Via Sully, we see Ross Douthat warming up the holodeck for a “What if President McCain…” simulation where all the Dems are wearing goatees.
Overall, in a McCain presidency Democrats would have faced the same political incentives Republicans face now — where it’s easier to blame a terrible economy on the president than to find ways to cooperate with him — with two added reasons to fight rather than to deal: First, they could have easily pinned the whole of the economic crisis on the G.O.P. (“the Bush-McCain Depression,” etc.), and second, they would have had a potentially unbeatable Hillary Clinton rather than a suspect Mitt Romney waiting in the wings for 2012.
To win significant cooperation under those circumstances, I suspect that McCain would have had to essentially surrender to Democratic priorities, which in turn would have turned him into a kind of John Tyler figure — a president despised by his own party and a first-term lame duck. And whether you start from liberal or conservative premises, it’s hard to see that scenario playing out happily for the United States or the world.
Bullshit. The Tea Party would still be there, they would be railing against McCain, threatening to primary the hell out of the entire Republican Party and they would have made big gains in 2010, but the major difference is we’d be at war with Iran right now, and that kind of throws the whole thing into a tizzy. But the notion that the Dems would block legislation to improve the economy is laughable: McCain’s own party would disown him unless he played the Tea Party’s games. If anything, you’d have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid putting up bills to do so and they would be rejected by Cantor and Boehner…hey, just like we have now.
The only other difference would of course be Vice President Moose Lady. As amusing as that would be, we’d be pretty much even more fucked now, with more wars and more Palin no health care reform at all. Joy.
“Democratic intransigence” would be on precisely nobody’s radar, Ross.
Mayur
Yeah, Ross. That’s right. I remember when Congressional Dems fervently opposed TARP, appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, and Medicare Part D, and crowed about making the recession “Bush’s Waterloo.”
I guess this jackass really is orbiting Rigel IX or something.
pragmatism
The below NY mag piece discussing Ezra Klein’s post postulates that johnny mac would have gone all keynesian on our asses and the teatards would have cheered because the idea came from the right side (pun intended).
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/ezra_klein_has_a_monster.html
John Cole
I disagree. There would be no tea party had McCain won. The tea party was wholly a reaction to the election of Barack Obama.
Chris
I’m going to dissent and say I never actually expected war with Iran from McCain. Climate wasn’t right: not only is the economy in the shitter, not only are people weary of two badly handled wars, but those two wars combined with all our other overseas commitments have our military stretched to the brink. I don’t think McCain would’ve started a war under those conditions absent something like another 9/11. But I could be wrong.
But yeah, I agree, the notion that Democratic intransigence would’ve been anywhere near Republican intransigence in real life is laughable.
Rommie
Indeed. Since exactly no one knows what President
SkroobMcCain would have proposed to do about the economic meltdown at the end of 2008, all the rest is just Magical Tea Party bullshit, with a side of VP Sparkly Pony Princess. He could have just as easily been Mr. Veto Everything and wearing the goatee himself, while kicking the goat off his lawn.The Bobs
@John Cole: Absolutely John. That is all they ever cared about.
JCT
That column of Ross’ this AM was LOL stupid. Between MoDo, BoBo and that fuckin idgit Friedman I barely read the NYT Op-Ed anymore after 30 years of reading it daily. I almost wish that fucker Safire was still alive. I’m pretty sure he at least had firing synapses.
PeakVT
where it’s easier to blame a terrible economy on the president than to find ways to cooperate with him
Douthat should read this.
BGinCHI
And what’s worse, any Democratic intransigence would have been played by the GOP, and the beltway media, as “broken government.”
Gee, wonder into whose hands that plays?
catclub
@John Cole: beat me to it.
or the same tea party would be there that was screaming about the Bush deficits and debt financed wars.
i.e nobody who ever voted GOP is in THAT teaparty.
Kola Noscopy
Is there some secret code by which to differentiate a DougJ post from a Mistermix post from a Zandar post?
