Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

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

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

He really is that stupid.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

In after Baud. Damn.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wednesday Evening Open Thread

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  1. 1.

    joe from Lowell

    So here’s my idea for pushing back against the anti-union pushback:

    Make up signs bearing some of the more common anti-union slurs, and give them to people whose physical appearance makes the claim look ridiculous.

    For instance, make up a sign that says “Union Thug” in pink and purple paint, decorated with Barbie stickers, hearts and flowers – and give it to a cute, little 24-year-old assistant librarian/AFSCME member. Make sure she’s in full view of the cameras as the march passes them.

    Make up another one with a stars and stripes theme that reads “Lazy Union Parasite,” and give it to a firefighter marching in his protective gear.

    Tell me those shots wouldn’t make the evening news.

  2. 2.

    srv

    I wonder if John loathes the troop hating, anti-American Ted Rall as much as he did back in the ole’ days.

  3. 3.

    RalfW

    It is hard to imagine the marketing strategy behind hating on the unionized firefighters and cops. Of course, the Wisconsin Wonderkind thought he could keep the cops & firefighters on his side for a tidy divide and conquer. And he failed.

  4. 4.

    DonkeyKong

    OK middle class, let’s get in a circle, here’s some gun’s and grenades to play with…………….

  5. 5.

    RalfW

    @joe from Lowell: Since you asked for it.

    They wouldn’t make the evening news.

    Maybe if the signs were radioactive and somewhere in Asia. But not here in TeaHadistan, where 100,000 “lefty” protesters are a bore-a-thon, and 7 TeaPartiers are to swoon for.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It’s probably not a good idea to call someone whose job it is to prevent deaths in fire “scum”.

  7. 7.

    Cris

    sigh.

    Added new RNC chairman Reince Priebus in a Tweet: “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

    Did the Democrats say anything that idiotic when GWB filled out his fantasy football or whatever? Maybe they did. Still idiotic.

  9. 9.

    Mike (Hammer) Kay

    three whole days without a manning thread — what’s this place coming to!

    the leading issue of our millennium is being ignored.

  12. 12.

    BGinCHI

    @joe from Lowell: I was also thinking of a flowchart.

    It starts with “you.” Then the next box is “without people in unions.” Then arrows to the following outcomes:

    –house burns down

    –burglary, no response

    –illiterate

    –no public transportation

    –and so on

    Shit the right takes for granted. I’m so sick of these assholes.

  13. 13.

    Garrigus Carraig

    That comic is creepy. My first thought was, “I bet no small children were in the WTC on the first day of school.” Looks like I was right. The fabrication weakens the impact of the strip for me.

  14. 14.

    Cris

    @srv: I wonder if John loathes the troop hating, anti-American Ted Rall as much as he did back in the ole’ days.

    I’ve always liked Ted Rall, but even I found his unwillingness to back down over the Pat Tillman affair pretty assholish.

  15. 15.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Cris:
    Reince Priebus? Like Karl Rove, he’s probably still trying to get even with every kid who beat the crap out of him when he was in school.

  17. 17.

    joe from Lowell

    @Cris:

    Added new RNC chairman Reince Priebus in a Tweet: “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

    If you take the vowels out of Reince Preibus’ name, it spells RNC PR BS.

  19. 19.

    Vibrant Pantload, fka Studly Pantload

    At last, the Open Thread discriminating commenters demand of a full service blog. Now then, where is Tunch with my slippers and Lily with my “veritable dustbowl of a martini” (to steal a phrase from Hawkeye Pierce)?

  20. 20.

    Svensker

    @Cris:

    Added new RNC chairman Reince Priebus in a Tweet: “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

    Did they mention Obama was black? Cuz you know those blacks like teh basketball and stuff more than doing hard work like good honest white folks.

  22. 22.

    BGinCHI

    @Svensker: Funniest part of this is that the GOP jackasses can’t imagine doing a bracket and being President at the same time.

    Like they’d have to schedule that stuff on separate days.

    Idiots.

  23. 23.

    beltane

    @Cris: I still cannot take anyone with the name Reince Preibus seriously. Sounds like the name of some kind of pubic itch.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    @beltane:

    I still cannot take anyone with the name Reince Preibus seriously.

    No matter what I do, when I read his name I always read it “Prince Reibus”.

  27. 27.

    Nellcote

    When they came for the communists,
    I remained silent;
    I was not a communist.

    When they locked up the social democrats,
    I remained silent;
    I was not a social democrat.

    When they came for the trade unionists,
    I did not speak out;
    I was not a trade unionist.

    When they came for the JewsMuslims,
    I remained silent;
    I wasn’t a JewMuslim.

    When they came for me,
    there was no one left to speak out.

  28. 28.

    JadedOptimist

    @RalfW: Remember, Ronnie was also the only President who was a former Union President – two terms as head of the Screen Actors Guild.

  29. 29.

    Dennis SGMM

    I’d like to ask how in hell we’re going to stop everyone, including the talking heads who should know better, from lumping together Social Security and Medicare as pieces of the deficit problem. It’s as if they’ve become one word, socialsecurityandmedicare, when in fact SS is still paying benefits from its own trust fund and, unlike Medicare, isn’t taking one cent from the General Fund. Call me paranoid but, I feel that the conflation is intentional so that the last vestige of the New Deal gets swept up in the bullshit frenzy to Do Something About the Deficit.

  30. 30.

    Zifnab

    @RalfW:

    Maybe if the signs were radioactive and somewhere in Asia. But not here in TeaHadistan, where 100,000 “lefty” protesters are a bore-a-thon, and 7 TeaPartiers are to swoon for.

