Project Cityhood is to promote the aesthetic beauty and quality of inner-city life and neighborhoods through the promotion of art appreciation in the youth and adult population, and implementation of bold art and color in public spaces, suffusing our neighborhoods with pride leading to greater community participation and revitalization of local society and culture.

Project Cityhood seeks not only to enrich the lives of inner-city children and other residents with the opportunity to enliven their surroundings with color and the power of art, but additionally, seeks to drive economic development in inner-city neighborhoods through the infusion of beautiful aesthetic surroundings and cultural opportunities in neighborhoods most in need of it.

Bedpan Art and Pollyticks are both taking aim at neocons and hitting them where it hurts them the most: in the funny bone. These liberals rock!

Neocons Aren't "Raised Right"

My fellow native Texans will recognize the ultimate insult, "Your mamma didn't raise you right." Of course, manners trump all in every region, and what BushCo did to Katherine Harris this week was both indecent and a definite Miss Manners No-No.

Is this how you repay someone who stole a presidential election for you? I guess it takes a neocon to condone this bad behavior. Luckily for us, it only takes a Wonkette reader to catch the Associated Press disappearing Katherine Harris from a Bush photo-op! But you have to ask yourself: did the AP editors do this on their own, or did BushCo instruct them to remove Harris's curvy curves? You already know the answer, don't you.

A Harris-Shaped Hole in our Hearts


A reader emails: Isn't that Katherine Harris carefully positioned right behind the president at the Voting Rights event yesterday? Why, yes, it is. As the White House's own video shows, Katherine Harris was standing right behind President Bush as he celebrated the re-upping of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Black political enfranchisement, Katherine Harris - they go together like ecstasy and glow sticks. So can anyone explain why she's missing from the AP photo of the event? Click quickly. I'm sure these links will get "mysteriously disappeared" soon.

Poor Katherine. Not only did George W. Bush make her asshat self disappear from an AP photo, she's had more Senate campaign staffs than God made little green apples. On top of that, she neglected to tell anyone that she had been subpoenaed in the Duke Cunningham case, and she got a "Dear Katherine" letter from both her state and national parties telling her not to go away mad, but to please just go away. Poor pitiful Katherine. Internet polls are currently running 50-50 between Tell-All Book and Small Plane Mishap.

Sidebar: the Katherine Harris Show reminds me of that "I Love Lucy" episode, where she gets the job in the candy factory. Everything goes just swell... until the conveyer belt begins to run too fast for Lucy to process the chocolates. Lucy was lucky. The director yelled, "Cut," and no real disaster ruined the factory. The big difference between Lucy and Katherine Harris? I Love Lucy! Katherine Harris... not so much.

Get All Biblical On Their Pharisee Asses

What would happen if the Ten Commandments were the law of the land? I followed a link from Is America Burning? to Spittle & Ink, where I found the answer. Here's an example:

Law if the US really was based on the Ten Commandments

Commandment: I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Current status as Federal US Law: No law whatsoever.

Consequences: Judaism would be made the official religion of the US. Belief in the Christian "trinity" -- including the belief that Jesus is God -- would be deemed illegal.

Tears of Job on the ouch-o-meter! Try getting elected with that Ten Commandments campaign platform, neocons. Hey, I know it's confusing, but it's in the Bible, and the Bible doesn't lie, does it? Deal with it and move on, U.S. Constitution haters. By the way, visit Is America Burning? for the link, but stay for the great blog posts.

Give Them A Pop Quiz Fit For A Bush Stem Cell

This pop quiz for George W. Bush from bee policy is posted at reyonthehill, where Jeff is hosting the current, scathingly brilliant, Carnival Of The Liberals (No Rules Edition):

What is this?


a) A particle of pollen in a nasal cavity
b) Volvox
c) A micro-turtle
d) Terrorist nanotechnology
e) A person
f) The Chrysler building

Pretty easy, right? Even a C student can figure out that it's not e or f; you know what people and buildings look like! There's probably no such thing as micro-turtles, and isn't Volvox a character in "Soul Calibur"? So it's probably either pollen or nanotech. We'll go with the nanotech because it's scaaaaaary.

Oh, wait, SOUND OF BUZZER INDICATING WRONGNESS. No, according to the miserably twisted and hypocritical "ethics" that allowed you to veto stem cell research because it was murder, that little guy up there is people. Kiss it, motherfucker, it's a baby. Kiss it if you can find it.

You've never even seen a picture of a blastocyst, have you? You slept through high school bio and junior high sex ed, and you only woke up long enough to say "the man sticks what where? Well that sounds gross."

There's more at the link, and it gets even snarkier. Enjoy.

Make Them Think They're Net Savvy

Send your pseudo-neoconic friends, family, and co-workers to websites and blogs devoted to their (cough) heroes and those promising to pad their wallets: Find Cheaper Gas (real site name: Stand Up To Big Oil); The Honesty Of Michael Steele (TheRealSteele); The Passion Of Bill Frist (Fancy Frist); George Allen For President (George Allen For Prez); and Senator Burns Loves Your Family (Buying Burns). These links (the actual ones) are all found at The Fudge Report, a snarky new Drudge-format site (guaranteed to confuse even the most discerning neocon), hosted by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. Definitely bookmark-worthy.

