Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

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

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

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“woke” is the new caravan.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

This blog will pay for itself.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

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Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    JenJen

    And yet, MSNBC has announced they’re moving his show to the cable TV dead zone of 4:00, and replacing “Morning Meeting” with a new show hosted by Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd.

    I threw up a little in my mouth when they announced that this morning.

  3. 3.

    Kryptik

    Ratigan gets my respect for consistently sticking to his guns regardless. Not always gonna agree with him, but….yeah.

    Of course, that means he can’t be seen where people might actually listen to him.

    Oh, and Fucking Todd.

  6. 6.

    Comrade Mary

    Shuster tweets: “@soapboxmom @mediagadfly @natthedem My friend @tamronhall and I appreciate the passions/support. All will be fine. Details down the road.”

    Shuster has his flaws, and I wish he’d stop sucking his teeth, but he’s shown some ability to actually question people aggressively. Can’t have that. of course.

  7. 7.

    Zifnab

    @JenJen:

    And yet, MSNBC has announced they’re moving his show to the cable TV dead zone of 4:00, and replacing “Morning Meeting” with a new show hosted by Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd.

    And yet? You say it like there’s not a distinct and obvious correlation. Banks don’t like being bitch-tweeted. Time to tell the guy to STFU.

    Banksters need a friendly media to keep the guys with pitchforks and torches off their door.

  8. 8.

    JenJen

    @Comrade Mary: I’d take an hour-long policy-driven show hosted by Shuster over Ed Schultz any day, but that’s just me.

    @Zifnab: Yeah, teh funny isn’t working for me today. I meant “and yet” in a snarky sense.

    I wonder if this decision was in the works for awhile, or if this is a Comcast-directed programming move? And just to wear the tinfoil hat a little bit longer, is Ratigan on vaycay, or is he sulking? He’s done it before.

  9. 9.

    Comrade Mary

    No, JenJen, it’s not just you. I’m more exhausted by Ed’s hysterical shtick than I am by Shuster’s tooth-sucking.

  11. 11.

    Maude

    @JenJen: I did a clean install of 9.10 on a laptop for a children’t librarian to use at work. Got great desktop backgrounds. I’ll be showing her how to use it and she’ll love it.
    Durn dial up went off and had to wait for it to dial again.

  12. 12.

    JenJen

    Speaking of our awesome liberal media, Atrios highlights the following from a list of “job-rescuing policy changes” suggested by WaPo’s Charles Lane:

    Reduce the federal minimum wage. In 2007, Congress enacted a three-step increase in the minimum wage, which was then $5.15 per hour. The final installment took effect in July, raising the rate to $7.25 per hour. In the meantime, unemployment climbed from 4.7 percent to 9.5 percent.

    There are no words.

  14. 14.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    I’ve come to the conclusion that the major power flows in this country are just protection rackets. The War on Terror is a protection racket, for example.

    Apparently the banking system is also a big protection racket. Either pay us $NNb by Friday, or we will break your legs, and also break your economy and your jobs, and your currency.

    I hate to sound anti-populist and all, but I take the democratic process at face value. Americans voted for its bellicose, moneyed-interest-driven government, for 50 years. The so-called “conservative movement” was always nothing more than a trompe l’oeil, a facade, paid for by the big money interests, a dog and pony show of phony populisms and jingoisms designed to build a voting coalition around a very narrow set of interests that put up the dough for the show.

    So now, the piper must be paid. Stop complaining, and keep voting your true interests. You, that is, we, asked for this. We asked for the false “security” of bellicose policies and false “prosperity” of turning the entire economy into a payday loan store.

    Now we have to fix it. Don’t ask Barack Obama to fix in one year what it too the Phil Gramms and the Alan Greenspans and the Bill Frists 40 years to create.

  15. 15.

    CalD

    So I guess that massive regulatory overhaul bill for financial services that the House passed last week rates no love?

  16. 16.

    BruinKid

    It’s funny how many liberal bloggers had been initially very antagonistic towards Ratigan, given how he’s turned out. Maybe it was because of his CNBC background that made people think he was just another Wall Street/GOP shill.

    Don’t think people could still make that case if they saw his absolute takedown of Betsy McCaughey back in October.

  17. 17.

    Elie

    @AngusTheGodOfMeat:

    Yep.

    My stomach turns at all of this. Really. It makes me sick and makes me feel real anxiety at whether we have the focus and discipline — whether we have the “want-to” to really fix it. I dunno. In America even the poor want to be rich or think they can be rich and don’t want that fantasy, the locked-in-ness of their real situation in front of their faces. White folks — poor whites particularly, guard this illusion literally, with their very lives. I believe that if poor whites actually accepted class exists and plays a huge role in their lives, we would have major change in this country. Right now, however, they keep voting with the right and keep being played…in some respects, they are the guardians of the current potical reality…

    Just my thoughts

  18. 18.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @JenJen:

    NBC is pretty desperate. They are grasping at whatever floats by in the whirlpool of change and declining ratings they are stuck in.

    As for Ratigan’s new time slot, the important thing is whether he will get prime time replays alongside Keith and Rachel. If he does, and attracts an audience there, it can be a good thing. I say this despite the fact that I am not really a big Ratigan fan, but maybe I have to watch several episodes. You know, like The Wire.

    I wish them luck, anyway. Now, can somebody please teach Ed how to run a righty-lefty talk segment without having everyone shouting over everyone else? Jesus.

  19. 19.

