Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Let there be snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I really should read my own blog.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

It’s the corruption, stupid.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2012 / Sunday Morning Open Thread

Sunday Morning Open Thread

by | 84 Comments

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(Jeff Danziger’s website)
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There are many excellent contemporary political cartoonists (and goddess knows we give them plenty of material), but I remain convinced that Jeff Danziger is the very best of the very best.
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But if you’re looking for the polar opposite, Jezebel has a gallery of the worst political t-shirts of 2012 (so far).
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Anybody got happier plans for the day than watching the Republicans further embarrass themselves?

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    Mustang Bobby

    I am going with a bunch of friends from the South Florida British car club down to Flamingo, on the very tip of the Florida peninsula, for the day. We will be driving classic British sports cars like MG’s and Triumphs; I will be riding with a friend in his 1967 Austin-Healy 3000. (I thought about taking my 1988 Pontiac wagon since it was built in Canada and is therefore a Commonwealth product, but decided not to.) We will have great weather and out of range of cell phone service so we don’t have to think about anything other than swatting the occasional mosquito and hoping that the Lucas electrical systems don’t crash. We will be back in time to watch football.

  5. 5.

    Phylllis

    Grocery run, then Settling in with The Last Hero: The Life of Henry Aaron. Only a month until pitchers and catchers report and life will have meaning again.

  6. 6.

    Cermet

    Oh, please. Foolsball, of course! Not thrilled but for me, I have to drive my daughter (she’s just fifteen so she can’t drive herself) for her flying lession at an airport; of course, the airport is rather far away … .

  7. 7.

    zoot

    gingrich is still around for one reason: he is a racist, arrogant, prick. And deys nothing republicans loves more than racist-arrogant-prick action.

  10. 10.

    Joseph Nobles

    @JPL: Don’t be so sure. Indiana was as thick with the Klan in the 1920’s as any state in the Union. Plenty of racists out there in the world.

    But no, the worst he can do is play Ted Kennedy to Romney’s Jimmy Carter, leaving Santorum the chance to overwhelm the brokered convention.

  12. 12.

    jayboat

    @Mustang Bobby:
    Sounds like a great day. The weather here lately has been perfect for top-down driving. Is this club out of Ft Myers/Cape Coral? I stumbled on a show at Tarpon Point a couple years ago. Brought back good memories. I drove a 74 MGB (early model) for 16 years. Miss that car.

    Amazing cartoon, Danziger scores another bullseye.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m making pulled pork and cole slaw for about a dozen people who are expected this afternoon. We’re having lovely weather — highs in the mid-70s. I don’t like any of the remaining teams, but I’ll watch the playoffs anyway.

  14. 14.

    MikeTheZ

    The entire concept that the most disgraced ex-House Speaker can legitimately win the White House right now says more about the utter failure our democracy has become than anything I could ever come up with.

  15. 15.

    gene108

    Republicans further embarrass themselves

    To be embarrassed one must possess a conscience that would allow one to have a sense of shame.

    I do not see the Republicans possessing a conscience.

    It’s all about winning. Period.

    @MikeTheZ:

    Says more about the modern Republican party than anything else.

    *******************

    I am going to force my fat self to exercise in a few minutes. Go to work. Got behind on some things this week. Do groceries. Finish homework. Watch what’s left of the play-offs.

  17. 17.

    Cat Lady

    The ad banner right above Noot’s hideous visage is for incontinence and prolapsed colon care, because nothing says squalling gaping asshole baby like Noot. Google ads – the new magic 8 ball.

  18. 18.

    Lojasmo

    Going to run (slog through) a snow-covered mountain bike trail, eat some lunch, maybe pick up a movie from Redbox, and settle in for an evening of b-j

  19. 19.

    scav

    In a very passive manner, waiting for my Sherlock Series 2 CD to arrive. (it shipped!) The rest is likely dull dull dull, clean clean clean.

  20. 20.

    WereBear

    Feeling well enough to move to the couch. Yay! Probably Hulu some stuff to watch, read, and we haven’t run out of food yet. So there’s that.

  21. 21.

    Southern Beale

    Sorry but none of those political T-shirts are as bas as the de rigeur political accessory of 2004 Republicans: the purple-heart Band-Aid.

    Talk about fucking offensive. Can you imagine? That is how low the GOP has sunk. Not even the gutter. Not the sewer. But … the pits of hell. So anyone who is surprised that the “moral values” crowd in South Carolina picked a serial adulterer who was censured by his own party 15 years ago? Yeah, just remember that.

  22. 22.

    gelfling545

    I am going to investigate the possibilities of tv without cable. I watch about 2 or 3 hours a month & for this I pay $70. Not smart.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    @Joseph Nobles: The primary schedule seems to benefit Romney. Newt might win FL but Josh at TPM said that is not going to be easy because of early voting. Until Super Tuesday Newt doesn’t have any easy states.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @hildebrand: RE: homemade pizzas — we make them just about every Saturday, and we came up with an innovation that made our pizzas semi-famous on a local level. This only works if you LOVE garlic.

    Take a whole head of garlic, cut the top off, place it cut-side up on a piece of tinfoil, drizzle it with olive oil, loosely close the foil around it and then roast it at 350 degrees F for about an hour. (A large head of garlic is generally enough for two pizzas.)

    After we roll out the dough, we lightly coat it with olive oil and then squeeze the now-squishy roasted garlic onto the crust and spread it more or less evenly. Then top the pizza with sauce, cheese, what-have-you and bake as usual.

    The result is not overwhelmingly garlicky, but it infuses the whole pie with that subtle roasted garlic taste. I’m sure we’re not the first people to have thought of this, but it’s damn good.

  27. 27.

    burnspbesq

    ManU – Arsenal, for openers. Later, Duke – Maryland women’s basketball (die, Turtle scum!). Finally, the Glorious Victory of East Rutherford Over the Infidel Hordes.

  28. 28.

    gelfling545

    @Mark S.: The problem here is my tv is an older model (circa 2000) & my current “computer” is a net book, neither of which is ideal for this process. I’m trying to work out the best procedure with the least amount spent on equipment.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mark S.: We recently got Netflix streamed through our kiddo’s Xbox 360, and it seemed like a good deal — $7 per month. But now the Xbox feckers are trying to shake us down for additional dough after an initial “Gold” membership trial period. WTF? I need to investigate alternatives…

  30. 30.

    Donut

    Even though my beloved Packers lost their shit last week and I can just now think about it without feeling bummed, I will me watching the footballs today.

    Gonna try to catch David Gregory servicing Newt on Meet the Press, also, too, but more than likely the two little
    Donut People will be occupying me when that is on. They will both be waking up any minute now.

  31. 31.

    burnspbesq

    @gelfling545:

    The age of your TV may turn out to be the biggest constraint. I’m guessing it doesn’t have any HDMI inputs, which rules out using an AppleTV or similar box as your gateway.

    You can get a lot of teevee for $500 these days.

  32. 32.

    jeffreyw

    Grocery shopping. Going to make a gumbo today. Trying to discover why my streaming audio recorder will not record to a USB thumb drive. Well, sorta not record, it seems to make a hash out of the MP3 file by recording only the bits that have odd numbers in them or something. ID3 tagger refuses to work, throws up its hands and sulks, gorges on ice cream.

  33. 33.

    WereBear

    @Mino: I was just thinking how much we have devolved since then. No way Newt would have a glove landed on him today for the same actions.

    Which is why anything which accelerates the decay of the Republican Party is a good thing. As appalling as the candidates, and the voters, are, I don’t want them to improve. I don’t want them to wise up. I don’t want them to come to their senses.

    The infection has to peak and be purged. Dropping back into business as usual means we keep running fevers and throwing up and never getting the immune system activated.

  34. 34.

    burnspbesq

    @jeffreyw:

    ” Trying to discover why my streaming audio recorder will not record to a USB thumb drive.”

    What recorder are you using?

  35. 35.

    Mark S.

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yeah, when I first got my xbox that gold membership was worthless, but now you need it if you want to use any of their video services.

    Pulled pork, you say? What time should I be over?

  38. 38.

    Donut

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m gonna try this next time I make pies. I have topped with roasted garlic, but never infused it with crust like that. I would eat that right now, for breakfast.

  39. 39.

    burnspbesq

    @WereBear:

    Well, OK, I guess. But do you not worry about what might spring up to replace the Republican Party if it were to go away? The 57 million people who always vote for the Republican candidate for president aren’t going to walk en masse through a portal to an alternate universe and never come back.

  40. 40.

    hildebrand

    @Betty Cracker: We loved roasted garlic, but I had not thought of spreading it on the pizzas prior to the sauce, great idea.

    I love the entire process – and the family loves the fact that they can get exactly what they want (no matter how seemingly strange) each week.

  41. 41.

    hildebrand

    Gah – no edit button. Not ‘loved’, but love. No past tense when it comes to roasted garlic.

  42. 42.

    burnspbesq

    @jeffreyw:

    Can’t help you with that, sorry. I’m a Mac guy. I use Mac the Ripper and Cinemaatize to extract audio from DVDs , and Audacity to rip vinyl to hi-res AIFF files.

  43. 43.

    burnspbesq

    Have you tried recording to your computer’s internal storage and then copying to the USB drive?

  44. 44.

    jeffreyw

    @burnspbesq: Sure, that works fine, I just wanted to skip a step. It is entirely possible the USB stick I’m working with is buggered. 32 gig Amazon Basic device that is occasionally not recognized when I plug it in somewhere. I may try another stick later on today. If I’m not too lazy.
    side note: your comment is numbered 3,000,002

  46. 46.

    Elizabelle

    That is an excellent cartoon.

    Number one nephew is 20 years old today. Happy Birthday Travis!

    WaPost on an Occupy Protestor. Columnist finds an articulate, focused activist; sounds surprised because we all know OWS is all over the map.

    Protestor Robert Eister wants to reduce corporate influence in politics. And “Eister, 25, is no spoiled, upper-middle-class slacker on a lark.” Surprise, surprise.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/occupy-protester-helps-answer-key-question-of-what-do-they-want/2012/01/20/gIQAQB1pGQ_story.html

  47. 47.

    WereBear

    @burnspbesq: But do you not worry about what might spring up to replace the Republican Party if it were to go away?

    We’re a two party system, nothing goes away.

    But they have to put the crazy back in the attic. They are stalling because it would reveal just how much of the Party is now also crazy. The short term thinking has boxed them in because they wouldn’t take voluntary losses to re-brand themselves; and now they’ve started losing anyway.

  49. 49.

    Chris

    @WereBear:

    We’re a two party system, nothing goes away.

    So true. So, sadly, true.

    @WereBear:

    But they have to put the crazy back in the attic.

    That’ll be difficult. The sanest era in recent political history (fifties/sixties “liberal consensus” years) was still overrun with far right loons of the McCarthyist/John Bircher variety, Dixiecrats and other assorted racists, and of course Richard Nixon. They might have been in the attic, but damn if their noise didn’t shake the house’s foundations.

    I’m not even sure what a sane United States political scene would look like.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    I found this site a few weeks ago, and probably spend more time on it than I really should. I mean, shoelaces aren’t all that interesting, right?

  52. 52.

    beltane

    If Gingrich gets the nomination part of me would actually like to see Hillary get the VP slot. Vengeance is sweet and all that.

  54. 54.

    burnspbesq

    @Chris:

    “I’m not even sure what a sane United States political scene would look like.”

    No such thing. This is as good as it gets.

    Has anyone else been reading Kim Lane Scheppele’s guest posts at Krugman’s blog about what’s been happening in Hungary and saying to themselves, ” that’s exactly what the Republicans will do if they get the Whit House and both houses of Congress.”

  55. 55.

    Michael

    For the roasted garlic lovers, you can try this:

    Preheat over to 300

    Cut 1-3 heads of garlic horizontally, and place cut-side down. Pour olive oil over them, 1 cup for every head of garlic. Add some sprigs of thyme and black peppercorn.

    Stick in the over for 45 min – hour

    Remove from the over when the garlic is properly soft and roasted. Pull it out of the oil and set aside. Strain oil into a bowl, cool, and put in an air-tight container or your favorite oil cruet (though it won’t keep as long that way).
    Once the garlic has cooled, you can fork mash it if you’d like. Also seal in an air-tight container.

    Both oil and garlic should keep at least a month.

  58. 58.

    dmsilev

    Just in: Romney caves, will release last year’s tax return and estimates for this year by mid-week.

  59. 59.

    kdaug

    @kdaug:

    Query: Does an implosion remove sound?

    Sadly, no.

    Checking the morning lineup, it appears to be all Romney post-mort, all the time. Oh, well.

    When does the Walking Dead return?

  63. 63.

    WereBear

    @Chris: I’m not even sure what a sane United States political scene would look like.

    It would leave out about two thirds of the electorate, for one thing :)

    I called it in 2008: it’s a Branding Crisis for the Republicans.

    For decades, they were the sensible Party, the cool heads with steely eyes who accumulated munnies and their wives did Good Works. Boring, sure, and proud of it. They were the solid foundation of the country! They understood dinner forks and foreign policy. They went to schools with names. They were what the movers and shakers of small town life patterned themselves after, and what ordinary folk aspired to. Respectable and Responsible.

    That’s what people thought they were electing with W. That powerful Brand is why “Republican” still has such a pull for people who are doing well or desperately want to. Republicans took an aging frat boy, trumpeted that he’d Come Home to Jesus, and it was The Prodigal Son runs for President. They cloaked him with their Brand.

    But what W did was put cyanide in the Tylenol. But they wouldn’t acknowledge their Brand had been ruined. They wouldn’t admit they were going to put tamper proof packaging into production, and re-tool. No! They pretended nothing had changed, when everything had.

    In 2008 they were desperate to run someone who appealed to the mainstream, which is why it had to be McCain. Because he was a maverick. Because he’d always run counter to them. If you didn’t like Republicans, you still liked McCain. That’s why they insisted the Base take him. That’s why the Base demanded someone like Palin. And it all fell apart.

    Because now their Brand has rebranded itself; as things do when we are not proactive. Because the Republicans pretended nothing was wrong, their Brand now stands for Looney Bigots Who Make Fools of Themselves Given Half a Chance.

  64. 64.

    Hal

    @dmsilev:

    Just in: Romney caves, will release last year’s tax return and estimates for this year by mid-week.

    I just saw this. The NY Times story suggested his not releasing his tax records helped with his defeat. I think it had more to do with his 15% tax rate and offshore tax shelters. I wonder if all of that will be in these records?

  71. 71.

    kindness

    Who is rooting for who today?

    Me – Niners of course. I guess the Patriots too but don’t really care about who wins the AFC, Either one looks to beat up either of the NFC teams this year.

  72. 72.

    handsmile

    On this particular lord’s day, I will:

    Spend two hours yelling at the television as Arsenal (in all likelihood) embarrass themselves in their match with Manchester United;

    Then, recover my scattered wits at the Guggenheim Museum viewing its retrospective of Maurizio Cattelan (all his sculptural works on display are suspended from the ceiling of the museum’s atrium);

    http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/maurizio-cattelan-all

    Then, return here to apply my wits (such that they are) to the next meeting of the illustrious Balloon Juice Reading Society.

    All in all, a most rewarding way to spend any day.

  73. 73.

    Joel

    @kindness: So says Vegas. After last weekend, the Superbowl spread flipped from ~NFC +140 to ~AFC +140. With the year going the way it has, who knows.

  74. 74.

    gbear

    @MikeTheZ:

    The entire concept that the most disgraced ex-House Speaker can legitimately win the White House right now says more about the utter failure our democracy the republican party has become than anything I could ever come up with.

    Both sides don’t do it.

  76. 76.

    Not Sure

    @beltane: Yes, because Obama needs an heir apparent. Do you see Joe Biden running for President again? I don’t. He’ll be a bit long in the tooth.

    Even better, draft Al Franken.

  79. 79.

    Judas Escargot

    @jeffreyw:

    Your USB drive is probably too slow to keep up.

    The spendier drives are faster (I use HP and Sandisk), but even then, depending on how your OS handles buffering, your particular USB controller/driver setup, etc, you might not be able to stream directly to it. I’ve had enough trouble streaming to cheap USB hard drives in the past that I’ve never even tried a stick. (You can pry my old iMac and its Firewire ports from my cold, dead hands).

    Like someone else said, you might have to stream to disc and copy over the finished product. Just remember… No PIRACY! PIRACY is bad at any speed!

  80. 80.

    Emdee

    @Southern Beale:

    So anyone who is surprised that the “moral values” crowd in South Carolina picked a serial adulterer who was censured by his own party 15 years ago? Yeah, just remember that.

    Also remember that the 2009 version of that party stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind a South Carolina congressman who shouted “You lie!” at the President of the United States, during a speech to a joint session of Congress, at a point when the president was telling the absolute truth.

    There’s no way they’d censure Newt today. They’d burn the country down first.

  83. 83.

    Mustang Bobby

    @jayboat: The club is based in Miami. We just got back in time for the Ravens/Pats kickoff. We had a great time, and best of all, no break-downs.

    I don’t belong to this particular club but I hang out with them. There’s going to be a big All-British show in Boca Raton in mid-February, so if you’re in the area, stop by. I’m going. Look me up.

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