They are all the same in their adherence to and cheering for the corporate Dem line.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So it’s not just the FDLeft who can’t understand how the whole Blue Dog/ConservaDem thing works. Just for starters, wouldn’t Jodi Rell still have been in office when Joe Lieberman was named to the cabinet? So one more Republican in the Senate. Nelson, McCaskill, Bayh, Baucus, Salazar, the Other Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln and Pryor, Conrad, Dorgan and Johnson, and probably Feinstein, all eager to show their bipartisanship— it would be pretty hard for Reid to not let legislation go to a vote, and certainly no filibuster. Pelosi under enormous pressure the the Washington Post and Steny Hoyer to “work with Our War Hero President At This Difficult Time”….
NonyNony
@John Cole:
John is right – without Obama there’s no Tea Party.
In fact, this part of Ross’s quote is the loser:
No. They wouldn’t. Republicans gain ground when people believe that government is useless. Democrats gain ground when they make the case that good government is worthwhile. You can’t make that case while treasonously stabbing the government in the back.
We’re not even talking about a “my team is better than your team” argument here. We’ve GOT an example of how Democrats act in a Republican majority government – we just fucking LIVED through it under W. And what we saw was Democrats bending over backward to find compromises because they WANT TO KEEP GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONING.
It’s like Ross fell asleep at the end of the Clinton years and woke up when Obama became President or something.
Jewish Steel
@John Cole: The Tea Party would still be called by it’s maiden name: The Republican Base.
MeDrewNotYou
We dodged not a bullet, but a fricken’ cannonball in 2008. Does anybody else remember that McCain was ready to go to war with Russia over the South Ossetia deal? Hell, he probably wouldn’t be able to handle the stress on the job and we’d be hurtling towards Armageddon with the Queen Grifter in charge. I’d be surprised if we hadn’t bombed Egypt and Tunisia and then put boots on the ground there.
Mark S.
I disagree. There wouldn’t be any Tea Party. None of those idiots cared about the deficit or whatnot until the occupant in the WH had a D after his name. It would have been business as usual when a president is Republican with corporate cronyism, hypernationalism, and tax cuts to solve all of our problems.
ETA: I see I was a little slow in articulating this idea.
schrodinger's cat
Stop the presses, I has found Tunch moonlighting as a model..
Zifnab
Would it? Or would we be witnessing a majority-run GOP Congress try and repeal the income tax entirely and maybe impeach a SCOTUS justice or two? Would we see the “Give everyone free ice cream and kittens Act of 2010” run into a stone wall of opposition when it was discovered the fine print contained provisions to have union leaders arrested, maced, and released to angry Tea party lynch mobs? Would the Republican plan to abolish the Dept of Ed and issue block grants to military contractors and mega-churches to supply education run into any opposition? How about the “Murdering abortionist doctors is now considered justifiable homocide Act of 2011”?
And of course, every time Democrats try to obstruct some hair-brained, hyper-destructive, crony-inspired Republican wet dream bill, you’d have Ross Douthat writing thousand word screeds about how Republicans would never ever ever engage in such juvenile mischief. And how dare Democrats refuse to kow-tow to Commander and Chief McCain when the unemployment level is at 15%! This is an emergency, donchaknow, no time for partisan bickering.
Mike Goetz
Breaking: Mitt Romney to release “Five Dollar Footlong” tax plan.
General Stuck
The sad and scary part, is that fools like Douthwat, and the rest of the clown columnists at the liberal (cough) NYT;s, actually believe the swill they write. That too often is picked up by the MSM herd and turned into gospel punditry.
Hell, everyone knows if Mccain had won, Sarah would be running the circus as Madame Hatchet with thermonuclear Weapons. After The Maverick mysteriously croaked, from a spiked vile in his daily chalice of puppy blood.
schrodinger's cat
What is Ross smoking? Sully must have left some of the good stuff behind in the Atlantic Offices, which Douthat got his hands on.
Take Them at Their Turd
My guess is that we’d be experiencing
President Moose Lady* President Agent Orange by now, given the stress and strains of the last two-plus years. It’s easy to throw firebombs from the sidelines. Given his age, I’m not sure Johnny Mac’s health would’ve held up under the pressure of actually having to make decisions in these wacky times.*My bad. We’re well past the expiration date on Moose Lady term limits.
geg6
@John Cole:
You are correct about that. However, since they really are nothing but the GOP base, they’d still be bitching and complaining about the same shit, without all the “near” stuff. They’d just change the photoshopped pix with African medicine men to ones with rhinos.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know about war in Iran. Petraeus would most likely have been somewhere in a McCain presidency, and while I don’t share the idolatry I don’t think he’d be a big advocate for a third war. I definitely think we’d have a couple of hundred thousand more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (combined) and would massively fucked up the Arab Spring, from Tunisia to Syria.
The Tea Party wouldn’t have the astroturf funding it does now, and David Gregory wouldn’t have been set on Goggle-Eyed to discuss “This Deficit!”, but there were tea-partyish objections to TARP, and a lot of the GOP base never trusted McCain. If anything there would be a small but noisy movement for President McCain to step down in favor of Moosalina, assuming she had been allowed to stick around.
Paul in KY
@John Cole: Agree. No tea party at all.
MeDrewNotYou
@Mike Goetz: I’m waiting for Rick Perry’s 99 Cent Menu of American Exceptionalism. Apparently we’ll be shipping freedom around the world in fry format. Taxes not included.
catclub
@Chris: Not me. You are assuming that we could ignore all the years McCain was an asshole pundit who shot from the hip rather than study ANYTHING
(starting at flight school, if not earlier) and would suddenly become a responsible statesman. Other people believed Bush would follow through on compassionate conservatism and be ‘ a uniter not a divder’. Didn’t work out that time either. Yet another group of people thought Obama would be a leftist firebrand who would excoriate his opposition, in spite of all his previous history, and were disappointed when he did not meet those expectations.
The common thread seems to be making up things to believe about politicians, and ignoring their actual history.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: That cat is fierce!
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
jesus, its too awful to contemplate, and where do you start?
how about,
“the fundamentals of the economy are strong” john mccain september 15 2008. everything is debatable if you want to imagine what the guy who fake shut down his campaign to do nothing about the economy would have done, or his vice president who either would be president, or would have quit…
hell how about, mccain screws the pooch, everything turns to shit, palin quits, and eric cantor is president after mccain dies on the toilet.
schrodinger's cat
If McCain had won, scary woman from Alaska would be Madame by President now. How is that for a nightmare?
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
No, it’s that he’s suffering from typical “both sides do it” syndrome with a helping of “I want to smear the Democrats as much as possible” on top. Facts and evidence don’t matter, only the Narrative.
Paul in KY
@General Stuck: No shit. McCain would be dead by now & Todd would have the nuclear codes.
Maybe the Secret Service would have been forced to stage a coup after they found out what they were dealing with.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “step down in favor of Moosalina”
Neat mixture of Messalina and Mussolini. I bow in your general direction.
ChrisNYC
Meg Whitman would be Treas. Sec. Ha.
geg6
This is completely OT, but fucking hilarious:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/fashion/raising-eyebrows.html?_r=2
pragmatism
@geg6: comment @ gawker: “another failure of the invisible hand”. that person will enjoy the int0rwebs they won today.
catclub
@Zifnab: “Would the Republican plan to abolish the Dept of Ed.”
Huh? They were definitely NOT doing this when they held both houses and the Whitehouse. They dropped SS privatization like a stone. Instead they worried about Terri Schiavo – but NO cuts in government spending.
MeDrewNotYou
@schrodinger’s cat: So do you think the Rapture would’ve happened yet, or are we still waiting for floating naked people?
