Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Everybody saw this coming.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

This really is a full service blog.

The revolution will be supervised.

“They all knew.”

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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

I really should read my own blog.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

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Archives for 2009

Teasing people out

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I don’t have anything special against Matt Welch. I liked his book about McCain, he’s written reasonable stuff in the past, but now he’s an unabashed glibertarian. Nobody’s perfect. But his appearance on the Snooze Hour today (h/t JK) made me laugh.

I would expect it (racism) to manifest itself at minimum with people expressing, whether it’s in their signage or in their conversation, concerns about hot-button racial issues: affirmative action, immigration, welfare queens, and whatnot.

Uh, Matt, many of them were carrying signs of a black president in white face. Isn’t that a better measure than whether or not they were using 1980s phrases like “welfare queens”?

And this especially:

And I saw a precious little — and I even tried to tease people out, like, “Ah, what do you think about that Obama character? Is he legitimate? Is he not?”

I don’t what it is, but the idea of this guy “teasing out” teabaggers by asking what they thought of this Obama character just cracks me up.

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Dead set on destruction

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TNC and Joe Klein both have good pieces up about the racist angle in Republican attacks on Obama. TNC makes the point that what angers the right most is that “Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.” Klein makes the point that it may not be white-on-black racism per se so much as it is generalized xenophobia and paranoia that animates the birther crowd.

My opinion is that it’s obviously no coincidence that the first time a president was heckled from the House floor it was a white southerner heckling the first black president. And if Joe Wilson doesn’t laugh at racist jokes, that may be because he takes racism very seriously, to paraphrase the great Jake Gittes.

But there’s another angle on this that I haven’t seen discussed. Klein, in particular, should be familiar with it from covering Clinton, though I doubt he’d admit it (pundit’s code and all that). It’s that personally destroying your opponent is an important part of Republican politics. I’m not making a value judgement here, but it’s a fact that these days at least, Republicans are much more aggressive about dehumanizing Democrats than vice versa. Have you ever seen a Democratic presidential ad as personal and free of issues as McCain’s “Celebrity” ad? And, in the end, what Obama went through last fall was pretty mild compared with what Clinton, Gore, and Kerry got hit with, and with with what Obama is being hit with now.

With Clinton in particular, the notion that he was the first black president because Republicans treated him like a black man is right on target. Racism is about viewing others as less than human. And so was Clenis-hunting. I remember having a talk with a Republican acquaintance of mine who told me that “Kerry and Gore are just weird people, like aliens, they’re not really humans.” The politics of personal destruction and the politics of racially-based debasement are striking similar.

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Maybe They Are On To Something

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The newest wingnut endeavor:

Rep. Jack Kingston’s (R-Ga.) has rapidly signed up 99 co-sponsors for his Czar Accountability and Reform Act of 2009, which I wrote about last week. All but one of them are Republicans: the member of the majority party backing Kingston’s crusade to prevent presidential advisers who haven’t been approved by the Senate from collecting salaries is Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.).

From wikipedia:

czars

Also according to wikipedia, this:

domesticpolicyczarkarlrove

Turdblossom wasn’t the only nickname Karl Rove had. Another nickname for him was “Domestic Policy Czar.”

I understand that consistency is not the Republican strongpoint. But would it have really hurt for them to wait a year before going batshit insane? Even most of America still remembers the last eight years, but they are going to the full monty with the nonsense anyway. I mean seriously, what is left for them to do? How do you top the last couple of months? Release a competing budget with no numbers?

Oh, nevermind.

(via)

*** Update ***

If the Republicans really were concerned with fiscal responsibility, they would stop making up so much shit that someone has to be employed full time by the White House refuting their lies.

*** Update #2 ***

Apparently Clay’s inclusion on the list was a clerical error.

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Let’s Party Like It’s 1997

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The balls on these people:

worsethantorture

To refresh:

Investigating known links to the past administration and torture- beyond the pale.

Investigating known wrongdoing within the Justice department regarding firings- partisan politics.

Investigating Monica Goodling and that entire sorry crew- unseemly.

Creating a special prosecutor to ogle Bill Clinton’s penis and another one to fish for some possible wrongdoing somewhere in a connection to Obama that doesn’t exist- YOUR PATRIOTIC GOD DAMNED DUTY. WOLVERINES!

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