Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The willow is too close to the house.

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

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

He really is that stupid.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

You are here: Home / Your moment of teatard

Your moment of teatard

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Someone just forwarded this Joe Miller fundraising email to me (Booman has a bit on it too).

We don’t want to loose the momentumn of this great campaign!! We are going to get Joe Miller elected, it’s just that for reasons we don’t understand God wants us to have a waiting spell. :) We need to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and keep the campaign uplifted in constant prayer. In order for Joe to keep campaigning he needs funds. So far the Lord has always provided the money in this grass roots campaign, and this time God is going to use you to provide! A fundraiser will be held at Campaign Headquarters on Monday from 5:00-8:30 pm…It cost alot of money to run a clean campaign and we all know that Joe’s campaign isn’t receiving any monies from corporations or from out of State entities.

This email is signed “Harmony” and notes that it is “Paid for by Joe Miller for US Senate.”

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    valdivia

    Wait. Harmony as in the closing line before the sig? Like “In Solidarity”? Or that is the name of the person?
    WTF?

    ETA: love how The Lord is now a community organizer providing funds for the grassroots campaign. Or what Booman said. I see that was his point.

  2. 2.

    licensed to kill time

    You know, that loose/lose thing drives me nuts on the tubes.

    eta: Maybe God should provide a spellchecker instead of a waiting spell.

  4. 4.

    Hal

    So far the Lord has always provided the money in this grass roots campaign, and this time God is going to use you to provide!

    The Lord lost his job back in January and has had to dip into his savings to stay afloat. He’d love to help, really he would, but money’s just a little tight right now.

  6. 6.

    valdivia

    @DougJ:

    either way it actually makes the email a classic.
    Because if teatard wingnuts are now signing their emails “Harmony” that really is some freaking funny thing. Who knew they were all peace-loving flower children?

    Having a raving lunatic republican candidate for the Senate send email from someone called Harmony is pretty funny too. ’cause you know, that is just what they’re all about!

  8. 8.

    numbskull

    So the good Lord lives in Alaska, huh. After all, Joe ain’t takin’ no money from “out of State entities,” right?

    And none of his money came from the Tea Party, right?

    And none of his money came from the Koch brothers, right?

    Alternatively, the Joe Miller campaign is a lying sack of shit.

    Tough call.

  11. 11.

    Frank

    Bizarre! So Miller accuses Obama of being a socialist (I bet Miller, like the rest of them, have literally no clue what that big words means) but claims that God gave his campaign money. Bizarre when you consider that Jesus through his actions showed that he had much sympathy towards socialism.

  12. 12.

    Zuzu's Petals

    “Harmony” is Harmony Shields, a campaign staffer and also a Team Huck volunteer, among other things. Her FB profile says she was homeschooled.

  13. 13.

    NR

    Fuck the Democratic leadership for guaranteeing that this guy will get into the Senate. Seriously, fuck them.

  16. 16.

    me

    “I simply want to reduce God to the size where I can drag Him into the bathroom and drown Him in the bathtub.”

    –Grover Norquist (almost)

  17. 17.

    ThresherK

    Another case of RealAmerica™ Birthrighteousness: How many seconds would it take for Politico to squawk about Al Gore if HE said “We must be as wise as serpents”?

    I don’t own a Bible, so if they’re saying a serpent is wise (and not, maybe, an owl, which may or may not be mentioned in the Bible), who am I to carp?

  19. 19.

    Mark S.

    @ThresherK:

    I think Jesus says that, right before he ordered that hit on John the Baptist. I could be wrong; I sometimes mix up the Bible with the Godfather.

  20. 20.

    wasabi gasp

    Hope Joe fares better than that Jesus guy who sucked so bad at fleecing lepers that god snuffed his shit out and turned him into a chocolate bunny.

  21. 21.

    MikeJ

    @ThresherK: As wise as serpents is from Matthew. Jesus is telling his followers to go out and be nice to everyone, even people who weren’t nice to them.

  23. 23.

    quaint irene

    Harmony Shields, really? Sounds like something to keep harmony from getting in. Oh, wait….

    Or like something that helps prevent those unsightly pit stains.

  27. 27.

    Dr. Squid

    So far the Lord has always provided the money in this grass roots campaign,

    I’d like to see that FEC filing.

  28. 28.

    ET

    Every time is see a lot as one word I have to go read this from Hyperbole and a Half which turn Alot into a creature. It. Is. Hysterical.

    And if I was a Bible believer then I don’t know wise is the word for a snake because the time I remember a snake it wasn’t a very flattering picture and it most definitely wasn’t wise. I also don’t remember God getting so directly involved with campaigns and wonder if that is violating the spirit of the not taking the lord name in vain commandment.

  29. 29.

    ThresherK

    @MikeJ: Thanks for doing the research. But does everybody know this chapter and verse?

    Put another way, how few seconds would it take for a Mark Halperin to come up with the uberPolitico meta-analysis, “Al Gore made the mistake of saying something which other people were able to misinterpret”?

    @Mark S.: An author of one of these bestsellers is supposed to have said “If I knew so many people were going to read it, I’d have written it better.”

  31. 31.

    calipygian

    It cost alot of money to run a clean campaign and we all know that Joe’s campaign isn’t receiving any monies from corporations or from out of State entities.

    So he isn’t getting Teatard Dick Armey money? Am I understanding that correctly?

  32. 32.

    Dr. Squid

    Maybe Harmony is Harmony Korine and we’re going to hear about a bunny that smells like a PILE OF BULLSHIT!

  34. 34.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @ET: Read it, awesome. Now, OCD that I am, I’m gonna spend hours and hours reading through that blog’s archive.

  35. 35.

    mellowjohn

    @licensed to kill time:
    good catch. i blew right past “lose/loose.” another thing that drives me nuts is people who write “alot” for “a lot.”
    so i totally buy the homeschooled comment posted by zuzu.

  36. 36.

    quaint irene

    I don’t know wise is the word for a snake because the time I remember a snake it wasn’t a very flattering picture

    And considering that it was the serpent who got us all kicked out of Eden….

  37. 37.

    NR

    @NobodySpecial: In an ordinary year, there is no way that a teabagging moron like this would get anywhere near the Senate. But Obama and the Democratic leaders have created such a toxic political environment that he is going to win, and win easily. And the whole country will have to deal with the consequences of having Miller (and probably several more like him) in the Senate.

    Like I said – fuck them.

  38. 38.

    60th Street

    “loose the momentumn”

    is “homeschooled” teatard shorthand for “dumb as a sack of bibles”?

    (apologies in advance to all the non-teatard homeshcooled)

  39. 39.

    ET

    @The Bearded Blogger: I totally understand and now excited because there is a new post about coupons. The one on wishing on a star was funny in a I did that sort of way while the Expectations v. Reality one made me laugh so hard I teared up as did the Bicycle one. I was introduced to that site for the Cat Safety Propaganda video.

  43. 43.

    licensed to kill time

    @mellowjohn:

    The loose for lose is everywhere on the nets! I don’t know how it started but I get a hair on fire thing every time I see it.

    Definitely read @ET: ‘s link if your hair starts burning when you see ‘alot’. I love Love LOVE Hyperbole and a Half.

  45. 45.

    BGinCHI

    @NR:

    “In an ordinary year, there is no way that a teabagging moron like this would get anywhere near the Senate. But Obama and the Democratic leaders have created such a toxic political environment that he is going to win, and win easily. And the whole country will have to deal with the consequences of having Miller (and probably several more like him) in the Senate.”

    The “toxic political environment” is a Dem creation?

    That’s the most spectacularly stupid thing I’ve read all day. Give yourself the snark or dumbass prize. You choose.

  47. 47.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @licensed to kill time:

    The loose for lose is everywhere on the nets! I don’t know how it started but I get a hair on fire thing every time I see it.

    That is not an internet-specific phenomenon, neither is their/there/they’re nor it’s/its.

    I’d recommend any local k-12 school district as a good place for “how it got started.”

  48. 48.

    geg6

    @NR:

    LOLwhut? Obama and Harry Reid have created the toxic political environment we’re suffering under today? Seriously?

  49. 49.

    scav

    @NR:

    But Obama and the Democratic leaders have created such a toxic political environment

    apparently by merely existing and worse, in nominal positions of power, oh my Itzpzpalotl (a gift to all Scrabble fans).

  50. 50.

    licensed to kill time

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    I just don’t remember seeing loose for lose as much before the intertubes came along. And I’m the kind of person who feels misspellings and misplaced apostrophes in an almost visceral way. They kind of jump out at me and smack me across the face. I might have made a good proofreader, I guess.

