Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Bark louder, little dog.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Everybody saw this coming.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

In my day, never was longer.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Republicans in disarray!

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Moore Award Nominee

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Martin

    Since Ryan called for the elderly to be turned into muffins and not crackers, this is completely over the top, irresponsible and doesn’t take the GOP proposal seriously.

  3. 3.

    Joe Beese

    It’s missing a 7th panel in which the President “reluctantly” accepts the “abandon them in the desert” plan as one of the “hard choices” we need to make.

  5. 5.

    LarsThorwald

    Take a good look at that cartoon. those proportions are correct.

    I am what I guess you would call an Obamabot or whatever, but the list of mounting disappointments is getting longer and longer. The worst, from my perspective as someone who has to negotiate against assholes all day long, is that he caves so very, very easily.

    He’s handing this country over to fucking lunatics, and the worst part is he does it by meeting them halfway without fighting.

    I’m afraid the man who fought wiselyand smartly through the primaries and through early battles is being, excuse me, a bit of a puss. These idiots need to be fought, not “tempted to the bargaining table.”

  6. 6.

    merrinc

    Eric Cantor just wants everyone to sacrifice, not be made into snack crackers.

    We believe if you put in place the mechanism that allow for personal choice as far as Medicare is concerned, as well as the programs in Medicaid, that we can actually get to a better resolve and do what most Americans are learning how to do, which is to do more with less.

    Medicare is my 72 year old mother’s only insurance and she has cancer. I guess she should try to get by with less chemo and anti-nausea meds.

  7. 7.

    Culture of Truth

    But you have to admit, it’s courageous to promote terrible ideas which if understood would be universally hated and if undertaken would destroy the remaining social fabric of a once great nation.

  8. 8.

    Bob Loblaw

    I imagine it must be rather bleak for dystopian sci fi writers knowing their art never actually has an impact on the way powerful interests think and act in this world.

    Of course, they were probably pretty bleak already, what with the dystopian visions and all.

  11. 11.

    cleek

    happy moment this AM: local NPR guy is doing a story about measuring school performance, and keeps using the word “logarithm” when he should be using “algorithm”. the people he interviewed for the story got it right. but maybe the reporter just didn’t believe that they knew what they were talking about.

  13. 13.

    joeyess

    This should get Paul Ryan banished to the North Slope of Alaska with the rest of the inbred Snowbillies.

    Ryan said his vote for the bailout was influenced by Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a popular book among conservatives that argues that Nazism and other fascist movements were actually left wing in origin, and his belief that a second Depression would threaten capitalism—and rescue Obama’s presidency.
    “I’m a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP… represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral,” he said. “I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system.”

    Sadly, this nonsense ushers him into every teevee studio in NYC via limo and feted at every cocktail party in D.C.

  14. 14.

    geg6

    @John Cole:

    Ritz, dammit. Only Ritz crackers are bold enough.

    And I raise you, Cole. I say that my math demands 22-18=1.5. So fuck you.

  15. 15.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Joe Beese:

    It’s missing a 7th panel in which the President “reluctantly” accepts the “abandon them in the desert” plan as one of the “hard choices” we need to make.

    Panel 8: Victory speech

  16. 16.

    John PM

    The only thing the cartoon misses is that the current elderly would not be turned into crackers, only those who will turn elderly more than 10 years from now.

  17. 17.

    geg6

    @joeyess:

    Jeebus. I never saw that quote before. This guy may be even more stupid and more laughable than the Snowbilly Grifter.

    Hard to believe, but that quote is pretty much all the evidence anyone should need. Except Sully. Who will find it “brave!” and “serious!”, of course.

  18. 18.

    joeyess

    Are we certain that Paul Ryan didn’t have an affair with Ayn Rand? Was he too young? Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.

  19. 19.

    gene108

    @merrinc:

    (snark)

    What is your mother producing to benefit society, at the moment?

    Seriously, we can’t expect to maintain American exceptionalism by spending resources based on some wishy-washy-do-gooder-tree-hugging emotion like “I don’t want my mom to die”.

    Suck it up.

    Only the productive or those whose ancestors were productive, therefore they inherit vast wealth and the productivity of their ancestors, can expect chemo, if they are 72 year old cancer patients.

    That’s what Ayn Rand would’ve wanted. Can’t wait for her to get a monument at the Washington Mall.

    (/end snark)

  21. 21.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    I for one refuse the believe that these ElderCare crackers will be tasty. Bland and blubbery to the point of being barely edible perhaps, but not tasty, nosireee Bob. I’ve seen what actual old people look like, and let me tell you, “tasty” isn’t the first word that comes to mind. The Republicans have gone too far this time.

  22. 22.

    ppcli

    @cleek: It’s only fair that after decades of featuring people who use the word “algorithm” for mechanical procedures to compute results from given input, NPR should give a voice to the people who call such procedures “logarithms”. Balance demands it.

    True, everyone on Fox news calls such procedures “logarithms” (or sometimes “biorhythms”, or “arrhythmias”…) but really, isn’t it just as unbalanced in the other direction to deny the non -“algorithm” side a voice?

  24. 24.

    Calouste

    @merrinc:

    “Sacrifice” in this context can not be taken too literally. Well, we’re maybe not at the point yet where Ryan and Cantor as the high priests of Randism literally rip out the hearts of the undeserving to sacrifice on the altar of Galt, but that’s about it.

    Figuratively, we’re already at the point where people believe that the sun will no longer come up capitalism will stop working unless the poor and unworthy are sacrificed.

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    @joeyess:

    Are we certain that Paul Ryan didn’t have an affair with Ayn Rand?

    Yes, but Ryan did masturbate to her vivid Dominique Francon and Dagny Taggart rape fantasies.

    .

  27. 27.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    OT (sort of) My husband has walking pneumonia right now. Apparently he needs a CAT scan. He has health insurance, however the imaging company will not let him through the door without the $800.00 deductible. I am so fucking tired of being blackmailed by these health care providers, and that is what it is, fucking blackmail.

  29. 29.

    sukabi

    @John PM: with the Ryan plan implementation EVERYONE not in the upper 1% is considered elderly and is cast out in the street.

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    CNN Poll (via TPM):

    Nearly six in ten Americans approve of the eleventh hour budget deal struck between Congress and the White House to avert a government shutdown, according to a CNN poll released on Monday. … In the poll of American adults, 58% said they approved of the budget deal, compared to 38% who disapproved.
    __
    […]
    __
    Democrats supported the compromise by a 66%-28% split, while independents backed it 56%-39%. But among Republicans, 47% saw the deal as a good thing, while 49% gave it a thumbs down because they felt the party had gotten the short end of the stick. Exactly 50% of Republicans said the party’s leaders had given up too much in the final deal.

    .

  32. 32.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    “Big Government Socialists: We abandon the elderly in the desert to fend for themselves.”

    That should be our tag line in 2012. Well, either that or

    “Democrats! We like Abortion, Socialism and Free Stuff!”

    You think I’m kidding? Wild-ass, crazy, easy-to-remember shit like that is how the Republicans won the House last year.

  36. 36.

    catclub

    @joeyess: That really is an amzing quote to me, because I was thinking they should pass TARP so that the economy would not crater.

    Ryan was thinking one step ahead, if the economy craters Obama is guaranteed to be elected in a landslide.

    If the democrats had been thinking strategically, rather than about namby-pamby ‘what is good for the country’
    crap, they would have wrecked the economy in order for their guy to be elected.

    Why does this sound so familiar?

    And the only reason most of the GOP opposed TARP was that they knew the great middle – including most democrats – was in favor of it. Tell them that if the economy craters, Obama will be elected, and they will be ON BOARD.

  37. 37.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    That is, when she wasn’t grabbing her Medicare benefits with both hands

    I was looking for that link when I ran across her picture. Ayn Rand was a remarkably ugly woman. Window to the soul or somesuch.

  38. 38.

    eemom

    @joeyess:

    he could be the spawn of her fabled love affair with Alan Greenspan. Yes, technically it didn’t happen but the image is suitably grotesque.

  39. 39.

    JGabriel

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    I am so fucking tired of being blackmailed by these health care providers, and that is what it is, fucking blackmail.

    Actually, blackmail is when someone says “Gimme $800 or I’ll publish dirty pictures of you and Paul Ryan.”

    When someone says, “Gimme $800 or you’ll die,” that’s assault and robbery.

    .

  41. 41.

