And not that purple dinosaur who has ruined so many millions of parents lives. At any rate, Barney Frank unplugged, shredding Gingrich:
Is there a funnier congressman?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
You can’t love your country only when you win.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania. Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
The willow is too close to the house.
Bark louder, little dog.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.
A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.
Republicans do not pay their debts.
Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.
Second rate reporter says what?
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
No one could have predicted…
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
KG
funny “haha” or funny “fuck an eh”?
cathyx
Barney and the Teletubbies. Ugh.
Alex
“Is there a funnier congressman?”
You made Al Franken cry. :(
Constantia
@ KG
I think in the local patois that’s “fuckin’ A” ! not to be an obnoxious grammar nerd or anything.
jnfr
He was so fantastic tonight. I mean, he always is, but with an extra helping this time. It helps that he knows Newt so well, of course.
metalgirl
@jnfr: So true! And I’m so glad the reply link is back (although I’m mostly a lurker, not so much a poster).
beergoggles
@KG: Funny as in wicked funneh. Frikkin southerners…
someguy
Barney’s awesome but he really doesn’t have a whole lot of room to accuse other members of Congress of being in bed with Fannie Mae executives.
rob!
Is there a funnier congressman?
Unintentionally, it’s Virgina Fox. Intentionally, no.
Mnemosyne
@someguy:
Given that Barney’s been blamed for the housing crash since at least 2008 thanks to his (much weaker) connections with Fannie and Freddie, I think it’s more that he’s enjoying pointing out that the same people who were vilifying him were taking Fannie and Freddie’s money.
ETA: A guy who took $3.2 million in payments from Fannie Mae has no room to talk about who should be arrested for their ties with Fannie Mae.
someguy
Barney Frank was both the regulator of Fannie Mae and the life partner of Fannie Mae’s head of innovative new product lines through the booming 90’s, and Barney pressed to get him hired. Newt’s a turd for sure, but the hypocrisy from Barney on this is a little too much for me.
Ahh, fuck it. I guess if nobody is going to call him on it, then it never happened and we’ll pretend like it never happened.
Jamie
@someguy –
Nobody calls him on it? I take it you haven’t visited a single Republican blog in 4 years? In which case, you also must not know that the only other reason for the crash was that the poor, put upon bankers were forced to make loans to shifty darkies.
BrianM
It’s all insider jokiness. Cutting other members of the country club. No relevance to us.
Marc
@someguy:
Republicans are so drearily predictable. We should just refer to the arguments by number.
Mnemosyne
@someguy:
Dude. Republicans have been “calling him on it” for at least four years now. Did you just wake up from a coma? Or did you actually buy into the whole “the only reason the housing market crashed was because Fannie and Freddie gave mortgages to Those People” idea and now you’re crushed to find out that Washington Mutual and Countrywide were more responsible for the disaster than Fannie and Freddie combined?
TheMightyTrowel
my parents just moved into his district. MightyTrowel = well content.
gocart mozart
If the Newt campaign fizzles, I recommend Barney’s dining room table as the next not-Romney.
Elizabelle
I like Benjy Sarlin’s last line.
Enthusiastically vicious. (And accurate, let’s be honest.) Go get ’em Barney Frank.
TheMightyTrowel
@Elizabelle: my cousin who works in the Warren campaign and has spent a good deal of time schmoozing with various MA politicians characterises Frank as having ‘a special brand of cranky pragmatism’.
debbie
Is it not a fact that Bush ordered Freddie and Fannie in either 2005 or 2006 to loan 50% of their funds to lower-income applicants?
harlana
shred away, Barney, shred away! he’s the only candidate i absolutely despise. the others just make me laugh.
MarkJ
That was very funny. I still can’t believe the media is treating Gingrich as a legitimate presidential contender. He’s got so many skeletons both in and out of the closet that there’s just no way. That hasn’t stopped NPR, for one, from issuing a series of uncritical fluff pieces (which haven’t mentioned any of the skeletons that have escaped the closet) on him this week.
someguy
@Mnemosyne:
Innovative products. You know what the fuck innovative mortgage products are? Zero down, interest only, 5/2 ARMs, shit like that. He’s not the only guy, the Republicans were there too. But he’s on a high horse about it now. Has nothing to do with minority loan programs, has to do with him pressuring Fannie Mae to hire his life partner, then that guy (Herb Moses) inventing a bunch of sketchy mortgage products at the heart of the housing bubble and financial crash.
I guess I’m not allowed to be liberal if I point out the corruption and hypocrisy of a Democrat.
BTW, he had a $10k/plate fundraiser in Manhattan targeting Wall Streeters three weeks ago. I suspect that Occupy folks weren’t in attendance…
agrippa
Plenty of blame to go around. Fannie Mae/ Freedie Mac did this; B O A did that, and so on. Need a score sheet to add up all the misdeeds by virtually every actor in this black comedy.
I let no one off the hook; there were very few innocent parties; that is what a bubble is about.
I do not think that very many public figures would ever say that there very few innocent parties; each political actor has their pet to protect; each has their favorite villain to attack.
agrippa
@harlana:
Yes.
Gingrich is a pompous, histrionic and narcissistic drama king.
Throw him a fish.
Marc
@someguy:
The first thing out of your mouth when Frank attacks Gingrich is an attack on Frank. I smell a Republican pretending to be a liberal. It’s just such a *coincidence* that you seem to be able to only attack Democrats here….