  52. 52.

    Davis X. Machina

    @licensed to kill time: Much of what print one saw pre-internet — newspapers, magazines, books, etc, — was passed through the hands of proofreaders and editors, but now a lot more of what you’re seeing are raw brain-dumps.

    Thirty years ago, if I didn’t read student essays, just about everything I read passed through the hands of a proofreader — mostly because the G/F was a proofreader/editor, and letters were mostly from her.

  53. 53.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @ET: Yeah, thanks a lot. My productivity is gonna take a dip again, like after I discovered XKCD comics.

    @Chuck Butcher: I hope the US regains its sanity without having to hit bottom, but hitting bottom is one way of recognizing a problem and changing. Perhaps a spell of speaker Boehner, Majority Leader De Mint, president Thune and wars with Lybia, Siria, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran could turn the country around…

    @scav: The one thing they could have done, though, is forcefully denounce the crazy as such, instead of meekly accepting as part of normal politics. But of course, the main culprits are the Kochs and Murdochs and, to a lesser extent, the Becks

  56. 56.

    licensed to kill time

    @Davis X. Machina:

    That makes sense. I love the raw brain-dumps phrase.

    I recently had a young neighbor ask me to proofread an essay he wrote for a college class. It was appalling, written on the level of a not very bright third grader. I was so embarrassed for him that I just corrected it and handed it back without comment. I might just hang myself if I had to do it for a living. So there goes the proofreading career.

  58. 58.

    Chris

    If Alaska Republicans want to avoid the corrupting influence of out-of-state money, they should pry themselves off the federal teat.

    Seriously, when you’re raking in over five bucks in federal cash for every dollar in federal taxes paid…

    …I guess it makes you very indignant about anyone suggesting the obvious.

  61. 61.

    Hal

    @NR

    But Obama and the Democratic leaders have created such a toxic political environment that he is going to win, and win easily

    How about a little elaboration?

  63. 63.

    Keith G

    Come on. It’s the second *Saturday* in Sept. Time to celebrate/bitch about football.

    Politics is has gotten tiresome, in the extreme.

  65. 65.

    The Bearded Blogger

    @Chuck Butcher: I hear you, but there is room for things to really get worse…. The US has had it really good since the 1930s when it narrowly dodged fascism

    @scav: look, I obviously don’t blame dems for the current political climate, but they could have done a much better work of marginalizing and denouncing the crazy. Even fucking Howard Dean legitimized the mosquers! You need to call out crazy, not accept it as a position different from your own!

  66. 66.

    kay

    @efgoldman:

    Is Kay around?

    Hi. I’m sorry, but I may have misled you, inadvertently. I’m thinking I wasn’t clear in the “yard signs” post, maybe?
    I’m not a campaign operative. I’m a lawyer in private practice. Before that I was a postal worker.
    I live in a rural county that’s 70/30 R/D so I’m one of the few “active” Democrats, and we share volunteer duties, just as members of the county Party. None of us are paid.
    For the yard signs, whichever one of is going to be in the nearest city picks them up. That was me this year. I meet with the campaign operatives a lot because they all come through here and they end up at the law office. I’m also the treasurer of a state-registered PAC, right now, but it’s local, and that’s a volunteer job too.
    That said, Harmony’s language is (IMO) a little sketchy here. I wouldn’t write an email this sloppy (not the poor spelling, but the accuracy) even as treasurer of our local PAC, which has 900 dollars in total, but that may be an excess of lawyerly caution, because I sign everything I write or file for the PAC.
    I think Miller does get donations from “out of state entities” (that’s a large category) and I wouldn’t represent to donors that he doesn’t. Again, maybe just me.
    Tea Party Patriots or not, they’re actually involved in a campaign for a US Senate seat, and they’re going to have to follow a lot of rules. I would not make a definitive statement like that to donors without being very sure it was completely accurate, and , honestly, I don’t know that it can be.

  67. 67.

    Jay C

    Why, when I saw that Joe Miller’s (yes, a “joke” if ever there was one) [non] fundraising gibberish email was signed by “Harmony”, did I assume it was this one?

    (with most sincerest and profoundest apologies to Ms. Mercedes McNab. if applicable!)

  68. 68.