FlipYrWhig
The Tea Party-ish streak would probably have been reoriented towards demonizing immigrants and public employees. The overarching point of TPers is that the government shouldn’t be making life easy for moochers and layabouts, especially in the midst of a bad economy. Under a Republican president, no one would be trying to do anything like that, so that sentiment wouldn’t be inflamed by current events — but it’s not like it ever goes away, because it’s pretty much what makes conservatives conservative. We would have had tax cuts and deregulation and even more of the midwest-governors’ approach to deficit reduction. And Conservative Democrats would have gone along with most all of it, because they run scared on anything that has to do with taxes or war/terrorism.
piratedan
man, just read those comments, there’s even one person who states that the economy would have been fine under Bush if he had resisted the attempts to implement the stimulus
S. cerevisiae
If McCain would have won there would have been no stimulus package, which means the economic free-fall would have turned into a global financial collapse which in turn would cause a world wide depression. There would be one good thing global CO2 production would plummet, but that would be small comfort as we all hunted for rats to eat.
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: Looks like he has lots of Tunchitude.
Legalize
There would be no “Tea Party.” The only reason something branded as the “Tea Party” exists at all, is because the president is near. There would have been absolutely no need for Dick Armey, the Kochs, or Fox News to brand, bankroll, and sell a faux populist movement of angry Real Americans. However, McCain would have probably dropped dead by now and President Mooselini would be bombing Russia this very minute for daring to be to close to her house. The economy would be shittier. Real Americans would love it. And Tweety would be Tweety.
Loneoak
Isn’t it amazing how pundit time machines always somehow justify the pundit’s presently unjustifiable politics?
kindness
Douthat obviously has better drugs than I do. Schmuck won’t share either!
Rafer Janders
Oh, if only we’d had a real world example of a Republican President facing a Democratic Congress! Had this ever actually happened in the past, we’d be able to tell whether Douthat’s hypothetical would be accurate or not!
Maude
Can Ross tie his shoes?
Shalimar
If McCain had won, one of the lunatics would have killed him by now so Sarah could be president. Sparkles!
gordon schumway
“Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is… maybe he didn’t?”
MeDrewNotYou
@FlipYrWhig: Speaking of the Midwest governors, what about the GOP at a state level in general? Would we still have the all-out ridiculous attacks on unions? (I know things really picked up in ’10, but they knew the demographic clock is ticking in ’08 and that they needed to stack the voting/political power deck. ETA-Plus beating on labor is always fair game.) I assume the assault on women and Planned Parenthood would be about the same; there’s never any change or subtlety in the fight against reproductive rights.
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat: @Paul in KY: Gotta agree that McCain would be dead by now. Pres Palin would either be determined to be incompetent and removed, or she’d simply quit. Hello President Boehner!
I have no idea what the country would look like now under that scenario, but I’m guessing we’d all be miserable. Especially after they shut down the internets.
Bill E Pilgrim
I got as far as reading that with President McCain we may well have been out of the depression by now because he would have proposed a smaller stimulus package.
Ross has always been sort of on a holodeck.
A Mom Anon
@MeDrewNotYou: Speaking of the assault on women,appearently the dumbasses are voting(or have voted) on yet another anti abortion bill today in the House. Another fucking redundant bill forbidding taxpayer money from being spent on abortions. WTF is the Hyde Ammendment then?
I’m going to start calling Orange Julius and my idiot GA senators and rep and ask “how many jobs did you create today?”. Every fucking day. I have had it with these assclowns.
schrodinger's cat
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Well that explains the Chunky Witherspoon episode.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Don’t touch that dial… President Obama says that Iran must be held accountable for their scurrilous attack upon the United States of America on its own soil.
Can you imagine – some evil country attacking another one on their own soil without permission, even from the hated UN? UNthinkable. That is a rogue state which should be shunned as an international pariah, its leadership decapitated and its population bombed back to the Stone Age to prevent future possible lawlessness no doubt also too, as I’m sure all here agree.
.
.
FlipYrWhig
@MeDrewNotYou:
IMHO almost certainly. There’d be pressure to balance budgets, especially without the stimulus’ aid to states, and the Greedy Public Employees would be the face of the crisis — even more so than they have been.
Jay B.
“Democratic intransigence” would be on precisely nobody’s radar, Ross.
No kidding. Hell, the only legislation Democrats torpedo or subvert is better Democratic legislation. Since the vast majority of them are craven, lickspittle whores they would have lapped up all the “Real” agenda the drooling McCain would have puked up. On the truly egregious things, they would have “kept their powder dry” for the right moment at some vanishing point in the future. We lived it Ross. We know how the story goes and how it ends. Wars, death, broken economy and an entirely complicit “opposition” party.
Redshift
Now President McCain has told us that regulations have meant the loss of “billions and billions of jobs.” I shudder to think what that tells us about how competently he’d respond to an economic meltdown if he’d been elected.
MeDrewNotYou
@A Mom Anon: From Steve Benen’s analysis, if you need an abortion to save your life, but the hospital refuses to perform the procedure, tough shit. They won’t have to give you any options or transfer you to another facility. Talk about “celebrating a culture of life.”
DFH no.6
@Mike Goetz:
OT, but damn, dude, that’s fucking WIN++ (or whatever the kids are saying these days)!
There are about a dozen teabagger co-workers who are getting that in an email from me immediately (gonna flesh it out a bit re:Cain and the 9-9-9 thing for the slower ones).
The couple other subversive scum here (we are quite the minority) will surely enjoy it, too.
Thanks, man!
Davis X. Machina
@MeDrewNotYou: You’re probably right about Tunisia, and Egypt, but rest assured that if McCain, or the Backwoods Boudicca, had put boots on the ground there, however, it would still have been about the oil.
ornery
oh sully said something. thank you for the very important information
Ash Can
I think Mr. Douthat has missed his calling. Somewhere in this great land of ours, a Burger King is missing an order-taker.
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: You can’t have bodaciousness without Boadicea. Um, something like that.
Bill E Pilgrim
@schrodinger’s cat: Chunky Reese Witherspoon with a goatee, in the holoverse version.
ET
surrender to Democratic priorities…hahahahahahahaha
MBunge
@pragmatism: “The below NY mag piece discussing Ezra Klein’s post postulates that johnny mac would have gone all keynesian on our asses and the teatards would have cheered because the idea came from the right side”
Such bullshit would appear to be an offshoot of the assumption that Barack Obama hasn’t done anything that any other Democratic President wouldn’t have done.
A majority of House Republicans voted against TARP in 2008 when George W. Bush was still President and asking them to support it. The idea that McCain and, presumably, a GOP controlled Congress would have supported massive stimulus is crazy.
Mike
Zach
Iran and Russia. We’re all Georgians now and all that.
pragmatism
@MBunge: i agree. nymag points to doug holtz-eakin promoting mortgage cramdown or refinancing as evidence. that’s thin at best.
lefthanded spiral
@MBunge: You will note that the unemployment rate in september 2008 was substantially lower than in later months.
I am confident that after employment collapsed, even a GOP house would vote for some stimulus. If GM and Chrysler were also allowed to collapse, the crater in the midwest would be visible from space. They would vote for stimulus. Just with a different name — Liberty dollars!
MeDrewNotYou
@Davis X. Machina: Drill baby drill! (In the Sahara…)
@FlipYrWhig: I giggled. I think you’re right about attacks on labor, and it might’ve been more blatant, since we presumably didn’t have a stong Dem showing to energize folks.
gVOR08
But, but, you don’t take into account Douhat’s, indeed all conservatives’, ability to channel what liberals think and would do. At least in their own minds.
MeDrewNotYou
@Zach: The Georgia/Russia issue was what really scared me about McCain foreign policy. His incredible ignorance and desire to revisit the Cold War and make it hot struck was the worst to me.
hells littlest angel
It doesn’t take a magic window into Earth-D to see that if McCain had won, the stress of the job would have killed him after a couple of months, and under a president Palin we’d be at war with all the “corrupt bastards” who ever made fun of her.
Cain
@Davis X. Machina:
It is an art sir, I salute you.
