I am currently phonebanking from Unity Pony HQ, so I thought I would throw up a thread.
Open Thread
by John Cole| 64 Comments
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.
When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.
We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
He really is that stupid.
Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.
Petty moves from a petty man.
They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.
Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.
If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.
You cannot love your country only when you win.
A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.
My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.
Krista
Awesome. How’s the phonebanking going? Have you told anybody to fuck off and die yet?
John Cole
No, but I have called two different people named Delbert, and my college room mate from 1992.
Dan
Hi John. I’m a regular reader and irregular commenter; wanted to pass along some thoughts on the GOP in light of your comments on their current state. Hope you get the chance to have a look.
John S.
Two?
Jesus man, you really are in West Virginia…
Mary
For shits and giggles, I searched this site for “magical unity pony” and found a few posts, including this one from my birthday earlier this year where John talked about how hope was pretty thin gruel and people were being too hard on the Clintons.
And now he’s phone banking for the M.U.P. himself. I love how things change. (And John, I’m not accusing you of any hypocrisy or crap. Your dislike of Hillary and your fair-mindedness co-exist pretty well in that post.)
Zuzu
Well, if anybody wants a break from cynicism and a little real-life inspiration, I recommend this movie:
Young@Heart
HumboldtBlue
The next time you can link to a story about the “psycho ex-girlfriend” murdering her boyfriend and the children, or locking them in the basement for years of horrific sexual abuse, or beating the shit out of them for years on end while maintaining a public face of decorum and respect I’ll pay attention.
Hilary Clinton may have overstayed her welcome, and you have been open and honest about your dislike, but I find the guys who use the “psycho ex-girlfriend” trope are usually the small-dicked punks who stayed under Momma’s skirts just a little too long and can’t figure out why women look at them and treat them, well, as small-dicked punks.
Fuck, hammer the woman for her silly political games, hammer her for her silly misstatements and embellishments, but don’t insult us and her with this schoolyard bullshit.
Dreggas
*checks* Hmmmm nope, not small dicked or punk (despite the mohawk) Next stupid generalization?
Hell forget the ex-girlfriend, she’s turning into Mommy Dearest.
Dreggas
Wow Small states matter now
John Cole
You might check and see who posted that and then read the VERY FIRST comment in that thread, especially if you need a laugh.
You can apologize here in this thread. I won’t be going anywhere.
Ted
That was an angry, angry post. Bitter, even.
Jay
Since this is an open thread, I just wanted to say that “Boris Johnson” and “Elvis Elvisberg” are the two greatest names in recent memory.
wasabi gasp
So, if I’m getting you right, the offending word is girlfriend.
Boyfriend would be a little weird. Something asexual like tinguisher wouldn’t make sense. First Lady would be super accurate, but low, we got clevage again. This ain’t so easy. How about we get real general like and go with human.
.
Ninerdave
Metaphor.
Zifnab
I was always a fan of Johnson Long and Max Powers.
Zuzu
Well, I don’t have a dick. And I am a Momma. And I thought it was kinda funny.
Dreggas
Best. Cartoon. Ever.
Doonhamer
That was the point where I lost interest in this post and stopped reading. It’s difficult to take seriously someone who equates a man’s character with the size of his penis.
Zuzu
Plenty of jokes, movies, rants about ex-boyfriends out there. “Something About Mary”? Borderline psychotic ex, yes?
dslak
We can laugh at psycho ex-girlfriends because the potential for physical violence is less than in the case of psycho ex-boyfriends. Is it pro- or anti-feminist to point out that female psycho exes are generally less of a physical threat?
les
Well, John, you’re doing a good thing and all, but in the meantime that Sadly No! thread you visited hit >1000 comments. I think they got a better grade of troll on the job.
ThymeZone
Heh. Girl or boy friend, a psycho is a psycho. It happens.
Rick Taylor
The campaigns consider a deal, awarding Hillary 10 net delegates for Michigan. She turns it down and sends Obama a self-righteous condescending letter. Heeelllooooooo? Super delegates? Anyone?
Just Some Fuckhead
The invisible hand of the market is giving us all the middle finger.
wasabi gasp
Yes. I guess I’m a little predisposed to the notion that Hillary would make a terrible boyfriend.
.
El Doh
From the Very Serious People at Talk Left:
Best Freudian Typo Evah[tm]. Oh, yeah… and BTD is, as we all know, an Obama supporter, so he’s obviously an evil woman-hating misogynist sexist chauvinist pig, and that was deliberate. Or something. And now someone else won’t vote for Obama!
Yes, I am easily amused…
SamFromUtah
I think they got a better grade of troll on the job.
Not really. P.luk’s is one of the people helping push the comment count up.