Most Important Advice: Know Your Limits

Confusing neocons is, of course, its own reward. That being said, the hard part is penetrating their lepton-sized brains and planting any kind of new idea. Our biggest problem is that there are only two types of neocons: those too stupid to understand that an accurate view of reality = Bush-hating; and those too stupid to recognize when their party leaders are scamming them. No, I'm not being redundant… neocons would see that as two types. Get it? Got it? Good.

Try not to use big words or compound-complex sentences when hitting them with the facts. Better yet, say it with pictures. BAGNewsNotes posts US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent press conference pics…




Of course, BAGNewsNotes is like all other liberals: he can't just post humiliating pics of Our Miss Rice. Nooooo. He has to analyze them... (gulp) intelligently:

Keenly focused on facial expression, the visual media honed in on the resultant, and highly accentuated signs of strain. In the top image, look at Condi's neck muscles. Bottom left, check out the cheek, nose and neck. Bottom right, look at the forehead. Stressful, yes. But considering Rice's extraordinary rigidity and self-control, to what, specifically, can we attribute this straining?

From what I saw of the briefing -- and considering the defiant, "pre-recorded" and yet tremulous tone of her voice -- this looks like the emotional cost of the refusal to empathize. In times of great harm, diplomats are required to extend to one another at least some degree of humanity. If Rice is chafing, it's because she rejects going there.

The "emotional cost of the refusal to empathize"? Sorry, BAGNews. You're too smart for 99.999999+% of all known neocons! You of all people should know that you can't win a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent. Simplify. Simplify. (Just kidding, BAGNews. Your analysis was better than an episode of Sister Wendy!)

If you really have to use words, use words that make neocons laugh. Here's an example from A Bluestem Prairie:

The Blotter: Tim Walz's Shocking Farmfest Confession!

We're hearing eye witness accounts that Tim Walz shone in yesterday's Farmfest congressional forum, but we hadn't gotten word of this:

Overheard: Congressional candidate's shocking confession

Tuesday afternoon, Farmfest 2006, congressional candidate panel, Redwood Falls. After nearly 90 minutes of taking questions, nine incumbent and challenger candidates for U.S. Congress are giving final remarks to a crowd of about 300. Each one--including Collin Peterson, Michele Bachmann, Rod Grams and Coleen Rowley, among others--takes great pains to prove "just folks" bona fides to the independent family farmers assembled. (Hey, Agent Rowley, how about the name of your blog?) Tim Walz, the DFLer challenging Gil Gutknecht in Minnesota's First District, scores the biggest laugh of the day, however. (Admittedly, the bar is pretty low at such an event.) "You wanna talk about small town, I'll tell you that I went to a school with 25 students, and 12 of them were my cousins," Walz says, pausing a beat. "Prom-dating was very difficult."

Now that's memorable. I'll be curious to see how candidate Tim Walz does in this race because of that quote. Neocons have about a nanosecond's worth of memory capacity, but even they can appreciate and remember incest innuendo humor. I think Tim Walz may have broken the neocon communication code without really trying. Hmm. I wonder if we can bottle that.

Neocons and neocon wannabes thrive on pics, soundbites, and simple concepts. Surely, Democrats can adapt to these communication tactics before November 7th. If not, I guess we could spend the next two more years analyzing our message to death... while neocons destroy more of everything we stand for. Is that an appealing "what if" scenario? I didn't think so. Let's get busy and confuse the bloody hell out of some neocons, y'all.

-- Delilah Boyd

[wakeme2008]

1. here she is :)

[Turbineguy]

4. Kathrine Harris at a Voting rights event?

What were they giving away as a door prize, a boob job?

[displacedtexan]

5. Thanks for the photo!

I hadn't seen the original one.

BushCo had to do some fancy photoshopping:
they had to 'disappear' Harris AND replace
Bush in this shot with a shot of Bush farther
away.

GGGRRR!

[M0rpheus]

6. At least part of her is still there...

Look near the bottom, you'll see her skinny pale leg...

[Felinity]

7. NO THEY DIDN'T!!!

There is something fundamentally wrong with this. News has become more perception than reality anyway, this is over the top.

Can anyone confirm who did the Photoshopping? It would seem AP has their own photographer, and if they are the ones that did it, we are certainly doomed.

[Hippo_Tron]

11. No more fundamentally wrong than this photo

[Virginian]

9. He sure is in her face.

For her benefit, I hope he used mouthwash after that last gin and tonic.

[bleever]

2. WH website has already scrubbed the video of Katherine Harris

at the bill signing.

That was fast!

ed: seeing the photo in the previous post, maybe the link in the OP is just broken.

[pooja]

3. i noticed.. i couldn't find it

[Contrary1]

8. No, it's still there...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060727.html

[flaminbats]

10. neocons always attack, but they never defend..

I always hear neocons attacking Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Ted Kennedy..but rarely see them show any passion for defending Bush or the Republican Congress. Times when they respond, they say things like "I don't agree with everything he does or I don't think they're worse than the Democrats!"

For me, defending our agenda..like universal healthcare, debt reduction, or ending the war in Iraq is easy. What makes debate fun is watching a Republican respond when reminded that we have a Republican Congress and President. Then they quickly change the subject, by saying "why talk about politics?"

lol, because you brought it up? :toast: