Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“woke” is the new caravan.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Let there be snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I was promised a recession.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

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

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2012 / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: “Rickrolled”

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: “Rickrolled”

by | 67 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Dave Weigel at Slate discusses “three lessons from Iowa“:

Lesson One: The Tea Party isn’t a small-government-first movement…. Sixty-four percent of caucus-goers called themselves “Tea Party supporters,” and 30 percent of them backed Rick Santorum — a social conservative who proudly defended his earmarks. Rick Perry, who campaigned desparately on the issues Tea Partiers say they care about — no earmarks! Term limits! Part time Congress! — got 14 percent of this vote. Michele Bachmann got 9 percent of it.
__
Lesson Two: Money is speech, which means people can ignore it. Michael Li was the first to calculate how much the candidates spent for every vote. Santorum spent $1.65 per vote. Rick Perry spent $817…
__
Lesson Three: Republicans aren’t so excited about 2012…

Ya think? More at the link; also, those precious votes cost Romney $113.07 each, which is pretty spendy for a race in which Willard’s handlers claimed he wasn’t really competing. I gotta say, seems to me, it’s all good news for President Obama!

So, what other encouraging news is on the agenda today?

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T right from the get-go here, but with your love of cartoons and cartoonists, AL, I’m sure you’ll join me in a heartfelt RIP Ronald Searle. His name may not be as well known here as in the UK, but I think quite a few would recognize his wonderful and idiosyncratic drawings. I fell in love with his work when I was quite a little girl and have adored him for many decades since. He was 91; for someone of his gifts, that’s still too young.

    As for Iowa, I can only imagine with what glee Searle would have skewered the lot of them with pen and ink.

  2. 2.

    rlrr

    Any bets on when Shit for Brains will post a comment on how this is the beginning of the unstoppable Romney juggernaut?

  3. 3.

    PeakVT

    So, what other encouraging news is on the agenda today?

    The Iowa caucuses will start to fade from my awareness for three years or so. I may or may not help that process with the appropriate beverage later in the day.

  4. 4.

    Lupin

    Even his dogs hate Glenn Greenwald:

    Writing — or, more accurately, typing — is difficult for me today as a result of a disagreement two of my dogs had with each other earlier this morning, one they shamefully attempted to resolve through the use of their teeth (rather than through diplomacy, as they’ve been taught). When, being the natural peacemaker that I am, I attempted to separate them, one of the combatants mistook my hand for the face of the dog at whom she was angry, and sunk her quite large teeth into that hand, rendering it more or less useless for the day. We have many dogs and they virtually never fight, so this was a very unusual canine drama.

    Dogs are keen judges of character. You better watch out, Cole. You’re next.

  5. 5.

    Citizen Alan

    It was the damnedest thing — I’ve got Veritas in the pie filter, but I could swear that even his pie quotes tonight sounded sad, depressed and defensive. Which was just hilarious to me.

  6. 6.

    NobodySpecial

    You know, winning a caucus by 8 votes is funny all in and of itself. It smacks of ‘We’re losing, get some people off the street in here and promise ’em free beer!’

  9. 9.

    Joseph Nobles

    @Lupin: Oh, shit, I do not wish a dog bite on the hand on even Glenn Greenwald. That happened to me once, and the hand was never the same. He better have gone to the clinic. Staph infections THAT FAST.

  10. 10.

    Phylllis

    I understand the hoopla (election year! horse race! woo hoo!) but just saw the actual numbers. About 110,000 total participated in the Republican caucus, in a state with 608,000 registered Republicans (2010 data from Des Moines Register-most recent I could find in 8 seconds of googling).

  11. 11.

    Kirbster

    Excellent ROI (in a financial sense) for Santorum, but I doubt he can duplicate it anywhere else. The votes might not look so cheap if one factors in the time he spent campaigning in-state.

    In a Citizens United world, Iowans have sensed that their caucuses are about to become irrelevant despite all the attention from pundits and the media. They’re not going to vote strategically for an electable candidate; they’re going to say, “f*ck it,” and vote emotionally because it doesn’t really matter. “Take that, GOP establishment! You’re not the boss of me!” The SuperPAC money is payment for having to endure all the toxic advertising, and benefits the state economy regardless of who won or lost.

  12. 12.

    debbie

    Best thing about Santorum’s showing is that Mitt will not be able to move toward the center, now during the primaries or later when the general campaign begins.

  13. 13.

    Xenos

    Where does the catchphrase ‘ya think?’ come from? I started hearing it a few years ago but could never figure it out.

  14. 14.

    S. cerevisiae

    Just for fun (?) I’m watching the Today show for the network spin and they keep talking about the Santorum surge. Do you think the writers are doing that deliberately?

  17. 17.

    Mino

    Oof. A bad start today. The dogs next door cornered a yellow tom against the fence. It didn’t appear to be sick {before the dogs got it}. Rabies is a real possiblility. Will be sending the body off to Animal Control.

  18. 18.

    Chris

    I agree with Anne Laurie’s “YA THINK?” reaction. Matt Taibbi had these guys pegged months and months ago. So did anyone who had even the slightest acquaintance with the conservative base of the last thirty/forty years.

    The Tea Party isn’t a small-government-first movement

    No, as Taibbi said, “the Tea Party [Movement] is sincerely against government spending, with the exception of the money spent on them.” He also said “they’re full of shit. All of them” which still seems like the most concise and accurate depiction of them.

  20. 20.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I start my morning with 10 minutes of Morning Joe. Why? Don’t ask. But Joe S. told me it was a HUGE win for Romney. Whatever, shit head.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    Second, new movie — shot in Super 8 — during John Mellencamp’s 2009 tour with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Opens this week in Manhattan.

    Sounds like a Super 8 elegy for dying American small towns.

    “The decay of America is original and massive in its scale,” reflects Kurt Markus, the esteemed photographer, who, with his son, Ian, filmed the small, pungent rock ’n’ roll tour documentary, “John Mellencamp: It’s About You.”

    Stark evidence of that assessment is strewn throughout this very personal record of the 2009 summer tour of Kurt Markus’s friend, the Indiana-born rocker John Mellencamp, with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Celebrated for his pictures of Western landscapes and the vestiges of old-time cowboy culture, Kurt Markus is a kindred spirit of Mr. Mellencamp, whom he has known for two decades.

    They share a despairing vision of the decline of Main Street, U.S.A., which the film portrays as a decrepit wasteland of crumbling storefronts and empty streets.

    http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/movies/john-mellencamp-its-about-you-by-kurt-and-ian-markus-review.html?hpw

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It seems Rethuglicans are about as excited about 2012 as Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour are.

    And I don’t give a flying fuck about the natural serfs who are the teabaggers. It’s been documented for 30 fucking years that Rethugs don’t give a flying fuck about deficits, or borrowing and spending. The only actual fiscal conservatives left are Democrats.

    However, the Rethugs are VERY interested in usurpers and melanin counts.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Holy shit! John’s “Back to High School” thread is up to 1034 comments.

    So far.

  25. 25.

    Raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: As Diane Keaton said in Love and Death. “that is so jejune”! I think that was after the Village Idiot’s Convention in Minsk which reminds me of the entire affair.

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    @amk:

    So glad to see some new posts by Al Giordano, particularly on US politics. He’s a gift.

    re the High School thread: meh.

  27. 27.

    ned

    Hee hee, Santorum surges from behind.

    I think every one of us has had a little santorum in them at one point or another…

  28. 28.

    Josie

    @amk: So glad that Al is commenting again on the political scene. His analysis is invaluable; he actually commits real journalism.

    Elizabell, I honestly did not copy your comment. I guess that is great minds working together.

  29. 29.

    amk

    @Elizabelle: Indeedy. Here is his take-down of cole’s bff.

    And if you need any more proof that Paul is a lost cause, look no further than Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald, now desperately trying to sell Paul to “progressives,” and revealing his own ideological axes to grind in the process: Greenwald is a reliably wrong bellwether in the sense that any bandwagon he attempts to form goes quickly next into the dustbin of history; yes, he is that bad a prognosticator.

  30. 30.

    El Cid

    The Teabirchers support banning contraception because of the deficit, and all the spendin’, and because of the Founding Fathers. You people hate America, so you wouldn’t understand.

  32. 32.

    JPL

    According to TPM Bachmann has a news conference at ten. She canceled her plans to go to SCar. Shucks let the Mittfest begin.

  33. 33.

    amk

    White House attorneys have concluded they have the legal authority to make a recess appointment despite Republican efforts to block the move, Democrats said Tuesday, and administration officials say they reserve the option to install Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without Senate approval.

    Some expect that appointment to come as early as Wednesday, when President Barack Obama goes to Mr. Cordray’s home state of Ohio to talk about the economy.

  34. 34.

    4tehlulz

    Lesson 4: Going to the gutter will help you. I expect Romney’s (or whoever gets the nomination once Mitt chokes it away) acceptance speech will go full birther.

  37. 37.

    magurakurin

    @SiubhanDuinne: that shit is fucked up. Damn. But the last 500 posts are really just the trolls talking to each other and the odd bystander unwittingly stumbling into the wake.

    BJ trolls = people who seriously need hobbies. Fun is fun, but damn. I mainly hang out here to read some jokes and quips while waiting for the next swell to arrive on this wave starved little island I now reside on. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Internet. In fact I more or less have a serious addiction going on. But some of the trolls in this place…whoa.

    Oh. And Glenn fucking Greenwald has well and truly lost the plot. That is for sure.

  38. 38.

    Jay in Oregon

    @rlrr:

    Any bets on when Shit for Brains will post a comment on how this is the beginning of the unstoppable Romney juggernaut?

    Could you be more specific? There are a lot of people who will answer to that name here…

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    @JPL:

    According to TPM Bachmann has a news conference at ten. She canceled her plans to go to SCar. Shucks let the Mittfest begin.

    One clown down. Perry is apparently “rethinking” his campaign, so I guess we can expect an announcement soon that he’s going to suspend his campaign to spend more time with his debate gaffes.

    Unless Huntsman manages an upset in NH next week, we’ll be down to the Romneybot and 3 clowns in about a week.

  42. 42.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @magurakurin:

    I couldn’t make a lot of sense of the whole imbroglio from the beginning and it was clearly so ugly I didn’t really try, and didn’t even look at comments in most of the related threads. But I was scrolling through the list of previous posts to see whether I had missed anything of interest on Iowa and noticed the comment count and was taken aback.

  43. 43.

    Glen Tomkins

    Disintermediation

    If they’ld cut out the middlemen and just give me the $817 direct, even I would vote for these clowns. But nooo!

  44. 44.

    Elizabelle

    @JPL:

    I saw that. Not an accident.

    Kevin Drum gets it right, I think:

    I have my own theory about Rick Santorum, though, and here it is: he surged because there were no debates in the final three weeks before Iowa. Santorum is possibly the whiniest, least appealing debate candidate I’ve ever seen in my life, and I figure he lost a few thousand votes every time he went on the air. So the calendar helped him a lot. Unfortunately, there’s a debate coming up this Saturday, which should be perfectly positioned to allow the voters of New Hampshire to remind themselves that they really don’t want to see this guy on their TV for the next four years. That’s bad luck for Santorum, but them’s the breaks.

    http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/somebody-wins-iowa-bowl
    (italics by Elizabelle)

    PS: if Iowa takes Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann off the national stage for a little while, at least, we must thank them for that.

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    I was just wondering: How do the locals pronounce “Des Moines”? I’m guessing that it’s not as not as per the French “deh mwan”.

  46. 46.

    magurakurin

    @SiubhanDuinne: I actually waded through a lot of the other threads and much of the one in question. Like I said, I probably need an intervention. But I was surprised as well when you said it was now up to 1000. I assumed it would have burned itself out long before now.

    The whole thing was pretty silly. I can see slagging Greenwald now and again for laughs. But he really isn’t worth getting all that worked up about.

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @Schlemizel:

    You’re right on the dragging out. Seeing Bachmann and Perry and as many loons as possible is money in the bank for Obama.

    My bad.

    Also: are you feeling better these days? Hope so.

  52. 52.

    Schlemizel

    @Elizabelle:
    Thanks – still no taste & no moisture. Wake up 8-10 times a night with my mouth glued shut. I’m trying to remain positive.

    Years ago I read about a guy that got hit by lightning 4 times, he sort of jokes about it as in “Don’t know what God has against me.” A couple years later I read that he had been hit 6 times and some casino paid him to perform out there talking about his experiences. Later I read he had been hit 8 times, more than once while he was inside of a shelter. He was angry, bitter and resentful of God.

    While it has not been lightning every time I understand the changes this guy went through.

  53. 53.

    Schlemizel

    crap! I typed a word meaning a place of business where people can risk cash on the off chance that they will be rewarded with larger amounts of same but those chances are actually illusionary (NO, not Wall Street – the other thing) so I am in moderation! I hate WP

  56. 56.

    gnomedad

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Holy shit! John’s “Back to High School” thread is up to 1034 comments.

    xkcd meme update: Someone is WRONG on the internet Balloon Juice!

  57. 57.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Joseph Nobles: Actually pasteurella infections are the immediate onset of concern, and are specific to animal bites, especially dog/cat. Medical attention required, in any case.

    /geek pedant

  58. 58.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Schlemizel:

    Here is something worthwhile. TNC writes a beautiful piece on Ron Paul.

    That’s a fantastic piece. TNC fundamental generosity as a writer allows him to take the conversation in directions that not many people with his kind of biggish-media platform are capable of.

  60. 60.

    Schlemizel

    @pseudonymous in nc:
    TNC & his little blog are a gift. He makes up for the sins of so many, more well known, bloggers. Because of his incredibly thoughtful and well reasoned posts he is a delight to read. Because of the iron hand he takes in his comment section it is a haven of sanity, it rare that I don’t learn something or see a new way to view an issue there. There are disagreements and arguments but never a pissing contest and trolls are dealt with properly.

  61. 61.

    Schlemizel

    @chopper:
    How about Lima, Ohio or Monticello, MN? The great think about American English is we have managed to mangle words from every other language in the world.

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    @pseudonymous in nc:
    Agreed. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a far more sensible thinker, and thus a better writer, than Glenn Greenwald. He brings up what Greenwald willfully overlooks. Ron Paul talks a good game, but if he were elected could he make any of it happen? None of his appealing proposals to legalize pot and end US involvement in foreign wars could happen on just a president’s say-so. And what of the rest of a Paul presidency: would Americans like that as much as they’d like being free to smoke pot, or not having to send sons and daughters abroad to fight dubious wars?

    I should add this: a US president like Paul, whose approach to foreign policy is to tell the world “You guys are on your own, bye-bye”, is pretty much the worst thing that could happen, not just to America but to Earth as a whole.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @chopper:

    Near me, it was more like “Diss Planes,” but we were in northeast Illinois.

    In Chicago, they have a Goethe St. Pronounced “GO-thee.”

  65. 65.

    Anne Laurie

    @chopper: As ugly as the accepted mispronunciation of Dee-TROYT? Or my personal favorite, the Michigan town known as PEER-eee, which is spelled “Pierre”?

  66. 66.

    Origuy

    Sacramento had a Goethe Park, which they have renamed, pronounced GAY-tee. It was named after Charles Goethe, who was an advocate of eugenics and a white supremacist.

    Brazil, Indiana is pronounced BRAY-zil.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks