Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I was promised a recession.

T R E 4 5 O N

He really is that stupid.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Come on, man.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

This fight is for everything.

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“I forgot”

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This Tweety bit, via Digby, is an instant classic:

Matthews: Did he think that people … well let’s get to some of the more extreme charges against him. Did he think that anybody thought that, anybody real, I mean we talk about the nut jobs all the time. But does anybody really think that Bill Clinton put a hit on his friend Vince Foster?

Branch: No, but it stayed in the news for six years.

Matthews: What news?

Branch: …. that’s astonishing. It was all over the place.

Matthews: What newspapers carried that?

Branch: Well first of all..

Matthews: The Clinton Chronicles, you know and Fox

Branch: Ken Starr could make stories about it all the time. It was an official investigation of the Whitewater special counsel.

Matthews: I forgot, you’re right. What’s his name, the guy from the mid west who shoots the canteloups. He got involved with it.

Nut jobs like this “esteemed giant”. Also.

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  2. 2.

    slag

    I’m starting to wonder if whatever quality it is that makes someone engaging on the teevee is the same one that makes them lose all ability to have a sense of perspective. I remember when Matthews was covering Jeremiah Wright during the election and, with regard to Obama, he just reiterated, “This is his Iraq. This is his Iraq.” I mean, WTF? How can someone’s brain possibly work this way? It’s insane.

  3. 3.

    Legalize

    Tweety doesn’t remember anything his Irish – Catholic uncle from South Philly wouldn’t want him to remember. No biggie. All that matters is that Broder tut-tutted teh Clenis. Broder is very serious.

  4. 4.

    Zifnab

    @slag:

    I’m starting to wonder if whatever quality it is that makes someone engaging on the teevee is the same one that makes them lose all ability to have a sense of perspective.

    The medium of TV is engaging. Giant pseudo-intelligent talking heads floating in space, espousing common wisdom and tabloid news. That gets people’s attention.

    The people actually on the other end of the camera? The Chris Matthews and the Keith Olbermanns and the Sean Hannitys of the world are obnoxious bores. Hell, take Geraldo Rivera. Is there anyone that actually enjoys hearing that man yap his yap?

    TV is infested with insulated idiots too busy pounding the refresh button on the Drudge Report to give a damn about the non-TV world. It’s just that TV itself is flashy and eye catching.

  6. 6.

    slag

    @Zifnab: Yeah. A flickering television does have a certain primal draw to it. I suppose that’s one of the things people like about sports too. But the attractiveness of the medium (if you’re into that sort of thing) doesn’t explain the divergence in ratings between programs. I can only assume people want to watch Geraldo yapping because they choose to watch him and not someone like Jim Lehrer.

    But then, maybe I’m being unfair. We all lose our senses of perspective from time to time. Hell, I know I’ve done it more often than I’d like to admit, and I suppose it’s better to not have those instances recorded for posterity’s sake. It just seems to be a prevailing theme–with extreme variation–among certain groups for reasons I haven’t been able to identify.

  7. 7.

    SpotWeld

    This is what happens when Drudge rules thier world.
    History, even recent history becomes on huge TL;DR

  10. 10.

    lemma

    Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana who shot watermelons in his back yard to prove I don’t know what about poor Vince Foster.

  12. 12.

    Woody

    I thought awarding the games to Brazil was almost a given, geographically.

    As with the World Cup in J’burg/SA next year, and the Beijing Olympics, it is a fabulous opportunity for the Rio oligarchs to clean out some undesireables, boost property values, and otherwise juice the pockets of the rich and powerful. Chicago just wouldn’t have been the same…there’s not enough squalor…

  13. 13.

    smiley

    Slightly OT: I know Tweety is identified in the lexicon (and I’ve know the nickname for years), but Where does it come from? Why is he called Tweety? I’ve never known that.

  14. 14.

    Mojotron

    This Time article from 1998 about what a jackass Burton was is great, they should’ve stuck with the “chuck norris list” format for the whole article though.

    Dan Burton thinks the White House bugs his phone. Dan Burton is so convinced Vince Foster was murdered that he brought a pistol into the backyard of his Indiana home and reenacted the crime — reportedly with a pumpkin standing in for Foster’s head. Dan Burton is so afraid of catching AIDS that he brings his own scissors to the House barbershop and refuses to eat soup at public restaurants.

  15. 15.

    gocart mozart

    I don’;t normally do this, but the “Right Said Fred” thread appears dead and I would like others to see this take down of our good friend B.O.B.

    @Brick Oven Bill:

    After a long day skiing the slopes, who would not look forward to a evening exercising Glenn Beck’s Value of Hard Work, steeping their teabag with Shar and her friend?

    Something tells me that Shar and her friend will never teabag you B.O.B. They seem like nice girls. I think they are just tolerating you because they are too polite to call you an asshole to your face.

  17. 17.

    IndieTarheel

    @smiley: His hair, and both the shape and the size of his head, remind many of the Tweety bird character from the Looney Tunes cartoons.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @The Grand Panjandrum:

    I was hoping they would get it despite the fact that Chicago is my hometown. What can I say, I guess I’m just one of those hate-America-firsters for thinking it’s cool that they’ll finally have an Olympics in South America.

    Though I would have been able to stay with relatives and see the Olympics if Chicago had won and that would have been pretty cool. Oh well.

  20. 20.

    Midnight Marauder

    @IndieTarheel:

    His hair, and both the shape and the size of his head, remind many of the Tweety bird character from the Looney Tunes cartoons.

    Actually, I think the story runs a little deeper than that. I don’t remember where I read it, but I seem to recall that the particular color Matthews dyes his hair is the reason behind the name. The other physical features are just icing on the cake.

    His staff nicknamed him Tweety Bird because of the shade of yellow he dyes his hair. First divulged at mediawhoresonline.com

  22. 22.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Mr. Matthews seems to have forgotten that someone at his very own network hosted Gennifer Flowers and fawned over her as she recounted her transparently phony tales about the Clintons. And goodness me! The host in question seems to have even borrowed Mr. Matthews’ name!

  26. 26.

    slag

    @asiangrrlMN: True. Maybe he’s more like an insect. Focusing all his energies on continually responding to external stimuli and modulating his actions accordingly rather than engaging in higher, more contemplative thought processes. These instances of seeming insanity could just be inevitable products of an overactive defense mechanism.

  27. 27.

    Midnight Marauder

    More spectactular fail from Matthews:

    Matthews: But you know… most people watching this show say that … I’m not talking about our show because I have a tough sort of attitude … but they would say that the mainstream broadcast nets, ABC, NBC, CBS are all sort of somewhat left of center, certainly conservatives say. They’re not lefty, they’re establishment liberal.

    Why would he think that the liberal establishment, reflected in newspeople’s opinions were anti-Clinton? [head explodes here — ed]

  28. 28.

    licensed to kill time

    Gah! Gah! Gah! Is he frakin’ serious?! He “forgot”?! Is he prematurely demented? Maybe Dan Burton mistook Tweety’s head for a pumpkin and that’s what he shot? My mind, it boggles.

  29. 29.

    dmsilev

    The way to understand Tweety is to recognize that he has an attention span of roughly 5 minutes, coupled with a complete lack of both long-term memory and self-understanding.

    -dms

  30. 30.

    handy

    And Somerby was delighted with Branch on Tweety (delighted with Branch, not Tweety), for saying that the NYT and WaPo drove Whitewater. It’s nice to see the poor fellow happy for once.

    Yeah I figured he would chime in on this exchange. It’s really very painful, though, to see how out of the way he is willing to go these days after people who are calling out the whackjob teabaggers on their own BS because the sensibilities of all those “hard working white Americans” who continue to vote against their own interests might be offended. Because, you know, they’re totally the most relevant demographic on the face of the earth and Dems don’t want to insult them OH NOES.

  31. 31.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    OT: I’m sitting in our cabin out in the middle of nowhere, about 40 feet off of the ground and built around a tree, posting this while my wife is off on a horseback ride. My ass is sore enough from the motorcycle ride, no need to abuse it any more than necessary.

    This is a pretty cool place they have here (Out ‘n About in Takilma, Oregon). If anyone has played the game MYST, this is like the age of Channelwood. Swinging bridges, platforms and cabins in the sky.

    Haven’t met the owner but I can tell from the bumper stickers in the lodge that Bush sure wasn’t a favorite…lol

    Off to take some pics and see if there are any DFHs around. One old fart at the campfire last night uttered something to the effect that ‘this place is a great place to get away from everything Obama’. Everyone just ignored him, which seemed to make him sour. Everyone wants to get away and have fun and this asshole tries to dampen the fun.

    Bitter old man on vacation with his nice and polite wife. It was clear that she did not appreciate his utterance as she quickly steered the conversation elsewhere and ignore him too. We felt sorry for her, it was thoughtless of him to do what he did. My wife had breakfast with her this am and she said that while she didn’t bring it up, she wouldn’t be surprised if the lady had voted for Obama.

    I hope she did…lol! Well, off for some pics now. l8r peeps.

  32. 32.

    eemom

    @handy:

    agreed. The underlying theory sort of made some sense to me at first — i.e., that Dems should take the initiative to lead these poor misguided sheep, because otherwise the reththuglicans do it — but I’ve lost patience with it. First of all it strikes me that Somerby is in his own way being condescending to these “low information” voters by implying that they really are too stupid to figure things out for themselves.

    Second of all I’m just tired of people being That. Fucking. Stupid. I really don’t think it takes a whole lot of sense to figure out when you’ve been manipulated, fucked over and lied to, time and time again.

  33. 33.

    aimai

    Dmsilev

    The way to understand Tweety is to recognize that he has an attention span of roughly 5 minutes, coupled with a complete lack of both long-term memory and self-understanding.

    This explains everything. Tweety is basically operating at the level of a very excitable Irish Setter. No wonder I get hives watching him try to follow a logical argument.

    aimai

  35. 35.

    linda

    tweets will never, ever get over the fact that bill clinton chose monica lewinsky (she’s fat, doncha know) over him.

  36. 36.

    JK

    Chris Matthews is too distracted by the playoff run of the Philadelphia Phillies to concentrate on politics right now. He should just go on vacation until the World Series is over.

  37. 37.

    DougJ

    The way to understand Tweety is to recognize that he has an attention span of roughly 5 minutes, coupled with a complete lack of both long-term memory and self-understanding.

    That hits a little close to home for me.

  38. 38.

    R-Jud

    @DougJ:

    That hits a little close to home for me.

    ‘S alright, you’ll forget about it soon enough. If you haven’t already.

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