That said, you’re insulting Boudicca with any comparison to our frontier lice hunter.
g
the thing is, almost everything Obama’s done – or tried to do – economically is middle-of-the-road maintstream economics 101. It’s virtually identical to mainstream Republican policies of the past. So if McCain had gotten elected, his advisors would have been the sme pro-bank, pro wall street, and he would have done EXACTLY the same thing.
The difference? The Republicans wouldn’t have called it “socialism” except in the deepest darkest cellars of prime wingnuttery.
If Hilary had been elected, she’d probably have done the same thing, and they would have cried to the skies that she was a lesbian commie.
Davis X. Machina
@Cain: T’aint’ mine, though — thank the stalwarts at Rumproast.com
The Other Chuck
Just another god damned contrived PUMA wank-fantasy to imagine Hillary on the ticket and not Obama. Apparently Steve Jobs is not the only one who could generate such a strong Reality Distortion Field.
bonkers
Would McInsane have pushed through a Stimulus? Would Mr. Cindy have done an auto-bailout? Healthcare? And on and on…?
Of course not, so Douchehat’s entire premise is completely, utterly wrong (feature, not benefit).
So it would make complete sense to call it the Bush/McCain Depression (it would be 10 times worse by now), and it make no sense…zero…to try to paint this as the Bush/Obama recession, which Repubs are doing now and the MegaMedia happily repeats ad nauseum.
D’oh! I feel into the trap…what a waste of time….so how ’bout them President Obama fundraising numbers?!? Shattering his own record for number of donors…double now where they were at at this point in the last campaign…Fired up!
taylormattd
I know John has been on some rampage about too many tags, but really, there should be a “Warming Up The Holodeck” tag.
MikeJ
@taylormattd: Tags are fine, too many categories is the problem. Of course the only time any tags have ever been used is on one post where Cole complained that people should use tags instead of categories, then even he never used them again.
Sloegin
Obama would probably look AWESOME with a Spock-style goatee. Biden, not so much.
jl
For some reason I got stupid(er than usual) and risked my Kthug acdess later this month to read Douthat column.
My best guess is… uh… maybe it was a joke? A little early for April fools pranks, though.
gelfling545
@schrodinger’s cat: I think that too. McCain would never have survived the stress of the job. Probably we’d all be dead now, too; or wish we were.
Arclite
The fact Ross Douchebag would claim something as ridiculous as that shows a complete lack of understanding of both political reality and history. Such a column should cost him his gig at the NYTimes. May as well put a chimpanzee in place of him. Random key presses would be an improvement.
Arclite
@John Cole:
Yup. Blackity blackity black black black.
kindness
Reading these comments I see we are expecting way too much from Ross. In my mind he’s a slightly more capable & a hair more intelligent Doughboy Pantload. But not by much.
Amir Khalid
@MBunge:
I seem to remember that McCain handled the breaking financial crisis very badly in 2008, compared to Obama, and this decided the matter for many people. He was either panicking or flailing helplessly, while Obama showed a much calmer head in a crisis situation.
Colin Powell, in explaining his endorsement of Obama, described it as a final exam for the candidates. He didn’t say it outright, but seemed to be implying that Obama passed and McCain flunked.
Southern Beale
I am now convinced that Herman Cain is not really running for president. Here’s the proof.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The Tea Party wouldn’t exist in a hypothetical McCain presidency. The shouts of Sozulizm! would have never materialized.
We’d still be surging in Iraq and Afghanistan if McCain were in the Oval Office. Also, the Democrats would have never been able to get anything done in hypothetical 2009-10 because Joe Lieberman and the Blue Dogs would have even more incentive and cover voting with Republicans to squash any left-leaning legislation.
And if you think things suck now? In McCain land we’d be in deep shit. Remember, Palin would be Veep.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Talking about holodeck issues: Just think of how different the country would have been if Jane or any number of other bloggers had been president.
MBunge
@lefthanded spiral: “I am confident that after employment collapsed, even a GOP house would vote for some stimulus.”