    I wonder how ratings are?
    I can’t help but think 100,000 pairs of eyeballs would be worth courting. But what do I know about the wildly successful print and tv media industries.

  31. 31.

    beltane

    @Dennis SGMM: You probably have a point. With names like Reince Preibus, Virgil Peck, Mae Beavers and Dick Wadhams there has to be something going on. Maybe the Republicans’ nominee in 2012 will be none other than the Heywood Jablowme/Mike Hunt ticket.

  33. 33.

    J

    @joe from Lowell: /Brilliant! I love it. But let’s face it, unless and until pro-union, pro-collective bargaining demonstrators resort to violence, they will be invisible to our media.

  37. 37.

    joe from Lowell

    @BGinCHI:

    Funniest part of this is that the GOP jackasses can’t imagine doing a bracket and being President at the same time.

    Obama got big props for his bracket last year. It makes him look like a regular guy, who enjoys regular-guy things, and also reminds people that he’s a tuff guy jock.

    RNC PR BS knows that this is a winner for Obama, and is trying to take some of the luster off.

  40. 40.

    Shadow's Mom

    One of the morning news programs on MSNBC made a point of showing that while ESPN broadcast Obama’s bracket picks, Obama made a point of calling on people to go to USAID.gov to find ways to help people in Japan.

  44. 44.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @BruinKid:

    Woot!

    Time to knock back some brewskis prior to your next set of orals to insure that those go slurringly.

    Oh, wait, that’s not right…

  46. 46.

    Southern Beale

    “Die Union Scum” aptly sums up this blog post from rightwing wackadoodle Tennessee state senator Stacy Campfield. Seven pro-teachers union protesters were arrested at the TN state capitol yesterday and .. well, just read Campfield’s post. It’s hilarious. Sounds like a parody … but it’s not!

    Basically he said the pro-union people smelled and needed to bathe … and some other choice things. HILL-fucking-larious ….

  49. 49.

    dmsilev

    @joe from Lowell:

    RNC PR BS knows that this is a winner for Obama, and is trying to take some of the luster off.

    It’ll backfire; it’s a boy-who-cried-wolf thing. The next time some reporter asks Obama about the GOP’s next outrage-du-jour, he can just say “those folks criticize me no matter what. Heck, they even attacked me for filling out a March Madness bracket.”.

    dms

  51. 51.

    Calouste

    @dmsilev:

    The next time some reporter asks Obama about the GOP’s next outrage-du-jour

    Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Citizen_X:

    The shocking thing that the villains are not Turkish led Islamic hordes, dressed pretty much as 13th century Mongols.

  56. 56.

    Amy

    Reince Priebus probably thought that taking on collective bargaining in Wisconsin, his home state, would be good for Republicans.

    Meanwhile, all the union-bashing in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana will pretty much ensure an Obama win in 2012 and create massive Democratic turnout.

    In other words, his political smarts are basically absent.

  57. 57.

    ppcli

    @Cris:

    Added new RNC chairman Reince Priebus in a Tweet: “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

    Unlike the Republicans, who have important abortion-banning, gay marriage restricting, health-care-bill rejecting, EPA-finding-“repealing”, and other crucial job-creating work to do. (Though if Obama had been a Republican, he would have just called it his “job-creating NCAA bracket” and Fox would have supported him on it.)

  58. 58.

    Joe Beese

    “The issue isn’t that these criminal and murderous acts are being carried out in his name, but rather that they are being carried out by his orders. The problem isn’t that he hovers symbolically, a great grinning blue suit, uttering promises about freedom, over the wholesale killing of civilians without cause or even decent pretext, but that he is the commissioner of the crimes. The question isn’t whether or not the drone killings are crimes, but whether or not the President is a war criminal.”

    http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/08/suborn.html
    http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2010/08/suborn.html

  59. 59.

    beltane

    @Citizen_X: I guess it wouldn’t be as exciting to make a movie where the US is taken over by a bunch of smarmy corporate executives in suits who take everyone’s money and shut down all the schools and deny people health care unless they meet their price. No, let’s build up some hysteria over North Fucking Korea.

  60. 60.

    dmsilev

    @Calouste: Sure it will. The question will be framed using the same words as the RNC press release or Sarah Palin Facebook post or whatever, but that sort of “fight! fight! fight!” thing is catnip to modern political reporters.

    dms

  61. 61.

    JCT

    @Dennis SGMM:

    Reince Priebus? Like Karl Rove, he’s probably still trying to get even with every kid who beat the crap out of him when he was in school.

    All the way through college no doubt.

    The joke is that for all of their “elitist” nonsense, Obama is far closer to a regular guy than they could EVER hope to be.

  62. 62.

    Mike in NC

    @ppcli:

    Added new RNC chairman Reince Priebus in a Tweet: “How can @BarackObama say he is leading when puts his NCAA bracket over the budget & other pressing issues?”

    How soon before the GOP starts waxing nostalgic about the keen management skills and eloquence of Michael Steele?

  65. 65.

    cs

    @Garrigus Carraig:

    Rall is merging two iconic images of firefighters, both involving acts of terror. There’s the obvious reference of the rubble in Manhattan. There’s also the reference to the picture of the firefighter carrying the baby out of the rubble in Oklahoma City, 1995.

    The baby in the arms of Rall’s firefighter is in exactly the same position as the one in the famous OKC photograph.

  66. 66.

    Superluminar

    @ Joe Beese
    I’m not reading your post, but would it be a fair summary to say it blames Obama for the sun rising in the East?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks