Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

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

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Democrats are back in array!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

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

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Come on, man.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Please don’t feed the bears.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

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Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    mikefromArlington

    Those bozo’s write hit pieces about you if you don’t give them access or write blathering love sonnets if you are willing to give them access.

    It’s all about access for Politico. They are the whores of journalism.

  2. 2.

    MattF

    All about ‘Does Newt’s demagoguery give him an edge on the competition?’… Ugh.

    I actually think there’s a story here, on the lines of ‘Why do Republican politicians all turn out to be hollow and evil?’ Even Cheney was once a human being, so I’ve heard.

  5. 5.

    Zifnab

    See- it’s an honest debate over whether or not Gingrich’s bile is over the line.

    No. It’s an opportunity to print Newt’s name as many times as possible in a news column. Newt is a slimy little attention whore and a key Republican fund raiser. The more times his name appears in the news, the more money he can collect from business leaders looking to bend his ear. Content is irrelevant, so long as Gingrich comes across as powerful and connected.

  7. 7.

    earlofscruggs

    There are real historians out there, you know, and real intellectuals, and real experts in all kinds of fields whom you could invite on a talk show. Instead, we have to listen to this ignorant, insane ball of bellyfat tell us that liberals want to impose Shariah law.

  8. 8.

    Daddy-O

    You give the People what they want when they want it
    And they wants it all the time…

    –Parliament/Funkadelic

  10. 10.

    El Cid

    You’re not an over the line right wing extremist unless you’re wearing a Nazi SS uniform, and I mean right now, not just on some weekends. You might also have to openly declare that you want to slaughter the Jews who control the media and the banks. I’m not sure, though, because if at the same time you offer to cut taxes on the rich and deregulate, you could probably still get interviewed and quoted as an elder philosopher statesman.

  12. 12.

    Punchy

    It will be fun watching only Republicans out-bigot, out-crazy, and hurl daily insults at one another for the next 2 years. For a party so schooled on acting as one and toeing the party line, they’re not used to having to argue and defend themselves. This should be great theater, especially once Palin jumps in.

  14. 14.

    Jay in Oregon

    Newt Gingrich: on the edge or over the line?

    I choose “unfit for polite society”…

    That’s the same trick you use when you want to send a petulant child to bed. You don’t ask him if he wants to go beddy-bye, you give him a choice of whether he wants to put on his his Star Wars pajamas or his Spongebob pajamas.

  15. 15.

    El Cid

    Aw, fuck.

    UK aid worker may have been killed by rescuers’ grenade
    __
    British aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been accidentally killed by US forces during a rescue mission in Afghanistan, David Cameron has said.
    __
    International forces there originally said the 36-year-old died on Friday when one of her captors detonated a suicide vest.
    __
    But the prime minister said new details had come to light suggesting her death may have resulted from a US grenade.
    __
    He said he had spoken to her family about the “deeply distressing” news.

  17. 17.

    jrg

    @Lynnehs:

    I second Punchy’s comment. If the GOP doesn’t get its act together, it’ll go the way of the Whigs.

    Yeah, right. This nation has an endless supply of bigotry and stupidity.

  18. 18.

    Keith G

    @Lynnehs:

    I second Punchy’s comment. If the GOP doesn’t get its act together, it’ll go the way of the Whigs.

    But not before it, with help from our media and disenchanted lefties, pull my country over the edge.

  19. 19.

    GregB

    I heard that The Politico has an insurance policy that covers treatment and care for shoulders that have been dislocated while giving reach-arounds.

  20. 20.

    KCinDC

    Sorry to complain, but is anyone else having problems with this annoying Bing ad at the bottom of the page? After the page loads, it jumps down to the ad every time, so you have to scroll back up to read the post and comments. This is happening on both the front page and individual posts.

  21. 21.

    Zifnab

    @El Cid:

    You might also have to openly declare that you want to slaughter the Jews who control the media and the banks.

    That only gets you in trouble if you’re on a low-rated CNN daytime infotainment show and are about to be replaced by a former state-wide office holder with a penchant for hooking up with hookers.

    So, if David Vitter ever gets into the cable news business, everybody better start getting really quiet.

  22. 22.

    Steve

    @El Cid: There’s a lesson here that we should have learned during the Cold War. Folks like Ho Chi Minh had no particular devotion to Communism, they were simply willing to break bread with whoever was willing to support their nationalist agenda. Sometimes the bad guys are true believers but they often turn out to be more pragmatic than we assume. Countries targeted by US trade sanctions tend to trade among themselves not because they share any real-world agenda, but simply because they have to trade with someone.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @KCinDC: yes. it is happening to a lot of people. I don’t like Bing as a search engine, but,even if I did, that ad would cause me to never use it again.

  24. 24.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @KCinDC:
    I was having the same problem (Chrome), which finally forced me to install Ad Block extension. Until the Bing ad is gone, Ad Block stays up. I hope Cole is listening. That is the most annoying ad yet – and that’s saying something considering the “You won an iPod” ads of yore.

  25. 25.

    Zifnab

    @El Cid:

    Speaking in his weekly radio and television program, Chavez scoffed at his Venezuelan political opponents who praised the giving of the peace prize to Liu.

    If anyone ever imagines what life would be like with El Rushboy as President…

  27. 27.

    El Cid

    @Steve: Don’t get me wrong — his economic programs though often conflicting drastically between different parts have certainly been thoroughly coherent in their thrust, and even the UNDP recognizes that only Venezuela has come close to meeting its Millennium Development Goals for its population, particularly the poor.

    He just applauds whatever nation gives them good deals. Iran partners up for auto and tractor industries, and therefore Ahmedinajad is just being attacked by the West whenever he makes another jerkass statement. China becomes a major supplier and purchaser, and now their dissidents are just like the crazy ultra-right wingers of Venezuela.

  29. 29.

    lamh31

    The only pages I usually read on Politico is Ben Smith’s blog, cause I find that for the most part if I want just “straight” info, his blog post are okay for that (unless that tv whore Jonathan Martin is subbing or Smith), and their Politico44 site dedicated to POTUS 44 admin news.

    But if ya’ll want a better article to read, this one is not a bad one, meaning it’s not too heavy on Politico’s village spin, but it’s actually a valid story.


    Barack Obama gets more personal with black voters

    I only have 2 addendum to it,

    1. they have a quote from John McWhorter(sp?) saying that that Dems and Obama need to get Blacks not only to the polls to vote, but to get them to vote for candidates “even though they are not Black”. Okay, first of all, getting them to the booth is the most important part. Secondly, once in the booth, the majority of the people will vote the straight Dem ticket anyway!. Thirdly, Blacks have been voting for non-Black candidate the majority of the time anyway. The problem you have is when voters feel aggrieved in some way by the non-Black candidate, that’s when you have a situation such as what may happen in the case of Kendrick Meek in Florida.

    2. Uhm of course it’s more personal for Obama, I think we all know why, and let’s be clear, enthusiam for Obama in the Black community is STILL near 100%. We are and will continue to be his most loyal supporters. Honestly, the only thing that I can see eroding that support, is if he cheats on Michelle O (he’d probably still get pretty decent numbers, unless he cheats with a non-Black woman, then he’s toast, sorry, but it is what it is).

    Anyway, I digress, the article is pretty good otherwise.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @MikeTheZ:

    Kind of like when they whined that they were forced — forced, I tell you! — to use H1B visa workers because those greedy American software engineers just wouldn’t write code for $30,000 a year.

  31. 31.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal

    @El Cid: From the article:

    Chavez said the opposition’s support for the prize showed that “they are lackeys” of the West. “They are worse than the Yankees.”

    FTFY

  33. 33.

    Mumphrey

    What a joke of a piece. They didn’t call him out on his endless lying and only grazed his soulless hypocrisy. And they had to tout his Vision and Historical Perspective, since they don’t want to be called liberal…

    But then, I guess that’s all we could expect, though. I mean, hey, Newt Gingrich’s ass isn’t going to kiss itself.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh31:

    You know, I keep seeing that weird meme that somehow Black people vote only for other Black people rather than voting for the candidate that will do the best job for them, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any evidence of that. If that was the case, Joseph Cao never would have won in Louisiana since he was up against a Black longtime officeholder. But Jefferson was totally corrupt, so Cao won even in that heavily Black district.

    Of course, now he’s probably going to lose his seat because he’s been voting with the Republicans against the president, but it won’t have anything to do with the fact that he’s Asian and most of his constituents are Black and everything to do with the fact that he consistently votes against a president who’s very popular with his constituents. Yet I’m sure that it’s going to be reported as, “See? Black people won’t vote for an Asian guy!”

  37. 37.

    KCinDC

    @Omnes Omnibus, I know that ad people have bizarre ideas about human nature, but it amazes me they so stupid they think scrolling the page down to their ad will do anything but enrage the target audience. I don’t use Bing either, and this idiocy only reinforces that decision, even in a time when Google is becoming increasingly worrisome.

  38. 38.

    Bender

    Gingrich has it figured out. The rule is always the same: If you are an outrageous or idiotic Republican, Big Lefty Media give you face time in hopes that you will frighten voters. If you are an outrageous or idiotic Democrat, Big Lefty Media hide you under protective palm branches.

  39. 39.

    morzer

    Give Politico enough time and they’ll be debating whether Gingrich’s SS uniform has historically correct insignia – and they’ll do so with complete obliviousness to the fundamental question that needs to be asked.

  40. 40.

    Martin

    @Mnemosyne:

    You know, I keep seeing that weird meme that somehow Black people vote only for other Black people rather than voting for the candidate that will do the best job for them, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any evidence of that

    White people find nicer way to say ‘Niggers are lazy and stupid’. And then, in the same breath, accuse them of having sufficient guile and commitment to a job to rig a national election.

    Shocking, isn’t it?

    Up next:

    “$250K is barely getting by in most communities, but those luckie duckie government workers earning $50K are proof that government spending is out of control!”

  41. 41.

    Suck It Up!

    @lamh31:

    Honestly, the only thing that I can see eroding that support, is if he cheats on Michelle O (he’d probably still get pretty decent numbers, unless he cheats with a non-Black woman, then he’s toast, sorry, but it is what it is).

    I know a lot of people say it shouldn’t matter, but I would lose my shit if this happened. I’m a bigger M-bot than I am an O-bot.

  42. 42.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    @KCinDC:

    I too often wonder what universe marketing types live in. Its like when I watch stuff on Hulu, whenever there’s a commercial I mute and open up a browser window to dick around in-just watching a commercial these days makes me want to go berzerk and never buy that product.

  45. 45.

    El Cid

    People continue to correctly emphasize the continuity between the TeaTards and Beckists and the ultra-right anti-Commie superparanoid John Birch types (and properly it should extend back to the Liberty League ideologies and anti-New Deal hysteria).

    Sean Wilentz in the New Yorker and part of his review being on the uber-loony W. Cleon Skouson, who wrote the Bible of the Becker and Teabaggers movement, The 5,000 Year Leap:

    Still, the most outlandish of the era’s right-wing anti-Communists was not Welch but Willard Cleon Skousen. A transplanted Canadian who served as a Mormon missionary in his teens, Skousen was considered so radical in the early nineteen-sixties that even J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I. watched him closely…
    __
    …All along, Skousen’s evolving thoughts ran in tandem with Welch’s. In “The Naked Communist,” a lengthy primer published in 1958, he enlivened a survey of the worldwide leftist threat with outlandish claims, writing that F.D.R.’s adviser Harry Hopkins had treasonously delivered to the Soviets a large supply of uranium, and that the Russians built the first Sputnik with plans stolen from the United States…
    __
    …A later book, “The Naked Capitalist,” decried the Ivy League Establishment, who, through the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Rockefeller Foundation, formed “the world’s secret power structure.” The conspiracy had begun, Skousen wrote, when reformers like the wealthy banker Edward M. (Colonel) House, a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, helped put into place the Federal Reserve and the graduated income tax…
    __
    …Skousen was undeterred. In 1981, he produced “The 5,000 Year Leap,” a treatise that assembles selective quotations and groundless assertions to claim that the U.S. Constitution is rooted not in the Enlightenment but in the Bible, and that the framers believed in minimal central government.
    __
    …“The 5,000 Year Leap” is not a fervid book. Instead, it is calmly, ingratiatingly misleading. Skousen quotes various eighteenth-century patriots on the evils of what Samuel Adams, in 1768, called “the Utopian schemes of leveling,” which Skousen equates with redistribution of wealth…
    __
    …Skousen also challenges the separation of church and state, asserting that “the Founders were not indulging in any idle gesture when they adopted the motto ‘In God We Trust.’ ” …“In God We Trust” came much later; its use on coins was first permitted in 1864, and only in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, did Congress mandate that it appear on all currency. The following year, President Eisenhower—who Welch charged was a Communist agent—approved “In God We Trust” as the national motto.

    Well worth a read, you Commie Fed Reserve librul anti-Natural-Lawists.

    Wilentz is right about the 5,000 Year Leap, as having read it it is a combination of decent (though available in a billion other sources) historical reviews of how the Constitution came to be mixed in with Natural Law crap.

  49. 49.

    Bender

    I like the cut of this guy’s jib! Political Ad Paraphrase:

    Man carrying rifle: I’ll protect our 2nd Amendment rights, take on the Obama Administration, get the federal government off our backs and out of our pockets. I’ll cut federal spending, repeal bad parts of “ObamaCare,” I’ve sued the EPA, and “I’ll take dead aim” (fires single rifle shot through a mounted copy of C’n’T bill) at the Cap and Trade bill.

