Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

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

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

T R E 4 5 O N

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

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Archives for 2009

Being Broke = Going Galt

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You have to read this to believe it:

But then in mid to late June, along came the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy. The Democratic triumvirate’s intent to starve the nation of energy, regardless of the consequences, and newly minted presidential nominee Barack Obama’s designs on punitively taxing 5% of the nation’s most productive in the name of redistributing money to everyone else, both became crystal clear. As a result, paraphrasing what I wrote at the time, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs responded to the trio’s total lack of seriousness by battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst.

They haven’t stopped, which is why the POR economy is now the POR recession as normal people define it. It is also why tax collections have taken a dive.

***

Through March 31 of last year, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, “individual income and employment taxes not withheld,” which are largely payments made by the self-employed, partners, and those in S corporations whose income flows through to individual tax returns, are down about 13%, or almost $15 billion, from a year ago. These not-withheld taxes are what drove last April’s all-time collections record, which is definitely not going to repeat itself.

It’s clear that quite a few ordinarily industrious people “went Galt” months before the tea party movement even came into existence. As a result, fiscal 2009’s deficit could come in closer to $2 trillion than to the Obama administration’s estimate of $1.75 trillion, or even the Congressional Budget Office’s $1.85 trillion.

The title of the piece is “Tax Receipts Plummet as Americans ‘Go Galt.'”

You have to kind of admire the mental gymnastics that piece took. The author ignores the fact that the recession started in December ’07, instead blaming it on Obama/Reid/Pelosi in the summer of ’08, and then ignored that recession when considering tax receipts have dropped and attributed that to people “Going Galt” instead of, you know, the worldwide recession.

And you know what? As stupid as that piece is, you can guarantee some wingnut will repeat it. Why? Because it has numbers in it, so it must be true. That is a veritable dissertation compared to the movement that brought us Liberal Fascism.

*** Update ***

I’m John Cole, not Juan Cole, you fricking clown. I was a member of PJM from the beginning. You’re attributing quotes to me that were made by a completely different person. Can you get ANYTHING right? Those things you are linking to at Anti-war and Zombietime- WERE NOT WRITTEN BY ME. THEY WERE WRITTEN BY JUAN COLE, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON.

Buffoon.

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Stay Classy, Rick Perry

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Way to govern with a steady hand, jackass:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax “tea party” Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states’ rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!”

An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall — one of three tea parties he was attending across the state — that officials in Washington have abandoned the country’s founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt.

Perry repeated his running theme that Texas’ economy is in relatively good shape compared with other states and with the “federal budget mess.” Many in the crowd held signs deriding President Barack Obama and the $786 billion federal economic stimulus package.

Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters’ questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that.

“There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

I’m sure you all remember when, in 2003, after the population of lefty liberal leftistan California, enraged by Bush taking us to war in Iraq, boisterously cheered Gray Davis as he debated secession. Oh, wait.

These jackasses are playing with fire.

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You can take all the tea in China, put it in a big brown bag for me

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Predictably, Marc Ambinder is promoting the wonders of tea-bagging:

But the tea parties really are something. Their origins — organic, programmatic, accidental or otherwise — don’t matter much anymore. If — and we’ll have to see the numbers at the end of the day — 100,000 Americans show up to protest their taxes, the onus to dismiss them as a nascent political force shifts to the Democrats.

A few questions… Why are Democrats obligated to dismiss this as a political force? Isn’t that what elections, which once had consequences, are about? And if these are such a political force, shouldn’t that force manifest itself more powerfully in political polls?

Finally, why do we have to pay attention to 100K tea-baggers when 10 million anti-Iraq war protesters were considered a focus group?

(via)

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More of This, Please

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Joe Klein, unplugged:

Bush flunkies trying to argue that Obama is more polarizing than Bush was. Given the fact that Obama had to take dramatic action, at home and abroad, to start lifting the country from the mess Bush made almost everywhere–and also begin to turn the country aware from the myopia and greed of the Reagan era–it’s amazing that he hasn’t raised more dust or teabags. And, I should add the fact that the alleged polarization mostly results from the fact that Obama gets extremely low ratings from self-identified Republicans, who constitute an extremist shard of a party at this point, is a badge of honor.

In the long run, it’s a safe historical bet that Bush will prove more polarizing than Obama because he was such an abject failure in the job–I doubt we’ll ever see Obama submerge to approval ratings in the mid-20s, or launch wars peremptorily without cause or purpose. The constant sniping from Rove, Wehner and the others during Obama’s first 100 days is a deeply neurotic reaction to the enormity of their own cockups in office. It shows a profound lack of class or grace, but then, that’s no surprise with these guys, is it? They ran the country like thugs, and thugs they remain.

Yes. Yes. And one thousand times, yes.

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Fight For the Right to be Stupid

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These guys are really so dumb it hurts:

Outside the White House, protesters threw an apparent box of tea bags over the fence. U.S. Secret Service officers cleared Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Park near the compound and sent in a robot to inspect the suspicious package while the White House went on lockdown.

Solid thinking, teabaggers! Seriously. That is almost a Darwin Awards entry- “Watch me throw this package over the fence while snipers sit on the roof of the White House!” Also:

But a funny thing happened en route to a visually pleasing Tax Day protest. The National Park Service said the tea party protesters didn’t have the proper permit to dump their bags.

…

“We have a million tea bags here, and we don’t have a place to put them because it’s not on our permit,” said Rebecca Wales, lead organizer of D.C. Tea Party.

…

A local think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said it would allow the dumping of the tea bags in its 12th floor conference room instead. Not quite the same impact, though.

No doubt there will be protests planned to protest the burden of getting proper protest permits. Maybe we can get all of them together to burn their driver’s licenses or something on Independence Day.

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Coleman/Franken Update

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I was under the impression that Franken had been declared the winner again the other night, but according to the NY Times, that apparently was not the definitive win. Does anyone have any idea how many more times Franken has to win before he is considered the winner? And at what point did Senate elections turn into the political equivalent of the World Series?

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Afternoon Open Thread

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Thought we could use one. Still working my way through all my cd’s, and ran across some Man or Astro Man. Again, long time since I have played that.

You know what really irritates me about the tea parties? The basic fact that if right now, it were President John McCain and not President Obama, and nothing else had changed, these tea parties wouldn’t exist. You know it, I know it, and even the teabaggers know it. It is just such transparent bullshit that it is offensive. The most these guys ever did during the last lost eight years was put a limp Porkbusters logo on their website, but now that we have President Malcom X George McGovern Shabazz, they are freaking out like there is no tomorrow. So absurd.

You know what else I think of every time I think of Dick Armey or Newt Gingrich or these Club for Growth clowns flogging this nonsense? The movie Bob Roberts. A friend and I have decided that movie is a more accurate representation of American politics the last three decades than any news piece, history book, or documentary. Why isn’t Bob Roberts on a channel every night of the week somewhere? It should be.

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