    MaryRC

    it’s just that for reasons we don’t understand God wants us to have a waiting spell. :)

    You’d think God could have taken a moment to explain to her why we don’t have the election the day after the primary.

  69. 69.

    kay

    @efgoldman:

    I mean, not to be a stickler pain in the ass, or contradict GOD, but 5 seconds of googling turned this up:

    WASHINGTON — National Republican establishment money is lining up behind Joe Miller, with a $212,000 pledge from the same national campaign committee Miller accused of trying to steal the election for incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The support comes as Murkowski is considering an independent write-in candidacy after losing to Miller in last month’s Republican primary.

    Unless the National Republican Senatorial Committee is now headquartered in Wasilla, they’re an out of state entity, and Harmony is playing a little fast and ‘lose’ here with her donor solicitation.

  70. 70.

    Steve

    Miller won the primary because the Tea Party Express spent something like $600,000 on an ad campaign, right? Or was it $750,000? Yeah, that’s a grassroots, in-state movement if ever I saw one.

  71. 71.

    Davis X. Machina

    @licensed to kill time: The G/F — whom I escaped, btw — didn’t just proofread, she proofread tax law.

    I teach Latin & Greek in a classroom where all the abutting rooms are exclusively used for English. When asked, I tell people that for administrative convenience all the dead languages are clustered together.

  72. 72.

    licensed to kill time

    @kay:

    Harmony didn’t learn teh Google in her homeschool, mayhap. It might be one of those tools of Satan or a wise serpent temptation. Cast out of the Garden of Google!

    @Davis X. Machina: Dead languages, that is V. funny!

  74. 74.

    kay

    @licensed to kill time:

    and we all know that Joe’s campaign isn’t receiving any monies from corporations or from out of State entities.

    Lord. Any monies. Really? Not any?

    We all know that. I almost envy how sure these people are when they pull things out of their ass.

  75. 75.

    licensed to kill time

    @kay:

    and we all know because we believe it’s so.

    That’s it. Faith-based financing, facts be damned.

  76. 76.

    kay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I think Harmony would say that an individual wasn’t an entity, I gave her that one at the outset, but ‘entity’ just means ‘distinct’ or ‘separate’, right?
    I don’t know how the hell she justifies “SarahPac”.
    I think the finance part of Tea Partying may be really interesting. All those groups and donations, people being people, you just know someone was skimming off the tour bus hires. Are the Palin/Beck books an in-kind donation? The whole thing makes my head hurt.

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kay: I don’t see how an individual is not an entity, but I am not an election law expert. Harmony must see SarahPac as emanating from Saint Sarah of the Half Term and, as such, being entirely Alaskan.

  78. 78.

    Anne Laurie

    @ET:
    __

    And if I was a Bible believer then I don’t know wise is the word for a snake because the time I remember a snake it wasn’t a very flattering picture and it most definitely wasn’t wise.

    According to the Dominican nuns in my parochial school, ‘the Serpent’ is the Devil who got ‘us’ cast out of Eden, and the serpents Matthew (ex-lawyer) wanted us to be wiser than were his minions here on earth. Christianist homeskoolars love this concept, because equating wisdom with Ultimate Evil(tm) vindicates their homespun inarticulate (moranic) virtue.

  79. 79.

    NR

    @Hal: Obama and the Democrats created this toxic political environment in two major ways. By 1) supporting and extending so many of Bush’s “War on Terror” policies, thereby demoralizing not only the base, but the swing voters who believed in Obama’s promises to bring change. And 2) failing to do what was necessary to fix the economy, passing a stimulus that was too small and too heavily skewed towards tax cuts (and don’t give me “That was all they could get passed.” Put up something that would actually fix the economy and dare the Republicans to block it. If they do, beat their asses in 2010 and pass it in January 2011).

    So you can thank Obama and the Democratic leaders for the new wave of teabaggers we’re about to get in Congress. These guys should have been laughed out of the political arena, but thanks to Democratic failures, they won’t be.

  82. 82.

    kay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m thinking national campaigns use weasel words, like “grass roots driven” or “most of our money comes from people like you!” and such.
    I think conservatives consider all campaign finance laws and disclosure a direct infringement on their First Amendment rights, so what the hell. Let the buyer beware, as they might say.
    Unless, oh, UNION THUGS are donating, then it’s COERCION or BUYING AN ELECTION, and we should all OBJECT.