Rick Taylor
Eccch. i coudl do without some of the more tasteless jokes.
Dreggas
This is Bushian tactics 101. Say NO and then blame it on your opponents.
buzzrd
If you haven’t seen Jeralyn Merritt’s performance on bloggingheads.tv, you simply have to see it to believe it. I have no axes to grind with Merritt nor BigTent and to start with I gave TalkLeft the benefit of the doubt and frequented that site as often as OpenLeft, a site that came online at approximately the same time.
But the illogic behind that site’s slavish devotion to Hillary is amplified by Merritt herself in this bloggingheads video.
Ann Althouse, who has found herself on the opposite side of logic at different times through her own career, appears as the very voice of sanity and reason in this video.
I really have no other words with which to describe Merritt. Her performance and now persona defie description for me. The only thing I can add is that if I got in trouble with the law in Colorado, I’m pretty sure that she would be very last criminal attorney I would ever contemplate hiring. Give me the public defender over Merritt.
El Doh
A whole lot of people I credited with far more sanity, not to say basic fairness, have proven to be pretty whacko during this campaign.
Sadly, I can’t just limit that statement to the blogosphere.
SamFromUtah
A whole lot of people I credited with far more sanity, not to say basic fairness, have proven to be pretty whacko during this campaign.
Agreed. I think it’s a sign of just how deeply the Rovian Rot has sunk in the American political scene.
Bot LaBeer
Proposal to update the lexicon:
Swingnuts (n.) Currently registered Democrats who boldly proclaim that unless their candidate is the nominee, they will vote Republican in the General Election.
SamFromUtah
Swingnuts – genius! Much better even than Yoosta-Bees.
Dreggas
they’re known for tea-bagging, dipping in one side then the other.
AkaDad
First Wil Wheaton, and now John Cusack.
Zuzu
Which is really saying somethin’.
Her teeth are blindingly white.
UnkyT
My little brother’s name is John Long, so Johnson Long has come up many a time in his life. His name is also amusing on lists ordered by last name, where of course he is listed as Long John. Richard or Peter Long are also good. I’ve got a million of them having grown up with the last name, and also having to name my own kids (my wife was not amused by my list of names for our first born).
w vincentz
Looks like the “Terror of Tuzla” has a new moniker…
Over at BuzzFlash they’re calling her the “Ghost of Wallace” due to her recent “hard working WHITES” words.
I expect to see her show up at a WV campaign rally sportin’ a white pant suit, and of course, the standard white hood.
You GO Hill! GO! GO!
Is it unconstitutional to burn a cross on the White House lawn?
And, why do they continue to call it the “White House”?
Will it be painted with a different hue after Barack’s victory?
Is that REALLY what she’s so worried about…a Mauve House?
Enlighten me…who does Sen Byrd support?
dwightkschrute
It’s apparent the Obama campaign is in its last throes, if you will. Clearly with West Virgina and Kentucky the Clinton campaign is turning the corner.
Zuzu
Althouse might be the voice of sanity in that bloggingheads video, but she sure displays her typically nonsensical thinking when she “hummmms” over the “inuendo” in Merrit’s comment at 5:25 that holding back the Gary ballot count “put a black eye on it.”
Bloggingheads
Cain
That’s not what I understood tea-bagging to mean. What I understood it to mean would make Dubya blush since he’s done it with Cheney.
cain
Ted
Funny stuff. The look on Althouse’s face through much of it is priceless.
Rick Taylor
Youtube of HIllary Clinton; “if we had the rules the republicans have, I’d already be the nominee.”
Ted
So it shall be done. Swingnuts.
Ted
Youtube of HIllary Clinton; “if we had the rules the republicans have, I’d already be the nominee.”
If wishes were horses…
Cain
Do we have to use “swingnuts”??? I’m eating here! Really it reminds me of tea-bagging.
cain
John Cole
Jeralynn Merritt is not a racist, and I am not gonna sit by and let people claim she is. She has lost her god damned mind in this election, but she is still a good person and not racist.
J. Michael Neal
Back when I was a security guard, lo those many years ago, I had a corner like that. The wind got funneled in such a way that, when you turned that corner, you were often brought to a dead stop by the wall of air. Really fun on those nights when it was twenty below.
Zuzu
I agree, and was stunned to see Althouse take her comments in the direction she did. Although to me it’s typical of Althouse’s lameness, along the lines of “Let’s take a closer look at those breasts.”
I assume no one would take Althouse’s hints seriously, but on the other hand ….
Bot LaBeer
I started reading Talk Left a few years back when it still was predominantly a political-leaning law blog. I rarely go over there anymore because it’s become a complete mess. Maybe someday they’ll get back to what they do best and get away from being just another source of surrogacy.
