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

The revolution will be supervised.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

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

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

People are complicated. Love is not.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

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You are here: Home / Sometimes I wish a rain would come and wash away all the scum of the city

Sometimes I wish a rain would come and wash away all the scum of the city

by DougJ|  April 6, 20127:44 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: We Are All Mayans Now

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It wouldn’t be hard to write an artificial intelligence type program that produced this kind of idiocy:

This week, President Obama called him a social Darwinist. The conservative Club for Growth criticized him for wimping out on Medicare and military spending, and Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican, blasted him for not cutting tax rates more drastically.

I figure Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is head of the House Budget Committee, must be doing something right.

It’s not that “if both sides are complaining you must be doing something right” is incredibly fucking stupid the first time someone says it — though it is — it’s that these morons think it’s clever to repeat it a thousand times a day.

Can you imagine thinking such a thing? I simply cannot.

It’s hard for me to have much optimism about a future in which the “paper of record” prints this kind of pap.

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Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    General Stuck

    April 6, 2012 at 7:52 pm

    I figure Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is head of the House Budget Committee, must be doing something right.

    That’s out of state, man.

    It’s going to be an ‘up is down’ kind of election, with all the pretty flow of colors from dropping a hit of strychnine laced Purple Micro-dot acid.

  2. 2.

    Egg Berry

    April 6, 2012 at 7:52 pm

    I bet David Brooks is sooo jealous he didn’t come up with that.

  3. 3.

    Cacti

    April 6, 2012 at 7:52 pm

    What makes Paul Ryan such a revolting hypocrite is that he used his father’s Social Security survivor’s benefits to pay his way through school.

    Having climbed up the ladder to a better life, in good Randian fashion, zombie-eyes wants to pull it up behind him.

  4. 4.

    middlewest

    April 6, 2012 at 7:54 pm

    Stalin was criticized by both Hitler and FDR. He must have been doing something right!

  5. 5.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 6, 2012 at 7:55 pm

    Mr. Stewart, your reservations for an early tumbrel are confirmed!

  6. 6.

    Baud

    April 6, 2012 at 7:56 pm

    @middlewest: You stole my line. [Shakes fist vigorously.]

  7. 7.

    David Koch

    April 6, 2012 at 7:56 pm

    You talkn to me?

    You talkn to me?

    I don’t see anyone else around here,

    you talkn to me?

  8. 8.

    JR

    April 6, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    I threw a kitten off a cliff. Everyone condemned it, so it must have been right!

  9. 9.

    Hill Dweller

    April 6, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    The AP told me Obama’s embrace of the insurance manadate was moving to the left. Both sides!

  10. 10.

    WereBear

    April 6, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    Gee, I remember the days when pissing people off was a sign of “doin’ it rong.”

    I’m so damn quaint.

  11. 11.

    MattF

    April 6, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    Just to underline the problem here– Stewart’s argument normalizes the arguments of right-wing crackpots. And yes, indeed, Club for Growth-ers and Ron Paul are right-wing crackpots. And when Obama notes this and points out the background of their crackpot ideologies, it’s brutal partisanship, needless to say.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    April 6, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    By the way, the person who’s doing something right in that story is President Obama.

  13. 13.

    bogdan

    April 6, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    “It’s hard for me to have much optimism…”

    Which is the whole point of these posts of yours DougJ gloom porn addict. Maybe there is an evening group in your town on tues, and thurs for others with your problem

    Put this in your “shitty jobs report” and smoke it btw.
    http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/04/setting-record-straight-on-jobs-report.html

  14. 14.

    butler

    April 6, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    Not to get all Godwin on this, but couldn’t this apply to the Axis powers? Getting attacked (quite literally, as well as philosophically) from both sides must have meant they were doing something right?

  15. 15.

    the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)

    April 6, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    Who the fuck is James B. Stewart and why would anyone give a flying fuck what he thinks, and after Judy Miller and Curveball, anyone who believes anything because it’s printed in “the paper of record” or any other corporate media deserves the ass fucking that they’re going to get as a result of that belief.

  16. 16.

    jl

    April 6, 2012 at 8:05 pm

    What kind of article is this thing anyway? Here is the heading:

    Common Sense
    For All the Furor Over Ryan’s Plan, It’s a Place to Start
    By JAMES B. STEWART
    Published: April 6, 2012

    Is this a blog, an opinion piece, a ‘new analysis’.

    This is an example of tendentious infotainment crud which masks third rate advocacy as news, or analysis for something informative.

    Seriously, what is this supposed to be?

    It is the intellectual equivalent of a puff piece for a magic paste that you rub on your belly to make the flab go away. At least that has to be ID’s as an advertisement in small type someplace on the page.

  17. 17.

    magurakurin

    April 6, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    All the animals come out at the convention – manwhores, caribou pussies, dog buggers, drama queens, bond market faires, oxycotin dopers, jesus junkies. Sick, venal. Someday a real rain’ll come and wash all this scum off the streets.

  18. 18.

    Suffern ACE

    April 6, 2012 at 8:07 pm

    Who is this Stewart fellow? And where do they keep finding them?

  19. 19.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 6, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    If everyone thinks you are wrong, may be you are wrong. Speaking of Stewarts, is it just me or is Jon Stewart sounding more and more Broderite these days.

  20. 20.

    magurakurin

    April 6, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    If a brain farts on the Internet and nobody smells it, does it still stink?

  21. 21.

    eemom

    April 6, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    @the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady):

    Who the fuck is James B. Stewart and why would anyone give a flying fuck what he thinks

    This. O This.

  22. 22.

    Suffern ACE

    April 6, 2012 at 8:11 pm

    @butler: They had some good ideas. They just went too far. Or so I used to be told by apologists until it became trendy to rewrite history to make the axis into progressive ground zero.

  23. 23.

    butler

    April 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm

    @the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): I’d never heard of him, but apparently he’s quite the accomplished writer for the Times. He even has a Pulitzer for journalism for exposing insider trading and other Wall Street Shenanigans, about which he later wrote a book. But that was 25 years ago, so maybe he’s settled into a life of getting paid a lot to churn out the occasional shitty column.

  24. 24.

    butler

    April 6, 2012 at 8:15 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Speaking of Stewarts, is it just me or is Jon Stewart sounding more and more Broderite these days.

    He has recently had one of his temporary spells of Broderitis. I’m not too concerned, they flare up occasionally but the GOP can be counted on to cure it by doing something crazy.

  25. 25.

    eemom

    April 6, 2012 at 8:16 pm

    @magurakurin:

    There was green alligators and long-necked geese, some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees….

    Particularly a propos given the rain imagery, if I do say so myself.

  26. 26.

    PeakVT

    April 6, 2012 at 8:16 pm

    Listen you screwheads

  27. 27.

    Amir Khalid

    April 6, 2012 at 8:17 pm

    @jl:
    I found the “COMMON SENSE” thing a bit ironic, meself.

  28. 28.

    Tonal Crow

    April 6, 2012 at 8:20 pm

    How about “If Republicans are doing it, it’s overwhelmingly likely to be wrong”?

  29. 29.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    April 6, 2012 at 8:21 pm

    If it’s not a corollary to the Golden Mean Fallacy, it should be: If you’re told you’re wrong by ‘both sides’, sometimes you really are just wrong.

  30. 30.

    David Koch

    April 6, 2012 at 8:26 pm

    Colbert >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stewart

  31. 31.

    beltane

    April 6, 2012 at 8:29 pm

    @middlewest: And Hitler was likewise criticized by Stalin and Roosevelt which means he was full of bipartisany goodness.

  32. 32.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 6, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    It seems like Ryan, has replaced McCain as the Village’s crush.

  33. 33.

    the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)

    April 6, 2012 at 8:31 pm

    @butler:

    Ruth Marcus has a Pulitzer “for her intelligent and incisive commentary on a range of subjects”. LOL.

    ETA: Correction: she was a finalist. Still a fucking joke.

  34. 34.

    msnthrop

    April 6, 2012 at 8:32 pm

    Nice quote = Travis Bickle – Taxi Driver, or at least pretty close

  35. 35.

    David Koch

    April 6, 2012 at 8:35 pm

    In truth, Hitler was criticized by both the left and right, which can only mean he was a moderate.

  36. 36.

    eemom

    April 6, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    @the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady):

    Pulitzers are ALL a fucking joke, period.

    MoDo has one. So does Kathleen Parker. Nuff said.

  37. 37.

    Phil Perspective

    April 6, 2012 at 8:53 pm

    @the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady): He’s the guy who wrote: Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America And no, I am not kidding.

  38. 38.

    wasabi gasp

    April 6, 2012 at 8:54 pm

    That quote up top is a Jeopardy contestant introduction.

  39. 39.

    Peter

    April 6, 2012 at 9:12 pm

    “if both sides are complaining you must be doing something right” is a direct corollary to to the South Park Fallacy, which is:

    “if two sides are fighting, they’re both wrong.”

  40. 40.

    RSA

    April 6, 2012 at 9:38 pm

    ((Democrat (?* ?x) criticized Republican (?* ?x) for (?* ?z) period (?* ?y) responded (?* ?w))
    (Do you often feel that both sides do it?))

  41. 41.

    Joseph Nobles

    April 6, 2012 at 9:40 pm

    You know who else both sides complained about?

  42. 42.

    RSA

    April 6, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    @RSA: Jesus, I can’t even program in Lisp any more.

  43. 43.

    Judge Crater

    April 6, 2012 at 11:20 pm

    Stewart really is a turd. He appears occasionally on CNBC to proffer the same kind of smarmy rationalizations for why the super rich are wealth creators and how the rest of us should just worship them and keep our proletarian mouths shut. He’s entranced by the powerful and thinks that the bullshit he spews is erudite and contrarian. He is the salmonella that our rancid world of elite journalism produces.

  44. 44.

    mclaren

    April 6, 2012 at 11:41 pm

    Meanwhile, Obama hits a new low — authorizes indictment of a waterboarding whistleblower.

    The torturers go free, never indicted…but the people who leak the news of the torture to the press? Why, THEY get indicted and sent to prison!

    Celebrate the HOPE and CHANGE! It’s CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN!

  45. 45.

    Gex

    April 6, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    What a novel new idea. If EVERYBODY thinks you are wrong, you must be right.

    Contrarianism is all that matters. What will happen when we are all contrary? Can we get back to studying things and then trying to learn from our studies? Or are we forever stuck rejecting what we learn so we can be cool?

  46. 46.

    mainmati

    April 6, 2012 at 11:55 pm

    @Suffern ACE: Haven’t had a chance to read this article but FWIW here’s a short bio: http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/profile/66-james-stewart/10

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    April 7, 2012 at 12:03 am

    @mclaren:

    A guy who goes on TV to claim that waterboarding totally worked and we got valuable information from it is not a “whistleblower.” He’s an apologist. He’s a defender of the Bush torture regime. But I’m not surprised that you would defend a serial liar and a torture apologist as long as you think it makes Obama look bad.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    April 7, 2012 at 12:08 am

    Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC’s Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.
    __
    “From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”
    __
    No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA’s application of the medieval confession technique.
    __
    The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou’s claim.

    Yep. Clearly he was a whistleblower trying to bring down the torture regime, and now he’s a poor innocent being railroaded by the evil Obama administration. The fact that his claims were immediately picked up and promulgated by the right wing media as proof positive that torture works is just a co-inkydink, right, mclaren?

  49. 49.

    Steve S

    April 7, 2012 at 6:54 pm

    It’s not that “if both sides are complaining you must be doing something right” is incredibly fucking stupid the first time someone says it—though it is—it’s that these morons think it’s clever to repeat it a thousand times a day.

    That’s what I think every time some dipshit repeats ‘also, too’ or ‘wait for it’ for the 19,000th time.

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