    Maude

    @merrinc:
    Oh, man. I’m so sorry your mom is going through this.
    I despise the Republicans for threatening to take medical care away.
    I have Medicare. Disabled.
    @JGabriel:
    People hate it when the prez and congress bicker. Obama knows this.

  42. 42.

    sukabi

    @joeyess: like all Greenspan’s dalliances in finance & “life” she’s been a first hand spectator, but “impartial” reporter… only giving the most positively glowing reports… of course she knows, and there’s a price to be paid for knowing and reporting…

    how do you think she affords to keep her 65 yo face, neck & body in such youthful shape?

  45. 45.

    Poopyman

    @geg6: The only problem being that nobody will ever fact check the very Serious Rep Ryan. Of course TARP was an Evil Obama plan!

  46. 46.

    Bulworth

    that we can actually get to a better resolve and do what most Americans are learning how to do, which is to do more with less.

    That’s a very Courageous statement from one of the Americans who doesn’t have to learn how to do more with less.

  47. 47.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Does anyone else think this Ryan yayhoo looks kinda like Ollie North did during his star turn in the Iran-Contra trials?

  48. 48.

    Maude

    @Poopyman:
    A week or two ago, the payback on TARP made a profit.
    The interest paid back was 6 billion over what was lent.
    Not bad.

  50. 50.

    Bulworth

    a second Depression would threaten capitalism

    Too bad capitalism couldn’t have prevented this second depression or rescued itself without government TARP. Oh well, pure capitalism has never failed, it has only been failed.

  52. 52.

    sukabi

    dear god, I’ve figured out what the “attraction” is for Ryan… HE’S GOT REAGAN’S HAIR… they can throw that zombie back in the ground, they’ve got NEW HAIR!!!

  55. 55.

    FlipYrWhig

    @JGabriel: That’s not possible. Everyone knows it’s the hugest most disillusioning disastrous disaster ever that everyone hates and is disillusioned by.

    Of course it sucked. Republicans weren’t going to vote for something good. We move on. Suck it up.

  58. 58.

    dww44

    @merrinc:

    And thanks to Medicaid, my 93 1/2 year old Mom has been 5 years in a nursing home progressing very slowly through the stages of dementia. She was widowed at an early age and, thanks to SS for widows with dependent children (she had 4 young ones at the age of 33) she was able to work in a drapery factory for around 28 years, standing on her feet folding fiberglass draperies and breathing that junk in the whole time, where she retired with no company sponsored pension and only $600.00 monthly from Social Security. This is, after all, the right-to-work South. Thanks to her children who supplemented her retirement income she continued to live alone in her own home until 5 years ago. So, now, the GOP wants to kick her and millions like her out of their nursing homes, put the nursing homes out of business and their employees (mostly unskilled minorities) out of work, and bankrupt her children who will then not have any retirement funds left except for their Social Security checks which will by then have disappeared.

    Why do Republicans want to destroy the Social safety net? Is it possible those like Ryan and Cantor and others are truly misinformed? Can they really believe the nonsense they are spewing? Or do they just lie with impunity? And are they that cruel and inhumane?

  59. 59.

    Bob Loblaw

    @Maude:

    I love how, to this day, nobody actually understands what TARP was or how it worked. It might as well be magic.

  60. 60.

    catclub

    @Maude: 1. I am pretty sure that the rescue of AIG (technically, the rescue of AIG’s creditors, such as Goldman Sachs to the tune of $13B) was not under TARP.
    2.All the bad crap is being shovelled into the Fannie/Freddie pile – THAT will not turn a profit.

    3. More was given away by opening the Fed window to non-banks, and then paying interest on Fed deposits — which encouraged banks to do THAT rather than lend their money to keep the economy going.

  62. 62.

    Maude

    @dww44:
    There’s an underlying hatred for people behind destroying the social contract. It is a class system in that the uppers don’t see the lowers as quite human.
    They don’t care what they do to anyone as long as they get their way.
    Cruel and heartless as can be.

  63. 63.

    Maude

    @Bob Loblaw:
    It was one the financial things I did understand for some reason. Usually it all goes over my head.
    I listen to Bloomberg radio in the morning and ti think it helps me understand some of what is going on.

  64. 64.

    Sly

    @joeyess:

    “I’m a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP… represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral,” [Ryan] said. “I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system.”

    Anyone who uses the word statist should be smacked upside the head, preferably by an officer of the state designated by the Office of National Head-Slapping Policy and who wears regulation head-slapping gloves (Model #3468-J15).

  65. 65.

    sukabi

    @Sly: good old fashioned cockpunch works much better… and has the added benefit of rendering speech impossible for a while.

  66. 66.

    some troll

    Yeah, it would be nice to not have to settle for the “abandon them in the desert” compromise, but SHOW ME THE VOTES for the leftist fantasyland legislation that would keep Medicare intact.

    While you whine and complain and stomp your feet, we very serious realists know that abandoning the elderly in the desert the best legislation we can possibly achieve given the current makeup of congress.t

  68. 68.

    Scott P.

    From TPM:

    Nearly six in ten Americans approve of the eleventh hour budget deal struck between Congress and the White House to avert a government shutdown, according to a CNN poll released on Monday. And what’s more, a plurality give Democrats the most credit for making it happen.

    In the poll of American adults, 58% said they approved of the budget deal, compared to 38% who disapproved.

  71. 71.

    Martin

    @catclub: True. Here’s as definitive an accounting as I’ve found.

    On TARP, we really aren’t in the positive. We’ve gotten back more money (from a range of sources, some which don’t include banks) as we lent out to banks.

    From the first TARP pot of $475B allocated, $409B was actually disbursed and $294B has come back, $36B of which is revenue. Presumably the other $151B will also return eventually with some amount of revenue on top, or at least $115B to get back what we paid. Not many of these dollars have been lost to outright bankruptcy, so presumably most of it will flow back in.

    Freddie and Fannie we put out $154B and got back $20B. We’re clearly going to take a bath on that.

    AIG we gave $68B and have gotten back $9B with a commitment to pay it all back, which we have no reason to believe won’t eventually happen.

    Auto companies got $80B, we’ve gotten back $25B along with about $1.3B in dividends, etc. Also with a commitment to pay it all back, again which we have no reason to believe won’t actually happen.

    Bottom line, due to F&F, we’re going to lose money on the whole kit, but likely in the $50B range if you add in all of the revenues generated.

  72. 72.

    Dave C

    @Joe Beese:

    Personally, I was thinking about emailing him and asking him to stop shilling for policies that will fuck the rest of us now that he has more skin in the game….but I thought better of it.

  73. 73.

    NonyNony

    @Maude:

    @JGabriel:
    People hate it when the prez and congress bicker. Obama knows this.

    It’s worse than that. Democratic voters and “independents” want compromise. Republican voters don’t. The folks who hate this deal the most are the Republican Tea Party base (you wouldn’t think it from the liberal blogs, but that’s where the polls point).

    Which means that Republican pols are going to get punished for compromising this time and Democratic pols rewarded. Which leads the Republicans to become more batshit insane and Democrats to go further to the right to find a compromise, because the folks who vote for them want them to be grown-ups.

    Really that’s what this comes down to – Democratic voters want their politicians to be grown ups. Republican voters want their politicians to be thugs. And Independents don’t know what they want they just know that whoever is in there now is a crook/incompetent/whatever and so they need to vote for the other guy because maybe he’ll be better.

    The dynamic is dysfunctional. Something’s gotta shift in the next decade because our system of government isn’t built to handle that kind of dysfunction. The last time our government was this dysfunctional we had a Civil War. (I suppose that that means that this time we’re in the middle of the “farce” part of the cycle. It’s not funny, but I guess it’s probably less tragic than the Civil War so maybe…)

  74. 74.

    Pangloss

    Paul Ryan is taking hairstyles AND the social safety net back to the 1920s.

    Now everybody Charleston! Yowsa, yowsa!

  75. 75.

    bad dad

    Andrew Sullivan got his green card today. He has had to fight for this for years due to his HIV status and his inability to marry at the federal level.

    I’ve been reading him for 20 years now and you guys for the last several. While I agree with you guys way more than I agree with him, (I especially like Dennis’ Confederate Party thesis) I respect Andrew’s intellect, his relative open-mindedness, his Sarah Palin vendetta, and the fact that he married a guy from my hometown.

    We have been jumping down his throat (rightfully so, mind you) the last several days. Today is one of the happiest and best days of his life. For one day, put down the pitchforks and go congratulate him.

    Tomorrow we can joke about how he can now fuck up America for the rest of his life. Today, let’s just welcome him to America.