  83. 83.

    Nethead Jay

    Reading that letter, there’s something worrisome about some of the phrasing in it. I’m fairly sure the religious allusions in the text are actually meant to be coded language intended for people and groups on the far Religious Right. The language is familiar to me from being part of a community that follows and does research into the darker parts of Christian fundamentalism, specifically Dominionism.

    Among other things, there’s been evidence found that Alaska is one of the biggest strongholds of these groups and that Sarah Palin has definite ties to several people and one of the worst groups on the far end of that scale. Couple that with what seems like a coded appeal in that letter and that his staffer is on Team Huck, who has his own Dominionist ties, and I’m getting some strong suspicion about Joe Miller. Last thing we need is that kind of extremist in the Senate.

  84. 84.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kay: I think anyone with any legal background uses careful language to avoid being tripped up on a tiny little fact. Harmony does not seem to have such a background.
    @Nethead Jay: That is an interesting take on the situation. I wouldn’t discount it.

  85. 85.

    kay

    @Zuzu’s Petals:

    Oh, thanks. This had not occurred to me but is wonderful:

    But this is the bottom line: Alaska should not be a state which is on the NRSC’s radar screen at all. The hundreds of thousands of dollars and senior level attention should be available to actually competitive races in places like Nevada, Kentucky, Colorado, and a half-dozen other highly competitive battlegrounds.

  89. 89.

    Lynn Dee

    @NR:

    failing to do what was necessary to fix the economy

    I would’ve liked a bigger stimulus too. If nothing else, it would’ve meant more jobs, more people employed, and less human suffering. But you make it sound like the economy could’ve been “fixed” by now if only the stimulus had been bigger. And I really doubt that’s the case.

  90. 90.

    kay

    @Zuzu’s Petals:

    Alaska seems like a one-off state, honestly. I read a little about it when Palin was nominated (I wanted to find out if they have a ‘strong governor’, they do, damn it, I had hoped not). I just assumed it was state where the legislature had all the power, because, well, they elected Palin. Wrong.
    It’s so unlike the lower 48 that I can’t categorize it. I think one of the biggest lies Sarah Palin tells is when she presents herself as representative of some vast middle American constituency. Alaska is an unusual place. I don’t think they continue to exist without vast infusions of federal funds.
    I do have hopes for Kentucky.
    A Fisher (Ohio) campaign big-shot took off to join the Conway campaign there, so one smart person thinks Kentucky is competitive.

  91. 91.

    Zuzu's Petals

    @kay:

    I agree that AK seems to have its own rules, I hope McAdams benefits from that fact.

    Re KY: So hard to bekieve anyone would vote for that Pauk idiot.

  94. 94.

    binzinerator

    @NR:

    But Obama and the Democratic leaders have created such a toxic political environment

    No doubt in large part due to Obama’s GWB leadership.

    No, not George W. Bush. Governing While Black.

  95. 95.

    Hal

    @NR

    By 1) supporting and extending so many of Bush’s “War on Terror” policies, thereby demoralizing not only the base, but the swing voters who believed in Obama’s promises to bring change. And 2) failing to do what was necessary to fix the economy, passing a stimulus that was too small and too heavily skewed towards tax cuts (and don’t give me “That was all they could get passed.”

    1. Swing voters are so demoralized by Obama’s Bush like policies they are voting for the Republicans who originally pushed for them?

    Yes, you can make an argument about a “demoralized” base, but you could just as easily argue that the vast majority of voters don’t care, or know about specific foreign policies.

    2. Which brings the argument back to the economy. A larger, bigger stimulus would not have negated Tea Bagger arguments. They hate the current stimulus as is, so I don’t see how a bigger stimulus would have placated them.

    Now, would it have revived and “fixed” the economy? Maybe it would have gone a long way towards that, but I think it’s ridiculous to argue that there was some magic bullet that would have resulted in a economic oasis in America.

  96. 96.

    ChrisB

    Isn’t God limited to contributing $2,400 per campaign or something like that?

    Do Jesus and the Holy Ghost each get to contribute another $2,400?

    Maybe they’re allowed to bundle contributions from all the saints or the angels.

  98. 98.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Technical question: In my #98, why didn’t the asterisks on either side of the quote result in bolding the phrase as usual? Was it the quotation marks somehow neutralizing the asterisks?

    Alternatively, FYWP.

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