    Hmmmm, no mention of political party or what branch of the Tea Party sponsors this “Manchin” fella. He must have a huge lead!

  50. 50.

    Davis X. Machina

    @MikeTheZ: All us 55-year olds who borrowed to send our children to school, and are facing terminal unemployment, are right there in the boat with you… I wonder how long my 1979 GRE scores are good for.

  52. 52.

    Mnemosyne

    @Martin:

    I think it’s even simpler than that — it’s good old-fashioned projection. As in, “I would never vote for a n* or a wetback, so I know they would never vote for a white politician.”

  53. 53.

    lamh31

    @Mnemosyne:

    Right you are. As some of ya’ll know, I’m a transplanted NO-ian will most of my fam still there, and Cao was toast almost from the moment he started voting against Obama policy. His first vote (I belive it was against the stimulus, even though, he told some of the press in NOLA that he was actually thinking about it) was the deadliest. People remember that vote well. So really all the Dems had to do was pick someone with enough name recognition, and hometown pinache, and they had know real chance of losing that seat again, add to that Cedric Richmond just happens to be Black, and it becomes a 99.99999% lock.

  54. 54.

    eemom

    @Suck It Up!:

    Fuck Halperin. Also fuck fellow Chicken Little asshole Steve Kornacki at Salon, for his “last resort of the doomed” screed today. Fuck them repeatedly with something rusted, twisted and pointy.

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh31:

    I kept hearing rumblings that the Democrats were going to try and get Cao to switch parties, but nothing ever came of it and Cao became just another “Party of No” functionary for the Republicans. I don’t know if he was unable to make a deal with the local machine or what, but it really seems like a missed opportunity for the Democrats.

  57. 57.

    Tom

    Imagine the piece was titled: Newt Gingrich: Over The Line.

    This immediately becomes an opinion piece, not a report. Many news stories don’t make strong stances because they are there to report on a subject and let readers draw their own conclusion.

  58. 58.

    lamh31

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m not sure about that. It may be so, but this might have been before Cedric Richmond announced his candidacy. It was gonna be hard enough for Cao to hold on to this being and R anyway, even after Katrina, the largest population are still African Americans, and in New Orleans, you be hard pressed to find any who are not Dems. I may be wrong, but I think that Cedric once before ran against “Dollar” Bill, and lost in the Dem primary. so once Cedric (who’s a hometown boy, with fabulous connections) announced, then it was/is his to lose.

    the other thing not in Cao’s favor, is that I can not recall him really campaigning in the AA districts much. He essentially won, cause he was not Bill J, so white Dems in LA voted for him in larger numbers, and AA Dems voted in larger numbers for Cao. With Cedric running, Cao won’t have the luxury of running against a convicted criminal!

  59. 59.

    debbie

    @lamh31:

    Honestly, the only thing that I can see eroding that support, is if he cheats on Michelle O (he’d probably still get pretty decent numbers, unless he cheats with a non-Black woman, then he’s toast, sorry, but it is what it is).

    Isn’t that why conservatives were so atwitter about the missing wedding ring?

  61. 61.

    Tony J

    @El Cid:

    UK aid worker may have been killed by rescuers’ grenade

    Sad to say, but when I heared the initial news coverage the fact that they were pushing the “Hostage definately not killed by her rescuers” line so strongly made me expect that the other shoe was about to drop. The PR boys only go all out that early when they know people are going to be hearing a different story very soon.

    Hence the effortless switch to attitudes of “She shouldn’t have been in a warzone anyway!” and “Asking questions is objectively pro-terrorist!” I’ve been hearing on the British version of Talk Radio this morning. Give it a couple of days and I expect to hear that “everyone already knows” that standard hostage-rescue techniques in a free-fire zone mean tossing grenades into every room you pass “just in case”, so it was her own fault for not knowing this and planning accordingly. Followed by the Breaking News that actually that’s – not – standard practice, but since She Sez one thing and He Sez another, “everyone” has decided to “leave it up to the experts” to sort out who, if anyone, takes the blame.

    The ‘experts’ being “the people with the most first-hand experience of situations like this”, who will, of course, wear the same uniform as the people who lied about it in the first place. You don’t really have to be a tinfoil-hatter to know what their conclusions are going to be. So we shrug, and it becomes old news.

    Rant over.

    @Roger Moore:

    Yes, but are they worse than Man U?

    If you have to ask the question..

  62. 62.

    KCinDC

    @El Cid, I’d say if you’re killed by grenades thrown by some group, even if it’s accidental, those people shouldn’t be identified as your “rescuers”. Maybe “would-be rescuers”, but if someone isn’t rescued I don’t think they have rescuers. Heard the same language on NPR this morning.

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