    (I do not want to start a flame war with this, nor will I respond to any bait. If you disagree with me, then just do nothing. I understand that completely.)

  76. 76.

    merrinc

    @gene108:

    Sounds like you’re laying a bold, serious argument. I’ll also remember to ask her if she feels guilty about saddling her grandchildren and their future progeny with the debt incurred as a result of her selfish medical treatments.

  77. 77.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @NonyNony:

    It’s worse than that. Democratic voters and “independents” want compromise. Republican voters don’t. The folks who hate this deal the most are the Republican Tea Party base (you wouldn’t think it from the liberal blogs, but that’s where the polls point).
     
    Which means that Republican pols are going to get punished for compromising this time and Democratic pols rewarded. Which leads the Republicans to become more batshit insane and Democrats to go further to the right to find a compromise, because the folks who vote for them want them to be grown-ups.
     
    Really that’s what this comes down to – Democratic voters want their politicians to be grown ups. Republican voters want their politicians to be thugs. And Independents don’t know what they want they just know that whoever is in there now is a crook/incompetent/whatever and so they need to vote for the other guy because maybe he’ll be better.

    Spot on, this analysis is.

    The dynamic is dysfunctional. Something’s gotta shift in the next decade because our system of government isn’t built to handle that kind of dysfunction. The last time our government was this dysfunctional we had a Civil War.

     
    I am, to the point of tiresomeness, a fan of the framework Kevin Phillips uses to look at US politics. And the frightening thing about that framework is that civil wars are an endemic feature of Anglo-American politics going back to at least the 1640s, with a recurrence interval of roughly 90-130 years or so (i.e. long enough for the prior conflict to be romanticized as memories of the bad parts fade away).

    You could argue that the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s turned into a small scale prelude (c.f. Bleeding Kansas in the 1850s) to the next civil war which otherwise might have turned up on schedule sometime in the last decade or two of the 20th Cen. That was probably as close as we can get in the nuclear age when control of WMDs is at stake, which perhaps is why it didn’t escalate any further. But it left issues between the cultural North and the cultural South unresolved, unlike the prior conflicts in the 1640s, 1770s and 1860s which ended more decisively with one side crushing the other, and as a result that fight is still going on today. It won’t go away until one side crushes the other, at least in electoral terms, and I don’t expect that to happen in my lifetime.

  78. 78.

    patroclus

    Perhaps this is a minor point, but doesn’t the Ryan plan eliminate W’s vaunted prescription drug benefit that all the Republicans voted for and touted as evidence of their commitment to providing health services for the elderly and disabled?

    Does anyone remember “compassionate conservatism” or is that too far in the past to be relevant?

  80. 80.

    Tim, Interrupted

    @bad dad:

    Today is one of the happiest and best days of his life. For one day, put down the pitchforks and go congratulate him.

    Fuck that noise. His acquiring of a green card is a net loss for the country. Usually, I am all in favor of immigration, but in this case, hells no.

    And why are you so hip to send BJ folks over to congratulate Miss Sullivan? Which of course no one can do publicly anyway, as the Daily Douche has no comment section…

    Andrew, go home! You are not welcome here!

  81. 81.

    Bobby Thomson

    We have been jumping down his throat (rightfully so, mind you) the last several days. Today is one of the happiest and best days of his life. For one day, put down the pitchforks and go congratulate him.

    First, fuck Tim, Interrupted and his gay bashing.

    Second, fuck Sully. He’s advocating policies that will lead to several people having the worst fucking days of their soon to be even shorter and brutish lives. I don’t give a shit if it’s his birthday or he just bought a round of drinks. Rah fucking rah.

  82. 82.

    General Stuck

    @NonyNony:

    This is really some good analysis! And yes, it is quite dysfunctional, a spiral towards some kind of reckoning with the tea tards and their sympathizers. They are seceding in slow motion, on a personal level, at least. for now.

  83. 83.

    Bill Arnold

    @ppcli:
    I heard a surreal segment on NPR recently, where they (?) were interviewing a Nigerian who was doing analysis of voter rolls looking for fraud. He managed to slip in that the analysis task was “computationally expensive” and to say that the background noise was computer hardware (sounded like a rack of servers, in his office).
    If they had interviewed an American, the reporter would have known to insist that it be translated down to a general audience.

Comments are closed.