John’s right – Jeralyn is a decent person who’s just lost her mind/perspective/whatever.
leinie
From US News, via Mithras, isn’t this interesting?
She’ll be out the $11 million, and still owe that fuck Penn his $4.5 million.
nightjar
Agreed, her blog was the first one I got the nerve to comment on several years ago– about the death penalty. When I’ve recently gone over there to butt heads with some of the commentors, she’s never deleted my comments. BTD, or Armando on the other hand, is something else altogether different.
Zuzu
Why is that?
scrutinizer
I used to enjoy reading TL too. I stopped after Armando started taking over the front page over there. I still don’t get why Jeralynn gave him somewhere to roost after he got kicked off the GOS. The guy can write some decent articles, but he’s a fucking animal in comments.
Rick Taylor
I’ve seen Jeralynn ban people for posting too many comments, “chattering” as they call it. A new poster posted 16 comments on a thread, and that was it; banned for today, when you come back your limited to 10. This was the post that got him banned:
So that’s what gets you banned at Talk Left by Jeralynn, posting too much, and responding to an accusation of pulling something out of your posterior with a web link.
Breschau
Okay, that’s fine with me. She’s not a racist. Settled, done.
But, she is posting things that seem to be demonstrably false, or at the least incredibly misleading. In fact, I’d go so far as to say she’s being very “RedState-esque”.
I see two options:
1) She’s had a nervous breakdown, which has caused her to “lose her god damned mind”. In which case, I think we should be calling for her to get the medical attention she obviously needs.
2) She is deliberately posting falsehoods, rumors, and Rovian bullshit to the website, for the expressed purpose of… umm, what again? Making sure the Democratic nominee (guaranteed to be Obama now) does not win?
If #1 is true, someone with more pull than me (read: John) needs to go to TalkLeft and ask her to seek help.
If #2 is true, she’s a traitor to her party and her country. Is that actually better than “racist”?
leinie
I think it’s cuz Primary funds are separate from general election fund, and the “election” for the primary is being selected the nominee at the convention.
Shygetz
I think people who are calling Hillary and her campaign spokespeople racist are missing the point. They are NOT demonstrably racist, anymore than Hitler was a devoted Catholic; they are opportunists. Right now they think racist comments offer them the best opportunity to win. If the tables were turned and Clinton was enjoying disproportionate black support that was her only argument for victory, she would be arguing that the black constituency is one of the most reliable and important constituencies in America, and they have been ignored for too long; ditto homosexuals, atheists, etc. Hell, if her core constituency was public urinators, we would be hearing about how people who insist on using toilets are elitist.
Hang ’em for being amoral, but don’t think for a moment that this convicts Hillary of being racist. The truth is, I have no idea what she really thinks about racism or anything else, and that bothers me even more than if I knew she was a racist. The only thing that convinces me to support Hillary over McCain (on the off chance that Obama suffers a stroke while molesting a choir boy) is that I tend to agree with the people she panders to more than I agree with the people McCain panders to; left to their own devices, I have no inkling how either of them would govern.
Zuzu
Sounds right.
I think this must be the actual provision of the act:
And the Federal Election Campaign Act, which McCain-Feingold amended, defines “election” this way:
KRK
On the debate whether HRC or Jeralynn Merritt or anyone else are really racists in their heart-of-hearts, I think this comment I stole from Michelle at The Field gets to heart of the matter:
El Doh
Yeah, I’ve seen a couple of people banned from there for posting too many comments — and at least one was limited to 5/day upon return(!)
That’s surreal, to me. For one thing, surely more comments/traffic/etc. are a *good* thing for a blog? We’re talking about people who were civil and presenting their positions and views here, not just the crap hurling kids.
For another, the people I saw banned for “too-many-comments” all had one thing in common — their views disagreed with Ms. Merritt’s own. Correlation is not causation, of course, but I’m fairly sure I’ve seen anti-Obama (note, their position was anti-Obama rather than pro-Clinton) posters post a lot of comments in a day without anything apparently being said. Perhaps she just didn’t see it — she has in some public messages said she doesn’t read every comment.
Still, I find it a rather peculiar policy and the enforcement would at least appear rather selective.
Rick Taylor
There was one guy banned for chattering, 1jpb, really smart, seemed to know a lot about health insurance, sometimes a little snide but definitely civil. He once declared he was loyal to Talk Left because he was challenged there and didn’t like preaching to the choir. He’s been consistently troll rated for substantial posts. Jeralyn (not BTD) banned him and limited his posts for chattering. Normally he’d be the sort of poster you’d think a blog would love to have.
nightjar
Yea, I did notice the “chattering” silliness. The relatively few comments I’ve made over there were certainly stronger than your example. I don’t know why she didn’t ban me.