    Zifnab

    @JenJen:

    There are no words.

    We’ll be seeing this stat quoted from now until the end of time whenever the minimum wage is brought up. Bank on it.

  20. 20.

    El Cid

    This seems like it was an interesting paper (PDF here), except that we aren’t really supposed to bring perspectives of economic and social class in this country, except via weirdo Tea Party bizarro world translation and weird Villager impersonations of how everybody hates Libruls at the Applebees salad bar. I would actually like to see this work updates. (HT Monthly Review and MR Zine.)

    THE CLASS CONTENT OF PREFERENCES TOWARDS ANTI-INFLATION AND ANTI-UNEMPLOYMENT POLICIES

    Arjun Jayadev | Department of Economics | University of Massachusetts, Boston | 29th July 2006

    This paper assesses class based preferences towards anti-inflationary and anti-unemployment policy. Using a consistent cross-country social survey, I find that the working class broadly defined, and those with lower occupational skill and status are more likely to prioritize combating unemployment rather than inflation. The result that the working class is less ‘relatively inflation averse’ is robust to the inclusion of several plausible controls. In addition, I find that those respondents who exhibit a broadly pro-business and anti-redistributionary attitude are more relatively inflation averse. The finding that inflation and unemployment aversion have a distinct class character has implications for current debates on the implications of macroeconomic policies such as inflation targeting.

    Given that the false, propaganda storyline that ‘everyone is most worried about the deficit’ will be religiously invoked for as long and as loud as necessary to avert serious jobs programs and a long aspired-to cutting of social services to ordinary people, maybe we ought pay attention to people who show things like, no, your average person has other priorities than the abstract known as ‘the deficit’, which is something that becomes important whenever it’s not having to do with wars and military funding and tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate contracts and subsidies.

  21. 21.

    Sentient Puddle

    I’m pretty down on his move because I do watch a good bit of Morning Meeting before leaving for work. He’s typically about as abrasive in his interviews too, and every so often, it does lead to a real gem. I gotta give him props for how he turned out.

    I’d second the call to swap out Schultz for Schuster. Or hell, maybe give up one of the Hardball hours in the afternoon (though I’m sure MSNBC would consider that totally unthinkable).

  22. 22.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @JenJen:

    I know the feeling, but actually there are words. The words are that people have to take responsibility for their own information processes.

    McDonald’s can’t force you to be fat and have coronary artery disease. WaPo can’t force you to have a crummy information base in your head.

    The moral is to eat wisely, and to read and watch and listen wisely. Get information from multiple sources, which luckily are widely available in these times. Compare, and examine critically. Figure out what is true and what is not, and what is known and what is not. Look for corroboration, and ask tough questions.

    The future belongs to the winners of the contests between the people who can do that, and those who can’t. For a while there, it looked like the morons were winning. They found it hard to do critical thinking so they invented slogans that can fit on bumper stickers. But their slogans proved lacking when it came to actually governing and managing.

    Those of us who think we are smarter than they are are pretty imperfect, too, we just have to strive to be sure that our flawed way of going about this is better than theirs is.

  23. 23.

    Remember November

    Yeah DR definite throws cock punches. I like him and follow him. He is the Anti Glenn Beck- someone with an ax to grind on his own whetstone, and not a jewelry buffer provided by Gold LIne.

  25. 25.

    Violet

    @JenJen:
    No way. Chuckie and Savannah are getting their own show? As if things weren’t dreary and horrible enough. I guess incompetence always get rewarded. That and being bland, unoriginal, nonthreatening, and sucking the dick of your corporate masters.

  26. 26.

    AngusTheGodOfMeat

    @JenJen:

    Yes, that is a good one. Not unlike one I heard on POTUS the XM channel earlier this year, from a banking industry spokesman:

    Stricter bankruptcy laws and draconian rate structures are good for consumers, because without them, low end borrowers would not have access to credit. So, the banks are really looking out for the subprime customers.

    I swear, that is what they said.

  29. 29.

    liberal

    @Lolis:

    Here is some good bailout news: Citigroup is repaying TARP and supposedly paying back more than it was given.

    Perhaps literally true, but BS in substance, given that we gave Citi what, $300B or so?, in loan guarantees, for either nothing or a pittance.

  30. 30.

    mp1900

    I’m in Ohio, and very interesting to see how people who cited religious reasons for voting R in 2004 all of a sudden were voting D in 2008. No jobs makes a huge difference. Now there are even less jobs.
    And boy are people pissed at the Dems.
    I’m not bringing up politics for any reason….them’s fighting words.

  31. 31.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    Here is some good bailout news: Citigroup is repaying TARP and supposedly paying back more than it was given.

    From what I have heard, they (and others) are only paying it back quickly because they want to keep paying out the big buck bonuses to themselves. Those bonuses look pretty bad if you are borrowing money to stay afloat but look much better if you pay back what you owe, plus a bit and then pay out bonuses.

    Let’s see if they need to borrow more money next year. :)

  32. 32.

    Liberty60

    @JenJen:

    Speaking of our awesome liberal media, Atrios highlights the following from a list of “job-rescuing policy changes” suggested by WaPo’s Charles Lane:

    Reduce the federal minimum wage. ..

    Chin up. It could be worse.
    He could have followed that by a declaration that restrictions on banker’s bonuses would drive away all teh smart people.

    If Obama was smart, he would claim that cutting bankers pay in half would mean that twice as many could be hired.

    O, teh stimulatin’ effect of it all!

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