“Some” stimulus several months later would have been as much good as tits on a bull. The question is “Would President McCain and, presumably, a GOP controlled or closely divided Congress have approved as big a stimulus as we got with Obama in a similar time frame?” All the evidence answers “Aw, hell no!”
Mike
amk
If mccain were prezinent, bin laden would have been alive.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Amir Khalid: McCain would have suspended the Presidency to deal with it, Palin, as someone else alluded to already, would have resigned, we’d be left with Boehner as President, and it would all end in tears.
Amir Khalid
@Arclite:
Chunky Bobo, for all his faults (and they are many, no argument there), is still not as fucking stupid or incompetent as Bill Kristol, whose error-filled colimns had to be regularly corrected. Kristol’s gig was up after a year, and not renewed. Da Chunk is a more talented writer of prose, less prone to obvious factual error, and somewhat better able to conceal dishonest argument.
pragmatism
@Bill E Pilgrim: orange tears that taste like salty gin.
schrodinger's cat
Zandar@top
I think you mean alternate Universe not Holodeck. Alternate Universe: where normal characters are evil and evil ones are good. Holodeck: 3D program.
Villago Delenda Est
There are basically two ways to deal with prime asshats like Douchehat:
1. Fully charged phaser bank.
2. Bat’leth in the gut.
Villago Delenda Est
@John Cole:
Absolutely right. The teabaggers did not exist before McClown’s concession speech on 4 November 2008. If the concession speech came from Obama, there would be no teabaggers…and the deficit could have been twice as high, with not a peep from them.
ChrisNYC
Here’s what we lost out on:
On Fox News today, John McCain called for the elimination of “thousands” of new regulations he claimed are costing us “billions and billions of jobs.”
El Cid
Are we sure he wasn’t just trying to impress people with a reference to John Tyler?
Bill E Pilgrim
@pragmatism: Exactly the ones I meant. Though I am definitely not going to ask how you know what they taste like.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): What, you think John Cole as President would have been better than them? Probably would have burned the place down by now, finishing what the British started. “Last night Rosie got out of her cage in the Lincoln bedroom and by the time I finished chasing her we had broken all of the china in the china room…”
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: The Vulcan nerve pinch would work as well.
pragmatism
@Bill E Pilgrim: i have some drunk melancholy oompa loompas in the basement. their tears sustain my existence.
les
@NonyNony:
You imply that Ross gives a fuck about either truth or reality; I don’t buy it.
Villago Delenda Est
@ChrisNYC:
You know, I hear this general outcry about “regulations” being in the way, but no one can specify what regulations are in the way. You’re just supposed to accept the hand wave without any muss or fuss.
I’ve got news for McDipshit: he’s no Jedi.
jimbo123
Dateline 2011: President McCain’s failing health almost certainly precludes his seeking a second term. Insiders are looking to Vice-President Palin to deal with double digit unemployment and a mounting deficit with the same fresh resolve that her signature project, the “Bristol Purity League”, achieved in the domain of social policy.
In other news, the three National Guard units currently duking it out with fanatical basanji guerillas in the irradiated rubble of Tehran will be re-upped at the end of the month. No one’s coming home for Christmas…
gogol's wife
@JCT:
My feelings exactly. I almost can’t believe I’m just flipping through without reading a word of it, with the occasional exception of Krugman and Collins. I used to always read Safire.
harlana
@John Cole:
harlana
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: “hell how about, mccain screws the pooch, everything turns to shit, palin quits, and eric cantor is president after mccain dies on the toilet.”
i didn’t know it was possible to laugh and throw up at the same time
Death Panel Truck
@Mark S.:
And dark skin. The “Tea Party movement,” to the extent there has ever been one, is all about racism. These same people say they support Cain, but they’d never vote for him. Fox and Fiends should have pressed Bocephus whether or not he’d actually have voted for Cain. In his drugged-out state, he might have said, “Ah, hell nah! He’s a n****r!”
kth
The same people who told him to pick Palin would have told him he couldn’t bail out the banks, or the auto companies, with (IMO) disastrous consequences.