Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

He really is that stupid.

No Justins, No Peace

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

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

White supremacy is terrorism.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

This really is a full service blog.

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Bark louder, little dog.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / TV & Movies / Television / “Even the Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Pick Beans”

“Even the Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Pick Beans”

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Goddess bless Stephen Colbert, this time for testifying in support of the ‘guest workers’ who are one step ahead of the rest of us on the Invisible-Hand-of-the-Market’s escalator to hell:


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And while blessings are being distributed, may suitable judgements also befall the two people in the next clip:


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Rep. Steve King, of course, holds the coveted Wonkette ‘Biggest Asshole in Congress‘ award, for being the lone vote against putting a plaque in the Capitol Visitors Center mentioning that the Capitol was built by slaves. Perhaps Rep. King is afraid that, given Republican wetdreams, his status in the only category at which he’s ever liable to be considered a winner might be threatened by a wave of incoming Teabaggers even more racist, narrow-minded and intolerant than himself?

Jim Newell at Gawker has the best anecdotes about the Colbert / King smackdown.
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Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    Violet

    “An insult to the time of the American people.” Oh yeah, I’m so offended that the Congresspeople had to sit there and listen to an American citizen talk about a serious problem, even if he did it in “character.”

    That’s way worse than, for instance, Congress interrogating excessively rich baseball payers about their possible steroid use. Who cares about poor people? Boring!

  3. 3.

    Redshift

    Stephen speaks truth to power through satire, and it’s especially awesome when he gets to do it to their faces!

    Heading out to go canvassing; later, guys!

  4. 4.

    Citizen_X

    Their go-to guy for equal poutrage on the D side of the aisle is fucking Conyers? He’s the silver medalist in the Biggest Assholes in Congress competition.

    Nice job of completely missing the point of Colbert’s “comedy routine,” by the way.

  5. 5.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Mr. Colbert was brilliant. I hope people listen. My favorite moment was when he pointed out what we have now is the free market solution with illegal migrant workers, and we don’t like it. “I believe in the Invisible Hand, and the Invisible Hand does not want to pick beans” — that should be on a T-shirt.

  9. 9.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Oh yes, Congress must stop wasting time with comedians and get back to the business of calling those things in the cafeteria Freedom Fries.

  11. 11.

    Svensker

    Stephen’s a Merry Prankster in a suit. Problem is, he’s too smart for most people outside his audience. As happened at the WH Correspondent Dinner, they just didn’t get what he was doing or saying. I’m still laughing at the Corn Packer = Gay Farmer in Iowan joke. Pretty juvenile, huh?

  14. 14.

    Davis X. Machina

    Where’s the ‘blowing out of the water” part?

    Krugman: “The question is, why on earth would you believe that structural unemployment is our main problem right now?”

    Lawrence Mishel; “EPI’s new paper, Reasons for Skepticism About Structural Unemployment, shows that there has been little evidence to support the claim of extensive structural unemployment and that the pattern of employer behavior regarding job openings, layoffs and hires does not support such a claim.”

    At first glance they seem to agree…

  21. 21.

    Violet

    @Southern Beale:
    Chuck Todd seems like a real tool. I can’t believe I ever liked the guy during the 2008 election season. He’s just so awful now. Villager through and through.

  22. 22.

    General Stuck

    And I agree with needing more stimulus now. Krugman is right and we need to borrow as much as we can to bring back all those outsourced jobs. Especially manufacturing. I am on board the Keynesian train like a good Obot. Hoot Hooooot!

  23. 23.

    DonkeyKong

    Ann Laurie, can you post a clip of these “serious” bastards in the Beltway laughing til chardonnay sprayed out of their nose at Bushes “Can’t find WMD’s over here comedy routine for sociopaths.

    We really need to see that again. To quote some assholes on NPR, that really, really hit “the wrong note”

  25. 25.

    Nick

    OT- while Arianna is going ballistic over the Democrats “inability to govern” for not forcing a vote on tax cuts she’d almost certainly later criticize them for, President Obama is the only person in the country calling out Republicans for blocking campaign finance legislation that every Democrat voted for.

  26. 26.

    Montysano

    Joe Bageant nails it:

    Meanwhile, the underclass…. are nevertheless politically potent, if sufficiently taunted and fed enough bullshit. Just look at the way we showed up in force during the 2000 elections, hyped up on inchoate anger and ready to be deployed as liberal-ripping pit bulls by America’s ultra-conservative political machinery. Snug middle-class liberals were stunned. Could that many people actually be supporting Anne Coulter’s call for the jailing of liberals, or Rush Limbaugh’s demand for the massive, forced psychiatric detention of Democrats? Or, more recently, could they honestly believe President Obama’s proposed public healthcare plan would employ ‘death panels’ to decide who lives and who dies? Conservatives cackled with glee, and dubbed them the only real Americans.

    “If sufficiently taunted”. So that means that denizens of Balloon Juice, TBogg, Sadly No, et al, we’re all part of the problem. A taunt from us, a flash of Megyn Kelly’s angry eyebrows, and we’re off to the races. “Conservatives cackled with glee” indeed.

  27. 27.

    Davis X. Machina

    @General Stuck: I can thank my superior level of caffeination, most likely.

    (I was kind of hoping PKrug was wrong. That would signal a rift in the laws of probability. I was throwing on clothes to run out and buy lottery tickets before it closed again.)

  28. 28.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Montysano: Bageant has sailed close to this “Liberals just need to lie better, and get their hate on more often” line of analysis before.

    In its own way, it’s as condescending as any of the condescending things the “complete-sentence and actual-facts” school of liberals are accused of doing.

  29. 29.

    eemom

    @Nick:

    Arianna is a fucking joke.

    What Colbert did yesterday shows her and all of her useless ilk for the dressed-up frauds that they are. To continue with my Emperor analogy.

  31. 31.

    Mike G

    @DonkeyKong:

    Ann Laurie, can you post a clip of these “serious” bastards in the Beltway laughing til chardonnay sprayed out of their nose at Bushes “Can’t find WMD’s over here comedy routine for sociopaths.

    In the Village, humor and laughter aren’t the spontaneous expressions of enjoyment of an intelligent mind, they’re acting poses the talentless courtiers use to advance their careers. You issue forth a ‘laugh’ at the witless statements of the powerful like the Chimp, with his juvenile nicknames and jokes about missing WMDs, to suck up to them.

    Colbert has no power, he can’t help them in their maneuvering for personal advancement, so why would they laugh at anything he says?

  32. 32.

    Three-nineteen

    Is anyone else watching the entire hearing? King’s remarks are unbelievable. First I was going to comment on him saying that the US growing their own fruits and vegetables can’t be important because the Eskimos didn’t need them, but then I got to this part (not blockquoting because I’m transcribing from the video):

    “..the Joe the Plumbers of the world who would, many days, prefer the aroma of fresh dirt than the sewage of the American elitists who disparage them, even as they flush.”

  33. 33.

    Dr.BDH

    Megyn and the rest of Fox News know that Colbert has their number. That’s why they hate him. They get the joke and they don’t like it, because Colbert cuts them to the bone. Megyn meant to say, “Colbert, funny or making conservatives look like assholes? Or both?”

  36. 36.

    Kyle

    @NobodySpecial:

    Arianna is not a liberal. Arianna is a grifter.

    I lived in the congressional district represented by her (now-ex) husband in the early 90s. She married him, knowing he was gay, as a vehicle for her political ambitions, and led him around by the nose. They did these joint husband-and-wife media interviews and she would be doing 70% of the talking.

    Arianna was a shameless phony, all raw ruthless ambition and mendacious to the bone. Also a devotee of the creepy John Roger new-age cult. People like that don’t really change, they just develop new ‘acts’ and new targets for their grifting. I would never trust her an inch.

  39. 39.

    hitchhiker

    Did she really just say that Colbert wasted $125,000 of taxpayer money with a 5 minute speech?

    Did King really just say that he didn’t believe Colbert had actually done any farm work?

    How do you even have a conversation with people that stupid? They’re impossible to parody.

    btw, if you’ve never heard Colbert give a straight interview, this one is pretty incredible.

  40. 40.

    Origuy

    Zoe Lofgren is my Representative. I didn’t know she was the one who invited Colbert until I watched the video.

    Who was the guy behind Colbert who never cracked a smile? Someone from Fox News?

  42. 42.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    And yet Darrell ‘The Idiot’ Issa had no problem whatsoever w/ Colbert “endorsing” the GOOP’s new fake, fake, ultra-fake “Pledge To America” at almost the exact same moment…

    I would say the irony is astonishing, but I’m afraid irony has given up and gone into hiding, muttering something about “the Witless Protection Program” as it slipped out the back door…

    And meanwhile, Glenn Beck sails full steam ahead w/ his “Obama Is a Christianist/Nazi” rant…

    It’d say this is all funny, but it isn’t anymore…

    It’s too farkin’ crazy/scary…

  43. 43.

    Anya

    @Kyle: I never though Arianna was sincere. She figured out a lucrative scam with her liberalism act. She still hopnobs with the likes of Gingrich. Even after his latest inexcusable stands, she invited him to blog at HuffPo. She has no principles.

  44. 44.

    El Cid

    Paul Krugman just blew Paul Krugman out of the water. Also threw him under the bus, and slapped him in the face. At least I think that’s what I saw.

  45. 45.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Three-nineteen: Cliff from a few threads below was listening to the whole thing for a second time. He’s crazy, I think.

    @Violet: I know. I liked him during 2008, too. Now, i couldn’t even click on that link because I loathe him so much.

    @El Cid: This is why I fake-married you. Get your big bottle of Ommunis(c) ready!

    I love Stephen Colbert for delivering an important point in a funny, intellectual, and incisive way. Fuck Congress with a rusty pitchfork.

    hitchhiker: Thanks for the link. I have never heard him out of character before.

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