Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

We still have time to mess this up!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I really should read my own blog.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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

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

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

This blog will pay for itself.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Come on, man.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

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92Comments

  2. 2.

    geg6

    Got a day off after a long week of panicked parents and students freaking out over whether their financial aid will be there. And, happily, they’re blaming the Rethugs, both federal and state.

    So I decided I’d start my day the way I did back in 1994, wake and bake and sit back and watch the GOP implode, maybe even more spectacularly than they did back then.

  3. 3.

    ant

    lol

    I watched that whole thing.

    Didn’t these guys make enough money to fix their teeth?

  4. 4.

    PK

    Earlier today, Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was projecting confidence that his debt plan would pass at a vote scheduled at 6:00pm. He was even spotted singing “It’s a zippity-doo-dah day.

    I read this over at TP. Wonder what song is he singing now?

  5. 5.

    JPL

    geg6,

    So I decided I’d start my day the way I did back in 1994, wake and bake and sit back and watch the GOP implode, maybe even more spectacularly than they did back then.

    There is a difference..Fox News didn’t get started until late 1996. Like it or not, they have a large influence over thirty percent of the voters.

  7. 7.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    @JPL:

    There is a difference..Fox News didn’t get started until late 1996. Like it or not, they have a large influence over thirty percent of the voters.

    As much as I loathe their basic dishonesty, FNC is not the problem. Already caught both NPR and CBS this morning engaging in “both sides are dysfunctional” reporting. They are the ones that drive the narratives that make Americans hate all politicians rather than just the GOP. Maybe this will play out like 1994 and be bad for the GOP but not nearly as bad as it should be for a party that has intentionally taken the country’s economy hostage.

  8. 8.

    Yevgraf

    David Gergen is one of the first people who deserves curb stomping in the spasm of violence that follows The Collapse.

  9. 9.

    cleek

    @Comrade Javamanphil:
    NPR is always worthless when the subject is complex. they’re so afraid to offend anyone that they end up focusing on the parts of stories that nobody can take issue with, while glossing over the rest.

  10. 10.

    Xenos

    If Boehner survives the weekend, he will need Ailes’ and Limbaugh’s support. And then he will be singing this song from that horrible Disney movie whence ‘Zippadee Doo-Dah’ came.

  11. 11.

    BalJu Commenter #2401

    A song by a band named after a strap-on dildo somehow seems appropriate.

  12. 12.

    JPL

    Comrade Javamanphil, How much of that is caused by the Fox News factor? Most of the MSM shifted to compete with Fox. You are right that there was crazy reporting before but it has become extreme. I love when talk radio hosts tank the fairness doctrine. I always want to call in to bozo boortz and ask why. Isn’t his reporting fair?

  14. 14.

    Kirbster

    In my fantasy movie version of events, millions of American citizens are heading towards the Capitol and by early tomorrow, over a million people surround the building, chanting, “Clean bill NOW!” along with thousands more at every representative’s local district office.

    When I concoct fantasies, I think big.

  15. 15.

    Napoleon

    A song by a band named after a strap-on dildo somehow seems appropriate.

    Steam powered, not strap-on, but point taken.

  16. 16.

    HRA

    @4PK

    Cry me a River fits perfectly.

    Listened to Peggy Noonan on Morning Joe this am and asked myself why do I inflict punishment on myself watching this program.

    “It’s all Obama’s fault.” Blech!

  17. 17.

    JPL

    WearBear, Fox News is not a news channel, they are an entertainment channel. They have already gone to court and had lawsuits tossed because they are not a news channel. I love telling this fact to my whacko friends.

  18. 18.

    cleek

    Fagan’s not the best singer in the world, but his kinda-creepy, strained, near-wail really adds a lot to that song. that guy there wasn’t really doing it for me.

  19. 19.

    Anya

    As usual the Dems will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Let’s wait till we hear from the usual suspects, we’ve already heard from John’s Senator.

  21. 21.

    geg6

    JPL @5:

    Yes, they have their giant megaphone, but this is a theme with wingnuts, whoever they may be at a particular time in history. 1994, 1964, the McCarthy years of the 1950s, 1929-32, 1860, the entire Andrew Jackson administration (not necessarily a great liberal, but certainly the guy who stamped the working man logo on the Dems)…they do it a lot. I don’t think FOX really changes the trajectory of these sorts of extremist movements.

  22. 22.

    Jewish Steel

    Benen twists the knife:

    At this moment, we know a few things. One, Boehner’s bill is going to fail, either in the House or the Senate. Two, Boehner is the weakest House Speaker in generations, and his hold on the gavel is tenuous, at best. Three, even if Boehner can squeeze his bill through today, his goal of using the vote to gain leverage and present a united front to Democrats is now laughable.

  24. 24.

    Bokonon

    Boehner’s own people are now pulling the same tactics INSIDE THE GOP CAUCUS that the GOP is using on Obama. They are creating a crisis, and taking the legislative process hostage, and threatening to destroy things unless they get exactly what they want. And they are running out the clock while everyone scrambles to meet their implacable and ever-more-extreme demands.

    Why should we be surprised?

  25. 25.

    SteveinSC

    Keith is on repeat in the morning and via DVR from last night from Current TV. Way better than Scarface. He’s less constrained than when he was on MSNBC.

  27. 27.

    arguingwithsignposts

    If you’re going to give Fox News credit this time, you should acknowledge that Rush Limbaugh went on the air in the late ’80s, and was a huge boon to Newt’s crusade.

  28. 28.

    Anya

    WereBear @ 13 ~ Wait till Stephen Harper realizes that law exists. Isn’t his former aid running Fox north? And did he not change the rules so that they have an easier path for approval.

    I think the only saving grace for Canada, is the somewhat draconian hate laws. Because of that, Sun News or whatever it’s called, will never be like Fox News.

  29. 29.

    Linda Featheringill

    I have long thought that in times of economic crisis, the government is an instrument of the Fat Cats. “Wall Street controls Congress” was an axiom.

    I’m beginning to wonder about that.

  30. 30.

    Samara Morgan

    Is this the end of divided government in America?
    In a parlimentary system would Boner have gotten a vote of no confidence and been tossed out?
    would the government have been reformed without the Tea Baggers so that it could …you know….function?

  32. 32.

    Joseph Nobles

    John Boehner was spotted singing an Uncle Remus song from Disney’s Song of the South?

  33. 33.

    NamelessGenXer

    Steam powered, not strap-on, but point taken.

    Since we’re going with the Dan of Steel, this one’s for the complicit newsitainers:

    showbiz kids making movies of themselves, you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else

  34. 34.

    Xenos

    @Joseph Nobles: I looked on youtube for the part of the movie where the little orange kid gets stomped by the bull, but I could not find it.

    I saw that movie in the theater when Disney re-released in in the early 1970s. It beggers belief that it was shown anywhere after, say, 1964.

  35. 35.

    Dennis SGMM

    This is going well:

    The death of Abdel Fattah Younes threatens the rebels’ momentum as they prepare to wind down for Ramadan.

    The Libyan rebels’ military leader has been killed in Benghazi under suspicious circumstances, casting the ragtag group’s campaign to oust Moammar Gadhafi into doubt. Abdel Fattah Younes was killed after being summoned from the frontlines back to Benghazi, the seat of the rebel government, where he was shot along with two aides. Younes had been a leading military presence under Gadhafi, but defected to the rebellion once the civilian uprising turned into a full-scale war. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the leader of the Transitional National Council, confirmed that Younes had been killed on his way to meet with the rebels’ judicial committee, although scant other details are available.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @ Samara Morgan:

    What do you mean by divided government? If you mean governing divided between two parties, it can’t change until 2012. If you mean our constitutional system with separation of powers, changing that would require massive changes to the Constitution so I don’t see it happening.

  38. 38.

    Soprano2

    It seems obvious to me that the Republican leaders don’t know the story of Frankenstein. They created and used this monster, and now it’s threatening to destroy them because they can’t control it. This result was easy to predict, but somehow none of them saw it coming. This is what happens when you put too many people who think purity is more important than governing into office.

  40. 40.

    Joseph Nobles

    @Xenos: According to Wikipedia, the last time it was released into theaters was 1986, if you can believe that.

  41. 41.

    The Raven

    On the recent acts of terrorism in Norway, Democracy Now interview with Eva Larsson, wife of the late novelist Steig Larsson, whose life work was largely anti-fascist activism.

    See also Searchlight Magazine.

    I’d like to see a tag, “Can we call them fascists yet, mommy?”

    (I know this is supposed to be a Boehner discussion, but this is an open thread, and I think this link is more interesting.)

  43. 43.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    @JPL:

    How much of that is caused by the Fox News factor?

    Certainly some. FNC and it’s conservative backers realized the media had become lazy and would always report political issues as some mid point between the extremes and they realized a news channel could set a new right extreme to force the middle to the right. Still, I save my ire for those that are smart enough to realize they’ve been played but have yet to acknowledge it.

  45. 45.

    Samara Morgan

    @Dennis
    my info is that many rebels distrusted Younes and believed he was still in thrall to Qaddafi, and feeding info to him and his chad mercs. this wont change the eventual outcome. The US just recognized the NTC and that allows them access to the frozen billions that Qaddafi stole from his people. Al-Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood have put out a death fatwah on him, and the International Court has charged him with warcrimes. Qaddafi cant pay his chad mercs much longer.

    Before General Younes defected to the rebel side soon after the uprising began in February, he had been a longtime friend of Colonel Qaddafi. Libyan state television sometimes tried to exploit speculation about his divided loyalties by reporting that he had returned to his old job.
    __
    During an interview in April, Colonel Qaddafi’s daughter, Aisha, suggested that General Younes was still loyal to her father. She said that at least one former member of the Qaddafi government on the rebels’ ruling council was still talking with the Qaddafis, and she pointedly declined to rule out General Younes.
    __
    For months, a public rivalry between General Younes and another rebel military leader, Khalifa Hifter, contributed to the pervasive sense of chaos in the ranks, as both men claimed to command the fighters in the field.
    __
    Rumors about General Younes and intertribal tensions started picking up here in the rebels’ de facto capital early Thursday evening with reports that a group of four judges working for the rebel council had summoned General Younes for questioning. The war effort he led has stalled out for months along immobile battle lines on the eastern front.

    @Omnes.
    i mispoke. i should have said the failure of the American divided government model…it will limp along for a while.
    but this is obviously a Fail for representative government.

  48. 48.

    Samara Morgan

    @Dennis
    you like a Obama concern troll libertarian.
    “ragtag group”??
    sorry, but the NTC has the same make-up as all the Arab Spring rebellions– students and islamists.
    its just in Libya Qaddafi could maintain a better police state than Mubarak because America was never interested in buying him off like Mubarak…no border with the israelinazis.
    One reason the Tahir revolution succeeded was that it was clear Mubarak’s patron America would not support him bombing and machine-gunning his populace.
    Qaddafi has no such patron.

  49. 49.

    WereBear

    WearBear, Fox News is not a news channel, they are an entertainment channel.

    Yes, I know, but their omnipresent logo still says “News” on it. Their viewers don’t know that!

  50. 50.

    Samara Morgan

    I still wonder which meaning of “divided government” you are using.

    theres more than one?

    In the United States, divided government describes a situation in which one party controls the White House and another party controls one or both houses

  51. 51.

    iriedc

    I don’t know enough about the History of the Congress to know if Boehner is weakest Speaker in history, but Lord help us, the evidence certainly suggests he’s the dumbest.

  52. 52.

    cleek

    i don’t know how strong or weak Boehner is, but i do know that, like Obama, he’s stuck trying to find a way to get two fundamentally incompatible philosophies to agree to do something that both of them will hate, for opposite reasons.

    not a job i’d want.

  53. 53.

    dead existentialist

    @ Samara Morgan:
    Hey, somebody’s taking her meds! You sound (dare I say it?) rational . . . .

    ETA: Meh. You’ve posted since I made this remark; nevermind. Carry on with the usual crazy.

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @ Samara Morgan:

    With all due respect, you sometimes find your own definitions of poli sci terms. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t using one of those. To answer your question, divided government is has seldom produced a crisis before, because, most of the time, the people in both parties were interested in finding a solution to problems. They may have disagreed about means and priorities, but they wanted to solve problems. Today, there is a large enough contingent that would just as soon see things blow up that things have gotten weird. I am not sure that a parliamentary system would avoid the crisis we currently face. I think it would just have played out differently. Cantor might have dislodged Boehner as PM; can you imagine the idiocy that could come of that?

  55. 55.

    Montysano

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred):

    I like Rickie Lee’s version.

    Very nice!

    “I detect the El Supremo in the room at the top of the stair” is one of many Fagen lyrics that make me smile every time.

    The Dan are playing at the new Tuscaloosa amphitheater in August. I hope to be in attendance.

  56. 56.

    magurakurin

    don’t take me alive

    would be my pick for Teahadists.

    That Steely Dan song took me back to a good place in the 70’s of hash pipes, beer copped from a friend’s older siblings and warm summer nights spent in stoned contemplation of the world, it’s problems and possible ways out. But that Cheap Trick video took me back to a bad place in the 70’s. High School. Cliques of Assholes. Shit music. Shit people. Conformity. Blandness. Approaching Reaganism…

  58. 58.

    Samara Morgan

    @DE

    Meh. You’ve posted since I made this remark; nevermind. Carry on with the usual crazy.

    which comment convinced you that im crazy? my al-jazeera link and fact-based analysis of Younes assassination or my musings on the Fail of divided government?

  62. 62.

    Samara Morgan

    lol @ AWS
    why dont you go back over to “Our EDK’s” execrable blog and contribute to his fundraiser? The world needs more Jenifer Rubin clones to have a voice.

  64. 64.

    ...now I try to be amused

    Got a day off after a long week of panicked parents and students freaking out over whether their financial aid will be there. And, happily, they’re blaming the Rethugs, both federal and state.

    Dare I hope that this optional disaster will be this generation’s Vietnam draft, the issue that motivates young people to become politically active (or at least vote)?

  67. 67.

    Paul in KY

    Loved the Steely Dan clip. Think the lead singer is Shane McGowan’s brother.

    As for the shirt he’s wearing, for those of you not alive in the 70s, we did wear that kind of stuff. That’s not a special ‘performing’ shirt, that’s a normal shirt you would have seen many dudes wearing. Man, those were freaky times!

  68. 68.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    Paul in KY

    I never seen you looking so bad my funky one
    You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone

  73. 73.

    shecky

    The bongo player is “Skunk” Baxter, Doobie Brothers and Missile Defense expert!

    I like how Baxter read some aviation books and became a missile defense expert, with the help of some star struck politicos. I wonder why he didn’t read Gray’s Anatomy and get a research grant from the Mayo Clinic. He grifted a government defense teat with the help of some So CA Republican assholes like Dana Rohrabacher, who got to hobnob with a boomer rock n roll insider/icon in return.

  75. 75.

    Samara Morgan

    @paul

    fyi, i was the captain of my fencing team in undergrad.
    i loved the bit where she runs up the wall and cuts the adversary up.

  78. 78.

    replicnt6

    Have you noticed that you can sing the verses of “Do It Again” to the tune of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”?

  79. 79.

    Samara Morgan

    Captain Stupid is reporting 216 votes.

    Update II: Looks like Jeff Flake’s late commitment for support may have given Boehner the 216 votes he needs today. But that was contingent on passing the BBA for a 2nd tranche on the debt ceiling, making Boehner’s bill an even more DOA effort when it gets to the Senate.

  82. 82.

    Paul in KY

    Omnes Omnibus, I think I had the same shirt. Poofy sleeves, 3 buttons at cuff, some print of a Led Zeppelin elf fantasy on back. Made of rayon or some other silk-like substance.

    Also, the shoes with the 3 inch heels (which was good for me as I was/am short).

  83. 83.

    Paul in KY

    Samara Morgan, I took fencing as an elective at UK. Teacher was an old Egyptian dude who had been on Egypt’s fencing team back in early 1960s. He wasn’t quite like the guy who taught Arya, but he was eccentric.

    Anyway, I found out fencing is very hard, very athletic & when someone whacks your wrist real hard with the edge of a foil, it hurts like Hell!

    Props to you for being a fencer :-)

  84. 84.

    MazeDancer

    @WereBear:

    Canada has a law that says you can’t lie if you are claiming to be a news organization.

    Great law, but who enforces it? Can’t imagine how it would get enforced here.

  85. 85.

    Bruce S

    David Frum – playing Sysiphus on the right, trying to pushback against the crazy – went after some big Murdoch/WSJ lies about the sources of debt and deficits. Not a shocker, but interesting in the depths of the WSJ obscurantism in trying to fashion a narrative about how we got here that doesn’t include the Reagan or Bush tax cuts:

    http://titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/conservative-limps-back-into-reality.html

    (That creep Stephen Green who writes some of this crap for the WSJ is on Bill Maher’s show periodically and he’s about as sleazy as they come. Unctuous and utterly dishonest little glibertarian bastard.)

  86. 86.

    Bokonon

    This “balanced budget amendment” essentially puts a gun to the head of Congress, and says that the GOP will not raise the debt limit in six months UNLESS the constitutional amendment passes by the necessary 2/3rds majority, and has been referred to the states for ratification.

    Once again – they are using blackmail to preempt the regular operation of Congress. In this case, though, it is rising to a CONSTITUTIONAL LEVEL.

    If that isn’t the mother of all coercion, I don’t know what is.

  87. 87.

    Samara Morgan

    @Mazedancer

    Great law, but who enforces it? Can’t imagine how it would get enforced here.

    its why Mark Steyn had to leave the country.

  88. 88.

    Yutsano

    @Bokonon:

    If that isn’t the mother of all coercion sedition, I don’t know what is.

    Adjusted that fer ya. And I think the AOS knows it don’t matter what he puts up since it’s DOA in the Senate anyway.

  90. 90.

    Bokonon

    While the Tea Partiers are at it, why don’t they just demand the ability to nullify any state or federal law that they disagree with, and get advance consent to amend the Constitution at will … or else?

    That’s where the GOP’s far right is going. Essentially, as the price for not blowing everything up, they want to preempt the normal legislative process. They get to veto the rest of Congress AND the chief executive.

    Shades of 1859 …

  92. 92.

    "Fair and Balanced" Dave

    Loved the Steely Dan clip. Think the lead singer is Shane McGowan’s brother.

    The singer is David Palmer who sang on live gigs for the band’s first tour. Palmer also sang the lead vocal on “Dirty Work”

    See what Kid Charlemange does for ya!

    Not bad but the guitar solo pales in comparison to what Larry Carlton’s version on the studio recording.

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