Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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62Comments

  2. 2.

    shortstop

    I don’t think I can ever again love him with the first fine careless rapture I had before he defended the IDF attack on the aid flotilla. But I’m liking this a lot.

  4. 4.

    roshan

    Had to bring back some comment gold from youtube:

    WHEN ANTHONY WEINER SAYS SIT THE FUCK DOWN YOU SIT THE FUCK DOWN
    This man probably has to drive two cars to work every day: one for him, and one for his colossal testicles

  8. 8.

    QDC

    I noticed yesterday that Fallows linked to the takedown of McArdle at Inversesquare. For the Atlantic blogger mutual lovefest, linking to that piece is just about the rage-equivalent of the above video.

    Some of McArdle’s colleagues may be starting to notice the general attitude toward her work that prevails among non-Atlantic folk.

  9. 9.

    Alex S.

    I’ve noticed that Matt Yglesias and E.J. Dionne are getting shriller lately, also too.

  10. 10.

    Svensker

    @shortstop:

    I don’t think I can ever again love him with the first fine careless rapture I had before he defended the IDF attack on the aid flotilla. But I’m liking this a lot.

    Yup. How he’s acting in that vid is how I felt about the flotilla attack, but I don’t think he’d appreciate that passion.

    Oh well, as Joe E. Brown said, nobody’s perfect.

  11. 11.

    geg6

    Well, that slightly makes up for his defense of Israeli murderers, I guess. But just slightly.

  12. 12.

    Allison W.

    The Gentleman Will Sit…..the fuck down!

    I have to say sometimes I don’t like Weiner, but this was great. I’ve had my own fantasies of going into the chamber and smacking some heads together for sure.

    I’m sure some here will comment that Obama needs to do this – uh no, no he doesn’t. The reports will be that he’s having a nervous breakdown – falling poll numbers, falling economy, Afghanistan leaks, etc.

  14. 14.

    Allison W.

    @Alex S.:

    I understand how they feel. Its just disgusting what the republicans are doing and STILL they are supposed to do very well in the mid-terms and their donations just keep piling up.

  16. 16.

    Allison W.

    @John Cole:

    I think he was yelling at Steve King. I think.

    J. Cole, you have to add “The gentleman will sit” in those one-liners under your blog name.

  18. 18.

    TR

    @Allison W.:

    I’m sure some here will comment that Obama needs to do this – uh no, no he doesn’t.

    Agreed.

    What Obama needs is for more progressives like Weiner to do this.

    The mainstream politicians thought FDR was a radical, until they saw what real radicalism looked like in the form of Huey Long and Father Coughlin. The mainstream media regarded Martin Luther King as a dangerous radical, until Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael showed the range of black nationalism off to his left.

    Our problem is that we do have angry people on the left, but for some idiotic reason, they’re training their fire on Obama, and not on the nuts on the right who really deserve it.

  20. 20.

    TR

    @Allison W.:

    I think he was yelling at Steve King.

    That’s the only time Steve King has been called “a gentleman.” If it weren’t for the House rules of decorum, Weiner should have yelled “the racist fuckwit retard will sit!”

  21. 21.

    Bella Q

    I don’t think I can ever again love him with the first fine careless rapture I had before he defended the IDF attack on the aid flotilla. But I’m liking this a lot.

    This was wonderful, and I was hardly surprised by his position on the IDF attack, but that defense indeed dimmed my ardor. Sigh.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    Speaking of the midterms, I am really hoping more GOPers bring Phyllis Schafly and the Eagle Forum with them on the campaign trail with them. I just know that her meme that 70% of single women voted for Obama so they could toss away their menfolk so they and their kids could live lives of luxury and bonbon eating on Obama’s soshulist welfare will resonate with the women out there. The fact that I’ve never married or had kids or been on welfare or even unemployed apparently didn’t change the fact that that’s the reason I voted for him, I guess.

  25. 25.

    Bella Q

    @burnspbesq: Probably not, but as an old criminal defense attorney told me in my youth, after one of his fine performances before a jury, sometimes the drama is all you got, so you have to make the most of it.

  26. 26.

    Punchy

    This odd pattern was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

    I had no idea a rap artist could have so much influence on particle physics.

  28. 28.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @burnspbesq:

    Awesome theater. But did it accomplish anything?

    Well, did the bill pass? OTOH, sometimes you just have to slap them down.

    Honestly, trying to accomplish anything involving people with no souls seems a difficult task.

  29. 29.

    Steeplejack

    @Punchy:

    I think he endowed the building, so he got his name on it. Philanthropy. You should see the Puffy Astrophysics Center. Very nice.

  30. 30.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @burnspbesq: It cheered people up. Also, if (and it is a big if) this kind of thing gets significant public exposure and praise, it could encourage others to grow a pair. It could, by being over the top, increase the probability that the procedural stalls by Repuyblicans get noticed. Finally, it was probably good for Rep. Weiner’s blood pressure to let that out.

  31. 31.

    Kristine

    Greg Sargent thinks the rant highlights Dem impotence:

    Weiner repeatedly yelled about the GOP’s “shame,” but this misses the point. Republicans are not going to be shamed into doing what Dems want them to do. Republicans are pursuing a concerted game plan here that Dems need to reckon with more directly. Indeed, Dems would be far better served if they kept calmly repeating that Republicans want government to fail, in order to breed cynicism and to get voters to give up on the idea that government works for them.

    Yelling is satisfying at that moment, but we learned in Corporate Meetings 101 that s/he who yells first has lost the argument, and appears weaker. The only people who seem more powerful when they yell are the folks who have the power to begin with.

    I hope the Dems have that underlying game plan that Sargent refers to in place, because otherwise they just look like they’re doing the same thing over and over even though it won’t work. What was that definition of insanity again?

  32. 32.

    Violet

    @TR:
    Yes, this. Exactly. I’m loving the somewhat newish tendency of people on the left and the MSM of calling a spade a spade. It’s like a breath of fresh air.

    More and more and more of this please. Sit down, Republicans. Sit the fuck down.

  34. 34.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Kristine:

    Indeed, Dems would be far better served if they kept calmly repeating that Republicans want government to fail, in order to breed cynicism and to get voters to give up on the idea that government works for them.

    I haven’t seen that work yet. c.f., Obama, Barack.

  35. 35.

    Violet

    @Kristine:
    It should be a coordinated strategy. Some yelling is good, but there should be boring repetition of talking points like: “Republicans want the government to fail,” “Republicans don’t care about unemployed people,” “Republicans want people to die when they get sick” etc.

    But this sort of thing is very refreshing.

  36. 36.

    tim

    OH MY GOD. I weep with joy.

    Now we need to see this regarding about 100 OTHER issues on which the Repukes play bullshit games and the dems yield spinelessly.

    Over and over again.

  38. 38.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @QDC:

    Some of McArdle’s colleagues may be starting to notice the general attitude toward her work that prevails among non-Atlantic folk.

    The Atlantic blog section are doing a pretty good interpretive performance of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies updated for the 21st Cen., but in such a subtle fashion that nobody even notices.

  39. 39.

    Allison W.

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Obama does it all the time and it worked during the campaign, but he needs other Dems to repeat it over and over and over and over…… Dems don’t have the consistency part down.

  40. 40.

    Kristine

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    I haven’t seen that work yet. c.f., Obama, Barack.

    Well, the argument I’ve seen there is that he didn’t start doing it soon enough/hasn’t done it often enough.

    I’m wondering how much of this will still be sticking in the average voter’s mind come November.

  41. 41.

    DecidedFenceSitter

    @TR:

    The mainstream politicians thought FDR was a radical, until they saw what real radicalism looked like in the form of Huey Long and Father Coughlin. The mainstream media regarded Martin Luther King as a dangerous radical, until Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael showed the range of black nationalism off to his left.

    Don’t forget the downfall of communism, a friend of mine who’s got his History PhD and I were talking and came to the conclusion that a lot of the last 30 years can be attributed to no longer having the threat of Communism – there’s no competing economic system for the hearts and minds of the masses.

  42. 42.

    Lawnguylander

    @Kristine: This isn’t anything like a corporate meeting though. His intended audience here isn’t even his co-workers. He’s trying to influence the people out there who read shallow news coverage that reports this as, “Democrats say one thing and the Republicans say another thing and that’s all we’re going to tell you, good luck trying to figure out who the real assholes are in this dispute.” I’m not usually a fan of people who yell but in cases like this it seems worth a try.

  43. 43.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @DecidedFenceSitter:

    I’ll cosign on that theory. US elites needed some plausible combination of internal and external threats to keep them from behaving in a totally irresponsible and self-destructive manner. When the USSR fell apart the effect on us was like having a semi-reformed and partially under control cokehead check out of rehab the day after his parents died and left him the family fortune. This story doesn’t end well.

  45. 45.

    Corner Stone

    Speaking of outrage, has anyone went to their local fried chicken place lately?
    My Popeye’s has gone off the damn deep end!

    I looked through their coupon ad and was shocked, shocked I tell you, to see how freakin much fried chicken is these days!
    If I want fried chicken I usually batter & oven fry sliced chicken breast at home but once in a while I get a craving for all the juicy bone-in chicken parts.
    It’s ridiculous. Anyone else notice this poutrage?

  47. 47.

    ellaesther

    Oh.My.God. I have goosebumps.

    THAT WAS BRILLIANT!!!

    I am going to call his office and tell him just how brilliant it was! Wow. He energized me, too, and I’m hundreds of miles away!

    I want to make this insider Jew comment first though: When he was yelling “It’s a shame! It’s a shame!” I am almost confident that what he was thinking was “It’s a shanda! It’s a shanda!”, meaning a shameful thing — as it is indeed, a great big shanda. And the gentleman Jew from New York knows it and isn’t afraid who hears him say it! Whoot!

  48. 48.

    danimal

    @Corner Stone:

    How?

    Part ‘bitch slap’ politics (“the gentleman will sit down!”, part push back against GOP gamesmanship that is effective only when it is hidden, part showing passion (just read some of the previous comments) and a big part of attacking from the left. Aggressively standing up for liberal policies frames the debate differently in the “he said/she said” media world we live in.

  50. 50.

    Bella Q

    @ellaesther: Given that when he yelled “it’s a shame” I expected to hear the repeat be “it’s a shanda,” your confidence is well placed, I think. In fact, I wasn’t sure which he said, at first listen, because I agree that it is a giant shanda.

  52. 52.

    ET

    I like this for no other reason that someone has finally shouted (in this case quite literally) about the political tactics that allow politicians, in this case Republican, to distance them from making an actual choice on the House or Senate floor and possibly being punished for it at the voting booth.

    Maybe the press will actually see what it is he is referring to. Of course I ain’t holding my breath because they are likely to splutter about him shouting more than the fact that he was trying to say.

  53. 53.

    fraught

    I thought I heard shanda too. But that’s just probably because I’m an Irishman who lives in NY.

  56. 56.

    Tally

    Bravo! More Dems need to get a pair and show it. The Repubs are walking all over Congress and the Dems have not been doing enough to stop it.

  59. 59.

    asiangrrlMN

    @shortstop: Aw, damn. I did not know this about him, but it’s not surprising. Disheartening, though, so yeah, my original lust for him has waned a bit. Still, that said…

    @Cat Lady: You and me both, sister.

    As for the shouting v. the calm denunciation, I think both is needed. Consistently do both to hammer the point home. Obama should remain calm in explaining how the Republicans are fucking over the country whilst the new Dems like Weiner, Sherrod Brown, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Grayson point out vocally that the Republicans are thugs. Sometimes, the only way to deal with a bully is to bully because that’s all a bully understands.

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